you have to love trans women more than you hate transmisogynists. and i mean real trans women, not this abstract symbol you've created just to defend. the real flesh and blood human beings who are messy and complex and imperfect. you have to love them even when they fall outside of your preconceived idea of what a "good" trans woman must be, when they're doing femininity "wrong" or "not enough", when they understand themselves in terms you find unintuitive, when they're rubbing against your understanding of what a woman should and can be. you have to support the trans women in your life and you have to be kind to the ones you meet and you have to respect the ones on the internet. otherwise you're not helping, you're just using them to play hero.

i feel like people dont really acknowledge or appreciate how much patience transitioning takes

like, social transitioning require immense patience with others. countless long, circuitous conversations with family and friends who "dont get it." unwanted stares, confrontations, and sexual harassment from people in public spaces.

and its not just other people you need to have patience with, which sucks! medical transition is one big long-ass waiting game! HRT takes months to even start working (whether you take E or T), and years to really kick into high gear. surgeries have massive waitlists, and prep/recovery can take months.

Whoever needs to hear this - DIY your hormones, testosterone is readily available and you should learn how to buy drugs, talk to trannies about your hormones regimens (especially transfemmes!!!) because doctors hate us and endocrinologists are categorically fucking idiots, stickpile injectables, help your friends out

Saw a post on Twitter that was like "I think it's entirely possible to be trans without dysphoria, but a lot of you are severely underestimating how much dysphoria you actually feel and how much you’ve let fade into background noise" and honestly? Yeah lol.

This is the tweet btw.

I think it's necessary for non-medically transitioning people (of which I am one) to de-focus from talking about the choice to not medically transition, and instead throw all of ourselves into the discussions about de-stigmatizing physical traits that don't line up with the typical perception of someone's gender

because that's the real issue, no one is forcing us to medically transition, medical transition is being withheld from our siblings who want and need it, when we are hated we are hated for having a body that doesn't line up with cis standards - just like all other trans people! and focusing on that means you avoid sounding like transphobes who want to bar access to medical transition

ive read a lot of anti-transition arguments towards people unsure about their gender that basically pose any sort of internal exploration as inherently solipsistic and narcissistic, with the mantra being that to think about your relationship to your assigned sex is already thinking too much; you should be thinking less! go get a job! work with your hands! volunteer for the needy! get involved in your local church! pray! marry! start a family! keep yourself busy, so you can never think about yourself again. maybe if you fill your mind with enough noise, you can drown your own conscience out.

im 100% not exaggerating btw, it's actually kind of madness inducing w how many times ive seen people use this mode of argument, it's extremely common. i think ive seen conversion therapy resources use a similar line of reasoning too. and like, if you are a cis person just trying to keep a closeted tranny in the closet, it works like a charm. you can, in fact, drown a person with enough noise and garbage until they stop thinking about their gender dysphoria or, well, anything. all the better that "i saw the tv glow" addresses it head on in relation to the closeted subject in question; yeah, go ahead, do it. you might be trans, you might actually be in serious danger, but it won't hurt if you don't think. and it will work for you, for years and years, and you'll always find more responsibilities and more opportunities to muffle your thoughts. but, maybe 5, 10, 20 years from now, none of the noise will be enough and it will dawn on you, how seriously in danger you actually are - but by that point you've drowned out your own inner conscience so aggressively that there's nothing there, just more of the static and noise of others and no interiority left to seek refuge in. you've got a job, you've buried yourself in work, you've married and have a family; you've given every part of yourself to others just to preclude the possibility of thinking about yourself, for yourself, and now there's no you.

ive genuinely lost track of the number of people who tagged this post w "oh shit this is me i gotta change" or smth to that effect, i knew i would get some notes like that, but not as consistently as it has been. i am deeply glad that this post is serving as a wake up call for a great many people who've been suppressing their transness to appease other people, sometimes without even realizing it. the moment you finally stop trying to please society and the people around you is the moment you claw yourself out of your grave and begin to actually live your life. don't let it be a fleeting thought; act on it, give it life, make it real, crawl out of the simulacrum you've trapped yourself in and live.

