We know that transfems and trans women are hypervisible and are often seen as the “default” when people talk about trans people. And I’ve noticed that because of that, transmascs and trans men are not only forgotten from very real issues but also from what is considered as trans culture as a whole.

When people talk about trans people making art, science etc, it’s almost always transfems and trans women only.

And I’d like y’all to reflect on that and remember that transmascs and trans men have also contributed, and to include them when you talk about trans people’s contribution to the world.

A few example:

Music: Hyperpop is a trans subculture, and we love Sophie and 100gecs, but don’t forget about Dorian Electra, and, more recently, Tobre.

Science: there's a lot of names here but pleasd do not forget about Ben Barres, neurobiologist, the first openly trans scientist in the US Academy of Science. Alan L. Hart, who was a pioneer in X-ray photography used for turberculosis detection, and the first trans man to receive an hysterectomy.

And regarding queer history, please, for the love of God, remember Stormé DeLarverie. I still consistently see Marsha P. Johnson named as the one who started the Stonewall Riots when she has said multiple times that it wasn't her. It was most likely Stormé DeLarverie, a genderqueer butch and male impersonator.

I’m not trying to be bitchy, it’s just important that we do the work because cis people sure as hell won’t.

Don't get me wrong, I know we're still far away, collectively, from the end of fatphobia and that most of people treat these women like shit on the daily and/or fetishize them disgustingly.

But it seems like being a shithead to people and insulting their bodies is ok, especially when it comes to men in their 40s or 50s. As a transmasc person who is likely to have a receding hairline and a dad belly, because genetics, I really wish that it was not a trend to make fun of that because you don't know who reads and hears you. In the same way I had trans brothers say that they were afraid to call themselves men, I had some who were terrified of growing old as men because they were scared of having the appearance of a grown man.

I can't tell you the amount of times I heard transfems say “thank god for HRT, imagine balding and having a beer belly ? Ewww” and everyone be like “yas queen” (most of the times these situations didn't happen in a little group of

people behind closed doors, to be clear, it was during trans meetings at our local LGBTQIA center where transmascs and men were there too).

Well, obviously you didn't want that for yourself and I'm glad you won't live that but please, keep that for when you're with your friends not when there's people

who will, maybe, grow to be like you described in horrendous words who can

HEAR YOU.

I'd rather be old and wrinkly with a beer belly and balding, but alive.

And believe me when I say I'm terrified of growing old. But if I have the chance to do so I will take it.

I'd rather grow into a skin that's not conventionally attractive than not grow at all.

And even then, fuck it, bald people are hot, bellies are hot, gray/white hairs are hot. If I ever become a gray bearded dude with tattoos and piercings I'm gonna look cool as fuck.

I'm sorry but I'm sick of hearing “we need more older queer people representions!!!!!” and then I see how you talk about older people in general like ??? It doesn't seem like you want older queers to be seen apart from the types you deem as attractive.

Maybe you're one of the reasons why older queers don't put themselves out there.

You can be as old as you want, it doesn't become less hurtful to see fuckers find your body disgusting, no matter their age.

It's something I've been wondering about for a while. I was definitely a queer kid, as I was openly bisexual from quite a young age, but I don't feel like I was a trans kid. I see by inner child as a little girl, being one and being seen as one played a huge part of my experience as a child and teenager, and the way I was socialized was very conservative "future wife" like.

If I felt and was seen like a tomboy from time to time, I always was "corrected" by people to not be this way in very harsh ways.

But I used to like being a girl, and I had absolutely no idea that things could be different in any way. I suffered not being able to play with my boyfriends anymore when we started going through puberty, and boys and girls started not engaging with each other unless for romantic interests (or later, sexual). I dreaded being sexualized while seeing it as "something to be proud of" because my parents taught me that.

But when I try to ask myself, "Maybe it was dysphoria," or any early signs of me being trans, it just doesn't seem to fit.

To me, child me and teenage me were separate people, early adult me who was confused in their gender and started to know things about transness was someone else, and then I came to be as a result of just life.

If I started drinking and getting high, it was precisely because I sat with them for so long it started eating me alive.

Like doctor, I'm traumatized and autistic, you can't just tell me to sit with the feelings. IT. WON'T. WORK.

