#Gender is a social construct! it's taught!

[shinigami-social]

Hi, big fan of this response overall, let me cover a quick thing before getting more in depth:

I think the biggest thing I need to specify is that I am not transfem and do not identify as transfem. I am a transsexual man, and I would consider myself FTM or ITM. I am not arguing that my experiences are transfeminine, and I actually think your response really helps clarify a number of my points on the nature of intersexism and misogyny that results in this experience so frequently related to transmisogyny.

Point 1 being said, people with my intersex variation get assigned male all the time. It’s usually considered a “female” condition (because one has XX chromosomes usually), but it has a spectrum appearance and does not immediately result in someone being AFAB, nor does it immediately result in someone being CTF. These two things being different is also something your reply fails to really get into, but they do result in different life experiences. A person can be AFAB and CTM which results in a relationship with transfemininity due to the fact that every part of their life outside of a single moment at their birth assigns them to the role of male, and a person can be AMAB and CTF and therefore experience a relationship with transfemininity due to the fact that, regardless of any bioessentialist viewpoints, they have been socially put into the male category. And there will be people in both these categories who do not have a relationship to transfemininity because the intersex experience is deeply varied. While most perisex people and many intersex people are assigned a sex/gender once at birth, many intersex people are either/both

Medically/legally reassigned later in life (their variation is discovered, new information about it comes up, as they grow up an attempt is made to “match” their sex to their appearance)

Socially reassigned. They may have been assigned a gender at birth, but the world doesn’t know what that is, and intersex people constantly move through the world being treated as different things in different contexts. There are, even if you have never considered it before, people who AFAB whose life experiences are otherwise the same as a perisex AMAB transfem, because being intersex simply doesn’t allow for absolutes.

All this being said, I generally agree with the bulk of your response. I feel that the experiences I talked about are, as I said, relation. There are similarities and parallels, but it also isn’t the same thing. I think that, as you mentioned, it can result in a type of solidarity, but at the same time, it leaves out the fact that transfeminine intersex people who have the actual same experiences do exist. AGAB cannot be the sole event used to define a person’s relationship to these constructs, especially when, and I am aware this isn’t common but it does happen, intersex people are not always even assigned a gender.

I didn’t share my experiences to prove I am transfem, but to provide context for the type of experiences I see many people use as evidence for what they think makes them transfem. It is, however, the entire point of my post to say that those experiences are classic intersexism and intermisogyny from, using the terminology you have taught me here, intersex people people who have always experienced misogyny from within womanhood. Not all intersex people have this experience, including not all intersex people with my condition.

So for all this, I’d like to clarify once again that this post was ultimately meant to be about the ways in which intersex people with these experiences communicate their relationship to womanhood, because I don’t think transfeminine is the word for this specific relationship. I think intersex is the word, but for whichever reasons, people struggle to identify that as the answer.

I hope this all made sense, like I said in the original post, I really did want exactly this: a proper and healthy discussion.

This is probably going to be massively controversial, but I just feel like it needs to be said at this point. I desperately need people to read this very carefully and approach this in good faith. General blanket warning for intersexism, transphobia, and intersectional misogyny with both of these I just wonder how many people in the intersex community just like… fundamentally don’t understand the way being intersex impacts your gender. I know that sounds fucking wild because obviously being intersex impacts your gender but like… it feels like a lot of people reach for comparisons to the binary over just, like, the label intersex itself. The thing on my mind in particular is the stark difference in what transfemininity seems to mean inside and outside the intersex community. This isn’t to refer to AMAB and/or CTM intersex transfems, but in particular people who were AFAB and/or CTF.

I want to clarify before I get into the main body of this post that I fully believe people can be AFAB and/or CTF and be transfem. This post isn’t to say that this never happens, no one ever experiences the combination of these two* things, or that people who identify this way are wrong for it. I just want to open up a discussion about why people are identifying this way, I guess. It’s not about invalidating anyone or their experiences, on the contrary, I really want to discuss the varied nature of the intersex experience.

I was AFAB, and I would generally consider myself CTF. I have simple virilizing classic CAH. I experienced many of the events which a lot of people talk about as why they relate to the transfem experience or consider themselves to be transfem. I grew up with a tenuous connection to girl/womanhood at best, I had the locker room harassment, I was widely rumored to be a hermaphrodite and transgender (no one could decide in which direction), I was put into situations specifically to attempt to uncover my “real” sex/gender. Even when I was seen as a girl/woman, I was Wrong about it. When I was seen as a boy/man, it was before I had ever come to terms with that identity for myself, and it was instead something thrust on me against my will for being a girl/woman Wrong. I was, for much of my life, locked out of womanhood in various ways.

I can very easily understand why people with experiences such as these would relate to transfemininity (and on a “relation” basis, yes, I would say I relate), and perhaps even identify with it based on how these sorts of things impacted them in particular. That being said… I have never understood why people think this is somehow not just being intersex. I’m not trying to say it can’t possibly be both, but sometimes it feels like people just refuse to acknowledge that this is a very common experience of the intersection of misogyny and intersexism. There are certainly transmisogynistic elements to it, I think transmisogyny and intersexism are deeply intertwined and always have been, but like… to act like this is solely transmisogyny feels like a denial of the intersex experience. For intersex people who were AFAB, are CTF, and/or likely some other types of intersex people depending on their circumstances, this is entirely par for the course because they are intersex. The things I described are, above all else, intersexist in nature. They happen to people for being intersex. There are aspects reminiscent of transmisogyny and perhaps even motivated by transmisogyny in many cases, but this distinct experience that I see many, many intersex people have experienced, it is to me such a classic experience of growing up intersex.

This is to say nothing of the appropriation of the transfem experience (no, I’m not accusing you or anyone else specifically of doing this, if it doesn’t apply to you, it doesn’t apply to you, but yes some people are objectively doing this). I am not focused on that. It is its own separate issue, but the thing I am trying to communicate here is why people struggle to find themselves in the word intersex when the thing that caused them these traumas is being intersex. The denial of intersexness and intersexism as explanations for the experiences directly caused by being intersex. The need to use terms broadly conceived of within perisex communities to describe perisex experiences of sex and gender to describe experiences inherently outside of the perisex view. To me, it seems like there is a very clear difference between using intersex transfem to describe “I have Klinefelter and also I am a trans woman” and “due to my experiences with PCOS, my relationship with femininity is deeply complicated and I use transfem as a sort of code for reclaiming my womanhood that I feel has been denied to me.” And like. I am not saying that these couldn’t possibly both be transfem experiences! I am not the decider of what makes people transfem, and it’s not really my business at the end of the day, but these are still just like, objectively different concepts being described. This is what I meant at the beginning of the post by the inside-outside usage of the term. It feels like transfem, in intersex spaces, is often used as a shorthand to describe a specific relationship to femininity and womanhood and this relationship is not necessarily “transitioning to femininity.” At the same time, it feels like it is being used this way because in some way, perhaps, the community is lacking in language that adequately communicates “my being intersex locked me out of womanhood, even though womanhood is what I was assigned and expected to conform to” which is, to me, a fundamental difference between most (not all, I’m aware we cannot ever make absolute statements when it comes to intersex experiences) AFAB/CTF and AMAB/CTM transfem experiences.

To me, I feel that intersex does adequately express these sentiments. Or, at least, it can if you let it. Intersex people pretty much inherently experience a complicated relationship to their sex and gender, and I wish we were allowed to talk about this without there being an obligatory comparison of how every intersex experience is always analogous to some equivalent transgender experience. Intersexism is intersexism, and intersex people experience it because we are intersex, and maybe we should fucking talk about that sometimes.

[zipper-neck]

Trans Rules of Engagement

By Florence Ashley

Strong communities make us all safer. As anti-trans movements gain in power and influence, holding space for each other through our flaws remains critical. Yet the very conditions that create our need for community care make it hard for us to care for each other. We are raw, wounded, traumatized, and hypervigilant. We make mistakes brought on by fear and hurt. We lash out at each other when we do wrong, often partaking in pile-ons facilitated by the synchronous nature of online interactions. Whether we realize it or not, we often exclude trans people from community when they need it most.

I have lost count of the number of trans people I have seen cast out of online trans spaces for misdeeds both major and minor—far too often with my help. I sometimes find myself wondering where they are now and whether they are still alive. Because, as Kai Cheng Thom has taught us, social death often means real death for trans people. Trans communities are life-sustaining in a world that hates us so, so much. In a world that wants us dead. We have lost too many people not to stop and think about how we can foster life among each other.

This goal I have for myself—that of fostering life—motivates the following principles and rules for engaging in online intra-community conflicts while preserving the life-sustaining spirit of our communities. Countless times have I failed to heed these principles and ignored these rules. This failure, which many of us share, is precisely why I now want to lay these principles and rules down on paper. If only as a reminder of my aspirations. The principles and rules are meant to be adopted for oneself, not imposed onto others. Their purpose is to foster productive engagement, not create even more conflict and rigidity. I hope that this will be a living document, and invite you to make your own version if you would like. Borrow what is useful, supplement with what is needed, alter what can be improved.

Some, and perhaps all, of the principles I acknowledge are false, hence the need for a living document. Each of my suggested rules have exceptions. In setting them out, I am staking a claim as to the sort of myths and half-truths that are necessary to sustain life in a world that wants us dead. We must treat them as true if we wish to foster life-sustaining communities and survive the hellscape we belabor.

Principles

1. We are all flawed, traumatized humans at the end of their rope. Many of our actions say more about the conditions we live under than who we are as people.

2. No one is disposable. No one is unsalvageable.

3. Life holds greater value than being right or comfortable. Hurt is preferable to death.

4. No one should be deprived of community.

5. Harm does not require further harm. Punishment does not equate protection or healing.

Rules

1. Do not depart from these rules, unless you have to.

2. Morgan M. Page’s Rule: Try to avoid criticizing other trans people in public. The world does it enough already.

3. Favor in person or private conversations: Addressing someone’s comments or actions in person or privately is typically more constructive and effective. It allows you to communicate more cogently and with more nuance problems in someone’s actions or words and because it is less likely to make them react defensively from a place of trauma or fear.

