If You Feel "vaguely Threatened" By A Minority Group, Then Youre A Bigot, Full Stop.

Frankly we all should have multiple names. We contain many multitudes and vibes and just one is too limiting

They say we can't reclaim "tranny" as if they haven't called our voices "tranny voice" for years, as if they haven't called us "tranny dykes" forever, as if cis people actually care who they hit with that word. I have been called "tranny," I have been called it in multiple languages, in many ways, people in my high school used it to attack me like any other trans person, queer people did. People used it to mock, to hurt, aggrivate, to try to bond.

But they push us out of feminist spaces because suddenly we don't understand anymore, they push us out of sapphic spaces because they deem our bodies gross, our self-expression wrong, and now they push us out of trans spaces because we don't suffer enough. I wonder how much more pain I am supposed to shoulder before it will be enough for it to be deemed worth talking about, for it to be deemed worth discussing, reclaiming.

Because we have the bi experience, the ace, and inter experience: every side turns us away. We're too queer and too damaged, and then we're not queer enough, haven't suffered enough.

All this when you won't even let us talk about our pain in our own voices. How will you ever know it if you never listen; if you make us afraid to talk?

Can we take a moment to think about the younger trans men and mascs on tumblr right now?

I was a teenager when ace and transmed discourses were at their peaks, and I can’t exaggerate how badly it affected me then.

Now trans men are the latest target, and I’m terrified for trans kids.

It’s easy to say “intracommunity discourse is an online problem! Go talk to queer people irl!”, but people forget that so many kids and teenagers do not have safe or reliable access to IRL LGBT+ communities and support groups. For many, online spaces are the only option.

We need to make sure the younger members of our community are being heard, and block out the hateful voices with messages of support and encouragement. Things are bad enough for trans people right now, and it's easy to forget that trans minors are often the ones suffering the most.

To any younger trans men or transmasculine people reading this:

The hate you are experiencing isn’t normal, it hasn’t always been like this, and it won’t always be this way. It is bleeding out from a small, miserable group of self-absorbed jerks.

Don’t feel obligated to call them out, don’t feel like you have to interact with these people. Please don’t doomscroll through discourse tags; it will make you feel like everyone is out to get you.

If you want to speak up for your community, that’s fine, but please take a break if you feel like your mental health is worsening. Block anybody who so much as breathes rudely in your direction.

You’re just as trans as the rest of us. You are welcome here.

Oh, and if you want to seek out external resources and groups, PFLAG helped me a lot when I was younger. It is an American-based organization, however, so if anyone has recommendations for those living outside of the US, please let me know in the reblogs!

I’m not gonna lie, the whole “what if a big, hairy trans man started using the women’s bathroom? what are TERFs gonna do then?” thing kinda pisses me off being used as some checkmate, because it insinuates that passing trans men would have any kind of power in that situation. If a passing trans man is forced to use the women’s bathroom, you know what will happen? Security will be called on him, he’ll be thrown out, and he’ll be forced to out himself as trans in order to avoid punishment, which will put an even bigger target on his back. He’s still going to be harassed. He’s still going to be forced into an uncomfortable and potentially dangerous situation, and he probably won’t avoid punishment anyway because the current laws in place are never going to favour any trans person’s defence over a cis person’s.

It also completely ignores trans men who aren’t “big and hairy” and don’t pass enough to be mistaken for a cis man. Non-passing trans men (or even men who look or sound effeminate enough to be suspected) who are forced to use the women’s bathrooms are still at a huge risk of harassment or even violence, especially young trans boys who are forced into their assigned bathrooms at school. Nex Benedict was literally murdered in a girl’s bathroom. Girls and women aren’t these inherently non-violent, peaceful and submissive beings (for one thing, that’s misogynistic). Trans men and boys get beaten up by them too, because most of us pre-T aren’t considered a threat, and we fucking die.

That’s not even to mention the trouble we already have in men’s bathrooms, because if we don’t pass, cis men will interrogate us on whether or not we’re “real men” and then sexually assault us if they discover we’re trans. Corrective rapes that trans men face is not something to be ignored, and I have trans male friends that it’s happened to who are lucky to be alive right now.

