Mike

gay genderqueer trans man | he/him | 29

[zessdeluxe]

That's almost it for this Pride Month. Before we go, there's one more thing we'd like to show you. Please take a look:

[casivarn]

who the fuck even uses "pretty boy" as an insult any more I thought we all came to the agreement that all it does is make you sound like you want to stick your tongue down the other guy's throat

[zetsubonna]

I feel like “addiction” needs to be added to the shelf of things people can’t use anymore because they aren’t using it correctly.

[zetsubonna]

”Dopamine addiction” you mean “reward seeking”

“AI addiction” you mean “self destructive antisocial behavior enabled by predatory technology”

“Porn addiction” you mean “internalized sexual shame and desensitization”

“Sex addiction” you mean “self destructive promiscuity”

“Addiction” is a clinical fucking disease. These people are not diseased, by and large. Some of them are experiencing/committing maladaptive behaviors and trying to absolve themselves of responsibility for their actions. Some of them are just existing in an evolutionarily explicable way, but our Puritanical/Calvinist society thinks they should be ashamed for ever experiencing pleasure or gratification at all rather than sacrificing every scrap of enjoyment they can claw out of life and suffering all the time because humans are tainted by sin and have to do penance for living.

I’m taking that word away and putting it on the top fucking shelf.

[the-haiku-bot]

I’m taking that word

away and putting it on

the top fucking shelf.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[hyperlexichypatia]

"Dopamine addiction" you mean "Doing what makes you happy."

"AI addiction" you mean "Over-reliance on a dubious source of information."

"Porn addiction" you mean "Enjoying media that some arbitrary authority considers too erotic."

"Sex addiction" you mean "Choosing to have sex more frequently or with more partners than is considered normal in a sex-negative, monogonormative society," unless what you mean is "Cheating on a partner to whom one promised exclusivity, the problem with which is the lying, not the sex."

We don't need to replace the "addiction" framemwork with a different framework of pathologization; we need to reject pathologization frameworks entirely.

[genderkoolaid]

sorry but this is maybe THE most annoying response i see to discussion of anti-transmasculinity and exorsexism in trans spaces.

i hate to use "sides" in this context because things are not that binary and they are not that uniform. but like. i need to fucking remind everyone that one ""side"" created the term transunity specifically to call for less infighting and for transfeminist theory that integrates all kinds of trans experiences, and the ""other side"" immediately began insisting the people behind it must hate trans women.

its so fucking infuriating. like jesus fucking christ you do not need to condescend to us about how this infighting shit is gonna get people killed!!!!! WE KNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! & its ESPECIALLY fucking gross when you type this shit on a post about intercommunity bigotry, as if the people being anti-transmasc or exorsexist and the people talking about how that is bad are equally contributing to infighting.

this discourse is not actually pointless or meaningless i'm sorry. there is real shit, real rotten fetid wounds in our community, that we have never properly addressed (& that goes for the anti-transmasculinity, the exorsexism, the transmisogyny, the biphobia, the misogyny, the aphobia, the racism, the classism, everything). we cannot just "stop fighting" because the REASON there is so much fighting is because people - bi people, aspec people, transmascs & nonbinary people, queer people of color - keep saying "hey this shit is hurting us, can we talk about it & stop doing it?" and then other people react to that like its a personal attack on them to have somebody question their emotional support lateral violence. and then because the internet is built to incentivize outrage over productive solutions & meaningful community-building, it becomes something huge and messy and shitty, and the core problem struggles to ever get actually properly addressed.

most of the time, at best, you get what happened post-ace discourse, where the community goes "fine okay the A can stay" but never actually grapples with the acephobia and arophobia or amatonormativity, never grapples with the extent of the hostility towards aspec people, and everyone just pretends it was silly terminally online teen arguments that had nothing to do with real life, and we return to a slightly modified status quo. and that is not fucking improvement.

don't come onto posts about transandrophobia, written from a transunitist perspective, castigating people about "you need to be united" that is literally. what we have been trying to say. for multiple years. if you zoom out it has been a major thread of conflict in the queer community for decades, fucking decades, without a true resolution.

[feminist-space]

[feminist-space]

[feminist-space]

[parsio]

Interesting how the first article link’s title named him the restaurant owner and referred to Thy Mitchell only as his wife.

The next article credits her as a restaurateur. That all should have been easily verifiable and uncontentious information.

[shrimpmasc]

how being transmasc feels when you don’t have a radfem in your ear saying you’re a traitor to feminism

[wiisagi-maiingan]

Abortion is good. Abortion is important. Abortion is a life-saving medical procedure and should be celebrated as much as we celebrate the existence and success of things like surgeries to remove tumors.

