iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I’m always wondering how we cross this bridge when there are so many people who seem uncomfortable with crossing it entirely. No matter what particular language you use to discuss it. I think the only thing we can do is talk about it anyway, even if language particulars make some people feel weird.

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I don’t think it’s misgendering to frame transmasc issues under the framework of misogyny, or drawing similarities to what women go through (both cis and trans, in different ways!). But there are many who do have this hangup, including other trans guys.

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There’s just a lot to it that I’m constantly thinking about (please excuse my hyperfixating a bit 🤣). I feel like transgender issues require nuance in order to have real conversations. But many people, including trans people ourselves, have hangups w/ dysphoria or misgendering (understandable).

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When people hear “masculinity” they generally only consider cishet masculinity, which is seen as inherently negative for reasons that certainly make sense. But it feels like there’s no room for nuance. I think this is also why nonbinary people AMAB are in that same weird twilight zone as we are.

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Because gender empowerment with any proximity to masculinity makes people uncomfortable. Because people don’t think about trans men or even marginalized men more broadly. I’d say even masc women can be left out of this picture if they sway TOO masc, like there’s a line they shouldn’t cross.

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But it does apply! Conceptually. Cis women can find a sense of empowerment that comes with identifying with sisterhood and all that that entails. That’s where trans guys/mascs are left out of the picture. We’re more marginalized than cis women but we lack any sort of gender empowerment.

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A lot of us also grew up using feminism and the language of feminism to frame our gendered struggles. We are well aware (most of us, I’d say) what our place is under patriarchy — and that is lesser. When we transition, it feels like we lose access to that language because it no longer applies.

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That pressure starts once transition becomes a consideration. It’s framed both externally and internally like a choice with a lot of weight. That’s where you get a lot of that TERF rhetoric about how we’re ruining our bodies/lives that otherwise had value, but post-transition no longer do.

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Something I’ve noticed is that a lot of us do have this anxiety pre-transition and worry that we’ll become a bad man. Which is odd, because I never worried about being a “bad woman” before, it was just something I felt I wasn’t (a woman/girl, that is).

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I am always trying to understand the “why” of it. There’s a very weird pressure that comes in from all sides. Including within. Both external, internal, and from everywhere. Not only do I think it’s an interesting discussion, but one that really needs to be had more often.

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Nuance on the intersection of being trans male/masc is lost often I think, because it makes people uncomfortable. This includes trans male/masc people too, & the reason I know this is ‘cuz I internalized a lot of that and struggled with it myself — and I also observe it coming from inside the house.

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And that’s a result of patriarchy too, the fact that it’s divided as such. “Women’s services” being like, this separate category that seems to only service cis women but exclude trans people from all sides, and I think it’s also a misconception that trans men are often included (usually not!).

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That’s the part that really confuses me. I’ve honestly found it easier to discuss those issues with cis people by using that as a vantage point. Like we go through much of the same stuff cis women do but with extra layers to it. Ex: Being denied services for women’s health on the basis of being men.

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Something about “trans men often have experiences that every cis woman has experienced” just breaks people’s brains for some reason. It really feels like double-erasure in a weird way

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I’ve never gotten tested (well as an adult bc it’s manageable for now and also insurance premiums go up sometimes!) but it’s so weird looking back as a kid where I would physically hurt myself, then my mother would pick up the tics as well and the doctor was like “idk nothing going on there” lol

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I think it’s because I was mostly “well-behaved” I guess. But yeah there’s a lot of medical misogyny that people AFAB have to deal with from a young age, but talking about those issues seems to make other people uncomfortable because it might imply the opposite (it doesn’t haha).

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And oh my gosh yeah, same hat here with the late autism and ADHD diagnosis. I was also tested as a kid!! And they gave me a diagnosis for sensory processing disorder instead, basically like “we see a lot of signs of neurodivergence but we don’t want to give you that label”.

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It’s literally the most blatant form of like… Classic Transphobia, but weirdly I think people are much less likely to notice when they perpetuate it specifically with masc/male aligned trans people. I have no idea why that is, because to me it’s just as blatant.

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I hate it! It’s just a different form of “hate someone before transition bc they don’t fit it and hate them after transition bc you are transphobic/misogynistic” but this time the call is coming from inside the house! It makes you resentful. There’s no reason for it.

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Of people who are AFAB and now do not present as cis are dealing with delayed autism and ADHD diagnoses or acceptance too! I remember being told that my self harming motor tics and hypersensitivity as a kid was normal??? Because I was a smart girl that meant I couldn’t be neurodivergent. Just wild.

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I hate how much of the weird “we must protect the dolls and but hate trans men discourse” ends up being some sort of gotcha when it really just reinforces misogyny (when a FTM person used to be a girl/woman) and tries to disregard the real pain trans men hold. Like what is the point! Also the number

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And I think yeah, people who aren’t us are allowed to discuss and theorize about us. But you should talk to more of us too before you form opinions on us based on what someone who isn’t us says. That’s all I think lol. Novel idea, I know.

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And I apologize for talking about this sort of thing often, but my reason for doing so is because I continue to see these common misconceptions about our experiences be… the commonly accepted vantage point where people who aren’t us discuss and theorize about what our lives are like.

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Perhaps because I’m autistic and I pass as more of a kid than a full-grown man, I’m still talked down to by people a lot of the time. I don’t think I’m the exception here either. But yeah I digress. In basically all aspects of my life, I lost more privilege upon transitioning. Wild concept but true.

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And this is coming from someone who has examined the angle of “do I have male privilege now?” in his own life. The *only* form of this I can see in my own life (and I’m being generous) is that maybe people talk to me a lil different when they don’t know I’m trans. But even that is not so different.

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On top of that (this is something barely anyone talks about???) there are certain privileges we simply can never have access to because we’ve been stamped with that female identifier at birth. This is not something we can “escape” upon transitioning — this is why TERFs think we transition though.

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Maybe it’s just because I’m autistic but that’s the thing too. People don’t usually think about these intersections of marginalization when it comes to trans guys either. Being autistic and trans, being black and trans, whatever that may be — but these are our real lives, we’re not just a concept.

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This kind of rhetoric made me more susceptible to gendered violence — being more susceptible to it, and internalizing it as something non-violent entirely (I think part of why it took me so long to recognize I was being SA’d by a former roommate was because I thought… I was less vulnerable to that).

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To experience MORE gendered violence after coming out and transitioning — I discovered I’m not the exception there for trans guys, but more of the norm. That violence came to me as a shock because I had this expectation baked into me that I would be suddenly more privileged post-HRT, not less.

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