#gender-nonconforming doctor who

[notjustateaboy]

yes sir, this gender right here. I need this.

[thedoctor-and-donna]

Happy Pride to The Doctor

[grandadtwelve]

I have thoughts abt the doctor participating in practices that were previously exclusive to members of a sisterhood more than once.

[edenfenixblogs]

I love how they talk about Rose’s gender in the new Doctor Who. Like there was no abusive and cruel misgendering up or big coming out moment.

It was just a well meaning grandma who was already doing well briefly mentioning about how she wanted to do even better and having a slip up because of how past tense works. Then she immediately apologized, self corrected, and nobody ever slipped up again.

And it all happened without her even in the room!!!! The respect they were showing wasn’t performative or just for the sake of her feelings while she was present. It was how those who love her conduct themselves when she isn’t present.

There is never a moment where there was ever any doubt that she was loved and wanted exactly how she is.

G-d. I’m so glad Davies is back in charge in Whoville (this is what I call the whoniverse. It amuses me).

[tpwrtrmnky]

We need to be able to discuss the conditions of trans people who want, need, or are already doing medical transition without first apologizing to everyone outside of that demographic.

The men, the women, the nonbinary people, the genderqueer ones, the genderfluid ones, the xenogender ones. The ones who are repressing the need so hard that it's fucking with their memory. The ones who downplay it into just a "want" and think they'll be taking up resources. The ones who've stabilized to a point where they just need the supply of hormones to stick around. The ones who have to worry about customs every time they place the order. The ones who've had to take on crushing debt to afford life-saving surgeries. The ones who didn't have that chance and spend their free time fundraising for themselves. The ones who sit through hours of painful electric shocks to their faces and will have to keep doing it for the foreseeable future until the hairs are gone.

The nonbinary people whose medical needs are so downplayed even in trans communities that some of you fuckers think centering medical transition is inherently enbyphobic. The nonbinary people who have to lie to their doctors to get help in a medical system that thinks their needs are somehow intrinsically different from those of binary trans people. The nonbinary people who need medical interventions that exist but are unavailable due to nothing but institutional negligence.

The young transitioners who've never lived as anything other than their gender, at risk of having to go through the wrong puberty because the sentiment that you could just be gender nonconforming instead is being wielded in texts such as the Cass review to justify the suppression of medical transition.

The group of trans people with transition-related medical needs is a huge segment of the trans community that is seriously vulnerable to political attacks, denied support of any kind in large parts of the world, and for some absolutely terminally online reason expected to walk on eggshells to avoid coming off as transmedicalist.

Some transmedicalists on the internet are mean sometimes. Get the fuck over it and recognize the form that attacks on the trans community are taking now, before the nonmedical form of transness is forced to become the only available option, and then targeted for further suppression.

[catboybiologist]

Biologists: so this person has XY chromosomes and some indication of past masculinization, but is clearly medically and biologically female in many other ways, resulting in dominantly female physiology that is represented in numerous ways

Some guy: see, you drooling liberal cuck? Biology says you're either XX or XY and there's only two genders 😎

Archeologist: so this person has a bone structure that generally overlaps with male metrics, but is placed with artifacts, clothing, and burial implements consistent with women, indicating that they were a woman within the society they lived in.

Some guy: see, you drooling liberal cuck? When archeologists dig up your bones they'll say you're a man 😎

Historian: so the modern language and connotations we associate with transgender individuals was really only solidified in the 20th century due to major prejudice and setbacks. Before that, there were many instances across largely independent cultures of what we would call both transgender people and gender nonconforming cis people, often as separate concepts. The language used to identify them is often messy, however, and has been permanently altered by the way we interpreted and translated it in our own society.

Some guy: see, you drooling liberal cuck? History says that this gender stuff is a modern millennial invention that just popped out of nowhere 😎

Psychologists: trans people are at much higher danger of mental illness due to the combined stress of dysphoria and the constant barrage of transphobia present in our society. They should have access to mental healthcare as a result.

Some guy: see, you drooling liberal cuck? Psychology says that these gender people are just mentally ill 😎

Doctors: so while HRT does have some side effects, they are extremely minor, especially compared to similar medicine. The regret rate for it is less than 1%, lower than even some physically life saving medical treatments.

Some guy: see, you drooling liberal cuck? This medicine is poisoning our kids with vile side effects and there are people who regret it 😎

[mooncaps]

Gender 2: Questioning Boogaloo

Alright, I'm gonna try to pack the rest of my thoughts and feelings about my gender into one long post so I don't keep cluttering up everyone's feeds with my useless emotional distress. No promises though.

I keep coming back around to the questions: Do I actually want to be a girl, and for what reasons?

It's gonna be lengthy post, but maybe it'll be interesting for some of you. I'd like to feel seen and understood in these quandaries, maybe even get some advice on some of it, but I'm hesitant to ask that of anyone. If you're interested in a journey deep into my gender-confused psyche, my history, and the insecurities I have surrounding the topic, then this is the post for you. And even if no one reads all this, I've gotta process and express all this stuff. At least it'll be a record I can look back at, if nothing else.

Alright, now that that's out of the way, *picks up shovel, points it at myself,* time to dig into this bitch.

When I look back at the above post in 2023, I'm marveling at how confident I sound about all of it. I feel so uncertain now. About where I am and also about some of the things I expressed back then.

And that was January 1st, 2017. I had barely clawed my way out of daily suicidal ideation only to be utterly gut-punched by new horrors. It wasn't even two full months after the election...that election. Did I have confidence back then? I don't remember feeling like a confident person. I don't remember feeling like much of a person at all. My tone is confident in that post though. At a guess, maybe I drafted some of it before the election; I think I had a little confidence for a brief window of time pre-election. I'm not sure how much of the confidence in that post was me leaning into it, putting on confidence because you're supposed to be confident about these things, or how much of it was real confidence. Why can't I remember what it felt like writing that post? I can read my words, but I can't connect to what I was feeling when I wrote them. Parts of it still ring familiar, but there are also parts I'm looking at more critically.

In that old post I said I was flattered by being mistaken for a girl. I expressed dissatisfaction about my face, voice, and shoulders making people see me differently. I talked about seeing myself in Bella while failing to connect with Beau, and that fact still raises questions for me today. The thing that started this gender journey was learning about trans people. I had vagina envy as a child and I talked about that in the post where I said several times that I'm not a girl. For the second time in recent memory I'm reminding myself of that post about the flower and the old shoe. Did I really feel convicted in saying I wasn't a girl or was I just trying to convince myself? When I set the record straight about not being a girl, I said I felt uncomfortable about encroaching on a space that didn't belong to me.

Was it my low self worth giving me impostor syndrome about it? Or is it genuinely not where I belong? Have I lost that confidence and become untethered from the socially constructed elements of gender because I so rarely socialize? Or do I rarely socialize because I feel like I'm not the right gender to socialize the way I want to? Have I lost that confidence because I'm drifting into something I'm not? Does the grass just look a little greener on the other side of the fence? Am I fascinated with the road not taken purely because I didn't take it, or because I truly wish I was there? Is my gender just genuinely such a moving target that I'll never settle on one for a prolonged period of time? Or is that just ADHD brain always wanting something new? Or I guess it could be both; it could be that my ADHD brain shapes how I feel about gender.

If I had a magical shapeshifting body, I wouldn't mind my gender being a moving target. I have this body though, and changing it would take a lot of work. And it could end up feeling like a lot of fruitless work if my identity changes again.

Is it really me if I'm too afraid to work for it?

I know people like to say there are no rules and there's no right way to be any gender, but I can barely even take care of myself, let alone make myself look presentable. Can I be a girl with four-to-seven day stubble on her face? Wearing hats to cover her male pattern baldness? With hair on her back and belly that she has neither the energy to manage nor the money to remove? Those things don't make me feel feminine. I don't feel like I have the right to stand here in this hairy, hulking, monstrous, masculine body and say "actually I'm a girl," even if I sometimes wish I could be. I'm still not even sure if I really want to be a girl or just do femme presentation, but I don't really feel like I can handle either in any kind of consistent way.

Am I better suited to admiring beauty than to being and feeling beautiful? Certainly being ugly sounds easier and trying to make this body the kind of beautiful I wish it could be sounds like an uphill losing battle. I worry that even if I could get good at femme presentation, it would still feel like a costume. I don't feel like I can be good enough to be a woman. Not good enough in body and not good enough in mind to place myself in the ranks of people so amazing and beautiful.

What I think I want is a world where all people are truly, completely, 150% treated as equals, because then my gender wouldn't be particularly relevant. Or the magical shapeshifting body, because then it wouldn't take so much effort to change how I look and how people perceive me. Or a world where I could be free of my low energy brain and/or free from capitalist financial pressures, because then I would actually feel like I can use my energy on my gender presentation.

A lot of it comes down to energy. I only have so much of it and I have to use most of it to survive. When I let my facial hair grow, it's not so much about wanting a beard as it is about not having the energy to fight a beard. And I've tried, at times, to make the best of this masculine flesh-prison. To find some kind of handsome that would be satisfying for me. There have been times when I've purposely grown a beard and tried to find a satisfying manly look, figuring if I'm stuck with a beard then I may as well try to make it a good one. The idea that I could have a face where facial hair doesn't grow was not a thought that ever occurred to me after puberty. Considering that possibility has given me much to think about. In the meantime, low effort masc and high effort masc are both bearded on me, and my rudimentary attempts at femme are stubbly, because this thing just grows whether I want it to or not. Eventually I stopped putting effort into my appearance (or my life in general) because I started feeling like no amount of effort could get me the appearance I wanted (or the life I wanted.)

So I guess I just want it to be easier. I don't want to have to struggle against my own body, but I do wish my body could look different. I wouldn't say I love my body, but I am essentially used to it. I'm so tired of working so hard for everything. I don't even have all that much, or do all that much, but it drains the hell out of me in this low dopamine brain.

I don't feel like I'm strong enough to pursue my dreams and heal my inner child. And not just because I'm pretty sure my state's government would literally crucify me for trying. Because of me. The energy needed for this kind of work is not something I've had in my brain any time in the last thirteen years, maybe longer. I can barely find the energy to keep myself alive most days, let alone have any left over for the pursuit of happiness. And then there's also the bigotry. I don't wanna fight. I wanna rest.