[thisisexorsexism]

this is exorsexism and transmisogyny

[b33viemm]

[image description: tweet by JupiterAngel (@/mistytangerines) which says "Is it bad that when I encounter someone online who doesn't specify if they're afab or amab queer/nb, I do feel wary in case they are amab because I've literally never felt safe with any amab who's queer because every single one of them has used queerness to exploit afabs." End description.]

[anarchopuppy]

sometimes being a fan of something means not wanting them to make any more of it

[xenosagaepisodeone]

john green didn’t “deserve” the way that early ‘10s tumblr treated him technically, but I feel like the discussion around whether he “deserved” it or not is completely missing the point. he was an adult in a space that was largely recreationally used by teenagers. why would he not get the substitute teacher treatment. what else did you think would occur here.

[lierdumoa]

Early ‘10s tumblr was the indie porn capital of the internet. Tumblr porn reshaped and democratized the internet porn landscape at the height of the sex positivity movement. There is literally a book about this:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56143249-tumblr-porn

Now if you’re wondering why I felt the sudden need to dredge up this post from 2022, it’s because of a couple other posts I won’t go into now that reminded me of it.

This post is a prime example of how casually and insidiously we can re-write history. When the OP made this post so many people in the notes nodded along, acting as though it were an obvious, incontrovertible truth that Tumblr in the late aughts/early ‘10s was a wholesome safe space for children, and it was therefore normal and natural in the tumblr culture of that time to treat adults as unwelcome interlopers.

But that’s not an obvious, incontrovertible truth.

It’s a complete rewriting of history.

It’s a brazen, boldfaced lie.

Or it would be, if I thought OP were lying intentionally. But actually I don’t thing they were. I think this might actually be how OP (mis)remembers tumblr. OP painted a pastel colored soft focus filter over their childhood memories without even realizing that’s what they were doing. And it’s fine if the way you like to remember something is different from the way it actually happened. But it stops being fine when you start using your fabricated whitewashed sanitized memories as “evidence” when crafting an argument, thinking no one will bother to fact check you.

I’m bothering.

Tumblr was an adult space from its inception. Teens were never tumblr’s primary or target demographic at any point in its existence.

[lierdumoa]

[brazenautomaton]

@lierdumoa OP didn’t say it was wholesome and safe? OP said it was used primarily by teenagers and that teenagers acted the way they acted around substitute teachers. There was no implication of wholesomeness or family-friendly shit. And it’s true? Teens were Tumblr’s core demographic. They were cruel in exactly the way high schoolers were cruel. The Social Justice Movement is primarily concerned with the things cruel teenagers care about, like bullying the weak and screaming at each other about fandom, because its architects were all teenagers on tumblr in the early 2010s. Superwholock was all teenagers and Dashcon was attended by teenagers and yourfaveisproblematic was a teenager and Homestuck fans were teenagers. So many of Tumblr’s most famous shit that never happened stories were made up by teenagers who didn’t understand anything about the world to make their story plausible. Teenagers fell for infinite chocolate and teenagers fell for Gan’s Syndrome and teenagers fell for every other fucking thing you can think of. Maybe early 2010s Tumblr was the indie porn capital of the Internet, but it was also the capital of teenager cruelty, built on raging emotions and self-righteousness from people with no sense of scale or proportion or restraint. You’d frequently see teenagers getting self-righteous about the implication they shouldn’t be looking at or writing porn! Like all the time!

Tumblr’s primary audience was teenagers, who behaved like teenagers. That’s it. Anything else about this being sanitized is something you imagined. Tumblr was a high school cafeteria, and there is nothing pastel soft focus about that.

[deadgenerations]

tumblr in the john green age was mostly highschoolers, in fact it was so full of teenagers that it had a perennial problem with child porn in part because these very horny underage teens kept posting naked pictures of themselves on this website. I mean, basically every long time user on this website started their blog while they were minors! source: I was there as one of the horny underage teen bloggers.

And john green was clearly trying to connect with the teens here, because they were the intended audience of his fucking novels. he didn’t come here to hang out with adult sex workers

what a bizarre hill to be sanctimonious on.

[phaeton-flier]

So the point here is less about the exact fraction of teenagers to adults and more to point out that this wasn’t purely a kids playpen at the McDonalds and thus John Green being here wasn’t inherently questionable. John Green trying to have a blog for his target demographic didn’t mean he should “deserve to get the substitute teacher treatment”, if that means anything besides “I can say whatever I want about him and you can’t point out that’s cruel”

[evilsoup]

in the 2010s tumblr was spoken about in news articles in the same breath as twitter and facebook. mainstream political parties, documentary series, movies, etc, had official tumblr accounts. An author having an account here was equivalent to an author having a twitter account, i.e. completely normal.

