#NOT A BAD THING obviously bc yk i WANT to be on t but i've just. yeah

[wyn0rrific]

plurality

[violenceenthusiast]

WARNING: transphobia

sorry to intellectualize in your inbox and feel free to like... delete this if it's too heavy or not your thing! but i've been having a lot of ideas about transness in fandom (i'm trans myself btw jsyk where this is coming from) and the whole like... cas-giving-dean-a-male-body thing and today's Discourse wrt that ask lampgate received about "looking trans"

like basically butler says that there's this Thing we all create that's basically an idealized male/female body that doesn't exist. like by labeling bodies as normal/abnormal for whatever reason we create sex, we create normative bodies. we are constantly referencing a non-existent ideal male/female body. claiming that all cis women and all cis men have the same bodies is stupid because they don't. everyone has slightly different hormones and slightly different expressions and that's not even to speak of intersex people who complicate the idea of Normative Bodies even further.

so then oftentimes when i look at transness (more specifically transmasculininity) in fandom - and i mean this in literally the nicest way possible - this tends to get represented a certain way. mostly it's represented in drawings/fics as people who've either had top surgery and have scars underneath their pectorals or people who wear binders, and most of the time they have not had bottom surgery. and while it is important to stress that YES people who look like this do exist and it's good that they are being represented it in no way is the Only or even Most Common transmasculine body. there is no way to "look trans" because there is no kind of Idealized Trans Body in the way that there is an Idealized Cis Body that is referenced. but i worry that in fandom we are creating this sort of Idealized Transmasculine Body by constantly referencing the same type of body that i previously described, which transphobes then weaponize as characters "obviously not looking trans." bc ya know in order to make that statement there must first be a Body That Is Trans.

and then cas bringing dean back in a male body sort of crystallizes this because it both upholds the idea of there being A Trans Body as well as there being A Cis Body. if we theorize about there somehow being a switch between those then there must be some sort of larger concept that we are referencing. it's buying into the non-existent concept of idealized sex, of normative bodies.

(for the record i feel the same way when it comes to temporary gender/sex swap fics. also this doesn't come from a place of "this is bad and Should Never Happen Ever" but more... what are the subconscious philosophical consequences and implications of the decisions we make)

OH addendum to that last ask bc i realize i might've come off wrong: that is not to say that trans people creating content for themselves and others to enjoy are responsible for the existence of transphobia. again i'm trans myself and i LOVE all trans content and i would love to see more of it. i'm just saying that the issue is like... complicated and intertwined and we are unfortunately all still trapped within a system that most people accept as being Right even though we have definitive proof that it isn't

glad for that addendum because that was literally the first thing i was gonna say lol. you can’t pander to transphobes, they’ll always take issue no matter what you do so you might as well just do your thing, yk?

but yea i was a sociology major so this is absolutely my type of thing. basically i agree with you. but i think there is a societal Ideal Type of transness and it’s still very much the “binary trans person who wants to be and look cis and transitions all at once and then passes perfectly and never brings up transness again” which. barf, there’s not enough time to unpack all of that. but at the same time the Ideal Type of transness boils down to: there shouldn’t be one bc it shouldn’t exist. which again, barf. as far as inside the trans community... idk i feel like on average, non trans/med etc. trans ppl are very aware and appreciative of the diversity of transness and the beauty inherent in that? but maybe that’s just my experience. if anything, i feel more worried about intracommunity ideals of transness being warped by whiteness and thinness, if that makes sense. also i think again always good to remember that what any given person posts in fan space will pretty much never be indicative of the full scope of their thoughts and opinions on the subject. but yea also there are ppl where fan spaces are there only queer spaces for example and then what happens if you’re seeing this same image over and over again but it’s not your reflection at all.

i think really what it comes down to with the elements you’re pointing out is that they are just what’s familiar to us? like. 1) as a bunch of twenty-somethings, binders and top surgery, maybe T is about all that most of us have been able to do if anything (at least that’s my impression. OR that may be all we’re interested in, etc. there’s always variation in prefs of course), 2) top scars are just such insanely good visual shorthand, and 3) fanart/fic is always in some way aspirational so as someone who hasn’t gotten to get top yet, i for one like thinking about a dean who got to do that already :)

and yea again any fic/post/etc that has cas changing dean’s body without asking/being asked.... it’s a no from me. bad on the consent side, bad on the conceptions of bodies and gender delineations side, bad on the “right” and “wrong” bodies side, so many things abt it that make me :/. also like even if you have dean brought back in laz rising with a flat chest sans scars, and a whole new set of reproductive organs.... like that’s still a trans man’s body? both literally and rhetorically speaking that still wouldn’t be a Cis Body (assuming you could even define in any meaningful way what it means to have a Cis Body, given the amount of variation in bodies AND the fact that literally every single person is failing the normative bc it’s by nature shifting an unattainable)? but also again, i’m gonna insist that “male body” as synonym for “cis man’s body” sucks bigtime.