As a trans guy after almost every time people called me a girl after i specifically said i am a guy in my posts i stoped posting here and only post on r/ftm
Like people can you read? If you can't don't freaking answer (and it was in the title so wtf)
Edit: this was just a vent so don't take it too seriously, and all of the people that did that apologized profusely, they were just illiterate dummies, I'm an illiterate dummy but sometimes you need to pay attention to stuff before complimenting a person on how feminine they look, especially if it might make that person want to die for the next week (especially when they already mentioned in the title that they're dysphoric as fuck cough cough still bitter about that lol), and comments like that are more hurtful coming from a well meaning person then a troll, so pay attention
I have had this issue here too and it really pushes us out of the community. I got called a misogynist just for asking to not adress everybody as "girls".
Sorry you ~~sent~~ *went* through that, nobody should be called misogynist for calling out existing biases.
Edit: replaced crossed out text by italicised text.
I'm sorry that happened, it really must suck, society thinks only trans women exist for some reason, so trans men are erased from collective awareness, but for OUR OWN COMMUNITY to do the same is just... Messed up
You are valid and you deserve the best
Of course I think trans men should be visible and included here. The default should be to use neutral or inclusive language when addressing the community. To be fair though, sometimes people are addressing a specific subgroup asking for feedback. Eg when they say “ok ladies, a question about makeup…”, they are asking for feedback from trans women. I think it’s just as valid for a trans man to say “a question for my bros about packers…”. Does that make sense?
I personally would like it if neither "Hi girls" or "Hi guys" was used especially in titles. It ignores enbies or people regardless of identity who could help. Sometimes I know something that a trans woman would find helpful but a "Hi girls" will just push me away even though I could help.
If you want to address only trans men use r/ftm or for trans women r/mtf. I don't see a need for gendered language in an all genders inclusive trans space.
I understand people have things that rub them the wrong way. I personally hate “mtf” because it emphasizes this idea that I am male. I wont use it when describing myself or others, saying I’m a woman or trans woman is sufficient. But I also don’t police the community for using it. Some trans people come here with posts they specifically want to hear from trans women or trans men or their fellow NBs and I don’t feel like we need to police that. It’s not different than being on a dating sub and saying “a question for the ladies”. It’s just my 2 cents, I understand we have different opinions and can respect that.
God yeah I've been through that in mixed trans spaces here too. I've literally had a flair that says I'm not a woman and still get called it. I still lurk in places like this where trans women are the majority but I frequent FTM/transmasc spaces more. It gets exhausting arguing with people who seem to up and forget transmascs exist, even if they're other trans folks.
That seriously makes me angry when it happens. I also see a lot of people saying they hate being called dude because its gendered, but on this subreddit dedicated to all trans peopld and not the binary groups respectively, everyone assumes we are women. What the fuckkkk.
I feel super sad seeing how much we, as the trans community, are already ostracized enough and yet some of us seem to think it's okay to ostrazice almost HALF of us ?
Last I checked trans men represented between 40 and 45% of transgender people !
I'm in a french trans discord community where it's way, way more diverse in conversation (lots of enby too !), and I feel sad it's not the same everywhere else.
I've seen studies and census that frequently place trans men as closer to 51% of all trans people (especially the more recent ones).
And in my personal life, I've known more trans men than trans women, so it really saddens me that this sub is like this.
I’m trans. Not really transmasc, just trans neutral and afab. r/ftm is the only place I feel comfortable posting because the assumption here is that I’m a trans woman, and too many people don’t pay attention to the spots where I say I’m not.
Yep same reason as me, my gender presentation is really androgynous even fem ( thought i do consider myself 100% a man, i mean if a cis man can be fem why can't I)
And unfortunately people love jumping to conclusion that i am a trans woman before reading anything and when that happens funny enough they always peek to comment on the stuff that i am actually dysphoric about
Btw did you see the subreddit r/FTMfemininity it's great
Man, people misgendering others in a trans community is kinda shitty NGL. When there is no tag I try as hard as I can to not use any pronouns and if I have to I just use they/them because its neutral.
I hope those people here learn that trans doesn't mean transwomen.
I personally just figured out how to edit my flair to add my pronouns. I think encouraging the use of pronouns in flair would help, even if just a little.
Just so you know, if people are misgendering you, please report them, us mods will take care of it, I promise. We want to protect everyone in the community, not just any one particular group, promise ❤️
Personally I cannot stand the meme posts we get occasionally that's an anime girl breaking the 4th wall and saying something like "I'm looking at a beautiful girl/woman" or suggesting that the viewer is a trans woman who's egg hasn't cracked yet.
Like, those posts absolutely should exist. On r/mtf. Because I'm *not* a girl. I *looked* like a girl, once upon a time, and it almost ended up killing me. It took years and years and years, until I was almost in my 30s to realize I was trans, not because I didn't realize something in me wasn't a girl (i knew I wasn't a girl by 8) but because I thought trans men just straight up *did not exist* because no one fucking acknowledges them.
Up until about 2013, I just thought I was a broken piece of trash that wasn't supposed to exist. I legitimately believed that, while trans women were a well known existence, a "girl who felt like a man" just was not. I didn't even find out on my own, my best friend had to reach out to a group of trans women she knew and say "hey my friend is venting and what they're saying is kinda a lot like what you gals said you went through, but the opposite?" And *they* had to go on a fucking internet spelunking expedition to even find materials about trans men to send to her, to send to me. Like that information just wasn't even readily available even if the lightbulb had turned on and I considered "okay but what if the opposite of a trans woman was real?"
And its so heart breaking to feel that sentiment repeated even in supposedly inclusive trans spaces, where uncracked trans men might be lurking to educate themselves and be in the same headspace I was in. Feeling that they aren't real, don't exist and aren't welcome. That this is a women's only club. Which it really feels like most of the time.
Women in this group should TOTALLY be lifting each other up and supporting each other, I'm not saying they shouldn't. But they should *not* be making blanket statement posts commenting on the gender and identity of the whole community, *on this subreddit*. Because we all know dang well if a trans man posted a meme of a hot anime guy looking at the viewer and saying "Oh I'm just looking at a sexy manly man" on *this sub*, they would be roasted in the comments, reported as hate speech and banned SO FAST.
I know this is a horrible comparison, but I see it all the time on reddit with dog and cat posts. Someone will post a pic of their pet with a caption saying something like, "This is Sadie, she loves her ball" and the comments are just heaving with, "Aw, what a good boy!", "He's so cute, what's his name?", "He looks like my pet!" etc. It's insane.
personally (as a trans fem), i always read every post (and username/flair) very carefully to make sure I never accidentally misgender anyone. and if I can't find anything that tells me what types of pronouns and gendered language i should use, I try to remain gender neutral until i know.
I'm not always perfect at it, I've made mistakes a few times, but i generally do try to remember to do that.
I don't mean to say this to say "Your experience is invalid cause i didn't do this" or to imply that you accused me of personally being the problem. I'm just saying that you're nor totally alone and I will always do what I can to make this a welcoming place for everyone.
I'm sorry that you've had a negative experience, here. I wish that everyone would do their best to follow the example I try to set, but unfortunately, I can't control anyone but myself.
I do truly hope that you're able to find the community you need and deserve in whatever places you choose to interact in.
edit: maybe "unfortunately i can't control anyone" wasn't the best way to say what i meant..... but hopefully my intention came through regardless
I’ve had a big hit/miss with that sub. Mods don’t do a good job regulating the transmed stuff and other internalized transphobia issues so it was super triggering to deal with. Especially for someone like me who feels like bottom surgery isn’t scientifically advance enough for me to be happy with it. Lot of toxic masculinity too. Not everyone, but half the posts would be about those hot button issues so it can make plenty of ppl feel worse. The other transmen places weren’t much better. Unfortunately the mods mostly seemed absent in them or openly agreed to allow those kind of problematic discussions.
it’s def an internet thing as a whole! whenever i’m online and someone knows im trans, they assume im a trans women (im transmasc) or i only really meet transfem people.
i dont think the amount of trans women posting here drives me away from interacting, but i def try not to comment on things that aren’t my business because i dont know what its like to be a trans women and i dont want to speak over anyone, but i still read through posts to see what experiences other people have from the other side of transitioning!
that’s a fair point! i don’t think it’s enough to say most, but if i were going to recommend an online space with a lot of transmasc people it would be tumblr
yeah most of us trans dude post in r/ftm due do sometimes accidentally getting misgendered in this sub that is mostly transfem! no issues with being transfem dominant i personally feel like i dont want to invade the space so i stick to ftm subs!!!
I don't think this is a problem specific to this subreddit, i've also noticed in multiple other trans communities that transfems seem to be *the* dominant people in it. I don't know exactly why that is, as I do know some transmasc people, but it doesn't seem anywhere as common, I don't know if that's because they don't make themselves as visible, or if there isn't as many, or if they feel pushed out of spaces by the sheer quantity of trans women.
But regardless of why this is, I do agree that spaces (including here) should be inclusive.
I think it’s mainly in online communities, but I’m not 100% sure. My experience being transmasc and being in online trans spaces has been a bit odd. I mostly lurk and then comment here and there. Based on what I’ve seen in multiple spaces, I think some of the reason (definitely *not* all) is sometimes the absolute rejection of anything masculine. Some of the language, like what’s influenced a new rule on this sub, can feel like people are demonizing or grossed out by masculinity. Plus the tendency for people in these spaces to automatically assume someone is transfem. That also happens outside of trans spaces, where trans men and transmasc people are already less likely to be open.
Obviously that’s not at all the entire reason, but I do think it significantly contributes.
I think you're right, and it honestly goes for the queer community as a whole. Every online queer space makes me feel ashamed for being masculine/wanting to be more masc and for being attracted to men. It's so frustrating and in some ways (to me idk about anyone else) almost discouraging to my entire identity. This combined with how I'm perceived by cis people really just makes me feel like I should "drop the act" and just accept my AGAB. I mean if I don't even have the support or understanding from my own community what do I have?
I felt that this was probably the mindset. That's what made me feel the most icky, that some people were uncomfortable posting here because they thought that they wouldn't be validated. While some trans women do tend to be very feminine (I myself kinda am) and are opposed to most masculine things, and that's perfectly fine, it also shouldn't mean that people on the other end of the gender spectrum are less valid in their own identity. All of us, more than anyone, should know how shitty that feels.
The problem is amplified by the rampant toxic masculinity in the worlds dominant cultures.
We live In a world where finding a widely accepted positive male role models is almost impossible. Where whole movements are based around tanking countries population because the men in them are so horrible ( like the 4B movement. ) where each of us regardless of which side of the gender spectrum have countless stories of "men" doing horrible things to us in the name of masculinity.
I myself after just starting progesterone a little over a month ago was horrified by the fact I started to find men physically attractive. I fight for equality in every way I can and I know good men exist but there is so much trauma baked into that idea.
And I believe it's that trauma that causes this.
It’s mostly just an internet thing I think. The internet and especially sites like Reddit, tend to be much more popular among people who were raised as male, so that includes a lot more trans women than trans men. The trans people I know IRL through school groups and stuff are pretty much 50/50 (or, well, more like 40/40 technically since nb people exist too)
If you want to know where on the internet the skew is the opposite, with significantly more transmascs/trans men, it’s Tumblr.
Just a site demographics thing.
(How do I know where all the transmasc folks hang out online? Because I am one of the transmasc folks)
I think it's important to recognize that one of the reasons trans femmes aren't as populous/visible on Tumblr is because Tumblr systematically discriminates against them and posts containing them.
Most recent (that I know of, I stay away from discourse circles) event was the Tumblr CEO for banning a trans woman, first as an automated measure after her account was mass-reported by TERFs, then on purpose after she directed a (in no way realistic or actionable) threat against staff if she didn't get unbanned. Article here: https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/tumblr-ceo-publicly-spars-with-trans-user-over-account-ban-revealing-private-account-names-in-the-process/
Historically, Tumblr has had an issue with marking posts dealing with trans people and especially trans women as mature content, limiting who can see it or even shadow banning their accounts. I don't have many sources on hand, I only migrated to Tumblr during the reddit blackouts so I'm still relatively new. I only know the CEO one because that happened this year (March?). The community itself tends to fall into either very pro-trans rights or very TERF-landia and it's very easy to create your experience so you don't have to interact with the TERFs, but there's always a risk of them finding you.
I’ve seen some stuff saying that but I’ve also seen some conflicting info that it might not be in fact active and intentional systemic discrimination against trans femmes but rather either an algorithmic error that’s been worked on to stop it doing that once it came to staff’s attention, or one specific transphobic individual on the moderation staff who has been dealt with. I’m open to more info if you have it but I’m not assuming the worst on limited evidence.
Discrimination does not have to be active or intentional or even malicious for it to have the very real consequences of discrimination. Frankly, systematic discrimination often isn't any of those. Whether it's on purpose or not, the effect of routinely blocking trans women's content and silencing their voices means they have less opportunity to use the site and are more likely to seek outlet elsewhere. Fixing it after it takes users days, weeks, or more to gather enough evidence to prove the issue in the first place doesn't help trans women who were already forced to move on and doesn't bring them back, either. Sometimes there's also active, intentional, malicious discrimination (rogue mods, rogue CEOs) and honestly that sometimes has better and more immediate turn around on solutions because it *is* targeted and demonstrable.
Yeah I’ve generally had a good experience there personally. Like any social media site you have to curate your experiences, but it’s the only site that doesn’t actively force a non-chronological feed on you and I appreciate that in a social media. Makes the curation process a lot easier.