Bathroom laws will affect us just as much. The violence that trans women face is something that trans men can also relate to, and both need to be talked about without people categorising all trans men as “big, hairy, strong men able to beat up anyone who tries to threaten them” when that’s not the case like 90% of the time. Acting like passing trans men are just there to make TERFs look stupid, when TERFs are the ones who are violent towards us no matter how much we pass, is just diminishing our experiences.

The way some of y'all say "the term transandrophobia is misogynistic because misandry isn't real" is like swerfs who say "the term whorephobia is misogynistic because it calls women whores"

Lying about who invented forcefem and forcemasc being a copy of it is one of the weirder manifestations of the weird aggressive radfem claim to everything under the sun but far from the only one.

Trying to trademark "eggs" for transfems is a fundamental refusal by radfems to see anyone else as trans. Even assuming it's true that it started specifically with trans women and it was ever exclusive for more than five seconds after it's creation, which would like to see some evidence for but am not holding out much hope considering it definitely fucking wasn't, it's completely absurd to act like the basic concept of a name for a concept like that should be exclusive to begin with. The only justification for it is that you don't think other trans people have any kinna journey like that to go through in the first place. What the hell else are they supposed to call it? Literally, what combination of words other than "egg" is a good metaphor for that situation?

And the answer to this conundrum is just that they don't want other trans people to have a word period. Radfems don't think other trans people are trans. Radfems do not believe it's possible to want to be a man or the desire to be a man to have any inherent worth, because dysphoria has fully taken control of their every waking thought and can only conceptualize trans people AFAB as bitches who are making fun of them by pretending to want to be something they desperately want to escape from and project their fear they're not a Trve Wymyn on to everyone else so they can reinforce their own shaky faith in their gender identity. You wouldn't see radfems saying things like "those AFAB cunts are evil for saying all the time that binary trans women have boring genders [fabrication] but actually we know more than anyone about gender because of transmisogyny" if they were not dealing with a psychological wound that's bleeding all over every post they make.

And, of course, radfems count any trans person AMAB as "TMA," which is essentially a way of labeling them Trans Women With Extra Steps. Have you seen a non-binary tee-em-ay that did not also identify as woman? Because I sure haven't! They surely exist, somewhere, but every one I've seen is also fem, and there's nothing wrong with that nor does it make them less non-binary, but it's very telling about TMA/TME culture and it's views on transfemininity, and what trans people AMAB who aren't also fem tend to think of that whole framework.

Isn't it such a strange coincidence that most of it tends to be super broad concepts that are in no way exclusive, in terms of material reality, to trans women, like "person who doesn't know they're trans yet"? If they ever were transfem exclusive, you'd get the idea that they were designed purely to bait people into picking it up just to yell at them for it, but what's actually happening is going after abso-fucking-lutely everything to tear people's language away as a power trip and feel like the most special queers to ever live.

But let's look at something less essential than terminology. Let's take the shark plushie. That, for one thing, has just provably never been transfem specific. Ever. Not once time in history, any claim otherwise is a deliberate lie. But even if it WERE, why? Why do you NEED it to be transfem specific? What about the shark plushie makes it transfem culture? What does that even MEAN? How do you signal a shark plushie is transfem culture? What exactly is happening when you see a trans man saying he put top surgery scars on his shark plushie? Can you explain to me why that's like watching your partner cheating on you? Besides that, do you understand this is a toy for toddlers that was never deliberately aimed at anyone queer? I genuinely so badly want to ask these extremely stupid people if in twenty years they'll scream at the hundreds of thousands of cis people who had one when they were four and were fond of it.

Like, it's wild, right? Because radfems will say on a regular basis "oh, they took the shark plushie, they took catgirls, they took forcefem, they took uhhhh flips to a random page of a book on a compilation of queer shitposts pumpkin fucking." And then, in their next breath, they'll go on about how transmascs make nothing but inferior degenerate art of no value.

They know we, trans women, have culture besides that shit, right? Drawn art? Film? Video games? Literature, too, even though every transfem book I've heard of sounds terrible, since I know that's only because I haven't ever looked for more. Like, I know good transfem books are OUT THERE if only people would discuss the ones that aren't about testosterone turning you into a feral monster or being gifted Trve Biological Wymynhood by the gods, as though that doesn't display some sickeningly bioessentialist transmed trends among the radfems on this website.

