#you are acting like our experiences as transmasculine people are making us More misogynistic

[nightmarish-fallen-angel]

I'm saying that targeting the transmasculine community specifically for misogyny, or acting like we're all misogynistic, is wrong and contributes to commonly held beliefs that we are trans because we're running away from misogyny and internalized misogyny, and that we are "gender traitors" who hate women.

There are transmascs who are misogynistic, this is typically called out within our community. Individuals can be sexist, but acting like transmascs are predisposed to misogyny due to our identity is wrong.

Also, assuming that every transmasc benefits from misogyny and gets validation from being misogynistic is a huge assumption to make.

Also I'm not "mansplaining" misogyny, I'm talking about my own experiences and the experiences of those I love to express why constantly being called misogynistic for something I can't control (masculinity/being trans) hurts.

There's something especially biting about people telling transmascs specifically to unpack their misogyny.

After so long of being yelled at or berated by my mother. Looked at with disgust for not shaving my legs and yelled at when I cut my hair, guilt tripped into wearing makeup, and being told any masculine dress was "not socially acceptable." All things that actively hurt gnc women as well as trans people. All things that are misogynistic to imply women have to do.

Every time I try to come out as trans: "I wish you weren't ashamed of your femininity, I'm so heartbroken that you hate women. You're only trying to become a man because you think women are inferior." Following it up with a "why can't you express yourself as you are and just be a gnc woman..." As if she didn't just mock me for those exact traits.

My mother, and by extension TERFs (as my mother is one), constantly imply that the only reason transmasculine people exist is because they are poor little girls who struggle with internalized misogyny. They need to embrace being the gnc women they truly are~ And the gnc women need to fix their internalized misogyny by being more feminine~

So imagine my frustration when the communities I assume to be safe for trans people (both irl and online) hit me with the "transmascs need to unpack their misogyny :/" "a surprising number of transmascs are misogynistic actually :/"

Everyone needs to unpack their misogyny dipshit. The fact that transmascs are singled out specifically leads me to conclude one (or both) of two things:

You have encountered a shitty transmasc person and have taken it upon yourself to decide that the entire transmasc community is like that. I'm not saying misogynistic transmascs don't exist, but if you see someone with a bigoted worldview and go "well this is indicative of the entire community" you are the problem.

You think transmascs are misogynistic for getting gender dysphoria around things that are feminine or conversely, they are misogynistic for getting euphoria around masculinity. This is just straight up punishing trans people for being true to themselves.

Both of these are transphobic arguments and are common TERF tactics to discredit trans people. I do not trust you if you hold the opinion that misogyny is more prevalent in transmasculine spaces than in society at large.

[genderkoolaid]

Screenshot:

Tell me you don't understand what we're talking about without telling me.

"People don't want trans men to be masculine because they don't want us to be trans" IS the argument I have seen most people make– specifically to point out how you cannot separate the transphobia we experience from our manhood and masculinity. We are treated badly for being men because we are trans. They are intertwined experiences. If trans men were women and not men, we would not be hated (similarly, if nonbinary people were [agab] and not nonbinary, we would not be hated.) It's transandrophobia to describe the specific transphobic oppression directed towards transmasculinity as a unified concept, not trans [separate identity] + male [separate identity].

Additionally, I haven't seen anyone who thinks the reason we get denied HRT is because they hate masculinity or want to destroy men. We get denied HRT because we are seen as women, unable to make decisions about our bodies, perpetually children while also having an obligation to be mothers, so anything we do to "destroy" our bodies is an act of violence in the eyes of the patriarchy. That is based in a mixture of transphobia and misogyny– which transandrophobia also describes (although some may use transmisogyny to describe that). Every post discussing the transandrophobia of denying HRT I have seen focuses on the misogynistic aspects of it.

The hatred of masculinity re: HRT comes in how people treat testosterone as it relates to transmascs: calling it's effects disgusting and ugly, acting like transmascs become violent raging misogynists when they are on it, saying transmascs get grosser and less clean. This does not come from a systematic hatred of masculinity itself, but the hatred of marginalized masculinity + existing gender stereotypes about men and women.

Additionally, trans men and nonbinary people who were AFAB are more likely (32% & 36%) to be denied coverage for hormone treatment than trans women and nonbinary people who were AMAB (18% & 16%) (p. 95). So while trans women do also get denied HRT (and that is awful too), it is in fact an issue that people who were AFAB and trying to get testosterone deal with more. A group does not have to be the only ones to ever experience something in order to have that experience be strongly based in their group identity.

