#Anyways!!! trans rights??!? AG transed my gender??!

[xxxvomitboyxxx]

FOUND THE PAGES (image ID under the keep reading)

I remember when my mom had gotten me the old American Girl body image book, The Care and Keeping of You, it had made me soo uncomfortable and made feel what I now know as dysphoria. It would have been so amazing for that book to talk to me about gender identity and expression ;-;

I really hope I did the image ID correctly, please someone correct me if I did anything funky! I think everyone should have access to the text on these pages because they're fucking amazing.

[Image ID: 3 pages talking about gender from the new American girl body image book. The first page is titled “Gender Joy”. The upper half of the page has text, and then an image on each side. The first image is of a heavy set person with a green tshirt and jeans and short hair, above them is an image of a skinny woman with long blonde hair and a pink flowing dress. The second image is of a thin person with long hair and a yellow tshirt, above them is an image of a shirtless man showing off his many muscles. The text between reads: “messages about how bodies "should" look are different depending on a person's gender. Girls tend to face more pressure to have thin bodies and long hair and to wear clothes like skirts, dresses, and blouses. Boys tend to feel more pressure to have a muscular body, keep their hair short, and wear pants and shorts. Luckily, it's not your job to look the way people expect - it's your job to be you. The way you show your gender to the world through clothes and behaviors is your gender expression. Your gender expression can be feminine, masculine, or somewhere in between - and it might change! Maybe you'll experiment with bright dresses and long, feminine hairstyles. Or you might try baggy shorts, plaid shirts, and a buzzed haircut. Your gender expression should make you feel at home in your body." There is an image below this text of 3 children, one with short buzzed hair and a dress, one with long hair wearing a Pendleton and jeans, one with shaved sides and pink dye in their hair wearing a teal tshirt and a skirt. They are all different skin tones and weights.

The second page has a block of text at the top, then a large image in the second half of the page of a young Black person with short hair wearing one dangly earring, a tan jacket, and 3 buttons, one button with she/her pronouns, the other button with a trans flag. There is a large trans flag in the background. The text at the top read: "While gender expression is what you show on the outside, gender identity is how you feel on the inside - a girl, a boy, or someone who doesn't quite fit into either category. When a baby is born, a doctor looks at the baby's body parts to assign its sex - whether the baby is female or male. Most kids grow up feeling comfortable in the sex the doctor assigned. This kind of person is cisgender. (Say it sis-jen-dur.) But for some, that assigned sex doesn't match who they know they are inside. A kid who was assigned as male might know herself to be a girl inside, for example. Someone whose gender is different than the sex they were assigned at birth is transgender. Some people don't feel like a girl or a boy inside - which is totally OK! People in this group are usually called nonbinary and might use a pronoun like they instead of he or she."

The third page is text heavy, with a smaller image to the side of the same kid from page 2 in a doctor's office with a doctor. The text reads: "Being transgender is not an illness or something to be ashamed of. If you're questioning your gender identity - or if you already know for sure that you're trans or nonbinary - talk with an adult you trust, like a parent or school counselor. That person can connect you with a specially trained doctor, who can help you and your family decide what's best for your body. At first, you and the doctor might talk about wearing the clothes and using the pronouns (like he, she, or they) that make you feel most like the true you. If you haven't gone through puberty yet, the doctor might offer medicine to delay your body's changes, giving you more time to think about your gender identity. And if you've already gone through puberty, a doctor can still help. Studies show that transgender and nonbinary kids who get help from doctors have much better mental health than those who don't. If you don't have an adult you trust, there are organizations across the country that can help you. Turn to the Resources on page 95 for more information.

On the second half of this third page is a large pink rectangle with text. On the top corner of this box is a large heart with the trans flag as the background, with the quote: "Being transgender isn't a medical transition. It's a process of learning to love yourself for who you are. - Jazz Jennings." The text in the pink box reads: "If you're transgender or nonbinary, loving your body might feel a bit different than it does for a cisgender person. Parts of your body might make you feel uncomfortable, and you might want to change the way you look. That's totally OK! You can appreciate your body for everything it allows you to experience and still want to change certain things about it. When you're feeling out of place in your body, do things that make your body feel more like home, like dressing in your favorite clothes and doing something you love. Celebrate the good feelings you have in your body right now. Remember, you deserve love and respect, no matter what your body looks like or how it changes." /end image ID]

Well. I did not have "conservatives cancel the American Girl doll company" on my 2022 bingo card but somehow here we are.

[ffc1cb]

i’ve always found it peculiar how during meeting the chargers cutscene the game just assumes your character automatically understands what krem is talking about when he mentions binding (though, granted, it’s all very unsubtle). like, this is a roleplaying game. what if i want to play a character who just doesn’t get it

[dead-lesbians]

happy pride month to the autistic lgbt+ people who watch tomska. and i guess everyone else too.

[gor3sigil]

Tailor your skin

[TW for mention of ED, rape, bullying, transphobia, sexual assault, transandrophobia]

[This text is one of the selection I'll put in my next issue of my zine, "From behind Tinted Windows and Cracked Screens", focused on transandrophobia. I was too happy with it not to share it. It's like the one I shared a while ago, but better, to me.]

My birth was a disaster. A disaster of closed call death, disease in undevelopped lungs, veins and poisoned flesh.

Growing up to be overprotected and neglected simultaneously. A clumsy and awkward kid trying to fit in, yet struggling to see the appeal of being like everyone else. My face hidden behind my long hair and my body behind baggy black clothes covering a starvation that no one was going to see anyways, I was still the curvy “looks-older-for-her-age” teenager. And then, I was trans.

What a surprise it was. Suddenly the mean girls who were making fun of my wasted attempts at femininity were claiming I was a woman too beautiful to be anyTHING else. My parents who complained about me being a tomboy all my life were scared to death of being right, after all these fights !

For my peers, the proud bisexual girl I had been had been eaten alive by my desire to escape my True Nature. Cis straight women who never were my friends would have switched up and given me head for me to stay the Holy Female their flawed feminism was forcing me to be, and to stay, for sisterhood, for the Cause.

