#but on the Other Hand... safety in being perceived as cis. but it feels so disgusting now. like im playing at something we all

[nothorses]

Question about your points on the post about TERFs vs TIRFs you made bc it has me questioning a lot of the stuffI've been taught:

Why is it TERF ideology to think that women are oppressed by the patriarchy? Why is it TERF ideology to be intimidated by men if you’ve been a victim of sexual violence at the hands of men? Women (both trans and Cis) face so much violence all over the world, why is it radical feminism to acknowledge that?

I’m genuinely curious because I want to deconstruct any harmful biases but it feels incredibly harmful to dismiss violence against women under the guise of “talking about this is all radfem ideology”.

I'm glad you're asking these questions, and I'm glad you're being critical about that post!

You're absolutely right that it would be harmful to "dismiss violence against women under the guise of “talking about this is all radfem ideology”- and I don't want anyone to take that whole list as A New Set Of Rules without thinking any further about it.

The point of that list was not to say "all of this is Bad", but rather to lay out some logical through-lines and how these ideas all work together to reach harmful conclusions.

Any radicalization pipeline relies on a kind of "rabbithole", or as @psychoticallytrans recently called it, "milk before meat". The idea is that you're given the "easy" stuff first, the stuff that is or feels right, and then those ideas steadily lead into more and more extreme ideas.

Women are oppressed by the patriarchy, and pretty much every branch of feminism is going to agree with you there; that's not a radfem-only idea. What distinguishes radfems from the rest is that they believe "the patriarchy" is embodied by every single living man; every man is The Patriarchy, and every man oppresses every woman. No woman can oppress a man, no woman can harm a man... etc.

You can see where we lose the plot here: is the patriarchy a system, or is it every single man? Who, then, do we count as men? How old is a man? What about other intersecting forms of oppression?

One of my go-to questions to ask, when taking a critical look at some of these ideas, is: under this ideology, are white women oppressed by black men? How? Can white women do harm to black men? How would this ideology answer these questions, and how would they (do they) deal with the archetype of the "Karen"; a white woman using her white womanhood to enact violence on black men through state institutions of white supremacy, like law enforcement? (Hint: radfems tend to complain that "Karen" is strictly a misogynistic insult.)

To answer your other two questions:

Why is it TERF ideology to be intimidated by men if you’ve been a victim of sexual violence at the hands of men?

(For context:)

Short answer: it isn't.

Long answer: My point here was to outline the way that the "inherent woman trauma and justified fear of all men" is weaponized against trans women, first and foremost, but there's more nuance here as well.

There is a difference between a traumatic response that you cannot control and need time to heal from, and a fear being actively encouraged as "justified" and "accurate" by those around you. There is a difference between exercising practical caution (even if you shouldn't have to), and fueling paranoia and a fear of the outside world. There is a difference between grappling with your own personal healing process after a traumatic event, and generalizing a traumatic response to the entire world & everyone in it.

Some people's trauma after a sexual assault latches onto the gender of the person who hurt them. That is understandable. Some people, knowing they are perceived as women, take extra precautions to ensure their safety from potential sexual assault and harassment at the hands of, predominately, cis and straight men. That is understandable. But when that translates to "you should fear all men at all times because any of them can and will rape you given any opportunity to do so", we have a problem.

Again, we should be asking: does this ideology make room for other forms of oppression? Can white women oppress black men? How does this interact with the racist stereotype of the sexually aggressive and dangerous black man? How does this ideology deal with the history of white women accusing black men of sexual assault in order to sic white men and police on them & enact state violence, as well as reinforce white supremacy? (And more! What about trans women and trans lesbians, in particular? Are trans men seen as sexual aggressors instead, if not them? Is either remotely accurate to reality?)

Women (both trans and Cis) face so much violence all over the world, why is it radical feminism to acknowledge that?

This is mostly answered by the above, but again, the short answer here is that it isn't radical feminism to acknowledge misogyny or misogynistic violence.

What is radical feminism is that idea that this violence is enacted by individual men, and not patriarchy as a system of oppression. What is radical feminism is the idea that misogyny is the ultimate form of oppression, and that others only "intersect" in niche circumstances (if at all) that do not need to be included in the majority of these conversations.

In radical feminism, black women's oppression is its own conversation, trans women's oppression is its own conversations, and we can handwave things like "Karens" by saying that's about racism; we don't need to make room for it in feminist theory. When trans-inclusive radfems say "if men could get pregnant", and trans men say "we can", they can respond "you know what we meant"- because they don't believe they need to make space for transphobia in feminist theory.

Another good test: when radfems talk about sexual assault as a woman-specific issue, and transmascs point out that statistically, we face higher rates of sexual assault than cis or trans women (or any other demographic), TERFs will say that's because it's "sex-based oppression" & ignore that our rates are higher, because there's no room for transphobia in their feminism. Trans-inclusive radfems will deny that it's true or important in the first place, because men can't be "more oppressed" than women.

It's not radical feminism to acknowledge misogyny and patriarchy. It is radical feminism to ignore everything else.

[fanfic-the-wish-your-heart-makes]

Nathaniel Barnes (& Harvey Bullock & Jim Gordon) Defending Homosexuality (Nathaniel Barnes x Male/Nonbinary/Not Cis etc. Reader, but this also has other cool stuff apart from romance like, uhm, him🤭😂)

@honestmrdual asked: So, about Barnes x reader request... How about Barnes and male reader, who insist on making their relationship known to public, at least in the precinct, and Barnes, pretty obviously, being opposed to this idea? Humour, or angst, or both, you can decide! :)

Author's note: Here are all of my thoughts, I hope you like them😊 This is soo much longer than expected

Reader: ambiguously not perceived as a woman (so a man, nonbinary, masculine/very androgynous woman, etc.)

Other featured characters: Harvey Bullock because he's gotta be against homophobia. Also a little mention of Jim & Oswald because they had something going there 😉

Warning: homophobia (not from the love-interest though 🙂), illegal homosexuality

First of all: whether homosexuality's illegal in Gotham or not, Nathaniel Barnes doesn't think of it as a sin. He may be a lawfully good character, thinking that the only line separating him from animals is the law, but he's not stupid: a healthy consensual relationship just isn't immoral, illegal or not. There's not the least bit internalized homophobia in him, and I can imagine that even if homosexuality was illegal, it would mostly go ignored by the police. Though it would be comically tragic for someone to get thrown into a cell next to an actual criminal. One's in for murder while the other just kissed their partner?? Gotham's crazy!

If it was illegal, Barnes would do anything in his power to make sure to help the wrongfully convicted. He starts out small by letting them go free on his own, going home in the evening to assure himself that you're still there in his arms, not in some cell. He knows he's already doing so much but what if it isn't enough?

He loves what you share and is very aware of how quickly things could go wrong, so when you ask him to make your relationship public, he's vehemently against it and very confused. "Did someone hit on you? Do you want to tell them that you're in a relationship? Because you have my full support to make up a partner if you want to."

When you tell him that that isn't the case, he assumes that it's something else. "Are you jealous? You know that I love you. I don't think that anyone at the GCPD wants to be with me." He leans towards you and lowers his voice, "But between us: I wouldn't want to be with any of them even if I didn't have you." He even tries to throw shade at his co-workers despite normally being very professional, "Some can be a little..." You smile at his obvious contrition, "Stupid?" you offer. He purses his lips and makes a vague hand gesture, which makes you laugh. He's really trying not to be mean.

Despite the now light-hearted atmosphere, you bring the conversation back to your request, and he gets serious again. The idea might sound naively dangerous to him but you obviously care about it, so he doesn't dismiss it right away. He wants to know whether there's a smaller problem that he can solve. Do you doubt his love for you? Are you afraid of someone taking him away from you?

If any of these is the case, he makes it one of his missions to prove you wrong. Not that he doesn't make you feel loved any other time. He's very thankful for you. But if it's not enough for you, then it's not enough. Feelings are valid...and so is your safety: he doesn't give in.

"Even just the fact that I'm a known police officer could put you in danger", he stresses, "And I can only think in horror of the hatred that would certainly be directed at us for other reasons."

Things continue as they were, until one day when he overhears some officers make fun of Jim Gordon for being called Penguin's bitch - with lots off ugly terms thrown at Jim - none other than Harvey Bullock, the man Nathaniel would have expected at least some homophobia from, defends his partner and gives them hell for the things they said.

"You got a problem with Jim banging a known criminal? That's fine with me, hell, I'd have a problem with it too if it was true! But you target my buddy because he's with a man? Seriously? Your girlfriend doesn't even know you've been looking at someone else, but you're criticising him for being in a consensual relationship, which, again, isn't even real?! Check your morals, man!"

"Okaay, Bullock, chill, I was just joking around. Besides: it's illegal, you know that, right?"

Harvey raises his eyebrows, "Well it shouldn't be." "Careful there, Bullock. Don't want to get thrown out by the captain, do we?" Harvey huffed, "I think he's got a little more common sense than you think." "You don't seem completely convinced." "Ugh, stop it. Get yourself a life. Maybe I'll ask him sometime."

Except that he doesn't. He has neither the time nor the nerves.

Nathaniel tells you the story, promising to work on it, just way slower than you wished. He waits until he heard the next hateful comment so that he could directly intervene, making his already planned speech later seem more natural.

So it comes that he spends more time outside of his office until one day when he heard Jim again, "Doesn't seem like Oswald if you ask me" followed by "Except that I didn't ask you, you fag-" "LANGUAGE", the commissioner's word gets everyone's attention, "like this is highly inappropriate here, any place really. You are police officers, show some goddamn respect!"

"But he's literally called his bitch in the streets-"

"Are we not in a police precinct?"

"Of course we are, sir, but it's also illegal to-"

"And do you not have a brain, detective?" "Sir, I wasn't trying to say that detective Gordon is seriously a f-"

"You're missing the point: hate speech of any kind isn't tolerated here."

"Got it-"

"-nor should you use it at home." He noticed the silence around him. "Have I made myself clear?"

"Yes, sir."

Wow, that felt good to get off his chest! He still needs to make that speech, which would normally be really easy but he doesn't want to make your relationship public or out himself to be honest. He wants to appear completely distanced from the topic, non-emotional, just rational.

When he asks what your ideas are, he's frustrated that something feeling so right, so wonderful, has to be justified at all. He's nervous about the speech: normally he only stands behind the law, and now he's speaking out against it? He's conflicted.

"Why don't you let someone else speak as well?" you try, knowing that he can take on too much work.

"What?" he asks, not wanting to put that burden onto someone else. You shrug, "Let Gordon say some things, he's the one you always complain about being one step away from being a criminal. And you say that he's got people who look up to him."

"No", he protests, "it has to come from someone who has never misstepped."

You give him an unconvinced look, "You have misstepped."

He takes in a sharp breath at the memory. "You killed a man and I still trust and love you, Nathaniel." He looks a little less sceptic now.

"That speech can come from any cop and it will come from someone who at least once committed a crime. I'm not saying that you should let someone else say everything, just that you might wanna talk about it with some other detectives first. Make it appear natural."

The perfect opportunity would come: the time when the crime incidents skyrocket and the precinct has to clean rooms to make way for prisoners.

"Alright everyone, listen up! We've obviously got too little room for perps, so we're gonna have to prioritize."

He takes a deep breath and thinks back to your impressed look at his practiced speech, "From now on, there are a few deeds we will no longer persecute. Not just because of the current lack of space but because they shouldn't be crimes."

He looks at the officers, most of whom don't look extremely bothered, and starts the list, "Anyone here on grounds of consensual relationships to someone of the same sex is to be set free without any entries."

By the end of the list of other "crimes", a few people are looking at him confused, some even angry but not many more than he expected. One officer raises his voice, "So what about that black-haired guy we got in for kissing another man?"

"He's in for sexual harassment!" Jim Gordon comes to his aid spontaneously. "He'll stay", Nathaniel continues, noting that a few people's sour expressions disappear.

"Finally for those of you still unconvinced, who don't have the brains to think by themseleves: before you arrest someone for any of the things mentioned before, ask yourself: would I rather harm one person or save many? A lot is on the line, we've gotten more bombings in four months than in the last year combined. So be smart."

"I'll drink to that!" Harvey shouts and the resulting laughter lightens the mood.

That that day more people visit the GCPD captain's office or pass by and say their approval. It's the beginning of a new time for the precinct and hopefully eventually for Gotham.

However, that still doesn't mean that he likes the idea of criminals knowing that you mean so much to him.

He'll tell some colleagues about you though. They deserve to know what a wonderful partner one can have as a police officer.

[postmoderntongues]

Do you not wish for a world where women don't have to fear, I suppose we'll say "males", in the same locker room? Do you not believe feminism can create that world? And if you do, but believe trans women are still too tainted by male socialization growing up, how should it begin?

I do support certain spaces being segregated by birth sex. AFAB people of all genders deserve a safe penis-free space when it comes to things like bathrooms and prisons and hospitals and contact sports and women's shelters. I believe that feminism is our best chance for pushing back against a world without sex-based protections. I also believe Afab people should be made a protected group under hate crime laws and that femicide, rape, domestic battery, etc should be recognized as the hate crimes that they are.

I don't think trans women are "tainted" by male socialization, or that they experience gendered socialization like somebody without dysphoria would, especially if they transition young or have childhood dysphoria and live their lives with the world feeling like an ill-fitting suit. I think that is a unique experience from how cis men are socialized and internalize that socialization. My trans women friends are completely different from my cis male friends and the ones I know are some of the most harmless people I ever met who just decided they were sick of the machismo bullshit and wanted to be soft and enjoy cute things and find make up and fashion fun and just feel more confident in their skin with a skirt and lipstick and god bless them, its no skin off my ass and it makes the mortifying ordeal of being perceived a little softer Im not going to begrudge them that.

I also knew all my MtF friends back before they transitioned and even as males they were trusted. My closest MtF friend who is going to be a bridesmaid at my wedding literally kicked down a door and saved me mid-rape from a neighborhood boy who was taking liberties with my passed-out body. She's also schizoaffective and has gone through periods of believing she was a prophet before when we were teens, so "refer to me as a woman" feels downright reasonable next to past requests like "refer to me as god/the voice of god". I also have plenty of FtM friends, Im going to have at least one "bridesman" at my wedding.

I love trans people, I love gender non conformity, I want trans people to live their lives with safety and dignity and for them to be accommodated with spaces tailored to their needs. I think the best solution is to separate spaces by birth sex instead of gender (two beige bathrooms, one says "urinals" and one says "Sanitary Product Disposal") and by creating restrooms/locker rooms/sports leagues specifically to accommodate trans people FOR EVERYBODY'S SAFETY (it is not fair or safe to expect people on HRT especially trans women with bone density loss from artificial estrogen to participate in contact sports with people who have cis bodies, nor is it fair to have trans men on T competing against cis women when T is considered a performance enhancing supplement).

