#and which is why those people who are put into conversion therapy for their gender are fucking miserable..

[uncanny-tranny]

I've seen some discussions pop up about gender dysphoria and how it's treated and pathologized, and in my opinion, gender dysphoria is a real feeling in that many trans people are dysphoric, but that medical professionals (notably cis ones) only hear what they want to hear. When it comes to gender dysphoria, I don't think it is inherent to being trans, but there is correlation between being trans and having gender dysphoria. I also think that dysphoria is exasperated when gender roles are so tied to sex and personhood - in my opinion, I think a lot of people's dysphoria may be eased in environments where perceived gender deviance is not seen as horrific or undesirable.

Basically:

1. Gender dysphoria is real and certain aspects of one's culture or environment can make those feelings more persistent. Gender dysphoria can look different between people, and that doesn't mean that one person's dysphoria is worse than another person's, or that one person's dysphoria is "right" while somebody else's is "wrong".

2. Gender dysphoria is tied to transness in a way that I think only pathologizes transness, and gender dysphoria shouldn't need to be proven in order to transition (socially, medically, any way)

3. Gender dysphoria can be a dynamic issue for anybody who has it, and a person's needs may change as their dysphoria changes or becomes lesser

4. Gender dysphoria is something a ton of people deal with - trans or no. Associating dysphoria with only trans people doesn't help the dysphoric people who aren't trans. Again, associating dysphoria only with trans people pathologizes transness itself because people will conflate the two.

5. For trans people with gender dysphoria, transition is a viable (and often necessary) form of treatment. It is not "enabling", it is helping trans people meet their needs. Transition is an option that is often successful, hence why forms of conversion therapy do not work. Transness is simply a natural variation of human identity.

I've been diagnosed with gender dysphoria/GID many times by many professionals, and I find that more often than not, these professionals are not equipped to deal with cases of gender dysphoria - especially when the person is also trans. This can be harmful because you essentially are meant to deal with those feelings alone.

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids, 

When it comes to healthcare, you’ll occasionally encounter things presented as an opinion or as something up for debate - when there’s actually clear scientific facts on those topics. 

You can probably think of some general examples off the top of your head, like: 

Vaccines (They save lives. In fact, they are one of the most effective tools for reducing mortality rates worldwide) 

Pasteurized milk (Raw milk is not healthier than pasteurized milk, it’s actually unsafe. Pasteurization kills harmful bacteria which can cause severe illness) 

Fluoride (Water fluoridation is a safe and effective public health measure) 

Climate change (It exists and directly impacts respiratory and cardiovascular health)

“Detox” (The liver and kidneys detox your body naturally; detox teas, juice cleanses etc. are unnecessary) 

Cancer (Cancer isn’t just one disease, it’s an umbrella term for many different diseases and that’s why it’s very, very difficult, if not impossible, to just find the one simple fix to end cancer forever) 

Sugar substitutes (They have been extensively studied and are safe for consumption within recommended limits) 

There’s a lot of misinformation out there and it often thrives because it plays on fears (such as the natural fear of illness, dangerous substances and life-threatening side effects). Nobody wants to willingly put themselves or their loved ones into danger - but this absolutely natural desire for protection can be exploited. 

Some common tactics for that are: 

relying on personal anecdotes (emotional stories often feel more reliable or trustworthy than cold, hard data, even though they aren’t) 

appealing to those who distrust authority (the suggestion that governments/scientists/corporations/“they” are conspiring against you feels trustworthy if it seemingly “confirms” fears you already had) 

misusing scientific terminology (Complex-sounding terms can make something appear credible and well-researched, even if these terms are used completely incorrectly) 

giving quick, easy answers or fixes to complex problems (health is a complicated, multifaceted topic and there’s oftentimes no easy-cut answer to why a certain person gets sick or if a now-healthy person will still be as healthy in 10 years. This unpredictability can feel scary, and oversimplified answers can offer comfort) 

While health myths impact anyone, they disproportionately affect marginalized groups - for example chronically ill or disabled people but also our community.  

That’s because health myths (or outright health lies) can perpetuate stigma and create barriers to accessing evidence-based care. 

Myths specifically targeting queer health often follow the same patterns we talked about above. Let's take a closer look at some common topics and break down the facts behind them: 

Pedophilia (There is no evidence linking sexual orientation or gender identity to pedophilia or predatory behavior. This myth is rooted in bigotry and perpetuates harmful stereotypes) 

HIV/AIDS (it’s not “the gay disease” or even a “punishment for being gay”. It’s a virus that can affect people of all genders and sexual orientations) 

Regret rates (Regret rates for gender-affirming care are very low, even lower than for getting a new hip or a tattoo.) 

Regret rates, 2.0 (“Regret” does not automatically translate to “they were wrong about being trans”. A trans person could regret medical decisions for a multitude of reasons (even external factors like a lack of social support or experience of harassment) and still continue to identify as trans) 

Mental illness (The higher rate of mental health issues in queer people is caused by external factors like discrimination and social exclusion, not by the identity itself. Being queer is not a mental illness.) 

Conversion therapy (It doesn’t work. It also causes severe psychological harm including an increased risk of depression, anxiety, and suicide) 

Treating these myths as not “only” homophobia and transphobia but also as health misinformation may feel nitpicky, but I think it’s important. If we don’t, it’s easy to dismiss them as merely a matter of “not accidentally saying something offensive” - but there’s more at stake than hurt feelings. Health misinformation can prevent people from getting the medical care they need and put their lives at risk. And that applies to “Trans people often regret their surgeries” as much as it does to “Covid vaccines are dangerous”. 

So, look out for those typical patterns and warning signs - not only in the general “health and wellness” area but also in discussions about queer issues. 

With all my love, 

Your Tumblr Dad 

[crypticcozycorner]

Why ace and aro activism is still needed (Cw//aphobia + one mention of transphobia which is marked so that part can be skipped)

These are all things I’ve seen said recently about ace or aro people. Many of these come from Yasmin Beniots Instagram account.

- people still believe that being aro or ace is equivalent to being a sociopath

-Still considered a medical disorder in many places

-In many places it is not legally recognized as a romantic or sexual orientation, meaning it can be harder to charge aphobia fueled hate crimes as hate crimes and conversion therapy for asexuals isn’t recognized as a form of conversion therapy

-the idea that an ace or aro person can be “fixed” by someone is still very prevalent

-ace and aro people are still called groomers (just look at some of the responses to Jaden animations coming out)

-people still believe it just straight up doesn’t exist

-religion is used to look down upon us as “our purpose in life is to get married and reproduce”

-people believe that we’re making it up because we “have no game/cant pull”

-the idea that aroallo people are predators or other things along those lines (especially towards aroallo men)

-people still believe that heteroromantic asexuals and aromantic heterosexuals are “just straight”

-people still believe that asexuality and aromantism are the same thing and erase the identities of aroallos and alloaces

-(Cw// transphobia) and one of the wildest theories I’ve seen popping up lately, which I literally can’t even put into words so I’ll just put a comment from Yasmin Benoit that an aphobe left: “After 9 years of pushing ‘affirmative care’ Stonewall needs a way of explaining young people who have no libido and cannot function sexually” or another comment which says “Frankenstein gender medicine damages or destroys sexual function. That’s why asexuality needs to be normalized 🚩”. Essentially they’re saying that transitioning ruins one’s ability to be sexual and that asexuality was an excuse made up to hide that.

People who deny the existence of aphobia are ignorant. I have had people message my mom saying she’s going to hell for supporting me. I’ve had queerphobes with speakers and microphones follow me and my friends around at pride screaming at us that we’re going to hell. I’ve had people time and time again try to erase my identity, telling me I haven’t found the right one, and other things like that. Just because the discrimination we face isn’t the same as, for example, what a lesbian may face doesn’t mean our discrimination doesn’t exist.

[sophieinwonderland]

I cut out the link since I'm blocked by the account. Tumblr doesn't give clear instructions on what to do if you get an anon ask about a blog that has you blocked, but this seems a safe practice to protect the individual in question.

I would also ask people not send me links to this particular blog in the future.

With that out of the way, non-western society isn't some monolith and treating it as such is itself western-centric.

Maybe there are some places where endogenic plurality is less stigmatized. I might question their conclusion that it's trauma responses being stigmatized as opposed to trauma accusations. Most childhood trauma is from family, and loyalty to family is a higher priority in many cultures than it is in the West. And admitting to being a traumagenic system is usually the same as accusing your family of abusing you which is going to be interpreted as a betrayal of your family.

But while some areas may be more accepting, on the other hand, there are also many non-western countries where people are tortured and killed in exorcisms for what's interpreted as spiritual possession.

Another thing they try to do is dismiss abuse over pluralphobia as simply existing at an intersection of other oppressed identities. I assume they're talking about how, for example, laws discriminating against people for identifying having a different gender than their AGAB just happen to oppress plurals too because of that intersection.