Does what I wish I could look like matter if I can't achieve it? I do wish I could look different, but how serious is that wish if I can't find the drive to work hard for it?

And even if I could achieve high femme, passing presentation, what do I expect to get out of it? Why am I drawn to this idea of being and being seen as feminine?

There are parts related to feminine beauty as an art form that I'm drawn to (probably in multiple ways) and there are parts related to social positioning due to how I'm perceived based on my post-pubescent sex characteristics.

I think I'd find joy in being a woman, in being seen and treated the way women are...the positive things at least. No reasonable person enjoys misogyny and the toxic stuff. In a world without toxic men, I think I'd really like being one of the girls. If I could be a respected girl, I think I'd enjoy being a girl.

I think about the socially constructed elements of it. I get anxious about describing or showing my appearance, even on this progressive platform. I've never really hidden the fact that I'm AMAB, but it's also not something I've advertised or something I like to bring up very often. I'm sure most of you just think of me as Korra in Sailor Mercury's outfit. If I dispel that illusion and point out that I'm just a fat, ugly dude, will that ruin everyone's image of me? Will it make people treat me differently? Or abandon me altogether? Sometimes I wonder if I'm just lonely and think being a woman (especially a pretty woman) would draw more people toward caring about me. There are other social aspect too, but attention is a factor, at the very least. And I'm sure that's not really a good mindset to have about it.

And I've had to ask myself if I'm just afraid to let myself be a straight, cis man because of how much everyone I admire dunks on straight, cis men. At the same time, there's plenty of shit that self-identified straight, cis men do that I'm willing to dunk on too. The more a man centers straight and cis as his identity, the more likely I am to disagree with him on many topics. I don't relate to whatever macho nonsense those guys are huffing. I don't want to be like those guys. As was true in the 2017 post, no matter what my gender is, it continues to be important to me that I stay aware of the ways male privilege and the other factors of being raised and socialized as male have affected my life. I don't want to be toxic, but I could be a man without being toxic, couldn't I? Or is there really something deeper within me that wants to be another gender for more reasons than just not being this thing that's the object of ridicule?

If the world really were equal, if I would be treated the same way no matter what my biological sex, gender identity, or gender presentation were, then I probably wouldn't care very much about any of those factors. I think I'd still wish to be prettier, just for the sake of it, but I'm not sure if I would feel so drawn to the idea that I might need to fight my own body to make it look a different way so people would perceive me differently. Because I do feel restricted in the ways I can socialize, in ways that I think I wouldn't be if I were a girl, or if I lived in a society where all genders were perceived and treated equally. I'd still have my aesthetic preferences, but if my social position weren't impacted by what I look like, then would I care as much about what I look like? If I could socialize the way I'd like to, if I could be loved and cared for the way I'd like to, regardless of how my gender is perceived, regardless of whether I'm ugly or pretty, then would my gender matter to me? Would being pretty matter to me? My low energy brain would probably just settle into the easier road, if the socially constructed parts didn't matter.

But my appearance is connected to social positioning. I can't change that. I don't live in a world where all genders, sexes, or presentations are treated equally. And whether I'm gender noncomforming, nonbinary, fluid, or a woman, all of those are perceived differently and treated differently than typical men. I, alone, as an individual in a society, don't have the power to make society treat me any other way if I look like a man. But I could try to control what I look like. And even independent of how I'd like to be perceived and treated, I am drawn to exploring feminine beauty. I think it's an interesting form of art and expression that I wish I could pull off. And I think I'd probably fit a little better in my society as one of the girls.

But the question remains: Will I still feel that way in a year? Five years? Ten? Thirty? Do I want to grow into an old woman or is this just some mid-life crisis vanity project making me want to be young and pretty? Would I be just as eager to be a young and handsome man? Or young and androgynous?

I'm realizing that I'm having a hard time picturing a future…as any gender. Old man. Old woman. Old androgynous nonbinary person. I can't form a clear mental picture of what any of those futures would look like on me. Is that a sign of fluidity? Or something else?

I'm haunted by the idea of changing my mind. Because that's what ADHD brain does. It's constantly shifting the goalposts. "Well, that made me happy for a while, but now this thing will me make me happy. Now another thing. And another thing. And another thing. And back around to an earlier thing. And now another brand new thing." Even the gender post above, this thing that apparently brought me confidence, happiness, and inner peace in the face of overwhelming darkness...I can't find those feelings anymore. If the confidence I felt back then feels foreign to me now, then how can I trust that anything I'm feeling today won't evaporate in another few years?

Who am I beneath the trauma responses? Who am I beneath the people pleasing and conflict avoidance? Who am I beneath envying other people's joyous lives and what do I genuinely want in my own life? Who am I beneath the lies I tell myself and which ones even are the lies?

Sometimes I feel like I'm mostly hollow. There's maybe a small percentage of a core me and then the rest just gets filled in with whatever mood or emotional dysregulation I'm feeling, with whatever fandom or fixation is on my mind, with whatever task is needed from me. Or maybe like I'm a sponge. I've got my squishy side and my abrasive side, but the rest is whatever I absorb, and if there's nothing to absorb then I dry out. Also I'm pretty worn down and possibly growing mold inside.

Do I only feel like I'm nonbinary when I'm absorbing that from others? Do I only feel like I could be a GNC dude when I'm watching GNC dudes? Do I only feel like I could be genderfluid when I'm watching genderfluid YouTubers talk about their experiences? Do I only feel like I might be a woman when I'm hyperfocusing on women?

Am I lost in a quest to make myself whole, or am I on the verge of fracturing into a dissociative system? And is that because many things are genuinely me? Is that because of ADHD brain telling me to want new things all the time? Or is that because I'm trying to be both what makes me happy and the people pleaser?

And who am I trying to please? My religious family? Some abstract idea of people who I imagine will tell me I'm not good enough at being a woman or being a femboy or being queer? Am I somewhere in the middle of all that, drifting between all that, or am I just in denial about where I really belong?

I looked back at Kaitlyn's slam poem and the line "the first time I opened the door to the possibility of being myself I found a treasure map I left for myself back when I was a kid" is sticking out to me this time.

When I wrote the gender post above, as 2016 became 2017, I don't think I was looking closely enough at my inner child. I recognized some signs of putting on masculinity like a costume, imitating other men, but I think I was overlooking other aspects. The treasure map I left for myself as a kid needs to include the joy on my face in those Ariel and witch costumes, the empowerment I felt belting out "Bitch" by Meredith Brooks, the comfort I felt listening to "This One's for the Girls" by Martina McBride, the fact that I liked wearing oversized shirts or my mom's nightgowns as if they were dresses, and definitely the little dress I kept locked in a suitcase for over twenty years for reasons I couldn't explain to myself.

I knew about that Halloween memory; I never forgot about that dress. So why didn't I want to pull it out and revisit that memory back when I was in the process of defining myself as nonbinary?

Sometimes I wonder if I'm putting too much stock in a silly Halloween costume idea I had nearly 30 years ago. I think there was something real behind it though. And when I try to remember what it was like back then, how I felt in that dress, I feel peace. And I think there's a reason I can't remember exactly why I chickened out and switched to a ninja costume. I probably repressed the memory of whatever made me change my mind because it probably felt every bit as traumatic for me as the repressed memories of abuse I endured a few years earlier.

And even in spite of all that, I still can't quite read the map I left for myself. It's been so long that parts of it have worn through. I'm still not sure if I felt like I was a girl or if I just wanted to be free to be girly, feminine, without fear of being judged for having a girlish spirit and a boyish body.

The doubts keep gnawing at me from every angle. Was I too focused back in 2017 on the signs that supported the nonbinary identity, while missing the signs of a female identity? Was it confirmation bias? Or is that what I'm doing now? Zeroing in on the things that line up with femininity while overlooking things that could tell me I'm not actually a trans girl. I still can't tell if I'm talking myself into it or talking myself out of it.

I'm not sure if I'm leaning toward genderfluid because I'm afraid to be a trans girl or leaning toward trans girl because I'm afraid to be fluid, but I'm realizing that there are fears connected to both. Does that mean I'm not either? Yet there are also appealing things about both. I can't seem to navigate this tangle. Although I can say that the idea of being a man forever sounds like the worst of all the options. I can fake it, pass as a man, let everyone assume my AGAB is me. It would be easy, at least in the physical ways. But the idea of being a man doesn't make me feel excited to live my life. And I haven't internally thought of myself as one for many years now. Even when I try to conceptualize myself as fluid, I don't go further on the male side of the spectrum than a little bit demi-boyish.

I think the female body is so much cooler than the male body. It seems like such a better canvas for customization. I used to just think my draw toward women meant I was heterosexual. I was drawn to girls, but was I perhaps steered a little bit toward crushing on them? Did I just admire or want to socialize with them and adults went "ooh, sounds like somebody has a crush" and then I internalized the idea that that's what crushes were? And then later in life I thought my draw toward women was just aegosexual attraction, but now I question if it was because I actually want to be a girl (and still probably also a mostly-female-attracted aegosexual.)

There are men I can look at and think "well, if I have to be a man, then that'd be a decent enough look." There are even a few who make me think "that could be fun." But there aren't really men I can look at and think "I would prefer to look like that over looking like a woman." Even women who are barely put together, in light-to-no makeup, messy hair, and a hoodie, look way better to me than the gremlin who lives in my mirror. Even women doing masc presentation seems like a more appealing aesthetic to me than just being a dude. The only guys I'd really want to look like would be male-identified crossdressers who have enough skill at it (and natural features) to essentially pass as women, like F1nn5ter and Rynali.

But that's still ultimately the same goal: look like a woman. They're just the ones who made me realize it was possible to do that to an AMAB body without estrogen. And regardless of gender, I need to accept that I can't be others; I have to be me. So what kind of me do I want to be?

I like feminine looks, I think both in terms of how I want to look and what I'm attracted to. I think I'd also like a lot of the social elements of being female. I'm not sure if I'd truly never ever want to be a man again sometime, but I definitely don't like the idea of being stuck as one. And I guess parts of that do sound a little more like genderfluid than trans girl. I'm not sure though. I'm still not 100% sure if what I feel falls under the category of dysphoria. Even if it does, I wonder if I'm truly genderfluid and only dysphoric sometimes, or if I'm always dysphoric and sometimes I just get distracted or dissociated enough to not care about my physical presence. The fact that I keep feeling differently about it sounds more like fluid, doesn't it?

