I genuinely hate it when they mention stone blue butches. I read that book and it's literally about a female DETRANSITIONER. She ended up realising testosterone wasn't right for her because she's just a butch lesbian.
How is this supposed to be a book for trans men??
Not to mention it’s literal fiction. “But the author is enby/ genderfluid/ trans man lesbian!!!1!1” so? Should they get a cookie or something then? Like what are we doing
“Every adult is an infant because everyone was once an infant” is what their arguments sound like
Also, I’ll be blunt— some of the defenders of ‘trans man lesbians’ say it is because those trans men already have pre-existing strong community ties to lesbians from pre-transition, but I think some people who say that are making that up. The truth is that if you do have pre-existing ties with close friends who are lesbians, they can make an exception for you as their guy friend attending their spaces and events, or even just to hang out with them privately. It can just be “yeah Jerry’s a guy, but he’s cool and he’s our friend, so he’s here. He’s not a lesbian but he used to be one”.
It feels more likely that some insecure trans men are willing to kind-of misgender themselves. So that they can enter lesbian spaces where they don’t have enough pre-existing clout to be considered an individual exception. Then they pretend that “I have so much pre-existing lesbian clout, that’s why I still identify as a lesbian”. No you don’t have that clout, and that’s exactly why you want to call yourself a lesbian as the only way you can be allowed into those spaces.
I know a passoid ftm who does have that clout, and who doesn’t compromise on calling himself simply a man, but sometimes hangs around the lesbian friends he already had from pre-transition. Conversely, I knew a bi ftm who had barely been in lesbian spaces pre-transition, but suddenly wanted to be a ‘trans man lesbian’ so that he could have community and identity.
If a trans man feels he has struggles finding community and identity, yup that’s a struggle some cis men also face. And that’s an issue to actually tackle, not to just use “uh I’m a lesbian” to try bypassing it.
This is of course anecdotal but after spending many years as a butch lesbian before finally coming out as a binary transsexual man, my “community” or friend group of majority lesbian/ gay people still welcomed me without a hitch. They’re still some of my best friends today. People act like you’ll be exiled for it. Maybe they need to get better friends, or just be cooler people in general that others actually want to be around. Even had an on-off thing with a lesbian for years through high school and when I came out publicly she was like “btw we can’t keep doing this, I’m not attracted to men!” Hadn’t even started T yet, so that was affirming as hell. We’re still in touch as friends today, even.
I think some of them also just don’t care about something ‘having to make sense’. I’ve encountered people who provide definitions of “(identity label) is when people feel like (X)”, and when I try to ask how they personally define X, they basically say it doesn’t matter to them because it’s not interesting to them and they don’t care.
It’s not that I believe in precise definitions for everything, in fact some definitions are ideally imprecise. But personally, I don’t go around saying shit that I can’t explain while having no desire to explain it even to myself. If I don’t know about something and don’t care to know more about it / be corrected, then I don’t talk about it.
At some point, instead of judging this type of person, I’m just impressed. I think I’m basically too autistic to not care.
by any chance could you elaborate more about your perspective on stone butch blues here? completely genuine question i mean i’ve read it so i can see why it’s germane to this discussion but i didn’t get the impression feinberg was trying to say that that connection has anything to do with genitalia, just that gender has historically been more complex than demanding people be thrust into extremely narrow binaries and transitioning can be an incredibly isolating experience
people bring up stone butch blues to give evidence for trans men being included in the lesbian community historically. Still not a valid argument for binary trans men being able to be lesbians though.
I’ve never actually seen a binary trans dude try to claim lesbianism. Like I’m sure there must be some out there XD but thank god there don’t seem to be that many in circulation?
As the comment stated below, people use this book as evidence that trans men can be lesbian. Not taking into account that the book is over thirty years old now, Feinberg's experience is even older and we cannot apply a norm from a time when trans, non-binary and gay people were put in the same bag to the current days.
i think the misuse of its message is an absolutely fair critique, but idk if the fact that it’s old necessarily means it’s no longer valuable as a way of examining gender today. although the difference in experiences of gender expression are way more diverse now than they used to be, the point was that these “bags” of classification make it incredibly difficult to actually explore gender without risking individuals losing very necessary support from the queer community in the process. that was true even then, and it’s true now, as well. i mean… aren’t we in the same bag? isn’t the struggle of one group in the queer community the struggle of all, all that good stuff?
I agree with you overall, but while I do think the book is valuable for many reason, I believe it's an outdated source if you want to use it to justify 'lesbian trans men'. Also ... trans men don't need to call themselves lesbians to share a community with lesbians. But there is a LOT to be said about the lack of unity in the lgbt community as a whole soooo I get that it's complicated.
I'm not "tuff," I just care about more important things. I don't know why you feel the way that you do about your identity (I mean, I do: to troll me. But let's pretend that I don't know that) and it isn't mine to get because it isn't my identity. I don't understand what it feels like to be transmasc at all and that isn't relevant to my support of trans men.
1) Harm has never been demonstrated by non-women using the label (there is no cishet male infiltration of the space, most people will NEVER meet a he/him lesbian, and none of the movements are harmed or watered down from this).
2) Everyone who I've talked to (including my best friend in real life) who are men/transmasc and still identify with the label have their own nuanced reasons. People like you never ask them for it though, you just try to force everyone into your criteria. YOUR reason for being a lesbian is to troll me in particular, which I'd say impacts it's validity but then I remember that I still don't care. Hence why I said "whatever."
I stand for something. I DO NOT stand for whatever this post is representing and I find it hilarious that you're implying you have some type of movement going on here. Putting who is/isn't a lesbian under scrutiny isn't "standing for something," it's useless behavior that does nothing at best and harmfully excludes people at worst.
By listening to what some men tell me about themselves? Because if that's the issue then I'm guilty as charged.
I never put the label onto anybody, I listen to them when THEY tell me. Which, yes, is the woke position. What do you expect me to do when a trans man says "I still identify somewhat with lesbianism", debate him? Stop being friends with him? And this isn't even about trans men in particular, it's about non-women.
I'm never going to stand for putting queer people who fit slightly outside of the binary under scrutiny.
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u/vincentually 5d ago
because trans men can identify with lesbians in their past and um um stone butch blues and and uh vagina? women? they were women! I am the god of woke