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Transmasc @lemmy.blahaj.zone

andros_rex @lemmy.world

5d ago

R/trans is a fucking mess

Not me, but if you’ve been following the drama, they removed this post about the unique issues we face as “divisive.”

It fucking sucks. There’s been a lot of discussion in other trans masc spaces about “transandrophobia” and this seems to absolutely demonstrate it. We aren’t treated seriously in spaces that should be welcoming for us.

People assume “trans” means trans woman. Spaces for trans people are often for trans women. Jamison Green wrote a while back about us not really having our own community, decades ago, and it still feels true today.

58 comments

Yeah most trans subs are fucking abysmal every time there's a new round of intracommunity discourse. It really shouldn't be this hard to accept that different marginalised identities are affected in unique ways by various power structures in society and within communities, but no, it invariably turns into this shit-slinging contest between subsets of the community. I know a lot of people just genuinely hold these sort of attitudes, but I do wonder how much of it rises to the forefront of the discussion due to shit-stirring from bad actors outside of the community.
A transmasc friend of mine has speculated that this whole transmasc erasure thing is just a continuation of good 'ol misogyny
- It just feels sometimes that we aren’t treated as “really” trans, that even in communities we should be respected in we are still viewed as our assigned sex at birth, that the same people who say “trans women are women” don’t really believe trans men are men.
  And AFAB non-binary people get it a bit worse, from what I’ve seen.
  I’ve noticed it in IRL spaces too, not just online. I don’t really hang out with other queer people anymore.
  
  It feels somewhat similar to how lesbians aren't seen as "threatening" as gay men. If it's doesn't "threaten" fragile cis straight men then it's not in the front of the discussion.
  
  Dude there are still so many people even other trans people that think trans men and transmasc nonbinary people aren't actually real it's fucking wild. I've seen so many of them get treated by default like the only reason they transition is because they are so tired of misogyny they decided to join The Patriarchy to escape it.
  It's like people literally believe "Eww, Men are evil who would want to be one willingly?" idk, I feel like that's a pretty strong argument that they are actually trans but what do I know?
Can someone explain why this was removed? What was the drama? I am out of the loop, it seems…
- The extremely short version is that a trans man made a post on the trans subreddit, saying that trans men's issues are overlooked and under seen.
  One or more moderators removed the post, claiming it was "divisive".
  The sub basically blew up, as there was nothing divisive in the original post. Drama has ensued. I don't know that it's been resolved .
  
  Hmm, who from who gonna be divided from that post? Cis and trans people? Because it is interpreted as actively searching issues with cis people to infuriate trans people over cis people? Like mods think boy is ok, and trans men complaining over being called a boy are overreacting? Because it is the correct gender?
  I guess a man that is called a “boy” from others has different meanings in different cultures 🤔
There is a PhD in here somewhere about how deeply rooted patriarchal influences are even within the queer community.
Trans men aren’t taken seriously because they were AFAB.
Trans women control trans spaces because they were AMAB.
- Isn't that just "trans women have male privilege" with a coat of paint? I've been in plenty of trans spaces that are dominated by transmascs; I think it's more because Reddit has historically attracted a lot of men, so those who transition end up on trans subreddit. It's not wise to make assumptions about what every queer community is like, especially when it comes to saying trans women have an advantage. For example, back in the day on Tumblr, Tumblr attracted a lot of women, particularly in fandom/fanfic communities (ex. the classic "i really like m/m slashfic, almost like i relate to it or something"), so the community was often dominated by people who weren't transfem, and this led to serious problems with transmisogyny at times.
- frames point in terms of AGAB language point is essentialist bullshit that equates to "trans women are functionally men and trans men are functionally women"
  Every time. Fuck off.
  
  We are mad at the evil AMABs right now sweaty, it's not the time to look at how we frame things.
  