There is so much good transfem culture people could be uplifting instead! But instead they go with transradfem culture, which, let's be clear, is not representative of trans women or our actual, authentic cultural output, and is mostly bought off the shelf at Walmart.

Like, oh, wow, if trans radblr is supposed to be transfem culture then I guess transfem culture is a bunch of fucking shallow memes, kinks, and literal baby toys. Great cultural output, girls! Great going! Truly the ZENITH of human civilization! They'll put down transmasc music every other day but I'm pretty sure just about anyone with a pulse could fuck around with a middle school recorder for a few minutes that has more artistic value than the transradfem culture that radfems act like hyper-defensive weirdos about.

Which includes a bunch of slurs for others, which is funny, because on one hand you're like, hey, this word originated on 4chan, and they're like "no, trans women invented it," and you're like, yeah, those aren't mutually exclusive ideas, maybe rethink that line of defense Birdgirl because you're going to get your client in even worse trouble here. Maybe instead say that yes, it was invented by transphobes for transphobes, but you're choosing to appropriate this 4chan slur anyway because you're jealous some non-binary people were invited to a concert you wouldn't have gone to anyway. That'd be at least a little more honest than inventing this false history where it was created specifically because of the pain and trauma of some non-binary people being invited to a concert you wouldn't have gone to anyway. Or at least that I hope you wouldn't have gone to even if you had been extended an invite.

Like, instead of celebrating real transfem culture that does actually exist, radfems incapable of creating their own stuff just want to grab everything in sight and plant a transradfem flag on it, which makes the definition of transfemininity and transfem culture they want to push all the more grotesquely empty.

btw the default state of trans men is not dead.

the default state of trans men is alive.

if they are not alive there is a problem.

if their deaths are not being recorded that is a problem.

if you use the fact that their deaths aren't recorded to imply they aren't dying you are a piece of shit.

People need to stop using the term “baeddel” for themselves OR others.

It is an intersexist and transmisogynistic slur.

If you call someone a "transandrobro" for calling out bigotry, I'm going to turn your kneecaps into dust.

The thing with like aphobia and transandrophobia and stuff is like

sometimes. you are going to see people complaining about oppression. and it's going to make you feel bad and uncomfortable. because you yourself are oppressed and in these circles you are used to being The Oppressed One and seeing these other complains about People Including You reminds you of actual bigotry in broader spaces, or makes you doubt your own oppression, or just makes it feel like you're being told you 'have it easy'.

but. that's not what's happening. what's happening is just that other people also have systematic problems and deserve to talk about it.

that is not an attack on you.

oppression is not a zero-sum game. Aspecs, or trans men, being better acknowledge as suffering from oppression, does not mean that you have it any less bad than you have known yourself to do.

it doesn't even mean that they have it 'worse'. It means exactly what I said: that they also have issues that they need help with and are worth discussing.

If that upsets the basis of your own understand of your oppression... yeah. maybe that means your understanding was wrong. sorry.

but it's only the THEORETICAL UNDERSTANDING that has been upset. your oppression is still not in any kind of question.

is that easy to understand or carry forth? no.

but it's necessary.

and it has happened, over and over again. When gay people and trans people were at head to head, both presenting the other as predatory sexual deviants and themselves as 'normal'. When gay men diminished lesbians' suffering because they were less likely to get on the news for being murdered than gay men. when bisexuals (within Tumblr's own history!!!!!!) were widely panned as possessing 'straight-passing privilege' and therefore never in the same 'category' of oppression as gay men and lesbians.

it happens over and over and over again. and it's always hard. but it always needs to happen, morally.

even if the people expressing their oppression are 'too aggressive'. even if their arguments make you feel uncomfortable and scared. even if the place you belonged no longer feels like home anymore.

it'd be nice if every time something happened that made you feel bad, it was because of somebody Bad who needs to be Stopped and/or Punished. but that just isn't the case.

an oppressed group (and we can judge this by statistics; it's really not that difficult) talking about their oppression is not causing actual harm to you. and even if they were, they still deserve to be able to do it.