there is only one fault

i wasn’t originally going to respond to this, because i tend to ignore the particularly low hanging fruit, and because it discourages more attention of this variety when they don’t get a perceived rise out of you - but i have been having thoughts about this language so i’m going to use this little crane shit covered lily pad to jump off of.

i was there when this turn of phrase started, it was a little ways into me watching a particular hub of ‘trans radical feminists’, around three or so years ago, back when i thought it was niche internet muck, back when not nearly as many trans men were speaking up for themselves, me included. i saw it start with a cis lesbian. she was close with all of these trans radical feminists, and had been caught liking a tweet about needing to come up with better slurs for trans men because zippertits wasn’t satisfying enough, and another about resorting to just calling us cuntboys. she spent a fair amount of her time going after and harassing any trans man and transmasculine person she ran across the path of. oh, and also and as well she was a niece of a billionaire, and she may have been responsible for seven deaths in her family’s hotel due to negligence, not to mention the fact that her decade or more of viscously bullying people online in the writing community got a call out written about her that won a fucking hugo award. that is where i saw “birthday boy” start. that is the kind of environment this language propagated in.

it started with a cis woman who felt she needed better slurs for us. it started with gender essentialist trans women. some known for: not considering us really trans, believing we are aligned with the patriarchy inherently because of the “gender we chose to be”, calling everyone in the community but trans women and lesbians a half dead carcass that should be left behind, calling gay trans men (and straight trans women) straggots and saying that we should all die en masse, making up a nasty nickname for a transmasculine person that referenced their sexual assault, saying in response to the transphobia we face that we are just upset at being “emasculated”, constantly saying things with the intent of “emasculating” us through infantilizing and misogynistic language. (and more!)

all of this and they are well respected community members, published transfeminists, and published fiction authors. that is who was calling us birthday boys back when it was an unknown enough term they still had to post the screen shot it came from when they used it.

they have imagined us as a small, immature and ineffectual men, who will taunt and poke and harass someone, only to feign fragility and special status when they retaliate against us.

all that is required to not be a “birthday boy” is to never center yourself as a trans man or masculine person in your own feminism. to discount every horrible thing you’ve faced at the hands of patriarchy as not being “as bad as what trans women face” and to relegate yourself to being a physical shield with no regard to how that effects you, while never once asking for anything in return. to not be a whole person but instead to be a thankless protector, while you are in just as much danger but nobody is protecting you.

i feel “birthday boy” is an important thing to address if only because it is acting as a dog whistle.

it is language that can easily be dismissed when called out, by painting the person taking issue with it as infantile for treating such a silly word as anything serious. but it is communicating something with weight, even though the words being used are deeply ridiculous.

lastly, i’d like to note that i have already seen a trans man, who was being loved and affirmed in his gender, being called a “birthday boy” on his actual birthday, and flinching when he heard it. it is ugly that the community has let things get to this point.

trans men who have socially and structurally grown up as girls spend our lives being treated as small, ineffectual, inherently immature people who can fall back on “victimhood” to avoid “consequences”.

there is nothing revolutionary about repeating that exact same pattern when we come out as trans men.

they will do a disservice to the theory of transmisogyny by essentially pinning its validity against the invalidity of transandrophobia theory. when transandrophobia theory has never been an opposition to transmisogyny, has never refuted its existence or the mechanisms behind it, its literally just an expansion of transfeminist theory to include more robust theory and literature for antitransmasculism.

Via @amanofgreatexpectations 's tags (reformatting and bold by me):

This is the logical consequence of mainstream queer identity itself being formed through naturalizing the cisheteropatriarchal oppression of people AFAB.

If queer marginalization is in essence cisheteropatriarchal marginalization then it would follow that all people AFAB are likewise essentially 'queer marginalized' from birth irregardless of their identities. But in fact that is not the way that framing functions. It's pretty clear that the popular understanding of 'queer' identity is rather derived from the comparative aberrancy of people AMAB experiencing cis heteropatriarchal marginalization unexpectedly. The “unexpectedness” is the key - and the source of people AFAB being overlooked when acknowledging experiences of oppression within the community. It's too “expected” to count and queer people AFAB lack the same sense of 'relative deprivation' to demand the greater equity that they are deserved.

This is also why cis gay men - and others - take such umbrage at the thought of gay trans men calling themselves 'faggots'. 'Faggot' is a transgressive hardship identity derived from people AMAB (who are the Kantian-universal Default Human Beings in their minds) experiencing cisheteropatriachal oppression - which isn't *supposed* to happen to them and is therefore transgresssive (and is tacitly a tough “male” identity by association) whereas any person AFAB experiencing cisheteropatriarchal oppression is supposed to endure this naturally. People AFAB are not allowed to think that they are fellow members of a people that are not 'supposed' to experience this marginalization - in effect to deny their shared humanity and to lock people AFAB into their object beings.

