#especially is none of them are cis...

[puppethistoryhive]

guy who can not stop thinking about bethory

[aishabellasbigblogofeverything]

I love it when women hate men. I love it when women are allowed to vent to each other about how horrible and creepy men are. I love it when women form friendships with and prioritize each other over relationships with men(whether they're attracted to them or not). I love it when women put men dni in their bios and on their nude photos and on posts on their blogs. I love it when women refuse to mollycoddle and accommodate entitled male feelings with "but this doesn't mean I hate all men, I know a few men who are great, I love my father/sons/brothers/uncles/male cousins/guy friends" I love it when women complain about men WITHOUT "not all men" being a disclaimer. I love it when women avoid socializing with/refuse to be around/befriend/get close to men because they know men can't be trusted. I love it when women make "kill all men" jokes. I love it when women offer absolutely no concern or care for men's feelings and if their misandry offends men whatsoever because why should we, men are the oppressor class who have raped and killed and abused us and kept us as subjugated as second-class citizens for millennia, they regularly mistreat us and the women in their own marginalized communities still every single day and make this world so much harder and more awful for us to be in, and if we choose to hate them and not spare them any sympathy then so be it, and I don't just mean "men as a class" either, you can be a woman who doesn't want to have anything to do with any man on an individual basis and completely cuts off men from her personal life too and ykw I will love and fucking support you in that because men deserve absolutely NOTHING from us. If they're so tough and strong then they can handle it just like they can handle being lonely. If you are a woman who hates men, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE A LESBIAN AND/OR A TRANS WOMAN, then just know that I love you. I love you, I support you, and you are safe here.

[dq1]

thinking again

[neighbourhoodtwo]

when people find out I'm trans it's all "oh ur so androgynous it's so cool" even though my style is distinctly not androgynous it's masc.

[transandrobroism]

notes/replies on that last post (about Florida moving to ban all HRT for adults) suggest it was struck down by a judge, which is a relief obviously. but i do wanna pick up on the response being "set up DIY networks for HRT! organise and help each other!" which is cool and all but... as the latest reblog comment points out, T is a controlled drug.

some quick and dirty googling confirms testosterone is a Schedule III controlled drug in the USA, with most legal sources suggesting possession and/or distribution of Schedule III drugs is a 3rd degree felony. conviction can mean up to five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. crucially, in Florida (where this law was intended to come into force), selling or distributing a Schedule III drug to minors pushes it up to a 2nd degree felony with a harsher fine/sentence.

i make this point because the response to HRT being restricted is often some variation of "mutual aid DIY network" or just flat suggesting DIY to people as the solution. which is cool if you're on estrogen, but possessing testosterone without a prescription is a literal felony in the USA. T is also a controlled drug in the UK, where trans people face long waiting lists for HRT - it's not illegal to possess T for personal use, but it is illegal to get them sent to you from abroad (importing a controlled drug) and to give them to other people (supply). to legally get T you need a prescription from a doctor.

in a hostile transphobic environment there is no guarantee that prosecuters will decide not to charge trans people for DIYing HRT. "set up DIY networks" for transmascs basically translates to "set up an illegal drug ring".

this is a form of transphobia that affects transmascs but does not affect transfems. it also affects nonbinary and intersex folks seeking or using testosterone HRT. in fact it could potentially impact some nonbinary trans folks worse because the medical gatekeeping around trying to transition as nonbinary is already an uphill struggle.

it is not easy for those of us on T to just DIY it and fuck the system. without a valid prescription our HRT becomes a banned illegal steroid that can land us in serious legal trouble if we get caught, especially if we're distributing it to other people as part of a mutual aid setup. i know we're all very "be gay do crime" for the memes but we are talking about an actual factual go-to-jail-irl crime here.

the fact that our HRT is an illegal drug unless prescribed by a doctor is a form of transandrophobia that affects trans men, transmascs, nonbinary people on masculinising HRT, and intersex people who want or need testosterone. it means that:

we cannot DIY transition without committing a crime, and have to weigh up that risk when considering DIY as an option

setting up a mutual aid testosterone DIY network is even more of a crime, especially if you want to use it to help trans teens

we are thus more dependent on placating medical practitioners and convincing them to prescribe us HRT

we will always be more impacted by any moves to restrict or delay access to HRT because we don't have an easy, legal DIY option

when access to HRT is limited for transphobic reasons, the DIY option comes at much higher risk

where access to HRT is severely delayed (as it is in the UK by years-long waiting lists), it is easier for transfems to start DIYing while they wait than it is for transmascs to do the same thing. in fact in the UK they've started selling estrogen HRT over the counter for menopause, so here if you want to start estrogen DIY all you have to do is get a cis lady friend to ask a pharmacist for menopause treatments. if you wanna start T you have to go on the fucking dark web (I'm exaggerating but... not a lot)

none of this is intended to suggest that transfems don't experience medical transphobia or gatekeeping and this isn't a "trans men have it worse universally across the board" post. there are undoubtedly some areas where it's harder to be transfem. however, this is one area where it is clearly and demonstrably harder to be a trans man. i am pointing this out because i keep seeing people saying that transmascs have it easier or there's no systemic or structural transphobia targeting trans men or we only ever experience misdirected misogyny or whatever. here is your proof that that is not true. this is a form of structural and systemic transphobia that impacts trans men and not trans women. and there is no possible world in which you can argue that testosterone being a controlled drug is somehow misogyny.

