The way that people talk about trans men genuinely hurts me and sometimes, it's hard to figure out what parts of my self-loathing are fueled by trauma and what bits are fueled by all the bullshit people say about trans people.

I saw a lovely video on twitter today, which was made by a cis gay man who...is either a sex worker in the porn biz or he's a sex educator, not entirely sure... But his video goes into giving advice to gay men on how to do oral on trans men. I didn't actually watch the video because I wasn't in the mood. But ah, fool that I am -- I looked at the replies and QRTs and discovered quickly the reason my self-loathing has been particularly easy to deal with as of late is because I haven't been reading transphobic nonsense on twitter.

It's particularly upsetting to see those suggesting that gay men being interested in trans men either makes them bisexual or that the existence of trans men is... "conversion therapy" -- as if the church would look at a trans man and say "oh well, you're interested in men so it's totally okay, you're not an abomination of any kind!". As if Conservatives don't also hate trans men.

It also deeply upsets and frustrates me to see transphobic gay men reducing men to nothing but their dicks -- that that's what they're attracted to and nothing else. It's not even just that they're misgendering me, it's the reduction of their partners to nothing more than a dick. As if that's the only thing there is to be attracted to in men, as if men are basically just living dildos. And like, maybe this is fucked up to think but god, does that seem homophobic as hell to me. Like yes -- the conservative Christians are right it is just a paraphilia/fetish for dick! There is so much more about men to love but transphobic assholes think the only important bit is the genitals.

And like, honestly, I don't care about these men not wanting to date trans men or fuck trans men. That's fine. I even, generally, think of myself as a "female man" (I have no interest in bottom surgery, aside from possibly metoidioplasty but being that I am a fat man, it's unlikely I'll ever be able to get that done since the chances of me getting to a low enough weight are, ironically, slim.) -- but god, is it so necessary for them to literally constantly insult us and talk about how "not man" we are, just because they're not interested in fucking us? Do they really define what a man is by who they'd fuck? Look -- I am not interested in forcing gay men who are repulsed by "female" anatomy into fucking trans men because like... what good would that do anyone? It would probably be traumatizing for both parties. It's the whole "any 'gay' man who fucks a trans man is actually bisexual" and using "female" as synonymous with woman and male as synonymous with man.

(An aside -- the way my brain functions, it sees gender and sex as genuinely separate and doesn't associate "female" with woman or "male" with man -- they're the descriptive terms for specific reproductive organ set-ups and the secondary sex characteristics generally associated with those things. A woman can be female or male, a man can be male or female.

Of course like, I'd never call a trans woman "male" or a trans man (other than myself) "female" because I know much of society sees those things as exactly the same. And like, I 100% believe sex can be changed since like, because all of the main visible markers of that (secondary sex characteristics, hormone balance, primary sex characteristics) can be changed with medical intervention. But none of those things must be changed for someone to be a man or a woman. Man/woman is personal presentation, internal perception and social role, it has nothing to do with the phyiscal body necessarily.

It's just a weird way my brain works and I fully recognize that it isn't like that for a lot of people. Also I say "generally associated with" because intersex people exist and their bodies do differ from those expected things (also they should 100% not be forced into any medical intervention as infants/children/teens without their consent).

Anyway back to my point I just... Ugh. I feel miserable about all of this. I feel miserable about my body, I feel miserable about my sexuality. I feel broken and fucked up and just... Like crap. I suppose part of the issue is that like, for me, it's really jarring to see gay people describing me and my existence with the same kind of language my mother used to describe gay people -- especially gay men.

This whole thing of like, how they make my existence and my surety that I'm a man and accuse the gay men who aren't biased against trans men, of being rape-y. I just... it's so fucked up. Every time I encounter this I end up having a whole-ass emotional breakdown about it and I don't even know how to avoid it. It's just that being, basically, told that calling myself a gay man is somehow fucking participating in conversion therapy or somehow a form of sexual harassment.

The funniest thing is that like, there's not this glut of trans men saying that gay men must fuck them or else. We literally do not want to fuck transphobes, we do not want to fuck people who have no interest in our bodies (whatever they may be like) but somehow, these people think that when we say we are men whether or not they want to fuck us... They seem to think that means we're trying to force them to fuck us. And it just... I've talked about this before in other places (my twitter) where like, fatphobia and transphobia intersect -- the idea that treating us like humans or like the gender we are somehow has to include finding us as viable sexual partners... which kind of makes me wonder if a lot of people don't...see people they don't want to sleep with as people.So when we say "I'm a person, I deserve basic human decency and treating me like I'm not a human being makes you a bigot" these sorts of people see that as "you have to be interested in fucking me or you're a bigot!" because... Yeah, like I said -- they see humanity as something you grant only to people you're interested in fucking.

That or it's like how certain kids will throw out things like "X person is a PEDOPHILE" against anyone they dislike because they know that the instant they throw out that word, they'll get the emotional upper hand. So bigots accuse trans people and fat people asking to be treated like people as being "rape-y" because well, once you invoke the spectre of a rapist, certain kinds of people just stop thinking and attack.

which disgusts me on a whole other level as a survivor multiple times over.

I really just...I need to learn to avoid these kinds of conversations because it hurts me this much.