#and realizing specifically that i am not cis. i am also scared of queer people realizing this bc it means i am not as good as hiding

[coyoteprince]

Some thoughts on the masculine side of my gender experience and how it ties into vulnerability

I am nonbinary, I believe some flavor of fluid, but I just read as a goth cis woman to the layperson. That's fine and good, there is a safety and privilege in being stealth even with the alternative way I dress, but there also feels like a safe with something precious I keep locked away in me.

I take comfort in referring to myself as a "woman with a man's personality" and likening myself to a kelpie or nymph: beautiful, soft, but merely a vision of a woman: in reality underneath the gossamer, a beast that fails man's words.

Occasionally, something stirs to life in me, similar but different: those feelings of masculinity. I am naturally positioned by my genes (I can grow a shitty sparse beard) and temperament to have some secondary features- but thats it.

And yet, when the pangs of longing ache, they come on suddenly and harsh and I feel trapped.

There is nothing I can truly do to feel comfortable with the swing of identity. Only shapeshifiting back and forth could satisfy me which is impossible. Yes, I could seek hormones or surgery, but I have decided for now to not for a variety of reasons. As part of that, I've always been rather... defensive and secretive about the masculine part of my identity. I have a secondary masculine name I only allow people I trust to call me, and this dumb tumblr post is the first time I'm admitting some rather personal things to the public eye.

I'm well aware today many won't respect the nature of my gender just because I am a ~nonbinary girl~ and not seeking permanent transition, but even before that the thought of being trans was too much for me.

The first time I realized I was trans I wasn't older than 15 and noticed the thoughts I was experiencing about wanting to feel like a boy. It frightened me so bad that I vowed to never give it attention again specifically because I already knew I was queer, mentally different, being abused, and "didn't need another target on my back". Haha. Hahaha

Ignoring those thoughts hasn't been too hard except when I see the ghost of my identity. Then it is overwhelming, like a wave crashing over me and threatening to sweep me into the tide. Painful and exhilarating all at once. Before I know it, it's gone again.

I read and watched The Outsiders in middleschool, as did many. I latched onto Johnny, a greaser kid with an abusive family who tried to play tough but was really just an incredibly scared, sweet runt. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I identified so hard with him but hindsight is 20/20. Despite the hamminess of Outsiders, I continue to hold a fondness.

Later, when I became comfortable with my nonbinary ID (something that was quite difficult for me) and an adult, I saw another ghost. A theme now set: soft hearted greasers. The first time I heard this I curled up and couldn't stop replaying it even though it made my chest ache.

Finally, the last ghost I've seen and what really made it all click for me was Izzy.

I was neutral of Izzy for the first season (sorry my old man fucker peers), but seeing him become disabled and starting to soften made me intrigued. Then, the drag scene and him singing: I yelped in excitement, bewilderment, and bawled like never before. It was the most intense gender euphoria I've ever felt. Izzy shot to the top of my favorite characters ever in an instant with all he grew to embody.

I guess I identify with boys clad in leather, forced to become rugged in all the wrong ways. Underneath, a natural softness terrified but desperate to show itself.

You can see this in Waite, too: A handsome, dark man who is oh so soft underneath. It's no secret that in my story over time he accepts his nonbinary identity and allows his truth to be seen framed by carnations and frill. Perhaps he is what I wish I was.

On the other hand, Degare is somewhat closer to my reality. A gender all his own, effeminant masculine mannerisms, fairly feminine dress, breasts and vagina and all- though he is still often more masculine than how I present. In contrast to Waite's uneasy fear of judgement, he tries to guard his natural softness rather aggressively out of fear of being taken advantage of.

I'm sure to many reading this I sound like a transmasc "egg" that hasn't cracked yet. To others, very mentally ill. Maybe to some who are fluid, they know the wish-washy feelings.

Either way, I'm a proud freak and I've worked hard to not allow others to hold power over how I view myself anymore. These past 4 years through a cocktail of treatments (though meditation and practice have been the biggest game changers) I've diligently learned how to balance being openly loving to all and authentic- yet protecting my energy and staying sure of my identity no matter another's opinion. Misery loves company and bitter, paranoid gossips and I no longer get along.

Softness, kindness, vulnerability for others and yourself are all difficult, at times seemingly impossible things to achieve when you come from a harsh upbringing and live in a world bombarded by bad news. Change in your view and behavior is excrusiating. But I believe striving for authenticity and love is the most important thing we can do as humans in this life.

Whether I end up transitioning down the line or staying as I am, I've learned to cherish these flashes of masculine desire and be empowered by vulnerability- and I don't regret it.

[theneighborhoodwatch]

What are your thoughts on the potential Julie and Frank 'relationship'?

(serious answer under the cut. also, again, disclaimer that this is all speculation and i'm not saying that any of this is 100% For Sure going to happen, i am just speaking within the context of this one particular theory.)

(edit: nvm i might actually be right. yeehaw [said unimaginably haggardly])

i've talked about that before on this blog, in this post specifically (with extra links for context so maybe check it out) and it's still something that i think about A Lot. in that post, i describe it as a source of Mutual horror, i.e. "you were created to both bring out the best in someone and to keep each other shackled to someone else’s incomprehensible idea of normalcy." and when i say incomprehensible, i really do mean incomprehensible; going by a few posts clown's made in the past, the idea of gender being tied to presentation and vice versa seems to be a foreign one to the playfellow puppets - and yet, this does not seem to prevent them from the consequences of being Perceived a certain way. it's also probably worth mentioning that if the 2022 pride art is to be believed, then neither frank or julie are cis, either (for whatever the playfellows puppets' definition/equivalent of "cis" is, anyway.)

i would be lying if i said i haven't thought about Several ways this could all play out; how it could affect both of them as individuals, their other relationships, their pre-existing friendship. i won't go over all of those here bc this post would be way too fucking long otherwise, but i will say that i think that they would have been friends regardless of whether or not the show decided they were (and regardless of whether or not the show wanted friends or "friends."*) i don't think either of them start out Aware that they're "supposed" to be together. i think they are likely made aware of it later on - of how they are seen. in this way, it's a good example of what i meant when i previously described welcome home feeling like a setup for some cosmic horror-as-coming of age shit (or coming of age as cosmic horror??) for example, in this particular context, i saw A Lot of these two scenarios when it came to growing up queer and/or closeted, especially in an unsafe environment: 1. "i'm told that because i spend so much time with this person, and they are (X) and i am (Y), that i am in love with them. i don't think this is true, but i have no idea how to refute this, so i'm just gonna Go Along With It until i am emotionally, mentally, and/or physically no longer able to do so bc i'm scared of what'll happen to me and/or the people i care about if i don't - OH FUCK THAT HAPPENED A LOT SOONER THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK"

2. "i'm told that because i spend so much time with this person, and they are (X) and i am (Y), that i am in love with them. i think that's the dumbest fucking thing i've ever heard and it does not apply to me at all" [is punished for this] "Ah." it's just that here, the scale would be magnified to the point of cosmic horror, in order to drive home the turmoil these situations bring, both internal and external. do i think frank and julie would be the only examples of this, or that it is mutually exclusive from any of WH's other potential themes? absolutely not. but if all we have to go off of are crumbs, then We Will Work With Crumbs. * side note, i was gonna talk about how it was interesting that despite knowing next to nothing about frank/eddie in canon except for the fact that It Happens, all of the frank/eddie art we have so far is a lot more unambiguously romantic than any supposed in-universe ship teasing between frank and julie, buuut then i realized that was probably bc we're still in the prologue and all the frank/eddie stuff we have is like, side sketches and concept art. of course it's gonna be more indulgent.

tl;dr: I Care Them and i hope you can tell

[caramelmochacrow]

hey. im sorry but i need to just. spill this because it's sorta been in my mind for a few months, not outwardly, but a feeling i finally realized when this term ended.

(a vent about myself under the cut, sorry.)

i really hate how much im separated and need to hide myself from people. even if it's something simple and dumb to hide.

like, will you believe me if i say i need to keep my love of math from all of my classmates? everyone in my class hates it, they complain all the damn time and im the only one who genuinely enjoys math (even though i get frustrated with it sometimes). everytime i say "i love algebra!" or "i love graphs!" they look at me as though i am a liar or im some sort of freak. even my friends, they tell me to shut up when i say it out loud even though i dont say anything when they say they want our math teacher to die or they complain about something i like about math. (which kinda hurts me as well lol)

i understand the dislike for math, i disliked it before, but saying you genuinely want our teacher to die just because she teaches a subject you dislike is fucking dumb. i was starting to unlearn that, but now im starting to relearn it, which isnt helping myself at all. (i really want to tell them off about it, but i dont want to also.)

there's also my love of music that i've complained here before once, i need to keep it quiet because when they hear someone likes anime or j-pop they think im a weeb that's obsessed w anime men and want to see them butt naked. i hate it. i hate when i listen to rock, i hate when i listen to metal, but i love it so much i cant. i don't even listen to music in school anymore because i feel so self conscious about it. i feel that i'll be judged at and be seen as some sort of weirdo that they'll whisper about behind my back.

there's also the glaring obvious fact that im very-gay-for-girls-but-also-a-transguy. im in an all girls school, but there are a few non-cis people here for semi obvious reasons. i dont feel comfortable being out much for obvious reasons and i feel miserable here. most of the people here are actually chill w the trans people in my school but some just love asking uncomfortable questions like why they were there instead of the boys school or about their names. it freaks me out. it scares me. it makes me want to never come out and be myself. there was this time today when i was in my business class and made my nickname for this game 'birdboy' which led to my teacher asking why i used boy rather than girl, which led to me and my friend (another non-cis person and one of the people i came out to) saying that it just flowed better and not because i was a transguy. that teacher was surprisingly chill w trans people being in her class though, she asked my friend his preferred name and started calling him that, there's also another friend of mine in that class and she's also chill w him and his name, so i think she's ok.

other than my gender, there's my sexual orientation, which im not even sure on. i like girls, girls are can be pretty and handsome, but if i said that, they would hate me for being gay(?), which is also terrible because most people in my school are homophobic, yay. i got asked once for no fucking reason and without prompt if i liked girls or boys and i fucking panicked and said i didn't like either, which led them to asking if i was straight or bi (didn't even say lesbian, smh) which i also denied because i didn't rlly liked men anyway (what they got for not saying lesbian) and also didn't want to say i was gay(?) to my entire class before a fucking we went to our social studies class. i was so fucking scared when they asked that.

like, my school is accepting of queer people and lets them wear what type of uniform they like (except for me because my mom filled out my form for me which didnt let me put my preferred pronouns and kind of uniform) but it feels so hard to believe with the amount of hate towards specifically those who aren't fem presenting. it makes me feel torn apart with if i want to be who i want to be or be hidden behind this false version of myself that ive been hiding behind for almost my entire life. i feel so terrible.

i feel so disconnected from people of my own culture as well. i suck at tagalog, i know how to talk in tagalog, but i speak like a little five year old. every time i speak to other filipino people, there's a disconnection, there's a thing i dont understand or know about my own culture. i feel like some sort of failure as a filipino person.

im better at english than tagalog, so that means i must be fine, right? no. not at all. other than the other stuff i said above, they dont use american english, the one i learned. and since i lived my entire life in the philippines, i dont know some stuff in new zealand. they get shocked when i dont know something that is pretty much so well known here, when i dont know the british equivalent of an american word or when i dont know any maori words. i feel so fucking dumb every time it happens.

i just hate how much i dont know and how disconnected i feel from the world and those around me.

[negative-speedforce]

6, 9, 15

6: (If you're out) do you wish you came out sooner? Later? Or was it the right time?

To my family? I was forcibly outed by the police during a mental health crisis. I wish I wasn't out to them at all.

My friends? Perfect timing. I'm really open about my identity, mostly because I'm scared of getting rejected when people find out.

When did you realize you weren't cishet? Not straight? I've been in love with my best friend since 4th grade. He's a gay trans guy now, and I'm a nonbinary lesbian, but I guess he's the exception, even if I know my feelings will never be reciprocated. Not cis? When I started puberty, my brain was like "Oh, hell no." 15: How has your identity changed over time? 2015: Officially acknowledged that I was queer. Cis bi woman. 2016: Turned 12, started puberty. Realized something was seriously wrong- I didn't want to be a woman! Bi trans man. 2017: Realized I didn't really want sex. Ace bi trans man. 2019: "man" is too arbitrary. Ace bi nonbinary transmasc 2021: Romance is weird. Ace demiromantic bi nonbinary transmasc. 2022: Wait- I'm not even attracted to men, am I? Ace nonbinary lesbian. 2023: Honed in my labels to be more specific. Aegosexual cupioromantic nonbinary transmasc lesbian. Here's also all the chosen names I've used over the years: Reyna, Jordan, Oliver, Adri, Rey, Phoenix, Creed, Revan

[chaotic-queer-disaster]

idk if im explaining this right but sometimes i feel like the only queer person on this site that doesn't want to look queer

[vaspider]

re: your (very informative) transmedicalism post.

would you say that the “cis people dont question their gender” concept is an offshoot of this concept? or is it perhaps something else i don’t have the name for

one of my cis friends has questioned about gender identity but ultimately decided that it was correct all along so it’s clearly not a foolproof concept that all questioning = trans.

i understand it to a degree (sort of) but it seems needlessly exclusive for cis people who want to understand gender (& their gender specifically) better - if youre told ‘no ur experience questioning makes you not cis’ then potentially you’d be apprehensive in even considering it (sometimes ignorance is bliss etc).

surely everyone examining their gender (cis or not!) is better for society’s norms, rather than grouping everyone, cis or trans, into trans just for wanting a better understanding of gender.

