#‘afab’ is not an identity! it’s not a state of being! you must not accept it as such

[unlimitedbutchworks]

like do we think that maybe instead, the way that agab language used as a direct replacement and pc stand in for male/female instead of a coercive past event has become so common, completely missing the point of the new language and thereby retaining if not directly reifying all the old baggage like the talk of “afab bodies” “female/afab socialization” and “women and afabs” does, may be a bigger problem than getting called your pronouns and in fact is creating the very situation you’re currently frustrated by

[genderisareligion]

Have you noticed that a big part of the unconditional support transactivism receives from women despite this movement being built on misogyny is because many MANY so called feminists don't want to actually acknowledge male supremacy? They eventually will criticize/oppose to one or another sexist event (like the abortion ban in USA) but as time goes on, they just forget it and even manage to despolitize them. Now, reproductive rights isn't an integral part of women’s rights anymore, it's “queer/lgbtqia+ rights”, “bipoc with vaginas rights”, etc.

But nothing makes it more obvious than the fact that women(even black/indigenous women) easily accepted they're “cis” - implying they have privileges for their womanhood not being denied - which is laughable because how being “acknowledged” as women is a privilege when to be a woman - specially a woc - in a misogynistic world is oppressive? The acceptance of the infamous “cis” also implies that both men and women are equally oppressive towards trans people, thus the analysis of male violence lost space to the more malleable “gendered violence”. By place both “cis” men and women, any observations of male patterns of violence is discouraged because it's “transphobia” (but why it would be transphobia if trans women are women like “cis women” and are targeted by men most of the time? Hmmmm) and a vile MRA rhetoric start to take place in feminism disguised as a true compromise with “gender equality”: women can be as bad if not worse than men. Women aren't victimized by male supremacy, in reality it's men who are the biggest victims. In the name of “not infantilizing women” for JUST acknowledge that misogyny exists, people are infantilizing men and giving them a free pass on their mistreatment of women.

Many so called feminists also lack sex class consciousness and they internalized all the sexist shit we have been taught by our society. So they really act that trans women are the ones who bring humanity to women's status, this is why claims like “If you don't think trans women are women, it means you think women are inferior” what is the connection between a man thinking he is a woman because he identity as one (whatever that means) with women supposedly inferiority? Women literally carry the whole humanity! Our bodies are complexes and prepared to survival and they pull out this weak guilt tripping rhetoric and women eat this up, think the only way they can achieve humanity is through males? Pffff

Honestly, after reading The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner(a must read to any feminist), this actual state of feminism became even more clear: men have stolen women's humanity, women's knowledge of our bodies, even the position of the creators of life, despite the fact that they can't get pregnant. The next step is stealing the womanhood itself and it isn't a random event, it's part of their colonization of females. Understanding how they operate helps us to fight back.

🙏🏽

“Cis” is the biggest pile of horse shit and my #1 source on this has always been and will always be my girl Audre Lorde. Who in the entirety of the book Sister Outsider goes to great lengths to emphasize: women can simultaneously have different lives/womanhoods (ex.black versus white womanhood, ie intersectionality) while working together against patriarchy. I think it’s funny/sad that today the white man’s “intersectionality” hates black women like me who reject gender roles and claims there is a sweeping “cis” womanhood privilege that’s so universal it automatically places all non trans “afabs” (nearly 50% of the goddamn globe) above trans “afabs” and “amabs” in status and life quality. Audre also goes to great lengths to support the statement “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” which I’ve always pretty plainly taken to mean that gender will never dismantle sexism.

You’re 💯 on these feminists who can’t deal with the reality of male supremacy. Gender framework is a sugar coat that makes things easier to cope with. I get it, sexism is pervasive and normalized as fuck and it’s scary to think about how angry a lot of men would probably get if things actually changed and they didn’t have access to female abuse as often as they do. But I’m personally also fed up with being scared and highly prefer just being pissed off back lol and trying to actively do something about changing it. They can be mad all they want, I’m not stopping until we get our humanity back fully even if it’s not within my lifetime and step #1 is naming the problem

[cipheramnesia]

This is a combination vent/semi anonymous coming out, and you don't have to post it, I understand why people would be hesitant to. I'm 18 years old, when I was 15 I got taken from a very queer friendly city to a small town in the most Republican county in my state. I came out to my friends and mom as enby when I was 16. I thought I was an enby girl, I had internalized a lot of radfem rhetoric and was ashamed of my own masculinity and manhood, then a soft trans boi, and trans man, and now which is "I'm pretty positive I'm genderfluid and/or multigender" but, even then, my experiences with gender, dysphoria, and euphoria are almost always unorthodox. I was assigned female at birth, I want to be a [feminine gender], but I feel like I was born in the wrong body, I relate most to and feel at ease with identity terms used by trans women.

Everyone tells me I'm cis and just have body dysphoria, or that im misinterpreting my own feelings, that im actually just a feminine trans man, that I'm a mogai snowflake, a crypto terf, a radfem, transmisogynistic, fetishistic, an invader, hell, that I'm playing into the "transphobic born in the wrong body narrative," that I must see trans women as men or as still being their agab because of this (I dont, its exclusively a me thing that agab has anything to do with it). But my experience with my body, and my own conceptualization of my gender, my womanhood, my femininity, is not cis. I have never aligned with the kind of womanhood assigned to me, I have never related fully to the girls and women in my life, my girlhood was wrong, when people look at me and call me she it feels Wrong because I know they dont see Me. And even if I were born male, I would still be trans, more comfortable and less conflicted probably, but still trans, I would probably still transition, I would still have dysphoria and euphoria but I would be able to call myself a trans woman. Even my own transition feels wrong because I'll be going on testosterone.

My friends support me, but they're not transfem, and I want so badly to reach out to trans women and transfem communities because I read posts and I see pictures and I relate and im jealous and I hate it, I'm so bitter and I dont want to be, I just, I feel like I'll never be able to live authentically and have people accept me in cis or trans society. I know why the idea of an "afab trans woman" sets off red flags, I know terfs and transmeds alike took that and bastardized it to hurt people, I hate them for doing that. I was so excited to find people like me for the first time when I learned what circumgender was, only to realize there just how people felt about my experiences. I recloseted myself, I've forced myself into other boxes, I've made myself a more acceptable flavor of trans, but it doesnt work and it doesnt go away, I used to be so naive but now I'm starting to feel suicidally depressed over it and I'm so scared people are going to hate me, they already do. No one understands, and that's what they tell me, that I cant be a trans woman because I'll never experience what it is to be a "real trans woman," but they dont understand everything about my experiences either, that goes both ways but no one is willing to take me at face value and focus on similarities instead. I'm so alone, and I'm so tired, and every day im reminded with this tme shit, this "only x can call themselves y" shit, how much I dont fit.

I want to be seen as a trans woman, I want to be clocked as genderqueer in a transfem way, and I know the dangers, I know the risks many trans women dont want that come with being visible, and people tell me im appropriating trans womens struggles, that I have a choice and they dont, but it's not a choice for me, and no one seems to understand that. And when I say I want to look visibly transfem people think I have a transphobic idea of a what a trans woman looks like, that's not true, I only know what I would want to look like if I was one. I used to use those words, but more and more these labels became segregated, and I get it, the biggest defense I've noticed is that people with very specific experiences need to be able to find each other, and broadening what "trans woman" or "transfem" means makes that harder but, are all transfem experiences the same? Is that more important than my ability to live comfortable and authentically? Maybe it is, honestly. I don't know how to feel anymore, thank you for your time, sorry for dumping all this in your ask box.

It sounds like you're going through a lot of complicated gender things right now. Let me just start at the top with the two salient points I plan to explain in detail, the tldr if you will.

First, gender is a fuck. I'm never going to enforce someone into or out of gender boundaries. Gender does not break into identifiable components in ways that matter. Your lived experience is what you have, and should be acceptable for others.

That said, second, "circumgender" seems to originate with transphobes, terfs, etc. For this reason, I would encourage you to forge a path away from the specific term. I won't insist something like "afab people cannot have any trans feminine gender experience." Only that you should separate this lived experience from an idea proposed by a hate group.

Third, which I say a lot but I wanna say again - I'm not the queer police. I am, if anything, fumbling my way through all the gender and sex and stuff as blindly as anyone else. I have a book of matches for light, but I'm still mostly in the dark.

Okay, now that we have the article summary, I'll try and go into some discussion and hopefully it will be of use. Where I want to start is with the current state of the gender which is... question mark? Gender has become increasingly nebulous because all the components we use to categorize can, to greater or lesser degrees, be separated from definitional absolutes. Everything from genetics to hormones to clothes and social roles does not have a clear, definitive binary gender distinction. Good.

This also means more people are aware that gender as a "man/woman" experience exclusively is not correct - gender can be experienced in an extremely diverse way. Consequently there's something of an awakening of people realizing they've never really fit into male or female genders. It has created a free space to explore the self via gender, but the same free space can be confusing, particularly if you haven't felt as if any of the particular orbits of gender feel correct for you.

And you know, like anyone trying to figure out where they belong, you can get sucked in by people offering easy answers, which is a radfem deal, which it kinda sounds like what you went through. It also does sound like you're experiencing more than a single isolated particular gender, to me, and while I don't want to say "don't be this gender" I don't want to shove you into a feminine category if you feel like you have other aspects to your gender. For the "variations in gender" in addition to the more general nonbinary there's also genderfluid, genderpunk, genderflux, bigender, and good old genderfuck - plus more.

Or, to put it another way, it sounds like in the space of exploring gender, you've been pushed around a lot and feel discouraged from trying to explore any kind of masculine or feminine feelings, or even seeing what neither one might be. This is all really abstract, for which I apologize. Like I said, I'm also feeling my way trying to understand gender stuff.

But altogether, some further internal consideration might be in order, maybe even see if you have any way to secure help from a therapist who has experience with more than just a gender binary? I know not everyone has this option, but consider it, if you can.

On the side of wanting to read as trans feminine, that's, as they say, complicated. Some people read saying "born in the wrong body" as a problem but I'm kinda whatever on that. I know people who have that experience, I know me who never did, it's different for everyone.

The issue with wanting to look trans femme, I think, is that there's not like... a specific look. I honestly could not say what it means to look trans feminine. I don't want to throw out examples but there is really no end to the scale of how trans femme people look.

This is also illustrative in a practical way of why "circumgender" as a term is more in the realm of transphobic than useful identity. It's kind of the opposition to the whole current thing with gender, which is that taxonomic or absolute classification doesn't exist. It says "I have defined and identified what a trans woman is, independent of trans women generally, and I am that."

