The Transmasc Voices Project

I'd like to start a small project raising awareness of sexual assault, coercion, harassment, and other similar behaviors toward trans men and others TME (transmisogyny exempt) by people TMA (transmisogyny affected).

I find that our experiences are far too often ignored, belittled, or even used against us, and I'd like to see a future where we can speak up about what we've been through and actually be met with the support and resources we need to heal from or escape sexually coercive situations.

I want to invite trans men and others TME who feel comfortable doing so to discuss their experiences in my askbox, anonymously or not, and I will post them (unless asked not to in the body of the ask) under the tag "#transmasc voices project"

Additional important info:

Risks: There is always the possibility of the tag being used to find transmascs to harass, and this is something you may be vulnerable to if you choose to submit non-anonymously.

Deletion info: If you submit anonymously, please note that neither you or I have any way of verifying who actually sent the ask once it's up, and as such, I have no way of verifying who you are if you reach out and ask that I delete it. As I want to ensure that no bad faith actors can silence our stories, I err on the side of not deleting them once they're up, so please do keep this in mind! Additionally, please be aware that independent archiving efforts may exist, so it would be difficult to have your submission truly removed from the internet.

If you do want to be able to delete later: You can send the text of your ask in my DMs before putting it in my askbox. Then, wait to send it into my askbox until I reply to your DM. This will allow me to verify later that the post is yours if you want to have it deleted. I will not reveal your identity to anyone, but even so, please feel free to use a throwaway sideblog for additional privacy if you like.

Reblogging info: I will leave posts rebloggable unless asked not to by the asker, so anyone who wants to spread awareness should feel free to reblog.

Those who may find these posts triggering should feel free to block the tag.

I will mark all posts mature to adhere to Tumblr's guidelines.

I will sometimes add additional content warning tags to some posts where they become relevant.

This project has no planned end date. I intend to keep taking submissions as long as I'm physically able, so hopefully no one feels rushed to contribute! You're free to take your time 💙

Some reasons a submission may not be posted:

I cannot post an anonymous submission if it includes some kind of clear identifier attempting to attribute it to a specific person, unless you DM me to verify that it's you.

Similarly, I cannot post a submission that names a specific other transmasc, even if said transmasc is only mentioned in passing or is not described doing anything harmful.

I will try to queue roughly half of all submissions, while the other half I plan to post when I see them. This is to space out submissions so that hopefully nobody's gets buried. If I'm posting others but yours isn't up yet, it may just be in the queue!

Thank you 💙

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1) Does not provide space for transmascs to talk about their experience if the abuser isn't a trans woman

2) Provides space for people who are not transmascs as long as the abuser is a trans woman

3) However does not provide space for trans women even if the abuser is another trans woman

Did I get this right?

you're trying so hard to play word games to make this look contradictory, but you're just ignoring the core of what i've said.

of course i’m going to screen the submissions.

if someone sends in something that’s just mask-off transmisogyny or a thinly veiled excuse to push a bigoted agenda, it’s going straight in the trash. i’m not here to be a mouthpiece for anyone’s hate. i’m here for survivors.

and as for naming people? hard no. absolutely not.

i know exactly what it’s like to have people try to wreck your life. i spent my late teens dealing with a relentless, long-running hate campaign that turned into irl stalking. it was the most fucked up, terrifying time of my life. i wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, let alone let this blog be used to do it to someone else. if anyone tries to doxx or target someone, i’m not just going to reject the post; i’m going to report it, delete it, and make sure it’s gone. if people try to use this project as an avenue for that behavior i will do everything in my power to help make sure they get banned for it. it is unacceptable.

ook, i’m not going to lie to you, you’re not wrong.

if i opened the floodgates to everyone, the sheer volume of stories about transfem-on-transfem violence would completely drown out everything else. i’d lose the focus on what i’m trying to highlight—this specific, toxic, "secret rot" of power dynamics where transmasc people are getting pulverized, silenced, and then told we don't exist. if this space just becomes another place for that cycle to repeat, the specific voices i’m trying to pull out of the darkness are just going to get erased all over again.

and honestly? it’s fucking gutting. i know it happens. i’ve watched my friends and my lover go through the absolute worst of it, and it keeps me up at night. it’s harrowing. it’s depressing as hell. if i had to curate a feed that was just a constant, endless scroll of transfems hurting transfems, i don’t know if i’d survive it. it’s already killing me to read what i have to read.

but this project isn't supposed to be a total census of every single abuse case in the entire trans community. if i tried to make it that, it would just collapse under the weight of its own trauma.