I'm tired of support for masculine dykes not extending towards transfeminine masculine dykes. really, there's not a lot of support extended to transfeminine dykes at all. there's a lot of transmisogyny within dyke spaces, (courtesy of a lot of transmisogyny being within Society) & we need to address this. how come boydykes are only celebrated from a transmasc, tme angle? more than that, only defended from a gender essentialist, transfeminine exclusive angle-- "trans men should not be excluded from lesbian spaces due to their afab experience." check your biases & gender essentialism, if you defend 'boydykes' on the basis of gender essentialism, with exclusion of transfeminine gnc dykes. check yourself & your biases. ask yourself what your defense for transmasc lesbians implies in the inverse scenario, for trans women. watch your language, adapt accordingly, be inclusive of trans women for once.

there are butch trans women, trans women who identify with masculinity, trans women who identify as boy dykes. genderqueer tma dykes who identify with manhood and womanhood both. the human experience is a spectrum & for every hypothetical transmasc you can envision & support, there's a transfem out there too. so what is with the lack of support, the judgement, gatekeeping, the transmisogyny?

trans women are punished doubly for not conforming to & performing femininity. extend your support towards gnc trans women with just as much, if not more valor than you have been for the gnc tme.

or, yknow--just extend your support towards trans women. there's seemingly a lack of that in our community.

lol maybe a not great way to phrase this but a lot of trans men are NOT emotionally prepared to be "treated like men" outside their insular transmasc fagdyke friend groups and fly off the handle fucking immediately the first time they are unfairly mistrusted for being a dude (shitty and im not saying this should be the case but did you not fucking comprehend why people act this way toward men and come to expect this?) or ghosted/rejected by a trans woman bc she prefers dating other trans women, or maybe simply someone else (we have all fumbled people, there is no need to become generally vindictive toward women about it bc they aren't attracted to you...)

like as a tboy observing tboys i see a lot of frustration when tactics that worked pre-transition fall flat when they are recognized as men, then their realization of that. the types of dudes whose moms told them to start crying when they got pulled over/in trouble to milk empathy for sad little girls are unsuccessfully trying to replicate this tactic on the internet in arguments with women and calling their failure a product of misandry

This is particularly a trend in the white transmasc community because they are used to tears/tantrums evoking sympathy, empathy, and desired results in the first place. Many trans men of colour, particularly Black, Indigenous, and Latino trans men, are well-acquainted with rejection, alienation, & distrust from strangers and others around us, especially if we occupied any sort of non-normative gendered space prior to medical transition. Even outside of that, many of us are indirectly and directly extremely well-acquainted with the reactions people have to men in our communities.. and necessarily already had to weigh that and come to terms with it as we made decisions about our transitions.

See the thing is when I was a teenager I was briefly confused about why the term "transandrophobia" is unnecessary because I wasn't familiar with transfeminist theory & then I learned. And I went oh, ok. But these fuckin guys are leaning hard in the other direction and going from "why don't we get our own word?" To fully being like "Misandry Is Real, Actually" when the answer to the question was "because misandry isn't real". But they just can't stand not having perfect symmetry with women because ...??? For what reason. Are you a jealous little boy? Stop it lol

Like there's jealous little boy behavior ("how come women get x? How come women get y? I want one" and it's like. Because misogyny) and it combines with this weird persecution complex that's... can I be so honest with you right now? Largely a white people problem. Acknowledging relative privilege makes their brains melt they can't fucking stand it. Not exclusively a white people thing! But Largely. So, no, misandry isn't real, and you can be oppressed for something without being The Most Victimized In The World

The people I’ve encountered who crusade the most for transandrophobia are always white trans mascs; these are the same types of people who’s passing tips include things that make it blatantly obvious they want you to conform to what white and western society deems as being a man or woman.

