[informedconsenter]

I feel like I understand your work more and more the longer I let it fester. I can't know your full intent behind everything (that's part of art as a whole and the mystique behind your persona, after all). Despite this, there are two lenses I like to use for analysis with your blogs specifically.

On the surface level, you are literally communicating with the viewer (who is expected to be a transmasc Tumblr user at least vaguely familiar with forcemasc). This reading might be your intent because it makes it the easiest to read and interpret. I like this a lot.

A reading I've begun to think about more recently is the speaker in your works representing the self, in the sense that the voice is the viewer from the future. I didn't consider this perspective until almost a year on testosterone, where I look at the twinkish thing I was then and feel an almost protective kind of lust. I looked unassuming then, and I find my past self cute in a way. Seeing and remembering my past self as this "other" only highlights how much I've become something else through my own actions and the influences that shape my actions. I find an arousing potential in the idea that I'll view my current self in the same way in a few years, seeing the gradual changes in online photos as a new person for each swipe.

I hope this wasn't presumptuous and that the idea is interesting to you as well, even if it wasn't your intention.

Presume away. My only intention is to change you. In a way, I put off answering this because I wanted to see where you’d be when this ask was no longer recent. Therefore, I offer you a response almost a year in the future. We do seem to work in seasons of years around here.

I myself am now different from cypionate60mg, even from informedconsenter. If I could debate him into submission, I would. But it was also those “previous” selves of mine that made this “current” one possible, so in a way I’ve forced my present self into existence by having not been content with the present at all.

I wonder—who is it now who reads this? One less twinkish than the person who sent the ask? Maybe that arousing potential has been realized once again in my absence. But was it your body that invited lustful protectiveness or was it the coherent naivete that you projected onto your previous self? In the latter, the past self may conceive of his future self in metrics of completeness. Similarly, the present self may see this past self as one in pursuit of him. Both are foreplay for sex that never quite comes. Granted, I say all of this with the bias of the contemporary moment. An excitingly impossible chase nonetheless.

[informedconsenter]

Hey. I was going to write and just say I'm excited about this new blog, but that felt like a waste of an ask and disingenuous besides. This feels masturbatory, but it's more honest I suppose. Yours were the first forcemasc captions I read, and I read them bemused, then fascinated, then they were no more and I realized I'd been playing fort-da pretending I wasn't into ForceMasc.

I liked what you said about the wanting and the flesh being entangled, and the idea that in "actualizing" one is heading toward an illusion. Lacan suggests that ontologically speaking, the self is always an asymptote because recognition of the self is always misrecognition. I misrecognize myself for the being in the mirror; I am inducted into the social and interpellated as "girl" which I naturalize to the self I have taken as object. I think there's an erotic oblivion to this; I am fundamentally incomplete in being constituted by language, I am not a Girl but Man is a fantastical construct; I am nothing—I can be anything. Is the more real self the self that is always in transition, contradiction and flux, rather than the self that thinks it's reached any stable end-point? Also, here's the actually masturbatory part: while you were gone, I wrote ForceMasc captions to myself to fill the void.

Obligatory I'm not a Lacan expert disclaimer, feel free to correct any misrecognitions of Lacan's thinking I may have done. Now that I've rambled, I can close off by saying I am excited about this new blog.

Sorry to force your patience. I kept this ask for a long time, during my second sabbatical, so to speak, because I enjoyed looking at it. I don’t see anything wasted, though you have been quite masturbatory in a way you know I like.

I’m pleased to learn that you replicated me internally. I’m sure I enjoyed being inside you. Your inquiries slip in and out of the desire to be inquired unto. You’ve also reframed the Lacanian asymptote experience as one of pleasurable and boundless oblivion, rather than a sense-making of multiplicity, which does seem to be a naughty miscrecognition. It's one I suspect you enjoyed doing, knowing it could justify your desire. And though I no longer believe that this theoretical edging can utopianize anything, I do still like it as a back-and-forth that we play with or wear in small moments.

Neither of us need to be Lacan experts to have fun. I’m glad to see you continued the project of self-authorship without me. I wouldn’t mind holding your pen to the paper and asking you to write more.