(thanks in advance! and sorry for my inability to be concise)

Yes, the practice of saying "if you ever even question then you must be that thing" is harmful on a lot of levels.

If cis people hear "you can't even question" then they'll never think about the complexity of gender or how they relate to gender and how even for cis people there are so many definitions of man and woman. That sucks!

And like... I think cis people really should think about and interrogate their gender, for their own sake. Like... what does man or woman, as an identity, actually mean to a person? What parts of it fit perfectly, what parts of it pinch a little like a new shoe? Figuring that stuff out can only make you feel more at home in your own skin. I mean, realizing that I really felt uncomfortable in dresses because I felt pressed to act out certain roles allowed me to change what I wore and become more comfortable in my own skin, why couldn't a cis woman do that and understand that she's interrogating her gender? My experience also came with a side of "oh, that's because I am not a woman and never was," but I don't think that's a necessary end point of interrogating gender.

Like, if even asking the question means the answer is yes... it's not a question. You have to be able to answer no.

I think that is part of why, honestly, when you ask cis people to think about how things like The Rock's top surgery was gender-affirming, or how breast augmentation (or reduction!) and tummy tucks and butt lifts for cis women can be gender-affirming, they react so defensively.

That's queerness in general, honestly. That idea that if you even think about it you must be it and the fear that people have of the consequences of being thought to be queer or trans? It's understandable that they'd react to the idea of even thinking about being queer with defensiveness. In some places, being thought by others to be queer or trans can ruin your fucking life, or end it.

One of the things that helps unwind that is contesting the idea that only queers ever consider that they might be queer, or so on. We can't expect the cishets to believe it if we treat our own that way, y'know?

So... yeah. If you think you might be trans... well. You might be trans. Then again, maybe you're just someone who is open to the possibility because there's nothing wrong with being trans, so there's nothing wrong with thinking you might be and then realizing you're not. That doesn't make you a liar, or infected with queer, or stupid, and it doesn't necessarily mean you're lying to yourself and just hiding in the closet bc you're scared, either. Might be the case. Might not be.

[maryellencarter]

This meme has been going around on my Dreamwidth, so I thought I might as well bring it over. All the "orientation" questions originally asked about sexuality specifically, but as my primary queerness is aromanticism and my sexuality is largely a great big blob of timey-wimey, I changed them. Still pretty amatonormative, but whatever, I've been up all night livetweeting a Castle of Cagliostro themed ACNH dream island tour and I definitely don't have enough brain to rebuild a meme from the ground up.

***

Orientation: Aromantic, something that isn't completely asexual but might be anywhere from aegosexual to allosexual. Sexual orientation fluctuates vastly, although I'm almost always attracted to men at least to some extent. I tend to be attracted mainly to people of the gender I currently am, which is entertaining and sometimes winds up with me being LGBT all at once, or at least in a very short span of time. Now, whether that's going to be sexual attraction or sensual or aesthetic or one of the others -- your guess is as good as mine in a particular instance. Aromantic is the only identity I've got that doesn't just go completely haywire at irregular intervals.

Gender Pronouns: I usually go by they/them online to facilitate asynchronous interactions (jesus, you can tell I've been up a while, I'm breaking out all the five-dollar words at once). Most of the time, they/them fits best. Sometimes I start feeling strongly he/him or she/her and then everybody gets confused, often including me.

Gender: Genderfluid, usually transmasc. I get very twitchy about being too cis or het, even though... y'know, as several friends have tried to get through my head, it doesn't invalidate my queerness if I sometimes happen to line up with my assigned gender and expected orientation. It just... feels really, really scary, like somebody is going to catch me being a (nearly) straight woman and make me marry that nice Catholic boy and start popping out babies. :P

(I've been feeling very female for a while now and I'm not coping with it well. Brain shit is complicated.)

Relationship Status: Partners and co-authors with @camshaft22 for the last four years and counting.

Celebrity Crush: I don't like having crushes. Occasionally I get one and I never handle it well. They're vastly uncomfortable, they hijack my brain when I need it for other things, they're embarrassing for all concerned, and they need to stop. I haven't had a celebrity crush specifically since my pre-internet days and I hope to god it stays that way.

Crush: No. My last meatspace crush no longer works where I do, thank fuck, and I really fucking hope I can go another twenty years before catching another one. Crushes have no redeeming qualities for me as an experience.

Best Friend: When I was a tiny autistic tortoise and had no friends, I had elaborately ranked lists of all the girls I was told I was friends with / was trying to be friends with. I haven't labeled someone a "best friend" in a really long time. I have a lot of friends, and Leia is my friend and also my primary relationship, which I suppose would count if you wanted it to, but the actual term just doesn't click for me.

When I came out: Hah. Depends what as and who to. Including coming out to myself a whole bunch of times. I knew when I was about two or three that I wasn't a girl and that I didn't want to be a wife. I realized when I was thirteen that I liked girls and scared the shit out of myself so badly that I still haven't entirely dealt with that. I was twenty-seven when I realized I was genderfluid. I still haven't had a chance to find out if I like kissing.

First person I came out to: As anything? Christ, I don't know. It would have been as asexual, that was the first identity I tried on, and it would have been to somebody in my bio-family. It's not a good memory, so I don't think about it.

First GF/BF: Leia. I never dated. Didn't have the chance in high school because I was in a very "wait until marriage", chaperones-and-courting sect of Catholicism, and none of the boys my age were interested in the loud butch with no boundaries. I've been too isolated to try since, and being romance repulsed didn't help. I think I still have profiles on one or two dating websites somewhere, at the behest of some therapist or other, but I was basically feeling like "I'm eventually going to have to suffer through this romance bullshit in order to have any chance of finding someone who might give me some scraps of what I want", and I just never quite got desperate enough to put myself through the extra depression.

Then Leia came along and saw me talking about Hobbie Klivian in a tiny Discord server and went "I want that one", and now she has a me. Sometimes just sitting around waiting for the right person to fall into your lap works just fine. XD

First heartbreak: Uh. Really hard to define when you're aromantic. Also when you're autistic and "none of these people actually like me" is a baseline of your childhood. Also when your mother is aggressively shipping you with every boy in range from the time you're born. I think I'm gonna have to pass on this one.

Crush on a straight person: I've had like maybe three crushes in my life. They're debilitating, years-long messes that I can't seem to get over no matter how hard I try. And crucially, a major component is that I get tongue-tied and can't talk directly to the guy at all. So I don't actually know if they were straight. They weren't out as anything else, to my knowledge.

Fallen for a friend: I'm aromantic. Friendship is as far as I fall. (Okay, that's catchy but doesn't quite answer the question. The less catchy answer is that I just don't have the wiring alloromantics seem to be talking about where... where friendship has a guardrail separating it from "you wanna try this thing together?" Now, I also don't feel attraction to real people that much or that often, and most of my friends are some flavor of aro/ace anyway, but... I guess what I'm saying is that if somebody I like as a friend made a move, it'd be a case-by-case thing, I wouldn't have to be like "can I jump this barrier and start having romantic feelings about you" because that's just nobody.

Cool straight friend: Uh. Do I know any straight people? I think the barbarian at D&D is the token straight person there. Is anybody here straight? ;P

Cool queer friend: Everybody else, obviously.

Person that made me doubt my orientation: One of the people I snurched this from pointed out that this could easily be read as "person who was an asshole and made me worry I was straight/etc", rather than a queer awakening in some sense. In the first way, my bio-family, for many many years. In the second way... I don't really have a "Captain Janeway made me gay" sort of moment, but there were a bunch of really pretty girls at youth group when I was thirteen, and then there was Huttslayer Leia when I was eighteen and that definitely did *something* to me that I truthfully have still not figured out entirely.

Am I proud of my orientation: Mneh. I don't really feel like being proud comes into it. I'm not ashamed of it. Being aromantic is just who I am. I... I also maybe feel a little weird talking about it as the only partnered romance-repulsed aro I know of. It's a lot of complicated shit and I don't completely understand it myself well enough to feel like I can answer the kind of intrusive questions I used to get about trans shit.

Am I comfortable with my orientation: Pretty much. I wouldn't know what to do with myself as anything else, that's for sure.

Describe myself: Like all my identities? Because just me, I'm a turtle who ought to be in bed. But if we wanted to go full microgranular identities, I could say something like... aromantic masc-leaning bisexual gray-ace, transmasc-leaning genderfluid intersex, technically probably polyamorous but very tired, sometimes bi-gender sometimes nonbinary usually gay occasionally lesbian, always queer.

My queer hero: I'd have to say the older bisexual lesbian lady (she used both labels, as one does) who mentored me when I was still a homophobic but well-meaning youngster. I've lost track of her now but she and her wife were my first example of a healthy relationship.

Favorite part of being queer: Definitely the not having to worry about romance anymore. Y'all can have that. It seems tiring.

[popshoveitqueen]

A Look at Problematic Language: Using “Gay” as an Insult

Note: I’m very new to Tumblr and therefore might not know what I’m doing. If that doesn’t dissuade you from reading, then thanks!

      While this topic is certainly nowhere near new, queer terms, more specifically for this example, the word “gay”, still get used as insults rather often, at least in my personal experience with attending a mostly cishet high school. Obviously, this is not okay for an entire slew of reasons, but to start with the short reason why: using the word gay as an insult, whether to directly attack the community or just in passing, is to essentially say that being gay is bad, or at the very least something that people should actively not want to be. When society allows for practices like this to happen, you can end up creating a belief in people that being gay would make them lesser.

Real World Example

      In my high school it’s genuinely a challenge to go even two days without hearing some guy say something along the lines of “Dude, that’s so gay!” to his friends, causing them to all laugh. I’m sure I don’t have to say it, but as a lesbian it really, really sucks to constantly be near people making fun of the community, especially because it’s quite simply so easy to not do that. There’s plenty of infinitely more clever and less harmful things to say, and yet the default for many boys across all grade levels at my school seems to be gay, without question.

      Now to be clear, my school tries incredibly hard to seem like they care about the queer community. There are at least a dozen posters hanging around touching on subjects like using the right pronouns and name, why bullying queer people is bad, and talking about the alarmingly high trans depression, self-harm, and suicide rates. However, this sentiment remains purely an image in most cases, as it’s rare to see homophobic behavior being called out. On top of the word gay itself, I often see boys putting on fake effeminate voices while saying offensive things that I’d frankly rather not repeat for this post. 

Well, Have You Spoken Up?

      While I understand this being one of the first things people would ask me when it comes to this issue, I feel like there’s a very real thing that needs to be considered. I am genuinely scared of what could happen if people realized I got somebody in trouble for homophobic behavior. None of the fear comes from administration, as whether they truly care or they’re just doing what they’re told to help the school’s image, the staff of my school seems to be pretty supportive of the community. The problem comes from my fellow students.

      There have been quite a few fights at my school just in this year alone, and although they haven’t been related to queer issues to my knowledge, it still shows what kind of people are at my school. There’s the obvious reason I’d be scared to fight, which is I don’t want to get hurt, but there’s also a greater one at hand. It’s very much related to the trans girls in women’s sports debate, in the fact that if I lost the fight nobody would care all too much, but if I won... that would most definitely be a major issue, especially if I happened to fight a girl. 

       While I’d love to touch on trans girls in women’s sports in greater detail later, the comparison I’m looking to draw is essentially that when it comes to sports, people are easily the maddest about trans girls participating in women’s sports when they start winning, or to put it more clearly, when they start doing better than cis girls. So basically, having seen that that’s the way trans girls are viewed by enough of the population to pass laws against trans girls in women’s sports, I very much believe that were I to get in a fight and somehow win, no matter who started it, no matter who said what, I’d be in an indescribable amount of trouble, and I’d probably hurt the reputation of other trans women, if just a bit. 

My Call To Action.