[unhinged-transmasc-man]

I really do think that some trans people see the word “man” in trans man and their brain shuts off. Their brains go “Oh, man. Man privileged and bad. Men evil and oppressive. Therefore you, Man, equal evil and oppressive. I do not consider you a person now.” The usual acknowledgement of identities and nuance and lived experience they willingly apply to every other group flies out the fucking window. They are so blinded by gender essentialism they completely dehumanize trans men. They don’t know what to do with us in their simplistic bullshit radfem gender politics. Saying trans women are women doesn’t make you not a radfem, deconstructing bio/gender essentialism, and the belief that all masculinity and men/men-aligned/masculine people are inherently morally evil/oppressive/corruptive, and that all femininity and women/women-aligned-feminine people are inherently morally good/innocent/oppressed, THAT is what you have to do to not be a radfem, at the very least.

I am sick to death of non-trans men acting as if trans men never interrogate what it means to be a man. It is in the DEFINITION of being a trans man. We have thought about what it means to be a man more than anyone else (interestingly, trans women also have to grapple with manhood and masculinity in being raised with patriarchal expectations and realizing they don’t fit them and don’t identify with manhood). We build ourselves up from nothing (in terms of making the world acknowledge us as men instead of forcibly trapping as us “women”), we have to make our bodies match who we are, we have to figure out and be determined to be boys and men before anyone else knows we are. We are trans BECAUSE we are men. We have to figure out what being trans and what being a man means to us. Our sense of manhood and masculinity will always be rebellious (not by our own choice, but in the way any oppressed group is rebellious in existing). Trans men are inherently an anti-patriarchal concept. Obviously trans men can be misogynistic like anyone else, but the claim that transforming into a man is automatically misogynistic is radfem trash. The idea that identifying as a man suddenly erases experiences of misogyny is so inherently alien to the actual lived experience of all trans men that it can only come from people who do not interact with, care about, or view trans men as worthy of listening to, or even acknowledgment at all, or even just outright hate us for existing. Non trans men seem to legitimately think that putting on a binder will make cis people see us as men. That is not how it works, and the fact that I have to SAY THAT just shows the absolute miserable state of how rampant anti-trans man attitudes are (anti-transmasculinity more generally but specifically with trans men).

Trans men think about manhood a LOT. We think about it a lot, because manhood and masculinity are central to our identity in a way that is different from any other group of people. We are taking previous experiences and concepts, and re-framing and re-creating those concepts with what fits us. We have to completely construct both womanhood and manhood. It is also a different kind of thinking of being a man because we actually are the men in that situation, “the man” goes from being Other to Us. The complete disregard for our personal experiences, and the reliance on non-trans men and their endless parade of disgusting and bigoted options rather than US is very telling. Trans men have a unique perspective: manhood and masculinity, and the patriarchy (they are not the same thing) were likely traumatic for us, but our own masculinity and manhood are freeing and liberatory for us because we are trans, and because we are trans men. Obviously we don’t want to be what oppressed us, so our usual conclusion is to do masculinity and manhood in a different way. And yet is it so common for that to be turned against us, to assume that because we are trans men we must be willingly aligning ourselves with patriarchy without a second thought. But some trans people do not want to let us do a different form of masculinity, because they see all masculinity as inherently the same, equally oppressive, and evil.

We have a deeper understanding of misogyny and constructs of manhood than most people. We have a deeply profound awareness of how gender works, we live with it every day. Our perspective is critical for advancing any sort of gendered liberation of trans people, and to act like it isn’t, and to act as if only people who do not identify with manhood or masculinity have an inherently more valid perspective is gender essentialist nonsense. Gender is fluid and can be interpreted in many ways, the harmful ways of the patriarchy are not inherent in masculinity or femininity. Masculinity is not inherently oppressive, the patriarchy is. Of course people not allowed to be men who insist on our right to be men anyway think about our identities all the time. Far more than the people who make these nonsensical claims in the first place. Quite honestly, the only way to make this better (what we can do, because 1. It’s not our responsibility to make non-trans men not hate us and 2. Non trans men need to do their work in fixing their attitudes about us) is for trans men to use our voices and share our point of view. Anti-trans man and masc bigotry relies on silence and deliberate violent erasure, and it’s harder to do that if we never be quiet. Our identities are not morally wrong. We deserve to take up space.

