Debunking Transgender Myths (by a Transmasc and Non-binary Person)
I was hoping to have this up for Pride, but as Peachkka says, “Pride all year, bitch, it ain’t just June”, so I’m perfectly on time. This has definitely been written about before, but most of the anti-transgender laws and regulations here in the US come from folks who are misinformed or willfully ignorant and willing to believe silly myths about us. I haven’t personally seen many of these written by transmasc folks, but that doesn’t mean anything, I miss a LOT and since I grew up in the southeast of the US my education was more indoctrination and propagandizing rather than actual learning of facts.
Side note: I recently finished Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the US. Didn’t think it was possible for me to be more radicalized but I was WRONG! Now I’m reading Transgender History by Susan Stryker from 2017 or 19, because even the PEOPLE’S HISTORY had not ONE MENTION of transgender folks at all. He even wrote about Stonewall, saying it was a protest led by “gay men”. It was not. It was a RIOT led by Black and brown transwomen, who still get erased from our histories even now. If you don’t already know who Marsha P Johnson and Silvia Rivera are, please do some self-educating — and maybe beyond Stonewall? They actually organized a really cool socialist house and home for QT youth in NYC.
Myth 1: If you don’t talk about transgender people or issues to children, they won’t have the language for it, and then they won’t BE transgender or gender non-conforming.
Truth 1: I’m here to tell you personally this one is so much bull honkey, as my Ma would have said (she hated cursing, haha). On a more serious note, though, this was my entire childhood. “If we don’t mention it it won’t happen” kind of thing.
Well, it happened. I came out queer as fuck, transmasc and non-binary, noetisexual (same wavelength) and demisexual (must have a deep connection with someone to get physical). The only thing that came out as a result of not having the language to describe myself was a massive amount of confusion and wrath that has manifested in lots of interesting and nasty ways throughout my life.
I tried to come out to my mom as bisexual when I was 16. I was desperate for my QT self to be seen by someone, anyone. I preferred it be someone I trusted and loved, and even with her issues, my mom was first on the list. I told her I was bisexual, because that was the one that sounded safest — maybe I’ll still end up with some dude, Ma!
It didn’t matter.
“What did we do WRONG?” she replied, bursting into tears. I’ve written about this a bit here so I won’t go further, but that should make it obvious that they were doing everything they could to make sure I was “normal” and that being my QT self was “wrong”.
Another fun thing from my family of origin: when I told my only blood brother, only sibling, that the county we grew up in was banning DICTIONARIES off the shelves, his response was, “Well they just want second graders reading porn now.”
WHAT? Oh, right, because in the southeast knowing we exist is porn. WHY ARE YOU PEOPLE SO OBSESSED WITH OUR PRIVATE PARTS?
There is so much more to being 2SPLGBTQIA+ than what is in whose pants and what you do with what’s there. The fact that the cis straight white right wing hets equate us with nothing but sex and genitals says more about THEM than it does about US. So who are the fucking groomers? Because when I was 19 I dated a 31 year old man who was DEFINITELY too old for me… and no one around me said a single word about it. He was the first to rape me, too. When I complained that it hurt me and I wanted him to stop (pretty sure I have undiagnosed vaginismus) he declined to stop. Yeah. He was Deaf and I was scared to tell anyone. I was scared to be housless, too, which is part of why I stayed in the closet so long and then retreated to the depths of it at 16. It was protection in the dark.
So yeah. Give kids the language and the tools to understand who they are early. It isn’t pornography to teach children that gay and intersex and trans people exist, and if you think so… EW.
Myth 2: All trans people want a complete binary sex change.
Truth 2: I am transmasculine and non-binary. Yes, we exist. I never wanted tits but I thought if I finally had them I would feel like a woman (HA nope). I wanted top surgery before I knew the name for it but thought it was a pipe dream until moving up here. I have never in my life wanted to have a penis, though, or to change much about my bottom. When I learned about bottom growth (look it up if you don’t know but realize your search WILL be NSFW), I thought that was pretty much perfect for me. So this myth did me immense personal harm because I thought I couldn’t possibly be transgender, because all transgender people were either transitioning to be MEN or WOMEN because we all know there are only two… genders… wait
Myth 3: All trans people are either transmen or transwomen (erasure of transmasc/transfemme and non-binary trans folks)
Truth 3: Speaking of myths that do so much harm, there are many, many genders. Gender is a construct and an expression that we came up with as humans. Let people express themselves how they want. As long as it helps them and harms no one, WHICH IS THE CASE, let people dress and look how they want to fucking look Mother damn it.
Myth 4: Gender Affirming Care automatically means surgery
Truth 4: Gender Affirming Care means so much more than a surgical physical change. There are so many ways to care about someone and affirm their gender, and many of them aren’t difficult to do. For instance, you can respect someone’s pronouns and use the ones they choose to go by without complaining about how difficult neopronouns and the singular they/them is for you to grasp. Just do it. The more you do it, the more natural and easy it becomes. Are you afraid of making a mistake? SO ARE WE. We do it all the time!! We just apologize and MOVE the ENTIRE fuck ON.
Other things you can do to affirm someone’s gender — if a femme person is growing out their hair, go on a shopping spree for barettes and scrunchies and brushes and butterfly clips. If a non-binary person is trying to make their wardrobe more genderqueer, offer to take them to queer clothing swaps. If a person is growing a beard as part of their gender expression but is having skin trouble, maybe help them pick out a beard oil and/or moisturizer?
