#i feel like I kind of ignored binary trans people in this discussion

[jellyfemmedyke]

I think people underestimate the effect of being fat on gender. Like tips and tools for passing for any gender often just don't consider fat people. Gendered norms don't consider fat people. Fat people are so often degendered and viewed as worth less because of it. This also affects trans people's ability to enact their gender or pass. I often see skinny trans people talking about their experiences and stuff and it's like a whole other world of experiencing gender and I don't think this is talked enough about as a significant intersection of identity (because of fatphobia and the rhetoric of weight being a choice). Like there will be the occasional mention of don't listen to passing tips that say to slim down or whatever but rarely a full nuanced discussion of how gender as a whole works differently for fat bodies

Thank you for putting into words the exact feelings I've had for a long time.The way my fat body shapes my gender is something that I can't ignore. I remember growing up in the early and mid 2000s where the titular "girl" were people like Hilary Duff and Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez, thin and cute and and completely unachievable for me.

I remember having meltdowns at the store when I saw those little pink rhinestone shirts where the curves were preset. I remember going to hot topic and seeing the clothing that wouldn't even fit one whole boob if I tried to put them on.

It was devastating. Learning I was non binary eased this a lot, making me realize I didn't have to try so hard to pass as a cis girl anymore but Even still, trying to live as a man wasn't any easier, men have the same devastating weight standards.

With the talk of Gym bros having eating disorders and everything. They have same kind of toxic gender expectation, except now It's that you have to be big and strong. You can almost get away with it if you're "Strong" fat, but having visible breasts or a hanging tummy or soft face will degender you just the same. Fat people are not allowed to have a gender until we "lose an acceptable about of weight."

We're almost On standby mode, saying things like "when I lose weight I'll finally be happy, when I can fit into those clothes I'll finally be loved and accepted. When i lose weight I'll finally be the real me"

which is reinforced by media and those around you. We have to over perform gender to be even a little bit included, and then that might not even work if you're in a larger fat body. And god if this isn't 12000% reinforced when It comes to transgender expectations.

I mean you see it when people post about how sad and fat they were pretransition, and then become beautiful thin butterflies post transition. You can see it in how tgirl tummy tuesday is only ever thin or slightly fat girls. You can see it in the expectation of trans men to be either big and strong or thin waifish twinks, the only representation we get is conventionally attractive trans people Trans people get all the cruel gender expectations that cis people get, but doubled or tripled, and the fat people are left in the dust until we can lose enough weight to be included. I'm probably going to talk about this more because I have so much to say about it.

[pocket-deer-boy]

at a certain point, someone's bigotry towards trans people becomes some kind of science denialism where they have to pretend trans people aren't real for their idea of the world to work. like, have a gander at this infographic

Beyond having no idea who the target audience of this infographic is (this reads as a bit too toony and colorful for the more serious sex ed tone of high school biology classes but is far too textually dense and visually noisy and cluttered for younger kids, so really it just feels like it's made or adults to pass around and nod along to work that tells them exactly what they already believe) It's also full of blatant medical misinformation, and states facts in a way that feels completely angry and bitter towards anyone who believes anything else. Like, no, transphobic lion gender infographic. Men CAN lectate even without any hormonal treatments or being trans. I've seen it personally.

It's also interesting to me how it explains sexuality (among other things) as being these incredibly rigid and inflexible categories. Like oh really, asexuals can't have sex? We can't go into nuances of sexual desire, sexual attraction, sexual pleasure and social expectations to perform sex. Like if you're ace and you did sex and weren't enthusiastic about it and never tried it again i guess you're not ace. The harry potter houses model of sexuality: you are one thing, you fit into this one thing, it prescribes how you're supposed to act instead of using it to describe how you actually exist.

This rigidity also becomes obvious when it talks about intersex people as being these exceptions to the rule that don't have to be counted for how gender and sexuality works. And of course, we have to force intersex people into these binary categories instead of, you know, letting them decide for themselves? And of course it ignores any kind of intersex person with any kind of features that can't be written off as an anomaly and an aberration from the norm. Here we start doing science denialism. Here we start pretending certain people's body features aren't worth discussing for the sake of public knowledge. They're only worth bringing up as anomalies, and not as like, people.

I can't fucking get over how jarring the whole image is actually. Like, the really cheerful cartoon furry lions next to this piece of text prescribing the rigidity of existence. Yeah baby, I love being a strong cool lion boy, I love being told everything I'm not allowed to do or be for the sanctity of my gender!

yeah roar!!!

Here's a little section i wanna do more of a deep dive on

Women have two eggs?? what??? the egg-shapd things in the uterus are not the eggs!!!!! what the fuck are you talking about

This particular part stands out to me. Like, obviously the purpose of this infographic is not to tell you how bodies work, but to insist that there's a correct and an incorrect way for bodies to work, and that people outside of what it describes do not exist. It's obvious because it won't even show you what a uterus, what a vagina, or what boobs usually look like, like any decent diagram whose purpose is science education would. It's obvious because it straight up lies to you about how periods work, and tells you that having a period is somehow intrinsically tied to being a woman.

Like, no. Obviously. Trans can men experience menstruation at any point in transition, and trans women can experience other common parts of periods if they've been on hrt for long enough. Periods are not some kind of woman exclusive thing, it's not purely reliant on having a uterus or having certain hormones. It's not gender dependent. It depends on multiple features of one's body. It's a very basic fact of transition, hormones change how your biology works no matter what features you have. To imply none of this is true is denying very very basic facts about how a lot of people's bodies work, simply based on some insistence that those people aren't real and if we simply look away we can all pretend trans women aren't real. It's digging your head in the sand, it's having lived looking at the shadows on the wall your whole life, being told something new, and going right back into your cave and angrily shouting at everyone that the shadows are real, the shadows are ALL that is real, and though I may have glimpsed things that lie outside of it, those things aren't real because I personally can safely ignore facts about how the world works and go about my day.

[confessionsofareindeer]

Not to like totally rant but like let's get this out of the way, Season 3 Heartstopper Spoilers:

They kind of ruined the show a little for me with this sad ace rep., the carnival scene takes out the depth of Tori and Micheal's relationship, it makes it look like they're just dating, it cuts out their queerness and just makes them look like a messy straight couple. They barely had any screen time, which is fair, they're just Charlie's sister and the guy that's always around her, (no one even seems to know Micheal despite them having had class with him in the comics, but whatever, Solitaire erasure it is) I wasn't expecting to see all of Solitaire played out on my laptop for me, but I wanted some sort of complexity around aceness and maybe a reference to its existence. But instead, you're telling me a group of queer teenagers needed a fish analogy to understand aromanticsm? Really? In school I only had to tell the cis boys and the girls who stared at me funny what it meant, not my friend group that is majority LGBTQ. I thought this was supposed to be a dreamscape to actually show me and my friends, not-a-water-everything-down-for-the-straights-and-alloscape, that comes with every other story, this was made by a queer person who is aro/ace so why did we end up like this, why did I bother having hope?

I really respect how the storyline made room for Darcy and Elle had trans and non binary identities and that they were expanded upon in the show, I love it really and I think that it felt like things my friends would actually talk about. We have a slight reference to Darcy having an unlabeled gender but even this feels wrapped up as they come out as non binary, I wish it was just all less clean cut, less perfectly fit so that everything works out, do their's and Tara's sexualities shift to reflect changing Lesbian identity in a more inclusive world? Do they decide to be unlabled or does the idiotic queer discourse not exist for them? Can we have people who don't particularly lean one way or the other, or who reject this modern idea that we should fit into the straight designed trap of conformity for the heads to comprehend something outside their simple world of the nuclear family? I want sexualities nuances to be explained like gender's was. Micheal talks about it, so why is there not a large discussion or plot around it? Why does it end up a somewhat hollow scene?

