#and it's relatable for some trans people to feel you failed masculinity (even if you never WANTED to succeed at it)

[uncanny-tranny]

hello there!! I know I'm being a bit bold with this ask even if I'm hiding to an extent on anon but- I was wondering if you might be interested in watching/sharing this video essay I recently finished on a trans reading of Jesse Pinkman

https://youtu.be/sVh0of5kAQ4

feel free to ignore me and either way I hope you have a good day!

I'm a few minutes into this video (it's close to the forty-minute mark), but so far, I appreciate her insight! Obligatory warning for spoilers about Breaking Bad and a little for Better Call Saul.

I think so many people are attracted to the idea of trans Jesse because Breaking Bad cannot be separated from the analysis of masculinity and toxic masculinity specifically. In these discussions, I think trans people often have unique insights into their experiences with toxic masculinity, and though that isn't always true, I myself certainly know that I and many trans people have a complex relationship with masculinity (and femininity, but I digress).

I think I most related to the idea of a trans reading of Jesse in the scene where Jane observes that not only did Jesse draw himself as superheros, but his kangaroo superhero had a pouch. It was relatable, and almost this sort of realization that Jesse presents himself a certain way, yet other people interpret him differently than he does.

I highly doubt Vince Gilligan intended Jesse to be trans. I highly doubt that Aaron Paul played Jesse in a way that was meant to be read as trans. However, I do still appreciate the trans reading of Jesse, and I think that if it were canon, it would fit neatly into the overall themes of the show (that being masculinity, gender, gender roles, and how people contend with these elements)

[our-trans-youth-experience]

Ask

This trans youth sent his ask to me via message but has allowed me to share it incase it helps others. Thank you anon :)

Anon: "hey i was just wondering if you had any advice for me. i am a teenage transmasc (not entirely sure about my identity yet) but have been experiencing massive dysphoria around my name and chest and stuff. i cant come out to my parents as they are very transphobic and i may end up being disowned. i feel as though i am trapped in this situation of not being able to come out but unable to be happy like this. i am very sorry for the rant hope you have a good day."

_______________________________________

hey welcome :)

I'm also a transmasc kid in a very similar situation to yours, in fact almost identical, so I can relate.

A few things i recommend:

- If you are friends with some people at school you know will be supportive, maybe try come out to a couple of them MAKING IT VERY CLEAR THAT YOU ARE NOT OUT TO ADULTS/YOUR PARENTS. It's not much but being called a preferred name and pronouns by even only a couple of people can make a huge difference.

- If you are able to buy your own clothes or choose what you wear (I am not), I recommend using clothing to express yourself and hide your chest. Layering with thinks like jackets and flannel shirts are a great option as they hide your chest and look quite masc. Additionally, i recommend t-shirts with those big, thick plasticky printed designs on them, as they don't flex very easily hiding your chest a little. Straight cut jeans can help hide curves if you get dysphoric about that. And if all else fails, a big hoodie hides everything

- if you are not able to get a haircut and have long hair, i recommend tucking it in a hat like a beanie to give the appearance of short hair. If it is long enough, you can even flip it over and make it look like a sort of fringe.

- If you wear makeup, or are open to doing that, there are plenty of masculine makeup tutorials out there which can really help make your face appear more masc

- In terms of a binder, I assume that like for me that is not an option. However, layering sports bras can be alright for now. Just make sure to be safe with it, don't size down, and stop if it restricts your breathing at all.

DO NOT attempt to come out to your parents if doing so may put you in any danger. When you are an adult, you can leave home, transition, and be happy. It will get better, I promise <3

[monorayjak]

I... it's getting hard to live like this. Hiding who I am to so many people. It hurts. I wrote a thing earlier today and I felt I summed up the feeling pretty well I think, reworded a bit to sound better:

"It feels like torturous self harm to be fully aware of who I am and yet imprison myself in a fortress of a false identity that's slowly caving in around me."

What I'm getting at here... I think... I think it might be time for me to come out to some people...and I really need some advice.

As of now, only four people IRL know about me, that's my therapist, my cousin (who was genuinely more like a sister to me), a friend at college (I knew they were extremely supportive and they had no connection to other people I know, so it seemed like a safe bet to tell her (I was right)), a friend I interacted with occasionally in high school who has since come out as trans herself (actually what got me to message her, saw her online and wanted to ask so I didn't misgender her or anything, and we got talking and I quickly realized she'd understand.)

At the moment, I'm still living with my mom, which is fine, I know she'll support me in her own way (she's queer herself, she has internalized issues, but she tries). I know my university I go to, despite having once been a "christian college," have opened up and been supportive of most of the students who do come out in one way or another. I know at least a few of the professors there who are absolutely trying to be supportive to everyone to the best of their abilities. My therapist knows, as mentioned before, but he is also... well, he ain't exactly a pro with gender and sexuality stuff (still a good guy, he just messes up what he's talking about here and there, like using masculine pronouns when he talks about a transwoman (largely I think its because he usually talks about them when they first started transitioning, and I don't think he thinks about gendering them correctly in reference to them coming out... if that makes any sense).

The issues... well, for one, I live in the bible belt. My extended family (who we are finally trying to cut ourselves off from now that the only think holding us together (my grandmother) is gone) lives all around me and the majority of them are.........well lets just say they really don't like my mom being gay, and one of them bullied a kid he was fostering because, in his words, "the kid's a fucking sissy!" Yeah... not a fan of that uncle. (In related news I am genuinely afraid of that man because he is very fucking clearly not mentally stable and has talked about killing himself and others before (while preaching at church!) and he is... really aggressive and has access to guns) I'm too poor to even consider leaving the state, and with... well frankly I'm a bit of a fuckup who really can't live on their own... yeah... fun times. Insurance may cover parts of things, but... honestly I don't even fucking know. Like I said, I know my mom will try to support me, but she is also... well, how do I say this? She tends to not know how to react to stuff. A large reason I don't talk about stuff with her is that she has a habit of turning it around into something about herself (not in a manipulative way, mind you. I just think she doesn't realize why it feels bad to tell her something like this and then have her break down a bit because I didn't tell her sooner or because she didn't work it out herself or anything like that). Basically, if I tell her, its either going to go one of two ways.

She reacts negatively and turns it around about herself and takes the moment to be hurt she didn't work things out or that I didn't tell her. (Literally once opened up to her when I was little (like 11?) about how much I hated myself... she said the next day she spent the entire night crying because she thought she failed... I understand what she was going for, but, honestly not something you should tell your kid who just opened up. Practically had it ingrained internally "If I feel bad, hide it. Because my mom will be devastated by it.")

She goes too supportive and expects me to be willing to open up immediately. Basically just forgetting she can't push me into being out and honest because it takes time to work up the courage.

Both of these options are... iffy. To say the least.

[genderqueerdykes]

I'm afab but most of my life I felt less like "girl" and more "failing at being a girl" because whenever my being a girl was brought up it was always because my physical characteristics were too masculine and didn't match what a girl was supposed to look like. I wanted to be a girl but felt like I never really was. Then as a teenager I got diagnosed with PCOS due to elevated testosterone levels and put on hormonal birth control and it was both a relief at having an explanation but also upsetting because it was confirmation that in a sense I really wasn't exactly a girl, my body was betraying my attempts at being a girl. So in a way my experience has been transitioning from "not a girl" into "nonbinary femme/I don't want to be a girl of there's rules around it but I enjoy femininity" and like. I'm trans, I'm femme, I take estrogen and progesterone. But I'm afab so the assumption when people learn I'm trans is that I'm transitioning to look more masculine and that I want to take T, when that is literally the opposite of what I want and am doing. It's just really lonely having this experience not knowing if anyone else can relate to it/even understands what I'm talking about, so I guess I'm just reaching to see if anyone else has similar experiences

hey, that's actually really touching and honestly relatable to a degree

i also felt like i was "failing at being a girl" due to my PCOS and hyperandrogenism. i felt like it was my fault some how that i wasn't "being a girl right" or that i somehow was just. not trying hard enough to be a girl. like if i just tried hard enough my body would stop being so masculine, or something

i honestly understand what you're going through to a larger degree than most would think. i am both transmasc and transfem, and i definitely understand what you mean about wanting to be femme without wanting to be called a girl, and wanting to transition into your femininity. it's okay if you need to transition into femininity if you were denied it due to your intersex condition. many of us are robbed the chance to live as ANY gender as children, due to our parents being worried about how we'll be perceived, if we'll be bullied, if it'll bring the family a bad name, and so on

i am not on estrogen or anything like that due to the fact that i hate the way it makes me feel, but i think it's rad as fuck for you! i'm a transfem nonbinary intersex person in a coercively assigned female at birth body and i just. i don't know. i understand what you're going through. i realize that while i'm bigender and i am a guy, i was also denied my femininity as a child and teenager and holy shit am i not okay with that. i wasn't being a girl or being feminine wrong, this is just my way of being feminine. i like the way i'm feminine and i like pushing my femininity to its extremes

anyway i just wanted to say that you're definitely not alone in this experience. i think this is really cool and i think it's totally awesome for you to want to be femme and to want to reclaim your femininity, especially since it was taken away from you like that. if there's anyone else that relates to this anon, feel free to chime in. i think there's more folks like this out there than we both realize. take care, i hope you feel better soon, you are loved

