the whole “men v non-men” RLY breaks down when you get into bigender/multigender spaces. the most common way i see the terminology used is when defining what lesbian (and to a lesser extent gay) means, like people defining lesbianism as “non-men attracted to non-men”. the issue arrises when someone is both a man AND a woman. calling a bigender lesbian a non-man would be simply inaccurate
to be honest, as a binary trans man, I HATE it when people refer to me as "afab", especially when it's used to group me in with cis women. like, my assigned sex at birth is a thing I'm trying to move past from and forget, and I have much less in common with cis women than I do with cis men. it's like, I was assigned a baby at birth, but I'm not a baby anymore, and it's just overly generalizing. not everyone afab has ovaries, or a uterus, or breasts, or any of the organs that are typically associated with that label. it just seems like a more socially acceptable version of the "what's in your pants" question, or trying to assign me back into "basically a woman". you can live one day without having to assign me back into a false dichotomy for your convenience, thank you.
I completely agree. As a trans man who realized he was trans at a young age (around 10 years old) and subsequently socially transitioned, I was treated as a boy for a large majority of my child/teen-age hood. Or at the very least, I was not treated like your typical "girl." Because I viewed myself as a man, I didn't internalize any negative (or positive) messages aimed towards women. I never got catcalled or sexually harassed. I was never told I needed to be a mother or a wife and I was always regarded as "one of the boys." That's why it always pisses me off when people assume that ALL trans men have the same experiences. That ALL "afab" people experience "female socialization" and that somehow makes us "better men" or that somehow I relate to women. Like, no. I was never a woman and was barely ever even a girl, so how could being a female somehow influence my perception of my gender when everybody in my life has treated me like a boy/man since I was a kid? Even my own parents who don't accept me have basically just given up on misgendering me since they know it's not "just a phase." Sorry for ranting under your comment but sometimes even the trans community can get themselves so twisted over trying to be "inclusive" to the point that it wraps back around to transphobia. I don't give a fuck if I'm "afab," that doesn't make me intrinsically understand womens issues any better than a cis man because I *am* a man! I grew up seeing myself as a boy and now I'm an adult who gets seen as a man. I mean, is it really that complicated? And all of that is to say I'm not even testosterone yet, so I KNOW its not just because of "Medical intervention" or a "social contagion" either
I totally relate to this. It’s like some women think we are still part of their sisterhood or deal with similar issues due to our AGAB, ignoring that this are issues based on how society views us, not our sex.
I am not huge fan of it since most of the time I stumble upon it it's just a different way of saying woman or female. I used it a bit when I first came out but I don't use it anymore nowadays. I don't even want to use it since I don't even need the feel to qualify my asigned gender. I don't need nor want it.
Feel like you pluked the thoughts, feelings, and words right out of my brain. Before i came out my experience was as a woman, not someone afab. Bc i am still someone who was afab but now I'm a man and living a man's experience.
The thing about socialisation is even when other intersections are similar it doesnt necessarily interact with a trans person the same way it does a cis person. I had a friend growing up, we're both afab, nuerodivergent, gender non conforming, and came from roughly the same ethnic, religious and economic background. The major difference is that he's trans and I'm cis. Both of us raged hard against the expectations placed on us due to our sex. As teens i think we both assumed it was the same frustration but when he came out we talked about it at length and it was very apparent that his internal emotional response was actually different yo mine. For me its a rage at being put in a limiting box because of my gender. For him, it was more, rage at being limited to the "girl" gender box in the first place. To be hyper clear, hes not okay with the girl box being limiting either, its just that that was his immediate emotional reaction in the moments. So even with us getting the "same" socialisation, our experience of that was wildly different.
That’s very true. And to take it a step further, I’d even say that various cis people can be affected by their gendered socialization in very different ways.
Another kind of neo-gender binary I see sometimes is tma (transmisogyny affected) and tme (transmisogyny exempt) which I'm gonna be honest as a transfem person who has experienced transmisogyny, I don't love. It feels like it locates transmisogyny in the bodies of its victims rather than the social structures around us, and by treating it as a simple yes/no it doesn't take into account the actual complexity of transmisogyny as a social phenomenon. It's not uncommon for people who are theoretically "tme" to be attacked by those who PERCEIVE them as transfeminine, as intersex people, or as gender non-conforming men. Transmisogyny is inseparable from socially conventions around appearance and behavior that get applied to everyone, yet it seems like half the transfem internet wants to frame it as special club facing special persecution.
(sorry this is really rambly I'm procrastinating but not using my brain too terribly much rn lol) This really resonated with me. I understand that by using that language it does kind of place transmisogyny as a structure as inherent and that some people will be inherently impacted by that. That makes sense to me, I understand how that could be a problem. I personally use it just because I HATE the myth of transmisandry. I understand my oppression as a trans man as transphobia and misogyny, but not transmisogyny. I am not impacted because I am both transgender and a woman, I am impacted because I am percieved as a woman and identify as transgender. I will always face the "aw confused mentally ill woman, bc women are emotional and gullible" type rhetoric, but that is not because I am experincing transmisandry. It's the same misogyny I've always faced, just now it's about a new subject. This rhetoric has nothing to do with my identity as a man and everything to do with the perception that I'm "actually a woman." I do not like when this type of rhetoric is separated as somehow unique in the same way I don't like how "men can't have emotions" is sometimes called misandry rather than misogyny. My experience of transmisogyny will always be a misdirected jab at trans women, transfems, etc. I am not the target, the problem is not rooted in a hatred for my existence. In the same way that a man who paints his nails and gets called a slur doesn't experience homophobia at large, even if some of the prejudice that relates to homophobia does impact him. I suppose some of this has to do with the politics of being able to "relinquish" an identity. The straight man can decide to not paint his nails and experience all the privilege of being seen as a straight man. I, for the time being, can be private about my identity as a man and experience all the privilege of being seen as a cis white woman. My existence is mostly invisible the the oppressor, and while it is not a privilege to have to hide, it is a privilege that I am able to.
i’ve deliberately made it ambiguous what i was assigned at birth the way i present online because that’s the only way i’m happy/comfortable with people perceiving me. ideally, no one would know, people perceiving me as my agab and not an inherently genderless person gives me dysphoria :c i wish this was the case with people irl too, but gender binary is too engrained in our society. at least online i can be 100% me, an autistic genderless cosmic feline robot thing lol
so real, i wish gender just. didn't exist. i don't wanna be dealing with it, don't perceive my gender, like okay if you so desperately need to call me something call me a woman or idk but mostly just leave me alone about it😭
Same. My wife knows. My GP knows. Who else needs to know? I don’t entertain those discussions online or irl. When I was young I was baptised Christian against my will. As soon as I was old enough to realise, I got really angry with my family for taking away my choice on the matter. I feel the same way about being assigned a birth gender. I’d just really rather it had never happened. ❤
i would love a whole video on the socialization conversation! as a trans man, conversations about “female socialization” are often prescribed to me, but in reality so many of these “”universal experiences”” are entirely unrelatable because i socially transitioned at 13 years old. i was a girl, but i’ve never been a woman.
Yeah, definitely. I also find the expectation that I'm supposed to relate to cis women very strange because as far as "socialization" goes I find that I have a lot more in common with trans women than with any cis person. Being forced into the wrong box + being autistic played a much more significant role than what other people saw me as.
This really resonates with me. I transitioned socially at 14 so i was pretty young. The idea of “female socialization “ doesnt fit with me a lot because im autistic. And so as an autistic person, the idea of being “socialized as female” doesnt connect to my gender so much as how i was punished as kid for not being normal enough which led to me masking a lot. I think that term is just kind of iffy because it can mean so many different things.
As a trans man I personally really dislike the term "transmasc". I've had it used at me in ways that seemed like the person wanted to conveniently ignore the "man" part of my identity. Kind of like how some cis people are suddenly a pro at using they/them pronouns when they have just met a trans person who exclusively uses he or she. Also similar to what another commenter said, I transitioned to be seen as a man, not necessarily to be "masculine". I do think it may have some use as an umbrella term for addressing, say, people who transitioned by way of testosterone, which is a group that could include both trans men and also some nonbinary people. Overall though I just think it's frustrating that we keep inventing new words that seem to just reinforce a gender binary.
so true! i dislike being called transmasc bc it feels like a man-lite label. likewise a nonbinary youtuber (i think milo stewart) has talked about disliking it for "similar but opposite" reasons, as it categorizes them into being masculine because of their transition direction, when they don't identify that way
This is so interesting because I use trans masc for the exact reason you dislike it: because it isn’t necessarily associated with the label of “man”. I usually refer to myself as trans masc because while I am definitely transitioning in a more masculine manner, I don’t entirely identify with being a man due to also being somewhat non-binary. So I guess I just happen to fall into the small group of people that actually enjoy the somewhat vague definition of trans masc. That being said, it sucks that people have used the language against you to invalidate your gender :( I love that language is so versatile and nuanced but sometimes it definitely works against us lol
@@kemanii-b3iI feel the same, but personally my favourite thing about using the term is that it recognises that my experience is similar to that of a lot of trans men, even though I am non binary and not a man.
I dont love the term transmasc as a nonbinary lesbian because of the fact that 1) it makes me seem like I AM aligned with men, when I am not a man and don’t wish to be remotely so and 2) while I could physically transition to be more masculine now, I’ve got the voice of a cis man and lacked any defining feminine features until I started birth control. Good chance I could have PCOS too, so… I didn’t start off as all that feminine to begin with. I still use it because it’s the best term I’ve got at hand, but I don’t love it dearly the same way I do the label lesbian.
I think it's weird the way people think "socialization" is a universal experience. It's like people forget that there are other ethnicities and cultures in the world, all with different methods of socialization.
I was once working on a school project related to feminism and I remember making a joke about me being the only guy there, and one of my friends who knows I’m trans told me “it affected me because I’m AFAB” but I don’t think it does really. She wasn’t referring to abortion rights or anything, but about being “socialized as a girl” and still dealing with misogyny or something?, which I totally DO NOT relate to. I literally am a stealth binary trans man that passes and transitioned starting middle school, I literally exist and am viewed as a cis man by the people around me. I explained this to her and I think she understood me, but idk I totally hate this separation of people based on their AGAB, totally missing that everyone has different experiences when it comes how they were socialized and currently live in society. I understand there may be trans men that do deal with the issues mentioned by my friend, but I just hate that she assumed I go through those issues because of what I was assigned at birth.
yeah, I definitely get that. I'm not even that far into my transition, but thinking back on my childhood, I realized that I wasn't really socialized as a girl at all, and that was much to do with having abusive parents that didn't care for much except my grades and my reputation. Of course I have had several quintessential experiences of "girlhood" but I have ALWAYS felt like an outsider in spaces that are meant to have a certain solidarity over girlhood. All this reminds me of a common transphobic talking point that somehow transwomen can't be women because they don't experience the intrinsic experiences of woman hood, but as a trans guy, I have never experienced this either, so by that logic, is my identity valid to them? Of course not, because people like that refuse to believe that women are able to have an identity separate from having a uterus
Lots of pickmes and other self-hating women would say the same thing as you. Just because you’re not aware of how your socialization affected you doesn’t mean it didn’t (hint: hating your body isn’t healthy)
@@maycarmel8416feeling like an outsider in female spaces due to not fitting gender roles is quite literally the definition of female socialization… boys are never pressured to conform to the female gender roles in those spaces because they are not socialized as girls… sounds like you just lack self awareness. Too bad
@@maycarmel8416did you know autistic girls and lesbians, especially butch lesbians also often felt like outsiders in female spaces growing up? That doesn’t mean they weren’t socialized female because by definition boys are not pressured to conform to those spaces.
As a nonbinary lesbian i really thank you for this jdmnxbxhxk all of this stresses me out too, especially with the man/non man binary and the constant categories. I also deeply resonated with your experiences talking about your socialization history too. As a genderfucky autistic person, my socialization history is also all over the place but most importantly, my gender nonconformity and autism was constantly at the forefront of my experiences. I've experienced a mix of different forms of gendered oppression and like the majority of trans women who also have a problem with this too, i as a nonbinary person desperately wish socialization discussions were more inclusive of gender nonconforming experiences. Not only that, but nobody seems to EVER talk about trans kids who already came out as trans and either started transitioning through childhood or at least tried to. I have no idea how nobody ever thinks about that, especially now of all times when trans kids are losing and have already lost their rights to their own childhoods. What are those trans kids going to say about socialization discourse years from now in their adulthood? Would that ever become the forefront in these conversations in our community?
yes to the entire explanation of socialization!! personally i like to refer to myself as “socialized female”, not only because i was put through girlhood, but because i took a “girl” role in my family, and my experience of girlhood is inextricably linked to my experience in my family. socialization is so particular to each individual person and divided it into “female” and “male” does such a disservice to everyone also every time i see “non-men” used i find it so funny because where are they drawing the line?? i feel like whenever people try to divide something as complex as gender into two distinct categories (male and female, transmasc and transfem, men and non-men, on and on) it never works don’t even get me started on bottom and top lmao vanilla queers need an evie lupine crash course
god dude i'm really glad you're talking about language so much. i really feel what you're saying like,, man. i'll use "ftm" in tags or whatever when it's somewhat relevant and i'm sure it'll be similar in medical paperwork but i'm def glad they're not used as much; i think "transmasc" is a term i've been somewhat comfortable with (like i view myself as somewhat "masc" but not necessarily a "man") but to see that binary like attributed to nonbinary people as a whole....god. no. and your point on top/bottom/dom/sub like oh my god. i've been slowly like entering kink spaces after a very long time just watching from afar and the way the terms are misused outside of the community is just.. unfortunate to say the least. needless to say i've been doing a lot of unlearning but like.... yeah
the socialization discussion really hit hard. I would say I was socialized as a brown hispanic girl, and though I've never been a woman that experience is intrinsic to my identity as a nonbinary trans man. That socialization protected me from some of the aspects of toxic masculinity and macho attitudes that are viciously enforced towards men in latine communities, while also contributing to my lack of assertiveness and difficulty speaking up- I learned early on that silence is a better response to conflict especially in situations where I lack power. does anyone else get the ick about the word 'transgender'? I definitely don't have a problem with people using it and it technically does apply to me, but I would NEVER describe myself as transgender unless I was talking to a cis person. I consider myself 'trans'- just trans. it does make me happy to see other people also identify themselves as nonbinary trans men and know that I'm not alone. I sort of view myself as Schrodinger's man- I both am and am not simultaneously. I use the term 'boygirl' to describe myself, but never 'girlboy'. Thank you for your insightful discussions as always- you've got to be my favorite trans youtuber.
My opinion on socialization is that we don't receive a "male" or "female" socialization, we are all socialized to understand the way men and women are supposed to be, but the methods of socialization differ based on what others expect us to be which is itself only based on the way we present to others.
so glad to hear you mention the top and bottom thing. This is something thats bothered me for years and yet i dont often see it being brought up into conversation. Its just another way to categorize people (who they dont even know! gross!) by what they look like/the traits they have. Ngl this perception (especially in regards to fanfiction or fandom related content) really affected the way i viewed my gender and also how people labeled me. yuck
I don't like the terms trans fem and trans masc personally cause the reason I transition is not directly to do with being more feminine but more to do with being seen as a woman not necessary a feminine woman I'd much rather be a masc woman then a man. Honestly I love it the most when I am being seen as a masc woman.
you could still call yourself transmasc tbh. i have seen people say it means trans + masculine rather than trans -> masculine, if that makes sense. not sure if i used the right words. despite this, it is still widely understood to refer to trans men and other tme trans people so i can see why a masculine woman wouldnt want to use that term. terminology is weird.
I have a lot of thoughts on gender and language. I think your thoughts are really informative and relateable. I'm nonbinary and intersex and I've often found that the terms which kind of recreate gender binaries within trans spaces, ftm/mtf, transmasc/transfemme, and afab/amab have often been used in ways I find quite exclusionary, like it's hard to find anywhere to belong when everyone else is divided up. And when they're used to try and draw nonbinary people in to either side, it feels even worse. I also want to talk about the terms afab and amab, and intersex ppl. As far as I know, the terms afab and amab were developed by intersex people, and spread in the trans community. I think how I feel about them depends on how they're used, but I do think that the appropriation was reasonable. Their meaning as originally intended, and their meaning as used by the trans community now is pretty similar, and still technically includes intersex people. But something I only really put together recently, is that they have become so used in trans circles, that I don't normally use them to describe myself, an intersex person, because it would lead to incorrect assumptions about my physiology or *socialisation*. And that kind of sucks. Intersex communities are, in my experience, hard to find, too small, and too often ignored, and so to have lost access to language like that isn't great. I'm not suggesting that people stop using them or anything, I don't think that would help. Just some thoughts.
I'm gender non-conforming, middle-aged, autistic, 'assumed' male at birth. I identify as genderfluid, male/man, trans-fem, femdaddy, twinkdaddy, mommy, etc. depending on circumstance. I also identify, in an odd way, as a 'trans-man', as in man-that-is-trans, and not so much with 'trans-woman', as the latter sounds binary to my ears, even tho I sometimes will identify with just 'woman', if that is the mood I am in.. Just call it as you see it, it's all vibes-based, anyhow!
One set of labels I didn’t hear mentioned in either video was the distinction between people being “transmisogyny affected” and “transmisogyny unaffected.” A friend of mine suggested using the phrase “transmisogyny targeted” instead because it is more accurate to what is being discussed, so I have been opting to use that term instead, but I am still curious what you all think about this distinction. As a transfemme nonbinary person who has very much felt the effects of transmisogyny in my own life I think it can be a somewhat useful label in helping to find and build community with other people who have had similar experiences. But generally speaking, I feel pretty uncomfortable referring to entire groups with a specific label unless it’s something they can opt-in to, especially when the label is specifically grouping people together based on their experiences of oppression.
I would also love to hear Ashton's thoughts on this one! Usually I see these terms around as TME (transmisogyny exempt) and TMA (transmisogyny affected). I think it's important to talk about transmisogyny specifically and how it affects people, particularly trans women, but I usually see it used by trans women talking down to trans men and downplaying their specific experiences of bigotry and oppression. As a trans man, I really beef with being called TME because... I've literally been mistaken for a trans woman before. Transphobes aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, and while I have been affected by transmisogyny much less than my trans sisters, it's still been erroneously directed towards me. It's just not accurate to split trans people into two clearly delineated categories based on assumed experiences of oppression, and it often seems like people are using it to drive a wedge between transmasc and transfem folks instead of building solidarity. It feels like the same issue with how amab/afab are often used, but with extra steps.
On bottom/top, I've even seen a Dutch organisation that is supposed to spread accurate sex ed information get that one wrong. Some friends and I corrected them on that but they refused to fix their mistake, they kept saying that top/bottom can mean dom/sub, even though that is very much not what those words mean ...
For me, transmasculine has never really been a word that I like using for myself, as a trans man whos also kind of nonbinary. I don't know exactly what it is about that label that doesn't sit right with me. I feel like it's because to me, the words masculine and feminine refer more to like gender expression and presentation rather than just identity. Like I consider myself a person who dresses, acts, and looks fairly masculine, but I wouldn't describe my actual gender as masculine, I'd describe myself as a man, yknow? That's just how I interpret those words, I don't know how other people might feel about the words masculine and feminine.
