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dolphin-diaries · 19 days ago

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How To Prevent Detransition In Five Simple Steps (Part 1)

Originally published on Dolphin Diaries.

What do you think of when you hear ‘detransitioner’?

The Right, likely. Grift and pantomime for clout, such as that of a certain doll or the world’s most Korean and Christian man. Coercion; forced detransition.

What do you think of, say, when you consider willing and genuine detransition? If you could look at Chloe Cole past her rhetoric, her ideological allegiance, her utter lack of compassion for those outside of it—what do you see?

Is it regret? Self-hatred? Pity, maybe? A correction of a shameful (stupid, even) mistake? A bizarre decision you struggle to imagine yourself—or anyone—making? A web of uncanny, discomfiting choices, written in flesh?

Maybe, if you’re trans yourself, you might also see your own fears. Not necessarily forced detransition—that wouldn’t make you like her. No, maybe you look at your past doubts and wonder if you could’ve been her, under different circumstances. Or maybe, it’s merely the thought of something that brought you great joy—your transition, the alteration of your body, your freedom—being broken, hated, turned inside-out. Like a shredded garment.

Perhaps you’re just unnerved to see it undone.

Detransition, in the eyes of the masses, is an undoing. That implies discontent, and since this discontent is over transition—something not only voluntary but often hard-won—it also implies that transition itself was a mistake. Seemingly, a preventable one.

And so there is only one conclusion: detransitioners must be prevented. I must be prevented. I am a stain on the medical, social, and queer establishments that have created me, whether you look at it from the Right or the Left. The ‘reverse’ dysphoria I feel is, by all accounts, utterly preventable. Naturally, then, we must attempt to prevent it.

The belief about detransitioners is that they need medical gatekeeping to prevent them from having transitioned—a more robust system of checks that would’ve helped them realise they were never trans. Or perhaps, that they need the topic of transness altogether excised from the zeitgeist. For instance, a known detrans grifter Maia Poet tweeted she is retrospectively grateful to her parents for having hyper-surveilled her after she came out as trans. She still socially transitioned and continued to identify as trans for twelve years afterwards, so it can’t have helped in the way she wanted, but she’s still grateful for, uh. Something. Whatever it is that was accomplished, which, it seems, was not a lot.

Well, no one was expecting cutting social commentary or lucid solutions from Ms. Israeli Sellout Poet, so never mind her. Let us put the grift aside.

That is the knee-jerk response, isn’t it? Make fun of the loud and stupid and obviously wrong ones?

That has its place, but let me assure you, detransitioners exist outside of TV and Twitter. Most are disinterested in sharing a pedestal with Maia or Chloe, regardless of what they believe. Let us even put myself aside as a singular subject. Let us examine what is normally either cynically weaponised by the Right, or else timidly swept under the rug. Because if you allow the idea that willing detransitioners truly exist—and they do, I assure you; if I turned my screen off, I’d be looking at one—then you must also allow the possibility of, well…

Transition regret.

Allow yourself compassion for a detransitioner—a random, regular person—that is staring at rock bottom and finding that their transition took them there. If I were them, I’d surely ask what could’ve been done to prevent that. What could’ve been done so that I never existed such as I am.

A very rock-bottom kind of question, I know. But the only way out is through.

So what is the most effective way to prevent detransition? What has been done to that end? How is transition handled, and what does that mean for detransition?

1. The Doctor Will See You Now

Over the past few months, I’ve spent a good chunk of my god-given procrastination allowance on scrolling online detrans communities that explicitly ban transphobia. You may call that biased, but I’ve found that detrans spaces which make no such explicit attempts are swiftly overrun by Gender Criticals. Not even detrans ones; the topic is hot-button and embarrassing enough to encourage unmitigated manipulation of the audience. It’s a bit like browsing spaces for discussion of cosmetic surgery. When an issue is too unseemly to be spoken of in polite society, the snake oil salesman can peddle whatever the hell he wants. By contrast, trans-positive detrans spaces tend to be smaller, less fraught, and more diverse in issues discussed and feelings expressed.

(To be clear, I will not quote anyone here. While their accounts were told neither in privacy nor in confidence, online messages in small communities carry a presumption of anonymity and non-disclosure, which I intend to maintain.)

Indeed, a sizeable number of even explicitly trans-positive detransitioners express some desire for a prior intervention. A therapist or psychiatrist that would’ve entertained alternatives, or questioned why their patient wanted to transition. It’s not uncommon, when queried by people unsure of surgery or HRT, for such detransitioners to advise waiting until total certainty is achieved. Unlike GCs, though, they often lament the lack of medical professionals that will neither attempt to do conversion therapy nor consider detransition an untouchable topic.

(As I’ve alluded to before, it is difficult enough in many places to find a therapist that even knows Trans 101. ‘Advanced stuff,’ like detransition, is beyond contemplation. It’s not that skilled-enough professionals don’t exist, but that there is no resource for finding them.)

There is a common denominator among such detrans people. They are often—though not always—young transitioners, having done so either in high school or shortly after. They’re usually from countries that have an informed consent model of transition care. Under this model, a doctor does not diagnose with gender dysphoria—or indeed anything at all—but merely provides assistance in alteration of sexual characteristics. That’s the idea, anyway; reality varies and often does not quite match that ideal, but by and large, the doctor’s job is then mainly to explain what the patient is signing up for. What intervention or investigation exists, if any, is minimal or perfunctory.

From a purely technical perspective, these detransitioners are asking for something that wasn’t this doctor’s job to do. But it is a fairly heartless argument to make. “Well, if your dysphoria wasn’t actually dysphoria, you should’ve gone to a therapist instead!”—rather silly, isn’t it? Easily refuted with: “If I knew then what was wrong with me, I wouldn’t be here.” And anyway, just because that is how the system works does not necessarily mean that is how it should work.

There is a wrinkle here, though. Informed consent may be the norm in, say, the USA—for now, anyway—but it is not worldwide. In most places you ought to receive a gender dysphoria (or transsexualism, if the updated DSM is yet to be adopted) diagnosis before access to medical transition is permitted. So how does the diagnostic model hold up when it comes to detransition?

2. Hoops and Hoops and Hoops

As I mentioned in my first essay, I am a young-ish transitioner from a country that very much does not practice informed consent. I started transitioning medically at 19, which is young for an adult transitioner but post-pubertal nonetheless. However, transitioning in adolescence would’ve been functionally impossible for me. Even if my parents were supportive and I somehow found a doctor to prescribe me blockers/hormones—the latter of which is monumentally unlikely, as it was illegal—it would still basically mean social death. So, in effect, I transitioned as young as was humanly possible.

The procedure to acquire legal access to hormone replacement therapy was pretty antiquated during my time. Internment in a psychiatric ward, a prior real-life test, the nine yards. (For the unaware, a ‘real-life test’ is a requirement to have lived as your desired gender for several years prior to any medical transition.) I was diagnosed rather thoroughly both for presence of gender dysphoria and an absence of alternative explanations, such as schizophrenia, BPD, autism, and, put colloquially, mummy or daddy issues—having a ‘broken family’ was a strike against the transsexualism diagnosis. Anxiety or depression was also a no-no. Under this particular model, literally any other condition is a contradiction to transsexualism. You are to be deeply distressed about your genitals and assigned gender stereotype, and absolutely nothing else at all.

Because yes, naturally the pathologisation of gender entails reliance on stereotype and archetype. What makes a man or a woman, after all? When the goal is to have transsexualism as the last possible resort, it’s not enough to merely wish for a different set of genitals or breasts or to describe oneself as a man or woman—gender must be dissected. And that dissection, inevitably, leads to ‘bitches be crazy.’ Man like car, woman like kitchen. Man fucks woman, subject verb object. Et cetera.

Of course, declaring any ‘irregular’ thoughts about gender to be the sole purview of a perfect and utterly healthy citizen, is just cruel. Gender conformity is a violently enforced social protocol. Therefore people that run up against it—trans or not—are highly likely to be made maladjusted. To deny them care on that basis alone is inhumane. If you are found too ‘wrong’ to be transsexual, you will then be told to go treat whatever is wrong with you—your symptom, not your cause. Gender will not be entertained.

Now, that the psychiatric treatment of gender dysphoria is inhumane, dated, and deliberately difficult and arcane, is not news. It is designed to prevent transition first and foremost and also secondly and thirdly, and only lastly to enable it. Some young people in the US may feel enough distance from such treatment as to not understand what it truly entails. To some it is buried history. Most, though, even when unaware of what such procedures are or were, understand they are/were bad. Nebulously bad or specifically bad (mostly the former), but bad nonetheless.

