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Women are human beings who deserve basic human decency. I don't know if I count as a man, though; probably it depends on your views.

Hello there! Dear tumblr user, did you know that "men as a class hold privilege and power over women" and "men are human beings who deserve basic decency" are two stances that can coexist :)

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It's interesting how both radical feminists and online trans people seem to think that it doesn't really matter whether people transition.

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when she says she doesn’t send nudes

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trans people are notoriously NOT open to a nuanced conversation about Gender and Do Trans People Really Exist and Are Trans Women Really Women/Are Trans Men Really Men

I'm probably what you'd call trans — at least, I was assigned [sex] at birth and people assume I'm [opposite sex] now; I don't necessarily subscribe to the identity implications of calling myself trans — and I would very much like to discuss and figure out What Gender Really Is and if Trans Men/Women Are Really Men/Women! That's mostly why I made this blog.

I’m pretty sure I’ve written about how I wish there were more acceptance and recognition in discourse outside of rationalist-type spaces for refusing to fully endorse any particular view on a topic but to be able to seriously treat multiple views that are out there. Well, usually instead of claiming to have written about something I adorn that claim to a link, but I can’t actually find anywhere I’ve written about that, perhaps because it’s an extremely unoriginal point to make – I’m sure about five dozen people in this general blogosphere have complained about the same thing.

Anyway, I feel the same way about conversations that happen in other contexts, such as professional arrangements of work assignments. I recently got asked about my willingness to do a certain thing for work, and when I realized how conflicted I was about it I decided to sleep on it for one night (a mistake as they were in more of a hurry for an answer than I realized) and when I responded I wrote a carefully-worded but not-too-long reply that summarized my full view but made clear that my conclusion was, “I’m completely willing to do this if you ask me to, but I feel apprehensive about how much it may complicate my life; I’d feel better if I knew X and Y.”

It seems – I guess understandably and unsurprisingly – that they were expecting an answer that sounded more like a simple “yes” or “no”, and in the absence of a simple “yes” they decided to default to interpreting my reply as “no”. Which is fine and I appreciate it; I just feel slightly awkward and embarrassed about the whole thing, and it’s led me to reflect on how laying out a full nuanced answer in hopes that it will instigate a brief discussion about particular concerns (like my X and Y) isn’t accepted that well under workplace norms any more than it is under social discourse norms.

Or more likely in this particular situation they simply didn’t have time for any more messages, and I guess this should have been obvious all along. But I kind of get the impression that it’s the case in general at work (not just in situations this time-sensitive from the other party’s end). And it’s one of those things that’s become a much bigger problem because of the pandemic. Sans Covid, this conversation would likely have happened in person, and it’s far easier to get across a nuanced attitude quickly in a back-and-forth face-to-face conversation than in an email exchange (that kind of thing is even easier with some kind of instant messaging but of course my colleagues and I mostly don’t do that).

Also, if the explanation for this norm in a work context is “people are overwhelmed and don’t have time and energy”, maybe it partially carries over to the social discourse context that I started this post with: maybe it costs too much of a certain kind of energy to not be able to immediately place your interlocutor in one team or the other with respect to whatever controversial topic is at hand.

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I sometimes feel like, when I decided to transition genders, I in some way gave up the societal pathway that I could (if I chose to) follow to be pretty likely to mutually fall in love with someone, have children if I wanted to, etc. I'm not sure if I'd want to take advantage of that societal pathway (I would like to have a life partner and fall in love, but I want to select them for being compatible with me in a way most people aren't, and I'm not sure how I feel about having kids and aspects of conventional romance), but the lack of it is... scary.

Occasionally I wonder if I should just detransition right away if I decide I want biological children, since it would probably expand my opposite-sex dating pool (because more people are straight than gay). But I'm not sure that the kind of [original gender person] I would be does very well in the world of standard heterosexual romance, and I don't think I want to spend decades of my life with someone who wants me to lean into gender roles (of either gender!).

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Whether or not you are trans, girls can have short hair and not like makeup and dresses, and guys can have long hair and wear jewelry and skirts. Such things on their own don't indicate that you are the other gender.

I’m going to tell you something nobody told me:

It is O-fucking-Kay if you think you’re trans except for that one thing

If you think you might be a girl but you like having your hair short, or you don’t like wearing dresses, or you don’t want to wear makeup, that is totally okay

If you think you might be a guy but you like having long hair or you really love skirts or you wear lots of sparkly jewellery, that is totally okay

If you think you might be nonbinary but you really like presenting in a way that aligns with your agab, that is totally okay

If you think you might be trans but you aren’t sure if you want hormones, that is totally okay

If you think you’re trans “except for…” that is totally okay and get this: you don’t have to change that part of yourself to be trans

You can if you want to, but if you don’t, that is totally okay

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Wanting to be X is distinct from actually being X.

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I don't want to be the kind of person who cares a lot about what gender I am.

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reblog if you are your url

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the fun thing about being ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ about your own gender is that you stop feeling technically misgendered and the entirety of the interaction is spent on reassuring the person who is trying their best to figure out your whole *gestures at everything* that you’re not offended

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Why am I way more okay with hairy legs than hairy arms?

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I think I'm bisexual?