#combined with the fact that i am now trans and have had my masculinity called into question

[mars-ipan]

HOOO my brother just touched a nerve

[gwenevolent]

My experience with being trans is strange, and honestly I’m curious if anyone else has had this sort of experience.

For the much much better chunk of my 23 years of life, I thought I was a boy. I went through puberty, high school, etc. and I didn’t question my gender once. In senior year I realized I was bi, found a boyfriend, and over the course of the next couple years had a very enlightening experience. I got to explore myself and how I present, I started crossdressing a bit, and I carved out a place for myself in rather non-standard masculinity. I also happened to realize I prefer AFAB partners. Eventually I moved back home, continued living like that, and still not questioning my gender.

One time a guy at work called me ‘sir’ and it felt very wrong. I don’t remember where my head was at at that point but I remember it made me feel weird, and I lowkey considered a more gender neutral identity before kinda forgetting.

Fast forward a couple years. An old friend comes out after some years of repressing. I’m with a partner who lets me explore a fantasy id been having for a while- I was kind of a twink who had a thing for dominant AFAB partners.

One night I’m hanging out and decide to shave my mustache on a whim. I’m looking in the mirror at myself, and suddenly I get the urge to go grab a dress I had and throw it on. When I look again, suddenly something clicks. All of a sudden I realized ‘maybe I’m not a girl’, I talk to my friend and my partner a bit, experiment, and realize that I am indeed not cis after all.

Another change comes after christmas, and shortly before starting HRT. The thought had come to mind that- considering I leaned more toward partners of the opposite sex as a guy- maybe that would be the case as a girl? Turns out I was right, because when I landed and saw my partner all of a sudden I realized I wasn’t attracted to them anymore. Over the course of the next few months of starting HRT and slowly transitioning, I come to realize that I’m straight.

All of this happened in a few months. I’m 6 months on HRT, just now starting to take vocal feminization seriously, and doing a lot of reflecting on things. I find it a strange experience looking back.

I have little inklings in retrospect that I didn’t like being a guy, and now I feel more comfortable in myself generally, but truly I had no clue that I was trans or that was even an option for me for nearly 23 years of living. I was entirely naive.

Combined with the fact that being trans hasn’t been the fix-all to my trauma and depression, my experience has felt very strange overall. But I’m doing my best to navigate it.

If anyone else has any similar story or experience, feel free to share :) have a great day everyone.

[i-arch-my-backula]

This is just a trans rant because I don’t have anywhere else to go and a lot of cool trans people are on here. 

Obviously talking about transphobia in this and strong language is used, brief mentions of an ed and toxic relationships

I hate having to tone down my gender identity for cis people. If I explain to them that I’m like more of a genderfluid man who uses he/they/it pronouns they get confused and ask a ton of questions or just judge me for using it/its pronouns. My mutual @the-slasher-madame described gender the best by saying its a sea creature at the bottom of the ocean made of mystery meat that jiggles when you poke it. That’s kind of like gender for me. I know I am 100% not a woman but I prefer more general labels like genderfluid guy because that’s what I am. 

Don’t get me started on how annoyed people get about me not sticking to the gender binary. Other trans people often are like “You’re the reason people are transphobic” like mf you have a single wrinkle in your brain if you think transphobes didn’t exist before it/its and neopronouns. Like why do you care if I use masculine and gender nuteral terms even though I’m afab. I’m literally a 5′4 17 year old who can’t do a push up and is scared of thunder storms and the leper from it, calm your fucking tits I’m not going to murder your family or make you transition. 

Don’t get me fucking started on people constantly sexualizing me for being trans. I think it’s the combination of me being trans, chubby and sometimes being fem that makes people think it’s ok to call me sexual terms even though I clearly state I am a fucking minor. Even if I was an adult it’s not fucking ok to call a stranger a slur I don’t want to say becaus typing it let alone saying it makes me feel gross. I had an interaction with an ex of mine who complained when I told him to stop misgendering me because he “finds it really hot” and “thought I was into it”. Also speaking of exes I have had many exes try to explain to me, a trans person, how gender dysphoria works and how I don’t have it because sometimes I wear a skirt and do makeup and don’t bind 24/7. A lot of my exes have been from the UK which makes me want to hate the region as a whole but Brahms Heelshire and Christian Bales exists (along with other actors I’m forgetting) are from the UK so for now they get a pass. 

People act like because I’m a minor I don’t know I’m actually trans but the moment I become and adult I’m “grooming” kids by talking about being trans. Hrt and other gender affirmations have saved my life. For the first 14 years of my life I thought I was a girl was hell for me. It only got worse as puberty went on. If I could have gone on hormone blockers before I started puberty I would have 100%. I remember being excited for puberty because I always felt like something about me was off so I thought thats what would fix it. 

Also I don’t have to and am not going to debate my basic human rights and happiness with you. I deserve respect as a trans person and I deserve healthcare. On a side note America should step up like most other wealthy nations in the world and make heathcare free. Also I hate the fact the only trans men I really ever see are skinny, masculine and maybe cis passing trans men. Along with gender dysphoria I have body dysmorphia which makes me feel even worse about my body. It crushes me to think about how I’ll never look like other trans men or even cis men because of how big my rib cage is and how my shoulders are never going to be right. How I can’t get rid of stretch marks and I most likely will have to pay out of pocket for facial masculineization surgery. I struggle to lose weight for many reasons which has led to eating disorders and so much fucking guilt. 

I remember being told by an ex that I’ll always be an ugly fat t slur and I often think back to those words. I’ve never felt healthy true romantic love and I feel like I never fucking will because I’ll always be an ugly, fat t slur. Even in friend groups I’m the odd one out, even among other trans people. I have to constantly explain I can’t do this or that because of my bone structure and weight and how I can never feel comfortable wearing anything and most of the time all the “help” or “tips” I get is equivilent to me asking for maple syrup and everyone telling me to go lick a maple tree. 

This kind of explains why my comfort characters are slashers along with Carrie White and Ben Handscome. I can relate to what they deal with and while none of them are trans men (canonnicaly) I can still find comfort in knowing that someone else understands what it’s like. I know this is kind of over sharing and literally no one cares but I just have to vent these feelings somewhere and this is my blog where I can do what I want. 

[teddykaczynski]

thinking… i dont think i was always masculine i wasnt always gnc, my parents gave me a lot of freedom with how i dressed and i chose to wear skirts and dresses every day. a lot of that though was that especially back then i hated pants and they were very uncomfortable for me on a sensory level. i had a very short pixie cut in second grade and i always had short hair besides that, but my interests were rather feminine too. i loved fashion i loved baby dolls i loved barbie movies and princess movies. and i guess none of that really matters especially for who i am as a person now but i dont have that experience of always being gender nonconforming and facing the negative reactions from other people because of that. once i was in middle school though i did begin to become less feminine, i wore a lot of plaid button up shirts with sweaters over top. but by the end of 8th grade i was (at least internally) very trans-identified and i would enter 9th grade with a new name and asking my teachers to call me he pronouns. i just struggle to see how i ended up coming to that conclusion and i always have. even when i was still deep in genderism.

sorry for not sourcing this fact but this one adolescent gender clinic in england released something saying that nearly every female seeking to transition at that clinic was either a homosexual, a sexual assault/rape victim, or autistic or any combination of those and im 3/3. but i dont think i ever made the conscious conclusion that i would be safer because of my sexual assault if i lived as a male. i didnt see how becoming a boy would solve the problem of my homosexuality. and yet i tried to anyway. i mean maybe thats the autism though, that my subconscious emotions and conclusions are always 10 steps ahead of what i consciously have the ability to put into words. and all of this is just another variation of this longstanding problem i have of me having a different experience from other people who are similar to me and thinking that that makes Me wrong. its 10pm and i have to wake up early for work tomorrow :(

[mumblino]

My self discovery journey

Heyo!

This is not what most of my posts are gonna be like, but I felt like it was important to talk about, and pride month is a perfect time to tell my (summarized) self discover journey~

My name is Brandon, although I don’t care if you call me Mumble. My pronouns change a lot since i don’t really know myself that well, but currently, they are He/Him, They/Them and It/Its. There are also days where I don’t really identify with any 3rd person pronouns, I’m just me, and that’s what I mean when I say No Pronouns.

I have Depression, Anxiety and Combination Type- ADHD, which is why i am on the internet a lot.

This is a very long post, so buckle up

//TW: Transphobia, Enbyphobia, Homophobia, Anxiety, Depression, ADHD,  Disordered Eating, Racism (not a huge part, but there are mentions of it), Self Harm, Mentions of a Psych Ward, Medication

I am a trans-masc, afab teenager. I am a romance-neutral aromantic (my interpretation of that is that I don’t mind romance, but I don’t actively want one or seek one out), and a sex-repulsed asexual (I am completely repulsed by the idea of engaging in sexual intercourse with anyone). and I am currently out to my friends, my mother, and my step-father, and am in the beginning-middle of my transition.

 I started questioning my gender identity when I was in early 7th grade, after my friend Saturn (pronouns are They/It/Bun) first came out to me as Non-Binary, and asked me to use They/Them pronouns.

I’ve never really actively considered myself straight. I’ve always seen love as between two people, and while I usually thought of a man and a woman, I have always been open to same sex couples. My best friend in 2nd grade actually introduced me to the LGBTQ+ community (not directly, but she did talk about those types of things quite a bit), and while I don’t want to assume her sexuality, I am fairly certain she experienced attraction to both boys and girls.

Before this, the only thing I really knew about trans people was that they existed, and I didn’t really care that much. However, my brother and my father had the idea that most LGBTQ+ people are “snowflakes” and since I didn’t know anything else, I believed them.

However, I wanted to learn more about Trans people, and how to be respectful and supportive of them. I did, at the time, consider myself to be LGBTQ+. In both 5th and 6th grade I thought I was either a lesbian or bisexual, since I didn’t know the difference between aesthetic attraction and sexual attraction, and well, people are pretty!

I also had this need to be very masculine, and I always have. I’ve always wanted to be a tom-boy, to be the masculine one in the group, be the Buttercup of my friends! And during th grade, as I started to learn more about LGBTQ+ people, I wanted to be the top. I wanted to be the stereotypical lesbian. The one with the androgynous style, chill attitude, and the one that scares the shit out of guys.

I’ve even said to myself (not knowing that being trans was a thing) that I want to be a boy. I’ve always identified more with the guys at my school. Not in a pick me girl way, but in a “I relate to you a lot, and I feel like I fit in with you” way.

 And to some extent, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is because of how often feminine guys are made fun of. I would not be surprised one bit if this is because femininity has always been demonized to me, especially if a guy is being feminine.

Anyways, through this dive into the Alphabet Mafia, I found out about asexuality. It really resonated with me, because I always found sexual things gross, but that also confused me. If I was asexual, why did I want to be masculine so badly? Why wasn’t I like the other girls? I’ve always felt like an outcast around most people, but especially girls. I never related to them. I always related to more masculine people, and boys especially.

After this, I decided to start looking into trans culture, and FTM culture especially. Through this I found Kalvin Garrah. I know now that he is very much a toxic influence on the Trans community, but he taught me a lot about trans culture. I also found Sam Collins and Jammidoger through him, who also taught me a lot (and are much more positive influences.) These FTM youtubers taught me a lot, and I started to realize, that I might be trans.

Because of this, I decided to ask Saturn if they could refer to me by They/Them pronouns. I went with They/Them because I didn’t feel like I passed well enough to use them. My hair was still long, I wasn’t out to my family, I still acted feminine sometimes, etc.

I would also like to make note of the fact that at the time, I was not very accepting of most gender identities outside of the “binary” and didn’t consider it a spectrum. I had a very close minded and rigid view of gender, and this is mostly due to family influences. This view is why I didn’t want to use He/Him pronouns, because I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I have since grown out of that viewpoint, reflected, and tried to do better when trying to understand other people’s identities.

This stress of my identity crisis, untreated mental conditions, toxic friends, and general struggle with school caused me to develop disordered eating habits. I have never been diagnosed with an eating disorder, however I’ve struggled with disordered eating for a long time. During 7th grade, I started to struggle with binge eating. The moment I would get home, I would immediately start a binge. It was uncontrollable, I felt horrible, and eventually, my mom had started to notice that I was eating an unhealthy amount.

