#did not know how much i needed a story of an effeminate trans man growing older

[bam-stroker]

"Umbra can’t exactly blush, but Spark had learned after many years together what his version of it was. A small smile, left chelicerae trying to hide it at the corner of his lip. It never stopped being adorable. Fifteen years. Fifteen. Years! What had started as a night of passion became over a decade of domestic bliss. Over a decade of getting to uncover more and more about the secret admirer turned lover. The lithe body Spark had in his youth gone soft with age and the tender abundance his life had become - entwined with Umbra’s.  The mirror above the basin catches their reflections in the corner of his eye. Spark had always been a little bit more of an effeminate man, and with time the perky daisy of his youth had blossomed like the elegant jasmine tendrils on the trellis outside their home."

I just want to see the twink grow old and be happy!!!!

[coyoteprince]

Some thoughts on the masculine side of my gender experience and how it ties into vulnerability

I am nonbinary, I believe some flavor of fluid, but I just read as a goth cis woman to the layperson. That's fine and good, there is a safety and privilege in being stealth even with the alternative way I dress, but there also feels like a safe with something precious I keep locked away in me.

I take comfort in referring to myself as a "woman with a man's personality" and likening myself to a kelpie or nymph: beautiful, soft, but merely a vision of a woman: in reality underneath the gossamer, a beast that fails man's words.

Occasionally, something stirs to life in me, similar but different: those feelings of masculinity. I am naturally positioned by my genes (I can grow a shitty sparse beard) and temperament to have some secondary features- but thats it.

And yet, when the pangs of longing ache, they come on suddenly and harsh and I feel trapped.

There is nothing I can truly do to feel comfortable with the swing of identity. Only shapeshifiting back and forth could satisfy me which is impossible. Yes, I could seek hormones or surgery, but I have decided for now to not for a variety of reasons. As part of that, I've always been rather... defensive and secretive about the masculine part of my identity. I have a secondary masculine name I only allow people I trust to call me, and this dumb tumblr post is the first time I'm admitting some rather personal things to the public eye.

I'm well aware today many won't respect the nature of my gender just because I am a ~nonbinary girl~ and not seeking permanent transition, but even before that the thought of being trans was too much for me.

The first time I realized I was trans I wasn't older than 15 and noticed the thoughts I was experiencing about wanting to feel like a boy. It frightened me so bad that I vowed to never give it attention again specifically because I already knew I was queer, mentally different, being abused, and "didn't need another target on my back". Haha. Hahaha

Ignoring those thoughts hasn't been too hard except when I see the ghost of my identity. Then it is overwhelming, like a wave crashing over me and threatening to sweep me into the tide. Painful and exhilarating all at once. Before I know it, it's gone again.

I read and watched The Outsiders in middleschool, as did many. I latched onto Johnny, a greaser kid with an abusive family who tried to play tough but was really just an incredibly scared, sweet runt. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I identified so hard with him but hindsight is 20/20. Despite the hamminess of Outsiders, I continue to hold a fondness.

Later, when I became comfortable with my nonbinary ID (something that was quite difficult for me) and an adult, I saw another ghost. A theme now set: soft hearted greasers. The first time I heard this I curled up and couldn't stop replaying it even though it made my chest ache.

Finally, the last ghost I've seen and what really made it all click for me was Izzy.

I was neutral of Izzy for the first season (sorry my old man fucker peers), but seeing him become disabled and starting to soften made me intrigued. Then, the drag scene and him singing: I yelped in excitement, bewilderment, and bawled like never before. It was the most intense gender euphoria I've ever felt. Izzy shot to the top of my favorite characters ever in an instant with all he grew to embody.

I guess I identify with boys clad in leather, forced to become rugged in all the wrong ways. Underneath, a natural softness terrified but desperate to show itself.

You can see this in Waite, too: A handsome, dark man who is oh so soft underneath. It's no secret that in my story over time he accepts his nonbinary identity and allows his truth to be seen framed by carnations and frill. Perhaps he is what I wish I was.

On the other hand, Degare is somewhat closer to my reality. A gender all his own, effeminant masculine mannerisms, fairly feminine dress, breasts and vagina and all- though he is still often more masculine than how I present. In contrast to Waite's uneasy fear of judgement, he tries to guard his natural softness rather aggressively out of fear of being taken advantage of.

I'm sure to many reading this I sound like a transmasc "egg" that hasn't cracked yet. To others, very mentally ill. Maybe to some who are fluid, they know the wish-washy feelings.

Either way, I'm a proud freak and I've worked hard to not allow others to hold power over how I view myself anymore. These past 4 years through a cocktail of treatments (though meditation and practice have been the biggest game changers) I've diligently learned how to balance being openly loving to all and authentic- yet protecting my energy and staying sure of my identity no matter another's opinion. Misery loves company and bitter, paranoid gossips and I no longer get along.

Softness, kindness, vulnerability for others and yourself are all difficult, at times seemingly impossible things to achieve when you come from a harsh upbringing and live in a world bombarded by bad news. Change in your view and behavior is excrusiating. But I believe striving for authenticity and love is the most important thing we can do as humans in this life.

Whether I end up transitioning down the line or staying as I am, I've learned to cherish these flashes of masculine desire and be empowered by vulnerability- and I don't regret it.

[vampelune]

kamukomahina gender/body headcanons

a bit of a ramble about my body, gender, and general appearance headcanons for them bcuz someone sent me a curiouscat prompting this 3k words of hyperfixation nonsense

Komaeda:

- He has a naturally lithe body, with a thin waist, broad shoulders and hips, which give him an hourglass. and a rather andrognyous body, which is "lucky" for him, because I hc him as nonbinary and gender non-conforming

- Gender-wise, as I said, I think he's nonbinary. Usually I do view Nagito as AMAB but I indulge in transmasc Nagito from time to time depending on my preference and how much I wish to uh, well, project, lol. But either way I think he would use he/they pronouns in a western sense. In japanese, however, they don't use third person pronouns that other people refer to them with, and in canon he uses the first person pronoun "boku", which is a "soft" masculine pronoun, in comparison to the "hard" masculine pronoun, “ore” (which Hajime uses btw!) which fits quite nicely, in my opinion! Also, in Japanese, you can be 'fluid' with your first person pronouns depending on the situation, so I think he could use more neutral or feminine pronouns should he desire it, too, to play on his gender non-conformity.

- Komaeda is very secure in his gender, regardless of being AMAB or AFAB. He does not care about stigma, or discrimination, he does not care about being "accepted" by broader society. Broader society is sort of meaningless to him, the average person and their ideas about gender and presentation and effeminity mean NOTHING to him. Whether or not a random person the street genders him correctly or treats him with respect is sort of, pointless? Because to him, most ordinary people are pointless nobodies. Their thoughts do not matter to him. I think he is still prone to insecurity, however, when around his "betters" but I just struggle to think he would degrade himself in regards to gender. to him, it's the least of his problems. what he cares about is hope and talent. He could dress femininely or wear makeup or straight up crossdress and not mind it, really. He thinks people would find a problem with it are the problem, because why does it even matter? It speaks to the way Komaeda is detached from societal norms & "normal" people, he did not grow up in normal circumstances, so he doesn't interact with the world normally by any means. he can mask and act normally to the best of his ability, often unintentionally?, but he simply does not fit into broader society and doesn't seek to.

- Komaeda loses weight really easily, and doesn't gain weight that well. This is mainly due to his many illnesses but also the medications he's been put on. He has a low appetite and burns weight rather easily, even though I headcanon that he eats like garbage (mainly junk food & takeout, since he obviously cannot cook). This makes him overall, health wise, not very healthy, and stick thin because of it. A stiff breeze could knock him over, tbh.

- He has a lot of faded scars, self-inflicted or not.

- Pre-despair (in HPA) he is fairly healthy but still lithe, and progressively his body deteriorates through his 2 years of hopes peak before the Tragedy begins.

- During the Tragedy itself, his body is at it's worst. he is almost nothing but bone at times, barely kept together by a need to live so he can see hope triumph. His weight fluctuates but he's very unhealthy. He's not anorexic or on death's door, but he's not well off, either.

- After being put into the neo world program, right after waking up, he's very, very thin and gaunt. he was in a pod on feeding tubs for an indiscernible but at least probably a month's worth of time? So he's just very weak, like he could collapse if he moves too quickly.

- But a while after waking, he goes into remission, and starts to gain more healthy habits due to being rehabilitated and cared for by Hinata, and gains some weight, finally at a healthy, normal weight. I still think he would struggle with putting on too much weight, but I am slightly fond of the idea that he gets a bit of healthy pudge after a while. To him, it's so foreign being healthy, that he honestly think something's wrong with him at first.

Hinata:

- Hinata has a very... average body, true to form. His hips and waist aren't too pronounced but he has a loosely "hourglass" shape, too, just not as exaggerated as Komaeda's in comparison.

- Gender-wise, I am EXTREMELY fond of transmasc Hinata. While I think I portray AMAB Hinata more than transmasc Hinata (in art and writing), I still firmly prefer transmasc Hinata. The reason I think portray otherwise more is just out of comfortability, but I've been getting better at comfortably portraying FTM Hinata. I have some reasons I prefer it and think you can extrapolate it from canon, but let's get into that

- Hinata, in my eyes, has an arc and story that fits perfectly into him just. Being trans. His desire to be someone else, someone better, someone he can proud of, and the way he overcompensates for himself and has an extreme inferiority complex would easily lend to him having similar feelings about his gender. To me, Hinata is a trans man who overperforms his masculinity out of insecurity and a need to pass. I see him as someone who would strictly use "he/him" in a western sense, which is lended to by his use of the "ore" pronoun in canon, which is almost hypermasculine.

- Even if he were AMAB, I think it still works, I think he's still someone who's insecure and tries to assert himself more strongly and therefore performs masculinity in a way to appear more confident than he is.

(side note: I actually read a bit about queerness in Japan and how it relates to gender performance and the use of pronouns, and read a bit about how queer women in japan tend to use "boku" and "ore" to perform masculinity, which I find neat. “Ore” was also sometimes used exclusively to show anger and dominance, which is why it's categorized as a "rough" pronoun. I think Japanese language, gender, and expression, and how those all relate to one another, are extremely interesting and if you get the time you should read about it lol)

- Body-wise, pre-despair, I think Hinata would. not have top surgery, obviously. I think he has a fairly average but leaning a little on the hefty side chest (pre-op) and binds it, hence the '91 cm' (but also he still has 91 cm post-op because bazongas). I also just think he leans on the "twunk" side of things at this point, not buff but not stick thin or without muscle, just kind of average with average strength and all, though I think Hinata would've tried to do sports and stuff to find his talent so he's in shape :)

- My personal, kind of amusing, but also kind of... thematical? Headcanon, is that during the Kamukura project, he also underwent gender transition. to be honest, while it may not make sense in modern Japan, I think we can suspend our disbelief for fiction, and also make the argument that Hinata's "transition" into Kamukura CAN be read, in some part, as relatable or at least familiar to the trans experience. Iit is not out of the realm of possibility, either, to assume that because many bits of society in Danganronpa are advanced (specifically science, is extremely ahead of our understanding, almost sci-fi like at times) certain attitudes about gender and sexuality can be smoothed over more in a Japanese context.

