#gender identity definitions

[lesbianjackies]

hold my hand and say it with me: jackie taylor is not a femme

[baphometsss]

This is going to come off as very bitchy but I feel like the more beautiful and Instagram perfect someone's Lavellan is, the less I can buy into their Solavellan stuff. I'm really sick of writing about this tbh but the issue of women being valued solely or ultimately based on their attractiveness is such a pervasive problem that, not only does it show in fictional works a lot, but even a lot of fans do it with their own works.

I wanna be clear that I don't think there's anything wrong with having that kind of Lavellan (unless you're focusing on how they look at the expense of developing their character I guess), but there's a couple of reasons why it suggests that the people behind them are missing the point

I think, while Solas appreciates beauty, he understands that who a person is is much more defined by their spirit; this is why he repeatedly says that he loves Lavellan's spirit and only comments on their appearance once. On a deeper level, it kind of leads into why I think he reads as very queer to me. I think making him heterosexual was a mistake when he consistently talks about people not being defined by their bodies. I'm not bi or pan so maybe this isn't my lane, but I think they sacrificed something that made more sense for his character to avoid playing into negative tropes. I get why they did it (despite not showing the same concern for other morally ambiguous bi/pan characters), but I do think his character suffered for it.

So while Lavellan being extremely beautiful doesn't exactly negate this, I think overemphasising their beauty is sort of pointless at best. There's something very satisfying about having an enby/gnc Lavellan, or a Lavellan who isn't stunningly beautiful, with Solas. A love story about two people who do not feel defined by their bodies, or indeed feel trapped by them, is what has always compelled me about them. It's a tale of two souls falling in love, becoming entwined in a space only they understand, a space that is very much non-physical. They relish that, because it's where they can be their truest selves without having to worry about how they look in a world that is overly focused on appearances. It's only by doing this, ironically, that they figure out how to be more complete people. Solas helps Lavellan to remember who they are in the face of their deification, and Lavellan helps Solas remember who he is after ages of being broken and used.

[coinger]

Tumbidflux

A "flux" identity for when your identity, including genders, pronouns, and names, shift with whatever blog you're running at the moment. New forms of your identity form every time you make a new blog. NOT plural, but can be related to plurality?

Symbol by me (tumbiflux symbol <3)

Can also be combined with other terms? Such as only having one other blog, or multiple. (Monotumbidflux and polytumbidflux.)

CREATED SPECIAL FOR ME AND PEOPLE LIKE ME, BUT ANYONE CAN USE!

[majimaisms]

queer icon majima is very strange to me DS actually really gets into how he views gender overall so it's weird ? lol

literally so true. a LOT of rambling under the cut because i have sooo many thoughts about majima's queerness and its portrayal in the games. youve opened a whole can of worms with this one

majima could not be a queer icon if his life depended on it i will die on this hill. even if he came out or even if she transitioned or Anything like his worldview and politics are so fundamentally conservative on so many crucial points and hes literally so repressed about sexuality like he could never. he could neverrrrrrrr. he needs to hashtag liberate your mind and stop basing his entire mental model of society and human relationships on The Nuclear Family and honestly completely revolutionize his thinking before he can even begin to take any of the steps necessary to becoming anything resembling a queer icon, or in fact a queer person capable of inspiring and being a positive example for literally anyone*. bro did drag once and it was with the full intention of getting hatecrimed so he'd have an excuse to get into a fight with a man he ASSUMED would be transphobic and he thinks its "demeaning" and "funny" for men to crossdress like give me a breakkkkkk. assigning him 1000 hours in the forcefem dungeon

if im being completely real with you i dont think his understanding of sexuality ever Really went beyond "romantic love is something that happens between a man and a woman" to begin with. i am however planning to use this against him in my fic but i really do think the best we're getting with majima is like. "in a queer romantic relationship but deeply heteronormative about it" im afraid. and the sad thing is he literally cant Afford to move past this even if he wanted to because the position he has situated himself in in society is an active, material obstacle to this, in some ways even more than heternormative society is for queer people in general, because hes responsible for so many people who depend on him. this is how the patriarchy (or any oppressive systemic structure) works, this is why people don't question things; there are real, material consequences to "realizing" things about yourself and society, and to revolutionizing your thinking, and the system is designed that way on purpose. majima is not in a place where he has a strong incentive to do so, the risks far outweigh the benefits for him, and he has so many coping mechanisms set in place to prevent him from looking at mirrors (wow, i wonder why that is !)