Maybe my friends and I are weird and philosophical, but we'd spend lunch arguing about this sort of stuff, so I really wish they'd show it, I have the backing of the kids who loved Perks of Being a Wallflower and Catcher and the Rye (don't ask me about that one I haven't actually read it, on principle) that found Solitaire, and all the depressed outsider protaganists a little too relatable for our own good, that maybe Tori and Micheal shouldn't have even kissed in the book because people are only ever going to misinterpret it. So now looking at the show, I guess of course this happened. Tori and Micheals story meant something to me and so yeah, I'm going to be a melodramatic whiner on Tumblr about it.

Listen, I get the show is cringey at times, that it's for teens and their friends and hopefully their families too, it shouldn't be a savior or the end all be all of queer rep, it's silly, they go out and drink milkshakes and sleep in tents outside for birthdays and ignore for the most part the politicization of being a queer teen except for when it's needed for the plot and I so deeply respect that, it shows kids being kids and I thank the queer gods that it isn't the sanitized storytelling of Love, Simon that people have made it out to be. But tell me why we couldn't get this one thing, why the ace and aro teens couldn't get something that talks about allonormativity a topic that needs to be so deeply explained instead of this, and trust me, I love that Issac told Charlie he could go look it up, but he shouldn't have even had to do that, don't make our main character dumb when he's not, he said knew asexual, clearly being aro is the romantic equivalent. All of Issac's character is cool, but it feels almost overdone at this point, with Jame's and the subtle aphobia of his friends who really don't get how he feels, I don't know, maybe it's because I've lived it and most of the ace media I see feels in this same vein, I just expected better from a new character who didn't have an already written plot, they could have done anything with him, and now he's just the token ace.

I don't want people who think their's something wrong with them for being aspec, I like in these shows when people experiment with labels and attraction, but I also just want someone is confidently ace, or that finds out what it means to be aro and finally feels validated for not being interested in people, I want someone to push the boundries of what being aromantic means the way people actually are the ones who don't fit into the little societal boxes, which is what the show is all about, not to even start be wishful and ask for a character that's just aromantic, or just ace, or like Tori is supposed to be ace and and complexly arospec, but still has something going on with Micheal, in a queer way where the people in the relationship fine it, not societal standards. I kind of wanted the show to question more of what a romantic relationship even looks like, because, honestly, I'm sure I even know.

All the Tumblr aspecs are aware of the trenches of the stupidity of the infighting and microlabels that come with understanding and interacting in digital queer space, but I wish we could see some of that, the overwhelming forcefield that's kind of alienating but also tells you you can be anything, I want to see the screenshots of 20 different pride flags with their definitions and names from the MOGAI years on Pinterest or the images section online. We have the Am I Gay Quiz jokes, but show me someone who is too indecisive to fill them out, who get X on the kinsey scale. I want more, I want friendships like Tori and Micheal that lean into something that, yeah looks like dating to straight people, but manages to defy their heteronormative labels, like what's vaguely discussed by Micheal at the table but manages to be outweighed by it being what looks to be blatantly cut out as Charlie and Tori talking on the ferris wheel because Tori doesn't even say 'we're not a straight couple' but just 'we're not a couple', and that's so infuriating.

And you know what, maybe it's cinematic and creative and it'll all work out in the next season, maybe it'll all be thought out and there just wasn't enough time for it in the episode, maybe the glimmer in Issac's eye when Charlie says he doesn't know if they're dating is foreshadowing, but it could just be my naive aspec heart seeing what I want. To me it looks like they decided this was something the audience wouldn't get so they chose to leave it out, I want to believe so they wouldn't ruin it, but probably just to avoid the ultra complex queerness that comes with a disregard for labeling and an abolishionist mentality. Which comes to the point of me begging creators to trust that their audience isn't stupid and that if they are ignorant on this, they can spend 20 seconds looking it up like they had Charlie do (in an unbelievable scenario). They have such a big audience at this point, so can't we use it to teach people this time, things that aren't as easily accessible in information, the stuff that ends up in academic queer theory and pot smokers, the things that confuse people and use the medium to explain it.

I also feel like I can see a future of this show that I won't like that might follow this season, if my understanding is correct. I think we'll end up having some sort of QPR (queer platonic relationship, if you don't understand what this is, this next part may confuse you, basically the committed thing a lot of aspec and poly people find to be a good alternative to typical or traditional romantic relationships that have their own rules defined by the people in them). Originally, I hoped we'd see one with Tori and Micheal because to me that's what they're reminiscent of, I have a feeling we might see this with James and Issac instead, they'll develop a deeper relationship in place of romance, since James was looking for someone to be closer with and already really likes Issac, and Issac needs someone to have more devotion to him, instead of leaving a single person in something that is not parallel to a romance, which would be annoying. Because they're also clearly setting up for Sahar and Imogen to be something, if we were all paying attention, I see through the remaining friends bit. I get it, and yet, god forbid someone be on their own and happy, as we see Issac have a common aspec breakdown of seeing the trauma of heteronormative society fall onto him and have his reality slightly collapse, I want this to work out, and be good, but I'm so scared that they'll fall into a trap of trying to please the straights and the allos like they already are. Yet again we see all the characters in a show the victim of being coupled off at least symbolically, if I'm right.

All this for what, it's television after all, we have real lives, some better than others, but we waste them sitting at computers and TVs to escape just to be drawn back in, because even the fantasy is disappointing, I encourage everyone who just read my rant to think hard about all of this, give me your opinion, but remember this is severely online of a take and that maybe you should go do something not related to Tumblr that makes you happy, read a book or do a craft or something, eat a vegetable and drink water.

Edit: I take back what I said about everyone being in a relationship like every other show, because I really do love the way friendship is one of the focal points of the show and I don't want to ignore that, I'm just worried that they're going to ignore the original plots of some of the characters and there are already so few aro or ace characters in media

I saw the thing about Alice Oseman saying she was saving Tori's ace arc for next season, a little while after I wrote this, I sort of think that makes sense, even if it's still disappointing and if you hadn't seen that you'd be thinking the same thing as me, remember this was an incredibly reactionary rant that I wrote an hour after watching the show, anyway, I think a lot of my points still stand, I think there's a lot they could still do, and a lot they haven't, I'm annoyed, but it's not the end of the world

[raybeanschildrenslit]

If You’re a Kid Like Gavin: The True Story of a Young Trans Activist - Nonfiction

If You’re a Kid Like Gavin: The True Story of a Young Trans Activist by Gavin Grimm, Kyle Lukoff, J Yang (Illustrator) - (Nonfiction) Published 2022 by Katherine Tegen Books

This is one of those books that once I had finished reading and set it to the side, I felt like crying. This is one of those books that I wish I had when I was younger to help me feel seen for who I was and am, and to have it be valid and normal and wonderful.