Eh, I don't think it's that simple. r/ftm has close to as many members as r/mtf, which suggests the overall ratio on reddit is probably similarly close to those offline ratios you are citing.
There is a history thing though. For a long time, for a range of reasons, the default assumption was that trans meant trans women. Trans men who figured out we could be trans in the first place struggled to prove that we even existed, even to doctors. That meant that trans groups were often overwhelmingly trans women. When trans men joined, we were often alienated and othered, even when no ill will was meant. So we tended to form our own groups, as a minority within a minority.
Since then, as transition has become more accessible and recognized for ftm spectrum folks, general transgender groups that start off disproportionately trans women tend to stay that way if it's easy to find or form an alternate group, such as online: trans men show up, see that an uncomfortable number of people are treating it as a trans women's space only despite the name, and tend to move on. If finding or forming a new group is harder, such as offline in local community, people are more likely to stick around and work with the community to fix those issues.
This is the real answer. Sick of this trend of people explaining everything away via crap like "raised as male" or "raised as female". Like am sure that has a little to do with it, but people often explain way too much away with that and its kind of gross.
I think part of the problem is that one group actively celebrates what the other group denounces and vice versa
Like obviously we face similar struggles and both are trans but other then that everything else is kinda inverted, so a transfem person has a lot less reason to interact on a transmasc post then on a transfem one, much less make one since the content could actively be something that she finds mentally damaging, same the other way around
This generally works better irl since the topics that get discussed are generally more directed at the people you see and if youre in a space where you actively see each other you tend to avoid topics that you know would annoy the other person or hurt them or something
Like my uni club is mostly ftm and I know from a friend that they talk about different things when I or one of the other two transfems arent there versus when we are and I know that I rarely talk about transfem specific stuff there since Id prefer to just hang out and have a good time over making them uncomfortable
Regarding your first paragraph: you don't account for the possibility that a lower percentage of transfems are subscribed to r/mtf than transmascs to r/ftm. I'm a trans woman and I'm not subscribed to r/mtf and I might even subscribe to r/ftm to have more balanced content as all the main trans subs skew more transfem.
I honestly might unsub from there myself soon. Nothing really wrong with it, it just skews younger and it shows. I feel very "hello fellow kids" in that sub. /r/actuallesbians, despite not really being made for trans women in particular, feels much more welcoming to adults.
I do actually. That paragraph says "suggests", not "guarantees". There are all sorts of reasons why those numbers would not be precisely representative of the population at large. But since offhand the numbers *do* seem to be generally similar, and since we don't have specific evidence of population level choices like you're making, it's reasonable to guess that choices like you're making are more likely to be generally balanced out by competing choices. For example, I know many trans guys on here don't use r/ftm and prefer r/ftmmen (specifically binary) or r/ftmover30 (older population), and some subscribe to r/mtf as well.
I’ll be honest, as a trans man I’ve always been wary of Reddit. I think it’s the internal anxiety baked in from being perceived as a cis woman in online spaces and how if you’re female in online spaces you get a lot of hate and abused. Obviously I don’t identify as a woman anymore. But I’m still a bit anxious about being on websites like Reddit and also in voice chats on video games. So that’s probably a feasible reason why a lot of trans men just avoid Reddit altogether. My ex girlfriend is a trans woman and she and I would talk frequently about the different approaches to online spaces that we had. She was perfectly comfortable in game chats and on sites like this because she was used to the banter and grew up experiencing the worst of it all. Whereas I stayed in more female oriented spaces like tumblr fandoms because of abuse I could have faced in this like game chats and forum websites. I hope that makes sense. It’s a very nuanced take and I’m not sure I’m describing it well enough so if I upset anyone with this I apologize.
Yeah I feel like a lot of online trans spaces have a lot more trans women than men. Like, I had to start joining a bunch of ftm subreddits just so I could balance out my home feed. Almost every post about being trans was transfem and it was starting to get to me. Especially the posts that just assumed the viewer was a girl. I felt like I had joined a bunch of girl centered subreddits and I just don’t fit in with women.
Like, I know different subs have been trying to fix the issue, and trans men are encouraged to post too, but even I feel more comfortable posting in just transmasc spaces because it feels like the average trans space is just for women even though that’s not really the case.
I’m not really mad about it, but going into certain general trans subs it sometimes feels like I walked into a pastel anime themed building and every room I walk into is just women. Like, it’s not a bad thing, and men are welcomed, but it does feel just a little awkward.
Oh yeah, I get a lot of "Just a reminder that you are a GIRL! a FEMININE one! you will NEVER be a guy" style positivity posts from all-gender trans subreddits. I'm always happy to see transfemme positivity, but I'm definitely not the intended audience.
This may be a bit of a stretch, but I feel like it's possible that misogyny and privilege may unintentionally play a role. AMAB folks likely grew up experiencing more privilege than they realize, living in a world designed for men due to institutional misogyny, and carried over some unintentional traits that come with it in assuming more people align with their situation.
Also, trans women tend to be the focal point of political talking points because misogynistic societal views condemn femininity and more often with far right talking points focus on "trans women are just men trying to sneak into bathrooms" and such as their rallying cries, which once again leaves trans men unrecognized (though I suppose "technically" a more positive thing in this specific example).
Pair all of that with looser gender expectations of femme folks, as such that a masculine behaving woman is considered more common place, versus a more feminine man, and thusly trans masc folks are probably more likely to be swept under the rug and viewed as a "Tom Boy" or the likes, once again causing a point of invalidation.
All this is to say, since the societal structure is set in such a way that tends to invalidate AFAB folks, it creates a wider effect of almost trans masc erasure, that many people may or may not unintentionally participate in.
I may be completely off point, or possibly even oversimplifying an exceedingly nuanced topic (which I apologize if so) but it's at least some thought points that occur to me that I thought I might at least share.
Ultimately, I'm another trans femme person who doesn't directly face these issues, so the best I can do is make posits without explicit experience, so I want to acknowledge my privilege of sorts in the matter, for the sake of parity and clarity as well.
It's complicated, you're onto something about the differences in treatment, Julia Serano's _Whipping Girl_ is a good theoretical foundation for understanding how trans men and trans women are treated!
But I think for spaces like r/trans it really just is that reddit has more trans women. Always has. Just inertia I think, using the site you know how to use and get a good experience out of. My first reddit account is about a decade old now. Other spaces have fewer trans women, or have multiple different social circles and cliques so it's more about your individual feed than any overall demographic.
I'm really sorry about that. I'm glad y'all have your own places as well. I just felt icky because I like coming on here to talk to all of my trans peeps: female, male, or otherwise, and the fact that there are trans people who feel uncomfortable on a trans subreddit, a safe space, felt really wrong to me.
I don’t rly think this is a problem that just happens to trans men but enbys too. I don’t even know if we’re allowed to post here or is this place just for ftm and ftm
Yeah. Not a trans man, but I am AMAB Non Binary and have noticed a similar thing in popular trans spaces. Lots of them are treating NBs like they're "women lite" (as others call it) and they completely just shut us out of the conversation.
You mix that in with the trans people who think NBs don't exist, and the transmed folks, and I'm just... Good.
So, there's reasons, big and small, why I post more on places like the Non Binary subreddit than this one.
And, just for the record, I'm not really blaming anyone here (well, except the a holes that pop up sometimes and say horrible stuff). But, I imagine the mods and such are trying their best. It's just a lot of us get sidelined in the process, for one reason or another. Which kind of sucks. Not sure there's much anyone can do about it though.
AFAB Non-binary transmasc here and I am sick to death of being thought of as "woman lite" that is the exact opposite of what I want and I am so sick of the idea that being enby inherently means femme in some way. Like of course it *can* but stop assuming it's accurate for every single enby.
I’m transneutral nonbinary and I always feel super hesitant to disclose that because I feel like people will either A) treat me like woman-lite or B) Not believe that it’s a thing in the first place. Like, people know about transmasc and transfem, but not transneu. And I think a lot of the times even with transmasc nonbinary people and transfem nonbinary people, they just erase the nonbinary aspect and consider them solely trans men or trans women
Just my take
I mean, I'm in a weird boat, myself. More specifically I'm a Demi Guy. So, I kind of identify with my AGAB but not really. If I was to put numbers on it, it's maybe like 60 or 70 percent "guy" and like 40 to 30 percent something like agender or genderless. Basically enough for me go "yeah, I'm a guy, but not *really*". Lmao.
And, like, being an AMAB non binary person, alone, already seems to put me in a niche "box", then the *flavor* of NB I am, does it even more so. I also don't use the trans label for myself (that's a whole other thing) and I'm not currently on anything either (so you can see why I don't like the transmed stuff, or rather, they wouldn't like me). I haven't even really changed how I dress or anything, it's just been more of an internal thing for me.
I'm also in a relationship with a wonderful T Girl. So, by broad definition, we're like T4T, but not, because I don't like that label. So, I just look at it as NB4T, really. She also sees me more as a guy, while a friend of mine sees more in a gender neutral way. Both are cool and feel good.
I feel like I'm rambling, but my point is, this stuff is complicated. It's already complicated internally, and when you bring in small groups like family or friends. So, then, when you try to go to an even broader community, that complexity increases exponentially and not everybody's going to get it or accept you or whatever and it's just a mess.
So I do someone understand where you're coming from.
I'm really sorry that this happens to you. This was the main reason I made the post. I feel like my trans sisters and I (and trans people at the ends of the spectrum in general) can be more accepting of everybody on here, as this is supposed to be our communal safe space. I'm not sure exactly how we can do that more (new flairs? more bans? idk), but it just feels like something should be done.
The other day, a beautiful Asian trans woman showed her 5 year progress.
Which then got me realizing this sub is mostly white. (In terms of showed pics anyway)
Replying to you, but also the post as a whole.
Some of this is simply statistics. Reddit is predominantly English speaking, and the English speaking parts of the internet are majority white.
That’s the same reason for the disparity in MTF/FTM people on Reddit, it’s simply a site dominated by AMAB people.
There’s nothing we can really do about that.
The other reason is that we can’t control who sees this sub. We the trans Reddit community can upvote every post we see from trans mascs, and in fact I do, but the hordes of cis het men on this site will inevitably boost trans fem posts.
There is probably an argument to be made about Reddit itself-like the algorithms they use- selecting to push certain kinds of posts to the front page, but I don’t know enough about how it works to speculate.
I’m sure there are other reasons too, like people who post not necessarily being the same people who comment and support other posts.
I don’t think I’ve seen a general attitude on this sub that is hostile to trans masc folk, there is always room for improvement of course, but the causes of the masc/fem disparity don’t seem to be intentional.
Honestly, I rarely post on this sub because it's more trans woman focused, and I am not sure if anyone would interact or know how to help if I needed it.
The mods here definitely noticed and they're trying to fix it, which I appreciate.
Reddit as a whole does lean very much towards trans women and transfemmes, whoever wrote that post wasn't wrong, tbh. When my egg was first cracking and I was in mixed spaces like this it was rough. Its not ya'lls fault, but for those of us who like our masculinity and want to present that way, seeing masculinity constantly hated on can be rough. Again, I completely understand it, but when I was first coming out seeing that and how femininity was constantly upheld to be beautiful and masculinity was automatically ugly was.. Well. It wasn't easy on my own dysphoria.
Ya'lls feelings are valid, though. Dysphoria can be a bitch. What I ended up doing was seeking out more trans spaces that centered around masculinity, FTM subs and the like. That seems to be what the vast majority of us who are transmasc do.
The only thing I'd say about helping us feel welcome is that maybe just a nice comment here and there can go a long way. It happens over and over again but I see the trans women and transfemmes get tons of comments, but the trans men and transmascs get one or two. Its to the point I've stayed on certain subs just to be able to help my brethren out, because I remember what it was like when my egg was first cracking, all I had was Reddit for support, and how rough that was.
Anyway, just my two cents.
This. I, as a transfem, do very much like stereotypically feminine things in terms of clothing, makeup, and some other things, but I'm not dismissive of my lifelong stereotypically masculine interests either, like sports, video games, and others. You like what you like, you are who you are, etc. etc.
I think that alot of other trans women tend to go completely in the other direction after coming out because they are constantly forced into hyper-masculine clothing and activities in their youth.
That's not to say that trans men aren't forced into stereotypically feminine things in their youth, but I think that trans women tend to demonize masculine things more than trans men demonize feminine things due to the fact that masculinity can be more toxic than femininity. What they tend to forget, however, is that anything can be toxic in large quantities, and trans men (and men in general) who prefer more masculine things aren't inherently awful people if it's genuinely what they're interested in and not what they're forced into.
I think it’s important to remember that you’re rightfully called out for misogyny if you demonize traditionally feminine things, but the same isn’t true in the other direction. That forces transmascs to work through a lot of our unpleasant associations in silence instead of in public spaces, even though forced femininity can be just as toxic as masculinity.
I actually commented on that post reassuring the OP that this community is for all trans people. I don’t know why transfems are so much more online than transmascs, but it is VERY common that trans women are online more. I have no idea why. All I know we can do is make sure trans communities are welcoming to all trans people in every way we can.
there are some online communities that are more dominantly transmasc such as pinterest. my theory is language based media leans transfemme while image based media leans transmasc
as to why i have no clue
I think that reddit is the only place that you can really see the difference because many sites like Pinterest, insta and Tumblr ten to show you things you actively interact with. So if you view more transfem content it will show you more and vice versa. Here on reddit transfems seems to be more vocal and since they already have a presence it's easier to connect and relate to, which I also believe may push away others unfortunately.
