#Disillusion dysphoria

[petejj]

what am I seeking?

Something I'm keeping

What am I hiding?

Something so binding blinding

[reluctantlyanimating]

bro sometimes I wanna do unexplained stuff and I just want ppl to vibe with it

like yes I want a shirt abt coffee

do I drink coffee?? Not usually. But the shirt is my vibe and I want it so please stop pointing out i don't drink coffee

now I'm never gonna wear that shirt

[deathgloss]

i can't believe i really forgot. i love the arts, i love music, i care about fashion and home decoration and personal style. i feel like i discarded these things in my life because they don't really mean anything and it isn't exactly gonna change the world. idk i think i was trying to figure out who i am stripped of all interests, aesthetics, etc. discarding them made me so utterly miserable

[drdemonprince]

I have to admit I was a little fucked up by egg memes and trans discourse that implied that unaddressed dysphoria was the primary source of misery in a person's life and that transitioning would suddenly make a person feel at ease, confident, happy in their body, and untraumatized.

I wouldn't say it's the most common narrative at all but there are certainly some trans people who explicitly propagate such myths especially if they conceive of themselves as a benevolent yet highly involved "egg cracker," too. There's a whiff of projection about the whole thing that's quite gross. People regret the time they spent in the closet and try to spare others the pain by pressuring them to come out before they are ready or making the experience of transitioning seem more straightforwardly positive than it ever could be. like, transitioning comes with a great degree of exposure to stigma and prejudice and if you already feel uncomfortable with yourself that's not exactly going to make your social anxiety any better.

it's really nobody's fault that i wanted such a tidy solution to these things, i've always been the type to love a false epiphany and to want to tear my skin off and burst forth, feeling free of myself and that is impossible. i made my decisions and it was good to learn from them -- i had to overcome a significant amount of my repression and escapist fantasizing *by* pursuing the kind of life that I dreamed about and realizing it was also gonna be flawed. i've done that with things that aren't transness, like my fantasy of living a 24/7 D/s hypno dynamic. i had to actually try to live that fantasy in reality a couple of times before i could be disillusioned enough with it and get over it and stop running away from reality anymore. getting disillusioned with what you think will make you happy and accepting ordinary unhappiness is a common project of life.

but still, you know, i wish fewer trans people felt the need to cover their revelations with treacly simplistic messages about how everything is better now and if you question your gender at all that means youre trans for sure and not transitioning is the one thing preventing you from leading a fulfilling life and all that. it makes sense as a reaction to mounting systemic transphobia but i always find myself wishing, in all things, that people could be more detailed and openly ambivalent about things instead of feeling they had to make straightforward simplistic love-is-love type emotional appeals. gay people are allowed to have bad marriages and divorces. trans people are allowed to still be unhappy complicated people after we transition. thats like the human condition

[sh5]

truly sad to watch how many people are so easily fooled by the idea of “putting off” fascism with their vote—not even stopping it, because no one can justify that harris isn’t a wretched monster who runs on the exact same promises as trump. we watched how the popular vote doesn’t matter in 2016, watched how biden strengthened trump-era policies for 4 years and killed tens of thousands of people, and you’re still like, but THIS time, it REALLY matters. I’m already disillusioned and I’m twenty-fucking-two. I’ve voted in ONE major election and ONE midterm election. I voted for local candidates that were silent on issues I cared about, just because the other guy was running on a platform of bigotry. I’ve done all the stupid bullshit y’all peddle, and nothing has fucking changed. in fact, it’s gotten worse. I’m sick of it. I’m so fucking sick of it. you people do not care about palestine, you people do not care about the incarcerated or homeless population of this country, ALL YOU FUCKING CARE ABOUT IS GETTING YOUR STUPID FUCKING HORMONES. ITS ALL ABOUT YOU AND YOUR DYSPHORIA. ITS ALL ABOUT YOUR “CHOSEN FAMILY”. KILL YOURSELF.

[ackwaitno2]

The dysphoria gets easier, right?

CW: Detrans kink, somno, SA, sexism

You've been catcalled, ogled, threatened for years. It's made you so disillusioned with your gender, your sexuality, your body, sometimes when you're going about your day, you still get flashes in your mind of the time you dissociated when someone sat next to you on a crowded bus and he started pressing his hand over your skirt, slipping through the band and rubbing over your underwear since you weren't resisting, looking at you with in his periphery: deadpan from the shock overload. One things leads to another, trauma leads to dysphoria, and you start calling yourself a boy. Sometimes you get pent up from not touching yourself for so long, sometimes you beat yourself up over wishing you didn't feel this way, sometimes your frustration leads to thinking about the idea of putting something in your "front hole", which gets you so dysphoric you feel sick to your stomach.

