#i want to be feminine and boyish in the way trans women are

[homosexualmorelikehomiesexual]

god im so fucking tired of gender

[earlycuntsets]

“I CONSIDERED MYSELF TO BE MORE OF A GIRL”

A CONVERSATION WITH GERARD WAY from theboyzine.com 1/18/2015

"Gerard way is the renaissance-type singer songwriter // Goth prince frontman // comic book artist // proud father best known for both his solo music and his band My Chemical Romance. We got a chance to ask him a few questions in early January. Enjoy!

What is your favorite animal?

I would have to say an ape; for a long time I didn’t take the time to know the difference between primates, but my wife and I have been really into animals—apes are just very gentle creatures.

As an emotional professional, how do you feel when people tell you to man up?

You know, growing up as a boy you are always told not to show your emotions, that it is a sign of weakness. I have been lucky enough to lead a life where I can celebrate how I really feel—but there is still negative attention towards it and it is still considered weakness.

Is there a point, then, where one does need to (for lack of a better word) man up?

You know I really don’t like that phrase. “man up”, because it implies that emotional strength in rough times is a masculine trait, when in reality some of the strongest people I know are women. But yes, there are a lot of times when you should control your emotions–  times of crisis and need where you really can’t let them get involved. I have learned to pull my emotions out of a lot of big decisions.

You often make it a point to spread the message of gender equality in your shows. Could you describe that a little bit?

It is something I have been lucky enough to be educated about. I generally try to pay attention to it, make sure I get my facts from the best sources and whatnot, and I really relate to it. I never really subscribed to the archetype masculinity growing up, I had no interest in sports or anything like that. There was a time where I was called a girl so often that when I discovered the idea of transgenderism I considered myself to be more of a girl. So I identify with trans people and women a lot because I was a girl to a lot of people growing up. When I was doing MCR I think I finally got to display my femininity through the glam theatrical aspects of the band. It made me feel more hopeful, that I was allowed to be flamboyant. I want to make sure women and men and everyone in between feel safe and empowered.

Was there a person or thing that first sparked your interest in feminism?

When I was around 16 I became friends with these really cool girls, and that’s how I got exposed to Bikini Kill, Helium, Bratmobile—that was the real punk. All the other hardcore scenes at the time were a little bit hypermasculine and violent, which was totally unappealing to me. But here are these bands—Bikini Kill, et cetera that were actually talking about important things. That was real punk. Great bands.

What sort of advice can you offer to all of us boyz reading?

You have to surround yourself with ‘the others’. Whether they’re the creatives that you know or whatever it is. Because you guys will feed each other, that’s the nature of people. Find companions who will push you in the field you are in.

Do you hang onto traces of boyishness? Comics and digging up worms?

Well first off I don’t consider those things boyish. I am really happy that things like comics have become less marketed specifically toward boys—did you know that 50 percent of comic book readers are girls now? There is a really great picture I saw one time of a little girl with all the spiderman toys in a toy store clearly angry that they were in the ‘boys’ section. We need to let kids have more freedom of choice in who they want to be.

But answering your question, I have always been super into comic books. I didn’t really ever like sports, so I played dungeons and dragons a lot. That was a really important creative outlet for me. Of course I still love Star wars, and biking.

How do you find ways to stay positive?

Society is so interconnected these days, there is so much noise. It is really important I think to turn the noise down, to find ways to do so. Whether you’re in a creative field or not, you need to find a way to follow what is in your gut because that noise that is so obstructive is   creeping. Think about the art you make, the people you love.

My routine is really simple but important to me. I wake up every morning and my wife and I get our daughter ready for school and I drive her there. And that’s when work begins for me. I am lucky that one day I can be recording a new song and the next I am putting all of my energy into a comic.

Do you consider your marriage to be a partnership?

I am very glad you asked. I consider my whole family dynamic a three way partnership actually. My wife and I have been partners since day one, and now our daughter is the newest addition to the mix. Of course we have different duties to each other—my wife and my job is to educate my daughter  and make her feel great and teach her how to work hard, to let her choose what she loves. That’s very important to us. It is great coming home from the road because Lindsay (my wife) and I get to work together more.

Thank you so much for doing this interview, is there anything we haven’t touched that you want to say?

Don’t chase your dreams, let your dreams chase you

[sometimes-men-need-help-too]

Im tired of the notion that men are only desirable if they're feminine. Especially if they're LGBT.

Trans women aren't men dressing as women, they're women.

Crossdressers don't have more value because he's in a skirt than he would if he was wearing a suit.

A gay man not being feminine and flamboyant doesn't make him not gay.

Media (Especially animation) tells guys that the strong and masculine ones are the dumb brutes that are impulsive and only good for their muscle. It's always the pretty boys that get the girl and win, and I think it's gross.

If you're a feminine man that's great and I'm proud of you for being comfortable with yourself.

If you're masculine man, you're perfectly fine and good just how you are.

Can we like, not put down one to raise the other? There's room to appreciate both.

I even notice this with women. I've read way too many comics about a tomboy who's "secretly afraid of femininity and actually wants to be a girly girl". Masculine women being jerks or seen as ugly in movies. Good luck finding a popular drag king, it's all about the queens. I've heard other women put down boyish girls for not being pretty or desirable enough.

What is this assault on masculinity to raise feminity?

I wanna add this and it's something I've said before but it goes along with what you're saying:

Some people are of the opinion that a man who embraces femininity more (whether that's with clothes or makeup or whatever) has a "healthier" masculinity than a man who doesn't want to

Not only is it incorrect, but it's a complete lack of respect

And really, it's just reframing the whole "real man" thing

Think about it; even though you're not explicitly saying those words, it's heavily implied that a real man would be able to "handle" some nail polish or whatever it is that's being referenced, while a weak man would be too fragile if he rejects it

How about we just drop the "real man" thing completely? Both sides of the spectrum need to be a little more respectful of each other

You're not less of a man if you're a little more feminine, but you're also not better than men who prefer to be more masculine

[hazel2468]

Ok also I just gotta...

