#but i still took it just as seriously as a trans name change regardless

[starbuck]

not to moralize fiction (and i mean that unironically) but, as a trans person, when a character has a distinct birth name and chosen name and people opt to call them their birth name, i DO take notice of that and that it’s generally cis people who do it.

again, this isn’t me actually making any sort of moral judgement, i just think it’s interesting how chosen names are more likely to be inherently respected as sacred by trans people due to our real life experiences.

[lovelivingmydreams]

A story by heroes and villains

Virgil Anker: better together

Virgil learns to accept help from others.

“Ugh! I am done!” Virgil glanced up from his assignment to see Roman let himself fall back into his chair with relief. Their first study session had gone rather well. They should probably reserve one of the discussion booths next time. The poor librarian had needed to remind them to be quiet multiple times. They’d just had too much fun. But Virgil could understand Roman’s exhaustion. It was time they wrapped things up. “Give me a sec, I have to finish this thing for English,” he muttered absentmindedly as he focused once more.

“Want me to read it trough for you?”

Virgil looked up in surprise. “You don’t…” he started. He didn’t even know why he was feeling like he’d done something wrong right now. Picani might be able to help him figure it out during their session after Virgil got back from his trip to the zoo with uncle Thomas tomorrow.

“We’re here to help each other Virgil. If I didn’t want to help you I wouldn’t offer. I thrive on being of help to my friends. It’s no trouble.” Right. Roman was like that. For everyone, not just him. It was okay to let him help. Virgil found himself smiling a little sheepishly and nodded. “Alright. You can read it when I’m done,” he allowed quickly turning back to his work.

When he finished his essay he looked up to find Roman in the zone. Which was excellent. It made it easier to sneak up on him. Apparently those with ADHD were extra susceptible to his cloak. Did he have proof for that? Well it was more of a hypothesis, but he had no means to test it. It made sense though.

And Roman had yet to prove him wrong.

Virgil cloaked himself, moved to stand right next to Roman and looked over his shoulder. It looked like he was designing a fashion line. Trans girl dresses, Pansexual messenger bags… as well as formal clothing inspired by broadway and Disney characters it seemed. He dropped his cloak.

“Seems I’m not the only one who can draw up some clothes.” Virgil had to stifle his laughter when that observation nearly made Roman jump 4 feet in the air.

“Will you stop that!?” he hissed.

“Not a chance,” Virgil chuckled as he picked up Roman’s sketches.

“This looks good though… You ever thought of becoming a fashion designer?” he suggested casually, allowing himself to imagine starting a brand with Roman someday.

“You are a genius!” Roman exclaimed, making Virgil’s heart jump.

He played it cool though. He’d gotten good at that over the last two years. Pretending that Roman’s smile didn’t turn his insides upside down. “It’s the least I can do. I sent in the designs like you said… I’m kind of excited.” He was. He hoped to catch a glimpse when he went out tonight.

“I’m sure next time you see DreamPrince on the news he’ll be wearing your design.” It was nice, having someone believe in him like that. Other than his dads that is.

“We’ll see,” he smiled as he handed Roman his laptop.

“Well,” Roman announced after a while. “I think you can hand this in with confidence Virge.”

Virgil felt himself relax at that. Roman wouldn’t say that if he didn’t mean it.

“So… I recall something about pizza? I’m starving!”

Virgil chuckled and lead the hungry Hispanic to the restaurant he’d suggested.

Virgil reminded himself over and over that this wasn’t a date, but it was very hard. Especially when, near the end of their meal Roman suddenly started acting nervous. “So… Um… There’s this… Shoot wait a minute,” Roman got up and picked up his phone.

“Si mama…? Que?” Virgil watched Roman look at his watch and jump.

“Perdona! I’ll be there soon.” With that he hung up and took out his wallet. Rambling all the way.

“So sorry Virge! Time got away from us I’m afraid. I swear I intended to give you that ride… Can you call your dad… You know what? Just use the change to take the bus or a cab or something alright? My treat! I’ll call you later!” he promised as he tossed down a few bills before rushing away. Leaving Virgil behind a little stunned. Maybe it was a family thing? It looked urgent.

He took the bus as it was cheaper and there was a stop in his new street.

The house was nice. Though Virgil wasn’t used to it yet. Especially now, when his dads weren’t home, it felt weird being here. Luckily he didn’t plan on staying too long.

He texted his dad while getting dressed. By the time he left the house, he got a reply.

“Don’t wait up. Patton and Thomas say hi. Thomas wants to remind you of the trip to the zoo tomorrow.” Virgil smiled, he didn’t know uncle Thomas was going to be there too… Maybe these projects were just poker nights with the boys. He might have to ask them about it when they got home.

Regardless, duty called.

Virgil was starting to think that he might need to do take a break from turning in evidence for a bit. The criminals were getting agitated.

“I say we attack now! They are weak! We can take them down easily!” he heard one guy suggest. No, turf wars were a bad idea. Clearly he hadn’t thought about maintaining the power balance enough. Good thing he was about to even the playing field again. All these idiots had to do was get caught on his camera with something very illegal, preferably saying the bosses name or any clue the police could use for some kind of big bust.

The leader of this troupe seemed rather well respected. Virgil had learned to spot the difference between the ranks, and if this guy wasn’t answering to the big guy himself, then he was pretty close.

“Boss says we have a truce until the rat is found,” The big dude in question stated.

A truce? Was he that much of a threat? Should he feel flattered or scared?

The tugs argued back and forth a bit more and Virgil was seriously considering just getting out of here. Maybe he could trip up some lower tier members. Or go back to helping lost travelers for a while. Just enough to make the higher ups relax again. They wouldn’t rebuild their ranks too much if they thought it was an inside job or something. Right?

And if they’d realized someone was giving the cops everything they needed to stop them, they wouldn’t plan anything major for a while. Unless the boss was stupid.

Suddenly Virgil saw a figure descend from the roof. He made a hero landing, straight from a superhero movie.

Virgil’s eyes widened. It couldn’t be…

“Do you gentlemen have permits for those weapons?” Dream Prince asked with a deep, booming voice as he rose up, wearing the full costume Virgil had designed. Including the cape. What was he doing here? Stupid question. He was government sanctioned. The chief was on the news a few days ago claiming him as one of theirs.

Which meant she probably asked him to look for Virgil. Does that woman never give up?

The gang was confused by his appearance. One of them calling the young hero ‘prince clown’. Virgil was too far away to see it, but he was willing to bet the clown in question was not too pleased with that.

With a gesture from the leader the gang was silenced. “Sure kid,” he said in a voice that made Virgil stand on high alert. “Got mine right here.”

Or find the stories of Logan and Roman in the Master post

Before Virgil could react in any meaningful way, Prince had shielded himself with his cape and the leader fired at least four rounds at him. The hero was unharmed though. The sounds of bullets falling to the ground the only evidence that they had ever left the barrel in the first place.

“Well now you just pissed me off. This is brand new!” Prince complained as he dropped the cape. And Virgil had to admit, it looked very cool. “I suppose you won't surrender peacefully?” he deduced.

The sound of guns being armed was his only answer. Which was stupid. That was already shown not to work. But sure, shoot with more guns. Don’t actually use your brain or anything. Prince let out an annoyed sigh as he hung his cape from a water pipe. “Fine.” And just like that, he sped towards the criminals through a rain of bullets.

It seemed like he had it handled, and Virgil was pretty sure that he would notice he was there no matter how well he cloaked himself if he got involved. And if he was here to look for him and bring him in for whatever the chief had planned…

Still, he couldn’t make himself just stand by.

He jumped in and helped disarm the criminals and caught a few punches, Prince seemed unlikely to dodge. Pretty soon he felt like Prince was adapting his fighting to his presence which told him that he was in fact spotted.

Soon the gang was down on the ground and their disassembled guns were on a pile on the floor. Virgil returned to the shadows once the sirens lit up the alley.

Prince donned his cloak once more and walked up to where the leader laid, showing off his boot.

“So… how does it feel to get your butt kicked by a guy in heels?” Virgil’s eyes widened as he saw Prince show off the boot. He was wearing the heeled boots? Sure he pulled them off, but that wasn’t a smart move. He couldn’t have had that much time to practice with them yet. Virgil sent the design on Tuesday. Unless… Maybe he’d worn heels before? That was a possibility. Though crime fighting in heels couldn’t be comfortable… Still, it did make the whole thing extra cool, Virgil had to admit.

Suddenly Dream Prince looked up at him and gave a playful wink. So he had noticed him. And he could see him even though he was cloaked right now… Or not quite. He wasn’t looking directly at him. So he knew he was there, just not where exactly.

“Good job Dream Prince. We've got it from here,” one of the police officers who’d come to make the arrests told Prince. The young hero turned to him and bowed.

“It's my pleasure to be of assistance to the police of this fine city.” While he turned around he made a gesture with his hand. Virgil could tell he was being asked to follow.

Part of him wanted to run the other way. But he was curious.

He wanted to take a good look at the costume. He wanted to scold Prince. He wanted to give him a message for the chief. Maybe find out what she wanted from him.

So he followed him all the way to a rooftop.

The city lights illuminated Prince from the back, his cape floating in the wind.

Virgil wished he could take a picture. Roman would love this.

Prince took a step forward and bowed for him. He was really sticking to this Prince thing huh?

“Greetings Phantom. I must thank you for the assist now and three months ago. I am Dream Prince, he/him if you please. A pleasure to officially meet you.” So he had figured out when they’d met.

Virgil couldn’t help a chuckle. He was still cloaking himself. He’d never talked to someone like this before so he had no clue if and how that affected his voice.

“Phantom huh?” Hmm. He kind of liked it. Sure it confirmed that prince was here due to chief. But it was a cool nickname.

“Sure you can call me that. He/him… mind telling me what that was about? I thought you officials weren't let of your leash unless you could be responsible enough to not get yourself killed?” Did he sound a bit catty? Maybe. Was what Prince did idiotic? Absolutely.

Prince didn’t seem to agree. “Says the guy who has half the criminal underworld out for his blood.”

Virgil looked away. Damn. He’d hoped Prince was going to live up to Virgil’s original nickname for him. But he was no idiot.

“Do you have something against the program?” Prince pressed.

“No I…”  Virgil tried to steady himself. It wasn’t Prince’s fault that he was pissed at his boss. “Sorry I’m just pissed at the cops for sending you, I guess,” he admitted reluctantly.

“Yet you chose to follow me up here?” Okay, so he really should give this guy more credit.

“Um… Well… I just…” He couldn’t tell him he was curious about him. That would give away interest on his part and he was not ready to let anything personal slide. He hated being put on the spot like this. Damn, this was not helping the stoic, mysterious guy aura he was going for.

“You interrupted my stake out!” he recalled. Right, one of the reasons he was mad at Prince. The lecture he’d interrupted with his observations.

“Do you know how long it takes to work my way up the ranks? First I have to find a low level runner, then I follow him to his boss, that guy to his and so up the ladder I go. I was getting real close to the big guy of this group. And now…” Sure, he had been thinking about needing to go more low profile for a while to let the rumors simmer out. But still.

“I apologize,” Prince replied sincerely with another bow. It was hard to be mad with this guy. Perfect hero material. “I merely intended to help. They were talking about killing you.”

He appreciated the concern really. But he overlooked one crucial detail.

“And now there is a price on your head! The leader of that little club is like two steps away from the big boss. They won’t be happy with you taking him in.” He couldn’t let him get himself on the bad guys’ list. Not because he thought he needed to protect him. Or maybe a little. When had he started feeling responsible for Prince? Was this how his dad felt? Why he’d tried to keep him from being overly self-sacrificing as a kid?

“You got dirt on them?” Prince wondered.

Virgil rolled his eyes. “Yes… But that’s not the point. They have no clue about me. Not really,” just some guesses and rumors. “But you are out in the open.” They’d know who to go after with him. “This is not your kind of mission Royal pain. And now that you are out, you can’t expect me to hold your hand any longer…” Virgil got distracted when Prince crossed his arm and smirked smugly. “You’ve been looking out for me all summer huh?”

That smug little… Fine he got him there.

He rolled his eyes with a scoff, trying to dismiss the statement. “It’s not like I came looking for you.” He just… Did the right thing when they met up.

Prince was the one dreaming if he thought he felt any kind of responsibility towards him. He was just trying to… To be someone he could be proud of. That was why he was doing this. To not feel week and useless. To help people, even if he couldn’t always help those he felt closest to.

“Still… Thank you…” Prince said gently, about to step forward again. But then he cringed and clutched his head. “Ow!”

The young hero sounded more annoyed than in pain.

He pressed a finger to his ear. Communicating with whoever was on the other line no doubt. “One. Loud. Two. Rude! I am in the middle of something! And did you seriously remotely reactivate my com?” Virgil could hear him hiss in the communication device, dropping the regal persona completely. Virgil bit back his amusement.

“I am fine, not a scratch on me,” Prince replied annoyed. “I’ll call you when I’m done here.” And then he seemed to take something out of his ear. He was so lucky Virgil wasn’t a bad guy or he’d just made it a lot easier on him to take him out.

“Sorry,” Prince sighed. “My mentor is… intense at times.”

“Mentor?” Virgil wondered. He’d heard about the GTA program and it’s monitors in the past. But mentors… that sounded a bit more one on one than just people who told you what to do.

“One of the people helping me practice my powers, test my limits. Comes with the program. It’s not just a babysit and a nice suit,” Prince joked.

“Oh…” Virgil didn’t know what to say to that. It was… Something he’d been wanting for a while now. For a way to test all that he could do. To figure out the shield, push the limits of his cloak and try and use his healing for others. Someone to help him strategize, to talk with when he’d had a tough night. But unless he was ready to come clean with his dad, that was out of his reach.