[cathkaesque]

There was a while where all of the Labour Party’s press releases were hosted via Tumblr

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

Also if you’re editing your substitute teacher’s statements to make it look like he’s telling the class how much he likes cock and doxxing him to the point where he stops working at your school because you’ve made him scared for the actual physical safety of his family, you should be expelled.

[panic-attack-imminent]

Yeah, this last point is really what is important. Regardless of whether Tumblr was mostly kids, mostly adults, or (more likely) a pretty equal mixture of the two, is absolutely immaterial. The point is that a man was harassed, doxxed, had incriminating false rumors spread about him, feared for his and his family’s safety, all because some people thought he was “cringe.”

The cock monologue was not giving him the “substitute teacher treatment” (whatever the fuck that means), nor was any of the other heinous shit.

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

#also the cock monologue was just blatantly homophobic too (“haha man who likes sucking dick is soooOOooOo funny!”)#like sorry to rain on y'alls parade but that shit was never funny and was always lame and loser behavior

[thegeekcompanion]

Also genuinely why everyone claiming it was mostly teens in highschool don’t give ANY citation for that? At least the first reply had a book to show for it.

Yes a bunch of people who still use Tumblr now made their accounts back when they were minors, including me, but also Tumblr was waaaay more mainstream and had adults from the start, and I knew it even back then which is why I didn’t have my age listed until I was older, did y'all really think you were only talking to teens?? Did no one teach you basic internet safety? And all of that to justify bullying a man?

[lastoneout]

Everyone forget this, but the truth is that John Green’s harassment campaign was a direct result of him showing support for asexuals and aromantics during the early hight of the ace/aro exclusion movement. The minute a mico-celeb showed support for ace and aro people they got accused of pedophilia and harassed endlessly(and the only creators who took part and didn’t have it effect them long term were the ones taking the side against ace and aro people, which says a lot). The same exact thing happened to Thomas Sanders after he was supportive of aro and ace people and his career has never fully recovered, this was a common tactic, because back in the day ace exclusionists frequently argued that asexual people who told kids about asexuality were abusing them because talking about sex with kids is always wrong and the only reason anyone would do it is because they’re a pedophile, and despite that being insane it held sway and worked to convince people that Sanders and Green were both dangerous and deserved the harassment.

Also to be clear people back then did argue that Green was wrong for being in a space for teenagers, but they didn’t mean tumblr, they meant him being a YA author with a fanbase of teenagers, and they used that as evidence of his nonexistent pedophilia as well as the fact that there’s a laughably non-explicit sex scene in The Fault in Our Stars. The nerdfighter fandom has always been populated by teens because John Green is a YA author and he and his brother intentionally kept their content all ages, that’s also what they meant by youth spaces, their own fan space which they weren’t even involved in to an abnormal or unhealthy degree.

(If anyone is curious the evidence against Thomas Sanders was that he once accidentally shared some slightly sexualized fan art of him—something he did I believe on a separate 18+ account with other fans on the condition that they’re adults, which I think is perfectly fine, creators shouldn’t have to pick either 100% kid friendly or 100% 18+ for their content—because the fan in question did not tell him their age and once he found out it was a minor he took the art down and blocked that person, which is all that can really be expected, and also that he did outreach with his former highschool to help the drama students learn about acting and creating videos. One is an unfortunate mistake and the other is just a good thing he did?? But both were used to drum up pedophilia accusations which again, were cover for the true reason people hated him, he didn’t hate ace and aro people.)

People also accused Green of being weird about women for writing Paper Towns because there’s a girl who’s a manic pixie dream girl so obviously he’s a misogynist….but the book was directly and explicitly deconstructing and critiquing the manic pixie dream girl trope and the way men often see the women they’re attracted to as objects and not people—like I can point to the exact passage in the book that is just Green looking at the audience and saying “women are people and you don’t own someone because you like them” I have it highlighted—so anyone claiming that the book was the opposite just can’t read but even then, it didn’t matter that it wasn’t true, it could be used to paint him as a monster so it’s fine to lie about something as blatantly false as this.

The only real valid criticism I ever saw was that The Fault in Our Stars was antisemitic for the bits about the Anne Frank house, which I agree with, but that was heavily drowned out by the pedo stuff so not only did this movement nearly destroy a man over fucking nothing, it prevented a genuine criticism of his writing from being brought up and addressed. It was unfair to Green, who should be made aware of this and be given a chance to apologize and make it right in any way he can, and to his jewish fans, who deserved to talk about how they were harmed and have that harm addressed, but it all got ruined by a bunch of bigots being assholes for no reason.

