#because you don’t think trans women or women in general are capable of complex thought. you don’t think they’re capable of thoroughly | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

lastsonlost · 4 years ago

Text

Crossing the divide

Do men really have it easier? These transgender guys found the truth was more complex.

In the 1990s, the late Stanford neuroscientist Ben Barres transitioned from female to male. He was in his 40s, mid-career, and afterward he marveled at the stark changes in his professional life. Now that society saw him as male, his ideas were taken more seriously. He was able to complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man. A colleague who didn’t know he was transgender even praised his work as “much better than his sister’s.”

Clinics have reported an increase in people seeking medical gender transitions in recent years, and research suggests the number of people identifying as transgender has risen in the past decade. Touchstones such as Caitlyn Jenner’s transition, the bathroom controversy, and the Amazon series “Transparent” have also made the topic a bigger part of the political and cultural conversation.

But it is not always evident when someone has undergone a transition — especially if they have gone from female to male.

“The transgender guys have a relatively straightforward process — we just simply add testosterone and watch their bodies shift,” said Joshua Safer, executive director at the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery at Mount Sinai Health System and Icahn School of Medicine in New York. “Within six months to a year they start to virilize — getting facial hair, a ruddier complexion, a change in body odor and a deepening of the voice.”

Transgender women have more difficulty “passing”; they tend to be bigger-boned and more masculine-looking, and these things are hard to reverse with hormone treatments, Safer said. “But the transgender men will go get jobs and the new boss doesn’t even know they’re trans.”

We spoke with four men who transitioned as adults to the bodies in which they feel more comfortable. Their experiences reveal that the gulf between how society treats women and men is in many ways as wide now as it was when Barres transitioned. But their diverse backgrounds provide further insight into how race and ethnicity inform the gender divide in subtle and sometimes surprising ways.

(Their words have been lightly edited for space and clarity.)

‘I’ll never call the police again’

Trystan Cotten, 50, Berkeley, Calif.

Professor of gender studies at California State University Stanislaus and editor of Transgress Press, which publishes books related to the transgender experience. Transitioned in 2008.

Life doesn’t get easier as an African American male. The way that police officers deal with me, the way that racism undermines my ability to feel safe in the world, affects my mobility, affects where I go. Other African American and Latino Americans grew up as boys and were taught to deal with that at an earlier age. I had to learn from my black and brown brothers about how to stay alive in my new body and retain some dignity while being demeaned by the cops.

One night somebody crashed a car into my neighbor’s house, and I called 911. I walk out to talk to the police officer, and he pulls a gun on me and says, “Stop! Stop! Get on the ground!” I turn around to see if there’s someone behind me, and he goes, “You! You! Get on the ground!” I’m in pajamas and barefoot. I get on the ground and he checks me, and afterward I said, “What was that all about?” He said, “You were moving kind of funny.” Later, people told me, “Man, you’re crazy. You never call the police.”

I get pulled over a lot more now. I GOT PULLED OVER MORE IN THE FIRST TWO YEARS AFTER MY TRANSITION THAN I DID THE ENTIRE 20 YEARS I WAS DRIVING BEFORE THAT.

Before, when I’d been stopped, even for real violations like driving 100 miles an hour, I got off. In fact, when it happened in Atlanta the officer and I got into a great conversation about the Braves. Now the first two questions they ask are: Do I have any weapons in the car, and am I on parole or probation?

Being a black man has changed the way I move in the world.

I used to walk quickly or run to catch a bus. Now I walk at a slower pace, and if I’m late I don’t dare rush. I am hyper-aware of making sudden or abrupt movements, especially in airports, train stations and other public places. I avoid engaging with unfamiliar white folks, especially white women. If they catch my eye, white women usually clutch their purses and cross the street. While I love urban aesthetics, I stopped wearing hoodies and traded my baggy jeans, oversized jerseys and colorful skullcaps for closefitting jeans, khakis and sweaters. These changes blunt assumptions that I’m going to snatch purses or merchandise, or jump the subway turnstile. The less visible I am, the better my chances of surviving.

But it’s not foolproof. I’m an academic sitting at a desk so I exercise where I can. I walked to the post office to mail some books and I put on this 40-pound weight vest that I walk around in. It was about 3 or 4 in the afternoon and I’m walking back and all of a sudden police officers drove up, got out of their car, and stopped. I had my earphones on so I didn’t know they were talking to me. I looked up and there’s a helicopter above. And now I can kind of see why people run, because you might live if you run, even if you haven’t done anything. This was in Emeryville, one of the wealthiest enclaves in Northern California, where there’s security galore. Someone had seen me walking to the post office and called in and said they saw a Muslim with an explosives vest. One cop, a white guy, picked it up and laughed and said, “Oh, I think I know what this is. This is a weight belt.”

It’s not only humiliating, but it creates anxiety on a daily basis. Before, I used to feel safe going up to a police officer if I was lost or needed directions. But I don’t do that anymore. I hike a lot, and if I’m out hiking and I see a dead body, I’ll keep on walking. I’ll never call the police again.

‘It now feels as though I am on my own’

Zander Keig, 52, San Diego

Coast Guard veteran. Works at Naval Medical Center San Diego as a clinical social work case manager. Editor of anthologies about transgender men. Started transition in 2005.

Prior to my transition, I was an outspoken radical feminist. I spoke up often, loudly and with confidence.

I was encouraged to speak up. I was given awards for my efforts, literally — it was like, “Oh, yeah, speak up, speak out.” When I speak up now, I am often given the direct or indirect message that I am “mansplaining,” “taking up too much space” or “asserting my white male heterosexual privilege.” Never mind that I am a first-generation Mexican American, a transsexual man, and married to the same woman I was with prior to my transition.

I find the assertion that I am now unable to speak out on issues I find important offensive and I refuse to allow anyone to silence me. My ability to empathize has grown exponentially, because I now factor men into my thinking and feeling about situations.

Prior to my transition, I rarely considered how men experienced life or what they thought, wanted or liked about their lives.

I have learned so much about the lives of men through my friendships with men, reading books and articles by and for men and through the men I serve as a licensed clinical social worker.

Social work is generally considered to be “female dominated,” with women making up about 80 percent of the profession in the United States. Currently I work exclusively with clinical nurse case managers, but in my previous position, as a medical social worker working with chronically homeless military veterans — mostly male — who were grappling with substance use disorder and severe mental illness, I was one of a few men among dozens of women.

Plenty of research shows that life events, medical conditions and family circumstances impact men and women differently. But when I would suggest that patient behavioral issues like anger or violence may be a symptom of trauma or depression, it would often get dismissed or outright challenged. The overarching theme was “men are violent” and there was “no excuse” for their actions.

I do notice that some women do expect me to acquiesce or concede to them more now: Let them speak first, let them board the bus first, let them sit down first, and so on. I also notice that in public spaces men are more collegial with me, which they express through verbal and nonverbal messages: head lifting when passing me on the sidewalk and using terms like “brother” and “boss man” to acknowledge me. As a former lesbian feminist, I was put off by the way that some women want to be treated by me, now that I am a man, because it violates a foundational belief I carry, which is that women are fully capable human beings who do not need men to acquiesce or concede to them.

What continues to strike me is the significant reduction in friendliness and kindness now extended to me in public spaces. It now feels as though I am on my own: No one, outside of family and close friends, is paying any attention to my well-being.

I can recall a moment where this difference hit home. A couple of years into my medical gender transition, I was traveling on a public bus early one weekend morning. There were six people on the bus, including me. One was a woman. She was talking on a mobile phone very loudly and remarked that “men are such a–holes.” I immediately looked up at her and then around at the other men. Not one had lifted his head to look at the woman or anyone else. The woman saw me look at her and then commented to the person she was speaking with about “some a–hole on the bus right now looking at me.” I was stunned, because I recall being in similar situations, but in the reverse, many times: A man would say or do something deemed obnoxious or offensive, and I would find solidarity with the women around me as we made eye contact, rolled our eyes and maybe even commented out loud on the situation. I’m not sure I understand why the men did not respond, but it made a lasting impression on me.

‘I took control of my career’

Chris Edwards, 49, Boston

Advertising creative director, public speaker and author of the memoir “Balls: It Takes Some to Get Some.” Transitioned in his mid-20s.

When I began my transition at age 26, a lot of my socialization came from the guys at work. For example, as a woman, I’d walk down the hall and bump into some of my female co-workers, and they’d say, “Hey, what’s up?” and I’d say, “Oh, I just got out of this client meeting. They killed all my scripts and now I have to go back and rewrite everything, blah blah blah. What’s up with you?” and then they’d tell me their stories. As a guy, I bump into a guy in the hall and he says, “What’s up?” and I launch into a story about my day and he’s already down the hall. And I’m thinking, well, that’s rude. So, I think, okay, well, I guess guys don’t really share, so next time I’ll keep it brief. By the third time, I realized you just nod.

The creative department is largely male, and the guys accepted me into the club. I learned by example and modeled my professional behavior accordingly. For example, I kept noticing that if guys wanted an assignment they’d just ask for it. If they wanted a raise or a promotion they’d ask for it. This was a foreign concept to me. As a woman, I never felt that it was polite to do that or that I had the power to do that. But after seeing it happen all around me I decided that if I felt I deserved something I was going to ask for it too. By doing that, I took control of my career. It was very empowering.

Apparently, people were only holding the door for me because I was a woman rather than out of common courtesy as I had assumed. Not just men, women too. I learned this the first time I left the house presenting as male, when a woman entered a department store in front of me and just let the door swing shut behind her. I was so caught off guard I walked into it face first.

When you’re socially transitioning, you want to blend in, not stand out, so it’s uncomfortable when little reminders pop up that you’re not like everybody else. I’m expected to know everything about sports. I like sports but I’m not in deep like a lot of guys. For example, I love watching football, but I never played the sport (wasn’t an option for girls back in my day) so there is a lot I don’t know. I remember the first time I was in a wedding as a groomsman. I was maybe three years into my transition and I was lined up for photos with all the other guys. And one of them shouted, “High school football pose!” and on cue everybody dropped down and squatted like the offensive line, and I was like, what the hell is going on? It was not instinctive to me since I never played. I tried to mirror what everyone was doing, but when you see the picture I’m kind of “offsides,” so to speak.

The hormones made me more impatient. I had lots of female friends and one of the qualities they loved about me was that I was a great listener. After being on testosterone, they informed me that my listening skills weren’t what they used to be. Here’s an example: I’m driving with one of my best friends, Beth, and I ask her “Is your sister meeting us for dinner?” Ten minutes later she’s still talking and I still have no idea if her sister is coming. So finally, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I snapped and said, “IS SHE COMING OR NOT?” And Beth was like, “You know, you used to like hearing all the backstory and how I’d get around to the answer. A lot of us have noticed you’ve become very impatient lately and we think it’s that damn testosterone!” It’s definitely true that some male behavior is governed by hormones. Instead of listening to a woman’s problem and being empathetic and nodding along, I would do the stereotypical guy thing — interrupt and provide a solution to cut the conversation short and move on. I’m trying to be better about this.

People ask if being a man made me more successful in my career. My answer is yes — but not for the reason you might think. As a man, I was finally comfortable in my own skin and that made me more confident. At work I noticed I was more direct: getting to the point, not apologizing before I said anything or tiptoeing around and trying to be delicate like I used to do. In meetings, I was more outspoken. I stopped posing my thoughts as questions. I’d say what I meant and what I wanted to happen instead of dropping hints and hoping people would read between the lines and pick up on what I really wanted. I was no longer shy about stating my opinions or defending my work. When I gave presentations I was brighter, funnier, more engaging. Not because I was a man. Because I was happy.

‘People assume I know the answer’

Alex Poon, 26, Boston

Project manager for Wayfair, an online home goods company. Alex is in the process of his physical transition; he did the chest surgery after college and started taking testosterone this spring.

Traditional Chinese culture is about conforming to your elders’ wishes and staying within gender boundaries. However, I grew up in the U.S., where I could explore my individuality and my own gender identity. When I was 15 I was attending an all-girls high school where we had to wear skirts, but I felt different from my peers. Around that point we began living with my Chinese grandfather towards the end of his life. He was so traditional and deeply set in his ways. I felt like I couldn’t cut my hair or dress how I wanted because I was afraid to upset him and have our last memories of each other be ruined.

Genetics are not in my favor for growing a lumberjack-style beard. Sometimes, Chinese faces are seen as “soft” with less defined jaw lines and a lack of facial fair. I worry that some of my feminine features like my “soft face” will make it hard to present as a masculine man, which is how I see myself. Instead, when people meet me for the first time, I’m often read as an effeminate man.

My voice has started cracking and becoming lower. Recently, I’ve been noticing the difference between being perceived as a woman versus being perceived as a man. I’ve been wondering how I can strike the right balance between remembering how it feels to be silenced and talked over with the privileges that come along with being perceived as a man. Now, when I lead meetings, I purposefully create pauses and moments where I try to draw others into the conversation and make space for everyone to contribute and ask questions.

People now assume I have logic, advice and seniority. They look at me and assume I know the answer, even when I don’t. I’ve been in meetings where everyone else in the room was a woman and more senior, yet I still got asked, “Alex, what do you think? We thought you would know.” I was at an all-team meeting with 40 people, and I was recognized by name for my team’s accomplishments. Whereas next to me, there was another successful team led by a woman, but she was never mentioned by name. I went up to her afterward and said, “Wow, that was not cool; your team actually did more than my team.” The stark difference made me feel uncomfortable and brought back feelings of when I had been in the same boat and not been given credit for my work.

When people thought I was a woman, they often gave me vague or roundabout answers when I asked a question. I’ve even had someone tell me, “If you just Googled it, you would know.” But now that I’m read as a man, I’ve found people give me direct and clear answers, even if it means they have to do some research on their own before getting back to me.

A part of me regrets not sharing with my grandfather who I truly am before he passed away. I wonder how our relationship might have been different if he had known this one piece about me and had still accepted me as his grandson. Traditionally, Chinese culture sees men as more valuable than women. Before, I was the youngest granddaughter, so the least important. Now, I’m the oldest grandson. I think about how he might have had different expectations or tried to instill certain traditional Chinese principles upon me more deeply, such as caring more about my grades or taking care of my siblings and elders. Though he never viewed me as a man, I ended up doing these things anyway.

Zander Keig contributed to this article in his personal capacity. The opinions expressed in this are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of the Department of Defense.

--------

Old story worth a repost SOURCE

43 notes · View notes

hellomynameisbisexual · 4 years ago

Text

5 Ways That Bi Erasure Hurts More Than Just Bisexual People

December 2, 2014 by Milo Todd

This year, Bisexual Awareness Day/Celebrate Bisexuality Day was on September 23rd.

That same day, the National LGBTQ Task Force thought it’d be a good idea to post an article entitled “Bye Bye Bi, Hello Queer,” in which leadership programs director Evangeline Weiss said “she is ready ‘to say bye bye to the word bisexuality.’

She said it does not describe her sexual orientation, and she encouraged readers to cease using the word as well as she felt it reinforced a binary concept of gender.

Let me drive that home a little more. The National LGBTQ Task Force not only thought it would be a good idea to publish an article insulting, misrepresenting, and forsaking the bisexual letter in their own name, but did so on Celebrate Bisexuality Day.

Rude.

And a fantastic example of the constant, ongoing erasure bisexual people have to deal with. This one just happened to be incredibly blatant.

What happened as a result of that article? People got pissed.

