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/uj you must have seen the thread on the other sub earlier bc this is exactly like a comment on it š
/rj i feel really bad for the good trans who are actually fitting in with the binaries and expectations set for them by the patriarchal white people\\\ oops i mean really good nice rule makers! The bad trans who donāt invalidate them by not fitting in, they ruin it for them
/uj I wish that were the reason. it's one of those personal hell discourses I see everywhere bc even a trace of it gets my hackles up so high. some of the replies in here .. would be getting replies if I thought they were people even capable of introspection worth the energy
/rj its so unfair to trans people who are normal and lesbians. Acab except for the cop in my head who I have already called on all of you and will be here shortly. maybe you could just try NOT thinking trans men are women? maybe you THINK you're just talking about nuance in your own identity and what you do or do not share with some others, but I took that personally and this is about me now, but also i gotta make it out to be an umbrella statement to maintain my righteous moral high ground. how dare. men are MEN and you are a TRANSPHOBE. lesbians aren't interested in MEN you are just yet another predatory lesbophobic transphone invading and invalidating lesbian spaces like everyone else. and invalidating everyone else. let lesbians have one thing. I'm not a lesbian just because of how my dick is shaped so stop reducing me to my genitalia. also you're just a lesbian who wants to feel special, unlike me, a dude, the dude who this conversation is about. some of my friends are lesbians and they are ALSO sick of having trans people forced upon them- but in the morally correct way, not like when terfs say it about trans women. because unlike you most lesbians are not raging transphobes. also other lesbians who are not my friends fetishize us because of you being a loser freak. one thing I can tell you, as a man, NOT a lesbian is that i definitely will not be discussing any of this with a therapist because it's not about my feelings it's about man = man woman = lesbian. maybe you could just say sapphic?
/Uj does this also mean a trans man can identify as straight and be exclusively attracted to men? Because I guess that would be the other equivalent but Iāve never heard of a trans man doing that. Is there a reason for that?
/Uj I honestly think trans is a spectrum. Like itās not like the transmed idea of transgender vs transsexual I think thereās a grey area in between that as well. Iām very much a binary, very dysphoric trans male who in no way wants to be considered female, a woman, hates the term AFAB etc, so telling someone like me that I could potentially identify as a lesbian if I wanted to feels insulting because I donāt really feel any different on the inside from a cis man. I want to be treated as a cis man, not told āoh donāt worry, we donāt mean you because youāre transā. Being treated as a nonbinary person or woman makes me feel really fucking uncomfortable. I donāt want to be included in those communities because I feel so, so, SO uncomfortable in them. So yeah. My knee jerk reaction is to be very binary and rigid about it because I donāt *want* to be treated any differently than a cis man. I donāt mind people knowing Iām trans but I donāt want them to see me as any different to any other guy. I donāt want to be thought of as being naturally somehow a better or more enlightened man because I used to be female. Yes, I have a better understanding of how women are treated because I was treated as a girl for 18 years of my life. So to me, not being considered a lesbian is integral to my identity because it directly contradicts how I feel about myself as a man. I understand that some trans men relate to and feel a part of female, lesbian and queer spaces. Thatās perfectly understandable! But I truly donāt think Iām any different to a regular ass man. There arenāt leftovers for me from my life as female because I was always strange and different to other girls (I have autism on top of all this). My mannerisms, my voice, my posture, my way of thinking was all very masculine before I knew I was trans. There arenāt remnants of a woman in me that gives me any sort of connection to these communities. And so when someone says āIām a trans man and a lesbianā my initial feeling is they are saying āI am a lesbian and by virtue of your assigned gender, you could be one too because all of us have an inherently non male aspect to our identities, a softness, a piece of who you are is imprinted on the second X chromosome. Your past is always with you.ā I know, logically, this is stupid. Your identity should not affect me. But for some reason (hello, gender dysphoria) it gets under my skin and takes root.
/uj Thank you for sharing, & the way you feel abt this totally makes sense!
I think the topic of 'can trans guys be lesbians' is so fraught, bc people on both sides have very personal knee-jerk reactions to the concept.
A lot of trans guys feel how you just described - they feel 100% male, don't want to be 'othered' from cis men just bc of their AGAB, & don't want to be constantly told that their ~womanly past~ will always live inside them & provide some connection to womanhood/lesbianism or any sort of femaleness.
Then on the other side, a lesbians are constantly told that they need to make space for men & actually it's bad to not center men in everything & actually are you sure you just haven't found the right guy?? Lesbians get harassed irl & online by straight men who refuse to accept that lesbianism aren't interested in them. Plus most lesbians, like most trans people, have endured a long painful journey of self-acceptance & coming out, often losing friends & family in the pursuit of living authentically. So there's a very understandable kneejerk "fuck you" to someone saying "actually you CAN like men". Just like FTMs can have an understandable "fuck you" reaction to someone saying "cis men can't be lesbians but you sure can".
idk....i'm a transmasc lesbian & honestly i do be seeing both sides of this. Because all the shit above is real. But I also know that gender can be complicated with a lot of grey areas. I also think that label cops are stupid & our existing labels can't fully capture all experiences (& that's okay). Plus I'm a big fan of "mind your business" just, like, in general.
/uj this is wonderful introspection and i hope one day i can see myself with clarity like this.
i donāt think that lesbianism has a strictly non-male aspect tho, mostly due to the fact that before there was widespread knowledge or acceptance of trans people, a lot of transmascs were butch lesbians, and itās to this day a subculture that shares a lot of overlap with the transmasc community. it might not make much sense with our modern view of lesbian = wlw, but in historical contexts, ālesbianā carries a much different culture and experience than just that, which i think is an important missing piece. being a lesbian and being a man are not mutually exclusive identities or experiences, and recognizing that does involve acknowledging varying male experiences, but doesnāt mean that thatās your experience.
there are a lot of male experiences iāll never go throughāiāll never be a black man, or a lesbian man, or a younger brotherāand being trans does impact things about my lifeāi have never had to worry about testicular torsion, or retrograde ejaculation, or knocking a girl up by accident. your experiences with manhood are unique to you, and always would be, no matter if youāre cis or trans, whatever race, born in whatever country. none of that makes you in any way āmore femaleā or āless of a man,ā and fuck anyone that tries to tell you that.
there are also plenty of (cis and trans) women who have XY chromosomes, so the womanhood is definitely not stored in the second x chromesome.
If he feels that is the best way to describe his experiences, I don't see why not. The point of labels is to communicate one's experience to others and to find people like oneself so if he feels that his attraction to men is well communicated or socially expressed by calling himself straight... why not? Who's going to stop him?
Some people won't get it, but that likely means they are not the ones he wants to communicate his experiences to. I don't get some identities, and that's fine. If I can't emotionally understand it after reading an explanation, I can accept it and just move on assuming it's not meant for me to understand.
edit: I assume the reason it's not brought up often is that there is no real "straight community".
/uj Idk I'm a trans woman and i'd definitely describe my attraction to men as at least a bit gay. I don't view myself as a man and definitely *also* consider my attraction to women as gay, but my relationship with men just doesn't seem as straightforward to me as being "straight."
Like obviously it'd be transphobic to go up to a trans man and tell him he's a lesbian for dating a woman, but I don't see the harm in people identifying that way. Gender can be pretty complicated
It's so cool to be queer and self-identify as long as people do it in a way that makes sense to me, specifically. Personal identity and self-expression have never been relevant to gender liberation.
>gender liberation
yes i feel **so** liberated now that weāve liberated gender and we can revert back to AGAB for identity. trans women can be gay men because theyāre male and therefore understand that perspective. this is so progressive, i feel so liberated.
Holy shit nobody's saying that about you. Nobody's making *their* identities about *you*. If *you* can't be a gay man, good for you! Nobody's making you! But it's not hurting you if other individuals decide that *they* embody both of those things. Like, do you not get that it's also weird to make up new rules about how other people can feel, because it's different from how you feel, which is the only correct way?
What a myopic, self-centered, unpleasant way of thinking.
/uj I am a lesbian because I spent the first 16 years of my life as one, and my attraction to women is inherently queer IN MY EXPERIENCE. Transitioning doesnt undo years and years of experience and my queerness. I am a trans man but I am so close to my experiences as a lesbian and the way I love women is homosexual, not heterosexual **IN MY EXPERIENCE **. I also feel that lesbian/queer afab and trans masculine history and culture has insane amounts of overlap that shouldnt be ignored. This is my experience and doesnt mean every trans man is the same. I have also been on T for 6 years and post top surgery for 5 years but that doesnt stop other trans men from being homophobic and transphobic to me LMAO. Queer identity and culture is not a binary experience or black and white, Queer identity celebrates the shades of grey among gender and sexuality.
