#having been oppressed into presenting masculinely

[catholicsapphic]

“[x female saint] had to dress like a man to be taken seriously/be safe/do her job! Isn’t that terrible? 😟” well but have you considered that maybe she Wanted to dress like that?

[princessefemmelesbian]

Transandrophobia truthers are so damn racist and white oh my fucking god y'all actually piss me the fuck off every time you tokenize Black and brown men for your stupid as fuck "mra but make it trans-inclusive" ideology created by a creepy guy with a corrective rape fetish(something I'll never let up on for as long as I live, btw). If I ever see another one of y'all say "Black and brown men face discrimination because they're seen as overly masculine and that's why masculinity in men is oppressed in this society" I will literally kill myself. Stop using Black and brown men as brownie points for your bullshit arguments about misandry being real when you don't have the slightest idea how racialized oppression works. White boys are so annoying and dumb istfg.

@punkeropercyjackson @punknicodiangelo @pinkpinkstarlet

[genderqueerdykes]

if you are a trans man or masc, masculine nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid or other gender non conforming identity, masc gay, a bear, a butch, stud, or boi, or other masculine queer person and don't feel welcome in any queer spaces, you're not alone.

the communities both irl and online have become EXTREMELY hostile toward mascs and men to the point of straight up excluding us and changing their wording to justify their violent exclusion. from renaming nonbinary spaces to "femme & them" and "she+" spaces, to telling men & mascs that they would "Scare" the women and "nonbinary" folks just by being there, as if masculinity and manhood are inherently traumatizing to be around.

masculine and male nonbinary folks have it so hard- most nonbinary spaces are almost definitely women's spaces who also conflate womanhood with nonbinaryhood, and often times just view nonbinary people as confused women. we are not inherently traumatizing to be around: masc enbies need places to go. we are still nonbinary and still trans and still queer for fucks' sake

nonbinary has never and will never mean femme or woman-adjacent inherently. nonbinary means what it means: people who don't or refuse to adhere to the gender binary, regardless of what side it is. masculinity is included in this, femininity is not the only way to be nonbinary.

masc queers do not have to bend over backwards to try to be more feminine and thus "less threatening" in order to have places to go. that's dysphoric and just inaccurate to a lot of queer folks' identity and presentation. it blows my mind because it makes no sense, anyway, even within the gay community, hypermasculinity has been present and even sought after by some people who find it very attractive, twunks, hunks, bears... but between the periods in queer history people started viewing masc gay leathermen and kinksters as the ones who were responsible for spreading AIDS and thus removing them from pride parades,

AND the lesbian separatism moment picking up to remove butches & male & masc lesbians from lesbian spaces identity, paving the way for modern rdical femniism, we've only entered a downhill landslide of hating men and mascs and ultimately trying to erase us from the queer community entirely.

the queer community is not the "women & femmes community". the queer experience is broad and vast, it includes a wide variety of masculine and male experiences, as well as genderfluid, multigender, completely ungendered and other gendered experiences. the lesbian, trans, bisexual, nonbinary, gay and general queer communities aren't the "safe place to hide from men & mascs community" like estranged rdfems and terfpilled trans folk like to tell you they are.

this is the QUEER community and it includes ALL forms of queerness, masc, femme, butch, male, neutral, bigender, neutral, and all. he/shes and he/hims and he/theys and he/its and so on are just as much of a part of this communities as she/hers and they/thems. you can't cast a blanket of "inherently abusive" over all men and mascs and one of "inherently abused/incapable of being abusive" over all women and femmes because that just traps you in a fantasy land that doesn't exist AND it prevents mascs and men from getting the help, resources and community they NEED.

men & mascs are hurt and abused by women & femmes every day and we refuse to speak about them because we live under a white cisheteronormal patriarchy and have complaints about how that functions. the complaints are legitimate but assuming that all men and mascs are oppressing all women and femmes and that women can never be oppressive is a false as hell narrative that actively damages people.

enough is enough. this mindset is hurting people. it's leaving masc and male queers to be estranged, harmed and even dead. i care about you if you're being affected by this mentality and these behaviors. you deserve community, safety, and a sense of belonging, you do belong, even if we struggle to form our own spaces due to unjust hatred. we will do our best to band together and keep each other safe. we must

[cowboy-heart]

'interview with a butch' - a fake interview reflecting on butch-femme dynamics! inspired by the amazing piece by @llovely, which you can read here :)

(ID below read more)

[an original, interview-style poem called 'interview with a butch':

when did you know you were butch? I knew by the time I was sixteen, but that’s only when I found the word. I’ve been butch since the day I was born, at least since I was just a few months old and threw an earth-shattering tantrum whenever my mum tried to put me in a dress. (both laugh) your poor mum!

I remember being a little butch knight, chivalrous even before I was double digits. my best friend only lived up the road from school, but her parents were running late and she was scared to do it herself. so I walked her up the hill, her arm linked in mine, pride balancing on my chest. and when I got her to her door, I said that we should kiss like adults do when they say goodbye, and we took it in turns to kiss each other on each cheek. when I walked home I felt something the size of a boulder in my stomach, but I didn’t know what it meant yet, just that there was something about myself that set me apart.

how did you feel with your first femme? oh, man, even for a writer that’s hard to find the words for. (laugh) let’s put it this way: before I had my first femme, I always felt like something was missing in my relationships – not just in the relationship itself, but in me. I felt broken and wrong, unsatisfied and selfish. I thought that maybe I just had too high expectations or something. hell, even with sex I felt like something was missing, like I couldn’t find my own desire.