4. Take your time: Few things require an immediate response. Responding while caught in a surge of thoughts and feelings is often unproductive. Ask yourself how much harm was done, versus how much we are reminded of an earlier harm. Ask whether your response is rooted in misperception or potential biases towards the person due to race, disability, gender, or other marginalized identities. Consider whether their words or actions reflect a different kind of thinking or communication style, a lack of access to education, or limited access to progressive communities and norms. You can respond tomorrow, once you have collected your thoughts, talked to others, and gained perspective.

5. Don’t mob: Be aware of group dynamics. Ask yourself if you are connected to this person and in community with them. Avoid jumping into the fray when others are already criticizing the person. Do not invite others to join in and mob them. Withdraw if others join in, and kindly ask people to stay conscious of mobbing dynamics. Mobbing rapidly grows out of proportion.

6. De-escalate: Focus on de-escalating conflicts. Ask what people mean or want, and why. Ask them for clarification or elaboration if needed. Ask yourself if you know enough about the context of the situation. Distinguish the action from the person, and acknowledge that it is normal to respond defensively or aggressively to public criticism and mobbing. People are traumatized, mentally ill, and are scared of losing the little social support they have. As a result, conflict can trigger a fight-or-flight response in both those who are criticized and who criticize, which leads to escalating conflict and ends in a loss of community. Dropping the conversation to return at a later date is preferable to escalation. Often, I find it best to limit myself to three replies in conversations that aren’t constructive.

7. Respond proportionately: Responses to words and behaviours should be proportionate to their harm, and reflect a need for healing and protection rather than punishment. When we speak from a place of hurt, we can understandably but unfortunately forget the measure and impact of our response. Use language that reflects the nuances and gradations of harm rather than a coarse good and evil binary. Cutting all social support and community banishment are rarely a proportionate response, even for someone who doubles down and does not apologize. Responding proportionately is asking first and foremost what response sustains rather than dissolves life. Especially when it comes to words, it is better to under-react than to over-react.

8. Ensure support for everyone: Check in on those who are criticized and those who criticize them. Remind people that we are all in this together, and that banishment is not how we work as a community. Everyone deserves to have their needs met. Do not shun or reproach people who offer support to those who were criticized or called out. Distinguish supporting a person from enabling their behavior.

9. Hold space for people to grow: Allow space for people to be accountable, change, and move on from previous conflicts. Do not hold past behavior over people’s head, nor dig up past misdeeds to fuel present conflicts.

10. Resolve conflict and harm as a community: We must ask how our communities enable and cause hurt and harm, and find ways to transform the conditions that create them. Holding accountable, problem-solving, and conflict resolution are functions that should be taken up by the collective, not isolated and unsupported individuals.

11. Center those most hurt or harmed: Focus on supporting and empowering people who are hurt and harmed rather than on punishment. Ask what they need to be safe and integrated in our communities, while committing to support for everyone; what they need to repair their relationship to the person who hurt or harmed them. Focus your involvement on bringing people together, fostering dialogue and mutual understanding, and restoring a sense of community togetherness, rather than deciding who is right or wrong.♦

[wraithdance]

https://www.tumblr.com/wraithdance/765961917651140608/i-really-liked-your-explanation-of-the-whole?source=share

I am really bad at articulating my thoughts but I think about this a lot as someone who hopes to 1- major in neuroscience (i'm 18, going to uni next year) and 2- is trans. I know being trans is not the same thing at all as POC experiences with fic, very cognizant of that, but more to the point where I relate to the aspect of not being able to get over the like mental wall of seeing "neutral" readers as me? I don't know what my brain is doing when i read certain fics but sometimes i can't do it.

I feel like I should close read some of my favorite fic and least favorite fic to see if there are triggers I didn't notice on the first read. does that make sense or seem similar to what you experience? Again I know it's not the same thing, but like i am so curious as to what cis straight white people put in their fic that makes it so obvious that they're cis straight white.

I am sorry if this bothers you, really not my intentions, I am obviously a future brain nerd and i can't stop thinking about this

Congratulations fellow Nerd! You've activated my interest in Race theory and fandom writing from an academic perspective!

Writing reflects life and to answer this question properly, I have to talk about life shit to catch you up to speed, (this should help if you take a sociology or cultural anthropology class lmao) So, Welcome to:

Calvary yaps: Sociology & Intersectionality in fandom writing 101!

Disclaimer: I'm just a random bitch on the internet who loves English and the ridiculousness of social hierarchies, this will be referencing American social constructs and in groups only, with a focus on my experience as a Black American woman who reads a shit ton of books. Don't fight me if you hate my explanation, I will simply not respond.

Read my house rules before sending me an ask, I'm just being a dumb ass rn and word vomiting my interests, so pls i beg no follow up questions unless I say I'm open to em later.

Definitions to know:

Socialization: the act of preparing individuals to participate in society by learned social norms taught in ones family or social settings like school/friend groups. (one can be socialized in gender, race, cultural practices, etc.)

Social Hierarchies: systems of social organization in which some individuals enjoy a higher social status than others (in my opinion this is a lingering safety measure from lizard brain cavemen hunter/gatherer days)

Intersectionality: A term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw; The process of acknowledging the unique parallels a marginalized person experiences when they have more than one marginalization (ie: race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, size, etc.)

Matriarchal society: Social groups/family structures that center female figures as representatives of authority.

Implicit Bias: Unintentional bias a person may have towards a group or individual based on learned stereotypes, prejudices, perceptions based on another's background or state of being.

first, yes anon you are making sense! So the main question:

'What cis straight white people put in their fic that makes it so obvious that they're cis straight white?'

I've been mulling this question around in my head for a few days and tried to figure out how to articulate this without going into depth in Sociological theory, but I can't! So here we are lmao, this is long as fuck so TLDR here.

I've talked to a LOT of Black and PoC people over the last months because I thought I was the only one who felt strange or could tell immediately when a writer was white, despite doing the best job they could to be neutral.

Every person I spoke to agreed they could tell right away even if we don't share similar racial backgrounds.

The answer I've come up with to why that is, is because white people are socialized (taught by society/their parents how to behave) in a way many black and PoC people are not, so their reader characters will often act in a way PoC people have learned not to, so it flags for many of us.

I plan to answer another question about this at a later date so an example is with shit like:

An over deference to hyper masculine male characters (for PoC cultures like certain Black/Latine groups that are often matriarchal in nature and don’t ascribe to as many traditional gender roles, this is a flag), lack of interpersonal/familial connection, over meekness, no challenging of external factors so things just HAPPEN to the reader and lack of awareness of surroundings to name a few. 

A lot of the language of the irl world places white cis people from Western countries as the default and everyone else as others. In which, PoC people have learned to navigate the world very carefully with a hyper-focus on what will potentially bring them harm/scrutiny/ostracism especially in white dominant spaces.

That extends to when we have down time while reading or partaking in media smfh.

I'm sure you've had to learn the same as a trans person navigating cis spaces and it's the same with any marginalization! If you are disabled you have an awareness of able bodied people and their expectations, same with being fat amongst skinny people, etc.

The more marginalizations you have, the louder the rules of social hierarchies become. Which is why many marginalized ppl stick close to those who 'get it' in their social groups as an act of safety in numbers. (Many of us attempt to have strong family connection/harmony because of this)

So referring to your comment about being trans is not the same thing at all as POC experiences with fic, it is when you are a Black or PoC trans person! My angel face @/buttdumplin has spoken a lot about that as a Mexican transman reading fics by cis people!

(Please for the love of God no one come to me explaining how marginalized they are so they shouldn't be lumped in with the white ppl PoC are cognizant of, I will check myself into a psych ward)

So what does that gotta do with reading fics?

No matter what anyone thinks, it is damn near impossible to not frame your writing from the perspective of your lived experiences. It's why even when I try my hardest to make my characters not sound Black, they will always read that way because I have been Black all of my life!

And it doesn't just happen with race, go on tiktok and search male authors writing women. (or here's another article lmao)

Also ask a Southerner how they know someone has never been to the South and don't know shit about our accents when they write Graves. There are linguistic tells that flag off and why we flame actors who pick up southern accents for their roles.

(They chew on that terrible goddamn Appalachian or Louisiana Accent not realizing Southern accents come in many fonts.)

So when I read a fic about Kyle Garrick from a non black person, I can tell the writer is non black by linguistic implications, the things they emphasize about him and what they don't. It doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy reading fics from non black people, I can just tell!

And sometimes that means I, and other PoC's associate the Reader as a white OC while reading fics.

For example, all black people are not monolithic because of our cultural and regional experiences, but many of us share common threads. That's usually family involvement, colloquialisms, that stupid fucking cookie tin our elders put sewing supplies in...

Other non Black PoC people might share similar cultural practices, so when I'm reading fics from say a latina, I will cock my head and go wait.... are you...? And surely enough, they are a person of color. 

But even while reading from a non black PoC, I have to tread carefully because anti black sentiment exists in many cultures, which is why you'll hear me say Black and PoC/Non black people interchangeably.

It’s how the conversation of Implicit bias comes up, because unknowingly non white characters can sometimes be written with a hyper focus that makes them seem inhumanly one characteristic or with little to no background while the other characters are fully fleshed out.

like the character of color is just a stand in to move the plot around white characters forward. 

So all that to say, without sometimes meaning to white writers will always sound off to me in a way that my brain can pick up on in the most minuscule ways because my awareness of my blackness/otherness has been drilled in from birth and reinforced by social norms.

I can even tell immediately if a white person has been around only white spaces their whole life with the jokes they tell lol.

In the grand scheme of things the race of the writer is most important to me when something jarring comes up that slaps me away from the experience, it explains so much of the disconnect.

