#ftm discourse

[thetransomen]

can't post this to my main account, but omg orgasms off t are sooo much better.

i quit t a few weeks ago and just started birth control this week - my pussy feels like it did when i was in hs. like, wet and soft, softer than it ever was on t. and it just feels different, more transcendent and magical. also more full-body involvement, whereas orgasms on t were always short-lived and (somewhat) unsatisfying.

there's also something else i can't describe - a kind of pain i get afterwards, a soreness i guess that i don't get on t. or if i do, it's worse. the pain off t is like, inside and throughout my whole sex organ, whereas on t it's just on my clitoris making it more painful.

it's not a bad pain either - just kind of a lingering soreness after

please note i'm not a detransitioner, just non-binary and getting in touch with my feminine side.

terfs don't interact

[elasticveins]

You guys hate nuance

[nixisverytired]

Can we take a moment to think about the younger trans men and mascs on tumblr right now?

I was a teenager when ace and transmed discourses were at their peaks, and I can’t exaggerate how badly it affected me then.

Now trans men are the latest target, and I’m terrified for trans kids.

It’s easy to say “intracommunity discourse is an online problem! Go talk to queer people irl!”, but people forget that so many kids and teenagers do not have safe or reliable access to IRL LGBT+ communities and support groups. For many, online spaces are the only option.

We need to make sure the younger members of our community are being heard, and block out the hateful voices with messages of support and encouragement. Things are bad enough for trans people right now, and it's easy to forget that trans minors are often the ones suffering the most.

To any younger trans men or transmasculine people reading this:

The hate you are experiencing isn’t normal, it hasn’t always been like this, and it won’t always be this way. It is bleeding out from a small, miserable group of self-absorbed jerks.

Don’t feel obligated to call them out, don’t feel like you have to interact with these people. Please don’t doomscroll through discourse tags; it will make you feel like everyone is out to get you.

If you want to speak up for your community, that’s fine, but please take a break if you feel like your mental health is worsening. Block anybody who so much as breathes rudely in your direction.

You’re just as trans as the rest of us. You are welcome here.

Oh, and if you want to seek out external resources and groups, PFLAG helped me a lot when I was younger. It is an American-based organization, however, so if anyone has recommendations for those living outside of the US, please let me know in the reblogs!

[thisismajortomtogaycontrol]

Whenever I see stuff about ‘trans men shouldn’t be able to say the f slur’ I just think about the time when I was 14 and got asked to homeschool prom by a straight guy 2 years older than me from the southern Baptist church I was raised in after he told me I was a third choice because every other girl he asked rejected him and then he proceeded to spend the entire night calling me a faggot behind my back whenever he got the chance to anyone that would listen. So yeah actually. As a trans man who’s been called a fag more than once I’ll say I’m a fag if I want too.

[unpopulartransfag]

I don't really understand why people have a problem with people, especially younger queers, using fun, new, complex or "made up" labels.

There were times when I was younger when I really identified with otherkin and I had a huge list of pride flags to show different facets of my gender identity and personality and you know what?

It was fun and liberating.

And yeah, I "grew out of it", I changed and evolved as a person and gravitated towards different, more "conventional" terms, but that's not a big deal. You're allowed to experiment and play around with different labels while you figure yourself out.

But it's also just as valid and fine if you keep using those terms for the rest of your life.

There's no age limit on neopronouns or mogai identities. You can be 97 and use ey/em/eirs pronouns and identify as a gender fluid boygirl and genderfaun if that's what makes you feel the most like yourself and makes you happy.

And idgaf if people want to hate on mogai, neopronouns, "weird genders"... Really, how the fuck are they hurting you? Unless they're just trolling like a douchebag or it's a MAP thing, people are allowed to do what they want. It doesn't affect you.

"Oh but they make transphobes hate us and mock us!" Transphobes already hate us and mock us, even when we're "normal ". Even when we pass perfectly.

Life is short, gender is different for everyone, worry about yourself.

[tmichelleotter]

Want to see my pretty dick cum 🍆💦

[tboychewtoy]

"can trans men say the t slur?" trans men can jerk off on my face for all I care

[sassquire]

are we really shitting ourselves and calling it ""trans masc privilege" because the like 1% of trans mascs who

are white

are thin

transitioned as early as physically/legally possible

AND

don't have any faggy mannerisms or The Voice

AND

choose to be stealth

....get taken more seriously at work or whatever

nevermind the fact that goes out the window the second people figure out you're trans and/or you need to go to the doctor. did we not realize with bisexuals that the hyperspecific privilege you get when you can pass as not-queer doesnt mean shit.

[ftm-wear]

For real: Passing

“In the simple sense, a portrait of a man shows us the man as a picture – that is, as a flat piece of paper with clusters of tones from a light-sensitive emulsion. [The portrait] shows the man sitting at a piano. In a more complex way, however, […] as a brilliant man, or a profound man […]. The more complex ‘as’ requires interpretation.”