But then, then I had my first femme. How graphic can I be here? (laugh) as graphic as you want! okay, good!

watching my stomach hang over my harness, long nails in my hips, I felt like I had a second sexual awakening. I felt the most present in my body I’d ever been, and like I could be in them forever. I didn’t feel dissatisfied, or wrong. when their hand held mine and played with my fingers I felt lightning shoot through me. it was like realising I was a lesbian all over again. but even outside of romance, femmes are my friends, my family, my community. talking to femmes, being around femmes, I’ve never felt so seen and loved. I can handle every sharp look, every slur thrown my way, just because my armour was polished by femmes.

do you find your roles restrictive? they’re liberating. I think sometimes people see me and think that I had to fit into this constrictive box, that I disallowed myself to enjoy anything feminine. the reality is that for butches, we find the word we’ve been searching for our whole lives. I can’t even remember finding the word, isn’t that crazy? it felt second nature. it somehow perfectly described everything I’d ever felt, exposed me to a community of people who were just like me outside of my Tory town! (pause)

I think there’s a tendency even in leftist, LGBT spaces to think that masculinity is oppressive, and femininity is liberating and oppressed. but it’s really not like that. we’re punished for deviating from our assigned gender, whether you’re a masculine woman, or a feminine man, or something in between the two. I’ve had gay men try to convince me to let them do my makeup, I’ve had gay women tell me that they’re “so glad” I don’t have ‘toxic masculinity’ like “other butches”. femininity was a cage for me, something I had to imitate to survive the perils of high school, but it was never me. masculinity liberated me, and it’s not inherently toxic. I love to carry the bags, hold open the doors, cry in pride, protect those I love. and there’s nothing like coming home at the end of the day to a sweet femme, ready to rub my tired muscles. man, I’m not good at concise answers, am I? (both laugh) no, but I love it!

what do you think of people who see your relationship as heteronormative? they’re twats! (both laugh) now, that’s a concise answer! no, no that’s not fair. here’s what I’d say to them:

I see it as…a complex gender performance. no, that makes it sound like it’s play pretend. they’re complex gender…expressions, dynamics, play, desire, euphoria. a butch and a femme together is no more heterosexual than a bear and a twink, a top and a bottom. it’s a dance that we know in our bones, like we knew each other in a previous lifetime and we’re just falling back into our favoured rhythm. even every fumble and awkward gesture is a part of it. we fall into sync and into each other, we tenderise each other’s gender, affirm it, and love every minute of it. we’re not two sides of the same coin, you talk to any butch-femme couple and chances are our priori (edit: interviewee meant propositions) are the same but our conclusions are not; we’re the same side of the same coin, just one is the top of the tail and the other is the bottom of it. is that a euphemism? (laugh) take it as you will!

I’m no man, my femme is no woman, and I’m no less butch when I’m wearing a kiss-the-cook apron and cleaning their kitchen, and they’re no less femme when they’re putting together a shelf or driving me to work. To look at us and see a heteronormative imitation of cisgender predetermination is proof of their own lack of nuance – do you think all dogs are boys and all cats are girls, too? (both laugh)

I think in a lot of ways, butch-femme dynamics are inherently transsexual. or, in the very least, good friends of transgenderism. If you can’t see us for what we are then chances are you’ve got your own internalised gender biases to unlearn.

I’ve always been butch to my bones, but when I’m with my baby I’m on cloud nine. I feel desired, my gender revered and loved.

so, what you’re saying is, you feel seen? I do. we see each other and nurture each other. I’ve never really liked being called ‘beautiful’, but when it falls from the lips of a femme, I know that they’re not seeing me as feminine. I feel most comfortable to explore the depths of both my femininity and masculinity with them; I don’t feel restricted to a role.

maybe that’s what people are missing about it: our homes are temples of gender exploration and devotion.

end ID].

[trans-androgyne]

When discussing things like privilege and oppression, people seem to have one of two ideas about transmasculinity depending on what suits them best at the moment. They either picture a passing masculine trans man or a femme-presenting non-binary person. Both of these prototypes are skinny and White and relatively palatable to the general public. They find it easy to paint both as basically having cis privilege anyway, just wanting to play up their oppression to make people feel bad for them or excuse their (trans)misogyny. They’ll call the former a misogynistic dangerous Aiden and the latter a basically cis theyfab. There’s no room at all for people like me, people on T but still perceived as a butch lesbian. Closeted transmascs. Intersex transmascs. Multigender transmascs. Gnc transmascs who’ll wear a beard and a dress, but are allegedly exempt from experiencing transmisogyny. And yet even those two prototypes still get discriminated against, assaulted, and killed in cold blood. But that must have been despite their male/cis privilege.

It’s funny that those narratives are so dominant. Have you considered you’re seeing transmascs as privileged because you’re only hearing from the most privileged transmascs? That the handful of skinny White transmasc youtubers and musicians and celebrities you can name only got that far because they fit the picture? But invisibility is a privilege, so I guess the rest of us should shut up and be grateful.

[macksting]

"I still want to make things, but perhaps I should just keep them to myself for the time being. For anyone that cares, I’ll still be continuing Heart of Elynthi and the JOmega charity, but once those are finished I will be taking an indefinite break from posting anything online. It’s a decision I’ve considered ever since the first hate wave from about a year or so ago but wanted to sit on it and see if the feeling would persist. I know now this is the best choice for me."