Sometimes I think I really am fluid and I need to figure out how best to make that work. Other times I think I'm probably always a girl and just getting dissociative about it to avoid the dysphoria. Is the fact that sometimes I feel less connected to femininity and sometimes I feel more connected to it just part of a cycle of fear and dissociation? Sometimes I think I'm fluctuating between masculine and feminine, but sometimes I think I'm fluctuating between feeling and not feeling. And I probably shouldn't be conceptualizing either one of those as being tied to any particular gender. I can be a dead inside girl, or a feeling boy, so that shouldn't be my metric for my gender identity. Is it fluidity or is it just varying degrees of feeling my feelings and running from my feelings? Is something in the gender nonconforming area more my speed? Is trans girl with fluctuating emotional problems the right fit? Is it still just a nebulous kind of nonbinary? Or is it truly fluid?

I think if I could keep up with it, I'd probably enjoy the fluctuations. Sometimes I feel like I'm meant to be a shapeshifter, destined for it somehow. If I could easily align my appearance with my feelings, I would be less stressed about my feelings taking me on a rollercoaster ride. It would probably even be fun to shift into different presentations and physicality, if it were easy.

And I didn't always feel distressed about my masculine features. I do have some memories of being excited to look manly and handsome. I remember getting leg hair and facial hair and wanting to show them off. Looking back, I think it was more about wanting to be good at performing masculinity, and praised for it, than about sincerely wanting to be masculine. And maybe parts of it came from ADHD brain, being engaged by the newness of it.

And I gave it my best effort for a little while. I think I had a little joy at times in feeling like I was satisfyingly masculine. But sometimes I question whether that effort was just about making the best of a cage I never wanted to live in. I didn't build the cage and there's very little I can do to reshape it. I just live here. Enduring in my cage because the idea of escape is too frightening. I do my best to cope with this cage in the hopes that someday there might be something worth coping for. But how much of who I am in the cage is who I really am?

There are some of my old pictures that I think look more like I'm trying to pass as a boy than like an actual boy.

I think the pictures that still make me smile are the ones where I feel like I actually succeeded at it.

Would I still be interested in feminine presentation if I felt like I could still look like that? I was interested in femme presentation before I reached that age. And I think even at and around that age I would've accepted an excuse to do something feminine and play it off as a joke.

I kind of internalized that idea as I developed. I could be girly as a joke, as long as I wasn't sincere about it. Then my peers wouldn't tease me (as much) and my grandmother wouldn't worry about (that part of) how I was turning out. Then that internalized idea evolved into trying to make wacky my brand. Even teen me takes on a nostalgic glow compared to my empty adult shell. At least teen me wasn't so afraid to be weird and childish.

Physically speaking, being my younger self would feel like an improvement over my current physical state. I have not taken very good care of this body because I spent most of my life not caring very much, not having a passion for living. So getting back the younger body I failed to care for would feel like an improvement. I might would even think of it as good enough to get by and not hate myself, but would I love myself? Would I be excited to be that self? Would I be any more motivated to take care of myself? Would having the ability to look like that again be truly satisfying? What would I want to make of myself? What do I want to make of what's left of myself?

Am I only excited by the idea of a feminine self because it's new? ADHD brain likes what's shiny and new...while it's shiny and new. Will this fixation wear off some day and leave me just as dissatisfied in femininity as I've been in masculinity? Would it leave me wanting to go back? It's hard to be sure. And yet I can look back on my life and see a wish for femininity even in some of my earliest conscious memories. It's a wish that comes back around no matter how many times I've pushed it down. Surely that means something.

I think, from my present day perspective at least, that masculinity was the consolation prize. I wanted to be girly on three different Halloweens, when there was that little bit of permission to want to be something else. And that version of me, my inner child, is the only one I trust unconditionally. Any me that came after, I take with a grain of salt.

I'm sure some traces of my true self existed in my false selves, but I'm still untangling how much of my teen and adult selves were authentic and how much was a performance. The greatest thread of truth I can see in myself is my desire to escape myself. And gender dissatisfaction seems to be a big part of that.

If anyone had ever made me feel like being pretty, cute, or feminine was an option that I was allowed to want for myself, if it felt like an option that I would've been fully supported in exploring, if I could've felt like I wouldn't be teased by my peers for it, if it wouldn't have worried some of the adults in my life, then I think I would've been all over it.

My education on the topic back then was incomplete. I didn't know about trans people. I was taught "these are the things that are going to happen to your body." And because I was abused in my earliest years, I have this little psychological block called "learned helplessness" which pushes me to accept that I can't control things. If I'm stuck being a boy, I may as well be good at it, the best boy I can be. Handsome, righteous, the nice guy boyfriend, rich, famous, funny, and successful on all the other metrics.

The same thing happened when I started losing my hair at 18 years old. Welp, guess I can't control it. Just another inevitable fact of masculine life. May as well be good at accepting it gracefully and be self-righteous about not fighting my body. I can track the depths of my depression back to the same time period my hair loss got too far along to ignore. I didn't even know how upset I was about it until it all hit me at once like a truck, a decade later.

Now I look back and I can see: I denied myself the option to be pretty and life took away the option to be any kind of handsome that would satisfy me. Just one of many ways I wish I'd broken out of the learned helplessness and taken better care of myself. And if I'd been a woman, there wouldn't have been that sense of "this is just a thing that happens." Even with the learned helplessness, I would've felt like I had more permission to be distressed about my hair loss. And people in my life would've been lining up to help me figure out how to deal with it. I think the social support is the thing I most envy about women. No one seems to care that I'm drowning, even when I tell them in plain English. No one offered help and I didn't know enough, so I just accepted, again and again, that my body is not a thing I can control.

And around the time I locked away my little black and white dress, started accepting that I just need to be the best boy I can be, and cut my name down from Nicky to Nick, I also started getting really angry and defensive. I think just in general, but I have at least one memory of a lot of anger when a boy I'd just met accused me of being a girl. Like, yeah, my hair was a little long, but that's because I was trying to grow it to be like Shawn Michaels, the clearly masculine wrestler and successful ladies man. I wasn't growing my hair out to be girly. DUH!!

It was probably pretty close to that look. I don't think my hair got much longer than that before I gave up on the awkward middle phase between short and long. I can remember wanting to get it long enough to flip it back like Shawn Michaels sometimes did.

I did that sometimes, picked a man to imitate. But again, consolation prize. If I couldn't be Sailor Moon or a Spice Girl, then Tommy Oliver and Shawn Michaels were at least cool and had long hair. At least Goku and Vegeta had magical powers. At least classic rock stars wore long hair and fun psychedelic colors. If I couldn't wear pretty floral dresses, I could at least wear Hawaiian shirts. I could put the effort into being the closest manly equivalent to what I really wanted.

I remember being so angry about the accusation that I was a girl and tempted to prove that boy wrong. Looking back, I think the vulnerability that anger was masking was: "What's the point of all this effort I'm putting into being good at being a boy if people are still going to pick on me for being girly either way?!" I recognize that younger self, and I love that kid, but that's one of the selves I take with a grain of salt when looking back and trying to find what's authentic in me. Nicky was the genuine one, before I got too overwhelmed by social pressures.

Nicky definitely wanted to be one of the girls in some of my memories. I didn't have the language or understanding to say I was genderfluid, nonconforming, or trans. I didn't have the nerve to say I want to be a girl in a serious way, not a playful joke way. In terms of social positioning and in terms of appearance, that's the way I wanted to socialize, that's the way I wanted to look, at least sometimes. Though I couldn't have articulated those wishes in that way, I wanted those things.

And Nicky could've pulled it off. Nicky didn't have facial hair, back hair, chest hair, belly hair, broad shoulders, or a manly voice. I've been nostalgic for childhood memories and childhood fandoms since I was teenager. Some of it's probably the basic childhood nostalgia that people get, for a time when they didn't have responsibilities, but I think there's also a gender element to it for me. Whether I was a trans girl, genderfluid, or nonconforming, it would've been easy, in terms of appearance and presentation, back then. A wig and a dress was all Nicky really needed to pass…and I was small enough that it wasn't a nightmare to find clothes I like in my size.

Even as Nick I was androgynous enough to be seen as a girl if I grew out my hair to barely even bob-length, even in my boy clothes. The late Nick/early Nic era was when that ability to flip presentation slipped away, though I stopped allowing myself to want to look girly even earlier than that. I still kind of wanted to be at least a little girly in personality, to be soft and caring, all through my life, but I spent about 19 years not allowing myself to want to look like a girl. Looking manly was the only goal I would accept, and I'm sure it was at least partially because I didn't want to be teased. And I'm still hesitant, because I don't want to be harassed.

If my education, back when I was Nicky, had included the fact that some people take special medicine to prevent the changes of puberty from happening, or to instead have the other puberty? ... I'm still not sure if I would've had the nerve to pursue it back then. With all of today's knowledge, I probably would choose it if I had the ability to do my life over. If I could intervene before puberty, learned helplessness, and later depression brought about the engrossification of my body, I think I probably would. From where I'm at today, I don't know if the fight (against my body and against bigotry) would be worth the limited result. And even knowing back in the day about the special medicine to stop puberty might not have been enough, by itself, for me to feel like I was allowed to want that in a conservative religious household, and in a world full of social pressure to be good at masculinity.

Even after I stopped attending church and started learning that being a boy wasn't my only option, it still took me the better part of nine years to come to terms with the idea that I might really want to be a girl.

I think I was genuinely relieved to let go of masculinity, in the 2017 post. There's still to this day an internal clash between who I feel like I'm supposed to be and who I'd want to be if I felt like I could be anything. I can't seem to let go of either, so I end up becoming something that doesn't satisfy either one.

The relief I felt in 2017 from accepting that I don't have to be a boy was sincere. I'm questioning whether nonbinary was just my way of trying to straddle the chasm inside myself, to sit in the middle, to privately pull away from who I felt like I was supposed to be, while not taking any of the bigger steps that would disappoint my religious family. Recently I've been drawn to the label of genderfluid, but is that still just me trying to have it both ways as the chasm widens? Do I just want to be able to float across and still come back to being my mother's son? Am I just holding on to that part of myself for her, or is it important to me?

