#i read a theory on here that gavin is trans

[soup-scope]

the constellation that vega’s namesake is apart of is Lyra the Harp

Said harp being the one Orpheus was gifted by Apollo

Now theorize.

[illratte]

The little bell over the door chimed in its tortured tone, marking a new person’s entrance. Usually, greeting the customers fell to Tina, as she was both more energetic and “easier on the eyes”, considering most people weren’t all too jazzed to see a 4’11” fat man, even in a queer bookshop. Or maybe especially in, Gavin thought bitterly. But at that moment, Tina was busy with an older white woman who was fervently explaining to her that since she had “studied transsexuals”, she would make a great partner. Tina looked ready to roll her eyes out of her skull. 

“Hello, and welcome to Alphabet Soup, where we are dedicated to smashing the heteropatriarchy with every book sold. Will you need help or would you prefer to browse our selection by yourselves?” Gavin half-droned the script he had memorized, trying to add inflections where he thought it was necessary. He was almost too caught up in the intricacies of whether the welcome or the hello deserved a cheery upbeat emphasis to realize that the two people in front of him, one a reed-thin black man with grey seeping into the fringe of his hair, and the other a white woman with pale skin that almost glowed in the artificial light and deep, black hair, swept into a ponytail, were looking at him like they knew him. 

Gavin was silent for a beat too long, his mind churning to put a name to the two faces before him. In the interim, the woman smiled, revealing crow’s feet. She was older than Gavin had first thought, then. 

“What a pleasant surprise.” Said the man, giving him a smile that showed bright white teeth. “Gray, was it?”

“Gavin Gray. How do you know my…” The man had on a brightly colored button down that clashed just a little with everything else in his outfit, and silver studs glinted at his ears, but minus that and the gray hair, Gavin did remember his face. “Orion?” 

Orion smiled again. “And you do remember my daughter Esther?” 

Esther smiled, and with a flush of recognition, Gavin did. She hadn’t changed much, except for maybe how she did her hair, and the lines on her face were new. He had seen her a few times, hanging around Orion. 

“Sorry; the lack of bat-like black really threw me off.” As members of the council, and members of the community, Gavin wasn't technically allowed to speak to either of them. 

Orion’s smile tightened. “Well, Esther and I are on vacation right now, so that hardly seemed appropriate.”

“Do you vacation here often?” 

“Esther picked it. The city, I mean, not the store; that was my idea.” 

“A big fan of queer indies, are you?” Gavin asked. “Or is it that small bookstore charm you’re after?” IN the back of his mind, his boss screamed at him to further a sell. But Gavin was maybe a little lost for words. They weren’t supposed to be here. The council had been expressly clear on that. And even if Gavin might have wanted, in his darkest moments, for a council member to swoop in and save him. But they weren't here for him, and Gavin didn't want them to be here at all. Gavin’s lips twitched as he regarded both of them. 

“A little bit of both, I suppose.” Orion said. “I’m just here to look around, actually, but I will make sure to call you if I need you.”

Gavin would have told him to call Tina, if not for the fact that the woman from earlier was still monopolizing her time. At the very least, she seemed to have gathered a significant stack of books in her arms. 

Orion disappeared into one of the rickety aisles without a backward glance, leaving Esther alone with Gavin. 

Gavin ran through a list of what he had to complete before his shift ended as he made his hands busy straightening the books on the nearest shelf. He hoped Esther would take the hint and leave. 

Instead, she pulled up next to him. She must have been almost a foot taller than him, which was just a little intimidating when she was so close to him. “That is an interesting book.” She said. He had pulled out one of the books that had been shelved wrong, probably by a customer. It was a collection of essays by Susan Stryker. 

“Have you read it?” He asked blithely. It was the kind of thing that the older academic queer types ate up, and that he had paid no mind to. With the smattering of classes he had taken at his community college, he had never stumbled across her work. Which probably made sense, since the painting and photography classes he had taken hadn’t intersected with any sort of queer theory. He hadn't thought someone on the council would care for that type of thing. 

“Yes. I did find “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix” to be particularly illuminating.”

