#i have seen egg/woman jokes but they're always DEEPLY unserious

[freckliedan]

#smashing this reblog button with every fibre of my very trans being #So much of being trans is experimenting to find out what you're comfortable with #and he is in fact doing that. quite obviously imo #and that experimentation doesnt Make him trans. but its honestly the only way he'll be able to know for sure

#for most people being trans isnt a switch you just flip #even if you Know for Certain that you're a binary gender #you still have to experiment with what parts of that gender are fun to express for you

#and i dont think anyone is calling dan a woman?? or saying hes transfem or even calling him an egg??? ive definitely never seen it at least #i Do think a lot of the outrage over dangender is a bias against trans women though #which is fucked up

#but in my opinion. he literally called himself a formless blob in big. thats the most nonbinary shit in the world #and maybe he doesn't identify that way. which is fine. but i think sooo many different aspects of stupid identity politics- #- is getting wrapped up in dangender discourse #for example. him being a gay man and trans i think is a problem a lot of people have #and. if you dont think nonbinary people can be gay or lesbians. please log off and touch grass for the love of god

#ive known i was trans since i was in middle school. im in college now. about to graduate! and i still dont understand my gender!! #i never had the ability to experiment with my presentation. quite honestly i rlly still dont. but i think the same applies to dan #for the same reason as well: he was scared

#scared of facing bigotry. Because so many things he's done since coming out (and even a bit before) are things that men get called gay for #a lot of the stuff he's doing is something he's reclaiming

#i think a lot of people are also too caught up on the idea of dangender being an inherently trans thing #cis people do still have genders #and no matter what even if he is cis he's leaning into gnc presentation #i cant articulate everything i want to say properly and this is already way too long

#but basically. i love dangender. and if you dont then go ahead and block me

(tags via @lessthanpog, broken into paragraphs at my discretion)

i'm sorry but if you've only been a phannie since the reniassance you really have no right to be criticizing dan gender posters.

i don't think anyone who got here post revival understands the distinction between "fans crossing the line" vs "fans listening to what dan and phil tell us even before announcing things explicitly and celebrating that". and the way people act like they need to defend dan from people who think he could be trans makes that abundantly clear.

dan especially has been so open about how this community's support is what made it possible for him to accept himself and come out, and that wasn't support that magically appeared the second BIG dropped. it didn't exist only after we got told officially.

the community support of dan and phil's queerness was the way people noticed and celebrated and understood the way they increasingly chose to be vulnerable with us over the years, and the way we shared how they made us feel safe in our identities.

they came out a million little ways before they said the words, but dan did especially: wearing nail polish, going curly, an earring in the gay ear, liking tweets that said he was gay, making increasing gay jokes. the winter before they both came out they tweeted about the bbc calling them a couple and didn't correct it. dan TOLD us in march of 2018 that he had a video planned for june that was relevant to the month but not because of his birthday.

they do the telling us with their actions before announcing it in so many other contexts too: moving, announcing tours, etc.

if you trust in and pay attention to their consistant patterns of behavior it's hard to be surprised by dan and phil.

so why is it that this one fucking thing—dan's gender—is not allowed to be posted about in the same way as everything else? those of us who do take so much care in what we say, too, if we ever do anything other than post jokingly. both for dan's sake (nobody forgets this is a public forum) and because the transphobic backlash is constant.

dan has been saying he sometimes wishes he was a girl since manchester. talking about gender since 2009. the gender conversation has been constant as long as dan's been online and we know it's been a constant since early childhood too.

dan said after BIG dropped in 2019 that he considered coming out in 2014 but then started thinking about gender and needed more time to figure it out. and you know how that ended? he did NOT say "i came out because i figured it out". it ended with dan saying that thinking about gender culminated in realizing it's okay to come out and change your mind. that you can be a formless blob. (quote)

and then sister daniel happened, and dan has been increasingly openly talking about questioning gender ever since. and hey: dan and phil commented on the possibility of a gender video from dan during dan's bday livestream. doesn't that sound familiar.

this isn't different from when dan and phil claimed heterosexuality and then were openly not in the lead up to coming out. this pattern of behavior is the same, and the way people are posting is the same, and i've never fucking once seen a dan gender poster cross the line the way people used to.

it's just a different subject.

would the people who get pissed at dan gender posters have been doing the same thing to people who thought dnp were queer before they came out? did you not realize what an rpf community is like because you got here after the fact, or are you being transphobic hypocrites?

why is the possibility of transness something dan needs to be defended from, anyways? it's a compliment and we know dan takes it that way.

figure your shit out. i'm sick of it, especially coming from other trans people. i've had so fucking many trans mutuals bullied off this website and out of this space for openly talking about the possibility that dan might not be cis over the years, and when the same transphobic talking points come from a trans sibling's mouth? it disgusts me.

you don't have to like it or agree with it or engage with it. but can you PLEASE stop acting like you have a moral high ground and are doing something beneficial to dan that he'd thank you for? just fucking block and blacklist and move on.

and know that if dan someday turns out not to be cis, you're gonna have to live with the knowledge that you made things harder for him.

us dan gender posters? we all know we might be wrong and we've had to think about whether we're happy with our actions if that's the case. and i know damn well we'll all be celebrating dan's gender nonconformity just as much for the rest of time if dan remains cis.

we're under constant scruitiny so we've had to self reflect. but i really don't think any of you have. think about your underlying biases. consider the impact a vehement defense of cisness would have on dan if he isn't. and please, for the love of god, let that impact your actions.