[sylvaridreams]

Sage said something regarding Alba's new in-game fit about that he's finally playing around with his gender which is unfortunately (?) Not the case! Alba's relationship to gender is that he has one. And it's one of the boring default ones and you don't need to look closely at it at all. So please don't look at him.

He is a cis man, and he genuinely is, and he knows this because he HAS examined "what do I want, what do I need?" And the answer to both has always been "be a man." The ideas of womanhood or of being nonbinary or agender or all both something else entirely are ideas that make him MISERABLE. He doesn't WANT to be anything other than a man.

The ISSUE is that Alba deep down (not very deep) is gnc (but hiding it from everyone, himself included.) He refuses to acknowledge this. He Knows there are countless ways to be a man; he has gnc people and feminine men and trans people in his life that he loves and respects and he has no disagreement with their lived experiences or identities or anything. It boils down to that Alba thinks it is his ONLY OPTION (for him, personally!) to squeeze himself into a miniscule box of "masculine man" and never move or breathe so the box doesn't collapse trying to hold him. This is a "rules for me, not for thee" thing.

People around him can clearly see SOMETHING is up with Alba in terms of gender or related stuff. Something is going on that he's burying deep. It's not hard to catch a glimpse of how miserable he seems over certain things. Yao tried cracking his egg and had no luck with it. Turned to Alba's companions once he was out of earshot, like you folks ARE seeing this right, there's SOMETHING there, and the response boiled down to "Yes we know, he just won't let anyone bring it up, he won't DO anything about it." And Yao was like .....🧍 I think I can fix him--

It's this huge dolyak in the room at times that's treated more like a skeleton in the closet. We just dont talk about it. He doesn't want to. He'll get there when he's ready, maybe. And it probably boils down to some deep seeded self hatred and belief that he hasn't earned happiness, but even he doesn't grasp that as the issue. He "has to" be masculine but he's so awful at it and it's not fun or enjoyable. He can't and shouldn't want to be any degree of feminine, he's not ALLOWED to approach that, so when he catches himself, eyes lingering on cute clothes that anyone else in the world would be allowed to wear, he feels like he deserves some sort of punishment for failing to not want it.

If Alba were able to actually rationally process his feelings about himself and approach this topic without melting down and hiding and piling more layers atop the answer and ask "what would make me Happy" and could stop from recoiling in fear and anger from the first genuine answer and then correcting himself with "no I wanna be masc" then MAYBE he could work out that he IS a gnc cis man with a really fucked up relationship to his own gender, his own body, and himself in general. Maybe he could admit that he IS feminine in a lot of ways, that he DOES want to wear certain things that he's disallowed himself, that he punishes and berates himself for looking at.

But he won't allow himself to approach the topic from an angle that isn't defensive and afraid and angry and hateful towards himself, for not meeting his own expectations of what is acceptable For Alba.

And I think maybe this comes to a sudden and unexpected head when he does something impulsive and stupid and wrong and he tries to stop himself and can't. He buys something (a skirt) out of a Canthan mail order company and then panics and stakes out the mail for a week waiting for it to arrive because he needs to destroy it when it gets there before anyone can see that he lost this battle of wills. And it gets delivered and he hides the box in a closet for days before bringing it back out to get rid of it.

But he makes the mistake of looking at it first. And it hurts to look at because it's something he wants, but it has to go. But uh. If he tries it on first. Maybe that will fix him and this impulse will go away forever and ever. But it doesn't. He puts the skirt on and it doesn't change things, it doesn't permanently satisfy him and now he will never care or want it again. It devastates him looking in the mirror knowing that he Wants to keep it.

And then the door opens and he and Canach are staring at each other in shock like. A: oh I have to die actually it's the only way, and C: by the tree he's DOING something about it. Canach shuts the door behind him and they're both dead silent and Alba just has this feeling of hollow, miserable shame.

And Alba starts crying the minute Canach starts talking, the second he mentions the outfit. "You look nice in that. What's wrong?" And it's SUCH a non-conversation. Canach can't work out how to approach this because he's supportive of whatever Alba is doing, he loves him regardless of who or what he is, but Alba doesn't want love and compliments and acceptance because he's the one person in the world who doesn't deserve it. He deserves to be punished for this in some grand cosmic way.

Canach asks if he'd be happier as a woman or something else, and Alba just melts down. No, I don't want that, I'm a man and I want to be one, I shouldn't have done this I'm sorry. And he's not calming down or taking any rational position on this, his feelings about himself and "what Alba is allowed to do vs everyone else" DON'T make sense to anyone but him, and eventually Canach has to be like Alba I shouldn't have to sneak around our house to try to CATCH YOU in moments of genuine happiness. How do you think it feels knowing you're refusing yourself joy out of some twisted view of what you're "supposed" to be. Don't you think that hurts me? Why are you required to operate under different standards than anyone else? You're not that important, get over yourself.

(Canach actually has figured this out that he has to word things this way A Lot, "your behavior matters not only because it hurts you but because it hurts OTHERS, it hurts ME." Only way to get him to start caring.)

I don't think they're able to make any significant progress but Canach does convince him not to get rid of or destroy the skirt, it's not hurting you, you can wear it at home, in our room if it makes you happy. Then says something crass and unrepeatable. And Alba halfheartedly resists and then relents. Like, fine.... whatever YOU want...

Anyway someday Alba will manage to deal with one of his ten million problems! But for now he is sad and wet forever. :)

[yourbigendergremlet]

Here is a bunch of rambles ive vollected over a few months instead of posting them in seperate posts

Feeling dysphoric about my face not being masculine, putting my hair down because it makes me feel masculine, i hate hair in my face, all my headbands to hold my hair back have bows on it, rip off the bows, wear is like a sweatband

Manly ✨

Even if i was ever gonna come out to my family as bigender, they wouldn't just say it is terrible, they would just tell me that im making no sense because i am still female, a part of me is still that, but they just wouldn't get that a part of me is also male, they would just say it was a tomboy. If they continue to misgender me, they aren't exactly wrong because i am still female so calling me she/her is still not wrong so i cant get that angry about it

Feeling dysphoria? I just made a new album in my gallery and copied any images that made me feel like a guy into there and named it "i am a big strong beautiful manly man"

Felt like a guy today but went to church and was gonna sit in the mens side but then felt extremely uncomfortable so i went to the women's side but i also felt uncomfortable with myself there and aaaagh

Me making braclets with my pride flags but my family dont know that thy are pride flags because they dont know the bigender and genderfluid flags 😎

Complaining to my little brother about our mum not letting me buy men's clothes and freely shopping in the men's section with him because he has not yet been tainted by our parents and older sister's views and feeling amazing even though he still knows nothing about lgbt stuffs

Me thinking of a plan to ask my little brother what his views on the lgtvs are but descreetly so that if he doesnt like it he wont tell mother 0.0

Conversation switches to "lgbt people bad", me goes completely silent 0.0 me: "haha yeah thats weird..." when talked directly to desperately trying to switch topic while not outing myself

My sister wants to try new nail polish but already has some on so asks my little brother to do it on him, parents being like "nooo he's a boyyyy" and my sister being like "yeah guys wear nail polish now tho but he still isnt gonna be able to be a girl" and me being there like "yeah, he can put on nail polish" and internally screaming that guys can be girls if they are aaaa

Hahaha internalised transphobia :D for a while there

Me: am i actually genderfluid or am i actually bigender? Am i faking it? Am i pretending to relate to genderfluid and ftm trans people? Am i only just female and male or am i non binary also a bit??? Am i duel weilding my genders or am i fluctuating between them right now i have no clue??????? Is that why im feeling like thisssss???