Also this was ableist harassment on top of it all, John Green has never been secretive about his struggles with OCD and accusing a man with FUCKING OCD of being a pedophile when you know you’re lying is horrific ableist violence. That’s part of the reason he left and as someone with OCD I genuinely think people chose this to attack him with because they knew it would do the most harm to him professionally and mentally. It was extremely ableist and as far as I’m concerned the only person who should be able to make jokes about what happened is him. Everyone else should stop treating this situation like there was anything even remotely funny about it because there wasn’t, it’s not funny to harass a mentally ill man and YA author with false accusations of pedophilia, that could have legit ruined his career and life. I’m glad it didn’t.

So anyway, aside from the one extremely valid complaint that got ignored, the real reason people suddenly hated John Green was that he was an ally to aro and ace people and back then being an ally was a social death sentence, especially on tumblr. The reason no one remembers this is because former ace/aro exclusionists have done a marvelous job of convincing everyone that “ace discourse” wasn’t a big deal and didn’t really hurt anyone, especially not anyone irl, but that’s a blatant and bold-faced lie designed to protect them from the consequences of their actions and further erase ace and aro people and our suffering. We do not deserve to be remembered, and everything done to us and our allies was just dumb teenagers being silly and not a coordinated campaign of queerphobic violence designed to completely eradicate the existence of ace and aro people and anyone who supported us, and thus no one who took part in that coordinated campaign deserves to be held responsible for what they did.

TL;DR The cock monolog was the culmination of an attempt to destroy a man’s entire career for the crime of being a good ally and saying things that are true like ace and aro people are valid. I don’t even think he said they were queer I think he just said they were valid and he welcomes ace and aro fans, but even that was too much. The idea that it was just teens being teens is untrue, plenty of adults were joining in, tumblr has never been a space only for teenagers, and that wasn’t even the reason people were harassing him, it was because he was a good ally, and on top of all of that a genuine issue never got addressed because people cared more about destroying him than they did actual marginalized people.

It would do us all good to remember that, and if you didn’t know I’m glad I told you, because this is the real truth. It was ableist and queerphobic harassment designed to destroy him which did a lot of harm and 0 good outside of fixing tumblr so you can’t edit other people’s posts which was a weird feature that never should have existed in the first place.

[transmasculinity101]

The Fetishization of Trans Men in the Community

I remember seeing a post from presumably a trans radical feminist talking about the poor representation of trans women in porn compared to “TME porn.” Of course, we all know what these people mean when they say TME. It’s a term designed to put trans men/nonbinary people into the category of cis people, people who have systemic power over us, while having plausible deniability because “it means cis people too! I could totally be talking about just cis people!” But I would like to talk about trans men in porn, and the sexualization of trans men and the fetishes forced onto us.

For starters, the vast majority of transmasculine representation in porn is of white, skinny, fem/androgynous trans men. They are often pre/non op top surgery, and are almost always pre/non op bottom surgery. The vast majority of porn featuring trans men involves trans men having their vaginas penetrated by a penis. Even in porn where a trans man tops, the strap on is never realistic (can’t be having people imagining a trans man with a dick, of course, otherwise they wouldn’t be good little sex objects) and there is always some sort of focus on the trans man’s vagina at some point in the shoot. Same with anal, there will typically also be vaginal penetration at some point.

If you are a trans man who isn’t white, who isn’t skinny, who is more masculine than androgynous hairless twink with a flat chest, post op top surgery and especially post op bottom surgery, or don’t have any interest in having your vagina touched, you will not be represented in the vast majority of porn featuring trans men. This is also true for T4T porn of trans men. It’s not exclusively when trans men are with cis men or cis women.

I post in transmasculine porn subreddits. I am an exhibitionist, it’s a major kink of mine (among other things). I am someone who also doesn’t draw any focus on my vagina in my posts, I am anal only, and I definitely don’t fit the beauty standard for trans men. I am a fat, hairy, bearded trans man who can’t be easily put into the category of “hairy tomboy,” especially given that there’s not that focus on my vagina. This is mainly in transmasculine porn subreddits. I’ve said on my other account on here, but I’ve very much enjoyed posting in gay bear porn subreddits. They have all been very respectful, and any time I’ve experienced any transphobia, it’s been removed, and the vast majority of interaction that I’ve gotten from the other bears there have been positive, because those subreddits are specifically for people who look like me: fat, hairy, bearded, masculine men. Most people don’t care about what I have downstairs, especially seeing as I don’t use it to begin with. When I said that I was getting bottom surgery, I was celebrated for it.

But the majority of interaction that trans men get in transmasculine porn subreddits is content surrounding vaginal penetration. And that’s just the non-kink focused subreddits. When you get into subreddits surrounding trans men with kinks, it’s a whole nother thing.

