#cis person potentially getting it wrong

[werewolfpdfs]

“clean girl aesthetic” “in my healing era (link to lip gloss in bio!)” “preventative botox” “buy our anti wrinkle straw!” “this candle will strengthen your feminine energies!” “pov: [INSERT ANYTHING] pick me girl” “full coverage concealer! link in bio!” “finance explained for girls!” “affiliate link in bio!” “lose weight! get that [TREND] look! glow up! buy this product! buy your soul back from us!“ rina sawayama was right

[ronanlynchbf]

diversity loss! those ppl correctly gendering u assumed you're straight..

[fiapple]

everyone acting like the fact that some detr*ns people join transphobic movements after de-tr*nsitioning is a phenomena that’s the fault of trans people not supporting them enough & not, oh, i don’t know, their own choice to become a literal fucking facist, owes all trans people $1,000,000 each actually. usd too.

[steveyockey]

To be aware you might be trans but unwilling to do anything about it is to create endlessly bigger boxes within which to contain yourself. When you are a child, that box might encompass only yourself and your parents. By the time you are a gainfully employed adult, that box will contain multitudes, and the thought of disrupting it will grow ever more unthinkable. So you cease to think of yourself as a person on some level; you think not of what you want but what everybody expects from you. You do your best not to make waves, and you apologize, if only implicitly, for existing. You stop being real and start being a construct, and eventually, you decide the construct is just who you are, and you swaddle yourself up in it, and maybe you die there. There is still time until there isn’t.

This reading of TV Glow’s deliberately anticlimactic, noncathartic ending cuts against the transition narrative you typically see in movies and TV, in which a trans person self-accepts, transitions, and lives a happier life. Owen gets trapped in a space where he knows what he must do to live an authentic life but simply refuses to take those steps because, well, burying yourself alive is a terrifying thing to do. The transition narrative posits a trans existence as, effectively, a binary switch between “man” and “woman” that gets flipped one way or another, but to make our lives so binary is to miss how trans existences possess an inherent liminality.

Humans’ lives unfold in a constant state of becoming until death, but trans people are uniquely keyed in to what this means thanks to the simple fact of our identities. You can get lost in that liminality, too, forever trapped in a midnight realm of your own making, stuck between what you believe is true (I am a nice man with a good family and a good job, and I love my life) and what you know, deep in your most terrified heart of hearts, is real (I am a girl suffocating in a box).

And yet if you want to read the film as being about the dangerous allure of nostalgia, you’re not wrong. I Saw the TV Glow totally supports that interpretation, too! But in tempting you with that reading, the film creates a trap for cis viewers that will be all too familiar to trans viewers. Somewhere in the middle of Maddy’s story about The Pink Opaque being real, you will make a choice between “This kid has lost it!” and “No. Go with her, Owen,” and in asking you to make that choice, TV Glow is simulating the act of self-accepting a trans identity.

See, the grimmer read of the film’s ending truly is a nihilistic one. It leaves no hope, no potential for growth, no exit. Yet you must actively choose to read that ending as nihilistic. If you are cis and the end of I Saw the TV Glow left you with a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction, a weird but hard-to-pin-down feeling that something had broken, and a melancholy bordering on horror — congratulations, this movie gave you contact-high gender dysphoria.

In an infinite number of possible universes, there is at least one where I am still living “as a man,” embracing my fictionality, avoiding looking at how much more raw and real I feel when I “pretend” to be a woman. I think about that guy sometimes. I hope he’s okay.

Consider, then, my cis reader, that TV Glow is for both you and me, but it is maybe most of all for him. I hope he sees it. I hope he breaks down crying in the bathroom afterward. I hope he, after so many years locked inside himself, hears the promise of more life through the hiss of TV static.

Emily St. James, “I Saw the TV Glow’s Ending Is Full of Hope, If You Want It to Be,” Vulture. June 4, 2024.

[euniexenoblade]

tl;dr version: a very frequent and more recent flavor of trans exclusionism, transmisogyny, and transphobia at large has started to bubble up as an overpowering, overwhelming (and fake) acceptance of gnc cis people.

The actual long version:

Trans people, especially trans women, when they want to come out or explore their gender are often met with loved ones, family, or friends telling them "you can just be gnc, you don't know you're actually trans, men can be feminine, you should try that before scary life changes" we often talk about how this is a move by abusive, transmisogynistic people in our lives, who pretend to to care about gnc people, but in reality it's just transphobia manifesting as a false support. They often manipulate trans people into not pursuing transition and then lay on all the manipulation to convince us we were so silly to think we're trans afterwards.

Though there's a lot of people who still see it as honest support for the gnc, most of us are pretty clear that it's transphobic. But, another way this takes form is from other trans people, there are a lot of trans people with internalized transphobia who only view the existence negatively and when you talk about people potentially being trans, you activate their rapid internalized self hate: how can you say that? You can't know someone else's gender! You're forcing them to be trans! Men can be gnc! You're actually the transphobic one!