Every marginalized person has a threshold for what they can ignore as a ‘trigger’ before they’re ejected from reader inserts, mine is usually the association with racial historical happenings, certain gender dynamics, etc.

It's why I mention crying like a little bitch when I read my friend Jess's (Kyletogaz) TF 141 Hair series, Dragon’s (Dragonnarative-writes) Transferrable Skills, and even Xavi's (Buttdumplin) Piercing fic.

Reading those fics felt like safety and familiarity. It was a moment where I realized I could drop the mental load I had no idea I was carrying, where I was trying to prepare myself for potential emotional damage and just READ.

It's also why as a Black person who fucks with kink and sex work it's been so touch and go when navigating dark fics/kink fics/fics about Sex workers.

Because there are different rules of engagement non white kinksters have to be aware of and that leads to a point on the collective vs. Individual experience as a PoC in kink, that I’ll eventually make a post about at some point or another. Maybe…

So yeah I’m tired of yapping. I hope this long shit was enough of an explanation!! Thanks to my friends Kiko, Jules, Xavi and Folded for yapping with me so I could articulate this better!!

[shveris]

incorrect quotes collection, part 3

today i bring you: things that definitely happened in the canon (trust me i'm gege's pc)

part 1 part 2

megumi: any room can be a panic room if you’d just give me a fucking second

sukuna, during the heian period: i was born for politics. i have great hair and i love lying

noritoshi: poison is a magic transmutation potion that turns people into corpses

miwa: this katana is actually a magic wand

momo: meet me in the inageya parking lot for a wizard duel

mai: *cocks gun* magic missile

kokichi: what the fuck is wrong with you people

yuuji: do you guys hear something?

sukuna: i hear the sound of you shutting the fuck up

satoru: what does 'take out' mean?

shoko: murder

haibara: dating

nanami: food

suguru: it can mean all three if you’re not a coward

shoko, on the phone with suguru: they’re in the kitchen again

satoru, in the background: “beat 3 eggs”… in what? hand to hand combat?

haibara, in the background: must be since nanami banned technique usage in the kitchen last thursday, remember?

suguru: gET THEM OUT OF THERE

megumi: goddamn it, the printer broke while printing out yuuji’s birthday invitations

maki: well, what are they supposed to say

megumi: “yuuji’s birthday”

panda: what do they say instead?

megumi: “yuuji's bi”

toge:

nobara: works out either way

sukuna: do you prefer gendered terms?

yuuji: i guess so

sukuna: fuck you

yuuji: where was the gendered term?

sukuna: in your mom

yuuji:

yuuji: my mom got dicked down by your twin which you ate in the womb

sukuna:

satoru: goodness me, it’s the perfect day for our hiking trip! bless mother nature

megumi, out of breath: mother nature is a WHORE

yuuji: what’s up guys? i’m back

megumi: what the- you can’t be here. you’re dead. i literally saw you die

sukuna: death is a social construct

satoru: died and came back as a cowboy, i call that reintarnation

nobara: wow, i don’t even get the joke but it sounds funny

megumi: that’s nOT. THE. FUCKING. POINT.

nobara: what the fuck yuuji, what are you doing here!?

yuuji: i missed you guys!

megumi: you just survived a car crash

nobara: the doctors said you have internal bleeding

yuuji: yeah, and? isn’t that where blood’s supposed to be?

megumi: i need to sit down…

these two are how yuuji's comeback should've went...

shoko: yeah, i'll smoke a joint tonight, but let's not get too crazy

*4 hours forward to shoko, suguru and satoru getting arrested for blocking the main road in large traffic cone costumes*

nobara: the only thing i'm guilty of is being gorgeous… and also assault with a hammer

satoru, on the night of the war delcaration: suguru, i’m sorry. i can’t keep seeing you anymore

suguru: no shit, you’re always wearing that blindfold

satoru: suguru… no…

nanami: gojo, we have a problem

satoru: what, the fire?

nanami: no, the- wait, what fire?

satoru: oh forget about it, this sounds more interesting

shoko: that was a joke. say ha

nanami: ha

shoko: now do it again

nanami: ha

shoko: congratulations, you are officially the life of the party

satoru: i would let you ruin my life

suguru: sorry, i’m busy ruining my own. you’ll have to wait

satoru, turning to suguru: my dick stopped breathing. it’s in desperate need of cpr

suguru: you’re in desperate need of a beating

shoko: or a lobotomy

suguru: both

shoko: if the beating is hard enough, it’ll count as a lobotomy

satoru: i always knew you guys were homophobic

satoru: none of those words are in the bible

shoko: psalm 119:105. “and jesus said unto his followers, should a manlet incel attempt to mansplain the blockchain to a girlboss, may she waste his time and yassify his blorbos”

suguru: he did not fucking say that

megumi: i taught my dog a new trick *throws ball* fetch!

dog: *just stands there*

noabara: he didn’t do it

megumi: that's because i taught him to ignore social conventions and think for himself

suguru: i’d kill someone if you asked me to

satoru: i’m pretty sure you’d kill someone even if i didn’t ask you to

megumi: if bees can be fish and boys can be girls, then why did my dad sell me to the zen'in clan?

nobara: i thought i was going to have to yell at you, but now i think i should hug you

sukuna, on yuuji's cheek: the real secret to immortality? not dying. you want to be immortal? okay, that’s easy. just don’t die. that’s it. refuse to die. there you go.

yuuji: but how-

sukuna, ignoring him: “but how” you may ask. well, easy. just don’t do it. refuse to. say “no, fuck you”

nobara: i'm not creepy

nobara: i'm petty

nobara: there's a difference, ya know

waiter: what would you like?

yuuji: a milkshake with two straws

megumi: *blushes*

yuuji: *puts both straws in his mouth* watch how fast i can drink this!

haibara: ieri-san, is that my mug you’re drinking out of?

shoko: no, it’s mine

haibara: it… looks just like the one i have…

shoko: you don’t have one like this anymore

megumi: i'm a witch. i mixed some herbs and crystals together and now all my shikigami know the f-word

nobara: which one?

megumi: what do you mean?

nobara: there's more than one f-word

yuuji, entring the room: you talkin' 'bout faggots?

megumi: why would we talk about cigarettes?

sukuna: i'll offer you some friendly advice-

yuuji: i don't want your advice

sukuna: well, then consider it unfriendly advice

jjk manga ends in 30 days which means i'm gonna nap on the highway after that last chapter drops :muscle:

[kindalikerackham]

okayyyyy fine (I say to the maybe 3 people interested) I'll talk about Dr. Tanaka, and the show's (Bones 2005) response to them

[disclaimer: my perspective is someone late 20s, white, & nonbinary, as well as biased to see the good in this show. I may not have the same perspective on these examples as someone else]

[also I wrote this for fun! so it's not like an airtight argument or anything]

so.. I wasn't surprised by the team's reaction to a person who doesn't conform to gendered standards (obsession with figuring out if they were really a man or a woman, culminating in a hug just to feel their chest), for 2 main reasons:

I. Bones is a show about awkward (usually contextually privileged) people with good hearts, and it expresses this core sentiment over and over again using microaggressions:

The little person from the State Department (Alex Radziwill) is called a midget, and Bones ignorantly accosts him about how he approaches his job. It's done in the context of Booth and Bones reacting weirdly to him. By her saying ignorant things that force Booth to confront his own weirdness, they eventually reach an equilibrium with Radziwill, where they treat him like a normal contentious coworker. It's really uncomfortable, and Radziwill has to sit through them getting over themselves.

The He in The She. Do I even have to mention more than the episode title? It takes forever for the cast to wrap their heads around Pastor Patricia Stephenson, a woman whose bones suggest a male, but whose anatomy suggests a female!! Oh no! Booth struggles with using her correct pronouns, and many characters flip flops between, often settling on the masculine pronouns. And yet, the show itself gives credence to how Patricia lived the last parts of her life. It finds the beauty and honesty in how she lived, and we get to see that honored. But not necessarily through the characters, especially the main squint squad.

Arastoo Vaziri. This poor man is just a Muslim who works in the lab. Bones expresses disdain for him being visibly religious. Hodgins straight up discriminates against him, tells him to his face that he doesn't like Vaziri because he's Muslim. Vaziri has to actively attempt to bond with Hodgins to overcome this bias. Cam barely steps in here, and ultimately Vaziri has to suffer the ignorance of those around him. He has to push back about his people being associated with bombs, because white people are terrorists too! He brings out a list!

And these are just main plot points. There are definitely other examples of how these characters awkwardly microaggress their peers and civilians.

II. The interpersonal logic of Bones is predicated on gendered relationships

I cannot count the amount of times a character on Bones said "It's a woman thing," or "It's a guy thing," or "Alpha-male." The more socially adept a character is (Booth, Angela, Cam, Hodgins), the more they lean on these constructs for explaining personal relationships and the more they use gendered constructs for what's permissible in their relationships. Brennan, Zach, and other squints are often actively taught what's okay to do based on gendered rules. "She's a woman," Angela says to Zach, who doesn't understand why a girl isn't calling him back. "It's a guy thing," Angela says to Brennan, confused about something Booth is doing. "It's a guy-hug," Booth says, manipulating Bones into accepting comfort by explaining a gendered rule that he's making up.

In an environment so saturated with these rules, the characters have no idea what to do with the interpersonal reactions they have to Dr. Tanaka (as Clark has established, the characters are constantly using their interpersonal lens at work). So, this mystery makes Dr. Tanaka into a site of intrigue. I'd say both Hodgins and Angela interpret this intrigue as attraction, based both on their desire for/interpretation of Dr. Tanaka as a woman or a man, respectively. The surprise/rethinking that occurs after feeling up Dr. Tanaka's chest is consistent with this mystery/intrigue/psychosexual anxiety of not knowing a gender. (To digress a bit, it's reactions in this vein that created the Trans Panic Defense for murdering trans people).