      Really, the thing I want to be clear from my ranting so far is that this has all stemmed from the fact that gay can just be used as in insult as though it’s nothing. It sparks homophobic beliefs, it sparks fear, and it also sparks a divide between cishet and queer communities which simply shouldn’t exist. And I already know that there are probably people reading this thinking to themselves “Jeez, does comedy not exist anymore? It’s a joke!”, and to that all I can ask is that you please open your heart, if just a bit, and listen. While I’m obviously speaking in very personal examples, these feelings are far from being unique to me. This is so much bigger than a light joke as many would like to believe it is. This effects people every day, and I would know.

      I’m not sitting here asking for big societal changes to just happen because of my random little Tumblr post, so honestly my biggest goal from the post is directed at any people who aren’t in the queer community. Although it’s sad, it’s people outside the community who usually have the greatest chance of actually inciting change in society’s views of the queer community, so please. If you participate in behavior like this, consider the consequences of your word choice, and if you know people who participate in behavior like this, please consider the possibility of calling them out. It’s small, but it could still help. 

Hey, So… Why Did You Make This?

     I’ll gladly answer that question! It’s incredibly important to get queer experiences straight from the mouths of people in the community out there, because that’s one of the best ways to get educated on or educate others about LGBTQ+ matters. I know my parents looked at plenty of media about trans people in an effort to understand what I was going through and how they could help me when I came out, so without information like that available it might be just that much harder for people to get through certain challenges. That’s why I want to do this, because I know looking at blogs by trans women in the early days of my transition really helped me figure certain things out, so maybe, just, maybe, I could end up helping fellow queer people who might need a bit of help on their own journey.

      But no matter who you are, if you made it to the end of this, I’d like to genuinely thank you for reading. I hope you got something out of it!

[whentherewerebicycles]

hey ummm im tipsy too because it's my flatmate's birthday and I'm literally a lesbian woman but sometimes I worry I might not be lesbian and it scares me because I'm scared of men but sometimes I think a man is attractive (like my flatmate) and idk why I'm msging you about that, sorry if it's weird. but you seem to have very valuable insights about life that not many others have (somehow?? idk?) and I respect and appreciate that.

oh it’s not weird! i think one thing i have learned is that it is 100% okay and healthy to hold your own sense of who you are lightly, and to not feel so attached to a particular label that you don’t allow yourself lots of space to grow and change as you have new experiences or meet new people who bring out different facets of yourself. to me the label of ‘lesbian’ is not an Essential and Immutable Truth about who i am (ie something that can never shift or change over time). instead, using that label speaks to a decision i’ve made about how i want to orient myself in the world, how i want others to perceive and interact with me, and where i choose to channel my energy & attention.

when i first came out i spent many, many years feeling like i had to justify and “prove” that i was “really” a lesbian and that i was ~~~pure~~~ of any flickers of attraction or interest in men (there’s a conversation about internalized biphobia to be had there, but we’ll save it!!). i have described this phase (which i think characterizes many young or newly out lgbtq people’s experiences) as “the push,” because for me it was basically like, to get myself emotionally, intellectually, and socially free of the rigid constraints of compulsory heterosexuality, i had to PUSH really, really hard, to get enough distance between myself and all of that stuff. i had to shove it as far away from me as possible to lessen the chance that it would suck me back in. that was a normal and necessary part of moving into a more openly queer identity, and for many women who identify as lesbian the “push” involves completely disavowing any past interest in men or relationships with men or emotional attachments to men.

the push isn’t a bad thing! like i said, i think it is quite necessary at first, especially since women are subject to even more of the “are you sure? i mean, you’re not really gay, right? maybe you just haven’t met the right guy / maybe it’s just a phase / maybe you just couldn’t get a guy to like you / maybe you’re just afraid of men so you’re pretending you like women” bullshit than gay men are. but it’s a phase that i think most people eventually are ready to move out of (well, unless you are on twitter, and then you just live in the wake of the push forever and ever i guess). and that’s because it can be quite an intense and anxious headspace to live in, as you often feel a lot of pressure to “figure yourself out” (ie pin down what exactly you are -- are you a “real” lesbian or not?), as well as a lot of pressure to prove to yourself as much as to other people that you are who you say you are, or whatever. so it’s stressful to live there, and it also requires you to draw a lot of really hard-and-fast lines (like, “this is what a REAL lesbian is, and i’m only REAL if i follow all of these rules or check off all of these boxes all the time, and if i slip up maybe i’m not actually a lesbian, and i’m lying to myself and everyone else”).

over time i’ve come to hold my own identity more lightly, and to demand less certainty and fewer fixed answers of myself (and of others, too!). the identity label i use doesn’t really matter all that much to me - what matters is 1) that i am able to arrange my life and relationships in a way that makes me happy, and 2) that others respect the choices i make (something that’s not always within our control). right now, “lesbian” is the word that i like best as a descriptor, but i also know that labels are very, very generic categories that almost have to be emptied of specificity and nuance in order to encompass a very wide range of people. to borrow & repurpose a phrase from the transfeminist theorist emi koyama: there are as many ways of being a lesbian as there are lesbians. lesbian is just a general catchall umbrella category for an incredibly diverse range of lived experiences, histories, self-understandings, sexual and romantic choices, life narratives, etc etc.

if lesbian is the word that works for you or feels like the closest approximation to how you want to identify & be perceived by others, then call yourself a lesbian! it is completely and totally fine to be a lesbian who sometimes finds men attractive, or who finds herself attracted to a specific male friend. there’s nothing wrong with that! personally, i am a lesbian who has had important emotional and physical relationships with men in the past, and it’s possible that in the future maybe i’ll meet someone who i really click with who happens to be a man. it’s not maybe something that i would go looking for, and if it did happen, it would certainly prompt some soul-searching, as does any new experience that surprises us or complicates the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and what we want. but holding my identity labels and my sense of self loosely means that i don’t have to feel as threatened by the possibility of changing desires or a shifting understanding of who i am & how i want to arrange my life.

my real true belief is that the vast majority of people are probably capable of forming deep emotional and physical attachments to any kind of person, if the circumstances were right and the person was the right person at the right time and we were open to the possibility of an attachment. i think that very few human traits or preferences are ‘hardwired’ into us in fixed and unchangeable ways. in general, most of our traits are influenced by a combination of nature and nurture, or genetics + experience. so like, idk, maybe some of us who are born cis women are slightly more predisposed than other people to find other women attractive. but nurture, lived experiences, environment, social and culture influences, and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are all play a much, much more important role in determining how we make sense of that predisposition, and whether we come to use words like “lesbian” to identify ourselves. so the type of rigid, stridently defended boundaries or definitions we often feel the need to invoke & defend during the "push” are even less useful here, because how could a fixed set of black-and-white labels (which, btw, only emerged in the last 100-130 years) possibly encompass or account for the wonderful heterogeneity of human experience?

anyway i guess this is all a very long way of saying that i think your worry is completely understandable, and certainly something i spent many years of my own life feeling! but i also think it can be nice to hear from other queer women that there’s a place a little further beyond that, which is basically just this realization: i am who i am, and i accept myself as i am right now, while also understanding that “who i am” will continue to evolve & change my whole life long. you are a lesbian if you say you are a lesbian, and if you want to have a crush on your male flatmate or find a male celebrity attractive or even try pursuing something with a male partner, that’s okay: it doesn’t mean your lesbianism isn’t real, or that you are now going to be pulled back into a compulsory heterosexuality you worked hard to push yourself away from.

but it also doesn’t mean that lesbianism is where you have to stay forever, just because that’s where you’ve landed or what has felt right for you up until now. it’s completely okay, normal, and healthy to allow yourself that space to change. maybe you’ll move into a phase of your life where “bisexual” or “queer” or “pan” will feel like a closer approximation or a better shorthand for how you understand yourself & want others to understand you. or maybe you’ll come to find some other word that you like better, or maybe you’ll decide that you don’t even want or need a word to live your life the way you want. the point is that you aren’t fixed in place. you are free to explore and to experiment and to try out different ways of orienting yourself in the world. and you should do so, in ways that feel exciting and affirming and right for you.

[ghostofcitrus]

more gender crisis bc i need somewhere to document this shit and also if u wanna read and say smth that’s cool too 🥺 fair warning it’s kinda longgg. but there’s a tl;dr and i tried to make the paragraphs short so it’s easy to read and i sorted the thoughts by paragraphs

ok so when i see a girl or group of girls or smth i, for the most part, am like yeah same. i have the same lived experience and like yeah u look cool and i relate in a lot of ways.

but like i also feel the same w non-binary ppl. i see agender ppl and i’m like oh nice that sounds like how i want to live MY life!! i get jelous. i saw a gender ambiguous person the other day and i thouvht i was going to lose my mind i was like AKSJSHJSJSNS Y O U. I WANT TO BE YOU. i talked to them i was like 😭😭i love your hair😭😭 and it was so compelling just seeing them i got my hair cut later that week. i like it.

and i cut my hair and i’m like y e s. and i’ve always wanted a very small/flat chest and have planned on getting a breast reduction (meaning i want basically no tits. i’m like a DDD rn. and i’m short and have a baby face so that’s like. very noticeable. pain.) ASAP. but i like dress and being seen as a girl? but i also want to be non binary, but it feels like something im striving for. i don’t feel like i’m there. i feel like i WANT to be there but i just keep hitting roadblocks.

when i think about OTHER girls, i’m like yeah. i relate to that. but when i think about myself. fully isolated. i want to present like a feminine agender person. i am connected to my girlhood. girl, sister, girlfriend, daughter... all of them accurately describe me. but i also like person, sibling, partner, child.

i like femininity. i like being seen like that. and being seen as a girl is cool and fine. but i don’t feel like it accurately describes all of me. but i’m like scared??

i want to be a “girl” in the way that when u look at me ur like ... is that a girl? my face i like lmao. it’s round and feminine. cool lol. my body.... i wish with like all my heart i woke up one day w/o titties or major curves. but i’ve literally work so hard to accept and like myself in my body. YEARS of forcing myself to look in the mirror and compliment myself. deconstructing fatphobia was a big part of it. but in my head. with no mirrors around. i think of myself as less curvy. a small fame, but not really curvy. much more neutral features. i forget what i actually look like. but when i do look in the mirror now i’m like she’s pretty. i like how she looks. nice. but it doesn’t really feel like me. but i feel cool. it’s like nice makeup that’s someone else chose for u and never comes off. like yes. that’s nice. but... it’s not like “me”. i feel like that about most of my features. but i’ve grown up in them. i don’t hate them. i think they look pretty and i feel confident enough like this. and after all the work i’ve done to get to this mindset... it’s just not what i want.

i think part of what’s messing with me is i’m automatically more comfortable with other girls/afabs, like we just share experiences and i can generally understand how they socialize. guys like,.. not so much. but most of my actual friends have ended up being guys. but im naturally wary of guys. and most around me end up being fucking republicans anyways. and another part of what’s getting to me is when i’m going about my life, i enjoy being stereotypically feminine. like i like to be taken care of, feel small , that bs. maybe it’s internalized misogyny that i feel like the only way i can be that is as a girl.

i also think i just have no idea what it would really feel like to go about the world non-binary. like i just want to keep blending into the background. i don’t want to be that noticeably different, i’m already autistic.

i think it’s also weird bc since middle school have been having periodic gender crisises but they always end in me just getting embarrassed, finding transmeds on the internet and also getting embarresed, not wanting to stop being feminine, or deciding it’s just not worth it.

and i think another thing is, i’ve always felt more connected to girls, but always on the outskirts of that, but that might just be because i’m autistic. but like i’m feminine in the sense that i like dresses. and being taken care of that and that shit. girls tend to really fucking irk me a lot of the times. i don’t really feel “connected” to them, more like “stuck” with them but making the best of it. some are pretty cool :) tbh it’s mostly just other autistic or queer girls i vibe with. other than that.. i struggle a lot to feel connected.

speaking of being autistic.... i’m realizing a lot of what i’m feeling is similar to how i felt when i first started to consider that i was autistic. when i was alone or in a space i was totally comfy in, i felt very confident that i was autistic. but when i was around people, i was like no i’m definitely not. and even now. i know i mask whenever i’m not alone. but i’m literally so fucking used to it it’s not hard at all. it hardly feels like a mask. just a different version of me. not the most authentic, but it’s how i operate around others. so whatever. not what i like per say. but in most cases, i can deal with it and still be perfectly happy (ish). this is exactly how i feel about all of this gender shit.

but i think part of my hesitancy to identify like this is i’ve never met ppl irl who identify as non-binary. that wouldn’t be a group for me to find and relate to and be comfortable with, i’d just be the different one. and i’m already different. and people don’t really get neopronouns and that shit.

ok and i’m anxious about my boyfriend as well. he’s a straight guy, idk how he’d feel about me being non binary. but i don’t want to sacrifice our relationship, so it’d be fine, because i also like my name and pronouns now. i like the shortened version of my name better tbh but i think my name sounds cool. mostly because saying it is a vocal stim for me, same with my partners name fore some reason. i just think they’re good names. they feel good to hear and say. and i’ve always been described that way and i’m like yeah that’s me.

i like dresses. feminine clothes? yes pleaseee. i like how girl are generally the ones who get taken care of. i like feeling small and dainty. i like being silly and cute. but like ... silly and cute arent like “girl things”?? but idk.

but i like “girl”. not “ladies” or “woman”. that feels too much like “female” and the only time i feel like i relate to that at all is in very specific situations. i’m feminine. i like that. i wish i could be feminine in an androgynous way tho????????

