okay fuck it i'm dropping the mask

i know so many of my transmasc friends who have gotten harassed and mistreated by people of specific queer circles in fedi that claim that masculinity is an inherently evil thing, people who have provided proof in the past of being mistreated, people who are asking to please just be acknowledged and understood by their fellow queer siblings

these same people will continue to call these things non-issues, or claim that they "have never seen such oppression towards trans men" even when provided with evidence, or straight up just using 4chan terminology to describe the assassination of anyone who has a masculine expression of queerness

i know i am nobody to say this, i know i shouldnt even be involved, but i've been through the exact same issues, people quite literally describing ways they would torture me on public, sending me death threats, subposting me cowardly, and calling all of my issues as "non-issues", quite literally celebrating the idea of me killing myself, even though all i wanted was just to hang out with people and stablish basic boundaries

I don't want people to tell me they want to "forcefem" me, i don't want people to tell me that i'm wrong for existing, i don't want people to tell me that i am "choosing to be the villain" for voicing my complaints, i don't want people to keep invalidating my emotions, and i don't want any of that happening to any of my friends, whatever their gender or sexual orientation or pronouns are.

i'm not elon musk, i'm not a fascist, i'm not your enemy, just please let me fucking be, let me exist, let me love you, because i want to love you all so fucking bad and often i just feel like an alien in this platform.

@nelson jesus christ what the fuck is wrong with people... I'm so sorry this happened to you.

@mei thank you, what worries me is that they're everywhere in this place, they're just... doing this, and i don't know why

@nelson do you mind if i boost?
being transmasc i've also experienced a lot of shit like this on this platform (but also in queer spaces just generally)
back when i had my own single-user instance i had a period of time where someone continuously tried to get me fediblocked for daring to say that transmasc people experience oppression, but while grasping at straws and warping things to make me seem like some sort of turboshithead (incl. saying i was a pedophile because i said i didn't mind the idea of being in a relationship with an age gap where i'm the younger person, as if that makes sense). after she got fed up of being continuously banned from a string of instances over this behaviour (which iirc was me "silencing trans women" or w/e) she told me she hopes i get sexually assaulted so i realize i'm not trans so i will "stop parading around my trans status" (she didn't outright say "sexually assault" or "rape", it was intentionally left vague, but i'm not stupid and i know what was intended)
before that, before i was ever on fedi, i had a bunch of trans women (whether intentionally or not) try and scare me out of transitioning by telling me things like "testosterone will just blunt any positive emotions and make you extra angry" and "testosterone will make you greasy and disgusting", etc. and while it didn't make me avoid going on testosterone, it sure made me paranoid it'd make all my problems worse for years until i was actually able to start
plenty of people think i'm just making this shit up because i "hate trans women" but i literally don't, i'm well aware that not all trans women are like this, and ive never said anything to the contrary. it's so frustrating how when i'm perceived as a man everyone assumes i'm trying to be some malicious asshole

@nelson my guess would be trauma begets trauma begets trauma

@nu boost this to hell and back, make this seen, they shall be made aware, and those who are against basic love and care for eachother shall be put on the spotlight.

and also yes, this "HE HATES TRANS WOMEN" thing seems to be an extremely common sentiment

one time, when i was voicing my complaints, a trans woman showed up in my replies telling me that i should always stay silent about my emotions and complaints because then i would "decide to be the villain", when i asked her why, she just kept spamming the same cohost link, soon enough, a friend of her proceeded to misgender me and both of them blocked me.

@mei all i want, is a world where we can all love eachother and take care of eachother, we're all queer and we all want to be killed off by fascists

also i wish for a world where killing fascists is commonplace 🔥

@nelson also stuff aimed at other queer masculine men kind of falls to the wayside in my memory just because the transmasc stuff has happened to me more directly, but i've also seen weird shit that acts like being a gay man is awful and being a lesbian is so much better, whether it be more "nice" stuff like "i feel so bad for gay men everywhere, because not only are they men, but they're also attracted to men so they have to deal with men's bullshit" or more outright hostile

@nu they kind of uhh, forget that what they're describing is gender essentialism, something that is very just against the whole idea of being transgender in the first place

@nelson Fediverse is the last place this behavior should be & this shouldn't be allowed to happen anywhere. All of the people saying this are really out of line. You are welcome here, they are not. Transgender men & transmasculine anything are welcome here, intolerance of them is not.