I find this intersection theory to be an interesting perspective from the SAME EXACT SYSTEM who months ago suggested that I came too close to "claiming transphobia" by pointing out a certain theme in an ask.

Here's a refresher for those who missed it:

Yes, that's them.

The same exact system you linked.

The admin to The Survivor's Network.

This particular user, and their awful little bullying Hellhole of a server, has repeatedly tried to downplay and dismiss discrimination against endogenic systems, and systems in general.

They're the absolute worst.

I feel it's important to understand where these arguments are coming from and what their goal is. Anti-endos with a long history of attacking endogenic systems want to erase or minimize the harm they've done or are doing. To acknowledge all systems as being oppressed for being systems, rather than ONLY traumagenic systems due to general ableism, would require admitting that they were the bad guys all along.

But let's put get back to the topic at hand.

The position that plurals aren't institutionally oppressed is nonsense

The most stigmatized parts of DID isn't the trauma flashbacks or the chronic depression or even the lapses in memory. It is, and always has been, the multiplicity. There's a reason every horror movie about DID will focus on that and double down on the evil alter trope.

The evil alter trope is an evolution of stories about people being possessed, being werewolves, or being replaced by Fae or malevolent Fox spirits.

People with DID aren't stereotyped as murderers because they're traumatized, but because they're plural. In fact, one common complaint about DID representation you see all the time is that it tends to erase every other symptom and comorbid disorder.

The multiplicity is always treated as the defining problem with systems in society.

This is why forced fusion from therapists used to be pushed so hard, and has been so harmful to systems with DID over the years.

But DID systems aren't the only victims of this form of medical pluralphobia, even in disordered spaces.

The same is true of other plural and plural adjacent disorders and experiences. It's why Dr. Romme of the Hearing Voices Network has compared forcing voice hearers to get rid of their voices to be akin to conversion therapy to "cure" homosexulaity.

And yes, this is happening to non-disordered systems. Just a few months ago, a tulpamancer talked about their own experiences of being forced on antipsychotic medication to get rid of their tulpa.

When the user tried explaining more to their psychiatrist, the psychiatrist actually increased their medication.

This form of psychiatric abuse goes beyond simple social stigma.

And this conversion therapy approach to plurality is something that many plurals and voice-hearers have had to deal with for decades. And itself is an evolution of the exorcisms people associated with spiritual plurality have been subjected to for centuries.

I should also mention Cambriancrew has talked about medical staff over the past couple years reporting policies of denying care specifically to systems.

Plurals have never been named as a collective group until the last 30 years.

But we've ALWAYS faced this type of widespread societal oppression for our plurality.

From friends and family ostracizing and rejecting us or even targeting us for hate from others.

From psychiatrists abusing us or trying to cure us.

From religious institutions engaging in literal torture to get rid of perceived demons.

And from a society at large that repeatedly denies our very existence and our personhood.

[junebugwriter]

Pride

Exploring pride is a complicated matter for me.

Growing up religious, the number one most important and most dangerous sin one could commit would be the sin of Pride. It's pride that brought down Lucifer, the light bringer, who sought to dethrone God. It's pride that corrupts, imagines we are more important than others, and that others ought to be subservient to us. Pride feeds the other sins--Greed, Wrath, etc.-- and is a matter of serious danger for the soul.

Reinhold Niebuhr talks a lot about pride in "The Nature and Destiny of Man," and I think his breakdown of it is instructive. He posits that pride shows up in three ways: pride of power, pride of knowledge, and pride of virtue. Pride of power is obvious: this pride comes from being more powerful or believing one's self to be more powerful, than others. Pride of knowledge is knowing or believing one's self to be smarter or know more than others. Pride of virtue is self-righteousness, thinking you are more virtuous than others. All of these lead to abuse, violence, and often the subjugation and oppression of others.

This is the kind of pride that Christianity is right to be wary of.

However, it's a very different thing from the kind of Pride one sees with queer pride. A very different animal, indeed.

Because Pride for LGBTQ+ folks is NONE of these things.

No, queer Pride is a matter of survival. Because for so long (at least in Western, Christian dominant countries) being queer was a matter of shame. Pride -- the dangerous, sinful kind a la Niebuhr-- was in fact the weapon used by Christianity to oppress queer folks. It was the manacle that kept queer folk in captivity, puts us in conversion therapy camps, tells us to be married to people we don't truly love, tells us to be locked into the gender identity that doesn't truly capture our actual nature.

It's pride of power that keeps us in control.

It's pride of knowledge that tells us that they know us better than we know ourselves, which is impossible.

It's pride of virtue that tells us we're sinful abominations.

So in fact, it is Christian bigots who are guilty of sinful pride.

Whereas queer pride? Why it's the reverse. When we are shamed by bigots, we are emboldened to be proud of knowing the power that comes from our community. When we are told to stay under control by those who hate us, it is pride that frees us and says "we actually do know better about our own lives than you do, thank you very much." When we are demeaned as sinful abominations, queer pride holds up the mirror and says "Clean up your own house before you try to wreck ours."

I'm new to being honest with myself about my queerness, but I'm not new to being queer. I've been queer all my life, even though I may not have known it. When I first encountered and learned from queer Christians that yes, in fact, God does love and support queer folks, I cried. I didn't know why I cried. But I did. Because I realized I didn't have to hold onto a harmful ideology if I didn't want to.

God loves us just as we are. And we can take pride in how strange, how wonderful we are.

This is my first ever Pride that I get to be a part of, knowing now that I am and have always been queer. I know I'll get things wrong. I know I have to have a lot of humility in learning more about the queer community and the queer experience. But there is nervousness and excitement intermixed.

I'm learning what it means to have pride in myself, for the first time. To be proud of how far I've come, and of what I am. And none of that pride comes from wielding power over another person. None of it is sinful pride.

All of it is queer pride. And I'm learning just how beautiful that is.

[lurkingteapot]

2023 post round-up/summary

Lovely @twig-tea tagged me here, so I'll try my hand.

I'd abandoned tumblr for about 4? 5? years 2016ish through 2020, had a short stint with it again in 2020, took peeks and vehemently disagreed with much of what I saw in 2021-2022, and grudgingly settled back in in 2023. I wasn't going to interact. I wasn't.

Jan-April: *crickets* I was being strong!

Then, I saw people moaning about how they'd learn Thai if only it was on Duolingo, and you know how spite can be funnelled into positivity? I did that! Result:

May

Popular: Free Thai Language Learning Resources, most popular by a landslide. This pleases me greatly, as I put a lot of work into it and always hope more people start picking up this language.

Favourite: maybe my thoughts on Ming, piggybacking off @kenmakaashi's post?

June

Popular: my musings on translation and how it relates to fannish reception of media, which was my most popular post of the year and 'broke containment', if only in a very small way. Some of the additions in the tags and reblogs are fantastic, do go have a look if you like!

Favourite: toss-up between my attempt at showing a parallel between a silly moment in Our Skyy 2 x BBS and a scrapped shot from BBS proper and this rant about Romanisations of Thai and why G**gle translate is the devil (that bit is in the conversation downthread), which let me meet @plantsarepeopletoo.

July

Popular: Summary of James Welker's 2006 essay "Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: “Boys’ Love” as Girls’ Love in Shōjo Manga"

Favourite: the offerings are slim here … let's go with the one in which I once more was salty about the way folks talk about BL

August

Popular: Only Friends' Ray isn't just The Drunkard, but also The One Who's basically Given Up On Himself, as per his title card (this one was so popular it got stolen and reposted – without credit or permission – to twitter 🙃)

Favourite: Thinking about Drama, the Romance genre, and tropes, and how those relate to our perception of BL (good additions from various folks in the notes; conversation with @visualtaehyun in reblogs and @twig-tea in the replies).

September

Popular: IFYLITA Ep 6 poem context notes

Favourite: toss-up between complaining about badly machine translated content in Love in Translation and musing on the name of Khun Yai's favourite bar

October

Popular: my long-winded answer to @zimmbzon's ask "Hi, how would a non-binary person (me) get around the binary gender rules and vocab in Thai?"

Favourite: uhhh … maybe my musings on honorific translations in kimi ni wa todokanai? (yes, technically a reblog from sideblog, shh)

November

Popular: most popular was this throwaway therapy vent containing food for thought and while I guess this meme is mostly fannish I'm linking it anyway because it's my blog and I'll cry if I want to (or something)

Favourite: when I called out the resemblance between the Last Twilight trailer and Intouchables (2011). Literally no one cared, but then @my-rose-tinted-glasses independently came in strong with receipts as soon as the actual first episode aired and made me feel validated af.

