#also trans women suffer for womanhood too

[impulsivelycontentious]

To be a woman is to sit at the character creator in a video game with dude's default settings and be like "nope I do not like this at all, it feels all wrong" and switch everything to the "woman" stuff. Especially the how other people talk to/about me.

Its not the ONLY nor the universal, but it's one of the things that makes me FEEL cis. I LIKE being a woman. I will always choose to represent myself as a woman.

What a woman is and how she thinks of herself is individual. Trans women's idea of their womanhood is as valuble as cis women's, and presents perspectives which can, if you're not fragile, help you understand yourself. In the same way people who are similar to you but not the same often can. Cis women don't have more authority on this one and I will not have some transphobe define my womanhood by suffering. I LIKE being a woman. I choose it. I am lucky enough to have been born this way; and I think i'd have chosen it regardless. The only reason i'm not trans is genetic lottery.

“to be a woman is to experience pain”“to be a woman is to perform”“to be a woman is to-” SHUT UP SHUT UP 💥💥💥💥

[busket]

garden variety conservative transphobia is going to get worse but radical feminism is also going to get worse. if youre a cis women terfs are going to try to recruit you and make you believe that the reason your rights are at stake is because of trans people. they're going to tell you that all men are your violent oppressors and they're going to include trans women in that category. they're gonna tell you about women who are gender traitors and joined the enemy and they're going to point to trans men. don't believe them. trans people are not your enemy, we have no power over you, and we desperately need your support and your solidarity.

be aware of radfem pipelines and dog whistles too. be skeptical of anyone that talks about the divine feminine or correlates birthing, menstruating, or female reproductive organs with womanhood. be especially skeptical of people who use those biological things as reasons to why women are more spiritual, or more in tune with nature, or just that they're better than men (read: anyone they decide is a man)

radical feminism is an expected reactionary outcome from cis women who are being oppressed by conservatives, especially when all they practice is ciscentric, liberal, white feminism. they feel the need to be radicalized but don't have the experience and information to pinpoint the true source of their suffering. trans people are not your enemy, AMAB people are not your enemy, anyone who identifies as a man is not your enemy. we're all being crushed under the same stone

[shamebats]

Not only do I believe that if someone who was previously assigned the role of woman/girl transitions out of it because they want to escape certain expectations that come with that role & organs they happen to have been given by nature, I also believe this will on the long term benefit cis women.

They should have all the same options available to them as trans people do & they should be aware that they have them.

Don't enjoy having periods? Take medicine to skip them. Womanhood =/= suffering through periods.

Don't like your boobs? Yeet them. Womanhood =/= having a non-flat chest.

Don't like having vaginal sex? You don't have to, there are other things you can do. Womanhood =/= putting up with unsatisfying sex just because you have the organ for it & your partners want to use it.

Dont like that you can get pregnant? You don't have to. Womanhood =/= suffering through pregnancy & childbirth.

Don't like the idea of being a mother? You can be a father instead. Or neither. You can opt out entirely. Womanhood =/= motherhood.

Don't want to be a girlfriend/wife? You can be a boyfriend, a husband, a partner, neither, anything you want. Womanhood =/= being a girlfriend/wife.

You don't like having a vagina? There's surgeries for that too. Womanhood =/= having a vagina.

We're still at a point where people in the social role of woman think there's this whole laundry list of things they just have to suffer through & put up with because of their assigned role & anatomy.

There's no virtue in suffering and if we help women learn this, they will put up with less bullshit from society.

(I also think this is a huge element of the transphobia afab trans people face. Misogynistic men don't want women to know that they can have that kind of power over their own lives & bodies, and a lot of cis women who've suffered needlessly all their lives have the instinct to push back against afab trans ppl exercising our bodily autonomy for the same reason that ppl who sacrificed a lot to pay a fortune for their education don't want it to be made free.)

[genderkoolaid]

hey i’m sorry to bother you but what are some warning signs that someone is a terf? i would very much like to be out as gender-fluid at my small town southern school (surprisingly supportive) but the school nurse had that “fallen sisters” book on her desk :( i don’t want to put myself in danger and i don’t know if she was reading it because she’s a terf or because she was curious about what was in it. thank you for your time!

Quick note: a lot of transphobes are not TERFs; they don't subscribe to the movement of radical feminism. But especially right now TERF ideas have become more widespread, since a lot of transphobic people turned to TERF speakers and authors for support. But that's also because a lot of TERF ideas meld very nicely with traditional patriarchal ideas (like the idea that the gender binary is required for safety of women). Things like "trans men are manipulated girls suffering from misogyny!" has gotten really popular recently, but in the past your average transphobe would probably be thinking more along the lines of "huh what a freaky dyke" than assuming it's the patriarchy's fault trans men exist.

Anyways! That's all to say that someone might use transphobic or radical feminist rhetoric without being a radical feminist themselves. Here are some things to watch out for:

Use of "female" and "male"; in medical contexts I tend to give people more grace, but if she's really insistent on sex language that's a red flag.

Highly concerned with pushing womanhood on students AFAB; if they're a TERF this is less likely to look like "pink and bows" and more likely focus on Female Power, uteri and menstruation, and identity with womanhood as a feminist act itself. Comments like "remember you can dress/act however you want and still be a woman!" can be well-meaning but they can also be a subtle way of trying to prevent GNC students from thinking about transitioning.

Fearmongering about the effects of HRT (especially T); educating about all possible effects is important, but if she focuses on negative effects, treats them as horrifying or more dangerous/common then they actually are, that's a red flag. Especially when it's tied to reproductive ability. Same when it comes to surgeries.

If she believes ROGD (rapid onset gender dysphoria) is a real thing, she's transphobic. If she doesn't use that term she might talk about transness/transmasculinity being a social contagion or trend, something young girls are pressured into (esp. by misogyny/lesbophobia), even if this is dressed up with "obviously SOME trans people are real but there's just too many now!!"

Of course, any kind of weirdness around trans people in locker rooms/bathrooms is a major red flag

If she does end up being transphobic, since you mentioned your school is supportive you might be able to tell the admins about that and have them back you up. If there are other trans people at your school, definitely ask them if they've noticed any transphobic behavior from her (you can ask cis folks too although they may be less aware of what subtler transphobia sounds like)

[rivetgoth]

Can I be honest I see tguys say stuff like this all the time and it’s just so fucking crazy sounding to me. I can’t believe how many of them felt some kind of camaraderie or community with cis women. I was consistently ostracized by women and girls in my life for my not being able to successfully assimilate into girlhood/womanhood and almost exclusively friends with boys through my entire childhood. My closest “female” friends growing up literally all came out as FTM around the same time I did. When I was fully “female”-passing pre-everything closeted etc I was still treated like a freak for being in the women’s room & at the very minimum was presumed gay throughout middle and high school to the point that I was called slurs & people would tease me by asking me how lesbians have sex with each other etc. I don’t mean to like invalidate people or say that these people’s experiences aren’t valid but I just think it’s crazy how common of a narrative “lamenting losing your community with fellow women” is in the FTM community when not only is that like a lifetime away from my experience but tooooons of WOMEN I know don’t even feel a universal camaraderie with fellow women 😭 Black women, trans women, autistic women, butch women (and obviously all those categories can overlap), even just cis women who were Weird Girls, I’ve talked to many who didn’t feel any of what OP is describing…