If I catch anybody celebrating this, I am going to eat your kneecaps. This guy is a sweetheart, I have friends who needed the sort of kind, GNC representation of masculinity he presented earnestly, he was humble and respectful and tried to use his platform for good, and you fucking miserable little shitheads, you pearl-clutching jackasses, decided to take one video out of context and make a crusade out of it. Why don't y'all pick a fight that matters? You think Cop City is gonna crumble because you chased someone offline who was supportive of trans folks and was glad to have been liberated from cishet society? Do you think the world is a better place now? If I find anyone celebrating this, I will be eating the forbidden plantain chips that are their fucking kneecaps. I may even let them have a bite. Yes I am fucking angry about this. Is it that important compared to everything else in the world right now? No, but you made one guy's life hell for no good reason, and that's horrible. Die in a fire. And to be clear, I am not angry about this on his behalf. He did not ask me to be angry. He does not most likely want anybody to face consequences for being a shit-eating little cop who feels good about themselves for crusading against a guy who is using his platform to help trans folks because we helped him too. This is for me. This is because I want a world liberated from oppression, not one where folks recreate it in miniature hoping this time they'll be the Big Man and everyone else will be oppressed, so they pick fights they know they can win just to abuse and belittle someone to feel good about themselves.

He was sweet. He still is. And I hope he lives a better life far away from this.

[feminist-furby-freak]

Could you elaborate on how gender ideology is misogynistic?

Sure. So gender ideology (see previous ask for how I define it) is misogynistic because it denies the present and historical reality of the sex-based oppression of women, reinforces the gender binary through its obsession with gender and gender roles, and jeopardizes women’s safety by privileging AGP men. Here are some examples:

It erases gender non conformity as a normal expression of the self. We see this through the “transing” of gender non conforming children and adults, particularly feminine gay men and masculine lesbian women. TRAs love to scream that we (GCs and TERFs) are obsessed with gender roles and uncomfortable with gender non conformity when they are the ones that promote the idea that men who present feminine and women who present masculine actually need to transition. I know so many detrans butch women who were told as teens and young women that they needed testosterone and surgery to fix them. What is more regressive than telling GNC people they actually need to become the opposite gender?

It denies the reality of sex and sex-based oppression. There are two camps for gender ideologists: gender identity is more important to one’s lived experience than their biological sex and gender is real but biological sex is not. Both of these ideas are misogynistic and false. Women’s subjugation for millennia across the world is not due to their “gender identity.” To say that femaleness isn’t real or that it is something an individual chooses to be is to say that women opt/opted into their oppression, or worse, that sex-based oppression never existed at all. How does the taliban chose which children can go to school? Do you think they go up to every child and ask them their gender identity? Of course not. It is unbelievable how TRAs have brainwashed so many people into denying the existence oldest and most universal form of oppression. This falsehood is so prevalent in academic spaces it has created a revisionist history and permeated science and medical research. Periods, pregnancy, and women’s health issues are now considered TERFy and we have to do this linguistic dance with dehumanizing terminology to discuss our own bodies. Ideology is more important than reality and medical authorities are parroting lies (TIMs can safely breastfeed, puberty is reversible, testerone does not have dangerous side effects) with no scientific basis without repercussion.

It privileges trans identified men over women. Gender ideology is not more scientifically or psychologically sound than gender critical ideology. Gender ideology has been arbitrarily accepted as The Truth by the left. TRAs will say that it is the compassionate or moral opinion and thus correct but this privileges the interests of trans identifying men over the interests of women. After all, morality is subjective. Take sports for example, women want a fair chance to participate in athletics and trans identifying males want to be validated by playing in female sports. The two interests conflict but the left has decided that the wants of the male athletes are more important than the wants of the female athletes, and this is treated as the obvious morally correct stance. But is it so obvious? I don’t think so. Nobody can answer why trans identifying males (because let’s be real trans identifying females never get special privileges) are prioritized over everyone else.

Feel free to send another ask if you have more questions.

[azure-cherie]

PAC : which type of seducer are you

•1~9•

This is based on " The art of seduction" by Robert Greene

With your intuition choose a picture of Adriana Lima , you can choose multiple as well . This is based solely on my intuition however you must observe yourself more for greater accuracy . This is for entertainment purposes.

Pile 1 :

The star

The Star is almost (or completely is) of celebrity status. They, like the Natural, poses the powers of the uncanny -- specifically mixing reality and myth. The star is a dream come true. Physically present, but almost legendary and mythic in essence. They are almost too dream-like to picture in front of us. We imagine them too far out of our league, and that is what makes them so attractive.

Pile 2 :

The Dandy

The Dandy is the Siren or the Rake of the same sex. They attract the traditionally-male with psychologically masculine traits, and they attract the traditionally-female with psychologically feminine traits. They tear down the labels that society has put on sexuality and they play in all spaces. We're attracted to Dandies for their ambiguous and obscure personas, and their freedom to break prejudice sexual behavioural roles.

Pile 3 :

The Rake

The Rake is characterized as the masculine Siren. Playing on society's roles that a female character must abide by, the Rake brings out the oppressed behaviours of a traditionally-femine figure. They bring out the excited feminine in us. Again, male, female, or neutral, we're attracted to Rakes when we've been too confined and comfortable - too restrained - too neutral and unenergized in our day-to-day lives.

Pile 4 :

The natural

The Natural is a reflection of those golden years of comfort and innocent affection - childhood. They portray what both Kubrick and Freud would describe as 'uncanny'. Familiar yet strange. The Natural brings into their persona a sense of youthfulness in an adult body, drawing those that long for the times of no responsibilities, harmlessness, and naive spontaneity.

Pile 5:

The coquette

The Coquette is hot and cold. They touch and go. They attract you with hopeful words or sensual maneuvers and then step back and distance themselves from you. They entice you and frustrate you at the same time, and we're attracted to this because of our human nature to want what we can't have.