(side note: I also think that science-wise, we can suspend our disbelief, and assume that top surgery and bottom surgery are much more advanced in this universe, given the almost unbelievable levels of science in Danganronpa, such as memory wipe, mind control, completely realistic virtual simulation, um literally everything about Kamukura which is body modification and brain modification to an extreme, etc. I think it's kind of fitting within these to assume that... Hinata/Kamukura could just, gain a functioning penis, lol)

Kamukura:

- Kamukura would have a. "Perfect" body. it's stated, I'm pretty sure, that they modified not only his brain but his body, because he needs to be able to perform every talent under their belt with ease, and his strength, instincts, technique, are all superhuman. So it's clear to me he'd have a buff body. toned muscles and all. He wouldn't really feel a need to keep it up, though, but I think since they're very... artificial (basically fucking steroids?) they wouldn't fade from a lack of keep-up.

- Kamukura also rarely ever is injured, but when he does, his body heals rather fast and can care for himself adequately, because again, his body is modified to a point of almost inhumanity.

- Gender wise, Kamukura genuinely does not care. however, I am not one to think that Kamukura is "a different person" from Hinata, rather, he is separate from Hinata, but an extension of Hinata as well, proven that he experiences some of his emotions even if subconsciously and without understanding them. he isn't a different personality or person developed in Hinata's body, but a very traumatizing, repressed, and manipulated version of Hinata given a new name, with memories repressed. He's like Theseus's ship in human form---if you get rid of everything that makes someone themselves and replace it, bit by bit, is it the same person? Technically, yes, but... truly? Who knows. 

Because of this, I think Kamukura would have a leaning toward masculine gender performance (in canon, in fact, he uses the soft masculine pronoun "boku" in stead of "ore" like Hinata) BUT I think he is still very nonbinary. In a western sense, i think he would use he/they pronouns, but not really care if someone mistook him for a woman, I suppose.

- His appearance, unironically, is very nonbinary or "he/they" to me because he's wearing a suit, the archetypal form of masculinity, but has extremely long hair, which is considered feminine, and speaks softly (dully). Of course, the bishounen "pretty boy" appearance isn't uncommon or considered less masculine in japan, I think, but there is still a different between soft masculinity and rough masculinity in japan, which lends itself to being interpreted sort of gender non-conforming by western audiences :)

- Kamukura, due to his apathy, struggles with self-maintaining, but as we all probably know i am extremely attached to KamuKoma and thus headcanon that Servant helps him, sort of like a royal servant would royalty in the old days, take care of himself by bathing him, brushing his hair out, grooming him, etc. partially out of duty, partially out of appreciation for Kamukura's body, and partially out of maintaining his sort of "perfect" look since Kamukura, especially post-Junko death, is perceived widely by the public as the new leader of the ultimate despair, even if he is ambivalent to such a title.

Post-DR3 Hinata/Kamukura combined:

As I rambled on about previously, I don't think that Kamukura and Hinata are separate people or personality, I really dislike the interpretation that they are like a "split personality" or operate like DID, because they do not "form" like DID, but also in canon, are not portrayed as separate people.

In post-dr3, Hinata instead says that he is both of them, because he is. Kamukura is Hinata, always was, but had been given a new, false identity, had been stripped of his previous self, his memories, his personality, and crafted into something new. but that did not "split" his brain into two people. It simply repressed who he once was, and made him someone he now was. But when Kamukura regains his memories, his past self, through the means of the new world program by restoring his own memories after SDR2 concludes and he wakes up, as well as doing the same for everyone else, he decides to be "Hajime Hinata" who he always was, but carrying and shouldering the weight of what "Izuru Kamukura" had been, become, and done. Hinata *is* Kamukura, he answers for Kamukura's wrongdoings, his crimes, as something he had done as a different person who's mind operated differently, due to being artificially suppressed, modified, into an apathetic tool for the scientists who made him, and later and aimless, bored individual who simply sought meaning he did not have in the unknown of what despair would be at it's climax. And if hope could overcome it.

As such, I think, when Hinata's self is brought back into the mix, and he now deals with Kamukura's apathy and boredom in part, but much less consuming and much less often, I think hinata is less staunchly "masculine", does not overperform it anymore, and is trying to understand what his past means to him, what his present is, and what his future will be. I think that Hinata would still primarily use he/him (or still use "ore" in Japanese, as it's also a means of his personality, which is a bit rough around the edges and blunt), but be more ambivalent to rigid gender expression, still finding comfort and idealness in masculinity, but not be made dysphoric or feel frightened, uncomfortable, with non-comformity or anything like that. being boyish, masculine, is what he enjoys, but he's comfortable in it now, doesn't need to prove himself or overperform it. He can explore nonconformity without feeling like his gender or masculinity is at threat, even if it's not his preference outright.

Body-wise, I think it's safe to say he retains Kamukura's muscle and all, but Kamukura didn't put much effort into the everyday machinations of being a human being in general, and Hinata is much more fond of food than him now, eats more often, and I enjoy the idea that he gains a little pudge and has a kind of "dad bod" almost, post-DR3? lol.

Both for Hinata and Kamukura I don't see their bodies as “bara” or overly buff, masculine, but a kind of comfortable middle ground between twunk and hunk, lmao. I think they're also averagely hairy, not overly so, very lightly. kind of well groomed, and all. Hinata, pre-despair, put not so much effort into his appearance but still some, especially in trying to pass. (In fact I think his hair cut looks like a home job, all choppy and stuff, which fits him in my opinion, something done by his own hands even if messy and imperfect, he still prefers to be in control of it. also fits the trans headcanon tehe).

Izuru put very little if any effort into himself, only the bare minimum necessary to function, but servant helped him upkeep it to a perfect standard. Hinata, post-dr3 now, finds himself putting you know, an average amount of care into himself and his body, enough to be healthy, but not overly critical and conscious of himself.

Komaeda i have always seen as someone who takes a good deal of care about himself, merely if to alleviate the "disgust" of his appearance and body, by practically preening himself. He is someone who is good at cleaning and seems to appreciate clean and well kept spaces, so I think he would have a similar attitude toward himself. even if he is insecure, and of course, struggles with mental health and may slip at times in his routine in keeping himself well-kept, I think he still maintains an appearance for the most part, at least in his later years (teen to young adult). An argument can be made that he cared less in his adolescence because he had much more apathy about the world, but when he gave himself a purpose with hope and talent, I think he would care for himself a little better, even if his was spiralling mentally.

His hair is always washed, it is just very curly and prone to mess, so it often looks like perpetual bedhead, even when he combs and brushes it. His skin is soft even if a little worn by his tendency for accidents & injury, it's still soft and almost luckily so, and he takes pride in moisturizing and cleaning himself. His skin is a little sickly, still, and I think that despite having blemishes, scars, etc. Komaeda manages to look pretty in a strange way, not conventionally beautiful, but almost ethereal? He's just *pretty*, there's no way to explain it, he is nice to look at even with all his "flaws" and imperfections. Even when he's sickly and bony, even when his cheeks are gaunt or his hands shaky and weak, when his hair is a tangled mess or his clothes are dirty, he's nice to look at in a way that's nonconventional, and it's sort of mesmerizing.

Hinata I think is very average but also in a way that's nice to look at it. He's not ground-breaking hot or conventionally attractive, he has a good body, a nice face, and hair you could play with a little if you wanted. I think what's appealing about him is his normalcy, he's not trying too hard or "gifted" gene wise, but he's just kinda nice to look at, he's enjoyable to be around, an understanding person, or at least tries to be even when he fails, and despite having flaws, insecurities, blunt, he is someone you're drawn to because he's one of those people that's just, easy to talk to? An emotional anchor, almost. The kind of guy everyone kind of knows and has talked to at least once, even if you're not friends with him personally, not because he's cool or popular or anything, but because he's a normal dude who's easy to trust and talk to.

Kamukura, on the other hand, is intimidating, appearance wise and personality wise. he looks, strange, anything but normal, his eyes are red and his hair is this dark cloud that envelops him. His face may still be that plain one Hinata has but faces can be changed by the surrounding attributes as well as expression and such is true for him, with his apathetic and cold expression as well as otherwordly characteristics, he comes off as much more beautiful in a dark way, kind of? In a way that's intimidating or a little daunting, but he's still very beautiful. mesmerizing.

okay, thats my ramble. ty.

[queer-and-dear-books]

Title: All Kinds of Other

Author: James Sie (Also known as the voice of the cabbage man from Avatar: The Last Airbender! Not kidding, the VA for the cabbage man is a writer!)

Genre: YA Fiction | Romance | Drama | Friendship | LGBTQ+

Content Warnings: Transphobia | Outing

Overall Rating: 9.7/10

Personal Opinion: A transcendent story about two boys who are still figuring out how they fit into the world. They grow and learn about themselves and each other over the course of the book and you will fall in love with them as they fall for one another. 

Couple Classification: Jules X Jack = Jock X Nerd

Do I Own This Book? One day, definitely.

Spoilers Below For My Likes & Dislikes:

Likes:

- Diverse characters all with a varying degree of experience in life. But even when they’re clueless about something (i.e. Jules with queer stuff), they go on to learn. Jules stereotyped other gays because he didn’t know anything else despite his own orientation being gay. He learned on his own time that being gay comes in all sorts of shades. Jamal, the captain of the basketball team, is gay and black! Two Latino boys were crowned Homecoming Kings! Lowell… I’m pretty sure is just a generic white gay but he was effeminate. Stereotypical. And that’s just as valid of a way to exist as Jamal. He was happy and comfortable in himself and that’s what’s important. Plus, he has a plus-sized Asian BFF in Lily Cho. We also have the Chinese Gregg Dang and the Indian trans love interest Jack. So much Asian rep and queer rep! And something else that is remarkable is that a lot of them are ignorant but they’re willing to learn. Lowell hadn’t even realized that the GSA wasn’t a safe space for the entire queer community. That Kacey didn’t feel safe there because they’re non-binary and therefore the terms “gay” and “straight” can’t fit them. It was so important of a moment that I think needed to be highlighted.

- The progression of Jules’s and Jack’s relationship was so natural and adorable to watch. While I got a lot of secondhand embarrassment at the start, it was still cute to see them get close. And Jules was just so obvious with the way he got so excited to be near Jack and constantly checking in on him. He dropped like a dozen hints of “Hey, I like boys” hoping that Jack would pick them up and it was hilarious. He reminded me of an eager, playful puppy and I appreciate how that resulted in Jack coming out of his shell more and more over time.

- Gregg and Cecilia are good friends. I mean, Cecilia was on thin ice when Jack had been wrongfully outed but they were supportive of Jules’s crush on another boy and actively and slyly observed them as they got closer together. It was just adorable. Gregg is also such a unique character. He just sort of exists in his own bubble and it’s honestly so funny.

