#Why else do you think trans adults exist?

[lancecharleson]

Hey, if you are someone, whether you're trans or an ally/friend of trans people, living in the UK, I highly recommend writing to your MP to demand they challenge the labour health secretary Wes Streeting's plan to make the former tory gov's temporary ban on puberty blockers permanent, based on the phoney pseudoscience-driven "cass review." The same review which has been wildly debunked by medical experts and academics across the globe, has come under greater scrutiny in court following the introduction of the temporary ban, and resulted in 16 trans kids dying as a result of their clinic closing in Travistock.

Let them know that his unfounded decision will not go unchallenged, both in court and in parliament.

In order to write to your MP, you can find out who's representing your constituency either here at the official Parliament website, or here at WriteToThem.

And here's a handy dandy email template to use if you're having trouble putting into words why no one should be taking the "cass review" seriously.

One last thing, if you have spare cash to throw away to further the fight back, this could do with a boost!

Trans rights are human rights.

[drdemonprince]

I was never really certain about my transition in the way that most gatekeeping hormone prescribers and curious members of the public demand that a trans person be. I didn’t “always know” that I was not cisgender. I haven’t “always known” anything about myself. Very few truths about me have always remained true, my existence is too interpersonal, contextual, and ever-evolving for all of that. (So is most everyone else’s, I think). I don’t think that the fact I’d eventually choose to exercise my body autonomy at age 30 by taking hormones is a decision I could have foreseen when I was a child. All that I knew about being transgender when I was a kid was a fact that most children intuitively know: gender assignment was a violation of my freedom, of everyone’s freedom in fact, and it was wrong. As an infant and then a child and teenager, people kept imposing labels on me; they kept forcing me and my body into prescribed gendered boxes, and while the specific labels and boxes never really felt like the right ones, the most disturbing part about it all was the forcing. No coerced identity would have ever felt right. Children can tell when secrets are being kept from them, and when adults are restricting their choices. They notice that they and the other children are being lined up boy-girl, boy-girl, without ever being told what a girl or a boy even is. They can see their parents frowning when they reach for the doll with the shimmery hair, or climb atop the neighbor kid on the playground. Kids know that they are forbidden from sitting with their legs spread wide or flicking their wrist, and their gender illegibility is shamed in them, long before they get any answers about what gender means or where it comes from or why it’s so important that they make themselves easy to understand.

Like the cloned children in Never Let Me Go who grow up being conditioned for a life of forced organ donation, children in a cissexist society grow up conditioned to fall within certain gendered boundary lines, and by the time they learn that the reason for this is almost completely arbitrary, they can’t imagine any alternative. Not until some of them hear about gender transition and find the prospect very compelling, for some reason. You can say that reason is because some of us are inherently trans, but there’s absolutely nothing in the way of brain science, genetics research, or even sociological data to back that up. Besides, the search for a biological “reason” that people are transgender or queer runs counter to the goal of queer liberation in the long run. Science only needs to explain the existence of transgender people (or queer people more broadly) if our existence is in some way aberrant or a problem. If queerness is accepted as a form of human diversity that simply exists, then there is no need to excuse it by claiming that it is never a choice. It can be a choice, if a person wants to make it, and hopefully it satisfies them, but maybe it won’t. Freedom to choose means freedom to forever be dissatisfied, to search endlessly for more, and yes, to capable of making a mistake. I would say that viewing myself as transgender was a choice. I decided to break away from the straight, female categories to which I had been assigned, and doing so allowed me to view the legal and societal power structures that had restricted me more clearly. It helped me better understand myself. But that does not mean the actual act of breaking away was always the truest reflection of who I am. The version of me that transitioned was a person on the run — and how a person behaves, thinks, and self-conceives when they are fleeing is not a great reflection of whom they might be if they were safe. If we all lived in a world free from mandatory gender assignment, and where our bodies were not mined for meaning about the kinds of sex we liked, the clothing we should wear, the personality qualities we have, the roles we should play in society, and the connections we are allowed to form with others, who knows who each of us might be. But none of us get to live in that world, or ever gets completely free from the frameworks of heterosexuality and the gender binary. These frameworks shape every legal institution we encounter, every school we attend, every item of clothing we put on, every substance we take into our bodies, every piece of paperwork that ever gets printed about us, and every look another person ever gives us. And so we make due with rewriting and recombining those frameworks as best we can. It should come as no surprise that those us who break away from the binary have to experiment and revise how we understand ourselves quite a bit — sometimes getting things “wrong,” sometimes searching forever for the semblance of something “right.” Sometimes reveling in the “wrongness” of all the available options is kind of the point.

I wrote about my detransition, retransition, and the eternal dissatisfaction that is probably the corest truth of my identity. It's free to read or have narrated to you on my Substack.

[feminist-furby-freak]

Could you elaborate on how gender ideology is misogynistic?

Sure. So gender ideology (see previous ask for how I define it) is misogynistic because it denies the present and historical reality of the sex-based oppression of women, reinforces the gender binary through its obsession with gender and gender roles, and jeopardizes women’s safety by privileging AGP men. Here are some examples:

It erases gender non conformity as a normal expression of the self. We see this through the “transing” of gender non conforming children and adults, particularly feminine gay men and masculine lesbian women. TRAs love to scream that we (GCs and TERFs) are obsessed with gender roles and uncomfortable with gender non conformity when they are the ones that promote the idea that men who present feminine and women who present masculine actually need to transition. I know so many detrans butch women who were told as teens and young women that they needed testosterone and surgery to fix them. What is more regressive than telling GNC people they actually need to become the opposite gender?