People got so pissed that the Task Force not only removed the article from their website, but posted in its place this non-apology (it keeps being referred to as an apology, but I’m not so easily pleased): “Having listened to a wide array of feedback on the timing and content, we recognize that this blog offended people. For this we sincerely apologize. It has been removed.”

In other words, “Sorry you got pissed off. Hopefully you’ll shut up if we take it down.” Which, as far as I can tell, isn’t much of an apology for a blatant disregard of an entire community of people.

Misunderstanding of the bisexual community has been the crux of biphobia’s history and the ongoing battle to erase bisexuality from the LGBTQIA+ community.

It’s a scary time to be bi, especially when your lesbian, gay, pansexual, and queer siblings and allies are calling for your blood simply because they’ve fallen victim to the mainstream agenda without realizing it. (Say what?! Jump to #5.)

It’s time for a change.

It’s time for all of us to properly understand one another and to — hope of hopes — become allies for our incredibly similar endeavors. To help initiate that friendship, I ask you, dear reader, to go through the following three steps.

Step 1: Look below. If I’ve played my cards right, virtually every reader should find at least one category with which they identify.

Step 2: Approach your designated section(s) with an open mind, an unprejudiced heart, and a desire to further enhance your own community/ies. It’s difficult for people to learn new things and see different views if they automatically approach them with resistance, which is often the case with bisexual topics.

Step 3: See how bi erasure hurts you as a person and, while you’re at it, likely hurts the people you care about. Because it really is happening.

So here are five ways in which bi erasure is hurting people of layered identities.

1. Female-Identified People and Feminists

Bisexuality is one of the only non-monosexual* identities currently recognized in the English-speaking world. If bisexuality is kept underground, it suppresses our limited, precious resources for open discussion about non-monosexuality. This hurts female-identified people and feminists regardless of their sexual orientation.

To this day, female-identified people can’t get a fair shake. Pay is unequal, birth control access is limited, and objectification is a daily thing. Non-monosexual women in particular are often not taken seriously because they’re seen as sluts, greedy, or unable to make up their minds.

Also, the general fetishizing of women is particularly intensified in the bisexual realm by (straight-identified) men, turning the very act of women’s sexual freedom, empowerment, and self-expression into nothing more than something for male gazes. (This is most often seen through the relentless prompts for female-female-male threesomes and masculine catcalls in bars when two femme-appearing women make out.)

By participating in or casually allowing bi erasure to happen, we’re ignoring the specific plights and abuses of bisexual women, thereby contributing to the ongoing problem of female inequality, objectification, and silence.

As feminists, we can’t pick and choose which women to fight for. The complexities of womanhood — and all of its cultural suppressions — are an all-or-none deal.

*Note: Non-monosexuality usually refers to someone who is interested in more than one sex or gender. (In other words, somebody who isn’t gay, lesbian, or straight.) Another way to say “non-monosexuality” would be “polysexuality” to help keep it from sounding negative.

2. Male-Identified People and Male Liberationists*

Just like with female-identified people and feminists, bi erasure hurts male-identified people and male liberationists regardless of their sexual orientation.

Allow me to make this pretty basic: Men continue to be fed the message that being gay is bad. Being gay means you’re not really a man, which means you lose your dude membership and the bulk of your male privilege. And since gayness equals the slightest shred of attraction to or intimacy with another male, all manners of bromance must be squashed.

In short, many guys live in a state of silent terror in this regard.

Bi men are afraid of being banished from the world of lady-loving, gay men are worried about losing all of their connections to hetero land, and nothing is worse for a straight man than being called a fag.

Constant monitoring, constant filtering, constant stress: Is this really the kind of world we guys want to keep living in?

By being able to talk about bisexuality — remember: one of our only non-monosexual identities — male-identified people can begin to break free from the masculine ideal.

Bi talk helps bridge the gap between being a man (straight) and not being a man (gay) and realizing, hey, having some manner of attraction to or intimate interaction with another guy is totally okay, masculinity unscathed.

Gay men can begin to regain their identities as men, bi men can finally start coming out, and “fag” will lose its strength as an insult from one straight man to another.

*Note: Male liberationists are more or less seen as allies to feminists and vice versa. Both will argue that patriarchy is bad, but while feminists talk of how it’s bad for females, male liberationists talk of how it’s bad for males. Examples include the inability to romantically or sexually love another male, the emasculation of men of color, and the physical, verbal, and mental abuse that comes from society’s expectations to be stereotypically masculine.

3. People Who Identify as Trans Sexual, Trans Gender, Genderfluid, Genderqueer, or Gender Non-Conforming

This one’s pretty easy. Some people on the trans spectrum identify as bisexual. But then they’re told they can’t or that it’s an insult to their trans siblings because bisexuality is believed to be trans-exclusive.

The problem with bi erasure is it adds to the ongoing problem of cis people — LGQ or not — telling trans people what to think. Cis people have a bad habit of thinking they need to speak for people on the trans spectrum even when trans people are quite capable of speaking for themselves. This is even more frustrating when it comes from a community supposedly meant to support them.

Despite the personhood for which they’re continuing to fight, trans people can receive backlash from the lesbian, gay, and queer communities as their identities and bodies are turned into political battlegrounds.

Sometimes, they’re used without consent by some cis individuals so that points can be made for non-trans-specific agendas, and sometimes they’re ironically used in the attempts for cis identities to help better the trans worlds.

For instance, automatically dismissing bisexuality as trans-exclusive and guilting any person on the trans spectrum that wants to identity as bisexual, if I may make so fine a point.

As blogger Aud Traher writes, “If you want to support trans people like me, don’t erase me or speak over me or cause me harm out of self-righteous biphobia. Look into yourself and deal with that internalized biphobia and then help others get over theirs. Don’t advocate for the destruction of a community in the name of ‘saving’ it. And, especially, don’t do it in my name.”

4. People Who Identify as Gay, Lesbian, or — Yes — Straight

Quite simply, it makes gays and lesbians (and straight people) look bad, too.

Bisexual people get a bad rap for apparently upholding the gender binary by saying they love only (cis) men or (cis) women, but isn’t that pretty much exactly what gays, lesbians, and straight people are saying when they identify as gay, lesbian, or straight? That they’ll only love either (cis) men or (cis) women?

But where’s their rampant backlash from the rest of the community for upholding the gender binary? I’m just sayin’.

Even when these groups extend their definitions to include trans people and people on the gender non-conforming spectrum, it’s often still as long as those trans people exhibit some manner of gender representation that falls into the lover’s category of desire.

Now, I’m honestly not trying to rag on gays, lesbians, or even straight people. They have as much right to identify how they want as anybody else. And there’s nothing wrong with feeling primarily attracted to only, say, cis or trans men if your brain simply tells you that you only like guys. That’s fine. Go ahead and do that. I’m not saying you can’t.

What I am saying is you can’t be spewing bi hate or letting bi erasure slide because 1) it’s incredibly one-sided and unfair, and 2) in the end, it’s making you look bad, too.

What do you think will happen if bi erasure is a success? You’ll be next, dears.

*cue Jaws theme*

5. People Who Identify as Queer, Pansexual, or Another Fellow Non-Monosexual

In late October, Lizzy the Lezzy — who I quite enjoy, by the way — shared a photo on her Facebook timeline explaining sexuality in terms of guests at a BBQ.

This would be all well and good if it didn’t include a glaring misconception about bisexual people, especially when compared to pansexuals. While bisexual people were defined as getting both hot dogs and hamburgers, pansexuals were defined as getting hot dogs, hamburgers, “and a salad.” Oops. What year is this again?

I’m going to make something very plain to you, dear reader: Bisexual people don’t just love (cis) men or (cis) women. That’s not how the ballpark definition goes. The “bi” in “bisexual” does not indicate a binary. Well, okay, it does indicate a binary, but probably not the one you think.

Instead of “bi” meaning a love for only cis men or cis women or otherwise putting men and women at two opposite ends of a spectrum, “bi” means a love for identities bisexual people identify with themselves and identities that they don’t.

Or, as the popular Robyn Ochs definition goes: “I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted – romantically and/or sexually – to people of more than one sex and/or gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree.”

Look at that very closely. That’s still a binary. That’s still “bi.” And there isn’t a thing wrong with it, no exclusion to be seen.

When compared with the general concepts of pansexuals and queers, our orientations suddenly sound pretty darn similar: We love everyone.

Bisexual people get a bad rap for apparently being transphobic. While we’ve already seen a little bit in #3 as to why we aren’t, I want to further drive the point home here. A large portion of the transphobic accusations toward us come from the queer and pansexual communities, which in turn seem to derive from some serious misinformation and misdirection by the mainstream.

For the record, queers and pansexuals are cool. I like them. But the fact of the matter is that the misconception of the “bi” in “bisexual” as meaning an attraction to only (cis) men or (cis) women — and therefore upholding the gender binary — was created and imposed upon bisexual people by the mainstream. You know, the people that want the gender binary to stick around.

And some queers and pansexuals ate the propaganda they were fed? That’s terrifying. It starts to show just how large and sneaky the mainstream’s gender binary monster truly is.

By defining and erasing bisexuality on the grounds that it upholds the gender binary, pansexuals and queers are not only reinforcing the binary they so sorely wish to dismantle, but they are losing important focus on where the problem actually resides: the mainstream’s insistence to force the gender binary on non-mainstream groups such as bisexual people.

Further, holding bisexual people responsible for the abuse they’ve suffered is simply wrong. All that’s doing is blaming the victim. But, by recognizing and respecting bisexual people as they truly are, bisexual people can not only help dismantle the gender binary and put a new definition on the concept of the spectrum, but finally be allowed to team up with pansexuals and queers to crush mainstream abuse on non-mainstream identities.

Doesn’t that sound nice? I think it sounds nice.

TL;DR

Dear non-bisexual identities, please stop shooting yourselves in the foot and then wondering why you’re missing toes.

We’re here for the same reasons you are: for the right to love whoever we want and for the right for others to do the same.

So let’s finally be friends. We’re never going to get anything done if we keep spending our time putting each other down.

38 notes · View notes

puttingherinhistory · 5 years ago

Link

December 27, 2015 by Suzannah Weiss

I was young when I came to discover masturbation, and I had orgasms long before I knew what they were.

Nothing about it seemed complicated. I just rubbed “down there” for a few minutes, and it happened. But later, magazines, comedy routines, and sitcoms taught me that my body – and vaginas in general – were mysterious and complex, often too complex for those without them to figure out.

Confirming what I’d been taught, orgasms weren’t as simple with partners as they were by myself. This is to be expected to some extent. There’s a learning curve when you’re getting to know someone new. But what confused me was that not everyone seemed eager to learn.

“Sorry,” I (unnecessarily) apologized to a partner for taking what I thought was too long.

“It’s okay. I know it’s harder for girls,” he said – and then stopped.

Compounding the lack of effort I encountered from some (though not all) partners, it became harder for me to orgasm when I started SSRI antidepressants. When I told my doctor, she said, “Oh, that’s hard for a lot of women anyway.”

I knew my body long and well enough to know being a woman wasn’t to blame, but others didn’t share my view that the problem was fixable. I grew hesitant to bring it up with partners out of fear that asking them to perform the supposedly impossible feat of getting a woman off was too demanding.

Orgasm doesn’t have to be the focus of sex, but if a woman wants one, she should have as much of a right to request it as anyone else does.

When people say that women’s bodies are more difficult – and these generalizations typically refer to cis women and are accompanied by rants about how complicated vaginas are – they teach cis women that an orgasm is too tall an order.

Trans women also have a slew of sexual stigmas attached to them, which Kai Cheng Thom describes here, though they’re beyond the scope of this article. In addition, though most research on orgasm inequity has studied cis women, trans and non-binary people with vaginas may relate to the frustrations of being taught their genitals are impossible to decode, too.

The view that cis women are hard to please maintains what sociologists call the orgasm gap, in which men have three orgasms for every one a woman enjoys, and 57% of women orgasm during all or most of their sexual encounters, but 95% say their partners do.

These statistics may appear to confirm the stereotype that women’s bodies are more complicated, but there are other forces at work.

As sociologist Lisa Wade points out, the orgasm gap is conditional. Lesbians report orgasming 74.7% of the time, only 10 percentage points lower than gay men. In addition, women take under four minutes on average to masturbate to orgasm.

If these statistics don’t convince you that there’s more to the orgasm gap than biology, here are twelve cultural factors that contribute to it.

1. People Believe Women Are Less Sexual

Women, the story goes, aren’t that into sex.

They may enjoy it, but they do it partially in exchange for validation, commitment, or financial support, popular wisdom says. As long as a woman is getting one of those things, she doesn’t need much out of the sex itself.

To the contrary, a lot of research and lived experiences indicate that women are as capable of wanting and enjoying sex as men.

Until we acknowledge this, we won’t prioritize making sex as enjoyable as possible for women because we’ll believe sexual pleasure isn’t as important to them.

It may not be because women themselves may buy into myths about their gender, neglecting their desires because they’re not supposed to have them. If they do, they and their partners miss out on balanced sexual interactions, not to mention fun.

2. Pornography Privileges Male Pleasure

Most people who have watched porn videos know they typically culminate with a “money shot” in which the man comes, and then the scene ends. Most woman-focused orgasms depicted in porn are merely incidental events on the path to a man’s pleasure.

Additionally, most mainstream porn scenes feel incomplete without blow jobs, while cunnilingus is less common.

All in all, the message is clear: It’s imperative that a man gets off, and if a woman manages to in the process, props to him, but it’s just an added bonus.

3. The Myth of ‘Blue Balls’ Persists

Blue balls, according to Urban Dictionary, is “the excrutiating [sic] pain a man receives when his balls swell to the size of coconuts because of lack of sex, unfinished bjs, and just not cummin when he knows he should.”

The entitlement reflected in this description is characteristic of most uses of the term “blue balls.” While vasocongestion, the accumulation of blood flow to the genitals, can occasionally cause mild pain in people with any genitals, this is not what men are usually referring to when they complain about blue balls. And whether they’re experiencing this or just sexual frustration, it’s never anyone else’s duty to relieve it.

Even though most women know no medical condition results from an erection that doesn’t lead to an orgasm, many of us feel guilty for not providing one. So, in addition to some men’s lack of effort to pleasure women, the pressure many women feel to pleasure men maintains the orgasm gap.

4. There’s More Information in the Media About Pleasing Cis Men Than Women

As a teenager, my secret guilty pleasure was buying copies of Cosmo from the drugstore and hiding them under my pillow to read at night.

I read all their sex articles just because I found anything sex-related titillating, but along the way, I learned all about different tricks to please men – and cis men, specifically. By the time I encountered a real-life penis, I already knew all the basic tricks in the book, plus some out-there ones my dude friends urged me not to try.

I don’t know what most teenage boys’ secret reading material was, but there aren’t many mainstream men’s magazines as obsessed with pleasing women as women’s are with pleasing men. If anything, I’ve heard it’s common for boys to sneak glimpses of Playboy, which is also geared toward pleasing men.

Maybe this explains why 25% of men and 30% of women can’t locate the clitoris on a diagram.

Amid all the advice we read about different ways to hold and touch a penis, many remain in the dark about vulvas and vaginas.

5. Hookup Culture Privileges Male Pleasure

“I will do everything in my power to, like whoever I’m with, to get [him] off,” one woman said in a study by Elizabeth Armstrong on college hookups. But when it came to their own pleasure, women held different expectations.

“The guy kind of expects to get off, while the girl doesn’t expect anything,” a woman in another study by Lisa Wade said.

Accordingly, one man in Armstrong’s study boasted, “I’m all about making her orgasm,” but when asked to clarify the word “her,” he added, “Girlfriend her. In a hookup her, I don’t give a shit.” Perhaps he sensed that women don’t expect much from their hookups.

