transmasc-akihiko

[transmasc-akihiko]

and you know what I was thinking about yesterday? it seems like everyone agrees that high suicide rates amongst trans people are bad and a form of oppression and contribute to our genocide... until you bring up that trans men&mascs have the highest rates of suicide. and then suddenly it's "who cares at least you aren't getting MURDERED!!" everyone agrees that conversion therapy is insanely harmful and abusive... until it's conversion therapy targeted at trans men&mascs, and then its "well they just want to SAVE you not KILL you!!" it's recognition of how disgusting and violent all forms of corrective sexual assault are... until we bring up trans men&mascs' higher rates of sexual assa and experiences of corrective rape by cis men and women (and even laterally violent corrective rape from other trans people) and then it's "umm getting KILLED is worse than getting raped!!"

it's almost like y'all have this diehard devotion to the narrative that trans men&mascs experience basically nothing that makes you say inane shit you would otherwise disagree with just to #own the cuntboys... perhaps coming from the violent erasure and unique systematic oppression of a certain group that you have internalized and never questioned...... anyways whether or not you are trying to help transmascs if you say something along the lines of "well obviously transmascs have it better/don't experience as much violent transphobia/etc." stop and think about what you consider "true violence", where you first heard this narrative, and if it's actually accurate to the experiences of transmascs at large

[transmasc-akihiko]

cis women if you call yourself a trans ally but the concept of trans people with uteri disappears from your mind the second you start talking about reproductive autonomy your trans allyship is bullshit and so is your intersectionality. you have no fucking clue how terrifying it is to be trans with a uterus right now. you have no idea how many trans people suffer and die because of trans erasure in healthcare language. we see you talking about respecting pronouns while talking about "women's bodies" and "but if MEN could get pregnant–" either put the words "people who can get pregnant" and "reproductive transphobia" on your tongue or shut the fuck up.

[transmasc-akihiko]

[transmasc-akihiko]

i’ve noticed lately that i’m not really a person to other queer and trans people anymore. ever since i started openly identifying as a trans man, people have been much less likely to consider my experiences as serious or worth talking about, less likely to give me any sort of benefit of the doubt when discussing queer issues or gender, and much less likely to care if something they’ve said was hurtful to me. i've watched as people went from viewing me as a complex human being with deep thoughts and feelings and a complicated and traumatic past whose voice was worthy of hearing, to just Man.

and i really want to get across how serious this is, bc i know a lot of you will read this and just go “ugh another man complaining” and i would ask if you’d react this way to a trans person who wasn’t a man, but i know you wouldn’t. because i identified as trans nonbinary for years and wasn’t treated this way. people took my experiences with misogyny, fatphobia, transphobia, etc. seriously, didn't try to claim i hadn't experienced it or that it wasn't as bad as i was making it out to be. it was specifically when i started to use the label 'man', not when i went on testosterone or came out in my real life or had any sort of large meaningful change in my life or who i was. it was literally in response to the word i used to describe myself. that one word was all it took for the queer and trans community to decide i was no longer worthy of being treated like a person. and of course, this shift was happening when the rest of society was also deciding that because i was more visibly queer i wasn't deserving of humanity anymore to them either. it was an absolute mindfuck to be experiencing a significant increase in queerphobia and transphobia in my real life while simultaneously having the queer and trans communities deny that that was happening and start to dehumanize me.

and i really wish this was an online only thing, but it's not. there has not been a single trans event or rally or protest i've gone to in the last year where issues that primarily affect transmasculine people have been directly spoken about. it's rare to even hear the words 'trans men' at these events. at a rally i went to last week, one of the speakers said that "all the signs that say 'protect trans kids' should say 'protect trans girls'" meanwhile out of the approximately 10 trans trans people chosen to speak, only two of them were trans men. numerous mutual aid resources for queer people explicitly exclude trans men. when speaking to the parent of a trans boy the other day, they had absolutely no idea that trans men could be denied coverage for gynecological care if their gender marker is an "m", which their child's is. this erasure and dehumanization of trans men, even within the queer and trans community, doesn't just 'hurt men's feelings lmao', it puts us in danger.

so yeah. it's really bizarre to go from the world denying my trauma and experiences because i'm just a stupid deranged woman, to the queer and trans community denying my trauma and experiences because i'm just a whiny entitled man. because in neither situation am i treated like a human being in need of compassion. i'm just a blank slate for whatever gender stereotype people need to project onto me.

rules of engagement:

-do not tag this with "q slur" -do not insinuate that i'm making any sort of statement about trans women/femmes. i'm literally just talking about me and my experiences. we're not on a goddamn oppression seesaw. -ra/df/em lite rhetoric gets an immediate block. i'm tired of dealing with ur bootlicking asses.