I was turn in turn a victim or a traitor. My femininity raped out of me but not my love for men. Men scared me from being a woman but not from becoming one of Them. I was bullied from being an outcast but not out of being trans. I was a Lamb enough but not so weak I couldn’t be the Big Bad Wolf.

I started drinking almost at the same time I realized I was trans and I lost more friends over a simple switch of pronouns than I ever did after a drunken meltdown.

The sisters who swore to protect me told me now to catch the blows for everything I had never been nor done. And the final straw was seeking euphoria using a gender swap app and seeing my father staring right back at me.

What do you think I fled, then ? Do you think I doubled down ? Do you think I went head first into the pool of a manhood made with my bare hands and spite ? Or did I melt myself into a mold I didn’t fit it, so sure I was to never find safety or softness or tenderness or bonding ever again ? Did I ran away in the moods like a wounded animal, did I rather got sick from dehydration than having to risk seeing my reflection in the water I drank ?

I could go on for eternity, there are so little words to describe the isolation, the alienation you feel when being on your own makes you unsafe and seeking your kin makes you a predator. I went from a healer to the one taking the blame for men who broke me just as much, whom I also swore I’d never become, not in a million years. But in the confusion of trauma, it’s easier to bite someone who won’t bite back, isn’t it ?

I could tell you it gets better. I will tell you, in fact, that it does. It does get better in yourself, when you find your inner peace, your inner strength. When the mirror becomes a friend that shows you excitedly all the subtle changes that comes with shedding out of your shell, that there is a community waiting for you out there. That you deserve every bit of love and support, that you are not a traitor, that your manhood is holy, oh so holy, your transness is too, in short, YOU are. My beloved, as much as I hear your raw suffering, the weight of the fear of becoming the ones who hurt you, it won’t happen. I promise you. You are a treasure, you make this world a better place, and you deserve no shame, no pointed fingers, no mean laughter. If you can’t trust yourself, trust the process.

I assure you that when the sun will rise, one day, and you open your eyes to see the big blue sky, you’ll feel it. The comfort of belonging. The warmth of your skin, finally fitting right.

[gwydionmisha]

Personal: Transness and Physio

Wednesday I was at physio as is generally the case on Wednesdays this physio cycle. (Current goals: Arm unsupported above my shoulder prolonged to the front at all to the side, Undoing damage from the wrong sling the first two weeks of healing, and strength building). My main pre-op physio had a free moment and stopped over to check on my between patients.

Him: How are you doing?

Me, cheekily: ready for this to be over.

Physios *laugh*

He turned to ask my physio for more detailed info. Which involved pronouns. Look, my pronouns are on file. My prefered name is unfailingly used by staff in this facility and all the healthcare settings I routinely used for… most of a decade or something like that. I used to have to pioneer a lot of health care providers, including Poverty clinic (second trans patient getting trans related health care there, back when there was one ignorant and low key transphobic provider, but it was far better than the extremely transphobic endocrinologist who wasn't taking new patients anyway so everyone had to trek down to seattle for everything), and just about every specialist I saw for years and years, often with people for whom English was a second language who were flat out confused my my medical charts.

For the record, once word spread (and trans provider word spread FAST on the trans grapevine) and Poverty clinic got deluged by desperate poor people who flat out couldn't afford 150-300 per health apointment and a whole day of travel, a second super cool doctor self educated and started taking patients. Within a year or two the whole staff had training. A couple years later they did a big survey, flat out changed the name of the clinic so as not to scare trans people, added prefered name/pronouns/gender to all forms and are a makor provider for two counties, providing an ever expanding range of care. Poverty clinic's main population had been HIV, kids who's parents couldn't afford health insurance, and unhoused. They are so much more now, and my whole reason is the better for it, because a whole lot of other practices got better and new services opened up all over the western part of my state to deal with demand that having two cities with trans heallthcare drew to the reagon. (A whole lot of other places have safe clinmics now and if you are in a blue county, you are likely okay to be fairly open. People can live in cheaper towns and cities and still have care a reasonable drive or bus away. It absolutely wasn't the case fifteen years ago. For some things the choices were seattle, san franscisco, and that one city in colorado. For hormones and trans friendly psychiatry it was only slightly better.) I am incredably proud of all the medical practices I pioneered and made safe for other people.

Thing is though, it's still not perfect. I'm pretty relaxed about pronouns, but where people are super careful about names, some people are waaaay better at pronouns than others. I bowl down the middle on purpose, in non-medical customer service settings, people take their best guess and I don't make a fuss unless someone else does or is obnoxious or I get duling customer service people who are in conflict and each sure they are right (Which is hilarious, but I consider it polite to step in at that point). I will back up a child if their parent corrects them to the wrong thing. I will happily give pronouns when a polite person asks.

In medical settings outside of places trying really hard to get it right like Poverty clinic or weirdly the Christian Hospital, people mess up pronouns about a third of the time. I think the masks make it more confusing for them and I am always in a mask in a medical setting unless I need to take it off for a medical thing.

The room in the physio clinic where I go, it is pretty much middle aged straight guy therapists (There's a woman sometimes and a younger guy I see doing legs now and then, but mostly it is middle aged straight guys who look like gym teachers. Guys like my late Uncle when I was growing up who was also a physio). Trans stuff doesn't come up. I spend the entire session working one on one with these guys, so while names get used now and then the pronouns are all 1st and 2nd person, you follow? There is enough conversation that I'm pretty sure none of the three guys who've worked on my arm are MAGAS. I peg them as likely democrats, but where on that spectrum? No fucking clue. They are all good guys and good physios. I do not know their stance on right to pee, you follow?

So the most classically straight ex-college athlete guy turns to the very gentle, very pacific northwesty type married with children postsurgical guy (I have no idea how to describe this type of northwest guy to someone who's never been here, but if you have it's really obvious. Loves being out in nature and likely has nature based hobbies. Cares about feminism and the environment in a genuine way. Relaxed about their masculinity and masculinity in general, so are usually some degree of queer friendly. Other stuff. It's hard to explain, but trust me. If you live here, you will meet a lot of this kind of guy. The two people I had my longest relationships with were this kind of PNW guy. I dated a bunch more. ), who is currently super slowly and gently stretching my arm, and asks him more technical stuff about my progress because he was worried I hadn't put on quite enough muscle before surgery.