The more inclusive and open experience of trans women is more like "I can identify that I am not cis, and my gender is a binary woman, or trans woman." I know this seems a bit like hair splitting, but one of the approaches for exclusion is to draw a line around something (eg, Woman) and then declare things which are excluded from it based on internal prejudice, systemic oppression, social mores, etc etc.

So, moving back to having a trans feminine feeling, I guess what I'm saying is that if gender is pretty nebulous, and trans femme can look like a lot of different things - it's not a question of what you can and can't do with your gender as much as it is that what you feel affinity for something that does not itself have any defining traits? This has nothing to do with afab or whatever, more that you've got a bit of a moving target.

This is good, because it means for one you can explore a larger understanding of trans women's experiences - get a good handle on how many different ways we have of doing or being a gender just on that single category of binary gender alone.

And also it means you can see the convergences of "not cis" and "feminine" through the lens of something that doesn't require one specific way of doing the feminine.

So I guess what I'd conclude with is to think about other ways to articulate your gender that don't require predetermination of the gender of someone else. You have a good amount to start with - "feminine but not cis, affinity for masculine, but in a feminine way (if I understood correctly)."

Some of this is probably a bit off the mark of what you are trying to deal with, but I hope it generally or overall is useful to think about.

[mr-nauseam]

I'll get sentimental.

Today is March 6th and after several years we decided that this day would be the birth of my ocs: Jareth. And he is so special in ways that I can't easily explain.

Jareth or nini as we usually call him was the first son, the first character who consciously I created and motivated me to tell a story and he was also my shield and my excuse for my questioning gender but I must start at the beginning.

Before the name: Quinn.

Jareth was very different from what he is now, he had different hair, other features and another personality but the most important point is that he was female assigned at birth and was perceived as a cis girl... until he dont .

By the time I created Jareth, then called Quinn (a unisex name that haunted me and I think was a sign I should have seen) I had abruptly entered the closet of my gender identity. I was 11 years old (when I knew nothing about the lgbtq+ community and living in a very heterocis normative environment) being an afab myself telling everyone to stop referring to me with female pronouns and hating being a girl but of course that "phase" (as my relatives called it) could not last forever and they put me in that closet by force... I began my state of denial and even so my doubts did not disappear. I wanted answers and I wanted to explore that topic so one day I woke up and decided that Quinn being a cis girl was an abominable idea. It felt bad to say "she/her", it felt bad to see her being a woman and I changed it.

Because I needed an excuse to understand myself.

Spiritually I like to say that Quinn became a trans boy even though I did him amab. This is where my fight began because I had a very rigid idea about what a man should be. I wanted to hyper masculinize Quinn with all those traits that I thought he had to have to be a boy but he always broke the rules.

And I was filled with questions: why does Quinn like men if he is now one? should that change? why does my head keep putting dresses on it? men can't wear those things... can they?

Sometimes I thought: Why is Quinn so effeminate? Wouldn't it be better if he went back to being what he was? (a woman) but I could never make that decision.

Making Quinn afab felt backwards, inappropriate and I spent many years instinctively responding to the reality I felt but couldn't name.

There were many conflicts for this journey of exploring myself through it, like that time when I fought with my best friend because I unknowingly declared Quinn as non-binary at the time and she told me that my ocs couldn't do that, "because that doesn't existed" and that hurt me like never before. How strange it is to remember those days when being neither a woman nor a man sounded like an impossibility, but Jareth always knew better.

And I think creating it was my key to being able to be at peace with myself while being tied to a world that insisted my emotions were a fake.

New name.

Eventually the breaking point came, where Quinn could no longer hold my doubts and fears. I had to face them. Accepting them as mine and not as "ideas for my character" in order to be happy. That decisiom caused me a huge crisis, especially in the matter of the name.

Because now I can say that Quinn was never his.

It was my name.

The one I was afraid to adopt because of all that it implied.

Ah It was time to give my ocs his own name, one that belonged to him and with which he could completely free him from being an empty shell without much identity.

The answer came in my favorite movie: Labyrinth.

Where David Bowie (the first human being for who I felt gender envy at my tender age of 5) was Jareth the globin king.

And it felt so own.

So suitable.

This is how Jareth is now my ocs, it's not like I don't project my problems on him anymore but I think I was able to draw the line between who I am, and my character and that made my life much easier and more fun.

Congratulations to Jareth for finally having a birthday date, I always love you with all my heart 💖

[my-darling-boy]

i love my body to an extent (being ftm) sometimes my chest bothers me sometimes it doesn't. anyways on one of my 'don't care' days i bought this beautiful corset. some days i resent it sometimes i don't. but the biggest issue is people call me a fake because i own it and have worn it in public (only at ren fair not on the street) i'm a firm believer in you need dysphoria to be trans* and i do experience dysphoria but the 'faker' thing bugs me. especially since i can't bind real well, advice? thx

The best advice I could give to you or any other trans person: never ever believe you need dysphoria to be trans.

I’ve made my stance on the matter very clear in THIS ASK: believing you or another trans person must have dysphoria will not only harm others, but yourself as well. It’s stated in my blog bio I do not want transme.ds/transsc.um following me or interacting with me, but if I can take a moment to educate, I will!

I used to have a LOT of severe dysphoria. What I didn’t mention in that link is something that happens to a ton of transmascs who are young or have just come out, and have since changed, and now feel too ashamed to talk about it, so you know what? I’ll say it because it’s important to learn from:

Trans people are faced with this persistent issue of being accused of faking our gender identity. I happened to be a minor who was new to identifying as transgender 8 years ago; I was having a hard time getting cis people to take me seriously as a man because of both my more feminine appearance at the time as well as other stereotypical “feminine hobbies” that I enjoyed; I felt I wasn’t meeting the standards to be a man. I thought to myself, “How can I PROVE myself to be a man to others or get an undeniable piece of evidence that I’m not a girl?” And that’s when I learned about Gender Dysphoria.

Not only did I feel Gender Dysphoria articulated the negative feelings I had about my body when I was 14-15, but it gave me this sense that I had this Membership Card to prove my trans masculinity to anyone who wanted to say that I wasn’t a trans man. To me, dysphoria was criteria by which to live by: as long as I was uncomfortable with myself and my identity as afab, that meant I was trans. This was wrong. And I’m here to tell you this mindset will ruin the way you think of yourself as a trans person.

It caused me to push away ANYTHING that could be read as feminine, from clothing to toothbrush colours. I started taking on aggressive personality traits which were seen as stereotypically masculine, watching sports I would otherwise have no interest in, dressing in clothing I wouldn’t wear even today. I was SO upset with myself that I was forcing out ANYTHING in my life that had to do with femininity. I had to be uncomfortable with my chest right? I had to want bottom surgery right? The more I hated who I was, the more manly I felt. It made me feel “more trans” than other trans men who were “more feminine” than me, or who didn’t feel they had dysphoria.

What started out as a simple medical term spiraled out of control: like it exists today in a lot of trans spaces, it’s not always used as a term to describe your experiences with your identity, but used by trans people to lift themselves up by putting other trans people down, usually linked to their own internalised transphobia.

I see it all the time in the trans community! I can’t speak for you, but it’s common to see trans people who are VERY uncomfortable with the idea of being “fakes” holding on so tightly to their belief in needing gender dysphoria to be trans. For them, it can serve as a piece of “proof” to compensate for the amount of confidence they lack in themselves. A lot of these individuals, if their mindset is not reconsidered, will go on to police other trans people for not meeting the criteria—which is socially constructed by the way—for living up to X gender. These people may have private judgements about the way other trans people present themselves simply because it’s not how THEY would choose to express their identity. While you are part of the community, it is not an extension of you that needs controlling. Meaning, trans people are trans just like you, but just because someone presents themselves in a way you might not want to yourself, you are not allowed to judge them or police them. If you feel other people in the community “make you look bad” or have “caused people to associate you with Fakersᵀᴹ” you need to re-evaluate your ways of thinking. It is still possible to be trans and transphobic, or sexist, or misogynistic.

You don’t need proof to be trans. The only thing that proves you are trans is you saying you’re trans and having a piece of paper won’t make you any more trans than anyone else. I found my own anxiety with being accused as a “Faker” (which is not a real concept btw), with feminine clothing, and seeing reflections of that in my own transmasc community was directly rooted in my own discomfort with my own identity. Once I learned to start being comfortable with myself for who I was, I loved other people for who they were. The only faking I ever did as a trans person was trying to be the hypermasculine man I wasn’t to uphold some silly social constructs and please transphobes who wouldn’t accept me anyway, no matter how manly I seemed.

Currently, I have little to no dysphoria! Recently I bought a black lacy lingerie set and I feel gorgeous! I don’t worry about being a Fake for liking something that is seen as feminine because there’s no such thing as being a faker, and if someone calls you a faker, they’re transphobic, even if they’re trans. I guarantee that if you focus more on learning to love others and affirm your own identity to yourself and not only rely on validation from others you will be able to wear that lacy corset proudly to more places than just a renaissance fair.

But if you still think trans people need to have dysphoria to be trans, I’d ask that you kindly unfollow me.

[chibimyumi]

What are your thoughts on the theory that O!Ciel could be a transgender man? You mentioned in a previous post that O!Ciel was one of the more gender ambiguous characters of the series. Personally, I think it would be really cool and could add in depth on how he feels inadequate to impersonate his brother

Dear Anon,

Ah sorry I caused a misunderstanding. What I meant in the post you refer to was how characters are being treated, not that their identities themselves are gender ambiguous. As one of the very few, O!Ciel and Doll have explicitly stated their gender identities, after all. But the misconception is entirely my own fault, I did not phrase that properly.

I really doubt O!Ciel is a transman, because if he were we would have known after 15 years of serialisation and 172 chapters with him as the main character about whom we even know his childhood growing up.

Why Our Ciel is 99.9% certainly cis-male.

Canonically AMAB

If O!Ciel were a transman he’d have to be assigned female at birth (afab). He was however, explicitly assigned male at birth (amab).

In male-obsessed 19th century people would make sure to assign children “properly” based on genitals to avoid having “fake boys” or “insult real boys by degrading them to female”. Especially in upper society they wouldn’t “mistake the superiour male sex”, especially especially if the Lord does not have an heir yet.

I can’t believe I have to talk about a child’s genitals......... To further prove this point, Sieglinde refused to believe O!Ciel’s male identity without checking his genitals, so she went and confirmed the presence of what made O!Ciel amab for us.

“Yeah but what if?”

Even if O!Ciel is actually afab, then R!Ciel would be afab too, because identical twins always have the same sex. The only exception would be if O!Ciel has Turner Syndrome while R!Ciel remains unaffected. Turner Syndrome however, comes with physical problems that would show in O!Ciel’s appearance tellingly. So we can rule out Turner Syndrome.

