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transmascpetewentz · 6 months

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A Short Guide To Writing Gay Trans Men

So a few disclaimers before I start:

I'm not going to talk about anything sex-related here because 1) people have made other guides and google is your friend & 2) I'm not very comfortable with it.

I am just one person, and due to the fact that I am white and thin and perisex, I will definitely have blind spots. If you want more information about intersections that don't apply to me, ask someone who it does apply to!

I did get lots of messages from trans guys giving me advice on this, but nonetheless I do not speak for absolutely everyone.

There will be very little info here on how to accurately write medical transitions because that's not something I've experienced. Google is your best friend on this one.

This is not a complete post. I will keep adding to it as time goes on. If you're seeing this post reblogged by someone else, click on the original to see if I've made any additions or corrections before you send me that anon hate and/or comment telling me to kill myself.

What Not To Do

When there is a trans male character written by a cis person, especially a cis man, there's a very solid chance that he is going to check off at least 9 of the following boxes:

Thin

White

Able-bodied

Neurotypical or LSN neurodivergent

Binary

No nuance given to his identity and expression

Sexuality not specified or elaborated on

A cis person's love interest

2 dimensional transmasc stereotype

Usually small and feminine, but not actually femme

Gay transmasc characters written by cis people are very difficult to find because cis authors will often not specify the sexuality of the trans man dating a cis man or elaborate on his connection to the MLM community. This is because many cis authors believe that writing a gay trans man is just writing a woman but switching one of the genders. This is, of course, not true, and there must be more care taken to provide nuance and create a more accurate (and non-dysphoria-inducing) representation.

Moving Past The White Twink Stereotype

This is one of the most basic bars to clear for a cis person writing a gay trans man, and yet so many continue to fail at this very simple task. Ask yourself: is your gay transmasc character a white, hairless, thin person? If the answer is yes, that's not inherently a bad thing, though it may be good to reflect on why you want to create a character like this if this is the only type of transmasc representation you write.

The biggest thing you need to do here is to give him a set of defining traits. Not physical traits, not even gender expression traits. Just personality. What kind of person is he? How does he cope with the transphobia in this world (unless you're writing a fantasy universe without transphobia)? How does he act towards strangers? How does he approach people of different genders? What is his outlook on cis people? Once you have the basics, it's time to think about his physical appearance & expression and how that has impacted his life and his personality.

You also want to avoid the trope where a gay trans man's personality is undeveloped and he is treated as an object for cis men to help them advance their character arcs. It's fine for trans men to serve a purpose like that in the story, but they need to be their own individual humans.

Writing Sexuality

If your trans male characters date men, and I cannot reiterate this enough, make them be open about their homosexuality or bisexuality. Give them a sexual orientation and make them be proud of it. Of course, not every gay trans man is going to identify heavily with a masc/fem role in gay male relationships, but you should seriously consider whether or not your character would.

Additionally, don't follow the flawed line of logic of "trans man -> vagina -> bottom -> fem/femme." It's fine to make your gay trans male characters fem but please, I swear to god please give them a good reason for being so. If you do make your character femme, be very cautious to use language that doesn't trigger actual trans men's dysphoria. Don't constantly point out the character's physical features that may be associated with femininity unless you're making a point either about his dysphoria or about how society treats him or maybe about how he comes to accept his body. However, please be extremely careful with the last one as this trope has been used in so many transphobic portrayals.

Have your gay trans male character exist in gay spaces with other gay men (both cis and trans). Have him be open about being a gay man specifically. Give him cis gay male friends. Give him trans gay male friends. Don't allow your reader to ignore the fact that he is very much a gay man.

Dysphoria

For the love of all things good, please do not write your gay trans male character's dysphoria as "from the day I was born, I knew I was born in the wrong body. I have had no internalized shame or guilting into making me doubt my transness, and it was obvious that I was not a woman." That's not how anyone's dysphoria works, even if they did know from a young age that they were born in the wrong body.

For gay trans men specifically, most of us end up realizing we're trans around either age 12 or age 20. This doesn't mean he has to be exactly that age, but that's generally the safest age to have your character's egg crack. Of course, you can sprinkle in signs that he's trans since he was a young child, but I know a lot of gay trans men and I have yet to meet one who has known since birth and has had no doubt in his mind about it. However you can and should write older gay trans men, even some who find out they're trans in their 40s or older. Representation of older trans people is seriously lacking compared to how many there are.

