Oh dear God... one of these again... can I blame the hormones? Naw, I think not.
Maybe my hairline isn't receding. Maybe I'm just pulling my hair out because it's like every time I go check up on my online trans community I am barraged by a bunch of shit that's either triggering, oppressive, or flat out obnoxious. Stuff that makes me want to yank pixels out of my computer screen just to stop seeing it (although that would be inefficient and in the long run expensive).
So there are a few things I would love to never hear again, although I'm sure I will:
"Man, why are you so up-tight about the pronoun issue? I mean, it's not their fault if you don't pass. Just roll with it. Gender isn't a big thing, anyway."
This has in recent memory come from genderqueers and people who like fucking with cis peoples' heads as well as post-transitional trans men who have it in their heads that everybody should just be patient and wait for the world to meet them. Oh, and cis people like to say it, too, especially as a variant of "Well, why do you have to be a man or a woman?" when they are clearly either one or the other.
As somebody who does pass and who really only has to deal with the pronoun issue from his parents, this still makes my eye tick. Pronouns are really important when your identity doesn't--can't--match seamlessly with your presentation. It's not just an annoyance, it is really fucking depressing. When a non-binary person (at least the kind who holds the "pronouns don't matter" viewpoint) gets misgendered, they might consider it funny or even a success. When a cis person or well-transitioned trans person gets misgendered, they have the privilege of thinking it's a bizarre fluke. To a binary trans, non-passing or not-always-passing person incorrect pronouns are a confirmation that reminds you of everything you want and don't have.
It's easy for me to look at trans guys who freak out about being called "she" and think about them as childish or impatient, but it's not my place--or anybody else's--to judge them in such a manner, especially considering I haven't had that problem aside from relatives in over six months.
"Testosterone isn't expensive. Just get another job and stop buying frivolous shit."
As a low-income person this attitude really, really cuts me for a variety of reasons.
I lived as male for nine years before I got testosterone. And to get it I had to spend a lot of money that could have gone to food or paying for school. Three months of therapy (because I couldn't get accepted by any informed consent programs and I had no health insurance) including having to drive an hour each way every week was no small sacrifice for me, and I still had to borrow money from my parents. When I started therapy my father argued with me over it calling me "impatient." Yes. After nine years.
When I was at the tail end of my therapy, my therapist informed me that not only would I have to have four more sessions after I started T, she was dropping her sliding scale and raising her price. The amount I had to pay went magically from $60 a session to $115 a session.
I luckily found an endocrinologist that took my health insurance. Each blood panel would have been roughly $350... without the hospital visit. There's always a chance my insurance will reject one of those blood panels if they figure out why they're being drawn.
The testosterone itself? No, that's not expensive. I spend around $60 for a 10mL vial and needles now. That's nothing. But getting it was extremely difficult and for my income level it is a huge financial hit. Was it worth it? Of course it was. Testosterone was the best decision of my life.
But seeing people tell other trans guys that this isn't expensive and that everybody can do it easily if they just "get two jobs" is fucking insulting. People shouldn't have to work two jobs to get their basic needs met.
"Bottom surgery is just disgusting! Have you ever even seen it?! It doesn't even work!"
There is something which, while it is a phenomenon that goes back much further than Chaz Bono coming out, I like to call the "Chaz Bono Effect."
Basically trans guys, usually pre-T or relatively early on T, talk about how terrible FTM bottom surgery is. Then they are on T for a while, or out for a while, and "suddenly" want it. Or at least strongly consider it.
Happened to me, too. Granted, I wasn't particularly vocal about it... but lots of people are. There is a lot of trash-talking of bottom-op among FTMs that leads to a really unrealistic view of what bottom-op actually is.
First off, phalloplasties aren't the only option. Second, they're better than people think they are. And third, your priorities likely will change once you get on T or have been on it for a while. There are plenty of trans guys who were in the "I will NEVER have bottom-op!" crowd who were on T for a few months, had top-op, and now want bottom-op.
But it's really not about you. Yeah, I feel silly for hating on bottom-op when now I'm strongly considering metoidioplasty as a future option for me, but that's not a big deal. The problem is that more of us have bottom-op than people seem to think. Non-op trans guys really get it in their heads that there are like four trans guys in the world who have had bottom-op and the rest of us haven't. That's not even close to true, and when you talk about how horrible it is you are making a mockery of them whether you intended to or not.
"We HAVE to STOP the RAD FEMS!"
I'm so sick of the topic of radical feminists coming up.
Let's be real for a minute here. Radical feminists can be vicious, transphobic assholes (although not all of them are transphobic, for the record). But they're also a dying movement with very little actual power. When people create legislation to limit transgender freedoms, they are not doing it because they read "The Transsexual Empire." Consider that feminism in general--something that all rational people should subscribe to whether in that name or not--has an undeserved nasty reputation anyway. If you say you support something for feminist reasons, there are thousands of people who will whine about how horrible feminism is. "Feminist" is even used as a slur to demean women who actually speak about their own rights. Consider the hate and vitriol spewed at Anita Sarkeesian for doing something as radical as stating the fucking obvious fact that there is sexism in video games. And "radical feminist" has even poorer connotations.
So I'm a paleo eater. Wait, this is actually relevant. Paleo eaters do not as a general rule get along with vegans (well, maybe as individuals, but not as a community). We have eating styles that are polar opposites of each other. And paleo eaters spend a hell of a lot of time debunking veganism and complaining about veganism without really recognizing that vegans are like less than a percent of the population and our time would be better spent working against, say, the Standard American Diet. Conversely, vegans love rambling on and on about paleo eaters without realizing that we are a similarly small slice of the population.
The point is that we have no real reason to spend so much energy complaining about radical feminists. We'd be much better off encouraging full inclusion in more mainstream feminist pursuits (especially of trans women women of color, low-income women, etc.). If we talk about transphobic feminists at all, it should be to remind mainstream feminists that transphobia is no more a "feminist belief" than racism or homophobia (both of which have been aggressively defended in "feminist" literature).
But the rad fems themselves... seriously? They aren't worth it.
"But so-and-so posted my picture/posted my words/said mean things about me!" I get it, she's an asshole. Welcome to the Internet. I'm sorry you had a screenshot taken from a public YouTube account and posted somewhere which is literally only read by trans people who seemingly want to be offended and like eight man-hating lesbians. Stop triggering yourself by visiting and don't concern yourself with it.
But yeah, that's it for now. Oh, believe me, there are plenty of other things I could complain about... but my blood pressure is bad enough.