[transmasc-akihiko]

Ok guys, after a lot of reasearch I have compiled a comprehensive list of what trans men and mascs are NOT allowed to do so we don't offend anyone

Here it is:

Transition

Not transition

Date queer men

Date non-queer men

Date queer women

Date non-queer women

Be attracted to men

Be attracted to women

Be feminine

Be masculine

Date trans people

Speak in general

Breath anywhere near a woman

Do anything

Do nothing

Be helpless

Be in queer spaces where there are women

Be in queer spaces where there are men

Have a vagina anywhere near a cis gay man

Be attractive to a terf

Be unattractive to a terf

Have top surgery

Not have top surgery

Consume mlm content

Consume wlm content

Consume wlw content

Headcanon characters as trans men/mascs

Give male characters vaginas

Have colored hair

Having a name that's too common

Having a name that's too uncommon

Be capable of menstruation

Be capable of carrying a birthing a child

Need an abortion

Remove your capability for menstruation and birth

Willingly have a child

Be childfree

Realize you are trans before puberty

Realize you are trans during puberty

Realize you are trans as an adult

Have long hair

Have short hair

Not throw away every feminine coded thing you own as soon as you realize you are trans

Go through corrective rape at the hands of a man

Go through corrective rape at the hands of a woman

Be oppreased

Experience transphobia

Claim afab people who lived long ago and lived their entire lives as men could have actually been trans

Claim you have any history before Tumblr

Take T

Not take T

Pass perfectly

Not pass perfectly

Claim the transphobia you experience is in some way connected to your masculinity and gender identity as a man or man aligned

Try to coin a term for the specific prejudice you experience

Claim that something someone who is not a trans man or masc said about trans men and mascs is wrong and correcting them

Claim that you have been, in any way, treated badly for your masculinity

[transmasc-akihiko]

AFAB non-binary people are way too often invalidated and called “not trans enough” or “privileged” or “transmisogyny-exempt” or other things like this, and this is a major issue.

and

AMAB non-binary people are way too often excluded and seen as predators or inherently dangerous in “safe” spaces, or even unduly associated with masculinity, and this is also a major issue.

Both are true at the same time, and both are issues that the trans/nonbinary community should work on to make it safer for everyone. And, more importantly, both are consequences of nonbinary people being shoved back into the binary of their AGAB, with various notions of privilege associated with it.

[transmasc-akihiko]

I think it really does speak for just how deeply there is something wrong with the online queer community that trans guys & mascs reaching out genuinely to say "we're dealing with a lot of issues that have gone completely undiscussed and it's bad enough that some of these things are killing us, and none of you even know they're happening" results in such a vitriolic response that there's been targeted harassment at every major blogger who's talked about it. like that's the immediate honest response to a plea for pain and suffering to be heard. what the hell.

#this is put really well!

[transmasc-akihiko]

okay look, there are more or less three ways you can make posts about men sucking that acknowledge the existence of trans men

you can create a carveout which makes it implicitly clear that you do not really consider trans men to be men. keep in mind this is straightforwardly transphobic, for all that it is frequently done by people who are ostensibly trans-positive.

you can include them in the post, just a direct "fuck all men, trans and cis." this isn't transphobic but it does make you kind of an asshole.

or you can consider that perhaps the way you are talking about men as if they are a single unitary class is kind of weird, and maybe this whole way of thinking is flawed in some intrinsic way that cannot be easily resolved

[transmasc-akihiko]

if you’re considering gender affirming care go through planned parenthood. i shit you not they do not make you go through all the bullshit (hopefully not but may be depending where you are) the only things i had to wait for with them were a wait list (a week) and for the pharmacy to fill (took so long my doc at PP just gave me what they had in stock because they care).

again take care and have extra precaution in areas that are more conservative, but if you travel to your nearest city you should be safer.

i did not need a note from my psychiatrist, instead they sat me with a social worker to ask some questions. it ended up not at all being about if i’m “trans enough” but just how i’m feeling, my experience, allergies and medical history. then they sent me to the doctor who reviewed and assessed health risks and gave me informed consent.

i was then trained by a member of staff to administer my own injections, and was given a choice between every method of testosterone (if i went with the gel, there would be a six hour period after applying each week i can’t touch my cats and they are absolute WHORES who love snuggles and i didn’t want them to transition too, so if that’s important to you, take it into consideration)

it was so much easier than going through a GP, who tended to shrug off everything i said, and wanted to take as much time as possible while i’m suffering with dysphoria. i fully reccommend going through planned parenthood because it is discreet, has options for payment with and without insurance, and will absolutely refer to you with the correct pronouns and name every. time.

and this is not an ad. i’m just sitting here before my third dose feeling thankful.

