Evan Urquhart

Being kind, I'll point out you've got an Atlantic divide going on in your responses to this and maybe your universalising is being responded to negatively by folks in locales where trans masc folks already have respected positions in orgs and community without the fanfare.

I appreciate your kindness, and am an enthusiastic fan and follower of you as I am of many other trans women!

Appreciated, but also I don't need fans. It's not why I'm here nor why most of us are speaking up. I literally intend to archive/delete this account in some post TERF war future if we get there and go back to my real name.

Don’t get me wrong- it’s not about fame. It’s that it’s hard to have our voices in the conversation if none of us have enough presence to speak or be heard on the same level of respect as trans women with large followings.

Maybe it's cause I live in a country where the same guy coedited the Trans Studies Reader and drafted the Gender Recognition Act, another trans guy runs our largest trans run rights organisation, etc that I don't get it.

I’m very willing to agree that there’s cultural misunderstandings at play, but I want to push back a little at the idea that there’s no need for trans men as bigger voices in the public sphere, or that our doing low key behind the scenes org work fully makes up for that.

That said- it isn’t primarily trans women’s fault, or trans women’s responsibility. A plaintive wish that there was more of an effort to help lift our voices (in America) was just that, not intended as blame.

The problem here Evan is you're seeing trans women as the gatekeepers to that visibility and not the cissexist society that also mainly chooses to platform trans women who conform to particular aesthetic norms pleasing a white, liberal,still fairly sexist male gaze and conscience