TL;DR: closing thoughts. if i were the only person on earth and i could do whatever i wanted like magically. i would change my appearance to look like my picrew... but like for an ex think Crona from Soul Eater of Ed from Cowboy Bebop. both of them are androgynous but when i see both of them i’m like they’re kinda feminine too! like that’s what i want to look like. i’d probably go by Citrus and neopronouns and maybe she/her (they’re fine but i feel like i’m lying about being non binary when i use them). ya know. how i want to be. but in reality. i am scared of that. it sounds like a lot of work and a big change that i could probably never really achieve. i also hate change. and constantly explaining shit.

also do cis people PINE over this shit the way i am? i’ve done this multiple times for years. not consistently bc tbh i have other shit i need to spend energy on but when i’m not pouring energy into somewhere else i tend to circle back to this. maybe that’s a sign that i’m right.

[dekusbrokenarms]

Class 1-A Gender and Sexuality Journey Headcanons

This is mostly just me really liking messy self discovery because I am a messy bitch.

Kyoka Jirou

First off, Kyoka is a trans girl. She socially transitioned when she was really young and began medically transitioning in high school bc her parents are super supportive and great (we stan a supportive parent)

She first thinks she's bi when she's 14 and comes out as such at 15

She dates Kaminari for a while second year and after they break up she's pretty certain she's a lesbian

After high school, she has a couple years where gender is kinda nebulus. For a while thinks she's a nonbinary lesbian but then decides she's just GNC and punk but definitely full girl

She gets more comfortable in her gender after that, but starts questioning her sexuality again

And ends up back at bisexual, but like not attracted to dudes. Girls and nonbinary people only please

Also she and Momo reconnect in their mid twenties and hit it off and get married

Denki Kaminari

Denki is completely comfortable calling himself straight up until he's 17

But don't get it twisted, he definitely was already acutely aware he was into dudes

Because wow boys are pretty

But he also just kind of ignores it because OMFG GIRLS

But after his other friends start coming out, he gets more comfortable thinking about his sexuality but doesn't bother labelling it

Specifically he doesn't want to label it because he gets comfortable with it after her starts dating Kyoka and doesn't want anyone thinking he's calling himself not-straight for dating her

But a couple months after he breaks up with Kyoka, he starts fooling around with Hitoshi and like really he's at the point of no return so he just slaps the bi label on himself and goes about his day

Towards the end of third year, he starts playing around with GNC and really vibes with the genderqueer label, but still uses he pronouns because he's used to them

He and Hitoshi break up after graduation and Denki really throws himself into exploring his gender and sexuality

And starts using he and they pronouns and typically dresses on the masculine side of androgynous but with lots of cool makeup

He gives polyamory a shot, but he keeps finding himself feeling like he's third wheeling other people's relationships and decides its not for them

In their late twenties, he and Hitoshi hook up at a reunion party and hit it off. They keep things casual for several months before suddenly they decide to move in together and in a blink of an eye, they're in a legit committed relationship without knowing how it got there but it feels right to them.

Eijirou Kirishima

No flavor for this one. He figured out he was gay when he was 12 and it stuck. His moms are lesbians and support him wholeheartedly.

Katsuki Bakugou

I think Bakugou also grew up with queer people in his life so he was never really in the closet

He was pretty certain he was asexual and aromantic until Kirishima weedled his way into his heart

At 17, he decides that he's probably demi-pansexual and demiromantic but that feels like too much so he just says queer.

This boy knows all the words though. Keeps very up to date with the local and global state of queer communities but doesn't talk about it unless prompted or provoked

At first he was very private about his relationship with Kirishima because it was no one's fucking business but after seeing the rampant homophobia in the hero business, he became very loud and very proud of his boyfriend very fast

Eijirou and Katsuki probably got married at, like, 21 and did not give one shit when people pointed out they were young. And they're together for the rest of their lives so those fuckers can suck it

Mina Ashido

Mina is your classic bisexual disaster and spends her teens and early twenties going between calling herself straight, bi, and a lebsian depending on who she's currently into because this bitch has zero object permanence

She chills out in her twenties though and is comfortable calling herself bisexual at long last

Hanta Sero

Sero is pretty comfortable being straight right up until all his friends come out

He spends a couple months questioning his sexuality before knowing for certain he's straight

But he's that one straight dude that always ends up dating bi and pan girls by complete happenstance

Hitoshi Shinsou

He really does not know what his sexuality is

Sometimes its yes

Sometimes its no

He says queer because he can't be assed to look into any of the microlabels

He just knows he's not straight and that's good enough for him

Momo Yaoyorozu

This girl is a lesbian but trying to convince herself of that was A PROCESS

She denies it for years and years

Its not until after graduation she thinks, but doesn't dare say, she's bi because she tells herself she's "mostly into guys anyway" so "it doesn't really count"

Slowly her percentage shifts away from guys and to girls

She's 23 before she accepts she's a lesbian

But she doesn't come out until she's 28 because she's scared since her parents expect her to end up with a man

Ochako Uraraka

This girl is mostly into guys. Like she's pretty sure she's straight because all the crushes she had so far have been on boys

When she's 18, she starts to suspect she might like girls too but is really too shy to explore that feeling at first

But when she does? Oh boy she will not stop talking about how wonderful and perfect girls are and how unfortunate her attraction to men is because she feels insecure in her validity as a bisexual woman with a preference for men

Tsuyu Asui

Tsuyu has known she's a lesbian since she was 15 and was very comfortable with that

She questioned if she might be bi a time or two but always came back to being gay

She does realize she's an ace lesbian at 18 though but she's also okay with that

Her goals in life are to own a house by a lake with a beautiful wife

Tenya Iida

Tenya is pansexual

Literally he just cannot see why gender would be a factor in choosing a potential partner

He never came out because he was 20 before he realized that this was not the default state and others weren't just being picky by having a different sexuality

And by then, every knew because he made no attempts to hide his partners

He was really stressed at first about it, and asked Tensei why no one ever told him he should be more careful with publicly showing his sexuality but Tensei was just like "we just thought you knew what you were doing, dude. And it looks like it worked out"

Izuku Midoroya

Again, Izuku is too swept up in "nghh girls pretty" to think too much about his sexuality when he's younger

When he gets a crush on Shouto, he doesn't recognize it as a crush at first because it felt so natural and comfortable and he was used to being uncomfortable around people he liked

So he has a crush on Shouto for years before it hits him: Oh I'm not straight

He stays in that nebulous not-straight state for months because he does not have time to deal with that

But once he stops procrastinating his sexuality, he cannot decide if he's bisexual or pansexual or polysexual and he gets super wrapped up in researching microlabels and its super overwhelming

He even questions his gender for a little bit but settles on he's a cis man pretty quickly

He does eventually start dating Shouto and just calls himself gay for a while because it's easier than trying to piece together ten microlabels like he's tempted to do

However after Shouto begins exploring his gender identity, Izuku gets more comfortable just calling himself pan because he realizes that gender never really played a part in who he likes.

Shouto Todoroki

He came out as gay at 14 to piss off his father depsite the fact he didn't actually have any feelings about his sexuality at the time

No he decided he didn't care what his sexuality was. He was gonna be gay.

And he forgot he did that until he was 17 and was like, oh- I should probably figure out my actual sexuality, after being questioned due to his close relationship with Izuku

So he thought about it for about 15 seconds to say, well, I do like Izuku so I'll just be actually gay now

That stuck until after graduation and into his twenties when he started questioning his gender

He figured out he wasn't particularly attached to masculinity or femininity and found comfort in the agender label

They started using gender neutral pronouns and grew their hair out long but that's really all that changed

They came back to their sexuality after that and decided it was just "men"

Izuku tried to be helpful and offered terms like androsexual, but Shouto didn't find them very useful so they like to tell people their gender is no and their sexuality is dude

It gets the point across

Yuga Aoyoma

Okay, so we all know he’s gay

But despite how flamboyant he is, this boy is a closet case

He definitely had a crush on Izuku first year, but he couldn’t handle that yet so he definitely lived vicariously through Ochako’s crush on him

I don’t think he came out until after high school

And zero people were surprised

He probably does drag too

And he’d look fabulous doing so

Kouji Koda

I think Kouji is ace 

I don’t think this is a word he had for himself until he was in his mid twenties

He just assumed he was a late bloomer and he’d been told he just had a low self esteem

But he finds the ace community and suddenly everything makes sense and he feels comfortable in his own skin

Once that falls into place, he discovers he’s also aromantic

He ends up having a platonic life partner and they have lots of pets and plants together

Fumikage Tokoyami

Fumikage figured out he’s bisexual when interning under Hawks. Like fuck, he had the most embarrassing crush on this guy who’s aesthetic is so embarrassing

I don’t think he had much trouble accepting that he’s attracted to guys though

Like a demon lives in his head

He’s mostly suffering because he has a crush on his cheerful, friendly mentor

Dark Shadow is very happy about this development because it’s a chance to embarrass him and make him uncomfortable

Fumikage gets renewed interest in being able to control Dark Shadow to shut his whore mouth

Unfortunately Dark Shadows outs him to his mentor

Fortunately Hawks is really cool about it and tells DS to have some chill and doesn’t give Fumikage a hard time about it, but Fumikage doesn’t get invited back for another internship with him and finds himself assigned to do work with sidekicks afterwards

Mezou Shouji

Mezou doesn’t fuck with gender

It’s not that he necessarily feels disconnected from his masculinity but rather that he just feels like gender is archaic and useless

So he’s pan and bigender (male and agender)

Definitely would make jokes about be attracted to frying pans and this is how he comes out to Fumikage in their third year. 

Rikidou Sato

Rikidou doesn’t really date in high school

Soon after graduation he ends up in a relationship with a girl that lasts five years before he realizes he’s gay

One time someone tells him he should have known sooner since he likes baking so much and he punches them in the face (I like to imagine this person was Mineta for face punching purposes)

He ends up good pals with the woman he was dating and she’s his maid of honor at his wedding :’)

Tooru Hagakure, and Mashirao Ojiro

I’m sorry if one of them is your fave. They’re both straight and cis and have never questioned it even once. 

[oreoambitions]

If this is too personal please feel free to just ignore this ask but I was wondering if you would ever consider talking more about being non-binary/ discovering that you were non-binary? I am only just at the point of beginning to accept myself as a baby enby so I love hearing other people’s experiences but I completely understand if that’s not something you’re comfortable talking about. Hope you have a great day either way and good luck with the firefighter :)

Hey friend, I’m more than happy to talk about it! Let me start by saying welcome to the enby club, and I’m so proud of you for exploring this part of yourself! I know it can be A Lot, and sometimes pretty scary, so I applaud you for the self examination and the bravery it takes to get to this point. It took me a long time to get to where you are. I was 26 when I got drunk (for the first time bc I’m a late bloomer whee) and told a group of friends that I thought I might be nonbinary. I was openly pretty hostile towards enby folks up until that point, and I hadn’t realized that this was the gender equivalent of really entrenching yourself in homophobia because you really wish you weren’t gay. It was another six months after that before I confided in a partner about it (sober). She asked if there was another name I wanted her to use, and then proceeded to never use it. Another six months and a breakup later I took some time to consider how that’d made me feel, and I came to the conclusion that it was at the very least time to change my name. I am still figuring out the rest. In retrospect there were a few signs. As a teenager my church held a coming of age ceremony split by gender and I didn’t know where to go. A church member asked me if I was trans - meaning, was I a boy - and I said no. I’ve always been pretty clear on that. They sent me to the women’s tent, but that didn’t fit right either. I was pretty clear about that too, but since I wasn’t a trans man I thought there was just something wrong with me that I was uncomfortable with womanhood.

For a while I thought maybe it was a body image problem. If I were prettier, I would feel more like a woman. If my teeth were straighter. If I lost weight. I put myself in the hospital running track and not eating because I was desperately trying to feel ‘right’ in my body. Spoiler: that did not work. It only made things more difficult.

