Tbh – I’m kinda not into MtF or FtM as terminology … Like I wasn’t a Male ever – I just had a whole world mistakenly telling me I was, while blocking access to things that would have let me figure out otherwise.
Idk – I just feel like it reinforces this very problematic bio…
Really? I don’t know what it’s like to be a Man. I know what it’s like for other people to mistakenly think & behave as if I was a man, and I know what it’s like to be a girl whose body had a hormonal imbalance & developed atypically.
But I’ve always had a lot of discomfort of masculinity, and I don’t really feel like I know what it’s like to be a man. Did I have some (a lot) of the same social experiences? Yeah, but still that seems different to me.
I guess I see your point about it being a useful broader communicational tool for people who are ignorant of gender id and trans stuff, but at the same time it feels to me like it’s saying to me “reinforce my dead gender id, reinforce my dead name … I’m a male before I’m a woman. I was male first & that’s significant”
Like I’ve never been a male – I didn’t become trans … we just all got it wrong for 26 years
Here’s the issue:
I was in the boy scouts. I may have been uncomfortable with the brand of masculinity, but I was undoubtedly trained to be masculine. I was a husband in a relationship that definitely tried to enforce gender roles I wasn’t happy with.
You can be taught things you don’t like or identify with and still understand them. I know how you’d build a Totalitarianism, doesn’t mean I have to like the idea or identify as a totalitarianist.
And again, my experience, I’ve played the part of a man, even if it was wrong.
And yeah, part of that is because my family was wrong about gender issues, and I was wrong because I didn’t know better.
I agree there’s problems, but I don’t feel the words are the issue, the culture is.
I feel as though some of this is coming from the “I always knew” trans narrative, which doesn’t apply to everyone! Like myself, for instance. I’d identify is FtX rather than FtM, but that F is definitely something that’s true for me. I was a girl when I was a kid! I was completely comfortable with my gender and identity and body up until puberty or thereabouts.
So for those of us who didn’t “always know” we were trans, it’s a useful thing to say. And it seems to me that people like that, who didn’t “always know” something wasn’t meshing, get overlooked, invalidated, and erased a lot, especially in mainstream discussions.
yeah i agree with Pi in a lot of ways.
I feel like with non-binary genders in particular its a bit harder to “always know” too because when i was little i didnt know that nonbinary was a thing, let alone something i could be, so my weird feelings with gender manifested as me being a tomboy and a bad case of not-like-other-girls syndrome.
was i always nonbinary*? looking back, the answer is probably yes. But back then i didnt know that! So i spent half the time trying my hardest to act like what i thought a girl should be and feeling like a liar when i did, and the other half feeling bitter and angry and insisting i wasn’t really a girl.
the point is, different people have different experiences. And although i agree that you shouldn’t ASSUME that some is FtM/MtF and i personally like afab and amab better, i dont think that the existence of the terms FtM/MtF/FtX/etc. are inherently bad either!
ugh 