- I love how Jules and Jack put their foot down when both of their parents were being such bigots. Even though Linda was so supportive with the gay thing and was ready to go to war with Bishop for her son, she refused to understand the trans thing. And Jules refused to let her have it. Well, at first he did, but then he learned to do better. Be better. And he came to the realization that his mother would never want to do the same. So I’m glad he got so mad at her even though she was his close ally because she was so disrespectful to someone he really liked. All those invasive questions were just wrong to ask. And she had the gall to act like she wasn’t trying to set Jack off with that whole “obviously he has anger issues.” Good for Jules for not giving her the satisfaction of leaving Jack. Good for Jack for not allowing his father, Rick, to indulge Linda in that bullshit. I feel so bad. Yes, Rick’s been so supportive of his son but it’s the bare minimum to love his son the same no matter what. So it was wrong of Rick to act like his son somehow owed him for what? For accepting his transition? So his son has to just go along with a woman saying he’s a trend? That’s so fucked up. So I’m glad that Jack refused to be guilt tripped and stood his ground. And his dad realized his mistake. As he should.

- Evie finally reaching back in the end to that last Tumblr post that Jack made was so sweet. It was like coming full circle. Since it all started with that Tumblr post. Seeing their story that way was confusing at the beginning but as I kept reading about Jack’s past as Adam, I became attached. It was so emotional and powerful and I am so glad that they’re going to work things out.

- The writing style is gorgeous. That ending, with the POVs joining together? Perfection. It was also just so romantic to see the way they reacted to one another in real time. Every time Jules did something, we got to see how Jack felt about it immediately. They felt safe and loved together and that is the most important thing in any relationship. Just look at when their parents met for that awful dinner. Jules was so unsure of what his mother was thinking but the moment he saw Jack, he felt good. He realized then he loved Jack and it can be as simple as that. It doesn’t have to be complicated because he doesn’t have the body parts that other boys are born with. He loves Jack and that’s all he needs to know.

- When Jules actually took the time to learn more about trans bodies and issues, I was head over heels for him. I mean, he actually watched Jack’s old videos with Evie to figure out what his experience was like. That moment when Jack was in the bathroom removing his binder because it suffocated him while he was asleep was something else. Jules standing outside and asking about it, he proved that he had educated himself. And he even gave Jack his hoodie so that he wouldn’t see too much of his chest. It was so respectful and thoughtful and he was just going about it perfectly. That’s what happens when someone actually educates themselves instead of asking people such horribly invasive questions like Linda did. He also knew Jack didn’t like being touched in a few places. So Jules asked for permission to touch his brow and it may sound really ridiculous, but it was actually so cute.

Dislikes:

- A lot of stuff felt unresolved in the end. Susie misgendered her own brother. It doesn’t matter that she’s going through a rebellion phase or that she felt like she’d lost a built-in best friend because it’s bullshit. It’s not fair to Jack who is trying to be himself. I feel like they needed to talk things out more before the conclusion of the book but I suppose that’s a thing you do in person, not over Skype.

- Speaking of unresolved, I feel like Cecilia owed Jules and Jack an apology for the shit she said.

- And Dhyllin. I’m assuming Jules cut him out of his social circle completely. To be honest, that was probably the direction their friendship was leading to. He’s such a dick and he was barely in the book! That’s how you know a character’s an ass. When they’re barely in the book and yet the few times they show up, they’re straight up nasty. Honestly, it’s no wonder why Jack thought he was the one who sent out the video. It is absolutely the type of douche move he would do under the guise of “looking out” for Jules. It also made me so happy when Jules snapped at him about the fact that being gay isn’t solely about dick. Fuck that notion.

- And Dhyllin. I’m assuming Jules cut him out of his social circle completely. To be honest, that was probably the direction their friendship was leading to. He’s such a dick and he was barely in the book! That’s how you know a character’s an ass. When they’re barely in the book and yet the few times they show up, they’re straight up nasty. Honestly, it’s no wonder why Jack thought he was the one who sent out the video. It is absolutely the type of douche move he would do under the guise of “looking out” for Jules. It also made me so happy when Jules snapped at him about the fact that being gay isn’t solely about dick. Fuck that notion.

- Holy shit, Linda is the worst. I was actually with her at the start because she was going to go to war for her son when she thought people were bullying him for his sexuality. She couldn’t extend that same grace to a trans kid though. Because she refused to understand it. She misgendered him constantly and “blamed” the parents for the way they raised Jack because children cannot “choose” to do that to their bodies apparently. Fuck her. And on the flip side, respect to Jack’s mom for going around the block to re-introduce her son and glaring at every person to make sure they knew his new name and presentation. Or else. What a badass.

- I was going to be mad at Kacey but I get it. They were scared of being alone. It’s terrifying. You see your savior at school and it’s like they’ve changed too and it feels heartbreaking. I’ve come to another realization too. This was a lesson to Jack. That outing a person without their permission is never okay because he made the same mistake with Evie. He outed her to her dad by mistake and put her in a very dangerous situation. One that involved her hair being cut and her clothes being shredded. He realized it because of what Kacey did to him. Obviously, it’s not a good thing that it happened at all but it’s good that everyone learned this. So it doesn’t happen again to someone who might not be able to survive it like Evie and Jack did.

- Fuck Gavin Miller. That’s it.

[stars--n--stripes-blog]

Like any religion, wokeness understands the need to convert children. The old Jesuit motto (sometimes attributed to Voltaire) was, after all, “Give me the child for the first seven years and I will give you the man.” And so I was moved but not particularly surprised by George Packer’s tale of a progressive school banishing separate restrooms for boys and girls because this reinforces the gender binary. The school did not inform parents of this, of course:

Parents only heard about it when children started arriving home desperate to get to the bathroom after holding it in all day. Girls told their parents mortifying stories of having a boy kick open their stall door. Boys described being afraid to use the urinals. Our son reported that his classmates, without any collective decision, had simply gone back to the old system, regardless of the new signage: Boys were using the former boys’ rooms, girls the former girls’ rooms. This return to the familiar was what politicians call a “commonsense solution.” It was also kind of heartbreaking.

As an analogy for the price of progressivism, it’s close to perfect. Authorities impose an ideology onto reality; reality slowly fights back. The question is simply how much damage is done by this kind of utopianism before it crumbles under its own weight. Simple solutions — like a separate, individual gender-neutral bathroom for the tiny minority with gender dysphoria or anyone else — are out of bounds. They are, after all, reinforcing the idea that girls and boys are different. And we cannot allow biology, evolution, reproductive strategy, hormones, chromosomes, and the customs of every single human culture since the beginning of time to interfere with “social justice.”

It’s also vital to expose children to the fact of their race as the core constituent of their identity. Here is an essay written by a woke teacher about the difficulty of teaching “White boys”:

I spend a lot of my days worried about White boys. I worry about White boys who barely try and expect to be rewarded, who barely care and can’t stand being called on it, who imagine they can go through school without learning much without it impacting in any way the capacity for their future success, just because it never has before.

This sounds to me as if he is describing, well, boys of any race. And when boys are labeled as “White” (note the capital “W”) and this requires specific rules not applied to nonwhite boys, they often — surprise! — don’t like it:

This week, a student spoke up in class to say that every time a particular writer talked about White people and their role in racism, he would start to feel really guilty, and it made him not want to listen … I try to keep an arm around the boys who most need it, but it’s hard, because I’m also not willing to give an inch on making my room safe for my students of color. It’s not their job to keep hurting while White boys figure it out.

Children, in other words, are being taught to think constantly about race, and to feel guilty if they are the wrong one. And, of course, if they resist, that merely proves the point. A boy who doesn’t think he is personally responsible for racism is merely reflecting “white fragility” which is a function of “white supremacy.” QED. No one seems to have thought through the implications of telling white boys that their core identity is their “whiteness,” or worried that indoctrinating kids into white identity might lead quite a few to, yes, become “white identitarians” of the far right.

One of the key aspects about social-justice theory is that it’s completely unfalsifiable (as well as unreadable); it’s a closed circle that refers only to itself and its own categories. (For a searing take down of this huge academic con, check out Douglas Murray’s superb new book, The Madness of Crowds.) The forces involved — “white supremacy,” “patriarchy,” “heterosexism” — are all invisible to the naked eye, like the Holy Spirit. Their philosophical origins — an attempt by structuralist French philosophers to rescue what was left of Marxism in the 1960s and 1970s — are generally obscured in any practical context. Like religion, you cannot prove any of its doctrines empirically, but children are being forced into believing them anyway. This is hard, of course, as this teacher explains: “I’m trying. I am. But you know how the saying goes: You can lead a White male to anti-racism, but you can’t make him think.”

The racism, sexism, and condescension in those sentences! (The teacher, by the way, is not some outlier. In 2014, he was named Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year!) Having taken one form of religion out of the public schools, the social-justice left is now replacing it with the doctrines of intersectionality.

Last week, I defended drag queens reading stories to kids in libraries. I don’t take back my words. Getting children interested in reading with costumed clowns strikes me as harmless. But when I was directed to the website of Drag Queen Story Hours, I found the following:

[DQSH] captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real.

However well-meant, this is indoctrination into an ideology, not campy encouragement for reading and fun.

And then there is the disturbing “social justice” response to gender-nonconforming boys and girls. Increasingly, girly boys and tomboys are being told that gender trumps sex, and if a boy is effeminate or bookish or freaked out by team sports, he may actually be a girl, and if a girl is rough and tumble, sporty, and plays with boys, she may actually be a boy.

In the last few years in Western societies, as these notions have spread, the number of children identifying as trans has skyrocketed. In Sweden, the number of kids diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a phenomenon stable and rare for decades, has, from 2013 to 2016, increased almost tenfold. In New Zealand, the rate of girls identifying as boys has quadrupled in the same period of time; in Britain, where one NHS clinic is dedicated to trans kids, there were around a hundred girls being treated in 2011; by 2017, there were 1,400.

Possibly this sudden surge is a sign of pent-up demand, as trans kids emerge from the shadows, which, of course, is a great and overdue thing. The suffering of trans kids can be intense and has been ignored for far too long. But maybe it’s also some gender non-conforming kids falling prey to adult suggestions, or caused by social contagion. Almost certainly it’s both. But one reason to worry about the new explosion in gender dysphoria is that it seems recently to be driven by girls identifying as boys rather than the other way round. Female sexuality is more fluid and complex than male sexuality, so perhaps girls are more susceptible to ideological suggestion, especially when they are also taught that being a woman means being oppressed.

In the case of merely confused or less informed kids, the consequences of treatment can be permanent. Many of these prepubescent trans-identifying children are put on puberty blockers, drugs that suppress a child’s normal hormonal development, and were originally designed for prostate cancer and premature puberty. The use of these drugs for gender dysphoria is off-label, unapproved by the FDA; there have been no long-term trials to gauge the safety or effectiveness of them for gender dysphoria, and the evidence we have of the side effects of these drugs in FDA-approved treatment is horrifying. Among adults, the FDA has received 24,000 reports of adverse reactions, over half of which it deemed serious. Parents are pressured into giving these drugs to their kids on the grounds that the alternative could be their child’s suicide. Imagine the toll of making a decision about your child like that?

Eighty-five percent of gender-dysphoric children grow out of the condition — and most turn out to be gay. Yes, some are genuinely trans and can and should benefit from treatment. And social transition is fine. But children cannot know for certain who they are sexually or emotionally until they have matured past puberty. Fixing their “gender identity” when they’re 7 or 8, or even earlier, administering puberty blockers to kids as young as 12, is a huge leap in the dark in a short period of time. It cannot be transphobic to believe that no child’s body should be irreparably altered until they are of an age and a certainty to make that decision themselves.