I'm also unsurprised at Sweets. From his defense of Dr. Tanaka presenting as they want to him standing alongside the hug onlookers out of curiosity, he's the part of the show that's looking forward. He's the planted seed for this episode: that people who don't want to share their gender, it's not your business, even if it's hard to resist the part of you that thinks that.

And honestly, I think that's kind of the core to it.

Bones is a show about privileged professional folks who are often ignorant, but it attempts to plant seeds in their moderate liberal audience about cultures and subcultures. It planted the seed that Radziwill (a little person) was just a coworker using his own advantages, and it's important to treat him like you would another coworker. It planted the seed that Patricia (a trans woman) was right to transition and live her fullest life. It planted the seed that Arastoo (a Muslim) is just a coworker, one who has his own religious life, and Hodgins was the one acting irrationally.

Finally, it planted the seed that Dr. Tanaka is just living their life, and the awkward must-know-their-gender drive didn't really mean anything in the end, except for the team feeling weird about it.

[sykeboy]

Hi guys today I wanna talk about the different ways in which Anin and Pin try to influence and gain control over their reality

First of all lets stablish that Anin (blue) and Pin (pink) are gender coded: Anin is coded in a way that is considered to be more traditionally masculine and Pin in a traditionally feminine way

Let's remember gender is a social construct and within our cultural norms there are behaviours and other aspects that are considered to be related to men and women specifically (wich is BS but still exists within our context)

Anin acts on her reality by being confrontative and go head on for what she wants most of the time, so when it was time for her to fight for her relationship with Pin she did this exactly, she spoke her mind and came out in front of a bunch of people. She was confrontational and direct about her intentions and feelings

Pin, however, is fem coded, she was raised to be a traditional woman, much like her aunt tries so hard to be. Women are traditionally taught to sit still, be silent and pasive when it comes to our needs and wishes, put others before ourselves, be selfless

So this is the way in which Pin has learned to affect her reality. She is going to self sacrifice and put Anin's and the royal family's "best interest" over her own wishes in order to feel some sense of control over the situation

Let's also not forget that Anin's social status allows her to be a little more upfront about what she wants and even bend the rules sometimes. While Pin does not have that level of privilege, therefore she must be more careful

Those scenes where everyone kept talking for lady Pin were particularly loud for me, even Anin lent her her voice cause she simply did not have a say over her own fate

[plutoswrath]

ᴀꜱᴛʀᴏ ᴍᴜꜱɪɴɢꜱ 2: ʟɪʟɪᴛʜ - ᴀɴᴄɪᴇɴᴛ, ᴡɪʟᴅ ᴍᴏᴛʜᴇʀ

TW: themes of abuse, power dynamics, sociology, misogyny. Astrology + politics mixed, I'm leftist after all, if that's not your cup of tea, skip this one and save yourself the rage quit lol. Women/femme presenting is an all inclusive term in this post!

So since a long time now I've been very intruiged by Lilith (mean, true, asteroid and waldemarth) but since we're most familiar with osculating Lilith and Black Moon Lilith, I will focus on these two specifically.

Keep in mind that there are multiple stories (even if it's just the tiny details that alter the story) and thus interpretations about Lilith, Lilith is also still very much unexplored in astrology.

But the stories of Lilith all do unite in the themes of demand, oppression, shame, morality, breaking free of limitations, isolation/ostracization, rage and autonomy. It’s about power dynamics, you and your raw self, all the desires and needs in relation to others/society. Lilith is described as dark and hidden because that’s exactly what we are taught to do with Lilith energy: hide it. Lilith is therefore often described as off putting, because nothing can be as uncomfortable as going against all reasoning and what you were told was ‘good’ and instead going by instinct and impulse. Lilith deals a lot with survivial. It can be both, a blessing in disguise or at times, a snake biting it’s own tail.

And before we dive deeper into Lilith, I want to say a few words on the practice of astrology, so you can get familiar with the way I use and practice it too:

Astrology is a tool to research our society/world and self, thus Lilith is a reflection of our societal circumstances and therefore you can't discuss Lilith without getting political and talking about misogyny/oppressive systems.

This does not (!) mean Lilith and its effects are limited to gender by any means, but because gender is a social construct, Lilith and it’s effects are influenced by the way we are socialized and by who we are politically. This is why people constantly find these weird power dynamics between men and women who share strong Lilith synastry in the first place.

Gender as we define it is not inherent in the stars and astrology, but our socialization will direct or at least set off the tone in which way certain astrological facts can develop potentially. This is why - very different to my usual approach - I do in fact want to highlight the performance and construct of gender in this take, because the themes of Lilith represent in the different roles and scripts that exist for men and women in our heteronormative society. It shows in the power dynamic that is created between those who are politically men and women or rather said those who are straying away from the script they we're ought to follow by those who hold more power over them. This is an universal experience that can be experienced by everyone, but I want to say that private and political self intertwine and it’s very much present in the stories of those who have experienced strong Lilith influence in their life. If you want to read further on my reasoning and understand my approach to astrology, you can read it here.

⇨ Sociology and politics aside, let’s get back to Lilith:

Naturally, because there is still a lot of mystery and complexion around Lilith, she is a very hot topic in synastry. But the assumptions of steamy sex and kinky encounters aside, and from what I've seen and studied, right now I'll go so far to say that when we deal with a (perceived) hetero relationship, it can only truly work out if the man involved absolutely sees the woman as an absolute equal and treats her as such. Even if difficulties arise and are set off by Lilith, both need to remain an be seen as an independend being with agency and acknowledge that at all times, no matter the decision. It's a choice both should commit to at the very beginning.

You think this is common sense in partnerships (should be at least) but Lilith has a very unique and personal relationship with ostracization, shame, humiliation, oppression and anger.

I often read that prominent Lilith contacts in synastry (but I'd add composite to that too!) need both partners to be healthy, functional (or at least have an idea of what that should be and look like) and communicate effectively and clearly, be vulnerable and honest. While this is definitely true, any strong Lilith energy in relationships between a woman and a man needs the man to dissect his views and held notions of women, I believe. Not that anyone should dissect and deconstruct what their internalized held beliefs of what gender, and what femme and masculine is, to begin with (duh), but I repeat my previous statement about Lilith’s themes: Lilith ultimately finds itself battling and dealing with power dynamics, because it represents you and your raw self, all the desires and needs in relation to others/society. Lilith is described as dark and hidden because that’s exactly what we are taught to do with Lilith energy: hide it.

The woman in the connection, especially if she is Lilith, will be the woman that will mentally have the man on his knees because her mere existence can challenge his previously believed authority he has on her/women, as well as the way people are wired and set in position in society. We see him questioning the ‘script’ or holding close to it like a dogma. There is (sometimes watered down) anger and resentment a man will channel towards the woman he has Lilith contact with. It can often be thoughts of ‘how dare she’ and ‘I’ll stop her before she even gets the chance to start’. As much as the escapism we search for online think this might turn out in an overly romanticzed femme fatale fantasy, reality often hits us hard when we see dysfunctional relationships unfolding right in front of us.

She will be the announcement of a possible challenge, a test of character, which he'll fail or master. It's a question of morality, for both. Because Lilith here can be the person he always dreamed of, but always has been too afraid to engage with. There is something uttrely objectifying happening when talking about lilith and it's effects, even if you don't want to, it is bound to happen living in the world we are in right now.

And this has all to do with what Lilith stands for. Especially those who have strong Liltih influence in their chart (doesn't matter which Liltih you use) - I'm talking in angular houses, on the angles, in contact to personal planets or to the chart ruler - have undeniably an interesting relationship with and effect on those people who want them to 'follow the scrip' in the way society wants it. And very important (!!): just because someone has strong Lilith influence, doesn't mean that they are in any way better or worse than other women. I want to highlight this because women with Lilith energy will get shit from anyone (!!) who has strong internalized misogyny in them. Think about the way women are raised to compete with each other and follow the script in order to survive and get by in a patriarchal society. Of course someone who's very 'Lilith' will trigger them. Same with men who encounter someone who's very 'Lilith'.

Lilith can join the club of the outsider that you'll find at the metaphorical table that is placed in an imagined highschool's cafeteria: finding her place right next to Scorpio, shaking hands with Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, nodding acknowledging to Cancer, Aquarius and Pisces.

I noticed women who have strong Lilith in their chart have had prominent themes of isolation, autonomy, exclusion and conflict in their life. Either born or forced in positions that has them relying on themselves and their gut instincts a lot (!) and the rest of their charts backed that up too. But whatever is touched by Lilith is bount to become fierce and brutal. Doesn't matter if it's natal, a transit, in composite; Lilith forces you to look within and unleash something inside of you, it works like a catalyst of some sort. Lilith also talks about demands. Think about how she demanded a different treatment, before she left the Garden Eden. Lilith's needs are that strong, that she is willing to face the brutal consequences of it. If anything, Lilith's pursue can be just as brutal (metaphorically, but perhaps phyiscally as well) as her will.

Pop astrology makes Lilith out to be solely about the physical act of intimacy, and sexuality definitely is a theme for Lilith, but not in the way people think it is, I believe.

There is an undeniable generational trauma and influence Lilith has on those who are politically a woman (all inclusive term)/femme presenting.

I will be even bolder in my claims and say that we still view Lilith through the lense society views women that ultimately choose to abandon societal and cultural prestigue and status by choosing themselves no matter what will occure, especially if it also means having to play with those societal expectations or finding their own niche in those roles and scrips they have to follow to get by. And this is not me trying to #girboss Lilith, but rather me saying that our studies still integrate and reproduce held harmful beliefs of women.

Deciding to work with Lilith is deciding to choose yourself because you see beyond the oppression and injustice, no matter what you think that might be in your life or in the life of others. The reactionary nature is most of the times caused by pushing and pulling from those who want her to follow the script. But Lilith often wants to write her own script, or at least edit what people have been given to her.