If you need O!Ciel to be a transman, then without the Turner Syndrome both twins would be XX-chromosomed. As canonically they were both assigned male at birth, everyone involved must first have agreed to pull a “Rose of Versailles” to make that possible. They already had a female predecessor and a current Queen Regnant. So why the hell would they do that? Even if somebody involved were a male-centrist, “the wife is still young, just get more children,” Victorians would have said. And if Rachel could not take another pregnancy, then marrying a new wife in Henry VIII-style was also not unheard of. Making a woman birth again or remarrying was surely more acceptable at the time than risk the scandal of having ““fake sons””.

XXY-Chromosome or Klinefelter Syndrome exists too of course, which is often how people get the wrong gender assigned. But this syndrome affecting identical twins has only been reported THREE times in all of (preserved) human history. Fine, let’s humour this thought for one minute and say both Ciels have this syndrome. Most XXY children in19th century however, would have been assigned and raised as male anyway. “Better err on the right side”, so to say. So if O!Ciel’s gender identity is male then he is still cisgender.

Conclusion

What makes somebody transgender is in greatest part because they feel the gender imposed onto them and in which they have been socialised are wrong. For some transgender people their genitals don’t even matter. The core of transgender experience is wrongly imposed gender and socialisation, so lacking either/both experiences makes somebody not trans.

Our Ciel apparently has the genitals which got him assigned male at birth,

was clearly socialised as male,

has stated his own male identity.

In conclusion, O!Ciel is a cisman.

[crispipaper]

A polite letter to J.K. Rowling By a transgender fan of Harry Potter (TW. Suicide and trauma)

Dear JKR, 

My name is Alex Hernandez, and I have identified as a Harry Potter fan since I was six years old, and a non-binary/ transgender individual since I was sixteen. I recently read your essay concerning your opinions about transgender individuals, and your claim that by providing information you were ‘protecting natal girls and women.’ I was extremely disappointed when I read your piece, both as a queer person and as a Harry Potter fan. The factual information you provided was ill-informed and often taken out of context. The opinions you shared were harmful to many members of the trans community, and perpetuated stereotypes that we have been trying to dismantle for years. 

What stood out to me most in your essay was the insinuation that the only way a person could truly be considered transgender is if they underwent hormone replacement therapy and/or gender confirmation surgery. This is simply incorrect, as there are many people (myself included) who happily identify as trans that have chosen to or cannot undergo those types of treatments. It also completely leaves out the identity of non-binary, a-gender and gender fluid individuals, who do not subscribe to the binary gender identities that accompany these types of treatment. It is also not as simple to gain access to these procedures as you seem suggest, even within your home country of the United Kingdom.

In your writing, you state that “a man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law.” According to the official website for the government of the United Kingdom, a person who wishes to obtain a Gender Recognition Certificate must be over the age of 18, have documented proof of a diagnoses of gender dysphoria, have lived as their intended gender for at least two years, and intend to live as this gender for the rest of their life (https://www.gov.uk/apply-gender-recognition-certificate). This clearly shows that a person must provide more than just their word in order to gain legal recognition of their gender by the British government. You are correct that surgery and hormones are not prerequisites for obtaining a GRC, however, medically transitioning is not a prerequisite for being a trans person. 

You also cited a very controversial study performed by Doctor Lisa Littman the supports the theory of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. According to this study, children and young adults are more likely to come out to their parents as transgender after engaging online with other trans individuals. Dr. Littman claims that according to the survey she conducted (which was directed at parents of children who had recently come out as trans), gender dysphoria can just appears out of nowhere during puberty, and that internet forums and peer pressure is a large contributing factor to this. However, there are several things wrong with her writing. To start, the survey she conducted in order to obtain her data was targeted at parents of children who had recently come out as trans and only posted to websites that were about parents questioning their teen’s recent coming out. She asked irrelevant questions about the child’s mental health, including whether or not they had been diagnosed with a mental illness prior to coming out, or if they had experienced trauma at some past point in their life. Although I understand that the article was taken down and re-reviewed, the author did not rescind her findings, and simply used the republication as a way to clarify what she had previously stated.  

The other aspect of your writing that stood out to me as particularly harmful to the trans community and those questioning their gender identity was the supposition that one could just “choose” to be trans because they have experienced trauma. Your experience as a survivor of domestic and sexual assault are real and valid, and your trauma regarding these situations is real and valid. However, this does not give you the right to suggest that you might have chosen to transition during these times in order to escape abuse. Transitioning (in your case) from an Assigned-Female-At-Birth (AFAB) individual to a male identifying individual does not automatically exempt you from abuse and violence typically experienced by cis-gendered women. It is not a choice people make because they have experienced a trauma. It is a recognition of what has always been true to them, that they were previously unable to freely express. 

Here’s where you seem to be missing the point. People who choose to transition from a female to a male are not trying to “escape womanhood.” What they are doing is finding ways to freely express themselves in the most authentic and truest way. For example, say you were born with red hair. But for years and years your family was dying your hair brown because it was more “socially acceptable” to have brown hair. You knew that you had red hair, and that wasn’t something that anyone could take away from you, even if they were trying to cover it up or pretend like it was brown. And one day, you meet a group of people who have naturally red hair, who are flaunting their red hair and making a point of not dying it to fit societal standards. And maybe you don’t agree with what these people are doing, and you continue to dye your hair. Or maybe, you realize that you’ve always preferred having red hair, and now you’ve come across a space where it’s ok to be a red head. These people understand what it’s like to have their hair dyed for years and years, and want to embrace their naturally red hair. That’s how it is for trans people. A trans man was always a man, he was just born into a woman’s body, and socialized as a woman. But once they encounter other trans people, and realize that these people will accept and love him for his true self, then he will “come out” because he realizes that he was always a man and now finally feels comfortable expressing that. 

I also want to take this opportunity to share with you my own personal journey of gender exploration, since the stories of non-binary trans people are often overlooked and rarely heard. I was assigned female at birth. I was given a traditionally female first name, and socialized as a girl for the first sixteen years of my life. However, even as a little kid I had a sense that something wasn’t quite right. When I was younger, I really didn’t like my name, and always wished I could have been called Amber or Ashley. I knew that I was not the person I wanted to be, but I didn’t have the language or understanding to really figure out how I was feeling. As I grew up, I came to embrace my feminine name, and to enjoy traditionally feminine things such as princesses and makeup.

Fast forward to high school, when I was beginning to learn more about the LGBTQ+ community. Before I got to high school, I didn’t know a single queer person my own age. Existing on the internet at the time, I encountered many stories of trans people, but the only ones I ever saw were of binary trans individuals. I knew that I didn’t want to be a man, but I also knew that I didn’t really want to be a woman either. So I cut my hair short and started wearing clothes that showed off less of my figure and that attempted to obscure my female form. When I was fifteen, I was doing a presentation on LGBTQ+ identities for school, and came across the term “non-binary individual.” At the same time, I was taking a class where we were learning about the history of feminism, and how many ancient cultures saw femininity and masculinity less as physical forms and appearances, but rather as energies that a person could embrace. Both of these streams of information collided, and I suddenly realized I had words to describe how I’d been feeling this whole time. I didn’t want to identify as a binary woman, and I didn’t want to identify as a binary male. Instead, I wanted the language that would allow me to feel comfortable traveling between these two energies. 

My personal definition of what it means to be a non-binary individual is a person who embraces both masculine and feminine energies, and can express themselves as one, neither or both. I keep my hair long and have chosen not to go on hormones or have reconstructive surgery partially due to trauma I experienced as a child, but also because I want to keep these aspects of feminine energy close to me. There are days where I feel more masculine, where I wear “mens” clothes and attempt to present as a more masculine individual. There are days where I want to feel more feminine, and I choose to wear skirts and makeup because that is what helps me to embrace my feminine energy. And there are days when I want to combine energies, so I will present myself as some combination of masculine and feminine presentations. 

All of this is just to say that when you, a person who has considerable influence especially on younger children, make these inflammatory statements and harmful claims, you are effectively telling children that this is not a world where they can be as authentic to themselves as possible. You are creating a hostile environment that encourages other people who share your ideas to be more vocal, which honestly does more harm than good. Many of those statistics that you quote about rising rates in teen and transgender suicide are often because people who feel forced to conceal their true identity would rather not exist in a world that won’t allow them to be who they really are. So if you are truly interested in changing public perception of transgender individuals, while continuing to support the education of children and the protection of women, I would suggest reading literature that directly opposes your view points, and having conversations with people (particularly trans people) who have real experiences and are willing to share them with you. 

Sincerely, 

Alex Hernandez (they/them)

[harrypotterfirsttime]

JK Rowling’s essay about why she’s a TERF: Abbreviated

My last post was LONG, much longer than I’d intended, and difficult to read on tumblr I’m sure (if anybody would like it sent as a pdf please let me know). So I’m making a shorter post and only including the paragraphs that I responded to with links to a source, for people who are more interested in the places where JK Rowling provably lied in her essay.

“For people who don’t know: last December I tweeted my support for Maya Forstater, a tax specialist who’d lost her job for what were deemed ‘transphobic’ tweets. She took her case to an employment tribunal, asking the judge to rule on whether a philosophical belief that sex is determined by biology is protected in law. Judge Tayler ruled that it wasn’t.”

First of all, Maya didn’t lose her job. Her contract was simply not renewed by her workplace, something that she was not entitled to under any law. JK Rowling also continues to falsely assert that Maya’s belief was that ‘sex is determined biology’, when she actually asserted that under no circumstances is a trans woman a woman nor a trans man a man, and the judge ruled that it did not fit all five necessary limbs to be a philosophical belief (it actually only failed the last one). The judge ruled that the ‘under no circumstances’ part of her assertion was absolutist, and that is what ultimately failed the fifth limb. [source]

“All the time I’ve been researching and learning, accusations and threats from trans activists have been bubbling in my Twitter timeline. This was initially triggered by a ‘like’. When I started taking an interest in gender identity and transgender matters, I began screenshotting comments that interested me, as a way of reminding myself what I might want to research later. On one occasion, I absent-mindedly ‘liked’ instead of screenshotting. That single ‘like’ was deemed evidence of wrongthink, and a persistent low level of harassment began.”

First off, this goes against the statement a spokesperson made for her when this happened, stating that she had a ‘clumsy middle-aged moment’ and liked the tweet by ‘holding her phone incorrectly’. The tweet she liked also had no content that she could research, it was a baseless claim that men in dresses get more solidarity than cis women (which I won’t even dive into, we have so much more to cover). [source] I also won’t dive into the use of ‘wrongthink’ as if we are all characters in George Orwell’s 1984, simply because nobody is controlling her speech, she is simply facing consequences for the shit she chooses to fling at the wall.

