#but also they're totally all trans in some way

[maxdibert]

Okay, this question has been making me roll and grit my teeth at night. Why do people make Sirius, Regulus, and Barty Crouch so feminine? I don't get it. It's almost weird in a way because Sirius seems pretty masculine to me, he just has long hair and a flamboyant personality. Regulus, we don't even know much about the guy and already I see fanart of his being a twink. And Crouch...I don't understand that.

I am not against mlm ships or gay characters/character head cannons. I myself believe that Snape is probably under that trans or gender-neutral flag (he radiates that energy), and that he is queer coded. But those guys? Ehh...it's weird how there's always a "top" and "bottom" for these kinds of things, don't you think? Can't they both just be masculine?

But can we agree that being gay doesn't mean being feminine? Can we understand that even if you make a crack ship or write slash, it doesn't mean you have to change the damn characters' personalities? I mean, if you want to pair Sirius with every male character in the saga, that’s totally fine, but don't create another character that has nothing to do with Sirius to fit your sexist and fetishistic stereotypes, seriously. They constantly reproduce dom/sub dynamics in homosexual relationships, with masculinized and feminized types, thus continuing stereotypes inherited from the heteronormative system. They're not doing anything radical, anti-system, or against J.K. Rowling; they’re turning Sirius into a stereotype traditionally assigned to women and making his supposed partners alpha males, reproducing these harmful dynamics. Sirius isn't feminine; Sirius is the most masculine of the four Marauders. Otherwise, Rowling wouldn’t bother mentioning a hundred times that he was super handsome, liked by the girls, had a motorcycle, or had posters of girls in bikinis on the wall. Rowling makes a big point of hypermasculinizing Sirius Black. Sirius is a tough guy from a hegemonic masculinity perspective—impulsive, violent, passionate, and a bastard when he wants to be. What you see in that fandom isn't Sirius; it's a damn OC they've created and named after him. He doesn't even physically resemble Sirius when they draw him because they always make him short and skinny when canonically, Sirius was the tallest of the four, and Rowling emphasizes how tall and intimidating he is multiple times.

I don't care about the ships because I think you can ship anything except some weird stuff, but just because you can ship anything doesn't mean you have free rein to make the characters hyper-OOC and have the audacity to convince the audience that it fits with the canon. No, it doesn't fit. If I want to read a Sirius x (insert any character), I want to read about Sirius Black, not some cheap imitator that the real Sirius Black would probably bully to exhaustion. Barty Crouch wasn't a sassy, cunty "uwu" type. Everyone was shocked when Barty turned out to be a Death Eater; his father describes him as someone who got excellent grades, seemingly a kid who flew under the radar, which is why everyone was so shocked when he turned out to be one of Voldy's boys. These people have turned him into a walking caricature, some kind of 80s diva that the real Barty never was. Again, they've created a character that doesn't exist and given him a canon name. And Regulus Black... What they've done with Regulus is also scandalous. In the end, they've turned him into a whiny, spineless, hyper-"feminized" character so that James can be the alpha male who saves him. Don't they see how terribly problematic these stereotypes are and the disservice they do to the community? I mean, they boast about being champions of LGBTQ+ representation, but all they do is reproduce super toxic and harmful clichés that perpetuate dynamics from a misogynistic and sexist heteronormative perspective. And on top of that, they do all this by completely changing the characters, dismembering them, stripping them of every ounce of their true personalities, and replacing it with their made-up nonsense.

[sillymushroom17]

Pomefiore is the trans dorm. All the trans peeps are put in there. The Dark Mirror takes one look at you and if you're trans it's like "Another one for Pomefiore".

My source: Trust me bro

Epel is all hung up on being put in Pomefiore and complains to Rook and Rook's like "Oui, it's because you're trans." Being trans is an entry requirement. Not everyone at NRC who's trans is in Pomefiore, but everyone in Pomefiore is trans. The Dark Mirror told me itself, this is 100% fact.

(Also Vil is totally genderfluid/bigender, Rook is 100% transfem, and Epel is absolutely transmasc)

Rook wanted to transfer to Pomefiore and the only question the mirror asked was "Are they trans?" When the answer was totally yes, it immediately let Rook transfer

[moshieee]

Ew, essays :[

I miss the old days of kindergarten when we attempted to color butterflies and ate erasers and glue

-🎁

I hated kindergarten

Essays may suck but at least now I'm not the weird kid in the corner wishing I had friends

However yes I absolutely despise essays with all my being... in fact!

Achievement unlocked: you somehow found a topic moshie hates enough and on a bad day to start them ranting in the tags...

Warning there are curse words, poor spelling, and caps locks

Sorry in advance

[dykewithbenefits]

Are you a cis girl with a transfem friend? Here are a few small ways you can show her your support:

Some trans girls might feel uncomfortable and/or experience gender envy if you dress overly feminine around them. Counter this by wearing nothing at all when the both of you are hanging out. If done in public, this can also cause a sense of confidence in your own body that will hopefully spread to your friend, alleviating her dysphoria.

If your trans friend has a hard time coming up with a new name for herself, lend her yours! Should confusion arises by the both of you sharing a name, consider changing yours to something that'll further support your friend, such as asking people to simply refer to you as her slave or slut.

Let her grope and take sexual advantage of you whenever, wherever. It's important for a trans girl to get acquainted with the female anatomy, especially if she's on or thinking about starting estrogen. What better way for her to learn than a literal hands-on approach? Let her squeeze your tits and ass to get a feeling for what they're like. Let her put her girlcock up your pussy, and describe how it feels to have her pound you full of girl cum!

If your friend wants to get implants, get them together! Allow her to experiment with her ideal body and the notions of conventional attraction by turning you into a total barbie! If you aren't a total transphobe, you could give her free reign to mold your body into the epiphany of femininity! And, in case you really want to give your friend a sense of shared experience, why not use modern medicine to graft a cock onto your own body so the two of you can match? Remember—the bigger the dick, the more supportive!

Many a trans girl can get worked up when getting random boners, as their feminine clothing tends to make these leave visible bulges. An ally knows that, in this case, the easiest solution is the most effective: simply help her blow her load by way of dumping it in your womb. A supportive ally knows to do this regularly, so that our trans cuties don't need to get those pesky random boners in the first place!