This involved pronouns. Get this: THEY WERE THE CORRECT PRONOUNS. Both guys used correct pronouns. They also included me in the conversation. Bravo, Physio Dudes! Seriously, I had no idea how that was going to go when the pre-op guy opened his moth and it was A+.

[tirfpikachu]

i fully didn't realise until now that tirf isn't just you jokingly misspelling terfs omg lol. Is the discord just for reidentified/trans folks? Don't wanna intrude if so :)

LMAO yeah it apparently used to be more popular ages ago and is now getting a bit of a resurgence which i love! :]

also the discord server is for anyone who is directly affected by misogyny - passing transfems included, so long as they're respectful & supportive of female/afab rights and exclusive same-sex attracted rights - who is a feminist and orbits radblr! we have really complex conversations about all kinds of feminist topics, gender, male/female socialization, transness vs gnc expression, and we call out bullshit from both the mainstream trans activist side AND bullshit we see from radfems who lack nuance or are just showing mean girl type behavior with other female ppl.

we also have a no-misgendering rule, though if the person doubts the person's trans identity in a genuine manner they can 100% specify that. we aren't 100% against transition (some of us are happily transitioned or plan to) but we view it very critically and hate the way it's currently handled. we have several transmasc ppl, two transfems (iirc?) who are super chill, many detrans/post-trans women and just radfems of all kinds. we only let a few folks in at a time so everyone can be properly welcomed and things don't get too crazy, bc we're a very tightknit lil community of tirfs/nuancefems! we also started doing movie discord streams and we're planning to do lots of spooky ones!! & the server is where you can apply to make content on @pokegyns (it can be anonymous) and/or be a part of our new pokegyns collaborative youtube channel. we also at times screenshot things members say and post them, with consent ofc. anyways, we have tons of fun and everyone is super nice <3 i love my server gyns!

DM me for a link if anyone is interested!!

[jabeur]

Hi Nico! Sorry if this question is too personal, you don't have to answer it in case it is, but have you known you're trans for a long time? (I think I might be too but I'm scared and uncertain, it seems people always know since they're very young and I'm not anymore) thank you ❤️

hi dear! not too personal, no worries, i'm open to discussing trans things as long as the other person comes from a place of respect and this is definitely the case

tbh the exact timeline is a little hazy in my mind bc sadly all my life is like that in my memories :/ but i started questioning my gender when i was around 18? and i guess i knew for sure when i was 19? it was hard at first bc uh almost no one who i tried to tell and then get to call me with different pronouns understood so it wasn't easy to be sure of my identity, honestly. i think the way to be in fact sure is to explore your gender as much as you can and one thing that really helps is having people around you, even internet friends bc i know it can be very very hard coming out irl, refer to you in different ways, different pronouns or names or using different words that you feel like trying to see what feels good. yeah it wasn't easy for me, but it has to be factored in that i have a personality disorder so knowing myself, having a strong sense of self, is hard, so that made an already not necessarily easy process even harder.

anyway, to address your worry: it's not really true that people always know since they're very young. i know or have met several trans people who figured it out in their late 20s/early 30s. i know of people who have realized at 40, 50 or older. it's never too late and there is no right moment to have it figured out. there is no expiration date for the moment you could possibly go "oh, yeah, i'm trans". you can be questioning for as long as you need. for as long as it takes to know. and you can realise that you are not trans, in the end. there is really no rule, you know? as with every minority or group of people, we aren't a monolith and so it would simply not be correct to say "every trans person knows by the time they hit puberty" or "every trans person knows when they're in their 30s" or anything else. we're all different. i know trans people who have always known, in one way or another. since they were kids. and that's definitely a valid and common enough trans experience. i also know a lot of trans people who have figured it out later in life. as i said, i knew when i was around 19, which is quite young but i would not say i had any idea prior to being 18, which some might see as realising "late". i started coming out in my 20s, i started medically transitioning when i was 23, i've still got steps in my transition i haven't gotten to but want to and i'm 28. the timeline's different for everyone.

it's not too late, is what i'm saying, no matter your age. you could be 80 and it would still 100% be worth it to know yourself more deeply and truthfully. i really believe that. i know it's scary, and can be confusing, i really do know. it was for me too. i thought there was no way i could be trans and be happy, if i'm being perfectly honest, but now my transness is just another part of me, an important one to me, one that can give me pains (but.. it's 99% of the time bc of cis people), but just one facet of who i am. and it can take time to get to a point when you're sure of who you are and as happy with it as you can be, but i want you to know it's okay. it's okay if it takes time, there is no rush. listen to yourself. you will know what you need to feel good with yourself in time! and please also know i'm here if you were ever in need of someone to talk to!

[fanonical]

So in your mind what’s w the garudo? To me they seem to think presentation = gender way more than the other peoples.

But in your version what’ll you be doing? Sorry if this one’s a bit blugh

no, i think you hit it square on the head. there is some semblance of a gender binary culturally recognised by the gerudo (they, after all, interact with men all the time) but as of BOTW/TOTK, the traditional gerudo culture dictates young gerudo girls of a certain age move to Gerudo City, which forbids men from entry. that's how it is on paper, anyway -- in actual fact, Link can walk right up to the guards in front of Gerudo City, be perceived as a "guy" and thus refused entry, then change into women's clothing IN FRONT OF THEM, and be allowed in, whereupon there is nothing Link can do to be kicked out from Gerudo City other than change out of the outfit.

