Why FtMs Don't Talk

Guest Author - McMad

Jul 22, 2025

Disclaimer: Some of what I have written here has been helped by reading Judith Butler’s “Gender Trouble”. This isn’t just because of what Butler themselves wrote, but also because of who else is quoted in that book. Two large influences for me so far have been Simon De Beavoir and Lacan. While this is not an academic paper, I do want it known that their work has helped inspire my perspective. I may not be able to add direct quotes as of right now, but know that if you see similarities in my ideas compared to theirs, that is likely why. This initial post is likely to be revised and republished later down the line with an accompanying YouTube video.

I have been wanting to talk about my experiences as a trans person for years now. There are plenty of drafts clogging my notes which prove my attempts, but I have never actually been able to finish anything. Recently, I took another stab at trying to explain my own journey through gender. I was going to call it, “my experience vs. the narrative”. The idea was that I would compare and contrast my life with the narratives surrounding both feminism and transgenderism to see where the similarities and differences were. I wanted to go over my initial misunderstandings about both these ideas, how those misunderstandings affected me and my concept of gender, and where I’m at now with more knowledge.

After a whole day of writing out my life’s story however, I realized a problem. Sharing my life experience as a transgender person born female is actually impossible. And that, unfortunately, is what this is about.

But first, we need to talk about what “the narrative” even is. This is actually very difficult. What is “the narrative” on trans issues? This answer is only simple if you’re already entirely opposed to transgenderism. If you are against any sort of progressive view on gender, you’re very unlikely to ever engage in that discourse around it outside of blanket opposition. If you have any sort of support for progressive ideas on gender, especially trans and feminist ones, defining “the narrative” isn’t so easy. Your engagement with the topic has shown you a broader spectrum of narratives which can exist within the community, exposing new complexity. Narratives within gender discourse often build upon each other. For example, one narrative states that gender dysphoria is a severe medical condition. “Transitioning is the proper treatment of a medical condition” is the accepted narrative upon which people then try to determine who has rights to claim that medical condition, how it should be diagnosed, whether current gatekeeping is adequate or oppressive, and so much more.

The same thing happens with basically anything in gender. When it comes to trans people, every issue fought over is due to disagreements rooted in other narratives about sex and gender which people subscribe to. The narratives you subscribe to regarding manhood, womanhood, sex, or gender are going to impact which narratives you will subscribe to when considering trans men, trans women, and non-binary people.

But on top of being trans, I am also female. Feminism has branched out into different territories quite a bit since getting us the right to vote. And like the trans community, these branches don’t always agree with each other, which creates even more narratives. Women are constantly in disagreement about how far sexual liberation should go, how much individual men are at fault for a misogynistic culture, how much onus is on women to further their own liberation, whether traditional marriage is inherently oppressive, whether sex work should be encouraged or not, and so much more. And like with the trans community, all of these disagreements are founded on other narratives feminists have subscribed to.

As a result, the discourse surrounding issues faced by people of my biological sex produces a whole other set of narratives I have to consider when speaking on my experiences.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of narratives out there about sex and gender which allow people to be fully self-serving in their reasons for subscribing to them. Even more depressingly, those who have built a platform off the peddling of narratives often manipulate others into subscribing to those same narratives in order to maintain audience growth and profit. Discourse is money now. Words are cash. Peddling narratives has become a widespread hustle.

This poses a serious problem, specifically for trans people who were born female, as our ability to be heard in our own communities has become fully dependent on whether or not listening to us profits those who have the power to push or change the narrative. As things currently exist, there is no incentive to listen.