[txttletale]

about the "people are allowed to be cis" like i kind of get the optics & context but I do think it's important to recognize that a gender journey can end at the same place it started. Often-times it doesn't because the journey starts due to discomfort with one's gender but in my mind it's the same as questioning any other belief, it's good to do it even if you end up still holding that belief.

The 'problems' faced by cis people who have questioned their gender are not nearly as big as those experienced by trans people but it's still something that happens, particularly among people in trans communities. I think this idea also sort of intersects with the idea of people wanting representation, and the idea of somebody questioning their gender sort of implies they're going to be trans so then there can be disappointment.

Some of this is speculative, and i haven't seen the original post so maybe i'm missing something but your post really hit weird because it's not telling people they can be cis it's saying you can dip your foot in the pool of transgenderism and not go all the way in. Like obviously that's less urgent than people shooting at those in the pool but just dismissing it is kind of weird

people are told it is okay to be cis literally from the moment they are born. i dont want to be harsh but literally everything you're saying could be coming out of the mouth of a conversion therapist -- the current term used to sanitize conversion therapy in the UK is in fact "exploratory therapy". "well we shouldn't rush them into transness we should give them time to decide in case they're actually cis after all" is the #1 talking point undergirding the total annihilation of trans healthcare for young people in the UK. trans people are already told at every single step of the way that it's okay to change their minds and be cis. they are told this by parents and teachers and peers who say "it's just a phase". they are told this by media outlets panicking about """rapid-onset gender dysphoria""". they are told this over and over again by transohobic medical systems that tell them that they should think about whether maybe they're just autistic or gay or they need to have more sex. every single part of our brutally transphobic society is already screaming "IT'S OKAY TO JUST BE CIS" in everyone's ears every second they exist in it. there is never a need to add your voice to that chorus.

[drdemonprince]

I keep seeing the posts about male socialization and idk it makes me feel weird because I identify as transfem and I *do* believe I had male socialization. I find it easier to identify with and understand male groups and to feel involved in the while I feel less at ease understanding how women feel and think even though my personal view of myself leans more towards a feminine identity. All these posts make me doubt that I am truly "transfem" and that even if I am, that I am fundamentally transfem in a different way than most other transfems I run into. Is there any sources or writing out there that either provides a counter-perspective or at the very least points to nuance on this subject from a transfem lens? I wish I didn't feel so alone with these feelings.

Your feelings and experience do not make you any less legitimate as a transfeminine person. A lot of trans women rightfully and understandably need to counteract the notion that they're oppressive privileged males or whatever by asserting, as clearly as they can, the many ways in which their socialization was a female socialization, with all the double-standards, demanded emotional labor, sexual predation, etc that entails -- but the very need to assert these things is due to the culture's twisted misconceptions about what gender even is and how it operates.

It's not as though a young person only gets the socialization of the binary gender to which they were assigned -- they get mandatory cishet socialization, and they see what is expected of the "other" gender, and that impacts them, and the standards for that other gender also influence how they are interpreted and seen.

And so I do think, to a certain extent, that when trans people assert that we actually didn't get socialized as our assigned gender at birth, we got socialized as the correct gender, actually, we are unfortunately ceding ground to the transphobes on a couple of key points. One, we're conceeding that there is a singular binary socialization that the two genders each get, which are separate from one another and always exhibit specific features, and two, that a person's socialization as a young person is a key determinant of their gendered experience, privilege, and identity forever, no matter what happens after they are young.

And you know, both those things are totally wrong. There is no one female socialization. I've written about this before, but I wasn't raised to be feminine. I was raised the way working-class girls are raised, which is to be no-nonsense, unfrivolous, serious, sporty, and capable -- a wife and mother, but the kind that never wears a skirt or cries in front of people. And there is no singular "male" socialization either -- I cite a few trans femme people in this piece who experienced themselves as having some male privilege before they transitioned, and some more typically "male" experiences, while also quoting a number of trans women whose lives went the exact opposite way. I assert in the piece that their experiences are theirs to name, and that there's a number of different ways we might each understand and categorize them personally -- especially when we take into account how much gendered socialization is dependent upon class, race, immigration status, diasporic status, and much more.

My view is that however you think your live played out, and whoever you find community alongside, you're right. I'm about to answer a similar ask about this from a trans masc perspective, but I'm a guy who has a ton of women friends and always have. I grew up mostly with girls as my closest buddies and we did things like playing pretend and having slumber parties and doing makeovers. I could chalk this up as a "female socialization" experience I guess if I wanted to. But I also grew up with a lot of gay boys, and I am a gay man, and guess what -- a lot of us grow up with predominately female friends. I don't think I have some essential feminine quality because my friends kept insisting on putting eyeshadow on me when I was ten. The fact I was bad at sports and couldn't be the tough, no-nonsense person that my culture expected me to be was gonna affect me whether I was a boy or a girl. And my upbringing was significantly different from that of one of my very best, oldest friends, whose family owned a successful business and were able to buy her a car and a horse and shit.

You're not betraying anything or lessening your own transfemininity by resonating with some typically "male" experiences or for having close male connections. Lots of queer women do! Just like I have plenty in common with lots of women! We don't say that cis women aren't women because they grew up tomboys, or had a ton of brothers, and the same is true of you. Even if you don't think of your younger self as "a tomboy" or even as a girl. You don't have to ascribe to the narrative that you were always one gender and always moved through the world with that identity. To demand that all trans people do so is respectability politics -- we cannot and should not require that all people be trans in the same ways. I have written before that transition to me feels at once both pre-ordained AND a choice that I made. You can say that you lived as a boy for some years or were a boy if that feels right to you, or that you had certain privileges while also suffering from dysphoria and disconnection; it's your life and you know it best and what serves you.

I wish I had narratives from trans women writers to direct you to, but for the most part the trans women who I've heard express feelings like yours have been in the support and discussion groups I've been in, and in private conversation -- I think because the socialization experiences of trans femmes are so unfairly politicized. I hope if any trans femme people see this have anything to share or any words to say that they will!

[velvetvexations]

I'm a trans woman. You need to stop being weird about men.

The idea that trans women should be allowed in single sex spaces for cis women is completely contradicted by the man vs. bear discourse. Ignore that I keep going back to the meme - maybe it's still doing numbers, I don't know, but it's good shorthand either way. If you think men are inherently suspicious and dangerous, ask yourself: why does that not apply to trans women?