In reality, the Doylist answer to this is it's a videogame abstraction -- and the whole thing is rather transphobic & racist too; a lot of the stuff going on with the Gerudo is between "kinda" and "very" racist just in general. i don't know how to (or if i adequately can?) address all of the problems there in my fic? . "desert race of giantess middle eastern warrior women" goes pretty deep to the core with this one, and that's before you get onto Ganondorf. and the whole stuff with the crossdressing... look man, if other people thought the Vilia storyline was meant to be progressive or sympathetic, i guess i'm glad they got that out of it, but it felt like a big transphobic joke to me. i'm changing pretty much all of this, and a bunch of other stuff. i still think it's not gonna be perfect (not really for me to say how unsalvageable some of the Gerudo stuff is in terms of racism, but i think i'm gonna reach out and talk to a couple of my friends about it and how they feel and what they might do etc) but i'll be changing stuff, and emphasising the good changes Nintendo has made over time whilst rejecting the worse ones

one thing i think i will do on the transphobia front is change it so that Gerudo City will allow trans women inside the walls if we are actively performing femininity to some degree. now, this is of course transphobic too, but i think it's kind of interesting to explore a more complex situation where trans women are a recognised type of person, and by the official legal policies of Gerudo City accepted in as women, but because of overtly binaristic, cisnormative overtones to the society, culture, politics & history there are probably still quite varying reactions, responses to transfemininity etc. because, well, that's my experience in a lot of gendered/women-only spaces! and i'd love to explore that through Link.

i also think that just before the Great Calamity, maybe there weren't as many openly trans people across Hyrule, perhaps due to social conceptions about gender at the time; i think maybe in the pockets of surviving towns and cities and villages 100 years later whilst Link has been asleep, trans people have become more recognised and embraced to some extent -- including in Gerudo City -- but, like in the real world, the change is slow, and some people struggle to see past their preconceived notions about gender. i just think it's more interesting to relate aspects of a #trans Hyrule to the trans experience now (i.e. in a time of great cultural shift for trans people both for good and for bad) but also exploring how and why it would be different in a fantasy post-apocalypse lol. i also don't want to overdo it into a depressive circlejerk of trans misery, either though, so don't worry, it won't be like that, i am making sure to steer very very clear of this.

i do also have maybe some potential reasons as to why there's been a cultural shift on transness in Hyrule (and particularly Gerudo City) in the 100 years after the Calamity though -- and i'd love to say more, but unfortunately, i've already said too much 🤐 gotta leave soooome stuff for the fic, and i have to check some stuff against lore before i commit to it.

great question!

[bisexual-in-every-gender]

Right, I don't know if this is just me being new to realising I'm trans but my wife (who is also trans but realised MUCH earlier than me at the age of four and is binary, whereas I'm a genderfluid trans man who fluctuates between nonbinary and binary man), she said something that irked me. Thing is, she doesn't tell people she's trans, she goes stealth, some of her closest friends have no idea she's trans. The only people that know are those that knew her prior to physically transitioning, including me. And that's fine. While I don't see a reason to be ashamed of being trans, she does and it's her choice to not disclose it. Fine. The thing she said that irks me is that she told me that once my T takes effect and I "pass" as a cis male, I should NEVER disclose the fact I'm trans to no one ever, because if I did, then people will immediately stop seeing me as a man and start seeing me as a woman. And it would be my own fault for telling people I'm trans.

It just bothers me on so many levels. Why is it MY fault if people stopped respecting my gender identity, were I to come out as trans? I'm also a nonbinary trans man a lot of the time and fully intend to keep putting on dresses or skirts if I so chose because fuck gender norms. Should I, according to her, not do that either? I also love colourful flamboyant clothing that many people might read as "gay". Should I stop doing that, in case someone then misgenders my wife?

For the same reason, she told me to keep my nipples after top surgery because if I don't, I'll immediately be outed as trans and therefore people would stop respecting me. But I'm pretty sure I don't want to keep my nipples, especially considering I can't control how they will heal and look like later. I'd rather see what it looks like without and have them tattooed on later, if I so chose. But she says that's just setting myself up for mistreatment. I'm a 4'11" fat flamboyant trans dude, it's not as if having nipples would earn me more respect anyway?

She's also SOO convinced that the moment people know you're trans, you're somehow less to them and everyone's gonna start misgendering me and seeing me as a woman, whether they want to or not. According to her, even if I had the deepest bass voice and a beard like Santa Claus, they'd start seeing me as a woman then. I mean.... am I just naive or does that seem exaggerated?

Her experiences aren't my own and it's her prerogative to decide whether to live her transness openly or not and yes, she passes for the most part and is happy with that. Fine. But I literally don't care people know I'm trans? I don't see shame in it. All I want is for people to respect my pronouns (he/they). As long as they do that, who cares? And if they don't, they're wankers. I shouldn't be held accountable for THEIR transphobia. Am I wrong?

[circuslollipop]

need you to know trans jace is so based. will be deeply in thought about this

ty!! ive been in deep thought about this for a while but havent really figured out how to bring it up skjfksjd. i've seen a couple headcanons of him as a trans girl, which are very compelling in their own right, but havent seen any of him as a trans boy yet? anyway i have some thoughts but fair warning they are suuuuuper jumbled

idkidk i already mentioned this but the thought of rhaenyra walking in on pre-transition jace stuffing his long hair into some sort of hat the way she did when she was his age,,

of course it would definitely change a lot about the story in a world as gendered as westeros. would rhaenyra still name him heir? if she did, and i think there's a good chance she would, of course there'd be people who are all like 'well all three of them are bastards anyway', but i could see other people thinking he's usurping luke and joffrey.

and what of rhae herself? well, rhae is a lot of things, but ultimately i think she, especially her show version, would accept jace for who he is and be his biggest supporter. i definitely love the idea of her having a trans son with her complicated feelings on her own gender. would she hesitate given the feelings it brings up, would she feel saddened because in her mind she's losing her only "daughter", or would she try to live vicariously through jace transitioning? either way i think she'd ultimately support him. i could even see her pulling some targ exceptionalism stuff w getting her allies to accept him like 'in old valyria the dragons changed their sex all the time, this just proves my son is a true dragon'. betrothals and stuff would probably get complicated and messy, and i could see a lotttt of people opposing a prince"ss" transing their gender like this. otto's pr campaign probably jumps at the opportunity to spin this whole situation in the greens' favor

i could also see jace, despite the support from his mother and her allies, stressing and posturing even more than he already does when he has gender as well as bastardry stacked against him. poor guy probably has even more of an uphill battle trying to prove himself as a worthy crown prince. but even so, through accounts and histories passed down through the ages, eventually the history books would only ever remember him as prince jacaerys

anyway there's like so many different directions this could go and what im spitting out here is only one of them so yeah skfdjhskdj