-Terry Barrett

The portrait Barrett describes also shows the man ‘as’ a man, but this no less “complex ‘as’” for him seems to be beyond interpretation. It is part of “the simple sense” of the photograph. He takes for granted that there was “a man” before the lens, that this man is now shown as a “flat piece of paper,” and the complex process of photographic signification only goes so far as to occasion different interpretations like “brilliant” or “profound man.” In other words, gender is what’s real in this photograph. In the passing moment captured in the photograph (therefore in a sense no longer passing), what’s passing is the depicted. Just like there remains something real in photographs for viewers, a stubborn reality-effect, gender attribution in Western culture still attempts to read pronouns off bodies, despite the linguistic turn, feminist and queer theorizing, surgical and hormonal bodily modification, intersex activism, and all kinds of gender-bending and transgressions. Passing for real, gendered realness, certain “kind of truths about gender” are still more often than not indispensable to entering the sphere of subjectivity and recognition. In order to be able to discuss how these issues pertain to FTM-bodies in transgender photography in chapter 3, some preliminary conceptual groundwork is needed.

The term passing as part of U.S.-American everyday parlance and as a concept in American Studies discourse originated with racial passing, and has since in both discursive arenas been applied to other presumed ‘stable’ (essentialized) identity categories “including class, ethnicity, and sexuality, as well as gender.” While all of these passings are passings, they are not identical. Passing as a conceptual term, I am arguing, needs to be explicitly fine-tuned to its specific applications, and is unproductive, if all passings are thought of as analogies of racial passing. Henry Rubin alerts us to the multidimensionality of the “economy of realness” when he writes that

[t]here are so many ways to participate in the economy of realness, even if your body is not white or your sexuality is deviant or your size does not measure up or you cannot afford to keep your wife at home.

The need for fine-tuning then emerges not least because one might be a transsexual woman also passing for white. Many theoretical concerns and observations doubtlessly apply to various forms of passing, for instance that “both the process and the discourse of passing interrogate the ontology of identity categories and their construction.” Consequently, the following discussion of passing in relation to (trans-)gender will at times both draw from more general considerations and lead to insights that might be transferable. But this is merely coincidental to my main purpose here of fine-tuning passing to an analysis of FTM-bodies in transgender photography, and explicating which questions, answers, or problems it might raise.

Consider the following quote as an example of sweeping or simplistic generalizations from certain forms of passing to all:

In the most general way, it is passing when people effectively present themselves as other than who they understand themselves to be. […] Who they understand themselves to be deliberately sidesteps a more complicated discourse over Who they are (and who or what determines who we are anyway?) or even the less complicated Who others see them as or even Who they have become. Passing never feels natural. It is a second skin that never adheres.

In relation to trans*, Kroeger’s journalistic working definition is exceedingly useless even at first sight. For transgender subjects at least, passing more often than not means precisely presenting as “who they understand themselves to be.” If in a ‘classic’ transsexual narrative, “[p]assing means to live successfully in the gender of choice, to be accepted as a ‘natural’ member of that gender,” passing is prompted by a desire to “feel natural,” or at least to enjoy the privileges that come with it. When Kroeger claims that passing “never feels natural,” she assumes that something else does, and overlooks the ways in which relations to ‘the natural’ can be vexed and uneasy, partly because they are also a matter of outward recognition and acceptance. And while transgender passing might, as e.g. the title of Jay Prosser’s seminal book Second Skins attests, be construed as a “second skin,” it is then usually the first skin that is seen as having failed to adhere in meaningful ways. Apparently, the “more complicated discourse” of the relation between passing and being that Kroeger wants to sidestep cannot be so easily evaded. Following the theoretical unraveling of any “reality of gender” by Judith Butler and others, it has become clear that

“[t]here is no ‘other’ side, no ‘opposite’ sex, no natural divide to be spanned by surgery, by disguise, by passing. We all pass or we don’t, we all wear our drag.”

SOURCE

[gor3sigil]

Cis Queer Bitches be like "Yeah I'm an intersectional feminist, I want everyone to feel safe and want to create a space for radical love and acceptance !!" then basically put a bouncer at the entry of the LGBTQ+ center to make sure the people coming to the "women and enbies ONLY" event are, indeed, women and enbies.

Edit: disabling reblogs since terfs decided to tear me down lmao

[charlie-ver]

Hey, you, the trans man reading this - I love you. I know there's posts like this, but I got down a bad rabbit hole last night and I think there's not enough nice posts towards trans men (:

I don't care if you've finished you transition, on won't be ever able to reach the changes you would like. I don't care if you've been on T for years, or just started, or won't be for some years, or can't or don't want to be. I do not care how you dress. I don't care if you want to be pregnant and have children one day. I don't care if you want hysterectomy and don't even want to freeze your eggs (Hell knows I am not freezing anything). I do not care if you want bottom surgery or if you love what you were born with. Because it doesn't matter and doesn't take away from your identity.