A few months after this, I started to see a therapist, and at the end of my first session with her, I came out to my mom. I could not be more thankful for how supportive of me she is. She has only shown love, and care for me, and the only time she’d no to a step in my transition, is out of a genuine concern for my physical and mental health. She is also religious, but she loves me for the way that I am, and has a very loving and positive viewpoint when it comes to that.

I didn’t do much for my transition at the time (other than switching my pronouns to He/They at some point) and focused more on school, depression, and my romantic orientation.

This was a part that really confused me. I’ve never had a crush (except for one that came from peer-pressure) and I’ve never had an interest in romance. (Keep in mind I had no idea what ‘Aromantic’ was) So what was I? For the time being I decided to consider myself either bi-romantic or hetero-romantic, because like I said, people are pretty, and I tended to notice pretty girls more than pretty boys. 

There was also another hurdle. My (now ex) group of toxic friends. These friends weren’t toxic in the way that they wouldn’t include me, they were toxic in the way that they would talk shit about any minority group, a lot of which i was a part of. They were racist (I am not a poc but it still made me upset and uncomfortable) ableist (they threw the r-slur around a lot) homophobic (this was the biggest one, mainly making fun of them, callng them ‘pixies’ and would say they would ‘burn them’) and transphobic/enbyphobic (they didn’t consider they/them pronouns valid, they threw around the ‘attack helicopter’ joke, and they would dehumanize trans people, and call them ‘transvestites’)

Over the summer, I still spoke to them, and tried to ignore all of their behavior, because if I had cut them off, I would be completely alone. I have an extremely intense fear of abandonment, so the idea of doing that was comparable to death.

Through the first half of 8th grade (I was doing school from home) I didn’t talk to many people other than them. I stayed in my room a lot, and the first half of 8th grade was a steady decline in my mental health. My depression and anxiety had significantly worsened over that time, and I was extremely lonely. This was also worsened by the fact that I have ADHD, and at the time, it was undiagnosed, so I was failing almost all of my classes. 

The only way I was able to comfort myself was through my hyperfixations, and over the summer, I had a developed a hyperfixation on the Origins MCRP group. Because I had nothing else to do, I decided to pick up drawing again, and in October, I did an Origins version of Inktober. Every day, I would draw a different character from their series Fairy Tail Origins. I did not complete the challenge, however I did get through the first week, and I am proud of myself for that.

One one of the days, I had to draw a character named Brandon (partial inspiration for my name lel.) Brandon is a sky devil-slayer, and a co-guild leader of a guild named Divinus Magia. and I decided to draw him in a picture that symbolically showed his mental struggles with a devil named Jupiter. I posted it to the fan discord, and the actor and creator of the character (online username is ReinBloo) noticed my artwork. I was extremely excited about this, and decided to start drawing more and more. 

Because of this newfound motivation to pick up drawing again, I decided to create my own persona. I decided to make my main persona a revised design of my profile picture at the time. It was an improvised character, but I liked the aspects of it, and in late 2020, (yes i am 14 shut up) I created my main Oc, Jupiter. (at the time he didn’t have a name and I landed on Jupiter because I like it, and it fit him.) Jupiter is a space inspired demon, with dark grey skin, white star-like freckles, pure white eyes, white hair (that is slightly purple) and light gray ram-like horns with gray stripes on the base and tip. His color palette is that of the Asexual flag, and this was originally unintentional, but since I like the colors, and my Asexuality is an important part of my identity, I went with it.

I fell in love with this character, and he helped me figure out a lot about myself. I continued to watch origins, and draw for them (mainly ReinBloo’s characters lel) and on January 27th of 2021, in the premier chat of one of the episodes of My Hero Origins, I met MissyLea (She also goes by Lea, and Vesper). We instantly became friends, and moved over to discord to continue our conversation. By February 10th, we were already planning on being platonic valentines. We related on so many things, she was so kind, and loving, and understanding, and very quickly, I grew a strong emotional bond with her.

By the end of February, I developed an emotional attraction to her. I wanted to be with her forever, and while I personally wouldn’t consider it romantic right now, at the time, I did. After a few months of identifying as Aromantic (I had learned about it by now, through the Asexual community) I decided to change that label to Demi-Panromantic. I realized that I didn’t really see her gender, I didn’t care. I love her, and that’s all that matters to me. Now, I feel as though it was more of an emotional and somewhat sensual love for her, but even so, I love her to the edge of the universe and back, no matter what our relationship is.

I have told her things I’ve told no one else. When I was struggling, she was there for me, with kind words, and an endless amount of unconditional love. She is the type of person everyone deserves to have in their life, whether they are a friend, a family member, a partner, or anything else, everyone deserves to have a friend with the amount of love in their heart that she has.

On March 19th, I decided to tell her how I felt. When she said she felt the same way about me, I was happier than ever. To have someone who feels the same way about me as I do about them is amazing. We started dating later that day.

It’s only been 3 months, but I feel like I’ve known her for 3 years. Vesper has made me feel complete when I’m around them, but they’ve made it so much easier to stand on my own as well. 

Near the end of my 8th grade year, I officially cut them off, and came out to them (albeit in a very aggressive way) and I wouldn’t have been able to do this without Vesper’s support. Just one person has made it so much easier to cut off toxic people.

Vesper’s support also made it easier for me to be more open with my therapist. I began to tell her more of what I was struggling with, and it has made my mental health journey so much more bearable.

Over these past two months, I have finally gotten a diagnosis, and been able to truly know what direction to go in to properly treat my mental health.

I hope that by sharing my story you can better know me, and I also hope I can help create a safer environment for others to talk about their stories.

I hope one day people will be able to be themselves, and talk about their experiences, without the fear of judgement, or persecution, and if just this one post helps us get closer to that, I will be happy.

Happy Pride Month everybody! You are all amazing, loved and valid! 🌈💖

[a-woman-apart]

I am Bisexual

I am a black, bisexual ciswoman dating a white, straight cisman, and the fact that he is male and straight are not the reason I am dating him, nor are they a reason NOT to. Pretending though, that his labels don’t factor into who he is as a person would be completely idiotic. 

At the end of the day, though, we are dating because we share similar values, we are compatible in multiple ways, we respect each other, and we love each other and are committed to making this work. It is true, that as a straight man, he wouldn’t be open to dating me if I were a man, but it is also true that if I were a man, certain aspects of my personality would change, due to a complex combination of nature and nurture that scientists still haven’t figured out.  

Also, there are people from both our “communities” (said very loosely) that aren’t down with “The Swirl” which is only something you get to celebrate if you are extremely privileged and quite a bit into eugenics. We each have racist people in our families, and we both get dirty looks on the street when we’re together for different reasons, but hatred is always at the core of the discrimination. 

Loving vs. Virginia was passed in 1967, and it is important to note that The Lovings wanted to be left alone and to live in peace, even though their marriage wasn’t recognized by law and it was a crime, even for white women, to give birth to interracial children. The Lovings only took their case to court when they faced racialized harassment. 

To me, it is absolutely terrible that in roughly 10 years, we went to celebrating “love is love” to now criticizing people for who they choose to date or how they identify. I can’t tell you how many times on this site I’ve seen bisexual women pressured to identify as pansexual to be “less discriminatory” or told in disgusting tones, “Why date men if you can choose to date women?” as if bisexual and/or lesbian were just things you can turn on and off like a light switch. 

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the rise of radical feminism and AFAB-nonbinary/transmasculine culture has coincided with poorer mental health for women in our community and also with a HUGE uptick in misandry and biphobia. Even gay men aren’t above being “canceled” for so-called “transphobic” caricatures of women, even though men have been playing women in the theatre for centuries, and now, women can play men, too. #Progressive  

Honestly, one thing I will say that guys do better than us women (in general, there are always exceptions) is comedy. Yes, men, as a a general rule, are funnier than us. Men are more likely to make fun of themselves, us, and other people, with no mercy, and I honestly think the women/AMAB non-binary in our community-- either the black or the LGBTQ+ one, take your pick-- need to learn to take a fucking joke. It’s not that fucking serious, but the one thing that ISN’T funny is the hideous biphobia, racism, and backbiting I’ve witnessed online and offline this year. 

What makes it even more disgusting, is that while I am including AMABs in my roast, I have actually seen MULTIPLE stories of AMABs being excluded from AFAB offline gatherings (DOCUMENTED ON THIS HERE VERY SITE) in the name of “safety” because they are seen than nothing more than a man in a dress. 

So, here’s where I lose some subscribers...if a so-called “man in a dress” is unwelcome in your circles, do you REALLY think you have room to fucking talk when a huge portion of you you skirt the line between male and female because you can’t accept your own femininity? So really, are you really “non-binary” or are you just a scared little girls who can’t grow up?

Of course, that isn’t ALL of you, but when the country (as pointed out by J.K Rowling) sees a 4400% in female to male transition (a lot of it with very young girls becoming AFAB/non-binary, many of whom are taking testosterone) while male to female transition rates remain UNCHANGED, suddenly this isn’t a “trans” or a “non-binary” problem, this is a FEMALE problem. Trans people, prior to this huge upswing, made up less than 1% of the population, and that included MtF and FtM transition rates. These rates had remained steady FOR YEARS, so from a purely mathematical perspective this uptick is a huge statistic anomaly. 

For years people on the Right have decried the so-called “feminization of boys”, when in reality the “masculinization of girls” is statistically a far more pressing societal issue. 

I didn’t want to get this harsh, but this is concerning as a medical health issue, especially because research from the Scientific American reports that lots of young women who report having gender dysphoria end up not being dysphoric about their gender at all, but uncertain about their sexuality [click link]. If I had a quarter for every time a girl who never felt comfortable with her femininity or identified as asexual or aromantic turned out to “just be gay/bisexual” then I would be pretty fucking rich. 

I felt the same way. I felt like I was “Not Like Other Girls” and even though I never felt like a man, I often didn’t quite feel like a woman. It turns out that bisexuality, especially in women, corresponds with certain personality traits (aggression, assertiveness, high sex drive) that have been “coded male.” Gender bias in medicine is still responsible for why we don’t have more studies on lesbian and bisexual women, or on women IN GENERAL. As someone who is concerned about women’s rights and the safety of young girls and women, I think it is a HUGE DEAL that modern medicine still sometimes operates on the false assertion that women are just men without dicks and added baby-hosting parts. The effects of testosterone have been heavily studied, but there is SO much we don’t know about estrogen, including why different amounts of it don’t factor into PMDD, PMS, and other reproductive issues, as much as certain women’s brains and bodies responding to it DIFFERENTLY for reasons not fully understood. 

To make matters worse, while disparities in treatment based on race are less marked in other areas of medicine, black women still die in childbirth-- especially in the Southern U.S.-- at much higher rates than other demographics. Bisexual and lesbian women are also more likely than straight women to fear childbirth, which can be a huge source of anxiety for us. Even if we choose to undergo it, our anxiety is often downplayed by health care workers. This fear of childbirth can be seen even in bisexual and lesbian women who love children and strongly desire to be mothers. This, as well as the cost of surrogacy/IVF treatments, has been a reason that same-sex female couples often opt for adoption. 

Bisexual women, in particular, are also more likely to suffer mental health conditions and be the victims of male-perpetrated domestic violence than straight women and lesbians are. “Straight-passing” doesn’t really seem to provide a shield from that, I hate to tell you. 

The very concept of calling someone out for “passing” in an attempt to insult them actually reeks of jealousy and amazing privilege. In the case of bisexual people, it assumes that hiding an entire facet of our identity doesn’t matter and doesn’t take an emotional and psychological toll, because we can “choose” an opposite sex partner. This ignores the fact that falling in love isn’t based on choice, and that the moment we pursue a same-sex partner, we still have to “come out” if we want to maintain a healthy, open relationship with them. 