[fite-club]

Greg again: to that anti transmasculinity blog, I’m sorry to break it to you, but toxic masculine trans guys do exist and I have met a handf of them lol. If you make an effort to meet people outside your own circles I promise you’d know that. Go to queer clubs and try to actively meet people please. Not every trans guy is some harmless dweeb on tumblr. Some trans guys treat women like shit as overcompensating behavior because that’s what they’ve been taught what masculinity is. Some act tough and threatening and have big trucks and think women should listen to them and they get to talk over them. But you’re too busy having your head so far up your ass to see that — and look, I know the prospect of becoming the very thing you hate is scary but no one is saying you specifically are benefitting off the patriarchy. But to act like no trans guy at all benefits from the patriarchy is something you’re sorely mistaken about. Please go and meet more trans guys. Because I promise while many can be wonderful there are some absolute fucking dickheads out there too. You just have to look past your own echo chamber for 5 minutes.

glad to hear coming out went well!! :^)

and yeah, one of the worst toxic-masculinity-perpetuators i’ve ever met was a trans guy i dated for a few months. i was regularly shocked at some of the things that came out of that guy’s mouth. the way he’d refuse to show any emotion besides anger, his eagerness to get into physical fights, the way he’d talk about trans women like they were all horny creeps and overreacting-bitches, the way he’d put down other guys for acting “weak”… and i’d met trans guys before who said some questionable things, but never before had i met a trans guy so openly misogynistic and emotionally stunted. my experiences with this guy are actually a big part of the reason why i care so much about pointing out transmisogyny and male privilege in the transmasc community! because these guys are out here, and we as a community NEED to address it and shame it publicly.

like, i promise y’all, it does not make us look bad to admit that we can benefit from male privilege or perpetuate toxic masculinity or uphold the patriarchy. it makes us look bad when we deny that it exists at all. it makes us look bad when guys like my ex are running around being assholes and other guys are claiming it doesn’t happen. we have to take accountability for that! and by taking accountability i don’t mean “accepting that it’s our fault”, i mean “accepting that it’s a problem in our community that we have the power to do something about”

[transmascrage]

Tags by @transmonarch

I looked it up and you're right.

Transmascs face more domestic violence than cis men and women, maybe even more than transfemmes (although I'm sure that there are a lot of factors in this, and I don't men to diminish transfemmes' experiences of DV).

Source 1 (very important, this page helps to identify domestic abuse specifically for transgender men, check it out. There's also resources for queer people in general.)

Transgender men are less likely to acknowledge abuse because the experience of domestic abuse is strongly tied to women and other feminine-of-centre identities. Admitting that a partner is being abusive may feel like you are undermining your identity as a man. Abusers may use language which plays on these fear to convince you that you are not “man enough” or that you are blowing things out of proportion. It’s important to remember that people of all genders and gender expressions experience can experience abuse and face the traumatic emotions that result from it.

Transgender men who come out or begin transition may face abuse similar to misogynist abuse of women in relationships, particularly to do with control or punishment for the ways in which they dress or act. This abuse can be physical, verbal, emotional or sexual, and is often extremely distressing because it not only dehumanises you, but also demonstrates contempt for your gender identity and the ways you choose to express that. In some situations, abusers may pretend that their controlling behaviours are for your own good or that they are attempting to stop you from attracting transphobic abuse from outside the relationship.

Source 2

FORGE, the nonprofit I direct policy and programs for, conducted a national study in 2011 that was approved by the Morehouse College School of Medicine Institutional Review Board and funded by the Office for Victims of Crime. Our survery was answered by 1,005 trans people. That study shows that transmasculine individuals were actually more likely to be victims of childhood sexual assault, adult sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence, and stalking than were transfeminine individuals (as shown in the chart below).

The only category in which trans women were more likely to be victimized was by hate violence, and even there the difference was small: 30 percent of trans women reported having experienced hate violence, compared to 29 percent of trans men.

(Note: this doesn't mean the violence that transfemmes face is less valid! In fact, it just makes me want to help transfemmes more, there's no animosity!)

Source 3 (This is a study about the treatment of transgender people in DV cases)

Source 4 (A video by a trans man who was a victim of DV)

As usual, there are very few sources about transmascs specifically, but that's still something.