It denies the reality of sex and sex-based oppression. There are two camps for gender ideologists: gender identity is more important to one’s lived experience than their biological sex and gender is real but biological sex is not. Both of these ideas are misogynistic and false. Women’s subjugation for millennia across the world is not due to their “gender identity.” To say that femaleness isn’t real or that it is something an individual chooses to be is to say that women opt/opted into their oppression, or worse, that sex-based oppression never existed at all. How does the taliban chose which children can go to school? Do you think they go up to every child and ask them their gender identity? Of course not. It is unbelievable how TRAs have brainwashed so many people into denying the existence oldest and most universal form of oppression. This falsehood is so prevalent in academic spaces it has created a revisionist history and permeated science and medical research. Periods, pregnancy, and women’s health issues are now considered TERFy and we have to do this linguistic dance with dehumanizing terminology to discuss our own bodies. Ideology is more important than reality and medical authorities are parroting lies (TIMs can safely breastfeed, puberty is reversible, testerone does not have dangerous side effects) with no scientific basis without repercussion.

It privileges trans identified men over women. Gender ideology is not more scientifically or psychologically sound than gender critical ideology. Gender ideology has been arbitrarily accepted as The Truth by the left. TRAs will say that it is the compassionate or moral opinion and thus correct but this privileges the interests of trans identifying men over the interests of women. After all, morality is subjective. Take sports for example, women want a fair chance to participate in athletics and trans identifying males want to be validated by playing in female sports. The two interests conflict but the left has decided that the wants of the male athletes are more important than the wants of the female athletes, and this is treated as the obvious morally correct stance. But is it so obvious? I don’t think so. Nobody can answer why trans identifying males (because let’s be real trans identifying females never get special privileges) are prioritized over everyone else.

Feel free to send another ask if you have more questions.

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids,

I have been openly living as a trans man for some years now. And I'm at a point where it doesn't take up so much mental space anymore.

Don't get me wrong: I certainly do not mean "it doesn't matter anymore" here. I am not a "just call me whatever pronouns, I do not care" person and I don't think I ever will be. Nothing wrong with feeling that way, it's just not how I feel. Being adressed with my name and my pronouns is still important for my mental well-being, and it still triggers feelings of dysphoria when people misgender me.

Even apart from misgendering: My identity is still important, and it always will be! Being trans is not some small thing that loses its importance over time. It's who I am. Being a man - and having grown up in a society that told me I wasn't - influences the way I experience everything in my life (from my self-image to my relationships with others to... well, everything).

What I do mean here is: Before coming out to others, and also before coming out to myself and accepting myself as a man, there were naturally a lot of questions running circles in my brain. Why do I feel so sad when adults tells me I'll grow into a woman? Why does it cause me so much stress when mom tells me to put on a dress? Why does it make me so euphoric to use masculine scents? When I try to picture myself kissing a boy, why do I see two boys? Ah, I just learned trans people exist, why does this fascinate me so much that I can't stop thinking about it? Am I creepy for being so fascinated by them? I'm older now, why is that sad feeling not going away? Why is it only getting worse now that I have "grown into a woman"? Why do I keep getting this horrified feeling that I took a wrong route somewhere and was never meant to arrive at "woman"? Wait... could this mean I am trans? Is it too late to realize I am trans at my age? Can I really be trans when the whole thought of even just considering surgery feels overwhelming and scary? Will I ever be ready to actually come out as trans? I really want to get married some day, could I even find love as a trans person? Can I ever be happy in a relationship if I hide who I am? Can I go on living in the closet? Okay, I am trans and want to come out, is it safe to do that? Will my family still love me? Will I ever be brave enough to come out to people outside of my immediate circle? Will people take me seriously? Will people hate me? Will I regret coming out? What if I fuck up my life?

Well, I came out and the world didn't end. All these questions, I either found answers to them or they just dissolved over time - and that frees up a lot of energy and mental space. The space that was occupied by these questions and concerns is now available to me again.

I do not wonder if I am a man anymore. I just am one. It has become something that is just self-evident to me. It goes without saying - or without conciously spending time thinking about it. Of course I am a man, of course I am Oliver. Who else would I be?

We all have a limited amount of things we can focus on, and many trans people share this experience that over time they do not need to focus so much on it anymnore. But this is not unique to the process of figuring out you are trans - in the sense that a cis gay, bi, ace etc. person could also relate to this, but also in entirely non-lgbt-specific ways. Think about a person prepping for an important exam for example. A lot of their energy and mental space will be tied up in exam related questions... which obviously will not be a permanent state. After the exam, they will naturally no longer by preoccupied by wondering how the exam will go!

I'm telling you all this because one of you asked me if I struggled with coming to terms with being a trans man - and this is my very long way of saying: Yes, I did (and it's pretty normal to do! It's a really big realization about yourself!) but struggling isn't a permanent state.

You'll find answers to some questions, some questions will just fade away. You'll figure things out.

With all my love,

Your Tumblr Dad

[butchbarbieagainstterfs]

What do you think gay men are attracted to in men that they can’t be attracted to in women?

It can’t be anything about femininity or masculinity obviously. That’s both sexist, and cultural so can’t be what drives men-only attraction.

It can’t be anything about stated identity because someone could lie just as easily as they could tell the truth in such a statement, and it makes no sense because homosexuality and heterosexuality exists in other species with no stated identities. It’s not like other animals without gender are all pan.

Saying idk it’s the vibes or some indescribable trait men have that women can’t but “I can’t explain” is a nonanswer.

Soooooooo what is it? Or do you think any sexuality but bi/pan is just cultural performance or an identity rather than an inborn orientation?

- [ ]

I don’t know why you’re asking me about gay men when I am…not a gay man tbqh, and there are plenty of gay men out there who aren’t transphobic and, I am sure, have spoken about this.

I’m a lesbian. I like women. One of my first crushes as a kid was on Nicole Kidman in the Golden Compass. When I was looking at her and being attracted to her though, I wasn’t thinking about vulvas. I wasn’t thinking about what she had going on downstairs. I just thought she was very pretty. That…hasn’t really changed much, as an adult. And I don’t get that with men and never have. I’ve never been attracted to them at all and wouldn’t regardless of what they had going on downstairs.

