#he’s always been intersex I just have different ideas on how that might present. and as usual. nothing concrete WHVDJSBS

[archersartcorner]

Got all my Six art showin up in my year ago album… made me think of Him. So have a Sixxie :)

[bubblyernie]

Can we get more Milo and Charlie lore? I just like em a lot.

YES ABSOLUTELY YUH HUH!!!!! this is about to be so long I might break tumblrs post word limit

So I have a few drawings in my queue that relate to lore, but I'll do my best to like cover most things ;w;

Okay as an OVERVIEW, Milo and Charlie were two characters I made as like throwaway designs because I wanted to try the concept of a marble statue earth genasi muse for a charcoal earth genasi artist. Which was this. Also toyed with the idea of heavy heavy heavy bod mods because you know how statues break or have unfinished parts.

Cut to my DM wanting to run a 13 episode miniseries for our campaign as a prequel in a bard-reskinned-strixhaven (so. art school. instead of wizards, its bards) and I was like oh I could play the earth genasi artist I have because the bard school is like all types of art (martial, visual, music, performance, culinary, and written). I ended up going with Milo rather than Charlie because I always imagined the marble one being more brash and jockish, which balanced the party more.

Long story short, redesign after redesign and I made him who he is rn — bod mods everywhere, the BIGGEST doofus, the ultimate bare minimum burn out student doing pot out their dorm window energy. He's such a people person (bard of valor lessgooo) and basically is the most 90s anti-bullying punk ever. Char's his boyfriend, he's there also but as an NPC

OKAY LORE TIME

----

Milo's actually two years younger than Charlie is so lets start with him. He's intersex and also trans — trying to skirt around tumblrs censorship here but — so born with female and male reproductive organs. Presented more femme (kinda tomboyish though) before growing more comfortable with a male identity maybe like right before getting into this bard college. FUN FACT: I originally based his design off two different statues — The Venus De Milo (....Milo Venn Mason) and Sleeping Hermaphroditus. Milo's also, like the Venus De Milo, 6'8" tall.

Charlie's also transgender, T4T lol, but does present more androgynous than Milo does just because he likes the style. Always been kinda quiet and reserved but he's actually really quite blunt, like has a snarkier tone to him than people would expect — and though Milo is more vocal with standing up for himself, Charlie is also just as ready to knock someone's teeth out but he's doesn't like causing a stir hsdfjhkkdfjk

Physiology is one of my favourite topics with dnd. So Milo and Char are both genasi, NOT constructs — I had this debate with the whole marble statue business. So there's other elements in there. Milo's like an abandoned statue, he grows moss and mildew when he's sad, it comes out of the cracks in his head (we'll get to that) and his piercing holes. He's also....all clay on the inside. Throat ends at the neck, no idea whats passed that, magic probably. He bleeds and blushes terracotta. Charlie on the other hand is solid diamond. Charcoal/carbon outside, but if he gets a scratch, it scrapes off the top layer and reveals diamond — that's actually the case with his fingernails. And Eyes. And Teeth. He's hot running too...charcoal and all. Charcoal Cinders... (I also find this fun, and there's a comic in the works of this, that Milo is softer than Char despite being brasher, its just the density and hardness of the rocks. I was interested in the Mohs scale and gemstones as a kid so....marble<diamond) like if Milo punched a cinder block, his hand would shatter, but if Charlie punched it, his condensed ball of brooding would scuff that thing)

This is so silly and kinda gross but that meme of like "......what if stones are soft but harden when we touch them" is what I think these two rocks are like. Because they have to move and function for yknow. logic and game mechanics and stuff. So I think Milo and Charlie feel like semi-hard modelling paste when they're not in "rock" mode. Like firm muscle or dense clay. Milo "Rock Hard" Mason, as my discord name was for a while

Backstory wise there's not much. They had pretty standard childhoods (didn't write that part yet oops). Met up in the bard school, first year Milo did a tat for Charlie (and lob enlargements, which they both have) and Charlie did Milo's tramp stamp. Anyway both were like :3c and thus, dating.

OKAY also trauma because...everyone needs a little bit. So Milo is/used to be a cheerleader — bard of Valor, yknow — and there's this whole...thing. I'm gonna post an excerpt from me raving to my friend about this but "milo's like sooo comfortable with being adequate. like he straight up said right before his exam his roommate was like "youll do great!" and hes all "well im not aiming for great, im aiming for passable!" because like...burnout and also hes surrounded by really snobbish and exemplary bards, its like a top notch school and he doesnt like how all that kinda gets to peoples heads. Plus he's really really heavy yknow, made of rock, so one time in a martial training soemone flung him and hes like OH GOD IVE NEVER BEEN ON TOP OF THE PYRAMID HELP!!, basically like the "yes im at the bottom of the pyramid, but thats because everyone needs someone to support them, and also its an essential part of the formation. I like being supportive even if it means i dont do anything glorious". All that is to say, he was at the bottom of a pyramid, someone on top of him fell, fell on him, his head hid the ground and he was just missing 1/4th of his head. I don't remember if my comic of this posted yet, I don't think it did.

So yes. Basically. Milo's got a massive crack in his head/missing half his face because of a horrible head injury. Charlie probably had like a 3 day long anxiety stomach ache about it. He's fine now. Also the unfinished face is because there's not enough clay to put that back together yet (matter cant come from nothing) — his chest being unfinished is irrelevant. He was just doing top surgery at home, got bored, and didn't finish that half.

I think that's about all I have at the moment for them together!!

---

Trivia fun facts!!

Milo's adopted. He has three moms, they're all tieflings. Charlie's got a bio dad and step dad, one looks pretty much just like him, the other is a satyr

Milo's 6'8" and while Charlie looks short as hell in comparison, he's actually 6'

Milo's tattoo guide — includes my fave Flete Puellae (Latin for "Cry, girls!", taken from Roman graffiti "Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!"

Milo's missing an index finger because he tried doing knuckle tattoos

Milo's more 80s British punk, Charlie is more 90s-2000s grunge/scene/Harajuku

Charlie, and Im debating on this, might be part bard part wizard. Scribes if anything.

Charlie smudges everything he touches.

Milo's expertise is in deception because if he wants to blend in, he just strikes a pose, nude, in the school courtyard. He's a nude model for the life drawing courses so it's actually not that absurd for him.

Charlie calls Milo "Mo", short for Mosiac. Milo calls Charlie...Charlie. everyone else has to call him Charcoal.

Even though they transitioned, I think they would use the same names as given — both are fairly neutral in terms of gender. Charlie may have gone by Cindy before (Charcoal CINDers). And again, both are kinda loosely goosey with how they present anyways

Charlie plays the shawm, Milo plays drums. In modern day, Milo used to play guitar (not anymore, oops there goes his finger) and drums. Bards!!

Moss beard (30 years in the future probably)

[pack-the-pack]

Going though your blog and answers has me ✨ fascinated ✨ and I mean that in the most positive of ways. ABO is a hit or miss because it frequently intersects with my scent kink but only in the most specific of ways lol. (It has also been rotting my brains in trying to come up with different hcs lately so thank you for satisfying that scratch)

Originally came here from your slur list which I'm Obsessed with because mundane world building (mundane as in every day, I very much love it XD) so going through it was such a treat.

And now having spent almost an hour scrolling, I can confidently say that I love your blog ~

(I'm also on your 'give chan all the love he deserves' boat and currently Going through it trying to find good fics XD. If you have any recs I would be forever grateful <3)

Food for thought: I know most head cannons around abo stay relatively away from deviation aside from personality (going off fanfics, I haven't explored blogs that much, a travesty I'm now realizing), but knowing that in humans neither sex nor gender is binary in any way has me wondering what those deviations might look like in an abo setting. What would intersex look like in this setting? Pheromones are pretty obvious, certain scents being correlated with certain presentations, but the potency could also bring up insecurity (going off your beta having weaker scents hc). Glands could be missing or placed differently (is the scent kink obvious lol) but seeing as they're important for communication, that could be an interesting take on ostracization as the "inept" one. I won't get too far into the surgery done to irl intersex folk because this is fun fantasy, but it's another aspect to explore.

All to say, I'm just fascinated with the evolution and the "how we got here" side of abo and all the ramifications that come with it lol.

Hope you have a good day! You've made mine with a new blog to explore -w-

Hello!

So sorry, for taking so long to answer. I've been neglecting my asks a lot, there's nearly 100 of them, and I know I'll never get them down to a reasonable number. Oop :V But slowly I'll get through SOME hahahaha. First things first: I'm incredibly grateful for all the kind words. I know I've slowly got less and less time over the years to dedicete to this blog, But I still try to come by whenever I have some time to spare. And to know that there are people out there that really enjoy what I write and create is very heart-warming. Ah yes, the infamous slurs post. The A/B/O magnet that curses my notifications lol. Like I said in my last post, one day people will realize this is for FICTION, and as you said, world-building, not a real thing? Antis be bafflings as always, but what else is new, ey? YES! Channie deserves so much love. I unforutetly don't have any fanfics to rec, even though I am writting one myself. But I gotta say, as I write, writing Chris' persona (because when it comes to Real People fanfiction, especially idols, I make it very clear that we're dealing with their personas as artists, not them as real people in their private lives) is surprisingly difficult. Most of all when it comes to writing him as a source of conflict. Because bloody hell, he's so sweet, I can't write him being petty or whiny belivably enough! When I do write my fanfic though and at least post ONE chapter, I'll let you know, if you want I can send you a link also. Now for the interesting part. As always, omegaverse biology! I think it'd be interesting if intersex people were like, maybe anatomically like one dynamics, but behaviourally like another. Specially on their scent. You look at this big person, and you think "there goes an Alpha", but then they just smell like sweet Omega or Beta and you're like "wait a sec--". I like the idea of different shapes and placements of glands too! That'd be quite interesting. As for the gonads and reproductive organs, technically in my verse, Alpha females and Omega males are in a way, already what one may consider intersex (at least one interpretation of it). Female alpha have a slit/vagina that acts as a sheath for their penis, which only grow upon arousal, much like cats. And at least in my verse, Omega males have a vestigial penis and testicles, that although not functional for reproduction still react to arousal and stimulus. They also have a womb accessible by their booty, which I know many people don't like, but hey, my game my rules, right? Thinking of other possible intersex presentations in a verse such as this, then one could maybe argue for functional and larger penises for "supposed" Omegas while keeping the ability to carry offspring. And for female Alphas maybe maintining the ability to carry children, like Beta females, but having a smaller, non functional penis. And also a myriad of other possibilities. Would that be enough to constitute a new dynamics? Maybe, idk actually. I think much like in real life, it'd be up to the individual to decide whether or not they want to be segregated and categorized as something other. It's certainly a fun thing to consider and build a story or some headcanons in the very least upon. Thank you for the ideas :))

[91vaults]

From a Butch lesbian perspective: GC's tend to talk a lot about the "poor lesbians" but as I discovered when really interrogating gender, there is a long history of gender fluidity within the lesbian community. There were always he/him lesbians, lesbians who's only connection to the concept of womanhood was...well lesbianism (of which I count myself) lesbians who performed and experienced gender in a way different to many "biological women". Lesbians who experience gender dysphoria with the "biologically female" parts of their bodies. (I have a body type that lends itself well to androgyny, but lord knows how I might feel if it were different) . Some of them might have been trans men and were they around today and made the choice to transition that would not be a loss to lesbians. We tend to exist in the frameworks available to us at the time.

To put us all in the category of "biological women" and "biological men" limits us and denies our experience. I feel a disconnect from "womanhood" as most define it but this is not some attempt to "escape the sexism that women experience" I am not immune to sexism and will never be. Instead I pick and choose the parts that do speak to my experience. "Woman Adjacent" fits me just fine. It doesn't need to make sense to others.

The relentless pressures of compulsory heterosexuality can make us cling hard to ideas and labels. We are inundated with so much messaging that its all about men, relationships with men, that we'll "grow out of it" or bi phobic myths that girls will mess around with you for fun then go back to heterosexuality. It is natural then to define your lesbian identity more so as the absence of attraction to men rather than the presence of an attraction to women. AMAB people who identify otherwise feel like a threat to the definitions and categories we use to stand our ground in a patriarchal society. I used to feel like that, and balked at the idea of "Nonbinary lesbians" or other labels ("Demi boy??? what is this nonsense") and of course unlike me many lesbians, butch or otherwise identify strongly as women and have fought so hard to be recognized as such. And lets be real, if that's the case and you start being asked what your pronouns are all the time that's probably going to grind your gears (where and when we get asked our pronouns can be a prickly topic all across the LGBT+ spectrum but I digress)

It's also hard to deny that fear, however irrational: " what happens to us when the "lesbians" are all non binary or transmen?" we feel like a minority within a minority, our numbers ever so small and now seemingly shrinking, they'll be none of us left, will I die alone?

what's wrong withing being a lesbian?

makes sense on an emotional level if you've struggled to regain the title for yourself.

It need not be like that though. Lesbians aren't going anywhere, there are many queer woman under the umbrella regardless of how they may identify. Letting go of strict definitions does not erase yours or anyone's identity, rather it makes you more empathetic and understanding. The shifting of the framework in which we identify ourselves is not a threat. It's an opportunity for acceptance and perhaps even exploration.

and ultimately at the end of the day you do not have to date anyone you don't want to for any reason. As long as your not a jerk about it. Sex and connection is complicated and contentious and perhaps does not exist in a vacuum: but personal preference is personal preference.

When GC/TERF ideology is taken to its logical conclusion it hurts us all much more than the "bogey man" trans person in their heads ever could. They talk endlessly about the protection of women: which women? women who are gender non conforming? women who are unable to or do not wish to reproduce? intersex women? women who are subjected to invasive questioning of their gender because they are athletes and present a certain way? (that's not even getting into the ways this disproportionately affects WOC) they claim to understand the reasons and inner lives of those they call women who do not identify as such. To talk over them and insist their "dysfunction" is due to a need to escape sexism, rather than just who they are. (I don't hate or run away from womanhood..I just orbit around it with nothing more to say about it then "...huh, ok")

They are incredibly abelist against autistic people as if they have no understanding of themselves, as if their particular experience with gender is invalid.

Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull calls for men with guns to guard women's restrooms. What do you suppose would happen if someone like me were to walk in? years ago in America a Masc women was accosted by a cop in a public restroom who demanded to see ID. A man in a female restroom harassing a woman....fancy that.

This is not about protecting women. This is about a hatred of a large portion of the LGBT+ community, its a repackaging of every homophobic trope they used in the past, before we collectively agreed the rights of gay people were not up for debate. It's about enforcing a strict veiw of gender based on biological essentialism, as nonsensical as it is harmful. As though they want to recreate Gilliead (given the alt right friends that's probably not far off the mark)

It might start that way for some, to express """concerns""" about women's issues, but it always seems to devolve into the same thing: obsessing over sexist and restrictive biological ideas about gender, misandry and obsessively nitpicking and mocking the physical appearance of those they hate (Feminism!!!!! :D )

Truly makes no sense.

[ursie]

Why do you keep calling Shatterstar gnc? He’s always been masculine? Just because he’s Bi doesn’t mean he has to be effeminate you know

Ok so I’ve gone back and fourth on how seriously I was gonna answer this so I’m sorry this took a bit to answer anyway here we go : I’m sorry if this makes no sense I’m tired

First off it’s important to remember in media what’s considered masculine and what’s not so while a lot of Star may be considered either or what’s important to remember is when him being a warrior, fighter/ect is being emphasized that’s them playing up traditional masculine characteristics and his presentation or softer moments is them playing up “feminine” characteristics (obv this is stupid but it’s also undeniably how people write characters 99% of the time)

Second off there is textual evidence he is at least viewed as gnc in universe in X Force-many comments were made about his makeup, hair (also I remember the pigtails) and general demeanor. Was it done in a ala homophobia way? Absolutely is it still canon? Yes (also so much worse now that it’s retroactively canonically homophobic as he’s literally Bi and definitely had a known thing w Julio at the time-so..way to teach him micro aggressions guys)

Now post x force in xfi he is drawn and written as far more traditionally masc, in appearance and presentation- even his body type seemed to change-as in x force he was described as acrobatic and fast, avoiding hits when he could in xfi he’s made into a brick house that just. Tanks hits-far more direct-even his fighting is made out to be more traditionally masculine

Now this could be broken down to character development (which we did not see and it’s important to note I can’t stress how ooc xfi Star is) but really it just reads as more homophobia as not only is Star aware enough of homophobia and gender roles to adapt to a more accepted persona (because the x force taught him homophobia) but also the writers at the time when he was canonically Bi went out of their way to adapt his character to both fit and avoid different stereotypes-he’s allowed to be a walking slutty Bi stereotype (which is literally so ooc) but can no longer be gnc-he’s allowed to be slutty and hit on women despite his relationship w Julio but he’s not allowed to present as anything less than “macho” in summary Star was just made palatable in all of the worst ways to straight audiences-they stereotypes they love were forced and the ones that make them uncomfortable were dropped

Later on we’re back to getting glimpses of less than traditionally “masc” only a warrior Star w him cooking for Julio and buying him a sweater in new mutants (which are not actually feminine traits but are presented as feminine/gay traits in media even lampshaded by what’s his name asking of his boyfriend bought his sweater to Julio (which he did-also another micro aggression marvel forces me to witness))

(There was that super racist x force run I didn’t read that came out around here-Star was back to being a super warrior macho macho man idk it was bad and the art was racist ignore it )

The slightly less masc Star is dropped in the Shatterstar solo where his character is p much completely retconned but also another more traditionally masc Star is pushed again w the crux of his problems w Julio being “they don’t fight enough”, the emphasizing of him still being a warrior despite how the crux of his character was trying to define himself out of that role assigned to him, there are definitely homophobic connotations to what’s her name (yes he’s Bi him having an ex who’s a girl isn’t the issue it’s the entire plot that is), and even weirder connotations with the use of his slave name/dead name as his go to name-he has only ever referred to himself as Shatterstar-that’s his name-other people either call him Shatterstar or Star-giving him a “traditionally masculine” name is certainly. A choice. There are a lot of problematic elements to the solo to unpack but the rest don’t really have to w the homophobia and forced gender roles Star seems to consistently face

Then in (new) xfi he’s gone something happened he’s on Mojoworld again he has long hair again (king) but his outfit is a wrestling one and his “masculinity” is once again emphasized with his being forced into being a warrior again just to like. Be on the island being tasked w immediately fighting Terry (I actually liked this scene but there were some choices about to consider especially about how the rest of the mutants still seem to view him)-and now we’re here where we’re right back to where we started w long hair, just left Mojoworld, definitely a warrior you can’t forget it Star. Only this time his identity isn’t up for interpretation or debate.

So long story short while Star may not be consistently gnc it was noticeable enough that once he was openly Bi they immediately started pushing for a more masculine Star and you can see the difference in characters as xforce Star and xfi Star might as well be different people. Stars ambiguous gender non conformity was enough that Marvel seems set on “fixing it” and writers are constantly walking a line in making sure he’s “not like those other gays” despite the fact that apparently he used to be. There is def canon evidence for a more gnc/less traditionally masc Star. No one is saying (but me) that he should be a Femme Bi dude they’re just saying they see him as gnc and like. Yeah he was🤷‍♀️

Also narratively him being Trans makes wayyy more sense also his people are machine made why do they even have different sexes or genders let alone follow the earths idea of it like he’s an alien., why would he care about the our perception of the sexes or gender- main point is he should be Nb and intersex but that’s another conversation

Anyway Star gnc king

Also yes just because he’s Bi doesn’t make him effeminate-he’s effeminate-not because of his sexuality - it is not his gender presentation despite how much it undoubtedly influenced it. People aren’t calling Star gnc because he’s Bi they’re calling him gnc because he used to look like this

[carlyraejepstein]

potentially upsetting topics: sui, gender dysphoria, abuse and parents, sex

Elliot Page’s coming out rescued an awful day. Its wording is unbelievably powerful, a comment I have made once before and will continue to do so. In it, he so strongly encompasses the fears, the sorrow, the rage, but most importantly the determination and the defiance of not only him but every trans person. I hesitate to use the word “community” because it implies a certain connection that might just not be there; I play a bit of Counter-Strike but I don’t consider myself part of the Counter-Strike community; yet when I read Elliot’s words I feel solidarity, I feel a pull to the trans community that I often don’t feel I pay my dues to, and it feels good, really good. Like I said on Twitter once, other trans people being, existing, living, is just rad. Inspiring, even, despite how that word has been worn out by cis people.

However, there’s a certain something that Elliot didn’t write, for Elliot never wrote “I am a man”; only his name, and pronouns, how he wishes to be referred to. Of course, we cannot possibly know what this omission means or does not mean to Elliot, but it’s something that concurred with a shift in how I perceive my own gender.

I remember first properly ruminating on gender in 2012 or 2013. My understanding was primitive, coming from Wikipedia. Once I knew what transgender or, given the time period, transsexual, the curiosity never really went away. I knew at this point about transition, and I knew about deed polls because of my resentment of my parents, I knew about HRT and I even knew about the GICs. I felt compelled to be an ally in that turbulent period in both my life and in the online culture I immersed myself in from around 2015 to 2017. At this time a friend was going through their own transition and seeing them gave me pause for thought; partly pride, partly worry but a small kernel of imagination, wondering if that could ever be me. It was when I went to sixth form, with its environment permitting greater yet still constrained self expression, that I felt gender dysphoria hit me with its full weight. Thinking, wondering, worrying about being transgender has been the central dialogue of my internal and external monologue ever since. Not a day passes where I don’t think about the dysphoria I feel over my continued closet-dwelling and the malignantly gendered properties of my body. On a January morning in 2019, at my very lowest point, motionless under the covers, I gave myself a choice between transition and death, and I chose transition.

It’s been a complex journey. When I was 13 I shortened my gender neutral name to make it more masc (which I have now happily embraced as my middle name). I leant into the deepening of my voice because I thought it gave me authority, conditioned through the harsh words of people from public Team Fortress 2 servers. I’ve done almost everything under the sun that gets people to say “I’d never have known!” when you come out to them; I worry that I still do and that nothing has changed. I’ve gone and cross-dressed when my parents were out, and I’ve been traumatised by Susan’s Place. I am autistic, no one who has met me can escape that fact; not that I would want to, and as a consequence I am so much more confident in my presence on the internet than I ever have been in the flesh, despite me still not knowing how to make friends; hence I’ve ended up trying to piece my transition together through 4chan (I know, bad) and Reddit and Twitter.

Perhaps the biggest reason I am not out is the time when I decided I would come out to my mother as trans. When we were in Munich we had walked past a pride parade, and when we got back to the apartment I revealed off hand that I was bi. My mother chided me for not telling them before hand since it was “polite” to do so, as if it were not my choice to make because, as I still believe to this day, it’s not a big deal and it’s none of their business. But I decided this time it was important, and that I could trust her. It turns out that just like every other time, trusting my mother is a bad idea that is guaranteed to cause me pain every time I make that mistake. She told me that because she “knows more about [me] than [I] do”, that she thought that I was just straight up wrong, couched it in rhetoric about how she thought that I was too weak to be trans, and quoted the shockingly offensive “autism is extreme male brain” theory to me. It was really devastating at the time and I think it still affects me to this day, especially as she constantly tries to worm her tendrils back into my life after I moved out.

But enough about my mother; she is a fucking flat out abuser. She has emotionally abused me, and undoubtedly my brother, all our lives. I was relieved that my dad chose not to react aggressively as she did, but with a modicum of respect and agreement not to make such a big deal out of it, something I would never expect my mother to match. In the middle of writing this piece I had to decide that I could not do it any longer, and I would never let her back into my life again.

Where that conversation in late 2018 relates to Elliot Page’s statement is my mother’s purported belief that “you don’t have to define yourself as a man or a woman”. Going past the fact that she is lying, since her tolerance for all trans people is thinner than the grey hairs on her head going on the basis that she couldn’t bring herself to say one positive thing to her own daughter that afternoon, it struck me recently that I can more eloquently describe my gender through elimination rather than a label. I am happy to call myself a woman, a trans woman, and I don’t feel as if I really am wavering in or around the binary. But what I can say for definite is that while I have been a boy for almost all my life, and am holding onto that, I am not, and never will be, a man.

Where that leaves me is that I am not a man, but must I be a woman? If I am perhaps not a woman, am I non-binary? No; it doesn’t feel right. However, if I attach just a convenience to the label woman, I can give myself that flexibility in how I feel and how I present myself, and perhaps the biggest example of that is how in recent months I have made peace with my voice. It is not really a femme voice; I hit vocal fry just speaking normally. But I know how to be expressive with it; it is my voice that I have honed over 19 years after all. One day I want to find someone who will help me upgrade my voice (and yes, upgrade) but keeping it means I fulfil one cool thing about being trans, and that is saying fuck you to the very existence of the gender binary. I keep this voice out of necessity, but I’m still trans femme, I am still a woman and I still want my facial hair zapped off.

As well, I reserve the right to say I used to be a boy. Not a man, but a boy. That’s why they call it boymoding, right? How else can I describe the first 17 years of my life? I can be a boy all the same now, although I may be pushing it aged 20, and at the point at which I am really stretching that concept which at this point I am adhering to solely for my safety and comfort, I shouldn’t need to use it anymore. Wishful thinking, of course.

I think we should consider why we use “man” and “woman” in the first place. From my perspective they are simply words to describe people with two different sets of primary and secondary sexual characteristics, convenient because, well, being cis is unavoidably common. But they are not discrete, as we so often have to reiterate using intersex people as an unwilling crutch, where one does not occur in the other they are so often analogous and often they overlap! Supposedly 60% of teenage boys develop further breast tissue, and 40% of women have some form of facial hair. Thinking that the two are discrete gives rise to the idea of “biological sex”, a concept developed by cis people either to misgender trans people in a way they think is philosophically rigorous, or to reconcile their tenuous support for trans people with a continuing belief in the gender binary. Personally I would like to smash the concept of biological sex to bits because it is not useful to us. At the very least it may describe one’s primary sexual characteristics but bottom surgery exists, and I don’t happen to think that it is “mutilation”. I don’t need to argue that “biological sex can be changed”; they are not discrete categories, and I don’t need to move between them, or seek validation for having moved between them. It is not a helpful generalisation for bodies, diverse as they are.

I must add that as a trans woman the fact that I may have a penis doesn’t mean that I use it in the same way as a man. I use mine to pee, primarily, and it’s definitely not going inside anyone except myself any time soon; a whole zine was written about how trans women fuck and use their bits to fuck, so I definitely don’t need to anyway.

Another bullshit concept is “biological destiny” or “biological reality”, although I will give less breath to this one because at it’s core it is fundamentally misogynistic, and it so often is divorced from any sensible definition of reality. It’s like if I had to have my arm amputated and then someone came up to me and said “you’ll always have two arms, you were born with them and you’ll die with them”.

I’ve heard and thought a lot about gender abolition but it seems to me that its proponents expect that like the state, gendered differences will just disappear over time. But I don’t want that to happen. If the binary is done away with I don’t want gender to disappear I want it to flourish! Because gender is beautiful, men are beautiful, women are beautiful, and everyone in between or outwith are beautiful. On the other hand, me and you don’t need to be men, or women, or call ourselves non-binary to be beautiful. Being trans is about cultivating your own beauty and your own identity. When cissiety demands that the only identity and presentation we’re allowed is one that corresponds to what they decided was between our legs when we were born, why give ourselves only one other choice?

I don’t really know how to end this piece because I wrote one half of it one day and the other half a couple of weeks later. At the very least I’m glad I can attribute my peace with not necessarily being a woman but a femme to Elliot Page, and not my rotten bastard mother.