Me going out somewhere, analysing how guys walk and act differently to girls and taking mental notes

Walking two steps like how people say guys walk and feeling absolutely on top of the world before going back to normal

Hoping im being subtle in trying to lower my voice so my family dont question it (and horribly failing at being subtle why is lowering your voice a bit so hard??)

Tumblr recomending me a suspicious amount of transgender posts before i had started properly questioning my gender or even thought about it

If i was a AMAB, being bigender would be so much easier becuase it's easier to just wear a skirt or dress and look distinctly feminine and then wear other stuff and look distinctly masculine but as a AFAB when you wear male clothes you still look female but who just bought something from the male section instead of looking like a guy

My mum speaking arabic and using the masculine versions of words for me as a joke but me internally pretending that she is using my correct pronouns 🥲

Me considering getting the school trousers so i can wear that sometimes instead of my skirt but also its my last year and no point spending money on uncomfortable trousers ill never wear again if its only for one year

So in church, women wear something called an isharba which is a headscarf meant to cover your hair to be modest.

Ive noticed that on days where im feeling like a girl, i can wear the isharba theoughout the mass but on days where im feeling like a guy i feel very uncomfortable wearing it and dont usually wear it in the mass. On some days i can wear it on and off throughout as well. It's intresting how my gender also effects something like wearing a head scarf, but i guess it can also be kinda like skirts in that sense? It was also a very subconcious feeling and even when i wasnt aware of what gender i was that day i would sometimes feel uncomfortable

Some days i feel more comfortable with the label bigender, and sometime im more comfortable with the label genderfluid and it's weird

Today im feeling more masculine, but also not fully so im more between he/they. But also there is a small twinge of feminine but only a small amount.

So i dont really feel like he/him, but i dont like they/them for myself, but then also im not he/she because there isnt a lot of she in me but im not he/him because i dont feel fully like a guy.

Im not none of them because i am all of them but to varying degrees to the extent where im not comfortable with any of the pronouns no matter how they are balanced. Idk? Are people just not meant to refer to me when i feel like this????

A very specific feeling i want to experience is wearing a dress while looking like a boy, i really want to have the feeling of being a cis boy wearing a dress so much

I didn't realise how important having facial and body hair was to me until my mum and sister kept saying that i should shave it. I really really love my body and facial hair and i really want even a small beard but my mum and sister made me shave my tiny moustache hairs and unibrow for christmas and tried to get me to shave my leg and arm hair and i feel super dysphoric without it being there anymore

That moment of delusion where i pretend to myself that the soft fabricy present my sister got for me was a binder and fantasise about it but its just a jumper in reality

My sister was talking about starfield and how stupid it was that you could put pronouns "why not just have it male and female lol" and i tried to laugh along but really just could not make it sound energetic and i felt kinda sick

Ive recently had the epithany that as a bigenderfluid person i am still allowed to be a femboy or a tomboy and that being feminine doesnt necessarily make me a girl that day and i am still a guy and-

[theasexual-jackson]

The terf pipeline that assigned female at birth trans folks are just “little girls with internalised misogyny and want to be males to escape misogyny” is bullshit! Feat. My experience as an afab transneutral person.

Hi, everyone! For those who don't know me, my name is Angel and I go by all pronouns (neos & xenos included), and welcome to this simple, but big, post.

I think everyone knows the radfems, also known as terfs. You know, these women whose feminism is just transphobia, racism, ableism, generalisation of womanhood and plain exclusion of anyone who isn't a cishet, white, middle to high class women. Maybe, a little bit of queer women, but only in their criteria.

And I think everyone here knows on their infantilization of trans men and assigned female at birth trans people in general. They always say: “Oh, poor little girl, consumed by outside and internalised misogyny, so she tries to be male so she can try to live happily!! =((”

And I say, bullshit, bullshit, FUCKING BULLSHIT! Talking from experience, even!

You see, even though I was raised and socialized as a girl... I didn't experience that much of misogyny. Hell, probably not at all.

“Omg, that's impossible, how would you do that?” Rapunzel. That's the secret, I lived and live to this day like Rapunzel.

I don't go out to stores that often, I only have one way on my daily basis: Home → School → Home. That's it, that's all it. This is how my life goes since forever.

And when I go out somewhere, I'm 9/10 times around one of my parents or my brother. So, my chances of getting catcalled, s/a'd or something are quite low.

I am a hyper protected kid, that's why I am a pussy. And while my mom was mean and a bigot in general in many points of my adolescence, she had enough sense to not be misogynistic throughout my childhood (things started to go wrong in my life, between me and her, when I started to show signs of non-cisgenderness and gender non conformity, to summarize).

And that gave me time to discover my identity without women hating structure of patriarchal society on the way (gender imposition on max.). In fact, I was reluctant to accept that I identified in a masculine way sometimes, because cis femininity (and probably some internalised transphobia) was too impregnated on my brain, at that point. So when I started to feel side effects of an misogynist society, my identity was already constructed, I already knew who I was, so misogyny couldn't really play a role in it.

To give y'all an idea, the first time I've ever been a victim of misogyny was in 2023, when I was 15, close to turning 16 years old, and I was getting romantically harassed by a boy (he changed schools, so I won't see that nigga's face ever again, THANK YOU LORD 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽) and that same muthafucka went on to say, in the middle of class, that women bad and they be the reason why we fail (based off that fucking Adam and Eve story, btw), directed at everyone who was read as a girl in that class, aka all the girls of my class and me. And, since I'm closeted, I had no choice but only be disgusted at that remark of his.

But, key word, disgusted. Not guilty, not deeply affected like any normal woman would; But disgusted. Because misogyny is disgusting to everyone who's not a misogynistic.

See where I'm getting into? My first contacts with what is misogyny in practice came too late to be experienced from a girl's perspective. Maybe from a fem presenting perspective, since I'm closeted, but I only can view it from a transgender perspective, now.

My transgender identity cannot be affected deeply by misogyny now, because misogyny came too late.

And that's not a case only for me, but for many other trans minors. Many trans kids understand that they diverge from the gender they were assigned at birth, even before getting a grasp of misogyny and/or gender related violence, even when they don't even know the existence of the word trans.

So, in conclusion, transness is not a result of internalised misogyny, but being a nasty girl who dismiss other girls just to get male appreciation is (and not only that, tho, patriarchy has many faces other than just sexual violence).

Bye!!! =3

[growingfeedeeinfrance]

Bonjour Porcelet!🐷 As the feedee gainer community tends to be most prominent in the Anglosphere it's always delightful to encounter those from other cultures & countries discovering the delights of feedism & making it their own! It just shows our innate desire to get fat is such a truly universal impulse for aǁ of us! But I'm curious to ask how you as a French gainer girl view your experience striving to grow fatter with all of France's differing cultural attitudes to diet body-image & cuisine?

Ouch tough question😅 [TW: fatphobia, ED, suicide] I think my story is similar to those in the anglosphere but I can still share x)

The first thing I have to talk about is fatphobia. I was put on a diet at FIVE years old. I wasn't even allowed to go to Bday parties because of the sweets.

So I came to discover feedism at the same time as I began to struggle with eating disorders. I was 10/11 years old, anorexic and already fascinated by fat girls stuffing themselves online. I used to actually have a journal were I would write every synonyms, idioms etc related to being fat, repeating them all in my head to myself before falling asleep.

My teens years were hard because I tried so hard to suppress this kink, I was so ashamed of it, and of my body. Even though I was super fit and skinny. I basically tried for 10 years to get rid of this desire, a form of self-made "therapy conversation" rooted in the shame my mother's fatphobia (and society's) had ingrained in me. I guess the fact that everything was in english online made it a bit more "distanced" and easy to deal with? But I did have the same feelings toward that one episode from the Totally Spies ;)

It was only when I was 20, that I finally opened up to my partner about my kink because I just felled so sad and lonely. I had tried making connections in the online feedism community but I always failed 😅 Along the way I realized that the french langage didn't carry as much attraction and seduction to me when it came to feedism. Like I'm sorry you all but talking to me in french about feedism stuff is just almost always "anti-sexy" 😅

It wasn't for them so I didn't start anything IRL. But after my 2nd attempt at suicide, and during the 1st pandemic lockdown, I started gaining weight (because of some medications + lockdown I guess). I just had to ask myself what I wanted in life and who I wanted to be.

