#- such a problem to you. and whether that is alienating to the trans people in the fandom.

[mothbeasts]

i miss posting and making and engaging with ieytd content but I will be honest sometimes it feels alienating. as a lesbian.

[elderredraccoon]

THIS!!! SO MUCH THIS!!!! I had experience with a carpentry mentor who was MtF but they were a huge piece of shit. However just vecause she was a bitch didn't make her any less of a woman. Just an asshole

I don’t know who needs to hear this but a trans and/or non-binary person being a piece of garbage isn’t an excuse to misgender them. Yes they’re a trash person but that doesn’t revoke their gender, give them consequences instead of treating correct pronouns like only good people get them instead of a part of who you are. They don’t “deserve to be misgendered,” they deserve to be punished normally, like cis people. Just saying.

[osmanthusoolong]

“Is porn addiction real? Less so than claimed, argues Lisa Hagen in a bombshell report for NPR. In this article, the journalist explores the ‘masturbation abstinence’ and anti-porn addiction movement in the US, finding a landscape filled with pseudoscience, reactionary rhetoric, and shame. “In one study,” Hagen notes, “among people who self-identify as ‘pornography addicts’, the average frequency of porn use was less than ten times a year”.”

…

“Meanwhile, sex acts outside the norm are often configured as things that only exist to hurt and degrade women or pollute their relationships, rather than as things women could possibly be interested in. Several of the women I’ve talked to have spoken about being into kink, and about how alienated they feel by discourse that kink is just a cover for violence against women, rather than something women themselves can desire and instigate.”

…

“The subtextual ‘threat’ behind ‘wrong’ porn gets very queer, very quickly. An interviewee for NPR describes a common set of anxieties on the forums he frequented: ‘‘The common themes were ‘porn is turning me gay’ or ‘porn is making me cross-dress’ or ‘porn is making me want to be dominated’ or ‘porn is making me like transgenders [sic]’.” It’s pretty clear that men are feeling drawn to the taboo thrills of getting topped, gender-play and gay exploration, whether as fantasy or as real possibility; men are also, I noticed, sometimes seeing straight porn and identifying with the woman. This opens up possibilities and anxieties that ‘porn addiction’ forums seek to close off. If you’re thinking about this stuff at all, they say, you have an addiction that is driving you to seek out ‘extreme’ material, and you need help. Reading this as a queer guy felt like hearing the Kill Bill sirens going off: it’s so clear that any erotic charge towards sex workers of any kind, gay men, trans women, or stigmatised forms of sex are seen as polluting ‘proper’ straight life.

If you read through anti-porn forums and programmes as someone who knows what conversion therapy looks like, you will find its tells in abundance. Heavy emphasis on shaming, while also promising that the programme will provide a way out of that shame; advice that new desires might not go away, but can be ignored and managed; unspoken assumptions that monogamous, cisgender, heterosexual, vanilla sex is the sexual ideal; heavy use of pseudoscience; intimations that the reader is being purposely corrupted by the porn industry or a wider, conspiratorial ‘agenda’. UK Rehab’s page on porn addiction advises that “pornography addiction can lead to changes in sexual tastes, desires and practices […] which can cause huge problems for addicts in relationships. The addict may begin to engage in different forms of sexual experience and expression, which may include risky sexual behaviour […] Even in less extreme cases, as mentioned above repeated exposure to hard-core pornography can lead to changed expectations of partners, which can make attaining a “normal” sex life increasingly difficult”. What is ‘normal’ here? What is ‘risky’? What are the ‘tastes’ in question?”

…

“Women, in particular, are taught that men’s excessive sexual desires are the root of cheating and disloyalty and sexual violence (rather than the misogyny that makes men disregard women’s boundaries, for instance), and that they therefore need to surveil and police their partners’ porn use. This is furthered by the assumption that any desire to use porn at all is a marker of unmanageable sexual vice and voraciousness, which you’ll particularly find in evangelical/religious circles.”

The fact that people will argue in court that this problem that, again, doesn’t exist, is responsible for CSA and other sexual violence and not the structure of society and families encouraging and enabling such…

…

“Most people who think they’re addicted to porn aren’t. What they’re addicted to is policing their own genders and sexualities, hoping that if they just do so a little more successfully, all their personal and relational problems will fall away.”

This seems relevant to the constant discussion about the subject here, especially given the politics of the people who think porn addiction/porn brain/etc is real

[madtomedgar]

Since fools are hand-wringing about (cis) women (and afab trans people) "mutilating" themselves by getting hysterectomies because it """harms""" their bodies and shows an alienation with the body:

The uterus has no hormonal or sexual function (according to my drs). It is a bag to grow a baby in. If you get rid of it, and not the ovaries, you can expect such horrrors as:

A mild and temporary mood drop from hormone fluctuation, especially if you had an IUD that was removed with the uterus.

Some minor temporary intestinal problems as your organs readjust to the gap.

A few months of sexual dysfunction while the body readjusts itself. It went away entirely on its own within 6 months of surgery.

Some mild confusion once a month when you feel like killing or crying about everything but because you no longer menstruate you get no advanced warning or bloody reminder that this is only the standard hormonal fluctuation and not a new type of insanity hitherto unbeknownst to science.

That's it.

Insisting that there are other treatment methods for things like endometriosis and PCOS is actively harmful. I promise you we have tried them all, whether we wanted them or not, whether they worked or not, whether they made things worse or not. It is pretty much impossible to get a doctor to agree to a surgical solution until you are 30 and have tried everything else for at least a year per alternative treatment. Some of these alternative treatments, like lupron, can have awful, permanent consequences for your body, like irreparable loss of bone density, while only working in about 1/3 of patients, and then only temporarily. You can't be on it long term because it will destroy your bones. Most of these treatments involve preventing menstruation, since that's when the symptoms are the worst. For context, I've recovered from surgery without painkillers, I've broken bones, and neither one of those was anywhere near as bad as peak endometriosis symptoms. Heavy bleeding and hemorrhaging, which also occur in these disorders, cause other issues for you body, including but not limited to chronic anaemia.

I get wanting to rehab the uterus' image. I get concerns, given the history of medicine, over a misogynistic society just cutting women up to their detriment rather than treating them holistically and effectively. I get wanting to keep your own uterus. But panic doesn't help here, and neither does insisting this organ is special and necessary and it's function is special and necessary.

If you want to freak out about women being pushed to harmful, unnecessary surgery, gastric bypass and other weight loss surgery is right there y'all.

[femdemon]

While I'm posting about my experiences with transandrophobia, I feel like people are weird about headcanoning characters as transmasc specifically. Like, obviously, there's your regular old gender and sex based bigotry a lot of the time about headcanoning any character as being anything other than strictly cis, perisex, and gender conforming, but people who allege to be progressive and open-minded get really weird and hostile about transmasc folks specifically seeing ourselves in fictional characters.

