#- misunderstand what it means to be butch by acting like butches who are women don't exist

[hotsugarbyglassanimals]

A lot of you need to sit the fuck down and remember that cis women and trans women can be butches. because at this rate y'all are acting like it's a solely transmasc identity by conflating the experience of going on T and having top surgery as a universal butch experience. or god forbid, y'all equate butch to being a trans man

[gaymessriku]

Old issue at this point, but the American reception to Dragona Joestar really is emblematic of the remaking of the gender binary into a 'woke' version. As presented in the manga, Dragona is called Jodio's brother and uses he/him pronouns. He also has a stereotypically feminine appearance and has canonically had surgeries to achieve this.

It is of course important to understand this in the context of Araki's treatment of women in past chapters. And he has in fact repeated these tropes with Dragona. However, especially with any knowledge of how gender is seen in Japan, there is no reason to view his pronouns and presentation as unintended or inherently transphobic.

I have seen person after person use she/her or they/them when referring to him, not due to any textual support but their own confusion and discomfort. Dragona may be a binary trans woman, or a gnc man, or whatever the fuck his heart desires. That is irrelevant to his pronouns. The idea that he cannot possibly use or like he/him due to his presentation is incredibly restrictive and disrespectful.

Viewing pronouns as inherently tied to gender or presentation only rebrands transphobic ideas of gender being inherently tied to sex. It implies an inherent scale between 2 points of male and female which are tied to certain appearances and behaviors, and everyone falling somewhere on it. E.G. the idea of having to be a masc or fem aligned nonbinary, or stereotypically feminine traits in men causing jokes about how they're secretly trans women and don't realize it yet.

This is harmful to not only the people who fall outside these categories but also those who are comfortable within them. It perpetuates stereotypes in queer spaces that cause fear and ostracization. And it is completely ahistorical to the movement as a whole. Accepting gender as a construct means both acknowledging the utility and weight of its signifiers in a personal and societal context, while also releasing yourself and others from the obligations thereof.

A trans man and a butch lesbian can look or act exactly the same and that makes them no less different or authentic in their existence. Promoting men wearing skirts or makeup while simultaneously viewing them as less their gender is hypocritical and still presents maleness as a default that femininity and womanhood is an aberration or change to. Saying you support trans people and gender nonconformity is incongruous with assigning certain traits to certain genders.

It is of course entirely possible that Araki has some level of misunderstanding or ill intent in his representation of Dragona. It is also possible that his identity or pronouns will change over the course of the manga. However, as currently presented, that is what he wants and is comfortable with. As a reader, in the same way you wouldn't misgender someone who doesn't fit your standards for presentation in real life it should also be applied to characters. This is not a matter of personal headcanon but the material as it is presented.

I'm not attributing intent or malice to those who do this. It is very much not about accusations of queerphobia or inciting self flagellation. This is about explaining how these actions are harmful and what they perpetuate. It is an invitation to think about how you view these categories and apply them to the world, even subconsciously.

It is not a sin to be wrong. It is not a sin to not have the perfect enlightened ideas inside and out. We all have biases, and they take time to identify and account for. Part of having moral and ethical principles is recognizing your own flaws in these areas. That is always the first step to understanding and improvement.

And of course I'm not a perfect being either, so contributions, criticism, or questions are very much welcome. Community is based on shared values and identity but also the ability to keep an open mind. We all have pieces of the world and the only way to get a better picture is sharing them.

[deerydear]

Although, I have seen "non-transitioning" transgender individuals, who change nothing about themselves. They ask other people to treat them as the opposite gender.

I was one of these people, for several years. I wish I had stayed as one... xD

I've seen it, several times: where someone else will question one of these types, and they give the response:

"What?!?!?! Don't you realize a girl (or boy) can look like anything? Stop being so butch-phobic (or fem-phobic)...

Looking back, now, after my hormonal transition... it seems ridiculous to me, because my personal understanding of what it means "being a man" has evolved...

TRA rhetoric can take any form. It is ever-shifting, ever-adapting to the social climate. I know how the game works.

"I want you to treat me like this. I'll tell you whatever you want to hear, in order to evoke the kind of reaction I want."

That was my thought process.

Although, this could be justified so:

"Well, cisgender people will never understand how painful it is to be transgender. They have a social privilege, in being understood as themselves."

Do they, now?

Do we not all face misunderstanding from other people in our lives?

"Women's suffering is ordinary but ours is extraordinary."

Part of the physchological component of my detransition has been gratefully realizing how much that I have in common with people of all creeds and classes. In the beginning, I had such a feeling of embarrassment in acknowledging this... because I had acted so self-righteously in the name of my social-standing. I tried to set myself apart. I tried to be different... but I wasn't.

I was a cisgender (or cissexual) woman wishing she was a cisgender man.

I hope that my owm writing inspires other people to be more honest with themselves --- cis or trans.