Crazier too (& I always see comments like this too) is people in the comments of this post being like “yeah OP being a man sucks because men are so cruel to each other and aren’t gentle and warm like women are and men’s bathrooms suck and are nasty and grimy and you can’t compliment women without being seen as a creep,” and I also don’t get that shit. Just detransition if you hate being a man that much bro I’m out here living as a man because I want to. I remember the time this goofy trans guy wrote some article going on and on about how the men’s restroom is a cold disgusting space of toxic masculinity and internalized homophobia and how men are performatively cruel to each other in there so they don’t seem gay or something and it was just. Incomprehensible to me (I’d seen that article and hated it before this even happened, but that SAME GUY later wrote some insane “how to pick up trans girls” article about how to seduce trans girls that was literally insanely dehumanizing, creepy, and misogynistic, shocker). I’ve been in men’s rooms all over the damn place in conservative areas liberal areas in foreign countries and men’s bathrooms are just. Fine. They’re fine. I think it’s really overshooting to assume some unspoken hostility when men in bathrooms aren’t super social because the social dynamic of men’s rooms has always made perfect sense to me lmao the goal is to spend as little time around the damn toilets as possible and just do your business and get out without bothering people or holding anyone up.

Idk. I don’t really have a uniform thesis in all this I just think it’s one of the most bizarre frequent things I see from the FTM community—so many guys seem to genuinely hate being men and feel that they felt some warm connected community with womanhood and this even comes out in way more genuinely toxic ways, the guy who wrote the weird “how to seduce trans women” drivel being case in point, or like, mis/degendering trans women by claiming they don’t understand the like innate female connection™️ that they have or by sounding like straight up incels being like “oh women are so beautiful and soft and kind meanwhile as a man I’m forced to be alone and suffer in silence the male loneliness epidemic is real” or whatever. Like I’d understand and be much more interested in analysis from trans men about the pitfalls of identifying with manhood in relation to patriarchal power structures or how harrowing it can be to be accepted as a man in a community of men and be made privy to the way some men will so brazenly speak about women in their presence and how to navigate that, but it’s never even about hating manhood as an oppressive force or dealing with actual bigotry from fellow men, it’s about feeling like manhood is isolating and lonely while womanhood is warm and connected and community-oriented and I just find that kinda batshit and just not. True. I have cishet male friends who tell me they love me, who offer to go with me into the bathroom to help me throw up if I’m too drunk, who wish me happy birthday with heart emojis…

I honestly think a lot of the problem here is that a lot of trans men have exclusively female friends pre-coming out (which again is still kinda wild to me, but w/e) and then when they do come out and begin transitioning feel the divide form between them and their cisgender girl friends and become convinced this is some epidemic of male isolation rather than like. Just the reality of having old friends who you could relate to more at a different point in your life. I think making more male, trans, and LGBT in general friends would really make a difference for these people. And just generally making friends that are contingent on more than “we were assigned the same sex at birth.” As an adult now I’m pretty discerning with who I’m friends with and I have amazing friends who are both cis men and women & trans men and women and I don’t feel like I have trouble relating to them or feeling left out by any of them. I guess ultimately it’s harmless unless it becomes the weird spiraling incel stuff I was talking about before but I find it kinda incomprehensible how often “I hate being a man” is uttered in spaces comprised of people who are undergoing massive trial and tribulation medically, physically, socially, financially, etc with the express purpose of being a man.

[tirfpikachu]

sometimes i feel like, in certain cases, "detrans woman" and "nonbinary woman" ain't too different. and could even be used simultaneously by the same person without much issue. after all, isn't processing internalized misogyny and escaping the gender roles box for womanhood also a way someone can at the same time not feel like a binary man, not feel like a binary woman, but not feel like a not-woman either? after unlearning all the bullshit male society taught us, it can be destabilizing and create distance between us and other women. we might no longer feel like a normie woman. we've been awakened. we're no longer a gender roled woman, rolled up in everything she was taught she needed to be or she would fail at womanhood. we're an unfailible woman, we can't get a bad grade in womanhood bc we don't care about gender grades. we know it's all bullshit. we took back the power patriarchal society had over us. in that sense, we're not willingly binary anymore. and i think, over time, it's only going to get harder and harder to find women who are happily into the gender roles, the gender box assigned to them.

people fucking hate that, ofc. especially male people, and doubly so cis/bio men. they hate that we're awakened women. they hate that we found feminism and sisterhood and go detrans or use nonbinary in addition to woman, bc we reconnect with our body type and our upbringing. and by they, i mean both sides btw. the patriarchy hates that we found our power, of course. non-feminists scoff at us.

and... mainstream trans activists hate that our journey got us here, and hate how we make dysphoria seem curable in unmedical ways and transness more complex than they like to think. we complicate things. they hate that they found power in changing themselves (whatever makes them feel at peace ofc), while we tried to as well, but in the process we found our power was within us all along. we found that just being neutrally sexed animals, just female humans, female animals, girls the way that one calls a cat a sweet girl, cat first girl second, human first girl second... our bodies, our gender category, don't define us. anymore, anyways. anyone who defines us by our womanhood is a bigot, and we scrubbed our brains free of all the shit patriarchal brainwashing left in us. and for us, personally, it was enough to free us. that's not the case for anymore. some folks need more than that. some folks need to modify themselves beyond recognition to feel at peace with themselves. but i do hope they know that deep down, they were always good beings all along. i hope they know that gender is bullshit and sex says nothing about anyone's worth, personality, goals, interests, etc. it says fuckall about any of that. i don't care if i get a male or female rabbit. a rabbit is a rabbit. if i feel affection for a new pet, our connection is what matters [*]. i would never assign someone gender roles based on their sex. but it's sadly done way too often by parents and male society. if you're trans, temporarily or forever, you gotta clean up all your internalized misogyny and sexism/gncphobia. find kinship with other female people, or male gnc people if you're male. just check off some boxes. clean everything up. deep-clean your mind and your heart first.

