Sick and tired of MRAs telling me I will "never understand what's it like to be a male SA survivor" just because I'm trans.

Yes, I know it's not the same experience!

Yes, I know people would be a lot more inclined to believe me because I was assigned female at birth!

That doesn't mean I don't know what's it like to have my masculinity questioned because of trauma, just like every other male survivor.

When I first came out as trans I was told BY A SELF PROCLAIMED MALE FEMINIST, that I wasn't trans because "that just doesn't happen to guys". I've had TERFS use my trauma to try to invalidate my identity.

The shitty part about being a survivor isn't just about whether or not people will believe you, it's about how people will see you differently. There is an entire video series by this channel called Pop Culture Detective which talks about how the fact that the sexual assault of male characters is treated as a joke in film and tv and how that is a result of toxic masculinity. That 100% applies to trans men as well.

This just goes to show how MRAs don't care about men's issues cause when trans men wanna have a nuanced conversation about how we face men's issues as well, MRAs do everything in their power to make it clear that we don't matter to the conversation.

"terfs like trans men!" "trans men don't have to worry about terfs!"

Oh I'm sorry wasn't there a big thing throughout 2020-2022 where everyone was all like "little girls are mutilating their bodies!", "what happened to our lesbians!?", "scared women are pretending to be men.", and so on? Wasn't there a literal book that talked about trans men, talking about them as if they were innocent girls who were lied to and thus were destroying themselves because of it, saying how we needed to 'save them from the hypnotization!"? Weren't there numerous bloggers/youtubers who made commentary videos in reaction to Elliot Page coming out, and proceeded to rant and rave how we are losing such beautiful women and lesbians to the "transgender agena"? What about the time where it was trending to fakeclaim trans people, whom most of the targets of this were trans men? How about when people called trans men 'dykes' because "well they're not actual men, they're just confused lesbians!"?

Do I need to add more, or do you guys understand?

it’s so funny to me that people used to try to warn me “if you go on t it won’t make you androgynous it’ll just make you look like a man” because 1) i do want to look like a man, that is famously a major part of being a trans man but also 2) t literally has made me androgynous?? like they were wrong on both counts. i got most of the looking-like-a-man changes that i wanted (deep voice, broader body, hair all over my body including my face) and i also give every single cis person in a five mile radius a stroke every time they try to figure out my gender. the assumption that trans men wouldn’t actually want to look like men and the assumption that cis people are good at correctly gendering us once we’re on t are both weird as hell.

warmth.

a comic about not being alone.

--

creative notes:

--

all my other comics

store

can we pleasee please please stop fucking fearmongering and blaming trans men for the predstrogen situation. please god. posts about "trans men teaming up with terfs to get trans women banned!" with zero sources all over my dash. blaming "transandrophobia truthers" for all the transmisogyny. have you all lost your fucking minds?? what the fuck happened to t4t??? what the fuck happened to trans solidarity??? why is "transfem separatism" even a subject worth entertaining????

anyone who says other trans people are the enemy is a fucking fed. jesus christ

It's funny when people claim that transmasc music is just "soft boy sad guitar strumming" or the like. Oh? Is that so? How many transmasc musical artists can you name exactly? Maybe it's actually that there's not a huge variety of our music because cis people don't want to listen to us, and queer people think we're so embarrassing and cringey, so either way it's rare any out transmasc will have a career or fan base at all.

you have to go to work so you can pay for your doctor, who is not taking your insurance right now, and if you say i can't afford the doctor's you are told - get a better job. it is very sad that you are unwell, yes, but maybe you should have thought about that before not having a better job.

(where is the better job? who is giving out these better jobs? you are sick, you are hurting - how the hell are you supposed to be well enough for this better job?)

but you go to the doctor because you had the nerve to be hurt or sick or whatever else. and they tell you that it is because you have anxiety. you try your best. you are a self-advocate. you've done the reading (which sometimes pisses them off worse, honestly). you say it is actually adding to my anxiety, it is effecting my quality of life. so they say that you are fat. they say that all young people have this happen to them, isn't it a medical marvel! they say that you should eat more vegetables. they say that you probably just need to lose a little more weight, and that you are faking it for attention.

(what attention could this doctor possibly give? what validation? that's their fucking job, isn't it?)

there is always a hypochondriac, right. someone always tells you about a hypochondriac. or someone who is unnecessarily aggressive during the worst days of their life. or someone looking "for a quick fix". or some idiot who wasn't educated about how to properly care for themselves who just abandons their treatment. and again, the hypochondriac, the overly-cautious hysteric. these people don't deserve to be treated like humans (right), and since you might be one of these people, you also don't get treated like a human. because those people can really fuck with the system, you now have to pay for it. and besides. you're actually probably faking it.

(more often than not, you find a 2:1 ratio of these stories. for every "hypochondriac", there are 2 people who knew something was wrong, and yet nobody could fucking find it. the story often ends with pointless suffering. the story often ends with and now it's too late, and it's going to kill me.)

you are actually just making excuses. someone else got that procedure or that diagnosis and he's fine, you should be fine too. someone else said they watched a documentary about other inspirational people with your exact same condition, maybe you should be inspirational, too. you're just too morbid. your pain and your experience is probably just not statistically concerning. it is all self-reported anyway, and you're just being a baby.