I see people being like "trans men/transmascs aren't oppressed, people see them as butch lesbians or tomboys! They get a free pass!" and I KNOW I've said this before but like...

In what fucking WORLD. Do you LIVE. Where being a butch woman or a tomboy is a "free pass"?

I spent most of my life as a cis girl and woman. I spent my ENTIRE childhood as a self-described tomboy.

I also spent my entire childhood being fucking TORMENTED for being too "boyish" to "not like a girl". For the most basic innocent things like, to name a few, liking Pokemon, liking ninjas, for wanting to be fucking JANE from Tarzan because she was apparently not REALLY a princess because she wasn't girly enough (Which, I will admit, in hindsight makes me cackle because holy shit). I was picked on by boys and girls, peers and adults alike. My fellow students would physically and verbally harass me. The adults who express "concern" about me not fitting in with the girls enough and ignore the bullying even when it was directly brought up. Anyone who dared to be my friend, regardless of their gender, was tormented for being friends with "a lesbian" and "a tomboy" and, on a few occasions, "a dyke" (a word I didn't know back then).

And when I hit high school? And I started leaning into femininity, in part because I did like it but undeniably because it was what was expected of me if I wanted to take part in the social activities and dating life that everyone else was? The torment turned fucking sexual. Guys would hit on me in the GROSSEST of ways and tell me I should be glad because, as a dyke, I should want to PROVE that I was straight. Girls tortured me in the locker room and tried, on several occasions, to kick me into the guy's locker room because "that's where lesbians should change". Bear in mind that, at the time, I was 100% cis and I was so far in the closet even I had no fucking idea I was queer.

So forgive me if, when I see these fucking transphobes (because that's what you are, when you talk about trans men and transmascs like this) going off about how "afabs" get a "pass" and we aren't "as oppressed" because "no one has an issue with masculine women" it makes me just a little absolutely fucking livid.

[shamebats]

It's a weird idea that I've been rotating in my head in a while but I do feel like I'm in a way a case study against the idea that if society wasn't as gendered, there wouldn't be any trans people.

Despite the society I grew up in having been misogynistic & patriarchal, my own family & the school system were actually surprisingly not that gendered. My parents were fairly autistic themselves, my mom was pretty butch in a rural slavic woman way (never really wore skirts or dresses, makeup or cared that much about her appearance, she had work to do) and I was a defiant child, so they'd mostly just let me do my own thing. I forbade my mom from buying clothes for me without my input fairly young, so I could pick my own clothes and dress however I liked. I was about as likely to dress in a more feminine way as any boy because I knew that everyone including my teachers would've made weird comments about it if I came to school in a skirt. I had a little brother and we were treated fairly equally, we were even abused & neglected in the same ways (yay, equality!).

My best friend growing up was a neighbors' boy and we spent most of our time together getting dirty, trying not to get lost in the forest and climbing tall trees. Nobody ever told me I wasn't supposed to do "boyish" things. But at the same time, my neighbor's grandma also taught us both how to embroider and sew on buttons and we were way more into it than his sisters. At school, I was only friends with girls.

For the first like 3 years of school, we all (girls & boys) had gym class together and even got changed together in the classroom, I think it was because we didn't have any dressing rooms at that school, and nobody thought it was weird.

Adults drilled into me that I needed to study so I could go to university because I was smart and that was what was the plan for me. The fact that I was a girl didn't have any influence on that. Sure, I was told I'd want kids eventually, but boys were told the same thing and nobody ever made me feel like motherhood was the main thing I needed to aim for in life.

I didn't really think about my gender much until puberty hit. To this day, most of my dysphoria comes from my body — my breasts, my uterus, menstruation, the fact that I could get pregnant, the shape of my body. Thankfully, not wanting children in your teens & 20s was also very normal & expected in my culture and birth control was free while I was a student.

At work, my bosses were always about 50/50 men and women. Right now I have a male superior but his boss is a woman and we're the only men in our team. We're paid fairly because we're in a union, but even pre-transition I was always paid well. I never felt like I would've been better off at work if I'd been a man.

My partner always liked that I was a tomboy and never put pressure on me to be more feminine. We had some issues with equal division of chores at the beginning but we've been pretty 50/50 for a while now and we've always had separate bank accounts and our own savings.

We've also known for a long time that we don't want children, so I was never looking at a future where I'd be sacrificing myself for others in the way most cis straight women do. In fact, my partner quit his job & moved countries for my sake.

Despite all of this, I still prefer being a man. Not much has changed for me socio-economically. If I'd stayed in my home country, I would've basically just gained transphobia as an issue. But I moved to a more accepting place so even that isn't as bad. My partner turned out to be supportive and is very much happy with me being his boyfriend now, so not even that aspect of my life changed since transitioning. I was very lucky.

I love being a man. Being on testosterone makes me feel like my body is finally mine and I've been riding the high of a much improved mental state since day 1 of starting T. I can only describe it like "what antidepressants wish they could do".

So if society wasn't gendered at all. If gender didn't exist and if misogyny wasn't real. If biology was the only thing that'd differ between people? Yeah, I'd still want T, top surgery & a hysterectomy. I'd still be a transsexual, and I'm pretty sure I'd still want to be a man.

[whitehairedanimeboyfriend]

Trans men DONT pass easier though. That's a myth. The majority of trans men are not hyper masculine bears with beards.

yeah that's my point. the problem is that a lot of people who know popular trans men on the internet only know of the rare ones that do pass very well, because they're the only ones seen as their gender being legitimate. Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but in my experience, in queer and progressive spaces, the bar for a trans man being seen as a man is set much higher than the bar for a trans woman being seen as a woman.