Like, okay. I've seen people say, "If you're only headcanoning overtly feminine characters as transmasc and overtly masculine characters as transfem, and you yourself are cis or whatever, maybe you should ask yourself why and whether or not you might have some internalized binarism you need to work on." And this is true, and good to point out! But then I've seen other people take this very good and true message and do some medicalism, gender essentialist bullshit to it like, "Yeah! Stop headcanoning feminine characters as transmasc altogether! Especially if you're a gender non-conforming transmasc person who heavily relates to the character in question and see a lot of yourself in said character. Don't you wanna be taken seriously by Normal People? Don't you wanna be seen as a Real Man? You can't headcanon this character as transmasc, then. Obviously, they're a trans woman, actually, like it's practically canon. In fact, you're Committing An Erasure if you headcanon this character as any gender other than a trans woman, and this is a crime that can never be forgiven and must be punished with Shunning until you admit that you're wrong."

And, like, I'm not saying that this never happens with other headcanons, I've absolutely seen it happen with other queer identities, I just see it a lot with respect to my own gender and I feel like it's bizarrely frequent. Why exactly are people so threatened by even just the idea that a character could be interpreted as transmasc? Why do people get this heated about basically any fiction or insist that it has something to do with representation when it was never canon to begin with? Some random person online who definitely isn't the author isn't in control of the story or characters, and it does nothing to the canon for them to have an opinion or idea about it that you don't like. I know that not everybody has gotten the "fandom isn't activism" memo yet, but even still, it just strikes me as really strange to sort of gatekeep who's allowed to relate to certain characters, or even just imagine them in ways that are different from fanon.

It kind of feels a lot like that thing people do where they're like, "Oh, the aces and aros want some characters they can see themselves in, we'll just give them the aliens and robots (never humans) and such, that should be enough." And then when we're like, "Okay, yeah, I can definitely see a lot of myself in this beloved robot character," suddenly it's all, "Nooo, beloved robot character couldn't possibly be aspec! You buffoon!!! How dare you!!!" It's like, even when we do get "permission" to have headcanons and characters we see ourselves in, we still don't really have it. And then I wonder why I'm always so drawn to inconsequential background characters who contribute nothing to the plot - I've totally been conditioned into it because liking and relating to the main cast is forbidden, I guess.

I know this is a very niche, small problem in the grand scheme of things, but it bums me out. Especially since a lot of this is coming from people who consider themselves allies and stuff, and we already face so much backlash just for daring to suggest that we have unique struggles. Not even when we're having fun storytime with our fan fiction do we get a break.

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

pt IX good omens on livestream, i'm not ok: S1E4

You did it, Good Omens fandom, my dear maggots. You broke me in every way. Now I'm here, and where I once spent my day peacefully being sad about normal things, I'm now sad about a random fact about nightingales I learned on a British ornithology site and this is just... the brainrot. It's real. Raise brainrot awareness. Prevention is better than the nonexistent cure.

Well, I've procrastinated this post by like 48 hours by drawing fanart and being mopey over Crowley and generally being asleep because I'm still on antibiotics and ill. So let us not procrastinate further. First, episode 4. Tally, hoes!

In preparation for the stream, I gathered two emotional support oranges, only one of which was gaseous, and an apple. This was so that rather than waste an orange on being gay for Crowley I'd use the apple for that, symbolic of his temptation in the Garden of Eden etc. I didn't know how badly this plan would go.

On Discord, our collective loins girded, I noticed with no small suspicion that everyone was muttering about the bookshop and whether I'd be okay. When I demanded frantically what happened to the bookshop (I THOUGHT EVERYTHING WAS IN S2) everyone shut up and told me the bookshop was in tiptop shape and it was all tickety-boo and nothing would happen at all in episode 5.

Spoiler alert it is not all tickety-boo.

We start with Aziraphale going for a jog to keep uh fit for exercising with Crowley, and he is interrupted by Gabriel, who is not Jimbriel, and is not naked, that is, we cannot see his arse yet, but we can see that he is an arse.

We then see not-Newt the deliveryman with his wife Maude and they are the only straight couple that the people on the chat care about. Calling him not-Newt is going to pose problems for me.

Crowley is being a smart baby, and researching astronomy. Poor Crowley. I love Crowley. Do you understand? I LOVE CROWLEY.

There is a lot of talk of spoons and forks and such innuendos. I make a joke about scissors being missing. The chat does not notice. I am disappointed in the gays.

I am so engrossed in the way Death says "deeAaaAAthHHhh" that I fail to notice Not-Newt get killed delivering a message to Death. This is going to pose problems for me.

I forgot about the apocalypse plotline till the horsepeople arrive. This is understandable. I care not for this 'world' ending, my new world is Crowley. I love Crowley.

Duck aliens fucking descend. This is not a joke. There are duck aliens, and they are supportive of trans people. Newt does not count their nipples.

The Shad guy doesn't care Newt found aliens. He is upset that Newt didn't find witches. If Shad was mowing his lawn and found gold, he would toss it aside because he is focused on mowing. I can respect that. People make jokes about Newt eventually finding a witch.

It is suddenly a Christopher Nolan movie. Someone corrects me and says it's more like Jerry Bruckheimer. I do not know what that is.

Someone says Crowley destroys the Bentley but for whatever reason, like a lot of people before, makes it a black box that you have to click to read. I don't mind that, I like clicking.

Aziraphale bought out a theatre for Crowley, like a Kdrama where the rich CEO buys out an entire theatre for his working class girl.

Adam goes through what I went through with OCD. It is not fun.

It is now a horror movie. Adam floats in the air. That was not a symptom I had with OCD.

Crowley asks Aziraphale to run away with him to the stars. Aziraphale says no. Crowley is upset and my baby Azi looks so sad and confused about everything he believes in. Great. I'm totally fine, I think as I start stuffing my emotional support orange into my mouth.

It is now a Home Alone movie. Crowley in gloves is sexy. Mmmmmmm yes. Crowley does great advertising for plant spray bottles as he murders and threatens demons.

I point out that the GO book says Crowley can do "weird things with his tongue" as I learned from the GO scent guide company page. It was after all the most relevant take-away from that page.

Disco Tony arrives. This is not a safe space.

AZIRAPHALE KEEPS TRYING TO DO THE RIGHT THING AND IS FAILED BY HEAVEN LEAVE MY BABY AZI ALONE WTF GO AWAY. THE ANGELS WALL SLAM HIM TOO. THAT'S CROWLEY'S THING YOU BASTARDS.

Newt and Anathema are cute. I DON'T NOTICE BECAUSE IM SO UPSET HE'S CHEATING ON MAUDE AND WONDERING WHY THE CHAT IS OKAY WITH IT BECAUSE I AM A FOOL WHO CONTINUES TO MIX UP NEWT WITH NOT-NEWT AND THEN THE CHAT TELLS ME NOT-NEWT DIED AND I'M CONFUSED.

