August of Many @augustofmany - Tumblr Blog

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not to be a fuckin dog on the TL but God my favorite thing about the dolls is when they get all shy and nervous when I go to pick them up or move them around, just because shes 6'3 and I'm 5'.

babes, you're, what, a buck 50 soaking wet? 180 if you eating good? I am a Napoleon complex with a tree stump sleeper build, I got this, I'm hungry, if you dont shut up and get over hereeee

#transmasc #trans man #transgender #lgbt #lgbt pride #t4t

thefairytaler

So here's what happened on Reddit:

A transmasc posted about how transmascs and trans men are often invisible, how our issues are dismissed, and how resources, especially medical ones, are almost always written with non transmascs in mind. They posted this both to r/Trans and r/lgbt.

A moderator of r/Trans responded by telling them to “stop bitching.” That’s the word they used. That’s the level of respect trans men get. Transandrophobic by the way, don't call trans men bitches.

The comment was deleted, quietly, after backlash. Then the entire post was removed. When asked why, a mod responded that the post was “playing oppression olympics,” and took the time to go through and dismiss each of the original poster’s points, including saying that trans men being sexually assaulted isn’t “unique to transmascs” and therefore not an issue, and claiming that access to testosterone isn’t any more restricted than access to estrogen, which is a straight-up lie, because T is a tightly controlled substance in most places and E is not.

The original poster was banned for three days.

Then a separate mod made a post saying, “nobody asked us our side of the story,” which is wild because people absolutely did, publicly and repeatedly. Users also started reporting that they’d had supportive comments removed or had been banned after disagreeing with the mods, some of those claims are still unconfirmed, but given the general behavior, it wouldn’t be surprising.

Then r/Trans locked down entirely. No new posts. The conversation was forcibly ended.

Some people posted about it on r/FTM, many of those posts were mass-reported, automatically removed by Reddit’s automod, or quietly buried. Meanwhile, r/lgbt also removed the original post, with no explanation.

One of the r/Trans mods eventually posted an “apology,” which was really just a soft-scrubbed PR post full of noncommittal language and distancing. They said they didn’t mean to call a trans man “a bitch,” they just used it synonymously with “complaining,” and they didn’t think about the implications until later even though the first post was about microaggressions just like the mod committed. They did not apologize for anything else, not for wrongfully banning people, not for accusing a transmasc venting like any other user of playing oppression olympics, nothing at all. They said they’re on break and can’t do anything about it. They said, and I quote, “please don’t be mad at the rest of the team.” even though the rest of the team are just as culpable for not stopping their behavior.

They also added that trans men are “a welcome part of the community” and tried to point at moderation history as proof. Because apparently we should be grateful that people occasionally get banned, every so often, for implying trans men aren't oppressed at all, wow, thanks, that is like below the bare minimum, cool.

The current state of things is: r/Trans has over 600,000 members, and trans men and transmascs were silenced, banned, and told to shut up for bringing up their own oppression. And the subreddit is locked down. There’s a mass exodus happening to the new sub, r/trans4every1, but let’s be real, the damage has already been done.

Now let’s talk about what this actually means.

This is not “just more Tumblr discourse.” This isn’t some random blog saying they don’t like transmascs. This isn’t a Twitter reply guy. This isn’t a niche zine or a spicy personal take. This is a massive trans-focused subreddit with over half a million users. It's easily one of the largest public facing trans community online, maybe even the largest, I've certainly never found a bigger one myself. And the moderation team made it crystal clear: they do not want transmascs to feel safe or welcome there.

This is what transandrophobia looks like on a slightly larger internet scale. When it’s in the hands of people who get to decide who gets heard and who gets deleted.

And for anyone who’s still stuck on “well they apologized” listen: trans men are told all the time that we’re being too loud, too angry, too entitled, too manly, too feminine, too confusing, too “binary,” too "Nonbinary", too much. We’re told that we’re “oppression olympics-ing” just for talking about our lives. And now we're getting banned and locked out of the spaces that claim to represent a huge portion of online trans people.