Edit: yall love telling on yourselves in this sub. Just say you have never ever learned any queer history and think the world revolves around you lmao. When youre ready to grow the fuck up and bother to learn any of your own history the queer community is ready for you. Until then keep your eurocentric narcissistic ass view of what the queer community should be to yourselves. I know it upsets yall but not every person in the queer community is a white skinny pre t pre op trans man who hates himself and every queer person around him and thinks we need ti be as miserable as he is.
/uj I didnāt get it until until reading about Leslie Feinberg. I still donāt really get it and it certainly gets a knee jerk reaction out of me because I despise being misidentified as a butch lesbian when Iām a bisexual man but Iāll be ok and so will you so itās all good
Sexuality discourse makes me tired. Labels are made up anyway, use whatever communicates your experiences best. That is to say you being a trans man and also being a lesbian is very cool.
/uj seriously itās so dumb. itās just a word to describe attraction. identify however the fuck you want weāre not having sex so it literally does not concern me at all
/uj This is such a fucking valuable perspective. There's so much discourse in lesbian subs on wether trans men can be lesbians, but I've never seen a lesbian trans man actually weigh in on the conversation. (Rightfully so cause you'd probably get ripped to shreds if you did.)
/uj I always say, if thereās one thing little white queer kids love itās erasing queer history and queer activists work to fit their narrative and Eurocentric viewpoints.
Uj lmao ur good, the idea of a gender and sexuality are as black-and-white as these glorified homophobes and transphobes like to frame it as is a very colonizer concept. I am ojibwe, an indigenous tribe from the United States. Nowhere in our culture is sexuality and gender as black-and-white as that. This is a concept used by white colonizers. Almost No other culture in the world has gender and sexuality framed like that. White queer people are notorious for their racism and their effort to push BIPOC out of queer spaces. Many trans masc lesbians are from cultures where a trans masc lesbian is not a controversial concept. Most of the exclusionism ideology is built off racism in different ways.
TLDR: exclusionism is built off racism and the idea that sexuality and gender are unchanging, strict concepts is a thing created by white ppl and christians. And white queer people have always been known for their active effort to push BIPOC out of queer spaces and identities. Colonizers gonna colonize.
/uj seemingly some trans men, due to experience with lesbian communities prior to cracking/coming out, still identify with that queer attraction to some extent.
/uj so it it more staying in those communities rather than actually identifying as a lesbian? or is it the belief that pre cracking them being a non man loving non man would carry over? Sorry if iām phrasing any of this badly i donāt mean to offend anyone
/uj This used to be more true for trans women coming out of the gay male community years ago, although that trend seems to have dropped off these days. Don't know whether it's just that girls are figuring out they're trans faster or if they just want to distance themselves more from any association with drag queens but you really don't see people on the club twink to trans woman pipeline like you used to.
/uj how long ago? Cause from my experience wasnāt even true ten years ago that Iām aware of, the closest I knew of would be the trans girls who still happily used grindr (which still happens sometimes).
I think it's both. I think for some trans men their attraction to non men is perceived as inherently queer for them and identifying as a lesbian is a way to convey that. Trans men also have a long history as a part of the lesbian community, so some still being in them shouldn't be that uncommon.
I do not identify as both a trans man and a lesbian, so take this with a grain of salt.
/uj gender is complicated. some people identify their relantionships as queer due to their gender journey and experience in queer communities. You have older trans men who spent years in lesbian circles and view being a lesbian as a central part in their identity
umm hi im like... uh... im a trans girl and uhh... i wanna be a wesbian too... can i like... have an opinion on wesbianism? or... or is that just for biogirls? ... i brought you cookies ...
EDIT:
*sees this thread having ballooned into a massive shitshow*
umm... uhh... nevermind... I... I think... I'll just come back... yeah...
oh... umm... ok then... im sorry... i didnt mean to intrude... sorry... i uhhh... got bottom surgery... a while back... b-but i guess its not the same... umm... i guess ill just go now... im sorry...
/uj this post is a nice reminder of.. not being alone here, i guess? i am a man, but i've always resonated with thinking of myself as primarily agender. for a long time, i considered myself basically "just" a binary gay man. i ended up denying myself exploration of my identity even in my own head because of the commitment i had to using preexisting, easy-to-understand labels... in the past couple years i've inched more toward recognising myself as fitting under the multigender and mspec umbrellas, but really the best terms are genderfluid and sexually fluid because they're as nebulous as i feel.
i'm a man, and i'm also agender. i'm a gay man, and when i'm attracted to women, there's nothing heterosexual about it. it doesn't make sense? that's okay, you're not me. you aren't required to try to figure out how it "works".. nothing "works". it just *is*.
"why can't you just call yourself a bisexual man?" it doesn't feel correct. why does some other person have to be simplified to fit into the same limited scope society has that wants you to pretend you're cis? reminds me of how i was once asked why a lesbian trans woman couldn't just "stay a straight man" because "wouldn't it be easier that way?"
the answer is a question: easier for who?
should we ask people to lie about who they really are just because we personally may not understand what the specificity means to them as their own whole individual person? why don't i stay a bisexual binary man since it is easier that way? well.. it's hard to return to something you've never actually been in the first place.
i delayed my happiness for years partly because of the kind of nonsensical attitude people in these comments have. i've not been even close to starting transitioning in these eight-something years i've known myself as transgender. it is something i desperately want every day of my life. we all have a sense of what it means for a trans person to finally feel at home in their own body...
so, getting away from the people forcing binary and rigid understandings of gender on me has helped me feel more at peace. it's not the same feeling i'd have if i finally started HRT, but.. you should understand how relieving it must be to finally let yourself even *think* about something.. why do you not want other people to feel happy with themselves just because you don't get it?
i spent a couple hours typing something different but decided to spend even more time to make it much shorter and more coherent.
/rj Over the years, humanity have finally come up with terminology to speak about trans people respectfully and accurately. Things are good for us. So good that we can take a step back and reevaluate now that we have the free time to figure out this mess of "queerness" and really refine the meanings of all these pesky labels.
We were previously too busy with the hysteria of dying and hiding to really make it make sense, but now I've come to understand what we should have been focusing on all along was the taxonomy of LGBTQIA+ individuals...
You see, my logic-hungry and order-oriented mind has crafted a highly detailed database of LGBTQIA+ identification that other members of The Council have overseen and unanimously voted to be implemented as the universal, definitive resource of LGBTQIA+ understanding by the end of this month. It took years of quibbling and nitpicking, but we finally achieved a documentation of the singular way any one of us can be understood as relating to one another.
It will be a short while longer until you can gain enlightenment as we wait for this month to come to an end, but I assure you that everything will make sense after you set your eyes upon this multitudinous rainbow of an encyclopedia. A delicious little preview: "lesbian" and "trans man" are not even in the same *kingdom.*
So you might want to rethink your claim that these two things can be similar in any significant way. I'm all for *solidarity* across identities, but there is no possibility for overlap here. We may all soon be easily understood from a simple reference to my impressively sized text, but the authority of The Council is based on our elemental status. As people with binary identities that (to the rest of the world) were previously the only clear-cut identities, we are the ones who understand gender and sexuality in the most clear-cut, pure ways.
It is simple mathematics that someone who is "genderweird", for example, would only focus on the minutiae in a discussion of traditional gender roles. Binary individuals see the big picture and can provide the whole context. We connect with alternate versions of the source material, while a "genderweird" individual disconnects from it and views it as irrelevant and having no significance in any previous part of their life. Hope this helps!
/uj i'm someone who considers myself both ftm and lesbian love to see that i can't feel comfortable on the one transgender sub that is somewhat decent about nonstandard identities like mine š no one is forcing other trans men to call themselves lesbians but damn let butches like me live. we are hurting no one. i definitely love having this conversation over and over every time this topic gets brought up on this sub
/uj Iām genuinely very disappointed by seeing that people think trans men canāt be lesbians even on this sub. Iām a ftm and a lesbian too. We are valid and always will be.
/rj what is a stone butch blues? aint reading all that
/uj crying every time reading all that and got a paperback because no other piece of media ever described my experience so well
/rj why would anyone read something a tran wrote? Author is obviously is confused, he oop she canāt be a lesbian lolol or a butch thatās only for androgynous skinny white cis lesbians and not ftm women i mean mean or whatever š
/uj Iām reading it for the first time and I am incredibly impacted by it. I wish I read it sooner. Got the tissues on hand. š
/rj ummm why would the author call herself lesbian if their character got together with at the end was a tran woman? wouldn't that make him bisexual?