In the case of trans individuals, it assumes that “passing” erasing the fact that you have biological differences (such as typically being unable to parent children) from cis people that might make you undesirable to certain partners. Also, if you are also “stealth” you risk the chance of experiencing discrimination and/or violence if your identity is “discovered.” 

As far as being “white/European passing” this also does not erase the genetic and geographical ties you have to your ethnicity and/or country of origin. It doesn’t change the fact that if people start making racist comments about any of your racial demographics, it still hurts, even if you try to hide it. 

[loki-zen]

Personal; probably avoid if you don’t want to read about transphobia today; me being honest about what I feel is in my brain without filtering too much for how internet strangers might interpret it; sorry Sophia

I realised something.

There was a certain ‘thing’ (literally don’t know how else to describe this) that I have always had that I had attributed to like subconscious societally-ingrained transphobia/transmisogyny, but which I think I have just realised is something else.

Which is that, like, internally, I feel like I don’t really ‘count’ trans female representation (in pop culture, or whatever, but I also had a twinge of it when someone said something about a controversy over a womens’ representative in an organisation being a trans woman) as female representation. Or rather - representation of me. I feel the same way towards it as I would, idk, BAME representation; I support it and consider it a good thing, but it doesn’t feel like a personal ‘yay’ in the same way.

And, I feel a vague indefinable sorta all-else-being-equal anti-attraction-in-a-friendship-sense to binary trans people I have met or who I know? Like it’s not a strong thing at all and totally doesn’t get in the way of forming friendships with individuals, it’s just a similar sense to like... if I meet someone and they’re wearing a football top, I’m prepared to be proved wrong, but I have a small prior for ‘I am not going to personally feel a deep connection with this person; they are probably not going to be the person in this group I become closest to.’

And with everything that I’ve read about having all of these prejudices we have to unlearn, it made perfect sense that this was that.

Whereas in actual fact, I think it was this:

Re: representation - I perceive myself as a member of a category I’ll call ‘Category X’ (chromosome joke unintentional) defined by these traits:

stuck with the kind of body that, without extensive remodelling, people are going to perceive as female, and then people are going to decide all kinds of nonsense about you based on that and it’s really tiresome, and they expect you to do things to it to pretty it up; like society put you in a box marked ‘woman’ and decided prettiness was the rent you had to pay to be there, etc etc, sexualised or denigrated but always viewed in sexual terms just for possessing the unchosen physical features that you have...

stuck with the kind of body that (in theory) can get pregnant, and subject to all of the ways societies still underserve and pathologise that kind of body, and possessor of the physical traits common(er) in that kind of body.

I do not consider myself a member of a category defined by any one or combination of these traits:

has a gender identity, and that identity is female

is, in some sort of cosmic or internal sense, or any sense that doesn’t just mean ‘member of category x who has not made the choice to transition or publicly identify as something else’, a ‘woman’, whatever that is

feels a connection to a mystical womanforce, possesses ‘feminine intuition’, is From Venus, or is anything other than in one of two overlapping Bell Curves

feels a natural connection to or identification with traits and values deemed ‘feminine’, or has a natural talent in abilities deemed ‘feminine’, to the extent that, when confounding variables are accounted for, ‘femininity’ or ‘masculinity’ has any predictive value in guessing whether this person will possess a given trait, value or talent. (I consider upbringing, physical traits and to some degree brain chemistry to be ‘confounding variables’ for this purpose; if AMAB!Loki would have given up on sewing due to teasing, hands that are too big, or even some sorta genetic or hormonal tendency toward being less manually dexterous*, that counts. Don’t @ me. Or do, I don’t care.) 

So I guess, when it comes to representation, it is literally true that a trans woman can be representation of a group that needs more representation, but not a group I feel personally a part of. I see ‘hell yeah, about time’, but I don’t get that same thing of ‘hey look somebody actually like me gets to do the thing’, and that kinda makes sense when I break it down like this.

When it comes to individuals, I assume that what my brain is doing is going:

Apparently cis person - we have no information on whether this person has a gender or cares about it

Person who I know, for whatever reason, is transgender - this person definitely has a gender that they care about so much that they will intentionally brave the horror of ‘people paying attention to your gender’ in order to express it, and I understand that exactly as much as I understand being into football

I think the still-unspoken assumption on the personal level, however, is that preferences/beliefs/internal landscapes that I find incomprehensible are necessarily a reason to feel that it is unlikely that I will become close to/form a good connection with someone.

It might simply be that it feels like more work.

-----------Side note: I wrote this as an aside and it got too long and ruined the rhythm of the thing but my brain vomited it forth so I had to include it----------

This class of people (category x) do and have experienced some phenomenal societal shit-canning around the world and throughout history, and this still needs addressing. We’re massively underrepresented in many industries including entertainment, on both sides of performing/creating, because of structural problems that date back to our being legally barred in many cases, and this should be corrected.  

This is true irrespective of the (additional) struggles of trans people. Whether they are in this category, or not in it. Or once were, but did the extensive remodelling, and kinda still have to deal with the second bit but feel freer from the first now. Or who have found that nowadays they have the first trait and that’s not fun to deal with on top of everything else, or who wish they had either or both of those traits despite the problems that come with them. Or who wish they had them solely because people keep telling them they can’t be who they know they are if they don’t. Or who have additional complicated feelings related to the whole mess. Etc. Other categories of people have problems as well. People in this category can be privileged on other axes. Nothing about the paragraph before this one aims to deny any of this.

--------------------------

edited cuz I’m a dingus and accidental wrote my real name

[bullet-farmer]

Okay, I’m having a horrible mental-health day and feel overwhelmed by work, and talking about something that’s been bothering me really feels liberating. Because I feel like it’s one thing I can control right now.

Please don’t reblog this or tag it. I don’t want this to become Discourse, especially in an awesome fandom. But I needed to get this out in a space where people I trust can reply if they wish. I’m fine with disagreement and discussion, as long as people respect my feelings, or ask for clarification if they don’t understand what I’m talking about.

This got long. And it’s about pronouns. And fictional characters. And idk.

Another thing that kind of bothers me about assuming they/them or ze/zir for Beelzebub’s pronouns, and why I’m using both less and less*: I’m really uncomfortable with how few authors do the same for any other character (save, of course, for Pollution, whose pronouns are clearly mentioned as they/them and really should be used exclusively, because that’s just the decent thing to do).  Of course, some people use they/them across the board, or pronouns other than she/her and he/him in any combination. But in my experience, authors who do this are quite rare, at least on Ao3. In most cases, I find authors using “gendered” (for lack of a better word) pronouns for everyone else--namely, those that (presumably) match the gender of the actor who plays each role. For example: she/her for Michael and Dagon, and he/him for Hastur and Gabriel. 

I don’t want to make assumptions about why people do this. For one thing, making sweeping generalizations about people is always a bad idea. It’s even a worse idea when talking about why a group as diverse as fanfic authors. For another, I don’t know what is in people’s hearts or minds, and I’d rather not try to arbitrate any thoughts but my own. That said, in the West, we are swimming in a sea of gender essentialism and binarism. And I can’t help but feel that both are somehow in play in this phenomenon.

Angels and demons in Good Omens are nonbinary. But from a binarist point of view, you could say that nearly all of the angels and demons have at least a few stereotypical masculine or feminine qualities. For example: Michael wears makeup, and a very frilly blouse at one point; Michael’s suit and Uriel’s have what we would call a feminine cut. Dagon has long hair in a style we would call feminine, Sandalphon has male-pattern baldness, Hastur has a deep voice and wears “masculine” clothes, etc. 

But Beelzebub breaks this pattern. She’s what people in the West tend to think of when they hear the term “androgynous”: somewhat boyish and youthful in appearance, dressing in typically “masculine” clothes that don’t emphasize her shape, and behaving in a way that many would call more masculine than feminine. To put it another way, she is aggressive, she speaks forcefully, she shows no hallmarks of being a queen or princess, and she entirely lacks subtlety. Women, of course, are socialized to do the exact opposite. Save for her appearance at the airfield, she is also far more unkempt than any character in the series with the possible exception of Hastur.  I’m beginning to see several problems as I go deeper into this deep dive.  First problem: the assumption that “nonbinary” means androgynous or genderless. And, as a subset of that problem, the assumption that androgynous and agender/genderless are synonymous, and that they/them and ze/zir are “genderless” pronouns. For some people, they very much are. For others, they are not. (For example, a blogger I follow identifies as a cis woman and uses both she/her and they/them).  Second problem: The fact that a character played by an actress simply must be agender or “not female” because said character is androgynous and behaves in stereotypically “masculine” ways.  Third problem: ...Why are we only insisting on they/them or ze/zir for the dirtiest, least conventionally attractive character in the show? I mean, being dirty and unkempt isn’t a stereotypically nonbinary trait, but considering how society sees women who don’t obsess over their looks as “not real women,” this has some very unfortunate implications to me. Fourth problem: Y’all, Neil didn’t say that Beelzebub would probably use they/them as pronouns. He said “zir” (and to be honest, I think that was him being witty rather than making an official statement). I understand that some people can uses these interchangeably to describe themselves, but they really aren’t interchangeable. And acting like they are, strikes me as basically saying “well, these are all nongendered pronouns, so just pick whichever you like best when talking about someone.” Imagine calling someone whose pronouns are they/them, “ze/zir” and thinking that isn’t misgendering or upsetting. I also don’t see posts that insist we respect any other character as nonbinary--particularly characters like, say, Hastur, Ligur, or Gabriel. (Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I really feel like people are even more hesitant to call more “masculine” characters nonbinary than they are Dagon, Michael, etc. Which also strikes me as having really unfortunate implications. But that’s a whole other post.) Or regular use of “Nonbinary Character” and “Canon Nonbinary Character” tags on AO3 for any other demon or angel.  All of this is really starting to get to me as a nonbinary/genderfluid person who absolutely does not see myself as agender or androgynous, even if people regularly describe my looks as “masculine” for reasons I’ll get into in a second. I’m genderfluid and nonbinary because I do not fully or consistently identify with the gender I was assigned at birth--and because I never have. While some days I feel fine with having society see me as a cis woman, some days I am deeply not okay with it--and am actually dysphoric because my body doesn’t look more stereotypically androgynous. However, when I realized that stereotypical androgyny is a concept that cisheterocentric society forces on nonbinary people--and DFAB people in particular--my dysphoria became a bit more manageable.  I also do not attend to my appearance. I have no interest in wearing makeup, flattering clothes, or even feminine ones. I wear skirts for comfort; I’ve always hated pants because of sensory issues, but if I didn’t, I’d probably wear a lot of “men’s” clothes. As it is, I wear T-shirts cut for men, rather than the fitted versions for women. And baggy clothes that men can get away with wearing, but women not so much. I don’t regularly style my hair despite having it long. I don’t shave any part of my body--which began upsetting people when I was twelve, y’all. Adults constantly bothered me about it, and about looking more feminine and stylish. I may be the only “girl” on the planet whose father encouraged her to wear shorter skirts and more flattering tops when she was in her early teens.

It really upset me, but at the time I had no language for why--other than that I felt pushed and harassed. Thankfully, people have since mostly cut that shit out, but when you deal with it as a child, it really leaves some scars and some gender confusion--a fact I only realized while typing this out! Of course, I don’t believe that any of these life choices inherently make anyone any particular gender. But society thinks differently. To it, I’m a failure as a woman, and when you add on the fact that I’m nearing forty, childfree, offbeat, clueless about ‘appropriate” interactions with men, and loud and messy because of ADHD, I’m labeled as even less of a woman. I would have no problem with this if it didn’t come with the pejorative baggage. I have never been a girl or a woman, though I feel I share enough in common with this gender to be comfortable having it be part of my identity to some degree. Even as a child, I felt this but I had no name for it because no one was talking about trans issues in a conservative red state in the 80s and 90s, and they sure as fuck wouldn’t have done it around kids. I didn’t even hear the word “nonbinary�� until the early 2010s.  All of this also means that I don’t get many characters or images that represent me. Again, media portrayals of people like me (DFAB and not consistently woman-identifying) are so rare that Beelzebub is the ONLY one I have found in my adult life who isn’t, you know, the butt of a joke about viragos and lesbians who are too ugly to get a man, and “undateables.” So having people insist that using she/her is somehow misgendering is...well, I get that it’s not directed at me. That it isn’t about me personally. That it isn’t meant to hurt me. That it is a lot of nonbinary people and genderfluid people talking about their own experiences. I know all of that, and I don’t begrudge people their feelings. But it still kind of hurts when they disapprove of disagreement. And it makes me worry that fewer people will read my fic, and may accuse me of misgendering if they do, even if I always “warn” for pronouns. I’m even hesitant to make posts like this or to refer to Beelzebub as she/her in casual conversation. Which, well...kind of makes me feel like I do in life. Almost no one but my therapists knows I’m not cis, because I don’t think I could explain it to them without causing confusion and some distress. Which I don’t want to cause and don’t have the spoons to deal with, especially when my own gender issues are so complicated and unclear even to me.

