neomale-tboy

[neomale-tboy]

"if men could get pregnant-" *shoots you* *shoots you again to make sure it stuck*

[neomale-tboy]

Retrospective on the first wave of self-identified baeddel bloggers

I'm gonna post about this because I was there during the initial wave of self-identified baeddels on this site and was directly affected by them. I know soke younger transmascs here weren't but it might be useful for me to share my experience of that time.

For context, I was around 16-18 during the initial wave and was active under my old account. This was circa 2016-2019, roughly. Though the peak was around 2016 and 2017.

Content warning for suicide baiting, rape threats, and harassment for being transmasc:

I first came into the transandrophobia discussion as a teenager - like many of you, I was a young, freshly out-to-myself transmasc looking for community and to discuss my experiences with transandrophobia. It hadn't long been coined back then and the various alternatives to transandrophobia had not yet been coined. When looking for posts describing what we now call transandrophobia, it was usual to search tags like "#transmasc hate" "#trans man hate" "misdirected misogyny" (the latter of which is very inaccurate as bigotry isn't misdirected - but it's all we had in the days before the term transandrophobia) for examples of specific hatred and bigotry against trans men and mascs.

Around this same time, (self-identified) baeddelism was kicking off in its own corner of tumblr. What is really important to note is that the people which I will call baeddels here self identified as such and were very proud of this. They usually had urls which either included - or were some pun on - the term baeddel. What seems to have happened in recent years is people mistaking those of us referring to self-identifed baeddels as slurring them with the term. This is a misunderstanding, as they self-identified with the term and that is what they called their group. It's therefore an endonym. However - what isn't acceptable is to label any trans woman or fem who doesn't self identify as a baeddel with the term. When I refer to baeddels, I mean exclusively anyone who identified under that term - not anyone else who held similar beliefs but was not part of this group. I feel it's important to clarify this - as I feel that context has been lost - and it is used to paint transmascs who were there during the first wave in a bad light. The backlash to people describing self-described baeddels as such is very similar to how TERFs self identified with the term TERF and then claimed it was a slur when people started to use it for them. This idea has now been accepted into the mainstream - despite the fact that the term TERF too, was an endonym.

The baeddels (assume from this point I'm talking exclusively about those who self identified as such) in their first wave were a loose group of mainly binary trans women (nonbinary transfems were often excluded - or very conditionally included). There was often exorsexism within the group which prioritised binary trans women over nonbinary transfems). Their stated goal was to expand on transfeminist theory and they were especially fond of Julia Serrano and her book, Whipping Girl.

They held Whipping Girl as a kind of gospel - and no amount of disagreement or criticism of the book was tolerated. It was normal back then that popular bloggers in niche corners of tumblr would send their followers after critics to spam their inboxes and harass people. This is very true of the popular baeddel blogs around at that time. Or, if they didn't personally call for their followers to harass someone, they certainly endorsed the action when it happened. Many transmascs around at that time (such as myself) were regularly on the receiving end of such harassment.

This post got long so there's a lot more under the cut

What might happen is - a trans man or masc would make a post in a transmasc tag. Baeddels often stalked these tags and screenshot them - then retreated to their own blogs to post said screenshot and mock the trans man or masc who posted it. Most memorably - this happened to a blogger who was horrifically bullied and harassed by baeddel blogs, culminating in one of the most prominent ringleaders of the baeddel group at that time to call for said transmasc to be raped and then said that the transmasc in question's ability to become pregnant was "AFAB privilege", because many trans women and fems wanted to become pregnant but couldn't - and that trans men and mascs who had hysterectomies were "throwing away" this ability. They claimed trans men and mascs who got hysterectomies were transmisogynisitic.

