you can believe victims about what they experienced and also not want to torch the lives of the people they've accused without proof. that is a space you can walk in and usually it's not even that hard. I say this as a survivor of domestic violence. "believe victims" doesn't mean get torches and pitchforks any more than "innocent until proven guilty" means victims are lying. please please learn this "believe victims" isn't about the perpetrators it's about the victims

You’re allowed to be excited about the little things. You’re allowed to be goofy. You’re allowed to be dorky about your favorite tv show, to make blanket forts, to enjoy cheesy movies, even just to sleep with stuffed animals. You’re allowed to do any of the things that make life a little more bearable. It’s fine, ok?

guy who's having gauzy idealized wife flashbacks for the whole adventure but it turns out she isn't dead or anything he just really misses her and wants to get home

I think its really beautiful that we as people are able to make really really ugly horrible pictures with our minds and hands. We can create something that is actually really bad. jsnt that nice. thats so. aweosme

also the thing about "we need to focus on the people most vulnerable, and transmascs may be vulnerable but not more than trans women!" is that it doesn't consider transmasc erasure as an active force.

its a take from the perspective that trans men are "vulnerable" is some vague abstract generalized way, not in a way which would behoove anyone to adjust their behavior or take action on their behalf. its the erasure of erasure; the assumption is that trans men probably have enough resources and support anyways, which could not be farther from the truth. some local communities may have more transmasc-focused resources, but many others do not. transmasculine people are left out of vital conversations, are excluded from vital resources, are ignored and forgotten when they are abused and killed.

it treats transmasc erasure as something which is passive in itself and which can be solved passively. which is erasure itself in action. i do not really give a fuck about "who has it worse," it is not about that. it is about the fact that if YOU do not make an ACTIVE EFFORT to advocate for transmascs, to make transmasc suffering and oppression visible and legible, it will not happen. it simply will not happen.

erasure is an active force. we all internalize transmasculine erasure and we can all easily contribute to it; we are expected to contribute to it. trans men&mascs cannot afford the model of "well we only need to raise awareness for the most vulnerable" because our vulnerability is defined by being ignored.

this is why unlearning anti transmasculinity has to start from (un)learning erasure. once you start to see it as an active force/tool of the patriarchy you realize it is the lynchpin that holds so much (especially intercommunity) anti-transmasculinity together. transmaculine absence is so normalized people experience our presence as an intrusion, and people genuinely do not understand why we would ever need to be more visible than we are. it is fucking everywhere.

like idk i remember reading about a trans man in India who, after he came out to his family, was literally locked in a room in their house. just shut up in a basement somewhere, out of sight and out of mind, until he managed to escape (and even then, there's also a trans man in India whose parents sent the police to track him down and kidnap him from a shelter meant specifically for trans people).

or trans men like Sophie Lederer, who was only 19 when he was arrested for "talking silly and claiming to be a boy" in the early 20th century, and the only other thing I know about him is that he spent the rest of his life, over a decade, institutionalized for his transmasculinity. god only fucking knows what was done to him in those years by his wardens.

that is the image of transmasculine erasure. it is boys and men locked in closets and basements and prison cells disguised as hospital rooms for years until they are dead and buried as women. if they even get a headstone at all. it is dead-eyed mothers with three children who have no income or job experience and are married to a cis man ten years older than them who they know would kill them, and possibly their children, if they even mentioned being trans. if you think of transmasc erasure or "invisibility" and imagine a white cis-passing guy working stealth at his office job, congrats! transmasculine erasure is already living like a fungus in your mind. i am trying to make you feel the horror the patriarchy has trained you out of feeling about the state of transmasculine oppression.

Hey, full offense, but if you're a white, passing, able bodied trans man who has enough access to financial and medical resources to transition medically, and you make an effort to talk over trans men who aren't as privileged as you when they say they don't benefit from the patriarchy, you need to pull your head out of your ass long enough to notice that the world doesn't revolve around you.

The US is detransitioning prisoners and just announced that ICE can detain trans people on suspicion of visa fraud. The UK just banned all care for trans kids and is now conducting an "evidence review" into HRT for trans adults and now the biggest DIY HRT web resource just went down.

Trans people need to learn solidarity yesterday, we need to be ready to organise together and set aside anything that we need to in order to get our shit sorted out. Cis people need to take it seriously that the fascists are trying to completely extinguish transess from existence

Solidarity or 'sit down and shut up?'

Crazy thing to say when it was immigrant trans men & masculine queer people perceived female who were the targets of a forced labor program and sexual violence in ICE detention.

And no one in the community seems to be interested in bringing it the fuck up. Even a post which starts off by talking about forced detransitioning under ICE! You'd think this would be the perfect example of this kind of violence in action, but for some reason people don't seem to think these people make good enough victims for the cause. Why is that?

At a time where reproductive rights are also being drained away, where there is very clear targeting of people's ability to control if they are pregnant, is it really so much to ask that we don't start talking about trans men's ability to "financially and socially defend themselves" as if that means jack shit to the brown undocumented trans men being used as slaves and sexually assaulted by federal employees specifically because they are trans men.

"Focus their energies on protecting the most vulnerable" the majority of people I see who talk about reproductive justice forget trans men. The majority of people I see talk about 99% of social issues forget trans men, much less nonbinary people in general. When exactly are we allowed to focus our energies a population that has a 51% lifetime rate of sexual assault across races, and which goes up to 71% for Native trans men? A population that, no matter what study you look at, is paid less than cis women (also see here)?

"Relatively privileged"? Are you fucking kidding me? Do you have any idea how insanely hurtful and straight up misinformative that is to say, in these circumstances?

The callousness this shows towards trans men is just unconscionable, and is highly suggestive of a lack of knowledge about the violence trans men face as well as a lack of openness to questioning ingrained ideas about transmasculine people. I don't mean this as an attack but this is a very clear example of how people internalize transmasculine erasure and repeat it uncritically as fact. We cannot tolerate this rhetoric. I'd like to once again highlight this HRW report, specifically the section “"Butches Get Punched”: Violence Against Masculine-Presenting LBQ+ People” in “This Is Why We Become Activists”:

This kind of attitude gets trans men is exactly what is described by this report as "limiting knowledge production on how presentations of masculinity are themselves policed and violated." It's just not right and its not remotely accurate. It can and does get trans men detransitioned and killed, and then those victims ignored and forgotten by the very people who claim to be acting purely out of a desire to focus on the most affected. The insistence that trans men don't need specific, focused attention and concern is exactly what creates the circumstances for their vulnerability!

If anyone wants to know more I'd recommend starting here and here.