I think I understand what you mean. I feel that masculine and feminine when used on their own usually means masc/fem gender expression, without that being specified, but I think that it's still valid to use it in other ways such as masculine or feminine gender.
This video made me feel a little more sane. I’ve had this friend for a decade and she has a 7-year old child that she raises as a cis girl. My friend and I have talked for many months about having a conversation with her child about me being non-binary and what that means (in a way that’s appropriate for a 7-year old). Then, my friend just randomly dropped the news that the father wasn’t okay with the that. I slept on my feelings, then sent a message gently explaining that I’m trying to avoid assumptions about what that means, but also expressed that I was hurt and confused about where this was coming from. Nothing I said was even directed at my friend, but she came back with a wall of text about how I had no right to lecture her on how to raise a kid because I’m not a parent, how dare I say she isn’t an ally (which I didn’t say), and that her daughter wasn’t anywhere near the age she needed to know about this stuff because she wouldn’t start her cycle for many years (which isn’t true because people with a uterus can start their cycle at 8). I was utterly shocked. I wasn’t even directing anything I said at her. Just generally sharing my feelings about why I think it’s important based on my experience. Despite that, I immediately apologized for the miscommunication and said I won’t say more over text until we can talk over the phone to clear this up. It seems like she thinks she did nothing wrong and I’m the world’s biggest asshole because I challenged her identity as an ally and unintentionally her decisions as a parent. Now, I totally get why that would make someone feel defensive, but I still don’t think it means she was right to play the victim and tell me I had no right to say she isn’t a good ally. I have a lot of issues with what she said, but I didn’t mention any of that. I just apologized and asked when would be a good time to talk. After two days, I reached out to ask if she wants me to gently inquire every so often, or just be silent and let her approach me when she’s ready. Still no response and it’s been a week. It’s crazy that it seems like our friendship might die over this…
If you are looking for reassurance or advice, it might be worth posting this elsewhere (reddit?) but here's my take if you would like it: I think apologizing may have been unhelpful. It isn't at all unreasonable to want to be seen by your friend's child as your true identity, and there is no way around this if you are interacting with the both of them (children are curious). Personally, I feel like her assumption that you were questioning her allyship feels more like a combination of admitting guilt and lashing out. I feel for you about not wanting the friendship to die, but I think it might not be worth saving the friendship if you have to apologize for expressing your feelings and if your friend is unwilling to admit any sort of fault in the matter or even just validate your feelings.
@@mantisbyte My thoughts are pretty much identical to your own. I think I generally try give people quite a bit of grace the chance to come around. But it's been nearly 2 weeks and I haven't heard anything from her. We're both in our 30's, so it's pretty hard to find excuses for her at this point. It just is what it is, I guess :/ Thanks for the validation
@@maxleveladventuresyou did nothing wrong kids can learn about gay and trans people there heads won’t explode. If I knew about being trans earlier I could have saved a lot of struggle for myself, and what if the kid meets trans kids or encounters trans people in public? Just seems very transphobic
Honestly, personally, my “male socialization” is a big part of my identity. Having been raised as a boy is a positive memory for me, I still find a lot of value in some of the lessons my dad taught me on how to navigate masculinity in a healthy way. But like, I don’t know how to say that without it sounding like I’m not “fully trans” or something. Now that I’m more confident in my gender identity, I can acknowledge that masculinity is as important to me as femininity. Idek how much I vibe with “trans-femme,” because both masculinity and femininity are integral to who I am. But none of that makes me “like a man,” you know? I do feel a certain level of camaraderie with men that I probably wouldn’t if I didn’t have that background, but I genuinely don’t think I’m more similar to them than I am to anyone else. I guess what I’m saying is, I wish there was some way to talk about my personal experience of “male socialization” with a less loaded term. If there was (and perhaps there is) I think it would open the doors to a lot of valuable discussion within trans spaces.
Personally, I just refer to my "girlhood" as a shorthand for those types of past experiences because I started to play around with gender socially at 14. That being said, I don't know how helpful that language would be to someone who began experimenting with gender or transitioning in adulthood.
Socialization is a weird one, I feel like most of the time when I hear it used it it's to explain a behaviour or interest that the person themselves considers out of place in their own gender, or to explain the lack of certain traits they feel they should have because of their gender. A trans girl might say "I wasn't socialized female" to preface why she doesn't know how to do her own makeup yet, or she might say "I was socialized male" to explain an interest in videogames... and you can see the problem, there's a lot of assumptions flying around about how other people are brought up and what is and isn't normal behaviour for particular genders. What I'd like to see more of is talk about subcategorization of the binary genders. It'll work just as well as with categorizing trans people because everyone is very different, but I think the comparison of how difficult it is to come up with divisions people agree on would be the point.
I don't necessarily agree because I feel like this could easily be misintrepretation. For me, it's helpful to describe how my childhood expectations translated to how I interacted with my interests and how that has changed with my gender journey. Many people do experience emotions surrounding interests they were expected or encouraged to have and those that they were not and I think it can be a valuable to share that piece of their story.
I also personally like to joke about how certain skills I would like to gain now are not those that I would've developed in childhood because they wouldn't have been emphasized (ex. tying a tie). I think framing is important here because I joke this way because I often don't want to hold myself/be held to cis standards when they weren't built for me.
I think that like many other terms, a lot of these terms are only useful in certain contexts. For example, I find ftm/mtf and transmasc/transfemme useful when discussing transitions, the latter two more so than the former two, because for most people, their transition is going to be either feminizing or masculanizing. I am aware that masculine and feminine are not ideal terms for this, but I think it's the best our language can do as male and female imply a very binary way of transitioning (either "completely" female or "completely" male when a lot of people don't transition to meet that binary in every way). I am also aware that there are probably a few people out there who these terms do not fit because they are intersex and transition in a feminizing *and* masculanizing way, but because transmasc/transfemme and mtf/ftm are only useful when talking about transitions, these terms are helpful for a lot more people than not. These terms help many trans people find advice and a community for their transitions, but outside of this context, these terms shouldn't really be used imo.
You being open with these discussions is super helpful for me because i learn and comprehend things a lot better in video/audio formats. Also i really love that you are open with your femininity and it helps me feel more comfortable and confident in my own expression of my gender. Thanks for the video!!
This topic is something I love talking about because I wish we had more language to discuss the difference between identity and lived experience. I would personally call myself "a nonbinary trans man", "transmasc" and "FTM" (usually when talking to cis people), these are quite simplified but they are useful terms to communicate how I would like to be treated However in many cases my experience aligns much closer with "transfem" people. I could pass as a cis man but I choose to wear makeup, long hair and feminine clothes; people usually assume my pronouns are "he/him" when that's not entirely true; I use makeup techniques invented by trans women to hide my facial hair or other "masculine" elements of my face sometimes; when I go outside I am often clocked as a trans woman, I've been threatened and assaulted by people who assumed I am one When I've been harassed, I feared for my life not in the way a trans man would, but in the way a trans woman would. And a part of me hurts a little bit when that experience is flattened to just "transmasc"
tbh, I think this type of language (specially male/female socialization) is then weaponized against the trans community by transphobic so called "feminists". I'm not causing the trans ppl that use this language of being transphobic, I just thinks they don't think that much before using this terms. I remember this just,,,,, infuriating debate about "do afab non-binary ppl can be gay?" and the ppl that insisted that they can't, always used the argument of female socialization. They always were THOSE type of radfems, color me shocked. I'm just tired of binary and gender conforming people imposing binaries and putting limits to queerness
I feel like there's a flawed assumption among transphobic people that socialization just, like, ends at some point. Like you're 15 or whenever and then it's like "whelp, guess my social environment no longer affects my behavior from this point forward". Like if someone starts their transition at 18, by the time they're 36 pigeonholing them as "socialized male" or "socialized female" is ignoring half of the time they've been alive.
So about the transmasc/transfem thing for nonbinary people: I definitely see where you're coming from, and I agree that it sucks for people to try to push nonbinary people into a binary. I do also think that those terms can be useful. I'm nonbinary, and I also sometimes call myself transmasc, often as a way of generalizing and relating my experiences with other people's. Obviously not every trans person is the same, not every nonbinary person is the same, not every trans man is the same, etc., but I do feel like there is a lot of overlap between my experiences and those of trans men. I guess by calling myself transmasc I'm basically trying to give more context to other trans people and build a community that understands my experiences. I don't think anything I just said made any sense, I'm kinda just rambling
Big same. The only thing I could think to add is that I also somewhat feel that the term trans masc affirms that I am no less trans because I am non binary.
I love discussions about terms ! Words and definitions are my ultimate mean to understand the world, so I love to remember strict definitions, then learn the nuances little by little. I wanna write how I use those words or not (just because I find it fun, it's not particulary relevant) : - ftm isn't a label I identify with, it's useful to communicate with cis people. - I used transmac the same way as ftm, but I identify with it a tiny bit more, maybe because it feels to me more inclusive of non-binary people. - female socialization : I don't identify with this one, I just say "people saw me as a girl". I am claiming "genderweird autistic kid" and "I was socialized as an autistic weirdo" cause it feels so accurate it makes me happy haha - "men and non-men" : the phrase as a whole is my gender (as a demiboy) :) - bottom&top, dom&sub, fem&masc : as a vanilla person who loves definitions, I am proud to say I don't think I messed these ones up. I wanna read your love & liberation zine though !
The socialization I experienced really is varied. By my family, and my mother in particular, I was socialized as a girl, especially as the eldest "daughter". Despite having two older brothers there was a lot of responsibility placed on me regarding house chores and my younger siblings, to the point where I basically raised my little sisters since I was child. At the same time I was often deemed masculine outside of the home, in part due to my presentation as I had no real concept of gender, but also probably since I was a chubby latine kid. I often felt that I wasn't allowed to express femininity aside from special occasions, and that lasted until my late teens when I finally realized I was queer. I've also been intersex since puberty, which I think contributed to how I was viewed, especially by my peers. I now identify as pangender and transneutral, but I feel like a lot of other queer people deem me as transmasc simply because I was assigned female at birth. And while I do feel some connection to masculinity, it's not the traditional masculinity of either of the cultures I grew up with, rather my own much softer interpretation. My gender expression is fluid, but when I'm much more feminine than I've ever been growing up. Also, some intersex people identify as transmascfemme/transfemmasc, and some as afab and transfem or amab and transmasc, and that's genuinely just so cool and just fucks with a lot of binary people's perception of gender and transition
Thank you for this video! It was very good, and I have subscribed :) Something I struggle with a lot when it comes to gender language is finding ways to distinguish between my identity and my external gendered circumstances, and to talk about how those interact. For example, my experiences of gender euphoria are almost entirely based in my identity (nonbinary). My evolving understanding of what gender *is* is a product of the interaction between my external circumstances (how people around me discuss/perform gender) and my own internal experience. But not being able to find welding gloves that fit---while clearly a consequence of gendered assumptions/trends re: who is going to buy welding gloves---has nothing to do with my nonbinary identity at all. It's pure external circumstance. Trans spaces have a wealth of language for discussing identity, which is fantastic! However, it's difficult to find language for discussing external gendered circumstance. Any language that we *do* develop to talk about it gets ruined pretty quickly, probably because external gender circumstance is what a lot of transphobes---or just people who don't think about gender much--- think gender *is*. So if you coin a word to refer to purely circumstantial aspects of being assigned female, for example, a lot of people will think, "Aha! This word refers to the only aspects of femaleness that I think are important!" So the terms just merge with "man" and "woman," basically, and we're back in the binary again. In the past, I've used terms like "AFAB" or "Female-socialized" specifically when talking about external gendered circumstances. I wasn't referring to any specific set of circumstances, because not every AFAB person is going to have the same set of external gendered circumstances. But everyone who lives in a society that has genders is going to have *some* external gendered circumstances, and there are commonalities and patterns in those experiences that are worth noticing. Now I'm looking for new language again, because both the above terms seem to be used to refer to a specific set of experiences that are not necessarily applicable to me, or to many other trans folks. I would love to have some vocabulary meaning "The external gendered circumstances, whatever they may be, that impact a person, independent of their identity." I think having that language, if we could use it correctly, could actually help to decouple externally imposed gender nonsense from personal identity, by moving the focus to the point of actual impact. To go back to my glove example, the problem may be *caused* by a cis-normative, misogynistic cultural context in which [people categorized by that context as women] are under-represented in the trades, but the *impact* is on anyone---cis men included---who happens to have small hands. In short, being impacted by misogyny is not a quintessentially female, or even AFAB, experience. Misogyny targets a loose collection of traits and circumstances, not an identity or even a demographic. Once you notice that, a lot of TERF rhetoric starts to look pretty silly. There's more to say on this, but I think this comment's long enough. I hope youtube sees it as good engagement, at least :) TL:DR I want vocabulary I can use to acknowledge the impact of externally-imposed gender models without misgendering myself or others, basically. (I don't actually care that much about the gloves) (it's not about gloves) (They were just a useful example) Anyway, I'm off to watch your other video. To anyone who actually read this whole comment, know that I am waving to you in a cordial manner across the internet.
Thank you for saying this. The part about socialization made me happy. The idea of being “male socialized” is frequently weaponized against trans women to back up the pervasive transphobic narrative that we are a threat. Thanks Ashton! :)
UA-cam randomly recommended me your video, so sorry for popping in with an essay from a stranger. the two places i've seen "non-man" used are in attempting to delineate a more inclusive exclusive space that in a more black and white gendered framework would be 'women's spaces', and, relatedly but very much distinctly, in definitions for the term 'lesbian'. Both uses are attempts to preserve what people see as a valuable distinction and separation while attempting, messily, to partially acknowledge the way any clear cut division will fail. I've seen it used a lot in the 'bi people can't call themselves lesbians' discussion, trying to create, often for understandable reasons, a term that says "I am not attracted to men" that cannot be misread. But in doing so it tramples on the definition of bi created by the bi community which is 'attraction to two or more genders' which itself holds a kind of discreteness to gender that can be... restrictive, but certainly allows this "non-man" attraction. Part of the problem is that attraction is often not logical. It isn't always based on understanding the unique relationship someone has to gender (though one shouldn't discount the inherent attraction some people have to queerness itself). And as you noted, the line between man and non-man is blurry, as are all other gender categories. Presentation wise, across the bar or whatever, or even after long conversations, there's no clear cut way without specifically asking it to know if the person you're flirting with identifies as a trans man or non-binary, or a butch woman, for example. Even more complicated, its possible that the same internal 'sense' in so far as that exists, could be parsed by two different people with two different experiences or in two different social groups or even time periods as different things. If the exact same person with the exact same sense for themselves and gender would fall on two different sides of this 'non-man' line by geography or time, how can one say they are or aren't attracted to people based on that line? But, in denying that line entirely, are we depriving someone of a needed term for discussing their attraction or community or experience? I think some of the mess is that I think there are a subset of people who want to say "non-cismen" but don't want to be seen to be separating trans men from cis men in any way. I think some of it comes back to the essentialism still, the idea that biologically some people are more dangerous or safer or caring or something else than others. In fact, I was a little surprised you didn't mention that part with "socialization" which in some circles has become the terminology used to... maybe unintentionally mask biological essentialism. Like TERFs use it too. It often goes hand in hand with "male puberty" or something. Which is a shame because I think it is a very useful concept that one should be able to talk about when its applicable. In general that's how I feel about all these terms. The issue is it requires one to be honest with what one really wants, and why, and to say it without hiding. If you want to create a group exclusively for people who experienced "female/male socialization" I think that can be a valid endeavour, for example, to talk about the way such things may have impacted psychological development, or to do a study, or skill gaps that often exist because of gender expectations, or whatever. But if what you actually want is to fill skill gaps, saying like "home economics for guys" is far less targeted than "home economics for people who don't know a needle from a thimble" or something. But if what you REALLY want is to create a group where people feel a specific kind of shared experience or perceive a specific kind of safety from either embarrassment or shame or harassment, you need to be honest with yourself and your prospective attendees on what you think will create that. And there isn't really a way to do that perfectly, probably. Which sends some people further into bioessentialism and TERF stuff. How do you navigate the perception that people feel, that 'cishetmen' are more dangerous than other gendered existences and histories? The flip side, of course, is that such models have always and will continue to promise false safety and solidarity, and silence people whose abusers were not that. This is a long standing issue, even in the most binary, cissexist system of "women's spaces." The presumption in creating them was that they were inherently safe because they lacked men. And if abuse could happen within them, that calls into question the space entirely, or has to be downplayed as a 'rare thing'. But the truth is probably in the middle, for such a multitude of reasons that we must continually chip away at -- a system of gender that creates violence in its enforcement. But is the solution to remove all such spaces? Do we have to deny what people have said such spaces have given them entirely to acknowledge their limits? I say this as someone who has both never felt safe in such spaces and who has found myself about to make a decision to cross streets or pick one interaction over another based on stereotypes I feel deeply uncomfortable with -- and as you pointed out, they are not exclusively male and female. For the same reason the advice to "always trust your gut" is complicated by the prejudices everyone in society interalizes on many axes, the idea of creating these spaces shouldn't be free from similar interrogation. We often, not without reason, will say that in clear cut directional oppression, the oppressed group has reason to desire a space without their oppressor. So this runs into 'gender as a class' analyses. What is 'without their oppressor'. The reality of it is always messy. Sorry for dropping my 2am rant at you. You're hand is far steadier with eyeliner than mine will ever be!
Adding to the conversation on the terms "top" and "bottom" and their use in what you call the "vanilla" part of the lgbt lmao. The conflation or misunderstanding of tops being doms and bottoms being subs could come from thousands of years of Greco-Roman and Abrahamic/Islamic traditions. Those areas of the Mediterranean saw gender differently than a lot of contemporary cultures now. Woman were seen as a degree of man, a defective or lesser man even, while children were immature lesser men. Although slaves and outsiders could be classified as effeminate, basically defective or lesser men, as well. Topping was considered the dominant role of the man, and bottoming as the role of women and "lesser men". As in the Greco-Roman world slaves, in s.xual relations with the man of the household, who are the role of bottom. And teachers "guiding" their students on s.x would top them. (Both of these examples are disgusting situations of lack of consent! Ew) More fun example to illustrate my point are the s.xual nocturnal demons succubus and incubus. The succubus is generally envisioned as fem while the incubus as masc. But the name of a succubus literally means bottoming, "sub" meaning "under" and "cubāre" meaning "to lie" in Latin. And incubus means topping basically in Latin from "incubāre" or "to lie upon". Because these positions were so gendered in the past, the demons became separate genders of the same kind of demon. As women in the Abrahamic and Islamic traditions are to be submissive to men, adding to that sub and bottom conflation. So there is a lot of toxic cultural elements that confuse the understanding of the terms, which can be frustrating as a non binary trans woman. As well as the misunderstanding of consent in general!