What, exactly, does a trans woman do to make herself different from cis men? How are you not advocating a belief in people being tainted by the way they were raised* which can only logically apply to trans women as much as it does cis men? It boggles the mind how, if that's a true concept, one could simply self-identify out it. Yet, the way transradfems talk, literally the only thing that distinguishes an AMAB better-than-bear from an AMAB worse-than-bear is that the former says they're totally better than a bear and you should take their word for it, which if men are really Like That should be of little comfort or security.

Some, even, will make impassioned defenses of butch trans women, which as a butch trans woman is great. But then they'll go on about how evil men are, and how innocent and victimized trans women are, and I wonder, what, exactly, differs an especially butch trans woman from a man to them? If, like me, a trans butch woman doesn't always wear clearly feminine clothes, has body hair, maybe even a shade of facial hair, and doesn't at all try to train her voice, are you going to be uncomfortable with her right up until she realizes she forgot to put their pin on and you see the she/her? Apparently that flips the switch from someone you desperately don't want to be alone with to someone you're totally fine undressing in front of?

All that sounds like TERFism, which is exactly the problem. The transradfem version of reality is one where TERF talking points are completely logical, because they're both based in the same radfem reality. That's not my reality, YOU have constructed a system perfect for them to operate in, that their ideology is fantastic for pointing out errors of reasoning in, as if it was deliberately crafted by them to be deconstructed. I would not at all be surprised if that's the origin of a lot of trans radical feminism, a psyop to make the trans community weaker with logic twists that TERFism can swing through like the Gordian Knot.

If you accept man vs. bear, TERFism is the only logical conclusion. If you don't, as I don't, then it isn't.

The only alternative is that you think being a woman is the only thing anyone should be and "choosing" to be a man is morally inferior. Which I shouldn't have to tell you is horrifying. It's also again incongruous with at least your defense of butch trans women - what exactly defines a "man" and a "woman" when a butch trans woman doesn't have to try to pass at all? You are literally saying all of this, gender, transmisogyny, misogyny, hinges entirely on pronouns and a difference of two letters in the name of what they call themselves, someone is dangerous or not depending on if they go by he/him.

TERFs will see this and be like "yeah! exactly!" BUT MY POINT IS USING THAT TO SHOW YOU SHARE THE SAME FOUNDATIONAL LOGIC AS THEM. If you don't want TERFs to have a point then you can stop accepting their worldview any day now! Come join me and frolic freely where we think TERFs are wrong!

*socialization is real and the idea pre-dates TERFs who incorrectly use the idea that to say that because a trans woman may or may not** have been pressured by external forces to play sportsball she must be hardcoded to be a sex offender, which is completely ridiculous

**no one can be said to have the same experiences, it's a generalization

[jadeazora]

Which Pokemon Villains are homophobic:

Giovanni: Would founding 🌈Rainbow Rocket🌈 count as rainbow capitalism? (It sounds like the name of a company that manufactures dildos, tbh.) I don't think he's supportive, but it doesn't bother him either. All he cares about is if you do your job well. He has men and women in his organization both thirsting for him. Have you met Archer? (His only true loves are money and power; Silver feels more like a precautionary heir.)

Archie/Maxie: are divorced. Also this was an image the official Japanese Pokemon Twitter fucking dropped with the caption "they're getting along well!" Definitely not homophobic:

Cyrus: dgaf. His whole thing is purging the world of emotion, so love's got to go too. (Pretty much everybody is under fire here.) He probably doesn't give a shit what you do in the meantime tho.

Ghetsis: 100%, no fucking doubt in my mind, regularly calls people slurs. His list of slurs is also *VERY* comprehensive.

N: Who do you think Ghetsis's favorite target is? I feel like he's completely chill with it, tho is personally entirely incapable of discerning the difference between romantic love and the love between friends.

Colress: If it isn't his "how to draw out a Pokémon's true strength" research, he doesn't care. You do you. 👍

Lysandre: His whole thing is beauty, and beauty isn't limited to gender or sexuality, and love is a beautiful thing, so why limit himself? Bro's pan.

Guzma: He takes outcast kids off the streets and gives them a home. No way he's homophobic! You got disowned? You're a fellow outcast in his eyes, and your home is with Skull now! (He's dating Plumeria, but is bi to me.)

Lusamine: initially, probably not since she's super controlling and not really a supportive mother to begin with, but since she does end her story wanting to do better for her kids, I feel like she would come around eventually and try to be better.

Piers: Nah, he's with Raihan and his little sis "fancies" Gloria. Next.

Rose: I feel like he would probably engage in some rainbow capitalism here and there, but he's generally friendlier than the other CEO-type villains personality-wise and there's several members of the Galar League who feel bi/gay (Nessa, Piers, Raihan), he wouldn't really be homophobic.

Volo: I don't think he cares that much, but if he can use homophobia to manipulate somebody, he totally would call them a slur. It really just depends what tool he has in his arsenal he feels would be the most effective way of manipulating you.

Penny: she literally calls your mom so pretty her brain glitched. I feel like she could get mad enough to doxx you if you tried to bully gay/trans kids in her presence.

Sada/Turo + the AI: As scientists, they're too wrapped up in their work to care (hell, they barely paid their own son any mind) and the AI knows being gay is something found naturally across species, so homophobia doesn't make much sense to them. Sada also strikes me as bi, and Turo strikes me as ace (with him, I think it's the outfit).

[nothorses]

I came across this paper:

https://www.academia.edu/71372307/Trans_masculinities_embodiments_performances_and_the_materiality_of_gender_in_times_of_change

I'm not well-versed in academic language so I can't really understand all of it, but it seems kind of gross and condescending, especially when it's using testimonials of transmasc's desire to be seen as men to, idk, prove that masculinity isn't really queer or something? I'm curious how other (smarter) people would interpret it.

I mean, your understanding of it is just as important as mine! I'm happy to add my thoughts, though.

My understanding is that their thesis is essentially "masculinity is related to maleness and the male body specifically, and we know that because transmascs want to have male bodies". They allow for some nuance here in references to other literature, and I agree with that angle of their argument overall, but their premise is fundamentally flawed in the exclusion of trans theory and trans narratives.

