🌹Pillager Posting🇵🇭🌹

@pillagerposting.bsky.social

Har

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.