Since we started dating; "non-sexual partners" you called us, we've been sleeping in the same bed. every now and then, cuddling when the fear of touch isn't too intense. What you don't realize is I've been waking up during the middle of the night and spending several hours a night grinding my girlcock against your pussy, making you squirm and whine in your sleep; nightmares. Yet your body cant help getting turned on from its base desire to sleeve someone.

Over time you start getting so confused and jumpy at work, guilty and tired when you're at home, and aroused and sweaty whenever you get ready for bed, you can't make sense of it. You feel sick all the time now, an anxious mess. You've been asking to cuddle more lately hoping squeezing me like a giant warm pillow will relieve the stress and doubt, to hold onto someone who'll protect you and knows what you've been through. You hold me so tight as you cuddle, trying to make it go away, but it takes so fucking much energy to prevent yourself from just sliding your panties just a little to the side, and sliding my cock all the way into you in one stroke. it really REALLY doesn't help when I keep saying its just natural for me to get hard when I'm in bed with someone with a pussy, you get wet whenever we're in bed too, right? Doesn't mean we actually want to have sex :) You cringe any time I use female words but you're too conflict-averse to tell me, and you feel even worse and wanting to hurt yourself when I keep saying I'm not interested in sex, yet here you are, the girlBOY, boy, thats been traumatized over years, that hasn't known peace for months, huffing from trying not to fantasize about my hand over your baby bump.

I don't mind waiting until you willingly give up. I'm comfortable in my lesbianism, and I know you'll be comfortable with yours too ^^

[sheshepherd]

ok no but I've been thinking I would've actually loved a rascals tng based ep on ds9.

nerys, miles, Julian, and jadzia being turned into their childhood self

me thinking abt how much anxiety julian and jadzia must be having because julian being augmented and jadzia saying that before joining she was the shyest. and I just think about how much anxiety dax might have even though she's still joined but just in her kid body.

then there's julian who would inevitably be so incredibly vigilant, self deprecating, and just disillusioned in some way. because being back in Jules body but not being Jules?? God I can't imagine the dysphoria and/or dysmorphia he would feel (esp if we write him as trans)

then miles. oh in some ways I just like the poetic nod back towards tng but also I love the idea of an incredibly tired, almost jaded, and disillusioned officer finding things he loved in his childhood and really rekindling that. miles is so depressed and has ptsd, so it'd be hard for him as a father, a chief engineer, etc etc to really think abt his past before he became all that

and this ties in neatly with kira nerys. not sure how many people read the terok nor series but I do recommend it! kira as a kid is someone who feels a lot. she's a big softie but also just a kid who tumbles about. but bc of the occupation she's almost told to stop crying when something bad happens. like this was a girl who cried in the books over killing a collaborator! I feel like she and ro's are in the ep would have a lot of overlap but the difference between kira and ro is that kira doesn't shy away from her feelings.

and I just wonder if being a child again would make her more sensitive from the things she's walled off of.

idk I just like the idea of these ppl reclaiming a childhood lost / rekindling their unadulterated love for things

[chaos-has-theories]

My dreams have just been getting. Ridiculously narrative lately.

Tonight it was Stranger Things: Robin and Steve had been getting disillusioned about their place in life and then got like. Thrown about by some Upside Down stuff. Started saying things at the same time (and that's where the episode ended, making viewers suspect they'd developed a mental link)

But no: turns out they changed bodies and tried to keep it a secret, but Robin was getting serious dysphoria and Steve also felt a lil weird about it. But the dysphoria (and Steve's depression from earlier) made Robin-in-Steve a perfect vessel for some Vecna bullshit, and actually it was both of them, just slightly less quickly. The third character (Jonathan, I think) managed to snap them out of it and got them back to their original bodies. (There was something there where I was briefly convinced their names were references to the bible, but nevermind that now)

Problem was that now Steve and Robin were recovering, and nobody noticed that Jonathan (or was it Nancy?) had caught the dead-eyed stare that showed that the Upside-Down was riding along....

And that's when I woke up.

[elfyprincess]

Hi! dont post this ask pls but i wanted 2 say that even though i strongly disagree with terfs on almost everything and came here with extreme predudice against u, you seem like a rlly nice person apart from the arophobia.

have a nice day and i hope u stop being an exclusionist in ur radicalness and feminism :3

Hi ! I used to be extremely supportive of gender ideology, but I became disillusioned with the trans community’s constant disrespect of women.

A woman is an adult human female. A transwoman is a male with gender dysphoria who socially and medically transitions in order to alleviate said dysphoria. If there was no difference between the two, there would be no need for the prefix “trans.”

My main criticisms of gender ideology are as follows:

1) Women deserve equal opportunities in sports. Trans identified males have no right to compete against women. Transwomen have an unfair physical advantage in sports due to their sex. They should not be stealing awards and opportunities from women.

