#cis and trans is about what you were SOCIALIZED AS growing up more than anything

[tautozhone]

hey there’s a singular loser in the comments of this post that’s inspired this addition to this post, but i wanted to give a more serious take on this.

we all live in societies with cultures, right? good old human history revolves around that. we all are born with surface level obvious differences that make easy categories and one of those BIG ones we’re obsessed with because of reproduction is our genitalia. it’s so easy to categorize on genitalia because it’s an assumption of reproductive roles. however the tricky thing here is the societal expectations that come with these roles, and how that shapes our understanding and perception of identity. even in cultures that don’t recognize sex as a category, they have what we can understand as gender roles.

people should not be rigidly restrained to these expectations that come with gender roles, but you literally cannot abolish the concept of gender in the same way you can’t remove biological sex from the conversation. we use gender to communicate our relationship to our biological sex. that’s about it. that’s the summary. the rest is back to the original point

if someone wants a bigger or smaller chest for some reason, they should have the right to pursue that. if someone wants procedures below the belt they should have that right too. it’s not just about giving in to gendered expectations of how bodies should look or perform, it’s about how someone wants their body to look and perform.

also: i genuinely don’t see how the common argument of elective surgery as unnecessary mutilation doesn’t alarm people who make it. do you not understand people’s rights to argue for what medical care they need? are you going to keep pulling in exception cases? and if i say that i think the right to transition medically is just as necessary as the right to chose to detransition? people shouldn’t see this as some siren call to have everyone lined up for whatever surgery they want possible, it’s supposed to serve as an example of how anyone getting the exact same medical procedure is entirely different based on context.

this is not a brand new discussion i started thinking about yesterday, i have presented to a 400 level political science class full of right wing conservative assholes about this. gender affirming procedures for queer people have proved to curve suicidal ideation and improve quality of life, and i just think it’s fucked up. people who will fight tooth and nail and rightful argue they NEED the procedure get shit on more than someone out there who wants to adhere even harder to a norm that society will gladly help them adhere harder to.

want to talk about reinforcing gender roles even and beauty standards at the same time, sure! you fundamentally can’t stop gendered expectations from happening in a society, and you can’t stop those expectations turning into standards and norms. do you want people to want to change their bodies so much it can genuinely become resentment and then have nothing to do about it? i have a couple of statistics to help show what happens and what they do about it actually.

i actually think these gendered expectations of beauty are more enforced by assholes pushing people into categories based on biology that will fail to agree with them in the long run. if you want vagina = woman and man = penis you’re already playing into history that had the actual reality you seem so horrified on: babies being given corrective surgery to fit one or the other and then raised and socialized as what was chosen.

and maybe you aren’t ignorant to that, sure, but it makes me so fucking insanely mad that no one seems to be able to agree on how much people should be able to argue their own case for medical treatments. yknow instead of them just being written off as nothing but unnecessary.

do you want me to argue for every corner? say that everyone should be sent to therapy to be made REEEEAAALLLY sure they want that jaw implant, that pec enhancement, that tummy tuck, that face lift, whatever it is? make sure they aren’t falling into a predatory mindset that would lead them astray to getting such a horrid procedure and oh! oh hey congrats! queer people have to do that pretty much every time! across the board! it’s not even new information!!

THE POINT IS THAT CIS PEOPLE DO NOT. that is the point of the original post. the moment it’s “trans” medicine is the moment it’s an argument. we already know that elective surgeries or plastic surgeries or whatever you want to call it are entirely rooted in the concept of aesthetic, the thing is i actually can’t make myself care about what other people want to do with their bodies and much less their money and time.

standing on the corner of the street with a sign that says “ask me about how i think a vast majority of plastic surgeries can be considered gender affirming procedures” and on the back it says “trans people getting the surgery doesn’t make it trans surgery”

[genderkoolaid]

I think your fight against anti-transmasculinity/anti-transandrophobia and how queer spaces paint masculinity as inherently evil, your posts have actually opened my eyes to alot of what transmascs go thorugh. But as a transfem I was hurt to see that you support spacelazarwolf, someone who has used TERFy arguments that for example include claiming that trans women react to male socialization the same was as cis men react to it, and are therefore "male-brained" or dangerous to be around: https://www.tumblr.com/lesbianchemicalplant/729005502701486080/trans-men-on-here-are-like-trans-women-are-sexist?source=share (I do not agree with the author's view that transandrophobia does not exist)

As a transfem, a group is constantly demonized by the cis world and a lot of feminist spaces as sexual predatory, dangerous men to be around, transmisogynistic arguments that are "backed up" by the fact that we are socialized as male, seeing another trans person use the same argument in order to demean transfems hurts me a lot, makes me more scared of interacting with trans spaces outside of my friend group.

I don't mean this as a call out or nor do I mean to sparkle an internet argument and I hope my worries aren't downplayed, but I think it is necessary to address certain things and we transfems and transmascs should have eachother's interests in mind.

I absolutely understand why you are worried about that post, but that screenshot was taken to specifically cut out the rest of the post & remove all context from what he was saying.

Here is the link to the actual post. Conveniently, the person who took that screenshot cut out the literal next sentence, which is "we all, regardless of agab, grow up exposed to sexism and misogyny, and we’re all affected by it in one way or another."

The reason he is specific about transfems is because he is responding to some tags which say that all "afabs" (referring to trans men talking about their experiences with misogyny) are biologically "smug" and "insufferable" & how he has seen transfemmes use bioessentialism towards other trans people in ways which are blatantly misogynistic, and hiding behind the defense that they themselves are women. The final paragraph of the post is this:

"i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: trans people who were assigned male at birth are not somehow inherently more capable of sexism than people who were assigned female at birth. everyone is capable of sexism. but they are also not exempt from perpetuating sexism and misogyny just because they are trans, and they have just as much of a responsibility to unlearn it as the rest of us do. do not use being trans as a shield from consequences when you say things that uphold oppressive systems."

The post you linked isn't just reading between the lines, they specifically cut off all context and put words in his mouth about "dangerous male socialization" that he actively clarifies he disagrees with in the post itself. He never says anything about transfems reacting the same way cis men do, or being socialized male or having male brains or being dangerous to be around. He is very clear that this is a universal problem to all people, and all trans people, and everyone needs to be active in unlearning misogyny because it is taught to everyone.

I don't blame you at all for being concerned about this, but the linked OP is actively warping the truth to justify the argument that belief in transandrophobia existing is inherenty anti-transfem.

[aseriesofunfortunatejan]

My relationship, as a cis woman, to accepting, understanding and reclaiming my gender identity is not that different from that of a trans person's. By that I don't mean "so basically I struggle just as much as a trans person 😌" - I mean "TERFs are seriously getting it wrong".

There is no divorcing gender studies from feminism nor from transgender activism. Anyone who is discriminated against on the basis of their gender/their gender identity is fighting the same fight. It's obvious to many of us - cis women have a subset of experience to empathise directly with genderqueer people.

"Why is it that I like my hair better short?" and "Why is it that people view me differently when my hair is short?"

"I want to wear whatever clothes I feel happiest wearing" and "People make a judgement about me based on the clothes I wear"

I didn't ask myself those questions because the TransGenders™ made me. I grew up with no choice but to ask them - because I cut my hair short not even knowing that people would have an opinion on that, because I grab whichever clothes are closest to the top of the pile the majority of the time. I didn't come to the conclusion that I am a woman "naturally" because "biology" - I came to that conclusion after having no choice but to ask myself those questions. It's commonly discussed that a girl growing up in Western society has no choice but to ask herself what makes her a girl, because the image of an idealised "woman" which does not exist is constantly being sold to us. And I cheer to the "not like other girls" girls who later realised all those feelings were due to not even being a girl in the first place, just as much as I cheer for all the "not like other girls" girls who eventually concluded that they're the real girl, not the made-up concept that's on all the billboards.

It doesn't really matter that we reached a different conclusion, that we are different people (God forbid!). What is evident is that we all suffered unfairly and for the same (stupid) reasons.

When I officially changed my name for reasons unrelated to gender identity, I accidentally wound up choosing a name that is even more feminine than my old one. And yet no one celebrated it - my requesting that they call me a different name bothered them, regardless the reason.

Despite being a cis woman, people are constantly putting my gender identity into question. Having short, "masculine" hair automatically means regularly hearing "it's unusual to see you wearing a dress" even though you've worn dresses all summer long, every year for many years. It means regularly hearing "I assume you don't wear make-up" from people who only ever see you inside your house, and a few times a year at that. People have a set idea of your gender and gender presentation ingrained in their mind. It is not objective. I am the only one who actually knows I'm a woman - to everyone else I am something different - I am "someone who messes with gender".

Not by choice. And identifying with the gender that happens to be socially associated to the genitals I have is doing very little to change my experience.

