#because i can give it to one of my transfem or gnc friends and make them smile

[tittyinfinity]

Trading clothing items with your other trans friends is one of the most beautiful experiences. Gifting gender euphoria upon each other

[mr-ribbit]

something fascinating to me about egg discourse is how often tme people Also joke about or question their friends potential to be trans, and it's literally never talked about like this.

my cis and tme nb friends routinely joke about celebrities or characters that have big "nonbinary energy" or who otherwise exhibit behavior we would associate with ourselves. i have tme friends and acquaintances who have approached me or my wife and straightforwardly said "something seems trans about you, have I asked for your pronouns recently?"

similar friends have even talked about other still-cis friends in our circle this way, or joked about "when are you going to transition like the rest of us?" or "yeah cis people are a minority in this group, just give it time" or "no wonder you have queer friends with how comfortable with being gnc you are" or etc etc examples like that

even the actual examples of people in my life that I can think of as being the most "invasive" or presumptive about gender have been tme people:

it was my cishet friends who outed me and my wife as trans to everyone at their wedding, including their boomer parents and hundreds of strangers, and called it "the most queer wedding party ever"

it was my tme nb friend who kept saying they could "always tell" her transfem cousin was trans before she came out, and then proceeded to randomly give us extremely personal details about her bottom surgery

it was my transmasc friend who refused to call me and my wife anything other than "little enby beans" after we met and introduced us with our full genders+sexuality labels to every single person one by one at a party

it was my transmasc nb friend who kept insisting my wife could "still be nonbinary" when she was first considering identifying as a trans woman instead, and it was THAT idea that actually slowed her down from making changes to her life that she wanted

it was my cis friends who approached me arm and arm and cornered my outside of a bathroom at a party right after I took a piss to suddenly ask me what my pronouns were because they "heard something" at the party

like, transfems deserve robust support against this trash so a lot of our defensive discourse has ofc been about how it IS okay for transfems to talk about eggs and be jokey about it and non-invasively approach others about being trans

but i swear to god none of these weird people have even stopped to make their discourse ABOUT anyone BUT transfems. it's so clearly targeted!!

no one has EVER approached *me* as a tme nb person and suggested i was pressuring gnc people with my egg jokes. never. nothing even remotely similar. i joke about other people being trans all the time and no one has ever treated me the way you all are treating transfems over this issue.

important note: my examples are all things I recall as being invasive and awkward, and I'm sharing them to make a point about how often rude behavior comes from the same tme people pointing fingers over this. but I still don't think any of them are worth the crucifixion people are treating transfem egg discourse with.

even when my friends were weird to me in the above examples, my reaction was either to confront them about it as friends who I trust to be able to communicate with, or to cut those individuals off after they proved not worth a relationship in the long run. at no time did I desire to make a call-out post or spread rumors about them or publicly declare all of their gender as a screeching menace to society.

my point here is that even when I do think about moments where others crossed a line, acting like this is a "issue trans women have" is blatantly transmisogynistic garbage that only exists to serve the woman-hating machine at the heart of our society. fucking cut it out

[tirfpikachu]

it's okay to call out a dysphoric person being comically out of touch, not realizing how gender conforming their lives are irl and how they benefit from it… but you can't assume that the person is inherently suffering less from dysphoria internally. dysphoria is a disorder. and like any other disorder, the ableist rhetoric - both for mental and physical disorders - that you can easily tell how much someone is suffering merely by their appearance actually can cause harm to people invisibly suffering. and that includes dysphoric people.

the very stereotypical visibly gnc trans person might face more gncphobia and overt transphobia yet suffer less from dysphoria, or not at all. yet a more gender conforming trans person might be suffering like crazy internally and be extremely debilitated, even housebound from dysphoria. both people need support and need to be good allies to one another. both people can be out of touch and say batshit crazy things about experiences they don't understand.

people who don't face overt gncphobia & transphobia have privilege from it and need to be aware of it and acknowledge it.

