#but 'AFAB people who are men. are actually men. not just Women In Disguise- no not even always in the 19th century'

[lordiavolo22]

just an fyi though, even though i talk about my disdain for ***********cishet********** men, this is not a t*rf or r*dfem safe space or blog. i am trans. cishet men is not codeword for trans women (because theyre women), i say cishet men to make it abundantly clear that i mean cishet men, specifically white cishet men!

[marzipanandminutiae]

also. I don't know.

I have thoughts on "people writing darkfic don't care about perpetuating bigotry" as someone who has not only written but also read fic in my main fandom where a character who murdered several people and fucked her brother has the "I am a woman disguised as a man for the purposes of this story but there are AFAB people who are men actually for real" throwaway conversation with a character she drugged, psychologically tortured, and tried to murder. and in some stories (including mine) sexually assaulted

like. turns out writing transgressive fiction doesn't mean you're indifferent to the danger of failing to carefully handle harmful stereotypes. who knew?

no but how much audacity and sheer entitlement do you have to have to tell people they need to stop posting their darkfic and porn fic and any other fic you don’t like to ao3 so you can have a safe space when ao3 was literally created as a safe space for writers to post their content without fear of it being randomly wiped out by pro-censorship assholes with an agenda like what has happened to plenty of other fic archives before?

“but a lot of us see ao3 as a safe space to get away from that kind of nasty content” - lol you can see the middle of a busy interstate as a safe space all you want too but that doesn’t mean that you get to walk into the road and scream at all the cars going by that they’re the ones infringing on your safe space either

ao3 is not, has never been, and will never be a site meant for nothing but children’s stories. you can “see it” like that as much as you want but there’s a difference between fiction and reality and that view of what ao3 is like is as fictional as the stories posted on it.

[marxism-transgenderism]

Like my big problem with the whole "NO CIS MEN" specific policy that's so socially enforced in queer spaces (not like you putting that under your nudes or whatever the fuck, but the specific fear and ostracization of cis men as threats in trans groups online and irl) is that that policy is necessarily and unavoidably going to target trans women.

Its going to target questioning and closeted girls who are looking for a space to crack their egg. It's going to target out and proud transfems and amab nb people who are looked at with suspicion as just "faking it" to get access to "resources" or in order to take advantage of and assault the "real queer people" who are always necessarily assumed to be afab, petite, and only ever capable of being victims instead of perpetrators of abuse. And it covers up and hides the actual abuse that takes place in these places because abusers in these spaces are going to be inherently looked at as innocent because they are not cis men.

You can bring along your cis girlfriend to the trans support group but if anyone dares to bring their cis boyfriend then they're ignoring others boundaries and endangering the group. This group is for "women and femmes" but if that femme has a penis or facial hair then their really just a rapist in disguise. Damn has anyone noticed that everyone here only knows about what testosterone does to your body but no one in the room can define what "anti-androgen" means.

I've seen this play out time and time again in my damn near decade of experience in this community, on and offline. And it's especially painful whenever I see another trans woman talking about how all cis men need to be kept away for everyone's safety because it just feels so "fuck you got mine." I was able to do the right make up and voice training and get on hormones early enough that I'm only viewed with a little bit of suspicion. But this is overwhelmingly enforced by afab trans and nonbinary people who think they're feminists cause they get mad when a man says "bitch" but will absolutely never question why they view people with vaginas as inherently safe and people with penises as inherently dangerous. I'm sick of it

[autolenaphilia]

God I think I actually prefer explicit fascist transmisogyny in comparison to the disguised dogwhistly liberal transmisogyny.

Like the people who openly call me an autogynephile and other various slurs and tell me to kill myself are at least being honest. They don't bullshit me about hating my very existence and wanting me to die.

It's all the faux-loving forms of transmisogyny that really make me angry. Like it makes my skin crawl in its dishonesty and hypocrisy. And it takes so many forms. Like the transmisogynist christian "hate the sin, not the sinner" approach where they claim to love me and just want me to accept Jesus in my heart. The necessary condition for accepting their version of Jesus however is me detransitioning, and that would kill me.

There is the terfy "people with gender dysphoria are suffering and they need help but we can't endanger women's sex-based rights for them." i've even seen in arguments about legal gender changes the following: "of course trans women deserve to use women's spaces, but if we allow legal gender self-id evil cis men will take advantage of that. So trans women will have to have their rights restricted." Even J.K. Rowling used it in her terf manifesto.

It makes one yearn for the days of the ur-terf book "The Transsexual Empire" which had the "shemale" slur in its subtitle and in which the author Janice Raymond argued trans women rape real women by the fact of their very existence. That kind of brazen transmisogyny at least had some kind of honesty about it.

There is also the transmisogynist callout culture fandom, or as the japanese fittingly call them: the american feelings yakuza. They callout transfems for problematic kinks like at least once a week but deny transmisogyny. "oh we don't believe all transfems are evil predatory sex perverts, it's just that this particular transfem is."

Their evidence for her being sexual predatory is that she ships two fictional siblings. Or in meatspace meetings, things like her having "bad vibes" ("bad vibes" or "gut instinct" are polite words for what more sensible people call "ingrained bias") .

And they suspiciously keep on making callouts for transfem after transfem in a neverending series, trying to ruin her reputation and socially exile her, but of course they are not transmsiogynists.