[rjalker]

I'm using "afab and transmasculine" because not all afab trans people are transmasculine. We are not reinventing the gender binary again, people, it's not happening.

Source for the quote: What Is Transmisogyny? written May 24th, 2021, by Julia Serano.

Multiple things can be true at once. Transmisogyny can be a vital term for some of us to communicate the intersection of transphobia and misogyny that we face. But others may experience it more complicatedly or severely, as in the case of transmisogynoir. And for others (e.g., certain nonbinary people, trans male/masculine-spectrum people), misogyny may intersect with transphobia in different ways that aren’t adequately articulated by transmisogyny. This doesn’t necessarily make transmisogyny “wrong”; it may simply mean that we need additional language.

again, this is quoting directly from Julia Serano, the creator of the term "transmisogyny". Literally agreeing that she as a trans woman can't fucking speak for all trans people, and that people who face different intersections of misogyny and transphobia deserve to have their own words and language to describe that intersection.

AFAB and transmasculine people having a word to describe the specific forms of misogyny and transphobia they face does not make them fucking men's rights activists.

It doesn't make them misogynistic or transmisogynyistic.

Do not fucking go around now of all fucking times when all of our rights are being taken away and act like AFAB and transmasculine people are being misogynists or somehow fucking transmisogynists just by asking people to fucking respect their identities as transmasculine or AFAB people *without* erasing the reality that the criminilazation of abortion literally affects them.

Literally what the fuck has to be wrong with you for your sense of community to think that people losing the right to safe abortions gives you the right to attack transmasculine and AFAB people for asserting their fucking right to not be fucking misgendered by literally everyone?

What in the absolute fuck has to be wrong with your idea of solidarity to think that half the fucking trans people in the US actively losing what little fucking fights they had means they're 'taking the focus away from women'????

For fuck's sake people, the next person I see pretending that trans men or AFAB trans people talking about the shit they face means they're MRAs or "truthers" (which is fucking antisemetic as fuck, how many people have to tell you to stop this shit before you listen??) is going in the fucking guillotine.

Trans men and AFAB trans people who are asking you to show them the most basic fucking form of respect are not your fucking enemy, you stupid useless fucking radfems.

And maybe you don't fucking identify as a radfem, but if your whole fucking concept of oppression is "All men are all-powerful and all-privileged and evil purely by virtue of being men, and women are always the helpless victims" congratulations! You're a fucking radfem!

Just because someone's not a woman does not make them the enemy. Just because someone's not a woman does not fucking mean they have male privileged. Just because someone's not woman does not fucking mean that the criminilazation of abortion doesn't fucking affect them.

Get your heads out of your fucking asses and get some fucking solidarity, or drown with the rest of the fucking bigots.

[butcheroes]

A genuine question, so if this sounds rude in any way it's not my intention, but I was curious if anyone has coined a term or phrase that relates to the misogyny that transmasculine people face while not... you know calling it misogyny. I know it makes me rather uncomfortable to call it that because I don't identify as feminine and i'm sure a few transmasculine people would appreciate something like that to be able to share our experiences without having to potentially misgender ourselves in the process. If not, I was thinking of something like misguided misogyny or maybe something more catchy if someone can come up with it. I've realized recently that (specifically for my experience as a whiteish passing trans boy) that some of my biggest issues navigating being myself have been a specific version of transphobia which is to act in a misogynistic manner or to assume sexist things about me because of my assigned gender at birth. As someone who used to navigate the world as a girl I know this is an intersection between misogyny and transphobia but the term transmisogyny refers to a specific type of intersection that i don't experience as a masculine-ish presenting person. Overall I'd love to hear any commentary on other trans peoples struggles with misogyny, as I'm coming to find are much more rampant than I realized.

Always, with love and peace,

Mars

[segadores-y-soldados]

Dear segadores-y-soldados, I'm a young adult that is trying to be more socially conscious and respectful of LGBTIQA, and I get most info primarily from the web and similarly conscientious PDHPE teachers. However, I've been stumped on the idea of gender as a concept; if gender isn't determined by gentalia, or performance actions ( e.g. wearing dresses isn't = female), what is it? As a transman, how do you personally define gender? Feel free not to answer if you feel its intrusive in any way.

I forgot that I put that question thing on the queue, haha.

This is a very interesting question.  