So I realized I was trans (I'm enby!) and that I wanted to pursue this kink in real life as much as I could. So I slowly started to center pleasure in my food habits, and tried to let go of the shame and the guilt (still trying). I have a malformation that makes it impossible for me to stuff myself (I throw up really easily) but I still tried to gradually increase my capacity.

I still feel sad and lonely because I fear that I will never meet someone in real life to share this kink with me. In all the spheres of my life (education, friends, activism...), I'm the fat one now. Which kind of drives me crazy because I'm not even that fat?!? And I'm just like "where are the other fat people?!?"

Even in diverse, kinky and sex positive places, feedism is always new to people and most of those spaces centers thin people. (I'm not "masc" enough to go to bear places 😅). Fatphobia is really pervasive in every spaces, and it's really hard to live through. For instance, EVERY transmasc spaces will center "thin/fit" bodies as the GOAL for transition. Like I want a more masculine body but I don't want to be thin. I want to keep my boobs and have less hips to reduce the "hourglass" body I have. It's super hard (almost impossible) to find cute, masc clothes that fit me. All of the environmental groups I'm in put big importance in highly physical activities and put fitness forward all the time. There is no relaxing or enjoying our bodies. WE HAVE TO BE FIT and want it. Public transport is also hard because the seats are so tiny (same in education). And fatphobia is still intense in medical places (like I went to see a cardiologist because my mom has heart issues and she told me my heart was super healthy but I still had to lose weight. why? no idea), and in familial settings (it's just for your heath etc etc).

Gaining would be soooo much easier if society wasn't so fatphobic. I hate it so much because I still have those moments where I feel I should try to lose weight because I fear I'm becoming "too ugly" (especially as a transmasc person) and I'll end up alone. And I've decided to center the relationships I have in my life and I don't want my partners to be disgusted by my body. That's why I never share my videos/photos with them and I only post on Tumblr. Thank you all for the feedist community online, I don't know where I'll be without it.

For the cuisine, having spent some times in the US, I have to admit that France's diversity in food makes gaining all the more enjoyable. And while yes, a lot of the food is centered around thinness/healthyness, most traditional dishes are much more hearty and fattening!!! (and delicious!!) And my sweet tooth is just in looove with french pastries!!! But I admit I like my twice a week american fast food x)

I don't know if I've really answered your question, don't hesitate if you want more details about some specific aspects of my experience in France!

[discyours]

[a different anon] you still can admit that its not universal - i agree - that all trans people fetishize but there are some that do it and it’s not in the chronology you mentioned (getting obsessed as a result of transition)

greetings!

Yeah I agree. Although I think a lot of people fail to understand that they're both pipelines. If you're not active in kink communities yourself (or sometimes even if you are) you may see the fetish as a starting point, but someone still ended up there somehow. People may be predisposed to certain kinks/fetishes but they aren't born with them (for the most part, I think there's exceptions like foot fetishes where there's some research that it's literally some neurological wires being switched).

In either case you have someone who has been influenced to direct their feelings (sometimes sexual, sometimes not) towards the concept of being a woman (taking that as an example because the flipside is much much rarer). And that can be anything from "I want to do something Sexual and Naughty and Taboo and society has taught me that women's underwear (very much unlike men's underwear) is all of those things", to "I've never related to the masculine expectations that are put on men, I feel like I relate a lot more to the women in my life and I think that's a sign I was meant to be born as one". One is obviously grosser to hear given the sexual nature of it, but both groups of people are being needlessly funnelled into connecting their (natural and understandable) feelings to womanhood.

Not that a crossdressing kink necessarily goes as far as fantasising about actually being a woman, but because of the pipeline(s) it's very common for it to end up there. I do have to say that while still inside kink communities, men with cross dressing/sissy kinks who are openly considering ""becoming a woman full time"" usually seem pretty self aware that it's a matter of living out a sexual fantasy, and they don't tend to bother with politically correct language (still misogynists tho). It's just that if they do ever make it into trans communities, they are very quickly "re-educated" that sexual crossdressing or sissy porn is a normal starting point for getting in touch with your (fully nonsexual and entirely innate) gender identity.

[your-bigender-big-brother]

I’ve been feeling so sick lately thinking about gender. I’ve known I was xenogender and gender-fluid for multiple years, but nothing I try presentation and label or even name and pronouns wise ever fits long term in a way that makes me happy. I’ve changed my name at least 8 times in the time since I came out as a binary trans man. I wish I had never come out, and could quietly shift and change until I felt right, without ever saying a word, without anyone looking for an update or trying to figure out if I’m detransitioning. I don’t even know if I’m detransitioning. I don’t feel gender euphoria ever anymore, except for a few little places where I can imagine myself as a fairy, or a saytr, or faun, and when I see natural things that give me xenogender feelings. My dysphoria and loneliness are constant. Women think I’m a threat, men think I’m a freak, other queer people don’t see me as queer because I don’t have any money to yassify myself and I’m Very physically large and I feel like I don’t know any of the words to find a community of people like me, if they even exist. I have exactly 3 friends I’ve seen in the past year, and no online community. I don’t know how to pick just one thing to make me happy and it feels like I keep wearing masculinity and femininity like masks and nothing ever fits. I’m 24 and I feel like I’m wasting my life. Like, it feels impossible to thrive? Idk.

How do I “become” myself? How do I choose what to be when Everyone’s gender presentation holds a potential appeal to me? People say “just do what feels right” but I feel pullled in a million directions all at once and I can only walk one way. This was a lot. Sorry. I’ve been going crazy.

I took a little longer to respond to this than I wanted to, but I needed to make sure I was focused enough to type out a concise reply. Sorry for the wait!

I think it's a rare occurrence that people reach an end to their self-exploration. I don't think we ever really come to a conclusion about who we really are and what identity-related language fits us perfectly. Life tends to be an ongoing journey of self-discoveries. We're not working toward a goal when we explore aspects of our identities - be it gender, orientation, spirituality, our place in the world, our values. The beauty of the human experience (and tangential experiences such as alterhumans and others) is that we are prone to constant change. I think change is good. I think change can help us learn and grow. I don't see this fact as a solution, just something to think about.

Do you have a go-to label that works when things get dire? Something broad, something more in the good-enough range? Sometimes, we don't have it all figured out. But placeholder labels can help. Genderqueer, nonbinary, genderfluid, genderflux - these can be used as broader labels until you have something more concrete figured out. Having a placeholder name and pronouns might also help. "Hey, I know my gender seems a little turbulent and confusing. I don't have any specific pronouns in mind, but X/Y/Z can work for now. Here is a name you can call me for now."

It's an odd way to navigate, but it might help. Establish a baseline rather than some unattainable "perfect" label that encompasses every single aspect of your gender. It's more realistic to have your good-enough and for-now labels so that there's at least something there. Even "I don't know" is a good answer for when someone asks what your gender is - people are more likely to refer to you by name and pronouns anyway, so I think it's more important to find a name (or names) and pronouns that can work as a default. They'd be a way to indicate that when all else fails and you're not sure how you want to be referred to, you have something to fall back on even if it's not exactly what you want in the long term.

As for presentation: Wear what makes you happy and comfortable, not what you think "matches" your gender in the most accurate way. Oftentimes, when there are multiple genders involved, it's hard to find a presentation that fits. Keeping it fluid and focusing more on your personal comfort is easier than trying to come up with the perfect outfit for someone who is xenogender and genderfluid.

If loneliness is getting in the way so badly, look around at online queer communities to engage with. You can go back to those broader labels and search for groups - maybe Tumblr blogs or Discord servers - that are dedicated to those broader labels. It helps to talk about your experience with someone else who might even be able to relate. You mentioned being "physically large" and I think it might really help to find communities where they discuss intersections of disability and transness, or having a trans experience while fat. If this is something you're specifically interested in, I know someone who might have resources. Just let me know.