also look at how he acts with civilians vs. other yakuza. the ds substory with daigo is him treating a fellow yakuza (outranking him!) this way but the is way more open minded about "unconventional" sexuality when it comes to civilians and women -- first example that comes to mind is kaho (minato girl) from pirates, but he also displays generally open minded attitudes about gender identity and presentation in that game on other occasions. he was even like this in y0, his hostess conversations have plenty of examples of him not subscribing to social norms especially in things like "gender equality". what i mean to say is i think him being in the yakuza IS the biggest obstacle to majima developing a healthier, queerer outlook on sexuality and gender. because its structure is so fundamentally patriarchal that misogyny, transphobia, homohpobia necessarily characterize the bonds between its members. him treating daigo the way he did in that substory is an example of this, but i dont think he would approach a civilian the same way. the yakuza is interesting in this way because it creates a patriarchy within a patriarchy -- like, we do often see this behavior between men who are regular civilians, where daigo and majima couldve been any two guys you know, because its the rules of the "club" -- the social club that is "manhood" as patriarchal society defines it. but the way yakuza place themselves Above civil society creates a different, more exclusive club and it has the same rules, and this means they are not exactly in the same social class as civilian men. so i do think majima might be more open minded re: civilian queer people in general, which is an interesting cognitive dissonance

not that there havent been queer icons who were FAR from being paragons of socially progressive thinking btw (plenty!! thanks to how rampant misogyny is even in queer spaces) but if we're talking about whether or not he would "deserve" the title of "queer icon".... *like i understand majima has helped many many rgg fans come to terms with their own transness, but i think its important not to project our own political beliefs and worldviews onto characters who frankly just. do not share them. reminder that majima is, CANONICALLY, a cis man who was born in ✨1964✨ who divorced his 18 year old wife after hitting her because she ABORTED HIS BABY. he thinks getting het married and having kids is like, the pinnacle of human happiness, forever inaccessible to him -- or he at least believes that's a morally correct thing to believe, but his double standards on this go SO deep that i Have to read it as internalized shame on his part. the cognitive dissonance is insane. you do NOT want to be het married with kids! its just a "dream" hes been sold that he couldnt really let go of because theres nothing else to replace it. because. again. cant afford to come to terms with his queerness

and while im at it i do think a lot of the fandoms revering goromi as some kind of like... paragon of transfem visibility or something (yes, even some of the people who just read this and went "well i definitely dont do that!") is also a result of this "projection" because theyre assuming majima is doing things in a way they personally find agreeable or understandable. but the fact of the matter is that goromi IS a transmisogynistic caricature, and even if shes the transmisogynistic caricature of the writers, technically, she is also majima's as far as in-universe analysis goes. it was not an exploration of gender in good faith on his part at all, and i really do think the fandom's unquestioning treatment of her (and majima) as a "queer icon" is nothing more than transphobia and homophobia and misogyny coming from the queer community itself, which, unfortunately, happens all the time. this is not meant to shit on anyone btw but i do urge everyone to not uncritically accept portrayals of queerness in media -- just because *you* have progressive ideas and can read things from that lens doesn't mean the majority of the people who engage with the same source material will, or that it was intended to be read that way. for most fans, a lot of the portrayals of queerness in rgg will do nothing more than reinforce pre-existing transphobic (especially transmisogynistic!) and homophobic attitudes of the audience. sure, you CAN read everything majima does in a way that *would* qualify him as a queer icon, but also, like, what if the world was made of pudding?

[bigmanfrog]

it sucks that i have to narrow down my identity to a cishet friendly description to be accepted in most places

most people in my life just think i’m a trans man, and even that’s too hard for them to accept

i’ve had numerous trans people - including people who don’t conform to societies standards of what it is to be trans, tell me that i’m just a trans guy and should stop with the ‘stupid’ explanations

im a butch, im a dyke, i’m a lesbian, yes i use he him pronouns, yes i’m on t, yes i’ve had top surgery, no i’m not a woman, that doesn’t make me any less butch or any more of a man and i’m sick of people telling me it does

[aroaessidhe]

2025 reads / storygraph

Kiss Me, Maybe

contemporary romance

an ace lesbian has an accidental thirst trap go viral and uses the attention to talk about her experiences - which ends up developing into a silly idea to do a scavenger hunt where the winner gets to be her first kiss

she starts to plan it, with the bartender she’s had a crush on for years, and realises she’s starting to fall for said bartender - and as their relationship develops so does her understanding of her identity & connection towards her community

grey-ace lesbian MC

arc, out may 6!

[serpentface]

What's the Wardi cultural take on Akoshos sleeping with/partnering with/marrying other Akoshos?

It's not highly regulated to a degree that there are overwhelming cultural norms about it. There's a lot of societal focus on akoshos being theoretically suitable sexual partners for both men and women due to being dual-gendered, but not to an extent that relationships with One Another are stigmatized.

