#and being both a gnc woman and gender conforming man makes it really difficult

[saltycharacters]

Being multigender really is just struggling to not let people pick one of your genders over another yknow

[doodlepede]

We dont really interact much but you usually interact with my posts about whipping girl and i just need to get this out to someone because I'm going crazy you don't have to respond or anything I'm just ranting "Of course, feminine traits that arise from our adult hormonal makeup are relatively easy to categorize as biological, as one can experience the corresponding changes firsthand via hormone therapy. In contrast, other feminine traits that have biological input —such as those that may be hardwired into our brains from birth—are more difficult to discern. Two possible examples of this include feminine aesthetic preferences and ways of expressing oneself. Evidence that these tendencies may be hardwired comes from the fact that they typically appear very early in childhood and often in contradiction to one’s socialization (both for children whose parents attempt to raise them in a unisex or gender-neutral fashion, and for boys whose families actively and aggressively steer them away from feminine expression). This indicates that some aspects of feminine verbal and aesthetic expression precede and/or supersede gender socialization" And I have so much to say this is fucking wild it feels like she sees masculine expression as the default and so feminine expression is automatically different and must have some explanation Its weird to be that she thinks gender expression is hardwired into brains when it can and does change for people its not just a static thing she ignores trans men/masc and gnc women only mentioning boys also weird to me that she puts kids being raised gender neutral or gender free on basically the same level as literal abuse like it just seems like more enbyphobia like she expects everyone to fit in masculine and feminine and man or woman and people who don't are somehow bad and contributing to transphobia and transmisogyny its so weird to me and not at all seemingly based in the material reality that many people face

i saw a massive text wall in my inbox and got Scared for a second LOLOLOL okay my thoughts as i read

yeah i would say that traits which are affected by hormonal changes are biological. its a biological process occurring in a biological organism. its the way we (are compelled to) label them that is sociocultural. breasts happen because estrogen, female is just a useful functional label, and when you remember that intersex people exist, you will find it less and less functional for anything outside zoology and even then, masisve fucking asterisk im not gonna get into right now. ah well theres your issue, there are no feminine traits hardwired into the brain. youre prescribing a sociocultural label to a biological system. that's "brain gender", flawed and borderlike hack science and cornerstone to most transmeds of old (2018). "motherly instincts" are the same, applying sociocultural labels where they don't belong. many many many many mothers outright kill their children through neglect or abuse, so wheres the hardwired instinct gone? single fathers exist and are often superior parents than the mothers so wheres the femaleness gone? we are already doing a LOT of conflation between "female" and "feminine" and biology vs sociology but im getting a little ahead of her....

"feminine aesthetic preference" that's sociocultural. "ways of expressing oneself" sociocultural. yawn. "appear early in childhood" because they are taught by parents and peers who are 100000% aware of the need to conform to society because humans are a social species. i was Very aware of the way my female peers were trying to get me to conform from as young as FIVE. and before preschool, my parents were the ones making me wear pink dresses, when I preferred blue and orange. gender performance is learned behavior. even if your parents try to bring you up gender neutrally, you still have to go to school and interact with every other kid who very much isn't. kids are way more aware than shes giving them credit for, they want to fit in, and every second of gender neutral raising is defeated the instant that child meets two members of the same sex as themself, because those others will know he is male and treat him like one of their own, and they will learn that they're a he and boys are like them. or maybe they'll decide that theyre nothing like them. who knows, but the illusion is shattered regardless. am i strange for literally remembering my thoughts and feelings from the age of 5ish? because i do. + people can change their fucking minds later in life and its no less legitimate as people who made up their minds in their single digits. who are you to fucking tell them otherwise?

(notice the way she singles out boys for being aggressively steered away from feminity without a second of consideration for girls aggressive minding to be feminine? her lack of perspective or consideration for anyone's pov but her own is showing again, it really is no wonder transradfems fucking worship this shitass book)

yeah no god she 100% sees male as default like girl stop you're reinforcing patriarchy

if she were ftm, tumblr would see her for the transmed she is and be over it. i genuinely feel as though she and authors like her are given the benefit of the doubt because of her transfem bias and female gender like be so for real with me.