[neil-gaiman]

hello! recently i've been thinking about stuff and thought it might be good to send those thoughts somewhere (even if the chance of you seeing this is slim to none) I've seen quite a few people say that they see your insistence that Crowley and zira aren't gay in human terms (b.c. they're not cis men or whatever) or because they're sexless is homophobic as it implies a certain level of disgust with straight up gayness (these characters can be queer but not gay, they're the "good" type of queer because they aren't sexual, etc.). as an example, asking "why did you think it was sexual?" as a response to a Sara McCullar on Twitter about the season 2 kiss was rather tasteless as it pretty boldly implied that sex would ruin or dirty the moment.

obviously gayness is no more inherently sexual than straightness, but I am rather uncomfortable with the idea that gay sexuality is somehow dirty or would ruin a&c if included. especially when there are scenes (the ox scene for example) that feel very much like they are meant to be sexual in nature. it definitely comes across as queerbaity to put in sexual themes and then attempt to retcon them away.

It is rather confusing as a viewer to see your position on this jump from "we put in the kiss because we wanted it to be unambiguous" to "what did you see that was sexual". I suppose the crux of the issue is that you seem to want to include queerness in your story while still holding topics like sexuality at arms length.

anyway. mostly wrote this to get the situation straight in my head, though I would be curious to know if you were aware of this discourse at all.

Not aware of it. Not interested in it. If anyone seriously thinks Good Omens is homophobic I'm not sure what they think they watched, but I know I'm not making a story for them.

But no, I don't think of that kiss as being "sexual". I think of it as a last-ditch desperate attempt to communicate, not as a prelude to or part of lovemaking. (I've written kisses I would classify as sexual and kisses I wouldn't. That's not a sexy times kiss nor was it meant to be one.)

[penisbagelbite]

"Affirmation" & Malgendering

"Fine, I'll 'respect' your gender, but I'll make it absolutely miserable for you. What? You don't like the way I'm 'affirming' your gender? Guess you'll have to stop being a (trans) man then."

I want to put something out there about what I call "malgendering". I see trans men talk about the phenomenon and acknowledge it as a part of antitransmasculinity but not the concept of "malgendering" itself and what it's purpose is, and as trans men and transmasculine people are especially caught in the lose-lose situation between misgendering and malgendering I think it is an important concept to establish. The erasure of transmasculinity, particularly as a unique gender and gendered experience, also serves to keep the transmasculine trapped within this double-bind, positioned between the gender binary of cis patriarchal ideas of womanhood and manhood, where for us there is only misgendering (being abused with the Woman gender) or malgendering (being abused with the Man gender).

I define malgendering as the practice of "validating" someone's gender identity only when it can be used against them and to hurt them, and malgendering almost always involves the enforcement of only the most negative sexist stereotypes available onto the victim with none of the "positives". If misgendering is forcefully pushing you back into your 'proper place' such as by calling you a "girl" or a "her" and showing you that you're really a woman through sexual assault -malgendering is scaring and traumatizing you into it by using your own gender against you. Malgendering is the realization that you don't need to misgender someone to hurt them or to punish them for the way they identity and push them towards the gender they're 'supposed' to be - you can do all that through 'validation'. It's psychological warfare on the sense of self.

This violence and abuse under the guise of "respect" and "identity affirmation" creates plausible deniability of intent and places the blame on the victim for "identifying that way", so much so that even other trans people will defend it and believe it's not maligned (especially because "but being seen as and treated as your gender is what trans rights is all about!" and "errm but its transphobic to not treat u this way?/ur misgendering urself by wanting to not be treated this way :/" with the hidden message being "don't like it? stop being trans"), even when faced with evidence of the (very much intended) effects it has on stalling and outright eliminating transmasculinity (ie. repression, detransition, suicide).

Some examples I can pull off the top of my head:

A transphobe is talking about a pregnant trans man. The whole energy of the Facebook video is 'comedic', and while calling birth the most “feminine” thing someone can do and alluding to how the trans man is really a woman, they still use he/him and call him a “guy” (in air-quotes). Not out of any respect but because the idea of a man being pregnant, calling a pregnant person a "he", and the very existence of the trans man in question, is the whole joke. In doing so, the transphobe has turned the act of using the proper pronouns and gendering him into a source of humiliation and made the experience of being properly gendered a demeaning one. -

The Ukraine military situation where all males aged between 18 and 60 were banned from leaving the country and obliged to serve in the military. Trans women were denied passage out of the country "because they were men", and trans men were similarly denied passage out of the country "because they were men". With the discrepancy between invalidating the gender of trans women and "validating" the gender of trans men, you'd think the motivation behind this would be obvious - that trans people are expendable meat and it's better they die than cis people. It shouldn't of needed to be said that "I'm only affirming your gender because it allows me to put you in a position where you will likely suffer and die and put the blame for it on you" is not 'respect' or 'affirming' at all but somehow this was taken as evidence for the idea of that trans men are more 'respected' and seen as their genders than others (and are thus 'privileged'). -

A common one almost every trans guy deals with at some point is cis people threatening to beat trans men up (and often following through), because "If you're a man and not a woman (anymore) that means I can punch you," using the proximity to masculinity that transmasculine people claim as a justification for violence. Every other week there's a new story in online transmasculine spaces about someone having their ribs broken with "Since/if you want to be a man so bad-" preceding the attack. -

The above is in a similar vein to when accounts of violence done to transmasculine people by cisgender men are brushed off and they're told something along the lines of "welcome to being a man", "that's just what men do to each other", "that's just the way things are with men", etc. along with the insistence that their attack had nothing to do with antitransmasculinity, making it an immutable problem with (cis)men as a whole - creating a sense hopelessness and that this is all they have to look forward to. -

Transmasculine individuals being refused treatment, tests, or insurance for gynecological issues, especially cancer, despite the knowledge that they are transmasculine, because "men don't deal with these problems" and they don't want "men in women's spaces", and if you don't want to be 'treated like a man' and get the care you need (and not die), you're going to have to go ahead and detransition, change that M marker back to an F.