I want to believe in good faith it's because it's a lot more socially acceptable for women to be masculine than it is for men to be feminine. So a lot of people will see

someone reads as afab + has short boyish hair, no makeup, baggy clothes, etc = tomboy or butch

someone reads as amab + has long feminine hair, makeup, dresses, etc = this person is clearly trying to be seen as a woman and therefore is a woman that's the only explanation

it's not passing per se but it's a lot easier for trans women to telegraph that they're women. But basically the only way for a trans man to telegraph that we are men is if we look amab. The only people I know that never misgender me are the ones that didn't realize I was trans. (and I don't know how that happened because I do not pass.)

[inner-memoirs]

Something that has been said to me as a trans masc person is, "Well aren't you just a tomboy? Liking boyish stuff doesn't mean you have to be trans".

The foremost mistake people are making when they ask something like this is assuming that I don't know myself well enough to distinguish being a masculine woman from being an actual man. While it's true that liking boyish things doesn't make a woman a man, that isn't the point. Gender expression is different from gender identity (though sometimes it can be easy to confuse the two).

If you put a man in a dress, it does not make him a woman; it makes him a man wearing a dress. He knows he is a man, he feels it within himself regardless of any external factor. But if people keep insisting he is a woman, treat him as one, and he is not made aware that he has any other choice but to comply, then he will likely feel compelled to do so.

When I tell you that as a child I participated in boyish activities like playing in the mud and catching frogs, or felt left out when I wasn't included with the boys, I am giving you context that I have felt disconnected from being a girl ever since I began being aware that I was treated like one. I just didn't have the language to describe it until I was older, and even then I tried to suppress it.

Many trans masculine people have a hyper feminine phase in which we try extra hard to force ourselves to fit into the box that was originally prescribed to us, only to come out on the other side with confirmation of what we already had a deep suspicion of: we just aren't women, and there isn't anything we can do to change that.

I can relate to women and their experiences. I know what it's like to be treated as one by society, and I presented as one as I grew into adulthood. I have all the lived experience of being female, without the "soul" of one. When I am amongst a group of women, I notice that I am different. When I am called by "she" or "her", I feel the words grate on my nerves and I know that they do not belong to me.

However, when my friends call me "he", when my partner refers to me as his boyfriend, when a stranger accurately assumes that I am male, and I'm treated as such, I feel at home. It feels natural, the way one should feel when they are being referred to. I love being a man in a way that I never loved being a woman. I feel confident and secure with myself, like I finally fit into my own skin. I am belated when I see the way that my body hair has come in so handsomely, or how sharp my jawline has become. This is not even close to the same thing as being a "tomboy".

I can't speak for every trans person, but I'm not wrong in saying that the vast majority of trans people think very carefully and thoroughly about who they are and what they want. When we decide to transition, we are acknowledging that we will likely face additional hardships in exchange for being happier with ourselves and true to our identity as an individual.

The next time you feel compelled to question someone's identity, think about the fact that you do not know what it's like to live as them. You don't know the road they took to get to where they are today, how they really feel, or what they really want. You are imposing your own experiences and thoughts onto them. While some people, like me, write posts like this to help bring awareness and understanding, the truth is that you don't need to understand their identity in order to respect it. There are countless different human experiences that I will never live, but that does not make them any less real and valid than mine.

[aimlesswalker]

I just want to be some guy

As a trans man, I don’t really feel like I belong anywhere in the lgbt+ community because I’ll never be attractive to anyone (which is why I ID as queer but even then I feel outcast) and it…. it really hurts sometimes. I’m simultaneously too masculine and not masculine enough.

in the men who are attracted to men spaces, most people when they see me think I’m a twink because of being short/small and/or for being trans/nonbinary. They think I’m hairless, feminine, boyish, submissive, etc. I’m…. at this point in my life I am really really not. Testosterone has made me male and everything that entails. I’ve gained (healthy! good for me!) weight and my stomach sticks out, I’m covered in body hair, I am partway to balding. All the things that are conventionally unattractive about men. All the things that are demonized in trans men. I’m too masculine to fit their idea of a nonbinary person. But masculine in “the wrong way”. I have to either be muscular/fit or small and hairless to be wanted here. I don’t even count as a bear, you’d probably just call my shape a “dad bod”. This isn’t just some vague feeling I get in these spaces- people have legit said to me “oh I love twinks” or “oh I love femboys” and I have to awkwardly explain that no I’m not one actually. I’m not what they want me to be. And I’m really tired of people placing that expectation on me- that I’m a slender hairless twink who is submissive and likes bottoming. Just because I’m small and/or trans. so gross. 

and then in the women who are attracted to men spaces well… they’d never look twice at me. I’m short and not at all muscular/toned/fit. Again, I have gained weight, am hairy, and halfway to bald. Bedsides not being conventionally attractive- they usually want a man who can “provide”. I am disabled and can’t work. I can’t drive. I can’t give them flowers or pick them up for a date. I can’t be any of the things they’re looking for in a partner. Being disabled makes me seen as “less than”. Being dependent on other people is a trait that is endlessly mocked in men. I’m not masculine enough. 

so where the fuck does that leave me? I’m not even going to talk about how being aromantic in queer spaces alienates me further. I love testosterone, I love what it’s done for me and how I feel healthier on it. But like. fuck. I don’t feel like I’m ever going to be attractive to anyone. I never get to feel pretty or handsome. I never get to feel happy about my appearance anymore and that makes me so sad. I used to derive so much joy from picking out outfits and accessorizing and applying glittery make up. I’m too sick to leave the house ever so I don’t do those things anymore, besides the fact that I *can’t* present feminine anymore without risking my safety. People would assume I’m a trans woman and act accordingly because they see a man attempting to be feminine. I am fully man and fully nonbinary, but I never get to exist as both at the same time. I can’t be feminine without people invalidating/forgetting my manhood. I can’t be masculine without people invalidating/forgetting my nonbinary-ness. I’m too masculine for nonbinary spaces and too nonbinary for masculine spaces. I just…….. I get incredibly sad about this.

