Tips for figuring out your gender plz 💔😕
Hey, cis women who say "I wish I was a man but definitely not a trans way, haha! I would never be a man :)"
I say this with all the gentleness in my heart: It is okay for you to be a man. If you want to be a man, you can just be one. You also don't have to stop being a woman to be a man. Multigender people exist. You can be a man and a woman at the same time. Or you can be just a man, or a non-binary man, or non-binary, or something entirely different. You can do and be whatever you want and whatever makes you happy.
Becoming a man is not a betrayal of womanhood and feminism. And everyone who makes you feel like it is an absolute asshole, and you should not ever listen to them. You do not have to push your own happiness aside for other peoples' comfort.
If you want to be a man, try it out! See where it gets you. Maybe it turns out that you really weren't trans, or not a trans man but something else entirely, and that's fine, too. Maybe it turns out you are a trans man. In any case, following those thoughts might get you to a happier and better place in the end. And if you turn out to be happier as a man than you were as a woman, that is wonderful.
Please don't feel forced to stay a cis woman for feminism - any feminism that mistreats or hates trans men and transmasculine people is bad feminism. Being a trans man or transmasc is not a moral failure.
Trans manhood and masculinity are wonderful, and you deserve happiness. And if you find that happiness in manhood/masculinity, you don't deserve to be shamed or harassed for it, and you should not be made to feel the need to put yourself down for it, either.
while I'm generally pretty wary of narratives that assume transmascs have a more developed feminist consciousness than cis men, I do think it's fair to say they do at least have more opportunities to gain that consciousness. I don't even think this necessarily due to their personal experience with misogyny, as while that can certainly be a factor, "suffering doesn't make you a better person, it just makes you suffer" etc. and being oppressed does not automatically result in a correct analysis or understanding of the structure of that oppression. An equally important factor is that transmascs are much more likely than cis men to be exposed to trans/feminist theory due to their proximity to queer, trans, and feminist spaces, and are therefore more likely to at least be familiar with the idea that masculinity, as it is currently constructed, is inextricably tied to oppression. this is also why I find it very misguided to interpret the pattern of transmascs distancing themselves from cis men as a sign that they are secretly not trans or whatever. instead I see this stemming from a very real internal struggle with the concept of masculinity and what it means to belong to broader social class of men. this is partially because transness is inherently antithetical to cispatriarchy and exposes a lot of its internal contradictions, but it also applies to anyone masculine aligned who also wants to support the feminist project. what masculinity is, and what it could be potentially transformed into, are very good questions that need to be grappled with, and is a discussion where transmasculinity can offer important insight. anyway tldr, I think transmascs are often uniquely positioned to both gain a greater understanding of misogyny and leverage their privilege in discussions with other men/mascs, but none of that is guaranteed by virtue of you being trans. you still have to put in the work, stop squandering your potential by whining about trans women who you think are too mean to men