All of this functions to create contention, and eventually a rift, between the individual and their sense of gender identity. Creating an association between being gendered 'correctly' and 'respected' as your gender (and ultimately existing as a transmasculine person) with abuse, violence, helplessness, trauma, fear, isolation... and by making transmasculinity and transmanhood uninhabitable and driving a wedge between the individual and their sense of gender identity you can more easily drag them back to their 'proper' place. Plant seeds of doubt by making being transmasculine an exceedingly unhappy experience. Make them think that everything that's happened is their own fault for choosing to be transmasculine or trying to be a man. That maybe since they're so unhappy this isn't for them. That living as a transmasculine person is just too difficult and they're not cut out for it, that if they "gave up" and were to be women again things would be easier and they would be safer and happier.

This also all serves to maintain cis patriarchal ideas of gender and the gender binary and police the boundaries of manhood, in a way I can't articulate right now.

Through all this, despite being called "men" during malgendering, we are not actually perceived as such. We are always an "other". Acknowledging us as "men" is just another weapon, and why some transmascs flinch at the phrase "trans men are men". Our own genders are used to beat us.

Using a scrap from my .txt journals:

"[...] on the subject of having a core aspect of yourself taken from you and turned into a weapon to beat you with, with the result being that aspect of yourself now becoming a source of trauma and pain so you abandon it and lock it away like an awful secret, that’s exactly what happened with my gender. Being genderless and a(nti)binary is what I’m most comfortable as, a(nti)gender is my ~real gender~, but I have to admit a lot of this is because I have been traumatized out of any gender with binary associations and have consequently come to know gender itself, and the act of gendering, as violence. Gender is but a designation for what exploitation, abuse, and violence can be enacted upon you and the justification there of. When someone asks whether you are "masc" or "femme", behind their back as they face you is a hammer in one hand, and a knife in the other, and what they are actually asking is if they can pummel you or lacerate you. When it comes to the “direction” I’m transitioning in though, it is obviously “masculine” (as much as a negation of "femininity" is always taken as stepping towards "masculinity") and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong to call me “transmasculine”, though I have been scared to death of being acknowledged as such."

My first encounter with malgendering was when I was 13 and had just started to realize I was "ftm" and looking for community online. My first exposure to any affirmation of transmasculinity was someone I came to respect reblogging a post about how Kill All Men includes trans men. This would set the precedent of the next decade of my life of existing while transmasculine. A decade of only hearing the words "trans men" and "transmasc" used negatively and as the butt of jokes that served to reinforce patriarchal ideas of gender. The consistent and relentless denial of transmasculinity as a unique gender and gendered experience, the denial of transmasculine reality especially in regards to misogyny, and continuous abuse and threats of violence, all under the guise of affirming trans men's genders as men (and affirming the gender binary in the process). A decade of having antitransmasculine sentiment fed to me in every way possible.

For me, the experiences of antitransmasculinity and malgendering from non-transmascs has effectively "chased" me out of my transmasculinity and any acknowledgement of it. For years I have hidden my transmasculinity and presumed "AGAB" out of fear, even in queer and supposedly trans-friendly spaces. I have not been able to associate with any “masculine” language in reference to myself without feeling that I am in imminent danger, have made a grave mistake, and suffocating in anticipation of punishment. I have always been scared of posting any of my art that eludes to my transmasculinity. I have always been terrified of being referred to or perceived as “transmasc”, a “trans man”, of being called a "guy" or “dude” or “bro”, of using "he/him" anywhere. All of it. Deep down on some level I do desire it, but it’s been forbidden and only aggravates existing wounds.

And this, in turn, pushed me out of associating with other transmasculine folks out of fear and internalized antitransmasculinity towards other transmasculine people, isolating me from any community or connection with anyone similar to me, exacerbating my loneliness and alienation as a youth to the point where now as an adult my ‘normal’ human social needs – connection, community, relationships, empathy – are completely broken. I don’t feel loneliness anymore, or the desire to connect to anyone, despite in ways being even more alone now than I was then. In a way I believe antitransmasculinity shaped the path of my schizoidism. Isolating and divorcing me from my transmasculinity and the world at large is what I understand to be yet another point of this type of antitransmasculine rhetoric - because when you've destabilized and isolated someone from their whole sense of self and community, they are much easier to control.

[comicaurora]

I'm sorry that the terfs made their way onto your blog but it does feel good to see you support trans people. Thank you for that

Always.

I think, charitably, that the discourse going down on that post is an extrapolation and over-focus on one element of the point I was making: that for me, determining with certainty that I was cis was a rather fraught process. I was presented with many alternatives, but underlying their imposition on me was the oddly regressive idea that the things I liked, the principles I valued, the parts of myself I was proud of were not permitted of women. My whole life I got smacked with the background radiation that I couldn't like being strong because women aren't allowed to be stronger than men. I couldn't like being loud and boistrous because women aren't allowed to take up space. I couldn't be a math geek because women aren't smart. It was all deeply regressive misogyny from day one, but I started getting hit with it slathered in a fresh coat of paint - all those assumptions still held to be true, but now there was the out that I could do all those things if I just wasn't a woman.

Concluding that the underlying bioessentialist premise was wrong was very important. Absolutely none of those statements were true, and were only ever maintained by cultural saturation, goalpost-readjustment when they were actively disproven, and the occasional bout of lying with statistics to pretend they weren't just Shit All The Way Down. The core premise that certain things were only permitted of or possible for men was bullshit, and I didn't need to surrender the gender I liked best in order to play in the spaces I wanted to. I could simply exist the way I was already existing. I didn't need anything else.