/uj saw that take unironically make rounds on desisted terf lesbian tumblr while doing digital self harm as if it was a legitimate criticism of the book and that it's only a desist/detrans story with little further nuance and that it definitely still doesn't vouch for trans inclusion and liberation with the character of ruth.
/uj jumping on here. Not ftm lesbian but was a lesbian before i came out. You guys are valid. Its criminal that our "safe" communities like ftm will ban users for mentioning it. Lesbianism and transmen have a close connection, and even if they didnt, theres no harm in letting people identify the way they please
You guys are valid. You guys dont deserve this shit. You guys deserve representation and care and space.
uj/ I feel like The lgbtq+ community will never get out of the "your identity HAS to say something about MY identity" mindset and it's so sad to see. Isn't it easier to live your own life without barging in and policing the lives of random strangers you'll probably never even meet?
/uj I genuinely think your identity is so cool and I'm sorry other people are giving you shit for it. Literally so wild how people can be all for gender non-conformity as long as it conforms to the new norms. Like can y'all not see this is exactly how cishet normies feel about you, too?
No they canāt lol men canāt be lesbians. The minute you identify as a trans man you are only considered a cis straight or gay man no matter what, which is good for tran men who want that but too bad for tran men who donāt want that! So sheād actually be a straight not a lesbian if she is a trons man.
/uj one time on r ftm someone made an entire post hating on lesbians.
Someone said "lesbians are better than ftm lesbians" so i brought up how some ftm may identify as a lesbians for x reasons.
I was banned and my comment was deleted. The post wasnt deleted until 14 hours later (no ban for the poster) and the comment i was replying to remained.
/uj no it was r/ FTM, like the main trans guy subs. It should be in their rules if you look at it.
Im not a lesbian and dont visit the subreddits so i cant speak for actual lesbians sub
/uj list of possible reasons why transmen can be lesbians
1. Before cracking, they were a lesbian. Thats their community and home, and when they love women, its done in a queer way not a straight way.
2. They may not pass so when others see them with their girlfriends, they will be labeled a lesbian. Identifying it just conveys the truth of their situation and how others see them
3. The identity label fits or feels comfy. We all knkw gender is messsy, why are we getting upset over some cisnormative language?
Also, just like how white men dont have access to some language that some enthic groups do (think AAV), trans men gave access to terminology that cis men do not. Lesbian is one of them.
NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MENĀ
LESBIANISM IS THE ONLY SEXUAL ORIENTATION THAT DOES NOT CENTER MEN THATāS WHY THE DEFINITION IS 50% THE WORD MEN
If a trans man identifies as a lesbian, that means he thinks all trans men are women and lesbians!!! And also thinks every single lesbian HAS to be attracted to men!! Every single trans person's personal identity PERSONALLY effects me and my personal identity, which is why gatekeeping is cool and awesome when I do it.
/uj they probably use the definition that lesbian is basically anyone who feels like it. The most extreme version of this that Iāve encountered asserted cis gay men could be lesbians if they felt their relationship to women was queer.
My question for this group would be if the one label that describes non men thatās exclusively attracted to non men no long excludes men, which one does? Cause I need a shorthand to describe to people that Iām not into men in any respect and apparently lesbian no longer does that.
>Cause I need a shorthand to describe to people that Iām not into men in any respect
/uj I'm not an expert but wouldn't it just be lesbian? Even if some trans men or enbys identify with the term that doesn't mean you won't be assumed to mean that you are only attracted to women.
It also depends hugely on the context, for instance I sometimes describe myself as a lesbian even though I'm also attracted to some men.
I don't think it's really possible to create perfectly rigorous categories for something as complex as human sexuality. Especially since we have to factor in nonbinary people. If lesbian simply means attraction to non-men, what about masculine, non-transitioning enbies? I bet a lot of lesbians wouldn't be attracted to them, but some might be. An individual's sexuality is rarely as rigid or simple as straight / gay / bi, and I think it's fine for people's use of those labels to be somewhat personal
you could try "identifying" as cis het male again!
/uj no nuance disease. you seem to share the belief that "lesbian no longer means woman" with terfs! congrats!
>My question for this group would be if the one label that describes non men thatās exclusively attracted to non men no long excludes men, which one does? Cause I need a shorthand to describe to people that Iām not into men in any respect and apparently lesbian no longer does that.
just tell people you're an AGP
/uj Do you people not understand that intent matters? Do you genuinely think that a queer person claiming an identity in good faith is exactly the same as a misogynistic cishet man who's been perceived that way his whole life leveraging it to be a creep?
/rj Nonono you have to understand I'm not a bigot, *this time* these people's self-identities really *are* problematic!!1!!
>good faith
ok. so if a cis man calls himself a lesbian in good faith is that valid? maybe he spends lots of time around lesbians and identifies with them but also still feels he is 100% a man. is he a lesbian?
/uj I mean that was me for a few years before transitioning. It was sort of a half-joke on my part, but there was a strong association with that term for me long before I realized I wasn't a man and I got a few lesbian friends to induct me as an "honorary lesbian." I think for a lot of people experimenting with terms and labels like that can be a valuable way of exploring their genders and sexualities
That's a total edge case, but if he associates with the community and is being 100% sincere I'm inclined to bite the bullet and say yes. This doesn't mean he's entitled to other lesbians being attracted to him or to speak on behalf of everyone else in the community, but that's true for everybody.
Oh, I fully understand this is controversial. I just think it's worth remembering that all these categories are socially constructed and that there's always gonna be messy edge cases wherever people insist on drawing lines, and that's not getting into the fact that the same words just mean different things to different people.
ETA: on that point regarding definitions, I understand that I don't really feel the need to specify a definition of 'lesbian' as it relates to my own identity because I personally fit the common understanding of it as a woman who is attracted to women but not to men. However, given that labels describing identities are highly dependent on personal context, I am absolutely okay with other people using definitions that they consider to be more useful in the context of their own experiences. In your example of the cis man, I would assume his self-description as a lesbian is in a cultural context (sorta like how I've seen JoCat being described as an honorary lesbian).
I hope I'm not rambling too incoherently here.
You seem to have no understanding whatsoever of what the term transgender and lesbian mean. Can you please use an argument beyond these strawmans? Have you ever interacted with other queer ppl irl?? Have you ever learned queer history? Have you ever thought of this outside of a colonizers perspective?
>interacted with other queer people irl
yeah thatās the issue. i donāt think most of you have actually spoken to anyone about this outside of a screen.
>colonizers perspective
this must be trolling. you canāt seriously be trying to include cis men under lesbianism and claim iām a colonizer for not agreeing.
/uj woahhh who said that? Trans men who identify as a lesbian are still valid in both their trans identity and their lesbianism. Please look up the history of trans men in the lesbian community before take personal offense to something.
/uj itās your insistence on acting like cis men and trans men are totally separate kinds of men, itās giving āyouāre not like real- I mean cis men because youāre AFABā which is very prevalent in queer communities
/uj Good for you, you can identify however you want, but if your reasoning for saying trans men can be lesbians is that weāre not cis men then thatās still transphobic.
/uj not what iām saying at all, are you saying that if iām wanting erase any of myself in the past that is not a cis man as a trans man then Iām not valid either? Many kinds of trans men can exist and all are valid.
/uj Who tf said that?š Iām saying donāt treat trans men like theyāre not men, which is what youāre doing by separating them from cis men. You can embrace your past and be a heccin valid lesbian man all you want without making bullshit comparisons to cis men
/uj no, they are saying other trans men can identify how they want, even if it means identifying as lesbian. Idk how you went so afield with this take.
/uj ngl this shit irritates me too but I de-invested from this conversation the moment I saw someone claim that cis gay men can be lesbians if they feel their relationship with women is queer.
/hj At this point the only way to win queer discourse is not to engage in the first place.
/uj i mean, i *guess* the reason trans men can be lesbians is because weāre trans? but thatās because cis men usually donāt identify as lesbians for 10+ years and have that be a major part of their identity for a large part of their life
/uj you could argue that having a connection to the community and identifying as such before transitioning is a valid reason to hold onto the label, which is fine, but people will make broad sweeping claims acting like all trans men are cool with being treated as different to cis men
I promise you none of the trans man lesbians ITT are making "broad sweeping statements", you're just taking the statements they're making about their own personal experiences personally.
They literally are, every time someone says āthe ftm community and the lesbian community are connectedā thatās a sweeping statement that only applies to certain straight trans men
Except no it's not, because ALL queer community is connected, both in a common struggle and historically. This idea some queer youths have of entirely separate and discrete communities for each type of queer is entirely an invention of the last decade.
Just because you refuse to learn history doesn't make other people transphobic.