Statistics about women’s orgasms reflect these attitudes.

The ratio of men’s and women’s orgasms is 3.1:1 for first-time hookups, but only 1.25:1 for relationships.

For whatever reason, hookup culture appears to have embraced the message espoused by the media that women’s orgasms are optional, while men’s are obligatory.

6. Sex Education Doesn’t Teach Us About Pleasure, Especially Female Pleasure

Like many schools in the US, mine only had a couple of days a year dedicated to sex education in middle and high school. During the initial classes on puberty, the portion about women was on periods and the portion about men was on erections, ejaculation, and wet dreams.

Already, our bodies were associated with making babies, while boys’ were associated with sexual arousal and pleasure.

Later on, we learned how to use a condom – along with how to complete a very normative sequence of events. You put it on, we were told, and then you have intercourse, and then someone ejaculates, and then you pull out and take it off. Men’s orgasms, but not women’s, were built into our safer sex lesson.

Nobody said “then you stop whenever you feel like it” or “your partner may need you to pull out” (because, contrary to what we see in porn, not every woman is multi-orgasmic and many have a refractory period, so we can’t all comfortably keep going until our partner wants to stop).

This is one sneaky way we learn to prioritize men’s pleasure without ever really learning about pleasure at all.

7. Self-Evaluative Thoughts Can Disrupt Women’s Arousal Process

Due to the emphasis on women’s appearances in mainstream porn and throughout the media, women learn to picture themselves during sex.

“How does my stomach look from this angle,” “Does my face look sexy or silly in this expression,” and “Would it be sexier if I made more noise?” are a few thoughts that have distracted me in the bedroom.

And I don’t think I’m alone: 32% of women say that when they don’t orgasm, it’s often because they’re stuck in their heads or focused on their looks.

Orgasm itself can become a source of performance anxiety.

Because the women’s orgasms are dramatized in porn and the media, with exaggerated moans and calculated facial expressions, some women feel so much pressure that fear of not coming keeps them from coming. This pressure can also lead women to fake orgasms instead of sticking it out for a real one.

Once again, women’s magazines don’t help.

Cosmo even provides a guide on “how to look even hotter naked.” Though “even” implies the reader looks hot already, the pre-bedroom workout routine and self-tanner application tips make it clear we don’t look as hot as we could – and even if we do, the focus is still on our partner’s pleasure, not what we see or feel.

Thoughts about partners’ perceptions place women outside their bodies, looking in, rather than inside them, feeling the sensations the sexual activity is causing. It’s hard to have an orgasm when you’re not even thinking sexual thoughts.

8. Sexual Trauma Can Impede Arousal and Orgasm

It’s extremely common for women to experience sexual trauma within their lifetimes. One out of six women has been the victim of attempted or completed rape.

According to sex therapist Vanessa Marin, this trauma can have lasting effects on one’s sex life.

“Sexual assault can rob your enjoyment of sex and can make any type of intimacy feel scary,” she said. “Some survivors experience feelings of disconnect or dissociation when they’re having sex. Others can easily get triggered by being touched in certain places or in specific ways.”

Marin recommends that survivors seek out therapy or a support group so they don’t have to deal with the effects of their pasts alone.

In the short-term, Marin has written that reminding yourself you’re with your partner, not the person who assaulted you, can quell trauma-related sexual problems. “Of course your brain knows that it’s [them], but this exercise can help the more subconscious parts of your psyche start to relax,” she writes.

Other emotions women disproportionately experience around sex, such as guilt and shame, may also lead to anorgasmia.

9. More Women Than Men Are on Antidepressants

SSRI antidepressants, like Prozac and Zoloft, can cause anorgasmia. This side effect isn’t gender-specific, but antidepressants themselves are.

Between 2001 and 2010, 25% of American women (but only 15% of men) had been prescribed medication for mental health conditions.

This may occur because women are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression, both frequently treated with SSRIs, the medication class most commonly known to cause anorgasmia. There are many theories as to why, but one possible source of this difference is societal misogyny.

As Ally Boghun writes of her anxiety, “A lot of the stressors that impact me the most are actually stressors put upon women by society to look and act in certain ways.” In addition, women are more likely to seek therapy, since toxic standards of masculinity deter men from discussing their emotions.

This is one case where the orgasm gap may be related to biological differences, but the sources of these differences are still societal.

10. Women Are Discouraged from Asking for What They Want

Women are taught to accommodate others’ wishes and put their own on the back burner, to be pleasant and polite and grateful and not ask for more, whether that’s food, payment, or sexual pleasure.

To bring back Armstrong’s research, one woman said she didn’t have the “right” to request an orgasm and “felt kind of guilty almost, like I felt like I was kind of subjecting [guys] to something they didn’t want to do and I felt bad about it.”

I can relate: I’ve said “sorry” many times for requesting or giving myself the stimulation I wanted, for taking what I thought was too much time, and for receiving pleasure without immediately returning it.

The same fear that keeps women from voicing their opinions in work meetings or negotiating salaries also keeps us from speaking up in bed.

But until we can “lean in” without bumping into hostility, women can’t singlehandedly solve this problem in any domain. It’s also up to our partners, coworkers, and others to make it clear they want to hear and accommodate our wishes.

11. The Normative Definition of Sex Isn’t Optimal for Many Women’s Orgasms

When someone says “sex,” most people think of penis-in-vagina intercourse, even though it means many different things to different people.

For example, some couples may see oral sex as sex. Some may also put oral or manual sex on the same level as penetrative sex, but this is still not the norm.

When someone talks about losing their virginity, for instance, we usually assume they’re talking about the first time they had penis-in-vagina intercourse.

This assumption can be problematic for women who get off more easily through other activities.

In one survey, 20% of women said they seldom or never had orgasms during intercourse. Only 25% said they consistently do. In another, 38% said that when they don’t orgasm, a common obstacle is “not enough clitoral stimulation.”

Since penetrative sex often doesn’t directly stimulate the clitoris, this could explain why other types of sex – or clitoral stimulation during intercourse, which women considered the most common way they got off with a partner – may be more optimal.

When we consider the activities that often help women reach orgasm as warmup or extra, we deprioritize women’s pleasure.

12. People Think the Orgasm Gap Is Biological

Orgasm inequity is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When men believe women’s bodies are an impossible puzzle, they don’t try to solve it. Neither do women who are taught their own pleasure is inaccessible.

That’s why it’s important we acknowledge all the societal factors that contribute to this discrepancy. Genetics can’t be fixed, but a lot of these problems can, which means that closing the orgasm gap is possible.

***

If you’re a woman having trouble orgasming, it’s likely not you. It may not be the result of any carelessness on your partner’s part either. You may just need to talk about it, challenge the myths you’ve learned about sexuality, and, if necessary, seek help for any psychological or medical conditions that could be contributing to the problem.

Or maybe it’s not a problem at all. Maybe orgasming isn’t important to you, and that’s your choice as well. But if it is something you would like, you have the same right to ask for it as your partner. If he expects orgasms from you, he shouldn’t mind you wanting one.

It’s not too much to ask, and your anatomy isn’t too complicated. The only thing that’s complicated is the toxic set of messages we’re taught about sexuality. But that’s not on you or your body.

#sex cw

1K notes · View notes

amphtaminedreams · 4 years ago

Text

J.K Rowling & The Echo Chamber of TERFs: Why Nobody Wants your Transphobic “Opinion”

TW// Discussion of Sexual Assault and Transphobia

SO...

I’ve seen the term “allyship fatigue” going round a lot lately on Twitter, since the issues of police brutality, institutional racism, and now transphobia have taken central stage.

And it’s weird. To be honest, hearing other white cis people calling themselves “allies” has always sounded kinda self-congratulatory. Taking this to the level of martyrdom that the phrase “allyship fatigue” evokes makes me want to heave. It’s shit that anyone even has to be saying Black Lives STILL Matter, but it does seem to unfortunately be the case that every time there is a highly publicised murder of a black individual by police, the explosion of us white people calling ourselves allies and retweeting and reblogging statements of solidarity only lasts so long before half revert back to being complacent with and uncritical of a world seeped with casual racism. Is that what “allyship fatigue” is? The excuse for that? Not only does the term take the focus off of the marginalised group the movement is centred around but it makes supporting equal rights sound like some kind of heroic burden we’ve chosen to take on rather than addressing a debt we owe and being not even good but just plain decent human beings. WE are not the ones shouldering the weight here, and if your mental health is suffering, that is not the fault of the people asking for their rights. Log off. We have the privilege to do that. It just doesn’t need to be a spectacle.

At the same time, this public onslaught of ignorance and hatred that the coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement has triggered (that let me again emphasise, black people have had to involuntarily be on the receiving end of their whole lives) and the frustration and anger that comes from seeing these absolute trash takes from people with no research into the subject who build their argument purely on “what about”isms is do-I-even-want-to-bring-children-into-this-fucking-world levels of miserable. In terms of earth beginning to look more and more like the prequel describing the events which lead up to a dystopian novel, the chaos of the last 4 weeks or so (2020 has not only shattered the illusion of time but also danced on the shards, I know) is the tip of the iceberg. I saw a thread about what’s going on in Yemen at the moment, which I had no idea about, and immediately felt consumed by guilt that I didn’t know. With the advent of social media, there’s been this sudden evolutionary shift where we’re almost required and expected to know about, have an opinion on, and be empathetic with every humanitarian crisis at once. I think young people feel this especially, which is why I say that sometimes it’s worth talking to an older person before you brush them off as a racist or a homophobe and see if they’re open to hearing different opinions-in general, I think we’re a generation that is used to being expected to consume a huge amount of information at once. They are not. For a lot (NOT all) of the older, middle-class, white population, ignorance isn’t a conscious choice, it is the natural way of life. The parameters of empathy until very recently have only had to extend just past your closest circle of friends to encompass people you “relate to”. That doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of caring about other things, and sometimes we owe them a chance to change their perspective first, if for no reason other than to advance the cause of, well, basic human rights for all.

So where does J.K Rowling come into all this? I hear you ask. Why doesn’t she just stop rambling? You potentially wonder. Well, I’m getting to it.

J.K Rowling isn’t an unconsciously ignorant people. She is what I would call consciously ignorant. And of all weeks to flaunt this ignorance, she chose a time when people are already drowning in a cesspit of hatred. The woman whose whole book series supposedly revolves around the battle between good and evil didn’t even try to drain the swamp. She instead added a bucket of her transphobic vitriol into it.

Let me preface this by saying that I wouldn’t wipe my arse with the Sun. What they did with the statement she made regarding her previous abusive relationship, seeking out said abusive partner for an interview and putting it on the front page with the headline “I slapped J.K”, whilst expected from the bunch of cretinous bottom feeders who work there, is disgusting. That being said, the pattern of behaviour J.K Rowling has exhibited since she first became an online presence is equally disgusting, and just because the Sun have been their usual shithead selves, doesn’t mean we should forget the issue at hand, that issue being her ongoing transphobia and erasure of trans women from women’s rights.

As I’m sure is the case for many people on Tumblr, J.K Rowling has always been such a huge inspiration for me, and Harry Potter was my entire childhood. My obsession with it continued until I was at least 16 and is what got me through the very shit years of being a teenager, and that will forever be the case. I’m not here to discuss the whole separation of the art from the artist thing because whilst I ordinarily don’t think that’s really possible, at this point the “Harry Potter universe” has become much bigger than J.K herself. I was so pleased to see Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint all affirm their support for trans rights-I was raised on the films up until the 4th one which I wasn’t old enough to see at the cinema, and the DVD was at the top of my Christmas list. They were always my Harry, Hermione and Ron. It was only between the fourth and fifth films that I started to read the books to fill that gaping in-between-movies hole, but as I grew up, I read them over and over and over again. Any of the subtext that people are talking about now in light of her antisemitism and transphobia went completely over my head, though who knows, whilst I can sit here and write that I’m certain I didn’t, maybe I did pick up some unconscious biases along the way? The art/artist discussion is a complex one and I don’t know if I’ll ever read the books again at this point.

There was absolutely no subtext, however, in the “think piece” on J.K’s website addressing the response to her transphobic tweets. There wasn’t all that much to unpack in the first tirade, they were quite openly dismissive-first that womanhood is defined by whether or not one experiences menstruation (I currently don’t due to health issues but I’m betting this wouldn’t make me any less woman in her eyes), and second, regurgitating an article which furthers the fallacy that trans women simply existing erases the existence of cisgender lesbian women. Rowling’s initial response to the backlash was to blame it on a glass of red wine, I think? Which is such a weird go-to excuse for celebrities because not once have I ever got drunk and completely changed my belief system. If you’re not transphobic sober, you don’t suddenly become transphobic drunk. What you are saying is that you’re not usually publicly transphobic (which isn’t even the case with Rowling because this is hardly her first flirtation with bigotry via social media) but that whoopsies! You drank some wine and suddenly thought it was acceptable!

Now what is her excuse for the formal response she wrote to the backlash, dripping with transphobic dog whistles and straight up misinformation (UPDATE: and as of yesterday, blocking Stephen King quite literally for replying to her with the tweet “trans women are women”, in case you thought that this whole thing was a case of her intentions being misconstrued)? Drunk tweets are one thing but if she managed to write a whole fucking essay whilst pissed I imagine there’s a lot of university students out there who’d pay her good money to learn that skill.

Here is the bottom line. TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN. There is no discussion around that. And if you don’t understand why, at the very least, you can be respectful of the way a person chooses to identify, especially when that person is an already targeted minority.

Obviously, sex and gender are complex things. Based on the fact that we don’t walk around with our nether-regions out, we generally navigate our way through the world using our gender and the way we present our gender. Gender of course means many different things to many different people; some see it as a sliding scale kind of thing whereas some people can’t see themselves on the scale at all, and choose to use terms other than man or woman to express how they identify. But, whatever gender one chooses to identify as, we live in a modern world-with all the scientific advancements we’ve made and all that we now know about the brain, using what is between people’s legs to define them is an ignorant, outdated copout. You’ll find that a lot of transphobes can live in harmony with trans women who conform, who have classically feminine features, maybe facial feminisation surgery, trans women who keep quiet about how they’re seen by cis women and don’t kick up “too much of a fuss” (which is in itself still a perfectly valid, brave and understandable way to live your life after years of feeling like you don’t fit in btw). The trans women that Joanne and her friends take the most issue with is the ones who want to expand what womanhood means and stretch the boundaries of what is and isn’t acceptable, destroying the confines of simplistic model that TERFs feel comfortable operating within. The ones who fight to be recognised as no “lesser” than cis women. Calling a person a TERF is quite literally just asserting that they are someone who wants to exclude trans women from their definition of womanhood, or in other words wants to cling to the old, obsolete model. If J.K Rowling cannot let the statement “trans women are women” go unchallenged (which we’ve seen from her response to Stephen King’s tweet she cannot), then she is by definition a TERF. It’s not a slur. It’s a descriptor indicating the movement she has chosen to associate herself with. Associating the descriptor of the position you so vehemently refuse to denounce in spite of all evidence and information offered to you with the concept of a “witch hunt” when trans women are ACTUALLY brutally murdered for an innate part of their identity is insulting, at the very least.

Let’s get this straight: despite transphobes trying to conflate sex with gender and arguing that sex is the only “real” identifier of the two, our existence on this planet and our perception of this world is a gendered experience. It is our brain, where the majority of researchers agree that gender lies, which decides and dictates not only who we are and how we feel but also how we interact with everyone around us. I don’t think it’s an outlandish statement to say that when it comes to who we are as people, that flesh machine protected by our skull is the key player. PSA for transphobes everywhere: when people say penises have a mind of their own, they are NOT talking literally. The more you know.