You also see it take form as things like "egg prime directive." "You can't tell the egg they might be trans!!!" Yes, you can. And you probably should. Trans people are not some mythical once in a blue moon thing. We are everywhere. There's lots of us. Being trans is not a bad thing, it's simply just a thing. Acting like you can't tell people they're trans is treating trans people like we're dirty secrets, a thing to be ashamed of, you're treating it like an insult. The truth of the matter is, telling someone they're exhibiting things associated with trans people can help speed up the process, less dysphoria to agonize over, less confusion as to what's going on, you can help kickstart a path to happiness.

But these people don't. Cuz they don't *want* people to be trans, and very specifically don't want people to be transfem. I don't need to get into the polls that showed most transmascs think telling a friend they might be a trans woman is morally wrong, you've seen it already. I don't need to tell you about how a transfem mentioned a specific person in the media seemed transfem, just for people to harass them (idk pronouns) off the site, just for people to confirm that yes - the individual in the news was likely transfem. And with that realization didn't come an apology, didnt come a new understanding, the trans and "pro trans" harassers stuck to their guns "recognizing transhood in others the way you see it in yourself is the same as transvestigation, the right wing transphobic conspiracy theory!"

This topic has been talked about a lot this past year, with the egg joke discourse, people getting harassed and ran off the site for correctly mentioning someone seems transfem, the constant harassment and blog deletion of trans women, the onslaught of harassment from the transandrodorks and terfs, etc etc. but I feel like it never gets correctly classified as a form of exclusionism. We easily recognize truscum exclusionism as what it is: "youre nb? You don't try to pass? You don't shave? Lol fake trans" it's the blue hair with pronouns schtick. It's gatekeeping the community. But, in the same respect, the "you can't just say people are trans" "it's ok to be gnc!" anti egg joke types of people are just as exclusionary. One end it's "you aren't a true transexual" and the other is "be gnc instead, being trans is a bad thing."

It's the projection of internalized transphobia into a policy. You can't tell anyone they're trans because you don't see trans people as anyone, you see them as weird monsters. That's a really depressing form of exclusion, but exclusion all the same.

[dumpster-fire-sapphic-failgirl]

Some more thoughts about Dungeons and Drag Queens (D20), especially Brennan’s presentation as DM

Brennan spent a large chunk of his life attending or working at a LARP camp. He’s no stranger to dressing up for games. He played a space wizard on Ultramechatron Go. He’s no stranger to dressing up on camera.

But in Dimension 20, he is resolutely Some Guy™️ and honestly it feels like he is doing that to make D&D and other TTRPGs as approachable as possible. You don’t have to go over the top. You don’t have to dress up. You can just be Some Person™️ and let your imagination do the heavy lifting

Which brings us to D&DQ. Brennan is full glam. And people are Horny™️ for it. But I think a lot of people might be missing the point. Doing an all Drag Side Quest is a political statement in America right now. And if Brennan was just Some Guy™️ he could potentially give fuel to folks (who don’t actually know anything about him) to say “look at what the dropout sjws are forcing on this poor cis-het dude”

So Brennan cheerfully dons A Lewk™️. For the first time, Denise the super talented makeup artist gets a crack at his face. And yes, he’s meeting his players where they are. And he’s doing his best to let the spotlight shine on the Queens. But. He’s visible. He’s (intentionally or not) telling the world “If you want to come for them you’ll have to come through me”

Don’t get me wrong, I love the “Brennan hotboi!” takes. And maybe I’m reading too much into it. But I love the feeling that this cis-het white boy got sprayed with glitter, tossed on Eursulon’s pauldron, and said “I got y’all. It’s safe here.”

In a world where it is very much not safe to be trans right now, that means a fucking lot

[moongothic]

Not sure I've ever actually verbalized this properly before but what genuinely makes Crocodad a theory I'm emotionally invested in, is how like

Like the kinda implication here is that, because Ivankov's HRT is MAGIC and gives you a functional cis body (it's all about that wish fulfillment baybee), Crocodile could not have transitioned until after the baby was born (since he wouldn't have the bits for it anymore). Which begs the question of, why would he not have transitioned before ever even getting pregnant? And to me, unless Ivankov just didn't get their DF until it was "too late", like. It really would just make sense if Crocodile never figured his gender shit out until he got pregnant. Like IDK, maybe I'm just projecting my personal pregnancy repulsion onto him, but like. Watching your body change against your will into something very traditionally feminine and do irreversible damage to your body (pregnancy hormones be scary yo) as some parasite grows inside you and having these deeply gendered expectations just thrusted upon you (not even like directly by other people, but just the societal expectation that's been taught to you since forever that you now kind of assume you have to live up to). Like that sounds like a horrible, dysphoria inducing nightmare to go through, something that could very easily become the straw that breaks the camel's back (or, the sledgehammer that cracked the egg)

And then you add the fact that Crocodile could not have held any negative feelings towards the baby, otherwise the brat would've been aborted. Meaning despite all the horrible shit he was going through internally, Crocodile still loved that child and was willing to go through hell for it

But then you add the fact that, as I've discussed in the past, it's very likely the baby was going to be left in Garp's care from the very begining. Like that might've been the plan from the get-go. So Crocodile was carrying a child he knew he would have to give up and would probably never see again.

