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#and i wish the word 'trans' wasnt taken to inherently imply said complexity
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gonna be honest i lowkey don’t like using the word ‘transgender’ to describe myself at this point, like idk maybe this is because i’m Chronically Online TM or whatever but i feel like the term ‘transgender’ carries like,, so many implications about someone’s political stance and how they view themselves, or that just being trans is a political identity in and of itself, and like fair enough if that’s how it feels for other people but like,, that’s definitely not how it is for me. i view myself more as just some dude who happens to be afab, my being trans has fuck all to do with my political stances, my personality, or my personal preferences. like i am literally Just Some Guy. the issue here isn't that i’m ashamed of the term ‘trans’ or feel that its literal definition doesn’t apply to me any more, it definitely does, but more so that i hate how just one singular word is used to imply so much about who someone is as a person and their relationship with gender, whereas a term like ‘blonde man’ literally just tells you that someone is a man and is blonde.
like as far as i’m concerned i have no ~special~ relationship with masculinity, my gender is identical to that of a cis guy’s in the way that a blonde guy and a ginger guy are both guys, and thus the same gender. and the only reason i have ‘relationship’, (if it can be called that), to femininity at all is because i was socialised as a girl for roughly 14 years. and if i’m honestly, femininity means nothing to me in the sense that it doesn't apply to me at all nor do i have any desire to partake in it, or be perceived as someone who posses the quality of femininity. not to say that men cant be feminine, or that femininity is an undesirable trait, neither of those things are true at all, but rather just that i hold no connection to femininity at all, other than an understanding of what it is like to be socialised as somebody possessing that trait, and i feel like these days ppl who are defined as trans men are expected to have this complex, possibly resentful, possibly nostalgic relationship with it and are also perceived as like, being men, but being men in a different way from the way cis men are men, which is honestly fucking infuriating to me because i’m just a man, period, and my being trans doesn’t actually affect how i’m a man because i just am. 
to me the word ‘trans’ should imply just as much about somebody’s relationship to gender as the word ‘brunette’, which is to say, absolutely nothing other than that they are a person of a particular gender who also happens to posses a particular superficial trait, but it doesn’t. instead, ‘transgender’ is used as a shorthand to imply a whole lot of complex gender shit, or that ppl who are trans are actually a somewhat different ‘type’ of male or female than ppl who are cis, and as someone who absolutely none of that is true for, it makes using the term ‘trans’ as a self descriptor really fucking annoying. like i said, i view myself as Literally Just Some Guy who also just so happens to be someone who was assigned female at birth, which doesn’t actually mean very much in regards to my relationship with gender, because i’d be a man in the exact same way if i just so happened to be someone who was assigned male at birth. i don’t have any special relationship with masculinity or femininity by virtue of being trans, nor do i feel that i navigate my gender identity differently from that of a cis guy or that my gender is inherently different from that of a cis guy’s, and i definitely dont consider my gender to have a bond with or encapsulate or overlap with femininity in any way. 
as fucking dumb of an oxymoron as it is, ‘cis man who happens to be afab’ honestly feels like a better description of my gender than ‘transgender man’ because of the way i feel that the term ‘trans’ has been warped by online spaces and irl political discourse. like, trans masculinity is meaningless to me in the sense that i don’t feel that it’s any different from cis masculinity. or rather, i dont feel that there are such separate things as ‘trans masculinity’ and ‘cis masculinity’. men are men, women are women, enbies are enbies, yknow? things like ‘trans’ and ‘cis’ are just vague descriptors that don’t actually mean anything in regards to gender identity and self-image, (as well as political leanings, personality traits, etc) in the same way that ‘blonde’ and ‘brunette’ don’t tell you anything actually important about someone’s gender identity. i just dont feel, that im my own particular personal circumstances, that there’s actually any valid distinction to be made between ‘trans’ manhood and ‘cis’ manhood, male-ness is just male-ness in and of itself. 
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