Now if that makes me bi or pan to you, quite frankly I don’t care and I also just want to put it out there: if you in your sexuality need your partner to have a certain genitalia set, that’s perfectly fine. Don’t date trans people. Have this conversation with your partner to make sure they aren’t trans. That’s your business and quite frankly your responsibility.

I also think this kind of question in a failed attempt at a gotcha is just reiterating the idea that being gay is an adult thing, because you never bring up straight people in this same manner. You are implying that the only thing that makes people gay is wanting sex with a certain type of genitals, which is the same exact sexualisation homophobes do to us all the fucking time. Being a lesbian isn’t just about wanting to touch vulvas.

Now I will be pinning this so I do not have to answer this kind of shit again, and you will never be darkening my page again because I will not be answering any further messages from you or anyone else that sends me this bad faith, poor attempt at trying to claim a lesbian is homophobic simply because he disagrees with you about trans people. Have the day you deserve. Now fuck off 😘

[punkeropercyjackson]

Every Kataang vs Zutara argument since the start has been only 2 things

A Zutara shipper attacks a Kataang shipper,often on a properly tagged post

A Zutara says something extremely bigoted and a Kataang shipper calls them gross for it and the Z/K shipper whines 'it's only fiction'

That's literally all this is.That's all it's ever been.All Kataang shippers have done is exist and have a moral backbone and all Zutara shippers have ever done is ignore and shit on Atla's radicalization messages and positive representation because they were so focused on their crush on Zuko they refused to absorb any of it and same goes for his redemption arc that was about him unlearning propaganda,giving reperations and breaking the cycle of abuse by becoming a pseudo-dad to Aang so he could heal his inner child,help out traumatized kids like he used to be and grow up to be his abuser's opposite to twist it into liberal 'Privileged people can never be abusers because it's just the way they were raised and shouldn't be blamed' bullshit and never have to self-reflect even though that was the whole thing that started the famous 'Zuko style redemption arc' phrase and show they asses as poser comrades since they think anarchism and activism is 'violence good' and nothing else

Zutara shippers do not have a right to start fights with Kataang shippers for posting anti Zutara or pro Kataang if the posts are tagged properly and i've noticed a certain few specific users on here who deliberately seek out those posts to 'debunk' and condesend the ops when nobody asked,nobody cares and nobody likes them and this is exactly what i mean with Z/K stans' extremist bigotry.Aang may not be real but the buddhists and tibetans and traumatized children you're insulting with your words of him are.Zuko may not be real but the asian men and mentally ill parental abuse victims and physically disabled people you're fetishizing with your potrayals of him are.Katara may not be real but the native women and punk women and adultitified girls you're degrading by erasing her radicalism are.Atla is not just a fictional cartoon,it's a mirror into our world's minorities told as a story and if it just a fictional cartoon,why don't Zutara shippers let it go?Zutara was never even offered to them and Zukka is not only not 'just Zutara but gay' since the dynamics are super different and Sokka is Katara's opposite but also a point in Zukka's favor seeing as Z/S shippers always ship Kataang,Korrasami and pretty much any combo of the TLA era girls and sometimes even perfer them to Zukka so it's plenty obvious they don't hate women and literally half of them ARE women with a fair amount of trans women specifically so they're's way more feminist Zukkas than they're are feminist Zutaras,who mind you are one thee definers for gender essentialist and ciscentric ships and shippers groups

Zutara shippers are not a minority.Nobody hates Zutara out of internalized misogyny because wanting Katara to date Zuko is not rooted in feminism and neither is having a crush on Zuko yourself on it's own and i say this as a Zuko selfshipper that made an Atlasona to be with him after reading the comics.New Atla kids don't deserve to have their experiences ruined by oldies who think ageism and gatekeeping is a term only for adults and when people tell you not to be bigots and roast you for it because bigotry is a very,very,VERY real thing in every context and you don't get to get away with it because you're saying to someone online or about depictions of real minorities.If somebody insults you for being a Zutara shipper,then you definitely used Zutara as an excuse to do something to earn it first.Zutara is not activism and Aang was and still is more revolutionary than your palpable ship could ever be and you hated him for it because you're jealous of him just like you are irl anarchists,activists and poc like him because we prioritize being good people over being normal and you were taught that's bad and that it means we must be 'on the wrong side' for it because you want him to be since once again,wished to date Zuko too much to learn from him instead or to let Katara be anything at all.Kataang shippers aren't to blame for that-You are.It's time to grow up

[bloodsappho]

These crosses all over my body

Remind me of who I used to be

And Christ forgive these bones I’m hiding

From noone successfully

Wrestling with God, secrets that can’t be hidden, flesh and bone. Themes established from the very outset. Of course we wonder what are these crosses, these secrets. As we will hear, violence haunts the protagonist. She is abused, she fights back, she kills. So are the crosses decorative sigils, testaments of faith worn around the neck and fingers? Are they cuts and bruises and batterings? Are they deep, inner wounds, bleeding out silently? Are they self inflicted cuts, scored with a razor into her wrists and thighs?

Self-inflicted razor wounds go much deeper than the pop-psych logic of “self-harm”. Particularly prevalent amongst young women, they attest to a body-mind that wants to open, to bleed, to have its own limits annihilated in a rush of pleasure and pain. Mortification of the flesh is particularly common in Christian culture, self-inflicted punishment for sinful thought and deed, attributed especially to women.

Camille Paglia:

“The artist makes art not to save mankind but to save himself. Every benevolent comment by an artist is a fog to cover his tracks, the bloody trail of his assault against reality and others.”

Later

“Art advances by self-mutilation of the artist.”

