transmascs, even those with a robust knowledge of feminism and long practice analyzing situations in their own lives through a feminist lens, are both directly and indirectly discouraged from seeing sexist treatment they receive for what it is. a very simple example is sexualization: in both LGBT+ and feminist spaces, transmasc existence itself is often taken as a sexual ouverture, an invitation for the non-transmasculine onlooker (be they a cis man, cis woman, transfem, or non-TM NB) to comment on the transmasc sexually. sometimes this takes the form of taking the transmasc to be a submissive, penetrable subject due to their 'inferior' masculinity and presumed 'female' body parts, sometimes it swings hard in the other direction with the transmasc being taken as an ultra-dominant ultra-masculine top figure, with the underlying assumption that they will rejoice in the opportunity to prove themselves as such in order to show their 'manhood'. personally i've often been faced with the latter. just acting casual, pleasant, and politely friendly, in a way entirely devoid of romantic or sexual undertones, has often caused other people (mainly, in my case, cis gay men who exclusively bottom, cis women, and trans women) to go into loud and elaborate displays of their sexual availability and high sexual desire that somehow were both targeted to me but still indirect. again, the underlying assumption being that as "the man" of the situation (a situation I never once endeavored to put myself in and was forced into against my own will) I would pick up on the presence of an available and willing subject of fucking and go into some kind of sexual frenzy. 'every hole is a goal' etc.
using my feminist lens and pattern recognition to explicitly name this unwanted and insistent sexualization as sexual harassment, operating along extremely similar patterns as the kind i'd been receiving from cis men for my entire life, has garnered me reactions going from suspicious and weirded out looks quickly followed by abrupt topic changes, to screeds about how i was being aggressive and hostile and should apologize to the interlocutor. to be clear, this was the case even when i tried bringing it up to friends who were not and did not know the people who had done the harassment. essentially;
feminist consciousness is actively discouraged in transmasculine people, even when it's about extremely straightforward, cut and dry situations.