They also largely get to escape from the most severe concerns about penetrator/penetrated power dynamics because they're not regarded as Men (they're regarded as dual-gendered, and they're a female social class on every practical level), there's no status of manhood to Lose by receiving sexual penetration. The only real thing you see in that department is people assuming that one acts as 'the man' and one acts as 'the woman', but this is largely due to preoccupation with a notion of sex being Penetration With A Penis (and that Penetration With A Penis means that one person is in a Man's Role and one person is in a Woman's Role). But this will not be regarded as unnatural as in same-gender male relations, akoshos will Have to take up a position in this sexual dichotomy if they want to have Real Sex (Penetration With A Penis) with each other, and this is not unnatural and doesn't involve gaining or losing status since they are simultaneously male and female, not men.

So like you might see individual culture critics finding stuff to nitpick about it as their annoyance of the week or a singular Guy here or there who thinks it's weird, but this isn't a widespread norm. The vast majority of people don't give a shit about akoshos having sex with each other. The worst thing you're likely to experience Solely by virtue of being in an akoshos-akoshos relationship is someone asking you (probably with genuine curiosity) which one does the man stuff and which one does the woman stuff.

Akoshos also don't experience Hard expectations for marriage (though there are societal pressures that make marriage an attractive safety net all the same, ESPECIALLY marriage to a man) so unofficial life-partnerships between akoshos are pretty much the Only same gender partnerships between unwed people that are going to go unquestioned. ((Sworn brotherhood is technically a same gender life partnership for men that is Functionally similar to marriage (in that it's a kin-making practice between unrelated adults), but the tradition is Built upon the assumption that both parties will be married to women and that a primary goal of this kinship is to provide security for both parties' wives and children)). Marriage obligations in general are more lax in the economically secure but not Wealthy lower mercantile classes (as obligations to support and perpetuate one's family are universal, but these obligations can be filled simply by having at least One son who can get hitched, and marriages in the lower classes have no political functions and therefore there's less reason to ensure All your children are wed (there's still incentives like dowry, but this is not desperately needed when a family is economically secure)). So akoshos in this class group tend to have a Lot more freedom in terms of their life arrangements and chosen partners (though still experience the limiting frameworks of structural misogyny in other capacities).

The only thing that is out of the picture is akoshos/akoshos marriage. Marriage in this society has a predominantly reproductive function, the concept of reproductively non-viable marriages is generally considered absurd. This is not JUST this culture's form of homophobia, as marriage is a very practical arrangement at its core - both in a reproductive capacity and as bedrock for the patriarchal blood-kinship family system that forms the core social unit. The idea of same gender marriage isn't just absurd because 'ewwww weird' it's like, that Cannot work within this system, it Cannot fill core functions of what a marriage intends to do here, the ways on which marriage and kinship are BUILT makes same gender marriage practically (rather than just socially) untenable.

The sole exception to the 'marriage = reproductively viable" rule is that akoshos can be married to men (which in practice is almost always as a remarriage after a man has secured At Least an heir). This has a Little bit of internal logic here in that they perform predominantly female social roles (thus are suited to being a wife, even if they can't bear children) (and also on practical levels of them having the same legal status as women) but it's really more of a 'this is just how it's always been' kind of thing. A lot of the older pre-Wardi identity dual-gender roles that got mashed together under the 'akoshos' name would have involved marriage to a man as a second wife/concubine, in addition to his primary wife who would bear his children. Men potentially having multiple spouses has not been retained as a cultural practice, but the notion that an akoshos Can be a wife to a man has survived into modern day legal and doctrinal practices around marriage.

So like this being said, marriage as it is legally defined is only between a man and a woman, a man and an akoshos, or a woman and an akoshos. In practice the latter two are comparatively VERY rare- a man/akoshos marriage cannot provide children (though an akoshos can practically fulfill all other obligations and duties of a wife), a woman/akoshos marriage Can provide children (and while akoshos cannot function as a male heir, these children Will take their akoshos-parent's family name (though the wife retains her father's family name)), but akoshos are legally grouped with women in terms of rights and privileges (including being permanently under legal domain of their father unless they have been legally handed off to a male husband) and Cannot provide hard power patriarchal support that this family system is built upon and therefore depends upon, which makes these marriages socio-economically insecure. They can obviously still be a good partner and parent, but this is not the same as having the Legal hard power of a patriarch.

Akoshos marrying each other would be reproductively and socially nonviable, and is treated as a similarly absurd concept to a man marrying a man or a woman marrying a woman. It's just not a part of the marriage and kinship framework, it's not a thing that you can Do.

[cynicalmusings]

[shoezuki]

i wanna depict sampo in my fics as being queer in some way but i wanna keep it undefined yknow. like i don't wanna write him jus saying 'i'm genderqueer' or smthin like that so i been tryin to sprinkle in some bits into some his dialogue of him refering to himself as other than a dude sometimes. idk if its working but i Did have one comment on the doctor fic bout it and i am still riding that high

[queeringclassiclit]

Éowyn

from The Lord of the Rings series by J. R. R. Tolkien (1954-1955)

submitted by anon

[paradoxspace-mogai]

‧₊˚✩ Brotransmascic

[Plain Text: Bro Trans Mascic /end ID]

When somebody is Bro Strider and is transmasc or when somebodys transmasculinity directly relates to Bro Strider.