Gavin Grimm is a trans activist who started his journey in activism in high school in 2015, the same year I graduated high school. He released this children’s non-fiction book about seven years later, sharing his experiences and normalizing trans identities for young- and hopefully all age- readers. While Gavin doesn’t share everything with us about his journey in his trans identity, he doesn’t have to, instead he reaches out to the reader in ways that make this aspect of life feel more natural and normal. For many, this can be a heartwarming moment. A place where we are recognized and acknowledged through someone like us generously sharing a fraction of their story. He walks us through coming into his identity, the issues that arose as he more so entered the world, and the actions he took to rally for rights and change. His story is far from over. In the snippet of it he is sharing, he says in his author’s note, “I hope people come away recognizing that we all have important choices to make in our lives- being kind, leading with love, standing up for yourself and others- whereas living our lives as the people we are is not a choice; it's a right. I hope that this story shows kids their own power and what they can do” (Grimm, 2022).

As someone who identifies with transness- identifying as Non-Binary Trans-Masc Queer- it is important that all versions of transness are expressed as they can be and remind others regardless of where they are in their journey that they are real, valid, true. Like I said, I could have used this when I was younger. I applaud Gavin for finding himself so strongly and standing up for what he knows is right. I am his age and still don’t really know who I am but if I had an ounce of his clarity when I was younger I could have saved some heartache, toxicity, and a few tears. I won't go into it but everyone, regardless of queerness or transness, is important and valuable and amazing and stunning. As someone who is queer and wants to push for social justice, diversity, recognition, safety, human rights… I want to be the librarian that shuts down bigotry and ignorance while creating a safe and free environment for the patrons- especially the YA individuals I want to work with, feel seen and heard and safe. I understand that I am repeating myself but I am passionate about this and that’s what happens with me. I think there are a lot of creative ways we can express ourselves in a smaller environment scale; making name tags with preferred/ correct names and pronouns, making zines of our identities, and experiences, hosting a queer club safe space for media discussion and community work. On a slightly larger scale, I can see myself reaching out and collecting resources for people to use and provide opportunities for parades, peaceful protests, celebrations, safe spaces and community gatherings beyond the library, and more.

-Ray 02/11/2024

Grimm, G., Lukoff, K., & Yang, J. (2022). If you’re A Kid Like Gavin. Katherine Tegen Books, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers.

[trans-androgyne]

This is the anon you asked to hear what tme meant to me. I also dislike the idea that trans women and femmes are the only people with a meaningful relationship to transmisogyny but I also don't think it is unfair to say that there are people who don't experience it and have nothing to say on the subject. I've never experienced transmisogyny, and I don't have a lot to add to the conversation. I don't mind clarifying my relationship to it. "Exempt" is a strong word if taken literally, but to me, it is just the sentiment that it doesn't personally affect me in any noticeable or harmful way, which is fair and accurate. If people are venting about real experiences with tmes being prejudiced and ignorant, then I can't take offence because it is true that people who experience less transmisogyny are more likely to not understand it or contribute to the problem.

At the same time, I do understand why other trans and intersex people do feel like they have shared experiences with trans women and femmes or have things to add to the discussion. I don't think it is fair to shut people down on identity alone. For instance, I once saw someone use a fictional example of an intersex woman being harassed by a store owner because he had mistaken her for a trans woman. Their conclusion was that the incident was intersexist because the woman was intersex, not trans. I take issue with this because it interrogates the victim's identity rather than questioning the motives and biases on the aggressor. To understand what happened, you would need to understand both intersexism and transmisogyny as well as how both forms of oppression have roots in oppositional sexism.

As for whether this fictional person or real intersex people would be tma is, in my opinion, up for them to decide, probably based on a lot of factors I don't know such as how frequently things like this happen or if there are other overlapping experiences. So long as the conversation is happening in good faith, people should be able to determine their own relationship to transmisogyny.

Still, trans women and femmes should be leading the conversation; they should be able to push back on people misrepresentating the nature of transmisogyny in good faith without being ignored or accused of being aggressive.

Again, i won't deny that there are problems with the way some people use these words (I think you are right about there needing to be less of a binary) but a lot of trans women and femmes find these terms helpful for now. The language might need to evolve, but I don't think it is completely broken.

A lot of problems with the tme/tma binary would be solved by letting people opt into whichever they felt fit their life better instead of the current situation of assuming others’ relationship to transmisogyny based on their identities. I worry that the tma label would still be a gatekept club considering how people treat it currently, but it’s possible that could change.

For the purposes of this conversation I am tme. My problem isn’t complaining about specific real “tmes” being transmisogynistic, but complaining about them as a group often in situations not even related to transmisogyny. Tme people are seen to oppress tma people and therefore any attack on them is seen as justified. People have told us to kill ourselves and “die faster” and said we’re the worst kind of trans people and more—from examples I’ve seen go unchallenged. This is a broader problem with people thinking they can “punch up” at their oppressors in any cruel way they want no matter what, like KAM. If the tme label continues to be used, it cannot be used as a synonym for “malicious transmisogynist” without contributing to the divide among the community.

I don’t want to strip language from transfems. I am uncomfortable with the way these terms are currently being used. I hope their use is able to evolve and ideally drop aspects that aren’t useful while broadening everyone’s understandings of transmisogyny as a system.

[fischerfrey]

a psa regarding the upcoming release of hogwarts legacy:

disclaimer: the following is not targeted towards anyone in particular

this has been said a billion times and i’m getting kind of tired of saying this: no, buying and playing the game does not immediately make you a bad person or a transphobe.

however, if you do buy the game, you’re not being an ally to trans people. being an ally requires giving up things you don’t want to give up. it’s recognizing that your entertainment is not more important than the dignity and rights of trans people and the dignity and rights of jewish people, since the story seems to lean heavily on antisemitic tropes.

i really don’t want to hear your justification for why you buy or play the game, that’s your business. but if people don’t feel comfortable engaging with your content anymore, or have an opinion to share that makes you uncomfortable, then i want you all to know, from the bottom of my heart, it’s not trans or jewish people tearing this community apart.

i say this all as a non-binary person who is obviously still creating content for hphl era (and the hp universe at large, but that’s a whole other conversation). i got into hphl not really knowing any of the game’s context. i should’ve looked into the background more, but i saw people creating ocs for late 1800s and i ate that shit up.

i chose to be a part of this fandom. i chose not to drop harry potter once i realised what kind of person jkr is. that was my choice and everyone is entitled to make their own. but choosing to support this particular game, even after everything that has come out about it, is going to affect this small corner of the hp fandom that we have all created together. there’s nothing to be done about that.

however you feel about this issue, i don’t condone hate or harassment. there are discussions to be had here but i really, really hope we can have them in a respectful manner.

i love my hphl era ocs, and i’m not going anywhere. i might start using a different tag for my legacy-adjacent content though, since my story lines really have nothing to do with the game anyway.

i wanted to play this game so badly. i wanted it to be good. but i’m not buying it, even if the story line ends up not being as antisemitic as the trailers made it out to be (doubtful, but hey, it could happen). i strongly encourage engaging in some good, old-fashioned piracy if you want to try it out.

please watch this video, or at least the part about legacy itself (starts at around 2 hours and 13 minutes), if you have the time:

“i know many people say and feel like ‘well capitalism makes us all complicit in one way or another. why bother fighting this fight? why not buy this game if it makes me happy? rowling’s gonna rowling anyway, regardless of what i do.’ and it creates a cognitive dissonance in people. they realise jk rowling is causing harm but they don’t wish to feel like a bad person if they want to play the game. they want to be made to feel okay.”