I believe that through comradery, empathy, and mutual understanding we can find that there is more than enough room in the world for all kinds, we just need to be respectful of each other. As for how it should begin, it has already begun, but I think a big step that needs to be taken is recognizing gender dysphoria as a mental illness and researching treatment options other than cosmetic transition, and making more spaces with trans inclusion in mind. But im much more worried for the trans man who has to change his tampon in the dangerous men's room than I am about the trans woman who needs to take a piss in the stall next to me and minds her own business and washes her hands when she is finished.

[cramenjoyer]

torn between my trans butch lesbian swag (white tshirt, flannel, dark jeans, huge boots) and my aroace nonbinary epicness (earrings, sundresses, also huge boots)

[barbaricpoetic]

In honor of Trans Day of Visibility, have my Adam Parrish Is Trans Actually rant

To be clear, I don’t think Adam was written as trans, or with any great intention for him to be read and coded as trans. I just think the idea of magic being related to sexuality and gender is something that plays an interesting role in The Raven Cycle as a whole, and as someone who relates a lot to Adam, I can see a lot of my own journey as a ftm demiboy in his character arc.

For this post, I'm speaking as if he is clearly, unequivocally, ftm transmasc.

Spoilers ahead for the entire Raven Cycle series

Adam starts the books off really trying to appeal to this height of masculinity. He goes to an all boys school, the jobs he works are typically male-dominated fields (factory and mechanic work), and he dresses not only economically for his station, but like a trans guy trying to pass as cis, despite that not being the way he’d like to present himself. He’s also described over and over as pretty, elegant, delicate, like a girl, but in a masculine way.

“And the third was — elegant. It was not the right word for him, but it was close. He was fine boned and a little fragile looking, with blue eyes pretty enough for a girl.” - TRB

Adam also puts a lot of effort into changing his voice to remove his accent, so it’s not unrealistic to imagine that that also comes with him trying to deepen his tones and drop his voicebox in order to pass better.

“The voice was careful, masculine, and local; the vowels had all the edges sanded off.” - TRB

“He even sounded different. There was no trace at all of his subtle Virginia accent. He’d endlessly practiced erasing it in high school but never pulled it off. Now it was completely hidden. A stranger’s voice.” - CDTH

Throughout The Raven Boys, Adam is questioning everything, but is being propelled by his desire to be like Gansey and the other Aglionby boys, because they feel closer to everything that he’s always known and hated, but at the same time feel unattainable.

“Adam felt the familiar pang. Not jealousy, just wanting. One day, he’d have enough money to have a place like this. A place that looked on the outside like Adam looked on the inside.

“A small voice within Adam asked whether he would ever look this grand on the inside, or if it was something you had to be born into. Gansey was the way he was because he had lived with money when he was small, like a virtuoso placed at a piano bench as soon as he could sit. Adam, a latecomer, a usurper, still stumbled over his clumsy Henrietta accent and kept his change in a cereal box under his bed.” - TRB

This battle with his masculinity comes to a head when his father (the most significant male force in his life) beats the living shit out of him and deafens him in one ear.

Driven by this stress and this feeling that he can’t belong anywhere, he goes to wake the ley line to find Glendower because he wants everything Gansey has, seeing Gansey as the perfect ideal man. Gansey has not just wealth, privilege, security, respect, but safety and comfort in his own gender (at least how Adam perceives Gansey, who, on the other hand, has some envy for Adam), which something Adam desperately wants and feels broken because he doesn't have.

“Gansey thought of one hundred things that he could say to Adam about how it would be all right, how it was for the best, how Adam Parrish had been his own man before he’d met Gansey and there was no way he’d stop being his own man just by changing the roof over his head, how some days Gansey wished that he could be him, because Adam was so very real and true in a way that Gansey couldn’t ever seem to be.” - TRB

Adam's waking of the ley line is almost metaphorical, or an analogy for what happens when you realize you're trans. You can either know it and go forward, walk that long difficult path, or you can hide it away, but either way, you're never going to be the same.

“Adam was different since making the bargain with Cabeswater. Stronger, stranger, farther away. It was hard not to stare at the odd and elegant lines of his face.” -TDT

The world around Adam is also experiencing a huge shift, as everything around Adam feels more strange and surreal and strangely right, which is a fairly common experience many trans people have upon realizing that they’re trans. 

“He swallowed his ginger ale. He wasn’t sure it hadn’t actually been champagne, now, all along. The party had become a devil’s feast: will-o’-the-wisps caught in brass hunting lamps, impossibly bright meats presented on ivy-filagreed platters, men in black, women jeweled in green and red. The painted trees of the ceiling bent low overhead. Adam was wired and exhausted, here and somewhere else. Nothing was real but him and Gansey.” - TDT

Adam views this change, this magic from Cabeswater as something from outside of him, kind of in a 'this is being done to me' sense.

“It had been a little over a month since he’d offered his sacrifice to Cabeswater in order to wake Gansey’s ley line. The entire ritual felt swimmy and surreal in his mind, like he’d been watching himself perform it on a television screen. Adam had gone fully prepared to make a sacrifice. But he wasn’t quite sure how the specific one he’d eventually made had come to him: I will be your hands. I will be your eyes.” - TDT

So far, nothing had happened, not really. Which was almost worse. He was a patient with a diagnosis that he couldn’t understand.” - TDT

He spends the next book in a kind of conflicted agony as he wrestles with what Cabeswater asks him to do vs what he thinks he should do, and this chaotic agony of deep seated repression coming to the surface, he goes towards what feels safe, more specifically, the hyper-masculine.

He’s dating Blue and really wants to kiss her despite her growing away from him, he experiences a lot more uncontrollable rage and frustration (like his father, who he fears he's becoming as he leans more towards the masculine).

“He calmed enough to remember that if he waited long enough, carefully analyzing how it felt, the emotion would lose its inertia. It was the same as physical pain. The more he tried to mentally decide what made pain hurt, the less his brain seemed able to remember the pain at all.” TDT

This comes to a head at Gansey’s mom's party, when he's acting out the part of a perfect young man with the world before him. The party puts him into a near-drunk stupor, as he realizes that even though he's closer to the gender he wants to be it's still an act that he's putting on for cis people around him. 

“With a jolt, he realized that he intimidated her. Standing there in his impervious suit with its red-knotted tie, young and straight-shouldered and clean, he had pulled off whatever strange alchemy Gansey performed. For perhaps the first time in his life, someone was looking at him and seeing power.” - TDT

His gender in this scene isn’t his, it’s a performance of what a man his age should be and it breaks him so much that he rages.

“’Oh, what?” Adam demanded. “You’re afraid someone will hear? They’ll know everything isn’t perfect in the land of Dick Gansey? A dose of reality could only help those people!’ With a sudden twist, he swept all of the figurines from the Queen Anne table. Foxes in breeches and terriers seized in midflight. They all plunged to the floor with a satisfying and diseased smash. He raised his voice. ‘World’s ending, folks!’” - TDT

So he finally goes to Persephone (a (transfemme queen no I will not be taking suggestions) and through her guidance into exploring this bond with Cabeswater, he realizes that his call to gender is not outside him, not defined by society's expectation of what it is to be male, what it is to be Adam, but that it comes from within him and it always has.

“Adam was once again retreating inside himself, most interested, as always, in the thing that remained unknowable to him: his own mind.” - BLLB

“He was a magician, Persephone had said, and his magic was making connections between disparate things.” - TRK

Adam’s gender is closer to male, but it isn’t quite all the way there.

“Adam narrowed his eyes. There was something different about him. Or maybe there was just something different between him and Henry. Henry was a boy. Adam was a —

Gansey didn’t know.”

But Adam learns that, and he accepts it. And as he eases into his role as a magician, he becomes safer and more comfortable in himself, in his own body, separate from the paralizing stasis that came with his character in The Raven Boys and the agonizing turmoil that came in The Dream Thieves. He learns how to grow and restructure his priorities and to walk away from the hyper-masculine in order to be himself. He still desires things, but he wants them for him as he is now, not who he has always wanted to be

And in the end, the unknowable boy gets to be known and loved, not just by his friends and his crush, but by himself.

(and then it all goes tits up in The Dreamer Trilogy, but I have a feeling we haven’t seen all of Adam there yet)

I feel very passionate about this, as you can see.

[with-my-murder-flute]

Hi everybody, thanks for the asks letting me know I made the top of @yusuftiddies’ list of Homophobes in TOG Fandom, you can stop sending them now.

So.

I can make mistakes and fuck up and own that. I am serious about listening to marginalized people. But... in this case, while @yusufstiddies generally describes factual events that happened and factual posts that exist, I have to say that I can’t actually apologize for the things I’m called out for because I don’t think they’re homophobic. The things he criticizes me for are things that come from a lot of personal experience as a queer bisexual cis woman, as well as a lot of reflection, research, and study. I believe in them really strongly and stand by them.

I’m really sorry if this makes TOG fandom too hostile, because it is not my intention to make this place so unpleasant that anyone feels driven out. I understand if my stance means people no longer want to follow me/read my stuff/participate in projects I’m involved with (though I’d rather hand off the Research Hub to someone else than see it go down with me). I’m posting this so people can know where they stand before they decide whether to keep interacting with my blog, or “deplatform” me as @yusufstiddies recommends.

I would recommend, for anyone who doesn’t want to see my posts, using Tumblr’s new post content filtering feature. If you type a username (like star-anise or with-my-murder-flute) into it, Tumblr will hide all posts featuring that specific string of characters, and therefore any post or reblog of mine.

To address the accusations against me:

I am an anti-anti: Yes. I’ve reblogged posts of mine about this before. I care passionately about preventing child abuse, but I think there are better ways to prevent child abuse in fandom (like concrete harassment policies so predatory behaviour can be reported and stopped early, and education about digital consent and healthy relationships) than attacking people who write “bad ships,” not least because the first people it hurts are abuse survivors trying to work through their trauma, and because the research says you cannot actually tell who’s a sexual predator based on what they write about.  Fiction affects reality, but not on a 1:1 basis. My mainblog, @star-anise, has a really extensive archive of my writing on the subject.

I said cishet men aren’t more privileged than gay men: Kinda. What I actually did was question whether Every Single Cishet Man benefits from more privilege than Every Single Gay Man. If a man is cishet but gets beaten up because people perceive him as gay, he’s not exactly feeling the warm toasty glow of heterosexual privilege in that moment. Oppression is complicated and there are times when someone’s lack of privilege on one axis is way less important than someone else’s lack of privilege on another axis.

The post above also includes me reblogging someone else’s addition about how straight men can be included in the queer movement: I’m queer. @yusufstiddies has made it very clear that he isn’t comfortable with the word “queer” and doesn’t like it. Therefore I think it’s understandable that he might not understand that the queer community sees ourselves as a coalition of people dedicated to dismantling the structures of sex and gender that oppress us, not a demographic of people whose gender identities or sexual orientations can be neatly mapped. However, I would say that doesn’t make queer theory inherently homophobic.

There are also some related points @yusufstiddies didn’t level at me specifically, but I would like to address:

The constant focus on the unsafeness of cishet people:

I’m not cishet. I’m a bisexual woman who’s dated women. Sixth-light is a queer woman married to a woman. This is not an issue of non-LGBTQ+ people blundering their way into something they don’t experience the daily consequences of. This is an issue of people from WITHIN the LGBTQ+ community who sincerely disagree with @yusufstiddies about the pressures we experience and how best to deal with them. I think that even if @yusufstiddies were to filter his fiction input to only LGBT-written work about LGBT experiences, or even only trans-written work about trans people, he would still find a lot of things he finds upsetting or transphobic, because sexual and gender identities are really diverse and not everything will suit one person.

The contention that saying “’Queer is a slur’ is TERF propaganda” is transmisogyny because it dilutes the definition of “TERF”:

People who point out the phrase is TERF propaganda are not calling every person who says it a TERF, and we are not trying to argue that telling a queer person that queer is a slur is inherently equal to the kind of damage a TERF does when she attacks a trans woman out of transphobia. Queer people being able to use the word “queer” does not have the same importance as trans women being able to live, work, and survive in public. Rather, we are literally saying, “This is a thing TERFs say when they take a break from attacking trans women and try to recruit new members to their group, so it’s in our best interests to not give it too wide a currency.”

Some people have experienced the word “queer” used as a hateful word hurled against them and don’t want to hear it ever again. I get that. It happens. Where I grew up, “gay” was a synonym for “shitty” and it took me a lot of years out of high school before the word “gay” wouldn’t shoot my blood pressure through the roof.  I actually do understand that and think that’s valid (and again, support using post content filtering for that word).

One of the things I do at @star-anise is argue with young people who are headed into full-on transmisogynistic TERF territory, and work at reeling them back and deradicalizing them. I use a tag called “weedwhacking” so my followers can filter out the sometimes lengthy back-and-forths we get going.

Something I’ve learned, interacting with so many TERFs and proto-TERFs, is that one way they frequently get recruited into harassing trans people was through discourse around the word “queer”. For one, it encouraged them to want to distance themselves from any perception of LGBT people as “weird” or “not normal”, which led to seeing trans people as “weird” and “not normal” and therefore not good members of the “gay pride” community. For two, repeating “queer is a slur” predictably causes a lot of queer people to react in a defensive manner, so by teaching young or new people to say it, TERFs can set them up to feel alienated from the larger LGBTQ+ community and more open to TERF propaganda.

The next issue isn’t mentioned in the original callout post, but I think it’s key to this entire issue:

@yusufstiddies has made several posts about what cishet people should and shouldn’t write. For example, cishets shouldn’t write Nicky experiencing internalized homophobia.  Another is a detailed post of things cishets shouldn’t write about trans people, including which sexual positions only trans people are allowed to write. I would imagine that part of his frustration with fandom has been the lack of traction those posts have gotten. I know I very deliberately didn’t reblog them.

That isn’t because I don’t agree that the things he complains about are rarely handled well by cishet authors. I agree that there’s a lot of bad fic out there that contributes to negative stereotypes against LGBTQ+ people and is basically a microaggression to read.