Like. All of that is so emotionally fucking devastating.

But then!! You get some hope because hey, Crocodile figuring his gender shit out and being able to get help from Ivankov would mean he could escape the Dysphoria Hell at the very least, like there's that bit of relief, right?

But then. Fucking. Dragon??? Is he bi, or did they get divorced because Dragon's not into men??? Is the Dragodile Divorce real???

'Cause if so. Like. Again, to re-iterate. Crocodile went through 9 months of nightmareish dysphoria hell to birth a child he loved but knew he could never see ever again, and while he got to have that dysporia alliviated thanks to Ivankov, doing so also resulted in him losing his husband.

Like even just conceptually that is so fucking

Like yes Crocodad has so much potential to be hysterical and an absolute clown show, and my speculation about The Details of it are indeed just speculation and could be completely wrong.

BUT DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHY I'M EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN THIS SHIT. DO YOU UNDERSTAND HOW FUCKING SAD CROCODAD MIGHT BE

[buttercupfiction]

Be it fate or just plain misfortune, all it took was one little chance encounter to set you on a path you never even imagined you'd tread. Now, it's up to you to decide where it will lead you. As a child, you got your hands on a Vestige, a remnant of a bygone era containing immense power and potential. It was an opportunity many would pay dearly for, and pay you did, as finding the relic did not come without a cost. The encounter left you with a parting gift you wish you could return, and sent you and your sister on the run - and you've been running ever since. Years later, you find yourself in the bastion of knowledge, Verimys, joining the local guild in search for answers. But, it appears you have arrived at exactly the wrong time; a series of murders plagues the city, seemingly without rhyme or reason, and you are about to get dragged into the fray. With the fate of more than just your own life in your hands, can you weather the storm ahead?

Vestiges of the Hallowing is an interactive fantasy game written in Twine and published on itch.io. The game is heavily character driven, with a focus on character interaction and interpersonal relationships.

The DEMO currently goes up to Chapter 2, standing at 38k words (without code).

play as male, female, or nonbinary; cis or trans

customize your appearance, skillset, and personality

romance any (or none) of the 6 potential love interests (2 male, 2 female, 2 nonbinary) without any gender restrictions

join a guild, investigate the murders in the city, and uncover a secret or two (or ten)

explore the Archives in the city and find out more about the Vestiges and your...unique situation

the Companion

A member of the Greyhounds guild your sister talked into vouching for you. Eager to help and friendly with everyone, but when the spotlight is off him, that spark in his eye dies out. Is he really as relaxed and easygoing as he tries to appear? Appearance: Lanky and of average height, with tan skin and big round chocolate brown eyes framed by short fluffy hair of the same colour that falls in messy waves, encircling his face.

the Journalist

A journalist working for a local newspaper called The Meridian. Resourceful and naturally charismatic, she has a way with people that seems almost effortless. Persistent in the pursuit of the truth almost to the point of recklessness, how far is she willing to go to achieve her goals? Appearance: Tall and lean, with rich brown skin and hazel eyes with prominent specks of green. Her long black hair falls down her shoulders in big curls.

the Archivist

An archivist of the Order of Erudition. Poised and perfectly cordial at first glance, though anyone who has crossed their path would say it's all a front, concealing their razor sharp wit and heartless disposition. Seemingly always in the know about everything, with just the right words to say, one can't help but wonder what goes on behind that calculating gaze? Appearance: Lithe and on the taller side, with olive skin and dark, midnight blue monolid eyes. Their silky black hair falls in a fringe over one side of their face and reaches a little past their shoulders.

the Renegade

A mysterious stranger that appears to be living full-time in a tavern. Bitter and asocial, with only a stray dog as company, he refuses to get involved in anything, yet seems suspiciously connected to the happenings in the city. It's clear he's hiding something, but what? Appearance: Tall and athletic, with fair, freckled skin and forest green eyes. His fiery auburn hair is shaved on the sides, while the rest is left short and unruly.

the Investigator

One of the two agents sent by the City Council to investigate the murders. Soft-spoken and level-headed, with a keen eye for details and an even keener mind, their forte is obtaining information and interpreting it. Though it's obvious they're devoted to the task, something else draws their attention away from it; what could be so important? Appearance: Lean and on the shorter side, with pale skin and sandy blonde hair that falls in a fringe over their dark grey eyes.

the Enforcer

Second of the two agents sent by the City Council. Assertive and ambitious, with an unorthodox approach to solving problems, her skill with a sword and quick reflexes make her an invaluable asset. Driven, but not too concerned about her task nor the goings on in the city; is there something else that holds her interest? Appearance: Toned and of average height, with fair skin and icy blue eyes framed by bangs of sleek platinum blonde hair that, when loose, reaches the small of her back.

DEMO | KO-FI | ASKBOX | PATREON

[socialistexan]

Questions for people who oppose gender affirming care for minors, we'll touch on adults later.