The simple answer is that I perceive gender as a gradient spectrum, or even a “grid” - at the ends we have non-visible “segments” that are different for every single person that define the boundaries of a person’s internal beliefs on “masculinity” and “femininity.”  Because it is a spectrum, these boundaries are often ill-defined, even internally, and where a person “places” themselves on a spectrum is up to them, and up to their internal sense of self and identity.

I put it like this because I have often moved my own “internal boundaries,” considering myself nonbinary for several years before I recognized that I fell within my own internal category of “masculine” instead.But even then I worry that is too restrictive.  Maybe gender is less like a linear spectrum and more like a circular one that wraps back to itself.  Maybe it’s even more like a sphere - somehow both large and “all-encompassing” and yet because we are positioned somewhere inside it, we can’t actually see everything about it.

And there’s something to be said about the concept of gender being “fluid” instead of being a line or a solid shape.  That gender “fills to fit a mold,” so to speak - and intersectionality is hugely important.  The crucibles of our experiences that come to shape us are all different - cross-sections between gender, ethnicity, cultural heritages, economic class, physical and mental health, job history, your “relevant skills,” your personal interests, even whatever we might consider some sort of “personality core.”

(OH HEY, I WAS ABLE TO PUT A CUT IN HERE SWEET)

(Read a lot more under the cut!)

Full-disclosure: I come from a background of a combined Materialism (historical materialism) and Performance Theory.  Materialism describes that you are affected by the world around you - no person is born in a social, political, or economic vacuum.  You are born into a position that already has history attached to it - your family, your parents, your living situation, your actual physical location in the world - and from the moment you are…well, I guess, conceived, this history will be engrained in you before you ever have the ability to decide things for yourself.

You are a product of a history you inherited without you ever getting a say in the matter.

It sucks.

I’m not saying it doesn’t.  Life is not fair.  There is literally nothing but sheer luck separating me from someone who may have almost exactly the same circumstances as me, except maybe we differ in eye color.  Or hair color.  Or my parents buy one book and their parents buy a different book.  Your physical world will shape you, and this is why extending better social supports to everyone of all backgrounds and circumstances is so important.  We will never be exactly the same and that is not the point.  The point is that we should all have the same opportunities presented to us regardless of our spectrum of minute (or large) differences that we inherit (physical, mental, emotional, social, political, economic, personal, etc).

In my personal experience - mine and mine alone, I do not speak for any other trans or non-binary individuals - I’ve found that being transgender (or non-binary, back when I considered myself like that) is that you often find yourself at internal odds with the external history and life “product” you are given as you grow up.  When you start getting a mental, emotional, and social grasp on your internal  consciousness and your external appearance, you begin to feel…funny.  You don’t know how, but you’re suddenly 12 or 13 and you don’t fully remember how you got to this point, but wearing dresses makes you feel…uncomfortable.  You don’t really know why.  You look back and try to find a point where this feeling started.  You cannot fully pin it down.  When did your internal, personal story begin to be at odds with the external physicality you’re engaging with?

And it’s not like your realization about being uncomfortable with certain clothes suddenly makes you “less of a girl.”  There are other girls around you who don’t wear dresses.  Dresses make them uncomfortable too!  But when you start asking about other questions, their answers don’t perfectly align with yours.  You’re like 15 or 16.  You’re confused.  If no one particular “femininity” is the same, then what defines it at all?  And “masculinity?”  You are internally drawn to intangible things about masculinity.  It’s not the stuff that people who stereotype transgender individuals think: you don’t sit there and make a laundry list of “the manly things I like” and the “womanly things I dislike.”  You are drawn to…how the boys around you act.  Their “style.”  Their ability to talk a certain way.

Their performances of themselves, or rather, apsects of themselves.

But even then, that’s just one set of cross-sections in the “liquid matrix” of your internal, personal story.  A ciswoman can engage in performance styles that are “traditionally masculine” (by Western standards) and still be…well, a woman.  A ciswoman can present herself in any way she wants to, and she completely has that right.  Remember, the point isn’t to make us all fit into neat boxes, but to engage in ourselves and each other reflexively.  We are liquid, fluid, freeform existences that are given slightly different molded shapes from the histories we inherit, and these shapes can be changed or restructured with our different, lived experiences.