Here are a couple examples of what I mean:

I genuinely don’t feel comfortable or safe discussing at length any of the sexual trauma or misogyny I’ve faced when speaking with TERFs. Why? Well because the narrative surrounding trans men from a TERF perspective is that sexual trauma or trauma due to misogyny is what makes you want to cut your tits off. Sexual trauma or misogyny are why trans-identified-females want to become masculine, in the hopes that such an appearance will deter men from being attracted to them. Transitioning from female to male is simply a way to escape oppression. This narrative however, has made it impossible for FtMs to genuinely speak on any actual experiences they may have with sexual trauma or misogyny in what is supposed to be a feminist space. Their accounts will only ever be heard in order to serve the TERF narrative, which aims to discourage people from transitioning at all. Whether trauma is the only direct cause of a female’s transition, whether some females may actually be better off living as men, whether happiness can ever be achieved through a masculinized transition, or whether it’s even possible to reverse the impacts of sexual/misogynistic trauma to restore a woman “back to normal”, are never discussed. How do we know if those discussions could potentially produce new knowledge? Better ideas which, if taken seriously, could threaten those who currently benefit the most off the current TERF narrative?

In other words, even though TERFs claim to be feminists who see trans men as victimized women, many of them are fully disinterested in contesting their narrative’s ultimate prescription, which is for the FtM to embrace their female body before it is sullied by hormones and surgeries; or to detransition before the sullying has gone too far.

The problem is that no trans-identified-female wants their personal narrative about what happened to them exploited by people who are not only advocating against their ability to transition, but whose pundits also profit off that exploitation. Nobody wants their own personal story regarding some of the most painful moments of their lives ripped away, all so that those profiting can continue to tell their followers what they want to hear. These TERF narratives are typically dressed up in empathy towards trans men to obfuscate reality. But the truth is, neither TERFs, nor feminists broadly, would exploit the experiences of sexual trauma from a traditionally feminine presenting woman in this way. The only reason it’s done to FtM people, is because some people profit from doing it, and others follow.

Likewise however, I also genuinely do not feel comfortable or safe discussing a lot of my experiences within the trans community. Nobody’s understanding of sex and gender was developed in a vacuum. This is the case with both trans women and trans men. Your understanding of sex, gender, manhood, womanhood, and gender ambiguity, will always be influenced by your previous life living as the sex you were born as. However, an FtM’s ability to speak on the impact their biological sex has had on their understanding of gender feels disproportionately limited in comparison to people born of the opposite sex, and an FtM’s ability to speak on their own experiences feels fully contingent on whether or not what they have to say invalidates someone else as a side-effect.

My ability to express my feelings and experiences with regard to sex or gender feel wholly reliant on what another group has decided are acceptable feelings and experiences for me to have. Whenever a feeling or experience is deemed NOT acceptable, it will simply be ignored until an FtM gets too annoying, at which point they will often be met with hostility, mockery, and humiliation.

Additionally, the very act of expressing feelings or experiences in the first place is often framed as inherently feminine in of itself- something a “true man” would never be inclined to participate in. If we believe “trans women are women” and “trans men are men”, I feel like it would logically make sense to conclude that an FtM risks his trans-ness being called into question any time he wishes to recount his experiences, as doing so would be displaying “female coded behavior”. This is already in itself an attack on his biological sex. But additionally, if his experiences in some way invalidate another community member, he risks being shunned at best, or at worst, accused of being emotional, histrionic, or trying to make everything “all about himself”, when he could instead be serving as an ally towards members being affected by issues deemed more serious.

Therefore, an FtM person’s access to the same basic gender affirmation trans women are seen as inherently entitled to, feels wholly reliant on their willingness to be objects which validate and affirm the identity of trans women; a dynamic which is not too dissimilar to how traditional misogyny treats women as objects which primarily exist to validate and affirm a man’s ego. Anything but allyship to the rest of the community, whether through proactive sentiments or simply through remaining silent, will result in an FtM’s biological sex being attacked for not being masculine enough. The right to equal treatment granted to the rest of the trans community is something FtMs are required to earn by acting against their own self interest in one way or another. Much like the TERF community, the trans community also views trans men as an object to further an agenda, instead of human beings entitled to the same things other groups are seen as fundamentally deserving of.