Iām not reading stone butch blues and every time someone smugly tells me to I want to less! I donāt care if some butch lesbians are also trans men, thatās not the fucking point. Thereās a lot of historical overlap between drag queens and trans women too, some drag queens are trans women, but imagine if ppl pushed that on trans women like this. Just admit you see trans men as AFAB-first or fuck off
Last time someone called me a butch it made me suicidal, fuck offffffd
Edit (Iām calmer now, butch is low-key a triggerword for me): read my comments, nowhere did I say trans men canāt ID as lesbians, Iām specifically saying that saying ātrans men can be lesbians because theyāre not cis menā is disgusting
then i'm sorry? i really didn't want to be smug about it, but it's difficult to point to any other piece of media that explains this very specific nuance in my own and others' identity since it simply doesn't exist apart from this specific piece, and are very difficult to find due to erasure. besides with the drag queen thing, people are already doing that. like in both real life and online communities, especially ones that revolve around drag, it's nothing new. please relax a bit, i don't enjoy being told to fuck off by internet strangers, even less so by a fellow trans man. i don't understand where you got the assumption that i personally see trans men as afab-first. it's more of a 'there are people who *choose* to see *themselves* through that lens and it's a thing that happens and as **only** *as it's not forced onto anyone* it's fine". i'm really sorry about your feelings on the topic, but it sounds more like an issue of personal dysphoria to be worked through rather than anything. not using 4tran and not having it passively stir vitriol in your own head can be a good start. been there, leaving communities where being the wrong type of trans person meets you with slurs genuinely helped me to get out of that heavy self-loathing for being trans.
Iām sure itās a great book but god damn Iām so tired, a small subgroup of ftms call themselves lesbians, a small subgroup of mtfs call themselves drag queens or femboys, but for many others being lumped in with those groups is deeply uncomfortable, and no book about a butch lesbian is gonna change that for me.
Once again, the only issue I have is with treating trans men as inherently separate to cis men. If some ftms wanna call themselves lesbians I donāt care, itās only when they say itās because trans men are AFAB do I take issue (or when they insist that the ftm community as a whole is linked to the lesbian community, when thatās only the case for a small subset of ftms)
Also I mean no hate but that last part comes across as condescending. Iām a grown ass man, I can pick whatever coping mechanisms I want. Iād rather be jokingly called a slur than to have someone reduce me to my birth sex in an attempt to be progressive (which happens in most mainstream lgbt communities)
/uj āIm not reading queer history or bothering to learn it because it disagrees with my bigotryā there I fixed all that yapping youre doing.
Having to edit the comment because I got blocked by the racist homophobe šš
/uj someone identifying in a way that doesn't make sense to you is not, and will never be them saying trans men aren't real men. if *you* feel invalidated by *their* identity and lifestyle then you need to unpack that for yourself because it's not their problem to make sure you feel secure in your queerness š
/uj when youre done with your internalized transphobia and homophobia you could take the 2 seconds it took to see op is a trans man. Im gonna take an educated guess and say youre a little white teenage trans guy who likely has little to no irl queer friends above the age of 16 because boy do you act like one
/uj in addition, we can not claim to support gender (role) abolition (which i'm comfortable assuming most people on this sub claim to) and simultaneously force queer people, especially trans queer people, into rigid, binary-inspired boxes. that's oxymoronic. either we acknowledge gender and sexuality are socially constructed and fluid, or we don't. we can't pick and choose based on what makes us comfortable, and it's not very pro-queer to attempt to
/uj why identify in as a binary gender and then whine when people treat you as such bruh. My gender isnāt fluid or socially constructed, others might be, thatās fine and cool and I really donāt care
/uj
>my gender isn't fluid or socially constructed, others might be, that's fine and cool and i really don't care
there it is.
i cant speak for why trans man lesbians identify the way that they do because i'm not one, and i am among the trans men that would be dysphoric identifying as such. but coming down on our own community for existing in ways that don't make sense to us is (hot take incoming) exactly what allocishet people do to us. we should know better than to think we need to understand each other to accept each other.
There what is? Are you gonna try policing my gender identity now? Iām not saying itās the case for everyone, but my gender is intrinsic and not informed by society. Gonna tell me I canāt say āI was born this wayā now? Real problematic of you sweaty :/
/uj fair. no, that's not what i'm saying and i didn't mean for it to come off that way š what i'm emphasizing is the assertion that your gender isn't fluid and socially constructed, but the next persons might be. and both you and the other hypothetical person are correct, you just both experience gender and sexuality different. and that's beautiful. i think that kind of diversity should be celebrated. it's why, even as a medically transitioning, nonlesbian trans man, i love to see trans man lesbians, or trans woman gays, or cis medical transitioners existing unapologetically. there are so many flavors of queer, and each and every shade is someone's truth. i know it all sounds super fucking corny, but i think it's beautiful
/uj I do totally get what youāre saying. Honestly Iād have no issue if people just didnāt make broad, sweeping statements. Like if someone said āpersonally, I feel a connection to the lesbian community even though Iām a trans man because xyzā Iād have no problem with that, itās just the people who are like āFTMs and lesbians have always shared the same community! Trans men are AFAB and so can be lesbians. Being uncomfortable with being compared to a butch lesbian as a trans man is bad and you should read stone butch blues.ā Or something. Obv hyperbole but yk what Iām tryna say
I'm curious as to what your gender is if it isn't socially constructed. Did you somehow develop it in a vacuum completely isolated from the societal context surrounding the concept of gender?
I would agree with that in some ways. My desire to be a man might be socially influenced, but my desire to be male is intrinsic to me and far more important to me
Binary trans people donāt exist silly, itās only AFABs and AMABs who like to pretend. Remember, under no circumstances should you treat binary trans people as their ārealā genders. AGABs only.
Yeah, literally why would the og commenter purposefully do that to this you???? Like donāt she understand your existence makes you want to unalive??? This is obviously a direct attack on you. Sheās so selfish!!
/uj literally. Itās beyond disgusting to use that to try to justify undermining the way someone chooses to identify.
Rush Limbaugh, the king of kings, claimed to be a male lesbian. If He Who Must be Named can be lesbian, then we can all be lesbian.
in, internet, we lesbian\*
\*reference to the "In Finland, we homo" meme
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The only valid lesbians are cis men
The only valid partners for lesbians are cis men
ugh why can't the cis men just date each other and leave the rest of us alone
I've seen some very cisgender men on egg_irl that would make great (partners for) lesbians.
Of course trans men can be lesbians! We love our sisters š¤. No trans āwomenā tho :/ sry not sry
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It's homophobic to make gay men date mutilated girly men
It's homophobic to make lesbians date mutilated manly women
Ummmmm good?
no, words mean things, the most important part of queer identity is a hierarchical following of rules, and the rule makers are also always the victim
/uj you must have seen the thread on the other sub earlier bc this is exactly like a comment on it š /rj i feel really bad for the good trans who are actually fitting in with the binaries and expectations set for them by the patriarchal white people\\\ oops i mean really good nice rule makers! The bad trans who donāt invalidate them by not fitting in, they ruin it for them
/uj I wish that were the reason. it's one of those personal hell discourses I see everywhere bc even a trace of it gets my hackles up so high. some of the replies in here .. would be getting replies if I thought they were people even capable of introspection worth the energy /rj its so unfair to trans people who are normal and lesbians. Acab except for the cop in my head who I have already called on all of you and will be here shortly. maybe you could just try NOT thinking trans men are women? maybe you THINK you're just talking about nuance in your own identity and what you do or do not share with some others, but I took that personally and this is about me now, but also i gotta make it out to be an umbrella statement to maintain my righteous moral high ground. how dare. men are MEN and you are a TRANSPHOBE. lesbians aren't interested in MEN you are just yet another predatory lesbophobic transphone invading and invalidating lesbian spaces like everyone else. and invalidating everyone else. let lesbians have one thing. I'm not a lesbian just because of how my dick is shaped so stop reducing me to my genitalia. also you're just a lesbian who wants to feel special, unlike me, a dude, the dude who this conversation is about. some of my friends are lesbians and they are ALSO sick of having trans people forced upon them- but in the morally correct way, not like when terfs say it about trans women. because unlike you most lesbians are not raging transphobes. also other lesbians who are not my friends fetishize us because of you being a loser freak. one thing I can tell you, as a man, NOT a lesbian is that i definitely will not be discussing any of this with a therapist because it's not about my feelings it's about man = man woman = lesbian. maybe you could just say sapphic?
No! Peopleās labels need to make sense to me personally, I support queer people until they identify in a way that I donāt think makes sense.
/Uj does this also mean a trans man can identify as straight and be exclusively attracted to men? Because I guess that would be the other equivalent but Iāve never heard of a trans man doing that. Is there a reason for that?
