MEN | FTM Response to ContraPoints

I really thought Natalie's video was going in a different direction when she said "it's not like you can just change genders and see what it's like from both sides. Or can you?"

Thanks for watching.

[felixaddison]

I really like that you did this explicitly as a response to add the trans male perspective rather than being angry at Contrapoints for not covering it. She tries to cover so much already and seeing her dogpiled on Twitter for not representing every perspective in every little thing she says has been heartbreaking. I feel that the reach of her platform has really opened up space for other trans people to add their own perspectives so thank you for stepping up and doing that.

[Riley-fbiu]

Trans guy here. Personally, I think everyone involved is getting caught up in "feminine" and "masculine" as the precursor to these ideals. I think it would benefit men, women, and enbies FAR more if instead of having culturally "ideal men" and "ideal women", we just have "ideal people" that we can look up and relate to no matter our gender. Anybody can be rugged, heroic, sensitive, artistic, stoic, bubbly, or what have you, and any of those things can be good. A woman's personal ideal can be Superman, and a man's personal ideal can be Mother Theresa. Traits aren't gendered, but in viewing them as such their connotations change drastically.


I know, I know... asking people to view others as a collection of traits without gender is a lot to ask for. For now, I'll stick with this:

Men need to be more introspective as a whole. Your "masculine ideal" should come from the self, your personality and your interests, not from what others are telling you to idealize. We need to focus less on what makes a good man, and more on what makes a good person. A good man isn't made of carpentry skills, competitiveness, a "provider" status, and muscle; nor is the only ideal man a Superman. A "good man" worthy of aspiration is a good person who happens to be a man, nothing more and nothing less, and I think that's something a lot of young guys don't realize as they idolize not-so-great men with a certain trait they desire (which usually coincides with old-fashioned views of masculinity).


Sorry if all that's jumbled and doesn't make much sense. I tend to have a hard time expressing my ideas in words. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, though!


-Real talk time, Spiderman is where it's at.-

[lisahayes]

As the mum of a trans son I found this so heartwarming & illuminating. My son is a gentle, kind and soft soul and I would hate to lose that because he felt he had to fit in with some masculine ideal. Speaking personally as I've gone on this journey with my son I've become a bit sick of the binary gender roles, the 2 boxes everyone tries to put ppl in. Can't we throw away these unhelpful and damaging gender roles and just start valuing pplfor who they are, their uniqueness and what's in their heart. Nothing else matters to me.
Loved this video. ❤❤❤

[NoChance]

Really liked this video, glad YouTube suggested it to me!

As a cis man, I liked Nat's video a lot. The experience of being masculine in a "toxic" way is a pretty consistent factor in the lives of nearly all cis men (myself included) and it's tough to really understand why and how that happens for a lot of young cis men. Nat did a good job of exploring this (disposable male, symbol of power/fear, etc.) and how the far-right exploits these. However, as her videos are very focused on being anti-far-right, she seems much better at revealing/tearing down "bad" systems than she is showing/building "good" ones and her videos often lack a positive call-to-action because of it.

Your perspective is absolutely a helpful and necessary addition to this conversation. I'm very glad that you shared it! The current male experience is far too narrow and we definitely need to better see how we can build new, far more positive "boxes" for ourselves.

[alexwoolard]

THIS is the kind of discourse I want to see about Natalie's content. Not broke takes about how she's transphobic towards non-binary people, but actual conversations about how there are gaps in her perspective on trans issues

[jasper]

Idk I feel like trans men need to speak for themselves rather than leaving it to contrapoints? She gets flamed pretty hard for sharing her own personal experience, this wouldn’t be a great move for her.

[adrianfridge]

I’m a 30yo pre-T trans guy. When I watched Natalie’s Men video, I understood she made that for cis men about what it means to be a cis man, layered with her own experience being assumed to be a cis man herself.

With that said, I never felt left out of her video essays because I always came in with the expectation that it wasn’t supposed to be about me. Ironically, in the process, her videos about accepting her transness, in spite of it being from a trans feminine perspective, helped me accept my own transness in a new light. It’s helped me become more self aware of my internalized transphobia towards trans/NB people of all walks of life.

This is why I just can’t with the discourse. Natalie never came across to me as some Expert On Everything Trans. She’s a story teller, and damn good at it. She knows how to illicit empathy.

YouTube kept trying to recommend this video to me, and I went in with the expectation of a smack down. I really appreciate that you didn’t go in that direction. I also really enjoyed the Superman analogy because Superman has been warped by society to be some distantly stoic goody two shoes god like being with Batman being the real, hardened down to earth practical Everyman. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Both the actual Superman and Batman have been warped into extreme caricatures of themselves who both lack empathy in a different way, and maybe empathy is the thing that portrayals of Manhood are missing.

I still don’t know what being a Man means, but I know what I don’t want in my manhood. Looping back to Natalie, she always emphasizes that she barely knows what her gender is supposed to feel like and that most of it is just performance. Therefore it makes sense that cis men (since they have the most privilege to leverage) need to start performing their manhood differently so that the very blueprint of “what it means to be a man” shifts for everyone else.

Sorry I don’t have a clear point to all this. I’m just thinking out loud here. Your video gave me a lot of interesting new dots to connect, so I really thank you for that.

[RegsaGC]

"I still liked butterflies"
As a cis man I can tell you people are plain lying if they say the don't.

"Self-administering adrenalineAAAA"
I cried from laughter this guy gets it.

Edit: y'all are never gonna believe this but I guess I wasn't that cis

[jeremyslather]

I like that you added to the discourse instead of just dragging Natalie on the figurative floor. It was pretty informative. Thanks.