This is why, for example, women with Lilith in contact with their Juno will be known as partners that are demanding in the eyes of those who want them to act as we expect women to be in relationships. They expect commitment that borders on obedience but these individuals will eventually combust under the pressure. They will find their way to assert their own role, but at the same time they can end up with people that are inherently lilith to them in the best or worst ways. Likewise, we see celebrity men with Lilith Juno contacts that are known to be immoral lovers, not caring if the spotlights are on them or not. The whole world is gonna see, how they want to have commitment and what it requires. (not to say that you are doomed to be a horrible partner just because you have Lilith-Juno contacts, this is just one way it can manifest!)

I believe that at it’s best and it’s very essence, Lilith is not about choosing hate over love, glorifying destruction over peace and community. I truly believe that at it's core and very best, Lilith is ancient and wise, she knows - because she has wisdom that is inherent to her - what is right and wrong for her and she downright rejects the status quo because she can see beyond the limitations and power plays people have put on each other. She is the link to our gut feeling, I believe. And it acts out, whenever something doesn't sit quiet right with us, or something might feel incredibly good (for better or worse). Again, Lilith was ostracized and forced to be alone, she had to be and sit with herself. That doesn't mean Lilith is the ulterior good, but rather the 'what if you would choose to not follow the script - what if you become mindful of your own and listen within yourself.'

She is very much wild and raw and instinctual as mother earth herself is (the sadow of the moon). Remember, after all, she is according to the stories the very first woman. She is following a very deep rooted beat of a drum, a melody, that will always guide her through life, she wants to connect to her own, inherent eco system.

When I research Lilith in astrological texts and read about her, no matter which Lilith it is, it most of the time feels almost like a caricature, oddly enough. If she's not 100% girlbossyfied, she is mostly only seen as the 'evil one' (or at least very constroversial figure). Despite the fact that she indeed can be bad, it's also a role Lilith was pushed to take on too, because after all, there hasn’t been any cooperation with her. So she doesn’t cooperate and rather does her own thing (for better and worse, but as long as it feels good to her, there's probably no one who can stop her). Looking at it from a more psychological and sociological lens, Lilith's story inherently integrates the idea of 'I play the villian you always thought of me as'. Which is in itself an (unfortunate) self-fulfilling and isolating prophecy. It's not inherently a cool, but rather a cruel thing, but she had to work her way around that too, I guess.

Growing up 'Lilith', I do want to talk about the many facettes she has. I don't think that the reduction of Lilith as a mere 'sexual' indication does her justice, even if the sexual part does play a role after all. Picking up the previous point about astrology and sexuality, I wonder how the extreme sexualization and fetishization of anything a woman does plays into the sex-focused interpretations of her (but I think part of the credit has to be given to the way sexuality - especially in women - is also used as a method and commodity).

I also often read about women that are Lilith and feel very wise and mature, being a spiritual teacher to their lovers. I personally agree. I feel the wisdom and knowledge of Lilith can get twisted - either she becomes the 'crazy one' or people take away her agency and personhood and reduce her to the (sexual) magnetism that she possesses by being deeply involved and concerned with her sexual energy (aka creative energy, it's the force we connenct with when we create ANYTHING). Thus, often resulting in her being very much in touch with it.

There’s also the concept of motherhood that I keep thinking about. After all Lilith made sure to revenge her killed children by.....kiling other children? Uhh, don't know really about that move but sure, you show them that was fucked up ig.

Since Lilith is the shadow of the moon, I wonder how much our upbringing, our mother figure and motherhood influence Lilith’s energy.

And of course: the other woman. Lilith came back to the Garden Eden just to find Adam with another chick!!! After she had to leave when she wanted to be treated with basic respect. And yes, she did take revenge on Adam too, but point is that Lilith also deals with betrayal and distrust.

There is so much I could write about Lilith. I feel one can't discuss and learn about lilith without getting sociological, political and a bit psychological as well. After all, she is one of the most complex and intruiging figures out there. Controversial. The dark side of the moon.

[positive-radfem-confessions]

I knew about radfem as a thing that was bad and that you had to block for since like 2017, and not until yesterday did I actually read around about what it was about, and now i feel like my understanding of a lot of things has shifted really rapidly and idk how to cope. Like i thought porn was a healthy expression of sexuality and bdsm is harmless between consenting adults but reading the stats and where it all stems from and its effect on women and the horrific abuse of the porn industry, i cant believe that anymore. I understand the reason behind gender abolition now and why theres critique of trans ideas. This whole time I was taught that radfems hated trans people for existing like how right wingers do, but after reading around I actually see the love that radfems have for trans men, and the indifference for trans women. Its not about hate at all. Its about the love of women and how sex is what we are oppressed by, and gender as a social construct exists to stand in the way of women. Sexism makes my soul hurt so deeply, and I never understood why people don't talk about it more, why I seemed to care about it more than people around me. Why lgbt people dont talk about it more. Its everywhere, in every part of society. It's so hard to acknowledge that this group which I consider family also actively benefits from the exploitation of the female sex. I don't know how I can deal with the fact that my friends would be upset at me for believing this. How do I even process this i feel alone

I normally as the admin of sorts of this blog do not 'answer' asks often, but I wanted to say that there are whole swathes of women (rad-aligned feminists, radfems, etc) around radblr who have been where you are and have felt what you've felt. Don't be afraid to ask them questions or talk with them! It can definitely feel isolating at times, but more women than you'd think agree with a lot of these feminist ideas and are just afraid of being silenced.

This blog is not a 'normal' blog where I answer or console people, so I will have to ask any radfems/rad-aligned who wish to direct this lovely anon to their blogs who are open to asks/conversations/or just have a wealth of information for her to browse through, please reblog or comment for her to find you, or start up conversations on this post if you wish! Many of us have talked about your experience at length, as we've been through it ourselves too.

You are NOT alone in your feelings and discoveries. I hope you remember that ⭐

[marrowdaughter]

“When biologists claim that “sex is binary,” they mean something straightforward: there are only two sexes. This statement is true because an individual’s sex is defined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova) their primary reproductive organs (i.e., gonads) are organized, through development, to produce. Males have primary reproductive organs organized around the production of sperm; females, ova. Because there is no third gamete type, there are only two sexes that a person can be. Sex is therefore binary.

It is important to note here that the binary nature of sex is compatible with sex ambiguity because ambiguity with respect to sex is not itself a third sex. However, many gender activists falsely assert that the “sex binary” must mean something like “every human who has ever existed and will ever exist can be unambiguously categorized as either male or female.” Given this, they contend that providing examples of people with ambiguous sexual anatomy (i.e., “intersex” conditions) not only disproves the sex binary but also demonstrates that biological sex is a meaningless and even oppressive categorization scheme. (We will leave aside for now the fact that many of these same activists do recognize an alternative version of “biological sex” in the form of gender-identity bio-essentialism, or the theory that a person’s subjective self-conception of male or female is rooted in the brain itself.)

The chain of reasoning goes something like this. Sex is not binary because intersex people exist. Their existence demonstrates that biological sex is a spectrum. Since sex is a spectrum, that means no line can be perfectly drawn separating males from females. If no single line can be drawn, then anywhere someone chooses to draw one is totally arbitrary and subjective. If it’s totally arbitrary and subjective, then that means the categories male and female are also arbitrary and subjective “social constructs” with no firm root in biological reality. If that’s the case, why are we categorizing people in law according to these arbitrary labels instead of letting people simply label themselves? To do otherwise is to oppress people based on a biological falsehood.

This is just how the argument is made, and it is made with stunning success. Children in K-12 are regularly taught these days that sex and gender exist on a spectrum. Parts of the scientific establishment and the medical profession have also embraced this idea.

Perhaps nobody is more well-known for relying on the existence of intersex conditions to supposedly disprove the sex binary than the historian of science Alice Dreger. In her book, Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, Dreger refers to intersex individuals as “hermaphrodites,” and says: “Hermaphroditism causes a great deal of confusion, more than one might at first appreciate, because—as we will see again and again—the discovery of a ‘hermaphroditic’ body raises doubts not just about the particular body in question, but about all bodies. The questioned body forces us to ask what exactly it is—if anything—that makes the rest of us unquestionable.”

Those without a firm background in biological science may read such passages and feel something akin to having an epiphany, but Dreger is peddling pseudoscience. This desire to extrapolate a small blur at a boundary to the entire picture is rooted in the postmodern impulse to “queer,” and thereby eliminate, natural categories. In the queer-theory worldview, categories are themselves oppressive, and human liberation requires the “troubling” of categories (to borrow Judith Butler’s term), including those of sex. Yet Dreger’s account does not accurately describe biological reality. The existence of “questionable” cases with respect to sex classification does not automatically cast a degree of doubt onto everyone’s sex. For most people, their sex is obvious.

Besides, our society is not currently experiencing a sudden dramatic surge in people stricken with ambiguous genitalia; we are experiencing a surge in people who are unambiguously one sex claiming to “identify” as the opposite sex, or neither sex.

Another false depiction of the sex binary is that it refers to sex chromosomes, with males always being XY and females always XX. Activists purport to debunk this misrepresentation of the sex binary by pointing to sex-chromosome aneuploidies—instances where an individual may have missing or extra X or Y chromosomes, such as in those with Klinefelter (XXY) and Turner (X0) syndrome, among others. How could sex be binary and based on sex chromosomes, they argue, if there are more combinations beyond XX and XY? They may also highlight examples of XX males and females with Y chromosomes as proof that chromosomes do not determine an individual’s sex.

There are several major issues with this line of reasoning. The first is that the vast majority of people with sex-chromosome aneuploidies are not intersex; their primary sex organs and anatomy are unquestionably either male or female. Other compositions than the typical XX and XY arrangement do not represent additional sexes beyond male and female, but instead represent chromosomal variation within each of the two sexes. A person with Klinefelter syndrome (XXY), for example, isn’t a new sex in the same way that a person with Down syndrome (who has three instead of two copies of chromosome 21) isn’t a new species.