I have two very deeply-seated reasons for my position:

LGBTQ+ identities are different from many other political identities because most people are not born identifiably LGBTQ+. It’s something we have to figure out about ourselves. And one really important way that we do that is using the safety of fiction to explore what an experience would be like, sometimes years before we ever admit that we fit the identity we’ve written about. So banning cishet authors from writing something is really likely to harm closeted and questioning LGBTQ+ people. It will lengthen the amount of time questioning people take before finding the identity that really fits them, and force closeted people to be even more closeted. 

There’s a lot of undeniably shitty stuff in fandom. However, I fundamentally believe that trying to target the people creating it and forcing them to stop doesn’t work very well, and has the serious byproduct of killing the creativity and enthusiasm of the rest of fandom and resulting in less of the actual thing you like being produced. I think that it is infinitely more productive to focus on improving the ratio of good stuff in fandom than trying to snuff out every bad thing.

Like I said: I understand if this means former followers, mutuals, or friends no longer want to interact with me. I’ll be saddened, but I’ve obviously chosen this path and can deal with the consequences. 

I wish this could have worked out differently.

[shredneck-archive]

Long post. Gender related I've been sitting on under the cut.

Transitioning and being publically perceived as a man to the general public has given me so much perspective on the world at large. On one hand, I still think that people should be allowed to hate men and even keep us out of their spaces if they want to, especially if they're gay women who, lets face it, don't really have anywhere to talk about their negative experiences with negative men except in groups where they're hanging out together or small spaces on the internet. I don't understand why so many men-- trans or otherwise-- are offended or offput by this notion. It's good when women feel they can set boundaries in your presence, don't ever take that for granted.

On the other hand, I no longer find myself relating to "what do you expect from a man" mentality and notions, because I do believe that men could be better people if they really tried. I wholly understand being annoyed and disillusioned by us, I'm not going to try to sway anyone away from being a man hater, I'm not here to "not all men" white knight or anything, especially when I myself was a pretty vocal "misandrist" for so long, but absolving or emotionally removing yourself from a situation with toxic men via writing it off on their manhood just doesn't sit right with me anymore. Men can be better, being around men who are decent people, drinking and partying with men who are decent people, being in "male dominated" work environments which require me having to grow a backbone and regularly correct and/or silence the men I associate myself with and would even go so far as to call friends, and many other things have taught me this. I speak from a degree of privilege as someone who's stealth 95% of the time, and again, I'm not putting it on the shoulders of non men to constantly keep their male friends in check, but I feel like writing "toxic" or worse, blantantly abusive behaviors, attributes, and mannerisms a lot of men enact as "lol typical man behavior, what do you expect when you trust / date / marry / love a men?" mentality isn't a particularly meaningful or helpful in the long-term, and could potentially veer into the line of bio essentialism and victim blaming if one isn't too careful.

I do, to some degree, consider myself (for lack of a better word) a "Men's Rights Activist" in the sense that I would like to feel secure and empowered by my own masculinity and identity as a transgender man, and I do believe the way to do that is by building unity and solidarity with cis men, whose lack of adequate support networks and knee jerk reactions to transness and gender non conformity at large trickle down to and directly impact us as members of a shared community. I probably wouldn't put this kinda thing in my bio or describe myself this way regularly, considering I think terms like this and "transandrophobia", regardless of how helpful they may seem, are beyond reclamation due to their origins and culture impact in incel / white supremacist / transmisogynistic spaces, but I do believe the issues themselves are worth talking about and I don't think it's particularly helpful to write every actively harmful experience a man has had due to what is obviously a sign of a shitty system rather than a mildly inconvenient interpersonal experience with "ok, but you know misandry isn't real right?" or "Ok, but men are the main ones upholding the patriarchy so why are you telling me this as a non man?" No, of course it isn't, and regardless of what any sadass transsexual man on here says, we're never going to be the main focus / in the direct line of fire of TERFs either. I'm not saying non men are responsible for the overall wellbeing of grown ass adults. Quite the opposite, really. But there are unique ways in which marginalized men experience violence that are blaringly targeted at their worth a men, intended to punch down at how they experience / express their masculinity, and those are conversations worth having, regardless of who is personally responsible. There are always internal biases to unlearn.

Of course I think there's merit in analyzing the ways in which marginalized (nonwhite, gay, trans, autistic, physically disabled, working class, etc) men are scrutinized under the classist cishet white supremacist patriarchy, as a black trans autistic man myself. I could talk for hours and hours about how, if I'm not actively being demonized or delegitimized by white people and nonblack POC of all backgrounds for my black manhood and the ways in which I express my masculinity as a black man, I am infantilized and over idealized for my transness and signs of autism by white tenderkweers. I could go on and on about how there was a good 4 years online where trans men were only respected if they were skinny, white depictions of softness and then were immediately cast aside when nonwhite trans men became more visible + we all started T, got beards, deeper voices, and developed backbones, were vocal about dysphoria and being objectified in certain ways and suddenly all the support turned into "lol, typical gross hairy sweaty men, of course you're insecure about your shrimp dick and find femininity inherently degrading and inferior. Exhibiting typical toxic male behavior by [SIMPLY EXISTING]". How Elliot Page's shirtless selfies garnered so much backlash online about "conforming to conventional ideas of masculinity and fragile standards of beauty", how, amidst an era where trans men are still considered "minors" at age 22 to further bar them from pursuing HRT, where trans men in the UK are currently incapable of getting any sort of bottom surgery due to all the medical professionals being fired or NHS waitlists extending over a decade, people think it's perfectly acceptable to make posts combating transmedicalism by being one step away from garden variety "gender traitors and self hating confused women" transphobia. If I had a dollar for every time I had to watch some motherfucker go on a tangent about how much more enlightened they are for not wanting a "frankenstein dick", how awful and unrealistic phallo results look, how pursuing T is inherently assimilationist behavior that people only pursue and are proud of taking due to systemic conditioning or some bullshit, I'm going to pop a cap in someone's ass.

Of course I, as a man who comes from a long line of stocky, rotund cis men, many of whom I'm very close to, think body positivity for all men, is very important. Of course I, as a black man, think it's important for black men (all men of color really, but black men especially) to feel empowered in their masculinity without it being seen as a threat and/or empowered by embracing their feminine sides without it being seen as a kink or a sign of weakness, especially if said black men are gay, trans, or bisexual. This is one of many reasons I am such a vocal advocate for adequate sex education courses and LGBT history having to be mandatory in both public schools and colleges, rather than a spicy electoral. I think regularly assuring people from a young age that both Testosterone and Estrogen dominated bodies come in a variety of shapes and sizes, that Testosterone and Estrogen are morally neutral hormones that everyone has and have very essential functions for all living creatures, about boundaries in romantic and sexual spaces, about sexual health and safety, and going in depth about the nuances of sexuality and the reality of how gender affirming care + how gender affirming surgeries are carried out and function would make for a lot of happier, healthier cis and trans children who will eventually become happy, healthy, cis and trans adults.

I do think there should be adequate support groups (RE: groups that don't coddle and easily bend to the whims of serial abusers to go about doing the same shit forever, and groups that aren't based around misogynistic FOMO whenever domestic violence and sexual assault rates for women are a topic of interest. This does nothing for men who actually want and deserve community and desire to heal, and worst of all, is extremely detrimental and offensive to the women and children who were abused by the former and the women who have to see their experiences became a cheeky gotcha point or a trivial topic of debate by the latter.) for men who were abused, be it by their fathers uncles boyfriends and brothers or their mothers sisters wives or grandmothers. I was personally a victim of both my mother's and my ex girlfriend's abuse for years, and I would greatly appreciate a space to discuss the nuances of being a man who was abused by a woman, specifically a trans man being abused by cis women, in a safe space that I know won't veer into derogatory language, emasculation, victim blaming, or misogynistic avocations of violence against them while I do so, and I would love the same for other men with similar experiences.

The one thing it's really difficult for me to think on for too long though, is discussions surrounding toxic masculinity. I do think there's a worthy conversation about the ways in which men feel the need to overcompensate masculinity when around each other, but to be quite honest most analysis of the phrase is tainted for me due to it mostly being used as a replacement term for "misogyny" "homophobia" "white supremacy" "an unfounded need to enact violence against children" and "that Marjane Sertrapi quote about how in the west if you're cold and unconcious on the street people just walk over your corpse and go about their day." I've also had it used against me by too many white tenderkweers who are uncomfortable with black men existing as unapologetically masculine individuals in their otherwise pure, wholesome, unquestioned world of bliss. It's just not a high priority for me, especially in a world where men are treating women and children 3 million times worse than the homies in the mosh pit or the antagonistic frat boys who want to feel something at the bar.

[carlyraejepstein]

potentially upsetting topics: sui, gender dysphoria, abuse and parents, sex

Elliot Page’s coming out rescued an awful day. Its wording is unbelievably powerful, a comment I have made once before and will continue to do so. In it, he so strongly encompasses the fears, the sorrow, the rage, but most importantly the determination and the defiance of not only him but every trans person. I hesitate to use the word “community” because it implies a certain connection that might just not be there; I play a bit of Counter-Strike but I don’t consider myself part of the Counter-Strike community; yet when I read Elliot’s words I feel solidarity, I feel a pull to the trans community that I often don’t feel I pay my dues to, and it feels good, really good. Like I said on Twitter once, other trans people being, existing, living, is just rad. Inspiring, even, despite how that word has been worn out by cis people.

However, there’s a certain something that Elliot didn’t write, for Elliot never wrote “I am a man”; only his name, and pronouns, how he wishes to be referred to. Of course, we cannot possibly know what this omission means or does not mean to Elliot, but it’s something that concurred with a shift in how I perceive my own gender.

I remember first properly ruminating on gender in 2012 or 2013. My understanding was primitive, coming from Wikipedia. Once I knew what transgender or, given the time period, transsexual, the curiosity never really went away. I knew at this point about transition, and I knew about deed polls because of my resentment of my parents, I knew about HRT and I even knew about the GICs. I felt compelled to be an ally in that turbulent period in both my life and in the online culture I immersed myself in from around 2015 to 2017. At this time a friend was going through their own transition and seeing them gave me pause for thought; partly pride, partly worry but a small kernel of imagination, wondering if that could ever be me. It was when I went to sixth form, with its environment permitting greater yet still constrained self expression, that I felt gender dysphoria hit me with its full weight. Thinking, wondering, worrying about being transgender has been the central dialogue of my internal and external monologue ever since. Not a day passes where I don’t think about the dysphoria I feel over my continued closet-dwelling and the malignantly gendered properties of my body. On a January morning in 2019, at my very lowest point, motionless under the covers, I gave myself a choice between transition and death, and I chose transition.

It’s been a complex journey. When I was 13 I shortened my gender neutral name to make it more masc (which I have now happily embraced as my middle name). I leant into the deepening of my voice because I thought it gave me authority, conditioned through the harsh words of people from public Team Fortress 2 servers. I’ve done almost everything under the sun that gets people to say “I’d never have known!” when you come out to them; I worry that I still do and that nothing has changed. I’ve gone and cross-dressed when my parents were out, and I’ve been traumatised by Susan’s Place. I am autistic, no one who has met me can escape that fact; not that I would want to, and as a consequence I am so much more confident in my presence on the internet than I ever have been in the flesh, despite me still not knowing how to make friends; hence I’ve ended up trying to piece my transition together through 4chan (I know, bad) and Reddit and Twitter.

Perhaps the biggest reason I am not out is the time when I decided I would come out to my mother as trans. When we were in Munich we had walked past a pride parade, and when we got back to the apartment I revealed off hand that I was bi. My mother chided me for not telling them before hand since it was “polite” to do so, as if it were not my choice to make because, as I still believe to this day, it’s not a big deal and it’s none of their business. But I decided this time it was important, and that I could trust her. It turns out that just like every other time, trusting my mother is a bad idea that is guaranteed to cause me pain every time I make that mistake. She told me that because she “knows more about [me] than [I] do”, that she thought that I was just straight up wrong, couched it in rhetoric about how she thought that I was too weak to be trans, and quoted the shockingly offensive “autism is extreme male brain” theory to me. It was really devastating at the time and I think it still affects me to this day, especially as she constantly tries to worm her tendrils back into my life after I moved out.

But enough about my mother; she is a fucking flat out abuser. She has emotionally abused me, and undoubtedly my brother, all our lives. I was relieved that my dad chose not to react aggressively as she did, but with a modicum of respect and agreement not to make such a big deal out of it, something I would never expect my mother to match. In the middle of writing this piece I had to decide that I could not do it any longer, and I would never let her back into my life again.

Where that conversation in late 2018 relates to Elliot Page’s statement is my mother’s purported belief that “you don’t have to define yourself as a man or a woman”. Going past the fact that she is lying, since her tolerance for all trans people is thinner than the grey hairs on her head going on the basis that she couldn’t bring herself to say one positive thing to her own daughter that afternoon, it struck me recently that I can more eloquently describe my gender through elimination rather than a label. I am happy to call myself a woman, a trans woman, and I don’t feel as if I really am wavering in or around the binary. But what I can say for definite is that while I have been a boy for almost all my life, and am holding onto that, I am not, and never will be, a man.

Where that leaves me is that I am not a man, but must I be a woman? If I am perhaps not a woman, am I non-binary? No; it doesn’t feel right. However, if I attach just a convenience to the label woman, I can give myself that flexibility in how I feel and how I present myself, and perhaps the biggest example of that is how in recent months I have made peace with my voice. It is not really a femme voice; I hit vocal fry just speaking normally. But I know how to be expressive with it; it is my voice that I have honed over 19 years after all. One day I want to find someone who will help me upgrade my voice (and yes, upgrade) but keeping it means I fulfil one cool thing about being trans, and that is saying fuck you to the very existence of the gender binary. I keep this voice out of necessity, but I’m still trans femme, I am still a woman and I still want my facial hair zapped off.

As well, I reserve the right to say I used to be a boy. Not a man, but a boy. That’s why they call it boymoding, right? How else can I describe the first 17 years of my life? I can be a boy all the same now, although I may be pushing it aged 20, and at the point at which I am really stretching that concept which at this point I am adhering to solely for my safety and comfort, I shouldn’t need to use it anymore. Wishful thinking, of course.

I think we should consider why we use “man” and “woman” in the first place. From my perspective they are simply words to describe people with two different sets of primary and secondary sexual characteristics, convenient because, well, being cis is unavoidably common. But they are not discrete, as we so often have to reiterate using intersex people as an unwilling crutch, where one does not occur in the other they are so often analogous and often they overlap! Supposedly 60% of teenage boys develop further breast tissue, and 40% of women have some form of facial hair. Thinking that the two are discrete gives rise to the idea of “biological sex”, a concept developed by cis people either to misgender trans people in a way they think is philosophically rigorous, or to reconcile their tenuous support for trans people with a continuing belief in the gender binary. Personally I would like to smash the concept of biological sex to bits because it is not useful to us. At the very least it may describe one’s primary sexual characteristics but bottom surgery exists, and I don’t happen to think that it is “mutilation”. I don’t need to argue that “biological sex can be changed”; they are not discrete categories, and I don’t need to move between them, or seek validation for having moved between them. It is not a helpful generalisation for bodies, diverse as they are.