Is my wish to be fluid just about people pleasing or does it come from something genuine in me? Or do I need to accept that wanting to avoid conflict is a genuine part of me? There is no solitary existence, so is who I would be in the absence of others even relevant? But even so, suppressing genuine wishes to make myself happy for the sake of making others happy, surely there needs to be some kind of balance and self-respect there. Where's the line between being the type of selfless that's kind and the type of selfless that's just a doormat? Where's the line between loving myself and selfish arrogance? Where's the balance between not wanting to upset others and what I sincerely want to make of myself?

If I had the magical shapeshifting body I dream of, then I probably would choose to change gender to suit situations, as well as try a bunch of shit just for the hell of it. Masc, femme, androgynous, different heights, different weights and curvature, skin tones, ages, hair colors, eye colors, animals, mermaids, fairy wings, butterfly wings, angel wings, fictional aliens. I'd do it all, at least to try it. Would I settle somewhere after that experimentation though, or would I always want to change every now and then? Is masculinity something I want to leave behind or something I want the option to return to every now and then?

Is it just that I'm afraid to let go, like I was afraid to let go of the edge of the pool when I was learning to swim, and the edge of the couch when I was learning to walk? Do I just want something stable to hold onto because I'm afraid I'll mess up, or is masculinity something I'd genuinely enjoy coming back to at some point?

If I take an IPL device to my face, would I one day regret not being able to grow a goatee? And if I do want to keep an option for facial hair, that makes femme presentation infinitely more complicated. And the temptation to surrender to the beard becomes infinitely more tempting. On the sensory level alone, even coarse beard hairs are better than sandpapery stubble. In the moment, I feel like I want my skin back. No coarse hairs, no stubble, no shadow, just my face. But again I have to ask if I'll still feel that way later.

So the idea of being fluid makes me afraid to do anything permanent to feminize my appearance.

And the idea of being a trans girl makes me afraid too, though I think a lot of that boils down to fear of how others would react to me. And I can feel like a girl on the inside, but that doesn't get me any closer to the things I would want from womanhood. That doesn't make me feel pretty. That doesn't make me happy to see my reflection. That doesn't get me the perception and social elements I want. That just makes me feel like a girl in a hideous body. Or, at best, a girl in disguise.

And the idea of just being a soft GNC dude doesn't feel so frightening, but I don't like my look with a beard and a skirt, or beard shadow and a skirt, and I don't think any look that makes me feel like "dude in a dress and makeup" would give me the personal satisfaction or the social aspects I wish I could have. If I could get my presentation all the way up to F1nn5ter levels, maybe I'd feel a little better about the look and be okay with something in the GNC dude range, but I don't feel like that's anywhere near achievable for me. And I'd still fear being judged and harassed.

Even nonbinary, the way I've been thinking of myself for years, isn't quite satisfying me. Not nonbinary masc anyway. Maybe nonbinary femme would be a little more personally satisfying, if I could live without fear of others.

I don't think it's the identities themselves that make me afraid, but the difficulties and practicalities connected to them. If it were easy to transform myself into each, and if I weren't afraid of being judged and hated for trying on new selves, then it wouldn't cause me nearly so much stress.

I would ask: Is it really me if it stresses me out? But it seems like ALL the options stress me out.

I'm not even sure which path would make me happy. All of the paths have fears and hard work attached, more fears and more hard work than I feel like I can handle.

I'm sure I don't fully understand the extent of what sort of cost, what sort of effect giving up male privilege would have on my life. Nor the full depth of hardship I'd face if I did pass as a woman. Nor the full depth of discrimination I'd face if I didn't. And I'm sure there'd be some portion of hardship, discrimination, and othering from male privilege that would occur even if I did just try to be a soft dude who wears girly clothes and has some girly interests. And trying to just deny my interests, to live as a conforming man would have other costs to my mental health. It really doesn't feel like there's any win scenario, just a choice of which way I'd prefer to lose.

I think a big part of the reason I want to have my whole identity completely figured out is because I want to be able to tell my mom, but I think if I do she's probably gonna pick it apart. I worry that she'll never be able to let her mind accept the idea of trans and nonbinary identities being real, because she has a religious conviction that God knows our genders and made us the way we're supposed to be. And she can cut through my walls to my vulnerable center like no one else on this earth.

I think some of that gender ideology is drilled so deeply into me that I have a hard time letting myself believe that I could really be a trans girl, that it's something I'm allowed to be. I never really knew about trans people growing up, but I knew about gay people. I was even taught that we should love them. Yet there was an unspoken implication of: "That's something confused secular people do. We God-fearing people know better than to be confused like that."

Sometimes I even feel like God's been leading me here my whole life and wants me to be His happy daughter or fluid child. I've had three spiritual experiences lately that seemed to be steering me toward following my heart into femininity. It felt like maybe even God wanted me to find this path, but then I started to ask myself: How could that really be possible? I'm probably just seeing what I want to see. I have to be deluding myself. Or Satan's making a sinful life look beautiful so I'll fall for his lies. Or is Satan the voice telling me to doubt that God wants me to be happy? Or do neither of those dudes exist and it's all just my own anxious brain trying to untangle the complexities of myself? Are my spiritual experiences evidence of a loving God, some kind of confirmation bias, or just my own spirit communicating to me what it wants?

So those doubts linger in my mind and make me afraid to share with my mom that I've been questioning my gender, even though I want to be able to tell her. I don't want to blindside her, but I also don't want to go to her with some half-formed idea of who I am.

I don't think she'd hate me or disown me if I decided to ID as female and transition. I don't think she'd try to stop me. There are certain steps she'd probably try to talk me out of if I went there, but even then I think she'd ultimately leave the decisions up to me and "still love" me. Sometimes I think it would almost be easier if she would hate me, because then I would have an obvious, if terrifying, course of action. For her to love me enough to let me pursue my own happiness, but not love me enough to be happy for me, or to help me pursue happiness...that's my hell. I'm aware that it's a very privileged sort of hell, but my feelings about it are relative to my lived experience.

And she would have questions. If I show her my softest heart, she'll want to prod and possibly dissect it. I don't think it would be as bad as this, but it would be uncomfortable. And if I'm not feeling confident enough in myself, I'll deflate under that pressure. Vulnerable as I am right now, she'd probably have me talked into going back to church and praying away my heart inside of a day. Part of me even wants to be able to rid myself of these wishes and make things simpler. It'd be so much easier if I didn't like the idea of being some kind of feminine.

Is it really me if I deflate under pressure?

The questions I keep asking myself are the ones I'm expecting my mom to ask if I ever work up the nerve to tell her. "Why does liking dresses and makeup mean you're not a boy? Boys should be allowed to do that stuff." And I agree that boys should be free to do that stuff. "It's because you were abused by a man, isn't it?" And I've wondered if that's the reason too. I know I don't like how much I look like my abuser. "Why can't you just be happy with a masculine body?" I asked the mirror the same question this morning and several other times. Why can't I just be happy as a boy? (And on that point, I'll take a phrase from my 2017 self: "Eventually, in all of my introspection, I hit the realization that quantifying why "he" made me uncomfortable was beside the point. The fact that it made me uncomfortable was the point.") Everything my mom ever taught me makes me hate myself for not just being happy in the body God gave me. Even beyond what my mom taught me, all the positive messaging I see about loving yourself as you are makes me feel selfish and vain for wanting to change myself. "Are you just doing this to escape your self-loathing?" Maybe. Or maybe that self-loathing developed because I couldn't find the courage to do this.

I mean, I love my mom dearly. She helps me in so many ways. I value being able to talk with her about everything else, even when she challenges me. Maybe even especially when she challenges me, because it pushes me to define and defend my own positions on issues. And I guess that's playing out with trying to define my position about my gender. I value that motivation to strengthen my resolve and many other things about my relationship with my mom. I truly think she's better than a lot of moms in a lot of ways.

But at the same time, it's utterly debilitating to need so much help from someone (and I do need a lot of help) and yet feel like you can't show that person your truest self.

And I hope I'm not making my mom sound awful in all these posts. She's flawed, old-fashioned in some ways, and deeply religious, but of all the family members in my life she was definitely the most supportive of me having "feminine" interests and letting clothes be clothes. She made my Ariel costume, bought my witch costume, and reached out to my friend's mom for that little black and white dress when I said I wanted to dress up as a girl. She also bought me a bunch of Sailor Moon toys and other merch. She was supportive in many important ways and made me feel like it was okay to have girlish interests even though I had a boyish body. I could go full F1nn5ter on my gender presentation and I don't think it would upset her at all. Yet in some ways, her progressive stance on gender roles and gender expression became the gate barring the path for me to explore gender identity.

Pronouns, name changes, hormones, surgery...these are the things I think she'd have a harder time with. Like I said, I don't think she'd hate me or try to stop me, but I do think she'd be disappointed and I don't know if I can handle that. And I'm still not sure if I even really want to do any of those things. Some type of femboy might be as far as I want to take it. The medical parts of transition sound particularly frightening to me.

There is one thing, about my body, that present day me is very unwilling to change, but I think Nicky would've been willing to change it, even interested in changing it.

I find it curious that I apparently wished I had a vagina as a child. I have no conscious memories of that wish; I only know about it because my mom told me that when I first learned about vaginas, I was jealous that I didn't have one. That particular feeling is not a feeling I have in the present. Is it just that I've gotten used to this body's default equipment, like I've gotten used to to tolerating other masculine features? Is it that I'm afraid to mess with that source of dopamine and stress relief? Did puberty and dopamine chasing get me a little too emotionally attached to it? Is it that I'll feel like I'm failing in a new way if I lose the ability to reproduce? (Even though I have no plans to use that ability?) Is it that I thoroughly repressed the wish of my younger self the same way I repressed other memories? Or was it ultimately more of a casual, playful sort of wish, and not anything deeper than that?

Fearing the medical steps is one of the reasons I'm not sure if I really am a trans girl. My upbringing makes me feel like that physical part is fundamentally incompatible with what it means to be a woman and the other sex's physical part is the most important thing that makes a woman a woman. I know on the logical level that gender is a social construct, a self construct, and an identity separate from one's body, but I don't know it on the emotional, personal level well enough to apply it to myself. And I'm left asking myself if I have a different gender identity or if I just want to be free to mix up my gender presentation. But am I holding myself back from identity for my mom's sake, or my own?