“Listen, I admit I was sent by the chief. But I didn’t come here to recruit you. I wanted to thank you and tell you… If you ever need someone to talk to, to help you figure something out… I’d be more than happy to oblige. No need to tell me your name or anything about yourself.”

Virgil looked at the offered hand. Maybe, it wasn’t impossible after all.

He considered his options. But it seemed like there was no catch to this offer. So he closed the gap and shook his hand.

“I’ll see you next time,” Prince offered kindly before letting go and running straight of the rooftop as if there was a walkway just for him.

Virgil smirked. Maybe he should wrap it up for tonight. Prince and the other heroes had the area covered. He’d collect the information he had on the tugs that were arrested tonight. Next time he saw Dream Prince, he’d hand that information to him.

If things went well… This could be a good partnership.

End of this part. Meet Janus and learn his side

@cirishere​ @hestianerd1 @moonlightshow00 @naturallyunstablegamer @alias290 @meowthefluffy @frida0043 @angelic-cali @selenechris @theblackveilinreverse

[all-things-lgbtqia]

JK Rowling continues to spout TERF ideology, continues to say she’s not a TERF.

JK Rowling, best known as author of the world-renowned Harry Potter series and the decider of who is and isn’t gay, took to Twitter within the past 24 hours to make what I can only assume was supposed to be a joke in response to a Tweet about efforts to help create a more equal world “those who menstruate” in a post Covid-19 world, saying that “I’m sure there used to be a word for those people.”

When called out for her erasure of trans men, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people - all people who can be assigned female at birth but do not identify as women - Rowling went on the defensive, criticizing the idea that “sex isn’t real”.

Here’s the thing, Rowling: sex is real. Trans people know this. That’s kind of what makes most of us trans. Their biological sex, which is a real and tangible thing, does not match the identity they see for themselves, which is also real although it can be a lot harder for us outsiders to see. This is why many trans people opt for modified clothing (such as binders and gaffs), hormones and surgeries to make the exterior body match the internal sense of gender. Granted, many trans people will not do this, and they are not obligated to do so, but the vast majority of us will opt for such measures, not just to make ourselves more comfortable in our skins, but also so people like you don’t keep misgendering us and then pretend to be the victim when we call you out on it (which you’re doing right now). Absolutely no one is arguing that biological sex isn’t real.

She then goes on to say that saying women like her, “who’ve been empathetic to trans people for decades”, hate trans people “because they think sex is real and has lived consequences - is a nonsense”.

Like I said Rowling, sex is real and absolutely no one is saying otherwise. You’re the one who keeps saying it. You said it during the Maya Forstater debacle and you’re saying it now. “Woman” is not a term that refers to someone who is biologically female. An overwhelming amount of the time it does, but not always. “Female” and “female-bodied” are somewhat controversial terms when it comes to afab transgender people, but they always refer to someone who is biologically female. “Afab” is an acronym for “assigned female at birth”, which can even refer to cis women. So as you can see, there are better terms to refer to someone with female reproductive organs than “women”. And believe it or not, a lot of those “lived consequences” are often the same for a lot of afab people. Not everyone has the privilege to transition at 6-years-old, before the horrors of the real world affect most of us. Many afab trans men (I would like to quickly acknowledge that some trans men may be biologically intersex), non-binary and gender-nonconforming people will have lived as females or a somewhat “female experience” up until they come out of the closet and begin their transition, if they do so at all. Pre-transition afab people are still subjected to the same amount of sexism, misogyny, sexual harassment and general dangers that come with being a woman because even though they are not women, society sees them as women. And yes, these people will even menstruate, because they have a female reproductive system (although it is worth noting that some people born with these parts may not menstruate at all, because biology is weird and sometimes things don’t function the way they’re supposed to). And on top of all that, trans women will also face the same hazards during and after the main stages of their transitions. In fact, statistically speaking, transgender women are even more likely to experience male violence than cis women, so let’s not pretend they aren’t involved in this whole conversation at all.

And just a quick sidebar, like I said, some people with female reproductive parts don’t menstruate because their body just never kicks that system into gear. If a cis woman never menstruates because she’s one of those people, is she no longer a woman, J?

I would also like to take the time to comment on how she pretends trans people don’t exist when she wants the spotlight and only references them when she gets called out for it. This is a lot like the, “I can’t be racist, I have black friends” “argument”. We’re not tools that you can use and then put back in the closet when you’re done (only we can decide if it’s time to go back in the closet, and I would rather not do that again, thank you very much). We’re not accessories you can flaunt to show how accepting you are. We exist even when you’re not making exclusionary remarks and pretending that the issue at hand is exclusive to cis females only.

She goes on to claim she would support trans people if we are discriminated against. I don’t have a Twitter account so I can see only very limited Tweets online, but so far I haven’t seen her comment on the proposed UK bathroom bill that would force trans people to use the bathrooms that correspond with the sex marker on their birth certificates. If she has commented, let me know and I will update this section of this post appropriately.

She tries to justify herself by saying she is well-read in scientific journals and transgender experiences, so she knows the distinction between sex and gender. But if this was the case, she wouldn’t still be using “woman” to refer strictly to cis women, and she certainly wouldn’t be using it to describe all  people who menstruate.

She says, “Never assume that because someone thinks differently, they have no knowledge.” And she would make a good point, if saying that only women menstruate and implying that if you menstruate you are a woman, plain and simple, wasn’t TERF rhetoric. Listen, you can know all about a subject as complicated and relatively new as gender identity, but knowledge and acceptance are two different things. Just because you major in Africana Studies and can name just about every major figure in black history doesn’t make you less racist when you clutch your purse tighter when you see a black man jogging down the street. Having a degree in Women’s Studies doesn’t make you any less sexist when you tell a woman to make you a sandwich because you disagree with her opinion. And reading scientific papers about transgender people and what it all means doesn’t make you less transphobic when you make sweeping claims that only women menstruate, and that transgender people don’t understand the struggles of being a woman.

In what is her most damning move so far, Rowling then Tweets out, “‘Feminazi’, ‘TERF’, ‘bitch’, ‘witch’. Times change. Woman-hate is eternal.” One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just doesn’t belong...

I get it, there are plenty of terms and phrases used with the intent of shutting up women you don’t agree with. TERF is not one of those terms. TERF is in the same category as racist, misogynist, neo-nazi, etc. NOT the same category as women-silencing words like ‘bitch’ or ‘feminazi’. A TERF is a trans-exclusionary radical feminist, someone who discredits the existence and experiences of transgender people (primarily trans women) because they feel like it (the transgender experience) doesn’t belong in discussions of women’s rights, or even that it threatens their identity as women. Sounds kinda familiar, doesn’t it? Calling someone a TERF is not a silencing behavior, and you’d figure a feminist would understand this. Calling someone a TERF is calling them out for behavior, while also letting the transgender community know that this is not a safe person to be around. If anything it’s a warning label. 

And look, don’t take this all to mean I hate women. I don’t. I only hate it when we pretend that an issue such as menstruation is exclusive to cis women. It isn’t. Women’s issues typically aren’t restricted to cis women. Trans women will experience violence and hate, usually at a disproportionately high rate when compared to their cisgender sisters. Trans men will often experience discrimination pre-transition, and maybe even post-transition from people who still see them as women. Not only that, but trans men typically experience the issues that come along with being biologically female (again, those that are afab). Most transgender men will menstruate and experience all the absolutely wonderful symptoms that come along with it. Some transgender men even get pregnant and have babies. No one is arguing that women have it easy. Transgender people - regardless of if they’re trans women, trans men, non-binary, agender, gender fluid, or gender-nonconforming - don’t want to erase women’s experiences throughout the years. We just want to live our lives in peace like everybody else. I just wish Rowling would stop pretending otherwise.

Is JK Rowling a terrible person? I don’t think I can go that far. She has made some serious contributions towards the acceptance of LGB (although notably not T) themes in children’s media, supports the Black Lives Matter movements, and even showcases fan art from very young fans on her Twitter. Although, she did share an article talking about the lesbian experience with discrimination and erasure, which is very important (hell, I admittedly don’t come across a lot of lesbian content on my Tumblr feed so I don’t get a chance to reblog a whole lot of it), but it also says that “ask my pronouns” is decidedly anti-lesbian, and paints the entire LGBTQIA+ community (referred to as “LGBTQ” with the quotes) as greedy, money-hungry, well-supported, and even predatory against children. Is this just a subject I’m not all that knowledgeable in? Perhaps, but I have a really hard time taking your arguments seriously LGBTQIA+ community is decidedly predatory against children, but I digress. I will say, however, that I am just disappointed. I’m disappointed someone who has been all about standing up to bullies and fighting against oppression has been using her platform to side with bullies and take part in said oppression. I’m disappointed she lumps “TERF” in with “Feminazi” and other terms designed to discredit women with opinions. And above all, I’m disappointed that she claims to offer us support when her actions support just the opposite. But, after all we’ve seen over the years, I can’t say I’m surprised.

[sir-camelot]

This Pride I decided to write a little bit about my ever going journey traversing my identity in the LGBTQIA community. Will put it under a cut so it doesn’t clutter feeds.

My relationship with being the black sheep of the family was always something to be proud of. I wasn’t like everyone else, I was a cut above because I never let the things that tore my family down do the same to me.

This continued onward when I started to identify as queer, though it took a long time to reach that point, I believe I was twenty-one when I moved from heterosexual to bisexual. At the time I was in a same sex relationship and while most of my family never outright told me they disapproved, I got many ignorant questions, many stereotyped assumptions, and my grandfather outright saying that it was a waste of a woman.

I never let myself feel shame.

My mom came to me while I was in my room one day, she sat down and told me her church tries to tell her every Sunday that homosexuality is evil and that anyone who identifies as such will go to Hell. She then tells me she’s known me forever and that I have a pure soul and that I love with everything that I am and that she could never see my love for another person, regardless of their gender, as something that would be evil or instantly damn me.

I knew then my mom would always be my ally.

It wasn’t very long after this that I learned about transgender persons and began doing research and politely asking questions of those willing to educate me. I took an interest in it because, well, I had always been uncertain that I was the right gender. Even in my earliest years as a child I lamented about how badly I wanted to be a boy, and truly that never stopped, my reasons just became more than ‘I want to pee standing up’.

I was lucky that it wasn’t as strange to be a tomboy as it might be the other way around, my parents let me embrace wearing boy clothes, playing with boy toys, and later cutting my hair in boy styles.

For years after learning about transgender folk I questioned my identity, but I had known myself this way so long, could I be anything different? Was it too late for me? Would anyone take me seriously?

Last year, in November, I came out as trans and received overwhelming support from friends, followers, and even from some of my family. It has been a journey, but each step has reaffirmed who I am. Each message I received talking about how much happier and confident I seem from people who don’t even see more than my internet self really just hammered home how much this has changed me for the better.

I started testosterone June 13th, my fee waiver for my name change was approved and my name will be changing July 10th. I am so elated with each step, becoming slowly more confident, basking in the love and adoration of my friends, family, and partners.

This Pride I will celebrate all of those who fought to be recognized, to be treated equally, and those who we lost. I will celebrate all that we have and who we are, those in the public eye and those still in the closet.

My name is Cameron and I’m a proud, polyamorous, pansexual trans man.

[terresdebrume]

Writing, big projects, and transitioning

The interesting thing about making my previous post is that I was joking but also now that I’m thinking of it a little more seriously...it’s probably closer to the truth than I realized at first. It’s not that I don’t want to write because I do!

In theory.

In practice, every time I try to give any of my stories a good thinking, my brain just goes ‘nope’ and that’s how I watched the entire New Tales of the City series last weekend, or spent most of today alternating between reading Good Omens fanfic and staring at the ceiling. (Well, that, and also I’m still tired from yesterday’s eval) It’s weird how even doing the things you like can become an absolute chore after a while—I’m glad I wrote the Superbat fic, honest! But by the end of it I had to push myself into it like I was working on my thesis all over again.

The strange thing is...I think I want to get used to longer fic projects like this.

First of all, the more time passes, the less I think of fic ideas that I feel able to fit in short fics. I don’t know if it’s just experience, or feeling better than I ever have in my life, or any combination of any other factor but...I think I like writing longer stories. I’ve learned so much in life through my longer fic projects, not just about my own mental state and mental journey—looking at you, SEADLA—but also about my working abilities.

Learning to write long fics, especially long fics that I finished before I started posting them—I’m thinking, of course, of the SBB story, but also about things like OMWK or 3WH—taught me again that I’m capable of dedicating a lot of time and effort to things I’m passionate about, even if it goes on in time and even if I’m busy in other areas of life. It’s taught me, or at least started to teach me that I like long projects—that I can undertake them for the sake of completing them rather than doing it only for the reward of readers’ attention. Not that that hurts, mind, but where I used to be unable not to share what I was working on right away because I wanted immediate praise for my work, I’ve learned to take the crafting and the finished job as ends and goals for themselves.

It’s also...raising some questions for me, but interesting ones, I think.

Because—and this is not a recent realization, exactly—I’m starting to understand that if I take too much time and energy to talk about a project, then I tend to lose both the energy and the motivation to work on it. It is, fortunately, not a problem for fic writers the way it can be for professional writers, but it’s still something I feel is good for me to know about myself...and it is, I think, possibly a little related to what I was saying about my staff review thing yesterday.

I don’t—I haven’t been aware of this thing about me long enough to say with certitude, but I think one of the reason people don’t realize I’m invested in a project if because more and more, unless I’m asked about it, I don’t really talk about it that much. It feels like I do sometimes, but if the number of posts in my SBB story’s tag is anything to go by...I didn’t talk about it as much as I felt I did through the past six-seven-ish months.