So here’s the first question: does this work? Does this ensure those that truly need transition can do it, and none that don’t, can’t?

I can obviously just point to myself and be done with it, but one person can be anything from an anomaly to a fun fact, just not a tendency. So let’s work through this.

Obviously such procedures do not prevent all transition. Do they reduce the number of transitioners? It is impossible to count for sure, but certainly such procedures generally exist in societies that are not amenable to trans people, and therefore some plainly do not survive long enough to try. It does not matter whether they would’ve eventually detransitioned or not; severe psychiatric procedure does not coexist with widely available, comprehensive therapy. It does not matter because no one will ever find out.

What of those that do survive, though? One extreme conclusion to make is, if you can survive without something, you do not need it. I’m not particularly interested in a survival-only existence as I do not live in a cave and hunt mammoth. (And even prehistoric people made jewellery and painted cave walls with art, so clearly they cared about things beyond sheer necessity, too.) So that aside, how do the lives of those that actually engage with the procedure pan out?

Naturally, one of the results of such procedures is the delaying of access. Some things, like hormones, you can get on the sly, but surgeries you simply cannot receive without either the doctor’s permission or a great—and I do mean great—deal of money. The procedure is designed to take several years before any access can be granted at all, assuming you go through it swiftly and successfully. The more stringent the procedure, the fewer doctors can do it; a degree of waiting is involved even before it begins. In my country’s case in particular, transition is fully paid for by the patient—there is neither state nor insurance coverage, at all, for anything. Even doctor visits in government-sponsored institutions are de facto paid because you need to grease some palms for someone to bother. No, there’s no suing the doctor that won’t treat you without the agreed-upon bribe; you can’t afford it and you won’t win. Therefore there’s also risk of further depression and suicide as great financial burden falls on people that, as a rule, have below-average funds, poor employability, and no family support. But assuming you soldier through, the overall result is a transition timeline that spans about a decade or two. The bulk of social transition will happen in the first five years, whereas surgical interventions, due to cost and laborious approval processes, fall on the last years.

This can be seen as a boon to detransitioners. Delay in access means more time to change your mind, hypothetically. The fact that surgeries are generally impossible until many years in transition means—hypothetically—there’s less chance you’ll end up with changes that cannot be reversed or amended without further surgical intervention, or at all.

As I’ve mentioned in my previous essay, I do believe such calculus to be heavily hindsight-skewed, favouring present lack of regret and dysphoria over past misery and the humiliation of the psychiatric grinder. It’s a little like getting hit with a hammer to the head and then falling madly in love with the doctor treating you. Sure, in hindsight it softens the blow of the head trauma, but you still wouldn’t recommend anyone walk around with a sticker on their back saying ‘Hit Me.’

I can understand, however, how a detrans person who never went through any of that, now deep in dysphoria blues, could find such an argument empty air. Infuriating, even. Perhaps they’d even say they’d gladly be a bit miserable for a couple years so long as they didn’t have to deal with all this now. Grass, greener, et cetera. So let us say this really is a possible advantage of the procedure—

If it actually makes you less likely to go through with transition once you begin the procedure and uncover doubts creeping in.

Does it?

3. A Patient Is A Person

There’s an elephant in the room, though not many notice it. To a cis person it may well be invisible. You might’ve spotted it when I first flippantly described the procedure I went through and mentioned a real-life test. Most people cannot be reliably and consistently integrated into society as the ‘opposite’ gender until they have some kind of physical intervention. Especially not in places that are highly transphobic, where being visibly trans is either not an option or a very dangerous one. But clearly, people do pass this ‘real-life test’ somehow. Is it really only the most androgynous among us that are allowed to transition under such procedure?

Well, no. Although doctors will be more charitable if you already seem like a ‘lost cause’ to your birth sex. Nothing wasted and so on. But like I said, you can always get hormones on the sly. It’s not even hard or prohibitively expensive.

That’s not the only issue with the procedure. How do you reconcile putting all this time and money into a (marginalised) diagnosis with (often precarious) employment? Why are trans patients supposed to have a singular script for their lives and genders, whereas cis people are permitted variance?

In the end, how do you prove to someone else that transition is right for you? Is it really all the silly quizzes and the identically heart-wrenching stories? Eh. Not exactly. In my experience, the doctor makes half their mind up the moment they look at you. And most every patient seems like a regular cis person—a fertile woman, a boy that can be made a man—and so the knee-jerk response is to help you stay that way, no matter how you feel. So there are two options: memorise a rote script of suffering and hope for the best, or, much more reliably and painlessly—

Already look like a transsexual.

Put plainly, the current diagnostic model of transition only works when you’re already transitioning. To access transition you must’ve already done so. Yes, we all simply pretend. Yes, people just memorise whether they’re supposed to like cars or kitchens and how they should describe their sex lives. Of course they do. People seeking transition are human.

You can wag your finger however much you want and insist that people must follow protocol, and whatever happens as a result of disobedience is their own damn fault. The empirical fact is, protocol as written is un-follow-able. Because it is un-follow-able, no one actually follows it.

The result of a system whose first and foremost purpose is to make as few people transition as possible, is very simple: everyone lies. No one trusts doctors. No one in their right mind would go to a doctor that controls their legal gender marker based on the patient’s tales of masturbation, and then bare their true gender feelings with an expectation of help. Even the doctors themselves do not care how you really feel or whether you’re lying. They know the system is faulty, they know none of this is human or nice, but they also don’t understand why anyone would transition and they don’t care to. They have a hundred more patients, a thousand more protocols that are also neither human nor nice. This is psychiatry, and you are an annoying and rare brand of crazy, one that’s both utterly perverse and—they know—not actually crazy, not hallucinating or threatening suicide (and if you do: you can’t, remember?). What you’re doing is wasting a bed and their time. So all they want is their bribe, maybe a dissertation subject, and for you to cooperate and be gone.

What actually decides access to transition? A little bit of luck, a little bit of social acceptance in one’s immediate social circles, but chief among all: money.

If we must prevent the possibility of detransition at all cost, surely financial disincentive still works? Not the way you’d want it to. The only thing cost barriers ensure is that the rich can do whatever they want on a whim, and the poor can’t have even that which they desperately need. That is the only social balance money can buy.

And what decides eventual detransition?

The truth is, at least for me, it wasn’t regret. I’ve lived a long while in trans circles shaped by such transmedicalism. And if I’ve learned one thing, it’s this:

Transition regret was everywhere.

It is not at all unique to detransitioners. Certainly wasn’t in my circles. Many trans people who were also my contemporaries and fellow countrypersons had something or other they regretted about their transition. Some had even found the whole process extremely traumatic. They regretted not allowing themselves any femininity/masculinity that ‘contravened’ their desired gender. They got haircuts, clothes, friends, surgeries—anything related to gender, which is everything—only and solely because of the need to transition under very strict guidelines. Sometimes consciously, sometimes not. We lie to the doctors, yes, but that does not mean we are untouched by the transition procedure at our heart. The procedure is long and complex, and thus at a certain point, it occupies a lot of your attention and time. You live and breathe the sex questionnaires and psych visits whether you want to or not. And, as I’ve established, no one in the whole hospital cares how you truly feel about your gender—so for a while, you may stop caring too. It’s a matter of survival. Not just in the sense of access to transition, but in the very banal calculus of things that will and won’t get you beat up in an alley. At some point it’s only human to mentally check out.

In other words, everyone was fucking miserable. Trans, detrans—everyone.

People transition because they want to. Because everyone wishes to be an architect of their own fate and body, insofar as they can, and for some that involves choosing which way their body grows and ages. How it occupies the mould of sex. And when barriers are put between you and your agency, what follows is not obedience. You are human; you are not an algorithmic machine; you do not simply obey, you choose. So what do most people choose when they want something very badly and are told they cannot have it? They resist, of course. Resist, lie, scheme. And resistance to stringent protocol takes a lot out of you.

If doubt starts whispering in your head and you’re not listening, will you even hear it?

Put plainly, there’s no space for gender feelings in survival mode. What the diagnostic procedure causes is precisely that. It does not matter whether one’s need to transition is caused by some sort of True Transsexualism or trauma or misogyny or self-delusion or a secret millionth thing. You want it, and there’s no resource, no space, and no help for you to dissect that need. No time, either, because everything costs years—be it in money, in waiting, or your own life. You have an acute need and a difficult path to it. That is all.