[positivityforlesbians]

i don’t know if i’m gnc or chapstick or neither and it’s stressing me out.

i always identified as a tomboy (b4 i was brainwashed by the internet) bc i liked sports and activities and didn’t care about getting dirty and prioritized feeling comfortable and having functional clothes over how i looked, but as i’ve gotten older, i can’t do a lot of physical things anymore and have developed some ocd tendencies around ‘cleanliness’ and i don’t know if i’m appropriating the term i guess?

bc i like dresses more now that i’ve detransitioned. i like that i don’t have to worry about trying to fit into pants that weren’t made for my body type, and they’re comfortable and easy to throw on. i still wax my legs and underarms every now and then, but that’s more because i have trich (i pull my hair out) and i go out without trying to hide my body hair. i hardly wear any jewelry, but i like shiny things and ‘light’ makeup for special occasions. i have a buzzcut that i do myself and i don’t wear bras but those are also like feminist related actions for me. i like heels every now and then, and leggings-as-pants (with a long shirt) every now and then but i prioritize comfort and functionality over looks.

i just don’t know where i fit or if i fit in these smaller niches of lesbian culture. i know it’s enough to just be female and homosexual but it’s so hard to find actual lesbian communities irl and online nowadays and it seems like there is less appropriation in more specific labels. (i would say i’m a bambi lesbian cuz i’m also asexual but that tag is basically dead except for positivity posts for other unrelated groups)

i know these labels aren’t as important as lesbian (female homosexual) but i still find it hard to conceptualize myself as part of the lesbian community when i never had a real Girlfriend and covid makes community difficult, and i find myself doubting my sexuality again

basically: i have trouble accepting myself as i am, as a lesbian, when i don’t have other lesbians to relate to. i just keep hearing like tra conversion therapy rhetoric and replaying moments where i convinced myself that i liked men because i have a LOT of internalized homophobia from my family, from society, and from my online experiences. i just wish i had more people like me in my life, even if just online.

i guess i’m asking what the difference is between gnc and chapstick and if there’s a certain amount of gender conformity that isn’t like considered ‘being gnc’. that part is even hard as i realize how femininity and masculinity are mostly relative and tools of the patriarchy but i digress.

thank you for this blog, i rely on it so much when i start to spiral into my own internalized homophobia

Hi, like you said, these specific labels don’t matter as much, they just fit some of us better than others and it’s fun to recognise a lesbian as this or that type but that doesn’t mean there aren’t grey areas. There isn’t really a strict code of what makes a woman a tomboy/gnc, we get the general idea but it’s not like we have a list of criteria that should all be ticked to be allowed to call ourselves that, other people are usually very able to see that we’re tomboys/gnc and they’re the first ones to point it out to us.

A woman can be both a tomboy and a chapstick lesbian, they don’t neutralize each other as they are similar (it’s just that tomboy isn’t specific to lesbians). For example a “soft-butch”, who is more on the androgynous side than the very masculine side of her style can be both a tomboy and a chapstick lesbian, there are overlaps and it’s important to be conscious of it. A chapstick lesbian is neither butch nor femme, she’s in the middle and more neutral about her style. Nowadays a lot of us are chapstick but within that group you could find yourself aligning more with a bit of masculinity or more with a bit of femininity, specifying it is not necessary.

An interesting fact is that the word “kiki” was used in the past (50s/60s) to talk about lesbians whose style fall “in the middle” (which shows that this word isn’t used only in the gay men community to talk about a gathering of friends to gossip and “spilling tea”), now you’ll also find a lot of us call ourselves andro/androgynous, though we aren’t all actually androgynous (def : ambiguity and confusion for others to find whether we’re a woman or a man). I cannot really know what you are but usually when you don’t fall in either the butch or femme category then the chapstick one is the right one. Xx