Then I thought maybe I was just aggressively homosexual, that the part of being “female” that I was rejecting had to do with heteronormativity. But there were things touted as universal female experiences among the queer community that fit awkwardly too, and the word ‘lesbian’ chafed. I didn’t want it applied to me even though it described me. I couldn’t explain why not. A good friend of mine came out as nonbinary a few years back. They described it as knowing that they could play the roles of male or female poorly, or they could step into a role that was right for them and live to the best of their ability. That absolutely resonated with me (and scared the heck out of me at the time) and it’s something that I still hold up when I’m struggling with my identity. Does this identity fit me awkwardly? Then it might not be right for me, and that’s okay.

The question people ask me a lot is whether I’m “really” nonbinary, or whether I just don’t want to be perceived as a woman because society treats women so badly. Whether I’ve just internalized a negative image of womanhood, and whether in a more just society I wouldn’t feel that way. And to that I say... sure, I guess maybe that could be a thing. But we don’t live in a hypothetical just society; we live in this one, and in this reality that label doesn’t suit me.

I’m still really struggling to figure out pronouns - they/them isn’t wrong but seems like a political choice, but she/her isn’t right, and he/him is right but also implies a trans binary identity which isn’t right - and I’m constantly afraid that this is Another Reason it will be difficult or impossible to find a compatible life partner. I worry that presenting too masculine or too feminine will invalidate my identity. I worry that people read me as just wanting attention and won’t take me seriously. It’s some scary stuff. It would have been easier to stay in the closet and pass as cis. But then we wouldn’t be ourselves, and that’s more difficult in some ways.

Anyway, I’m not sure if that’s what you were looking for. If you have specific questions I’m more than happy to answer them! And you can always shoot me a message if you just want to chat/vent about enby things. Always here to support baby enbies, in or out of the closet. Sending you much affection and solidarity, and I hope you are keeping safe and sane out there!

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

An Obituary for Identity Politics

I began writing this text about a couple months before the uprising in response to George Floyd’s death. The uprising, which now has become a global event, has motivated me to share my perspective in this text. My experiences in Minneapolis from the 26th through the 31st of May have furthered my contempt for identity politics and so I have included additional critiques of it based on those experiences.

Rewind back to a time and place where people used pagers and pay phones. When front porches and public parks were the hang-out spots. A time when conflicts were resolved face-to-face and shit-talking came with real life consequences. These were the days before ‘call-out culture’, ‘troll-baiting’, and other internet-dominated social activities. Some say the internet and technological expansion have advanced the fight against oppression. My opinion? The internet is where all potential for social revolt goes to die. In addition to pointless petitions and endless memes, recognition as a rebel can be gained through pity parties and academic loyalty rather than hands-on direct action. While providing an excellent breeding ground for keyboard warriors and pretentious academics, the internet also allows for the stunted development of social skills necessary in navigating face-to-face communication. Conflict resolution takes the form of indefinite internet drama and at most an awkward in-real-life re-construction of judge, jury, and executioner. Face-to-face interaction is almost unnecessary in the techno-society where phones have become a personalized commodity seemingly fused to one’s hand. From a screen with adjustable dimming, a full spectrum of emotional expression can now be digitally represented from a cache of emoticons.

The internet is also a place where the lynch-mob mentality of “call-out culture” encourages people to view one another as one-dimensional beings – only defined by mistakes and imperfections. In the name of ‘social justice’ and ‘outing abusers’, a new statism emerges, utilizing fear and guilt to coerce allyship conformity. And similar to being charged by the State, once condemned on the internet, an individual may never escape that reputation. Instead, any or all personal growth and development remains trivial to the static nature of their past mistakes. Despite personal improvement, a convicted individual is sentenced to forever remain captive by the essence of their online portrayal.

In my experience as a ‘marginalized voice’ I’ve seen identity politics used by activists as a tool of social control aimed at anyone who fits the identity criteria of ‘oppressor’. The traditional power-struggle for equality has turned into an olympic sport for social leverage, inverting the same social hierarchy that should have been destroyed in the first place. Many identity politicians I’ve come across are more interested in exploiting “white guilt” for personal (and even capital) gain than physically confronting any organizational model of white supremacy. I’ve witnessed victimhood used to conceal blatant lies and bullying, motivated by personal revenge. All too often I have seen how identity politics creates a culture where personal experiences are trivialized to the point of passive silence. But this is all old news. Any experienced, self-identifying anarchist has seen or probably experienced some form of being ‘called-out’ or ‘cancelled’. So why do I bring it up? Because I still see this shit happening and I still see so many people lacking the courage to openly confront it.

I don’t expect this text to bring identity politics to a grinding halt. I am merely expressing my hostility for it and its authoritarian, anti-individualist nature. I still see self-proclaimed anarchists fussin’ over ‘white’ dreads (as well as seeing people cut their dreads under social pressure). I still see people justify voting like they did for Obama (this time it’s for Bernie). And I still see ‘allies’ mumbling frustration under their breath, too scared to confront the authoritarianism they see right in front of ‘em.

How many ‘white’ anarchists were called racist (or privileged) and shamed for refusing to vote this past 2020 election?

Imagine what anarchy would look like if people refused to obey the condescending demands of identity politicians. Would people feel more free to explore their lives beyond the narrow limitations of prescribed identity? Would they fearlessly reclaim their power to formulate their own opinions? Is there a joy to be experienced in the hysterical mockery of academic elitism?

Would this text be less valid if it wasn’t written by a queer person of color? What if I was a ‘white’, ‘cis’ ‘male’? Why would it matter?

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t. Because after all, this isn’t just about identity. This is about anti-authoritarian anarchy. If there is one thing I have seen the most in the past few years, it’s how identity politics moves like a plague, consuming every social space — ironically including anarchist circles. For me, anarchy is about destroying socially assigned identity and all the limitations it imposes upon the imagination. Anarchy is an individualist experience that finds itself held captive by the prison of assigned identity. Rather than destroying that prison along with the society that constructs it, anarchism today has become a cemetery of dead potential, internalized victimhood, and an ideological competition for who is ‘most oppressed’.

Rather than taking aim at identity itself and the apparatus maintaining this paradigm, energy is spent tearing one another down, ignoring the complexity of individual uniqueness, and playing the State’s role of defining each other based on membership to identity categories. Embracing a particular identity only reaffirms that identity’s existence as a ‘universal ‘truth’ – and therefore, by the colonial intentions of assigned identity, the servitude and enslavement of some to others as a universal truth as well.

I refuse to participate in upholding enslavement as a condition of my existence, and therefore these ‘truths’ are nothing more than political works of fiction. They are the products of a well-perfected, socially engineered god-complex that enters the mind like parasitic cordyceps, demanding unquestionable obedience. The atom of mental manipulation is a mind institutionalized by the incarceration of industrial society. Identity politics are the antiquated chains of colonization, polished by those who assign personal value to them. These ‘truths’ are the social constructs of control, keeping the life of rebellion shackled in a cold well of reform. And while many have become comfortable there, I have broken out to explore the infinite unknown terrain of hedonism and anti-political anarchy. ‘Black’, ‘Brown’, or ‘White’ power is the antithesis of freedom; it is the ideological charity work of a civilized, humanist form of rebellion. Identity politics is the sterilization of individuality, rendering it both obedient to the collectivist authority of identity and gullible to the nationalist myth of supremacy.

Ultimately, the ‘human’ is an animal domesticated with labels socially constructed to correspond to a hierarchy of economic status. And though this hierarchy has changed over the years, it is constantly held in place by a relationship of those who make demands and those who obey. No matter how the categories are arranged, the hierarchy represents authoritarianism; the group dominating the individual. What defines a ‘human’ is the degree of obedience and commitment to civilized roles and behaviors required by industrial society. The less cooperative a ‘human’ is, the more likely that ‘human’ will be compared to an animal. The animal is the undesireable being – even for the identity politicians who prefer to adopt the colonizers’ ideological anthropocentrism. Perhaps this explains why there is such little discussion on animal liberation in leftist-anarchist writing. The marginalized voice is more concerned with being portrayed as equal to the civilized colonizer than with the lost connection between their animality and the earth. At the core of leftist politics is the humanist aim for social equality within industrial progress — all while the earth continues to be cut up into nation-states and ravaged for anthropocentric exploitation and expansion.

It is my opinion that as long as one maintains a personal relationship with the ‘human’ identity, similar to ‘white’ or ‘male’ identities, the individual will only continue to reinforce the colonial paradigm of civilized vs savage. And as long as this reinforcement continues, the individual also remains vulnerable to imprisonment within other identity constructs that further suppress feral potential.

I wonder when or if anarchists in general will move beyond the group-mentality of leftism toward individualist insurgency — recognizing confrontation with identity as an act of personal emancipation. Will anarchists one day come to realize that anyone or anything above the individual represents an authority figure – whether it be “The Commune”, the “Movement”, or the cultural governance of identity? Maybe some, but I am sure not all.

The Victimhood Saint

After a 45 minute drive we finally arrive. It’s been a long day of retail theft and this is the last stop. It’s my turn and I plan to walk out with at least $500+ worth of merchandise for online resell. But I’m already gettin’ a bad feeling from this place. Unlike the other locations, this store is much smaller which to me means Loss Prevention will have a visual advantage watching the doors. Bigger places mean the enter and exit doors are spread further apart. In addition, the bigger the store, the more difficult it is to keep track of every shopper through the cameras. I decide to go for it anyways. Never know anything for sure until ya try.

I walk in, grab a cart and begin searching for the specific items I plan to take. I also scan the check out lanes and customer service desk. Two customer service employees busy chatting, check out lanes all blocked off except the one near the entrance and two near the exit. The entrance lane has a worker wiping down carts. One exit lane has a cashier, the lane next to it is totally empty. I take note of it as looking “too easy”, but I decide to refocus on where my items are located in the store. After loading my cart I start my journey to the exit. For anyone who shoplifts for a living, they know this is the exciting part. Every moment up to this point I’ve been just a regular shopper. But now, as I walk toward the exit, I begin to shed the costume of “shopper” and prepare for the criminal experience of “shoplifter”. As my heart starts to pound I feel my nerves initiate a well — developed calming response where I temporarily disassociate from the panic in order to keep my senses sharp and focused. I have to be ready for anything. And I still have to maintain my “regular shopper” face and body language. As I pass through the “too easy” lane everything looks good.

Customer service people are still chatting not paying attention, the one cashier is too busy ringing up someone to notice. I pull out my fake receipt and casually make my way through the first set of exit doors. If I was seen or caught, this is about the moment I would hear someone approach me from behind or feel someone grab my shoulder. Out the second set of doors, all is good. Time to start making my way toward the back of the parking lot – and then it happened...

Anyone who has ever shoplifted long enough knows these dreaded words: “Sir... Sir!”. I hear someone behind me yell out. I pretend to not hear it. Then I hear quick footsteps approach from behind. “Sir, I need to see your receipt” he says as he flashes me his Loss Prevention badge. Fuck. Where did this clean-cut lookin’ hipster see me? Must have been in the clothes area behind me... maybe that lane was a fucking trap? Doesn’t matter. Let go of the cart and walk away. I start to walk away and I hear “No no...sir we have to go back inside and fill out paperwork. Don’t worry you will not be arrested”. Yeah, fill out paperwork with all my information, have my picture taken for their records – fuck that. I continue walking away. Another LP runs out and is on the phone. This guy is on the phone with the police. I instantly realize the first guy was secretly stalling me till the police got there! I break out in full run. I hear them both running close behind me. I cross the street and bolt into a trailer park, zig zag between trailer homes and finally hide out in a steel shed. I force my paniced breathing to quiet deep breaths. I calm down and listen to them searching for me nearby.

Finally after not hearing them anymore I text my accomplices a rough idea of where I am. I come out of the shed, trying to tidy up a couple things that fell inside from when I stormed in there. The cops will be here any second. I see my accomplices car slowly drive by and wave em down. I jump in and lay down and we drive off.

I should have trusted my instinct. This was a bad run. But it could have been worse. Instead of being in jail tonight, I am comfortably here writing this text. But this is the reality of shoplifting – or any crime for that matter. No matter how many times you get away with it, it is important to expect to get caught one day. Be ready for it. And when it happens, study the panic, the emotions, the physical responses... know it all well. So the next time you engage in criminal activity, you have a better understanding of the worst case scenario. For me, this is elementary, and there is no place for victimhood or or an outcry of innocence.

While Covid-19 created the conditions for state repression in the form of “stay-at-home” orders, ironically my opportunity for illegalist fun has expanded! Many businesses are left unattended for weeks at a time, meaning property damage goes longer without being reported. In the midst of the panic, supermarket Loss Prevention and security personnel are focused on the number of items people purchase in each cart without realizing the cartloads of food quietly slipping out the other door.

