#‘trans man whos dating a cis lesbian who misgenders them LOL’ I think you should shut up forever

[flyingcookierambles]

i’m too cowardly to ask off-anon, but also like to keep record that it was me. im asking a certain someone this lol its 7:27 pm wed 7/12:

hi sorry if this is kinda ramble-y. im an 25+ introverted acearo who has never kissed or dated or "experimented" in high school/college cuz i was too focused on my grades and i think i'd would like to try sex once just see what all the fuss is about but i am also afab non-binary and i'm not "visibly trans" so i just get misgendered a lot as a "cis woman." would you have any advice on trying to not feel gender dysphoria when having sex? like, i feel like if i got flirted with by a cishet man or a cis lesbian woman, i feel like i would feel awkward and dysphoric like they are only attracted to me bc i look like a "woman" and also kinda bad like i am wasting their time. should i try to just put something in a dating/tinder/idk (dating app here) profile like "t4t" or my they/them pronouns or "ace4bi/pan" or "ace4other sex-favorable/curious aces" or a little trans flag emoji or something and hope people take the hint?

while i think i would prefer a 1-on-1 meeting for my first time, i also was worried about going to places like a total stranger's apartment/house/hotel alone and i had briefly thought about trying a public sauna since it did seem safer for the reasons that you gave to previous anon that there would be others around and security, but my city's gay baths is pretty. dinky? if google reviews of 2/5 stars are to be believed, it's kinda gone downhill since 2011 on facilities maintenance/showers/hot tub not working, etc., and is very pricey compared to other bigger cities' bathhouses. just generally disappointing i guess? and as an afab looking person, i think would only be allowed to go in on sundays which i think is their all genders day according to the website? but still, from my outward appearance, i was worried that i would get misgendered by any who approach me as a "girl" or get thought of as that stereotypical cishet girl invading gay bars/queer spaces, etc.

also, i dont like being touched on basically my entire torso/back or neck area, only limbs i think.

do you have any advice for a non-binary curious ultra-virgin/late bloomer with too many conditions for an ideal partner? should i just. try to think real hard about not thinking about getting misgendered and ignore any bad vibes/cbt/gaslight myself out of it??

or should i give up since i doubt that other extroverts who are experienced with no touch aversion issues and just looking to party/have a quick hook-up and have a good time would want to deal with introverted me and my picky-ness and gender/touch issues ruining their weekend/wasting their time?

(also i did kinda look into that surrogacy sex therapists/councilors that are apparently a thing now?? but they look like they're mostly in the cooler PNW/west coast areas. im stuck in plain boring uhh let's say think of ohio-pennsylvania-virginia tri-state area suburbs with limited car transportation. but i can get around the city by bus. its not even the cool east coast, its like mid-atlantic/midwest ugh. even some of those cuddle parties/councilors i had thought of for trying to lessen my touch-aversion are mostly west coast and texas for some reason?? my region is just too boring....)

(again sorry if this is a long ask! ^ ^ )

Edit: it got answered yay plus then a kind internet stranger gave advice a mini essay in the notes nice!

https://www.tumblr.com/drdemonprince/722689420814434304/hi-sorry-if-this-is-kinda-ramble-y-im-an-25?source=share

[gnostic-heretic]

And when I say a lot of t*rf posts end up on my dashboard I mean it and it’s always so hard to try to separate between the people who are ultimately well meaning and didn’t know and those who spread this stuff maliciously. That post is right tho if you know what r*dfem transmisogyny and transphobia looks and sounds like it’s harder to fall for these posts... the shitty thing about t*rf shit is that it trickles down, in a progressive scale from their blogs to seemingly “neutral” (but never actually neutral*) blogs that maybe sound a little iffy but never outright call themselves g/ender critical or name trans people, onto complicit popular discourse blogs and then on people’s dashboards. *Hell one time I saw a blog that seemed like an innocent supergirl femslash blog just to find she reblogged constantly from t*rfs posts that were just on the borderline and never outright mentioned trans people, only buzzwords and this is what I mean by “neutral” blogs that are actually complicit. This blog has a lot of followers. How many of them reblog these posts uncritically? And I wish there were more lists of said buzzwords and how to recognise them but

The reality is that we trans people especially trans women have to be constantly on the watch for shit like this. We know the arguments and we know why they’re bullshit. Meanwhile cis people don’t really know the specifics of their ideology and seem to fall for it over and over. And the worst thing about it is that t*rfs use this as confirmation bias that their ideas are actually good and everyone would agree with them if they just present it without the slurs and mocking. But the slurs demeaning and mocking are a fundamental part of it, and of trans exclusion in general. Fear mongering and dehumanising trans people are the mean to wiping us out of existence.

I won’t explain why those ideas are wrong because I’m starting from the assumption that my followers are not transphobic and don’t find statements like “trans women are women” controversial, but buzzwords include (warning for blunt discussions of transphobia):

- expressing “concern” about men invading women’s spaces or the “purity” of said spaces (they don’t use the word purity but as a concept in general). This concern is never explained, only stated, because once you look into it you find that it’s actually about trans women. As a side note, the whole “invasion” thing is a popular one and it is reminiscent of white s*premacist bullshit ... this idea that since gay trans people are “actually straight” we will eventually outnumber “the real” gay people by calling ourselves gay and invading their spaces. the more you know ... if this doesn’t ring a bell you need to look into actual n*zi theories like “the gre//at re\\placement” and then we can talk again. The jump from t*rf to alt-ri/ght trad mom is shorter and swifter than either of those groups would have you believe

- “males can’t be lesbians” a pretty non controversial statement if it wasn’t that male is code for trans women. “Men who fetishise lesbians” is also a tricky one because while this is indeed a real issue, they’re referring to “auto/g/ynephilia” aka the idea that the reason lesbian and bi trans women transition at all is just because they fetishise the idea of themselves as a woman/lesbian (contrapoints has a good in depth video about this that explains better than I ever could) — on the same note talk about how “male sexuality” is something inherently corrupt, oppressing, and violent, and cannot be healthy ever, without any other context given is also usually code for “trans women are perverts and sexual predators” . The word “p//ornsick” also comes up often so watch out for it.