One of my biggest issues is with the detrans/misgendering kink. I don’t necessarily have an issue with trans men who either use the kink to get money because they are doing sex work (you obviously have to do what you have to do, and we’ll talk about trans men who have to do sex work in a minute) or even trans men who actually have those kinks. However, there is no way to have a conversation about the way that trans men are fetishized without mentioning how many people have the detrans/misgendering kink for trans men. When you look at transmasculine porn subreddits that center kink, the vast majority of interaction is on posts where trans men market that they have a detrans/misgendering kink. It’s not only cis people who partake in this kink. Even outside of reddit, I can’t look at a lot of transfem sT4T domme’s NSFW accounts because the majority of their posts about trans men are detrans/misgendering content. “Fakeboy” content is a big part of the tumblr transmasculine kink scene. I am someone who is a sT4T male sub with a femdom kink, and I can’t relate to most other trans people who post about that kind of deal because a lot of it focuses on detrans/misgendering trans men, and the ones that don’t focus on trans men who use their vaginas during sex. If you find something without that, it’s a trans man who’s a top/dom, and that’s great and is their right, but that’s not me either.

I often find social media NSFW profiles that center around wanting to find transmasculine sexting partners specifically to misgender and detransition them. It’s marketed as a kink, but at some point it’s hard not to at least think that a lot of the non-trans men who post about this kink so frequently just genuinely want to detransition and misgender trans men, and are just calling it a kink. Even other trans people. I don’t really trust any non-trans man who has a misgendering/detrans kink for trans men, even if they’re also trans. Even in the trans community, we are expected to conform to femininity to make other people more comfortable, so forgive me for being distrustful.

The forced impregnation kink is another thing. I have my own kinks, but it’s another thing when it’s forced onto trans men who have no interest in it. Breeding is hot, but we have to be sensitive to the group of people who are both disproportionally affected by forced impregnation in order to detransition them, and the group who specifically has very complicated feelings surrounding pregnancy. I’ve talked about forced impregnation before, and I’ve had several, at least 100 trans men express on a post that I made some time ago that if they ended up pregnant and couldn’t abort, they’d commit suicide. Trans men who want to get pregnant, are pregnant, or who have been pregnant are valid and deserve the space to talk about their experiences, but we can’t erase those of us whom pregnancy is one of the worst things that they can think of happening to them. I had an ex girlfriend try to babytrap me, and she stopped when I said I was sterilized, but it’s still very disturbing to think about. This was the ex girlfriend who repeatedly raped and tried to kill me. The cis man who correctively raped me wore a condom when he did it.

At one point, I got a private message from another trans woman. She was only 18, I’m not that upset with her for saying this because she was young, but I had just had a hysterectomy, and she said that it was “sad that [I] got a hysterectomy,” presumably because she wanted to get me pregnant. I don’t really feel any type of way about pregnancy as somebody who definitely can’t get pregnant on account of not having reproductive organs, and I did/do have a breeding kink, but that message really upset me, because who says something like that? That a trans person’s gender affirming surgery is “sad” because you wanted to fetishize them pre op? It’s one thing for cis people to say inappropriate, transphobic shit like this, but other trans people should know better. It’s so much worse coming from another trans person.

The primary issue with people pushing the forced pregnancy kink onto trans men (besides that a lot of trans men are uncomfortable with that) is that pregnancy is often used as a form of control. Pregnancy leaves you physically dependent on the people around you, and having a child leaves you financially dependent on the people around you. The person that you are often dependent on is the person who impregnated you in the first place. This is something that often happens to cis women in abusive relationships, but it has different implications for trans men. Trans men who are forcibly impregnated by someone who wants them to detransition, and are dependent on that person, often do have to detransition. Pregnancy is often a dysphoric nightmare for trans men, and having to detransition and be dependent on a transandrophobe who impregnated you is a fucking nightmare for all of us I’m sure. When you think about that, the forced impregnation kink with trans men is a lot darker than you might have thought. And trans men can absolutely have that kink and that is their right, but forcing it onto trans men, even just sharing your fantasy to a nonconsenting trans men, is sexual harassment and a threat.