"A child can not consent to life changing surgery."

That's true, children can't - and honestly shouldn't be able to - consent to a lot of things. However, medical consent is a very different beast, this consent is gotten from their legal guardian, not the child.

Putting aside that while surgery for a trans minor does happen it is extremely rare, why is this standard only applied trans children and their medical care?

Do you think the 3200 cigender girls ages 13 to 19 who received a breast enhancement in 2020 gave the proper consent? Do you believe the 4700 cis girls in the same age group and time who received breast reduction in 2020 should be barred from that treatment? Why is 230 trans kids receiving a gender affirming surgery not okay, but the others are?

Can a minor consent to any surgery at all? Like, say, knee surgery which has a much higher regret rate than Gender Affirming surgery?

"Puberty Blockers and Hormone Replacement Therapy can have lifelong medical effects!"

So can any medication.

Should children be able to receive chemo? That has lifelong effects. Pain killers, those can be addictive and put your body, especially a child's body, under extreme stress, should children receive that care? Should a child receive psychiatric medication, those absolutely have side effects that could be long lasting? Tylenol can cause stomach bleeds that can have life long effects, should they receive that medication?

I'm allergic to penicillin, does that mean penicillin should be pulled from the shelves? It saves millions of people's lives, but it could kill me, so why would you legislate access away from the millions to accommodate the exception, me?

"What about detransitioners? What if they regret it? What if they realize they haven't

It's terrible that sometimes this happens. It is extraordinarily rare in an already small population, but it does happen. We should love and respect and give support to detransitioners, they have gone through medical trauma and a personal journey that few can relate to. It is awful they have to deal with the potential affects of treatment that they later regreted.

But trans people who went through the wrong puberty also experience these exact issues. Trans women who went through male puberty have deeper voices and all the same issues that a detransitioned cis woman who underwent HRT. And adult trans women who underwent male puberty had no say in whether they went through that, while a detransitioners at least had the opportunity to make a choice. Why do you have sympathy for one of those kinds of women and not the other?

Also, doctors sometimes get things wrong in any kind of medical treatment. Misdiagnosis happens, incorrect treatment happens. Sometimes a doctor is just plain bad or greedy. Does that mean you throw out all access to a form of medical treatment just for a few mistakes and improper treatment?

[votive-candle]

So I've been considering a rebrand on this blog for a long time for "professional" reasons... like changing my username, making an official portfolio with my name to it elsewhere, etc.

This idea has been mostly motivated by this deep insecurity I have surrounding what I would say is either NSFW work, suggestive art, "fangirl" energy, all that. And it's... frustrating, to say the least. And difficult express in a way that's coherent. Because my personal feelings are that art, even art that within the sphere of industry that I want to approach (ie. game art & story design, character writing and so on), should not have to be confined within this box of "sensibilities" that I'm told it should be.

If I was doing fine art like painting, or making installations, or sculpture, I get a sense that this puritanical ideology of self-censorship would not be expected of me. I also get a sense that if I was born male and lived as a man, there would be different industry expectations of me also. If I was a cis dude I don't think a game director would mind if I had a portfolio full to the brim with borderline naked, hypersexualised women and girls with big swords and huge racks (no shade, big boobs and big swords are fun and cool). But -- and again I don't have evidence of this, it's just a hunch -- I somehow get this idea that the way I approach drawing masculine figures? The way I write and express myself through, and speak about characters? The sexually explicit artwork I've drawn over the years, which majoritively does not even show genitalia? I get this gut feeling that this would be much less... palatable (?) in the industry for commercial, media focused art.

I've been drawing sexual content since I was a teen fangirl and I think it's really strange that somehow, as I get older and more mature (and I'm serious here, like really, let that sink in? I was told directly "you're not a kid anymore, potential employers won't like this" in response to shipping art an old tutor saw me post online a few years back?), it's considered in many ways less appropriate for me to produce explicit or sexually themed artwork. Particularly when that art has that air of "fangirl" (or "fan-person" in regards to myself) around it. Because "fangirls" aren't professional, are they? They're vapid, of course. They don't consume art meaningfully, not like strong, stoic men do. No, they just want their shipping and their coffeeshop AU's and their moodboards, and there's nothing creative in that, is there? No "professional practice" there.

I just find that... baffling

I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who is borderline asexual on that spectrum, and always has been. Somehow, professionalism is partly hinged on making your art less exploratory of adult themes, once you become an adult, once you're old enough to understand and properly illustrate the importance of adult themes. Isn't that strange to anyone else? Because to me it feels wrong.

Like I said, I'm borderline asexual. I don't draw sexual content to get my rocks off. I draw it because I find physical intimacy to be one of the most multifascited expressions of humanity between people. Sex and sexuality are so dynamic in their capacity for storytelling. With it (and safely so through fiction, if you're careful about it), you can express and explore so much; passion obviously, love, but also sadness and grief and condolence, malice and rage, heartbreak, self-destruction, self-improvement, excitement, fun, even just friendship.