Newt and Anathema are having sex. As an aspec person, I am very alarmed at the visuals.

Azi is failed by heaven and the metatron. Shocker. Fucking get away from Azi. Azi is miserable and looks like he wants to cry.

AZI IS EXORCISED AND THE FUCKING FLAME CATCHES IN THE BOOKSHOP AND THE EPISODE ENDS.

TAKE MY PAIN MOTHERFUCKERS. I WILL POST THIS AND THEN WRITE THE EP5 PART.

[unepetitecorneille]

Gender dysphoria and Smirke's Fourteen

So, whatever this ends up being, it's about the different aspects of gender dysphoria as domains of the different entities. All of it is just headcanons and personal bullshit, but it will have a more serious side, and some sillier bits as well. Disclaimer: It's largely based on my own experience, not everyone may relate to it. Also, there isn't just one way to dissect dysphoria and categorise its flavours based on what fear power they fit, so if you don't agree with me, that's fine.

CWs/TWs: canon-typical CWs + discussion and themes of: gender dysphoria, gender perception based on biological traits, alienation from one's body, body modification, shifting of bones, self-harm, transphobia, intrusive thoughts - This stuff is quite explicit, and there's a reason certain topics weren't present in the podcast. Some parts could induce dysphoria about things you aren't dysphoric about, so be careful. Read at your own risk. Stay safe.

The Flesh: The more physical aspects come here. Wanting to change certain parts of your body that are commonly associated with a different gender. Wishing you could chop off some of you in some places, maybe even bone or that your bone structure would morph into a more fitting form. (In my case it's wanting broader shoulders, narrower hips.) Now this is just for the funsies, completely unserious: the Flesh could be such an ally. I think it would absolutely support medical transition, any changes you make on your body to make yourself feel more at home in it. It would feed more on the horror of transphobes at the 'audacity' of trans people being happy in their bodies whether or not the way they look aligns with their views about what they 'should' look like, whether or not they underwent any medical transition.

The Stranger: Yayyy, fun one. /s Basically feeling like a stranger in your body, feeling like it is not yours, at least not fully, not truly. Voice dysphoria definitely comes here (for me). This is a very ftm point of view, but the feeling when I look at my hips and I <know> they should be narrower. My shoulders should be broader, my lungs bigger, my ribcage more spacious, my torso longer, my waist fuller, not so narrow.

The Spiral: The more obsessive parts, all the extreme self-consciousness go here. Worrying that the tiniest details would 'give you away'. Generally the 'Am I manly/womanly/androgynous/... enough?' kind of thoughts. Overthinking small bits like how you sit, or use gestures, how you speak. Also, putting too much emphasis on things you cannot do anything about (for me my hips and how high the waist of my trousers goes up). This feels very niche, but the obsessive thought of 'Do they percieve me as a boy or a girl?' in dangerous situation. Like, really? That's not the biggest problem, couldn't we just focus on the more pressing matters? Anyway, the Spiral could be an ally, too. Like come on, Michael. The Distortion would totally come for transphobes and eat them and drive them crazy.

The Web: Not being in control. The hopelessness you feel when no matter what you do, people keep misgendering you and deadnaming you, just generally treating you like what 'they' think you are.

The Eye: The awareness that people are constantly percieving you. Them percieving you is inevitable, and you dread they percieve you as a gender you aren't. Or knowing it's a day you don't pass. Knowing they see you as a gender you aren't and you can do nothing to change that.

The Dark: (This is very closely connected to the first half of the previous one, I wanted to put this there originally, but well, this is about <not> knowing and uncertainity, so it fits the Dark better.) Not knowing what little box people put you in in their heads. You don't know how to present to be safe and only as uncomfortable as necessary at the same time. It's exactly like being in the dark and not knowing what is in it. Anything could be lurking there. Even another human being. With malicious intent. With the intent of hurting you. But this, not knowing how you are percieved can be even more stressful than simple worry about your physical safety. There's even more uncertainity because you can't know how they'd react if they knew you're trans/queer.

The Lonely: Being othered by society. Being an outcast. Self-isolating to keep yourself safe. Choosing to be alone instead of the company of those who look down on you/ hate you/ don't accept you/ might hurt you. Difficulties making friends because of who you are.

The Buried: Having to play a role to be safe or to find community. The suffocating reality that you practically don't have a choice but to put on a facade. (Even if you don't have to actively pretend to be someone or something you aren't, but you can't be fully free and your authentic self.) The hopelessness of being stuck in a nightmarish situation, you can't escape it for a good long time yet. (I Saw the TV Glow very much reminds me of the Buried.)

So that's about it. There are some overlaps, but the same can be said about the fears themselves. I hope you enjoyed reading.

[one-squash-one-end]

An analysis on gender and sexuality - Blue Sargent

Hi! This belongs to my big Raven Cycle analysis, click here for the masterpost!

This part will deal with our favorite short ant, Blue Sargent. A sort of silly but still intentional analysis/essay on why I think she's nonbinary, where I go off on random tangents because i have adhd and access to the internet. Enjoy! (This will be so fucking long though, I had Thoughts)

3. Trust me, the characters are queer as fuck and I can prove it (+ my professional opinion on whether they’d wear a crop top)

a) Blue Sargent

Look. No matter how I look at this entire character, there’s simply no way Blue is not genderfluid. (The fluid is one of Maura’s footy healing teas btw.) And I am here to spread the agenda and force my own identity onto fictional characters so that after you have read this analysis and interpretation, you will agree with me on my correct opinion.

To begin with, there is this entire theme of not fitting in and dressing in an “unusual” way. It becomes very evident that Blue is really proud of being weird and eccentric, this displayed in attitudes towards her mom, the boys and her internal monologue about Mountainview High. She does not want to fit in if it means changing for others, yet she says “the problem with being weird was that everyone else was normal”. This could possibly be a metaphor for being trans; being proud of it, yet being only surrounded by cis people, who conform to all those societal gender norms. It means one would feel sort of isolated (as Blue does mention she is), not being able to relate to or feel deeply understood by anyone in their environment.

Additionally, alternative fashion (or at least that’s how I would describe her aesthetic in general) has quite typically been claimed by queer people. I know this is a lot of interpretation here, and it’s worth mentioning that you absolutely cannot tell someone’s gender by how they present on the outside. However, the evidence gets stronger as we dive deeper. If we look at her fashion sense together with the statement of “I don’t care to be pretty, I care to look on the outside as I do on the inside.”, it sends quite a clear message: Her outside is very jumbled, not conforming to societal norms, a mix of many different styles that seems to change its focus daily. In my opinion, that’s pretty gender of her. If that’s how she presents on the outside (which is not traditionally “female”, among other things I just mentioned), just think about what that would mean for her inside. It’s chaotic, it’s messy, it’s just a lot of things. It’s called being genderfluid.