[emphasisonthehomo]

Hey, I know you asked for asks about trans Danny (and I love your universe so much, don't get me wrong), but I was wondering have you ever considered trans Steve? He'd have had the rare opportunity to 'start over' when he's send away from HI, maybe he took the chance to transition? On the other hand, trans folks were banned from the military back then and we all know how the Navy made Steve the man he is. What path d'you think he could have taken if he was trans? Or would/could he have cheated his way into the Navy anyway? I'm curious but I know this is not your playground so feel free to ignore. Thx.

Oh darling, anything to do with transing a character’s gender is my playground, thank you so much for this question.

TW: for general discussion of dysphoria, this gets pretty heavy emotionally. And also personal, lmao.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about trans!Steve, and what I think a transgender narrative for him would look like. And this is any flavor of trans tbh, be that telling the story of Stephanie McGarrett, Steven McGarrett, Stef McGarrett, etc.  

For all intents and purposes, Steve was raised by the navy. It’s a very intrinsic part of his character. For me it’s up there w/ Danny being from New Jersey. You can’t not make Danny a Jersey boy, just like you can’t not make Steve a SEAL. I’ve spoken a little bit about this being why I find it difficult to put Steve into different careers here, and I think it applies to this as well.

And you’re right re: being trans in the US military. There’s a long and complicated history of it either being banned or restricted, and it technically only became ‘legal’ in 2021. Even if I wrote a trans!Steve as a modern au like trans!Danno is, he would be unable to be out of the closet and be in the Navy. I don't think he'd be able to cheat his way in either, that's a pretty big To Do.

I do think he’d still have joined the navy, even if he was trans. I think he’d just have been in the closet about it. And it’s for this reason that imho trans!Steve would be one of those people who doesn’t come out and transition until they’re in their 40s or something. It would be the story of DEADNAME McGarrett going to Annapolis, becoming a SEAL, being the Navy’s Finest, Creating Five-0 and then much later, deciding to come out. Like post season 10 timeline coming out, I think.

Because Steve keeps a lot of his feelings crammed up inside his head and heart, and he stews over stuff, and he’s not emotionally open. He just isn’t. The Military Fucked Steve Up. John McGarrett, whether he meant to or not, Fucked Steve Up. All of the other shit's that's happened, has Fucked Steve Up. Steve opens up more over the progression of the show, especially w/ Danny, but he’s still an emotionally constipated nutcase in many ways.

Is this a story I’d ever write? No. There are a few reasons for that, and the main ones stem from my own Gender Experience™ and shit. It’s the same reason why Trans!Danno takes place when Danny’s in his 30s and has pretty much already transitioned socially/medically/etc. The story of Danny’s coming out and transition is glossed over, because if I delve into the depression and dysphoria aspect too deeply, I’m gonna start drinking too much again. Being closeted sucks, dysphoria sucks, the internalized self-loathing and shame sucks, and it is euheuheuheuheuheuh DEEPLY triggering for me.

Trans!Danno takes place after most, if not all of that, for Danny. Danny’s got the surgeries he wanted, he’s on T, he looks in the mirror and likes what he sees, he’s doing GREAT. Does he still have issues and insecurities? Well yes, because he’s human. But I am uninterested in writing about the emotionally darker and more upsetting aspects of trying to come out and transition, because I do this for fun and I don’t wanna bum myself out.

The story of Steve/Stephanie/Stef McGarrett, coming out and transitioning at the age of like 45/50 would be deeply sad in many ways. It’d be steeped in internalized transphobia, self-loathing, dysphoria, etc. Especially when you take into consideration Steve’s character and how he Deals with things emotionally. It’d also be a story of joy, of self-actualization, and all those other good things.

Are those stories meaningful and important? Absolutely. Would I personally write it? No. Because the journey to get to that joy would trigger the shit out of me. Is that everyone’s gender experience? Also no, but it’s mine and that’s the lens I’m approaching stuff from.

Excellent question! Thank you so much.

[papakhan]

if nix is no longer sun's (Sasha's?) mom in canon, does she still exist? Does she still paint with him? Did she paint with the other khans children? Were nix and marigold apart of papa's advisers? What was sun's relationship with marigold, chance, and jessup like? Lol sorry, I just really love your opinions and lore for new vegas and I'm very curious

Yeahh Nix isn't Sun's mom anymore but I'm probably gonna rework her to use somewhere else, im still workshopping her atm. Unfortunately she was just kinda part of my earlier story which was admittedly reductive and weak writing on my part and I will own up to that. The idea of this random cis woman "fixing" the New Khan remnants by berating them into Not being misogynists and taught them to be nice to children doesnt sit right we me any more, so now the Khans are a bit more autonomous in their development and Softing so don't need an outside force to come in and Show Them the way, if that makes sense? I hope I'm explaining why I didn't like my own writing choices anymore well anyway. I also wanted to go full ball into making Papa trans gender just as a little treat for me. I think he's already a very queer-coded character and his performance of masculinity kinda feeds into my idea of transness for him. I'm not sure if I can explain but it means something to me <3 Sun Min (who's Sun's dad was actually his og dad back when he was a tf2 oc) was just kinda a better fit for "guy who got that warlord pregnant" then Nix ever would be (sorry queen)

Anyway rambling about critising my own writing aside, Nix probably does still exist I just don't know what to do with her yet. I'd like her and her daughter Jasper to be involved in Sun's life still but just in a different role. I might revamp her and start calling her by what was her actual name which was Juliana.