I am almost 35, divorced, and a whopping four-time college dropout. I'm still making new gender discoveries to this day and finding blind spots where I don't know what label to use. I am the epitome of a work in progress. You are not wasting your life. Your life is so new and there's so much for you to experience. - 💙💚

[draingang-agora]

I think this reification is more like a broader trend of a pathological need progressives often have for gender to be real in like a meaningful ontological way. They want the statement: Trans-women are women, to be like metaphysically, actually true. But gender isn't real! we know this! it's a social construct. In practice, we use the word "woman" to refer to: personal identity(how you feel), personal identities as expressed socially(i.e what that person says they are,how they dress, what they look like), Social identities (i.e how your family, social circle, society, treats you and what they treat you as,) of varying modes; your perceived sex, your perceived masculinity and feminity (and those two things in relation to each other), and sex. I don't think any of these uses are wrong! family resemblance and varying language games etc, but I think most of us really want it to be real, we want there to be an essential difference between an amab man, and an amab woman, and there just isn't really.

In some ways I think TERFS actually get this right in the broader understanding(if we steel man them a bit from the deranged psychosexual obsessions their opinions tend to manifest as). At least the radfem tendencies they're taking from(many of whom were not transphobic). Gender is sex based, it is our socially constructed understanding of what sex is, this has very little to do with the actual in-the-world fact of sexual bi-morphism, and writ large, more to do with how we interpret that fact, such that many biological males can easily *be* women in most of the ways that matter to this interpretation. But then TERFS still want to have gender so they just do it again thinking they're cutting through the bullshit to sex-as-the-fact, and it fails hopelessly because of course it does, they just mistake a new map for it's territory. Masculinity and Feminity are the idealized understanding of the traits of each sex, but we seemed to have moved to a model where masculinity and femininity are distinct from "gender" which is distinct from sex. This isn't the case! These are all interrelated and epiphenomenal, e.g we read these attributes differently based on what we think someones sex is. When I wear suits, I need to look like a girl dressed like a boy, I don't want to just look like a boy! We know boys can be feminine and girls masculine, but we still kind of want boy and girl to be real meaningful ontological categories. We want non binary people to be a whole different kind of thing to men and women. Op mentions differences in experience of transness but there are also different fundamental aims, some people who identify as women are fine to look male and they present and act like men but ask people to call them she and her and woman or girl. Some identify as women and are fine looking biologically male but still act femininely, want certain female secondary sex characteristics etc. Personally for the most part I want to look cis, I don't feel much like a trans woman and I don't really feel an inherent connection to them on the basis of transness like I think a lot of you guys do. I want to look like I was born a girl and I act with certainly a high degree of femininity, though it's more important to me that I be perceived female in terms of sex then in terms of my feminine or masculine qualities. Nothing about these identities and the numerous weird cis female identities have anything in common such that there is a type of thing they all actually are. Certainly some of them will be included in more possible usages of the word "woman" then others, and this will factor into their experience of "privilege", but there's too much variation here for them to all encompass something that makes the term Trans women are Women, True. It's a range of historically contingent identities that aren't universal or essential. One day I hope they're no longer even need.

i think fundamentally the problem with "do trans women/men have male privilege" discourse is that it tries to reify male privilege as this thing either you Have or you Don't Have, rather than a collection of benefits/lack of punishments (these are separate concepts!) that various people will or will not have in various circumstances. this is compounded by the fact that "always knew they were trans, was raised as their actual gender", "always knew they were trans, hid it" and "was fine being cis until 20" are both legitimate ways to be but will have very different experiences!

and I don't think this reification originates from this discourse; rather, "privilege" has sort of coalesced already, and this unhelpful understanding is a cause of that piece of eternal discourse. like, why does it matter whether trans women/men have male privilege? what are you actually trying to get at? ask that question instead, and be willing to accept the fact that the answer will vary greatly depending on the person in question!

[merrysithmas]

masculinity in star wars

you know, after some great posts by the brilliant @intermundia my mind has been going. something i've long thought, and something they recently put into very beautiful words, is how one of the central themes of star wars, and why so many nonbinary/queer/trans/masc people gravitate towards it, is masculinity.

i'd even argue it is THE central theme (even beyond the concepts of Spiritual Balance & Good vs Evil), which explains the phenomenon of cismen being so violently gatekeeping and protective of it.

we all know when sw was released in the 70s the emotional arc at its core revolved around the concept of Father and Son, the forgiveness, redemption, or blame therein.

it is easy to see why Luke Skywalker, noble, innocent, and nontoxically pursuing a masculine concept of "knightship" (while retaining feminine qualities himself which would prohibit him from fitting in with the imperials) would become a hero to many young cis boys who had overbearing, unrelatable, absent, or downright evil fathers. it is easy to see why obiwan, the wise and protective second-father figure would become their beloved guru.

it is also easy to see, of course, the reverse, wherein many men who feel they failed at fatherhood, partnership, and life, would relate to Vader and the salvaging love he had for his son. the possibility that they were not totally consumed and digested by the toxic masculinity that had conscripted them and of which they then became soldiers of - an Empire.

the question SW asks in almost every film to this date is - what is masculinity? where does it come from? how do we define it? what do we do with it? and how do we balance it?

we see this reflected over and over again - Din Djarin with Grogu, the Bad Batch with Omega, Palpatine/Qui gon with Anakin, Obi-wan with the Skywalker twins, Rey's unrelenting search for a father figure in Luke, Kylo Ren and his burning abandonment in front of the absent Han Solo, Yoda and his Order, Cassian Andor and the powerless castration he experiences via the Empire, the HyperMasculine Empire, the warsome Mandalore vs. the pacifist Satine Kryze, Cal Kestis & his success borne of his crew of resourceful women.

Characters who are presented as male are constantly being challenged by ideas of masculinity and by which route they will choose to express it.

what does it mean to be a "man"? a question queer, trans, and masc people often ask themselves in relation to our identities. and a question we see the SW characters face constantly. is it sacrifice (Anakin)? protectiveness (Din)? bravery (Luke)? resilience (Obi-wan)? taking up arms when you are wronged (Cassian)? vengeance and blazing your own way (Vader)? Kindness and vulnerability (Cal)?

of course, this concept of masculinity in SW as a central theme also extends to its female characters and what it means to have female masculinity of any kind especially within a patriarchy or a situation where masculinity can be translated into a threat (to anyone, including oneself). this is another reason, id argue, for uproar in the cismale sector of the fandom when they are faced with a topic (female & queer masculinity) that they neither experience nor understand and see therefore, as a threat.

characters like leia, rey, jyn, reva all display various components of outright female masculinity and/or display a picture of women grappling with the masculinity around them, which i would postulate is what makes them so iconically and instantly popular. they are allowed to be whole on screen. they are not merely a "feminine" archetype. they are whole - masculine, feminine, passive, and aggressive.

Leia with her commanding military presence is never once questioned. She then becomes a mother who grapples with the duties of traditional motherhood while following a path that is most meaningful for her (the Rebellion).

Jyn, the abandoned streetrat rebel who is allowed to be callous, doubtful, unpreened, and cynical. Whose strength of heart eventually pulls a motley crew together.

Rey, a sexless scrapper whose skills come from self-reliance, who is pushed face to face with someone who repulses her - Kylo Ren with his burning crucifix of a saber, who haughtily croons to her that he can take "whatever he wants" from her. She pushes him away, rejects him continually, until he renounces the toxicity of his confused perspective (brought on by his own torture). Only to in the end embrace Ben, the good man who'd die for her to live: as she embodied the principles that he failed.

Reva, a hardened and traumatized covert soldier who gives in and then climbs out of the charybdis of vengeance and spiritual suffering. who mistrusts and is disgusted by the men who were supposed to protect her family (Obi-wan and Anakin). we rarely get to see this rage and pain from a female character on screen.

as queer people of course we see ourselves in between those philosophical questions and identify with various characters and their struggles. we are always presented with these internal questions of what makes an identity and confronted with our own society's labels of "masculine" and "feminine" and how they relate to our place as queer people.

& of course, "canon" doesn't truly exist in the sense of a character's gender or sexuality - a character's orientation and identity is up to the viewer- and with complex questions of identity already at play in this universe it is easy to see oneself as a queer person within this story.

and then of course, we are now starting to see characters like Merrin, Obi-wan, and others' sexualities expanded upon further than the "assumed cishet" brand usually defaulted by the general audience.

so those are some futher, not-totally developed thoughts on the topic here haha

[angelic-brutality]

heyo ;) how are y'all doing?? really hope y'all are fine!

k so a friend asked me to do this and i just LOVED the idea, so coming out to some tr boys as trans ! this isn't something actually romantic, like, i didn't specify the relationships as romantic or friendly so you can read as both of them

characters: draken, hanma, mitsuya

warnings: i'm brazilian so almost 100% sure there's grammatical errors here. characters might be ooc.