“I mention all this only to explain that I knew perfectly well what was going to happen when I supported Maya. I must have been on my fourth or fifth cancellation by then. I expected the threats of violence, to be told I was literally killing trans people with my hate, to be called cunt and bitch and, of course, for my books to be burned, although one particularly abusive man told me he’d composted them.”

Can we salute the man who decided to tell JK Rowling that he composted her books, because that’s absolutely hilarious. But really, I just want to point out that no matter how many threats of violence JK Rowling thinks she is getting, transgender people are subjected to much more abuse both online and in real life, and it affects their wellbeing much more directly than simply being called a cunt or a bitch on twitter. [source] While JK Rowling thankfully isn’t killing trans people, she’s disappointing so many of her LGBT+ fans who looked up to her and found comfort during their childhood in her books that encouraged people to be brave and be themselves.

“What I didn’t expect in the aftermath of my cancellation was the avalanche of emails and letters that came showering down upon me, the overwhelming majority of which were positive, grateful and supportive. They came from a cross-section of kind, empathetic and intelligent people, some of them working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people, who’re all deeply concerned about the way a socio-political concept is influencing politics, medical practice and safeguarding. They’re worried about the dangers to young people, gay people and about the erosion of women’s and girl’s rights. Above all, they’re worried about a climate of fear that serves nobody – least of all trans youth – well.”

I’ll tackle this paragraph from top to bottom. Firstly, the reason you believe the overwhemling majority of people supported you is because many of those who don’t (myself included, until now) simply rolled their eyes and ignored you, because you are not worth our time. We have lives to live that are unconcerned with your bigotry. Second, I hope those people who were working in fields dealing with gender dysphoria and trans people have since left their jobs, because they have no business serving a community who they secretly harbour unsupportive ideologies about. And finally, the idea of supporting and helping trans people (specifically trans youth) is DANGEROUS to young people, gay people, and women’s and girls’ rights is simply false. No women’s rights have been repealed in favour of trans people’s rights (mainly because trans women continue to shockingly be women). In fact, trans youth with parents who are very supportive and affirming show a statistically significantly lower rate of both depressive symptoms and suicide attempts. [source] [specific graph]

“If you didn’t already know – and why should you? – ‘TERF’ is an acronym coined by trans activists, which stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. In practice, a huge and diverse cross-section of women are currently being called TERFs and the vast majority have never been radical feminists. Examples of so-called TERFs range from the mother of a gay child who was afraid their child wanted to transition to escape homophobic bullying, to a hitherto totally unfeminist older lady who’s vowed never to visit Marks & Spencer again because they’re allowing any man who says they identify as a woman into the women’s changing rooms. Ironically, radical feminists aren’t even trans-exclusionary – they include trans men in their feminism, because they were born women.”

The first two sentences in this paragraph are true. Viv Smythe, a trans inclusive cis radfem, is credited with coining the term TERF to describe her fellow radical feminists who are ‘unwilling to recognize trans women as sisters’. It has also become widely used to describe feminists who exclude trans women from their feminism, even if they are not radfems. [source] I don’t care about who has been called a TERF, all I need to know is that they are transphobes, which they should feel equally disgusted at the fact their behaviour warrants the label. Trans men do not want to be included in radical feminism because we were ‘born women’, and JK Rowling including this as if it is an excuse is appalling. Trans men are not women, therefore we do not appreciate radfems claiming to support us based on their obsession with what genitals we were born with.

“The fourth is where things start to get truly personal. I’m concerned about the huge explosion in young women wishing to transition and also about the increasing numbers who seem to be detransitioning (returning to their original sex), because they regret taking steps that have, in some cases, altered their bodies irrevocably, and taken away their fertility. Some say they decided to transition after realising they were same-sex attracted, and that transitioning was partly driven by homophobia, either in society or in their families.”

There is a lot to unpack in this paragraph. And I don’t have the room in this already much too long post to dive into detransitioning, so I’ll say this: it sucks that some people transition only to realize they shouldn’t have. But these people are a staggering minority of people who do transition, and there is no external person they can blame for believing them when they relay their symptoms (as doctors are supposed to do) and acting accordingly, with the patient’s consent. The issues I have here are the language JK Rowling uses to say young women are transitioning, purposefully misgendering trans masculine people. And implying that people are transitioning because they are gay, because their families or society push them to not be gay and instead transition, is absolutely laughable. Studies have already shown that society as a whole is much less accepting of transgender people than they are of gay people and lesbians. [source]

“Most people probably aren’t aware – I certainly wasn’t, until I started researching this issue properly – that ten years ago, the majority of people wanting to transition to the opposite sex were male. That ratio has now reversed. The UK has experienced a 4400% increase in girls being referred for transitioning treatment. Autistic girls are hugely overrepresented in their numbers.”

There are a number of factors that could have led to such an increase in referrals, and no studies have a definitive answer, though most speculate that the increase in acceptance and visibility of trans people is likely a major contributor. [source] Additionally, I personally believe that more trans women seeked transition years ago because it was impossible to be accepted as a trans woman without fully medically transitioning, whereas trans men could get by without transitioning and simply presenting as their gender. Now that transition is more acceptable and available, trans men do not need to hold themselves back from transitioning, but unfortunately, with more visibility has come more vitriol that is specifically aimed at trans women, and this could discourage them from transitioning or coming out at all. I won’t dignify the statement about autism in afab trans people being prevalent other than saying that cis people can be autistic, trans people can be autistic, and implying that neuro-atypical people cannot make informed decisions about their bodies and healthcare is abhorrent.

“The same phenomenon has been seen in the US. In 2018,  American physician and researcher Lisa Littman set out to explore it. In an interview, she said:

‘Parents online were describing a very unusual pattern of transgender-identification where multiple friends and even entire friend groups became transgender-identified at the same time. I would have been remiss had I not considered social contagion and peer influences as potential factors.’

Littman mentioned Tumblr, Reddit, Instagram and YouTube as contributing factors to Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, where she believes that in the realm of transgender identification ‘youth have created particularly insular echo chambers.’”

Lisa Littman’s study can be read here. There are a multitude of issues with this study, and many big names in psychology and gender studies have spoken up about the issues in her conclusions and in the methods to begin with, which are unscientific and deeply flawed. [source] The biggest flaw, in my opinion, is that the study interviews parents of trans youth as opposed to the trans youth themselves, and takes the parents’ limited knowledge of their child’s inner thoughts and experience as fact without consulting the trans person at all. Additionally, recruitment for the study was mainly done through anti-trans organizations. All of this information is available in the original study and in the rebuttal. Because of this, I cannot take anybody who cites Lisa Littman or her study seriously, because it is not credible whatsoever.

“When I read about the theory of gender identity, I remember how mentally sexless I felt in youth. I remember Colette’s description of herself as a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ and Simone de Beauvoir’s words: ‘It is perfectly natural for the future woman to feel indignant at the limitations posed upon her by her sex. The real question is not why she should reject them: the problem is rather to understand why she accepts them.’”

More people than JK Rowling is probably aware of feel ‘mentally sexless’ in youth, because they have no crippling discomfort regarding their gender identity, and either do not feel pressure to prescribe to gender stereotypical behaviours or actively rebel against it. According to brain studies, everyone is technically a ‘mental hermaphrodite’ because there remains to be no such thing as a male brain or female brain. [source]

“I want to be very clear here: I know transition will be a solution for some gender dysphoric people, although I’m also aware through extensive research that studies have consistently shown that between 60-90% of gender dysphoric teens will grow out of their dysphoria. Again and again I’ve been told to ‘just meet some trans people.’ I have: in addition to a few younger people, who were all adorable, I happen to know a self-described transsexual woman who’s older than I am and wonderful. Although she’s open about her past as a gay man, I’ve always found it hard to think of her as anything other than a woman, and I believe (and certainly hope) she’s completely happy to have transitioned. Being older, though, she went through a long and rigorous process of evaluation, psychotherapy and staged transformation. The current explosion of trans activism is urging a removal of almost all the robust systems through which candidates for sex reassignment were once required to pass. A man who intends to have no surgery and take no hormones may now secure himself a Gender Recognition Certificate and be a woman in the sight of the law. Many people aren’t aware of this.”

First of all, the number of kids who “desist” from their gender dysphoria are not reliable. Mainly because the methods in these studies are not robust (ie one study defined gender dysphoria as exhibiting any behaviour that was not typical of their gender, such as boys playing with barbies and girls playing with monster trucks; another study classified subjects that did not return to the clinic and did not follow up as desisters without confirming). [source] Additionally, studying children who do exhibit true gender dysphoria, the main factor determining whether it will persist or desist seems to be the intensity, and not at all related to peer relations. [source] Trans people wishing to transition medically may no longer need to subject themselves to extensive and unnecessary therapy to convince medical professionals that they are who they say they are, but they still need to wait on very long lists for our turn to access hormone replacement therapy and surgeries, and can spend all of that time being sure that we are indeed trans and want these medical treatments. JK Rowling is also purposefully misreporting facts in regard to Gender Recognition Certificates. In order to get one, one must be over 18, have lived as their true gender for at least 2 full years, and provide two medical reports (one from a gender specialist and another from a general practitioner) citing that they have gender dysphoria. If they have not had any medical transitional treatments, the medical reports must state whether they are waiting for them or why they are not pursuing any, in direct contradiction of JK Rowling’s assertion that any man can get this certificate. [source]

“I believe the majority of trans-identified people not only pose zero threat to others, but are vulnerable for all the reasons I’ve outlined. Trans people need and deserve protection. Like women, they’re most likely to be killed by sexual partners. Trans women who work in the sex industry, particularly trans women of colour, are at particular risk. Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who’ve been abused by men.

So I want trans women to be safe. At the same time, I do not want to make natal girls and women less safe. When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman – and, as I’ve said, gender confirmation certificates may now be granted without any need for surgery or hormones – then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside. That is the simple truth.”

‘Natal girls and women’ is another transphobic dog whistle. There is a non-offensive way to say this, which I am sure if JK Rowling has done all the reading she has claimed to do, she must have stumbled upon the word ‘cisgender’ at some point. It effectively communicates the same information without alienating trans people and implying they are less than cis women. Trans women are not ‘men who believe or feel like women’, and this long standing myth that cis men will use the guise of being a trans woman to gain access to public bathrooms and changerooms has been thoroughly debunked, because trans women have been using women’s bathrooms and changerooms for years with no issues. [source] And scroll up for the claim that Gender Confirmation Certificates are given out to any man who decides to be a woman for a day above, this is just more misinformation, no ‘simple truth’.