December

Popular: Why I'm pretty sure Last Twilight's "fried rice/false rice" joke was funnier in Thai

Favourite: the saga of the songs in Ep 4 of Last Twilight

I didn't do any round-up posts, but I'll include the other category @twig-tea added:

Five other posts that I want to highlight because I can:

BL Favourites Tag Game (July 2023)

Link to fujoshi.info with information on WHY you should check out that site if you're interested in having an informed opinion on BL and the genre's history.

contemporary issues in Thailand as mentioned in Only Friends ep 1

Thoughts on code-switching in Step by Step

Reply to @mynameisnotthepoint's comment-via-ask on my anti viki rant

I'm not going to tag anyone because I'm completely lost – I was mostly off tumblr for nearly three weeks; if you made a post like this you'd like me to see, please link me/tag me! <3

[hilacopter]

I've been trying to put into words this frustration of mine for a while, and I think I've finally got it figured out:

So! Israel is built on genocide! And that's certainly not a good thing. You can try to argue about whether or not Jewish people are indigenous to the land (though I won't get into that whole argument here), but there's no denying the fact this country was built on blood. Lives were lost and people were banished. Therefore, us Israelis are deemed colonizers for living here. Is it false? No, not necessarily. Is colonialism okay or justifiable? Of course not! However, the way people have used this as an excuse to dehumanise us Israelis is absolutely disgusting.

Western leftists have this mindset that we should either be sent "back to where we came from" (and by that they mean countries we have never been to in our lives and just so happen to have ancestral ties to), or that we should be eradicated. Because it's easy to see these groups of people you don't know as simply blank NPCs, or a hivemind. I've had an online friend of mine tell me that there's this level of dissociation when you aren't the one going through it, and that a lot of times it takes having someone you know suffer that fate to go "oh shit, REAL PEOPLE are going through that", and I think the problem stems from the fact so many of the people who insist on being involved in this conflict don't actually have Israeli (or Palestinian, for that matter) friends to tell them what it's like to be living through this nightmare. We're faceless and nameless, which leads to dehumanisation and demonization.

It is a universal fact that no human is the same, everyone's life is valuable and unique. Everyone has something to bring to the table, and something like the country you were born in is inconsequential to how good or bad of a person you are. Unless, of course, you're an Israeli. That means you're nothing more than a filthy colonizer. That means you're a part of an evil hivemind being led by an evil government (yes, Israel's government is horrible WHICH IS WHY WE'VE BEEN PROTESTING AGAINST IT FOR MONTHS NOW). That means you've done wrong merely by existing.

I'm certainly going to offend some people with this comparison, but in my opinion telling an Israeli to simply deport is not much unlike telling a queer person to go to conversion therapy. It's obviously not the same thing, but just like you aren't able to get rid of someone's gender or sexuality, you aren't able to get rid of someone's heritage. Simply sending us away won't magically make everything better, believe it or not (I won't get into it in this post, but know that there will be no Palestinian utopia under Hamas rule, as Hamas actively harms the people of Palestine too). We won't just forget about Israel and keep living like nothing happened. We have lives here. We have friends and family we'd be separated from. Most of us won't simply be able to adjust to a new country we don't even know the language of. And if you think the solution is to kill us all... I don't even know what to say to you at this point. Is being attached to the place you were born in truly such a horrible crime? You can argue we deserve it for being colonizers, but it's not like we chose to be born here. Which leads to my next point:

The global left is used to everything wrong being a mindset. Homophobes, racists, sexists; all of those are not something people are born as, rather something they've been lead to believe. Something that can be fixed by teaching them better and having them unlearn their ways. So when faced with the fact that being an Israeli isn't something which can be reversed, leftists don't know how to process it. They cope by seeing us as something inherently evil and violent. Something inherently unworthy of living. Something that automatically deserves whatever bad things happen to it. Something less than human. Something that must be erased, one way or another. It doesn't matter that we're people with feelings and minds, we're all just filthy colonizers! Get rid of us pesky Israelis and everything will be better! Just burn it all down!

It's human nature to want to get rid of something you don't like. Whether it's a bug in your kitchen, a shitty friend, a mindset you don't like, whatever. It's when "something I don't like" translates to millions of people that you start to get under my skin. It's when you celebrate a brutal massacre and root for a terrorist organisation that I deem you a disgusting human being.

Like it or not, new life has been created here. And no matter how many chant "death to colonizers", you won't be getting rid of it. You won't be getting rid of us.

Because we, as human beings, don't deserve to be gotten rid of.

[trans-advice]

I'm a newly hatched egg and something I'm struggling with is I had a mom who was very supportive of the lgbtq+ until it came to her own kid. Like she had butch lesbians and femme gays as friends and I could talk to her about Elliot Page and Caitlyn Jenner transitioning. She even constantly told me it was fine if I was a lesbian. But whenever I would express my gender dysphoria to her, she would always shut it down with "it was always my dream to have a daughter" and "i kept having kids until I had a daughter". She put so much pressure on me to be more femme, to wear more makeup, to put on perfume, to wear dresses and skirts.

I also feel dumb for letting it affect me so much because I cut contact with her years ago for other reasons so why am I letting it bother me so much? And idk who to talk to about this and I feel dumb for bringing it up when there are people whose families are way worse than mine. I can't afford therapy.

Idk i'm just so confused.

1: your mother basically told you get entire relationship with you, including pregnancy, (including introducing you to her friends) was a relationship where you were constantly dehumanized & objectified the entire time, like waiting for a candy egg with pink paint to come out of a candy machine.

2: part of your self esteem as a trans person was seeing realistic examples of queerness via your mom's butch lesbian & femme gay friends.

3: the strictness of the gender binary reinforces the boss-worker heirarchy your mother had with you her child. This is why she felt so comfortable telling you that she ordered a girl as if you were a server who gave her a wrong item from the restaurant kitchen. Then, when she sees that doesn't get her anywhere, she does conversion torture on you, basically treating you like a piece of food on a restaurant plate that she has to fix the seasoning herself, whether it's like removing mushrooms or scraping meat or adding sweet 'n low to a stir fry dish. She's never recognizing that you & your body are not a product to consume. She never recognized your right to bodily autonomy. (To say the least of it, I do mean there's probably more bugs under those unturned stones.)

Point being, part of seeing living, actually existing, realistic, queer adults, is part of building our self esteem. By the way, realistic transition goals is part of building positive self esteem in general. (This is why TDOV in March was developed by trans people, because we didn't trust cis people to help us back then, and we wanted to combat genocidal narratives that lied about our prevalence & life outcomes.) And so your mom's queerbaiting anti-trans conduct hits hard because now you've found out that you need new role models (other than the ones your mom gave you), in order to build your self-esteem with, which will shake some expectations you had for your own life for a while until at least you make more pro-trans lgbtqia+ friends to help you secure your bearings.

Like I'm going to also be blunt here too and I'm going to say that your mom probably would've abused your girlfriends in a similar way she abused you because she would've seen them as yet another candy egg covered in pink paint. So yeah, it's good to keep no-contact with your mom, especially to help protect your new support network including yourself.

Good Luck, Peace & Love,

Eve

[mossbark]

You are defining "gender affirming care" and "care trans people receive" and the people on the post are defining it as "care which is sought out and used to affirm one's gender".

You are correct that Viagra and HRT for menopausal cis woman are not medically exactly equivalent to HRT for trans people, but that is not the point being argued. The point being argued is that cis people also take medical actions that are primarily to make them feel better in their gender.

It is similar to the common point that a cis woman with a moustache who does laser hair removal for it is doing so because a moustache does not fit her idea of her own gender presentation; this is the same reason a trans woman might get laser hair removal.

"The point being argued is that cis people also take medical actions that are primarily to make them feel better in their gender."

The point I am actually making is that cis people are not taking Viagra or estrogen to primarily affirm their gender. They are taking them to correct symptoms of physiological dysfunction. This isn't a hard distinction to grasp.

"I can't maintain an erection, which makes sexual intimacy difficult if not impossible. (And/or) I also have concerns about high blood pressure." Viagra.

"I am suffering from fatigue, hot flashes, hair loss, osteoporosis, insomnia, unstable mood, and pain during sexual intercourse due to my body's natural hormonal cycle being discontinued as I age." Estrogen for menopause. Also, for what it's worth, there are numerous physiological risks associated with being estrogen-deficient long-term, including an increased risk of dementia.

I think it is utterly out of touch, and uncompassionate, to completely ignore all these symptoms so these treatments can be framed as being about gender identity instead of physical day-to-day functioning. Again, I cannot overstate, I am in favor of gender-affirming therapies for those who want them, but it is crucial to understand why it isn't fair, accurate, or helpful to declare apples are really oranges because they're both round fruits. Overlap can exist between treatment outcomes, but that doesn't make the treatment the same.

