Orange Juice Club

Stop trying to be one of the good ones.

You're going to be made to feel like you have to apologize for your gender and your masculinity, like the patriarchy's sins are your burden to carry, like you need to singlehandedly solve misogyny, like you're never really a victim and should suppress that pain to be the stoic protector women are owed, and like you need to make yourself and others like you as small and unobtrusive as possible as an apology for existing.

You're going to be told that trans men are like little girls and should be seen and not heard, that they lie and exaggerate, that they shouldn't want attention, that they're prone to silly fantasies and playing dress-up, that they owe everyone their beauty and sex appeal or they're disgusting and worthless, that they're just holes to be fucked into submission, that their fertility is someone else's property, that they owe everyone around them labor, that they're easily led, that they're just not intelligent enough to be authorities on their own experiences and need someone older, stronger, smarter, and more important to hold their delicate little hands and guide them. Most of the people telling you this will proudly call themselves feminists.

You're going too be told that trans men are men, so they can and should take the hits, that they shouldn't cry or show emotions, that they need to be more stoic, that they need to put their health and bodies on the line for others, that they're hairy and stinky and disgusting in their masculinity, that they're prone to violence and fits of anger, that their anger is scary and should never be permitted or expressed, that it's never justified, that violence is a part of them so violence is just something they should expect and accept without complaint, that their anatomy is a joke or a fetish and nothing more, that their cocks aren't big enough like a real man's, that they need women to act as their moral compass, that they don't have complex feelings like women, that they aren't emotionally intelligent. Many of the people telling you this will proudly claim that they're against gender essentialism.

If you try to be one of the good ones by accepting all of this, by agreeing with it, by enforcing it on other trans men who try to speak up, you will still never be one of the good ones because to them, there is no such thing as a good transmasc or trans man. You are the scapegoat and the sacrificial lamb, all at once. You eat their sins and their guilt and you are placed on the sacrificial altar to absolve them. You are a punching bag. You are a repository for all their unexamined transphobia, internalized or otherwise. You are the effigy they can burn when the cis men who have hurt them are to powerful to touch.

That's what it means to be one of the good ones.

So don't do it. Don't do what they do and turn the anger and resentment you feel for how you've been treated on equally undeserving targets; caring about yourself and others doesn't translate to passing the abuse on to a target you've deemed acceptable as the people who hate you have. But don't let them use you that way, either. You owe yourself and your brothers better than that.

If I ask you for help then I demonstrate you can ask me for help.

That.

help then I demonstrate you

can ask me for help.