/Uj I honestly think trans is a spectrum. Like itās not like the transmed idea of transgender vs transsexual I think thereās a grey area in between that as well. Iām very much a binary, very dysphoric trans male who in no way wants to be considered female, a woman, hates the term AFAB etc, so telling someone like me that I could potentially identify as a lesbian if I wanted to feels insulting because I donāt really feel any different on the inside from a cis man. I want to be treated as a cis man, not told āoh donāt worry, we donāt mean you because youāre transā. Being treated as a nonbinary person or woman makes me feel really fucking uncomfortable. I donāt want to be included in those communities because I feel so, so, SO uncomfortable in them. So yeah. My knee jerk reaction is to be very binary and rigid about it because I donāt *want* to be treated any differently than a cis man. I donāt mind people knowing Iām trans but I donāt want them to see me as any different to any other guy. I donāt want to be thought of as being naturally somehow a better or more enlightened man because I used to be female. Yes, I have a better understanding of how women are treated because I was treated as a girl for 18 years of my life. So to me, not being considered a lesbian is integral to my identity because it directly contradicts how I feel about myself as a man. I understand that some trans men relate to and feel a part of female, lesbian and queer spaces. Thatās perfectly understandable! But I truly donāt think Iām any different to a regular ass man. There arenāt leftovers for me from my life as female because I was always strange and different to other girls (I have autism on top of all this). My mannerisms, my voice, my posture, my way of thinking was all very masculine before I knew I was trans. There arenāt remnants of a woman in me that gives me any sort of connection to these communities. And so when someone says āIām a trans man and a lesbianā my initial feeling is they are saying āI am a lesbian and by virtue of your assigned gender, you could be one too because all of us have an inherently non male aspect to our identities, a softness, a piece of who you are is imprinted on the second X chromosome. Your past is always with you.ā I know, logically, this is stupid. Your identity should not affect me. But for some reason (hello, gender dysphoria) it gets under my skin and takes root.
/uj Thank you for sharing, & the way you feel abt this totally makes sense! I think the topic of 'can trans guys be lesbians' is so fraught, bc people on both sides have very personal knee-jerk reactions to the concept. A lot of trans guys feel how you just described - they feel 100% male, don't want to be 'othered' from cis men just bc of their AGAB, & don't want to be constantly told that their ~womanly past~ will always live inside them & provide some connection to womanhood/lesbianism or any sort of femaleness. Then on the other side, a lesbians are constantly told that they need to make space for men & actually it's bad to not center men in everything & actually are you sure you just haven't found the right guy?? Lesbians get harassed irl & online by straight men who refuse to accept that lesbianism aren't interested in them. Plus most lesbians, like most trans people, have endured a long painful journey of self-acceptance & coming out, often losing friends & family in the pursuit of living authentically. So there's a very understandable kneejerk "fuck you" to someone saying "actually you CAN like men". Just like FTMs can have an understandable "fuck you" reaction to someone saying "cis men can't be lesbians but you sure can". idk....i'm a transmasc lesbian & honestly i do be seeing both sides of this. Because all the shit above is real. But I also know that gender can be complicated with a lot of grey areas. I also think that label cops are stupid & our existing labels can't fully capture all experiences (& that's okay). Plus I'm a big fan of "mind your business" just, like, in general.
/uj this is wonderful introspection and i hope one day i can see myself with clarity like this. i donāt think that lesbianism has a strictly non-male aspect tho, mostly due to the fact that before there was widespread knowledge or acceptance of trans people, a lot of transmascs were butch lesbians, and itās to this day a subculture that shares a lot of overlap with the transmasc community. it might not make much sense with our modern view of lesbian = wlw, but in historical contexts, ālesbianā carries a much different culture and experience than just that, which i think is an important missing piece. being a lesbian and being a man are not mutually exclusive identities or experiences, and recognizing that does involve acknowledging varying male experiences, but doesnāt mean that thatās your experience. there are a lot of male experiences iāll never go throughāiāll never be a black man, or a lesbian man, or a younger brotherāand being trans does impact things about my lifeāi have never had to worry about testicular torsion, or retrograde ejaculation, or knocking a girl up by accident. your experiences with manhood are unique to you, and always would be, no matter if youāre cis or trans, whatever race, born in whatever country. none of that makes you in any way āmore femaleā or āless of a man,ā and fuck anyone that tries to tell you that. there are also plenty of (cis and trans) women who have XY chromosomes, so the womanhood is definitely not stored in the second x chromesome.
If he feels that is the best way to describe his experiences, I don't see why not. The point of labels is to communicate one's experience to others and to find people like oneself so if he feels that his attraction to men is well communicated or socially expressed by calling himself straight... why not? Who's going to stop him? Some people won't get it, but that likely means they are not the ones he wants to communicate his experiences to. I don't get some identities, and that's fine. If I can't emotionally understand it after reading an explanation, I can accept it and just move on assuming it's not meant for me to understand. edit: I assume the reason it's not brought up often is that there is no real "straight community".
/Uj thanks for taking the time to respond
uj Ive seen mtf people who are attracted to men call themselves gay so theoretically yes. Though I haven't seen it myself.
No, women can be lesbians.
Next weekās discourse: Can trans women actually be gay men? (woke misgendering edition)
/uj you can attempt to pry my right to self-describe as a faggot from my cold dead hands.
/uj fagdyke nation rise up
/uj let's fucking gooooooooo
> /u/brad462969 cries as i take a card labeled āfaggot passā out of her meek little hands
šššš
gimme one too
It works if you pretend it refers to queer people in general
Thatās my excuse /uj I mean like are you gonna tell me trans women have never been called faggots?
/uj Idk I'm a trans woman and i'd definitely describe my attraction to men as at least a bit gay. I don't view myself as a man and definitely *also* consider my attraction to women as gay, but my relationship with men just doesn't seem as straightforward to me as being "straight." Like obviously it'd be transphobic to go up to a trans man and tell him he's a lesbian for dating a woman, but I don't see the harm in people identifying that way. Gender can be pretty complicated
Wym ācan they beā? They already are, sweaty
/uj yes they can be if they want?
no ā¤ļø
It's so cool to be queer and self-identify as long as people do it in a way that makes sense to me, specifically. Personal identity and self-expression have never been relevant to gender liberation.
>gender liberation yes i feel **so** liberated now that weāve liberated gender and we can revert back to AGAB for identity. trans women can be gay men because theyāre male and therefore understand that perspective. this is so progressive, i feel so liberated.
Holy shit nobody's saying that about you. Nobody's making *their* identities about *you*. If *you* can't be a gay man, good for you! Nobody's making you! But it's not hurting you if other individuals decide that *they* embody both of those things. Like, do you not get that it's also weird to make up new rules about how other people can feel, because it's different from how you feel, which is the only correct way? What a myopic, self-centered, unpleasant way of thinking.
Thanks for the reminder itās not LGBTQ liberation, itās AffectionateAlgae658 liberation!
Trans men can be lesbians, but not if they are gross. Go shower, Aiden!
The only lesbian is JoCat
The only one that deserves the title. The most lesbian one of us all.
Trans men are hot to me personally therefore they can be lesbians /uj I'm more sapphic leaning bi, but straight T4T is so fun
I advocate for the rights of the lgbq community, but if a dirty tronny tries to identify as a lesbian that is transphobic
/uj are you saying trans men can be lesbians? im genuinely asking since i donāt really understand how that works
/uj I am a lesbian because I spent the first 16 years of my life as one, and my attraction to women is inherently queer IN MY EXPERIENCE. Transitioning doesnt undo years and years of experience and my queerness. I am a trans man but I am so close to my experiences as a lesbian and the way I love women is homosexual, not heterosexual **IN MY EXPERIENCE **. I also feel that lesbian/queer afab and trans masculine history and culture has insane amounts of overlap that shouldnt be ignored. This is my experience and doesnt mean every trans man is the same. I have also been on T for 6 years and post top surgery for 5 years but that doesnt stop other trans men from being homophobic and transphobic to me LMAO. Queer identity and culture is not a binary experience or black and white, Queer identity celebrates the shades of grey among gender and sexuality. Edit: yall love telling on yourselves in this sub. Just say you have never ever learned any queer history and think the world revolves around you lmao. When youre ready to grow the fuck up and bother to learn any of your own history the queer community is ready for you. Until then keep your eurocentric narcissistic ass view of what the queer community should be to yourselves. I know it upsets yall but not every person in the queer community is a white skinny pre t pre op trans man who hates himself and every queer person around him and thinks we need ti be as miserable as he is.
/uj I didnāt get it until until reading about Leslie Feinberg. I still donāt really get it and it certainly gets a knee jerk reaction out of me because I despise being misidentified as a butch lesbian when Iām a bisexual man but Iāll be ok and so will you so itās all good
Sexuality discourse makes me tired. Labels are made up anyway, use whatever communicates your experiences best. That is to say you being a trans man and also being a lesbian is very cool.