  @WalkblesseD I'm just here to compliment your minthara profile pic. Fire :paintingnailswithfire:
- I think we need to be extremely careful about word choice and examining the underlying sentiments when talking about anything that goes anywhere near ‘trans women have male privilege.’ I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing or that you believe that, but arguments that hinge on gender essentialism (which I believe a lot of the AMAB/AFAB ‘discourse’ winds up being/turns into) should be avoided. Both because gender essentialism in general is a flawed lens to view the world with, and because I don’t think I’ve ever once seen a productive conversation about it. At least not online.
  I’m a trans guy and I’ve seen the kind of behavior in the OP online for around 20 years and I have no hope it will stop any time soon. It’s depressing AF and the only solution I’ve found is to drop spaces that tolerate that like a hot potato. That’s a lot of potato dropping, but it’s better than hanging around a space with people who make you miserable.
  
  I am effectively saying that trans women have pseudo vestiges of male privilege.
  It’s just a thesis statement though, I don’t know if that actually holds water. Feel free to challenge that.
  I agree with you wholeheartedly that gender essentialism is bunk.
  However just because it is bunk doesn’t mean people don’t unconsciously bias themselves and perpetuate it.
As a trans woman I wish that others in the community would be treated better. Trans means all trans people and that means enbies, men, and women.
I think that people generally associate trans with trans women because of the media. If we are scary then we are a more effective scapegoat. It's easier to make trans women scary because they can brand us as perverted men.
I am also aware that there are significantly more trans women in online spaces than trans men. I also see people complaining about more trans women being moderators but of course that's going to be the case when we make up a larger percentage of the user base. I have no idea what to do about this. I would like there to be as many trans men as there are trans women in these spaces but idk what can even be done to achieve that. I talked about this before with a trans man I know and we both had zero idea how to do that.
- Trans means all trans people and that means enbies, men, and women.
  Yes! My gods the experience I had when I first started actually figuring things out around 10 years ago was horrible because of people not getting this. I tried to join a few online communities that claimed to be for trans people or at least trans inclusive and it was such a horrible experience. Multiple large communities the literal second they learned I'm AMAB and not on HRT I either got outright banned, told my existence was triggering to other members and I should either leave or not participate in any discussions, or told that I'm not actually nonbinary.
  That I just have too much "internalized transmisogyny" and I'll be so much happier once my egg cracks the rest of the way. The last one particularly hurt because I'd had an entire gender crisis back in high school and I literally told them that the idea of being a woman felt just as wrong but in different ways as being a man and they just laughed at me like I didn't know what I was talking about. Took me so long to actually start willingly engaging with trans communities again.
  
  God I'm sorry.
  It should be so simple. Not taking hormones doesn't mean you aren't trans.
  If someone else is uncomfortable that should be their problem. It's true for us and that includes you.
  
  Yes! Enbies are valid and there are so many ways to transition. I always say to just do what makes you happy because everyone is different and there is no "correct" way, just different ways.
I mean, even if it's a trans community, it is on reddit.
Trans men are men.
Wild. The reddit trans community has always had problems but this is absolutely ridiculous. Removing a post about erasure of transmasc issues is a frankly incredible level of callous detachment. The queer community has always denigrated and mistreated the transmasculine community. It's at least somewhat heartening to see some outrage in the comments. But the moderation team should be thrown out over this. Bigotry and erasure have no place in queer communities.
this sadly seems to be an age thing. LGBTQI+ was a taboo topic for centuries before the 2000s, it has become better but many older people can not comprehend that what they were taught all their life, to suddenly accept. I can observe this here in Germany, especially eastern Germany, most people over the age of 50 will not accept you, if you are different to their perceived norm
- most people over the age of 50 will not accept you, if you are different to their perceived norm
  Yes, people take over the norms they learned from their social environment when they were young and most stop adapting them to social progress that happened when they are older.
  Since the GDR heavily imposed the traditional family to push birth rates (e.g. you basically had to get married to get a flat), even homosexuality is a strange and foreign concept to many people who grew up in this environment of enforced cultural conformism.
  It will be interesting to see how this changes when newer generations get old, since society is much more pluralist nowadays.
Reddit and discord are fundamentally unsafe places for trans people, any queer communities there are intentionally or unintentionally helping prevent people from moving to more safe platforms.
- to answer to anyone asking why discord, any community that doesn't have a focus on queer topics, statistically is not great for trans folk. Many big communities are, yes, but you also have to remember discord has a LOT of servers.
- why Discord? isn’t it moderated mostly by the people who start the communities like Lemmy? (genuinely asking because I don’t know)
  
  The problem is Discord servers have become too large and too public, that leads to a lot of trolls and bad actors.
- I know tons of trans people on discord. What makes it unsafe for them?
  