people who suffer less or not at all from dysphoria need to uplift more dysphoric voices, even if those dysphoric voices are conforming irl.

dysphoria is an often debilitating disorder. just like any mental disorder, they need the same amount of reasonable accommodations as we would give any other dysphoric person. just because this person is a they/them female person who identifies as a nonbinary woman doesn't mean she internally suffers any less than a more stereotypical trans guy. at my very worst dysphoria-wise, i sometimes looked outwardly more conforming than in my healthier days. this is also because i had worked hard on unlearning internalized sexism and teaching myself that men can be feminine and women can be masculine, and that trying to wear more masculine things wouldn't make me any closer to being male bc clothes say nothing about one's sex. i know other trans people who did a lot of that inner work, and now are told they must be fake, they must not be dysphoric any longer for being transmasc femboys or transfem tomboys etc. if we want the trans community to fight its sexism problem, we need to welcome those who no longer associate clothes with sex yet still have dysphoria. we need to welcome the transmascs who are more feminine yet still have top/bottom dysphoria, and the transfems who are more masculine yet still yearn from hrt & surgeries. if we are to treat dysphoria as a disorder, and want it to be properly treated, and heal the dysphoria that can be healed to prevent detransitions, we need to apply the same logic that disabled activists & mental health activists advocate for and dispell the myth that invisibly disordered folks inherently suffer less. i may be in a wheelchair but someone else might have worse pain and worse struggles than me in many areas; i may have more serious sounding disorders mentally but the person with generalized anxiety might suffer a trillion times more than i do on a day-to-day basis.

we radfems on the more tirfy side, or simply radfems who care deeply about dysphoric people - a big amt of us having a history of dysphoria ourselves or dysphoric friends - need to work on creating a stable balance between calling out the comically out-of-touch takes trans people who don't face gncphobia irl often say, and being aware of our own kneejerk ableist reactions to someone not looking "dysphoric enough" who talks about their own personal struggles.

[officialgleamstar]

Personal DnDads Pride Headcanons

some of these are simple but most are paragraphs long because of who I am as a person (incapable of saying things concisely), so they're going under a readmore. vaguely organized by age group.

one quick note: feel free to cheer on or rag on any of these that you please, variety in opinion is the spice of fandom life! everyone's headcanons are so real and valid to me, i am a strong believer in having as many contradicting fandom opinions as you want. for this list, i just went with everything that is "default" to my fan content. others' transfem sparrow is shaking hands with my gnc sparrow and yes, i'm listing that one on purpose, because if you make fun of transfem sparrow, you are getting hit by my bat. be fucking nice.

please enjoy!

Season 1 Dads and Spouses

Carol is a lesbian. This is simply canon to me. It’s important that this is first and visible to everyone.

Bi/pan polyamorous Henry and Mercedes is also simply canon to me. Honestly that one might be fully canon based on some of the things that happen in Odyssey

Henry is unlabeled but in the sense that he calls himself ‘queer’, ‘bisexual’, ‘gay’, or ‘pansexual’, fully depending on his mood and the conversation happening

Ron is also unlabeled but in the sense that he has never thought about it in his life and isn’t intending to now

Glenn is bisexual but never talks about it unless someone else mentions it first, and he tries really really hard to never think about his gender once in his life. The queer angst I give Glenn could be a whole post of its own but just know he has issues. He does fuck men though

Darryl still isn’t really sure on his sexuality and probably never will be, but he’s actually explored it a bit, so that’s better than whatever the fuck was going on with him before the show started. Henry likes giving him subtle bear pride flag accessories because Darryl actually wears them a lot. His favorite color is brown, after all.

Jodie, Nicky, and Taylor all are bisexual with a preference for women. Sexuality isn’t genetic but it is for them specifically.

Morgan is also bisexual. Literally none of the season 1 parents are straight except maybe Samantha and even with her, my opinion fully matters on the day and how I’m feeling.