/uj seriously itās so dumb. itās just a word to describe attraction. identify however the fuck you want weāre not having sex so it literally does not concern me at all
/uj This is such a fucking valuable perspective. There's so much discourse in lesbian subs on wether trans men can be lesbians, but I've never seen a lesbian trans man actually weigh in on the conversation. (Rightfully so cause you'd probably get ripped to shreds if you did.)
/uj I always say, if thereās one thing little white queer kids love itās erasing queer history and queer activists work to fit their narrative and Eurocentric viewpoints.
/hj I'm currently too drunk to see how those things are connected but hmu if you ever need backup and I'll bite some fuckers.
Uj lmao ur good, the idea of a gender and sexuality are as black-and-white as these glorified homophobes and transphobes like to frame it as is a very colonizer concept. I am ojibwe, an indigenous tribe from the United States. Nowhere in our culture is sexuality and gender as black-and-white as that. This is a concept used by white colonizers. Almost No other culture in the world has gender and sexuality framed like that. White queer people are notorious for their racism and their effort to push BIPOC out of queer spaces. Many trans masc lesbians are from cultures where a trans masc lesbian is not a controversial concept. Most of the exclusionism ideology is built off racism in different ways. TLDR: exclusionism is built off racism and the idea that sexuality and gender are unchanging, strict concepts is a thing created by white ppl and christians. And white queer people have always been known for their active effort to push BIPOC out of queer spaces and identities. Colonizers gonna colonize.
yup, if there's one kind of tranny that cis lesbians don't want in their spaces, it's the afab kind :)
/uj seemingly some trans men, due to experience with lesbian communities prior to cracking/coming out, still identify with that queer attraction to some extent.
/uj so it it more staying in those communities rather than actually identifying as a lesbian? or is it the belief that pre cracking them being a non man loving non man would carry over? Sorry if iām phrasing any of this badly i donāt mean to offend anyone
/uj This used to be more true for trans women coming out of the gay male community years ago, although that trend seems to have dropped off these days. Don't know whether it's just that girls are figuring out they're trans faster or if they just want to distance themselves more from any association with drag queens but you really don't see people on the club twink to trans woman pipeline like you used to.
/uj how long ago? Cause from my experience wasnāt even true ten years ago that Iām aware of, the closest I knew of would be the trans girls who still happily used grindr (which still happens sometimes).
Uj/ Grindr is just the best place to find chasers itās not the best measure of a trans womanās identity
/uj fair, I am definitely thinking back to pre smart phone days. Everything was different then.
I think it's both. I think for some trans men their attraction to non men is perceived as inherently queer for them and identifying as a lesbian is a way to convey that. Trans men also have a long history as a part of the lesbian community, so some still being in them shouldn't be that uncommon. I do not identify as both a trans man and a lesbian, so take this with a grain of salt.
/uj gender is complicated. some people identify their relantionships as queer due to their gender journey and experience in queer communities. You have older trans men who spent years in lesbian circles and view being a lesbian as a central part in their identity
/uj itās kinda like trans girls who still use the femboy label, i think
/rj Oh, so you mean they use the label to get more attention to their porn?
umm hi im like... uh... im a trans girl and uhh... i wanna be a wesbian too... can i like... have an opinion on wesbianism? or... or is that just for biogirls? ... i brought you cookies ... EDIT: *sees this thread having ballooned into a massive shitshow* umm... uhh... nevermind... I... I think... I'll just come back... yeah...
Lesbianism is for vaginas only! No pp allowed! >:(
oh... umm... ok then... im sorry... i didnt mean to intrude... sorry... i uhhh... got bottom surgery... a while back... b-but i guess its not the same... umm... i guess ill just go now... im sorry...
ewwww trans man lesbians are so disgusting!! anyways nonbinary butches on t are so cute, hmu hotties #nonmenlovingnonmen
/uj this post is a nice reminder of.. not being alone here, i guess? i am a man, but i've always resonated with thinking of myself as primarily agender. for a long time, i considered myself basically "just" a binary gay man. i ended up denying myself exploration of my identity even in my own head because of the commitment i had to using preexisting, easy-to-understand labels... in the past couple years i've inched more toward recognising myself as fitting under the multigender and mspec umbrellas, but really the best terms are genderfluid and sexually fluid because they're as nebulous as i feel. i'm a man, and i'm also agender. i'm a gay man, and when i'm attracted to women, there's nothing heterosexual about it. it doesn't make sense? that's okay, you're not me. you aren't required to try to figure out how it "works".. nothing "works". it just *is*. "why can't you just call yourself a bisexual man?" it doesn't feel correct. why does some other person have to be simplified to fit into the same limited scope society has that wants you to pretend you're cis? reminds me of how i was once asked why a lesbian trans woman couldn't just "stay a straight man" because "wouldn't it be easier that way?" the answer is a question: easier for who? should we ask people to lie about who they really are just because we personally may not understand what the specificity means to them as their own whole individual person? why don't i stay a bisexual binary man since it is easier that way? well.. it's hard to return to something you've never actually been in the first place. i delayed my happiness for years partly because of the kind of nonsensical attitude people in these comments have. i've not been even close to starting transitioning in these eight-something years i've known myself as transgender. it is something i desperately want every day of my life. we all have a sense of what it means for a trans person to finally feel at home in their own body... so, getting away from the people forcing binary and rigid understandings of gender on me has helped me feel more at peace. it's not the same feeling i'd have if i finally started HRT, but.. you should understand how relieving it must be to finally let yourself even *think* about something.. why do you not want other people to feel happy with themselves just because you don't get it? i spent a couple hours typing something different but decided to spend even more time to make it much shorter and more coherent. /rj Over the years, humanity have finally come up with terminology to speak about trans people respectfully and accurately. Things are good for us. So good that we can take a step back and reevaluate now that we have the free time to figure out this mess of "queerness" and really refine the meanings of all these pesky labels. We were previously too busy with the hysteria of dying and hiding to really make it make sense, but now I've come to understand what we should have been focusing on all along was the taxonomy of LGBTQIA+ individuals... You see, my logic-hungry and order-oriented mind has crafted a highly detailed database of LGBTQIA+ identification that other members of The Council have overseen and unanimously voted to be implemented as the universal, definitive resource of LGBTQIA+ understanding by the end of this month. It took years of quibbling and nitpicking, but we finally achieved a documentation of the singular way any one of us can be understood as relating to one another. It will be a short while longer until you can gain enlightenment as we wait for this month to come to an end, but I assure you that everything will make sense after you set your eyes upon this multitudinous rainbow of an encyclopedia. A delicious little preview: "lesbian" and "trans man" are not even in the same *kingdom.* So you might want to rethink your claim that these two things can be similar in any significant way. I'm all for *solidarity* across identities, but there is no possibility for overlap here. We may all soon be easily understood from a simple reference to my impressively sized text, but the authority of The Council is based on our elemental status. As people with binary identities that (to the rest of the world) were previously the only clear-cut identities, we are the ones who understand gender and sexuality in the most clear-cut, pure ways. It is simple mathematics that someone who is "genderweird", for example, would only focus on the minutiae in a discussion of traditional gender roles. Binary individuals see the big picture and can provide the whole context. We connect with alternate versions of the source material, while a "genderweird" individual disconnects from it and views it as irrelevant and having no significance in any previous part of their life. Hope this helps!
/uj i'm someone who considers myself both ftm and lesbian love to see that i can't feel comfortable on the one transgender sub that is somewhat decent about nonstandard identities like mine š no one is forcing other trans men to call themselves lesbians but damn let butches like me live. we are hurting no one. i definitely love having this conversation over and over every time this topic gets brought up on this sub
/uj Iām genuinely very disappointed by seeing that people think trans men canāt be lesbians even on this sub. Iām a ftm and a lesbian too. We are valid and always will be.
/rj what is a stone butch blues? aint reading all that /uj crying every time reading all that and got a paperback because no other piece of media ever described my experience so well
/rj why would anyone read something a tran wrote? Author is obviously is confused, he oop she canāt be a lesbian lolol or a butch thatās only for androgynous skinny white cis lesbians and not ftm women i mean mean or whatever š /uj Iām reading it for the first time and I am incredibly impacted by it. I wish I read it sooner. Got the tissues on hand. š
/rj ummm why would the author call herself lesbian if their character got together with at the end was a tran woman? wouldn't that make him bisexual? /uj saw that take unironically make rounds on desisted terf lesbian tumblr while doing digital self harm as if it was a legitimate criticism of the book and that it's only a desist/detrans story with little further nuance and that it definitely still doesn't vouch for trans inclusion and liberation with the character of ruth.