[what-even-is-thiss]

(2/2) Idk how to phrase this but how did you come to realize you were demiboy? What does it mean to really feel connected to one gender more than another? What does it feel like when you don't feel connected to any? What made you go "this is me?" I don't feel connected to anything and don't understand how some people can feel so much of a bot or a girl or sometimes both.

In my opinion what you’re confused about comes down to an individual understanding of gender.

What gender is can’t be properly explained. It’s a complicated phenomenon. However, much like with religion, one can develop their own beliefs about gender, be indifferent to it, or choose to reject it entirely. I’ll give you a basic rundown about different ways to interpret gender. In my opinion no one of these completely explains gender and some combination is necessary to get the full picture. I hope this can help you. It seems like in your situation, from what limited info you’ve given me, this might be helpful to you as you discover your own ideas and beliefs about gender.

Note: Some of this is from published philosophy, other parts of it are from my own theories and observation.

1. Gender as performance

Assumes that gender is fully learned

Transgender people that fully subscribe to this school of thought often talk about becoming men, women, or non binary people. They don’t say that they always  were that thing. Rather, they weren’t happy as the gender they learned from birth, and so they learned a new one.

2. Gender as physical sex

This assumes that your gender aligns with either what your primary and secondary sex characteristics are or what you feel that they should be.

Men would have or want to have flat chests, penises, more body hair, deeper voices, etc. women would want breasts, vaginas, softer skin, etc. A non binary person would be intersex or desire some combination of what men and women have.

3. Gender as an innate understanding of the self

Assumes that gender cannot be controlled. You are and always have been that gender or if that gender changes you have no control over it

Not necessarily physical.

I’ve seen people that fully believe this one describe gender as an “energy” that one can feel.

According to this school of thought you are either born with a gender or your gender develops at a very young age in a way that nieither you or anyone else can control.

Gender identity then is finding terms to help oneself understand this internal gender. Whether or not others understand it doesn’t matter.

4. Gender as a relationship to the outside world

This explaination of gender says that gender is how one wants to be perceived by and interact with others

Could go with gender as performance but not necissarily. A person could present feminine but still wish to be addressed as a man and interacted with like he is a man so therefore according to this idea this desire makes him a man.

5. Gender does not exist

People who follow this generally fit into three categories but not always.

Cis people who don’t care about their gender or who think the idea of gender is flawed. They generally stick to their original gender socially and physically because it’s easier or they don’t care

Non binary people who actively distance themselves from gender. Usually agender people or nonspecific non binary people but not always.

People that go for any pronouns and just do what they want with gender presentation. Could identify as cis, trans, or neither.

I personally view gender as a combination of all of these things and I think that they’re all allowed to exist at one time. Even the “gender does not exist” category.

To answer your question about how I knew I was genderfluid (I’m not always a demiboy) I looked at all of these things. I looked at the performance I was giving and questioned if I was comfortable with it. I thought about what I wanted physically for my body. I thought about the gender I understood inside of myself and how I wanted others to view me. I thought about gendervas a social construct and whether it even worked for me. It was a long process but eventually I figured it out because everything about me is always in flux. Always changing. Not just what I want to do, but what kind of body I want, how I want people to see me, how I desire to present and perform.

I can’t tell you what your gender is, but hopefully this helps some. And one last thing. You don’t have to understand your gender if you don’t want to. And you don’t have to make it anyone else’s business.

[atasteforsuicidal]

I LOVE your writing 😖💗! In your last fic you mentioned Damian was omega(which is awesome!) How does that work in your au? Do they only know when they present? And do you have any thoughts on how Damian handled it👀?

Thank you so, so much! ♥ I’m so glad you’re liking it! And thanks for the questions, too!

To be honest, since I tend to use the “intersex omegas/alphas” concept with male omegas and female alphas, I’ve always felt more comfortable with the idea that it’s very much biological from birth. The idea that presentation just completely changes their anatomy has never sat well with me for some reason - partly because it’s rarely ever addressed as painful (which I assume it would be - it’s not just the external anatomy, you know? Male omegas would also need to grow a uterus and Fallopian tubes and stuff, for example), but it also just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

The only ones that take a little longer to tell would be a female beta v a female omega, or a male alpha v a male beta, but I think there are probably hormone or DNA tests of some sort done during, like, the 6 or 12-month check-up, in those cases? But because of that, male omegas and female alphas are obvious from birth. Although, I suppose there could be some guess-work even between determining between those two, which I hadn’t considered before - maybe there’s a scent difference between primary genders or something like that? I’ll have to think on that a bit more.

Since Damian would have known his whole life that he’s an omega, I think he handles it reasonably well. Ra’s was obviously disappointed - Talia, less so, and more because she knew Ra’s was unhappy than because she really cared about her son’s caste - but I don’t think omegas are seen as completely useless or weak or anything like that in most cultures. They can be fiercely loyal and protective of those they call their own, and there’s certainly an appeal to that in a warrior/future-leader; Ra’s was just perhaps a bit harder on him during his training than he might have been otherwise to ‘compensate’.

I think having Jason around during some of his younger years helped, too - even if omegas aren’t looked down upon that much, he still knew his grandfather was displeased with him, and he would have felt some resentment for his caste. But seeing how strong and capable Jason was, especially after the Pit when he was training, would have done a lot to help him accept that he could still be everything the future Demon’s Head needed to be.

I hope that clears some things up! Thanks so much for the question, and, please, always feel free to hit me up with anything you want to know!

[lo-lynx]

Lost manhood: analysing the eunuch’s masculinity in A Song of Ice and Fire

Note: This is a partly rewritten paper that I wrote for a university course. I’m quite happy with it to be honest, and I thought more ASOIAF fans might enjoy it. I’ve attempted to make the language slightly more accessible and removed some of the parts of the explanations of the story because I here assume that people have read the novels. I’ve previously written a similar analysis about eunuchs in ASOIAF, but this one goes much deeper. So, hang on, this is quite a long one (puns not intended).

 “No one loves a eunuch.” (Martin 2011a, 609). So states Varys the eunuch, in A Game of Thrones. The five (as of yet published) books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series tell a story of war, love, and power and are set in a mostly medieval world. A medieval world which also happens to contain dragons and magic. But as Shiloh Carroll writes in her analysis of medievalism in the novels: “(...) A Song of Ice and Fire examines contemporary concerns or anxieties while placing them in a far-distant past, allowing the reader to consider them at a distance.” (Carroll 2018, 7). This can, for instance, be seen in how George RR Martin has said that he believes that most people of the Middle Ages were not very different from people of today when it comes to love, sex, and sexuality (ibid, 83). While scholars and students of gender and sexuality would most likely disagree (see my previous text, or just later in this one), Martin’s statement seems in line with the idea of looking at contemporary concerns through another lens. Based on the novels, it is also clear that Martin has been influenced by several different historical and cultural contexts, from Celtic history to Mediterranean Mythology and beyond (ibid 109). Fans of the books have also compiled several more of Martin’s stated historical influences from Scottish history, to Alexander the Great, the Mongols, and the Vietnam war (glass_table_girl 2014).With this amalgamation of different historical perspectives, it is interesting to look at how one aspect of the power dynamics in this series is portrayed: namely gender power dynamics, and more specifically masculinity.

 The world of A Song of Ice and Fire is a deeply patriarchal one, with most of the people in power being men (Carroll 2018, 56). But throughout the series, it is also clear that not all men in this world are equal, just as in our own. In this paper, I want to analyze how one of the men who are not as highly regarded in the series is portrayed, namely the eunuchVarys, mentioned above. (It should be noted that in this context, eunuch seems to mean someone who has had both their penis and testicles removed. On one occasion Varys mentions being cut “root and stem” (Martin 2011b, 584).) Varys holds the position of Master of Whispers in the Seven Kingdoms, a position that entails keeping a network of spies through the kingdom and beyond (Martin 2011a, 166). Because of this web of informants, he is also often called the Spider. The Seven Kingdoms encompasses the continent of Westeros and might be said to be a parallel to the United Kingdom of our world, or Europe generally (Carroll 2018, 109). Varys, however, comes from the city-state of Lys in the continent Essos. Essos seems to be inspired by different parts of Asia, and the Westerosi perspective on it is similar to the European perception of “the Orient” (Carroll 2018, 109). As both a foreigner, a eunuch, and a Master of Spies Varys is mistrusted by most characters in the novels (for example: Martin 2011a, 246).  By a close reading of three different scenes where Varys is present, I want to analyze how his gender is perceived by other characters and what that can tell us about how masculinity is constructed in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire.

 In analyzing Varys, I will use several theoretical perspectives that I will present here. Firstly, I will look at how eunuchs have been viewed in our world historically. Konstantinos P. Nikoloutsos writes that Greek writers of the classical period often viewed eunuchs with contempt (2008, 232). Oftentimes eunuchs were associated with Eastern cultures, such as Persia. They were generally seen as feminine, submissive, and sexually available yet also sexually passive. That might sound counterintuitive, but what it means is that according to the sexual conventions of the time, a eunuch could participate in intercourse but not be the active part. As Nikoloutus writes of the norms of sexuality during that time:

In fifth- and fourth-century Athenian literature, sex is discussed in connection with the issue of age, class, gender, and power. In our male-authored texts, sexual intercourse is perceived as an act that reflects (or should reflect) the hierarchical structure of society; as such, it involves a penetrator (i.e. an adult male citizen) and a penetrated other who could be a woman, a slave, a metic (i.e. a non-citizen resident), a prostitute, or a kinaidos (i.e. an effeminate man who preferred the passive role in sexual intercourse). According to the moralizing discourses of ancient Athenians, a freeborn man who wished to retain his claim to full masculine status should always seek to play the active/insertive role while having sex with other men. (Nikoloutus 2008, 230)

By being assigned the passive role in sexual intercourse the eunuch is therefore seen as less of a man. The eunuch could also be seen as a liminal figure, neither man nor woman, neither Western nor Eastern. In a way he inhabited a third gender space. By inhabiting this transgressive role, he was also able to move between female and male spaces (Llewellyn-Jones 2002, 37). This could make him useful at court, as he became privy to the intrigue of the private female sphere and could pass on that information to the public male sphere. Other authors have noted how in many societies, while eunuchs were useful figures at court, they were outsiders as well in the sense that they often had a different ethnicity (Tougher 2002, 149). For instance, in the late Roman empire eunuchs were not allowed to be created in the empire, but allowance was made for “importation of castrated barbarians” (ibid, 144). The eunuch is here constructed as something “other” than the own population, the “us” part of the “us vs them” equation. This association with what was consider the ethnic “other” (particularly the Eastern other) with femininity and sexual promiscuity and/or deviance has striking similarities with orientalism. The term orientalism describes how western cultures have traditionally described the people of “the Orient” as emasculated, lesser, savage, barbaric, sexually depraved, etc. (Carroll 2018, 107, 119 & 121). Dehumanization of people who are considered “other” can be seen with other groups of people who transgress societal borders as well, such as trans people. Susan Stryker writes that transsexual people are often seen as monstrous, similar to for instance Frankenstein’s monster (1994). Eva Hayward compares the trans experience with that of the spider, partly because they are both looked upon with both curiosity and distrust (2010). But she also writes that similarly to the spider’s web, transsexuality can be seen as a creating a home of one’s own body. Making a home where one is not intended to exist, but that becomes a home nonetheless.

 In modern time the role of the penis in the construction of masculinity, that can be seen with eunuchs of more ancient times, persists. Anne Fausto-Sterling writes that even though medical professionals are often aware of the fact that it is possible for children to be born with sex characteristics that fall outside of the male/female binary, these so-called intersex children will often be “corrected” by surgery (1995, 130). It should be noted that a lot of activists oppose these types of surgeries (for example: Amnesty 2017). Fausto-Sterling further analyses how in medical literature a so-called normal penis is often considered crucial for boys (1995, 130). When a child is born, if that child’s penis is considered too small the penis will often be turned into a clitoris, and a vagina will be created. The child will then be raised as girl. The existence of a phallus that is large enough is seen as crucial for boyhood and manhood:

All this surgical activity goes on to ensure a congruous and certain sex of assignment and sex of rearing. During childhood, the medical literature insists, boys must have a phallus large enough to permit them to pee standing up, thus allowing them to “feel normal” when they play in little boys’ peeing contests. In adulthood, the penis must become large enough for vaginal penetration during intercourse. (...) At birth then, masculinity becomes a social phenomenon. For proper masculine socialization to occur, the little boy must have a sufficiently large penis. (Fausto-Sterling 1995, 131)

Here again, the existence of a penis is connected not only to masculinity but also sexuality. Having penetrative sex (and being the one penetrating) is linked to proper manhood. Similarly, Karioros and Allan write that the testicles are often linked to masculinity (for example by phrases like “grow a pair”), but also virility (2017).  They also write that because of this, castration is often linked with a fear of losing one's masculinity. Here we can see a connection between masculinity, sexuality, and fatherhood as well. Other authors have also noted this link, for instance in regards to how the inability to father children might feel like a threat to one’s masculinity (Thorsby & Gill 2004).

 The theme of sexuality and masculinity is one that Stephen Whitehead also writes about when he analyses masculine embodiment (2002). Whitehead writes that is that what is considered to male not just determined by biology but is also dependent on the discourse around sex/gender (ibid, 186). What he means by that is that how a “male body” should look and behave is not just innate, it depends on how expectations from society. Furthermore, the way that the masculine subject experiences their own body depends on what is generally expected of the male body, mainly for it be strong, tough and in control of physical space (ibid, 189). This can be seen as a contrast of the expected feminine embodiment, which is generally expected to be timid, careful, and restricted. Whitehead further describes how bodies (regardless of gender) are regulated through the panoptic gaze (ibid, 194). He borrows this term from Foucault to describe how we in modern society are constantly under surveillance, to the degree that we subconsciously regulate our own behavior.  Whitehead then goes on to show how this panoptic gaze can be extra harsh on some bodies (such as for people of color), subverted by some (such as gay men), and be different during the lifespan. Regarding aging male bodies he writes that with age many cannot live up to the ideal of having a strong and active body, and many lose sexual confidence at this time as well (ibid, 200). Here we once again see the theme of connecting masculinity to an active sexuality.  

