gor3sigil

[gor3sigil]

There's increasing talk of Trump possibly having dementia so this is your reminder that making fun of disabilities is still violent and ableist even if the disabled person a bad person. People with dementia and other forms of CI are not stupid, intentionally violent, or more bigoted than the rest of the population. There is also nothing funny or mock-worthy about incontinence, slurred speech, confusion, or word salad. You can have discussions about his ability to lead and declining health without throwing an exceptionally vulnerable disabled population under the bus.

[gor3sigil]

Omg THIS THIS THIS

remains utterly CRAZY to me how many trans mascs did not have gay boys for friends as kids, or simply did not notice their faggotized experiences. gay boys get called ma'am on the phone, gay boys get sexually assaulted in locker rooms, gay boys get told they can't run fast enough or lift heavy things, gay boys cultivate lots of weird private nerdy interests and become bookish and introverted, gay boys have only girls for friends and feel safest among women, gay boys sometimes are the "eldest daughter" in their families, gay boys are horse girls and spent their summers pretending to be mermaids, gay boys are used for emotional support by adult relatives and strange older men, gay boys get catcalled, gay boys have so many of your so called female socialization experiences did you not notice did you not care

[gor3sigil]

[gor3sigil]

Not to be wildly off topic/distracting/idk evil? But I'm a cis dude who recently started paying attention to trans men after all the reddit stuff recently.

I always knew they existed obviously, but I fell into the same habit of only thinking of trans women. I am a firm believer in people's bodily autonomy and their ability to be whoever they want, because ultimately, it has nothing to do with me lol.

All of that to say this, I was, and still am, genuinely shocked by how much I relate to posts trans men have made recently all over reddit. And here is the potential 'distraction'. A ton of what I read vividly reminded me of how I felt when I tried to exist in women dominated or liberal spaces. I always felt like my acceptance was dependent on towing the line. Internalizing the patriarchal concept of hiding my feelings, my issues, in order to support others. Genuinely, last week was the first time I've seen someone, other than a jackass, be proud of their masculinity, AND BE SUPPORTED! It was absolutely wild.

My point is that I feel the cis man and trans man experience bleed into each other a lot more than people realize, and as long as people are comfortable minimizing cis men then trans men will inevitably get sucked under that label.

It isn't my place, my fight, or whatever. I'm not comfortable speaking about this almost ever, but trans men are fucking lit and should be supported. Masculinity isn't a sin. And hopefully one day everyone will be treated like people regardless of what they are identifying as.

Sorry for the long anon, but the emotions have been running high and, ya know, kinda hard to deal with them as a cis man. So I'm sorry you were the one I felt comfortable anon dumping on. I hope you have a lovely weekend!

That's a lovely anon actually, I'm super happy that your shared these thoughts !

I think the same way. I mean, trans men are men, and are part of a minority. The same dynamics are in motion when it comes to navigating our masculinities. The thing that got me thinking lately, is how, while there's no systemic misandry in the scale of trans/misogyny, the first thing that people try to tear appart when you're a man who's not Manning the way partiarchy told him to, is his masculinity. It's a way of dehumanizing men. A man is a work force and a tool without emotions ready-to-use and if he isn't, he isn't man any longer.

It's definitely a shared struggle.

And one of the way we can fight against it, is to support our sisters and siblings, and to find in their strength and their love other ways to be men.

It's what I've been thinking about anyways, just me rambling lmao.

Thank you, anon ✨️

[gor3sigil]

Your writing is 100% clearly feminine, if you want to keep larping as a guy at least learn how men speak.

Actually I love my feminine writing ! Thanks for pointing that out ✨️🩵

My masculinity isn't as fragile that it could be lessened by my love for poetry.

That strengthens it, actually.

[gor3sigil]

I know the Reddit situation is extremely disheartening, but I wanted my fellow trans men to see this. In my many years of being in online trans spaces, I have never seen such an overwhelming outpouring of love towards trans men — and from people all across the trans spectrum.

I have a sincere feeling that we are going to come out of this with raised awareness towards transandrophobia and with more people vocally supporting the transman/masc community.

[gor3sigil]

Whenever someone tries to hypothesize a bad faith scenario in which trans mascs have male privilege they always reveal their lack of knowledge on the trans masc experience.

"But what if your name on your application says John", well what if I chose an anti-assimilate name? What if I never changed my legal name? What if my name identifies me as a minority of another kind? What if my appearance doesn't match my name? What if my gender marker still says F? What if I don't pass? What if everyone already knows I'm trans because it's a small town and people gossip?

When people create these scenarios, they're imagining a trans man with no complication. His transition was successful in assimilating him into cishet society, no one knows who he was prior, all his documents were successfully changed, he has no other axis of oppression to hold over him. He's basically THE Chad trans man, the Chads Man, if you will.