The misinterpretation is the assumption that this being true of me means this is everybody's relationship with gender. I turned out to be cis, so for me, feeling that holding onto my assigned gender wasn't allowed was distressing - just another invocation of the same bioessentialist bullshit I'd been dealing with since the preschool playground. This is because misgendering is fundamentally denying that a person has the right to express themself the way they want. When aimed at me, it says I'm not performing traditional femininity well enough to deserve my pronouns. The same disrespect is the root of misgendering when aimed at trans people. "Perform your gender to my satisfaction or I will confiscate it."

The problem is, bioessentialism is 100% ingrained into the terf playbook, which is why, for instance, all their shitty talking points about trans athletes eventually boil down to "no woman can ever defeat a man in any contest because we are simply naturally weak and stupid and there is nothing we can do about it" and quite frankly nothing disgusts me more than the defeatist acceptance of the very lie that feminism is dedicated to overcoming. Instead of accepting that the paradigm of bioessentialism is a false dichotomy right from the jump, they embrace and weaponize it against the people whose existence proves the dichotomy is a lie. If gender essentialism is fundamentally false, then it is nobody's fucking business what anybody does with their gender. If the lines don't exist, nobody needs to enforce them. And yet there the terfs go, hunting down people whose lives are none of their business and trying to argue that they represent some great and terrible evil, some downfall of society made flesh, something that makes it totally correct and normal for them to spend so much time thinking about strangers' genitalia. They want this to be a noble crusade so badly they won't even examine what flag they're flying.

I love and support the trans people in my life and will always, always stand on the side of your right to exist, but alongside that, terf rhetoric especially disgusts and infuriates me because it is, at its heart, utter cowardice. The world told them they were weak and stupid and inferior and they fucking believed it. And now they think Fighting The Good Fight For Women means turning around and using the same paradigmatic weapon that hurt them to hurt the people whose existence outside the binary proves the weapon is a lie. They're the same shithead schoolyard bullies who made me believe my entire existence was foundationally wrong for years of my life and I will never, ever side with them or the shitty, cowardly rhetoric that contributed to the loneliest years of my life.

Figure out who you are and do it on purpose. Find the real source of the misery in your life and try fighting that instead of the other crabs in the bucket. Trans rights.

[spaghettioverdose]

I've never really talked on here about how I figured out my gender, and since this whole egg discourse is going on, I feel like I should.

I'm not one of the trans women who figured out their genders at age 4 and became fully confident of it. Up until around 16 I didn't even begin to consider that I may not be a cis guy and it took me up until almost 19 to fully realise I was a trans woman. Before this, at 18, after feeling particularly shitty for weeks (from what I later learned was definitely dysphoria), I attempted suicide.

I only really started to understand myself once I started hanging out with other trans people on discord servers. My perception of transness was the more mainstream-accepted version (at that time) of "I always confidently knew I was a woman basically from birth and I exhibited x, y and z feminine behaviours at all times etc." which I didn't fit in with, so I always thought "well I can't be a trans woman because that's not me". Being around other trans people, and especially having other trans women point out behaviours I had, and tell me "that's also how I thought before I realised I was trans" helped me immensely.

I didn't get any of the rigid online definitions and examples, nor did I get the perfectly sanitised videos from the handful of trans people who made it on youtube. None of that felt like me at the time. I didn't have any point of reference. I only really understood myself once I related to someone who used to be in the same position. If some trans girl didn't call me an egg, I might still be a completely miserable "cis" guy to this day still, or even dead.

I understand that others have had worse experiences when it comes to this, but we must recognise that the problem in these situations is outing or harassment. The porblem is abuse, and as with all things interpersonal, you can always turn it into abuse. As with all things interpersonal, you have to have some amount of tact and caution.

I don't think we should harass anyone into getting their egg cracked (and this happens vastly less often than people here seem to think but it does happen), but also we shouldn't be constantly agnostic about if someone is trans or not, because in the end not everyone is capable of coming to that conclusion by themselves, and by the time you've "let them figure it out" they might've spent several more years being miserable and not knowing why or they might be dead.

It is also very important to point out that this discourse is only really happening because there is a particular bias against trans women. This isn't a discussion of how to approach the subject, or a handful of people talking about their experiences with it, it's a discourse where one side is trying to problematize another aspect of the transfem community. Notice that people are arguing this when it comes to transfems and not cis gay people or even transmascs. Notice that this website always cycles back to attacking some aspect of the transfem community every couple of weeks.

Do you really think these arguments are being made in good faith? Do you really think it's worth adding to the sea of transmisogyny that is this website and most of the world?

As always, this post is meant for people who are genuinely well-meaning. The dipshits who keep jumping on any excuse they can to harass trans women can go fuck themselves.

[chainmail-butch]

i was talking to a friend who's a trans woman about this. she used to be really weird about butch trans women, but ended up being butch herself. she told me she was adverse to it because "it was like watching someone leave their house completely naked. you feel maybe a little embarrassed for them but you're mostly scared for how other people are going to treat them too. [she] thought "well, [she'd] be embarrassed doing the same and maybe they were having a hard time passing. but then finding out they're doing it on purpose, [she] thought that they were making a joke of being trans, like they were enforcing the stereotype of just saying you were a woman despite not making any effort to look like one. [she] was confused as to why anyone would do that, especially when she'd been having a hard time being treated well even though she did everything to make herself like a cis girl." she hated having to put in so much effort into looking feminine but did it because she was sure that's just what you had to do. obviously, probably regardless of how she looked, she was going to be treated like shit on the principal of being trans and after actually talking to butches and thinking about it more, she decided to just dress how she felt comfortable and still be proud of being a woman.

That's very interesting to hear. That is the consistent impression I've gotten from well meaning trans women.

I had to wrestle with the whole, "declaring myself a woman without making the effort," thing. When I first transitioned I put on dresses, tried on makeup, and got cute jackets. None of it felt right. I knew, entirely, that I was a woman. But doing all of the things women were supposed to be doing made me feel even worse than when I had lived as a man, which is saying something.