Before shutting down, many stores like REI, L.L Bean and other places would deactivate their security towers. I am guessing this was due to the high volume of people passing through with purchased merch with hidden tags still attached. Probably to avoid the annoyance of the alarm going off every few seconds, the towers were turned off, leaving open a grand opportunity to simply walk out with security tagged items hassle-free.

The past few weeks got me revisiting old memories of when my understanding of anarchy was that of an activity that only lasted as long as a may day march, a demonstration, or night-time fun. I remember feeling like anarchy was the moment I wore black pants, shoes, gloves and a t-shirt around my face. After these activities it was back to the “real world”. Back to wage-slavery, back to the daily routine of paying rent and penny-pinching my food stamps for groceries. Sure, there was the occasional clandestine activity along with tabling zines at punk shows or radical events. But there was this divide that always created a separation, always treating anarchy like an extra-curricular activity. Sure, my life was committed to rebellion; the very concept of a zine distro before I named it “Warzone Distro” was conceived while wasting company time on the shitter. Despite wage-slaving, my mind was always fixated on understanding how to cut corners and work the least for the most amount of money. I was the worker who handed my extra hours over to others. Half-day at work due to light truck load? Hell yeah, I’m out!

Over time, anarchy as mere extra-curricular activity just wasn’t enough. And what I mean by that is I became less and less tolerable of bosses, wage-slaving, alarm clocks, paying rent, and penny-pinching. I remembered what it was like being a kid and not having to conform to such obligations. I remembered adventuring all day outside from early morning to late at night. Everyday was a new adventure, and everyday I was learning something new about myself. Then, as a responsible adult I was learning something new about myself. I hated adultism, adulting, and the performative role and identity of “adult”. But I wasn’t tryin’ to become a child again. Those days have come and gone. I began to wonder what an anarchist life that transcended the adult/child binary could look like.

Fast forward years later here I am, jobless but no longer penny-pinching, and older but more youthful than I have ever been. Some say I am the worst of all worlds; hedonistic, violent, and childish. Of course, what these words mean and how they are applied to me is subjective to interpretation, but one thing is for certain; I feel far more free than I have ever felt and experienced. And I have a love affair with crime. It is an intimate experience — committing crime with a furious contempt for society and the law. Causing disruption and getting away with it compliments my desires for anarchy moment by moment. Nowadays I adventure all day outside from early morning to late at night. And with every criminal activity I am learning more and more about myself. In addition to accepting the fact that my days of joy-riding the fuck out of life will either end in prison or sudden death, I am learning to appreciate the present more than the past or future.

One thing about crime that I have come to realize is a uniqueness that comes with breaking the law, a sense of individual ability, inability, strengths and weaknesses. All are discovered within the experience of breaking the law. And it is this experience that I intend to expand in order to discover more about myself, becoming ungovernable in an anti-social sense.

I reflect back on my past self imprisoned by the cult of identity-politics. I remember how one reason to glorify victimhood was to gain social attention and portray the (marginalized) identities assigned to me in a positive light. “Look at me! A responsible queer person of color holding down a job as a law-abiding citizen!”. But why? So I could prove how similar I was to all those ‘white’ hard-working class heroes that America needs to uphold its colonial establishment? Another wage-slave to passively, willfully accept the conditions of my enslavement? To become another christian of color pretending there is an imaginary kingdom above for all us hoodlums that just never got a fair chance in life? Fuck all that.

The reasons for white supremacists, homophobes, patriarchs, and patriots to fear people like me is beyond identity politics; I am a sworn enemy of their control and order. The societal castle they seek to build and maintain will always be the target of my sabotage!

I think most people can see and understand that embracing socially assigned identities is not necessary for understanding how society utilizes them as tools for social control. I think it is equally as easy to see how identity as a tool of revolution is limited and in fact has led to internal conflict within many revolutionary projects. But what blows my mind is the fact that for so many, these identities were not immediately rejected as a primal, personal form of rebellion. But to be fair I think it is safe to say that these identities maintained the power they do because they are so frequently used by leftist organizations for moral persuasion. Through victimhood and innocence, identity politics is used as an appeal-to-all method of creating group-think that ultimately encourages an individual to surrender independent thinking to a god-complex of morality and collectivism. I think this also plays a pretty big role in statism and the rejection of illegalist revolt.

I reject the statist, civilized binary of guilt and innocence, and therefore also reject the internalization of victimhood. I have no use for “call-out culture” or an internet lynch-mob against my enemies. On the internet, attempts to gain public support against one enemy only informs and empowers another enemy (the state) to confiscate my responsibility. And guilt and innocence is a legalistic binary that only serves to judge and divide based on moral determination. I despise the State, all its social manifestations, and it’s enforcement of repression against chaos. Therefore I am not a victim; I am a self-declared enemy in a war against it. I don’t expect pity, a pardon or charity from it, nor from its defenders.

It was the day Chicago issued its Stay-At-Home order. My partner-in-crime and I were in my home town visiting my mom. While driving home from getting my mom some groceries I notice someone sitting on a park bench alone. “Big Momma” is her name. I was surprised to see her outside in the cold and not indoors at one of the local shelters. Come to find out the shelters had closed their doors probably related to Covid-19. I started to wonder how many others were outside in the cold...

My partner and I head over to a park that I used to do Food Not Bombs at and to my surprise there are about 20 people set up camp outside a building’s air vent blowing out warm air. We walk over and ask how everyone is doing. Some people, after recognizing me from activist projects years ago, excitedly run over to greet me. They are all the unlucky ones locked out of the shelters at least for that weekend. My partner and I get back in the car and come up with a plan.

A half hour later we are at another grocery store. Unlike other times, getting out of this one with free food is going to be a little difficult. The set-up has changed due to heightened security at the door due to Covid-19 and the fear of looting. But it is still possible to get out with a full cart. We load the bottom of the cart with bottled water, multiple loaves of bread, peanut butter, jelly, over 20 bags of mixed dried fruit, fresh apples and bananas. Were ready. We make our way to the door with me leading. My role is to peer around the corner at two self-check out clerks to make sure they aren’t looking. If they are, I will pull out my phone like I am making a phone call. If not, I keep walking forward. My partner and the cart close behind, the coast is clear. First set of doors... second set of doors... all good. Finally get to the car and unload into the trunk. Success! Next stop is another grocery store, but we won’t be getting food at this one: we’re raiding the men’s and women’s bathrooms for huge rolls of toilet paper. The dispensers can be a little loud opening sometimes, but relatively easy to do with any kind of house key. Two backpacks filled with about three huge rolls each, we are all set.

Back at my moms we clean our hands thoroughly before making bags and bags of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Once we finish with that were off back to the homeless encampment. Every person gets two sandwiches, two apples, two bananas, some dried fruit and a bottle of water. In addition we wrap the toilet paper rolls in the grocery bags to keep dry and pass them out. We stick around for a bit and exchange laughs and talk shit on the cops. It was good to make new friends and catch up with old friends. It was good to see they were all maintaining and in high spirits despite the circumstances of the weather and the shelter closures. We left and decided to check other parks for people. Found a few lone wolves who happily took what we had left of the water and sandwiches. We arrive back at my mom’s house and settle in for the night. I open the fridge and giggle while scanning over all the stolen vegan food contemplating what to have for dinner.

The Allyship Coward

In my opinion, the concept of “Allyship” started with good intentions, but like other aspects of identity politics became sour and ready for immediate disposal. Here is how I feel about “Allyship”: If you need a politicized buzzword and concept to motivate you to build bonds with people across gendered or racial categories, your “solidarity” is disingenuous. If your style of communicating is loaded with talking points pre-approved by some Woke Ally 101 workshop, you have become a free-range puppet. Genuine mutual aid or solidarity doesn’t require trendy twitter phrases to motivate bond building. In other words, don’t work with me only because that’s what you read is the “right” thing to do, or because your progressive college professor told you to. Don’t kiss my ass and follow me because I am a victimized, ‘marginalized’ or ‘poc voice’. Or because your friends or comrades will guilt you. Don’t let something as fake as socially constructed categories define our relationship. Work with me only if you personally enjoy our interaction, my personality and most importantly you want to out of individual desire. I don’t believe in coercive mutual aid: it makes a fool out of two people at once.

There are also those who assume they know how other people think based on racial and gendered assumptions. These are the identity politicians who act as both police and representatives of others, coercing allyship through guilt and shaming campaigns. Using their identity, they declare themselves beyond reproach while utilizing a passive-aggressive method of communication for intimidation. But in my opinion, nobody is obligated to support or listen to them, or any one, especially based on something as flat as identity. I am always weary of those who talk as if they represent the interests of people they have never met. It is foolish to think that just because people are socially assigned similar identities that every individual subscribes to the stereotypes of those identities.

Identity politics has successfully offered an understanding of how civilized society works, but as a solution to tearing it all down only leads to boundary policing identities, nationalism, internalized victimhood, and more stereotypes for people to find themselves fighting against.

Wanna know someone’s experience? Interact with them directly. Don’t make assumptions based on social constructions. Wanna show solidarity with people? Treat them as individuals with unique experiences and histories, not as mere drone members of homogenized groupings. And to those who still obey without questioning, another word for white ally is still coward!

The Woke Leadership

Personally, I don’t like to use the word “educate” to describe the communication of ideas between two individuals. “Educate” implies the instillation of universal “truths” rather than the horizontal exchange of personal perspectives. The context of which I see this word “Educate” used the most reinforces a social hierarchy between those who are “woke” and those who are not. Do people actually learn anything when the communication of ideas is asserted in a top-down manner? Maybe. But I prefer not to entertain that hierarchy.

Individual people are more than just ‘white’, ‘brown’ or ‘black’, ‘male’ or ‘female’, or whatever social construction assigned to them at birth. Therefore, communicating with identity-based assumptions will almost always come off as condescending. I see shit like “educate your friends”, or “get educated”, as if to direct toward a Church of Social Justice in order to be “awakened”. And apparently the capitalist mentality of further monetizing information is acceptable without question. Some think the ‘labor’ of answering questions merits a wage, citing something as voluminous as a Google search if one is unable to pay. Ironically, many questions come in good-faith, and are from well-intending activists who endure being talked down to in the first place. In my opinion, this elitist way of responding to well-intending people discourages their empowerment by trivializing their personal histories and guilting them into accepting others as paramount. There is a collectivism to this method of “educating” which creates the foundation of another social system of coercion. I have no interest in contributing to the materializing of that. I can offer a critical view or counter a point without socially stratifying the exchange.

I consider each and every individual mind a rushing, wild waterway of ideas that spill out when the dam of social subordination breaks down. Society collectively discourages any wildness, domesticating the individual and ultimately creating a caged animal within the mind. Beneath all the social conditioning there is a unique individual that discovers itself in chaotic contradiction with society.

Uniformity is the enemy of free expression. There is no “education”, only popular opinion enforced by those who intend to think for others. I think ideas and perspectives can be exchanged in a way that doesn’t resemble an authoritarian model of top-down communication. I’m not an educator and I seek to educate no one. Rather, as they grow and develop, I share my personal experiences and ideas with the world with the understanding that others will differ and have unique experiences of their own.

For example one thing that I have come to realize is that the illegalist life isn’t for everyone. I have seen some people do it for a while and ultimately break under the weight of the very real stress of criminal activity. So when I write these words about criminality – and my contempt for identity politics – I speak only for myself. When I began writing “Descending into Madness”, it was the same night I had walked out of a Seattle REI with two packs worth over $300 each. The security tower alarms never went off as I walked right out with two rope-style security tags attached. Prior to walking out I joked with myself that my criminal affairs indicated that I was descending into madness because attempting this was fucking crazy. And then I was successful. And I realized on the car ride home that if it wasn’t for entertaining such courageous insanity I might not have never known that some of these stores have non-operational security towers.

In my opinion, the “Woke Leadership” of leftism leads anarchism over a cliff into a downward accelerating disintegration. Paralyzed by the fear and shame enforced by a new order, some anarchists will never make it to self-emancipation, or independent thinking as a rejection of group-think authority. It is by a narrow, liberal definition of anti-oppression that many individuals define themselves as anarchists – a type of definition that limits anti-oppression to the moralist, humanist confines of civilized society. It is not a coincidence that most anti-oppression praxis requires a statist apparatus to enforce laws that accommodate equal rights. And while there’s nothing wrong with people having equal rights under capitalism, that victory celebrates the power of statist reform rather than anti-authoritarian attack. And in front of this statist power are the “community leaders” or those who have no interest in critiquing authority. Instead, they have built their socio-political careers on petty reforms in the name of “the community” and scold radicals – calling them “outside agitators”. And following behind these leaders are ‘white’ anarchist allies, confused and frustrated, trying to decide between being called a racist for setting shit on fire or a good ally for kissing a ‘black’ preacher’s ass.

