#i'm tired of being treated like a “controversial topic” because i'm trans

[legocactus]

2024 should be the year where "make up a guy to be mad at" should become a law

real people and minority groups are off limits. you have to be nice to them. if you really need someone to be angry with, we can make up a fake group to blame your problems on

[hardpacker]

i didn't expect it and didn't go looking for it, but now that i've been on here more... somehow only on tumblr have i seen other trans guys discussing with one another the sort of thoughts that in other spaces i've felt very alone in sharing or having in my head at all.

it's heartening to know that these topics and experiences aren't just like... imaginary, and are actually as widespread as i believed, and may even have names-- ones we decide, the way any community invents names and language. over the years i became self-conscious and tired from going back and forth between trying to scream these thoughts in the open and trying to clamp down on them when it seemed socially unacceptable... or just socially unappreciated.

that, and the pushback, makes me think about the way tumblr has been and is still referred to as being a haven for (specifically) obsessive/sensitive/hysterical "teen girls" and "[autistic] people."

but who are those people? yes there are teen girls and autistic people here. but the above is the same language terfs use to talk about trans boys and men. and not only terfs, but also run of the mill transphobes, and anyone whose transphobia fixates on trans men over others. it's a weird semi-covert misgendering and de-gendering, and if the age doesn't nullify it, the neurodivergence does. it's intended to delegitimise at the individual level and any community-driven effort. even progressive-minded people keep these in their back pocket, because at least they can/could agree those people aren't important. that's what "sjw" helped do, for a while. and if it's not an ongoing reaction, it spanned the better part of a decade.

the perception of tumblr as a weird Gender-y Wellspring lead to terfs prioritising it as a place of focus, to raid... they still do, and have had years to learn and spread the right language. many of those people might even be gone now, but the effect is apparent when you do see some rancid 16yo parroting cruel fictions that have no previous incarnation. and at least no previous incarnation among any other group.

i remember my split-second cognitive dissonance in 2010-2011 during one of the earliest infiltrations, where they were attempting conversion therapy by seeking out young trans kids and even doxxing and contacting their families. and it was done with the same imploring voice of correctly capitalised and punctuated concern you might very well see now. i don't think i had the full scope of what was going on, in part from being so excessively suppressed by my family at that time... but that treatment did at least prepare me in identifying something Feeling Wrong, and actively rejecting and working against these invasive practises.

in the way i internalised it when i didn't see others understanding or engaging with the same ideas i tried to share, i do keep getting in my head about them now, basically on those terms: well but if it's happening here, is it really happening? how can you trust this? what if YOU'RE being FOOLED? WHAT IF IT'S PROOF YOU'VE BEEN DELUSIONAL THIS WHOLE TIME?!

which is awful. i know it's gotta be some kind of reactionary safety mechanism especially when the topic of cultural/societal treatment of trans guys, broadly, is so fraught. for big chunks of my life i tried to shut off feeling any way about it, about transness, about transness as a community, about the way i was/am treated. developing a kind of baseline for ourselves in the community, with the potential benefit of educating would-be allies, hasn't gone especially well. even our ilk react with contempt or disdain, scoffing like oh, here we go. you must be new.

i say "ourselves" like i'm involved, but i'm really not. i've basically tied my livelihood to how deferential i can be. can't have too controversial an opinion even or especially when it's about myself.

it's just so raw. i never expect gentleness or curiosity. "Messy language" doesn't get a pass here the way it might when discussing queer labels. Pain can't be messy, it must be precise. It must be relatable.

