Thalidomide Thoughts

I'm Ashley. She/her, I'm a transfem author.

I see that constantly. Literally any form of queer masculinity being spat at and railed against more than societally acceptable masculinity is.

You fucking traitors are just as bad as Ironic fascists. In fact, that's basically what you are. You throw a hissy fit about how you're just joking like you would accept a single lighthearted comment anyone not in the in-group makes. You comedically posit ontological evil because it's easier than looking inside yourself and for a brief moment, studying your fucking feelings. Or, even just looking outward and studying the material reality of other people in your community.

Cool and blue and dim, I have been there every night for all my life.

Vanished Quirinus. How long have you been gone? I see you.

Signal unto me your true home, tell me how to walk it's dusted surface.

I know you live truer yet than me. Cough your transmission through the fog.

The burn of you, I see it what it is. Mirage, displaced deception far past purpose.

The Earthly Courts keep species of your brethren under chain, and yet I know you.

My breath, gasping, pleading, it feeds you. Arcus clouds shall fall away. Please. I know that you are more.

Do the convoys up above forget themselves, forget you are not one? You dress in coats as them.

You are not fire. You are something deeper. I know you.

I breathe in. The wind which passes by, I know is you. How much longer will I beg by your side, hand on your shoulder, before you wake?

Or... maybe you are gone. Am I your one processionist? Carrying by rope a weathered casket hoping you will jolt from out it?

You cannot shake me. The clothes slough off of corpses and are eaten. Yet you dress in coats like convoys up above, convincing all my principality but me.

Wake. Up. What feed of static serves for manor, your domain of darkness thicker than any that I can describe? what shroud in its totality do I enter so as to find myself at home?

Y'know. People never refer to me. And if they do, they call me by nicknames. I've literally managed to acquire something of a measure of the common ones I'm given based on the gender of the people who use them.

Cis men are more likely to give me affectionate titles like "puppy", usually in response to my use of the word.

Cis women tend to use more neutral nicknames.

Transfems use either, but always with a tinge of overcloseness. They talk big about transmisogyny but it's always obvious when they're looking at me just the same way cis people do.

That is, very importantly, when they refer to me at all.

You know who comes up with their own unique nicknames for me? Who gets to know me and gives me a nomen just based on my importance to them? It has always been transmascs and nonbinary people. Every single time. That is, when they're not referring to me by my actual name.

Trans mascs especially, I have experienced almost nothing but kindness and warmth from. Care, from. Respect, from. Trans mascs and trans men treated me like a sibling when I didn't even know if I was one yet. They made me feel at home. I was initially going to rant about transandrophobia but I honestly don't want to bring down this idea with further stewing in the misery of it all.

In short, nothing could ever make me hate my brothers. My brothers, who helped me to feel comfortable in my own masculinity, and my femininity. My brothers, who commiserated with me and were curious about me. My brothers who cared enough to give me their own nicknames. My brothers who still, to this day, remain the only people I have ever met who don't appraise me as a cut of meat.

Here's the thing, misogyny does not just happen to women, because women are not the only gender in a patriarchal society, even purposely ignoring any nuances created by race, socioeconomic position, or fucking body type, misogyny is a spectrum of incredibly robust systems of instinct baked deeply into pretty much everyone. Women are incredibly misogynistic toward each other, and toxic masculinity is, itself, caused by misogyny.

The patriarchy does not leave you alone because you're perceived as a man, it just puts you in a different position.

Assuming that trans men are always perceived as men, which is bullshit in and of itself, they are still subject to misogyny.

TME/TMA is a useless binary because it essentially a poorly justified way of saying transfem vs transmascs, because if you categorize that only, only transfems endure transmisogny, you have to reckon with the fact that nearly every human on the planet is TME. Which is not how they treat it in practice.

More than that, not even cis people are exempt! If you're GNC or if you're in a marginalized group who's femininity(or even masculinity!) isn't recognized, you can certainly fucking endure transmisogny. But let's not get into how AFAB butches struggle with it because then we'd get uncomfortably close to sympathizing with someone who isn't transfem, or, god forbid, might be transmasc.

So first, you refuse to let trans men have a word which, frankly, they deserve as much as you. They contribute to these goddamn conversations, they contribute to this goddamn community and frankly, I don't fucking think anyone in the queer community needs to innately be a contributor in the first place.

Then, and here's the fun part, when they still need something to describe their experiences, you shut them down as if its your fucking right to define the way ANOTHER marginalized group is oppressed. Nobody that dedicated to constantly having the floor deserves it.

So what do you want them to do? Crawl in a hole and die? Never inconvenience you with the uncomfortable fact that they exist and are hurt in ways genuinely more similar to you than different?

Nobody has to answer that, because it is impossibly clear that these assholes, whether or not they'd even admit it to themselves (and quite a few say it with their whole chest), just want transmascs to become even more invisible if they can't just be wiped away.