I eventually figured out that there is plenty of effort to being a butch woman. There are still styles, there are still pieces of gendered clothing, there are still gendered actions, they're just hidden in plain sight. They're all the things I wanted to do and all the ways that I wanted to be perceived that I couldn't understand until someone (Leslie Feinberg) held a mirror to my face (SBB) and said Butch. Then it all clicked.

I've been doing HRT for three full years now. I've been socially transitioned for three full years now. It is work. It is a challenge. It is walking out of the house with nothing but your soul and what you choose to armor it with. For some women the armor is a dress and a full face of makeup. For me its leather and boots.

I love my sisters deeply. I love women deeply. I love womanhood deeply. But my womanhood is also deliberately not womanhood. My selfish desire is a world where I can be exactly who I am without having to justify it to every woman, trans or cis, that crosses my path. But that's not gonna happen any time soon.

As so many butches, cis and trans, have said, It is a difficult road to walk and I have no choice but to walk it.

[genderqueerdykes]

i love you so much i love the way u talk abt trans men and our struggles i makes me feel so seen especially bc youre older than me, i want to be understood , keep posting please

THANK YOU !!

i appreciate that. i feel like nobody (aside from some very cool bloggers on here) is advocating for trans men anymore. like unless its a trans man talking about these issues, it just doesn't happen. nobody advocates on our behalf for the most part. everyone just leaves us to the weeds. we have to help each other because most people just don't even understand what trans men and mascs want. like it's absolutely positively insanity inducing

when i was in college, at my pride group, there were just. no conversations about trans men. at all. in fact. at the time i was beginning to realize i was a trans man but i couldn't find support or acknowledgement of transmasculinity anywhere. whenever i would participate in the conferences, and large group meetings for LGBTQ communities in our part of the country... I was forced into queer women's groups. i did not identify as a woman or bigender at that time. i asked them where a female-to-male genderqueer person should go, and they put me in every queer women's group. i was not being considered trans. i was being viewed as a cis butch lesbian.

i was fucking pissed.

i learned the word transgender and what it meant and the example that was given was male to female, which was informative. i heard a lot of things about feminine transition, drag queens, cis gay male culture, bisexuality, pansexuality, and even asexuality. i want you to know that my college's pride group in 2011 - 2012 was more accepting of asexual people than trans men, which is insane for that time frame. i was actually allowed to help with a presentation on asexuality

i had to go online and research trans men, though. there were none to be found in the group that were at least out and able to talk to each other. we were all very stealth and nervous. my long term friends there ended up being gay men, lesbians, and a transfem agender person. i never met a single trans man there. it was heartbreaking.

i am tired of participating in transmasculine silence. i will not participate in self-erasure. trans men are trans. we're men. we're mascs. we NEED support, community, and care. we need to learn how to access transition resources, to comfort each other, to laugh with each other, to help each other find what clothes make us feel like ourselves, to say each other's names and pronouns, to see one's self in the other.

we need people who will protect us from misgendering. we need to be able to talk about our unique issues. we need to be able to talk about how yes, we experience misogyny, but also that transandrophobia is literally a thing. we need people who will stand up for femme trans men and gay trans men. we need people who understand that it's not okay to call every single trans man a confused butch lesbian and assume that they're a queer cis woman. trans men can be butch lesbians and that's okay. but you can't rip away a trans man's manhood for the sake of being a catty asshole. it's misgendering. it's transphobia. care about being transphobic. transphobia hurts all trans people no matter where it's directed. we all lose when you opt to deny trans men and mascs the right to community.

i am transmasculine. i am a trans man. i love being a trans man. i'm not ashamed. i'm not going back in the closet. i love my transmasculine brothers and siblings. i will not silence them. silencing them is a disservice to us all. i refuse to do that to us.

thank you for sending this ask. stay safe, take care of yourself, you're an important part of the LGBTQ community, don't let anyone take that from you.

[insomniakisses]

Hotd reaction to you saying its too big

Warnings/Notes: MINORS AND CIS HETS DNI // 18+ Content Ahead, Omegaverse

You knew your first time with your alpha would hurt, but it was your marital duty so you had to face it here and now. Luckily, your alpha seemed more than content in taking the lead.

Leading you to your new chambers they made quick work of stripping you both off, leaning down to kiss their way across your chest and down to your pussy. Once there they began slow licks from your hole all the way up to your clit swirling there tongue there before repeating the process. Loving the moans and mewls you let out as your hole clenched around nothing.

Once they had ensured you were wet enough to take them they rub their tip against you getting it when enough before gently pushing in with a moan, there tip popping in completely as you yelp. “Its too big!”

Rhaenys

She simply moves to rub ur clit continuing to push in. “Cmon be a good omega and take ur alpha” she coaxes leaning to kiss ur neck and jaw as she stretches you paying no mind to your tears as she bottoms out.

“B-baby” you whine as you attempt to push her away she huffs slapping your hands away and holding your legs open. “I’ll go slow and you’ll adjust” she states matter of fact as her hips begin to move.

Alicent

She pauses immediately nosing at your neck placing soft kisses there. Her body is screaming to pound you but she never wants to hurt you especially not during something intimate. “Are you hurt?” She asks soft eyes full of regret stare at yours and you shake your head looping your arms around her neck pulling her in for a kiss mummbing a “just be gentle” against them as you legs lock around her waist.

She moans feeling herself slip deeper and her hips set off to a soft pace pushing all the way in and pulling out to her tip before pushing back in again. Not going faster till you’re begging her to.