Hemingway claims “to write is easy, you just sit down and bleed”. Bowie claims “to be an artist is a ridiculous thing. It makes much more sense to earn money, look after your family. I don’t know why anyone would do it.” Self experience attests to artists sitting in frozen cold apartments, unable to eat properly, following a voice that nobody else can here. Addicts and artists often go hand in hand.

“These crosses all over our bodies”, the stacked wounds and traumas of war against the everyday. The great mistake of Amero-boomerist art criticism to assume that such wounds and traumas are the fault of oppressive power structures themselves. Such power structures exist to keep violent nature in a straightjacket, a state of affairs that the artist simply cannot abide by. The only advice that can ever be given to someone who is thinking about becoming an artist is “Give up now”, because the path of crucifixion is not something that can be chosen or rationally debated.

Many cultures and esoteric paths offer Gods of ecstasy and vision who undergo violent metamorphoses and stand at the crossroads of life and death: Jesus, Dionysus, Shiva and Osiris just a few. Of course the Christ myth is an evolution of the Dionysus myth, but the Christian Universalist reading comes out of Jewish linguistic totalitarianism which wants to banish the erotics of masks, idols and personas. The multiplicity and polymorphism, not to mention the perversity, of the various robes of the dying God is anathema to the priest line that wants to establish strict loyalty and sexual submission.

Judaism today has evolved to be a champion of the erotics of the eye, with many of the great figures of Hollywood Jewish artists trained in Romanticism and Expressionism who fled central Europe when the Nazis came to power in the 1930s. It is in fundamentalist Islam where we see the nightmare of Abrahamic totalitarianism most clearly, with women wrapped in rags and virgin girls offered as the heavenly reward for total submission to God.

Michael Jackson, one of the most influential and biggest selling artists of all time. One hardly ever hears his name mentioned save in scorn, and yet his traces are everywhere — the songs and dances of every popstar of the last 20 years are unmistakenly scorred by his influence. Jackson is frightening because he is, we might say, trans-everything. Massively androgynous, morphing from black to white, physically and musically, adult and child, his career is a violent and unceasing metamorphosis. He was under the knife as much as under the camera, a vanguard of celebrity plastic surgery taken to extremes, to many an angel and to many others a satanic freakshow.

The artist, condemned to create beauty at the monstrous intersections of life.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/740550153935667200/httpswwwtumblrcomolderthannetfic740123102285

Yeah, there’s been a lot of wank in DS9 fandom lately about why the fandom likes Bashir so much more than Sisko that tends to blame colorism or that Sisko’s Black identity is much more a part of his character while Bashir doesn’t have strong ties to any non white culture. ….And maybe that’s PART of it, but I think the much bigger part of it is that Bashir is presented as a type of character that female fic-writing shipping fandom goes nuts for and Sisko is not. Bashir is a socially awkward overenthusiastic arrogant nerd who has a ton of homoerotic subtext with multiple other male characters and whose canon het relationships in the show are fleeting and half-assed. Sisko is older and a devoted dad and Responsible Adult who has a long-lasting, well-developed and generally well-liked canon het relationship for over half the show’s run. I think if you had the Bashir character played by a Black man who is very in touch with his Black identity and the Sisko one played by a half-English half-Arab actor who is presented as very culturally Brit, the fandom reaction would still favor the former. (In fact, TNG has something of that type of character played by a black man in the form of Geordi and the nerdy girl shipper fandom also loves him and shipping him with Data, so….)

The analysis also ignores that other kinds of fandom exist, namely the cis dude parts of it, and they tend to favor Sisko over Bashir by a wide margin; in fact Sisko is one of the most popular and Bashir one of the least popular DS9 characters in those corners. And Bashir and Alexander Siddig himself have always had a very heavily female following (to the point of being the original name for TVTropes’ page on female-dominated fandoms), even though it is obviously not just women who watch DS9. During the lockdown in 2020, Siddig was doing these Zoom meetings where he met with fans and I went to a couple of them and was briefly in the unofficial Discord for it, and it was almost entirely women + AFAB trans and non binary people. Barely any cis dudes.

It’s weird how many analyses of fandom, even very serious academic ones (like what that paper the previous ask mentioned sounds like), don’t seem to factor in the obvious factors first, the basic nature of how different kinds of fandom work, *before* concluding it must be racism or some other kind of bigotry above all else.

--

Also, to the extent that Bashir ever went near ladies, it was like... Dax in the pilot or something, and I remember watching that when it premiered and going "Ooh". Even his het options were more fanficbait-y than anything Sisko ever did.

It's not an accident those papers are like that. Cut them no slack.

[womenvoices]

Your statement that you think "trans people deserve the same rights" is a lie. Would you say that "disabled people deserve the same rights" and then be fine with stairs at entrances because they have the same rights to go up stairs as everyone else? Or "gay people deserve the same rights" to mean that they can marry someone of the other binary gender just like everyone else?

You're saying that same thing when you then go and say "trans women should not use female spaces" - female spaces includes public accommodations (bathrooms, change rooms, etc). If you're restricting trans women from the appropriate accommodations, then no, that's not actually equality, that's the fake version of equality that I laid out at the beginning of this ask.

Your examples are irrelevant. It's not about the right to use stairs, it's about equal access to certain places. For example, a public building with only stairs isn't equal for disabled people because they CAN'T go up the stairs on their own which is why elevators, ramps, lifts, etc. exist. It's not about the right to marry someone of the opposite gender, it's about the right to marry another adult. So, while gay people do have the right to marry someone of the opposite gender, that alone is not equal because people don't marry people because they're the opposite gender, they marry because of love.

Trans people have the same rights as other people. They are allowed to use public restrooms, but like everyone else, it's important that single sex bathrooms stay single sex for the people using them. Can you give me an example of a right that trans people do not have that people who aren't trans do?