[*] insert tras here being like, "why can't you be like that about dating? you dirty close-minded terfy homo dyke? why can't you love beyond genitals? beyond just bodies?" and these days i laugh and laugh and laugh at that shit because wow they have zero clue!! they don't know the sense of peace at having my female/afab body against another female/afab body, at knowing we were born the same, at knowing we went thru the same growing up, at knowing we understand eachother so, so deeply without saying a word bc she is what i am, she is where i have been, and i have suffered as she has suffered, and we are a love born of the connection all female beings share, the connection of bio dick havers treating us as prey. not knowing we're more powerful than they could ever dream of. do bodies like ours not hold the godly powers of creation itself? are we not gods in the literal sense, born creators, who get to choose if a new life should be made? do we not hold the future in the palm of our hand? to the dismay of penised beings? and do me and my beloved not love eachother only the way two gods could love one another, knowing the struggle, knowing the power? is the patriarchy not fighting tooth and nail to control us, wrestle us into submission before their phallic altar? do they not know it's impossible, for everything in us would dry up at the sight? do they not know that we can rely on sisterhood to get us through fucking anything? do they not know we masculinized ourselves and found ourselves happily female anyway? do they not know that i'd love her with a beard and five eyes, but if she was reborn male we would not be the same people to begin with (tho ofc i like to think the bodyswapped versions of us would have a love story too, we would not be us anymore, not this timeline's love story, she would be a different version of her and i would miss our og love)? because what is anyone without memories, and aren't childhood memories, puberty memories, some of the experiences most affected by one's body type (under the patriarchy), some of the most developmentally significant memories of all? is female just genitalia and estrogen puberty to tras, to "hearts not parts" type folks?

is female just a meat suit and not also the life experiences linked to it, our upbringing, a rich female culture one is born into? trans women might be immigrants into this female culture if they pass post-transition, they might get the exact body, but they just don't know the culture the way born into it do. any transfem will admit being transfem is hard, it's hard to merge into female culture when they self-admittedly don't know much about it. anyone not having been born into this culture, not being fluent the way only a native resident of femaleness can be, will show signs of it even if it's been 50+ years. you can't just wipe someone's upbringing clean, your past always leaves traces, and a transfem wouldn't be able to bond with other female4female lesbians on basic female upbringing things... when those are the things that make being into other female ppl so attractive for many of us! we just get eachother. we understand without even saying anything. we understand female body issues. there's a warm sense of peace emanating from that knowledge in my heart, knowing me and my girlfriend were born the same. we went through so many of the same things, all the good and the bad sides of growing up female. and i find that attractive as hell, and it brings me immense joy in life. there's so many inside jokes a transfem just wouldn't get the way my gf can. and i unfortunately need to add, since people get defensive, that this isn't shaming the transfem for not having those experiences. i hope the transfem will come to terms with not being female too. she can be a woman in society, but she's not born this way, she's an immigrant into womanhood, and that's okay. she still needs to let lesbians who are only into people raised female enjoy our unique sexuality that she just can't understand. i can't understand the transfem4transfem experience either. so what? isn't lgbt or 2slgbtqia+ or whatever culture all about inclusion and diversity in sexuality and gender expression? what about those who are girls the way animals are girls? we hate gender roles but we're personally definining cis womanhood as being female animals, female humans? what's so twisted about that? what about female4female lesbians? transmasc4transmasc can exist, why not us? why make everything so stupidly complicated for no reason? why shame us for how we were born, for being into others like ourselves?

i pity them, honestly. watch them bring girldick and male upbringing experiences to female4female lesbians, watch as we'll all dry up like the dying succulents on our windowsills and sip drinks laughing at the naked male bodies before us because they're so unsexual to us homodykes. watch as we raise eyebrows at the male's lack of misogyny in her upbringing, her lack of expertise on female culture, and just... everything that's so fundamentally unappealing to us. we can be friends. we can be allies. thankfully though, sex and marriage isn't activism. you can't play woke in the sheets. if you do, that's honestly sad. love isn't political. heteros made it political, but love is just love. and the love between two female people is normal. boring at times, even. we're normies. and if mainstream tras can't see that, well, maybe they have issues to work through in therapy. idk.

if two dysphoric ppl working through really hard shit end up feeling at peace with being female animals, female humans, and loving one another, if that's threatening, if that's bigoted, if that's twisted, well...

we detrans chicks and homodykes will find our own place to hangout. and we'll be nice to your faces, of course, but behind doors we're having a blast with others like ourselves. people like us have done this for as long as humanity has been alive, anyways. we always go underground and make it work anyhow. radblr is proof of that. idc if i have to go door to door checking if any homodyke is there, or if i have to comb thru tra spaces to find cool detrans folks, i will find others like me. that's what the marginalized have always done.

we're like lizards. we'll just find a cooler rock to party under🦎✌️

[genderqueerdykes]

am I the only person who is kinda sick and tired of the queer experience or whatever being defined by how oppressed you are ?? like .. I thought we were over the oppression olympics y'all come on ..

idk, it just feels like every time I make any post about my queerness, especially being partially tmasc, I have to cover the joyful post with "OF COURSE I EXPERIENCE OPPRESSION AND HATRED BEING QUEER SUCKS AND IM NOT SAYING IT'S FUN OR EASY ALSO OTHERS HAVE IT WORSE" which, just isn't true. being queer is the most positive and fun and freeing thing ever, the homophobia and hate that comes with it isn't. but I don't want to define my identity and my queer joy by a percentage of how hated I am yk ??

i'm sick of it, too, you're not alone.

discussions of oppression are important. that is part of the reason we come together to form community. but it's not the ONLY thing that makes us queer. yes we are oppressed by cishet society, yes we are othered. we know this. we do not need a constant reminder that we are miserable. we do not need a constant reminder that our lives are hard. we do not need a constant reminder that we are suffering.

it's a super unhealthy mindset and it's getting people hurt in real time. i'm not sure why it started cropping up that trans women and transfems are the only ones allowed to talk ever because we're very oppressed, but it's not how this kind of thing works. it's not on a scale of "Whoever has it worst gets to talk all the time and explain other people's suffering to them" it's. everyone is allowed to talk because we're all miserable and we all suffer. there's this sort of transfeminine self-centeredness that's being promoted right now that has to go. we can't keep going like this. while transfems and trans women are important and our stories deserve to be heard, the world doesn't revolve around us.

constantly reminding transfems and trans women of how bad we have it isn't helping us grow from our trauma and flourish. it's keeping us trapped in our misery. i DON'T think it's progressive to reduce a woman/femme's life to suffering. i DON'T think it's progressive to constantly remind women and femmes of how bad they have it. i don't think it's progressive or feminist to equate womanhood to suffering and there's nothing else to it.

i'm just gonna say it, but we're behaving like it does and it's not helping anyone anymore. and for some reason, we're obsessed on our pain and wallowing in misery instead of experiencing trans joy. another transfem told me they tried to make the queer spaces they participated in a bit more upbeat and tried to talk more about what makes being trans good and what there is to enjoy about gender, they were told that "everyone is over trans joy. we're about trans rage right now". and unfortunately, that rage is barely if at all ever being directed toward the people causing the pain we're angry about. the rage gets pointed towards people inside of the community and it helps no one.

let's save the conversations about oppression for their time and place. they have one, just like every conversation topic, but this cannot be the end all be all of our discussions in queer spaces. this behavior will not bring us to liberation. it will keep us trapped in the oppressive system we're trying to break free from. thank you for sending this, so many people feel the same way, it's not just you. you're not alone. i hope we see changes in this soon

[olderthannetfic]

tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/775776774680428544/the-transandrophobic-bigots-on-here-i-feel-like-a?source=share

agreed in every point except on one, and i find it interesting that no one dares to mention it: at least a substantial amount of the people who make these sort of posts or give it notes are trans women, so yes, i do reckon they care about trans women.

it's just done in a way that assumes that trans men have a direct hand in their oppression by having different experiences and that this somehow is "less bad" of a nerf than what they got going on.