While I agree cis women, trans women, and anyone else who gets LHR (edit: Lazer hair Removal) likely do so for the same reasons, you're again comparing apples to oranges by saying medical intervention is similar to a cosmetic procedure. You can also get into a discussion that goes beyond the scope of this conversation about drawing the line between personal aesthetic and gender presentation, which I would argue is what most cis people are actually experiencing in these given contexts as opposed to gender dysphoria. A woman who feels ugly because her skin is wrinkling and her hair is falling out is experiencing body dysmorphia, a diagnostic category that can overlap with gender dysphoria, but also includes eating disorders. If this same women declared she felt like less of a woman because she doesn't feel beautiful, you should probably have the empathy to understand she isn't declaring she doesn't truly feel misaligned with her gender identity, but is lamenting her appearance. These are fundamentally different experiences that due to the limitations of language, may be expressed verbally in similar ways. Also, I think the discomfort *most* presented in the initial argument is wildly overstated.

My biggest contention with everyone who has engaged with my perspective is that they are prioritizing gender expression, which is reflective of their own lived experiences, over the realities of these given diagnoses. It amounts to speaking over the lived experience of patients. To put it in perspective for you, how does this argument break down if a trans woman has ED, but wants to have PIV sex with her partner? What if a transgender man, who realized his identity later in life and does not want to seek transition, suffers from osteoporosis after entering menopause, and opts for estrogen therapy to reduce bone loss? In these situations, the argument breaks down and is no longer about affirming gender. The ultimate point I am making, simply put, is that treatments meant to restore bodily function are not the same as gender-affirming care because of coincidental overlap. The targeted symptoms are different, and it is a blatant misrepresentation to claim that cis people seek out these treatments primarily to feel better aligned with their gender.

Its popular on this website to demonize the fields of psychology and psychiatry, because I suppose they can feel restrictive to people who are untrained and uneducated on why we abide by the DSM and other treatment guidelines. This conversation is a perfect example of why it requires a master's or above to even get a job in the field. It requires critical thinking, good judgement, scientific integrity, and a solid understanding to tease out the nuances of why one diagnosis over another. I think it has become common to assume bigotry is at the root of every distinction, and sometimes it is, but this particular subject is not one to take at face value.

Hopefully this clarifies why I think this conversation is getting redundant, because at the end of the day, it's an argument the OP admitted is based on their personal politics and desire to push social boundaries rather than an understanding of how the human body works.

TL;DR not everything is the same and it doesn't have to be.

[defining-trans]

I don’t understand the phrase “trans women are women”. Yes, they exist and are trans and aren’t lying, but in my point of view, “man with a vagina” and “woman with a penis” seem like obvious semantic impossibilities, like “curves right angle” or “married bachelor”. That gender and sex aren’t the same or that intersex people and women with Swyers syndrome exist doesn’t change that in my view. Can you please change my mind about the objective semantics of “man” and “woman” and convince me that transmen and transwomen are men and women in the same sense of the words “man” and “woman” without using a new definition of the two words from what we’ve used throughout human history?

You appear to have the wrong idea about me. I don't endeavor to change your or anyone else's minds about trans people - that's your decision and yours alone. We are simply having a conversation, an exchange of words in which I provide you with information and context that I believe validates my own perspective.

In my opinion, you're missing the bigger picture. You're focusing on what gender and sex are instead of looking at how they function in our everyday lives, and why the human race came up with these concepts in the first place.

Instead of directly addressing your concerns, I will do my best to explain why I think you really don't need to be so fussed about them.

I'm fairly confident that most of the transgender people you'll encounter throughout your life will be strangers you pass in the street. You probably won't even be able to tell they're transgender. You'll see men and women, some of which may look too girly to be men in your eyes and some of which may look too mannish to be women in your eyes.

That doesn't tell you what's in their pants, though, let alone what genitals and societal expectations they were born with. If you try to play the guessing game, maybe you'll get one or two right, but you will lose over and over again, accusing "natural born" men and women of being transgender while not even questioning the biological sexes of plenty of actual trans people.

You personally don't have to accept trans people as the gender(s) we want to be recognized. You don't have to, and no one will put a gun to your head in order to make you. You don't have to like us, you don't have to talk to us, and you don't have to fuck us. You have every right to buy into the rumors that we are sad, delusional people who would be better off in therapy until we can accept living solely based on what genitals we were born with. Go right ahead! I won't stop you.

But the thing is, we're allowed to disagree with you. We're allowed to say "either call me by my chosen name or I won't answer." We're allowed to say "you seem like a great person, but I'm not interested in dating someone who sees me as a man/woman." We're allowed to keep you at arms' length if you refuse to respect our personhood as coworkers, friends or family.

There is no perfect definition of 'man' or 'woman.' You're coming at this from a semantic angle because you think that if you use a strict operational definition for what 'man' and 'woman' mean, others will be forced to agree with you. Words are just shorthand for things. You know that, right? The whole reason we created words in the first place was to articulate concepts quickly and efficiently, condensing them into the most basic form possible in order to save time.

Sweeping statements like "men cannot have vaginas" and "women cannot have penises" are just too easy to pick apart. What if a cisgender man got surgery to give himself a vagina? What if a cisgender woman got surgery to give herself a penis? You might say "no cisgender men/women would ever get those surgeries" but remember, there are people in this world who get the buccal fat removed from their cheeks, who risk their lives and overall health for a brazillian butt lift, and that's not even the wildest type of surgery out there.

What I think you probably mean to say is "men should not have vaginas and women should not have penises because what if someone like me falls for a man/woman and they turn out to have equipment down there that I don't like." To which I would say, tough shit. People have unfortunate incompatibilities in relationships all the time. I'm not going to make my body look a certain way just to make your dating life easier to navigate.

Honestly, I have to wonder, do you go up to breast cancer patients with double mastectomies and tell them they "really should consider getting implants so that people can tell they're women"? Do you mock men with gynecomastia because their chests look too womanly and it confuses and upsets you? Do you go up to intersex people and say "you can call yourself a man/woman and you even look like one, but you'll never really be one because you were born an abomination of biological sexes", all in an effort to make sure us transgender people know that you don't see us the way we see ourselves?

All we're asking is that you A) let us exist (away from you, if you're not willing to call us what we want to be called) and B) acknowledge that we are humans who deserve basic human rights. This nonsensical waffling and back and forth over what gender and sex really are, who really counts as a man or woman and how that definition MUST apply to every single man/woman and everyone else can go fuck themselves, it has absolutely nothing to do with your everyday life or the daily life of a trans person.

Just let us exist without constantly trying to invalidate our experiences and police the terms we call ourselves because you don't like the way we define them. Is that really so hard to do?

[lucreziaq2001]

•TV show: "Criminal minds".

•Content warnings: Forced gender roles, period-typical homophobia, physical aggression at school, a girl not defending her friend against bullies, hints to conversion therapy, the girl's son and friends asking where she is and her mother refusing to answer.

•Some of the lines are almost the same that are in a scene of the "Cold case" episode this story is inspired by. I did modify them a bit, though. I didn't just copy and paste them.

•I made up Aaron's high school friends, they weren't in the actual show and I just needed them for this scene.

•VERY IMPORTANT THING: This chapter was pretty upsetting for me to write, so if you find it upsetting to read, I understand. Feel free to stop and go to the next one.

•Tags: @lex13cm, @golden1u5t, @avis-writeshq, @chrrysgirl, @hugyourlungs, @achillmango, @marie-sworld, @iluvreid, @babygirl-garcia, @rynwritesreid, @strangermoonlove.

The bridge to Heaven

Chapter 12: Expelled, then gone missing

The next day, when Emily went to the school cafeteria at lunchtime, she saw Jennifer sitting at a table.

Their eyes met for a few seconds, but the two girls didn't say a single word to each other.

Being ignored by one of the people she cared about the most was like a stab in the heart to Emily, who couldn't hold back her tears at that moment.

"Oh, look, she's crying! What happened to you?" Aaron said a few seconds later, walking up to her.

"Don't even try to do this! If you cry, then you're not like us guys" one of his closest friends, Alexander, interjected.

"Did you hear what he said?" Aaron added, moving closer and closer to Emily "So which side are you on? Decide!".

"You want a girlfriend, right? To do that, you'd have to be a boy! A real one!" he then yelled at her, before pushing Emily so hard that she fell to the ground.

"Go to hell! I hate you!" the girl defended herself, shouting too, but her words were of no use.

"Now I'll show you what a girl should be like!" Aaron told her, taking a lipstick out of his pants' right pocket and opening it.

Then, while three of his friends kept Emily lying on the floor and held her still, he tried to put it on her lips while the girl squirmed as much as she could.

Both Jennifer and Spencer, who was sitting at a table with her at that moment, wanted to intervene, but ended up doing nothing.

Spencer knew that Aaron wouldn't have stopped if he had told him to, and on that occasion, even with a lot of shame, Jennifer put her own reputation in front of her classmates before helping her friend.