Rhaenyra

She groans not stopping as she pushes your legs to your chest pinning you in place. “I’m big huh?” She smirks cocky as always “You think you can take it? Take my thick cock as I breed you full?” Shes past bottoming out now already moving at a fast pace her tip smacking your cervix every thrust her cock so thick she stretches you so much you struggle for breath.

You’re left a mess mouth open moaning and mumbling none sense, tears of pleasure leaking from your eyes as you stare at the ceiling with blown out pupils. Belly bulging with cum as you leak onto her cock. Rhaenyra isn’t fairing much better shes moaning mouth open and eyes closed cock past sensitive and knot ready to pop as she goes and goes and goes.

Aegon

Blushing he whines and nuzzles ur neck pushing in more. “It’s okay love, ittle be okay” he mumbles into your ear.

It doesn’t take him long to push in he’s not all that big in length but he’s definitely thick. Which is the problem he’s stretching u so much and u whine and moan under him.

He’s gentle and needy in his thrusts pulling you into a sloppy kiss as you adjust around him. “You’re doing so good love” he gasps cumming already as he rubs your clit.

Helaena

She blushes and whines hiding her face and you bucking into you fast and sloppy. She’s in her head now, too focused on pleasure. “Sorry, baby” she gasps holding you close.

You wrap your legs around her waist playing with her hair as she gives you a sweet kiss. Humming in delight she focuses more getting out of her own head and concentrating on you.

“Welcome back baby” you whisper and looking down she sees shes cum twice and by the feel of how wet you are you probably have too.

Aemond

He groans throatily smirking against your ear, snapping his hips all the way as you yelp and gasp. “Take it baby, I know you can. It’s your purpose” he husks into your ear.

Blushing you feel him push your legs to your chest going deeper. His thrusts fast and hard as her moans and groans his balls slapping against your ass.

[imoanurparentsnames]

"Affirmation" & Malgendering

"Fine, I'll 'respect' your gender, but I'll make it absolutely miserable for you. What? You don't like the way I'm 'affirming' your gender? Guess you'll have to stop being a (trans) man then."

I want to put something out there about what I call "malgendering". I see trans men talk about the phenomenon and acknowledge it as a part of antitransmasculinity but not the concept of "malgendering" itself and what it's purpose is, and as trans men and transmasculine people are especially caught in the lose-lose situation between misgendering and malgendering I think it is an important concept to establish. The erasure of transmasculinity, particularly as a unique gender and gendered experience, also serves to keep the transmasculine trapped within this double-bind, positioned between the gender binary of cis patriarchal ideas of womanhood and manhood, where for us there is only misgendering (being abused with the Woman gender) or malgendering (being abused with the Man gender).

I define malgendering as the practice of "validating" someone's gender identity only when it can be used against them and to hurt them, and malgendering almost always involves the enforcement of only the most negative sexist stereotypes available onto the victim with none of the "positives". If misgendering is forcefully pushing you back into your 'proper place' such as by calling you a "girl" or a "her" and showing you that you're really a woman through sexual assault -malgendering is scaring and traumatizing you into it by using your own gender against you. Malgendering is the realization that you don't need to misgender someone to hurt them or to punish them for the way they identity and push them towards the gender they're 'supposed' to be - you can do all that through 'validation'. It's psychological warfare on the sense of self.

This violence and abuse under the guise of "respect" and "identity affirmation" creates plausible deniability of intent and places the blame on the victim for "identifying that way", so much so that even other trans people will defend it and believe it's not maligned (especially because "but being seen as and treated as your gender is what trans rights is all about!" and "errm but its transphobic to not treat u this way?/ur misgendering urself by wanting to not be treated this way :/" with the hidden message being "don't like it? stop being trans"), even when faced with evidence of the (very much intended) effects it has on stalling and outright eliminating transmasculinity (ie. repression, detransition, suicide).

Some examples I can pull off the top of my head:

A transphobe is talking about a pregnant trans man. The whole energy of the Facebook video is 'comedic', and while calling birth the most “feminine” thing someone can do and alluding to how the trans man is really a woman, they still use he/him and call him a “guy” (in air-quotes). Not out of any respect but because the idea of a man being pregnant, calling a pregnant person a "he", and the very existence of the trans man in question, is the whole joke. In doing so, the transphobe has turned the act of using the proper pronouns and gendering him into a source of humiliation and made the experience of being properly gendered a demeaning one.

The Ukraine military situation where all males aged between 18 and 60 were banned from leaving the country and obliged to serve in the military. Trans women were denied passage out of the country "because they were men", and trans men were similarly denied passage out of the country "because they were men". With the discrepancy between invalidating the gender of trans women and "validating" the gender of trans men, you'd think the motivation behind this would be obvious - that trans people are expendable meat and it's better they die than cis people. It shouldn't of needed to be said that "I'm only affirming your gender because it allows me to put you in a position where you will likely suffer and die and put the blame for it on you" is not 'respect' or 'affirming' at all but somehow this was taken as evidence for the idea of that trans men are more 'respected' and seen as their genders than others (and are thus 'privileged').

A common one almost every trans guy deals with at some point is cis people threatening to beat trans men up (and often following through), because "If you're a man and not a woman (anymore) that means I can punch you," using the proximity to masculinity that transmasculine people claim as a justification for violence. Every other week there's a new story in online transmasculine spaces about someone having their ribs broken with "Since/if you want to be a man so bad-" preceding the attack.

The above is in a similar vein to when accounts of violence done to transmasculine people by cisgender men are brushed off and they're told something along the lines of "welcome to being a man", "that's just what men do to each other", "that's just the way things are with men", etc. along with the insistence that their attack had nothing to do with antitransmasculinity, making it an immutable problem with (cis)men as a whole - creating a sense hopelessness and that this is all they have to look forward to.

