organic farm-grown soy boy

This could 100% be projection, but the only way I learn about how my experiences differ from others' is by talking them out, so: I can sympathize with the people who make guides like that, misguided (harr harr) though they may be. Because it reminds me of my own history of being bothered by depictions of trans guys (I'm going to be specific in my example here to what I personally experience) because I felt dysphoric whenever the differences between trans guys and cis guys are discussed or made apparent.

Years ago here on tumblr an anon asked me what I think of trans Arcade Gannon headcanons. My answer was that they made me uncomfortable, because to me, if Arcade Gannon was a trans man, nothing would change about him, and when other people fixated too much on his transness it made me feel like he was being Othered from the kind of manhood experienced by cis men.

I think, although I never identified as such, that at this time I was what you'd call a transmedicalist. My perception of transness was that my goal and the goal of any "real" trans person was ultimately to become indistinguishable from cis; to be in no way different from a cis man. Because I perceived my dysphoria as being caused by confronting the differences between me and a "real man", I was uncomfortable with watching people discuss trans man headcanons, because that read to me as a bunch of people fixating on the differences that cause my dysphoria.

Whereas now I understand the main cause of my dysphoria to be a reaction to the values and expectations others project onto me based on their perception of my gender - the ways what I have or don't have informs people's ideas of who I am and what I should want, and I fundamentally don't jive with the picture they're building of me. E.g. I'd love to have a flat chest, but the tits themselves bother me less than the fact that other people see them and decide they indicate things about me that are wrong.

Honestly when I was younger I couldn't read fanfics about trans male characters because it made me feel self-conscious when people's trans guy Lone Wanderer or someone would break down crying every chapter and be a sensitive softboi at a time when I was very much overcompensating because the slightest hint of softness or showing less than the maximum amount of dudebroness would instantly be used against me as proof that I was really a girl - I did not have the luxury of crying in front of people. And there was always a scene where someone walked in on him in just his binder/without it, and he was outed by someone seeing his Not Cis Male body (which would usually cause him to instantly start crying) and it made me feel sick every time.

But those could be really really cathartic things for another trans guy to see for one reason or another. Trans guys are allowed to cry, and should when the urge strikes, and people knowing you have tits isn't the end of the world. Being discovered to have tits is not the worst thing that can happen to you. But also if I was successfully passing with a friend group and then the jig was suddenly up and their entire image of me shifted upon clocking me I think I'd feel the world cave in too.

I'm rambling here, my point is: I think to some degree I understand this defensiveness, this urge to be like "stop fixating on things that Other me from the cis version of my gender, stop pointing at and talking about the things that make me feel Different from cis people of my gender, it makes me feel dysphoric, and it shows that you're fetishizing or being otherwise weird about trans people's Differences"

But as I always say (now), it's not transition that makes you transgender, the transness comes first. You are trans because you feel trans, no medication or procedure will cause you to Become, you simply Are. And that's true no matter what body you have right now.

Trans man with tits? Those are a man's tits. They're male tits, because they're on a male. He doesn't become a man only once the tits come off. A 'male body' is not something he must pursue and achieve - the body he already has is a male body, because he's a male and it's his body. Male titties. Male vagina.

A mindset which has cured me of the instinctive ick at the thought of trans men being depicted as being in any way different from cis men.

This fic just crossed the 1k mark so I'm boosting it lmaooooo