I wanted to respond to your comment on one of your posts:
"i am so bothered by the fact that the most emotionally undeveloped people in this space are driving away not just the trans men who have genuinely important things to say and contribute but our allies too."
I get what you're saying, but... why do people let that happen? I meet absolutely terrible people of many minority groups; I never let one bad person turn me off them and become convinced they don't deserve rights. That one homophobe who happened to be black didn't convince me I should stop arguing for BLM. That one ableist as hell feminist didn't convince me that women shouldn't be advocated for. So why is it with trans men, and only trans men, we have to all collectively be punished for the actions of the worst among us, who we have disavowed at every turn? I don't know if you saw the transandrophobia tag the last month, but there are more "you guys, we are becoming/can't become transmisogynists, you have to stop" posts than there are posts talking about transmasc issues. I never see this from other groups when one, or even many, people with that identity act hatefully to other minorities.
So I ask again: why are transmascs different? Why do we have to be collectively punished? Why are we not allowed to be represented by our best, but only our worst? Why can't it be "some trans men are great people and some trans men are terrible people, just like anyone else?"
christ i’m sorry to have let this sit for nearly a week, i’ve had absolutely nothing to give lately. but i really want to respond to what you’ve said here so, better late than never i suppose !
i empathize with your feeling about this here, but i’d like to maybe add an alternate perspective that is a little less hopeless, if you squint, lmao. this is not necessarily the case of allies abandoning us because there are some absolutely shit trans men and they want to punish us and leave us to fend for ourselves because the bad ones have sullied us all, it’s more like, this is a conversation space, a town square almost, where this specific form of discrimination and oppression is discussed, and it is being flooded with people who are only looking to fight, who are not engaging with the transfeminist source material from the coiner of transandrophobia or the people who were instrumental in the development of the theory at its inception, who are constantly posting inflammatory screenshots that only serve to harm the trans men and mascs that frequent this space, who are bringing in waves of harassment campaigns and generally making the environment inhospitable to discussion and theory building and community. and this is not just driving away our allies, it is also driving away trans men and mascs who were intentionally and conscientiously engaging with theory building and transmasculine activism. this is the flight of people who give a shit about the kind of work that makes a tangible difference because the environment is becoming increasingly hostile.
that being said i do want to validate your feelings here because they are not unfounded. i have noticed, that seems particularly easy for other trans people to abandon and discard trans men and trans mascs. that we are an after thought at best. that their biases against us are very easily taken advantage of and one absolutely dogshit trans guy they knew suddenly makes us all the devil incarnate. a few too many times now i’ve seen someone go through a bad break up with a trans man and next thing you know they are posting straight up hate speech about us. it’s weak, and shows a low moral fiber. i theorize that we are particularly easy to abandon due to sexism against those born and/or assigned female going entirely unchecked and unconscious combining with the repulsion towards masculinity in a lot of the queer environments men and mascs like us frequent. it’s beyond shit, i just think that isn’t necessarily the exact case in this circumstance, though you’ve highlighted something very real that happens and needs to be addressed far more than it currently is.
every minority group should be represented by their best, their most wise and kind and honest, because otherwise, if you let the dogshit people who cause real harm be the basis for your understanding of that group, you’ll be lumping in so many innocent people who do not deserve your ire. it’s how bigotry can colonize a person’s mind and warp them into something ugly, see someone you loathe that’s apart of a minority group and then next thing you know you’re ranting about a sweet trans man who likes to garden and regularly donates to trans shelters and shit and absolutely no one but other hateful people want to be around you. it’s a goddamn miserable way to be alive and so expansive in its harm.
i’m unbelievably tired of this just being accepted behavior, where trans men are bending over backwards to affirm trans women and fems and disavow transmisogynistic action, while we are getting smeared as a whole bc one unwell teenager posted something transmisogynistic in between like fifty posts all acutely being aware of trans women while they discuss trans masculine oppression. meanwhile i’ve had to block almost every person i’ve seen in the transmisogyny tag for being blatantly transphobic and anti transmasculine towards trans men, and its common to see posts from trans men and mascs repeatedly assuring everyone that trans women and fems love us and the few aren’t representative of the whole. the whole thing is skewed, i find it so unpleasant.
