Words Have Power

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(He/him) 🏳️‍⚧️

WUHHH THE RECEPTION TO THIS IS SO SWEET DIEs

IM SO GLAD YALL THINK IM PRETTY

WILL DRAW MORE PEOPLE PROBABLY WWUUFFF

BRUH a dude I know from work came in for the first time in months and I thought he looked different but couldn't figure out why?? So I asked if he'd changed his hair and he was like "BITCH I GOT TOP SURGERY"

GOT DAMN HOW DIDNT YOU NOTICE

LIKE THIS

WHO BROUGHT THIgS BACK

kill his ass

*doom music starts to play* I actually kindof like scheduling these kinds of appointments now...

but seriously Fellas, don't forget to schedule a pap smear every couple of years just in case. If you still have a cervix you can still get cervical cancer. ilu

this has been a psa

i've had this as an idea since 2017 btw

damn, tumblr says my art is ass and trans people is eye strain so no blaze for me :\

it'd be a shame if this...

blazed the old fashion way...

People do understand that the privilege from male privilege doesn’t come from identifying as a man, right?

That’s not the thing that confers the privilege. Patriarchy grants that privilege to men based on how nearly they conform to what patriarchy says a man is and should be. That’s where the privilege comes from, not just identifying as a man.

Which is why it doesn’t imply trans men aren’t men to say they aren’t given male privilege.

All it implies (or really just says) is that trans men are not men that the patriarchy recognizes and rewards in the vast majority of cases; in other words we aren’t systemically granted male privilege. Where there are certain places you can find conditional benefit as a trans man if you are entirely stealth and try to conform to patriarchal standards, that is a precarious position to be in and one that can end in death if (or when) they’re outed as trans.

But like. The way people talk about men on here it really feels like people think that male privilege is a thing which is tied 1:1 with having the identity of man. Which only works if you dismiss the real lived experiences of trans men.

I don't like talking about personal things in-depth on this blog for several reasons - but I do want to make it very clear that I am a trans masculine person who feld his home state, in part explicitly because of regressive, misogynist legislation.

There isn't a day that goes by where I don't miss Indiana. I miss the Kankakee river. I miss the Dunes and Lake Michigan. I miss the miles and miles of back country roads and corn fields. I miss the people. I miss the community I grew up in, the homes I grew up in, the streets I spent the first 23 years of my life living on. It genuinely pains me that I was not able to - and continue to know that I cannot - safely live in a place that I love around some of my closest friends, family, and loved ones. I can't live at home because my body cannot exist under Indiana state legislature safely.

And I am lucky to have been able to leave. I am privileged to have had the resources to live in safer states. I have trans friends and loved ones back home who are not as lucky as I am and my fight is for them.

So do not ever try to tell me that trans men benefit legislatively from male privilege when I had to leave my entire life behind to be able to live freely and people I love are still suffering under the exact kinds of legislation you are claiming they benefit from.

Peer-reviewed tags

I’d just like to ask folks to have a little more sensitivity about the “Tampon Tim” stuff—the way Donald Trump and U.S. conservatives are making fun of the democratic vice presidential candidate for putting free tampons in boys’ bathrooms. My girlfriend broke the news to me as though I was supposed to laugh, and it wasn’t until she saw the look on my face that she realized how personal this was to me as someone who’s advocated for menstrual products in men’s restrooms at my school and lobbied for access in prisons in my state. This is about trans guys and I want people to remember that.

I remember seeing a Kaitlin Bennet video where she went around smugly asking people if they thought tampons should be in men’s restrooms, with the obvious intended answer being of course not. We’re a joke to them; being connected to menstruation and menstrual products is already considered embarrassing for women, but for men, it’s downright humiliating and disgusting. As people who need tampons, who can get pregnant, who have breasts, but claim to be men, we are considered a perversion of the sex-gender binary. We cannot exist, and they make that clear. When you leave trans men and mascs out of these conversations, such as by pivoting to jokes about fictional cis men, you are contributing to our erasure. Please just remember who is actually harmed by these sentiments, and listen to our perspectives on it. Thank you.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt went on Fox News to say, "As a woman there is no greater threat to a woman's health than leaders...who support putting tampons in men's bathrooms in public schools." Supporting trans men and mascs--such as providing us with menstrual supplies, including us in "women's" healthcare, and using inclusive language around reproductive health--is framed as a threat to women.