Like, yes, masculinity is in some way related to appearance and the "male body", and there are a lot of reasons for that! But is the dysphoria of trans people really ironclad "proof" of what maleness and masculinity are? And why don't they spend any time talking about what dysphoria actually is, what trans people think it is, why trans people think they feel the way they do, or what trans academics have to say about any of this?

I have a lot of other issues with this paper as well, and I could probably write a paper just as long as theirs going into all of the reasons for that. But I think that answers your biggest question; what they're trying to prove, how they're trying to prove it, and why that comes across so weird.

To your other question ("is it condescending?"): I think this is kind of subjective overlay, but the way they go about analyzing their data is pretty condescending, in my opinion. They tend to frame their participants' responses as kind of misguided or ill-informed, particularly Diniz- who they definitely discuss as "trying to justify his choices" to identify as nonbinary while also seeking medical transition, like this is inherently contradictory and must therefore rely on some kind of delusion or desperation. It's weird!

I do also want to point out, briefly, that they also really cherrypick which claims they bother sourcing, and how they try to back them up.

They argue that trans men have male privilege based on the opinions of, like, three of their 30 total participants- and then carry this as "fact" through the entire paper, uncontested. That's extremely fucking weird and super suspect in a paper like this! I just wrote my own qualitative research paper based on interviews (which is what this is), and it's pretty standard to acknowledge the limitations of your research, and to position your results as non-definitive. Like, that's been a major part of every discussion with everyone I've talked to about my research. I would not have been greenlit to receive my degree if I hadn't been careful to avoid framing my research the way these people frame theirs.

The other weird thing they do is cherrypick statistics- or rather, one single statistic- to "prove" that transmascs do not suffer as much as other trans people, or possess some kind of privilege. They only cite murder statistics from one source; apparently that's the only relevant metric for quantifying all oppression? They also fail to acknowledge any possible shortcomings of this statistic, like the issues of under-reporting and misgendering of transmasc victims.

I could go on; I have a lot of gripes. But I think your criticism is totally valid, this was a weird and frustrating read.

Also curious if @genderkoolaid has thoughts- you tend to talk about gender studies from an academic position more, and you probably have a lot more field-specific expertise than I do. I'll boost other additions too, I love a good academic discussion!

[olderthannetfic]

I just got the weirdest hate comment. Basically, this woman who has loved all my stories and commented on them for months found out I'm a cis man. And now she hates my F/F stories. She's now decided they're "fetish fuel" for "your lesbian kink" and "you probably write with one hand down your pants".

None of these stories have steamy scenes. One, I suck at writing those. A lot. A lot a lot. Two, the women are busy saving the world. That's stressful and stress makes some people's horniness go way down, so I always assumed they wouldn't be in the mood until the villain is defeated, you know? Three, some of these stories have middle school aged characters and I find people older than me hot, so I have literally, truly not thought once against their sex lives. I assumed they were going on dates like I was at 13 - movies, hang out at the mall, playing video games, that stuff. Nobody I knew was getting laid at 13. (I didn't get laid until I was 20, personally, but idk what the statistics on that are.)

So it's really weird that she's suddenly angry at me. I know most of the fans of the show are women. I get why she assumed I was one. Totally valid. Statistically that makes sense. It's the jump from "you are male" to "you're getting off to this" that I don't get. Don't get me wrong, I know some guys like F/F and some women like M/M. But liking writing/reading something doesn't mean you get off to it.

(Also utter side tangent but I don't like her using lesbian to refer to bi characters. That's... not how that works. Bi people don't become straight or lesbian or gay depending on who they date.)

Can someone explain to me? I think my neurodivergent ass is missing a lot here and I'm lost.

--

Radfem nonsense.

Look up lesbian separatism as a political thing to find the sorts of women who think all men are inherently suspect, dangerous, predatory, etc. Some of them are also TERFs and think trans women are men and predators, but this general attitude on gender happens even without the transphobia.

Basically, she thinks you snuck into her exclusive clubhouse and got your cooties on it.

Some femslash fans do view this type of fandom as an expression of their identity, not just a thing they enjoy, and being confronted with the reality that it can also just be a fiction taste and the space isn't all people like them making a space for people like them can be upsetting. She's being a jerk and not responding to your actual work or your actual self, but if you want to know why, that's why.

[avagarde]

Once again I have found myself watching through the entirety of the 2000's Nickelodeon show from Cartoon Network alumnus Rob Renzetti, MY LIFE AS A TEENAGE ROBOT.

The show was an immediate favorite of mine as a child and it has a lot of staying power as a piece of animation thanks to its visual style, themes, characters, and sense of humor. It's honestly one of if not my favorite cartoon and I wanted to get some people interested and give them some confidence while watching it. Usually these days people make skip lists for shows, that will probably be the smallest part of this post but I still wanted to give people recommendations and tell them what to look for and expect.

This list will help you find the GOOD EPISODES, GENDER EPISODES, and BAD EPISODES. I will also be providing a link to where to watch it for free below the read more.

As of writing this post the entirety of My Life As A Teenage Robot is available for free at pretty decent visual quality over at archive.org. This is how I rewatched the show.

The first suggestion comes for WATCH ORDER. This one is easy, the episodes are ordered as they should be aside from Escape From Cluster Prime parts 1 & 2 (Season 2x09a & b, as listed in the archive.org playlist) which you should watch after having finished the rest of season 2 first.

Season 3 of MLAATR comes out after the events of this special episode so don't save it for the very end.

Now for Content Lists. There are a few categories I'm making lists for. To make this easy keep in mind that pretty much every episode (EXCEPT THE LAST) of this show is totally watchable, even when they aren't great. So these content categories will come with the added modifier that if I think they're VERY GOOD I will highlight them GREEN, and if I think they're BAD I'll highlight them RED. I'll talk about my favorite episodes after we get through these.

GENDER/BODY IMAGE CONTENT

For a lot of you I imagine this is why you're here. Jenny has become a bit of a transgender icon for trans women who watched cartoons in the 2000's. I do want to preface this by saying Rob Renzetti has gone on record saying this was not his direct intention but that he is supportive of the interpretation and as a trans woman I find Jenny's struggles very relatable and in some ways as an autistic person she hits a lot closer to home than other canon trans characters.