[lockedtombbrainworms]

Patriarchy and the Nine Houses

I've been mulling this one over in my brain on long drives recently, and as I'm currently at home resting up after an insanely busy few days and also some sort of illness flareup, I want to put some of what I've come up with into writing. These are coming from the perspective of a somewhat masculine-presenting queer trans woman with some degree of familiarity with anarcha-feminism, a lot more familiarity with anarchism in general, but not really much academic feminist background. I'm also white, which may well impact what I'm taking away from this here.

Something else that might influence what I've written here are the frankly insane doses of decongestants I'm currently on, but here goes.

So firstly, I don't think 'Patriarchy' as common feminist discourse uses the term exists within the Houses.

In terms of "Evidence Against", for one, there is seemingly no gendered violence in the Nine Houses - I've seen more than one post about how at no point does Gideon Nav feel like she's in any sort of danger of sexual assault or anything like that from the men she interacts with - she's quite happy to walk into Silas and Colum's room, and at no point does the narrative mention her being concerned about sexual violence while she, a teenage butch lesbian, is trapped in a room with an older man whose intentions towards her are unknown. She gets worried, sure, but mostly about swords or necromancy, not sexual assault. Our Griddle may be a bit sheltered, sure, but she's read a lot of adult-oriented comics, which in my experience tend to be fairly lurid about any and every fucked up thing that happens in the society that produced them, and none of those, nor anything she's been told by Aiglamene or witnessed on the Ninth, seem to have instilled any fear of patriarchal sexual violence in her.

The houses also don't seem to have a concept of homophobia or particularly rigid gender roles - at absolutely no point does anyone take issue with Gideon's sexuality and gender presentation, despite various other characters being absolute shits to her in various other ways throughout the book - Crux, Naberius, Silas, the Reverend Parents - at no point is it even hinted at that any of them were homophobic or shitty about gender-non-conformity. I don't really think you can get rid of any of those things entirely without also at least taking a big chunk out of patriarchy, if not eliminating it - they're all too tightly linked together.

I honestly don't think you can describe, for instance, Palamedes or Silas or Naberius as benefitting from "male privilege" in the context of the books without getting into some weird gender-essentialist bollocks about how being male Just Does That For You, at which point you may well be sliding into terf shit and I don't really think we have much of a common ground to discuss this from. The fandom's treatment of gender (and race, while we're at it) is another matter, but in the context of the books, I genuinely don't see "male privilege" or "patriarchy" existing within the wider society of the Nine Houses. You can look at the necro/cav dynamic as a sort of metaphor for gender, and I do consider them through that lense in some cases, but it's not a 1:1 map for gender and I don't think it's trying to be.

You could argue there's some weird patriarchal ideas of manhood in Mortus' treatment of Ortus - the guy very clearly abused his son to try to "toughen him up" and make him into a warrior when Ortus wanted nothing more than to write poetry, but while that's arguably written with a patriarchal bent to it from a doylist perspective, at no point does anyone actually tell Ortus he's less of a man in the text. What they do tell him is that he's less of a cavalier, which is why I actually view that dynamic as much more of an exploration of cavalier-hood as a metaphor for gender - 'toxic cavalierhood' rather than toxic masculinity, albeit via a dynamic that's unforunately very familiar to a lot of us.

The big flaw in my argument is that, unfortunately, in the literal sense of the word, the Nine Houses very much are a capital-P Patriarchy. They're run by an immortal God-Emperor dude with some fairly intense catholic shit going on! John actually was raised in a patriarchal society, and while his experiences as a he remembers it, and while he seems to have done an OK job of not passing homophobia, misogyny or strict gender roles onto the society he built after literally fucking nuking the one he grew up in, I don't know if someone in his position of power is really in a position to unlearn anything more at this point. To a lesser extent we see it with Augustine as well - the Saint of Patience definitely reads as a misogynist at times during the text (telling Mercymorn "you have made yourself unlovable" and his whole thing about Ianthe chosing to be broken spring to mind), and while he may not remember the pre-resurrection world, it still shaped him (and his brother, who is as much a part of the man we meet in HtN as the original Augustine who was resurrected).

Also none of this is to say the society of the Nine Houses is perfect - far from it! There's all sorts of fucked up abuse dynamics present, and the entire thing has been a fucked-up expansionist empire since it found someone to do expansionist imperialism on about five millennia before the story takes place, before which it was still a fucked-up death cult living on the reanimated wreckage of a dead solar system. If anything, the lack of misogyny, homophobia, rigid gender roles and the like are a parable - it doesn't matter how inclusive and egalitarian the society of the imperial core is when it perpetuates brutal violence on the imperial periphery.

[roadhogsbigbelly]

she did NOT say that fictional csa is fine though, that’s the thing that everyone is very expressly telling you. and IM not defending ““people who jack off to fictional children”” either, where the fuck are you getting that, do you just say this shit to every trans woman you see? you can’t argue by putting shit in people’s mouths. the “standards” you are describing are the same standards that the people you’re smearing agree with. im not saying its all or nothing at all, you just can’t take anything we’re saying seriously

when you read "stopping being mean to sex freaks who like ageplay and incest shipping" why do you think that suddenly stops at loliporn or fictional csa when that's part of the package? do you think "ageplay and incest shipping" only applied to game and thrones fanfiction and mild "daddy" play? like of course those posts saying "don't be say you love sex freaks if you don't include ALL sex freaks" is also including fictional csa, like fucking cailou porn or whatever. because the posts those are response to are like "stop being mean about people with weird fetishes that make you uncomfortable! (except fictional csa fuck you you can die)" if she's not supporting fictional csa great, but why did she reblog the fucking post than?

and again the fact that i criticized her has nothing to do with her being a trans woman, that didn't even cross my mind, and i've criticized cis men, cis women, trans men, non binary people and people of all genders and sexuality that have been dismissive of concerns over this shit. i've criticized cis women on twitter for publicly posting their weird underaged boy rape fantaties and i got accused of "hating women's fantasies", i've also critcized other cis gay men for drawing actual "toddlercon" and got accused of being a "pick me" gay, and other variations of "stop criticizing grown adults for what they do in private even if they post in publicly actually oops"

i don't actually care what people do in the privacy of their own homes, but the only reason people on tumblr make posts about how "you should stop being mean to people about their age play, incest porn" is because most people don't actually keep it private actually, or else other people wouldn't be seeing it and complain about it. like if you go into someone's dms or a locked private space to "out them" for being into scooby doo or even some actually more harmful fantasy than that's still kind of gross and intruding and they shouldn't do that, but if said person is doing it in a PUBLIC FORUM than yeah they're not above criticism because it's their own "private fantasies" when it's clearly not.