We, as feminists, are fighting for our right to challenge gender norms. Our right to have short hair (despite the expectation that it should be long), our right not to bear children (despite the expectation), our right to do anything a man does (despite the expectation), etc. To say "except if you're trans" at the end of that paragraph would be nothing short of silly. We are being discriminated on the basis of our gender identity, on the basis of our gender presentation, using the same tools. Our enemy is the same. We are walking in the same direction, with the same goals. To our enemy, we are the same, and it would be beneficial if we wasted our time fighting each other, weakening our troops.

"What is even a woman anymore?" asked some man in the 19th century upon seeing one of those "women's rights activists" wearing trousers. Is that who you identify with most?

[nonbinaryresource]

hmmmm not sure how to phrase this exactly, but I've been looking through the questioning tag and thought I could try just asking specifically. (Sorry it got quite long!)

I'm pretty sure watching too many trans tiktoks did not make me nonbinary, but it sure brought up questions. Mainly, what if relating to nonbinary/trans experiences in my case is just that, relating? I'm thinking I might be nonbinary or trans, all because I suck at almost everything considered my gender, from looks to skills and so my "disphoria" is me not liking how others see me, rather than it being my body. I don't want to be my body to people first and then my person, besides I get the feeling top surgery would make me look and feel aesthetically cooler lol but that's just me

Is that a thing or I'm just extremely in denial?

Not sure if you caught the study we were just reblogging on how dysphoria and transness is not caused by "social contagion" like tiktoks, but if not, it feels relevant to link.

Researchers from the Fenway Institute disproved the theory of "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" (RODG) and determined that "social contagion" does not influence gender identity in the largest study of its kind, published earlier this month in Pediatrics journal.

"The hypothesis that transgender and gender diverse youth assigned female at birth identify as transgender due to social contagion does not hold up to scrutiny and should not be used to argue against the provision of gender-affirming medical care for adolescents," Dr. Alex S. Keuroghlian, the study's senior author and director of Fenway's National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center, and the Massachusetts General Hospital Psychiatry Gender Identity Program, said in a statement.

But I'm gonna focus on the idea of "what if I just relate to trans experiences but aren't trans?"

Okay.

So.

What if you do?

What?

Then what?

You...find out more about yourself?

You...discover new things about your own feelings and comfort?

You...consider all of the options and come to decide on which label is best for you to adopt?

I'm not seeing a downside here. I'm not seeing anything to panic about. The transphobes have turned exploration and experimentation into the boogeyman. Life is about exploration and experimentation. Capitalism has absolutely ruined us. It's ridiculous to expect children who aren't even done psychologically developing yet to know and pick their life path and dedicate the rest of their life to it, including going thousands of dollars in debt to get a degree if necessary. It's ridiculous to expect people to not explore and experiment and have some damn fun in life, whether that's trying out 60 different jobs to find something that they want to do or discarding and picking up a new hobby each every single week to find what they actually find enjoyable or playing around with genders/sexualities/names/pronouns/clothes/etc. to figure out their feelings and better get to know who they are.

There is nothing - NOTHING - inherently wrong, bad, or immature about exploration and experimentation in life period.

So what if you relate to trans experiences but are actually cis? So what you identify as trans now for whatever length of time and change how you label later? So what?

I am so tired of the idea that anybody knows what they are doing ever. Nobody knows! We're all just making it up! The imposter syndrome we're putting everyone through for every aspect of their lives - from their jobs to their hobbies to their genders to their sexualities - is out of control. The society we have built is not meant for people. And that's incredibly, incredibly heartbreaking.

People should be allowed to play and explore and experiment!

People should be allowed to grow and change!

People should be allowed to be confused and unsure!

People should be allowed to not know!

People should be allowed to try on identities like we try on clothes at the store!

Fuck the self-gaslighting society is pressuring you to put yourself through.

I don't care what you know for sure. I don't care if you're going by a label you're unsure of. I don't care if you're going by a label you know is technically not the most accurate. I don't care if you stuck up a bunch of identity labels on a dart board, threw a dart, and decided to identify as that one. I'm here for you. The messy, confused, complex, hard to understand you. The real you.

Could it be a thing that you relate to trans experiences, don't really relate to cis experiences, and yet are cis? Sure. (Slightly tangential, but I think you might get some food for thought out of this piece of writing.)

But don't sit here thinking you have to identify as cis because you don't have "proof" of being trans. That's not a thing. It's just what the transphobes want you to think. You can identify as any damn thing you want (let's avoid cultural appropriation, though!), even if you're only 0.5% thinking you might be that thing.

If you think you might be nonbinary, practice not giving into the thoughts like "but I can't really be nonbinary because I'm only just now thinking about it". Practice letting yourself try out being nonbinary! For at least several months, unless it's just too terrible and you realize right away that it's not right for you. Don't debate on this or put yourself through a court of law or beat yourself down. Just let yourself be nonbinary. In a couple months, then come back to the questions of "is this right for me?".

And there is no "right" or "wrong" reason to identify with whatever identity. Some people identify as nonbinary because they have a very specific, pinpointable, non-binary gender. Others identify as nonbinary because they're not really sure but nonbinary makes them the most comfortable. Others identify as nonbinary because they want to be nonbinary. Others identify as nonbinary because they don't relate to or don't understand or don't want to identify with the binarily gendered structure of our society. Whatever your reasoning, it's both valid and nobody else's business (though ofc you can tell anybody why if it's what YOU want to do).

~Mod Pluto

P.S. If anything in this ask comes off as angry or frustrated, it is not with you. It is towards society and bigots who purport attitudes that harm people, even if in seemingly "little" ways like making them feel like they can't trust their own feelings.

[marsstarsdoesart]

part one of talking abt random sad shit (DYSPHORIA/DYSMORPHIA)

(feel free to correct me if anything's wrong)

The word dysphoria comes from the Greek word dusphoros, which means "hard to bear", and being dysphoric or having dysphoria means that one is in a state of "unhappiness", "unsatisfied" or "uneasy", all to a much greater scale than what is typical.

Dysphoria became a more commonly used term from the 1950's-1970's or so and just rose in popularity after, one of the most common terms being gender dysphoria, or body dysmorphia.

Both of which I would like to clear up some common assumptions and stigma about.

>>>||gender dysphoria ≠ body dysmorphia||<<<

Being dysphoric about one's gender can mean lots of things. Ex; being unhappy with one's body because they were assigned a gender at birth that doesn't fit or doesn't completely fit, being mentally confused or overwhelmed by unhappiness and a sense of longing to fit into a different gender, feeling as though one's been "stuck in the wrong body".

Being dysmorphic about one's body can also mean lots of things. Ex; being unhappy with one's body type, shape, or size, feeling extreme concern about one's appearance, avoiding mirrors or constantly checking themselves in them, feeling ugly or distorted.

While there are similarities to both, they are NOT the same thing.

Also, just so my trans/enby/genderqueer/any other gender than cis friends know,

Trans people with minor/no dysphoria are still trans. You don't necessarily need dysphoria to be trans. Some people are aware they don't fit into their assigned gender and are fine with it, get gender-affirming care and/or surgery and live peacefully, for a multitude of reasons, some being due to lack of social stigma, growing up as your preferred gender from a younger age, and many other things.

Also, in case there was any confusion, this mainly is for me to explain things and give tips and advice? Sorry if that wasn't clear. Exiting the therapy corner~ 

*trombones give an off pitched squeaky whine in the background instead of a nice outro or something*

[ceilidhtransing]

It fascinates me the lengths some cis people - and often even well-meaning cis people - will go to in an attempt to “explain” transness that would be entirely unnecessary if they just accepted that we are who we are and it's really as simple as that.

They'll come up with all sorts of theories in their heads about how some sort of extreme past trauma must have made someone trans, or it must be some kind of strange mental delusion (ranging all the way from “they're insane and we shouldn't pander to their illness” to “we should be kind to these people because they can't help their condition”), or perhaps it's because when they were very young their caregivers didn't encourage them enough into the stereotypes of their assigned gender, or maybe it's social contagion and they caught transness from their classmate, the list goes on.

In a way I get the impulse to try to “understand”, to try to “find a reason”, especially among the well-meaning ones, because they can't get their heads around transness and seem to be grasping for some kind of explanation for what on earth would make someone do all this weird stuff of changing their body and taking on [what seems to them to be] a whole new identity. They can't ever imagine themselves doing such a thing so they land on the idea that something really extreme must have happened to make someone do all that.

But all these theories are so totally unnecessary, and they're conjured into existence purely because the people making them simply. can't. internalise. that yes it's possible to be a woman who was assigned male at birth and yes it's possible to be a man who was assigned female at birth and yes it's possible to be neither a man nor a woman.

That's it. You really don't need any explanation once you genuinely accept that fact into your worldview.

“Why is Jared from accounting doing this to himself? Do you think maybe he was assaulted or something and this is his coping mechanism?”

Well “Jared” is actually a woman, and if you just accept that, everything else becomes obvious and there's no mystery whatsoever.

