And Yet We Persist

Alaric | 20 | he/him | TME vampire cat for real | contains not a single tude (previous blog was shadowbanned)

[wheretherearestars]

https://www.tumblr.com/wheretherearestars/822622706490064896/transmascvoiceproject-hi-i-am-a-trans-man-who

im prettysure you tagged the wrong blog because it led to a parody page

i thought so too for a bit but as far as i know it's not parody. there's another blog that is though

[wheretherearestars]

@transmascvoiceproject

hi. i am a trans man who has recently been made aware of your blog. i do not mean this in an accusatory manner, but i have some questions about your project. they are below.

your blog name and stated goal seem to be at odds. the blog name purports to platform and archive stories from transmascs, but the stated goal is to platform and archive stories from anyone who has been hurt by someone who is transfem. uncharitably, this seems to imply that the blog title is a cover for a project with a goal of dumping more negative attention on transfems. if this is not the case, what is the reason for the disconnect?

your project as a whole seems to assume a natural symmetry between transmascs and transfems that is being disrupted by the effort made by the transfem community to not shun people. from what i've seen, this symmetry is fallacious. ignoring transness as an axis of marginalization for a moment, imagine two people who are both autistic. one is a man and one is a woman, but other than that they are the same along all other axes. i think we can agree that the woman will face difficulties that the man will not. she will face difficulties due to standard-issue misogyny, as well as difficulties due to misogyny and ableism intersecting. her special interests may be dismissed as frivolous if they are feminine. her flat affect may contribute to others seeing her as cold and less receptive in ways that women are punished much more for. more examples of this can likely be easily sourced from autistic women sharing their experiences online. going back to the topic of transness, i am wondering what makes transfems and transmascs any different from the above example. if we look only at binary or mostly binary trans people, trans women are fundamentally a type of woman, and trans men are fundamentally a type of man. further, nonbinary transfems face a different and often harsher type transphobia than nonbinary transmascs in a way that lines up with the transphobia faced by binary trans people. there is a thorn here, in that transmascs transition away from the role of a cis woman, meaning they have likely faced misogyny and may still face it. however, to put it simply, people are not mad at me for being a man. they are mad at me for being trans. for transfems, people will be mad at you for both. my point is that there is no special "we're all faggots in the eyes of the state" symmetry between transmascs and transfems, just like there is no symmetry between autistic men and autistic women, south asian men and south asian women, or men and women who hold any other marginalized identity. with this in mind, your blog's stated goal seems to be to counteract the efforts of the transfem community's effort to protect its members from the subtle and unsubtle vitriol that is hurled their way. my question here is simple: why is that in particular your goal?

if you are so kind as to actually answer these questions, i would like to preempt one possible answer to the second. you might say that the effort to protect transfems from vitriol is suppressing the ability of people who have been hurt by someone who is transfem from speaking out. a response one could make is to argue that trying to do this is akin to conservative newscasters focusing only on crime committed by Black people for the purpose of "countering the woke narrative". we likely agree that the newscaster is being anti-Black in their coverage. however, i doubt we agree on the similarity between your project and this phenomenon. to address this, i ask you to consider the power dynamic in play. if all else is held equal, someone who is TME holds power over someone who is TMA. in that case, the former is more able to leave the situation, more likely to be believed, and less likely to be booted from their community due to the conflict. if we assume that yes, the TMA person did actually cause significant harm to the TME person, the next step would be to scout out options. i believe that in this scenario the TME person should use the power they have to leave the situation without a public callout that, as a public callout is very likely to leave the TMA person without community or support in a way that would not occur were they TME. i personally do not condone this kind of punitive justice. this may lead you to ask what to do if all else isn't held equal. if the TMA person is white and the TME person is racialized, if the TMA person has significant money that the TME person doesn't, etc. in that case, the issue is not with the TMA person's marginalized status but with their racial or class status. further, this is all ignoring that due to the nature of this kind of power dynamic, the direction of harm faces the other way much more often. basically, making a blog to highlight harm done by a group that is both much more likely to be the victim and is uniquely hurt by callouts seems to be a bad idea.

as an addendum, i urge you to reconsider the decision to continue with this project. while i personally don't see that much value in a transmasc-specific voices blog, making one would have a positive impact in a way that your current blog does not. if you've made it this far, genuinely, thanks. i don't like being confronted in this way either, but i believe it is one of many tools that can help shape the world for the better.

[viscericorde]

how a woman of taste prefers to practice necromancy

[y2k-internetexplorer]

[foone]

Cats have never forgiven us for swapping the warm displays with a built in shelf for a cold thin rectangle

[monkeyislandtwo]

fonts will be named shit like viscera antique, 16 bit dreams, doctor's orders, bingo condensed, googly, wish you were here

[equos-bipes]

for your consideration

[yurucamp]

serval

[chubs-deuce]

biblically accurate fursona moment

[estrogenesis-vaporeongelion]

in the future genetically engineered cat boys aren't just legal to kill, you have to murderfuck one every year it's required like your taxes

[estrogenesis-vaporeongelion]

families are permitted to file jointly or separately

[estrogenesis-vaporeongelion]

in the suburbs they have to bait them into a patch of forest with a tv set playing bad twee pirate shows and then cull them from blinds with bows

[wheretherearestars]

cat boys are an invasive species. after proving to be unsuitable pets, they were released into the wild en masse by those who didn’t want to just kill the buggers. now they roam wild, harassing women and eating the local birds.

do your part! trap and kill a cat boy today.

[katlovesshrimps]

yknow how it is with chronic pain

[catboybiologist]

Sloppy poll

When did you start HRT, based on the kind of HRT?

Puberty blockers as a kid, proceeded to estrogen/feminizing

Estrogen/feminizing, 10-20yo

Estrogen/feminizing, 20-30yo

Estrogen/feminizing, 30-40 yo

Estrogen/feminizing, 40+ yo

Puberty blockers as a kid, proceeded to testosterone/masculinizing

Testosterone/masculinizing, 10-20yo

Testosterone/Masculinizing, 20-30yo

Testosterone/masculinizing, 30-40yo

Testosterone/masculinizing, 40+ yo

Other HRT/complicated timeline

I'm cis/I'm bald/I'm vanilla extract/results

Remaining time: 1 day 13 hours

Eg: I'm a trans woman and started estrogen at 25yo. I would choose the third option.

[giana-raphael]

little

[wheretherearestars]

gooseworx has been banned but neil gaiman is still up. i would say i'm baffled if i didn't know exactly why this is the case.

[wheretherearestars]

she's back! now reinstate everyone else you cowards.

[dmdog]

It lives in the arcade and leaves sticky little footprints on the linoleum. Naming it Gumble

[syn4k]

"lock in" is probably one of the most important phrases to enter the public lexicon in the 2020s

[joyflameball]

[wheretherearestars]

gooseworx has been banned but neil gaiman is still up. i would say i'm baffled if i didn't know exactly why this is the case.

[mysilent879]

[hbmmaster]

a couple days ago someone reblogged one of my posts where I'm defending patricia taxxon with a screenshot of a post from isuggestforcefem and said "this is her blog btw" which of course it literally isn't, those are in fact two different people. so anyway I went to check their blog and between posting how much they hate isuggestforcefem (who, again, they appear to believe is the same person as patracia taxxon) they also post about how they're in the serial killer fandom. so you know I guess that's how the transmisogynist smear campaign is going