#don't let the social pressure to conform to gender norms get you

[werewolftransjenderism]

A butch shaving their legs is like an angel losing its wings

[aishabellasbigblogofeverything]

Now why the hell did I just read an article about the infantilization of trans men try to convince itself AND the audience that trans women somehow have it easier than trans men when it comes to having their gender respected and taken seriously and get more leeway to express and play with their gender outside of norms and stereotypes like, is this a fucking joke, am I being punked...the article outright states that a trans woman can wear pants and nobody will think that she's less of a woman for it but let a trans man wear a skirt or dress and people will see it as a sign that he's really a girl like BRO...have you forgotten that trans women are pressured to perform femininity 100% to a tee to prove that they're real women way more so than cis women...like you were EATING up until that part, you legit could've made your point without throwing transfems under the bus and acting like they couldn't POSSIBLY EVER have the same or similar hardships and struggles with having their gender recognized when they don't conform to gender norms as you do...like why don't you try talking to some transfem butches or tomboys or studs and try to say again that trans women are "allowed" to be masculine and it's given more leeway than trans men being feminine...don't make me laugh. And then ofc the article went on to say that trans men are "socialized as women" and yeah that's when I stopped reading, ofc the guy who wrote that article thinks that trans women don't get invalidated when they don't conform 100% to the feminine norm...he straight-up thinks that trans women are privileged over them due to being "socialized as male" a flat-out TERF lie!!! And like ofc the article didn't explicitly say that or at the very least I didn't get to that part in the article yet where they obviously WOULD say it but either way that's clearly the implication. Just so sad to see. Men regularly dismiss women's complaints and concerns and act like they're the ultimate victims because the only way they can talk about their struggles is by putting women down...and to see that that happens in the trans community too is really shameful. Like oh my gosh. 💔

[sawdust-emperor]

Unfortunately the post about girl math seems to belong to a terf blog so I have deleted it

That said the trend towards 'being too dumb to understand the economy' is the same trend as those posts saying " it's OKAY to be skinny, and a feminine woman who stays at home and wears makeup, even though nobody shows those anymore... 🥺✊"

There are complex forces at play here:

(longass post under read more)

A) social media guides people into bubbles where it seems like the subversive is the norm. Infighting is common because the space is safe from outsiders who would normally be a uniting antagonist, so encouragement to conform to the outside in these spaces feels rebellious and subversive when people are otherwise arguing about which side to crack the egg on. It isn't, but it feels like it is. It also has the added benefit of attracting arguments in the comments of posts, which is engagement, and the machine loooves engagement. So it gets shown to more people.

B) The right is squeezing into the cracks of movements and trying to grow. If they can remix a widely accepted message and paint it as something new and edgy, they can dripfeed it into places where it will do harm. For a time, it was cool for big commentary channels to be anti-SJW because the right had so successfully misrepresented their enemy. That happened because feminism was gaining widespread acceptance by the media, and the right couldn't have that, so they painted the modern feminist as a caricature of every traditionally unlikeable trait a woman wasn't supposed to have, and some people who would have otherwise worn that label with pride instead felt the need to call themselves egalitarians or otherwise distance themselves from the word 'feminist' as a result.

They're doing that again, but this time they're trying to say that modern media (social and not) demands women be badass superheroes instead of making themselves small. The thing they're trying to make edgy and subversive is smallness. They are asking you to be small but framing being small as being a rebel, because being a badass superhero (a woman who is financially independent and doesn't conform to every single standard set for her by her society) is lame and expected of you by your peers. Don't you want to stand out? Look, the cover of Playboy featured an overweight woman (for the first time ever) - that means being skinny is under attack! You must rebel! Lose weight!

The same goes for this girl math. "Everyone is saying you have to be smart, but we both know you're not even average, right? You're a dumb bimbo who can't tell she's getting scammed at the mechanic, and that's okay. You just need a man to control your finances for you. Better get pretty so you can grab a 'decent' one."

That's what they're doing when they encourage "girl math", " ED girl dinner", "let me describe the economy so the girls will get it: Hailey Bieber is China", et cetera. Women are very much still being guided towards becoming financially dependent on a man, but in certain bubbles online, it can feel like women have already won their Barbie-style utopia where saying these things is edgy and new. Parroting "but what if I WANT to stay home?" In 2013 felt edgy and new because the era where that was socially enforced was already two or three decades in the past. In the same way, saying "but what if I WANT to wear makeup and be thin and pretty and dumb?" Feels edgy and new because the era where all of that was the ideal is already two decades old. Nobody is saying that women cannot or should not wear makeup. They're saying they shouldn't have to. The right is spinning it as an attack on traditionally desirable feminine women from shrill unlovable harpies, not a suggestion that maybe old gender norms are based in nothing but sexism. To clarify - anywhere else, outside of online North America and Europe, all of this is still a very strong suggestion bordering on mandate. Even within the US, there is pressure. Women of color are pushed towards relaxing their hair or using lightening creams to look more like white women. If you want to join a sorority in the South and get all those connections, you better be thin, pretty, and blonde, and your tan better be artificial. The right WISHES all of this were true in those online pockets of subversion, too. They want to keep women small. That's why this is happening and why it will keep happening as long as the alt-right remains.