I often think that cis people get themselves tangled in trying to imagine what would make them want to “become the other gender”, when the only thought experiment they really need to do in order to “get it” is to imagine waking up one day in a body that society assumes would belong to the other binary gender. Hell, imagine growing up in that body. Imagine trying to go about your day as You, still the man or woman that you are, while everyone is constantly treating you as, and insisting that you are, the other binary gender, and while trying to exist in a body that doesn't feel like yours or reflect who you are inside. Of course you're going to take steps to rectify the situation, to ask people to refer to you in ways that reflect your internal self, to change your body to be more congruent with your actual gender, to want to live as who you actually are. It's not actually at all complicated.

And obviously transphobes aren't exactly trying to get their heads round it, but it's staggering how many cis people who really think of themselves as being supportive of trans people still haven't properly internalised the basic tenet that there genuinely isn't anything more “to it” than we are, deeply truly eternally, who we say we are.

[venomroses]

7, 8, and 10 for the four?

7. If they weren't a killjoy, what would they do? If they aren't a killjoy, were they at some point? What were they like, or what would they be like if they were?

Party: If they weren't a killjoy, they'd probably be a pharmacy tech in the City. They were on that track before they left to find Kobra, who left the City first, so if that had never happened that's where they'd be.

Kobra: If he'd escaped to the desert and just hadn't become a killjoy, he'd probably work for Dr. D. If he'd never escaped, he'd likely have been drac'd or exiled to the Lobby at some point.

Ghoul: He was on track to become an Exterminator, though he likely wouldn't have stuck with it for very long. He was from the inner city, so he likely could've done whatever he wanted, but he didn't really have a backup plan.

Jet: If he wasn't a killjoy he'd likely be like the others- doing what he'd done before meeting them. He was working whatever jobs he could find to care for the Girl, so that's where he'd be.

the Girl: She was a killjoy when she was little, but not after the four died.

8. How old were they when they got to the Zones? How old were they when they became a rebel, if they are one?

Party: They escaped to the Zones at 15, just a few weeks after Kobra did. They were much more reluctant to go against BLI more than they already had by escaping, so even if they went with Kobra and Jet's more rebellious acts, their heart wasn't really in it until Ghoul joined the group when they were 18.

Kobra: He escaped to the Zones at 13. Depending on what you define as a rebel, you could say that he's always been one, but he didn't become a killjoy until around 15.

Ghoul: He left the City at 17 and began rebelling as soon as he was reasonably sure he wouldn't be immediately caught.

Jet: Jet was born in the Zones, so he's always been there. He was always reluctant to take risks with the Girl being so young, but when Kobra got into it, he had to admit it was pretty fun to fuck BLI up.

the Girl: She was stolen from BLI as a baby, before 3 months old, but her exact age at the time isn't known. You could technically consider her to be a rebel when the Fab Four started rebelling when she was about three or four, but of course she was a little kid so she was just copying them without really understanding why. She didn't truly rebel against the City until she destroyed it.

10. Has living in the zones changed their perception of their gender/sexuality? Or, if they were born in the zones, does exposure to city ideas of gender/sexuality change their perception of their own identity? What do they identify as?

Party:

Kobra: He got more comfortable with his gender once he's in the zones. He was AFAB with PAIS (partial androgen insensitivity syndrome), so he naturally has higher testosterone levels than a perisex girl. Once he was off the estrogen HRT he was on in the city he got to embrace his more masculine traits. He's a trans man and gay (he/him pronouns).

Ghoul: He's this kind of cis guy:

this is him and Kobra To Me. Doesn't really know what label to use but gender doesn't really matter to him

Jet: City ideas of gender and sexuality, not just heteronormative expectations but their ideas of queerness, make him feel very boxed in. He doesn't really bother questioning what labels he should use or anything. He's fine with being a man, but if he'd been born a girl he'd probably be fine with that too. He doesn't really care about pronouns so just use whatever. And he's mostly into men but sometimes there's a woman or nonbinary person he's into

the Girl: She has a weird relationship with gender because who the world knows her has is so closely tied to a specific gender because of her name, because she was so socially isolated for most of her life her perception of gender isn't the same as someone who grows up constantly around other people, and because she's intersex. She doesn't really like being referred to as a girl in any context, name or gender, but she's not a boy. She's fine with her body and fine with she/her so she doesn't really bother looking for actual labels.

[genderqueerdykes]

hey ! so while i wouldnt consider myself a trans person i never really think abt my gender at all and dont care what ppl call me ever. i guess that the reason that i dont consider myself a trans person is bc im not mentally transitioning, as in, changing my self perspective from one gender to another, socially transitioning, or medically transitioning. my gender has never been something i give more than a passing thought to. the most annoying thing about this is bc im AFAB, once i start dicussing this online, some radfem comes out of the fucking woodworks to talk abt how "women dont experience gender as children and you were forcibly disconnected from yours via the patriarchy" which could be a mildly good take if it wasnt coming from someone who believes that growing up as a man makes you violent and growing up as a woman makes you miserable. gender is a joyous thing ! just not for me lol. ok chat over have a lovely one you lot <3

i really appreciate you sharing your experience though!!! i think that's a really cool experience, some people just.... don't experience gender. i don' tthink that has anything to do with your agab, you're right i think r/adfems are just determined to try to recruit people into their echo chambers... many afab people are certainly denied the right to explore gender but yea, i get what you're saying and i hate that people just like. decide to invalidate your experience just because of your agab

i just think what you experience is cool and i hope people don't make you feel pressured to identify any which way. you're cool no matter if you're trans, cis, agender, whatever. hopefully people leave you alone and just let you experience. take care! feel free to come back any time

[bullshit-tqia]

I don’t think I’ve ever said you’ve threatened me, but you definitely said I should die, as you said “go die alone in a hole you transphobic fuckwad” during your first interaction with me. I don’t necessarily think it is a death threat since you didn’t threaten to kill me or anything, but it is quite obvious you at least expressed some hope for me to die for disagreeing with you.

The reason why I said it is obvious you find transmisogyny more important than transandrophobia because you said you get more angry about it than transandrophobia. If a trans woman is killed for being trans and a trans man gets killed for being trans, I get angry at both deaths with the same amount of anger. You said you get angrier at it. It is a perfectly rational assumption to believe that because you get angrier at transmisogyny, you care about it more.

I get angrier when I break my phone than when I break the tip of my pencil. Do I care about them the same amount? Obviously not. But this is exactly what people mean when they say “I get angrier about X than about Y.” You care about it more. You are more willing to get angrier because you find it more distasteful, so you get angrier. Why is transmisogyny more distasteful to you?

But as a whole I don’t think that’s necessarily wrong or bad. But I do think it is a flagrant attempt to moralize and act like you are better than me, so I moralized back. So now you have to justify what you said. This was intentional. I baited you.

I never said I wasn’t capable of perpetuating transmisogyny. I just said that I am not being transmisogynistic for recognizing trans women can be misogynists by absorbing misogynistic beliefs about women or AFAB people from before they transitioned. You’re acting like it is impossible for trans women to be misogynistic. Saying trans women can be misogynistic isn’t TERF rhetoric, it’s just reality. Nobody is immune from being misogynistic.

Rejecting TERFs shouldn’t just be “when a TERF goes left, I go right.” That’s not how you actually reject TERFs, you’re just being petty. You may have turned right but you could easily end back to where TERFs are. You can still uphold the same anti-science & anti-feminist beliefs that TERFs hold. It’s not impossible.

If your idea of rejecting TERFs is rejecting reality because it’s too scary for you to consider that trans women are still human while being capable of being misogynistic like everyone else…then I don’t understand why you think I’m the radical while you are justifying ignoring reality to pretend trans women are ethereal, untouchable beings incapable of doing wrong. That in of itself is transmisogynistic. You can’t act like one group of people are perfect entities in order to protest TERFs. TERFs think the same about cis women, they act like any criticism towards women or womanhood as a whole is misogyny. It’s the same rationalization behind the same beliefs.

It is incredibly damaging to keep doubling down on stretching the definition of TERF or transmisogyny by acting as if any interpretation of socialization is transmisogyny. Why is it literally impossible for trans women to have been treated like they were men prior to transitioning? What would cause dysphoria if trans women weren’t expected to be and act like men? It makes no sense. Vice versa for trans men, what would cause dysphoria if trans men weren’t expected to be and act like women? Nothing? Magic? Self perception isn’t influenced by someone interpreting how someone is perceived? Do we all exist in separate realities that aren’t influenced by other realities? It makes no sense. How can’t trans women be influenced by the expectation of them being men when they grow up?

You act like trans men being expected to be women when growing up and not applying the same logic to trans women also introduces a level of dangerous thought: if that was the case…then are trans women privileged for not having expectations to be male that influences them? Trans women were more free to be feminine while young? I thought it was the literal opposite, that trans men are more likely to be allowed to be tomboys because femininity being seen as a bad thing. Nothing you say makes sense.

You haven’t come to these realizations because you don’t care as much as you think you do, you care about “the movement,” not about being right.