“Delightful.” Gavin nodded absentmindedly. He had to get to a different section to re-shelve the book, but Esther was still in the way. Maybe if he dodged around her… 

“It is quite the interesting essay, based on the intersection of rage and monstrosity. Susan Stryker herself is transgender, and it focuses on the alienation she feels, much like Frankenstein’s monster. I found it rather illuminating, and quite compelling. I think you and I both know how it feels to be cast aside.” 

“What, are you trans?” Gavin’s jaw worked. He didn’t like the way she said it. Like she knew just how he felt. 

“No, no. But I do understand, Gavin.” Her hand came up to rest on Gavin’s back. Gavin would have flinched from the touch if he hadn’t stiffened. “You’re not the only person whom the council longs to cast aside.” She had intense eyes, like chips of ice. Gavin couldn’t look away.

[phcking-detective]

First Blood Update (7)

greetings, robots, androids, and delicate flesh vessels!

First Blood will go live with chapter one posted on here and to AO3 on July 7th! It's ~128k long, 33 chapters (down from 34 bc two got squished together), and rated E for language, violence, and graphic sexual content. It will update once a week on Sundays.

Just because they've been partners (and fucking around) for a few months now, doesn't mean Gavin likes the android or anything. But after they catch a routine suicide case Gavin knows is a murder and Nines is the only one who believes him, and they start hanging out together after work—just in case a new lead breaks—and bond over mutually wanting to beat the shit out of Connor … OK, so maybe they hold hands once or seven times. Maybe Nines listens to all his crazy theories about a mysterious android manipulating the stock market and hacking other androids. Maybe he steps in front of a few bullets for Gavin and they get captured and tortured together and maybe Gavin lies to IA about what happened for him.

Maybe he realizes he'll never find a better partner, but that doesn't mean any of this is romantic—and it's not because he's an android, it's because Gavin knows he's a piece of shit who doesn't deserve this.

But maybe he can still have it anyway.

I'll also post chapters on a Patreon I made to raise some money for seeing a therapist while I work on my transition as a trans man so I can stop dipping into my savings! Link is here, the tiers are $1/$2/$3, and details are below the cut~

$1 Officer Tier – you get access to chapters one week earlier than they post on AO3 or tumblr, so you can read chapter one starting June 30th! You also get to vote in fun little polls about the fic and patreon rewards, ie: if I get X number of patrons, I'll post bonus content from the other tiers, and you'd get to enjoy that even if you're not subscribed to those tiers

$2 Detective Tier – you get lots of cool bonus content and deleted scenes! bonus content means little drabbles I've written, some background info that didn't make the fic, and a backstory for Nines. deleted scenes are the little filler moments that got cut to help streamline the plot, like Gavin and Tina play-wrestling each other, Gavin helping Nines get more hits than Connor on his blog, Nines thinking a lot of deep heavy thoughts in the shower, etc.

$3 Lieutenant Tier – you get exclusive access to ~1k chapters each week from two AUs I'm currently writing! A/B/O AU: Detective Gavin Reed has never needed a partner and he sure as hell doesn't need an Alpha. It's not like anyone would want to bring home a bitter, scarred Omega insistent on having a professional career to meet their parents anyway. Then Nines is assigned as his partner. He's finally found an Alpha he can actually work with, but the android worries about the quality of "partners" Gavin brings home during his heat—and is determined to prove he can do better.

Reverse AU: Detective Richard Stern doesn't need a sober companion just because he had one  mental breakdown, stabbed himself during an interrogation, and screamed his throat raw inside the elevator. He's never done any sort of drugs, only been drunk once in his life, and has the highest case clearance in the department. But when Captain Manfred says it's that or lose his job, the only control Nines has left over the situation is who gets assigned as his "companion." Luckily, his favorite informant GV200 "Gavin" Reed, has a background in personal nutrition, fitness, and—massage. He's also Richard's secret crush. How could this possibly go wrong?

The patreon charges per chapter, so you only pay when I post chapters each week on Sunday. That's roughly four times a month, and again, chapters post one week earlier than AO3 and tumblr. The tiers also stack, so you get the tiers below yours as well!