There is also the sofboi transandrobro type of transmisogyny. They spread the vilest transmisogyny but always falls back on a terfy bioessentialism to claim ontological innocence and perpetual victimhood in all situations. I've literally seen someone say "how can i be a misogynist, i'm literally afab." These people will not say directly "shut up about your oppression, stupid tranny", but say it in coded form. I had one guy traumadump to me about his rape in vivid detail to make the point that (trans)men suffer more and imply that transfems don't suffer from sexual violence.

And that's the crux of the issue. Open hate barely fazes me anymore, unless there is an immediate threat of physical violence. But being condescended to, being emotionally manipulated, being faced with people veiling their hatred of transfems behind a veil of superficially loving rhetoric, that does make me angry. And these people always use my anger against me. "Why are you so angry when these people are being so polite and nice to you?" And that's because the point of these rhetorical approaches is to have plausible deniability for your bigotry and make transfems look crazy when they point it out.

Yet it's the same bigotry as the explicit version, it's just more dishonest about it. Like if had the They Live glasses and looked at the rhetoric, it would just read "exterminate all transfems." All those polite liberals believe the same thing about transfems as the neo-nazis openly calling for us to be hanged, they just lack the virtue of being honest about it.

[self-loving-vampire]

Something ironic about the recent trans discourse is that maybe as a result of figuring out I was trans extremely early I always related more to the AFAB trans women who sometimes show up in fiction than to the standard narrative of trans womanhood that part of tumblr seems to prefer.

Like, I didn't grow up as a flamboyant and bullied theater kid with stereotypical egg behavior who then gets cracked. I grew up with "Okay so I know I would be happier if I modified my body but I can already tell that the people around me would never accept that and can't be trusted with the truth so let's pretend to be a boy for now."

And that's what I did. I was good at it too since my interests were not very "feminine" in the first place. No one knew my real self or what I actually wanted for myself (in part because I was depressed enough about the whole situation that I just didn't quite feel like living at the time).

The types of characters who knew they're not men from the start but are forced to play the role and wear the disguise because of the biases of those around them just resonate with me more, especially if there's a hyper-sexist and abusive father trying to force it on them.

[boreal-sea]

It's reductive to categorise groups of people into "afab" because of how they were born, trans women experience a specific misogyny that's both transphobic and misogynistic, they share a lot of experiences as much as cis women and to insist that biological genitalia is what makes "sex oppression" happen is not only transphobic but proves we as a society, fail to recognise the harm trans women go through, afab and amab are terms that need abolishing, it's doing more harm than good. A trans woman will go through more misogyny than a trans man. That's just facts.

A trans woman will relate to a cis woman more than a cis woman would relate to a trans man, to insist otherwise gives terfs ammo to insist that we're "not biologically women" (afabs) and makes it so there's a language to discriminate, "afab only" spaces, it's bigotry disguised. Trans women ARE biological women, anyone who says otherwise is wrong.

- trans woman from previous anon

It's not reductive to talk about the reality people who are assigned female at birth have to live with every single day.

I am not insisting that genitalia is what "makes sex based oppression happen". That's ridiculous. Misogynists don't hate people who were born with vaginas BECAUSE we have/had vaginas. They hate us because hundreds of years of cultural patriarchy DECIDED people born with vaginas were lesser people. The vagina doesn't cause the sexism, it's just (one of the many ways) society identifies who to hate.

Genitals are a visual marker our society uses to categorize people at birth, and ignoring that this happens is ridiculous.

I actually said in my first response that trans women are very much included in the abuses slung at people assigned female at birth, so I'm not excluding trans women from anti-female sexism. Trans women are very much victims of it!

Yes, I agree, trans women are the targets of a unique form of oppression that comes from an intersection of sexism/misogyny and transphobia. That is 100% true! Transmisogyny is very real!

Sexism is based on hating people assigned female at birth, people assumed to be female, femininity, and things culturally associated with femaleness. And that includes trans women.

Sexism unfolds like a rotting flower from that core. Many people become victims of it.

"A trans woman will go through more misogyny than a trans man".

How can you know? Really? EVERY trans woman? EVERY trans man? Because I fucking guarantee this statement is not universal. There are trans women who have faced less misogyny than me. I didn't start transitioning until I was in my late 30's. I experienced misogyny that whole time. Are you gonna claim I didn't?

And are you so fucking delusional you think that the instant a trans man comes out, he STOPS experiencing misogyny!? NEWSFLASH: that's not what fucking happens. We don't instantly become cis men with all the societal benefits. Many of us never pass. We don't get to stop experiencing misogyny. Fuck off.

Why are you insisting on binaries that opposite each other? Why are you trying to throw trans men under the fucking bus when we're your fucking allies in this shit?

[caestoexist]

(excerpt from my film + lit analysis class essay on afab gender nonconformity in film specifically about she's the man 2006 and tomboy 2011)

"She’s The Man is a romantic comedy designed for an adolescent audience, and therefore starts with a high energy montage of the main character, Viola, playing soccer on the beach. It is overlaid with bright, colorful graphics showing the title credits, and set to the song “No Sleep Tonight” by The Faders. Viola, while not stereotypically feminine, is clearly a girl. She is shown to like sports, and is uncomfortable in dresses, but also wears a bikini top and short jean shorts in the opening montage, and has long hair. She only comes to the decision to present as a boy in order to impersonate her brother, Sebastian, so she can play on the boys soccer team, after the girls team is cut.

At the end of the film, she reveals herself to be female, wins the game, and goes back to living as a girl. In fact, the second to last scene shows her onstage, in a dress and makeup, making out with Duke, a fellow soccer player and her former roommate, who first met her as Sebastian.