Henry and Lark have definitely had an exchange at some point where Lark asked him how it was to ‘experience twink death’, to which Henry just went ‘get back to me in a few years on that, kid.’ and Lark spent the rest of the week furiously moping because clearly, he’s a twunk, Father- (words of a man who did not take care of himself well enough from the ages of 18-25 to ever be a twunk)

This is my little shipper brain but Jodie only realized he liked men after being stuffed into the Odyssey and being around Ron 24/7 for months on end (and the demon stuff, but he didn’t know that yet for obvious reasons). In his timeline, he had a whole arc about it and now he’s persistently attracted to strange men who don’t make sense as well as women light-years out of his league. He’s still a little miffed that Henry doesn’t remember the very long conversations they had about it, but him and Nicky get to wear matching bi pride bracelets now, so he guesses it’s fine.

Kiddads and Spouses

Lark is bisexual. He has known this since kindergarten when his parents explained what the flag all over their house was and has never thought about it since.

Lark also helped Rebecca realize she was bisexual because she would ask him about it in a class they shared in high school

This is utterly unrelated to LGBT headcanons but I think Veronica and Rebecca grew up in San Dimas with the kiddads, and were friends with them in high school. It just makes sense to me

Unlabeled Terry Junior is something that can be so personal to me. In a general sense, he likes everyone romantically, and identifies enough with the asexual spectrum to wear an ace ring, but he doesn’t really see the point in putting a name on it. He’s just Terry Junior and he’s happy with that.

Him, Lark, and Nicky did have a group chat called ‘bisexuals with an agenda’ in high school though, where they would make plans for pranking or otherwise harassing their fathers during group outings. Terry loves Ron but that does not mean he is above ruining his day. It’s done with affection.

My thoughts on Sparrow could be a full fanfiction but gonna try to keep it simple (retroactive edit: did not keep it simple). Sparrow is the token cishet of the kiddads, but in the queerest way possible. He’s an Oak-Garcia, of course he’s explored himself very thoroughly. At current, he identifies as gender non-confirming cis man, but he has had periods of his life where he transitioned and then detransitioned. In early high school, he identified as non-binary. From senior year up until just before Hero was born, he lived as a trans lesbian. He doesn’t see these periods as phases, just as his identity changing over time. Currently he’s perfectly happy identifying as a man, but wouldn’t be wholly shocked if he transitioned again. Calls himself “cis but gender is obviously, massively, a social construct and so it feels unfair to expect myself to fit into these boxes when identity can be so fluid and-”

Rebecca still calls him her wife, and also a granola lesbian or MILF from time to time because it makes him laugh, and while Nicky was still in his life, he would send Sparrow trans memes a lot. Sparrow also has always liked being seen as non-binary, he sees it as ‘winning at being androgynous’. Competitive to the sense of nonsensical Sparrow my beloved

Sparrow always wears women’s clothing but that’s for autistic reasons. They just fit nicer for his brain. It helps the gender(tm) thing though, he near exclusively wore hand-me-downs from Mercedes throughout all of high school

Sorry for talking so much about Sparrow. He’s my favorite character so he is the focus of many of my thoughts. Anyways

Never been a huge fan of the ‘Grant was outed by his crush in the Forgotten Realms’ headcanon, I think Grant came out about a year beforehand. Long enough where everything about it has settled but it’s still new enough that Darryl forgot for a split second and thought Grant might have a crush on Killa during the Four Knight arc. He’d known he liked boys a while before that, and also his parents kind of figured he was gay most of his life since he had 95% girl friends

Marco is pansexual! He met Grant in college because he worked the front desk of their dorm building and would always wear a bunch of pride pins

Nicky was Grant’s first good friend who was a boy, I like to think that they were childhood friends. Grant announced this to his dad at the age of 10 by going “Nick Close is transgender now, so that means you don’t have to worry about me only talking to girls because he’s a boy.” and Darryl went “…Alright?” and then googled what ‘transgender’ means

Speaking of, Nicky realized he was trans because of Mulan. Both Glenn and Jodie, in their respective timelines, googled ‘How do I know if my daughter is a lesbian’ before he came out because Nicky would rewatch the reflection song so often and also the tomboy-isms. Everyone felt very stupid for being surprised when he cut all of his hair off, cried, and asked to change his name

T4T Nicky and Cassandra is canon and they rubbed it into everyone's faces when they were together, Anthony is just afraid of the truth

Cassandra is trans het. I love trans het people more than anything and I love her so this makes sense to me.

