Lemmy's Transmasculine Problem

okasen, 1 month ago

Part of the issue could be in overlap of identities. I could have identified myself as transmasc on the poll, but I chose nonbinary instead. Both are true most days, anyways.

Borger, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Fwiw I’m a trans man and I also work in tech lol. I didn’t see the survey. I’m stealth irl and don’t spend much time on trans communities/subs online either. I think this might be fairly common

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago

Hello fellow trans man 👋. Always good to see another on here.

Kit, 1 month ago

I’m a binary transdude, and I think the problem is that transmen tend to leave trans spaces once they have achieved their transition goals. They’re more likely to be stealth irl, too. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having an imbalance of gender identities in this space, and I don’t think that steps need to be taken to correct it. It’s pretty chill as is.

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

As the other checks notes one of three other binary trans men on here, I will say I feel the lack of transmasculine people on here. This community isn’t quite as bad because it’s not specific to that, but even the answers to questions are usually from transfemmes and there’s nothing wrong with that but they aren’t as relatable to me and it makes it harder to understand what some widely held transmasculine experiences are.

c/FTM on the other hand? There’s hardly any active users on it, and a lot of the active ones are transfems trying to be supportive. It’s a big deal to me because it’s one of the few places on the Internet where I feel safe and able to be open about my transness. The problem is there’s no major place where I can ask questions and get advice and support for my trans man specific problems.

You’re right, trans men are definitely more likely to live stealth and have it a lot easier in that regard. I’m in the beginning stages of medically transitioning which is why I seek out support on here. Even if most trans men move on (which I’m sure there there are a lot that do want to stay in trans spaces), it’s still important to have a place where we can go to get advice and support from other trans men while going through the process.

Kit, 1 month ago

Sounds like c/FTM needs to adjust their rules to allow posts to request answers only from transmen

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago

Honestly it’s not much of a problem to me. I mentioned it not because I’m annoyed at the transfem people, but annoyed at the lack of transmasculine people. I have gotten some genuinely helpful answers from transfems on there. I’m hoping to try and recruit some more transmascs from other platforms onto here and post more on the community.

P.s. Are you interested in helping me mod FTM? Could really use another transmasc mod

ada, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

One thing I will suggest is to use the fact that you are the mod of one of the largest trans communities on lemmy to be absolutely biased towards content that encourages and appeals to trans masc folk. Stick a link to the trans masc communities in the side bar. Make posts about those communities and pin them.

Make posts with “CW: Assumes reader is trans masc”. Put on trans masc mods. Make a weekly sticky post “Trans masc weekly chat - top level posts from trans masc folk only” etc.

The bias towards trans fem folk is common in a lot of social media spaces, and in my experience, one of the most effective ways of dealing with it is by explicitly making space for trans masc folk, and asking trans fem folk to take a back seat when needed.

You can’t easily draw more trans masc folk to lemmy, but what you can do is make the guys that are here feel like they have explicit support and spaces where they won’t get drowned out so they hang around longer. And over time, that changes the community to be more balanced. Feel free to use your position to create those opportunities. You have my explicit support to do so!

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago

That is some very good advice. Thank you ada

Crow, 1 month ago

Well, most of the transmen I know are barely online in the first place, so even less would be on Lemmy specifically

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago

It sounds like that’s specifically the trans men that you know, not a majority. I know plenty of trans men who are chronically online.

dandelion, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

I don’t think anyone is arguing transmasc presence shouldn’t be encouraged, but it is also my perception that the ratio of chronically online transfems is significantly higher than transmascs. And furthermore, in trans spaces in general I also see this imbalanced ratio, for example at my local trans support group there might be one or two transmasc folks at most, transfems are more likely to show up to the support group and in much larger numbers (like 1 transmasc to 10 transfems).

I am not entirely sure why this is, either. It’s especially puzzling because as I understand it there actually are equal numbers of trans men and trans women, so it seems that trans men are less present in trans spaces but not fewer in number overall.

I’m not sure my speculations as to why are going to be accurate or helpful, but I am wondering if you have any ideas as to why this disparity exists (on Lemmy or elsewhere)? Being a (trans) man can be quite lonely and I personally would like to see more transmasc presence in trans spaces.

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago

Dang it…I accidentally deleted my comment. Anyway I was saying that I think age plays a role in irl queer spaces. I notice a lot of younger transmasculine folks in society and trans spaces than older (though part of that is a bias in the ones that are visibly trans and not, and older ones are less likely to be as visibly trans). Maybe there’s more transmasculine gen zers or transmasculine gen zers feel able to be more open about their transness. I personally have met many more transmasc than transfem people irl, but every single one of them was gen z.