I've appreciated having access to phrases like AMAB and AFAB in the context of discussing specific effects of socialization. Like, even tho I identify as nonbinary, I still want to give consideration to how my upbringing and treatment as an AFAB child has impacted who I am today. I did also identify as a girl when I was younger, not having fathomed there were other options that would better suit my gender non-conformity. And that early identification allowed the societal gendered messaging to penetrate my self-conception. So now as an adult, I make conscious adjustments for it; I ask for more than I think I should for income (even tho I found out, it's still below the average...), I push harder for promotions, and I do find it easier to relate to the oppression women face having myself experienced it. But your point about how those experiences might themselves be more nuanced, how AFAB could look different for ppl depending on who they were at that time, how they presented, how they were perceived, and even the culture in which they grew up. That gave me much more to think about.
For me, it is really only a relavemt term when talking abt where you started from socially/puberty wise, ex. you want to discuss the experience of afab ppl on Testosterone. It is NOT appropriate to use as a category that is essentially "different". I have been around a well meaning person who once said something along the lines of "AMAB people are built different" in refrence to some antics that our mutual friends (a trans woman and a cis man) were getting up to. It's statements like that, imo, that can cause harm. Basically don't bring it up unless it's relavent and the other ppl are comfortable with it.
I’ve seen “non-men” be used a lot in spaces that used to be women-only like clubs for women in STEM, etc. I was actually in a band that kind of an all-women jazz band, but we always had trouble navigating exactly what to call it since we had a few nbs in there; I think the most accurate description is just non-men, bc the purpose of that group was to provide a space in an area that is just dominated by men
18:30 i tend to say “people of marginalized and minoritized gendered experiences” or “women and gender minorities” or etc and it’s a bit clunky but i’m wondering for a peer review about that wording? like i’m a bit iffy about the “women and-“ bc that frames everyone else as extensions of women + technically women are minoritized but ppl get confused bc women aren’t a literal minority of the population percent-wise
I was thinking something along the lines of: "people of oppressed and minoritized gendered experiences", but I feel like it should only be for folks who are gender minorities. Women experience oppression based on their gender, but they aren't a minority. I hope I don't sound totally offensive...certainly not my intention. I'm just trying to come up with language that doesn't leave people out.
I would be really interested to see another video like this and how these terms can relate to being autistic and experiencing gender as an autistic person. Especially relating to the being socialized as one binary gender. I feel like my experience being “socialized as female” is very different from most because i am autistic and was so disconnected from gender. Loved this video though and i hope you stay safe!
Real idk I know alot of ppl use ftm but for me personally I feel weirded out when ppl call me that same with afab I get extreme dysphoria from being called female or recognizing that I was born "female"(not really tho cuz my biological sex is kinda silly) and it just gives me dysphoria when ppl call me ftm or afab and like good for ppl who use that but genuinely if someone used that on me I would feel like really upset
I get that. Ftm and mtf suggests that being trans mean you've changed your sex, and ignores that gender is a different thing. I think that afab and amab at least recognises that sex and gender are much more nuanced.
All the ways language gets misused and misunderstood can be so frustrating. I'm a man who, when I was a kid, wanted to grow up to be a woman, always loved femininity and was and still am a staunch feminist. I'm a man who likes dresses and skirts and likes how lovely they look when women wear them. Here's the kicker: I was AFAB, and I haven't taken HRT yet. Most people who first meet me think that I *am* a woman, but I'm not. I'm a man who is non-binary. And to be honest, though I grew up with a lot of positive affirmation around womanhood, I never felt that I was being 'socialised female', and I still don't. I also feel that my gender is non-binary, it is not a lack of gender, I don't like to be assumed to be agender at all. I like the term 'man' but it is almost completely removed from my gender for me. Those sorts of nuances are very difficult to explain to cis people, and sometimes difficult to explain to other trans people, too. I always sympathise with trans women who are told they had a 'male socialisation', there's really no such thing. Everyone gets their own unique experience.
How I refer to myself usually depends on the context of what I’m talking about. I refer to myself as trans nonbinary or just trans when talking about my trans experience but I’ll say I’m AFAB nonbinary or even a woman when I’m talking about female-oriented subjects. My use of binary language to describe myself is really only because of the patriarchy I’m subjected to, not because I relate to it. I’m more comfortable saying I’m a woman than saying I’m femme though (although I’d rather go with neither), not that anything is wrong with using that term since I still tend to use it broadly. Maybe because femme feels like I’m identifying as exclusively feminine or “mostly” feminine which isn’t the case (do cis women even do that?). Woman feels more like I’m referring to a collective perception of me. People will treat me like a “woman” even when I’m gender nonconforming because of gendered traits I have (my biology, voice, given name, etc.) It’s definitely hard to navigate gendered language in a way that is inclusive when the entire concept of gender is designed to exclude and categorize. I’ve even caught myself saying “biological male/female” which is a really insensitive and icky term. Going through a list of gendered terms to pick from kind of just feels like the binary rewording itself to try and come off as “inviting” or “harmless” when it’s still relying on gender stereotypes.
im also a nonbinary trans man and if prompted i would say im transmasc, but it's never the 1st descriptor i go for. it's an umbrella term i fit under, but if im telling someone my personal identity im gonna be more specific. or, for example, in medical contexts, just say im a trans man. 4 me it's the same type of thing as being genderqueer. like yes, i am genderqueer, but it's not my primary identity n it's never how i would describe my identity if i have the option to simply say my full, specific identity.
It's so interesting to me that you say that because I also could be called genderqueer but just don't identify with it for some reason, however I do identify as transmasc, and not a trans man. I just think it's cool how it's so similar but different.
i really hate the way the word non-man is used. personally, i identify as a nonbinary transmasc, and i don't want to be lumped in with "non-men." please stop categorizing me with women, i use the label transMASC for a reason. i've also seen a lot of people define lesbian as a non-man attracted to non-men because they're trying to have a nice concrete definition, but queer identities are much more nuanced than that. and then there's always the question of "well what is a non man?" what really gets under my skin is people (usually cis girl lesbians) deciding "well, a transmasc can be a lesbian because a transmasc is still a non-man, but trans men can't be lesbians because they're men." makes me feel like they view transmasc like "woman-lite" or something. also trans men can be lesbians, and bi lesbians and mspec lesbians exist, none of which fit nicely into the non-man loving non-man definition of lesbian sorry if that was confusing at all, i have a hard time conveying how i feel about things with words
ugh "transmasc is still a non-man"? wtf, cis people grabbed the term "non-man" and just ran off the rails with it! It's giving me a headache! I'm gonna go look at cat videos!
the non-men thing i've heard mostly in lesbian circles and a way to try to include nonbinary lesbians (as in defining lesbian as "a non-man who is attracted solely to non-men"). I think it's certainly made lesbian spaces more inclusive, although i have seen it used to exclude he/him lesbians. ultimately though, im not a lesbian and it's none of my business lol
I think that the way people perceive and use the phrase ‘socialized male’ is an interesting insight into how feminism that lacks nuance and intersectionality makes anything with the word ‘male’ in it into an accusation of privilege. If you are queer in any way, being “socialized male” was at best a mixed bag and at worst a form of oppression.
I think this video raises some important points, especially for binary trans ppl. I’m a trans man, and due to my “binaryness” I was a bit clouded as to the harm of categorizing people by the “type” of transition they had/have (transmasc/femme). It’s true, it really doesn’t make any sense to box people in by those kinds of terms, and they are medically and personally invasive/prescriptive. I feel for all non-binary people who are described in these ways by even their binary trans friends; descriptions that they do not align with. If we all accept gender as a vast and liquid spectrum, is there no place for masculinity or femininity (divorced from the cis-derived prescriptions) in our language, as people who may describe others to others? I also have questions about androgyny, as a label and gender description. It’s always kind of rubbed me the wrong way, as if androgyny was a third gender category for “acceptable” non-binary presentation (as understood by the general population). This makes me wonder what “androgyny” even means, as I’ve seen it be used mainly as a physical/expressional descriptor with just as rigid of standards as stereotypical masc/femme. Is androgyny a biologically derivative term, hitched to the idea of “masculine/feminine” bodies? Maybe only if one is using it in a similar way to “trans masc/femme”. This is what makes me feel dubious about androgyny as a descriptive term, on top of my discomfort with how non binary people are treated in relation to androgyny. I’d be interested in hearing a non-binary perspective on androgyny, and how it’s used in queer spaces for or against non binary people. Apologies if you’ve already talked about androgyny before.
Thank you for diving into this topic. As a nonbinary trans man, I've been struggling with an internal debate about whether I belong in "women's spaces" (often implicitly welcoming of "non-men" whatever the fuck that means). I went to an all-women's college (oops?) 20 years ago, and I love everyone there, and have some shared experiences (giving birth, carrying a heavier share of emotional labor in my relationship, etc), but I've struggled to know when I need to *not* contribute to conversations surrounding misogyny. It feels like I was only ever about 20% the target of misogyny, because I always presented neutral growing up. At the same time, I was never perceived as butch, much less as a boy, so could I really have been exempt from misogyny if I was assumed to be female? And is that the be-all and end-all of obtaining that hall pass to be allowed to enter and be a taking-up-minimal-space member in an all-women's space? Like, I went through a few incidents of street harassment, but I felt like I was a target because I was a quiet, fawning-response, 5'2" scrawny person, not because of being female. So even with that shared experience I feel like a fraud trying to claim "me too", when actually "not quite". Socialization is not just effected by your presentation / disability / race / culture, but also by how you internally interpret all socialization. So if I wasn't interpreting anything as people teaching me how to be female (that would explain why I missed so many memos!) then I can't really re-write history and say that I ever had a female experience.
it really feels like there's so much more discussion & education to be had around the terms of top & bottom. often these terms are used in ways that limit sexual dynamics to a penetration-focused perspective, leaving out the nuances of sexuality beyond that. many of my preferred methods of pleasure, especially with other trans people, are entirely non-penetrative and it leaves me feeling left out or overlooked in conversations that base themselves around top/bottom language
something ive seen more recently is people using transmasculine + transfeminine to just mean "trans + masculine/feminine" regardless of agab (ie afab or amab people can be transfem and amab or afab people can be transmasc if they choose to identify that way), though i definitely agree people used it as "whats ur agab" 2.0 for some time. i also agree for sure it's just one of those things that are inappropriate to apply to others without knowing they identify with it, but i think that also applies to most words for gender regardless (such as man or woman or nonbinary). i personally use the term transmasculine for myself in place of a more complicated explanation of my identity because my comfort level of calling myself a man fluctuates pretty regularly but for me its just "trans" and "masculine" put together. im trans and my gender is typically masculine. theres not much else to it for me, since both things are very central to my identity. i know you said "if you identity with this it's fine" so this isn't me trying to gotcha, i just wanted to provide more context on why i specifically use it to explain the first part. as someone who has been on hrt for years now i dont really see the worth in someone talking in depth about my agab because at this point my experiences align much more closely with a cis man than a cis woman but i do have mixed feelings about being "socialized as [x]" because like you said, i feel like my socialization wasn't really one that matched up with the usual experience of my agab. even when i was in the closet and unaware of what trans or nonbinary even was, people could tell something was "off" and they treated me differently for it. however, that isn't to say *none* of those experiences were in common with other people who are cis either. socialization is a complicated issue regardless and separating it by the gender you were raised as is just ignorant of every other factor of that in the first place. There is no one singular "male/female experience".
this was so interesting! I hadn't even realized that ftm is a term I would never willingly use for myself. I agree that it feels very clinical, and as someone who hasn't medically transitioned in any way I feel like it doesn't describe me or my experience accurately at all. I really enjoy labeling myself as transmasc because it's broad and vague enough to cover my ever-changing perception and experience of my gender and I feel like it accurately describes my transness and transitioning in a way to fit a more masculine-like gender than the one society expects from me. Although it fits for right now, I can easily see than changing in the future as I gain more control over and comfortability in how I present myself. After hearing what you said and reading some comments my perspective has definitely broadend! I think a lot of these issues stem from the fact that we still operate in a world that creates a binary of gender and sex, and creating language that doesn't reflect that is difficult. I find the socialization point super interesting. Lumping almost unimagineably diverse experiences together just on the basis of sex assigned at birth definitely seems very unhelpful. Even having been in gendered sports for my entire childhood, I frequently felt alienated and out of place, separated from everyone else. Quarantine started, and then by the time I went into sophomore year, I had cut my hair and started being occasionally perceived as a boy. I never finished my "girlhood", and have definitely never been socialized as a woman, so equating my socialization to that of a cis woman just seems silly and dismissive.
A thing to add as a very closeted trans woman: the socialization being non binary isn't only other socializations, but also how you interact with it. I have never been able to present as femme as I want, but people treated me somewhere in the middle ground of "sissy" and normal. The way I've received it is also very different than cis men. My friends being nearly only women my whole life also factors into this. At least for my peers I engaged with, it was a different kind of socialization.
I just don’t understand transfem and transmasc (or just fem vs masc in general) in particular. Like the other ones I have seen used well, seen used not so well but atleast I understand the thought process behind its usage. Transfem/masc I’m so confused on for so many reasons some being - how do you define masculine vs feminine like they’re kinda notorious for being so wishy-washy - is it defined by presentation like the clothes you wear, mannerisms or something - is it defined by identity as in your gender? that is considered by you? by society? to be fem or masc - it’s defined by how you body is perceived (like kinda sex but honestly people can’t tell sex they can just assume based on how you look) - is it just AMAB and AFAB 2.0? - why was this created? was it to include non binary people into the binary as in expand the definition we give to binary trans people to include some non binary people with similar experiences? (Also why do I never see any other grouping except these two like I haven’t heard of transneutral until this video might just be a me thing tho) Like these words just doesn’t mean anything to me because I never know what the other person means by it I’ve seen it used by people to describe there identity (which I never want to ask because i know describing gender is fucking hard and I never want to even imply that the way they identity is wrong)(like if I don’t get it that’s fine I’m not gonna potentially hurt this person just to comfort myself) I’ve seen it used as for I think just gender/sexswapping (like fem version of this character I assume is there gender is femmine? (I still don’t know that means but ok)and now physically “femmine” too) And I’ve seen it being used when discussing politics, feminism trans issues ect. as a way to I think do what I typed above ALSO why are some trans people and a lot of cis people try so hard to exclude men when talking about oppression like they will reinvent the same thing over and over women and trans women, women and nonbinary people then girls gays and theys (I would rather be called a slur that be call a “they”) AFAB, those socialised as female, and now non men Like I get it most feminist lit. focuses on cis women but that doesn’t mean that’s the only gendered oppression like it crazy how many can’t include trans men will see transmen are listening to them and yet the best they can do is afab. If you really don’t want cis men included then say that but if on the off chance that cis men could be included why not just not say it at all? I don’t think most of this is done out of malice or anything I think it’s just people copying other people and not thinking about the words they use. It’s a skill issue more than hatred. I really hope moving forward people will just think about the words they want to use and not ones that they think they should. Honesty and fucking up sometimes goes way better the watering down and lightly fucking up imo.
Your point about socialization makes me think that the issue people have more often is not about being raised as "X" but having to figure out "Y" on their own. My SIL has limited skills with fashion and it is more that she was not given the opportunity to play with barbies or talk about other girls' clothes. It is like learning how speak a new language since her influence for clothes was all plain looking guy stuff.
I don't fully mind the word trans masc for myself, but as a fellow non binary trans man, I think what gets me is that I'm not somewhere in between those things. I'm non binary *and* a trans man. And any language that leaves out one of those two is not going to be fully accurate to my experience of gender.
I think the usage of these terms can stop us from getting to the heart of certain issues. For example, I had to do a lot of cooking and cleaning growing up, and I have a friend who did not. Someone might jump the conclusion "well, you were socialized as a girl, and they weren't". I definitely had to learn these tasks at a young age because I would be expected to perform them as a wife, and my friend never had that expectation. But there are also huge factors of socioeconomic differences and neglect. (And on the topic, "socialized as a girl" is strange for me to hear. Because of the things I have endured starting very, very early in life, I feel like I never had a childhood. I was socialized as an *adult.*) Simplifying all this as "you were socialized as a girl and they weren't" stops discussion of other very real issues. I also frequently hear "transmasc/transfem" used in a different way than you've described. I often hear "transmasc" as a way to say "AFAB" without saying "AFAB", and likewise for "transfem" and "AMAB". Much more than "AFAB/AMAB", I understand the purpose with "transmasc/transfem". For example, it can help some in finding resources specific to their transition. However, I want to talk a bit about my own transition. I have had top surgery and been on HRT for several years. I identified as a trans man for many years, and I felt somehow like I was closeting myself further. At the time, I couldn't identify it more than "I feel like testosterone is making me look ugly/like not a human being/like someone I don't want to be". After top surgery, something clicked, and I realized I'm bigender. It wasn't the testosterone that made me feel so disconnected, it was the performance of masculinity itself. Those years feel even more alien to me than when I was "a cis girl". Learning to accept myself as I am, to stop hiding (when it's safe), to embrace femininity, has been a process of such euphoria, a kind I rarely, if ever, experienced in my "hyper-masculine" days. So, to butcher the phrase, I have "transed masc". But I also feel like I've transitioned to femininity. However, in many circles, someone who was "AFAB" identifying as transfem might be taken as appropriating language. I willingly got "masculinizing" surgeries and still take "masculinizing" hormones; I have no need for many transfem resources. I can understand that if I were to identify as transfem, it might be offputting or seem like I'm encroaching on a space that wasn't built for me, and I would respect and honor that. But my experiences don't align with "transmasc", at least mostly. Nowadays, I find a lot of solidarity and community with trans women, and the resources I seek out are often not listed as for "AFABs" or "transmascs". I wonder a lot what this makes me. Long comment, and I don't mean to speak over anyone here or claim that my experiences are universal, I just thought this was another perspective to add. To anyone reading this who got this far, I am wishing you well :)
not gonna lie, when i saw the title i thought this was gonna be bad and antinonbinary due to many of my recent experiences, but knowing your content, i should have known better, ngl. thank you for making this video! the transmasc/transfem one is a big one for me because it often feels like trans people use these terms in a very similar way cis people use man and woman, in a very bioessntialist way, like "if you bind your chest you're transmasc because flat chests are inherently masc" or "if you take oestrogen you're transfem because oestrogen is inherently feminine". it leaves no spaces for other conceptualisations of gender. i've also seen people tie certain experiences to gender similarly to how cis people think only women experience misogyny. despite being neither, i am often seen as transmasc or transfem and discriminated against accordingly, but apparently in order to be allowed to speak on my experiences i have to misgender myself, because that's exactly what this is: misgendering! it's no less bad than calling a trans guy a woman. it's really not a "nitpicky nonbinary people language" issue. it's nonbinary people wanting to exist. these terms and the way they're used are now so deep ingrained in our community that they have created a new binary. it's not an issue of imperfect language, it's an issue of "this is how i see the world and language is how i convey this worldview" and their worldview wants nonbinary people gone. it's way beyond language but antinonbinarity is frequently dismissed as only language. and lots of people get really weird about this too when you point out the misgendering binary language. i have received so much harassment from binary trans people and nonbinary transmascs ans transfems alike for pointing out how this is just a new gender binary, but a lot of binary trans and somehow even nonbinary people really don't want nonbinary people who are fully off the binary to exist or be included. it's like we're too weird and are expected to quietly sit in the corner and just take all the misgendering from our own community. like, cis people already put me into a binary, so why are trans people doing the same thing? tbh, i don't identify as transandrogynous or transneutral either. i'm just trans, nonbinary, maverique. it shouldn't be required for me to be transmasc or transfem or to at least have an equivalent to those terms. it shows in the history of these terms too. you pointed out how they're basically used as more acceptable versions of amab and afab and this is exactly how they started out! people used to be very open about using transmasc to describe afab trans people and transfem to describe amab trans people. they were basically like "i guess nonbinary people exist so we're gonna make terms for those who we deem masc/fem enough to be trans". now people are less open about the terms being used that way but it's still apparent. when i first entered trans communities in 2017, this binary was already well established and it really harmed me as a baby enby. i knew i wasn't a trans guy and the only option that was presented to me was transmasculinity. so i spent a year still feeling wrong and boxed in, forced into the next binary, put into another closet. learning how many options there are was liberating. it sucks how much we have to walk on eggshells when we critique language, especially when it's used as a binary, because we say "this binary is bad" but people always take it as us thinking that people who identify as transmasc or transfem are bad. it's the same logic that cis people use when they say nonbinary people don't want men and women to exist. like no. we just want to exist equally to you all. we want there to be more than 2 valid options. along with binary language there's also some weird trinary thing going on of male/female/none or sometimes male/female/neutral. it's apparent in the "nonbinary version" of transmasc/transfem being transneutral despite many nonbinary people not being neutral. there's also the whole man-aligned/woman-aligned thing and people who are neither are "unaligned". like. i'm still very much aligned with people of certain genders! just not the binary ones. same way people say "gendered language" when they mean "binary language". there are so many beautiful terms that are gendered in nonbinary ways, that are gendered in ways specific to certain nonbinary genders like maverique, or nonbinary people as a whole. enby is a good example. i'm not a man i'm not a woman and what i'm left with shouldn't just be "nothing".