The trans community also engages in similar exploitation as TERFs. Whereas it feels like TERFs will exploit the female experiences of FtM people, it feels like the trans community primarily exploits their bodies. The silent image of an adult human female who has undergone testosterone therapy is most favorably represented when it can serve to secure the inclusion of trans women in female spaces, whereas it’s usually ignored or seen negatively in most other circumstances. In other words, the bodies of FtM’s are used as tools to further the interests of a group they are not a part of. When considering this dynamic, I simply cannot help but harken back to the descriptions I have read of old misogynistic structures where a woman’s body was used as a bargaining chip to secure land and finances between men through marriage. In both cases, there is a female body being utilized to exclusively secure someone else’s benefits.

No individual man, woman, or trans person, in whatever form they were born in, is responsible for this happening. There is a difference between an fundamental hatred of someone, and the neglect to include them due to your own limited perspective, even if attempts from outside parties to broaden your perspective cause you to resent them. You cannot be expected to know about a different perspective if you’ve never had to consider that a different perspective is necessary, or even possible. Furthermore, while I am a human being who occasionally feels emotions about these things, I despise harboring resentment within myself. I harbor none towards TERFs, trans people, males, females, or anyone else. I have discovered great enjoyment in engaging with the perspectives of people who are different from me. And while I know how hard that can be, most anger or frustration I have felt is primarily towards the fact that interest in this manner of engagement feels one-sided, albeit with some exceptions (there are always exceptions).

The reality is that the nuance required to further discuss the topic of gender cannot exist without threatening that which is being gained by the current conversation’s lack of it.

What’s being gained in this case, is the capital as well as the validation easily attained by those who have been setting the standard for trans advocacy and trans science historically. As a result, FtM people are largely excluded from the conversation of trans rights, unless they can be used to secure the rights for other groups of trans people. The logic broadly goes like this: “these people don’t actually have many problems, and the problems they do have are silly. Therefore, we should spend more time focusing on my problems, because I have more problems, and they are NOT silly.”

The interesting thing about this fundamental line of logic, is that it’s practiced in both feminist and trans communities, even when those communities are at odds with one another. Feminism has consistently discounted and discredited the experiences of male individuals by explaining that they don’t have as many problems, and that the problems they do have are frivolous. But we do not see this as a problem. Due to the historic oppression of women, dismissing the problems of males within a feminist context is seen as a way of “punching up”. After years of this behavior from feminists, the idea that trans people (especially those born male who have been victims of this “punching up” in the past) would be happy to return the favor by treating FtM people in this same way as a form of “payback” is perfectly understandable. Not just because of an FtM’s identification with manhood, but also specifically because of their birth sex.

TERFs engage in this same “punching-up” behavior against trans women, as they see trans women as men, and therefore a target they are justified in “punching up” at like with any other man. The main issue is that trans spaces replicate the aesthetics of this behavior, while still producing misogynistic outcomes.

Like TERFs, the trans community has a vested interest in exploiting a certain subsection of females, specifically to further narratives which do not actually value the humanity or dignity of FtM people as equal to the humanity or dignity of those predominantly driving the narratives served in part by our existence. FtM experiences, bodies, and personal narratives are still seen as tools which can be used when they support pre-existing narratives which only profit everyone else, but are at best ignored, and at worst, attacked and discredited when their existence does not serve the broader community’s interests.

As they currently exist, both communities stand to gain from the usage of a specific kind of biological female, but stand to lose from their inclusion.

This isn’t to say that every single person propping up these dynamics is directly benefitting through capital or even validation, nor do I fault any individual person for their part in this structure, even if I have had bad experiences with individuals as a result of this structure. That’s because most of them are victims of grifters.

Grifters are typically those people who most easily benefit from a current narrative on any given topic, as they have no real conviction in any of the ideas they share. They do not share ideas based on their merit. Rather, they share those ideas which will provide the most direct benefit. As a result, they do not rely on well-founded arguments to back up their positions, as their actual positions are subject to change. Instead, they prey on feelings of vulnerability and fear, effectively trapping people and farming them for capital by keeping those feelings alive. Most people who mistreat FtMs in the way I have described here are not doing so out of a direct benefit. Rather, they’re being misled because someone else who is benefitting has convinced them as part of an audience that a challenging or opposing idea is a threat to their personal safety and wellbeing.