And when all is said and done, and now you want to detransition? You’ve spent years to transition in the first place. You’ve invested great effort and great money, even if you’re not yet ‘done.’ You’ve likely lost family members and friends. Sunk cost is a hell of a weight, and sunk cost is precisely what the diagnostic model—a prevention model—engineers in spades.

4. A Dream of Utopia

So the informed consent model has no oversight, and the diagnostic model is a horrible grinder. Informed consent seems to be the patented harm reduction choice of the two. But surely those are not the only things that can exist? Surely we can dream of more than just ‘less harm’? Can there not be some sort of prior screening by an actually humane doctor who understands both trans and detrans needs? No quizzes about masturbation or kitchens or cars or whether you demanded to be called ‘boy’ or ‘girl’ at age four—just a robust way to determine whether you actually have gender dysphoria or not?

Let us say it is possible. When detrans people ask for qualified, humane, non-transphobic aid in helping them through their feelings on sex/gender, they are not asking for the impossible. Their need is one that must be answered in a just and caring world; it is already being answered for trans people, so why should the detrans be any different? And from there, you might think, it follows that it’s possible to attempt a system whose aim is some reasonably brief and minimally invasive pre-screening, which would filter out would-be detransitioners and enable trans people to pursue their transitions.

It is possible to attempt that. But.

All systems of restriction and access have a problem: there’s a power dynamic at play. Transition is often a pretty acute need. Doctors can make mistakes, they’re only human. Who is to decide what is real gender dysphoria? What if the doctors are not so humane? What if they enjoy holding power more than they enjoy helping? ‘Just don’t hire them’ isn’t really an answer—if we knew how ‘not to hire bad people,’ we’d have already colonised Pluto.

That doesn’t mean no system of restriction has its place. Access to weapons has similar problems, but most people would agree it’s probably not right for them to know nuclear codes anyway. Obviously no one worth listening to would compare detransition to guns or nukes, but let’s say, for the sake of the argument, that the possibility of detransition is so utterly undesirable that, if a prevention system could exist, it must.

The question remains: what makes gender dysphoria real?

The answer is very simple. Ultimately, it will always only be real because you said so. Because the patient said so—not the doctor.

If you’re a medical professional, you know how much of your diagnostic work relies on patient testimony. How you must at times cajole them into being honest, or to decode what exactly ‘bubbling pain in the liver’ means. Those unfamiliar with the medical world often imagine there’s always some kind of screening that can determine with certainty if the patient is lying or misguided or unsure. And yes, even if John insists he never put that Christmas ornament up his arse, the X-Ray will show it one way or another. But in many cases, it’s not that simple, and patient testimony is crucial.

When it comes to psychology and psychiatry, this issue could not be more acute. Often there is nothing else to go on at all. That doesn’t mean therapists are just useless soundboxes—but neither are there Top 10 Signs My Patient Is Actually A Narcissist. Nor are there actually body language experts that will totally tell you you’re being delusional; peddlers of simple and exact solutions are, as a rule, charlatans.

In short, therapists and psychiatrists are not mind readers. They are only analysing what you are saying about your own mind, and what you’re doing about it. They can aid you in interpreting yourself, but at the end of the day, you’re still the one doing it.

And here’s the kicker: no single issue faced by detransitioners is something trans people do not experience. Some detrans people first transition as a form of self-harm after sexual assault; but childhood sexual trauma is common among trans people who are happy in their transitions, too. Many detrans women felt pushed out of their gender by internalised misogyny and the impossibility of envisioning happy lives as women; but all those that are brought up or grow up as girls experience misogyny, including trans men and trans women. Detrans people often cite only wanting to transition after they learn of the possibility of transition and not from early childhood, as if that is evidence—but many trans people do not seek transition until they learn of its existence, too.

Trans people doubt their transitions all the time. Feel unhappy with their transitions, at least sometimes. And they self-harm via detransition too—a lot. The idea that none of this happens, or only happens very rarely, is a fiction recited for the sake of self-defence and attaining civil rights in a hostile world. Spending any time in trans spaces will tell you the truth is much more nuanced. And even so, even still, only some of those people detransition. And only some of those do so completely of their own free will, and not out of despair or a successful right-wing pipeline.

For every seemingly telltale sign of future detransition, there are numerous counterexamples. In fact a trans person can have all those signs at once, and nonetheless remain trans. Diagnostic criteria for a condition requires a list of symptoms, and if no number of those can be definitive? That means there can be no diagnosis. No (medical) condition.

In other words, resources, attention, and qualified aid can all accommodate detrans people exactly as it does trans people. Procedure cannot. Just like it can’t satisfactorily accommodate trans people. It is a dead end to treat the matter of gender as if it is a disorder, an ailment of the individual, rather than an exercise of agency against a society which enforces sex/gender.

Additionally, I have so far spoken in extremes. Real and not-real trans people; detransitioners that utterly regret their transition and wish it never happened. It was necessary for the argument. But many detransitioners do not have such black-and-white feelings about their past. Some are nonbinary and unhappy with either ‘man’ or ‘woman’; some do not maintain that their gender dysphoria wasn’t actually real; some even reject the label ‘detrans’ on principle, even though they have verifiably detransitioned. I have not mentioned any such case because I wished to argue that even the most ‘textbook,’ most acutely regretful case of detransition has little to gain and much to lose in a gatekeeping-first transition system. However, I must also point out that the ‘textbook case’ is the only case that can envision any gain at all. It isn’t real, but it’s a lovely mirage. To the rest of us, there isn’t even that.

5. I Have Bad News—Or Do I?

Yes, what I am saying is that detransition is inevitable. I’m saying its negatives can be curtailed by therapeutic and medical care that accommodates for detrans people—as much is true for trans people—but, regardless of how preventable detransition may seem, there is no way to simply solve it. Detransition can only be vanished by going back in time and making medicine freeze at the turn of the twentieth century, before such things as exogenous hormones were invented. Even a full ban on transition would be just a costly inconvenience, but ultimately not a magic bullet. People do banned things because they want to all the damn time. Oh, and I guess we’d also have to sterilise every single female horse.

So does that mean detransitioners are necessary collateral damage?

Only if you think detransition is inherently, inevitably, invariably undesirable and bad.

When you discover you want to detransition, it can be hard to accept for a myriad of reasons. Sunk cost, fear of ostracisation, shame, or even because you have no idea what detransition can look like and you don’t know what to do. And then there’s dysphoria and dealing with the wider society’s disgust and I-told-you-so’s. Some amount of what one might call a ‘bad time’ is unavoidable.

But why? What makes wanting to detransition—not resigning to it; wanting it—bad? What makes it socially reviled and pitiable? What makes going through it feel so difficult? How is the shame of detransition engineered—and what for?

See you in Part 2.

#transfeminism #detrans #detransition #transmedicalism #material feminism #lesbian feminism #feminism

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genderkoolaid · 11 months ago

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i find this so interesting. on multiple levels. i actually agree that there are trans people who use the language of "gender is fake" while still relying on the idea that gender is not a construct. i mentioned this in another post but we have a problem with conflating our choice in labels with the experiences we use them to express. and then ofc there are people who still follow the medical model of being trans which uses shit like "brainsex."

but i find the comparison w christianity interesting because of the assumption that "full" or "true" belief is an objective measurement. there are plenty of people who identify as christian and perform as christians but don't "truly" believe. and i'm not even talking about hypocrites! there are agnostic + atheist christians who find community in christianity and/or find it valuable philosophically. same as most other religions. because, like gender, things don't have to be Scientifically Real to be worthwhile. its fully possible to acknowledge that gender is fake (so is sex btw <3) and still find value in gender identity. laws being a social construct doesn't mean there can never be value is having an agreed upon set of rules. the only thing recognizing social constructs inherently asks us imo is to interact w those constructs knowing that they are always being recreated.

anyways. transness Exists as a scientific fact. in that there is clearly a common experience had by homo sapiens. partaking in culture is not diametrically opposed to "nature" we are social animals social construction is our nature! this is why social + physical transition works for many. its just smth humans naturally experience. the best argument terfs can make with this information is that identification w sex constructs exclusively is what is the most politically useful thing we can do, but at best this obscures how much influence gender identity has over society & pressures intersex & transsexual people to put themselves in a binary that cannot accurately discuss their experiences even if they are willing to admit that sex is a construct.

#m.