Right now, I'm very lucky to be in therapy with a great therapist who specializes in LGBT+ issues and gender transitioning specifically. But I'm dipping into my savings to be able to afford it, and I'm only going once every other week when I really feel like I need weekly sessions to stay on track and make progress. I'd really love to raise some money with the patreon to help pay for that!

Just to make it clear though, the full entire fic will be available FOR FREE on AO3 and tumblr. The bonus content and deleted scenes come from stuff that was fluffy but didn't really help move the plot or character development, honestly a little too OOC for me to include, or didn't narratively fit with the rest of the fic. None of it is necessary to understand the fic or Gavin and Nines' relationship. The patreon is just for anyone who would like to basically donate to me, but you still get some cool stuff in return because I love you~

[equalityforher]

VIDEO: Issues of Power, Not Bathrooms

by Shay-Akil McLean

Issues of Power, Not Bathrooms

On February 22nd, 2017 Agent Orange’s administration revoked the transgender protection guidelines on Title IX in a “Dear Colleague” letter from the ironically named Department of Education (DoE) and Department of Justice (DoJ).  The letter stated that it would not be utilizing the interpretations of Title IX that the Obama administration had utilized.  Less than two weeks later the Supreme Court announced that it would not be hearing the case of teenager Gavin Grimm against Gloucester County School Board in Virginia.  The DoE and DoJ’s decision makes it possible for states and local school districts to deny the rights of transgender and non-binary gender students despite their resistance.  Without the DoE and/or the DoJ enforcing these guidelines, transgender and non-binary students lack another form of protection against discrimination.  This makes it more difficult for transgender and non-binary gender students to sue educational institutions for not allowing them to use the bathroom that matches their gender. They will have to battle it out in lower courts for the next few years.  Without federal protections, transgender and non-binary gender students are without sufficient support from the state to defend their rights to self-determination.  Such actions make room for states to negotiate the legitimacy of transgender and non-binary students’ knowledge about their own gender and bodies.  To defer decision making power to states and local school districts then allows room for states to continue segregating bathrooms by the sex criteria of genitalia.  For the DoE and the DoJ to not enforce the previous guidelines is to make space for negotiating the rights of trans and NBG people away.  That space was widened when the Supreme Court said that it would not be hearing Gavin’s case.  

[Read the two page “Dear Colleague Letter” issued by the DoE and DoJ on February 22nd, 2017]

Upon first glance this appears to be about the use of public ‘sex-segregated facilities’ but it’s about much more.  Sex segregated facilities are merely one site of an important struggle between the right of transgender and non-binary people’s power to navigate space as their respective gender versus state institutions’ aim to exercise power over trans and non-binary gender persons based on reducing them to a binary classification of genitalia.  As stated by historian Margot Canaday, “The state does not just direct policy at its subjects; various state arenas are themselves sites of contest over sex/gender norms” (2009:5).  Understanding this requires that we place this social problem into the context of the longer history of the state’s passage of regulatory measures that have directly and indirectly policed sex and gender non-conformity.

WHAT IS BEING NEGOTIATED?

It’s important for us to ask ourselves: what exactly is being negotiated here?  As argued by historian Robert W. Gordon, “The power exerted by a legal regime consists less in the force that it can bring to bear against violators of its rules, than its capacity to persuade that the world described in its image and categories is the only attainable world” (1984:109).  This is an issue of power and certain people are under the impression that the biological essentialist understandings of gender and sex in modern society are the only truths that they are willing to abide by.  So let’s return to the definition of sex.  Sex is a determination made through the application of socially agreed upon biological criteria for classifying persons as females or males.  The criteria for classification can be genitalia at birth or chromosomal typing before birth, and they do not necessarily agree with one another (West & Zimmerman, 1987:127, 133). But it’s important to recognize that placement in a sex category is achieved through socially required displays that proclaim one’s membership in a sex category.  Thus, one can claim membership in a sex category while lacking sex criteria. Gender is what West and Zimmerman define as the “activity of managing situated conduct in light of normative conceptions of attitudes and activities appropriate for one’s sex category” (1987:127).  Gender is constructed through our actions and through our actions/deeds we proclaim membership into a sex category.  Gender qualifies as a satisfactory rationale for entry into sex segregated facilities since a person can have membership in a sex category while lacking sex criteria.  Sex segregated facilities can be accessed by whoever fits the set of ‘managed situated conduct’ that is their gender.  Sex is then not reducible to genitalia.  What this means is that there is no ‘formal public process’ required since placement in a sex category is achieved through a person’s power to control their own behavior/actions and define themselves.  To claim that sex is ‘unambiguously biological sex’ excludes the rest of the definition of “sex” and presents a theory (idea) about the world that does not match human practice/action.  Which leads us to a better and more important question: Why do we (as a society) negotiate the existence of people who already exist?  Why do we entertain such notions as legitimate?

