I love your theory in the morning, we need more of it. =)

This is a brilliant post!!

I've just come from reading the comment thread on Bill's post about "Would I want to change being queer?" and was realizing how different my experience of being a queer man is from non-FtM queer men. Especially Alex's comment, about not having to stress over how another man's body works. That is SO not the case for me. And so I was feeling "illegitimate" somehow, because my experience of queerness doesn't involve common body knowledge. Unless I'm sexually involved with another FtM, I never really share the inner identity and outer parts with a lover. So a gulf opened up for me...then I came here, saw how your experience of being queer--if I'm reading you correctly--is much more centered on alienation from exploitative norms. Rules-breaking. Pushing back hard against a culture that wanted to crush you for as long as you can remember. And how your desire is something related to but also other than this.

And I can identify.

Thank you.

Like you, I really really wish there were more feminist gay men.

Brynn~

Thanks for this comment. I wasn't thinking along those lines at all when I was writing my comment on that other post. In fact, I was mostly excited that I got to use another Seinfeld quotation in a comment, but that's another story.

My sexual experiences have been limited to a small (isn't that what they all say?) number of cis men who have identified somehow as not straight. That being said, I think that saying that "we all have the same bodies" is a gross oversimplification. The last guy I was with was fifteen years older, 2/3 my weight, several inches shorter, with mild cerebral palsy. To say that we had the same bodies would be incorrect, and, considering how many people have sex with people with different bodies in this world, it seems like people are willing to cross those boundaries all the time.

I actually think that I feel similar alienation (to a much, much less degree, I understand, and I'm not trying to trivialize your experiences) from an abstract idea of a community of people with similar bodies because of my ethnicity (a little bit) and my weight issues (a lotta bit). Add to that certain ways in which my junk works differently than others', which I won't go into here, it kinda opens up a whole lot of anxiety. I'm definitely not going to say that it's the same as your experiences at all, but I'm hoping it's a starting point for some understanding. Please correct me if I'm just not getting it.

Mattilda~

Dehumanization in gay male spaces? Um, yeah, and it's even funnier because that's something I think we should know about.

I must be surrounded by a great group of people who identify as gay men, because I definitely wouldn't say that this is a problem that they are all or systemically unaware of feminism (as if everything that gets labeled as feminism can be rolled into one concept). Like some are, some aren't. But then I exit that group of people and I enter those public gay male spaces, like the bars and clubs, and maybe that's why I just don't go to them anymore, because people are actually willing to be openly rude to others there. But I'm trying to take that as a cue to not be so judgmental - I mean, people congregate at those spaces based on one thing and so many other things about them are so different, so me being like, you're rude, you aren't giving me a chance, why don't you stop and think about the broader implications of what you're doing, seems like it's just me trying to impose some abstract concept of awareness on others. Like a total lack of humility. Like I'm more enlightened or something.

But then again, my apparent decision has been to just stop seeking out those spaces. I'm still trying not to be so essentializing and judgmental, but just from a distance.

Great post!

Hey, Alex, yeah it’s true that all of us can only understand others’ experiences to a limited degree. Then again, all of us being human, maybe the bodily differences aren’t as significant as we might think. In the end, maybe my bodily experience as a trans guy isn’t that different than a cis-guy’s.

The rub is, I'll never know. And that's one of the big reasons it's so hard to let it go.

Mattilda, I'm glad I was reading it right! And thanks again for the brilliant post.