Back on trans men forced into sex work, a lot of them are forced into marketing off the detrans/misgendering kink for money. I’ve seen an account from a transmasculine sex worker, whose bio was something to the extent of “he/they unless you’re paying me, then you can use she. It doesn’t matter if I’m dysphoric about it.” I’ve seen a trans man make a series of photos that I was really into, but he misgendered himself in it. The description was “don’t misgender me please, this was a photo series for work by a paying client.” I’m sure a lot of trans men in sex work market off the detrans/misgendering kink wouldn’t do so if they would get enough money otherwise. Beyond that, I’m sure a lot more of them would get top surgery, and some of them aren’t even on T because they can’t transition because they rely on their pre-medical transition body to get money. When we talk about survival sex work in the trans community, the discussion is very focused on trans women. Which makes sense, trans women disproportionally are made to do survival sex work due to the inherent transmisogyny in our society. But trans men are also forced into survival sex work on account of being trans men, and that does need to be talked about. And trans men also have to degrade and misgender themselves for money. Trans men also have to use slurs and derogatory terms for money. And it doesn’t get easier because they have a vagina.

I also think it’s important to mention the amount of transandrophobic TRFs who post things with the effort to silence trans men on our own struggles and oppression, and then turn around and post that they want to fuck a “tboy” or a “boypussy.” I remember seeing a post on tumblr from a very notable transandrophobic TRF trans woman, that was something to the extent of “idk why TMEs hate me so much, I’m trying to bridge the rift between us in bed.” It had several reblogs. I happened to see it from checking a “transfeminist” account for transandrophobia, which I obviously found. I was so disgusted and uncomfortable that I never screenshotted it, I didn’t even talk about it for at least a week to anybody, because it just left me with a sinking feeling. This particular trans woman is a VERY big name among transandrophobes and TRFs. She’s posted horrible things about trans men, and she obviously fetishizes trans men from the things that she’s said to me and my transmasculine friends. It’s one thing for somebody to fetishize trans men when they don’t have multiple social media accounts dedicated to talking about how much they hate trans men, but she does. A lot of people say that all TRFs/transandrophobic trans women are T4T lesbians, or lesbians in general. This is not true. Many transandrophobic trans women are open to dating trans men or even exclusively date trans men. This is predatory behavior. A trans person exclusively dating trans men isn’t inherently predatory, that’s just called being T4T, but it’s different when the person doing it hates trans men and views trans men as sex objects.

I saw a screenshot from instagram, from presumably a transandrophobic trans woman. The post was parodying “nonbinary people don’t owe you androgyny,” “trans men don’t owe you masculinity,” ect. The bit about trans men was “trans men owe the dolls dinner dates.” Again, posted by somebody who does not believe that trans men should have the language or even ability to talk about our own struggles and oppression, believes that trans men need to shut up and take TRFs on dates. I saw a post several months ago from a TRF saying that a trans man who makes porn is a “model trans man” because he doesn’t talk about trans men’s issues and just does porn. Essentially that he was “a good tboy who knows when to shut up and suck dick.” They went on to call trans men who were upset and uncomfortable with this blatant fetishization and objectification of trans men out on their “dry pussies”. TRFs and other trans people who seek to silence trans men and then fetishize us are a real problem in the trans community. Being T4T isn’t inherently safer than dating cis people for trans men, especially with the state of the trans community and the ideas that trans people have about trans men. I’m obviously T4T but I have experienced violence and other forms of harassment from some of the trans people that I’ve dated. I’ve experienced even more from trans people I’ve encountered on the internet and in IRL trans spaces.

I also think we need to have a discussion about the way that trans men who are tops/doms are treated by the people that they have sex with. Trans men who top/dom are essentially seen as pleasure dispensers. They are expected to make their partner cum and then not receive anything in return. I was sexually abused by both of my subs/bottoms before I stopped topping/domming, and while one of them was of course the cis man who correctively raped me, one was my cis girlfriend from college who wouldn’t take my “no” for an answer when she tried to make me do sexual activities with her when I didn’t want to. I was a highly dysphoric detransed lesbian who detransitioned because of the transandrophobia I had experienced since coming out, and she would make me dysphoric on purpose to “brat” with me. If I ever raised my voice after telling her “no” several times, she would get sad, and I’d have to comfort her, and then she’d do it again. She’s a teacher now. Trans men who bottom/sub are expected to just be holes for people to stick their dicks in. People, and women especially, in the queer/trans community refer to us as being like “cis men who can make women cum” and “if cis men had empathy,” then we are treated with none of the care/tenderness that we provide to the women in our lives. Trans men are expected by the trans/queer community to give up our bodies and our safety for other people’s pleasure. We are expected to be good sex dolls and “protect” the trans/queer community while not being protected when we need it, are abused by the people within our community, and actively being silenced when we talk about our needs from the community and the oppression that we face. We’re human meat shields, whipping boys, scapegoats. We are expected to bear the sins of cishet men by people who don’t have the systemic/social power to oppress/discriminate against cishet men, we are punished for things that disproportionally affect us as trans men, we are silenced when we speak up about this injustice, and then we are expected to be the “protectors” of the trans/queer community, while benefitting from none of the protection that we are forced to provide to others that could not care less if we live or die. If we say that we need to prioritize trans men, we are called misogynists and “tMRAs,” by people who totally aren’t TERFs because they only hate trans men, and being a transmasculine exclusionary radical feminist isn’t really trans exclusionary because we’re not trans in the way that trans women are. Trans men have the highest risk of sexual abuse in the trans community at around 50%, and there are probably even more that don’t disclose. We are sexually abused by the people we date/have sex with, and then they turn around and say that trans men are “very well represented” in porn because they think all trans men are skinny white fem/androgynous twinks who let people fuck our pussies. That’s all they see us as.

