#and like as someone who is transmasc nonbinary but reads 100% as a cis woman i know what im getting into and im fine being seen as a woman

[dashiellqvverty]

i fucking hate the fake progressive transphobia of saying (for example) "ummm well men can wear dresses nowadays, why should i ASSUME someone i perceive as a man in a dress is a trans woman" like okay why are you prioritizing the feelings of a hypothetical cis man over an actual trans woman expressing frustration with being misgendered. and also lets be real its probably going to be a lot less hurtful to this hypothetical man and easier for him to correct you if you gender him as female than if it were the other way around. anyway THIS IS NOT ME SAYING PRESENTATION = GENDER this is me saying i personally feel that its generally a good idea to err on the side of "hey if this person seems to be presenting as something different than what i perceive as their sex, i am going assume they want to be read as that gender." basically if you act like its offensive to ever assume that someone might be trans, you are at best prioritizing cis feelings, and at worst being extremely facetious and saying you HAVE to misgender people for progressive gender nonconformity reasons when actually you just dont see them as the gender they say they are

[opinated-user]

On the one hand, I want to be glad Lily only writes "intersex" characters when they're sexy hot futas fucking everything in their path. It means that all intersex people who don't have two sets of fully functioning genitalia - which is the overwhelming majority of us - are safe from being depicted as lusty rapists or TERFy villains.

On the other hand, while the number of intersex people who actually match her porn/hentai influenced version of the word are very few, they still got depicted as serial pedophiles in Lily's work, incapable of not raping people because intersex = horny all the time for all things.

As an intersex person who Lily would never write due to not being sufficiently sexy to masturbate to, I have privilege over those who are most often reduced to fetish fuel by her and other horny porn addicts online. And I do want to acknowledge that. I'm safe from her horniness, but not all intersex people are.

Plus, with how Lily thinks gender and sex work, you know she'd 100% be one of those people to write intersex people as nonbinary and go "biologically they ARE nonbinary!" and ignore the vast majority of intersex people who identify with a binary gender. (And then never write rep for binary-identified intersex people due to her utter lack of diversity in writing; she puts in a maximum of one non-sapphic non-cis non-perisex character at absolute most.)

they still got depicted as serial pedophiles in Lily's work, incapable of not raping people because intersex = horny all the time for all things.

i bring up this part in particular because this is not exactly how LO wrote rainbow. she wrote this character as a pedophile who is horny all the time and has her entire personality reduced to having sexy very specifically because of the presence of testosterone in her body. she actually writes a doctor who explains that for people with testosterone is pretty normal to be attracted to teenagers (of 14 years old if you're curious) and as long they can supress some of the hormones then it will be fine... which at the time was also bizarre to read because this is literally more gender essentialism. terfs and other bigots constantly like to talk about testosterone like some kind of poison that makes someone into a raging horny animal. transmasc people many times speak about how this kind of rethoric was what kept many of them from hrt for a long time. this was written by a trans woman. Brittany can confirm this, but i think that LO was just coming to term with being trans or was still not out when that fic was written so... considering that, it sounds disgustingly as someone trying to cope and justify the ugly tendencies they already know they have by blaming it on biology. speculation from my part, but still noteworthy. it's not so much a reflection of intersex people, as a reflection of what she thought a type of hormones could do to a person.

[transmasc-pirate]

I want to write something about digital self harm, and how it can contribute to divisions within the queer community. So here goes.

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So I have this bad habit.

I get online and I seek out bigotry directed at groups I'm a part of. At first it was bi women, later when I started figuring out my gender, nonbinary and transmasculine people.

But the thing is, bigotry that comes from right wingers doesn't really affect me emotionally. Not online, anyhow. It hurts so much worse when it comes from our own community, from people I agree with otherwise.

Back when I still thought I was cis, I used to try to find lesbians saying that they didn't want to date bi women, that we were gross or tainted, that they didn't want to be with someone who 'centered men'.

And now that I identify as transmasculine and nonbinary, I look for other trans people implying that transmasculine people are traitors to feminism for identifying with manhood, or that we don't really face any serious discrimination.

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And the thing is, the biphobic lesbians and the trans people who hate trans men? They're a tiny minority. Most people aren't like that. I have to seek them out if I want to see stuff like that.

But in my mind? When I spend so much time reading awful, hateful things from other queer people? It sure as hell doesn't feel like they're a minority.

And if I'm being 100% honest, I've had to check myself, because I have caught myself feeling like most lesbians are biphobic. I know logically that this isn't true. All the lesbians I know irl (and most that I come across online) are wonderful people. But the feeling is still there.

---

And I'm not the only one who has this bad habit.

I sometimes see lesbians talking about how a lot of bi women are lesbophobic, or transfeminine people talking about how there's a real problem with transmisogyny among trans men.

And yeah, these are very real problems.

But I'm willing to bet that a lot of people have the same bad habit I do. That they spend a lot of time seeking out this lesbophobia and transmisogyny, and that it affects the way they view bi women or transmasculine people as a whole.

---

I think it's pretty clear how this can foster division within the queer community. When a lot of trans women feel like most transmascs are transmisogynists and a lot of trans men feel like most transfems hate them for being men, it's a lot harder to come together as one community.

Sidenote: I do want to make it clear that I'm not trying to dismiss bigotry within the queer community. It is a very real problem, but when people start thinking that most lesbians are biphobic or that most transmascs are transmisogynistic, that's a problem too.

---

So where do we go from here?

If I'm being completely honest, I don't know.

It's always good to remind ourselves that the things we see when we do digital self harm aren't representative of the communities as a whole.