[chadgamer]

women are expected to only ever feel romantic feelings for men so it makes sense why women who have feelings about men at all so frequently interpret those feelings as romantic. women aren’t supposed to relate to, connect with, or project onto men, and we’re also derided for “trying to be like men” (whether that’s what’s actually happening or not). a woman being perceived as “trying to be like a man” or “thinking she’s like a man” is treated as at best sad and pathetic, and at worst pathological and dangerous. women aren’t supposed to look “like men”, act “like men”, aspire to be “like men”, relate to men, have male heroes, project onto male fictional characters, etc. the only thing women are supposed to want relating to men is marriage and kids; not kinship, admiration, envy, etc. this is absolutely true in the inverse about men. gender roles and homophobia and transphobia (i.e. the gender rules, generally) don’t only tell us that we need to only feel attraction to the “opposite gender” and behave within the bounds of gender conformity, but also that attraction is the only way we can relate to the “opposite gender” and any other form of relation is unacceptable as a gnc/transmasc lesbian, i’m really happy that i’ve finally gotten to the point in my life where i’ve both come to terms with loving women but also with relating to men the way that i do. it’s really difficult getting over the intense baggage that gender roles give basically everybody but especially true for gay, trans, and gnc people and i think it’s important for all of us to realize that breaking gender rules through how we feel about other people is fine to do, actually

[gayregis]

which characters are trans this is a scientific inquiry

all of them except vilgefortz and leo bonhart

ok ok jokes, ill go more in depth... some of this is taken from things ive written before but not posted. also for anyone reading this im non bee nary so know that im not trying to describe the experiences of different identities in first-person, i’m basing this off of both my own and my friends’ experiences... none of this is “OMG YES CHARACTER ANGST >:))” but rather depicting personal struggles in fictional characters, so just know that  the more difficult subjects that may be covered are not there just to see the character in pain, but rather to think about their eventual resilience against it and development afterwards

for geralt and yennefer i have more specific reasons why i think being transgender actually fits with their canonical characters & related story arcs, and then for the rest i have headcanons and maybe some reasoning but not a lot.

geralt: geralt already represents how a struggle with toxic masculinity and expectations of masculinity can influence one who wants to be seen as masculine to deny and bury their emotions. him being trans develops upon the aspect of his struggle with emotions, ive seen my friends who are transmasculine / myself when i used to ID as transmasculine struggle with showing emotions bc of feeling like you’re going to be misgendered if you shed a single tear. in canon, we already learn that kaer morhen has a bit of a macho culture (just fyi eskel and lambert and coen are trans too now, don’t go getting any idea that those guys are cis) and i believe that the “witchers have no emotions” thing is like 5% actual biology and 95% being raised to fight and not to feel. vesemir is a good father but he just wasn’t very emotionally nurturing, it’s the caste’s way of raising kids that geralt breaks out of.

i think geralt’s self-image also speaks a lot to the feelings of harsh internal transphobia. he constantly others himself from others and feels like people view him as different, which is metaphorical for any marginalized group under the sun, but also is very common for lgbt ppl. again this is smth ive really struggled with within the past few years so im just projecting/know what it feels like and feel that how geralt sees himself in canon is similar to a view suffering from internalized transphobia.

geralt's character already redefines manhood because he has to learn what it means to be a good father. and i think him being trans would be representative of his constant learning and growth as a person, yet also somewhat involved with his self loathing and feeling like just Him Existing is an affront ... but of course he unlearns this with time and love from others and all of his character development

yennefer: yennefer’s whole backstory revolves around defining who she is and defying the people who mistreated her and told her she was nothing. canonically yennefer of vengerberg is the story of the successful self-made woman... her life as janka she would rather forget, no one calls her by that name, and no one ever would because its not who she is nor who i think she ever was. 

shes incredibly strong-willed and knows what she wanted from life but some things are terrifying to reach out for, like love and acceptance. yennefer has a conflict with love and being loved because that was never a safe topic for her ... (also sapkowski handled this specifically poorly imo, but:) yennefer canonically struggles with being loved for who she is. i think she deals so much with her previous abuse and again, expectations from parents, and coming to terms with the fact that she survived it all. also this isnt even touching upon her arc regarding motherhood. wanting to give a child your everything and everything that you never had... the love and kindness that no one gave you...

