#but unless that’s the Sole Thing making you dysphoric (which it might be! i don’t know your life) then it’s still worth at least trying

[seveneyesoup]

tbh even if hormones won’t change something you’re dysphoric about (eg voice, height, chest size) it’s still worth considering going on them bc it Will change other things

[agnesgoesadventuring-blog]

This is an email I received from someone who wishes to remain anonymous (I’m assuming it’s from the person who asked me for my email address). It’s in regards to the message I answered a couple of weeks or so ago about why the “magic!cock” trope and stories where a character magically changes their genitals for sex are harmful for and hurtful to trans people.

I’m posting most of it under a Read More just because, with the email and my response, it’s very long. I tagged this as "Critical Role” and “vaxleth” because the sender asked me in earnest to do so.

Your post about the why things like the magic!cock trope are harmful made me cry. I'm a trans man, so seeing someone saying everything I was thinking meant so much to me.

I hope you tag this in the Critical Role and Vaxleth tags. I understand why you might not want to, because people can be pretty nasty when they feel like something they enjoy is being attacked. But even though I'm not brave enough to say this on my on tumblr under my own name, I would really appreciate my voice, as a trans man, being heard on this.

I've been in a few different fandoms, and I've seen the magic!cock and girl!peen tropes a lot. It happened so much in the Glee fandom that it was like its own subgenre. I've always been so uncomfortable with them. Seeing them hurt a lot. I can't afford hormone therapy. I'm probably never going to be able to afford to transition, and that means I'm one of those people who is never going to have the body that I feel like I'm supposed to have. Stories where women are magically given penises during sex and then magically go back to being "normal" after hurts me in so many ways. The trope treats the body I know I'm supposed to have as some kind of a fetish, and that after sex that identity has to disappear to go back to being a "normal" woman. It's like being told that my identity is only useful or good enough for sex, for some kink, like wanting a penis is just about sex and that's I'm just supposed to be a woman outside of that.

I saw trans women hurt by it too. I knew that they felt like the bodies they had were being fetishized and like the fics treated them like they weren't real women because they couldn't just go back to being "normal" at the end, but I could never understand how they really felt until I saw the reverse of the trope in the Vaxleth fandom.

I'd never seen the opposite of the magic!cock trope until the Vaxleth fandom. So far I've seen one story where Keyleth uses her magic to give Vax a vagina and one story where Vax gets cursed and is given breasts. (I know, some people are going to say "oh, it's just two stories", but that's still two stories too many and it's not like there are a ton of Vaxleth fics). It kind of blindsided me to see these fics and they effected me in a completely different way than magic!cock fics. It hurt me way worse, and that was something I didn't think was possible.

I felt like I was being fetishized in a completely different way. They took a body like the one I'm supposed to have, changed it into a body that resembled the body I do have but don't belong in for the sole purpose of getting off, and then changed it back to being "normal" at the end. It was like the body I do have was being taken out for a spin and then tossed aside once the person using it got off, so they could go back to being a "real" man, like unless you have the kind of body I know I'm supposed to have but will never be able to have I don't get to be a "normal" man. Like, as a man, the body I have is only good for sex, and not good enough to actually be a man.

These stories are basically "she's a real girl but she magically gets a penis for sexy fun" or "he's a real man but he magically gets a vagina for sexy fun" and that there are so many people who don't see why that would be so hurtful to trans people makes it hurt even more.

I don't know if that really explains it well because I'm trying to put words to feelings I have about the way ideas about trans people that I've had to deal with for so long are being put into fics and I don't know if I can do that and be understandable. And I know I'm not saying everything because I can't even put everything to word. Like, there are some cisnormative things about about magic!vagina and heteronormative things about magic!cock that I feel like I can't really articulate well because of how overwhelming my feelings about this whole things are.

I'm also bi, so I'm really bothered by the fic where Vax is given a vagina because in a way it equates being bisexual but having a preference for a certain kind of sex with gender dysphoria. I've experienced both of those things and they are not even close to being a same. And as a bi person I feel like stories that change the sex organs during sex is sort of invalidating, too. Because there's so much erasure of bisexuality with things like "you're really just gay" or "you're really just straight".