 The analysis of the scenes with Varys from A Song of Ice and Fire will be presented below in a thematic fashion, but for context I will provide a brief overview of them here. The first scene is from the first novel, A Game of Thrones, from the point of view of Catelyn Stark when she arrives in Kings Landing (Martin 2011a, 165-169). There she meets the Master of Coin Petyr Baelish as well as Varys himself. This is the first time Varys appears on page, even though he has been mentioned before. The second scene occurs later in the same book, from the point of view of Hand of the King Eddard “Ned” Stark who has been imprisoned, accused of treason (Martin 2011a, 608-613). Varys shows up in his cell, disguised as a gaoler, and they discuss the future. The third scene is in the next book, A Clash of Kings, where the new Hand of the King Tyrion Lannister and Varys discuss politics and power (Martin 2011b, 117-122). This scene is from Tyrion’s point of view.

 In the first scene where the reader sees Varys he is described thusly:

The man who stepped through the door was plump, perfumed, powered, and as hairless as an egg. He wore a vest of woven gold thread over a loose gown of purple silk, and on his feet were pointed slippers of soft velvet. (...) His flesh was soft and moist, and his breath smelled of lilacs. (Martin 2011a, 167)

In the scene with Tyrion in A Clash with Kings he is described similarly, this time as having flowing lavender colored robes and smelling of lavender (Martin 2011b, 117). In both these occasions his appearance seems somewhat feminine, with flowing robes and flower scents. It is also interesting to note how his mannerisms are described. In the scene from A Game of Thrones it is described how he “giggled like a little girl” (Martin 2011a, 168). Later he handles a knife “with exaggerated delicacy” and when he still cuts himself on it, he lets out a squeal (ibid). In the scene from A Clash with Kings he is described first as “gliding into the hall”, and then he “tittered nervously” when questioned by Tyrion (Martin 2011b, 117). Later he is also described as giggling nervously (ibid, 121). Throughout this scene his reactions and speech generally seem exaggeratedly emotional, almost theatrical. One example is when Tyrion confronts him about not telling him about Tyrion’s sister’s involvement in the killing of the former king Robert’s bastard children:

‘Your own sweet sister,’ Varys said, so grief-stricken that he looked close to tears. ‘It is a hard thing to tell a man, my lord, I was fearful how you might take it. Can you forgive me?’ (Martin 2011b, 117)

His mannerisms throughout these two scenes seem careful, delicate, and emotional. This is somewhat of a contrast to how he is described in the scene with Eddard Stark from A Game of Thrones. Here some of the same language is present; Varys is described as speaking sadly and sighing (Martin 2011a, 609-610). But Eddard also notes how he seems blunter than usual. His appearance is the most different though, here he has disguised himself:

The eunuch’s plump cheeks were covered with a dark stubble of beard. Ned felt the course hair with his fingers. Varys had transformed himself into a grizzled turnkey, reeking of sweat and sour wine. (Martin 2011a, 609)

Here Eddard sees how Varys has changed himself from his usual plump and feminine self, into an unwashed gruff gaelor. Seeing this disguise might hint that Varys usual appearance, with his theatrics, is a disguise as well. I will return to this notion later.

 From these scenes we can see that Varys usually seems to dress in a slightly feminine manner. His mannerisms seem feminine too, if one considers what Whitehead writes about feminine and masculine embodiment (2002, 189). Feminine embodiment is described there as timid and more restricted, while masculine embodiment is described as tough and in control of physical space. With his nervous tittering, exaggerated delicacy etc., Varys most definitely appears more feminine than masculine. All of this also seems in line with how eunuchs were described being feminine and submissive in antiquity (Nikoloutus 2008). Varys’ clothing is also interesting from this point of view; having a loose silk gown, a golden vest, and pointed slippers he fits in well with the idea of the eunuch from as an “Eastern” figure. This, of course, also makes sense since he comes from the continent of Essos that seems inspired by such real-life cultures. Based on his appearance one can then see how he is both perceived as feminine and “Eastern”, which was how eunuchs were seen in for example ancient Greece. However, it is also worth noting how this is similar to the orientalist view of men from “the Orient” as being emasculated/effeminate (Carroll 2018, 107).

 Another way Varys can be considered to be emasculated is of course in regard to his lack of genitalia. In all of the scenes I am analyzing it is mentioned that he is a eunuch, which makes it seem like this is central in people’s perception of him (Martin 2011a, 166 & 609; Martin 2011b, 120). In the scene with Eddard, Varys says that he swears upon his lost manhood that he is telling the truth (Martin 2011a, 613). This is an interesting turn of phrase since it directly links the removal of his genitalia with masculinity. However, it is in the scene with Tyrion that this issue is discussed most thoroughly. Tyrion says:

‘People have called me halfman too, yet I think the gods have been kinder to me. I am small, my legs are twisted, and women do not look upon me with any great yearning… yet I’m still a man. Shae is not the first to grace my bed, and one day I may take a wife and sire a son. (...) You have no such hope to sustain you. Dwarfs are a jape of the gods… but men make eunuchs.’ (Martin 2011b, 120)

Here Tyrion explicitly links having a penis with being a man. He seems to specifically connect being a man to having sex with women and fathering children. This is in line with what Fausto-Sterling writes about how having a large enough penis is considered crucial for masculine socialization, partly so the man can have penetrative sex with women (1995). It is also similar to the view of Ancient Greece, where being the penetrator in sexual intercourse was very important for one’s masculinity. However, unlike those times it seems that in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire it also important for one’s sexual partner to specifically be a woman, not simply any person below oneself in social standing. One can also note how fatherhood seems important to masculinity, which Thorsby and Gill write about as well (2004). That losing one’s manhood means losing one’s masculinity makes sense in relation to Karioris and Allen’s article, where they write that the testicles is seen as the seat of masculinity (2017). They also note how the testicles are connected to virality. All in all, it seems clear that partly why the penis and testicles are important to masculinity both in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire and our own is because of their perceived necessity for (penetrative) heterosexual sex and fatherhood. For someone to be counted as a real man they apparently have to take part in those practices. This is why Tyrion claims that he is still a man, and that Varys is not. Tyrion’s comparison of himself and Varys is furthermore interesting in other ways. It is clear when Tyrion refers to himself as a “halfman” he believes that his disability is an obstacle to him completely inhabiting a masculine subject position. As Whitehead writes, masculine embodiment is often expected to mean toughness and being in control of physical space. Tyrion describes himself as small and with twisted legs, and one can assume that this makes harder for him to live up to those ideals. However, since he can still have heterosexual sex and father children, he counts himself as a man. This emphasizes how important sexuality and virality is in the construction of masculinity.

 The last theme that I want to touch upon is how Varys seems to be mistrusted and ill liked. In Catelyn’s chapter in A Game of Thrones she reflects on how she does not trust him, and how Varys’ ability to find out information disconcerts her (Martin 2011a, 167-168). In Eddard’s chapter later in the novel Varys points out himself how “no one loves a eunuch” (ibid, 609). However, he then says that “A eunuch has no honor, and a spider does not enjoy the luxury of scruples, my lord.” (ibid 610). This provides somewhat of an insight into his political strategy, while also making it seem wise to mistrust him. In the chapter with Tyrion in A Clash of Kings Varys makes a similar statement: “Spiders and informers are seldom loved, my lord.” (Martin 2011b, 120.) So, as a eunuch and a spy Varys is mistrusted and unloved. That he occupies the role of a spy is interesting in relation to what Llewellyn-Jones writes about the role eunuchs historically could have at court (2002). Those eunuchs could move between the private (feminine) sphere and the public (masculine) sphere, and therefore inform those in powers of courtly intrigue. This seems similar to what Varys does. A reoccurring theme for him, then, seems to be the transgression of borders. From private/feminine to public/masculine spaces, from feminine to masculine embodiment, from East to West. Perhaps, similarly to how eunuchs were regarded with contempt in Ancient Greece because of their transgressive position, this explains part of the reason why Varys is disliked. The fact that he is called “the Spider” also hints to him not quite being considered human. This is similar to how both Stryker and Hayward describe the way trans people are often perceived (1994; 2010). Similarly to how Hayward describes how the spider is looked upon with both curiosity and disgust, this seems to be how Varys the spider is seen. Furthermore, similarly to Hayward’s description Varys seems to create a place for himself through his spider web. However, there are some complications to simply reading him as a trans character. For one, it is very unclear how Varys considers his gender himself, the reader only gets descriptions of him from other characters’ points of view. But while it is unclear how he identifies; the way other characters see him seems similar to attitudes trans people might face. His, in their eyes, unclear gender and sex makes him seem slippery and unlikable. This ties back to the idea of eunuchs being seen with contempt because of their liminal character.

 Perhaps one strategy that Varys uses to counter the disadvantage of his position as a eunuch is to play into it. Earlier I noted that his feminine mannerisms seemed almost theatrical, and if he can disguise himself as a goalor, then perhaps his usual appearance is a disguise as well. As a spymaster he is most likely aware of how one’s every move might be watched, similarly to the panoptic gaze that Whitehead describes. This might have made him realize how important it is to control his own appearance etc. Varys might do something similar to how Whitehead writes that gay men might sometimes subvert the panoptic gaze on male bodies, by not conforming to the expectations of their embodiment (2002, 198). Varys seemingly conforms to the way eunuchs are expected to inhabit their bodies, but the reader cannot be sure if this is his “true” appearance or if he even has one. In this way he might be said to subvert the panoptic gaze by not simply conforming to the role of the effeminate and weak eunuch that his appearance might indicate but use this to his advantage. Furthermore, it seems useful for his position at court to both be able to move between different spaces with different disguises, and to use the idea of a eunuch as effeminate to seem less threatening in a patriarchal society.

 In conclusion then, Varys is considered less of a man because of his lack of “manhood”. In a world where sexuality and virality is intimately connected to masculinity, his perceived lack of those makes him no true man. Furthermore, his appearance and mannerisms seem more feminine than masculine. This, however, might be a strategy of his to seem less threatening in his position of Master of Spies. As he says himself, eunuchs and informants are seldom loved, so it might be beneficial for him to play into the role of the weak effeminate eunuch. Perhaps this also makes him able to move between differently gendered spaces, similarly to the eunuchs of antiquity. However, being the effeminate eunuch also seems part of what makes people distrust him. Him inhabiting the liminal space between borders of gender/sexuality and ethnicity, both spatially and with his embodiment, makes people vary of him. Is he a man or woman? Western or Eastern? Neither? But by destabilizing such borders, he also makes them visible. When the characters deem him less of a man for appearing feminine and lacking the body parts that would make him a man, it becomes clearer what requirements there are to be a man. Those seem to include a certain amount of toughness, active sexuality, and virality. Lacking both the set of genitalia that is deemed necessary to perform those actions and having the gendered perceptions of his ethnicity working against him, Varys cannot be perceived as a true man. But ultimately, this says more about how the society he lives in views masculinity.

 References

Amnesty International. (2017). “First, do no harm: ensuring the rights of children born intersex.” Accessed 1 December, 2019. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2017/05/intersex-rights/

 Carroll, Shiloh. 2018. Medievalism in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer

 glass_table_girl. 2014. “(Spoilers All) A List of Things that GRRM Has Cited as Influences or Sources of Enjoyment”. Reddit, August 31, 2014.

https://www.reddit.com/r/asoiaf/comments/2f3wz9/spoilers_all_a_list_of_things_that_grrm_has_cited/

 Fausto-Sterling, Anne. 1995. “How to build a man”, in Constructing Masculinity, eds. Berger, Maurice, Brian Wallis and Simon Watson, 127-134. New York: Routledge.

 Hayward, Eva. 2010. “Spider city sex”, Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, 20(3):225-251

 Karioris, Frank G. and Jonathan A. Allan. 2017. “Grow a Pair! Critically Analyzing Masculinity and the Testicles.” Journal of Men’s Studies, 24(3): 245-261.

 Martin, George RR. 2011a. A Game of Thrones. London: Harper Voyager.

 Martin, George RR. 2011b. A Clash of Kings. London: Harper Voyager.

 Nikoloutsos, Konstantinos P. 2008. ”The Alexander Bromance: Male Desire and Gender Fluidity in Oliver Stone’s Historical Epic.” Helios, (35)2: 223-251

 Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd. 2002. “Eunuchs and the royal harem in Achaemenid Persia (559-331 BC)”, in Eunuchs in antiquity and beyond, ed. Tougher, Shaun, 19-50. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales.

 Stryker, Susan. 1994. “My words to Victor Frankenstein above the village of Chamounix: Performing transgender rage” GLQ 1(3): 237-254

 Throsby, Karen & Rosalind Gill. 2004. ”It’s Different for Men: Masculinity and IVF.” Men and Masculinities, (6)4: 330-348

Tougher, Shaun. 2002. “In or out? Origins of court eunuchs.” in Eunuchs in antiquity and beyond, ed. Tougher, Shaun, 143-160. Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales.

 Whitehead, Stephen M. 2002. Men and Masculinities, Cambridge and Malden: Polity.

[arcticdementor]

Near the beginning of Ibram X. Kendi’s celebrated best-seller, How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi writes something that strikes me as the key to his struggle: “I cannot disconnect my parents’ religious strivings to be Christian from my secular strivings to be anti-racist.” Kendi’s parents were “saved into Black liberation theology and joined the churchless church of the Black Power movement.” That was their response — at times a beautiful one — to the unique challenges of being black in America.