  I think there's a disconnect between people who use discord as an IM client and people who use discord as a way to find communities. Ive been using discord since like the friends and family alpha, and I've never once joined a server that was larger than "4-12 people I know irl who hate group texts." The way I understand and think about discord is drastically different from somebody who uses it more like a decentralized forum full of hobby or creator driven communities. I'd guess that the latter half is what is being referred to as dangerous for trans folk, but again I cannot confirm as discord is functionally equivalent to like MSN messenger for me
  
  I wouldn't personally call the whole platform unsafe. A lot of big servers, yeah not gonna be too great.
- I heard of people attacking the suggestion of switching to Matrix claiming they “want to remain accessible”. When the clients Cinny and Fluffy Chat blow Discord out of the water.
  
  To be fair Matrix does lack a lot of features still. Video and voice calls are a mess, there's not the equivelent of voice channels afawk.
  For those of us who are plural, there's no plural kit alternative (at least not widely avaliable), the moderation tools and permissions systems are a joke (we should know we used to moderate a whole server and several spaces). The search is really bad or non existent in several clients.
  A lot of this is because those behind matrix are more concerned with corporations and their needs than the common user, and keep making really ridiculous and assinine decisions; like keeping matrix.org as open signups until it becomes too big to moderate and they have to start charging people for the privelege of decent performance, instead of what they should have done a long time ago and shutting their doors so as to encourage federation.
  Matrix is actually not at all well thought through or accessible, we have never and will never use discord, but we can't deny they have a point.
All of Reddit is a fucking mess. Never look back
Trans sister here. This is awful. I absolutely stand behind my trans brothers and things like this bring us ALL down.
P.S. I didn't find anything in the community details. If you'd rather not have me in here (the line about needing a transmasc community of your own is not lost on me) I'll delete my replies and be on my way, no hard feelings.
Dude, fuck ALL reddit. That place is worse than Twitter, now.
Just for clarity, "asshole" is still gender-neutral, right?
- Yeah, you can even get ranks in it. Like Major Asshole.
  
  Or General Asshole.
- (Almost) Everyone has one, and anyone can definitely be one.
I was ban on reddit from r/bicycling for posting about brand reliability and quality scopes when I was a buyer for a chain of bike shops for years. The mod was a deeply narcissistic cop IRL. Moderation has a tendency to attract narcissists and that is the key underlying issue. If admin fail to remove the narcissistic fools, it causes a lot of real world harm. As a mod myself, I am a janitor. I do not matter. I do not micromanage. The community flags are my primary means of action. When a flag is made, I sort through it and give the benefit of the doubt in all possible cases. You have a right to a bad day and to be wrong, but if someone makes some HRT comment negatively, I will absolutely crush that bug. A good mod is invisible and serves the community without egotism. That is not the case on reddit in many communities and there are no effective measures taken to remedy the problem. It hurts a lot of good people.
Is there an initiative to spread the information of this space to ftms on reddit? No, they should not feel pushed out of a supposed trans space on reddit, but if there is transphobia from the mod team, knowledge of this space would be beneficial.
- R/ftm might be a good place to post. I’ve been banned so many times that any new account gets auto shadowbanned.
I actually don't know how to avoid these types on reddit, if you're a niche within a niche you get twice the bullying. I don't know what's wrong with that system, but it doesn't work.
People assume “trans” means trans woman.
I used to think that a majority of trans people were women, because that's the representation I encountered most online. It was rather surprising for me then to, in a Polish book about transgender experiences, read a psychologist (or therapist? I can't remember exactly) say that they usually had trans men visit them and that trans women were somewhat of a rarity. It makes me wonder if this gender disparity exists in any form in reality and why representation online seems to focus around trans women more often.
The book I mention is Ciała obce by Paula Szewczak.

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