Trans men just seem to be statistically less common?
Historically, yes, but increasingly not.
Historically, transfemmes have always gotten overwhelmingly more media attention, and it's only very recently that transmascs have become socially visible at all, and this has meant a lot of people recognizing themselves as transmasc and feeling able to come out. Among younger trans people, the numbers are pretty similar, and that kind of shapes the whole controversy and "debate" around them. It's much more of a "think of the children" controversy, in which the evil trans cult is brainwashing innocent girls into becoming men because they like football or some shit.
Do transmen face less stigma because they "pass" as men better?
I think that's a stereotype.
Transfemmes are routinely stereotyped as butch and messy, but the reality as that most transfemme celebrities are absolutely unclockable unless they don't want to be (we'll get to that). There are certain things which I think make the journey to "passing" as a transfemme harder, unless you were fortunate enough to be put on puberty blockers, but the reality is that almost every trans person goes through a period of being socially transitioned and not passing, and for most people getting through that stage will take several years.
It's more true to say that transfemmes tend to be picked apart and judged far more harshly on their appearance, because that is part of the humilating and offensive stereotype that tranfemmes have to live with. Non-passing transmascs do not get the same treatment, they get insulted and invalidated in other ways, but seldom do you see the appearance of transmascs get dissected and picked apart in the way transfemmes do.
Then there's the question of whether a person actually wants to pass. There are gender non-conforming trans people of all genders, and you'll notice that I keep saying "femmes" rather than "women". That's because not all people who dress or socially position themselves as women consider themselves to be women. If you think someone isn't "passing", you probably shouldn't assume that they actually want to.
I would assume that it's possibly a slower transition biologically from male to female?
I don't think that's necessarily true.
I think you could make the argument that hormones can do a lot more of the work for transmascs, without the need for specific surgeries, treatments or therapies, but even then, think of how long it takes a cis man to go through puberty. We're still talking several years. I've actually watched this play out with a friend, and while he's gone through a pretty amazing transformation, it's been a long one, and even now he doesn't "pass" as a gender conforming man (although he's not a gender conforming man, so I don't think that's a problem for him).
That might be the case, and good for them. How come they are never the ones advocating about trans issues and rights though?
I mean, they are.
Like, one of the people who has done the most work in trans advocacy in recent years is Laverne Cox. She's spoken very openly about suffering discrimination and hate-crime, and yet she is
flawless. At the end of the day though, it's not a performance for your benefit. It's not a performance at all. The fact that you would ever have the
audacity to think that anyone who has slightest obligation to care about whether or not they pass to you is ridiculous, it means less than nothing, and the fact you've got through life without realising that just shows how much being cis has rotted your sense of perspective.
See, that's discrimination. Imagine if the rest of us got to go through life being as entitled and oversensitive as a cishet man.