RedDogsBeg
This has reminded me of something I read years ago on a concerned transwoman's blog, who said she had seen transmen being targeted for sexual abuse.
blog post
Before I went on testosterone, I (thought I) became good friends with a trans woman. We met through the trans activist group on campus, and we started hanging out outside of the group because we seemed to have so much in common, despite the fact that “she” was about 35 and I was 20. I had been socially transitioning for about a year. “She” had been on estrogen for a few months, or something less than a year I think. We talked about trans issues a lot. “She” validated my pain over my parents disowning me and how it felt to be misgendered all the time and listened to me when I was suicidal. I saw us as having mirrored problems even though I realize now that we were in two very different situations. I trusted “her.”
At some point in the friendship, Z (the MTF) started sending me explicit texts letting me know that “she” was interested in me. I had no idea how to deal with that, so I just deflected “her” advances. I assumed “she” would stop after multiple “no”s, excuses, and a complete lack of interest in anything beyond friendship. I was afraid to be too harsh, because I didn’t want to hurt “her” feelings. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship. I couldn’t risk losing my main source of support, the one person who “understood” my problems and treated me like a man. No one else offered the same level of sympathy for my transsexuality, not even my girlfriend. No one else was willing to drive me an hour to the only other trans meeting in the area, or stay with me when my dysphoria got so painful I thought I needed to die.
I called myself pansexual at the time, because that’s practically mandatory from inside the Gender Fog, and I also had been taught to see Z as nothing other than a woman. I felt guilty for my wary gut feelings about Z’s sex and had to overcompensate by validating “her” identity through trust that wasn’t earned and just giving “her” the benefit of the doubt. Not only did I have to treat “her” as a woman, but I had to navigate the friendship as a man would. There was no room for feeling threatened or listening to my feelings or for risking being transphobic. My subconscious unease about trying to see Z as female was negated by the fact that I thought gender shouldn’t matter and therefore attraction was based on the person, not the genitals. Either way, there was no way to rule Z out of being a potential date without my politics being questioned. If “she” was not at least a potential sexual partner for me, then I was a transmisogynist. Seeing this person as a woman meant not seeing Z as a threat, and even seeing myself as the person in a position of power because I identified as a man.
One night, Z came over after the trans group. My girlfriend was at the library and I was expecting her back sometime soon. Z cornered me multiple times, moving in, trying to kiss me. I kept telling Z that my girlfriend would be back soon and that she would be pissed if Z didn’t back off. I kept washing the dishes, not responding physically, attempting to change the subject. Z kept coming up behind me, putting “her” arms around me, whispering in my ear. I kept trying to move, but Z was much bigger and stronger and I didn’t want to start a physical struggle. I was trying to play calm even though I was very anxious.
At some point I left to go to the bathroom and when I came out Z cornered me further back in the apartment - in the bedroom. I was very uncomfortable, minimally responsive, and I said “no” in every way I could think of, making excuses in-between Z’s creepy advances. Even still, I didn’t want to hurt “her” feelings (cough-female socialization-cough.) Maybe I thought that somehow my identity could still be a shield.
It was all just a game to Z. “She” laughed off my protests. “She” tripped me down onto the mattress on the floor. “She” raped me.
Later, Z wrote an account of the events on “her” blog. Everything was backwards in Z’s version: I, the “man,” was the one making the advances. “She” quoted “her” words as mine. “She” presented “herself” as the passive sexual partner, and me as aggressive and dominant and pushy. Z wrote out the coercive atmosphere as erotica. Even the basic physical logistics were reversed.
The only detail that Z left out of the reversal was the part where the female in the situation fears being pregnant while waiting for her late period for a week.
This was not the only time Z hurt me. I continued to stay “friends” with “her” because I was isolated and I had a lot of needs I couldn’t meet. The mindfuck continued, because I was without language for “her” violence. “She” turned everything inside-out and defined what was real in many ways. When I initially saw Z’s account of the sexual encounter online, I just felt crazy. The violation escalated and went on for months.
For the next couple years, I struggled with this mental knot that could not be straightened out with the politically correct language or ideas. The aftermath was painful and difficult and I tried to find the words for what happened, but I had none within the trans paradigm. I was a “man” and “she” was a “woman.” I kept going around and around, but my brain was just locked in this wordless puzzle. I read online about cis men being “raped” by cis women, but that was not like what Z did to me. I wasn’t able to unravel this or tell anyone what really happened until I started moving out of the trans gender fog.
I have been afraid of saying anything even after finally understanding the reality of being raped by an MTF, because my words and my truth will inevitably be questioned. I wanted to write out part of my experience with this to add to the all-but-non-existent record of MTFs as dangerous men.
I never knew that this was a pattern with MTFs violating FTMs until I started talking to women who had left the trans community. I cannot identify out of rape. I was not a man when I was being fucked by this person using “her” dick as a weapon. I held no power. The trans ideology takes away my only way to portray this situation for what it was: another man hurting a woman. Rape is about power, and men hold power. Gender politics scramble the sexed pattern of violence.
Gender kept me from knowing what I already knew. I was more vulnerable to Z’s assault because defending myself would be twisted around as “male” privilege and transmisogyny, just like being raped was twisted around into being a typical sexually-aggressive “male.”
Gender isn’t some theoretical spectrum. When trans women talk about what it means to feel like a woman, this is what I think of: rape I am not allowed to even speak of. This is what it feels like to be a woman. Being FTM didn’t change the reality of sex-based violence for me, and the MTF who hurt me is no outlier.Heis just another rapist.
From: snowflakeespecial.tumblr.com/post/88965957647/the-gender-of-rape
A 14-year-old female who experiences dysphoria is no less vulnerable than any other female child, and deserves to be safeguarded.