"Emily Prentiss! In my office. Now" the principal ordered at that moment, however, entering the cafeteria before Aaron could do something worse to Emily, and the girl, naturally very shaken, got up and left the room in tears.

And at that point, a new awareness came to Jennifer's mind.

Emily was more coherent and courageous than many other people in that school, her included.

Not everybody appreciated those qualities, however.

Especially not the principal of their school.

That day, he ended up calling Emily's boyfriend, Ian, who was 21 years old at the time, and asked him to come and get her.

He expelled her from school and that same day, she disappeared.

She left the town and none of her friends were told where she had gone.

Only Ian and Emily's mother knew, but when, all within three days, Jennifer, Spencer, Derek and Penelope showed up at the Prentiss family's house and asked Elizabeth that question, she refused to answer.

Even little Declan already often asked where his mother, whom he was very close to, was and why he couldn't see her those days, but not even for him, his grandmother had an actually satisfactory answer.

"Your mommy went to get cured" she told him every time the little boy asked questions about Emily.

To get cured, yes, but where?

And why?

She wasn't sick and her friends knew it.

Not everyone, however, had that knowledge.

[talkingpointsusa]

Michael Knowles compares trans identity to cancer and praises conversion therapy

Out of all these Daily Wire guys, I tend to be the most dismissive of Michael Knowles. That’s mainly because he has comparatively low viewership compared to all the other Daily Wire grifters and he isn’t always as openly monstrous as guys like Matt Walsh. He usually talks about the dumb stories that nobody else at the Daily Wire seems to want to cover. Stuff like lab grown penises or AI that can predict your death.

Unfortunately, this is one of those episodes where he IS monstrous. Naturally it has to do with the rights favourite boogeyman; trans people trying to live their lives. The main story of this episode is a report the CDC put out on October 10th about trans youth and where he decides to take it is absolutely disgraceful.

But before that, did you guys know that someone tried to assassinate Trump again? Strap in folks because this is the weakest “assassination attempt” narrative yet.

CW: when we get to the anti-trans narratives Michael gets extremely bigoted. Also, suicide is mentioned. If you don’t want to read that, I totally get it. Stay safe out there.

01:49, Michael Knowles: “Before we get to what I think is the biggest news story in the world right now, which is about how one in eighteen American high school students doesn’t know what his gender is, I guess I have to mention there might have been a third assassination attempt on President Trump over the weekend. This was at Trump’s massive Coachella rally, that looked bigger than the Coachella Festival that’s been going on for years now, it was a huge rally. There are reports that a half a mile outside of the security gate a man was arrested with a bunch of guns potentially trying to assassinate President Trump again.”

We’ll get to the stuff about high schoolers later but for now let’s take a look at this so-called “assassination attempt”.

This is about a man named Vem Miller who was arrested outside of Trump’s Coachella Rally with multiple illegal firearms. Miller claimed that he was a journalist with “VIP status”. A search of his car found the guns as well as multiple passports. The car was also unregistered. Evidence from the fake license plate ties Miller to the far-right extremist “sovereign citizen” movement.

It’s pretty likely that this was just one of Trump’s extremist fans trying to bring his guns to the rally. It’s not exactly unheard of for Trump to be popular with the sovereign citizen gun nut crowd.

Even if this was an assassination attempt, he was caught before Trump was even in his field of vision making this a complete non-story. This kind of thing is quite common, just look at all the attempts on Obamas life.

This is weak stuff and a clear attempt to get the Trump is a victim ball rolling again.

02:26, Michael Knowles: “The man denies it, he says that he’s a Trump supporter and he was there to protect himself because there were so many attempts on Trump’s life and so I don’t know, there’s not a lot of information about this one. The only reason I even mention the story yet with so few details is it is a crazy thing that ‘President Trump Almost Assassinated Again’ is the kind of headline that we don’t even bat our eyes at.”

Because this was barely an assassination attempt. We didn’t really pay attention to all those attempts on Obama’s life either.

The reason why the first one got so much press was because Trump was actually shot. The other two (if you can even call this Coachella one an assassination attempt) were just huge nothingburgers.

03:09, Michael Knowles: “Democrats have so normalized trying to assassinate Trump that we don’t even really pay attention to it. There were prominent leftists, the first time that Trump was very nearly killed and the bullet actually did hit him in the ear, who said ‘well you know, that’s the consequence of spreading hate. Well, what do you expect when your a threat to democracy. When your Hitler 2.0 you know, that’s what happens.’”

Yeah, nobody was saying that. The closest incident to that was an MSNBC clip that came out after the second assassination attempt that the right collectively freaked out over. But, as we discussed on this very blog earlier, that was just a very standard broadcast news pivot.

03:48, Michael Knowles: “Now I want to get to our most important news story of the day that is being completely neglected and I — I guess you’d say even suppressed by the establishment media. Over 3% of American high schoolers now identify as transgender. Over 3%, I guess 3.3. So you have a one in thirty chance, if you are an American high schooler today, of identifying as transgender. And there’s an additional 2.2% of students on top of that who are questioning their gender identity.”

Yeah, there’s a reason that the legacy media is “neglecting” this story. It’s just warmed over culture war garbage.

Michael is getting these numbers from a recent CDC report entitled “Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance —United States, 2023”. More specifically, it comes from a section of the report entitled “Disparities in School Connectedness, Unstable Housing, Experiences of Violence, Mental Health, and Suicidal Thoughts and Behaviors Among Transgender and Cisgender High School Students”. Click the link to read it for yourself.

So for starters, Michael tries to later turn this into an anti public school narrative but as it turns out some of the students polled for the report came from private schools. But that’s not the important part of this study.

So, 5.5% is still the very small minority of students. I know that Michael’s trying to turn this into some kind of massive sweeping thing but it really isn’t. 94.5% of students do not identify as trans making the ones that do an extremely small minority. However, this study took a closer look at the mental health outcomes of that 5.5% and what it found was absolutely heartbreaking. Quote:

“Transgender and questioning students experienced a higher prevalence of violence, poor mental health, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, and unstable housing, and a lower prevalence of school connectedness than their cisgender peers. Compared with 8.5% of cisgender male students, 25.3% of transgender students and 26.4% of questioning students skipped school because they felt unsafe. An estimated 40% of transgender and questioning students were bullied at school, and 69% of questioning students and 72% of transgender students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, a marker for experiencing depressive symptoms.”

The report goes on to state that 26% of transgender students attempted suicide in the past year, a number that’s more than double that of their cisgender peers. But the most heartbreaking statistic of all is this, 10.7% of transgender students reported experiencing unstable housing. This number is extremely high compared to cis males (2.1%) and cis females (1.8%).

You know who’s creating the conditions for this kind of thing to thrive? Michael and everyone else in the right-wing media who persistently spread bigoted narratives about the trans community. These narratives turn trans identity into a thing to be ashamed of as opposed to just a part of who these high schoolers are. No wonder they’re getting bullied at such a high rate, no wonder their parents seem to be throwing them out of the house for being who they are, no wonder that their suicide rate is so high.

Michael is essentially taking a report that talks about how trans people are struggling due to stigma and then using it to stigmatize trans people. This is just disgusting. And guess what? Michael knows these stats because he goes through some of them here.

04:48, Michael Knowles: “Now, what do we know about students who identify as transgender or who are questioning their gender? We know that they try to kill themselves at extraordinarily high numbers.”

Because of the bigotry that YOU spread dipshit. I know I might sound a little passionate here but I have a lot of friends who are trans, many of whom undoubtedly went through similar experiences that the kids in this study did.

Michael naturally ignores the parts about trans people experiencing extremely high rates of bullying, or the parts about how most trans students skip school because they feel unsafe in their own classrooms, or the parts about how the parents of trans kids (who no doubt consume a lot of right-wing media) are more likely to kick their kids out for being who they are. No, it’s just that being trans naturally causes suicidal ideation so we have to isolate kids so that we can try and crush the trans identity out of them.

The fact that Michael knows the numbers about suicidal ideation in the trans community tells me that he read this report and actively chose to ignore the parts that disprove what he’s saying. He knows what he’s doing here and that makes it so much worse.

06:28, Michael Knowles: “You need to find alternatives to regular American high schools for your kids. You have to find alternatives. Whether it is an orthodox religious school, you know I’m a big supporter of traditional Catholic education, Christian education broadly, but whatever. Let’s say you’re Jewish, let’s say you’re Muslim, let’s say whatever you are, an orthodox — a serious religious school that doesn’t follow the religion of liberalism or leftism, that isn’t going to fall into this kind of craziness, is going to be a much better option for your kid. Or homeschooling, obviously.”

Except that private schools were included in the YRBS data, it wasn’t just public schools. As for homeschooling, there are valid reasons to homeschool your children but “isolating them from everyone left of Donald Rumsfeld in case they become trans” isn’t one of them. If one of those kids being homeschooled turns out to be trans, they’ll have grown up exclusively in an environment that stigmatizes trans identity which will increase their risk of depression and suicidal ideation.