Veronica is non-binary, in the sense of “girl but to the left”. They/she pronouns, calls themself a girlie and a mom but not a woman, dresses in a kickass pantsuit at formal events. I’m also in love with her

Season 2 Teens and Friends

Hero and Normal are both trans. When Hero came out, Sparrow sat Normal down to explain why Hero was now a sister instead of a brother and Normal responded with “Well, that’s not fair. How come Hero can be a girl but I can’t be a boy?!” and Sparrow just stared at him for a really long time before going “You can be a boy, honey.” and they went thrift shopping as a family for new clothes the next day

Normal is stealth trans, mostly because Hero is the same way and he copies her, but also because it doesn’t really occur to him that he passes. He just figures that people knows even though he is on testosterone and binds and presents masculine. It helps that his family presents pretty gender-neutral as a whole, so most people assume he had long hair as a kid because his parents are hippies. They had a son and daughter, both with long hair. They now have a daughter and a son, both with short hair. To the general populace, nothing has changed, they just misremembered which kid was older.

Taylor is a demi-boy and spends every year growing more and more feminine. Definitely calls their gender something like ‘boy with a dash of girl on the side’ with their friends. Growing out his hair was a newer thing and he regrets cutting it, even if it was a super cool sequence and he looked like an anime protagonist, because he liked how it framed his face.

Cassandra has always maintained an openness about her trans identity, so Taylor’s the same way. He’s always got the he/they pronoun pin on (I figure this is normalized by the time of season 2, but he’s just very pleased about it), he has a variety of trans and non-binary pride pins that he cycles through, and they like painting their nails because it’s an easy way for them to feel a little more feminine.

Cassandra’s living room is decorated with a massive trans pride flag and LED lights. The first time the teens walk into Taylor’s home, Scary says “it looks like a Twitch stream in here” at the same time that Normal says “it looks like my sister’s room in here” and they high-five while Taylor yells at them to be nice.

Hermie is genderfluid and uses any pronouns. This is real to me. He has my own teenage trait of gender shifting every three hours and never knowing what to do about it and he will be suffering with this until he exits puberty, at which point he gives up and just sees what gender other people choose for him.

Hermie is also pan/ace! No further thoughts here. She just is.

Erica just goes by queer because she doesn’t think the common passerby deserves to know her rich inner life and she’s right, they don’t

I tend to say a lot that all of the S2 kids are bisexual, and I represent them as such, but I truly believe that Lincoln and Normal both have no idea what’s going on with their sexualities. They say they’re bisexual for bisexual teen squad reasons but Normal is going through a constant crisis of “Am I gay or bisexual?” and Lincoln looks up the definition of aro/ace on a weekly basis. Neither of them will ever express this until Scary goes “maybe I’m not bisexual, actually.”

On that note, Scary is a lesbian but she’s not going to realize that until college. For now, she’s rocking with the bisexuality and pretends it’s not weird that her ‘crushes’ on boys feel wildly different than her crushes on girls. Yes I am projecting. This is not a secret. We project onto Scary here.

[iveofficiallygonemad]

What about that gay little musician (Klavier I think is his name) from AA for the character asks!!

Jdoxowkxixjs I love the way u phrased this SO much!!!!

Yes his name is klavier which means piano in German which he 100% knew when he picked it out! He is canonly gnc af and dresses in the nonbinary colors. Klavier is a they/he in my heart although I have a seen transfem klavier which I also love and adore.

Sexuality hc: Klavier is a bi icon, could u see him wearing heart shaped glasses? Yes

Also he's ace! And canonly wears an ace ring!

