”trans Men Are The Weakest Links Of The Trans Community” My Trans Male Friends And I Have Lived A

”trans men are the weakest links of the trans community” my trans male friends and I have lived a lifetime of having our bodily autonomy stripped away to the point of sexual harassment. people talk about our bodies like everyone except us owns them because no one can handle the idea of precious female bodies being “mutilated” by gender affirming care. we are treated like traitors by women and as confused, silly girls by men. we have no spaces in which we belong because even the queer community tries to control our bodies. if we pass as men then we get ousted from queer-friendly spaces, and if we don’t pass as men we’re treated like cringe, theyfab trenders. everything we love is considered annoying. we’re called ugly and sad and “what a shame you guys are men haha”. We have to watch as society uses us as an excuse to ban gender affirming care for young people because our bodies belong to the government, because our bodies belong to our mothers, and because our anatomy is the only thing they see us as. And then we have to sit back as the trans community blames us for these bans. “All of these fake transtrenders are the reason they all hate us” when we’re busy having the women in our lives scrutinise our bodies to make sure we’re not being “infected” by the trans contagion. There’s no space we can belong in. No space that tries to make us feel welcome because either they treat us like women or they treat us like dangerous, cis men.

Every trans man I know has been sexually assaulted. Every trans man I know has been brought to suicide attempts, either due to their families or due to people online bullying them to death. Our struggles are constantly diminished and yet behind the scenes we’re fucking exhausted from fighting attacks from every single goddamn side. How fucking dare you call us weak. We’re going through fucking hell like every other goddamn trans person out there and our bodies are being abused and controlled and scrutinised every day of our fucking lives. Have you seen how TERFs talk about our bodies? How they lament us “mutilating” our breasts, our fertility, our anatomy, all in the name of feminism. That’s sexual fucking harassment, and it’s disgusting. But that’s all they fucking see us as. We’re not human, we’re just defected specimens. Cis women give themselves free passes to harass our bodies because they see us as “one of them”. One of them, but wrong. One of them, but need to be fixed. My mother regularly checks my chest to make sure I’m not trying to flatten it, and she can get away with it because “that’s what mothers do to their daughters.” Even when I’m not her daughter. Even when I’m screaming at the top of my lungs wanting to die because my body doesn’t belong to me. My body stopped belonging to me as soon as I came out as trans, because female empowerment doesn’t apply to me anymore. Female empowerment is now about “correcting” me, to restore my body back to its former glory, because only then was I worth something.

We are not weak. We are strong as fuck for dealing with the shit we have to deal with. And the worst part is, so much of the bullying comes from other trans men. We’ve been taught to hate ourselves so much that the only way to get ahead is to put down our own brothers and treat them in the way we’ve been treated.

There is no weak link of the community because we’re all dealing with absolute shit from all sides, but don’t you ever suggest that trans men are somehow the whiny babies who have nothing to complain about when we’re constantly holding back from screaming our guts out because there’s nothing else we can do.