She’s The Man has something I call ‘The Mulan Effect,’ where a film represents a character pretending to be the opposite gender without actually tackling transgender topics. In these types of films, the character has external motivation, usually hiding from, or impersonating someone, or trying to gain access to something. A key feature of films that demonstrate ‘The Mulan Effect’ is the crossdressing character returning to their original gender presentation after achieving their goal."

i think it's an interesting phenomenon because on the surface a film with the mulan effect seems to be trans or trans adjacent in nature, but when you think harder about it, it's usually not as related as it would seem. of course it's somewhat related just due to the feature of a character acting and dressing as the opposite sex, and often has loosely feminist undertones (woman just as good at fighting war as man!! gender win!) but it's about a mostly gender conforming, usually straight character (in fact, if the character isn't straight, it kinda falls into a different category than the mulan effect imo) simply putting on a disguise.

it doesn't touch on actual gender nonconformity or transgenderism beyond very superficial features of it, such as being considered strange, ugly, or wimpy by those around you. its much safer than a film actually about trans or gender nonconforming topics, because it can almost fully avoid homosexuality or transgenderism other than a sort of parody/joke on those things (this straight woman falls in love with a boy, but he's secretly a girl! must be awkward for her!). it's kinda like the bury your gays trope in that it depicts the undepictable but in a way that doesn't justify being gay or trans.

it's also like the bury your gays trope becsuse people will still identify with it when that's the only representation they're given. like if all the gay stuff you can read ends with the characters dead, you're still gonna read it just for the gay shit. if the media showing gender nonconformity and transness only shows it as either temporary (the mulan effect, the trope of a tomboy growing out of it as they get older, usually influenced by meeting a man they're attracted to and realizing they're a Woman and gotta Act Like It) or evil (all the trans serial killers, who are mostly trans women, sometimes trans men who are gangsters, mob bosses, or criminals) you're still gonna identify with the characters just because you don't have anything else showing someone who does what you do.

in a lot of media trans women are represented as evil and perverted and trans men are often not represented, or represented as a temporary issue, something done as a result of external pressures, or something that you grow out of. trans women are often ugly, strange, aggressive adults and trans men are children, also perceived as ugly and strange but overall more sympathetic. i think it's interesting and wonder how much this broad societal representation affects the way we perceive those groups even without realizing it.

it's also interesting how the way we see women vs men plays into this, as trans women are "too manly" making them adult, large, aggressive, etc. trans men are sometimes also seen as too manly, because nobody takes them seriously as a boy to begin with, so they're judged as a girl. if they are seen as a boy, they're wimpy, small, childish, and more likely to have pity taken on them. trans women embody "man traits" like thinking for themselves and making decisions, like an adult, whereas trans men embody "woman traits" by just not even being taken seriously on the same level as trans women (who are more likely to be portrayed as actually trans women, as opposed to trans masculinity, often portrayed as confused or traumatized little girls) and also being shown more often as children. they are then able to be saved by a man, and only then are able to be happy as a woman. the transphobia is just the first layer of these types of bad rep, the deeper you dig the more it seems to be misogyny. like "trans women are men so they're powerful and aggressive by nature, trans men are women and therefore they don't know what the fuck is going on, even with themselves. they need a man to come set them straight, it's not their fault". it starts to seem really fucked when you think about it.

i'm saying this after having gone thru every pre-2012 representation of trans characters in television and film (according to wikipedia) and finding Some Patterns.

i don't really know what the conclusion of this post is, but basically. trans women and trans men are both affected by misogyny. misogyny is at the root of so many things. if you're against misogyny you should be against homophobia and transphobia too. period.

[caffeineandsociety]

The most insidious thing about intracommunity transphobia is how much it still relies on stereotypes of someone's AGAB - trans women and fems and other presumed-AMABs are scary, creepy, burgeoning, sex-obsessed perverts; trans men and mascs and other presumed-AFABs are frivolous, selfish, shallow airheads who just want attention and can't handle REAL problems and/or gross ugly creepy girlfailures who are lashing out and preying on other people because it's the only way to get control over their lives -

And very few people are willing to acknowledge this, because they will SAY "trans women are women, trans men are men, trans people are who they say they are" until they're blue in the face - or rather, until they come up with justifications for these stereotypes that fit into that framework.

It's not subtle misgendering and deep-seated queerphobia to immediately believe the worst of any trans girl who happens to like My Little Pony and Sailor Moon and exists in the general vicinity of teenagers; no, it's TOTALLY a one-off, pay no mind to the fact that the person in question has uncritically believed every single one of these claims that's crossed their social media feed. If anything, it's fighting the idea that women are all weak, powerless, delicate flowers who can never actually hurt anyone! Right?

It's not subtle misgendering and deep-seated queerphobia to write trans men and mascs' issues off as a lesser, "diet" transphobia that's never done anything worse than making people sad on the internet, that's not a persistent stereotype of women from both outside of AND within the queer community; it's just a means of trying to get men to stop talking over women, nor is it transphobia try to talk trans men and mascs out of transitioning because "testosterone is poison" - nor does that idea rebound back around to hurt pre- or non-HRT transfems for that matter - it's TOTALLY true that T will cause roid rage but ONLY in trans men and mascs for, uh, some reason. Absolutely none of this "sit down and shut up and let people insist you're just confused or be written off as a screeching predatory harpy who's an inherent danger to women and children" is a recycled lesbophobic stereotype, how dare the person calling out this behavior misgender trans men by implying as much!?

But of course, pointing this out is just "trying to have it both ways", trying to claim the authority presumed of a man AND the fragility presumed of a woman, right?