Is it just my own religious indoctrination not letting me accept that I'm actually allowed to be trans if that's what makes my heart sing? Or am I just deluding myself into arrogantly turning my back on God's plan for me? Or is God actually kinder than that and me being happy and feminine is part of the plan? I'd love for that to be true.

Digging around in my deepest heart has also unearthed more religious baggage than I realized I was carrying. Do I still believe, even after years of telling myself I didn't? Am I just too deeply indoctrinated to think straight? Am I finding the true God behind the lies and performances of righteousness? Am I trying to talk myself into a comforting lie, to imagine a way around death and something nicer than this shithole world? Am I just regressing because of all the stress and uncertainty?

It's really messing me up, but I keep feeling like I have to find a way to make the pieces fit, to find a way to believe in God AND be genderfluid or whatever I am. To make what my spirit tells me is true about myself fit with what I was taught about God growing up. Sometimes I feel like either I must be lying to myself about my gender or I must be lying to myself about God. I want to be able to believe in both, but if I have to choose then I think I have to choose what leads my spirit toward peace, but I'm back and forth about which one that is, which is why I'd rather not have to choose. It's probably just fear of my own mortality, but I want to be able to believe in life after death, if nothing else, even if it's in the lowest degree of glory that I was taught about growing up.

It might just be some kind of wish fulfillment or escapism thing, but I find myself trying to imagine a fulfilling heaven for me as a queer person. I think I want to be able to believe in a God who could love my whole self, in whatever identity I finally land on. Not the the ultra-conservative, tyrannical weirdo a lot of American Christians seem to have conceptualized, but an actual loving God who celebrates our differences rather than judging us for them. I want to imagine a God who's somehow even better and more loving than anything I was ever taught. But at the same time I know that me wanting something to be true doesn't make it true.

When I imagine the idea of a God who could love me as any gender, or a heaven where I can be a shapeshifter, and all the other queers are there, it fills me with peace. Just imagining a being who's impossibly old, infinitely powerful, and unfathomably wise, who wants me to be happy, who has a plan for me, and that plan includes me finding gender euphoria, anywhere or everywhere on the gender spectrum, would be such a comfort.

But when I imagine that the oldest, wisest, most powerful being in the universe created me with a certain type of body because He wants me to stay this one gender and this one shape for all eternity, it sends my head and heart spiraling into turmoil and chaos.

And I'm sure I've partially conflated God and my mom. Because if my mom wasn't a religious person, if I didn't sense sincerity and good intentions from her faith, then I probably wouldn't care so much what God thinks of me.

Sometimes I wish I didn't care, but I wonder if I'll ever be able to shake the fear that a bunch of staunch old conservatives really do speak for God and I really am a disappointment to Him. I'd like to think I know, in my deepest heart, what will make me happiest. If heaven doesn't have that kind of happiness then what makes it worthy of the name? But at the same time I don't think I'll ever lose the fear that I'm wrong, that I'll be judged, that I'm just a cursed, ugly, evil, selfish, envious, vain, disappointing waste of the near-limitless potential of human life.

If my mom's church would accept and support trans people (really accept and support, not "love the sinner, hate the sin,") then it would probably clear up a lot of my distress. If I could finally feel like the oldest, wisest, most powerful being in the universe loved me and wanted me to be happy, that would be heavenly.

And that's a big part of why I left the church, because I didn't have a sense that God wanted me to be happy or that I belonged and had found my people, the way my mom did. I wish I could believe those things.

I think I'd risk the rest of it, the judgment of bigots if I don't pass, the misogyny if I do pass, the mortality rate, and any other worldly consequences, if I could believe that none of that worldly stuff could ever destroy me, if I could truly feel like God and my mom would be in my corner. Not just allowing me to play, while being quietly disappointed and hoping their prodigal son will turn back to the light, but sincerely supporting me in my exploration because they want me to find that euphoria. Not loving me in spite of how I define myself, but loving me because they're happy, overjoyed about me finding the strength to define myself and they're excited to know me.

Right now it feels like the only way to get that kind of support and joyous response from God and my mom would be to give up on my longing to find my happiest self, to mutilate my spirit and go to back to church. I can't see myself doing that.

Even if I never find the courage to show euphoric gender presentation in public, I don't wanna go back to being that bible-thumping teenager, running from my own joy, bullying myself into performing righteousness and seeking praise from the pious, hating myself for falling short of their standards, and judging others for the ways they fell short. And I guess I can believe in God and an afterlife without being Like That™ again.

Even if I accept the idea of some kind of God existing, that environment was poisonous to my spirit. I don't think anyone in that environment ever acted with malicious intent. I think they just prioritized their own values and the things that were genuinely beneficial and helpful to them, while presumably not realizing that pressuring others, who have different needs, into those same life choices would be harmful to them, to me. I don't think any of them were trying to hurt me, but nonetheless I came away damaged and who I was back then does not feel like any genuine self I've ever known. Like, the gender post above is a little more confident than I remember being, but some of my journal entries from 2004, when I was deep into trying to be righteous, are on a whole other level of "who even are you?" Definitely one of the versions of me I take with a grain of salt.

I think in some ways I was eager to get lost in "serving the Lord" and performing righteousness. I wanted people to tell me what a good job I was doing. Praise can be a powerful motivator. But I also think it was because I didn't value myself, which of course is a kind of humility that's taught and praised in the church. If I couldn't be beautiful or magical, the next best thing was righteous, which would be rewarded with praise in this life and beautiful magic in the afterlife. A lot of my life is a story of "well, what's the next best thing?"

And I could lose myself in that righteousness, draw my focus away from all the things I was unhappy about, and do something good while I was at it. I remember a church member once telling me about how when he was young he decided to join the military because he was suicidal and he figured he may as well do something good on the way out. I think that's sort of how I approached righteousness, not actively seeking my death, but not caring about my life and figuring I may as well devote it to God if I couldn't love myself.

And even today I still don't feel like I have the clearest concept of who I am or very much love for myself. Doubt and self-loathing are etched into my psyche like my appendectomy scars are etched into my belly. Fear makes me freeze, or run, even from my own joy, when sometimes I might benefit from fighting. Low self-worth makes me feel undeserving of nice things. Nearly everything I ever wanted in my youth was punished or discouraged in one way or another. All I really wanted was to avoid the teasing, quiet the concerns, and beat the gay allegations. Over time though, it started to feel like the person I was becoming to shield myself was the person I actually wanted to be. Between that and so many wants being discouraged, my first instinct is always that I must be the one who's wrong. And the formative sexual traumas in the very earliest parts of my life taught me that my autonomy and value as a person are unimportant. Learned helplessness runs deep in my thoughts.

There are times when the idea of letting myself want to be a girl makes it feel like a literal weight has been lifted off my shoulders. And I get excited about the idea of starting a new chapter of me. As long as I exist within myself and don't notice anything about my physical presence.

And then there are other times when it all just seems like too much. Sometimes I think my destiny is to waste away in mediocrity and trying to imagine I could be beautiful is just a waste of energy. There are times when I feel like this can't be normal. I want to be able to believe that my feelings are normal, but I doubt myself and judge myself so thoroughly and deeply. There are times when I feel so stupid for thinking I could ever be a girl. When it feels like there must be something wrong with me. When it feels like I'm just fooling myself into believing I could ever be any good at being feminine, into believing I could ever be fulfilled or happy.

I don't know how to recognize the difference between reasonable doubt telling me something isn't for me and unreasonable doubt telling me something can't be for me. I wish I could be a girl, at least in this moment, but I still don't feel like I actually can be. Does what I would be if I could be anything matter, if I can't actually be anything? A wish to be a girl feels about as realistic to me as a wish to shapeshift into a butterfly.

Do my wishes even matter if they're unattainable?

I don't feel like I've gotten anywhere in all this soul searching. Some of these questions have been percolating in my mind for years, and seeing F1nn5ter has lit a fire under me for a few months, but so far I'm just boiling alive while still not answering any of the questions. I still have the same problem I had at the start, except now I'm consciously aware of it instead of pushing it down and running from it.

I woke myself up only to realize I'm still helpless and hopeless. The things I was running from caught up to me, but so far they've just left me wishing I had run faster. I looked into the face of my fear only to remember why I've been avoiding it. Except now I've unraveled too much of my escapism to be able to settle comfortably back into it again for any helpful length of time. I feel like I've ruined my own coping mechanisms and now I'm just stuck with pain that I can't heal. I feel like I've shattered my old life and I don't think I can find the strength to forge these fragments of my old self into a new one.

Being awake and alive, keeping my heart open, it feels pointless without any hope to go along with it. Where can I find my hope?

And maybe that's why I want to imagine there really is a God out there who wants me to be His or Her or Their happy daughter or fluid child. Because I can't imagine any other way to find the hope, the strength, the courage, or the confidence to attempt the treacherous journey to where I think I want to be...assuming I don't change my mind about where I want to be in another few years.

And round it goes again. Spiraling in the uncertainty with no clear way to get free of it.

Maybe I need to play to my strengths and lean into clinging to what comes along for now. Just try to be satisfied with being a nebulously nonbinary, poorly-put-together femboy until or unless something else comes along that makes further steps seem more achievable. Money's holding me back for a while anyway, so there's not a lot I can do in the present apart from thinking about what it all means.

I think I know where I want to be, or enough of it anyway. Whether it's girl or femboy, temporary and fluid or permanent binary trans, in any of those scenarios I think the early steps in my path are the same. Thinking ahead to the parts of the road where it might fork is just driving me insane. I think I have an idea of what direction I want to move in, but I don't feel like I can see enough of the path to walk along it. Even those early steps feel overwhelming right now. And maybe I need to just maintain where I'm at for the time being until the universe shows me the next steps in my path. Maybe that can be the thought I use to quiet my mind for a little while.

*looks up*

Yeah, that's a lot of post. Hopefully I've got enough of it out of my head to slow down and rest until the next thing comes along.

Understanding My Gender

I expect that understanding and accepting oneself is always a complicated journey. That journey becomes more complicated if your identity exists outside of the conventional social norms. The idea of finding yourself sounds like a cliché, but it rings true to my experiences. It took me a long time to really find myself.