But still…very ironic to act like I’m the one doing all the harm and that you aren’t now threatening me…

“You don’t deserve to feel safe”

“You are a horrible person”

“You viscerally disgust me”

But yes…I’m the bad guy for saying that trans women were treated like men and that made them unhappy…you’re unintentionally denying the existence of dysphoria and the struggles of trans women in an attempt to prove me wrong…Wow

Edit: trans-androgyne is sooo tough despite begging for sympathy on their account

@bullshit-sriduangkaew I am not reblogging your response because I do not platform lies or misleading information about me. I have said I hate people like you, yeah, but I have most certainly not threatened violence towards you and you’re shitty for implying I have.

Anyone could tell you I think transandrophobia is just as important and in need of addressing as transmisogyny. I literally run a transandrophobia blog and server. But as much as you want to dodge accountability for it because “oh I’m just a trans man I can’t be responsible for perpetuating transmisogyny :(“ you are fully to blame for your actions and their effects. You are one shitty person in a long pattern of transmisogyny using the literal exact arguments that TERFs do, and that rhetoric causes tangible harm that I have seen firsthand. You cannot claim you are totally definitely 100% de-radicalized while actively saying radfem shit. I am not talking about your general politics, I am talking about how you focus on transfems this way exactly like a TERF.

Don’t talk to me about tone policing when you 1) use the term wrong, 2) tell me to stop being so mean when making my arguments, and 3) tell me as an openly autistic person that I need to read between the lines.

As I have already said and you clearly saw: I much prefer civil conversations intended to change minds, and that is the kind I typically have. But I have spent too much time consoling my partners about the effects of the horrible TERF rhetoric you spew to be neutral about this. You are a horrible person and you deserve to know it. You don’t deserve to feel safe saying this shit in the transandrophobia tags. We fucking hate you here. If you don’t want to see how much I despise you for your bigotry, block me.

I always like to imagine I could be on good terms with the people I disagree with one day. But as of right now, you viscerally disgust me as a person. Change your heart or be rejected from all but the most extremist transandrophobia conversations forever. Your choice.

[nothorses]

Interview With An Ex-Radfem

exradfem is an anonymous Tumblr user who identifies as transmasculine, and previously spent time in radical feminist communities. They have offered their insight into those communities using their own experiences and memories as a firsthand resource.

Background

I was raised in an incredibly fundamentalist religion, and so was predisposed to falling for cult rhetoric. Naturally, I was kicked out for being a lesbian. I was taken in by the queer community, particularly the trans community, and I got back on my feet- somehow. I had a large group of queer friends, and loved it. I fully went in on being the Best Trans Ally Possible, and constantly tried to be a part of activism and discourse.

Unfortunately, I was undersocialized, undereducated, and overenthusiastic. I didn't fully understand queer or gender theory. In my world, when my parents told me my sexuality was a choice and I wasn't born that way, they were absolutely being homophobic. I understood that no one should care if it's a choice or not, but it was still incredibly, vitally important to me that I was born that way.

On top of that, I already had an intense distrust of men bred by a lot of trauma. That distrust bred a lot of gender essentialism that I couldn't pull out of the gender binary. I felt like it was fundamentally true that men were the problem, and that women were inherently more trustworthy. And I really didn't know where nonbinary people fit in.

Then I got sucked down the ace exclusionist pipeline; the way the arguments were framed made sense to my really surface-level, liberal view of politics. This had me primed to exclude people –– to feel like only those that had been oppressed exactly like me were my community.

Then I realized I was attracted to my nonbinary friend. I immediately felt super guilty that I was seeing them as a woman. I started doing some googling (helped along by ace exclusionists on Tumblr) and found the lesfem community, which is basically radfem “lite”: lesbians who are "only same sex attracted". This made sense to me, and it made me feel so much less guilty for being attracted to my friend; it was packaged as "this is just our inherent, biological desire that is completely uncontrollable". It didn't challenge my status quo, it made me feel less guilty about being a lesbian, and it allowed me to have a "biological" reason for rejecting men.

I don't know how much dysphoria was playing into this, and it's something I will probably never know; all of this is just piecing together jumbled memories and trying to connect dots. I know at the time I couldn't connect to this trans narrative of "feeling like a woman". I couldn't understand what trans women were feeling. This briefly made me question whether I was nonbinary, but radfem ideas had already started seeping into my head and I'm sure I was using them to repress that dysphoria. That's all I can remember.

The lesfem community seeded gender critical ideas and larger radfem princples, including gender socialization, gender as completely meaningless, oppression as based on sex, and lesbian separatism. It made so much innate sense to me, and I didn't realize that was because I was conditioned by the far right from the moment of my birth. Of course women were just a biological class obligated to raise children: that is how I always saw myself, and I always wanted to escape it.

I tried to stay in the realms of TIRF (Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminist) and "gender critical" spaces, because I couldn't take the vitriol on so many TERF blogs. It took so long for me to get to the point where I began seeing open and unveiled transphobia, and I had already read so much and bought into so much of it that I thought that I could just ignore those parts.

In that sense, it was absolutely a pipeline for me. I thought I could find a "middle ground", where I could "center women" without being transphobic.

Slowly, I realized that the transphobia was just more and more disgustingly pervasive. Some of the trans men and butch women I looked up to left the groups, and it was mostly just a bunch of nasty people left. So I left.

After two years offline, I started to recognize I was never going to be a healthy person without dealing with my dysphoria, and I made my way back onto Tumblr over the pandemic. I have realized I'm trans, and so much of this makes so much more sense now. I now see how I was basically using gender essentialism to repress my identity and keep myself in the closet, how it was genuinely weaponized by TERFs to keep me there, and how the ace exclusionist movement primed me into accepting lesbian separatism- and, finally, radical feminism.

The Interview

You mentioned the lesfem community, gender criticals, and TIRFs, which I haven't heard about before- would you mind elaborating on what those are, and what kinds of beliefs they hold?

I think the lesfem community is recruitment for lesbians into the TERF community. Everything is very sanitized and "reasonable", and there's an effort not to say anything bad about trans women. The main focus was that lesbian = homosexual female, and you can't be attracted to gender, because you can't know someone's gender before knowing them; only their sex.

It seemed logical at the time, thinking about sex as something impermeable and gender as internal identity. The most talk about trans women I saw initially was just in reference to the cotton ceiling, how sexual orientation is a permanent and unchangeable reality. Otherwise, the focus was homophobia. This appealed to me, as I was really clinging to the "born this way" narrative.

This ended up being a gateway to two split camps - TIRFs and gender crits.

I definitely liked to read TIRF stuff, mostly because I didn't like the idea of radical feminism having to be transphobic. But TIRFs think that misogyny is all down to hatred of femininity, and they use that as a basis to be able to say trans women are "just as" oppressed.

Gender criticals really fought out against this, and pushed the idea that gender is fake, and misogyny is just sex-based oppression based on reproductive issues. They believe that the source of misogyny is the "male need to control the source of reproduction"- which is what finally made me think I had found the "source" of my confusion. That's why I ended up in gender critical circles instead of TIRF circles.

I'm glad, honestly, because the mask-off transphobia is what made me finally see the light. I wouldn't have seen that in TIRF communities.

I believed this in-between idea, that misogyny was "sex-based oppression" and that transphobia was also real and horrible, but only based on transition, and therefore a completely different thing. I felt that this was the "nuanced" position to take.

The lesfem community also used the fact that a lot of lesbians have partners who transition, still stay with their lesbian partners, and see themselves as lesbian- and that a lot of trans men still see themselves as lesbians. That idea is very taboo and talked down in liberal queer spaces, and I had some vague feelings about it that made me angry, too. I really appreciated the frank talk of what I felt were my own taboo experiences.

I think gender critical ideology also really exploited my own dysphoria. There was a lot of talk about how "almost all butches have dysphoria and just don't talk about it", and that made me feel so much less alone and was, genuinely, a big relief to me that I "didn't have to be trans".

Lesfeminism is essentially lesbian separatism dressed up as sex education. Lesfems believe that genitals exist in two separate categories, and that not being attracted to penises is what defines lesbians. This is used to tell cis lesbians, "dont feel bad as a lesbian if you're attracted to trans men", and that they shouldn’t feel "guilty" for not being attracted to trans women. They believe that lesbianism is not defined as being attracted to women, it is defined as not being attracted to men; which is a root idea in lesbian separatism as well.

Lesfems also believe that attraction to anything other than explicit genitals is a fetish: if you're attracted to flat chests, facial hair, low voices, etc., but don't care if that person has a penis or not, you're bisexual with a fetish for masculine attributes. Essentially, they believe the “-sexual” suffix refers to the “sex” that you are assigned at birth, rather than your attraction: “homosexual” refers to two people of the same sex, etc. This was part of their pushback to the ace community, too.

I think they exploited the issues of trans men and actively ignored trans women intentionally, as a way of avoiding the “TERF” label. Pronouns were respected, and they espoused a constant stream of "trans women are women, trans men are men (but biology still exists and dictates sexual orientation)" to maintain face.

They would only be openly transmisogynistic in more private, radfem-only spaces.

