Time is a Flat Circle
content warning: mentions of transphobia (nothing extreme but to be safe)
Tumblr in the early to mid 2010s gained a reputation as the cesspool of social media apps. Between the public failure that was Dashcon, the rabid hoards of fandom participants, and the off the wall fake stories Tumblr was quite a polarizing place to any outsiders. However, the more questionable aspects of early Tumblr culture lied in the large LGBTQ concentration: discourse about who was truly the most oppressed in the community, blatant erasure and ignorance of BIPOC LGBTQ history, the ongoing fight between transmedicalists (those who believe debilitating dysphoria and the need to stick to a binary transition) and those who believe gender is a spectrum and a social construct, and — what I’d like to focus on — the infantilization of transmasculine individuals.
There grew to be a stereotype for trans men and transmasculine nonbinary people of them being “uwu small soft babies”. They were just manly enough to be considered valid men while being just feminine enough to enjoy the trappings of certain aesthetics: skinny and white, slice of life animes, the color pink, skirts and jewelry, etc. featured in the stereotype of a trans man. Now, obviously this stereotype is both transphobic and also alienating to the large population of individuals that weren’t into anything mentioned above but nevertheless it persisted. Trans men and transmasculine people were not seen on the same level as a cis man, they were something male-adjacent. Manly enough to maintain the label, but different enough to be a spectacle or something closer to a fetish.
Everyone around during these years wished this era would’ve faded into obscurity and for the most part it did. Enough people jumped on those perpetuating the stereotype that it slowly faded out. But, unfortunately, the Internet is a perpetual hellscape and fourteen year olds are going to be stupid. After the Great Porn Purge (essentially new rules dictating the removal of explicit nudity and sexual situations on the site, although a solid amount of NSFW content still remains trust me) happened in early 2019, users began leaving en masse to go get their nasty on elsewhere. The brunt of this relocation fell upon two apps — Twitter and TikTok. Twitter is where a large amount of discourse extinguished on Tumblr (for the most part of course) came back with a vengeance and then some — see the “big mean lesbian” and “lesbians MUST be women” arguments. TikTok, where discourse recycling still resides, appears to have received the rest of ye olde Tumblr: recent examples include similar creations of fandoms, clones of phenomena like Tumblr Prom, and weird ways of signaling your participation in a fanbase. But the most pervasive piece of hell that made its way back to the forefront of terminally online LGBTQ culture is infantilization; this time it’s found a new target.
Back in the old Tumblr days nonbinary people DID exist but there was a ton of microlabels dividing users which…isn’t an issue in of itself but it prevented a monolithic nonbinary identity except the asshats that called all nonbinary people “transtrenders”. But now the label “nonbinary” is recognized more and that gives people easier ways to create an overarching identity and thus easier ways to stereotype. Thus the “enby” stereotype was born on TikTok. A lot of the stereotype is recycled from the old Tumblr mess: soft, sweet, androgynous (just barely), colored hair, skinny, white. Some stuff is new out of necessity: exclusive usage of they/them pronouns, AFAB (I despise the term but it’s the most common label hence the usage), dresses like Gonzo, loves hyperpop, and has a weird name like Socks or Teeth. The “uwu soft” moniker has been reborn and reattached.
Much like the same projection on trans men, the “they/thems” ideals are harmful. Obviously not everyone fits within the incredibly hyper specific descriptors for a nonbinary person; not everyone uses they/them pronouns — pronouns don’t determine gender identity anyway I don’t get why cis people haven’t gotten this yet — not everyone has a silly name, not everyone is into possums and frogs (sidenote: where did this start?), not everyone likes the term “enby”, and not everyone has questionable music taste. I’m the first to admit I fit a LOT of the sillier stereotypes for a nonbinary person. I mostly stick to they/them pronouns though I’m fine with he/him and vamp/vamps, my name is a noun, my music taste is BAD. I also fit a lot of the more restrictive and serious stereotypes as well: I’m white, I was socialized as a woman, I’m relatively skinny, and after I shaved my head I looked fairly androgynous. While this did make me more apt to get shoved into the “uwu they/them” box — which isn’t true I have a history of biting people and I will do it again — it’s also unfortunately an easy out from getting called “not nonbinary enough”
Perhaps the most obvious result of this stereotype is the inadvertent binary created by it thus ironically giving a gender identity based around removing the gender binary a restriction. Anyone seen outside of the easily digestible nonbinary image is immediately tagged as not enough: the largest recipients of such ridicule are nonwhite (especially Black and/or Indigenous) nonbinary people and nonbinary people socialized as men. This ties into another issue present but not exclusive to Tumblr: the differences in fetishizing and “othering” In the recent revisiting of the infamous Tumblr Sexymen (https://youtu.be/q9i9KDtZtv8?t=1) phenomenon on Twitter, people have been quick to point out how quick users were to anthropomorphize inanimate objects into the archetypal sexyman rather than fawn over a nonwhite or not skinny character in the same manner as like the Onceler or Sans from Undertale. Skinny white men are more societally accepted and digestible than a BIPOC character or a fat character. The same principles can be applied to the infantalization of nonbinary/transmasculine people. It’s easier to baby someone that fits into a preconceived notion of a “less dangerous” group: skinny, white people are automatically more digestible and honestly the transphobic notion that trans men are male-adjacent or nonbinary people are more or less their assigned gender makes this worse. The foil to this is how society demonizes trans women/transfeminine people (even more so if they’re Black and/or Indigenous) hence why they’re way more immune to being babied and subjected more to either outright transphobia or the “step on me” phenomenon where people attempt a compliment by insinuating they want the person in question to enact violence upon them.
Obviously this infantilization business is far from the most dangerous thing affecting the trans community as it’s mostly located online and therefore lacks large scale material consequences. But it’s a testament to just how deep transphobia runs in online spaces — especially ones that claim to be “trans-friendly” Infantalizing nonbinary people may just seem like an annoying resurgence of a dumb Tumblr trend on its surface, but it’s genuinely an amalgam of a lot of major yet rarely dissected (by white cis people) issues within the LGBTQ community. Time truly is a flat circle or a busted washing machine, it always manages to bring up the nastiest stuff from the bottom of the barrel.