Someone saying "I have never seen such oppression towards trans men" is oppression towards trans men. That is minimizing & erasing their experience & it's disgusting.

I'm happy I haven't had to see this behavior, but I hear about it so much & it's upsetting to me that others are going through this, especially in a place that's supposed to be accepting. If I ever see this I won't hesitate to call them out on it.

@jackemled i see it every time i log into this platform but i really really really don't want to point at random people in here, that hurts people further, and it sucks.

there's some really good posts by Nate, trans dude who moderates wafrn, that describe these issues out there in X but also Fedi

@nelson i have only seen this type of behavior from like /tttt/ 4channer-type trans women and transmeds, I’m sorry you have to experience this harassment, we will try to make fedi a safe space for you

@nelson it is unfortunate this behavior exists

@d4rkness i've literally seen a post, like just now, that was something amongst the lines of

"trans women are forced to say that they like trans men because not liking trans men is seen as bad"

which is an extremely wild take to have

@nelson that’s an insane take wtf

@nelson 4chan and its consequences on the queer community

@d4rkness god cant we just all love eachother

like, shouldnt we be focusing on the actual issues like chasers and shitty people and not just random people on the internet who are just trying to exist???

@nelson @d4rkness who said this why would anyone say this

@shroomie @nelson transmeds/exclus/tttt users

@nelson Yeah, it's just so upsetting to see that fediverse is simultaneously so accepting & so hateful. Why is this one specific form of hate tolerated & why is it so popular? Something similar seems to happen to black people on fediverse. It's so bizarre to hate someone just because of their gender or their skin color.

I think this mindset manifests in the same way as anti LGBT or racist conservatives; they are presented with new information that either they could not have imagined possible or contradicts what they thought was true, & instead of learning about it & developing an understanding they throw a temper tantrum, pretend it's evil, & attack it. They don't want to admit that their guess about how the world works was wrong. They must always be correct. Anyone that does not agree with them or fit into their worldview is the devil.

@jackemled i guess it's just because statistically, it seems most people in queer fedi are transfems, some of them come from spaces like tumblr and 4chan, and most of them just... aren't quite aware of what trans men go through! i dont want to say they are evil, but they can become radicalized which is what i feel is the issue

idk, the only thing i'm radicalized on is that i believe everyone deserves a place to rest their head upon and be comfortable with, we all deserve the warmth and love of people like us

@d4rkness @nelson okay yeah but who specifically. what instance are they on

@shroomie @nelson good question

@shroomie @d4rkness sometimes i wish i could just point people to these posts but i dont want fedi meta to happen and for this to get worse with rants like

"this is why cis men are ruining the fediverse"

(... which i mean, it's true, but that's mastodon.social and a different issue altogether LMAO /j)

@nelson @shroomie totally reasonable

@d4rkness @shroomie

i mean, i remember when @goat (my headmate) said he wanted to be a good ally and help others, then someone replied with like "ok then take this estrogen and put on the cat ears"

he, of course, said "hey, that's not very nice, i like being a man", which was shortly followed by a block and a literal fucking public timeline threat about sending him to montana and getting him killed or starved to death

that was... insane, to say the least.

that person is still out there, unscathed, it seems.

@nelson @shroomie @goat that’s fucking wild bruh wtf is wrong with some ppl

@nelson I can understand growing up as a transgender girl, being forced to act in a way that does not represent you & being forced to fill a role that you aren't right for, being tortured & hurt every time your disguise fails, & then finally being able to come out as a girl & transition, then thinking "masculinity is evil because it hurt me". It's a very simple conclusion & it's pretty close to the truth; the people that force you into a box you don't fit in are evil, not the box itself.

