i hope he's changed! and i'm glad people being shitty to trans women using femboys as a cudgel no longer have such a high profile tool to use! but i need people to understand this
i hope he's changed! and i'm glad people being shitty to trans women using femboys as a cudgel no longer have such a high profile tool to use! but i need people to understand this
It's an incredibly mild complaint compared to how harmful this behaviour was but I am also annoyed by how F1nnster hid taking HRT. Trans people don't need to be out but their whole channel was about being a cis man on T who was just that girly which obviously was a lie. I tried to shake some sense into countless boymoders who were dooming because they were "manlier than a cis guy" and would not believe she was lying about not taking HRT.
At least this video will hopefully put an end to all the cope from insecure trans girls beating themselves down using him as a cudgel but probably not.
I'm genuinely disgusted by that. I'm almost more angry about that. F1n spent all that time making money off of being "just a guy" who looked more feminine than most tgirls do on HRT. Being "just a guy" who was prettier than your girlfriend, while on HRT???
Imagine being a beauty influencer who makes their whole shtick about loving your natural self while hiding the work they've had done.
'Cause the trap ideology thing is somewhat explainable by being egged on by chat and dealing with complex internal identity shit while having no real trans community irl. Doesn't change the responsbility that comes with having a platform but we also don't live in a society that acknowledges that that kind of responsibility even exists.
I'm 4 years HRT and 2 years post FFS and he's prettier than me with a more feminine face. Considering how insecure I am it hurt that a cis guy could do that just for fun and leave me in the dust. That kind of direct lying is not appreciated.
i remember seeing a post (by a trans woman) joking about how she didn't hate f1nn5ter for good reasons, she was just like the evil witch who is jealous of the young princess' beauty in a fairy tale and going "yeah, i feel that"
knowing he was on hrt for at least a while makes me so much madder about that. i don't know how long he was on hrt for, i think it was only like the last 6 months or so before he came out? but even so that's so unbelievably frustrating in ways i cannot put into words
To be fair I don't remember looking very different at all on only six months HRT, idk how much of an effect it'd've had.
yeah this is absolutely not the biggest thing to worry about with f1nn5ter, i don't know how much it mattered to him looking like that, which he certainly did before he started hrt. it's something that really bugs me (i feel like maybe it shouldn't but it does) but if it wasn't for the other stuff i would just immediately let it go. i mean the whole thing is inextricable from the trap stuff but you get what i mean
he made some downlow statements about being on HRT maybe more then a year ago. deflected it to being on Finasteride but many did not believe.
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Hate to break it to you, but that's almost every beauty or fitness influencer out there, male or female. Hiding the use of performance enhancing drugs or surgeries like BBL, ab sculpting or liposuction.
yeah, i hadn't thought about that but that is more than a little fucked up, especially given how much he leaned into that as the gimmick. i mean, i know there was also a lot of just standard streamer stuff, like minecraft streams and whatnot, but that was THE thing she had going on
Why do you think the public was entitled to know he was taking HRT? People come out when they want to come out. I think it's disgusting that you're criticizing a gender-fluid person for not coming out when YOU wanted them to. And he is well within his rights for expressing his feminine side while still calling himself a guy.
It's messed up in the same way that workout influencers deny being on steroids when they are. It gives people messed up body image issues because they are being told that they can achieve something that is actually impossible. This is a reaction that a lot of people in the thread are actually having.
There are differences of course:
A. There's more social pressure to hide being on HRT than steroids.
B. Not mentioning something is different than denying it.
So, I think we can acknowledge that he had reason to hide it and that he's not required to disclose it, but we can also acknowledge the harm it causes in the discourse when it comes from such a prominent person.
the reason is very clearly stated there, which is that the entire thing his channel was based on was that he was an ordinary cis guy who looked like that and it's now clear that was untrue. he was something used against trans women by transmisogynists regularly. either "why can't you just be a feminine man, like him" or saying he was prettier or some other similar bullshit
of course! i do not begrudge anyone who does that. however, in addition to the above, he on several occasions made videos* that heavily leaned on some super transphobic tropes, about the idea of an attractive women secretly turning out to be a man as this big twist. that shit gets people killed irl, so him doing it as a joke for content is both in poor taste and also perpetuating that idea that tricking men is what we do as trans women. and it's also his whole gimmick to begin with, and that was how i heard about him. he was the streamer/youtuber who looks like a girl but is a man, that was his thing. the fact that he was lying about that for months, maybe longer, is something that it's perfectly reasonable to be mad about for a whole host of reasons
*
I see those titles and I see someone attempting to explore their identity, albiet in a out-of-touch streamer way and with clickbaity headlines. Anyone who used him as ammunition against other trans people would've just clung onto something else as a weapon if he didn't make his content the way he did.