Idk I'm rambling but. When cis gay men experience violence from straight men = obvious homophobic violence that can be recorded as a hate crime. When people AFAB experience violence from straight men = uh just regular intimate partner violence not motivated by any bigoted ideology.

and yet she wonders why we have no interest in her, it must be because trans men don’t want to date trans women, the fault must be with us. the concept that it could be because of her doesn’t even cross her mind.

she was not asking for trans men who love trans women, she was asking for a completely cis passing, patriarchal man, who happened to share transsexuality with her.

and this thought has bumped into another thought in my head, about these trans women who say they are simply women asking for support from the men in their community. a deeply understandable request that i see trans men meet with joy on the regular, gusto even. and yet, they look around and go, no trans man is supporting us, no trans man is supporting me. and i’ve stopped in my tracks in this moment because, support isn’t whats being asked, is it. that’s why the support given is dismissed entirely. what’s being really asked for is worship. it’s servitude. and anything less is seen as a failure at our social duties of chivalry. a failure of our manhood. a failure to uphold our side of the patriarchal bargain it has been implicitly assumed we must have agreed to in the first place.

a third thought has been bumped into. the few trans men these women do surround themselves with, are without a doubt, in every instance i have seen, viscously misogynistic towards other trans men and transmasculine people, and deeply benevolently sexist towards trans women. that is what is given the seal of approval. that is what is required. anything less than looking up, anything less than that high pedestal that unconditional worship guarantees will never crack and fall, anything less than feet kissed and sexual favors freely given, anything less than a doormat, a punching bag, a sex toy, is akin to community abandonment to them.

1. Your body is not your own.

1a. Your body is a site for other’s desires.

If they want you to be beautiful, it is cruel of you to deny them that. If they want you to be feminine, it is cruel of you to deny them that. If they think you should reproduce, it is cruel of you to divest yourself of reproductive duties.

1b. Your body is owned by the state.

Reproductive laws that can affect cis women also affect you, but you cannot weigh in on them, because you are not a woman.

Anti-trans laws affect you, but you must not bring this up; you are never the “real” target, even when you are, because you are not “really” trans.

When the legislation talks about “protecting” your fertility, you should feel lucky to be safeguarded from yourself.

- - -

2. Your experiences are not your own.

Your childhood does not exist. You cannot claim girlhood if you are a man, and you cannot claim boyhood if you did not grow up within it, and no other visions of childhood may exist. Your history, however you define it, is fundamentally incompatible with who you are.

Forms of sexism which are aimed at women, by a binary logic, cannot be aimed at men or mascs. If your experiences contradict this, either you are invalidating your identity, or you are appropriating womanhood.

It is your duty to blithely dissociate yourself from any trauma patriarchy may have inflicted on you. Men cannot be affected by these things even if it happens to them personally. A “real” man must be stoic and uncaring.

- - -

3. You are a “default” body.

You are to be assumed affluent, perisex, binary, and passing, with no legal or situational barriers to medical or social transition, and no reproductive concerns to speak of — unless your nonconformity can be used to dismiss you.

You are assumed to be able-bodied, sane of mind, white, and thin — unless your mental health or appearance is good for mockery.

You are to be treated as essentially cismasculine. Being treated as if you are cis is a compliment, even when it is erasing your lived experiences, and even if it is known and true that transfems have their own unique struggles from cis women too.

- - -

4. You are an “aberrant” body.

4a. Your body is a site of fascination. You (are presumed to) have a gestative capacity, and a fun extra hole. These traits are relevant when others assess your attractiveness and their kinks. They are not relevant in the context of your health. You’re a submissive little bottom, right?

(Your body is something to conquer and claim. This may be done to emphasize your femininity, deny your androgyny, or defang your masculinity.)

4b. Your body is a site of disgust. Any steps you may take to masculinize yourself are “ruining” your “female” features, regardless of any joy you personally take from the changes, and regardless of if you engage with medical transition or not.

(You are killing the woman you are supposed to be. Stand trial.)

4c. Your body is too unattractive to be sexually violenced. It doesn’t happen. When it does, you have anatomical privilege, because you are (presumed to be) in possession of a vulva, and victims with those are of course always believed. But it doesn’t happen, because you are essentially a cis man, and of course men don't get raped.

(It is not possible to be targeted for this violence because you are transmasculine. It is always misaimed violence, intended for someone else. Apologize to her for taking up her space.)

4d. Your body is a proxy for other’s ideas about activism. Womanhood is good, and manhood is bad, and things in-between are uncomfortable and hard to classify; therefore, a detransition back to cisfemininity would be a preferable state of being, wouldn’t it?

