#transhomophobia

[cat-in-a-mech-suit]

It’s truly sad how gender nonconforming trans men/mascs are still not accepted into the mainstream, are still seen as an embarrassment to the trans community, and are called fakers for exhibiting the same femininity that would be celebrated in a cis queer man. Transmedicalist ideology is often associated with trans men because of the Kalvin Garrah days of the 2010s, but all this does is erases the gnc trans men who fought to exist and still are fighting today. Yes, there were and are plenty of transmed trans men, but it was also mostly trans men and nonbinary transmasculine people who popularized “trendercore” aesthetics to push back to that (aesthetics that are still denounced). People who disavow homophobia against cis gay men freely mock “yaoi brained Aidens.” Let’s remember it wasn’t until Lou Sullivan that gay trans men were allowed to have hormones. The real history and suffering of gay trans men isn’t taken seriously or learned about. Queer people who claim to hate toxic masculinity take a lot of joy in forcing it onto trans men in a way they don’t onto anyone else, but trans men are seen as acceptable targets for being “cringe.” On the other side, trans men who do succumb under the weight of this pressure and adapt toxic masculinity for themselves are ruthlessly derided for it by the same people who forced that onto them in the first place. And often trans men can be called toxically masculine just for being uncomfortable with feminine things for themselves, which devalues the real issue of the transmedicalists who actually are uncomfortable with gnc trans men.

There’s a really prevalent idea in society and the queer community that being a man has to be about stoic suffering, which is similar to the ways people say that being a woman has to be about suffering so trans women can’t be women without a uterus, or whatever suffering requirement they have for womanhood. Gender is not about freedom of expression, it is about responsibility and sacrifice - sound familiar? So, a trans man who is confident in being a man without fitting toxic masculine expectations freaks people out even if they think they don’t have toxic masculinity to unpack, and they subconsciously or consciously push that onto trans men rather than examining themselves for even a second.

The idea of the trender is also a reason transmasculine people get gatekept from trans spaces. People see trans men’s manhood, transness, and experiences of misogyny as fake! This gives transmasculinity no space to exist at all. While people perpetuate this idea that trans men could never be really men, or really trans, or really understand so-called “women’s issues,” they also specifically say that trans men don’t understand what it is like to be read as a gnc man, while simultaneously mocking gnc trans men for just existing. These are all very similar arguments to the ones used against trans women being women — gnc trans men are lying that they’re trans to get into trans spaces when they’re just delusional cishet girls, gnc trans men could never understand how hard it is to be “socialized” as a gnc man, gay trans men are trying to force their boyfriends to be gay or force themselves onto cis gay men, gay trans men are pornbrained fetishists who want to look like little boys, trans men who talk about their experiences with reproductive rights are trying to play the victim to hurt women — but you will hear these arguments from people who claim to support all trans people.

All of these phenomena I think are why there is so much pushback to language for transmasculine oppression. Because in order to follow the transmedicalist framework and assimilate, you have to be exactly like a cis person of your gender. Cis men aren’t oppressed for being men, so trans men can’t be oppressed for being men. It’s a completely cis-centric take that ignores reality. Trans men’s experiences do not have to conform to anyone’s idea of what it is to be a man to be valid.

[dorkinlesbianlove]

How does attraction, exclusively to one gender, work? How is gender attraction natural. The only explanation I've ever gotten was to say attraction is fluid and no one is 100% gay or lesbian.

[passesinthemorning]

Wow, what groundbreaking material, ricky! Never heard this perspective before. It must be so nice having a whole group of marginalized people to beat up.

[cat-in-a-mech-suit]

It’s really interesting how everyone seems to treat gay trans men’s existence like a highly contagious plague.. I wonder why. I guess we’ll never know /s

[cat-in-a-mech-suit]

Transmasculinity Throughout Time: Dr James Barry

Part 2! Here we go. James Barry was the first European doctor to successfully perform a C section where both the mother and child survived, which is cool to me because I was born via C section. He was born in 1789, but lied that he was younger on documents in order to pass - people described him as young looking and soft featured with a boyish voice, but never questioned in his gender. Despite adamantly stating he was a man for his whole adult life and only being revealed as transgender after death, he is still referred to as a “a woman ahead of her time” in the Guardian in 2016 and argued to have only presented as a man to enter the male-dominated medical field. In his wikipedia page, he is only referred to by his last name, not he/him pronouns. This is another example of the transmasculine erasure done by cis feminist historians that I mentioned in my last post in this series. Instead of doing this, cis feminists, here is what you can do: accept and include transmasculine experiences as a part of feminist narratives, not in contradiction to them, and if you can’t do that, at least actually do some research on the women who were practicing medicine at the time, and acknowledge their accomplishments instead of stealing and erasing transmasculine history! To all students of history, and especially anyone who cares about queer/trans history: stop erasing trans men (and all trans and nonbinary people) and explaining us away. Come face to face with our existence. Can you do that?

Alright.

Barry was a British imperial surgeon. When he was 19, he expressed longing to be a soldier, and he later joined the British army. Eeh, I know. His official title quickly ascended to Colonel Medical Inspector. If it wasn’t for his privilege, his gender transgression would likely have not been so easily forgiven and explained away through infantilization and feminist narratives during and after his life. However, he still faced great challenges.

In his profession, he was unlike others because he spent time around and advocated for the most marginalized in society - prisoners, mentally ill, lepers, poor people, and enslaved people. He did this even though it made him vulnerable and eccentric to those around him. His bluntness and need to make change made him extremely challenged and unpopular among his fellow officers, and he survived on his professionalism and bravado alone, enduring an accusation of “conduct unbecoming of the character of an Officer and a Gentleman” for a clash with another surgeon, of which he was acquitted thereafter. He also got into a pistol duel and won against Captain Josias Cloete of the 21st Light Dragoons. Generally, he was described as both rude and unafraid to speak his mind, as well as sometimes overly polite, with a good bedside manner. People were confused by him because he didn’t fit into society, and they constantly speculated on his life and tried to diminish him and the advocacy that he did.

He was first appointed to his position and was able to keep it despite challenges to his authority because of his “close friendship” with the Governor, Lord Charles Somerset (we all know what close friendship means when historians say it). In 1824, he was slandered, put on trial, and investigated when someone said that they “detected Lord Charles buggering Dr Barry.” James Barry is an important historical example of transhomophobia. Unlike what TEHMs and their ilk believe, queer trans men in fact have been experiencing homophobia all this time. James Barry experienced the same homophobia as a cis gay man would at the time, with the additional pressure of being a trans man who had to pass as a cis man to live as himself: transhomophobia. As a queer trans man, thinking about what he must have gone through makes my stomach hurt.

In 1857, he was appointed to be the Inspector of Hospitals in Canada, and he made significant improvements to sanitation and care for prisoners and lepers during his short time in that position. He was forcibly resigned against his will after only two years, because of his supposed poor health.

Before he died of dysentery in 1865, he asked for his person to not be examined at all. His wishes were disobeyed. He was outed as trans and subsequently, his life was either erased or stolen from him and written as that of a woman. To avoid a scandal, all army records of him were locked for 100 years, until in 1958, a biography of him was written by a cis woman historian, who wrote about him as a woman pretending to be a man and erased his transness. Barry’s own doctor said after his death that “it was none of my business whether Dr. Barry was a male or a female” and suggested that he might have been intersex.

Interestingly, he was also known for an incident in which he scolded Florence Nightingale for poor sanitary practices, which she complained about after he died, saying he was “the most hardened creature I had ever met.”