As somebody else mentioned, it’s relatively easy to be stealth as a trans man especially once on T. Also I have heard a lot of transmasculine people, especially binary trans men who pass and especially straight binary trans men who pass say that many irl queer spaces are unwelcoming or outright hostile to them because of a general distrust of men and masculinity. Not sure if that would apply to online queer spaces, tho.

And you’re right, there is the isolating aspect of being a trans man. Being treated as a man by society is lonely. You’re expected to be stoic and tough stuff out. Friendships between men are a lot less focused on emotional support than between women. Obviously, this will not always be true but it’s something I’ve noticed.

dandelion, 1 month ago

Hmm, the IRL trans spaces I am a part of like the support group tend to be more gen y than gen z, so if you’re right about the age thing it’s at least consistent with what I’m seeing. However, it doesn’t explain why there seems to be such a dearth of transmasc folks online where you would think gen z would be more common. Maybe gen z are more likely to be on tiktok than reddit, and reddit happens to be where the trans community orbits right now?

One of my speculations was that being a trans man doesn’t have the same challenges as for trans women, and those differences might explain the differences in approach to community. I don’t in any way want to imply trans men have it easy, but it does seem like trans men might be able to integrate into cis society more easily for various reasons, and to that end they might be more likely to go stealth and not need to stick around in trans groups (which could expose their trans status, and is a risk probably not worth taking for many trans men). I think the same thing is true of trans women, btw - I don’t see a lot of stealth trans women in the support groups IRL, though I do see many passing trans women online (at least photos of them, which I think are upvoted higher on reddit than less-passing photos).

Somewhat random, but I have personally met several trans men attorneys and seen on TV trans men attorneys, usually attorneys who are fighting for trans rights. Not sure what to make of that and it could be irrelevant or sampling bias (it’s a small subset, maybe 3 - 4 people), but I certainly noticed.

If trans men transition and integrate more easily I would guess it relates to gender disparities among cis people, and the way gender markers are weighted in our society, e.g. a beard and a deep voice both come easily with T and they weigh more heavily when “gendering” someone (compared to feminine markers do on a trans woman). For trans women with a deep voice and a beard shadow it might be really hard to overcome the “weight” of those gender markers to appear as a woman to most people (even if they have large breasts, for example), and there is a greater fragility in their womanhood than there might be for trans men (not to imply trans men don’t also experience similar struggles, uncertainty, etc.).

There is greater fragility in women’s gender even for cis women compared to for men (though again, many cis men experience insecurity in their gender). The gender is more violently and strictly enforced for women than for men, and men who cross over into womanhood are more stigmatized.

Of course what is not getting talked about here are transmasc folks who don’t take T, or of the many instances where trans men have struggled immensely and been killed for who they are. I don’t think I can repeat enough that trans men are subject to similar struggles and violence as trans women even if the ways those manifest might look a little different.

That said, I don’t feel confident in my speculation - I don’t actually know enough and I’m going off of what I’ve seen and what I’ve read about gender from Julia Serano and others. I would prefer something more empirical and tested.

Either way, I wonder what pragmatic steps we can take to create a space that is more inviting to trans men and transmasc folks. We need them, online and IRL.

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago

You bring some good points, and I agree with most everything but the fragility of womanhood. There is a much greater tolerance for gender variance in women than men. You don’t have to worry about “looking gay” or “being a sissy” as much as you do as a dude. Now, given this is toxic masculinity and it’s not healthy at all, but it is a common thing to come across in this day and age (at least where I’m from).

I had to fight tooth and nail just to be seen as a lesbian before I knew trans people existed and that I was one. I wanted people to acknowledge my queerness so badly and it felt like no one would take me seriously and would always say “it’s just a phase.” That is to say, while gender is often violently enforced for people coming into feminity, people trying to leave it are often infantalized and not taken seriously because of it. Part of it too is cultural. Here in the deep south, there’s a lot of machismo and toxic masculinity and finding someone who deviates from that is much harder to find than for women. You’re right that it’s much more stigmatized for AMABs to be queer. My point is that I think there’s equal fragility for each gender but in different ways.

dandelion, 1 month ago

Hm, I think I hard disagree that gender variance is tolerated more in women than men.

Even feminine looking women feel insecure in their gender, and rates of body dysmorphia are empirically higher in women than in men. Women often feel they have to “put on their face” using makeup and aren’t themselves or recognizable without makeup, whereas men are not expected to do anything to be “themselves”. Being a man is just a default, and as long as you have certain minimal gender traits (like a deep enough voice, a beard, etc.) you’re easily granted manhood. I’m primarily looking at this in cis folks since I think binary trans folks during transition are by definition not stable in their gender or haven’t “achieved” their desired gender yet (and non-binary presenting folks are forever ambiguous and left between genders).