ciri: ciri hesitated to ever identify with “girl” or “boy,” she’s also i think the representation of childhood in general, she’s naturally curious about gender presentation as she ages and just never really cares to commit to gender. i think she’d say she was a girl but only reluctantly bc she just doesn’t care much.

dandelion: [from his TV Tropes page:]

he’s an artist and a musician, he’s not gonna be cishet...

ok in a more serious context i think he’s a nonbinary guy, i think him being trans might explain why he has way more friendships than relationships with family members. dandelion, like yennefer, is also someone that had to define who he was for himself, i mean for one his stage persona of dandelion is entirely an artist’s creation/hyperbole of himself, i think he also had to think abt his inner identity too

his gender is also just “your friend that comes to your house and eats all ur chips and drinks all ur beer and passes out on top of you on the couch”

milva: ok unfortunately i currently think milva is the token non-trans friend (she’s nonbinary just doesnt think of herself as trans) but it’s only because her major arc in baptism of fire revolves around her pregnancy and miscarriage and just bc she is not trans doesn’t mean she doesn’t go through her own difficult struggling process surrounding her womanhood. she struggles enormously throughout the series and in her backstory with defining herself between two rigid identities: the feminine maria and the cutthroat milva. in her talk with geralt, she reveals how she feels trapped between these two identities and feels like they cannot coexist. i feel like she’s a nonbinary/gender non-conforming butch* lesbian whose struggles with sexuality intersect her struggles with gender and what it means to her to be a gnc woman. also you have to consider that milva was raised in a small village in lower sodden so she understood gender in the very strict roles ascribed to men and women, so she felt like she couldn’t be a woman unless she was this very traditional idea of what a woman is “supposed to be like,” which she’s both been trying to shape herself to be and also running away from simultaneously. she learns to accept herself within the hansa bc they love and support her for who she is, and she doesn’t need to be strictly feminine or masculine to be understood by them

* i know the terms nonbinary and gnc and butch didn’t exist in the 1260s tyvm, i’m just saying this as how i interpret her in a modern context

regis: gender is a human sociological construct so basically don’t ask him unless you’re prepared to listen for 20 minutes. vampires can exist noncorporeally so they can exist without gender, also i hc the telepathic vampiric language is nongendered as it’s a transmission of pure thought, will, and force, so it doesn’t even use any grammar. i also hc that vampires just appear the way they feel in terms of appearance and age (e.g., regis at around 300 when he died still looked 25 bc he was as stupid as a 25 year old, now he’s calmer and understands more, so he looks middle-aged). when chilling out with humans regis will be referred to as a man bc that’s just how he appears but it’s an identity he had to learn about and adopt, not something he was assigned. most vampires look androgynous anyways bc they just feel androgynous, how are you gonna feel a gender when you don’t know what a gender is... if you HAD to understand him with human labels / put it in a modern context (like if i was making an modern real life AU) i’d say he’s a nonbinary trans man. 

cahir: much like geralt i think cahir’s story is one of living up to expectations, but cahir’s actually takes it a step further because his major motivation in his backstory is trying to prove to his mother that he can be a good son that will make her proud and gain honor for the family... he seeks validation from external sources but faces ruin when he learns that war is not the way to prove one’s prowess and skill

angouleme: shes trans and i simply say so bc shes very cool and funny and i dont think a cis person could be this cool and funny. also i think the story of a runaway teen who was abandoned by her biological family and found solace in a new family is both very good and featured in a lot of trans ppl’s narratives. she kind of exudes this “im finally at a point in my life where i’m safe and cared for, i can start HRT now, let’s gooOOoooOOooo” energy. 

