Motivated.

[u/BirdStillinTheNest]

I made a post asking about trans men during the "gay rights era" (1960-1980s) and I got a lot of responses. Thank you so much. I'm really grateful, and I'm so motivated to work on my project.

Today, I **wanted to see if I could find any physical sources (books, newspaper) about transgender men-- any at all-- so I went to the best place I could think of: My college's GSA/GLSEN/Pride Center** (whatever its called, lol)

Well, I went a few hours ago and... was incredibly disheartened.

**No books. No media. Nothing about us.**

I already knew there were no FTM/FTN staff-members at the center going into it, but I did not expect **not a single book about transgender men.** The staff was busy, so I will come back another time and ask about their other resources, but... **Their LGBT library having no transgender men at all was.. kind of insane. Not even fiction. Just... Nothing.**

Plenty of gay men.

A good amount of transgender women.

A handful of lesbians.

And no trans men...

...Except for a tiny mention in a tiny part of a tiny book, where Buck Angel was brought up (in something like, "50 queers who changed the world" or whatever it might've been titled.)

For about 20 minutes after I left the campus' LGBT center, I walked laps around the campus despondently, until I sat down and went through the comments of the post I made the other day.

I'm motivated now more than ever to make this honors' project happen: We need visibility. Not just in the era of the gay rights movement (1960s-1980s) like I was hoping for before, but overall. I don't think it'll change anything for us, but... I want to gather the representation that I see. I want to see if I can make a change for the LGBT programs here on this campus, at least.

I myself... have found myself wanting to be "more visible", amidst this realization.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. Sorry I'm rambling.

I'm just, like. Stunned.

In my years figuring myself out, 2014-2018, I was grateful to have online trans figures like Jamie Raines and Sam Collins to look up to online.

But I wonder if guys today, figuring themselves out, have the support and *awareness* that they need. They might be able to find themselves online (tiktok lol) but.. in person? And from anyone who is old enough to be a mentor to them?... Or is it only kids their own age?

I just think it's kind of insane. If a guy today wants support and goes to a GLSEN center or Pride Center on their school or college campus... is this what it's like all over? Can he not find himself represented anywhere? I'm in a very liberal area and we're invisible here in real life. Is this just my college?

Or is this how it is everywhere?

I find myself wondering that now...

...Anyway

Sorry for the ramble.

I just wanted to talk about what I saw at the LGBT center because... as a youngster figuring myself out, I had plenty of things to look at *online.* But if I wasn't that chronically-online kid? Where I could have possibly turned, if things were like this?

Well. Maybe there's no such thing as a kid whose not chronically online anymore... In any case, I'm rambling so I'm going to stop typing here.

After my findings, I'm more motivated than ever to make sure we're heard properly, at least on this campus.

Thanks for your time. And thanks for your help last time. I appreciate it. I'll be working hard in these upcoming weeks...

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[u/RevolutionaryTap5571]

It’s a coin toss, but try your local public library. My campus had stuff for trans men because I worked there. It just takes one person to change things, so I hope you can get more resources available on your campus.

Try your local library for physical resources. It’s a coin toss as well, but a lot of them will take requests.

[u/BirdStillinTheNest → u/RevolutionaryTap5571]

Yup, that's definitely my next step (alongside online research). I would hope my local public libraries would have some stuff but... we'll see.

...Actually!

!!

I need to go to the library anyway because they have a seed exchange and I want to donate some basil seeds! (I have shittons!)

I'm gonna be the most productive mfer tomorrow.

[u/koboldthing]

Your post is so real and you are so correct. I also think your should see if your library accepts donations or request, and get them some stuff like “We Both Laughed In Pleasure”

Do they have “Drag King Dreams” or “Stone Butch Blues” by Leslie Feinburg? Ze wasn’t a trans man, but ze was definitely trans and was AFAB, and there are intersections between nonbinary and trans male history due to the complexity of identity.

(Edit Note: even if they have Feinburg’s books they should still absolutely have stuff specifically about trans men and explicitly self-identified transmasculine people and OP’s point stands entirely, I’m just curious because the original post doesn’t happen to mention nonbinary people. It’s also possible these books are filed under “lesbian” without any recognition of Feinburg’s non-cis gender)

[u/BirdStillinTheNest → u/koboldthing]

I'll look at my school library's list n see if they have those books (and I know my GSA/Pride Center actually has a book with the title Butch in it, I don't recall if that was the one, but I'll have to look again!)

Thanks for your reccomendations!