[ID: A fullbody of Klavier stands in the center of the screen, hands on his hips. He has long blonde hair in a twist, a purple blazer, and a black button down and pants. On his left is the ace flag (back, grey, white, purple) and on his right the nonbinary flag (yellow, white, purple, black). Both of these are colorpicked off of him. On the bottom left is a image of Klavier pointing to the right with a ringed hand. On the right is a closeup of him pushing up his shades with the middle finger, which has a silver ring on it. End ID]

Ship: THEE klavier ship is klapollo, listen they are SO!!!

NOTP: not really applicable cuz klapollo is so prevalent? I'm open to other ships w him in it (assuming characters r close in age). I guess maybe him and ema (bcuz I think they'd only work if in a poly w polly) and tbh I think they’d be more fun as worsties

Random hc: I love klavier sm I feel like ive seen every post abt him and don’t have any original thoughts that haven’t been said before but, I hc him as having OCD. This is mostly just based off of our interactions with him during Guitar's Serenade.

Also, I’m aware this is an unpopular opinion but I don’t think he had a crush on Apollo when he first met him! Like I do find that trope fun and silly, but looking at his character Klavier would never fall for someone at first sight, and definitely not someone he’s as suspicious about as Apollo [he accused his brother of Murder]. Klavier is SO So meticulous and need to have all the facts figured out beforehand. I truly believe he needs something to be loud and messy and BAD at to vent with because he tries SO hard to keep everything under wraps at all times. Get the man a buncha brightly colored paints he can go ham w!!! Let him blast music in his lonely studio apartment and head bang and belt songs and dance badly where no one can see!!! Let him learn to take up space authentically in his own damn house!!

General opinion overall: He is SO charismatic and blorbo-able! He seems carefree but is Not in any sense of the word. He makes you think he wears his heart on his sleeve but it is hidden under SO many layers, getting him to trust you is going to be SO much work. He puts EVERYTHING he’s got into his passions and by god he’s gotta make sure he’s got everything Just Right. He’s such a layered character and its hard to pick out his thoughts, also they created a character who is just SO interesting when you pair him with literally any character. Like he and apollo are such opposites how would they function together? What the hell was the Gavin brother’s relationship Actually like? I think abt this all the time. Also like, him and Wright actually became more similar characters due to his disbarment, but also That past affects his relationship with Ema too! Also how the hell did he cope (did he cope???) with the personal betrayals he suffered in AJ?? Also what’s his relationship with the other prosecutors in the office???? Does he have offscreen friends or did he really lose everyone? I am unable to be succinct over Klavier but it boils down to:

He has the range! He acts silly and carefree but is so NOT! Which gives you so much to explore

Also tagging @kingdomofbrokenhearts bcuz u also sent in an ask abt him, and @sailormaya bcuz they are the CEO of Klavier Gavin and know all the facts. Also if you wanna read a klapolli fic where klav Doesn’t fall in love at first sight and has The biggest bi panic, highly recommend: this fic!

[cebwrites]

gender/sexuality HCs (Heart Pirates pt 2)

a/n: for point of reference, i’ll be deferring this intro since not all the hearts are named yet and we still don’t know much about them ; 3 ;

as a reminder you’re free to agree or disagree with these hcs, these are just how i write them and my personal opinions o(￣▽￣)ｄ

onto the HCs! word count: 0.7k

Clione

he/him (cis man)

a raging dumpster fire disaster bi if i’ve seen one

clione shoots his shot a lot with airs of confidence to cheer himself on, the only downside is that people often see right through him and turn down the inflated persona he wears just so his knees don’t buckle

there’s a certain appeal to his awkwardness and fumbling, maybe clione wants someone to match all that energy he puts out, or maybe he needs someone tall, dark, and handsome to help slow him down

Ani

bi, they/she (gnc transfem)

their gender journey has always been something that Ani’s kept close to heart and at the same time, just a cog in the background that no one’s drawn too much attention to outside of her initial mentions of it to clear up any confusion

the realization happened gradually over time along their journey with the Hearts - she’s grateful for such an understanding crew but supposes with a captain like Law and a partner like Fang, any response that wasn’t acceptance wouldn’t be tolerated