I really enjoyed reading your comment, and it seems like you feel similar to the way I do. It bugs me how much language harms nonbinary people. I call myself a transcendent, nonbinary, altersex, Gendervoid, who is not masc, not femme, not andro. So...where does that leave me? I'm certainly not part of the transmasc ,transfemme, transandro trinary! Side note: I'm glad you mentioned the "trinary". I've been thinking about that for years, but was never able to put it into words like you did. I'm not part of the man-aligned/woman-aligned binary. And "un-aligned" makes me feel un-human.
I've only heard the "non men" distinction be made in lesbian circles (still not super often) as a way to describe how they can be lesbians and be attracted to nonbinary people. I assumed it was one of those terms made to quickly explain yourself to the outgroup. I had no idea it was being used to distinguish who gets gender oppression...? With most language that condenses complicated ideas into one word or a phrase, nuance gets lost almost completely. It's weighing the pros and cons of "quick and easy term" vs "fully explaining my lived experience every time I talk about this subject". It's important to talk about what terms get used, especially because the theme of these seems to be "putting everyone in a softer binary".
I’m auDHD and I don’t have a gender. I describe myself as gender less or nonbinary to other people because I feel like it’s the easiest for other people to understand. I also use afab to describe myself when ever it’s relevant in the conversation. I don’t necessarily identify with my sex, but I’m also not trying to change it to something else either. And because a lot of my trauma comes from the fact that other people are viewing me as a female, therefore abuse me in the ways that are mostly directed at females, I identify with certain experiences that female people have. I also am very factual and I don’t like when people ignore the fact that my sex is currently female, even if I don’t have a gender. It feels to me like when I talk about being fat and people try to swear to me I’m not fat and say to not call myself that… ummm, factually, I am fat. And it’s not a bad thing to be fat, so I will speak about it in factual terms. It’s not an identity thing for me; just like female isn’t about identity for me; it’s about speaking factually and referencing the experiences had because of those facts.
I also describe myself as a nonbinary trans man instead of transmasculine. I generally attribute it to the language being commonly used when I entered the community, but your explanation of your identity makes sense as well!
Yeah I feel I was socialized as a queer or outcasted fem boy. And since an early age everyone knew I wasnt a guy and was left out by both boys and girls. My parents constantly tried to make me more masculine and I hated it. I seen myself as detached or not apart of gender ans more and more apathetic to it. I identified as "not a boy or a girl" before i knew a non binary person even existed. Many guys i met growing up would say things like "well you are pretty much a girl". Idk how gendee socialization by any means could be considered binary for my case and it makes me feel weird that someone would assume it. My whole family figured being gay and trans were rhe same thing and whenni came out as gay litterally everyone was like "I KNEW IT! You always played girl characters and u were so fem and blablahblah". Then to top it off withbeing ND and walla I was basically just socialzed as an androgynous queer who was percieved and treated differently deoending who you asked
never heard transmasc and transfem used that way? they are so uh fluid that I related to both at different points in time and it's surprising to see them in this context
I also find that the constant tone policing and censoring really of certain queer spaces makes even harder for me to make sense of my socialition. So i perfectly agree with you when you say that i am only representing myself when i am using certain words/terminology that some other people find weird/degrading or even trasphobic. Like I use femboy a lot to refer to myself pretransition but a lot of transgender girls find that offensive altho im specifically talking about how i was never socialized as a male. I was conventionally feminine presenting with long hair makeup girly dresses and i was even assigned a room of my own to change during P.I. All the people that say that thats your average male experience dont have a leg to stand on.
The thought that 'male/female (or any) socialisation' should somehow indicate all of someone's socialisation (rather than just the particular part in which it applies for the topic at hand) is absurd to me. And yet I don't need to think long to see and agree that that is absolute how it is used way too often. :c
I personally don’t like transmasc. I don’t really see myself as transitioning myself into a more masculine presentation. I transitioned to live as a man. If we have to mention I’m trans, I would most prefer to be called a trans man. I don’t really identify as “masc” and I see transmasc really associated with nonbinary people, so it also doesn’t feel like something I can claim or a group I’m even part of. Transmasc just seems like an alternate to AFAB.
I personally use both FTX and transmasc(uline) to talk about myself sometimes. FtX I find most useful in cases of "before-after" comparisons, which are really "before-now" comparisons as there isn't really an after. Like if sharing pictures, or voice samples, or for inspiring people or something, it can be relevant what your journey looked like and what your goals have been. "FtX" isn't as helpful of a description than "I was assigned female and I'm nonbinary, my biggest dysphoria has always been my chest but I had voice dysphoria too, my goals are/have been to have a higher waist-to-hip ratio and a flat-to-small chest. I don't mind body hair or baldness but the idea of facial hair is dysphoric for me" or something, but it's an easier keyword to search for people who may be interested in finding someone they can relate to. Transmasc, for me, means transitioning or having transitioned in a "masculine direction". This doesn't work for everyone because gender isn't a spectrum but a weird 4-D non-euclidian space, but for some people it's an umbrella term that can work.
my alternative to ftm is "before & after". It leaves out all the info that I don't want to get into: what gender I was assigned, what I'm dysphoric about, what changes I've made to my body, and what changes I plan to make.
Language is super important because it shapes our ideas. I personally find the current language around Gender Roles to be reductive and most people don’t know the difference between gender identity and expression. Not to mention us using male and female terms for things that aren’t sex only continues the general confusion of sex and gender.
one that i haven't seen brought up yet (though i didn't read that many comments) is transsexual. i personally use the term to describe myself, and one time i told a trans friend that i think the term transsexual is really cool and it said "yeah, it's a shame that it's used as a dogwhistle". i found this really interesting because the spaces i had recently entered into were for the most part very inclusive and not transmed at all, but i have certainly seen some people use "transsexual" to exclude non-binary trans people or trans people who don't experience dysphoria and/or don't transition. i think transsexual is cool because it's saying "hey, maybe sex isn't as rigid and binary as you thought", and there is just something so beautiful about changing some supposedly immutable part of yourself. i mean, i'm on HRT because i want to be for many reasons, but it also is very gratifying to have a personal little "fuck you" to people who talk about sex as a rigid, unchangeable binary. but of course i do recognize the ways that "transsexual" can be used to exclude many trans people and form a new category of "real transsexuals" apart from that, i definitely learned a few things from this and the afab/amab video. i hadn't really thought about men/non-men before, so that was really interesting to hear discussed
I'm a nonbinary lesbian who uses she/they pronouns. The language thing that I find really annoying is when people assume that I'm comfortable with identifying as trans. Obviously there's plenty of nonbinary lesbians who do identify as trans and that's super valid and cool but I don't use it at a label or claim it as an identity and I hate having to awkwardly correct people or explain the nuances of my gender. Also this is completely unrelated to this vid but thanks so much for including the document of sources under your disbaility justice video. I used it as a jumping off point for researching a essay I wrote for uni on chronic illness construction and psychotherapy and I found it so helpful!
The "non-men" phrase seems like a bit of a distortion (whether accidentally, purposefully for irony, or purposefully with bad intent) of the concept of "feminized people" (I can't remember who came up with it, im going to figure it out and come back later)- which is basically the same idea but better worded- it (roughly, again ill fix this later) means any population who is "feminized" to any degree (in that moment) under the view of patriarchy, whether because of their biology, presentation, or sexuality, in some cases race, or even what their job is (like nurses). It's focusing more on what characteristics patriarchy targets (which is what is meant by "feminine" in this case) rather than the identity of the people(s) being talked about. okay um if someone knows who came up with this that'd be really helpful, so far i can't find where i first saw it
Spent a decade as genderfluid before deciding transfemme was a better label for my experience. I really like the term transfemme, it describes my existance a lot better than transwoman I feel, since I'm coming from such a queer background. I'm going from presenting mostly masculine to presenting mostly feminine. But I don't think I would ever use an umbrella for people. Maybe "trans" or "queer" in certain situations, but I will always default to the chosen identity of the person.
I really relate to this! I definitely understand why the verbiage would make some people uncomfortable, but in my case at least it feels like a good way to summarize my identity without going into the nuances of how I feel about my gender.
"male socialization" is definitely something I use to describe growing up and also it was something deeply alienating for being queer, NB and neurodivergent. I find it useful describing my own experience in occasion, especially when talking queer men, but I try not to impose it on anyone unless I'm having a conversation around the specific topic. Given that though, 500% agree on how people tend to use the term. I find it that uh.. Liberals (derogatory) make this mistake more often, something they struggle with alongside using intersectionality correctly.
It's so refreshing to see the punk style still showing up in culture. I got into punk starting in 1977 right when most gay guys loved disco. I had to be different. Androgeny has always been prevalent in punk rock.
ive always understood (and been taught) sozialization different from your understanding. less of a socialized while being x/y/z, more of a socialized to be x/y/z or socialized in the light of bein presumed and pushed to be x/y/z. i think thats an important diffence
Once again I love all of this! Also in regards to AGAB language, not only do I hate it, I feel I should actively rebel against it tbh. I’m assigning myself female right now and applying it retroactively, eat my ass transmisogynists and bioessentialists, I’m an afab trans woman now.
tbh recently i have started using afab as a par of describing my own gender, but can see where it would hurt others. i use it bc my gender is complicated as someone who is intersex and is fine with that part of me but did go through some parts of transition.i also am legally male via paperwork, went on t, got top surgery, and still identify as lesbian bc that fits me as a label too. gender and sexuality are such fluid things and all vastly different experiences per person and i think we do need to rememebr we should only use certain thigns for us and not put it on others.
I’m just getting tired of labels and language as a whole. People keep reinventing the binary lol. Recently I’ve been thinking of identifying as a fairy- like how feminine gay men have historically been called. I’m a nonbinary lesbian but I relate to it because of the feminine gender fuckery of the word and also I like fairies. I hadn’t thought about the male female socialization thing but now that you mention it, yeah I wasn’t really socialized as a girl. I took a diversity studies class in high school last year and when we got to discussing women I remember feeling very detached from it because I really am not a woman. But I also wasn’t a man so it was a pretty interesting experience. The teacher was asking the girls in the class if they’ve ever been catcalled or experienced other forms of discrimination women often experience and I realized I hadn’t really faced any of that like a lot of my classmates had. My parents are leftists and my mom is kind of gender nonconforming herself and they raised my sibling and I in a pretty gender neutral way. It’s very interesting!
OMG your story is kinda similar to mine!! I'm also someone born to a leftist parent, I don't particularly relate to being socialized as either gender, and I've barely, if ever, had experiences that are regarded as universal to growing up as a female, such as the cat calling, or being told I couldn't do or be a certain thing because of my gender. Yet I always felt self-conscious about opening up about that last part because I don't wanna make it seem like I'm throwing a pity party for not experiencing misogyny? But now that I read about just one person that can relate to that, I realize that this is no pity party, this is just one way in which people can grow up!! And we deserve a space in the conversation too. ^^
As a trans nonbinary person, I love the term “trans femme” used for me! Interesting, I never would have thought that people don’t like it. (unless you’re nonbinary. People who want to clump nonbinary people as trans masc/trans femme have issues)
Ummm there are tons of enbies who are NOT agender and use man and woman and yes especially trans masc and femme if they are enby but not a they/them agender person. There is NO clear distinction between binary and nonbinary identities. You can’t make a new binary between the two and people who do are wrong and only diving us up more
For me personally, I really like calling myself transfem. Man/Woman feels a bit too much like constructed categories that I kind of want to reject as a non-binary person. masculine and feminine make more sense as a fluid spectrum of presentation or energy. I’m not a trans woman, because I don’t feel like I fit into the category of man or woman, but in terms of how I feel and want to be perceived I lean more towards the side of femininity. It’s definitely a very personal thing though and people shouldn’t assume that every non-binary person leans more towards one. Really appreciated what you said about socialisation! Loving these videos 😊
Kind of related thing that l've been thinking about: A while age I commented on a post about physical and social transition, talking about how I've always "envied women and afabs who are naturally more hairy and embrace it" and also adding that I don't like the word afab but don't know what else to use here. Someone suggested just using women and fems because the problem people have with body hair + femininity has little to do with biology. Several weeks later, I'm still thinking about this because it doesnt sit right with me to call anyone whose body hair would be frowned upon a woman or feminine. I say this as someone who is definitely percieved as somewhat feminine, but I don't feel like I myself am feminine. Like, if it were up to me, people would look at my gender expression and see my genderfuckery instead of adding in my secondary sex characteristics and seeing "weird girl". I'm not part of the category of people that I'm taking about in the beginning, but if I was hairier, I would be, and I wouldn't like to have femininity assigned to me, just because people see me that way. This is getting kinda circular at this point but the point of being trans is that I don't like others assigning femininity or femaleness to me, so I don't like the idea of people doing exactly that when discussing experiences like mine. And I still don't know what to call the group of people I'm referring to 🤷 People whose body hair would be frowned upon because of their percieved gender or sex? Idk man
Super interesting discussions!! These are my thoughts (as a binary trans woman): -I'm not a fan of mtf, even if other trans people call me it. 'Trans woman' is just an easier descriptive. -I used to identify as non binary/trans fem but I've moved away from it as I am now binary. I can still understand people who use it but again, tread with caution, try not to put people in boxes etc. -I don't like the term 'male socialisation' at all. I think it can be useful as for me, there were definitely behaviours and attitudes that I was taught from growing up being perceived as a boy but I think that 'female/male socialisation' ends up being used by transphobes to negate trans existence a lot of the time. -"men and non-men", I see this used in some lesbian spaces of people in people talking about being attracted to non-men and being nmlnm, I am not a lesbian but I am queer and am careful to use this terminology (I don't personally use it, to me it comes across as a touch chronically online). -"top/bottom" I really don't use this. I find it's actually a huge thing talked about amongst straight cis people as well but I'm cautious to assume someones sexual preferences based on gender presentation because the two have quite literally no relation!!
It was interesting seeing Ashton talk about transmasc and transfem cause I've just never thought about it that way. Since I first heard of transmasc I just felt attracted to it, I'm nonbinary but transmasc is like I'm saying I'm 'masc' even though I am not masculine, but lean towards to somewhat manhood in my gender spectrum but I'm still not really man. It feels pretty close to the 'nonbinary trans man' except I don't rlly feel confortable calling myself a man
I live for the chuckle that happens when you describe your opinion of discussing language as value neutral, I laughed myself xP Side note: discussing language is fun as shit because it's wildly subjective and ever changing so no shame in wanting to talk about it!!! It doesn't qualify as a special interest for me, but shit yea it's fun to talk about and explore the impact language and sound has on our perspective and subjective experiences Side side note note: socialization-wise agree again xD I was incompetent enough at learning and using social cues as a child that I also was just an autistic weirdo floundering to figure out what the hell was supposed to be happening Also I'm sorry, I'm really bad at listening to things fully and not losing my thoughts so edits come as I continue and process real time with the video It's good to see your videos because you express a lot of the things I try to explain my feelings about to others, so thank you ^_^ validating af
I would like to talk a bit about my rerlationship with the label queer. First I need to say that I am not from english speaking country and I heard it only few years back. I also stumbled upon the word in positive use and in academia. Mostly by people who reclaimed it and proudly used it for themselves. I never had experience of that labes used against me in negative way. And I don't see it often used as such. But that doesn't apply to everyone. Not evceryone was lucky as me to it not being used against them and I recognise it. That's why I use it for myself and fellow people who also use it and won't force it upon others. I won't be forcing any labels onto others.
"I am once again here to discuss being a transexual" me constantly
read that in bernie sander's voice
@@raydgreenwald7788that honestly makes the statement even better
me when i sit down with my friends because i have Opinions and Things To Talk About
so real for that.
You wouldn't think "don't assume the terminology people are comfortable with" would be a hot take, but I guess not.
the whole “men v non-men” RLY breaks down when you get into bigender/multigender spaces. the most common way i see the terminology used is when defining what lesbian (and to a lesser extent gay) means, like people defining lesbianism as “non-men attracted to non-men”. the issue arrises when someone is both a man AND a woman. calling a bigender lesbian a non-man would be simply inaccurate
non-man is not a term I'm gonna take on board.
Yeah, as a nonbinary man, I don't use that term because it feels very exclusionary, and I also feel like it could lead to more sexism
to be honest, as a binary trans man, I HATE it when people refer to me as "afab", especially when it's used to group me in with cis women. like, my assigned sex at birth is a thing I'm trying to move past from and forget, and I have much less in common with cis women than I do with cis men. it's like, I was assigned a baby at birth, but I'm not a baby anymore, and it's just overly generalizing. not everyone afab has ovaries, or a uterus, or breasts, or any of the organs that are typically associated with that label. it just seems like a more socially acceptable version of the "what's in your pants" question, or trying to assign me back into "basically a woman". you can live one day without having to assign me back into a false dichotomy for your convenience, thank you.