Just. Fuck. On the one hand, I need to reiterate, as I always do, that queer people are NOT the primary source of queerphobia - these root ideas aren't born within the queer community, and in fact despite the loud minority, ARE less common here than within cishet society, however much it may sometimes feel otherwise because we're basically each other's captive audience.

On the other hand, we have to look at what's happening here. When this happens as an intracommunity thing, it REALLY fucking sucks because 1) someone who will double down into infinity on any of these ideas does, indeed, have basically a captive audience that they're free to abuse, and 2) it's all predicated on the idea that the MOMENT you come out as queer, you're totally incapable of holding queerphobic ideas, or at the very least you can't REALLY HURT people with them. "What, you're really accusing me, a flaming faggot/a whole lesbian/an actual trans person, of being queerphobic?" says the guy who insists on sticking to the narrative that most gay trans men are obnoxious screeching yaoi fangirl chasers who just want to trick him into straight sex disguised with one degree of abstraction; or the girl who's constantly trying to get her trans girlfriend to quiet down and stop asserting herself, flinching in terror the moment she shows the slightest negative emotion, despite never having acted this way with her cis exes; or the person who immediately pivoted from seeing their nonbinary friend as totally fitting into their "women and nonbinary people" community to seeing them as a creepy predator trying to invade the space the moment they found out they had a deep voice and facial hair. While these are NOT things that all queer people do, they ARE things that most if not all queer people will be on the receiving end of at some point or another if they spend enough time in the community, and that's a problem! Especially since people who have a queer-positive- and feminist-sounding justification, and especially who think of themselves as incapable of doing this kind of harm, are sometimes even capable of justifying saying and doing shit that, coming from anyone else, would be blatantly obvious as a hate crime.

And once again, in conclusion, I must repeat, this is not an identity-linked issue, because guess what - assuming it is is part of the problem!

[curieklei]

hiii so english isn't my first language and i'm learning more about gender and trans stuff and if i might be trans or something (i've been told i sound agender?? but that feels wrong), and something that confuses me, so i'm asking around abt it… "woman" used to simply denote afab, right? like a body type of ppl with a biological (not surgical) vagina & estrogen puberty. like a female dog. ppl say that it reduces women to their genitals, but what about with other animals? like female cat, female horse, etc, just bc we say "oh she's a girl" or "oh i have a male dog" doesn't mean we're saying they're only their genitals in that case, right…? a bitch is just a female dog, that's why it's a misogynistic word. misogyny is based on how ppl see someone without a penis as lesser, bc they don't have the power to forcibly penetrate and feel genital pleasure for it, they can't impregnate, they're "just a hole" etc. like so much of misogyny is just body-specific. the misogyny transfems experience seems terrible but also conditional? bc if they're found out to be amab they're treated as creepy men, so they then stop experiencing misogyny, they just face usually homophobia. meanwhile bio women (and transmascs who don't transition) have no exit door to the misogyny unless they transition and pass perfectly as male or something, and historically that wasn't an option. to me man & woman have always been neutral body types until i came across trans stuff, and i think the idea of gendered brains sounds sexist af. like gender seems like bullshit, i see me being a woman as just like being a female cat, i don't have ~womanly~ vibes in my brain, i was just born female and that's the least important thing about me, but male society made it weird. why should gender continue to be a thing? what does gender actually mean, if sexism was to be eradicated? is it bad if i view my womanhood as just a body type? most cis people i've talked to view their "gender" like this, as just a body type, like any other animal. they don't "feel" like one, they just have the body and aren't dysphoric about it. they might not always like it, but they don't have dysphoria about it, so they just… are. is that transphobic? i've heard mixed thoughts about it from trans ppl & activists, i'm just curious. feel free to ignore this lol ;;

Edit: A person in the replies has informed me that those may be are terf talking points disguised as questions to avoid suspicion so take this anon with a grain of salt. I'm keeping this post just in case anon is genuinely curious or something.

From what I see, reducing the societal importance of biological sex is indeed what's slowly happening, but it's definitely not in the same stage everywhere. It takes years for a person to unlearn something they were told their whole life, it takes generations for biological sex to lose importance.

I'll go over your questions:

Why should gender continue to be a thing?

I think you meant biological sex here. It's important to keep a little bit of it for medical purposes. Also imo it's possible for a culture to give it importance without ending up with a system that makes people feel awful sometimes.

What does gender actually mean, if sexism is to be eradicated?

I guess it'll just be a trait of a person in a similar way skin color is a trait of someone's body but like, with way more dimensions. It's kinda hard to put rules around this. Maybe it's just an answer to the question "What am I?".

Is it bad I view my womanhood as just a body type?

Lol do what you want it's your womanhood, your body and your you. There's nothing bad here and you're free to decide for yourself.

Is [not feeling much gender about your body] transphobic?

Doesn't feel transphobic to me, but anyone reading this is free to give their own take on this and the rest of what you said.

Idk what else to say so thanks for the ask and have a safe self discovery journey! Feel free to dm me or send another ask if you want to talk or me to add something to this.

[genderisareligion]

Have you noticed that a big part of the unconditional support transactivism receives from women despite this movement being built on misogyny is because many MANY so called feminists don't want to actually acknowledge male supremacy? They eventually will criticize/oppose to one or another sexist event (like the abortion ban in USA) but as time goes on, they just forget it and even manage to despolitize them. Now, reproductive rights isn't an integral part of women’s rights anymore, it's ��queer/lgbtqia+ rights”, “bipoc with vaginas rights”, etc.