She might paint with Sun or she might just teach him how to make dyes and pigments. I'm not sure if I'm gonna keep her school teacher side either so I'm not sure if she did with other kids, probably she did tho.

Nix was an advisor but that might be something I change, Marigold never was tho she was just a close friend of Papa's. Marigold to Sun is like an Aunt, she looked after Sun pretty often when he was growing up and he and Jessup were only a few months apart in age so they've always been kind of besties <3 Sun isn't as close with Chance tho, he always thought it was a little bossy (when really he was probably try to stop jessup getting into whatever shit you can imagine 7 year old jessup getting into)

[amethystblack]

Why is there an ever increasing amount of people on internet demanding people refer to them by weird ass pronouns (like bun/bunself or wtv)? or children supposedly needing novel hormones and their perfectly fine genitalia chopped off or else they'll kill themselves? This has never been documented in history... am i the only 1 seeing this nonsense is clearly astroturfed? asking in good faith

oh boy there is so much to unpack here.... you say you're asking in good faith, so i'm going to choose to believe you, but let's come back to that.

i have a number of issues with the way you've phrased this, but i think what you're trying to ask, to put it another way is-- "Why is this happening now? Why are there more and more people with non-cis and divergent gender identities now, and, rather than being a genuine human problem, is it not being artificially pushed as an agenda?"

You're right in your implication that the answer to 'why now' is the internet, but not because of astroturfing or any kind of disingenuous plot. I believe the internet, and the distance, anonymity, and resources it provides, has finally given a large number of people the privacy, confidence and understanding they need to express who they are in ways that most rigid local societies simply would not have permitted before. In addition to that, there have been many in-person LGBT circles over the pre-internet decades and centuries, but the internet has also made all of those communities more visible than they were in the past.

Contrariwise to communication in the present giving people the space to be open to other possibilities, and making it more visible, there is already documented history of divergent gender identities having been actively excluded from history even when they are known to have existed for hundreds of years. History is written by the winners, and for years, the winners have been old christian white men who do not abide homosexuality, let alone practices outside the gender binary. Why would they write into history books for children to learn about?

Your recourse, as I take from the astroturfing comments, is to doubt the sources of those accounts as I doubt the intentions of your history book writers. There are plenty of articles about it all across the internet though-- could they all be lies? Neither of us can actually prove the accuracy of history, so I believe it is best to not waste our efforts with it. Let's focus on the present, and I will give you my personal experience.

I assume you've asked this question to me in particular because you already know I'm trans (which to be fair, is perhaps a mark in the 'good faith' column for you). When I was growing up, I met exactly one other trans person. As a twelve year old, I vaguely felt like, wow that's cool, i wish i could just be a girl too (lol), and to my memory we never talked about it in depth. I also recall, around the same age, having a chat with two other teenage friends who also knew her, where we all agreed in confidence, yeah, being born a girl would've been preferable. To my knowledge, both of them still identify as male today and are happily married to women. A few years later I would ask my first boyfriend to call me his girlfriend, but I had completely forgotten about everything related to being trans-- I just thought, if I were in a gay relationship anyway, that would feel better. Later I had difficulty with a girl I dated because I told her, again having forgotten trans people existed, that I wished to be a girl. My discomfort with my own body and my resulting disinterest in intimacy ultimately led to us breaking up. Three years after that something online finally reminded me that trans people exist, and I finally realized, wait, maybe I am trans??? And began looking into the matter seriously.

The point of me saying all this, is that nothing pushed transness on me in those seven years. I had fully forgotten that it existed even when I technically knew it was a thing, and I felt the way I did independently of it. When I started exploring transitioning, it was because I sought it out. I had those feelings, I wanted a solution, and turned out a solution existed. The increasing prevalence of non-cis gender identities in all directions is because these feelings are, to varying personal degrees, normal, and the means to act on them finally exists. And as society as a whole becomes more accepting, it is safer to make the leap too. Had I been born in a more transphobic time, I might not have decided to transition, opting instead to swallow the dysphoria and self-hatred and live miserably. Or not live at all. In this epoch, I had permission to transition, but I did not get an invitation, let alone have anyone pushing it on me. Hell, I would've liked an invitation.

So this is all to say, though it may not be your experience, dissatisfaction with one's gender and body are not new in the human condition; we can just finally act on them. Thanks to advances in medicine and culture, it is safer than ever, and sure, there are more trans people, but that also means that people have more agency, and are less miserable.

...Now let's talk about all the problems I have with your ask. Let's start with the questions themselves.

Why is there an ever increasing amount of people on internet demanding people refer to them by weird ass pronouns (like bun/bunself or wtv)?

So I read this as two separate questions -- why weird ass pronouns? -- why are they demanding it?

Okay, so neopronouns aren't everyone's cup of tea. I see their increased usage as a matter of-- 'as long as we on the internet here are exploring new ways to respect people and use language, why not have some fun with it?' It's not hurting anyone, so why not? Unfortunately, it gets strawmanned as a way to take trans and especially non-binary people less seriously, so that just sucks for everyone, but I really don't think it's that serious. In my experience, I've never actually met anyone who's been obtuse about them-- it's just "it would be nice" and they've always been reasonable about if people aren't up for that or don't remember it. There is a basic level of flexibility and understanding to assume from normal social conversation, and I assume that most people who use neopronouns aren't about to insist on them right off the street.

...But, shitty people exist in all demographics. And I'm sure there are some who use neopronouns and are very obnoxious about it out there. I really consider that to be a problem with the specific people rather than the concept of neopronouns... but for how often it gets brought up in these arguments vs my personal experience, it really seems blown out of proportion for the sake of delegitimizing trans people. Let me ask you anon, have you ever met someone like that, who asks for that and is combative when it isn't followed to the letter, or is that just a story you've heard secondhand?

or children supposedly needing novel hormones and their perfectly fine genitalia chopped off or else they'll kill themselves?

I think I've answered the why of this already, so I'm going to skip that and just talk about the phrasing-- the hormones are not novel. they are just the normal hormones that exist in people already, and they have the normal effects, but for the opposite gender. it's also pretty rare for children to go out and request that. teenagers, maybe. i would have loved to get on some blockers as a teenager though. as it is, i don't feel like i had much of a teenage life, and that's exactly because i was already so uncomfortable.

