#feeling transgender as of late

[midwestgender]

i lost my old binder im so sad... i literally have no idea where it could have gone lol i searched everywhere and asked all my friends to check their houses but no luck. it was one of the older gc2b ones which were better quality than the newer ones and i like it a lot :/ but now gc2b has such a bad rep so i have to try a new brand and im nervous abt it.... i bought a spectrum one but im afraid i went a size too small estoy nervioso

[wis-art]

the L and the T love

[spinfader]

Got my tomboy vibes.

[myfriendgoo94]

😜

[roguerocketz]

and you will continue to live.

you must.

[icedroppedinparasolcider]

Momoi Airi is a Trans Woman

This is headcanon at the end of the day and there's nothing wrong with disagreeing, but the way she's written regarding her sense of identity as an idol, the choice of phrasing they use when she talks about herself in reference to others (namely Shizuku), and the connections her visual motifs provide to concepts and other characters tied to or commonly seen as trans just makes it incredibly hard for me to view her otherwise.

A lot of what I have to say is very personal to me; I'm a trans woman myself, and Airi's writing and experiences connect with me and my own transition journey in a way I haven't really seen anywhere else in media (I'm not a very prolific media consumer). So it's entirely possible a lot of this is just me projecting onto a character I care a lot about. But while I've adored Airi before this revelation, I didn't reach the level of attachment I have for her until the realisation of just how well she's written through the lens of a trans girl. Specifically one who's, for the most part, entirely socially transitioned but keeping the fact she is trans secret.

When Airi was little, she was, as she herself describes, very boyish. She'd get into physical fights with boys around the neighbourhood or at school, she'd come home most days covered in dirt and mud from playing with her majority boy friend group of the time. She was intensely defensive of her little sister, most of her fights being with possibly bigger-than-her boys because they were mean to her sister. It formed a reputation for Airi, a reputation that followed her as she began to deviate from these patterns and pivot her interests and activities hard and fast thanks to starting to watch idols on TV. She was enamoured with them, would rewatch recordings of their performances and interviews over and over so she could emulate it and be more like them. She'd stop getting into fights, stop playing with her rougher friends; everything started changing dramatically thanks to her being introduced to a new "type" of woman: an idol. Something Airi wanted to become, and was willing to change everything about her to be.

These changes weren't socially easy for her, though, with backlash coming from these old friends and classmates because of how girly she was trying to become. The idea of being a tomboy was something Airi started to consider a bad thing, a gross thing. During her Colourful Festival side-story, To You Who Yearns To Be an Idol, amidst a conversation with her younger self Airi calls the little girl a tomboy, something that makes the younger Airi immediately deflate and shy away from the conversation. It upset her to be called that, especially by an idol, something she wants to become. Which leads to the younger Airi talking about how she's been treated by her peers for changing the way she dresses and not playing the same way she used to, for changing the way she talks, with her being talked to like she's doing something horrible and wrong for simply chasing a dream of who she wants to be. And in this conversation, Airi says a particular line that changed everything for me:

This is said in response to Little Airi's repeating of what the boys in her class call her as she wears cuter, girly clothes. That she's some big, mean monster who shouldn't wear things like that, who could never become an idol. Effectively telling her that she could never be a girl because of the way she used to behave. She started as someone rough, someone harsh and dirty, that's not something she should—not something she could—change. Something we see in present day that she's largely internalised through her struggles with what it means to be an idol, her struggles with calling herself an idol.

For Airi, being an Idol and being a Girl have become synonymous with each other. Her ability to be an idol, to draw that attention, have a smile that sparkles on stage and in front of the camera, spread hope and joy to other people; this part of her identity has grown beyond her job, it's who she is as an individual. Being Momoi Airi, the second year Miyajo student, is inseparable from Momoi Airi, the ex-QT member and now member of MORE MORE JUMP! And if she can't be the image of an idol that exists in her head, that she's always viewed idols to be, that Haruka and Shizuku manage to embody, that Minori is becoming, then can Airi even really call herself as much of a person, of a woman, as them?

Airi's been in this constant uphill battle where she believes she doesn't sparkle as much as the other idols around her, so she puts more effort into learning how to make herself sparkle, but manages to convince herself that because she struggles with this, she's less of an idol than those very peers. It's in large part what Ice Drop is about, Airi's difficulty finding satisfaction with her work as an idol because it doesn't shape up to her own expectations and beliefs of what an idol "should be", because it doesn't match what she sees other idols she looks up to, like Shizuku, doing. Something also portrayed during Airi's conversation with Shizuku in Chasing the Radiance Beyond the Blue Sky, where she outright tells Shizuku that because she doesn't have the same physical appeal she has to fight harder and use different strategies to get any attention as an idol. And if Shizuku is the "perfect idol", and Airi will never be able to achieve that, can she even call herself an idol?

