The C Word

And no. I don't mean that one, I think that I'm not ready to dive into that one yet. I mean COMPLICIT.

I am complicit, and so are you. That is not the same thing as enacting violence to the degree that people who actively do violent things are, but if every time we witness and do not interfere… we are complicit.

Violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is normalized and spans a scale, scope, and spectrum beyond what people can see.

“Trans men are men” means that we are also required to do some inner and outer work on misogyny. That does not erase our trans experience, nor any violence we may have experienced prior to or since transitioning. Dismantling the patriarchy is a net benefit for all, but we must do better for women, specifically.

The ubiquity of sexual violence is such that ¼ of cis men, somewhere between ⅓-½ of trans men, ½ of cis AND trans women, and somewhere around there for nonbinary people as well, have been the victim/survivor of it.

Whereas cisgender men are not the sole perpetrators, but they are the primary ones.

We are men, too. It is our duty to disrupt rather than participate in or perpetuate this harmful culture.

When we, as trans men, are sometimes safe(r), it is because we are known to be men. When we are in harm’s way, it is almost always misdirected misogyny, if not homo/transphobia or some other ism. Whereas trans women are facing transphobia, misogyny, and transmisogyny, and then being accused of being dangerous or taking up too much space, when in fact, no community is free from bad actors, but on the whole, it is our sisters who are being harmed rather than doing harm.

While people misdirect attention at trans people or queer people, it is a shield for accountability. Wouldn’t it be better to instead confront the real problems head-on, in our community and beyond? The wrong people have felt shame.

I mentioned catcalling a little in my podcast episode with Aidan, offhand, but didn’t delve much into things like sexual violence, which I have experienced pre- and post-transition. You have no idea what I avoided saying in that episode about masculinity that I wish I had. The good and the bad… that is to say, I love being a man. I believe that masculinity can be good, but I have seen it at its best and its worst.

And it comes in so many forms. Something I also need men to recognize, gay men, straight men, cis men, trans men: ALL MEN to know going forward, is that we will not grow if all we do is avoid accountability.

WE MUST HOLD OURSELVES AND EACH OTHER ACCOUNTABLE IN OUR WORDS AND DEEDS.

WE MUST DO BETTER NOT TO AVOID CANCELLATION, BUT TO MAKE OUR WORLD SAFER.