So if you want to just watch a couple episodes just to get a shot of gender struggle so you can point at the screen and tell your friends "see! I told you Jenny was trans!" this list will have that. I am also including general body image content on this list because I think that's very relatable for but not exclusive to the struggles of trans women. Any body image centric content on this list will have BI listed after it.

"It Came From Next Door" 1x01a

"Pest Control" 1x01b (BI)

"Raggedy Android" 1x02a (

"The Great Unwashed" 1x06b (BI)

"The Return of Raggedy Android" 1x07a

"Hostile Makeover" 1x09a (BI, and it also makes a great case for puberty blockers imho)

"Tradeshow Showdown" 1x12b

"Victim of Fashion" 2x01 (BI)

"Humiliation 101" 2x03b (BI)

"Weapons of Mass Distraction" 3x01a

Season 1 definitely has the most to do with Jenny's self image, so you'll find it coming up in various episodes. It becomes less apparent as the seasons go on due to Jenny building self confidence.

SHELDON CONTENT

The chaser of the show. Not everyone hates Sheldon, but his crux as a character is being a creep/nerd who doesn't take no for an answer. I think at times his utter depravity as a toaster fucker and the butt of jokes works so I tolerate him for the most part but the way the show plays with his role/the possibility him and Jenny could get together is very Cringe/Cringe Comedy. He also sort of turns into the "gay friend" role in later seasons, which I'm sure a certain kind of person could dig into what that means for the themes of this show. Anyway, here's just a heads up for what episodes center Sheldon if you hate him or love him (???????).

"Attack of The 5½ Ft. Geek" 1x03a

"Ear No Evil" 1x04a

"Shell Game" 1x10b

"Saved By The Shell" 1x12a

"Love 'Em Or Leash 'Em" 2x04a

"A Robot For All Seasons" 2x05

"Dancing With My Shell" 2x07a

"A Pain In My Sidekick" 2x09a

"Designing Women" 2x10a

"Escape from Cluster Prime" 2x13-14 (I mean... he's IN IT... but don't skip this one)

"The Price of Love" 3x06b

"Good Old Sheldon" 3x07b (had this been the last episode with Sheldon in it, my opinion on him would improve greatly)

"Infectious Personality" 3x08a (this episode is mostly just weird)

"Agent 00' Sheldon" 3x09a

Silver Shell stops showing up in season 3. Also by season 2 Sheldon gets a lot of furry/pet play content so... do with that as you will.

SHIPPING CONTENT

Here's a list of some episodes if you're working on fics and need a reference. These eps are focused primarily on supporting whatever argument you're trying to make and I'll try to be impartial in this. Also I'm not really gonna do side characters.

"Hostile Makeover" 1x09a (Jenny x Brad)

"Saved By The Shell" 1x12a (Jenny x Sheldon)

"Love 'Em Or Leash 'Em" 2x04a (Jenny x YK9)

"Bradventure" 2x11a (Brad x Melody)

"Teenage Mutant Ninja Troubles" 2x12b (Jenny x Misty)

"Escape from Cluster Prime" 2x13-14 (Jenny x Vega)

"No Harmony with Melody" 3x02a (Brad x Melody)

"Mist Opportunities" 3x05b (Jenny x Misty) (primarily in conflict however)

"The Price of Love" 3x06b (Jenny x Sheldon)

"Agent 00' Sheldon" 3x09a (Jenny x Sheldon)

"Ball and Chain" 3x11a (Jenny x Brad)

OFFENSIVE

Okay, so what in this show do I think is bad or could offend people? Well, several of the cartoons show other cultures in a way that could be considered derogatory. This is again going to be me trying to be objective because I'm just some white girl who can't make the call for a lot of these, and a lot of these are issues in episodes I like.

"Speak No Evil" 1x05b (Japanese people depicted with yellow skin)

"Around the World in Eighty Pieces" 2x07b (Various cultures depicted in caricature such as the middle east and japan)

"Samurai Vac" 3x13a (SKIP, this one I feel pretty confident in saying the depiction of Japan is offensive and reductive. I also just think this episode is mostly bad and weird? The characterization of Jenny doesn't feel like her at all. The episode after it "Turncoats" isn't really worth a watch either, so you can call your watch through after Queen Bee.)

AVA'S FAVS

Here are the episodes I really like that I think you should definitely give a look! I will mostly be focusing on a few that haven't been mentioned here unless I think they're so good they need to be brought up again.

"It Came From Next Door" 1x01a (Obviously we've been here before, but the first episode of this show is solid enough that even if you just want to watch one episode, the first episode I think can do that for you)

"Raggedy Android/Return of Raggedy Android" 1x02a & 1x07a (These are just two episodes that work well together as dialogues with Jenny's self image/relationship with femininity and they get pretty creepy with it too!)

Various Great Season 1 eps: "Class Action" "Doom With a View" "Unlicensed Flying Object" "The Great Unwashed" "The Boy Who Cried Robot" "Grid Iron Glory"

"The Wonderful World of Wizzly" 1x13a (Rob Renzetti hates Disney part 1)

"Victim of Fashion" 2x01 (Jenny's outfits in this episode are VERY GOOD)

"Mind Over Matter" 2x02b

"Around the World in Eighty Pieces" 2x07b

"Mama Drama" 2x11b (Jenny is a terror)

"A Spoonful of Mayhem" 3x04a (ACAB)

"Girl of Steal" 3x05a (They managed to make their "don't steal" episode very funny and not preachy)

"Indes-Tuck-tible" 3x09b

"Historionics" 3x10b (Rob Renzetti hates Disney part 2)

"Voyage to the Planet of the Bikers" 3x12a

CONCLUSION

My Life As A Teenage Robot is a really exceptional show that I think should be remembered as more than just the vehicle for Jenny's introduction into the world. As an adult watching this show I really can't get over the art. The character design, the shading, the backgrounds, their commitment to drawing crowds as various different character styles. It really was a show that was going for it's style and it cohered very well. The humor also stands alongside other successful comedic shows like spongebob handily. As an adult, the sort of nerdy humor with fewer annoying bits works better for me than going back and watching a lot of cartoons.