Like I said, I can’t know right now if this theory is correct or if I’m missing something, but if it is correct, then I don’t know if I’ll be able to ‘correct it’, as it were. It’s not that I’d want to make it disappear entirely, but learning my boss didn’t think I was invested in the kids’ classes until recently when I’ve been consistently working on kids’ classes for the three years I’ve been working here was...a thing. Granted, he had zero reasons to realize that if I hadn’t been motivated I’d have done the same thing I did for the teenagers’ classes and tried not to get them—aka, I would have changed jobs.

But yeah, overall...valuable lessons, there. It’s also kind of reassuring on the topic of transitioning too, actually. It’s a project I’ve been putting off for...well, I don’t even remember when I came out, oops xD But yeah, I’ve been putting it off for many reasons, not the least of which was that I had no idea how to go about it—still have very little idea about that—and was kind of afraid I’d...I don’t know, give up halfway through, or realize I wasn’t actually trans after all.

It’s been at least a year and a half since I came out to myself and to the world, though, and while there are still many parts of my life that don’t fit with the...uh. Classical Trans Narrative*, so to speak, one thing that hasn’t changed is that I like the days when I’m in a binder better, and it makes me smile every time a new person starts calling me Matt (one of my students took to it recently, it’s adorable and I keep meaning to thank his father for giving him that tip) and I enjoy imagining my future life as a man much mire than I enjoy imagining myself a future as a woman, when I ever do that anymore.

It’s still strange because I still kind of...misgender myself in my head, still. Because I’m not exactly traditionally masculine, and I’m not that eager to put up that front (being a man like Good Omens’ Aziraphale would be much more in my ballpark, I think, for example) and gender stereotypes still have a certain grip on me. On the one hand, it’s probably what allowed me not to put my finger on being trans for as long as I lived with my parents, which I think is probably a good thing overall, but on the other hand..well, this.

Regardless...I’m starting to feel more confident about this, and also tired enough about the whole waffling situation that I’m beginning to really consider preparing my name-change material for December, when I’ll get to France and have an occasion to file it with the city hall. That implies researching how it’s done, but I still have time for that, and right now just...having that as a clear and small chunk goal is enough.

And hopefully, by the time I get there, I’ll have enough space in my brain to be writing again :P

---

*By Classical Trans Narrative I mean the social image of a person who has been consciously dysphoric their whole life and was able to put words on why that was from a very young age—give or take a number of details. This reflects the experience of some—many?—trans people, but not mine, and sometimes it’s hard to truly believe that I ‘deserve’ to be trans because of those differences.

[boyprincessmanic]

December 31st marked my one-year anniversary taking testosterone for my gender transition. This has been a long time in the making so I thought I’d post some pictures. I’ll put a cut so my long-ass post isn’t filling up your dash lol

This picture was taken in June 2011, before I started questioning my gender at all. I used to love taking selfies. I got a digital camera for my birthday when I was like 14 and I became an Expert at taking selfies. My confidence wasn’t super high, but it wasn’t super low either. I just thought taking pictures was fun!

A few months later, December 2011. This was probably right before I started questioning my gender, but I was very heavily in denial. This period of my life was probably the deepest state of denial I’ve ever experienced. I let my hair grow long again and insisted that I was a girl, no matter how miserable I felt. It was something I had no control over (as I thought), so I might as well accept it. I stopped taking selfies for a long time.

Of course, I did eventually start seriously questioning myself, mostly with the help of my friend Zack. I thought, maybe I’m not a girl. Maybe I do have some sort of control over this. I got my hair cut short and started styling it, and I felt amazing. It was the best I’d felt about myself in probably a year, or more. This picture was taken in September 2012, and this was the start of me taking selfies again. The first time someone saw me as a boy I was ecstatic. At the time, I didn’t feel 100% male or 100% female, so I began to think I was maybe non-binary (but I said genderqueer at the time). 

December 2012. I was the Maid of Honor at my friend’s wedding, and as the title suggests I was Honored to be a part of her ceremony. However, this was a gigantic turning point in my life. I distinctly remember the thought “I’m not a woman” repeating in my head as I prepared for this event. I was so afraid of actually being transgender that even though some part of me knew for sure I wasn’t a girl, I didn’t want to be a man either. I was caught in the middle, and it was very confusing. Six months later I came to the realization that I am meant to be a man, so that’s what I did.

By June-August of 2013 I was presenting as male. I was still too scared to tell my parents exactly how I was feeling, but they knew I was unhappy living as a girl and was at the very least questioning my gender identity. I wouldn’t come out seriously to my parents until April 2014, when my mom took it very well and my dad remained mostly quiet on the matter. In December 2015 I started seeing a gender therapist, and I made it my goal to be on T by June 2016. In March 2016 I told my dad that I’ve been seeing a gender therapist and was going to ask for hormones. His response was Less Than Ideal™ and I plummeted into the worst year of my life.

This is hard for me to talk about because it’s hard to admit, and it’s scary to admit. It’s scary to admit my weakness, and I have a hard time sharing my thoughts and feelings. In 2016 I thought I was going to kill myself. I decided I would rather die than hurt my dad, but not transitioning was killing me just as bad. Every single day I went to work, I sat in my car and cried before forcing myself to go into the office. I had breakdowns at work almost daily, having to leave the office to cry. I researched how to buy a gun. I regularly stood on the sidewalk in preparation to jump in front of a vehicle. I tried to climb the ladder onto the roof of my office, but my phobia for heights is what stopped me. I remember the exact moment I realized I didn’t just want to die, I wanted to kill myself, and it was the most scared I’ve ever felt in my life.

Obviously, I didn’t kill myself. I held on mostly because people had expectations of me. Or because I didn’t want to hurt my parents, or my partner. I didn’t want to leave them alone, so I stayed for them. Or maybe I stayed for me. I’m not entirely sure. The more time I stuck around, the more I realized that my transition should be for me, and not for anyone else. I decided to transition, regardless of the consequences. I would rather be alone, living as myself and loving myself, than living a lie and surrounded by people who love a fake version of me.

On December 31st 2017 I took my first shot of testosterone. It was thrilling. I knew this was the moment my life was going to begin. I didn’t tell my dad right away that I was going to be taking hormones, but I knew he would figure it out eventually. He’s still not where I would like for him to be in his acceptance of me being trans, but he’s getting there. Right now it’s okay. For how much longer, I’m not sure. But I’ll get there when I get there.

These pictures were taken today. I almost never get misgendered by strangers anymore. My coworkers all call me by my real name. I’m on my way to getting top surgery this year, and maybe legally changing my name. I feel better about myself every single day. I still have bad days, but overall my self-love is higher than I can recall it ever being. I’m glad I didn’t die in 2016. I would never have been able to see myself with a beard (even if it is a whispy one haha).

Thanks for reading, and thank you for hanging around with me on my journey. I know some of you have been around for quite some time. I love you very much.

Here’s hoping that 2019 is a good year for us all. ❤ 

[c-you-on-the-otherside]

05/17/18

The past few weeks or so, I’ve been thinking a lot what my next move should be. What I find to be helpful in my life, is if I don’t like my current situation, I start looking for what’s next and what’s better.  This helps me to always keep moving forward, to always keep striving, and to keep me away from the negative thoughts of a current situation I dislike. So I’ve thought a lot lately about what’s after Hawaii, since I don’t particularly like it here. In my mind I had a few options. 

1.) I can really get shit done and focus on studying for my California Fluoro test so I can complete my California License and work in California as a traveler after this assignment.  2.) I could head back home to the east coast,be closer to all my awesome friends,  get an apartment in Boston with  someone I know, and use this time to settle into a good paying job in Boston while also going back to school for MRI. Part of this motive too would be so I am around resources and support groups that would allow me to begin my transition if I wanted to.  OR

3.) I could buy a house in Portland/Seattle, start a brand new life, work for Kaiser (because of their awesome health insurance benefits) and focus on being myself with possibility of establishing care and beginning my transition. 

Now all three options were very appealing to me. It’s almost as if, looking at them at face value, I wanted them all just as bad equally.  So I took a few days to break these down in my head and to really see what was going on in my mind.  I asked the universe for some guidance, and 2 days ago, I found myself watching a live video feed of one of my favorite trans guys I follow on instagram. This dude is awesome (palmer_fivevi) He is so real and he has a beautiful family: a beautiful girlfriend, and a beautiful daughter. And he is just spiritual, in everything he does, and everything he posts. I love following his journey. Because of him and his girlfriend, I got into Tarot, because I was intrigued by the way they live their lives, so beautiful and spiritually driven. Anyway, I’ve tried to message him a few times just asking for advice and trying to explain the point I was at in my life being pre-t, but it never got anywhere. He never responded to my messages and instead of taking offense to this, I just figured he is a man who leads his life effortlessly, and doesn’t have time to constantly respond to tons of messages he gets on the daily.  What I started doing though, is interacting with him and his family anytime they’d go on live chats, and I’d ask questions there and that way it actually ended up meaning more and being more intimate because they were personally answering my questions and I got to see their emotions. So 2 days ago, they went on live and I watched them for a good 40 minutes.  I asked a few questions about his life, like how they explain Emerson being trans to their daughter, and if he was already transitioned when he met Blue (his gf), how they met, and when Emerson started testosterone.  I remember a post where he explained that he started it later than most, and in his post he explained how this was his own personal preference and how he just wanted to be sure....how he followed the signs of the universe and did what he needed to do.  After this specific post is actually one of the times I tried reaching out, because I related to that a lot.  I think a lot of people are rushing into transitioning without actually thinking of all the factors, and I am not that person. It’s hard for me to relate with the trans guys who just jump in and do it, because I’m not that guy. I love my life in a very careful way, always turning the globe to look for different angles and perspectives and transitioning is absolutely no exception to how I live my life.  He never responded to that message, but I’ve always wanted to know his thought process a little more in depth. I’ve asked for my own guidance from the universe recently and Believe this was it’s answer. In the live chat, I asked him why he decided to transition so late and if he regretted it.  He responded saying that he’s been growing all his life, and he doesn’t regret one second of it. He wanted to be sure and so he took the time he needed to. I went on to say that I was pre-t and navigating this life of wanting to transition but not being sure. I told him I was 25 and felt like I was running out of time but how I also didn’t feel fully ready. Him and his gf came back with the most beautiful response. They told me that throughout life, we all transition. Every single point of your life is  transitional era, and regardless if you’re in a physical transition or not,everyone faces transitions. They told me to embrace the transition that’s happening now, because the pre-t phase is important mentally and is something to embrace and appreciate. They told me not to forget the small moments, like when someone first used he/him or used the name I have chosen for myself, and to absolutely not rush into it.  Everything they said was so beautifully worded and gave me the hope I needed and the tools I needed to find the answers I’ve been trying to find. I felt pulled to Boston bc I miss my friends and family and felt like I needed to start transitioning. But Boston will still be there, my friends and family will still be there, and transitioning can happen wherever I want it to and whenever I want it to. Theres no rush. This lead me to opening my eyes and seeing that I was trying to rush, and I was trying to become myself faster but the thing is I already am MYSELF. I already KNOW who I am, and if I have to live just a little longer in the wrong body, then I think I can manage because I’ve done just fine for 25 years. Putting my dreams on hold just to make a physical transition happen is kinda silly. I have plenty of years to look myself, but I won’t always get the chance to travel the way I am. So after that conversation, I quickly refocused my sights on California. I’ve set out to find this place for a long time and to end up there. I don’t know what my huge pull in towards that state, but something in my soul tells me that there is something great waiting for me out there, and I have to go out there and catch it. I’ve tried thinking about why I’ve also let so many distractions come in between me and seriously insane attraction to Cali, and all I can think of is that there is something great out there for me, something life changing, something that I wouldn’t have been ready for had I met it prematurely in the beginning of my travels. I’ve travelled for a year and I’m gearing up to settle down, so my next stop is Cali, and whatever that brings to the table, I think, will be something so special and exciting and I can’t wait to know what that is. After Cali, if I still want to settle in Portland/Seattle or Boston, than I totally can. This life isn’t a race and there is plenty of time to do all the things I want to do. For now, I need to focus on being my truest self that I can be, and continue doing the work I need to do to better myself and reach for the goals I’ve set out to accomplish. Life is truly a beautiful journey and I am so lucky to be living it...to have the opportunities I have, the ambition, the drive, and the never ending fight to keep on going. Keep on keeping on my friends. This life will test you and push you to your limits, but know that you’re the warrior in your own story. Stay strong.

[thedeadflag]

As a cis woman unfamiliar with a lot of what trans women go through, your blog has been a huge help in educating myself! Thank you so much for your patient and thorough explanations of the issues you see come up (particularly in the 100 fandom). I feel like you're opening a conversation that could help reduce transmysoginy in fandom culture.

Me prior to reading this comment, deleting the seemingly ever-present transmisogyny in my inbox

Me after reading this comment

I appreciate the sentiment, I really do. And i’m glad I’ve managed to help you learn.

Honestly, I do try to educate, I try to spread the word, I try to show people how to make themselves safer for trans folks, particularly trans women. I like putting in this work, because I believe people can change for the better, and I want to be a part of that change. I want to help. I’m happy to be patient and make long, detailed posts on a variety of things if it could help someone come around.

I’d like to believe I can help make fandom less dangerous and harmful to trans women, less steeped in transmisogyny, but my reach is pretty limited. It took all of 2 or 3 months to dial the transmisogyny and trans fetishization in The 100′s fandom up from a 4 to an 11. I’ve been at this for pretty much 2 straight years now, trying to reel back that damage, but it’s still sitting at about a 10.5 

Fact is, if the fandom wanted to be a safe place for trans women, it knows what it’d need to do. If the people who caused this to happen, or at least the ones that now regret it, wanted to undo the damage they’ve done, and to send a message to include and support trans women and fight transmisogyny, they know what they’d need to do. It was pretty simple to ramp things up to an 11. 