Pile 6:

The siren

The Siren is of highly charged traditionally-feminine energy and tends to attract those of a completely opposite, traditionally-masculine energy. Whether or not you identify as male, female or neither, you'll tend to be attracted to a Siren when you show characters on the extremes of traditionally-male behaviour.

Pile 7 :

The charismatic

The Charismatic is the excitement in the room. They exude confidence and energy in all the right places. They are mesmerizing and we're attracted to them because of their sincere obsessions and opinions and actions. They glow a sense of charisma with their animated gestures and fiery persuasive voice. And if they fit our values, they're just a good time to be around.

Pile 8 :

The ideal lover

The Ideal Lover comes to us from our childhood dreams, or rather our lost dreams. They are the ones that bring a hopeless fantasy to life with their ability to mirror the ideals we once had as innocent happy-go-lucky children, but have lost to grey world. They are highly astute at understanding our deepest desires and definitions of affection and bring them to fruition.

Pile 9 :

The charmer

The Charmer has almost a devilish smile you're willing to swoon over. The word "charm" comes from the Latin "carmen" -- a song or a chant that is synonymous with a magic spell. To charm is to literally cast a spell on another. The way that they do this, and the reasons we fall for them, is because they understand 3 fundamental laws of human nature: The law of narcissism, the law of defensiveness, and the law of grandiosity. It's our egos that they stroke, our vanity emotional walls that they align with, and our self-esteem that they praise.

Definitions from the website:

https://aarondanielfilms.com/blog/the-9-archetypal-lovers-you-are-attracted-to

Thank you, hope you resonate 💕

Have a great day/night ahead 😘

[hillbillyoracle]

So I saw this screencap earlier

And I thought it was a great chance to talk about something.

A lot of progressive folks are familiar with the fact that right wing circles use feminine as a derogatory term and that there's a real cost to that for women.

What people are less familiar with is how it hurts men - queer and straight, cis and trans.

And I'm not shocked given how common it is in left leaning spaces to be reactionary (read: dismissive or outright harass) when men try to talk about these what these issues look like for them.

When men talk about how they've experienced toxic masculinity and anti-feminine bias, in addition to the usual right wing responses, I'm starting to see a bunch of supposed feminists and trans/queer allies harass them as well - saying they're hurting women/feminine presenting folks by "centering men", dismissing their concerns as made up (even when there's research to back it up), "why aren't you talking about what this is like for cis and trans women instead??".

I've seen trans men accused of being TERFs or being liars (by other trans people even - wtf) when they talk about their experiences of allies actively excluding them from trans spaces or harassing them for using T4T tags. I've seen men be accused of lying about publicly accessible clinical research that shows men make up 75%-77% of suicide cases - or worse suggest they deserve it. I see posts about how men's complaints "aren't unique to them" and dismiss them because women also suffer things those authors assume are the same (even when the research contradicts this).

And here's the thing:

When you assume feminine=good/safe/gentle and masculine=bad/unsafe/enemy - you're parroting a conservative talking point.

There is no way around this fact.

A big part of what underpins child rearing being "the woman's domain" in conservatism, is the idea that men are inherently dangerous and therefore shouldn't really be around children without women present.

The reason why they blame women for abuse and rape - because they believe men are inherently dangerous and if a woman trusted them then it's her fault.

Part of why women have been effectively banned from many trades and careers for so long is the assumption that being around that many men presents an inherent danger to a woman.

"But!" you might be saying, "This person is clearly talking about men engaging in open conflict as good here!"

Yeah because conservatives see politics as an inherently male/dangerous/toxic sphere and uphold it as such.

I could go on and on really.

All of this is to say - please be more thoughtful in what you consume, comment, and reblog.

There are experiences specific to being masculine. Erasing that is one, a dick move, but two, particularly violent toward those talking about trans masculine, minority masculine, disabled masculine, and queer masculine experiences.

All privilege comes at a cost. Listening when people talk about that cost is key building a new more fair reality. Seeing the privilege is not worth the cost makes fervent allies. Want more allies? Don't be a dick to people having that realization.

Push back against the assumption of woman=good and man=bad when you see it - especially in community spaces. The amount of times I've seen domestic violence services only available to women is insane...

Do not let identarian politics blind you to the fact we're all human and working toward our own liberation should not come at the oppression of another. Believe me, those with real power would much rather you stay raging out at men in a similar class with you than directing your efforts at them.

The right wing wants you to believe it's either/or. Fuck that - it's both/and.

[drdemonprince]

Your post about "transitioning to escape gender but then there's more gender" has been rotating furiously in my mind since I saw it. When I first realized I was trans at age 15, I identified as agender, but I knew I wanted to go on T and get top surgery so I decided it would be simpler to tell everyone I was a trans man and that just kind of became the truth. Now 10 years later I'm sorta starting to feel like I wanna actually be agender again, but the idea of an identity shift like that at my current age is terrifying and idek who I'd tell, or how I'd do it, and I don't think I wanna stop using he/him exclusively, and I have no idea why I'm telling *you* this other than that I'm scared to talk to anyone I know about it because it feels like somehow admitting that I was wrong about the gender I fought like hell to become, even though i don't really think that's the case I think my sense of self might just be continuously evolving... but I just wanna say you talking about having a gender shift like once every several years is helping me process this rn and feel like I'm not faking anything now AND wasn't faking anything before.