Gender is obviously a much newer concept than sex-it is both influenced by and interacts with every element of our lives. It’s also much more complex, in that there are still many gaps in our understanding. I assume these two factors combined with the familiarity of the (usually) binary model of biological sex are a part of why TERFS fundamentally reject the importance of gender in favour of the latter. Yes, most of the time, we feel our gender corresponds with our sex, but not always, and nor is there any concrete proof that this has to be the case. Most studies tend to agree that our brains start out as blank slates, that we grow into the gender we are assigned based on our bodies. In other words, our sex only defines our gender insofar as the historical assumption that they are the same thing, which in turn exposes us to certain cultural expectations. To any TERFs that have somehow ended up here-if you haven’t already, I suggest looking into the research of Gina Rippon, a neuroscientist whom has spent a large portion of her professional career analysing the data of sex differences in the brain. Whilst she originally set out to find some kind of consistent variance between the brains of the 2 prominent sexes to back up the idea that the brains of men and women are inherently different, she found nothing of significance-individual differences, yes, but no consistent similarities in the brains of one sex that were not present in the other. Once differences in brain size were accounted for, “well-known” sex differences in key structures disappeared-in terms of proportion, these structures take up the same amount of space in the brain regardless of sex. Her findings are best summed up by her response to the question: are there any significant differences in the brain based on sex alone? Her answer is no. To suggest otherwise is “neurofoolishness”. Not only does her research help put to bed the myth that our brains are sexed along with the rest of our bodies during development (this is now believed to happen separately, meaning the sex of our bodies and brains may not correspond), but also the idea propagated by the patriarchy for centuries that basically boils down to “boys will be boys”-a myth used to condone male sexual violence against women and even against each other on the basis that it is inherent and “can't be helped”. That they are just “built differently”. Maybe at one point in human evolution, men were conditioned to fight and women were conditioned to protect, but whilst the idea remains and continues to affect our societal structures (and thus said cultural expectations), we’ve moved on. I mean we evolved from fish for fuck’s sake but you don’t see us breathing underwater.

Gender identity is based on many things and admittedly we don’t fully have the complete picture yet. The effects that socialisation and gender norms in particular, as much as we don’t want them to exist, have on our brain are huge; there’s evidence that they can leave epigenetic marks, or in other words cause structural changes in the brain which drive biological functions and features as diverse as memory, development and disease susceptibility. Socialisation alters the way our individual brains develop as we grow up, and as much as I’d love to see gender norms disappear, they’ll probably be around for a long time to come, as will their ramifications. The gap between explaining how socialisation affects the brain of cisgender individuals compared to the brains of transgender or non-binary individuals is not yet totally clear, but as with every supposed cause and effect psychology tries to uncover, there are outliers and individual differences. No, brains are not inherently male or female at birth but they are all different, and can be affected by socialisation differently. In one particularly groundbreaking study conducted by Dick Swaab of the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, postmortems of the brains of transgender women revealed that the structure of one of the areas in the brain most important to sexual behaviour more closely resembled the postmortem brains of cisgender women than those of cisgender men-it’s also important that these differences did not appear to be attributable to the influence of endogenous sex hormone fluctuations or hormone treatment in adulthood.

Maybe dysphoria is something that evolves organically and environmental factors don’t even come into it. Like I said, we don’t have the whole picture. What we DO know is that for some people, as soon as they become self-aware, that dysphoria is there, and the evidence for THAT, for there being common variations between the brains of cisgender individuals and transgender individuals, is overwhelming. You can be trapped in a body that does not correspond with how your brain functions, or how you wish to see yourself. Do individuals like J.K Rowling really believe it is ethical to reinforce the idea that we are defined by our sex and that our sex should decide the course of our lives, should decide how we are treated? That we should reduce people to genitals and chromosomes when our gender, the lens through which we see and interact with the world, could be completely different? Do they not see anything wrong with perpetuating the feelings of “otherness” and dysphoria in trans individuals that results from society’s refusal to see them as anything more than what body parts they have? In a collaboration between UCLA MA neuroscience student Jonathan Vanhoecke and Ivanka Savic at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, the statistics collected pointed to what trans activists have always been trying to get at-the areas of the brain responsible for our sense of our identity showed far more neural activity in the brains of trans individuals when they were looking at depictions of their body that had been changed to match their gender identity than when this wasn’t the case; when they saw themselves with a body that corresponded with their gender identity, when they were “valid” by society’s definition, they felt more themselves. When J.K Rowling tells trans people that their “real identity” is the sex they were born with, she is denying them this right to be themselves and due to her large platform, encouraging others to do the same. YOU are doing that, J.K. And who knows why? Where does your transphobia come from? Peel back the bullshit layers of waffle about feeling silenced and threatened, which you know you are directing at the wrong group of people, and admit it’s for less noble reasons. Taking the time to unlearn the instinct embedded into your generation to see people according to the cultural status quo of biological determinism is effort, I know-but you wrote a 700+ page book. I’m sure you can manage it. Or is it an ego thing? You don’t want to admit that you may have been uneducated on gender and sex in the past, and now have to stick by your reductive position so your image as an “intellectual” isn’t compromised. I don’t know. Only you do. But your position is irresponsible and dangerous either way. You can make up bullshit reasons as to why the link between trans individuals and the incidence of suicide attempts and completions isn’t relevant or representative of the struggle that trans people face due to the hatred that people like you propagate but it is there, and you J.K Rowling, someone who has spoken in the past about the horror of depression, should know better. You should know better than to CLAIM you know better than the experienced researchers who have found the same pattern time and time again-that the likelihood of trans individuals committing suicide is significantly higher than that of cis people.

No, Rowling’s transphobia has never been as upfront as saying “I don’t believe transgender people exist” but she continues to imply that when she makes claims such as womanhood being defined by whether or not one experiences menstruation, and the completely subjective concept of whether an individual has faced sex-based violence from cisgender men. I’m sure she’d be out here taking chromosome proof cards like Oysters if it wasn’t for intersex individuals throwing her whole binary jam into a tailspin. Yep, there’s even suggestions that the binary biological model might not be so binary these days-just because two people have, say, XY chromosomes, does not mean that these chromosomes are genetically identical between individuals-the genes they carry can, and do, vary and so their actions and expressions of sex vary.

Ideally, what TERFs want to do with their language of “real womanhood” is create an exclusive club that trans women are left out of when they too suffer under the same patriarchal society that those who are born female do. Yes, they might not experience ALL the issues a person born with female genitalia do, but no two women’s life experiences are the same anyway. Trans women also have their own horrible experiences with the patriarchy, and are often victims of a specific kind of gendered violence that is purported by the idea of “real womanhood”. Don’t throw trans sisters under the bus because you’re angry about your experience as a woman on this planet-direct your anger at the fucking bus. Don’t claim that “many trans people regret their decision to transition” when the statistics overwhelmingly show that this is the EXACT FUCKING OPPOSITE of the truth (according to British charity organisation Mermaids, surgical regret is proportionately very low amongst gender affirmation outpatients and research suggesting otherwise has been broadly disproven) because you’ve spoken to a selective group of trans individuals probably handpicked by the TERFS you associate with to confirm their biases, and then have the nerve to claim that trans-activists live in echo chambers on top of that. Don’t use anecdotes and one-off incidences where “trans women” (I say trans women in quotation marks because we’re pretty much talking about a completely statistically insignificant group of perverted cis men who have, according to TERFs, somehow come to the conclusion that going through transition will make their already easy-to-get-away-with hobby of assaulting women even...easier to get away with?) have committed sexual crimes to demonise and paint as predatory group who are largely at risk and in 99.9% of situations, the ones being preyed on. It’s a point so disgusting that trans activists shouldn’t even have to respond to it, but the idea that an individual would go to the pains of legally changing their gender and potentially the hell of the harassment that trans people face, the multiple year long NHS waiting lists to see specialist doctors, just so that they can gain access to women only spaces is ridiculous. It’s worth noting here just how sinister you repeatedly bringing up this phantom threat of cis men becoming trans women in order to assault women in “women only” spaces is. The implication here is that they should use the toilet corresponding to the sex they were born as, right? Because it’s all about safety? Well, statistically speaking, far more trans women are abused whilst having to use men’s toilets than when they use women’s ones and the same goes for trans men, and yet you don’t mention it once. Your suggestion also puts people born female who identify as women but maybe do not dress or present in a typically feminine way at risk of being ostracised when THEY need to use the women’s bathroom. The idea that by ceasing to uphold values like yours we are putting women at risk is quite simply, unsubstantiated; the legislation to allow individuals to use the bathroom corresponding to whichever gender they legally identify as has been around since 2010 in the UK and yet we’ve yet to see the sudden spike in the number of women being assaulted in bathrooms you imply will exist if we create looser rules around gender identity and let people use whichever toilet they feel the need to. Similarly, in a study of US school districts, Media Matters found that 17 around the country with protections for trans people, which collectively cover more than 600,000 students, had no problems with harassment in bathrooms or locker rooms after implementing their policies. If cis men want to assault women, they will. They don’t need to pretend to be trans to do so. Don’t pretend to be speaking as a concerned ally of LGBTQ+ individuals when you’re ignoring the thoughts of the majority of individuals who come under that category.

(Just Some of the Trans Women Murdered for Being Trans Over the Last Couple of Years, L-R: Serena Valzquez, Riah Milton, Bee Love Slater, Naomi Hersi, Layla Pelaez, and Dominique Fells)

Trans women are not the threat here. Bigots like you are the threat. HOW DARE you use your platform to reinforce this rhetoric that gets trans people killed when there are so many much MUCH more important things going on right now. Two black trans women had been murdered just for being black trans women in the week you wrote your essay defending those initial tweets. This is an ongoing issue. As a cis woman, my opinion should read as sacred texts to you right, Joanne? Because I’ll say with my whole chest that I feel far more threatened by bigots like you who do not care for the harmful impact of their words than I do by trans women. I do not feel threatened by trans women AT ALL. And yeah, to me, unless they tell me otherwise that they like to go out their way to affirm their trans-ness (which I completely respect-it takes a lot of courage to be proud about your past in a world that condemns you for it), they’re just WOMEN like any other. Yes their experience of “womanhood” may be different to mine but no two individuals experiences are the same anyway and our gender related suffering has the same cause. As a rich, white, cis woman, it’s wild that you are painting yourself as the victim in this debate when trans people can face life in prison and in some places a death sentence for openly identifying with a gender different to their sex in a lot of countries. Nobody is saying that you can’t talk about cis women. Nobody is saying you can’t talk about lesbian issues either, though it’s a bit of a piss-take that you like to throw that whole trans women erase lesbian existence argument out there as a kind of trump card to say “look, I can’t be a transphobe, I’m an LGBTQ+ ally!”, an argument akin to the racist’s age old “I can’t be racist, I have black friends!”. You know from the responses you get to your transphobia that majority of the LGBTQ+ community are very much adamant that trans women are “real women” and that the same goes for trans men being “real men”, so don’t claim to speak for them. You cannot simultaneously care about LGBTQ+ rights and deny trans people their right to live as who they are, however veiled your sentiments around that may be. The whole gay rights movement of the 60s and 70s exist partially BECAUSE of black trans women such as Martha P Johnson if you didn’t know, and though it’s kinda common knowledge I’m doubting that you do because very little of what you tout is backed up by any kind of research. The articles you retweet, echoing the views of lesbians who also happen to be TERFs do not count-the idea that trans people existing simultaneously erases the existence of lesbians only applies to individuals such as yourself who don’t see trans women as women in the first place. That is the problem! Most people don’t have an issue with the fact that you may have a preference for certain genitalia, but I would argue that ignoring exceptional circumstances related to trauma or some other complex issue, relationships are supposed to be with the person as a whole, not their “organic” penis or vagina and it’s kind of insulting to anyone in a same sex relationship to reduce their bond to that.

Back to my point though, of course there are issues that cis women and lesbians face that need talking about, but trans people are affected by the same patriarchal system. You don’t need to go out of your way to mention that they’re not included in whichever given specific issue when there are also cis women who may not have experienced some of the things TERFs reference. You especially don’t need to act as if trans women are the reason we need to have these discussions in the first place. As I’ve said, as MANY women have said, repeatedly-they are NOT the threat here. It is disgusting to see someone I once had so much admiration for constantly punch down at a group that is already marginalised. It’s 2020, J.K, there’s so much info out there. YOU’RE A FULLY GROWN WOMAN. There’s no justification. We get it, you had a tomboy phase. You weren’t like “other girls”. You didn’t like living under a patriarchal system. So you think you understand the mindset of people who want to transition. You think you’re not doing anything wrong by helping to slow the advancement of trans rights because well, you turned out fine? But you clearly fundamentally misunderstand what being trans is. It’s not about your likes and dislikes and having issues with the experience of being a woman (god knows we all do but I doubt anyone truly thinks for one moment that being trans would be any easier), it’s about how you think and feel at your core. It’s such a complex issue, and all the majority of trans people are asking you to do is LISTEN to them. You may be determined to live in binaries, yet the bigger picture is always more complex and fluid and it’s ever-changing, so all we can do is keep an open mind and keep wanting to know more and gather more evidence. If you’re capable of the mental gymnastics required to retcon the piece of work you wrote in the 90s to make it seem as if you were “ahead of the diversity game”, to the extent that you are now claiming Voldermort’s snake has always actually been a Korean woman and see nothing wrong with that when paired with the fact that the only Asian character you originally included was called Cho Chang, then well…I’m sure you can put your ego aside and do the groundwork to understand what trans people are trying to tell you too. You inspired a lot of children and teenagers and even adults, and got them through some very difficult times, taught that the strength of one’s character matters far more than what anyone thinks of you. You claimed you wanted to stand up for the outcasts.

Well, stand up for the outcasts. Now’s a better time than any. And once again: TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN AND TRANS MEN ARE MEN. They shouldn’t have to hear anything else.

Lauren x

[DISCLAIMER: shitty collages are mine but the background is not, let me know if you are aware of the artist so I can credit!]

#transisbeautiful #trans pride #trans lives matter #blm #black lives matter #jk rowling #trans rights #gender identity #gender studies #trans women are women #politics #socialism #safe space #all are welcome

21 notes · View notes

thedeadflag · 5 years ago

Note

so this is something I've been mulling over for a while now - do you reckon it'd be possible to make a version of a/b/o that isn't fundamentally transphobic, or would it reach the point of "this is so different that you might as well not call it a/b/o" before that? off the top of my head you'd have to take out all elements of g!p, mpreg, and biological essentialism, and it'd probably be possible to write a version of a/b/o with that framework, but I don't know if I'm missing anything.

a/b/o is a reactionary trope that relies on cissexism-derived biological essentialism to function. Like, that’s the engine that powers the bdsm/power dynamics, cisheteronormative breeding/family building, “dub/non-con”, etc. elements that draw people to it, and led people to create it in the first place.

Like, my best attempt at describing a non-transphobic, non-shitty typical a/b/o adjacent fic would include:

Werewolves (let’s face it, werewolves can be really cool if written well, and there’s a lot of really good ways to write them, a lot of ways to subvert tired subtropes within the trope)

Found Family-focused family/pack building (because wolves often adopt wolves from other packs into their own, blood lineage isn’t really a thing; much like vampires being created, newly turned werewolves of any age can be considered their sire’s child; if it needs to have a pregnancy arc between two men or two women, there’s IVF/IUI, or magically/spiritually-induced pregnancies, and of course writing a fully fledged complex trans character with their own non-pregnancy arc and virtues/flaws/goals/etc. and getting relevant trans beta writers who aren't your friends to keep it on track if you’re a cis writer)

A flexible, non-binary gendered society (rather than the rigidly structured biology-is-destiny a/b/o society) that’s trans inclusive either explicitly, or implicitly if it’s a new social universe with different rules.

