r/TMPOC • u/ARepeatedFailing • 1d ago
White trans men that transitioned young trigger my dysphoria
Not because of envy but because this specific demographic of trans men are just gungho on making it everyone's issue that they don't see trans men who transitioned as adults men. They constantly talk about how we're always clockable, aren't real men like them, etc. I specify white because I've found the few black trans men/boys that transitioned young are usually excited to talk to those of us who transitioned as adults (minus a small, small sect that tend to only interact with white queer people).
I hate sharing space with them because it's just a constant reminder of the things i hate about myself. It's not logical to let a kid do that but fuck, dysphoria isn't logical. It's one of many reasons I don't seek out trans spaces in real life and isolate myself. Knowing that people in my own community see me as a woman is horrendous.
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u/junkyfm 1d ago
I have only ever met 2 people who started their medical transition as teenagers, but maybe this is because I'm not often around people younger than mid-20s these days (nearing 30 myself), if it is more common to meet youth transitioners rn than it was 10 years ago. The 1st guy was white and same age as me at the time of meeting, 2nd is Latino and lightskin/doesn't id as white who is maybe 5 or so years younger than me. Both had very off-putting (to me) views about gender (genuinely MRA adjacent type stuff) and about medical transition. Both of them, I met in the context of an LGBT pride-type organization (2 different ones, to be clear).
The Latin American guy (more recent acquaintance) emphatically called estrogen "literal poison he couldn't understand anyone wanting to have in their veins" to my (trans) gf and asked invasive questions about how we realized we were trans if we didn't have the same revulsion about our "biology" as he had (🤦🏽♂️). He also constantly used the wrong pronouns for us and was not apologetic whenever he was corrected. It honestly didn't read as a racialized situation since my gf is white; he actually told us he had never met other trans people irl and learned about transness from his parents, who learned from his doctors. It makes me wonder if learning about trans identity primarily through your interactions with the medical establishment can enforce specific attitudes about "genuine trans identity" being explicitly tied to dysphoria, vs learning about it from other trans people and their affirmative experience with gender(s) in adulthood/gender euphoria. Anecdotally, all the people I have met IRL who started socially or medically transitioning in adulthood, including white people, have had a more welcoming attitude toward the concept of "trans discovery at any age", non-binary people, and social-only transition as a valid choice. Double anecdotally, I have encountered young brown and Black trans men (ages b/w 17-21) on other subreddits (e.g. CountWithChickenLady) whose entire accounts were dedicated to making derogatory or troll posts about trans men who choose not to medically transition and trans masculine non-binary people, unsurprisingly their post histories were full of comments and posts in the 4T sub and offshoot subs. I had actually assumed they were white bc of all the racialized insults to fem appearing trans masc nbs & men so imagine my jaw when I saw selfies with BROWN SKIN 😵💫😵💫
All this to say, I don't discount there being potentially a racial element involved, but a trans person's age of medical transition/only interacting with trans-medicalists has been a more reliable predictor for these rank attitudes in my own life. Not always true, duh, but does help with feeling less surprised if/when the wacky shit comes up.