I must add that as a trans woman the fact that I may have a penis doesn’t mean that I use it in the same way as a man. I use mine to pee, primarily, and it’s definitely not going inside anyone except myself any time soon; a whole zine was written about how trans women fuck and use their bits to fuck, so I definitely don’t need to anyway.

Another bullshit concept is “biological destiny” or “biological reality”, although I will give less breath to this one because at it’s core it is fundamentally misogynistic, and it so often is divorced from any sensible definition of reality. It’s like if I had to have my arm amputated and then someone came up to me and said “you’ll always have two arms, you were born with them and you’ll die with them”.

I’ve heard and thought a lot about gender abolition but it seems to me that its proponents expect that like the state, gendered differences will just disappear over time. But I don’t want that to happen. If the binary is done away with I don’t want gender to disappear I want it to flourish! Because gender is beautiful, men are beautiful, women are beautiful, and everyone in between or outwith are beautiful. On the other hand, me and you don’t need to be men, or women, or call ourselves non-binary to be beautiful. Being trans is about cultivating your own beauty and your own identity. When cissiety demands that the only identity and presentation we’re allowed is one that corresponds to what they decided was between our legs when we were born, why give ourselves only one other choice?

I don’t really know how to end this piece because I wrote one half of it one day and the other half a couple of weeks later. At the very least I’m glad I can attribute my peace with not necessarily being a woman but a femme to Elliot Page, and not my rotten bastard mother.

[spacegaywritings]

A manly man - Oneshot

edited 26th MAY: pronouns, spelling, shortening sentences, replacing words

Summary:  ftm Roman is on his period and it hurts and sucks. Vulnerable and disgusted, he cuddles up to his soulmate who always understands him. Remus is always there to assure xyr better half and make sure he knows he is loved - and a strong and manly man. Remus uses xe/they!

Tags: menstruation stuff, trans character /trans Roman, remrom, romantic /platonic incest (if you wanna see it like this), gender roles (mention) 

ao3 link

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story under this cut!:

Roman dragged himself over to his bed, sinking into the soft mattress and sliding under the cool sheets.

 They would be warm soon, he told himself. It would just be a couple of moments until then, he assured his body.

 The adolescent was shivering and overall felt like a truck had run over his entrails but left him to look just as dashing as usual - if not a tad paler than his average appearance.

He was sick to his stomach, his nausea sitting so deep in him and piling up as much as to actually reside in his throat as well. His whole body was sore, heavy and simply dirty inside and outside.

 He was frail.

Breakable.

He felt more vulnerable than he had ever been in his life and it was humiliating to ... to be.. to .. to b-bleed!

 It was an audacity to have him suffer like this! He was a prince, a man made to romance and charm people, to change the world and end misery for any and all people.

Instead he was stuck in his bed, by now curled up in his own puddle of horror and bad feelings. He was swimming in dysphoria and shivers of disgust.

 A soft knock could be heard at his door.

Roman snuggled deeper into his bed, trying to just sink into the mattress enough to actually disappear into the safety of softness.

 No humans, no creatures at all, just cotton and filling and feathers or whatever there was in mattresses.. Hemp and all. Things, just sleepy things.

 His throat produced a sound.

 Roman was not sure what kind of sound it was. It sounded raw, real. It was like a theatrical performance of the worst crisis the hero had to go through in a tragedy such as MacBeth.

The sound was probably enough to invite the person on the other side of the wood to come in and right after it, the door was slowly pushed open to reveal the vulnerable blanket burrito to Remus.

 “Princey, you okay?”

 Remus pushed inside, their back leaning against the door until it closed. Their arms sported another set of blankets and a hot water bottle. There was a backpack perched up on xyr shoulders.

 The suffering wanna-be royal curled further into his all-time low and let out another sound of agony.

 “Aw, my knight, I am here now. I got more blankets~”, xe offered with a little pose to show off the inviting sight of desired warmth.

There was a hot water bottle in their blanketed hand and a mischievous grin playing on xyr lips.

 The blanket burrito shifted a bit, just enough to move from the middle of the bed to the side which Remus took as signal that there was enough space for another person.

 “Hey hey, hey hey hey hey hey hey!”, they started as they moved over to the side of the bed that was now free for him to join their lovely Roman on.

Another non-verbal sound of mild annoyance came from the tall figure under the sheets and Remus simply took the invitation to go on with xyr announcement.

 Xe leaned in.

They whispered.

 “You know what?”, xe continued, carefully arching xyr back to get even closer to Roman. Xyr voice dipped into a sound that edged on conspiracy, on riot and schemes, “I got snacks for you. They are almost as sweet as you.”

 They flashed him a smile and slid under the covers, rudely inviting the cool outside into Roman’s happy safety for a moment but the hot water bottle was immediately in place to aid him and make up for the incredulous intrusion they had dared to start off with.

Roman hugged the hot bottle against his stomach, slowly shifting it lower to his cramping and screaming abdomen.

 At once, a little sigh of relief stole itself onto his features. His body visibly relaxed, muscles loosening, his whole posture being less tightly wrapped up in the mess of sheets he had created by now.

 Part two was now in place.

 Remus was giggling as xe made xyrself at home with another big blanket immediately joining the two and covering them up.

The fluffy fabric spread over the two.

The smaller one carefully lowered themself to press a little smooch to the top of Roman’s head.

 “Hey there, my prince”

 Xe smiled.

 Despite his sour mood, Roman could not help but feel his heart flutter and lips immediately twitching into the slightest hint of a smile.

Remus noted the change with a soft smile as they gently tugged Roman’s head into their lap and started stroking through his soft curls.

 Xe loved how velvet the ginger mess of Roman’s hair was. It was like a child imagined clouds to feel like. Fluffy, adorable, simply a dream to cuddle.

 “Mhmmmm...Rem...”, he hummed groggily.

 They whistled back in reply and quickly moved just enough to reach their backpack and get their hands into it. Xyr hands slung around a small bottle of lemon juice which was quickly handed over to Roman.

 “Got you the good shit, right here. This will kill your fucking sicky-ew, so we can have some snacks for you. I got films to watch on my shitty stupid tablet and nobody can take that from us.”

 Remus carefully uncapped the bottle and held the bottle for their soulmate to drink from it. Roman did, like the good boy he was and Remus gently brushed through his curly, short hair.

 They started watching a little show after that, just cuddling up and hugging while Remus pressed a few kisses here and there to Roman’s pained face.

Eventually, the sick man drifted off in the arms of Remus and to the sounds of some off cartoon show playing in the background. Xe held the prince-to-be close and allowed xyrself to actually doze off along.

  ***

 It was a few minutes later when Roman stirred the slightest bit, immediately alarming his datemate to wakeup and pull him closer to their chest.

 Remus grumbled and immediately wrapped xyr arms around the living stuffie that was the manly Roman. This time, he was fighting back a bit.

Softly, innocently, he shoved Remus away, gently nudging them aside with soft violence.

 “Not nooow”, he whined as he fought to get out of the sleepy gremlin’s grip. It was more of a challenge than one would expect. Honestly, Remus was kind of strong with their stupid arms of an athlete.

 What did xe do again? Roman was not in the right mind to remember but he was sure it was some kind of really gay dancing shit which was why Remus was able to lift him up with little effort.

Surprisingly, Roman was still a bit stronger in his arms and legs but not so in his back and overall ability to keep up body tension. He was not made for this kind of stuff. Right now he was just sweaty and icky and ugly.. so so ugly and disgusting that he needed to get up and change.

 His miserable state was less after his meds had kicked in and he had gotten some juice to ease his once so upset stomach.

A small smile appeared on his lips and he gave in for a minute.

 “Rem, I need to .. I need to go”, he defended himself as the smaller CHONK of human wrapped their limbs around him in pure spite and loving spirit.

Xe grumbled but xyr arms seemed to loosen around the regal idiot just enough to give him the heartbreaking permission to leave, despite the pain it caused Remus to be abandoned so harshly, so rudely, so absolutely col-

 Aaaand Roman was gone.

 Remus whined after him but tried not to complain too much and instead swallowed the needy sounds.

Why were they the clingy one and not Roman? Being clingy was work , it was exhaustive and it required someone to always be with them to fulfil their need to be somewhat physically touched every now and then.

It was too bad Roman did not have so much for touch as Remus did but they made it work.

 Somewhat luckily, shark week was the time during which Remus got more cuddles and Roman allowed himself to be more “vulnerable” and show his general soft side as a man.

 Maybe it was a downside of people generally hugging him less ever since he came out.. people being more physically distant and giving him the feeling it was “unmanly” and “weak” to hold hands, to cuddle and snuggle and have stuffies or emotional attachments and such.

 Ridiculous, if you asked Remus. But their gender-non-conforming lifestyle was already speaking up against Roman’s insecure heart enough to invalidate their argument, subjectively.

Even xyr pronouns were so strange, so new and out there.

 Roman would always argue he was outstanding and proud but at the same time, he would not dare to do anything that could obstruct how he was perceived by other people.

Being anything but cis was a whole struggle but being a transman was probably another level of difficult.

 Remus did not have any “gender roles” to fulfil in order for people to be more inclined to use their pronouns correctly. Usually, they just did not and Remus would proudly suggest “it/its” pronouns. Other wanted to devalue xem with these but xe loved this set of pronouns and would never back down from people who thought they could hurt xyr gender identity and change xem in any way. You know, make them right, straighten them out so they would be “normal” again.

 Roman, on the other hand, had people tell him he was not allowed to use restrooms unless his genitalia was “right”.

Shark week made the whole struggle more present.

When people always invalidate your whole existence and sometimes even intentionally used your weak spots and insecurities against you, it would eventually wear you down enough to be affected. No matter what Roman did, it would be written up to him doing it because he was a transman.

 “Oh, is this because you are a “man” now?”

“Of course you would want to do this so you can try to look manly like the others”

 All those words have been enough for Remus to start fights left and right and they would always do it again for their golden boy. Not that Roman knew. Roman hated being protected.

 Roman was the knight in this story. He was the ace of hearts, the soldier of the forgotten and protector of the oppressed. Remus should be the one to need protection.. but maybe that would be too much to ask for.

None of them really needed it.

Remus was just sick of hearing people hollering their transphobic bullshit around, especially at xyr prince.

 “Rem?”

 Roman was standing in the door, leaning against its frame with tired eyes and a pale face. As much as Remus tried to enjoy a needy handful of boyfriend but the bitter taste of conditions always came with it.

 “Finally, my prince has come”

 Xe breathed out in relief and opened xyr arms.

Roman immediately abandoned the door frame and threw himself onto the bed with a little skip over the bed frame. He landed all over Remus, knocking over the cup that used to hold lemon juice and also involuntarily pushing the tablet further away.

 He was giggling a bit, just a slight shadow of a smile tickling his features as he threw his arms around his datemate’s neck and quickly pulled them further down with him.

 “You are silly, Rem”, Roman commented.

 Xe shook xyr head.

 “You are my prince. You always have been and always will be this prince of my dreams”, they insisted stubbornly as they brushed their index and middle finger over his throat.

“I did not know how much I needed you until you came for me and swept me right out of my dumpster.”

 He blushed and nudged Remus away with his elbow but he still slid back into xyr lap. His mouth was producing sounds like the ones meant to silence a child but he was just seeking the comfort of a hiding spot to cover up the bright red blush on his cheeks.

He carefully buried his face in Remus’s little fat roll of a tummy.

 “You were an abomination of a human being when we met”, he remarked with a muffled voice.

 Roman was right. 

 Everyone saw Remus in the light of society's strict rules. They identified xem as a man rather than the gender-defying riot xe was. 

They dumpster-dove, yes, to recover packaged and completely fine groceries thrown away by big companies because they weren't allowed to sell it or give it away. They indeed broke rules and tagged walls but Remus had shown Roman the art of graffiti and the roots of it. Xe had proved xyrself to be more than a societal disgrace but instead be a considerate person to never litter and live a highly principled life instead. Not one restricted by society.

 Honestly, Roman was probably more likely to accidentally endanger others due to his impulsive and defiant behaviour while Remus was genuinely trying their best to always think of others. People just took it to be offensive when Remus was late to school because they helped a worm cross the street or started a spontaneous sit-in because of speeders on school property. 

 Everyone thought xe was a slacker, someone looking for attention with xyr pronouns and identity. Even their names was seen as "too extra". 

 "I'm sorry", xe mumbled and carefully tilted his head just enough to glance up at xyr datemate. 

 "I - I didn't mean that in a bad way. That was mean to say" 

 He cleared his throat to justify his inconsiderate comment. He was a lover, not a fighter! It was his duty to protect Remus and not play into the mean nicknames used by bullies against xyrs whole being. 

  One of his favourite things about the embodiment of chaos was this: Instead of getting mad ,they just shook their head with a giggle. 

 "You tickle me, Roro", xe started with a snicker, "your words are endearing to me ~" 

 Roman furrowed his brows. A smile fought onto his lips. 

Remus wasn't as insecure about themself as he was. Nothing seemed to ever hurt xem. 

 "You're the best, Rem. You really are" 

 Roman cuddled back to the little fat roll of Remus when an idea hit him. 

Slowly, his fingers crept up to their sides and, once in reach, immediately ran up and down their skin. 

 "Wh-", Remus began with a surprised gasp. 

 It was too late. 

 Squips and squeaks escaped the trash goblin as Roman's fingers played xyr giggles like a fiddle. The pal was writhing and twitching, vividly moving and trying to escape the tickling fingers. 

 But the Prince wasn't just a great royal and soulmate, he was also an amazing hunter. He knew when to change his angle, switch positions and shift to another spot on Remus' vulnerable body. 

They were a treasure book of sensitive skin. Almost any and all gentle touches sent xem into a giggling fit. 

 The smaller pal was curling into themself, laughter ever-persistent and body still vibrating in excitement and occasional snickers that echoed from xyr throat even after Roman retracted his fingers. 

Remus was but a little ball of giggles by now, their existence reduced to nothing but amusement and little tears from being so ecstatic. 

 On top of that, xyr prince was smiling at xem with this softness on his features.. Not even kid's cartoons could be that soft and gentle. It was a Roman-only phenomenon. 

