Thread by @LiamDel

I want to talk about what I call compounding female socialisation for transmasc folk. As always, I speak from my own experience and don't invite comparison with transfemmes - our lived experiences don't negate eachother. Always nonbinary inclusive, always speaking calmly.

https://twitter.com/stagrunner/status/1086406076734586880

This thread and all the replies within is something I see repeated over and over among transmascs - warily suggesting we face issues specific to us like any minority does, expecting a lot of pushback for our lived experience because we're seen =to cis men.

This pushback comes from within the trans community, the queer and LGBTIQ community, from trans allies and T*RFs and people who hate us. "You're men, stop complaining, you have it so easy" eyerolls abound.

So I'm going to delve into why this matters to us+ my personal experience

"You have a lot of rules, don't you?" asked my psych.
"No?? I don't have any rules."

Psych:

My psych and I talked A LOT about how I put everyone's needs before mine, how I am constantly empathising with everyone around me all at once no matter what is going on in my life, how I could be in the most serious situation and still drop everything to look after someone else.

I would go to work, come home and immediately and literally crash into bed shoes on and all, and wake up in time for work again. Every day. I wouldn't make dinner or brekkie and just have lunch. My brain was doing a lot of extra work somewhere to the point of total exhaustion.

I was literally empathising so deeply and strongly with people around me, anticipating people's needs AND trying to meet those needs all on my own, spidering out to consider their home life and family's needs and and AND AND ANDANDAND - all at once, all the time, my whole life.

My psych would ask if this taxed me at all.
"Not at all!"
They asked if I ever felt annoyed that I did so much for others, with no return.
"Not at all!"
They asked if I ever got annoyed when someone was actually an asshole to me.
"Not at all! I bet they've had a really hard day!"

This sort of behaviour will come as no surprise to most women. Its a hallmark of feminism, the fact that anyone deemed female is trained from birth to put themselves last in the order of care, to BE the carer to their own detriment. To ignore your own needs, however serious.

And its SO much deeper than that: If you're not ignoring your needs, you're totally without needs to begin with. You must be quiet. You must never speak up. You must never be rude, never assert yourself, never frown, Always Smile And Always Be Nice - Especially To Men. Etc. Etc.

These are often taught to us as Rules Of Life. I had millions of tiny and large rules I absolutely had to follow, or else I was an asshole of the highest degree. I felt that so strongly, I grew highly upset when my psych tried to tell me there were other options.

But more insidious: When you negate your own needs long enough, your body stops telling you you have them. What's the point, you're not listening anyway. I wasn't able to connect with most emotions, because they'd be plastered over with NICENESS and SMILE LOTS and I'M SO SORRY!!

Worse, I had the assertive skills of an 11 year old, at age 30. This is where hardcore female socialisation keeps you. "Oh I'm so sorry!! My fault! No, you're fine! Please keep doing what you're doing, don't worry about me, its nothing!"
I literally thought assertiveness=asshole.

I want to underline that. I literally, completely, believed that if someone was physically and purposely harming me and I said "No/Stop", I was a mega asshole and deserved extreme shame. No other option had been given to me, I had never had the chance to do otherwise.

Everything else you've heard about female socialisation, the things that women in our society are expected to do and the things feminism stands for, applies as well.

With all you've seen above, do your feelings/empathy change when the person this happens to is a trans man?

That is our BASELINE for this thread. Now let's get into the compounding part.

I've seen the argument from T*RFs and feminists and other trans folk, that the very second a transmasc realises he is transmasc, he is equal privilege to a cis man. I see it a LOT, and its bizarre.

It doesn't even work if you delete our entire upbringing/lived experience up to that point. Some trans men discover themselves at age 55+! Even if a lot younger, our formative years have HUGE impact on who we are and our futures. Even then, it takes years -if ever- to "pass" male

As children, anyone brought up this way is gaslighted into believing this is the right way to be - we're praised for being such good, polite, quiet, helpful children, even as we decline playtime/learning skills and same-age socialisation to help adults clean up the kitchen.

Even realising you're trans can be fraught with difficulty - when you're taught to ignore your needs, its difficult to identify those needs may be as big as you're not even the gender everyone says you are. People say you want to be a man just to escape negative female treatment.

"You just can't handle being a woman", "You just want life to be easier", "You should suck it up like every other woman", "You're betraying feminism"

All of this suggests we're still women, that being trans is easier than being cis, and that "women" can't know their own needs.

When trans men do assert themselves through all these barriers - because NOT asserting self can be literal torture and death - we're gaslighted again. Remember all the female socialisation behaviour we've been doing all our lives? That's applauded more because its rare in men.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be expected to be kind and decent people, obviously. I'm saying, you take someone who has the assertiveness of an 11 year old etc and now continue to praise that behaviour as Expected and Good no matter how detrimental to themselves, bc they're a man.

But we're not cis men. We literally have the same - or worse - lived experience as cis women - this is a whole other thread, but eg: 62% transmascs experience domestic abuse, 58% NB AFABs and 51% binary AFABs experience sexual assault etc. And support services turn us away.

Transmascs are so often feminists for the exact reasons any woman is - we've lived the same experiences and continue to have feminist needs after transitioning. We're locked out of healthy feminist self-improvement bc we're men -we don't get to be assertive, have power and needs:

Because people think we already have it all as much as cis men do. This makes healing to a NORMAL level of helping others, empathising and putting other people first so much harder.

