jelluu

[jelluu]

I'd like to talk a bit about masculinity.

So, I'm a trans woman, I was raised male for 26 years, and since my father wasn't around half the time, my mother did the majority of the raising. This means that she did the majority of teaching me in how to "be a man" socially speaking. Sure, car stuff and male duties were my dad's job to teach me, but values and behaviour in how a man should act was the role of my mom.

My mother always told me that she was raising me to be a good husband to my wife, to treat women with love and respect, and overall how to be masculine but not toxic.

My mother even put together a collection of films and books for me to read with positive male role models for me to build my life around, and honestly it really helped a lot.

So, I'm going to pass on the knowledge I've learned about masculinity that I've learned over the years:

Masculinity isn't a bad thing. It's not bad to be a man, or masculine. Yes, there are toxic men out there with toxic views on how to "be a man", but the same could be said about women. If you don't think women can be cutting or hurt people with femininity, you're dead wrong.

Masculinity can be gentle. It can be loving. There's men out there who adore the women in their lives, and treat them extremely well. These men care about those around them, they're active listeners, they have good communication, they're devoted to their partners, and they're genuinely good people. They're not feminine for caring about animals, speaking softly, being gentle, being loving, anything of the sort. They're men, and that's their masculinity, which manifests in a healthy, positive way.

Masculinity can be gentle, loving, devoted, doting, generous, kind, and all sorts of positive gentle things. It's also a spectrum. There's plenty of masculine men who act in ways that are kind and caring.

George Fisher for example, lead singer of Cannibal Corpse. He's a big, masculine dude who works out. He also spends his free time at home and on tours out playing claw games to win toys for sick children.

Or Travis Ryan, who has a house full of rescue pets, and is an advocate for veganism

Donald Tardy of Obituary fame takes care of over 130 feral cats in Florida every night when he's not on tour, bringing them all food and water

Three examples of extremely masculine men, who are kind, soft, and gentle towards animals and children.

There's nothing wrong with being soft. It does not make you any less of a man.

Too many people act like masculinity is hard, damaging, evil, toxic, and so on. Which yeah, it can be in some - but there's also a lot of good in it. Loving, positive, healthy masculinity should never, ever, be treated like something that needs to be "fixed" because it's masculinity and therefore bad.

There's good men in this world, whose masculinity is good and should be celebrated, and healthy, positive masculinity in those that choose it, should be treated as the good that it is.

So, to those who are choosing masculinity, and choosing a path of loving, healthy, positive masculinity:

Thank you. Honestly. We need more good men and masculine people in this world. You're not a bad person for being this way. You deserve equal goodness to the goodness you put out.

Keep being loving, good, amazing people. Don't let anyone tell you that you're bad for being you, because you're not. Masculinity can be wonderful for some, and it shouldn't be treated like a curse, or a bad decision.

Masculinity is beautiful

Masculinity is wonderful

Masculinity can be a force for good

Masculinity is healing

Masculinity is a spectrum and there's no wrong way to do it, so long as it's not toxic

Masculinity can co-exist with femineity

Masculinity should be celebrated and not shamed

Masculinity doesn't make you a bad person

Trans men, and transmascs deserve all the respect, and room to grow into the people that they've always wanted to be. To shame them for wanting to be masculine is harmful for everyone involved. Masculinity isn't a bad thing, men aren't ontologically evil or bad. The vast majority of men are good people, and are blessings to those around them.

So men, and mascs:

Be soft, be nice, be kind, be gentle, be authentic, be vulnerable, don't be afraid to be you. You're not any less of a man for being "soft", instead you become a man of value, and worth.

[jelluu]

Making my own post, out of an abundance of caution and/or conflict aversion.

Be soft, be nice, be kind, be gentle, be authentic, be vulnerable, don't be afraid to be you. You're not any less of a man for being "soft", instead you become a man of value, and worth.

Yes. And. Being tough is good -- being tough doesn't have to be incompatible with being emotionally intelligent or sensitive or gentle, being tough is the ability to endure hardship and is a positive quality. (And not exclusively a masculine one, but also, it is a masculine one.)

Having firm boundaries is good. Being able to not care under certain circumstances is good -- some people really are not worth taking too seriously.

Being strong and proud are good -- not the only things that are good, but they are also good.

