genuinely everyone needs to talk more about anti transmasculinity/transandrophobia in their daily life. however best works for whatever context you find yourself in. bring up the murders and violent assaults of trans men. bring up the transmasc suicide rate. bring up historical examples of trans men that don’t fall into the “white passing heterosexual man who isn’t outed until after his death” stereotype. bring up forced pregnancy as a detransition tactic. bring up transmascs in the US having some of the worst health outcomes of all trans groups. point out how transmasc erasure relies on inherently unrealistic and out of touch notions of how misogyny functions. point out how the ways we use to analyze trans experiences under patriarchy are based in cis frameworks. we need to make anti transmasculinity and transandrophobia a more public conversation. we need to openly and loudly contradict the popular narratives of how transmasculinity is seen and treated under patriarchy. we need to introduce people to transmasculine-centered feminism and transunitist theories of transphobia and provide a real grounded criticism of the erasure of anti-transmasculine violence.

anti-transmasculinity is not an accident, it’s not something the patriarchy just stumbles into, the misogyny is not misdirected and it’s not just a pre-transition phenomenon. and most importantly, the idea that the patriarchy just can’t comprehend transmasculinity and doesn’t know what to do with trans men is perhaps the most egregious and widespread example of how erasure works as a cover up for anti-transmasc patriarchal violence by suggesting that it literally does not and cannot happen, and if it does, it cannot be truly systemic or even really on purpose. when trans people and allies do this it is generally not purposeful, but when people continue to promote this narrative, they are genuinely participating in the patriarchy’s cover up of the deaths and lost lives of thousands upon thousands of people. we have to challenge the cissexist consciousness people approach transmasculinity with. we all must speak up!!!!!!!!!!!!

On April 27, 2023, an armed security guard shot and killed a Black trans man named Banko Brown outside of a San Francisco Walgreens.

Brown’s killing sparked outrage. But San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins decided not to charge the security guard who shot him, saying that he acted in self-defense. And just last Friday, Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office announced that it supported that decision. 

This announcement has crushed Banko Brown’s loved ones, including those who say that his killing was an example of the conditions that unhoused transgender people face in San Francisco.

KQED reporter Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez sits down with Brown’s chosen family, to discuss life as a homeless queer person in San Francisco, and Banko’s life before his death. […]

Kazani Kalani Finao: […] We just had amazing, great conversations. Just always sparring with each other, bouncing back with, like, fun ideas. He uses a bright, outgoing apartment. Conversation was always immaculate, always amazing. Of he was a visionary. The struggle not only brought us together, but like I was able to, like, really build a relation with him based on, like, his gifts. He was very creative, his swag, his drip, like he was a trendsetter to me. He’s definitely inspirational to me to like, you know, him, me younger to me, like I always share with him. Like, bro, you give me so much confidence, you give me so much courage for me to be me. He didn’t even know it. But again, he was just natural at that. Whatever I remember of him is his drips, sauce, smile, hugs, goofiness. […]

Xavier Davenport: Banko never had a space of his own. Banko had been in and out of shelter, in and out of people’s homes, sometimes even some people’s own [SROs]. So let’s really break down what that really looks like when you are living in a one room space with another individual. You do not have privacy. Nine times out of ten, being a transmasculine identif[ied] person, especially being black, you have to render some type of services to stay there, whether it be sexual, whether it be drugs. So when we talk about black men and being fetishized, Banko dealt with a lot of that. And so those people would be the people to take him in. […]

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: And can we talk a little bit about Banko in terms of the safety? You know, obviously Banko went through the least safe thing you could imagine with the most terrible outcome you can imagine. What was Banko experiencing in terms of safety during this whole process?

Xavier Davenport: Banko was actually experiencing a lot of issues with violence happening in some of the places that he was trying to stay at. Nobody’s perfect, you know, especially when we’re talking about community, right? People have all kinds of issues and trauma that they are that they’re trying to live through as well. I definitely know that there were a few times where, you know, he was upset from violent experiences that had taken place. And what we all do, right, we get upset, we want to do something about it. So, you know, really trying to calm him down to, like, see a different side of it, for him to just move through the trauma that he was experiencing.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: Yeah. And I don’t know how much you all followed kind of the public discussion of what happened to Banko afterwards. A lot of what I heard was a kind of a questioning of like, what did [Banko]’s trans identity or black trans identity have to do with the shooting, especially when the security guard themselves was was black. I wonder if you could talk a bit about for people who don’t understand what does [Banko]’s black trans identity have to do with what brought him there that day and what happened? […]

Xavier Davenport: […] What what that all has to do with is when you are a young, black, transmasculine identified person, people see that he walks in, he’s dark skinned, he has a hat on a t shirt, he has a little bit of a, like a goatee or, you know, something growing in. And as another black man or being another man, there is a fight for power for who is the man. [F]or Banko, you know, the thought process is, you look like a little boy or you’re trying to pretend to be a little boy. Because let’s be clear, Banko had not had, you know, top surgery. He had not been going through that part of of medical transitioning. So you have a masculine person with visible breast coming at you. You are going to now struggle for your manhood. I’m going to show you who’s boss is something that for people that are even lesbians who are more masculine looking, [t]here is a struggle between men and any form of masculinity that they can see to them isn’t necessarily real.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: So it’s a it’s like a challenge.