My glass of emotions doesn't empty itself every night. It stays half full. If I keep pouring and pouring, it overflows, and the relapses are so worse than what I would've done if I didn't just try to go through the feelings instead of making it more bearable.

That's the issue I have with most addiction therapy. They think all you ever do is run away. It's like they do see that substance abuse, self-harm, or any form of harmful addiction we pick up to stay the fuck alive. My brain is a hornet nest that everything, every second of every day, pokes with a stick. So excuse me if sometimes I need a time out from it. It's not always "the easy way out". At times, it's the only one that doesn't mean disappearing.

And if it's the thing that keeps my heart beating for a few more hours, it'll have to do.

I tried breathing exercises, medication for anxiety AND cravings, AND neuroleptics that turned my mind into mush, meditation, exercise, going out to walk, vitamin supplements, yoga, stretching, hypnosis, cardiac coherence. Nothing works.

At the end of the day this shit became a full time job I kid you not. How can I live if I spend hours everyday to JUST function ? What if I funtion better while using ?

But there's no options in my case, you're just seen as a lost cause and left to rot because everyone think that you, inevitably, will.

In all the years I've spent going back and forth with my gender, being sure one day and unsure the next about how I wanted to present, if I wanted to be more fem or masc, if I wanted to be neither of them, there's one thing that I never wished: I never wished to be born cis.

There's something so magical in being trans. To me it's like a never ending childlike wonder of myself and others. I see my body as a white canvas I can do anything with and as a playground for me to explore and find secrets at every turn. It's shedding so many times that I had hundreds of silhouettes and I'm not even 30. It's seeing the most deepest and honest smiles when you hang out with your peers, and they're fully themselves and you are fully yourself even if it's just for one moment.

Being trans is being more naked than ever. My understanding of my own flesh at its core like I'm dissecting it once a year is so whole and complete. Noticing the patterns, the intricate map of my skin, how it grows and stretch with every change even well before HRT as I was practicing new poses and expressions and clothes.

I don't see myself as a flower, I see myself as a whole garden, with bees and critters everywhere, bursting with life in the warmth of the sun under a sky as blue as the cleanest seas.

Regarding the way others see me, mind you, I always was, and I mean ALWAYS, all my life, seen as a freak.

Try to picture this, even tnough you maybe can because this is the story of a whole bunch of us: growing up as a goth, queer and undiagnosed autistic girl, in a little shitty town, the last child of a family of disabled and neurodivergent folks that everyone saw as a family of, well, freaks. The teachers at school knew your brother who was bullied, and your sister who always caused troubles. They don’t know which of these paths you’re going to take but they sure as hell don’t like you. And the only other queer kids you know are a couple of girls who’d chugg down vodka before class in middle school because they were not accepted at home and bullied during recess.

My first queer relationship, also in middle school, was the typical “I loved her to the moon and back but she only wanted to experiment” and it tore down my soul. It took me years to recover from this. I think that, apart from my longest relationship to date, I never put that much of myself into someone I loved. But she was just goofing around and I mean, fair, we were kids, but man did it hurt. I resented her for years after. Now I just hope she’s happy and doing the job she always dreamed of doing.

Anyways, all that to say that I was used to being seen as an outcast. I hated that for years and tried and tried again and again to fit in. It doesn’t work. Because this in not the answer. Remember when I said that my family members were always all disabled ? My father espacially was physically disabled (and probably also autistic but undiagnosed), and he’s still to this day one of the most ableist person I’ve ever met. He knew his kids weren’t “normal”. He fought tooth and nails for us to fit in. Because that’s how he survived. But despite it all, it never worked. Because you can’t force your way into society’s standards.

I never felt more free than when I just gave up trying to. If I was going to be seen as weird anyways, might as well go all the way. Dress as I please, date who I wanted (another story for another time but it didn’t go as planned), enjoy the shit I enjoyed, unapologetically. And guess what ? It stopped the bullying. Because I gained confidence in myself and most of all, pride. I grew proud of being an outcast, so much so that people just started to be like “well, they’re like that anyways” and left me the fuck alone.

I’m rambling lmao but I think it’s important to be aware that nobody will live your life for you. Being your weird self, it’s so hard, butn so rewarding. More rewarding than anything. You’ll start making new relationships based on you TRUE self, you’ll go all the way for your passions, and trust me, you’ll be more free than anyone who bent themselves to fit in the mold and still need to painfully stretch their limbs everyday to keep the act on.