“but what discourse like this does is try to comfort those who want to buy the game, to make them feel like they’re still good people if they support a system that causes harm, because they can’t fight it anyways. yet it ignores that you do actually have power. it tries to make you forget that you don’t have an obligation to buy the game. you don’t have to give it your attention.”

to reiterate: i don’t think everyone who buys and/or plays this game is a terrible person, but i do disagree with those saying that buying the game is a non-issue.

finally, there are so many good games out there that don’t support a terf or subscribe to antisemitic tropes!!! i know you all fellow gamers have loads of unplayed games on your devices or libraries just waiting for you to play them. maybe try those out instead. 

[director-yomi-hellsmile]

Cube joke (pinned post)

If you know me from @/growling or @/seth-burroughs then you get a krówka. Personal blog of Yomi Hellsmile, so just call me by that name. Serious metaphysical fictionkind & fictive, I'm actually fine with treated as literal Blorbo From Your Games it makes me feel sane and slightly better than just having it ignored. Please poke me around and bombard me with questions as much as you like I thrive off of attention and require constant enrichment in my containment chamber. Just no being weirdly invasive/rude with questions like ''what is the exact mechanism of how you tried to kill your girlfriend that one time'' or otherwise not saying shit to me I know you wouldn't say to literally anyone else please I'm trying to be so nice every day

Fine with source talk / Rain Code discussion (if you're cool with me getting a bit weird about it), fine with all sourcemates if you are respectful/nice in turn, I don't have anything against doubles and I'm waving at you same hat style but I'll probably just nonjudgmentally block you for my own comfort, sorryyyy I gotta take care of my shitty heart rate.

I'm very often not good at articulating myself and a lot of things I end up writing end up kind of incomprehensible or weird, I can't really do anything about it so don't point this out unless you absolutely need to have something clarified. Sometimes I get confused and either not really get what you're saying or can't reply to you for quite some time whether because of that or my perpetual low energy, if you @'d me or sent me an ask and I don't respond within a week then I'm not purposefully ignoring you; either need to take longer time with writing, or I don't really have an answer. Don't blow up at me for asking you to clarify something in simpler terms. My tone might be off either due to those, my brain just working differently, or english not being my first language.

Other info + disclaimers/warnings:

Trans man + non-binary bigender, masculine or neutral terms only - and no, "girl" is not gender neutral and I do not care if you use it that way. If you'd like to perceive me perhaps refer to me even: he/him, it/its or xe/xem/xir, and only those; do not call me by they. Also don't call me a "boy" I am a grown ass man.

Loveless aroace (and a fagdyke if you unlock my easter egg), aplatonic, afamilial, posting about those pretty often. Or I think. I'm trying.

Semiverbal LSN-MSN Autistic and refuses to shut up about it + Narcissistic PD (so please bring criticism up nicely) and will keep talking about it and my beautiful big dark narc rage eyes. Follow me in order to fulfill your mutual list diversity quota /joking that was a /joke

Do not insult me as a "joke", or approach me with any sort of overly familiar playful rudeness. I kind of hate how normalized just being ~ironically~ straight up mean to people is on here. No I probably won't read your sarcasm unless I've already memorized all your speech patterns or something

Mainly into: Rain Code (lol. lmao, even), Warriors, Akuma Kun, Mouthwashing, Henry Stickmin, birds, cat genetics and scraping pretty rocks off of sidewalks

Plural, we are not interested in assigning roles to each other or specifying our "origin" or how it all happened as it's not currently relevant to us nor is it any of your business like why do you care. Anyway this blog is safe for endos or like, any other type of plural.

Occasional nsfw posts under the #nsft tag, which will contain a bunch of hard kinks like torture rape violence etcetera, so, block that if you don't want to see those. That's also the only tag I consistently use on this blog.

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

I know that the word "biology" has gotten a bad rep in trans spaces for being used as a shitty excuse for bad thinking and bad policy... But like... 'Biology' is not a bad or dirty word.

Just like real world biology is a scientific study that would actually back up sex and gender as not being binary or fixed... People in fandom spaces just using the word biology in reference to how nature functions unadulterated by conscious choices, aren't inherently coming up with bad -or exclusionary- explanations or ideas because they want to explore how something naturally evolved or could evolve in the absence of interference, theoretically, even in universes where there are forces at work other than 'natural' evolution.

Sometimes discussing biology in fandom spaces is fun and kind of adjacent to the whole point of what you are doing, aka "Vulcan biology, the biology of Vulcans..." And hand waving things away as not needing to be explained or specified is kind of missing the point no matter how easy it is to do...

Maybe sometimes when you are writing smut, as a random non-specific example, you want a solid theory on what kinds of pleasure a character is capable of experiencing that is laid out in a way that doesn't ignore or alienate cannon.

So maybe picking apart how a character race ended up the way they are is weird and needless nitpicking to -you- that should be hand waved away or isn't worth bringing up and exploring, but to someone who is -for example- going to use it for plot reasons or is going to be horny about it, the nuance of how things got to be how they are is kind of important.

To put it very bluntly, for anyone still missing the point, the reason why a person might want a very specific explanation of these things is that maybe it's hard to write about having a character -as a lover or otherwise- when how they function or experience pleasure on a fundamental level isn't written in the original text in a way that makes sense. Even if you are going to come up with your own answers, you might still really enjoy working it into something that doesn't argue with the accepted cannon, because that's how you get your kicks, or because that raises the likelihood that other fans can also enjoy a story without being irked by it being "incorrect" constantly.

Maybe -you- don't feel the need to explore it because you aren't horny on main about it.

[multigenderswag]

nah this is probably all in my head but is genderfluid seen as like, being outside the bounds of...like...all categories of being trans/nonbinary/multigender? Like, they aren't seen as trans because "they're cis sometimes", not nonbinary because "they're binary sometimes", not multigender because "one gender at a time" (which is wrong, at least for me, I'm not one at a time).

I mean multigender people are the most normal for sure, I've barely seen anyone think fluids don't count lol. But I have seen a handful of static multigender people asking if we count. Not being exclusionist but still sort of like, being confused about us ig?

I don't mean to downplay how static multigender people feel if that's how this is coming off btw- for example, I've seen like people basically erase the option of a character being pangender/bigender/trigender, what have you for them being genderfluid. Even when they fit one of the former much much more, because I guess someone switching genders is more acceptable to people than being multiple at once which sucks and is stupid. So, I'm not trying to be like "wahh why does nobody acknowledge us"

But, ig what I'm saying is, I don't feel like genderfluid people are accepted as anywhere under the trans umbrella exactly, like we're just kind of a gimmick to people that accept us over multigenders and it's annoying. I'm probably not wording it correctly but like, it's only acknowledged when convenient enough to ignore static multigenders, but otherwise genderfluid isn't real and not worth the attention in a legitimate discussion. idk this rant was kind of all over the place I am quite sorry about that lol.

I think that's partly because the genderfluid experience is so diverse- some consider themselves trans and some don't, some consider themselves nonbinary and some don't, some consider themselves multigender and some don't- that it's impossible to put all of genderfluidity under one gender label. But it's definitely not okay and probably very frustrating to be told that you don't "count" as the label you feel connected to.

In my experience, part of me might sometimes feel uncomfortable including genderfluid folks as multigender because of how many times my bigender identity has been invalidated by people telling me I'm fluid. But I can take a deep breath and recognize that genderfluid people are absolutely multigender, if they consider themselves that way, and the multigender community is better with them here! Any part of me that feels differently is just lashing out due to my own bad experiences, but that's not the fault of genderfluid people and my pain doesn't give me the right to be an exclusionist.

