gay trans men: isn’t it fucked up that so many cis gay men proudly talk about how disgusting they think our bodies are, get violent when they realize they were attracted to one of us, push us out of community spaces because they don’t think we belong there, invalidate the orientation of the cis gay men who enter into relationships with us, accuse us of raping the cis gay men we’ve had sex with, aggressively misgender us and make assumptions about our bodies, act like their personal lack of desire to be with us means we must be fundamentally unattractive and morally reprehensible, and generally treat our existence like a personal attack worthy of a violent response when all we’re trying to do is exist?
those cis gay men & their friends: oh my god, you’re literally trying to force your disgusting female pussy onto gay men! this is conversion therapy! you’re a predator and a rapist and you deserve to die!
gay trans men: …we literally do not care if you have sex with us. nobody said anything about that. a lot of us are t4t, asexual, and/or already in a relationship, and the rest of also don’t want to have sex with you that badly because we would much rather be fucking someone who actually likes us; this has never been about who we personally want to sleep with. we’d just really appreciate it if you could treat us like human beings and not actively try to make the gay community hostile toward our existence. you don’t have to be attracted to us, just don’t be awful to us? and maybe, once you have that part down, ask yourself why you were so quick to assume a subset of queer people are all violent predators?
those people: HOMOPHOBES! EVIL GROSS FETISHIZING RAPIST HOMOPHOBES!
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building off of this post, people love to say that “trans men want to keep going into in women’s spaces after they transition because they just want to have the best of both worlds!” but in my experience, there are four main reasons that a trans man might use a “women’s space” after they transition:
it’s an important resource that’s being arbitrarily gendered and we need to use it regardless of which gender is “supposed to” be using it.
it’s a public facility where we’d be significantly less safe in the men’s version and we have to choose our safety over our desire to not be misgendered.
it’s a social space that we’ve been in since before we transitioned and we don’t want to suddenly be cut off from our friends and support system.
the trans man in question is multigender and is also a woman, or maintains some other kind of connection to womanhood alongside their manhood.
do any of those sound like “evil men rubbing our dirty little hands together making plans for how we’re going to get male privilege without losing access to women’s spaces” to you? they sure don’t to me!
i think it’s pretty reasonable that we want to transition without losing the ability to access the resources we need, keep ourselves safe, keep up the relationships we’ve built, and express all facets of who we are. all of those are really, like, pretty basic parts of having good life and we shouldn’t be expected to give them up when we transition.
and honestly, if you claim to care about trans people, you should not be so attached to the gendering of these spaces that you’re willing to deny trans men those things for the sake of upholding gender restrictions. anyone who prioritizes the sanctity of gender segregated spaces over the safety, health, and well-being of trans men is a fucking transphobe. (yes, even if you’re trans yourself.)
and that’s what really gets me about all of this — the vehemence with which people are willing to defend those spaces being entirely and inflexibly gendered, despite how enforcement of gendered spaces has hurt trans people time and time again. gendered spaces have literally always been set up in ways that force trans people to break the rules; some trans men might break those rules in ways that don’t make sense to you, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong for us to do so! it just means you might feel weird about it and that’s okay, discomfort won’t kill you.
“but using women’s spaces after transitioning to male defeats the purpose of transitioning! the whole point of transitioning is to be able to live as a man!”
and who are you to tell trans men what the point of our transitions should be? what if the purpose of us transitioning is just to live the happiest and most fulfilled life possible, and forcing ourselves into unsafe spaces or denying ourselves access to important resources or cutting ourselves off from important people in our lives or pushing down the more complex parts of our genders would “defeat the purpose of transitioning” for us? what if being able to go where cis men go is just one part of a much bigger journey, not the end goal?
if you really want to talk about “defeating the purpose,” let’s talk about how policing which gendered spaces trans men can access defeats the purpose of trying to stop cis people from policing which gendered spaces trans people can access, because it allows the policing of trans people in gendered spaces to continue in some form instead of eliminating it altogether. let’s talk about how using “evil men invading women’s spaces” rhetoric against trans men defeats the purpose of trying to stop cis people from using it against trans women, because it allows the rhetoric to continue in some form instead of eliminating it altogether.
the point of saying “let people decide which gendered space is right for them” isn’t to make sure everyone uses the one aligned with their “true gender,” it’s to let people do what’s best for them without punishing them for their choice. sometimes the best choice is one that seems wrong from the outside, and you need to learn to live with that.
i just think we as a community need to be more hostile toward people who think upholding the sanctity of a gendered space is more important than giving trans people the freedom to move through the world without being punished for existing in those gendered spaces. that kind of thinking is fucking dangerous and it’s weird as hell that some of y’all are so comfortable with it being directed at us.
moral of the story: stop giving so much of a shit about where a trans man decides to piss or see a doctor or hang out or whatever else. even if you think he doesn’t belong there, he probably has a good reason to be there anyway, and that reason is frankly none of your damn business.
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