When I first started to learn about transgender people, really learn about them, it brought up some questions for me. Before that I had a certain cultural awareness of the idea of sex change operations. Bad jokes and poor representation were all around me. None of it ever really challenged my perception of myself. Even when I first heard the phrase “LGBT” and looked up what the T stood for, I still didn’t have any real context for what that actually was. I remember getting into Veronica Mars and being really excited that there was an episode where Veronica reunites someone with their father, who had “become” a woman. I still thought of it in those terms, a man becoming a woman. I didn’t really understand, but something about seeing it represented, not as a joke, made me really happy. It was a few years after that when I really started learning, late December of 2014 as I recall, and that’s when I started to question myself. I had led the kind of life that, when I started to genuinely learn about transgender people, I had to ask myself: “Am I this? Why am I not this?”

Keep reading

[actually-safer-to-kiss]

Well, Actually

Summary: Spencer gets frustrated as Reader proves him wrong about an unsub's profile.

Couple: Spencer Reid/Fem!Reader

Category: Fluff-ish

Content warnings: discussions of gender, sexy implications, Ernest Hemingway

Word count: 1.5k

It’s when I flip the OPEN sign to CLOSED that I can finally breathe. Saturday Sale Days at the bookstore are usually easygoing, but most people took refuge at the windows thanks to the crime scene across the street. Another sex worker was murdered, according to the agents who were here earlier. Well, one of them looked like an agent; coated from head to toe in black and seriousness. The other, however, might as well have been a pretentious preppy middle schooler who thinks a doctorate — three doctorates (he made sure to correct me) — gives him the excuse to lack social graces.

I’m not used to running into FBI agents regularly. However, I’m fairly confident that questioning civilians is more about further insight and not running to the end with confirmation bias. Dr. Reid, on the other hand, had his confirmation set that he and his team were looking for a woman riddled with internalized misogyny who was killing sex workers and leaving quotes from Ernest Hemingway pieces.

So, is it wrong that I may or may not have said they might actually be looking for a male with possible gender nonconformity issues? According to the quotes written in lipstick and discussions revolving around Hemingway’s relationship with gender, it was the first thing to pop into my head.

And it was Dr. Reid’s first instinct to take it personally, like any other gifted child who’s never learned what it’s like to be wrong (possibly). His reaction mainly consisted of raising his voice and saying my assumption “was not relevant to our case” and taking a collection of Hemingway’s short stories without paying for it. I haven’t found a suitable way to explain that to my boss yet.

Regardless of his reaction, I had no reason to expect to see him again. I got a card from Agent Prentiss after she questioned me behind the counter and haven’t heard a word since. It didn’t matter then because we were closed, and I had the day off tomorrow —

Knock, knock, knock. A simple three-raps on the glass. The night makes it difficult to see who it is, but I’m more than familiar with the panic button under the register. So before I turn the lights out, I get closer to the door to find out who on the other side can’t read.

And without thinking, I open the door, but don't let him in. “Agent Reid.” I can’t help but push him just a bit.

“Dr. Reid.”

“Right.” I faked a laugh (years of practice). “Well as you can see we’re closed for the night so —”

His hand is out, holding the book. The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. The paper cover is already pulled up at the corners and the spine is cracked. Nothing display worthy, that’s for sure. “I took this.”

“And you had it for six hours. How did you decimate it so quickly?”

“I was using it as a source while we were trying to solve the case.” His hand was shaking, from nervousness or lack of strength to hold a paperback in one hand for longer than a minute, either could be possible. “I figured a way to make amends was to come back and purchase it.”

I looked down at the book and looked back up at him. Sincerity and boyish charm force me to hold the door open for him and let him in. When he comes in, his under eyes are darker, perhaps because he's a night owl, or because of his job. His hair is still fluffy like this morning but droopy.

He was prepared to call it a night before coming here. But thievery is apparently too heavy for this agent’s shoulders.

I walk to the register, booting up the fancy tablet. “So did you? Solve the case, I mean?”

“We did.”

I scan the barcode, luckily he didn’t ruin that. “And? Did she explain the Hemingway quotes at least?”

Silence, only for a moment. I see his hands digging into his pockets. He pulls out a debit card and hands it over. “He, actually.”

“What?”

“He didn’t explain the Hemingway quotes but said he targeted sex workers because they were ‘freer than he ever would be.’”

Silence swallowed the room immediately upon saying that but of a different kind. The kind that was ripe for me to brag and possibly even do a little dance. But I’m patient, and I don’t like interrupting people. I tap the screen slowly so the good doctor can gather the words. I even took another glance and his eyes were already locked on me. It would’ve made me jump if he didn’t follow it with “You were right.”

There it is. “Hmm,” I say as I keep the arrogance down to a minimum as I contemplate my next words. I take his receipt and scribble before bagging the book. “So do I get a one-way ticket into the bureau, or do I take your place or —”

“Thank you for your help." He says slowly as if he were being ordered to apologize. Like he wrote these words in a document before coming here. “Your observation sent us in the right direction.” His hand is out, waiting.

I also have a talent for dragging things out. When I shut the techy stuff down again, I go back around and hand them to him, so I can get closer. Read his face. When he reaches out and just touches the paper, I jerk the bag back. “That’s not what you want to say.” I let the bag dangle off two of my fingers, shamelessly drinking in the moment. “Come on, it’s gotta be killing you.”

He rolls his eyes. Briefly, but enough for me to notice. “What could be killing me?”

“That you, an FBI agent, with two PhDs —”

“Three PhDs.”

This is so fun. “Three PhDs was outsmarted by a girl who works in a bookstore. Merely a bachelor's on my resume.”

“That is not the case.” He says.

“It seems relevant to the case now.” That intended to burn, and it did. Scorched actually. I could feel it from here, so I walked to the back to find the lights, expecting him to follow me.

He did. The creaking of the old wood floors echoed as we walked, there was no rhythm or synced steps, just two different walking patterns, one at ease and the other eager. “Just tell me how you figured it out.” He says. “Hemingway has been praised for his writing style and the way he wrote certain female characters but his macho personality indicated he enjoyed nothing feminine.”

A chuckle might have been appropriate, but I replied with a stark laugh. A bold “Ha!” As I opened the lightroom door. “Because macho men are known for being the happiest people on Earth, according to history.” With a click, the lights flickered steadily before turning off. I had my phone flashlight ready, though. “Honestly, Dr. Reid, it might be worthwhile to take a break from reading and watch a documentary on the man. It adds up quickly, even someone like you would get it.” I let the flashlight guide me back to the front, avoiding collateral damage from bookshelf corners.

Until Dr. Reid stepped in front of me, causing my head to collide with his chest. Somehow, I didn’t drop my phone and instinctively reached for my nose. “Someone like me?”

“Ow, first of all. But yes.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

I rub my nose in the dark. “That even a predictable bookish boy like you can eventually come to grips with the fact that he doesn’t know everything.”

“And you do?” He asked.

“I never said that,” I admitted.

He looked at me skeptically. Even in the dark, I could feel my arrogance might have gotten the best of me here. I tried looking away, to another dark space. 

He, however, did not. “What else did you say? Predictable?”

“You mean you don’t remember?”

He sighs, and air from his nose brushes above my lip.

Then so does his hand in my hair.

His lips, though, were quite the opposite. As if all his frustrations couldn’t take it anymore and needed to be let out with a teeth-smashing, saliva-coated spectacle (that no one could see. Not even us.) All I felt was wandering hands and the wall hitting the back of my head before he pulled away. His hands are still on my waist, and he breathes sharply in and out. “Was that predictable?” I heard him swallow.

I contemplated my response for a short while, wondering which one, a yes or a no, would get him to do it again. So instead, I just grabbed where I assumed his head would be and jerked him down to meet my lips again. It worked. His hands wrapped tight as if he glued himself to my skin. “Will you get reprimanded by your team for being somewhere you aren’t?” I ask between breaths and lip separation.

“Maybe. I’m sure you’d enjoy that.”

“I won’t admit anything,” I said. Whether it was to see Dr. Reid’s night turn out worse, or to keep a secret from his boss about a makeout session in a bookstore, I’m not sure. But his body was thin, layered with clothes. Warm.

“What will you admit to?” He whispers, moving our bodies, begging for more kisses. Or just more.

“Dinner?”

“For?”

“Education purposes, Dr. Reid.” My hands can’t help but explore. “Seems like we’ve got a lot to learn.”

[cambriancrew]

Why do we pro-endos use a chapter from a psych doctor who specializes in therapy for queer people, in a book on transgender mental health care?

That chapter explains why on the first page.

The idea of plurality becomes important when working with some trans­gender and gender-nonconforming (TGNC) people. Many TGNC people have had traumatic backgrounds, some severely so, and it would make sense for some of them to have dissociative states. These dissociative personalities can have different gender identities, making the evaluation and treatment of gender dysphoria more complex. However, although dissociative identity disorder and plurality are frequently associated with trauma, there are those who are plural and report no history of trauma. The case presentation in this chapter describes someone with severe trauma, but this is not a definitive or universal reason for the existence of plurality.

Many clinicians have probably already worked with plural people and are unaware of it. Changes in personality structures can be subtle and difficult to appreciate, and symptoms such as these are not typically brought up in a general mental health evaluation.

(Emphasis mine.)

This doctor, Dr. Eric Yarbrough, while he specializes in treating transgender people, has also worked with many plural systems. One such system, who is what we'd call a traumagenic DID system, is the case study for this chapter. Doctors don't have to specialize in something to have experience with helping people with it and knowledge about it! Especially in psychiatric care, where most psych professionals in the United States have a broad range of specialities. Just check out the listings on psychologytoday.com.

The book is here if you want to read it for yourself.

[cringecompanionapologist]

Moffat, Sexy Women, and More 80s Who Complaints:

Note: I am a woman and everything I'm saying is my opinion as an individual woman and not an attempt to represent women as a whole. We're like half the world's population. We're not gonna agree on everything.

I'm just gonna randomly say a bit about the Moffat era and women that's sort of a defense in an "this still feels better than other things" sort of way.

Look, I will not deny that the Moffat era (mostly 11's part) has some issues with women. Most of it, at least for me, has less to do with how the female characters are written and more to do with how the male characters address them (Let's Kill Hitler, I'm looking at you).

But, one thing that bothers other people that doesn't bother me as much is the sexualization. This is mostly compared to what came before it.

For me, because sexuality isn't an inherently negative thing, a character of any gender being sexualized isn't automatically a bad thing. It's more of a matter of subject vs. object.