So you start asking yourself why certain points for you are different from the friends you have.  I have literally asked cisgender female friends if they are comfortable with being considered “a woman,” and when their answers - regardless of all their other cross-sections of personal identity - were “yes” without hesistation, I knew, personally, that I needed to ask myself why my answer was different.  Why did it make me uncomfortable?  If I wasn’t “okay” with being “a woman,” then what was I okay with?

…Again, full disclosure, one of the most difficult, excruciating questions I had to ask myself was if I was a misogynist.  It physically pained me to think that I might hate women, girls, and femininity on an irrational level, but it was a discussion I had to have with myself.  But I am glad I did it, because it forced me to understand that I DO like certain aspects of “feminine performances” (aka things Western culture considers “feminine”).  I loved, and still love, many things that are considered “feminine” - high heels, jewelry, flowers, pop music, etc.  I loved - and still love - many of the women who have been strong, inspiring presences in my life.  My mother, grandmothers, sister, and several friends in particular will be lifelong role models to me.  And whether I like it or not, my actual physical existence will inevitably be tied to how women and girls are treated in my country.  Even though I will eventually need a separate, specialized care, my rights to healthcare are permanently tied to how women, girls, and feminine individuals (including transwomen and non-binary feminine individuals) are treated in this country.  And that goes for all of us - men, boys, and masculine individuals too.

What I came to realize is that I was deeply and personally uncomfortable with apsects of myself that (I thought) I had no control over - cross-sections of my existence that were integrated into me long before I even had the ability to “cogito ergo sum.”  I was so deeply uncomfortable with these aspects that I frequently mentally detached my internal, personal self from the external physical self.  I often felt like I was a brain stuck in a body I did not choose to have.  I was on reddit some random day several years ago when I came across a comment expressing the above situation - “I feel frequently detached from my body.  I don’t like it.  I feel isolated inside myself.”

And the response someone else gave back was, “You may want to check if you have gender or body dysphoria.”

I literally cannot describe the intensity of relief I felt to finally have a term to describe this feeling.

Gender dysphoria.

What a relief to learn it has a name.

Gender dysphoria sucks.

…And that’s putting it mildly.

Life is not fair. There is literally nothing but incredibly minute, incredibly small differences that separate me from my cisgender sister - theories range from hormones in the womb, to exposure in the first few years of life, to “brain chemistry,” or whatever.  I don’t know the answer.  I don’t have a theory I favor over others, because many of them do not include the experiences of my non-binary “siblings.”  I gave up trying to find a “scientific answer” for my situation because so many of them wanted my fluid, liquid, freeform “self” to fit in a box that I didn’t actually care about.  I don’t really need or crave a “scientific answer.”  As far as I can tell, the most “common solutions” for transmen and transmasculine individuals have already been found and, frankly, been in place for hundreds of years (even if they weren’t all recorded).  They are simple things - engaging in “masculine performances,” getting specialized healthcare (in the form of surgeries and hormones), changing your name and pronouns to the ones that suit your liquid, fluid self best.

Incredibly minute, incredibly small differences

That can finally - finally - help me bridge my internal, personal story with the external physicality and the product of a history I inherited.

My shape will never be “perfect.”

But no one’s is.

We are all products of histories we inherited without ever getting a say in the matter.

But that does not mean we are solely defined by them.

Nor that we cannot reshape them ourselves.

Gender is a social construct you inherited without you ever getting a say in the matter.  It intersects and makes cross-sections with other aspects of identity and history that you, unfortunately, did not get a say in choosing.  But because it is merely a construct, you can, with time and effort, push back against it.  The liquid and fluid aspects of who you are - your personal identity - do not have to be defined by it.  The mold of your shape can be hammered out however you want it to be, however you feel it should be.  The crux of the issue is that we also live in a material, physical, real world that will push back, and this material, physical, real world has certain expectations about who it thinks you are and who it believes you should be.  It will try to construct you.  You and I and everyone are shapes being put under constant pressure by inherited histories, cross-sections of social, political, and economic spheres, and constantly changing situations.  We make progress not to make everyone the same, but to understand, learn about, celebrate, and reshape our differences.I choose to define myself as a transman because I believe that the experiences and situations of other transmen mirror mine.  There are differences between us, certainly, and I will never fully understand another transman’s situation or his life or his experiences, but many of our internal, personal stories and our cross-sections of identity align.  I have chosen, like many transmen, to engage in “masculine performances” that make me feel more comfortable with the story I am telling about myself, to myself.