And when Kendi’s book becomes a memoir of his own life and comes to terms with his own racism, and then his own cancer, it’s vivid and complicated and nuanced, if a little unfinished. He is alert to ambiguities, paradoxes, and the humanness of it all: “When Black people recoil from White racism and concentrate their hatred on everyday White people, as I did freshman year in college, they are not fighting racist power or racist policymakers.” He sees the complexity of racist views: “West Indian immigrants tend to categorize African-Americans as ‘lazy, unambitious, uneducated, unfriendly, welfare dependent, and lacking in family values.’” He describes these painful moments of self-recognition in what becomes a kind of secular apology: a life of a sinner striving for sainthood, who, having been saved, wants to save everyone else.

…

Liberal values are therefore tossed out almost immediately. Kendi, a star professor at American University and a recent Guggenheim Fellowship winner, has no time for color-blindness, or for any kind of freedom which might have some inequality as its outcome. In fact, “the most threatening racist movement is not the alt-right’s unlikely drive for a White ethno-state, but the regular American’s drive for a ‘race-neutral’ one.” He has no time for persuasion or dialogue either: “An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change.” All there is is power. You either wield it or are controlled by it. And power is simply the ability to implement racist or antiracist policy.

The book therefore is not an attempt to persuade anyone. It’s a life story interspersed with a litany of pronouncements about what you have to do to be good rather than evil. It has the tone of a Vatican encyclical, or a Fundamentalist sermon. There is no space in this worldview for studying any factor that might create or exacerbate racial or ethnic differences or inequalities apart from pure racism. If there are any neutral standards that suggest inequalities or differences of any sort between ethnic groups, they are also ipso facto racist standards. In fact, the idea of any higher or lower standard for anything is racist, which is why Kendi has no time either for standardized tests. In this view of the world, difference always means hierarchy.

…

He’s capable of conveying the complicated dynamics of that violent mugging on a bus, but somehow insists that the only real violence is the structural “violence” of racist power. After a while, you realize that this worldview cannot be contradicted or informed by any discipline outside itself — sociology, biology, psychology, history. Unlike any standard theory in the social sciences, Kendi’s argument — one that is heavily rooted in critical theory — about a Manichean divide between racist and anti-racist forces cannot be tested or falsified. Because there is no empirical reality outside the “power structures” it posits.

…

He wants unelected “formally trained experts on racism” (presumably all from critical race-theory departments) to have unaccountable control over every policy that won’t yield racial equality in every field of life, public or private. They are tasked with investigating “private racist policies.” Any policy change anywhere in the U.S. would have to be precleared by these “experts” who could use “disciplinary tools” if policymakers do not cave to their demands. They would monitor and control public and private speech. What Kendi wants is power to coerce others to accept his worldview and to implement his preferred policies, over and above democratic accountability or political opposition. Among those policies would be those explicitly favoring nonwhites over whites because “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”

Every now and again, it’s worth thinking about what the intersectional left’s ultimate endgame really is — and here it strikes me as both useful and fair to extrapolate from Kendi’s project. They seem not to genuinely believe in liberalism, liberal democracy, or persuasion. They have no clear foundational devotion to individual rights or freedom of speech. Rather, the ultimate aim seems to be running the entire country by fiat to purge it of racism (and every other intersectional “-ism” and “phobia”, while they’re at it). And they demand “disciplinary tools” by unelected bodies to enforce “a radical reorientation of our consciousness.” There is a word for this kind of politics and this kind of theory when it is fully and completely realized, and it is totalitarian.

…

I once thought I understood what sex and gender meant. “Sex” meant male or female; “gender” meant how you express that sex. Simple enough. I also thought that homosexuality was defined as a sexual and emotional attraction to someone of your own sex, as would be implied by “homo” meaning same, and “sexuality” meaning, well, sexuality. This baseline agreement on basic terms was a good start for a reasoned debate. You can tell someone’s sex by their chromosomes, hormones, genitals and secondary sex characteristics. You can tell someone’s gender by the way they manifest their sex and sex characteristics. People have infinitely different ways to express their maleness or femaleness, and cultures create different norms for these expressions. And my basic position was that we should expand those norms and accept all types of nonconforming men and women as very much men and very much still women.

But now I’m confused, and I don’t think I’m alone. Slowly but surely, the term “sex” has slowly drifted in meaning and become muddled with gender. And that has major consequences for what homosexuality actually is, consequences that are only beginning to be properly understood. Take the Equality Act, the bill proposed by the biggest LGBTQ lobby group, the Human Rights Campaign, backed by every single Democratic presidential candidate, and passed by the House last May. Its core idea is to enhance the legal meaning of the word “sex” so it becomes “sex (including sexual orientation and gender identity).”

The Act provides four different ways to understand the word “sex,” only one of which has any reference to biology. Sex means first “a sex stereotype”; secondly “pregnancy, childbirth, or a related condition”; thirdly “sexual orientation or gender identity”; and last “sex characteristics, including intersex traits.” Yes, at the end, we have “sex characteristics” in there — i.e., biological males and females — qualified, as it should be, by the intersex condition. But it’s still vague. “Sex characteristics” can mean biologically male or female, but can also mean secondary sex characteristics, like chest hair, or breasts, which can be the effect of hormone therapy. So in fact, the Act never refers to men and women as almost every human being who has ever existed on Earth understands those terms.

…

In these lesson plans, here’s the definition of homosexuality: “a person’s sexual identity in relation to the gender to which they are attracted.” Homosexuality is thereby redefined as homogenderism. It’s no longer about attraction to the same sex, but to the same gender. I’m no longer homosexual; I’m homogender. But what if the whole point of my being gay is that I’ve always been physically attracted to men? And by men, I mean people with XY chromosomes, formed by natural testosterone, with male genitals, which is what almost every American outside these ideological bubbles means by “men.” I do not mean people with XX chromosomes, formed by estrogen, with female genitals, who have subsequently used testosterone to masculinize their female body — even though I would treat them with the respect and dignity they deserve in every context.

…

Of course, anyone can and should like whatever they like and do whatever they want to do. But if a gay man doesn’t want to have sex with someone who has a vagina and a lesbian doesn’t want to have sex with someone who has a dick, they are not being transphobic. They’re being — how shall I put this? — gay. When Rich suggests that “it’s not just possible but observable and prevalent to have ‘preferences’ that dog-whistle bigotry,” and he includes in the category of “preferences” not liking the other sex’s genitals, he’s casting a moral pall over gayness itself. Suddenly we’re not just being told homosexuality is “problematic” by the religious right, we’re being told it by the woke left.

That’s the price of merging gender with sex. It’s time the rest of us woke up and defended our homosexuality.

[doorsclosingslowly]

disjointed notes about nightbrothers, sexual orientation and gender, since i’m apparently posting background reasoning today

[content warning for rape and transphobia, as was to be expected considering the canon information i’m extrapolating from]

my basic model of how nightbrother/Nightsister society works is:

a child is born. if She is a Sister[*][**], She is raised by Her Mother; if he is a boy, he is returned to his father’s village. he’ll be raised in the house his father belonged to, usually; occasionally, the Sister talks directly to the village elders, who then give the boy to his brothers by the same Mother; boys will also be taken in by other nightbrothers, if there is no identifiable blood relation. this happens too if a young boy loses his brothers later on. they’re mostly raised communally anyway: they are all each other’s brother. that’s what they call each other. direct blood relation is a difference of degree, not kind. they work together, keeping each other alive and paying tribute to the Sisters. (the Sisters keep detailed records of who is related to whom, but they do not share.) (this is basically the settlement that wrath reached with the Witch in the stories: allow me to raise my child. allow me to hold him, if only for a few years. obviously, it’s been twisted--now: give my son to my brothers. the father does not return.)

when a nightbrother has reached late adolescence, he will be made to stand in the square, for the Sister to choose--if She wants--to participate in the Trials. in the fight that follows, most injuries are not lethal, and the losers crawl back to their brothers to heal and stand in the square once more

when a brother proves his strength and remains the last man standing and is chosen by a Sister as a mate, he leaves with Her and lives in her own home and becomes Her personal servant. he sires Her children. he is totally isolated from his family, from other men, and from other Women. the degree of cruelty is Her choice.

some brothers are sent back, eventually, like stinger who shut down emotionally. the Sister who took him didn’t want to lie with someone who was as lively as a corpse, and She didn’t want to kill him. brothers who are returned become the elders of the village. (savage thinks: He needs to get out, get back alive, get back to his brother, and he will never see him again if She sees his abject fear. Because nightbrothers do come back sometimes from their trials, callous ones and kind ones and small ones and tall ones without rhyme or reason, limping home from the Sisters and falling into drink, and Savage has always wondered at the Elders calling their return a kindness. Calling their own survival merciful, when they have grown hard and cruel for it. and he’s kinda right: they are deeply traumatized, and all too often, they cannot forget the fate that awaits all the young brothers around them. they look at a young boy and see a corpse.)

alternatively, if a Sister tires of Her mate--or has too many sons and doesn’t like Her Sisters’ judgmental looks--She kills him. She might then take another.

i think savage is aroace, but in-universe, i don’t think any nightbrother has a concept of sexual orientation remotely comparable to ours. sexual orientation implies agency: conversely, why would it matter whether you are attracted to women, when it is your duty? when you cannot escape?

there are many nightbrothers who have sex with other nightbrothers, for reasons including sexual attraction and love and affection and the wish to share all their lives forever and the desire for closeness, and some that don’t, but:

it’s not an identity. also, notice this makes no reference to women whatsoever. there’s wanting to sleep with other men, and there’s not wanting to sleep with other men. nightbrother society (and Nightsister society) are pretty much exclusively homosocial. friendship, choosing to share your bed, rivalry, intimacy--that’s what you have with another nightbrother. cross-gender interaction is intensely regulated and unequal. it’s difficult to have a deep relationship with someone so far above (or below) you, and a nightbrother cannot refuse--cannot be honest to--a Nightsister. if there are man-Woman couples that genuinely care for each other, they’re looked at askance by both societies. (also it’s still dubious consent at best.)

nightbrothers do not see sex with men and sex (rape, though that’s not how they see it) with Women as acts belonging to the same category. being chosen by a Sister is mating, breeding, terrifying, duty, purpose--ultimately, death--whereas sleeping with nightbrothers is choice, a fact of life. bisexuality would be the most fundamentally incomprehensible sexual orientation: the idea that there is a word thats put those two actions together is as if there was an adjective for ‘likes bicycles and grass’. why those two things?

w/r/t gender -- physical appearance at birth  ≠ gender ≠ exclusively man or woman ≠ presentation ≠ something immutable and so on and so forth, but to the nightbrothers there is no distinction. gender is a caste, inescapable, the most important fact about you, and it governs your whole life and decides whether you are slave or slaver. (Savage is caught, for a moment, by the thought of the Mother with a nightbrother’s face. It shakes him. How would he know who to trust, and who to serve?) it’s interesting for me to write, this claustrophobic exaggerated cisnormative pov, considering i have a difficult relationship with gender but the closest approximation is ‘no please don’t’

occasionally i’m tempted to think about nonbinary or intersex or transgender nightbrothers or nightsisters, but i know the consequences for them would be horrible--these borders must not be crossed, so the structure of society is not questioned--so i shy away. more seriously i’m playing with writing a conversation about gender between savage and socvumo (gender-nonconforming twi’lek woman) because she knows the violence of gender intimately but she knows it as something imposed from the outside--what is the use of a twi’lek woman if she is not pretty--whereas her own people’s view of gender are far more relaxed and fluid. or eldra (also a twi’lek, but she’s not my OC so i’m more constrained. as a Jedi--luminous beings are we, vessels of the force not mere bodies--she has an interesting perspective though)

__

[*]   by the way, Sister and brother are also synonymous with Nightsister and nightbrother; usually i’m not talking about a sibling relationship. as with the capitalization pattern, this is wording i tend to use in savage’s pov

[**]   i really don’t understand why they look so different. i’m way more interested in sociology than biology, though, so i’m just handwaving it. a couple of theories i’ve considered are: phenotypically nonstandard fetuses (i.e., dathomiri zabrak women, paleskinned men, mixed looks) are somehow unviable or the babies are killed at birth, they’re both hermaphroditic species though in that case why would you need the mating in the first place, the gffa is weird, none of the writers gave a fuck

[roidespd-blog]

Chapter Twenty-Four : T as in TRANSGENDER

Let’s run down our Queer alphabet. I did the G for sure because patriarchy. I did the L. The L was an interesting journey. Obviously, I did the B, I may have overdid it at times. Okay, are we done ? What do you mean, no ? T ? Uh ?

WHAT’S THE T ?

Transgender : denoting or relating to a person whose of sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex.

We previously talked about gender identity and how sometimes, it may differ from the sex you were assigned at birth. Well, still true but that’s just the basic info everyone is supposed to know about. The word transgender, coined by Psychiatrist John F. Oliven in his 1965 book Sexual Hygiene and Pathology, is actually as much an proper identity as it is an umbrella term to many variables in the Trans community. We’ll get to that in a minute.

4500 YEARS IN THE PAST (or the Unexpected Virtue of Ambitious Storytelling in a Amateurish Article)

In broad terms, the History of transgender people begins in ancient Sumerian and Akkadian civilizations, as texts from over 4500 years ago mention transgender priests and prostitutes (remember, oldest job in the world). Some reports suggest that the idea of a third gender came from prehistoric times. They were known Trans priests in Ancient Greece, Phrygia and Rome while an Roman Emperor called Elagabalus preferred the use of “lady” instead of “lord” when addressed to. Variables from the trans community umbrella comes from the fact that there is shared History between transgender people, intersex people and even Second Spirit individuals from the Navajo community. Hijras (India), Kathoeys (Thailand) and Khanith (Arabia) have importance and recognized identities when it comes to the question of gender around the world. They are reports of transitions from male to female and female to male as early as the 1800s, with musicians (Billy Tipton), soldiers (Albert Cashier) and painters (Lili Elbe) coming to terms with their identity reassignment.