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canmom · 1 month ago

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A Summoning author's notes

this has been out a little while now, let me add some extra background comments...

i released A Summoning with minimal edits from the 2022 version (just adjusting a few lines of Lilith that felt a bit much really). i call it medievalist but it's not really trying for a specific time period, it's in a sort of vague floating time and place peppered with cool things from the past (like most fantasy), but i try to pull on some more unusual threads at least. very loosely you could place it somewhere in the early early modern period, 15th through 17th centuries.

in England, travelling players became more common in the Elizabethan period. the content of what they perform here is very loosely inspired by the tradition of the morality play.

the intercrural sex scene is a now largely forgotten practice, sometimes done in a sex work context (one reason being that it helps with minimising STI transmission). one notable example was Mervyn Tuchet, who was forced to read a rather convoluted statement of Christian belief and then executed for sodomy in 1631. the 'patting about the loins' joke is riffing on Chaucer. a braies is a kind of loose trouser-like clothing.

like any uminekohead would, I used a magic circle from the Key of Solomon on the cover (in this case the Fourth Pentacle of Venus, which is used to summon a person to you and command spirits of venus and thus makes sense for its use in the story, but more importantly it has a cool and intricate design), which goes back to the 14th or 15th centuries. this one includes a few letters from the Celestial Alphabet of Agrippa, which I inevitably appreciate as a Yoko Taro fan.

the wizard tower is a thing of pure fantasy. I wouldn't know where to begin researching it - I found various threads on forums and reddit about the history of the image of a wizard in his tower (for example), and there's some speculation it's inspired by Roman astrologers, but the association of wizards with towers seems to be more of a 20th-century thing, going back mainly to Howard. the sort of comically misogynist philosophy of magic followed by the Master is more inspired by the 20th-century concepts like 'orgone' than anything truly medieval, mixed with some of the wild ideas that Romans had about sexuality.

a friend reasonably pointed out that lilith's conception of transness is very modern - and sure she's a demon from another world and time, but there is a kind of unintentional aspect where it sort of suggests that from the main narrative authority in the story, the modern conception of 'transness' where you are always really a girl is the final correct one, and that seems against the spirit a bit. this feels like a misstep for me, similar to how the final act of Tipping the Velvet pulls in some quite modern lesbian politics to its Victorian setting. if I were to write again - I know as much about the Old English baedlings as anyone who reads @baeddel's blog. but this story is roughly 15th-century-ish as the other references suggest. I believe in that period, gender was understood as being more about what you do than expressing some inner essence, but I would need to research a lot more thoroughly.

nevertheless it has been in the oven for long enough, and I wanna make this a year of releasing things rather than sitting on them for years x3

the next story, The General's Worm, is a really nasty one, just undergoing a final editing pass.

#fiction #sff #a summoning #short stories

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the-trans-folk-witch · 4 months ago

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The Triple Goddess of Wicca, and why she must be killed : Another trinity with a problematic following

What better time to bash Wicca than the present? At the time of writing this it is nearing the height of Autumn and All Hallows is lurching towards us with natural disasters all along the southeast of the US. Hurricanes are bringing ruin to the homes of the innocent, as well as the possible deserving conservatives of Florida.

At this time I am in deep thought of the many times in history that loss, death, illness, and danger upon a group of people was seen as a "cleansing" by the Christian god. The Aids crisis is a great example of this. It was seen as natures way of ridding the earth of queer folks. so why should we not view the hurricane as such a riddle?

In relation to problematic religious views that damage queer folks, I wanted to disect one of these religions. Wicca, a religion with many branches and problems. This religion -as many know- prides itself on its pagan origins and distance from Christianity, while still displaying the same issues Christianity presents to the world. A religion where the pedo-priest becomes the rapey-coven-leader. A space where women are just a womb for a man or god to lay seed in, and most pressing; a place where trans bodies are ignored. Another religion made by a cis white man and taken too far.

I was inspired to tackle the beast that is this neo-religion by the load of terfs that have plagued my inbox for the past 3 years. These Dianic-Wiccans seem to forget the cultures that bore their goddess also created many stories of gender-bent gods such as Hermaphroditus who is most famously known. Shikhandi, who is labeled as a FTM warrior. Lakapati, whose gender changed many times in Filipino history. And Apollo who has a myth where he lived in the form of a woman for 7 years. As we all know, transness is older than wicca will ever be, and there is no use in continuing to argue with dianic -terfs on the internet. So, instead of berating them on their lack of historical knowledge, I want to pinpoint the thing within their faith that this trans-exclusionary "feminism" stems from. Their goddess.

We all have seen the links made to Hecate or Diana in their religion. The concept of an ancient goddess having three main forms or titles to call on. But what maddens me is the ignorance that many non traditional wiccans spout off. As if they are from an ancient tradition of Hecatean worship. When their triple goddess is historically claimed as a purely wiccan invention by the mouth of Gardner himself. The dissent from traditonal wicca to neo-wicca has been maddeningly full of lies. This religion did not evolve, but made space for more issues. If you asked the first or traditional wiccans who they worshipped, you would hear they worshipped the gods of wicca who were revealed to Gardner. Not an entirely Greco-Roman rip-off. Yes, the triple goddess may have been inspired by triple goddesses of history. But she is much newer and much more problematic than her ancient counterparts. To think an ancient tradition such as hecatean devotion has been watered down and conflated with a made up goddess that prioritizes women's usefulness to man as her purpose. To be more clear, let me roughly describe Hecate's triple form in history. Hekate of the moon/sky, Hekate of the earth, and Hekate of the underworld. A goddess who was encompassing all places and aspects of life. The ultimate power of the world. She was not this maiden mother and crone being. She has been reduced to this western concept of "maiden, mother, and crone". As if counting the stages of a woman's service to men is to be empowering. As if all women must be these three things. As if women are only worthy of worship if they rear children, or had a period of chastity (maidenship). A spirit that was made up by a man with a breeding kink has claimed the titles of hekate and are now toting her images as if they are her. People are holding this goddess close to their hearts and wombs only to mock greek culture despite not having greek ancestry. Cis women are using Hekate's image to attack trans women and use this made up triplicate nature of child birth and their British founder's obsession with women's bodies to make us seem unnatural. Yet, here they are pretending Hecate, Diana, or whatever name they are aimlessly slapping on this goddess is of natural pagan origin. It all satirically contrasts with the actual historicity of transness. Imagine having the nerve (read: ignorance) to mock me for being trans as if it is a new thing, when the very gods you're using to back it up are from the mind of a mortal man. Trans people have and will always be divine. Even without bearing children, having a womb, or lying with a male god. Your obsession with your baby making abilities is not the feminism you think it is. You can be so much more you terf wiccans. Yet you cling to the parts of yourself a man told you to. Do not use your body as a weapon to shame my body. Because we are both equal in the eyes of men. worthless, and only for sex. Whether its to make a baby or to give a man a shameful night to remember with a tranny. You, like i am, are just a fantasy. And your god emulates that.

Before you tell me I am sexualizing the titles of the maiden, mother, or crone too much, notice how the religion does that itself. Lets not forget how often wicca has holidays devoted purely to their two gods having sex. The maiden claiming to hold this fertile power and being a feminist figure of virginity while also slightly drifting into purity culture is not exactly the feminist religion wicca intends to be. Its damaging if anything. The maiden is simply a title given to woman to hold until she was made pregnant. There is little depth or actual ties a true maiden in the religion may relate to in this goddess. It is such a flat epithet which holds little use for ones faith other than to claim your youth and sexual awakening. And yes, being young and sexual is in line with feminist ideas. Embracing sexuality or the lack of sex is empowering. But this empowerment was not intended by Gardner. The "feminist" nature of the maiden is fairly recent and flawed. And it is still being marked as a woman's title which she can not move from in life until a man allows her to become a mother.

The mother is a a more three dimensional aspect of this spirit. One I think wicca did mostly right. She is the typical mother goddess all religions have. She can be loving, stern, etc. And yet, she is still hollow. Who would she be outside of the other pagan cultures she is based on. Where is her originality? And do modern wiccans realize Gardner did not share the same ideas of her as the religion does now?She was made by a man's idea of a woman just as many other goddesses were, but who was she before? There wasnt always an origin myth. She was the maiden. Wicca tries to make this growth of a goddess reflect human growth expecting it to make her relatable, but it falls flat. She is a mother. cool. She got pregnant. What if a worshipper has no interest in having kids, fertility obsessions, or the sort? what is the point of even worshipping her? in the early stages of wicca, she wasn't a mother goddess in the sense of caring for her worshippers. Gardner in my belief fully intended her to be a way to pull women into the religion by utilizing the growing feminist movement of his time. She was a way for him to express his mommy issues in a spiritual sense as well as to discuss sex between man and a woman in a disturbingly hetero-centric way. It started off as a minor sex cult in the eyes of Christians. And there was some truth to that belief. The mother was cause of this. She allowed space for men to get women to embrace their sexuality in a group setting. It was masked as a feminist idea instead of the reality which was men perversely trying to discuss nature's sexual powers and the power of creation. Many a coven spent time sharing intimate stories and ideas in a setting that was more than just friendly. And I can not be convinced this was not for male gain. With the spread of femininism there were covens who of course tried to rid the group of creepy men. But alas, they all fail to admit the religion was crafted for the very things.