(Your transition is at odds with good feminism.)

4e. Your body is a joke. Men don’t menstruate. Men don’t gestate. Men don’t lactate. Men can't have breasts. If the suggestion sends people into hysterics, you must take it lying down.

(Remember; comedy is subversion, and you are an “abberant” body.)

4f. Your body is a hypothetical and not a lived reality. If men could menstruate or gestate, that would fix patriarchy. It would not result in men being denied at the door of the gynecology office, surely.

(To entertain your existence is a rhetorical inconvenience.)

4g. Your body is a source of put-down. You are a cunt, a pussy, a fembrained bitchmoid — and it isn’t sexist to refer to you as such, because you are a man. Your disinclination to be reduced to bioessentialist biogotry is simply proof that your masculinity is fragile. It is not proper for you to object to it, even when it is the same rhetoric spewed by patriarchy itself, and even if it would be equally galling to say to a woman, cis or trans.

(Have you not considered that your trans body is privileged under cis patriarchy?)

4h. Passing is universal to all transmasculine bodies and all life situations. Closeted, clocky, queer, or femme trans men and mascs cannot exist, and are not subjected to the same violence as women or other queer men. Legal gender markers don’t matter. Medical access isn’t a concern. People from your past cannot possibly be vindictive enough to out you, because queer or not, you have male privilege.

(Have you considered that you simply aren’t trying hard enough to pass?)

- - -

5. If you are inadequately masculine, pre-transition, nonbinary, or bi-gendered, you cannot “really” be a man.

Remember; you are a lost little girl when you need to be talked down to.

Remember; manhood and womanhood are diametric opposites, exclusive states of being.

Remember; poverty is not an excuse.

- - -

6. If you are inadequately feminine or too masculine, you cannot “really” be queer.

Remember; you are a “default” body.

Remember; you are essentially cis.

- - -

7. If you are too assertive or too unwilling to serve as a punching bag, you cannot “really” be a feminist.

Remember; men cannot be feminists.

Remember; men cannot need feminism.

Remember; your masculinity is most readily acknowledged when it provides a rhetorical threat.

- - -

8. If you really insist on your masculinity, then it must be in service to others. You owe them labor, defense, money, and deference.

You are not owed equality or reciprocity, because men are responsible for patriarchy. You are on the hook for the patriarch’s debt, and you are presumed to share his wallet.

(A man is a protector and a provider. I thought you wanted to be a man?)

- - -

9. Your interest in your own autonomy is indistinguishable from power-grabbing.

Your self-determination and self-advocacy aligns you with patriarchal interests, or is a sign that you are too battered by patriarchy to self-determine in the first place. Someone else must decide these things for you. Someone else must speculate on your motives. You do not get to speak for yourself.

- - -

10. Your inclusion and representation is not important.

10a. When you notice your absence from culture, art, and storytelling, others ask; why do you not simply project your experiences onto cis men? Remember, you are a default body. Surely you are different from other queer people who need direct representation.

(When you try to do that, you are classically fembrained and illiterate for thinking a given character could have transmasculine subtext or themes.)

Projecting onto cis women is akin to killing them.

Why are you not satisfied with mpreg fanfic?

10b. When you make your own art and stories, you are playing with dolls. It is unimportant, juvenile, and easily dismissed much in the way that people discuss teenage girls who act as culture-makers.

(If transmasculinity is not present in the world of art, it must be because it has no artistic merit.)

- - -

11. Your erasure is proof that you have nothing to offer.

The muffling of violence done to you or your brothers is proof that no violence occurs in the first place.

The muffling of you or your brother’s contributions is proof that none of you contributed in the first place.

The removal of your brothers from the historical narrative is proof that they didn’t exist, or that they never stood in solidarity with other feminists and queers.

Silence is proof that you need not speak.

- - -

12. Denying any danger that you may be in is affirmative to your masculinity, because men cannot be harmed.

There are no statistics that say otherwise if we never read them.

There are no patterns of abuse if we never speak of them.

There are no dead if they are recorded as femicides.

There are no victims if we do not speak their names.

- - -

Most trans mascs are not out here claiming to have a 'mystical' connection to womanhood. If a trans woman had prostate cancer she should be able to get treatment for it without having to be misgendered, same as how when trans men have cervical cancer or pregnancy they need access to 'womens' healthcare. If someone else feels a connection to their AGAB because I don't know maybe that was decades of their life their experience doesn't invalidate anyone else's. A trans person saying they feel connected to their life pre transition and/or they still need healthcare for the organs they don't want is not at all the same as saying that people transitioning the other direction can never have the same connection to that gender.