The second big theme we have is her constantly being treated as “one of the boys”. And yes, of course cis girls can be friends with large groups of boys (and the other way around) but it is quite rare or unusual, especially if all of them are straight (so my point is this: Blue is not cis and also the boys are all queer, more on that later). Either way, Blue defies traditional gender norms and “girly” hobbies by taking part in fun teambuilding activities such as cave exploring, trespassing, grave robbery and burying a body. We stan.

Then we have this quote, which is talking specifically about Blue truly being part of the group for the first time: “They were loud and triumphant and kings of Henrietta.” Now, while kings are a theme that is quite consistent throughout the books, each of the boys and Mr. Gray being called one at least once in significant scenes of their character arcs, by that time it is not yet that established. There would have been so many other words for Maggie Stiefvater to use. First of all, kings and queen, though that would be a bit unwieldy. She chose not to alienate Blue. But there were other alternatives, something not quite so gendered, such as royals, or gods even. Yet, that specific wording happened, showing she is in no way other than the boys. And maybe in that scene she really wasn’t, feeling more masculine that day perhaps.

Furthermore, “whatever her identity crisis was, it seemed to live at home, not with the boys”, meaning she does feel alienated around all those women, but she does somehow fit in with the boys. Yes, this is also a teen thing of being misunderstood by parents while identifying a lot with peers, but when what she rejects is femininity and she seems to embrace masculinity, it’s a bit sus, don’t you think? And then lastly it’s not only the Gangsey, but also the Vancouver crowd as well, a group of boys held together by somehow being different than the rest of Aglionby (if I remember correctly), that she feels immediately at home with.

Next, there are the 300 Fox Way women. As we just established, Blue feels a sort of identity crisis in this house filled with women. She does not fit in, because she is the only one without any psychic abilities, meaning she is already “other”, but there is a clear focus on showing how she is so, so loved, by her direct family (like Maura) but also the others (Calla, Persephone) have accepted her as one of their own. Now, what if she was also genderqueer? Wouldn’t that give her one more reason to be different, while simultaneously putting emphasis on the fact that trans people can and deserve to be loved by their families?

I saved the strongest evidence for last (well, sort of, there’s still more to come actually). The following quote is the ultimate confirmation Blue is not female. As she, the Gangsey and some of her family group together in the kitchen, she says there were “three boys, four women, and one Blue”! Here she is specifically not assigned either of the aforementioned genders, not grouped together with the 300 Fox Way women in a “five women, Blue being one of them” manner and also not one of the boys in this scene. This might be an age issue (like how for months I wasn’t sure if I dislike both the terms “woman” and “girl” being used for me because of age or gender), but the scene could have easily said “women, boys and one teenage girl”, focusing on groups divided by age and gender like the original intention might seem to be. And yet it didn’t.

Now for some more quotes. After some guy from her school draws a penis on the unicorn on her binder, she says “she preferred her unicorns ungendered”. For the reasons already listed I deduce that, much like the unicorn, Blue prefers herself ungendered.

“She felt one thousand years old. She also felt like maybe she was a condescending brat.” is of course supposed to show how contradicting growing up can feel, perception of oneself flickering between being terribly grown up and still being a little child, who cannot know anything. I would also argue, though, that this duality can be quite reminiscent of her gender identity, feeling like multiple, supposedly contrasting, things at once. As an additional afterthought, the theme of being ageless is sometimes associated with omniscient beings, detached from being human, such as deities. Another thing that would be quite typical for gods, especially when they are so apart from society, is being genderless, or having a gender that fluctuates. Some examples for this would be Dionysus, Loki or the ancient genderfluid entity Asushunamir, stemming from the mythology of one of humanity’s first civilizations, Mesopotamia.

Then, naturally, we have other people’s perception of her. While she probably has been described as a girl in quite a few instances in the book (one of them being Henry, though before he really knew her), to me it sticks out that she describes herself as a “sensible teen”, not a sensible girl, though that might have made even more sense in the context of not going around kissing random boys (but yes, let’s be honest, that’s some antiquated slut-shaming, people can kiss as many consenting people as they like). Further instance is that Gansey says “Blue was a fanciful, but sensible thing. Like a platypus, or one of those sandwiches […]”. Like, he goes out of his way to not describe her as a girl in that scene, instead drawing weird-ass comparisons. Now, while calling his friends magnificent creatures is totally his thing (maybe Gansey rejects gendered terms and embraces silly greetings), this did seem intentional to me. Not to mention the obvious parallel of platypuses being mammals but laying eggs, somehow combining different species. Despite reproducing differently than “normal” mammals (also having different sexual organs), they are still recognized as such, and if that isn’t very trans rights of them, I don’t know what is. (Yes I know being a mammal is not derived from reproductive organs and this is probably all somewhat wrong, but I am relying heavily on metaphors here and also I dropped Biology.)

Now as a last thing I chose the entire theme of “something more”. If I’m not mistaken, “something more” is important for every other character as well (I specifically remember Henry), but it begins with Blue and seems to be most relevant to her either way. As I’m writing this I realize so much of the evidence I have collected can also be read under points of view of growing up, but still fits her gender, showing not only that Blue is pretty reminiscent of how teenagers feel, how things in their lives contradict, but also that we come to realizations about our own gender as we grow up, whether it’s realizing at five, fifteen or fifty years old, self-discovery is an ongoing process. So “something more” is absolutely about her future, but it might also relate to her gender being something more than simply female, more than the binary dictates.

If you read this entire series with the opinion that Blue is not cis (like I do! And like my real life friends hopefully will after reading this J), there are masses of hints pointing towards it and creating evidence. Smash the cis-tem.

By now I’ve made my point about her gender pretty clear, so now it’s time to point out that Blue isn’t straight either. First of all, if she does not confirm to either of the binary genders, she cannot, in any way, be heterosexual, but either way, there’s just no way she’s straight.

Now, if you read this essay (? analysis? meta deep-dive?), you will soon be convinced that her entire friend group is queer somehow, which absolutely accounts for something because I can confirm, from real life experience, that queer people seem to flock towards each other. I will admit that we don’t really see her interact with many female characters outside of family (yes I will admit this is a red flag, but I promise the book passes the Bechdel test), but the vibes she gives off are clearly m-spec.