Stop sowing division in the trans community over something petty. I think the way he made content potentially had a positive impact on many gender-nonconforming people, because he showed that you don't have to identify as trans in order to explore your identity and how you express yourself.
You're upset that he "lied" about being on HRT? Did you tell everyone right away when you started HRT? I would imagine you told people when you were ready. Fin was still figuring out his flavor of gender-queerness and probably didn't want to be pigeon-holed into being called a transwoman by his community. He probably thought it was nessessary to reinforce the idea of "I'm a guy, but I look like a gal." through his videos so much to avoid that.
ok well this "petty" stuff causes real world harm and, i would like to say again, GETS PEOPLE KILLED. these ideas that he's leaning into and perpetuating get real trans women killed! that is by far the most important thing here, even if there's a bunch of other shitty things going on here. this is not sowing division, this is not petty, this is something that causes actual harm! like, in ways that aren't just a streamer feeling bad because all these trans women think he's one of them
the people using him as a cudgel against transfems would have found other ways to attack us, but having someone so high profile is a uniquely potent form of ammunition that i have the right to be bitter about! i am mad about this shit! i am not advocate we burn him at the stake, i am simply saying i haven't forgotten it and i'm still angry!
good for them! i'm happy for anyone who feels that way! there are some in the comments of this post, i'm glad they found that way of learning to express themselves. i take issue with the phrasing "you don't have to identify as trans to x" because as mentioned transphobes often make that argument using him as an example, and the idea that pressure exerted by people suggesting people questioning their identity identify as trans could be a real problem compared to the massive, overwhelming pressure exerted by our transphobic (and especially transmisogynistic) society is both patently ridiculous and a transphobic trope
but as mentioned i'm genuinely happy for anyone who felt like they understood themselves better thanks to his content
you're right, i didn't tell everyone right away! i bet you think you're real smart for that one! the difference between me and f1nn5ter is that i was not selling myself as a cisgender man who looked like that, dealing with all those other tropes i've discussed and also (as has been brought up by a bunch of other people here) giving people a lot of body image issues when they compare themselves to him because if a CIS DUDE looks like that why can't i look better when i'm on hrt
but that's hardly the most important point here. it sucks, but the important point is him repeating these deeply harmful tropes. i don't care if he had a hard time with people assuming he was a trans woman (as i mentioned earlier the idea that people pushing him in that way make a big impact comparatively is ridiculous, but i'll roll with it) the trap stuff is inexcusable to me. you cannot do that shit for so long without someone informing you why it's a problem, i refuse to believe no one told him to cut that specific shit out
and it doesn't matter anyway because there's no fucking way he was titling the videos like that to make himself feel better about his gender, that's bullshit and you know it. the videos were titled and thumbnailed like that because leaning into scandalous transphobic tropes gets clicks. and i am allowed to be angry at him for that! you're acting like i have any power over him when i'm a broke removed in a different country expressing my frustration over the shit he's done that's hurt me and my friends and those like us. fuck off
Thank you for speaking the words in my heart and for educating and shutting down the normalization of transphobia and the sexualization of trans women. It's so frustrating to see people try to shut down legitimate concerns by displaying their ignorance in the material conditions of trans women.
jesus, this really is episode 315 of "transfem eceleb is a Bad Person for not making her entire life fully accessible to the public"
sorry if this reply was nasty, i just feel insane that we're able to slip into this thinking so casually of just seeing a public figure and immediately talking about how they have a Responsibility with their Platform to never make anyone feel any bad feelings even incidentally and never tell any lies and always share personal details and not be too pretty or too complicated or too comfortable with themself and look directly in my eyes and cast a spell protecting me from the evils of this world.
like, there's a reason queer people stay in the closet! it's not because they're evil or cowards! flex your empathy muscles!