Anyways. I'm just trying to say...people, trans men, don't always get pressure in the direction of being tougher. I don't tell most people about my gender and I generally don't get seen as a guy, so I'm not really getting dude social pressure, but what I've been hearing from trans mascs who do is that they're getting pressure to be quiet, to not be too outspoken, to not stand up for themselves, and in that context "it's ok to be soft" may not come across as permission-giving so much as norm enforcing. You can be a guy, but don't be tough, don't have firm boundaries, don't be strong and proud, keep your head down and know your place.

So.

If feminism says something is a good thing for women to be -- strong and loud and persistent and willing to stand up for what's right -- trans mascs shouldn't lose that with coming out or with transition. Trans mascs need to be accepted (and accepted as men/masc) when we're soft AND we need to be accepted when we're hard.

So to speak.

And yeah, it's also good to want sex, to be sexually assertive, to desire.

[jelluu]

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!

[jelluu]

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW (2014) dir. John Erick Dowdle

[jelluu]

sound off everyone what’s the worst texture. just in anything. for me it’s ground beef not even a question

[jelluu]

So I've got this friend whose nervous because she's trans and dating this guy who she hasn't told yet because they've only been on a two dates. For this story let's call the friend Jane and the guy she was dating Jason. Happy ending don't worry.

So I tell Jane to bring her boy over to a bbq I'm having and she can tell him she's trans at my place surrounded by queer and trans people who love her and will support her if he ends up being awful.

She waits till the end of the bbq to tell him the news, by which point the rest of us have learned that Jason is a kind, friendly, empathetic, hard working, dummy. So we sit down, all of us a little worried about this gym bro's reaction when she tells him she's trans, and that she understands if he doesn't want to keep dating her it's no big deal.

He's baffled, so we explain what trans is, and after the disclosure that she hasn't had bottom surgery yet...

"Oh you have a dick?"

"... yeah."

He look's around at the room full of people with baited breath, his clearly a little afraid girl friend says

"Oooohhhh! I get it! You think- don't worry Babe! Watch this!"

And ya'll this man jumps up, runs into the kitchen and returns with one of the bratwurst we had for grilling and proceeds to tilt his head back, put it down his throat, hold it in his mouth for a moment, and spit it up without even a whisper of a gag and then looks around at the group absolutely beaming with pride.

My mans saw his worried girlfriend and her support network and thought to him self "Oh they don't think I can't please my girl, but I'll show them!"

[jelluu]

no actually i don't think antivaxxers' kids should die from a disease. i don't think gun advocates' kids should die in school shooting. children dying is bad actually, even if they're children of people you don't like.

[jelluu]

reblog to erase benjamin netanyahu's name from the Book of Life.

like to guarantee that his Yahrtzeit is forever forgotten.

[jelluu]

not the first time he’s said this but he seems to be hard launching it now. can white people like say something now or

[jelluu]

Comedians in the '70s and cartoons in the '90s: weird how your kids can watch violence and murder on TV but the FCC wants us dead if we say the word nipple.

Internet users in 2025: you didn't warn me that there would be erotic themes in the game you just mentioned which is fucked up because I thought it was going to be a normal "morally struggle with killing people" game but now it's gone too far :-/

[jelluu]

Wearing dresses does not mean that you aren’t non-binary

Wearing suits does not mean you aren’t non-binary

Wearing clothing from your assigned gender doesn’t mean you aren’t non-binary

Having facial hair doesn’t mean you aren’t non-binary

Wearing feminine makeup doesn’t mean you aren’t non-binary

Not wanting to go through any kind of hormones doesn’t mean you’re not under the trans umbrella

Not wanting to go through surgeries doesn’t mean you’re not under the trans umbrella

If you identify as trans/non-binary/something else, then you are trans/non-binary/something else, no matter what exactly you look like

[jelluu]

I need to get this out before I forget or lose the thought process, even though this headache is not going away. Apologies in advance if my wording isn’t perfect here.

This is something I’ve approached the topic of before but I’ve come to realize I haven’t been as direct with it as I should be. And it’s how trans men and transmascs are presumed to have power in or benefit from situations where this is not the case.