But nothing makes it more obvious than the fact that women(even black/indigenous women) easily accepted they're “cis” - implying they have privileges for their womanhood not being denied - which is laughable because how being “acknowledged” as women is a privilege when to be a woman - specially a woc - in a misogynistic world is oppressive? The acceptance of the infamous “cis” also implies that both men and women are equally oppressive towards trans people, thus the analysis of male violence lost space to the more malleable “gendered violence”. By place both “cis” men and women, any observations of male patterns of violence is discouraged because it's “transphobia” (but why it would be transphobia if trans women are women like “cis women” and are targeted by men most of the time? Hmmmm) and a vile MRA rhetoric start to take place in feminism disguised as a true compromise with “gender equality”: women can be as bad if not worse than men. Women aren't victimized by male supremacy, in reality it's men who are the biggest victims. In the name of “not infantilizing women” for JUST acknowledge that misogyny exists, people are infantilizing men and giving them a free pass on their mistreatment of women.

Many so called feminists also lack sex class consciousness and they internalized all the sexist shit we have been taught by our society. So they really act that trans women are the ones who bring humanity to women's status, this is why claims like “If you don't think trans women are women, it means you think women are inferior” what is the connection between a man thinking he is a woman because he identity as one (whatever that means) with women supposedly inferiority? Women literally carry the whole humanity! Our bodies are complexes and prepared to survival and they pull out this weak guilt tripping rhetoric and women eat this up, think the only way they can achieve humanity is through males? Pffff

Honestly, after reading The Creation of Patriarchy by Gerda Lerner(a must read to any feminist), this actual state of feminism became even more clear: men have stolen women's humanity, women's knowledge of our bodies, even the position of the creators of life, despite the fact that they can't get pregnant. The next step is stealing the womanhood itself and it isn't a random event, it's part of their colonization of females. Understanding how they operate helps us to fight back.

🙏🏽

“Cis” is the biggest pile of horse shit and my #1 source on this has always been and will always be my girl Audre Lorde. Who in the entirety of the book Sister Outsider goes to great lengths to emphasize: women can simultaneously have different lives/womanhoods (ex.black versus white womanhood, ie intersectionality) while working together against patriarchy. I think it’s funny/sad that today the white man’s “intersectionality” hates black women like me who reject gender roles and claims there is a sweeping “cis” womanhood privilege that’s so universal it automatically places all non trans “afabs” (nearly 50% of the goddamn globe) above trans “afabs” and “amabs” in status and life quality. Audre also goes to great lengths to support the statement “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” which I’ve always pretty plainly taken to mean that gender will never dismantle sexism.

You’re 💯 on these feminists who can’t deal with the reality of male supremacy. Gender framework is a sugar coat that makes things easier to cope with. I get it, sexism is pervasive and normalized as fuck and it’s scary to think about how angry a lot of men would probably get if things actually changed and they didn’t have access to female abuse as often as they do. But I’m personally also fed up with being scared and highly prefer just being pissed off back lol and trying to actively do something about changing it. They can be mad all they want, I’m not stopping until we get our humanity back fully even if it’s not within my lifetime and step #1 is naming the problem

[bullywug-n-mugwort]

.

idk why people just decide they get to invalidate someone else's identity when they are not the one with that identity and therefore don't know what they're talking about. just saw someone i otherwise respect reblog a post about how bisexual lesbian is an invalid term because each term has changed over time and claiming it's lesbophobic and biphobic to use the term [something something mutually exclusive experiences]. i usually call my orientation "queer" but i often use "bi lesbian" to make sense of my own experience. the tags of this post were full of people dunking on all imagined reasons someone may call themselves a bi lesbian, none of which reflect my own experiences and reasoning.

not that i should have to defend myself, but a lot of these comments were very fixated on the experiences of "liking only women" vs "liking both women and men." these categories obviously have social significance, but to me personally, romantically and sexually, these categories aren't super helpful. i cannot isolate traits of manhood or womanhood i find attractive. i'm into femme traits until i see a hot butch. i like certain chests, certain facial features, and any genitals. these traits don't map onto coherent binary genders very well. not to mention my attractions shift with my fluid gender. if i'm looking for a consistent pattern, i'm into gendernonconformity if anything. i guess i'm far more into women than i am men unless the man is a flamboyant twink but at the end of the day i'm not into either as much as i am a very specific weird collection of queer gender markers. (and pansexual had never seemed to fit the bill, because there are also many gender expressions and markers i am certainly unattracted to.)

does that really make me a biphobic bisexual? i wrestled with more shame at the idea that i was a lesbian, a stereotype threat for the bisexual community i love. the twink i married turned out not to be a man at all. i was struggling with worries about comphet for years because i loved them but our marriage didn't feel "right," and now that we're both practicing genderqueers it does. to me, that experience made bisexuality feel less like home than it had before. at the same time, finding like two men attractive excludes me from the lesbian community. is it such a sin to have found home in a term that made coherent my knot of comphet and dysphoria?

i realized, as many lesbians with comphet do, that i would probably never be happy in a relationship with a man, as in someone who self- identified as a man and embraced manhood. i also find astarion bg3 hot as fuck. i fail to see how these are mutually exclusive experiences.

can i guarantee that no biphobia or lesbophobia has wormed its way into my brain? of course not, but it is so strange that embracing both those terms brands you as someone who hates both. it's also strange to exclude people from terms on the basis of internalized shame. why care if some people call themselves bi lesbians? does it feel invalidating to you? that's your own work-- same as women who think afab nonbinary people are really just women who are ashamed of being a woman and therefore should continue living as "women". (ie it's not my job to choose an identity that you approve of or think is free of shame. you figure it out.) are you worried it invalidates us in the eyes of the heteros? i simply don't believe in policing our own terms to make cishets see us as more valid or understandable. it's disguised respectability politics, plain and simple.