I've heard all the defenses. That it's just like some kind of "enhanced" sex toy, that it's because cis queer women want to explore what it would be like to be able to feel their partner in that way, that nonbinary people want to explore the idea of their bodies being different, but none of that changes the fact that it's fetishizing trans people's bodies, treating us like our bodies or identities aren't good or normal enough. And then of course there are always people who say that we're "kinkshaming", without realizing that by saying that they're pretty much admitting to turning our bodies and identities into kinks.

Just because you benefit from something (like exploring sexual ideas like things mentioned above) doesn't mean it doesn't hurt people, and if something is hurting people then maybe it's a good idea to find another way to explore those ideas. Because there are other ways. There are always other ways. This is representation that harms trans people, and if you don't care or you're putting the things that you want above harm being done to other people, then you're an asshole. I know people are always going to say that anyone who has a problem with any kind of fic is "policing" or "kinkshaming" because they think that fic isn't "nice enough" or is "too dirty" or "weird" or "not polite" or whatever, but those are just easy covers for "I don't care about people whose experiences are different from mine and I'm going to keep doing what I want because I don't care if it hurts other people." And just because you CAN do something doesn't mean you should. It's not okay to get off on the backs of other people, and it's not okay to explore your own sexual and gender stuff on the backs of other people, either.

In the Vaxleth fandom we've had both of these things now. Magic!Cock (because I guess Marisha said something about Keyleth using her magic for that at a con or something) and magic!vagina and other magical alterations to give a man breasts (the fics) so I guess it's kind of unique to have both and that means that more vulnerable people are going to be hurt. Can we please at least acknowledge how hurtful these things can be to trans people and how transphobic the tropes are? Can we at least do that much? I mean, it would be nice if people would just stop using our bodies and identities to get off, or stop using our bodies and identities to explore their own stuff. But if that's not going to happen, can we at least admit how hurtful this is? My body and my identity are not fantasies for you to do what you want with. The bodies and identities of other trans people are not yours to do what you want with. What you want to imagine and explore was a very real dysphoric nightmare for us. It hurts us. If you're not going to stop, at least acknowledge that so that you can maybe try to take more care in writing these fics or look for ways to explore these things that aren't so hurtful to trans people. I do feel like there are possible ways that these things can be explored that don't actively harm trans people. But I have yet to see them because most of the time people don't care about whether or not they're harming trans people.

I’m so glad you sent this. When I responded to the last message (which was also sent by a trans person), I was having a hard time, because I was repeating what I’d heard from trans people, as I’m not trans myself. And even though I was repeating what had been said to me rather than inserting my own interpretations and such, I still worried that it was too much like I was speaking for trans people. So I’m very happy to have other trans people share their experiences and feelings on this matter.

Too often people use other people and their experiences/identities/and so on to explore their own personal stuff, or even to just, as you say, get off, and then when the people who are being exploited for these things say something like “hey, this hurts us” or “these stories are perpetuating tropes that are harmful to us”, people go on the defensive and start accusing people of “policing” or “kinkshaming”, casting themselves as the victim and the people who are being exploited and even oppressed as the villain. Instead of taking a step back and considering what people are saying, they prioritize their wants. 

Nobody has the right to hurt other people just because the thing they’re doing that causes that hurt is beneficial to them, or enjoyable to them. It’s not kinkshaming or policing when someone tells you “this thing you’re doing is hurting me” or “this thing you’re doing is hurting these people”. 

It’s not kinkshaming or fandom policing to tell someone they’re doing something wrong.

I’ll just never be able to understand the way some people are just so willing to dismiss people who are suffering or marginalized just so that they don’t have to stop doing something they like, or just so that they don’t have to change the way they do things.

We need to listen to people when they tell us we’re doing something that harms them, especially if it’s coming from people who are already marginalized or oppressed. And we need to really think about the things we do and whether or not there’s a way to do those things without hurting these people. When it comes to fandom, so many people are so focused on their fandom experience, and what fandom can do for them, but they often don’t think enough about the fandom experience of others and how certain things that are common in or that happen in fandom impact them. While every fandom is very different, the one thing they all have in common is that they’re a community. Communities are supposed to take care of each other. Communities don’t work when people just take what they want without caring about anyone else.