2) Women deserve access to female-only spaces. Especially vulnerable women, like incarcerated women & women seeking help from rape crisis centers. Incarcerated women should not be forced to shower with convicted male rapists.

3) Trans identified males constantly degrade women & expect us to respect them. They say they are better than us because they have “designer coochies” and choose to conform to misogynistic female stereotypes. Women are expected to submit & accept this humiliation. If we speak out against this misogyny we are silenced & labeled transphobic. I’m tired of it. I will no longer lie to spare a man’s feelings. A woman is an adult human female. A man is an adult human male. No amount of hormones or surgery will ever turn a man into a woman.

I do not hate any individual who chooses to transition in order to alleviate gender dysphoria as long as they respect women, biology, and scientific fact. I believe legal adults should have the right to transition if they so choose. I do not believe transitioning should give you unfettered access to the opposite sex’s intimate spaces.

I do not hate “aromantics.” I believe sex should be an act of intimacy between two people who love and trust each other. I do not believe you should be having sex with someone you are not romantically interested in. I believe this is the best way to cultivate a healthy culture surrounding sex.

I hope you have a nice day as well. And I hope you can take the time to try and see my perspective on things. 🩵

[hoarderofliterature]

being indian-american and also very Gender is hilarious, a vignette

i think the easiest term for what my gender is, or sometimes isn't, is genderfluid. i don't think i've ever truly been able to understand the concept of gender, or how it's ever applied to me. but i'm not completely agender, either.

some people might argue that calling gender a performance can be a bullet in favor of bigots, who wish to treat trans people as just "disillusioned kids playing dress-up", as a teacher i once met in high school so succinctly put it. but gender is something i feel more tangibly in terms of performance, and i can't really put it in other words that make sense.

i find myself at odds with who i was, ten years ago. when gender felt like something out of my hands, an understanding waiting to be reached within my brain, hoping that one day it might solidify into something on a binary side, or at the very least, leave me with nothing at all to worry about.

(and when that didn't end up happening, a firm resolve to at least learn to deal with the constant dysphoria, await the supposedly masculine or feminine shifts in perspective the same way i anticipated and dealt with blood work results.)

i find myself at odds with that because gender to me now, and the way i feel it, is wholly performance. perspective, perception, their resulting behaviors and viewpoints, are all so fluid. and the way my gender shifts, flows into another, is still not something i am entirely in control of like the way i once wished, but something i can wield in the environment or situation in which i find myself, regardless of how it shows itself at that time.

anyway.

the way i dress most days is androgynous, so that if gender taps me on the shoulder and asks to be my skin for a few hours, i can work with it. but today was more masculine, and i was going downtown, so i decided to wear something to reflect that - an open floral shirt over a t-shirt with a golden chain, jeans, sneakers, and of course, a backwards baseball cap. which is about as southern california dude/butch of an outfit you can get without wearing swim shorts and a tank top.

and on the way back, i had to stop by an indian cultural event because a family friend was participating.

indian culture is very strict to the gender binary. this opposes some parts of vedic philosophy, in which the body is a mere shell for the soul, and so the soul is inherently without the idea or limitation of gender. it also renders gods as genderless, though we have the separation between gods and goddesses in mythology. many hindus haven't followed the true meaning of the scripture for a long time. but that's besides the point.

indian men tend to gather, standing or sitting, in groups while their wives shop, and not to talk- to steadfastly stare in opposite directions, and if they do talk, it's about politics. or the latest moon mission. indian women hover, stall to stall, either staring fearfully at their husbands or cheerfully talking with store owners, or silently comparing prices while taking stock of the different languages within nine square feet of them.

my experience of the indian american performance of gender, outside of what bollywood puts on screen, is, in a word, careful. everyone wants someone else to know, to notice, that the way they are dressed or the volume of their voice is deliberate. that the gold earrings they're wearing are 24K and they got them on their last trip to India over the summer. that they will fit in with the rest of their half of the crowd if they lower their voice, speak less, speak more, laugh louder, eat pani puri or samosas any more or less delicately than the man or woman next to them.

standards of being an indian man or woman are trained into us as young children, so that we grow up with a clear idea of what that looks like. how to dress (within american standards, but also indian standards, but also gender standards), how to talk, what topics to discuss, how to stand diminutively to avoid attracting attention, what to say to make others stay within their own gender boundaries, and let them recognize that we're doing the same.

great how that turned out, huh.

so when they're confronted with someone who doesn't fit any of those standards, who doesn't want to, who simply wants to exist in a culture that thrives on conformity and oneupmanship, they don't know what to do.

and standing with my father in this event market crowd was interesting. because i was deliberately performing masculinity in my clothing and stature, and people were thrown off. nearly every woman was in a chudidar or a dress or wearing makeup, staring at me and my long hair and my decidedly non-feminine presentation, trying to reconcile those. trying to figure out exactly why my mother let me leave the house dressed like this, because you can't escape your indian parents' clutches even as an adult. trying to know exactly what i was, failing, and turning back to the other women with one eye on the merchandise and one eye on me.

and it wasn't the fact that i wasn't in indian dress- there were plenty of people in western clothing- but rather that i stood by my father, equally silently, in a crowd of men looking like they'd rather be anywhere but there, holding on to gender not as a bargaining tool or a tenet, but as a rippling, nebulous key.