So imagine this: you're a young teenager in need of validation. You see other people your age put photos of themselves on social medias and get tons and tons of compliments. You try your shot, post a picture of yourself and get like… 2 likes. And no comments about how pretty you are, just these 2 likes.

Then, you discover Twitter. You post a new pfp of yourself and since you see that it's a thing people do, you post with the hashtag “new pfp”. You go eat lunch with your family. Then you come back online with hundreds of notifications from people making fun of your appearance and calling you ugly. The only “nice” ones are telling you, “respectfully”, to delete the post, for your own “good”.

A few years later, you're transitionning and you see all the support trans people get online in some places. You're an active member of a discord server. You gather up the guts to post a picture of yourself in the designated server. It gets 2 to 5 “🏳️‍⚧️” reactions. The people before and after you get wonderful compliments and praises.

You leave the server feeling humiliated and sad.

And I wish I had advices to give you about how to cope with this. I don't. I studied cinema and photography for years, trying to make flattering pictures of myself, longing for the reactions everyone seemed to get but me. It never worked.

Even in designated spaces it never worked. I seemed to fail to get what to do with myself in pictures. No amounts of filters, poses, angles seemed to cut it. I'd never get one compliment out of anyone.

How do you build any self worth when people look at you only to say how you could improve your looks ? How you could improve your image? How you could be a good product™️ ?

Even dolled up in drag, all I ever gor was that my looks were “interesting”. This isn't a fucking nice thing to say. A book is interesting. A movie is interesting. A human can be, but hell, when I heard what people said about other performers I had to ask myself why the FUCK all I got was that.

Now you know part of why I play the part of the freak.

I'll burst the hell out of your bubble. If I can't be beautiful I'll be so rancid I'll make you want to puke. No, “interesting”, “brave”, “nice” won't cut it. If I can't get you to admit how pretty my being can be I will be repulsive. I will seize you by the throat and take you out of the comfort bubble you worked so hard to build. I will burry your head in the dirt of me, in the dust of my soul until you can't breathe anything but what I inspire to be, until you choke on your own tears and have nothing left in your sobbing lungs than the ashes of the selves I burnt for your little comfort, your little cabins made out of my flesh and bones. I'll hold your skull down and yell “What's beauty, bitch ?! Do you not like my belly rolls ?! Does my fat not feed you ?! Do you feel at ease now ?! Do I need to spoon myself into bite sized pieces you can digest ? Are you hungry for my rotten fruit ?”

I will spread my ugliness so far it's the only thing you'll see when you finally raise your pathetic symmetrical face.

I will shit on your perfect mouth until it's the only thing you can smell.

I will piss in your cookie cutter boxes untin you have to take swings of it when you try to fit in, your mouth dirty with the rancid liquid, forced to swallow bits of it down in every breath you ever take.

> Interesting, I scroll to read

> She talks about over representation of trans men in media compared to trans women

> Use as an example a political event composed of only cis queer men

> Can't name a single fucking trans man in local political events (spoiler: there are none)

> Says she puts CIS queer men and trans men in the same basket

Okay screw you I'm so done.

Shout out to alt people who can't have the look they want because of sensory issues and/or health issues (long hair are too much/you can't grow hair, accessories are too heavy/too loud/not possible for various reasons...)

Shout out to alt people who can't wear make up for sensory and/or health reasons.

Shout out to alt people who look "cheap".

Shout out to alt people who can't partake in concerts, festivals, or any events because of sensory and/or health reasons (but for the love of god, make events accessible PLEASE).

Shout out to alt people who can't attend events because they struggle with addictions and raves, festivals, concerts are triggers.

Shout out to alt peole who are struggling with addictions. Period.

Shout out to alt people who don't fit in the body standards. BIPOC, fat, disabled, mentally ill, everyone.

Shout out to alt people who just got into in at ANY AGE and are met with gatekeeping. I love you.

Shout out to alt people who are poor and can't afford any of the stuff we see displayed on social medias.

I love you all. I wish communities were more welcoming. But you are as passionate as anyone and you deserve to find community anywhere.