It’d be just as simple to ramp things back down. They’d just need to use their platform with the same tenacity and relentlessness as they did when spreading and promoting trans fetishization and transmisogyny, and pushing their followers to rally around trans women.

But it doesn’t happen. It’s chalked up as “drama”, because they’re not actually affected by it, and/or they don’t want to rock the boat and alienate potential followers and friends, regardless of whether they recognize there’s a real significant issue at hand. Which is the exact same dynamic trans women see in offline spaces when calling out transmisogyny. No one wants to do anything about it because it could cause friction among their social network, so it’s trans women that get the boot, who get ignored, passively or actively pushed out of those spaces. A lot are willing to acknowledge that something’s wrong, that we’re being hurt, maybe even by them, but next to no one’s actually willing to put in the effort and take the risk of sacrificing part of their social network to help us.

As Lexa once said: “So blood must not have blood applies only when it’s my people that bleeds.”

The clexa fandom rose up together in a united front after Lexa’s death to protest homophobia, the bury your gays trope, lesbian and wlw media representation, etc., clamoring for better, for improvement, that harmful representation caused real material harm to the community, and that media representation needed to be taken seriously. Everyone was spreading suicide hotline numbers while bemoaning the media content and social issues that make such an action necessary.

And yet, when it’s trans women tossed onto the pyre and violently misrepresented, when it’s trans women being hurt, it’s okay. Blood must not have blood, we need to calm down and accept that people are just exercising their creative freedoms, and that since some people, nearly all who aren’t us, enjoy the content, it’s perfectly fine and acceptable, and that we’re horrible people for openly criticizing offenders and the fandom as a whole. That we need to be ignored, and we can be ignored, without moral issue so long as people say that they love and support us, regardless of their actions. 

It’s a mess. Fandom is a mess. I’ve had a lot of people come tell me, or tag my posts, saying that the things I write about transmisogyny and trans fetishization in fandom are ‘interesting’. Or that they think there might be a problem that should get looked into. Or that they hope my posts can bring a discussion to the table.

When the reality is, this discussion has been had. We know specifically which problems are prominent, and why they crop up, and what harm they cause. It’s why I’m educating, or trying to. 

I don’t really want a conversation at this point, at least not in the vein of the ones i’ve had in the past. I’ve had conversations with a lot of the bigger name fetishists in the fandom, writers and readers, and the results of those conversations always end up as something along the lines of: 

“Well, I respect that trans women feel this way, but I’m creatively entitled to write/read/promote what I want, and I’m not harming anyone. Don’t like, don’t read. I’ll tag so you can filter the works out, but the stories help people, and i like writing/reading/promoting them. I’m not going to stop. If you can tell me how to help in ways that don’t involve me stopping writing/reading/promoting g!p, I’ll absolutely listen, though.”

Which is not helpful, even if it’s technically a ‘conversation’. The only way these ‘conversations’ can end positively is if all sides recognize that trans women such as myself are coming in as educators, and everyone else is coming in as students, to learn. That’s it. 

And there’s generally been an immense unwillingness for non trans women to accept that basic premise. I’m trying to teach people how to be less oppressive, how to harm us less. Unless these conversations recognize the power dynamics involved, rather than treating everyone as if we’re on a level plane, then they’re not going to help or be constructive in any way. hell, they can make it worse, by leaving folks thinking that they’ve done their part in talking to me and others like me, so now that they’ve heard us out, they can go on their merry way without criticism.  

Which is why after two years, I’ve hardly made any traction. Almost no one is willing to admit they reproduce transmisogyny and have anything to learn about how fandom and media can be use to exclude, misrepresent, harm, and direct harm towards marginalized groups that they don’t personally belong to. And if they do recognize that, very few are actually willing to do anything about it or care to do anything about it.

[sammierogers]

How It All Got Started

With 2018 just around the corner, I find myself looking back on three years of Detroit Invasion events. It has been a truly interesting and totally unexpected ride. A lot of people have asked how it got started and why. I guess it is time to put that down in writing both as a chronicle of sorts, but also as an explanation, since a few people, I fear, have misconceptions about these remarkable events.

To be quite honest, Detroit Invasion began by accident, and quite unintentionally. No one knew what was starting at that time, and the success and growth has been amazing.

At the beginning of 2014, after a lifetime of hiding from myself and every other human on Earth, I finally emerged into the light of day as myself, full of trepidation and some panic, and totally unsure of much at all, beyond the fact that I could no longer live my life in fear. I did not step out shyly and cautiously. I was more like a race car waiting for the light to change. I fairly exploded out of the gate, so strong was the pent up need formed over many decades.

In that first year I became a regular member of the local Detroit transgender community, and found I loved socializing with other girls. I discovered I loved to dance. And, I was blessed by many wonderful new friends who all helped me more than I can say. I just assumed the Detroit community, with it's friendly, warm, all embracing sense of family, was much like any other TG communities anywhere else. I have since learned this is not entirely true. From what I have seen, many cities have larger but far more balkanized communities rife with back biting and cliques. Detroit is not like that.

During the same period, I attended several large TG events around the country, exploring, watching...listening and learning. At most events, I found similar experiences.... a lot of workshops, classes and speeches, followed by some night time social events. But, honestly, the experiences left me disappointed. I am not young, but I am computer literate, and I know how to do research. And, beyond that, a career as a well trained professional actor has given me a good understanding of psychology and the ability to critically analyze complicated questions. For me, the classes and seminars, covering everything a transgender person might need, from medical advice to legal advice to such things as “ladylike behavior and comportment” were unnecessary... I confess, the last had me positively rolling with laughter....but then, I do know there are girls who need such things. For me, nothing in these classes offered me anything I did not already understand either from research or personal intuition. Rather, for me, the large events were about meeting and getting to know other people like myself...about discovering the breadth of experience in our community.... about making new friends, listening to other experiences, and, most of all, just having a good time in the company of other people who “get it”. For a degree I was disappointed by events that took themselves so seriously that the “fun” was given little attention. I'm a rock and roll girl. And I'm in no hurry to start acting or living like an aging grandmother.  I have too many years of missed experiences to make up for still. At home, much of our time together as a group was spent in social activities of a different sort, with a lot of time in nightclubs dancing. Detroit girls like to party and have fun. I went to events expecting a bigger and better version of this and quickly discovered an average Saturday night in Detroit was a better party than I could find at most national events. In fact, at several events that first year, as part of a group of Detroit girls in attendance, I found that other girls started asking around to find out what the “Detroit Girls” would be doing that night. It was eye opening. Apparently, we were not the only girls looking to kick up our heels a little.

In late 2014 I attended the Erie Gala in Pennsylvania with my friend Donna. There I met a couple of girls from Ohio who seemed of a similar mindset to those of us in Detroit, at least in regard to having a good time. We got to talking about our home communities, and they were intrigued. We invited them to come for a visit and see for themselves. A weekend in January of 2015 was agreed upon and the die was cast. I got online on a chat board used by many of the local girls and let them all know a couple of guests would be in town.

Let me pause and say this...on any given Saturday night in Detroit, the two main bars/nightclubs where TG go to hang out will host from 20 to 40 girls. On any given Saturday night.

That first weekend in January of 2015 we planned for both Friday and Saturday night. Friday was small and intimate. About 10 of us were there, altogether. You all know who you were, I am sure. Many claim to have been there. I can name names of the few who actually were. Regardless, it was a tiny affair. But the following night, when I walked into the bar, there were well over 100 people there. It was jam packed. I had never seen so many girls in that bar before. And it was an amazing night. So amazing that we all vowed we would have to do it again. And so we did, the following April. Only now, it seemed like our little event needed a name.

In the run up to the first weekend, one of our local girls had gotten on the chat board and asked “What's all this I hear about some t-girl invasion of Detroit?”

The name stuck. That April we held the second Detroit Invasion (Mk II). And that is how it all began.

But there is more.

A lot of people misconstrue the intent and actuality of Invasion events. Operating without any real knowledge or understanding (a common way to form opinions in America, unfortunately) many people think the Invasion events are nothing but “wild, over-sexed crossdressers”. Nothing could be further from the truth, although, in this Trumpian age of fake news, it seems no one need let actual facts get in the way of their own beliefs. And, sadly, within this vast community that we call “transgender” there remains a lot of backbiting and gossip and much of what we term a “trannier than thou” attitude. For the uninitiated, “trannier than thou” (Sometime shortened to “Triple T”) refers to a sad but all too common form of self aggrandizement that targets those considered further back on the road to self acceptance as somehow unacceptable and “lesser than”, and as such the target for scorn and derision. It is an ugly and unfortunate phenomenon that serves to divide us instead of finding commonality. It defines people by labels instead of facilitating understanding.

Here is the thing. Critical thinking in this country seems to be in sad supply. It has been replaced, it seems, by the habit of “feeling” an answer to a complicated problem, and then attempting to rationalize those feelings through thought. It leads to a lot of faulty logic and poor conclusions. Actually, all too often, even the attempt to rationalize feelings is absent, as more and more people go through life forming totally emotionally driven and, often, totally illogical ideas.

So... here is the truth about Detroit Invasion events.

Yes, they are social only. We make no attempt to laden them with classes or speeches.

Yes, they are a lot of fun, at least for anyone who knows how to have fun. But they are not “a bunch of oversexed crossdressers”

Far from it.

Detroit Invasions are totally egalitarian when it comes to the transgender umbrella. There is no litmus test to determine if someone is “trans enough”. Our Detroit family accepts everyone. Everyone is welcome. As such, we have all kinds of girls, from fully transitioned post op through pre op, through non op.... we have full time, part time and first time. In fact at every single Invasion we have welcomed at least some girls “out” for the very first time. No girl left behind. It is a big tent and we welcome everyone with love, support and warmth.

But, on another level, Invasion events are political. Visibility is a political act in our world. And, at Invasion, girls are very visible. There is political empowerment working on two levels. On one level, those of us too shy or inexperienced to venture into totally public spaces are able to safely do so, visiting, as themselves, everything from nightclubs and bars, to river boat cruises, casinos, theme parks and auto shows and more. Further, Invasion events are political because they force mainstream people in these spaces to interact with transgender people (often for the first time). Many mainstream people have never knowingly met one of us. And even when they do find themselves in the same space as one of us, such as at a restaurant, interaction rarely takes place. This is not the case with an Invasion event. It is hard, if not impossible, to not interact when the space you are in is suddenly “invaded” by 50 to 100 happy, gregarious, transgender women. And in that unavoidable interaction, people discover we are not strange and exotic, not cartoons, not sexual predators, but rather some pretty nice, happy, warm, and fun human beings. Much like anyone else. We become familiar. That word....”familiar” ...the root of that word is family. In a sense, we become family. If you fail to grasp that fact about Invasion then you miss the point entirely. Invasion events are political action events on a very basic, non threatening level. But, of course, they are also a lot of fun.

Our team has now grown beyond just me and includes half a dozen or more over worked volunteers. Together, we plan, coordinate, and host four three day events each year. Each event is similar but each is different with aspects tailored to take advantage of seasonal opportunities. We bring in girls from all over the country. By memory, our “little” event has drawn girls from the following states and provinces... Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Tennessee, New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas, Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico, California, Missouri, Kansas, Minnesota, West Virginia, North Carolina, New Jersey and Ontario …. and I have probably missed a few. Each event draws between 100 and 150 girls. Because each event brings out different girls, in total each year we affect the lives of more than 350 transgender individuals. By that count, we are larger than several of the “major” national transgender events. And we are growing. In 2018, if all goes well, TGDetroit, the sponsoring organization for the Detroit Invasions, will attain full non profit status. And plans are already in place not only for Invasion events and activities running through the next two years, but also for TGDetroit itself to grow into a full transgender support agency where the Invasion events will only be a small part of our expanding goals. With your support and a lot of work we will be able to help a lot of girls.

Because, ultimately, as much fun as it is to “have fun”, this is about way more than that. Far too many TG live lives of quiet desperation...attacked physically and verbally, abandoned by friends and family, fired from jobs...and all simply because the average American remains uneducated and ignorant about us and harbors misconceptions that lead to hatred and abuse. It is a war zone out there for a lot of girls, and a lonely life in those personal trenches. Detroit Invasion is about giving girls a three day pass every now and then to get out of those trenches, and breathe freely for a while. To let their hair down in a safe space among family who really treat them as family. They are more than parties. Every girl that comes to Invasion becomes part of an ever expanding family and Invasion events are truly a lot like family reunions. And even beyond that, what we do is all part of a plan and vision to move the ball down the field... to try, in some small way, to make a difference and make life for girls down the road a little better. It's our way of saying thank you to the girls who helped us. And, be sure to understand this.... TGDetroit is not about making it easy for a few “passable” girls to fit within some archaic and mythological gender binary. TGDetroit is about tearing down that binary....destroying it and every shred of pain it has caused... and replacing it with a world where all of us, from across the entire gender spectrum.... ALL of us....have a place that is safe, secure and respected. That is our goal.

Those of you who know me personally will have heard me say “I just throw parties” Yes, it's true. That's what we do. But, it's also lot more than that. Instead of just having an opinion....come see for yourself. We will make sure you feel like part of the family.

[lizzieart]

Hey!! As much as I'd enjoy the idea I doubt I'm worth that much to you, but I'd love to hear about the characters you've created and if they are based upon anyone you know or knew for the ideals behind them. Hope you get this soon I'm interested in your stories.

Well first of all bless you, and second you are already worth that much to me because you took the time out of your day to send me a message!  Seriously, thank you.  I am a lonely garbage can.  And third, yes, some of my characters are loosely based on people, but most are just based on traits I relate to and/or admire.