all these terms for our identities are best fits and best guesses, grasping for connections under this big lovely queer umbrella. the person who reblogged that post is a nonbinary lesbian. why do the same people who accept the concept of a nonbinary lesbian-- a thing that should be impossible if the term "lesbian" has actually calcified as the post claims-- insist that "bisexual" and "lesbian" are concrete, immovable, and mutually exclusive identities? to be extremely clear, i support nonbinary lesbianism. it's valid. and it's a weird fucking line to draw, saying that the gender spectrum can support loosely-gendered lesbianism on the side of the beholder but not the recipients.

there was also a historical argument claiming that people are misinterpreting contexts in which bisexual lesbian was used circa early 20th century. and like... okay??? i found the term in a pdf zine from the 90's which interviewed self-identified bisexual lesbians, gleaning a bunch of different reasons for the label. some fell into the assumptions of the aforementioned post, eg bisexuals who were basically political lesbians. (i don't claim to support this stance, though i do still insist people can call themselves whatever they want.) many more summarized complicated stories like mine, people who did not fall neatly into either "mutually exclusive" category because, it turns out, gender is a fluid weird spectrum. bi lesbians whose attractions are bi and gender is lesbian. bi lesbians who were literally only into women except for one "man". bi lesbians who were trying to untangle comphet and so weren't sure which label, if either, fit. bi lesbians who liked to fuck any gender but only fell in love with "women". so anyway, fuck outta here with "history doesn't work like that" narrow target practice.

and even if that's true... again, words are evolving all the time. we've made words like sapphic and achillean to make some sense of gender. "lesbian" has on-off been used as a gender term for decades. we've invited nonbinary people into lesbianism and many understandings of gender into bisexuality. bi lesbian is another evolution of our language, and people have been shitty about it since at least the early days of DTWOF-- bechdel's characters struggled with all of the above since the 80's.

and what's the point of terms? to find community, self- identity, and sometimes practical utility, eg in the dating world. were i to date again (yikes), "bisexual" would not be a helpful self-descriptor for finding a romantic partner. lesbian would. if i wanted to hook up, bisexual would be more helpful than lesbian, and i'd have to root through lots of gender expressions anyway. so in terms of my self identity and finding communities of similar folk, "bi lesbian" is a super helpful term. if you are a bisexual or a lesbian and feel frustrated or confused by my term, that's because it doesn't apply to you. maybe just realize this isn't your thing and leave our community to explore our experiences. love you, see you later in the sapphic tags where we have things in common.

so anyway, i think it's pretty silly to see a term, imagine reasons you dislike for why someone may use it, and pitch a fit. my identity's legitimacy has no bearing on yours. leave us alone.

[csolarstorm]

I'm AFAB but genetically male (technically considered intersex), but after being raised female I decided I was a heterosexual male. And as long as I didn't express my maleness, things were fine. I came off as rather androgynous and had a lot of female mannerisms from my upbringing.

Then I had to take testosterone for my health. First of all, I didn't want to do this, but I literally had no growth hormone, so it was risking my life not doing this. Once it started making me more masculine, I saw this phenomenon.

My loved ones treated me differently. They knew I was the same person, but they expected me to be rude and crude, to break things randomly while holding them, they emphasized chivalry toward my female friends who didn't even expect it, and teased me whenever I "acted too much like a guy". I was treated like a low-key threat even though I'm in a wheelchair, and in fact I was actually physically picked on by my female ex.

The sad thing is I DO know that they have a reason to be uncomfortable around men. My parents have both been harassed and assaulted by men suffering toxic masculinity, and so was my ex. And I didn't acknowledge that back then. I was young and didn't have the perspective. I felt bitter that they treated me differently when I was in the in-group of females for so long, so I thought they would feel confident they knew me, or at least have the motivation to get to know and understand the person I was becoming. But that isn't the way it went down.

And for a long time it felt like Tumblr was constantly reminding me of this when they were really just fighting sexism and doing it in the way they knew how in the era at the time. Because both sidesing an issue can blur what's important, and when we're looking at the genders with a very general and heteronormative lens then women definitely have it worse than men.

But over time I feel like Tumblr has become more nuanced. Intersectionality has settled more into the discourse (compared to before) and now we're getting perspectives from people who've identified as several genders throughout their lives. And now since we're fighting for transgender rights and against TERFS who really represent gender essentialism wearing a feminist disguise, it feels like we're trying to do a 360 back toward just not judging anyone based on their gender, period. And I thank people for that. It takes some of the years of baggage off my shoulders.

So here is my problem with the "by virtue of being a man, you have to make your peace with the fact that some people will be uncomfortable with you, and thus you have to make yourself a safe person"

I've heard the same thing about being black. A lot of people have taken my very presence as hostility. I have had people escalate situations just because I am present as a black person in front of them. Before, and after transition.

You know what the problem with bending over backwards to make other people comfortable with your presence even though you haven't actually done anything to them besides breathe the same air?

It's never enough. You can be One Of The Good Ones for ages and at some point you will fail your Good One inspection and people will turn on you at the drop of a hat. People who you thought you had a good rapport with. People you thought were your friends.

I have *experienced* this, both online and in person.