Remus breathed, the burning lungs in their ribcage thirsting after the sweet relief of oxygen at last. Slowly, coordinated breaths in and out were managed and only occasional giggles stole their breath while Roman patted their face softly. 

 "You okay there?" 

The pal simply leaned into the touch with an approving hum. Xyr eyes closed and xe patted the space next to xem. 

 "I'm glad you're better, Roro" 

 He cuddled back up to his soulmate and took the trashy being into his superior, gay arms. A squeak could be heard, like a mouse finally finding the cheese it's been destined to achieve in its life. 

Remus sniffed happily and hugged back, melting into the embrace their Roman offered. The caramel soft embrace only two parts of a whole would ever be able to understand. 

 "Rem?", Roman whispered, softer than the late night spring breeze rustling the blooming trees right now, "Are you okay?" 

 Remus stubbornly pushed their head against Roman's collarbone and simply tugged - or rather: repeatedly attempted to tug - the blanket over the two instead of bothering to answer this daring question. 

Xyr grappling hands eventually calmed down when Roman shifted to pull the blanket completely over them and even covered their curious faces with the soft fabric Remus had brought over. It even smelled of xem, Roman remarked with a small tad of surprise in his thoughts. He only now realised, when the blanket covered their faces.

 It was the moment of realising you had more money in your bank account than anticipated which meant you weren't as broke as expected, unusually so. 

... It was a nice surprise and filled Roman with the comfort of nostalgia and affection. 

 "It's okay, Rem", Roman reminded them " I'll always have you - as you'll always have me, you little cryptid." 

 They hummed. 

 "My man", xe mumbled into his chest, voice low and unusually shy. 

 "My one and only prince. My manly prince." 

 Roman's cheeks turned a regal shade of red as he snuggled his beloved idiot closer. 

Why would they say that now, he wondered but refused to ask. Never would the man turn down unexpected bouts of validation. 

 His chest harboured fireworks inside. Little tingly sparks of warmth tickling him, fondling him ever so gently from the inside. 

A dream kissed his creation and glitter blessed his actions. 

 Literal kisses. 

Actual kisses. 

Little smooches dripped and dropped onto his face. His whole facial features were soon ravished by the precipitation of Remus' intense wave of affection. 

 Smooches arrived at his jawline, little pecks graced his eyes that immediately shut with a hesitant giggle. 

More and more little softness was spilled all over his head. The little curls were kissed deeply with a dutiful smile in the dedicated face of Remus, the appreciation of all art that was xyr beloved Roman. 

 He shook his head, shaking the kisses off only to receive more little butterflies and tickles of lips along with whispered praises spreading all over his cheeks. 

 "You're my hero" 

 Not a single spot of facial skin was left without the warming enlightenment of their bundled up love. 

 "My one and only royalty" 

 Remus nuzzled his neck. 

 "If you were my king, I wouldn't overthrow your government unless you were really really mean", they promised sheepishly. 

 Roman's heart fluttered its wings of love like a Kolibri. 

 "You'd be the least favourite of all my people ", Roman retorted with equally diabetic sweetness in his words, "because I'd never want you to be below me." 

 Remus wiped xyr puffy eyes and blinked. 

 "That's a dumb pick-up line", they remarked with a flustered hint of dismay in their eyes. 

"Just make me equal then, so I can be your favourite like I'm meant to be." 

 Roman tugged at Remus and quickly rolled on top of them with little effort, only stopping when he was on Remus' other side and got to kiss the hidden sharpness of their cheekbones. 

 " Remember that I'm your man ~", he sang in response. 

 The two continued to tease each other, softly exchanging little smooches and kisses to litter only with love in this wide world that was the other to each of them and them only. 

 They ended up sharing the snacks and juice Remus had brought over. 

Before supper came, they were snuggled up and dozing off contently in the worry-free state of comatose sugar overdoses. Love nibbled at their dreams and palms found each others backs as the two slept through the evening. 

 In the background, Mulan was running on Remus' forgotten tablet. 

[ofaheadstronghealer]

Alma Bio

I know we have official bios but until that was posted I thought I’d temporarily post this to help with interactions, please feel free to message me if you have any ideas for plots or connections or what have you! :)

FULL NAME: Alma

AGE: 36

OCCUPATION: Healer/Slave

CHARACTER TRAITS: (+ Clever +Kind Hearted , -Headstrong - Insecure )

LABEL: The Phoenix

GENDER + PRONOUNS: Cis-female, she/her

BIO

(trigger warning: implied sexual assault)

Alma, an unusual name for an unusual girl. There has not been a moment in her life that could be described as ‘typical’ or ‘normal’, perhaps that is why for most of her life being normal had been something she’d craved so desperately until she would come to understand the true power in being different from the rest. Something her mother had always understood.

Alma was born a fatherless child. Not literally, of course, but in the sense that the man who is her father was not her mother's husband nor was his identity ever known to the girl or to the others in the village in which she grew up. Being branded a ‘bastard’ was her first taste of this ‘otherness’ that she would come to experience her whole life, being the daughter of a woman who was suspected by many of being a witch….well that certainly didn’t help matters. When Alma thinks on it now she finds proof that God has a sense of humor, how hard she fought to be unlike her mother and yet how like her she later became. Alma isn’t a witch, not one of the barbarians ‘Volvas’ or one of their ‘seers’, and neither was her mother before her but that mattered little to the townspeople she grew up around. They were pariahs for her whole childhood, ostracized by the community until one of their people needed a healer with skill unmatched by any other and then only under the most dire of circumstances would they accept them with open arms. Alma wouldn’t realize that until she was much older, a naïve thing desperate for acceptance she would bask in it no matter what the price for as long as it lasted. Sometimes at night she would kneel before her bed and pray, pray to god to show the truth of her innocence to the people so that she might live among them as kin and not be regarded with such fear. The first time God answered her prayers she was but the tender age of 14 and she was shown his power...as well as his cruelty. Had she known the price that God would make her pay for her freedom she would have been more specific in her prayers, would have extended the prayer to her mother as well but alas she was selfish as children so often are and did not think of such things. A life for a life, her mother's death for her freedom. She still remembers the way her mother’s hand felt upon her cheek before they brought her to the pyre, remembers the tremble in her voice as, for the last time, her mother told her that she loved her. Alma was forced to bear witness to her mother's death, forced to stand there as she was engulfed in flame and pleading for her life. Suddenly acceptance didn’t matter so much to Alma, all she wanted in that moment was her mother back. 

The years following her mother's passing were difficult in many ways and brought many changes, on one hand she was welcomed back into the community as a show of the villagers' mercy but on the other she was an orphaned girl with no family and no prospects. Her mother had not raised her as a proper lady, she was not educated in the things a girl should be and though everyone around her agreed she was beautiful she was far too clever and her reputation too marred to make a suitable wife for anyone ‘such a waste of a beautiful girl’ they’d mutter as though that were supposed to make Alma feel appreciated. Perhaps other women if put in her position would have simply bowed to fate but not Alma, she had too much of her mother in her for that. If she had no use as a wife then she would find another way to have use, to make herself indispensable so she could not be so easily cast aside. In what she would later realize was a bold move she became a healer like her mother before her though unlike her mother she was more careful in how she was perceived, cautious to never show up the men around her, to curb her clever tongue, and to never perform acts that could be considered miracles and later used against her. She couldn’t really say in any sincerity that she was truly happy but it was as close as she’d ever gotten, she was valued and though people looked at her sometimes with pity it was better than the terror she had become accustomed to in her youth. If only she’d been able to save her mother than perhaps it would have been perfect. Alma lived this way in the village for many years, alone but accepted as much as she could be. That all changed the day they showed up. 

The day of the raid was like any other, Alma had been making her rounds attending to the villagers when she heard the screams. At first the healer thought it was simply in her head, it wasn’t unusual for the painful memory to surface; it had been haunting her for years, but it grew in its volume and intensity and soon it became clear to her that they were not the screams she remembered hearing as a child. Of course they’d all heard of the Vikings and their ways, how they would often raid and pillage and kill everything in sight, but as every other town did they never thought they would be targeted. She was still in the house of a patient when it happened, the person too weak to realize what was going on and certainly too weak to fend for themselves. Alma is no saint, she will not deny if asked that there was a moment when she simply considered running and trying to save herself but one look at the pathetic state of the woman laying there and her mind was purged of that thought. She could not abandon her. Alma helped the other woman to the back of the house, hid both herself and the woman in a dark pantry not easily seen and for the first time in a very long time Alma prayed ‘Please God protect us, see us through this, save us’. God answered Alma much like he had the time before, granting her her wish but always with a twist. The Vikings that crashed through the house at first appeared as though mindless beasts that had not the capacity to think beyond destruction and for just a moment Alma thought herself and the woman safe. She was made aware of how wrong she was when rough hands tore her from the safety of the pantry, a foreign tongue that she couldn’t understand flooded her ears but she understood the tone well enough. The only thing that got her through the assault that followed was the sight of the other woman, frail but still hidden. Safe. 

Alma doesn’t remember much about the journey that led her to Hedeby, she tries not to think about it. She can recall her captors dragging her back to show the horde their prize, remembers her feeble escape attempt just before they threw her on one of their boats. The rest of the voyage was not memorable, she kept her head down as much as possible on the boat and simply listened. Though she could not understand all of what was being said at some point in the journey she managed to make out that they were going to one of their cities, a place they called ‘Hedeby’. Alma was not certain what to expect, what would become of all those they had taken including herself? Would they be killed? Sold? The thought was frightening but she did not let it overwhelm her, simply continuing to listen and do as the Vikings bid. When Alma was brought to what appeared to be an open market in chains with the others she stood silently as they were inspected by the market goers. As time passed and the other villagers were distributed it became clear to the healer exactly the position she was in, she had always been a slight thing and while that had not been looked at negatively back home it was becoming clear that as a slave she was probably the most unappealing of the bunch. Death, it seemed, would be the escape that God would deliver her. It was not to be so. Much to her own surprise she was bought by what appeared to be a family of little means meaning that they had little to trade and therefore she was the only one they could afford, the man looked brutish, as they all did, but was not unkind in his handling of her. She was in their service for a few years, quietly observing the customs and language of these strange people with whom she now resided, but knew it would not last, she was a healer not a farmer and unsuited for the physical labour demanded of her and every day she grew weaker. It was a miracle of God when one day as she was working the fields a man emerged from the forests and collapsed before her clearly wounded, it was pure instinct when Alma leapt into action. Over the next few days there grew a small gathering of Vikings who watched as she tended to the man, they appeared intrigued by her methods some of which were unknown to them. Unknown to Alma the man she eventually ended up saving was someone that the King of these Vikings held as a very dear friend, King Ragnar demanded Alma be brought to him at once. Alma entered the great halls of the Viking King with the family that had bought her but she did not leave with them, word spread not long after of the healer from a foreign land who was now under the ownership of the King. 

That was many years ago and much about Alma has changed, she still bears the status of slave under King Ragnar and his family but as their personal healer she is treated with a great deal more respect than most slaves. Though sometimes she finds herself longing for the familiarity of her old home Alma has managed to settle somewhat among the Vikings and has found respect for some aspects of the way they live their lives and is, in some ways, more herself here than she ever was back at home.

EXTRAS

- Due to how her mother died and having been forced to watch it Alma has a deep and intense fear of fire. 

- She can fully understand the Vikings language but she still cannot fully speak it

- When first she arrived at Hedeby Alma was incredibly quiet but since being raised to the royals personal healer and over the years becoming more settled she has let more of her true personality come through, she has a clever tongue and a headstrong nature and does not feel she’s in such a precarious position anymore that she must hide those things though she is still cautious with who she shows it to

- Although she acts like she’s over the whole wanting to be accepted and loved thing she is very much not over it and longs for a feeling of home and belonging and love.

- At first she hated the Vikings and saw them as brutes and barbarians but now for the most part she has let go of that view though there are still moments where she considers them beasts

- One of the first things she noticed and loved about the Viking culture was how they treated their women, coming from a place where she was only looked at as a thing of value through marriage and the fact that she had a brain frowned upon she was secretly impressed at the freedoms Viking women were afforded.

[nothorses]

I don't know if anyone else has experienced this, and I worry about saying this off anon but I want to actually, be a face as I do. When I came out I knew I wasn't cis, and I was lucky enough to have the support of two wonderful trans partners, but I had an extremely hard time finding my place in the trans community. I am pro MOGAI and new, hyperspecific terms because I know how important it can be to want to put a name, a flag, and individual pride to your identity. 1/?