It could be such a self-indulgent trap to pretend that I am a "poor little victim" of transgender brainwashing, but... I relished in the chances I saw, to be a domineering asshole. I might not have started out as what I developed into, but I had been selfish for a long stretch of my life prior to that. Not all my actions had selfish intent, but some of them ended with selfish results... and then when I saw those results, I had to choose: was I okay with hurting other people's feelings? What about "these people"? Is it okay if therefore I put a label on them, pretending they're utterly seperate and different from I? How indiscriminate does this labelling process get, over time?

A: "Oh, this sounds like TERF rhetoric"

B: "but I'm trans! This is my own opinion. Aren't I entitled to that?"

A: "You must have internalized transphobic ideas. You should unlearn those and learn to love yourself better, so you can be a better comrade to your fellow trans-people."

B disengages from the conversation at this point. Yet, underneath the surface there is a conversation happening in her:

Imaginary-internal-B: "but these new ideals don't feel like truth. They ring wrong. I don't feel like how this person tells me I should feel."

I-A: "Your idea of 'truth' is transphobic. I'm telling you that you only feel bad because you grew up in a transphobic society. Once you unlearn your conditioning... you will feel free."

B....

Only years later... Did I uncover these feelings again.

...Breathing life back into what was frozen in the winter ground...

it was my choice to believe these things, when I felt otherwise. Remembering this truth is a remembrance of agency. I control where my life goes. My actions matter. I see the results of my own actions. I matter.

i was not some pawn helplessly swayed from side to side, according to external forces. I had my own agency, my own motivations, my own desire...

So, I see how my own desires can get me into unfavorable places.

Yet, of course there was an outside world that I was part of... It was not simply me, alone.

There is a give and a take. I had choices.

my suffering is profound and legitimate, yours is frivolous nonsense

Just reading a blogger I like but I had to laugh because she was talking about how beauty practices are bad for women's mental health, and she left a note saying "unlike gender affirming care! gender affirming care improves people's mental health and it's nothing at all like cosmetic practices."

TIL, when an older woman gets botox to remove her wrinkles and avoid facing the inevitability of decline and death, her problem is spiritual/structural and she needs to Do The Work to deprogram her ageism, unlike people with dysphoria, who of course have legitimate claims to cosmetic alteration.

And it is cosmetic - no part of the body that is altered by HRT or SRS or any of the feminization/masculinization surgeries is failing to function or functioning poorly. The problem is with the brain, which perceives the body parts as foreign or undesirable. We may sympathize with someone struggling with such a condition, but that does not change that the body parts being altered were already healthy and the alterations are cosmetic, and the relief being brought about is mental.

But plenty of trans people openly admit that separating body dysmorphia and gender dysphoria is a losing game. Contrapoints's video on "Beauty" (transcript) has the observation that she feels least dysphoric when she is meeting feminine beauty norms:

But I also think that trans people often talk like gender dysphoria is this intrinsic, personal experience that's always 100% valid and never has anything at all to do with the external pressure of beauty standards. But in fact, gender dysphoria is not sealed away in a vacuum away from the influence of societal ideals and norms.  [...] When I try to psychoanalyze myself, I find that my desires to look female, to look feminine, and to look beautiful are not exactly the same, but they're woven together so tightly that it's kind of difficult to untangle them. And the opposite is also true, that for me feeling mannish or dysphoric usually goes along with feeling ugly. I don't have a lot of days where I walk out the house thinking "well, I'm giving femme queen realness, but apart from that I look like absolute shit". 

Max Robinson's book "Detransition," from an FTM perspective, points out how the prospective trans man views his suffering as unique from and distinct from women's, even as the surgeries they seek are not especially different:

The stereotypical cosmetic surgery patient is seeking to become closer to being perfectly feminine - she wants to be beautiful. Transitional cosmetic surgery, on the other hand, is widely understood to mark the patient as ex-female and therefore unfemale; this is part of the meaning FTMs seek to create through surgery. FTM desire for cosmetic surgery is positioned as something totally different than the stereotype of a woman who 'merely' seeks beauty at her frivolous leisure. FTMs are deemed to have a rare affliction that needs urgent, life-saving treatment. Conversely, there is nothing more common than for a woman to become obsessed with her socially-deemed 'unsatisfactory' looks and desperately seek to change them, believing that such a change is the only thing that can restore her quality of life. This comparison will feel like an insult to the FTM. It will feel that way because we believe other women's suffering doesn't matter, and recognize how much ours does. Women's suffering is ordinary but ours is extraordinary. For us to matter, we must be differentiated from the silly little woman who wants to be pretty so badly she'll pay thousands of dollars (now billable to credit cards and loan programs designed to pay for elective surgeries!) to risk her life and health. These women don't need to be fixed; we do. FTMs know that we don't deserve a woman's fate but have not yet realized that no woman does.

I have more to write on the topic of the relationship between gender identity and beauty culture, but I'll end this one here. It makes sense that somebody who is identified with the opposite sex would also be affected by the standards of beauty expected of that sex. (Non-binary identification is more complicated and requires separate treatment.)