[jocrude]

SKETCH FOR A BALLARDESQUE RE:DYSPHORIA

God, I can just see it. I can’t write it at the moment, but if Beat becomes En Vogue and has a revival in this Serpent-eating-its-tail we must for lack of a better meaning call Contemporary Culture…

(Author’s Note: First as tragedy, then as farce, then as farce, ad nauseum...The serpent of culture has been eating its tail until it has become sick, and irony/post-irony is our collective acid reflux, “as a dog returns to his vomit”[1] joyously hollow, exhaling from the nostrils with more oomph than usual, we do not holler with glee anymore but are now hollow with glee “like the bizarre euphoria after an hour’s vomiting”[2], but this too is a topic I must think on at an unspecified later…)

Anyways, the story I would’ve wrote went like this:

(Hang on, I should just note to you real quick that this sketch is, well, a sketch—as much for the artist’s future use as for the public’s consumption.)

Ahem. Anyways anyways, the story I would’ve wrote went like this:

You’ve read Deleuze, haven’t you? Postscript on Societies of Control?[3](If you haven’t I can’t blame you, he’s terminally French and not in the good way.) The whole inspiration for this thing was that a transgender mate of mine sent a link to a news article on a Discord server I (also transgender, and fresh from the Dandenong Mental Health Care Unit with Wellbutrin and a grudge,) was on. It was from Gamesradar, about an Autistic Savant for hacking being hospitalised for life after he leaked something or other related to Grand Theft Auto Six.[4] The text, unaltered, from my transgender mate, is as follows:

The autistic 18 year old responsible for the GTA 6 leaks will be locked away in a secure hospital for an indefinite period of time Because he wants to continually commit cybercrimes as soon as possible

He's an autistic savant of hacking and cybercrime

I reposted it to another Discord server, with the following commentary:

So apparently there's an 18 year old autistic savant for hacking who has hacked Nvidia and Microsoft in the past and he's being hospitalised for life after leaking GTA 6 stuff. This is so bizarre it's funny but it's also shit like this that perfectly outlined why I'm anti-psychiatry. It's a prison system for crimethink. Also, read Deleuze's "Postscript on Societies of Control", I know he has a reputation for being incomprehensible but this is a short and easy-to- understand read. Dividuals being punished in anticipation of crimes they may possibly commit related to unauthorised transmission of information. [Link to said text on The Anarchist Library.]

(Author’s note: We’re pretentious! Yes, haha! Young and irritating! I’m noting this with glee as I write.)

Now, enter a third transgender online mate:

he's friends with maia of hacking the no-fly-list fame[5]

i think i once joked that congress will put us all in mental hospitals if this keeps happening, so this tracks

And, Quoth I, like some fateful Cassandra: (the thought that started all this bother you’re now reading about, drumroll please…)

God I can see a dystopian future where the Republicans are like "trans people need to be killed" and the democrats are like "God that's too far, but look at the correlations between gender dysphoria and autism, depression, adhd, anxiety, etc.. Let's just hospitalise them." Trans people crowded into sanatoriums working on a shoestring budget, those few who wear the mask well enough to become outpatients too disillusioned to have hope of getting well and unsure if the answers they give are a mask or their real face, new neuroses springing from that... And a society of very concerned moderates debating to what extent the hospitalisation scheme could be improved.

I’ll need to develop that! That’s a very golden idea! I’m a good writer because I am developing this idea, and you’re not. But I’m not that good of a writer. So! I make sketches, so as to help me practice and that.[6] Our hero is a Transgender just like me. She’s the wrong type of transgender (unlike me), the cringey type, not so much Bigger Thomas as Blahaj Thomas[7], painful as the pun just there. She will be an outpatient in this stratified system of liberal compromise, one of the shining examples of the Utopian Solution to the Transgender Question.

(Author’s Note: As I’m writing this, I think back to how I told the psychiatrist at the Dandenong Mental Hospital that I couldn’t quite remember if I was diagnosed Schizoaffective. I think back to when I watched “Conspiracy”, a BBC docudrama made using the actual minutes from the Wannsee Conference[8]. I think of Croissants, another French invention with too many layers. I think of watching a video on my phone at Marie Bashir[9], another hospital, Plastic Pills (a youtuber) on Deleuze and Schizoanalysis[10]. Lines of flight between layers. I think of pretentiousness, using words and concepts you don’t have a right to know. I think of when I learned about Zen Koans, riddles you unravel to a solution you know but can’t explain because it just feels right.)