“What you or I may or may not consider ‘tactical’ isn’t really relevant. This is less a war in the traditional sense and more a storm -uncontrollable and chaotic. This is one of the problems with the left’s characterization of ‘the movement’ as something uniform, monolithic, and ideologically consistent. It isn’t. It won’t be. ‘The movement’ consists of a million individuals with their own individual views and opinions and actions, and it does no one any good to deride anyone who isn’t doing things exactly the way you see fit.” Baba Yaga

Another Word For “Black Leadership” is Authoritarianism

After marching, we arrive at the 3rd Precinct at East Lake St and Minnehaha Ave. BLM organizers begin howling into the megaphone about demands, with a few prayers and droning chants mixed in. I notice someone slowly creeping up behind me who starts bangin’ his fist on the window. Concerned it will break, three bystanders begin quietly shaming him “this ain’t the place for that, keep it peaceful!”. The person responds back quietly but with angry tension in his voice “that’s the fuckin’ problem, y’all muthafuckas never wanna do shit except march and chant...”. Discouraged, he starts to walk away. “I’m with you on that shit fo real tho” I tell him. “That’s what’s up – fuck all this other shit” he responds while walking away. A minute or so later, I lose my patience for listening to BLM talk about being peaceful and decide to go look for that same individual again. I round the corner to the back of the police station and notice a commotion. A group of about 5–7 ‘black’ folks are blocking the back glass doors of the police station, arguing with a group of about 20 ‘black’ and ‘brown’ angry youth – including the one from earlier. Unable to contain my own frustration I get caught up arguing with the police-defenders as well. Finally, in the middle of the shouting a couple of ‘black’ and ‘brown’ youth begin spray painting “fuck 12” near the commotion. Cheers behind me erupt from a crowd that has now tripled in size. A brawl breaks out near the doors, and then a single rock smashes through the precinct window and is immediately followed by a hail storm of rocks, street cones, water bottles, and anything else within reach. The group of 5–7 ‘black’ pacifists cry out in desperation to stop the destruction, going as far as attempting to physically detain people, but ultimately are overwhelmed. They try to collect the rocks after being thrown and find themselves in multiple physical confrontations while doing so. People from the front of the building run over and join in on the vandalism. Eventually after every window is smashed the crowd moves toward the police parking lot and begin damaging police cars. I finally pause to catch a breath when I hear a stun grenade go off. The police run out from another door and begin shooting rubber bullets and tear gas. The crowd disperses but with hysterical laughs of joy and accomplishment. The 3rd Precinct is in ruins — and little did I know this was all just the beginning.

The very next day a bigger crowd of mostly ‘black’ and ‘brown’ youth showed up and continued to wage war on the 3rd Precinct. By night, a three mile radius was liberated from police control by the people on those streets. The 3rd Precinct was breached and taken over. Police abandoned the area all together. Their building was looted and cop cars driven into the street and set on fire. A Target across the parking lot was broken into and looted along with other stores nearby. People celebrated the victory by shooting off their guns in the air. Strangers sang and danced around burned out cop cars, exchanged high-fives in passing, and shared looted food. People casually socialized in front of burning buildings while others threw rocks through the remains of store front windows for target practice.

While it might have seemed like a perfect utopia, it wasn’t divorced from reality. Fights broke out between small factions of people and long-awaited personal conflicts were solved in the now cop-free streets. Business owners shot and killed looters and low-income housing units burned to the ground. But this is the difference between the textbook, sugar-coated ideologies of politics and raw, unmediated rage. The revolt didn’t happen due to any teachings of Mao or religious messages from a god. The fires, looting, and attacks against police didn’t need Marxism, a transcript of The Coming Insurrection, or an academic course on the history of anarchism. All that was needed was the chaotic expression of rage against representations of authority.

As expected, many people on the internet – including many self-proclaimed anarchists — passed judgement on the situation – most often coming from an ideological position that placed value in uniformity and a narrowed range of “acceptable” forms of revolt. In my experience, uprisings like this flourish best when least controlled or organized. The more that expressions of anger are controlled and organized the less anarchistic they become — essentially becoming pacified to accommodate a particular political vision. For me that is undesirable and also unrealistic. Destruction is destruction, violence will be violence, and to expect an uprising to be anything less is naive at best. While some can sit on the sidelines and moralize specific tactics or forms of emotional expression, they disregard the reality that full-fledged warfare has no inherent morality. Businesses that were boarded up and declared “black owned” weren’t spared by any moral consideration; they too were broken into, looted, and subsequently burned to the ground.

Also, in my opinion, the more uncontrollable and unmanageable an uprising remains, the less likely the police will have the ability to adapt to its formation and dominate it. The police had the least control over hundreds of individuals rebelling in such a chaotic manner as to overwhelm them and send them fleeing.

Over the next few days, attacks against the 5th Precinct happened while liberals, pacifists, and identity politicians quietly crawled back to avenge their loss and inability to control the first riot. The internet became their ground zero for one of the worst campaigns of lies and fear mongering I have personally ever seen.

As the victories of burning cop cars and police stations circulated online from all over the states, liberals rushed to the scenes in a desperate authoritarian attempt to assert their ideological morality and political program. They insist on a narrative that labels anyone who engages in sabotage as a “white supremacist” or “undercover cop” “infiltrating” the uprising.

Many of these liberals are the same ‘black’ people who failed to stop ‘black’ and ‘brown’ rebels from looting and destroying property. They failed to convince all ‘white’ people to evacuate the riots (because even some ‘white’ people knew not all ‘black’ or ‘brown’ people have a problem with them being there – recognizing their value as accomplices). And in an effort to preserve capitalist, reformist values, liberals of all races sought to halt the looting and vandalism by bombarding social media with blatantly false information. This false information is riddled with catch phrases like “outside agitators” and “white supremacists” in order to emotionally motivate readers to chose a side within a false dichotomy. And those who are not physically on the streets or there with rebels battling police are the target audience of these narrowed, inaccurate representations of reality.

Different ideological motives create different interpretations of events. And since liberals and pacifists tend to dominate social media more than those who are too busy out in the streets, they have an advantage. And since liberals morally frame all people of color as obedient, victimist heroes, most people have difficulty admitting that people of color are capable of destroying property and participating in violent forms of protest. This also plays into the compulsion to blame ‘white’ people for forms of rebellion considered morally undesirable. Riots/uprisings are not all utopian and pretty. They are the dangerous elements of liberation that occur when all other options have failed. Whether people are afraid of violence or not won’t change the fact that police kill, and will continue to kill as long as the concept of law enforcement exists. In my opinion there is no “bettering” the police, and there is no “justice” when someone is already being buried six feet deep.

And the police are not all ‘white’. ‘Black’ cops kill ‘black’ people too.

The worst part about the online interpretation of events is that the people spreading this misinformation fail to communicate to the online-world the joy, smiles, singing and dancing of racially diverse rebels as they celebrated the destruction of the 3rd Precinct.

I mean shit, imagine being a person of color, harassed by police all your life, and then a day and night comes when you actually get to see a police station burning, and police completely abandoning the area. All this is erased from history when liberals credit it all to a group of people — white supremacists — who didn’t exist in those battles in the first place.

To this day as I write this, there are still people spreading conspiracy theories on the internet like the famous “brick bait” video of cops unloading bricks (behind their own building – not in an alley as originally propagated). While I can’t say for absolute certainty that there were no white supremacists at the events at all (I mean I saw some driving past in pickup trucks yellin’ white power shit, and the ‘brown’ dude who rolled up in a truck rockin’ pro-police slogans and a confederate flag) I sure as hell didn’t see any in the battles. I have seen pictures of ‘black’ people locking arms to protect riot police, white allies turning other ‘white’ people over to the police in the name of ‘black’ support, and ultimately police regaining control and using these pacifying efforts to brutalize peaceful protesters.

Feral Delinquency

It is my opinion that the last months expose weaknesses of civilization in very obvious ways. Governmental control had increased as a panic response to social tension and spontaneous ruptures of illegal activity. Covid-19 broke the order of daily productivity and civilized slavery, leaving people more time to contemplate their lives and the value of their free time outside of working. The uprisings in response to the murder of George Floyd demonstrated the weaknesses of the police power and control – even at their own home base. At this point I have no earthly idea what will come next.

I admit to finding it fascinating to see non-human animals and the earth flourish in the midst of our industrial despair. To see clearer skies, various animals walking the streets, flooding that loosens the foundation of this concrete jungle. I can’t help but feel both the pandemic and these continued ruptures against authority are better than a return to normality; a normality where death from industrial civilization and the State is as routine as a slaughterhouse in full operation.

I wonder what kinda conversations people are having with each other or with themselves during this blooming destabilization of domesticated order. Will more and more people seize this opportunity to express anger and frustration through random acts of violence and sabotage against one another? Against law enforcement? Against the institutions that have become weaker due to financial loss and now stand more vulnerable than ever? I can only hope the uprisings continue in some capacity – above or below ground which is personally more favorable for me at this point.

Will people beg for the return of the old daily misery of monotony, or will they explore the depths of permanent uncertainty? Return to work or rewild? I guess only time will tell.

But here, I can only speak for myself. My anarchy is my own, as are my thoughts and words in this text. I don’t write to impress any club of internet anarchists who flex intellectual texts for self-congratulatory praise. I make my diary public in an antagonistic effort to mock the victimist, anti-individualist narrative of leftism which currently dominates contemporary anarchism.

I don’t wish for a return to normality and the daily misery of industrial production. I have no desire to celebrate ridiculous “victories” such as police accountability, firings, or prison terms – which will only be followed by the rebuilding of their ruined precincts or perhaps an equally authoritarian “community-based” replacement. I desire nothing less than the total abolition of all governance and policing. And perhaps those who hold some form of elitist power will find me undesirable and will orchestrate a smear campaign against me, banning my writing and “cancel” me from their Movement. But little would they know that the days and nights, between wide fields and the stars, and between the tree tops and the ground – is the domain of my adventure! And with it is a joy that follows anarchy as a vibrant life experience rather than a measure of social capital online, or a theory frozen in an academic journal.

The internet has created a culture of desperation for social continuity and digital validation. It is the breeding ground for “new” concepts of anarchism that are nothing more than communist corpses with hipster aesthetic. Anti-civ anarchy, impregnated by leftism now displays the extent of its power with endless twitter debates on “eco-fascism”. Twitter — a place where reclaiming one’s life and body is shamed by the disciples of privilege politics – is a graveyard of voices glorifying their own death-by-internet.

My animalism looks nothing like adopting the imagery and behaviors of existing animals. Instead it is the silhouette of an illegalist, feral menace dancing around the burning prison of domestication. My abandonment of victionhood is a foreclosure on both the pity politics of morality-based organizing and the sainthood of innocence. My anarchy is an obituary for identity politics. It is a personal insurgency without a future, a dream without the anaesthesia of hope, a declaration of joy with the lifespan of an exploding bomb.

This text is dedicated to all those rebels whose only negotiation with authority is fire and destruction...I am forever inspired by your courageous wrath across racial and gendered lines... To the youth who made history on May 26th, to the rebels who perished, and to those currently held captive for their part in this war against the state. RIP George Floyd

[benene-the-banana]

So I have a very important announcement (Coming Out)

And I know to many of you I may not find this to be very important but this is to me so that’s what I’m gonna call it

So as it’s known I am LGBTQ+ because I’ve mentioned it before and now I have something involving that to update y’all about that.

No it’s not that I’m not LGBTQ+ anymore. I very much so am but now I guess you can say I’m even more queer

So I know I have mentioned before that I was a “cis female” but I don’t think that’s the case anymore

I’ll be honest with you guys that is when I was in denial. Very much so in denial.

Because this has been a scary process for me and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared rn about coming out about this

But after a lot of thought and talking things out with a friend who is non-binary themselves and knows a lot about how being trans works because they also did a lot of research on it when figuring things out for themself

We came to the conclusion I’m probably not cis because after talking to them I realized how not only how in denial I’ve been

But also seeing that I have been denying my dysphoria as well and have been passing it off as something else

Im still figuring things out but I’ve decided that now I’m finally gonna start experimenting with labels and see what fits me

Because its so tiring trying to pretend I’m something and someone I’m not

And I think the label I’m gonna test out first is

Genderfluid

It fits best with how I feel so far about my gender identity

I’m still really anxious about coming out. But for now I’m only doing so on a few social medias so far because I don’t want to risk some people finding out so I’m only posting on medias I’m aware they don’t have for safety and comfort

I don’t want to hide from who I am anymore I just wanna be able to be me

But I will still take the baby and safety steps I need to in order to do so

Now to get any possible questions out of the way

Are you faking this? Doing it for attention?

No I am not faking this. I understand this is out of the blue for me but I assure you I am not faking. I’ve finally been coming to terms with it is all. And I’m finally making that much more public other than hintings of it on my Twitter acc. I would never fake something like this. I hope you can trust my word on that

Have your preferred pronouns changed?