[informedconsenter]

[informedconsenter]

I really enjoy your work here (and with your previous project) when it comes to how you talk about masculinity and transition. I got into forcemasc originally through your older posts and I really enjoyed the way they were curated. I have some posters I like in the scene still but I agree with the previous anon. Sometimes I feel like by going "this too can be a man", personally I feel a bit limited. What if what excites is outside the boundaries of what a man needs to be? What if I need the friction, the otherness, the potential not yet (and maybe not ever, as one grows and changes, the potential is forever changing as well) achieved...

I like when forcemasc is born from the idea we are capable of change, in many ways. Before I got into transmasc I didn't realise how I had internalised a lot of toxic logic regarding gender. At the time I always told people "I'm trans but I haven't transitioned yet". It was only when I was talking to people and reflecting on my fears regarding "not passing" (I no longer think in these terms) that I realised there's no beginning to transition. It's not necessarily when you start hrt or get top surgery or get a new document. For me, there's also no end to transition. There is no man I'm looking to achieve, because I am that now and here. Then when I get on T I will be a different sort of man, but the same one, too. I understand for a lot of people this sounds maybe distressing, like a Sisyphean gender transition maze, even maybe #coping, but it's how I have found myself. I like the idea of transformation taking me to an unexpected place, foreign, open to possibilities. Why limit myself to all these men I see online, why have a narrow idea in mind? What I am now is me, before being a man or anything else. In the future, it will still be me. But maybe unrecognisable, too, and that's very exciting, to me.

Anyway. Enjoying the hashtags and the current posts a lot. I find humour in them sometimes too, in a good way I mean. They feel very personal, even with the detached nature of online posting. Also, I got into Against All Logic a while back due to your rec post, so thanks for that too.

Interesting points, I'd agree, and thank you.

If Deleuze suggested the brain is the screen, then it stands to reason that the body is the theater. It's been oft-repeated that gender is a performance, but the metaphor loses its potency when we forget that effective acting comes not from one expressive individual, but of how they interface with everything around them. Both tangible and immaterial. When you are so excruciatingly aware that the world expects you to play your assigned role, the body becomes one of your most basic but transgressive tools to defy expectations. It does not mean that the body must become capable of anything and everything to transcend norms. So at the same time, things like passing, gaining muscle, short haircuts, training oneself into more conventionally masculine mannerisms—they don't excite me these days. Personal taste. A natural result of having once been too invested in them. It is the mere act of change that I find deeply erotic. A vague yet expansive concept, requiring its continual existence as proof it ever happened. Hot.

The wanting and the self are entangled, and therefore by doing things with the body, the self is satiated. I think that's where the irony comes into play, and what's so enticing about forced transformation in general. We have a subject who is too scared to interface with their self, which is why a dominating force becomes necessary to actualize the self. A strenuous exercise in autonomy, guided by another.

If you're into collaged music a la ALA, you might enjoy the album this track is from.

[informedconsenter]

There's something about the art you produce that provokes an almost indescribable feeling. Sexually and mentally. Something about the tone feels gently dominant, but not in the overly patronizing way I feel like I've seen in the forcemasc scene this far. I've been looking at this type of stuff for about a year when I started to be more active in my transition (starting testosterone, correcting people about name/pronouns, etc).

I feel a bit infantilized by the general forcemasc scene with this excessive affirmation and lack of content that doesn't spell everything out for the viewer. At the same time, I'm not sure how I would approach making more stuff like yours myself. I'll sit back and observe for now.

What I enjoy most about forcemasc is the push and pull between anxiety and desire, the feeling of inevitability, as a lot of the self obliteration themes; this "becoming" you've mentioned before.

Keep up the good work and thank you for helping me become more.

Thank you. I don't browse the tag anymore, so I don't know what's being made, aside from whatever pops up at the top of my timeline when I come here to post.

Transition can turn the body into a dangerously ambiguous object. Observed and interacted with in such a delicate, nervous way by others. I do not. I point at you and say this will change. So forcemasc becomes one way to expand that ambiguity into a setting or a relationship. Ambiguity can be a thing you manage and shape, rather than an aura that follows you. I'd like to believe this is also the goal of domination: to drape you in the things that make you anxious and watch you learn that you love to wear them.

Some posters may want to hem ambiguity by reshaping the pre-existing pattern: "This, too, can be a man." A little too cognitive behavioral therapy for me. That's not transformation; it's taxonomy. I want to pull on the one desire that hangs loose and let the entire garment unravel. I want you to understand what comprises the pattern itself—that it was made of desire and to desire it returns.