And people generally don’t care??? the sentiment seems to be that trans men who are masculine, who pass, who are stealth, etc don’t belong in the lgbt+ community, shouldn’t be in lgbt+ or queer spaces. They’re not wanted there because of being masculine. These spaces are only for “non-men”. But the second you talk about your struggles as a trans man as a reason for why you should be included, you get pegged as an owo twink femboy to most people. It’s always one or the other (demonized or infantilized) and I’m really fucking sick of it. It hurts. I just want to be some guy.

[baeddel]

is boymoding crossdressing? many such questions

it's interesting right? because in one respect i want to say, as a woman, when i wear female clothes, it is obviously not crossdressing. however, if you insist on this most of the uses of the term 'crossdressing' that have ever been said become impossible to understand. these are perhaps no more than two observations of the same phenomenon: the shallow, abstract, somewhat fictional system of gender which we learn and the deeply acquired sense of gender which often disagrees with how things should be. since i'm thinking about language all the time recently i want to make an analogy on that basis, perhaps between grammar and acquired language—after all most native speakers think they speak their own language a bit wrong and will often say, 'i say x, but you're supposed to say y...' we are capable of accomodating multiple points of view in this way.

and trans-, as in transgender, means exactly the same thing as cross-, as in crossdressing, anyway.

however isn't there something about 'going back', backpassing, using your deadname, and so forth, which feels very like a kind of crossdressing? once i settled on calling myself a trans woman i stopped doing a lot of things i used to do—wearing a lot of makeup and jewellery for example—even when i was not hiding who i was for safety reasons, because they no longer had any satisfaction for me. because i had to recloset in real life i stopped wearing my female clothes, and i had male clothes that i wore unhappily. but i then acquired a special, third set of clothes, which i would wear only in situations which were (to use what is i suppose now medical terminology) gender-affirming, such as calls with my trans friends, which were also menswear, for the reason that i was trying to do more of a masc or butch presentation. now i don't really do that, but it's something that i feel became quite common throughout the 2010s up to now, and i wonder if or how it existed previously, at least it seems common online, which is that transfems, when around other transfems, want to appear more boyish or masculine, and passing is not interesting and might even be a bit shameful. especially among girls who are my age and have been in the scene for a while. and which you might interpret as a kind of specifically in-group form of crossdressing proper to a situation where camabs wearing women's clothing is expected rather than surprising. i have known some trans men who look and behave femininely for similar reasons but i don't know enough to say it's the same phenomena. anyway it reminds me of something that Jackson Crawford, an Old Norse youtuber guy, talked about, which is that where he lives in the South in the US when he was younger you would have to take off your stetson hat when you went in a diner because that was the decorum, and if you were sitting in a diner with your hat on it was seen as extremely rude. but today if you go in a diner guys like that are all wearing their stetson hats, and he says it's because there's a change in the signficiance of the hat, and what became most important was signalling your group affiliation to the out-group rather than the in-group signalling of your knowledge of proper decorum. well maybe there is something like that, we have developed at least in some contexts a situation where in-group signalling is more important, because when you were younger the kind of expectations you were chafing against were enforced by mom and dad, while today they are enforced by WPATH.

[hellokittyballsack]

WAIT. DO U ALSO HC DRIX AS TRANSFEM. OR AM I. LOSING MY MIND.

I DO IN A WAY ? ITS COMPLEX SORRY

i dont like labels but i do refer to drix as she/her because i see her motherly love and gentle soul that she carries around on her sleeve. i love her sm... ARGHH also i love ur pfp

(im gonna use this opportunity to rant about labels since i was looking for an opportunity to share this somewhere NOT MAD AT U OR ANYTHING LOL TLDR: hairy balding cis men are beautiful women the way they are ♥️ masculinity can be feminine vice versa if you let it be🖖)

you can skip blue text and just read the green part, blue's more of a personal experience laadeedaa!!

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

with a lot of my fav cis male characters i tend to slowly start calling them she/her the more i love them, dont really know why but i think thats just me projecting since im a trans man so i cant really enjoy femininity authentically, yknow? (or the way i want to) ide get misgendered since the body i was born with is "female" or "feminine". 🍅 🍅 🍅

plus im almost certain if i was somehow flipped and born a cis man ide still end up transitioning(not medically but thats a personal thing) and then yearning for masculinity, simply because i hate how these bodies limit the perception people have of me. i want to be my own person, identify as me first, not to have my label define me or my identity for that matter bc identity is SO much more complex than just one word.

its like Ying Yang but sadly i cant ever be a true neutral because that would mean dressing androgynous which i cant do because me, dressing androgynous, would just be a boyish girl. and me dressing masculine would get the results of "being seen as androgynous" because of how my body is naturally. but is that fair at all? so the only thing i can do to be seen as masculine is to medically change my body? ☹️

and i dont want to be seen as androgynous either at all, i love my male identity, dont love what comes with it but love it. and want to be perceived as masculine, ..but being androgynous is the only way you can build up your identity on your own without someone viewing you with a gender filter on their glasses.(sorry for the shit metaphor) and after people find out whats in your pants they will immediately talk to you differently and that SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if i want to put on a dress that doesnt make me a woman or a feminine man, let me enjoy this dress, masculine-ly ‼️‼️🤲 PLEASE

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

(⚠️this isnt relative to the asked question as explained prior, use labels all you want guys but know its okay if someone doesnt use labels ect ect. just explaining the jist here quickly⚠️) sometimes people use labels to put others into boxes and focus on "whats womanly" / "whats manly" --- so its difficult to have people respect your identity while "breaking the rules" (their rules) of said identity. aswell as people focusing on the physical. (body and such) rather than finding beauty in feminine and masculine features you have without that lowering your validity of said identity. this being said that usually happens in heteronormative spaces BUT it occasionally slips in into the lgbtq community.

masculinity can be femininity vice versa, its not just black and white 🫂 body hair can be both for example, even in "masculine" areas, it still can be feminine. and that should go for any body part, clothes, action, interest or anything for that matter ♥️♥️