Sex is beautifully dynamic from a humanistic standpoint. It shouldn't need to be considered this looming force of demonitisation, or an industry blockade. And I understand I have drawings that are too graphic, too NSFW to put in a professional portfolio, to leave online for employers to see. But I'm not even talking about smut here.

Majoritively, I really don't want to distance myself from a lot of this work I've created. It means something to me dude, because these characters and stories mean something to me. Sometimes the drawing itself is just... a technically well executed drawing. I don't want to revoke that because there's an implication of "ooh, someone's touching ass, breast and dick in there!"

Yet by expressing my excitement over that, I do feel cornered. Like I'll never get hired anywhere. Which isn't easy given the struggles I already have with disability, mental health, etc. So I feel a need to sort of give in and retcon a lot of my posts.

I don't like that finding work in the fields I'm interested in kind of hinges on a lack of self-expression, I suppose. I find it bitterly ironic since I want to work in creative fields. It feels like a betrayal of the self and of the purpose of art and good media for grown individuals.

But hey, I guess that's capitalism, baby.

This blog might change a bit in the near or semi-near future. Maybe a new username or profile pic, I'm not sure yet. Maybe a second blog will pop up somewhere. I just wanted to vent a bit on my disdain in having to make these decisions. Beg your pardon.

[genderkoolaid]

https://www.tumblr.com/fite-club/732282106727858176/the-thing-thats-going-over-so-many-younger-trans

(link: post where op says discrimination against transmascs does exist, but is not targeted specifically against transmascs and goes on to give a bunch of examples)

too tired to go on about how wrong op is so im passing it over to you

wow another user i already had blocked [Obligatory Do Not Harass This Person Notice]

Yes, T is a controlled substance because of bullshit athletics laws. There being another reason that law exists does not mean it cannot and is not used to actively target trans people, ESPECIALLY trans people of color. This article goes over the numerous ways that T being a controlled substance opens the doors for a variety of abuses, & this one goes more in depth into, Stann Fransisco, a transmasc Two Spirit, who was arrested, sexually assaulted, and jailed after police found hez T and needles and hey had to out hemself as trans. It was not made a controlled substance because of transmascs, but they certainly use it to target transmascs & others and there's no reason that a transphobic government would be interesting in letting go on this control.

With trans people and pregnancy, its a similar situation- ATM might not be the reason people on T are taken off it during pregnancy, but it can absolutely be used by people (such as abusive partners) to detransition people. (Also, intersexism plays a huge role in this as well, since a lot of times the major "danger" of people being pregnant on T is the possibility of an intersex child). And the same thing for being left out of vaginal and uterine health care- even if the system wasn't directly set up to target trans people, it is used that way and kept that way regardless.

And as for being kept out of conversations? That can 100% be targeted. There are absolutely openly transphobic people who make the decision to use trans-exclusive language around pregnancy and abortion. And are you fucking kidding me with the idea that trans surgeries aren't less studied because organizations don't want to give money to support their research?

Frankly I'm tired of the idea that in Twenty Fucking Twenty Three, all transphobia transmascs experience is just the result of nobody knowing what a trans man is. Its been fucking decades since FTMs starting getting awareness, and there's a current moral panic that has transmascs as a central figure. Are you fucking kidding me? Do y'all really think nobody is out here targeting us specifically? And, on top of that, the idea that being erased means you can't be targeted is ignorant. Intersex people, from what I have read, experience something similar a lot: people not knowing what you are, you not being given the tools to know what you are, and yet you experience targeted violence for the traits of the thing nobody mentions. Hell, that's like... a ton of queerphobia? Being targeted for having the traits of an unmentionable condition? People not knowing what "gay" or "trans" is but smelling something socially unacceptable on you?

Ironically this whole thing is, imo, another example of the impact of erasure. Because erasure is fundamentally about not just the violence of being silenced, but silencing violence. Erasure puts into place the idea that transmasc invisibility is part of reality; transmasculinity is literally invisible to people. What that means is, erasure promotes the idea that transmasculinity is literally inconceivable: its just something people created one day, or its some deep hidden extremely rare thing that sometimes happens, but either way, there is no precedent for it and no preconceived ideas related to it. Of course there is no anti-transmasc violence, because when cis people see a woman trying to be a man, they have literally no preconceived ideas on this at all! Or, if that doesn't work, erasure will attribute any potential violence to misogyny and lesbophobia, squashing the idea that anything could happen as a result of "women becoming men" and the hatred around that idea.

In 2023, yeah, people do know we exist and, in fact, fearmonger about there being too many of us. Its vital that we are aware of this and realize that new forms of anti-transmasculinity will continue to take shape as we get more awareness. For example: in the past, people weren't aware of chest binding, but now you have transphobes who know to look for binders under people's shirts so they can attack transmascs.