The onus is on everyone to be safe people to be around. Singling someone out and blaming them for daring to share a demographic with someone else who has caused harm isn't cute when people do it to me because I'm black, and it's also not cute when they do it because I'm a man.

People are uncomfortable about my blackness all the time. I didn't magically stop experiencing racism when I started taking testosterone. So it's absolutely wild to me that people think "well, you know, with what you look like, some people won't want you around" is going to fly when I was explicitly taught *not* to tolerate that shit by every single one of my black relatives.

Someone doesn't like that I'm occupying a space? Well I'm not hurting them, so that's a them problem and not a me problem. That's how I've learned how to exist as black in white-majority spaces. Why do you think you can change the demographic and get me to agree with you?

[snekdood]

Ive heard some people say that "masculinity is the default for everyone so thats why people dont recognize you as your assigned gender" and idk i gotta disagree?? Masculinity is the default, yes- but is it the default for everyone? Id say its the default for what the default type of person is considered, which is often a cishet white man. The default for those whom have womanness pushed on to us is dresses and heels. I am subverting expectations somewhat when i dress in pants and a button up shirt, but thats old news, thats what feminists did back in the day, however, its that exact association- the association with the cis girl feminists who rebelled against the norm, thats been locked in with ppl afab. When i wear pants and a pixie cut and act more masculine- im seen as a subversive, cool, hip, feminist woman. Thats the most that im allowed. Its not the default for afab people, but its accepted at this point, and is now more or less a default clothing style for everyone however its originally designated for the "default", cis men. If it were the end all be all default, though, we wouldnt still have tradwives about, now would we? Plenty of people still think women should be in the kitchen wearing dresses with their mouths sewn shut. That is still the default many people *want* me to end up in. So now, me wearing pants is just me being "a rebellious woman". That is the two extremes to many people and they only ever allow themselves to see me on either end of each spectrum. They never allow themselves to see me creep over to the spectrum of man. Im only either a traditional woman or a woman thats "trying to be different" to them. Unless im capable of passing as a man and they dont know im trans by default and i have to reveal it to them for them to realize "women" can become men, but id think only extremely passing trans guys could ever get away with that, and even then, when they find out, theyll start eyeing you up and down and pretend to notice parts of you that actually reveal that you're afab, in spite of not seeing it there before, as if i said the magic words that suddenly *unveiled* my "disguise". And once again im locked in the role of woman for them. And once you're locked in that role for a lot of cis men, you cant get out of it, because theyve found a million excuses to not listen to anything "women" say. You minus well be mute. Ive only ever been treated like a human by cis men like this when they dont know that im a trans man and think im cis too.

No matter how hard i try to prove my masculinity, when i dress as a man people have to dismiss it as me being butch. I can never be a man but just a female version of whatever man they think im trying emulate. Im a masculine man? Then im a butch. Im a sporty man? Then im actually just a cool tough tomboy sporty girl actually. Im an expressive and artistic man and it shows in the way i dress? Then im just an eccentric alt woman whos more willing to bend my gender expression. I can never just *be* a man. I only get to be the "female" version of whatever man they think im trying to be. Im allowed to dress like a man, im even allowed to be a butch woman in plenty of cases for cis men, but im never allowed to actually identify as a man. They see it almost as me playing pretend and playing dress up when i dress masc and when i cross over that border of manhood then suddenly i crossed over into accepting my life as being a half goat demon man or whatever. Suddenly thats when things get serious and its code red and everyone has to hit the deck and start doing their best effort to get me to Not start identifying as a man and stop living as if i am and stop trying to get ppl to recognize me for who i am. Im allowed to dress however i want insofar as people can think im just playing pretend.

And bc its old news for afab people to wear pants n shit, I also sort of feel like a lot of cis people see amab people becoming feminine as more dramatic of a change than it is for someone like me to be masculine, which makes me seem like a tomboy or whatever to them. Me dressing with pants and button ups and such is seen as this ~whatever~ thing because im allowed to explore my gender expression so long as i dont try to claim to be an entirely different gender. However, since it is such a dramatic shift for amab people in cis ppls eyes, and because masculinity is seen as so prized, people will assume that if an amab person decides they want to be a woman then that means she really means it, because "no truly masculine man would do that" or whatever.

[taibhsearachd]

TERFs and anti-trans activists love to pretend that they are concerned about people who experience dysphoria, that this is a mental illness and hormone treatment will only harm them, they should seek therapy and not HRT.... I’m an afab person dealing with severe dysphoria because my body produces too much testosterone. I’m nb, I might (like my afab nb partners) like to let my voice deepen, grow a beard, etc etc... but it took long enough for me to accept my body as it was. And then it started changing. And that was upsetting regardless of my gender identity, because I got used to my body and it started doing things I didn’t understand and couldn’t anticipate...

There’s absolutely no support there from the people who are So Concerned about gender dysphoria as a mental illness. No concern about my dysphoria/uncertainty about beard growth, thinning hair, etc etc, no push for therapy or HRT for those suffering dysphoria who don’t identify as trans... and meanwhile these same people who want to present themselves as the defenders of womanhood (afab, of course) vilify these exact things (beard growth, thinning hair) as proof that trans women aren’t real women.

Certainly doesn’t help my own personal struggle, actually makes me feel much worse about myself as a woman, drove me further away from identifying as a cis woman. Terfs will viciously attack a woman with a beard because they know they’re a man... when this person has always been a woman, is afab, grew up as a girl, would never be looked at as anything but female if she shaved her beard, but because she chose to stop so many terfs insist she must be a man in disguise. This gives the lie to terfs insisting they just want women to exist as they are, without having to modify themselves... they just want to enforce a strict system of conformity, they just want the rules of conformity re: female bodies to relax a TINY bit. There’s nothing revolutionary or radical about that.