I’m not gonna call it white supremacy necessarily…but the “men are oppressed, women are the enemy” extremist pipeline is a very slippery slope.

M2B (Male-to-Butch) by Kylie Paintain, 1997. Found in Unapologetic: The Journal of Irresponsible Gender #1. Read the full issue here.

Image description: An article titled “M2B” by Kylie Paintain with a photo showing Kylie, a woman with short hair and tattoos. The text reads: “MtB? What´s that?” Most people have heard of male to female (MtF) transexuals and even lesbian transsexuals but male to butch (MtB) is something new entirely for many. Those who have a problem with MtF transsexuals identiying as lesbians… “Why go through all the mtf stuff and then id as lesbian?” …are usually stuck at the misconception that transitioning is all about who you want to have sex with. So an mtf who chooses to identify as a butch will be particularly strange for them. “Don´t women who identify as butch really want to be men?” I think “identifying as a butch woman” really says it all. Secially the woman bit. For me and others like me, butch is very seperated from male. I id very strongly as female and see female/woman as my gender identity and my butch identity is an extension of this. I think you can display masculine traits/characteristics without being/iding as male or without losing any sense of being female/woman. When I transitioned 8-9 years ago there was an aweful lot of pressure for me to confcorm to a very sterotypical female image and role ie Het Barbie. I tried to do this - I didn´t really see any other option at this stage - but it just didn´t feel right so I set out to find out what was right for me. This took me about 6 years during which time I was totall celibate. It was a difficult time as I had to come to terms with a lot of stuff about myself that I didn´t like but I think I am a better person for it. I came out as a dyke about 4 years ago but all the dykes I knew were andro-dykes so while I had taken a major step in the right direction I still wasn´t feeling right about me and who I was. It wasn´t until someone suggested I read some books on butch/fem that I realized how I fitted in. It was amazing to read about women who felt a lot like I do - who id strongly as women but acknowledge their masculine side in a positive way. It hasn´t exactly been easy - being out as a transsexual and iding as butch has caused a few problems but I figure if people have a problem with the concept and don´t have the courage to talk to me in person about it then it remains their problem and not mine. While I try to be as available as possible for people to talk to - I believe that it is only through talking about these issues that we will start to resolve some of them - I don´t believe in forcing my opinion on anyone. I try to respect other peoples choices in their lives and only ask the same of others. After all why should our indivdual expression of gender be forced into conforming to waht makes others feel safe or comfortable? Why can´t we express our selves our inner feelings without being made to feel like freaks and misfits? Why does there have to be such strict regulation of gender in a society that seems to be willing to let other things grow? Until recently transexuals where supposed to disappear once they had “successfully” transitioned but now there are a growing number of us who will not disappear, who will not shut up about gender and who will not bend backward to make Joe and Jill Citizen feel comfortable. I strongl believe that the best way for me to be happy and reach my full potential is to be the best me that I can be. If that means ditorting other peoples safe views on what is gender then so be it. -Kylie lives in Melbourne Australia with her gorgeous fem partner and her kind of gorgeous m/bike (still waiting on some money to fix it up a bit more). The queers think Kylie´s “really” het and the hets think she´s REALLY queer. end Image description

“… sex assignment is not simply an announcement of the sex that an infant is perceived to be; it also communicates a set of adult desires and expectations. The infant’s future is often being imagined or desired through the act of sex assignment, so sex assignment is not a simple description of anatomical facts, but a way of imagining what they will mean, or should mean. That imagining comes from elsewhere, and it does not exactly stop after sex has been legally or medically determined at birth. The girl continues to be girled; the boy continues to be boyed; and these practices of girling and boying are repeated not just by parents, but also by a range of institutions that greet the child with boxes to be checked and norms to be embodied. In a sense, sex assignment does not happen just once. It is an iterative process, repeated by different actors and institutions, and depending on where one lives, it can be reiterated in ways that are not always in conformity with one another. Sex assignment is not a mechanism, but a process.”

— Judith Butler, “Who’s Afraid of Gender?”