Your experience of transitioning and the very real fragility you experienced (and many men both cis and trans experience) is not meant to be disregarded by discussing the severe insecurity and fragility of gender for women, in fact I know a lot of what you have experienced from being raised a boy and having a much delayed and relatively weak puberty. I wasn’t recognized in my manhood and constantly felt insecure in my gender as people expected me to be a man.

I also live in the deep south and was raised here, so the masculinity here is as you mention of a certain intense quality. Men are more fragile here and more likely to police other men in their gender, it’s true. Even as an adult living as a man it became a kind of sore point when interacting with certain kinds of men. I remember one time I was pleading with a line worker who was shutting off my internet to leave it on (I was in the middle of hosting a meeting and couldn’t get disconnected). The line worker after ignoring me and disconnecting my internet referred to me as a boy, which I experienced as a kind of dehumanizing refusal to recognize me as a man, and a statement that created a stark hierarchy. It was not just that I wasn’t a “man”, he was also implying I wasn’t an adult in his eyes, even though I had finished whatever male puberty I was going to have at that point and was adult by any other measure. I was a bit shaken by that experience, as those kinds of experiences were more common when I was younger, and for the most part adults were more mature and less likely to treat me that way. So I started growing out my beard as a safety measure (and as a form of self-neglect, and as a way to hide my face), and when city workers like that would show up I would crawl into overalls and boots and put on my best man-drag. I didn’t get confused for a boy after that.

So I agree that the fragility is very much there for men, and that the way it works is different for men and women. Still, I think it’s typical for cis women to work much harder for their gender than men, and it’s just empirical that women experience more insecurity and fragility in the gendered expectations. I think this stems from the fact we live in a patriarchal society where men hold a privileged position.

Here is a source about the body insecurities in men vs women:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16801740/

It’s hard to properly compare the ways gender are enforced, especially when they can be so different. So I will just reiterate what you have said: there is fragility and enforcement in both genders, even if I think it’s well established that fragility is more stark for women in this society than for men. It’s true in different subcultures the shape of gender enforcement is different, and this is also just ignoring the obvious difficulties faced by any trans person whether men or women.

I know trans men struggle, I just don’t know why they don’t show up to support groups and participate in trans culture online and IRL.

doubtingtammy, 1 month ago

IMO this is because Lemmy is still mostly targeted at techy/open source people. Trans women have already created their own communities/subculture in this world (‘programmer socks’ etc). But there’s not that critical mass of trans men programmers to make a bustling community here.

Lemmy is probably also very white.

So we need more diverse topics to attract a more diverse audience. Right now, the only people signing up for Lemmy are people who have opinions about Internet protocols.

BarrelAgedBoredom, 1 month ago

I’m not techy at all but after 8 or 9 months of lemmy I just bought an old Thinkpad and I’ll be putting Linux on it when it gets here next week. Y’all are contagious lol

TheRealLinga, 1 month ago

I don’t have an opinion about internet thingies!

5714, 1 month ago

How did you end up here?

Szyler, 1 month ago

Not op, but also barely know how IP works. Fuck reddit threads I agreed with during the blackout sent me here after they killed 3rd party apps. I like it here so I stayed. The simpler Linux memes are funny :)

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago

What?

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago

I wonder if other instances such as slrpnk.net would have more trans men. I hope we can figure out a way to attract non-programmers on here. Need a script that explains the concept of Lemmy in laymen’s terms.

I definitely wanna do an analysis of ethnicity on here, although I’ll likely need to do that on meta since it’s not directly related to being trans and people are probably getting tired of all the graphs and surveys by now.

Caitlyynn, 1 month ago

Yea I’ve tried plenty times already, but even tech savy ppl who don’t care about privacy are hard to convince to come on lemmy. Reddit’s bad reputaion doesn’t help either and a lot of ppl are far too tech lazy to move over here.

Atlas_, 1 month ago

+1 - this survey is measuring existing demographics, not suitability (although if there are issues there we should definitely flag+fix them). I would expect the numbers for users signing up for Lemmy to be more similar than different.

What if we pooled a little bit of money and bought targeted ads? If 20 or 100 signups would be meaningful those numbers aren’t so expensive to buy and would then give us much more direct signal on whether trans men are bouncing off the community.

ChaoticNeutralCzech, 1 month ago

Willingness to answer surveys is a trait inherited via the Y chromosome, apparently /s

TheCoolerMia, 1 month ago

Recommend this community to transmascs or on transmasc communities and make posts that will attract them! :3 The problem as always would be getting new people to make a lemmy account and understand how the fediverse works but they might like Blahaj Lemmy!