CONTESTED MEANING & THE CONSEQUENCES OF STATE ACTION

Denying the right of transgender and non-binary gender people to exist and use public restrooms & locker rooms is a regulatory maneuver of a legal regime aiming to persuade the world that they are not convinced of the validity that transgender people’s knowledge of their own bodies and egender.  This opens up the institutional grounds for states to supersede the rights of trans and non-binary peoples to define themselves and enforces biological essentialist classifications instead.  Such actions are part of America’s long history of “…the state’s identification of certain sexual behaviors, gender traits, and emotional ties as grounds for exclusion…” (Canaday 2009:4).  For the state to not enforce those guidelines is for them to claim that only those who live and procreate in accepted cisheteronormative manners will be provided with the institutional and systemic protection provided to citizens.  And what do such policy decisions do? They set precedence for what is and what is not acceptable behavior. �� Such state actions then legitimate images of humanity that exclude transgender and non-binary gender persons contributing to this year’s growing list of murdered Black Transgender women like Alphonza Watson in Baltimore, Maryland, Keke Collier in Chicago, Illinois, JoJo Striker in Toledo, Ohio, and Chyna Gibson and in New Orleans.  It opens the grounds for transgender and non-binary people to not be allowed the same right to defend themselves like CeCe McDonald and Ky Peterson.  By not upholding the rights of transgender and non-binary students to utilize the public facilities that match their gender, the DoJ and the DoE is making room for the interpersonal, institutional, and systemic harassment, mistreatment, and violence against trans and non-binary peoples.  

We have failed community members because we have refused to collectively take the steps required to change the way we speak about people, the way we treat people, we backed down from holding one another accountable to the non-negotiability of the humanity of trans people.  And because of that failure, more Black transwoman have been murdered.  Not only does this have a detrimental impact on the lives of transgender, intersex, and non-binary children, but it destines them to a life of violence that state institutions are refusing to provide them protections against.  

What is then necessary for us at this present moment is what James Baldwin referred to as “non-cooperation”.  Do not follow procedures that deny someone’s humanity.  I encourage you to choose people over protocol and procedure.  To speak of systems and institutions then is to speak of coordinated collective human action driven by a particular set of logics and ideologies.  That means we have to interrogate how we've been made what Hannah Arendt calls "functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery".  What we DO, what we ALLOW to be said and done around us; ALL of this plays into what we communicate as legitimate and acceptable human behavior.  Coordinated non-cooperation requires that we act in ways that uphold the non-negotiability of the humanity of transgender and non-binary peoples.  But to get there we have to listen to transgender and non-binary gender people.  Our everyday practice must speak to and act towards changing the very transphobic language and social structures (protocols, rules about behavior, etc.) that we've come accustomed to.

Listen, offer your time, your resources, offer up your networks, coin, your presence when needed to stand in solidarity with transgender and non-binary people against others and their institutions that wish to deny us the right to exist as who we are, who wish to enforce their will and interests on us and deny us the right to human agency and human decency. As long as you entertain the notion that everyone has a right to argue about this, you are maintaining the idea that the humanity of transgender and non-binary people is negotiable. This is not up for debate.  Keep in mind that we have children to protect.  Transwomen are women. Transmen are men. Trans and non-binary people exist, have been here, and will continue to be here.

References

Canady, Margot. 2009. The Straight State: Sexuality & Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Robert W. Gordon, “Critical Legal Histories,” Stanford Law Review 36 (January 1984): 109.

West, Candace and Don H. Zimmerman. 1987. Doing Gender. Gender & Society (1)2: 125-151.