If she can't call herself an idol, does she even deserve to call herself a girl? Or are the harsh words of her grade school classmates right about whether she should be wearing the cutesy clothes?

A large part of Airi's struggle with this, why it's even a spiral in the first place, ties into her nature as a Solid Heart student as well as why I see so much of myself and my transfemme journey in Airi's story. It doesn't matter how many people tell you that you're enough and that you've done what you set out to do, not if every thought in your head is telling you they're wrong. According to everyone I know, I pass really well as a girl. My voice is naturally feminine, even without masking it very hard, I've basically never been misgendered since growing my hair out by strangers looking at me, I've even been told by close friends that they'll forget I'm trans because I'm just "one of the girls" to so many of them. And I appreciate all of it, so much; I'm very lucky to have had such a smooth social transition. But none of that changes who I see in the mirror, who I hear when I talk, what I feel when I wake up in the morning forced to acknowledge my body. I'll never be a "real girl", not until I fix these things, and it's entirely possible that it's impossible to truly get rid of this feeling.

That's what Airi feels regarding her identity as an idol. Everyone in the world could tell her how good an idol she is, how much hope she spread as Happy Everyday, how beautiful and bright her smile is. But that will never replace or fully mask the doubt in the back of her head about whether she's really an idol, because nothing that she used to do aligns with what she's always seen idols to be, so much of what she does today is so different from the reality of her dreams. She's not that idol, so is she even an idol at all? I'm not that girl, so am I even a girl at all? Obviously I am, and obviously she is, but it's a feeling of doubt that never goes away.

Airi needs to constantly be an idol, or she's not an idol at all. And, at least to me, this has come to mean to Airi that if she's not an idol, she's not a girl. Because all of the work she put into being cute and girly was to be an idol. If she can't accomplish that, does she even deserve to be a girl at all? Or is she just a fraud wearing a mask trying to make people laugh on TV?

[toc-the-elder]

Awh oh my god I just had a random cisgender woman sit next to me and we got talking and she asked me how old I am and she was genuinely shocked when I told her I am 30 in a month. She even asked me if I had had any work done or botox or anything like that (I haven't). Just nice things.

[21stc3nturyd1gitalb0y]

turns out, i fit in pretty well with the riot grrrls because i, too, enjoyed angrily screaming about womanhood. the difference that went over my head at the time was that, generally, most of them hated being girls due to sexism, and i hated being a girl due to gender dysphoria.

ill never forget the angry punk girls who made me who i am, even as i outgrew a subculture that centered femininity. they helped me survive my teenage years, and ill always be grateful for the introduction to intersectional feminism

[ink-flavored]

at best, they call us helpless poor lost little girls who can’t find their way in a cruel world and when we refuse their help they call us hysterical young women too lost in their own delusions to see how far they’ve strayed from the path and when we reject them they call us traitors we’ve lost our halos and become demonic men, agents of corruption angry beasts of fire and wrath that seek only to destroy their sanctity and yet— when we live, we are not respected they tape over our mouths and insist we’re mistaken when we die, we do not keep our names they’re taken from us, our last wishes thrown out with our dignity and buried in dresses and they shrug when we ask where our brothers are buried “what brothers?” they say. “those poor women will surely repent” “at the holy gates, admit to sacrilege” “they were never yours to claim” but if the body is such a sacred place we partake in the holy act of creation and your desecration of men made divine in our image is more a sin than any of us have ever been

                                       – lucifer

Poetry Taglist: @elegant-paper-collection​ @dove-actually @polyphonetic @the-ichor-of-ruination @qelizhus @liv-is

[gibbearish]

oh boy its my favorite day where nonusamericans condescendingly explain to me that the election effects other countries too and therefore i need to be even more terrified than however terrified i already am

[myfriendgoo94]

Been working out on a regular basis and the results have been good apparently 🖤

[risetherivermoon]

fkin crazy ppl would rather make an already complicated web series even more complicated by shutting down the possibility of a character being transgender

"its not realistic!" bro...u just said care and paul are the same person from alternate fkin dimensions- trans people are real

[lazy-toad]

Just awoke from a dream,, where I was at a transmasc nude beach, and entered this no good real world. What the hell. Take me back

[ricepisspee]

SO fucking funny when people pretend that misogyny is over. like girl when was the last time you went outside. cmon let's go together

[monorayjak]

So finally looked into the "Amazing Digital Circus" thing.

I quite like it. It's a type of "I don't know what the fuck is happening" type energy I enjoy.

BUT, the thing that's drawing my attention the most... is actually a head-cannon I saw someone had (that I love and have integrated into my own thoughts) and a ship the community has created.

Namely the head-cannon that Pomni is a trans-woman and the Ragatha Pomni ship.............................

no this has nothing to do with me myself being a bi trans woman myself who wishes I could create a digital body that is cute and fem............ok maybe it does a little

[tastetherainbow290]

Do you believe in human rights?

Ofc