Reblogging again because I just came across this article, where the author says this:

^ This is so fucking infuriating. lmao. Congrats to the author on finding a combination of words than makes me physically feel you throwing me under the bus.

We should have tampons in the men's bathrooms. Frankly I think it's a good step towards normalizing gender-neutral bathrooms by making people (esp. cisperi men) more comfortable with the idea of different sexed needs than their own. It literally hurts no one. Cis men can just ignore them. Trans men, especially homeless and poor trans men in menstrual poverty, will benefit from them.

The law says menstrual products must be provided to all menstruating students. Unless there are no trans men anywhere in any school in the entire largest school district, why aren't there tampons in the boy's room? Why does Tim Walz need to be defended from the claim of putting tampons in the boy's room? Why are (cis) women implied to be the main victims of opponents of this law, while trans men only get referenced as part of a culture war?

But hey, silver lining: This is a good example of how people will fuck us over without even mentioning its us they're fucking over.

As a trans man who has had to put painstaking work into body positivity, body neutrality, and my own sense of manhood, I can't help but feel so bad for men who have, seemingly, never felt permission to have any positive feelings about their body and their manhood.

Yes, body positivity and body neutrality are for you, men. You owe nobody washboard abs, or beautiful facial hair, or clear skin, or unblemished skin, or "masculine" features. Genuinely, you are under no obligation to perform any of it. The weight of those expectations is genuinely suffocating. Let yourself remove that yoke from your shoulders and actually live.

I’ve never heard or seen anyone actually say that. It’s very nice to see someone saying that.

A trans man coming out as a man is never a loss.

I don’t care if he went into a male-dominated field. All fields are cis dominated.

I don’t care if he’s a straight man now. He should be allowed to be himself and happy. He does not owe it to you to be a miserable lesbian for your comfort.

I don’t care if you thought he was hotter before. His happiness is worth the price of your desire. Also you’re wrong and I’m giving him my number.

More trans men is a good thing. More trans men means more closeted trans men are feeling safe to come out. That’s a good thing.

A trans man coming out means that there's now a man who is happy with himself and who UNDERSTANDS what we, woman, go through. He's one more ally, and he's one more brother.

His happiness is everything. And he should always, always be treasured.

“Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep” – Mary Elizabeth Frye

Happy Pride 2019!

Holy SHIT

There are tears in my eyes, this is such an awesome and clever interpretation of a beautiful poem

Oh now that SLAPS

it kills me how much people love to speculate on the trans male experience. transphobes and even other trans people will conjure up ideas of what it must be like for us to live, how hormones affect us, and especially what society treats us like. they love to tell us how we live our lives; strawman after strawman about fictional trans men who started hormones and became "evil and ugly", completely fabricated stories about about how every trans man they know suddenly "gained male privilege" and never deal with misogyny or transandrophobia.

people who tell you how your transmasculine experience will go have no idea what they are talking about. even if they sound confident, they are not correct- each and every transmasculine person has a different experience in life- we do not automatically gain the societal privilege of cishet white men once we decide to socially transition. they cannot see what your future holds. you don't deserve to have someone telling you how you will experience your own life, it is yours, you are allowed to live your truth, pave your own way and prove that we have varied lives that transcend what transphobes think the trans male experience is.