(and before you take words out of my mouth i am not inherently against public displays of sexuality or even kink, i don't think a child seeing a man in a pup mask and harness is going to tramatize them, i think they'll be fine, and in general i think try to hide the fact "sex" like. exists from children does not nothing to deter grooming and kind of causes it in some cases. i've seen people insisting that people who don't lock their nsfw twitter accounts of adults have regular but explicit sex that they're are personally grooming children who might have to figure out porn exists, and i think that's an unhealthy attitude to have. my point is more that the entire argument that noone can criticize or have a negative opinion on "ageplay" or "incest kink" because "it only exists between two private consenting adults" is just. not true.)

[ichangedmymind2]

an actual defense of Lily Orchard or how I came to be radicalized by an unjust society and modern internet culture

I don't know how to phrase it other than, like, I think the more I learn about this person it makes me reflect on how the internet itself has kind of forgotten its 'roots'. Well, perhaps more that the internet was kind of the native lands of the weirdest strangest nerd people you can imagine. Or at least, in a sense, anyone could pitch their flag and exist in a way that made sense to them, even if it was just a temporary fantasy. A way to manifest a better version of someone you cannot really be in the real world. A place of direct expression and creativity and communication. If we are to foster justice in a society of idiosyncratic individuals its kind of hard to do so when we retroactively remove humanity from those who have no recourse to defend themselves. I see how Lily Orchard is treated and I can't help but feel that everybody keeps making the same mistake regarding this person, victims or otherwise. If this is to have begun with Lily being abused as a child and functionally never 'growing up' as a person as a result, why should we as people continue the cycle of abuse? Its kind of disgusting to me how so many people so desperately want Lily to react, to conform with a level of 'awareness' or 'shame' about anything and everything they did or didn't do. Why? If they are that same little girl who was abused by an adult, someone she thought she could trust, why should she trust anyone ever again? No really, why? Do you actually care about Lily? You talk of people as cursed artifacts that can be whisked away with a few magic words. Secured from the hands of the unscrupulous, a threat to liberate others from. When Hot Allostaic Load was written, it was perhaps the greatest most pertinent piece of writing in regards to how trans women are treated even in the most safest accepting of places. How they are desperately unsafe even in those places, how fast they can be othered and demonized and sacrificed to sate the bizarre insecurities of anyone else. And I feel like, even as old as the writing is, it still holds as the penultimate example of how trans annihilation is a woeful default setting in 'society' in so many aspects. From how people perceive trans women, even children, as threats. How people project the worst aspects of themselves upon them with an uncanny instantaneous retroactive fervor.

Why wouldn't I be skeptical of how Lily Orchard is treated as a trans woman. it gets to be so much, I have to wonder if tolerance and empathy isn't a real thing at all. Just a cute gratuity, a turn of phrase. A way to express some kind of understanding but without the comprehension required of it.

Heaven help you if you are a total fuckup and you hurt people because it is by your nature to fuckup. Is this world not for you? Are you not allowed the dignity of humanity but to be cast as some kind of primordial wretched beast that has to be shunned lest the contamination spread? What about that phrase, it holds true: Hurt People, Hurt People. Lily Orchard is the poster child for this in the most literal sense. She was hurt, but then we have the gall to act as if its something uniquely devastating or strange when she hurts others? Well, I apologize, but I can't just do it anymore. I feel bad if people are hurt, but after a certain point folks have to stop expecting more from a person who never really shown any inclination toward anything but toxic interpersonal interactions due to trauma. You all want something from this person, and all you ever get is the worst of yourself. I keep seeing this time and time again. It doesn't matter who it is. When someone is subject of such intense stigma, even if its supposedly warranted. So what? They have no meaningful power. They cannot actually hurt you in any way that they've already been. Its all a mass delusion. There is nothing here, just a weird nerdy little girl who was abused a child and the consequences from that. Exercised again and again and again and again and again.

[rjalker]

people really need to stop recommending books based purely on the fact that they're "Queer representation" of some kind.

Not only does it do a disservice to the story itself, because I guarentee you the author wanted their story to be remembered for more than having "x characters" and nothing more...

...but if you're going around blithely reccomending tons of random strangers read something like the Xenogenesis trilogy by Octavia E. Butler based purely on the fact that some of the characters use it/its pronouns...

that's.

I'm sorry but that is just so negligent. That's the only word I can think to describe it. Xenogenesis is an adult science fiction story meant to be read by adults who are ready to have an incredibly serious conversation about slavery, eugenics, rape, genocide, and how consent literally cannot exist when you are a slave, and what that means for you and everyone around you.

It's not a fun casual adventure story anyone and everyone should be picking up without knowing what they're getting into. You have no idea how many people you're casually recommending this series to are victims of rape who are going to be triggered by scenes in this series, and you're not giving them any warning!

It's already bad enough for people to be flattening stories down into whether or not they have "X characters" but to not warn people about genuinely triggering content in the books you're flattening this way?? Why would you do that?

Please don't fucking do that. If you know a series deals with triggering topics then you need to warn people about that any time you recommend people read it. The Xenogenesis series requires trigger warnings for rape at the very least, and a whole lot more on top of that too, but that's the bare minimum.