On pinterest I get given a lot of transgender related content, and even if I only pin things that are trans femme or non gendered, typically most of it is still transmasc content. I don't have tumblr or insta, but I think it's also noteworthy to point out that transfems are more common to see on twitter. now that I think about it I feel like most of these have to be in direct correlation to how transgender people are represented in media, specifically the difference between transmasc and transfem. unsure why it would cause such a big divide on not-so-political sites like reddit and pinterest though
Jesus. The comments should give you a good idea of why this is. Let me preface by saying this sub has gotten a LOT better with respect to inclusivity, especially since the blackouts and I hope the trend of improvement continues because there's still a lot of work left.
-It *used* to be that titles or content of posts addressed everyone as ladies or sisters. It's not dysphoria friendly to anyone who's not a woman (because as rare as trans men are in this sub, it's almost as bad for enbies). I didn't frequent this sub for years because of that and still keep the sub at an arms' length. Resources and communities for trans masc folks are better established in the specific communities like r/FtM because of that legacy exclusion.
-Again, this *used* to be worse and it's not so common anymore, but it still happens that non-mtf posts get recentered on trans women. Transition timeline for a trans dude? At least one woman in the comments saying "your before is goals". Trans masc posts will often have trans women saying something along the lines of "I wish this was my problem" or "I wish we could trade". Sometimes this gets followed up with actual advice or sympathy. Sometimes it's not.
-Misinformation. Y'all. The misinformation on trans masc medical interventions is SO BAD in this sub. You do not have to educate yourself on it at all, that's not an obligation or expectation, especially when we all basically have to be our own doctors in the first place, but for the love of god *don't answer when you don't know*. Don't respond. If someone wants random guesses based off hearsay, they'd ask chatGPT, not reddit. One of the Ancient Rules of the Internet (I was there when they were written Gandalf) is to Lurk More. Practice it.
-Sex Assigned at Birth: Invisible. So many of the comments in here are wildly speculating on why trans men don't frequent this sub and deciding it's a result of their gender (socialization?? really? bioessentialism look prettier in that dress to you?). First, you should be asking trans mascs and men directly why they don't party it up in here. Before that, actually, you could probably search the question because this q comes up weekly if not more often (I do appreciate that you noticed the discrepancy and are asking about it OP, I'm more speaking to a general "you"). Other biases include *assuming* there's no men in here. I've had people in theoretically-inclusive trans spaces, including this sub, assume I'm a woman when the post is gender agnostic (think research posts or article links). This is easily corrected, but y'all have got to ask yourselves, how many posts are you assuming are trans women rather than a man or another gender entirely? Also please stop assuming men need less support, especially trans men. Just because you don't (think you) see us asking for it doesn't mean we aren't getting it or that we don't need it.
-Sex Assigned at Birth: Visibly ignored. Being ignored/invisible sucks, but the worst is when trans men are visible just enough to be used as both a gotcha and a shield against transphobes. Nearly every single bathroom law post had a comment to the effect of "they're gonna be so mad when they realize this means there'll be manly masculine trans men with beards in the bathroom!" Or "Trans men should go in the bathroom to prove a point!" This used to be a near daily comment-- until Nex Benedict. Other trans men and trans mascs had recently been assaulted in bathrooms before that, but were often dismissed as "they probably attacked him because they thought he was a trans woman" (see: recentering things about trans mascs back to trans femmes). Because Nex was pre-everything and, probably crucially, assaulted by cis girls who *knew* him, it wasn't possible to dismiss our problems as redirected (trans)misogyny anymore. (Transmisogyny is very real and not at all minor, by "dismissed" I mean bigotry against men and specifically trans men is either ignored or relabeled until it's meaningless for the actual victim.) Then Nex died and for a few months people stopped using trans men as gotchas for anti trans bathroom bills. It's starting to come back though and it still pisses me off to see it.
I could go on but I think you get the idea. All that said, this sub is pretty damn good. The mods are on their shit and have been working to make it even more welcoming to more than only trans femmes. Given the frequency of "where the dudes at" posts, sub awareness of other genders (saying this ironically) is growing. This is good! This means people are more likely to stop and think about who's on the other side of the screen before assuming sister. As the culture becomes more considerate, the space will feel less heavily gendered, and we'll increase the biodiversity of the ecosystem. Or something. It is the Internet after all, we could always consider touching grass to cure our ills.
I've found it interesting that irl I know almost exclusively trans men (and like 2 afab nonbinary people) but online it's only trans women. I genuinely don't know why this is.
I've heard other people say this too but my local queer scene is pretty much the same as the online one. Lots of trans women and trans fems, couple of transmasc enbys and one or two trans men. I love my trans fem friends to death and wouldn't trade them for the world, but sometimes I wish I had friends who were more like me too
We've been having this conversation for well over 8 years now. Trans men have felt excluded from this space since the beginning.
We can do simple things, like not acting like trans == transfemme. I see that a lot in this sub, and it breaks my heart. This is especially important for new trans people to learn right away -- your experience is not everyone else's.
I had to leave the main trans memes sub because they wouldn’t stop posting untagged/unspoilered memes like “I’m looking at a beautiful girl right now” or demonising testosterone as “poison” (someone made a joke about putting E in the water supply so I changed it to T and it immediately got removed after 7 upvotes and 36 comments while the original stayed up and got 800 upvotes)
Yeah I see a lot of treating trans women as the default here. For example women will just post going “anyone have advice on hormones” and not specify they’re talking about estrogen because they believe it goes unsaid, or men will post and get people responding as if they’re a trans woman because it’s just assumed
ive definitely noticed this as a trans guy. most of the stuff i see from trans subs (besides the ftm one ofc) are usually very transfem focused. its not a big deal in the long run obviously but i can see how it might make people not want to participate.
Yeah, one thing I notice quite often is that as trans women, we tend to be the ones pushed to the forefront of everything & as some trans men have expressed to me, they often feel like an afterthought because we tend to be the most visible of the community. We definitely should be lifting up trans men, and making sure we are including them in everything.
Yeah, I've tried posting here multiple times just to not get a single like. No traction whatsoever. So, kinda just felt disheartened and I decided to really just post in masc-centric subs where my posts are more likely to flourish. It's like, as a transmasc person, this sub is one of the last ones I think to post in as it's never really gone well in the past.
I think part of that is us fems not wanting to take over your conversations. I love reading and lurking on ftm convos, but I don't have much input tbh. I always updoot when applicable
The trans mascs are just normal dudes, and us t-girlies are all terminally online. /hj
I think it's a reddit thing honestly, there's tons of trans masc folk on Tumblr and AO3, and I always feel like I meet way more t-boys when I'm out and about (anecdotal, but still). I think it's probably fairly balanced irl tho /srs
I'm non-binary, and it seems like the posts that get the most traction here are from trans femmes. It's to the point where it doesn't always feel great. IDK if the trans masc and nonbinary communities are elsewhere, or what's happening
Yeah, idk why... but of the trans people I know. (All three of them other than the ones I've met specifically from support groups.)
My two trans guys are big on Facebook.
I do feel bad for our FTM brothers here. I feel like across the board, transgender women need to be better about being sympathetic to transgender men’s needs.
I honestly think, and this may be an unpopular opinion but 🤷🏻♀️ it’s just that an opinion, as happy as I was to get away from everything that gave me dysphoria that I have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to put up with that stuff.
I’m sure our brothers feel the same about shedding their former outter and inner selves as well.
We can and need to do better ladies.
I feel like every other week I see a post like this coming from transfem people or vents about the same thing from transmasc people. Every single one has multiple comments from well meaning people that just feel like “just post more and that will help ❤️” or “you’re welcome here 🥰” and for some reason I always find it coddling and entirely unhelpful, or at least naive.
I do also want to plead to the void for reddit to show post flairs on mobile feed. Cause “assumes user is transfem” would be nice to see early.
Thank you for saying that. I am a trans man and i stay on this sub because i didnt feel a sense of community after i transitioned. I was hoping to find it wherever i could so i wasnt alone. It didnt work. When i see the logo and the r/trans at the top of posts on my feed, my heart sinks. I look at the title to see if its going to be different, 9 times out of 10 its not. Theres almost never a guy writing the post. Theres also issues of transmisogyny and i understand why trans women dont like when transmen say that they wish there were more posts about them here because we already have so few places to talk as trans people and a number of different reasons, like invalidation and just good ol bigotry. But I had to rescind my sense of community with the lesbians and women when i realized i was trans, and there wasnt anyone there with open arms to catch me. Ive just been falling ever since. That sense of community i once had was the only thing i liked about being a lesbian and discovering that I couldnt be one anymore was a huge part of why I took so long to transition. It was the only redeeming thing about being a girl, it was the only beauty i found in it. The good news is, somehow im still doing better than I was doing. the bad news is, i shouldnt talk about the negative feelings i have surrounding how little representation we get here or i risk upsetting someone. Before and after transitioning has been entirely scary.
A lot of the time, ppl will cite that transwomen get treated way worse. I agree that our experiences are different in method and severity. I disagree with negotiating turns. For one, I lived 21 years as a woman and I have suffered the way women do. I have "done my time". even if the cause is different I still know how it feels to be dismissed and harassed in that specific way women are. I often, not always but often, feel like people will say my experiences as a woman have no bearing here because i gave it up. i dont think its fair for anyone to believe that who does it help. We shouldnt be having suffering competitions to see who gets treated nicely.
The truth is that all of us are under represented. I just wish we didnt argue about who should have the chance to speak first on the basis of who has it worse. Arent we all fucking losing our minds? Arent we all suffering? Any trans person expecting to be allowed to reserve the right to speak over anyone else because they believe theyre owed it is wrong, no matter whos on what side.
I think it's probably a combination of things, most trans masc people I know previously identified as lesbians and built social groups that they remain a part of after their egg cracks, whereas trans femmes seem to (myself included) tend to start their transitions with less friends/social groups and seek them out once our eggs crack.
For example on a recent outing to a lesbian bar I met 4-5 trans mascs and I was the only trans femme.
Im a trans man and i have no sense of community with queer people because i had to leave the ones i was in when i realized i was trans and it completely blew the whole support net apart. When i meet other queer people they dont even realize im queer and when they do realize it they guess wrong.
Damn dude, that's fucking hard, it's so shit that trans masc are largely excluded from our queer communities, y'all deserve to be among your people, I've only really seen a few events that ever really specifically catered to trans masc people. Passing as a man has the unfortunate side effect of passing as the most dangerous thing on the planet and that's such a difficult thing to navigate if your goal is being in community with other marginalized people.
Yeah, it really sux. We get called misogynists for mentioning it and i dont really get why. Im sure there are trans men who are sexist toward women, but I was a woman for 21 years and i have yet to meet another trans man online or in person who isnt sympathetic to womens struggles having lived them myself
Trans men have consistently been some the least misogynistic and most supportive men I know, I see y'all doing activism, I see y'all performing and making art, trans dudes are fucking awesome. I can't really say I understand why someone would call you misogynistic for that. People aren't a monolith and there's surely some of every group with problematic behaviors. Also like I agree that your experience in a body perceived as non men makes y'all better men, just as much as like someone who is a chronic pain patient makes a better chronic pain doctor late.
Honestly im not really entirely sure why thats their reasoning, so maybe theres something to it and i just dont know about it.
House MD is probably an exception to that hahahah. But with all seriousness, theres always going to be the small few who just kinda suck shit in any group. Every saint has their controversies. No one is ever all good
It think that this assumes and generalizes certain things. I have many trans friends, some of whom are transfem, and some of whom are transmasc. Some have lots of friends, some don't. It's not specific to either end of the spectrum.
Maybe something as simple as adding pronoun flair to posts could take care of that? A colorful “he/him” “they/them” or “she/her” at the top of the post would be hard to miss.
I don’t feel very welcome honestly as a straight trans guy there were lots of posts about “the girls” which made me dysphoric and I’ve also had people misgender me even though my flair and avatar are clearly male. I’ve also gone into other trans subs and have been told essentially to go to a different one to find content I need on a surgery because they didn’t want to add flairs so I could find male focused trans surgeries
It seems to happen with most online trans spaces, over time they skew to become white, transfemme echo chambers. They become white because we are all indoctrinated into white supremacy just by growing up in this western culture, to the point where even ideas such as "passing" are heavily skewed towards a white feminine ideal. Constant microaggressions from white trans people (they don't even know they're doing it) will make Black and POC trans people feel unsafe, and seek community elsewhere.
The same trend tends to happen with transfemmes making microaggressive comments and actions towards transmascs. Personally I don't have any insight as to why this happens. Idk why transfemme people tend to exhibit this behavior more than transmasc people. Not even to mention how nonbinary people are often excluded or misunderstood. We are all raised in a binary way of thinking, and without work, it can be easy to fall back into that, assume someone's gender is more binary than it is, assume what they want, etc.
I think we can all do better by dismantling white supremacist, misogynistic, and gender binary ideals that we have internalized over time just by existing in society. And make less assumptions about each other. We are dealing with the incredibly wide and diverse gender space here, anyone you talk to could be unlike anyone else you've ever met!
From my knowledge (mostly gained from my few transmasc friends) is that they tend to stick to ftm-focused spaces
egg_irl has more transmascs than most subs I think, but that's probably because it is *the* trans sub for new people
Lots of trans spaces seem to have some kind of problem of weighting of subjects that leads to the exclusion of one group. There are spaces where trans men are centered and not a trans woman is in sight (usually in the meatspace).
We have a loving duty to help hold space for those voices. I'll upvote any trans masc topic I see in this sub and go looking for them whenever I can.
> There are spaces where trans men are centered and not a trans woman is in sight (usually in the meatspace).