Second, the notion that XX males and females with a Y chromosome debunk the claim that sex is determined by chromosomes erroneously conflates how sex is determined with how sex is defined for an individual. “Sex determination” is a technical term in developmental biology referring to the process by which certain genes trigger and regulate sex development. Mammals, which include humans, have evolved what’s called “chromosomal sex determination,” meaning that certain genes residing on chromosomes guide the development of males and females in utero. The Y chromosome is considered “sex determining” because it usually harbors a gene called SRY that triggers male development, and in its absence a female typically develops. But in very rare instances an SRY gene can find its way onto an X chromosome, resulting in a male with XX chromosomes.

This process stands in contrast to sex-determining mechanisms in other organisms that do not rely on chromosomes, such as “temperature-dependent sex determination” that occurs in many reptiles, where the temperature at which an egg is incubated triggers male and female development. In the alligator A. mississippiensis, for instance, higher incubation temperatures (>34°C) produce males, while lower temperatures (<30°C) produce females.

In both chromosomal and temperature-dependent sex determination systems, though an individual’s sex is mechanistically determined in different ways, it is always defined the same way—by the type of gamete his or her primary reproductive organs is organized around producing. This should be obvious, as it would have been impossible ever to have discovered these different sex-determining mechanisms without first knowing what males and females are apart from sex chromosomes and incubation temperatures.

These efforts by activists serve a single purpose—to portray sex as so incomprehensibly complex and multivariable that our traditional practice of classifying people as simply either male or female is grossly outdated and should be completely abandoned in favor of “gender identity.” This entails that males would not be barred from female sports, prisons, or any other space previously segregated according to our supposedly antiquated notions of “biological sex,” so long as they “identify” as female, whatever that means.

But while sex development is a complex process, it does not follow that the outcomes are equally complex. Dreger’s claim that the existence of edge cases “raises doubts not just about the particular body in question, but about all bodies” is not true. A person’s sex is almost always completely unambiguous and recorded correctly at birth.

While it may be necessary to outline reasonable policies and laws for hard cases, we need not pretend we’re all hard cases. Failing to reject Dreger’s rhetorical sleight-of-hand prevents us from calling a spade a spade.”

Article published on August 4th, 2024. Emphasis is my own.

[justsomeguycore]

the whole deal with socialization/conditioning is like. it is absolutely real, but the effects it has on a person are in no way uniform and certainly not permanent. different people take to the conditioning differently. often people realize they’re trans when they reach a point of not being capable of living up to what’s expected of them. when i was little if someone tried to tell me “this is for boys, that is for girls” i immediately would be like “that’s stupid” lmao. doesn’t mean they didn’t keep trying to condition me to be a proper lady but by god it never fucking worked.

and i think that’s the case for a lot of trans and queer people. the conditioning just doesn’t take because there is something inside us that keeps denying it. but even cis and straight people experience this for other reasons - neurodivergence, trauma, disability, even just personality and interests/passions can make a person unable or unwilling to meet the gendered expectations that have been taught to them. just because gendered conditioning exists does not mean there’s some fundamental difference between the sexes that excludes any exchange between them. this idea that your experiences as a child shape your adult self is not incorrect, but it’s also not absolute. we view childhood as flexible, malleable, and adulthood as fixed, but it’s not true. we are still all capable of learning, unlearning, growing, changing. also despite the cisheteropatriarchy’s best efforts, there actually is no universal “girlhood” experience that is distinct and mutually exclusive from a universal “boyhood” experience. humans love our little categories so much but at the end of the day they are total constructs, generalizations, self fulfilling prophecies.

[bogkeep]

hmm

so a sentiment i've seen repeated many times over the years is "advocate for intersex people because we deserve rights, not as a gotcha to prove transphobes wrong" and obviously i 100000% agree with this, human rights are their own merit and argument!!!

HOWEVER i am struggling to wrap my head around, like... How do you educate about gender Without talking about the reality of intersex people? i will fully admit that i might just not be plugged in enough to the intersex community to have experienced the particular phenomenon that's being referred to. there's probably discussions i'm fully unaware of.

like, theoretically, even if sex WAS a very rigid, strictly binary phenomenon, we would still have to advocate for the rights of transgender and non-binary people on the basis that we deserve human rights and dignity.

but "biological sex" is NOT a very rigid, strictly binary phenomenon. to me, the understanding of biological sex as an incredibly diverse spectrum is FUNDAMENTAL to understanding gender. when i was volunteering for the queer youth organization, i was taking courses on how to educate teens about sex and gender. what that particular education initative had found, through experience, was that teens best understood what was meant by "gender assigned at birth" and gender as a social construct when we started the whole section by explaining that intersex people exist and that "biological gender" is a lot more complicated than we're often taught.

i think the thing is maybe, like, that intersex people as a category are frequently thought of as outliers, 'defects' even, when we're not. intersex people are a part of the natural diversity of humans. our existence is as natural as the existence of any non-intersex person. like that's the THING. is it a gotcha to reinforce the reality of our existence? to remind bioessentialists over and over that they're the ones denying the observable truth?

i also just think that advocating for intersex rights and trans rights are deeply intertwined in so many ways. so much of the societal fear around transition and detransition strikes me as a fear of intersex bodies. by accepting the capability of a human body to change, to exist within multitudes, to not be beholden to our silly little categories nobody has ever fully belonged to perfectly to begin with - to accept women with beards and men with boobs as not only possible but perfectly natural, to prioritize our own health, wellbeing and bodily autonomy above the tyrannical categorization of the gender binary...

idk!!! my personal intersex experiences are vital to how i experience and talk about gender and how i advocate for trans rights. i can't separate them. maybe it's different for me because i do self-identify as intersex. maybe i'm just clueless about what the criticism is directed towards. this is my personal and biased opinion, please don't take my word over that of far more established intersex activists :')

[scarabjewels]

What Mad Girl Movies Taught Me:

Never Be Like Me

(Lessons From Helter Skelter and Black Swan)

Beauty and perfectionism has been ingrained to how we build our self identity, social acceptability and self worth. This just has to stop. So here I am, sharing my opinions and experience, in hopes that someone who is struggling the same way finds this and say " wow, I am enough. The world is just fucked up".

Let's get on to it as I dissect the moral lessons two beloved movies of mad women we can all learn from.

Helter Skelter: Beauty As A Trend is Never Achievable

I have noticed how fucked up body trends are, in all known genders yes, but especially the heterosexual ones.

It really is so fucked up how it is normal to treat the body like a moldable accessory, when it's literally what works hard keep you alive because it is you! In just a span of a decade from 2015 to 2024, the trends over body aesthetics is crazy. I can tell you that sexism and ingrained toxicity in social constructs are alive and maybe even so flourishing with globalisation, whilst civil wars are coexisting. It's crazy (but that's another conversation).

Lately, another wave of Heroin Chic is hitting the influencer network, this wave has been a long time coming, especially during and after the pandemic. People have been trying to get healthy, yes, but for the wrong reasons, so much so that people just try to look healthy when in fact they got there from the artificial place.

Just around mid-2010, big ass and a tiny waist were all the rage. Yes, it opened up the door to the body types acceptance but also glamorized it, too much. Then by 2020, healthy body figures became the rage again: abs, toned muscles and no fat. Interestingly, body positivity also came along with the trend, opening the new target audience in markets: the plus size. Here we are at mid 2020, where heroine chic came back, along with toned look. The influence of this trend came with the build of many celebrities losing weight, such as Kim Kardashian removing her buttlift, Christina Aguilera looking like she was in her early 20s again, Nikoavokado coming back with relatively a drastically changed body and many more.

I will be honest that I accidentally jumped into this trend train. I lost weight drastically in a span of 6 months, due to self harming habits. (Please be warned of the terms I am using to describe what happened to me, I did not get diagnosed, even when it is very obvious what is happening to me). Ever since I was younger, I unconsciously trained myself to not eat when I am upset which led to repercussions I am yet to recover from. My weight would fluctuate all the time as a teenager and even now as an adult, as I get upset for longer periods of time, and the stress of that period still stays even after I feel better. So my eating habits would have split days of completely normal times to eat or literally starving because I slept in the whole day, that is my journey right now which is actually quite better than before. I would be physically incapable of even digesting food properly, my stomach would reject just the thought of eating again, which would only happen if I try to eat outside of the house (very specific I know), yet I would eat just fine at home. I couldn't eat because it would literally hurt. It was the worst periods of my life honestly. I couldn't function well, I couldn't sleep , one time I fainted at work from extreme fatigue.

Needless to say, I lost too much weight. Not skin -bone, but a drastic comparison from before. I am not happy, I am not moving much, and I feel like I am not enough, because now I am developing body dysmorphia. I was fine when I was a little over weight, I am jolly, active and full of life (not all the time, but most is pretty good!) I moved a lot, I am talking about long walks and trekking, and it was just for FUN. I loved it. Now, I can barely move and at age 22, my bones would "pop" or "creak" just from an occasional stretch or kneeling.

Look at what happened to the patients of the clinic where Lilico and other people were obsessed with beauty. Suicide, because they couldn't afford to lose their new look. They would rather die beautiful than live. Lilico is fucked up in her own way, yet her actions' main motivation is because of the delicious power she has from her perfected beautiful appearance. Fame, a rich guy who is obsessed with her, money, easy manipulation of others. She wanted it all. She wants to be what everyone wants, and just from her monologues, you can tell she hated every single minute of it, especially in the manga. She treated herself like a perfect product no one should ever dare to one up, yet she knew she was just a product, that her market value will end eventually. That girl went bat shit crazy. She was addicted to the good stuff her socially praised beauty was. It is obviously not worth it!

Oh here is one too: ageism. Look, it is well and alive before so is today. The amount of males who told me women have a ticking clock of attractiveness is frustratingly high and even exists in younger generations. Age is the number of years you have been alive on this earth, not a set of intervals of attractiveness.

