awoooo

i wasn’t originally going to respond to this, because i tend to ignore the particularly low hanging fruit, and because it discourages more attention of this variety when they don’t get a perceived rise out of you - but i have been having thoughts about this language so i’m going to use this little crane shit covered lily pad to jump off of.

i was there when this turn of phrase started, it was a little ways into me watching a particular hub of ‘trans radical feminists’, around three or so years ago, back when i thought it was niche internet muck, back when not nearly as many trans men were speaking up for themselves, me included. i saw it start with a cis lesbian. she was close with all of these trans radical feminists, and had been caught liking a tweet about needing to come up with better slurs for trans men because zippertits wasn’t satisfying enough, and another about resorting to just calling us cuntboys. she spent a fair amount of her time going after and harassing any trans man and transmasculine person she ran across the path of. oh, and also and as well she was a niece of a billionaire, and she may have been responsible for seven deaths in her family’s hotel due to negligence, not to mention the fact that her decade or more of viscously bullying people online in the writing community got a call out written about her that won a fucking hugo award. that is where i saw “birthday boy” start. that is the kind of environment this language propagated in.

it started with a cis woman who felt she needed better slurs for us. it started with gender essentialist trans women. some known for: not considering us really trans, believing we are aligned with the patriarchy inherently because of the “gender we chose to be”, calling everyone in the community but trans women and lesbians a half dead carcass that should be left behind, calling gay trans men (and straight trans women) straggots and saying that we should all die en masse, making up a nasty nickname for a transmasculine person that referenced their sexual assault, saying in response to the transphobia we face that we are just upset at being “emasculated”, constantly saying things with the intent of “emasculating” us through infantilizing and misogynistic language. (and more!)

all of this and they are well respected community members, published transfeminists, and published fiction authors. that is who was calling us birthday boys back when it was an unknown enough term they still had to post the screen shot it came from when they used it.

they have imagined us as a small, immature and ineffectual men, who will taunt and poke and harass someone, only to feign fragility and special status when they retaliate against us.

all that is required to not be a “birthday boy” is to never center yourself as a trans man or masculine person in your own feminism. to discount every horrible thing you’ve faced at the hands of patriarchy as not being “as bad as what trans women face” and to relegate yourself to being a physical shield with no regard to how that effects you, while never once asking for anything in return. to not be a whole person but instead to be a thankless protector, while you are in just as much danger but nobody is protecting you.

i feel “birthday boy” is an important thing to address if only because it is acting as a dog whistle.

it is language that can easily be dismissed when called out, by painting the person taking issue with it as infantile for treating such a silly word as anything serious. but it is communicating something with weight, even though the words being used are deeply ridiculous.

lastly, i’d like to note that i have already seen a trans man, who was being loved and affirmed in his gender, being called a “birthday boy” on his actual birthday, and flinching when he heard it. it is ugly that the community has let things get to this point.

trans men who have socially and structurally grown up as girls spend our lives being treated as small, ineffectual, inherently immature people who can fall back on “victimhood” to avoid “consequences”.

there is nothing revolutionary about repeating that exact same pattern when we come out as trans men.

have you ever actually watched anything around pregnancy and giving birth??? Like, even so much as a 5 second audio from the process. The amount of physical trauma it carries out on the body and leaves is genuinely the subject of several horror movies. You’ll notice I haven’t even gone into specifics with this post because I’m half-convinced tumblr would ban me.

anyway I’m making this post because with the state of discourse on this site, I’m firmly convinced that if it were the other way around, and the current group of transgender and loudly transandrophobic shitheads were the ones facing the prospect of giving birth, and all the complications that come with it, and all the insanely high risk of fucking dying, and all the political climate that designates anyone with a functioning womb as a fucking incubator, and just the sheer pain and trauma of it alone, we’d never hear the end of it.

again, I cannot restate my point enough that it’s awful that people are forcibly sterilised or put through other forms of reproductive abuse that does not involve pregnancy or giving birth. This should not happen, and should be a part of the conversation around reproductive autonomy within the trans community.

This fundraiser would allow me to take a few weeks break from this intense work schedule, pay off what I owe to friends, and to manage a slightly lower work load for the month after until I can begin selling sex regularly again to increase my income once my baby becomes eligible for 2 days a week of government funded childcare. Without this I cannot make next month's rent or bills.

I hate having to share so much person information to be considered worthy of support, but at the same time I know people are wary of being scammed and would rather not donate to people with other options besides fundraising. You can read the full details of my current situation at the GoFundMe link.