As an adult I think I also appreciate how much the show was going for "dealing this situations." Obviously the show has morals for kids, but I think a bit thing it was going for was just showing characters dealing with tough/ridiculous scenarios. The show DOES stuff TO its characters giving what are very simple characters a chance to shine.

It's also very fun to see a character build confidence and earn the forgiveness of people. Obviously the world is unfair to Jenny but at it's core I think it shows a world that cares about her and can appreciate her just as much as it can anyone else. Despite standing out, Jenny is as much appreciated as she is derided. I really loved getting to see the life Jenny had to live, and I hope you do too.

[wirewitchviolet]

That thing about 'the arc of history bending towards justice...'

I'm pretty sure I've gone on about this before, and I'm pretty sure I'm preaching to the choir, but I just had a well-intentioned acquaintance try to give an inspirational speech about American trans people's fears right now, and his heart was in the right place, but all his facts were wrong, in some really important ways. I feel like the perspective he has is the same one as... basically every decent person who isn't like, intimately familiar with WPATH, so please spread this around, and please if you only read one rambling history lesson from a trans person about the current state of things, make it this one.

So here's the big problem. Trans people get brought up in the mainstream media a LOT these days, but the framing is totally wrong. The impression people get is that there is presently a big push for new trans rights, where we want proper government recognition, and trans women in particular want to be able to use public women's restrooms, and play on girls-only sports teams, and a dozen other things. That is a lie you are being fed. These are all rights we ALREADY HAD, for decades. Possibly centuries depending what we're talking about specifically and where we're talking, even. The big issue right now is that a bunch of bigots just woke up one day about 10 years ago and decided that nothing else they were angling for was getting them anywhere with the general public, so hey let's make a boogieman out of this minority of a minority nobody knows the first thing about and act like all the horrors they're inflicting are just them enforcing some totally fictional status quo.

Speaking personally, I can say that The Trans Agenda in like 2014 was something like: 1- I'm gonna make a nice big pot of chili. 2- I'm gonna maybe replay some old video games from the '90s I haven't taken down off the shelf in a while. And OK maybe 3- It'd be cool if it weren't just the medical professionals who specifically specialize in trans stuff had enough of an education to know that when there's a difference in how a drug is going to effect men vs. women, it's for reasons directly tied to the levels of various hormones, or would at least trust their trans patients to know what we're talking about and not give us the wrong doses of things and maybe kill us as a result. And also like, treat us for regular things like broken arms (real example) without weirdly panicking about some prescription we're on they don't recognize.

There was absolutely not a point where some trans woman started petitioning the government or whatever to let her pee in a toilet with a little placard of a stick figure in a dress in front. We've just been doing that the whole time. Nobody's ever had a problem with that. You didn't know we were in there? OK. If I'm like at a restaurant and have to use the bathroom, I don't know how many of the other women in there have like, type O blood. I also don't care, and I think everyone would agree it was weird if I suddenly did care, and demand they post a guard out front asking to see driver's licenses. Just completely out of the blue some nutcases from the UK started foaming at the mouth and writing weird tabloid articles about their completely unfounded fears that... I don't even know. Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs might put on a wig and follow them into the bathroom, dose them with chloroform, and drag them to some basement dungeon through some series of secret passages or something.

This was based on literally nothing at all, to be clear. Like, people pushing for this went and did serious research for anything even anecdotal to back them up on this, and didn't actually find anything. Then they started walking into public restrooms with cameras throwing doors open on people and going "see? See? Some creep could totally do this if we don't ban trans people from using bathrooms!" And... somehow this got traction? I figure it's because coincidentally there was this whole other thing going where people were looking at how every building had equal numbers of men's and women's rooms and saying "you know, like, 90% of people who come in here are the same gender and we end up with really long lines, what if we just took the signs down and told everyone to just use whichever?" which... when it's happening at the same time Chicken Little is ranting and raving about the boogieman wearing a cheap wig, wires got crossed? And suddenly we've got waves of legislation passing all over about who's allowed to use what bathrooms with weird standards that'd involve like DNA tests to actually enforce properly. Absurd stuff.

Meanwhile, your average trans activist at the time was just like... sitting there eating a sandwich and going "huh, they're making a TV series based on Fargo? That's an odd thing to happen out of the blue. And yeah we started going "hey, what the hell?" when this stuff started passing because like... yeah that's what you do when you see an article in the local newspaper that says you can't go to the bathroom at work or whatever without swabbing your cheek and waiting for lab results for 3 weeks first or whatever.

Same deal with sports. Major sports organizations like the Olympics have been weirdly paranoid about men pretending to be women since 1950. And there have been, to the best of my ability to research... zero men who have actually done this. And while the weird standards used for this have been used to kick a good number of women out over the years, none of those women have been trans, for what that's worth. Really, the whole gender testing thing has only ever been used for horrifying stuff like forcing women to strip in front of random creeps, or let them do "invasive internal exams" and of course so many incidents where some woman who isn't white wins at something and people move the goalposts to in some way to get her specifically banned. You may be thinking, "wait didn't I just see a whole bunch of news coverage about someone getting banned after some gender testing thing? She was trans right?" No. You're thinking of Caster Semenya. She's a woman. A cis woman. F on her birth certificate, born with standard issue female genitals, has periods, all that. People are just being weird racists there and crossing the streams with random transphobia. That and just... half-reading stories and making stuff up.

To the best of my knowledge, the total count of trans athletes who have competed in the Olympics would actually be... three nonbinary people, who so far as I can tell all competed against people with the same gender they had on their birth certificates, nothing done medically, so, nobody should have any problem there. Caitlyn Jenner, who didn't come out as a woman until like... 40 years after competing, on the men's team, and Laurel Hubbard, the first and only trans woman to compete at the Olympics as a woman, who placed... dead last, flubbing all three of her lifts.

If we just look at sports in general, OK, there WAS one big famous where a trans woman wanted to compete in a major sporting event, was banned from it, took the organizers to court over it, and the eventual ruling was there was no reason at all she shouldn't be allowed to play against other women. Renée Richards. And this was all the way back in 1976. Nearly 50 years ago now.