Like what the detective said: "Youth is beautiful but not inherently beauty". You know what you get with age? Wisdom, even more beauty, journeys of epics and living life to the fullest.

Look at the Golden Girls. If you ever have a chance to watch that show, you find that dating at an older age is great and sometimes rocky, like any type of dating. Their age in that show is supposed to be around 50 to 60, and they were ACTIVELY DATING. They even tackled the insecurities of being older, having wrinkles, a hanging stomach, and being unattractive, and it is always countered. It isn't true what they say, that you are attractive at only a certain age. Honestly, I prefer the type of dating in an older age. You MOSTLY know what you want from the other, and because you have gone through a lot already, it's faster to move on. Also, these ladies mostly dated men AROUND THEIR AGE. Now, this is important too. Males have told me that men just age better with time, and that's not true at all. It depends heavily on each individual, irregardless of age and gender. The Golden Girls dated handsome men, overweight men, men of different races and religions, average men, etc. They like to get to know the person (Blanch, though, is so hyperactive, so maybe not always getting to know them for who they are, but she does value traditional dating) because that is way more valuable than their looks.

Lilico didn't even like anyone, not even herself. Probably just her sister, she loves her but well she is Lilico so toxic af. Sex is not even making love to her, it's a business transaction, a tool for manipulation, and a means to an end. That's fucked up.

Let's this be a cautionary tale: achieving society's beauty will never be worth it.

I discussed said toxic beauty standards. Now, let's move one ahead with the toxicity of perfectionism.

Black Swan: There is No "Perfect"

Perfect? No, she was brilliant, but she was never "perfect". Perfectionism is so toxic in itself already, I know because I used to participate in it too.

I wanted to be perfect in writing the best, it didn't matter to me if I was not on the top ten highest grades in class, as long as I am the best in that one thing I am good at. However, my story is not close enough to Nina's extremely perfectionist behaviour, so I will share one that is closer to that tale as well as the point the movie and I am trying to make.

I am Asian (Filipino) and just from above, I can say that that really is the school system here, yes being a nerd is normal and being the TOP NERD was so important, I saw people broke down because they didn't win at a class competition. Toxic, right? Self-worth was associated with how good you are at academics and those over-achieving people envy others who had it easy. I was one of those who didn't struggle with academics as much, I got good grades , even when I didn't study. University did humble me, of course. Still, it doesn't bother me if I got a bad grade or a good grade. But the comments I hear from the one who worked hard to be "the best", damn. I once had a classmate who really wanted the best record in her academics. She was obsessed with it. Losing sleep, losing patience, and losing her mental health, basically. I did ask her once when she was stressing about not getting in a higher rank in the top ten, I asked her : "Does it matter?"I didn't mean it as a serious thing, but it came out like that because she replied,"It matters to me. " The tone was "I want to win." Look, her hardworking personality is ENOUGH to get her a job (she really wanted a job to get out of the house), I just wish she wasn't stressing out about winning so much. Back then, I remember her being in a bad mood, because she didn't sleep working on a project or she had a bad group mate (to be fair to her, everyone hated that person for good reason). She was ENOUGH, and I hope she sees that about herself now.

I think sacrifice is discussed a lot when talking about toxic perfectionism but behaviour from the get go isn't talked about enough.

Nina Sawyers is an example of the bad behaviour of any toxic perfectionist. She would do ANYTHING to get to the top. She tried to seduce the director to get the part she wanted, she would sabotage Lily who was friendly to her all through out as a person wanting to steal her part, she would do anything that it literally messed with her head, that her fate was her karma. She was jealous, envious and had no GOOD DAY unless SHE WAS THE PERFECT ONE. She loved the praise but couldn't handle anything less.

Nina needs to cut her mother out of her life, go out and actually have fun, and have friends who she doesn't see as competition. She needs to be friends with her peers of the same interest, too. God, that girl has no friends. She is too busy with her craft, and also, her mom is overbearing, which probably drove her to isolate from others.

One other thing, like in Helter Skelter, Nina sees her skill as a marketable tool that puts her above the rest, which is also why she is so paranoid when the director keeps comparing her to Lily, feeling threatened to be replaced. The director is an asshole, but it is pretty clear that those comparisons were meant to constructive criticism, though he needed to work on that bad delivery, also I think he was unconsciously and consciously manipulative of his muses in general. The past "Oddette", before Nina, probably experienced all the build-up paranoia that led her to extreme actions such as aggressively confronting Nina and stabbing herself in the face.

No person should ever feel like they are replaceable because they are worthless. No one should ever feel like they have to be the best because that's the only way that makes them worthy. You are worthy, nonetheless of your skill.

The Conclusion: You Are Never Enough For Them, You Are Enough For You

I know I discussed Nina and Lilico as cautionary tales, but we also to acknowledge the society that drove them to that point. We, as a society, glamorize the best of what we see: skill, craft, art, beauty, age and etc. We failed to acknowledge that we are putting impossible pedestals on them. We treat "good" things as if that is what should be good. We really failed to SEE BEAUTY AND GOOD IN OTHER THINGS.

Lilico was bullied for being fat, fetishised for being fat, and praised for being perfectly beautiful. Then, she is shamed for her past.

Society really ruined her.

As for Nina, she was always praised for being perfect, yet she had no friends because she saw them as a competition. Her over bearing mother would put her down (I saw more moments of her downplaying her skill, though in hindsight, rather than actually celebrating and supporting) .That is a factor as to why she thrived in praise so much in ballet. That is where she could be loved and FREE.

Her mother failed her, and the perfectionism ruined her.

Do not ever go to that point where you find yourself going crazy over an unreachable height. Be kind to yourself, so someone is comparing to other people? wow, aren't they someone who notices too much, that person has no life to live. Also, don't do that to yourself, don't be the loser who always looks down on others, who compares themselves to greater people because they are not enough, that is not a habit you want lingering.

I also was a person who compared themselves often to others, guess where I got that from? My flesh and blood: my mother. I still remember it, she compared me to a good friend of mine and it led me to compare myself to everyone. It was ONE passive-aggressive comment. I hated it so much, and I never did that to anyone.

I learned that I hated that feeling whenever someone does it to themselves or others to that to me, I take offence and say that that is such a sorry way to think then I realized I was like that. I had friends like that, and guess what? the Habit is still here, but I now combat it because I have no friends who do that to themsleves or others. I was done with that mentality.

I don't like it, so why should I linger in that energy?

Now, I implore you to really look at the bigger picture, think and do what is truly best for you, no matter what others say.

[haru-dipthong]

Parallels Between Gender and Language

I’ve been doing a lot of reading on gender recently, including Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble and Avgi Saketopoulou and Ann Pellegrini’s Gender Without Identity, and I’ve found several interesting parallels between gender and language.

Gender and language arise independently within every human culture, which indicates that the blueprints for these two social constructs are built into our brain structure.

Gender and language are both enacted by mimicking established conventions and occasionally making an original subversion, which can sometimes propagate memetically and fundamentally change that language’s linguistic structures, or that culture’s gender structures.

Gender and language are both acquired (or at least, an acquisition model of gender has been proposed by Saketopoulou and Pellegrini, and I find it very compelling). It’s this third point I’d like to explore a bit more in depth.

I’ve written at length about Krashen’s theory of language acquisition, but one important aspect of it I’d like to draw attention to is the Monitor Hypothesis, which states that conscious learning plays only a limited role in the ability to produce and understand language.

Learning has only one function, and that is as a Monitor, or editor. Learning comes into play only to make changes in the form of our utterance, after is has been “produced” by the acquired system.

Krashen (1982, p. 15-16)

The acquired system, then, is a system that does not understand how the language works, but knows how to produce and interpret it without understanding. You might think this sounds very similar to large language models such as ChatGPT, and I do, in fact, think that we all essentially have an organic LLM in our brain, powering our language acquisition (such a metaphor elegantly explains Krashen’s Input Hypothesis as well - you need to train the model on large data sets!)

Imagine (you may not have to imagine very hard) that you have acquired a language, but there are certain quirks of the language that you (or rather, your Monitor) are taught are incorrect. To use an English example, you may be taught in classrooms that “its” is the possessive, with no apostrophe, and “it’s” can only mean “it is”. Every time your acquired system writes “its” or “it’s”, you then have to rely on your conscious monitor system to correct it if it is incorrect. This is an extremely mild example, but consider also children in rural or oppressed communities, such as Black communities. These children acquire one dialect (such as rural Australian English or AAVE), and yet learn in classrooms that it is incorrect, not proper. Enforcing linguistic purity is an inherently oppressive act that aims to subjugate. Not only that, it is futile. In order to produce the normative, “proper” version of one’s language, one needs to subconsciously acquire it (which would mean being exposed to a great deal of input — possibly requiring distancing from their community — not just being consciously taught how it works), lest they be cursed to consciously monitoring their language production whenever it is required (such as in their professional life). And that is no way to live. A far better world would be one where there is never a requirement to produce a normative version of language, one where language is not used as a tool of oppression.

I would argue that this is similar to gender conversion practices. Models of gender are acquired subconsciously, which we then form attachments to, subconsciously (these attachments may be normative or non-normative, strong or weak, but everyone must contextualise themselves within their models of gender). When psychologists and other academics discuss finding a “cause” for these non-normative attachments to gender (i.e. transness), they often do so with the goal of preventing or reversing this cause. I won’t speak on prevention for now (though I do believe it to be impossible and unethical), but I would like to draw a parallel between attempts at “reversing” transness, and attempts at enforcing linguistic purity.

Attempts at trans conversion such as gender exploratory therapy (GET) are attempts at changing the subject’s conscious conceptualisation of their gender. I would also consider self-repression an attempt at changing one's conscious conceptualisation of gender as well, speaking from experience. I remember consciously suppressing non-normative gendered desires and expressions prior to coming out. These attempts are futile, because they will never alter the acquired system lying underneath. If such attempts “work”, they only work in the sense that the subject is consciously monitoring and correcting their intuitive gender productions. And that is no way to live. A far better world would be one where there is never a requirement to produce a normative version of gender, one where gender is not used as a tool of oppression.