Additionally, because I am always looking for some representation of my own identity, Blue could potentially be somewhere on the aro-ace spectrum. This isn’t shown super strongly, especially since she does get a canon relationship and it’s very sweet and romantic. Yet, she is not really sex-driven or anything like that and seems to value friendship a LOT, though the entire theme of friendship in general throughout the series will be explained in a later part of this analysis. Also, while I am aware that the books are YA and thus won’t focus on sex too much either way, especially in teen characters, it’s comparably low, considering the premise is (wrongfully) about true love’s killing kiss. We can also compare her storyline and character to Kavinsky, someone her age who seems to be very obscene, and characters like Ronan, who are somewhere between them on that scale. Overall, I would probably call her pan, but once again, there might be some greysexuality or something similar in there.

Lastly, Blue would absolutely wear crop tops of course. Now that I think about it, she probably even does at some point in the books.

[crimeronan]

i really wanna know how long camila's "is my daughter having sex with her... whatever hunter is" can go on. does she start wondering if amity is involved in that too? does she end up with the confusion of "well they definitely all go off to bed together sometimes but amity and hunter really don't seem like they're sleeping together. maybe this is evidence that nothing's going on that i should be worried about? hopefully? i mean not that there'd be anything wrong with that if there was they're all adults and i have no right to try and parent luz after everything but. agh."

god, i want it to go on forever, i love it so much. i think i've talked briefly before about how camila is way more open-minded than one might initially expect: she's already spedrun the queer polyamorous daughter thing with vee and knows nonbinary n trans people like masha. she's read weird alien romances with unconventional relationship structures. she's been to pride multiple times. she could probably kiss a woman if the opportunity arose. ally of the century!

so it's not even that she's questioning IF there's something going on. she just assumes there is. and the question then is whether the kids know how to be safe. which is much less clear cut!

god, can you imagine hunter and amity getting into a genuine fight in front of her. they may not have tried to kill each other recently but they Do both still default to solving interpersonal problems by pummeling each other. camila like I SUDDENLY HAVE OTHER SAFETY CONCERNS THAT I WOULD LIKE ADDRESSED-

camila might straight-up ask about amity, though. since her place in all this seems less clear-cut. very solid potential for luz to panic because she's still convinced that amity is afraid of her and might hate her guts, & so she's like "ohhh no hahaha it's not like that!! no no i'd never ask that of amity" while amity is like "oh yeah. us?? dating?? Ha Ha :("

[thekimspoblog]

So here's the thing, boys, girls, and everyone outside and in-between. I migrated here from YouTube. And on YouTube (actually anywhere outside of Tumblr), if you voice even the most boilerplate feminist talking points, you will be dismissed as "radical". Same way if you are left-wing, you are "radical". So it's a problem when feminists with radical ideas can't organize on a more femme-friendly platform like Tumblr, because the term has been appropriated by transphobes. It's a problem when referring to yourself by the label the rest of the internet has already tarred you with will simultaneously alienate you from your sisters in other circles. Whether or not it was intentional, this kind of vocabulary confusion serves an anti-feminist agenda.

And on top of that, transphobes really just shouldn't get to call themselves radical, when what they are fighting for is by definition a reinforcement of the status quo. Not to mention it completely ignores the longer history of intersectional feminists who have identified their ideology as "radical". In my mind, words should mean what it sounds like they should mean: so a "radfem" is an activist who supports/condones extremist tactics to enforce a feminist agenda, and the dissolution of the gender binary is the only logical conclusion of the feminist agenda, so LGBT rights are automatically included. If you exclude trans women from your movement, not only are you not radical but you can't be a feminist.

Committing arson for the suffragette movement (or the pro-choice movement, or trans rights) is RADICAL FEMINISM. Arguing that t-girls can't be oppressed under patriarchy, as if misogynistic socialization can't happen while people are fully clothed, is just fucking stupid.

In conclusion "TERF" is a horribly confusing, oxymoronic misnomer, and we as the people trying to criticize transphobes should stop entertaining it as a valid descriptor.

[molsno]

yesterday, I did shrooms for the first time. I wasn't really that sure what to expect. I take weed gummies every week, and I have experienced some psychogenic effects from them in the past, so I thought that they would be somewhat comparable, but they're really not. I wanted to write about my experience and organize my thoughts, so I tried to go into as much detail as possible. this post is very long, so I've put it under a read more.

first of all, I took them via capsule. I don't handle strong, bitter tastes very well, and I'd heard that's what they tasted like, so my girlfriend and I ground them up into a fine dust and packed them into pills. I ended up taking 6 pills, for a total of 1.8 grams of shrooms. I ate light beforehand since I knew nausea might be a problem. I just had a simple cheese and salami sandwich and then swallowed the pills.

it took a while for them to take effect, and I was a little anxious to find out how I would react. that said, I was in a pretty good mood yesterday - I had just had a job interview that I thought went really well, so I'd been feeling a little better than usual. normally I'm quite pessimistic, but I knew that going into a trip with a negative mindset would make for a bad experience, so I tried not to stress over it too much.

the effects were mild at first. my pupils began to dilate, and the ceiling looked as though it was tilting and rotating. the popcorn pattern had the illusion that it was sliding to the left as I stared at it, which made me giggly. based on what I'd heard, I thought that I would start having stronger visual distortions, and maybe even some hallucinations. that wasn't the case. I'd taken a milder strain of shrooms - golden teacher. and I was about to learn just how fitting that name was.

slowly, I started tearing up. I wasn't sure why it was happening at first; I thought it was just because I'd had my eyes open for a long time. but soon enough, the floodgates burst. the world fully opened up to me, and before I knew it, I couldn't stop crying tears of pure, unrestrained joy.

it's difficult to describe what it felt like, so let me give you some context. for the past 6 months, I've been unemployed since being laid off from my job, and I've been struggling to hold it together emotionally as things continue to fall apart around me. recently, every day has made me question whether or not life was even worth living. I've felt powerless to help myself as the horrors of capitalism continue to push me down and break my spirit. I've felt alienated from my friends, especially as many of them have left me and the friends I hold dear. and due to my aforementioned powerlessness, I felt as if it was impossible for me to truly help the people I care about as much as I want to, even when they're going through horrible crises, especially because of my own fears holding me back.

in an instant, all of that changed. I can honestly say I've never felt happier in my life than I did yesterday. I approached the window, which extends from floor to ceiling, and put my hands against it as I looked out. the sky was overcast, but the world had never seemed so bright. as I listened to the album "nurture" by porter robinson, I looked down at the city, watching all of the people walking around, and it dawned on me that like all of them, I'm just another person in this wide world.

it can be difficult for me to understand that, because being a marginalized trans woman living under a capitalist regime makes me feel so insignificant. but in reality, I'm connected to every single organism who's ever lived on this planet, and in that moment, I felt like I really understood what it means to be human.

in our industrialized society, it can be all too easy to downplay the significance of nature, to see it as less important than us, or in the worst cases, to see it as an obstacle to our survival. but that's simply not true! humans aren't separate from nature; we're just another part of it. even in a concrete jungle made by human and mechanical hands, nature surrounds us, we just have to know where to look.