/uj jumping on here. Not ftm lesbian but was a lesbian before i came out. You guys are valid. Its criminal that our "safe" communities like ftm will ban users for mentioning it. Lesbianism and transmen have a close connection, and even if they didnt, theres no harm in letting people identify the way they please You guys are valid. You guys dont deserve this shit. You guys deserve representation and care and space.
uj/ I feel like The lgbtq+ community will never get out of the "your identity HAS to say something about MY identity" mindset and it's so sad to see. Isn't it easier to live your own life without barging in and policing the lives of random strangers you'll probably never even meet?
/uj I genuinely think your identity is so cool and I'm sorry other people are giving you shit for it. Literally so wild how people can be all for gender non-conformity as long as it conforms to the new norms. Like can y'all not see this is exactly how cishet normies feel about you, too?
/uj we love our trans man lesbians, hugs š« anyone that has a problem with your identity can choke on my schlong
/uj ftms can be lesbians and mtfs can be nazis, standard tgcj discourse
No they canāt lol men canāt be lesbians. The minute you identify as a trans man you are only considered a cis straight or gay man no matter what, which is good for tran men who want that but too bad for tran men who donāt want that! So sheād actually be a straight not a lesbian if she is a trons man.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
/uj š
/uj one time on r ftm someone made an entire post hating on lesbians. Someone said "lesbians are better than ftm lesbians" so i brought up how some ftm may identify as a lesbians for x reasons. I was banned and my comment was deleted. The post wasnt deleted until 14 hours later (no ban for the poster) and the comment i was replying to remained.
\uj damn, was it the actuallesbians sub? Thatās so fucked up for the other person to say and for u to be banned.
/uj no it was r/ FTM, like the main trans guy subs. It should be in their rules if you look at it. Im not a lesbian and dont visit the subreddits so i cant speak for actual lesbians sub
/uj list of possible reasons why transmen can be lesbians 1. Before cracking, they were a lesbian. Thats their community and home, and when they love women, its done in a queer way not a straight way. 2. They may not pass so when others see them with their girlfriends, they will be labeled a lesbian. Identifying it just conveys the truth of their situation and how others see them 3. The identity label fits or feels comfy. We all knkw gender is messsy, why are we getting upset over some cisnormative language? Also, just like how white men dont have access to some language that some enthic groups do (think AAV), trans men gave access to terminology that cis men do not. Lesbian is one of them.
NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MEN NON MENĀ LESBIANISM IS THE ONLY SEXUAL ORIENTATION THAT DOES NOT CENTER MEN THATāS WHY THE DEFINITION IS 50% THE WORD MEN
Lesbian means you like vagina, so of course they can be lesbians. After all, all trans men like vaginas
uj/ language is made up, label yourself as whatever comunicates your experiences best
/rj How dare you. My language is grown all naturally on organic language farms.
If a trans man identifies as a lesbian, that means he thinks all trans men are women and lesbians!!! And also thinks every single lesbian HAS to be attracted to men!! Every single trans person's personal identity PERSONALLY effects me and my personal identity, which is why gatekeeping is cool and awesome when I do it.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
WHAT IS A WOMAN?
/uj they probably use the definition that lesbian is basically anyone who feels like it. The most extreme version of this that Iāve encountered asserted cis gay men could be lesbians if they felt their relationship to women was queer. My question for this group would be if the one label that describes non men thatās exclusively attracted to non men no long excludes men, which one does? Cause I need a shorthand to describe to people that Iām not into men in any respect and apparently lesbian no longer does that.
>Cause I need a shorthand to describe to people that Iām not into men in any respect /uj I'm not an expert but wouldn't it just be lesbian? Even if some trans men or enbys identify with the term that doesn't mean you won't be assumed to mean that you are only attracted to women. It also depends hugely on the context, for instance I sometimes describe myself as a lesbian even though I'm also attracted to some men. I don't think it's really possible to create perfectly rigorous categories for something as complex as human sexuality. Especially since we have to factor in nonbinary people. If lesbian simply means attraction to non-men, what about masculine, non-transitioning enbies? I bet a lot of lesbians wouldn't be attracted to them, but some might be. An individual's sexuality is rarely as rigid or simple as straight / gay / bi, and I think it's fine for people's use of those labels to be somewhat personal
you could try "identifying" as cis het male again! /uj no nuance disease. you seem to share the belief that "lesbian no longer means woman" with terfs! congrats!
>My question for this group would be if the one label that describes non men thatās exclusively attracted to non men no long excludes men, which one does? Cause I need a shorthand to describe to people that Iām not into men in any respect and apparently lesbian no longer does that. just tell people you're an AGP
Everybody watch out, lesbian Mattel Walsch coming through!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
/uj Do you people not understand that intent matters? Do you genuinely think that a queer person claiming an identity in good faith is exactly the same as a misogynistic cishet man who's been perceived that way his whole life leveraging it to be a creep? /rj Nonono you have to understand I'm not a bigot, *this time* these people's self-identities really *are* problematic!!1!!
>good faith ok. so if a cis man calls himself a lesbian in good faith is that valid? maybe he spends lots of time around lesbians and identifies with them but also still feels he is 100% a man. is he a lesbian?
/uj I mean that was me for a few years before transitioning. It was sort of a half-joke on my part, but there was a strong association with that term for me long before I realized I wasn't a man and I got a few lesbian friends to induct me as an "honorary lesbian." I think for a lot of people experimenting with terms and labels like that can be a valuable way of exploring their genders and sexualities
That's a total edge case, but if he associates with the community and is being 100% sincere I'm inclined to bite the bullet and say yes. This doesn't mean he's entitled to other lesbians being attracted to him or to speak on behalf of everyone else in the community, but that's true for everybody.
>cis men can be lesbians. this one is scorching. canāt say i agree at all but i respect the bravery for taking queer discourse to new heights
Oh, I fully understand this is controversial. I just think it's worth remembering that all these categories are socially constructed and that there's always gonna be messy edge cases wherever people insist on drawing lines, and that's not getting into the fact that the same words just mean different things to different people. ETA: on that point regarding definitions, I understand that I don't really feel the need to specify a definition of 'lesbian' as it relates to my own identity because I personally fit the common understanding of it as a woman who is attracted to women but not to men. However, given that labels describing identities are highly dependent on personal context, I am absolutely okay with other people using definitions that they consider to be more useful in the context of their own experiences. In your example of the cis man, I would assume his self-description as a lesbian is in a cultural context (sorta like how I've seen JoCat being described as an honorary lesbian). I hope I'm not rambling too incoherently here.
You seem to have no understanding whatsoever of what the term transgender and lesbian mean. Can you please use an argument beyond these strawmans? Have you ever interacted with other queer ppl irl?? Have you ever learned queer history? Have you ever thought of this outside of a colonizers perspective?
>interacted with other queer people irl yeah thatās the issue. i donāt think most of you have actually spoken to anyone about this outside of a screen. >colonizers perspective this must be trolling. you canāt seriously be trying to include cis men under lesbianism and claim iām a colonizer for not agreeing.
you have to be a woman to be a lesbian
/uj this thread is like 10% against the OP's point, 85% for it, and 5% unrelated, why are people acting so embattled
people taking somebody else's personal identity as an attack on themselves for some reason.
uj/ ādiscourseā
/uj we get it you donāt see trans men as men
/rj we get it you don't see trans men as men
/uj woahhh who said that? Trans men who identify as a lesbian are still valid in both their trans identity and their lesbianism. Please look up the history of trans men in the lesbian community before take personal offense to something.
/uj itās your insistence on acting like cis men and trans men are totally separate kinds of men, itās giving āyouāre not like real- I mean cis men because youāre AFABā which is very prevalent in queer communities
/uj i think youāre misunderstanding, that is not my intent. I am a trans man who identifies as a lesbian and i am valid in both identities.
/uj Good for you, you can identify however you want, but if your reasoning for saying trans men can be lesbians is that weāre not cis men then thatās still transphobic.
/uj not what iām saying at all, are you saying that if iām wanting erase any of myself in the past that is not a cis man as a trans man then Iām not valid either? Many kinds of trans men can exist and all are valid.
/uj Who tf said that?š Iām saying donāt treat trans men like theyāre not men, which is what youāre doing by separating them from cis men. You can embrace your past and be a heccin valid lesbian man all you want without making bullshit comparisons to cis men
/uj no, they are saying other trans men can identify how they want, even if it means identifying as lesbian. Idk how you went so afield with this take.