'perfectly fine genitilia' is also such a gross phrase. it might be 'perfectly fine' in your view, but it is not your body to make the call on, and you are not the soul living with the discomfort from it. that also is definitely not a thing that happens as much with children, and the reductionistic point of view where [this thing that some trans people choose to do] is now applied to children as a growing social problem sounds to me like some well-workshopped rhetoric. moreover, why are we making an argument over other people's genitals??? to whoever is spreading that one, gross, mind your business.

i imagine the last few paragraphs inspire some amount of defensiveness because i'm just ripping into your phrasing. and that's fine, but set that defensiveness aside and come back to the table with me. i said at the start that i am choosing to believe you're in good faith here, but for reasons apparent in the prior two paragraphs espeically, you really do not sound like you're in good faith here. like, just saying that does not make it so. i am hoping there are real intentions behind those words you've typed.

and if that is the case-- if you really mean that, then respect to you firstly, but i want you to know that, rather than you being in bad faith, wherever you're getting these talking points from, about 'novel hormones', 'bun/bunself', etc, they are not in good faith. you are concerned about disningenuous information in the internet environment, but the arguments you're representing in this ask are coming from people who are themselves disingenuous, taking only the most extreme parts of gender divergence, and needlessly applying them to children as a moralistic charge. i implore you to prioritize your own, personal, actual experiences with real trans people in the world when making judgments about them-- not just the talking points of others about them.

[transgenderer]

Ok. Lets say I buy that youre presenting as you truly "feel inside". How is separating trans women from womens sports (where high school age males regularly outperform olympic level females) or prisons causing violence to the trans women? And if it is, is it causing more or less violence to the women raped in jail or denied scholarships or assaulted in changing rooms?

hmm. i wanna break this down into pieces

first of all, my personal experience doesnt really accord with the idea of transness expressing who i am inside. i think of it more in like...lower-level terms? like, i experience immense discomfort ("dysphoria") when seen/referred to as a guy, or when i percieve myself as having features that would cause people to see me as a guy. i take hormones to modify those features, and ask people to use she/her, etc for similar reasons. ANYWAY

okay, so first of all...i dont really care about the sports issue! i have a lot of trouble caring, basically at all. my defense of the pro trans-women-in-womens-sports positions comes from the fundamental arbitrariness of the categories involved. theres no particular reason to separate sports into mens and womens, instead of say, short and tall, strong and weak, or even categories that dont really affect performance, like black and white, blue eyed or brown eyed, left handed or right handed. people like watching sports, so we have a system to organize them, and at some point people decided men and women shouldnt compete against each other. but like....it doesnt have to be that! is it any more fair that a short guy cant get a scholarship for basketball than this hypothetical cis girl who cant get a scholarship because shes been beaten by a trans girl? i dont feel like it is! the whole sports scholarship system is kind of dumb

i feel like the sports issue isnt really about sports? like, sorry, but nobody cared about womens sports already. i mean i dont care about any sports. but people who care about sports care about mens sports. because of sexism or whatever. so it FEELS to me like the role of gender-in-sports is much more about public signalling/consensus-building about who counts as a woman

okay, so now that weve got trivialities out of the way...prisons. prisons are fucked up, i think having a penal system is important but prisons are such cesspits of rape and abuse and suffering. trying to apply harm-reduction considerations to prison policies is weird, because theyre systems that are just...totally uninterested in harm reduction, that actively choose harm increasing. but lets try anyway. i think, pretty inevitably, an out trans women who is sent to a mens prison for longer than...idk, a couple weeks(?) is going to be physically or sexually assaulted, just...as a certainty. theres a lot of men who are aggressively hostile towards trans women, and it only takes one among the whole population of people who interact with her for there to be a bad incident.

heres my argument for why putting trans women in womens prisons is probably harm reduction, even if you assume trans women are just as dangerous as cis men. imagine if 1 in 10 men want to assault a trans women, and 1 in 10 trans women want to assault a cis woman. (i think this is pretty generous to your argument!). if you put the trans woman in mens prison, she interacts with enough different men that she definitely gets assaulted. if you put the trans woman in womens prison, there's a 90% chance nobody gets assaulted, so unless that bad apple is assaulting TEN cis women without getting caught, its harm-reduction to put the trans woman in with the cis women.

oh, and changing rooms. changing rooms are crazy! i dont know why we have communal changing rooms. building a bunch of changing stalls is not that expensive. being made to strip naked (or like, to your underwear) in front of a bunch of your peers is terrible, its absurd and awful we make kids do it, we should stop.

[hms-no-fun]

was there anything in particular that inspired the concept of june eg8ert?

there are lots of little things! i talked about it some in my video about writing godfeels 2.1 and 2.2, but the short version is that a lot of the post-toblerone june fanart i saw was really frustratingly bubbly. and like, i understood why. who doesn't love art of a character who has happily transitioned being happy in public? to be clear, i loved that art and i still do, it made me feel SO GOOD to see so much explicitly transfem june and transpositive homestuck art in general at the time! but after a while it struck me just how little any of that art reflected my experience of transition, which has been slow and full of false starts and lots of dysphoria and disappointment. and good things! see it wasn't like i wanted the polar opposite, a grimdark genderangst june. what i wanted was something that reflected both the euphoria and dysphoria, the good and the bad.

typically when i start fics they're less based on a scene or a plot than they are a question. like i started godfeels 1 because i wanted to know how it felt to live this extraordinarily lonely life as someone with unfathomable power and seemingly no will to use it. but i was also fascinated by john's dynamic with jade specifically, how difficult it had to have been for both of them to go through with typheus' deal and force jade to live alone on a ship for three years. honestly that's the origin point for a LOT of godfeels when i think about it.

so following on from that, my big questions with gf2 were, what if june comes out and her friends don't take it very well? and what if she decided to go back in time and retcon herself to be trans when she was a kid? now if you've read gf2 you'll know that the first question is resoundingly answered, while the second is... basically never touched on outside of like one dialogue exchange with jade i think. this is because of vriska, and i think if you've understood everything else i have said so far then i don't need to explain to you why that makes sense. anyway my idea for how that second question would be answered was june would take jade back in time and be like "i'm gonna give myself a better future by making myself realize i'm trans at a younger age, and i want to give you the opportunity to give yourself a friend on your island." i always wanted to find a way to make jade less lonely at some point in her life, like in 2.3 my original plan was to have june rescue nepeta from a dead timeline and basically give her to jade as a friend and mentor, but then she decided to become silverbark instead.