Would you rather learn or be afraid? Do your QT neighbors matter to you? Then CARE about their GENDER rather than ignoring what they are going through. And by the way, who says you can’t learn WHILE you’re afraid?
Myth 5: Being transgender automatically makes you homosexual.
Truth 5: I am transmasc, non-binary, demisexual and noetisexual. I am not a gay transman, though they definitely exist. For people asking, if you were just going to date men anyway, why transition? are completely missing the point. Gender and sexuality are NOT the same thing and never have been.
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Myth 6: Why is everyone suddenly trans and queer?
Truth 6: This is just not true. People have always been transgender. People have always been queer. Just like there aren’t “all of a sudden” more autistic people or people with ADHD — the diagnosis statistics changed. People have NOT always been able to live out loud and proud of who they are in every aspect of their lives, however. That definitely includes neurodivergent people.
For instance, when I tried to come out as non-binary to my brother of origin, he snapped back at me, “Why y’all gotta be so LOUD about it?”
The rejection sensitive dysphoric reaction I had from my AuDHD caused me to hit such deep burnout and depression that I ended up going inpatient on and off for the next six months. I wasn’t trying to be loud. I was trying to tell you something important, but once again, you made it about you instead of me.
If you find yourself thinking, “where did all these trans and queer people come from?” Perhaps question why your view of the world kept you from seeing PEOPLE WHO HAVE ALWAYS EXISTED and who have ALWAYS been a part of this world. We aren’t going anywhere. Your made up self-righteous gods don’t scare us and we’re tired of the pedo elite hunting us down to take the pressure off of their reprehensible selves. We all know billionaires are what shouldn’t exist, not trans people. They are the ones ruining the world with their greed and selfishness.
We can be different. We can DO different. Capitalism is not the only answer, let’s queer this UP.
Myth 7: Social pressure can make a kid transgender.
Truth 7: Nope, no way. Social pressure make someone choose to be possibly reviled and thrown out by their family, fired from jobs, scared to go to the bathroom in public, afraid to ask for gender affirming care, have their very own government come after them like a pack of hellhounds for having to pee while existing in the world? To have so-called holy places turn against you, to have so-called friends and family hurl awful insults at you, up to and including that you’ll burn in a made up horror place just for being a different gender than they expect or understand? To have gender dysphoria/and/or dysmorhpia so badly that you dream of cutting off or greatly modifying body parts in a world that still mostly sees doing that and being transgender as a mental illness?
Who would choose this?
Being trans is not a mental illness and never has been. This has been a handy way to infantilize transgender people and take away their agency and self-determination. We are full and complete humans in our own rights, and our gender or sexuality shouldn’t determine whether we can exercise our agency.
Myth 8: All transmen are confused butch lesbians who have been fooled by the patriarchy into betraying womanhood or some other terfy nonsense. There is also a myth of male privilege — that as soon as someone transitions to male that they are afforded all the privileges that appearing cisgender heterosexual white males get.
Truth 8: That privilege only really exists for appearing to be white binary looking “passing” transmen. Black and brown transmen and non-binary people suffer from high erasure and still have to be super careful about how they move through the world, much more than those who pass as white.
Myth 9: We’re all antagonistic and waiting for a single episode of misgendering to pounce.
Truth 9: We’re all absolutely fucking exhausted and have no more patience left to be misgendered over and over again by the same people/person when it can actively cause harm.
Myth 10: We are Schrodinger’s transfolk. Either the eternal boogeymen waiting to pounce from every bush to expose your children to transness and corrupt them, or we’re treated as invisible because we (especially transmen) don’t exist even when we’re standing right in front of someone.
Truth 10: Here it is, the big huge secret that they don’t want you to know — we’re just people. We’re just people who want to live our lives free as who we are in our hearts, and to be allowed free agency over our bodies just like white cis men get. Like everyone SHOULD get.
If this article sounds overly antagonistic or needling, I am not meaning it to be. I am AuDHD with CPTSD as well as an anxiety disorder, and I am also trans and queer. 3 marks against me — add in that I was indoctrinated by MAGA and betrayed them by moving to Seattle and learning self-advocacy as well as becoming an accidental activist when Vee and I spent our first almost 18 months in the PNW houseless? Oh and I’m an educated anarchist college dropout as well as a pagan devotee of the Morrigan and the Dagda?
Well, how many marks can I get? Ha. I’m tired, y’all. Vee and I have finally managed to carve out a safe home from this insane society, and like Chinchilla says, we just wanna lie low and live lavish (lavish = a 1 bedroom apartment with water and enough to feed ourselves and our furbabies… maybe free healthcare), but that has never been part of the Richie Riches’ plans. That’s why we’re STILL fighting.
One last thing to think about — every time you pass on misinformation or myths about transfolks, you are a dupe playing right into their hands. Their playbook is to divide us further so they can rob us of what little we have left. When they’ve come for all of us, who do you think will be running the machines at gunpoint for them? Yep, you poor (I mean literal as in asset and money poor) cisgender heterosexual white folks. Are we going to let them do this, or will we finally realize we’re the 99% for a reason? THERE’S MORE OF US. Always has been, always will be.
It’s time to stop the eternal talk and start walking. Together.
(Special thanks to Daniel, Jay and Nico, my wonderful siblings ❤)