•••

even recently i tried to carve something out and find language. i'm thinking back to May(?) when i wrote some thoughts for a cis peer in what became a kind of short essay, following a difficult and public interaction.

i'm thinking about it because my peer did bring up tumblr as a place where terfs did/do groom trans boys... but this was brought up to defend women who draw BL (featuring conventionally attractive cis men) because this peer claimed that "100%" of their detractors were trans men, that "cis gays never complain about this" and "AFAB people should understand this." and that trans men who pushed back on this were groomed by terfs to do so. and yet trans men were not victims in this narrative, but aggressors.

because i believe they were being truthful, or at the very least had been given reason to believe this, i was surprised and dismayed to hear. it makes my heart ache in a weird, anxious, hollow way (like a bell, not like a void) whenever there's bad behaviour going on from a place so close to home.

i was also perplexed that in a thread about loving and creating sexy transgressive artwork and in defense of focusing on cis men loving or fucking each other, that this was the only time trans men were named explicitly.

i'm not gonna lie, the entire thing put me in a very bad place for a few days. on twitter i have many of these terms muted so that i won't see it. but they asked me questions, so i answered. i wanted to express that,

i believed what they said, that they had been treated badly, and that nothing i wrote was intended to ignore that

acknowledging that some young trans men have been manipulated and abused by terfs isn't a "gotcha." it's a pervasive tragedy

it's very possible for them to disagree with the work or the argument without ever being groomed by terfs

"liking BL" isn't a coherent political category, class, demographic

trans men also like BL and have been creating it alongside cis women and genderqueer people for literally ever

trans men may, for many multitudes of reasons, have different concerns than cis men

[detangling misogyny directed at cis women and misogyny directed at trans men, which is... real?]

cis men are not the ultimate arbiters of gayness

cis gay men do discuss these things but maybe not in the same niche twitter-centric circles

trans men are not simply or simply trying to be a pastiche or homage to cis men

a cis woman expecting to relate to trans men on the basis of gender assignment at birth isn't only odd, it's also misgendering, and positions cis woman/girlhood as the True origin point

i want to think it was useful. i worry it seemed like an imposition, that i was demanding more time or more energy on something that was my problem-- my problem for seeing a problem. when i was done writing and sent it off to them, i apologised for the length and let them know i neither expected them to read it anytime soon nor expected a response in the event that they did. but, they still asked me what i "wanted" from them.

when i correct someone about my name or how to refer to me, i don't expect that the world changes for them and that they see me how i see myself, or that they keep referring to me correctly when i'm not around. if i divulge being autistic, i've very rapidly learned to expect worse. it is met with awkwardness if not cold rejection. for my entire life online i've remembered how harrowing it was to pair my face with my art, and got "that's not what i thought you looked like. I was expecting someone thinner."

there's no proof of better behaviour-- better Thinking-- that i wanted in this case. or that i'd even know how to ask for/look for. i won'g see it, good or bad. it isn't about doing something for me. it should hopefully go far beyond me.

but like i said: it put me in a bad, weird, out of body state for a few days. being confronted with pain in a public setting and then being responsible for first analysing, researching, and translating pain-- my own and historical, community pain-- with no precedent or expectation for kindness, took a big toll on me. i was emotional and not, keyed up and fatigued. of course i would and have tried to tamp down those feelings when they arise. it is much harder to look at it and try to bring someone else in to look at it with you. suddenly, the things people say aren't real become vividly, graphically real again.

•••

anyway. i'd like to get over the shock and dejection and emotional distance i put between myself/my life and the surfacing of these difficult inter-community discussions. i never wanted to be distant from them, but distance is a common byproduct of transition, an extension of the enforced invisibility.

because i think a common misconception is that invisibility is passive, or even self-constructed. but "invisibility" is an action-- it's the way others treat you. it's how you're remembered, referred to, written about, it's a controlled lack of support and lack of language, it's having your life defined by external forces and not by you or your own. it is an oppressive and intentional reaction.

for me i think it's just the immediate surprise. these Are conversations that benefit from coherent, linear, longform exploration-- just as i've thought for years. but for as long, i also felt that time had passed. like, time is a resource and if we all collectively are deprived of it, maybe that means the Concept being discussed no longer has a place in this world and so no longer exists. or that i had just missed it. i had missed my opportunity to find people beyond those whose apathy made me completely unrecognised and unreal, and that it was deserved, and i was only lucky to receive what grace i could. sincerely and lovingly: that's psycho shit. i shouldn't be so stunned to see, like, a conversation. A cheeky paragraph.