Lili, in fact, is famous for becoming one of the first woman to go through vaginoplasty in 1931. She went to Germany to undergo four different operations over a period of two years. Her immune system rejected the final operation (construction of a vagina and implementation of a uterus), and her body developed an infection. She died on September 13, 1931. Her life was immortalized in 2000’s The Danish Girl written by David Ebershoff, followed by a movie adaption from Tom Hooper (2015).

To be honest, the History of Transgender people in the world is so vast and varied, I’m getting overwhelmed. The Tale of Two Brothers from Ancient Egypt. Tribes from West Africa who did not assigned gender to their children until the age of five (In Central Africa, one can be genderless until puberty). The great tradition of dan roles in China since at least the Mind and Qing dynasties. The story of Esther Brandeau/Jacques La Fargue from 18th century Canada. Frances Thompson, a formerly enslaved black trans woman, one of five to testify in front of a U.S. congressional committee in 1866. Zuni Ihamana We’wha who became a cultural ambassador of her/his people in 1896. Danica Roem… Oh Danica Roem. Remind me to talk about Danica Roem later.

And now, it sounds like we’re not defining Trans identity properly as I’ve just mentioned Intersex and Cross-Dressing performers. Well, History is messy. Although they officially differ from one another now, they were more obscure concepts back then (and before “then” was a “then”).

DO NOT CONFUSE (PRESENT EDITION)

The first notion that a ignorant could have, based on lack of informations and overbearing sense of historic confusion, is that Transsexual and Transgender are synonyms. In fact, yes, Transsexual is a term that was used for a long ass time to define transgender people. It has since been rejected by a big part of the trans community. For now, transsexual is a subset of the umbrella that is Transgender. For a transgender person, the notion that “sexual” is used at to refer to their gender identity is extremely reductive. If you are still confused and one day you meet a openly out trans man or woman, don’t put your fist in your mouth flipping a coin to figure out what term suits them best. Just ask. Politely. A Transgender individual is also not to be confused with Transvestites. Transvestite : Someone who derives pleasure from dressing in clothes primarily associated with the opposite sex. First of all, transvestite is kind of an outdated term that was used in such a negative way I almost find it insulting (although it shouldn’t). Know that transvestism has nothing to do with gender identity. It’s the pleasure to put on clothes that do not belong to your gender category. A transvestite gay man stays a gay man. In some cases (but not all), the act of transvestism is developed as a fetish and provokes sexual arousal.

One synonym of the term would be cross-dressing, which was coined after some members of the post-Stonewall Riots group Street Transvestite ActionRevolutionaries, founded by Sylvia Rivera (1971) complained about the use of the term Transvestite. One newly-named long-lost cousin derivative of this is the term Genderfuck (or GenderBender), in which an individual will dress regardless of the binary concepts of fashion and clothing.

Do not confuse Transgender with the Art of Drag. Yes, you’re straight but hyped, you kiki in front of RuPaul’s Drag Race from time to time because they’re so funny and flamboyant. Yes. Yes. Being a Drag Queen is basically being a Cross-Dresser, except that this is a vocation, a paid job if you are lucky. Drag Queens are performers, pretty damn good ones at that, and their gender and sexual identities have nothing to do with how they pay the rent. If you read the June 11th article on RuPaul, you’ll see the details on the scandal Ru created about transgender people. Know that some Drag Queens are transgender and they can keep on being fabulous Drag Queens. Oh, and Drag Kings are a thing too. They just don’t have an Emmy Award-winning show to popularize them.

I will talk about Intersex people and their ancestry and connections to the Trans community, but not today.

PROCCESS

As a Transgender person, you usually feel a disconnection at a very young age between who you are in your head and what body was given to you by a non-existent God Almighty. When a person starts to go into transition (Process of changing one’s gender presentation and/or sex characteristics to accord with one’s internal sense of gender identity — the “and/or” is crucially important) he/she/they makes a conscious personal decision. Careful, you cannot confuse Transitioning with Sex Reassignment Surgery (or SRS), which is only an option. Transitioning is a holistic process and includes many physical, psychological, social and emotional changes.

On the social side, the first step would be to come out. A gay man or woman does not simply go from one gender to another, he/she/they has to redo the entire terrible dance of announcing your gender identity. Through that process, a new name might be chosen by the individual, with the proper set of pronouns. Since it’s a process that can be years in the making, the person transitioning might start to wear different clothing and accessories, style their hair differently, ease themselves into his/her/their real self.

Whether of not he/she/they go through with SRS is totally up to the individual. In the times of Lili Elbe, you could not consider yourself a transgender person unless SRS was performed. You would have been a transvestite. Today, as the laws progressed (very slowly and very recently), only the decision and the social and psychological changes are factors into transitioning legally.

Also, if you ever wonder in a transperson went through surgery, just dont. IT’S NONE OF YOUR FUCKING BUSINESS, YOU DOUCHEFUCK.

On the medical side, the use of hormone therapy to create feminine or masculine characteristics is a major step into the transition (again, not an obligation). For trans women, surgeries can include breast implants, orchiectomy, laser hair removal, tracheal shave, facial feminization and penile inversion vaginoplasty. For trans men, male chest reconstruction, hysterectomy, phalloplasty and metoidioplasty are options to explore.

You also need a trustworthy doctor by your side to help you through your transition. Using hormones without medical guidance is dangerous and you may risk serious complications.

The point is, not all transgender people transition “completely” or even at all. The ways of some are not those of others. It may be a personal choice or a financial one, as those surgeries are very expansive and not always part of your insurance package (in the States, for example). Nevertheless, a person’s gender identity should always be respected no matter how they decide to transition socially or medically.

TRANS UNDER THE LAW

They are still a lot of places in the world where Transgender people are not protected under the law, where they cannot access the public bathroom of their gender based of bigotry ideas and religious fanaticism. There’s also discrimination in work places, many other public services, in health care.

In the United States, where you can be recognized as Trans, an Employment Non-Discrimination Act was stalled and failed several times over the last two decades. Each state now have choices of legislation in the matter. Mr. Orange is quickly taking back what was giving over the years to Trans people, such as the right to serve in the United States Armed Forces. Furthermore, Trans black women are still the most in danger population on record. As recently at early, the body of 26 year-old Chynal Lindsey was found. It’s the second unsolved murder of a trans black woman in the spam of a few weeks, fourth in three years in Dallas alone.

Did you know that until January of 2018, France was asking their transgender citizens to go through obligatory sterilization, a direct violation of human rights (decision made the European Court of Human Rights in April 2017) ? 20 countries in Europe were implementing that rule, while 36 still require mental health diagnosis in order to get legal gender recognition. Back to France. Laws to protect trans people started to be talked about as early as the late 70s. Twice, in 1981 and 1982, a law failed to pass. Meanwhile, transpeople were still considered psychiatric cases when in need of hospital care, and that until 2010. Since the 2016 case of a young trans woman who didn’t want to go through any surgery and still change her legal name, shit have moved around in the right direction. With the non-obligation to be sterilized came the possibility to change one’s name more easily, not based on any invasive medical procedures. You need to prove that that name represents your real identity, that’s it’s been used that others for quite some time and the change would harm your psychological well-being. New rules about minors who want to transition have also been add up to the law. They can change their names at age 12. The birth certificate can be modified at age 16. Transphobia is punishable through many updated laws when it comes to slurs, defamation, sexual harassment and discrimination.

And yet, trans people don’t feel safe. I wonder why.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITY NOTHING

2017 and 2018 were the deadliest years for Transgender Americans, with over 50 deaths in 24 months. Cases of Transgender people being arrested for crimes that were not crimes are basically limitless at this point. The Transgender community is still the most rejected of them all. Have you ever wondered how you would react if Pierre was suddenly in the process of becoming Vanessa, her real self ? The answer is not relevant. Vanessa would not have the support of her family, her uneducated friends would try to ditch her faster than you can say vaginoplasty and her boss would find a way to make her feel unwelcome. People have not been properly educated. They get easily confused with pronouns, so to understand the difficult process of gender dysphoria ?

Gender Dysphoria : the distress a person feels due to their birth-assigned sex and gender not matching their gender identity. My mama once told me that the fact that I was gay took time for her to process but she never stopped loving me. When I asked her “what if I was transgender ?” she replied “Oh no Alex. Not that. I don’t think I would accept that”. My mama’s no bigot. She is just so uninformed that she automatically rejects any foreign ideas. That’s why representation is so fucking important, so.

WE CAN BE HEROES

Long gone are the days where the only trans people on television were played by cisgender actors and were called “transvestite hooker #2”. It started with a bang with Hilary Swank in Boys Don’t Cry (1999), it slowly went to more recognition with Felicity Huffman in Transamerica (2005) to continue through Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club (2013). All fine performances by three cisgender folks. I’m not even gonna mention prior appearances of trans characters, they are just so offensive.

The real revolution started in July of 2013, when the character of Sofia, played by Laverne Cox, was introduced to the world by Netflix. A transgender character played by a transgender actress. She went on to be nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Guest Actress. Twice. The consecration came a year later when Cox made the cover of Time magazine. It was called a “transgender tipping point”. 

In 2014, Transparent debuted its first season on Amazon. Let’s not forget the Tambor scandal, yes, but it would be a shame to not celebrate the work of non-binary individual Jill Soloway, who gave trans people a platform — as except for Tambor and Whitford characters, all the trans characters were played by transgender people. in 2015, Caitlyn Jenner made the cover of Vanity Fair, officially announcing her transition. She’s a terrible person. I won’t say otherwise because she’s a trans women. A terrible person is a terrible person. In 2017, A Fantastic Woman won Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards. First, it’s an incredible movie. Second, it served as a response from the government trying to erase the trans community from existence in the military. An incredibly realistic portrayal of a trans character in Shameless (played by the gorgeous Elliot Fletcher) in also to be noted. 

In 2018, Pose premiered its first episode. I’ve already talked about Pose so much. I’m not getting into too much detail again. It’s major.

I’ll just say this : I went back to work on Friday. I work at an english bookstore, you see. In the press department. And There she was. Indya Moore. On the cover of Elle US. My jaw dropped on the floor. A trans woman on the cover of one of the most popular fashion magazine in the world. I’m sorry but MILESTONE. 

Scarlett Johansson having to quit a movie where she was gonna play a transgender person because of the outpour of rage that followed ? PRICELESS MILESTONE. Janet Mock becoming the first transgender person to direct an episode of television ? MILESTONE TO INFINITY. Supergirl just introduced the TV’s first transgender superhero, played by Nicole Maines. I’ve said it before. Get the kids on board and then, jackpot. In France, activist-turned-actor Adrian de La Vega and actor Océan (who documentary feature is available for streaming right now!) are making incredible waves for the french trans community.

My god… DANICA ROEM ! This american journalist was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017, becoming the first transgender person to both be elected and serve in any U.S. state legislature. She famously answered to a chance to attack her republican counterpart in the race (Bob Marshall, nicknamed the commonwealth’s “chief homophobe”) by these simple words : “I don’t attack my constituents. Bob is my constituent now.”

GET YOUR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT… WELL, TRANSGHT

Queer people, here’s my daily message on repeat : GIVE MORE TO THE TRANS COMMUNITY. Stop looking at yourselves in the gym mirrors and focus : Trans people be should OUR top priority. We are letting our siblings in the mud while we parade with pride. Enough. Each new Pride should be first of foremost about trans rights and how we can protect them. AS FAST AS WE CAN. Here we have brave men and women having the courage to live as their true selves, we are one of the same. No dancing on Robyn’s music until the entire crowd starts screaming “TRANS RIGHTS NOW ! TRANS RIGHTS NOW !” I’m not hearing you. LOUDER.

[ladytygrycomics]

All You [N]Ever Wanted to Know about the Biology of Freeza’s Race. . .Probably

Disclaimer:

I will begin by saying that I feel it is in poor taste to explain world-building outside of a narrative because that is something that should be achieved within the narrative itself (however subtle or apparent it might actually be).

Still, this particular topic is a popular one and so many of the private questions I get are in relation to it that I feel I should post something, if for no other reason than to establish a precedent that yes, I do come up with this crap on my own. I’ll still address it, just as I intended, within the story itself, but I thought an infodump might be fun. After all, it’s going to take me years, at my current pace, to tell the entire story.

Finally, I post this only because this is the type of thing about which I geek out (but only to a certain point). I say it all in good humor and with a gentle reminder that we’re talking about a universe with energy blasts, flying people, and filthy wish dragons. Being legitimately mean-spirited about disagreements regarding fictional characters, their anatomy, and so forth? GTFO. ^_^

Oh, and hey, if this sort of rambling appeals to you, or if you just want to read some Freeza fanfiction, you can follow my webcomic here~

My Background: I’ve been an animal geek since I was a child back in the (gulp) 80s. I loved to read nonfiction about creatures and watch nature documentaries. That love has never died. I had nearly every type of pet of growing up but my first love was always reptiles.

Like so many who shared a fascination with the beings who inhabit our planet, I assumed that I would pursue a career in veterinary medicine. On two separate occasions, I sought out veterinarians to shadow professionally and both times, I knew that it wasn’t the field for me. Oddly enough, it seemed that one would need to adopt a sort of callousness (compassion fatigue) to survive in the career. Animal abuse and neglect were more common than I could stomach; I hated the idea of having to develop that sort of attitude just to do my job.

Despite choosing a different career path, my hobbies continued to reflect my interest in animals: dog obedience, animal training/behavior, equitation, falconry. . . the list goes on. As an undergrad, I worked as a department lead for one of the few pet store chains that has some integrity, e.g., spending hundreds on surgery for something like a six-dollar hamster in our care was not unheard of.

Specifically, I worked in exotic pet care and I was the go-to person for herps (reptiles/amphibians) and psittacines (parrots). I am by no means an expert on the level of a focused biologist in the field. I offer this information only to show that the biological decisions I’ve made in representing a fictional, alien race come from at least (some) experience and study.