Dog i am right there with you. As a kid I always thought gender was bullshit, the coercive nature of it disgusted and scared me and I rebelled against it the best that I could. I loathed being assigned to any gender category, I never identified as a "girl", but I didn't really identify with any other category either. Puberty terrified me (and of course, it does most young people, but it felt like it would only more deeply entrench the category that I was assigned to in other people's minds, it made it more difficult to escape). I had trans friends as a teen but it did not occur to me to transition because there was really no end goal that I wanted to head toward, I just knew what I wanted to avoid and not experience. I coped mostly by degendering my body with a fairly androgynous style and way of presenting myself to the word and mannerisms, but also by starving myself which was not so great, and not sustainable. I considered transness for myself, even trying on a friend's binder and presenting masculinely at certain queer events, but it seemed to me at the time like just another way in which to obsess over gender, a foolish coercive socially constructed thing that i was trying to avoid.

In my 20s, I learned more about nonbinary people and figured that explained things pretty well. I was enamored with the transition journeys of some other trans people, largely trans women more than trans masculine ones (with some trans-effeminate faggot boy exceptions), but I still didn't want to take on all the expense and uncertainty and hassle of navigating the medical system for myself. I didn't think that the pursuit of being happy merited taking on so many risks or fiddling with myself so much. I saw it as an extravagance I didn't deserve, I guess, and I also couldn't locate a target outcome that seemed desirable enough for me. I was still dealing with an eating disorder and recovering from some trauma and didn't really think about my life in the long term. I guess I still don't, haha, whoops.

Eventually I came out as nonbinary, and nobody really gave a shit. There is a lot of useless, solidarity-breaking discourse that happens online about essentially who is "more" oppressed, binary trans people or nonbinary people, and a lot of that fight amounts to the two groups shouting about the ways in which they annoy one another without there being any cogent analysis of power and where oppression comes from (let alone how much those two categories overlap).

But I will say that being a they/them was far more difficult than being a trans guy socially and institutionally, because your identity is completely illegible to every system around you. "binary" trans people struggle under this too, but i have found there are some immense benefits to having a socially and institutionally legible target gender. nobody would fucking actually they/them me. not anyone. not even other trans people and queer people. there were no public gendered spaces for me. there were no spaces for me. there was no way to move through the medical system, professional life, and other public institutions as a nonbinary person. i was still just a cis woman in everyone's eyes. including the people who claimed to support me. and it was massively frustrating.

and so i think ultimately, i took my frustrations with not being at all able to escape coerced gendering as a nonbinary person and combined that with the affinity i do feel for queer men and the general sense of misery i was still experiencing in my life and decided what the hell, i'll round myself up to being a trans guy. i upped my T dose, i dressed more masculinely, i eventually got a super masculine hair cut that really squared off my jawline and got me gendered correctly, and i started more consciously inhabiting queer men's spaces.

and it was pretty dope. for a while. i felt the rush of having gotten away with something. when people effortlessly gendered as male i felt freed at last from the pressure to be a woman. i was no longer being coerced into being something that i was not. i had escaped the enforced category so much that people couldn't even see the history of that category being pushed onto me. there was relief.

but then. as always happens. people made little comments about my handshake being too weak for a man. the hypermasc dudes at the leather bar rolled their eyes at me and all the other effeminate dudes swanning around the bar. the people who picked me up off the apps or at the sauna would always let it slip, eventually, that they had a lot of experience with trans guys, or had most recently been dating all trans guys, and it would make me feel like a stock character to them, yet another category into which all kinds of assumptions had been projected. a type not a person. a few people said my haircut made me look like i was in the military or described me as actually masculine, which was equally jarring because it was so incorrect. people tried to affirm me by saying i was such a dude, i was such a man, i was such a fag, i was such a gay bro, pawing all over me leaving the mark of all their assumptions and oversimplifications behind. i had tried to run away from gender and there i was just BASTING all the time in everybody's goddamn assumptions about gender. trans people didn't talk about it any less than cis people did, they were just as fucking confining to be around.

it honestly feels really dirty. when people try to affirm your gender constantly and can't stop talking about it, when people look past you and see only your body, your history, or the role they have typecast you in, when people use your body as an outlet for their own gender or sexuality explorations, when they keep trying to measure every single facet of existence up into being masculine or being feminine or being toppy or bottomy or any other gendered type, it's claustrophobic.

as a trans man i tried playing this whole gender game and the second i started winning i began to feel even more disgusted with myself. it wasn't a victory or an escape, it was a capitulation. exploring with my identity and presentation has brought positive things into my life and my health has gotten better as a result, and i've made wonderful friends who, like me, are disaffected by this coercive gendering system. so i don't regret any of that. but trying to make myself legible under the existing gendered system was a fool's fucking errand. i wish i hadnt done it to myself and i wish i hadnt had it pushed onto me. to be clear, it was cissexist, binarist society that forced it onto me; even when other queer people coated me in their gendered assumptions that is obviously a byproduct of societal conditioning, and it's conditioning that ive reinforced in my own behavior and outlook toward others plenty of times too. we all do it, and we are all wronged by the existing coercive gender system.

i dont even care how i fucking identify anymore and i have no intention of changing pronouns again or anything, i'm so bored of it, i just actually want off this fucking thing. im not interested in trying to make others understand what i am anymore or in who i am even being simply categorizable, i dont want to obsess anymore over how i am perceived or to attempt engineer my appearance and mannerisms to broadcast an identity to anyone. i dont even want to fuck anybody right now at all because im so sick of how much that's a gender pantomime for people. i want off this fuckin ride man im so done.