Also, anyone on the fediverse could participate on that poll, I’m 100% sure there wouldn’t have been THAT many cis people if participation was somehow exclusive to people from this community, if u ask a question about identity everyone that sees it will feel the urge to answer it :p

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago

Right…I’m still struggling to figure out how to make a post that will attract transmascs and explain Lemmy in a comprehensible way. I know that there are a lot of transmascs on Tumblr but I don’t often hang around in those circles on there and don’t use Tumblr that often. The main place that I used to hang out in transmasc circles was on Reddit. I still haven’t gotten around to deleting my reddit account, and I feel guilty for making a post on there but I might could make one last one…if anybody wants to help out in helping me formulate an effective post to put on there that would be greatly appreciated. We could potentially get a fair amount of new people if done properly.

I definitely think that it got leaked to all for some people, but it does sound like there are a lot of allies that lurk on here. Anyhow, it did give a good estimate of the demographics of trans and nonbinary people if you ignore the cis aspect of the survey.

TheCoolerMia, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

I think my bf has a tumblr account so maybe I could ask him if he’d like to help! :3 but he also has bad memories from that platform so maybe he wont

Yeah I guess people that r already in a transmasc community might not feel like going to another >v< but I think some would like to join if u mention we need to make the difference between transfems and transmascs more balanced and give them clear enough instructions on how to join, like recommending them Blahaj while telling them they can join through other servers and where to find those! idk how to help with that rn but I’d love to :>

and yeah agreed, it was an interesting survey! :3

edit: oh and by “make posts that will attract them” I also meant posts in this community that would be useful/interesting/etc for transmascs

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

That would be a huge help to do that. Tumblr is a good place to do some recruiting right now because a.) there are a lot of terfs and transphobia and it isn’t hard to find and b.) I’ve heard that anything mentioning trans people gets flagged as NSFW and is repressed in the algorithm. It would be a good appeal for people to know that it’s a moderated community and we have a no tolerance policy for transphobia and TERF dog whistles.

Mentioning mobile third party readers would be a big appeal too since many Tumblr users use the app on their phone.

TheCoolerMia, 1 month ago

Damn thats crazy o.O wouldn’t have expected that from a big social media platform today but tbf thats mainly cuz my bf told me it had poor to none moderation so I imagined it being mostly anarchy x3

Btw he said that being amab he feels hesitant to make that post cuz he doesnt know how people will react and says theres some pretty unchill people there :< (he’s told me before about people being major assholes to him for using the trans label being a catboy)

jsomae, 1 month ago

That’s right, there are more CIS WOMEN on a TRANS community than binary trans men or transmasculine people alone.

There are also more cis men than transfeminine people, so this isn’t surprising. Bayes theorem explains this well.

I said this in the other thread, but perhaps Lemmy has an AFAB problem, rather. Maybe there’s some particular trait attained in youth that boys are more likely to get which is a prerequisite for getting into lemmy later

Sop, 1 month ago

Reddit was a wildly sexist place and most lemmy communities are too. So it’s not a surprise that afabs are not really drawn to this place.

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago

The main reason why I mentioned cis women in particular is because Lemmy is known to have such a low percentage of them, so the fact that there’s more on here than trans men or transmasculine enbies alone on a trans community is baffling to me.

Lemmy does seem to have an AFAB problem and my current theroy is that AMABs are usually pushed into the CS and related fields at a young age much more than AFABS. Lemmy is currently made up of a large percentage of people in the CS field right now. That could change in the future if the word is spread about it.

jsomae, 1 month ago

that’s my theory too. I am afab but I have a brother who got me interested in CS at a young age.

Perhaps reddit also has an AFAB problem. Or rather, the effect you’re thinking of that makes cis women rare here applies equally to other afabs.

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago

I pretty much stumbled into Lemmy. I’m not a programmer but have always been tech savvy and grew up with the Internet. I used reddit a lot because I liked being in a majority male space. Even when I was an egg, it would give me a rush of euphoria when people automatically assumed I was a dude on Reddit. I was one of the people who jumped ship from Reddit when all the API stuff went down.

Reddit doesn’t seem like it’s got as bad of an AFAB problem as it used to. When I left it wasn’t uncommon for people to mention if they were a woman and wasn’t as taboo from the looks of it. The trans spaces were pretty big and active. I’m sure the demographics are still slightly skewed but they’re certainly not as bad as they were six years ago when I’d first joined.

jsomae, 1 month ago

I am happy to hear you are enjoying lemmy.