The problem obviously is, this man basically doesn't exist. And even if he did, the security of his entire existence would require him to keep his mouth shut, don't advocate for himself or other trans people, and to be so deep stealth that he never allows himself to be vulnerable with another human being ever again. If he opens up to anyone about being trans, he immediately loses all those privileges.

All this meant to say...

Pease Stop talking about Chads Man. Chads Man doesn't exist. Your local trans man is most likely a disabled punk with stick n poke tats who doesn't believe in documentation lol.

[gor3sigil]

I sometimes see folks talk about the lack of historical transmasculine narratives and culture in comparison to transfeminine ones, and regardless of validity I just want to say that it’s incredibly cruel to draw the conclusion that it just must’ve been easier for us/less necessary rather than acknowledging that for a lot of human history people AFAB were treated as literal property with very little autonomy. Hell, in the states, people AFAB weren’t even allowed to open bank accounts without permission from their “husband” until 1974. Regardless of how things are now, I think it’s incredibly important to keep in mind how transmasculine bodies and narratives were controlled (and still continue to be) by governmental and societal powers by way of our assigned sex, along with our transness.

[gor3sigil]

i dont get offended at white people jokes even though im white because: 

i can recognize white people as a whole have systemically oppressed POC in america, which is where i live 

most people when they make white people jokes only mean the shitty white people and i am not a shitty white person 

im not a pissbaby

[gor3sigil]

Alright. I think I've made up my mind after following all of this discourse for months now.

After what happened on Reddit recently, I think denying the existence of transandrophobia would be like trying to argue that misogyny doesn't exist or that racism doesn't exist.

Trans men and transmascs do have experiences that are unique to them - if you know this to be true, you should support the usage of the word transandrophobia and discussions surrounding it.

If you believe that trans men and transmascs deserve to discuss these experiences, and raise awareness of these experiences, you should support the usage of the word transandrophobia and discussions surrounding it.

If you believe that trans men and transmascs discussing their experiences is not inherently transmisogynistic or misogynistic, you should support the usage of the word and discussions of transandrophobia.

Trans men and transmascs are constantly denied the right to talk about these issues, whether we refer to these issues with a word like "transandrophobia" or simply say "transphobia directed towards trans men/transmascs", etc.

If we can't talk about these experiences regardless of whether or not we call them transandrophobia or not, then using the word transandrophobia we shall.

[gor3sigil]

So here's what happened on Reddit:

A transmasc posted about how transmascs and trans men are often invisible, how our issues are dismissed, and how resources, especially medical ones, are almost always written with non transmascs in mind. They posted this both to r/Trans and r/lgbt.

A moderator of r/Trans responded by telling them to “stop bitching.” That’s the word they used. That’s the level of respect trans men get. Transandrophobic by the way, don't call trans men bitches.

The comment was deleted, quietly, after backlash. Then the entire post was removed. When asked why, a mod responded that the post was “playing oppression olympics,” and took the time to go through and dismiss each of the original poster’s points, including saying that trans men being sexually assaulted isn’t “unique to transmascs” and therefore not an issue, and claiming that access to testosterone isn’t any more restricted than access to estrogen, which is a straight-up lie, because T is a tightly controlled substance in most places and E is not.

The original poster was banned for three days.

Then a separate mod made a post saying, “nobody asked us our side of the story,” which is wild because people absolutely did, publicly and repeatedly. Users also started reporting that they’d had supportive comments removed or had been banned after disagreeing with the mods, some of those claims are still unconfirmed, but given the general behavior, it wouldn’t be surprising.

Then r/Trans locked down entirely. No new posts. The conversation was forcibly ended.

Some people posted about it on r/FTM, many of those posts were mass-reported, automatically removed by Reddit’s automod, or quietly buried. Meanwhile, r/lgbt also removed the original post, with no explanation.

One of the r/Trans mods eventually posted an “apology,” which was really just a soft-scrubbed PR post full of noncommittal language and distancing. They said they didn’t mean to call a trans man “a bitch,” they just used it synonymously with “complaining,” and they didn’t think about the implications until later even though the first post was about microaggressions just like the mod committed. They did not apologize for anything else, not for wrongfully banning people, not for accusing a transmasc venting like any other user of playing oppression olympics, nothing at all. They said they’re on break and can’t do anything about it. They said, and I quote, “please don’t be mad at the rest of the team.” even though the rest of the team are just as culpable for not stopping their behavior.

They also added that trans men are “a welcome part of the community” and tried to point at moderation history as proof. Because apparently we should be grateful that people occasionally get banned, every so often, for implying trans men aren't oppressed at all, wow, thanks, that is like below the bare minimum, cool.

