objectification and entitlement as a transmasculine person in the world, a rant™
I’m not trying to get all Negative Nancy And Debby Downer Shit All Over Everything And Ruin A Good Time about what I consider to be a perfectly lovely night out last night at [REDACTED]. I definitely plan to be a regular there. I ultimately feel good there, like “Oh, these are my people! Yay!” Which is a great feeling. Nor do I want to downplay the joy I felt at finally being able to simply show up without a shirt (which all started because I wasn’t sure which one to wear anyway) and not have to worry about keeping my nipples covered with electrical tape while feeling horrendously dysphoric and self-conscious the whole time. Like, I was finally able to be That Guy Who, I Don’t Know, He Just Never Wears A Shirt At The Club And He Dances To Front 242. It was great.
But I noticed two things which make me want to slap the LGBTQ community upside the head. Like, you guys need to fucking cut it out.
I’m about to get crude here and use abrasive language. I make a few references to violence, oral sex, and sexual violence. I use lots of hyperbolic cursing to make my point. If you don’t like it, calmly click the red X in the upper left corner of your browser window…it’s really that simple.
Moving on…
1. Older Cis Lesbians Treating Me Like I’m Honorarily One Of Them
I was taking a break from dancing and this cis lesbian (like, I don’t know that for sure…? but this is just a lucky guess based on her behavior, and if she’s gonna make assumptions about me, I’m damn well gonna do it right back)leans over and asks how old I am. When I laugh and tell her 35 and she says she thought I was maybe 20 and a half, I laugh awkwardly because oh god, here we go, all trans men look 12, right?
She started going on about how she’s 45 and she never would have thought I was 35 and wonderful it is and how I’m kinda like vegan chicken nuggets and oh they played this music at her high school prom (really? they played the Sisters of Mercy at your prom? I should’ve gone to your high school, it would’ve saved me a lot of grief back then!). I don’t understand the comparison but it was probably, in hindsight, the most covert and bizarre display of transphobia that I’ll possibly ever experience. It felt a little chaser-esque to me. The whole time, she was sort of leaning into me and was touching my bare torso.
You know…touching me in that way that cis women do when they assume they can because they assume 1) it’s okay because they’re a woman and 2) I’m basically one of them, right? So what am I getting so worked up about, aside from the fact that this happens to me all the fucking time? The most I will say is that she got my pronouns right, but wow lady, I sure fucking hope so because between the (albeit fake, but who’s counting) bulge in my tight vinyl pants and my obvious lack of boobs, I’m throwing up some prettty strong signals here. So can you not?
Anyway, I have a long history of refusing to let other people ruin a good time for me, so I politely declined her offer to buy me a drink and then went back to the dance floor while I tried not to think of how maddening it is to constantly look so young and to stick out so much amongst the scruffy-faced cis gay men who proudly pranced to Madonna. But it still stuck with me. There was this sense of entitlement there that on the surface, maybe was just another queer being friendly…what’s wrong with that? But beneath it, it’s something I see in the LGBTQ community that needs to stop: the infantilizing of transmasculine people and trans men and the assumption that they have a history in common with cis lesbians. Like yeah, yeah, I get it, we look young…but did it ever occur to you fuckers, god dammit, that maybe that’s not a compliment when we’re trying to pass and be respected as such?
I mean, just to reinforce how far off she was, I have a bachelor’s degree, a mortgage, and TWO 401K accounts (which reminds me, I gotta consolidate that shit). If I had gotten knocked up at the Ministry show I went to in high school, I would have a snot-nosed teenager running around belting out the lyrics to “Jesus Built My Hotrod” because I would have taught my child well. Hell, I remember when analog synths from the 80’s were under $1000 on eBay, for fuck’s sake. I remember dial-up Internet and Geocities websites! Don’t fuck with me! But I digress. (Get off my lawn!)
So. There was that. Which brings me to my second point. Hold onto your butts, people.
2. Cis Gay/Queer Men On Grindr Who Don’t Understand Why I Don’t Want To Just Go Gallavanting Off With You Right Now (how the fuck do you spell “gallavanting” anyway? I’m not fixing it)
Sometimes I sporadically open Grindr even if I’m not in the mood…ya know, just to see who’s gay. Honestly most of the guys on there just seem really boring and like they don’t really have anything in common with me. If you dress like a finance bro and don’t like the same music as me and don’t understand that being an artist is essentially a second job, then no, I don’t want to fuck you or do anything else with you because you’re literally not interesting to me. There, I said it. If we lock eyes in real life and the thirst is real and we must obey our thirst, then maybe it would be different as long as you don’t talk much. But when you’re online, it creates so much tedium because you actually have to interact beyond just mindlessly lunging at each other in a bathroom stall. It’s hard work.
Anyway, what I’m getting at is, sometimes I look anyway, because you never know…and sometimes I message these guys as long as they’re not bombarding me with unsolicited dick pics. And I always get asked to “host” and there’s always this assumption that I’m gonna just run out the door to go meet them immediately and have a dick in my mouth within the hour. Like Jesus, at least let me clean the litter box first and change the sheets, you know? To clarify, the dick would be attached to someone, not by itself. But I digress.
This is a precarious scenario where my history does in fact come into play, because I come from a world where no, I actually couldn’t just invite random men over to my house to fuck them unless I wanted to possibly get stabbed or raped. And the fact that I have to spell that out, is disturbing to me. So I mean, again with the entitlement and the obliviousness about other people’s boundaries and needs. And thus, no, I am not putting myself in a position (ha) where one of you assholes might decide you’re grossed out by my AFAB genitals or where things might just…get…weird. Weird in a way that turns trans people into statistics, if you catch my drift.
If I seem a little angry or something, it’s because the early days of transition as someone who seems doomed to look like a kid for eternity, are shitty enough and I do enough of a job invalidating myself. I don’t need other people doing it for me, especially people who are supposed to be my “community.”
I keep putting that word in quotes because I don’t think it means what we think it means and I honestly think it’s, at this point, a fucking joke, if this is how we are. On a less vitriolic note, I think the best thing we can do is to remember concepts like boundaries and consent, especially in LGBTQ spaces, and especially as these spaces evolve.
In short, we can do better.