Anyways, anyways, what was I saying again? Oh yeah. In this dystopia our heroine will inhabit, the Republicans and Democrats have worked together rather like a Caduceus[11] to create a society of control, of prevention, of compromise, for the Transgender infection. The Transgender,(Capital T,) whom Nick Land rather astutely called the “jews of gender,” presents an exciting new problematic in the deaf-dumb-and-blind machine of Capital’s social controls. I vaguely remember Wallerstein talking about a “fuzzy border” theory.[12] Jews, in Wallerstein’s analysis of Antisemitism as-I-vaguely-remember-it, are capable of being absorbed into the “White” racial category when societally convenient. Yet there are signifiers remaining upon them that mark them as an “eternal outsider” ready to be scapegoated in times of social distress. I remember Wallerstein or Balibar or one of those bloody Continentals furthermore saying that the sociological function of bigotry is more or less to rank and stratify class society into a more modular, flexible, “fuzzy” collection of groups that can be ejected or absorbed; as ballast for the floating, headless, decomposing corpse of Capital and the blind and desperate ecosystem that feeds upon the corpse-wax. I might have added that last bit myself.

But Jews beget jews. There is a clear, unbroken line of matrilineal descent. The reason this problematic is so exciting is that nobody really knows what causes one to become transgender. It is abhorrent to say, but, in theory, “the jews” as an ethnic group could be wiped out. “Exterminate all the brutes”[13], the Nazis hoped, in theory if they were able to sever that line of matrilineal descent the jewish race would cease to be. (Reality interjects of course and says that genocide on such scale is so anti-human as to not be feasible, but genocidaires don’t really care much about what Reality says.) The Transgender cannot be wiped out permanently, pulled out at the root, it is an enemy/ally/thing-to-cry-over that has various manifestations and suppressions throughout the history of gender expression but always exists, at least as far as we know. A perfect enemy, a punching bag that always pops back up.

Anyways, anyways. The Republicans wanted to kill all Transgenders but this, like most genocides or genocide-adjacent-things, was unfeasible. The Democrats, concerned moderates that they are, saved the day and created a social welfare scheme. Recognising the correlation between Gender Dysphoria and things like Autism, Depression, Suicide Attempts (41%!), and maybe Schizo-spectrum disorders that the author is not quite sure she has, the Democrats set up a Bureau of Psychiatry that, in that typical strange American way, was instated for the good of the Gender-Diverse. I remember a fourth online transgender mate of mine sent me a copy of Fanon’s Wretched Of The Earth, and Black Skin, White Masks, as a Christmas present, that I read while staying at Marie Bashir Hospital and sadly left behind when I moved to Melbourne. I think I remember Fanon talking about how re-education was a particularly nasty form of torture, because one would be left unsure whether what they were saying was what they needed to say to get out of the torture, or what they honestly believed.

We observe things from the point of view of a concerned moderate looking in. Like an odd ant in a terrarium, our heroine has been detected to be infected with gender dysphoria, and autism, and is funnelled into the Bureau Of Psychiatry. They talk in a despicable and cringeworthy way about bits of very online transgender culture that they have absorbed; they are a simulacrum of woman, not woman itself. But as they are funnelled through the Bureau of Psychiatry they learn to answer various questions in so accurate a manner as to move to the top levels of the sorting algorithm of mental deficiency, and learn to put on an act to be as close to an ideal functioning human being as someone who has been marked with a mental disorder can be. Along the way, they become more and more removed from the vague psychic-emotional signifiers of womanhood that implanted their dysphoria to begin with. They wear the mask; the mask wears them.

[1]Proverbs 26:11

[2]A quotation appropriated from the TV series “Brass Eye”(1997)

[3]Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on Societies of Control”(1990)

[4]https://www.gamesradar.com/hacker-behind-gta-6-leak-will-be-confined-to-a-secure-hospital-for-life-due-to-his-intent-to-return-to-cybercrime-as-soon-as-possible/

[5]Maia Arson Crimew, high-profile transgender hacker who was put on trial for cyber-crimes; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maia_arson_crimew

[6]Pronounced “An’nat”, an affected Commonwealth vocal tic. Useless Information.

[7]Bigger Thomas, the thuggish, antisocial black protagonist of Richard Wright’s anti-racist novel “Native Son.” Blahaj, a blue plush shark sold by Ikea, stereotypically associated with “femboys” and a certain very online milieu of gender-diverse people that other transsexuals regard as “cringeworthy.”

[8]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wannsee_Conference

[9]The Professor Marie Bashir Centre, containing a mental health unit where the author was confined for a period of four months because they lacked a home to return to.