And of course in more recent years, again, after a bunch of random bigots just completely out of the blue started losing their minds about trans people with no prompting and started lobbying for new laws banning us from all kinds of things nobody had had a problem with us doing forever, there was Mack Beggs, a trans guy, who was forced, by one of those aforementioned baffling reactionary new laws, to compete on his high school's girl's wrestling team. He didn't want to be there, they didn't want him to be there, but the law said hey, F on your birth certificate, we're classifying you as a girl despite how clearly wrong that is. And then there's been a bunch of other weird cases like that like one state banning trans girls from playing any sports with other girls which only affected one single girl in the entire state, who was playing lacrosse on a team that wouldn't have even existed if she hadn't personally organized it.

But the point here is, trans people aren't asking for anything here. We're just standing here, and people are flipping out and banning us from doing all these things without any prompting. And hell, I THINK this one got shot down in higher courts, but when Florida got the brain worms on this and started passing all the anti-trans legislation they could think of, they actually included a ban on us just standing there! The wording was something like (and I apologize that I can't find it, search engines are useless now), "if a child can potentially see someone who was assigned male at birth who is wearing women's clothes, it's considered sexual assault."

It's important to understand what's actually going on here, both because what's going on here is just plain terrifying, but also because there is this huge segment of the population who has this weird idea that people's rights only ever get better, there's just some weird arbitrary ratcheting where you have to take a number and get in line. Like, "hey, used to be only white men could vote, then eventually the Progress bar filled enough that we let white women start voting too. Then we had to wait for it to fill up again, hey, we're ending this whole segregation of black people thing. Gotta give it another 30 years or so to fill up, now hey, gay people can get married! Don't be impatient trans folks, you just need to stay in line and wait for it to fill again for your turn!"

That's not how anything has ever actually worked. It would frankly be absolutely insane if it actually did, but like, this is an idea people get in their heads because history textbooks really like to gloss over all the stuff that makes the country look pretty bad and promote this whole "stuff is just always getting better!" vibe. But no, sometimes, things just straight up get worse for people. Ten years ago I could go to the damn bathroom, I could have social media accounts, I could access all the medications I need to live, I could safely set foot in any given state in the country... at least if I kept some witnesses around at all times to verify I was not in fact hitting on my would-be murderer in any of the black states on this map.

The problem is NOT that with Trump in power, the pause button is getting hit on trans people climbing towards some state of finally getting to be regular people. We were (largely) already there, and there's been a huge push over the past decade to strip that away from us. And Trump plus the rest of the Republican party in general have made very specific promises to make that way worse real real soon, including several things that will straight up kill a ton of us.

Like, when I'm talking about losing access to necessary medical treatments, I'm not talking about "THE SURGERY" and magic pills that give you boobs or beards. A lot of trans people are trans because there's weird medical stuff that in addition to messing with what does and doesn't grow mess with things like whether your blood flows properly and whether various organs do what they should. Just one of those many things the average person doesn't know, because everything written about us is from deranged bigots making crap up.

[genderqueerdykes]

hi um. i’d like to ask you for some advice, since it seems like a lot of people come to you when they need it. i’m a trans girl who’s been taking estrogen for 2.5 years but. i’m just so disappointed and unhappy with what hrt has done for me. i feel like i’ve been completely taken over by doomerism from me constantly comparing myself to other transfems both online and irl, and from spending too much time on trans reddit (i’m sending you this ask instead of writing another vent post on r/mtf). through this i’ve convinced myself that i will never be happy with my body, or that i’ll never have real boobs or a feminine body at all. i really really don’t want to give up hope, but it just seems so far out of reach, and i’m stuck down here in this inky abyss. what do you do in dark times when you need to regain hope, but you can’t do it yourself?

first of all, i wanted to say i'm sorry that you're feeling this way. medical transition is a very finicky thing. there is no way to predict what will happen and when, so it's okay to feel just. completely bummed the hell out when you're not seeing the changes you hoped for yet. i definitely see how it can be crushing, especially when you know your body needs to look a different way for you to be happy. it's important to consider people look a lot different irl than they do in photos and videos. camera lenses can only capture so much. pictures and videos can be edited. it's hard to compare yourself to something like that

& i did want to say that you're definitely not alone! there are a lot of girls in your exact situation. with everyone responding to HRT differently, you'll see girls who get changes right away, and girls where it takes a long time. changes with HRT generally happen very slowly, way slower than the eye can perceive, so it's okay if you feel like nothing is happening. your body just may need more time to adjust

have you ever increased your dose? if not, that is totally an option! you may also want to look into progesterone if you find that you're not happy with your breast growth after some time. it's best to look into progesterone first to make sure it's right for you, as it will affect more than just breast growth, but i wanted to throw it out there as an option! if you're not on an androgen blocker, this could also potentially help you

for both estrogen and testosterone HRT, it can take a minimum of 5 years for people to begin seeing the effects they were desiring. 5 years, minimum! that's a very long time, comparatively, you are very early on in your journey. the effects you want to see may just come along further on down the road. i know it's easy to fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others. it's good to remind yourself that they are not you, they do not share your genetics. they look like them. you look like you. it's okay that you don't look like those people- they're not you.

it doesn't make you any less of a woman just because you haven't seen these changes yet. there are plenty of women who look just like you, cis, intersex, trans, genderqueer, and otherwise. there are many cis and intersex women who don't "pass", and it doesn't make them any less of a woman: the same applies to you, and every trans girl. dysphoria can be a real pain in the ass and make things harder than it needs to be. it's okay to not be content with where you're at now. it's okay to be frustrated that you're not seeing the changes you want to right now. many, many trans people feel just the same way you do.

you may feel awkward and uncomfortable right now because you're literally in a transitional phase. think about when teenagers go through puberty, about how awkward they look and feel. cracking voices, bodies that are "in the middle" and not fully developed. that's what you're going through at the moment, and its okay. it just takes time for things to fully settle in.

what i would suggest is trying to find ways to do some self care that affirm your gender that don't involve your appearance. validating yourself in other ways is extremely important. building yourself up takes time. if you feel insecure about how you look, it's okay. you can start building your confidence in your identity and gender in other areas of yourself, first, then move on to your appearance. try to spend time with people who respect you for who you are, no matter how you look. try to surround yourself with people and things that affirm you

i hope you start seeing those changes you want to see soon. if you need more advice, feel free to ask! if any other trans girls on E have any advice for the asker, or relate to the experience, please feel free to chip in with some feedback on this ask, or by sending an ask! due to being intersex, i was taking estrogen and progesterone despite not wanting to, so i was not cataloguing what was changing or anything like that, so i can't speak from personal experience there despite having been on E HRT in the past.

