our ftm experience

can i get a positivity post for trans guys/mascs who haven't changed their names and don't plan to? my given name is very traditionally feminine but i want to rock it in a guy way, think like the song "boy named sue". it's always awkward to introduce myself and see the other person recalculating their previously masculine perception of my gender when they hear my name. at lgbtq events i've been mistaken for transfem more times than i can count. i'm tall and i'm happy about that, but it just adds to the false perception of me. i like my name and i don't want to get rid of it just to conform to people's expectations. i just want to be seen as me, a guy, with my name.

i think that's really cool of you and i respect that a lot. being trans is hard enough, but not meeting expectations of what a trans person should be, being gender non-conforming or just having these little things that could potentially make other people question you even more can be especially challenging. i like that you decided to stay true to yourself and not conform, even though that makes it harder for you.

surely there are other trans guys and trans mascs that didn't change their name for whatever reasons. whether that reason is of your own choice because you like that name, or because you feel like you can't go by a male name, it's okay. your name doesn't define your gender. being trans and not conforming to gender stereotypes on top of that can be really tricky. so be extra nice to yourself. you're cool.

Equinox also tried to claim in its recent transmisogynistic rant that transfems make false accusations because of toxic masculinity. https://www.tumblr.com/coremilk/774757128066957312

"i've noticed a lot of transfems have this issue, and it's from internalized toxic masculinity. they've been taught that men raise their voices, and women stay quiet. they benefit from this still, s they keep doing it. i've also seen a lot of transfems default to throwing things or hitting people, screaming at someone unrelated, insulting people, literally making up lies and accusing people of things they haven't done, misgendering people, and so on"

Link to post - op did a wonderful job breaking down just how horrible it is but I'd like to share my thoughts too.

Jesus christ this is worse than I thought it'd be. I don't even think this is "softened" TERF rhetoric, it's straight mask-off transmisogynistic bigotry. The more I read through those screenshots the more aggravated I was getting. This is the same ethos as 'gender critical feminism'.

It even tried to use its intersex upbringing to justify using the radfem version of gender socialization theory, which personally pisses me off as someone who did experience inconsistent gender socialization due to being intersex. Gendered socialization as a sociology concept isn't akin to brainwashing like TERFs, radfems, and this fucker, seem to believe. The act of questioning your gender and out as trans in and of itself breaks the internalized roles you were previously subconsciously enforcing on yourself by believing you are cisgender. For people like me, those roles were never consistently enforced and reified by the world around me, meaning I never internalized them and truly had a false-cisgender or genuine cisgender self-conceptualization. I was looking at cisnormative gender from an outsider's perspective from a very young age. This means my gender journey varies greatly from most people who experienced CSIG (consistent societally imposed gender). THAT is the difference between CSIG & ISIG, not whatever the hell radfem bullshit this person is on about.

You can't really get more transmisogynistic than referring to transfeminine hurt and anger as "toxic masculinity" and literally blaming their "stubbornness" on having a penis?? The FUCK. A body part will never make someone behave in a certain way. Blaming a trans woman's "bullheaded" behavior on having a penis is no different from a transandrophobe blaming a trans man's "hysteria" on having a vulva. My penis isn't making me stubborn, aggressive, "bullheaded", or whatever else. It's actually very difficult to make me legitimately angry.

This is a really upsetting post that lays out a disturbingly TERFish set of beliefs regarding trans women. Legitimately. I would recommend blocking @genderqueerdykes, especially if you are transfem or adjacent.

Hello!

Okay I know this isnt a confession, but I thought I could ask anyways:

I was wondering if you had any transmasc media you could recommend me. Preferably stuff like short stories or films, but anything works! Ive been feeling a bit down and I cant think of any off the top of my head

I can firsthand recommend;

And since I'm too sleepy to think properly, have some letterboxd lists!!!

(First list is films by transmasc directors, second list is films about binary trans men.)

Also!!! Tell Me Why is a really good game with a transmasc protag. Consider getting it or watching a Let's Play on Youtube :)

Anyone else, feel free to drop recs in the comments!!!

Hey so I've heard you're the one who's coined transandrophobia and I wanted to properly get it from the main source- what is an exact and specific definition of the theory and all it entails? I recently wrote a piece on it because of a specific source and the ways I feel it failed to understand the root of oppression- however it was not by you and therefore is more likely to have been a bastardization or a flawed version of it. I want to know what the original theory is so I can better understand things and know if the issue I find is more so due to things people have thrown on top of it overtime.

Feel free to ignore this if you want, absolutely no pressure.

Hello, I am writing a book on the topic, until then, This Post is a rough run down on defining transandrophobia and some examples, I suggest you start there.

Further reading would be This Post (discussing the importance of not harrasing transandrophobic people online, since it does help combat transandrophobia), This Post (Discussing one of the many ways trans men's struggles are dismissed as lesser despite the grave violence we face), This Post (Explaining why waiting for the perfect term to define transmasculine oppression is futile), and This Post (Discussing one of the ways that transandrophobia kills trans men).

I can not, in a single post, provide an "exact and specific definition of the theory and all it entails" for transandrophobia any more than I could provide the "exact and specific definition of the theory and all it entails" for idk Marxism. It is a large and complex topic and tumblr has never been the ideal space to discuss theory due to the social desire for harassment that haunts this site.

But the short of it is "Transandrophobia is a term to describe how the fear of men (androphobia) and gender essentialist politics in certain spaces, queer and non-queer, trans and cis, effects transgender men's lives." The reason this term exists, is to provide trans men with language to discuss this specific and often shared experience of violence and rejection, in the hopes that it will encourage discussion among queer and trans circles along with prompting organization and mutual aid for trans men.