[scorpio]

Thank you. Not what I initially thought was coming when I saw "response video" on reddit. I'm pretty sure ContraPoints doesn't outright refuse but chooses to sidestep the trans male perspective because she knows she can't truly speak to that experience. Having someone who can and will speak on that is great; having someone who will do so without throwing too much shade on someone their responding to just for having a blind spot is invaluable for modern discourse!

[davetronred]

Omg I busted up at "Chest-burster appropriating your hard-earned nutrients."

[iroc]

As a subq injector I feel VERY INVALIDATED AS A MAN THE TUM TUM IS JUST AS BADASS I TAKE MY T IN THE GUT LIKE A PUNCH RAWR

Kidding aside I really, really appreciate this response. I love our Dark Mother and bristle at gripes that she necessarily be “representative” of our broadly diverse community, but now that she is practically the Voice for Us Trans Online, your not-a-callout is dead on. There aren’t enough transmasc people visible enough to “fill in the gaps” and I really want to change that. Your writing is fucking great, and would love more content like this in the future. Subhellascribed.

[ahhh]

I come from a feminist and non binary background. But here’s the thing gender isn’t real in the way a lot of people think it is. It isn’t a hard driving force that forces men to spread their legs on transits. It’s something given, something inherited, and something customized.
I’m also Mexican so I saw many versions of masculinity.
Masculinity is just how you interpret manhood, how you feel about men in your life. What you want to take away from men you look up to.

I want to be hard-working like my father, ambitious like my brother, and focused like my other brother.
But I want to be non threatening, I want to be emotionally available.
I want to care about others. I want to be well-kept, but I’m not afraid of color or looking “gay” I’m not here to make other men comfortable. I’m here for me and I’m not interested in a competition. My purpose in life is for me to figure out. I just will be a man doing that

[syndetonation]

"what is masculinity in 2019? these are kind of unfair questions to be honest; some people get pretty mad when trans people answer them." And those people are idiots. As a cis man, I value your input on this topic. We're all figuring this thing out together. I think the cultural experiences cis men grow up in through boyhood and adulthood lead them to a lot of potentially toxic mindsets and behaviors, and those of us that try to be something else work to undo the damage. We're still figuring out ourselves, let alone masculinity. For me, that's something I work through in therapy. I had to learn how to healthily express my emotions and desires from the ground up, because it wasn't I was ever taught as a boy. So I think trans men in particular have a unique opportunity to help define masculinity because they probably weren't as directly exposed to all of this toxic garbage that cis men get raised through. All the negative traits that our parents unknowingly taught us, all of the dated ideals our media tells us, all of the dumb things our friends told us about how we as men are supposed to act towards women. Trans men, especially if they transitioned later in life, probably had life experiences that looked much different as much of the world perceived and treated them as a woman. And while one person's life experiences don't necessarily wholly express the identity of half the population, they certainly shape important perspectives on it that we wouldn't be able to obtain otherwise. So, thank you for making this video, and I look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

[thomkuhle]

As a binary trans man I feel like this really resonated with me. But I do feel like trans men feel the pull of transitioning into toxic masculinity in order to feel safer in some way. It's something that I'm scared of becoming myself, as I transition further. Especially since I DID find out about transness through feminism. But I liked the Superman metaphor, and I think it really helped me, thanks.

[malienation]

"Emotional sensitivity can be leveraged in an abusive situation just as effectively as physical power"


Beautiful.


Like your Batman vs. Superman analysis too.

[UndercoverAkatsuki]

I honestly feel like kind of the reason why trans men often become invisible in this discussion/mixed in with cis men is because we can be. As a gay trans man who has been full time for five years, I find a lot less comradery with a straight trans men than with a gay cis men, and most of it comes down to masculinity I feel. A lot of the times in my experience, straight men grow into the 'toxic' male social role fairly easily as soon as they start transistioning, and the friction i've seen on that front mostly comes from a dropped female social support system following that(e.g. exclusion from women's only groups), which is then replaced with your regular straight man nonsense as they are integrated into that society. Why upset that and a possible position as an Accepted Man by questioning/rejecting that model of masculinity?

As a gay man I was from the get go excluded from such a thing, so my experience with masculinity is much different and affords me much more flexibility, to the point that I really don't care about it at this point to be honest. There's also an interesting discussion to be had, about how straight men often lean into hypermasculinity to ensure their passing/acceptance, while gay/bi men can take refuge in any clocking elements being excused as simply being a Very Camp Gay and thereby passing. This is a super complicated topic I'd honestly love to discuss more, I hope all of this made sense. Thank you for doing this video!

[joywolfe.]

Honestly when I saw the title of Natalie's video I was like "Duh! Of course this is gonna be about trans men." I was genuinely surprised.


Also the bit at the end about Superman and Clark Kent kinda almost made me tear up, because *AS A CIS-MAN*, hearing a trans man put into words the kind of ideal man I always wanted to be seen as was ridiculously inspiring. I've always felt trapped in that the only way I thought I could be perceived as masculine would be to be emotionally unavailable and brooding, which isn't me at all. But if I were emotionally open or vulnerable, even when people were accepting and encouraging, it always felt feminizing or infantilizing, like you said about the "soft boy" archetype. I genuinely worried I'd just have to live with the fact that I was always gonna be seen as a big ol' sissy, which was kinda damaging. Thank you for mansplaining my masculinity to me lmao

[KaoriKino]

Another example of a compassionate man that isn't a softboi: Brock from Pokemon.
His character isn't super sensitive, but his strength is used in a nurturing way (taking care of his siblings and Pokemon).

[jimpachi]

"I had nightmares that the boy I had a crush on would want to have sex with me" WOAH. Thanks for sharing your perspective, it was thoughtful and powerful.