[10]Refer to the YouTube playlist Deleuze by Plastic Pills “All of the main Deleuze content from creator Plasticpills assembled in one place. Alongside the video intros, listen to some of the world's foremost experts in Deleuze studies advise how to approach these difficult texts. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx5jMl5-m5ZSyaYg7hTBynO6iDFlrDUtr

[11]Not to be confused with a Rod of Asclepius, the symbol of medicine. Quoth Wikipedia: “Although the Rod of Asclepius, which has only one snake and no wings, is the traditional and more widely used symbol of medicine, the Caduceus is sometimes used by healthcare organizations. Given that the caduceus is primarily a symbol of commerce and other non-medical symbology, many healthcare professionals disapprove of this use.”

[12]Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, “Race, Nation, Class:Ambiguous Identities”(1991)

[13]Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness.” The Unlucky number.

[brazenautomaton]

Given that the existence of biology-based gender dysphoria is the entire thing that causes and legitimizes being transgender, how can idealogues be surprised when transphobia increases the more that this fact is rejected and the more fluff is added to gender politiking?

I can't prove that but there is a correlation

I think there is a correlation but it's not a huge one because there's only a certain group of people this is really effective on because they're willing to accept the premises of trans activism enough to think it's wrong on its own terms.

but then again, it's like the whole thing where people were like "we shouldn't try to talk to trump supporters because they're all insane" and were only looking at the most insane Lizardman Constant of people, not realizing that their failure to talk to people wasn't making the Lizardman Constant people insane but was leaving other people so disillusioned and/or pissed off that they're willing to side with the Lizardman Constant-ers.

like an internally consistent conception of trans and gender that is aimed at describing reality instead of winning sociopath power games among People With Very Strong Opinions On Gender Politics wouldn't convince ron desantis to stop being a transphobic dickhead. but it would allow us to convince other people who are more reasonable to stop believing the things ron desantis says and supporting the things he does. with the current model of gender based on sociopath power games and pissing off normies, you literally cannot convince anyone who is not fully ideologically committed to being pro-trans to change their opinion without going "oh and you have to ignore the people who are visibly fighting for trans rights in order to be for trans rights."

[atcostmag]

Softmax - Swishers

The latest track since the release of her 2022 EP "But What If There Isn't?", Chicago-based producer and songwriter Softmax presents track "Swishers". A track borne from the pandemic, "Swishers" recalls the dysphoria of a paranoia-driven OCD relapse. Channeling memories of disillusion and discontent, the track manifests in the dark, heady spaciousness of a invigorating future R&B track. Detailed by the tower of gassing bass lines and the clunky percolation of flocculating synths, the track recalls imagery from congener Jillian Banks' (BANKS) earlier works from the mid 10's. Speaking of the track's motifs which recollects her anxiety over her privacy being infringed on by social media, Softmax had this to say about the track:

 “It’s about wanting to connect with the world and understand people while feeling further and further from it.”

Co-produced by Joel Ford (Oneohtrix Point Never, Ford and Lopatin, and How To Dress Well) and Berlin-based Gabriel Gifford, you can groove to the moody lush of Softmax's beat-driven R&B:

[yasudasayobutactuallyunlovable]

Most of how Aoko being transgender in one way or another would affect anything in Witch On the Holy Night would probably be school related. I'll get to how Alice, Soujuurou, Touko, and others would react but there wouldn't be any major differences I feel.

As we know, Aoko is harassed by boys before the main events of the novel until some dude stalks her to her house and she physically retaliates while nowhere near the school and she somehow gets suspended for it because it's Japan in the late 1980s. Even with all the money she has, it seems extremely unlikely even with magic or whatever that Aoko would be able to transition one way or another even if they did want to, and even then they probably wouldn't bring it up to strangers in the same vein that she isn't concerned about matters of sexuality due to busyness.

For the sake of for funsies though, let's imagine that she was transitioning so this entry won't be too boring. Whether Aoko be transitioning towards a more masculine or feminine body, if there were some way that anyone were to find out (given her personality and other secrecies such as being a mage among other issues that could arise, I highly doubt Aoko would bring it up themself), the sexual harassment issue would probably solve itself albeit with a potentially different issue which could still lead to her having to assault somebody perhaps less close to her house and closer to the school or the town.

If people were to know, the scene with Aoko being tricked into drinking and putting on a sexual bunny costume (Nasu please keep your fucking dick in your pants for future writings please) would be far less likely to happen if they were a trans boy and of negligible possibility if they were a trans girl cause different transphobia dynamics. Their life as a part of the school council or whatever might also be more difficult if not impossible due to discrimination that would depend on both the faculty and the students.