[seriousbrat]

it’s so interesting to see how the interpretation of teen (boy) behavior in books has changed since they were written. it’s mostly for the better, but i think it does cause some people to refuse to engage in good faith with the source material, or on its own terms. i’ve loved hp since i was a kid, but i had never interacted at all with the fan side of things until maybe a year ago, and it was very odd (on the whole — which is why i’ve mostly just stuck to a handful of blogs with great fics and meta, like yours) to see how a lot of the text is taken now, compared to how my friends and i understood it at the time. i think its totally fair — and good, on a cultural level — to point out that the boy who pulls your pigtails isn’t being cute, and your male friend being in love with you doesn’t mean you owe him anything. but it’s also like … kind of intentionally closing the eyes to how these parts of the story are meant to come across? and i am not coming in here as some kind of “boys will be boys” person, but teenagers are messy in their relationships and their friendships, and more relevantly, it’s very clear what types of dynamics are being presented by the text. and it can be fun to pick apart what kinds of narratives are meant to be taken as romantic in different stories written in different times/places and why, but to look at the story on a story level you’ve got to also work with what it gives you.

Yes I think you make a very good point! I agree and personally I think both Snape and James would be written slightly differently if they were written today. Also, imo there's an element of wishful thinking coupled with naivety (and this has always existed tbf) when people who haven't ever been cis teenage boys try to write cis teenage boys haha. Like the 'closing of eyes' isn't always intentional. I know I keep going on about the Inbetweeners but I literally think watching that as a teen myself gave me an insight that I can never take back about what teenage boys are like haha.

Like this isn't to say that teenage boys are all exactly alike, or that there's some inherent, natural difference between boys and girls in terms of mentality or personality, but there is a social difference, generally speaking, a constructed one that happens because boys and girls are raised and socialised in a patriarchy. It's obviously not universal at all, and that's not even accounting for trans kids and the complexities they face, because even among cis boys and girls or men and women there's endless variety, and gender absolutely does not determine personality, interests, etc. Unfortunately it does influence them, though, that's our reality.

In terms of fiction, especially fanfic, obv one is free to do as they please. But there is such a thing as narrative voice, which can be an important thing to consider. Again when it comes to fanfiction it Does Not Matter that much, it's for fun, but in published fiction (or if you care about quality ig) it just is something you should consider. This is where the 'Men Writing Women' thing comes in, where you read something so obviously written by a man who doesn't understand how women (generally) think or speak or act at all. And in our patriarchal society such usually ends up being offensive and has often been overlooked and accepted when it shouldn't be. I don't think it's helpful to pretend men can't write women either, since plenty of male authors write female characters beautifully and the rest shouldn't be let off the hook. If you can't write women, skill issue and you shouldn't be published.

Anyway it's vastly more forgivable and understandable, and it pains me to say it but I think you can sometimes tell when it's a woman writing a man or a boy too. I will say on the whole I think women are better at writing men than the reverse haha, probably because we've been socialised to empathise with men whereas boys are not taught (by society) to empathise with women. Maybe women even empathise a little too much tbh. Maybe that's the problem, like we subconsciously over-project our ideals onto male characters, making them too nice, too woke, too cuddly, too sweet, because that's what we want to see, and leaving out the nastier elements that are so common. Again, that's not necessarily a problem!! Only if you're trying to create a realistic, effective portrayal of a certain (average) type of teenage boy-- which you don't have to do. I'd raise my eyebrows at an unrealistic portrayal much more in published fiction than fanfiction personally.

And ofc you can always choose to write a character who diverges from the accepted norm, but to do so effectively has to be a deliberate choice and done thoughtfully. For a boy like James, who is very average, the norm, he's decent enough but no Woke Feminist King haha. He's not meant to be.

Anyway, I think that's why the Marauders et al (including Death Eaters lol) are nowadays often portrayed like sweet little babies who all cuddle and take care of each other and respect women LOL. Like whatever, it's escapism haha, it's understandable. But sometimes I do think a lot of these people have never really interacted with many gay men or know what their culture is like. lmao. straight men maybe, but in a limited way. if you've ever had the misfortune to be with a group of cishet men who are talking freely with each other you'll know what I mean. again this is GENERAL. and socially constructed, not inherent. but very common nevertheless.

[queenaryastark]

I have always done my duty, she thought. Perhaps that was why her lord father had always cherished her best of all his children. Her two older brothers had both died in infancy, so she had been son as well as daughter to Lord Hoster until Edmure was born. Then her mother had died and her father had told her that she must be the lady of Riverrun now, and she had done that too. -- Catelyn VI, ACOK

--

Brienne squinted at him suspiciously. "No. I was my father's only s—child."

Jaime chuckled. "Son, you meant to say. Does he think of you as a son? You make a queer sort of daughter, to be sure."

Wordless, she turned away from him, her knuckles tight on her sword hilt. --Jaime II, ACOK

--

Within the tower, the smoke from the torches irritated her eyes, but Cersei did not weep, no more than her father would have. I am the only true son he ever had. -- Cersei I, AFFC

It's fascinating, the way GRRM explores the different ways the female characters respond to the societal restrictions on women and how they view themselves as a result.

During the time before Catelyn had a surviving brother, she held a role her culture dictates is only for males, that of her father's heir. So, rather than wondering why male heirs were preferred for this position, she considered herself a son and a daughter until relinquishing part of that to Edmure. Cat continues to be a contradiction as she goes through the story being active and assertive in ways she would consider manly and says that a woman can rule as well as a man. Yet she also tries to force Arya to fit within the rules laid out for her at the expense of her own self-image and believes Edmure must understand the military situation better than her by virtue of being male.

Brienne experiences something similar as she is her father's only child. The differences come with her reaching her teens but never getting replaced with a surviving brother and the fact that she physically doesn't fit the strict physical ideal women are taught to strive for. While she has martial talents that she has received training in, she also wanted to fit the ideal of Westerosi highborn womanhood only to be mocked for her attempts. This leaves Brienne in a middle ground where she doesn't feel comfortable in any socially constructed role.

Cersei is in the opposite situation than the other two since she was born with a brother. But the fact that she has a male sibling who looks so much like her, is the same age as her, and who receives vastly different treatment from her leaves Cersei resenting the difference between her and Jaime, which is her gender. So, while Cersei visually fills the role assigned to her, she considers women to be inherently inferior to men and considers herself to be male and superior as well. This doesn't seem to be a situation where Cersei is a transgender man. This is a reflection of how her society has taught her that women are weak and, therefore, she doesn't want to be grouped with other women.

[starless-gaze]

for trans day of visibility, here are some of my marauders hcs (spoiler alert: all of them are trans)

james

demiboy

he/they pronouns

crop tops give him gender euphoria (plus they make reggie blush so...)

thought they were cis, wore a flower crown once and immediately thought "yup, not a man"

reg helped him pick a label

sirius

genderfluid

any pronouns but mostly they/he

one day they're wearing the fanciest most dramatic gown and the next the chunkiest leather jacket and remus' jumper

full face of makeup at all times

wears colour coded bracelets to let their friends know what pronouns to use when the gender flows

remus

transmasc

he/him pronouns

came out at the age of 5, hope and lyall did everything in their power to make their little rem rem feel comfortable

chose the name remus for the irony

when asked abt his gender his responses are "old libraries" "a full moon" "earl grey"

peter

agender

they/he/she pronouns

thinks neopronouns are so cool but doesn't know how to use them

calls herself a "triple a battery" (get it? cause they're agender, asexual and aromantic)

would absolutely verbally destroy anyone who dares misgender his friends but can't stand up for themself

lily

polygender

she/they pronouns

is completely ok with being called she but absolutely lights up when ppl use they/them to refer to them

started wearing pronoun pins on her uniform after pandora gave them one as a gift and never took it off

no one dares make fun of them bc the first (and last) person who did it got hexed so hard they ended up in the hospital wing and lily got her first detention ever

marlene

genderqueer

they/she pronouns

loves skirts but hates dresses because she can't bind

didn't understand why it was so uncomfortable for them to wear dresses until pete came out

closeted with their family but out to everyone else

mary

demigirl

she/her pronouns for the general public, she/they pronouns for close friends

tries to incorporate her flag on every outfit, either a pin, a bracelet, graphic liner or just wearing the colours

isn't uncomfortable with being called a girl but doesn't really sit right with them either

prefers to be called "lover" rather than "girlfriend"

regulus

trans man

he/him pronouns

taught sirius how to do makeup in exchange of them cutting his hair

tattoed waves over his top surgery scars

has an inhumane amount of knowledge about microlabels and niche identities

pandora

transfem

she/her pronouns

flowy dresses give her the biggest gender euphoria

thought she was a straight guy but didn't feel right about it, when she figured out she was just a trans lesbian it all made sense

really into greek mythology and picked the name pandora because of the myth

dorcas

genderfae

they/them pronouns

has so many pronoun and flag pins in their bag at all times and gives them away to anyone who asks

constantly has to correct teachers on their pronouns

hyperfemme gender expression at all times because "fuck gender norms, my skirt doesn't dictate my gender, you know my pronouns so fucking use them"

barty

bigender

he/she pronouns

saw dorcas doing panda's makeup after she came out, asked them if they would do hers and felt so insanely happy looking in the mirror after they were done

black eyeliner in his bag at all times

her gender could better be described as "skate park"

evan

"no clue but definitely not a cis man"

they/he pronouns

uses "girl" as gender neutral

doesn't want to label their gender, bangs on about it being a social construct and "can't be arsed to define it"

when the gender dysphoria hits, he draws on their arms with a felt tip pen, barty started noticing this pattern and ever since then, evan asks her to draw on them instead