when a trans man dies because his murderer wanted him to be a woman and his masculinity defied that, regardless of how much misogyny motivated his murder, that man still died because he was a man. because he refused to call himself woman when he was told that was his place.
many men would not be dead if we could simply hold our tongue and our breath and our life closed by continuing to be woman. but many men can’t. trying to do that kills us slowly. when we shed off that lie we can instead, at least, die violently, quickly, brutally, and then have our murder counted in femicide statistics without anyone recognizing that a man died because he dared to be a man
systemic or nonsystemic, the personal prejudices people have against trans masculinity and female masculinity is ultimately for their masculinity and not for their “failure to perform femininity”. we can perform femininity as much as we want and transphobes will still kill us because we dared grasp for a label they do not want us to have.