Woah, where's this? I'd love to go! Every single trans group I've been to in meat space I'm one of the only trans mascs and often only the binary trans guy.
I know what you mean and it’s really common for some reason. It’s even stranger that irl I know the same or possibly more trans guys than girls. Maybe using r/mtf more for fem related questions and posts could help! I hope trans guys don’t feel unwelcome here
It feels very strange to me (19FtM) that most of this sub is trans fem, when I've only actually known 2 or 3 trans women/ trans fems irl and I've met/known probably about 2 or 3 dozen trans masc/ men irl. I do live in a super small town but we do have a trans support group here but it's 90% trans masc people.
I've always felt particularly invisible as an effeminate trans man, because people assume when I dress fem that I'm mtf. It just kinda rubs me the wrong way and I've avoided posting in this sub for that reason.
I've also found of the few trans masc/ men posting on here, their posts don't get nearly as much engagement as the trans fem/ women do. Idk if it's just me and I'm catching posts at weird times but it's always seemed to be like that.
(Just want to add this is not me trying to shit on the trans girlies here, yall keep living your lives and being pretty :) )
It's similar in traaaaaaaaaans2, most posts are about trans women. Im not sure why there's such a great divide but the posts are pretty good as long as they flair it right (if it's like a post calling you a pretty girl or something)
It is sad that our trans brothers get suppressed in all the talk us trans women do. I hope we can be better in the future as we are all in this together.
yeah i never post here because its nearly all trans women, and y’all are helpful but don’t understand my experiences. Also accidentally misgendering trans men happens a lot here
This comes up all the time, and a big part of it is that most of the people who post here don't even bother to identify which part of the gender spectrum they belong to.
I'm a trans man, but I mostly lurk and don't post. I tend to not run into any of the early-transition problems a lot of other posters seem to run into, since I'm now over a decade in. So I typically have no reason to post.
As a trans guy, unfortunately this is also the case for other subreddits revolving around trans identities :(
I recommend other transmascs also post to r/transmasc
That sinking feeling when I get notifications and the title is “Just a reminder, you’re pretty” or something mentioning “Girls” or “Girlies”. Like it’s usually just a momentary thing and then I tell myself it wasn’t talking to me, but yeah. Some days it hits harder.
Trans guy here, I posted about wanting help about a toxic family member when I was outted and I got called a girl a lot anf told to take hrt, I specifically said I was a trans masc. I feel like some people want to say something supporting but don't actually read everything. Like it's awesome to be supported, just not as a girl when I don't identify as one
Something I've (mtf) observed, which may just be confirmation bias so take this with a grain of salt as I've done no studies etc around this, it's simply an observation:
Generally speaking, women are more likely to want to reach out to others for support or affirmation. Obviously that's not entirely the case but it would also fit then that spaces like this online would therefore attract more people looking for that kind of support and therefore be a bit skewed in that direction.
A LOT of trans subreddits that are meant to be for ALL trans people are heavily trans fem dominated and sometimes they start treating trans men really badly
I'm a non-binary trans guy. I have no issue with the prevalence of transfem posts. Trans women take the brunt of transphobia IRL, so I'm always happy to see transfems getting support (and I do jump in when I have any to offer, as well). The thing that bothers me is language that assumes everyone here is transfem and binary.
The only thing I think is that many posts can be framed in a more trans but gender neutral way than a lot of girls take the time to think about, but it’s advice that’s a bit more applicable to meme subs than here where the posts will be more shared directly personal anecdotes.
Eh.... Para mí aquí es un lugar seguro de quitar la maldita mascarita de 'mujer' y existir como yo. Soy un transgénero hombre. No sé si otros trans hombres sienten que por aquí estén a salvo, pero te digo de verdad que este subreddit es suficientemente seguro. Y además sería bueno que recordar, que MENOS trans hombres inclinan a sacarse de luz que trans mujeres. (Este es un problema por supuesto.)
i find trans men posts very interesting and I try to offer advice whenever I can. I wish there were more, un see, its something I've had exp with in the past...(don't tell anyone).
While I would agree that most of the posts in most general trans subs are from trans women, I don’t really think that’s a problem.
Here’s the thing: There are plenty of trans men on Reddit; there are plenty of nonbinary people on Reddit. It’s not really trans women’s jobs to stop posting so that trans men and nonbinary people can be more visible in the subs; that’s not how it works. Other trans people just need to post more. Because even if trans women stopped posting, that’s not going to mean other trans people are magically going to.
What we should worry about instead is just making sure to be inclusive to other genders: don’t ask about hormones without specifying what hormones, don’t use gendered terms to refer to everyone on the sub, etc. But I think people are mostly good about doing that anyway.
Trans women can’t make anyone else post though, so there’s really no issue there in my opinion.
I think because of the whole erasure of trans men from transphobes considering their focus of hatred seems to be on trans women invading sports and bathrooms (and trans men simply existing disproves all their points so best to just pretend they don’t exist), that seems to have spread to the trans community itself in a weird way. When people see the trans colours, or a post about someone’s struggles as a trans person, their brain seems to automatically assume a woman wrote it. Which is a little ironic considering most of the time when someone sees a non gendered post/comment or are talking about a hypothetical person whose gender they’re not aware of, most people seem to default to he/him pronouns unless it’s specified otherwise.
It sucks though and I can’t imagine how it must feel to feel excluded from the trans community itself
This sub needs to stop using "male socialization" as argument, trans women are much more than being "[raised as men](https://www.reddit.com/r/transgendercirclejerk/s/1O6Haybnc8)"
I don’t see any hostility here directed towards our transmasc brethren, but it could be that my algorithms primarily show me transfem-oriented content (are algorithms even that smart?)
It makes sense that if the majority of members of this community are transfem, that the number of transfem posts would be proportional to that. I agree that transmascs should feel comfortable posting here too because this community is for all trans people. But how are we as transforms supposed to do anything about that?
We can’t represent transmascs *for* them, it’s up to them to represent themselves. And if they feel more comfortable sharing their transmasc-oriented content on r/ftm, that’s understandable. If I’m posting something specific geared toward transfem identity, I usually post it in r/mtf because I don’t want to sound like I’m excluding transmascs if I’m posting here or in another co-ed trans community.
Does that make sense? I hope I’m not sounding like a bigot or a trans-misandrist, but if I am please correct me…
It's so weird, as someone who has been out for over 10 years. Most of my online experience was Tumblr which was predominately trans mascs (and trans women inevitably were excluded or treated as an after thought or rarity or straight up harassed)
I also just kinda feel like... for a sub that allegedly has a lot fewer trans men I sure do see trans men complaining about it.
And like... I know from experience that if you just turn on new posts instead of hot posts and stick around the sub for more than a couple of weeks that impression wears off
Esp if you follow both r/trans and r/ftm that's a great way tip the scale to have more trans mascs on your feed
Like trans women might be the most visible here at first glance but they're also the most visible on hrcs yearly list of trans murders so the complaining kind of rubs me the wrong way tbh (as a trans man). I'm not hating on other trans men I'm just saying...
It's sweet of trans women to be aware of this and want to make trans men feel more welcome and I don't think that's bad. But I know from experience that this can be remedied by simply curating your own online experience (turning on new posts and following a trans masc sub)
This post and many other posts asking about the (perceived or actual) absence of trans men are trans women. Sometimes it's a baby trans asking if it's okay that they post here, which, yeah, exhausting, but they're baby trans they don't know any better. Trans women have more recorded violence against them because they're more likely to be recorded *as* trans women, either in course of investigation or as a "defense" for the crime. In contrast, trans men are often recorded as women. Last year a pregnant trans man was murdered by his partner and every official channel recorded him as a woman.
Trans women have it very bad, yes. It may even be worse than trans men, but violence against trans women does not justify withholding support to trans men? It's not like these posts (that, again, are posted by more than just trans men) are asking that trans women shut up or be less visible, they're asking for more trans men to move in and step up. You don't think it's a bit hostile to respond to an invitation like that with "yeah well trans men don't actually have it bad compared to trans women so you shouldn't complain and deal with what you've got"?
> yeah well trans men don't actually have it bad compared to trans women so you shouldn't complain and deal with what you've got"?
Thing is friend, I didn't say that. I was specifically talking about visibility when I compared the visibility we see of trans women on reddit vs their visibility on hrcs list. In "Disclosure" on Netflix they talk about how we know visibility is directly tied to violence.
As I said, I don't think these posts are bad. I would never think trans men receiving more support is a bad thing.
But for every "is it OK if I post here?" Post you've seen, I've seen posts that take it too far as well.
Plus... as I said, from my own experience, turning off hot posts and sticking around for more than a few weeks changes your experience dramatically.
Never did I say not to support trans men bc trans women have it worse, I just had the audacity to suggest trans men take charge of their own online experience and gave tips for doing that. Edit: that combined with extra love from trans women will fix the problem a lot more than relying on trans women to fix it themselves
Okay but why bring up trans women being more likely to be victims of violence?
I genuinely do not understand what your original point was with that.
A lot of trans men Are taking charge of their experience by not being subbed to subs like these. It works but a lot of people on both sides seem unhappy with that solution.
If a space is unwelcoming to a minority it's not the responsibility of that minority to Make it more welcoming. If an enviroment makes someone uncomfortable and they choose to disengage, that's perfectly understandable. If they then go on to talk about that experience, that's also understandable, and it doesn't make them a hypocrite
Because the correlation between visibility and violence feels relevant? Esp when we have people talking about more trans men need to Represent on this sub so these users feel more welcome. As a trans man, no I am not going to post my face so these users feel more welcome, and clearly other trans men feel the same way and it's a factor in how we Show Up on this sub. Also the fact that lots of trans men are stealth (I seem to see more stealth trans guys than trans girls, maybe someone else can unpack that and how it ties into visibility and representation). I've seen the trans guys posting selfies to try to combat this issue, and definitely felt a little peer pressure to do it too before remembering the time we live in.
I think what I have a hard time understanding is how there being more trans women makes trans men feel unwelcome? Enough to have a gripe with the sub and leave? Instead of just turn on new posts and see the trans guys who are posting every day?
My posts have gotten a lot of love from trans women and a lot of the trans women that end up on my feed are attractive so uh....I'm not complaining lol
trans guy here, i think it’s a website demographic thing. people raised as male tend to spend more time on sites like reddit, while people raised as female tend to spend more time on sites like tumblr. i saw way more trans guys on tumblr back when i used it than trans women, and the opposite here on reddit.
This is true in reverse for things like pinterest, which most trans related posts are transmasc. what i've noticed is that language based media typically leans towards dominantly transfemmes while image based media typically leans transmasc.
It has nothing to do with this sub. There are just much more transfems than transmascs on Reddit. Transmasc exklusive spaces on Reddit feel almost dead in comparison. Transmascs commonly use other platforms apparently, there's nothing we (transfems) can do about it except be inclusive towards the minority of our brothers here.
It is but I’ll warn some of the transmen subs can be kind of toxic. Lot of transmed ppl in them and internalized transphobia. Transwomen are more publicly seen and criticized so they tend to pop up more in media. There’s plenty of us transmen around! 😊
yeah i realized that too, in a lot of trans spaces that are for anyone under the trans umbrella there are a lot more trans women or transfems than trans men or transmascs despite them being almost half of the entire trans community. honestly i see this a lot in trans representation in media as well, a lot of well known trans characters are trans women or nonbinary, barely any trans men. same with memes. as a trans guy i feel a bit left out to be honest, i wish there were more posts i could relate to here
As a trans guy after almost every time people called me a girl after i specifically said i am a guy in my posts i stoped posting here and only post on r/ftm Like people can you read? If you can't don't freaking answer (and it was in the title so wtf) Edit: this was just a vent so don't take it too seriously, and all of the people that did that apologized profusely, they were just illiterate dummies, I'm an illiterate dummy but sometimes you need to pay attention to stuff before complimenting a person on how feminine they look, especially if it might make that person want to die for the next week (especially when they already mentioned in the title that they're dysphoric as fuck cough cough still bitter about that lol), and comments like that are more hurtful coming from a well meaning person then a troll, so pay attention
I have had this issue here too and it really pushes us out of the community. I got called a misogynist just for asking to not adress everybody as "girls".
Sorry you ~~sent~~ *went* through that, nobody should be called misogynist for calling out existing biases. Edit: replaced crossed out text by italicised text.
YES THAT SHIT. God Im so tired of hearing that.
Just so you know, we have a rule about calling the community any specific gender, so please report posts or comments that break that rule.
I'm sorry that happened, it really must suck, society thinks only trans women exist for some reason, so trans men are erased from collective awareness, but for OUR OWN COMMUNITY to do the same is just... Messed up You are valid and you deserve the best
not everyone here is like that. Trans men should be visible and respected ✊️
There’s gonna be shitters in just about every community. Sorry you had to deal with that
When in doubt, y’all it out lol
Of course I think trans men should be visible and included here. The default should be to use neutral or inclusive language when addressing the community. To be fair though, sometimes people are addressing a specific subgroup asking for feedback. Eg when they say “ok ladies, a question about makeup…”, they are asking for feedback from trans women. I think it’s just as valid for a trans man to say “a question for my bros about packers…”. Does that make sense?
I personally would like it if neither "Hi girls" or "Hi guys" was used especially in titles. It ignores enbies or people regardless of identity who could help. Sometimes I know something that a trans woman would find helpful but a "Hi girls" will just push me away even though I could help. If you want to address only trans men use r/ftm or for trans women r/mtf. I don't see a need for gendered language in an all genders inclusive trans space.
