#i don't care if they're genderless gods they're still TRANS

[vaguelydreaming]

"oh pete is trans" "no richie is trans" "ethan is trans"

you fools. you absolute buffoons. EVERYONE in hatchetfield is trans. steph? trans. macnamara? trans. miss holloway? trans.

what do you think the t in hatchetfield stands for?

[hoarderofliterature]

being indian-american and also very Gender is hilarious, a vignette

i think the easiest term for what my gender is, or sometimes isn't, is genderfluid. i don't think i've ever truly been able to understand the concept of gender, or how it's ever applied to me. but i'm not completely agender, either.

some people might argue that calling gender a performance can be a bullet in favor of bigots, who wish to treat trans people as just "disillusioned kids playing dress-up", as a teacher i once met in high school so succinctly put it. but gender is something i feel more tangibly in terms of performance, and i can't really put it in other words that make sense.

i find myself at odds with who i was, ten years ago. when gender felt like something out of my hands, an understanding waiting to be reached within my brain, hoping that one day it might solidify into something on a binary side, or at the very least, leave me with nothing at all to worry about.

(and when that didn't end up happening, a firm resolve to at least learn to deal with the constant dysphoria, await the supposedly masculine or feminine shifts in perspective the same way i anticipated and dealt with blood work results.)

i find myself at odds with that because gender to me now, and the way i feel it, is wholly performance. perspective, perception, their resulting behaviors and viewpoints, are all so fluid. and the way my gender shifts, flows into another, is still not something i am entirely in control of like the way i once wished, but something i can wield in the environment or situation in which i find myself, regardless of how it shows itself at that time.

anyway.

the way i dress most days is androgynous, so that if gender taps me on the shoulder and asks to be my skin for a few hours, i can work with it. but today was more masculine, and i was going downtown, so i decided to wear something to reflect that - an open floral shirt over a t-shirt with a golden chain, jeans, sneakers, and of course, a backwards baseball cap. which is about as southern california dude/butch of an outfit you can get without wearing swim shorts and a tank top.

and on the way back, i had to stop by an indian cultural event because a family friend was participating.

indian culture is very strict to the gender binary. this opposes some parts of vedic philosophy, in which the body is a mere shell for the soul, and so the soul is inherently without the idea or limitation of gender. it also renders gods as genderless, though we have the separation between gods and goddesses in mythology. many hindus haven't followed the true meaning of the scripture for a long time. but that's besides the point.

indian men tend to gather, standing or sitting, in groups while their wives shop, and not to talk- to steadfastly stare in opposite directions, and if they do talk, it's about politics. or the latest moon mission. indian women hover, stall to stall, either staring fearfully at their husbands or cheerfully talking with store owners, or silently comparing prices while taking stock of the different languages within nine square feet of them.

my experience of the indian american performance of gender, outside of what bollywood puts on screen, is, in a word, careful. everyone wants someone else to know, to notice, that the way they are dressed or the volume of their voice is deliberate. that the gold earrings they're wearing are 24K and they got them on their last trip to India over the summer. that they will fit in with the rest of their half of the crowd if they lower their voice, speak less, speak more, laugh louder, eat pani puri or samosas any more or less delicately than the man or woman next to them.

standards of being an indian man or woman are trained into us as young children, so that we grow up with a clear idea of what that looks like. how to dress (within american standards, but also indian standards, but also gender standards), how to talk, what topics to discuss, how to stand diminutively to avoid attracting attention, what to say to make others stay within their own gender boundaries, and let them recognize that we're doing the same.

great how that turned out, huh.

so when they're confronted with someone who doesn't fit any of those standards, who doesn't want to, who simply wants to exist in a culture that thrives on conformity and oneupmanship, they don't know what to do.

and standing with my father in this event market crowd was interesting. because i was deliberately performing masculinity in my clothing and stature, and people were thrown off. nearly every woman was in a chudidar or a dress or wearing makeup, staring at me and my long hair and my decidedly non-feminine presentation, trying to reconcile those. trying to figure out exactly why my mother let me leave the house dressed like this, because you can't escape your indian parents' clutches even as an adult. trying to know exactly what i was, failing, and turning back to the other women with one eye on the merchandise and one eye on me.

and it wasn't the fact that i wasn't in indian dress- there were plenty of people in western clothing- but rather that i stood by my father, equally silently, in a crowd of men looking like they'd rather be anywhere but there, holding on to gender not as a bargaining tool or a tenet, but as a rippling, nebulous key.