mix that in with radical feminism (and it doesn't matter that radical feminism is inherently inseparable from transphobia and esp transmisogyny, it's just like how poor people will vote for fascists bc they gave them a scapegoat) and you get the exact sentiment out and proud terfs got about trans men being pitiful traitors to (cis) womanhood except that trans men have actively chosen to be oppressors AND they also wanna be able to bounce back on being a smol bean or the guy from that tweet who taunts tall jacked guys and then goes "im just a little guy, and it's my birthday too!". male socialisation is fake and if you subscribe to it, you are a transmisogynist but cis female socialisation is 100% real and no trans men or "theyfab" (urgh @ this word...) will ever be able to lay it off bc while they chose masculinity as a bigoted cloak of protection, they're still stupid impressionable little girls who will grow into Karens, if they already aren't

some extreme points I've seen so far with this sentiment are that trans men (who btw are all white and at the end of the day racist. there are no trans men of colour and there are also no trans men elsewhere besides the west) are more prone to supporting fascism while also harping upon how the same fascists wanna kill them and that they are naturally unthreatening as platforms will ban trans women to make it clean and marketable but leave trans men there. which sucks! for obvious reasons!!! but jesus christ, this is just being out of touch with reality beyond the internet

tumblr likes to think that some people are inherently immune to being bigots in another direction or to general assholism, but suffering doesn't make you noble. not that it is about noble -it's about kicking down at an acceptable target

--

[stil-lindigo]

okay so, not entirely sure what the last anon was on about (and it very well could be a troll just trying to bait. they really should have at least brought up what they meant if they wanted to appear in good faith), but it may be in relation to "drink up" and how it attracted terf attention on twitter? (which I know you addressed btw, so I hope this doesn't come across as an attack or anything)

personally, I think the phrase "our only natural predator" might have appealed to terf rhetoric just a little (but that's my opinion - I very well could be 100% wrong). I have my own personal feelings on the use of "natural" in the phrase (men don't naturally prey on women like animal predators do their prey - if anything, it's unnatural, deliberately chosen behavior - and it reminds me of the excuse that "it's just naturally how men are," like "boys will be boys." HOWEVER, I see how that phrasing ties into the "lioness/women turning it around and preying on the predator" theme, so honestly it works well there), but aside from all that, I can also see why it might've attracted terfs: bc they very often view and frame trans women as male predators to cis women. I know that's definitely not how you intended it though!!

and this also isn't meant as a nitpick to your work, so my apologies if that's how it comes across. I really like your art and your writing (and "drink up" has a very cool theme)! it's just that I can see how terfs might've interpreted it a certain way. it's not your fault that they viewed it like that though, and you've made it very clear you're NOT down with trans exclusionary BS. so that's literally the only thing I could see anon complaining about tbh, assuming they're not just being a troll. also I'm sorry for the super long message (I have an issue w/ typing too much smh). I just thought I'd share my thoughts on it in case it's at all helpful, but also this might just be annoying to read instead, so honestly feel free to just discard it if you prefer!

It’s not annoying at all anon, and I appreciate you taking the time to send this in. The comic you’re talking about is one I think back on with a lot of regret. It was made in a furious haze after a big time female streamer revealed that she was being mentally abused for years by her husband, where he would waste her hard earned money, threaten her dogs and her livelihood and overall be a monster to the woman who was their primary breadwinner. The reaction online to this information by her largely male audience was so genuinely vile and violently misogynistic that I made the comic, without thinking broadly about the implications you’ve already pointed out. In reality, the comic was meant to talk about how all women (cis and trans) suffer under the patriarchy and how the label of womanhood can often be an open call for baseless derision, dehumanisation and entitlement at many levels.

TERFS quickly co-opted the comic, and I’ll always regret ever giving them an opportunity to feel empowered and validated by my art, but I’ve learned from the experience overall to do better by my trans siblings. Thank you for engaging in good faith - I hope my behaviour now and in the future can make up for past mis-steps.

[diva-caoimhe]

Assigning my ocs ride the cyclone songs! (Songs, not characters)

Plus a soft launch of 2 new ocs!

Ava:

Sugar Cloud (Constance’s song). The song isn’t about how much better she is, what she wanted, it’s just about enjoying being with friends. That’s all it wants, to have fun with friends. The line “I wouldn’t trade my life for a thing” is because she simply cannot picture a better life, it’s suffered so much that all she can imagine is the suffering she’s been through. And, despite all its suffering, she will always try see the beauty in things.

Umbra:

What the World Needs (Ocean’s song). While they lack Ocean’s outward personality, they share her thoughts on others, believing that other around them are useless, loud, and stupid, however, unlike Ocean, who repeatedly insults Constance, they wouldn’t insult Ava, Ava would probably just do the “she gets up!” bits. “Keep your head down and things will look up!” Is them talking about Sam and Grace, and how tired they are of them and their, outgoing nature.

Grace:

Noel’s Lament. While the focus would be more on the being “that fucked up girl”, (Grace’s transness) rather than being about wanting to be a hooker, but parts of that would still remain. As when Grace heard the remarks of “trans women fetishise womanhood” she thought that wanted the worst parts of being a women would mean that she wasn’t fetishing the “good” parts of womanhood.

Sam:

“My life is awesome”/“Talia” (Mischa’s songs.) “My life is awesome” would be her strong “jock” personality, the way he acts around other, big, tough, and fearless, the part of her that loves parties, and being social, etc, etc. Surrounded by “friends” and fans, being cheered from all angles. “Talia” would be who she really is, he doesn’t want to be surrounded by people, always busy, while yes, she loves sports, it gets tiring. Talia would instead be Grace, as Grace is the only one who’s always been there for him, staying, and still caring, through every phase and life event, never judging her for stressing over small things or getting panicked easily.

Scrape:

“Space Age Bachelor Man” (Ricky’s song). While, there isn’t much lore relevance to this, it still fits him. While yes, most of the song is about wanting to be desired in a romantic/sexual way, there is a deeper aspect, he just wants to be wanted, most people don’t think much of him, only that he speaks too much and hasn’t done anything particularly wrong, so he wants to be noticed, he wants to be the saviour, but, at the same time, he also worries about too much pressure being put on him. “Oh my goodness, what have I gotten myself into!?” Is him realising that there is a big danger to helping with this cause. He is too young to understand the risks.

Kevin:

“The Ballad of Jane Doe” They’re never remembered, never thought of, always the second choice. She can’t even blame anyone, he wouldn’t want to talk to himself either. “Isn’t there anyone left to tell me who I am?” They don’t know who they are, her sense of self is so weak, but they lack the friends to give them the external validation. “No one around, to mourn or cry” She has over-exaggerated the truth, while there woukd be people to care if they died, there wouldn’t be many, Scrape would be there, that’s all he knows for certain. “Just John and me, forever eternally, Jane Doe.” “John” woukd be Scrape, he’s the only constant in their life, while, yes, he has siblings and parents, Scrape is the only one to never judge them, they spend so much time together that they feel like family. And the whole thing of some people not knowing if Jane was even in the choir would be how she was never properly involved in this whole ordeal, their only here because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

ANYWAY IF YE HAVENT WATCHED RIDE THE CYCLONE YE SHOULD. ITS PEAK.