If mating seasons have to exist, they’re cultural more than biological, and no biological processes that could impede or trouble a person’s ability to properly consent.

No inherent, glorified or reified power dynamics, certainly none rooted in or fostered through biology.

That doesn’t seem very much at all like a/b/o to me. It’s a werewolf AU, which is the reason why a/b/o was created in the first place. It wasn’t enough. It needed something more than just a supernatural bent

I’ll continue on below for a bit on some simplified functions of a/b/o, but it’s mostly just some ramblings.

Like, to quote the originators of the genre/trope:

I'd like to see Alpha male Jared, and Bitch male Jensen. Jensen is a snotty prude (think Lady from lady and the tramp) he may be a bitch male but he's not just going to let anybody take a go at his sweet little ass...until he meets Jared...then prudey little Jensen turns cock slut for Jared. Bonus points for J2 being OTP, Jensen was a virgin before Jared, and now that they met each other, it's for life.

...

There are three types of men, alpha males, beta males, and omega males. Alpha males are like any ordinary guy with the exception of their cocks, they work just like canines (the knot, tons of cum, strong breeders, etc) The beta male, is an ordinary guy without the special cock. Omega males are capable of child bearing and often called bitch males.

Like, I want you to look at that real close and see what’s going on in there.

This was created to be a trope where there’s a world where women, as we explicitly know them, don’t exist, but where a subgroup of men take up the functional role of the woman in the heteronormative social structure of the world. It’s also not surprising that (assumedly cis) women created and initiated the spread of this trope.

Look at the language used. This is heavily, explicitly gendered for a reason. If you’ve read much of anything about how the male gaze impacts female sexuality, you’ll know a common response is for women to position themselves out of the proverbial frame entirely, so that no part of them can explicitly exist as an object, where they can take on the role of a subject. There’s no women whose experiences will directly link to her own and her own perceptions, comfort/discomfort/etc.

However, many of these women also have been heavily affected by the male gaze and heteronormativity, and that combined with not knowing what a real gay male relationship is like, what it looks like, what experiences might be unique to it...they fill in the blanks with their own conditioning.

And maybe seeing a lot of that toxic masculinity in media content was unsettling because of how women get treated in that content, and how they in turn might feel in those shoes. But if a MAN, even if it’s a heavily female-coded man, were to undergo that...well, it’d be easier to appreciate those tropes and dynamics they’ve been force-fed to believe were arousing, hot, desirable. Especially if they can have two hot men in it. They can enjoy that self-created taboo, bypass their own discomfort and insecurity, and project it onto a type of person different enough to suspend their disbelief and maintain that difference, even if they’re pumping that guy full of all the typical misogynistic tropes and experiences they’re not comfortable having directed towards them and other women.

In short, it’s a way to get off on heteronormative norms/tropes, using another as a vehicle in order to keep up their cognitive dissonance.

Of course, this eventually spilled out into the Het fandom (makes perfect sense, since many of the a/b/o originators and proponents were het women), and then worked its way into Femslash fandom by piggybacking on g!p in order to meet the necessary criteria for PiV sex.

Just, in this case, you necessarily shift some of the puzzle pieces around. Trans women take the place of the “alpha”, acting as an acceptable vehicle for a toxic masculine cis man, since lesbians aren’t into men. Even if the trans woman is generally written, in nearly every way aside from part of her body, as a toxic cis man. The original a/b/o’s “Bitch Male”/Omega Male is swapped out for the Omega Female, usually a spunkier, more in your face version outside of romantic/sexual contexts in the media content, but let’s be real here, she’s still by and large submissive when it comes down to it.

In a world where more wlw grew up feeling predatory for their attraction to other women, for feeling sinful, for being rejected from female intimacy het women enjoyed with each other after coming out, etc., it’s pretty common for a lot of lesbians to lack initiative, not be able to read or communicate romantic/sexual cues between each other...to essentially be “useless lesbians’ as the joke goes,and to feel isolated and undesirable.

So writing a F/F fic where some hot woman modeled in the image of some hot cis woman pursues you? Takes the initiative sexually/romantically? Doesn’t beat around the bush, but is blatant? Who can’t control her lust around you? Who can give you the perfect nuclear family you’ve been conditioned to want in order to feel value in our heteronormative world, but were told you weren’t worthy of or could never feasibly attain? Who gives you a sexual encounter you have some education in and some emotional stake in due to common conditioning of PiV sex > all else? Who can give you plausible deniability for a number of contexts due to a lack of ability to explicitly consent? etc. etc.

Like, yeah, that’s going to feel comfortable for a lot out there. That’s going to seem pretty hot/arousing. It’s a way to get off on the norms and expectations thrown on women in society, but in a way that lets them distance themselves ever so slightly from men by shifting it from text to subtext, explicit to implicit.

Don’t just take my word for it, though. Here’s a few snippets from one of the most popular g!p/omegaverse femslash writers (if not the most popular) that help illustrate how/why this trope has found an audience

Why Do I Write G!P?The elephant in the room. It arouses me, but it’s also a form of self-comfort. I grew up in a very fundamentalist home. Women being with women was at first unspoken, and then derided, both by my church and at home. I felt insanely guilty for my attractions, so I developed ‘cheat codes’ to deal with it.

It was okay if the woman I had sex with in my dreams had a penis, for example. It was okay if she forced me to have sex with her. It was okay if we basically simulated heterosexual sex.

Because of my childhood (which included conversion therapy), I found myself falling into heterosexual roleplay patterns, at least sexually. It was a lingering thing from my childhood.

It’s still there, and I know I’ll never be rid of it.

...

I associate penetration with power. You know, being steeped in sexism from an early age turned some problematic thoughts into kinky lemonade. And since I’m a femme sub, taking power away from the top by ‘penetrating’ them can ruin the mood for me. I mean, I can write power bottom scenes with the best of them, and I enjoy them, but… *shrug* if I’m going to write omegaverse or g!p, someone’s getting fucked, and it’s not the top.

There are rules to a/b/o. There are specific reasons it’s sought out, read, and created, and that’s why it’s hard to imagine a version of it without those harmful elements, because the trope requires them for the audience to be satisfied.

It’s why all gay male a/b/o fits a pretty specific pattern. it’s why femslash a/b/o fits a very specific pattern. There’s nearly no deviation as a rule, because there are so many parts that have to be in play and functioning in a specific way in order to get the desired result.

I could go on for hours about this, and the above is all a pretty damn simplified take of what’s going on in a/b/o for it to exist in the way it does and meet the needs of the audience, and I’ve already written a lot about this in the past, so I’ll try to cut it short here.

#a/b/o #omegaverse #trans fetishization #creative responsibility #transmisogyny #cissexism #genitals tw #genital mention tw #long post #fandom dynamics #fandom meta #heteronormativity #g!p #biological essentialism #Anonymous

46 notes · View notes

queerbrownfox · 7 years ago

Text

#ShutDownSaltyParents

Anybody who’s ever worked in retail knows it: you see some interesting things. Sure I’ve got a more than my handful of stories. Bloody swimsuit bottoms in fitting rooms, guys calling to ask about women’s underwear that decide to use your phone conversation to jack off, even a kid, now known at my workplace as The Karate Kid, who decided that it would be a good time to scream “HI-YAAA!” over and over again while kicking clothes off of racks.

Usually the story just ends up being a funny to tell at dinner time, but every once in a while, I end up seeing something that really digs itself under my skin and makes me absolutely sick.

I was working in the shoes department all day today setting new product. Bustling about, paying less attention to customers compared to usual like I sometimes do while busting out a project and breaking down boxes. I’ll admit it. I’ll answer questions every once in a while, but I’m in a zone, as it were. But then, there was this cute little kid that caught my eye. He was probably six or seven, with a curly mop top and puppy-like brown eyes. Kids don’t usually melt my heart like that, but this one really put a smile on my face.

He was playing around with the shirts his mom was going to buy while his mom tried on shoes. I had my eye on her. Kept thinking to myself, put the boxes back put the boxes back put the boxes back, but much to my dismay, she was one of those that didn’t pick up on vibes really well. What are retail workers for though, right?

Anyways, this kid had on a pretty little ruffly floral shirt I’d been eyeing up myself to be honest. He looked at me with this bright big smile on his face and then turned to his mom and said, “Look mommy, I’m a girl!”

The mom, with an annoyed look on her face ripped the shirt off from over his head and said “No you’re not. You’re a boy.”

I thought about it all day. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so sick to my stomach about the way I handled something.

I stopped what I was doing and looked at the kid. His fallen face. I couldn’t meet the mom’s eyes. And what did I do? How did I swoop in? I just turned back to my boxes and started breaking them down again (rather passive-aggressively, might I add) with my box cutter. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her cart roll past.

But what could I have said, right?

It’s times like these that it hits me in the face. The reality of the status quo. I can hit the pride reacts on my Facebook page as much as I want. I can post articles queer identity and talk about it with my peers and professors as much as I like. But I always, always am surrounded by like-minded individuals. People who agree with me. Yeah, of course the gender binary is bullshit and reverse-racism is as mythical as Sasquatch. Agree to agree.

I’m totally blind to the fact that the majority of this society is so far behind in their understanding of literal human empathy. I know this mom is not by any means the only one. Who has boxed in her kids with dolls and action figures or pinks and blues. Screamed at a son for breaking into his sister’s dress up clothes or his mom’s lipstick stash. Or perhaps even worse: laughed. Took it as a joke, a prank he was playing.

Here’s a tip. If your kid isn’t laughing, don’t laugh at them.

Kids that age, Jesus, they’ve never come face to face with a world that’s rejected them. Bullied them, broken them. And can you, as their parent, really sleep soundly knowing that you were the one who introduced them to this world’s malevolence?

“Your kid is going to hate you when he grows up.”

I saw an article recently about a genderqueer child who attended New York City Pride for the first time with their (straight, not that it matters) parents. Rainbows abounded. The kid’s long, curly blonde hair was in adorable little pig tails and they had the most adorable little grin on their face--as did their pride flag-waving parents. It was a pick me up for my day, you know? The kind of thing that makes you think, “Well, there’s a bit of hope out there.”

But then I made the mistake of reading the comments. And I saw that one: “Your kid is going to hate you when he grows up.”

First of all, let’s lay this on the line. Intentional mIsgendering = hate speech. Let’s call it what it is. There was more, too. “He’s going to look back at these pictures one day, and he’ll never forgive you for dressing him up like this.”

Dressing up? As if the parents “dressed ‘him’ up” this way? As if that great big smile could possibly have been forced? As if, more importantly, genderqueer and trans kids forced to conform to their assigned sex at birth aren’t being “dressed up” like you claim?

I’m so sick of people treating kids like they’re stupid. Like they couldn’t possibly know what they want. Like they’re constantly embarrassing themselves. Seriously? If there’s one thing I really admire about kids, it’s that they literally can’t be embarrassed. They’re blameless, shameless, they do the most outlandish things without blushing. But they are capable of being shamed by the outside world. Kids develop guilt complexes so young. I would know--I sure did. And it absolutely breaks my heart when I find myself watching another kid developing one right before my eyes.

But hold on--back to me. I’m not off the hook.

Us queer folks, I think we really have to put aside this us versus them complex. The whole, “Look at these terrible parents being bad people. Shame on them. Like my Facebook article and let’s bitch about how terrible this is in the comments.”

We need to break out of our complain-fest because it traps us in our community of like minded individuals, saying the same things over and over, expecting progress to happen as our generation gets older. Bullshit. I’ve seen millenials turning a blind eye and buying into the stereotypes baby boomers propagate, albeit a little bit more quietly. Not that that makes our generation any better.

The next time we see a kid getting shut down, belittled, bullied, we’ve gotta do our job. Never mind shitty parents. They’ve got their own mindsets, they’ve already been conditioned and raised. That’s a whole other battle that we ought not to over burden ourselves with.

Let’s start with the little kids.

Let’s say it, in our own subtle way, that it’s okay to be you. It’s okay to be confident, to rock a dress or some lip gloss, whether or not you identify with a feminine identity. A smile, a wink, a complement can go so damn far in the eyes of a little kid.

With that in mind, what would I have said today? What would I have done differently? I think I know now. I think I would’ve caught that kid’s eye when he smiled at me and said, “That suits you, kiddo.” ♡

#lgbt writers #LGBTQ Blog #lesbians #lgbt #genderqueer

11 notes · View notes

ievani-e · 6 years ago

Text

I’m Genderqueer, I Guess!?

(AKA, My Experiences Accepting — and Then Rejecting — Womanhood)

Over three weeks ago now, on February 4th, I started out wanting to write a random little opinion piece about Disney’s Mulan. I had experienced a personal epiphany, and I wanted to revisit some of the ideas I had had about Mulan in the past, and contrast that with how I felt about it now. But, I realised, there was something else I had to write before I could. I had to write this random thing first, because this post informs that one.

So what this post is going to be about is this: I am genderqueer.

This is not a recent thing. I have not suddenly changed as a person. On the contrary, I’m exactly the same person I have always been. The only thing that has changed is the label itself: a label which, for reasons explained below, I have decided to don.

In order to properly tell you about where I am now, I have to tell you a bit about my past and give you an overview about my experiences growing up. I have to tell you how I first got to this place for my decision to come out as genderqueer/gender non-binary to make sense.

Some backstory, then: While I never directly suffered as a result of my gender identity the same way some others have, I did still struggle with gender dysphoria. I recognise that many trans and queer people have (or have had) it way worse than me, and that I am extremely fortunate to have avoided being bullied or ostracised due to my gender identity, having firmed up and sussed out what it even was only now. But, nevertheless, it was there the whole time.

Growing up, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was medically wrong with me: that the doctors must have made some kind of a mistake, and everyone around me treating me as a girl ever since was simply the result of carrying the error forward. I must have had a higher dosage of androgens in my system, or maybe an extra chromosome or something. I must have secretly been intersex and just hadn’t been diagnosed. Surely, something had to have been wrong. I couldn’t have been a girl, because any definition of or expectation for a “girl” I ever heard was something so different from what I was.

As a child, I grew up with a very narrow definition of what it meant to be a girl and what girls could and couldn’t be, because that was what had been spoon-fed to me by the media and the social norms I saw around me. These norms were perpetuated at school, by members of my family, and on TV — with TV standing in as a representative for the world at large. What I saw around me was: girls liked shopping and jewellery. Girls liked fashion and beauty. Girls liked horse-riding and ballet. Girls were vain. Girls were stupid. Girls only cared about wearing pretty pink dresses and chatting about boys. Girls were… <insert other extremely limited, restrictive, two-dimensional female stereotype here>. Those were the conclusions I had come to, based on what the world was showing me and teaching me.

And I wasn’t like that. I wasn’t like those girls. I was nuanced, I was complicated; I was intelligent and smart and not at all interested in love and romance, and I much preferred to hang out with boys like I was one of them than try to date any of them. I liked video games and horror films and reading thrillers and action adventures. I was no girly-girl: I was a tomboy, and proud of it.

Nothing I had heard about girls applied to me or appealed to me in any way. (I mean no offense if you are more feminine than I was and you do like that sort of stuff: it’s totally okay to be that way, too! It’s just that I, in particular, wasn’t).