It's important to note what baeddels thought and believed at the time. They expressly endorsed radical feminism, but decried how it had been warped by TERFs. Instead, they sought to create a transfem-inclusive radical feminism (which still excluded trans men, mascs and non-binary people). They also regularly talked over and excluded intersex people - who were angry about the group using the term baeddel. The term baeddel was originally (as in, in the Medieval era) a slur against intersex people. However, the baeddel narrative was that it was a term exclusively against trans women. This is ahistorical and intersexist. The baeddels held transmisogyny to be the undercurrent of every bigotry in the world (similar to how cis radical feminists to hold misogyny as the undercurrent of every bigotry in the world). They were also self-identified transfem separatists - who believed they had nothing in common with the rest of the trans community (e.g. trans men, mascs and nonbinary people). They believed in "(C)AFAB privilege" - the idea that trans people who were assigned female at birth had inherent privilege over the rest of the trans community somehow and that trans men and mascs in particular didn't actually face any real transphobia. To the baeddels - only binary trans women were called slurs. Or killed in hate crimes or faced any kind of transphobia. Notably, most baeddels preferred to use cafab/camab instead of afab/amab. The version with the 'c' - standing for 'coercively' - was created by the intersex community (as all agab terminology originally was). However, baeddels routinely erased intersex people and claimed they created the terminology. This is demonstrably false - but it was a key part of baeddel ideology at the time to use cafab/camab over afab/amab. To be brief - baeddels were a transfem (mainly binary trans women) separatist group who held an ideology which posited transmisogyny was the most important kind of oppression there is. As a result, they were incredibly hostile to other trans people - particularly trans men and mascs.

I can't include everything that ever went down on this post - as it would be very, very long. But my own personal experience with the first wave of baeddels dates to when I was around 17.

There was a baeddel blogger who often changed their url - but most often it included a noun and then "-princess". I ended up on the wrong side of this blogger after I made a post in transmasc tags about transmasc oppression specifically. The blogger screenshot my post and let out a screed against what I'd said (which had nothing to do with trans women - it was a post about transmascs in a transmasc tag). They involved their followers and encouraged them to go to my inbox and harass me - which was alarmingly common back then. After the first few hate asks I turned off my inbox and tried to message the blogger to ask them to tell their followers to stop. I was 17 and if memory serves, they were 15. The ages may seem trivial - like it was just 'teen drama' but I assure you it wasn't. This particular blogger was one of the youngest self-professed baeddels out there - but looking back as an adult - it's clear they had been groomed by older adults in the baeddel side of tumblr to be as vitriolic as they were. Evidently - they'd also faced some horrific transmisogyny in their life and were also lashing out in a very unhealthy way. It's quite sad - but the popularity of baeddel ideology affected many vulnerable trans women who wanted validation for their suffering - but got suckered into a group which coped with those experiences in a self-destructive and harmful manner.

But I was 17 and they were 15 when this happened. The blogger didn't listen to me. So I went back to my own blog and the transmasc tags to vent about what had just happened - explaining the harassment (I had published some of the hate asks) and venting about how I'd been treated and brushed off by this blogger. I said that the way this blogger had been behaving was aggressive and intimidating. Said blogger saw my new posts and there was a long reblog chain between me, their followers, themself and a few concerned transmascs sticking up for me.

This reblog chain mainly centred around calling me a transmisogynist for saying the blogger's behaviour was aggressive. The argument was that aggressive was a term often used to describe trans women by cis people in a transmisogynistic way. Which certainly does happen. But this doesn't mean it is automatically transmisogynistic to describe a trans woman as aggressive - all human beings have the capacity to be aggressive. This blogger was behaving aggressively towards me. If anyone of any gender behaved the same way, I'd also describe them as aggressive. In those times it was common to make very flimsy accusations of transmisogyny to shut up trans men and mascs who had been hurt by what baeddels had said to them. Once the accusation had been made, it was free rein to harass the accusee until they were chased off the site. Even talking about it now I'm afraid that a false, bad-faith accusation of transmisogyny from almost 10 years ago would be taken more seriously than my lived experience on the receiving end of so much harassment and stress stemming from it.