#yes! #also for me they worked out a plan where i would have to do minimal blood draws because i have a debilitating fear of needles #and they decided that it was best for the patient (me) to get my hrt without going through that

[transmasc-akihiko]

Okay. So. Longass post while I eat dinner and wait for my controller to charge and then I’m going back to my game.

The problem is it’s never actually been about the word itself.

We tried transandrophobia. Transmisandry. Isomisogyny. Transmascphobia. Anti-transmasculinity. People fought about literally all of them, saying they don’t exist, that they legitimize incel and terf language, that they’re some power grab, that they’re inherently transmisogynistic.

We tried transmisogyny and were told it was just for trans women and that we couldn’t use it.

We tried “transphobia specific to trans mascs”. We were told there is no such thing. That other demographics experience it and thus it’s actually theirs and not ours to discuss. We brought up trans mascs with genders marked M or X being denied abortions, pap smears, and other reproductive care. Trans mascs correctively raped by their significant others and spouses they were forced by their families to marry. Trans mascs who were targeted specifically because they were trans mascs, often buried as women under their dead names to be forever misgendered by history. We were told we were making it up and that we were weaponizing our womanhood by discussing these lived experiences.

We tried “just” misogyny. We were told that as men, we weren’t allowed to say that we experienced misogyny because trans men are men and men never experience misogyny and thus our very real experiences weren’t really ours and they weren’t that bad.

We tried “just” transphobia. We were told that as trans men, we don’t really experience transphobia because any transphobia we do experience is actually transphobia about trans women and thus our very real experiences weren’t really ours and they weren’t that bad.

You don’t have to take my word for it. You can go into the tags of any of those words and see exactly that being discussed in real time right now in 2023. I’ve even got screenshots from @baeddel-txt if you want to give yourself psychic damage by reading truly the worst takes ever from 2014 onwards.

At some point, one has to admit what it’s actually about is stopping trans mascs from discussing the way they’ve been treated by society, and stopping others from considering that maybe the way they’ve been treating us is a problem.

And make no mistake- while some of it is coming from trans fems and it’s impossible to say it’s not, just as there’s shit-flinging in reverse from trans mascs to trans fems as well, because for some reason we prefer to blame each other rather than working together to solve our problems as a collective- if you take a scroll through these tags a lot of it is coming from cis people and fellow trans mascs. A lot of it is coming from other LGBT or otherwise queer-identified people and a lot of it matches previous attempts at killing the ace, bi, and pansexual communities using the same arguments that the internet likes to cycle through every couple of years and has been doing since online communities began to exist.

So, I ask you, if you got through this and still want to write a witty retort, what have you done to help us fix the staggering amounts of suicide, sexual assault, and beatings we face? What have you done to help us fix the staggering amounts of us being denied necessary healthcare? What is your solution to all this, besides to sit at your computer or scroll through your phone and quibble about whether or not the specific word is allowed to be used this week?

[transmasc-akihiko]

i am so fucking tired

this creator then liked and pinned this comment

y’all are literally using te/rf rhetoric holy mother fuck i am so tired.

#non transmascs need to fucking stop making entire videos about us without our input

[transmasc-akihiko]

Shout out to my disabled transmascs who can't bind even if you want to. Who want to, maybe even used to, but who's bodies won't let them. For those where it will cause pain, it will cause breathing issues, it will trigger sensory issues, it will be unbearable. Toughest dudes out there.

#yeah #binding collapsed my ribs

[transmasc-akihiko]

"men irredeemably bad" has permeated the Online Disk Horse so much that we blew through "trans men have full male privilege, oppress all women, and shouldnt even really be considered trans people" into "its perfectly fine and normal to misgender trans men and be outright hostile and refuse to call them men". terminally online reactionaries looked at the slippery slope and got a fucking sled, man. ill keep going out and living in the reality of being an out trans person, but you can sit back and dictate what that means, i guess.