I don’t have children, but I sure worry about gay kids in this context. I remember being taunted by some other kids when I was young — they suggested that because I was mildly gender-nonconforming, I must be a girl. If my teachers and parents and doctors had adopted this new ideology, I might never have found the happiness of being gay and comfort in being male. How many gay kids, I wonder, are now being led into permanent physical damage or surgery that may be life-saving for many, but catastrophic for others, who come to realize they made a mistake. And what are gay adults doing to protect them? Nothing. Only a few ornery feminists, God bless them, are querying this.

In some ways, the extremism of the new transgender ideology also risks becoming homophobic. Instead of seeing effeminate men as one kind of masculinity, as legitimate as any other, transgenderism insists that girliness requires being a biological girl. Similarly, a tomboy is not allowed to expand the bandwidth of what being female can mean, but must be put into the category of male. In my view, this is not progressive; it’s deeply regressive. There’s a reason why Iran is a world leader in sex-reassignment surgery, and why the mullahs pay for it. Homosexuality in Iran is so anathema that gay boys must be turned into girls, and lesbian girls into boys, to conform to heterosexual norms. Sound a little too familiar?

Adults are increasingly forced to obey the new norms of “social justice” or be fired, demoted, ostracized, or canceled. Many resist; many stay quiet; a few succumb and convert. Children have no such options.

Indoctrinate yourselves as much as you want to, guys. It’s a free country. But hey, teacher — leave those kids alone.

By Andrew Sullivan

[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. 

[orthonas]

Blog 4: Introspection

So I’ve been thinking about myself lately, like who I am and why I am and stuff. I guess I did that before now but I never really wanted to write any of it down. In a way I think it’s probably important for everyone to think about this kind of stuff at least once in their life. Consider what they are, why they are the way they are, what are they going to be, and most importantly, are they happy with that?

I guess I’ll start with trying to think about what I am if I’m going to go through with everything I just listed. It’s hard to describe yourself, at least it’s always been hard for me to describe myself. I feel weird saying good things about myself and focus on the negatives a lot, but my life is made up of a lot of negatives I guess. I’m not trying to like get sympathy with that either, I feel like a lot of insecure people get accused of trying to guilt trip others into saying nice things to them or something along those lines but I like to think that there’s nothing malicious about it. Just people being insecure, you’re usually your own worst critic and all that.

I’d say appearance wise I’m not great, pretty far from what I want to be really. My body is weak and inflexible and super unhealthy. My shoulders are too broad and you can see my veins through the skin on my arms. My hair has the consistency of straw and is all stringy and gross looking most days. My face is nothing special. And on top of that I have a man’s body, I’m more effeminate than some guys which I’m lucky for but I have male genitals, no breasts, my face is male looking. It hurts to look in the mirror and see a guy and I hate it. Good things about my appearance would be my hair can look decent on good days, I’m more effeminate looking than a lot of guys which is something towards passing as a girl, and honestly I don’t know what else to say about myself. It feels a bit weird to start with appearance, it doesn’t seem like much of a self examination in the sense of who I am. But in a way my appearance reflects that, and it makes sense to start with the outer layer and work in.

So I guess next would be how I act, and honestly I don’t like the way I act. More and more I think about who I am and what I do and I don’t like it. On the days I don’t do anything and waste away I feel useless and worthless, not someone worth keeping around. And on the days I go out and do things I rarely do them well, always in half measures. Fearing any sort of hard work for some inconceivable reason. I guess I”m just lazy. And how I act around people, I’m usually too shy to talk to anyone unless they approach me or unless I have a good reason to talk to them. And even when I do talk to someone I think I come off as overbearing or obnoxious and pushy. I think it’s in part because I get really excited to talk to people, I feel starved for affection, to talk to people sometimes and I just pour everything out the first chance I get and that’s offputting. But I can also be seriously annoying or rude or just flat out mean sometimes too and I hate that part about myself. And sometimes I’m too distant, I’m terrified of saying the wrong thing or messing up something between me and a friend. And even more terrified of having already done so and that friend hates me. Like what if they just put up with me, they pretend to like me because they feel like they have an obligation to keep me around? Or even worse I’m just the spare friend, someone you talk to at school sometimes but you would never want to spend time with if you had the choice. And that stops me from maintaining friendships, from really trying to reach out and talk to others. But everytime I try that the people I know are busy or something like that, and it feels like my worst fears are confirmed. I’m probably too needy of a friend, too clingy, but it hurts all the same to not be able to spend time with the people I like.

So why am I like this? It’s hard to say really, a huge multitude of reasons to breakdown and analyze. When I was growing up I was an awful arrogant bully and maybe the way I am now is justice for how I acted. I hate my younger self honestly, they were a little dick. After I got into 6th grade I guess I just retreated into my shell, I didn’t know how to make friends or talk to people so I didn’t. I don’t know what my reputation was back then or if I had a reputation, it was probably more likely that no one noticed my presence or cared for it. As the years went by I became more and more withdrawn, I had a couple friends and made some in my different classes but I would always let them go for the next year. I was alone for a lot. Luckily for me in 9th and 10th grade my friend group now really got together, like we all started hanging out and playing dnd and it was nice to finally have a group to call my own. To have people I didn’t have to worry about texting or talking to or any of that. I still did worry though, I barely ever initiate conversations and I’m usually ignored. It’s sort of funny cuz even now that happens and I think it’s really fed into my self esteem issues. It’s no fault of there’s though I’m not blaming them, I say stupid things a lot. Things that aren’t worth responding too and I can’t just expect them to want to talk to me about dumb things I guess. It’s still something that when I think about it makes my insides feel like they’re on fire though. I really only talked about my social anxiety but I think I have other issues that I don’t really feel like getting into now honestly so maybe another time.

So that leaves what do I want to be. And I think about this a lot, everything I think about are more nebulous dreams than any sort of hardset goal. Lofty wishes that will probably go unfulfilled because I lack the conviction to go through with them. The goal or dream or expectation or whatever you want to call it would be my dream to be a girl. And I guess with that dream I could say I’m a girl, I’m a trans girl. But I want the stuff that goes with that I want female body parts I want people to see me as a girl I want to be able to transition without my friends and family ostracizing me. I want to be a normal person, not a freak of society. I wish so bad that I was born cis, female or male I don’t care just with a body that I didn’t hate as much as I do now. And I guess in my dream I’ve gotten there, I might not have gone back in time and become cis but I pass as a woman, I have the parts I want. I’m happy that way. My other major dream is to have money, I guess that sounds shallow but god is it daunting to think about how all I have to look forward in life is being another cog in the workforce, and that’s it. Work my entire life away at some shitty job and never go anywhere or do anything. My life now isn’t worth that price and I’d rather just end it if I needed to. My third dream and the most attainable feeling so far would be my dream to be an author, a famous author with well liked books would be nice but I’d settle for being a minor author with a decent fan base. I want to write a story that people like, that people enjoy, that I enjoy. And once I write the stories I want maybe I could write something worthwhile, something that’s not fantasy or sci-fi but something that people will remember or take something away from. A way for me to really convey how I feel.

So I’ve said what I want to be, what I am, and all that. And I have no idea how I’ll ever get there. I’m stuck the way I am now and unless I really start trying to change I don’t think anything will happen. I’m like a leaf being swept away by a current, unable to do anything but just float along in life. Never doing anything worthwhile or noteworthy. Barely even surviving. And certainly not living. So I don’t think I can say I’m happy right now. It’s hard to say I feel anything a lot of the time, I just feel empty.

[oumakokichi]

You keep going on about Kaito's "misogyny" when I really doubt that was the intention. I think that was just meant to show Kaito isn't the brightest bulb in the box and sometimes says dumb things even when his heart's in the right place. When he's trying to say something like "Nobody should kill people for a living", it comes out as "uhhh women shouldn't use weapons, ya know?". Probably to show despite his trust in her, Maki still intimidates him on some level.

I’m afraid that misogyny is still misogyny, even when it’s well-intended. I’ve played through the entire game and I understand Japanese, so trust me when I say I know what I’m talking about. Momota doesn’t say “nobody should kill people for a living,” he says “girls shouldn’t kill people for a living.” There is really no way to get around the fact that, unfortunately enough, Momota has many, many comments about how girls shouldn’t fight, girls shouldn’t wield weapons, girls are more suited to childcare–etc., etc.

That’s not even touching on his actions towards other guys, which are still rooted in toxic masculinity. The reason he wants Saihara to become a stronger person is partly so that he can carry on Kaede’s will, yes–but it’s also because he considers Saihara weak and “emotionally fragile,” and thinks that that “isn’t how a man should act.” The whole idea of “manning up,” of “stop being such a sissy,” is rooted in the idea that showing emotional vulnerability is something only women should do, and therefore “bad.”

These sorts of actions aren’t limited to Saihara either. Much of Momota’s disdain for Hoshi is because Hoshi’s depression and suicidal comments didn’t match up with his idealized vision of “the famous Hoshi Ryouma” from middle school. When Hoshi says he doesn’t have a reason to live, Momota directly calls him a sissy (”女々しい,” which has a direct connotation with being both “effeminate” and “cowardly”).

Hoshi presents no threats to the group, and even says point-blank that he has no intentions of getting in anyone else’s way–but Momota still has a major problem with him because he considers his depression to be “shameful.” Again, emotional vulnerability is associated with “being a girl,” and that’s supposed to be a “bad thing.”

Momota’s treatment of Gonta isn’t always the best, either. As much as he believes in him and sticks up for him in Chapter 4, the fact doesn’t change that whenever Gonta begins crying or apologizing, Momota tells him to stop crying not because “you didn’t do anything wrong and it’s not your fault,” but because “men shouldn’t apologize so much.” Crying, apologizing, or otherwise putting one’s emotions on display are “un-manly”–again, implying that “only girls do these things,” that a “real man” would never display such “weakness.”

Even his comment towards Korekiyo in Chapter 2, where he calls him an “オカマ,” is rooted half-parts in homophobia, and half-parts in misogyny. The word is often deliberately used as a Japanese slur, the rough equivalent of calling someone a “homo” in English (or worse, the f-slur). It’s a word addressed particularly towards “effeminate-looking” Japanese gay men, or trans men for that matter. The implication in that scene was that Korekiyo creeped him out because he was looking and talking effeminately (not because Korekiyo is an actual creep, which he is).

Look, I like Momota as a character. I translated all his FTEs, I’m translating through the entire game, and I’ve written multiple pieces of meta expressing what I think his strong points are and what I do like about him. But he has flaws. His misogyny is present throughout the game, and the main problem isn’t even his misogyny per se–the problem is that the narrative itself doesn’t treat it like a flaw. My fault is much more with Kodaka as a writer than Momota as a character, but that doesn’t change the fact that misogyny is present and that it goes almost entirely overlooked.

Regardless of whether there are good intentions behind it or not, these sorts of sentiments are still harmful. It’s important to address these sorts of flaws, not only in ndrv3 but in any work of fiction, because otherwise they get brushed under the rug or shut down in conversations by arguments like this. I think it’s much more important to simply acknowledge when misogyny is flat-out misogyny, rather than making excuses for it or trying to turn a blind eye to it.