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

like with peter strahm from Saw (aswell as mark hoffman) thru months of writing scenarios between them and my brainrot i now see them as the most beautifully gorgeous women and that includes all their hairy appendages. that doesnt necessarily mean i headcanon them as transfem, i see their "male" bodies to be the peak of feminine beauty, as well as their masculinity. i mean that i dont "genderbend" them and turn them into cis women, and i dont add or take away from the original character, longer hair or a sudden change of clothes, or trans scars even though im trans myself and will probably end up with such scars (in a perfect world i would be seen as male with or without boobs) theyre perfect the way they are and i love them dearly oh so much 🫂🫂🫂🫂....(not saying its bad to do any of that, live your truth) i may draw them wearing dresses or lipstick time to time but thats not what defines their identity as women, who says theyre 100% only women either fuck it lets go full genderqueer!! theyll never be cis women yes, but thats not what my goal is at all. trans love everybody ♥️ transexual pride!! ♥️♥️(and even if you dont identify as trans but still arent cis ♥️♥️youre valid however you feel, whenever ⭐) But that doesnt mean i headcanon them as trans also, theyre them, and i want to see them shine, not being shadowed by a label or limited by one, that goes for Drix too. that doesnt mean im against such label, though theres really no way of explaining without it SOUNDING like i am, go fuckall with your headcanons imagination is free!!!! just labels arent for me AND THATS OKAY

theyre all my girls who are boys who are girls MUAH 💋

[wheresmyidentity]

I don’t know where to begin. I was going to use this space to talk and vent and maybe someone out there will get it or understand or maybe not. Maybe it’s just for me. But the whole theme is my gender and identity.

I was always told, from a young age, I was pretty. They used to joke and say I would get all the boys and I could get men to do anything. Probably too young that was said to me. I’ve always been open about liking girls. I never tried to hide it and I never felt ashamed. Honestly, liking girls was never a crisis or worry of mine - how funny. I mean, sure, I did when I fucked a girl for the first time and had a break down in my closet (of all places). But not really because I liked girls, but because I cheated on my boyfriend. So being Gay or Queer or Bi or Pan or whatever identity for my sexuality I prefer wasn’t a big deal. I watched girl on girl shit probably way too young too. Never straight shit.

But it’s when I met my first nonbinary/trans person that my world screeched to a halt. They were so gloriously - and funny enough I met them on here. They went by the name Cecil and I was in awe with how they carried themselves. They used They/He pronouns and despite being strict in this, they dressed and appeared feminine. Dresses, florals, pinks, pastel gothic almost. Lipstick and beautiful makeup. It hadn’t really clicked in my brain until then about gender and identity. Like someone could be a he and present like a “girl.”

When I was in the fifth grade we learned about periods. I went home in tears and locked myself in my room. I screamed “I don’t want to be a girl!” My nana found it hilarious but it is my first clear memory of feeling uncomfortable in my skin. I had pulled at my skin and sobbed on the floor, begging god to fix it. I remember bra shopping for the first time and being horrified and embarrassed.

By middle school, my body had already become sexualized. I never liked two piece swimsuits but was pushed to wear bikinis to show off my “perfect” body. Ones that squished my growing boobs together. When going out my hair had to be curled or straightened perfectly. I learned in sixth grade how to do the perfect eyeliner and how to apply makeup. I perfected it by eighth grade. In sixth grade, I made the volleyball team and we would be changing in the locker room. Nana took me to buy Victoria secret bras and thongs. I was 12. Push up bras with lace, frills, underwear that said things like “bite me” and “naughty.” I went to a Halloween party and by age 12-13 we all wore the “sexy” costumes in hopes of getting boys attentions.

I was taught to be a sex symbol and pleasing to look at and hyper femme from my earliest teen years.

I look back though and I was pushed to do “boyish” things like sports and hated them. How could I possibly ever question my gender. I’m not hypermasculine. I was never interested in anything that falls under “boy”. I don’t care for cars or working out or sports or beer or dinosaurs. I thought boys were annoying but at the same time I was put here for them to enjoy. That was my strength. My power.

I hide. Feminine is what I know. Girls are strong and wonderful and I want so bad to fit in that. I look up to women, not men. Men are stupid and shallow and gullible. And yes, women are who hurt me, never really men. But it’s not like I blame them or hate them. I can hide behind the makeup that makes me beautiful. I can hide behind pretty clothing. I never can explain it properly and I’m hoping I can soon. One day. This is just the background info.

[oofensteinsmonster]

Detransitioning.

First and foremost I want to address the transphobic people/right wing/terfs in the room and say this isn't for you. You are not allowed to take my story and use it to deny gender affirming care to trans folk. If anything I want it ABUNDANTLY clear that my access to both hormones and spaces to explore my identity is what rooted my self esteem and made me who I am today, even if my identity looks different than it did a year ago, and I have absolutely no regrets about the decisions I made for my body. I was informed of the process every step of the way, I did all of my research, I knew exactly what was going to happen. Kapeesh?

Kaposh.

With that out of the way.

I will be referring to my genders in the third person when I feel it is relevant to alluding to how the situations made me feel. I do not have multiple personalities, but the following situations did cause me to disassociate from aspects of myself.

My experience with my gender has always been at odds. I grew up without a positive and consistent mother figure in a misogynistic southern state, and the male figures in my life were turbulent and terrifying. This mattered to me as someone who mirrors what they see in order to understand the behavior. My friends before I became a teenager were mostly boys because I enjoyed rough housing, games, and exploring the neighborhood. When the adults started separating my age group by sex I had a hard time relating to the girls in my age group who were already flirting with the boys and trying on make up. It wasn't that I didn't like boys (or girls for that matter), quite the opposite, and it wasn't that I didn't like make up or clothes or traditionally feminine things, it's just that I didn't have a lot of experience with that stuff and when I did try it out I was laughed at because I wasn't allowed to be feminine at that point, but because I was a girl I also wasn't allowed to be masculine.

If I played with dolls I was called a sissy, and if I built forts with the guys and wore traditionally boyish clothes I was called a gay slur by my father, or by the older neighborhood boys…and eventually by my friends as well.