Don't make your character the stereotype of a straight trans man who doesn't face the specific intersection of being trans and gay. Facing this intersection does affect something even as personal as dysphoria. Many of us will have self-doubt, believe that we're disgusting fetishists of gay men, or simply exist as women in gay spaces for a time. You also have to take into account gay beauty standards & your character's upbringing to figure out what they're likely to be most dysphoric about.

hi :3

That's it for now. I'll keep adding to this post as I get feedback and suggestions. If you want more advice, feel free to send me an ask. When I get enough asks about things, I'll make an FAQ post answering some of them.

#wentz.txt #transmasc #writeblr #long post #extremely long post

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uncloseted · 7 months

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Hi Christina!! I know of conservative and democrat but I don’t know where my own political beliefs lay. I’m a mix of both red and blue pill. I believe in gun bans, free world class health care (im from Australia so I’ve always had that and feel so sorry for u guys that u don’t have it), I believe in welfare and upping the welfare so people can actually live of it, upping the minimum wage, helping students and those less fortunate. But I also believe in only two genders, not confusing children about genders in school, and I think people shouldn’t be allowed to transition to another gender as I believe they are severely mentally ill, and no happy person would ever want to change sex. I’m not religious btw. Idk what to call myself politically

In the US we would generally call that a moderate or someone who is center-left? You might also describe it as being socially conservative but economically liberal.

But (and my apologies for hijacking this ask, but if you've been around here for any amount of time, you knew this was coming) I want to talk a little bit about your position on the trans community. Why does maintaining a binary set of genders matter so much to you that it excludes trans people from your goal of "helping the less fortunate"? What are you afraid will happen if trans people are allowed to live the lives that are authentic to them? How are you imagining that will impact your life, and why are you so scared of that impact that you feel like it needs to be banned entirely?

Trans people aren't "severely mentally ill". They're just people who don't relate to the biopsychosocial gender role that they were assigned at birth. Trans, gender non-conforming, and intersex people have always existed. Many cultures have historically recognized more than two genders. Even within Western culture, we recognize lots of different gender expressions amongst cis people- girls can be tomboys or girly girls, women can be femme or butch, people can be androgynous... for a while, "metrosexual" was even a term for men who put effort into their appearance. All of those concepts are just gender expressions. The line at which they go from being "cis" to "trans" really just depends on culture and the person's perception of their own experience.

While there isn't a lot of research on why some people are trans and some aren't, but the research we do have seems to suggest that trans people are just born that way. It seems that being trans is, in part, genetic, and that trans people's brain structures are (on average) more similar to the brain structures of other people of the gender they identify as, rather than the gender they were assigned at birth. Being trans is not a "severe mental illness". It's just a different way of existing in the world. But even if it were a "severe mental illness" (which, again, it is not), don't mentally ill people have the right to seek treatment that will alleviate their suffering? Because that's what transitioning does. It alleviates suffering and discomfort associated with conforming to gender roles that don't align with a person's gender identity. You're right that very few people who are happy would undergo a medical transition to change their body. But the root of that unhappiness isn't mental illness. The root of that unhappiness is feeling like you don't belong in the body you have or the gender role that you've been given. And so transitioning alleviates that unhappiness.

And there's scientific data to back this idea up. Per the American Psychiatric Association, transgender individuals who transition experience long-term mental health benefits, including reduced anxiety, depression, and suicidality. And, per the Stanford University School of Medicine, trans people who start their transition as teenagers have better mental health than those who start their transition as adults. If you want trans people to "recover" from the "severe mental illness" you perceive them as having... transitioning is the way to let them do that.

But even if you don't care at all about trans people's health and wellbeing (and let's be real, I'm not convinced that you do), why should that mean that transitioning "shouldn't be allowed"? We let adults make all sorts of decisions about their bodies that they may regret down the line. For example, cis women are allowed to get boob jobs- gender affirming care within itself- regardless of whether or not they might regret it in the future. Cis women are allowed to take hormones in order to alter their menstrual cycle - often starting when they're in their teens- and we accept that they understand the long-term risks and benefits to their health that come with that choice. Why should trans people's choices about their bodies be any different? They're making informed decisions about the medical care they (and their doctors!) think will benefit them. Who are you to take that decision away from them?