It’s still perfectly fine to like Momota as a character. I like him myself, and I think he’s hugely important to the plot of ndrv3. But discussing a character’s flaws isn’t the same as condemning them. If anything, because the narrative itself dismisses many of Momota’s flaws, I think it’s all the more important to remember them in fandom discussions.

Momota is a good person, and a good friend–but he also thinks women are inherently weaker than men and spends about half the game making comments about how other guys in the group need to “man up” or “stop being such sissies.” That’s just… plain old misogyny, really. No getting around it. Misogyny is a flawed mindset that can be addressed within any stories, and that characters can grow out of, which is what I hoped would happen with Momota but ultimately never did. Therefore, it’s not bad to discuss Momota’s more misogynistic comments with a sort of, “hey, I sure wish this had been handled better” mindset.

I hope I’ve explained myself well. Every character in every series has flaws (or they should, theoretically), so when I point out those flaws it’s not because I’m trying to come down hard on them, but because those things are part of what make them a character in the first place. So that’s why I discuss these things about Momota, especially when talking about what could’ve been done better with his character arc in-game.

[nostalgicpirate]

The Long Story

There was a time in my childhood when concerns about sexuality, gender, and other such matters were all but absent.  I flowed from day to day, each an epoch in itself, not wanting an explanation of the world, but simply living it.  Then came the pivotal moment, an event so traumatic as to be the catalyst of every negative event in my life from that point forward, or so it seems.  

I remember little of my life before the divorce, before foster care, before meeting my abuser.  My earliest memories are locked away, kept from me by the passage of time and my minds own selfish insistence on me persisting.  But I wont talk about those events in much detail now, only the affects to that cause.

I found myself living with another family, kept apart from all my siblings but my sister Allison, and with new parents and new brothers.  I remember Brain the most frequently when I think of the themes I will contain within this exercise.   Brain was an effeminate teenage boy who was one of the birth children of my foster parents, his voice was high and giddy, and he had a kind of energy that I had not experienced before.  He crossed his legs at the knees, he was concerned with his physical appearance in a way that somehow seemed taboo, in fact, all of his predilections seemed somehow against the grain, much to the chagrin of his, and now my, parents.  I didn't know what “gay” meant, but I heard the word for the first time then.  Too young to concern myself with things like sexuality, I thought it just meant the way he behaved, his voice, his mannerisms.  Attraction, I didn't understand, WAS a part of it, but I couldn't conceive of such things.  I did know that his parents and siblings found it amusing and somehow damning as if his “different-ness” somehow made him ridiculous.  I remember trying to take on Brains behaviors and was met with the same ridicule as he was, but they simply thought I was mocking him and thought little of it.  

Even as a child I liked to grow my hair long, and at that age it was a blonde so intense it was almost white. They called me cotton-top as an endearment because of it.  I was slight of build, my face was lean and thin, and I was short for my age.   Consequentially I was often mistaken for a small girl, something that I think bothered my mother more than me.  It bothered me then, but not enough to stop me and my sister from braiding each others hair.  

I wont go too much into detail of the events of my abuse in this piece, I've done that in other mediums, other pieces, and it doesn't need to be tread over again.  There is such a thing as beating a dead horse, and that isn't the purpose of me writing now.  Suffice to say I started my sexual experience as a human young, and with a much older man.  Even after I left foster care, my mother would let me spend nearly ever weekend in his “care”, and not understanding at first that what he was doing to me was abnormal, I still loved him like a father.  Years would go by in such a manner, even after my family moved from the suburbs of Richmond (where he lived) to the blue ridge mountains outside of the town of Crozet.  As I aged I began to understand that most boys weren't like me, most boys didn't have this secret thing that occurred with their “fathers” when the lights when out and we were supposed to sleep. As I began to enter puberty the acts became pleasurable, but somehow all the more wrong.  I liked it, what I felt when things happened, but I knew that it was wrong.  The confusion of both enjoying and being horrified by what was happening to me will never leave me.

At a time when most boys were on the look out for girls, I didn't know what to think, how to behave.  My friends sensed that I was stunted in this way, and one by one abandoned me, no longer wanting to spend time with me.  I found myself attracted to girls, but also enthralled by the idea of boys. Going to school became horrible, I never knew where to look, or how to act, or how to speak.  Through middle school I stopped socializing all together, into high-school I had no friends.  My grades plummeted, I stopped taking care of myself physically, my long hair became matted and full of knots, my clothes I hardly washed.

Discovering the internet was an important turn for me, both the secret and at that time painfully slow world of pornography, and the mild degree of social interaction afforded by chat rooms.  It was here I could express the apparent taboos I had acquired or had been born with without persecution, as my peers had already taken to treating me like a pariah and calling me “gay” or “faggot” at every turn.  With slowly downloaded videos I found myself experiencing pleasurable acts separate from the abuse that had happened to me.  This became important because my malefactor had disappeared from my life nearly overnight, and I didn't have him or his creative assortment of magazines to keep me company.  At first it was men and women, then trans women (whose juxtaposition of genitals and apparent gender amazed and excited me) then in the chats I started talking to young men my age.  I don't remember the first time I had cybersex with a boy, but I do know that it was always “by accident”.  I found myself unable to chat in the main room of the chat rooms, the regulars had too closely knit a group of friends, and even in that digital environment I was too scared to do that.  Instead I'd enter a private chat with all assortments of people, trying to find those that wanted to talk about things of a sexual nature a lot of the time, but also trying to form some kind of social connection, but my life was sorely lacking that at the time.  Upon entering a private chat I'd rattle off the now infamous anagram “ASL” (age, sex, location), and SOMETIMES the person would be male and within my age group.  Those that weren't immediately turned off by me being male as well would then SOMETIMES want to engage in sexual acts.  Keep in mind that these things didn't happen with ONLY males, but with a wide variety of people.  I always had my eye out with a trans person, something that was then a rare find in chat rooms due to stigma.  The advent of the webcam took things up a notch, deep in the midnight hours I'd fine people to display my pleasure too, sometimes men, sometimes women.  I began exploring my body in methods that were taboo among the “straight” led society I live in.  

My first partner outside of the chat rooms was a young woman about my age, but only by happenstance, she pursued me, and if she hadn't it would have been many more years before I found someone.  This is another period of my life I'm going to gloss over, because it isn't pertinent to what I'm trying to say in this piece.  What I will say is that there was a person inside of me that hardly spoke, who I think started in those chat rooms, or maybe just opened its mouth for the first time, and Rebecca, my first love, was the first real person to experience that part of me.  

Gender is a complex subject, or so I'm discovering.  As I said earlier, I was often mistaken for a girl as a child, and there were girlish things that I enjoyed, but I always was keenly aware that that part of me wasn't welcome.  Any deviation from standard male behavior was savagely mocked by peers and family alike. I found little ways of acting out, however, the length of my hair being one of them.  To keep people from mocking me further, as soon as I began to grow facial hair I forsook shaving altogether and grew a long beard, an ability I thought at first a blessing.  In high-school, having a beard meant people no longer took me for a girl, people mocked me less, people kept their distance.  

It was probably that beard that attracted Rebecca in the first place, she used to refer to me as “goatman” as a loving endearment.  However, in private moments together over the phone in the night I began to show a different side of myself, when speaking my voice would become light and go up a few octaves, almost a mimicry of Brains voice from my childhood, but even more so.  It wasn't just my voice, it was my body language, my mannerisms, it was me, or some part of me, speaking out loud for the first time.

Realizing that who I was was fractured wouldn't come for many years, what I did know is that in those private moments, in that identity that I could only share with her, I was truly happy, maybe for the first time since I was a small child. It was, however, one of the reasons she eventually left me for another partner, and that hurt tied itself into the fear of sharing that part of myself, and it would be years before I had the courage to do so again.        

Eventually I graduated high-school, namely because I transferred to an alternate school with open minded staff and a smaller student body.  I found myself then on the verge of life but with two major problems having been recently discovered. I was disabled, physically, and mentally.  I had what the doctors at the time suspected was a form of schizophrenia (they didn't know about my sexual abuse, however) and what would later be determined to be a severe form of PTSD.  I also had a debilitating spinal deformity known as Scheuermann's Kyphosis.  Kept apart from society by the crippling social anxiety from the PTSD and the very literally crippling kyphosis, I started the process of getting disability, and with a few years moved in with my brother with my “own” income.  

The years with my brother stagnated me, kept me locked in place worse than anything I could have done with my twenties.  I was forced to devote every ounce of time an energy to him and had no room for socializing (even if I were able) or self reflection.  It was only when I cut ties with him that I began to, once more, explore myself, but before that, before moving out even, I met someone who changed my life.

In the twilight of my youth, just before the move, I met a woman named colleen in an online chatroom. She was fierce, and strong, and very openly bisexual.  She saw through the many layers of psychosis and trauma that made up my brittle damaged mind and didn't turn away, didn't find me wanting. It wasn't attraction I had for her, it was fellowship I sought from her.  I told her everything, all the details of what I've transcribed here, all the little secrets I'd kept from my family and friends, and she didn't think me gross or damaged, but encouraged me to explore myself.  The years with my brother were bitter for our friendship, as she lived a few hundred miles away, and we were both too scared to meet, but also due to the isolation forced upon me by him.  When I finally got away from him, when I finally cut ties, she was there to support me emotionally like few others could.  

I had few friends after that, Mr. Richards ( a mutual friend of my brother who stopped talking to him in favor of me) was one of them, Rebecca (who remained my friend even after our tumultuous relationship) was another.  Colleen was the unspoken third, the bearer of all my secrets, the one person I could confide anything and everything with.  

She was the first person I came out to, spoke with in depth about my sexuality and my gender and all the glorious weirdness that is me.  Years later I would in turn tell my other friends, and eventually (and weirdly last) my therapist, who should have known all along.  

Finding terms for the parts of me that didn't make sense was a big deal for me, I wanted an explanation, a clean cut reason for the malfunctions I found within myself.  Gender, it turns out, isn't that simple.  I wasn't trans, as I first though, because there WAS in fact a part of me that very keenly wanted to remain male, and I wasn't entirely cis, because there were times when “Binks” the name I gave the effeminate voiced female portion of my mind and gender would speak up and make herself known.  The closest explanation I've found is the term Genderfluid, wherein my gender identity is in a constant state of flux from male to female and back again.  Understanding my sexuality came first, however.  I was deeply afraid of men, it would seem, and apart from musings online and in chat, I was terrified of being... well, different, being gay.  I had associated homosexuality with those terrible early moments of my sexuality with my abuser, even at times thought that he had “turned” me gay somehow.  

I still struggle with who it is I am, and how I want to be with, but its getting clearer ever day, and with that clarity I have hope.  I haven't had much luck with relationships, but I have a DEEP desire to be loved, and to love others.  “Others” in this case being virtually any consenting adult.  My attractions range all across the board, so much that I've found that the closet term to describing me is “Pansexual” or: not using gender or gender identity to chose a partner.  The affect of this is that I'm attracted to basically everyone to varying degrees, though its more of a weird hierarchy of attractions, with cis and trans women at the top, and trans and cis men at the bottom. I don't know if that is “right” for being pan, but its the way it is for me, so maybe being right in this case doesn't matter as long as I'm true to myself.  

One day, it'll all make sense, and maybe even I'll be brave enough to share my secrets with the family I know and sometimes even love.  