“On Saturday morning, I read that the Scottish government is proceeding with its controversial gender recognition plans, which will in effect mean that all a man needs to ‘become a woman’ is to say he’s one. To use a very contemporary word, I was ‘triggered’. Ground down by the relentless attacks from trans activists on social media, when I was only there to give children feedback about pictures they’d drawn for my book under lockdown, I spent much of Saturday in a very dark place inside my head, as memories of a serious sexual assault I suffered in my twenties recurred on a loop. That assault happened at a time and in a space where I was vulnerable, and a man capitalised on an opportunity.  I couldn’t shut out those memories and I was finding it hard to contain my anger and disappointment about the way I believe my government is playing fast and loose with womens and girls’ safety.”

First of all, JK Rowling is blatantly lying. The Gender Recognition Act Reform has been completely shelved by the Scottish government in light if the more pressing need to fight the coronavirus on April 1st, and I cannot find any updates on this being considered by the government. [source] The only trans related news out of Scotland I can find is that on June 5th, the Scottish government included trans women in the definition of women in guidance for school boards, which will have none of the effects that JK Rowling is fear mongering about. [source] Again, I am upset to know that JK Rowling is a survivor, but she is using this revelation as a weapon to make people fear that it will happen to others as a result of trans people gaining access to the same public spaces as their cis counterparts. Women’s and girls’ safety is NOT being put at risk by trans people using a bathroom or changeroom.

[freedom-of-fanfic]

hey there! so, i strive to be philosophically consistent and i think i need some insight: what would be the point of critizising stuff if you ultimately couldnt claim that some content is inherently bad? why would any of us want to critizise anything at all if problematic content is always allowed to exist? how can i ever say 'X show is mysoginistic' if i also say 'noncon/loli/etc is acceptable'? im not trying to test u with these q's, i just want to hear some other opinions bc im confused. x

these are good questions tbh. I’ll try to keep the rambling to a reasonable length for once. but the really short answer to all three of the questions you posed is 

it’s all about context.

question 1:

what would be the point of critizising stuff if you ultimately couldnt claim that some content is inherently bad?

First let’s define the words ‘bad’ and ‘inherently’. (This phrase gets used so much in anti parlance because it’s ill-defined and vague and therefore perfect for wrecking debate attempts.) in the context of the rest of your ask, I think I’ll define ‘bad’ as ‘immoral’. (Therefore, ‘good’ means ‘morally upright’.) Also, to make it clear: ‘inherent’ is ‘innate’. 

to say something is ‘inherently bad’ is to say that the quality of ‘badness’ is inseparable from the thing. so the core of this question is: can fiction be innately immoral? and if not, why would you critique it?

IMO, because fictional content is fictional, and thus unverifiable, no one fictional work can ever have an inherent moral value. However, critique is absolutely valuable as a supported opinion (though it cannot be a verifiably correct truth).

There’s debate as to whether humans have an inborn moral compass. If they do, then it’s possible that certain actions can be innately immoral. Deliberately harming another person’s physical being by assault, rape, or murder would certainly count as innately immoral. Lying is immoral; stealing is immoral. There may be good reasons for some of these things (though not all) - harming or killing in self-defense/in battle, lying to protect or for social grease, stealing to survive - but they are not moral actions.

Similarly, a character in a fictional work might act in an immoral way. But does that make the fictional work itself immoral? 

The answer will depend on the person. Some people will feel that any morally gray action in a story means the fictional work is endorsing immorality. Others might feel the work depicts the acts but condemns them. Others still will feel it’s simply an aspect to a good fictional story, and yet others may feel that the work is trying to do one thing but actually accomplishing another.  

And they will all be right. Each person’s individual understanding, created by how they read the work, their personal experiences, their cultural background, their personality, their identity - will come together to create an entirely unique experience with any fictional work, and each person’s final opinion on the work can never, ever be wrong.*

If the only reason for criticizing a work is to determine whether the work is good or bad on some universal scale, then yes - it’s useless to bother. no scale is actually universal when it comes to fiction. But if the purpose of critique is to give a reasoned opinion and appeal to others to agree with you, then criticism is still valid as part of ongoing, honest debate about what makes fiction ‘good’ to you and people who think similarly to you.

In short, no crit of fiction can truly encompass every individual experience of a piece of fiction, so no crit will ever be the ‘absolute truth’ any more than any story will be ‘innately good’. it’s all about context, and everyone has individual context when it comes to fiction.

*an opinion can be misinformed or lack information, so some opinions may be more valid than others, but an opinion is an opinion: it’s not wrong. It’s personal.

question 2: 

why would any of us want to critizise anything at all if problematic content is always allowed to exist?

because fiction may be allowed to exist - but so is your opinion of the fictional work that has content you find problematic!

Just because fiction is allowed to exist doesn’t mean you can’t try to dissuade people from consuming it. There’s nothing wrong with deciding you hate something and telling everyone that you hate it and you think it’s awful and bad in every way and nobody should ever look at it.

However. (when is there not one!)

It is the responsibility of a critic or reviewer to review with respect, particularly in the realm of fanworks. Just as a creator should be held responsible for tagging their work with the correct pairings and warnings (or make it clear that they choose not to warn to avoid spoilers and consumers should be aware the work might have upsetting content), a reviewer should be held responsible for:

keeping their review focused on the work, not the creator, and 

being clear that their review is an opinion, not fact.

keeping their review focused on the work - depiction is not endorsement. there is no way to know, unless a creator states it directly, that their work is a direct reflection of their personal beliefs. Saying ‘this story contains [x] and therefore the author is an [x]ist’ is defamation.

being clear that their review is an opinion - A reviewer can use facts, their personal experiences, and their knowledge of the creator’s other works as backups for their opinion, but their opinion will still just be an opinion. people who assert their opinion is a fact are being disingenuous and shut down discussion rather than stimulating it, which is a shame because more discussion leads to be better understanding of why a work is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or whatever.

unless one is the appointed spokesperson of a group, and that group has agreed that whatever that person says about a work is their collective opinion, no opinion speaks for an entire group. if a reviewer asserts ‘I am [x], and this work upsets me because [reasons related to being [x]],’ that does not mean that everyone else who is [x] will feel the same way. (expecting a marginalized or hurt individual to be the spokesperson of everyone who shares that marginalization/hurt is actually a form of stereotyping and really shitty!)

When reviewers don’t review responsibly, particularly when giving negative reviews, they can incite personal hatred of the creator and fear/hatred of the work itself. Depending on the situation and severity, it can even lead to mob-law-style dogpiles and attempts to scare the creator into either taking the work down or running away themselves - a form of group censorship, to be frank.

In short: critique must be kept in the context of opinions, or it stifles conversation and leads to censorship in situations where discussion and education would be more effective and valuable.

question 3:

how can i ever say ‘X show is mysoginistic’ if i also say ‘noncon/loli/etc is acceptable’?

because it’s okay - and, maybe paradoxically, more logically consistent - to have different stances on the same subject depending on the context. 

you can’t apply the same rules equally to all people, all situations, or all experiences and expect to get fair results (and if you try, you’ll inevitably bring down the most harm on the people who need the most help). For a simplistic example, if you taxed everybody the same income percentage, it would look fair. But more of a poor person’s income goes directly to living expenses than that of a rich person’s income. If you tax the rich person 10%, they won’t feel it in any want of necessary food, clothing, or shelter, but the poor person almost definitely would.

what I’m trying to say is that it’s acceptable - even ideal - to apply different standards (and different scales of reaction) to fanworks than to published books, than to high-circulation published books, than to TV shows, than to internationally-released movies, than to real life (etc etc). There’s several reasons for this:

the scale of impact is widely different. Fanfics rarely get even a million unique views, even after years of circulation. A tv show reaches millions of pairs of eyes every week.

the context is widely different. Transformative fandom, a relatively small space, has a disproportionate number of non-straight/non-cis participants, is overwhelmingly female/afab, and probably has an unusually high number of survivors, not to mention relatively high awareness of social issues that impact them. The average audience member for a fanwork is therefore a very different one from that of a large-scale media release.

the vulnerability differential is widely different. Social power in fandom is mostly determined by popularity, but this is a very volatile source of power and can disappear in an instant. A single fanwork creator, therefore, is about the same level of vulnerable to a rumor, a callout, a complaint as everyone else in fandom (very). The vulnerability of a movie director, on the other hand, is relatively low. If hundreds of thousands of people rallied behind callouts and expressed their anger and hatred of a director, it probably won’t make any meaningful impact on their output or their personal life without outside factors.

So to use your example: You may be bothered by misogynistic content regardless of what you consume - fanwork or TV show or otherwise, but if you call it out in the TV show vs call it out in the fanwork, you’re going to have a very different impact level (not much on the TV show/its creators, but a lot on the fanwork/its creator).

Conversely, nonconsensual sex in a TV show reaches not only a much larger audience than a fanwork, but also a very different audience. For the TV show: a smaller percentage will have experienced sexual assault and the level of education about sexual assault will generally be lower. Also, unless the show explicitly warns for rape, it’s possible some people won’t even realize it’s noncon depending on how it’s portrayed - whereas fanwork ettiquette demands tagging and warnings. In other words, noncon portrayals in TV shows are more likely to send a damaging message than noncon portrayals in fic - fic, which has warnings on it, reaches a much smaller audience, and has an audience that is more likely to judge the content on personal experience and education than the TV show audience.** 

Basically, it’s not contradictory to take a different tack of behavior to the same issue in different spheres, and it’s not contradictory to decide that you’re okay with content that is potentially damaging existing in some spaces but not in others. That’s putting your opinions and morals into context and changing how you act on them.

In fact, it’s downright important to do this. When you don’t change your response level or moderate your judgement in consideration of relative power and/or impact, the people who are the most likely to get run over are those who are at a disadvantage already: LGBT/queer people, black and brown people, immigrants, survivors, women, etc. Who is going to be more hurt and scared by people coming down hard on noncon fic: the rape survivor who wrote it for personal therapeutic value or the person who wrote it for titillation and fun? I bet you can guess.

the title of this blog is related to fanfic specifically because the hard stance I take on censorship is one I’m comfortable taking in the realm of fanworks, but I think the line - already a bit fuzzy at this low impact space - gets blurrier and blurrier the higher impact you go. Where does responsible depiction outweigh the freedom to portray? At what point does tolerating a fictional content become inappropriate? Where’s the line between fiction and propaganda?

These are all great questions to ask, but in the meantime, I’ll be down here saying that fanworks - lowest of low impact, plastered with warnings, and with the empowering effect of giving largely marginalized people a voice outweighing the danger of portrayals of immoral things - should always be free to exist.

