TW: mention of sex/genitals, transphobia from trans men
I have seen this recently, where some trans guys will refer to certain parts of their anatomy or reproductive issues with medical terms that include or very clearly allude to female or women. I don’t mean things like misgendering kinks or anything sexual, purely medically. I am also only talking about parts or issues that are similar to cis men’s and already have a male equivalent for them.
For example: i was reading a post about trans men being able to ejaculate and it looking, smelling and tasting more like semen on T and how affirming that is. A lot of people in the comment share the same experience, but some trans men really feel like it’s their duty to remind us that “no, we can’t and never will be able to produce semen. What you are experiencing is what a woman experiences.” Idk it just sounds transphobic to me and the worst thing about it is that it’s coming from our own community. It’s ok if you don’t want to use those terms for yourself, but putting down others like that.. sounds like a TERF wrote it.
What bothers me even more is when it’s used with reproductive issues. Some researches have been done that show trans man can grow prostate tissue on T, because we already have something similar and there was a post about this on reddit where a person was voicing their concern over prostate cancer. The chance of that is very low, because it doesn’t develop like a cis guys would, but i don’t think commenting “no, you can’t get prostate cancer, you can only get (don’t remember exact term but it includes female),” with no TW and following with “heard this from cis women’s experiences” is at all useful. What is the utility of using a female term for a male with a male issue?
We are not cis women and are bodies are not completely different from cis mens. Neither are all cis bodies the same, so using female terms for trans men by trans men shows cis people that it is ok and only further perpetuates cis normativity. It further upholds that binary system that cis people suffer from too, where women get treated as a whole other species. It’s the same logic as with trans men just being a different kind of men, which most of us agree on. But if we have anything similar to cis men anatomically it’s always “no, you have this female womanly thing and it’s nothing like a cis men’s, that is not possible”, just because we were perceived as women in the past. No one defaults to opposite gender terms when cis people have issues with their reproductive organs&functions, we deserve the same respect. So why can cis people differ from the standard and not trans people?