it's kind of freeing, to hit this point of complete gender apathy, and i think it is a pretty common stage of identity development for a lot of queer people who have explored multiple identities and roles over time. there is no category that i actually am, or that anyone is, there are just the frameworks that society has given us to work with to understand ourselves, and the ways in which we flatten who we are to be able to make sense of the world using those frameworks. but who i actually am is so much more contextual and mutable than all that. i am a different person in the classroom than i am on the train platform than i am in the bedroom than i am cuddling on the couch than i am when i'm working out than i am when curled up on the floor crying than i am at a big furry convention. who i am continues to change as new people come in and out of my life and age and change and my body alters and as the weather turns. who fuckin knows man it's nothing and everything. i want to let it just be

[kittyit]

One thing I don't like about trans critical spaces is how they are focused on trans women being unattractive and 'cringe.' this is just my personal experience, but I have been sexually victimized by multiple trans women, most of whom passed, many of whom were skinny and beautiful and most of which had high brow tastes and no interest in anime or other cringe topics. one of these TIMs was a serial sexual assailant and I think probably attracted to underage boys, and she was also beautiful and charismatic. Meanwhile, I also know multiple trans women who are good people and don't infringe on female spaces but who are conventionally "ugly", broad-shouldered, and have masculine interests. It also seems like the only thing TIMs criticize about each other publically is being "ugly", large, or fat.

my position has consistently been for about 15 years that mocking someone's appearance is not a feminist act. it simply isn't.

mocking appearance is essentially a cruel hobby, it's primate social aggression we're using our huge brains for. it's really fun, and that's why almost everyone does it. i sometimes do it too, in private, in intimate company, and it's enjoyable. i say this to clarify that despite my position, i don't set myself apart or above from women who do it. i do it too. and it's constant in basically every subculture online. julie bindel actually posted on her facebook recently troubled about this same thing. as you said, it's so common in queer/trans circles too, the long-forgotten 2013 values of tenderqueerism fallen to the wayside. stan culture, politics, just basically everything...i really can't stress enough that in my opinion, it is a hobby

mocking appearances is not feminist or activism. it quite often is anti-feminist. it's kindergarten stuff to not judge a book by its cover. it doesn't matter what a male person looks like - he is still male and all considerations that apply to male people apply to him. i don't need to think a male person has a hideous appearance to criticize him for any of the oppressive acts he's doing. focus on appearance (or other unrelated personal attacks) often takes the sting out of a criticism of someone's character, morals or actions and makes your argument easier to dismiss. and of course the now mocked & dismissed concept that when you rip into someone's appearance, you do friendly fire to anyone around who shares those features. but of course this doesn't matter to anyone because it's 1. so fun 2. we're so used to it 3. everyone is doing it 4. so who cares? (I do. However)

i also just can't really scrape up that much finger wagging anymore at women who do spend a huge amount of time blowing off steam mocking the insane parodies that trans women present as. it's basically evil imaginative play. it's just not activism and acting like it is, as you said, is really detrimental to radical feminism being understood as a feminist way of thought that deeply affects women's lives.

as for the rest of this, have you read pronouns are rohypnol? you do not have to call a serial rapist pedophile you knew she. there is no one here but us, he cannot hear you. i encourage you to free up processing power in your mind, especially if you've survived trans male violence. calling the men who harmed you he can be a turning point in reclaiming your own sense of reality, it was for me

[spacelazarwolf]

i’m not gonna reblog the actual post bc i am not in the mood for discourse but i am getting kind of tired of seeing “trans femmes aren’t pressuring gnc men to transition” posts bc like. idk maybe ur talking abt ppl who are actually saying that, but the vast majority of those posts are made in direct response to gnc men and/or nonbinary ppl who are talking abt our frustrations with the over-familiarity a lot of ppl — not just trans femmes — have developed when it comes to gnc men and nonbinary ppl, telling us what our genders actually are bc we’re clearly just confused or don’t want to “admit the truth.”

i’m sure there are individual people like transmeds who pressure ppl to transition but that’s not what most of these convos have been abt. we’re talking abt the ppl who tell gnc men they’re clearly an egg bc they like wearing women’s clothes and painting their nails, or tell amab nonbinary ppl who present masculine that they’re “basically a man” or that they’re a “trans woman in denial.” we’ve talked abt how east asian men and jewish men have historically been demonized as a part of their systemic oppression and the way ppl unwittingly continue that cycle with those of us who are gnc and/or nonbinary. we’ve talked abt the way even ppl who say they accept nonbinary ppl are still enforcing a masculine/feminine binary, and how this continues to disproportionately affect intersex people.

and like. it’s not some nefarious plot to get more ppl to transition. it’s just a combination of ppl not having boundaries and acting inappropriately, ppl not doing the work to really unlearn the gender binary, and ppl not taking into account the way other intersections interact with gender.

[notes-from-the-epicene]

"I don't owe you androgyny"

I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard this rallying cry repeated in the non-binary community now. The idea that us enbies are people that are not simply the Harry-Styles-in-the-ugliest-outfit-you-can-possibly-imagine stereotype of a mix between femininity and masculinity is analogous to the core struggle genderqueer people face daily against the traditional western gender binary; “we get to choose who we are – not you”. With that in mind, I want to discuss my experience as an AMAB enby – specifically one who “presents masculine”.

When I first came out as an enby, I received the standard shit from people. Some insidious, some overt - for every “You’re just a man in denial” and “You just want to invade women’s spaces”, I also had a “I’ve always thought of you as a man, though…” or a “You’re just a trans women waiting to realise who she is”. There was a big issue with where these comments, however - they weren’t just coming from your regular uneducated bigots.

They were coming from other enbies.

