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 âstop bitching.â
Thatâs the word they used. Thatâs 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 âplaying oppression olympics,â and took the time to go through and dismiss each of the original posterâs points, including saying that trans men being sexually assaulted isnât âunique to transmascsâ and therefore not an issue, and claiming that access to testosterone isnât 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, ânobody asked us our side of the story,â which is wild because people absolutely did, publicly and repeatedly. Users also started reporting that theyâd 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 wouldnât 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 Redditâs automod, or quietly buried. Meanwhile, r/lgbt also removed the original post, with no explanation.
One of the r/Trans mods eventually posted an âapology,â which was really just a soft-scrubbed PR post full of noncommittal language and distancing. They said they didnât mean to call a trans man âa bitch,â they just used it synonymously with âcomplaining,â and they didnât 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 theyâre on break and canât do anything about it. They said, and I quote, âplease donât be mad at the rest of the team.â even though the rest of the team are just as culpable for not stopping their behavior.
They also added that trans men are âa welcome part of the communityâ 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. Thereâs a mass exodus happening to the new sub, r/trans4every1, but letâs be real, the damage has already been done.
Now letâs talk about what this actually means.
This is not âjust more Tumblr discourse.â
This isnât some random blog saying they donât like transmascs.
This isnât a Twitter reply guy. This isnât 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 itâs in the hands of people who get to decide who gets heard and who gets deleted.
And for anyone whoâs still stuck on âwell they apologizedâ listen: trans men are told all the time that weâre being too loud, too angry, too entitled, too manly, too feminine, too confusing, too âbinary,â too "Nonbinary", too much. Weâre told that weâre âoppression olympics-ingâ 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 isnât 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 youâre sitting there thinking, âwell itâs not that deep,â youâre 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 theyâve shown us they donât want us in the room.
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 theyâre trying to make us afraid to exist.
The same way we donât coddle fascists.
The same way we donât 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.
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