@jackemled my take is

whatever you are, whatever you want to be, whatever you feel like, is valid and should be respected

if i'm just some cis man, who has experimented with being a woman before, and just wants not to be alienized, then i shouldn't have to deal with hatred

i'd understand if someone started calling me slurs if i said something "i wish all trans women died" or some shit like that, totally deserved, but insulting me just for existing? sucks

the transgender "ideology" also protects cisness and just wanting to be a man, or a woman, or nothing at all, or all at once, or sometimes this and sometimes that, or something new, or something not meant to be understood

again, the only thing i'm radicalized on is that we should love and respect eachother.

(except fascists, kill those)

@nelson I can understand going through that, coming to that conclusion, later seeing a transgender man come out, relating to him because he went through the same experience, & realizing that your initial conclusion was slightly off. What I can't understand is stopping at the "seeing a tboy" step & attacking him & being unwilling to use the new information to build a more accurate understanding of the world. I can't understand the desire to hurt people because they do not fit in with your model of the world instead of adjusting your model to fit reality better & being happy for someone who finally escaped hell.

@d4rkness @shroomie @goat imagine my fucking reaction when i asked a big moderator about it and they just went

"oh yeah they're a cult leader"

@jackemled i blame this on radicalization

it's the same techniques the big conservative politicians use to trap the conservatives in a specific mindset, they keep repeating the same bullet points and fail to actually try to understand and feel empathy, because they've been robbed of it

it's now an "Us vs them" situation.

@mei oh my god that fucking wording was ass, ok i fixed it

never write anything important past 12 am

@nelson
god thats so fucking horrible.
im so sorry to hear you and others have dealt with that.
fedi, for both good and bad, is built to house fringe communities of any type, but dear lord... some of those communities are ass.

I hope you feel better soon! :]

@shroomie @d4rkness @nelson translunar.academy is the instance most famous for these attitudes. But the loudest anti-transmasc voices are all on different instances. I think it would be poor form for me to name them publicly.

@nelson

You know this hits hard. As a pan man. Who didn’t want to change their sex, I feel the same. I have a frighteningly similar experience in queer spaces IRL. I look like who doesn’t belong to the loud majority. And they express it clearly without any knowledge of me. So I just wanted to say hi 👋 and to tell you there are people out there who can accept you, like me.

Weirdly, for me, it’s more valid for online places than IRL.

@Azzura yeah it's so weird, i believed in fedi because it's a place built by queer people for queer people, i actually expected this place to be an oasis amidst the chaos of other social media, but it doesn't seem to be that way

that's kind of why my headmate (@goat) decided to be a moderator here, because we wanted to see change, and this is partly why i am making these emotions and concerns clear and spread them around, because i want to inspire change.

i hope everything goes well, and i hope we can eventually cultivate the culture and love of respect that we need

@kaiiak i feel better, that's why i made this post, because i wanted to scream my experiences out loud, that's how you get people to listen and enact change, to be aware, to look forward to better standards.

@nelson i no longer trust anyone who calls themself a "transfeminist" because it's always synonymous with transandrophobic bashing of trans men

if you want me to change my mind then fucking prove that ideology of yours isn't just for harassing trans people you don't like

@ov @nelson imho transfeminism has value, it's just poisoned by so much weirdly targeted hatred against trans men

like... there's a world of difference between how cis men experience the world and trans men do and how they affect it

and like, masculinity isn't bad, it's patriarchy that is bad. i wish more people understood this

@nelson @mynameistillian @ov tbh this whole ”men are evil so trans men choose to be evil”-shit feels like it is just the otherside of that basic terf-ideology coin.

@whangdoodler @mynameistillian @ov

"men are evil"
"ok i understand, can i be a man that isnt evil?"
"no. being a man is inherently evil"
"so, are trans men evil?"
"yes.

@whangdoodler @nelson @mynameistillian but if you say it out loud you're in big trouble

@ov @whangdoodler @mynameistillian i am in big trouble, and i don't regret it

@nelson I know exactly the group you're talking about, they make Fedi worse for everyone and what they say is not acceptable.

And yeah, you're right, they always claim "not to have seen any transandrophobia" on here, that's a clear tell that they are the ones posting it.

Transphobia is transphobia, from anyone, trans women included, and I consider it just as heinous.

@Tattie i still can't quite understand why do people attach so so so tightly to an ideology which preaches the idea of committing violence to eachother.