u/dahknee

Hey guys, wanted to get your experiences and thoughts about something a lot of trans guys go through.

I transitioned at 30, and before that was in sapphic community spaces since I mostly date women. Since taking testosterone people perceive me as a cis het man. In that invisibility there is safety at the cost of visibility and sometimes community.

There is a trans lesbian in my city who is very active in the queer community and organizes a series of parties, some of which are sapphic. I used to love going to those events with a lot of my friends who are women and nonbinary trans mascs, but the organizer has told me explicitly that trans men are not welcome at those parties because they are for sapphics, and that men cant be sapphic.

We have this big WhatsApp group that used to be for "Queer international women" and when I transitioned I asked if the group was intended to be for women or if it was more like FLINTA since I knew there were a lot of nonbinary people in the group, and I was wondering if it was still for me as a trans man. It sparked a whole conversation, the group got renamed, and a lot of the enbies were glad for the clarification. That same woman who organizes the parties opposed calling it a FLINTA group and was vocally against it because some trans women experience FLINTA as being trans-femme exclusionary.

None of it is personal or against me, and I know this, she doesnt even know me. She just feels that trans men are men, and she wants spaces that are for women and nonbinary people. I understand how it is when you want to feel safe and with people who wont assault you or sexualize you or bother you, and obviously we all experience the way cis het men are usually the ones doing that, so when you see someone who you perceive is a cis het man, your brain automatically will feel less safe. And a lot of us have experienced the grief associated with realizing that in order to be your authentic self, you are now perceived as a threat.

I realized, though, that after being told I was not welcome at those events and having whether I should be in the WhatsApp group opposed, I have kind of removed myself from a lot of the local queer events, especially the ones that are more sapphic/queer rather than for gay men. I think I am probably being overly sensitive or reactive in doing that. Losing access to that community makes me sad, and I realized I probably dont need to be editing myself out of them. I could let it go and just go where I want to go but I dont want to be an entitled man who thinks his emotions make him entitled to all spaces.

I notice when I do go to those spaces or events I feel like I have to play up my queerness by presenting in a feminine way (which makes me dysphoric), or not wear a shirt or something so people can see my scars, but the most authentic me is very masculine presenting, and queerness is about celebrating who you are.

I imagine many if not all of you have experience with this sort of thing. I'd love to hear how you navigate it, how you think about it, what balance you find, etc.

TLDR how do you experience and handle being perceived as a cis het man in queer/sapphic spaces?

My girlfriend (36F) has been seeing a therapist for about a year. I (36M) originally recommended the therapist to her because she helped me immensely in some of the hardest times of my life and thankfully she has been really helpful for my girlfriend also.

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Unfortunately, it is a private therapist outside of the public healthcare system in our country, and her fees have increased a lot and my girlfriend is paying ~2.5x what I was when I saw her 5 years ago, at around 250 euros a session, and she requires that patients have sessions every week.

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My girlfriend is now spending ~30% of her post-tax income on therapy and can't afford to save any money as a result. She can only barely afford it because our housing costs are extremely low for the market in our country right now.

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She decided she needs to talk to the therapist about the fees to see if they could work something out to make it less of a financial burden.

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When they talked about it, the therapist said that she was worried about therapist-burnout because her fees were already so low. My girlfriend has a recent experience with burnout that the therapist knows about, and is generally extremely empathetic and struggles sometimes with setting boundaries and conflict.

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When she told me that the therapist said she was worried about getting burnout from having the fees be too low, it struck me as inappropriate.

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She is well within her professional right to say that she can't lower the fee, but to say something personal about burnout felt like it could be manipulative. She has a power imbalance and knows so much about where she could have leverage with my girlfriend. To bring that up in that discussion seems, perhaps, out of place.

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On the other hand, therapists are humans too, and deserve, of course, to have work environments that are compensating them fairly and where they don't feel at risk of burning out, and maybe being open about that with a client is fine since you are both just people.

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She then asked my girlfriend to ask people in her life for money and to "try to find money from other sources" either from me, or her parents, or somewhere else she could earn extra money. This also struck me as a bit inappropriate.

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So, what do you think? Was that inappropriate or even manipulative behavior? Or is this something you would say is fine in a therapeutic relationship?

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Thank you for reading this and for your thoughts!