[transmasc-akihiko]

some ppl treat transmascs like alright if you act "too" masculine you're a toxic monster of the patriarchy and if you don't act masculine "enough" you're actually just a girl. and this all depends 100% on how i personally feel about you at any given moment :) now dance monkey dance

[transmasc-akihiko]

the fact that so many trans men have had the exact experience of repressing their identity as a direct result of "all men are evil men are scum men are the worst" rhetoric. like so many trans men directly cite that stuff as the reason they could not accept their gender for a long time and have started talking about the real life emotional impact of this. and people will still be like "stop whining men aren't oppressed so it doesn't matter!! let us vent!!!" like. it's clear that y'all do not care about trans men (or other trans men). how the hell is hearing about trans men being TERRIFIED of the idea of being a man not enough to make you question the morality of these jokes? how can y'all hear trans men talk about being abused and dropped by friends after coming out as a direct result of this rhetoric and have no desire to change. how can you hear people suffering and say "well you aren't suffering in a way that makes sense to me so suck it up"

[transmasc-akihiko]

i also am a trans man that wants to be cis, to the point that i present myself as cis online (aside from this side blog that is disconnected from my personal) and to an extent, identify not as transmasc but just as a man. i don't nor have i ever lived in a place that is uniquely dangerous to be queer, and im fortunate enough to have an accepting and otherwise queer family, yet i still believe my life would be leagues better if i had been born a man. i don't pass irl. part of that is physical limitations like my height and facial features and inability to bind due to health issues, but part of it is that im gnc and alt as well and enjoy wearing fashion that i like. no amount of trans acceptance will make me read as male initially to strangers. but even if i passed unoquivically to the point where stealth was possible in day to day life, even if i had my ideal surgeries and procedures, no matter how fantastical and unrealistic, i would still regret being trans. i would still mourn a boyhood i never got to have, and the years of my life that i feel are being wasted not being in an ideal body. its not always about dysphoria or social standing, sometimes being trans and wishing you weren't is just because the person you feel you are inside is incompatible with your lived experiences. i love other trans people, i love how they embrace transness and genderfuckery and are proud of their identities and say fuck you to cisheteronormative standards, but it's just not me. i don't want to have to overcompensate on masculinity for any chance to be gendered properly either, like i said im gnc and alt and would like to look the way i want while still being recognized as a man, a privilege only really afforded to cis men. i don't think there's anything wrong with cis manhood. i don't think there's anything wrong with trans manhood either. but i wish i wasn't irreversibly stuck with one when i long for the other.

as a trans man i don't understand why fellow trans guys want to be cis? like, i see cis guys and i only like their looks, i would never want their mindset, politics, actions or humour.

i feel safer with other trans men and i feel graceful I'm a trans men and not a cis men, i think it made me more conscious and angry about this shirt world

I think it largely is a dysphoria thing, but like, I also have definitely envied the confidence they get to have in their manhood. I understand they also have that same manhood constantly threatened and dangled as a motivator, and I understand there is a unique kind of confidence trans men get to have in our manhood that cis men don't, but it's hard to remember that sometimes, when the cispatriarchy is telling us that we would be Real Men if we were cis.

and I know I've felt some envy over getting to grow up as a boy and have a boyhood, and the fact that they don't have to deal with a lot of the shit trans people do, and a lot of things that have nothing to do with bodies or appearance.

... and I know that there are plenty of cis men who didn't get a lot of that stuff, either.

I'm very grateful I'm a trans man, and I wouldn't trade the life I've led and the person I am for anything. But idk, I get it.

#i also have been suspecting that im intersex maybe i should look more into that

[transmasc-akihiko]

Trans men can’t be “treated like women” because they’re not women. What they experience is misdirected misogyny. Saying trans men experience misogyny or are “treated like women” is transphobic because it’s saying they’re women, which they’re not

queer discourse has rotted y’all’s brains from the inside out holy shit.

i lived as a woman for almost 30 years. i experienced life as a woman during that time, and i still do because i don’t pass (though i have definitely made it into the “woman being too masculine and therefore must be put in her place” category which is uh. fun!) there is nothing “misdirected” about the misogyny i faced and still face. society doesn’t give a fuck about my gender identity. transphobia, at its core, is an issue of society not seeing us as who we are and punishing us for it. acknowledging that doesn’t mean we’re agreeing with it and i don’t understand how people can come to that conclusion. like. i genuinely don’t understand how some of y’all are so disconnected from reality. it’s just insane.