There wasn't a safe place for me to retreat into as far as identity went, every outfit felt alien, and eventually I fell into being reclusive and kept to myself.

When I entered my 20s and moved to Texas I was introduced to the idea of different gender identities and it felt right.

I was able to experiment, and for the first time I had positive feedback. I could be feminine, I could be masculine, I could be both and neither. It was liberating and for most of the decade, while I had considered physical changes, like hrt, I was mostly content with where I was and who I was.

This was until my last relationship.

For the sake of the story let's call him Red. Red came into my life at a time that I desired a more assertive lover, and because I am also kinky, I needed a Dominate. This is just my prefered dynamic, I don't buy into that alpha male “all women/femmes need to be subjugated” bullshit, it's a kink that happens to coexist with my more docile and domestic nature, but I can and will still put on my own pair of boots and be a boss bitch when the situation calls for it you feel me? Great. I also want to mention that other than this situation I've had nothing but great experiences in the kink community and am not trying to blame kink on my trauma in any way, shape, or form. It is a community founded on consent, and the people that ignore that are ignoring what makes said community what it is and what it stands for.

Carrying on.

Red started off being everything I thought I needed. I mistook tolerance as acceptance and celebration because I wanted so badly for everything he fed me to be true. He was my “twin flame” *vomit* my Sir, my Master, he saw what he thought I needed and he gave it to me.

At a price….always….at a price.

Without going too much into detail, because I still have a lot of process and heal on that front, he took my feminine side …and used her well past the point of my consent. She was raped in every sense of the word. Abused. Objectified. My traits were no longer my own, they were simply a fetish. I wasn't beautiful anymore, I was “sexy”. My name that I had fashioned for myself for 10 years was discarded for one that he gave me, which in D/s is fine, except he'd only use my real one when he was upset or angry. I was no longer myself, I was what he wanted me to be, and because of that and because of never being given time or space to come back into myself I eventually completely detached from my femininity. I buried her far beneath where I thought he couldn't find her just to keep her safe.

But I still had my masculine side, who

…did not embody my rage and grief but rather helped me juggle them. He held them when I was tired of carrying them around, and when the time came he helped me stand my ground when I finally got rid of Red and his influence in my life.

It was easy for me to assume that this was my true form, and because I'd always batted around the idea of hormones, I decided to try them out. It was a low dose, because in my state of mind I understood that diving in head first was not the wisest decision ( FOR ME…you hear me terfs? F o r. m e. ) I started going by a different name, I cut my hair (note: Korean boy band hair not my best look ) I put away all my dresses ( in my car, just in case ) ( clothes don't have a gender but this was my process ) and that's what I embodied for 7 months.

And I had a wonderful experience with it! My support structure was unmatched, my household never struggled with addressing me by what I wanted to be addressed by, my friends were super supportive the whole journey, my assigned Doctor was extremely clear and concise and never once did anyone make me feel “less than”. It was part of me I needed to pay attention to and explore, even without the trauma that led me there I still think I would have ended up wanting to experiment the way that I did. My masculinity became a place to rest, he said to me “ Let me take it from here for a while. Heal. “ and I will always be thankful for that.

It wasn't until after I finished grieving the break up that I realized I might not be a man. Plus, the changes to my body weren't feeling as at home as I wanted them to. More on that later. So I stopped using the gel for a little while just to see how I felt…and I never picked it back up.

Eventually the parts of me started gravitating back together, and while they don't fit the same way they used to, they are at home within me for the first time in years.

And if I hadn't had the freedom to discover that for myself…if my access to gender affirming health care had been denied or I had been shamed, or put on some kind of fucking registry like Ken Paxton was trying to collect ( fuck that guy ) or thrown into some kind of conversation therapy, I'd still be lost. I'd be so much worse off than I am.

People who detransition make up less than 1% of trangender folks. I am the only person I know that has ever decided to stop. I am the only person I know whose decisions were swayed more-so by personal traumas rather than a sense of long standing identity. I didn't have a sense of identity. And maybe if gender roles hadn't been so strictly enforced/contradictory when I was a child, maybe if I had been celebrated in my curiosity and my fluidity I would have gotten here a lot sooner. Which isn't to say that I am in any way resentful of having gotten here a little later than most.

So if you were wondering if I regret it, the answer is no.

This next segment is to answer any potential questions about the physical changes I experienced while on Tgel, how they made me feel, and how my body detransitioned after I stopped using it.

Note that every single body is different, so what I went through is not going to look the same for someone else.

Skin: As an autistic with sensory issues, while I knew my skin was going to change…it did not change the fact that I hated how itchy everything suddenly was. Your skin becomes more rough with T, and hairy. I never really experienced acne just because my genetics are pretty good on that front, but I did get significant leg hair growth. This did not go away when I stopped taking T, which I expected. But that's ok because it's just hair and I just needed to get a more durable razor. Big whoop.

Also I did have some very hard to notice fuzz under my chin, but that kind of went away. Along with the roughness.

Voice changes: I actually love my voice now. It was a few octaves higher before T, and I feel like it's more bodied and lovely. Not masculine, more androgynous. It didn't go back to normal, and I'm perfectly happy with that.

Bottom growth (tmi warning): I don't care about sharing this information so long as you don't ask for pictures you weirdos. But I started off with a teeeeeeeeny tiny little clit even in comparison to others. So now it's just kind of an average size, and hey I have better orgasms now. Win/win.

Body temperature: before T I was cold natured, and now I'm hot natured. That hasn't changed yet, and I'm not sure if it's going to. I feel pretty neutral about it at least until I try cuddling someone with the same body heat as me in which case *I hate it*.

Periods: still haven't had mine since I stopped which… I probably need to go see what's going on about that but from what I gathered it does sometimes take the better part of a year to restart the menstrual cycle. I'm not in a hurry, though. That was one of the perks of being on T, instantly stopped my period.

