#erasure

I hate feeling like I'm a doomer about this, but the bi and ace discourse felt way more like primarily online queer discourse to me while I see transandrophobic sentiments and continued transmasc/nb erasure everywhere, not just on social media. I don't want to discount the prevalence of bi- and ace- phobia and erasure (I am bi and ace), but, by and large, anti-transmasculinity feels way more baked into feminism, and our erasure when we are explicitly relevant more normalized in society.

This isn't just Tumblr discourse, and I've seen more people recognizing it and pushing back on it (in proportion to how much I've seen anti-transmasculinity) here than I have anywhere else so far.

There is this odd phenomenon where being a transmasculinized individual one is faced with an array of exceptional examples of those like us, while being told these examples actually represent all of us. These examples are supposed to be saying something important about all of us.

Every narrative I was fed as a baby trans, was of exceptional trans men who could only talk about how much better people treated them. Being cis passing and indistinguishable from a cis man was the standard back then in 2016 when I originally came out, and remains as such today. It is disheartening to see that people have no issue with enforcing that expectation, even if "gender liberation" is supposedly important to them.

So to be a boyfaliure, a faggot, someone who faces open discrimination and gender questioning even when I can pass as being plausibly cis, someone who is talked over even when I am seen to be a man with expertise in my field... suddenly Devon Price is the standard I've simply failed to live up to. Even worse for non-white trans men who're made to feel they failed to live up to this white ideal of transmasculinity. When normative and gender conforming trans men write articles about their improved lives, better wages, endless opportunities, they receive an outpouring of support from those who wish to stroke a cisnormative image of transgender existence.

The stories from people like me, they don't feel good to read, they don't let the reader sit back and pat themselves on the back for seeing trans men as "real men" without any challenge to their preconceived notions of manhood (in this case, being a "real man" is being privileged, cis passing, and often stealth with a successful career).

For a reader who feels too challenged, these things are easy to dismiss. Perhaps the transmasc in question is simply "early in transition." If we aren't, then maybe he's just not trying hard enough. Even if "trying hard enough" is a transmedicalist and cisnormative standard which is unfair to apply to trans people, the speaker is simply lying. If they're not they're an outlier- and if they're not, then they are still somehow unimportant. It has to be okay to write transmasculine oppression off as a phase, (or as not having ever existed at all) otherwise it would mean accepting that manhood can't save one from discrimination. It would mean that trans gender doesn't map onto cis gender cleanly and neatly, that old models cannot be recycled to include all of us.

It is very easy to accept that a transmasculine transition ends in privilege and opportunity, after all, the only reason a woman would ever want to be a man is to gain privilege... right? The only trustworthy trans men, well they will tell you stories of their vast wealth of privilege after all.

The image of a trans man is a simple one: A white, able bodied man who was once a lesbian and is now straight, who has taken Testosterone, gotten top and bottom surgeries, presents masculine 100% of the time, has a good paying job, and is only affected by trans bills in the sense that it would mean he would have to go to the bathroom in a different place, or he might need to fight harder for his prescription. There is nothing unique about this, his relationship to masculinity and femininity are the expected ones. He is essentially a cis man who used to be a girl.

As a result, trans male oppression does not need to be considered a complex interaction between societal expectations of assigned femininity in contrast with current masculine identity, combined with the act of transition and nature of trans identity. No, it can just be simplified to trans = oppressed, and man = privilege. There is no need for deeper though.

When a trans man is feminine online, it can just be simplified to the fact that this person is not actually a man. Trans men are simple creatures who yearn to be masculine 100% of the time. They are only trans enough when they present in this simple way.

No, this "cis" male character cannot be a trans man because that character's story is a complex exploration of how the expectations of masculinity are suffocating. Any other trans headcanon is okay, but trans men never experience masculinity in the context of forced expectation, because the lives of trans men are simple, and for them, masculinity is wholly good all the time.

There is no need to specifically platform trans men on this topic, because their relationship to it is uncomplicated. There is no need to say "especially trans men" when talking about sex work, or reproductive rights, or discrimination, or kink, or violence, or exploitation, because transmasculine experience is a simple one that can be explained in a single footnote against the other, more unique and kaleidoscopic experiences of all other gender experiences. Trans men can be marginalized in a literal sense because they are uncomplex, and unimportant because everything they go through, every else goes through in a much more vivid way.

I feel slightly insane just having to type this out, but this is rhetoric you inevitably come across if you discuss transfeminism on Tumblr.