Real asf
I completely agree. As a trans man who realized he was trans at a young age (around 10 years old) and subsequently socially transitioned, I was treated as a boy for a large majority of my child/teen-age hood. Or at the very least, I was not treated like your typical "girl."
Because I viewed myself as a man, I didn't internalize any negative (or positive) messages aimed towards women. I never got catcalled or sexually harassed. I was never told I needed to be a mother or a wife and I was always regarded as "one of the boys." That's why it always pisses me off when people assume that ALL trans men have the same experiences. That ALL "afab" people experience "female socialization" and that somehow makes us "better men" or that somehow I relate to women. Like, no. I was never a woman and was barely ever even a girl, so how could being a female somehow influence my perception of my gender when everybody in my life has treated me like a boy/man since I was a kid? Even my own parents who don't accept me have basically just given up on misgendering me since they know it's not "just a phase."
Sorry for ranting under your comment but sometimes even the trans community can get themselves so twisted over trying to be "inclusive" to the point that it wraps back around to transphobia. I don't give a fuck if I'm "afab," that doesn't make me intrinsically understand womens issues any better than a cis man because I *am* a man! I grew up seeing myself as a boy and now I'm an adult who gets seen as a man. I mean, is it really that complicated? And all of that is to say I'm not even testosterone yet, so I KNOW its not just because of "Medical intervention" or a "social contagion" either
I totally relate to this. It’s like some women think we are still part of their sisterhood or deal with similar issues due to our AGAB, ignoring that this are issues based on how society views us, not our sex.
I am not huge fan of it since most of the time I stumble upon it it's just a different way of saying woman or female. I used it a bit when I first came out but I don't use it anymore nowadays. I don't even want to use it since I don't even need the feel to qualify my asigned gender. I don't need nor want it.
Feel like you pluked the thoughts, feelings, and words right out of my brain.
Before i came out my experience was as a woman, not someone afab. Bc i am still someone who was afab but now I'm a man and living a man's experience.
The thing about socialisation is even when other intersections are similar it doesnt necessarily interact with a trans person the same way it does a cis person.
I had a friend growing up, we're both afab, nuerodivergent, gender non conforming, and came from roughly the same ethnic, religious and economic background. The major difference is that he's trans and I'm cis. Both of us raged hard against the expectations placed on us due to our sex. As teens i think we both assumed it was the same frustration but when he came out we talked about it at length and it was very apparent that his internal emotional response was actually different yo mine. For me its a rage at being put in a limiting box because of my gender. For him, it was more, rage at being limited to the "girl" gender box in the first place.
To be hyper clear, hes not okay with the girl box being limiting either, its just that that was his immediate emotional reaction in the moments.
So even with us getting the "same" socialisation, our experience of that was wildly different.
That’s very true. And to take it a step further, I’d even say that various cis people can be affected by their gendered socialization in very different ways.
"Socialized as an autistic weirdo" saaammeee
Another kind of neo-gender binary I see sometimes is tma (transmisogyny affected) and tme (transmisogyny exempt) which I'm gonna be honest as a transfem person who has experienced transmisogyny, I don't love. It feels like it locates transmisogyny in the bodies of its victims rather than the social structures around us, and by treating it as a simple yes/no it doesn't take into account the actual complexity of transmisogyny as a social phenomenon. It's not uncommon for people who are theoretically "tme" to be attacked by those who PERCEIVE them as transfeminine, as intersex people, or as gender non-conforming men. Transmisogyny is inseparable from socially conventions around appearance and behavior that get applied to everyone, yet it seems like half the transfem internet wants to frame it as special club facing special persecution.
(sorry this is really rambly I'm procrastinating but not using my brain too terribly much rn lol)
This really resonated with me. I understand that by using that language it does kind of place transmisogyny as a structure as inherent and that some people will be inherently impacted by that. That makes sense to me, I understand how that could be a problem.
I personally use it just because I HATE the myth of transmisandry. I understand my oppression as a trans man as transphobia and misogyny, but not transmisogyny. I am not impacted because I am both transgender and a woman, I am impacted because I am percieved as a woman and identify as transgender. I will always face the "aw confused mentally ill woman, bc women are emotional and gullible" type rhetoric, but that is not because I am experincing transmisandry. It's the same misogyny I've always faced, just now it's about a new subject. This rhetoric has nothing to do with my identity as a man and everything to do with the perception that I'm "actually a woman." I do not like when this type of rhetoric is separated as somehow unique in the same way I don't like how "men can't have emotions" is sometimes called misandry rather than misogyny.
My experience of transmisogyny will always be a misdirected jab at trans women, transfems, etc. I am not the target, the problem is not rooted in a hatred for my existence. In the same way that a man who paints his nails and gets called a slur doesn't experience homophobia at large, even if some of the prejudice that relates to homophobia does impact him. I suppose some of this has to do with the politics of being able to "relinquish" an identity. The straight man can decide to not paint his nails and experience all the privilege of being seen as a straight man. I, for the time being, can be private about my identity as a man and experience all the privilege of being seen as a cis white woman. My existence is mostly invisible the the oppressor, and while it is not a privilege to have to hide, it is a privilege that I am able to.
i’ve deliberately made it ambiguous what i was assigned at birth the way i present online because that’s the only way i’m happy/comfortable with people perceiving me. ideally, no one would know, people perceiving me as my agab and not an inherently genderless person gives me dysphoria :c
i wish this was the case with people irl too, but gender binary is too engrained in our society. at least online i can be 100% me, an autistic genderless cosmic feline robot thing lol
And that makes you hella cool ! :D
so real, i wish gender just. didn't exist. i don't wanna be dealing with it, don't perceive my gender, like okay if you so desperately need to call me something call me a woman or idk but mostly just leave me alone about it😭
omg a fellow autistic magic kitten
Same. My wife knows. My GP knows. Who else needs to know? I don’t entertain those discussions online or irl.
When I was young I was baptised Christian against my will. As soon as I was old enough to realise, I got really angry with my family for taking away my choice on the matter.
I feel the same way about being assigned a birth gender. I’d just really rather it had never happened. ❤
I, too, would like to turn off the gender. 🖤
i would love a whole video on the socialization conversation! as a trans man, conversations about “female socialization” are often prescribed to me, but in reality so many of these “”universal experiences”” are entirely unrelatable because i socially transitioned at 13 years old. i was a girl, but i’ve never been a woman.
Yeah, definitely. I also find the expectation that I'm supposed to relate to cis women very strange because as far as "socialization" goes I find that I have a lot more in common with trans women than with any cis person. Being forced into the wrong box + being autistic played a much more significant role than what other people saw me as.
This really resonates with me. I transitioned socially at 14 so i was pretty young. The idea of “female socialization “ doesnt fit with me a lot because im autistic. And so as an autistic person, the idea of being “socialized as female” doesnt connect to my gender so much as how i was punished as kid for not being normal enough which led to me masking a lot. I think that term is just kind of iffy because it can mean so many different things.
As a trans man I personally really dislike the term "transmasc". I've had it used at me in ways that seemed like the person wanted to conveniently ignore the "man" part of my identity. Kind of like how some cis people are suddenly a pro at using they/them pronouns when they have just met a trans person who exclusively uses he or she.
Also similar to what another commenter said, I transitioned to be seen as a man, not necessarily to be "masculine".
I do think it may have some use as an umbrella term for addressing, say, people who transitioned by way of testosterone, which is a group that could include both trans men and also some nonbinary people. Overall though I just think it's frustrating that we keep inventing new words that seem to just reinforce a gender binary.
so true! i dislike being called transmasc bc it feels like a man-lite label. likewise a nonbinary youtuber (i think milo stewart) has talked about disliking it for "similar but opposite" reasons, as it categorizes them into being masculine because of their transition direction, when they don't identify that way
This is so interesting because I use trans masc for the exact reason you dislike it: because it isn’t necessarily associated with the label of “man”. I usually refer to myself as trans masc because while I am definitely transitioning in a more masculine manner, I don’t entirely identify with being a man due to also being somewhat non-binary. So I guess I just happen to fall into the small group of people that actually enjoy the somewhat vague definition of trans masc.
That being said, it sucks that people have used the language against you to invalidate your gender :( I love that language is so versatile and nuanced but sometimes it definitely works against us lol
@@kemanii-b3iI feel the same, but personally my favourite thing about using the term is that it recognises that my experience is similar to that of a lot of trans men, even though I am non binary and not a man.
I dont love the term transmasc as a nonbinary lesbian because of the fact that 1) it makes me seem like I AM aligned with men, when I am not a man and don’t wish to be remotely so and 2) while I could physically transition to be more masculine now, I’ve got the voice of a cis man and lacked any defining feminine features until I started birth control. Good chance I could have PCOS too, so… I didn’t start off as all that feminine to begin with. I still use it because it’s the best term I’ve got at hand, but I don’t love it dearly the same way I do the label lesbian.
I think it's weird the way people think "socialization" is a universal experience. It's like people forget that there are other ethnicities and cultures in the world, all with different methods of socialization.
I was once working on a school project related to feminism and I remember making a joke about me being the only guy there, and one of my friends who knows I’m trans told me “it affected me because I’m AFAB” but I don’t think it does really. She wasn’t referring to abortion rights or anything, but about being “socialized as a girl” and still dealing with misogyny or something?, which I totally DO NOT relate to. I literally am a stealth binary trans man that passes and transitioned starting middle school, I literally exist and am viewed as a cis man by the people around me. I explained this to her and I think she understood me, but idk I totally hate this separation of people based on their AGAB, totally missing that everyone has different experiences when it comes how they were socialized and currently live in society. I understand there may be trans men that do deal with the issues mentioned by my friend, but I just hate that she assumed I go through those issues because of what I was assigned at birth.
yeah, I definitely get that. I'm not even that far into my transition, but thinking back on my childhood, I realized that I wasn't really socialized as a girl at all, and that was much to do with having abusive parents that didn't care for much except my grades and my reputation. Of course I have had several quintessential experiences of "girlhood" but I have ALWAYS felt like an outsider in spaces that are meant to have a certain solidarity over girlhood. All this reminds me of a common transphobic talking point that somehow transwomen can't be women because they don't experience the intrinsic experiences of woman hood, but as a trans guy, I have never experienced this either, so by that logic, is my identity valid to them? Of course not, because people like that refuse to believe that women are able to have an identity separate from having a uterus
so if you werent socialized female why do you need to pretend to be male? hmmmmm
Lots of pickmes and other self-hating women would say the same thing as you. Just because you’re not aware of how your socialization affected you doesn’t mean it didn’t (hint: hating your body isn’t healthy)
@@maycarmel8416feeling like an outsider in female spaces due to not fitting gender roles is quite literally the definition of female socialization… boys are never pressured to conform to the female gender roles in those spaces because they are not socialized as girls… sounds like you just lack self awareness. Too bad
@@maycarmel8416did you know autistic girls and lesbians, especially butch lesbians also often felt like outsiders in female spaces growing up? That doesn’t mean they weren’t socialized female because by definition boys are not pressured to conform to those spaces.
As a nonbinary lesbian i really thank you for this jdmnxbxhxk all of this stresses me out too, especially with the man/non man binary and the constant categories. I also deeply resonated with your experiences talking about your socialization history too.
As a genderfucky autistic person, my socialization history is also all over the place but most importantly, my gender nonconformity and autism was constantly at the forefront of my experiences. I've experienced a mix of different forms of gendered oppression and like the majority of trans women who also have a problem with this too, i as a nonbinary person desperately wish socialization discussions were more inclusive of gender nonconforming experiences. Not only that, but nobody seems to EVER talk about trans kids who already came out as trans and either started transitioning through childhood or at least tried to.
I have no idea how nobody ever thinks about that, especially now of all times when trans kids are losing and have already lost their rights to their own childhoods. What are those trans kids going to say about socialization discourse years from now in their adulthood? Would that ever become the forefront in these conversations in our community?
yes to the entire explanation of socialization!! personally i like to refer to myself as “socialized female”, not only because i was put through girlhood, but because i took a “girl” role in my family, and my experience of girlhood is inextricably linked to my experience in my family. socialization is so particular to each individual person and divided it into “female” and “male” does such a disservice to everyone
also every time i see “non-men” used i find it so funny because where are they drawing the line?? i feel like whenever people try to divide something as complex as gender into two distinct categories (male and female, transmasc and transfem, men and non-men, on and on) it never works
don’t even get me started on bottom and top lmao vanilla queers need an evie lupine crash course
god dude i'm really glad you're talking about language so much. i really feel what you're saying like,, man. i'll use "ftm" in tags or whatever when it's somewhat relevant and i'm sure it'll be similar in medical paperwork but i'm def glad they're not used as much; i think "transmasc" is a term i've been somewhat comfortable with (like i view myself as somewhat "masc" but not necessarily a "man") but to see that binary like attributed to nonbinary people as a whole....god. no. and your point on top/bottom/dom/sub like oh my god. i've been slowly like entering kink spaces after a very long time just watching from afar and the way the terms are misused outside of the community is just.. unfortunate to say the least. needless to say i've been doing a lot of unlearning but like.... yeah
the socialization discussion really hit hard. I would say I was socialized as a brown hispanic girl, and though I've never been a woman that experience is intrinsic to my identity as a nonbinary trans man. That socialization protected me from some of the aspects of toxic masculinity and macho attitudes that are viciously enforced towards men in latine communities, while also contributing to my lack of assertiveness and difficulty speaking up- I learned early on that silence is a better response to conflict especially in situations where I lack power.
does anyone else get the ick about the word 'transgender'? I definitely don't have a problem with people using it and it technically does apply to me, but I would NEVER describe myself as transgender unless I was talking to a cis person. I consider myself 'trans'- just trans.
it does make me happy to see other people also identify themselves as nonbinary trans men and know that I'm not alone. I sort of view myself as Schrodinger's man- I both am and am not simultaneously. I use the term 'boygirl' to describe myself, but never 'girlboy'.
Thank you for your insightful discussions as always- you've got to be my favorite trans youtuber.
I personally don't like using labels because I personally find them restrictive no matter how detailed they get.
ashton always has the most transpilled drip ever
My opinion on socialization is that we don't receive a "male" or "female" socialization, we are all socialized to understand the way men and women are supposed to be, but the methods of socialization differ based on what others expect us to be which is itself only based on the way we present to others.
huh i havent thought about that
i have a similar idea. rich men and poor men, rich women and poor women live gender very differently!
@@lulucool45 and as a black person, it's even more different!
I think socialization is akin to trauma. I am me in spite of everything that has happened to me.
so glad to hear you mention the top and bottom thing. This is something thats bothered me for years and yet i dont often see it being brought up into conversation. Its just another way to categorize people (who they dont even know! gross!) by what they look like/the traits they have. Ngl this perception (especially in regards to fanfiction or fandom related content) really affected the way i viewed my gender and also how people labeled me. yuck
I don't like the terms trans fem and trans masc personally cause the reason I transition is not directly to do with being more feminine but more to do with being seen as a woman not necessary a feminine woman
I'd much rather be a masc woman then a man. Honestly I love it the most when I am being seen as a masc woman.
you could still call yourself transmasc tbh. i have seen people say it means trans + masculine rather than trans -> masculine, if that makes sense. not sure if i used the right words. despite this, it is still widely understood to refer to trans men and other tme trans people so i can see why a masculine woman wouldnt want to use that term. terminology is weird.
Yeah that makes sense. It doesnt work for everyone but it makes a lot of people super happy and comfortable. :)
I have a lot of thoughts on gender and language. I think your thoughts are really informative and relateable. I'm nonbinary and intersex and I've often found that the terms which kind of recreate gender binaries within trans spaces, ftm/mtf, transmasc/transfemme, and afab/amab have often been used in ways I find quite exclusionary, like it's hard to find anywhere to belong when everyone else is divided up. And when they're used to try and draw nonbinary people in to either side, it feels even worse.
I also want to talk about the terms afab and amab, and intersex ppl. As far as I know, the terms afab and amab were developed by intersex people, and spread in the trans community. I think how I feel about them depends on how they're used, but I do think that the appropriation was reasonable. Their meaning as originally intended, and their meaning as used by the trans community now is pretty similar, and still technically includes intersex people. But something I only really put together recently, is that they have become so used in trans circles, that I don't normally use them to describe myself, an intersex person, because it would lead to incorrect assumptions about my physiology or *socialisation*. And that kind of sucks. Intersex communities are, in my experience, hard to find, too small, and too often ignored, and so to have lost access to language like that isn't great. I'm not suggesting that people stop using them or anything, I don't think that would help. Just some thoughts.
I'm gender non-conforming, middle-aged, autistic, 'assumed' male at birth. I identify as genderfluid, male/man, trans-fem, femdaddy, twinkdaddy, mommy, etc. depending on circumstance. I also identify, in an odd way, as a 'trans-man', as in man-that-is-trans, and not so much with 'trans-woman', as the latter sounds binary to my ears, even tho I sometimes will identify with just 'woman', if that is the mood I am in..
Just call it as you see it, it's all vibes-based, anyhow!
Love this so much! We’re fucking with and deconstructing the gender binary and we should absolutely fuck with labels too. You be you! 🩷🩵🤍
Jupp, I'm all for breaking the meta, even if it isn't 'competitively viable'!@@prof.evilpictures8696
One set of labels I didn’t hear mentioned in either video was the distinction between people being “transmisogyny affected” and “transmisogyny unaffected.” A friend of mine suggested using the phrase “transmisogyny targeted” instead because it is more accurate to what is being discussed, so I have been opting to use that term instead, but I am still curious what you all think about this distinction.
As a transfemme nonbinary person who has very much felt the effects of transmisogyny in my own life I think it can be a somewhat useful label in helping to find and build community with other people who have had similar experiences. But generally speaking, I feel pretty uncomfortable referring to entire groups with a specific label unless it’s something they can opt-in to, especially when the label is specifically grouping people together based on their experiences of oppression.
I would also love to hear Ashton's thoughts on this one! Usually I see these terms around as TME (transmisogyny exempt) and TMA (transmisogyny affected). I think it's important to talk about transmisogyny specifically and how it affects people, particularly trans women, but I usually see it used by trans women talking down to trans men and downplaying their specific experiences of bigotry and oppression. As a trans man, I really beef with being called TME because... I've literally been mistaken for a trans woman before. Transphobes aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer, and while I have been affected by transmisogyny much less than my trans sisters, it's still been erroneously directed towards me. It's just not accurate to split trans people into two clearly delineated categories based on assumed experiences of oppression, and it often seems like people are using it to drive a wedge between transmasc and transfem folks instead of building solidarity. It feels like the same issue with how amab/afab are often used, but with extra steps.
On bottom/top, I've even seen a Dutch organisation that is supposed to spread accurate sex ed information get that one wrong. Some friends and I corrected them on that but they refused to fix their mistake, they kept saying that top/bottom can mean dom/sub, even though that is very much not what those words mean ...
For me, transmasculine has never really been a word that I like using for myself, as a trans man whos also kind of nonbinary. I don't know exactly what it is about that label that doesn't sit right with me. I feel like it's because to me, the words masculine and feminine refer more to like gender expression and presentation rather than just identity. Like I consider myself a person who dresses, acts, and looks fairly masculine, but I wouldn't describe my actual gender as masculine, I'd describe myself as a man, yknow? That's just how I interpret those words, I don't know how other people might feel about the words masculine and feminine.