I’m going to put the rest of this answer under a read more; if you choose to read it, buckle up, ‘cause there’s a huge fucking wall of text below.

It all started with a homebrew one shot my friend Cait was running in the winter of 2013.  I had never played a tabletop RPG before (I’ll still say tabletop even though she was running it online), but I had always been interested in her worldbuilding and characters; it was a frequent topic of discussion for us.  Plus, I trusted her pretty much explicitly with my sensitivities, so even though I was anxious, I agreed to join up.  The campaign didn't start for a few months after, so I spent plenty of time asking Cait as much as I could (without spoilers) about her world.  After all, I was (and still am) a person who completely overthinks every little detail of something I’m into (yay special interest fixation).

Just some background on the setting; there are two groups of people in this world, magi and non magi.  Magi were heavily persecuted (like at the threat of death) for hundreds of years, but not so openly in present time (although this can depend on region).  The Havens is a city built almost exclusively by mages, for mages.  It was a fortress that provided sanctuary to mages during wars long passed, and in more peaceful times turned into one of the largest universities of the arcane in the Uplands.  There are other countries/continents other than the Uplands, but those have not been planned out at this time (to my knowledge).  Anything else world related I should be able to answer as we go along in the rest of this text (or if you send me another ask; though we’ll see if you want to after this lmao).

Saoirse was a real diamond in the rough for a while.  I knew my babe was in that mess of ideas somewhere, but it took a bit to figure it out.  I decided on a name first (I had been aching to use the name Saoirse), and I drew quite a few pictures of her before I settled on a design, but even that changed over time as I grew accustomed to drawing literally anyone else besides other white people.  I had educated myself and knew what nasty tropes to stay away from and made her a person.  She's a confident, powerful, mentor figure, and her exuberance for life and love of her family has gained the adoration of colleagues and friends alike.  She has her faults; she tends to overextend herself trying to help people or gets caught up in her work; but it all stems from a place of great compassion; she is dedicated to making the world a sweeter place.  To be honest, somewhere along the way Saoirse turned into everything I want and hope to be.  She has a family and friends who she is close to and love her dearly.  She never has to hide her feelings or work to earn their love.  She just has it.  Saoirse is a child of love in its purest form.  And she brightens up my life every day.

Brennya started out as one of Cait's NPCs, but a relationship grew between her and Saoirse after the events of the one shot.  Cait and I aren't always in contact due to life issues and school and work, but she let me keep writing interactions between Brennya and my other characters regardless (thank you).  Also, while it is a side note, have I ever mentioned that Cait’s absolutely brilliant?  She double majored in English and Geology and then got accepted into grad school right after that.  I love her.  So even though I can't (and wouldn't out of respect) claim Brennya is purely my character, I was allowed to continue writing for her.  And the way I write Brennya is honestly pretty personal.  Brennya is closer to the person I am currently... and have been in the past.  Brennya is loved now too, but Brennya was not born into love.  Love was conditional, a commodity contingent on success; personal worth built on actions and achievements, not being.  She grew to be a successful scholar nonetheless, but success rings hollow when you have no one to share it with.  She can be deeply cynical of the intentions of other people and readily manipulative of others (getting what she can from them before they have the chance to do the same to her).  She expects deceit and is truly thrown off guard when confronted with an honest person (like Saoirse).  She wants things like family and connection and truth, but has a hard time believing they exist for a person like her.  So she pretends that she is impervious to those feelings; that wanting those things is trivial in the span of existence; until she can no longer deny it.  When she meets Saoirse, it's not easy at first.  Being truly cherished at no expense of your own is difficult to understand for someone like Brennya (and for someone like me), but it is a truly beautiful thing if you can accept it.  Meeting Saoirse’s family is overwhelming for her at first too; they are an intense bunch; but they accept her almost immediately, simply because she makes their daughter happy.  Brennya acclimates eventually.  

Personally, though I’m still not in a great situation, I have healed from of a lot of bitterness I used to hold.  Seeing them happy inspires me to do better in my own life; realizing that while it may take time, it will ultimately be worth it.  And that someday I will be able to love and trust fully.

Anyways, the rest of them are a little more lighthearted in nature, I swear!!

Aoife is Saoirse’s sister and the middle child of the Keir siblings.  She’s the fun, flamboyant sibling; always jovial, super pretty, and damn good at making others feel welcome.  Aoife sees everybody as a potential friend.  Gods help you if you mistake her good nature for weakness though; she’s a powerful force to be reckoned with.  She’s a vital part of the Bluewater Town Guard, and she loves her work, preferring busy places like the town square or the docks, where her nature as both a protector and people person can flourish.  She also adores the town’s children and always makes time for them.  She lives in a house on the Keir property with her wife Mazneen.

Mazneen is my newest character, so forgive me for not having a lot on her yet (I’m trying to do something new while being culturally sensitive).  I also think it’s important for me as her creator to state explicitly somewhere down the line that she is a trans woman (representation is a high priority for me), but with the really angry and reactionary culture of tumblr these days, it’s really hard to create trans characters without someone getting upset (watch, someone will write a really angry callout for me not ‘performing her gender right’ or something…  well guess what buds, there’s no one right way for a trans woman to be trans!  BEGONE TERF!).  What else I can tell you is that she is outgoing and so incredibly sweet, and loves helping people see the beauty inside themselves like she sees in herself.  Mazneen is also a savvy businesswoman and trader originally from the Havens, and has family, friends, and business contacts there (I just haven’t gotten that far in her writing).  She currently lives and works in Bluewater with Aoife’s mother, Meirna, in her tailoring business (accounting and supply are her specialties).  They mostly make clothing suitable for cold climates like Bluewater, but occasionally produce some finer pieces on commission.  Their regular clothing is really popular amongst the whalers and even gets shipped to other parts of the Uplands.  They’re basically running something like a fantasy L.L. Bean if that makes any lick of sense.

Meirna, who I mentioned earlier, is the Keir siblings’ mother and the wife of Roarke.  She is a woman of great intelligence, tact, and grace; people used to tell her that had she not married a whaler she could have been a favorite of the Havens elite.  But she chooses to completely disregard this, and to this day she is more than happy with her life; she is still in love with her husband Roarke, runs her own well-known business, and has three very successful children.  I also have the inclination to make her deeply spiritual in some way; the Uplands actually has a few religions with a decent pantheon of gods, but I haven’t quite figured out the details of that yet.   Regardless of spirituality (or lack thereof), people look to her for comfort and guidance.

Roarke is the father of the Keir siblings and Meirna’s husband.  He’s a retired whaler but still an active part of Bluewater’s whaling guild.  Being retired certainly doesn’t keep him from being out on the water though; he just fishes for a lot smaller catch these days.  He loves the outdoors and has a fire for life that just can’t be tempered.  But he’s also a MEGA DAD.  Like the best Dad I imagine one could hope for.  He loves his family so much and he’s so proud of his kids and all their achievements.  Intense honestly just isn’t strong enough to describe the way he lives his life.  Roarke is the epitome of ALL THE TIME ALL THE TIME.  Just a huge dude with an absolute heart of gold.  Where else could Aoife have gotten it from?

Arlen is the youngest of the Keir siblings, and takes after his mother more.  His intelligence and patience are unrivaled; and his charismatic and comforting presence gives him the perfect bedside manner as a physician.  He studied at the Havens like Saoirse and Brennya, but with a focus on medicine instead of arcane arts and archaeology (Saoirse and Brennya's concentrations, respectively).  He’s an accomplished healer and has been instrumental in improvements made to Bluewater’s current health awareness and services.  He spends time every year to make trips to Snowshower, the large city northeast of Bluewater, and sets up a free clinic in the impoverished areas of the city.  He eventually ends up in a relationship with Rory after some time (still working on those details).

Rory also started out as an NPC.  He was originally the character that was Saoirse's call to action; a former student in a spot of trouble, and Saoirse just didn't have the heart to turn him down.  Except that the trouble he was in was, in fact, much more trouble than originally stated; a large debt with a notorious Poppyport (a city on the southernmost coast of the Uplands) crime syndicate, Redbloom (also can you guess their specialty lmao).  After the events of the job, Saoirse finds out that she's only thirded his debts.  Turns out he's got some serious impulse control issues and formed a gambling habit that, as you can probably imagine, got way out of hand.  He has an intense need to impress people with flashy displays, always trying to one up himself and others, but quite often these gestures fall flat.  Rory was chasing that dream of being famous and left Bluewater a few years back, only to become known as a fool.  And even though it was free publicity, bad publicity is only just publicity until you owe a crime lord his debts.  So Saoirse takes a risk and flees Poppyport, making her way back to Bluewater with Rory in tow.  Redbloom has no ties to a whaling town like Bluewater, it isn’t profitable enough.  So now he’s stuck in Bluewater for his own safety, and it would have driven him nuts if it weren’t for befriending the Keir family.  He still isn’t a huge fan of life in Bluewater, but his work and friendships keep him well grounded.  He eventually starts dating Arlen sometime into the timeline, but I haven’t written any of that yet; it’s only a series of ideas right now.  I do also want to look into writing a resolution with the whole Redbloom debt, but we’ll see where the story goes.  He’s always been…  A little all over the place.  He was a mandatory character and I really had to think about a way to work him into the story, and even now I’m still not completely satisfied.

I guess my main point is that I’m not nearly finished yet; I’ve only just begun getting bits of my story down, but I’m dedicated to expanding this family and their world and I just really love them all to bits.  And apart from their main story I’ve got some alternate universes I like to work on too, like their Dragon Age AU.  I’ve actually written quite a bit of meta and dialogue, and even drawn some for that one.  I haven’t really shared it with anyone yet though; haven’t figured out a delivery method that feels quite right yet.  I tried starting a blog for it, but it got stuck in the development phase a few months back.  Maybe I’ll try and figure that out soon.  I’ve just got so many ideas!  Anyways sorry for the wall of text and thanks for hanging in here with me with I figure shit out!  If you have any more questions I’d love to answer them! 

[raeofgayshine]

It’s National Coming Out Day

And tonight at Pride we talked Coming Out stories. And I wanted to share my story, because I knew everyone would be supportive and because if there was ever a time to get it out, now is it. But my anxiety kept me from speaking up until too late. So I’m going to put it here

Now I can’t remember everything exactly and at point time seriously blends together in my mind, but I’m going to do my best to put to together a semi comprehensive story.

Starting with the first time I ever heard about the LGBTQA community, back in 9th grade.

Now before then I heard, sort of, about boys liking boys or girls liking girls, through rumors and things at school, but that was never a big deal to me, I never even realized there was a name for it, I just figured it was normal and that was that.

So in 9th grade my best friend, who at the time I had just met, he sort of explained to me the idea of being gay, what it meant and like explained to me the entire prejudice against them and a 1000% I never understood because to me people were people and who they loved didn’t matter.

To this day I still don’t understand prejudice against the LGBTQA community, but that’s something else.

Anyways so it was at that time I sort of realized I wasn’t attracted to boys, at least not the way my friends were, so I spent a solid year just identifying as unsure, questioning. I thought that, you know, I would know when I knew and until then I just had to wait for feelings to happen.

I was wrong .

So flash forward to some time Sophomore year. I’m in English class sitting with my best friend, my other best friend at the time, and this guy who was sort of my friend I guess

Anyways so my two friends are sitting talking about guys and liking guys and all that

And the dude st the table is sort of just listening to them, I’m zoned out, but he’s watching and listening them and when one of them finally ask why he says something about how trying to figure out how girls brains work when it comes to guys.

Of course me who has no filter automatically looks up and says casually maybe I should listen to them because girls brains never made sense to me.

It took a minute and me explaining for them to understand I meant in regards of liking guys or just people in general (though in a way that was my first moment ever realizing I wasn’t fully female).

Then silence fell for a minute, and my best friend just sort of stared at me for a while before he asked “Are you asexual?”

I asked what that was, listened to the explanation, shrugged and said maybe and moved on, like it was no big deal but I realize now that this was essentially the first time I sort of came out. It was certainly the first time I had ever really acknowledged my lack of feelings and confusion, at the time it seemed so insignificant but it really sent me down a path.

10th grade me wasn’t ready for a label. I looked into asexuality in the coming weeks and it seemed to be similar to my experience, but I just wasn’t sure and I wasn’t ready for a label, so I pushed it off for a while.

Anyone who has followed blog knows about the downfall at the end of my 10th grade year, so by the time I was 16 I was in this circling spiral of confusion and anxiety and self hate and suicidal thoughts, the first half of 11th grade was some of the toughest time of my life.

At some point I finally realized that I needed to start figuring out things about myself, I needed to work it out before I got worse, so I spent a lot of time researching and reading and just thinking until finally at some point I accepted I was Ace.

I had also been by this point questioning my gender but I pushed that off to figure out one thing at a time.

So once I figured out I’m Ace, obviously I’m out online and to my best friend, I’m pretty sure my sister found out through my blog, but at this point I’m now left trying to figure out my romantic orientation or my gender.

And the idea of being anything other than cisgender (even though I knew I was) terrified me, so though I looked into it some, I largely pushed away out of fear.

It was a little harder for me to figure out my romantic orientation because I wasn’t exactly sure what love even was, for a while I thought I might be aromantic, but that didn’t really feel right, I kept looking for signs but if I’m not mistaken I didn’t actually realize until Ghostbusters.

When I had that incredible dream about dating teenage Holtzman and woke up realizing that I decidedly liked girls. It didn’t take me long afterwards to realize that those feelings transcended across gender, which in retrospect makes a lot of sense because even before when I was questioning I didn’t want to give myself a label because I figured I would just fall in love with anyone regardless their gender. I just didn’t have to term then.