Anyway, I identified as cis until very recently. It was watching the way terfs treated cis women with abnormal hormones that drove me away from that identification, because if my natural body is abhorrent and aberrational to the people most interested in policing my gender according to chromosomes, if even my birth sex won’t convince them to properly gender me... fuck it. Fuck it.

I don’t have a gender. Or my gender is so obscure that only I conform to it. Regardless, no TERF is your friend or will ever be. They align themselves with conservatives and Christians because at their core they despise “degenerates” and nonconformity and you don’t even have to make a choice to earn their ire - just be a little too different, biologically, and you are a target. They claim to stand for all women but come for bearded women as if they’re men in disguise, so don’t doubt for a minute they’ll turn on anyone else who doesn’t fall in line the moment it becomes convenient. TERFs are not your friends or your allies - they are the enemy in a feminist mask.

[autistichalsin]

It's also worth noting that this same erasure is the only time trans men get respect.

That is to say, when a historical trans man was undeniably trans, like Billy Tipton, he either never gets talked about at all (in Billy's case) or treated as "ugh just another man."

The only ambiguously trans historical figures seen as worth celebrating are the ones who are suggested to have actually been just women fighting the patriarchy.

Because, you see, being an AFAB man somehow, in these peoples' minds, does NOT constitute smashing the patriarchy. It is more impressive, in their eyes, to be a disguised cis woman than it is to be a trans man. Because what makes an act good is solely whether and how much it benefits cis women.

I think a big reason trans men do not appear in media as often as other queer identities, as well as historical erasure to a point, is because it goes against many women's experience with challenging bigotry. I cannot tell you how many pieces of media exist with "girl dresses as boy to get Privilege or Respect she wasn't given before, but has to reveal she is A Woman by the end as she has to prove women can do The Thing TM too and it's more 'honest' to her identity'". With a lot of trans masc/man historical figures there is constant fighting over whether it was really a women fighting the patriarchy and not a guy struggling with being trans. There is a book about "female husbands and the women that love them" for Christ's sake. We are constantly interpreted as on the border of being super hurt/proactive women for the sake of that class's conscience, and anything else is "taking away" from women's more important issues, supposedly. I'm just tired of all afab people having trouble with their identity being funneled into the "women good, patriarchy/men bad" pipeline or else. It feels like me talking about being a man, even in a trans context, is unacceptable because it *might affect a women at some point

[thesecrimsonstrings-if]

My type of fictional men are the ones written by women. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the WIP IF with the men of my dreams was written by a cis straight man 🚶🏾‍♀️ Even the female characters are so well-written and I’m just in awe, even if it’s the bare minimum for male authors. Are you free on Friday cause I’m free on Friday so we can go out if you’re free on Friday to get something to eat on Frid---

okay, so i get that this is a compliment (if i ever heard one) but since i've gotten a lot of asks like these, i wanna talk about this in a little more depth.

i agree that sometimes when cis straight men try to write about female characters, it just comes off clunky and plain misogynistic. but i can also say that about female authors who write about male characters with not much of a personality. the gender of the author doesn't really matter if they're just ignorant about the people they are writing about.

i don't mean to go off on you here because believe me, i've read a lot of stories where i've wondered if the male author had ever interacted with a woman before. but there are also many men writing strong female characters who aren't eye candies or damsels in distress or mary sues. i personally think it all comes down to the male gaze vs the female gaze. salem tovar has made a very good video on how both of those gazes can be harmful and you can check it out here.

young boys are often made fun of for liking genres like romance (trust me, i have firsthand experience for this) and their literature taste often just drifts off to more ‘acceptable’ ones. for example: horror, historical, science fiction, etc., just all things that the society consider to be ‘manly’ genres. female characters in these type of stories are... let's just say that they're not typically written very nicely, but this is the type of literature they grew up reading.

AFAB people typically write male characters who are desirable to their targetted audience because they actually meet all the standards that real men in their life could never even come close too. however, sometimes they write so many cringey men that it either makes me laugh or throw up in my mouth a little.

like, sarah j. maas? what is wrong with the men in your books? i can practically smell the testosterone leaking from the pages to the point that i thought you were a male author disguising yourself as a woman. rhysand tries to come off as a feminist so much that it ends up feeling like a hate crime against women. all the female characters are either incredibly weak like elain or a straight up bitch like nesta. aside from feyre, of course, perfect little feyre who can do no wrong. i have absolutely no idea why there are so many SJM fans who are ready to lay down their lives for this musty crusty dusty hormonal smut fantasy series.

now, let me stop before i go on a whole rant about this god-awful series and SJM in general which will be longer than azriel's ‘wingspan’.

anyways, it's obvious that men who have no idea how proper female characters are written, end up writing them in a way that make you wanna bash your head in with the book and that's completely understandable. i, myself, grew up surrounded by romance books because my mum didn't really give a shit about what genres i liked as long as i was happy reading them. of course, i didn't tell her about the smut books i had on my wattpad library when i was 12.

have we consumed years of literature written by men which depicts women through a sexist lens? yes. is romance a genre that is dominated by the AFAB authors? also yes. can women write female (and male and NB) characters just as badly? hell yes. it's really not a question about the author's gender but more about if they actually know about the characters they're writing about.

and while i understand why people don't usually like it when AMAB authors write romance novels, i dislike the sweeping generalisation of them all being very bad at writing the characters.