Recently ive come to realize that realistically most transmascs to exist in human history, the ones who expressed even the slightest sign of transmasculinity visible to th outside i mean*, have been institutionalized in some way shape or form. Like statistically the answer to âwhere were the transmascsâ in any given location situation or time period, asked in good or bad faith, is âlocked up somewhere for being crazy, dangerous, and/or cursed; (with a varying degree of officialness and bureaucratic justification)â. Idk what to do with that. The idea feels so huge, like i myself alone cant contain it.
*the ones who didnât of course went the same way as most people afab in human history: forced to marry bear children and do feminized labor while their soul died on the inside.
this ask has been sitting in my inbox for nearly a week like a lead ball, and i still havenât been able to find the words i want. itâs crushing. the weight of it. what people like us have faced for millennia. it is the one thing that forces me to choose myself every day and not go back into the closet. the fact that i get to do what they didnât. that i donât have the right to throw away something they died to experience. that it is my duty to continue on, with the hopes that my liberation will in some way retroactively heal those who came before. and it reaffirms my dedication to do everything i can to stop the present day suffocation of men (and transmascs) like us.
because that suffocation is still happening. the fight to be us, our fight, for trans liberation, should not be about parties and celebration, we have nothing to celebrate while our brothers are still forced to have sex with cis men they donât want, forced to experience the mutilation of unwanted pregnancy and birth, forced to carry the unbalanced brunt of feminized labor, forced to be silent, forced to bury themselves in appropriate patriarchal womanhood.
we are disappearing down the cracks, and the only people who are going to save us are ourselves, we can only count on ourselves, so we better make damn sure we show up for each other.
i am in the process of figuring out what that looks like for me, i hope you will join me in finding that out for yourself. we can all do something, no matter how small, and we must. those institutions still exist, those rooms with no way out are still standing, and some of us are still inside them.
i believe we must stop in regards to our existences and realities waffling, conceding, bending, apologizing, justifying, defending. we exist, we face what we do, we know our realities to be true, we just now have to really spend time deciding what our role in our liberation looks like for us, individually and collectively.
we all have to keep going, and trying, and giving and taking, and loving, until one day there is no room with a lock, there is sunshine on every one of our faces, and self determination is the human right of every single of one us.
i love you anon, we can do this, we can keep going, if not for ourselves, if not for each other, then for them, looking down on us now, every time we safely bind, every time we take testosterone, every time we love our bodies our masculinity our manhood, every time we take up room and stand up for ourselves, their souls are looking down on us, and we owe them our continuation.
