Just saw some stuff about "killing the old male side" and I understand why a lot of other transwomen approached it like that, but... That's not exactly where I'm at. Part of it is I was never that male to begin with. Even though looked (unfortunately still look, to some degree -_-) physically male as all hell, I never "socially" passed as male from the start, and only provisionally managed to for a brief and miserable period of time in our 20s shortly before transitioning.
But another part of it is that there's a version of masculinity I don't mind one bit, a part I don't mind having a little bit of as part of me.
Setting aside the plural stuff for (perhaps) another post later, lemme dig into something rather important.
trans stuff below, musings on the role of maleness
Got bullied out of first-grade and then homeschooled, and for so many years my only model for "maleness" was my dad. My dad is Cool, objectively. He is a 68-year-old socialist who smokes weed and plays the acoustic guitar. He has hitchhiked cross-country. He takes no shit but has endless kindness for people who are close to him. He is an OG hippie (sort-of) who never went reaganite. In other words, masculinity(good).
My dysphoria didn't really start until puberty started, and it was very physical. My social dysphoria didn't start until a few years later, after I went back into the public schooling system for highschool. And even then it took me a while to comprehend what American society expects out of men. And that's when I really started feeling the blood in my veins turn to dust and all of the soul leeching out of me.
But, the thing is, as much as maleness (constructed as it is by society) hurt me SO badly, oh god, and as much as physical maleness is a daily body horror routine for me. I always think of my dad, and his unflinching honesty and kindness, and remember that masculinity can be a lot of things. Masculinity as it was constructed by him, by his own choices, by his decision never to beat me even though his parents beat him, appeared to me as something wholesome and good, blood still in its veins, no connection to games of superiority.
I think transmasc people are tapping into the same kind of masculinity my dad embodies. Hell, how many of you want to be the weed-smoking acoustic-guitar-playing socialist sort of man? I've spent too much time around transmasc people to ever really want the male elements in here to die. To the trans guys: y'know I see it, you've found something real and true and "animal" for lack of a better word about being male that has something compelling about it, rather than becoming a bulky bone-ridged beer-soaked husk that chose spite over joy 20 years ago (which is the "masculinity" I saw in my future and fled from like a bat out of hell).
All I ever wanted was for the physical dysphoria to go away. The social femininity feels more like being free to be myself, like the strait jacket of the mockery you get for acting feminine and presenting male has been lifted and I can just do my own most natural "whatever." I have never, however, really been disgusted by the idea of "acting" masculine, that's never a dysphoria for me, and I think it's because I got lucky in the dad lottery.
So like don't let anyone tell you that masculinity is still toxic even if you're trans or whatever. Masculinity isn't guaranteed to be toxic even if you're cishet!