i do not think f1nn5ter has a responsibility for that, and the hrt nondisclosure is not the problem here. it's something that's shitty, but not too different from other similar influencers not talking about things they've done to look the way they do. it feels a little worse here because f1nn5ter's whole thing was kind of directly about being a Cis Guy who looks like that and there's already a bunch of feelings and often dysphoria tied to his deal, but it isn't really any different from the examples given by say, redquestionasker2. if a fitness influencer were revealed to be using steroids when they claimed not to be in the middle of there already being a bunch of discourse about that person it would absolutely be something people criticized (as they should), though obviously there are some notable differences between the 2 examples
i would not try and argue this was a big problem on its own, it's the trap stuff that is the real issue to me, because as i keep mentioning, that gets people killed. those ideas and tropes get trans women killed regularly. i think that's the important thing to take away from this
i don't think anyone has said he was evil or a coward for staying closeted? the person you're responding to very clearly says it's totally fine for him to have stayed closeted, but it was a move that did hurt people in certain ways and i think it's important to be aware of that
I guess I understand what you're saying. That stuff wasn't great.
Going to disagree, influencers online should absolutely disclose drug use to their audience, should the use of drugs allow them to achieve a certain look. That absolutely should be one of their responsibilities if they make a career out of how they look. It doesn't have to be anything specific, in fact I'd prefer it not to be specific so that people do not try to copy them, just a heads up that hey I'm not 100% natural or whatever. This goes from Hollywood actors, to models, to bodybuilders and fitness content. Sadly far too many people fail to do this, and it leads to people having body image issues. That is the last thing people need, especially transgender people.
would not be the first time i've learned of a completely new alien moral standard for the first time after someone decides to apply it to a transfem.
Sorry but thats just forced outing. HRT isnt a vanity thing.
Nah dw I can see why my comment sounded weird.
I am not against trans influencers being in the closet. I was not pissed by PhilosophyTube coming out as trans after doing most of her transition because it's her business only, I don't care. I myself am closeted on HRT so I see the necessity. We are on the trans sub and I assumed we are all trans here. I just find F1nn and F1nn only annoying because it was very obviously also a channel gimmick. I would find myself annoying too if I became a "cis female fitness influencer" while being on testosterone. And honestly I have a negative perception of influencers in general that might play into this.
Sorry too if I sound defensive, my inbox did not get the messages and now I realized people assumed I was a guy doing the "they tricked me!1" thing, which there are probably a lot of.
i wasn't assuming that, and i didn't want to come off like i'm dismissing your real hurt. I just don't think it's fair to put it all on him.
can you change this? it's a term I mostly see in fetish/porn and it's kind of a slur. leaving it up as other mods might disagree.
Its worth noting that he's been on HRT for 6 months and people were leveling him against trans women well before that.
Anyway as i said in my top level comment, I think this attitude is wrongheaded even if your bitterness is understandable, because it supports forced outing.
Yeah, the problem here isn't the nondisclosure, it's that people tie acceptability as a trans person to "passing" and hold that over our heads. Putting this in scare quotes because passing as it is commonly understood doesn't mean "looks like a cis woman", but "meets a conventional, cishetnormative standard of beauty women are subjected to." What people in this comment chain rightfully complain about would have been thrown at them regardless of Finnster's hormone status, because it's just plain old transmisogyny. We've been judged by how fuckable we are to cishet dudes since at least the days of Ray Blanchard, when that consideration *was a direct part of if we were allowed to take HRT in the first place." We're talking about straight guys here. When an AMAB person tells them she's trans, wants to live as a woman fulltime and wants to access gender affirming care, the first thing these hogs wonder about is frequently "would i tap that"? And they often do not care about actual passing in the sense of "could i live stealth?", either, knowledge of our AGAB is a core part of chaser fantasies. Most of them will lie about all of this, but their lies are never particularly convincing. How hot we are by straight guy standards becomes the focal question in whether we're allowed to exist or whether we're too confusing to be allowed even as a guilty pleasure.
Finnster has not created this mindset, he has become successful because his presentation matches such narratives, because his content fits into a deeply transmisogynist attention economy. This is something he has, ofc, deliberately utilized - but the main problem here is that he has played into invalidating "trap" discourses and the fetishization of fem-presenting GNC people, when he came out about what really isn't relevant here at all. All of the really problematic shit he's done works just the same for people who are open about taking HRT, as we see from the entire debacle around "transmaxxing" communities in incel spaces.
We cannot expect transphobes to argue honestly. We cannot expect them to understand how HRT works, or how any other part of transitioning works, or how various gender identities work, and we cannot expect these guys to think with anything but their dicks. That's the problem, not if somebody piggybacking on their perception of genderqueerness needs half a year to make jokes about how the E makes his nipples hurt.