Hey, cis women who say “I wish I was a man but definitely not a trans way, haha! I would never be a man :)”
I say this with all the gentleness in my heart: It is okay for you to be a man. If you want to be a man, you can just be one. You also don’t have to stop being a woman to be a man. Multigender people exist. You can be a man and a woman at the same time. Or you can be just a man, or a non-binary man, or non-binary, or something entirely different. You can do and be whatever you want and whatever makes you happy.
Becoming a man is not a betrayal of womanhood and feminism. And everyone who makes you feel like it is an absolute asshole, and you should not ever listen to them. You do not have to push your own happiness aside for other peoples’ comfort.
If you want to be a man, try it out! See where it gets you. Maybe it turns out that you really weren’t trans, or not a trans man but something else entirely, and that’s fine, too. Maybe it turns out you are a trans man. In any case, following those thoughts might get you to a happier and better place in the end. And if you turn out to be happier as a man than you were as a woman, that is wonderful.
Please don’t feel forced to stay a cis woman for feminism - any feminism that mistreats or hates trans men and transmasculine people is bad feminism. Being a trans man or transmasc is not a moral failure.
Trans manhood and masculinity are wonderful, and you deserve happiness. And if you find that happiness in manhood/masculinity, you don’t deserve to be shamed or harassed for it, and you should not be made to feel the need to put yourself down for it, either.
Saying this because I used to be this “cis woman/girl” a few years ago, and felt exactly the same about myself. I did believe the “every woman feels like this! You’re not trans!” shtick for years, and forced myself to stay a girl and a woman because that was “the right thing to do” according to the “feminists” I was around.
I know what it feels like. It can get better.
All of this also goes for trans men and transmasculine people who still struggle with such thoughts, of course. It doesn’t just go away the second you realize you are trans.
What sparked this post, however, was a video I saw made by a cis woman lamenting that she was a woman and wishing she was a man but she couldn’t just be a man because she “wasn’t trans” and still liked being a woman, and a lot of other cis women in the comments agreeing. And I just feel so bad for them. If you feel miserable being a woman and wish you were something else, try this “something else” and see how it feels. See if you’ll be happier. Because sometimes, the grass is greener on the other side, and you don’t have to keep suffering in your own body or mind.
And being a trans man or transmasculine is not giving up, or taking the easy way out (fucking lol), and it doesn’t mean you are less of a feminist or that you will become an outsider to feminism. Your relationship with your life as a girl/woman and the misogyny you’ve experienced is yours alone. You are allowed to be a man in ways that cis men do not understand. You are allowed to have a relationship with misogyny and womanhood that cis women do not understand.
Hell, you can just decide one day that you are a man and change nothing about your life if you want to. The possibilities are endless. Transmasculinity is not a loss, a lessening, a closing of doors. It does not mean you are boring or traditionalist or falling in line with the status quo. It’s cool as fuck, actually, and takes a lot of bravery and determination.
Surround yourself with revolutionary transmasculine feminists; let yourself realize how many doors can open when you stop defining transmasculinity by everyone else’s metrics.