Accepting trans kids saves lives.

07:27, Michael Knowles: “What the schools are teaching now, the schools are teaching that your boy is not really a boy, that your girl is not a girl.”

Than why are trans people still a really small minority? If all this fearmongering was true, we wouldn’t live in a world where 94.5% of students are not trans.

08:20, Michael Knowles: “Conservatives have to take control of the schools back again. We have to fire the leftist activists who are trying to lead your kid to suicide, we have to fire them. We have to ban them from being around children ever again, certainly in a classroom setting.”

So basically, take away any hope of trans kids being accepted in schools which will almost certainly increase the amount of bullying they experience and that suicide rate.

Here’s Michael Knowles comparing being trans to cancer. You can’t even make this stuff up.

08:51, Michael Knowles: “It’s like — it’s like having a kid go to Fukushima high school after a nuclear explosion and you say, well what are the odds of him developing a cancer”

Presented without comment.

09:55, Michael Knowles: “LAUSD, the Los Angeles School District, has just celebrated thirty-five years of National Coming Out Day. Coming Out Day is a day when school staff encourage kids to identify as gay and now trans and queer and questioning or whatever the initialism has come out to.”

That’s not even close to what National Coming Out Day is. Accepting LGBTQ youth when they come out isn’t the same thing as pressuring them to adopt a queer identity. Your sexuality is what you were born with, there’s nothing that changes that. Plus, as we discussed earlier, LGBTQ acceptance in schools seems to be extraordinarily low if we’re going off how much these kids are being bullied.

Also, in case you’re curious, only 3% of trans people experience some form of regret around their decision to transition.

Not content with comparing trans identity to cancer, Michael decides to defend conversion therapy.

10:43, Michael Knowles: “There’s a real irony — is the libs in recent decades have invade against what they call ‘conversion therapy’ which is when someone, you know, has disordered affections and desires and they go to a therapist, they say ‘I wanna have normal desires’ or ‘I’d like to mitigate some of these disordered and harmful desires I have’ and the therapist says ‘Ok, well here’s some ways to work on it’ or whatever, I don’t know.”

Well, I guess we’re partying like it’s 1986 because apparently conversion therapy is back on the table over at the Daily Wire. I didn’t expect to hear a pro-conversion therapy argument here. “Disordered and harmful desires”, again I don’t see how you could view this as anything but extreme anti-LGBTQ bigotry.

Conversion therapy is pseudoscience that does nothing but traumatize the people that it claims to “help”. There is a mountain of research that proves that and the only reasons why you’d still support conversion therapy are either extreme ignorance or extreme bigotry. With Michael I’m going to go with both.

11:04, Michael Knowles: “The libs have presented this as though kids are being like, electric shocked or something which is not occurring.”

Yes it is.

11:12, Michael Knowles: “But what would you call National Coming Out Day in the public schools? That is a kind of conversion therapy.”

Again, acceptance does not equal forced change. Comparing LGBTQ acceptance to forcing people to change their sexuality is an absolutely ridiculous argument to make.

We’re now done with Michael’s hot takes on queer identity, thank god. He does an ad for steaks and then talks about some teachers who were thankfully suspended after being caught giving kids melatonin patches.

I’m not going to cover Michael’s take on this story (this post is already long enough as is) outside of saying that what these teachers did was wildly inappropriate but that doesn’t mean that this is a practice that’s been widely adopted by the school system at large. The teachers involved were dismissed, as they should have been, and if you want to make an argument that this specific school should have had more oversight I would 100 percent agree with you. However, projecting this one incident onto the entire public school system is just silly.

He also later talks about Venezuelan gangs in Aurora Colorado. Since this is a big narrative going around in the right-wing media I decided that we might as well get it out of the way. Here’s what Michael says.

17;43, Michael Knowles: “Speaking of libs endangering your family, unbelievable news story out. There is a Venezuelan prison gang, this sounds like it’s out of the Onion or the Babylon Bee, there is a Venezuelan prison gang called Tren De Aragua that has taken over a town in Colorado. Aurora Colorado has been overrun with a prison gang from Latin America. They’ve apparently overrun several apartment buildings, they’ve been expanding their reach in the US, because Kamala Harris as the border czar is letting them all in.”

Boy, Michael’s really never going to let that made-up border czar thing go is he?

This story is about an apartment complex in Aurora Colorado that was the target of false claims that stated that Venezuelan gangs took it over. The initial source of the claim was the owner of the building, CBZ Management. The reason why this is important is because company is sketchy as all hell.

There have been numerous reports detailing building code violations at the complex that have dated back years. CBZ has accrued more than $44,000 in fines at one of its properties. These included fines for mice infestation, ceiling damage, and illegally parked vehicles. CBZ said this year (despite the fact that the complaints go back years) that they could not address these concerns because they felt it was unsafe to send their employees into the building. Suuurrreeeee. The game that these guys are playing here is pretty transparent.

Aurora police stated that CBZ was attempting to “fabricate false narratives” about a gang takeover at the building but did acknowledge that some elements of Tren De Aragua have operated in Aurora in the past.

This was then amplified when surveillance footage from a CBZ owned property of armed men entering an apartment went viral. There is zero evidence tying these men to Tren De Aragua nor is there evidence that this was part of some shadowy gang takeover. From the looks of things this was just a burglary. The Aurora police have identified ten members of TDA in the city and arrested nine of them.

Essentially, this is the story of a really sleazy developer trying to weasel their way out of managing their building properly and someone’s apartment possibly being robbed. Immigrants haven’t taken over the town.

Conclusion:

Yeah, that was just a really gross affair. I don’t really have words for it because it kind of speaks for itself.

If you’re a trans youth or just a trans individual reading this post, remember that you ARE valid and stay safe out there. Hopefully the next post is more fun.

Cheers and I’ll see you in the next one.

Original video:

Ep. 1594 - Venezuelan Prison Gang Conquers Colorado Town, Oct 14, 2024.

[thatguywhomightbeagirl]

I have no friends, and I must vent

I like many people claim that I have no one to talk to regarding my problems and like many people I am completely talking out my ass. But I do want to explain why I feel like I can’t talk to anyone aside from mysterious gay people in my phone.

My family is transphobic. Not conversion therapy/‘we need to get rid of them’ transphobic but ‘she, oh sorry “they”’/‘she’s a them’/casually drops a slur transphobic. In case you were wondering they are the same kind of homophobic. So for obvious reasons I don’t think I can go to them with my gender problems. I should clarify that this is mainly my parents, my sister is far better but not perfect (not that I am either) but I still don’t want to talk to her because it would come back to my parents at some point and she also gets very serious and emotional about things, which isn’t a bad thing but not what I’m looking for in my first ‘I’m not sure about my gender’.

I don’t have many friends, much less queer friends who have some experience with this (at least as far as I am aware). It certainly doesn’t help that I am criminally introverted, arguably my best friend is someone I talk to maybe three times a year. This year I started work with some other people and as a result we became a bit of a friendship group and then adopted a couple more friends leaving a group of 10. Of those friends there are 3 that I can say with some degree of confidence are queer in some way.

A (she/her) who from what I can tell is bisexual but I’ve never confirmed cause I think it’s weird to ask.

B (she/they) who based on pronouns is at least not entirely cis but that’s as much as I know.

C (???/???) I do not know their gender, they have not put their pronouns anywhere and I really want to ask to make sure that I use the right ones but I am definitely too scared to do so. They are an extremely nice person and would probably be happy to talk about it or politely let me know otherwise but I’m still scared.

Of these people I really want to talk to person B, not only because they use seemingly non-AGAB pronouns but also because they are very straight forward and honest, they don’t mince words and gets right to the point. Unfortunately person B does not like me any more, ever since The Incidenttm.

I do have one friend who I’ve known for a long time and is enby. I’ve wanted to catch up with them for a while now but I’ve got a bit of an ulterior motive driving me now so I finally reached out but they work weekends and I now work on weekdays meaning it seems impossible for us to both be free.

As a result of all this I feel like I have no one I want to talk to, I suppose I have a couple options but none of them really feel like someone I really want to talk to about my feelings, so dumping my feelings onto tumblr it is I suppose.

[book-of-my-dreams]

Always fun when the whole family gets together for a celebration and literally all of them are transphobic (even the ones who know that I'm trans) and make me realize yet again how fucking stupid transphobes are. Like the way their minds work is so weird. And the best part is: this conversation wasn't about me, they have no idea I'm trans. They were judging the fuck outta this trans man none of them had ever met, my aunt's friend's son. He's just living his best life, getting surgey and a husband, and they're spending brunch talking shit about him and feeling like they're good people for doing that.

My cousin was completely stuck on the fact that the trans man in question was gay. "She got surgery to be a man but now she's getting married to a man? I don't know why she didn't just stay a woman if she wanted to marry a man" Why would you think HIS marriage has anything to do with HIS gender? Those are two completely separate things.