(once, while sitting down in the middle of making coffee, you had the sudden, horrible thought - i could kill myself to make the pain stop. you had to call your best friend after that. had to pet your dog. had to cry about it in the shower. you won't, but that moment - god, fuck. the pain just goes on and on.)

you know someone who went in for routine surgery and said i still feel everything. they told her to just relax. it took her kicking and screaming before they figured out she wasn't lying - the anesthetic drip hadn't been working. you know someone who went in for severe migraines who was told drink water and lose weight. you know someone who was actively bleeding out and throwing up in the ER and was told you're just having a bad period.

in the ER there are always these little posters saying things like "don't wait! get checked today!" and you think about how often you do wait. how often the days spool out. you once waited a full week before seeing the doctor for what you thought was a sprained wrist. it had actually been broken - they had to rebreak it to set it.

but you go into the doctor. the problem you're having is immediate. the person behind the counter frowns and says we're not taking your insurance. you will be paying for this out-of-pocket.

they send you home with tylenol and a little health packet about weight loss or anxiety or attention deficit. on the front it has your birthday and diagnosis. you think about crying, and the words swim. it might as well say go fuck yourself. it might as well say you're a fucking idiot. it might as well say light your money on fire and lie down in it. and the entire fucking time - the problem persists.

it's okay. it's okay, it's just another thing, you think. it's just another thing i have to learn to live with.

Actually I think we should talk about how incredibly fucked up it is for sapphic women to say shit like "I'm no better than a straight man 😔" when attracted to a woman in a way that isn't 100% pure and wholesome, or act like men's attraction to women is inherently dirty, predatory, or objectifying.

yeah you support trans people but are you normal about trans men who choose to get pregnant

while i get where this comes from and it’s true to an extent, i reeeaaaally don’t like how people try to explain “trans men don’t [necessarily] have male privilege” with things like “some trans men don’t pass”.

like sure that’s the most obvious example (someone who is seen as a woman won’t have the privilege that comes with being seen a man) but you’re still acting like being a passing trans man is just a free opt-in to male privilege which is………kinda the issue.

Shoutout to all my fat transmascs, my long haired transmascs, my short transmascs, and all my transmascs who get misgendered from behind and on the phone.

All my transmascs with "feminine" hobbies, "feminine" gestures, "feminine" ways of talking. My transmascs who don't voice train, who still wear clothes from the women's section.

Every transmasc experience is unique and amazing. You're all so wonderful and handsome and bring something that's just you into this world. Don't stop breaking boundaries and rules, reshape them and force the world to conform to you.

Trans men and women tend to get viewed as either disgusting male freaks or perfect feminine female goddesses based entirely on identity and vibes alone, forcing trans men to either detranstion to talk about the issues faced, or shut up and hate themselves and grovel at the feet of their "betters", and trans women are forced to preform the highest standards of femininity or be shunned and live in fear of being cast out and not being "woman enough" facing the constant need to prove themselves to avoid being seen as interlopers. these things are similar, these problems overlap, and yet people go on to pretend that one is the most victimized victim and the other is the "subjector and oppressor" (Interchangeable) and neither can truly understand the other. these ideas being perpetuated by others within and outside of these groups. It drives me up the wall that there are people pretending this helps anyone, that either benefits from the others oppression in anyway. Personally, from what I've seen a lot of it comes out as like gender insecurity, from the inside groups, which is pretty sad, but also extremely frustrating to be lashed out at for being unwilling to accept this gender essentialist false binary

gay trans men: isn’t it fucked up that so many cis gay men proudly talk about how disgusting they think our bodies are, get violent when they realize they were attracted to one of us, push us out of community spaces because they don’t think we belong there, invalidate the orientation of the cis gay men who enter into relationships with us, accuse us of raping the cis gay men we’ve had sex with, aggressively misgender us and make assumptions about our bodies, act like their personal lack of desire to be with us means we must be fundamentally unattractive and morally reprehensible, and generally treat our existence like a personal attack worthy of a violent response when all we’re trying to do is exist?

those cis gay men & their friends: oh my god, you’re literally trying to force your disgusting female pussy onto gay men! this is conversion therapy! you’re a predator and a rapist and you deserve to die!

gay trans men: …we literally do not care if you have sex with us. nobody said anything about that. a lot of us are t4t, asexual, and/or already in a relationship, and the rest of also don’t want to have sex with you that badly because we would much rather be fucking someone who actually likes us; this has never been about who we personally want to sleep with. we’d just really appreciate it if you could treat us like human beings and not actively try to make the gay community hostile toward our existence. you don’t have to be attracted to us, just don’t be awful to us? and maybe, once you have that part down, ask yourself why you were so quick to assume a subset of queer people are all violent predators?

those people: HOMOPHOBES! EVIL GROSS FETISHIZING RAPIST HOMOPHOBES!

People will reinvent eugenics in a performatively progressive way sooner or later. The idea that people should not be attracted to the disabled because it's fetishizing the power you have over them, the idea that dating someone short is at all comparable to pedophilia, the idea that no one outside of your own race can ever truly understand your experiences and therefore no one outside of your own race could ever truly love you... like, we're not there yet, but every so often I'll see a truly rancid take and think "Now why does that sound familiar?"

(Post edited slightly to better reflect initial intent through clearer language)

I don't know who needs to hear this, but: If you're a man -whether you've been one all your life or just recently started to notice within yourself the need to become one- that's enough.

You don't have to pass a test, there is no quiz, you don't have to check a minimum amount of gender role boxes. No one can tell you HOW to be a man. It doesn't matter how you look or how your body looks, how you talk, how you act, how you behave, what your sexuality is. You don't even have to fit in with the other guys. If being a man feels right for you, you can say "This is me and I'm a man".

The gender police will never knock on your door. Your gender is your own business and no one else's. No one can tell you what a man can or can't do. There is no wrong way to be a man. Be the kind of man you want to be, the kind that sparks joy. You can do it, bro. I believe in you.