sure, nature can be dangerous. there are plants, animals, and fungi that can easily kill us if we don't know what we're doing, if we don't respect their needs and desires. but humans survived for all of these millions of years by helping each other, by teaching each other, and by loving each other. even in the harshest conditions, we're incredibly resilient due to our eagerness to care for one another.

with tears still streaming down my face, I couldn't hold myself back from telling the people I care about how happy I was to know them and how much I love them, and how happy I was to be alive. for the first time in a long, long time, I felt genuine hope. I truly felt that no matter what happens, everything will turn out alright.

incidentally, I really wanted to go for a walk outside, but my girlfriend advised me not to, both because she was worried about my safety, and because there were too many people out there, and I was very obviously tripping. I think she made the right call this time, as I have no idea how a stranger would have reacted when I inevitably approached them with tears streaming down my face and told them how beautiful the world is. still, I believe that going for a walk through the park on shrooms some time would be really enjoyable. perhaps one day I can, when I have more experience and I'm in a less populated area.

in any case, I genuinely believe that these mushrooms were communicating with me. sure, we bought these from a company, meaning they were probably grown in a lab or some other artificial environment, but mushrooms just like these exist all over the world. they wanted to teach me to appreciate the natural environments they originated from. if I truly took their lesson to heart, if I researched and studied hard enough, if I learned how to reliably and consistently identify the organisms that exist in the world around me, it would be possible for me to go to a forest and safely identify mushrooms like these growing in the wild, where I could just pick them and eat them freely.

is it naive for me to believe that they intended to teach me that? maybe, but I don't think so. I would say I'm overall a skeptical person, but after this experience, I don't think it's fair for me to discount their intelligence. we may be different, but we're ultimately both organisms that exist on this earth together, and we all share a common ancestor. I'm no mycologist, but there are fungi out there that know how to take control of an ant's body and use it to spread their spores. I think it's fair to believe that they're intelligent enough to communicate with humans in their own way. that's why I think that golden teacher is the perfect name for them.

soon enough, the peak of my trip began to fade, and I stopped crying. I eventually got a headache, but I still felt wonderful. I ate some oreos and drank a glass of milk, then laid down for a while and processed my thoughts in silence.

after some time, I started to feel tired, and even a bit nauseous. I wanted to hold it in, but after an hour or so, it only grew stronger, so I rushed to the restroom and threw up. I hadn't been prepared for the nausea - I heard that it would usually only take effect about an hour into the trip, but mine didn't hit me until several hours after it had ended. although my stomach felt better, my head still hurt. despite being exhausted, I found myself unable to sleep. I stayed awake for hours. 2 am came to pass, then 3 am, then 4 am. at some point, I think I did fall asleep, as I remember having some dreams, but it was a very light sleep, and wasn't continuous at all. as I write this, I'm still very tired. I think I'm going to take melatonin tonight to help me sleep.

during my trip, I wanted to feel the euphoria I'd been feeling forever. but as it faded, I realized I don't need to. and in fact, I actually didn't want to; feeling so much joy was actually very overwhelming! it's difficult for me to convey just how strong the emotions I felt were, and having so many revelations in such a brief period of time was overly taxing on my brain. not to mention, throwing up and being unable to sleep was pretty unpleasant.

these mushrooms were never going to solve my problems or cure the emptiness I've felt inside, and it would be disrespectful toward them to ask them to do that. rather, they taught me how to obtain happiness for myself. they taught me to find value in the world around me, to pay attention to the nature that surrounds me in my day to day life, to be proactive and vulnerable with the people I care about, and to remember my place in the world. if I want to feel this joy, I have to put these lessons into practice, and work to make the world a better place for everyone. and I'm going to try my best do just that.

while I'd love to do this again (ideally with a bit more preparation), it's not something I can take for granted. I'm really glad I got to have this experience. I feel like it changed me for the better, and I want to do for the world what these mushrooms did for me. ❤️

[a-fantastic-time]

Guide to a Fantastic Time!

Hello everyone! Thank you for coming, I hope we have a grand old time. First things first, this is a 18+ Rp area, so I hope you please respect that we should do just fine. Rps do not need to go down that route, I am 100% down for SFW rps, but I mainly prefer NSFW. Just pointing that out now. Also I will absolutely will not do anything with anyone under age, characters or people.

Muses! Unfortunately I do not have a set listing for muses. I actually love to play as many characters as I can from different fandoms, or OCs that I have sorta made up and never really put them to pen and paper. So feel free to ask me about them, and I will gladly talk your ear off. Note that I do play any gender, be it Male/Female/Herms.

Fandoms! I will do my best to get as many of my favorite Fandoms/interest listed down, I will be editing this when I can, so if you ever have an interest, or show, or game that you like and you do not see it on my list. Please feel free to ask me about it, and maybe I can add it to the list.

List of Interests-

She-Ra The Dragon Prince Glitch Tech Transformers (series, not movies) TMNT(series, not movies) Steven Universe Big Hero 6 RWBY Marvel(Comics/Shows) DC(Comics/Shows) Halo Pokémon Digimon Mortal kombat Mass Effect Dragon age Final Fantasy (Any game/series) Boku no hero UnderTale DeltaRune Sonic(Series) Ben 10 Diablo League of Legends Wakfu Miraculous Ladybug Bleach D&D Yu-Gi-Oh Gargoyles Aliens(Franchise, and in general) Kaiju(Monsters in general, not just the franchises) Gundam (any series) Hazbin Hotel Helluva Boss Murder Drones Starwars Critical Role Destiny Warframe Panty & Stocking Resident Evil(all series)

RULES: More may be added at a later time. But for now please read and follow.

I absolutely do not "one line", I have told many people this and sometimes I do make exceptions depending on the situation like if you are tired and its late, or you are not feeling up to rp. If you continue to one-line after I give you a warning, After that, I will simply not reply.

I do not in any shape or form condone rape. I am ok with rough sex or maybe being dominate with my partner, but I will not participate in rape of any kind sorry.

I will do my best to message you first as soon as possible. If you do not get a message from me right away, its most likely because I thought I did or I forgot. So please let me know if I have yet to talk to you yet. I do not treat anyone as a number.

If you have a problem with the way I RP, then please let me know. I have no problems changing things to make the rp more pleasant for both parties. Whether it be either grammar, or possibly with how you prefer actions or talking to be placed in either ** or "". Please just let me know, and I will see how I can change it to make it more pleasing to you.

I am completely fine with rough to kinky sex, but I hate abusive sex. Examples: forcing me to suck, ride, fuck you when I do not want too. cussing me out while we fuck for the sake of demeaning someone during it to make yourself seem superior or saying you can do that just because your Dom/alpha is bullshit. If you do this I will tell you to quit it, but if you whine about not being allowed to be yourself you will be blocked enough said.

