Flowerpetalscout - Sawyers Sanctuary

Koi (Hong Kong, 2024)

𝐄𝐦𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐲/ 𝐐𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠

puppy gromit

“When people hear “sexual” harassment, they often think the behavior has to be related to sexual activity, but that’s only part of it. Sexual harassment has a few different elements: -Sexual harassment involves words, conduct, or actions that are sexual in nature, or which are connected to a person or group’s sex, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, or any other gender-related characteristic, AND which have the purpose or effect of demeaning, degrading, or distressing another person, unreasonably interfering with someone’s work performance, or contributing to an intimidating, offensive, or hostile work environment. So If your coworker is telling you that you shouldn’t wear a particular type of clothing because it’s too feminine or masculine, or if they’re making fun of gay or trans people, or saying that girls and women don’t belong in a particular profession, AND them doing that makes you feel uncomfortable, unable to focus at work, or like you aren’t welcome in that workplace, it might constitute what we call a “hostile work environment.” - Sexual harassment also refers to quid pro quo sexual harassment, which involves the offer of improved treatment or other work-related reward in exchange for engaging in sexual behavior, the threat of poor treatment or work-related consequences for refusing to engage in sexual behavior, and other implicit or explicit work-related sexual coercion. For example: if a boss promises you a raise, says you can get better shifts, or tells you that you can have a job if you engage in sexual conduct with them, or if they say you’ll get fired or they will otherwise treat you badly at work if you don’t do it, then that might be a quid pro quo situation.”

— Sexual Harassment in Your Workplace: What to Know, and What You Can Do (via hellyeahscarleteen)

It is so frustrating to know what it's like to pass as a cis man in a male-dominated field, and see all these experiences of highly privileged trans men in these same fields propped up as the standard.

There is this odd phenomenon where being a transmasculinized individual one is faced with an array of exceptional examples of those like us, while being told these examples actually represent all of us. These examples are supposed to be saying something important about all of us.

Every narrative I was fed as a baby trans, was of exceptional trans men who could only talk about how much better people treated them. Being cis passing and indistinguishable from a cis man was the standard back then in 2016 when I originally came out, and remains as such today. It is disheartening to see that people have no issue with enforcing that expectation, even if "gender liberation" is supposedly important to them.

So to be a boyfaliure, a faggot, someone who faces open discrimination and gender questioning even when I can pass as being plausibly cis, someone who is talked over even when I am seen to be a man with expertise in my field... suddenly Devon Price is the standard I've simply failed to live up to. Even worse for non-white trans men who're made to feel they failed to live up to this white ideal of transmasculinity. When normative and gender conforming trans men write articles about their improved lives, better wages, endless opportunities, they receive an outpouring of support from those who wish to stroke a cisnormative image of transgender existence.

The stories from people like me, they don't feel good to read, they don't let the reader sit back and pat themselves on the back for seeing trans men as "real men" without any challenge to their preconceived notions of manhood (in this case, being a "real man" is being privileged, cis passing, and often stealth with a successful career).

For a reader who feels too challenged, these things are easy to dismiss. Perhaps the transmasc in question is simply "early in transition." If we aren't, then maybe he's just not trying hard enough. Even if "trying hard enough" is a transmedicalist and cisnormative standard which is unfair to apply to trans people, the speaker is simply lying. If they're not they're an outlier- and if they're not, then they are still somehow unimportant. It has to be okay to write transmasculine oppression off as a phase, (or as not having ever existed at all) otherwise it would mean accepting that manhood can't save one from discrimination. It would mean that trans gender doesn't map onto cis gender cleanly and neatly, that old models cannot be recycled to include all of us.

It is very easy to accept that a transmasculine transition ends in privilege and opportunity, after all, the only reason a woman would ever want to be a man is to gain privilege... right? The only trustworthy trans men, well they will tell you stories of their vast wealth of privilege after all.

By these mechanisms, erasure by exceptionalism is reinforced.

Delphinium

i don't know if people know this but the idea that AGAB is useful in medical contexts is actually actively dangerous

one of my friends has CAIS. they were assigned female and have a prostate. they have been denied prostate exams multiple times on the basis of "being assigned female" despite insisting that they had valid concerns about symptoms that aligned with prostate cancer. guess what happened when they finally got an exam? they ended up having prostate cancer

it fortunately is now in complete remission, which is why they're comfortable with me talking about it, but you see the issue here? biology is never as simple as assigned sex, by judging the care someone needs by their proximity to maleness or femaleness any mixed or otherwise "abnormal" sex characteristics they have are completely ignored

it doesn't just affect intersex people either, you're throwing trans people under the bus as well. transitioning does change your sex characteristics, trans people should have access to medical care that is catered to their body and not to their assigned sex