To illustrate my point, let's bitch about 80s Who for a bit.

Now, when I say 80s Who, I'm mostly referring to the Saward Era (seasons 19-23/5th and 6th Doctors). Ace wasn't really sexualized in the same way the companions before her were.

If you dig through this blog, you'll find that this is sort of the third in a miniseries about various issues with 80s companions that mostly come down to something about gender. With Tegan, it's that she's an outspoken woman and treated negatively for it. With Turlough, it's that the EU tries to downplay the more gender-nonconforming aspects of his character, which admittedly mostly happened by accident.

This time, I'm talking about Peri. Peri was heavily sexualized but in a way that I don't particularly like. It ultimately comes down to how the era handles sexuality in general.

JNT was more of a marketing guy than a creative guy, but his ideas of marketing the show ended up contradicting one another. On one hand, he wanted to avoid controversy. Doctor Who had a bit of a history of controversy, though most of it was about how violent it was, something this era of the show clearly did not care about. Instead, the primary JNT/Saward obsession was with sex. It had to be clear that the Doctor did not fuck and never had. But, this sort of extended to the companions as well. 60s and 70s Who would occasionally give companions one-off love interests. This didn't happen a lot, but there was a history of it dating back to The Daleks, where Barbara makes out with one of the Thals for a bit. In 80s Who, the only time a companion got a love interest was right as she was leaving the show and that was a last minute change.

(Side Note: I'd once again like to comment that Doctor Who wrote women better in 1964 than in 1984 and that Barbara is a great character. The worst thing Moffat every did was have Twice Upon a Time trick people into thinking of this era as The Sexist One.)

You might be wondering, "so what? It's a kids show. Of course nobody's gonna be horny!". And yeah. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. The problem is that the show isn't horny, but it is sexy.

What I mean: Horny is sexuality in-universe. It's the characters having sexual attraction and interests. Sexy is sexuality out-of-universe. It's characters being attractive to the audience.

Peri is the ultimate example of this. She's completely normal for this era of the show when it comes to sexuality. It's not really a thing and when it is it leads to almost immediate marriage. But, she's always dressed in revealing outfits. In Planet of Fire, she's on vacation in a warm region, so that makes sense, but she continues to dress that way everywhere she goes.

Peri is sexualized as fanservice for the audience and for villainous characters to leer at to make them more threatening. Her personality doesn't really match her choice of outfits. It's all for the benefit of the audience and a justification for creepy bad guy behavior.

I mentioned before the sexual subject vs. object. A subject does while an object is done to. A subject looks while an object is looked at. When a character's sexuality isn't an aspect of their character, existing primarily as something for the audience and other characters to leer at, she's a sexual object. And that sucks.

The reason Moffat's sexualization of characters like Amy and River doesn't bother me is that they do not have this problem. The women in this era are just as horny as the men. It's clear that these characters are the sort of people who'd choose to wear the outfits they wear. Yes, it's still fanservice written that way due to Moffat's horniness, but the female characters he writes have sexual agency. They're sexy because they're horny. They flirt with people they're attracted to. They're not just being leered at by the audience and other characters. They're looking as well as being looked at. They actively participate in the show's sexuality. They are sexual subjects.

Of course this doesn't work all the time. There's a lot of "men are horny idiots about women" jokes. When it comes to other aspects of female characters, there's a lot of talk of them being overly emotional and focused on romantic relationships. This did get better over time, being less of a thing with Clara and basically not a thing at all with Bill. I think Moffat was aware of the criticism he was getting and learned from his mistakes. But mistakes were certainly made.

But, though Moffat was obviously horny for his female characters, he them sexual agency. It might not be for everyone but it meant that the horniness of the era didn't bother me.

Besides, I'm horny for Moffat's female companions too. Is it morally different because I'm a woman being horny in a gay way?

[coffeebean-transmasc-experience]

Shout out to any and all agab nonconforming/agabpunk folk

The ones who look at agab and just say "fuck that, I don't have an agab"

The ones who make up their own agab or use one so obscure no one else knows what it means

The ones who still use traditional ones but not the one they were assigned by a doctor

The ones who only identify with their agab sometimes

The ones who used to identify with their doctor assigned agab but don't anymore

The ones who didn't used to connect with their doctor assigned agab but are starting to feel more connected to it now

The ones who are genderless or have countless genders and that affects their connection to agab

The ones who are trans to their doctor assigned agab

The ones who have more than one agab

Intersex ones

Disabled ones

Ones who use xenogenders

Ones who use neopronouns

Nonhuman ones

You're all awesome af, and your experiences and unique takes on the world and gender are so interesting and special. Don't forget that!

[whoishotteranimepolls]

This blog is really fulfilling my near constant need for long lectures over fandoms that I never really get to flex out huh? I'm going to start making powerpoints. Alright, time to explain Ivankov and Bon Clay with a quick history of the LGBTQ+ community in Japan. Disclaimer: I am not Japanese, I am from a western country, but I will try to do my best to summarize the history and connotations to the best of my ability. I also do understand that some of the genderqueer characters do seem to be based on stereotypes, but that will be explored.

Okama is slang interchangeably used for gay men, drag queens, gender nonconforming men, and transgender women. It is very similar to the English word "Queer," especially in the idea that current members of the LGBTQ+ community are attempting to reclaim it as a positive phrase, rather than the slur that has been used against them. A large part of Japan still conflates gay with crossdressing or transgenderism, which is why homosexual men are sometimes referred to as okama (literally a 'pot' but meaning something similar to the English word 'queen') and are usually represented as cross-dressed and effeminate. The use of the term okama derives from the slang usage of the term to refer to the buttocks and thereby to anal sex which is considered to be the definitive sexual act engaged in by homosexual men. Homosexuality in Japan has had a fraught history that I do not have the character space to completely include here. Bon Clay is a character that first appeared in One Piece in the year 2000. Now, I know a lot of modern day fandoms do not understand the history of queer characters in media. This was long before we had shows like The Owl House, Steven Universe, Yuri on Ice, or She-Ra (I can't think of a lot of modern queer anime off hand). We had very little canon queer characters, at at the time, it was far more common for queer characters to either be women (Sailor Uranus, Utena), or male villains. And Bon Clay was not only queer, he was an out and proud Okama. He was referred to both as a man and a woman, and sang an entire song "Okama Way/Oh Come My Way." Bon Clay, despite being a villain, got a redemption, he befriended the Strawhats, and helped them to escape from Alabasta, even though he himself was sent to jail instead.

“One may stray from the path of a man. One may stray from the path of a woman. But there is no straying from the path of a human!”

In the end, this world is broken down to men and women But I'm a man who is a woman So I'm the best (the strongest) The best (strongest!) OH COME MY WAY

Emporio Ivankov

As Mod pointed out, his design is based off of Doctor Frank N' Furter from Rocky Horror Picture show and Norio Imamura, a real life Okama and a member of Mayumi Tanaka's acting troupe whom Oda met. Ivankov is gender fluid and uses their fruit to switch between whatever sex characteristics they want to have. Ivankov refers to himself as a "Newkama", as opposed to an "Okama". This is a double pun made by mixing words. It basically goes "Newhalf" (Transgender) + Okama (Crossdresser) = Newkama (Newcomer). Newkama claim to go beyond the concept of gender since almost every one of them has experienced life in both male and female bodies thanks to Ivankov's Horu Horu no Mi. Also, there is a question on what pronouns Iva uses, with in the Japanese text, they appear to use something like Neo-pronouns, always replacing the first character with a V in the pronouns they are using (Vatashi vs Watashi for "I" but I do not know enough Japanese to speak on this or how their pronouns should be translated)

She was the queen of NewKama Land in Impel Down, a secret haven inside of the prison where prisons escaped to. (This is why Mod jokes that One Piece fandom took over Horny Jail, we have a gay club in our jail in source material that was created by a transgirl and maintained by genderqueer okamas. We cannot be stopped). She is also a member of the Revolutionary Army, (MANGA Spoilers: A former slave), and Queen of Kamabakka Queendom, a place where okamas can be free to live their lives with no criticism and to just, be themselves.

Now, I understand why the artstyle turns people off and makes them seem like harmful stereotypes, and they aren't always treated well in the story. While Luffy is extremely accepting of Ivankov and Bon Clay (The only people in the entire story he refers to with honorifics are them, and he uses female honorifics, Iva-Chan and Bon-Chan), Sanji has shown to be pretty transphobic. But I also think that they encapsulate the messages of One Piece: Complete and Utter Freedom. The Freedom to be true to yourself, to live your authentic life, and to live without regrets. These characters are not only strong, respectable, and free, but they fight for that freedom for others as well.

There is no queerbaiting in One Piece. The only canon LGBTQ+ Identities we have are the transgender characters, probably attributed to Oda not wanting to write romance, and thus it is harder to make canon gay/lesbian/bi ect characters. Luffy, on the other hand, is argued heavily whether he's canonically aro/ace, or just heavily coded. We have other queer characters as well, especially in Wano. Kiku is a transwoman, and Yamato is a transman. Bon Clay, Ivankov, Inazuma, and other "Okamas" are genderqueer, although the identies may not translate nicely into English. Some of it may not have aged well as well (The use of "Transvestite" for example). But overall, the LGBTQ+ Identities have been respected by the narrative of the source material if not necessary by the characters or author. (And definitely not by some fans). Its also important to remember, Bon Clay was introduced in 2000. Kiku was introduced in 2018, that is nearly 20 years to learn how to depict trans people. She has no gags, she just exists as she is. Oh, and none of the queer characters die in the series, and Bon Clay even has the quote "Queers will never die!"

(Morley should probably be added to this analysis, as a transgender woman who pretty controversial, but she doesn't appear much in the manga/anime so I don't know a lot about her lol. I'm also not going to touch the "debate" of Yamato's gender here)

Sources: Male Homosexuality and Popular Culture in Modern Japan

One Piece: A Queer Retrospective

For context, they are responding to this post about Emporio Ivankov and Bon Clay

Well done! Great job! You deserve a cookie. Because this is why I love Defend Your Blurbo. Emporio Ivankov and Bon Chan would be proud of you

Fun fact, the horny jail reference actually comes from the bg3 fandom and the narrator outtakes. I just think it's very appropriate for the One Piece Fandom at least when it comes to my blog and what you guys have put me through

[bullshit-tqia]

Your psychiatrist and surgeon do not care for you.