Fang

bi, he/him (transmasc)

in direct contrast to his girlfriend, Fang is out and loud about just how trans he is - captain worked hard on his top surgery and Fang’ll be damned if he doesn’t show off the scars any time he can (the opportunities are slim in the sub and their boiler suits so that makes him even more keen to go topless outside)

he’s not the “yodel from the heavens about how much i love my partner” type unlike some other people on the crew, but Fang shows his affection a lot through small gestures throughout the day - they have different stations in the sub but even then he manages to swing by Ani’s for a quick kiss on the cheek with his snack drop-off and vice versa, it’s the little things that they manage together

(yes I know his canon name is Hakugan but I got attached to Fang long before Oda revealed that bit about him fairly recently so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

Dorie

he/they/she lesbian (cis woman)

every crew needs a stone butch to keep things on the straight and narrow, right? right

despite how private he can be about his personal/romantic life, dorie still manages to be quite the open flirt - hitting mainly on other butch women but hey if you’re a gal interested in other gals that’s free real estate in their mind

everything is kept pretty casual, they don’t expect to form lifelong bonds in a coupe nights when the crew typically don’t dock at an island for more than a week at a time, give or take how much trouble they get (dragged) into - she takes what she can get and for the moment, it’s enough

although, some part of him does wonder when they’ll meet up with the Kidd Pirates again, for no particular reason...

Hake

they/them (enby)

demiromantic but what kind of pirate doesn’t kiss their crewmate goodnight? or on the forehead sneakily before breakfast, or on the cheek- just.. cause...

point is! they’re very affectionate and like to sling at least an arm around whoever they’re talking to if it’s someone close

they’re chatty and amicable too with a friendly disposition to boot, something you’d breathe a breath of relief for to find in your tattoo artist, no? well--

Hoki

they/he (genderqueer)

unlabeled yet down horrendous for their best friend

this dumb gay bitch has gotten a bunch of small tattoos all over their body just as an excuse to spend more time with and/or be physically closer to Hake rather than just talk to them like a normal person

because the feeling of their arm around his shoulder sends Hoki’s heartrate skyrocketing normally but for some reason, seeing Hake in their element, at their most focused, calms them just enough to stay still for another hour or so

yeah he’s down so awful someone send HELP

And because I don’t have enough to say on the rest of them to make another post but wanted to mention these goobs anyway-

Jean Bart, Marl, Gul, Bas, and Laeno are the older gays of the crew - the queer elders (peepaws even) if you will Marl and Bas are trans men, Laeno is unlabeled but certainly not cis, while Jean and Gul are cis (all he/him, all mlm) Jean Bart didn’t have much of an opportunity to explore himself a la pillaging and terrorizing as a fearsome pirate captain before he was caught and sold to the Celestial Bastard that owned him - but now that he’s free and has a lot more time to his own thoughts, he’s able to examine himself properly and even reconsider experiences in the past as maybe not so straight after all

[penelopetheverytrans]

I'll actually put my reply on this version of the post, cause I do rly love and agree with Wowzer here and also your response is a genuinely good addition. I'll also try and put a cut here too but I'll be so real rn, I've never done that before so i might fuck this up terribly.

I think honestly just... there's so many things I could argue, like how the whole "pubic area" thing was because it feels like you were implying it was sexual which is a weird thing to claim just about a crop top showing some stomach, or again how in your original reply you specifically said Snazzy's post was "extremely bad" which by virtue of being a comment about the post and not necessarily just the Alec characterization also really looks like you're calling his art bad too, but there's only like two really important things I feel I really need to focus on at this point.