About a week later I was watching something, the CMA’s I believe, when it just hit me that I really should have realized earlier I liked girls as well as guys (and nb genders too), because when I was younger I was completely in love with Taylor Swift. Once I figured out what romantic feelings were it was a lot easier for me to look back and see moments I had felt them.

And this entire time, my entire Senior year, I’m trying to come to terms with my gender.

It’s hard. Harder than figuring out my sexuality, in part because it can be very hard to find info outside of the binary if you don’t know where to look.

My whole coming to terms with my gender is an entire ordeal, I’m still trying to come to terms with it really, I’ve tried out a thousand different terms but none of them have stuck. Still, at some point in Senior year I finally accepted that I was outside of the binary, started using they/them pronouns, and that was that.

Then so probably around March, it was later winter early fall 2017 at any rate, I finally ask my best friend to help me with name suggestions, because I just couldn’t use mine anymore.

I was terrified at first to change my name because I was afraid I wasn’t trans enough, but he convinced me to do it and slowly, I did.

The first time I introduced myself to someone in person was at Pace Orientation, when I got the whole group to call me Raven and that was that.

And then when I started school I was Raven and no one ever questioned it, Pride and all of them accepted me with open arms and it’s been hard but I’m working on it.

My gender coming out is still a huge struggle for me, at some point I feel like that should be a post all it’s own because the mess of feelings I have over it is ridiculous, but for now

Thats my story

And for anyone following this blog that didn’t know: Hi, I’m Raven(puff), and I’m Asexual, Panromantic, and Non Binary and I use they/them pronouns.

Happy National Coming Out Day everyone. Even those of you still in the closest, I’m proud of ever single one of you for continuing to fight on for another day.

I love you all muchly. Thank you.

[hub-pub-bub]

Earlier this month, the author and screenwriter Gareth Roberts announced that his story was being removed from a forthcoming Doctor Who anthology. Having been shown Roberts’s past tweets about transgender people, BBC Books said that his views “conflict with our values as a publisher”. At least one of the book’s other contributors, Susie Day, had promised to withdraw from the project if Roberts were included. “I raised my concerns, and said if he was in, I was out,” Day said.

A few days before, at the Hay festival, the Irish author John Boyne had described a campaign against his own book, My Brother’s Name Is Jessica, about a boy and his trans sister. He was insulted on Twitter for his appearance and his sexuality. (Like Roberts, he is gay but not trans.) Some critics proposed a boycott of Boyne’s novel, which was not withdrawn. Others made veiled threats to his safety. “I don’t feel it’s my job as a reader or a writer to tell anyone what they can or can’t write,” Boyne said. “We are supposed to use our imaginations, to put ourselves into the minds and the bodies of others.”

The campaigns against Roberts and Boyne are not new, or isolated. Since March, I have been sending discreet messages to authors of young adult fiction. I approached 24 people, in several countries, all writing in English. In total, 15 authors replied, of whom 11 agreed to talk to me, either by email or on the phone. Two subsequently withdrew, in one case following professional advice. Two have received death threats and five would only talk if I concealed their identity. This is not what normally happens when you ask writers for an interview.

Amélie Zhao withdrew her forthcoming fantasy novel about slavery.

Another of Zhao’s critics was Kosoko Jackson, whose own debut novel A Place for Wolves, about a romance between two teenage boys during the Kosovo war, was scheduled for release in March. Jackson is black and gay, and a professional sensitivity reader, which means he reads books before publication and offers advice on how they handle matters of identity. Yet on 22 February, he too was accused of insensitivity, for allegedly minimising the suffering of Albanian Muslims. “I’ve never been so disgusted in my life,” said the first review to make this point, on the reading community website Goodreads.com. On 25 February, comments below the review began to discuss sending an open letter to Jackson’s publisher. On 28 February, he posted a note apologising to “those who I hurt with my words” and withdrew the book. In April, the British YA author Zoe Marriott was widely accused of cultural appropriation for writing a Chinese-inspired fantasy novel called The Hand, the Eye and the Heart.

These are just the latest battles in a war that seems to be escalating over who should control the way that people from marginalised communities appear in YA fiction. In August 2016, the Mexican-American author EE Charlton-Trujillo’s verse novel When We Was Fierce was delayed after several bloggers criticised its attempt to capture the voice of a black teenager. It has still not been published, and is not mentioned on Charlton-Trujillo’s website. In the months that followed, three speculative fiction novels, The Black Witch by Laurie Forest, American Heart by Laura Moriarty and The Continent by Keira Drake, attracted protests for their allegedly racist content. Forest published regardless, and with great success, despite a campaign of one-star reviews and emails to her publisher. Moriarty published, too, although Kirkus magazine, which had defended The Black Witch, downgraded and revised its review of American Heart, because it said the article “fell short of meeting our standards for clarity and sensitivity”. Drake, however, was convinced by her critics, 455 of whom signed a petition demanding that The Continent, “a racist garbage fire” according to one fellow author, be delayed to allow “additional editorial focus”. A substantially revised version appeared in March 2018.

The YA community is a much tighter group than the scattered loners who write adult fiction. “Young adult” means books suitable for readers aged 12 to 18, and the grownups who write them exhibit en masse the same idealism and energy, the defiance and conformity, and the love of social media for which teenagers are famous. Spend time weaving through the Twitter feeds of YA bloggers and authors and you’ll find a supportive atmosphere for struggling writers, along with a widespread belief that the novels they produce should be good in all ways, moral and artistic. In particular, every author I’ve spoken to agrees that marginalised people must be represented in books more accurately and often than in the past. It is something they have more reason to care about than most, since young people on average are more liberal and less white than the general population in both the US and the UK. It is also natural to write more cautiously when about half the people reading will be children.

The YA category is still a teenager itself, with origins in the Harry Potter years at the beginning of the century. Its first big identity discussion took place in 2012, when the film of The Hunger Games surprised some loyal but inattentive readers with the news that two of the main characters were black. In May 2014, a new fan convention in New York called BookCon announced an all-male, all-white panel for its Blockbuster Reads event, and We Need Diverse Booksgrew out of the protests that followed. In September 2015, Corinne Duyvis, a Dutch YA author, proposed the Twitter label #ownvoices to promote books in which “the protagonist and author share a marginalised identity”. It has since become a kind of quality assurance mark for many campaigners, since it means that a book will help diversify both the characters and authors in YA fiction, while guaranteeing that the author knows what life with the character’s identity is like. In autumn 2015, Kirkus began a policy of noting the skin colour of major characters in children’s and YA books, and assigning own-voices reviewers to them. Kirkus also started to provide what it called “sensitivity training” to its reviewers. The employment of sensitivity readers became routine in US YA publishing at around the same time.

John Boyne faced criticism of his book My Brother’s Name Is Jessica. Photograph: Murdo Macleod/The Guardian

Many of the battles around YA books display the worst features of what is sometimes called “cancel culture”. Tweets condemning anyone who even reads an accused book have been shared widely. I have heard about publishers cancelling or altering books, and asking authors to issue apologies, not because either of them believed they ought to apologise, but because they feared the consequences if they didn’t. Some authors feel that it is risky even to talk in public about this subject. “It’s potentially really serious,” says someone I’ll call Alex. “You could get absolutely mobbed.” So I can’t use your real name? “I would be too nervous to say that with my name to it.” None of the big three UK publishing groups, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins or Hachette, was available for comment.

Another author I will call Chris is white, queer and disabled. Chris has generally found the YA community friendly and supportive during a career spanning several books, but something changed when they announced plans for a novel about a character from another culture. Later, Chris would discover that an angry post about the book had appeared anonymously on Tumblr, directing others to their website. At the time, Chris only knew that their blog and email were being flooded with up to 100 abusive messages a day.

“These ranged from people telling me that … I was a sick pervert for tainting [their] story with my corrupt, westernised ideas,” Chris says, “to people saying [I] had no right to appropriate [their] experiences for [my] own benefit and I must immediately stop work. Some emails and comments consisted of just four-letter words.” There were threats of beatings and sexual assault. One message made the threat of a group “coming to my house in the middle of the night, and breaking in so that they could give me a lethal overdose”. Some messages came through Goodreads, although Chris does not know if they were linked to the main YA community. The “vast majority”, and all of the most violent threats, “came from an ideology that I would identify as left”, Chris says, and every message made the same demand. “Stop writing this. Don’t write this. You can’t write this. You’re not allowed … ”

Chris now realises that it would have been best to call the police. In fact, they told no one. The messages continued for about a year, during which time Chris stopped sleeping, found it hard to write, and became increasingly depressed. At last, from a mixture of financial necessity and the feeling that the punishment was already happening, Chris finished the book, which has since been published. The original Tumblr post remains online.

For publishers, supporting a book accused of racism could seriously harm their reputation, yet the price of withdrawing one could be enormous. “It is a topic that is discussed on a daily basis in private groups on Facebook,” says an author I will call Paris, who has twice been nominated for the Carnegie medal. “There is a huge demand for books to be more sensitive to minority groups, but there is also a concern that this censorship, pre-publication, is the wrong way to go about it.” In Paris’s case, after months of debate, an entire series was withdrawn by the publisher. “The books were literally going to print that morning,” Paris remembers. “They ended up paying for the entire series, so I got all my advances and it never got published … It was mind-boggling. Just bizarre.”

Does Paris know why they pulled it? “Because the publisher was scared of Twitter. They admitted this, because there are things like a racist character in the book. They were worried that people would say, ‘This has got a racist character. The author must be racist.’” The publisher was certain that the books were fine, Paris says, but felt it could not risk an accusation of racism. “They are paranoid, and [the] sales [department] were second-guessing everything. They went through [the books] and went, ‘That could be misconstrued as offensive. That could be offensive. That could be offensive …’”

The idea that sensitivity is too subjective to understand, let alone enforce, frustrates many of those who campaign for it in the YA community. Rather than being a righteous mob trying to silence other opinions, they regard themselves as simple fact-checkers, providing a service that is welcomed by authors. “I see sensitivity reads as a form of peer review,” says one, who asked not to be identified. “There are some things as a white, cis, straight person that I may not notice or even consider. I recall a huge moment for me was reading about black ballerinas dyeing their pointe shoes to match their skin. It’s such a small thing, but I never had to think about that when I did ballet; the shoes always matched my skin.”

Heidi Heilig runs a YA Facebook group with more than 1,700 members. She says that the community is much more moderate and reasonable than many outsiders have been led to believe. “There is a sect of people who say, ‘Any criticism is censorship,’” she says. “There are people who say, ‘You can only write a character from a certain race if you are of that certain race.’ But a lot of the conversation falls somewhere in the middle.”

‘The way that things have played out this year doesn’t sit comfortably for me’ author Mary Watson.

Far from being afraid of criticism, Heilig says that many writers in her group are eager for feedback on identity matters, and many writers from marginalised groups are happy to provide it without accusing anyone of anything. None of this, of course, is seen by the outside world. “We care about our peers,” Heilig says. “We don’t want to drag people. That is the worst and last option. The first thing to do is try to help.” Meanwhile, many mildly racist books are still published without controversy, she believes, and some of the controversy we see has an important but hidden private context. “I don’t think that the fears you’re talking about are borne out by reality. People make this out to be so hard, but honestly I don’t think it’s that difficult. What we’re looking for is good writing, so you either know what the tropes are and subvert them, or break the tropes entirely. I don’t understand why there’s such a push to do the same old thing.”

Ellen Oh has been reluctant to talk publicly since her tweets about Blood Heir, for which she received death threats against herself and her family. She reported the worst cases to the police, and in the end deleted her social media accounts. Criticism is healthy, Oh believes, but she feels that outsiders have made things needlessly unpleasant. “I wish we did not have these mob reactions,” she says. “The YA community used to be a safe place where bloggers and writers could communicate and share book news. It’s become so different … There are extremes on both sides, and it is hard to find the truth among all the vitriol.”

Mary Watson, a mixed-race author who grew up under apartheid in South Africa and now lives in Ireland, agrees. “I think there have been many careless and even damaging representations of people of colour in books,” she says, “and as a reader I’ve experienced it throughout my life. Sometimes it’s just eye-rolling, sometimes it makes you want to shut the book in exasperation, so I understand that there’s a lot of anger about how people are represented. I absolutely get that. But the way that things have played out this year doesn’t sit comfortably for me … I absolutely agree that sloppy representation should be spoken out against, but I think this should happen in ways that encourage constructive dialogue rather than cancellation.”

Sophia Bennett, a British author, welcomes many of the changes in YA over the past five years, but sees a clear line that critics should not cross. “One thing that saddens me about the way that the argument is polarised on social media is how many people comment negatively, particularly, on books that they haven’t read,” she says. “I think that is an unhealthy attitude for a readership to have. They don’t want to make up their own minds based on their own experience.”

There are other reasons, beyond the page, why the YA community might be upset right now. According to research by Melanie Ramdarshan Bold at University College London, after a period of rapid growth in the early 2000s, the number of YA books being published in the UK peaked in 2012, since when it has declined rapidly. In 2016, the latest year in the study, just 167 different YA authors were published in the UK, less than half the number of 2012 and fewer than in any year since 2006, when the dataset begins. Overall, sales of young adult fiction fell in the US last year, and in February the Bookseller revealed a very steep drop in UK sales, which are now at their lowest point for 11 years. There are many theories to explain this, including the idea that YA has become overloaded with social justice themes – although this was hardly a problem for The Hate U Give, a huge blockbuster by Angie Thomas, which concerns the shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer.

The YA wars may die out in the months ahead, as people grow weary of the arguments. Or the conflict may appear to die out, if timid publishers purge anything that they can imagine being questioned. The wars may even spread. There have been two pre‑publication campaigns against adult novels on the basis of identity so far this year. A petition demanded the withdrawal of The Cape Doctor by EJ Levy because of the way it handles the gender of its central character. In May, They Called Me Wyatt was cancelled after its author Natasha Tynes tweeted a photograph of a black subway worker eating, against the rules, on a Washington DC train. Tynes was widely accused of racism. At the time of writing, on Goodreads, her book has received 1,970 one-star reviews. She is now suing her publisher.