[jessicakehoe]

How Mina Gerges Went From Being a Viral Meme to a Body Positivity Champion

Mina Gerges has had a rollercoaster few years. Since 2015, when his elaborate Instagram recreations of celebrity red carpet looks went viral, he’s dealt with a fallout with his family, a body image battle, homophobia, and online trolls but has emerged as a body positivity champion and now, one of the faces of Sephora Canada’s new national campaign. Read on for our interview with Gerges about body diversity, LGBTQ representation and more.

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Literally crying in excitement to share that I’m in Sephora’s new national campaign😭 When I was 9 years old, I’d sneak into my mom’s room and wear her red lipstick when she wasn’t home. I went to an all-boys school in Abu Dhabi and had to pretend to be someone I’m not so that I’d fit in and not get bullied more, and I always cherished these moments of joy I felt in my mom’s red lipstick. I think about my younger self, and how much he needed to know that he’d be okay. That there’s nothing wrong with him for being different. That our culture may never understand him, but that he’s so beautiful and nothing’s wrong with him. Fast forward to this monumental campaign – a gay Middle Eastern immigrant as the face of a makeup brand. I’ve been looking at this picture for a week, in awe of the confidence and power that radiate through this image. I see resilience and beauty, shining so bright and unapologetically as an openly gay Middle Eastern man despite belonging to a culture that systemically erases and persecutes our LGBTQ community. Representation matters, and I am grateful to fight for the visibility of our community and share the struggles we face, because we’re still so unrepresented in the media. To think that this can give hope to just one young queer Middle Eastern person that they matter, that they’re seen, and that there’s nothing wrong with them brings me tears. I’m beyond grateful that my first ever campaign is with a brand like Sephora that has always been a safe space for me to explore my gender expression, and that’s so unapologetic and bold about celebrating diversity. To me, beauty is reclaiming my culture from the toxic masculinity that’s so engrained within it, and creating new narratives about what it means to be LGBTQ and Middle Eastern/ North African. To that young, scared, lonely Mina who was always told there’s something wrong with him for being gay, I just want you to know that you’ll be okay, and you’re going to look so beautiful in billboards all over this country one day. Shot by the incredible @leeorwild 🌟@sephoracanada #SephoraPartner

A post shared by MINA GERGES (مينا) (@itsminagerges) on Jul 2, 2019 at 4:01pm PDT

Buzzfeed writing a post about your Instagram account is the sort of thing most teens dream about. But for Mina Gerges, then a 19-year-old student at Western University, it was a bittersweet moment. Yes, his cheeky red carpet recreations suddenly had thousands more likes, his inbox was flooded with emails and interview requests, and he’d even gotten a repost from Katy Perry but that Buzzfeed story had another consequence: it outed him to his conservative Egyptian parents.

“We somehow went eight months without talking about it,” recounts Gerges over black coffee at a Toronto cafe. But unbeknownst to him, his parents were Googling him every day, suddenly privy to the secret life that Gerges had been living for months. They’d seen the tongue-in-cheek recreations he’d been shooting in his bedroom with the help of his sisters (looks that included a dress fashioned out of a garbage bag and tinfoil to echo Jennifer Lopez’s outfit at the 2015 Vanity Fair Oscar party and curtains painstakingly painted to resemble Kim Kardashian’s look for the 2015 Met Gala), the interviews he’d been giving to various media outlets, and even the Arabic news sites that had picked up the story. Finally, several months after that first Buzzfeed post in January 2015, his parents sat him down to talk.

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Yes, those are cheese slices on my head 🧀😂 #MetGala #MinaGerges #RitaOra

A post shared by MINA GERGES (مينا) (@itsminagerges) on May 1, 2017 at 8:06pm PDT

“The language barrier made it so difficult to communicate what I felt or to communicate even what it is [to be gay],” explains Gerges. “At the time the only Arabic word for what it means to be gay, ‘khaneeth,’ directly translated to something negative—it connotes being a pervert, effeminate, and is more commonly used as a way of saying faggot.”

Since then, fuelled by the efforts of LGBTQ activists, the terminology has expanded to include words like ‘mithli’ which translates to “same” or “homo,” but the perception of queer people as being sexually deviant is so ingrained in Middle Eastern culture that no matter how hard Gerges tried to mend the relationship with his parents, nothing worked. Hard as that was—and continues to be—it also gave him the motivation to use his social media presence to change the way the Arab community viewed LGBTQ people, and to give them positive examples to look to.

“A lot of what I do now is informed from what I learned trying to deal with my parents,” he says. “I’m educating myself on what it’s like to be queer in the Middle East and what I can do with my platform to talk about this or to create any kind of change. And I’ve found a community of kids who have felt exactly the way that I have felt. I take that back. Not just kids, but older men and younger men, queer women, trans people from the Middle East, who have found similarities in our stories.”

Photography by Samuel Engelking

Gerges, who grew up between Cairo in Egypt and Abu Dhabi in the UAE, moved to Canada at the age of 12 with his mother and two sisters (his father came later). In both the countries where he grew up, being gay or even acknowledging LGBTQ people or rights was completely missing from the culture. In fact, he had no idea what the word ���gay’ meant or even that it existed until someone called him that in high school. To be out and proud may not have been something Gerges ever saw growing up, but even after moving to Canada it was a very narrow version of “gay” that his formative understanding of the term was built on.

“The first time I Googled “gay men” all I saw was images of white, muscular, slim men,” he says. “So I thought that that was the norm.”

In trying to fit that mould as a young man grappling with his identity and sexuality, Gerges went down a spiral of eating disorders and body dysmorphia. He became anorexic in his first year of university, a time when he was not only struggling with being accepted in the gay community “as a plus-size man of colour” but also deeply unhappy studying science, something his parents had encouraged him to do. (He later switched to media studies.) When he began his celeb recreation posts in the summer of 2014, he was already suffering from anorexia.

“The people who may have followed me from the very beginning saw a Mina who was anorexic, at 150 lbs. And when I was in recovery shortly after, I started gaining back some weight and I was happy. But it was hard to find that happiness when I went on social media. I was at the height of my creativity where it wasn’t just drag, it was DIY, it was kind of like the golden age of my work. But all that people could comment about was my weight. I was like ‘I just spent eight hours painting this garbage bag so it can look like a million dollar dress and all you have to say is to call me a whale.’ It broke me. It was one of the worst things I’ve experienced in my life.”

He took eight months off social media between October 2015 and May 2016. During this hiatus, Gerges took the time to heal, using the distance from people’s hateful comments to learn how to love and accept his body. When he was finally ready to return to social media, he made a promise to himself that things were going to be different.

Photography by Samuel Engelking

“I decided I wasn’t going to FaceTune my body anymore. Instead of hiding it I’m going to be so unapologetic about this body and maybe if people see confidence they will be less likely to say mean things. Honestly something as simple as not FaceTuning out stretch marks felt like such a liberating act of protest. And also reclaiming a platform that I was basically bullied off of.”

And that was the beginning of a new chapter for Gerges’ public persona. In 2018 he posted a shirtless picture of himself along with a lengthy caption about why it was “the scariest yet most empowering post I’ve ever made.”

“The feedback was unlike anything that I had ever experienced. It was a lot of people from the LGBT community, not just men, who were sharing with me very similar stories about their struggles with their body image and experiencing an eating disorder. That’s when it clicked for me. I’d felt so alone when I was 19-20 years old but here I was getting all these messages from people telling me they’d had the exact same journey but were ashamed to talk about it. That’s when I was like ‘this is my calling.’ Let’s shift this conversation.”

Last year, Gerges did a nude photo shoot with NOW Toronto for their annual Body Issue. He posted the nude photos on Instagram when the issue came out and lost 4000 followers.

“You see male models who are thin and muscular pose for pictures just like these, or even more scandalous ones, and those pictures end up in editorials and in ad campaigns for Dolce & Gabbana and Versace.” But when a body like his is nude, he says, the comments move swiftly from praise to criticism. “That double standard is why we need to talk about body positivity and the fact that bodies like mine, which don’t fit into this beauty ideal, experience the world differently and are treated differently because of it. It was crazy to get the backlash for that when thinner, more muscular guys are being praised for the exact same thing.”

Photography by Samuel Engelking

“It was a voice that needed to be heard and a story that needed to be told,” says Samuel Engelking, the photographer who shot the images for the Love Your Body issue. Engelking, who has photographed the likes of Margaret Atwood, Ai Weiwei and MIA, says of working with Gerges, “When we first met on set I was immediately taken by his positive spirit and confidence despite the unusual circumstances of the shoot.”

This newfound confidence is what Gerges’ followers are responding to, and he’s seen a shift in the way they interact with him online, even though the negative and hurtful comments about him, his body and his Middle Eastern identity—even from others in the Arab world—do still keep rolling in.

“Giving up my culture as these, for lack of a better word, these haters would want me to, is not an option,” he says. “I refuse to be shamed out of my culture. It is mine just as much as it is yours. Nothing that you can do will prevent me from embracing being Egyptian and being North African. You cannot take that away from me.”

The post How Mina Gerges Went From Being a Viral Meme to a Body Positivity Champion appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

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[demitgibbs]

Justin Theroux: The Spy You Wouldn’t Mind Being Dumped By

No straight man has ever offered to make me a crop top, but Justin Theroux is no ordinary straight man. If you’ve seen him in all his shirtless, ripped, oiled glory in 2003’s Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle or bore witness to all that was bouncing around in his grey sweatpants in HBO’s The Leftovers (I know you saw that; you haven’t stopped seeing that), you have likely wished him gay.

The vers 46-year-old actor is, at least, the closest a straight man can get to being gay, palling around with the new Queer Eye posse and portraying a deep well of gay characters during his two-decade career, from Marshall in 2000’s The Broken Hearts Club to an assortment of gay Englishmen in numerous New York theater productions. Significant gay cred aside, his acting instincts have resulted in an impressive mix of unpredictable career choices rooted in pathos and humor, David Lynchian mystery and Herculean ruggedness: from 1997’s Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion on through Mulholland Drive, Strangers with Candy, Sex and the City, Zoolander and, most recently, The Spy Who Dumped Me. Directed by Susanna Fogel, the action-comedy caper stars Theroux as Drew, an on-the-run spy who inadvertently gets his ex (Mila Kunis) and her best gal pal (Kate McKinnon) embroiled in his messy assassin-fighting mission.

Things are tamer in a hotel suite in New York City on the day Theroux sits across from me with his rescue pit bull Kuma. Theroux – imagine if he dumped you; what an honor – is not wearing sweatpants. But my mock disappointment isn’t sweatpants-related; it’s knowing that he made Queer Eye guy Jonathan Van Ness a crop top but didn’t bring me one. And do I let Justin Theroux wreck the shirt on my back? I do, right? “I would so do it,” he politely insists. “If you have a t-shirt and a pair of scissors, I’m happy to quickly fashion you one.”

Let’s talk about how you invented sweatpants.

(Laughs) I invented the grey sweatpants! I brought them back, I know! You know, I was the one who made a shirt for Jonathan. We were going to gay Pride and he was like, “F*ck, I gotta go out,” and so I made him a shirt. I was like, “I wanna make one of those crop top t-shirts with the tassels,” and he ended up wearing that.

Do you regularly make crop tops for your gay friends?