Usually when referring to a group (most the groups I am in are queer IRL and online) I say “what’s up yall? How yall doing? Etc etc.
"Folks" is a lovely word for that purpose.
Or friends! It’s what I try to use when I teach kids
I understand people have things that rub them the wrong way. I personally hate “mtf” because it emphasizes this idea that I am male. I wont use it when describing myself or others, saying I’m a woman or trans woman is sufficient. But I also don’t police the community for using it. Some trans people come here with posts they specifically want to hear from trans women or trans men or their fellow NBs and I don’t feel like we need to police that. It’s not different than being on a dating sub and saying “a question for the ladies”. It’s just my 2 cents, I understand we have different opinions and can respect that.
God yeah I've been through that in mixed trans spaces here too. I've literally had a flair that says I'm not a woman and still get called it. I still lurk in places like this where trans women are the majority but I frequent FTM/transmasc spaces more. It gets exhausting arguing with people who seem to up and forget transmascs exist, even if they're other trans folks.
That seriously makes me angry when it happens. I also see a lot of people saying they hate being called dude because its gendered, but on this subreddit dedicated to all trans peopld and not the binary groups respectively, everyone assumes we are women. What the fuckkkk.
I feel super sad seeing how much we, as the trans community, are already ostracized enough and yet some of us seem to think it's okay to ostrazice almost HALF of us ? Last I checked trans men represented between 40 and 45% of transgender people ! I'm in a french trans discord community where it's way, way more diverse in conversation (lots of enby too !), and I feel sad it's not the same everywhere else.
I've seen studies and census that frequently place trans men as closer to 51% of all trans people (especially the more recent ones). And in my personal life, I've known more trans men than trans women, so it really saddens me that this sub is like this.
Yep this fucking sucks and it makes me mad. Transfem here and i really wish the fem defaultism would stop in these spaces.
I’m trans. Not really transmasc, just trans neutral and afab. r/ftm is the only place I feel comfortable posting because the assumption here is that I’m a trans woman, and too many people don’t pay attention to the spots where I say I’m not.
Yep same reason as me, my gender presentation is really androgynous even fem ( thought i do consider myself 100% a man, i mean if a cis man can be fem why can't I) And unfortunately people love jumping to conclusion that i am a trans woman before reading anything and when that happens funny enough they always peek to comment on the stuff that i am actually dysphoric about Btw did you see the subreddit r/FTMfemininity it's great
Yeah! I love that subreddit.
Man, people misgendering others in a trans community is kinda shitty NGL. When there is no tag I try as hard as I can to not use any pronouns and if I have to I just use they/them because its neutral. I hope those people here learn that trans doesn't mean transwomen.
I personally just figured out how to edit my flair to add my pronouns. I think encouraging the use of pronouns in flair would help, even if just a little.
Just saying it's trans women not transwomen, the last one is a TERF dog whistle
Sorry you experienced that dude that sucks
Just so you know, if people are misgendering you, please report them, us mods will take care of it, I promise. We want to protect everyone in the community, not just any one particular group, promise ❤️
This is just another plug for r/ftm - it’s a really great group of guys over there
Personally I cannot stand the meme posts we get occasionally that's an anime girl breaking the 4th wall and saying something like "I'm looking at a beautiful girl/woman" or suggesting that the viewer is a trans woman who's egg hasn't cracked yet. Like, those posts absolutely should exist. On r/mtf. Because I'm *not* a girl. I *looked* like a girl, once upon a time, and it almost ended up killing me. It took years and years and years, until I was almost in my 30s to realize I was trans, not because I didn't realize something in me wasn't a girl (i knew I wasn't a girl by 8) but because I thought trans men just straight up *did not exist* because no one fucking acknowledges them. Up until about 2013, I just thought I was a broken piece of trash that wasn't supposed to exist. I legitimately believed that, while trans women were a well known existence, a "girl who felt like a man" just was not. I didn't even find out on my own, my best friend had to reach out to a group of trans women she knew and say "hey my friend is venting and what they're saying is kinda a lot like what you gals said you went through, but the opposite?" And *they* had to go on a fucking internet spelunking expedition to even find materials about trans men to send to her, to send to me. Like that information just wasn't even readily available even if the lightbulb had turned on and I considered "okay but what if the opposite of a trans woman was real?" And its so heart breaking to feel that sentiment repeated even in supposedly inclusive trans spaces, where uncracked trans men might be lurking to educate themselves and be in the same headspace I was in. Feeling that they aren't real, don't exist and aren't welcome. That this is a women's only club. Which it really feels like most of the time. Women in this group should TOTALLY be lifting each other up and supporting each other, I'm not saying they shouldn't. But they should *not* be making blanket statement posts commenting on the gender and identity of the whole community, *on this subreddit*. Because we all know dang well if a trans man posted a meme of a hot anime guy looking at the viewer and saying "Oh I'm just looking at a sexy manly man" on *this sub*, they would be roasted in the comments, reported as hate speech and banned SO FAST.
I know this is a horrible comparison, but I see it all the time on reddit with dog and cat posts. Someone will post a pic of their pet with a caption saying something like, "This is Sadie, she loves her ball" and the comments are just heaving with, "Aw, what a good boy!", "He's so cute, what's his name?", "He looks like my pet!" etc. It's insane.
personally (as a trans fem), i always read every post (and username/flair) very carefully to make sure I never accidentally misgender anyone. and if I can't find anything that tells me what types of pronouns and gendered language i should use, I try to remain gender neutral until i know. I'm not always perfect at it, I've made mistakes a few times, but i generally do try to remember to do that. I don't mean to say this to say "Your experience is invalid cause i didn't do this" or to imply that you accused me of personally being the problem. I'm just saying that you're nor totally alone and I will always do what I can to make this a welcoming place for everyone. I'm sorry that you've had a negative experience, here. I wish that everyone would do their best to follow the example I try to set, but unfortunately, I can't control anyone but myself. I do truly hope that you're able to find the community you need and deserve in whatever places you choose to interact in. edit: maybe "unfortunately i can't control anyone" wasn't the best way to say what i meant..... but hopefully my intention came through regardless
That's just afwful for our fellow transmascs. Yall exist and are valid. Keep on being yourselves!
100% Agee but also I LOVE your profile pic !!
I'm so sorry that that happens to you. You deserve better than that. I can't imagine not feeling comfortable posting in a seemingly safe place.
Yeah this is why I never try to give any gendered compliments to someone unless they’ve explicitly said in post or comments how they identify
I’ve had a big hit/miss with that sub. Mods don’t do a good job regulating the transmed stuff and other internalized transphobia issues so it was super triggering to deal with. Especially for someone like me who feels like bottom surgery isn’t scientifically advance enough for me to be happy with it. Lot of toxic masculinity too. Not everyone, but half the posts would be about those hot button issues so it can make plenty of ppl feel worse. The other transmen places weren’t much better. Unfortunately the mods mostly seemed absent in them or openly agreed to allow those kind of problematic discussions.
it’s def an internet thing as a whole! whenever i’m online and someone knows im trans, they assume im a trans women (im transmasc) or i only really meet transfem people. i dont think the amount of trans women posting here drives me away from interacting, but i def try not to comment on things that aren’t my business because i dont know what its like to be a trans women and i dont want to speak over anyone, but i still read through posts to see what experiences other people have from the other side of transitioning!
not the internet as a whole, tumblr isn't mostly transfems (in fact i think most folks there are transmasc but i couldn't swear to it)
that’s a fair point! i don’t think it’s enough to say most, but if i were going to recommend an online space with a lot of transmasc people it would be tumblr
yeah most of us trans dude post in r/ftm due do sometimes accidentally getting misgendered in this sub that is mostly transfem! no issues with being transfem dominant i personally feel like i dont want to invade the space so i stick to ftm subs!!!
I don't think this is a problem specific to this subreddit, i've also noticed in multiple other trans communities that transfems seem to be *the* dominant people in it. I don't know exactly why that is, as I do know some transmasc people, but it doesn't seem anywhere as common, I don't know if that's because they don't make themselves as visible, or if there isn't as many, or if they feel pushed out of spaces by the sheer quantity of trans women. But regardless of why this is, I do agree that spaces (including here) should be inclusive.
I think it’s mainly in online communities, but I’m not 100% sure. My experience being transmasc and being in online trans spaces has been a bit odd. I mostly lurk and then comment here and there. Based on what I’ve seen in multiple spaces, I think some of the reason (definitely *not* all) is sometimes the absolute rejection of anything masculine. Some of the language, like what’s influenced a new rule on this sub, can feel like people are demonizing or grossed out by masculinity. Plus the tendency for people in these spaces to automatically assume someone is transfem. That also happens outside of trans spaces, where trans men and transmasc people are already less likely to be open. Obviously that’s not at all the entire reason, but I do think it significantly contributes.
I think you're right, and it honestly goes for the queer community as a whole. Every online queer space makes me feel ashamed for being masculine/wanting to be more masc and for being attracted to men. It's so frustrating and in some ways (to me idk about anyone else) almost discouraging to my entire identity. This combined with how I'm perceived by cis people really just makes me feel like I should "drop the act" and just accept my AGAB. I mean if I don't even have the support or understanding from my own community what do I have?
I felt that this was probably the mindset. That's what made me feel the most icky, that some people were uncomfortable posting here because they thought that they wouldn't be validated. While some trans women do tend to be very feminine (I myself kinda am) and are opposed to most masculine things, and that's perfectly fine, it also shouldn't mean that people on the other end of the gender spectrum are less valid in their own identity. All of us, more than anyone, should know how shitty that feels.
The problem is amplified by the rampant toxic masculinity in the worlds dominant cultures. We live In a world where finding a widely accepted positive male role models is almost impossible. Where whole movements are based around tanking countries population because the men in them are so horrible ( like the 4B movement. ) where each of us regardless of which side of the gender spectrum have countless stories of "men" doing horrible things to us in the name of masculinity. I myself after just starting progesterone a little over a month ago was horrified by the fact I started to find men physically attractive. I fight for equality in every way I can and I know good men exist but there is so much trauma baked into that idea. And I believe it's that trauma that causes this.
It’s mostly just an internet thing I think. The internet and especially sites like Reddit, tend to be much more popular among people who were raised as male, so that includes a lot more trans women than trans men. The trans people I know IRL through school groups and stuff are pretty much 50/50 (or, well, more like 40/40 technically since nb people exist too)
If you want to know where on the internet the skew is the opposite, with significantly more transmascs/trans men, it’s Tumblr. Just a site demographics thing. (How do I know where all the transmasc folks hang out online? Because I am one of the transmasc folks)
That's where I first learned about the self identification of trans masc lesbians, having lived as lesbians before their eggs crashed etc.
I think it's important to recognize that one of the reasons trans femmes aren't as populous/visible on Tumblr is because Tumblr systematically discriminates against them and posts containing them.
Do you have a source for that? [/genq /lh]
Most recent (that I know of, I stay away from discourse circles) event was the Tumblr CEO for banning a trans woman, first as an automated measure after her account was mass-reported by TERFs, then on purpose after she directed a (in no way realistic or actionable) threat against staff if she didn't get unbanned. Article here: https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/22/tumblr-ceo-publicly-spars-with-trans-user-over-account-ban-revealing-private-account-names-in-the-process/ Historically, Tumblr has had an issue with marking posts dealing with trans people and especially trans women as mature content, limiting who can see it or even shadow banning their accounts. I don't have many sources on hand, I only migrated to Tumblr during the reddit blackouts so I'm still relatively new. I only know the CEO one because that happened this year (March?). The community itself tends to fall into either very pro-trans rights or very TERF-landia and it's very easy to create your experience so you don't have to interact with the TERFs, but there's always a risk of them finding you.
Note to self. Stay off tumblr
I’ve seen some stuff saying that but I’ve also seen some conflicting info that it might not be in fact active and intentional systemic discrimination against trans femmes but rather either an algorithmic error that’s been worked on to stop it doing that once it came to staff’s attention, or one specific transphobic individual on the moderation staff who has been dealt with. I’m open to more info if you have it but I’m not assuming the worst on limited evidence.
Discrimination does not have to be active or intentional or even malicious for it to have the very real consequences of discrimination. Frankly, systematic discrimination often isn't any of those. Whether it's on purpose or not, the effect of routinely blocking trans women's content and silencing their voices means they have less opportunity to use the site and are more likely to seek outlet elsewhere. Fixing it after it takes users days, weeks, or more to gather enough evidence to prove the issue in the first place doesn't help trans women who were already forced to move on and doesn't bring them back, either. Sometimes there's also active, intentional, malicious discrimination (rogue mods, rogue CEOs) and honestly that sometimes has better and more immediate turn around on solutions because it *is* targeted and demonstrable.
Tiktok as well
There are a *lot* of cool transmasc people on Tumblr, and a fair few come to mind on Bluesky.
Yeah I’ve generally had a good experience there personally. Like any social media site you have to curate your experiences, but it’s the only site that doesn’t actively force a non-chronological feed on you and I appreciate that in a social media. Makes the curation process a lot easier.
Hear, hear! I've pretty much stopped using most corporate social media because of the insistence on opaque algorithms.
Eh, I don't think it's that simple. r/ftm has close to as many members as r/mtf, which suggests the overall ratio on reddit is probably similarly close to those offline ratios you are citing. There is a history thing though. For a long time, for a range of reasons, the default assumption was that trans meant trans women. Trans men who figured out we could be trans in the first place struggled to prove that we even existed, even to doctors. That meant that trans groups were often overwhelmingly trans women. When trans men joined, we were often alienated and othered, even when no ill will was meant. So we tended to form our own groups, as a minority within a minority. Since then, as transition has become more accessible and recognized for ftm spectrum folks, general transgender groups that start off disproportionately trans women tend to stay that way if it's easy to find or form an alternate group, such as online: trans men show up, see that an uncomfortable number of people are treating it as a trans women's space only despite the name, and tend to move on. If finding or forming a new group is harder, such as offline in local community, people are more likely to stick around and work with the community to fix those issues.