But I think we might be mincing words here with “problem.”

problem: there are too few AFAB people in the space problem: the space is unwelcoming to AFAB people

Reddit may not be (excessively) misogynistic (or transmisandric), but fewer AFAB are on reddit than we would have liked. Lemmy I think is this but even more extreme.

anonymous111, 1 month ago

Cis here. There isnt much content on Lemmy, compared to reddit.

I don’t participate in this community but I do see a lot of this instances posts on ‘All’.

You can see that as a con, as you’ve pointed out, or as a plus, you’ve got reach outside of your community.

You may be better off with a private invite only community of some sort. I’m not sure if that is possible with Lemmy, it might be.

Sop, 1 month ago

Sexism is somewhat of a regular occurrence on 196 and personally that really throws me off. I report sexist memes but mods there do not seem to care as the posts are never removed.

I think trans men are better at recognising sexism for obvious reasons than cis men and I think that as long as it’s a regular occurrence on the biggest community of this instance it will be a reason why some trans men (and cis women for that matter) decide not to stay here.

TheCoolerMia, 1 month ago

can u give some examples? I cant think of a single time 196 hasnt been anti-sexist, and that community is specially anti-transphobia

Sop, 1 month ago

The Sydney Sweeney meme was pretty sexist. There are semi frequently memes where the centre of the joke is a woman’s body, where I will find gross comments as well.

Most of the memes are fun and trans positive, but there is definitely a pattern of objectifying and sexist jokes that are not being moderated (as I said, I do report but no action is being taken). I have also found the community very hostile against observations of sexism, which absolutely does not help. Personally, as a trans masc person who has experienced a lot of sexism on the internet when I still presented as femme, I do not feel welcome there.

TheCoolerMia, 1 month ago

Ohhh yeh, 196 has always been pretty horny and I feel like its hornier here than it was on reddit, I see why that could make u uncomfortable xP

Sop, 1 month ago

I don’t have a problem with lewd content if it isn’t objectifying.

A picture of a girl getting excited over boobs is different to a meme that refers unironically to the old school ‘joke’ where women and girls with large breasts were told they have great personality. In the first example no one is degraded, while the 2nd example is a joke that has often been used to degrade women. I think context matters a lot and especially memes about trans girls appreciating their new body or describing their transition goal aren’t objectifying at all

NoIWontPickAName, 1 month ago

It’s like sex scenes in books and movies. Straight, gay, furry orgy where the gimP is released, whichever.

I don’t need sex in my books, especially because people always seem to walk in on that exact part of the audiobook.

eatthecake, 1 month ago

That’s right, there are more CIS WOMEN on a TRANS community than binary trans men or transmasculine people alone.

We have a problem.

This kinda reads as ‘OMG there are (cis) women on the internet’. Why the need to point out the number of cis women as a problem? There are also more cis men than trans men but i guess that’s ok?

TheCoolerMia, 1 month ago

I think u meant to reply to the post and not my comment x3 but I guess its just cuz OP focused on AFABs, and the post doesnt complain about there being cis women but about the lack of trans men

Hupf, 1 month ago

https://i2.wp.com/m.quickmeme.com/img/e7/e7e252998b7bda86fa88c0a3536346568d1fedce58892edbe4b19237704eae12.jpg

Jackie_meaiii, 1 month ago

Where do my tboy and trans masc bros like to hang out usually? I see a lot of trans masc stuff on Pinterest and I know a few on Threads, but idk where else?

I think the move would be to bring people over from other social networks though.

Kit, 1 month ago

Transmen don’t tend to gather together like transwomen do. We’re just stealth in male-dominated spaces.

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago

It’s gonna depend on the dude. Some can’t pass and so they can’t go stealth. I go stealth most places but I like online trans spaces and knowing trans people. There are multiple large ftm and transmasc subreddits that are active. Evidently there’s a portion of men who want to be around other men who have shared their experiences.

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago

There are lots of trans men and transmascs on Tumblr and reddit. I agree with bringing people over from other networks. Problem is how do I explain the concept of Lemmy in laymen’s terms

crazyminner, 1 month ago

I dunno if you can force it. I think it might just be something that takes time.

dandelion, 1 month ago

Sure, we may not be able to force it, but there might be things we can do to help encourage or promote it (and on the other side, things we could do that discourage). Worth thinking about what those might be.

xilliah, 1 month ago

How about posting transmasc content? For example links to quality blog posts.

I’d be curious to learn more about it too.

cowboycrustation, 1 month ago

I can do that. Might crosspost ftm more.

xilliah, 1 month ago

Ja like that artporn community, it’s basically just that one poster holding that whole community up.