Xavier Davenport: It is a challenge. It very much is a challenge. I know this first experience. I have dealt with this my entire life.

JuJu Pikes-Prince: And if I can just highlight that it’s true. And these are cases that’s not getting covered […] of Black Trans Men getting killed. […]

Xavier Davenport: […] I would say what needs to change is the systems in how they construct homelessness. There needs to be shelters specific for transmasculine folks. There needs to be shelters for trans people, period. But trans men need their own space. There needs to be more black, trans masculine leaders. There’s nobody else that can speak about black transness except for black trans people.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: And how about the joy? What is your joy look like right now?

Xavier Davenport: My joy looks like, you know, the rest of the work that I do. The Bay Area Transmasculine calendar is doing a second premiere of a calendar that we started last year with a group of Transmasculine folks to continue to ensure that Transmasculine folks are seen and can receive joy in seeing and having representation of themselves in all bodies, in all forms of trans masculine bodies, and in all forms of trans masculine and different cultures and ethnicities.

Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez: That’s beautiful.

JuJu Pikes-Prince: [F]iguring out the funding, figuring out where money can go to. I definitely believe that there should be more programs for black trans men, even from our community. My [femme queens, my dolls]. We need to serve our [kings], our [trans kings.] [Sorry], I’m getting emotional. And it’s because I’m thinking about the joy part. [L]iving and finding purpose. Picking up someone else’s purpose when they couldn’t find their purpose. And knowing that I’m here and I can also at least set some type of story for someone […] and hopefully help another next person, next generation to continue to do this advocacy work.

tbh my opinion isnt so much that trans men cannot have male privilege. its that the way we understand male privilege is based in cis women, specifically otherwise privileged (esp. otherwise-gendered privilege, i.e gender-conforming/straight/perisex) cis women’s understanding of gender as something static and inherent to who you are, rather than something fluid which is, in part, constructed by society and placed onto you separately in every moment.

can a trans man experience (cis) male privilege? yes. can a trans woman? yes. and so can a cis woman! hell, a femme perisex cis woman with a gender neutral name could if she’s assumed to be a cis man on a resume. male privilege is not an on/off switch. the idea that it is stems from cissexist understandings of male/female as entirely separate and static categories which everyone can and must be understood through. trans people in feminism are expected to constantly defend and deflect accusations of being Privileged Male Oppressors by promising cis perisex women that our experiences are just like theirs! we don’t have any scary opinions that don’t align with their worldview! we swear we won’t ever make them have to reflect on how being cis+perisex has biased them and potentially made their analysis of gender at all inaccurate! trans experiences are only considered valuable to cisfeminism to the extent that they reaffirm what cisfeminists already hold true. thats why they only ever want to talk about a very simplistic narrative around wages pre/post-transition. its extremely unthreatening to cis people because it presents transness in patriarchy as just going from one cis role to another; it doesn’t ask cis feminists to expand their paradigm to include the ways in which trans people are treated as a class and their own complicity in transphobic oppression.

which is why trans men have been getting fucked over by trans-affirmng cisfeminism. because by virtue of having our gender acknowledged, we are expected to forfeit our place in the feminist movement and adopt the role of outsider along cis men*. and its also why trans women and MTX people get fucked over the minute they cannot or refuse to describe their experiences through the one or two approved narratives. cisfeminism cannot tolerate transness-as-transness. it has to be compressed and reduced and diluted into something that fits within a cis-centric framework. we aren’t allowed to have nuanced and intersectional conversations about trans men & other trans folks relationship with male privilege, the things we have to sacrifice to there, how fleeting it can be, the fact that for some of us being read as “biologically male” is actively more dangerous than being read as female… if it isn’t familiar to cis women, then it means you aren’t really oppressed.

*cis men should not be outsiders in feminism either btw but thats another post

This was the standard for trans men when Green came out in the 1980s—they were instructed to disappear and blend in as much as possible, which meant upholding the most limiting stereotypes of their gender. It was radical—in fact, unheard of—to even publicly be a trans man, let alone a man who questioned traditional masculinity and his own place in it. Under those conditions, Green didn’t see a path forward.

The man who changed things, for Green and for the world, was Steve Dain. Dain had been a girls’ gym teacher at a San Francisco Bay Area high school; he lost his job when he transitioned, and chose to fight the termination, thereby becoming a national news story. Dain’s high visibility and eloquence soon made him a mentor for many trans men in the Bay area, including—most famously—Lou Sullivan, founder of FTM International.

To Green, Dain also represented a more livable version of masculinity—one not tied to patriarchal norms, where “becoming a man” didn’t require being a traditional, straight man who purchased “respect” at the cost of a relationship with his own kids. “He did not [transition] because being a man was somehow better than being a woman, but because it was the only thing he could do to be himself,” Green wrote in Visible Man. “It was about telling the truth, not about hiding.”