My grandma was way too insistent on "letting nature be nature and not messing with it" for someone who's literally only alive because we messed with nature and replaced like half her bones with plastic or some shit and put tunnels in her arteries. Also her daughter had cancer but I guess her messing with nature by getting chemo therapy was fine?

"I don't believe any of those people can be happy after doing that do their body" again grandma, what the fuck are you talking about. How do you just completely ignore the fact that almost everyone who's trans and doesn't "do that" ends up severely depressed and suicidal? Also completely ignoring the fact that studies prove that they're much happier after getting surgery or at least things like binders.

Then grandma got told that modern medicine can make trans men a working Dick but that they're sterile and ofc she immediately went "see, nature knows what's it's doing, t doesn't work if you mess with it" as if no cis person ever has any issues with infertility.

My mom knows I'm trans and I thought she'd gotten over it but when she heard that this guy's mom died a few years ago she immediately said "I bet it's because of that, she died and that made her so sad that she thought she'd be happier as a man" ?? What??? What does that even?? What

Istg they were all so fucking condescending like they were the best people ever and trans people are all just pitiful crazy people. If a person offs themselves, transphobes liie my family will say it's because they were trans which obviously means they were mentally ill, not because they were treated like shit for being trans and having to sit there and listen as your entire family talks about how they don't think you're human.

Another great topic was that my pregnant sister in law (she's okay but married to an asshole) was talking about how she wants to parent their baby boy like not telling him to "man up" or not to cry or play with dolls because he's a boy and her husband was just rolling his eyes.

He and all the other men at the table laughed and said that they were raised traditionally male and turned out fine...which woud be a hilarious joke but they were serious. THEY DID NOT TURN OUT FINE. They get drunk every time they're sad and have extreme anger issues. Because apparently that's traditionally manly and talking about feelings isn't. None of them are happy but I guess enjoying their lives wouldn't be manly so they just don't. I really really hope that they divorce soon and he doesn't get custody.

[pyrrhiccomedy]

is there anything remotely constructive one can say in response to a middle-aged lesbian TERF who thinks that saying "date whoever you want, but if you're closed to dating whole groups of people like black, disabled, trans, you should examine your biases" is a form of (quote) rapey coercive conversion therapy that likens lesbians' sexual orientation to racism and is the same thing as homophobic harassers telling lesbians they should try dick?

Is there anything constructive to say to a TERF-terf? Like an actual terf? Like they call themselves a terf openly and tweet about how transgendered women are peeping at them in the bathroom? No. Those are kissing cousins to fascists. Lost cause. Move on.

Is there any way to have a constructive conversation with a middle-aged lesbian who is asking the question you have here, but has not been fully radicalized yet? Like, they are asking a very terfy question, but they actually might be willing to engage in a conversation with you in good faith? Yeah, I think so. You just have to come at it strategically.

So let's set the parameters for what we're talking about here carefully. I'm gonna say the word "penis" a lot, so brace yourselves for that.

We are not talking about non-lesbian terfs. Our demographic is a middle aged lesbian on the brink of being radicalized, but who is still willing to engage in a genuine conversation about her ideas.

We're also only going to deal briefly (in this very paragraph) with the use case of lesbian terfs who make no distinction between trans women who have fully medically transitioned, and trans women who still have dicks. Because like, if you just think a person assigned male at birth will always be male no matter what their body looks like or how they feel on the inside, the problem isn't so much that you're a terf as it is that you're a gender essentialist. Like, you can definitely be both, but the gender essentialism is the deeper issue, and that's a harder one to talk people out of because you start getting into a lot of science. Your question mentioned dick, so our use case here is a lesbian who doesn't want to date a trans woman because she doesn't want to touch a dick, and she perceives being asked to consider why she doesn't want to date trans women as pressure to put herself into a situation where she might interact with a dick.

Step one: engage your own empathy first.

The question being posed here logically holds together. You need to recognize that before you can engage with this person productively. Like, you know that this question is terfy as fuck, and that a trans person would probably feel bad hearing it, but the question in and of itself is not nonsensical. There's an "If A then B then C" happening here that holds together. "If a trans woman has a penis, and I, a lesbian, don't want to touch a penis, then by encouraging me to be more open-minded about dating trans women, you are exerting social pressure upon me to touch a penis." That tracks. It's not a kind or enlightened or nuanced way of looking at the situation, but the problem is that it is defensive, not that it is nonsense.

The second part of your empathy homework is to understand that middle aged lesbians have by and large had experiences that give them reason to be defensive. Lesbians who came up in the 70s and 80s faced way more pressure than most of us ever will to "give dick a chance." So while you see their question as a terfy dog whistle, they see your question ("why not consider why you don't want to sleep with a trans woman?") as an anti-lesbian dog whistle. Because when they were coming up, it would have been! You know that you don't mean it that way, but they have probably earned the right to assume the worst.

The third part of your empathy homework is to stop accusing this woman of being a terf unless she is an actual, out and out, radicalized terf (in which case, you can stop reading, because that's not what we're talking about here). Saying "that's terfy" or "that's a terf argument" or "you're really sounding like a terf" makes people SUPER DEFENSIVE. You are trying to make this woman feel less defensive, so she will allow herself to be more open to your ideas. You're not wrong! But you're also not going to get anywhere, and you specifically asked for how to have a productive conversation.

Okay, so empathy engaged. We have acknowledged that her question is not inherently spurious. We have acknowledged that she has a right to be defensive about her unwillingness to touch a penis. We're not going to call her a terf while we're trying to make a connection. Step two.

Step two: recognize that your argument as you've posed it here kind of sucks.

"if you're closed to dating whole groups of people like black, disabled, trans, you should examine your biases" STOP stop stop stop stop stop stop stop stop. You are comparing three things here that have nothing in common other than that people are prejudiced about them. Not wanting to date black people is completely different from not wanting to date disabled people, and both are completely different from not wanting to touch a penis. Conflating all of these things makes it incredibly easy to sidetrack your argument. Literally all I have to say is "so you're saying that not wanting to touch a penis is just like being racist?" and you are never going to get the conversation back on track. Those things are not the same. Leave racism is out of this. Leave ableism out of it too. Like, if you're comparing apples to oranges, I could add "children" to the list of 'whole groups of people I'm closed to dating,' and like - I shouldn't even have to continue this line of thought, this sucks, this is a bog, get out and never go back in. Not wanting to touch a penis isn't like anything. Stop comparing it to other stuff.

Step three: disrupt their way of thinking.

You're going to do this by asking questions. We're going fully Socratic here. You're not going to tell this woman anything. You're not going to 'invite her to consider' shit. You're going to listen, and you're going to ask questions, and that's it.

Here are some good questions to ask:

If a person looks 100% like a woman, like you can't tell at all that they're trans even if they're totally naked, and they think of themselves as a woman, and they act like a woman so completely that you'd never guess they'd ever lived as a man, does it actually matter that they're trans? Like if there's no way of telling unless you draw a blood sample and test their DNA?

This question is, first of all, to make sure sure sure that we're not talking to a gender essentialist. If they answer "yes," you can follow up with:

So do you just think they have, like...a male energy or something that you'd pick up on?

And if they're like, well, no, that's nothing, then you can keep asking questions until they grant you that a trans woman who is functionally indistinguishable from a cis woman is, like, not the problem, and you can continue. If they say some shit about chromosomes, we're in gender essentialist territory and you can mildly ask them if they might be willing to read some scientific studies you've found, and drop the conversation for now.

If she's agreed that a 100% cis-passing trans woman is not the source of her unease here, you can cut to the chase with:

It's the dick, right?

And then stop talking for like, five fully uninterrupted minutes, while this woman goes on a rant about how YES, IT'S THE DICK, SHE DOESN'T WANT TO TOUCH A DICK, IS THAT A CRIME? IS THAT A CRIME NOW? ARE YOU SENDING HER TO JAIL?

Let her get it all out of her system. If you can bring yourself to do it, crack a couple of jokes, because of course it's funny to imagine someone going to jail for not wanting to touch a dick! It'll let the tension out of the argument, and make her feel more like you're on her side.

Once she's fully wound down about this, you can pause for a moment, thoughtfully, and then ask:

Okay so...but...are you a lesbian because you love labia? or because you love women?

This can go a couple of ways:

1 - "Yes, I am just wild about vulva, that's my whole thing." okay cool! nevermind! you're never gonna be sexually satisfied with a trans woman who hasn't had bottom surgery then, no stress. We can drop this whole conversation, just...

But you don't think it'd be weird if a lesbian was more into women than labia, right? Like, lots of lesbians do sex stuff that doesn't even involve direct pussy contact, we're a famously creative bunch of outside-the-box (ba-dum pshh) thinkers. So like, if that woman were willing to view a trans woman's dick as just like, an unwanted but tolerable lil clump of skin on the body of a woman she's otherwise very attracted to, you wouldn't condemn her for that, right?