This isn't just online drama. This is a bellwether. And if it isn’t setting off alarms in your head, it should be.

The way transandrophobia manifests in online spaces absolutely bleeds into real life, into medical gatekeeping, into poor data collection, into the erasure of sexual violence against transmascs, into advocacy groups that write us out of the picture, into educational materials that treat us like footnotes, if they include us at all.

And if you’re sitting there thinking, “well it’s not that deep,” you’re part of the problem.

We need to start being more honest about this: Transandrophobia is real, it is widespread, and it is growing. We need to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt when they’ve shown us they don’t want us in the room.

And frankly?

We need to start making TRFs [Trans Radfems & transmasc-exclusionary feminists alike] deeply uncomfortable being open about their beliefs. We need to make them afraid to be TRFs, the way they’re trying to make us afraid to exist.

The same way we don’t coddle fascists. The same way we don’t tolerate TERFs. We need to stop tiptoeing around transandrophobia.

Because this growing wave of transandrophobia is going to kill people. Full stop.

Protect trans men. Protect transmascs. Protect your siblings; all of them!

Edit because I forgot to add it:

Another thing worth noting is that not only was r/trans deleting and banning any users and posts talking about the situation, they were deleting any posts talking about transmasc issues or transmasc positivity full stop.

Even when those posts had nothing to do with the current issue. They were being silenced. They were being actively erased, in a trans space.

gor3sigil

A cis woman tells me that maybe she should transition to gain male privilege as I'm recovering from getting beaten up in the men's bathrooms.

I tell her to be my guest and give me a call when she gets her jaw broken, I always carry a first aid kit and a pepper spray.

She calls me a misogynistic asshole.

A cis man tells me that he'd sure love some T.

Gave him my prescription and best of luck with the constant shortages and getting denied.

He calls me a pussy.

I'm fighting for my life and reproductive rights. I get told to get off women's fights, that it's not about me, like I shed my womb after my first T shot.

I search for support groups for SA victims, and I'm stuck in the same “women/NBs only”. Still shooting my shot, send an application. I introduce myself. Never get a call back.

I go to a trans night. Say I go by he/him. Get told back “yeah, that's how we all start !” by a trans woman. I'm too exhausted, I get up and I leave.

I hang out with my friends, one of them drunkenly says masculinity is a prison we must learn to escape. She gets rows of applause. Back to drinking alone.

Yes I could explain it. But who'd you rather be ? A delusional girl or a man made threat ?Or it could be better, I could just not exist ! And we'd bleach my corpse and I'd become a casualty. Not an F, ot an M, a W for Wound and for Wrong.

I put a candle on a single cupcake, 2 years on HRT. I blow it in the dark. Curtains closed like casket.

augustofmany

Sometimes, I feel so in love with you, I want to scream these new vocal chords raw. I am so remarkably in love with you in this fleeting window of time we have together, I know I cannot do a damn thing to protect myself from how devastatingly empty your absence will feel. All I can do is love you, anyway. I agree to be torn apart by this indescribable, accidental magic we have found. I will be annointed by the saltwater on my cheeks.

augustofmany

Hey if you EVER catch me saying shit like this again, take a baseball bat to my temples. Way more productive.

As a trans man who uses the mens restroom most often, nothing sets off such a primal rage and fear within me like walking into a restroom to see a piss troft.

#transgender #transmasc #trans man #ftm trans #transmaculine #bathroom talk #trans men in public #shower thoughts

Do you have a moment to talk about my religion?

#good boy bad dog #augustofmany #auggie #t4t #transgender #lgbt #nsfw

Sex sells, and your sex cells make all the lost boys drool. You're a dime, but they'll have to wait in line.

#transgender #transmasc #trans man #ftm trans #t4t #transmaculine #augustofmany #auggie #lgbt #lgbt pride #transfem #trans woman #trans man and woman

Transitioning saved my life, sure, but its also made me a 90s era heartthrob, and i love that for me

#jonathan taylor thomas who?#augustofmany #auggie #transgender #transmasc #trans man #ftm trans #transmaculine #lgbt #lgbt pride

Unsent Letters, #023

June 12th, 202_. 12:46_.m.