No, that was the first one I’ve done. It was just like, “It’s a perfect moment in time. I’m with Jonathan and I have a t-shirt and we have scissors and I think I could pull it off.”

We’ve become a good little clutch. Tan, Antoni and Jonathan have come over a bunch of times and we’ve gone back and forth, and I’ve disappeared into the bathroom with Jonathan and we’ve talked products.

Can a straight guy have a queer eye?

Keeping my fingers crossed. Season 3! Maybe we should do a whole thing where it’s like, “Straight Eye for the Gay Guy.” Find some gay guy who’s not got his shit together and I can go and help him out. I don’t know if I’d be that helpful.

WATCH:

I must say, you’ve got your shit together.

I put a little effort in sometimes. (Queer Eye guy) Tan’s trying to get me to wear some color. I’m pretty much blacks and greys. White is technically a color for me.

We need to get you in floral.

I don’t think it’s gonna happen! I just can’t pull it off. I keep looking for a Hawaiian shirt that’s 95 percent black with just a little pop of color in the flowers.

Recently, Jonathan was obsessing over your shirtlessness in Charlie’s Angels. Is that the role most gay men fangirl over when they meet you?

I mean, the first one was actually The Broken Hearts Club, which was a movie I did years and years ago. I remember being at gay Pride and people being like, “Oh my god, this is the guy from Broken Hearts Club!” (Playing gay) was kind of my bread and butter in New York on stage. I would do Joe Orton plays, or Shopping and Fucking. I’d do all these gay Englishmen. That was my thing that was my calling card.

Why go for the gay roles?

It was something that just happened. It wasn’t like I was seeking them out. It was just something that presented itself. At the time, there was that kind of question when you’d go into the audition: “Are you comfortable kissing a guy?” “Yeah, of course.”

In 2000, some actors were being told not to play gay characters for the sake of preserving their careers. Was there any pressure on you not to play that role?

No. My agent at the time was gay, so it was never a discussion. It always boils down to, is the part good or is the play good? If the material is good, I’m happy to do it. If it’s bad, then I don’t wanna do it. But I wouldn’t want do it for a straight part either.

Did it feel like an important movie at the time for the LGBTQ community?

It didn’t, because it’s not necessarily my community. But it was one of those I was happy (about). It was the first (LGBTQ) movie that showed – at least that I had been a part of, or had seen – just a normal relationship. No one’s dying of a disease, no one’s fighting with their parents. It felt like a great episode of Thirtysomething or a great episode of This Is Us.  (Its gay themes were) just built into the fabric of the movie, as opposed to being the fabric of the movie. There weren’t big red arrows pointing at each character going, “Oh, and by the way, they’re gay!” They were functioning, normal people in their lives, which is reality. In a weird way, its normalcy was the thing that made it special and that felt like a good reason to do it.

Growing up in Washington D.C., what was your introduction to the LGBTQ community?

God, you could argue it was probably Catholic school and noticing the priests. Not their behavior; I didn’t think anything nefarious was going on. I don’t think they were doing anything horrible to the boys of the school, but I remember thinking, “These men seem effeminate and they carry themselves in a different way, and I think these guys like other men, like other gay men I’ve seen.”

They didn’t fit the typical heteronormative archetype. 

Yeah, exactly. And it was an odd kind of thing, where I thought, “Oh.” I’ve since come to think maybe the priesthood is like an enclave for people who aren’t comfortable with their sexuality and they wanna shut it down and they think, “Please make it go away. I’m just gonna go to this place and go to seminary school and hope that this feeling leaves me,” which is a shame.

You strike me as the kind of guy who’s surrounded by gay men for various reasons.

Yeah, of course. I went to a very progressive high school that had gay boys in it. In college, it becomes quickly normalized. But you can’t live in New York and not be friends with every kind of person, whether they’re gay, trans, straight, whatever.

You were ahead of the game?

Well, I think most people in the city or in pockets of the country were kind of ahead of the game. It felt like, “Wait, this conversation is still happening? Oh yeah, I guess it still is. I guess we do need to keep having this discussion.” (I) marvel at people who are still made uncomfortable by it. Like, how on earth? It’s like being made uncomfortable by a sofa; you’re like, “It’s a sofa.” It couldn’t be more normal.

You should know that you’ve been called a “gay men’s dream” by the National Enquirer, probably their most accurate reporting.

Cut to 10 years later: Ew, who’s that old guy? (Laughs)

No way. Our gay icons never age.

Oh yeah, that’s right!

So this movie: Was the title The Spy Who Dumped On Me ever considered?

(Laughs) It’s the James Bond they never made! Idris Elba, Daniel Craig, why wouldn’t you do that movie?

RELATED:

Susanna’s friends call her the “lesbian whisperer.” And, of course, Kate McKinnon is queer and one of two leading ladies in this film.

It’s so cool.

Did you get a lesbian read on Kate McKinnon’s character, Morgan, in the movie?

Yeah. But what I liked about her character: again, it wasn’t the focal (point). It’s kind of ambiguous. What she brought to the part was super hilarious. She works really hard on specific jokes, beats, alternate lines, trying to come up with other stuff that isn’t necessarily on the page or in the direction. Kate really goes in and scribbles on the sides (of her script) and it looks like A Beautiful Mind on her script. She approaches her work (in) really sort of (an) academic way.

You’re long overdue for a gay role.

What’s the last one I’ve done? Maybe (my character) Kevin Garvey from The Leftovers is, who knows. Don’t tell anybody. No, I’m joking. (Laughs) You could argue he was really put-upon and maybe that was the reason why, ’cause he was in a hetero marriage.

(Theroux’s handler peeks in to say, “One last question.” “Two more,” Theroux whispers, giving me two fingers.)

What would you look for in a gay role now?

I don’t know. It’s really always the story. I want the story to be good and compelling. I want the character to be good and compelling, and that could be anything. A la Broken Hearts Club, you do sort of hope that eventually these all become just the background to the characters, because it’s way more interesting just playing the relationship and playing the story than it is playing the orientation.

If you were to date any of the guys you have played in your career, which ones might you go for? Personally, I’d shack up with Joe from Six Feet Under.

Joe in Six Feet Under was a sweetheart. But if I dated Joe, he was straight, and so I think that would be problematic.

He’s only straight till he drinks four beers.

Until he drinks four beers, then all bets are off! The bondage gear comes out. Like, we all know Joe liked being tied to the bed. (Laughs) I don’t know if there’s anyone I’d really wanna date. And it’s weird to think about dating yourself. Just visually awkward.

Actually, Matt McGrath’s Broken Hearts character was an adorable character. But I don’t know, I played some pretty f*cked up guys, so they all seem like they’re not great relationship material.

from Hotspots! Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2018/08/16/justin-theroux-the-spy-you-wouldnt-mind-being-dumped-by/ from Hot Spots Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.tumblr.com/post/177060262410

[hotspotsmagazine]

Justin Theroux: The Spy You Wouldn’t Mind Being Dumped By

No straight man has ever offered to make me a crop top, but Justin Theroux is no ordinary straight man. If you’ve seen him in all his shirtless, ripped, oiled glory in 2003’s Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle or bore witness to all that was bouncing around in his grey sweatpants in HBO’s The Leftovers (I know you saw that; you haven’t stopped seeing that), you have likely wished him gay.

The vers 46-year-old actor is, at least, the closest a straight man can get to being gay, palling around with the new Queer Eye posse and portraying a deep well of gay characters during his two-decade career, from Marshall in 2000’s The Broken Hearts Club to an assortment of gay Englishmen in numerous New York theater productions. Significant gay cred aside, his acting instincts have resulted in an impressive mix of unpredictable career choices rooted in pathos and humor, David Lynchian mystery and Herculean ruggedness: from 1997’s Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion on through Mulholland Drive, Strangers with Candy, Sex and the City, Zoolander and, most recently, The Spy Who Dumped Me. Directed by Susanna Fogel, the action-comedy caper stars Theroux as Drew, an on-the-run spy who inadvertently gets his ex (Mila Kunis) and her best gal pal (Kate McKinnon) embroiled in his messy assassin-fighting mission.

Things are tamer in a hotel suite in New York City on the day Theroux sits across from me with his rescue pit bull Kuma. Theroux – imagine if he dumped you; what an honor – is not wearing sweatpants. But my mock disappointment isn’t sweatpants-related; it’s knowing that he made Queer Eye guy Jonathan Van Ness a crop top but didn’t bring me one. And do I let Justin Theroux wreck the shirt on my back? I do, right? “I would so do it,” he politely insists. “If you have a t-shirt and a pair of scissors, I’m happy to quickly fashion you one.”

Let’s talk about how you invented sweatpants.

(Laughs) I invented the grey sweatpants! I brought them back, I know! You know, I was the one who made a shirt for Jonathan. We were going to gay Pride and he was like, “F*ck, I gotta go out,” and so I made him a shirt. I was like, “I wanna make one of those crop top t-shirts with the tassels,” and he ended up wearing that. 

Do you regularly make crop tops for your gay friends?

No, that was the first one I’ve done. It was just like, “It’s a perfect moment in time. I’m with Jonathan and I have a t-shirt and we have scissors and I think I could pull it off.”

We’ve become a good little clutch. Tan, Antoni and Jonathan have come over a bunch of times and we’ve gone back and forth, and I’ve disappeared into the bathroom with Jonathan and we’ve talked products.

Can a straight guy have a queer eye?

Keeping my fingers crossed. Season 3! Maybe we should do a whole thing where it’s like, “Straight Eye for the Gay Guy.” Find some gay guy who’s not got his shit together and I can go and help him out. I don’t know if I’d be that helpful.

WATCH:

I must say, you’ve got your shit together.

I put a little effort in sometimes. (Queer Eye guy) Tan’s trying to get me to wear some color. I’m pretty much blacks and greys. White is technically a color for me. 

We need to get you in floral.

I don’t think it’s gonna happen! I just can’t pull it off. I keep looking for a Hawaiian shirt that’s 95 percent black with just a little pop of color in the flowers. 

Recently, Jonathan was obsessing over your shirtlessness in Charlie’s Angels. Is that the role most gay men fangirl over when they meet you?

I mean, the first one was actually The Broken Hearts Club, which was a movie I did years and years ago. I remember being at gay Pride and people being like, “Oh my god, this is the guy from Broken Hearts Club!” (Playing gay) was kind of my bread and butter in New York on stage. I would do Joe Orton plays, or Shopping and Fucking. I’d do all these gay Englishmen. That was my thing that was my calling card. 

Why go for the gay roles?

It was something that just happened. It wasn’t like I was seeking them out. It was just something that presented itself. At the time, there was that kind of question when you’d go into the audition: “Are you comfortable kissing a guy?” “Yeah, of course.” 

In 2000, some actors were being told not to play gay characters for the sake of preserving their careers. Was there any pressure on you not to play that role?

No. My agent at the time was gay, so it was never a discussion. It always boils down to, is the part good or is the play good? If the material is good, I’m happy to do it. If it’s bad, then I don’t wanna do it. But I wouldn’t want do it for a straight part either. 

Did it feel like an important movie at the time for the LGBTQ community?