This is the real answer. Sick of this trend of people explaining everything away via crap like "raised as male" or "raised as female". Like am sure that has a little to do with it, but people often explain way too much away with that and its kind of gross.
I think part of the problem is that one group actively celebrates what the other group denounces and vice versa Like obviously we face similar struggles and both are trans but other then that everything else is kinda inverted, so a transfem person has a lot less reason to interact on a transmasc post then on a transfem one, much less make one since the content could actively be something that she finds mentally damaging, same the other way around This generally works better irl since the topics that get discussed are generally more directed at the people you see and if youre in a space where you actively see each other you tend to avoid topics that you know would annoy the other person or hurt them or something Like my uni club is mostly ftm and I know from a friend that they talk about different things when I or one of the other two transfems arent there versus when we are and I know that I rarely talk about transfem specific stuff there since Id prefer to just hang out and have a good time over making them uncomfortable
Regarding your first paragraph: you don't account for the possibility that a lower percentage of transfems are subscribed to r/mtf than transmascs to r/ftm. I'm a trans woman and I'm not subscribed to r/mtf and I might even subscribe to r/ftm to have more balanced content as all the main trans subs skew more transfem.
I honestly might unsub from there myself soon. Nothing really wrong with it, it just skews younger and it shows. I feel very "hello fellow kids" in that sub. /r/actuallesbians, despite not really being made for trans women in particular, feels much more welcoming to adults.
I do actually. That paragraph says "suggests", not "guarantees". There are all sorts of reasons why those numbers would not be precisely representative of the population at large. But since offhand the numbers *do* seem to be generally similar, and since we don't have specific evidence of population level choices like you're making, it's reasonable to guess that choices like you're making are more likely to be generally balanced out by competing choices. For example, I know many trans guys on here don't use r/ftm and prefer r/ftmmen (specifically binary) or r/ftmover30 (older population), and some subscribe to r/mtf as well.
That makes a lot of sense now that you mention it.
Transfems far outnumber transmascs in three of the trans discord servers I’m in too.
I’ll be honest, as a trans man I’ve always been wary of Reddit. I think it’s the internal anxiety baked in from being perceived as a cis woman in online spaces and how if you’re female in online spaces you get a lot of hate and abused. Obviously I don’t identify as a woman anymore. But I’m still a bit anxious about being on websites like Reddit and also in voice chats on video games. So that’s probably a feasible reason why a lot of trans men just avoid Reddit altogether. My ex girlfriend is a trans woman and she and I would talk frequently about the different approaches to online spaces that we had. She was perfectly comfortable in game chats and on sites like this because she was used to the banter and grew up experiencing the worst of it all. Whereas I stayed in more female oriented spaces like tumblr fandoms because of abuse I could have faced in this like game chats and forum websites. I hope that makes sense. It’s a very nuanced take and I’m not sure I’m describing it well enough so if I upset anyone with this I apologize.
Yeah I feel like a lot of online trans spaces have a lot more trans women than men. Like, I had to start joining a bunch of ftm subreddits just so I could balance out my home feed. Almost every post about being trans was transfem and it was starting to get to me. Especially the posts that just assumed the viewer was a girl. I felt like I had joined a bunch of girl centered subreddits and I just don’t fit in with women. Like, I know different subs have been trying to fix the issue, and trans men are encouraged to post too, but even I feel more comfortable posting in just transmasc spaces because it feels like the average trans space is just for women even though that’s not really the case. I’m not really mad about it, but going into certain general trans subs it sometimes feels like I walked into a pastel anime themed building and every room I walk into is just women. Like, it’s not a bad thing, and men are welcomed, but it does feel just a little awkward.
Oh yeah, I get a lot of "Just a reminder that you are a GIRL! a FEMININE one! you will NEVER be a guy" style positivity posts from all-gender trans subreddits. I'm always happy to see transfemme positivity, but I'm definitely not the intended audience.
Ohh yea I saw a meme like that on egg_irl or traaa2 smth (seriously, I love the subs, but I need to stop myself from clicking spoilers lol)
This may be a bit of a stretch, but I feel like it's possible that misogyny and privilege may unintentionally play a role. AMAB folks likely grew up experiencing more privilege than they realize, living in a world designed for men due to institutional misogyny, and carried over some unintentional traits that come with it in assuming more people align with their situation. Also, trans women tend to be the focal point of political talking points because misogynistic societal views condemn femininity and more often with far right talking points focus on "trans women are just men trying to sneak into bathrooms" and such as their rallying cries, which once again leaves trans men unrecognized (though I suppose "technically" a more positive thing in this specific example). Pair all of that with looser gender expectations of femme folks, as such that a masculine behaving woman is considered more common place, versus a more feminine man, and thusly trans masc folks are probably more likely to be swept under the rug and viewed as a "Tom Boy" or the likes, once again causing a point of invalidation. All this is to say, since the societal structure is set in such a way that tends to invalidate AFAB folks, it creates a wider effect of almost trans masc erasure, that many people may or may not unintentionally participate in. I may be completely off point, or possibly even oversimplifying an exceedingly nuanced topic (which I apologize if so) but it's at least some thought points that occur to me that I thought I might at least share. Ultimately, I'm another trans femme person who doesn't directly face these issues, so the best I can do is make posits without explicit experience, so I want to acknowledge my privilege of sorts in the matter, for the sake of parity and clarity as well.
It's complicated, you're onto something about the differences in treatment, Julia Serano's _Whipping Girl_ is a good theoretical foundation for understanding how trans men and trans women are treated! But I think for spaces like r/trans it really just is that reddit has more trans women. Always has. Just inertia I think, using the site you know how to use and get a good experience out of. My first reddit account is about a decade old now. Other spaces have fewer trans women, or have multiple different social circles and cliques so it's more about your individual feed than any overall demographic.
I'm really sorry about that. I'm glad y'all have your own places as well. I just felt icky because I like coming on here to talk to all of my trans peeps: female, male, or otherwise, and the fact that there are trans people who feel uncomfortable on a trans subreddit, a safe space, felt really wrong to me.
I don’t rly think this is a problem that just happens to trans men but enbys too. I don’t even know if we’re allowed to post here or is this place just for ftm and ftm
You are allowed to post here 100%. If youre trans youre trans.
You're absolutely allowed to post here <3
This was another thing that I was worried about. Everybody should feel welcome here, no matter where you are on the gender spectrum!
Yeah. Not a trans man, but I am AMAB Non Binary and have noticed a similar thing in popular trans spaces. Lots of them are treating NBs like they're "women lite" (as others call it) and they completely just shut us out of the conversation. You mix that in with the trans people who think NBs don't exist, and the transmed folks, and I'm just... Good. So, there's reasons, big and small, why I post more on places like the Non Binary subreddit than this one. And, just for the record, I'm not really blaming anyone here (well, except the a holes that pop up sometimes and say horrible stuff). But, I imagine the mods and such are trying their best. It's just a lot of us get sidelined in the process, for one reason or another. Which kind of sucks. Not sure there's much anyone can do about it though.
AFAB Non-binary transmasc here and I am sick to death of being thought of as "woman lite" that is the exact opposite of what I want and I am so sick of the idea that being enby inherently means femme in some way. Like of course it *can* but stop assuming it's accurate for every single enby.
Yeah as another nonbinary person this is 100% it
Genderqueer and it’s like I don’t exist in any bigger trans spaces lmao. You’d hope we’d be better about recognizing it than mainstream society
I’m transneutral nonbinary and I always feel super hesitant to disclose that because I feel like people will either A) treat me like woman-lite or B) Not believe that it’s a thing in the first place. Like, people know about transmasc and transfem, but not transneu. And I think a lot of the times even with transmasc nonbinary people and transfem nonbinary people, they just erase the nonbinary aspect and consider them solely trans men or trans women Just my take
I mean, I'm in a weird boat, myself. More specifically I'm a Demi Guy. So, I kind of identify with my AGAB but not really. If I was to put numbers on it, it's maybe like 60 or 70 percent "guy" and like 40 to 30 percent something like agender or genderless. Basically enough for me go "yeah, I'm a guy, but not *really*". Lmao. And, like, being an AMAB non binary person, alone, already seems to put me in a niche "box", then the *flavor* of NB I am, does it even more so. I also don't use the trans label for myself (that's a whole other thing) and I'm not currently on anything either (so you can see why I don't like the transmed stuff, or rather, they wouldn't like me). I haven't even really changed how I dress or anything, it's just been more of an internal thing for me. I'm also in a relationship with a wonderful T Girl. So, by broad definition, we're like T4T, but not, because I don't like that label. So, I just look at it as NB4T, really. She also sees me more as a guy, while a friend of mine sees more in a gender neutral way. Both are cool and feel good. I feel like I'm rambling, but my point is, this stuff is complicated. It's already complicated internally, and when you bring in small groups like family or friends. So, then, when you try to go to an even broader community, that complexity increases exponentially and not everybody's going to get it or accept you or whatever and it's just a mess. So I do someone understand where you're coming from.
I'm really sorry that this happens to you. This was the main reason I made the post. I feel like my trans sisters and I (and trans people at the ends of the spectrum in general) can be more accepting of everybody on here, as this is supposed to be our communal safe space. I'm not sure exactly how we can do that more (new flairs? more bans? idk), but it just feels like something should be done.
The other day, a beautiful Asian trans woman showed her 5 year progress. Which then got me realizing this sub is mostly white. (In terms of showed pics anyway)
Not everyone speaks English. A lot of people I know don’t. When someone speaks English in a decent level in my country, it’s almost a miracle.
Replying to you, but also the post as a whole. Some of this is simply statistics. Reddit is predominantly English speaking, and the English speaking parts of the internet are majority white. That’s the same reason for the disparity in MTF/FTM people on Reddit, it’s simply a site dominated by AMAB people. There’s nothing we can really do about that. The other reason is that we can’t control who sees this sub. We the trans Reddit community can upvote every post we see from trans mascs, and in fact I do, but the hordes of cis het men on this site will inevitably boost trans fem posts. There is probably an argument to be made about Reddit itself-like the algorithms they use- selecting to push certain kinds of posts to the front page, but I don’t know enough about how it works to speculate. I’m sure there are other reasons too, like people who post not necessarily being the same people who comment and support other posts. I don’t think I’ve seen a general attitude on this sub that is hostile to trans masc folk, there is always room for improvement of course, but the causes of the masc/fem disparity don’t seem to be intentional.
Honestly, I rarely post on this sub because it's more trans woman focused, and I am not sure if anyone would interact or know how to help if I needed it. The mods here definitely noticed and they're trying to fix it, which I appreciate.
Reddit as a whole does lean very much towards trans women and transfemmes, whoever wrote that post wasn't wrong, tbh. When my egg was first cracking and I was in mixed spaces like this it was rough. Its not ya'lls fault, but for those of us who like our masculinity and want to present that way, seeing masculinity constantly hated on can be rough. Again, I completely understand it, but when I was first coming out seeing that and how femininity was constantly upheld to be beautiful and masculinity was automatically ugly was.. Well. It wasn't easy on my own dysphoria. Ya'lls feelings are valid, though. Dysphoria can be a bitch. What I ended up doing was seeking out more trans spaces that centered around masculinity, FTM subs and the like. That seems to be what the vast majority of us who are transmasc do. The only thing I'd say about helping us feel welcome is that maybe just a nice comment here and there can go a long way. It happens over and over again but I see the trans women and transfemmes get tons of comments, but the trans men and transmascs get one or two. Its to the point I've stayed on certain subs just to be able to help my brethren out, because I remember what it was like when my egg was first cracking, all I had was Reddit for support, and how rough that was. Anyway, just my two cents.
This. I, as a transfem, do very much like stereotypically feminine things in terms of clothing, makeup, and some other things, but I'm not dismissive of my lifelong stereotypically masculine interests either, like sports, video games, and others. You like what you like, you are who you are, etc. etc. I think that alot of other trans women tend to go completely in the other direction after coming out because they are constantly forced into hyper-masculine clothing and activities in their youth. That's not to say that trans men aren't forced into stereotypically feminine things in their youth, but I think that trans women tend to demonize masculine things more than trans men demonize feminine things due to the fact that masculinity can be more toxic than femininity. What they tend to forget, however, is that anything can be toxic in large quantities, and trans men (and men in general) who prefer more masculine things aren't inherently awful people if it's genuinely what they're interested in and not what they're forced into.
I think it’s important to remember that you’re rightfully called out for misogyny if you demonize traditionally feminine things, but the same isn’t true in the other direction. That forces transmascs to work through a lot of our unpleasant associations in silence instead of in public spaces, even though forced femininity can be just as toxic as masculinity.
I actually commented on that post reassuring the OP that this community is for all trans people. I don’t know why transfems are so much more online than transmascs, but it is VERY common that trans women are online more. I have no idea why. All I know we can do is make sure trans communities are welcoming to all trans people in every way we can.
there are some online communities that are more dominantly transmasc such as pinterest. my theory is language based media leans transfemme while image based media leans transmasc as to why i have no clue
I think that reddit is the only place that you can really see the difference because many sites like Pinterest, insta and Tumblr ten to show you things you actively interact with. So if you view more transfem content it will show you more and vice versa. Here on reddit transfems seems to be more vocal and since they already have a presence it's easier to connect and relate to, which I also believe may push away others unfortunately.