I enjoy futas/shemales/dickgirls as much as everyone else. But if you plan to stick anything in me, you will get the same treatment in return. Its how I see its fair. I do not care of your "DOM" or "Your only comfortable with giving". With that said, I do have a preferences towards woman, and futas.

Sorry guys, not into you! Especially not into fembois, sissies, or traps. With that stated, didn't think I would have to emphasis this, but I am not into Men. I will play them, but will not ship with them. So to make it clear. I do not do M/M, nor Futa/Male. Trans is questionable, and needs to be discussed with me.

AGAIN!!! I PLAY MALE MUSES, I DO NOT RP WITH THEM!! if you see on my page M/F, it means I am playing male. It does not mean you get to be reply with a male muse and expect me to play what ever muse you think I am playing.

[blueikeproductions]

Sometimes it seems to me that the problem with female characters in the transformers franchise is that in the end, few people need them? Sometimes, here and there on social media, you can see the dissatisfaction of individual fans who do not like the current or past state of things with regard to female characters, but there is very little response from the audience. Fans have little support for existing female characters or new ones. Fans don't actively rebel when Hasbro once again makes a bad toy of a female character. And a personal observation in a familiar to me, but not the smallest part of the fandom - many female fans are more interested in male characters anyway. And of course there is a part of the fans who want to change the gender of previously existing male characters. And again, it seems to me that there is more love for the characters here, rather than a desire to add a female character.

What should we do about it? Probably nothing, the audience of this franchise is quite established for any changes, so we can only be happy when one of the authors really tries to make a high-quality female character, namely, to make a character and personality first of all.

P.S. A separate camp of fans are those who argue about how to explain the presence of females among transformers and whether it is necessary in principle. Why didn't anyone figure out that you can just explain it through the main origin? There was a Primus - he created Cybertronians in the image and likeness of the alien races he liked, which would explain all the strange appearance in general. If we take the origin of the Quintessons, then it's even easier, they created a product that was convenient for them / customers wanted / in the image of some race that they had previously enslaved.

Yeah it’s a weird circle jerk. Theres nothing wrong with having gals like Elita, Carly, Botanica, Glowstrike, and Hashtag, but writers and fans have a bad habit of needing female bots explained leading to Shockwave’s back handed comment about thinking female Autobots were extinct and IDW’s own confusing over corrections “We never had gender until Jhiaxus rebuilt Arcee for sick kicks, no wait wait, lady bots were a thing, they’re just maybe extinct on Cybertron for some reason, no no wait we still had lady bots all along, they’re just trans women on Cybertron while biological (technological?) women exist on colony planets!” Good grief pick a lane and stick with it.

Not helped is Hasbro’s own stance now that female robots exist only because of Solus Prime, which itself is a little insulting from a “diversity” standpoint because she’s the only lady among the Primes. One could make the argument Amalgamus is gender fluid because of his (their?) ability to Transform into anything, so in a roundabout way there’s two women among the Primes if one wanted to look at it that way, with Adaptus in a similar position (as the Guiding Hand in IDW are all men otherwise).

It’s the same problem I have with modern “diversity” initiatives because all they keep doing is drawing attention to people who are female, ethnic races, or LGBT, but never organically making them actual characters people can relate to and enjoy.

Sari might’ve had Indian roots, but they never drew attention to it instead focusing on making a fun little girl character who was best buds with the Autobots. Sort of the Gosalyn to their Darkwing. They did however draw attention to her (still unresolved) Cybertronian heritage but only because it was important to her backstory and character development. I guarantee if Sari were made today, she’d be a surface level checkbox brat akin to Ironheart who waxes about her people’s hardships and her own perceived problems despite not having any because of her father’s successful company. She forces herself on the Autobots to prove a point that didn’t need to be made, creating an old Stockholm Syndrome where the Autobots love her despite not offering any reason for them to. (It’s worth noting Ironheart’s comics are at least self aware she’s kind of a dipstick because her classmates and her black teacher she goaded into treating her “poorly” were visibly confused at her behavior and hesitantly indulged her whims.)

Cyberverse and EarthSpark are also horrible about this because they feel the need to gender bend most characters like Skywarp & Frenzy, rather than just use Slipstream (which CV did to be fair), create a brand NEW female jet, or in Frenzy’s case, just use Flip Sides.

Interestingly I’ve heard that Hasbro has limits on this, as the CV and ES teams wanted to make Thundercracker into a woman, but Hasbro said no, he’s a legacy player and has to remain a boy. (Or something to that extent.) Why Skywarp gets hit with the gender stick, I don’t know, but Skybound keeps the character male anyway, despite also being a legacy character. I imagine there’s more leeway with the Rainmakers because they were one off generics, and only recently-ish got names and expanded relevancy so it didn’t really matter if they were men or women. (That said, they appear to be still all male in IDW, with only Cyberverse and Earthspark making Nova Storm into a lady bot. Acid Storm was clearly meant to be male in CV, but an animation error and Catt speaking up led to the character being gender fluid unintentionally… who then died horribly. Organic representation, my actuator…) It’s nevertheless created an odd expectation perhaps, as the Seeker trio fluctuates in cartoons now, leading to the idea it’s now two ladies & a dude, with Nova Storm a permanent member in this idea. I don’t mind this in principle since Screamer, Cracker & Warpster were never really a cohesive trio anyway. Starscream was the star, the other two were just there and forgotten in most media. That Starscream/Slipstream, Thundercracker/Skywarp, & Nova Storm came about in modern stories as a group because of modern “diversity” soap boxing and muddled storytelling doesn’t help though.

There’s no real need to explain lady bots, they’re just there and if handled correctly you get awesome ones like BlackArachnia or memorable ones like Strika. Handle them poorly and you get Eren Jaeger Windblade, RiD Ultra Magnus wannabe Pyra Magna, and Primus forbid IDW Slide.

Primus and/or the Quintessons including ladies just because is acceptable because there’s no need to dwell on it, anymore than they decided to make LGBT bots. Live and let live, don’t dwell on it is my feeling. Just have said Transformers be cool and memorable and they happen to be this or that, I don’t know why that’s such a lost art anymore.

[spaceysoupy]

Yeah uh please don’t follow or interact with us if you are or support trace/trans-race. ESPECIALLY if you are bodily white and claiming the experiences, cultures, or resources of BIPOC. No amount of good faith or suffering doesn’t make that not harmful, sorry. We have introjects too who aren’t Indigenous or have other identities but we do not publicly/verbally claim what the body is not and what we have not personally experienced. It is wrong for trace people to speak on experiences they have not had. Even if some trace people are BIPOC, we aren’t monoliths and we do not have the same experiences and it’s still wrong to speak as if you are part of a group when you aren’t that group.