I think I understand what you mean. I feel that masculine and feminine when used on their own usually means masc/fem gender expression, without that being specified, but I think that it's still valid to use it in other ways such as masculine or feminine gender.
This video made me feel a little more sane.
I’ve had this friend for a decade and she has a 7-year old child that she raises as a cis girl. My friend and I have talked for many months about having a conversation with her child about me being non-binary and what that means (in a way that’s appropriate for a 7-year old). Then, my friend just randomly dropped the news that the father wasn’t okay with the that.
I slept on my feelings, then sent a message gently explaining that I’m trying to avoid assumptions about what that means, but also expressed that I was hurt and confused about where this was coming from. Nothing I said was even directed at my friend, but she came back with a wall of text about how I had no right to lecture her on how to raise a kid because I’m not a parent, how dare I say she isn’t an ally (which I didn’t say), and that her daughter wasn’t anywhere near the age she needed to know about this stuff because she wouldn’t start her cycle for many years (which isn’t true because people with a uterus can start their cycle at 8).
I was utterly shocked. I wasn’t even directing anything I said at her. Just generally sharing my feelings about why I think it’s important based on my experience. Despite that, I immediately apologized for the miscommunication and said I won’t say more over text until we can talk over the phone to clear this up.
It seems like she thinks she did nothing wrong and I’m the world’s biggest asshole because I challenged her identity as an ally and unintentionally her decisions as a parent. Now, I totally get why that would make someone feel defensive, but I still don’t think it means she was right to play the victim and tell me I had no right to say she isn’t a good ally.
I have a lot of issues with what she said, but I didn’t mention any of that. I just apologized and asked when would be a good time to talk. After two days, I reached out to ask if she wants me to gently inquire every so often, or just be silent and let her approach me when she’s ready. Still no response and it’s been a week.
It’s crazy that it seems like our friendship might die over this…
If you are looking for reassurance or advice, it might be worth posting this elsewhere (reddit?) but here's my take if you would like it:
I think apologizing may have been unhelpful. It isn't at all unreasonable to want to be seen by your friend's child as your true identity, and there is no way around this if you are interacting with the both of them (children are curious). Personally, I feel like her assumption that you were questioning her allyship feels more like a combination of admitting guilt and lashing out. I feel for you about not wanting the friendship to die, but I think it might not be worth saving the friendship if you have to apologize for expressing your feelings and if your friend is unwilling to admit any sort of fault in the matter or even just validate your feelings.
@@mantisbyte My thoughts are pretty much identical to your own. I think I generally try give people quite a bit of grace the chance to come around. But it's been nearly 2 weeks and I haven't heard anything from her. We're both in our 30's, so it's pretty hard to find excuses for her at this point. It just is what it is, I guess :/
Thanks for the validation
@@maxleveladventuresyou did nothing wrong kids can learn about gay and trans people there heads won’t explode. If I knew about being trans earlier I could have saved a lot of struggle for myself, and what if the kid meets trans kids or encounters trans people in public? Just seems very transphobic
Honestly, personally, my “male socialization” is a big part of my identity. Having been raised as a boy is a positive memory for me, I still find a lot of value in some of the lessons my dad taught me on how to navigate masculinity in a healthy way. But like, I don’t know how to say that without it sounding like I’m not “fully trans” or something.
Now that I’m more confident in my gender identity, I can acknowledge that masculinity is as important to me as femininity. Idek how much I vibe with “trans-femme,” because both masculinity and femininity are integral to who I am. But none of that makes me “like a man,” you know? I do feel a certain level of camaraderie with men that I probably wouldn’t if I didn’t have that background, but I genuinely don’t think I’m more similar to them than I am to anyone else.
I guess what I’m saying is, I wish there was some way to talk about my personal experience of “male socialization” with a less loaded term. If there was (and perhaps there is) I think it would open the doors to a lot of valuable discussion within trans spaces.
Personally, I just refer to my "girlhood" as a shorthand for those types of past experiences because I started to play around with gender socially at 14. That being said, I don't know how helpful that language would be to someone who began experimenting with gender or transitioning in adulthood.
I am the person who says language is the most important thing. Hi. That's me. Yes, I really do think LANGUAGE is the most important thing. /gen /srs
real! if we can’t actually talk about it, how are we gonna talk about it?
you're so real for that! language is the thing our entire communication and therefore lives are built upon, why would it not be important?
Socialization is a weird one, I feel like most of the time when I hear it used it it's to explain a behaviour or interest that the person themselves considers out of place in their own gender, or to explain the lack of certain traits they feel they should have because of their gender. A trans girl might say "I wasn't socialized female" to preface why she doesn't know how to do her own makeup yet, or she might say "I was socialized male" to explain an interest in videogames... and you can see the problem, there's a lot of assumptions flying around about how other people are brought up and what is and isn't normal behaviour for particular genders.
What I'd like to see more of is talk about subcategorization of the binary genders. It'll work just as well as with categorizing trans people because everyone is very different, but I think the comparison of how difficult it is to come up with divisions people agree on would be the point.
yeah it feels like people are apologizing for not performing their gender the "right" way
I don't necessarily agree because I feel like this could easily be misintrepretation. For me, it's helpful to describe how my childhood expectations translated to how I interacted with my interests and how that has changed with my gender journey. Many people do experience emotions surrounding interests they were expected or encouraged to have and those that they were not and I think it can be a valuable to share that piece of their story.
I also personally like to joke about how certain skills I would like to gain now are not those that I would've developed in childhood because they wouldn't have been emphasized (ex. tying a tie). I think framing is important here because I joke this way because I often don't want to hold myself/be held to cis standards when they weren't built for me.
I think that like many other terms, a lot of these terms are only useful in certain contexts. For example, I find ftm/mtf and transmasc/transfemme useful when discussing transitions, the latter two more so than the former two, because for most people, their transition is going to be either feminizing or masculanizing. I am aware that masculine and feminine are not ideal terms for this, but I think it's the best our language can do as male and female imply a very binary way of transitioning (either "completely" female or "completely" male when a lot of people don't transition to meet that binary in every way). I am also aware that there are probably a few people out there who these terms do not fit because they are intersex and transition in a feminizing *and* masculanizing way, but because transmasc/transfemme and mtf/ftm are only useful when talking about transitions, these terms are helpful for a lot more people than not. These terms help many trans people find advice and a community for their transitions, but outside of this context, these terms shouldn't really be used imo.
You being open with these discussions is super helpful for me because i learn and comprehend things a lot better in video/audio formats. Also i really love that you are open with your femininity and it helps me feel more comfortable and confident in my own expression of my gender. Thanks for the video!!
This topic is something I love talking about because I wish we had more language to discuss the difference between identity and lived experience.
I would personally call myself "a nonbinary trans man", "transmasc" and "FTM" (usually when talking to cis people), these are quite simplified but they are useful terms to communicate how I would like to be treated
However in many cases my experience aligns much closer with "transfem" people. I could pass as a cis man but I choose to wear makeup, long hair and feminine clothes; people usually assume my pronouns are "he/him" when that's not entirely true; I use makeup techniques invented by trans women to hide my facial hair or other "masculine" elements of my face sometimes; when I go outside I am often clocked as a trans woman, I've been threatened and assaulted by people who assumed I am one
When I've been harassed, I feared for my life not in the way a trans man would, but in the way a trans woman would. And a part of me hurts a little bit when that experience is flattened to just "transmasc"
tbh, I think this type of language (specially male/female socialization) is then weaponized against the trans community by transphobic so called "feminists". I'm not causing the trans ppl that use this language of being transphobic, I just thinks they don't think that much before using this terms.
I remember this just,,,,, infuriating debate about "do afab non-binary ppl can be gay?" and the ppl that insisted that they can't, always used the argument of female socialization. They always were THOSE type of radfems, color me shocked.
I'm just tired of binary and gender conforming people imposing binaries and putting limits to queerness
I feel like there's a flawed assumption among transphobic people that socialization just, like, ends at some point. Like you're 15 or whenever and then it's like "whelp, guess my social environment no longer affects my behavior from this point forward". Like if someone starts their transition at 18, by the time they're 36 pigeonholing them as "socialized male" or "socialized female" is ignoring half of the time they've been alive.
So about the transmasc/transfem thing for nonbinary people:
I definitely see where you're coming from, and I agree that it sucks for people to try to push nonbinary people into a binary. I do also think that those terms can be useful. I'm nonbinary, and I also sometimes call myself transmasc, often as a way of generalizing and relating my experiences with other people's. Obviously not every trans person is the same, not every nonbinary person is the same, not every trans man is the same, etc., but I do feel like there is a lot of overlap between my experiences and those of trans men. I guess by calling myself transmasc I'm basically trying to give more context to other trans people and build a community that understands my experiences. I don't think anything I just said made any sense, I'm kinda just rambling
Big same. The only thing I could think to add is that I also somewhat feel that the term trans masc affirms that I am no less trans because I am non binary.
I love discussions about terms ! Words and definitions are my ultimate mean to understand the world, so I love to remember strict definitions, then learn the nuances little by little.
I wanna write how I use those words or not (just because I find it fun, it's not particulary relevant) :
- ftm isn't a label I identify with, it's useful to communicate with cis people.
- I used transmac the same way as ftm, but I identify with it a tiny bit more, maybe because it feels to me more inclusive of non-binary people.
- female socialization : I don't identify with this one, I just say "people saw me as a girl". I am claiming "genderweird autistic kid" and "I was socialized as an autistic weirdo" cause it feels so accurate it makes me happy haha
- "men and non-men" : the phrase as a whole is my gender (as a demiboy) :)
- bottom&top, dom&sub, fem&masc : as a vanilla person who loves definitions, I am proud to say I don't think I messed these ones up. I wanna read your love & liberation zine though !
i may be stupid but isn't men & non men just everyone?
The socialization I experienced really is varied. By my family, and my mother in particular, I was socialized as a girl, especially as the eldest "daughter". Despite having two older brothers there was a lot of responsibility placed on me regarding house chores and my younger siblings, to the point where I basically raised my little sisters since I was child.
At the same time I was often deemed masculine outside of the home, in part due to my presentation as I had no real concept of gender, but also probably since I was a chubby latine kid. I often felt that I wasn't allowed to express femininity aside from special occasions, and that lasted until my late teens when I finally realized I was queer. I've also been intersex since puberty, which I think contributed to how I was viewed, especially by my peers.
I now identify as pangender and transneutral, but I feel like a lot of other queer people deem me as transmasc simply because I was assigned female at birth. And while I do feel some connection to masculinity, it's not the traditional masculinity of either of the cultures I grew up with, rather my own much softer interpretation. My gender expression is fluid, but when I'm much more feminine than I've ever been growing up.
Also, some intersex people identify as transmascfemme/transfemmasc, and some as afab and transfem or amab and transmasc, and that's genuinely just so cool and just fucks with a lot of binary people's perception of gender and transition
Thank you for this video! It was very good, and I have subscribed :)
Something I struggle with a lot when it comes to gender language is finding ways to distinguish between my identity and my external gendered circumstances, and to talk about how those interact. For example, my experiences of gender euphoria are almost entirely based in my identity (nonbinary). My evolving understanding of what gender *is* is a product of the interaction between my external circumstances (how people around me discuss/perform gender) and my own internal experience. But not being able to find welding gloves that fit---while clearly a consequence of gendered assumptions/trends re: who is going to buy welding gloves---has nothing to do with my nonbinary identity at all. It's pure external circumstance.
Trans spaces have a wealth of language for discussing identity, which is fantastic! However, it's difficult to find language for discussing external gendered circumstance. Any language that we *do* develop to talk about it gets ruined pretty quickly, probably because external gender circumstance is what a lot of transphobes---or just people who don't think about gender much--- think gender *is*. So if you coin a word to refer to purely circumstantial aspects of being assigned female, for example, a lot of people will think, "Aha! This word refers to the only aspects of femaleness that I think are important!" So the terms just merge with "man" and "woman," basically, and we're back in the binary again.
In the past, I've used terms like "AFAB" or "Female-socialized" specifically when talking about external gendered circumstances. I wasn't referring to any specific set of circumstances, because not every AFAB person is going to have the same set of external gendered circumstances. But everyone who lives in a society that has genders is going to have *some* external gendered circumstances, and there are commonalities and patterns in those experiences that are worth noticing.
Now I'm looking for new language again, because both the above terms seem to be used to refer to a specific set of experiences that are not necessarily applicable to me, or to many other trans folks. I would love to have some vocabulary meaning "The external gendered circumstances, whatever they may be, that impact a person, independent of their identity."
I think having that language, if we could use it correctly, could actually help to decouple externally imposed gender nonsense from personal identity, by moving the focus to the point of actual impact. To go back to my glove example, the problem may be *caused* by a cis-normative, misogynistic cultural context in which [people categorized by that context as women] are under-represented in the trades, but the *impact* is on anyone---cis men included---who happens to have small hands. In short, being impacted by misogyny is not a quintessentially female, or even AFAB, experience. Misogyny targets a loose collection of traits and circumstances, not an identity or even a demographic. Once you notice that, a lot of TERF rhetoric starts to look pretty silly.
There's more to say on this, but I think this comment's long enough. I hope youtube sees it as good engagement, at least :)
TL:DR I want vocabulary I can use to acknowledge the impact of externally-imposed gender models without misgendering myself or others, basically.
(I don't actually care that much about the gloves) (it's not about gloves) (They were just a useful example)
Anyway, I'm off to watch your other video. To anyone who actually read this whole comment, know that I am waving to you in a cordial manner across the internet.
*waves back across the internet in a cordial manner*
Thank you for saying this. The part about socialization made me happy. The idea of being “male socialized” is frequently weaponized against trans women to back up the pervasive transphobic narrative that we are a threat. Thanks Ashton! :)
UA-cam randomly recommended me your video, so sorry for popping in with an essay from a stranger.
the two places i've seen "non-man" used are in attempting to delineate a more inclusive exclusive space that in a more black and white gendered framework would be 'women's spaces', and, relatedly but very much distinctly, in definitions for the term 'lesbian'. Both uses are attempts to preserve what people see as a valuable distinction and separation while attempting, messily, to partially acknowledge the way any clear cut division will fail.
I've seen it used a lot in the 'bi people can't call themselves lesbians' discussion, trying to create, often for understandable reasons, a term that says "I am not attracted to men" that cannot be misread. But in doing so it tramples on the definition of bi created by the bi community which is 'attraction to two or more genders' which itself holds a kind of discreteness to gender that can be... restrictive, but certainly allows this "non-man" attraction.
Part of the problem is that attraction is often not logical. It isn't always based on understanding the unique relationship someone has to gender (though one shouldn't discount the inherent attraction some people have to queerness itself). And as you noted, the line between man and non-man is blurry, as are all other gender categories. Presentation wise, across the bar or whatever, or even after long conversations, there's no clear cut way without specifically asking it to know if the person you're flirting with identifies as a trans man or non-binary, or a butch woman, for example.
Even more complicated, its possible that the same internal 'sense' in so far as that exists, could be parsed by two different people with two different experiences or in two different social groups or even time periods as different things. If the exact same person with the exact same sense for themselves and gender would fall on two different sides of this 'non-man' line by geography or time, how can one say they are or aren't attracted to people based on that line?
But, in denying that line entirely, are we depriving someone of a needed term for discussing their attraction or community or experience?
I think some of the mess is that I think there are a subset of people who want to say "non-cismen" but don't want to be seen to be separating trans men from cis men in any way.
I think some of it comes back to the essentialism still, the idea that biologically some people are more dangerous or safer or caring or something else than others.
In fact, I was a little surprised you didn't mention that part with "socialization" which in some circles has become the terminology used to... maybe unintentionally mask biological essentialism. Like TERFs use it too. It often goes hand in hand with "male puberty" or something. Which is a shame because I think it is a very useful concept that one should be able to talk about when its applicable.
In general that's how I feel about all these terms. The issue is it requires one to be honest with what one really wants, and why, and to say it without hiding. If you want to create a group exclusively for people who experienced "female/male socialization" I think that can be a valid endeavour, for example, to talk about the way such things may have impacted psychological development, or to do a study, or skill gaps that often exist because of gender expectations, or whatever. But if what you actually want is to fill skill gaps, saying like "home economics for guys" is far less targeted than "home economics for people who don't know a needle from a thimble" or something. But if what you REALLY want is to create a group where people feel a specific kind of shared experience or perceive a specific kind of safety from either embarrassment or shame or harassment, you need to be honest with yourself and your prospective attendees on what you think will create that.
And there isn't really a way to do that perfectly, probably. Which sends some people further into bioessentialism and TERF stuff. How do you navigate the perception that people feel, that 'cishetmen' are more dangerous than other gendered existences and histories?
The flip side, of course, is that such models have always and will continue to promise false safety and solidarity, and silence people whose abusers were not that. This is a long standing issue, even in the most binary, cissexist system of "women's spaces." The presumption in creating them was that they were inherently safe because they lacked men. And if abuse could happen within them, that calls into question the space entirely, or has to be downplayed as a 'rare thing'. But the truth is probably in the middle, for such a multitude of reasons that we must continually chip away at -- a system of gender that creates violence in its enforcement. But is the solution to remove all such spaces? Do we have to deny what people have said such spaces have given them entirely to acknowledge their limits? I say this as someone who has both never felt safe in such spaces and who has found myself about to make a decision to cross streets or pick one interaction over another based on stereotypes I feel deeply uncomfortable with -- and as you pointed out, they are not exclusively male and female.
For the same reason the advice to "always trust your gut" is complicated by the prejudices everyone in society interalizes on many axes, the idea of creating these spaces shouldn't be free from similar interrogation. We often, not without reason, will say that in clear cut directional oppression, the oppressed group has reason to desire a space without their oppressor. So this runs into 'gender as a class' analyses. What is 'without their oppressor'.
The reality of it is always messy.
Sorry for dropping my 2am rant at you. You're hand is far steadier with eyeliner than mine will ever be!
Adding to the conversation on the terms "top" and "bottom" and their use in what you call the "vanilla" part of the lgbt lmao.
The conflation or misunderstanding of tops being doms and bottoms being subs could come from thousands of years of Greco-Roman and Abrahamic/Islamic traditions. Those areas of the Mediterranean saw gender differently than a lot of contemporary cultures now. Woman were seen as a degree of man, a defective or lesser man even, while children were immature lesser men. Although slaves and outsiders could be classified as effeminate, basically defective or lesser men, as well. Topping was considered the dominant role of the man, and bottoming as the role of women and "lesser men". As in the Greco-Roman world slaves, in s.xual relations with the man of the household, who are the role of bottom. And teachers "guiding" their students on s.x would top them. (Both of these examples are disgusting situations of lack of consent! Ew)
More fun example to illustrate my point are the s.xual nocturnal demons succubus and incubus. The succubus is generally envisioned as fem while the incubus as masc. But the name of a succubus literally means bottoming, "sub" meaning "under" and "cubāre" meaning "to lie" in Latin. And incubus means topping basically in Latin from "incubāre" or "to lie upon". Because these positions were so gendered in the past, the demons became separate genders of the same kind of demon. As women in the Abrahamic and Islamic traditions are to be submissive to men, adding to that sub and bottom conflation.