**again you run into the issue that every fictional portrayal of something will have a unique interaction with every individual. What one person finds pornographic and harmful might be therapeutic to another. But with mass media the question of ‘does the message this sends amplify already-existing harmful opinions?’ becomes more important and ethical to ask.

[argentconflagration]

wondergirrl said:

what is this about. anti what?? am confused please aid me VonBond

This is pretty long and I apologize, but I feel like I need to go all the way back and talk about TERFs, for reasons that will hopefully soon be clear.

As I'm sure you know, TERF stands for 'Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist'. There are still TERF communities within feminism, but generally speaking, TERFs are far less numerous and their ideology has far less sway than it used to have. Part of the reason for this was people going out of their way to proactively explain why TERF arguments are wrong before their fellow feminists encountered TERFs, which made it a lot harder for TERFs to spread their ideology.

Which is great! But I think that for the most part, feminists have argued against the transmisogynistic aspects of radical feminism, and to a lesser extent the sex-worker-exclusionary aspects of radical feminism (SWERFs), but kind of failed to see the coherent whole that TERF-flavored feminism belongs to, what sort of thinking causes it, and why it's wrong. "Being anti-TERF" nowadays has largely been reduced to stuff like putting "no TERFs!" in blog descriptions and popular posts, and it rarely takes the form of scrutinizing TERF logic to understand how they went wrong and how we can avoid making similar mistakes against other people. Which is why I'm writing this now.

(I've tried very hard to articulate what I think are two distinct flaws in thinking that seem to me to give rise to just about every TERF position, but I do feel like I'm not quite right on the money, so if anyone has better ways to say these two things, I'm all ears.) In general, TERF positions are the result of 1) rigid, black-and-white, binary thinking and 2) ignoring people's consent, especially their 'yes'es. Take transmisogyny: they believe that trans women are men and therefore oppressors. Now, this belief is readily debunked by observing the world, but TERFs have divided the world strongly into oppressors and oppressed, and have a lot of rhetorical tools to dismiss and ignore anything said by "oppressors" or that seems to favor "oppressors". And because trans women are "oppressors", they justify violence and harassment that ordinarily common sense would never condone.

A lot of other central TERF positions have to do with ignoring people's 'yes'es. Sex workers say, "No, this line of work isn't without its problems, but I want to be empowered to address those problems, not kicked out of my livelihood." AFAB trans people say, "I'm not a woman, I'm another gender, and I want to transition." Subs (in BDSM) say, "I enjoy being submissive." Heterosexual and bisexual women say, "I want to date and/or sleep with men." And TERFs' response to all these people is, "That's just your internalized misogyny talking." (And when these people fail to stop wanting the thing they want, TERFs decide that they've taken the side of misogyny and are now valid targets for harassment.) TERFs don't pay attention to people's stated wishes and what they actually are or aren't consenting to. Instead, they decide what women must want, or what wishes would best further the cause of feminism, according to their views of feminism and patriarchy.

Which brings me, finally, to antis. Antis come from two main sources, and one is the anti-kink/anti-BDSM/anti-porn aspect of TERF-style feminism. The other is, as ridiculous as it sounds, ship wars. Ship wars have existed since the beginning of fiction, of course, and what's going on right now is that some people in fandom harass others using the intellectual framework laid out by anti-kink/anti-BDSM/anti-porn radfems. The targets are usually people who ship things (or create/consume other content) that's dark or unrealistic. (E.g. if you ship an abuser with his victim, that content is either going to be dark, if they have an unhealthy relationship, or unrealistic, if they have a healthy relationship. This also often includes non-ship-related dark content like characters getting killed.) The harassers believe themselves to be morally superior to their targets, based on the justification that "no one could really enjoy this content unless they were either enacting oppression or internalizing oppression".

This is particularly obvious when they talk about survivors of abuse and trauma. As you might know from debunkings of the "violent video games" moral panic, dark themes in media tend to be a way for people to emotionally process horrible things that happen in real life. There are lots of ways this plays out, according to the specific needs of the individual, but to speak from my own experience, taking things that were inflicted on me nonconsensually and fictionalizing them -- bringing them into a context where I have complete control -- is really important to healing and growing past that experience. Now, everyone, no matter their specific experiences, has fears that they might choose to process through fiction, but survivors of abuse and trauma are necessarily people who have experienced some of the worse things the world has to offer. Antis' response to this is the same as TERFs' response to people who want or need things that are politically inconvenient for them: "That's just internalized oppression." "That's an unhealthy coping mechanism." "You're taking the side of oppression, so it's okay to harass you."

Antis tend to have other beliefs that are inherited from radical feminism. For example, like TERFs, they tend to conceptualize heterosexism as "homophobia, which also hurts bisexual people because they're attracted to the same gender" rather than "heterosexism hurts people of non-heterosexual orientations in a variety of different ways". As such, they tend towards aphobia, biphobia, and nbphobia. Many of them are aphobes/exclusionists, and they tend to support a short list of acceptable non-straight identities (e.g. "LGBT") rather than accepting categories that are loose or flexible like "queer", "LGBT+", "QUILTBAG", etc. I've also found that, even when acknowledging NBs, they tend toward rhetoric that puts people into two categories based on their gender, like "men vs women/NBs" or "women/transfeminine people vs men/transmasculine people". Again, they have very binary thinking, and disregard people's stated wishes not to be put on one side of a gender binary.

They also have a particular way of talking that leans toward bullying and ideological abuse. They tend to interact with anti-antis even when they're not in a place to do so in a non-harmful way, and tell people who disagree with them to go kill themselves ("drink bleach", "jump in a fire", etc.). They tend to overuse words like "gross", "nasty", "scum", "garbage", etc. that provoke a disgust response, and generally exaggerate wildly ("literally advocating for child abuse", that kind of thing). There's a distinct lack of emphasis on anything that could potentially break the grip of black-and-white thinking, such as recognizing gradations of harm, or weighing the harm of something against the benefit it has.

I don’t want to go overboard and replicate the exact same patterns by implying that “calling something you don’t like ‘garbage’ is supporting ideological abuse” or anything like that. At the same time, I'm pretty sensitive to all this stuff, and pick up on it easily, even when I would rather ignore it. I can't stand to see people harassed for something as trivial as their taste in fanfic, and I also tend to be particularly vulnerable to ideologically abusive rhetoric because of some of the stuff I've gone through. An easy way to avoid interacting with people who harass others for their dark fic (or who support that framework of moral inferiority) would be to hang out with people who create and consume dark fic. But I actually find most of that content stomach-turning, so I wouldn't want to hang out around people who are posting it and talking about it all the time.

tl;dr: To avoid “TERFs minus (most of the) transphobia”, I might try hanging out with people who like fucked up fic, but I don’t want to do that because it would be unpleasant.

[goron-king-darunia]

Identifying as a woman is not a quality of being a woman.

Oh boy, a transphobe! And I know exactly what post you’re here about, too!Tell me, sweet, hateful, anon, if identifying as a woman is not part of being a woman, then what is? Because, you see, there are many many people who are genetically female (XX Chromosomes), hormonally female (produce primarily estrogen and progesterone with some testosterone) and physically female (they have breasts, a vagina, vulva, average sized clitoris, all that jazz) and you would think that perhaps from these features, that this person you are looking at might be a woman. But here’s the rub. Almost certainly there will be cases where this assumption is true. But more importantly, the person I just described identifies as a man. Therefore, to me, that vagina-having, XX chromosomed, estrogen-producing human being is a man. Because I care about what people want instead of just what people appear to be. They’re not lying about their genetics or anything like that. They’re giving me the key piece. Because despite what you think, all that other information about them is either wrong (i.e. not what they want to present as and would like changed) or it’s irrelevant to their identity (they’re non-binary or don’t give a hoot about their body because gender is a construct and has no basis in physical reality.) So, you see, my dear angry transphobe, gender is not the same thing as physical sex or hormones or chromosomes because all that could change and this person would still identify as a man. Therefore, if is one’s gender identity, what someone feels like they are, or what someone sees themself as or identifies as, that is truly important. Because, you see, we are all just brains trapped in skulls that are trapped in fleshy prisons. And if our fleshy bits don’t look like what our brain thinks they should or if our brain goes “you know what, I don’t hate the vagina, but I hate being called a woman when I’m a man inside.” then you, my friend, are known as trans! Because guess what, no matter what you want to simplify everything else down to, it’s never black and white. There are intersex “women” (or if you will, people who are AFAB) that are born with both vaginas and extraordinarily large clitorises that resemble penises more than clitorises. So, if the clitoris is sufficiently large, doctors opt to keep it, but sew the vagina closed in order to better facilitate the “normal life” of a human they have deemed “a boy”. Sometimes it’s the other way around and what should be the penis is trimmed down and the rest is reshaped into a vagina. Genitals look really weird, friend. And if they don’t quite fit our gender binary for easy identification, we chop them up and make them look normal even if they don’t end up matching the child’s gender identity in the future. So being a woman is not simply the quality of “having a vagina” because firstly and most obviously, there are men who have vaginas. Secondly, what constitutes a vagina is not always clear. Is it still a vagina if the clitoris is really really huge and phallic? How close to a dick can a clitoris get before you decide “That’s not a clit, it’s a penis.” Where is the cut off (literally) point?Being a woman is also not really clearly correlated with having XX chromosomes either. There are lots of chromosome “errors” or just plain weirdness that can happen. You can have just X or just Y. You can have XXY, XXX, XXXX, you can literally have any number of excessive X chromosomes because the body is weird. And not all of these correlate to a clear cut “woman” or “man”.Finally, you have hormones. There are plenty of men who produce too much estrogen, or their bodies react differently to testosterone and they don’t grow beards or body hair. There are women who produce too much testosterone and do grow beards and lots of thick body hair. And I mean “real women” as you might call them or “AFAB people.” I’m talking people with normal vaginas and breasts who have XX chromosomes and identify as female who are growing full, Dumbledore beards. Because hormones are a bitch. These people used to be sideshow “freaks” because “Wow, hurr durr, someone with breasts growing a beard? Sure is strange! Let’s pay money to laugh at it, what a horrible creature!” Because transphobia was funny way back then, huh? “Can’t be a woman because it has a beard but can’t be a man because tiddy. Must be a monster, let’s gawk at it!” Also, please remember that really tall people and really short people were also sideshow freaks back then, and you probably wouldn’t make fun of Tyrion or a basketball star nowadays, right? So why would you tease people that don’t fit the gender binary?So as I pointed out, there are a lot of ways to deviate in all 3 of the makers transphobes like to use for saying “trans people are just freaks regecting their natural physique/genes/hormones.” And I can hear you saying “Okay, well, then how about we define a woman as only someone who is XX, makes more estrogen and progesterone and reacts properly to it, and has breasts and a proper vagina. That and only that is a woman.”  Except, like I stated at the very beginning, if that person you just described identifies as a man, then they’re a man. And also that’s just really narrow and rude and you exclude all the perfectly decent women who identify as women but only deviate on one of those factors. “I identify as a woman, and have breasts and make estrogen, my chromosomes are XX, but because I had a really big clitoris as a baby, the doctors decided I was male when I was born and just sewed up my vagina.” I think that’s as much a woman as anyone else. Or “I have a perfect vagina and body, I make estrogen and react normally to it. I identify as a woman, but my genes are actually XXXX.” That’s just as much a woman as the last person.So you see, if you try to define a woman as something overly simple. You end up with something that excludes more people than you want it to. The only sure fire way to decide if someone is a woman or not is to ASK THEM HOW THEY IDENTIFY and then accept it. Because if you strip everything else away and just ask a brain in a jar through a computer “Hey, are you a man or a woman?” All that matters is what the brain tells you, right? So yeah, I know I’m feeding the trolls with this, but I’ve been thinking about this for a long time before I even got this ask, and now’s my time to get it all out there. So yeah, crawl back under your bridge you transphobe troll and miss me with that transphobic shit. Good day.