The crone is no better. She is today revered as a source of wisdom or power. Yet in a coven system this "wisdom" is just older coven members using their age as a way to act smarter than their fellow members. The spirit of the crone is an archetype we see in many cultures. I can respect the usefulness of it in one's spiritual hierarchy. Yes, older women are wise. I say this with my fantastic and loving grandmother in mind. But the crone of wicca originally was not as multifaceted as she is today. She was the ending of life. But most importantly and unbeknownst to female members, she was the ending of a woman's sexuality. The idea that after you're old you are no longer beautiful. You are no longer having sex with the male god or bearing children. you are no longer useful to a man unless it is to inspire his art or give him ideas as a source of wisdom. The crone too was made by a man's idea of female aging. The god and goddess were presented to us as a pair on equal footing, but the woman was just to fulfill a role. The god serves an equally damaging role too. Enforcing ideas of masculinity and protectiveness. But it does not hold the same weight as the triplicate nature. It does not follow a man into every stage of his life expecting him to change multiple times. The crone is the end of female empowerment. She is not a servant to her children or husband like the mother, but a servant to men who seek knowledge.

Wicca had a feminist appearance at one time. But it has not aged well. Although many covens try to be inclusive to queer folks, we can not ignore how its own gods do not acknowledge us. I understand the interest in wicca that many (mostly newer) witches have. The hunger for a community or a mentor. But forcing yourself into a highly performance based and gendered grouping is not going to result in a deep faith or fulfilling spiritual life. Yes it can be nice for those of us with OCD or autism to put all of the spirits in boxes and to categorize them into a balanced or symmetrical hierarchy. (god and goddess, sun and moon, life and death.) But the dualism in this religion reflects the gender binary and transphobic agenda within the religion. It can not be escaped. In fact, it is so infectious that traditional witchcraft spaces have adapted these male/female concepts. We have forgotten how feminine the devil is and how the witchmother has a beard. We have allowed our spirits to be organized in ways that fall within the binary. And it all started with Wicca.

So as a response to this malignancy in our community, I kindly tell all of my terfy readers to get fucked. Preferably by the old wrinkly cock that leads your coven.

#folk witchcraft #traditional witchcraft #transgender witches #beginner witch #folk catholicism #folkloric witchcraft #animism #santa muerte #witchcraft #wicca #wiccan #pagan wicca #wiccablr #wiccalife #witchblr #pagan #witch community #magick

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beloved-of-john · 2 months ago

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Hi, I'm sorry if this comes across as trying to debate your faith, that's not my intent but as someone who was raised Devotely RC, and left the church after realising my queerness, I'm kinda curious what led you to join the church as a queer man?

That's a very valid question, and I really do sympathise with your experiences. I of course agree that the Catholic church is not great™ in its stances on queerness (and some other social issues). Maybe it's my hope that things will slowly improve, although I don't expect to see that in my lifetime.

I think at the end of the day it's the theology for me. I already had a Christian faith before I decided to convert, but when I started to read more into Catholic theology, it connected so much more with me than the Protestant ways of explaining things that I was used to. My personal experiences of God aligned much more, eg. things like having spiritual experiences with the Eucharist. I also loved the traditions, observances and the style of worship. All I can really say is the Catholic way of doing things connects me to God in a way nothing else does.

With my reasons for wanting to be Catholic laid out, I then had to consider my queerness. My godmother is a devout Catholic and so was her husband, and they had always been some of the most supportive people in my life of me being trans, so I knew that a queer-affirming version of Catholicism was possible. I was still scared of not being accepted though, so my godmother told her priest about my situation and he told her that it didn't matter if other people don't accept me, because what matters is that God does. And that did it for me really. I've been used to just living being an act of defiance for a long time now, so what else is new? If there's a space I'm not wanted, that's a space I'm going to take up. Especially if my own happiness stands to be gained. That's the priest I go to now for instruction, and while we haven't really discussed my transness, it makes a big difference to my confidence to ask questions knowing that I'm safe with him.

I think it probably helps that I realised and accepted my transness and queerness long before I felt a calling to religion. Going through that vulnerable point in my life while dealing with institutional transphobia/homophobia from the church would have certainly made things a lot more difficult when it comes to my relationship with religion. I have had bad experiences with religion growing up, and I do consider myself to have religious trauma, but I went from a very religious primary (elementary) school to a completely secular high school, and the queer stuff all went down at the latter, and my parents weren't and aren't religious. I do think God showed His presence in my life when He knew I'd be ready for it.

To sum it all up really, Catholicism is the version of Christianity that connects with me the most, I know a queer inclusive Catholicism is possible despite whatever the Pope says, and I am secure enough in my queerness and my faith that no amount of being told off is going to make any difference to me. God made me incredibly stubborn (and trans) so the haters can take it up with Him!

#asks #catholicism #roman catholicism #queer catholic #trans catholic #gay catholic #queer christian #trans christian #gay christian #queer christianity #queer affirming christianity #christianity #christian faith #catholic faith

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knightofleo · 3 months ago

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TRAИƧA by Red Hot Org

"Storied activist and music production non-profit Red Hot presents its latest project, TRAИƧA out November 22nd. With production beginning in 2021, and over 100 artists contributing, TRAИƧA marks one of the most ambitious projects ever undertaken by Red Hot - a spiritual journey across 8 chapters and 46 songs, spotlighting the gifts of many of the most daring, imaginative trans and non-binary artists working today. It softens the edges of the world we know, and invokes powerful dreams of the futures that might one day thunder from its cracks. The album's instantly memorable cover speaks to the tension between nature and constructed environments, and the tension of transness in the western gender binary."

Adrianne Lenker, Ahya Simone, Alan Sparhawk (Low), Allison Russell, Am Taylor, Anajah, André 3000, Ana Roxanne, Anjimile, ANOHNI, Arthur Baker, Asher White, AV Maria, Babehoven, Bartees Strange, Belina Rose, Benét, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Bill Callahan, Blake Mills, Bloomsday, Calvin Lauber, Caroline Rose, Cassandra Croft, Cassandra Jenkins, Ceyenne Doroshow, Christian Lee Hutson, Claire Rousay, Clairo, CLARITY, Cole Pulice, Devendra Banhart, Dirty Projectors, Eileen Myles, Eli Winter, Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland, Ezra Furman, Faye Webster, Fleet Foxes, Frank Cosmos, Gary Gunn, Gia Margaret, Green-House, Grouper, Hand Habits, Heart Shaped, Helado Negro, Hunter Schafer, Imara Jones, Jamal Shakeri, Jay Dee Daugherty, Jayne County, Jeff Tweedy, Jlin, Joy Guidry, Julianna Barwick, Julie Byrne, Julien Baker, Kara Jackson, Kathi Wilcox, Kb Borins, Kelela, L'rain, Laaraji, Laura Jane Grace, Lauren Auder, Lee Ranaldo, Lightning Bug, Lomelda, Lucy Liyou, Lynn Avery, Lyra Pramuk, Mary Lattimore, Mizu, Mojo Disco, Moor Mother, More Eaze, Moses Sumney, Nico Georis, Nina Keith, Niecy Blues, Nsámbu Za Suékama, Quinn Christopherson, Pepper Mashay, Perfume Genius, Pharoah Sanders, Rachika Nayar, Sade, Sam Smith, Sharon Van Etten, SOAK, Soft Rōnin, SKY, SPARKLE DIVISION (William Basinski), Taryn Blake Miller, Teddy Geiger, Time Wharp, Wendy & Lisa, Yaeji, Yaya Bey

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catboygirljoker · 4 days ago

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Questions 1, 21, 23 and 25 for Xiggles on that character questions meme (surprised if no one sent any about him already)

oagh thank you !! i havent received any asks for that ask game yet actually!

character ask game :o)

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?