One is your final point in your last response to me, and also sorta related to what Wowzer said, which is that you really seem to be interacting with other people's character interpretations as being "wrong" just because you dislike it. It's very fair for you to dislike the Alec thing, or the Scorpia thing, or whatever, but that doesn't mean you should engage in discussion about it by calling a poster stupid or claiming their art doesn't count as "real" content for the fandom. You can always just move on, or if you do genuinely want to discuss things, discuss them as you have been doing now. Genuinely, looking at your most recent reply here, it's honestly really clever and thoughtful, but your immediate reaction to a single piece of not-serious meme art was to write a whole paragraph slamming the artist, and also writing multiple additional posts/ask responses about this. I want to hear your discussion on why you think the Slutty Chaotic Femboi reading of Alec weakens his character. I don't want to pick up vague themes about it through you sending genuinely cruel hate mail at my best friend for making a cute doodle. If you don't like something, block and move on. If you really want to have some sort of discussion about something you really don't agree with, start it naturally or write like a little tumblr essay instead of just tearing random people apart.

The other important thing is just... Snazzycrown is a gnc man. You're setting forth a whole interesting dive into why this trope exists, but you're doing it by posting about how terrible the characterization of this gnc man is on artwork by someone like him. I did see your (honestly wayyyy too buried in the text) message saying this isn't necessarily accusing Snazzy of anything, but still having that as your message you're trying to convey on this post in particular gives it such a disturbing interpretation. For example, there's a massive difference between an essay on how people are obsessed with porn of Brisket Guilty Gear because they want the "tabooness" of fucking a trans girl without actually having sex with someone who's trans hence the obsession with trying to claim she's still just a femboy and quoting outdated canon, and posting that same essay as a response to a transfem artist's Briget porn. Even if you clarify that it isn't intended to be aimed at her, the fact you're choosing this specific post to go wild on gives it a really mean look. Not to mention how that whole response was the best you've been, and only came after I talked you down from hate mail over this. Just... think about that.

I love fanon Alec, I don’t remember canon anymore. I’m here for the fics.

[what-even-is-thiss]

I feel kinda weird when cis gender conforming friends tell me they’ve gone into the girls/boys room and nothing bad happened. I know it’s well meaning, but here’s the thing. Here’s why it’s different for trans people.

Because if you’re a cis woman with long hair wearing clothes with a feminine fit and you walk into the men’s room, they don’t think you’re trans. They think you’re cleaning the place, or the women’s room is full and you’re gutsy. If you’re a cis man in the women’s room they might get a little weirded out but in all likelihood they’ll think you lost a bet or that you’re changing the toilet paper rolls. Or whatever.

If a person walks in and they’re obviously trans or you can’t tell though? Yikes. Shortly before I stopped using the women’s rooms I was a few months on T but didn’t fully pass. I obviously had/have breasts and wasn’t trying to hide them but I was also wearing men’s clothes and had short hair. Two women in a gas station stopped me before I went into the women’s room and said “You know that’s the women’s room, right?” And when I said “Yes.” they laughed at me and pointed in front of a group of other people at this busy gas station and then walked off. I eventually stopped using the women’s room because of all the stares I was getting and occasional incidents like the one I just mentioned.

Even now I only use the men’s room when I’m sure it’s going to be relatively empty or one where there are no mirrors. I keep hand sanitizer in my bag not just because I have a skin condition that reacts to water but also so I don’t have to use the sink. Because if I go to the sink that gives other men more opportunity to scan me. And I have seen them scanning me. Especially when I have to wait for a stall, because stp devices don’t work for me and a lot of urinals don’t have a barrier between them anyways.

Men tend to be a lot less vocal about their discomfort at my presence than women in my case, but I’m also transmasc so I can’t speak for visibly transfem people who use the men’s room. Cis men are still frightening though because they have a reputation for being aggressive. Cis women are frightening because they have a reputation for making a fuss. If you’re a cis person you can be almost certain that the fuss is because the other cis people think it’s silly or weird. Not because they’re suspicious of you.

If you’re a gender conforming cis person and go to the “wrong” restroom you’re still going to be in less danger than a trans or gnc person. I’m not saying there’ll never be a problem. I’m saying they still see you as cis and that always gives you at least some protection.