I also just don’t have the spoons to deal with people for assuming I’m a cis, straight girl writing a hetero relationship when I use she/her in most of my Beelzefic. And to be honest, I’m just sort of hurt at the inconsistency around pronouns and the issues said inconsistency raise for me. 

I mean, like I said, I know this isn’t personal, and I do my best to keep that in mind. But I don’t like having to hold my thoughts in because they might upset other genderfluid and nonbinary people.** I have to do that enough in my life already as a queer person, and as a mentally ill person whose feelings are not always appropriate to the situation. Having to hold them in here, too, feels really unfair and frustrating to me, and kind of like I can’t be myself even in LGBTQ+ spaces. so... tl;dr  Use whatever pronouns for Beelzebub you like, or no pronouns at all. I am not the pronoun police, and I would never tell anyone what to do with their writing. But please don’t accuse people of misgendering if they do otherwise, or mistreat them if they do, or make assumptions about them or their reasons. You don’t know who they are or what experience they’re writing from, just as they don’t know who you are and your experiences. I guess that’s it. thank you. 

* Yes, I am aware of what Neil said on the subject. I’m genderfluid and allowed to disagree and to present an alternate view. ** I really don’t care too much about cisgender folks’ opinions on this issue. I’m sorry, but I don’t. Especially when cisgender people opine about what pronouns we should use for a character. I’m glad that they’re concerned and think they’re trying admirably to be good allies, but this really is an in-house and stay-in-your-lane issue. 

[autismgavemychildvaccines]

Why I’m Ashamed to Be Christian

So, now that I am literally sick of the Measles nonsense (no, fucking literally, working 12+ hour shifts on an incident management team has got me sick and tired enough to call in tomorrow), I’ve decided to do a non PH rant, though it’ll for sure rear it’s fucking head somewhere in here. Instead, let’s tackle something real fun. Religion! Time to buckle up.  In my half fucking awake daze that I was just nudged out of, something really wild hit me. My faith, my belief in a very specific God with a specific book (though I admit that other religions, so long as their origin is not a company or a tool to oppress others on the outset, are valid/likely just as true) makes no God damned sense.  (For reference, here I will claim my most closely related sect as my own; American Evangelism [though if one were to ask in person I’d say “non-denominational”, but historically, the two are close] and will be speaking as a part of a community I used to closely belong to but now have drifted away from on some granola-crunching dumbassery that is “I am a church of one” bullshit. I’ve wanted to be other things, but ever since I left the Freemasons, fuck all else has had much appeal.) So, first things first, Garden of Eden, right? Pretty fucking cool place, some might have even called it a perfect garden, a perfect place for humans and God to interact? But here’s my hang up with it. The trees of Life and Knowledge, and the rule that Adam and Eve could eat of any fruit except those grown upon that pair. Why even fucking have them?

 When I asked that as a kid in a faith based area, they said because it was a test.

 Of what?

 “Well, of our loyalty to God and our Faith, of course”. 

Except again, what the fuck? Like, I get the idea of free-will, in fact I am a huge believer in individual free will (I’ll get to that in a sec), but here’s the stickler here. As any other creative type will tell you, we want our work to take on a life of its own. Like say I wanted to program a remarkably bright AI, and it worked, and all I wanted was for it to recognize me as its creator and to discover and enjoy what home I could make for it. You know what I wouldn’t do? I wouldn’t give an AI, even with some simulated free will, the ability to break certain rules. For example, I wouldn’t allow it unrestricted access to the internet or my personal accounts. I wouldn’t even give it the concept that such things existed, let alone put it right fucking there to be used. That would be a flaw, an imperfection in an otherwise perfect place. And yeah, there’s something to be said for giving free will with not-free consequences, sure. But two things: 1) Don’t be pissed when the thing happens that you allowed to exist in the first place and thus forced it to be a mathematical certainty now that you’re dealing with perhaps the most curious species to ever exist.  2) Don’t go blaming them for a lack of faith. If anything, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, an act that abusers often use to get what they really want and have a thin veneer of an excuse to make happen. Now doesn’t that sound a lot like a good number of the followers of this faith, as opposed to an almighty, omnipotent, powerful being? Hmm, something to consider there, maybe.  Speaking of followers, let’s actually also take a look at some of the prophets that we as American Christians often hold so dear. Now me? I’m a Luke guy, I like Luke. Peaceful, loving gospel for the most part, and I dig it. Peace and love, baby, that’s all I want coming from stories regarding a higher power that we had to hang up like a fucking tapestry to make sure we got all that love. But do you know who I fucking hate, and who I blame the most for how the American chruch is? Paul/Saul of Tarsus. Thiiiiiiiiiiis prick. This fucking Deus Vult Vulture. Actually in many ways, he really is the archetype to the Modern Evangelical fucking anything. Actively participated in the harassing, attempted extinguishing and successful terrorizing of a marginalized group. Then after being hit back for it, literally “seeing the light” and trying to be the fucking vanguard of said group only to lead it down a path where he’s suddenly the appointed expert of anything to do with the issue. And while he does this, he helps create the most violent and bigoted thoughts in the whole of the religion, and is praised for his visions as he says they are truly from God, and can thus act oh so righteously. This right here is a fucking problem, y’all. Like, I know the whole forgiveness idea allows for some mental gymnastics on how this could even happen, but even then to make a genocidal ass-face your de-facto leader aside from Christ himself for the next 2000 years is a fucking flip that even at the 1988 Olympics, if Christians were America, Russia would give them a straight 10/10.    And yet, for many of us, that’s exactly what we’ve done. Hell, we’ve even fallen into the forced victim narrative of the synopsis of this asshole:  “Oh well, you see, I was a heathen and thus I couldn’t help myself, but then like, the God of the people I was killing talked to me and like, now I have to do this (Take on the “burden” of leading the church) as penance for what I couldn’t help myself over.” We’ve fallen for it so much, that it may as well be hard wired into our nervous system to believe anything resembling it, just as we assume if something is flat, green and on a tree, it’s a leaf.  Maybe it’s why we as a religion (and let’s face it, other Abrahamic religions as well) are so damn good at beating down the marginalized while screaming that we are the saints, we’re the sacrificiers trying to make things better. Like, let’s have some modern day fun with this bullshit, man; let’s see how we treated and in many places continue to treat women.  Of the few churches I have been to, 100% of them had one dual-sided message that made me real fuckin’ uncomfortable, fam:  Part 1) That women cannot be trusted onto themselves and thus 2) Men must take control of them and society to not allow for some unspecified “Ridiculous bullshit”.  (as a fair heads up; I do fully recognize non-binary, trans individuals, etc, but for the sake of brevity I’ll be mostly referring to M/F in the traditional sort of way, because opening up Christianity’s treatment of anything regarding gender fluidity is a Ph.D. thesis for another day)  Now, I don’t know about y’all, but I know damn well that out of all the dudes I know, and all the lasses I know, they’re a pretty mixed fuckin’ bunch. It’s almost like their gender assigned at birth doesn’t really affect how reasonable they could be as people nor how much responsibility they should have. Obviously some cultural practices skew this quite a bit in so far that women are expected to take more responsibility, younger, and for less praise, but if anything that should help destroy, not reinforce that message.  And yet, the idea persists so much in Christian circles. And not just by the men themselves, but the women, also. For the longest time of my church going days, the pastor was a woman. She wholly believed it was just and right that her husband be in charge of everything, that women should be loyal to their men in all aspects. Then again, she also (despite recruiting members primarily from college) did not believe in evolution at all, so there’s that in terms of an intellectual hurdle. But regardless, this inherent submissive attitude within the faith (and even the half-hearted and self-congratulatory “Yeah but we REALLY are the ones making the decisions because we can withhold sex if we want” is essentially that too just a smidgen more empowering), when combined with the idea that men should be wholly in-control (which is a breeding ground for toxic masculinity if there ever was) is shameful. It’s what has allowed so much bullshit in the past, including these recent abortion laws. Now, I’m going to cover abortion in another post (I might get to it tomorrow; It’s been on the burner for weeks), but it’s super pertinent here.  We, as a religion, have allowed ourselves to tell women (just as we tell/told minorities before) that they cannot be trusted with their own bodies, that they cannot be trusted when they speak, and most certainly cannot be trusted to truly hold dominion over anything. And that has allowed the most insidious, hateful, bigoted, disgusting things to happen in the name of God. A God that while I am writing this post I still believe in, but my doubts about how genuine the message has ever been is hitting home. One whose words about peace have been ignored when they could be interpreted or pointed to to support war, where the rich can profit off the poor, or to support sexism, because we as men historically have wanted to control “everything of ours”, or to take the very free will we claim to hold so dear from those who need the ability to make their own decisions the most. Words that have been used to hold down good people from making lives better. Words that in the hands of those who wanted, could be profaned and desecrated and thus allow for profane and disturbing events, both on the grand stage of the world and behind the closed doors of any house in some small town. Words which are held up with a wink and a nod so that followers feel included when they are scammed by some fucking fried chicken joint who wants to make more money to fight against equality, or to pay for another $9 million jet for some asshole who croons about how the poor should be grateful they do not have the temptations of the rich.  To other followers, do you not lament that we are this way? That we have been this way for so long? Because I fucking do.  And to those who have been discriminated or marginalized or whatever else against because of your gender or skin colour or situation or victimization or  past deeds of any sort; I’m sorry. Genuinely, truly sorry you have suffered as you have. Sorry for what people have done thinking it was somehow morally or spiritually justified, sorry that they thought they were saving you. And I can assure you that I will never try to lead you as those before me have tried to. Though if it’s all the same, I’d like to get to hear you, and walk beside you. 

[migleefulmoments]

I am a fan of Wentworth, and he was saying he wasn't gay in almost every interview at the time (before anyone read anything in that statement I'm not insinuating anything about D, just so we're clear). He didn't evade the question, he was stating "I'm not gay". Now when we were watching him (and of his own accord), the closeting had tremendous effect on his mental health.

There is an importance difference between “I’m not gay” and “I’m straight”. Gay men and women questioning their sexuality have often said “I'm not gay” but nobody says “I’m straight” and then walks that back. Darren has said it hundreds of time over 9 years.  Sexual identity is determined by the individual and nobody else. Darren has been very clear that he identifies as straight. He has said it point blank many times, he has lived his life in a manner consistent with a straight man- he married a woman he dated for 8 years, he’s never dated a man that we know of- and the ccers have looked- and he has never insinuated he is attracted to men, even in a joke. There is nothing to suggest he is gay accept a group of fans who cannot let it go. This got long so ....

Wentworth has never talked about closeting being something that was forced on him by the show runner or in a contract form. His experience was like everyone else- the reality that LGBTQ actors get less work, are typecast as gay characters-which up until a handful of shows like Glee, Will and Grace, The L-Word and  Queer as Folks, most gay characters where side kick, buddies, comic relief. There were other shows with gay characters but not many.  It is changing, but when Wentworth was struggling, it was still scandalous to come out- they still had to do the big People cover stories claiming “I’m Gay”. Work was hard to find- so everyone giving gay actors advice to stay in the closet were giving good career advice. The problem is that they didn’t understand the mental health implications of this kind of pressure, they didn’t appreciate the struggle to be true to oneself and they seem to have lacked basic of compassion. Most of the actors who have talked about the pressure, also talk about their own struggle with accepting their sexuality and how that mixed in with the pressure to stay in the closet coming from their managers and casting directors. Coming out is not a one-size-fits-all process, it is a complicated, very personal experience that is affected by one’s upbringing, religion, whether there is family and/or friend support, and one’s own mental health status. All of those factors impact coming out but now add in “under the world spotlight” and “impacts your ability to earn a wage” and that gets much more complicated.  