I switched my own terms quite a lot, from demigirl to genderfae to genderflux to where I am now, genderfluid. But I remember there was a moment, because I was so sure I was only female aligned, where I thought for just a moment that I might be a boy, and I was terrified, I didnt want to be a boy, I didnt want to be "that trans." Like every trans person, I struggled with internalized transphobia, not feeling valid or true enough in my identity, 2/15

But that dreadful feeling of being Scared of being a boy is something I think about a lot, and something I think is truly telling. I'll admit I primarily (only) use tumblr because social media honestly isnt my thing, so I can only speak to what I've seen here, but I remember seeing so little about trans men, other than the occasional mention in broad positivity posts, the even rarer info about binding or passing, but I did see how much people hated men. 3/15

It was always implied to be about cis men, I've been spared the more modern issues regarding overt hatred of trans men, but I saw the constant anger and vitriol and genuine hatred for men. And I realize now I wasnt just scared of being "too trans" I was scared of being hated. So I made myself nonthreatening, I called myself a boy, I performed femininity to an even higher, though subversive standard, because I was still so scared of being a man. The enemy. The oppressor. 4/15

It took many more months to dare say I wanted to call myself a man, and even then I was scared, in the comfort and safety of my girlfriend's company. I felt dirty saying it, and I still do. I always only dare to refer to myself as a trans man, instead of just as a man. And I do want to sidetrack for a moment and say my relationship to gender, as a genderfluid person, is admittedly more complex than just when I feel this way, in other ways people are also particularly hateful towards, 5/15

But even with those other facets, and my fear of being open in them, pale in comparison to my relationship with masculinity. Because when I did come out and admit to myself that sometimes, I am not a woman, or nonbinary, I am a man, I became more aware of things. I exited wonderland, so to say. Suddenly I became so much more aware of how much people simply did not care about me or people like me, and especially not our problems or concerns. 6/15

I saw how invisible I was, and worse than that, I saw a very subtle malice. The only mention of trans men were in those broad positivity posts including everyone under the trans umbrella, or in the rare case something was positive exclusively for trans men, it was always reblogged with "dont forget trans women/enby people" tacked on, I remember once I looked in the trans tag and counted how many posts it took to find one exclusively about trans men that didnt mention binding 7/15

I got into the forties. Because on other posts, I would see people make passive aggressive remarks about how "trans men are talked about too much" or "there's all these resources for trans men, what about trans women" and I wanted to know on what earth the people who said that were living on, because the only, and I mean the only thing people tend to talk about in regards to trans men is how to safely bind, and rarely, the effects of HRT. 8/15

This happened a while ago, but I remember seeing a number of posts on my dash about how much representation trans men receive. I believe there was a panel about trans people, where a majority of the panelists were trans men, and trans women were less represented than them. They encouraged people to complain, said we received too much attention, and pointed at mythical trans male rep in media that in reality, I could count on one hand. I remember being so angry and passionate about it 9/15

Now im honestly just tired. I dont feel accepted by the trans community, and even the trans male community is iffy (I fit in amongst mogai people most, but I cant deny trumeds are particularly prevalent, and it wore on me), and it's so tiring to have every post made by trans men for trans men have to be preambled by belittling themselves and downplaying their own suffering. I just want to exist in peace, but I feel like that's too much to ask. 10/15

I've reached a point of exhaustion that I have become entirely apathetic to my own gender, what was once a deeply important aspect of my identity. I feel disconnected from it, and as a consequence from my own body. I don't bother examining it anymore because I can't feel it, as someone who suffers from dissociation, I feel dissociated from it in order to protect myself, something I was once so openly proud about. 11/15

Im scared to try and push for transition, for my own personal reasons, but now on top of those Im terrified of being silenced and belittled and hated for something that should make me happy. I've tried so hard not to feed into the lateral violence and become embittered towards trans women, because that's not fair, but I won't lie and say it hasnt been hard when I have seen more than I ever would've liked be so willing to ignore or outright throw their brothers under the bus 12/15

And of course there are even more who do show their support for their brothers, and for that im thankful, but this invisibility effects how I perceive everything. I feel like I've been pushed back into the closet, I say im trans because I know I'm not cis but I don't even know who I am, what my place is, and I'm scared to explore because I'm scared that who I am will be violently rejected by the people meant to support me. I want to be free to even explore who I am. 13/15

I wish people would listen to my experiences and what I have to say, but in every microaggression every act of ignoring I feel silenced. Trans men are viewed as predatory, just in a different way; trans men are fetishized and have chasers; trans men face higher rates of violence and sexual assault for being trans men; research about transmasc transition is almost nonexistent, and new, better surgeries are not even thought about; transmasc history is erased and silenced. 14/15

I, feel like im rambling at this point, and I'm sorry I've been so longwinded, I just. I want to thank you, for creating a space where I can speak my truth, because before finding your blog I didn't think anyone would care. I feel like I have so much more to say but honestly im scared, and too tired, and have said enough for now. I just want this feeling of loneliness to go away and hopefully I'll find a way to accept myself. Thank you for listening to me, and giving me a platform to speak 15/15

(Edited the numbers for accuracy)

Thank you for trusting me with this, and to other folks: I think this is an important narrative to listen to and share!

[bigowlenergy]

Can u fix shield hero? no, but lets enjoy ourselves anyway

ok, now that the Bad Time is out of the way, how do we have fun with this dumpster fire narrative?

first order of business, make naofumi an actual victim. if ur going to explore male victimization and trauma, then u need a victim. this should be obvious, but alas, none exist in the entire series.

the most thematic options are to actually make the racism/sexual assault aspects matter. taking the initial situation at the tavern on Night One and turning it into an actual assault against naofumi at the hands of a woman who is socially, politically, and culturally in power over him offers a great opportunity to give his misogyny and trauma responses some actual ground to exist. having major trust issues and wanting to control members of the sex that raped u is a totally valid response to that sort of trauma. it makes a measure of actual sense rather than just being the best excuse a guy has found for being shitty to women and thinking himself the victim.

it would also be a heavy culture shock that actually makes melromarc look remotely close to the monarchy it nominally is supposedly. cis men in reality have a hard enough time understanding their own victimization to abusive women; it would be a huge blow to ye olde excited isekai protag expecting a Good Time and getting a heavy dose of a swapped power imbalance instead. having to deal with being the least favored hero & social ostracized due to it & a sexual assault reputation & while being an actual victim? damn son, that sounds like a narrative that has Value. sounds like a terrible time! noice.

and ive mentioned it in an earlier post, but demi-human naofumi? bro? that’s a solid hell yeah from me. like, just malty KNOWING she can absolutely do whatever she wants to him, including sell him into slavery with ease and holding that over him? maybe even not publicly accusing him, but keeping him on her side as basically her own slave and forcing his compliance through the same threat he canonically wields over raphtalia - that it would only be worse if it were someone else who owned him. that she’s a merciful master, compared to others, and all he has to do is obey her and help her rise through the ranks to reclaim the throne from melty.

all the political drama and treacherous royalty comes to head so quickly, in a situation like that - being the shield hero, who can only protect, having to further protect the one privileged person who needs absolutely no more protection? while being a member of a race considered subhuman and oppressed and seeing first hand how other demihumans are treated by the king? and being kept in such a way to prevent him from ever helping them or being helped by others? poetic cinema.

but which way to go, then? a prey animal usually perceived as weak or a predator/ closer to beastmen type who are racially stereotyped as inherently dangerous and needing to be controlled for the other heroes safety? or maybe even a human passing one, with only small hints - just enough to make him a social target but enough that he can still be perceived as human except until confirmed otherwise? and using that to his advantage in getting the other heroes to see it as human slavery/ using his human appearance to better help other demihumans from the other side.

there’s other ways to mess with the victim/minority angle to -

trans male naofumi dealing with the double whammy of being in a horrible situation that maybe - very possibly - could be solved by a self outing to a bunch of total strangers who already aggressively hate and discriminate against him + having the thought of ‘well, i wanted to be socially treated like a man’. and then having to make that choice of accepting it and remaining safe and presumed cis or leaning into the matriarchy society and the fact of a whole new world to hope things are different here. a horrible choice that leads to living feral in the woods like usual, but damn if it aint validating his gender.

OR “I cant possibly have r^ped this woman with my dick cause i dont got one!!! case closed bitches” of course there is no transphobia bc we love ourselves here

OR trans woman nao coming into the narrative with loads of internalized misogyny and denial and slowly having all those breakdowns due to being treated like a cis male rapist. maybe socially transitioning after the queen takes back over and the other heroes having to deal with absolutely nothing they knew about the shield hero being remotely correct.

OR hell, malty is also a trans woman, and naofumi comes out to her as her first party member that night and everybody has a good time! malty learning to sympathize with the hated shield hero through shared experiences as the least favorite child in the family and trans feels and ending up getting good character development and siding with the shield hero.

bruh i wanna enjoy this narrative so bad but the amount of heavy lifting required is obscene. instead of defending anything, i will just queer the narrative until it feels good. take that.

[sasstablook]

voidpunk feels, let’s go

quote, OG voidpunk @arotaro​: “I don’t have a voidsona because I don’t have much of a sense of self”

what is voidpunk? 1 2

a history of voidpunk

alright, the rest of it is under the cut!

cw: discussion of “scary” mental disorders, self harm mention, dysphoria talk, anorexia mention, violence mention, some mentions of sex, abuse discussion

so to start out with, these are my Official Diagnoses: C-PTSD, bipolar-1, and fibromyalgia. I am not against self-diagnosis, but I tend not to self-diagnose myself, for fear of using the wrong term and it coming back to bite me in the ass. that being said, I'm pretty certain (especially in regards to my bipolar disorder) that there's something else going on here that the professionals are missing. I'll only be discussing my symptoms from here on out, not my disorders as a whole.

my main symptoms I experience that make me "not human" are:

intrusive thoughts and impulsiveness

paranoia and psychosis

body, social, and mind dysphoria

memory loss and executive dysfunction

disorganized speech and being nonverbal

hypo/hyperactivity

ambivalence and black+white thinking

I started with a very long list, and I tried to group related symptoms together. so...

I'm going to refrain from inputting sources and various denotative definitions, speaking only on my personal experiences.

1. intrusive thoughts and impulsiveness

a lot of "normal" people get random unwanted thoughts. like that little voice that says "throw your phone in the river" when walking across a bridge. these aren't necessarily intrusive. the main thing that separates these two experiences is intensity. my personal pattern of intrusive thoughts includes a lot of violence. for fear of stigma, I won't go into further detail. but often times, these intrusive thoughts develop into impulses. these are things I do without thinking them through. I don't think about consequences, I just act. my brain tells me to... let's say, scream. like blood curdling, someone's getting murdered, scream. I just do it.

my brain tells me to hurt myself. I don't know why. I do it without further questioning or examination. not even to just get my brain to shut up, necessarily. there are some persistent intrusive thoughts that never get acted on. but some of them do lead to action, even if they're the least persistent of the bunch

2. paranoia and psychosis

these aren't necessarily linked in the way intrusive thoughts and impulsiveness are, being that one can exist without the other (impulsiveness is always caused by an intrusive thought). but they very often go hand in hand, with paranoid thinking leading to psychotic symptoms. example: I am paranoid that my roommates are talking about me in the other room; I then begin to hear voices-- which may or may not belong to my roommates-- whispering unintelligibly

3. body, social, and mind dysphoria

https://imgur.com/vp1EjlA

dysphoria is something a lot of trans folk can relate to. but my dysphoria isn't exclusively tied to my gender. my dysphoria is invariably linked to my dissociation and depersonalization experience. this ties into my inability to connect with human beings.

I experience body dysphoria in that I despise basic bodily functions and necessities to keep the body alive. this includes consuming food stuffs, which ties into my experiences with disordered eating (y'all remember when I was anorexic? yeah, the thoughts haven't went away, but I'm doing better with my actions now). also can humans just... not... with the bathroom thing. like is it absolutely necessary to piss and shit all the goddamn time.

I experience social dysphoria in the way I am perceived by others. this mostly ties into my gender. no matter what I do, I am always read as a girl. but even so, I struggle to be read as masculine in that I don't necessarily *want* to be read as masculine. because men are just flat out awful. and this isn't exclusive to cis men. I don't *want* to be associated with men. because if men are bad.... and I'm a man... then I must be bad, right?

which leads us to mind dysphoria and the same line of thinking in regards to my masculinity. I am at war with myself on exactly how I would like to be perceived by others. my feelings on The Way Men Are and my feelings on my own identity as a man do not coexist peacefully

4. memory loss and executive dysfunction

memory problems are a symptom of all three of my Official Diagnoses, so it's no surprise I struggle with short and long term memory. if the event occurred even last month, I probably won't remember it. I struggle to recall basic details about people I've known for years, including age and last names. so you can imagine what it's like when I meet someone new!

as far as executive dysfunction goes? I just... don't remember. I don't remember how to do the most basic things. I've had to have loved ones walk me through the steps of preparing a bowl of cereal before. no, I'm not joking

5. disorganized speech and being nonverbal

I love language. I'm a poet. language is my thing. I got a perfect 36 on the English portion of my ACT, dammit

but as time goes on, I'm losing my command of the English language. I use the wrong word in the middle of sentences. sometimes the word isn't even related to the word I meant to use, though I can't think of any specific examples right now. sometimes it's just straight up word salads, which make sense to me, but not to those around me.

sometimes my brain's language center just... gives up. during those times, I may utter one or two word sentences. I might just make noises. I might use gestures or ASL. I might text full sentences or just a couple words at a time. or I could just become completely and utterly silent, not even attempting to communicate. I don't understand this

6. hypo/hyperactivity

note: I chose the suffix "-activity" rather than "-sexuality" because this isn't just limited to my problems in bed, though that's a large part of it.

this is something that I've only become aware of after others have pointed it out to me. there are days where I move too slow for their comfort. and it isn't always related to my pain either. I can be having a good physical day and still move like a sloth. on the other hand, there are days when I'm bouncing off the walls

I also fluctuate between hypo/hypersexual. there are days when I am sex repulsed. there are days when all I want to do is fuck

7. ambivalence and black+white thinking

I live in such a state of contradiction. I don't know how to feel about people, concepts, what have you. in order to cope with this, my brain often sorts others into 2 categories: perfect and evil.

sometimes, someone who was perfect yesterday can be put in the evil category the next day (I'm currently experiencing this with a lover of mine). I don't see gray areas. I'm incapable of processing gray. which is odd, considering I'm on the gray-ace spectrum

all of these combined tend to cause certain thoughts, feelings, and actions in other people.

"that's not normal"

"that's weird"

"you're crazy"

"you're broken"

"what's wrong with you?"

"we're putting you here for your own safety"

"this will fix you"

sure, help me out a little. give me some medication, some therapy. but... "fix" me? what about me needs to be "fixed"? why do I need to be "fixed"? namely, why won't you listen when I tell you what I need in order to cope with my brain's battle against me? I don't need crisis intervention. I don't need an institution. I just need medication for my chemical imbalances and therapy to learn how to live with my brain. when you talk about "fixing" me... it's like the only reason you care is because I'm not a "productive" member of society. it's like you want to "fix" me for your benefit. does that make sense to anyone else but me? this comes back around to the disorganized speech and communication, I'm really not sure I'm getting across my thoughts effectively here.

people hurt me... I feel like they do this because they think I'm a villain. I feel like they hurt me to protect themselves. even if I go out of my way to shield them from the way I am inside, it might not be enough to help them feel safe around me

I'm scary.

for so long, I've been in love with aliens, and cryptids, and monsters, among other inhuman creatures. I relate to them. I feel so disconnected with my humanity, that these beings bring me comfort

and now, I'm not the only one

voidpunk

bonus: actual notes from my notepad that I took in an attempt to gather my thoughts

my voidpunk: aliens, cryptids, slasher horror, cyborgs/androids, uncanny valley, Homestuck, primal, cannibal, afterlife, demons, liminal spaces, occult, FNAF, psychedelics, Undertale, dandelions, hoarding, Twilight vampires, parasites, X-Men, we're all made of star stuff, death and decay, bugs and creepy crawlies, succubus/incubus, god complex, yandere simulator, fae, transparent, Nathan W. Pyle comics, the world is quiet here, Lemony Snicket, escapism, fernweh, unconventional beauty

things that make me voidpunk: sleep paralysis, hurting others, an urge to kill, impulsive violence, using sex to get what I want, hyper/hyposexuality, xenogenders, microlabels, neopronouns, dissociation, an inability to connect and relate to other humans, lack of "common sense", "men are trash", inability to distinguish between My Reality and Real Reality, I Don't Remember Anything, psychosis, can't pick up on subtlety, unsure how to socialize properly, I'm Scary, ambivalence, inability to make concrete decisions, self medicating, Out Of Control, how do I move properly, broken executive functioning, disorganized speech, paranoia, I despise basic bodily functions like eating and bathroom, what do you mean you can't read my mind, google: how to communicate effectively, black and white thinking

[sophygurl]

WisCon43 - re: programming

I’ve been thinking about conversations (both online and off) held this year about WisCon’s programming - lack of certain kinds of diversity, reasons why that might be, and what to do about it. As someone who writes up a lot of panels, goes to a lot of panels, sits on a lot of panels, and although I didn’t mod this year - has moderated her fair share of panels, I’ve been thinking about it from all of those perspectives.