I, the little weirdo that I felt like at the time, had never fit into the picture of the archetypal girl. So, I reasoned, the only logical conclusion was that I must not have been a girl. I must have been a boy. At least, I fit much more comfortably into the definition of a “boy” than I did the definition of a “girl”.

The problem there is, it’s easy to decide that certain characteristics associated with a certain group aren’t compatible with you when the characteristics given to you are so limited in the first place. There was a very specific mental image I had in my head of what a girl should be like, and there didn’t seem to be very much room for discussion. For boys, on the other hand, it seemed like they could be anything except that. That has a whole host of issues all its own — ones I won’t be getting into in depth now — where boys are discouraged from displaying feminine characteristics or emotionality, and this is just as harmful to boys as it is to discourage girls from displaying masculine characteristics. Double-standards do exist, and they are not okay.

But, putting aside that can of worms for now, boys generally had a lot more options than girls did. Of course I would be able to see more similarities between myself and boys when there was a wider range of options to choose from from the start.

Please permit me to be an optimist for a moment and say that I believe that, in an ideal world, all positive characteristics would be embraced and encouraged in children, regardless of whether they were typically “feminine” or “masculine”. We would love unconditionally, and judge each person for their own individual merits and demerits, rather than holding them up to some perceived notion of being “girl” enough or “boy” enough. Doing so is incredibly detrimental to us all because, when we start holding personhood up to some arbitrary standard, it becomes very easy to fall short. And that does not feel good for the many of us who don’t measure up.

But the real world and the ideal world are worlds apart, and social norms did, and do, exist. In any case, I certainly didn’t fit the cookie-cutter mould of what it “meant” to be a “girl”. And that felt like a failure on my part. I felt like I wasn’t enough; like I wasn’t good enough, just the way I was.

I grew up empathising and relating to men in a variety of ways, because in our culture and in our media it is predominantly male characters and male role models that we see. Female role models… Not so much. Female characters in books, video games and TV were few and far between to begin with, and those that did exist tended to be depicted as homemakers, love interests, sex objects and… nope, that’s about it. As a result, I didn’t know that there were more ways to be than just those.

That’s not to say that shows featuring more positive role models didn’t exist — it’s not even to say I didn’t happen across a few of them myself. Rather, it is that those positive influences weren’t numerous enough or prevalent enough for me, as a child, to notice; or to start to change my mind about women as a whole because of them. There weren’t enough positive portrayals of women for those portrayals of women to form part of a larger pattern; certainly not enough to challenge the already-existing patterns of behaviour that were being perpetuated far more prominently and pervasively. There were exceptions, but that’s just it: complex, interesting, autonomous female characters — women such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena: Warrior Princess — were exceptions; not the rule. (And I’ve never actually even seen Xena: Warrior Princess myself, so…)

One such example that comes to my own mind is that of Elizabeth Bennet, from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice; which isn’t actually about pride and prejudice anywhere near as much as you might think. That, I read when I was 13? 14? 15? as part of my high school’s English Literature course, and Elizabeth Bennet was probably the closest thing I had to a positive female role model in literature at that time. Even then, Elizabeth, too, was posited as the exception, not the rule: even within the book’s own canon. You see, Elizabeth was exceptionally skilled, witty and intelligent; she was particularly sensible, reasonable (even if not open-minded…) and capable of critical thought. Unfortunately, the logical continuation of such a premise leads to the (incorrect) implication that other girls… usually… weren’t. So in the book, we see that Elizabeth wasn’t like other girls. Elizabeth was different.

So while I saw myself, to a certain extent, in Elizabeth, I also saw the same demonization of — and the desire to distance oneself from — other women which I experienced first-hand, along with the desperation to distinguish oneself from the gender norms as if they were true; not as if they weren’t. The mistake Elizabeth and I both made was that, by thinking of ourselves as “special little snowflakes” and elevating our own status to that of the exception, not the rule, it came at the cost of failing to appreciate the basic humanity and the complexity of other women: women who may, in actuality, have had a lot more in common with us than we first gave them credit for.

Meanwhile, it seemed that (cis) men were allowed to be human, and experience (almost) the full range of thoughts and feelings and ways of life attached to that, in a way that women just weren’t. But, the issue of gender and representation in media is in fact another beast entirely. What is relevant to me throughout all of this is that this all culminated in the fact that I was someone who accepted men exactly the way they were, and could relate to men in a multitude of ways; but, before discovering feminism, despised anything even remotely “female” or “feminine” and discriminated against it, dismissing it or distancing myself from it for one reason or another, despite being female myself. What. The. Fuck.

Now I’m an adult and I know better, I know that the majority of my discomfort with “the feminine” stemmed primarily from good old-fashioned sexism, both internalised and otherwise. I know now that those beliefs — both the ones I had impressed upon me, and the ones I in turn applied to others — are inherently inaccurate and deeply flawed.

Problem solved, then: it’s not that my gender identity or expression was wrong. It’s not that I wasn’t woman enough, despite not feeling like I fit in all my life. It’s that sexism exists, and sexism is the cause for all of my dysphoria, hurray(!)

Or so I thought.

Sexism does still play a part, however, and that’s what has made coming to grips with my gender identity all the more difficult for me. Before I could discern what was really true about myself, first I had to disentangle what was really true about “what it means to be a female/ a woman/ feminine” from all the fallacies, generalisations and mistruths. When I came across feminism several years ago as a young tween and learnt about what it was, it opened a lot of doors for me in terms of coming to a greater understanding of myself and the world around me. Feminism has been a very positive influence in and on my life, and is responsible for a lot of personal growth. But also, in this particular instance, confused me even further. And that’s because, I started to think that… maybe the reason why I didn’t associate myself with the concept of “girlhood” or “womanhood” when I was younger was only because the concept I had in my head had been so completely wrong all along.

Before feminism, all that internalised sexism really did go a long way towards meaning I related more to men than I did to women; or at least, thought I did, because really, I never gave women much of a chance. I had to unlearn a lot of the preconceived notions I had grown up with, and learn everything all over again from the ground up.

The more I learned, the more I came to understand; but even so, the feeling of me being different or not quite fitting in anywhere didn’t go away. It’s just that I started to think that maybe it wasn’t me who was wrong: maybe it was the gender norms themselves that were wrong. It was the idea that “women are like X and men are like Y” — and that this is universally true for all women and all men — that was wrong.

What I had to learn was that women could be anything. And I mean; I already knew that about men — but women, too?! So women can think and act for themselves, and be incredibly intelligent and have their own thoughts and opinions and expertise on a subject, and have a vast array of interests?! It sounds stupid now, especially if you already know it to be true; but it was a much-needed life lesson for the twenty-year-old me. I was already fully accepting of a wide range of personalities and occupations for men, because I saw such a wide range of men and male characters/personalities in the media. It was already a given to me that men could be anything. And yes, there is that whole “…except be feminine” thing I mentioned before, and it is an issue; but I never personally bought into that. I had my fair share of male role models with a sensitive side or more typically feminine character traits as well. What was shocking to me is that I had to learn that the same thing I had always believed to be true of men was true of women, too.

What I had to learn, absurdly for the first time as an adult, was that not every woman had to like the same thing or have the same hobbies or interests. Not all women had to look or dress or behave the same way, or any way in particular at all. Not every woman had the same likes and interests as me: but — and here was the key difference — they could have done. There was, in reality, no logical reason why they couldn’t. I realised that girls can be tomboys and gamers and total nerds and still be girls.

If that was the case, then maybe my own experience and my own expression of self — despite being so far removed from that limited childhood notion of “girl” = “pretty, vain and vapid” — was nevertheless still valid within the wider, broader and more inclusive interpretation of “womanhood”. Maybe, even with my own complete and total lack of femininity and associating myself with more typically-masculine traits and behaviours, maybe I still was a woman: just that the category for womanhood was far broader than I had been led to believe. Perhaps I wasn’t a woman who had fit into those narrow definitions I had held as true in the past; but a woman nonetheless, who could still meet the definition of a woman if only I broadened those definitions up.

No two women are the same; and as such, it makes no sense to think that there is such thing as a universal expression of that womanhood. Every single woman is a unique individual, with her own skills and experiences and her own story to tell. Just because my own experience didn’t have much in common with the experiences of those around me, that didn’t necessarily mean that I wasn’t a woman, or couldn’t have been a woman, or that I was some abhorrent anomaly. I might have been three standard deviations away from the mean; but that doesn’t mean that I was not, nevertheless, a valid data point.

So I got confused.

The feminist within me wanted me to think of myself as, and identify as, a woman. After all, I had just truly come to understand and to appreciate that being a woman was okay. I had just come to understand that “femininity” existed on a wide spectrum, and even oddballs like me could be included within that. Besides, if I was a feminist and believed in women’s rights (as a targeted approach to believing in equal rights in general), then wasn’t I supposed to be proud to be a woman? Wasn’t I meant to further the cause and #represent? If being a woman was no inferior to being a man, and if women came in all shapes and shades and were allowed to claim and celebrate their own individuality as they saw fit, regardless of the norms, then why would I need to be anything else? Was “woman” not sufficient? How could I be a feminist and yet still feel a reluctance and general disdain towards identifying as a woman?

That was one side of the confusion.

The other side of it was: well, if I wasn’t a woman, what else would I be? As a child, I had felt I fit in more with boys; but I had no all-consuming desire to be a boy or to be thought of as one myself. What I wanted was simply to be myself. I didn’t think of myself as a boy, hanging out with other boys. I thought of myself as myself, hanging out with other boys. As an adult, I feel no more and no less an affinity for one gender than the other. There is no affinity for either; and likewise, no antipathy for either. I feel empathy for everyone; a general relation towards all individuals, regardless of their gender. I don’t come down on one side or the other.

It was around the same time that I started batting around the idea of being genderfluid; but ultimately decided against exploring it any further or even acknowledging it in any real way, because it “didn’t matter, really”. I don’t know why nothing came of that back then. I guess I didn’t have the courage to pursue it, nor was there the same motivation to do so as now. I thought private thoughts: I often joked/ seriously heartfully felt that I was a gay man trapped in a woman’s body; but I also felt like a gay woman trapped in a woman’s body. And, because I felt like both a gay man and a gay woman, I reasoned that, maybe, if I looked at it a certain way, that was almost like having elements of both a straight man and a straight woman instead. Either way, I was bisexual! (Which I am, by the way.)

I tried to use my own sexuality against me; I tried to twist it around, and pressured myself to act more like a “straight woman”, or how I thought a straight woman should be. And, no, there does not seem to be much logic to that train of thought: it was just me oppressing myself, trying to knock myself back down into a more “acceptable” way of being, even if that meant flattening myself in the process. It’s weird to see how, in this way, I was still equating “straight” with “normal”, even though I was bisexual myself. This is why queer representation is so important!!

That particular mental interpretation was lacking, for many reasons. And something I didn’t think about at the time was that either way, I wasn’t cis. Either way, there was that overlap of masculinity and femininity in me: I had elements of both, but neither were quite the way convention might have you expect. I felt like I approached femininity from a male perspective: I was “feminine”, but in the same way that (some, not all) gay men are “feminine” without being women. Likewise, I approached masculinity from a female perspective: I was “masculine”, but in the same way (some, not all) lesbians are “masculine” without being men. I had traits of both within me, but even then, they were crossed over; associating my inner “male self” with the “feminine” and my inner “female self” with the “masculine”.

So maybe now, as I write this, it’s more obvious why I didn’t fit in. Everyone else around me associated “male” with “macho” and “female” with “femme”. Such extreme interpretations were at direct odds with mine, and left no room for the many variants of gender identity and gender expression in between. It was, society said, one or the other. And I wasn’t either.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t something I came to understand until much more recently, or else I might have been able to place myself sooner.

But even those past times I did question my gender, those thoughts stayed only thoughts. And in any case, because I didn’t feel like I most definitely, most assuredly wanted to be/become a man, I thought that meant that I had to be a woman by default.

So, I thought, if I can’t commit to not being a woman, I guess I will just remain a “woman”. I guess I will just stand and be counted as one of the many women who do not fit the cookie-cutter mould dictated to us by gender norms, as many women don’t. I will be just one of the many examples of why the mould is rubbish: of why putting men and women in boxes does not work, because we do not all fit in neatly. I will hold my head up as a woman and say, “I do not follow the rules, but I am not the exception. It’s the rules themselves that are jank.”

And the feminist in me was appeased. After all, this way, simply by being myself I could prove patriarchy was wrong, or something to that effect. I was proof the norms were not catch-all, be-all and end-all. I could live with being a woman; just one that defies typical social norms. And those norms ought to be questioned and defied, anyway — so I comforted myself into thinking I was doing someone some good, maybe, somehow, by acknowledging the expectations for my gender but then subverting them; and that, in so doing, it might contribute towards shattering the preconceptions themselves.

I still didn’t feel comfortable in and of myself, but I shrugged it off. I was like, “okay, maybe this is fine.” In the wise, wise words of Lindsay Ellis: “This is fine. This is fine. This is fine, guys. This is fine.”

Of course, there were still times when I felt the incongruence more keenly than at others; my wedding and the times when I get compared to my sisters were particularly triggering experiences for me. But when it was just my husband and me, together and alone, there was no incongruence. There was no discomfort. We accepted each other, and loved each other, exactly the way we were. When it was just the two of us, we could just be the two of us. When we knew each other as well as we did, on that close and personal basis, then there was no need for labels.

And so, I had privately settled the dispute of my own gender. I had mentally filed it away under “agree not to agree; it doesn’t really matter, anyway. Putting a name to it doesn’t actively change who I am.” I had told myself that that was good enough; and I had kept on living my life, continuing with things just the way they were.

I had accepted womanhood, and resigned myself to it.

And that was that.

Cue hbomberguy’s “Donkey Kong Nightmare Stream”.

For those who missed it and the surrounding controversy involving TV writer Graham Linehan (#thanksgraham), hbomberguy (real name Harry Brewis) is a YouTuber who makes sensible — okay, maybe not “sensible” —, well-thought out videos addressing a variety of topics in modern media: usually video games, film or television series, but he also commentates on social trends and ideologies, as well.

Link to hbomberguy’s channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClt01z1wHHT7c5lKcU8pxRQ

My husband first knew him from his LetsPlays, and I became a fan too because of his game, film and television analyses. (Someone who overthinks and overanalyses works of fiction for all possible meanings and real-life takeaways?? Here’s a man after my own heart!)

So when he announced he was going to do a livestream of the classic Nintendo 64 game Donkey Kong 64 in order to raise money for the organisation Mermaids — a charity offering support groups, education, and crisis hotlines for transgender individuals and their families, as well as training for corporations to raise trans awareness — we were very interested in watching it.

Link to Mermaids’ website here: https://www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/

Unfortunately, my husband and I weren’t able to watch the stream as it went up live; but we did watch through the archived footage after the fact. And boy, did it hit hard. So many feels were had. So many feels.

My husband isn’t as informed on social justice issues as I am, so a lot of the overarching context that was old-hat to me was brand-new to him. But bless him, he is learning. I, on the other hand, thought going in that I was just going to be watching a stream of a dude we liked from YouTube playing a game, and raising some money for a good cause while he was at it. What I wasn’t expecting was that some of what I heard would hit me so hard in the heart.

To pick out just a few key moments from what was truly an epic event the whole way through, Susie Green, the CEO of Mermaids herself, appeared in the stream — and, let me just say, she is so effing awesome. I have an aunt called Susie Green, too, who is also one of the most kick-ass ladies I know, so awesomeness must come with the territory or something.