I understand you went though something terrible, and i am truly sorry about that. But making this blog, and then continuing it after you received mass critisim from transfems, was entirely the wrong move. I've seen you talk about how it's "taboo" to talk about being assaulted by transfems, how they're seen as a category ontologically incapable of abuse, but in reality its entirely the opposite. Transfeminine people are disproportionately accused of sexual assault and rarely are those accusations ever even slightly examined or the transfem's refutations believed. Victims are far from facing a "wall of silence", as you've described. Quite the opposite, in fact. Countless trans women have been driven from the community by false accusations. I've never seen a TME victim (or perpetrator, for that matter) turned on the same way.

On the face, if this blog was just a transmasc answer to the transfem voices project, I'd be all for it. (apart from the fact you blatantly copy-pasted the outline post. Thats. Thats not good. Make your own.) But this blog has clearly become a space to talk about specifically abuse by transfems, and this became especially clear when you included cis voices. I thought this was about transmasc voices? I struggle to comprehend why you'd include cis voices, but specifically disregard transfem voices due to "limited resources". Wouldn't the logical resource cut off point be for all non-transmascs? Including, say, cis people? And I'm not saying that transfems can't be abusers. They can. Anyone can. But by focusing only on abuse by transfems, you're perpetuating the idea that all or most transfems are abusers, which is entirely untrue. It's like doing a census on crime but only focusing on crimes done by POC and not letting them participate in the census.

You claim this blog isn't in bad faith, but frankly that's really hard to believe. Even if you didn't mean to, the space you've cultivated here only perpetuates the hurt and hate our sisters face every day for just daring to exist. Any many, many transfems have made you aware of that. You haven't listened to them. But you claim to amplify transmasc voices. Maybe you'll listen to me. Please consider deactivating this blog and reading up on transfeminism. If you really are acting in good faith, the later would be especially helpful to you, i think.

PS: You say your own story is being silenced, but I'm sure if you posted it on your main, instead of making a project about it, you'd have seen nothing but an outpouring of support. It's the cultivating a specifically anti-transfem voices space thats the problem here.

You’re promising a hypothetical support that you’re simultaneously proving wouldn't exist by attacking the very platform I had to build because the "main" community tried to silence me.

You claim victims are "far from facing a wall of silence," and yet, here I am, telling you that when I spoke up on my own, I was told to shut the fuck up and stop slandering vulnerable people. You’re dismissing my actual, lived experience of being silenced because it doesn't align with your theory that trans women are the only ones getting dogpiled.

You talk about "false accusations" driving trans women out of the community. I’m not talking about false accusations. I’m talking about abuse. And the fact that you immediately jump to the "false accusation" narrative whenever someone talks about being harmed by a trans woman is exactly why survivors stay quiet. You aren't interested in the truth; you’re interested in the hierarchy of who is allowed to be a victim.

You’re confused about why I include cis voices? It’s because the abuse isn't limited to one demographic of perpetrator, but the common denominator is the way the community rallies to protect them at the expense of the survivor. I didn't "copy-paste the outline." I used a format that worked because the original project established the necessity of documenting abuse within our community. If you don't like the format, that’s your problem.

And don't you dare tell me to "read up on transfeminism" as if I’m just an uneducated, hateful kid who doesn't know the theory. I know exactly what you’re doing. You’re trying to use academic-sounding language to justify the fact that you find my survival inconvenient. You’re not "inviting me to consider" anything. You’re trying to manage my behavior because you think I’m a liability.

If you were raped by a gay man in the 1980s and you started a web page "raising awareness of sexual assaults by gay men" it wouldn't matter what your intention was. It wouldn't even matter that you were a trans man, because you'd still be shining a spotlight on evidence that can be used to validate extermination. You're giving them ammunition.