The current state of things is: r/Trans has over 600,000 members, and trans men and transmascs were silenced, banned, and told to shut up for bringing up their own oppression. And the subreddit is locked down. There’s a mass exodus happening to the new sub, r/trans4every1, but let’s be real, the damage has already been done.

Now let’s talk about what this actually means.

This is not “just more Tumblr discourse.” This isn’t some random blog saying they don’t like transmascs. This isn’t a Twitter reply guy. This isn’t a niche zine or a spicy personal take. This is a massive trans-focused subreddit with over half a million users. It's easily one of the largest public facing trans community online, maybe even the largest, I've certainly never found a bigger one myself. And the moderation team made it crystal clear: they do not want transmascs to feel safe or welcome there.

This is what transandrophobia looks like on a slightly larger internet scale. When it’s in the hands of people who get to decide who gets heard and who gets deleted.

And for anyone who’s still stuck on “well they apologized” listen: trans men are told all the time that we’re being too loud, too angry, too entitled, too manly, too feminine, too confusing, too “binary,” too "Nonbinary", too much. We’re told that we’re “oppression olympics-ing” just for talking about our lives. And now we're getting banned and locked out of the spaces that claim to represent a huge portion of online trans people.

This isn't just online drama. This is a bellwether. And if it isn’t setting off alarms in your head, it should be.

The way transandrophobia manifests in online spaces absolutely bleeds into real life, into medical gatekeeping, into poor data collection, into the erasure of sexual violence against transmascs, into advocacy groups that write us out of the picture, into educational materials that treat us like footnotes, if they include us at all.

And if you’re sitting there thinking, “well it’s not that deep,” you’re part of the problem.

We need to start being more honest about this: Transandrophobia is real, it is widespread, and it is growing. We need to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt when they’ve shown us they don’t want us in the room.

And frankly?

We need to start making TRFs [Trans Radfems & transmasc-exclusionary feminists alike] deeply uncomfortable being open about their beliefs. We need to make them afraid to be TRFs, the way they’re trying to make us afraid to exist.

The same way we don’t coddle fascists. The same way we don’t tolerate TERFs. We need to stop tiptoeing around transandrophobia.

Because this growing wave of transandrophobia is going to kill people. Full stop.

Protect trans men. Protect transmascs. Protect your siblings; all of them!

[gor3sigil]

I genuinely don't think the trans/queer community at large has separated itself from the transphobic idea that everything trans men do is embarrassing and cringe, and it rlly shows in the way some of you talk abt your questioning of your gender back in 2020, as well as artists and people associated with teenage/young transman/masc culture, and it's rlly disappointing to see, esp since it's so common in the transmasc community itself

[gor3sigil]

Hey.

So for anyone else who uses Reddit, I would highly recommend watching out for r/trans at the moment. The reason for this is that there has been a lot of drama there regarding the mods (which consists of almost only transfems, and the one transmasc mod left due to all this) deleting a post about transmasc struggles due to it being “divisive”, one of the mods saying the OP was bitching, them “apologizing” (or more accurately just saying “sorry we got caught” but make it 3 paragraphs long) and then removing any posts regarding transmasc people.

What the hell r/trans.

Stay safe guys

[gor3sigil]

to everyone who has been talked out of testosterone HRT because it will make you "scary": no it will not. testosterone isn't "scary". masculinization isn't "scary". being masculine or a man isn't "scary". it's just another way to be a person. testosterone HRT is a good thing. it helps many people. if you want to take it, take it. don't let anyone else tell you not to because it "scares" them. it's not happening to them. their fears don't matter to you. it's happening to you. it's your choice.

[gor3sigil]

Thank you, reddit user 🩵

[gor3sigil]

Disabling the reblogs on this because it has reached the "piss on the poor"/"let's make assumptions about OP's beliefs based on this meme" side of the site and I don't want to be hit with this much bad faith every time I log in.

That being said, very good resources have been shared in the reblogs. While I'm not a fan of plastering them in public because it puts these resources more at risk of being taken down, you can find them.

And my DMs are always open.

Stay safe.

[gor3sigil]

"malgendering is a word trans men are using to not have to take accountability for being men" you're making it sound like being a trans guy is equivalent to rape lmao you're out of touch as shit.

and friendly reminder, being men is what makes them queer/trans/lgbt. this is like if we had to hold lesbians accountable for banging/being in relationships with chicks because being a lover of women puts you in a position of power over them, not being banged by/in relationships with men is privileging, and society values liking girls (while failing to mention that it's only valued in cis guys). if you feel the need to hold a queer person accountable for... being queer?... you've fallen for anti-lgbt propaganda.