In the end, the only story that matters is the one you tell yourself.

Apologies for the long post.  I hope this helped answer some of your questions.  And thank you for asking all this stuff!  I can really only speak to my own personal experiences and what educational frameworks I can utilize.

[genderkoolaid]

this part of Lou's life really compels me because like so many parts of his story it touches on a transmasc experience that is so common yet so erased by normative narratives around transmasculinity. most of the time when i see people talking about transmascs & misogyny (like on a very general scale, not just on Tumblr) it's very "before transitioning you are seen as a cis woman and subject to misogyny on the incorrect presumption that you are a cis woman" and then you transition and don't experience misogyny really anymore. so transitioning is going from being a victim of misogyny -> being safe from it if not active in it. and one side to this narrative is ofc the idea that transmasculinity is a maladaptive trauma response to "escape misogyny" and that transitioning from female to male is in line with what the patriarchy wants. experiencing misogyny is about being a cis woman and FTM transition is about moving towards a cis man's relationship with misogyny.

but for so many transmascs who started questioning while in a relationship with a cis man the more you express your transmasculinity the more misogynistic pressure you are faced with. and also, it's hard to meaningfully explore and develop your understanding of yourself when you are taught from childhood to decenter your desires and feelings for the sake of your cis husband. Lou expresses in his diaries at one point feeling scared by an argument with his boyfriend J on machismo– Lou desires the aesthetics of it but not the chauvinistic reality, while J seems to genuinely believe in it. It takes Lou a long time to separate himself from his cis boyfriend's perspective of him, as a gender-fucky girl but always a girl. and other partners express similar ideas, that it's okay for Lou to be kinda queer but as long as his still remains, on some level, a girl they can fuck and enjoy. His own desires, to be a gay man and be truly accepted, to transform his body into what he's always longer for, are irrelevant past the point where they made him sexy to them. Lou also talks about how he felt more comfortable internally while crossdressing as a man, but felt more comfortable externally while dressing as a woman, because while it's more painful on an emotional level to live as a cis woman, it's harder to belong in society as a trans person. Or as he says: "I continue to feel more like a part of the human race, yet less like a person."

& there's this heartbreaking passage after he has been convinced by J to not pursue medical transition and to "accept" his female identity:

Ridiculous when my whole crusade was to be a feminine gay male. And also my inability to merge into a male-male relationship with J, even tho I know now it would have been impossible. I knew I was acting strangely toward him, that I wasn’t relaxed or really me…that with the only person I’ve really felt at ease around. Maybe I would have fallen into the Miss Plastic Surgery syndrome—always blaming one thing or another for the fact that I’m not a “real man.” I hate to face it, but it’s true: I would never be entirely comfortable as a male. Because in my heart I know I am nothing.

and like. how many of us have experienced that? being unable to even conceptualize yourself as a man because you are so caught up in being a cis guy's girlfriend? convincing yourself that transition would only make things worse, because you can't imagine it as a real possibility and that's more painful than the everyday dysphoria? how many of us minimize our transness for the sake of lovers who think of it as a sexy party trick, but get grossed out and angry when we talk about wanting testosterone, top surgery, god forbid bottom surgery? a LOT of transmascs face a rise in misogyny as they assert their manhood, not a fall. people are sent to conversion therapy or forced into heterosexual marriages after asserting their manhood. our transmasculine identity is not conformity, it is not a symptom of a lack of feminist resistance. being transmasculine IS resistance. it is the RESULT of freeing ourselves from patriarchal roles of daughter-wife-mother. transmasculinity flourishes under feminist liberation, not patriarchal suppression.

I’m not crazy, I’m not living in a dream world. I’m not pretending anymore. I will have a man's chest. I will be a man. Oh, God, I don’t know how to believe it’s true. It’s too good. It’s too good. I know now: I can do anything. I can be anything I want. I can challenge the wind…

I’ve said it before + it’s becoming true again this time. Whenever I’m alone (i.e., without a boyfriend) my crossdressing becomes more serious + constant. In my search for the perfect male companion, I find myself. In my need for a man in my bed, I detach myself from my body and my body becomes his; I stroke his hair, I see his wrist. I feel the warm winds blowing my open shirt from my smooth, hard, flat chest. I catch the hungry eyes of another beautiful youngman. I reconsider male hormones—trying to remember why I decided against them before.

— We Both Laughed In Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan