mothshrub

My latest hobby is 'watching video essays by trans authors particularly but not exclusively if they have an essay on masculinity or gender and society'.

• Contrapoints
• Jesse Gender
• Lily Alexandre
• Lady Emily
• RickiHirsch
• Alexander Avila
• Oakwyrm

What I really want is so many essays about masculinity that someone writes a meta-analysis comparing and contrasting how the different authors approach the topic.

We can already compare Contrapoints, Jesse Gender, and Alexander Avila, where there's a fascinating sense of looking at it from both the inside and outside in all of them, but with Contrapoints and Jesse Gender, it's also a sense of 'I was there, now I'm not, and I'm so glad I'm not.' With Alexander Avila, his sense is more an energetic 'I'm there now and it sucks'. And like--these seem obvious and straightforward when stating it out loud, but the framing couldn't be more different, and speaks by itself: Alexander speaks to the viewer the whole way like they're a man that he's coaching through all the steps of manhood, taking them in for a look 'from the inside'. Other trans men might not take the same approach when writing about something like this, but I haven't seen others (yet, still looking), and it's just really interesting to see how everyone's extremely personal journies affect how they write about it.

Even when their conclusions are different (Contrapoints refrains from making recommendations to solve issues with Masculinity, feeling that it's not her place as someone who's not in that category, but Jesse Gender does), they all have experienced trauma in society's conceptualization of manhood and womanhood, and in the way they experienced society pressing both of these at them.  All of them have huge empathy for the issue, even as they show the stark cruelties of the system as it is. All of them are extremely clear on the harms of it all, and all of them agree on the part where the system Must Change.

I need more!! If anyone has recs for more authors, then please, more!!!