Sassy. And also Peter.
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psa: stop treating asexuals like they are incredibly innocent children who have a weird obsession with dinosaurs/dragons/unicorns/ect because this stereotype is actually kinda belittling and degrading because not wanting to fuck people doesn’t make you a child who only wants to draw with crayons and eat mac n cheese fuck off with your “uwu” bullshit.
So much of the Euro-American understanding of being trans (or anything other than 100% constantly identified with your assigned gender) focuses on discomfort.
Some people take this idea to an extreme and claim you can’t be trans unless you hate your body and want every surgery available to you. As many other writers have said before, that’s not true. It’s perfectly possible to be trans with only mild dysphoria or none at all. It’s perfectly possible to be trans and have a mental map of your body that looks just like the one you already have.
But I’d like to push even harder against the idea that trans=discomfort. I’d like to offer this: sometimes the exploration of one’s gender can be motivated by pleasure rather than discomfort.
Let me give an example. Let’s say there’s a person named Cal. Most people think of Cal as a boy, and Cal’s all right with that. So far as Cal’s concerned, a boy isn’t a bad thing to be. But sometimes, Cal likes to imagine being a girl and being treated as a girl. Those fantasies are always accompanied by feelings of pleasure, satisfaction, anticipation, and warmth. Eventually, having had these thoughts for years, Cal asks people to use ‘she’ pronouns in private and to refer to her as a girl. Cal does this for another year before claiming the label “trans”.
Some people would say a person like Cal can’t be trans because there’s no dysphoria, self-hatred, distress, or even discomfort. There’s just a pleasure-based preference. But why is distress necessary? Why are trans people supposed to be defined solely by our pain and self-hatred?
It’s my opinion that defining trans people solely by discomfort is an aspect of transphobia. The idea behind trans=discomfort is that being anything other than 100% cis is so awful that no one would do it unless the alternative were unlivable. Think about that: defining trans people solely by their experiences of discomfort means believing that being trans is so awful that only misery could drive us to it. And to me, that sounds like the thinking of someone who really hates trans people.
So I’ll come out and say it: sometimes transition or self-exploration of gender is not just about lessening discomfort, but is about improving and deepening the pleasure we take in our lives.
how many spiderman movies can they make….how many times can uncle ben die…..when will they free peter parker from his own personal hellish groundhog day….
Hi Hank. I read an article today that said the governor of Texas signed a bill giving pastors the right to refuse to marry gay couples. Obviously, there's been an uproar about it being discriminatory and stuff but what I don't understand is this: Why would a gay couple want a Christian pastor to officiate their wedding? They know that Christians believe that their "lifestyle" or "choice" is a "sin," so why would they want someone so judgmental to be part of the best day of their lives?
That is a thing that some and not all Christians believe. Many Christian faiths and many Christian people have been long-term supporters of LGBT rights. And, as someone pointed out in a reply to this post, many LGBT people are Christian and thus want to be married in a Christian church.
The problem is not with the faith, it is with bigots.