@natqwp @corvusfrugilegus-rook @helpmemiku

[genderkoolaid]

I don't know if you know blue eye Samurai, but I hate how people talk about the protagonist.

I'm a non binary Trans man, and I actually identify a lot with Mizu (the protagonist), but I go here on Tumblr and I see a lot of posts that say: "I know everyone can see Mizu however they like, but I want everyone to know that the right interpretation is that she is a woman pretending to be a man... but everyone can think whatever they want, not forgetting that she is a woman of course."

And it's a bit annoying because when I see explanations of why is "wrong" to see Mizu as a Trans man, I see people going "Why can't there be representation of gender non conforming women!?" And "she wouldn't pretend to be a man if it wasn't for the society she lives in!"

The last one makes me especially angry, because of how many Trans men get erased from history with that same argument.

I don't know, I think it makes me mad because that fandom feels like a micro cosmos of the anti Trans masculinity a lot of Trans men have to face.

And it's not like I think it's wrong to see Mizu as a woman, but when everyone goes "of course she is a woman, why would she want to be a man for anything other than necessity?" I don't know how to feel.

I'm gonna steal my own words from that post about jeanne d'arc:

And the best part is, we can say all of this and also see her as part of women's history! Because women's history, too, does not have to be exclusively about woman-born or woman-identified women. It can be about a larger cultural experience. And Jeanne d'Arc suffered because of transphobia which is always fundamentally misogynistic. I would argue it even makes sense to say her death involved transmisogyny in a very literal sense. The thing about transfeminism is that it can free us from the need to view personal identification with the role of "woman" as vital to feminism. Being a woman, in whatever sense, is certainly not unrelated to feminism, but one can be a feminist and have any kind of personal or communal relationship with womanhood. Anyone can be inspired by the story of Jeanne d'Arc and her bold defiance of both misogyny and transphobia, no matter how she may have personally understood her gender.

People have this idea where if a character or historical figure (or even currently living person) is anything but a woman, then any kind of Feminist Story falls apart. Especially when it comes to misogyny! People act like someone being a trans man means all their experiences with misogyny are like. gone? Or the story is now, essentially, about a cis man being mistaken for a woman, and thus women are Not Allowed to feel any connection at all.

All of this on top of the fun hypocrisy that is "we can't say this person/character is a trans man because they wouldn't have that concept, but we can say they are a cis woman because those are both the only options and ciswomanhood is a natural and universal concept we can apply regardless of any other context :)"

& with Mizu its like. you literally can see her as a GNC woman. people calling him a trans guy or transmasc or genderqueer or anything else are not taking away your experience of her as a GNC woman. Transmasculinity is not just Negative Womanhood, the idea that transmasculinity is something which saps away representation/power/dignity/identity/value from (cis) women is like ATM 101.

But the whole way people treat trans men and misogyny really annoys me, I guess because the assumption is that for women, having to dress as a man to get respect inspires anger at one's position in society, but trans men are incapable of having any complex feelings about that. Like trans men must fully enjoy not being able to have sex with others, or go to a doctor, and having to live in fear of being outed and facing the brunt of transphobia and misogyny, and trans men also couldn't possibly be angry about misogyny that they experienced, and also nonbinary people don't exist and no transmasculine person could possibly be anything but fully comfortable being seen as a cis man all the time. Sure, some trans men are perfectly happy passing as cis men, but like. there is more than one trans man. & ignoring all other transmasc experiences besides The One is a form of erasure, it just passes as something else because technically you are acknowledging A transmasc existence.

[thedandelionresistance]

Intersex transneufemmasc here, @luxiomahariel is right. AFAB transfem and AMAB transmasc are NOT intersex-exclusive. Any prescriptivist argument about what the "real" or "true" definition of any part of womanhood is fundamentally rooted in ra//dical feminism, even with a decidedly non-radfe//m caveat added in to "protect" a marginalized group.

It's true to some extent that "AFAB transfem" is not an identity. Transfem is the identity, AFAB is incorrectly assumed to be or used as an adjective modifying transfem, when it is actually an event that happened to you at birth with no correlation to your anatomy nor gender presentation that affects your relationship to your transfemininity.

However, taking a word for word T//ERF argument about what a "woman" is, adding "trans" in front of every instance of the word "woman", and then saying "but actually as long as you're this intersex to ride this doesn't apply to you" is just a different flavor of bioessentialism and gender essentialism. By insisting that you must meet a certain standard of being physically non-dyadic (whether genetically, hormonally, at a direct macro-anatomical level wrt sex characteristics, or any other form of intersex), is in fact insisting that there is a particular way transfemininity can look, but broadening the category slightly. It also typically results in sorting intersex people into "perisex-AMAB-adjacent-enough" and "too-perisex-female-adjacent", either through physical features or based on the gendered experiences someone had while growing up and being raised.

It also defines a subset of womanhood/feminine genders (specifically, the intersection of womanhood/femininity, transness, and intersex identity), as based around the suffering and struggle and oppression one had to face to get there.

Using status-quo-"hater"s arguments, someone with a subtle genetic intersex variation without outward nondyadic sex characteristics who was raised female can never be transfem, someone whose parents started raising them as a boy but immediately accepted that they were a woman the instant they were old enough to understand and express gender (since they were never treated as anything other than a woman from the moment womanhood was applicable to them)* can never be transfem, and so on - unless there's just a blanket rule of "if you're intersex in any way, you can do whatever you want forever", which then arbitrarily denies the transfemininity where some perisex snd intersex people have experientially identical lives and internal relationships with their gender (such as in the case of intersex identities that can go undetected for a person's entire life, and therefore be functionally identical to a perisex person's life other than the unknown invisibility of their identity).

(Note: it's pretty rare for a person who was assigned FEMALE at birth rather than MALE to be raised as a boy, this is more likely to apply to an intersex transfem who was AMAB. Not unheard of, but a pretty rare reason to identify as AFAB transfem.)

You can see which it might be in cases such as perisex AFAB people being raised as boys by abusers or cults being attacked for using an "intersex exclusive" term, while AFAB intersex people with outwardly perisex-female-typical characteristics who are raised as women are either denied the term that is for intersex people for being "too perisex"/"not intersex enough" or arbitrarily allowed to use the word despite not having any of the experiences determined to "count" as an intersex AFAB transfem experience.

"AFABs who want to be trans girls" is also a transradfem dogwhistle. Besides being dripping with the misogyny transradfems define transfemininity around and the mixed bio-/gender-essentialism and intersexism of simultaneously treating AFAB as a coherent biological or legitimate social category while also erasing intersex AFAB people (Remember, bigots know they are contradicting themselves. They simply don't care if it's useful to them.), it is commonly used by people who appoint themselves arbiters and gatekeepers of intersex and transfem identity alike, who do not speak for the majority of either community and who often rebinarize intersex identity into male and female intersex. The vast majority of these people are perisex, with a few, typically self-hating or "the leopard won't eat my face" token intersex hangers-on who temporarily benefit from throwing their own community under the bus to gain conditional acceptance for as long as they are useful as a token.