Anyway, among other things, Susie Green (the CEO, not my aunt) was saying (and I paraphrase) that one of the best ways to support trans people is just to let them know that they can be safe around you.

And that broke my fucking heart, because fuck. Because LGBTQ+ people could be safe around me: but if I myself wasn’t out and proud — if I myself wasn’t visible, or open about my own situation — how the fuck would they know that?

That idea (built upon by CaseyExplosion when she said just to be a friend to trans people you know) deeply resonated with me because of past personal conversations I have had with some members of the gaming group I’m a part of. In private messages, there were people I spoke to at length about gender and about sexuality. The thing is, I was never the one initiating these conversations. Due to my own experiences and empathy, whenever they brought up that they were struggling, I would listen and I would relate and I would tell them a bit about my own experiences, too. And something that came up in one of those conversations was how difficult it was to know who you can talk to about gender and sexuality stuff, because you don’t know how people will respond or who you can trust.

One of my dear friends talked to me about his struggle with sexuality and being gay, and I could understand and empathise and listen to him without judgment because, although it isn’t exactly the same, I am bi and have my own experiences with making the personal journey of coming to understand and accept your own sexual identity, and the struggles along the way. Another friend confided in me she was having confusing feelings for another woman, and she didn’t know what to do. Again, I shared with her that I could understand because I was bi, and we talked for a long time about how she was feeling. She said later I was one of the few people she could trust to talk to about this, because she knew I wouldn’t judge her.

I know people who struggle with their own experiences, and I also know people who are so far removed from those struggles in their own personal lives that they can come across a little insensitive and non-inclusive in their speech or actions; not due to malice, but sincere lack of experience, lack of information, and lack of awareness. One such friend of mine gets very confused over what is “sex” and what is “gender” and frequently conflates the two, and tends to be very dismissive of the social issues going on around him or the community’s attempts to address those issues. And again, this is not because he is an uncaring or unkind person, because he is usually exceptionally caring and kind. But in these particular instances, because he is young and uninformed and he is not part of those circles himself (nor knows others who are immediately affected), there is no reason why he would know more about it. There is no reason why he would understand.

Still, he recognises that he doesn’t understand, and he does try to learn more and keep himself open to learning more. Thus, I unofficially took it upon myself to educate him, to try and foster that understanding; and I talked to him a lot about my own gender identity, too, to kind of serve as my own example for him of what the gender spectrum was. I told him a lot about my own experiences, eventually summarising my situation as, “I don’t agree with the gender norms and I don’t fit into them myself, but I don’t really know what I what I would fit into. I’m not comfortable being a woman, but I don’t know what I would consider myself as instead, so… … …”

On each of these occasions, and many more besides, I was fortunate enough to have these incredibly deep and meaningful conversations with real people all over the world; some of whom were struggling to find understanding and acceptance at a time when they really didn’t know who they could turn to. I’m so incredibly lucky to have them in my life, and that I could learn from all of them and know their unwavering love and support. Our friendship has enriched my life, and I have been exposed to so much love and positivity and really grown as a person because of it. I’m so grateful and glad that they found me, and that I could likewise be a positive figure for them in their time of need.

But that’s just it: they found me. They took a leap of faith, not knowing the outcome, because they needed someone to talk to and they didn’t know for sure if I would be accepting or understanding: it was just that, based on our group conversations, I seemed like the kind of person who might be. They demonstrated an incredible amount of trust and faith in me, and I am extremely grateful for that. But it’s something that they should not have had to do. They should have known that they were safe from the get-go; I should have made them feel safe. I should have been more open, more inclusive; more forthcoming with my own experiences and beliefs, so that they knew they would find a kindred spirit in me, without needing to take that risk. And that is a failing on my part.

Remember how I said about how it even came up in one of those conversations that it’s difficult to know who you can talk to about gender and sexuality, because you don’t know how people will respond or who you can trust? Well, back then, my response to that was something along the lines of: “I would hate it if someone was struggling with this stuff and they felt like they couldn’t talk to me about it, just because they didn’t know that I was queer too.”

And yet…

To my shame and my dismay, although I did share my own experiences with others one-on-one once they had already started talking about it with me, I was never the first to say, “hey, I’m LGBTQ+, and if you’re LGBTQ+ too, that’s A-okay!” I was never the first to bring it up; and in so doing, I’m worried that I might have inadvertently created an atmosphere within our gaming group where LGBTQ+ members feel like they might not have been welcomed or represented.

Because our gaming group is online, everyone is totally anonymous, and no-one has to reveal more about themselves than they want to: including their appearance, their sexuality, or their gender. Still, I wonder if maybe there are some members, new or old, who are LGBTQ+ or who are internally struggling with their own self-identity, who look around and do not seem to see anyone like them. The atmosphere in our group, as is the case with society as a whole, is one where it’s assumed cis/hetero-normative by default. Topics of gender and sexuality rarely come up in the group chat; the more in-depth ones take place in private messaging instead, where they are invisible to the others.

So, by all appearances, straight and cis is the norm… even when it isn’t.

(Update: I am very happy to announce that, since I began writing this, this has now changed! Although it was my intention to come out to my gaming group after posting this, I ended up outing myself to the group early, which initiated exactly the kind of conversations about gender, sexuality, and inclusivity we should have been having all along. Our gaming group has now officially adopted “other” as a third gender option when we are asking members to introduce themselves, along with asking for preferred pronouns! I hope this change, minor though it may seem, goes a long way to helping every member feel more comfortable when disclosing their gender and their pronouns, should they choose to disclose at all.)

Getting back to the point, Susie Green saying that something you can do is to simply help trans people feel safe… That really struck a chord with me. If even people like me who do struggle with their gender and sexuality don’t say that they do, how would anybody else know? What chance do we have of finding each other? What choice is there but to feel different and alone, even if you actually aren’t?

And in my case especially, it is very, very easy to assume I am cis and straight, even though I’m not. I’m very obviously female (thanks, big boobs), and I’m married to my husband — so that makes us a straight couple, man and wife. Luckily, my sexuality was much easier (relatively) to come to terms with for me, and I have been proud to say that I am bi the few times it does come up, as I have known that about myself in that particular regard since I was 13. Even so, because it is so easy for everyone else to assume that, because I married a man, I therefore must be straight, it doesn’t come up that often.

(Even my husband sometimes forgets. We often joke around with each other about the things we say, deliberately taking innocuous things out of context and saying, “That’s racist!” or “That’s homophobic!” One time, we were joking about something — I can’t even remember what — and I teased him about something he had said by exclaiming in mock-indignation, “Hey! That’s homophobic!” His response? “Well, can you really be homophobic against someone who’s heterosexual?” And I’m just like “…”)

It’s easy to assume a woman who is married to a man is straight. It’s easy to assume everyone is cis by default, because most people are. But that shouldn’t be the default. It shouldn’t be the norm to think, “Well, I’m just going to assume everyone is cis unless they specifically say otherwise.” All that does is create the idea that everyone really is cis, because after all, not many people (dare to) say otherwise; which in turn stunts efforts to spread awareness as many people who might have identified as trans if they had had the resources to know more about it don’t have those resources in the first place. And sticking to that as the norm creates the expectation to conform. It creates the idea that people, even those who aren’t cis, need to be cis, or at least pretend to be; because that is the norm and such thinking inherently comes with pressure to adhere to it.

Assuming cis by default makes it that much harder for trans people to say anything to the contrary, because they don’t see very many people who have the same experiences they do and may not necessarily know if it is safe to talk about it. If everyone assumes that everyone else is cis unless they make a big fuss about it, trans people may very understandably not want to make a big fuss. Maybe they’ll feel, like I did, that the only thing they can do is quietly fade into the background; to try and hide, and try not to draw too much attention to themselves, or out themselves as anything other than “the norm”.

What we all need to do is be more welcoming and inclusive, right off the bat; not because we know for certain that there are LGBTQ+ individuals in our midst, but because we recognise the possibility that there could be. Because we, as a society, recognise that there are many different expressions of gender and sexuality, and all are legitimate and valid.

I don’t want to fade quietly into the background. I don’t want to not be seen, not even by other LGBTQ+ people — those who should be my fellows. That sounds incredibly egotistical, but what I really mean is that I don’t want other LGBTQ+ people to look out at the world and not see themselves reflected in it and think that they are alone; the way I did before the charity stream began.

You are not alone. We are here. We are queer. And we should be proud of it.

For me, Susie Green’s line about simply letting trans people know that they are safe around you resonated with me deeply. For me, it was a call to action. I couldn’t hide any longer, privately satisfied with my own answer that I guess I just won’t bother defining who I am. That approach didn’t sit right with me after that. I want to be known; not for my own sake, because I’m an asocial fuck who couldn’t care less what other people think of me. But hopefully to be recognised; for someone else to see themselves in me and think, “Hey, maybe that person could relate to me. Maybe they know a thing or two about gender dysphoria and would be willing to listen to me. Maybe that’s a person I could talk to.”

That was what motivated me to come out. But I’m writing about my decision to come out as if it was a very simple process. It wasn’t. I make it sound as if I was just getting on with my life; then I happened to see the charity stream; and that inspired me to come out, and so, I did. In reality, gender issues have been interwoven with my psyche my whole life. Videos and discussions on social justice, representation and important issues within marginalised communities are something I actively seek out. And even when I felt like I really wanted to come out — to show others that they would be safe with me, and that I would welcome them and refrain from judgment — there were still things getting in the way there, too. And it was difficult.

The first time I heard Susie Green’s story on the stream, about her and her daughter and how things could be made better for today’s youth, I cried a lot. I thought about it a lot. I watched nothing but Donkey Kong for days on end, and dreamt about it too: not necessarily about the game itself (but also about the game itself), but the people, and their voices and their thoughts and their stories. I was trying to make sense of it all. For over a whole month now — ever since my husband and I started watching the stream — my head has been filled with thoughts on gender. It has overtaken my entire life ever since, and that’s because I want to do more, be more — and even this first step of simply coming out of the closet myself has taken a lot of preparation. Far more than I thought it would, actually.

For over a month, I have lived, breathed and dreamed gender non-stop. And thinking non-stop about such emotionally heavy, difficult issues does take its toll; especially when you include the multiple conversations I had about coming out with multiple people, multiple times.

But those difficulties I experienced with coming out weren’t what was getting in the way of coming out. The real difficulty there was giving myself permission to be anything but “woman” in the first place.

Remember feminism? Remember that feeling I had that, if I were truly a feminist, I would be proud to be a woman — not actively wishing womanhood away. I had unlearnt and relearnt a great many things about what it truly meant to be a woman; and ultimately, what it meant was to be human, just the same way as men were human. But even so, I did not know where matters of discrimination based on sex ended, and matters of individuality began. When it came to how I felt about myself, how much of it was to do with my sex? How much of that, in turn, was due to sexism? How exactly did I feel about myself, on the individual level, if, hypothetically, sex and sexism had (and had had) no part to play in it?

I didn’t exactly know.

Fortunately, my subconscious had the answer, even when my conscious mind did not. Some of the dreams I had about the Donkey Kong stream were mindless, repetitive, and nonsensical; just as the Donkey Kong 64 game itself is mindless, repetitive, and nonsensical. I dreamt only of hbomberguy getting endlessly stuck on puzzles and wandering around in circles — not so different from the real stream, then(!) When he cleared one level, he was faced with another, and another, and another; the game stretching endlessly on, in the way that dreams do. But the final dream I had about the stream was far more emotionally significant.

In that dream, I dreamt not about the game, but the stream itself. I dreamt about the chat, and the Discord channel for other YouTubers and allies that had been set up there. In my dream, for whatever reason, I had been accepted to join the mic call. I was able to talk directly to Harry himself and the guest stars; I was able to be a part of the stream as it went out live over the internet. I was able to talk to them all first-hand. I wept at the opportunity, and I thanked them all so much for doing this; I wanted them to know how much it meant, for them to be so open and so brave and for standing up for what was right. I told them how wonderful it was to hear them talk about their own experiences and their identities, because I was still struggling with mine. I told them about my dysphoria and my disillusionment with being “a woman”; but how I lacked the certainty and the conviction to do anything about it. I also told them about the guilt I felt as a feminist; that pursuing an identity as anything other than “woman” felt like it would be very un-feminist of me.

At that, I could very clearly imagine Harry’s face and hear his voice as he gave a bewildered, “What?!” And, to be honest, it’s probably the same reaction I would have had as well, if someone else had told me the same thing. And that’s because, as Dream Harry went on to say, that’s not what feminism is about. Feminism is not about forcing yourself to be a certain way, or about trying to be what you think someone else wants you to be regardless of the personal cost to yourself — so much so that you end up disempowering yourself in the process. Feminism, rather, is about empowerment. It’s about giving a voice to the marginalised and, in the case of trans rights and gay rights, telling them that who they are is real, and that they are worthy, too.

The stream itself is proof of that. It’s an example of the community coming together to support trans rights and recognising that transgender identities are valid identities too. No-one should be forced into a box that does not fit them, but allowed to define themselves for themselves. That included me, too.

And it was weird when I imagined the YouTubers telling me this in the dream, because it made me think about how I would respond if it was somebody else telling me they were trans. And if someone else came to me saying they were trans, I would accept them straight away, exactly as they were. I’d encourage them to be true to themselves and do what feels right for them, whatever form that may take. My own personal beliefs are that trans women are real women; trans men are real men; non-binary people are real people (even though I didn’t know that non-binary identities even existed until recently); and that feminism is about raising everyone up and empowering them, and accepting and embracing everyone as they really are. I would never tell anyone else they were being un-feminist just for being themselves; indeed, I would fight for their right to be themselves. I would regard them with unconditional love, and respect what they were telling me about themselves; accepting it as true without question. I would never tell them that their identity was wrong.

But it took hbomberguy telling me the same thing in a dream for me to actually apply those principles to myself, too.

Until experiencing the stream and hearing the personal accounts of other trans people first-hand, I had still been tied down into thinking that being for women’s rights meant that I was locked into being a woman myself; or that I was doing some kind of disservice to the cause if I were to acknowledge myself as anything else. But, for everyone to be free to be themselves and to be accepted without hate and without prejudice is the cause.

That was a conclusion that maybe I should have been able to come to on my own; but either I couldn’t, or just didn’t. It took hearing all of the wonderful people participating in the Donkey Kong stream talking about their experiences for me to realise that, maybe I was okay the way I was, too.

Discovering feminism and learning that I could be exactly the way I was and still be a woman had been an important step for me. But it was not the end of my journey. I had to go a step beyond that. Knowing that I could identify as a woman, with no degradation to myself, was one thing; but learning that I could also not identify as a woman if I so chose was also an important milestone. There are more options in life than the arbitrary one we get assigned to us at birth; and for me, being so uncomfortable with mine, I saw no reason to try and force it upon myself any longer.

I hadn’t been at all sure at first where the line was between respecting women and recognising that I myself was not a woman. But now, with the help of feminism, the Nightmare Stream and the dream that it inspired, all the amazing people who participated, and even just the knowledge that an amazing charity like Mermaids even exists and is doing great work in the world… I think I’ve disentangled myself and disavowed myself from enough sexist notions that I know that it’s not that I don’t believe in being a woman. It’s that I do believe in being an individual. And as an individual, speaking on the personal level, not only do I not follow the stereotypes and/or the mandated patterns of behaviour prescribed for my sex; I don’t want to, either. There is still something to be said for how maybe those stereotypes ought not to exist in the first place, and maybe then I wouldn’t mind so much what my sex was or what my gender was. But they do, and so I do, and I know the path that has been laid out for me is not the one I want to walk down.