Outside of school stuff though, the most plot relevant difference per se would be Aoko's feelings for Soujuurou and how they navigate it and Soujuurou's reaction to it. Aoko would in some form or another, especially if they're camab but also if they're cafab (coercively assigned male and female at birth respectively), be aware of how Soujuurou may potentially react to their feelings after questioning him at the rundown fair or whatever it was, and before then they would wonder whether they knew or how they knew and who told and how they could have feelings for someone like them and so on.

Soujuurou himself might react badly for a moment if he saw Aoko as a man and maybe didn't know they were cafab or knew that they were camab some way or another given that one no homo scene with blonde haired what's his name (he might be the one to out Aoko now that I think about it). The bad reaction would only be brief though and other than Aoko potentially being disillusioned by the idea of them ever being together even before the scene where Soujuurou is in their room and says something that upsets Aoko, not much would change. Maybe Aoko would be more discomforted by the idea of Soujuurou seeing and reacting badly to their body when they're being healed in the church given the added dynamic of being trans and potential body dysphoria, but nothing beyond that.

Alice would probably know before anyone else other than Touko and nothing would change much. Maybe they'd have more separation with clothes or something but nothing particularly relevant.

Touko would definitely know but probably wouldn't give a shit given who she is as a person with her scientific background, peculiar humanitarinism and morals outside of the hatred towards her younger sibling, and the fact that this is literally the same character that passes herself on via dolls with no existential crisis from her and her successive bodies whatsoever. If anything she'd be Aoko's biggest ally if she didn't hate them so much, maybe give them a new body even.

Blonde haired what's his name would probably be the rudest about it if at all but wouldn't actively hate them or anything. Again, he'd be the most likely to out Aoko to Soujuurou if it were to happen given story events but less out of direct malice so much as transphobia influenced concern for Soujuurou. He might not do this cause he knows Aoko would kill him but he still might maybe, comes off as a guy that can't keep his mouth shut much. Not much else would change though, and he might even defend Aoko's position in student council on the basis of their hardwork and effort.

Kuma would still find Aoko hot. I don't have much to gauge how she'd react to being trans but she's definitely bi and would probably be at least a little attracted to them still even if they were transphobic, hell they'd probably in theory keep their bunny suit picture still.

The church people might be transphobic but they wouldn't be able to do anything about it due to political circumstances. The nun lady might still misgender them though.

That's about all I can think of for Aoko at least in Witch on the Holy Night. For added extensiveness, if they were trans in Tsukihime in one way or another, they wouldn't bring it up and it wouldn't really change anything or how Shiki sees them. At the most if it came up somehow, Shiki would be nice and supportive by virtue of being a nine year old at the time who looks up to them in some way or another, and would probably cause him to be progressive about trans people at an early age or even discover that they're trans earlier if you were to headcannon that as well. Wish there were sequels to examine as well but there's quite a bit to think about as is.

[drdemonprince]

is it (internally too I guess) transphobic of me to be cautious dating someone who just started transitioning?

I don't want my opinions and preferences on how femmes look to be a factor as a tme non-binary femme. I don't want or need her to change herself (or not!) in a certain way, to be clear; I just assume that attraction can fluctuate for both of us and she is the kind of person to take relationships seriously quite quickly. can't tell if I'm overthinking it.

if that's too specific and/or obviously fucked up (I'm honestly not sure) I'm super sorry. my gender presentation stuff is a hornet's nest I am not addressing as nothing helps so I'm really happy for her.

thanks for reading

I think this is actually a really lovely and conscientious question and that your fears are reasonably founded!

The early years of transition are quite emotionally perilous for people and they try our romantic relationships quite heavily; there's a reason I've seen prominent trans people on Twitter claiming that you should end your relationship the moment you come out and begin to transition. I don't fully agree with that advice, but I think a lot of people who try to bluster through an existing relationship while transitioning do end up living to regret it, myself included. I tried to transition gradually to make all the shifts bearable for my partner and me, but that only fomented resentment and insecurity on my end and complete bafflement about how far this was all gonna "go" on my ex's end and ultimately it just meant we drifted apart painfully over the course of years instead of swiftly. it wasn't pretty.

During the first couple of years of transition, people try on all kinds of new styles and presentations, explore new sexual roles, try on different mannerisms, join new friend groups, adopt new self-narratives and frames on past events, and much more. And it's also an incredibly vulnerable time in terms of physical safety out in public AND emotional safety in bearing one's evolving self to close loved ones, and even the slightest reaction from another person can have massive ripple-effects on how we view ourselves and the 'success' of our transitions for a long period afterward.

I think it's very wise and appropriate for you to be concerned that your own reactions to your partner's transition might unduly influence them! I have seen T4T couples with bad boundaries erupt into chaos over this kind of thing in so many ways.

