A “transgender man” has gone viral for posting an Instagram video bemoaning the experience of presenting as a man.
Published by motivational speaker, stress management coach, and social media influencer James Barnes, the video offers an intimate look into the oftentimes unrealized difficulties inherent in living life as a man.
To critics, the video also provides proof that no matter how many hormones they take, biological women like Barnes will never really be men.
View the video below:
This is really sad. Trans man realizes how hard it is to be a man when you’re really a woman.
Males and females are different and no matter what you do to your body, you can’t be the opposite sex. pic.twitter.com/Ib2in2vJrb
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 10, 2023
“Nobody told me how lonely being a man is. I had closer friendships with random women I met in the bathroom before I transitioned at clubs because of how open women are than I had in my eight years of transitioning because women are just so much more vulnerable and deep than men,” the video began with Barnes saying.
“But to have known, and I think a lot of trans men feel this, we knew what depth felt like before we transitioned. We knew what it felt like to like have people want to hug us and have people want to talk to us, and have a community. And then you transition, and you’re just a guy walking down the street that people cross the street so that they’re not near you. And friendships are so much harder to build. And people are colder.”
However, Barnes, a biological woman, then briefly trashed so-called “CIS white men.”
“And what’s hard is that none of this invalidates how real and raw women and people who are in marginalized groups feel about CIS white men. All of that’s valid,” she said.
Is it, though?
“But I also now understand why the suicide rate is so much higher in men — because this shit is lonely. And I’m an emotionally mature man. I know how to build friendships, and it is still really, really hard,” she continued.
“Try to think about how you can, in your small little community where you feel safe, reach out to women in your life and just help them feel seen for just a moment. Or do little conversations to help their emotional maturity so that they can reach out to people and have deeper guy friendships,” Barnes concluded.
Critics immediately pushed back on her by arguing that real men don’t cry over the tribulations of being man — they shrug it off and push ahead.
Look:
It takes a real man to be a man.
— Electronzap (@electronzap) June 10, 2023
Many men are very lonely, but get on with life or call it quits, instead of complain. It is what it is
— Moi (@manifestdreamin) June 10, 2023
Unpopular opinion: I don’t feel sorry for her. Men don’t spend our time crying because we didn’t get a hug. We’ve got shit to do and place to go. A woman injecting herself with drugs and growing a beard is a woman that injected herself with drugs and growing a beard.
She’s…
— Superstraight™ Mr. E ⬛ (@E_jeck) June 10, 2023
This is heartbreaking. A woman can’t be a man. No matter how much hormones she takes.
She feels lonely because women communicate totally different from men. We like to analyze things with our friends, feel that we are being heard and we are more emotional and empathetic.…— MaryC (@MaryC_Love) June 10, 2023
The fact that she’s having this hard of a time seems to prove she’s not a man
Men don’t kill themselves b/c they can’t make friends or “be vulnerable”
They do so b/c they have extra pressure on them to provide, be successful & strong whereas women don’t have the same pressure
— Rebecca V-Devoted Reality Believer (@RebeccaAVelo) June 10, 2023
Not everybody was critical. Some men responded to Barnes’ tearful video with the exact compassion and empathy that she’d been seeking.
“Very few women understand even on a basic level how hard it is to be a man. This person decided to live as a man and found out the hard way. Let’s not mock them though, in fact, I’m going to email and let them know I’m here if they need to talk. Hate is bad for the soul,” European kickboxing champion Tristan Tate tweeted.
“I’m so sorry he is in pain. I would give him a hug if I was there. Instead, I’ll just do as he suggested and let men know that we see them and appreciate them,” another Twitter user, this one a random person, tweeted.
Barnes isn’t the first biological woman to complain after presenting as a man. Journalist Norah Vincent became famous after she presented as a man (Ned) for 18 months and then documented the experience in a book, “Self-Made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man.”
Like Barnes, Vincent also struggled.
“Being Ned had worn Ms. Vincent down; she felt alienated and disassociated, and after the retreat [at a therapeutic masculinity workshop], she checked herself into a hospital for depression. She was suffering, she wrote, for the same reason that many of the men she met were suffering: Their assigned gender roles, she found, were suffocating them and alienating them from themselves,” according to The New York Times.
Vincent eventually committed assisted suicide in Switzerland last year.
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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