Having women say these things only makes it worse because a fellow woman wouldn't betray you like that, right? Especially one who calls herself an egalitarian feminist? The lede is so buried some of them don't even realize what ideas they're picking up and broadcasting, women who are otherwise staunch feminists online are saying that because they don't feel like calculating the tip without their phone calculator sometimes, they're a total ditz, and that's just a fact of womanhood. Girl math is less accurate than regular Boy math. You are unchangeably stupider than a man on average, is what that actually means upon any deeper analysis. In doing that, they make themselves small, and hide it behind a joke. Just like "attack helicopter" was transphobia hidden behind a joke too. Letting the jokes slip by means letting it get a foothold in the mainstream again. "Women do girl math" replaces "girls are worse at math than boys are".

It is okay to be bad at math. It is okay to scrounge snacks for dinner. It is okay to have a difficult time with global politics. It is even okay to not want to get better at any of that if it is distressing to try. But that is on you. That is a you thing. It is not inherent to your gender. You are an individual, just like every other woman. Calling it girl math or girl pushups or saying that you throw like a girl is blaming your weaknesses on an easy scapegoat, which you will grow to resent if the pattern continues.

[rainbowsky]

Hi. You're seem so understanding and articulate it feels like you're a matured middle age man ( correct me if I'm wrong)

If yes, how does it feel to be a part of fandom and passionately stanning them because my family curse me for stanning celebrities asking me if I'm a teenager. So wanted to know your opinion

I don't know what everyone's talking about with this 'middle-aged man' stuff. For the record, I'm "29" years old! 🤥

There are so many reasons why people might try to make me feel ashamed or weird or wrong for being a BXG. Gender, age, race, sexual orientation, geographic location, political leanings. In my '29 years' on this earth I’ve learned a few really important things I recommend people reflect on a bit:

Social stigma is not about you, it’s about conformity

People who try to shame or attack you for doing something that brings you joy are usually doing so because of ignorance, social conditioning and a blind spot in their emotional intelligence. I’m putting this politely because really, people who do this should just piss off.

There are very rare exceptions where people might be justified in shaming or dissuading others - for example, when confronting hate speech or other harmful behavior - but when it comes to hobbies, interests and personal preferences, they are completely out of line.

Anyone who tries to shame, attack or dissuade you is trying to shove you back into a box that they feel comfortable keeping you in. They are trying to make themselves comfortable because you have stepped outside the status quo - you’ve stepped outside of what is deemed socially or culturally acceptable - and that tends to make people nervous.

In pretty much every culture around the globe, there is immense social pressure to conform to the norms of that group. If you step outside of what’s expected of you, no matter how much happiness stepping out might bring you, there will always be people who will try to ‘correct’ the ‘problem’ by making it undesirable for you to continue to do so.

When someone tries to shame you for being into fandom (or for pretty much anything, really), that’s what they are doing - they’re trying to make you ‘be like them’ again. They are trying to shift you back into line. To get you to conform. And while they aren’t always conscious of it, when they do that they are being total assholes.

Particularly when it’s something that brings you joy, brings you a sense of youthful enthusiasm and beauty, and makes life struggles more endurable.

There was a great quote posted here the other day by @accio-victuuri that I think sums it up really nicely:

It might seem obvious that scolding or teasing or deriding people for the joy they find in life is just a total dick thing to do, but conformity is such a powerful force that those being scolded, shamed, etc. don’t often fully grasp the wrong that’s being done to them. More often they will internalize a sense of guilt, embarrassment and shame.

It’s so easy to get sucked into believing we are wrong to do something that transgresses social/cultural norms. So much so that we will often stop what we’re doing, change our behavior, or at least try to hide it or be less open about it.

I’m here to tell you that conformity is social poison that leads us away from self-actualization and fulfillment in our lives. I’m constantly saying this, and I really strongly believe it: In a world where conformity is king, selfhood and self love are a revolutionary act.

Make no mistake about it, we have to carve out space in our world to be who we want to be and do what we want to do. No one’s just going to ‘let’ us be ourselves. Human society doesn’t generally work that way.

And that goes for every aspect of who we are. Not just fandoms, but our very identity as people. Sexual preference, gender identity, social groups or interests we want to be a part of, spiritual or cultural practices we identify with, careers we want to pursue... Anything we want to do that falls outside of the norms of the group we are in - whether it be a friend group, a family group or some other grouping of humans - we have to fight for.