Transmasculine individuals being refused treatment, tests, or insurance for gynecological issues, especially cancer, despite the knowledge that they are transmasculine, because "men don't deal with these problems" and they don't want "men in women's spaces", and if you don't want to be 'treated like a man' and get the care you need (and not die), you're going to have to go ahead and detransition, change that M marker back to an F.

All of this functions to create contention, and eventually a rift, between the individual and their sense of gender identity. Creating an association between being gendered 'correctly' and 'respected' as your gender (and ultimately existing as a transmasculine person) with abuse, violence, helplessness, trauma, fear, isolation... and by making transmasculinity and transmanhood uninhabitable and driving a wedge between the individual and their sense of gender identity you can more easily drag them back to their 'proper' place. Plant seeds of doubt by making being transmasculine an exceedingly unhappy experience. Make them think that everything that's happened is their own fault for choosing to be transmasculine or trying to be a man. That maybe since they're so unhappy this isn't for them. That living as a transmasculine person is just too difficult and they're not cut out for it, that if they "gave up" and were to be women again things would be easier and they would be safer and happier.

This also all serves to maintain cis patriarchal ideas of gender and the gender binary and police the boundaries of manhood, in a way I can't articulate right now.

Through all this, despite being called "men" during malgendering, we are not actually perceived as such. We are always an "other". Acknowledging us as "men" is just another weapon, and why some transmascs flinch at the phrase "trans men are men". Our own genders are used to beat us.

Using a scrap from my .txt journals:

"[...] on the subject of having a core aspect of yourself taken from you and turned into a weapon to beat you with, with the result being that aspect of yourself now becoming a source of trauma and pain so you abandon it and lock it away like an awful secret, that’s exactly what happened with my gender.

Being genderless and a(nti)binary is what I’m most comfortable as, a(nti)gender is my ~real gender~, but I have to admit a lot of this is because I have been traumatized out of any gender with binary associations and have consequently come to know gender itself, and the act of gendering, as violence. Gender is but a designation for what exploitation, abuse, and violence can be enacted upon you and the justification there of. When someone asks whether you are "masc" or "femme", behind their back as they face you is a hammer in one hand, and a knife in the other, and what they are actually asking is if they can pummel you or lacerate you. When it comes to the “direction” I’m transitioning in though, it is obviously “masculine” (as much as a negation of "femininity" is always taken as stepping towards "masculinity") and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong to call me “transmasculine”, though I have been scared to death of being acknowledged as such."

My first encounter with malgendering was when I was 13 and had just started to realize I was "ftm" and looking for community online. My first exposure to any affirmation of transmasculinity was someone I came to respect reblogging a post about how Kill All Men includes trans men. This would set the precedent of the next decade of my life of existing while transmasculine. A decade of only hearing the words "trans men" and "transmasc" used negatively and as the butt of jokes that served to reinforce patriarchal ideas of gender. The consistent and relentless denial of transmasculinity as a unique gender and gendered experience, the denial of transmasculine reality especially in regards to misogyny, and continuous abuse and threats of violence, all under the guise of affirming trans men's genders as men (and affirming the gender binary in the process). A decade of having antitransmasculine sentiment fed to me in every way possible.

For me, the experiences of antitransmasculinity and malgendering from non-transmascs has effectively "chased" me out of my transmasculinity and any acknowledgement of it. For years I have hidden my transmasculinity and presumed "AGAB" out of fear, even in queer and supposedly trans-friendly spaces. I have not been able to associate with any “masculine” language in reference to myself without feeling that I am in imminent danger, have made a grave mistake, and suffocating in anticipation of punishment. I have always been scared of posting any of my art that eludes to my transmasculinity. I have always been terrified of being referred to or perceived as “transmasc”, a “trans man”, of being called a "guy" or “dude” or “bro”, of using "he/him" anywhere. All of it. Deep down on some level I do desire it, but it’s been forbidden and only aggravates existing wounds.

And this, in turn, pushed me out of associating with other transmasculine folks out of fear and internalized antitransmasculinity towards other transmasculine people, isolating me from any community or connection with anyone similar to me, exacerbating my loneliness and alienation as a youth to the point where now as an adult my ‘normal’ human social needs – connection, community, relationships, empathy – are completely broken. I don’t feel loneliness anymore, or the desire to connect to anyone, despite in ways being even more alone now than I was then. In a way I believe antitransmasculinity shaped the path of my schizoidism. Isolating and divorcing me from my transmasculinity and the world at large is what I understand to be yet another point of this type of antitransmasculine rhetoric - because when you've destabilized and isolated someone from their whole sense of self and community, they are much easier to control.

[cat-in-a-mech-suit]

Transmasculinity Throughout Time: Hatshepsut

Kicking off this first post in what I hope to be a long series by saying that I am just a guy who likes obsessively researching things and I am absolutely not a historical expert, and in this case, not an Egyptologist. My perspectives and interpretations are my own. You are welcome to have other ones.

Hatshepsut is known as Egypt’s first and only female pharaoh, and is discussed as such throughout almost all material about them. I will be nonetheless using they/them pronouns to refer to them, but during their life they used both masculine and feminine pronouns. The tendency to project modern ideas onto historical figures is common. Especially in the case of people who exhibited signs of transmasculinity, it is common for their entire lives to be reduced to “women who cosplayed as men for power” which is problematic for obvious reasons. Cis men coveting masculinity for the pursuit of power in a patriarchal society is never a reason they are actually women, yet it is okay to do this with historical transmasculine people in the name of feminism? There is a clear double standard. So, I will be using gender neutral pronouns because we can’t really know if Hatshepsut was alive today whether they would identify as a woman, trans man, nonbinary or as none of those identities. I am simply going to be discussing the history and some of my interpretations.