There's a lot more I can say here and a lot of studies I can cite. I can tell you that every major U.S. medical and mental health organization, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychological Association, plus global health organizations including the Endocrine Society, the Pediatric Endocrine Society, the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine, and the World Medical Association, and the World Health organization support access to age-appropriate, individualized medical transition for transgender youth and adults. The Australian Psychological Society is also included in that group, in case you were curious. I can tell you that the evaluations that trans people undergo in order to receive gender affirming care are extensive, even moreso for trans children. I can walk you through the reasoning behind introducing discussions of gender into classrooms early, and explain that children often have an understanding of gender by the age of three. I can talk about how the points people bring up when talking about trans people are the same ones they used about gay people fifteen years ago, and the world didn't end when countries started legalizing gay marriage. But I don't know if any of that will make a difference, because the reaction people have to trans people isn't really based in fact (no matter how much people will try to insist that it is). It's based in emotion.

So instead, I want to wrap up by asking this. How do you know that you are the gender you are? What makes you feel like a man or a woman? Are those things innate, are they cultural, are they both? How would you feel if one day, everyone started calling you a name of the opposite gender (for example, Michael instead of Michelle or vice versa) and insisting that you adopt the social roles of the opposite gender? What if you were forced into activities that you don't enjoy, with people who aren't like you? That would suck, right? You'd probably want to do whatever you could to be seen the way you feel on the inside, right? That's all trans people really want- to be seen for who they are. You can think that they're mentally ill or cringe if you want (although I really hope you won't), but don't legislate away their ability to pursue their happiness, even if you don't get why they would want that.

If you're interested in learning about trans issues more in-depth, I highly recommend ContraPoints' channel. She does a really good job of discussing transphobia and gender critical ideas while still being incredibly entertaining and fun.

youtube

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transmisogyny-explained · 2 years

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Hey, i'm transmasc and i've been trying to educate myself on transmisogynism for just a week so i don't know a lot, sorry if some things i ask are evident. Hm about your last reblog, i've got questions about the word "femboy", i went through your carrd and what you already posted about that, as well as other sources but i still don't get it fully. Outside of tumblr nothing states anything about it being transmis but then i've never heard of transmisogynism before coming on tumblr so maybe that's why. Anyways, i've been identifying as such because well, i'm a feminine masc-aligned individual, the same way a masculine fem-aligned person would identify as tomboy. So first question, should i switch for tomgirl? Would that label be ok (or do you know any other, cause tbh having "girl" in a label is not very comfy)? Second question is just the origine of the word, it was created to mock cis feminine men (from what i understand), trans women have nothing to do with that, so why would it be transmis? I don't undersand that ^^' Thank you for your time, and your blog in general, it's really helpful!

Sorry for taking so long. I feel like I’m struggling with answering this ask because I want to give you a substantive answer, but much of what I have to say has already been said before. I’ll give it my best anyway, but I hope you don’t mind me referencing other posts you’ve probably already read.

1. Yes, there are of other ways to describe yourself as a feminine boy. You could use femme or GNC or lavender boy. Some people have created new gender terms altogether for describing feminine boyhood such as rosboy or feminec.

2. It was not created to mock cis feminine men. It has been historically used derisively against people who are perceived as effeminate. While this includes cis feminine men, it also includes transfems because we are also seen as effeminate, having “failed at being men.” People who are bigoted towards GNC men are very unlikely to be accepting and respectful towards trans people in general.

3. Even if the word was created specifically to mock GNC men, it would still be partially rooted in transmisogyny (though misdirected) because transmisogyny is a manifestation of patriarchy. Maleness and masculinity are seen as superior to femaleness and femininity under patriarchy, so transmisogyny is one way in which patriarchy punishes those who transgress this paradigm. The stigma against GNC men is a part of how this system reinforces itself.

4. Regardless of where the term actually originates from, it is currently used online in porn as a way to demean, fetishize, and misgender transfems, very similarly to how “tr*nny” and “sh*male” are used. That alone gives it a transmisogynistic connotation.

6. Furthermore, the way the word has been turned into a meme also shows a pattern of transmisogynistic fetishism. In particular, the characters which the word is often applied to are seen as sexually enticing (particularly by cis men) for the perceived “discordance” between a feminine appearance/expression and the possession of a penis, very similar to how “tr*ps” and “f*ta” are viewed. Again, this alone gives it a transmisogynistic connotation.

6. Obviously, Tumblr shouldn’t be the only place where you learn about transmisogyny or interact with trans women, etc. But the thing that’s kind of great about social media is that it gives us, transfems, a platform of our own, a space to talk about our experiences. And, really, that is the best way of learning about transmisogyny, just by listening to us when we talk about these sorts of things.

7. Personally, I really don’t care if you identify with the term. All I ask is that you be aware of its transmisogynistic roots.

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