The mainstream, cissexist understanding of transmasculine people is the Irreversible Damage narrative (one that's old enough to show up in Transsexual Empire as well) of transmascs as "misguided little girls", "tricked" into "mutilating themselves". It is a deliberately emasculating and transphobic narrative that very explicitly centers on oppression, even if the fevered imaginings misattribute the cause. As anyone who's dealt with the gatekeeping medical establishment knows, they are far from giving away HRT or even consults with both hands, and most transfems I know have a hard enough time convincing people to take DIY T advice, leave alone "tricking" anyone into top surgery.

Arguably, the misogyny that transmasculine folks experience is the defining narrative surrounding their existence, as transmasculinity is frequently and erroneously attributed to "tomboyish women" who resent their position in the patriarchy so much they seek to transition out of it. This rhetoric is an invisiblization of transmasculinity, constructed deliberately to preserve gendered verticality, for if it were possible to "gain status" under the sexed regime, its entire basis, its ideological naturalization, would fall apart.

Honestly, the actual discussions I see are centered around whether "transmisogyny" is a term that should apply to transmascs and transfems alike. While I understand the impetus for that discussion, I feel like the assertion that transmisogyny is a specific oppression that transfems experience for our perceived abandonment of the "male sex" is often conflated with the incorrect idea that we believe transmasculine people are not oppressed at all. This is not true, and we understand, rather acutely, that our society is entirely organized around reproductive exploitation. That is, in fact, the source of transfeminine disposability!

I know I'm someone who "just got here" and there is a history here that I'm not a part of, but so much of that history is speckled with hearsay and fabrication that I can't even attempt to make sense of it. All I know is that I, in 2024, have been called a revived medieval slur for effeminate men by people who attribute certain beliefs to me based on my being a trans woman who is also a feminist, and I simply do not hold those views, nor do I know anyone who sincerely does.

If you're going to attempt to discredit a transfeminist, or transfeminism in general, then please at least do us the courtesy of responding to things we actually say and have actually argued instead of ascribing to us phantom ideologies in a frankly conspiratorial fashion. I also implore people to pay attention to how transphobic rhetoric operates out in the wider world, how actual reactionaries talk about and think of trans people, instead of fixating so hard on internecine social media clique drama that one enters an alternate reality--a phantasm, as Judith Butler would put it.

Speaking of which--do y'all have any idea how overrepresented transmascs are in trans studies and queer theory? Can we like, stop and reckon with reality-as-it-is, instead of hallucinating a transfeminine hegemony where it doesn't exist? I'm aware a lot of their output isn't particularly explicative on the material realities of transmasculine oppression despite their prominence in the academy, but that is ... not the fault of trans women, who face extremely harsh epistemic injustice even in trans studies.

The actual issue is how invisiblized transmasculine oppression is and how the epistemicide that transmasculine people face manifests as a refusal to differentiate between the misogyny all women face, reproductive exploitation in particular, and the contours of violence, erasure, and oppression directed at specifically transmasculine people.

You will notice that is a society-wide problem, motivated by a desire to erase the possibilities of transmasculinity, to the point of not even being willing to name it. You will notice that I am quite familiar with how this works, and how it's completely compatible with a materialist transfeminist framework that analyzes how our oppression is--while distinct--interlinked and stems from the same root.

India is home to one of the world’s largest and most visible transgender communities who have shaped centuries of culture and resilience. In 2014, the India Supreme Court affirmed that gender identity in all its forms is a fundamental right. In 2019, that principle was written into law.

This is not just a trans issue. The proposed 2026 amendment bill threatens non-binary and gender-diverse people too.

At its core, it removes the right to self-identify. Replacing it with a system where a state-appointed medical board determines whether someone can be legally recognised as transgender. Identity, instead of being personal and self-defined, is proposed to become something that needs approval.

The definition of who qualifies is also narrowed. Many people who currently identify as trans or gender-diverse risk being excluded from legal recognition altogether: okaying trans women from traditional communities but not trans men.

Legal identity affects everything from access to healthcare, documentation, employment, housing, and personal safety. For those undergoing or seeking gender-affirming care, this disruption is worrying. For others, the risk is being erased from systems that govern daily life.

There are also provisions framed around “misuse” including penalising the act of “forcing someone to be transgender.” While positioned as protection, language like this, without clear evidence or safeguards, can be interpreted broadly. Historically, that ambiguity has not favoured marginalised communities.

Reversing a decade of progress, India’s highest court recognised self-identification as intrinsic to dignity and autonomy in 2014. This amendment challenges that foundation, shifting authority from the individual to the state.