Arcosians: Before someone gets their panties in a knot, I’ll touch on the name I use to denote Freeza’s race. For everyone who points out that “Arcosian” is exclusive to the Ocean dub, yes, I know. To anyone who says that the aliens depicted in this filler, who first contract the saiyans, are not the same race as Freeza’s clan, yup, I agree with you. Freeza didn’t even exist as a known concept when that was animated.

I had to pick a name to avoid being catachrestic. Clunky phrases like “Freeza’s clan” and “Freeza’s race” are jarring to the ear.

When I first entered the fandom, most people called them either Icejins or Changelings. “Icejin” makes my inner etymologist squirm (though this is the term I still use when talking casually). “Changeling” denotes something else.

“Arcosian” and “Arcos”, even given the source, have been the most satisfying choice for me. Rest assured, I don’t personally get hung up on anyone using the other terms (or having different head-canons, in general). If we can follow what the other person is trying to communicate, there’s little point in being pedantic (and it tends to reflect more poorly on the person acting like a dick than the person who is “wrong.”)

Commonalities:

Sexes:

For storytelling purposes and for simplification, I stick with two (male and female). It’s boring and uninspired but I can work with it without having to spend a lot of time establishing new information. Hermaphroditism in higher species is rare and while there are some instances of intersex in reptiles, I wasn’t interested in trying to focus on this.

Omnivorous:

While you get the occasional, herbivorous oddballs like uromastyx, many reptiles are carnivorous/insectivorous. You get omnivorous species as well so depending on which creature you’re using as inspiration, there’s a lot of room to make up information for a fictional species that shares reptilian attributes. I imagine that Arcosians are primarily fish and meat eaters. Veggies aid digestion. Fruit is a treat. Grains would be the least tasty meal for them.

Noises: The only reptilian noise I’ve adopted is “purring” and this is loosely based on crocodilian behavior that males use to attract mates and establish territory. I’ve taken some major liberties with this one in that it’s used as an involuntary indicator that a male of the species is feeling especially amorous. Look for it to be used for comedic effect later.

Scents: Those big eyes in the center of the face typify predators and the Arcosians are no exception. While primarily a visual species, there will be some instances where scent comes into play, particularly in a breeding behavior involving scent glands under the tail and an ability to perceive female receptiveness (in their own species and in some others). Have you ever wondered why human females are discouraged from owning male iguanas? It’s not pretty on the rare occasions that something goes REALLY wrong. <.<

Oviparous: Honestly, I think it’s more likely, given some of the dissimilarities I use, that Freeza’s race would bear live young (like some reptiles). I needed them to be egg layers for a narrative decision that won’t become apparent until much later in my story. I did take advantage of this though and go with the tendency that some reptiles have their genders determined by temperature during incubation (so these fancy aliens have the technology to choose the sex of their offspring by the time Freeza is born).

Dissimilarities:

Sexual dimorphism: This is the fancy way of saying that males and females can be visually distinguished from each other and in a way more telling than having a look under the tail. I wanted to play with this a lot more than I ended up doing but the key difference I use is that black lines on the face are a male trait (perhaps serving a similar purpose as those on a cheetah) while colored markings under the eyes are a female trait. Defined lips are a masculine trait.

Bio Armor: I waffled on this for a while because of how ambiguous Freeza’s first form looks in terms of being either organic or technological. I ended up going with the former which seems to be the common head canon anyway.

Endothermic: This is the fancy way of saying they’re warm-blooded. The simple explanation is that Freeza has proven he can survive in space, though I imagine he would adopt a defensive state of torpor, even when healthy, i.e., not cleaved in two. Surely he should have SOME vulnerabilities, right?

Most of the fandom assumes the species is cold-blooded but here’s the fun factoid that many don’t seem to know: cold-blooded animals DON’T sweat. More specifically, unless I’m forgetting some exception, only mammals sweat (and not all mammals do).

While the similarities between reptiles are intentional, I also don’t want to be TOO on-the-nose when it comes to drawing those similitudes. Toriyama (likely unintentionally) establishes that Freeza’s species shares mammalian traits (apart from other physical similarities, of course) by making him sweat like a pig in his fight with Goku.

Mutant traits: “[Cold and Freeza] are the only ones [of their race] who possess an abnormal level of battle power and cruelty”—so said Toriyama in an interview about Bardock. I treat most Arcosians as being comparable to strong humans—they can’t fly, manipulate energy, etc. I decided to make transformation a purely mutant trait as well. There are elements of Freeza’s suppressed forms present in other OCs of the species but this is solely because I wanted to better differentiate characters.

Asexuality: From the same Bardock interview, Toriyama commented that Freeza was born from his father alone. In context, the phrase modifies Freeza’s traits as a mutant. Did Toriyama actually mean that the species is asexual? Maybe? Probably? It would be fitting for a perfect life form but at the end of the day, there just aren’t a lot of female characters in DBZ. It would not surprise me if this were a potential means to include procreation without needing to include another character (which Toriyama has certainly done in the past). Still, I’m ignoring the hell out of this, regardless of intent/correctness, for narrative reasons.

"Biogems”: I haven’t yet decided on a specific term to indicate the shiny carapaces that sit on the heads, chests, forearms, shoulders, and shins of some Arcosians. But you know what I mean.. . I’ll probably just continue to say “carapaces.” I had some fun with this one and I imagine that these are something wholly alien about the species. They serve to regulate body temperature in all parts of the body and protect important organs (namely the brain and guts). For the chest bit, I used a bit of bird geekery: it will also serve as a brood patch during natural incubation.

Genitals: (because everyone loves the naughty bits). I don’t have an established head canon on how their junk looks. The NSFW stuff I draw varies and will likely continue to vary unless there is a lot of interest in seeing an 18+ version of the steamy scenes (at which point I’ll commit to a design). Until then, expect to not get a clear look in the public version of the comic.

All I can say is that the males keep their equipment stored in the base of their tails until it’s needed (just like most reptiles). I did have a laugh about giving Freeza some hemipenes or some other type of weird-looking reptile gear (and boy, is there ever some out there) but if push comes to shove, don’t expect something too alien.

I think that covers it. . . Did I miss anything? Let me know your thoughts. And hey, if you like this sort of thing and want me to do more, let me know! Otherwise, I’ll be content to keep quietly turning out comic pages. :3

[jkl-fff]

But am I wrong to think that gender is not a feeling though? But a representation of your genitalia? It's why I've been so confused because I was raised and taught that if you have a penis your a boy and a vagina your a girl. It really doesn't matter how you act, weather your more masculine here or feminine there because that's just your traits as a person. You want to wear a dress but have a dick? Then your a boy wearing a dress. It don't matter if you act feminine cause your still a boy. 🤔😔

Well, the short answer is:

Yes, I think the belief that gender is all about genitalia is fundamentally wrong.

Yes, it’s a common misconception in most societies(especially since people incorrectlyuse the terms “sex” and “gender” interchangeably–mostly because the term “sex" is treated more-or-less likea dirty word),but the fact that it is common doesn’t make it any less wrong.

Now, let me take a moment to reassure youthat you’re not the only one who wasraised with that belief.Most people are raised with it (certainly, I know I was),which is why it’s such a common misconception in most societies;it’s taught to children, and few people challenge it as they grow up.But, like a lot of things we’re taught as children,the truth is not that simple—it’s not that black-and-white.Why do you think people go to college after high school?Because what you’re taught as a kid isn’t the whole truth …and sometimes, it’s just plain wrong.

Firstly, let’s talk about the meaningsof three very important terms:sex, gender, and sexuality.Sex = Biology; you are born with this, it’s encoded inyour DNA.Most people think it’s a binary, that there are only two (Female andMale),but there is actually a spectrum of Intersex that runs between them.Gender = Performance; you are not born withthis,and can fluidly change it because it is basically how you choose toactand how you choose to present yourself to yourself and the world.Gender is on several spectrums that include Feminine and Masculine(with other factors like race and class, etc. affecting it),and this is what determines if a person is a “woman” or a “man”(and NOT what their biological sex happens to be).Sexuality = Attraction and Desires; you are not born with this one, either (at lest, not entirely … it’s complicated); basically, it’s about who you want to have sex with and how you want tohave it with them.You have hetero- and homosexuality, bi- and pansexuality, and asexuality. This is also where preferred sexual roles, plus kinks and fetishes fall. People often make assumptions about other people’s gender based on sexuality(there’s a stereotype that gay men are feminine, for example),but those assumptions are, quite frankly, ignorant … and often dumbass.

Something crucial to keep in mind, also,is that these three terms are actually separate and distinct;they might influence each other, but they do NOT determine each other.This is why you could have, say, a feminine heterosexual male or a masculine bisexual female,or literally any combination of the above.Now,society does try to impose genders on people because of their sex—does try to equate them, make people believe they’re the same thing(does try to say being male is what makes someone a man or a boyand being female is what makes someone a woman or a girl)—but this is NOT how gender actually works,and is as much a form of oppression as is racism.

In fact, this is the heart of what sexism is–saying a person’s sex determines their gender(and thus the basis of how they can act and what their worth to society is).

Key proof of this is that different societies (whether in different countries or during different centuries)have had radically different concepts of what it is to be a “man” (or “boy”) and to be a “woman” (or “girl”).Sometimes very contradicting ones, too.High-heeled shoes used to be considered “manly” (masculine)—in fact, the very first ones in history were worn by “men”;same with wearing makeup and lots of jewelry.And yet, nowadays, we consider that “womanly” (feminine),even though actors playing hard-boiled action heroes and rightwing politicians (Trump himself) do it all the time.Besides that, you could think of other behaviors or character traits(being strong or a talented fighter, being nurturing with children,being domineering, being subservient, being logical or emotional,being concerned with fashion and appearances, etc.),and people are just as likely to have themno matter what their sex is.Thereis no genetic or biological connection betweenwhat really makes someone a “man” and being male.Thisis why we say that gender is a social construct;it has no basis in nature (biology), but is entirely made up by people and societies (sociology).You literally have countless females who are more “manly” (or more “boyish”—more masculine) than most males,and countless males who are more “womanly” (or more “girly”—more feminine) than most females.To say nothing of the equally countless Intersex peopleor Transsexual people who do not now or have never fitinto the limited binary of “has a vagina or a penis”.

So in the end, whether a person has a penisor a vagina(what their sex is) doesn’t matter to their gender.Should you need another example, then consider this:If being a “man” is all about having a dick,then the only real man would be theguy with the biggest dickregardless of how he acts, dresses, talks, etc.and literally everyone else in the worldis less of a man than he is.That means that biology would be more important to a person’s identity than even their personality.And doesn’t that sound just absolutely absurd? It does to me.

Finally, let me close with a pragmatic point—a point about how we should actually act in the real world.Y’see, all of the above is conceptual; it’s about pure ideas.But in the real world, you have to actually interact with people.Well, most of the time in the real world, you got no way of knowingwhat’s between a person’s legs … and frankly, it shouldn’t matter to you or anyone else, because it’s nobody’s business but theirs.If they tell you they’re a girl, then treat them like a person who is also a girl(yes, even if you think they look like a boy).If they tell you they’re a boy, thentreat them like a person who is also a boy(yes, even if you think they look like a girl).If they tell you they’re non-binary or bigender or gender fluid or queer or whatever the freakin’ hell, then treatthem like a person who is also that gender(yes, even if you don’t get why and are confused by their gender,because their gender is not about youand you don’t have to get it to berespectful of their identity).

I mean, really, to do otherwise is just plain rude.It’s like saying you know more about who they are than they do …and also saying that you just don’t care about their feelings.Imagine asking someone to call you “Marty”,and instead they call you “Farty McFuckface” all the time,and insist that’s what your name really is.That’s pretty much what it is.

So everyone, as always, remember thatthe most important point is neither hard nor complicatedbecause it is quite simply:don’t be an asshole to people.

[brajeshupadhyay]

How COVID-19 is changing queer spaces: Opening doors to some, while shutting out the more vulnerable

If it seems like everyone around us is reaching out for a shoulder to lean on in this time of the pandemic, then that need is urgent, desperate and acutely experienced when it comes to those marginalised by mainstream society. In speaking to members from the LGBTQ+ communities, it becomes evident that differences are further magnified within these communities. Factors like caste, class, creed and corporeal compositions which are already hurdles to accessing benefits in the mainstream become more crippling. And much like other support institutions battling to provide care and assistance, these LGBTQ+ safe spaces have been forced to go online as well.

While there have been some fundamental changes engendered by this shift, there are other issues that have only become clearer. And addressing them will be the demanding hard work needed to ensure an equitable future for these groups, as well as our societies at large.

For Good As You, the longest, continuously running LGBTQ support group, which has been around for more than 25 years, it was a no-brainer to move their physical weekly meetings to an online platform. “And it was immediately interesting to see who began coming for the meetings,” according to the openly gay Srinivas Muktha, a software engineer who volunteers with the group and has been actively attending its activities since 2005. “In the past, people would come for the meetings either through the route of counselling or accompanied by friends. With the newer members on these online meetings, there has been no such pattern. In fact, for a lot of them, it was their first time socially interacting with the community and not just for hook-ups as before. These new members are logging on from towns in coastal Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and we have a few people attending from the North as well,” he points out. “In the before times, distance and commitment would be the common reasons behind the floating population at the weekly meetings, but presently, location and distance aren’t factors at all,” he adds.

Another significant change that Srinivas has noticed has been the multiple languages being spoken on these online meetings. “There has always been an effort to translate any member who wants to speak in a language they are comfortable with at the meetings. In reality, English has become the default language. But with these online platforms, being able to simultaneously translate people through text in the chat window has changed this aspect,” he tells us. And people aren’t bothered at all because we’re so used to reading subtitles, he quips. “This has allowed people to speak up at these meetings even if it is their first time attending it. And language isn’t the barrier any longer,” he adds.