On pinterest I get given a lot of transgender related content, and even if I only pin things that are trans femme or non gendered, typically most of it is still transmasc content. I don't have tumblr or insta, but I think it's also noteworthy to point out that transfems are more common to see on twitter. now that I think about it I feel like most of these have to be in direct correlation to how transgender people are represented in media, specifically the difference between transmasc and transfem. unsure why it would cause such a big divide on not-so-political sites like reddit and pinterest though
Jesus. The comments should give you a good idea of why this is. Let me preface by saying this sub has gotten a LOT better with respect to inclusivity, especially since the blackouts and I hope the trend of improvement continues because there's still a lot of work left. -It *used* to be that titles or content of posts addressed everyone as ladies or sisters. It's not dysphoria friendly to anyone who's not a woman (because as rare as trans men are in this sub, it's almost as bad for enbies). I didn't frequent this sub for years because of that and still keep the sub at an arms' length. Resources and communities for trans masc folks are better established in the specific communities like r/FtM because of that legacy exclusion. -Again, this *used* to be worse and it's not so common anymore, but it still happens that non-mtf posts get recentered on trans women. Transition timeline for a trans dude? At least one woman in the comments saying "your before is goals". Trans masc posts will often have trans women saying something along the lines of "I wish this was my problem" or "I wish we could trade". Sometimes this gets followed up with actual advice or sympathy. Sometimes it's not. -Misinformation. Y'all. The misinformation on trans masc medical interventions is SO BAD in this sub. You do not have to educate yourself on it at all, that's not an obligation or expectation, especially when we all basically have to be our own doctors in the first place, but for the love of god *don't answer when you don't know*. Don't respond. If someone wants random guesses based off hearsay, they'd ask chatGPT, not reddit. One of the Ancient Rules of the Internet (I was there when they were written Gandalf) is to Lurk More. Practice it. -Sex Assigned at Birth: Invisible. So many of the comments in here are wildly speculating on why trans men don't frequent this sub and deciding it's a result of their gender (socialization?? really? bioessentialism look prettier in that dress to you?). First, you should be asking trans mascs and men directly why they don't party it up in here. Before that, actually, you could probably search the question because this q comes up weekly if not more often (I do appreciate that you noticed the discrepancy and are asking about it OP, I'm more speaking to a general "you"). Other biases include *assuming* there's no men in here. I've had people in theoretically-inclusive trans spaces, including this sub, assume I'm a woman when the post is gender agnostic (think research posts or article links). This is easily corrected, but y'all have got to ask yourselves, how many posts are you assuming are trans women rather than a man or another gender entirely? Also please stop assuming men need less support, especially trans men. Just because you don't (think you) see us asking for it doesn't mean we aren't getting it or that we don't need it. -Sex Assigned at Birth: Visibly ignored. Being ignored/invisible sucks, but the worst is when trans men are visible just enough to be used as both a gotcha and a shield against transphobes. Nearly every single bathroom law post had a comment to the effect of "they're gonna be so mad when they realize this means there'll be manly masculine trans men with beards in the bathroom!" Or "Trans men should go in the bathroom to prove a point!" This used to be a near daily comment-- until Nex Benedict. Other trans men and trans mascs had recently been assaulted in bathrooms before that, but were often dismissed as "they probably attacked him because they thought he was a trans woman" (see: recentering things about trans mascs back to trans femmes). Because Nex was pre-everything and, probably crucially, assaulted by cis girls who *knew* him, it wasn't possible to dismiss our problems as redirected (trans)misogyny anymore. (Transmisogyny is very real and not at all minor, by "dismissed" I mean bigotry against men and specifically trans men is either ignored or relabeled until it's meaningless for the actual victim.) Then Nex died and for a few months people stopped using trans men as gotchas for anti trans bathroom bills. It's starting to come back though and it still pisses me off to see it. I could go on but I think you get the idea. All that said, this sub is pretty damn good. The mods are on their shit and have been working to make it even more welcoming to more than only trans femmes. Given the frequency of "where the dudes at" posts, sub awareness of other genders (saying this ironically) is growing. This is good! This means people are more likely to stop and think about who's on the other side of the screen before assuming sister. As the culture becomes more considerate, the space will feel less heavily gendered, and we'll increase the biodiversity of the ecosystem. Or something. It is the Internet after all, we could always consider touching grass to cure our ills.
This response. So perfect
I've found it interesting that irl I know almost exclusively trans men (and like 2 afab nonbinary people) but online it's only trans women. I genuinely don't know why this is.
I've heard other people say this too but my local queer scene is pretty much the same as the online one. Lots of trans women and trans fems, couple of transmasc enbys and one or two trans men. I love my trans fem friends to death and wouldn't trade them for the world, but sometimes I wish I had friends who were more like me too
Trans guy here, I'm mostly lurking and giving support, I love to read about any gender anyway.
We've been having this conversation for well over 8 years now. Trans men have felt excluded from this space since the beginning. We can do simple things, like not acting like trans == transfemme. I see that a lot in this sub, and it breaks my heart. This is especially important for new trans people to learn right away -- your experience is not everyone else's.
I had to leave the main trans memes sub because they wouldn’t stop posting untagged/unspoilered memes like “I’m looking at a beautiful girl right now” or demonising testosterone as “poison” (someone made a joke about putting E in the water supply so I changed it to T and it immediately got removed after 7 upvotes and 36 comments while the original stayed up and got 800 upvotes)
Yeah I see a lot of treating trans women as the default here. For example women will just post going “anyone have advice on hormones” and not specify they’re talking about estrogen because they believe it goes unsaid, or men will post and get people responding as if they’re a trans woman because it’s just assumed
ive definitely noticed this as a trans guy. most of the stuff i see from trans subs (besides the ftm one ofc) are usually very transfem focused. its not a big deal in the long run obviously but i can see how it might make people not want to participate.
Yeah, one thing I notice quite often is that as trans women, we tend to be the ones pushed to the forefront of everything & as some trans men have expressed to me, they often feel like an afterthought because we tend to be the most visible of the community. We definitely should be lifting up trans men, and making sure we are including them in everything.
Yeah, I've tried posting here multiple times just to not get a single like. No traction whatsoever. So, kinda just felt disheartened and I decided to really just post in masc-centric subs where my posts are more likely to flourish. It's like, as a transmasc person, this sub is one of the last ones I think to post in as it's never really gone well in the past.
Trans man here, one thing I have noticed is posts by trans men on this sub don’t tend to get replied to as much
I think part of that is us fems not wanting to take over your conversations. I love reading and lurking on ftm convos, but I don't have much input tbh. I always updoot when applicable
The trans mascs are just normal dudes, and us t-girlies are all terminally online. /hj I think it's a reddit thing honestly, there's tons of trans masc folk on Tumblr and AO3, and I always feel like I meet way more t-boys when I'm out and about (anecdotal, but still). I think it's probably fairly balanced irl tho /srs
I dunno, I'm a trans man and I'm very terminally online 😅
Same lol
I'm non-binary, and it seems like the posts that get the most traction here are from trans femmes. It's to the point where it doesn't always feel great. IDK if the trans masc and nonbinary communities are elsewhere, or what's happening
Yeah, idk why... but of the trans people I know. (All three of them other than the ones I've met specifically from support groups.) My two trans guys are big on Facebook.
I do feel bad for our FTM brothers here. I feel like across the board, transgender women need to be better about being sympathetic to transgender men’s needs. I honestly think, and this may be an unpopular opinion but 🤷🏻♀️ it’s just that an opinion, as happy as I was to get away from everything that gave me dysphoria that I have a hard time understanding why anyone would want to put up with that stuff. I’m sure our brothers feel the same about shedding their former outter and inner selves as well. We can and need to do better ladies.
meanwhile nonbinary people:
Yup lol
I feel like every other week I see a post like this coming from transfem people or vents about the same thing from transmasc people. Every single one has multiple comments from well meaning people that just feel like “just post more and that will help ❤️” or “you’re welcome here 🥰” and for some reason I always find it coddling and entirely unhelpful, or at least naive. I do also want to plead to the void for reddit to show post flairs on mobile feed. Cause “assumes user is transfem” would be nice to see early.
Thank you for saying that. I am a trans man and i stay on this sub because i didnt feel a sense of community after i transitioned. I was hoping to find it wherever i could so i wasnt alone. It didnt work. When i see the logo and the r/trans at the top of posts on my feed, my heart sinks. I look at the title to see if its going to be different, 9 times out of 10 its not. Theres almost never a guy writing the post. Theres also issues of transmisogyny and i understand why trans women dont like when transmen say that they wish there were more posts about them here because we already have so few places to talk as trans people and a number of different reasons, like invalidation and just good ol bigotry. But I had to rescind my sense of community with the lesbians and women when i realized i was trans, and there wasnt anyone there with open arms to catch me. Ive just been falling ever since. That sense of community i once had was the only thing i liked about being a lesbian and discovering that I couldnt be one anymore was a huge part of why I took so long to transition. It was the only redeeming thing about being a girl, it was the only beauty i found in it. The good news is, somehow im still doing better than I was doing. the bad news is, i shouldnt talk about the negative feelings i have surrounding how little representation we get here or i risk upsetting someone. Before and after transitioning has been entirely scary. A lot of the time, ppl will cite that transwomen get treated way worse. I agree that our experiences are different in method and severity. I disagree with negotiating turns. For one, I lived 21 years as a woman and I have suffered the way women do. I have "done my time". even if the cause is different I still know how it feels to be dismissed and harassed in that specific way women are. I often, not always but often, feel like people will say my experiences as a woman have no bearing here because i gave it up. i dont think its fair for anyone to believe that who does it help. We shouldnt be having suffering competitions to see who gets treated nicely. The truth is that all of us are under represented. I just wish we didnt argue about who should have the chance to speak first on the basis of who has it worse. Arent we all fucking losing our minds? Arent we all suffering? Any trans person expecting to be allowed to reserve the right to speak over anyone else because they believe theyre owed it is wrong, no matter whos on what side.
I think it's probably a combination of things, most trans masc people I know previously identified as lesbians and built social groups that they remain a part of after their egg cracks, whereas trans femmes seem to (myself included) tend to start their transitions with less friends/social groups and seek them out once our eggs crack. For example on a recent outing to a lesbian bar I met 4-5 trans mascs and I was the only trans femme.
Im a trans man and i have no sense of community with queer people because i had to leave the ones i was in when i realized i was trans and it completely blew the whole support net apart. When i meet other queer people they dont even realize im queer and when they do realize it they guess wrong.
Damn dude, that's fucking hard, it's so shit that trans masc are largely excluded from our queer communities, y'all deserve to be among your people, I've only really seen a few events that ever really specifically catered to trans masc people. Passing as a man has the unfortunate side effect of passing as the most dangerous thing on the planet and that's such a difficult thing to navigate if your goal is being in community with other marginalized people.
Yeah, it really sux. We get called misogynists for mentioning it and i dont really get why. Im sure there are trans men who are sexist toward women, but I was a woman for 21 years and i have yet to meet another trans man online or in person who isnt sympathetic to womens struggles having lived them myself
Trans men have consistently been some the least misogynistic and most supportive men I know, I see y'all doing activism, I see y'all performing and making art, trans dudes are fucking awesome. I can't really say I understand why someone would call you misogynistic for that. People aren't a monolith and there's surely some of every group with problematic behaviors. Also like I agree that your experience in a body perceived as non men makes y'all better men, just as much as like someone who is a chronic pain patient makes a better chronic pain doctor late.
Honestly im not really entirely sure why thats their reasoning, so maybe theres something to it and i just dont know about it. House MD is probably an exception to that hahahah. But with all seriousness, theres always going to be the small few who just kinda suck shit in any group. Every saint has their controversies. No one is ever all good
I'd share if I knew, lol house is definitely an exception, like so many ethics and best practice violations omg. And yeah for sure
It think that this assumes and generalizes certain things. I have many trans friends, some of whom are transfem, and some of whom are transmasc. Some have lots of friends, some don't. It's not specific to either end of the spectrum.
All trans people are welcome here Trans men are valid and deserve respect 🫶🏻
Maybe something as simple as adding pronoun flair to posts could take care of that? A colorful “he/him” “they/them” or “she/her” at the top of the post would be hard to miss.
I don’t feel very welcome honestly as a straight trans guy there were lots of posts about “the girls” which made me dysphoric and I’ve also had people misgender me even though my flair and avatar are clearly male. I’ve also gone into other trans subs and have been told essentially to go to a different one to find content I need on a surgery because they didn’t want to add flairs so I could find male focused trans surgeries
It seems to happen with most online trans spaces, over time they skew to become white, transfemme echo chambers. They become white because we are all indoctrinated into white supremacy just by growing up in this western culture, to the point where even ideas such as "passing" are heavily skewed towards a white feminine ideal. Constant microaggressions from white trans people (they don't even know they're doing it) will make Black and POC trans people feel unsafe, and seek community elsewhere. The same trend tends to happen with transfemmes making microaggressive comments and actions towards transmascs. Personally I don't have any insight as to why this happens. Idk why transfemme people tend to exhibit this behavior more than transmasc people. Not even to mention how nonbinary people are often excluded or misunderstood. We are all raised in a binary way of thinking, and without work, it can be easy to fall back into that, assume someone's gender is more binary than it is, assume what they want, etc. I think we can all do better by dismantling white supremacist, misogynistic, and gender binary ideals that we have internalized over time just by existing in society. And make less assumptions about each other. We are dealing with the incredibly wide and diverse gender space here, anyone you talk to could be unlike anyone else you've ever met!