Because yes, this is also harmful to intersex people. It is harmful to intersex people who have a sense of their internal identity, but do not yet know they are intersex - whether because they are uneducated or misinformed about what counts as intersex despite having nonnormative outwardly visible sexual characteristics, or because they are not aware that they have an intersex variation entirely. It is harmful to intersex people who may have faced abuse, bullying, or oppression, such as medical or even community gatekeeping from outliers within the intersex community, and don't feel confident identifying as intersex - especially if you demand people must do so in order to be able to identify as transfem. It will hurt the people not able to safely openly identify as intersex (even where they might be able to safely identify as trans).

The idea that it's primarily people who want to "look traditionally masculine" who are perisex and use the AFAB transfem label is a misrepresentation at best and a particularly odious and ass-pulled strawman at worst. While it's not untrue that rarely, perisex AFAB transfem people happen to want features typically considered more traditionally masculine, it's more complicated than associating transfemininity generally with features they consider masculine.

Sometimes the desire for those features is entirely unrelated to their transfem identity or even related to the masc part of an identity such as "transfemmasc". Sometimes it's related to butch identity tied to their transfemininity. Sometimes it's because they consider those features feminine in the exact same way some perisex AMAB transfems and trans women do. The reasons as in the examples are often far more complex and not rooted in transmisogyny if there is any relation, and all experiences that some AMAB transfems share. Far more often, the people who were assigned female at birth who are using the transfem label and are perisex have experiences such as:

-being multigender and having that experience inherently queer their experience of femininity and womanhood, because "manwoman" does not match the gender of assigned female at birth. nor does any component of "genderfluid" when, even when experiencing only one of the genders they are fluid between at a time, the genderfluidity itself changes the nature of each individual gender

-being a demigirl, a feminine xenogender, or even transitioning towards femininity as someone who was previously a masculine, androgenous, neutral, or otherwise gendered woman. also, transitioning towards a feminine nonwomanhood, such as your gender going from butch dyke to femboy or a femme man (yes, you can be a transfem trans man or transfemmasc, just as you can be a transmasc trans woman or transmascfem)

-being an introject or syskid in a plural system, where you may have soulbonded or joined a gateway system from your original life, where you were born a different sex or identity or born into the system with an internally intersex body (for example, we have several headmates like this. one canonically has a different intersex variation than our body does in their source. another simply formed with non-triadic sexual characteristics (they're also not human, hence the use of nontriadic, and are intersex by the cultural norms of their species' society)

-for that matter, all manner of alterhumans and nonhumans alike, who may have had different bodies in past or parallel lives, experience endelic or otherwise body-identity related harmless delusions, and so on

(People who consistently rage about not shutting down or talking over minorities about their oppression and experiences are very quick to shut down and talk over plural, alterhuman, and delusional people about our own experiences, even those of us who are notably also bodily intersex within this shared reality. It really reveals that it was never about centering vulnerable and suppressed minority voices, but about centering themselves.)

(It also, particularly when all these groups mentions face significant sanist oppression, is directly perpetuating and participating in that oppression, by defining what is an acceptable and allowed identity that these people can claim as both real and valid, as well as by denying these groups autonomy, historically one of the primary ways we've been oppressed. It's one thing to talk about different experiences - though this can also often devolve into denial of exomemories or exotrauma, something that on a neuropsychological level is registered as real by the bodymind indistinguishable from memories and trauma in this reality - but this is also often reductive and exclusionary to the non-monolithic intersex community that doesn't share these non-universal experiences that they are defining intersex identity around.)

It's also worth briefly noting that reality checking or fakeclaiming delusional people, regardless of whether the belief is harmful or not to anyone, is itself directly harmful to the delusional person unless they've explicitly consented to it, full stop. You are doing direct IMMEDIATE harm to them if you do so without their express, uncoerced/manipulated permission.

- This is also not an experience I can speak on personally, but the masculinization of some women of color and feminization of some men of color, especially where the lines between perisex and intersex blur, may be a factor for some people. It's also a complex situation entirely - because the entire definition of intersex is based around white dyadic standards. I debated including this at all, because I don't want to tokenize people of color, but wanted to bring up that how gender and sex and race all interact is important to acknowledge and to listen to people of color about. Nonwhite people are not always treated as their assigned gender at birth, sometimes to the point of feeling they have to transition towards it, from what I've heard from my friends. And intersex variations are underdiagnosed in people of color even in spite of being based around deviations from white perisex female and male standard bodies.

(People also forget that perisex AFAB and AMAB are a range of bodies and significantly wider range of experiences, and that intersex is an extremely wide variety of bodies and experiences basically encompassing everything not within the range of the dyadic sexes. There is absolutely a threshold at which it can be unclear whether someone is simply towards the end of the perisex range, or just outside of it.)

In any case, the experiences of perisex AFAB transfems (and much of this also applies similarly to AMAB transmascs, who are hypererased much the same way AFAB transmascs are, only compounded by the hypererasure of AMAB nonbinary/nontransfems. This is in part because of demonization of any perceived maleness or masculinity in transradfem spaces where it is treated as an impurity or contaminating aspect of gender, and in part because the centering and defense of (white, ontologically harmless and vulnerable victim-gendered womanhood) is crucial to upholding patriarchal gender standards and colonial racial oppression. But that's part of a much larger, more complicated conversation even than this).

At the end of the day, it's just a form of ladder-pulling to deny people the right to identify as transfem, and furthermore, it relies on circular logic. Deciding who can identify as transfem and therefore is allowed to define transfem and therefore is allowed to decide who fits the definition of transfem and who therefore can identify as transfem effectively is used to justify not letting anyone they've defined as a "non-transfem" define transfem in a way that includes their transfemininity.

It's the exact same way TER//Fs use eternally goalpost-moving definitions of women to exclude trans women from being "real women" and therefore having the "right" to define "real womanhood". All exclusion relies on this.

(I will instablock anyone who goes "oH bUt wHaT aBoUt rAciAL/eThNiC/cULtUrAL iDeNtiTiEs aNd aPpRoPriAtiOn". That is both fallacious and racist. Systemic racial oppression and gendered oppression are not the same thing, and you are not here to have a nuanced conversation about cultural appropriation vs sharing, open vs closed cultures and their exceptions (such as appropriation from primarily open cultures, or exceptions to joining closed cultures in good faith as determined by those peoples. I have not yet met a person of color, jewish person, muslim, or even nonwestern white person who has not said "stop it, you're being racist/antisemitic/islamophobic/xenophobic", in all the literal thousands of interactions I've had with these groups of people on this specific issue.)

Anyway, I could add stuff about the conflation of transfem with trans woman and the way this simultaneously erases nonbinary identities and treats them as "trans woman lite" (further contributing to AMAB nonbinary hypererasure, as well), about the way that someone's personal relationship between gender and sex can be intertwined, but how sex has literally nothing to do with gender in any way at a general/universal level and that the vast majority of people who claim it does are doing sex=gender, trans edition levels of reductivism. (Note: not all people are, but where some nuance exists it lacks depth, effectively being gilding on a shitcake.)