This is more of a rant than an actual thinkpiece. I am uncomfortable with the way that trans men are treated sexually by the trans community. We are sexually assaulted and harassed and then that abuse is denied because we “have male privilege” or “have AFAB privilege.” The people who fetishize our bodies say that we shouldn’t have a right to speak up for ourselves. The people who consume fetishized porn of trans men are saying that we have “such good representation” in porn for us. “Trans men are not invisible, our struggles are invisible.”

[twisted0lli3]

This is a really good example of how TERFs disguise their attacks against trans men, and why it’s so harmful to consider TERF attitudes towards trans mascs as infantilizing.

The post is made to appear sympathetic to the man they are mocking. “Look at this poor ‘girl’ and how he’s mutilated himself” sounds sympathetic, especially to trans people who are subjected to aggressive, direct attacks on their identities and humanity.

But this performative sympathy is just a front so that TERFs can enjoy being cruel without appearing as the aggressor. This allows the audience to still enjoy the pleasure of engaging in cruelty while dressing it up as pity.

This plays into the broader tactic TERFs deploy with trans mascs.

Rarely ever do they confront us directly the way they do with trans women.

In fact, because they see us as women, their primary objective is to make sure we are never ever heard at all, so that they can maintain the narrative that none of us would ever transition of our own free will.

Instead, they poison the well. They talk to our “handlers”. Our parents, our doctors and psychiatrists, our husbands, boyfriends, our pastors.

The veneer of sympathy is not to appeal to trans men. It is to appeal to those they see as having ownership over us. When trans men fight back against this, the malice comes out in full force.

Trans men do not get attacked less. The attacks are simply not recognized as such, because even in protesting oppression, we place it on a hierarchy.

[genderkoolaid]

But this performative sympathy is just a front so that TERFs can enjoy being cruel without appearing as the aggressor. This allows the audience to still enjoy the pleasure of engaging in cruelty while dressing it up as pity.

[dykepuffs]

For anyone who has ever been seen as an unfashionable*/awkward* etc teenage girl**, it's recognisably a sibling to "We just want to put makeup on you to HELP you, we're telling you your clothes are ugly because you will never get a boy like that! You'd be so pretty! We just feel sorry for you, having to look poor and frumpy and everyone avoiding you because of it" As a method of bullying done by other girls** which often skates under the radar of authority figures like parents and teachers, because they're unwilling to think of something so feminine-coded and seemingly "caring" as being the same kind of ritual humiliation as other more traditional kinds of bullying.

The "point" is of course that the target is unable to fight back in any way - it demonstrates the bullies' social power (because the target could only fight back by physically removing themselves from the situation, running, locking a door etc, which would be further proof of the target's outcast status - "I tried to show her how to do her makeup and she RAN OFF like a FREAK, GROSS" or to physically fight back - "She PUSHED ME when I went to put makeup on her, she's violent and dangerous!") And reinforces that the bully is a morally "good person" (because "she just wants to help!! Why are you so ungrateful?!?!") In the case of the adult terfs with a trans man or transmasc target, the only ways that he can fight back will again make him look either "violent" or "hysterical" or both, making him the bad guy.

It's reinforced by authority figures who, again, will always interpret it as "helpful" and the victim as ungrateful/mistrustful/socially inept for their reluctance. In the case of the terfs it's all the handwringing "Well maybe she is just projecting her own feelings of how much she would be distressed to have had the same surgery? Maybe you just need to have empathy for her like she has for you? She cares about you!!! She SAYS so!!!!" which the terfs enjoy, because it is further proof, again, that their victims are people who can't be believed.

[dramatic-dolphin]

people are so fucking weird about uncontacted tribes/peoples oh my goddddd you are not making it out of the colonialist mindset

[dramatic-dolphin]

fun fact uncontacted peoples are not ignorant they are fully aware of the "outside world" and are CHOOSING not to have contact because they (rightly) feel it would add no value to their lives and place them in an exploited position. it's voluntary. they are isolated on purpose.