Sometimes the babier trans in the relationship molds herself too much on her more seasoned partner's transition and personal style. Other times, the babier trans leans heavily on the more experienced trans partner for advice and psychological transition related doula-ing, leaving the more experienced trans partner feeling used (Casey Plett has a lot of short stories about this dynamic! check out A Dream of a Woman for a story about a trans girl who becomes disillusioned with her cute, sweet, perfectly supportive cis boyfriend the moment she realizes he isn't so cis, and then ends things). I've even seen trans-trans couples break up in a hail of drama and abuse accusations, all because one partner was triggered by the (misgendering kink) porn preferences of the other partner.

There are so many ways to be trans, and each one of us who has been trans for a while has a lot of strong opinions about the subject. Even if in theory we support the body autonomy and self-expression of every other trans person, in practice we come to relationships with a mess of dysphoria triggers, trauma responses, aesthetic preferences, medical know-how, load-bearing neuroses, and sexual role hang ups to bear, and sometimes when our existing soft spots bash up against a newly-transitioning person's raw wounds, it hurts everybody.

I think it might be easier for you to know this newly-out trans person as a friend than as a romantic partner at this time. It sounds like your gut is telling you something like that, too. You mentioned that she gets attached very quickly. She's in a really open, raw position right now and will probably need a lot of support as she transitions, and she might also be really desperate for approval and for feelings of safety because of it too. And you're not bad or transphobic for wanting to avoid getting wrapped up in all that.

I think it's really big of you to recognize you have your own hang-ups and that they might unconsciously influence her and how her transition goes, too. a lot of trans people don't interrogate how their own expectations and baggage might radiate into their partners (for instance, a lot of TME nonbinaries with trans femme partners pressure those partners into staying masculine to some degree, and keeping their penises sexually available to them for penetration, and it's really harrowing and traumatic). I don't get the vibe you're the type to do anything like that and I don't even know if you're TME, but you get the idea. Trans people aren't inherently pure, we hurt one another and turn one another into symbols of what we desire and what we fear and what's hurt us when really we should be regarding each other as distinct people.

It's fine to not want to date someone newly transitioning. Do you know how many gay people I've met who've said they'll never date newly out or questioning people again? A ton! Being with someone who is newly out requires a lot of patience and emotional caretaking, and some people have no taste for that or aren't equipped to do it, and that's fine. I'd be disinclined to date someone newly out for the most part too, at least if they were also trans masc. I'd be too afraid of accidentally punishing them for reminding me of my earlier self, and that's not fair.

[genderisareligion]

~10 years ago, I was trans. Back then we knew we had a mental illness. We felt our bodies didn’t match our minds. We hoped changing our bodies would give us as much peace as possible, but we knew we couldn’t actually become the sex we wanted. I wished gay men and straight women would want me bc I wished I had a male body, but I knew I didn’t, and wouldn’t have imagined holding it against them. We all felt that way. Now instead of dysphorics, our movement has become overrun w/ antiscience rapists

I've been looking into this long enough to see this shift happen with my own two. It is disappointing that the transsexual/"transmed" community got demonized. Even while I hate gender and think it's a harmful placebo that benefits way less people than it harms, I still have sympathy for some people who believe in it the same way I feel about religious women as I used to be one. I've been struggling with anorexia most of my life and that has come with bouts of dysmorphia which I understand is distinct from dysphoria but similar enough that I know it's not always something that can just be "unbelieved in." It feels very real even if it's not and since the solution is impossible it can take a long time to heal from.

Before 2020 I considered myself a transmed ally and was especially reading/sharing content from FTMs because the only trans person I knew IRL was a transmed FTM (although he didn't call himself that and didn't even know what a TERF was when I asked lol fucking bless I love normies). Then the white supremacist shit happened (pinned post, some other shit a few weeks after that) as well as January 6th 2021 and I became officially disillusioned with all of gender. I still support him from over here because he's normal about his shit and is actually one of these people whose dysphoria and life quality did improve from going stealth but I'm also a staunch believer in "If there were no gender there'd be no dysphoria." (I'm not saying the fact that butch lesbians sometimes have easier lives as passing men is like fucking right or anything, just pointing out the objective fact I witnessed + he told me, that people left him alone more often and he was happier for that at least).

Does wanting gender abolished mean I think physical intervention is always unnecessary? For HRT and even some* reduction surgeries, not necessarily, I think it can depend on the severity (*SRS below the belt is pretty inhumane as it stands now but ethics in the plastic surgery world aren't what they are in the non elective world). I think it should be an absolute last resort and that a lot of people with dysphoria could go without and get some extensive form of therapy instead if our society wasn't so violently capitalistic via medicine, wasn't putting suffering people through an automated surgical assembly line to avoid doing the real work of trauma recovery. Trauma these people received from just like being born into violent capitalism and its sexism which of course the capitalists don't want to acknowledge so they tell you it's about your "gender identity"

Unfortunate trans is becoming synonymous with anti science and rape apologism because there used to be more to it than that