Like, so much of everything about how trans masculine people are viewed comes down to breasts. If you have visible breasts, best case scenario you will be misgendered constantly, worst case scenario you will be viewed as a gender deviant freak. I think the entire reason "it's so much easier for trans men to pass" discourse exists is because in my experience, the second someone has prominent breasts, the idea that they could ever be trans masculine does not occur to people. People think trans men have an easy time passing because if they see a masc person on the street with breasts, they will just view them as a woman. It does not matter how actively masculinely you present. Women are allowed to dress masculinely in our society (which is obviously a good thing overall), so there is no amount of masculine presentation that can override the boobs = woman coding. If someone sees a non-passing trans woman, they might be absolute assholes, or they might go "ah, clearly this is a trans person, but I see what she's going for and I want to respect that," but for better or for worse, they can tell what she's going for. With trans men? Oh, we can still get clocked as genderfreak tranny—no one is lucky enough to get out of that—but when anyone who isn't actively hateful sees us, they just assume we're gnc women. Nothing else is a possibility.
Like. There are a lot of reasons for trans masculine invisibility, don't get me wrong, but I do think part of it is that a huge percentage of trans masculine people are literally invisible to other people, even other queer people. "Man with boobs" does not register as a possibility at all. The second people, even trans people, even me, the person writing this, see someone with breasts, they automatically view them as a woman and never consider any other possibility. It doesn't matter how woke you are; you see someone with E cups and masculine attire and you assume butch at absolute best, woman who is just wearing clothing that's normal for women to wear at worst.
Like okay. This is tumblr. This is the fandom website. And we love our trans headcanons. So tell me, when was the last time you saw art or read fic of a character as trans man where they weren't able to bind or tape to flat? And this is on the "queer" website that is supposedly overrun with trans masculine people. Loads and loads and loads of us cannot get flat no matter how much we try to bind. Many of us don't bind at all, whether by personal choice or for pain/health/comfort reasons. And many of us will never be able to access top surgery. But absolutely every depiction of us, from media to the imfluencers and activists on social media, is with a flat chest. The busty guys are never visible. They don't exist. They don't get to be representations of trans guys.
I worked my ass off to be adequately masculine in order to be gendered correctly, even though in reality I'm gnc as all hell. It didn't matter. I still didn't get it. I was still she/her no matter what, even in groups where people knew damn well that I was transgender, even when I corrected people. I got top surgery? All of a sudden, using he/him pronouns was easy and natural. I mean, don't get me wrong, people who knew me pre transition still misgender me sometimes, but it has reduced so dramatically. It was this moment of "oh, I see. You all had the power to do this the entire time. But you didn't. Because until I stopped having breasts, it was impossible for you to view me as masculine enough. As if that was ever anything I had any control over."
I told an acquaintance who is The Best Trans Ally in my Orchestra that I was getting top surgery, and he told me "ah, I was wondering when you were going to stop presenting so androgynously," as if I ever had a choice to begin with.
Whether or not you pass as a trans guy is make or break on breasts. Don't get me wrong, flat-chested guys or guys who can bind effectively absolutely get misgendered too. I'm not saying that they don't. I still do even post top surgery; I'm a short effeminate guy who works in a 90% female field, wears women's scrubs (men's scrubs don't get the fun designs), and works with old people who have poor eyesight. But what I am saying is that some of the time, some people with small or bindable breasts do get gendered correctly. At absolute best, people with large breasts get gendered correctly by people who know them and know that they're trans. And often, as long as the breasts exist, even those people won't gender you correctly. As soon as my chest was gone, I went from passing maybe 3% of the time (again, old people with bad eyesight gave me better odds) to at least 75%. Nothing else changed. Hell, I dress more femininely now because I can wear form-fitting clothing without being super dysphoric.
Anyway. It's been 5 months, and clearly I haven't forgotten yet. But it annoys me that for all the focus on top surgery in trans masculine identity, for how often being trans masc is flattened to just binders and top surgery scars, the simple fact of what it's like to be a man with breasts, and how that is effectively impossible, doesn't get discussed very often. To me, when I had breasts, that was all I could think about every day. It was the central obstacle in the way of me getting recognized as the correct gender. And as such, I'd expect it to be talked about so much more. But of course, it isn't, because for that to happen, we'd have to acknowledge and accept that men with large breasts can exist in the first place.
And I just. I don't want to forget. I don't want to wake up 10 years from now and no longer be angry that men with breasts can never exist or be recognized, even in supposedly trans-positive environments, just because I'm no longer one of them.
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