[papirouge]

Is trans ideology popular in your country? Ive heard there's been a backlash in the UK so now i'm curious about France... My country is unfortunately the type of country that follows whatever trend the USA is doing whether it's bad or good so the ideology did make its way into our schools, universities, politics and so on. But I feel the average person here is much less tolerant of it than the average american, like pretty much everyone believes it's a pretty radical ideology and very few people take the whole nonbinary stuff or neopronouns seriously.

Some serious stuff here has been passed like kids can now transition when they turn 14 (hormone treatment inc puberty blockers and surgery), you can also change your legal sex at that age too no transition of any kind neeeded for that, you just need to request the legal change in your papers from male to female or viceversa. Some dude even got to change his ID to mark X where his sex is supposed to be since he identifies as nonbinary (he's a bio male though).

Like i'm glad to be able to freely express my opinion with others since being critical of trans ideology is quite popular actually, but there are so many laws being changed since people still are very "to each their own". They just care if their own kids get sucked into the ideology but couldn't care less if others do, then they're like "as long as its not hurting anybody". So people tend to act apathetic about the way this agenda is slowly making its way into society since it isn't directly affecting them... Until it does. Then it's just too late.

France is still very TERFy lol

When abortion access got passed in the Constitution, french tra seethed about the fact that the bill didn't even include trans men or "people with uterus" (whatever this is) lol. When female members of the parliament celebrated the bill, they dressed in the "radfem colors" (violet white and green) 👀

I think trans ideology will have an extremely hard time invading romance countries because we have an extremely gendered culture. Even our languages are extremely gendered and gender neutral (singular) pronouns are nonexistent (the only attempt I've seen are those mixing the female and male singular pronouns in a single one, but it still puts genderless people in the female/male pronouns box). We don't have the equivalent of "it" or "they" in french. Everything has a gender, even objects or concepts.

Romance countries also have a very deep love for romance (duh), sex/sensuality and the human body. This comes from the Greek civilization they're the offsprings of ofc, but Catholicism plays a big part too. Catholics love some naked people. They couldn't help pulling out countless paintings of Jesus on the cross almost naked SMH lol. The chapel Sixtine is full of naked bodies too....

That's why in the psyche of those countries, trans bodies are unholy atrocities destroying God's work. Trans people won't be accepted like that out there.... And when they do, they have to be impeccably passing. I always found troubling how french people dissed the first lady (who's trans) on her looks, almost more than the fact he sexed the current president when he was still a 14 y.o boy.... Sometimes tells me if s/he was more passing people wouldn't be that mad, and I lowkey hate it....

Sometimes I feel privileged for being able to have critical thoughts about the trans ideology publicly because I know that women lost their jobs for that. One time I was talking to my colleague about a transathletes and we both agreed how men had some damn nerves and no shame for invading female sports like that. Like- it wasn't even a debate for any of us that those trans women were men and we both seethed against male audacity during the whole discussion lol Most women in France are crypto terf yall lol

But the pushing for trans ideology is definitely getting stronger. It's now possible to change your legal sex (but you have to be an adult I think). Not sure about whether minor can access hormones though.

[starkidsbackbababababa]

What if Hatchetfield is actually the town people go to when they don’t want to be related to their past life any more after transitioning, so it’s just an entire town of safe space for everybody there, and everyone knows it but nobody says it. Clivesdale is normal, and one time somebody bullied Alice for not being a real girl, so now everybody hates Clivesdale and they can’t for the life of them explain why, like, they have cherry trees and shit, why do the trans folks hate them so much? All the while some bigot kid named Jared sits there in shame silently knowing it’s his fault…

Did I just go on a lore rant??? Anyways, yes. I approve of this. Think about the implications.

"oh pete is trans" "no richie is trans" "ethan is trans"

you fools. you absolute buffoons. EVERYONE in hatchetfield is trans. steph? trans. macnamara? trans. miss holloway? trans.

what do you think the t in hatchetfield stands for?