take care of yourself for now. try to go easy on yourself, you're still in your coocoon. the day where you emerge as a butterfly is on its way, it just takes a little time. please feel free to come back any time. i hope we can get some good insight for you

[snekdood]

you will never be able to take me out of who i am 😌

[thankskenpenders]

I saw some talk on twitter about there being a trans character in the Lara-Su Chronicles, but didn't see this mentioned in your post, so is this really true or just a rumour? I'm trans and just like to see more trans characters in ANYTHING

Believe me when I say you do not want trans rep from Penders lmao. Please love yourself

Anyway: Ken loves to pat himself on the back on Twitter for planning to put Representation in his stories, but it's really just an ego thing for him. It makes him feel important and progressive. None of it is actually present on the page in TLSC: Beginnings despite his many declarations of how progressive these books will be.

For example, he made a big deal out of the fact that Espio's daughter Salma is autistic now and how big of a deal that is for autistic Sonic fans everywhere, but she's not actually in either of the stories here. She is on the endpaper illustration if you want to look at her godawful new design, though!

He's also spent years making a big deal out of the fact that Rotor/"The Emissary" and Cobar were supposed to be a gay couple in M25YL and how that really broke new ground for comics etc. etc., but in this book all that really results in is a single panel of the Emissary holding Cobar and going "Goddess, don't let him die on me."

And, yes, Ken did, in fact, announce on Twitter some time ago that he plans on including a trans character in The Lara-Su Chronicles. It's apparently even a character we've already met, though whether this means he's retconning a returning Archie Sonic character to be trans or it's one of the new characters is still up in the air. It's presumably an echidna based on Ken's statements about how in the new universe "Echyd'nya" society is so totally progressive and they're "not hung up on gender identity the way humans are" and transitioning is "as common as the air 1 breathes," even going as far as implying that they can spontaneously change sex like amphibians. And yet at the same time this character being trans is a secret in-universe "for reasons that will rock someone’s world."

Exactly none of this is conveyed in any way, shape, or form in the book we got.

I don't really know who the trans character is supposed to be, honestly. My first guess was Dr. Zephyr/Zephur, because their design is slightly gender ambiguous, no one every refers to them with pronouns, and they have no data file to clarify their gender. But no, it can't be them if it's supposed to be an Echyd'nya, and also Zephyr/Zephur is probably just a guy because if they were a woman Ken would've given them an hourglass figure. Maybe... Remington? Given all the shit about his unknown origins, is the Big Twist supposed to be that he was DFAB? I don't know. I just know that, whatever it is, if the story containing the reveal of who the token trans character is even gets published, it's not going to be good.

[sophie-frm-mars]

Transmisogyny discourse on here has such an annoying shape to it.

Like I know that a bunch of it is just because it's from people who are / have always been very online / don't have much life experience as with all discourses that take on annoying shapes so I've been trying to not get too fixated on it but like,

Okay TMA (Transmisogyny Affected) and TME (Transmisogyny Exempt) are absolutely useful and valuable terms in the discussion of transmisogyny and how it works, because you need to be able to talk about who transmisogyny directly affects in order to talk about it. The much larger group of the total population is TME people, because that's (broadly) all cis people, and transmasculine people. So the majority of transmisogyny is necessarily directed from TME people to TMA people, but it's important to understand that as a social force it is actually directed from everyone towards TMA people. Trans women also engage in and perpetuate transmisogyny, sometimes incredibly vicious and harmful transmisogyny - the point of these terms is to identify the groups relevant to the discussion, not to identify an innocent oppressed class and an oppressor class who does entirely 100% of the social dynamic.

The next annoying part of the discourse is that in talking as if TME people = the transmisogyny doers, we keep winding up at a transfems vs transmascs discourse. This part of the discourse is like 1 part transfems misidentifying where the fight worth fighting is to 5 parts transmascs wanting to talk about ways they're also oppressed to like 20 parts raw transmisogyny. Yes, people who perform masculinity under patriarchy are more respected by partriarchy and get some benefits from that, and this is reflected in the differences between experiences of transmascs and transfems. This will be true everywhere that there is the basic patriarchal binary gender division between masculine (possessing agency, meaningful subjectivity, power) and feminine (being a type of property that belongs to others). Incidentally this is why the dyke butch/femme dichotomy is just there to sell more gender.

Everyone should get to perform their gender in a way that makes them happiest, and the problem is that we live under a patriarchy, which disempowers some people for the ways they perform their gender. I'm getting really basic here because some people on here talk like they need reminding.

The real reason the discourse is annoying though, just like all online discourses are, is because none of it is about how to organise to actually fight transmisogyny - that is, to make things meaningfully better for transmisogyny affected people.

2 years ago in the UK a teenage trans girl, Brianna Ghey, was stabbed to death after a prolonged campaign of transmisogynistic bullying by her classmates that the adults in her school life were absolutely aware of and did nothing about. Her death was the most important thing to every trans person in the UK for a moment, and then the political energy just dissipated without gaining any momentum. This is because organised structures of trans community, protest, politicisation and direct action just weren't there.

3 years ago in the UK a cis woman, Sarah Everard, was murdered by a police officer. There was an organised vigil which was politicised by Sisters Uncut, a feminist direct action group with chapters across london and the UK which had evolved to embrace police abolition over the course of its existence. The police escalated against the vigil and the spectacle of the police crackdown on women mourning the death of a woman murdered by police became a crucial moment in police abolition discourse in the UK. Because Sisters had already been laying down the organisational infrastructure for years, because it had been holding discussions among members and because it had responded to its members needs, it was in a strong enough position to act quickly and make change in the public consciousness. (You can read more about this in Abolition Revolution by Aviah Sarah Day and Shanice Octavia McBean.) If there was an organisation half as well put together as Sisters Uncut present in the trans community in the UK when Brianna Ghey was murdered, the organised response could have done something similar and meaningful.

I wrote a bit here about how trans people could use an assembly-organisation model to achieve meaningful change, but that's just my personal proposal for what would make a difference. The larger point is that discoursing over transmisogyny online, just like all discoursing online, is just shadows on the wall of the cave.