Oh, And Just In Case There Was Any Confusion:

All those "we need more weird queers" posts pointing out how our community won't accept even the simplest of things but now we have to add trans men onto it.

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.

Block people who make bad faith posts about trans women's struggles by saying trans men do not struggle.

Block people who post on trans men's vents by suggesting they don't suffer as profoundly as their sisters.

Block people who try to make you turn against the women and others who make up our family.

Do not allow yourself to become bitter and jealous, protect yourself and you will be protecting our community.

I am not a big Tumblr poster. Ok? I'm an observer in all aspects. A lurker, if you will. I don't reblog stuff. I barely even like things. I only follow people sometimes.

But recently I've been scrolling through the 'transandrophobia' tag a lot more than I used to. recently I've seen posts that send me into a train of thought that's like. "People really think like this?" And it's more tiring than I realize sometimes. So I'm putting my thoughts into this post.

I've recently watched masculine trans people and queer people of all kinds getting the short end of the stick. I watch people put others down based on their masculinity, and I think- if this is such a big issue when done to femininity, why in the world would you think it's acceptable to flip it around? Feminism has never been about saying that women are better. It's never been about hating men. It's been about uplifting women so that they'll be seen as equals, and breaking both men and women out of patriarchal mindsets. It's about uniting over the fact that no group of people is better than another.

Trans men and enbies and mascs do not have whatever perceived systemic privilege you think they do. Trans people in general will only ever have conditional privilege in specific situations, if that. Society only praises performative masculinity- the kind that fits into their neat little boxes of 'should' and 'shouldn't'. Masculine queer people have never fit into those stupid little boxes. Trans men. Mascs. Butches.

I'm tired of this. Tired of the 'femininity good masculinity bad' talk. You're not children. Grow up and learn some nuance. Trans men are whiny and annoying to you because they've never had the privilege of being anything other than invisible. Constantly erased and brushed off so when they start getting angry you see it as an attack because you haven't cared to see them before. You haven't cared to see them when they were scared. You haven't cared to see them when they were just begging to be seen. You haven't cared to see them as anything other than traitors or thieves or anything because until it's not about you anymore, you don't give a fuck. You only look at them when you're personally slighted by whatever they have to say.

What does it cost to have empathy for other's lived experiences? Nothing. When a group of people is telling you what they've consistently and repeatedly been through, you listen to them. You don't shut them down because of an immutable trait. You don't shut them down because you've never seen it happen. You don't shut them down because they're not your idea of someone who's oppressed. That's not how this works. People are angry for a REASON. Masculine queer people have every right to be angry. we've been pushed aside and had statistics ignored and been told that other people's oppression is more important than ours simply for what? the sin of masculinity?

Now, above all, trans people should be united. Instead of fussing over whatever sort of strawmen and caricatures you have in your head, we should just be listening to each other. we should be able to listen to other's lives and traumas and pains without throwing a fit over words or theories. Having words to describe oppression is important. Being able to label your pain is important. But none of that matters more than what's happening to people in their real lives. the people who are dying. The people who are being raped and silenced and shunned out of public spaces and even their own homes. No words will ever matter more than the people who are actively hurting due to your refusal to even look in their direction.

if you want to talk about this, be my guest. Ask me questions. Tell me I'm wrong. Whatever. I just have a need for this to be known above all else. I don't care what people on the internet think of what I have to say. This site is a fuckin cesspool. so's every other corner of the internet.

Thanks for reading.

It is so annoying when people respond to "the queer community has an anti-masc problem" with "well society loves and praises masculinity!" Okay... yes... but that's not what we're talking about 😭 The queer community ≠ society as a whole. Also? The society that praises masculinity does NOT praise queer masculinity. Cishet society does not praise butches, masculine trans people, or anyone who is masc in a queer way. And unfortunately, many queer people have this same problem.

Somehow there are people on this website who can say “I’m a transfeminist” and also “it’s okay to misgender trans people if they disagree with me” and not realize they’re not really being transfeminist.

I don't usually reblog from people who want to "debate" the existence of transandrophobia or dismiss the issues trans men face because I think it's more important to center transmasc/trans men's voices in this conversation.

But this is a reminder that if I DO engage with someone like that on here, DO NOT harass them! Also, don't try to argue with someone who's committed to seeing everything you say in the worst possible light. Just block and move on.

idk man i think that if you can read dozens and dozens of trans men talking about how their support systems abandoned them when they started getting too masculine on T or had top surgery or whatever, and queer spaces started treating them like threats or potential predators, and you find these stories going back to the 90s or even earlier, and you read all of that and come away thinking that there’s nothing wrong with how progressive communities treat men, you are just fundamentally beyond help dude. you don’t see us as people

this goes for gendered insults as well! I don't care how mad you are, or how much you dislike someone, it's still misgendering.

if a trans woman/fem person tells you to stop calling her "dude" or "bro" because it makes her feel dysphoric, then stop using those words as "gender neutral" and respect her boundaries.

if a trans man/masc person tells you to stop calling him "girl" or "bitch" because it makes him feel dysphoric, then just stop using those words as "gender neutral" and respect his boundaries.

To my uk trans people and allies out there.