Will check back in if there's any issues on that front, however I will say that I have pcos which causes unpredictable cycles to begin with so, again, my body is different.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask, I'm posting this publicly because I want more awareness about detransitioning and debunking a lot of what I feel is being weaponized against the transgender community regarding it.

I will not react or respond to bigotry or hatred, I will delete any fetishizing of my identity or my body, I want this corner of the internet to remain safe.

Wrap up:

Remember that no matter how many changes you experience in life, you are just as valid today as you were yesterday and will be tomorrow. Nobody can tell you who you are, or who you're not.

Whatever you're doing, so long as it isn't hurting anyone or yourself, you're doing it perfectly. 🥰

Be well my loves,

Theo (She/they/ and sometimes it)

[vacantgodling]

7 - Would they ever consider a sexual relationship with someone they aren’t attracted to? Under which circumstances? 5 - Do they care about their gender identity “matching” their presentation in the way their society expects? Why or why not? 12 - Does their society impose gender roles on people? How has this impacted them? 13 - How is transness viewed in their society?

for anyone you think would be fun

~ @void-botanist

bc i'm being abnormal about azelie and sjaak i'm going to do this for them. crazed about them even.

this wip is heavy so i'm gonna put tw for just.... heavy subject matter regarding sex, transness and body modification. and stick it under a cut.

5 - Do they care about their gender identity “matching” their presentation in the way their society expects? Why or why not?

azelie -> not really; she's quite masc. though she does wear dresses, she keeps her hair cut short and somewhat 'boyish' (for the time) and much of this has to do with being on the fringes of society (vampirism) but also wanting to differentiate herself from rosita and matrixell, who are very very traditionally feminine.

sjaak -> yes, i suppose, but not in a way where he thinks about it? in his mind he is and always will be a man, he's never thought about being anything other than. the intersection of being biracial (he's black/white) in 17-1800s is definitely going to cause somewhat of a gender cognitive dissonance because of his struggles with feeling like he's even human (and being a werewolf doesn't help) but he's never felt like. trans/nb basically.

7 - Would they ever consider a sexual relationship with someone they aren’t attracted to? Under which circumstances?

azelie -> yes, and she already has in some ways; she's not really attracted to sjaak but the two of them sleep together around the time they first meet. and she's definitely not interested in silvano but 😬 she did what she needed to do to protect biscella. because she's ageless (a vampire) and was born in such a way that is traumatic (vampire birth is oof in this wip) she has actually very little mental connection to her own body and only sees it as a vessel to further her goals. romance and mental attraction is more sacred to her in many ways.

sjaak -> hahaha he's literally so in the closet its funny. generally speaking though no. esp given the time period (late 17-early 1800s) he's AGGRESSIVELY attracted to women to the point of self detriment (re: this whole story) and he wouldn't ever sleep with a man... unless we remove ourselves from the main wip and i think about multidues of later in history land since he's also virtually immortal so take of that what you will.

12 - Does their society impose gender roles on people? How has this impacted them?

in general yes--i mean this is a historical supernatural fic so it IS actually for once set in an identifiable historical time period and you Know that europeans were extrememly rigid about gender presentation

when i think about their respective 'alternative' societies outside of the real world sphere, vampires are more uptight than werewolves--at least in the coven that azelie is currently apart of with the rest of the casavantes. the reason for this being is that essentially, their coven is a cult. luis (the father figure) defected from the main cult that he was apart of who saw humans as a source of food, with his half-sister-wife matrixell and created his own MUCH smaller coven wherein he took away her and their daughter rosita's ability to reproduce on their own (bc vampiric women can its a whole thing) and that plays into the role of what he believes a 'proper woman' is, and something that rosita and matrixell buy into. azelie however, doesn't. and she hasn't let herself be defanged, nor has she bent to the whims of their new cult which in a way is like not performing womanhood in their eyes correctly. its a loooooot of nonsense going on in this wip.

when it comes to werewolves, there's actually more of a lax structure of gender when it comes to the actual people who are turned; as anyone can become a werewolf by consuming moonstone, and so everything is not broken up by gender man/woman but more like breeders/wolves. breeders are those in the pack who haven't turned because their goal is to procreate with broodmothers and bring up more warriors into the fold. because true wolves who hunt vampires (like sjaak) are infertile, there isn't the whole dichotomy of being a right or wrong man/woman because the real value is being strong to slay vampires. this is why dalal has such revere in the pack DESPITE being a woman because she's extremely strong and has slain hundreds of vampires. if any of this makes sense. ik its not very traditional way of thinking about it, but that's what makes sense to me to explain this pff. but, for sjaak, this causes a lot of internal conflict. he was raised in yknow, regular society before he was turned into a wolf so his already complex struggles with being a biracial (black) man in relation to gender is OOF. but now he can't even do the parts of being a man that he was taught all this time were important: provide (apart of the pack now he can't work traditional labor jobs for a myriad of reasons) or sire children (infertile). so aside from everything else going on in this wip, something else is that sjaak struggles in a cis way about not feeling man enough, but also in a trans-adjacent way because of not having a choice of being who he is now (werewolf tm) and somehow liking who he is becoming despite it all (which is a stretch of a metaphor, i know, but it kind of describes how Eye feel regarding being a man/man adjacent in queer society when sooooo many alphabet mafia people hate men. its a lot of commentary in this wip ok).

and speaking of transness--

13 - How is transness viewed in their society?

if we ignore the real world and just stick to the world of vampires and werewolves: overall vampires are very accepting of a variation of 'transness'. vampire women have the capability of creating life on their own without men (no dick needed but cool if you got one in my book, in practice... its 1700 something you tell me), and the reason i consider it trans (in a way) is because even though vampires are an alternative and trangressive society, there is still the backdrop of the real world behind it and how vampire women behave is certainly not how all of women behave irl during this time. however, there are some like luis who aren't a fan, and yknow, we essentially genetially mutilating people (defanging) becuse of it. so yike. but luis is an outlier in vamp society.

similarly, werewolves with their whole anyone can become a wolf thing, transness in a way is acceptable if i think about it through that lens. not all women have to become broodmothers and bear/sire children, they can become werewolves instead. it is still... misogynistic though because more women become broodmothers and bedwarmers to the pack than men do, but in a way, becoming a werewolf as a woman is a form of transness in a way.