(this is completely tangential but i think the reason i didn't go that direction is kinda related to what i talked about in my last ask about catboy dave, where i had to really stop and ask myself what story i wanted to write. because i feel like if you build a narrative about maybe going back in time and transing your gender as a kid, and you have it be this big weighty question about whether or not she should do it or if it would even work, and then you conclude by having her not go through with it would be... pretty inherently unsatisfying. like even if it's a profound or interesting conflict to have in prose, when it's over what you're basically left with is a bottle episode that doesn't really have to impact anything that comes after. but then, on the flip side, if you DO follow through with it, the result would be that there's a happy early-transition june running around living her life, and then there's our june, for whom nothing has changed. and the more i thought about what that story would look like, it just seemed so inevitable that it would become this depressing dead end where june just winds up right back where she started, living alone and isolating herself. idk maybe she could have instead built a new life with new characters and that could potentially be interesting on its own, but that wasn't the story i wanted to write.)

as far as other stuff, i've made no secret of just how autobiographical many aspects of june are. a lot of her development as a character mirrors my experiences, and i guess if you wanted to make it pathological you could say godfeels is a story i use to help process some of my more complex emotions about transitioning and living in the world as a trans person. in places where you can modify text color, i've adopted june's blue as my own. she's messy and difficult and makes mistakes but she always says what's on her mind and asserts herself and has this core sort of RESPECT for her identity that i find really compelling to write and that i wish i had more of in my own life.

i have no idea if this answered your question but i sure did say a lot of words

[genderqueerpositivity]

1) Nonbinary, to me, is a word that I can used to express that my gender is outside the man/woman binary. I also identify as trans: my gender identity is different from the one expected of a person who was assigned female at birth.

I identify as genderqueer, which is my preferred gender label. I connect with the history of the term, and the association with queer identity. I also like that genderqueer describes my gender for what it is instead of what it is not ("My gender is queer" as opposed to "My gender is not binary".)

I'm also transmasculine and gendervague (my experience of gender identity is inherently connected to my neurodivergence).

2) My pronouns are they/them/their, he/him/his, or ey/em/eir.

3) I prefer Mx.

4) On the nonbinary flag, the yellow stripe. On the genderqueer flag, the green one. On the trans flag, the white one. All of which are for people whose genders are outside of the binary.

1) 17/18. This is around the time I joined tumblr and around the time I discovered an article about genderqueer identity written by a genderqueer person. (I googled to link it, as I still remember the author's name and the article name, and the website no longer exists. That sucks.)

2) Same as above. I was just, amazed, that being neither a woman or man was something that a person could actually do. Actually be.

3) I definitely questioned if I could be trans before I learned that I was possible to be nonbinary. I would've been like...15/16? I remember hearing about Chaz Bono's transition on TV. And again, I was like, people can do that??! Everyone around me reacted to the news of his transition with so much disgust and confusion. I didn't think I was a man, not entirely anyway, and if you aren't a man then you must be a woman. And the way that people around me spoke of transgender people, I believed that I didn't want to be like that anyway.

Fuck internalized transphobia.

4) I've come out to some people. Mostly other trans folx--friends, people in my local community. I was outed as a lesbian to my family around the same time that I discovered nonbinary genders (almost a whole decade ago). And it went very badly for me. As a result, I'm not out to most of my family as trans. But I did just come out to my dad on the 4th of July, and that went far better than I could have expected.

5) Being out is important to me. But I'm not certain how the rest of my coming out will go.

1) I get to define myself on my terms. I get to choose the names, and the labels, and the pronouns. I get to play with gender presentation and to find different ways to express my gender. I love being in trans centered spaces, I love the name tags, the pronoun pins, and the consciously inclusive and neutral language.

2) I've learned a lot about gender and self-identity. I've learned that what makes me happy matters.

3) I've gained a better understanding of myself and what I want for my future. I've gained friends within the community.

4) When someone uses my name, when I hear my pronouns spoken out loud, the first time (and every time since) that I've put on a binder.

1) I'm neurodivergent, chronically ill, and fat. I am not 30 yet, but I'm much closer to 30 than 20.

2 and 3) My gender identity and neurodivergence are very connected, I'm gendervague. That isn't a popular statement to make. Transphobes manipulate the overlap between the trans and neurodivergent communities in an attempt to pathologize transness. In reaction, those within the trans community who buy into respectability politics openly mock the terminology created by autistic and otherwise neurodivergent trans people that we use to describe the ways that our genders and neurology are connected.

In some ways neurodivergent and/or autistic trans people are both invisible and too visible.

At a few weeks short of 28, I'm older than many of the most visible faces in the nonbinary community; I'm almost 28, and the closer I get to 30, the more I wonder what aging as a nonbinary person will look like. There aren't as many visible nonbinary people over the age of 30 as there are under the age of 30. Nonbinary identity is often presented as a phase that young people go through--that is unfair to nonbinary youth, and it is also unfair to older nonbinary people.

I'm fat and afab, which means that I cannot achieve the nonbinary ideal of thin, flat chested, androgyny. The majority of visible nonbinary people are thin and conventionally androgynous. Even while binding my chest, my fat body is only ever perceived as afab.

4) Nonbinary people can look like anyone. I look like a nonbinary person right now, just as I am. I'm just as nonbinary right now as I will be once I've medically transitioned (which I intend to in the future.) My other identities don't make me less nonbinary.