In the context of ancient Egypt, the pharaoh was a living embodiment of the masculine god Horus. Hatshepsut embraced this role after coming to power, ascending from the position of queen regent alongside a child king once their former husband Thutmose II had passed, to “his majesty the king herself.” As their rule progressed, they were depicted as more and more masculine in statues and reliefs, using the same ceremonial fake beard as male pharaohs, muscles, and other masculine signifiers. They didn’t stop wearing makeup and jewelry when presenting as a male king though, which some historians take as evidence to support a female gender identity - it could mean that, but it could also just mean they liked to be fashionable and didn’t subscribe to restrictive gender roles!

Like kings before them, Hatshepsut emphasized their connection to the gods by telling a story to justify their rule. However, the story they told had to be exceptional - and it was. Hatshepsut’s throne name, Maatkare, translated to “truth is the soul of the sun god.” This demonstrated a connection to the sun god, Amun or Ra, and to Maat, the tradition of maintaining harmony in ancient Egypt. The story was that Amun had appeared to their mother who had conceived Hatshepsut for the purpose of being king, commanded by the god of creation Khnum, to “fashion [them] better than all gods” with “the great dignity of a king.” In carvings, Khnum created Hatshepsut as a little boy. This explanation for their lineage is especially interesting because it emphasizes their connection both to their mother’s bloodlines and to being the child of Amun, not ruling as just a queen regent, but as a king.

During their rule of 20 years, Egypt’s trade flourished and there was an immense period of construction during which countless buildings and statues were created, and temples renovated. Unfortunately after their death, extreme measures were taken by Thutmose III to erase all records of Hatshepsut from existence in order to preserve the line of male kings. These efforts were primarily successful, and much of their history has been lost to time. There are many things about Hatshepsut that we will never know.

[bynux]

Gender essentialism is a social cancer.

Just saw a post on Lex that was basically a transmasc person asking the queer community at large to stop excluding them because they pass as a cis man. They asked that we maybe stop coming down on trans men, masc NBs, hell, even trans women who don't know they're trans yet.

And…yeah. I don't think that's an unreasonable ask. Tbh I think that should also include cis men who aren't straight, because they are part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

I think what's vastly more important than whether someone has a masculine identity is whether or not they're explicitly being toxically masculine. Wanting more body hair isn't toxic, wanting a flat chest isn't toxic, wanting to enjoy more "masculine" activities and be seen as one of the guys isn't toxic. SIMPLY BEING A MAN IS NOT TOXIC.

Anytime I've seen someone insist otherwise, it's been someone closely tied to—if not within—radfem/TERF circles. The logic that leads people to say masculine traits == bad is the same as the logic that results in having penis == bad, yet for some reason the former is treated as common sense even in queer circles. We're supposed to be rejecting gender norms, not reinforcing them dammit.

What's bad, what's toxic, is possessiveness. Needless aggression. Unchecked jealousy. Entitlement (especially sexual entitlement). None of these are inherently masculine traits.

It's one thing to be cautious of cis men, who more often than not have accepted masculinity as the default rather than a conscious choice, and may have learned more toxic traits as a result. But you don't know who is or isn't trans.

You don't know how that "cis man" actually identifies. Even if you do, you don't know whether or not he's examined his gender identity and decided he's happy where he is. You don't know whether or not he's actually possessive or entitled or aggressive. Making such assumptions is no better than assuming that a woman will be shy and submissive.

You don't know, and it's not your place to decide.

[insaniquariumfish]

Transwomen cannot be true feminist allies because they do not believe that femininity itself is inherently patriarchal, degrading, and unnecessary. IF they are in any way critical of femininity (which is rare), their only issue with it is that it is too strongly expected of women; they frame femininity as "something women should be allowed to choose if they want to," and not as something that is harmful to women in nature by default, whether they choose it or not.

They do not acknowledge the fact that a woman can only "choose" to be feminine in the same sense that someone raised in an extremely religious area can "choose" to be religious. Women are conditioned from birth to be feminine, told that their value as human beings is dependent on their ability to embody femininity, and if they are not feminine then they are punished for it and suffer for it. To frame this as a free and neutral choice is to deny the nature of what femininity is: something that is forced upon women, a tool invented and wielded by patriarchy to aid in the oppression of women and the empowering of men. And even if there were no longer any pressure from men for women to be feminine, the history of femininity, the centuries of suffering that women have been forced to endure in the name of femininity, why it was created, what purpose it is meant to serve, who it is meant to harm and who it is meant to benefit, none of those realities would be changed.

To trans women, femininity is essential to womanhood, and to be critical of femininity is to be critical of the very means through which their identity as a trans woman manifests. The idea of doing away with the association between womanhood and femininity poses an existential threat to them, especially to those who struggle to "pass," because how else can they signal their womanhood to the world, or affirm their womanhood to themselves, if they do not physically look like women and do not have female bodies?

They claim that they simply must be hyperfeminine, that they have no other choice, because for them to be gender nonconforming would result in them being mistreated and taken less seriously and struggling more in life. Well guess what, cis women face the exact same consequences for refusing to perform femininity. And masculine cis women do not have a panic attack every time they are misgendered, because they are secure in the knowledge that no amount of people not perceiving them as women can change the fact that they are women. Trans women claim to believe this themselves, that their womanhood exists independently of what they look like or how they dress or how they are perceived by others, but they do not act like this is the case. They act like validation that they are "feminine enough" matters more to them than the actual state of existing as a woman. They revel in femininity, find ecstasy in femininity. They cling to it with a vise like grip, embody the hyperfemme in as many ways as possible, and in doing so they only reinforce and perpetuate the idea that to be a woman is to be pretty, that to be a woman is to be dainty, adorned, coquette, frivilous, petty, bubbly, emotional, demure, submissive, stupid, sexy, slutty, an open mouth, an expectant asshole.