» Draken

c’mon, look at this guy and try to think he is transphobic. you can’t, right?

you knew that it wasn’t a big deal coming out to him; if you were prepared, you were 100% he would support you

and you are completely right

he’s the type to support you doesn’t really minding that now you're another gender. if you’re a boy, he will treat you like a boy. if you’re a girl, he will treat you like a girl. if you’re neither of them, he would treat you like you want

he’s really open-minded so it wouldn’t be hard to call you by the right pronouns and name

if your parents don’t support you, he would take you to bike rides or walkings through the city just so you don’t have to deal with them

he would also go with you to a medical center (?) so you can get hormonal treatment

and this boy would do ANYTHING he can if you have dysphoria

helping you cut your hair in a way you look more masculine/feminine/androgynous, buying you new clothes and everything yk

he wouldn’t argue with people that misgender you because, according to him, these people will always exist, but he would definitely glare at them until they correct what they said

and if they don’t, he would say it out loud asking them to correct in a politely way, but with a bit of an aggressive tone

i just love him so so much *cries*

» Hanma

when you told him you’re trans he was like “oh, ok. well heading back to the subject…”

would make some questions about it but trying not to offend you

when he accidentally misgenders you he goes “OH FUCK” and correct it

and if you didn’t come out to everyone and he needed to purposely call you by your dead name he would apologize later with a gift related to you being trans, like a pin or something related to the trans flag

if you’re afab and use a binder, he would constantly remind you to take it off

“TAKE YOUR FUCKING BINDER OFF” “WHY” “I DON’T WANT YOU WITH A FUCKING RESPIRATORY PROBLEM” “YOU ALSO DON’T WANT ME WITH DYSPHORIA” and this would go on until you take it off

if you’re kinda feminine and your height is similar to his, don’t be surprised if one day you see him wearing a skirt/high heels of yours, using a bit of makeup and everything

“hanma tf you’re doing with my things” “you just look so beautiful in them, i wanted to see if it is the clothes that make you look so good-looking” he would say that with the typical goofy smile

honestly i think he would try to help you if you don’t like your hair but fail miserably and then need to pay so you can go to an actually hair stilist

if you’re a transboy or a transgirl, if you were at a party and need to go to bathroom and he sees you heading to the one of your gender assigned at birth, he would just stop you by your arm and say “tf you doing you’re not even allowed to be there”

and if you’re non-binary he would happily listens to you talking about all the problems you and the people of your community have (like, not having bathrooms especially to enby people on public places, not learning that they/them can be used for non-binary people at school and etc)

» Mitsuya

i have the feeling he would help you with dysphoria even if you don’t talk a lot about it, he just knows it yk

if you have long hair but wished you had short hair and can’t cut it (your parents don’t let you, afraid of cutting it and don’t like it, etc) he would make you beanies for you so you can hide it

(a/n: if you don’t know what 'packer' is and don’t like seeing nsfw content, DO NOT search it, even if it’s not actually nsfw) if your transmasc (and wanted, ofc) he would make you a packer even if you’re embarrassed of buying it or even talking about it

if he sees you looking at too much time at the mirror like you don’t like what you see, he’d simply hug you

if you complain about not being masculine/feminine/androgynous enough, he would say “i loooove my trans boyfriend/girlfriend/partner and honestly i can’t understand why you don’t like yourself; for me, you’re the most perfect human”

tbh i’d start crying if i heard that

yk those crochet tiny animals that some people do with the pride flags? he would def do one of those for you in your birthday and say “sorry, i couldn’t do anything better :(“

WHAT DO Y'ALL THINK OF THIS?? tbh it was kinda hard to write it cause i didn't came out to a lot of people to know how most of them react (the only ones act like draken and hanma)

remember me saying i did this for a friend? i'm sure it will be hard to translate everything for him <(_ _)>

well, really hoped this is good ! coments and reblogs are apreciated !

taglist- @rome-alone @anti-shvji

[hiiragi7]

Hey there, I figured I would share my perspective on this as a system + intersex + trans person. I'll be using the term alter throughout this post, since that's what you used here.

Within the system community, there tends to be a line drawn between what an alter presents as internally and what they call themselves externally, because they do share a body that doesn't necessarily match who they are internally. This is where you get a lot of "as an alter/in the innerworld I am x, but the body is y".

Some spaces have the view that this disclaimer along with being careful not to speak over those who bodily have that experience or imply they experience the same thing is enough, while other spaces will say you should not identify as anything you are not bodily at all, it depends on the community.

There's a lot of different reasons why an alter would present as transfem even if the body is assigned female and is perisex (non-intersex), including alters who are dysphoric about the system transitioning to a more masculine presentation and who want to transition back to a more feminine one, and alters who are so dissociated from the body that they do not see it as their own at all and instead have an internal body they relate more to and base their internal identity off of. This isn't to say that they shouldn't be cautious and aware of how they speak about themselves externally, but that identity is... well, messy, especially if you have a disorder that involves disorganized identity such as DID.

In general with alters who present as minorities the body isn't, a lot of the issue in wording with regards to this comes down to whether or not a system or individual alter can recognize and adequately place themselves in a framework of oppression when discussing their identity and how that relates to what their body experiences. Otherwise you get people who talk over others who experience that oppression bodily, or who say they experience the same exact thing due to exomemories or how they're treated internally, because they do not recognize how body experiences are inherently different from an alter having solely internal experiences regarding being a part of a minority group that the body isn't.

All of that being said, as for the question "can a perisex afab person identify as transfem" in general (both systems and non-systems), I feel that is very personal and assumes a lot about how a person views and defines their femininity related to their birth sex. Even a perisex afab person may transition towards femininity, especially if their femininity was twisted through abuse or was forced away from them.

A lot of people also will say "intersex afab people may identify as transfem", which is true, but I also find that these same people often fail to acknowledge that there will be afab intersex people who do not "look" intersex and may in fact present as nearly identical to a perisex afab person outside of specific medical tests, which brings into question where exactly the line is. Can someone with PCOS identify as transfem? Does it depend on whether they are hyperandrogenic or not? What about someone who has elevated T levels but you wouldn't know by looking, because they do not develop androgenic traits? What about people who have differences in their chromosomes that do not show any signs outside of a karyotype test? Are you comfortable with these kinds of intersex people being transfem as well, or do you believe only certain kinds of intersex people with certain characteristics can be transfem? And if you are comfortable with this, what then seperates these types of bodies and experiences to the point that a perisex female-assigned person can never have similar enough experiences to ever be acceptable as transfem, especially when sex is a spectrum? And if you're uncomfortable with it, then when you say "intersex afab people can be transfem", you do not truly mean intersex afab people can be transfem.

You get into an issue of there just being... well, too many complex and nuanced experiences to lump under a broad point of "this group can be transfem, this group can't be". There's so many different individual experiences regarding sex and gender identity that any attempt to make rules regarding it will involve some degree of stereotyping and overgeneralizing.

I find that here there is an issue where there is a need for language which describes a certain group and experience (people born with male traits who transition towards female ones or towards femininity in general, and who experience different forms of oppression due to that) but the current language does not necessarily fit that because in practice gender identity and bodies are not easily fit into boxes when they are queer.

Lastly, I wanted to point out that you yourself have used language in this post which overgeneralizes and plays into transphobia, which I want to outline mostly just to make you aware of it and the language you use when talking about trans issues.

if you're fronting as a transfem alter in an afab body then youre in your desired body? like youre just female at that point?

This plays off the assumption that "afab" means "non-transitioned", when afab is really just a sex designation you were given at birth and says nothing about current sex characteristics or what someone's body looks like. Being afab does not mean you have a "female body", especially not with trans people and especially not with intersex people.

Also, by saying transfem alters in afab bodies are "already in their desired body", you imply that transfem people all have the same transition goal, one that is as close to perisex female as possible. This is not the case, as transfeminity is a spectrum. Transfems can have a wide variety of transition goals and body types, and any configuration of sex characteristics.