And I also know that, if I hadn’t’ve been motivated to come out now, even after hearing all those brave and courageous voices; even after hearing all those incredible stories of personal tragedy, triumph, and strength; even after experiencing something which, even though I was only an onlooker, nevertheless felt made me feel like there was a space for me after all, and made me feel like I was home… then I was probably never going to come out. Ever. If even that experience, which moved me so much, could not bring me to accept myself, then it would probably have never happened.

What Mermaids and the Donkey Kong Nightmare Stream gave me was something invaluable: they gave me permission to give myself permission to be who I was all along. It taught me that I was allowed to be who I was; and that who I was was okay. That’s why the work Mermaids does is so valuable: so that no child has to go through this all alone, navigating complex topics without the words to properly explain it. Mermaids gives love and support and important information and resources, so that each child can come to terms with themselves and accept themselves the way they are. And that’s much more preferable than being a grown-ass adult trying to get your shit together when you have no clue what you’re doing; scrambling to put the broken pieces back together when really, you were never broken at all.

So, that leads me to writing this declaration:

I know what it’s like to feel uncomfortable with the gender norms thrust upon you because of your sex.

I know what it’s like when your internal experiences of yourself are incongruent with said norms and other external expectations.

I know what it’s like to feel like you are wrong just for being yourself, and like an outsider in your own skin.

I know what it’s like when you are forced to acknowledge your assigned gender and a piece of you dies because that’s not who you are, and it starts to feel like you never can be who you really are as long as the world keeps reminding you otherwise.

I know what it’s like when even simple things, such as which box to tick on a form, can be a deeply divisive topic rife with internal conflict and strife. And I know and I loathe how, in my case, I have to opt for “woman” anyway, on account of my being female and there being no better option.

And I also know how I have struggled to come up with a satisfying answer about what a better option would have been, though I have found my answer now. (Although, going back to speaking more generally, simply including the simple and unassuming option “other” would be a start!)

I don’t know what the fuck I am. But I know I’m not a cis woman.

Thankfully, there’s a catch-all term for that, and that’s genderqueer. That’s why I wanted to write this post: to come to terms with myself as my new identity, and re-introduce myself as genderqueer.

And actually, the above line about not knowing what I am is no longer true, and that’s because I can get more specific than that now. Unlike when I first started writing this, I can now say that I do know what I am. Three weeks down the line, I can now say that recognising myself as genderqueer was the start of something beautiful. Through the process of writing this post — and having many, many private conversations and coming out many, many different times to many different people — I have been learning more and more about genderqueerness all the time; and, in doing so, myself.

Through those conversations and through watching and listening to the YouTube channels of other trans and non-binary individuals, I’m becoming more and more sure of myself. I’ve realised that I am very happy to identify as non-binary; and that non-binary suits me and my own situation very well. So now, it’s not that I don’t know what I am other than “not cis” and am relying on a catch-all umbrella term to cover me anyway; it’s that I know myself to be non-binary. It’s a far more accurate of a term for how I feel myself to be than “woman” ever was.

So, while I may at first have picked up the genderqueer umbrella due solely to its all-encompassing nature, only knowing at that time that I was “not cis”, it has nevertheless led to a journey of self-discovery where I’ve realised that, hey, I actually really fucking love this umbrella. And it’s a much more comfortable umbrella for me to fit under than the “woman” umbrella had been for me. It’s so much roomier under here!!

So anyway, that’s what I wanted to say. I am bi; I am genderqueer/gender non-binary; and I am still questioning. I am B and T and Q; and LGBTQ+ folks, you are safe with me.

fin

P.S. Thank you, everyone who read it this far. Thank you for tolerating my self-indulgent trite as I waffle on about my own life when, all things considered, I have enjoyed an immense amount of “comfort” — or rather, the avoidance of misfortune — because of being able to pass. I have enjoyed a lot of love and support from the people closest to me and the ones I love the most, and that is why sitting down and definitively defining my gender — when really, it is something so personal to the individual — didn’t seem to make much difference to me as an individual before now. But it might just make all the difference to someone. I’m planning on expanding my thoughts on this (namely, gender identities vs individual identities) in a future piece of writing.

That said, if you are a LGBTQ+ person reading this (or someone who is unsure, or questioning) and you are not currently out, then despite my encouragement to make ourselves seen and our voices heard, please, please, please don’t come out if you feel it is not safe for you to do so. I am only coming out now myself because it is safe for me to do so; it was just inconvenient for me before, and that’s why I didn’t do it until now. Your safety and your well-being is the number one priority, so please, do not do anything you feel uncomfortable with or which you feel might put you at risk.

P.P.S. To serve as something of a glossary: “Genderqueer” is just an umbrella term meaning “not exclusively masculine or feminine”; which falls within the umbrella term “transgender” meaning “anyone whose gender is different from that of their assigned sex”; which itself falls within the umbrella term “queer” meaning “anyone who is not exclusively heterosexual and cisgender”. There are several layers deep to this, and getting further down is just a matter of specificity.

For example, someone who is gender non-binary is genderqueer, who is trans, who is queer. Someone who is a “trans woman” or a “trans man” (as opposed to “trans” on its own) is someone who identifies as the binary identity woman or man, but were born male or female respectively. Thus, trans women and trans men obviously come under the umbrella of “trans”, but are not “genderqueer”, though they are “queer”. The Q in LGBTQ+ can thus be seen as a kind of tautology, because all LGBT individuals are by definition not heterosexual and/or cisgender, and therefore are all queer. But while all LGBT individuals are queer, not all Q+ individuals are LGBT, as they might identify as something else entirely not covered by its own letter. The Q can also stand for “questioning”. In this way, the Q catches all individuals who are unsure of where they fit in but who do not identify specifically as LGBT, and the + denotes the inclusion of all communities and identities not covered by their own letter (of which intersex, pansexual and aromantic/asexual, to name only a few, are examples).

The website OK2BME has a great page on this. Link here: https://ok2bme.ca/resources/kids-teens/what-does-lgbtq-mean/

P.P.P.S. Interested in supporting trans rights yourself? To once again paraphrase Susie Green, Mermaids CEO, a good way to support trans rights is to support trans people themselves. Look up your local trans charities, donate or volunteer if you can, call out casual transphobia when you see it, and just generally be a friend. A number of trans individuals have crowdfunding campaigns active to try and help them cover the cost of transitioning, so that is an option as well.

YouTuber and Twitter user Mama Math (link here: https://twitter.com/hellomamamath) made a spreadsheet with links to some of the guests on the Donkey Kong Nightmare Stream who consented to be listed with the details of their websites or where to follow them. The spreadsheet also includes whether or not that person is trans. If you are interested in learning more about trans rights and what it means to be trans, simply listening to the stories of those who are trans and supporting the content they make is a great place to start. Link to the spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sdavyrGPnsrNdTxWBILoulCKxvIvzMkMaJoXPjNQcOI/edit#gid=0

If you are interested in watching the Donkey Kong Nightmare Steam yourself, here are the links to the parts:

Part 1: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/365966431

Part 2: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/366901309

Part 3: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/367450055

Part 4: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/369226467

P.P.P.P.S. (Okay, this is getting ridiculous now. This is the last post script, I swear!) In case you’re wondering, as I haven’t actually addressed it at all above, my preferred pronouns are “they/them”, as I consider “they/them” the most neutral and free of assumption. While I am not agender, I nevertheless prefer gender-neutral nouns and pronouns. I consider my own gender to be more fluid, and sometimes, “she/her” or “he/him” will feel right to me; but sometimes, they won’t. For example, if someone refers to me as “he/him” online, I won’t feel compelled to correct them and actually enjoy being referred to as such. I do not have the same euphoric reaction to “she/her”, though I understand that many people will fall into old habits and believe that it is the more “correct” term to use, even though actually it’s my least favoured out of the three. My point is that, sometimes, using “she/her” or “he/him” to refer to me may be acceptable; but using “they/them” is preferable and will always be applicable, so that is what I ask for you to use.

However, I do still have a feminine side to me, and as such, I will still relate with some feminine terminologies; but I am not “a woman”, nor do I relate exclusively to women. In this specific instance, I do ask for you to avoid calling me “a woman” and refer to me as “a person” instead.

I’m considered as something of the “mum” within the online gaming group, with others teasingly and lovingly calling me “mother”, and I love that. A very important person to me calls me “sis” or “sissy”, short for “sister”, and I wouldn’t want to change that, either. To my husband, I am still his “wife”. (I recently discovered I have a major aversion to “princess”, though, so that one’s definitely out…)

I am not truly gender-neutral, which is why I do not identify as agender; but rather, I encompass both masculine and feminine traits, and therefore I will adopt both feminine and masculine terms where they seem applicable. Some days I’ll feel more in touch with my feminine side, and some days I’ll feel more in touch with my masculine side. That doesn’t necessarily mean I want to reject all gendered terms completely, and certainly not all of the time. But I do want to introduce some gender-neutral ones into the mix, so that gender-neutrality is recognised as an option. Again, I am stating a preference, with my preference being for the gender-neutral.

As for my preferred name… well, I go by my online handle “Evani” within most game-related things, and I’m perfectly happy with that. In my mind, I know that the name “Evani” is short for “Evan-Evani”: an original character of mine who has both male and female selves (better known as the Animus and the Anima, à la Jungian psychology). Those selves are named Evan and Evani respectively, and thus they are collectively referred to as both names, even when they present as one whole and not as the two halves. I’m comfortable with my online name and don’t feel the need to change things there.

My “real” name, however… After a lot of thinking about it and batting around about a million different names and variations, I finally settled on one I was happy with: “Ievan”. (Pronounced just the same as “Evan”.)

I had been looking at all kinds of different names; starting with those which were variations on my birth name, to names which looked similar or shared the same letters, to ones which had the same semantic meaning. I couldn’t find any I liked, until a friend asked me what it was that spoke to my soul. At that point, I realised I had been trying to find a name “in keeping” with my birth name, “Stacey”; not for myself but to make the perceived adjustment easier on others around me.

But to be honest, I had never, ever liked the name “Stacey”; and changing how I spelled it to “Stacie” may have made it more tolerable, but even then, I still did not like it. I had been trying to find a new name I liked, based on an old one I didn’t. No wonder I had been having such difficulty!

Recognising that, it made no sense to base my new name for my new identity on my old one. The point of coming out as non-binary was to feel more comfortable with myself and my own identity; and adhering to my past name ran counter to that.

So, with my friend to bounce ideas off of, I took the search away from “Stacey” — the name I had never liked — and back to “Evani” — the name I had already adopted for myself some years prior and had used for myself ever since, albeit only in online settings.

I choose “Ievan” instead of “Evan”, which is perhaps the more obvious choice, because it’s an anagram of “Evani”. It also meant that, by slightly changing my online name from “Evani” to “Ievani”, I could create an amalgamation of both names. “Ievani” included both the names “Ievan” and “Evani” within it, symbolising the dual nature of the masculine and the feminine and the great deal of overlap between the two; just as I experience an overlap and a merging of the masculine and the feminine within myself. I appreciated the symbolism, as well as the fact that “Ievani” captured the same meaning to it as “Evan-Evani” did; only much more elegantly, representing “Ievan-Evani” but with much fewer letters. Having taken to “Ievani” as I did, my choice of name for “Ievan”, as opposed to “Evan”, became an easy one to make.

Plus, by spelling the name as “Ievan” with the extra “i” and not as “Evan” (even though they are both pronounced the same) meant I could have the best of both worlds: I could have a name which sounded masculine, but looked feminine. It was a blend of both, and gave me a lot of versatility and adaptability to play around with as well, owing to the fact that you can draw a lot of different nicknames and short-forms out of it. Some examples: Ieva, Eva, Ev, Evi, Evie, Eve, Iev, Ieve…Now I can basically be called whatever I feel like being called, and friends and those around me can pick out their own personally-preferred nickname for me! It grants a lot of freedom and customisation, which I love. Now, when people call me by my name, I smile instead of cringe.

(As a side-note: yes, this does make me “Ievan Evans”, and you are right, it is repetitive! But I love the peculiarity. It’s been a running gag of mine to have characters in my stories whose surname is a repeat of their first name; the first one being “Evan Evans” — the aforementioned Animus — and another one called “Luca Lucas”, though the latter is technically an assumed identity deliberately made to parallel “Evan Evans”. Now I can be a part of the joke myself, too!)

Realistically speaking, I don’t expect everyone to switch over to “Ievan” straight away. Not everyone is going to read this post, and I’m not going to choose to tell everyone who doesn’t. It’s fairly common within the queer community to not come out to everyone, and not all at once. So I accept that, to certain people, I will still be “Stacie”. And that is fine. As long as I am happy with my own identity and the way I live my own life, I can make my peace with it if I will still be “Stacie” to them.

So, if you still want to call me “Stacie”, that’s fine. I won’t fight you over it. I just might not be fine with it; but even then, it’s fine.

In regards to my writing and my self-published works: my past works were published under the name “Stacie Evans” and, in that particular regard, I think I will keep it that way going forward as well. “Stacie Evans” can be my pseudonym as an author! (Which is ironic, because usually it’s the pen name that’s supposed to be the fictitious one…) While I could legally change my name, it would be a hassle; and right now, I’m happy just adopting it for myself and testing it out.

In short, I’ll be using: Ievan for real life (including Facebook, which is more personal); Evani for games; Ievani for other social media (which I consider a mix of both); and Stacie Evans for works of poetry or fiction, as well as with those who are uncomfortable calling me Ievan.

Feeling confused? Don’t worry. You can always ask to make sure! (Which is a good idea in general, about anything; and you can apply it with pronouns, too! I personally love it when people ask my pronouns, as it confers a sense of understanding, compassion and respect.) All questions are welcome, because I believe there is no such thing as a stupid question. All questions are a chance to learn more. (But please, keep it considerate.)

Useful resources:

(not an exhaustive list; these are the things I have come across and have found helpful myself, so I am sharing them here too)

Mermaids, a UK-based charity providing support for transgender children/ young adults and their families, as well as crisis hotlines, online forums and interventions: https://www.mermaidsuk.org.uk/

The January Donkey Kong Nightmare Stream to raise money for Memaids:

Part 1: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/365966431

Part 2: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/366901309

Part 3: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/367450055

Part 4: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/369226467

Spreadsheet of the participants in the Donkey Kong Nightmare Steam, with links to their Twitter and YouTube accounts: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sdavyrGPnsrNdTxWBILoulCKxvIvzMkMaJoXPjNQcOI/edit#gid=0

Let’s Queer Things Up!, a blog about all things queer: https://letsqueerthingsup.com/

More from LQTU! content creator: https://samdylanfinch.contently.com/

Specific article linked to on the above about what it means to be genderqueer: https://www.healthline.com/health/transgender/genderqueer

Specific article linked to on the above about what it means to be gender non-binary: https://www.healthline.com/health/transgender/nonbinary

Genderqueer Me, a website with featured voices from transgender individuals and their families, as well as online talks about trans issues and information regarding transition: https://genderqueer.me/

OK2BME, supportive services for the LGBTQ+ community: https://ok2bme.ca/

Private YouTube playlist I made of videos I have watched, discussing transgender and non-binary experiences and identities, which are of personal relevance to me in some way or which discuss things which are particularly useful or important when it comes to developing an understanding of the transgender spectrum (also not an exhaustive list; I plan to keep adding videos as I find them): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTv7NUhc6gDOr1AW13CmlZujWAEo2Msyh

#genderqueer #nonbinary #coming out #queer #queers on tumblr

0 notes