Anon, I hope you and any other genderlfluid folks reading this find acceptance in a community they want to be a part of.

[carrionsong]

Transmisogyny is very real, very targeted, and very awful, but I think where ppl are coming from in criticism of the TMA/TME labels, is that it may seem like inventing and reinforcing a different kind of binary in a way when the human experience is very complex. And re: the outing part, I think people sometimes forget even amongst our peers in the queer community, no one is actually entitled to information about someone else's transition, or assigned sex at birth

i dont personally see it as a cut and dry binary when i mentioned that the terms arent perfect bc obviously they dont always include intersex trans peoples experiences And racialized views towards womanhood/what is seen masculine or "man like". its not meant to really be one when these experiences can overlap so often, plus it lumps in cis men / trans men / cis women / afab nonbinary people in one so thats a Hell of a "binary". our experiences Are complex and we dont all live in the us/western world, so we can all have different experiences and still have it be a trans and queer experience that trans and intersex people share! and thats a really good point too! intersex women Do have shared experiences with transfems as people who are degendered and seen as lesser bc of cagab. but we can share experiences and still be transphobic or transmisogynistic to other people. the problem lies with how pervasive and universal transmisogyny is, and how it affects transfems everywhere regardless of where they live. its inescapable!

and i feel like saying that it outs us queer people when the question the terms are asking is, do you experience transmisogyny... is a bit disingenuous. when we are discussing transmisogyny, our cagab and axes of oppression does very much matter. its not a top-down, "im more oppressed than You" kind of thing, but we perpetuate it! even if we share experiences, that doesnt mean we cant still put each other down and be transmisogynistic towards transfems, thats the whole point!

simply put, its language to describe often unique lived experiences that a transfem person has in a patriarchal society where they are subjugated, punished, and killed for being "failed men", and degendered and denied trans womanhood as a result. how transfems are expected to be meek doormats and shoulder our collective societal abuse lest we see them as inherent abusers and rapists bc of their cagab, and how every single thing a transfem does is under scrutiny bc of them being """male-adjacent""" (made a face typing that shit out but its how its seen.) and having to shrink themselves down to a shell of themselves for the Chance to be treated as a person.

its obviously not a cure all term to neatly describe every single experience we as queer people have in a nice little box, but its a Start! we cannot ignore how insanely transmisogynistic society and our online spaces are, so having language to talk about it is important as we expand our understanding of it and critique it along the way! bloomfilters on twitter describes this much better than i can with this thread, i follow her and their transfeminine oppression analyses are super well written and easy to understand and shes super smart and cool :]

[sanfielle]

how are trans masc people inherently privileged? not all of us are cis passing binary trans men who have Male Privilege ™ and actively most of us face a lot of violence and hatred as well. why cant we be a united trans front instead of playing privilege war?

disclaimer: i am tme so my opinion and interpretation is colored by this, if any transfems want to comment please feel welcome to do so. this is probably the only anon i'll answer in my inbox because i feel it might be the only one in some good faith, and even if it's not, it at least asks concise questions i can answer lol.

acknowledging how transmasc - and all tme trans people, yes, this can even include amab nonbinary people if they don't identify with the transfeminine label - have privilege over transfems isn't antithetical to having a United Trans Front at all. our goals can still be united while we also acknowledge and tackle transmisogyny in our midst - if anything, we CANNOT have a united trans front if we ignore transmisogyny and don't allow discussion of it!

an overwhelming amount of SOCIETAL transphobia is directed towards transfems too. while it's undeniable all trans people experience transphobia on some levels (i'm fucking trans), if you look at the way society as a whole is thinking of us, you'll see the true target is majority transfem people, and we're either an afterthought or we've somehow been groomed by those evil transfem people into this ideology or whatever.

all the bathroom bills in the US, all the drag storytime stuff (which also affects gnc men ofc, but the concern is 'people with penises being feminine is inherently grooming kids', which also lumps in transfems with them), an entire hate movement founded around hating "men who think they're women" is DIRECTED at transmisogyny affected people - the boogeywoman is a gal with a cock.

the woman who coined the term "transmisogyny" (julia serano) says in her book whipping girl:

"when the majority of jokes made at the expense of trans people center on 'men wearing dresses' or 'men who want their penises cut off' that is not transphobia – it is transmisogyny. When the majority of violence and sexual assaults committed against trans people is directed at trans women, that is not transphobia – it is transmisogyny."

sure, that pity that us afab trans people get from these same bigots is infuriating - we aren't confused, we aren't stupid, we haven't been groomed into this, we aren't mutilating ourselves, we aren't mentally ill, etc, etc - but it's undeniable that being treated like a tragic, confused Wombyn or a poor baby girl who just wants to escape misogyny is not nearly as severe as being treated like a rapist just for having a dick and wearing a skirt regardless of how old you are.

especially when that is on a societal level - it's inescapable, it's been baked into our society since day 1. you may not be aware of it, i can't even be aware of it, but just because we can't see our own transmisogyny cooked into our brains doesn't mean it doesn't exist. we as tme people are the least equipped to identify it -- this is why we need tma people to have their own language about it, so that they can point it out to us. if you can understand a similar but unrelated concept of the difference between the intricate details of racism V colorism, this is the idea of it.

you don't even need male privilege to be privileged over transfems. i'm a tme nonbinary intersex butch lesbian! i'm a woman (heavy quotes)! i don't have any kind of male privilege at all and i literally never will! but i still have privilege over every transfem, no matter how cis-passing and conforming they are, because every 'man in a dress' joke will never be about me. there's never going to be a world where that's about me, or you, or anyone else who doesn't experience transmisogyny - hence, we're transmisogyny exempt.

so yeah, even being trans doesn't mean you can escape being transmisogynist (no matter what way that trans is short of being tma yourself, no matter how cis passing or binary you are, no matter your gender identity), and holding this privilege over transfems - just like being any other minority or experiencing hate and violence doesn't just let you off the hook for being bigoted towards others. letting transfems make language to talk about and point out transmisogyny in our spaces is vital to allowing us to understand each other and uplift all of us equally.

otherwise we're just building a space that transfems would never be safe in - destroying that goal for your United Trans Front.👍

[feathered-serpents]

What even is bisexual lesbian and why did twitter got worked up about it??

Bisexual lesbian is, from my understanding, kind of a label that is different for everyone. For some people it means lesbian who also dates non-binary people, for some it means someone who prefers women so strongly they identify greatly with the word lesbian but have had very few instances of being attracted towards other genders. For some they identify with one label in one way and the other in another way (for example: Lesbian as a gender/experience label, bisexual as a sexuality. Vice versa. It's whatever)

Twitter got up in arms about it because of three reasons (that I saw the most often)

It's transphobic

Lesbians can't like men/non-women

It is biphobic/lesbiphobic

Number 1 is referring to some people using bisexual-lesbian to mean they were a lesbian attracted to trans women AS WELL AS cis women. This is obviously transphobic as you're implying that trans women are somehow not "real women" and attraction to them deserves an entire label of its own. So that's shitty. But it's worth noting there is no proof this is where the label originated and I find it kind of hard to swallow an argument that boils down to "Some people who use this label SUCK so, therefore, this label SUCKS" when that's true for literally every queer identity that ever exists. Queer people are people, sometimes people suck. There is no queer label that proves "shitty person" or "good person." We've had that discussion before and it's Bad