[lgbtqia-dictionary-blog]

Harvard LGBTQIA Resource Dictionary

Hello! This blog is mainly surrounding LGBTQIA terminology. Below is a list of LGBT terms found on the Harvard BGLTQ website! If you have any that are missing you can submit and I will add them to this website! 

Ace – Someone who identities as Asexual.

Ag / Aggressive – A term originating within communities of color to describe a masculine lesbian. Also known as ‘stud.’

Agender – A person without gender. An agender individual’s body does not necessarily correspond with their lack of gender identity. [Related Terms: neutrois, genderless, gender neutral]

Ally – 1. Someone who confronts heterosexism, anti- LGBTQIA biases, heterosexual and cisgender privilege in themselves and others 2. Has concern for the well being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, intersex, queer, and other similarly identified people 3. Believes that heterosexism, homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are social justice issues.

Androgyne – A person appearing and/or identifying as neither man nor woman. Some androgyne individuals may present in a gender neutral or androgynous way.

Aromantic – A person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to others.

Asexual – A person who does not experience sexual attraction. They may or may not experience emotional, physical, or romantic attraction. Asexuality differs from celibacy in that it is a sexual orientation, not a choice. People who are asexual may call themselves “ace.”

Assigned at Birth – This term illustrates that an individual’s sex (and subsequently gender in early life) was assigned without involving the person whose sex was being assigned. Commonly seen as “Female Assigned At Birth” (FAAB or AFAB) and “Male Assigned At Birth” (MAAB or AMAB).

BDSM – (Bondage, Discipline/Domination, Submission/Sadism, and Masochism) The terms ‘submission/sadism’ and ‘masochism’ refer to deriving pleasure from inflicting or receiving pain, often in a sexual context. The terms ‘bondage’ and ‘domination’ refer to playing with various power roles, in both sexual and social context. These practices are often misunderstood as abusive, but when practiced in a safe, sane, and consensual manner can be a part of healthy sex life. [Related Terms: Kink, Leather]

Bear – 1. Originating within a gay men’s subculture, someone who has facial/body hair and a larger body. 2. An umbrella term that is often defined as more of an attitude and a sense of comfort with natural masculinity and bodies.

Bicurious – A person showing some curiosity for a relationship or sexual activity with a person of a gender they do not usually engage with. [Related terms: heteroflexible, homoflexible]

Bigender – A person whose gender identity is a combination of man and woman. They may consciously or unconsciously change their gender-role behavior from masculine to feminine, or vice versa.

Binding – The process of flattening one’s breasts to have a more masculine or flat appearing chest.

Biphobia – The fear of, discrimination against, or hatred of bisexuals, which is often times related to the current binary standard. Biphobia can be seen within the LGBTQIA community, as well as in general society.

Bisexual – A person who experiences sexual, romantic, physical, and/or spiritual attraction to people of their own gender as well as other genders, not necessarily at the same time, in the same way, or to the same degree.

Boi (pronounced boy) – 1. A person assigned female at birth who expresses or presents themselves in a culturally/stereotypically masculine, particularly boyish way. 2. One who enjoys being perceived as a young man and intentionally identifies with being a “boy” rather than a “man.”

Bottom – A person who is the receiving or penetrated partner during sexual activity.

Bottom Surgery – Surgery on the genitals designed to create a body in harmony with a person’s gender identity. [Related Terms: Gender Confirming Surgery, Sexual Reassignment Surgery]

Brown Boi – A masculine of center person of color.

Butch – 1.A person who identifies themselves as masculine, whether it be physically, mentally or emotionally 2. Sometimes used as a derogatory term for lesbians, but it can also be claimed as an affirmative identity label.

Cisgender – someone who feels comfortable with the gender identity assigned to them based on their sex assigned at birth.

Cisgender Privilege – The set of privileges conferred to people who are believed to be Cisgender. (Examples: having one’s personal pronouns correctly used, no harassment in public restrooms, no denial of expected access to health care, etc.)

Cisnormativity – The assumption, in individuals or in institutions, that everyone is cissexual, and that cisgender persons identities are more normal, valid, and worthy of respect than transgender people’s identities.

Cissexism – A pervasive and institutionalized system that “others” transgender people and treats their needs and identities as less important than those of cisgender people.

Coming Out – 1. The process of accepts one’s own sexuality, gender identity, or status as an intersex person (to “come out” to oneself). 2. The process of sharing one’s sexuality, gender identity, or intersex status with others (to “come out” to friends, etc.). 3. A life-long process for individuals in the LGBTQIA community.

Cross-dressing – To occasionally wear clothes traditionally associated with people of the other gender. Cross-dressing is a form of gender expression, is not necessarily tied to erotic activity, and is not indicative of sexual orientation.

Demiromantic – A person who does not experience romantic attraction unless they form a strong emotional connection with someone.

Demisexual – A person who does not experience sexual attraction unless they form a strong emotional connection with someone.

Discrimination – Prejudice + power. It occurs when members of a more powerful social group behave unjustly or cruelly to members of a less powerful social group. Discrimination can take many forms, including both individual acts of hatred or injustice and institutional denials of privileges normally accorded to other groups. Ongoing discrimination creates a climate of oppression for the affected group.

Down Low – Originating within communities of color, used to describe men who identify as heterosexual but who are sexually active with men. Many avoid sharing this information even if they are also sexually active with women. [Related terms: Men who sleep with men (MSM)]

Drag – The performance of one or multiple genders theatrically.

Drag King – A person who performs masculinity theatrically.

Drag Queen – A person who performs femininity theatrically.

Dyke – 1.Sometimes adopted affirmatively by lesbians (not necessarily masculine ones) to refer to themselves. 2. Derogatory term referring to (often masculine) lesbians.

Fag – 1.Derogatory term for a gay or effeminate man. 2. Derogatory term for any individual who does not match their assigned gender role. 3. Sometimes reclaimed by gay men as a self-identifier.

Femme – An individual of any assigned sex or gender identity who identifies with femininity as dictated by traditional gender roles.

FTM – Abbreviation for a female-to-male transgender person. This term reflects the direction of gender transition. Some prefer the term MTM (Male to Male) to underscore the fact that though they were assigned female at birth, they never identified as female. [Related terms: transgender man, trans man]

Gay – 1.Used in some cultural settings to represent men who are attracted to men in a romantic, erotic and/or emotional sense. Not all men who engage in same gender sexual behavior identify as gay, and as such this label should be used with caution [See: Down Low]. 2. An umbrella term for sexual orientations that fall outside of straight/heterosexual.

Gender – A socially constructed system of classifications that ascribes qualities of masculinity and femininity to people. Gender characteristic can change over time and vary between cultures.

Gender – A complex system of roles, expressions, identities, performances, and more that are given gendered meaning by a society and usually assigned to people based on the appearance of their sex characteristics at birth. How gender is embodied and defined varies from culture to culture and from person to person.

Gender Binary – The idea that there are only two genders – man or woman –and that a person must be strictly gendered as either/or. [See also: Identity Sphere]

Gender Confirming Surgery – Medical surgeries used to modify one’s body to be more congruent with one’s gender identity. Also known as ‘Sex Reassignment Surgery,’ especially within the medical community. In most states, one or multiple surgeries are required to achieve legal recognition of gender status.

Gender Dysphoria – Discomfort or distress caused by one’s assigned sex and the desire to change the characteristics that are the source.

Gender Expression – How one presents oneself and one’s gender to the world via dress, mannerisms, hairstyle, facial hair etc. This may or may not coincide with or indicate one’s gender identity. Many utilize gender expression in an attempt to determine the gender/sex of another individual. However, a person’s gender expression may not always match their gender identity.

Gender Identity – A person’s sense of self as masculine, feminine, both, or neither regardless of external genitalia.

Gender Non Conforming – A person who either by nature or by choice does not conform to gender-based expectations of society (e.g. transgender, transsexual, intersex, genderqueer, butch, cross-dresser,etc.). Also known as ‘Gender Variant.’

Gender Normative – A person who by nature or by choice conforms to gender based expectations of society.

Gender Oppression - The societal, institutional, and individual beliefs and practices that privilege Cisgender and subordinate and disparage transgender or gender non conforming people.

Genderqueer – An individual whose gender identity is neither male nor female, is between or beyond genders, or is some combination of genders. Sometimes this includes a political agenda to challenge gender stereotypes and the gender binary system. Genderqueer individuals may or may not pursue any physical changes, such as hormonal or surgical intervention, and may not identify as trans*.

Grey Ace – Someone who identifies as part of the asexual community but does not identify as completely asexual. This differs from demisexuality in that being demisexual is a specific orientation and a gray ace is used as a catch all for any unspecified identity under the Ace umbrella.

Heteronormativity – The assumption, in individuals or in institutions, that everyone is heterosexual, and that heterosexuality is superior to homosexuality, bisexuality, and other sexual orientations.

Heterosexual – Men who experience sexual, romantic, physical, and/or spiritual attraction to women, and vice versa. Also known as ‘straight.’

Heterosexism – Prejudice against individuals and groups who display non-heterosexual behaviors or identities, combined with the majority power to impose such prejudice. Usually used to the advantage of the group in power. Any attitude, action, or practice – backed by institutional power – that subordinates people because of their sexual orientation.

Heterosexual Privilege – Those benefits derived automatically by being heterosexual or being perceived as heterosexual that are denied to homosexual and bisexual people. Also, the benefits homosexual and bisexual people receive as a result of claiming heterosexual identity or denying homosexual or bisexual identity.