Gay trans men? You aren't just confused straight girls. You are valid in your gender AND sexuality. Straight trans men? You aren't a betrayal the moment you are no longer misgendered. You're still welcome in lgbtqia+ spaces. Because you're a part of our community. One does not lose their place the moment they are perceived and cis or cishet.

Cis men have heard it before, but they won't admit it. All this "if you like x you must be a girl" really just feels like repackaged "if you like x you must be gay". Wanna hear a secret?

HOBBIES, JOBS AND FAVORITE THINGS DO NOT HAVE GENDER.

I like botanical gardens. I love plants. I like looking at clothing, room decor, fabric stores sometimes catch my eye. Because I am am artist, and I take inspiration from these and many more things. Plant care and gardening is not a "red flag" for a trans man in my humble and trans opinion, but it's a sign that you have love to give. And that's beautiful. Just like liking these things does not indicate that a man is gay, it does not mean that your internal identity is any different.

Do not let the world put rails on your patch to your own masculinity. And if you have to hide, that's okay. If you can only be yourself online, that's okay. Trans people will always be here. Trans men will always be here. The best thing you can do is to live as safely as you can. I know this can come off as condescending from a European who has nothing to fear personally, except violence for one month in the year, because my way of being trans isn't "obvious", but I try to take it that my safety means I can try to reassure the rest of you, while you can just focus on your own misery and don't have to be strong for anyone but yourself.

If you need a safe place to went, come to my asks. If you don't want me to post them and just read them, that's ok. You can be angry, you can vent, you can cry, do whatever you need, but, obviously, no transphobia or anything (: Special love goes out to trans men who are of the aroace spectrum, because honestly, the aroace discourse never seems to die, it's just dismissed. Reminds me of something. Hm (: I wonder.

Anyhow. Come to me to cry, for a virtual hug, for a distraction, if you'd like. Feel free to ask for art. Want me to draw your trans characters with flags? I can do that, for free, for you. Ask or dm is enough (: Art and listening is the best I can do, but I'll do my best to do it well.

I love you. You deserve to live, you deserve to be happy, and you also are wholly entitled to cry, to complain, to be sad, angry, loud, afraid. You are a human being with emotions, you deserve to feel them. Nobody can tell you what your internal identity, what your gender is. Because nobody else can know that. Only you can.

So let me repeat: It does not matter how you dress, whether you are on T, whether you want surgeries or love your body as is, whether you are skinny, fat, or muscular, what accessories and clothes you wear, how your voice sounds, how you act, how you carry yourself and what you like. The only thing that matters is how you feel. And while we're at it, yes, you may change your mind, but it still doesn't invalidate your identity in the moment. There was a time where I thought I was biromantic, but I dropped that because I wasn't, and nobody gave me shit for it. Because nobody should. Whatever you feel right now? Valid. Do you identify at a trans man but don't use he/him? Valid. Do you identify with more genders? Are you maybe a man only sometimes? Or are you more at the same time? All of that is valid, if you feel like a man in some aspect or on some part, you are one, if that's a label you want. If your gender makes more sense as a man, then yeah, you are one. Nothing else but how you feel matters.

I love you, and again, I'm here for you if you need that. I can only listen and draw a little something for you, but maybe that's enough for some. If it can help a bit, I can do it for you.

Anyone derailing this post will be blocked. I have no patience for derailers.

[bopperclowning]

“is forcemasc transmisogynistic” you guys know its just forcefem but with the genders swapped. you know that right. forcemascing is largely targeted to ftm as gender affirming. the thing ur actually mad about is detrans which does suck

[tssummerjamesxoxo]

Can I be your favourite tranny girl? 🥺❤️🏳️‍⚧️💦🍆❤️

[tsmsddie1356]

How deep would you go? 🥵

[ftm-wear]

”I never think about my birth sex!” cries the cis.

How many times have you heard this out of a cis mouth when explaining what you do to pass, or how you knew you were trans?

In rebuttal, keep this in your back pocket - the fact that someone learning a new language as an adult has to think about it a hell of a lot more, and a lot more explicitly, than a baby learning the same language doesn’t mean the adult speaker won’t one day become fluent.

Goal + Action = Change ; taking action to achieve a goal is not “deceit” or jumping through hoops, or whatever these un-introspective cis people think it must be (faking?).

We learn gendered messages as children, directly and indirectly, including how to walk, how to talk, how to carry ourselves. These lessons can be unlearned and re-learned as adults to better suit the sex we desire to live as, calibrated of course to our particular needs.

Passing can be about what you wear, but it’s also about the man underneath the clothes.

Resources and other thoughts on passing:

Caveat: I may not agree with and co-sign every single utterance here. Buyer beware.

[kripkerot]

this actually hurts my brain. “omg trans ppl want to be the most common version of their desired gender bc that genders literally all they’ve ever wanted ever??!!?!?!” yeah?? literally how could you get more girl than that. “omg trans ppl wanna be the opposite gender what……”