Let me talk about my identity for a moment. I see myself as outside of gender as a construct. Androgyny? Femininity? Masculinity? They mean nothing to me. I am me. That is my identity. That is who I want to be seen as, and no less. Am I masculine? Apparently. I dress practically the same now as I did before I came out: for utility. Sure, I like to look attractive, but first and foremost I dress for my own comfort – to use the word that people refer to me as, “masculine”. T-shirt. Jeans. Boots.

I also have my bra. A ratty old thing, it stops my breasts from poking out too much or moving in an uncomfortable way. I have a disorder that causes AIS, which means my body doesn’t process testosterone properly, leading to androgynous sexual characteristics - breasts, no body hair, no facial hair, softer skin, that sort of thing. My disorder is pretty metaphorical for my experience of gender; I’ve never fitted neatly into any category. As a kid, I played as much in a “feminine” way as a did a “masculine” way, much to the chagrin of my parents. When I had been properly house-broken to the traditional rules of gender, I was a mess. Your classic mid-teens “alpha male” wannabe. I couldn’t mediate my body, my personality, my experiences with what everyone else told me was how I was supposed to be; to put it another way, who I was against how people told me I had to be.

I didn’t owe them masculinity, but by god did I feel like I did.

This isn’t a feeling that’s gone away since I realised who and what I truly am; it’s morphed. I know the classic narrative of queerdom is solidarity, empathy, and resistance in the face of oppression, but my reality has been dog-eat-dog world of exclusion, infighting, distrust, and derision.

I don’t owe anyone androgyny, but by god do I feel like I need to.

Why do I feel that need? My identity is defined by rejection of gender. I don’t fit into a category – sex or gender. If I were staying true to myself (#Slay) I’d feel no need to change my gender presentation for the public eye. I should be me – no less. However, gender is a social construction. We in the genderqueer community have taken that idea to a logical conclusion: we have the ability to define ourselves - nobody else. We have absolute sovereignty over our own identities. Gender is still, however, a social construction. The words “Masculine”, “Feminine”, “Androgynous” – they mean nothing to me internally, in the domain of myself, but socially? They apply. My presentation is how I am judged; literally, how I present to people. The social qualities that these categorisations hold is how the majority of people get their first impressions of me, how they interpret my actions, my words, my ideas.

A lot of people are scared of masculinity, and for good reason, too. Patriarchy, intersexual violence, sexual assault, the list goes on and on and on. I wouldn’t dare invalidate their experiences for any amount of personal validation of my own identity - but that’s not to say those reactions don’t invalidate my identity. In my experience, presenting how I do – a “masculine” AMAB enby – is an incredibly fine line in the genderqueer community. At one moment, I am the genderless entity I want to be perceived as. I am me - my personality, my actions, my good and bad qualities. The next moment, I am a man. Frightening, unempathetic, a bull in the china shop of other people’s fears and traumas – a danger to be managed and accounted for.

My experience of gender is a constant battle. Even in the realm of those who do not normally view me as masculine, all it takes is a single mistake to trigger the view. I monitor what I say, how I act, what I do in order to maintain the social view that I am me  – not a man. In my experience, my  assigned sex and gender matter just as much in genderqueer spaces as they do in the outside world. I have to perform to expectations, partake in the gendered masquerade for acceptance.

I am not a man, nor a male – I rejected the former, and the latter is a rough categorisation for me at best. I can’t trade my presentation for the comfort of others; to do so feels like an injustice, a betrayal of myself and the goals of the genderqueer movement, yet I can’t expect others’ comfort when I present how I do. To do so would be an injustice to them, a denial of their own experiences. Is that reaction justified? I feel like I’m not allowed to answer to that – to (ironically) paraphrase Simone de Beauvoir, I feel as though I am both judge and party to this issue.

To summarise this long rant, the genderqueer community has a question to face. Yes, genders are social constructions, but the social aspects of presentation cause intersectional issues we are seemingly struggling with. When considering justice for our masculine siblings, where do we draw the lines of our discourse? How involved should they be in these discussions? Do we take our ideals to their conclusion, involving them and letting them individuate themselves away from their presentation, or do we hold strongly in consideration for the anxieties and traumas of those affected by patriarchy? I would hope there is a third answer here – one that my privileges might not allow me to see, but I hope that in this writing I can convince you, the reader, to consider your own feelings about this issue.

[spiderfreedom]

Why women presented as men, in their own words

Most of these working-class women appear to have begun their "masculine" careers not because they had an overwhelming passion for another woman and wanted to be a man to her, but rather because of economic necessity or a desire for adventure beyond the narrow limits that they could enjoy as women. But once the sexologists became aware of them, they often took such women or those who showed any discontent whatsoever with their sex roles for their newly conceptualized model of the invert, since they had little difficulty believing in the sexuality of women of that class, and they assumed that a masculine-looking creature must also have a masculine sex instinct.