But even without that, even before that, people don't need to know the name of something to hate it. A lot of anti-butch violence is done specifically to punish, in the minds of the attackers, a woman trying to be/act like a man/replace men; that's anti-transmasculinity*. Mothers insisting their tomboy children need to grow up and act like women? That's anti-transmasculinity. People only talk about historical transmascs who more or less lived well, but there are people who were outed and put in prisons and mental asylums and abused, and that's just the records we can find. There are articles written about the horror of a woman realizing her husband "is a woman." Steve Dain transitioned in the 1970s and was called "thing" "it", immediately seen as a sexual predator towards little girls, and had the school system do everything possible to fire him- and it worked. Those people likely had never heard of a trans man before- but they immediately reacted with disgust and targeted attacks. They didn't need to know what he was to hate him for it, because the cultural ideas that create and manage transphobia as a system are still there.

Also bonus aphobia from the tags:

*and, for the record, "anti-transmasculinity" can be co-existent with misogyny and lesbophobia. they are all interconnected.

[marimbles]

I just want to say I don't mind hearing some oversharing but also I definitely think that gender euphoria and dysphoria aren't necessarily a trans exclusive experience personally, this is just one person's opinion so I can't speak for everyone but gender is so complex I think we should be talking about the way it impacts cis people as well because I think it probably helps everyone understand gender better in general no matter how you define it or yourself. I just think it's really interesting!

I think so too! But I know some people don’t see it the same way so I just wanted to be respectful of that. On one hand I think it’s really helpful to present gender euphoria/dysphoria as a potentially common experience between trans people and cis people so that cis people can understand trans people better. So they can say, “oh, that discomfort I felt when the doctor called me ‘ma’am’ on the phone is what you feel when someone uses the wrong pronouns? okay, I understand.” Or “oh, that happiness I felt when I found the perfect wedding dress is how you felt when you wore makeup for the first time? Okay, I understand.”

At the same time, I get that on another level, cis people can never understand what it feels like to be trans and all the complicated emotions that come with it. There’s a big difference between being self-conscious about your chickstache and feeling like your body parts literally do not belong to you (not something I can’t say I’ve ever experienced). But of course, people experience dysphoria differently, and the common element between trans and cis people encountering gender incongruence is the distress it can cause either way. That distress is easy to recognize. I think gender euphoria is harder for a cis people to recognize even if they do experience it simply because they’re not used to thinking in those terms. If you’re born in the pool, you don’t know how water feels, or whatever. For trans people, gender euphoria is a distinct feeling because it’s the opposite of dysphoria—it’s the relief of the discomfort. Whereas for cis people who are used to feeling comfortable with their own gender/expression, it’s just normal and they probably don’t even give it much thought. But they would definitely feel the difference if they were being constantly misgendered like a lot of trans people are.

Anyway, this is just one cis person’s limited perspective, but I think it’s interesting to talk about! So thanks for sharing your thoughts!

[bloggingboutburgers]

cw: discussions of bullying and aphobia

Hearing aroace peoples' existential crises over their friends discussing crushes, as someone who was socially isolated and severly bullied for their whole childhood and most of their adolescence so had NO friendgroup until adulthood and NO community or inclusion in literally anything (and when it came to sex and romance the other kids explicitly considered my potential involvement in either to be impossible / laughible because of how "weird" they found me (my autistic traits before I even realised I'm autistic)), felt like starving while listening to someone else complain about the food they're actively eating.

Food intolerances and dislike of different foods (as metaphor for being aro/ace) ARE important and difficult to grapple with when you're expected to eat specific foods in specific proportions at different times - but man did it sting until I realised why I felt that way and gave myself a talking to since my trauma doesn't justify belittling the very real struggles of aroace people.

I guess since the choice between 'stay alone or conform' was never really a choice because I was rejected no matter how cis straight or allo I was it taught me to go "fuck it" and accept myself regardless of what other people do or say (which ironically has lead to me becoming dramatically popular all of a sudden at uni, which has been weird to get used to since I have literally no experience with any of this - platonic or otherwise - which did lead to some advantage being taken of me but f*ck it we ball ^^'). And I guess it's just been difficult understanding why anyone would care so much about whether they're "normal" or not? You really have nothing to gain from that, safety is not guaranteed in conformity so best to live aroace and damn all aphobes to hell if they have a problem with that.

It's a mindset I'll never understand and that's only ok now insofar as that lack of understanding no longer results in misplaced anger at people who, for a time, I had once considered spoilt, ungrateful and out of touch. Basically, I'm full of sh*t and to every aroace person reading this you deserve good friends that actually respect you for who you are and do not even TRY to get you to change your mind about sex or romance. Have a lovely day x

Sincerely,

An aggressive emotional support anon

I'm genuinely sorry for all the hardships you went through. I don't mean to equate at all, truthfully from reading you and considering I WAS asked some of those questions as a kid regardless (the "who's your crush" bullshit and whatnot), it definitely sounds like I had it less hard than you did, but... I was bullied in elementary school and middle school, also not necessarily because I was aroace (I don't know why it happened really, I don't know if anyone ever knows, I boil it down to... me being me and there being something fundamentally wrong with me ig), and I definitely also get some of those feelings of "oh boo hoo you call that struggle" boiling in me when people discuss their own past struggles sometimes, so... Yeah, every one person's experience is unique, but I can at the very least very much sympathize.