HIV-phobia – The irrational fear or hatred of persons living with HIV/AIDS.

Homophobia – The irrational fear, hatred, or intolerance of people who identify or are perceived as non-heterosexual, including the fear of being read as part of the “gay” community. Homophobic behavior can range from telling gay jokes, to verbal abuse, to acts of physical violence.

Homoromantic – Someone who has romantic feelings for members of the same sex or gender.

Homosexual – An out of date term for a person who is primarily emotionally, physically, and/or sexually attracted to members of the same sex. Many people view this term as offensive in that it is excessively clinical and sexualizes members of the LGBTQIA community.

Identity Sphere – The idea that gender identities and expressions do not fit on a linear scale, but rather on a sphere that allows room for all expression without weighting any one expression as better than another.

In the Closet – Refers to a homosexual, bisexual, trans person or intersex person who will not or cannot disclose their sex, sexuality, sexual orientation or gender identity to their friends, family, co-workers, or society. An intersex person may be closeted due to ignorance about their status since standard medical practice is to “correct,” whenever possible, intersex conditions early in childhood and to hide the medical history from the patient. There are varying degrees of being “in the closet.” For example, a person can be out in their social life, but in the closet at work, or with their family.

Institutional Oppression – Arrangements of a society used to benefit one group at the expense of another through the use of language, media, education, religion, economics, etc.

Internalized Oppression – The process by which a member of an oppressed group comes to accept and live out the inaccurate stereotypes applied to the oppressed group.

Intersex Person(s) – Individual(s) born with the condition of having physical sex markers (genitals, hormones, gonads, or chromosomes) that are neither clearly male nor female. Intersex people are sometimes defined as having “ambiguous” genitalia.

LAG – "Lesbian After Graduation." Related to the usage of "LUG," primarily within some women's colleges. Used more as a short-hand in conversation among alums when they don't remember the person as having been a part of the lesbian community while they were students together, e.g., "she must be a LAG."

Leather Community – A community which encompasses those who are into leather, sado-masochism, bondage and domination, uniform, cowboys, rubber, and other fetishes. Although the leather community is often associated with the queer community, it is not a "gay-only" community.

Lesbian – Women who experience sexual, romantic, physical, and/or spiritual attraction to other women.

LGBTQIA – A common abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual community. The acronym is used as an umbrella term when talking about non heterosexual and non-cisgender identities, and does not always reflect members of the community. Sometimes the “A” is used to reference Allies and the “Q” is used to reference Questioning people.

Lipstick Lesbian – Usually refers to a lesbian with a feminine gender expression. Can be used in a positive or a derogatory way, depending on who is using it. Is sometimes also used to refer to a lesbian who is seen as automatically passing for heterosexual.

LUG – Derogatory term standing for “Lesbian Until Graduation” mostly used/heard by those within some women’s colleges. Portrays the person as “selling out” for a post-graduation life of heterosexual privilege. Denies the possibility of a bisexual identity.

Masculine of Center – A term originating within communities of color describing people whose gender identity or expression falls towards the masculine end of the gender spectrum; includes a wide range of identities such as butch, stud, aggressive/AG, dom, macha, tomboi, trans masculine, etc.

Monosexual – Attracted to one gender. May be used for individuals who identify as straight, heterosexual, gay, lesbian, etc.

MTF – Abbreviation for a male-to-female transgender person. This term reflects the direction of gender transition. Some people prefer the term FTF (female to female) to underscore the fact that though they were assigned male at birth, they never identified as male. [Related terms: transgender woman, trans woman]

Nonmonosexual – Attracted to more than one gender. May be used for individuals who identify as fluid, bisexual, pansexual, etc.

Neutrois – A person who identifies as being neither a man nor woman. This differs from androgyne, in that an androgyne sees themselves as a mix of two genders, while neutrois individual sees themselves as not having a gender. [Similar terms: genderless, agender, or non-gendered.]

Oppression – The systematic subjugation of a group of people by another group with access to social power, the result of which benefits one group over the other and is maintained by social beliefs and practices.

Outing – When someone discloses information about another’s sexual orientation or gender identity without their knowledge and/or consent.

Packing – Wearing a phallic device on the groin and under clothing for any purposes including: (for someone without a biological penis) the validation or confirmation of one’s masculine gender identity; seduction; and/or sexual readiness (for one who likes to penetrate another during sexual intercourse).

Panromantic – Someone who has romantic feelings for a person regardless of their sex or gender.

Pansexual – A person who has the potential to be attracted to all or many gender identities and expressions.

Passing – Describes a person's ability to be accepted as their preferred gender/sex or to be seen as heterosexual.

Polyamory – Refers to having honest, non-monogamous relationships with multiple partners and can include: open relationships, polyfidelity (which involves multiple romantic relationships with sexual contact restricted to those), and sub-relationships (which denote distinguishing between a ‘primary’ relationship or relationships and various ‘secondary’ relationships).

Prejudice – A conscious or unconscious negative belief about a whole group of people and its individual members. Anyone can be prejudiced toward another individual or group.

Queer – 1. An umbrella term which includes lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, trans* people, intersex persons, radical sex communities, and many other sexually transgressive communities. 2. This term is sometimes used as a sexual orientation label or gender identity label used to denote a non-heterosexual or cisgender identity without have to define specifics. 3. A reclaimed word that was formerly used solely as a slur but that has been reclaimed by some folks in the LGBTQIA community. Nevertheless, a sizable percentage of people to whom this term might apply still hold ‘queer’ to be a hateful insult, and its use by heterosexual people is often considered offensive.

Questioning – An individual who is unsure of and/or exploring their gender identity and/or sexual orientation.

Same Gender Loving (SGL) – A term originating within communities of color used to express same gender attraction. Note that it is often used as an alternative to words that do not culturally affirm the history of people of African descent.

Sex – A medical term designating a certain combination of gonads, chromosomes, external gender organs, secondary sex characteristics and hormonal balances. Because ‘sex’ is usually subdivided into ‘male’ and ‘female’ based on genitalia, this category does not recognize the existence of intersex bodies.

Sexual Orientation – The desire for intimate emotional and/or sexual relationships with people of the same gender, another gender, or multiple genders.

Sexuality – Refers to a person’s exploration of sexual behaviors, practices and identities in the social world.

Stealth – This term refers to when a person chooses to be secretive in the public sphere about their gender history, either after transitioning or while successful passing. Also referred to as ‘going stealth’ or ‘living in stealth mode.’

Stem – A person whose gender expression falls somewhere between a stud and a femme. [See also: Femme and Stud]

Stereotype – A preconceived or oversimplified generalization about an entire group of people without regard for their individual differences. Some stereotypes can be positive. However, they can have a negative impact, simply because they involve broad generalizations that ignore individual realities.

Stonewall Riots – On June 28th, 1969, New York City Police attempted a routine raid on the Stonewall Inn, a working-class gay and lesbian bar in New York’s Greenwich Village. Unexpectedly, the patrons resisted, and the incident escalated into a riot that continued for several days. Many people attribute this event as the catalyst for the American Gay Liberation Movement. It is often left out that the more frequent patrons of this bar were trans women, drag queens and butch lesbians.

Straight – Another term for heterosexual.

Straight-Acting – A term usually applied to gay men who readily pass as heterosexual. The term implies that there is a certain way that gay men should act that is significantly different from heterosexual men. Straight-acting gay men may be critiqued by members of the LGBTQIA community for seemingly accessing heterosexual privilege.

Stud – A term originating within communities of color to describe a masculine lesbian. Also known as ‘aggressive.’

Switch – A person who is both a ‘Top’ and a ‘Bottom;’ there may or may not be a preference for one or the other. Also known as ‘Versatile.’

Top – A person who is the giving or penetrating partner during sexual activity.

Top Surgery – This term usually refers to surgery for the construction of a male-type chest, but may also refer to breast augmentation.

Trans* – An abbreviation that is used to refer to a transgender/gender queer/ gender non-conforming person. This use allows a person to state a gender variant identity without having to disclose hormonal or surgical status/intentions. This term is sometimes used to refer to the whole gender non-conforming community that might include (but is not limited to) transgender, genderqueer, genderfluid, non-binary, genderf*ck, transsexual, agender, third gender, two-spirit, bigender, trans man, trans woman, gender non-conforming, masculine of center, and gender questioning.

Transfeminine – 1. A term used to describe those who were assigned male at birth, but identify as more female than male.. 2. Those who identify as transfeminine, as opposed to simply as MTF or a woman, trans or otherwise, often place themselves feminine of center. That is, they identify more closely with femaleness than maleness, and generally desire a physical appearance that reflects this identification, but do not identify as wholly female or as a woman. It should be noted that transfeminine is not a descriptor of gender expression but of identity. Transfeminine people do not necessarily have to be stereotypically feminine in their interests or even presentation.

Transgender – A person who lives as a member of a gender other than that expected based on sex or gender assigned at birth. Sexual orientation varies and is not dependent on gender identity.

Transition – This term is primarily used to refer to the process a gender variant person undergoes when changing their bodily appearance either to be more congruent with the gender/sex with which they identify and/or to be in harmony with their preferred gender expression.

Transmasculine – 1. A term used to describe those who were assigned female at birth, but identify as more male than female. 2. Those who identify as transmasculine, as opposed to simply as FTM or a man identify more closely with maleness than femaleness, and generally desire a physical appearance that reflects this identification, but do not identify as wholly male or as a man. It should be noted that transmasculine is not a descriptor of gender expression but of identity. Transmasculine people do not necessarily have to be stereotypically masculine in their interests or even presentation.

Trans Man – An identity label sometimes adopted by female to male trans people to signify that they are men while still affirming their transgender history.

Trans Woman – An identity label sometimes adopted by male to female trans people to signify that they are women while still affirming their transgender history.

Transphobia – The irrational hatred of those who are transgender or gender non-conforming, sometimes expressed through violent and sometimes deadly means.

Transsexual – A person who identifies psychologically as a gender/sex other than the one to which they were assigned at birth. Transsexuals often wish to transform their bodies hormonally and surgically to match their inner sense of gender/sex.

Two-Spirit – A Native American term for people who blend the masculine and the feminine. It is commonly used to describe individuals who historically crossed gender. It is often used by contemporary LGBTQIA Native American people to describe themselves.

Versatile – A person who is both a ‘Top’ and a ‘Bottom;’ there may or may not be a preference for one or the other. Also known as ‘Switch.’

Ze / Hir – Alternate pronouns that are gender neutral. Pronounced /zee/ and /here/, they replace “he”/”she” and “his”/”hers” respectively.