If you were in 1930s Germany, and a Jewish person robbed you, starting a tabloid about "Raising awareness of Jews stealing from non-Jews" it wouldn't matter how real the harm caused was, because you're still handing a bludgeon to the Nazis.

And whether you want to admit it, those are in fact the stakes.

Should rapists be held accountable? Yes. Obviously. And should victims of rape, regardless their rapists' demographics, be allowed to discuss their trauma and commiserate? Also yes.

But making this about SPECIFICALLY TMA people is not either of those things. It is weaponizing rape victims' trauma in order to validate and reinforce transmisogyny, and accelerate an existing genocide of trans people that is focused very pointedly on TMA trans people.

And that may not be your intent! But your intent is unimportant to the people who will use this blog most effectively against TMA people.

The entire reason mousidy's project exists is because of both how immensely rare it is to see discussion of rapes of TMA people by TME people is (because TMA people are always cast as the predator) and because it's immensely important to talk about them because of the privilege TME people have over us (for instance, that TMA people are always cast as the predator)

If you wanna continue this project, and I don't think having a place transmasc rape victims can find community is an inherently bad thing, even for ones who have been raped by TMA people, I think this would be better as a Discord server. Vet people as they come in, make sure no-one's using this in bad faith to harm transfems, have rules against doxxing or callout posts, and I think that could be a really important space.

Stop acting like you have the moral authority to tell me where I am allowed to exist. Comparing my blog to a Nazi tabloid is not a 'critique' of my praxis. It is a violent, dehumanizing way to tell me that my life, my trauma, and my voice are a danger to your political project. If you think my existence is a weapon, that says everything about your view of me and nothing about my reality.

You want me in a Discord server because you want me invisible. You want a 'vetted' space so you can control who speaks and shut it down the moment it gets too loud for your comfort. I am not putting my life and the lives of other survivors behind a paywall of your bureaucracy just so you can sleep better at night.

You are going to bat for this so hard, with such a visceral, desperate need to silence anyone who speaks out, that it genuinely begs the question: what exactly are you protecting? Who did you hurt, or who are you covering for, that makes the prospect of survivors sharing their stories such an existential crisis for you?

This is why people think this is kind of a hate rag or a psy op. There is a really serious need for transmascs to articulate their experiences, especially because it can be incredibly hard to try to make sense of your abuse (oftentimes at the hands of other men,) while also trying to make sense of your masculinity. You are, in some sense, making it harder for that project to be done in order to do this thing.

It is exhausting to have to walk people through the absolute basics of survivor-centered work, but let’s be crystal clear: the existence of one type of violence does not invalidate the reality of another.

The logic you are pushing, that we should only focus on the most statistically common perpetrators, is the exact same logic used by cisgender men to shut down conversations about sexual violence in every other space. If we applied your "well, most violence comes from X group" standard to the rest of the world, we would never be allowed to talk about anything except cisgender male violence. You aren't advocating for a "transmasc-only" space; you are advocating for the silencing of anyone whose story doesn't fit a predetermined, politically safe demographic.

You claim I "took the name" that should have been for something else. That is a total fantasy. There is nothing stopping you, or anyone else, from creating a project focused on transmasculine survivors of IPV. If you think that is a "serious need," then go do it. Start the project. Put in the work. Don't sit in my inbox telling me that I am responsible for the labor you aren't willing to do yourself.

I am not "making it harder" for anyone else to exist. I am making it harder for people like you to pretend that transfeminine people are incapable of predation. If you are so concerned about transmasculine voices, then listen to the ones that are already here in this project, instead of trying to use them as a shield to protect your own comfortable, sanitized version of reality.

I am not a "psyop" for acknowledging that abusers don't stop being abusers just because they share a marginalized identity with their victims. And frankly, the fact that you think this is a "hate rag" for documenting abuse confirms exactly why this space needs to exist. You aren't protecting transmascs. You’re protecting the status quo.

Do you believe a "white voices project" would be moral to create? How about an "abled voices project"? If Black men were implored to speak of how Black women mistreat them, would pushback be "misandry"?

