Transmen need to be a lot more visible.
I feel like as an enby I benefit a lot from hiding under the “tomboy” label and a lot of transmen just pass more easily because while it’s harder to create a penis through surgery, testosterone makes the rest of the immediately visible changes more easily vs estrogen can’t change facial bone structure or un-deepen a voice.
There’s also a society wide stigma not even necessarily about women but more about femininity. It’s why you also see stigma against men expressing emotion and wearing clothing and engaging in hobbies that are traditionally “feminine.” Often it’s not even really women we have a problem with; it’s the whole concept of femininity, no matter who it’s applied to.
Both of these things make trans women a lot more visible in the public eye, but that also makes it easier for TERFs to act like this is a feminism issue. That would be (a little) harder if we were putting more transmen on the cover of GQ. Equality, y’know?
This puts a lot of blame on trans men while simultaneously perpetuating the erasure we are constantly facing.
I am a trans masc enby, but I have been on full dose testosterone for a decade, have had top surgery and a full hysterectomy. I am still routinely misgendered because T did not lower my voice enough to pass and I do not have enough facial hair, so people assume I am a woman with a hormone difference. This misgendering happens in person and over the phone, and my experience in this is fairly common among trans men.
On top of that, any attempt we make to be more visible is often silenced because we are accused of taking space away from trans women. People will say ‘trans people’ and then talk about an experience that is pretty exclusive to trans women, and if we point it out, we are told to enjoy our male privilege and shut up. When we tried to put more focus on a trans man in sports who is being ostracized in a similar way (see Mack Briggs, who was forced to compete on the girls teams), then we are told that it “isn’t the same” as what trans women face, and that we should be grateful for the fact that his plight isn’t getting attention.
We face the exact same kinds of issues that trans women face, but with almost none of the support. We have to fight to even be seen in most trans friendly spaces, which usually end up being more akin to “women and femme” spaces where masculine trans people are told that we aren’t welcome because we make people uncomfortable. Then, when we try to make our own spaces, we are accused of excluding trans women and being misogynists.
All that to say: stop blaming trans men for the abuses that cis people perpetuate. We have our own struggles, and while we stand with the rest of the trans community, it is not our job to put ourself in more harm’s way to benefit others. We are here, we have always been here, and we would really appreciate people recognizing that it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows for us, and that we face just as many issues with a fraction of the support.
I’m a binary trans man. I haven’t expierenced the things that you’re talking about. I definitely agree that there’s a transfemme-centric point of view both on Lemmy and the wider trans discourse, but I have confronted that many times and people have always been open to listen to my expierence as a trans man.
I’m sorry that people have treated you unkindly and invalidated your expierences in the past. That sucks. It doesn’t mean that’s a universal thing that trans men expierence, though.
We need to stop erasing the existence of trans men =/= blaming trans men. You’re getting reactionary about something you don’t need to. It’s probably a trauma response, you’ve probably been blamed before. You’re not being blamed here and you need to stop looking for enemies within the trans community because it makes it much harder to fight the external ones.
It’s pretty crazy how transphobes (and especially TERFs) will use the idea that society hates feminity and accuse transmascs of transitioning to escape those constraints and stigma (ignoring the fact that being trans puts a lot of stigma on you). All the while accusing trans women of doing it to prey on women and other ridiculous accusations. Can’t win either way, in their eyes.