Number 2 is kind of. Incredibly online. Very obvious that these people have not researched any of their own history and would probably tell a bisexual woman she can't use terms like "butch, fem, dyke" etc. Historically, lesbian just meant "woman attracted to other women." That's it. It didn't have to be exclusively women, it was just ANY attraction to women. This makes this argument feel weirdly ignorant and would probably make a 70-year-old queer person look at you like you were insane

And finally number 3. Which reeks of virtue signaling. Because you will never really get anyone to explain to you how it's these things. The most common sort of explanation you get is "clearly this person is uncomfortable identifying with one over the other because of internalized biphobia and lesbiphobia, so they just use both without having to pick" and I just. I don't like it. I don't like telling people what they're feeling. If someone has picked a label, I don't understand how you could feel so entitled to this stranger's psyche to decide they're doing it for the wrong reasons. You don't KNOW them. It is never your business how someone else chooses to identify

Number 3 also often hand in hand with "it harms real lesbians/real bisexuals" and by GOD does that infuriate me. "Real lesbians" is the most terfy thing I've ever seen in my life and I saw people on twitter who claimed to hate terfs use it without any self-awareness whatsoever. And "harms" them? How? HOW are they harming them? Because I promise you, some twitter girl identifying as a bisexual-lesbian is NOT ever going to do anywhere near the same amount of harm as the republican lawmakers who have made it their life's MISSION to take every strand of human rights we've been given away from us.

And if you're thinking that the existence of bisexual-lesbians was going to make some frat dude utterly convinced that he can cure lesbians with his penis feel like he suddenly has a chance. Newsflash. That is not the bisexual-lesbians fault. That dude does not see women has capable of making choices that could possibly exclude him. That is ENTIRELY his problem. You're looking at someone doing something heinous and instead of punishing him, you're looking at some completely random individual and going "See what you've done? You enabler"

Look, bisexual, lesbian, they're both beautiful words that deserve to be used by whoever wants to use them. The person using these labels probably fought for YEARS to become comfortable with them enough to associate them with themselves. I have not met a single queer person who did not fight that fight, you do not, under any circumstances, have the right to take that from them. Lesbian is a gorgeous word that means something different to everyone, bisexual is just as gorgeous and is just as personal. You do not have the right to take them away just because you don't understand its personal meaning to someone else

TLDR; Being queer is a deeply personal experience and queer labels are beautiful things. You have no right to tell anyone they can't use a label they want. Queer exclusion is always bad

[firespirited]

Here's how I use shinigami eyes (not saying you have to do it this way)

I see a post that’s got a red name and click which leads straight to posts that have been heavily through the terfosphere, usually marked 'terfs do touch' 'rf gc do interact' and some of my muted tags. I open all the non red urls who reblogged from red urls, scroll to their main, ignore any intro and read one page of their blog. If they're cruel to a trans person within 10 posts they get marked. That's the low bar to pass. Ten posts without obsessing. Read more for length and word blergh.

The point of shinigami eyes is to mark transphobes not just radfems, it's just that radfems are bigoted 95% of the time, and a bunch that say they're not radfems/terfs have a post explaining that they don't align with the feminism part (anti choicers, women libertarians...). It's also important to keep going when there are no terfy indicators as there are a bunch of right wingers who also enjoy blogging about trans people as 'cringe content'.

It feels like doing something useful by not making trans folk have to see that vileness and I feel a strange responsibility as a brit and a feminist who started with the radical texts and knows them well.

I don't care who created the extension, it's useful and I can't exactly be picky from my slave and blood mineral computer chips on billionaire monopoly software.

There are things I'd very much like to discuss without it getting co-opted by bigots or turned into pile on fodder. It happens so fast and with such ferocious accusations that you have to be in a good head space and towards the start of the day so you can disable reblogs or delete a post if it gets into the wrong hands. Right now I'm marking about a dozen or more a week, it doesn't make you feel safe writing anything when you feel you have to check all reblogs on a post because a bunch won't be marked as haters before it's too late.

Word blergh ahead :

I want to be able to talk about what it means if scotland and wales leave the UK for someone who has family in all, about our femicide epidemic, about the teachers having to learn to deprogram boys from manosphere ideology, about women in stem, prison abolition, how alienated I feel from gender performance, how I think Dylan Mulaney is the most annoying toxic positivity theatre kid turning transition into hashtag content I can't stand her she's not even mean just so confident in her ignorance, and can I rant about women enforcement of patriarchy while also running support networks within churches but always being on edge for what they will or won't refuse support about, girl bullying and teen girl pressure hurting deeper, trans folk helping me rediscover gender euphoria and also how I find rupauls drag race reductive and catty. How I'm still furious the covid vaccine wasn't tested on pregnant women and we don't have data about covid and womb damage/period disruption when given the kind of cells involved we really should be seriously looking into it. I want to talk about male violence or female labour exploitation with the understanding that we're talking about the social constructs that we're all tangled up in. I want to talk about ugliness, medical misogyny, all the adhd things my dad could get away with

and I can't without having to stick asterisks everywhere saying I don't believe in gender essentialism, i do believe in patriarchy and if this doesn't apply to you congrats on being one of the good ones there are good people and my experiences as a woman are not universal

and I hate transphobes so much for hijacking what should be basic human rights for their culture war of distraction when we have so so many problems to deal with and yet this issue is so important because it's breaking the sex binary and comphet down and they're so scared they're recycling the anti-gay talking points without even filling the serial numbers off! The disruption to ideas about patriarchy is worth the fight even if there weren't flesh and blood humans getting hurt (it's a strong motivator though ilu all my gnc and trans friends).

I get so tangled: I think sending death threats is wrong, i regularly call for the death of the pope and posted about stoning king charles yesterday. I have catholic friends. I'm problematic and enjoy problematic media. I'm conflicted when I see quotes from books that helped me understand why I was so miserable back then and why the world was so unfair so much remains true. Those books also left huge fragments that didn't fit and by all that is dear to me: working class and black womanists provided the missing pieces then trans and non binary folk added more and then the disability activists who'd read all that and had more nuances to add, my heart.

I have so much I've held inside because of people who can't even be bothered with Dworkin's evolving philosophy of gender or that maybe we might have learned a few things since the Sixties because they take individuals like me and throw them to mobs and I really don't want to retraumatize my trans friends either. Aaaaargh.

It's complicated. I'd rather have to censor 'kill' and have hate speech enforcement to be able to speak openly about feminism or gender in general without the bullies swarming. I know for many that's just talking about any politics and it's silly to complain when I'm not even trans just a 'traitor' to these women but Tumblr had been safer, it's certainly a place where I haven't been attacked as much for being socialist. The mobs on twitter were frightening in scope, the ones on tumblr accused me of things that felt horribly personal. I feel like a big coward for not wanting to deal with fallout so I haven't shared some of the amazing feminist reading and learning I've been doing the past few years.

[shig-a-shig-ah]

I'm just wondering, if gender is fake, why to invent pronouns and identities? Aren't they are fake as well?

Short answer: because it's fun!

Longer answer under the cut because I am long-winded af about sociology in general and about gender in particular. I'm going to explain this assuming literally no background knowledge whatsoever, so please know if I over-explain anything, I'm not trying to be patronizing. Just accessible to anyone, regardless of how much exposure they've had to this stuff.

First off, we need to unpack what it means to say that gender is 'fake.' This doesn't mean that gender straight up doesn't exist--it simply means that gender is, at its essence, a made-up category. (Or, in fancy social science lingo, it's a social construct.) Essentially, this means that gender is a category that we as a society have agreed is meaningful, but that isn't really rooted in any biological/physical reality.