For a while, I didn’t think that TERFs were real. I had read and agreed with the ideology of these "reasonable" people who others labeled as TERFs, so I felt like maybe it really was a strawman that didn't exist. I think that really helped suck me in.

It sounds from what you said like radical feminism works as a kind of funnel system, with "lesfem" being one gateway leading in, and "TIRF" and "gender crit" being branches that lesfem specifically funnels into- with TERFs at the end of the funnel. Does that sound accurate?

I think that's a great description actually!

When I was growing up, I had to go to meetings to learn how to "best spread the word of god". It was brainwashing 101: start off by building a relationship, find a common ground. Do not tell them what you really believe. Use confusing language and cute innuendos to "draw them in". Prey on their emotions by having long exhausting sermons, using music and peer pressure to manipulate them into making a commitment to the church, then BAM- hit them with the weird shit.

Obviously I am paraphrasing, but this was framed as a necessary evil to not "freak out" the outsiders.

I started to see that same talk in gender critical circles: I remember seeing something to the effect of, "lesfem and gender crit spaces exist to cleanse you of the gender ideology so you can later understand the 'real' danger of it", which really freaked me out; I realized I was in a cult again.

I definitely think it's intentional. I think they got these ideas from evangelical Christianity, and they actively use it to spread it online and target young lesbians and transmascs. And I think gender critical butch spaces are there to draw in young transmascs who hate everything about femininity and womanhood, and lesfem spaces are there to spread the idea that trans women exist as a threat to lesbianism.

Do you know if they view TIRFs a similar way- as essentially prepping people for TERF indoctrination?

Yes and no.

I've seen lots of in-fighting about TIRFs; most TERFs see them as a detriment, worse than the "TRAs" themselves. I've also definitely seen it posed as "baby's first radfeminism". A lot of TIRFs are trans women, at least from what I've seen on Tumblr, and therefore are not accepted or liked by radfems. To be completely honest, I don't think they're liked by anyone. They just hate men.

TIRFs are almost another breed altogether; I don't know if they have ties to lesfems at all, but I do think they might've spearheaded the online ace exclusionist discourse. I think a lot of them also swallowed radfem ideology without knowing what it was, and parrot it without thinking too hard about how it contradicts with other ideas they have.

The difference is TIRFs exist. They're real people with a bizarre, contradictory ideology. The lesfem community, on the other hand, is a completely manufactured "community" of crypto-terfs designed specifically to indoctrinate people into TERF ideology.

Part of my interest in TIRFs here is that they seem to have a heavy hand in the way transmascs are treated by the trans community, and if you're right that they were a big part of ace exclusionism too they've had a huge impact on queer discourse as a whole for some time. It seems likely that Baeddels came out of that movement too.

Yes, there’s a lot of overlap. The more digging I did, the more I found that it's a smaller circle running the show than it seems. TIRFs really do a lot of legwork in peddling the ideology to outer queer community, who tend to see it as generic feminism.

TERFs joke a lot about how non-radfems will repost or reblog from TERFs, adding "op is a TERF”. They're very gleeful when people accept their ideology with the mask on. They think it means these people are close to fully learning the "truth", and they see it as further evidence they have the truth the world is hiding. I think it's important to speak out against radical feminism in general, because they’re right; their ideology does seep out into the queer community.

Do you think there's any "good" radical feminism?

No. It sees women as the ultimate victim, rather than seeing gender as a tool to oppress different people differently. Radical feminism will always see men as the problem, and it is always going to do harm to men of color, gay men, trans men, disabled men, etc.

Women aren't a coherent class, and radfems are very panicked about that fact; they think it's going to be the end of us all. But what's wrong with that? That's like freaking out that white isn't a coherent group. It reveals more about you.

It's kind of the root of all exclusionism, the more I think about it, isn't it? Just freaking out that some group isn't going to be exclusive anymore.

Radical feminists believe that women are inherently better than men.

For TIRFs, it's gender essentialism. For TERFs, its bio essentialism. Both systems are fundamentally broken, and will always hurt the groups most at risk. Centering women and misogyny above all else erases the root causes of bigotry and oppression, and it erases the intersections of race and class. The idea that women are always fundamentally less threatening is very white and privileged.

It also ignores how cis women benefit from gender norms just as cis men do, and how cis men suffer from gender roles as well. It’s a system of control where gender non-conformity is a punishable offense.

[botanyshitposts]

is that why you think mammals have more than two sexes

idk if this was supposed to be like, a bizarre transphobic jab, but partially, actually. in biology very, very few things actually occur in binary groups; i prefer to imagine biological sex, as well as gender, by imagining two overlapping bell curves. there’s an average that we expect from gender and sex matching up at birth because most people will fall within the first quartile of the curves where all the most average genes were turned on and all the non-genetic factors surrounding that turn out in an average expected way, and there are more people who still are just as male or female but have different genes turned on and off or whatnot and wouldnt check every single box if like, The Chromosome Police showed up and made them do a cheek swab or whatever, and there are people who are intersex, which covers a wide range of different expressions of the genome.

but! we don’t have The Chromosome Police and we don’t need them, because we have gender to do this for us, which is something that has much more to do with a mix of genetic and sociological factors. in my opinion, gender makes it so that even if you’re a cis man who doesnt have like, idk penis gene #435 on the Y chromosome, youre still a man, and even if youre a woman who doesnt have vagina gene #874 turned on, youre still a woman. hell, some people go their entire lives without knowing that they have full extra chromosomes. it just....it just doesnt matter.

to expand on this, my theory is that gender serves the function of convenience more than like, a law or whatever; we have a system where there are usually a small set of things that happen as a result of a wide range of thousands of different things that turn off and on during development, and a lot of different moving parts are going on in that department that help mitigate disaster if one deletes itself or whatever, and not all those things are guaranteed to turn on or off, and as a result we’ve developed a system where regardless of whats in your pants- because anything could be there, honestly, evolution works in systems and as a result doesnt know or care- there’s a social thing that functions differently on another level thats more elastic, so no matter if you’re a woman who was born with one singular penis gene turned on or a woman who had a lot of them turn on, you both can kind of be in the same clump of ‘people who are this’. not ‘people who look like this’ or ‘people who do this thing’ or ‘people who have x combinations of chromosomes’, but ‘people who, for whatever multitude of reasons and results or relationships with themselves, are this way or another way or are existing successfully in some distant combination of ways’, and having those people around- if we follow this theory- apparently was not at all disastrous enough for evolution to pump the breaks and start killing people who never activated Penis And Vagina Gene #1456. in fact, trans people have been around as long as humans have, and that includes nonbinary people, intersex people, and cis people with different gender expressions. ancient societies had us around, there are just as many of us now as there always was, and biology just. it does not care.

think of all the things that go into a person. there is a whole lot of stuff that we do not understand. there are so many things that could change, or differ from individual to individual, and having a lot of moving parts like this with millions of different viable combinations of biological and environmental things works, because it means that the entire system doesnt break like a fucking twig if both a penis and a vagina gene turn on at the same time, or if little grog in the forest grows up hunting mammoths with his 8 moms and no dads in a nomadic tribe in prehistoric france. it also means that even if someone ends up as another combination, they dont immediately collapse into a heap of dust! great system, for the most part.

now, this is all contentious. first of all, this is my own set of theories on why this exists, and second of all i have complex feelings about the science surrounding this itself; as a biologist im fascinated, but as a trans queer person it’s terrifying. the reason this is is because there are two groups of people who want to learn things like this: people who actually want to study the details of human sex and gender, and people who want to find The Ultimate Queer Gene to ‘fix’ us forever, which like. as ive covered before. egregious moral, ethical, and basic human rights reasons aside. not something that actually would improve us as a species even if we did go to the farthest ends of the bell curves i mentioned and manage to transform the entire human race into two massive homogeneous supermale and superfemale groups with only the the most Epic And Extreme big dick and boob genes selected for (or, if were going off TERF logic, femurs of a bizarrely specific length or like, a skull shape or smth, you can see where this goes very quickly).

like. this shit is complicated. it is. sometimes, things in biology- especially when it comes to real people of our own species- are best left as enigmas, you know what im saying. but in the meantime, we can take estimates, we can say ‘we can make an educated guess about the biological sex of a skeleton by looking at their pelvis’, but we cant say ‘all cis women have femurs of exactly x cm, which is absolutely a normal and not creepy thing to obsess over’, and we cant say ‘all human beings are either male or female and that looks one of two ways’, because as we know from intersex people and all the other caveats in this subject, this is not true.

we can say with confidence that most human beings have a gender that matches what is average for their biological sex (which doesnt always define itself as the exact same set of characteristics to begin with) but not always, and most human beings have have a gender which falls vaguely under the umbrella of two vaguely defined existences, but not always, and most women have a femur length between x and x cm long, but women come in all shapes and sizes and therefore it isnt a good way to define what being a living breathing person of a particular circumstance means or looks like, holy shit, etc, and we can use this knowledge to make educated guesses about the world, but we can also use knowledge of what isn’t the majority of people to make educated guesses about what those guesses mean, and what roles they play (and hopefully will get some more rights in the meantime).

so yeah like. most people are one of two biological sexes, but its more complicated than ‘peepis or vagornio’, you feel.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

So with the whole Michael Knowles thing I think that he does understand that there is a difference between trans people and modern activist ideology. Now mind you I still have a bone to pick with how he said what he did say. Because in my opinion, he said it with the intent of being inflammatory. However there is a much much, larger issue in that I don't think it has anything to do with specifically or uniquely drag queens. The problem is the fact that drag queens are being considered to be trans by default. When drag was never ever initially about being trans at all. It was essentially a weird almost pseudo minstrel show for over exaggerated versions of women and femininity. That's why most drag queens would be heavy set bearded and caked in makeup. Essentially they used to be clown shows. And people who were drag queens typically did it as a fetish. Now mind you, there has been definite change in what a drag queen is today.