People in general use afab and amab incorrectly a lot, and assume it says anything at all about what a person's body looks like or how it functions or how they were raised socially rather than just being the letter put on your birth certificate by a doctor when you were born. I talk about this more here.

those i've seen ID as an afab transfem (which aren't very many, but) are either DID systems with transfem alters/headmates where the body is female, or intersex people who were afab but developed masculinely and ID with common transfem experiences and sometimes therefore as transfem. there's a lot of variation to that so you're probably better off hearing from someone who actually IDs that way so i hope someone who does responds, but i thought i'd tell you what i know!!

thank you anon 🫡

see my issue with it (im not a system so excuse me if im speaking out of line) is that if youre a transfem alter whos fronting in an afab body its hard to call yourself transfem in that moment- you might be transfem in the headspace but once you start fronting you do have the afab body

the intersex side i can see, esp if they have those experiences but a mtf alter in an afab body probably wouldnt have trans experiences outside the headspace ig? like if youre fronting as a transfem alter in an afab body then youre in your desired body? like your just female at that point?

idk it feels invalidating and dangerous to label imo as a person under the the trans umbrella- like whos stopping some cis afab girl from claiming shes also transfem bc she mentally identifies with the label?

once again if someone sees this and thinks im speaking out of line lmk thru my asks or comments, i dont mean this disrespectfully (ive had a day, im posting this at 3am after crying for half an hour (ill likely ask a few of my system friends about this tmrw))

(im not truscum, idt you need dysphoria to be trans but calling yourself transfem while fronting in an afab body just doesnt sit right with me)

[mmmmalo]

For anyone still under the impression that June Egbert is just a product of the Toblerone wishes with no particular relevance to Homestuck proper, here's an argument to the contrary: that June (or whatever you like to call her) was already here, woven into John's relationship with the idea of Dad.

Act 1 has a certain preoccupation with the ideal forms of things, John having multiple instances of saying X isn't a REAL X unless it has this or that characteristic. "A fire BELONGS in a fireplace, categorically." One of those outbursts touches upon masculinity, with John saying a gentleman without a monocle is a piss-poor excuse for such. Along such a paradigm, you might gather that something like John saying the beaglepuss sucks as a disguise or trying (and failing) to integrate Dad's pipe into the façade communicates that John is kind of grasping at this ideal of masculinity exemplified by Dad and getting frustrated that he can't seem to measure up to it (or that masculinity feels "fake" on him).

This sort of dynamic is more blatant with Dave, who talks openly about how he isn't a "hero", not really, measuring himself against the impossible standards set by his Bro. But as much was already implicit in Act 1.

Later it gets established that John has some kind of fear of heights: the first ogres appear after John experiences vertigo from almost falling off the stairs, and again after getting launched by the pogo hammer. (Just as Karkat suspected he was given a planet covered in his own blood as a form of harassment, Sburb placed John's house on that needle plateau because of this fear of heights; the game generally manifests adversaries in response to fear). The phobia becomes relevant to Dad stuff after the ogre fight is over, when John is hesitating to jump down into Dad's room: it isn't just that John's nervous about entering the room for the first time, the descent itself makes John anxious. Furthermore, this juxtaposition serves to establish that the fear of heights and anxieties around Dad are related somehow, if not outright synonymous. The two are associated again at the beginning of Act 5 Act 2, when dream!John tries to jump over a canyon to reach Dad, but awakens mid-leap. The formal reason John awakens is Vriska of course, but if we ignore her we're left with John approaching Dad and immediately experiencing vertigo. (The name "June" comes from Vriska contacting John shortly after this dream, incidentally)

This comes up again when John finds Dad's wallet and gets overwhelmed by the prospect of Manhood and the responsibilities it entails -- next thing you know John is flying around in Dad's car, having fun... and after the scene is interrupted by Seek the Highblood, we return to find John crashing the car (another fall from the sky!) and talking with Vriska about dread surrounding societal expectations, and the possibility of rejecting them to pursue something different for yourself. John came into the scene worried (if quietly) about the expectations surrounding manhood, so the Vriska conversation serves to makes those kind of concerns more vivid.

The car crash is itself kind of a metaphor for that conversation's trajectory... in Act 6 we see something analogous play out among the Dersites who have gotten into dapper-wear: one Dersite sits on a hat, panics about ruining it, and then begins to wonder if perhaps a crumpled hat could have a value of its own, aesthetically. (Dirk expresses this sort of counter-assessment more bombastically: "...the next best thing. By which you mean, the vastly superior thing.") Dad Crocker swoops in to condemn the crumpled hat, but the Dersite's tentative revaluation of an apparent failure mode is something the scene shares with Vriska, who initially regards her ambivalence towards murder as a symptom of personal failure, unbefitting her caste. John enters that conversation with a crumpled car, and from context we can guess John's revaluation concerns "failing" to be a man in the way Dad is, and how maybe that doesn't need to be considered a failure.

As laid out so far, I guess none of this quite necessitates trans-Egbert, since people can come at "anxiety and reservations at the prospect of embodying masculine ideals" from a number of angles... but there are other considerations which make me think wrestling with self-deprecating thoughts like "I'm a failed man" are maybe comorbid with a budding sense of being a girl, in Egbert's case.

Foremost, I think it helps to recognize that Dad's car can function as a symbol of John's body. To sketch a case for that:

1a. Death often means transformation: the trolls die in questcocoons to reach the godtiers, suggesting that death stands between the caterpillar and the butterfly, their too solid flesh dissolved into a goo.

1b. A command in Act 1 implores John to "retrieve arms from MAGIC CHEST". John complies twofold: we see some fake arms retrieved from the toy chest, held up by John's real arms which have been "retrieved" from John's ostensibly armless torso.

2. This dual usage of chest is deployed in part 3 of Openbound, in service of building a dysphoria metaphor (among other things). The segment reintroduces us to Fiduspawn, a game in which one creature hatches from another, a host creature, killing the host in the process (fans of the Alien films may recognize this as derivative of the "chestburster", fans of Homestuck may recognize this as analogous to godtiering). Damara (who Rufioh refers to as "doll") becomes the host plush, who is accused of locking away Rufioh's "happy thought" (Tinkerbull) in her "chest". Rufioh's beef with Damara serves to illustrate an adversarial relationship with one's own body, the ways in which the body itself seems to function as a barrier to some happiness. The carnal imprisonment of euphoria (the "happy thought") represents dysphoria. The conversation between Kanaya and Porrim which follows has analogous content and offers a potential resolution to such a conflict, with Kanaya coming to distinguish her body from the reproductive duties assigned to her body by her caste's place in society, and knowing that she is not "bound" to the Matriorb by any will but her own...

3. But the paradigm of Fiduspawn reminds us that the act of actually ripping the happy thought out of your chest has suicidal overtones, when taken literally. And Aradiabot notwithstanding, the inner ghosts the kids give up are often green: Dirkbot tears out his uranium heart and explodes, Rose peels pink bricks off the green core of an island and wonders aloud if her existence is a mistake, and (returning to our main topic!) John tries to retrieve the green package from Dad's car. The retrieval of the box comes to represents the birth of the self from its shell, the now broken body, a gesture which overlaps with the pursuit of death.

So we can infer that Dad is akin to Damara here, having locked the desired object (the box, the "happy thought") within a container that we can identify with John's own body. Thus Vriska's talk of perhaps rejecting her assigned role in society proceeds naturally from the wreckage of Dad's car: insofar as the car functions as an emblem of the masculine expectations imposed upon John, the car's wreckage suggests the possibility of liberation from those expectations, liberation from your own body. John is "sick to death of cake" -- cake is a Life symbol imposed by Dad, in visceral excess, accumulating as every birthday marches John towards Manhood. The possibility of living as a girl does not seem to have occurred to John yet, life and masculinity seem inextricable and absolute. The first time John sees Dad's car totaled (after Rose drops it), the symbol of self-as-corpse is surrounded by yellow bands of caution tape. The Authority Regulator who placed the tape will later declare himself to be THE LAW, and we should take his word for it: the scene's function is to declare that the crumpled car, the "dead" and therefore feminized body, is forbidden to John. No surprise then that as John marches to her death, in defiance of the Law's prohibition, she-whose-name-does-not-yet-suit-her is met with impressions of several maps that actually align with their territories: troll movies whose titles are their contents in full, a rocket encoded by the sound PCHOOOOO. John wants that for herself, I think. And as @lscholar once pointed out, it’s worth noting that John's pursuit of this unity (this pursuit of "death") is interrupted by Dave, who in saving John's life repeatedly emphasizes their status as "bros" -- masculinity being, again, inextricable from life within John’s symbol system.