[vibrating] i have a normal and countable number of things i like about him. for right now: hes representative of many of my favorite things about KH.

one of those things is its thematic depth—he has really interesting interactions with a lot of my favorite themes in the games, including identity/personhood, fatalism, authority figures failing those under their authority, also a lot of the Christian themes/motifs (and the ways those themes are played with), also the ways in which characters parallel each other or act as foils to each other. lotta stuff to dig into there!

another thing i like about KH is its sprawling, epic scope. and luxubar is present for or has a hand in nearly every single plot element in the games. call that bitch humpty dumpty the way he was always there

another thing that characters, like. fuck up? they make mistakes and are wrong about things. they lose sight of their noble goals or do the wrong thing in pursuit of them and end up being unable to achieve those goals. they spread lies and misinformation on accident or on purpose. and boy howdy luxubar has made a lot of mistakes and told a lot of lies. hes a complicated messy flawed character!

all of that AND he's Fucking Weird!!! just a fully bizarre person who says weird shit! even if you dont know anything about his backstory he's still one of the most memorable and fun characters in the series!

in terms of what i dont like about him. 99% of the things someone might criticize about him, i would respond with "yeah thats the point, thats why he rules as a chracter". but if someone said "i hate xigbar because hes a misogynist" i wouldnt even have a response. like yeah. he says some weird "haha girls am i right" shit in Days. i Dont like how he talks to Aqua in BbS. the only thing i could really say is "xigbar is a misogynist because he is in a game series written by misogynists and you have to correct for that" but i still kinda grimace every time he talks to or about a female character. really hoping thats not intentional and future games wont continue to characterize him that way

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

oh man i could give a dozen different answers for this...in developing his overarching story in my current fic, im really enjoying exploring the like. existential horror of his Whole Deal with the added wrench of "trans man in a cis man's body". no body dysphoria at the cost of total alienation from his body and from potential community with other trans people. unable to participate in conversations about transness; unable to explain why. especially since my other protagonist [oc lamia] is transmasc and has his own complicated relationship with gender and his own body. much too think about !!!

i dont really know how to answer the "what i dont like" part of the question lol...like i write fic as a way to explore a piece of media and its characters. saying something like "i wish he had [x] characteristic so i could do [y] plot thing" feels like saying "i wish this person im interviewing had said something different so i could write this interview differently". like idk! im doing literary criticism, effectively, my writing is responsive to the character, i just writes him like i sees him

23. Favorite picture of this character?

oh MAN i could give a million different answers for this.... right now im thinking a lot about this half second pose he has in DDD.

just something very funny to me about seeing him giving a thumbs up. the supportive smiler.

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

ive answered this question here! relinking because theres a video clip involved lol. primarily my first impression of him was "evil little league coach". that was before i even played Days, he's REALLY an evil little league coach in that game. it's remained basically true for him to me this whole time.

now whenever i see him im just like "THE BITCH HIMSELF <3 <3 <3 <3 <3" and i kick my legs and smile and grin and clap and play.

#when i first saw astarion baldursgate showing up on my dash as everybodys Blorbo of the Week i kinda rolled my eyes.#like ok prettyboy vampire character. whatever #and then i saw the posts about the depth of his character and his angsty traumatic backstory. and i was like ok yeah he seems interesting i #and THEN. i saw the clip of him getting mad at the protagonist for firing a laser at him or somth. and heard his vocal performance #and saw his mannerisms and how he was animated. and i was like Oh. I Get It.#everyone's like ''lmao people are really out here thirsting for vampire preminger'' and im like. im never gonna play BG3 #but i know thats the fucking point. thats the appeal. thats what makes astarion a good character.#thats how i feel about xigbar. all that angsty complicated backstory shit AND he talks like a teenage surfer in a middle aged mans body.#thats what makes him a home run. thats why i stay up at night thinking about him.#anywayyy thank you for the ask!!!!#kh #asks #ask games #about the kh fic #xigbar meme tag #xigbar scholarship tag

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jwood718 · 5 months ago

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A series of links led me to this: Southern Poverty Law Center's article and list of anti-LGBTQ+ groups active in the United States, and their influence on legislation in this country and internationally, and the increasing anti-trans rhetoric, and action, purveyed by them.

SPLC pulls no punches when calling-out people and groups that promote hate in the name of anything else (parents' rights, Christianity, etc) and the same goes here. The list is accompanied by a map featuring how many anti-LGBTQ+ groups are active in each state.

Some highlights:

"In 2023, the number of anti-LGBTQ hate groups listed by SPLC increased by about one-third, to 86. This is the highest number of anti-LGBTQ groups SPLC has ever listed. The increase is largely the result of the activities by groups often described as 'family policy councils,' which operate at the state level in ways that mimic the national organizations Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom...

...the weaponization of pseudoscience as a tool of trans suppression and the targeting of fundamental freedoms like free speech, expression, and assembly through book and drag bans has become a more prominent feature in recent years...

In April 2023, the Heritage Foundation published its 'Mandate for Leadership,' a 900-page handbook that lays out the implementation strategy of its presidential transition plan known as 'Project 2025.' The project represents a dramatic reshaping of the federal government by recruiting and vetting conservative ideologues for positions in a hypothetical 2025 Republican presidential administration. It also represents a dramatic confirmation of the anti-science and anti-LGBTQ focus of the contributors to the plan. Namely, on page 1 of the Mandate for Leadership, Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation claims that 'children suffer the toxic normalization of transgenderism with drag queens and pornography invading their school libraries.' By page 5, Roberts claims, 'pornography' is 'manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology and sexualization of children' and argues that such manifestations be outlawed. Roberts also argues that 'the people who produce and distribute [such materials] should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.'"

And of course it gets better. I didn't know, but am not surprised to read, that anti-trans rhetorical hate has now been morphed into a version of the "great replacement" conspiracy theory: children, including children of gay or lesbian couples, "...are being replaced or 'transed' against their will by gender-affirming health care and LGBTQ-inclusive educational curricula."

Fuck: anything to rile up people and get them to vote in autocracy.

Full story

#trans rights #lgbtq rights #human rights #anti-trans hate #southern poverty law center #project 2025 #election 2024 #vote blue #society #these united states

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sunkissedliterarylightofchrist · 10 days ago

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I saw the ask you got regarding your religion and I'm sorry that all that was said to you. It's really unfair of whoever posted it and does not reflect the fandom at all.

However, I did notice that you didn’t specifically address your views on queerness in that post. I was curious about your perspective on the topic as a Christian and how it relates to your beliefs. No hate intended, just genuinely interested.

I did see your take on transness and neopronouns which I do disagree heavily with, as somebody who doesn't use neopronouns. The world is messed up right now, and if something as simple as neopronouns brings a little bit of happiness to somebody, then who are we to care? If god really doesn't make mistakes, and god makes us in Her own image, then who are we to correct people who have lived their lives with this truth? Surely their gender identity is part of how god made them; part of gods plan. And the take of 'I will use their name so not to use their pronouns' isn't as respectful as you believe it is.

But I was hoping for your wider stance on queerness as a whole in regards to your religion. What do you think of people who are gay, lesbian, trans, nonbinary, and everything else under the queer umbrella, and how does it fit in with your Christian beliefs?

I am coming at this with pure respect; I'm just wanting to understand.

Hi! I assume you're talking about the hate ask that got left on my sideblog? If that's the case, I totally agree! ZR is a blast and I've yet to talk to someone who's really rude or hostile, except for that anon. Its a cool fandom! Probably my favorite, even though its so small! I didn't address my beliefs in that post because it did not seem relevent to the ask in question, but I am glad that you saw you could ask me over here what they really are, and that you did! Thanks for being repectful, it's a lot easier to engage in conversation with someone who is actually willing to hear what I have to say, even if they disagree, then someone who's just trying to punch me in the jaw!

So here we go.

I believe what the Bible says. The end-all and be-all authority. It is the Word of God, what God commands us to do, directly breathed out into a book that we can study to learn what His will in our lives is. It's truly remarkable! We don't have to walk through life blind and stumbling about who we are and what our place is in the world, we are told! So everything I believe about anything has its ultimate basis in Scripture.

So here is what the Bible says about homosexuality:

1 Corinthians 6:9 - “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God."

Leviticus 18:22, 20:13 - You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination; If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.