So there is a lot of toxic cultural elements that confuse the understanding of the terms, which can be frustrating as a non binary trans woman. As well as the misunderstanding of consent in general!
I've appreciated having access to phrases like AMAB and AFAB in the context of discussing specific effects of socialization. Like, even tho I identify as nonbinary, I still want to give consideration to how my upbringing and treatment as an AFAB child has impacted who I am today. I did also identify as a girl when I was younger, not having fathomed there were other options that would better suit my gender non-conformity. And that early identification allowed the societal gendered messaging to penetrate my self-conception. So now as an adult, I make conscious adjustments for it; I ask for more than I think I should for income (even tho I found out, it's still below the average...), I push harder for promotions, and I do find it easier to relate to the oppression women face having myself experienced it.
But your point about how those experiences might themselves be more nuanced, how AFAB could look different for ppl depending on who they were at that time, how they presented, how they were perceived, and even the culture in which they grew up. That gave me much more to think about.
For me, it is really only a relavemt term when talking abt where you started from socially/puberty wise, ex. you want to discuss the experience of afab ppl on Testosterone. It is NOT appropriate to use as a category that is essentially "different". I have been around a well meaning person who once said something along the lines of "AMAB people are built different" in refrence to some antics that our mutual friends (a trans woman and a cis man) were getting up to. It's statements like that, imo, that can cause harm. Basically don't bring it up unless it's relavent and the other ppl are comfortable with it.
I’ve seen “non-men” be used a lot in spaces that used to be women-only like clubs for women in STEM, etc. I was actually in a band that kind of an all-women jazz band, but we always had trouble navigating exactly what to call it since we had a few nbs in there; I think the most accurate description is just non-men, bc the purpose of that group was to provide a space in an area that is just dominated by men
18:30 i tend to say “people of marginalized and minoritized gendered experiences” or “women and gender minorities” or etc and it’s a bit clunky but i’m wondering for a peer review about that wording?
like i’m a bit iffy about the “women and-“ bc that frames everyone else as extensions of women + technically women are minoritized but ppl get confused bc women aren’t a literal minority of the population percent-wise
I was thinking something along the lines of: "people of oppressed and minoritized gendered experiences", but I feel like it should only be for folks who are gender minorities. Women experience oppression based on their gender, but they aren't a minority. I hope I don't sound totally offensive...certainly not my intention. I'm just trying to come up with language that doesn't leave people out.
I would be really interested to see another video like this and how these terms can relate to being autistic and experiencing gender as an autistic person. Especially relating to the being socialized as one binary gender. I feel like my experience being “socialized as female” is very different from most because i am autistic and was so disconnected from gender. Loved this video though and i hope you stay safe!
Real idk I know alot of ppl use ftm but for me personally I feel weirded out when ppl call me that same with afab I get extreme dysphoria from being called female or recognizing that I was born "female"(not really tho cuz my biological sex is kinda silly) and it just gives me dysphoria when ppl call me ftm or afab and like good for ppl who use that but genuinely if someone used that on me I would feel like really upset
I get that. Ftm and mtf suggests that being trans mean you've changed your sex, and ignores that gender is a different thing. I think that afab and amab at least recognises that sex and gender are much more nuanced.
Woa you uploaded this on my birthday !! Awesome birthday gift, I love your vids 💥💥‼️‼️
All the ways language gets misused and misunderstood can be so frustrating. I'm a man who, when I was a kid, wanted to grow up to be a woman, always loved femininity and was and still am a staunch feminist. I'm a man who likes dresses and skirts and likes how lovely they look when women wear them. Here's the kicker: I was AFAB, and I haven't taken HRT yet. Most people who first meet me think that I *am* a woman, but I'm not. I'm a man who is non-binary. And to be honest, though I grew up with a lot of positive affirmation around womanhood, I never felt that I was being 'socialised female', and I still don't. I also feel that my gender is non-binary, it is not a lack of gender, I don't like to be assumed to be agender at all. I like the term 'man' but it is almost completely removed from my gender for me. Those sorts of nuances are very difficult to explain to cis people, and sometimes difficult to explain to other trans people, too. I always sympathise with trans women who are told they had a 'male socialisation', there's really no such thing. Everyone gets their own unique experience.
How I refer to myself usually depends on the context of what I’m talking about. I refer to myself as trans nonbinary or just trans when talking about my trans experience but I’ll say I’m AFAB nonbinary or even a woman when I’m talking about female-oriented subjects. My use of binary language to describe myself is really only because of the patriarchy I’m subjected to, not because I relate to it.
I’m more comfortable saying I’m a woman than saying I’m femme though (although I’d rather go with neither), not that anything is wrong with using that term since I still tend to use it broadly. Maybe because femme feels like I’m identifying as exclusively feminine or “mostly” feminine which isn’t the case (do cis women even do that?). Woman feels more like I’m referring to a collective perception of me. People will treat me like a “woman” even when I’m gender nonconforming because of gendered traits I have (my biology, voice, given name, etc.)
It’s definitely hard to navigate gendered language in a way that is inclusive when the entire concept of gender is designed to exclude and categorize. I’ve even caught myself saying “biological male/female” which is a really insensitive and icky term. Going through a list of gendered terms to pick from kind of just feels like the binary rewording itself to try and come off as “inviting” or “harmless” when it’s still relying on gender stereotypes.
im also a nonbinary trans man and if prompted i would say im transmasc, but it's never the 1st descriptor i go for. it's an umbrella term i fit under, but if im telling someone my personal identity im gonna be more specific. or, for example, in medical contexts, just say im a trans man. 4 me it's the same type of thing as being genderqueer. like yes, i am genderqueer, but it's not my primary identity n it's never how i would describe my identity if i have the option to simply say my full, specific identity.
It's so interesting to me that you say that because I also could be called genderqueer but just don't identify with it for some reason, however I do identify as transmasc, and not a trans man. I just think it's cool how it's so similar but different.
i really hate the way the word non-man is used. personally, i identify as a nonbinary transmasc, and i don't want to be lumped in with "non-men." please stop categorizing me with women, i use the label transMASC for a reason.
i've also seen a lot of people define lesbian as a non-man attracted to non-men because they're trying to have a nice concrete definition, but queer identities are much more nuanced than that. and then there's always the question of "well what is a non man?" what really gets under my skin is people (usually cis girl lesbians) deciding "well, a transmasc can be a lesbian because a transmasc is still a non-man, but trans men can't be lesbians because they're men." makes me feel like they view transmasc like "woman-lite" or something. also trans men can be lesbians, and bi lesbians and mspec lesbians exist, none of which fit nicely into the non-man loving non-man definition of lesbian
sorry if that was confusing at all, i have a hard time conveying how i feel about things with words
ugh "transmasc is still a non-man"? wtf, cis people grabbed the term "non-man" and just ran off the rails with it! It's giving me a headache! I'm gonna go look at cat videos!
the non-men thing i've heard mostly in lesbian circles and a way to try to include nonbinary lesbians (as in defining lesbian as "a non-man who is attracted solely to non-men"). I think it's certainly made lesbian spaces more inclusive, although i have seen it used to exclude he/him lesbians.
ultimately though, im not a lesbian and it's none of my business lol
I think that the way people perceive and use the phrase ‘socialized male’ is an interesting insight into how feminism that lacks nuance and intersectionality makes anything with the word ‘male’ in it into an accusation of privilege. If you are queer in any way, being “socialized male” was at best a mixed bag and at worst a form of oppression.
I think this video raises some important points, especially for binary trans ppl. I’m a trans man, and due to my “binaryness” I was a bit clouded as to the harm of categorizing people by the “type” of transition they had/have (transmasc/femme).
It’s true, it really doesn’t make any sense to box people in by those kinds of terms, and they are medically and personally invasive/prescriptive. I feel for all non-binary people who are described in these ways by even their binary trans friends; descriptions that they do not align with.
If we all accept gender as a vast and liquid spectrum, is there no place for masculinity or femininity (divorced from the cis-derived prescriptions) in our language, as people who may describe others to others?
I also have questions about androgyny, as a label and gender description. It’s always kind of rubbed me the wrong way, as if androgyny was a third gender category for “acceptable” non-binary presentation (as understood by the general population). This makes me wonder what “androgyny” even means, as I’ve seen it be used mainly as a physical/expressional descriptor with just as rigid of standards as stereotypical masc/femme. Is androgyny a biologically derivative term, hitched to the idea of “masculine/feminine” bodies? Maybe only if one is using it in a similar way to “trans masc/femme”.
This is what makes me feel dubious about androgyny as a descriptive term, on top of my discomfort with how non binary people are treated in relation to androgyny.
I’d be interested in hearing a non-binary perspective on androgyny, and how it’s used in queer spaces for or against non binary people.
Apologies if you’ve already talked about androgyny before.
Thank you for diving into this topic. As a nonbinary trans man, I've been struggling with an internal debate about whether I belong in "women's spaces" (often implicitly welcoming of "non-men" whatever the fuck that means). I went to an all-women's college (oops?) 20 years ago, and I love everyone there, and have some shared experiences (giving birth, carrying a heavier share of emotional labor in my relationship, etc), but I've struggled to know when I need to *not* contribute to conversations surrounding misogyny.
It feels like I was only ever about 20% the target of misogyny, because I always presented neutral growing up. At the same time, I was never perceived as butch, much less as a boy, so could I really have been exempt from misogyny if I was assumed to be female? And is that the be-all and end-all of obtaining that hall pass to be allowed to enter and be a taking-up-minimal-space member in an all-women's space?
Like, I went through a few incidents of street harassment, but I felt like I was a target because I was a quiet, fawning-response, 5'2" scrawny person, not because of being female. So even with that shared experience I feel like a fraud trying to claim "me too", when actually "not quite". Socialization is not just effected by your presentation / disability / race / culture, but also by how you internally interpret all socialization. So if I wasn't interpreting anything as people teaching me how to be female (that would explain why I missed so many memos!) then I can't really re-write history and say that I ever had a female experience.
it really feels like there's so much more discussion & education to be had around the terms of top & bottom. often these terms are used in ways that limit sexual dynamics to a penetration-focused perspective, leaving out the nuances of sexuality beyond that. many of my preferred methods of pleasure, especially with other trans people, are entirely non-penetrative and it leaves me feeling left out or overlooked in conversations that base themselves around top/bottom language
something ive seen more recently is people using transmasculine + transfeminine to just mean "trans + masculine/feminine" regardless of agab (ie afab or amab people can be transfem and amab or afab people can be transmasc if they choose to identify that way), though i definitely agree people used it as "whats ur agab" 2.0 for some time. i also agree for sure it's just one of those things that are inappropriate to apply to others without knowing they identify with it, but i think that also applies to most words for gender regardless (such as man or woman or nonbinary).
i personally use the term transmasculine for myself in place of a more complicated explanation of my identity because my comfort level of calling myself a man fluctuates pretty regularly but for me its just "trans" and "masculine" put together. im trans and my gender is typically masculine. theres not much else to it for me, since both things are very central to my identity. i know you said "if you identity with this it's fine" so this isn't me trying to gotcha, i just wanted to provide more context on why i specifically use it to explain the first part.
as someone who has been on hrt for years now i dont really see the worth in someone talking in depth about my agab because at this point my experiences align much more closely with a cis man than a cis woman but i do have mixed feelings about being "socialized as [x]" because like you said, i feel like my socialization wasn't really one that matched up with the usual experience of my agab. even when i was in the closet and unaware of what trans or nonbinary even was, people could tell something was "off" and they treated me differently for it. however, that isn't to say *none* of those experiences were in common with other people who are cis either. socialization is a complicated issue regardless and separating it by the gender you were raised as is just ignorant of every other factor of that in the first place. There is no one singular "male/female experience".
this was so interesting! I hadn't even realized that ftm is a term I would never willingly use for myself. I agree that it feels very clinical, and as someone who hasn't medically transitioned in any way I feel like it doesn't describe me or my experience accurately at all.
I really enjoy labeling myself as transmasc because it's broad and vague enough to cover my ever-changing perception and experience of my gender and I feel like it accurately describes my transness and transitioning in a way to fit a more masculine-like gender than the one society expects from me. Although it fits for right now, I can easily see than changing in the future as I gain more control over and comfortability in how I present myself. After hearing what you said and reading some comments my perspective has definitely broadend! I think a lot of these issues stem from the fact that we still operate in a world that creates a binary of gender and sex, and creating language that doesn't reflect that is difficult.
I find the socialization point super interesting. Lumping almost unimagineably diverse experiences together just on the basis of sex assigned at birth definitely seems very unhelpful. Even having been in gendered sports for my entire childhood, I frequently felt alienated and out of place, separated from everyone else. Quarantine started, and then by the time I went into sophomore year, I had cut my hair and started being occasionally perceived as a boy. I never finished my "girlhood", and have definitely never been socialized as a woman, so equating my socialization to that of a cis woman just seems silly and dismissive.
A thing to add as a very closeted trans woman: the socialization being non binary isn't only other socializations, but also how you interact with it. I have never been able to present as femme as I want, but people treated me somewhere in the middle ground of "sissy" and normal. The way I've received it is also very different than cis men. My friends being nearly only women my whole life also factors into this. At least for my peers I engaged with, it was a different kind of socialization.
I just don’t understand transfem and transmasc (or just fem vs masc in general) in particular. Like the other ones I have seen used well, seen used not so well but atleast I understand the thought process behind its usage. Transfem/masc I’m so confused on for so many reasons some being
- how do you define masculine vs feminine like they’re kinda notorious for being so wishy-washy
- is it defined by presentation like the clothes you wear, mannerisms or something
- is it defined by identity as in your gender? that is considered by you? by society? to be fem or masc
- it’s defined by how you body is perceived (like kinda sex but honestly people can’t tell sex they can just assume based on how you look)
- is it just AMAB and AFAB 2.0?
- why was this created? was it to include non binary people into the binary as in expand the definition we give to binary trans people to include some non binary people with similar experiences?
(Also why do I never see any other grouping except these two like I haven’t heard of transneutral until this video might just be a me thing tho)
Like these words just doesn’t mean anything to me because I never know what the other person means by it
I’ve seen it used by people to describe there identity (which I never want to ask because i know describing gender is fucking hard and I never want to even imply that the way they identity is wrong)(like if I don’t get it that’s fine I’m not gonna potentially hurt this person just to comfort myself)
I’ve seen it used as for I think just gender/sexswapping (like fem version of this character I assume is there gender is femmine? (I still don’t know that means but ok)and now physically “femmine” too)
And I’ve seen it being used when discussing politics, feminism trans issues ect. as a way to I think do what I typed above
ALSO why are some trans people and a lot of cis people try so hard to exclude men when talking about oppression like they will reinvent the same thing over and over women and trans women, women and nonbinary people then girls gays and theys (I would rather be called a slur that be call a “they”) AFAB, those socialised as female, and now non men
Like I get it most feminist lit. focuses on cis women but that doesn’t mean that’s the only gendered oppression like it crazy how many can’t include trans men will see transmen are listening to them and yet the best they can do is afab.
If you really don’t want cis men included then say that but if on the off chance that cis men could be included why not just not say it at all? I don’t think most of this is done out of malice or anything I think it’s just people copying other people and not thinking about the words they use. It’s a skill issue more than hatred. I really hope moving forward people will just think about the words they want to use and not ones that they think they should. Honesty and fucking up sometimes goes way better the watering down and lightly fucking up imo.
Your point about socialization makes me think that the issue people have more often is not about being raised as "X" but having to figure out "Y" on their own. My SIL has limited skills with fashion and it is more that she was not given the opportunity to play with barbies or talk about other girls' clothes. It is like learning how speak a new language since her influence for clothes was all plain looking guy stuff.
I don't fully mind the word trans masc for myself, but as a fellow non binary trans man, I think what gets me is that I'm not somewhere in between those things. I'm non binary *and* a trans man. And any language that leaves out one of those two is not going to be fully accurate to my experience of gender.
I think the usage of these terms can stop us from getting to the heart of certain issues. For example, I had to do a lot of cooking and cleaning growing up, and I have a friend who did not. Someone might jump the conclusion "well, you were socialized as a girl, and they weren't". I definitely had to learn these tasks at a young age because I would be expected to perform them as a wife, and my friend never had that expectation. But there are also huge factors of socioeconomic differences and neglect. (And on the topic, "socialized as a girl" is strange for me to hear. Because of the things I have endured starting very, very early in life, I feel like I never had a childhood. I was socialized as an *adult.*) Simplifying all this as "you were socialized as a girl and they weren't" stops discussion of other very real issues.
I also frequently hear "transmasc/transfem" used in a different way than you've described. I often hear "transmasc" as a way to say "AFAB" without saying "AFAB", and likewise for "transfem" and "AMAB". Much more than "AFAB/AMAB", I understand the purpose with "transmasc/transfem". For example, it can help some in finding resources specific to their transition. However, I want to talk a bit about my own transition.
I have had top surgery and been on HRT for several years. I identified as a trans man for many years, and I felt somehow like I was closeting myself further. At the time, I couldn't identify it more than "I feel like testosterone is making me look ugly/like not a human being/like someone I don't want to be". After top surgery, something clicked, and I realized I'm bigender. It wasn't the testosterone that made me feel so disconnected, it was the performance of masculinity itself. Those years feel even more alien to me than when I was "a cis girl". Learning to accept myself as I am, to stop hiding (when it's safe), to embrace femininity, has been a process of such euphoria, a kind I rarely, if ever, experienced in my "hyper-masculine" days. So, to butcher the phrase, I have "transed masc". But I also feel like I've transitioned to femininity.
However, in many circles, someone who was "AFAB" identifying as transfem might be taken as appropriating language. I willingly got "masculinizing" surgeries and still take "masculinizing" hormones; I have no need for many transfem resources. I can understand that if I were to identify as transfem, it might be offputting or seem like I'm encroaching on a space that wasn't built for me, and I would respect and honor that. But my experiences don't align with "transmasc", at least mostly. Nowadays, I find a lot of solidarity and community with trans women, and the resources I seek out are often not listed as for "AFABs" or "transmascs". I wonder a lot what this makes me.