This increase in attendance and need for conversation with others from the LGBTQ+ communities is also something witnessed by Rohini Malur, a communications manager, who is a founding member of All Sorts of Queer, a support group and safe space for all queer people who aren’t cis-men, which started in 2016. “We would do Wednesday Drinks as a weekly meetup before, but hardly anyone would show up. In these times, with an increasing sense of loneliness and helplessness, our weekly online meetings are very well attended,” she says. “For many of our members, who are women, non-binary and trans, it has been a difficult situation. Emotionally for sure, but even physically in some instances with being forced to move back with their birth families for different reasons. Either they’re ‘out’ but live with a disapproving family or they’re ‘not out’ and have had to suppress their desires and its expressions,” she explains. “Or it is harder because they’re living alone, we’ve had instances of members of the group moving in with each other to battle these feelings during the lockdowns,” she added.

For the heterosexual community and cis-queer men – by and large – the home has always been the safe space. Therefore returning, rediscovering and refurbishing it has been their present preoccupation in this period of social distancing. This hasn’t been the case at all for members of the trans community, says Kanaga, a Chennai-based trans woman who has been volunteering for several years with a number of organisations working for transgender rights in Tamil Nadu, besides working as an IT consultant. While Kanaga notes the transition of safe spaces into online forums as a positive move, she does want to point out an oversight. “The problem within our larger community has always been one of access,” she stresses. “Who gets to use the terms ‘mental health’, ‘stress’, ‘self-care’? Who gets to access these new online avenues when these ‘safe spaces’ have always been trans-exclusionary? Who among us gets to have a ‘home’?” she asks.

“There’s a subset of the community who still need these physical safe spaces. The trouble is for a majority of the trans community, the safe space cannot be converted into the digital forum. Among my own circle of friends and acquaintances in the community, I saw the way that they missed this year’s Pride March though it happened online. For them, they miss dressing up for cultural events and going wild during the March. They’ve had to keep it all together for an entire year and at these community gatherings, they just let it go. So for us, from the trans community, these drop-in centres, physical safe spaces and houses of our friends are very necessary still,” she explains.

While in her own experience, Kanaga did seek out online spaces over a decade ago in a bid to be seen as she wanted to be seen, called by the names and pronouns she preferred, through working with her community she has also come to see the slippages that happen in this seemingly easy move to the online space. “In a community where personal space isn’t a given, it is already hard to access basic needs, and if one does access these digital forums, the ingrained trans-exclusionary nature of these spaces has made sure that the gatekeeping is done thoroughly so that only a few of us can even squeeze through,” she remarks.

And in the instances where funds have been gathered to support these basic needs of the trans community, one trips over another hurdle. “An organisation I was volunteering with had received aid and had even transferred the money to each trans person's bank account. While most of them could go to a nearby ATM and withdraw the funds, some of them couldn’t. One of them was this disabled trans woman who couldn’t get any transport to gain access to the money because of the lockdowns. We managed to help her in this instance, but there’s always a little bit extra that can be done with regards to easing the lives of the marginalised communities, even the subset within a larger one,” she adds.

This need for private space, paraphernalia and ‘poshness’ to reach out to online safe spaces for community and camaraderie has also been pointed out by another subset of the LGBTQ+ community – the trans men community. Gee Imaan Semmalar, a trans man, currently a PhD candidate at the University of Kent, is a member of the working group of Sampoorna, a dedicated group of trans and intersex Indians. Sampoorna began in the mid-90s and was founded by three trans men and a trans woman who helped each other with medical and legal information. In 2004, the listserv was set up to enable sharing of information within an expanding circle of trans and intersex people. It still exists as a goldmine of the history of early conversations between trans men – regarding medical transitions as well as the mundane,” he quickly adds. While Gee echoed Kanaga’s observations with regards to the issues of “safe spaces” and “accessibility” faced by the trans male and intersex communities, he was able to point out one of the ways they’ve overcome the literacy problem. “I’ve noticed a boom in WhatsApp groups populated with trans men, and I’ve even been added to a couple of them. The voice message feature has really allowed us to connect, care and crowd-source help for one another inspite of the distances. These groups communicate in different languages, allowing for ease in communication. I’m part of one with over a hundred trans men from Kerala,” he attests, pleasantly surprised.

Gee points out that even with the shifts and new avatars that safe spaces are taking to tackle crises in the time of the pandemic, these might just be stop-gap solutions. There needs to be a more rigorous approach to this idea of safety itself. “The violence of the natal family still continues, one hears in the stories of the trans men stuck at home with their families that the violence has heightened, with them being forced to dress the way they don’t want to or constantly being nagged about marriage, and in these times they can’t even run away to someone’s house because there’s an understandable fear of exposure to the virus,” he says.

He also notes that certain support systems had long stopped before the emergence of this global situation. “Shelter homes for the LGBTQ+ community have long been shut down, and there’s a marked decrease in neutral spaces that would have acted as half-way homes for those who need it,” he adds. “And there might be a serious need to even redefine the very idea of ‘safe space’ after all this time. Even the home has proven to be otherwise, as seen with the brutal murder of trans-activist Maria at her own home in Kollam district, Kerala,” he argues. Kanaga underscores this concern when she says, “It isn’t safety if it isn’t guaranteed for all of us and is in the service of just some of us.”

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[artofpeacelove]

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I’m 32 years old, and I didn’t find out I was intersex until two years ago, after both of my parents had died. In the midst of an ugly sibling fight over our parents’ assets, one of my six older sisters called me a “faggot.” When I dialed up another, the eldest, to complain about the insult, her response was unexpected. “I don’t know why she would say that, since she knows you were born a girl,” she told me.

I identified at the time as transgender, as someone who had been born male but had transitioned to female, so I thought this was a rare moment of acceptance and progressive thought. It seemed my sister was acknowledging that I was “born this way.” As I turned the comment over and over in my mind that night, however, something didn’t sit quite right with me. So, I called her again the next day.

“What did you mean, that I was born a girl?” I asked her.

She begged out of answering, saying that she didn’t want to change the way I felt about our parents since they had passed, but I persisted. Finally, she told me that I’d been born intersex, or as she called it, “a hermaphrodite,” and that everyone knew but me. According to my sister, when I was born the doctor told my mom that I was deformed, that I would need surgery and hormones to live a “normal” life… as a boy. My mom was sent home with me but told that she’d need to return to the hospital soon in order to “fix me.” I underwent surgery at some point thereafter to remove the “unwanted” female parts of my anatomy, my sister told me. Suddenly, the scars in my genital region, the ones my mother had told me were from chicken pox, made sense. I wasn’t, however, given hormones at the time. The why of this remains a mystery, as I can no longer ask my parents to explain their thought process from all those years ago.

Despite an effort to “normalize” my body with surgery, however, I never felt as though I fit in. I remember looking up at the sky at a very young age: “Why am I so different?” I just felt like there weren’t many people like me, and that I was really alone. I was a boy but feminine. I dressed up like Belle from Beauty and the Beast and the female Power Rangers. My parents let me do as I pleased, and indulged me with outfits meant for little girls; maybe they felt guilty about what’d they’d done and wanted me to be as “me” as possible regardless. I’ll never know.

Then, one day in kindergarten, my teacher noticed there was a penis beneath my dress. She called my parents in and told them they had to start dressing me like a boy or I’d be expelled. That day is burned in my brain, because when we got home, my dad, a barber, told me we had to cut off my Dora the Explorer bob. I cried, as I’d wanted to grow it even longer, and was held against my will, kicking and screaming, as he shaved it. I remember saying to him that I hated him, and him replying that he was so sorry, and that it was hurting him to cut my hair, too. He told me it was for my own good and safety, words I didn’t understand at the time but which stuck with me nonetheless. The first act of violence against my identity took place in the room where I’d had surgery; this was the second.

In the years that followed, I was forced to conform to gender norms as a boy. The small act of rebellion I was still allowed was a refusal to wear pants. I wore shorts year-round instead, which earned me the nickname chores (the Spanish word for “shorts”). I still had no idea that I was intersex; all I knew was that the identity being forced upon me didn’t fit.

When my sister revealed the truth to me so many years later, she also told me that my parents had finally tried to get me hormone treatment when puberty refused to take hold, but that it had been too late. This revelation dredged up the memory of an appointment I’d attended with my father when I was 13. I remembered that the doctor had asked me if I wanted to take estrogen or testosterone. I didn’t know what he meant, but I told him I didn’t want to take anything. Then I told him I definitely did not want to be a boy, but that I didn’t want my father to know I didn’t want to be a boy.

To his credit, this rural Washington state doctor didn’t tell my father the truth. Instead, he told my dad it was too late for me to get the hormones, and that they should let nature run its course. Today I’m grateful for that doctor; however, at the time, I still left his office “a boy.”

Three years later, when I was 16, I began to really question myself and my life and my identity. I became depressed and attempted suicide on multiple occasions. After the last time failed, I decided I was just going to be whoever I wanted. Myself.

I left home for Los Angeles to attend the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. There I met my best friend Johanna. She told me that she was trans, and I said, “I am, too. I think.” At that time, I was dressing fairly androgynously, because that’s what felt best, but as she started taking me into trans spaces, I learned I had to become femme in order to be accepted. Otherwise, I was just “a gay boy in a dress.” I didn’t feel 100 percent onboard with the idea, but I didn’t know where I would find a community for the androgynous, and it was community I so desperately craved.

So, I began to transition via hormone therapy. In this period, I went home at one point and my mom said something odd, which was that she didn’t want me to be like my uncle, who had never married or had children. She also told me that she didn’t like me hanging out with the trans community because I was changing too much, and because I “wasn’t like them” as I’d been “born the way I am.” I argued that they were, too, not realizing at the time what she was trying to say.

My dad had always been more accepting than my mom, than most people, and when he was dying, something beautiful happened. He told my brother-in-law to call all of his daughters into the room. When we were gathered, he said, “You are all my daughters.” It was a such a beautiful moment of acknowledgement, one that healed the trauma from when he’d shaved my identity away as a kid.

After my mom died, and I learned that I was intersex, I realized that what she’d once said—that I was born this way—was her way of telling me that I was intersex. There was another revelation in this time period, too. The uncle she’d mentioned, the one she’d not wanted me to end up like, was also intersex. (By the way, intersex bodies often recur in family trees.)

This revelation helped me to heal my relationship with her, though she was already passed. I chose to replace the anger and resentment I’d felt with appreciation for the fact that she likely thought she was doing what’s best for me, trying to save me from the fate she’d seen my uncle suffer. I chose to accept that version versus the version of anger or mistrust or any sort of negative energy towards her and my father, these two beautiful beings who raised me with minimal education. With all of these realizations, I began the process of healing.

Learning that I was intersex, however, threw my life into a tailspin. At the time, I was doing trans advocacy work, and I wondered if I was an imposter. I didn’t know if I should separate myself not just from my work but from the trans community. Ultimately, I decided that no, I didn’t need to leave my work or my community because I had lived the trans experience before learning my truth. Instead, I added an identity for which I could advocate: intersex. Since then, I’ve identified as intersex trans femme.

I started to acknowledge my femininity and my masculinity at the same time. Finally, I understood why I have some soft features and why I have some hard features, and it allowed me to see myself no longer as what I need to change but as what I already am. There had always been a fight within myself—I was too feminine or not feminine enough—but the more I’ve allowed myself to be this androgynous being, the more that I continue to harness a power that is so beautiful and loving.

I know now that my parents did the best they could with the information and biases they possessed, but I would make different choices with my own child. Every intersex individual looks different—sometimes you might have a penis and a vagina, sometimes a penis and ovaries, etc. It takes innumerable forms. When you decide to change whatever it is that nature has made at such a young age, I consider this genital mutilation and therefore sexual abuse. You’re doing it without their consent, and you’re changing their entire lives. And yet, these surgeries are happening in secret all over the United States, and globally. It’s heartbreaking. We’re not close to enlightenment around this, though. California is the first state that’s tried to pass legislation banning doctors from performing such surgeries on babies and children, which tells you where we are as a nation.

If you’re not sure how to feel about the idea that intersex people should not be forced to gender conform, I invite you to consider how imbalanced this world is at present. We have a dominant gender and a submissive gender. To me, the intersex gender can help us to balance this imbalanced dynamic. I think that’s what we’re brought into the world to be: balance. I think there’s something very beautiful about having both genitalia.

Can you imagine what this world would look like if we acknowledged that intersex people exist rather than erasing an entire population out of existence?

To bring intersex populations out of the shadows, I believe we need LGBTQIA2S+ trainings in school wherein people of different identities speak about their experiences—a lesbian couple talks about lesbian sex, transgender people talk about trans sex, an intersex person talks about genitalia. In this way, these types of discussions would be normalized, and then people wouldn’t have to pose invasive questions (“What’s beneath your skirt?”) to strangers that make them uncomfortable and uneasy about their bodies.

I believe this would lead to a healthier society, mentally, because kids, like the one I once was, will be able to realize they’re not alone.

If you are intersex and struggling with your identity, that is the first thing I’d like you to know. I would also encourage you to harness your energy and focus on loving yourself and the body you’re in, because the shift in consciousness starts with that very personal change. If you are in a dark spot, cling on to the little bit of light for as long as you can until you find a bigger light to cling to. That’s what worked for me.

I know there aren’t many role models out there for intersex people to look up to, and it’s hard to talk about this stuff when elsewhere there’s just silence. I’m trying to create the change I need but there so many against it, and putting up a fight against so many bullies is scary.

Still, I’m going to do what I need to do to make it, and that’s loving the magical being I am, the one who was born between the sexes, perfectly.

***

Alexandra Magallon is a legal services client advocate for the Los Angeles LGBT Center who identifies as intersex trans femme. The intersex population has historically been erased, rendering it all but invisible. She offers her story (as told to Erin Bunch) to shed light on a closeted demographic that’s actually as common as redheads. 

Being an ally for the LGBTQ+ community entails more than just wearing rainbows in June; here’s how to make allyship a foundational part of your everyday life. Plus, this  ten-second tweak goes a huge distance towards helping the cause. 

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