(I barely covered the actual point, much more details/nuance to get into later but need a break)

(Just realised the above stats look weird with the graph, they're from three places. Its hard to find stats about trans men that don't conflate us with trans women, or only count Gay relationships:
advocate.com/commentary/201…
transequality.org/sites/default/…
dvrcv.org.au/sites/default/… )

Continuing with Australian stats breakdown that show trans men are the only LGBTQ group whose mental health is not improving, and those stats are huge rates of depression/anxiety/psychological stress. We're falling through the cracks of queer feminism.

https://twitter.com/LiamDel/status/980180425812267008

I also need to make sure you know "trans men" doesn't just mean super muscly white trans men with beards - it means the 25 year old who has been trying to access hormones for a decade, the people who don't choose medical transition at all, the guy on T that can't grow facial hair

There are endless and greatly varying examples and reasons why transmascs are still perceived as women, and this doesn't end if someone does achieve a cis version of passing as a man. But that's another topic, and endless anxiety for many intersex trans folk /nonbinary people.

Trans men are held to a higher standard than cis men, in the queer community. There is the very common assumption "you're a man now, you have cis male privilege, I'm going to treat you as such" that in totality erases our transness, our childhoods, lives and traumas to that point

MANY trans men feel shame at being trans and delay coming out/transitioning because of this. This is very difficult to talk about, any transmasc thing is, because we so often are socialised to be meek/mild mannered/quiet/gentle, and our trans identity is often not taken seriously

Then when we do come out, we are often faced with a queer community that either doesn't accept us as men, or only accepts us as cis men.

This predicament and erasure is expressed FREQUENTLY in hushed tones, private groups, with safe friends. We're seen as MenLite, and CisMen 2.0

"Trans men literally have 2 be ten times better to prove they're "not like other men" and if a single trans masculine person is a shitbag demon then it's open season to literally abuse trans masc ppl apparently"

Stuff like this feels very common, and we feel powerless about it.

We can feel cut off from trans and queer community, cut off from the close feminist relationships we've been a part of our whole lives, but we are also cut off from opportunities to heal ourselves and undo the female socialisation of our upbringings.

There are brilliant community-led catch-up courses in male-dominated fields for women that are trans inclusive, that actively exclude trans men.
When I was 11 in Tech class, the male teacher never let me touch a button and ignored me totally, despite there being 3 students.

We've been through literally the same hurdles, struggles, barriers and violences as women. And we're turned away from "women's" support services, because we're now seen as the abusers, because we might have a beard now. We're just as terrified of cis men as you are, same reasons.

We don't get included in most little and large movements to assist people to raise themselves up out of the place female socialisation puts us all - when a transmasc says "You know what, I've had enough, I'm going to start asserting myself for once!" we're told we're toxic.

The very real fear of toxic masculinity is used against us, the men who have first-hand experience at the brunt of male violence as well as being in some of the weakest positions socially, economically, mental health - like any minority. We're the easiest target to get angry at.

And I understand that. I understand the need to get angry at All Men. I understand it in the depths of my fears that will never leave me, the scars on my psyche that I've been struggling and failing to heal, in my poor body image, my terror at being in public, being preyed on.

(TW: s*xual violence+++)

I've been raped years before I had access to hormones. And when I finally transitioned and felt comfortable enough to go to queer bars, I've been sexually assaulted, stalked, had my bathroom use questioned 5 times in one night and more. By men and women.

We truly understand there are asshole trans guys out there, just like there are asshole toxic people in all letters of the LGBTIQ umbrella. They're assholes to us too! We just want to be included where appropriate, to not be erased, and have our lived experience acknowledged.

We want to stop being jumped on for taking steps to improve ourselves, because a trans man deciding to assert his boundaries and needs probably isn't the same as the MRA trying to fling shit. We like to be celebrated like other queers, for small and difficult accomplishments.

Difficult accomplishments like loving who we are. Feeling attractive. Expressing our own reclaimed version of masculinity in a deeply personal way because its the gender expression that fits us best. Going outside. Battling anxiety. Surviving another day despite depression.

Remember, we're often quiet about all this because we've been socialised to put everyone else first, ignore our needs, don't rock the boat, smile, don't kick up a fuss, empathise with others until you're exhausted, care for other people before you care for yourself. Smile more.

(Hi! Thanks for reading so far!! I welcome discussions, but I do not condone insults towards trans women and other groups and think comparisons and "who has it worse"ing insults nonbinary folk and is divisive cis battle of the sexes bullshit. We're above that. Be empathic/kind.)

Further thoughts: not every trans guy is going to have this same experience, the same as not every cis woman does. Not every trans guy is going to feel this is accurate, the same as not every cis woman feels they need feminism. Not every trans guy is queer - lots are straight.

Lots of trans guys outright reject any comparison to cis women in every way, for good reasons including dysphoria, assertion of identity, assertion that trans people needn't rely on cis framing, etc and I welcome their perspectives. There is not one way to be trans, but millions.

There's also a worrying trend as trans men become more and more acceptable as potential partners for cis folk, that people take the above discussion and turn it into "Aw trans boys are so cute soft lovely!" infantilising, OR see us as easy targets for domestic and other violence.

We're so much more varied than I can ever express, and every extra intersection adds complexity to all the above. To all tguys, listen to varied nonbinary folk, to Asian and Black and Brown and all PoC transmascs, Indigenous transmascs, intersex transmascs, disabled transmascs,

to refugee transmascs, to transmascs from countries with languages you don't speak and cultures that are unfamiliar to your own, to transmascs who are much older than you and much younger. I guarantee every single one of us has common ground and different barriers to cross.

Our friendships are so strong, our compassion so great, and our capacity for understanding so deep. We can support each other up and out of whatever negative socialisation we've had, share skills and foster healing and empathy, and cherish what we choose to keep. You're awesome.