It may not be realistic to hope for restraint on social media, but it is clearly what’s required. If authors are only human and make mistakes that need to be corrected, then critics are also human, and must be ready to admit some mistakes of their own. In January, Kosoko Jackson was an authority on negative tropes in fiction. In February, he was a perpetrator, as unreliable as everybody else. Heilig herself praised A Place for Wolves on Goodreads, then later apologised for being “flippant and disrespectful”. Still, correction hurts, so it is always tempting to dismiss the “social justice warriors” or the “arrogant racists” on the other side. Ironically, it can even happen when writers argue over how to avoid stereotypes. Nothing is more normal than being wrong.

[muirin]

I’m So Confused

I’m trying really hard to figure out what I am. I’m bad with labels, and I’ve never been good at self-discovery, finding myself, or any of that. I’ve just kinda been me, and life just floats through me like a fog. It happens, and I make decisions, and I go where I go without thinking too hard about what it all means. That all changed a few months ago, and now I find myself stuck, wondering who and what I am, with no introspective skills to really figure it all out.

Things I definitely know: I cross-dress and I love it. I really like who I see in the mirror/camera when I’m dressed in traditionally female clothing and makeup. For brevity’s sake, I’m just gonna call this “dressed like a woman” because yes, I get that anyone can wear anything, regardless of gender and all, but I hope you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt. I’m frightened by what all this could mean for my family life.

Things I think I know: I think I feel, deep down, more feminine when I’m dressed like a woman. I’m pretty sure I do. I feel like people who are androgynous slide in my perception toward the male side of the spectrum, or at least the “more male than me” side of the spectrum when I’m dressed like a woman.

Things I don’t know: What this means. What to call myself. What to do.

Here’s some history.

I don’t remember ever having dramatic, crushing, born-in-the-wrong-body crises when I was little, like the folks who write the articles about being trans. I do remember playing with my sister’s toys, and having no problem with doing so, but it was usually when I was playing with my sister. It didn’t get any kind of attention. Positive, or negative.

I remember trying on my sister’s bras. I’d fish them out of the hamper, stuff them with socks, and look at myself. It just felt like a thing. There were no revelations from the sky. No deep conclusions that “This is who I’m supposed to be.” It was just a thing. I always figured it was something everyone did. Thank goodness I never told anyone about it.

I got bullied a lot, especially in grade school. They called me by a feminine version of my name. Even my neighborhood friend called me ‘fag’. I remember it hurting. It makes me wonder now if this bullying caused me to push things down. To deny any kinds of feelings of femininity for fear of more ridicule. I don’t know.

I remember my sister coming out as gay in high school. I remember it being a big explosion in my house. I remember her stealing my hoodies to cover up her body. I remember being really angry about it. I remember her bout with anorexia. I remember not feeling much about that at all. I don’t think I understood the seriousness of it. I was still, frankly, pissed at her for being so terrible to me through high school.

I remember being in my 20s and being envious of women’s clothes. Mostly for the variety and choice of it. Women can wear flats or heels or sneakers or boots. Women can wear jeans or capris or shorts or skirts or dresses. I wanted that kind of variety. I was stuck in jeans, tee shirts, and hoodies in the real world, and khakis and polos in shitty retail jobs. And now I’m doubting whether or not it was about variety so much as the clothes themselves.

In my early 30s, I experimented with cross-dressing once. I knew nothing. I bought a bra and some makeup and a skirt and a tight shirt . I put on a silly blue wig I got at a Halloween store and took pictures of myself with an ancient webcam. I posted the photos to an anonymous message board, and was mocked mercilessly. I shouldn’t have expected any better from the internet. I put all those things in a bag and into a drawer and forgot about them for a long time.

I learned on a halloween one year that a friend of mine was a frequent cross-dresser. I thought “Good for him”, and had trouble figuring out what pronouns to use when. I didn’t even think about the clothes in my drawer.

I got married. I married a wonderful woman who made me feel good and safe and loved. I didn’t tell  her about the cross dressing, though. Partly because I’d pushed it away, partly cuz it felt shameful.

I used the word “tranny” in front of my sister, and she got really angry. She had to explain why. I told her I used it because it’s what my friend’s wife calls him, because he cross-dresses. My sister explained why that’s not cool. I took it to heart, and never used that word again.

I got a little bit involved in a local kink scene. It’s nice. There are ups and downs, some made and broken relationships, but generally, it’s good. Kink stuff could be a whole other post full of history, so I’ll leave it there.

I joined an online community that fostered fantasies of bodily transformation. Being things that you weren’t or couldn’t be. Silly, cartoonish stuff, really. The internet brings crazy fandoms and common interests together. There was a disproportionate number of trans people there. I fostered an emotional relationship with someone there who presented themselves as a female. Then, one day, she told me she decided to present male instead. I was crushed, and called it off.

I began to get the suspicion that my cross-dressing friend was more than just a cross-dresser. She slowly stopped using her male facebook, and almost exclusively used her female facebook. When I think about her now, it’s always with her girl name. I say she/her when I’m talking about her.

My sister came out to me as trans. I now have a brother. I wasn’t shocked. I didn’t mourn. I was mostly worried about how this would blow up with my parents. It did. I thought to myself that my brother’s a lot cooler than my sister ever was. I figure that 30-something years of actively hiding who you are can wear on you and make me angry. In my head, nothing snapped into place. I didn’t even think of my probably-trans friend. I didn’t think of my online community. I didn’t think of the clothes in the corner of my drawer.

I decided to try on a female voice/name online. Nothing really changed. Everyone was just as nice and open and welcoming as they were before. Nobody treated me differently. They just called me a new name. I flipped between male and female voices. Probably half and half at the beginning, and slowly started sliding toward always-female. It was nice. I thought to myself that maybe people were nicer to me when I was presenting female. I couldn’t be sure.

My kid was born.  A fantastic little kid.

I found a “main” kink top. She’s (still) amazing. The relationship grew very fast, and neither of us handled it well. It caused a lot of problems, and my marriage took a bad turn. We went to couples therapy. My wife felt like I was hiding things from her. I kind of was. I admitted it, smashed the brakes on the kink relationship, and things are getting better.

My friend is definitely trans, and even when she’s presenting male, I call her ‘lady’ and her chosen female name and I always tell stories about her, not him. She announced that her cosplay photographer wants to do a just-for-fun photo shoot, and anyone’s welcome. I asked her to help me dress up like a girl for some photos, and she agreed to help. She walked me through the steps of doing my makeup, loaned me some body parts (okay, boobs) and a wig. When I looked in the mirror, I said “I love you.” That’s not something I’ve ever done. It felt like a big deal.

Things started moving fast at about this point. It’s still so foggy and disorganized and confusing in my head.

My trans friend asked if the cross-dressing is a kink thing or an identity thing or what, and I tell her I don’t know. She insists that I do some thinking about it, and let her know. I did some thinking and I let her know that it’s somewhere fuzzy and in-between. It’s not just a kink thing. The thrill wasn’t a sexual thing. It wasn’t for my top so much as it was for me. It was an “I like who I see in the mirror thing”, but I was nowhere near any kind of “This is who I should be.” She got kind of cold and business-like in her reply, and essentially boiled it down to “I can’t help you with that. You should talk to your therapist.”

I did talk to my therapist, and to a close friend or two. The consensus is that it’s okay to be unsure and foggy and somewhere in-between.

I explained to a confidant that sometimes when I’m “attracted” to a woman I see on the street, it’s not because I want to have sex with her. It’s because “I want to just, like, steal her body and be in it.” She got what I meant, and understood that it wasn’t some kind of weird Buffalo Bill sort of thing.

I loved the photos from the shoot, and couldn’t stop looking at them. I shared them with my online friends, and they all said very nice things. I spent a bunch of christmas money on makeup and silicone boobs and a wig and clothes. I told my wife about it, and it was bad. In trying to explain my state of mind, I told her about the female voice I used online. It didn’t help. I didn’t have any words to make things right. To make her understand.

To her, this was just the latest surprise, and she wondered if it would ever end. She wondered about other things I could be hiding.  She wondered if I’d ever stop ‘looking for more than I have.’ I told her I don’t know. We did a lot of work in therapy. Things got better, but it was hard and it left a deep mark. It made me very reluctant to talk about this stuff with her any more. Mostly for fear of damaging our relationship or straining things more. I really don’t like conflict.

I started trying on makeup and dresses and skirts more often when I had random free time. I was temporarily unemployed for a while, so I had a lot of free time. I shot a bunch of selfies and liked them. I shared with my friends online, and they still had nice things to say. It made me feel good.

This brings us to about the present. Where I am now. It’s probably even less organized.

I’m not androgynous. Getting even barely close to ‘passing’ is a lot of hard work, but I feel like that work pays off.

When I walk through the city, I look at women in their clothes, and I still feel a lot of envy. I want to be able to wear what they wear, but I know that most of the outfits I like wouldn’t flatter me. On good days, I see the girls who have narrower hips and broader shoulders, and I think “I could pull that off.” On bad days, I dwell on the fact that I’m built very much like a dude. I’ve read the fashion guides for the “wedge” body shape. Angelina Jolie, right? Sleeveless is out. Pencil skirts are out. Sleeves and A-lines are in. Otherwise, I’d just end up looking silly and top-heavy. The bad days are really hard.

I practice my “girl walk” when I walk through the gay part of town.

I try to imagine being out and about while dressed like a woman. It’s exciting and terrifying.

I contemplate my penis sometimes. I wonder if I’d be better off without it. I wonder if I’m just thinking that because I should.

I still don’t know what I am, or what to do about any of this. I don’t know if I’m trans. I’m pretty sure I’m some flavor of queer, but I don’t know if I’m bigender or genderfluid or some other thing.

I don’t know if I’m just latching onto what I think is the group of “cool kids” in my circle of friends who happen to be queer, and I’m trying to be more like them. More accepted by them.

I can’t tell if I’m mentally recoiling at all of the backlash that white straight cis-guys are getting, and this is my way of shying away from that group.

I can’t tell if fear of losing my family, my wife and child, are making me think around the things, and making me deny things, or if these feelings are really not there.

I don’t know if I just feel like I’m ugly and I think girls are prettier, and since I want to be prettier, then I guess I should be a girl. There’s more I don’t know than I do at this point.

I don’t have any kind of conclusion, beside just typing it out, shouting it out to the world, and trying to make sense of another day.

I’m so confused.

[trans-matters]

My friend just told me that he thinks he's transgender and I want to support him but I'm not sure how because I've never dealt with this kind of thing first hand before, do you have any advice?

I found the following article had some good tips, I’m going to past the article in here.

SOURCE: http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/how-to-be-ally-to-trans-friend/

1. Find an Appropriate Space to Process Your Thoughts and Feels

Holy guacamole! Transgender?

Maybe it’s been a long time coming, or maybe you’re completely shocked. You might be scared, or uncertain, or downright confused. Whatever you’re feeling, it’s understandable that you have some processing to do.

Because while your friend has had years to come to this realization, you haven’t had much time to figure it all out.

That’s totally okay! Take some time, some space, and unpack those thoughts and feels.

However, the important thing to know is this: It is not your friend’s responsibility to help you sort out your feelings.

That is, while it’s perfectly understandable that you might be struggling with your friend’s transition, it’s not fair to unload that weight onto your friend.

Your friend already has a lot on their plate. A transition is a big step! And chances are, they’ve come out to a lot of people at once. They are likely not in a position to guide each individual person through the complicated feelings that they have about this transition.

Nor should they – during such an emotional time, it could be hurtful (and even traumatic!) to try to ease people into acceptance.

Your friend has asked for your support during a really challenging life event. It’s not an appropriate time to demand that they shoulder your emotional baggage when they are already carrying such an enormous weight!

Instead, seek out a support group, whether it’s online or offline. Look to other friends that you trust to help you process your feelings. Journal about what you might be thinking. Seek a creative or physical outlet that lets you release some of the stress you might be feeling.

This allows you to be in a better place to support your friend and ensures that you won’t be triggering your friend by saying something unintentionally hurtful as you try to process.

2. Do Your Homework

I’m going to sound like a broken record by now, because this is far and away the most frequent advice I give to allies of trans folks.

But it’s true! You gotta do your homework!

The Internet is a magical place, and there’s an enormous wealth of information out there on the transgender community. And if you’re looking to support your friend, it’s a great idea to do a little bit of research.

This takes your friend off the hot seat instead of forcing them to painstakingly educate you (and many others) on every little aspect of their experience.

This article is a great place to start, but there are many other places to go from here! GLAAD has an abundance of friendly resources to get you started on the basics. You can always poke around the transgender tag or non-binary tag here at Everyday Feminism, too.

And depending on how your friend identifies (maybe they’re neutrois, non-binary, or genderqueer!), there are so many fantastic blogs written by trans folks where you can get direct insight into the experience of being trans.

If you’re overwhelmed by the reading, you can always hop over to YouTube and let Ash Hardell (and fantastic special guests!) school you on everything gender, or check out Dr. Doe at Sexplanations as she chats about the social construction of gender in sailor attire (no, seriously, she’s dressed like a sailor).

You’ll have the benefit of deepening your knowledge of gender (how cool!), and your friend will appreciate that you took the time to learn.

3. Respect and Validate Their Identity

The worst thing you can do for your friend is invalidate their identity. When your friend comes out as transgender, it’s not your place to greet them with disbelief, amusement, contradiction, or a refusal to recognize their gender.