Several actors and singers have talked about being outed and the horror of being forced to talk about their sexuality way before they were ready. Some weren’t even ready to face their sexuality themselves and were forced to when people kept bringing it up. Whether they were outed by the media, by coworkers, by fans or a combination, these are all deeply disturbing stories of depression and anxiety brought on by being outed. 

The problem with the cc trope is that the reality isn’t as simple as Abbu’s theory that one person pushed an actor inside the closet and locked it with a signed, never-ending, legally binding contract. In fact, cc theory is a simple, 1-dimensional look at what really goes on with LGBTQ performers and the closet. It is simply a prop in the CrissColfer fantasy that is used to further their “proof” but it is not based on the reality of what is happening in Hollywood, it discounts the individual’s struggle to be accepted and to accept themselves, to come out and be safe and earn a wage. The ccers out Darren daily with no remorse. They ignore the stories being told by actors who struggle after being outed and they fixate on their fantasy that “Darren wants them to out him”. Nobody ever wants to be outed.   

Closeting in Hollywood isn’t based simply a misconception held by casting directors and managers who are out-of-touch with the times. As a society, we-and by we I mean ccers- still label people as gay based on effeminate behavior and gay kids are being threatened and bullied at school at an alarming rate. Gay kids are still committing suicide. The problem is much deeper than Hollywood. We are making changes but they are slow and the Trump administration and Mike Pence are trying to turn things back to 1950. They just barred transgender troops and have fought to end the rights that Obama administration gave to protect trans kids in school. 

The cc fandom needs actually read the interview and quotes they post because the people aren’t saying what the cc fandom are hearing. They cherry-pick quotes to highlight and ignore the stuff that disproves their 1-dimensional theories.  Today Valentinaheart posted and Abby reblogged (Bold is theirs) : 

Garrett Clayton made headlines when he came out as gay back in August.

It followed years of unfair speculation from both the public and the media – many of whom pressured him to come out when he wasn’t ready – and closed out a chapter of the actor’s life that saw him hide his true self in the public eye.

Now, in his first interview since coming out as gay, the former Disney star tells Gay Times he “finally feels comfortable” with his sexuality – but there was a time that the homophobia he experienced in Hollywood pushed him further into the closet.

“One of the first things somebody who was instrumental in starting my career did, they sat me down and they said, ‘Are you gay?’ And I could feel the pressure of the question, so I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m gay, or bi, or whatever’, because suddenly I could feel that there was something wrong with that in this person’s eyes,” he says.

“They looked at me and said, ‘No one wants to fuck the gay guy, they want to go shopping with him, so we’re going to have to figure this out.’ It turned into this situation where I’d get calls and they’d say, ‘You still need to butch it up’. I literally had to change everything about myself at that point, otherwise I was never gonna make it.

“And that was so conflicting, because here’s somebody offering you your dream, but they’re telling you that you’re not good enough the way you are. You’re talented, but who you are isn’t good enough.”

Unfortunately, this insidious homophobia was something that continued long into Garrett’s career.

“They had me changing the way I walked, the way I spoke, the way I dressed, the way I answered questions,” he continues. “It got as petty as them saying, ‘People need to see that you’re into sports because they’ll think that’s more masculine, so why don’t you go buy a sports hat, take some pictures in it, and make sure people see you in it’.

“There’d be calls after I went into casting offices like, ‘Hey, this is how gay casting thought you came across today, so here’s what you need to do to fix it’. I even had cast members screaming drunkenly in the middle of a room, ‘Who here thinks Garrett is gay?’ and then yelling at me for not having come out yet.”

It felt “like being back in high school” for the aspiring actor, and the self-suffocation prescribed by those around him inevitably took its toll, leading to a period of reclusive behaviour and depression and, ultimately, therapy.

“I convinced myself that I was the problem, and I got into a really dark place for a couple of years. Then I went to therapy for about a year and a half to really sort through all the things I went through growing up and the situations I found myself in while in Hollywood. I got to work through all those conflicting things.”

The second paragraph was not in bold and yet says a lot to a fandom who outs Darren on the daily: It followed years of unfair speculation from both the public and the media – many of whom pressured him to come out when he wasn’t ready – and closed out a chapter of the actor’s life that saw him hide his true self in the public eye

The article says that

  “...but there was a time that the homophobia he experienced in Hollywood pushed him further into the closet”

Interestingly, they did bold this section which could have directed at them

I even had cast members screaming drunkenly in the middle of a room, ‘Who here thinks Garrett is gay?’ and then yelling at me for not having come out yet.”.

How can they not see they are the cast members yelling “are you out yet’?

It felt “like being back in high school” for the aspiring actor, and the self-suffocation prescribed by those around him inevitably took its toll, leading to a period of reclusive behavior and depression and, ultimately, therapy.

So, the taunting and outing took its tole and lead to depression? Hmmm.... they never listen to what their posterboys are saying. 

[jkl-fff]

JKL I cannot stress this enough. ANSWER ALL OF THEM.

Heh. Why pick when you can just request all of them, right?Here we go, then (and thanks for the asks!)

Slightly Invasive Gay Asks

1. What’s your gender?

Hmm … Since I find the idea ofconceptual genders rather poetic (not recognized terms, but abstractdescriptions), I’ll give one of those: quirky and enthusiasticlanguage-literature-writing teacher who unironically uses a lot of Uncle Irohgifs and giggles like Scooby-Doo when someone make a particularly potent pun. Also, I’m a cis man with inclinations more towards non-toxic masculinity.

2. What are your pronouns?

He/His Grace, preferably, thoughI’ve no problem with people using Him or They/Them, I suppose.

3. Is your family accepting?

I’m fortunate enough to say theyare. Mom’s still worried about my spiritual and emotional well-being—about mefinding happiness, and worrying it might not happen like this—but that’s justwhat moms do.

4. What do you wish you could tell your past self?

Righteousness and Wickedness aresocial constructs propagated and perpetuated by authority figures to maintainan ideology which benefits them. So is “God the Father” (and Jesus Christ andthe Holy Ghost) as you conceive of them, or as anyone else ever conceives ofthem. You are *free* to do *whatever you want* so long as it doesn’t infringeon the freedom of others.

This means, boyo, that being gay isn’t a sin.Which is good, because you are gayer than a fruit bat. Just embrace it already,and you’ll be a lot more at peace with yourself and the universe.

5. What is your sexuality?

Hella gay,my dudes. Hella gay.If I wanted to expand further,I’d add placiosexual (I get off on pleasuring other people more than being pleasured).

6. Favorite color?

A deep and rich purple, like Tyrianor Imperial purple. Though I am increasingly fond of light pinks. And black is always in season.It’s funny, but as a kid I’d always say dark blue because I didn’t want peopleto think I was gay. Naturally, purple was the gay color, while blue was a safe“boy’s color” … for reasons … Isn’t heteronormativity absolutely silly?

7. Sun Gay or Moon Gay?

Moon, I guess? The sun is sogarishly bright. Even harshly so. But the moon is tastefully understated—just reallyelegant, y’know?—and also gentle and cyclical.

8. When did you find out your sexuality?

This is a rather difficult questionto tackle thanks to the cognitive dissonance imposed by heteronormativity … 

Onsome level, I *had* to have known since I started masturbating regularly (atage 13 or 14), because I only ever fantasized about other boys and guys. And I *was*aware of this on some level. However, the very idea of being gay was soinconceivable for a mormon boy (and socially stigmatized thanks to thepejorative use of the word “gay” to mean basically “stupid” from elementarythrough high school), that I refused to recognize it for years. Like, I was soinvested in being a good, mormon boy that I truly fully planned to follow themormon track of serving a religious mission for 2 years, marrying a woman inthe temple (big thing for mormons, that temple marriage), and probablyeventually having a kid or two (though I’ve never actually wanted to havechildren).

Ergo, it wasn’t until I was 19 and on a mission in France, working and livingnonstop with other guys (most of whom were quite good-looking AND had notrouble lounging around in their underwear when we were at home), that I couldno longer lie to myself. That was when I consciously recognized and consciouslybegan to struggle against “the burden of Same Sex Attraction” (as mormons insiston calling it) through “the power of faith” in Ja-eeee-sus Chrys’theLORD.

You can extrapolate from the present-day contents of my blog (and the abovesarcasm) how successful that was. Honestly, I’m rather surprised thepsychological distress such internalized and slow-toxic homophobia caused neverdrove me to take a leap of faith off a building at some point between ages 20and 25.

But those dark days were over when, at 25, I fell in love for the first time,and decided that there wasn’t much sense in being miserable, self-loathing, andlonely anymore. That’s when I started the process of coming out.

So … take your pick, I guess: it’s 13, 19, or 25.

9. How was your day?

Apart from sleep deprivationweighing me down (which is my own fault, as I stayed up late writing, then hadto get up early to lesson plan), it was grand! Went to work in the afternoonand got a good workout there moving freight, then went to teach my French classin the evening and had a ball while doing it!

10. Do you have any gay friends?

Bitch, at this point, I’m wonderingif I have any *straight* friends.Seriously, though, I do have some straight friends. But my closest friends areall openly queer in one way or another.

11. What’s your favorite hobby?

Taekwon-Doand writing.

12. Who’s the best gay icon in your opinion?

Garnet, anthropomorphicrepresentation of a now-married, WLW couple WHO KICKS ALL OF THE ASS BECAUSESHE IS MADE OF LOVE A N D  I T  I S S T R O N G E R   T H A N  Y O U,  J A S P E R!

13. Which Pride flags do you like the most design/colorwise?

Hard not to love the classic Gay Priderainbow, since it accessorizes with everything, though I prefer one thatexplicitly makes sure to include PoC, such as this one:

(Does anyone know who made this one?I saved a copy when I first saw it, because it’s fantabulous,but have never seen the post for it again.)

For the colors, the Bi and theTrans flags are quite lovely combinations, too.

14. Are you openly out?

You tellme:

Yeah, I wear this everyday becauseI got tired of people even contemplating the possibility that I might bestraight.

15. Are you comfortable with yourself?

More-or-less, and I think more thanless as time goes on. There are still bad days, but … once I understood thatbeing kind to people *also* means being kind to *myself*, it became a loteasier to become comfortable with myself. AND also easier to actually recognizeand work constructively on the parts of me I wished to improve.

16. Bottom or Top?

As a matter of principle, I striveto at least *be willing* to be verse—strive to never ask for anything I’m notwilling to give back, but … I definitely prefer to take charge and Top (evenwhen, or especially when, still giving manual or oral pleasure).Who knows, though? Maybe I just haven’t been topped right.

17. Femme or Butch?

Bold of you to assume I have aconsistent style.Seriously, though, im be Butch, I guess? I don’t really seek to present in afeminine way, so by default that make me Butch … Right? I dunno.

18. Do you bind?

Only myroot foot to strengthen it against a lingering ankle injury when I go to work.

19. Do you shave?

Only when I have to tidy up mybeard. No one shall see all of my face EVER AGAIN!

20. If you could date anyone you wanted, who would it be?

Right now, it’d be a coworker ofmine named Justin. He’s just … such an adorkable nerd with a really upbeatpersonality, and I find him very cute. And physically attractive, too. Like,damn, have you *seen* his assets? (obviously you haven’t, but trust me, they’requite pleasing assthetically)Unfortunately, he’s already married to another guy, who I hope knows he’sdamned lucky.

21. Do you have a partner (s)?

Alas, I donot. I’ve been somewhat unlucky in love.

22. Describe your partner (s)?

Hidden from me—hidden somewhere outthere, hopefully searching for me as I search for him … hopefully soon to crossmy path …

23. Have you ever dated anyone of the same sex?

I thinkabout 10 different guys. Obviously, none of them worked out.Some of them might have, but Iwasn’t ready at the time, and now it’s too late …  Oh well. Life goes on.

