I Have No Soul, Have A Nice Day!

You don't have to be a jerk about it. The most effective yet civil way of dealing with harmful "humor" is just pretending you don't get the joke and asking them to explain. "I don't get it, what's girl math? What's a girl dinner? What do you mean by you're just a girl? Can you explain the joke to me?"

For those of us raised as girls, we were told to sit down, shut up, and look pretty. Even if someone wasn’t specifically told that, it was obvious that it was being pushed by the people, media, and social norms around us.

So when we as transmascs and trans men are told /that exact same thing/, to sit down and shut up because someone “more important” is talking, it reminds us of how we were treated when we were little girls or when we were seen as little girls.

And the “look pretty” part doesn’t get left out either. The ratio I’ve seen of “shut up and sit down” in the same sentence as something referring to our genitals (or the genitals they expect us to have) is nearly 1:1.

We have to walk on eggshells constantly. We are either seen as confused and stupid little girls or scary and privileged cis men. I’ve seen countless posts saying something along the lines of “take away the trans part from trans men and it all makes sense” which is ridiculous, obviously. We are trans.

When we step outside that perfect model of either the stereotypical 14 year old with fluffy hair and a high pitched voice or the stereotypical cis man with all the power in the world, we are critiqued at best and abused at worst. When we fit into those stereotypes, we are critiqued at best and abused at worst.

We are treated like dress up dolls that are just a bit broken. We can’t be good enough for everyone, let alone anyone. People put their own perceptions of us above our experiences and then stick their fingers in their ears when we try to tell them that maybe we’re worth listening to.

Amazon’s super bowl ad where the Alexa mocks Chris Hemsworth for being worried about giving spy software control over his entire life. Waymo’s ad with the intro “the robots are coming!” mocking people who are rightfully extremely concerned about sharing the road with, or riding in, self-driving cars.

random eridian: and now, for a few words from our newest member

It’s infuriating, because these are progressive people, and I’m fairly certain there’s a transmasculine person on their team. Occasionally they’ll throw in the obligatory “women and people who have periods” as an afterthought, but it never goes further than that, as if they haven’t connected the fact that the people being referred to in that statement are transmasculine people (and non-binary, intersex people etc.)

Like, at this point I’m just venting, because transmasculine erasure is so crazy that I can’t really wrap my head around the fact that no matter how progressive a group of people are, it’s almost guaranteed that we will be forgotten the moment any feminist discussions will be brought up.

“Pregnancy should not be tied to womanhood because some women can’t get pregnant.” And also trans men exist.

“Being a teenage girl is far more traumatic than being a teenage boy.” Have you ever spoken to a teenage trans boy.

“Men do not understand what it’s like to be taught survival methods from a young age.” “Men do not understand what it’s like to fear walking home at night.” Trans men do. Black men do as well, but we’re obviously well past an understanding of how intersectionality works.

And on and on it goes, and trans men have to sit back and stay quiet about how everything being said is something that has also affected us (and in a lot of cases, still does, because that shit doesn’t go away the second we transition). Yet, if we point it out, it’s either a quick “yeah yeah sure and trans men too” (well you didn’t even try to include us until it was pointed out to you but this is still the best case scenario) or a downright “we’re not talking about men, stop making everything about men” (no one ever makes it about trans men).