But sex is biological! you might say. We're a sexually dimorphic species! Males and females! Penises and vaginas! Etc., etc.! (I am speaking of the proverbial 'you' here, not necessarily of you in particular, anon.) There's this common sense narrative that we're all taught from a very young age that people can be divided into males and females, which is synonymous with men and women, and that there's something natural about these divisions.

The truth, though, is more complicated, and for a couple reasons. The first is that biological/physiological sex is not actually a neat binary. There's a lot of variation, and no matter what defining characteristic you want to use to determine sex--hormones, chromosomes, genitals--you're always going to get people who don't fit neatly into one box or another. (Intersex people exist, for starters.)

Now, some people challenge the utility of biological sex as a concept too--and here I literally just mean the categorization of the body into male, female, or intersex--but I personally don't take much issue with it. But it is important to know that sex isn’t the same as gender. If we think of sex as purely based on physiological characteristics, we can think of gender as all of the social meanings and expectations that have come to be associated physical sex. Men are aggressive, stoic, etc. Women are emotional, soft, whatever. But the thing is, none of these traits are exclusively innate to men/males or women/females--differences in behavior that emerge between men and women occur because they’re taught. We all start learning from a very young age that boys do this, and girls do that, and it becomes internalized enough that it starts to look natural, but it really isn't; it’s just become second-nature to us. And we know this is true partly because in terms of behavior/disposition, there’s as much variation among men and among women themselves as there is between men and women as distinct groups. Further, the supposed differences between men and women aren’t consistent across time and place--the norms for what men like or how they behave have differed depending on the historical period, and the traits that distinguish men and women vary from culture to culture. This wouldn’t happen if there was something biological about gendered behavior.

So, gender, then, is really rooted in identity (how we think and feel about ourselves) and performance (how we act/comport ourselves throughout the world). And these things are absolutely shaped by social forces (because we’re taught to act and think of ourselves in certain ways), but if you accept that gender is largely a construct imposed from without and then internalized, this opens up the possibility of other kinds of gender identity and gender performances.

Now, yeah, you could argue instead that we should simply do away with gender entirely. Let people look and act however they want without creating new labels or pronouns or any of that. And honestly, I think that's my ideal world. But the world that we actually live in genders everything. It's this overarching structure that shapes out interactions, permeates our institutions, and has a profound impact on our experiences. So many of our norms and our models for what life looks like are highly gendered, and as such, it's not really possible to move through our society without having some kind of relationship to masculinity and femininity, to manhood and womanhood, even if that relationship is rooted in a rejection of the constraints of those categories or (in my own personal case) a sort of failure or inability to adhere to said categories.

Creating room for 'new' gender identities creates language to articulate those relationships. (And, I do want to push back against the idea of these being new inventions a bit, because plenty of other cultures have had language and space for trans/nonbinary identities, and the rigid systems we have now are, in part, a consequence of colonialism, but that's a whole other thing.) And this desire to have language to express ourselves is just... a very human thing. We want to be able to describe our experiences and connect with people who share them. New identities and pronouns are way to do that. (Also want to note here that pronouns are not synonymous with gender identity; I know cis people who prefer they/them pronouns, and nonbinary people who were assigned female at birth who are fine with she/her pronouns. They're just one way to reflect gender identity.)

Which brings me back to: it's fun! There's a type of pleasure (in a nonsexual way) to be had in identifying a gender performance that feels right. And for some people this is along binary lines, but for others it isn't.

Speaking for myself, I didn't even come out as nonbinary until was 30, but I had a very ambivalent relationship towards womanhood up until then. And not just in a way where I didn't love the stereotypes associated with it (although, that too), but in a way where I was lowkey... bad at it. I started getting mistaken for a lesbian in the sixth grade and that's been a constant theme my whole life. And like, I am bisexual, but it took a very long time for it to click that people were really making that assumption based on my gender performance and not any real hints about my sexuality. I just wasn't quite feminine enough to pass, or something, and this was true even at times in my life where I looked more feminine.

And looking back on my life, I can literally pinpoint moments where I sort of... 'bought in' to elements of male socialization--to stoicism and to objectifying women and to many other things that my woman friends didn't that very much led to that more ambiguous gender performance. And none of this is to say that woman have to perform a particular type of femininity to be women--I certainly believe people can be gender nonconforming without being any kind of trans or nonbinary--but for me personally the result was that the 'woman' box just never felt right and I always felt sort of... confused about gender. About why it mattered or why I was supposed to pick or identify with something. Even as a bisexual person, my attitude is less 'women are hot! men are hot!' and more 'attractive people are attractive, beyond that who cares?' And the language of being nonbinary just really spoke to those feelings in a very real way, even if there's nothing innate about it. It gives me a way to express my experience as a particular type of gendered being in a highly gendered society that wouldn’t be covered by just saying ‘oh I’m a slightly masculine woman’ or something, because it’s a lot more complicated than that. 

[cipheramnesia]

Just in case you missed it: some person made a blog called @transmisogyny-explained and started a massive blocklist of "transandrophobia truthers" as if we were conspiracy theorists, and refuses to add trans women who believe in transandrophobia because "this is about tme people using it as an excuse for transmisogyny".

We're ALL being added. Vent blogs, people who have only liked posts, people who have made posts, they're SWEEPING every post and asking followers for names and it's like... So laughably organized by people who have transmasculine people. Lmfao.

I saw, it makes me feel exhausted and sad and frustrated on many levels. My angst at present is the way it's always parsed as trans masc vs trans femme, in the sense of gender only fitting on a line between female and male. When we talk about gender in those terms, without including the wider complexity of gender beyond the binary, we're also contributing to an ongoing problem where nonbinary is left out of every discussion, treated as a third gender, and generally ignored or otherwise excluded.

It's also frustrating being aware of specific cases of violence or bigotry directed at trans masc people, cases I'm aware of because they were really high profile! and I have to see discourse like there's no such thing as transandrophia.

It's discouraging that it's so much coming from this place of stupid puritanical exclusionist call outs, all this purposefully inflammatory language just to try and tear down some corner of the trans community.

And I have this dumb post about trans your gender and you'll calm down and I love it because so many people of all gender experiences are sharing the same kind of story. This silly and beautiful moment of "I thought this gender stuff was ridiculous and then I realized I just wanted different gender stuff." Y'know were all distinct but in so many ways we are all SO MUCH ALIKE. We have got so many shared experiences that take us on different journeys why are people spending time to make a list of "The Unclean Excommunicated Ones Who Have Spoken of The Devil's Foul Transandrophia."

I'm just. Why are people working so hard not to see the good? When so much more good is right here? I got so many near and far trans folx making my Tumblr better, it's exhausting when I watch people try to make it worse.

