I’m not sure if this is the best place but I don’t know where else I could talk about something like this. I know that my style of masculinity is toxic but I’ve never gotten good advice on how to overcome it as a trans man.
The assumption that trans men don’t have toxic masculinity because “they got socialized as women” is a common one in trans spaces and not only does it not apply to me, the implication that trans men are softer men pisses me off and digs me deeper.
Lore time: I internalized masculine norms throughout my isolated childhood. I knew and insisted I was a boy from an early age and my behaviour got me isolated and bullied by my female peers. I was also mistreated a lot for being queer.
My main problem is being insecure because of dysphoria combined with the transphobia I’ve received, pushing me to toxic competitive behaviour that runs the risk of alienating my friends. However, compared to the attitudes I’ve faced and still face in real life, affirmation from queer spaces about how men don’t need to be one way feel detached from reality. How can I not be insecure when I’ve been bullied for my whole life and none of that would’ve happened if my body wasn’t female? If I said that doesn’t matter wouldn’t it be cope?
Tl;dr what do when toxically masculine as a trans man in very transphobic irl corcumstances? I would especially appreciate examples of masculine-presenting men who didn’t engage in masculinity as a competition. If post is too big wall of text or just too many personal details tell me and I’ll trim.
Can you give examples of your toxic masculinity?
-I overreact when I see trans men who’ve made more progress than me, I think I made my (also ftm) boyfriend worse by trying to get my manhood validated which is what got me into wanting to fix it.
-I bury all emotions under anger, I’ve worked on this for a while and have gotten good at confronting/solving the original problem that makes me angry but I’m still very out of tune with other emotions.
-I have heated dudebro moments when I see trans men who actually want to be feminine. I know it’s nonsensical and fight it but the thoughts of “man up lol” are still there. This happens with cis men too, with the weird satisfaction of being more masculine than a “real man”.
-In general manhood feels like a competition where only the buffest tallest men get the male crown while the short incel peasants suffer. Any love or appreciation I get despite being short and not that far into transition feels like they are secretly saying “You should detrans and become a housewife lol”. I can get a compliment and still twist it to be insulting to my masculinity somehow.
-Talking about problems make me feel I’m not being a “real man”. I actively fight that one a lot but it still ends up making me keep my problems to myself until they all pile together and make me a lot worse mentally.
this is honestly a thing for anyone medically transitioning. sometimes the dysphoria hits wrong and its hard to keep things going in a t4t relationship with it. if your dysphoria is different enough its easier to work with imo. i purposefully avoid selfie and surgery groups to avoid jealousy, i havent been able to get surgeries for things that have been fucking me up due to a sort of fucked up family situation (re: we are slavic / rural czechs and pooled our resources as normal but the family wont use these resources to help me even though i contributed a lot). its harder to do that in person, but maybe you can avoid certain topics with your SO, that might help
life isnt all a competition, some things take slower, and yes, that is more painful, but you gotta try to push against that impulse each time you think it. its not healthy for anyone. it should also help to not bottle this up and have a conversation with your SO about these struggles, you might be hear some surprisingly similar takes.
edits:
i get this too, especially if the woman is transphobic.