It didn’t, because it’s not necessarily my community. But it was one of those I was happy (about). It was the first (LGBTQ) movie that showed – at least that I had been a part of, or had seen – just a normal relationship. No one’s dying of a disease, no one’s fighting with their parents. It felt like a great episode of Thirtysomething or a great episode of This Is Us.  (Its gay themes were) just built into the fabric of the movie, as opposed to being the fabric of the movie. There weren’t big red arrows pointing at each character going, “Oh, and by the way, they’re gay!” They were functioning, normal people in their lives, which is reality. In a weird way, its normalcy was the thing that made it special and that felt like a good reason to do it. 

Growing up in Washington D.C., what was your introduction to the LGBTQ community?

God, you could argue it was probably Catholic school and noticing the priests. Not their behavior; I didn’t think anything nefarious was going on. I don’t think they were doing anything horrible to the boys of the school, but I remember thinking, “These men seem effeminate and they carry themselves in a different way, and I think these guys like other men, like other gay men I’ve seen.” 

They didn’t fit the typical heteronormative archetype. 

Yeah, exactly. And it was an odd kind of thing, where I thought, “Oh.” I’ve since come to think maybe the priesthood is like an enclave for people who aren’t comfortable with their sexuality and they wanna shut it down and they think, “Please make it go away. I’m just gonna go to this place and go to seminary school and hope that this feeling leaves me,” which is a shame. 

You strike me as the kind of guy who’s surrounded by gay men for various reasons.

Yeah, of course. I went to a very progressive high school that had gay boys in it. In college, it becomes quickly normalized. But you can’t live in New York and not be friends with every kind of person, whether they’re gay, trans, straight, whatever. 

You were ahead of the game?

Well, I think most people in the city or in pockets of the country were kind of ahead of the game. It felt like, “Wait, this conversation is still happening? Oh yeah, I guess it still is. I guess we do need to keep having this discussion.” (I) marvel at people who are still made uncomfortable by it. Like, how on earth? It’s like being made uncomfortable by a sofa; you’re like, “It’s a sofa.” It couldn’t be more normal. 

You should know that you’ve been called a “gay men’s dream” by the National Enquirer, probably their most accurate reporting.

Cut to 10 years later: Ew, who’s that old guy? (Laughs) 

No way. Our gay icons never age.

Oh yeah, that’s right!

So this movie: Was the title The Spy Who Dumped On Me ever considered?

(Laughs) It’s the James Bond they never made! Idris Elba, Daniel Craig, why wouldn’t you do that movie? 

RELATED:

Susanna’s friends call her the “lesbian whisperer.” And, of course, Kate McKinnon is queer and one of two leading ladies in this film.

It’s so cool. 

Did you get a lesbian read on Kate McKinnon’s character, Morgan, in the movie?

Yeah. But what I liked about her character: again, it wasn’t the focal (point). It’s kind of ambiguous. What she brought to the part was super hilarious. She works really hard on specific jokes, beats, alternate lines, trying to come up with other stuff that isn’t necessarily on the page or in the direction. Kate really goes in and scribbles on the sides (of her script) and it looks like A Beautiful Mind on her script. She approaches her work (in) really sort of (an) academic way. 

You’re long overdue for a gay role.

What’s the last one I’ve done? Maybe (my character) Kevin Garvey from The Leftovers is, who knows. Don’t tell anybody. No, I’m joking. (Laughs) You could argue he was really put-upon and maybe that was the reason why, ’cause he was in a hetero marriage.

(Theroux’s handler peeks in to say, “One last question.” “Two more,” Theroux whispers, giving me two fingers.)

What would you look for in a gay role now?

I don’t know. It’s really always the story. I want the story to be good and compelling. I want the character to be good and compelling, and that could be anything. A la Broken Hearts Club, you do sort of hope that eventually these all become just the background to the characters, because it’s way more interesting just playing the relationship and playing the story than it is playing the orientation.

If you were to date any of the guys you have played in your career, which ones might you go for? Personally, I’d shack up with Joe from Six Feet Under.

Joe in Six Feet Under was a sweetheart. But if I dated Joe, he was straight, and so I think that would be problematic.

He’s only straight till he drinks four beers.

Until he drinks four beers, then all bets are off! The bondage gear comes out. Like, we all know Joe liked being tied to the bed. (Laughs) I don’t know if there’s anyone I’d really wanna date. And it’s weird to think about dating yourself. Just visually awkward.

Actually, Matt McGrath’s Broken Hearts character was an adorable character. But I don’t know, I played some pretty f*cked up guys, so they all seem like they’re not great relationship material.

from Hotspots! Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2018/08/16/justin-theroux-the-spy-you-wouldnt-mind-being-dumped-by/

[sylviathewanderer-blog]

Today I took the first step down the road in the long journey that is my life. I have tried, and failed miserably, to live my life as the person I was told that I was born to be for 32 years. Every day I looked at his face in the mirror and tried to avoid eye contact with him as I brushed his teeth, combed his hair, and cleaned his body. Then I'd put on his heavy, coarse threaded clothing and plod my way along the path of his life, doing my best to try and play his part in the world the right way all the while knowing that I am not the right actor for his role. I've known my entire life that something wasn't right, that I was the problem. I comforted myself by saying that I'm just different from the other guys. I couldn't have been more right. Well. . . Perhaps instead I was so wrong that I became right coming the other way around. I'm different from all of the other guys because I was never a guy to begin with. I have been a woman all along. I've been a woman wearing a terrible man-skin coat doing her best to stand up and roar loud enough to scare all of the real men away so she could be alone to plant her flowers, care for her animals, and write out her long fantasy stories. At first I thought this feminine side of myself was something new until I became curious about the person I heard pounding on the other side of the walls I had built around them as a child. When I ripped away the cracked bricks and mortar I found a familiar face staring back at me. We hadn't seen eachother since I tried to bury her back when I was 7. When my sister became 10 she got her ears pierced as is tradition in our family. From that day she was a big girl and couldn't be bothered to play with her annoying little brother anymore. I loved my sister more than anything and cherished our time together especially since I could always count on her to chase away all of the bullies who tortured me every day at school for being weird. Her pulling away tore out my heart and so one day I came up with a solution that would make us both happy. I asked her to help turn me into a girl. Because I was 7 and she was 10 (aaaaand our father was a MAJOR homophobe who thought that even hanging his clothes on a pink hanger would make him magically turn gay. Try to visualize the logic there! "Honey, did you put my favorite shirt on a pink hanger again?" "No, I don't think so. Why?" "Because I am FAAABULOUUUS!!!" lol A couple of grizzled bikers sit at a dingy bar. One looks over at his drinking partner after a long ride and notices something off about his undershirt. "The wife wash yer whites with a red sock again?" "Yeah. And now I wanna go out and kiss all the boys, dammit!" He says sullenly staring into the golden froth. "I know how that goes. Mine hung my leathers on the pink hanger yesterday!" He growls draining another beer. The man in the pinkened shirt looks over curiously "You wanna go make out?" "Yeah, sure." (Sorry, I'm an amateur comedy writer so I am prone to these odd drifts of thought!)) We decided that the best way to make me a girl was to dress me in her clothes. I stripped down and put on her panties and night gown and we talked, played barbies, and listened to the radio all night. I became so comfortable and felt so natural that we lost track of time and forgot what I was wearing. . . Then my father came home from the bar! That night was so traumatic that I became afraid to ever express that side of myself again and so I sewed together my man-suit, locked my true self behind those walls and did my best to forget about her. She is stronger than we knew though, and she has manifested herself all of my life. Once I became a teenager I grew my hair out. It was always my best feature and became the only thing that I felt was really me. I would swell with an odd pride whenever a woman complimented me on my hair and being told how jealous of it they were thrilled me to know end. Once I got my first job and was buying my own clothes I picked out light, breezey khakis, white undershirts and cotton button up shirts to wear open over them. They were mostly brightly colored Hawaiian shirts or subdued floral patterns in more traditional male colors. I loved them and they became a part of my unique style. Then there were the flowers. I love gardening and growing any kind of plant, so I kept baskets of flowers on any surface in my room that got enough light to support them. And then there's my tea set collection. My mother caught me playing with the first one in a shop and went back to buy it for me for Christmas that year. I loved it and it quickly grew into a collection that I now have decorating my room in an array of shadowboxes. I've struggled with this identity for all of my life that I can remember, and I suspect it goes back even further than that, but who really knows there. I can remember getting bullied in school for months when I curtsied while the music teacher was teaching us the ediquet for our school play. Turns out i was supposed to bow instead. Whoops! Not that it mattered, really. Those kids had sniffed me out as being different long, long before that. Could have been because I was shy and meek. . . Oooor maybe it was the clover flower crowns and necklaces I taught the girls to make and would even wear around the playground myself. Could have been that. *sagely nod* I met another trans woman recently and I told her about how much I loved my hair and that it was killing me that I am going bald and that my hair looks terrible now. She smiled at me and made a joke about giving me her hormone pills that could regrow my hair so long as I didn't mind also growing breasts. I felt such a sudden and deep yearning that I must have made a face because she quickly hid the bottle and changed the subject, though she did offer them again later with the same joke, probably to test the waters and confirm what she was suspecting. I made a joke and brushed it aside. Later, I would go home and while staring at my scalp in the bathroom mirror, brake into tears. I hadn't cried in over a decade so it turned into a sob, then bawling, and then into full blown weeping. I sat on the toilet trying to collect myself and had an epiphany. I was mad at myself for being too weak and timid to accept her offer. I knew then that if given the choice I would happily, gladly, and proudly trade my penis to whomever I had to to get my hair back. I've been an asexual my entire life so it's not like I use the damned thing for anything other than urination anyway! What use do I have for it? Give me back my damned hair!! It was then that all of those feelings and all of those dreams about being turned into a woman made sense to me. All of the female characters I had made in video games and had spent more time designing than I did doing whatever the game was about seemed like obvious signs. So there I was, the crumbled debris lying at my feet. And there she was, my true self, a golden outline of a woman with soft kind eyes staring through my soul telling me that it was alright. I could cry now. I was finally safe. She smiled at me and I tried to smile back, but couldn't. I already was. We were finally one again. We were whole. We were just I again. Somewhere, I felt as if my male persona was waving at me, laughing like he always did when he knew things were going to be their toughest. Somewhere The Drifter faded away and left me alone with myself, with The Wanderer. So I smiled again, and took the first step on my long road. I am going on my first journey, the one to get back my long, golden brown hair and to become the woman I was always meant to be. I came out to my mother today. She told me she always knew, but thought that I would always stay the effeminate man I was. She told me that she is proud that I found my strength to fight for what I really want. She told me that she loves me and that she will always love me unconditionally. Then she text me a few hours later to tell me that she loves me again. I am so lucky to have her as my mother and my guide. Many of our brothers and sisters aren't so lucky and find themselves disowned or worse. She divorced my father when i was 16 and I havent talked to him in at least a decade, so I don't care what he thinks. I'll mail his name and legacy back to him when I find the time. I don't need them anymore, and they never really belonged to me to begin with. This is my first day as an open trans woman and I don't even have a real name yet. I haven't talked to a doctor about hormone replacement therapy, but I absolutely will. I am going to begin saving money for my surgery too. So on this day, I declare to the world, to myself, and to the people of Tumblr that I am a transgendered woman! I am proud! I am strong! And I am coming for my GOD DAMNED HAIR!!