My perspective is also of someone who has a balance of ways in which I am and am not marginalized. I won’t list every single thing as that would be tedious and non-productive, but to share some of the biggies: I’m disabled, queer, and genderqueer; I am also white, cis, and neither an immigrant or the child of immigrants. If I get stuff wrong in any of the areas I’m privileged in, I very much welcome correction and feedback. Also, none of us these communities are monoliths - so conversation from all angles is always helpful. 

To those who may have missed some of these conversations, my impression is that it flowed from a few starting points: 1) people new/new-ish to WisCon who therefore weren’t as aware of how programming works differently at this 100% volunteer-run con, 2) people unaware that certain demographics of the con (specifically mentioned were poc - particularly blpoc, and trans/non-binary folk) have grown tired of being The Diversity People on panels, 3) some incidents at last year’s con - while handled by safety and anti-abuse teams well - did contribute to folks from certain marginalizations either not wanting to come or at least not wanting to actively participate in programming this year.

I don’t have a lot of thoughts on those points. I have never been on the concom, don’t know a lot of about the behind the scenes stuff that goes on, and while there are certainly things we can do (”we” meaning both the folks officially doing stuff bts and all of us as a community who care about the con) to make the con feel and be safer for everyone and to encourage more people to participate - we certainly can’t make people continue to do frustrating 101-level work educating people about their own identities year after year.

What I DO have thoughts on are the other starting points some of these conversations flowed from, which I perceived to be: 1) this panel description touches on specific marginalizations but the issues affecting those marginalizations were not brought up by panelists, 2) when someone from the audience asked questions relating to those marginalizations, the panelists didn’t know what to say, 3) when there were people with and without certain privileges on a panel - sometimes the people with privilege talked over the people without them.

These are all very fixable issues, and indeed I have seen these issues dealt with in very positive and productive ways in the past, so I wanted to share a little bit about my experiences when I’ve thought it has gone well.

Panel Writing.

The first stage of programming at WisCon is submitting panel ideas to the programming department. I write a lot of panels up (ask the programming department lol), and I write up panels on a broad variety of topics from Important Issue panels to fun squee panels. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when writing up panels with a nod to intersectional feminism and diversity inclusion:

When writing a panel about a Serious Issue, make sure there is some language about the ways in which other intersections are impacted by the Issue. For example, if I’m writing up a panel about queerness, I might slip in a phrase also asking the panelists to think about ways in which race or class affect the Queer Issue at hand. That way it’s baked in. Hopefully (and you can’t control this if you’re not on the panel yourself - but hopefully), the moderator and panelists will take those intersectional issues into consideration in their discussion. 

When writing up a more fun fannish panel, STILL make sure to include a statement or two asking the panelists to consider ways in which Fan Thing touches on issues of race, gender, what have you. For example, “yaddayadda fun thing! Also, how do we feel about the show’s treatment of race?” Again, the idea is to bake it right in there so that the panelists are already (hopefully) thinking about those things and won’t be caught off guard when the audience is wanting or expecting them to discuss it a little bit.

When suggesting a panel, you can suggest potential panelists. You can either do this specifically as in “Person A would be a great addition to this panel!” or more generally with a note asking “please make sure at least one panelist is X identity”. None of these things are guarantees, of course, but it helps programming see what you’re going for. Another idea for when it’s essential that a panel is comprised of specific folk is to hand-staff the panel. That means it’s not open for volunteers and only the people who have been pre-selected can sit on the panel. (I believe this is how panels at many other cons are naturally run?? It’s just not the default for WisCon where we like lots of volunteers and self-selection.)

Another thing to keep in mind is thinking about who your potential audience is going to be. You can delineate in the panel description whether this is meant to be a 101 or higher level discussion. You can bake in the idea that this panel is jumping off from a panel held in a previous year and the panelists won’t be doing much in the way of backgrounding that. You can say “this is NOT a panel about ...” to make it clear this panel is about Issue Y and only about Issue Y. There are lots of ways to make it clear what the panel should and shouldn’t be about, which again, is not a guarantee, but certainly helps move the panel in the right direction.

Panel formation.

When asking to be on a panel, you can make a note about why you want to be on it, or why you want to moderate it. This is a handy place to speak about your identity pieces (IF you want - nobody is forced to do this). For example, on a panel about disability, I might type in a little note talking about my specific disabilities and possibly how my queerness informs my disability. That way, if there are ten people with similar disabilities as mine asking to be on the panel - programming can decide that maybe I don’t need to be there. Or if no one else has mentioned queerness as part of their identity, they might put me on to make sure that’s a voice being included. 

When you get assigned to a panel, you see the names and emails of the other folks on the panel with you. If you’ve been coming to the con for awhile, you might be able to see right then where a problem area might be - like, holy cow this panel about TV show with black main character is skewing very white! Or perhaps that panel about the intersection of X and Y has mostly folks with experience X and not Y! What do? Well, there’s a few things that I’ve seen done/have done.

One thing is to reach out and see if people from the underrepresented group want to join you on the panel! You can do this quietly by asking folks you know personally, put out calls on social media, ask programming to help you locate some folks, or even put up notes in the green room once at the con asking for folks with identity Y to volunteer. 

I’ve also been on panels where none of the above happened, but I’ve looked out into the audience and seen friends with Identity Y who I know are usually up for talking at a moment’s notice and asked if they’d join us. (This can backfire if your friend with Identity Y is just sick to death of talking about their identity, but if you ask it in a nice enough way, hopefully they’ll feel comfortable saying nah, I’m here to listen this time) 

This can also happen as the email conversations begin and everyone starts sort of awkwardly saying things like “well, I think we should talk about asexuality but I’m not ace...” and suddenly you realize you’ve left out an important part of the conversation. As in the above scenario, sometimes you can reach out and include that perspective. But sometimes you can’t. What do then?

One thing I’ve seen done/have done is to have the moderator acknowledge the issue at the start of the panel. “We all understand that an ace perspective, or perspective X, is an important one for this topic, but none of us are ace, so we’re just gonna do our best on that part and if we mess it up, we hope someone with that perspective will correct us!” This accomplished a few things: 1) it lets the audience know that you know there is a flaw there so they’re not sitting there wondering why tf you’re not talking about Thing X as much as they’d expected, 2) allows folks in the audience with perspective X the opportunity to speak up if they’re feeling like they want their perspective shared (example: “you mentioned that none of you are ace, I’m asexual and wanted to share that...”). It might be important for the mod to even seek out “comment not a question” in those specific instances. 

Sometimes, as happened my very first time moderating, it turns out that someone in the audience has a very unique and important perspective and the rest of the panelists just kinda do chinhands listening to them for a bit and THAT IS OKAY. 

You might even get all the way to the panel and not realize until someone in the audience speaks up that you are lacking an important perspective. What do??

This weekend, I witnessed a panel where this happened and the panelists all just asked the audience member if they’d come up and be on the panel with them! Now, like the example above of asking a friend in the audience at the start of the panel, this won’t Always work. Perhaps the audience member does not Want to share their perspective - they only want to make sure that perspective is being covered. That is 100% fair! No one should feel forced or pressured to insta-join a panel! But giving someone the option can be a great way around accidental gaps in inclusion. 

Doing the panel. 

Now, it’s not always possible to flesh your panel out with diverse perspectives. Despite trying all of the other things, perhaps no one with Identity X wants to sit on your panel. Or perhaps there are too many intersections for a panel of 6 to even cover all of them. Or maybe no one even realized how important Issue Y was to Panel Z until Panel Z got underway. But STILL there are things you, the panelists and moderator, can do!

The most important thing you can do is to make sure you’re prepared for the stuff baked into the panel. Even if you believe the make-up of the panel is sufficient to cover a specific issue, what if the 2 poc panelists end up unable to make it to the con or the 1 Deaf panelist got sick or the person you thought you remembered was Jewish - ooops turns out you had mistaken them for someone else? Listen, this stuff happens. So Be Prepared. 

No, as a white person, I absolutely cannot and should not speak on the experiences of people of color. That would be wildly inappropriate. But what I can do, and try to do, is educate myself ahead of time on how the topic at hand affects or is affected by issues of race. If there are poc on the panel willing and able to touch on those things - perfect! Worst thing that happens is that I got a little more educated, which is the opposite of a problem anyway. But if it turns out that it’s only me and another white panelist and the audience is asking questions about race, I can at least say something like “from what I’ve read in this article/heard my poc friends saying/saw online from poc fans.... it seems like XYZ might be true but also could be a problem because of ABC”. Heavy disclaimers should abound, but, yes, it is possible to at least address an issue even if that issue doesn’t directly affect you. In fact, Tired Queer in the Corner might be really happy that you Straight Ally on the Panel did your homework. 

If you can’t prepare - if an issue sneaks up on you - just be honest about that and still try to do your best! “Oh, wow, I just realized we never discussed in our pre-panel discussion how the issue of religion impacts this topic, but now that this audience member has brought it up - can any of us speak on that?” If it turns out that, no, none of us can speak on that - toss it to the audience. “Can anyone else address this?” Again, this is a potential backfire situation, but worse case scenario no one wants to address it, you can apologize, pledge to do better next time, and move on. The toss-it-to-the-audience approach also only generally works in smaller panels where audience participation is easily done. If you’re on a dais with a large crowd and no wireless mics - you might have to forgo that particular work-around.

Other options include post-panel discussions. Moderator: “We only have ten minutes left and we never did hit topic X. If anyone - panelists and audience alike - would like to discuss this, we can move into the overflow room to dig in deeper.” That’s one approach. Another is to take it to twitter, or other online discussion. “Sorry we didn’t get to any audience questions about Y - but please add your comments to the # and we’ll do our best to reply in the coming days!” Last year I moderated a panel with a lot of very intelligent and wordy panelists and we literally ran out of time right before I would have gone to audience questions. But that hashtag was busy and lots of us went to it after the panel and had some lovely conversations with some of our audience members that way. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s another way to try and get to the stuff that might otherwise be missed.

Also - be aware of your privileges and make sure you are privileging the voices of those you have privilege over. This weekend, I caught myself interrupting a fellow panelist of color and stopped mid-interruption, doing the sort of “no, continue” motion and set the mic down to make sure I didn’t do it again until they were finished. It happens to all of us, and most of us at WisCon are in positions where we have some and don’t have other privileges. As a panelist - try and remember where yours are and be mindful of when to stop talking. 

As a moderator - you have to do this and Also keep in mind your fellow panelists intersections and possibly step in when you notice the white lady keeps monopolizing the conversation or the cishet dude to keeps talking over the queer woman. It’s part of the mod’s job to make sure everyone is heard, so if you don’t believe you’re capable of doing that part you need to either 1) ask someone to help you or 2) not moderate in the first place. [And BTW, asking for help is okay! We don’t all have the same skill sets, so asking one of your panelist buds to help you in an area you lack is not a bad thing to do!]  

So those are some of my ideas on how to make sure more voices and types of voices are being heard in panels. I’d love if people added their own! Thanks to everyone who made it a priority for us to keep having these conversations. 

[lay4decolonisation-blog]

She-Ra: Princesses of Power (2018) and the Representation that I Want

 **CONTENT WARNING:  ABUSE, VIOLENCE**

When I heard She-Ra was back and GAY, I had to jump straight or not so straight into it. The amazing characterisation and themes of the show fit the modern audience perfectly. She-Ra: Princesses of Power (SPOP) did what Voltron: Legendary Defender wish it did. RIP. 

The SPOP series was written by Noelle Stevenson, and produced by Dreamworks. Season 1 aired on the 13th November 2018 via Netflix. 

There’s two things I want to discuss, so I’ll split this up into sections: visual character design & complex characterisation.

Visual Character Design

80’s She-Ra         

 2018 She-Ra

 She-Ra is the hero alter ego of Princess Adora, who transforms when she calls forth “For the Honour of Grayskull!” with The Sword of Protection. 

When I saw the visuals for the series and the new outfit for She-Ra I nearly screamed. It was perfect. I will always prefer Marvel cinematic movie adaptations on the basis that women wear full body armour, and not a skirt. So it was natural for me to fall in love with the shorts, flowy skirt, useful boots and 80’s influenced shoulder flares on She-Ra’s new threads. 

She looked PRACTICAL, and totally badass. I see no male gaze in the update. She-Ra isn’t wearing heels, or red lipstick, her dress doesn’t look like it’s about to give her a nip slip, and her hair still flows like golden threads in the wind! 

Notice how I just used the ‘Male Gaze’. The Male Gaze is essentially a patriarchal control of representation of women and/or other genders in media, and can be applicable to historical documentation (Mulvey 1989). Ponterotto (2016) describes it expands on the media’s control of feminine bodies as: 

“The invisibility of women has been accompanied in an extraordinarily inversely proportionate manner by the visual display of her physical appearance, of her body as material object, to be observed, judged, valued, appreciated, rejected, modified and essentially commodified, for socially-constructed purposes. From a feminist point of view, this purpose can be claimed to be essentially male pleasure, concomitant social benchmarking and commercial profit.” (134)

From the ‘controversy’ from predominantly male audiences on the release of She-Ra’s costume it’s obvious that it’s doing its job (Lenton 2018); with men reacting with things like: 

“The character designs for this show are god awful. She-Ra looks too much like a man.” MECCA_Studios @ twitter

“if you're trying to make your girls look like boys for your show then you are not actually fighting for equality you're proving that men is the superior gender and taken more seriously than a beautiful women, you're only helping sexism not fighting it” - iamconsumer @ twitter

I wanna acknowledge this was mainly white, cishet males reacting to a show that is predominantly AIMED AT YOUNG GIRLS. SPOP’s visual design of She-Ra was so key in getting this show right. She is a woman icon for young girls growing up and seeing her on screen wearing a non-sexual costume whilst being feminine, strong and beautiful will mean something for them growing up. Women/Feminine peoples can look at the screen and say “I’m She-Ra!” and not have to feel like they have to look good for male gaze to do that.  