Autobiographical accounts of transvestite women or those who assumed a masculine demeanor suggest, if they can be believed at all, that the women's primary motives were seldom sexual. Many of them were simply dramatizing vividly the frustrations that so many more women of their class felt. They sought private solutions to those frustrations, since there was no social movement of equality for them such as had emerged for middle-class women. Lucy Ann Lobdell, for example, who passed as a man for more than ten years in the mid-nineteenth century, declared in her autobiography: "I feel that I cannot submit to all the bondage with which woman is oppressed," and explained that she made up her mind to leave her home and dress as a man to seek labor because she would "work harder at housework, and only get a dollar per week, and I was capable of doing men's work and getting men's wages." "Charles Warner," an upstate New York woman who passed as a man for most of her life, explained that in the 1860s:

“When I was about twenty I decided that I was almost at the end of my rope. I had no money and a woman's wages were not enough to keep me alive. I looked around and saw men getting more money and more work, and more money for the same kind of work. I decided to become a man. It was simple. I just put on men's clothing and applied for a man's job. I got it and got good money for those times, so I stuck to it”

A transvestite woman who could actually pass as a man had male privileges and could do all manner of things other women could not: open a bank account, write checks, own property, go anywhere[…]

Ralph Kerwinieo (nee Cora Anderson), an American Indian woman who found employment for years as a man and claimed that she "legally" married another woman in order to "protect" her from the sexist world, also expressed feminist awareness for her decision to pass as a man:

“This world is made by man—for man alone.... In the future centuries it is probable that woman will be the owner of her own body and the custodian of her own soul. But until that time you can expect that the statutes [concerning] women will be all wrong. The well-cared for woman is a parasite, and the woman who must work is a slave.... Do you blame me for wanting to be a man-free to live as a man in a man-made world? Do you blame me for hating to again resume a woman's clothes?”

There must have been many women, with or without a sexual interest in other women, who would have answered her two questions with a resounding "no!"

From “Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers.” The economic reason for women to pass as men is almost never mentioned, funny that!

[nekropsii]

I have a very genuine question and I come with no intent of provoking anyone, but what do "masculine" and "feminine" mean if we don't go by stereotypes like wearing skirts and bows or having a certain attitude? Or are you saying that wearing pants is masculine is an outdated concept? I can understand that man and woman go well beyond presentation and stereotypes, but I thought masculine and feminine meant just that.

Gender is an ever evolving social construct and complete genuine horseshit, but there are some declarations of what is and is not belonging to a certain gender presentation that are wildly outdated. So yes, I’m saying that “wearing pants makes a woman manly” is outdated, because it literally fucking is. That’s what I’ve been saying this whole time. Maybe that would mean something in a piece of media from the god damn 1800’s, but it doesn’t mean shit now, and it’s patently ridiculous to act like most women don’t have a pair of fuckin’ pants in their wardrobe in the year of 2024 in the continent of America.

To look at a woman who is hyper-feminine and declare her masculine on the principle that she is wearing fucking pants is weird and sexist because no normal person thinks that way without themselves also being sexist, often to a very substantial and oppressive degree. There’s women’s pants. There is a women’s pants aisle. Do you earnestly think a pair of bedazzled bellbottoms with BABYGIRL printed on the ass and no pockets and zero crotch room is intended for men to wear? Because they’re not. Like, I’d love for men to wear that shit, obviously, but it’s demonstrably not intended for them to wear - again, zero crotch room, no pockets. Women’s pants are a real thing that exist and they’re notoriously built differently from men’s pants. And by differently I mean often built like shit, and this is why some women, regardless of gender presentation, will shop in the men’s pants aisle, and this does literally nothing to damage their own femininity.

In the context of Meenah, it is even worse to declare that she is masculine purely on the basis that she is wearing fucking pants, Jesus shitting fuck Christ, because she’s very, very clearly Black coded. This dips straight into Misogynoir, quite clearly. A big part of Meenah’s character is her femininity, but she’s often labeled as masculine purely for stupid shit like “being mean” and “wearing pants”. It smacks of how every Black woman has to fight just to be seen as herself, because society so often strips people of the choice to be perceived how they wish to be seen on bigoted grounds. Black women are frequently labeled as manly no matter how feminine they are on the basis of them not performing femininity to white standards - not quiet, prim, dainty, minimalist, subservient.

Any little thing gets a Black woman’s Woman Card yanked from her hands. “Too loud”? Scary, manly. “Too mean”? Aggressive, manly. “Dressed wrong”? Sloppy, oversexual, manly. It’s practically the default form of Misogynoir. And here people are, proudly declaring it and defending it using some logic that only works in the 1950’s and back, or proudly declaring that saying that wearing pants makes a woman more masculine by default is a totally normal thing to say by pulling out some absolute Spiders Georg examples. Tone deaf.

It’s… Really not that difficult to parse, but Tumblr has an issue with recognizing any form of misogyny or racism, especially in itself, Jesus Christ, so… What can one expect.

[duncebento]

when nonbinary ppl were having rich discussion about nonbinary activism and experience, black activists (some of whom were nonbinary themselves) intruding to say “hey, we’ve been using the abbreviation ‘nb’ to mean ‘nonblack’ already, and we think that you using the same abbreviation may dilute or confuse the term” did not erase years of nonbinary discourse or silence nonbinary people in regard to present and future discourse, because the change suggested— a change in abbreviation— was mostly semantic and thus pretty superficial.

the argument about whether the term “transmisandry” should be used, and especially whether it makes sense to be wielded against transfems, is purported by the word’s advocates to be a semantic argument— but if it were truly semantic, it is unlikely that any grand discourse about the unique oppression faced by trans men would go erased or silenced as a result of semantic criticism. (i’m always quick to bring up that black men, unlike black women, have no particular term to discuss the unique experience resultant of their racial and gender experiences, and yet it is their oppression that is talked about most heartily in discussions of antiblackness. certainly, terminology is not the utmost important technology in discussing our oppression.)

“transmisandry” is, in reality, treated with more than a semantic weight— because to give it up as a term would be to give up on the idea of men being oppressed for their masculinity, an idea that cedes the responsibility to dismantle patriarchy in its suggestion that there is a matriarchy operating with equal ferocity— a matriarchy, specifically, that allows trans women to wield up the tools of power against their brothers and in doing so elevate themselves. this is imaginary.