I don't know if status-quo-"hater" is speaking over people who hold an entirely different identity or a shared identity, and can't be arsed to check. I honestly don't care either way.

All forms and experiences of AFAB transfemininity and AMAB transmasculinity are valid. I will not debate nor entertain any responses trying to convince me otherwise (I actually won't even see them before they are removed where possible and you are blocked, thanks to help screening my notifications). There is no way in this universe that you will convince me that believing people about their own internal identity and experiences is somehow the bigoted option and that actually the people controlling the labels that people can and can't use are the good guys who are just victims of the horrible meanies who are... minding their own business and going about their lives. All cops are bastards includes label cops (and I say this as a disabled person who nearly died due to police violence, so I don't give one singular flying shit about anyone telling me I'm "co-opting" that phrase).

Block me if you don't like it or whatever. Usually I ask people to not include my username in the screenshot to avoid harassment, but despite trusting my currently four followers maximum that will see this to not harass any of the screenshotted people, I can admit that would be hypocrisy, so like, do whatever.

Tl;dr Linguistic prescriptivism and bio and gender essentialism harms everyone involved, including intersex people, and also relies on contradictory and faulty logic to even try to justify itself. People can use whatever gender labels they want forever.

[vergess]

Thank you for being willing to give advice! I know it’s kind of a ridiculous situation so I’m sorry if seems childish!

My gf is our dm for dnd, and there’s a bit of personal conflict between about how she writes women. I’m afab she/they enby, and she’s trans she/her so like I know it’s not malicious. But uh… every woman she writes is Special tm, super hot/pretty, super feminine even if they’re like a knight, super strong, etc.. It makes me feel… not good. The men she writes are varried but she doesn’t spend nearly as much screen time on them. And tries to push me as a player to interact with them the most?

The other players at our table are straight guys, who don’t have an issue with it and like all the hot women. She and I have had a few minor arguments about it, and we had one that was sort of heated where I called it fetshistic, and she is rather upset with me despite in the past saying she understands where I’m coming from.

Ultimately I know she writes the sort of women she wants to be, but as someone who balks under having to preform femininity during our weekly escapism being surrounded by it makes me feel like I have ants under my skin. With how upset she is I’m worried I’m completely in the wrong. I have no idea how come to a middle ground with this. Sorry I rambled on so much, I’m just afraid of missing context and was hoping for an outside perspective.

So, there's a few different tangled layers to this problem and I completely see why you're struggling with it.

Ultimately, games like DND are a place for people to have the fantasy of power and autonomy denied to them in real life, with fun gameplay and social support built into the experience. And you and your GF have fundamentally different power fantasies. She wants to be the protagonist of a shoujo fantasy anime, and you want to be Not That Thing. Very understandable that you would come into conflict over this!!

Neither of you is wrong, here. That's the part you need to remember the most: you're both playing the game as intended.

One aspect that I think you might be overlooking in this is that your GF's fantasy isn't just to be the pretty special woman. It's to be the pretty special woman that you spend time protecting/working with/adoring. It may be helpful to think of these OCs less as a reminder of feminine expectations, and more as an attempt by your GF to build you a world populated with hyped up versions of herself so she can get your approval and affection in a less direct way.

In effect, you want to reframe your perception as less "this is a reminder of everything I don't want to be" and more "this is a reminder of everything my GF wants to give to me."

If you're still suffering even with that re-framing, then it might be time to ask your DND group about switching DMs for a while. Maybe play a one-shot campaign where you're DMing and model the types of characters you'd like to see more of as NPCs. It may be the case that your GF is so fixated on this type of character because she's grappling with the internalized concerns around "acceptable womanhood" and doesn't fully grasp that you would and do still like women who are not perceived as perfect paragons of femininity. So this is a good way to let her see in action that you a) enjoy women who aren't perfect femmes too and b) still see them as Truly Women.

Now, I don't play DND, I only GM and I only do it in other settings. So, I also asked @arionwind about this situation, and ze had some good suggestions too. DND is notorious for putting excessive pressure on DMs to build the entire story, world, and cast.

It may well be the case that your girlfriend is too overburdened by this to also make compelling and complex prominent characters. After all, the more complex seeming male characters only appear briefly, and the easier to manage female characters that are all eerily similar to each other are the ones presented prominently. So, yes, that does mean women are getting more screen time, but that may be because that type of woman is easier for her to make up and play convincingly on the fly.

Ari says you can try to approach this in a number of ways, but two of the most straightforward would be to offer to assist your girlfriend in her DM prep work and sort of "co-DM" the game (you prep, she plays, or you both share equally, etc). Or you can try asking about as player rolling skills like "history" to introduce NPCs of your own design on a high enough roll, thereby introducing either more non-female characters, or more comfortable female characters.

As I mentioned, I don't play these games at all only GM, and I have no meaningful familiarity with DND. @arionwind has offered to help you with the actual DND specific stuff here, including that "rolling history" business, so I would direct followup questions about DND to zir specifically.

Finally, if nothing else, this type of writing is a phase. We all go through it. Your GF is in her Mary Sue stage. In a few years, she'll outgrow this!! But you have to remember that when you had your Mary Sue stage at like 14, she was being denied that opportunity, and she's playing catch up.

[tirfpikachu]

i just saw an endearingly old post of one of my earliest peaking takes. i was frustrated at how little the left cared about detransitioners.

i do want to reinstate that caring about detransitioners and the growing number of (non-transphobia-related) detransitions doesn't mean that all transition is done to escape something. for some, it truly is in their best interests in the end, yadda yadda. you can care about more than one issue. and this issue actually affects you too.

even for those who are explicitly transitioning to escape the patriarchal abuse on female/afab folks and gnc people, who am i to feel anything other than bittersweetness at being left behind as a gnc woman? and perhaps a faint feeling of unnervement in my own self-perception, same as when i see any other major body modification a female person does around me…?

what i truly want is happiness under the patriarchy for those traumatized by it. i want female happiness, gnc happiness. i just... worry. i worry, because you have no idea the concerning amount of detrans folks in my askbox and my DMs and my server. something is wrong. something is genuinely, truly wrong. we need to increase our speed in fighting the patriarchy, because more and more stories like my own keep piling up. this is bad news for everybody struggling under the patriarchy. it means we now have an exit door. for many, it's a necessity. for others, like myself, and many others, it was self-harm, repression, and fulfilled the never-satisfied need i have to surgically alter my face because i know i'd have it easier mentally and socially. it sucks when it's just a fact of life. i know that in some countries, like korea, plastic surgery is almost a badge of womanhood and is offered as a kind-hearted gift to women and gnc people around you. what if this is the future of transition for female/afab folks and gnc individuals? what if it becomes the deliciously tempting little exit door that just glows anytime you suffer misogyny irl or online? what if those little trans jokes people make, those egg jokes, lead to more detransitioners? which not only can be traumatic, but also harm trans people in actual need of transition; the only point that usually actually reaches non-detrans people's hearts. detransition fucking sucks. dysphoria utterly blows. reverse dysphoria? it also blows. imagine thinking this will be your deliverance and bam, you're hit with waves of opposite dysphoria. imagine the light at the end of the tunnel leading to a high cliff. imagine everything you thought you ever knew about yourself was ripped away from you and you had to rebuild yourself all over again.

