#queer masculinity

nonbinary people on T.

nonbinary people with visible facial hair.

nonbinary people who are jacked asf.

nonbinary butches.

nonbinary bears.

nonbinary men.

nonbinary people AMAB who aren't "trying" to be feminine.

I have always held the cowboy close to my fantasies. He represented the complete embodiment of manhood and the rugged outdoors. "El Cowboy" was the photo project that would document that great western fantasy. I wanted to see if I could pass for this masculine icon. I forgot that my breasts were a part of me, this space allowed me to cross into a space where the gender line no longer existed. Sexuality and gender are even more fluid than I had ever imagined. I am genderless. I transcend gender. I wanted to present the viewers with an ambiguous subject at first. Allowing them time to ponder on whether who they were looking at was actually male or female. More importantly I wanted to challenge their element of desire. I wanted to disrupt their comfortable voyeuristic space, provoke them, force them to ask themselves whether or not they found the subject in the photograph desirable. We are socialized to make gender the most important factor in determining who we will be attracted to, who we will have sex with, how we will behave, and so on.

My masculinity is the tall trees, flowing rivers, grass in spring and leaves in fall.

When there's lateral aggression by other queer people being transandrophobic, could some of our concerns that we don't feel welcome due to our acquired masculinity be meeting the belief of others that we have nothing to complain about, because *surely* trans men already had a leg-up in the queerness department?

So when queerness is exclusively seen as feminine, this is a problem it creates. It means that transmasculinity is dismissed because surely we already had an "in" based on presumed agab and *surely* don't need any help or support. When in reality we are often expelled from queerness when our masculinity is seen as incongruous to it.

I only just woke up so brain is soup. But this explains why some transandrophobic trans women have said things along the lines of "trans men are privileged over trans women" because our presumed agabs are seen as an unfair advantage when it comes to access to the queer community. If queerness = femininity, then the logic is those afab have an edge over those who weren't. But this is predicated on a misunderstanding of queerness in the first place. When queer masculinity isn't allowed to exist, neither is transmasculinity. The whole conception/stereotype of queerness is flawed and leads to this.