The Tattoo Post™️ is so revealing of the current state of trans discourse online. Really it’s quite a fascinating case study. Right from the jump we have the weirdly paternalistic framing that trans men should run tattoo ideas by their friends, insinuating that trans men innately have poor judgment. By singling out trans men as a demographic rather than just advising people get feedback on their tattoo ideas or stating that they think the tattoo in question is bad, OP implies that it is trans men specifically and no other demographic that deserve to be held to this level of scrutiny. And even if you stripped the weird gender wars bullshit away from the whole thing, there remains the fact that putting a stranger on blast over an innocuous tattoo is deeply weird and uhhh bullying? Just straight up middle school bully behavior? What the hell is wrong with you?
Anyway here are my favorite notes
Exhibit A: The very feminist take that people socially/medically/legally classed as female aren’t oppressed on the basis of being socially/medically/legally classed as female.
Exhibit B: Seeing a non-sexual image of a trans man and immediately thinking about him bottoming. Because sexually objectifying random people for no reason is, again, very feminist. 🙄
Exhibi— okay I don’t have anything to say, I’m just enamored by this one. What does it even mean. What if a cis guy was a trans guy. What if the world was made of pudding. What if words meant nothing.
I’m not even gonna hide in tags for this, stop calling the tattoo “shit”. Literally no one’s opinion is needed here. “Yeah I agree it’s a bad tattoo, but these people are taking it too far!!!” is a fucking useless argument to make against people who want to control our bodies and detransition us.
It Does Not Matter What The Tattoo Looks Like And If You Like It. People Feeling Entitled To Stranger’s Bodies And Being Transphobic Is The Issue, Not The Quality Of The Tattoo.
Honestly I was on the fence about making this point in an addition myself, so I appreciate you saying it. It’s a bit disappointing to see, both here on this post and on the original uterus tattoo post, that such a large chunk of the folks defending this man feel the need to make it known that they don’t like the tattoo. That they think it’s ugly, or has unintended unfortunate implications, or what have you. Why do any of our opinions on the tattoo itself matter? Why do we have this urge to interject a clarification on our own aesthetic preferences? It’s quite frankly underhanded to say “Well I think the design is cringe and ugly and badly executed and it’s weird that someone would actually get this put on their skin forever, and he made an ill-advised choice in getting this tattoo, but there’s nothing morally wrong with it and everyone has the right to make whatever choices they want about their bodies (even if they’re bad choices) and people need to stop piling on this one guy just because he’s trans and did something cringe.” I’m exaggerating here, but still this unnecessary injection of judgement definitely undermines the point people are trying to make in support of him. It also wouldn’t hurt if more people were accustomed to saying “this isn’t my cup of tea” or similar turns of phrase instead of “it’s bad” in these sorts of situations, if you really must give your opinion.