[discyours]

Do you know why arguments about abortion are so difficult, and so polarising? Because you’re not gonna convince anybody who thinks babies are being killed with a women’s rights argument, and you’re not gonna convince anyone who thinks a fetus is a clump of cells with a baby-killing argument. If your beliefs about a fundamental part of the argument (what a fetus actually is) differ, you’re not gonna get very far. I feel like we’re hitting the same wall here with arguments about transgenderism. Can’t agree on who can be transgender, which genders are valid and how trans people should be treated if we don’t even agree on what gender IS.  I love hearing other people’s perspectives and trying to understand them, so I’m gonna try to explain a few of tumblr’s most common perspectives on gender the best I can. I might get a few things wrong, so let me know if there’s anything I need to change. Please note that none of these groups are hive minds, people in them don’t always agree and won’t always match my description here. The TERF/gendercritical perspective: First of all, let’s clarify who I’m talking about here. TERF stands for trans exclusionary radical feminist. However, that’s now considered to be a slur by a lot of them and they prefer to be called gendercritical feminists. They subscribe to second wave feminism, and are usually GNC (gender non-conforming, not conforming to typical gender roles) women.  Biological sex is a main component of gendercritical theory, and talked about more than gender. They believe biological differences between males and females are the main cause of gender inequality. Females are physically weaker than males and are the only sex that can bear children, and according to gendercritical feminists this makes them inherently oppressed. They also strongly believe sexuality is based on biological sex, not gender. So if sex decides whether you’re oppressed of privileged and gender is a non-factor, what’s gender useful for? Well, according to gendercritical feminists... nothing. If sex describes everything concrete, gender is nothing but a few social rules. And being radical feminists, they usually aren’t pleased with the gender roles that have been imposed on them. If gender = gender roles, and gender roles are bullshit, you might as well abolish gender. And that’s essentially what gendercritical feminists are aiming to do. They either do this by equating gender to sex (man = adult human male, woman = adult human female) or simply dropping gender terms altogether and just talking about males and females. Trans people are referred to by their biological sex, and treated accordingly. Trans women are still biologically male and therefore have male privilege, should not be allowed into women’s bathrooms, and are referred to with he/him pronouns. Trans men are still biologically female and are therefore oppressed.  Gender dysphoria is usually explained as the result of having gender roles imposed on you. Trans people are encouraged to accept themselves as being GNC cis people. For trans men, internalised misogyny is also a common explanation. Medical transition is seen as a mutilation, not actually changing sex, and is therefore not seen as a viable option. 