Take, for example, a cis lesbian hitting on a trans man at a gay bar rather than the trans lesbian. I’ve often heard people remark on this scenario as if the trans man wanted this, as if this is a good thing for him. But the trans man didn’t choose this. For many trans men, we would reject this person immediately on the grounds that she’s a lesbian and we’re men and hope she’s not enough of a creep to keep going. I’m an SA survivor and had to take years before I felt safe or comfortable with my own attraction to women again; the prospect of ending up in this situation, having her insist “you’re woman enough for me” or “I can show you how great womanhood is” or anything of that nature is terrifying for me, yet it’s also exactly what I’d expect from a cis lesbian who would pass over the trans lesbian in favor of “the ultimate butch”. And yet, in this scenario I’d also have to contend with being seen as the one at fault for this purely because I’m the trans man.

That’s the example I’ve brought up multiple times because, quite frankly, it’s one that makes me not want to go to queer events alone. But it’s far from the only one.

Michfest gets brought up a lot in these discussions. For those out of the loop, it’s a women’s only music festival run by TERFs. They famously wont let trans women in but will let trans men in. This is seen as trans men getting a benefit not afforded to trans women, and while I can see why, I ask you to think a bit more on this. Why do they want trans men in? What do you think will happen if a trans man passes too well and goes? If you know how trans men are treated by terfs, you already see what’s happening here. Trans men who are seen as not being beyond redemption are allowed in, as there’s still hope they’ll detransition. But once you go too far, you cannot go here and not expect to be harassed. After all, you’re clearly a man. And what if you convince some poor girl that she can be a man too? Wouldn’t that just be awful?

Trans men will put in tons of effort to support each other, like sending their old still usable binders to guys who can’t afford it or who can’t access them as easily. We make compilations of passing tips, we share resources with each other, we create things for us because god knows nobody else is going to do it for us. But, when we have these things, the fact that we all had to come together to make these exist in the first place gets lost on too many people. Suddenly, it’s so much easier to be a trans man, cause you can get a free binder and all the resources out there are for you! As if this was just gifted to us by the unseen hand of some mystical trans affirming patriarchy god! And when we complain that something labeled as a general transgender resource only caters to trans women, we’re showing male entitlement because we have everything already! You’d think “either include us or label it as transfem” would be a reasonable request.

And don’t think I forgot the bathroom thing. “Ohh, what if a big hairy trans man went into the women’s bathroom? What will they do then?!” Too many of you seem to think that they’d just be too shocked and stunned into silence to do anything. Like they’d have to install fainting couches in the bathrooms for cis women who saw a trans man. The trans men who’ve been forced into this position will tell you that’s not what happens. We get the shit beaten out of us. We get arrested by officers who call us “ma’am” as they cuff us for being men in the women’s room. Someone’s cis boyfriend goes in to threaten us for pissing in the same room as his cis girlfriend. Cis women will assault you themselves. And if the law says you have to use the bathroom according to your assigned gender at birth, well, you might just be better off never using a public bathroom because you’re going to be a target for violence no matter what. In spite of this, because so many people think the mere concept of a trans man blows the minds of cis people so hard they go into a catatonic state on the spot, we’re not seen as being in any danger. We’re seen as a rhetorical device to use against transphobes. It’s assumed we’ll be safe no matter what bathroom we use. It’s a strange thing to assume when so many cis people see us as vectors of a social contagion that seeks to mutilate your daughters.

I’m going to hazard a guess that some of you just think we have male privilege by default as being men and that this outweighs transphobia to such a degree we’re barely affected by it, when in reality the transphobia renders it next to impossible to attain male privilege. You literally have to be stealth in order to do it. You have to hide that you’re trans to gain it. And then you have to never let anyone find out. Because the moment you do, it’s gone. But that doesn’t really map out well with the idea that male privilege is an inherent part of manhood that all men have with no exceptions. So, instead we do mental gymnastics to justify this insistence. Instances of obvious transphobia are interpreted as a form of privilege for the trans man. Acts of support we extend to other trans men are treated the same as institutional privilege extended to us. We get less support because it’s assumed we need less. So-called “allies” engage in our erasure while the openly transphobic fearmonger about us with books like Irreversible Damage.

I’m just asking, don’t paint us as the ones in control when we very clearly aren’t.

[jelluu]

“i asked chatgpt—” oh well i asked your mother and she says you havent called in a while

[jelluu]

ur future nurse is using chapgpt to glide thru school u better take care of urself

[jelluu]

I think the hot new trends for this summer should be reading comprehension and critical thinking skills

[jelluu]

[jelluu]

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