It is our right to do so. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

One of the ways we can do that is by finding like-minded people to connect with. I think that’s what we all do. It’s what’s led us all here to Tumblr to share our love of GGDD.

As for the people in our lives who aren’t so like-minded, I deal with them by trying to expand their horizons. They don’t mean to be total assholes, they just aren’t self-aware of what they’re doing. They haven’t yet carved out space in their understanding of the world, for me to be a BXG and for that to be OK. I’m perfectly happy to help them to do that. 😊

You can do that too, by making a case not unlike the one I laid out above. Or you can simply ask them, “Why would you try to make me feel bad about something that brings me joy?”

Social pressuring behavior is almost never based on conscious reflection or awareness. It’s knee-jerk and subliminal.

When we ask someone to explain why they are doing something, they are forced to reflect on their motivations. They might have never done this type of self-examination before, or really tried to understand why they do the things they do. It can often lead to ‘aha’ moments and a shift in awareness and behavior.

Or at the very least it might make people realize they are being dicks and make them think twice about pressuring you a second time.

Age is a meaningless concept

No one tells you this when you’re growing up, but you never stop being you. The you that you are right in this current moment - this is the same you that you’ll be when you’re 95. How you feel inside about being you will likely never change in any major way.

In fact, almost nothing about the experience of self changes as we age. The only truly dramatic change that happens to us as we age is that other people start looking at us differently and treating us differently.

A lot of younger people seem to think of older people as ‘someone different from me’, but in truth everyone is fundamentally human, with all that implies. We have all the same hopes, feelings, pains, fears and needs as people who are younger or older than us.

This is why ‘ageism’ is a Thing just like sexism, racism, queerphobia, etc. are Things. Because age is an arbitrary distinction that can’t tell us anything meaningful about another human being.

In the same way that it’s completely awful when someone is shocked to see a female neurosurgeon or a generous Jewish person, it’s completely awful when someone is shocked to see an elder who is into music and likes to ride motorcycles. In the same way that people of different faiths, ethnicities, gender identities and sexual orientations are equal and fundamentally similar as human beings, so too are older (and younger) people fundamentally similar to all other human beings.

I look forward to the day when people don’t lose their dignity and the respect and interest of those around them as they age. Unfortunately that day is unlikely to come until/unless we find the technology to keep people looking young, because humans respond to each other based on superficialities. Most of the time when a younger person sees an older person they don’t see a fellow human, they see an old person. They respond to them based on the texture of their skin rather than the content of their character.

But the shriveled up old lady who can’t reach the prunes in aisle 5 has the same heart and spirit in her that she had at 20. She looks out through those cloudy eyes with the same bright mind she’s always had. Her heart still skips a beat when she gets a compliment from a hot guy.

If you took the time to talk to her and ask her about the things that bring her joy, you’d find she is just like you and has all the same feelings and needs and interests that she’s always had.

When I was a teenager I had no idea that when I got older I would still feel the same. I assumed that I would turn into a different person as I aged. I haven’t. I’m still me. I always will be. I might become better at processing and navigating my experiences and the world around me and I might become more self-aware and more knowledgeable and better at dealing with my emotions, but inside, the mental narrator of my life - the protagonist of my psyche - hasn’t changed at all.

It’s a difficult concept to explain. Maybe it’s something we need to experience in order to understand, but how we feel inside doesn’t change just because our hair starts to turn grey, to mutiny, and to retreat back from our foreheads. Inside I’m the same cool person strangers used to want to meet when they saw me enter a room, despite the fact that I’ve become more and more invisible as I get older.

Everyone you know is in the closet

In the closet about being gay, in the closet about being an alcoholic, in the closet about being into Pokemon, in the closet about wanting to be a lawyer, in the closet about believing in reincarnation, in the closet about being poor, in the closet about liking nail art, in the closet about hating Lee Daniels films, in the closet about wanting to be spanked because they’ve been a very, very bad boy. Etc. etc.

As people get older they don’t stop doing or feeling things, they just learn to hide it.

The little kid who squeals over a cute baby bunny will still squeal at 35. The only difference is, he might not do so as openly. People don’t stop feeling squeeful about baby bunnies. They just become really practiced at hiding it. Sometimes they hide it so deeply that they completely lose touch with those feelings, but if given the chance and freedom to explore it, they’ll find those feelings are still there.

When you really think about who the ideal person is in the minds of the people around you, and when you think about the fact that almost everyone is striving on some level to be the ideal person, and when you think about just how incredibly narrow that concept is... it starts to become really obvious why people hide who they really are.