Eventually, this reblog chain culimated in a reply which has stuck with me, all these years later. They posted an infographic about the rates of suicide in men. They said to me that I should prove I'm a real man and kill myself because the cis male suicide rate is so high. This was framed as a gender-affirming activity. I was not suicidal at the time, but was recovering from a suicide attempt I'd attempted 2 years prior, when I was still in high school. Words can't describe how reading that made me feel - or how it still makes me feel now. But it is absolutely despicable to tell someone to kill themselves because of their gender identity. For a very long time afterwards, I recieve messages and asks with the percentage of men who have committed suicide. It was awful.

This, unfortunately, was not an isolated event. Scores of trans men, mascs and nonbinary people had the same experience I did. Whether it was nonstop harassment, rape baiting, suicide baiting. It didn't matter - there was just a slew of hate against trans men and mascs. Such was the trans women and fem separatism - that it led baeddel bloggers to harass and burn the bridges between themselves and other trans people.

-

There's so much more I could add or talk about, but this post is getting very long. But a lot of what I see when people talk about baeddels is a disconnect with what it was like to live through that era. Many young transmascs now weren't on tumblr yet when a lot of this went down.

But astute readers may have noticed something glaring. Well, two things really.

1) It is no longer popular to self-identity as baeddels. (This is because of a lot of internal events within the baeddel group which other bloggers have written about).

2. The ideology which came out of the first wave of baeddelism is now widespread and no longer exclusive to baeddels.

The last point is really important and alarming - the prominence of baeddel bloggers may have gone away, but their ideology hasn't. Much like cis radical feminism - trans radical feminism has retained a foothold and has become more widespread. For example, the belief that trans men don't face transphobia, or don't face as much transphobia (or simply face "misdirected" oppression rather than actually being targeted) has now been proliferated throughout the trans community. So-called "AFAB privilege" remains a talking point despite its obvious falseness as a concept.

These days, the much more accurate descriptor of trans radfems (TRF) seems to be in use. Which better describes these beliefs - and helps to describe people who espouse these ideas who did never and have never identified as a baeddel in any capacity. I do not condone describing people who hold similar beliefs to the first wave of baeddels as baeddels if they did not identify with the term. So TRF is a much more suitable way of doing this.

I made this post, primarily, to remember the first wave of baeddelism (the second wave happened briefly in 2020-2023, roughly) as someone who lived through it. It was a harrowing time to be a transmasc and the things I saw and had said to me will stick with me forever. The movement had a terrible impact on many young transmascs at the time and it shouldn't be forgotten.

But having said this - I have sympathy as well for the young and vulnerable transfems suckered into this ideology. All round - everyone suffered. It was a train wreck. And it should not be repeated.

[neomale-tboy]

"Men aren't oppressed for being men"

Trans men are real men. Trans manhood is real manhood. Trans men are oppressed for being trans men.

You're just a transphobe who hasn't actually internalized trans manhood as real manhood.

You only view manhood as an oppressive force rather than a real, genuine identity someone can feel connected to. This is transphobic.

You don't value the full scope of trans men's experiences as we define them for ourselves. You want us to sit down, shut up and let others make the decisions for us. Something most of us have been told all of our lives but is somehow progressive now that we're men....huh. Our voices are lifted up by feminist language for the misogyny we experience before we transition and then we're thrown out on the curb when we transition. We're "on thin ice" while we're pressured to self flagellate and be ashamed of our identity and when we begin to talk about the complexities of our issues we have our experiences flattened and dismissed.

You can't say trans men are men and try to dissect the trans part from the man part. You are inclined to do this because you have anti-transmasculine biases. Our experiences are the experiences of men, marginalized men who are not valued by the system.

[neomale-tboy]

“we need more unapologetic queers!” you guys can’t handle trans men/mascs talking about their oppression

[neomale-tboy]

Cookie Concepcion, one activist leader we worked with at Central California Women's Facility (CCWF), speaks to the fraud of "gender responsiveness" in a Feministing.com blog post dated May 13, 2008. Explaining how the prison doesn't allow female-assigned prisoners to wear boxers, Cookie writes, "Lately a lot of time and money has been spent on mandatory Gender Responsive training for all officers and staff. The objective of this training is to define differences between female and male inmates. The basic ideology is that females commit crimes because they are victims, whereas males are just bad and mean. This must be where they learned how dangerous it is for females to wear boxers."

— Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex

[neomale-tboy]

I want to make some sort of post about the fallacy that is "x and y are both subgroups of group z therefore x and y are the same and to say they aren't is to deny their belonging to group z" but I don't really know how to word it

people love doing this in regards to trans people

"trans men and cis men are both subgroups of the group men therefore they have the exact same struggles and rights" yeah, and cats and dogs are the same thing because they're both mammals, and if you imply they aren't you're being a bigot and saying dogs aren't real mammals

I wish people realized how this fallacy is getting them and how it is not in any way bad to admit that trans people are in fact, generally, intersectionality non withstanding, suffering much more than cis people

as with any other fallacy though, most people *do* get that it's wrong, just that online there's some very loud very wrong people who would rather not learn from their own mistakes

[neomale-tboy]

Love that there's a contingency of people reacting to the UK ruling as if it's crazy and laughable that it could effect anyone other than trans woman. And by love I mean "grimly amused by people's aversion to think beyond a surface level even when it's against their best interests." Because I've been seeing other trans people talk about how it only affects trans women and I want to put my head through a wall because no dipshit this has your ass in the line of fire too.

It does not take a huge amount of brain power to ask "would it possibly be terrible for some trans people to be forcibly legally trapped in womanhood? The same way it is terrible for others to be forcibly legally denied it?" And the answer is yes it is violently stripping people's self determination from them in order to force them into humiliating, unsafe, and outright dangerous situations. This is very bad. This goes double for intersex people who are already constantly under threat from a rigid sex binary being violently enforced on them, and drawing sharp lines in the sand around a specific gender does not bode anything well for folks with atypical or varied chromosomes/sex characteristics.

It is darkly funny that some people are incapable of seeing this as anything other than a dangerous blow against trans women specifically, because while I'm sure a lot of people just refuse to think about it for longer than ten seconds, I can't help but wonder how many of them see it this way because they've internalised the fight for trans rights as being inextricably linked with the right to be a woman. I do not think some people can entirely process that many people don't want to be women.

[neomale-tboy]

Around this time last year, I remember I went to tour a supposedly very queer friendly college. I stopped at the table for their equivalent of a GSA. The conversation I had with the lady was really nice and informative, although when I went through the little bucket of pronoun pins, I only found variations of she/her, they/them, she/they, etc. they even included some neopronouns. But there was no option for he/him, or any other variant. When the lady realized what I was looking for and realized that I was, in fact, a trans man, she quickly became very visibly uncomfortable. Uncomfortable with me, the queer student looking for a safe space from this college, and I was quickly moved off to another event. I didn’t end up going there.

When I went to a convention, people would see the trans pride flags I had. We’d have great conversations and make jokes, but suddenly when I’d mention being a man, these people were suddenly less friendly and were quick to end the conversation. When I went to a panel with a trans woman, we were both treated very differently. Despite both of us saying we transitioned during Covid lockdown, her identity as a trans woman was treaded more seriously, while I was treated as some kid that wanted attention. I still go to the same convention yearly, but I’ve taken notice to how differently I get treated.

When I went to a pride event in June, I did really have a good time. I spoke to a lot of people there, however many of them stopped listening or acted uncomfortable when my actual, specific identity as a trans gay man was mentioned. When people found that out, they shifted to having their attention and questions on my friend instead. I ended up only having solidarity that felt real there with other trans masculine people, who still seemed excited to talk to me even after finding out I identify as a man and with masculinity.

One time I corrected a trans woman on what she had said about trans masculine people. Something along the lines of trans masculine people having an easy time transitioning. I wasn’t rude, I tried to be kind, and corrected her on the fact that many trans masculine people struggle to transition and pass. She said I was mansplaining to her and was a misogynist, said that trans men are men and therefore she does not want to share spaces with trans men, and other people agreed with her.