- the pervasive idea that a group of “straight people fetishising being gay/a lesbian” is out there and threatening REAL gay/lesbian spaces starts from here. I’ve mentioned a/utogy/nephilia but “fujoshi” is usually code for gay trans men, with a similar idea behind it. We’re not really gay men, just straight women who fetishise the idea of ourselves as a gay man... at least that’s the idea behind it.

- which brings us to the point. “straight people invading gay spaces” is usually if not always code for gay trans people.

- kinda related to the above point, honestly you’re all fools if you think the whole ace discourse bullshit wasn’t just eventually a path to trans and bisexual exclusion. Trans and bi people have been saying this for years but no one wants to listen. That’s not to say that exclusionists are t*rfs but those ideas were popularised by them... that’s just to say learn where your ideology comes from before you endorse it and embrace it

- similarly “queer is a slur” started there so you might want to reconsider why you’ve been convinced to tag your posts “q slur” by people who use other homophobic slurs pretty liberally lol . “Queer means straight people invade our spaces!” + any talk about gnc straight men/women and how it doesn’t make them queer or lgbt, Yeah, this was about never about “gnc” it was trans people all along. The implication is that trans people don’t exist, so we can be nothing but gnc “males/females”. Congrats! You’re a fool! Now don’t make me read this bullshit ever again.

- stuff that makes fun of said “gnc people” “queers” , man buns, undercuts, brightly coloured hair, specific names (aiden comes to my mind) careful about posts that mock the concept of “queering heterosexuality” they’re usually about gay couples with one trans and one cis person, or where both people are trans but with different asab. (ie a gay trans man dating a pan cis man, a trans woman and an afab nb person dating will get mocked as “straight people” who are just pretending to be anything but) sometimes it’s also about bi people jsyk but...

- “forcing young lesbians to not identify as lesbians”/“stop telling young lesbians they should be/are men” is also a big thing. implies that trans people are out there recruiting teenagers who would otherwise be cis lesbians (or more rarely cis gay men) and forcing them into identifying as trans. “young lesbians” also doesn’t always mean young lesbians it’s usually meant to misgender trans men who already identify as men (but in this theoretical framework trans as a concept is nonexistent, a perversion, a delusion, so what could we be but porn/sick straight people or delusional, misguided cis gays who fall victim of a conspiracy)

- entire blogs dedicated to d/etransition (or “reidentifi/cation” as they call it now) experiences that don’t bother to acknowledge that their experience is not universal and au contraire seem to want to push detransition as the one way to happiness especially for afab people. Yes I do think that people who detransition should be able to talk about it, but if the conclusions you draw are “this didn’t work for me so it’s toxic and bad for everyone”, and openly advocate against trans people’s existence, you’re full of shit. Only a small percentage of trans people detransition: over 90% of us are satisfied with the results. It’s all just concern trolling.

- posts about how dysphoria is either a “delusion” or a “normal female experience”, posts that sound a lot like body positivity but they’re actually pushing for detransition (ie you should accept your body as is, surgery is mutilation of your already perfect body etc etc) this is also tricky but it’s all in the language. Phrases like “young women who undergo surgery to fix their already good bodies” could refer to a variety of things but it’s all in the context. Words like “reconnect” “reidentification” are usually presented as alternative. Dysphoria is usually not named and referred to as a delusion or social pressure and something that should never be considered real, ie if you see something like “young women undergo surgery to chase a delusion” it probably comes from a t*rf. be wary of any surgery talk in general is my point because it’s usually presenting gcs as on the same level of lip fillers and Botox (ignoring that trans people face infinite struggles to access surgery and social ostracism for pursuing medical transition so it’s not the same AT ALL)

- talk about stuff like “hrt is dangerous actually” and “binding is horrible actually”? Yeah. You can guess where it comes from. It’s important to acknowledge the risks of hrt/binding but sensationalism about how it’s dangerous and could kill you and so on... it’s just overblown concern trolling to convince people that medical transition is mutilation and a conspiracy to kill the above mentioned “young lesbians”

- sentiments akin to “t*rf is a slur used against lesbians” even if not presented this way are also a red flag, sorry. If you don’t want to be called a t*rf, maybe don’t speak and act like one.

- the sad news is in the end there’s no way to discern whether someone is a t*rf or not because a lot of the time these same talking points come from blogs that have little “t*rfs don’t interact tee hee!” Banners on their description. A lot of r/adfem blogs out there are side blogs of people you wouldn’t usually suspect. Maybe they are vocal against trans exclusion, and in support of trans people, and then switch accounts to hurl about how horrible it is that they feel forced to welcome us “sexual pervert straight people” into their spaces. That’s why imo it’s more important to recognise the ideology than it is to look for clues. Again, if it sounds like one, it’s probably one :’)