They want to make money off of you.

They are willing to get you exogenous hormones that can give you higher rates of depression, cancer, cysts on your clitoris, PCOS, liver, kidney, and heart disease, blood clots in the lungs, strokes, polycythemia and hyperlipidemia, thrombosis, brain tumors, acute coronary syndrome, malignant hypertension, anemia, a worsening of psychosis, hepatitis, and to briefly mention dizziness, nausea, and chronic headaches. This is from hormones alone. They do not tell you this because your doctors make money off of you and don’t want to dissuade you from giving them hundreds of dollars.

Long term studies admit that they lose a large portion of their participants, but they assume that those participants are happy.

What is becoming more likely to me is that these participants died. And their deaths will never be considered or remembered. How can we be sure that transitioning is good long term if we have no record to even begin to consider that being true?

Gender Affirming Care is not regulated or approved for being a good solution to gender dysphoria.

When was the last time we thought that removing parts of the body was a good solution to helping mental problems? Oh yeah, with lobotomies.

There is no proof of “gendered brains.” The amount of white matter between women and men is so slight that it’s as defunct as race science. They overlap so heavily with little evidence of proper structural distinctions that it is dishonest to pretend there is any major pattern. There is no proof that even these “differences” observed in trans women vs. cis men are because of gender dysphoria, or are the effects of hormones. We have no understanding of how gender dysphoria manifests or how it works.

You are being experimented on.

If hormones can worsen your mental health because they are exogenous, how are you being treated? Even if gender affirming care lessened gender dysphoria, it is being exchanged with depression and possible psychosis. You are exchanging one bad thing for another. This will not help you long term.

Gender Dysphoria will still manifest through your memories, your knowledge of chromosomes, and the fact that you have a secret

It cannot go away as long as you are aware of your own transition. It is not helping you. You have to continue to delude yourself that it is working for it to work. That is the definition of a placebo.

Why was the first drafted solution to gender dysphoria hormones and surgery and not therapy?

Why? Nobody has given me an answer to this. We have never even tried to see if any antidepressants or therapies work to help gender dysphoria in a way that won’t make you targeted, bullied, and fearful for our lives. That is fucking cruel.

Listen to detransitioners, listen to the trans people who suffered as a result of surgery.

It may not be rare. Recent studies have shown that every trans person that was put on hormones had a negative effect to their health. EVERY. Why is the assumption that we must suffer to be happy? Why can’t we be nonconforming without giving up the rest of our lives to be on hormones and having surgery after surgery? Why? Genuinely, why?

There are trans women who had colon vaginoplasty, where they use part of the colon to create a vagina. These women start to shit through their vaginas. And these surgeries often follow a previously failed SRS procedure. It is a last ditch effort and it is horrific to your body.

While having complications, many detransitioners and trans people were ghosted by their doctors.

They don’t give a fuck about you. They want to make money off of you. As trans people and detransitioners were suffering after their surgeries, their doctors abandoned them because well…they didn’t have to do anything to help them. Because gender affirming care is not approved or regulated. There is no proof that it even helps beyond a few surveys that may not have honest answers and exclude detransitioners and those who killed themselves as a result of their failed surgeries.

I transitioned, and now I may be suffering dire consequences of it, because I bought into this idea that experimenting on my own body would be worth it. But now I feel the same as I did before I detransitioned and after. Nothing has fundamentally changed. I was still dysphoric but I was making myself deeply unwell to satisfy society’s perception of what a woman should be.

You can grow your hair out, you can wear makeup, you can be feminine. You can cut your hair short, you can ditch makeup, and you can be masculine. You don’t have to hurt yourself to fit into this standard when it is logically possible for you to accept how you were born.

It cannot be impossible for you to be happy.

These greedy doctors are preying on vulnerable people to make money.

[self-loving-vampire]

Transphobes (and other thoughtless people in general) are really invested in this idea that people have a cap on how many conditions they can legitimately have.

So they will say that a trans person is not actually trans if they have anything else going on. For example, with the ableist argument that trans people and their doctors are misleading and "recruiting" innocent and easily-manipulated autistic people (which is then also painted as some kind of eugenics conspiracy).

Like, they read "there is a correlation between autism and being trans" and their mind goes "those poor autistics are not Truly Trans they're just autistic sheeple who have fallen into the trans cult".

Even though autistic people are also less likely to be heterosexual and may in fact have higher rates of transness precisely because they may be more likely to question and reject gender norms as just more made-up neurotypical bullshit.

Similarly, there's another line of thinking that I have absolutely no respect for that goes "trans people are just traumatized and need therapy instead of transition", as if you can't be both trans and traumatized at the same time. It has to be one or the other, even though growing up trans (or autistic, which many trans people are) often results in abuse and trauma.

They used to say this same garbage about being gay or gender-nonconforming too, and those things were often treated as being basically the same as being trans.

Conservatives like Jack Chick and James Dobson treated homosexuality is "acquired", inherently disordered, and generally a result of psychic damage from child sexual abuse (blamed on queers, of course), looking at porn, or just not growing up with a "proper" pair of trad cishet parents.

[funhouse-mirror-barbie]

Joanne Koanne Rowanne will be like “why doesn’t she just share a dna test to prove she’s a woman” to a woman who has absolutely nothing to prove, been literally bullied by the whole world, and will probably receive harassment for the rest of her life because of freaks like Jowling Roanne and Elongated Muskrat, but you just KNOW that if anyone asked Joanne to take a fucking DNA test to prove her womanhood she would fucking crumble into dust and use white woman tears to make herself a victim.

She should just come out and say it: nothing will ever be enough for her, or for any “gender critical” transphobe once they’ve arbitrarily decided someone is not a woman.

Imane Khelif could post results of a DNA test confirming she’s a “biological” woman and have it confirmed by every doctor on the planet and jkr and co. still wouldn’t believe it because they do not give a fucking shit about “protecting women”.

Their only objective is to villainize and bully anyone who is trans, nonbinary, gender-nonconforming, or who they happen to perceive as a man—regardless of that person’s gender identity OR sex. And there’s a reason it’s almost always women of color who get singled out. “Gender Criticals” are racist and sexist, and their behavior is disgusting.

Don’t let them fool you. It’s not about protecting women. It’s never been.

It’s about upholding white supremacy, phrenology, transphobia and homophobia, and silencing anyone who isn’t “woman enough” based on their extremely misogynistic standards.

Also—if Imane Khelif was a trans woman, she would still have earned her win. She was would still be a woman. If you’re only supportive of her because she’s cis, and would have an issue with her if she was trans, then you’ve missed the whole point of this post.

[kinky-pen]

Got any general Ouran headcanons?

More disorganised, general thoughts!

Tamaki:

When Tamaki found out about renfairs, the whole host club wasn't just dragged to one (I don't believe they're a thing in Japan, but I may be wrong), Tamaki made them help him organise one. Yes, Kyoya had thought he'd escaped budgeting for Tamaki's whims in adulthood, and yes he felt stupid for thinking that.

Paints his nails frequently. It's an activity he finds fun, but he also repaints them constantly because he changes his mind about the colour constantly! He also wants them to match his outfit, and god forbid he plan ahead.

Was raised Catholic in France, but finds much more love for the aesthetics and community than the religion himself.

Haruhi:

Haruhi was always androgenous, but she embraces her gender nonconformity and identity even more as they become and understands themselves. Lots of lovely suits, both masc and fem. (They do use all pronouns, also, but use she/they the most)

Keeps the short hair!! I know she grows it out in the manga, but the short hair is nicer, more in character, and Haruhi said on multiple occasions that they prefer it.

When she's a lawyer (not if, let's be real), she's actually scary good at employment law and making sure companies compensate and treat their worker's fairly (comrade Haruhi, everyone)

Kyoya:

Keeps a sketchpad handy a good portion of the time. He found art really relaxed him, and he's pretty talented at it, but he'll keep it to himself as it's something he actually considers for him, not profit or prestige.

Has had a crush on every member of the host club, at some point, except Hanni for obvious reasons (boo, you whore)

Has diagnosed depression, and is half convinced he has a personality disorder of some flavour. He can be a bit of a hypochondriac, however, and his doctors haven't confirmed anything as of yet. Who knows.

Hikaru:

Dyes his hair constantly, all sort of colours. Like Tamaki and his nails, Hikaru recolours his hair very often - as soon as he gets bored of it. It got to the point where he dyed it four times in a month, fried it all off, and had to get a buzz cut. He eased up a little after that.

Loves getting tattoos. He's one of those people that really love the sensation of it, and he also gets a cool piece of art on his body forever! Yes there's something wrong with him, he's seeing a therapist!

Loves spending time in his office, tinkering about with new things - whether it be finding new ways to put together certain pieces of hardware, or coding new software. He can disappear in there for days straight, sometimes (he has a mini fridge stocked with drinks and snacks, don't worry)

Kaoru:

Goes through phases of growing out his hair, then cutting it all off again. Changes hairstyles frequently. When you're head of a designer brand, you do have to balance keeping up with the latest trends with setting them, and I think Kaoru does well with both sides of that.

Loves flower arranging (which is semi-canon), but it's something he keeps up his whole life.

Kaoru actually does have some """mild""" HPD (that's the phrasing he uses, but he generally means he's high functioning) he's just like me frfr

Mori:

This man matures like a fine wine. Will always be attractive, honestly. He went from hunk to DILF to GILF effortlessly.

Still wins Judo competitions and such well into his early fifties, but decided to retire from competing at 53 due to some joint issues. Still keeps it up for fun and health, though.

Had a bit of a revelation about putting his foot down and protecting his boundaries during university. It actually helped him a lot with the self destructive tendencies he has in canon.

Hunni:

Living his best life with his goth wife! He just adores that girl so much and she'll kill for him! (Ask her to kill for you, Hunni, she really wants to)

Takes up baking his own cakes, which does actually save money in the long run - not that they need to worry about that.

Had a similar revelation to Mori in university, caused by Mori standing up for himself more. He realised that he can still be true to himself and what he wants, without running roughshod over those who care about him. He can still be a little selfish, but better than what we see in canon.

Also, as this is a kink blog and I don't really want to encourage engagement from people not into NSFW/are minors - please only 'like' this post if you're the aforementioned :)