Stop recommending people read things just because "characters use x pronouns in it" or "it has nonbinary characters" or "it has a lesbian in it" without any relevant warnings about triggering content it also contains.

At least the person who did this did specify that the it/its users in Xenogenesis are all aliens, but like, that's the least of things people need to be aware of before reading this trilogy.

Reccommend media by actually summarizing it. There's almost always an official summary you can find somewhere. Warn people about any topics that might be triggering that the content contains.

And, since I see this happen the most: for the love of fuck do not lie to people about Queer characters being in a series, or refuse to explain to people that the Queer characters that do exist are just the same old stereotypes we've all seen a million times, with nothing to balance them out and make them actually progressive.

That is going to accomplish nothing except alienating people who've been tricked into reading something that's not actually what they were told it was. You are not going to get anyone to enjoy a series by betraying them by lying about nonexistant or at best shallow, stereotypical, bioessentialist 'representation'.

The Animorphs does not have a single canon Queer character.

The Murderbot Diaries is just the exact same nonbinary robot stereotype that was old in the 90s, with no important human nonbinary characters at all despite there being seven whole books at this point. There are exactly 2 human characters who use neopronouns, but they're the epitome of "token characters". They appear for a combined total of maybe 10 pages, have no importance to the plot, and get shoved offscreen as quickly as possible, never to be seen again. All of the robots use it/its pronouns because they don't have genitals and Martha Wells is transmisic and loves biological essentliasm, and still very clearly equates sex with gender with pronouns. Despite the protagonist using it/its pronouns, no one ever asks anyone else for their pronouns, everyone just magically knows, because, again, biological essentialism. Also known as the exact opposite of representation for trans people.

The Xenogenesis trilogy does not have a single canon Queer character in it. All of the characters who use it/its pronouns are part of the third reproductive sex for the alien species.

Start recommending series based on what the plot is actually about, or what good things they have going for them, not just because they have characters who use XYZ pronouns or are the literal stereotype of a nonbinary robot.

[tommming]

Adoption analogy for trans gender identity

One of my favourite analogies for being transgender (and people should use this more in my opinion, I came up with it idk if anyone else did too) is adoption. (and I am aware that adoption in our society has some problematic issues in its current state, but that’s not the point, especially because humans throughout history and the world can and do adopt children).

When an adult adopts a child, and the child is happier and healthier because they have someone to care for them, and the parent and the child both like to refer to each other as mom/dad and son/daughter, would you deny the reality of this relationship or refuse to use the words mother/father son/daughter?

Some adoptions will be more visually obvious than others (like inter-ethnic), and this can lead to mean and invalidating comments and assumptions about the relationship. 

In adoption situations, it’s clear that the medical implications (genetic diseases etc) are not the same as biological parents and children. 

And some kids will at some point decide they want to call their adoptive parents “adoptive parents” and reconnect with their biological parents, and maybe have two sets of parents, and this is accepted, because parent can mean different things. 

Everyone (idk i’ve never met an adoption hater) accepts that this is all valid and in a sense real, because who counts as a parent or son/daughter is just words, and even if they usually have a concrete biological basis, it would be quite disrespectful and unhelpful to refuse to use the words to include adoptive parent/child relationships. 

As you can piece together I am sure, the visually obvious adoptees are analogous to visually obvious trans people, medical concerns are analogous, and different sets of parents is somewhat analogous to the somewhat nuanced way sex and gender all fit together (like someone can be male and nonbinary or whatever) and that whatever the adoptee kid says about their relationships is probably what others should accept, and just the whole thing is analogous! Especially it’s really the same type of thing: People accept the fact of adoption / gender as something that is socially and psychologically real despite lacking the biological basis that typically defines these things, largely because many of the important parts of what defines these words/concepts actually does apply to the situation, and importantly I would argue everyone is better off because of it! (better both because of the actual adoption / transition itself and because of the validating language and people being understanding of it).

You could argue that adoption reduces the resources available for real parents/children (parenting clinics, family therapy, family lawyers, etc.) You could argue that is degrades  and distorts the meaning of what a child is (so that immigrant parents wanting their children to be reconnected with them might have less legal leverage, or that after someone dies it’s no longer enough to be a biological child to inheret their stuff if they have no will, because being a child no longer has any real definition). You could even argue that it perpetuates unhelpful stereotypes about parent/child relationships (for example I know someone that had an abusive mother and is lowkey triggered when people talk about maternal love, and it’s not helpful at all for people to assume that everyone’s parents are nice and caring and present or even existent/known because so many children’s parents are not, or that parents are responsible and have rightful authority over children, which is a dangerous idea for children that are abused by their parents). But are these realistic concerns? Why or why not? I’m not saying this is exactly the same as gender issues, but it has similarities for sure.

I think these ideas are interesting and important and I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but I really think this is a great analogy, and shows how I wish the world would be about transgender people (accepting and validating, even legally, without suspicious concerns and without any delusions or misconceptions about what’s real or not).

Furthermore, if you want to really get into it, both the idea of being a parent and the idea of being a woman or man have an interesting similarity, due to both of them being being complex concepts that involve biology and social relations and stereotypical characteristics and all kind of stuff. Someone who is a father to a child that died before the child was born, and left nothing for the kid (wasn’t married lets say), is a parent, and so is an adoptive father, notice how there is absolutely no single fact that these two dads have in common except for the identification as a father. I think this is very similar to a very masculine cis woman that is consistently mistaken for a man, lives a very masculine life generally, lets say perhaps has had medical issues with her hormones throughout life, and has no real attachment her gender because she is a gender studies professor and knows about how its all bullshit (I knew a professor that was a lot like this), and a trans woman, who is technically male, but passes effortlessly as a quite feminine woman and has since being a little child gravitated strongly towards girlhood and said she’s a girl, and grown up to take hormones etc., although not yet done bottom surgery (you probably are aware of this, but there are many trans women that fit this description). There is not a single fact that makes these people both women other than their identification as women. Both are quite atypical, but both have good reason be called women. 