Trans women are, throughout society, classified as the abusers. Told we are inherently dangerous or monstrous. Stories that confirm that get put on the news, on social media, on anywhere with a platform. Stories that reject that narrative, or even reverse it, are buried. That is why the transfem voices project was started. To reduce that disparity. So you, in asserting that you must counter trans women's attempts to be heard, are directly opposed to equal treatment.

Sorry you feel bad. Fix your heart.

It is incredibly patronizing to be told that the silence I have lived through is all in my head. You are telling me that I can just go to anyone in the real world and be believed, but you are the same person who is currently sitting here telling me that my project is just a malicious attempt to draw negative attention to trans women. If I cannot even speak about this to people who identify as part of the same community without being accused of "baiting" or being told my trauma is a political attack, how am I supposed to believe that the world is a safe place for these stories?

You think this is meaningless because it is happening on Tumblr, but this is where my community lives. This is where I have built my life. When the spaces that are supposed to be for us turn around and demand that we bury our experiences for the sake of the collective, that is not meaningless. It is a fundamental betrayal.

It is true that individual TMEs assault TMAs. Just as it is true that individual TMAs assault TMEs. All human beings are capable of sexual violence, but acting on your dissatisfaction of your perceived unfairness of the label TME by specifically trying to foster a space that is hostile to trans women and supports the narrative of them as pedophiles and predators — that is bigger than us, and does not care if you say it is “not targeting all trans women,” because it will take your support as support — claiming it is for nothing more than the bolstering of voices is unkind, and disingenuous. The systems at large in our world do not even think about the perceived unfairness of the TME label, but they do think about the next way to subjugate a trans woman by calling her a predator.

People’s issue with your blog is not just about your intent creating it — which may indeed not have been to throw the concept of the trans women under the bus — but the underlying meaning to it. There is no practical difference between two people crying out about transfem predators, one of them thinking it’s all transfems, one of them thinking it’s “just about the individuals,” because you are saying the same thing that comes across in the same way to those who read it. This blog does far less for the victims of assault you’re trying to platform than it does to reinforce society’s demeaning idea of trans women.

I’d invite you to consider what you can do in the future to support all trans people. And if you dislike the label TME so much, I’d invite you to consider the work you can do in this world to make that label unnecessary, so that we no longer need a term to describe the specific hurt that society systematically inflicts onto trans women.

It is truly exhausting to be told by a fellow trans man that my lived experience is "reactionary" and that my trauma is merely a "dissatisfaction with a label." You are stripping away the reality of what has been done to me and my peers, packaging it neatly into a political problem that you have the privilege of analyzing from a distance.

You say there is "no practical difference" between holding an individual accountable and hating a demographic. That is a dangerous, cowardly stance. By claiming that acknowledging an abuser who happens to be a trans woman is the same thing as attacking all trans women, you are the one who is actually reinforcing the idea that trans women are a monolith—a monolith so fragile that it cannot withstand the truth of a single victim’s story. If your community's safety depends on survivors staying quiet, then it is not a community I can afford to participate in.

You lecture me on "supporting all trans people" while you are actively working to isolate and silence a segment of that population—those of us who were harmed by the very people you are protecting. Why is my support for trans women contingent on my silence about my own abuse? Why is it that my trauma is the only thing standing between trans women and their safety, according to you?

You tell me to work to make the term "TME" unnecessary. Do you think I want this term to exist? Do you think I want to be defined by this? I am trying to survive the reality of the harm I’ve faced. You want me to be a better activist for a cause that is demanding I bury my pain for the sake of the collective.

I have been thinking about this. Honestly, the reason I haven't opened it up that way is because I am struggling to keep my head above water just trying to get the current project off the ground. Every time I turn around, I am being accused of starting a hate campaign, and I am already so drained by the constant policing of who is allowed to be a victim.

I see the point. Abusers don't respect identity labels, and harm is harm regardless of who is inflicting it. But I also know that if I open that door, the accusations of "bad faith" and "transmisogyny" are just going to get louder, and I don't know if I have the capacity to handle that right now.