People Of Colour (POC) Representation

Bow, Mermista, Frosta, Netossa and Catra’s - along with ethnically ambiguous characters - redesign was kind of glossed over with the amount of objections about the Queer and Feminist arguments going around. 

So here’s some of my babies:

Bow 80s 

                                                            Bow 2018

Mermista 80s

                                                            Mermista 2018

Catra 80s                                                  

Catra 2018

Frosta 80s

                                  Frosta 2018

Bow stood out to me alot because I empathize alot for my dark skinned brother’s who don’t have any or many examples of good representation on screen that explores queer identity, gender performativity, body image and positive masculinity that is casual and fun. (I speak of course from an Indigenous background, but a lot of my community look at the African-American community on TV for dark bodies representation.) Imagine a young dark skinned boy watching Bow being fun loving, supportive, gentle, obsessed with crop tops, hanging out with girls and embodying positive masculinity, then using as a mold to treat their sisters, mums and cousins. Incredible. 

 SPOP centers ethnic looking characters amazingly with their characterisation. Having POC on screens breaks out of normalizing whiteness, and de-centers it as the default way of being (Scharrer & Ramasubramanian 2015). People might argue that fantasy worlds don’t overlap with real worlds because race mightn’t exist in the fantasy world, but when you’re a ethnic kid growing up watching/ reading white bodies being superheroes and warriors and People of Colour don’t exist you have no representation, or worse POC are negatively stereotyped. Representation is IMPORTANT. Representation is the ability to control the way the world perceives a group of people, or yourself - white people often struggle understanding this because whiteness as an identity is invisible by normalization (hooks 1992, Dyer 1997). It can be compared to men as ungendered compared to women, or non-cis and queer people with heteronormativity. So it can only be visible when colour is involved, and depending on whether it’s good or bad POC representation it can create racial stereotypes (Brigham 1971, Nosek 2007). 

LGBTQIA+ Visual Representation

I feel like you can find a lot of this, but not any by me! 

I will start with Scorpia cause she’s such a dear. 

JUST LOOK AT HER. 

Everyone is screaming ‘butch lesbian’ little to know that she is a total femme (anyone can fight me on this). Her open attraction towards Catra was loud, unapologetic and was super ultra normal. Despite her giant crab claws, I just want her to hold me gently. I think it’s another good example of different body types. Like it’s not just an exterior what makes a woman a woman or a good person a good person. Before I die of thirst, let’s move on to my Bow’s dads. 

OH MY GAWD. Bow resembles Lance and George so much. Like the perfect little mix between their two personalities UGH. Both very different individuals who share a common obsession with history. Two gay Black dudes just be out here owning the biggest collection of ancient artifacts, studying the classics and raising 13 kids like wojefdikewajfaij

Lance out here rocking dreads and the glasses with sandals *bathump* and George with his little moustache and fancy hair. They go on like a normal couple picking on one another and knowing each other’s personalities, caring about their son and reflecting on their parenting when they realize they messed up instead of blaming their kid for not understanding them okmfoerngfa

Sorry, my heart nearly went into cardiac arrest thinking about them. 

I won’t miss the exceptional drop of them telling Bow their disappointed that he had to hide a part of himself because he was afraid of what they’d think of him or do. I remember that feeling….*glances at my physical wooden closet*

SPINNERELLA AND NETOSSA.

Netossa is the only character (I’m pretty sure) who was originally dark skinned in the 80s She Ra - she also had no powers. 

Now rocking up with powers and gf, she is out here living her best life. Look at them. Just look at my babies. They swapped chokers, like wow, what a lesbian power move. Plus sized, buff queer women rocking their femininity being loyal and totally badass. Their actual appearances on screen are limited but impactful as they are seen as people seem to question more what the heck they do in the Rebellion rather than their queer relationship. 

Complex Characterisation

Let’s start with Shadow Weaver’s relationship with Catra and Adora. 

Starting off at Mystacor as Light Spinner, she a teacher and getting one of her students, Micah, to perform a spell that conjured evil magic - The Spell of Obtainment - ultimately decided her path as Shadow Weaver. She became an abusive, manipulative and self righteous authoritative figure to Catra and Adora. 

Shadow Weaver is an abuser. Abuse works differently in each situation but is defined by White Ribbon Australia in categories of:  Physical, Financial, Emotional, Verbal, Social, Sexual, Stalking, Spiritual, Image based, Dowry and Elderly Abuse. 

The emotional, verbal, social and I’m going to add economical (instead for Financial) abuse she inflicted on Adora and Catra made them stick together as companions through the hardships. Adora upon realizing the Horde’s actions and motives rejects and calls out Shadow Weaver’s abuse. Catra, on the other hand, looks for something like approval from Shadow Weaver. Catra grew up neglected and constantly compared to Adora in her duties to the Horde by Shadow Weaver, so when Adora left a shift happened in Catra. Adora was her main source of comfort and sense of safety in Shadow Weaver’s irract attitude towards her. Adora was her constant feeling of affection and comfort, when she went against the very codes that kept them together their entire lives - Catra was betrayed. Finally, maybe she could get the parental approval she was seeking from Shadow Weaver she never got when Adora was around. Also looking for validation of her moral that has been cause her actions other than rage and sadness that Adora had left her alone. Catra sort out her Abuser’s approval because that’s the only way she knew how to get validity and self assurance of her identity as a member of the Horde - all she ever knew. 

Catra feels alone and like she can’t depend on anyone, and because she knows how that feels she was also able to emotionally manipulate Entrapta into join the Horde. It’s a consistent cycle of isolation that stemmed from one person’s influence. 

The thing that differs Adora and Catra, was more Adora being given opportunities to lead and step up where Catra was always on the side. Adora gained leadership skills and an emotional capacity where she was able to trust others and trust herself. This ultimately allowed her to do the right thing and join the Rebellion. Catra on the other hand had to quickly use her head and be more aware of things other than herself which made her falter in the leadership role of Shadow Weaver, but that is her coping mechanism of isolating herself and having to immerse herself with other people and the world to take action. 

Adora’s culture shock between the way the Princesses live and the way it was in the Horde only shows how she’s been manipulated through learning the knowledge and behaviours that were enforced on her in the Horde. Princesses aren’t evil. The Horde is evil.

Adora’s role of She Ra has put a lot of pressure on her, and she is fighting her own self. 

What happened with Adora was she was specifically chosen because she’s had the experiences she’s had. She knows what it's like in the Horde. How their systems work. What type of people and kids are there. She knows all of that to use to win the war. She’s not gonna break into it, but out of it. 

When Adora breaks out of the Horde’s learning, and the truth telling begins the walls will crumble and there will be internal upset. There’s a good and evil battle going on inside of each character. Adora wants to protect her friends and do the right thing, but sometimes those two things aren’t the same thing. 

Another character I wanna bring up is Glimmer. Glimmer has been fighting to fight. She’s having to fight a struggle in her internal kingdoms. She’s been trying to tell the truth to the other Kingdoms and unite the Kingdoms so they can beat the Horde and save everything they love. She needed to stand up to her mother, the other Princesses, and herself. She is so damn strong and I love her so much omg. 

When Bow went to the ball with Perfuma and she was upset, this was because she was afraid Bow would leave her. She’s been isolated also by her mother into doing Princess things that don’t actually have a big impact, but Bow has been consistent in her life and training to be a leader. When he left her side, she was scared that she was going to be isolated again. She knew it was irrational, but that kind of stuff just happens. Sometimes our feelings don’t always make sense to us at first, and we have to look somewhere else to understand what we’re feeling right then and there. But the besties will prevail. 

The other thing I didn’t touch on earlier, but will now is age. The Princesses age from around 11-18 (?). The thing about having young people saving the world is really where we’re at. Kids are rioting in the streets trying to get big corporations led by greedy bastards who want resources and exploit people to stop, and save their entire world - yeah, you know I’m talking about situations like the climate strike. We will learn from our elders mistakes and do it right. 

We shouldn’t give up because our parents did. We will be the ones to win, just like Glimmer, Adora, Bow and the gang.

Representation isn’t a debate - it’s a necessity.  

Thanks for reading babes. 

Reference List

Dyer, Richard. (1997) ‘The Matter of Whiteness’ in White, London: Routledge.

Brigham, John C. "Ethnic stereotypes." Psychological bulletin76.1 (1971): 15.

Nosek, Brian A., et al. "Pervasiveness and correlates of implicit attitudes and stereotypes." European Review of Social Psychology 18.1 (2007): 36-88.

Bell, Hooks. "The oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators." Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992): 115-131.

Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. In Visual and other pleasures (pp. 14-26). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Ponterotto, D. (2016). Resisting the male gaze: feminist responses to the" normatization" of the female body in Western culture. Journal of International Women's Studies, 17(1), 133-151.

Scharrer, E., & Ramasubramanian, S. (2015). Intervening in the media's influence on stereotypes of race and ethnicity: The role of media literacy education. Journal of Social Issues, 71(1), 171-185.

https://www.whiteribbon.org.au/understand-domestic-violence/types-of-abuse/

[scriptlgbt]

CW: Plot with exhibitionism, lack of public consent

Question

First of all, I know the situation I’m describing is inappropriate behaviour for everyone, yet it happens because people are nuts. I’m talking about those who do things like have sex in public or in your bosses office while he’s out and then they get caught. Now the majority of such incident reports in the media or social networks are with straight people. Then the public slams them for being inappriopriate. But, the rare times it has been gay people, sometimes they (the inappropiate ones) accuse the public as being homophobic even though it’s simply bad behavior for anyone. Also, in these incidents, the lgbt community really hate the bad rep when the public uses incidents like this to justify being homophobic, ignoring the fact that straights have done the same. Okay, so that’s out. If I put in my story a few characters that have done this, both straight and gay, any tips on how can I avoid writing it in the wrong way? Also, I’m aware that there are plenty of incidents like this that are also not widespread news so it’s possible I can write this without the media coverage, but it may hinder some plotlines. Thanks.

Answer

I’m going to answer this in a mostly informative (rather than advisory) sense about how sexual harassment and violence interact with the LGBT+ community. I am sharing a lot of personal experience (in vague terms) because I don’t know how to convey this information and its gravity in its absence. There’s still advice in this, and the info is part of that.

The reason homophobia is jumbled up in this is not because it’s not shitty to involve non-consenting people in your sex scene, but because historically, ‘cruising’ or ‘dogging’ has been the only situations someone gay could get laid. Pre-Craigslist (and now that SWERFs have run that part of Craigslist down) and during the illegalization of LGBT+ bars, in the absence of apps, and especially with people who didn’t have a place to go home to, whether because of homelessness or lack of safety, people have ended up in infamous parks.

It’s shitty and I’m not going to excuse that at all, I just thought I should explain the historical context for this.

LGBT+ folks are also exponentially more likely to get arrested and experience police brutality, with the results of that leading more often to homelessness, job loss, religious excommunication, than many other demographics. There’s harassment that’s targeted, about our genitalia, our sex lives, things that are actually consensual that are done with consenting people. People throw around slurs and label it as disgusting for being gay sex, rather than for being 

Again, I’m not saying this to excuse but to explain the issues at play. My point is that people shouldn’t do this (because it’s not like the public as a whole can consent, just to be clear), but it’s still the case that homophobia does play into the reactions that people get. If everything were fully equal, then people would get equal reactions. It’s hard to notice from an internet post comment thread for example. But when sexual assault and rape happen within the LGBT+ communities, we handle things the way that cis straight people don’t - by cutting people out. This is a part of the healing process and important. No one who has been victimized should have to take responsibility for the people who have victimized them. 

This also leaves those people who have perpetrated bad things to end up dealing with the greater societal oppressive straight community stuff they may have been sheltered from when they had a sense of community. Cis + straight society isn’t going to focus proportionately as much on the actual problem as people within our community do.

Personally, I have been forced to keep silent about abusers of mine because they threatened to spread lies about me that were more horrific than what they did to me. There was some brutal things they threatened as well that I won’t get into. It took hearing someone else going through the same thing for me to come forward. That, and I found out they were telling people these lies as what they perceived to be a precautionary tactic, so when I came forward a couple years after the fact, I lost most of my support system. That’s really difficult. A few others I didn’t know came to my inbox on social media to tell me their stories and talk about how I wasn’t alone, that they believed me because they had been through it or witnessed it or otherwise did not believe the things that were said about me could have been possible. (In as vague terms as possible, one of them was about a death that never happened and there is lots of evidence online that it never did.)

I also felt a crushing weight of how my abuser was a chronically suicidal trans person, like myself then too. I know how our community reacts to abusers, and I knew that if everyone unaffected (those outside the community) knew, I could have had blood on my hands. At least, that’s what I feared.

I was 20 when that happened, homeless for the second time in my life then, and it’s been a little bit now. I was homeless a third time at a different point and have had healthy relationships and stable housing in my life since maybe age 21. (Or 22? I mean there was a discriminatory eviction in there but I had a fallback place to live that I have lived in since.) (I turn 24 in December.)

Something I have learned a lot about since, and have found integral to all my healthy relationships, is the concept of transformative justice. To quote Wikipedia, “Transformative justice is concerned with root causes and comprehensive outcomes.“

I cannot recommend enough the following article:

Here’s my favourite piece on Transformative Justice, which explains how it works in an accessible way.

Punch Up Collective also has a framework here for conflict resolution.

I think that, ideally, to resolve these kinds of situations, the ability to analyze and hold accountable in this kind of way is pivotal to any and all healing and growth. If coming forward meant that something changed that would be conducive to healing, in all cases, people would feel safer coming forward. On a wide scale, there’s a lot of repercussions as it is right now, under rape culture. (And transmisogyny, and transphobia. The thing with LGBT+ cases though is that the issue is not painted as what it actually is, it is instead painted as a problem as result of LGBT+-ness and culture, not wider rape culture.)

The gist of this is that if transformative justice techniques and strategies, communication of that, and the nuances of these things, were integrated into stories about these issues, I think the effect of this on someone reading it for the first time would be quite a big deal. 

I mean my story is obviously different because it involves IPV/Intimate Partner Violence, but some of the attitudes of not knowing how to come forward about a situation of non-consent are translateable. Not necessarily of the same gravity but I wouldn’t fault you for making it have a big gravity or smaller gravity. Trauma holds itself differently in everyone who has it or interacts with it.

I hope this helps.

- mod nat