...and that's the short of it. A more detailed account might get into the association of Vriska and other blue girls with the feminized corpse, or read into Equius self-consciously roleplaying as a cat girl between John’s joyride and crash, or perhaps try to apply this car-body framework to the appearances of Dad's car in the Epilogues. And I haven’t even touched upon clowns...but I'll call it here for now.

[flightlessnightingale]

On Lesbianism

I’ll state it at the top here, because many have not understood my stance. The purpose of this essay is not to say that Lesbian cannot mean “Female homosexual.” Rather, my objective is to show that Lesbian means more than that single definition suggests. Female Homosexuals are lesbians, unless they personally do not want to use that label. Now, on with the show: Lesbianism is not about gatekeeping, and I don’t want to have to keep convincing people that the movement popularized by someone who wrote a book full of lies and hate speech then immediately worked with Ronald Reagan is a bad movement. In the early ’70s, groups of what would now be called “gender critical” feminists threatened violence against many trans women who dared exist in women’s and lesbian spaces. For example, trans woman Beth Elliott, who was at the 1973 West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference to perform with her lesbian band, was ridiculed onstage and had her existence protested. In 1979, radical feminist Janice Raymond, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, wrote the defining work of the TERF movement, “Transsexual Empire: The Making of the Shemale,” in which she argued that “transsexualism” should be “morally mandating it out of existence”—mainly by restricting access to transition care (a political position shared by the Trump administration). Soon after she wrote another paper, published for the government-funded, National Center for Healthcare Technology — and the Reagan administration cut off Medicare and private health insurance coverage for transition-related care.

Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism is a fundamentally unsustainable ideology. Lesbianism is a fundamentally sustainable existence.

There used to be a lesbian bar or queer bar or gay bar in practically every small town — sometimes one of each. After surviving constant police raids, these queer spaces began closing even Before the AIDS epidemic. Because TERFs would take them over, kick out transfems and their friends. Suddenly, there weren’t enough local patrons to keep the bars open, because the majority had been kicked out. With America’s lack of public transportation, not enough people were coming from out of town either.

TERFs, even beyond that, were a fundamental part of the state apparatus that let AIDS kill millions.

For those who don’t know, Lesbian, from the time of Sappho of Lesbos to the about 1970′s, referred to someone who rejects the patriarchal hierarchy. It was not only a sexuality, but almost akin to a gender spectrum.

That changed in the 1970′s when TERFs co-opted 2nd Wave feminism, working with Ronald fucking Reagan to ban insurance for trans healthcare.

TERFs took over the narrative, the bars, the movement, and changed Lesbian from the most revolutionary and integral queer communal identity of 2 fucking THOUSAND years, from “Someone who rejects the patriarchal hierarchy” to “A woman with a vagina who’s sexually attracted to other women with vaginas”

How does this fit into the bi lesbian debate? As I said, Lesbian is more of a Gender Spectrum than anything else, it was used much in the same way that we use queer or genderqueer today.

And it’s intersectional too.

See, if you were to try to ascribe a rigid, biological, or localized model of an identity across multiple cultures, it will fail. It will exclude people who should not be excluded. ESPECIALLY Intersex people. That’s why “Two Spirit” isn’t something rigid- it is an umbrella term for the identities within over a dozen different cultures. In the next two sections, I have excerpts on Two-Spirit and Butch identity, to give a better idea of the linguistics of queer culture: This section on Two-Spirit comes from wikipedia, as it has the most links to further sources, I have linked all sources directly, though you can also access them from the Wikipedia page’s bibliography: Two-Spirit is a pan-Indian, umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people who fulfill a traditional ceremonial and social role that does not correlate to the western binary. [1] [2] [3] Created at the 1990 Indigenous lesbian and gay international gathering in Winnipeg, it was "specifically chosen to distinguish and distance Native American/First Nations people from non-Native peoples." [4] Criticism of Two-Spirit arises from 2 major points, 1. That it can exasperate the erasure of the traditional terms and identities of specific cultures.           a. Notice how this parallels criticisms of Gay being used as the umbrella           term for queer culture in general. 2. That it implies adherence to the Western binary; that Natives believe these individuals are "both male and female" [4]          a. Again, you’ll notice that this parallels my criticisms of the TERF definition of Lesbian, that tying LGBT+ identities to a rigid western gender binary does a disservice to LGBT+ people,—especially across cultures. “Two Spirit" wasn’t intended to be interchangeable with "LGBT Native American" or "Gay Indian"; [2] nor was it meant to replace traditional terms in Indigenous languages.  Rather, it was created to serve as a pan-Indian unifier. [1] [2] [4] —The term and identity of two-spirit "does not make sense" unless it is contextualized within a Native American or First Nations framework and traditional cultural understanding. [3] [10] [11] The ceremonial roles intended to be under the modern umbrella of two-spirit can vary widely, even among the Indigenous people who accept the English-language term. No one Native American/First Nations' culture's gender or sexuality categories apply to all, or even a majority of, these cultures. [4] [8] Butch: At the turn of the 20th century, the word “butch” meant “tough kid” or referred to a men’s haircut. It surfaced as a term used among women who identified as lesbians in the 1940s, but historians and scholars have struggled to identify exactly how or when it entered the queer lexicon. However it happened, "Butch” has come to mean a “lesbian of masculine appearance or behavior.” (I have heard that, though the words originate from French, Femme & Butch came into Lesbian culture from Latina lesbian culture, and if I find a good source for that I will share. If I had to guess, there may be some wonderful history to find of it in New Orleans—or somewhere similar.) Before “butch” became a term used by lesbians, there were other terms in the 1920s that described masculinity among queer women. According to the historian Lillian Faderman,“bull dagger” and “bull dyke” came out of the Black lesbian subculture of Harlem, where there were “mama” and “papa” relationships that looked like butch-femme partnerships. Performer Gladys Bentley epitomized this style with her men’s hats, ties and jackets. Women in same-sex relationships at this time didn’t yet use the word “lesbian” to describe themselves. Prison slang introduced the terms “daddy,” “husband,” and “top sargeant” into the working class lesbian subculture of the 1930s.  This lesbian history happened alongside Trans history, and often intersected, just as the Harlem renaissance had music at the forefront of black and lesbian (and trans!) culture, so too can trans musicians, actresses, and more be found all across history, and all across the US. Some of the earliest known trans musicians are Billy Tipton and Willmer “Little Ax” Broadnax—Both transmasculine musicians who hold an important place in not just queer history, but music history.

Lesbian isn’t rigid & biological, it’s social and personal, built up of community and self-determination.

And it has been for millennia.

So when people say that nonbinary lesbians aren’t lesbian, or asexual lesboromantics aren’t lesbian, or bisexual lesbians aren’t lesbian, it’s not if those things are technically true within the framework — It’s that those statements are working off a fundamentally claustrophobic, regressive, reductionist, Incorrect definition You’ll notice that whilst I have been able to give citations for TERFs, for Butch, and especially for Two-Spirit, there is little to say for Lesbianism. The chief reason for this is that lesbian history has been quite effectively erased-but it is not forgotten, and the anthropological work to recover what was lost is still ongoing. One of the primary issues is that so many who know or remember the history have so much trauma connected to "Lesbian” that they feel unable to reclaim it. Despite this trauma, just like the anthropological work, reclamation is ongoing.

Since Sappho, lesbian was someone who rejects the patriarchal hierarchy. For centuries, esbian wasn’t just a sexuality, it was intersectional community, kin to a gender spectrum, like today’s “queer”. When TERFs co-opted 2nd Wave feminism, they redefined Lesbian to “woman w/ a vag attracted to other women w/ vags”. So when you say “bi lesbians aren’t lesbian” it’s not whether that’s true within the framework, it’s that you’re working off a claustrophobic, regressive, and reductionist definition.

I want Feminism, Queerness, Lesbianism, to be fucking sustainable.

I wanna see happy trans and lesbian and queer kids in a green and blue fucking world some day.

I want them to be able to grow old in a world we made good.