One thing that has really helped me is, when I see bigotry from within the queer community directed at me, I'll post about it somewhere like r/transgendercirclejerk on reddit. It's always therapeutic to post about a trans woman I saw who hated trans men and have other trans women in the comments going "god that's so gross" or "she doesn't represent us". It reminds me that most of the community supports one another and that the people I find when I do digital self harm are a tiny minority.

[justbutch]

How do you feel about the concept of cisgender as a butch? I detransed after 4 years on T and aside from throwing away my packers and pronoun and sex marker reversal i live pretty much the same i did as ftm so as a gnc female i feel in the nowhere land of where both trans and cis sound absurd applied to me. I wish gnc was recognized as third option but i feel kinda crazy and guilty for this view.

Hi there, first anon ever. Sorry for replying so late. I’m not very good at putting my thoughts into words, which is why you’ll find very few original posts on this blog. However, this is a topic I have thought a lot about, so I’ll try my best to give you a good answer.

For context: I never medically transitioned, my social transition was relatively half-assed and while I have definitely experienced feelings that could be justifiably put under the dysphoria label as it’s currently used, I never had really strong sex/body dysphoria, all of which obviously influence my perspective on gender topics.

Regarding any discussion of labels and terminology, I think a big problem at the moment is that terminology changes so quickly and varies so strongly between communities that it is really hard to make yourself understood regardless of how you label yourself. And because labels have become a battleground for ideology, certain concepts/identities will be extremely difficult to express within certain communities no matter how hard you try and which label you choose (this is true for both queer as well as radfem circles).

If I am entirely honest, my first reaction to being called “cis” is a very strong internal cringe moment. I really, really hate using this label. This is largely because of how trans, and therefore cis as its opposite, is currently conceptionalised by the majority of people, not because I think there is no value in the concept of “trans” at all. At the moment, many people use the label trans for any discomfort around gender and/or any tendency towards (visible) gender nonconformity. In this context, the idea of a “cis” butch seems pretty absurd. On the other hand, I do think it is useful to acknowledge that I do not mind people recognising me as female (anymore) and that I am not actively trying to change the fact that people gender me as a woman. So I do think “cis” has its uses in that context and many butches who call themselves cisgender are probably using it that way. And then there are of course butches who really actively consider women their gender identity, whether that’s inborn or constructed.

In the end, I do think that gender identity as a concept has its use and that it is important to acknowledge that both gender performance and medical transition will change someone’s position within the social framework of gender. However, I do not think that the current use of cis/trans as a strict binary, applied to simultaneously to these three different concepts by different people, is really doing that job particularly well. Because that’s how you end up with nondysphoric gender conforming people lecturing medically transitioned male-passing “cisgender” butches about cis privilege…

Regarding labels for me personally, I often try to target the words I am using somewhat to the group I am speaking with, but it’s quite exhausting and in the end it’s never really perfect. I really wish that I had a good way of describing my alienation from social womanhood, while still acknowledging that I am largely gendered as a woman by society due to being visibly female/afab. Currently, identifying as trans seems to preclude that due to the whole “sex is a social construct and your gender is whatever you want it to be” thing. I really wish the queer community was actually serious about distinguishing between sex, gender identity, gender performance and social/perceived gender, because that would fix a lot of these problems for me, but alas...so since there is currently no universally accepted label for “gender nonconforming afab/female person without an internal gender identity who largely gets gendered as a woman and is not too bothered about it”, describing myself as a gender non-conforming woman seems to do the best job of getting my lived experience across. It will still mean people in queer circles assigning some kind of internal identity to me that I do not possess, which is eternally frustrating, but this is just one of the points where my own framework of gender is so out of line with the mainstream that I don’t think any label would get across how I really feel. It will also mean that certain radfems will get very mad at me for calling myself gnc because no one is really 100% gender conforming, which is technically true (kinda like with that whole cis/trans not-actually-a-binary), but also, not everyone gets spotted as a dyke from 20m distance and makes other women uncomfortable in the restroom by their presence, you know?

For your own situation, I completely understand why you would be even more uncomfortable with the label cis as I am due to the fact that you medically transitioned, still get read as male and probably have a history of dysphoria, all of which are experiences not usually encompassed by the cisgender label. However, I also understand not wanting to use the trans label due to its current strong connections with gender identity. I think that this is one of the situations that show very clearly the limitations of the cis/trans binary and the current focus on identity at the expense of lived experience. I think it is only natural that you would want a label that encompasses both your sex and how you are seen by others in terms of gender given that both will have a strong impact on how you move through the world. Unfortunately, given the current state of the discourse and especially the fact that some people seem to be extremely unwilling to accept that anything besides gender identity might ever be relevant, you will probably not find a label that will make everyone happy in this regard. I personally think that considering yourself a gender non-conforming female person is perfectly reasonable and it is very similar to how I think about myself, though I know that it’s not particularly catchy and won’t fly with the “sex is a social construct” crowd. Other labels I’ve heard people situations similar to yours use are e.g. “passing woman” (probably a bit old-fashioned), “butch/trans cusper” and “functionally nonbinary”, all with slightly different connotations. There are also plenty of people who use transmasc,  nonbinary or even FTM labels to acknowledge their gender expression, lived experience and/or identity while still considering themselves female (though not necessarily women). This is obviously highly controversial these days, but let’s face it, pretty much everything any gnc female/afab person does is.

So, this has turned out super long and ramble-y in the end and I’m not even sure if it’s still relevant, but I hope there was something useful in there for you.

I know that this all sounds a bit negative because I’m currently very tired of all the fighting about labels, so let me just say that people like us have always been out there and always will be, regardless of which labels we choose. And while labels can be important, I really hope you will find people who will take the time to understand you regardless of what labels you use in the end, because you deserve it.