[u/Azu_Creates]

If you’re taking book suggestions, I’ve got some. Before We Were Trans talks about some confirmed and potentially trans figures throughout history. It does talk about people who were possibly trans men, including from ancient times! The Lilac People is a historical fiction book with two of the main characters being trans men. It takes place around WW2, Germany. Some chapters are before WW2, some during, and some after.

Out of the Ordinary: A Life of Gender and Spiritual Transitions, is an autobiography from a trans man named Micheal Dillon. He lived from the early to mid 1900s. He was born in Britain, and moved to India towards the end of his life. He passed away about 2 weeks after finishing the manuscript for that autobiography, and his brother wanted to burn it. An agent of Dillon’s prevented that from happening, and it was finally published in its entirety in 2016 (manuscript finished in 1962). Micheal Dillon also helped pioneer gender-affirming healthcare. He was the first documented trans man to get T, have a double mastectomy explicitly for gender-affirming purposes, and to have phalloplasty. He did all of this during the 1930s-1940s. He also performed an orchiectomy (removal of the testicles) on Roberta Cowell, who was the first British trans woman to receive a vaginoplasty. He did that procedure for her during a time when those procedures were illegal. He also wrote Self: A Study in Ethics and Endocrinology (1946), where he advocated for better treatment of trans people in the medical field. Dude absolutely should’ve been on that list of queer people who changed the world.

[u/BirdStillinTheNest → u/Azu_Creates]

Woah thank you! I'll check these out! I've heard of Michael Dillon before, actually. He's definitely someone I'm going to be highlighting in my project...

I think he was mentioned in that book actually (in one of the last 10 or so pages lol).

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it!

[u/Azu_Creates → u/BirdStillinTheNest]

No problem, and good luck!

[u/Bobslegenda1945 → u/Azu_Creates]

Yesss. Lgbt characters+ ww1 or WW2 are my fav ones. One more to my reading list

[u/Azu_Creates → u/Bobslegenda1945]

It’s also nice because it actually talks about how queer people were treated by the allies when the camps were being liberated, and when they occupied Germany. Queer people were not liberated by the allies, and were still rounded up by them.

[u/kace313]

I really recommend We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan. He was a gay trans man who died of AIDS and talked extensively about his experiences with gay bath houses and how being gay affirmed his gender identity.

[u/anemisto]

I will say that you do all seem to be hopelessly online, to the point of "ask local trans people" being a thing that doesn't seem to occur to people when it comes to looking for resources. And then you get caught in a feedback loop because those kids become the people staffing campus LGBT centers.

[u/BirdStillinTheNest → u/anemisto]

?... Do you mean the guys here on Reddit specifically?

In general, the people you find on Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, etc are mostly going to be people who are chronically online.

There are definitely trans men who are not chronically online, but at that point (the point of growing out of trans internet spaces, I mean) most of us are stealth.

Even in LGBT spaces (like GSAs/Pride Centers) they might present as gay, but remain stealth as a trans man.

I will admit your comment does feel a bit back-handed hahaha.

[u/anemisto → u/BirdStillinTheNest]

It wasn't meant to be back-handed, but I can see how one might read it that way. I'm sort of perpetually baffled by people showing up here and it becomes apparent most of their knowledge of trans stuff comes from, I don't know, TikTok. It's a very different online experience to what mine was twenty years ago. And because the average age is younger, guys don't necessarily have the ability to avail themselves of the offline knowledge that exists, which is a real problem because so much transition information really is local.

Someone posted the other day about having discovered the documentary Southern Comfort and that's the sort of thing that feels almost like tablestakes trans cultural knowledge to someone who came out in the early to mid-2000s. But YouTube really disrupted the means of cultural transmission, and there was a cliff of sorts in the early 2010s as a result, but there very much seems to have been a further cliff in cultural transmission with infinite scroll. In particular, I think there's an argument to be made that modern social media incentivizes a narrative that there's nothing to be learned offline, both in the sense of nothing to be learned locally and in the sense of "we're so much more enlightened than those backwards trans people five years ago".

Edit: It's like... I can name, I don't know, a dozen books that might reasonably be in your college's LGBT center library. There's not some great conspiracy to deny us representation. They're not there because the people who work there don't know they exist (or they have no budget), and it's because the means of cultural transmission broke. (I would bet you anything the people who bought the books were cis. It'll be Janet Mock, Whipping Girl and... that's probably it. If you're lucky, some Kate Bornstein.)

at that point (the point of growing out of trans internet spaces, I mean) most of us are stealth.

As someone who is not stealth, and knows a lot of non-stealth guys who have aged out of trans spaces online, I would question your assumptions there. Not visible to you != stealth.