On another occasion I corrected a cis woman on what she said about trans masculine issues. She took personal offense to this and proceeded to heavily harass me for multiple months, complaining that lesbians and trans women have it harder. She even went as far as to find my private social media accounts and literally threaten or wish death upon me. People still agreed with her and told me I was the one in the wrong when I spoke up about the harassment I was facing.

The way trans men and trans masculine people in the community is awful. We’re treated as both dangerous and disgusting, but also as children and annoying. The hatred towards us and other masculine queer people has slowly become far too normalized. When we try to speak up about what we face, I only see people saying that we hate trans women, that we’re in detransitioning cults, and we’re trying to tear the community apart. I see people saying that the concept of our own specific oppression is a hate movement against trans women and the concept of trans misogyny. Masculine queer people who simply speak up about our experiences aren’t any of these things, and it’s time we stop normalizing this behavior.

[neomale-tboy]

So I recently saw this post about a video where a woman is saying "trans men are men because this one trans man yapped at me for ages about a history topic I didn't ask about" and while that post does bring up really good points ("is it mansplaining or is it just a man talking about a topic you aren't interested in"), I'd like to point out how this is actually one of the functions of transandrophobia.

It takes a very neutral behaviour - talking at length about a topic of interest - and, because of our gender identity as men or masculine, it takes that behaviour and turns it into something seen as "annoying" or "cringe" and demonises it as a specifically male behaviour.

It's malgendering as well, "trans men really are men because they're doing this thing I perceive as negatively associated with cis men".

There is something to say about how, within the context of the video, it didn't seem like the actual dude was "mansplaining" - which is a real misogynistic behaviour. But the post linked talks about that in depth so I'll only briefly touch on it here.

There is a difference between talking down to someone you perceive as less knowledgeable (in the case of mansplaining, men talking down to women because they see them as unintelligent due to misogyny, especially about a subject the woman does have an understanding of), and just talking at length about a topic that someone isn't interested in.

The latter of course gets twisted into misogynistic and annoying/cringe behaviour literally due to the person's gender identity.

And of course all that is to say, actually maybe you should let trans men speak because we are more erased and invisible than even cis women. Why are you (person in the video), as a cis person, putting negative gender stereotypes onto a trans person?

[neomale-tboy]

[neomale-tboy]

a lot of people scoff at transmascs for not wanting to be friends with people who say stuff like "kill all men" and "i hate men" but what i think a lot of people dont seem to grasp is that when you're transmasc, and one if your friends says something like that, it leaves two possibilities:

a) your friend doesnt see you as a man (which is just straight up transphobia)

or

b) your friend hates you. and idk about you, but i generally require all of my friends to like me. thats kind of just, a baseline requirement for friendship, i think.

but moreover specifically they hate you for being a man. and i think what a lot of people have trouble wrapping their brains around is the fact that, when you're a trans man, and someone says they hate you specifically for being a man, what theyre saying is that they hate you for transitioning. they're saying they would like you better if you hadn't transitioned. they'd like you better if you were cis. which yes, is also transphobia. but also for many of us, (not all, but many) there is no universe in which we would have survived not transitioning.

in my case, i had pretty frequent suicidal thoughts all throughout my life, up until i transitioned. once i reached a certain point in my transition, my suicidal thoughts disappeared. i never had another suicidal thought except when i was put in a situation where i was being denied transitional care. so if i had never transitioned, i would be suicidal if not dead. so when someone says they hate me for being a man, what i hear is "i would like you better if you were dead (or barring that, suicidal)"

[neomale-tboy]

I’m not gonna lie, the whole “what if a big, hairy trans man started using the women’s bathroom? what are TERFs gonna do then?” thing kinda pisses me off being used as some checkmate, because it insinuates that passing trans men would have any kind of power in that situation. If a passing trans man is forced to use the women’s bathroom, you know what will happen? Security will be called on him, he’ll be thrown out, and he’ll be forced to out himself as trans in order to avoid punishment, which will put an even bigger target on his back. He’s still going to be harassed. He’s still going to be forced into an uncomfortable and potentially dangerous situation, and he probably won’t avoid punishment anyway because the current laws in place are never going to favour any trans person’s defence over a cis person’s.