[dramatic-dolphin]

sentinelese people aren't like some ignorant noble savages, or actual savages who are all about warfare and killing (wildly racist take i see very often), they are literally regular ass fucking people who have seen the exploitation of their neighbors (other andamanese people) AND the massive disease outbreaks caused by contact, and decided they want no part in that. they are literally regular people choosing to survive. that's it.

[standwithdaanes]

Good resource to start learning about uncontacted peoples:

Uncontacted Peoples: at the edge of survival

There are at least 196 uncontacted Indigenous groups living in forests across the globe. Right now, more than 95 percent of uncontacted peop

[standwithdaanes]

For those in the notes arguing about whether "uncontacted" is the correct term; whether or not it seems the most accurate, it's the term that is being used. "Uncontacted" just means they reject contact with non-Indigenous society, not that they are isolated from all other people or don't know it exists or have never spoken to a white person before. From the link above:

Uncontacted Indigenous peoples reject contact with outsiders, as an active and ongoing choice. Survival International has calculated that there are 196 uncontacted groups worldwide; some of these are entire peoples who are uncontacted – such as the Sentinelese in India. Some uncontacted groups – such as the Ayoreo Totobiegosode in the Paraguayan Chaco or the Amahuaca in Peru – are sub-groups of bigger tribes with whom they share a language and often a territory. All are aware of the outside world, and reject it. They are self-sufficient and resilient. They live independently in forests, sometimes on islands. They resist intrusion, and thrive when their rights are respected. Uncontacted peoples may encounter outsiders sporadically, or not at all. They are aware of neighboring Indigenous peoples, who may be closely or distantly related. The uncontacted Hongana Manyawa in Indonesia have family members who have left the forest, mostly under duress. The uncontacted Pirititi occasionally encounter their contacted Kinja neighbors in the Brazilian Amazon. The Massaco, also in Brazil, were for decades known only by traces in the forest, including booby traps sharpened with rodents' teeth and placed on their hunting trails to warn off outsiders. Uncontacted peoples’ rejection of contact is often rooted in memories of devastating past contact and invasion, which brought violence, epidemics and death. Their denial of contact is a clear expression of their autonomy and self-determination.

At that link you can also check out "Voices from the Edge" which is a collection of interviews mostly with Indigenous people who have been forcibly contacted and whose relatives are still uncontacted.

[homoidiotic]

“T-Fags” is a photography book exploring fag identity for trans men, trans masculine and non-binary people, by @el_hardwick & @orionisaacs_

[genderkoolaid]

need binary trans people to understand that being nonbinary/genderqueer/gnc and getting euphoria from being androgynous/"genderfuck" doesn't actually mean that experiencing the misandrogyny and dehumanization that comes with being recognizably outside the binary any better. all it means is that there is no hypothetical endpoint, there is no "if i could only xyz then everyone would see my real binary gender and treat me like any other human being and i could escape being treated as an disgusting creature that doesn't fit in anywhere" because the thing that makes you feel real, the thing that relieves your dysphoria and makes you feel like yourself and not want to die, is the very thing that makes you be seen as a disgusting creature. so its either never transition or swap one closet (binary cis person) for another (binary trans person) or just accept that this is the price you pay for being nb/gq/gnc and open about it, and even then people will forcibly stuff you back into the closet, and also you may not even be able to access the gender affirming care you need on account of you not being binary and your goals not being binary.

& like. misandrogyny hurts all trans people because we are all outside the binary to some degree in the eyes of patriarchal society. there are nb/gq/gnc people who may be less personally affected by it day-to-day than some binary/gender conforming trans people! but it does drive me insane seeing people be like "no one in the world could ever understand the immense suffering caused by being read as androgynous more than me, a white binary trans woman, and frankly every nonbinary person who gets euphoria from androgyny is valor-stealing from Me Personally because they must not understand that being androgynous is bad" as if when you get queerbashed for being an obvious tranny, its somehow less painful if you get euphoria from being androgynous in instead of experiencing androgyny as an inherently lesser state of being to be escaped.

[infectiouspiss]

disabled ppl we need to start lying to nosy people okay? you tell me i'm too young to need a cane and i will tell you point blank that maybe you should tell that to the guy who ran me over. you don't get an explanation of my health issues you get lies and depending on how much of an asshole i want to be that lie will be anything from a humble car crash to a 1 billion lions attack. mind yr business.

[infectiouspiss]

"i could never live like that" well maybe you'll have to because this happened overnight. yeah you heard me i was the most able bodied man in the world but then one morning bam i woke up disabled. yeah you could have that too. there's no cure either you'll just wake up one morning and now you have to live like me

[infectiouspiss]

"what happened" well have you ever seen looney tunes? yeah an anvil landed on me and squished me flat.

[penumbralwoods]