[lavenderphoenix99]

wow. just wow.

this is why i'm sick of queer people creating yet another binary like "women and nonbinary vs non women" "women and nonmen vs cishet men" "trans and nonbinary vs cis"

SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!

like quick, tell me, you transmultiphobic person, what is the definition of nonbinary again? what is the definition of genderqueer again???

why do we, as a community, shove a group of people who identifies as something that is LITERALLY OUT OF THE BINARY, as one category, yet again!!!??

why do we, as a community, not understanding and learning more about people whose identities literally q u e e r s gender, and to think that maybe, just maybe, they can't and won't be ever be quantified within "basically cis" or "basically trans" in their gender, just for a DAMN second????

like, just, just, THIIIINK about it, what @/transmultiphobia-discussion just said (with some addition of mine) about why genderfluid people might not identify as trans, you transmultiphobe bitchass:

genderfluid people can be fluid between genders that are close to their assigned gender at birth, and they damn well are welcome to identify as cis, and they're no less genderfluid because of it

maybe a genderfluid person feels like their cisgender part of their identity wants to be acknowledged, and so they don't wholly ID as trans, and like, you should respect that actually??? to acknowledge the wholeness of a person's gender??? crazy shit!!

and then i'll go over the main shit show from that piece of damned shit of a transmultiphobic human being:

HOW FUCKING INFLATED YOUR DAMN EGO WAS WHEN YOU TYPED THAT??? """MY COMMUNITY"""???

NOT ONLY YOU'RE DEAD WRONG, BECAUSE YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY NOT THE ARBITER OF THE NONBINARY/GENDERQUEER COMMUNITY, ESPECIALLY WITH SUCH SHIT ASS ATTITUDE,

THERE IS LITERALLY NO OWNER OF NONBINARY/GENDERQUEER COMMUNITY, YOU'RE JUST BEING MASK-OFF GATEKEEPING, PEOPLE ARE LITERALLY BEING SHOVED OUT OF IT, THE SPACES THAT ARE SUPPOSEDLY ACCEPTING OF ANY AND ALL KINDS OF NONBINARY/GENDERQUEER PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!

AND YOU KNOW DAMN FUCKING WELL, AS A NONBINARY PERSON YOURSELF, WHAT IT WOULD BRING TO US, IF WE WERE FORCIBLY EJECTED FROM OUR OWN COMMUNITY????

like... oh my goodness,

sorry not sorry for the extreme wording about this, but as an ambonec agender transmasc myself, i just can NOT stay silent about the erasure and ignorance about transmultiphobia issues anymore, i just CANNOT stand it when i see people erase one of my identity, erase my whole fucking transness, just because identify as a cisgender straight woman sometimes

i'm sick and tired of seeing me, and many many other people like me, treated as "JUST x" or "JUST y" not "x AND y" regarding our gender, and thus weaponize our multigenderedness against ourselves in order to feel good and... what? powerful? authoritative? inside your silly "safe spaces" (that are probably not safe in the first place)????

man, just... grow the fuck up. touch grass. go to a real life queer community event/spaces/communities, i promise there are people there who are being themselves and don't give a rat's ass about who is ackshually trans or who is ackshually cis, as long as they're being respectful there

anyways, OP, i hope you don't have to face those nasty ass gatekeeper again in your life, ever, and i suggest just swiftly block and report, if possible, people like those, and i'm sending you love <3 <3 <3 you're always welcome and supported here

and @transmultiphobia-discussion thank you SOOOOO DAMN MUCH for starting this discussion and bring our issues to light; the multigender/bigender/genderfluid/poly/pan/omnigender community are not going away anytime soon, we're here, we're queer, we won't be silenced anymore and we WILL fuck shit up if you dare mess with us

like the cool kids say: play stupid games, win stupid prizes

bye <3

(oh and btw, @transmultiphobia-discussion if you want me to take down this reblog because of the strongly worded response, please do tell me in the DMs! I understand if my words are making you uncomfortable)

I'm so pissed off right now

My mutual reblogs a post disrespecting genderfluid people who don't identify as trans. I'm not looking at the post so I might get some things wrong but the wording was approximately this:

"not all genderfluid people are trans" ...are you smoking crack? No one's AGAB is genderfluid. If you don't exclusively identify with your AGAB, you are trans. That's all the word means. By definition, all genderfluid people are trans. Stop being stupid.

Now, I'm not genderfluid, but I'm bigender so I share the multigender community and larger nonbinary/genderqueer community with them. I am also not trans. I'm isogender and I'm cisgender. I reblog with a long takedown of their claim, explaining why some genderfluid people (and why I, a person who doesn't exclusively identify with my AGAB) may not identify with being trans. I went over why personal identity matters more than the definition of transgender, that it's inclusive so people are welcomed into it if they wish to identify that way, but it's not an enforced identity. That they have to respect the identities of genderfluid, multigender, and nonbinary people who are not trans. I thought this person might just be meaning well but needing some opposition, but this bitch responds with (approximate wording again:)

So, just to be clear: You, a self-identified cisgender woman, come onto My (nonbinary and been out for 10 years) post about MY community to call me stupid for saying trans people are trans? Cool. #transphobia #enbyphobia #cis people shut the fuck up challenge

I just. That really showed their transmultiphobia. I am the gender that better suits their argument. The way they contrasted me being a cis woman with them being nonbinary, then calling it "MY community" very implicitly is degendering me, stripping me of my nonbinary/aporagender identity because it's easier to feign a point by saying I'm a cis woman, therefore an outsider who has no right to argue with them, a nonbinary person, on the topic. Also the fact they accepted my identity as a cisgender woman despite the fact their post that I replied to would have categorized me as transgender.

I am not a fucking outsider in the discussion! I don't identify as trans but that's irrelevant because the post wasn't about the trans community. It was about the nonbinary community. It was about the multigender community that I share with genderfluid people. IT WAS ABOUT NON-TRANS GENDERQUEER PEOPLE. MY COMMUNITY. NOT THEIRS. MINE. The post was blatantly disrespecting my identity, even if naming genderfluid people. I had every right to respond! I had every right to be in the discussion! I had every right to defend genderfluid people who might identify in the same way I do! Or the way *I* identify!

Clearly they didn't have a real response but they didn't want to read my response with an open mind. Didn't want to consider that there are non-trans genderqueer people. So I'm degendered, for the purpose of painting me as an outsider instead of acknowledging that I am a fellow genderqueer person who just doesn't identify as trans

classic example of "multigender people are whatever gender category that is most convenient to the person" folks!

jeez that makes me so angry. make a post about how all people like yourself are trans no matter how they actually describe themselves, and when you say something, suddenly you are, in fact, cis to them. may seem contradictory, but this happens to multigenders all the time. I've been called a predatory male, a confused trans man who won't fully accept is transness, and a cis woman invading trans spaces just by being a bigender lesbian. none of it is consistent nor makes any sense! but since I exist in multiple gendered categories, people refuse to accept them simultaneously and put me in whichever one fits their worldview. is convenient to their argument, by how much they like me and tolerate me.

and it is very telling that they view genderfluid as a gender in of itself, rather than a descriptor for someone's genders- the same way people go "multigender women/men aren't women/men, they're multigender!" The case of not seeing multigender people's identities as legitimate as monogender people's and having to settling for just "multigender," or else you're an invader or a predator to those monogender people. because if they did, it would make total sense why a genderfluid person might call themselves cis- some only switch between genders closely aligned to their assigned gender, for an example. like it's totally up to the person to describe their experiences with their gender identity and if cis more closely describes that than trans, even if they're not perfectly binary, that's fine!

I feel like messing with the cis/trans dichotomy and blurring the lines a bit is necessary is normalizing transhood and dismantling cisnormativity. like they're built off of the phenomenon of assigned gender at birth and forcibly assigned gender roles, "cis" being the default and "trans" considered divergent. if they're no longer assigned to people, is the gender binary is no longer relevant, then what significance would those terms really have anymore? if there is no "cis" or "trans," just people that exist as they please right from the get-go? isn't that what we want? why strictly enforce them onto anyone?