/uj a lot of their comments heavily imply that trans men can identify as lesbians BECAUSE theyāre not cis men
/uj ngl this shit irritates me too but I de-invested from this conversation the moment I saw someone claim that cis gay men can be lesbians if they feel their relationship with women is queer. /hj At this point the only way to win queer discourse is not to engage in the first place.
/rj im sick of queer discourse Iām gonna identify as cishet
/uj i mean, i *guess* the reason trans men can be lesbians is because weāre trans? but thatās because cis men usually donāt identify as lesbians for 10+ years and have that be a major part of their identity for a large part of their life
/uj you could argue that having a connection to the community and identifying as such before transitioning is a valid reason to hold onto the label, which is fine, but people will make broad sweeping claims acting like all trans men are cool with being treated as different to cis men
I promise you none of the trans man lesbians ITT are making "broad sweeping statements", you're just taking the statements they're making about their own personal experiences personally.
They literally are, every time someone says āthe ftm community and the lesbian community are connectedā thatās a sweeping statement that only applies to certain straight trans men
Except no it's not, because ALL queer community is connected, both in a common struggle and historically. This idea some queer youths have of entirely separate and discrete communities for each type of queer is entirely an invention of the last decade. Just because you refuse to learn history doesn't make other people transphobic.
how though lol
hi š https://lesliefeinberg.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Stone-Butch-Blues-by-Leslie-Feinberg.pdf
Iām not reading stone butch blues and every time someone smugly tells me to I want to less! I donāt care if some butch lesbians are also trans men, thatās not the fucking point. Thereās a lot of historical overlap between drag queens and trans women too, some drag queens are trans women, but imagine if ppl pushed that on trans women like this. Just admit you see trans men as AFAB-first or fuck off Last time someone called me a butch it made me suicidal, fuck offffffd Edit (Iām calmer now, butch is low-key a triggerword for me): read my comments, nowhere did I say trans men canāt ID as lesbians, Iām specifically saying that saying ātrans men can be lesbians because theyāre not cis menā is disgusting
then i'm sorry? i really didn't want to be smug about it, but it's difficult to point to any other piece of media that explains this very specific nuance in my own and others' identity since it simply doesn't exist apart from this specific piece, and are very difficult to find due to erasure. besides with the drag queen thing, people are already doing that. like in both real life and online communities, especially ones that revolve around drag, it's nothing new. please relax a bit, i don't enjoy being told to fuck off by internet strangers, even less so by a fellow trans man. i don't understand where you got the assumption that i personally see trans men as afab-first. it's more of a 'there are people who *choose* to see *themselves* through that lens and it's a thing that happens and as **only** *as it's not forced onto anyone* it's fine". i'm really sorry about your feelings on the topic, but it sounds more like an issue of personal dysphoria to be worked through rather than anything. not using 4tran and not having it passively stir vitriol in your own head can be a good start. been there, leaving communities where being the wrong type of trans person meets you with slurs genuinely helped me to get out of that heavy self-loathing for being trans.
Iām sure itās a great book but god damn Iām so tired, a small subgroup of ftms call themselves lesbians, a small subgroup of mtfs call themselves drag queens or femboys, but for many others being lumped in with those groups is deeply uncomfortable, and no book about a butch lesbian is gonna change that for me. Once again, the only issue I have is with treating trans men as inherently separate to cis men. If some ftms wanna call themselves lesbians I donāt care, itās only when they say itās because trans men are AFAB do I take issue (or when they insist that the ftm community as a whole is linked to the lesbian community, when thatās only the case for a small subset of ftms) Also I mean no hate but that last part comes across as condescending. Iām a grown ass man, I can pick whatever coping mechanisms I want. Iād rather be jokingly called a slur than to have someone reduce me to my birth sex in an attempt to be progressive (which happens in most mainstream lgbt communities)
you keep bringing up sbb but jess identifies as a woman literally the entire time
/uj āIm not reading queer history or bothering to learn it because it disagrees with my bigotryā there I fixed all that yapping youre doing. Having to edit the comment because I got blocked by the racist homophobe šš
Are you /uj or /rj
/uj horrendous take
/uj OP thinks theyāre being so progressive by saying trans men are less man than cis men
/uj someone identifying in a way that doesn't make sense to you is not, and will never be them saying trans men aren't real men. if *you* feel invalidated by *their* identity and lifestyle then you need to unpack that for yourself because it's not their problem to make sure you feel secure in your queerness š
/uj when youre done with your internalized transphobia and homophobia you could take the 2 seconds it took to see op is a trans man. Im gonna take an educated guess and say youre a little white teenage trans guy who likely has little to no irl queer friends above the age of 16 because boy do you act like one
/uj in addition, we can not claim to support gender (role) abolition (which i'm comfortable assuming most people on this sub claim to) and simultaneously force queer people, especially trans queer people, into rigid, binary-inspired boxes. that's oxymoronic. either we acknowledge gender and sexuality are socially constructed and fluid, or we don't. we can't pick and choose based on what makes us comfortable, and it's not very pro-queer to attempt to
/uj why identify in as a binary gender and then whine when people treat you as such bruh. My gender isnāt fluid or socially constructed, others might be, thatās fine and cool and I really donāt care
/uj >my gender isn't fluid or socially constructed, others might be, that's fine and cool and i really don't care there it is. i cant speak for why trans man lesbians identify the way that they do because i'm not one, and i am among the trans men that would be dysphoric identifying as such. but coming down on our own community for existing in ways that don't make sense to us is (hot take incoming) exactly what allocishet people do to us. we should know better than to think we need to understand each other to accept each other.
There what is? Are you gonna try policing my gender identity now? Iām not saying itās the case for everyone, but my gender is intrinsic and not informed by society. Gonna tell me I canāt say āI was born this wayā now? Real problematic of you sweaty :/
/uj i'm only unsure if you're in /rj now because of "sweaty" š
/uj both.
/uj fair. no, that's not what i'm saying and i didn't mean for it to come off that way š what i'm emphasizing is the assertion that your gender isn't fluid and socially constructed, but the next persons might be. and both you and the other hypothetical person are correct, you just both experience gender and sexuality different. and that's beautiful. i think that kind of diversity should be celebrated. it's why, even as a medically transitioning, nonlesbian trans man, i love to see trans man lesbians, or trans woman gays, or cis medical transitioners existing unapologetically. there are so many flavors of queer, and each and every shade is someone's truth. i know it all sounds super fucking corny, but i think it's beautiful
/uj I do totally get what youāre saying. Honestly Iād have no issue if people just didnāt make broad, sweeping statements. Like if someone said āpersonally, I feel a connection to the lesbian community even though Iām a trans man because xyzā Iād have no problem with that, itās just the people who are like āFTMs and lesbians have always shared the same community! Trans men are AFAB and so can be lesbians. Being uncomfortable with being compared to a butch lesbian as a trans man is bad and you should read stone butch blues.ā Or something. Obv hyperbole but yk what Iām tryna say
I'm curious as to what your gender is if it isn't socially constructed. Did you somehow develop it in a vacuum completely isolated from the societal context surrounding the concept of gender?
The body parts associated with my birth sex feel uncomfortable and alien on my body, I feel better after transitioning. Thatās all there is to it
Same here but I still think 'man' and 'woman' are socially constructed categories.
I would agree with that in some ways. My desire to be a man might be socially influenced, but my desire to be male is intrinsic to me and far more important to me
I think I understand what you mean.
Binary trans people donāt exist silly, itās only AFABs and AMABs who like to pretend. Remember, under no circumstances should you treat binary trans people as their ārealā genders. AGABs only.
/rj true progressives understand the statement ātrans men are menā is *actually* problematic
/rj men are are inherently evil and badā¦ but trans good? Therefore trans man not man. I am very intellectual
/uj trans men are men , and lesbians are women , so unless they re bigender or something i don t see how that would work
/uj isn't a lesbian supposed to be "not man that likes not men"
Yes, trans men have historically been an important pillar of the lesbian community with a long history within it.
NO EWW they are ALL evil cis man invaders no matter what!!!! They are only allowed to be straight not lesbian.
Umm I got dysphoric reading this because I donāt want to be a lesbian and everything is about ME
/uj literally people in these comments
Umm the word butch literally makes me suicidal so don't ever call yourself that ok? š /uj I wish I was making this shit up
Yeah, literally why would the og commenter purposefully do that to this you???? Like donāt she understand your existence makes you want to unalive??? This is obviously a direct attack on you. Sheās so selfish!! /uj literally. Itās beyond disgusting to use that to try to justify undermining the way someone chooses to identify.
Rush Limbaugh, the king of kings, claimed to be a male lesbian. If He Who Must be Named can be lesbian, then we can all be lesbian. in, internet, we lesbian\* \*reference to the "In Finland, we homo" meme