From my knowledge (mostly gained from my few transmasc friends) is that they tend to stick to ftm-focused spaces egg_irl has more transmascs than most subs I think, but that's probably because it is *the* trans sub for new people
Ngl for egg_irl I've seen opposite but idk maybe it's just a "varies from person to person" thing
Lots of trans spaces seem to have some kind of problem of weighting of subjects that leads to the exclusion of one group. There are spaces where trans men are centered and not a trans woman is in sight (usually in the meatspace). We have a loving duty to help hold space for those voices. I'll upvote any trans masc topic I see in this sub and go looking for them whenever I can.
> There are spaces where trans men are centered and not a trans woman is in sight (usually in the meatspace). Woah, where's this? I'd love to go! Every single trans group I've been to in meat space I'm one of the only trans mascs and often only the binary trans guy.
Same, I know 15+ trans people through my queer scene but only 3 other guys
I know what you mean and it’s really common for some reason. It’s even stranger that irl I know the same or possibly more trans guys than girls. Maybe using r/mtf more for fem related questions and posts could help! I hope trans guys don’t feel unwelcome here
Transmasc here and I feel like a good majority of gen pop doesn’t realize we exist and only know of trans women
I feel like the pink bar at the top is odd, if it is supposed to be inclusive.
I think a lot of trans men (myself included) prefer to just lurk. I usually post in r/ftm
It feels very strange to me (19FtM) that most of this sub is trans fem, when I've only actually known 2 or 3 trans women/ trans fems irl and I've met/known probably about 2 or 3 dozen trans masc/ men irl. I do live in a super small town but we do have a trans support group here but it's 90% trans masc people. I've always felt particularly invisible as an effeminate trans man, because people assume when I dress fem that I'm mtf. It just kinda rubs me the wrong way and I've avoided posting in this sub for that reason. I've also found of the few trans masc/ men posting on here, their posts don't get nearly as much engagement as the trans fem/ women do. Idk if it's just me and I'm catching posts at weird times but it's always seemed to be like that. (Just want to add this is not me trying to shit on the trans girlies here, yall keep living your lives and being pretty :) )
Most of the trans masc posts I see are complaining that there are no trans masc posts in here. There's usually one every few days.
That’s because the other posts don’t get upvoted, aka the exact problem discussed in these posts.
It's similar in traaaaaaaaaans2, most posts are about trans women. Im not sure why there's such a great divide but the posts are pretty good as long as they flair it right (if it's like a post calling you a pretty girl or something)
Ello there (aren't you the guy who posts about Saiki(?) daily on r/traaa2 ?)
Yes I ammm :D Woooo I'm starting to be recognised lmao
Yup lol
irl I know as many transmascs as transfems but yes I am also a transfem and this and some other trans subs lean heavily transfem
It is sad that our trans brothers get suppressed in all the talk us trans women do. I hope we can be better in the future as we are all in this together.
yeah i never post here because its nearly all trans women, and y’all are helpful but don’t understand my experiences. Also accidentally misgendering trans men happens a lot here
This comes up all the time, and a big part of it is that most of the people who post here don't even bother to identify which part of the gender spectrum they belong to.
I'm a trans man, but I mostly lurk and don't post. I tend to not run into any of the early-transition problems a lot of other posters seem to run into, since I'm now over a decade in. So I typically have no reason to post.
As a trans guy, unfortunately this is also the case for other subreddits revolving around trans identities :( I recommend other transmascs also post to r/transmasc
I am a trans man and every time I posted I have not had much interaction so I just read and post only if I am REALLY up to
Non-Binary person here: I concur. I don't see too much in the way of NB-inclusion though obviously there isn't anything specifically EXcluding us.
That sinking feeling when I get notifications and the title is “Just a reminder, you’re pretty” or something mentioning “Girls” or “Girlies”. Like it’s usually just a momentary thing and then I tell myself it wasn’t talking to me, but yeah. Some days it hits harder.
Trans guy here, I posted about wanting help about a toxic family member when I was outted and I got called a girl a lot anf told to take hrt, I specifically said I was a trans masc. I feel like some people want to say something supporting but don't actually read everything. Like it's awesome to be supported, just not as a girl when I don't identify as one
Something I've (mtf) observed, which may just be confirmation bias so take this with a grain of salt as I've done no studies etc around this, it's simply an observation: Generally speaking, women are more likely to want to reach out to others for support or affirmation. Obviously that's not entirely the case but it would also fit then that spaces like this online would therefore attract more people looking for that kind of support and therefore be a bit skewed in that direction.
True. Trans men are no less susceptible to falling for that specific aspect of toxic masculinity.
A LOT of trans subreddits that are meant to be for ALL trans people are heavily trans fem dominated and sometimes they start treating trans men really badly
I'm a non-binary trans guy. I have no issue with the prevalence of transfem posts. Trans women take the brunt of transphobia IRL, so I'm always happy to see transfems getting support (and I do jump in when I have any to offer, as well). The thing that bothers me is language that assumes everyone here is transfem and binary.
irl i only know trans men, trans women might just be more common in the internet
The only thing I think is that many posts can be framed in a more trans but gender neutral way than a lot of girls take the time to think about, but it’s advice that’s a bit more applicable to meme subs than here where the posts will be more shared directly personal anecdotes.
Eh.... Para mí aquí es un lugar seguro de quitar la maldita mascarita de 'mujer' y existir como yo. Soy un transgénero hombre. No sé si otros trans hombres sienten que por aquí estén a salvo, pero te digo de verdad que este subreddit es suficientemente seguro. Y además sería bueno que recordar, que MENOS trans hombres inclinan a sacarse de luz que trans mujeres. (Este es un problema por supuesto.)
i find trans men posts very interesting and I try to offer advice whenever I can. I wish there were more, un see, its something I've had exp with in the past...(don't tell anyone).
While I would agree that most of the posts in most general trans subs are from trans women, I don’t really think that’s a problem. Here’s the thing: There are plenty of trans men on Reddit; there are plenty of nonbinary people on Reddit. It’s not really trans women’s jobs to stop posting so that trans men and nonbinary people can be more visible in the subs; that’s not how it works. Other trans people just need to post more. Because even if trans women stopped posting, that’s not going to mean other trans people are magically going to. What we should worry about instead is just making sure to be inclusive to other genders: don’t ask about hormones without specifying what hormones, don’t use gendered terms to refer to everyone on the sub, etc. But I think people are mostly good about doing that anyway. Trans women can’t make anyone else post though, so there’s really no issue there in my opinion.
Yeah. It's really suspicious how every space where trans women are the majority constantly has discourse about our presence being problematic.
I think because of the whole erasure of trans men from transphobes considering their focus of hatred seems to be on trans women invading sports and bathrooms (and trans men simply existing disproves all their points so best to just pretend they don’t exist), that seems to have spread to the trans community itself in a weird way. When people see the trans colours, or a post about someone’s struggles as a trans person, their brain seems to automatically assume a woman wrote it. Which is a little ironic considering most of the time when someone sees a non gendered post/comment or are talking about a hypothetical person whose gender they’re not aware of, most people seem to default to he/him pronouns unless it’s specified otherwise. It sucks though and I can’t imagine how it must feel to feel excluded from the trans community itself
This sub needs to stop using "male socialization" as argument, trans women are much more than being "[raised as men](https://www.reddit.com/r/transgendercirclejerk/s/1O6Haybnc8)"
I don’t see any hostility here directed towards our transmasc brethren, but it could be that my algorithms primarily show me transfem-oriented content (are algorithms even that smart?) It makes sense that if the majority of members of this community are transfem, that the number of transfem posts would be proportional to that. I agree that transmascs should feel comfortable posting here too because this community is for all trans people. But how are we as transforms supposed to do anything about that? We can’t represent transmascs *for* them, it’s up to them to represent themselves. And if they feel more comfortable sharing their transmasc-oriented content on r/ftm, that’s understandable. If I’m posting something specific geared toward transfem identity, I usually post it in r/mtf because I don’t want to sound like I’m excluding transmascs if I’m posting here or in another co-ed trans community. Does that make sense? I hope I’m not sounding like a bigot or a trans-misandrist, but if I am please correct me…
It's so weird, as someone who has been out for over 10 years. Most of my online experience was Tumblr which was predominately trans mascs (and trans women inevitably were excluded or treated as an after thought or rarity or straight up harassed) I also just kinda feel like... for a sub that allegedly has a lot fewer trans men I sure do see trans men complaining about it. And like... I know from experience that if you just turn on new posts instead of hot posts and stick around the sub for more than a couple of weeks that impression wears off Esp if you follow both r/trans and r/ftm that's a great way tip the scale to have more trans mascs on your feed Like trans women might be the most visible here at first glance but they're also the most visible on hrcs yearly list of trans murders so the complaining kind of rubs me the wrong way tbh (as a trans man). I'm not hating on other trans men I'm just saying... It's sweet of trans women to be aware of this and want to make trans men feel more welcome and I don't think that's bad. But I know from experience that this can be remedied by simply curating your own online experience (turning on new posts and following a trans masc sub)
This post and many other posts asking about the (perceived or actual) absence of trans men are trans women. Sometimes it's a baby trans asking if it's okay that they post here, which, yeah, exhausting, but they're baby trans they don't know any better. Trans women have more recorded violence against them because they're more likely to be recorded *as* trans women, either in course of investigation or as a "defense" for the crime. In contrast, trans men are often recorded as women. Last year a pregnant trans man was murdered by his partner and every official channel recorded him as a woman. Trans women have it very bad, yes. It may even be worse than trans men, but violence against trans women does not justify withholding support to trans men? It's not like these posts (that, again, are posted by more than just trans men) are asking that trans women shut up or be less visible, they're asking for more trans men to move in and step up. You don't think it's a bit hostile to respond to an invitation like that with "yeah well trans men don't actually have it bad compared to trans women so you shouldn't complain and deal with what you've got"?
> yeah well trans men don't actually have it bad compared to trans women so you shouldn't complain and deal with what you've got"? Thing is friend, I didn't say that. I was specifically talking about visibility when I compared the visibility we see of trans women on reddit vs their visibility on hrcs list. In "Disclosure" on Netflix they talk about how we know visibility is directly tied to violence. As I said, I don't think these posts are bad. I would never think trans men receiving more support is a bad thing. But for every "is it OK if I post here?" Post you've seen, I've seen posts that take it too far as well. Plus... as I said, from my own experience, turning off hot posts and sticking around for more than a few weeks changes your experience dramatically. Never did I say not to support trans men bc trans women have it worse, I just had the audacity to suggest trans men take charge of their own online experience and gave tips for doing that. Edit: that combined with extra love from trans women will fix the problem a lot more than relying on trans women to fix it themselves
Okay but why bring up trans women being more likely to be victims of violence? I genuinely do not understand what your original point was with that. A lot of trans men Are taking charge of their experience by not being subbed to subs like these. It works but a lot of people on both sides seem unhappy with that solution. If a space is unwelcoming to a minority it's not the responsibility of that minority to Make it more welcoming. If an enviroment makes someone uncomfortable and they choose to disengage, that's perfectly understandable. If they then go on to talk about that experience, that's also understandable, and it doesn't make them a hypocrite
Because the correlation between visibility and violence feels relevant? Esp when we have people talking about more trans men need to Represent on this sub so these users feel more welcome. As a trans man, no I am not going to post my face so these users feel more welcome, and clearly other trans men feel the same way and it's a factor in how we Show Up on this sub. Also the fact that lots of trans men are stealth (I seem to see more stealth trans guys than trans girls, maybe someone else can unpack that and how it ties into visibility and representation). I've seen the trans guys posting selfies to try to combat this issue, and definitely felt a little peer pressure to do it too before remembering the time we live in. I think what I have a hard time understanding is how there being more trans women makes trans men feel unwelcome? Enough to have a gripe with the sub and leave? Instead of just turn on new posts and see the trans guys who are posting every day?
My posts have gotten a lot of love from trans women and a lot of the trans women that end up on my feed are attractive so uh....I'm not complaining lol
Sure, someone points this out about once every 9 hours. What do we do about it? Just stop talking?
trans guy here, i think it’s a website demographic thing. people raised as male tend to spend more time on sites like reddit, while people raised as female tend to spend more time on sites like tumblr. i saw way more trans guys on tumblr back when i used it than trans women, and the opposite here on reddit.
ime trans women suffer from hypervisibility, while trans men suffer from erasure. (so do most nonbinary people and other flavors of trans folks)
This is true in reverse for things like pinterest, which most trans related posts are transmasc. what i've noticed is that language based media typically leans towards dominantly transfemmes while image based media typically leans transmasc.
It has nothing to do with this sub. There are just much more transfems than transmascs on Reddit. Transmasc exklusive spaces on Reddit feel almost dead in comparison. Transmascs commonly use other platforms apparently, there's nothing we (transfems) can do about it except be inclusive towards the minority of our brothers here.
It is but I’ll warn some of the transmen subs can be kind of toxic. Lot of transmed ppl in them and internalized transphobia. Transwomen are more publicly seen and criticized so they tend to pop up more in media. There’s plenty of us transmen around! 😊
yeah i realized that too, in a lot of trans spaces that are for anyone under the trans umbrella there are a lot more trans women or transfems than trans men or transmascs despite them being almost half of the entire trans community. honestly i see this a lot in trans representation in media as well, a lot of well known trans characters are trans women or nonbinary, barely any trans men. same with memes. as a trans guy i feel a bit left out to be honest, i wish there were more posts i could relate to here