Moreover there's been changes to how drag queens are perceived as well. The issue however, is the fact that you have stuff like RuPaul's drag race and people associated with that thing that have brought kids in to watch men's strip out of women's clothing. Which in turn partially led to the creation of drag kids. It also led to one of the most famous pictures on the internet which was a little boy no older than 4, 5, 6 or 7 hanging off of the leg of a naked man who is a drag queen. Then I believe it was either in Europe or Canada there are women bringing babies to provocative drag dancing shows where their literal toddlers are there watching a man in leopard print thong thrust his hips into the air while caked in makeup clearly in drag wearing high heels and nothing else. The worst part of it is the fact that you have a lot of people who are activist types who specifically go out of their way to say that drag queens are trans. But the premise of being a drag queen was never being trans. It was literally a hyper feminine caricature of being a woman sometimes it was as a kink sometimes it was as a fetish and sometimes it was to be someone different for one night out of the week.

But the best faith assumption that I could make about what Michael Knowles was actually saying when he made that statement, was that radical trans activism as an ideology needs to stop. And more specifically, instances you have where we're trying to convince kids they're actually trans. There are people who are trying to convince young lesbians and young gay men that they're actually trans and not actually gay or lesbian. The term egg is a thing and is quite literally being used today in various different social media groups and Discord servers etc. Jazz Jennings a trans person who is now 21 or 22 years old had a mother who pressured transition on them at 2 years old.

I still don't agree with the way that Michael said what he did. But I agree with him if what he was saying was that the radical activism and pushing of transgenderism on to people needs to stop. And I think he implicitly worded it the way he did as to not say trans people. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. But if I were in knowles's position I would have probably been as equally inflammatory given the fact that I've had more than one friend whom are lesbians who have been harassed because they refused to suck trans women's dicks. I've had at least three friends who started going through the transition process, started getting fast-tracked through that process, and then realized almost too late that's not what they wanted or how they really felt.

I'm not a republican. I'm not a right winger. I'm not a conservative. But even I think that this whole radical movement in regards to transgenderism has gone too far. People are being told to hate their bodies, to hate their skin color, to hate being cis. They're being told that if they're not these new hip things that they're evil Hitler Nazi people and bigots. And you take a group of those people growing up hearing that stuff non-stop especially in adolescents? Of course they're going to hate who they are and they're going to assume that they're the opposite sex or want to be the opposite sex so that maybe they can get away from all of the criticism that they get non-stop for being just who they are.

Also apologies for the rent this is a particularly sensitive topic to me because how it nearly destroyed several of my friends' lives. Including one who got pressured into believing they were a man and were literally less than a week away from having their breast removed when they tried to off themselves, had it not been for me staying on the phone with them for between 6 to 8 hours so their parents could get there where they were at college to look after them.

On the other hand, Republicans are being inconsistent in their treatment of trans not as a disorder, but as a moral failing. Replace the word "trans" with "blind" and that CPAC guy's speech should still make sense but instead it turns into a bizarre rant against blind people. I think a lot of this comes from a Repiblican failure to distinguish between trans people and the, by definition, cis drag queens. Trans people want to pass, drag queens want the opposite.

I want to say their conception of "drag queens" is completely off, because it is

but I don't know if it's indefensibly wrong because of how "drag queens" are used on offense in the culture war

like their conception of it is always a big hairy bearded guy in a dress who is repulsively ugly and sexually threatening, and that's wrong on like all of the levels you can be wrong at. any time they depict a drag queen it's like this, someone making no attempt to look feminine and wearing a dress that is sexually provocative and so repulsive on a man. whenever they talk about 'em, there's always that disgust at their assumed ugliness. disgust based morality is a fuck.

but to be charitable like the primary thing drag queens are "deployed" to do is piss off the normies with their flaunting of gender roles and sexually charged behaviors. they say "I'm confident that I am sexy even though I don't conform to your aesthetic ideals, doesn't it piss you off?"

we shouldn't be that surprised when the answer is "yes, it does." especially things like "drag queen story hour" -- there's nothing particular to a drag queen that makes them better storytellers, nor are they like a significant and underrepresented portion of the population, the thought process behind it is clearly "this will piss off the normies" and yeah, you were right, it did

[asexual-means-no-attraction]

i know you’ve been open about your opinions on nonbinary genders but it’s still disappointing. like, that r/agender anon… how do you know that these people are cis? how do you know if all of these people are dysphoric or not? it’s such a huge generalization to make. did it ever occur to you that most agender people aren’t comfortable as EITHER gender? i just don’t understand why you’re so dismissive to the experiences of nb people. i really don’t. i’m a binary trans guy and it makes total sense to me how gender is more complicated than “man or woman”.

Listen. When someone tells me the reason they don't identify as a girl is because they don't like makeup, or because they didn't enjoy Barbie's growing up, or maybe because they don't feel comfortable wearing revealing clothes like they see other girls do. And they use that to claim they are trans-- ya I'm gonna question it. Cuz those are all gender roles. I loved Barbie's growing up, so did my cisgender little brother. Had a cisgender friend, and she hated them. Same thing with makeup. The clothes one is the only one that really holds any value. But your assumption should be to first explore if it's body dysmorphia or being uncomfortable because of objectification.

There are hundreds of reasons why someone would feel uncomfortable in their body that have nothing to do with being trans. And anyone who's immediately reaction to any of those reasons is to say it must be gender dysphoria or say they're trans is gonna get a hard pass from me. You gotta rule out the other stuff first. Same goes for anyone who describes being trans as a "feeling." Cuz there is no way to "feel like a women/man." You just are what you are and the disconnect will manifest in various ways.

I'm not actually opposed to nonbinary at all. And I've said so before in my posts. My issue is that the ones that claim that nonbinary is apart of the trans community ALSO explain it as a feeling. Describing issues that stem from gender roles not gender itself. Things that would be solved if we lived in a society where gender roles didn't exist. And that harms trans people a lot.

There i already a big misunderstanding of what it means to be trans. A lot of people think that it ties into gender roles. But it has nothing to do with them at all. If the world was perfectly equal in terms of gender, and there were no gender roles, I would still be trans.

What I hear a lot of nb people talk about is things that would be solved by pushing for social change. But instead they just create a new gender and call it a day. That doesn't fix anything. If you don't feel like a women because you want to be able to wear and look however you want without the judgement and social stereotypes that come with being a women that's 100% understandable. The solution however, is not to separate yourself from women but to work towards getting rid of that social stigma. So you can be yourself and be stressed about it.

I have yet to see any nb people (afab or amab) describe their experiences in ways that actually sound like their talking about gender instead of gender roles. I really don't mind and even support the idea of nb if it was actually about gender itself and the physical body. But every reason I'm shown looks like it's related to social issues and then described as being trans (which feels like a big slap in the face) or they describe body dysmorphia instead of gender dysmorphia (which points towards body shaming issues NOT transgender).

I'm not gonna tell someone what they are or aren't. I'm a firm believer that everyone has to come to their own realizations of who they are on their own in their own time. The only time you should share your opinion is if they ask for it. But that doesn't mean you can't talk about the harm that a special issue or label has. I'm not singling anyone out. I'm just talking about the very very common problems that I find with nonbinary people as a whole.

[commandtower-solring-go]

I've tried to stay off of tumblr the last few months, in part because it is a hot bed for low-stakes dramatic nonsense about high profile celebrities. And in part, I just hate the idea of arguing about people I don't personally know. What's more, this is such a complex issue that any meaningful conversation about it would just result in walls of text no one is reading shouting at each other. But I’m a slut for sharing my thoughts. 

For the uninitiated, Finn (or F1NN5TER) is an English Twitch streamer. Early in 2020, he started cross dressing as the e-girl Rose, as part of a promotional campaign he ran called 'girl week'. Rose would be used to bait other straight men into fawning over him, before Finn would reveal he’s a man. As a subscriber goal, Finn would continue girl week if a certain number of money was raised each week. This has continued ever since.

As the months went on, it became clear that Finn enjoyed large elements of it, and his streams served as a documentation of his gender journey, as he came to make peace with the complex relationship to gender he had developed. However, what underpinned all of it, was a general apathy to gender. Finn did it, but did not care.