Romans 1:26-27 - For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

1 Timothy 1:10 - ...the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine,...

There are more. But I think you get the gist here. Homosexuality and transgenderism and even saying you don't have a gender, and a lot of what the LGBTQIA+ movement stands for, goes directly against God's design. There are two genders, man and woman. We are called to have any and all sexual relations within marrige between one man and one woman. It's black and white. That hurts what our flesh craves, that's uncomfortable, and might even feel cruel, but it is how we are created to be. Man and woman compliment each other, and are created to work together as a single unit for our entire lives. That's how God decided it would be.

But note that God isn't slam-dunking on homosexuality because He hates it extra. A lot of the condemnation against gay sexual sin is listed among a list of sins that are all equally condemned. And actually, if you count it up verse by verse, the Bible spends more time talking about men who abuse their wives (physically, mentally, sexually) and how that's wrong over being gay or trans or any of that. Straight sin is no better or worse than queer sin.

Christian culture (which, trust me, is just dumb Western culture and almost none of it is actually Christianity as it is supposed to be) goes after this especially because they hate it more and use the Bible as an excuse. Which I hope you can see is wrong on all counts and by doing that they are sinning just as much. Anger against sin should NEVER result in more sin. Ever. So if anyone has ever used religion as a means to intentionally hurt you or your queer loved ones, I truly and deeply apologize on their behalf. God sees their sin too, and He is enraged at them for disrespecting His name and treating His law with contempt and passing it off as what He wants them to do. They will face justice for their sin, same as all of us.

And it comes to neopronouns- you're basically saying that you aren't a person, or something to that effect, it depends on the person. So as for it making somone happy... I disagree with that because of what the Bible says. Jeremiah 17:9, The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

Our feelings and emotions and flesh lie to us all the time. If you're a runner, you know that! Your body is screaming at you that this is the worst thing ever and you are going to die if you don't give up right now, but then a chase comes on and you're able to sprint at top speed for thirty seconds and go, 'Huh, I guess I was able to do that.' Our bodies and minds lie to us, all the time. That's a big thing about mental health too- there are some days that there is nothing I want to do more than pack up and leave my entire life behind without telling anyone and intentionally hurt them by this. And then once in a while there are worse days when suicidal ideation gets the better of me and I'm standing at the edge of a river not that far from my house and contemplating drowning myself.

But I don't. Because my mind and body and feelings are deceptive. And I listen to God and what He says. Because what He says is always good, beautiful, and true. And far above me and anything about me. He is strong where I am weak. And I, in my flesh, apart from Him, am weak in everything.

It's the same here. It's the same with every other sin. My feelings are weak and changeable, and my body and mind work together to decieve me into desiring things that are terrible for me. And same with every other person ever. So wanting to do something just because it feels good or makes you happy isn't a good reason for doing a lot of things. Just because being called eir/ehm would make you happy doesn't mean its a good reason. Just because getting drunk would make you happy doesn't mean its a good reason. Just because mastubating makes you happy doesn't mean its a good reason. And this comes to gay relationships too, or being trans, or no gender, or any of that. Just because it makes you feel good doesn't mean its a good reason.

Is it because God hates happiness? By all means no! Look around! God created snow to play in and alchohol to consume and sex to have and other pleasures to read or watch or hear or more, and every good thing in the universe He created and He approves! He loves beauty and fun! I bet Jesus had some really good Aramaic puns he told the disciples! We have our joy in Him and what He has done, but even beyond that joy, because He is a good and gracious God, He has given us billions of reasons to be happy! Let us rejoice in that!

The thing about restrictions on anything ever is that they all have a place and purpose, and for every single one of these we can find the basis of why straight from His word. That's why true and genuine Christians, not those who puppet the name for their own ends or misguided beliefs, study the word. How can you know how to drive if you weren't taught how? Same thing with the Bible. It's all just really one big excerice in delayed gratificaiton. Delayed gratification is the ability to resist the temptation of an immediate reward in favor of a more valuable and long-lasting reward later. So despite our flesh craving things that feel good to us, we have to deny ourselves for His sake, because that is what He has commanded us to do. And while it might be 'boring' now and we miss out on 'good' (as defined by the world, which is wrong) things now, our reward is in Heaven. And our reason for this is Jesus. And there truly is no greater reason.

When it comes to anyone that is sexually confused, or with any sin ever really, its not how God created us. Life is not supposed to be this way. We were all corrupted by the fall and how sin has infected everything. While you might believe that you were 'born this way', its not. Its not who you were made to be.

But good news! GOD CAN FIX IT!

The only thing worth placing our complete and total identity in is Jesus Christ, the son of God, who willingly came down from heaven to earth to be born of a teenage girl in the grossest place possible, to walk the earth for thirty years and experience every hardship and be tempted with every sin, to then die in the most torturous way that humans have ever devised, all for a chance at saving and redeeming His children. Every day, the more I learn about Him and what He has done for me, how can I not deny my impluses to lie and lust and be lazy and succumb to how my evil mind wants me to hurt myself and every other sin? He made the ultimate sacrifice so I could have but a chance at life. So from the moment I put my faith and trust in Him and was saved, until the day I die, I am going to continually deny myself for His sake, because he denyed Himself of His rightful glory for mine.

That's why I'm a Christian.

So when it comes to talking to anyone who is queer, or engaing with any piece of media that has a lot of queer representation in it, I love them and treat them the exact same way I would treat any other person or fandom. With the diginity and love and respect that they deserve as people. Whatever labels they put on themselves or whatever they think about anything ever, I'll be kind and gracious to them like how Christ has called me to. But, I won't accept a sinful lifestyle as okay, no matter the sin. I won't accept the lifestyles of ANYONE who disobeys God, not matter what the sin in question is, because every single lifestyle or belief apart from Him is sinful. But I will never turn my back on them, or treat them with disrespect or even hatred, and with every single desicion I make I do everything in my power to do exactly what God has called me to do.

Now. If you read all of this and now decide that you hate me, or just disagree with my beliefs, and want to block me here and my fandom sideblog, that's cool. I get it, I really do. I'm just glad that you listened to what I have to say here.

Like I said in that post though, I don't really talk about my faith in Jesus Christ on there at all? And in my writing (mostly unpublished yet though lol) I plan to touch on it slightly, because that's just how my Five runs through her life, but it doesn't like... change my perception of the story really? I love it and enjoy it! So while being a Christian is an integral part of my worldview and all that jazz, its not like I'm going to go into the ZR tag with a megaphone and scream, "I HATE QUEER PEOPLE!!!" And also because... that's not true.

I don't hate someone who disagrees with me or lives their life differently than I do just because we're different. That is just as much of a sin. So look, when it comes to fandom in general, I don't think it is the best place and time to talk about the Gospel and how Jesus has changed my life unless it nautrally comes up, not because I don't want to share how Jesus has radically changed the human condition of emptiness and guilt and shame, but because it's not exactly the perfect way to talk about these things. I personally think its more effective to have a deep converstation about what the meaning of life is and our place in it with someone I know personally, and I have a good relationship with, than just making a post that says 'ur an evil sinner who's going to hell repent or else' in a fandom space.

Also because that's a lie. You, reading this, no matter who you are, are no better or worse of a sinner than I am. We both deserve to die for our sins. But what the difference between us as of this moment is, is that I have been redeemed by Christ. And you can too. I'm praying for you, and if you have any follow up questions or want to learn more, I am here.

I'm sorry this was so long, but thank you for reading it! It became long because there are just so many important things that needed to be said when it comes to this.

#sunkissedliterarylightofchrist #asks #anon #christian #queer #gospel #bible #theology #sin #human condition #fandom

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haymarketvtubestuff · 8 months ago

Text

GENDER ANARCHISM

Or: In Praise Of and Calling For Gender-Nonconformity, Transgenderism, and Transsexualization

by “The Beautiful Creatures”

In a social structure that mandates one form of expression or another, it is an act of high treason to show disdain towards the rules one may view at best as arbitrary, at worst hostile. Men are expected to dress for more formal events in a suit and tie that give a sense of armor, while women are expected to be in dresses that may unnecessarily expose. Certain empowerment movements encourage women to wear the suit, but have historically balked at men engaging in a similar script-flipping. Meanwhile, queer and drag communities, which celebrate the subversion of societal expectations, have at times upheld those expectations.

Attempts to destroy the rigidity of this structure, including genderpunk (or, to use the more transgressive term, “genderfuck”, used by Christopher Lonc in his Gay Sunshine article “Genderfuck and its Delights”), aim to rebel against binarist understandings of gender. However, the practice more frequently focuses on gender-bending or -mixing, rather than the de-emphasis of the importance of gender.