Between us, the ambiguity comes not from you or your changing shape, but from the pressurized atmosphere of desire that saturates everything. Can you feel it? Everybody wants something from you. So how does what I want from you win out over all of those other interwoven outside influences? I started cypionate60mg with firm goals, though not always clearly executed, and perhaps the forcefulness of that is what drew you to me. While others have imitated me, while some have found their own niches, I have always been guided by my own desire first and foremost, which is to pass through the screen and touch you in a naked way.

[informedconsenter]

[informedconsenter]

hey, its nice to see you on here. if you are who i think you are then I missed your posts man, good to see them back

[informedconsenter]

i have to wonder, what is the significance of the tags on your posts? aside from the forcemasc tag, which is obvious, what do the various and (seemingly) unrelated tags mean?

Their significance is determined by your willingness to parse citation from joke, comprehend their content, and connect them to the broader theme of constructing manhood. As with my previous blog, I enjoy an interactive experience: one that takes you away from the scroll and into discovery.

I wouldn't feed you anything that I didn't also think you could digest. That being said, they're nonessential.

[informedconsenter]

[informedconsenter]

[informedconsenter]

I fear I'm not as good at analyzing text as i used to be. What do you mean the friction is lost? Why is there friction from feeling good with the antagonism of the captions, but not with the pursuit of validity (thru captions i think)?

Speaking about trans men in particular here, in relation to the captions and transitioning in general. Being trans creates friction, regardless of whether you are supported or not. Some people seek to ameliorate that through affirmative words, and though there's an audience for that, I don't get off on it.

Because the question is not "what is a man?", but instead "what to do about being a man?" The friction comes from choosing to live, not trying to wrestle the gender goal posts from the establishment. I question the point of seeking validation for my transgressive existence within a framework that excludes me by design. So when I say "friction", I mean the friction that comes from knowing there is no place for you in the larger schema, even if somebody offers you that abstract validation.

In terms of the captions, I'm not interested in telling somebody that he is a man despite X, Y, and/or Z. It seems beside the point. And personally, if I focus too much on validating myself as I am now, I lose out on who I could be. It distracts me from the very thing that drew me to becoming, as an eternal action, in the first place—which is to live fully with an unstable sense of self.

Does becoming frighten you? 'Man' is a mirage of a destination. As you seemingly approach, it distorts and changes shape, until at close examination it reveals itself to be nothing more than an ever-shifting assemblage of granular particles.

Does becoming excite you in equal proportion? Pushing yourself to become more and more of who you are, until there is nothing else left but you? Journey into the undertaking that cannot be prepared for in advance. This is the nature of force: you must go forward knowing that nothing will grant you the comfort of certainty.

[informedconsenter]

[informedconsenter]

Greatly appreciating the textual focus on the body over images where there is absence of it, but a starling presence of its absence. I opened your blog, saw the posts and the blog aesthetic and thought to myself. Fuck. This is clever. And maybe I have a few screws loose but the way you use images and build tension between the imagined and the visual, it compels me. For some time I thought you had concluded your work with the other blog (and I suppose you have, in a way), but it's good to know you haven't entirely left the art of making posts, just changed the way you use the language.

A loose screw, a button freed from its eyelet: different manners of coming undone, of lapsed closure.

In the cypionate60mg project, I conceived of the body as an antagonist, similar to the captions themselves. Why does it "feel good" to want to become something that already exists? IE, the status quo. What is so intoxicating about a cis man's image? Trans men, as a collective, seem to anchor their lofty "transition goals" to certain men, performing a simultaneous export and import of masculinities. Much of our culture is a byproduct of that goldless alchemical exchange.

However, the stronger species of "feeling good" seems to be that of validity. And so the prevailing motifs of forcemasc captioning became affirmative, and not antagonistic. In addition, the surrounding debate focused on whose images to use, which type of man could be the most masculinizing to imitate. The friction between indulgently "feeling good" in a world that wants to make you feel bad, or worse, was lost.

Reassurance is not a reward I give you for being yourself. It is something you will have to create on your own, lest you languish in it. In accordance, I've taken the body away from you. You have only yours now. What will you do with it?

[informedconsenter]

[informedconsenter]