This has drawn complex and varied opinions about whether Finn was trans, whether they were taking advantage of trans folks, or women as a whole.

The culmination of the last 4 years of streaming has seen Finn come out as genderfluid earlier this year. However, he still prefers he/him pronouns

To be clear, I don't watch Finn. Its very 15 year old boys fucking with his mates by tricking them into doing something vaguely homoerotic. I did that humour back in the day. I was a normal, social teenage boy in the mid 10’s internet. You can see the extension of this in the femboy phenomenon. Swarths of young men dressing up and tricking men on video chat rooms. 

What people have taken away from this is a group of men taking advantage of the tools and phenoms of women (both trans and cis) and using them as the punchline of a joke. But life is never that simple. These boys aren’t playing with your gender. They’re playing with their gender. And the ability for someone to play with their identity and come to terms with it in their own way, is huge. What these men represent is a generation of young amab folk given the freedom to make their gender the butt of the joke. To be able to cross dress and still come home after. 

What I believe happens is one generation spends their teens and 20’s fighting for validity from the older generations. And they spend their lives at the forefront of that conflict. They have to, there are no new 20 something year olds being born and people rarely just change their minds. But what they create in their wake is a growing wave of acceptance which begins with those younger than them. 

Young people are now born into a world where transness and gender nonconformity is a more widely accepted phenomenon. These days, everyone knows a trans person or two. I work with 4. And so they can’t understand what we fought for, because the fight follows us, not them. As a result, they don’t carry with them that same fear you or I do. There is curiosity. 

We did the exact same thing. Following Boomers and Gen X, who fought for of homosexual acceptance, my generation was heavily criticised for the way we novelised queerness. We made too many flags, too many identities. We played with the formula because, for us, we were safe to. We trivialised it, not for the sake of trivialising it, but for the sake of exploring how we fit into it. This is that same phenomenon. 

So all of this to say, when I talk about F1NN5TER, I’m not actually talking about him or anything he believes. He’s a wealthy Twitch Streamer from England. Of course he’s conservative. I don’t know the man, or anything about him. For all I know he isn’t on HRT, his name is actually Adam, and he’s South African. I don’t know. But I don’t care. The point is what he represents. A general social acceptance for gender nonconformity. 

Okay so i've come to recognise where i land on F1NNSTER or however you spell his name.

I understand the insistence that he is an uncrackes egg. And i understand folk's frustration with a cis man who dresses as a woman for fun. But sincerely, i think ragging on his shit will do more to shame people for their exploration of gender than anything else.

Femboys, mascgirls. All of it is a valid NGC expression of gender and sex and the arguement that it hurts trans people is no different than the arguement that trans women hurt cis women.

He uses he/him pronouns and has been explicit about that. and until he comes forward with a statement saying that he identifies otherwise, then i'll continue to keep refering to him as such because that's how he chooses to identify. Doing otherwise would be no different that misgendering any other GNC person.

[apricotbuncakes]

🏳️‍⚧️ Luigi is Trans Masc 🏳️‍⚧️

Long Post!!!

Now that I have your attention, here are some reasons that I headcanon Luigi as trans, based off of my own experience as a trans masc person.

1) He ghosts hunts even when he has the option to say no.

Could this be a ‘I have to save my loved ones from danger’ or a ‘this is the right thing to do even though I’m scared’ situation? Yeah! But I’m trans and grasping for straws, so let me have this.

I put this as a reason for him being trans, because I believe he’s doing it because he’s a man and he’s ‘not supposed to be afraid’.

Luigi is assumed to be 24, and his character was first introduced in the 1980s, specifically 1983. Assuming he was 24 when the first game released, he would have been born in 1959 (feel free to check my math on that).

Although his character was introduced in the 80s where men tended to be more feminine and flamboyant, he was probably raised with the idea that men should be tough and strong, and should lead. Even if we throw release date and age aside, even if he was born in my generation, those stereotypes of men still exist and are taught within society. Even as those norms are being broken day after day, he would have still been exposed to the toxic masculinity.

Luigi, from what we’ve seen of his adventures, tends to be more scared and less ‘tough’ than what was expected of a man. From what we know of Luigi, we can safely assume that (if he was trans) he would be doing this not only for his family and friends, but to prove he was tough and strong, and that he was manly.

2) He dresses like his brother.

Yes, he is a plumber by trade, but he also ghosts hunts, and makes bank off of that. You think he would wear a different outfit when he ghost hunts simply because denim Isn’t meant for physical activity. Anyone who’s run in jeans knows that it isn’t exactly meant to be stretchy. It’s (supposed to be) designed to withstand the test of time. So why doesn’t Luigi change from plumbing cloths (specifically his denim overalls) to something more suited for the running he has to do in various places for ghost hunting? Because Mario wears overalls and a t-shirt.

From what I’ve seen on social media, other trans people follow the lead of those around them who match their gender identity/their presentation. I would do the same was well. I would look at what my dad wore, what my brother would wear, and what guys at school wore. I developed my style after what I had seen, so I could pass.

While you don’t have to pass to be trans (or even have the desire to), it’s a common theme amongst trans people to try and blend in with cis society. This can be for safety reasons, or just because they want to fit in with their peers.

Luigi clearly looks up to his brother, crying tears of joy whenever Mario is saved from King Boo. He congratulates him when he wins events. He supports him, because he looks up to him. They’re brothers after all!

It makes sense that Luigi would mirror Mario, since they are so close. Since Mario is most often seen wearing his overalls, Luigi follows suit, because it’s what he believes guys do. He’s following the example that Mario set for him.

3) Luigi’s view on gender expression.

Luigi has had a couple of instances where he is known to ignore typical gender stereotypes, specifically with dresses.

In the game super Mario Odyssey, Mario can be seen wear a wedding gown with a veil, and Luigi is only concerned that Mario didn’t tell him about the wedding. There was no wedding, and Luigi didn’t mock Mario when informed that his brother was wearing the gown for fun.

The second major instance is from the New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe website. The website tells us that only Toadette can use the Super crown. The last part of the Super Crown’s description says “Sorry Luigi- Only Toadette can use this item!”

While this could point to Luigi being trans fem instead of trans masc, I would like to point out that recently, it has become more accepted that men can dress feminine. Since this game was released in 2019, it’s completely possible that Luigi has caught onto this, and is becoming more accepted and accepting of his femininity as a man. This would also be plenty of time to unlearn harmful stereotypes from when he was younger, about what men can and can’t do. Although he still sticks with old habits, he’s learning more about how the world around him works, and how it’s changing day by day.

I believe that Luigi has a better understanding of gender and gender expression because he is trans. He’s learning to accept that he doesn’t have to be hyper masculine to be a valid guy.

4) How he got his mustache and flat chest (and… other stuff).

This section will be discussing the effects of hormones, surgeries, and genitalia. Please keep this in mind as you read.

This is more of an explanation for how certain things happened.

How did he grow a mustache? Testosterone. It was likely after helping his brother with his career, and winning sporting events he had a good amount of income to start Testosterone. Another option? Minoxidil. Minoxidil was tested to see if it could cure ulcers in the 50s. Through testing, The Upjohn Company discovered it opened blood vessels and allowed for blood to flow more smoothly. In the late 70s, it was FDA approved for patients to use if they suffer from high blood pressure. Through this, they discovered that minoxidil also has the side effect of hair growth. The FDA approved the product to be sold, and it was called Rogaine. Meaning Luigi would have had access to something to grow facial hair, even if testosterone wasn’t an option.

What about his flat chest?

Binding or Top surgery. Both were an option by the time Luigi was old enough. Laurence Michael Dillon was a trans person who was born in 1915 and died in 1962. While I do recommend you look at more of his story, what I want to focus on is the fact he had top surgery. While the surgery was still fairly early in it’s development, it was possible. Luigi, who wasn’t born until 1959 (as previously discussed) would have the option to get top surgery when he became an adult.

Another option would be binding, though I think this is less likely because of how binding restricts physical activity. Binding in any way makes it difficult to run or exert yourself in general. We see Luigi run a LOT in various games, and for decent amounts of time too. It’s less likely that he’s binding.

The last thing is his penis.

There was a huge joke going around about the bulge we saw in a promotion for Mario Tennis Aces. People were discussing how large it was, and Even Mattpat on Game Theory discussed the measurements to determine how large it was.

Why was it so noticeable? Well bottom surgery was also an option for him pretty early on. Surgeons (from what I’ve been told be social media) will ask how you’d like to look like. Even if he decided to not get bottom surgery, he could be wearing a packer.

A packer is anything you use to give the feeling and or appearance of a penis, specifically used by trans masc people who were not born with a penis. There are many different types of packers (including clean rolled up socks) that people may use. What’s most important to note though, is they have a high chance of moving around.