In short, gendercritical feminists believe the concept of gender to serve no useful role that isn’t already filled by biological sex.  The tucute perspective: Again, let’s clarify who I’m talking about here. Tucute generally means someone who believes gender dysphoria isn’t necessary to be trans. Tucutes rarely believe in the gender binary (two genders, man and woman), and are usually liberal feminists. In a surprising similarity to gendercritical feminists, tucutes also believe that gender roles are bullshit/that gender is a social construct. A lot of them also ideally want gender to be abolished. However, they deal with this entirely differently.  If gender is a bullshit social construct, it can really be anything you want it to. It can be an entirely subjective thing, different for everyone. For some people gender is how you relate to the world, or how you relate to yourself. It can be how you like to dress, it can be the first word that comes to mind when you look in the mirror, or it can be absolute nonsense. Turning gender into something so vague it’s impossible to grasp is one step closer to abolishing it altogether, so tucutes are happy to “make up” an infinite amount of genders. To some of them it may be an important form of self expression, to others it’s a protest. Calling yourself genderfucked/gendervoid/genderless is almost like a fuck you to anyone who’s tried to impose gender roles on you, and that’s exactly what they want.  Transgender means someone is a different gender than the one they were assigned at birth, so if anyone can choose to be a different gender, anyone can be trans. Dysphoric trans people are (usually) acknowledged and supported by tucutes. The main tucute theory on what causes gender dysphoria is transphobia/cissexist ideas of how people of a certain gender should look. Medical transition is (usually) supported, but people are encouraged to accept that how you look has nothing to do with your gender. Non-dysphoric people should also be allowed to medically transition according to most tucutes. There are no concerns of it causing dysphoria, since cissexism is the alleged cause.  In short, tucutes believe gender is something everyone experiences differently. The only rule is that there are no rules.  The truscum/transmedicalist perspective: Transmedicalism is defined as the belief that gender dysphoria is a medical condition, and that it’s a necessary part of being trans. Truscum is a term referring to people who hold transmedicalist beliefs, it originated as a slur but has been reclaimed. Conservatives tend to be more drawn to transmedicalism than the other two options here, but transmedicalists are all over the political spectrum. Most truscum are trans.  Truscum believe that gender and sex are connected, and that both are biological. They believe gender is determined by the way your brain is structured. When truscum say “gender”, they really mean “brain sex”. Physical sex and brain sex are meant to match up, and truscum believe that gender dysphoria occurs when they don’t. This makes gender dysphoria a neurological condition. The connection between sex and gender is still very important to truscum whose sex and gender don’t match up (trans people). Since changing your sex characteristics (medically transitioning) isn’t readily available to everyone, changing the gender you are perceived as (socially transitioning) is the closest some people can get. Getting referred to with pronouns that match up with your gender (which in turn is connected to your desired sex) can help alleviate dysphoria, even if nothing about your physical sex changes. Because of this, a lot of truscum are against making everything gender-neutral/”abolishing gender”. Gender (sex) dysphoria would continue to exist, with no social crutch to lean on to make it any better.  Truscum are divided on the possibility of nonbinary brains/nonbinary dysphoria, and as a result are divided on whether or not to support nonbinary genders. Truscum support medical transition as the best (currently available) way to deal with gender dysphoria. They are against non dysphoric people medically transitioning, partially because it takes up medically necessary resources for non-medical purposes, and partially because they believe it will cause dysphoria.  In short, truscum believe gender is biologically determined and connected to sex. They believe you can’t choose your gender and as a result, that you can’t choose to be trans.  So we all fundamentally disagree. We’ve established that. But maybe, just maybe, if we can try to understand each other’s perspectives we can stop it with the suicide baiting and focus on more important things, like figuring out how to fucking co-exist? There’s ways to acknowledge the importance of biological sex without making trans people want to kill themselves. There’s ways to say “fuck you” to gender roles without taking medical care away from dysphoric trans people. There’s ways to allow for self expression without confusing it with social transition.  Empathy is great, please give it a shot. 

[cocaine-for-ants]

My older half sister and I both share the commonality of having some tomboyish characteristics as kids...

...but I'll also acknowledge that like pretty much all of my family, my older-half sister has described me as a bit of a weird kid, because while I would also be the type to go wandering around the woods and stuff, it is also best to put an asterisk on me and acknowledge that there were times where I would deliberately wander around the woods in a pink feather boa and pink and purple heels just because I fucking could.

Things like that make me feel like I can't truly describe my childhood self as really being "tomboyish" or "girly" to any real capacity, because I was (and still am) an androgynous oddball that had a pretty wide gamut of interests that can't be filtered into any one box.

To some capacity, I feel like conversations on being GNC predominantly focus on being either "masculine" or "feminine" when it's unexpected, and I don't think that being socially androgynous is very well addressed in context of trans people, GNC people, and other gender related topics. I also find that to be incredibly damaging and silencing in context of what it means to be GNC, because I think it's a lot easier to talk about it when it's mostly a matter of being a femme man or a butch woman...but an androgynous man or woman throws additional things at it, because you still conform sometimes, but you don't conform at others, and a lot of people like to nitpick at when you don't conform to whatever expectations they may have of you, regardless of whether they expect you to be solely feminine or masculine in some way, shape, or form.

So, in brief, I find myself in a position where my older sister can easily talk about being bullied as a tomboyish cis girl growing up, but I find it a lot more difficult to describe my gendered childhood experiences when it always boiled down to "What even ARE you?!", and I also found that any answer I gave was insufficient no matter however I answered, because I could always be read as masculine or feminine, and I have personally stuck out like a sore thumb regardless of what I've said about myself. Describing explicitly interphobic school bullying is a far more difficult task, imo. I feel like straightfoward tomboyish girls and girly boys have it somewhat easier in this regard than I did.