There are always more people like you than you realize. There are also always more people unlike you than you realize. This is true in the fandom, for sure. There are definitely a lot of people older than you. A lot of people from walks of life where fandom would be frowned upon. A lot more men than will openly admit being into GG and DD. But they’re there. Don’t ever feel alone.

You do you

Depending on the practices in your region of the world, one day they’re going to put you into a box and bury you in the ground, or burn you up and scatter the ashes, or (I’ll spare you this macabre list).

We have such a limited amount of time on this earth, and it goes by incredibly fast. We endure so much in our lives, and overcome so many obstacles. We have the right to make the most of our existence, in whatever way brings us joy and meaning.

There are always going to be people who try to shit all over your parade. The older you get, the more this will happen. Start early, work hard at showing the people around you that you are going to be you and do you and they better get used to it.

This only gets harder over time. If you get started now, your life will be more fulfilling and more meaningful than if you wait for the ‘right time’. Spoiler alert: that time won’t ever come, because ‘the right time’ is something you create, not something you capitalize on. Like I said before, no one’s going to just ‘let’ you be you. YOU is something you will have to fight for every step of the way.

And life is not only more fun that way, and more fulfilling - it’s also more meaningful because you get the chance to inspire others to do the same. You can be a living example for those around you. If you can’t find it in yourself to do it for you, then do it for them.

I try to be the first person on the dancefloor at a party, when everyone is standing around awkwardly watching the lights scatter across the tiles. The guy who makes it OK for everyone else to dance. I don’t mind making an ass of myself, because I know a secret none of them know, but hopefully some of them will learn: making an ass of yourself is fun.

Despite any differences we might have, people here have made me feel very welcome. While it has its downsides, one of the great things about the internet is that it distills us down to text on a page so we can focus on what we have in common.

So, to answer your question, stanning them is fun, joyful and fulfilling. I love it. I make no apologies, even when I’m aggressively pressed to. 🙂

A great thread about the value/devaluing of fandom in society can be found here.

EDIT: Because some people are getting confused, no, I'm not 29. 😅

[sapphos-darlings]

hey! i'm kind of a baby lesbian, and i just could use a little advice... please delete this if it's not the sort of question you answer and i'm so sorry to bother you both if that's the case! so my question is, if i'm a lesbian (and i'm mostly sure i am) do i have to be/can i be attracted to nonbinary people? i've seen a lot of people saying that lesbians *have to be* attracted to nb people, but i don't really understand how that works... so sorry again if this is against your rules.

Hello, Anon! Please don't apologize, there's nothing to fear or be ashamed of here. This is Lavender, ready to help.

Oh, my dear, your sexuality doesn't work according to rules like "should be attracted to", and only you can tell if you are or "can" be attracted to someone.

Let's start with the most important thing, and that is that anyone who's trying to tell you that you have to be attracted (which often just means sexually available) to anyone is manipulating and pressuring you. That is coercion. Sexual coercion is rape. You don't ever have to prove anything to anyone with your body. Never.

You are thinking in political and ideological terms. It sounds to me like you're trying to figure out your sexuality by making a list of groups of people you're potentially attracted to, because you think saying "I'm a lesbian" is a political or moral statement that needs a disclaimer of your personal stance on every bit of discourse that surrounds LGBT identities.

You don't need to do that. No one has the right to demand explanation from you. It's the same as with people who respond to a woman's "I'm a lesbian" with stuff like "but how do you know if you haven't tried men?" or "how will you give grandkids to your parents?" These are acts of disrespect towards your identity and privacy, and what you're experiencing is this very subtle social pressure to conform and explain yourself.

Sexual orientation is an innate and biological function. It doesn't care about things like social norms, cultural practices or indeed the current hottest discourse, or what's trendy. It just is, and it works on person to person level when you meet real people in the real world.

So you're a woman who's (probably) attracted only to other women. So am I. That's what a lesbian is. It doesn't mean that I'm attracted to all women or every woman, just that all the people I'm attracted to are women.

Now, yes, things might get tricky when we consider all those people whose identities are more complex than simple sex = gender. That's something you can't necessarily see or tell about a person right away, and perhaps you don't understand or relate to the experience at all.

That's alright. You're not other people. You are you, and when you learn about your own orientation and grow confident in it, you won't think what other people's experiences, ideologies or opinions mean for you, because that's nothing.

Nonbinary people are also not a cohesive group, so making blanket statements about all of them is pretty useless, at least in this context. There are male nonbinary people, and obviously a lesbian is not attracted to them. Then there are female nonbinary people, and well, you can't know by looking if she is nonbinary or not, so you may or may not find her attractive, and then you are or are not attracted to her.

Personally I don't feel the need to say anything more than that I'm attracted to other women (or female people, if you prefer the inclusive version), and if someone wants to know if she specifically is attractive to me, she should come up to me and ask.

- Lavender