dysphoria can be unpredictable. but i think we can do better. education is key. cis gnc manhood & womanhood being represented in non-sexist ways in the mainstream - including assuming it means they're gay or trans - is essential. authentic trans experiences being represented in addition to those is also key. but you must understand that i am living proof that dysphoria can heal in some cases, and that dysphoria can involve social contagion. if i had been surrounded by badass masc feminists irl alongside my cool trans friends i 10000% promise you i'd have found myself way sooner, and probably never transitioned or gotten reverse dysphoria. and i wouldn't have needed to trigger any uncomfortable feelings in trans friends when i detransitioned. it would've been better for everyone. but first and foremost for me, someone struggling with a severe dysphoric disorder that took over my life for 13+ years. marginalized folks need to handle these issues in complex, gentle ways. we aren't approaching these things the right way. we so easily celebrate people who only just start questioning being lgbt. we lock them into an identity, like my online trans friends unconsciously did with me, by not making every lgbt (or non-lgbt gnc) choice seem equally valid and wonderful. we take them at their most mentally vulnerable and we don't handle it with enough sensitivity and tact. we need more proper, healthy lgbt & gnc community support. this cannot keep happening. something needs to change, and it needs to change fast.

[deservedgrace]

Am I being petty? My dad is always saying stuff like “I’m praying for you to be successful” or “god made you perfect”. I know he means well but it’s so uncomfortable whenever he does those things. I don’t want you to pray for me, I need real help. You don’t know the real me and you probably wouldn’t be as proud if you did. He still thinks I’m the perfect Christian boy instead of an atheist who’s figuring out their gender. He claims to love and support whatever I want, but he always leaves out being a girl when listing off topics, and has questioned me at random times about trans athletes when I’m too tired to think of an answer.

In my opinion, absolutely not.

I was actually just talking about the prayer thing with my friend last night. So many christians use prayer as almost a silencing method, whether intentionally or unintentionally. When I left the church I realized just how abysmal my comforting/supporting methods were because while I was in the church, I and everyone around me relied on cutting uncomfortable topics short with "well I'll be praying for you" or ask to pray with you about it, and offer literally NO other support while also expecting prayer to, just fix it magically. Hilariously, the same people that are always like, "god's not a genie, you're praying wrong if you're expecting him to answer every prayer you have" seem to ask for and expect genie-like responses from him while doing NO work of their own to support the people they're praying for. Prayer is Very Very often used as a substitute for support. Even when I was deep in the church it never felt sufficient, but I couldn't say anything because it was supposed to be sufficient and if it wasn't sufficient that was a problem with me and my "sinful nature". Churches and christians that focus on prayer over actually being the hands and feet of jesus (fucking doing something about it) aren't fostering proper community and support. They're fostering a culture of not being able to talk about difficult things, of suffering in silence, and of relying on a silent and unprovable god which often results in being taught to rely solely on yourself.

I really feel for you with the gender thing. I don't know the full context of your specific situation but I see "god made you perfect" used to silence any notion of being trans far, far too often. The implication being, being cis is the default, being trans is going against who "god made you to be", etc. I've noticed this especially of christians who believe in complementarianism (men and women have different roles to fulfill), many of them tend to "love and support whoever you are"........ so long as it falls into their tiny box of what they deem acceptable. I don't want to turn this into a whole thing about gender but even in a worldview that doesn't recognize the existence of trans people, there isn't a definition of womanhood that includes every woman and excludes every non-woman and vice versa for men ("a woman is someone who can have babies" excludes those with infertility issues, something that affects up to 20% of women, "a woman is someone who has XX chromosomes" excludes intersex women, "a woman is someone who has a uterus" excludes women who have had hysterectomies, "a woman is someone who has had a uterus at SOME point" excludes women that simply born without one, which happens to about 1 in 5000 based on a quick google, etc etc). My point being, they're trying to draw these confining and limiting boxes where they can't. Humans don't work like that. Their idea of perfection is something that is simply biologically and sociologically and historically unsupported. Gender is complicated because humans are complicated. It's disappointing that some people can't see the beauty in that and it's devastating that it often causes so much pain and suffering to those around them.

I really hope you're able to find proper support. If possible, I encourage you to (safely!!!) continue exploring your gender. And it makes complete sense that you'd feel uncomfortable about these things. Prayer without proper support is skirting responsibility at best. Tearing down trans athletes and doing the christian "god made you perfect" thing with the implication of cis being the default is not a supportive environment to be around. I'm not going to be able to remember the quote verbatim but one of my favorite god/trans quotes is something along the lines of "god made trans people for the same reason he made wheat but not bread and grapes but not wine; so humanity may share in the act of creation". I'm not necessarily encouraging this as a "gotcha" statement, I can hear in my head exactly how my church would respond to that. But outside the church I think it's a beautiful reframe despite me not believing in god anymore. And if you would prefer something less religiously related: I'm deeply sorry you're not in a supportive environment. There's nothing wrong with you. As far as I can tell you're having a very normal reaction to the shit you're having to put up with and the situation you're in.

[terra-feminarum]

Thank you for being here. I might not always agree with what you say but your posts are thoughtful and nuanced and you carry the energy of a great philosopher with you.

It's a pleasure to have you on my dash.

And I might be just emotional tonight for unrelated reasons but reading your post about how societal changes are fast and women are getting fed up really helped me.

Thank you.

I'm glad to hear. I'm also glad to hear you don't always agree with everything I say but you still find it valuable. I don't agree with everything I've said a year ago, and I probably won't agree with my future self either. I think thinking, writing and having conversations is the best one can do to try to make sense of things, and hopefully that clumsy process will lead to better outcomes than sticking to one opinion for the rest of one's life.

I invite you and others to disagree with me in public, maybe we could try having respectful disagreements and learn? I ask this selfishly as I'm actually very bad at disagreeing and am very quick-tempered and would like to learn something else.

About societal changes being fast: they are. I always give trans issues as an example because that's the one I've lived through and participated in, for better or worse. It was a fringe phenomenon and now it's what it is. I've seen gay rights advance, too, though I didn't participate in that but rather just enjoyed the fruits. I remember when it was illegal to write or talk publicly about homosexuality in a way that might be interpreted to advocate homosexuality. And now the most popular presidential candidate in my country is openly gay.

Now I'm just rambling but I have hope for a change. One reason is really that so many women seek to escape womanhood by identifying out of it: this is an expression of suffering. This is better than not even realizing you suffer. I doubt it will be an identity they will keep for the rest of their lives, and what then? Where they will turn after that? There are so many women who seem to be fed up in other ways. Younger women are critical of hook-up culture and porn industry and that was such a surprise for me and I've learned so much from them. Women are realizing they've been sold shit. The ecological situation causes more and more people to look into the values that has caused the destruction in the first place and that will have a profound effect: these are men's values and what they do with nature, they do with us, too. This is a time for profound changes in our value systems and the iron is hot, so to speak. Of course others see that too so there will be competition, but I believe there is a good chance women will gain some serious wins.