— How Jamison Green’s visibility paved the way for a generation of trans men by Jude Ellison S. Doyle (emphasis mine)

Rocco Kayiatos started to realize that he was trans as a teenager. It was 1999 or early 2000, he says, and Google didn’t really exist: “I remember searching on Ask Jeeves for literally anything related to trans men.” 

He was living in San Francisco, and was part of the queer poetry scene, having toured with Sister Spit; he was able to meet trans people that way, and the poet Max Wolf Valerio became a friend. Still, Kayiatos says, he struggled to put himself together: “The reaction that I got was really rough,” he recalls. “I felt like I couldn’t really be a man, one, because of insecurity around my own transness, but then two, because culturally, I got so much pushback from people that I loved about how shitty men were and why would I ‘want,’ quote unquote, to be a man.” The trans men he read often seemed to be guilty or defensive: “I never read a book by a trans guy about their experience that wasn’t somehow written in a way that’s like, almost an apology for being a man.” 

Then he read Green’s memoir. “It’s just the most profoundly gentle and loving and compassionate offering to healing masculinity, that’s so timeless,” Kayiatos says. “It’s still relevant and advanced in the present day … for me, when people are listing the must-reads about transmasculine people, places or things, if they don’t start with James’s book, I just think, ‘You missed it.’ Because his book is the starting point.” 

— How Jamison Green’s visibility paved the way for a generation of trans men by Jude Ellison S. Doyle (emphasis mine)

As Green describes it, the WPATH revision effort was being protested by trans men, who noted that the guidelines were only written to cover trans women’s medical care. Green was part of the crowd of protesters, and he was also a recognizable face, which led to him being selected to advise the board pretty much by fiat. After the protesters had beaten down the doors and charged the room where the WPATH committee was meeting, Green says, “The guy who was in charge of the revision effort pointed at me in the audience and said, ‘All right, you can look at the draft over and give us some feedback.’ Me? I wasn’t even a member of the organization.”

Nonetheless, Green went over the proposed guidelines with a group of trans men, and wrote a 12-page document giving feedback on things like hysterectomy (which trans men sometimes require for medical reasons other than gender, but which doctors could withhold simply because they were trans). He stayed up for 24 hours straight to meet the deadline. When the WPATH revision came out, it contained none of his suggestions, but it did have his name on the front— essentially, trying to avoid activist critique by saying that a trans man had looked at it. 

In 1999, when the WPATH performed its next round of revisions, Green’s changes were incorporated, but his name was nowhere to be found. “Did I get any credit for that?” Green says, sounding audibly frustrated, before biting it back. “You know, that’s okay. The most important thing was to get these changes.” 

— How Jamison Green’s visibility paved the way for a generation of trans men by Jude Ellison S. Doyle (emphasis mine)

from steroidbeyonce on Instagram:

Chevy Hill, a 35 year old Black Trans man, was murdered in Atlanta. As of last night I could not find any reports about Chevy’s death . This morning I could only find one. So often, when we talk about trans death especially amongst trans masc people, the death of Black trans masc people goes unreported. Likewise, the violence and abuse that Black trans masc people experience is frequently overlooked or minimized under the misconception that our bodies are no longer at risk because we have medically transitioned. It is important that we uplift Chevy and his story to bring awareness about his life & who he was. Rest in power Righteous Torrence “Chevy” Hill.

another black trans man was murdered on Thursday, February 29, 2024. his name Righteous Torrence “Chevy” Hill. we currently do not know any details other than that he was murdered.

his friend posted two days ago on instagram:

our beautiful black trans brother, 35 year old Righteous Torrence “Chevy” Hill, was murdered in Atlanta, GA this weekend.

he went by his nickname ‘Chevy’. he was originally from Macon, GA. he owned Evollusion, which is a black/queer owned LGBTQ+ salon in Atlanta that provided and dedicated full service to specializing in hair, nails, barbering and makeup. growing up as young black queer boys/kids , the barbershop experience can sometimes be a tricky space to occupy, this was something that Chevy understood and wanted to cultivate a space of safety where you can also get the affirming look and style you want, and he did exactly that.

Chevy was a beloved son, brother, partner, and father.

one of his last posts that had a photo of himself said :

“if you truly know me, you know i am a humble, modest, private man, that i love my community, i have the love of God in me and will give the shirt off my back to any soul in need, also i never post pictures of myself, i never give myself credit, that stops today, i am my legacy!”

(a close friend of Chevy asked if i could share more then one photo of Chevy, since he never posted photos of himself and in recent years he got the confidence to want to share more photos and now he won’t get the chance to)

Chevy, hey king, hey brother, hey angel, thank you for everything, i lové you, we lové you, i’m so sorry. there are a lot of photographers in heaven who will be able to photograph you as the glorious black trans angel that you are.

there will be a homegoing service/memorial for our brother