This gender has no implied AGAB.

[weeb-polls-with-pip]

Anime Awakenings Round 1 Side B Poll 14

Propaganda:

Revy -

"made my buddy realize she liked girls. probably helps that she kills people by wearing very little clothing."

Medicine Seller -

"Well, I'm not actually a part of the LGBTQ+. I think. Uhhhhh

I’m not necessarily surrounded by homophobic people in my life, in fact as an art student I have a fair share of LGBTQ friends. I’ve always been that straight friend who everyone thinks is a lesbian or Najime (KCC) kind of gender, but I’ve never been attracted to girls and I’ve never felt like I was anything other than a girl. Well, we’ll get back to the latter soon.

I watched Mononoke; Karakasa.

I love Kon Kusuriuri. I want him. I want to BE him. I want both at the same time and it’s infuriating. I want his gender, the kind where he’s so proudly and unbudgingly feminine while still being so masculine too. His deeper voice fits surprisingly well with his character design. God I want to be an unabashedly shameless twink that busts ghosts while flirting with men and women in an eccentric manner.

Here’s the thing. He’s 185 cm. I’m 160. Okay, no biggie. But it gets a bit personal here with my own body image issues. I like being a girl, I like guys. But I’ve only ever liked guys for how they looked. I am so jealous. I want their stick legs, okay. The fact that they have no ass. Literally, I want that. I want to be a guy who chooses to be feminine, not a girl who is feminine because she has to be. It makes no sense. I’m confused. And my body type isn’t the masculine kind that’s for sure. I could never be Kon. It’s depressing. I’ll never be him, and I have to live with it.

Honestly, I have never actually thought of dating a guy, can’t even imagine it. Whenever I see a straight couple, I never see myself as the girlfriend who’s giggling away. I see the boyfriend, smiling and walking tall, and I think: I want a girlfriend, and I want to be this person for her.

But I’m short, I’m admittedly pretty but not in the way that I want to be. I want to be androgynous, I want people to be confused on whether I’m a girl or a guy. I wanna be tall enough that I can be a guy, but short enough that I can still be a girl. Everything could be fixed, maybe, if my body was just different

When I draw Kon, outline his legs and his arms, I always feel like I’m just drawing who I want to be. I want him. I want his gender. I don’t know if I ever can have his gender.

I don’t know what I want anymore, I always thought I was sure (maybe) but now that Kon is here I’m just confused. Is it because I’m not as cis as I thought I was, or is it because of my body dysphoria? I’m too much of a coward to consult any irl lgbtq friends on this, so I’m resorting to a tumblr poll. lol

Am I in denial right now. Initially I was doing this form for fun but now I’m literally reeling from wtf I just wrote, because I’ve never put it into words before. Am I cooked gang?

Damn you, kusuriuri."

[in-tua-deep]

Book recommendation for yall! Found this in the library and checked it out bc I was a curious. It’s a really interesting look at the lives of women in the UK and the lesbian community, and has lots of chunks of stories from the various folks who were interviewed

The stories are very honest and very interesting! It has a lot of different answers to questions such as “how do people conceptualize themselves when they don’t have the language to do so” and is super insightful, I think a lot of it is applicable to non-UK folk as well

If your local library has it, definitely give it a read!

[thisonemess]

What do you call it when you're a girl or woman but also you don't feel human but you also like all the girly things but you also feel kinda weird when you think of yourself as a woman or are being called one but masculine terms feel more wrong, but gender-neutral terms kinda too? Like, when it's more "Yes I exist in a female body" but you feel more like an alien or ghost than a human woman?

Asking for a friend👉👈

[mantisgodsdomain]

Now that we are being followed by people, we need to make some thoughts and opinions clear so that people are not later Shocked And Disgusted or whatever by thoughts we have held for many years. We think it's weird and also bad to treat queer people like they're a different species from cishet people, and we think that treating things like Having A Sexuality makes a character better than if they have a different sexuality is bad no matter what way you put it.

We also think that, if in your setting queer folks are widely accepted and straight isn't a "default", it may be worth noting that, say, a straight woman might need just as much self-discovery to work out she's straight that a lesbian does nowadays. In the same manner that, in Ace Attorney, Larry Butz needs to tell Phoenix that no matter how many photos of handsome men he shows him, he's tried, he's just not attracted to men,

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Pluralities

sci-fi novella

a burned out 20-something with premonitions has a gender-questioning journey, after quitting their job and becoming friends with benefits with a trans guy

with a parallel narrative about a runaway alien prince in a space empire and his complicated friendship with his sentient spaceship friend

audiobook arc from netgalley!