We are not necessarily arguing for the total destruction of the label, or even the complete unisexing of society. Instead, we argue for the embracing of what Jacob Tobia calls “gender chill” and what Rae McDaniel calls “gender freedom”. In a 2019 interview with Trevor Noah, Tobia calls for embracing gender as “a playful thing, where there’s no patriarchy, no misogyny, none of the things that make gender suck” and where it is more of a “dress-up bin” that encourages experimentation.[1] McDaniel adapts this mindset in Gender Magic and expands upon it: “Gender freedom is not about erasing gender, but allowing it to be a playground, full of richness and individuality and freedom for everyone, cis and trans alike.”[2] McDaniel wants the reader to imagine “all that’s possible when we show up for ourselves and the world from our authenticity and deep self-knowledge.”[3] We seek the same.

To the authors, it is clear that, so long as misogyny and patriarchy influence the setting in which we discuss gender expression and experimentation, ideas such as “genderpunk” or even “gender chill” will be met with extreme opposition. Anarchist (and anarchism-friendly) voices have correctly pinpointed patriarchal hierarchical systems as a strong negative influence, and more voices than ours have spoken at length regarding the topics of gender and liberation.

To keep the definition as simple as possible, to be “trans” is to “not identify with your assigned gender”.[4] The complications begin with that last word - gender. Only during the 20th century was “gender” used to signify as to whether one was male or female. This strict either/or was upheld as scientifically sound, with anything beyond the two labels punished as aberrations by the likes of John Money and his counterparts who viewed intersexuality as a biological mistake - a view unfortunately continued into the early 21st century, with nonconsensual surgical procedures being done on newborns the moment an “oddity” is spotted. Interphobic views are present within queer communities - more strongly so in the conservatively-minded, but no less near-universally present - and these views do nothing but uphold the very hierarchical and patriarchal system we supposedly fight against. As such, more nuanced conversations regarding the complexities of gender and sex must continue, even in the event of a successful revolution.

Our personal experiences with gender and with presentation are varied, though the authors admit that our experiences are united and informed by white Christian colonialism that requires constant unlearning and fighting against. It is with this in mind that we understand the existence of an intersection between gender and social role that has historically led to the active nullification of transness.[5] “People who lived as a different gender as part of their job or social position are overwhelmingly characterised as ‘disguised’ or ‘cross-dressing’ men or women, the gender they lived as nothing more than a masquerade.”[6] Both historically and in the present, gender and gender presentation are viewed as duties to uphold, rather than mere labels that ultimately have no bearing on how we will provide nutrients to the vegetation six feet above us. And yet there is an inherent defiance in this borderline postgenderist realization that is curiously opposed by those who seek to call themselves “gender critical” or “anti-gender” (and, yes, we are well aware of those camps being in favor of upholding the patriarchal system under which we all suffer).

The issue with attempting to modify one’s gender presentation is that we are informed by a myriad of stereotypes, and those stereotypes change within the culture or cultures of our upbringing. Therefore, we cannot assume that one particular experience with gendered presentations, such as those informed by western European understandings, is the only one in which other parties are required to maneuver. At the same time, we must be wary of attempting to impose labels such as gender on non-US and non-European social structures. For example, it would not be entirely accurate to label the hijras in India, the kathoey in Thailand, or the bissu in Sulawesi strictly as queer, transgender, or nonbinary.[7] These (English) labels have a political nature to them in the same way that our wishing to present a particular way has its own political nature to it. It is not on its own conservative, progressive, liberationist, or authoritarian, this want to play around in the dress-up bin, but it is made into one because of the systems in which we live. A child’s simply asking why girls wear dresses and boys wear pants risks being met with undue anger and punishment. We can already imagine what potentially comes with acting upon mere curiosity.

There are many in our societies who realize as well that they do not fall into the initial label given at birth, at naming ritual, or similar. While the admittedly reductive labels of cisgender (identifying with this initial label) and transgender (not identifying with this initial label) are political in nature and prone to being used in an imperialist fashion, those of us who make use of these labels understand that living experiences and labels are not so set in stone as we imagine them to be. At the same time, the risk of reinforcing the structure remains, as there exist camps in both cis and trans communities that argue that there is no such thing as a nonbinary experience, or outright invalidate or fetishize the existence of those who are gender-nonconforming with regards to presentation. In regards to the former, the enbyphobic viewpoint demands adherence to strict binarism in label and in presentation; as for the latter, this is unfortunately a frequent circumstance involving chasers who either want “a taste of the wild side” or demonstrate a jealousy of the gender freedom espoused by those who dare to go beyond societal expectations.

When we speak of the embracing of gender freedom, we speak both of experimentation and of complete liberation. When one experiments with identity and with presentation, one has greater opportunities to discover what works, what doesn’t, and what is just “meh”. Judith Butler defines gender as “[an] apparatus by which the production and normalization of masculine and feminine take place along with the interstitial forms of hormonal, chromosomal, psychic, and performative that gender assumes”,[8] so to recognize gender less as male and female and more as a system is to begin to understand where we come from. However, views such as gender nihilism, which seek the total destruction of gender, are not compatible with what we propose. The structure needs to be destroyed, yes, but total negation of the self and of the other for the sake of total equality does not give room for expression. In a universe that is uncaring towards labels such as gender, there is still meaning to be found not in creating associations that depend on a hierarchical system, but instead in the creation and maintenance of a mutualist web.

Ours is an absurdist stance in this regard, for while there exists the meaningless conflict between "male" and "female", the conflict only exists because the system depends on an artificial and hierarchical structure, upon which "male" is arbitrarily placed at the top. By all means should this Tower of Babel be destroyed - instead of building upwards towards the heavens, we should build structures where we are more free to support each other, and to encourage experimentation and growth.

How can one, then, help in the destruction of the restrictive system we currently call gender? We must first cast out the seemingly firm rules. Little rebellions eventually lead to big ones (and that is what an authoritarian is constantly on the lookout for!). Who says, for example, that a man cannot be a man if they wear nail polish or the tiniest bit of makeup? Who says there aren’t heels your size? (Do, however, start reasonably - going straight for 4-inch platforms is asking for disaster if you’re only beginning to practice.) Who says you look bad in a skirt? Maybe you just need to find the right pattern or cut to accent your favorite parts about you. Experimentation helps to find what works - and finding what doesn’t eventually puts one in the right direction. The joy comes from seeking out what works and finding what does - the “failures” are just lessons we pick up in our practice.

As for what you call it - having fun. Crossdressing. Being faggy or butch. Refusing to conform to the rules of gender expression. Gender chill. Gender freedom. Pick a name and run with it. Talk about it with people you trust - and people you can seek advice from. Practice that confidence! Find that joy! It is yours for the taking!

And if, in the process, you find that there is joy beyond the gender of your birth to the point where you realize you find minimal to no joy in that assigned gender, then leave! Hit the bricks! Just walk out! Real winners know when the fight isn’t worth it.[9] Your gender is yours to define, and that is a beautiful thing.

From the ashes and rubble of the old, we can create the new. So long as there is intention and a willingness to cultivate, we have the opportunity to bring new life into something. Gender does not have to be a thing of governance - instead, let it be a canvas on which you express yourself through various means. If taking hormones (or even just the “bioidentical” stuff) to make you look or feel more like yourself does the trick, do what helps you express yourself. Become the figure of freedom you wish to be.

There’s still time! Break free of the false structure! Refuse to conform! Emancipate yourself from gender rules! Be your whole, full, genuine self! Do what you can, while you can! Do not conform to false traditions! Cross the river that is Gender! Transsexualize!

NOTES

“Jacob Tobia - Promoting a “Gender-Chill” Exploration of Identity with “Sissy” | The Daily Show” March 21, 2019. Accessed May 12, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qo3rCzl_JB4

McDaniel, Rae. Gender Magic: Live Shamelessly, Reclaim Your Joy, & Step into Your Most Authentic Self (p. 19). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.

Ibid.

n1x. “Trans Nihilism”. Dated Sept. 23, 2017. Accessed May 13, 2024. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/n1x-trans-nihilism

Heyam, Dr. Kit. Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender (pp. 35-36). Basic Books. Kindle Edition

Ibid., p. 36

Lee, Juan. “Queer Identity Politics and the Colonial Character.” Dated June 20, 2023. Accessed May 13, 2024. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/juan-lee-queer-identity-politics-and-the-colonial-character

Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender (p. 42). Routledge.

Thank you, @dasharez0ne, for all the shitposting you do over a hot stove.

#trans liberation #transgender #gender nonconformity

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