If she'll give you that, cool, case closed imo. You're a lesbian who loves pussy so you don't want to date a trans woman, but you won't judge another lesbian for dating a trans woman. And peace on earth returns.

If she won't give you that, you can keep asking questions about why, and the conversation is going to turn in a more "why exactly do you feel like you need to judge other people's sexual practices when everyone is a consenting adult" direction, which is way less fraught than the terf conversation.

Okay, moving on:

2 - "Of course I love WOMEN but I want a WOMAN woman."

This is easy. Now we're back in "so is there some kind of magic 'male energy' you're picking up on, here?" territory. Keep asking questions until this breaks down or turns into gender essentialism again.

3 - "Uh...that's a good point kind of except I'D STILL HAVE TO TOUCH A PENIS."

This is the one time I'm gonna tell you to make a statement instead of asking a question, because the point is still just to keep her talking. The statement is, sagely:

A penis has way more emotional power than like, somebody's elbow or something.

That's it. Now you're just gonna let her talk again. She's going to talk for a while about her feelings about penises. This is a really important time to empathise. She might have trauma. She might have righteous anger. She might share a fucked-up conversion therapy anecdote. This is your time to be a good friend. Lots of women, lesbians and otherwise, have negative associations with penises, and the reasons for that are usually painful. Like if she's just "yeah yuck ew gross gross hahaha I hate them they're so weird looking," that's fine too, but prepare yourself to listen.

Anyway, whether it comes out as "ew penises gross" or a thirty minute conversation about deep personal trauma, a time will come when you can, oh so gently, like you are cradling a fatigued bumblebee in your hand to carry it to some sugar water you've set down in the shade, ask:

Do you think maybe you've given the penis too much emotional power?

And then stop talking again. Be genuinely curious when you ask this question. Does she think that maybe she's allowed the penis to loom overlarge in her connotative universe? If so, is that something she's interested in changing - not so she can date trans women but just like, in general?

From there you should be good to just...talk. Don't expect a capitulation right there in that very conversation. The goal is "you've given me some food for thought," not "oh, wow, you've opened my eyes to what a bigot I've been." Don't push too hard all at once. Let her go away and think about it. In a few days or weeks - whatever feels right - bring it up again and ask if she's thought at all about it since the last time you talked. Keep asking questions.

Good luck.

[fagsystem]

I cannot even begin to put into words how much it means to me when I see people talk about this.

For quite a while, I have noticed that the queer community runs rampant with a gender affirming version of gender essentialism. It firmly draws a line in the sand between men and non-men. Men are inherently evil and dangerous and privileged, and non-men are just people.

It was honestly only rather recently I was able to recognize it for what it is. It was only in reading this post that I fully realised the ways in which this has impacted me.

I have a vivid memory of when I was thirteen or fourteen of me considering undergoing conversion therapy for being transgender. I was fully aware of how horrible and traumatic conversion therapy is to endure, it was not from a place of ignorance.

I wish to make a prefacing comment before stating the reason I was considering it, to help understand the severity of how it impacted me. I was living in an unsupportive household in which I was not even allowed to be out. I was not allowed to go by my name and pronouns even with friends. The day I told my classmates I was transgender, my parents told me that me being transgender was going to get my brother pushed in front of a car. I had no shortage of experience when it came to being taught being transgender was a bad thing. None of that factored into why I was considering conversion therapy at age thirteen. It was because of how I was seeing women, especially queer women, demonising men.

One instance of this that is particularly burnt into my brain was the comments under a post about MLM and WLW solidarity. There was comment after comment from queer women about how the post would have been better off without the men. That it is horrible to compare WLW relationships with relationships that involve men, because all relationships involving men are horrible and toxic and disgusting. Men are inherently horrible and toxic and disgusting.

There was so much more than just this one instance. I was taught that it was a shame at best that I was transgender because I could have been WLW. That being a man meant that if I were to ever date a woman, I was going to hurt her. Any relationships I had would be toxic because I am a man. People are better off being with women. I could have been WLW. Instead, I was a monster.

Even now I am afraid to mention I was considering conversion therapy. My instinctive response is that it does not matter I was experiencing such extreme and traumatic bigotry that I considered undergoing conversion therapy to fix me, the fact that I ever thought that it is horrible mistreatment of those who have been forced to undergo it. That instinctive response is probably from the same place that made me want that, the idea that something is wrong with me not the bigotry I am facing.

I was taught that it is not bigotry I am facing. That it is impossible to experience oppression on the basis of being a man. That as a man, I not only held privilege above all other transgender people, but cisgender women too. Any time I would see someone begin to broach the topic of transgender men experiencing transphobia they would be dogpiled. Accusations of being transmisogynistic and speaking over the transgender women getting murdered were coupled with the 'fact' that transgender men only experience a fraction of the bigotry that transgender women do. Any experiences that fell out of that fraction was simply misdirected bigotry from people who believed us to be transgender women. Transgender men are not truly the targets, simply collateral, and implying otherwise is using your privilege as a man to silence and oppress transgender women.

I only found out last year that studies indicate transgender men and women face rather equal levels of bigotry. The only instance in which transgender women face far more bigotry than transgender men is when it comes to black transgender women and black transgender men. When I found out I wrote a big post for it, which I never ended up posted. I planned on making it a YouTube video. I wanted to be able to link to it when I speak about transphobia, as evidence that I was actually experiencing the harm I said I was. I needed evidence that I was not harming transgender women and minimising their struggles on hand or else I was simply going to be another man using his privilege to silence women. I was too scared to talk about anything without that evidence. I never ended up having the energy to create that video. I felt so alone for so long.

The only time I would ever see anything like this being talked about is transfemmes speaking about demonisation they face for being transgender. I would find myself horrified that I would dare to relate to transmisogyny, that is not something I am allowed to feel.

I heard the song Woollen Mittens on TikTok a while ago. It is a song made by Ewy, a nonbinary creator, about their experiences with being demonised for masculinity. When I heard it I almost did not even allow myself to feel how deeply it resonated with me. It was not until I saw them post a video where they said they do not mind who uses the song on TikTok provided they are queer that I, with the permission of someone who is not a man, allow myself to feel how I felt about it.

I wish I was able to provide some form of happy ending. I struggled for a little while to think about something good I could say. If I allow myself to be entirely honest here, it was only as I read and made this post did I realise that I am far more impacted by this than I realise.

Me seeking some form of happy ending to provide is coming from a place of feeling like I must ease the emotional burden I have placed upon those who decided to read. I almost began the reblog with something along the lines of, 'I try not to post such heavy topics, my apologies if it upset you.' I feel responsible and horrible for any form of emotional hardship that I may give to others.

I have always prided myself on being a good communicator. I built a communication system from the ground up for an ex of mine who struggled with it. Whenever I detect something that may be wrong with a partner of mine, I walk them through communicating. I feel horrible for not having picked up on it sooner, for allowing myself to harm them. Me not knowing what I cannot possibly know feels like my responsibility, not theirs for not having told me.

When I do communicate how I feel, it feels like a violent passionate burst that destroys everything in its wake. It feels like fire and it burns. I prefer communicating over text, so I can take my time and ensure the fire does not burn others as well. No matter how careful I am, no matter how it was received, it is followed up with careful attempts to dress any wounds it could have possibly left behind in the people I spoke with.

As I began to explore masculine forms of dressing, I struggled to let go of the label gender non-conforming when dressed like that. I seek out ways I can incorporate femininity into my look to smooth the hard, dangerous edges of masculinity.

Ever since I began dressing masculine, I have been obsessed with figuring out what sort of man I want to be. I want to be put together, but kind and liked. I want people to feel safe. I planned on carrying around a sewing kit in case anyone needs, because it is soft and domestic and dorky and sweet and people will not view me as scary if they know about it.

Since being on testosterone, since people look at me and see a man, it feels as though it is my responsibility to ensure they feel safe at all times. I have been masking my autism for months because my formal linguistic style, lack of expression, and monotone voice is a frightening now that my voice is deep. Even after it has caused me to lose months of time from dissociation, I have been struggling to let go of it. I initially wrote the majority of the post masking, to ensure I came across correctly.

I have realised I think of myself as a monster. Now that I know that I can see that every aspect of myself is built on this belief. I do not know where to even begin to address this.

I cannot quite stop myself from giving it a happier ending, so instead I am going to acknowledge that is what I am doing. Thank you to everyone who has added to this conversation, you have helped me realise a lot of important things about myself. Now that I am aware of them, I can begin to work on them.

is he “trauma dumping” on you or have you just not unpacked what the patriarchy has taught you outside of “woman bad” and you think men expressing any kind of emotion or vulnerability is bad actually.