It also completely ignores trans men who aren’t “big and hairy” and don’t pass enough to be mistaken for a cis man. Non-passing trans men (or even men who look or sound effeminate enough to be suspected) who are forced to use the women’s bathrooms are still at a huge risk of harassment or even violence, especially young trans boys who are forced into their assigned bathrooms at school. Nex Benedict was literally murdered in a girl’s bathroom. Girls and women aren’t these inherently non-violent, peaceful and submissive beings (for one thing, that’s misogynistic). Trans men and boys get beaten up by them too, because most of us pre-T aren’t considered a threat, and we fucking die.

That’s not even to mention the trouble we already have in men’s bathrooms, because if we don’t pass, cis men will interrogate us on whether or not we’re “real men” and then sexually assault us if they discover we’re trans. Corrective rapes that trans men face is not something to be ignored, and I have trans male friends that it’s happened to who are lucky to be alive right now.

Bathroom laws will affect us just as much. The violence that trans women face is something that trans men can also relate to, and both need to be talked about without people categorising all trans men as “big, hairy, strong men able to beat up anyone who tries to threaten them” when that’s not the case like 90% of the time. Acting like passing trans men are just there to make TERFs look stupid, when TERFs are the ones who are violent towards us no matter how much we pass, is just diminishing our experiences.

[neomale-tboy]

one night i was with my partner, and i got all dressed up in a way i'd always wanted to dress up for them. so now i've got a fishnet top to put on under a crop top :). i look hot! i enjoyed it. i'm sure they will too.

[neomale-tboy]

saw someone in the tags talking about being a "transmasc isolationist" in response to transandrophobia-

no! not that! the response to exclusionary ideologies shouldn't be more exclusion! that's how we got here in the first place!

[neomale-tboy]

the new wave of transmeds on this website need to remember their history

[neomale-tboy]

calling trans men / transmasc people / nonbinary people / intersex people abusive is certainly A Choice.

a shitty and disgusting choice but certainly a choice

[neomale-tboy]

As a nonbinary trans man the exorsexism that's inherently packed into transandrophobia is not lost on me.

It always gets brought up like "and it's exorsexist when you say this" as if every trans man is binary and every nonbinary person is completely removed from being affected by transandrophobia, but we never acknowledge that a lot of the same people that have transandrophobia thrown at them are also directly affected by the exorsexism. It's base level exorsexism that sorts us into a mythical 3rd gender, and when we are perceived as too much of one binary gender or another our nonbinary identities are stripped from us in order to make generalizations. Nobody even attempts to understand what the nonbinary portion of our identities actually mean. "You say you're a nonbinary man? Well sorry I can only conceptualize a hateful caricature of cis men so you're a violent dangerous oppressor" or "You're transmasc? You're not explicitly a man? Ok that's fine, you're on thin ice though because you'll basically just detransition and start being a terf. Also don't get too masculine or all your problems become invalid". This has been a problem for so many years now and it's never gotten any better. It's no wonder that people who oppose transandrophobia as a term also throw around "theyfab". It's all exorsexism and always has been, "nonbinary people" as a whole (when they lump us into one 'other' category'), whatever that's supposed to even mean, are no longer a socially acceptable target with the "transtrender" phase of the internet being seen overall understood as unacceptable and transphobic. But marginalized men are an easy target because there's plenty of people who think it's justifiable to hate random men they don't know, so they just swap out "transtrender" for "man" or "masc" and say the same exact shit verbatim with no one batting an eye.

It's never justifiable to hate someone based on identity. It's always bigotry. You can hate the system, you can call out what forces allow certain groups power over others, you can encourage those people to make sure they don't abuse that power, but that sure isn't what's happening here. Cut the shit, we see through it.