This can and already is doing significant damage and alienating BIPOC from the plural community which already has a major racism problem that has gone unaddressed for decades. White trace people are defending their own appropriation by pointing out that poctpoc trace people exist but this is still wrong.

It is particularly cruel for white transrace people to publicly identify as Indigenous and try to access specific closed cultures because practicing our own cultures was illegal and punishable until 1978. Our children have been stolen and removed from their cultures and we are still fighting to get back what was taken from us. Our languages are endangered and our histories are taught by white professors who don’t prioritize Indigenous students’ safety and make our trauma into “learning opportunities.” We have to fight everyday just to survive and none of this is ever acknowledged by white people.

Whether you are genuine and do not wish to hurt people or not, trace has the same effects as pretendians and undermines our sovereignty and safety.

So yes, I will absolutely be hostile if non-Indigenous people try to claim Indigenous identity, experiences, and culture while simultaneously ignoring the harm they are doing to us. And I will be very very suspicious of your intentions when you don’t even acknowledge the history of the term in the first place or the potential harm.

[sophieinwonderland]

Honestly I'm wondering how much of the transID discourse around "want to be" vs "is" is just... well, in transgender terms, how someone IS their gender but WANTS* to transition to better match that. Like for my transx identities, I want to have my bodymind match the identities that I am more closely, and "want to be" is the best I can do in this imprecise language. As in, wanting to be it on a physical or neuropsychological level, not just on the level of internal identity. It's the same for my transgender identity - I am pangenderfluid (as well as altersex), amd want to transition to more closely resemble my physical ideal (at least, in a non-shapeshifting form lol).

(After all, the dysphoria for me comes from NOT being, on some level OTHER than innate identity, the identity that I am. I'm not dysphoric because I am, say, transmexican and am mexican on every level including physical and cultural, or because I am trans-MADD and have and experience all symptoms of MADD. Those identities mean there are things I feel I SHOULD experience, but DON'T.)

*Many trans people NEED to transition, but I have absolutely met trans people who WANT to, whether that's alongside needing or simply nondysphoric trans people wanting to who are like "I'm happy now but could be happier". Although, I've also even met a trans person who feels they DID choose their gender, and I think saying that the existence of people like that alienates the transgender community is just catering to assimilationists. It doesn't matter if it's a choice or not because bodily autonomy should not be denied regardless.

Either way though, I think the divide could be solved by just... coining labels with both meanings. Like modern discourse is so against labels having multiple meanings, but that's just??? how words work??? Any identity can be both "is" and "wants to be" and "is" and "wants to be" can even mean different things to different people!

This is an interesting point I hadn't considered.

I just think the "wants to be" terms creates a false perception. There's a disconnected where, when people hear that someone "wants" to be something else, they might interpret that the same way they might if I said "I want to be a billionaire" or "I want to fly."

I don't actually identify as being rich or being able to fly. They're just things I think would be cool, and I personally don't think that most transID people are "wanting" to be something else in the same way I want to be rich or have superpowers.

But it's not me that needs convincing. Here's an example of a anti-trace post that was recently made in the transID tags...

This is who you need to convince. People who see those who are born POC identifying as white, and automatically jumps to assuming they must be doing so because they want the privileges associated with whiteness.

And the problem is that it's not an unreasonable perception if what you're hearing from the transID community is usually "we want to be X."

I think the transID community needs to do a better job communicating that these are internal experiences first, and that when they say they "want" to be something else, what they're usually saying is, as you say, that they want their minds and bodies to match with their internal experiences and self-perceptions.

Understanding has to be built on a foundation of solid communication.

[demisexual-eddie-diaz]

Hello, it's the anon from the last " is this transphobic?" ask

if i am afraid of misgendering someone, and i am not completely close to them, should I avoid them (while still maintaining cordiality?)

context:

the person in question used to be a friend of mine, before we mutually drifted apart but remained friendly

After this, they came out as a trans ftm, but eventually found themselves to be non-binary

it's been over five years, and I haven' t seen them much since we have very different classes.

They are SUPER nice but i still catch myself slipping with pronouns sometimes. I can remember their name perfectly though (no deadnaming, but then again I haven't interacted with them much since we drifted).

The fact that it's been so long since they've come out kind of negates the excuse of "not being used to it"

On the other hand, the language we speak at home does not have gender neutral pronouns (i mean they might have come up with some, but my parents sure don' t know about them/wouldn't use them) so my friend is still referred to with feminine pronoun, on the occasion that they are mentioned.

They were only male-identifying for a short period, but i think i had an easier time remembering the male pronouns. so maybe its because im not used to gender neutral pronouns, since all the books I've read only use he/she for the third person singular?

i dont think it would be obvious if i DID avoid them since they have other friends and we dont interact much in the first place

i dont want to alienate or "other" them by making it seem like im walking around eggshells around them--- even if i often am.

also, are they even still nonbinary???? they dont correct me when i slip up, so maybe the pronouns they use have changed??? but its probably because they're just a kind person

Hi, friend:)

To start with, I think the easiest thing pronoun wise would be to just use their name as much as possible.

Example:

A - “Who’s that?”

B - “Matthew. We’re friends.”

A - “How long have you known Matthew?”

B - “I’ve known Matthew for three years.”

As for ‘slipping up’ on their pronouns and not knowing whether or not they still identify as non binary, the easiest thing is to just ask.

Truly, you don’t have to worry about upsetting trans people by asking their pronouns. As long as you’re being respectful and don’t ask too personal questions. The classic ‘what’s in your pants’ question would be an example of going too far.

I know that as long as I’m with a safe group of people, not around my unsupportive family, then I’m perfectly okay with telling people my name and pronouns.

Example:

(Me) - Hello, I’m Matthew. My pronouns are he/him.

(My friend) - Hi, my name is Julia. My pronouns are she/her.

It’s really is that easy and as long as you use the name they’ve asked you to use, and you try to say their name and not pronouns as much as possible, it would probably go a lot smoother.

As for the language part, I’m not sure what language you do speak, but I know that this was a problem for one of my friends. They’re Mexican and only speak Spanish at home. There are a few queer organizations working on discovering new ways to say singular they/them in other languages. As for the book part, I’d recommend going to a library or bookstore and just reading a book centering a gender non conforming character. The book will use the singular they for that character so it would be good practice. Also, you used the correct pronouns when typing this so maybe just writing about your friend or even making stories about characters with they/them pronouns can help.

I hope that this was helpful, I’m a binary trans person so I gave the best input I could. If it makes you feel any better, I will say that even as a trans person I mess up on some of my friends pronouns. If I knew them before then I do sometimes mess up. I will say that the name is the easier part, pronouns can be more difficult.

Also, if you have any other questions you could ask here or private message me. Either are fine.

- Matthew(he/him)