[curhartwrites]

Cultivated Queerness

Much of the time, we consider gender as something individual and innate - something that is born in us, even if we don't discover it until later in our lives. When I began to realize that I'm trans-masculine, it was tempting to then look back on the previous years of my life and paint them with the wide brush of secret boyhood. It's true that hindsight is twenty-twenty, and of course there were signs (like my love of Peter Pan, and my textbook-transmasc insistence on carrying as many stacked chairs as I could), but I didn't navigate my childhood or early adolescence "pretending" to be a girl, and certainly not consciously. There were definitely times when being a girl felt like playing dress-up, but being a boy felt that way, too. All gender was dress-up to me when I was younger. Sometimes it still is. Figuring out who I am is largely a process of rummaging through a big box of things that other people have left behind in my life, trying to find what feels good and what doesn't. My experience of gender now, as an adult nonbinary trans person whose gender weathervane spins most reliably toward the masculine, is still shaped and informed by the experience of girlhood - and in particular, southern-fried queer girlhood. Yes, some aspects of gender are inherent. Yes, there are people in the world who have always known. But gender is also cultural. We learn what gender is, what it looks like and how it speaks and walks, from the people around us. And during the time in my life when I thought that I would grow up to be a woman, my models for womanhood were deeply and subversively queer. My mother is queer, and her friends are the kinds of Appalachian butch women who spring fully formed from the wet clay ground at lakeside music festivals, cigarette in hand. They have buzz cuts and wear men's clothes. They rescue dogs, play guitar, keep rifles in their trucks, compete in chili cook-offs, and curse like sailors. They're loud and fat and strong, and their hands smell like tomato vines. I have loved these women as long as I have been alive. Those are the women who raised me, and my relationship to masculinity was shaped in part by their example. Their culture. Later, when I left my hometown and began to explore what it meant to be trans-masc, I began to drink in the warm, kinky leather-and-whisky brand of masculinity that is so historically holy to the realm of queer men. This, too, felt like something that belonged to me (or something to which I might belong). But there are overlaps and intersections between the world of trailer park dykes and the world of smoky-bearded bears. There's a common thread here of rebellion, power subversion, community-building, and intense loyalty. That common thread is the tightrope I am walking in my journey toward self actualization. It shifts. It changes shape, comes in waves, moves with the moon and the seasons. The rage in me is a woman's rage. The tenderness is boyish. I have in me the warring desires to be seen as a safe port in the storm for queer women, and to be welcomed with an arm around my shoulders into the Greek camaraderie of queer manhood. The other night I had a dream about giving birth (to the child of my trans-feminine wife, who is growing out her beard again right now and looks impossibly, ethereally beautiful). After a childhood spent running barefoot in back yards full of singing frogs while a coven of dykes sat around a fire close by, I still want these things: to carry a child and feed them from the wellspring of life that is my own body. To care for my home. To nurture. To be called "Momma," maybe. I don't know.

The love that I have since received from queer men who have welcomed me into their spaces and helped me to carve a home for myself has also shaped who I am. The physical freeness of queer masculinity has helped liberate me from much of the trauma that I have held in my body all my life. It reminds me, in a lot of ways, of the Good Ol' Boys I grew up with back home who stood around someone's fixer-upper chewing "backer," boys who loved their families and weren't afraid to hug each other or cry on one another's shoulders. Here is another overlap. Another common thread whose stitches hold together the disparate pieces of what I consider to be my Self. The leather boys in the alley are the redneck boys in the field. These experiences of gender, these bright impressions left on the insides of my eyelids that inform how I move through the world, were not there when I was born. They were given to me. They are gifts imparted by the people who have loved me into being. Treasures.

[a-confused-teen-venting]

Quick question for any girls, trans guys or afab genderqueers with very short “boyish” hair:

Do I need to go to a barber to get a short haircut?

I’ve been trying to get a short boyish hairstyle for almost a year now, but all I ever go to are women hairdressers who give a feminine spin on it or don’t know how to properly give me the haircut I want.

Apart from that, I’ve been told by them that “I shouldn’t cut my hair short” and that “I look beautiful with long hair” which just makes me second guess how I’ll look with the hairstyle.

I’ve become more insecure about my hair not looking the way I wish it did, which end up turning into dysphoria breakdowns and getting impulsive thoughts of cutting it myself.

Any advise or help some of you can give me, I’ll greatly appreciate it!

[coldhearthotlove]

So many people homophobic/transphobic people on Twitter claim that young FTM transgender boys/men are actually just “straight tomboys going through a trendy phase”; and they’ll “outgrow it” once they hit puberty - and become super feminine women married to men…

But..?

I’ve known I was trans since I was a toddler in the 90s?? (I had ZERO exposure to anything LGBT+ related as a kid. I didn’t even have any (openly) gay family members). So there was no one to “influence” me…

I’ve l ways preferred boyish things (especially clothes)? The only reason I didn’t “seem” more “masculine” as a kid was because I was always yelled at or made fun of whenever I tried. So to make everyone else happy, I acted like a “normal” girl…

I only ever had crushes on girls (as a kid), and only ever was romantically/sexuality attracted to women?? I never had a crush on a boy as a kid/teen; and I never was into men now as an adult. I only ever see myself marrying a woman…

I’ve identified as transmasculine for years, and my feelings about my gender identity haven’t changed…

I’m 30 now…

When is the day supposed to come when I realize I’m actually a (cis) woman, start turning extremely feminine, start getting attracted to men, and want to “settle down” and get married to a man and have kids??

I’m extremely curious to know…

Because according to Twitter homophobic/transphobes this is supposed to happen one day as an adult…