24. Anyone of another sex?

Technically, I suppose I’ve been ontwo dates with women. For the first (a double date) we were theoretically goingto a high school dance … but none of us were really into that when we gotthere, so instead we just drove around in her truck and made her stuffedpenguin heckle other drivers. The second was a few years later, and we went to a young, single adults gameevening after having dinner with her family. Annnnnd … that’s it.

25. Pastel Gay or Goth Gay?

I ain’tgoth, that’s for sure. But I’m not sure I’m pastel, either …

26. Favorite dad in Dream Daddies?

While I’ve never played the game,the most physically attractive one to me is the redheaded bear. Mostly becauseanyone else who might be physically attractive to me ruins the effect with amustache (THEY HAVEN’T BEEN STYLISH SINCE THE 70s, AND EVEN THEN THEY LOOKEDSTUPID!) or by being unrealistically sculpted (and I am *not* into that; I likemy men to look like they actually exist in the real world).

27. Tell me a random fact about yourself.

I have, like, over 20 neckties leftover from my mission days. I hardly ever use them anymore because I loathedressing up … but I have used them for some fun with other guys, and hope I getto do so again, soon.

28. Do you own any Pride flags/merch?

Just the rainbow bracelets picturedabove … and also a pair of rainbow socks, though those were actually procuredfor (not by) me … so I could officiate a *straight* couple’s marriage,ironically.

29. Have you ever been to a Pride Parade?

I’ve been to three. The first twowere … alright, I guess. Like, it was exciting to go to something so openlyqueer—so loud and proud—the first time (even if I had to hurry home for churchstuff for my little brother’s mission homecoming … let me tell you, that was a dayof extremes). And fun to go with my then boyfriend for the second.But … I dunno … There was a big crowd, and a lot of noise and heat (what withit being the middle of June). Introverted ol’ me wanted to go home—or at leastsomeplace quiet an cool—after about an hour, because the novelty had worn offby then.

The third, however …I was visiting my aunt in Washington D.C. That Sunday morning, we were walking tosome of the Smithsonian museums when we just happened, entirely by accident, tocross paths with the advancing Pride Parade. So we stopped and watched it for,like, half an hour … I suppose it was more of a March than a Parade,technically, which might be why it resonated with me more than the other twohad. But all the same …Here’s more on that event: http://jkl-fff.tumblr.com/post/161753611614/dc-pride

30. Any advice to someone who isn’t out, or who is exploringthemselves?

Two things: Go with what feels right for you. Your labels might or might not change, butyour understanding of what they mean for you definitely will develop and deepenover time (this is part of what “gender is fluid” means; it isn’t fixed and unchangeable,because *your identity* is neither fixed nor unchangeable). Be truthful enough withyourself to let it happen. Because in the end, the only wrong answer … is adishonest one.

Also, learn as much sympathy, empathy, compassion, and compersion as you canfrom your negative experiences. Like, it is inevitable that you will suffer inlife, so learn how to be aware of and kind towards the suffering of others.Exclusionists absolutely disgust me, because after suffering discrimination andoppression … they decide to put others through the same kind of needless pain.Gods above, life is hard enough as it is, so don’t go out of your way to makeit harder for others. Let your negative experiences motivate you to make sureno one else has to go through such bullshit ever again.

Thanks again! These were a lot of fun!

[04nc1n9]

haven’t slept in a while so thoughts are going mushy and i came up with a headcannon for zelda that statistically probably already exists but i don’t care. i came up with it while thinking about how fun it is to annoy zelda fans by calling link zelda. so firstly i will explain what i hope to convince you of throughout this; the legend of zelda is a metaphorical and literal transition story of ganon transitioning into zelda, with link being the space in-between when she was questioning her gender and felt too anxious to even speak. okay so i have like zero cold hard facts and, although i own and have access to a ton of zelda games, have only played like the tutorial to two of them. this may not be very well explained, but i do have the combined information of almost two decades worth of consuming creepypastas, game theories, and miscellaneous info on all of the games. first piece of evidence: the “three” of ganon, link, and zelda are all essentially soul bonded together through divine prophecies and such. it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that they all share a single, albeit fragmented, soul. this soul materialises as the triforce (i do not care about some goddesses that the triforce actually represent, the goddesses are just zeldas inner conscience. boom won.), the triforces being might (i think) for ganon, courage for link, and wisdom for zelda.  lets start with ganons piece of the triforce and work from there. so, ganon is linked to the “might” piece of the triforce, the piece that symbolises tyrannical rule, physical strength, a stalwart defence, and brutality. i think, again i haven’t played the games. with all my expertiese (that ebing none) i believe that ganon represents a stage in zeldas life where she was so far into the closet that she denied her true self and turned to crushing both herself and others. yes, i am saying that ganon is zelda from a time where in order to escape herself and ridicule that she believed could have been brought upon her by others, tried to swing harshly in the opposite direction. she embodied every toxic stereotype of masculinity, pushed other trans people down, and tried to project her self-hatred onto others. let’s leave gandalf here for now. enter, link. link, as the name suggests, is the transitionary period between rejecting herself and accepting herself. link’s triforce is the triforce of courage, the courage to reject all that you’ve been forced to be by an oppressive society, the courage to own up to your old mistakes and wrongdoings and try to rectify them, the courage to apologise and help others that are struggling, and the courage to be yourself. link, unlike ganon, embodies less of the stereotypical features associated with far end of toxic masculinity. link in many of their games has some form of lost innocence, i believe in one game, after saving the day, was unable to live with the rest of their kin as their actions caused them to age unlike the rest of their kin. i believe, metaphorically, that this is due to links uneasy transition from ganon. before being link they had already shown themself to be antagonistic to people who are questioning their genders. perhaps this is also a reason that link rarely, if ever, speaks. perhaps this could also be a significant reason for link’s undying will to fight back against ganon- link never wants to let ganon win again, link doesn’t want to return to being what they were before they finally started accepting themself, and they want to make amends for all the wrongs they did when they were ganon. perhaps the events of majora’s mask were link further questioning, and maybe becoming panicked, that they couldn’t figure themself out- and in blind fear started taking on the identities of people around them, as if putting on masks. and maybe, just maybe, heart canisters are a metaphor for taking estrogen. i don’t know how to justify this it just feels right. but after all that desperate searching- there stood geruda clan which link had to dress femme to enter. i believe this to be the moment that, after all the years spent questioning, link finally began to understand who they, she, really was on the inside. wearing clothes that affirmed the gender of the “zelda” hidden deep within and being accepted into a women’s-only space, even if link wasn’t doing it with the intentions of self-discovery to begin with, and even if it will take time for them to understand what that feeling truly was, it was there. again, i haven’t played botw, i only know about this whole thing from femboy link art. now onto zelda, after all the trials she had to go through, she finally accepted that this is who she is. the triforce of wisdom; enlightenment, knowledge, experience. zelda has all of this because she has experienced centuries of living in many different shoes trying to find the one that fit, until one finally did. but, even after coming this far, she knows she is still wearing those wacky-physics steel shoes also known as “ganon,” she knows that even if she did come this far what is behind her must still be amended, and even after all those decades she still works against her past self, trying to overcome the damage she, and others who were like her past selves, have done. she developed a way to speak with her past selves (because elf magic, duh) to try and help them on their journey to becoming her, but the only one that seemed to listen was when she was link, and thus she stood by the version of herself that finally was able to udnerstand right from wrong and against the version of herself who was still incpable and tried to make wrongs right. and then she transitioned and got magic powers and time travel and stuff, imma be honest i’m reaching at this point, i know basically nothing about zelda other than she’s a princess and what i’ve already written. i’m going to be honest i could come up with a shit ton more absolute word vomit like ganon being just slightly off from another anti-trans (basically anti-everything tbh) hate group but i don’t want to bloat it. so that’s my theory on trans zelda, hope you enjoyed. my eyes are throbbing and dry and i need to sleep.

[the-ghost-of-jason-todd]

“using non-binary as a label is the easy way out because afab wlw can’t accept their own womanhood--”

bruh.  you may have a point in that it can be hard to come to terms with your own sexuality and/or relate to loving women separate from the persistent male-gaze but calling any trans label ‘the easy way out’ is incredibly backwards and i Do Not Care For That Shit.

it’s like a nightmare combination of ‘special snowflake uwu’ accusations and ‘gay men think they’re trans women because they’re doing mental contortion to be heterosexual’ arguments (that’s the original transmedical argument, btw.  that homosexuality could be ‘cured’ by gay men becoming women.  this is how it came to be that gay men like alan turing were chemically castrated with feminizing hormones.  it’s also tied into the medicalization of female sexuality, both cis and trans.  just like.  as a heads up).  

listen, i’ll be the first to admit that gender and sexuality is a hard intersection to think about, especially because we’re limited to whatever common language is in use at the moment.  but man... trans people already fight so hard against a slew of accusations that come at them at every waking moment, from every possible angle, that suggesting they haven’t thought hard enough about Who They Fucking Are is rude at best and damaging/silencing at worst.  i will always encourage people to think deeply about their identity and their existence in conjunction with that identity, but to phrase it as if choosing a trans label is somehow EASIER than choosing a non-het label?  nah.  fucking nah.  not in the western world that i inhabit.

the closet for trans people is a hell of a lot smaller than it is for gay people.  hiding who you kiss vs HOW YOUR FACE LOOKS?  your partner’s pronouns vs your pronouns?  the culture and behavior of gays/lesbians in public spaces vs every single indicator of gender/sex characteristics that every stranger pings fifty times per conversation and feels like they have a RIGHT to know?  yeah, MISS me with that ‘oh boo non-binary is just a way to get around your sexuality and not think too hard about it’ because being non-binary makes me 200% more visible than liking girls ever did.  i had to think VERY FUCKING HARD about being trans.

i just... you cannot possibly think that it’s easy to be trans/nb.  who gets public support?  gay people.  gay men specifically.  most ‘queer’ movies are about gay men.  not bi, not trans, not ace.  trans people are much more likely to be physically hurt just EXISTING.  every month a trans woman walks into a parking lot and gets beat to death like--TRANS=/=EASY.  IN ANY CAPACITY.  i have to explain my transition to EVERYONE.  cishet people, gay people, other trans people.  saying ‘i like girls’ is NOTHING like trying to say ‘i am a boy’.

and honestly... why do you guys like to hate so much?  you hate when kids are questioning and insist they don’t have a space in the community.  yet you hate when they pick a label because oooh what if it’s the WRONG label?  what if they didn’t have the same label journey that YOU had?  obviously they did it wrong!  

you hate the kids who can’t articulate their feelings on their identity, you hate the kids who are just now learning what ‘transgender’ even means, you hate on the kids who come to you asking basic queer theory questions because you’ve somehow forgotten that 90% of our society DOESN’T HAVE AN ANSWER FOR THEM THAT ISN’T “WE DON’T TALK ABOUT THAT, IT’S BAD”

i DO NOT care if an afab lesbian is using a non-binary label.  i DO NOT care if an afab lesbian takes twenty years to unlearn internalized homophobia and can finally call herself a cis-lesbian.  i’m going to support her when she uses non-binary labels and i’m going to support her when she decides that she was just using them as a cover for her true feelings on wlw relationships.  because i TRUST that she had a good reason to sit under the trans umbrella and because i KNOW that gender/sexuality is fluid and no one else needs to answer to me about why they feel the way they do.

like jesus christ, guys.  NOTHING queer is easy.  is it easier to be nb instead of lesbian?  NOT FUCKING LIKELY.  the transphobia and gatekeeping from within the community alone testify to the fact that being nb is hard.  it’s hard even in a designated queer space.  we can talk about how it’s normalized for women to aspire to be a man and adopt masculinity, even in lesbian spaces, and how misogyny and femininity intersect, but that conversation does not cover what it’s like to actually live your life as a trans individual.  nor does it actually cover what makes a lesbian a lesbian!  being ANY type of queer means trying to define a nebulous cloud of a hundred different facets of You and it’s not easy getting to any label!

at the bottom of this whole thing... i do not get the weird trans man vs lesbian narrative people are pushing.  honestly it’s blowing my mind thinking about it all because i’m seeing people fighting over what someone ELSE should identify as and???  there being one more trans man in the world doesn’t somehow take credibility away from lesbians.  same goes the other way.  it isn’t ‘switching sides’ if someone picks one label over the other.  it isn’t ‘faking it’ if someone changes their mind.  there is no false advertising, or transtrending, or whatever the hell.  

we’re all fucking people.  marginalized people, at that.