No not really. I go by all Pronouns still

BUT

If you want any specific pronouns to refer to me as those pronouns would be She/They/Em/He/Xe

And I do ask every now and then that he/him and ey/em are used a little more often within those periods because it gives me euphoria

Do you have any new preferred names?

No you may still refer to me as

Benene (pronounced Ba • nee • nee)

Banana

or

Bean

And if we’re close and you know my irl name you may refer to me as that but I do prefer the name Benene

Do you have any plans to get a official gender dysphoria diagnosis?

Possibly yes! I do plan on coming out to my therapist soon and telling her everything so hopefully she can help me out on that which I’m sure she will :)

And those are all the questions I can think of answering rn. If you have any more u can ask I don’t mind answering! As long as it’s nothing outright offensive or inappropriate.

This is all I have to say for now involving this. Thank you for hearing me out on this if you did. If I have any updates involving my gender identity I will post them but for now this is all.

[genderfluid-existence]

Hi, I’ve been questioning if I’m genderfluid on and off for some time now, and so I thought I’d ask for advice from someone who knows that they’re genderfluid

1. Before you knew for certain that you were genderfluid did you feel like there were possibly other people in your head besides you? Not in a dissociative identity disorder kind of way, but something else? (sorry for the bad wording there)

2. What were some more obscure signs you were genderfluid?

3. Part of the reason why I don’t want to say I’m genderfluid is bc I’m worried actually cis, and that I’m just pretending to be genderfluid due wanting to fit in w/ my friend who is trans/wanting to be more queer than I already am (I already know I’m somewhere on the bi+ spectrum), it’s a coping mechanism for my semi-not-good mental state. (sorry again for the bad wording), do you have any advice regarding this?

Sorry a third time for the bad wording, but I need advice, and this seems like a good way to get it.

Howdy 🤠

I'm always very happy to help, but as always, keep in mind that you are the only person who can say what your gender is, what will make you happiest, and what is the right choice for you. I can only speak from my own experience.

1. Oh boy, quite a question right off the bat. The answer is kind of, I guess. I've actually wondered if I had DID for a long time. I almost certainly don't, but it's definitely very easy to worry that you've confused the two.

It's sort of hard to answer because I don't know specifically what you mean, if not in a DID way. But I'm curious, so do elaborate if you'd like.

I am not a different person when I am a different gender, but it's possible to think of my gendered selves as "personas" in a way, so in that way, I suppose you could explain it like that.

I also engage in a lot of self-dialogue and self-reassurance, which often manifests in my thoughts being formed in a conversational way (including the pronouns you. And yeah, I feel a little weird about it this, but it doesn't seem to cause any issues). There's nothing that indicates that I feel that there is another enitre person on the ends of these mental conversations, let alone that the two ends are different genders. However I still have yet to understand a lot about my inner workings. Some may judge this as a disorder.

Finally, I think I have some identity-formation problems. Including the fact that I often feel like my mental understanding of how I present to people changes a lot. Not strictly in a gender way, nor in a DID way (at least I hope not). I just have trouble forming a stable image of "me", so sometimes it can feel like I'm different people.

2. Hmm, interesting. I'm sure there are many that I have yet to identify since they come with time.

When I was a child I remember having a minor fascination with having a male version of myself. I've found an old drawing of myself next to an imagining of a male version of myself.

Also, I imagine that if questioning is especially long and difficult, it could be a sign of fluidity. I say this because if you feel one way for a period of time and another way for another period of time, it can feel like these experiences contradict each other, and it's abysmally confusing. Like, why don't any of my feelings line up??? If I'm a man, shouldn't I feel like a man all the time? Yesterday I didn't feel that way.

Grain of salt: questioning can be long and confusing for anyone, and dysphoria can fluctuate even for gender-solid folks.

Also, there are some indicators of being trans in general.

For example, dissociative dysphoria is a less discussed manifestation of dysphoria in which you just don't feel real/your surroundings don't feel real.

Also, irrational avoidance. When I was younger, my sister used a lot of highly feminine pet names and terms of endearment, it was just her style. But being around her made me incredibly dysphoric because of these reminders of how she saw me. So eventually I came to associate her with those bad feelings, even though I had no explination for the feelings, since this was before I even knew of transness as a concpet. It took me a while after she stopped to realize Oh shit, that's what it was. Now we've been on much better terms for years.

Also, there are signs that can be indicators of any number of psychological distress (so they could be explained by other mental health issues) like extreme escapism, sleep issues and other depressive symptoms, dissociation, aggression, anxiety, avoidance of social situations, etc.

3. This is common. Firstly, nothing is stopping you from claiming a label. Absolutely nothing. Coming out to yourself doesn't mean you have to come out to others, transition, or take any other steps. So if you're wrong, so what? A label does no harm.

What can have the potential to do harm is transitioning unnecessarily. If you think it's a maladaptive coping mechanism, my only advice is to seek counseling before taking any steps that you think you might regret.

I've never heard of a person worrying that they want to be more queer than they actually are. And indeed I've never heard a detransitioner point to this as an issue. The only thing I could think of, is perhaps a sort of munchausen syndrome where you would theoretically try and gain """ oppression points.""" To be clear, I don't think this is very likely, but not impossible. In that case if it really worries you, I would again seek counseling, since that sounds like a symptom of a larger issue.

I've not quite cracked the nut of what if it's social pressure??? to be honest. And immitation is certainly a common trait among young people (assuming you're young). So, quite honestly, is it possible that you (and I) have tried on the trans label out of imitation of peers? Yeah.

I don't know if there's a solution to this (except of course counseling) other than careful trial and error. Trying on aspects of the male (or female) role and testing to see if it makes you uncomfortable or comfortable. Indeed, many aspects of social and sexual dimorphism can be very evocative of euphoria/dysphoria. Like, being called she/her might elicit relatively minor euphoria/dysphoria, but (cw: AFAB dysphoria) the idea of being vaginally penetrated? Yeah, most people will have a pretty strong reaction to that one (cw: end).

In short, sometimes these worries about "What if it's X?" don't always have an easy answer, and I don't think any trans person can solidly eliminate the question forever. I have a friend who's more than 2 years on T and still occasionally worries that he's secretly cis. But the fact that doubt lingers doesn't stop trans people from transitioning.

I want to be careful here to not seem like I'm saying that you should run right into transitioning with no caution. I just want to frame your doubts in perspective. If gender affirming steps feel uncomfortable, and you find yourself surrounded by doubts, then it's important to listen to that and take a step back. But if you're 90% certain that transition is right for you, but that 10% of doubt is scaring you away, try and put it in perspective. There's a 10% chance you'll regret transitioning, and 90% chance that you'll regret not transitioning. And sometimes only time and experience can close the gap between 90% and 99%.

Gahhh, I seem to be infinitely apt at bloviating; sorry 🥴. Hopefully something in my essay of a response can be of use to you.

[nonbinaryresource]

I've been coming to terms with being enby for two years now, and "genderfluid" best fits me. But lately I've been scared of feelings so male. My ideal body and name is closer to a cis-guy than anything androgynous, but that scares me because I've always wanted to be a mother and like the idea of womanhood. I know I'm not a woman, but I don't want to loose the woman part of me. I'm scared of one day realising I'm a transman and not just enby. I don't know how to not be scared of this. :/

I know this seems contradictory, but... let yourself be afraid. Let yourself cry and grieve and freak out. Pushing these feelings down and trying to deny them and trying to just get over them without processing them and understanding how to move past them is just going to make these feelings get worse and boil over and explode.

It’s okay to be afraid. Even if you love being genderfluid, even if you’re extremely proud, this does change your understanding of yourself and what you want. That’s a scary thing! Your future seems to be changing from the picture you’ve always had. Your identity is different from how you’ve understood it for so long. Even exploring these feelings for two years doesn’t erase your past or past you or mean you have to have been over these feelings.

So, let yourself be afraid. Because it is a scary thing you’re going through! Let yourself grieve. Just because you may eventually be happier and more comfortable and more settled in your genderfluid identity one day doesn’t mean you aren’t still experiencing a loss. A part of my coming to terms with being nonbinary and genderqueer also involved grieving for the woman and girl I’d been, and I didn’t even want to be a mother as another layer on top of that. What you’re feeling is perfectly natural. You don’t have to punish yourself for this or ignore and deny these feelings. You’ll never grieve if you don’t let yourself, and a part of that is letting yourself feel what you’re feeling. Yep, even the bad feelings.

When you feel ready to tackle it, you can sit down and think about a plan. A plan will help you realize all your options and perhaps give you a healthier way to forge a path forward - by accepting your feelings and working with them rather than trying to bulldoze past them. .When do you want to plan on actively trying to become a mother/parent? Do you want to get pregnant or would you be happy to foster and/or adopt? If you want to have a child via pregnancy, could you possibly stand waiting to go through with most medical transition until after you’ve given birth? (If so, maybe also schedule a checkup with a doctor to discuss your fertility and make sure that waiting makes sense.) What about having some of your eggs frozen until you’re ready to try for a child, going through medical transition in the meantime, and then having a surrogate carry your eggs?.You also have the option of partially transitioning to start with and going through with more transitive steps down the road. For example, while T greatly reduces the risk of pregnancy, it doesn’t completely eliminate it. You could talk to a doctor about starting with low dose T (being sure to bring up thoughts of trying to get pregnant in future years) to start with until you’re ready to pursue further transition.

Once you’re feeling ready, I would also suggest sitting down and listing some pros that have come out of realizing you’re genderfluid and thinking of positive things that can come as a result later down the road. Some things that might be on this list could be things like:

More comfortable with my gender and how I perceive myself

Able to recognize more of what I want and how I want to look and therefore be able to pursue such steps

Be confident in my body after physical transition

Can still become a loving and supportive parent

Can still experience the joys of parenthood

Can still be there to love and protect a smol being who needs my help and support

Understand myself better and have a healthier relationship to who I am

Lessened depression/anxiety the more I accept my gender feels

Found a new community of people to support me

There can absolutely be a period of grieving while realizing and coming to terms with being trans/nonbinary/genderqueer, but there is also growth and positivity and comfort and happiness and new experiences. Give yourself a bit of time, love, and patience, and you will start to feel that more and more.

Plenty of trans people get pregnant and/or become parents. Perhaps you won’t realize your specific dream of being a mother, but you can still pursue parenthood. Here’s some good links to hear about other trans people’s experiences with this, particularly through pregnancy:

https://nonbinaryresource.tumblr.com/post/186416339642/great-question-please-do-not-read-any-comments

https://vimeo.com/44406099#

(contains cissexist language) https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2019/08/16/non-binary-pregnant-navigating-most-gendered-role-all-motherhood/

https://helloclue.com/articles/cycle-a-z/thinking-about-pregnancy-as-a-nonbinary-trans-person

https://www.parents.com/pregnancy/everything-pregnancy/transgender-man-gives-birth-to-healthy-baby-talks-navigating/

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/20/the-dad-who-gave-birth-pregnant-trans-freddy-mcconnell

Another thing I would like to suggest to you is to look into local trans/queer meetups in your area. PFLAG would probably be a good place to start if your area has one. These can be safe spaces to talk about these feelings and find others to connect with who may even have same/similar feelings as you. It won’t solve your problems, but it will provide you an invaluable resource and, most importantly, allow you to make connections with other people and remember that you’re not alone in this.

Finally, one last thing I would like to suggest to you, is that if you still feel a connection to womanhood and don’t want to lose this... then don’t bar yourself from identifying as a woman! Maybe you identify as a genderfluid woman. Maybe your include woman and womanhood in your genderfluid experience. You can still be partially and/or sometimes a woman and pursue whatever transitioning steps to your ideal body.

I identified as a nonbinary woman for a solid chunk of time because I still felt connected to womanhood and couldn’t just “abandon” that feel. For me, that was a period of time necessary for me to help myself come to grips with my changing gender feels. Identifying as nonbinary and a woman helped me feel more grounded and better accept how I felt in regards to my gender without drowning in despair about losing a core thing I’d always known about myself.

I don’t identify as a woman these days, and for me personally, doing so back then was clearly a step that allowed me to accept I was (now) nonbinary - and genderqueer. But! There are also plenty of nonbinary people who do genuinely identify with man/woman, and it’s not just a step for them - it’s a core part of their identity as much as being nonbinary is. I don’t know which one you’ll be, but whichever is valid, and you’re allowed to identify in whatever way makes you most comfortable and happy.

Basically, your feelings are your feelings, and how things turn out are going to be how things turn out. You’re not doing anything wrong. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to be scared and happy at the same time. It can and will get better for you, as long as you allow yourself to both grieve and move forward without just bulldozing over your feelings. It’s just going to take some more time for you.

~Tera