“You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double knot your shoe laces. ”

As much as I love drawing doodles and simplified figures, I missed doing full illustrations, feels like it's been a while.

Trojans!! Can't believe I hadn't drawn them fully yet... So, here's my take for the four of them, I guess.

I went swimming with a friend and their family and their 10 year old sister said "my dad told me you were mutilated"

A few months ago I ended up having a very long talk with a friend of a friend. She told me that she'd never really spoken to a trans man before, the only trans people she knew were trans women. There was a point, after the third time I reminded her that I was a man, that she just sorta of slotted me into her mental box of "man", and I could tell that happened because after that point she started trying to explain things to me as if I was a cis man.

I categorically do not "pass" and likely never will. I'm very short, my hips are prominent because I'm fat, I keep my hair long, charitably I could be said to have a baby face, I have D-cups and cannot bind due to spinal problems. To the majority of cis people I do not "look like a man".

But for the rest of the conversation I had with this friend of a friend I had to keep reminding her of how other people are going to view me, because there was no room in her mental idea of "man" for a man who is not treated as one. This was not malicious on her part, she was very nice to me, and I believe her when she says she wants to support trans people. I do not think she was lying when she told me how horrified she was to learn about how her trans woman friends were treated.

She said she was envious of me going out alone and how I need to understand that's a facet of male privilege and I asked her to look at me and explain why I'd be any safer. She was shocked to learn that I've been catcalled, been assaulted, that I regularly get spoken down to by cis men, shocked to learn I don't have a single transmasc friend who hasn't. She couldn't understand that I'm going to be treated the same by misogynists as any fat cis woman who doesn't wear makeup. There was no room in her feminism for trans men, because there was no room in her understanding of gender for men who are not cis.

You face sexual abuse, workplace discrimination, medical discrimination, and violence

It never gets reported, or is lumped in with the statistics of a different oppressed group.

Data and “proof” regarding your discrimination is spotty or nonexistent as best, so nobody advocates for you or talks about it in the media

Other LGBT+ people don’t personally hear about it, so they claim it doesn’t exist/they have it worse while dismissing and denying your personal experiences.

The discrimination continues to happen unopposed

This isn’t me arguing that hypervisibility is any better. It goes without saying that the hypervisibility of certain groups (Trans women, gay men, etc) contributes to their oppression, and has made things incredibly dangerous for them right now.

I just want people to acknowledge the dangers of invisibility as well.

Trans men, intersex people, nonbinary people, asexual people… There are so many groups in the LGBT+ community who get left behind and ignored while society tries to eradicate us.