Mr. Maxwell Egbert Wickersham III, Doggo Of Destruction, Was Quite Pleased With His Latest Excavation.

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.

puppy gromit

if someone is talking about how much they love their parents do not jump in and start venting about your issues with your parents. if someone is venting about their issues with their parents do not jump in and start talking about how much you love your parents. peace and love amen swag city

May 2021

this little freak keeps sneaking into my garden and rubbing himself all over my flowers??Hello?????

happy lesbians

Ay, I made these two illustration for a riso workshop last week, it was absolutely awesome !!! (shoutout to dear @jeananasartblog who motivated me to tag along - the print she made during the workshop is RAD AS HELL🔥)

My University has a requirement that, regardless of your degree, you need to take at least one course that centers on the experiences of a marginalized community or communities. I took a course on the psychological trauma of racism. There was a whole week's worth of lectures and conversations sprinkled throughout the course about how racism affects white people.

My second to last assignment for this course is writing about how we will do something for social change. And part of what we've been discussing all this course is how white people need to specifically think about the privileges and the ways racism also affects you negatively. Understanding that is a good way to start discussions with white people about racism, especially as a white person. Which is what's emphasized throughout the course: starting conversations. Starting discussions, whether in your personal life or your career, are a great way to do something for social change.

This was an introductory course with no prerequisites. There was a specific video we watched of a black man talking about how white people don't understand how this system also harms them as well and his frustration that we don't identify that.

Of course we should just care that people are suffering, and that should be enough, but part of the issue is the way people misidentify their suffering to come from people fighting oppressive systems and not the oppressive systems themselves harming them also.

why the emphasis on men suffering? nobody says that white ppl suffer under white supremacy because they don't, it's there to benefit them and only them, same with the patriarchy and any other oppressive state

People do in fact talk about white people suffering under white supremacy. I have seen many different anti-racist thinkers discuss that exact topic.

There is literally no benefit from insisting that oppressive systems are 100% good and healthy for those who benefit from them. It is good when people go "actually this system sucks and makes mine and everyone else's life worse."

I want to live in these beautiful places ...