To the void of Google docs,

She told me multiple times, just like she told Artie, too; before I left, she "knew there were serious problems" but that she was 'content' to stay. 'Content', like I'm some kind of terrible monster, one must swallow pride and bitter pills in order to love. Like it's some sort of grand consolation to me and such a testament to how she loved me so much she persevered the challenges of such an endeavor, such a thankless job as being with me.

It’s just completely incomprehensible to me how someone I loved so much, someone I wanted to see thrive so badly, was so 'content' to quietly resent me and let me fade away from myself so completely, for the rest of our lives. She was perfectly happy to continue to let me break down every couple of months, over and over, about necessary changes she was just never going to be willing to make. Not to save us, or even just save me. Months on end, repeatedly, for the rest of ever. She was content to let me be miserable and lose every light in my eyes until they glazed over like eyes tired from hours of virtual companionship and computer screens, but for good. She did not care about any of the many small but significant deaths I endured over seven years, convinced she could and would do what she promised she wanted to, one day. And now she has the nerve to act like this contentedness that wrought the life out of me is some kind of absolving act of mercy.

And I can’t help but feel she had to be aware, on some level, that these changes she promised so many times over seven years, were never, ever, going to be possible for her. Not for me. Not while she was with me. No matter what I did. No matter the hours in therapy, the tri-monthly med management, not the constant self reflection, not the dedicated way I tried to pull conversations and “how can I love you better's” from her, like teeth, every. day. for. years. None of the work I put in, none of the results I am certain I accomplished, nothing I had done, so desperate to be in this relationship and marriage with someone I convinced myself just loved me in a way I couldn't understand, was ever going to undo the rude and excitable temperament of my early twenties. Given the ease with which she reached this as the conclusive reason for all of our problems so suddenly after curtains, how can I believe she did not know all along she would never allow herself to put her grudges, resentment, or past insecurities away in any manner meaningful enough to really love me? How could she have loved me if “she never felt safe coming to me about emotions”, because I was a pretty intense 23-25 year old. The excuse sounds so flimsy and far-fetched now, it echoes like the lie a child tells hastily to avoid the consequences of their actions as the shattering of an expensive vase rings behind a loud and preemptive, “I didn't do it!"

And I don't know if I find it completely reprehensible and cowardly to play paragon in contrast to a loud, foul mouthed, ex boyfriend character as a way to avoid guilt, or if I can only find it to be completely pitiable that maybe she really is just so walled off from her own emotions, it is easier for her to string some bullshit together about a handful of times I raised my voice in objection to manipulative behavior and believe that, than it could ever be to ever face the reality of this incredibly isolated prison she built for herself that I was foolish enough to enter and stay inside by choice for so long.

And isn’t it awesome how now, I get to see that same martyrial and wonderfully benevolent contentedness shutting the door of this home I built like a mausoleum in my face, smiling and saying “I can see that it really is ultimately for the best, now". All the while a totally new beacon of life, some sort of once-impossible, self-sufficiency considers moving to fucking NEW YORK, for someone she has known barely any longer than my father has been dead, when I was so very recently made to feel like North Carolina would be an almost fucking unthinkable, Odyssean trek away from a family that I had never even realized felt so othered from me until it was mentioned as a great reason we are divorcing.

I want to walk into a river and go until it finds an ocean and then I want to keep walking, in iron boots, and I want Elise to live whatever wonderful life one gets to live after sucking the life out of someone for nearly a decade and calling it love. I wish her the best of the sort of life one can make once they actually care enough to make one.

- the most significant of the footnotes.

#prose #writing #ramblings #unsent letters #letters i’ll never send #divorce #break up #journaling #writing exercise #writing therapy

For what I believe may be the first time in my life, a woman complimented my the scar on my upper lip specifically when commenting on these photos and I think somehow it healed a bit of that four-year-old kid who got this scar trying to impress a red haired girl at their Catholic pre-k in New Orleans, back in 1999, and has been a little nervous talking to girls ever since.