TL;DR: if you don’t understand why people take up the non-binary label, then stop fucking talking about it because the discussion is not for you and your strange desire to apply your own mental journey onto other people.  go ahead and talk about how you came to your labels, and how internalized homophobia shaped your path, but don’t--don’t.  imply that there are inferior labels or that non-binary identities have no weight.

[sinesalvatorem]

I can’t stop thinking about this quote from Leslie Feinberg that @wearsshoes showed me:

I was considered far too masculine a woman to get a job in a store, or a restaurant, or an office. I couldn’t survive without working. So one day I put on a femme friend’s wig and earrings and tried to apply for a job as a salesperson at a downtown retail store. On the bus ride to the interview, people stood rather than sit next to me. They whispered and pointed and stared. “Is that a man?” one woman asked her friend, loud enough for us all to hear. The experience taught me an important lesson. The more I tried to wear clothing or styles considered appropriate for women, the more people believed I was a man trying to pass as a woman. I began to understand that I couldn’t conceal my gender expression.

So I tried another experiment. I called one of the older butches who I knew passed as a man on a construction gang. She lent me a pair of paste-on theatrical sideburns. After gluing them on, I drove to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. As I walked around, nobody seemed to stare. That was an unusual experience and a relief. I allowed my voice to drop to a comfortably low register and chatted with one of the guards about the job situation. He told me there was an opening for a guard and suggested I apply. An hour later, the supervisor who interviewed me told me I seemed like a “good man” and hired me on the spot. I was suddenly acceptable as a human being. The same gender expression that made me hated as a woman, made me seem like a good man.

I keep thinking about this fucking quote because it feels simultaneously so #same and so bizarre.

It seems bizarre for entirely typical mind reasons, because to me it feels like femininity is easy and masculinity is near-impossible. And I’m bad at internalising that this is a me thing. The same way that I had a really hard time coming to terms with the fact that not everyone hated fighting games in primary school, I have a hard time alieving that not everyone is naturally inclined to walk/talk/sit/gesture like me and isn’t expending continuous effort to not do that in order to appear Stronk.

But I was also thinking about what Leslie said about those interviews and, yeah, I think I’m a perfect reversal there. I wouldn’t feel particularly uncomfortable interviewing for a job as a waitress, as long as I established that my employer was OK with having a transgender employee. And on Sunday I was walking down a street that seemed to have fifty hairdressers and nail salons and cosmetologists on it and I thought that, if I decided to opt for a low-pay job instead of continuing to study programming, I could probably just walk into these places off the street and ask about openings until one hired me.

On the other hand, a while back a transmale friend of mine suggested I get a job as a security guard because I’d get to sit around for most of it, and I was like... no. I am trans in the wrong direction for that. There’s no way I’d be able to send a vibe that said “cultural fit”, much less “could actually appear threatening ever”.

And that vibe is definitely a gender expression thing. I have two modes: Uninhibited, in which I radiate signals of femininity in all directions, and cautious, in which I try to suppress having any clear gender signals apart from the ones I’m relatively confident I can pull off, like keeping my voice low. When I was in high school, I sometimes tried to imitate distinctively male behaviour, but I’d keep doing it subtly wrong due to not actually 'getting’ it, leading to a cross between “how do you do fellow kids” and being actively uncanny valley. So I started aiming for a lower bar of seeming genderlessly nerdy, rather than visibly faggy.

But my uninhibited gender expression doesn’t feel like imitating women the way my abortive attempts at seeming bro-ish in high school felt like imitating men. I’m sure at some point in my life I must have picked up my behaviours by imitation, because a lot of my gender expression is culturally dependent (eg, British women smile way less than I do). However, when I’m interacting with people in the moment, my uninhibited gender expression doesn’t feel like anything at all. I’m not really paying attention to it, apart from some amount of background stress that it’s going to make other people mad.

I suspect a good analogy is to languages, which I’m pretty good at learning about the structure of, but really bad at producing in real time (other than English). At some point early in my life, I started picking up English from the people around me, and it stuck really deeply and I got really good at it. I can be articulate in English. Meanwhile, when I’ve tried to learn languages since then, I’ve been pretty bad at it - especially speaking them in real time, when I flail around and fuck it up.

And the same thing seems to be going on with gender expression. I learned how to do girl when I was very young by observing the women around me, and am now pretty good at it, to the point where people who are trying to gender me as male often lose that battle. Meanwhile, when I tried to learn how to man, I got an OK grounding in the structure of masculinity, but next to no ability to convincingly do it. In high school I could speak boy about as well as I could speak French - enough to ask for directions, but not enough to get a job or maintain a friendship.

But, of course, the last line of that quote is the most relatable (again, gender flipped). People at best tolerated (very bad at being a)boy!me. And, well, often they didn’t. Even when I had otherwise achieved social success by making my presentation a combination of low-gender and high-charm, I was still widely considered unfuckable, because “not outputting a massive amount of femininity constantly” isn’t enough on its own to be attractive to androphiles. You need to actually be able to dude, which to me sounds like being told to ‘just’ hold my breath for an hour.

Meanwhile, girl!me (or openly-flamboyant!me when I don’t pass) just... Doesn’t have those problems. People find me pleasant to be around even when I’m not actively doing Charm. And the unfuckability is very much a thing of the past. I’d never had a single successful romantic interaction before I met my first girlfriend in [Redacted], who immediately read me as female upon meeting me. But, since transition, there has never been a moment when I’ve been single (for better or worse?), and I don’t really expect there to be unless I choose it. Life is just so much easier when my role isn’t in direct conflict with my inclinations all the time, which is what I think Leslie feels too.

[transstudiesarchive]

Poems from a young queer trans kid who eventually made it out

New offering for this project below (click “Keep reading”). Full text for the four poems above included below that. ______________________________

Four poems written by a young queer trans kid, raised Mormon, who didn’t know out queer people existed and had never heard of the concept of being trans. I lived in a small, conservative agricultural town with seemingly more churches than people. I was the fifth of eight kids. When I came across a bunch of my childhood poetry a while back after coming out as trans, they all made so much more sense…

Once I’d Seen Seattle

I think I’m glad I didn’t know sooner—

I’m not sure I’d have made it out.

I always knew I didn’t belong, but had no idea why.

I lived in a desert of ideas. Actually, it was worse than that.

I lived at ground zero where ideas that took hold were quickly censored or driven out; there was nothing in the air in my suffocatingly small, claustrophobic town to even let me conceptualize what I would later realize to be not only my truth, but my beautiful kaleidoscope of identities.

My town might as well have been an island because we never left the city limits. The only time anyone ever left was when my parents traveled to nearby towns for cancer treatments or other medical care.

I am the fifth of eight children raised in what I thought at the time was a staunch Mormon home. My dad was the eldest of six, all of whom lived within thirty minutes of us.

My siblings joked that I had to be adopted because it was clear I didn’t fit. Nothing fit.

But I kept trying.

I was a mama’s child and for some reason I was driven to be a golden child. I wanted to excel at everything and make my mom proud. But in my town, that meant Cub Scouts, then Boy Scouts along with church groups which became gender-segregated church groups and gender-segregated sports at school and at church. And outside school and church? Partying, partying, partying. And three-wheeling and fishing and shooting guns and hunting. But I never went hunting. (Even then, decades before waking to veganism, I couldn’t fathom how anyone could point a gun at a beautiful, innocent animal—a sentient being with a will to live—and pull the trigger.)

So I kept trying, sometimes channeling some fictional character to manifest some forced hyper-masculinity and jackass behavior. Somehow I survived all that and so did my closest friends. Even though at least a couple kids every year didn’t survive.

I learned about ‘homosexuals’ from the bible and felt a combination of curiosity and fear. Even as I sensed the repulsion and fear in others whenever it came up, I found myself fascinated. Was this me? Two close childhood friends later came out as queer.

Maybe, I told myself at the time, my discomfort in all-male spaces was because I was really attracted to guys and frightened it might show or that I would be tempted to act on those feelings.

But that didn’t explain how much discomfort, bordering on distress, I felt when I had to wear masculine church clothes—button-down shirts and jackets and slacks and ties and Oxford shoes. My mouth is getting that vomity sensation just writing this.

I remember the horror I felt one day when my sister pointed at my bare chest:

“You’re growing chest hair! You’re becoming a man!”

It’s the first time I remember feeling truly depressed. I found myself feeling more isolated as time passed and activities at school grew more polarized. Skipping events started to feel much better than staying and having to be one of the guys.

I loved nothing more than when I’d be invited to activities with the girls—but they were so heartbreakingly few! So I often stayed home, a devoted mama’s child, happy to help out with what she asked me to do.

In junior high school I had that rare teacher who loves what they do and has held onto the spark. He brought homemade borscht in when we were studying Russian literature.

I have no idea how, in a town like ours, he got approval to do this let alone budget, but he took us on an overnight trip to Seattle to see Shakespeare productions, art museums, art galleries and the science center. My world went from gray to a riot of color during that trip.

I don’t know if I saw something or someone in particular while there; if I did, it never registered consciously. But that trip lit something in me that gave me hope about who I was and who I could become. I knew there was someplace better for me.

In some ways, that made the next four years more difficult and more painful than the years before. Because compared to Seattle, my town was hell. Specifically, my town was a dull bathroom break in the red-state flyover part of hell. And I had four more years ahead with no clear path out even then.

I got contacts and became the class clown, but I lived under storm clouds I couldn’t dispel. My grades suffered. When I was at risk of not graduating, some friends of the family came up with a plan. I moved in with them and after graduation, at their encouragement, I left for a two-year Mormon mission to Japan.

Then I came back, moved to Seattle, met someone amazing, sang her Somebody by Depeche Mode without missing a word in the middle of the store at the mall where we worked. We got married in the temple because for some reason I was still doing that then. I struggled off and on with the feeling I might be gay. It was still all I knew; the only option that could explain the fact that I was different. That I didn’t belong.

I knew I’d made it out when I went back to visit my parents one year and the clerk at the drugstore asked my partner and I if we had ever visited the area before. I asked how they knew we were from out of town and they said, “I can just tell. Are you from Seattle or something?”

Almost thirteen years after saying “I do,” we divorced after giving an open relationship a try. I was a workaholic the entire time. A had a few relationships of varying duration, including some casual relationships with men. A couple months after swearing to stay single for a year I met the person I hope to spend the rest of my life with. We met through mutual friends, but both had online dating profiles and both had ours set to exclude vegans because WTF? How does that even work? Then we got together and went vegan.

Over the last several years before we met, the idea of being trans hit my radar. I’d talked with previous partners about it. I’d even gone through the not-atypical pattern of splurge-and-purge where I would embrace my sense of who I was and buy a bunch of skirts, cute tops, dresses and other things that never saw the world outside our house. My partners were supportive. But then I would panic and get rid of everything and go back to life in drag. I would do things like let my fingernails grow long, shave my armpits and some of my body hair, pluck my eyebrows—but never enough to “give me away,” as far as I knew.

Then at the age of 47 I learned my company was going through a restructuring and my department was being eliminated. Having grown up in poverty, I’d always let a stable job and reliable income take precedence over everything else. And my life history reflected that. But because of my partner, my circle of friends and who I’d allowed myself to become, I did something I never thought I would do. I left my job, volunteered at the local QIATBLG+ community center two days a week, did other social justice organizing and volunteer work, came out as trans, changed my name, updated all my legal documentation (including the non-binary X gender marker on my driver’s license) and enrolled in school full time. I had been on the fence on whether to start school or start a non-profit to serve the area trans and queer communities. When I learned about the brand new major at PSU—Sexuality, Gender and Queer Studies—I knew what I had to do. And I knew my life was right on track. - Iris @ Age 49

Signs of Humanity

Why can’t I be human? I’m called a child when I cry So I hold my feelings deep inside. Again I ask you, why?