Regardless of how you perceived them in the past, it’s your responsibility to believe your friend when they come out – and affirm their sense of self.

For example, when I came out, a number of people told me they were having a difficult time believing me because I had worn dresses in the past and had seemed to enjoy femininity. They suggested that I was confused and should take more time to think about it.

When a trans person comes out to you, it isn’t your place to tell them how they should or shouldn’t identify. No one can know someone’s gender except for the person themselves. If they say they are non-binary, they are. If they say they are a woman, they are. If they say they are a man, guess what? They are.

This probably goes without saying, but support means using the name they have asked to be called, using the pronouns that they have requested, and tuning in when they share their experiences – without judgment, without contradiction, and without accusation.

Remember that appearances can’t tell you what someone’s gender is. Gender is not something you can necessarily see, although we sometimes choose to express our gender in a particular way. Gender is not a haircut, a way of dressing, a set of body parts, or a set of behaviors. Gender is a sense of self, an identity that is only for us to declare.

So please, don’t say things like “But are you really?” or “I don’t believe that” or “Those pronouns are too complicated.”

If you are having a hard time accepting someone as transgender, give yourself the space and time you need to get to a place where you can better support this person before attempting to give support.

4. Don’t Just Talk the Talk

Sometimes being supportive means showing the fuck up.

Being an ally is about more than just vocalizing your support. One really excellent and helpful way to show that you’re standing by your friend is to offer tangible, concrete support to make their transition a little bit easier and make our lives as trans people a little bit safer.

Do they have a doctor’s appointment or a surgery consultation? Offer to drive or hang out in the waiting room. Are they going to court to legally change their name? Bring them flowers and accompany them. Are they shopping for new clothes? Ask to tag along.

If your friend is using a public restroom but they’re afraid for their safety, offer to go with them. If they’re fearful of using public transportation, offer to ride with them or give them a ride. If they need to get home after a fun night out, offer to call them a reputable cab or walk them home. Because while the victims are never at fault, the reality is that transgender people are statistically more likely to be the victims of violence and assault.

And if your friend is experiencing body dysphoria, I’ve written an entire article on steps you can take to support them.

And of course, ask your friend if there’s anything you can do. Your friend may have something in mind that they won’t ask for unless prompted.

We are the experts on our own experience, so it’s best to check in with us before assuming our needs.

5. Be an Ally and Advocate (Without Overstepping)

Support can be personal, of course, and standing by your friend through their transition is a valuable and wonderful thing.

But in today’s world, being transgender is sadly not just a personal struggle. Often times, it’s political. There are difficult battles each and every day being fought over our right to exist, our right to be recognized, and our right to be safe.

Being a supportive friend can also mean being an ally – because creating change is one of the best ways to make your friend’s transition safer, easier, and more empowering.

“Whoa,” you might say. “That sounds serious. But where do I even start?”

Well, here’s a list of 52 things you can do for transgender equality. Yes, 52; so don’t tell me there’s nothing to be done! You can do one thing per week for a year, damn it.

Ultimately it means making sure you are politically engaged and aware when there are issues at stake for the trans community (hint: this means always).

It can be as simple as voting “yes” on local ordinances that will support the trans community or calling someone in when they say something problematic about trans people.

It can mean being involved at your local LGBTQIA+ center and canvassing for a trans cause or donating to a fantastic trans organization.

But it also means stepping out of the spotlight and allowing trans people to lead and tell their own stories.

You should amplify the voices of trans people – sharing their work, inviting them to conferences and universities, getting them involved wherever possible – rather than speaking over them.

There’s always more work to be done. And if you’re looking to support your friend who is trans, it’s time to make this world a better place for all trans people.

6. Learn to Take Criticism and Know How to Apologize

Even if you follow every bit of advice in this article, you will still make mistakes. And I want to remind you that making mistakes is okay, as long as you’re willing to receive criticism and apologize sincerely.

Remember that regardless of your intention, your impact is still important. You may not have meant to spill coffee on my shirt, but I imagine that if you did, you would still apologize and you would still try to help me clean things up. Because, you know, I’m assuming you’re a nice person.

You may mix up your friend’s pronouns by accident. You may say something insensitive, only to realize this later on. Even I, as a trans person, make mistakes with other trans people from time to time. We’re all learning. Every single one of us!

Just recently, a thoughtful friend and fellow Everyday Feminism writer, Adrian, explained to me that a word I was using was actually extremely harmful to trans women. Instead of getting all prickly and defensive about it, I had to remind myself that this was a great opportunity to do some growing and avoid hurting others in the future.

Even I make mistakes! What’s most important is to learn from those mistakes.

So how do you apologize?

When you misgender someone, it’s best to offer a quick apology, a correction, and let the conversation move forward. Nothing is more awkward than a person spending five minutes apologizing for misgendering you and completely redirecting the conversation. I shouldn’t feel like I have to console or comfort you after you’ve made a mistake, right?

When there’s a bigger hiccup – maybe you’ve said something offensive without realizing it – it’s good to know how to give a sincere apology. There’s an amazing video that breaks this down that is basically required viewing for anyone who aspires to be a decent human.

As the brilliant Franchesca Ramsey says in her video, “A real genuine apology is made up of two parts: the first part is you take responsibility for what you’ve done, and then the second part is you make a commitment to change the behavior.”

If you’ve said something that is hurtful to your friend, an apology can be the difference between a rift in your relationship and an opportunity for growth. Never underestimate the power of a sincere apology.

—-

Kyle

[itsworn]

This Sleeper’s a Keeper: A 14,000-Mile Unrestored Original 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS454 LS6

Up in the hills the crafters still refer to it as squeezin’s, trickling through a homemade distillation system. More public and commercial now, old-school moonshine remains a sort of rite of passage for many. The Chevelle SS you are looking at is the automotive equivalent of good moonshine. Plain white wrapped, column shift, bench seat, and little to show that it is packing a real kick. It goes smooth, then you realize you are at 110 mph or faster. As for the crafter, well, that would be ol’ Chevrolet, passing the LS6 around to some guy named Roger Penske. How much should you use? Oh, we are just sippin’ it, a little at a time; in fact, less than 15,000 miles since it was purchased back in 1970.

Tim Wellborn is noted for his ability to buy cars right, and this one came into the collection in Alabama back in 2013 after it was offered at Mecum’s Indy Classic. At the time, Tim and his wife Pam already had a low-mileage black LS6 in their collection, but something about this particular car drew Tim’s attention with enough pull that he decided it was worth chasing.

“I like white muscle cars, and I thought the gold interior was a great complement to it,” says Tim. “Plus, it was a non-cowl induction car, non-stripe car, a bare-bones car. The black one was such a time capsule, and it had taught me a lot about these cars, so when this one came up I decided it was worth chasing if it came in at a good price. It did.”

Column shifters on muscle cars could be considered a detriment in some cases. The lever in the LS6, however, looks almost aggressive in its angularity. Tim was correct when he wondered if the selling price would end up being reasonable as result, and he took it home without topping $100,000.

While some factors may not have helped the car, others did. “The first thing that caught my attention on this car was that metal Roger Penske dealership tag on the decklid, because everybody knows who he is,” says Tim. “How many LS6 Chevelles are still around that have provenance from his dealership? I figured not many, and that adds to this car’s interest and value.

“This car has more original documentation, including notes the original owner wrote, than any other car I have ever owned. In 1992, the owner had written up the history of the car and wanted it sold at auction. That sale had happened about a year before I bought it, so the guy who consigned it was only the second owner. And it’s so original. The owner wrote notes regarding everything he ever did to it, even everything he replaced. The tailpipes, oil and coolant changes, plugs, air and oil filters, wiper blades and tires—that was it. It has the original driveline, original paint, original interior, all of it.”

Once Tim got it back to the museum, he found it to be “an amazing driver. It’s smooth, quiet and extremely powerful. People know I have a lot of Mopars, and I love them, but this is a completely different ride. In fact, Dennis Gage was down here filming for his TV show, and after driving this Chevelle he got out and told me it was the best-riding muscle car he had even been in.”

So how did this jug o’ lightnin’ get through to today without the sort of abuse so many other muscle cars suffered? On May 25, 1970, a young man named Burton Greeby came to Havertown, Pennsylvania, to Mr. Penske’s big Chestnut Street dealership in Philadelphia. He had a pretty good idea what he wanted: a 1970 Chevelle LS6 454/450hp with the cloth interior (on the order form, “blue” is scratched out and “tan” written in), tinted glass, a rear defogger, a rear speaker, automatic transmission, a 3:31 Positraction rearend, power steering, and a heavy-duty battery.

The salesman calculated an approximate total of $4,111, but Greeby did some hard negotiating, special-ordering the car for $3,699 and a grand total of $3,931 including tax. As Tim noted, the paperwork is extensive, so this form shows he could not get factory air, and they killed the power locks to get the price down. There is a factory build sheet here, something not often seen, and it shows the specifics of the car’s construction. The sales-day notes show that Greeby came to the dealer with a whole lot of money (yep, sounds like moonshinin’) on July 7 to pay the entire bill off and pick up his new wheels.

Southeastern Pennsylvania, with its street race scene and local dragstrips, was a hot place to be. Havertown itself was home to K&G Speed Associates, sponsors of the Frantic Ford Mustang fuel Funny Car. Steve Kuniuka’s place was down in Concordville, near the East Coast base of Jungle Jim Liberman. Indeed, among the paperwork that Tim got with the car are timeslips from Atco Raceway, just over the bridge in Jersey. Somehow the car was classed into SS/DA, though it was not in worked-up Super Stock trim by any stretch of the imagination.

Greeby wrote little notes on each slip: air cleaner on or off, low-gear start, and so on. The Chevelle’s best e.t., being big in weight and with a 3.31 cog, was 13.85. It is not known how many laps were made except for these few slips, and since there is a drawing of how the smog equipment was routed, it’s possible he temporarily pulled it off for the effort. Regardless, the car was never modified seriously for racing and seems to have been very well cared for from day one. Even that smog junk.

So when Tim himself was selling a group of cars from the collection at Mecum’s Florida auction several years ago, he chose to send the black car over the block. It had stripes, a similar solid history, and a little more curb appeal to the general buying public. The white car became the keeper.

Tim says, “In my opinion there were really three ‘greatest muscle cars of all time’: the 1971 Hemi ’Cuda, the Boss 429 Mustang, and the LS6 Chevelle. These were the benchmarks for Chrysler, Ford, and GM of that era. So as the collection has grown and matured, we wanted to make sure we had representation on those. I still need to find a comparable replacement for the Boss ’9 we used to have.”

At a Glance

1970 Chevelle SS454 Owned by: Tim & Pam Wellborn, Alexander City, AL Restored by: Unrestored original Engine: 454ci/450hp LS6 V-8 Transmission: TH400 3-speed automatic Rearend: 12-bolt with 3.31 gears and Positraction Interior: Gold (“tan”) cloth bench seat Wheels: 14-inch SS Rallye Tires: F70-14 Goodyear Polyglas Special parts: Rear speaker, rear defogger, tinted glass, H/D battery, power steering, AM radio; 14,175 original miles

The designers made major changes to the 1970 Chevelle release, moving the taillights into the bumper structure and giving the SS a flat-black panel with callout lettering offset to the right side. With the LS6, a lot of guys saw this view.

For many enthusiasts, the 450hp 454 LS6 is still considered the pinnacle of street production engines from Chevrolet. Available only one year in high-compression trim, the 454 established immense street cred for the brand in 1970, and likely helped sell a lot of more basic examples to people who could not afford the insurance premiums on this bad boy.

Though most people removed the emissions equipment for good, the original owner drew up the exact routing, leading to the conclusion that he may have removed it for one of his drag racing tests but had the foresight to save it. The scarce original components are still there, and the routing sketch was in with the paperwork.

Tim Wellborn admits that the gold interior was a big attraction, and we agree it goes great with the white body. On the handwritten order form, the “blue’ is scratched out and “tan” written in, meaning that original owner Burton Greeby may have reached the same conclusion as he sat down with the salesman.

The column shifter is not on everybody’s must-have list, but on the Chevelle it looks almost nasty. Selecting it eliminated the weight of extra bucket seat structures, took down the initial purchase cost, and, most importantly, let your girlfriend ride closer.

These undated timeslips from Atco Dragway were likely from the car’s first year of existence. The car ran high 13s, though based on speed readings, tire spin was a challenge. Being classed in SS/DA, where the dialed-in Division 1 Hemi Mopars ran, did not help matters and may have been one reason drag racing was never seriously pursued.

Wellborn noted that the extensive Penske paperwork helped seal the deal. The handwritten order form, assembly plant build sheet, and window sticker help tell the story, but are just a few of the many items that were included in the car’s sale. It has had just three owners since delivery.

The low-mileage car delivered on its promise of originality and condition once it was in the collection. Dennis Gage drove it for his TV program and returned smiling, saying it was the best-riding muscle car he had even been in.

“I Thought the Wellborns Had Mostly Mopars”

Tim and Pam Wellborn are noted for their museum in Alexander City, Alabama. When we contacted Tim about this story, he joked a little about the Mopar connection.

“Yeah, we have got some, but the museum is not just for Mopars. We have a bunch of GM and Ford stuff on display right now. That Chevelle, an SD455 Trans Am from 1973, a Ram Air IV GTO Judge convertible, a G.T. 350 Shelby, and more. We have had some people wanting to put cars on display, so that has let us rotate through a lot more variety.”

The museum is open on Saturdays, as well as by appointment.

Wellborn Muscle Car Museum 124 Broad St. Alexander City, AL 35010 (256) 329-8474 wellbornmusclecarmuseum.com

The post This Sleeper’s a Keeper: A 14,000-Mile Unrestored Original 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS454 LS6 appeared first on Hot Rod Network.

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