This is often a point of connection IRL with me and certain transfem friends, ie, even inside The Community there’s a narrative of what all the “real” men and women experience and if you don’t share that, it doesn’t count & you aren’t a person. It helped me a lot to realize a lot of trans women I know were also frustrated by this, for the same reason, & were also exhausted by the misogyny-driven idea that only one kind of Gender Experience can be true and accurate. I have comrades in the frustration of having transness lectured at you while your experience is treated as Dangerous For Other Trans People To Hear

[in my most pro-union of voices]: it’s important that you talk to other coworkers{Queer people} about how much you’ve getting paid {what gendered experiences you have} that way when it’s easier to stand up for others pay{better gendered experiences under society}. If you don’t talk about it the patriarchy will get you to believe that the other gender is hurting you when they advocate for themselves, even if they might actually be doing you a favor

Finland has mandatory military service for all able-bodied men. The summons come to every man on the year they turn 18, and your service status is visible on your government records - whether you've done your service, are yet to be summoned, or deemed excempt from service and for what reasons. Even if you're blind, deaf, in a wheelchair and cognitively impaired, you still need to show up for the evaluation, though ideally you'll already have a doctor's note for the occasion that basically just says "I mean just fucking look at this guy", and the military doctor will look at you and go "yeah" and sign you off as unfit for service for the time being.

And if you get your legal gender changed, your military status updates accordingly. When I got my gender marker changed to male in my late 20s, I automatically showed up in the government systems as an adult male who has not done military service yet, and I got summons the same year. However, back then being transgender was a diagnosis that you need a doctor's evaluation on, and being trans was one of those medical conditions that give you the option to opt out of service - in the "you can go if you think you can handle it" way, but you have no obligation to volunteer. So I didn't.

I met a friend recently who mentioned that he's going to wait a few years yet before getting his gender legally changed, so he can age out of the conscription system and avoid summons altogether. I said that I was released from service due to trans diagnosis, and asked if he can't do so as well. He said no - the law has been changed since I transitioned, and now that you no longer require a medical diagnosis to be trans, it is also not a diagnosis that'd make you excempt from the military.

So the finnish government basically just said "if you're a grown man with nothing wrong with you, then you're a grown man with nothing wrong with you. Now grab this fucking gun and do your duty for fatherland."

followers who have had/are looking to get top surgery!!! i highly recommend thinking about scar mobilization. many times a scar after soft tissue surgery will feel "stiff" or "stuck." this is because in scar tissue, the soft tissue layers partially fuse together:

luckily this can be reversed at least partially most of the time through massage. once the wound is completely scarred over, you can begin to gently but firmly massage across the scar with 2-3 fingers in up and down, side to side, and clockwise/counterclockwise circular motions (more repetitions than i'm doing here), you can also gently pull the scar if it's not painful:

start with very light pressure and increase as time goes on. this should never be painful, only sometimes feeling that "tight" feeling. again, the wound must be COMPLETELY scarred over, no scabs whatsoever. but you can start massaging as soon as that happens.

you can do these as often as you like as long as it's not painful, but once or twice a day for maybe 5 minutes is definitely enough

btw this works for every soft tissue scar, not just top surgery. the same method is used for things like C-section scarring

here's to trans men with anger issues. here's to trans men who are loud or raise their voices without realizing, neurodivergent or otherwise. here's to trans men who get irritable or frustrated or impatient easily due to trauma, neurodivergence, mental illness, pain, or other disabilities, here's to trans men who can't take care of themselves, here's to trans men who can't stuff down their emotions, here's to trans men with violent intrusive thoughts, here's to trans men who snap without meaning to, here's to paranoid and psychotic trans men who become scared or hostile toward others without causing violence due to delusions and hallucinations, here's to trans men who struggle with homicidal ideation

here's to trans men who are bitter and angry and don't want to get better, here's to trans men who have tried to recover from trauma and have failed, here's to trans men who can't access proper mental health care because they aren't taken seriously, here's to trans men with mental health care trauma, here's to trans men who cope poorly with anger and hit inanimate objects and do "scary" things that don't actually hurt other people physically or emotionally.

here's to trans men with complicated mental health issues who need help but get insulted and called mean, rude, scary, shitty, assholes, dicks, jackasses and abusers. here's to trans men being human, too, and struggling with things just like anyone else. that doesn't make us evil, we are heavily traumatized by cisheteronormative society. here's to trans men who don't hurt other people but get told they do because people won't let men struggle with their emotions. i love you. you're loved. keep your chin up.

They don't forget trans men exist, they try to detranstion us to be women, and then kill us if we don't