I think a way it manifests in me is that I now have that compulsive, debilitating fear of being "othered" in any way, shape, or form, so I guess being aroace doesn't help my case. But at the same time... Well, like you brilliantly put it, when you're in a situation like that, no matter what you do, you won't be accepted anyway, and having that knowledge back then is probably also what lead me to figure myself out as aroace so early in life. Because I was treated as this much of an outsider, I ironically had that much room in my own head to form my own identity, far apart from others and the need to conform. Yeah, that identity may include a "piece of shit that doesn't deserve to be supported of part of a group" side that's been forced in, buried deep down and can't be erased, but... It also includes asexual and aromantic, and it's been cemented so hard from so early with such self-affirmation that later down the line, it saved me from a lot of stuff. I never had to force myself into a romantic or sexual relationship because I was undoubtably aroace – and people saw me as an outsider and an eyesore anyway. I spent years of being scared to go to school or out in the street every day, but later down the line, somehow, I feel it saved me from doing so many things I wouldn't have wanted to do.

...Bleh, sorry, didn't mean to turn this into me-me-me crap when you had the courage and sincerity of not only showing your experience, but finding the strength to show more love, understanding and support than a lot of people probably cared to give you for so long, despite all the pain you felt for so long. I guess I just wanna say... This take is definitely inspiring, so thank you on behalf of myself and others I'm sure, but also... I hope that, for yourself, you're also managing to own what you lived through in a way that allowed you to affirm yourself more strongly (it sounds like you are, I hope it IS the case), and most importantly, I hope you're in a much better place in your life now and you'll never have to return to that level of loneliness again.

[platinumgigi]

you know, in light of the Great James Somerton Callout Double Feature™ recently, it made me think back to when i used to watch James' videos. i wasn't an avid fan and never watched his streams or anything so i couldn't have any inkling of the plagiarism on my own, but this all now reminded me of one instance where he made a point of something in one of his videos that was so blatantly wrong, it made me wonder "wait...did you even watch the thing you're talking about?"

and that was with his video on the Owl House, because i believe there was a bit near-ish to the end where he's talking about the open queer representation in TOH, and at the time the video came out the show itself hadn't concluded yet, but he mentioned alongside the not only very canon Lumity as representation the show had to offer, he also mentioned...that the show was hinting at there being a potential romantic relation between Hunter and Gus????

and that had grabbed my attention and made me confused, because...no?? did we watch the same show??? cause if you've watched the Owl House not only would you know that Hunter was 16 and Gus was 12, which is really stretching it in terms of acceptable age gaps, but also...their relationship was not like that, and didn't have any sort of romantic subtext to try and grasp at. the way they hung out and interacted was much more of a "dudes being bros" way (silly headbump handshake, comforting each other in their insecurities and what people saw them as "weak" for), and i'm pretty sure even at the time the episode came out where Gus and Hunter officially became friends, Hunter was already showing signs of crushing on Willow???

so, in retrospect, it now occurs to me that the reason James mentioned that was not because he had simply misinterpreted Gus and Hunter's interactions and the shows intentions for them in the future, but it was deliberately James grasping at straws to shoehorn in some kind of MLM representation into the show where there wasn't any. and while, yeah, in an openly queer show, still not seeing yourself represented kinda sucks, but James Somerton is clearly a person who doesn't value anything in the LGBTQ+ community other than the G. he thinks being a gay man (especially a cis white gay man) is the only real way of being queer, or at least the most "oppressed" type of queer, probably because news media only ever gave significant attention to the deaths of cis white gay men during the AIDS crisis, and that is pretty much James' only point of reference in "historical events that happened to queer people" because god knows he didn't care enough to research and write on his own, let alone research and write about queer history involving queer people who weren't cis white gay men like him.

and it's especially shitty that he that he tries to force this idea of Hunter and Gus having romantic subtext right after he talks about Luz and Amity's relationship. i'm personally not the biggest fan of Lumity within the story of the Owl House, but the representation is really great, especially for something in a disney cartoon. so him trying to then detract all the sapphic representation that Lumity provided and even built the show upon with an MLM relationship that not only is weird in context but also never even happened?? the AUDACITY.

and what gets me even more is that, by the end of the show, while Hunter does end up in a relationship with Willow, it's not a straight relationship. it was confirmed by the show's creator Dana Terrace after it concluded that Hunter is bisexual and Willow is pansexual, and while yeah, real shame that there wasn't any actual expression of those facts during the show's runtime, it's still nice to know that they're queer, and thus their relationship is queer. it's also great to have a canon bi/pan couple when there's STILL an immense infighting problem between bi and pan people thinking that one of the sexualities is trying to erase the other due to their similar (but not same) definitions. so having them not only coexist but also be in love is great!

but you just know, you just KNOW, that even if James' video was made after the show's official conclusion, he would probably either:

A: ignore Hunter and Willow's relationship and try to play on plausible deniability that they're just friends since they never had any great romantic gestures like Lumity's confession and many kisses

or

B: make a shitty argument out of it that the Owl House "could have gone leaps and bounds further with their representation, but Disney was so homophobic that Hunter couldn't possibly get to also be gay, so he had to end up with a woman :("

and while i think both are probably just as possible as each other, my money would be on option B, because god damn it this man can't praise a piece of queer media if it doesn't somewhat center around or involve gay men, and leave it to James Somerton to try and project himself onto the white teenage boy and think that if he were gay, that'd somehow make the story better.

this man actively hates women, especially queer women whom he loves to pretend are actually straight women, and if he had the chance would still do everything he can to try and make a queer relationship between a man and a woman into some woeful narrative of "what could have been" if they just made the man gay.

god, from this singular moment alone where i had a very questionable opinion of James, the knowledge i have now completely recontextualizes everything. this guy is a plagiarist, a misogynist, but most of all, an internalized homophobe who replaces the word "gay" in the content he steals from with "LGBTQ+" and "queer" because he actually *would* just like to use the word gay, but if he did it would make it more obvious that he's plagiarizing, so he instead makes "queer" and "LGBTQ+" be synonymous with gay to make it look like he's actually being inclusive.

and i don't really remember much about his video about Korra, i don't know if i even watched it, so the only frame of reference that i have is what Hbomberguy said about it in his video, and i frankly do not want to go and give James anymore views he has not earned and will never deserve, but i think he did a similar thing in trying to grasp at straws with a potential queer relationship between Mako and some guy who i don't remember (i really didn't watch much of Korra sorry) but that also kind of was not the case of their relationship at all either, from what i've heard. at most it was just people shipping them, especially since the footage James Somerton used in his video was from a fucking ship AMV and not even from any of the high resolution episodes. so again it seems like there's an instance of James trying to shove in an MLM relationship that doesn't exist in a show whose lead representation is a WLW couple.

again i could be wrong, and correct me if i am, but unless there's a convenient re-upload of that entire video on another channel or even another video website, i'm not going to give James' channel any more attention than it unrightfully has.

fuck this guy.

[schnuffel-danny]

I know you have some fun gender head canons for vlad, but does Jack have any fun gender stuff going on?

Conversely, how does Jack feel/ what does he think about Vlad’s gender?

Jack is so painfully cis, that he's incapable of conceptualizing himself as identifying/being perceived as anything other than a man, and this unshakeable security in his gender leads to him being chill with literally anything. Jack could wear a glittery pink princess dress, a long neon pink wig and have a face full of make up and he wouldn't even consider it to be potentially funny as a "Haha man in dress lol", because if he's the one dressed like that, then it's the most masculine that clothing/make up can get :,D

A downside to this is that, Jack has never bothered to examine why others may not be as comfortable with their bodies, how they are seen, and how they present.... Jack has a hard time relating to other people and their personal struggles, and while he will respect a person's chosen name and pronouns, he might get upset if their dysphoria is somehow a hindrance to what he wants to do at a given moment.

Jack has never once questioned Vlad's identity and presentation. He always supported her choice to experiment with pronouns and clothing. Even as kids, Jack was never bothered by his new friend, who was clearly going through a "girl" puberty, introducing himself with a boy name and using masculine language for himself. And Jack never thought it was weird when this friend started flip flopping between a feminine and masculine identity/presentation. Vlad has always been, and will always be, just Vlad. It's up to Vlad himself to announce how she feels at a given moment :) However, there were times when it was clear, that Jack never thought about Vlad's identity as something deeper beyond "I'm Vlad and even if I don't look like it now, I'm a guy" and he'd get visibly upset when Vlad's dysphoria and fear of being immediately clocked as "wrong" got in the way of fun. Jack doesn't understand that feeling, and he's not really capable of understanding properly, so to him, as bad as it sounds, it's just a really annoying "nonsensical" roadblock, on the same level as a fear of bugs, or being too dumb to fix a car....

Jack would never misgender a person, he will never argue about the validity of someone's identity, he never trips up with a new name or pronouns... but he will likely get offended if a trans person doesn't want to go swimming in the lake with him, because it's triggering to them.

[sometimesraven]

"Misgendering isn't more important than women's safety"

if you think trans people are exclusively or even primarily concerned about misgendering you literally don't know enough about the topic to have an opinion.

It's like saying "catcalling isn't more important than trans safety". You know that's a stupid statement because catcalling in itself is a form of violence, and usually indicative of a bigger potential danger towards you from the person catcalling. Many men who catcall will get violent or otherwise escalate if a woman responds the wrong way. We know this.

Repeated and deliberate (and sometimes repeated and accidental tbh) misgendering is the catcalling of transness. It almost always indicates a greater underlying transphobia. Transphobic people will get violent or otherwise escalate if a trans person responds to misgendering the wrong way.

Furthermore, if you think trans people are only worried about 4B and other radfem movements, especially in the west, because of "misgendering", you're part of the problem we're worried about. Nobody is asking cis women to center trans people in their movements and activism, but if you can't even consider and be mindful of us, you are dangerous to us.