This is why I think that gender is actually a circular definition. Men are men because they are considered men, women are women because they’re called women. Just like parents are parents because someone called them a parent. There are a million and one things that are typical of a man or woman or parent, but none are completely definitive (in my view), and that’s okay because they are just words and words are tools to understand the world. And likewise I think other complex concepts are probably like this too. Religions, languages, families, crimes, salads, idk! Trans women are women because we regard them as women.

[elifinchsart]

some Tillman and Mike gender headcannons/thoughts since i have them mostly coherently typed up and they are important To Me. these are not Universal Trans Experiences just my thoughts for these characters cw for discussing transphobia, dysphoria, fatphobia & bad parents

I think Tillman absolutely did not figure out he was trans until like his early twenties. My headcannon about his mom Harmony (Crab NPC from Discipline Era), her whole thing is control + image. (This led Tillman to also feel like he needs to be in control of his image but, unfortunately it’s easier to control a bad image than a good one)

But part of Harmony's image control was appearing as a perfect rich family so Tillman was expected to dress and behave very femininely. And his thought process went “I hate wearing dresses and getting dressed up like this and I don’t know why I hate it so much. It must be because something is wrong with me and it must be because I’m ugly�� + that got mixed in with his weight because I think he’s just naturally chubby/fat. So that was one of those things that’s dysphoria that you don’t realize that’s dysphoria until later. Tillman absolutely he had the trans experience of I’m going to only wear baggy hoodies and beanies lol. Anyway this all manifested into him having a very antagonistic relationship with his body and food (esp bc Harmony is v the passive aggressive “Oh you’re eating/wearing that?” sort of parent. This is also part of the reason he was nasty as a teen/young adult because he was in a lot of pain that he didn’t realize was pain-just that everything was uncomfortable and pissed him off. Figuring out that he was trans, getting top surgery and going on hrt actually helped mellow him out a lot. Being able to just Exist in his body without dressing it up to impress anyone else helped him so so much.

I think Mike was also very helpful in getting him to a better place with his body and especially food as something that should be enjoyed not rationed out or brings misery. Mike loves to make food for people so they had a bit of a roadbump when they first started dating and Tillman refused to eat much of Mike made and they had to talk about it. Mike was very patient and not pushy for once and let Tillman come around on his own. Mike also hyping Tillman up as the hottest man ever helped too LOL. I think Tillman had a lot of apprehension about transitioning wrt still being desirable which is something I’ve def felt and I know other trans men have too

I think Mike had a lot of gender emotions growing up but they never fully formed into anything understandable for him because he was like “well I’m not not a man” and he didn’t really have access to like Knowing About “Weird” Gender Identities despite knowing a trans person (Jaylen) and she only ever had Jaylen to compare to and they have very different genders haha. And then I think in college and after she kinda was like well y’know men can be feminine, men can wear dresses, it doesn’t have to be a gender thing so I’m not going to think about it too hard. I think also she had this idea that maybe she was faking it or not trans enough or people would think he was doing it for attention or to seem punk. Also incredibly stupid logic but I think she was like “I don't want to look like I'm just copying Jaylen” which is a silly thing to worry about but nevertheless. And then Blaseball happens and again he doesn’t really have time to think about it. So its only post shadowing and in therapy that she finally talks to more trans and nonbinary folks about their experiences and starts to approach it from a “what makes me happiest” pov rather than “well I'm not miserable” pov because its a very Mike thing to try to avoid being too happy as a coping mechanism. And because of all this she gets to experiment and decides he likes having a lot of gender especially if it contradicts each other (she/her pronouns on masc days, he/him while dressed femme, beard + dress etc.)

[momentsofamber]

stoned chibi me has several Controversial(tm) Things (aka topics I ran away from in fear of discourse over the last two decades) that she would like to announce before I sober up and morality ocd and bpd start beating my ass for oversharing.

sometimes (especially age regressed) I'm still a girl even though I am transmasc non-binary physically and to the offline world. identifying as a girl sometimes in safe spaces like online does not make me a cis girl and does not invalidate my experience as a trans person. I am non-binary. my gender is allowed to be more than one thing, including female in a non-cis way.

I do not know the origin of my system. maybe it's bpdgenic because I had traits of it in childhood. maybe it's median, maybe it's endogenic. maybe it all started out as a lonely little girl who was so afraid of abandonment that she made a bunch of friends in her own head so she couldn't be alone and that was just a survival skill that she had without any labels for it. that doesn't make me any less of a valid plural system and I wouldn't be as stable as I am now without my other selves.

I'm a paraphile who has been ashamed of having a paraphilia my whole life. it existed even when I was a toddler. in fact I'm so ashamed of having said paraphilia that I've only ever told a handful of people what it is and have a fear of even saying the word itself because it's so obscure. anyone I've ever actually told, their reaction has always been 'that's adorable' or 'I can completely understand why that's appealing to you'. I have never hurt anyone with my paraphilia and finding someone attractive for something specific cannot harm them because thought crime does not exist and I never engage with the people personally unless there is consent involved.

I'm pro-incest. I think what consenting related people do at home is none of my business in the same way that what anyone else is doing at home or at a friend's is none of my business. what consenting adults do is absolutely none of my business and doesn't affect me.

I'm anti-censorship and I believe that people should be able to make any content they want, or have sex however they want as long as it is consensual for all 18+ parties involved (if irl roleplay or live-action porn) and/or entirely fictional content (art, fic, rp, etc). fictional characters under the age of 18 and/or fictional characters who are related to each other are still fictional and therefore do not require anyone's consent. don't like? don't look.