Why can’t I be human? When I laugh, they think I’m weird. So I just smile to myself. Are feelings to be feared?

Why can’t I be human? When I’m quiet, they ask what’s wrong, So I think of something to talk about. Must I do this to belong?

Why can’t I be human? I’m scoffed at when I make a mistake. So I just turn and walk away, Though deep within, I ache.

Why can’t I be human? Why can’t I act like me?!?! Instead of just another model in… Series: Humanity. - by Iris @ Age 14

Close Your Eyes and Look at Me

Do not judge me by appearance. You have eyes but cannot see. Look at my spirit and my feelings. Close your eyes and look at me!

Hold your ears so you can listen. Hear my meaning, not my words. It is my heart that is speaking now. Is my language so absurd?

Quell your pride so you can feel. I know that you care deep inside. Why must these feelings that are so human Be held within, always denied? - by Iris @ Age 15

Balanced Confusion

Just sitting here, my mind is spinning With contemplative images. Caught in limbo between past and future, Unable to focus on the present. Trapped in a loop of unanswerable questions, I seek out nonexistent facts. Falling toward my termination— Groping for what is not there. Each time I sense a certain order And settle to a steady state, A new unknown begins to form And throws me into chaos. Emotions reign in my subconscious Running rampant, take their toll. I struggle to cling to reality, But slip across the line… Perceptions are nearly nullified. I no longer trust my senses. I crawl to the center of my mind And slumber in balanced confusion. - Iris @ Age 14

Sitting in the Oven

Sitting in the oven Wondering why the hell I’m here. I’m thinking and feeling something… Not sure what, but sure not fear.

It’s not too comfortable in here. I’m sitting on the wire rack; The bars aren’t big enough for my butt And there’s nothing to support my back.

Looking through the dirty glass I can see life passing by outside. Something is welling up inside me; I’m not sure what, but it’s sure not pride.

I guess I don’t like it here, But there isn’t much that I can do. Maybe if someone opens the door I’ll jump and try to make it through.

I’ve come to the conclusion That this is not the way to live. I’m thinking and feeling something… Not sure what, but sure not initiative. - Iris @ Age 16

[killeret-and-the-void]

A Text Post Nobody Asked For

In which I try to figure myself out and likely fail horribly.

So! Ya boi is struggling with a little thing called Gender Identity™. Probably not all too surprising and was pretty much going to happen eventually, I think.

This will probably be incredibly long, so you can bear with me if you’d like, or just close this tab and save yourself from my ramblings. I’d like to start by saying that I am not the most informed person in the whole world so I’m apologizing right now if I word something off or cringe-worthy.

There’s also a tl;dr at the bottom.

Act I - From Little Girl, To Confused Mess

Here’s a small anecdote that may have nothing to do with anything but I wanna be thorough. When I was very little (Kindergarten just to narrow it down) I thought I was a boy. I straight up remember saying to a friend: “I think the doctor’s got it wrong. I’m a boy.” This was before I knew of any anatomical differences between sexes, and once I did know of such a thing I was like “Oh darn. Well I guess they were right after all” and I continued on my merry way thinking I was then considered a “tom boy”.

Still, however, this was around the time that as a child, I would roleplay with friends on the playground. We’d play characters from the most recent Disney Channel Original Movie or something like that and act out the a scene or two, and you know how a rather large majority of those movies have one main dude and one main chick? Well we’d take turns on who would play who. I remember being disgruntled having to “play the guy” - you know, feeling like I couldn’t do it properly or something. 

I’m not sure when I began to prefer “playing the guy”.....

But this was only in acting, you know? When playing a video game where I could choose my character’s sex, I always chose female. Something about wanting to make my character either look like me, or look like how I wanted to look at that time.

Enter into highschool and me using tumblr. The Hell Site.

It was this period where I really tried to form my own opinions and it happened to be when I became rather educated on things that I had otherwise been oblivious to. My feelings on myself really hadn’t changed: I was fine with my biological makeup and even started to find out that I could see myself in a relationship with another girl. Sadly though along with high school and growing up, along came depression. I became disillusioned and started hating myself - listening to music and playing video games helped place me in someone else’s shoes. Sophomore year I even tried my hand in drama, but I had to drop it due to anxiety and stress from mulitasking it with an AP class.

I suppose it didn’t help that the district flat-out wouldn’t allow someone to play a character or sing a part that didn’t match their biological sex. And quite frankly, at that time, the idea of playing anything that was close to how I was seemed despicable. If I am a girl, why would I wanna act as one? That’s too easy. If I’m bisexual, why would I wanna act a character who is bisexual? It wouldn’t be acting. And if I’m a morally sound person, why would I not wanna be the most evil, brutal antagonist of the show?

I figured this stemmed from me... hating myself. I was slipping in school, feeling more worthless with every passing day. Crawling out of my own skin sounded like the only solution. I didn’t want to be me. Or anything that I already was.

The explanation made sense, and it put my questions to rest. So I continued to read the parts of male characters when we were able to choose what Shakespeare role we wanted in class, continued wanting to dress up like male characters for Halloween, and my opinion of my own body image didn’t change. I was comfortable doing what I did. Until now.

Act II - Trevor

Instead of physically acting, I combined my interest in the act of pretend with my love for writing and began roleplaying online. Once again, I started out with a cis girl OC (I remembered that same gnawing feeling “How could I even try to play as an original guy? What if I don’t do it properly?”), but it expanded and along with that girl, there’s also my most recent who’s a cis guy, and the ‘middle child’ creation that’s something non-human and... doesn’t really have a gender; a character that has learned to act as both genders separately if/when needed.

The gender identity nor the biological make up of any of my characters, whether OCs or based off of someone, really did not matter to me after I made that first girl and got the hang of it all, though I did chuckle at the thought that I managed to have two of the binary genders, and then a middle ground between them.

What I really wanted to get to, though, was to mention the friends I made through the RP experience. A large group of many different people and different identities and sexualities. One of these people - a great friend of mine - as part of a joke I was involved in, started calling me Trevor. At first I was like like “Oh geez”, but something about it being a more traditionally masculine name made me like it?

The difference between this and any other masculine name I’d ever gone by is that this wasn’t an act - I was myself. It literally didn’t change anything else, though. People still called me by she/her pronouns and I was for all intents and purposes, referred to as a girl. Why was it starting to bother me??

I wasn’t acting any different, I still said the same stupid shit, I play the same video games, I wear the same clothes. But when people mentioned me and said “It’s her favorite character” or “She went to the store and said she’d be right back” it made me frown a bit? And when someone who wasn’t well acquainted with me saw the name Trevor and automatically used he/him it felt a bit gratifying. It’s when I noticed something didn’t feel right.

Gender up to this point of my life was always something I never applied to myself. I love and respect my trans friends and my non-binary friends and it’s so fucking easy to do. It makes them comfortable to be called by the right name and the right pronouns so I couldn’t imagine doing anything but that. However, when it comes to... anything else, gender had begun to fall through the cracks.

When I was little I gave pretty much everything a gender; numbers, letters, colours. But the more I looked at things and the more I learned, literally nothing had a “gender” anymore. Except people, if they wanted to. Anybody can wear skirts, dresses, overalls, tuxedos, etc. Nothing is “for girls” or “for boys”. 

But this left me in limbo. If playing video games isn’t a “guy’s thing” and liking the colour pink wasn’t a “girl’s thing”, then why should gender even matter in reference to me? So it didn’t. Until apparently my pronouns started bothering me??

Now it feels weird even typing the name “Rhianna”. It looks... foreign to me.

Act III: Fear

I guess maybe some part of me always liked the idea of a being a boy. Being a girl is exhausting. The standards, the fucking creeps who think they can put their hands on me or take advantage of me, the expectation that I’m not allowed to have body hair. Despite all this I’ve never not said I was a girl. Not to say that being a boy is all sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows, they’re expected to somehow not be emotional. It’s not ideal either way.

So what the fuck do I want? 

I suppose it’s not much of wanting anything, is it? Other than maybe wanting to be comfortable. I’m over thinking this because I’m scared. I’m not saying I don’t feel like I’m female. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel like anything else.

I find myself craving androgyny and masculinity. Even before I looked at myself and had these questions. Admiring androgyny in others, wanting things and then being told I couldn’t because it was a “man’s” thing. (True story, when looking at class rings, I wanted a larger one, pointed one out, and my stepmom flat out shouted “That’s a man’s ring!”. As if it was some sort of crime that I wanted a larger ring in that style.)

Went to the mall a few weeks back, and was looking for a new wallet. There were three different ones I was interested in, two of a similar style but different design, and another that was a thicker design with a chain. My dad was like “Well the chain one is more of a... a guy’s thing, I guess.” Was that supposed to deter me? I only wanted it more. Ultimately I chose one of the other ones because of price and I only have women’s jeans - those things suck when it comes to pocket space.

I keep on coming back to the same question. What does it mean? Why am I suddenly happier being called by he/him pronouns? It’s not like I hate going by she/her.

In fact, I catch myself saying these things. I’ll say something like “I’m a weak willed woman” and then stop like.... Nobody’s Gonna Believe You Are Struggling With Gender Identity If You Keep Saying Shit Like That. It’s just ingrained in my brain. Like a catchphrase. There’s such a divide between me and where I wanna be, I think.

I feel like I can’t relate to boys in music. Like I’m stuck on the outside looking in. It’s upsetting to me. Because not only do I feel like I’ll never get to that point, but what if that means that I’m not really struggling? What if it means I’m forcing this on myself to be different? I apparently do not like to be too comfortable for too long.

And this is not a comfortable thing to deal with, that’s for fucking sure.

I was tagged in something on Facebook about wanting a day to hang out with friends but it was specified that these friends would all be girls and it made me think. It made me worry.

I know my dad and stepmom won’t accept me being anything other than their daughter (Hell, they’ve likely suppressed the fact that I’m not straight) and maybe my mom would be... okay with it? I don’t know. But my family is tricky, and I’m ready for that. But.... my friends?

How much of my life am I willing to change? And that’s fucked because I literally wouldn’t be changing anything about me. Like, I still act the fucking same, but it will change literally everything around me. It’s terrifying and I’ve considered that maybe my fear is what’s making me be like “Oh, I mean, female pronouns are still fine, it’s cool”, but I Don’t Know.

There’s one thing I do know, and that’s I don’t feel they/them. Just the connotation and the feeling of it makes me feel larger and more important than I am, and it doesn’t match... me.

Now, here’s the kicker, if I am attracted to masculine things as it results to me and the things that I want and want to be seen by, that is fine to accept. But I do not experience any sort of dysphoria. I’m fine and comfortable talking about my body, complaining about my boobs, etc. I wanna be taken seriously even without changing any piece of myself besides being open about it. And knowing the struggle of transpeople, the idea that I’m fine with what some consider “female parts” makes me feel like a phony. Makes me feel privileged.

Doesn’t help that I’ve been remembering some trans classmates I had who threw a fit when Bill Nye said that gender was a spectrum and then said that non binary people were crazy. Feels great to remember that.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

This is a mess to read, I’m sure, and my thoughts are so scattered. I just want to get my words out, but I’m afraid this makes no sense. I have so much more to say, at least I think I do.

Act IV: Too Long, Didn’t Read

tl;dr: They/them doesn’t feel right, I don’t despise she/her, but I am comfortable with and might actually just prefer he/him. I am... considering the possibility of gender fluidity, tbh.  But with that being said I think I can sum up my feelings with a picture.

You see these two? Not only am I attracted them, but I’d love to be them. To be able to have masculinity when I want, and also ooze femininity when I feel like it. To mix it up, switch between the two. And I honestly do not know what that makes me. Or what it means for my pronoun preference if I frown when being referred to as a girl, but feel like I’m on the outside looking in if I’m referred to as male. Thanks for reading. ♥