Long comment, and I don't mean to speak over anyone here or claim that my experiences are universal, I just thought this was another perspective to add. To anyone reading this who got this far, I am wishing you well :)
not gonna lie, when i saw the title i thought this was gonna be bad and antinonbinary due to many of my recent experiences, but knowing your content, i should have known better, ngl. thank you for making this video!
the transmasc/transfem one is a big one for me because it often feels like trans people use these terms in a very similar way cis people use man and woman, in a very bioessntialist way, like "if you bind your chest you're transmasc because flat chests are inherently masc" or "if you take oestrogen you're transfem because oestrogen is inherently feminine". it leaves no spaces for other conceptualisations of gender. i've also seen people tie certain experiences to gender similarly to how cis people think only women experience misogyny. despite being neither, i am often seen as transmasc or transfem and discriminated against accordingly, but apparently in order to be allowed to speak on my experiences i have to misgender myself, because that's exactly what this is: misgendering! it's no less bad than calling a trans guy a woman. it's really not a "nitpicky nonbinary people language" issue. it's nonbinary people wanting to exist. these terms and the way they're used are now so deep ingrained in our community that they have created a new binary. it's not an issue of imperfect language, it's an issue of "this is how i see the world and language is how i convey this worldview" and their worldview wants nonbinary people gone. it's way beyond language but antinonbinarity is frequently dismissed as only language.
and lots of people get really weird about this too when you point out the misgendering binary language. i have received so much harassment from binary trans people and nonbinary transmascs ans transfems alike for pointing out how this is just a new gender binary, but a lot of binary trans and somehow even nonbinary people really don't want nonbinary people who are fully off the binary to exist or be included. it's like we're too weird and are expected to quietly sit in the corner and just take all the misgendering from our own community. like, cis people already put me into a binary, so why are trans people doing the same thing? tbh, i don't identify as transandrogynous or transneutral either. i'm just trans, nonbinary, maverique. it shouldn't be required for me to be transmasc or transfem or to at least have an equivalent to those terms.
it shows in the history of these terms too. you pointed out how they're basically used as more acceptable versions of amab and afab and this is exactly how they started out! people used to be very open about using transmasc to describe afab trans people and transfem to describe amab trans people. they were basically like "i guess nonbinary people exist so we're gonna make terms for those who we deem masc/fem enough to be trans". now people are less open about the terms being used that way but it's still apparent. when i first entered trans communities in 2017, this binary was already well established and it really harmed me as a baby enby. i knew i wasn't a trans guy and the only option that was presented to me was transmasculinity. so i spent a year still feeling wrong and boxed in, forced into the next binary, put into another closet. learning how many options there are was liberating.
it sucks how much we have to walk on eggshells when we critique language, especially when it's used as a binary, because we say "this binary is bad" but people always take it as us thinking that people who identify as transmasc or transfem are bad. it's the same logic that cis people use when they say nonbinary people don't want men and women to exist. like no. we just want to exist equally to you all. we want there to be more than 2 valid options.
along with binary language there's also some weird trinary thing going on of male/female/none or sometimes male/female/neutral. it's apparent in the "nonbinary version" of transmasc/transfem being transneutral despite many nonbinary people not being neutral. there's also the whole man-aligned/woman-aligned thing and people who are neither are "unaligned". like. i'm still very much aligned with people of certain genders! just not the binary ones. same way people say "gendered language" when they mean "binary language". there are so many beautiful terms that are gendered in nonbinary ways, that are gendered in ways specific to certain nonbinary genders like maverique, or nonbinary people as a whole. enby is a good example. i'm not a man i'm not a woman and what i'm left with shouldn't just be "nothing".
I really enjoyed reading your comment, and it seems like you feel similar to the way I do. It bugs me how much language harms nonbinary people. I call myself a transcendent, nonbinary, altersex, Gendervoid, who is not masc, not femme, not andro. So...where does that leave me? I'm certainly not part of the transmasc ,transfemme, transandro trinary! Side note: I'm glad you mentioned the "trinary". I've been thinking about that for years, but was never able to put it into words like you did. I'm not part of the man-aligned/woman-aligned binary. And "un-aligned" makes me feel un-human.
I've only heard the "non men" distinction be made in lesbian circles (still not super often) as a way to describe how they can be lesbians and be attracted to nonbinary people. I assumed it was one of those terms made to quickly explain yourself to the outgroup. I had no idea it was being used to distinguish who gets gender oppression...? With most language that condenses complicated ideas into one word or a phrase, nuance gets lost almost completely. It's weighing the pros and cons of "quick and easy term" vs "fully explaining my lived experience every time I talk about this subject". It's important to talk about what terms get used, especially because the theme of these seems to be "putting everyone in a softer binary".
I’m auDHD and I don’t have a gender. I describe myself as gender less or nonbinary to other people because I feel like it’s the easiest for other people to understand. I also use afab to describe myself when ever it’s relevant in the conversation. I don’t necessarily identify with my sex, but I’m also not trying to change it to something else either. And because a lot of my trauma comes from the fact that other people are viewing me as a female, therefore abuse me in the ways that are mostly directed at females, I identify with certain experiences that female people have. I also am very factual and I don’t like when people ignore the fact that my sex is currently female, even if I don’t have a gender. It feels to me like when I talk about being fat and people try to swear to me I’m not fat and say to not call myself that… ummm, factually, I am fat. And it’s not a bad thing to be fat, so I will speak about it in factual terms. It’s not an identity thing for me; just like female isn’t about identity for me; it’s about speaking factually and referencing the experiences had because of those facts.
I also describe myself as a nonbinary trans man instead of transmasculine. I generally attribute it to the language being commonly used when I entered the community, but your explanation of your identity makes sense as well!
I didn't know you made zines!! That zine sounds great I will go buy it now
This was really interesting, thank you.
Now i have to think of more open-ended ways to ask about other people's gender. "What's your gender vibe?"
Yeah I feel I was socialized as a queer or outcasted fem boy. And since an early age everyone knew I wasnt a guy and was left out by both boys and girls. My parents constantly tried to make me more masculine and I hated it. I seen myself as detached or not apart of gender ans more and more apathetic to it. I identified as "not a boy or a girl" before i knew a non binary person even existed. Many guys i met growing up would say things like "well you are pretty much a girl". Idk how gendee socialization by any means could be considered binary for my case and it makes me feel weird that someone would assume it. My whole family figured being gay and trans were rhe same thing and whenni came out as gay litterally everyone was like "I KNEW IT! You always played girl characters and u were so fem and blablahblah". Then to top it off withbeing ND and walla I was basically just socialzed as an androgynous queer who was percieved and treated differently deoending who you asked
I just wanted to say that I love watching you do your make up.
never heard transmasc and transfem used that way?
they are so uh fluid that I related to both at different points in time and it's surprising to see them in this context
I also find that the constant tone policing and censoring really of certain queer spaces makes even harder for me to make sense of my socialition. So i perfectly agree with you when you say that i am only representing myself when i am using certain words/terminology that some other people find weird/degrading or even trasphobic. Like I use femboy a lot to refer to myself pretransition but a lot of transgender girls find that offensive altho im specifically talking about how i was never socialized as a male. I was conventionally feminine presenting with long hair makeup girly dresses and i was even assigned a room of my own to change during P.I. All the people that say that thats your average male experience dont have a leg to stand on.
The thought that 'male/female (or any) socialisation' should somehow indicate all of someone's socialisation (rather than just the particular part in which it applies for the topic at hand) is absurd to me.
And yet I don't need to think long to see and agree that that is absolute how it is used way too often. :c
I personally don’t like transmasc. I don’t really see myself as transitioning myself into a more masculine presentation. I transitioned to live as a man. If we have to mention I’m trans, I would most prefer to be called a trans man. I don’t really identify as “masc” and I see transmasc really associated with nonbinary people, so it also doesn’t feel like something I can claim or a group I’m even part of. Transmasc just seems like an alternate to AFAB.
I personally use both FTX and transmasc(uline) to talk about myself sometimes. FtX I find most useful in cases of "before-after" comparisons, which are really "before-now" comparisons as there isn't really an after. Like if sharing pictures, or voice samples, or for inspiring people or something, it can be relevant what your journey looked like and what your goals have been. "FtX" isn't as helpful of a description than "I was assigned female and I'm nonbinary, my biggest dysphoria has always been my chest but I had voice dysphoria too, my goals are/have been to have a higher waist-to-hip ratio and a flat-to-small chest. I don't mind body hair or baldness but the idea of facial hair is dysphoric for me" or something, but it's an easier keyword to search for people who may be interested in finding someone they can relate to.
Transmasc, for me, means transitioning or having transitioned in a "masculine direction". This doesn't work for everyone because gender isn't a spectrum but a weird 4-D non-euclidian space, but for some people it's an umbrella term that can work.
my alternative to ftm is "before & after". It leaves out all the info that I don't want to get into: what gender I was assigned, what I'm dysphoric about, what changes I've made to my body, and what changes I plan to make.
Language is super important because it shapes our ideas. I personally find the current language around Gender Roles to be reductive and most people don’t know the difference between gender identity and expression. Not to mention us using male and female terms for things that aren’t sex only continues the general confusion of sex and gender.
Please, please make a video about kink, queerness and fashion! No pressure but I feel like you would be the one to do it ❤
one that i haven't seen brought up yet (though i didn't read that many comments) is transsexual. i personally use the term to describe myself, and one time i told a trans friend that i think the term transsexual is really cool and it said "yeah, it's a shame that it's used as a dogwhistle". i found this really interesting because the spaces i had recently entered into were for the most part very inclusive and not transmed at all, but i have certainly seen some people use "transsexual" to exclude non-binary trans people or trans people who don't experience dysphoria and/or don't transition. i think transsexual is cool because it's saying "hey, maybe sex isn't as rigid and binary as you thought", and there is just something so beautiful about changing some supposedly immutable part of yourself. i mean, i'm on HRT because i want to be for many reasons, but it also is very gratifying to have a personal little "fuck you" to people who talk about sex as a rigid, unchangeable binary. but of course i do recognize the ways that "transsexual" can be used to exclude many trans people and form a new category of "real transsexuals"
apart from that, i definitely learned a few things from this and the afab/amab video. i hadn't really thought about men/non-men before, so that was really interesting to hear discussed
I'm a nonbinary lesbian who uses she/they pronouns. The language thing that I find really annoying is when people assume that I'm comfortable with identifying as trans. Obviously there's plenty of nonbinary lesbians who do identify as trans and that's super valid and cool but I don't use it at a label or claim it as an identity and I hate having to awkwardly correct people or explain the nuances of my gender.
Also this is completely unrelated to this vid but thanks so much for including the document of sources under your disbaility justice video. I used it as a jumping off point for researching a essay I wrote for uni on chronic illness construction and psychotherapy and I found it so helpful!
The "non-men" phrase seems like a bit of a distortion (whether accidentally, purposefully for irony, or purposefully with bad intent) of the concept of "feminized people" (I can't remember who came up with it, im going to figure it out and come back later)- which is basically the same idea but better worded- it (roughly, again ill fix this later) means any population who is "feminized" to any degree (in that moment) under the view of patriarchy, whether because of their biology, presentation, or sexuality, in some cases race, or even what their job is (like nurses). It's focusing more on what characteristics patriarchy targets (which is what is meant by "feminine" in this case) rather than the identity of the people(s) being talked about.
okay um if someone knows who came up with this that'd be really helpful, so far i can't find where i first saw it
Spent a decade as genderfluid before deciding transfemme was a better label for my experience. I really like the term transfemme, it describes my existance a lot better than transwoman I feel, since I'm coming from such a queer background. I'm going from presenting mostly masculine to presenting mostly feminine. But I don't think I would ever use an umbrella for people. Maybe "trans" or "queer" in certain situations, but I will always default to the chosen identity of the person.
I really relate to this! I definitely understand why the verbiage would make some people uncomfortable, but in my case at least it feels like a good way to summarize my identity without going into the nuances of how I feel about my gender.
"male socialization" is definitely something I use to describe growing up and also it was something deeply alienating for being queer, NB and neurodivergent. I find it useful describing my own experience in occasion, especially when talking queer men, but I try not to impose it on anyone unless I'm having a conversation around the specific topic.
Given that though, 500% agree on how people tend to use the term. I find it that uh.. Liberals (derogatory) make this mistake more often, something they struggle with alongside using intersectionality correctly.
i do care and thank you
that eyeliner really suits you
It's so refreshing to see the punk style still showing up in culture. I got into punk starting in 1977 right when most gay guys loved disco. I had to be different. Androgeny has always been prevalent in punk rock.
ive always understood (and been taught) sozialization different from your understanding. less of a socialized while being x/y/z, more of a socialized to be x/y/z or socialized in the light of bein presumed and pushed to be x/y/z. i think thats an important diffence
Once again I love all of this! Also in regards to AGAB language, not only do I hate it, I feel I should actively rebel against it tbh. I’m assigning myself female right now and applying it retroactively, eat my ass transmisogynists and bioessentialists, I’m an afab trans woman now.
tbh recently i have started using afab as a par of describing my own gender, but can see where it would hurt others. i use it bc my gender is complicated as someone who is intersex and is fine with that part of me but did go through some parts of transition.i also am legally male via paperwork, went on t, got top surgery, and still identify as lesbian bc that fits me as a label too. gender and sexuality are such fluid things and all vastly different experiences per person and i think we do need to rememebr we should only use certain thigns for us and not put it on others.
Great video and also you just seem like such a lovely and gentle person, I want to drink tea and do crafts with you so bad
I’m just getting tired of labels and language as a whole. People keep reinventing the binary lol.
Recently I’ve been thinking of identifying as a fairy- like how feminine gay men have historically been called. I’m a nonbinary lesbian but I relate to it because of the feminine gender fuckery of the word and also I like fairies.
I hadn’t thought about the male female socialization thing but now that you mention it, yeah I wasn’t really socialized as a girl. I took a diversity studies class in high school last year and when we got to discussing women I remember feeling very detached from it because I really am not a woman. But I also wasn’t a man so it was a pretty interesting experience. The teacher was asking the girls in the class if they’ve ever been catcalled or experienced other forms of discrimination women often experience and I realized I hadn’t really faced any of that like a lot of my classmates had. My parents are leftists and my mom is kind of gender nonconforming herself and they raised my sibling and I in a pretty gender neutral way. It’s very interesting!
OMG your story is kinda similar to mine!! I'm also someone born to a leftist parent, I don't particularly relate to being socialized as either gender, and I've barely, if ever, had experiences that are regarded as universal to growing up as a female, such as the cat calling, or being told I couldn't do or be a certain thing because of my gender.
Yet I always felt self-conscious about opening up about that last part because I don't wanna make it seem like I'm throwing a pity party for not experiencing misogyny? But now that I read about just one person that can relate to that, I realize that this is no pity party, this is just one way in which people can grow up!! And we deserve a space in the conversation too. ^^
@@llegando-al-umbral yeah!! I’m glad you relate, the world has so many more experiences than people tend to talk about and it’s super cool imo!
As a trans nonbinary person, I love the term “trans femme” used for me! Interesting, I never would have thought that people don’t like it. (unless you’re nonbinary. People who want to clump nonbinary people as trans masc/trans femme have issues)
Femby enby.
Ummm there are tons of enbies who are NOT agender and use man and woman and yes especially trans masc and femme if they are enby but not a they/them agender person.
There is NO clear distinction between binary and nonbinary identities. You can’t make a new binary between the two and people who do are wrong and only diving us up more
I might have misunderstood your comment also.
For me personally, I really like calling myself transfem. Man/Woman feels a bit too much like constructed categories that I kind of want to reject as a non-binary person. masculine and feminine make more sense as a fluid spectrum of presentation or energy. I’m not a trans woman, because I don’t feel like I fit into the category of man or woman, but in terms of how I feel and want to be perceived I lean more towards the side of femininity. It’s definitely a very personal thing though and people shouldn’t assume that every non-binary person leans more towards one.
Really appreciated what you said about socialisation! Loving these videos 😊
Kind of related thing that l've been thinking about:
A while age I commented on a post about physical and social transition, talking about how I've always "envied women and afabs who are naturally more hairy and embrace it" and also adding that I don't like the word afab but don't know what else to use here. Someone suggested just using women and fems because the problem people have with body hair + femininity has little to do with biology.
Several weeks later, I'm still thinking about this because it doesnt sit right with me to call anyone whose body hair would be frowned upon a woman or feminine. I say this as someone who is definitely percieved as somewhat feminine, but I don't feel like I myself am feminine. Like, if it were up to me, people would look at my gender expression and see my genderfuckery instead of adding in my secondary sex characteristics and seeing "weird girl". I'm not part of the category of people that I'm taking about in the beginning, but if I was hairier, I would be, and I wouldn't like to have femininity assigned to me, just because people see me that way. This is getting kinda circular at this point but the point of being trans is that I don't like others assigning femininity or femaleness to me, so I don't like the idea of people doing exactly that when discussing experiences like mine.
And I still don't know what to call the group of people I'm referring to 🤷
People whose body hair would be frowned upon because of their percieved gender or sex? Idk man
Not related to the video but what is your favorite diy?
Super interesting discussions!! These are my thoughts (as a binary trans woman):
-I'm not a fan of mtf, even if other trans people call me it. 'Trans woman' is just an easier descriptive.
-I used to identify as non binary/trans fem but I've moved away from it as I am now binary. I can still understand people who use it but again, tread with caution, try not to put people in boxes etc.
-I don't like the term 'male socialisation' at all. I think it can be useful as for me, there were definitely behaviours and attitudes that I was taught from growing up being perceived as a boy but I think that 'female/male socialisation' ends up being used by transphobes to negate trans existence a lot of the time.
-"men and non-men", I see this used in some lesbian spaces of people in people talking about being attracted to non-men and being nmlnm, I am not a lesbian but I am queer and am careful to use this terminology (I don't personally use it, to me it comes across as a touch chronically online).
-"top/bottom" I really don't use this. I find it's actually a huge thing talked about amongst straight cis people as well but I'm cautious to assume someones sexual preferences based on gender presentation because the two have quite literally no relation!!
It was interesting seeing Ashton talk about transmasc and transfem cause I've just never thought about it that way.
Since I first heard of transmasc I just felt attracted to it, I'm nonbinary but transmasc is like I'm saying I'm 'masc' even though I am not masculine, but lean towards to somewhat manhood in my gender spectrum but I'm still not really man. It feels pretty close to the 'nonbinary trans man' except I don't rlly feel confortable calling myself a man
I live for the chuckle that happens when you describe your opinion of discussing language as value neutral, I laughed myself xP
Side note: discussing language is fun as shit because it's wildly subjective and ever changing so no shame in wanting to talk about it!!! It doesn't qualify as a special interest for me, but shit yea it's fun to talk about and explore the impact language and sound has on our perspective and subjective experiences
Side side note note: socialization-wise agree again xD I was incompetent enough at learning and using social cues as a child that I also was just an autistic weirdo floundering to figure out what the hell was supposed to be happening
Also I'm sorry, I'm really bad at listening to things fully and not losing my thoughts so edits come as I continue and process real time with the video
It's good to see your videos because you express a lot of the things I try to explain my feelings about to others, so thank you ^_^ validating af
I would like to talk a bit about my rerlationship with the label queer.
First I need to say that I am not from english speaking country and I heard it only few years back.
I also stumbled upon the word in positive use and in academia. Mostly by people who reclaimed it and proudly used it for themselves. I never had experience of that labes used against me in negative way. And I don't see it often used as such.
But that doesn't apply to everyone. Not evceryone was lucky as me to it not being used against them and I recognise it. That's why I use it for myself and fellow people who also use it and won't force it upon others. I won't be forcing any labels onto others.