This creates a massive chilling effect on the discourse around trans men. FtM people like myself are increasingly disincentivized from speaking on any of our experiences, because doing so poses several risks to us. At best be met with blank stares, and at worst, opens their lives up to scrutiny, their stories to exploitation, and overall puts them at risk for mockery, belittlement, and misogyny. This creates a broader lack of interest leads to lack of research; lack of research leads to a lack of accessible knowledge. In turn, scant knowledge on a demographic directly benefits people who peddle false narratives surrounding that demographic, disincentivizing anybody from pursuing knowledge which they may otherwise be more inclined to seek out.

The trans community’s problem is not that it said there were 20 genders, or that it normalized they/them pronouns. Feminism’s problem was not paintings made of period blood or people with blue hair. The problem is much worse. Progressive discourse is constantly being nerfed by bad actors who pit people against each other solely so that they can continue to benefit from the current discourse for longer. And to prove my point, let’s pick on my least favorite pooner:

Buck Angel, a rare example of an FtM with a voice, spends far more time appealing to popular narratives about social contagion, than he does actually discussing the issues people like him face. He has actively worked to discourage curiosity on the topic by stating that FtM’s are different from MtF’s, as well as agreeing with other trans people like Brianna Wu when they echo these sentiments without elaboration. Of course, the audience Buck Angel appeals to is not actually interested in learning the differences between these two groups, nor are they interested in actually furthering research on FtMs in order to better understand their needs. This is not cruelty or malice born out of hatred for FtM people. It’s fear that new knowledge would pose a threat to the narratives which currently make money. This is why people like Buck Angel distinguish FtM’s and MtF’s as different. The distinction made is not intended to help broaden the discussion so that the needs for FtM people can be included and better understood. Far from it- the goal is actually to keep FtMs invisible by insinuating that understanding them or including them in any current trans conversation is simply pointless. It serves to maintain the current narrative on trans issues, allowing the focus to remain on more profitable discourse, while also allowing Buck to monopolize FtM representation as someone who knows what he’s talking about, when he doesn’t.

In conclusion; my experiences as someone both female and trans have to stay private if I wish to preserve their integrity and maintain my ownership of them. Were I to talk about everything I’ve gone through, both TERFs and trans people would have more than enough material to cherrypick for the sake of their own narratives. I don’t want to feel like I’m being robbed of my own experiences, just because someone else needs them to validate their own perspectives or line their own pockets.

The burden of responsibility does not rest on one person alone. Rather, it rests on the collective structure of monetized discourse, which rewards the sharing of ideas based on their profitability rather than their merit, effectively forcing every idea into a dichotomy in which it must either be commodified, or discarded. Ultimately, the commodification of ideas for profit is not something which only affects gender discourse, but all discourse. Buck Angel is only one example of this, but Brianna Wu, Brad Polumbo, Maia Poet, Katie Montgomerie, Erin Reed, Abigail Thorne, Contrapoints, and plenty more all stand to benefit from simply riding the wave of gender discourse in its current state, until it’s been so stifled that it stagnates, and then dies. If stories like my own ever want the chance to be heard and genuinely understood, then they first need to be recognized as stories belonging to a group of people who are human, despite being uniquely female. So long as the experiences and bodies of FtM people are viewed as objects which further a broader narrative, they will not be treated as human.

But this cannot change until communities are no longer incentivized to listen without trying to cram our experiences into their preexisting ideas of what those experiences signify, due to narratives they have already subscribed to. Until people have been convinced that someone else’s needs don’t inherently pose a threat to their own, until people realize that discussion of one person’s experiences does not inherently invalidate another’s, then misogyny against FtM people will continue to impede their ability to be truly included in the community.

Originally published on McMad's Substack:

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