Even with harnesses or underwear specifically designed to keep a packer in place, they can still shift around in your pants, especially when you’re doing a lot of moving. From my experience, my packers tent to move forward rather than back. Wearing athletic shorts will also make that area more pronounced as the fabric is looser, so if Luigi was wearing a packer, we’d know.

5) He’s trans cause I say so.

Like I said in the beginning, it’s a head canon. I say he’s trans because it’s a cool idea. A Nintendo character that is trans, and isn’t being hidden, explained away, or made fun of (like Vivian from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door). I like the idea that Luigi is a proud trans guy, and we don’t know because it doesn’t matter. He’s a guy because he’s a guy. He doesn’t just ‘become’ a guy because he goes through surgeries or goes in hormones. He’s trans, and t doesn’t matter if we know or not, because his trans identity isn’t important to the story we’re playing, or our knowledge to know. We aren’t entitled to it.

He’s a guy who happens to be trans, and that’s that.

If there is any misinformation above, please let me know so I can correct it. This was meant to be a fun post about my head canon, but I did use real world examples t explain it, and if I got something wrong, I’d like to know. Thanks!

[epicene-humanoid]

some trans Jeff thoughts:

he realized he was trans in elementary school and just went fuck it I'll just start introducing myself as Jeffery and see if anyone decides to stop me (as we know, jeff winger can get away with almost anything)

he got top surgery the second he could afford it (around the same time he started at his law firm), and probably bribed someone to keep it a secret

"I'm jeff winger and i would rather look at myself naked than the women I sleep with" are the words of a man proud of his transition

he's really insecure about his fashion sense, which is why he mostly dresses like the douchey guys at his firm in the start of the show, he thought you can't go wrong with the sleazy lawyer look

he will never admit it but he feels super good about the dean hitting on him, because the dean is a (cis) guy, acknowledging that Jeff is more manly than him

i think he starts out stealth and comes out to everyone one by one, probably starting with abed because he knows abed won't judge him and will probably just see it as an interesting backstory.

abed just says it's cool and maybe worth a prequel exploring Jeff's transition, and jeff asks him to predict how all of the members of the group will react to him coming out.

abed's predictions:

britta will be over-the-top supportive and do a ton of research about trans history, probably put together a slideshow just to prove how progressive she is, and jeff will be a little bit weirded out, but also touched that she did all that for him, though he would never let her know that

shirley will be confused, because she doesn't know how someone she trusts and knows so well could be part of a group she was raised to hate, but ultimately realizes that there's nothing actually against the lgbtq people in the bible, and, as a cool character development arch, starts to advocate against use of the bible to justify bigotry

troy will just think it over and decide that Jeff's physique and coolness are even awesomer knowing how much work he'd had to put in to be like that, and respects Jeff's manliness even more

annie will give him a hug, say something sweet about how she'll always love him, and worry about his health, because even she read somewhere that taking testosterone makes you more likely to have a heart attack, jeff will explain that the risk is still only as high a cis guy, and she'll be the one to always remind him to take his shots

peirce will say at best say "jeff winger used to be a chick?" and at worst call him a slur, either way there's sure to be a lot of misgendering from him, and pestering to know Jeff's deadname (needless to say, Jeff just doesn't tell peirce)

the whole group goes out of their way to keep their beach trips a secret from pierce (the girls don't want him there anyways, he's too liable to be creepy) even though jeff knows that even if pierce saw his scars, all he would have to do is make up a story about some childhood accident and pierce would never question it

sorry this ended up being super long. can I hear some of your headcanons for him?

YES ALL THIS!!! yes yes i’m fully accepting this as canon oh my god

i’m about to type a whole ass ESSAY at midnight because i have been DYING to talk about this for months ajfdksljk,,, this is going to be obscenely long and i might end up adding even more to it as i continue to rewatch the show because there is truly no shortage of trans jeff content (especially when you’re trans and see transness in every little thing ajdkslfkjs)

spoiler warning for literally everything about this show under the cut <3

i 100% agree, i feel like he realized he was trans super young, especially since in the show we see him as a little kid a couple of times. 

like look at little jeff with the oversized sweatshirt and little ponytail!! that’s childhood trans fashion. not to be dramatic but part of me thinks that jeff’s dad left before he fully came out to his family (which gives him even more angst about it, because until that one Thanksgiving episode, he’s never able to prove to his dad that he’s a better man), but part of me thinks that his dad left after he came out (which adds that spicy i-should-have-stayed-in-the-closet guilt that he has to work through). 

either way, because his dad wasn’t there, he had to base his concept of masculinity on something else, which was becoming a lawyer!! there’s some line that’s like “after the dust and divorce papers were settled the only man i looked up to was [the lawyer guy]”. like, replacing your father figure in your mind with the concept of “a job where you can talk your way in and out of anything and distort other people’s concept of reality”? that’s trans.

 and the fucking THANKSGIVING EPISODE... i struggle to watch it without crying hehe <3 yeowch! the dichotomy of willy jr. being the “wrong” kind of man because he’s “too soft” but jeff also not being enough despite adhering to all the social standards of masculinity... fuck!! this whole scene of him telling his dad “i am Not well adjusted” and talking about how he gave himself an “appendix surgery scar” when he was a kid and he still keeps the get-well-soon letters from his classmates under his bed? oh my god. the implication of people loving him not despite his scars but because of them?? trans. i can’t think about this episode for too long or i’ll start yelling.

OH and this scene? where he talks about how his mom got him a girl costume for halloween?? and everyone said “what a cute little girl” and after a few houses he stopped correcting them?? and “once the shame and the fear wore off, i was just glad they thought i was pretty”?? THAT’S TRANS... the man needs validation oh my god... and then in all the halloween episodes we see he has these ultra-masculine costumes (a cowboy, David Beckham, one of the fast and furious guys even though he never watched the movies, a boxer with his DAD’S boxing gloves... god) costumes are about becoming something else and he always chooses to be hypermasculine and that is trans.

THE PHYSICAL EDUCATION EPISODE!!!!!!! being uncomfortable during P.E. is a queer experience. period. but him being specifically uncomfortable in the clothes someone else is assigning to him? trans. “are we gonna talk about clothes like a girl? or use tapered sticks to hit balls around a cushioned mat like a man?” TRANS. and him eventually stripping in public? celebration of transness. and the fact that he eventually becomes comfortable in both the uniform and his own style!! trans!! god i love this episode. 

AND AND AND!!! the gay dean coming out episode!!! where it’s the three of them discussing the best way for the dean to come out as gay despite not entirely identifying with that label!! so we have both frankie and the dean who are sort of ambiguously queer, and jeff who’s a stealth trans man who’s probably only out to only the study group at this point. this scene where the dean and jeff have this like eyebrow communication while frankie is talking is just so cute. queer-to-queer communication. “I am so curious” “oh?” “intellectually.” “oh...” ajfdksljfk this scene just screams high school GSA to me and i love it so much.

and SPEAKING of the dean!! i totally see you on that. i feel like jeff has some internalized homophobia/biphobia (like he’d throw punches over someone else, but when it comes to himself he has a lot of shame). and also seeing the dean so confident in all his different outfits/costumes has a weird affect on him bc it’s like “okay, the dean, a cis guy, can do that, but i as a trans guy could Not because that’s Breaking the Rules”. which, like, throwback to the halloween thing. of course there’s no right way to be masculine, but mr. winger does not know that.

another thing!! the episode where their emails get leaked? that includes his emails with his therapist. fuck!! he was outed to the whole world in that episode!! no wonder he was so fucking angry!! this whole episode (and really any time he mentions his therapist) is so interesting when you think about them as a person he talks to about his transition. OH which adds to the thing with the dean!! “and you told your therapist you wanted to be alone this weekend” and “not you jeff, i know you’ll be visiting your dad” ”I told you to stop reading my emails”. luckily his study group has his back and just makes fun of him for emailing astronauts lmao

and WHO can forget “they’re giving out an award for most handsome young man!!!!” what else is there to say about this line besides: he’s trans. you know he didn’t get awarded enough for being a handsome young man when he was a kid, and no amount of compliments when he’s fully-grown can really make up for that. some people crash a kid’s bar mitzvah to cope with the fact that they struggled to be seen as themselves when they were a teenager <3

also his weird relationship with pierce? where he kind of hates him (understandably lmao) but at times has this almost-friends-almost-father-son relationship with him? especially in this episode where he’s forced to bond with him and ends up having a good time by accident (at a barber shop no less, the perfect place to Be A Man with your Man Friend). idk what to say about him besides the fact that pierce says his mom wanted a girl when he was born and made him dress like a girl (and his middle name is anastasia!) so if they’re gonna do any bonding over transness it’s gonna be that. 

okay one last thing and then i’ll shut up for the night. this episode kills me (and almost kills jeff hahahahelpi’mcrying). it’s a very Trans thing to not be able to visualize your future self, it just is. growing up trans at the time he did? i don’t know what kind of future he saw for himself, but i’m so happy that he ended up with a group of friends who became his family and love him the way they all do. i’m so emotional over this asshole it’s ridiculous. 

in conclusion:

they’re trans, your honor <3