#i'm the only one. i'm the only cis person of some of my friend groups!

[genderqueerdykes]

your post makes no sense? all of the identities that you named are NOT cis men??? and quite frankly it feels transphobic for you to consider them that

i'm a trans woman so i'm part of the group i'm commenting on. you do realize that a bigender trans woman who identifies as a trans woman and a cis man is still partially a cis man and that's not transphobic and it doesn't invalidate their trans womanhood, right? you do realize that a transfemme cis man is still a cis man and that doesn't invalidate their femmehood, right? you do realize a transfemme genderfluid person who identifies as a cis man is still partially a cis man and it doesn't invalidate their other genders, right? being bigender doesn't completely erase 1/2 of the identity. being a woman doesn't cancel out being a man. are you seriously saying that because that person has a queer identity means that it totally erases the fact that they are literally also identifying in plain english that they are also a cis man?

immersing yourself in the transfeminine community will help with this drastically. i don't know you or your history, but most of my IRL friends are transfeminine, myself included. there are many of my transfem friends who never want to be considered a man, and that's perfectly fine. however, i would say a good 1/3rd of the trans women i've met have also still identified as a cis gay man on some level. without shame, without it taking away their womanhood. existing alongside each other; parallel. if you meet and befriend a good number of transfeminine people you will find out that a lot of transfems identify as cis men and trans women at the same time. that's not new. many trans women identify as cis gay men and trans women at the same time. like, it's an extremely common thing. bigender means having two genders- one is trans woman, the other is cis man for people who identify this way. this person is a trans woman, a cis man, and a bigender person.

this doesn't make that person a bigender person, and a trans woman only. why do you think it's okay to completely erase that person's male identity? why do you think it's okay to completely ignore someone's manhood for the sake of their other identity? cis manhood isn't "icky". it doesn't get cancelled out by queerness. them partially being a cis man does not invalidate their trans womanhood. wake the fuck up, you're being transmisogynstic as hell right now and it's embarrassing.

a question you must ask yourself: why are you insinuating that it is transphobic to refer to someone correctly? my post specifically referred to trans women who also identify as cis men in their own words. why, in your mind, is this a bad thing? you MUST ask yourself why it's "transphobic" to acknowledge these identities and refer to these individuals correctly. you must ask yourself why you're putting your comfort before someone else's representation. there are transfemme cis men. there are transfeminine genderfluid people who identify as cis men when they are men. there are non binary cis men. why do you think that cis men cannot be queer, or trans? why are you assuming that a trans woman being a cis man at the same time is transphobic? why

this reeks of "woman cannot be man at the same time or else woman get cancelled out"

what is confusing about trans women having multiple genders? what's wrong with a bigender, multigender, genderfluid, genderqueer, genderfuck, gender non conforming, and/or intersex trans woman having a male identity that's also cis? what's wrong with that? how does that erase or "conflict" with the rest of their identity in any capacity?

there are bigender trans men who are cis women and trans men at the same time. there are bigender trans women who are cis men and trans women at the time. literally how does that not make sense. please explain to me how it doesn't make sense. every single person who has told me i'm not making sense hasn't told me why. please explain to me why you proudly and loudly saying that bi/multigender trans women don't exist is okay, but me fighting for people to understand that they do is transphobic.

stop virtue signalling and shoot the cop in your mind dead. in your attempt to look like a hero and earn brownie points all you did was show that you literally don't understand multigender, genderqueer, non binary, and other gender vast experiences. trans women won't magically like you more now because you decided to show everyone that you think it's transphobic to call someone who overtly in their own words identifies as a cis man, a cis man.

cis men aren't the devil. calm down and stop freaking the hell out over the fact that you can in fact be a cis man and a trans woman at the same time. the sun will still rise. the world will keep turning. it's not transphobic to refer to someone by the terms they ask you to use. get over yourself on this one, anon. that's your cross to bear: you are the transphobe. do yourself a favor and look into multigenderism before you decide to comment on trans theory again

you thought yourself into a corner and you can't find your way out.

[whatdaikesneed]

One of the girls I broke in my early 20s is happily married to a man now. I went to their wedding! I even fucked her after the rehearsal dinner. (As hot as it is when women cheat on their partners for me, in this case they're open, and he was off with two of the bridesmaids.)

She was a trans man when we met, and "straight," meaning she only dated girls. Skinny, and little, but with some intense curves. This was before binders were everywhere, and she has absolutely gigantic tits. Great ass, too. And she had real fakeboy energy about it, she had a lot of tight and low cut shirts, like she was just daring people to call her a girl.

She started taking T while I knew her, and she got so horny about it. We got a lot closer as friends because of that: I was the only person in the group who wasn't kinda put off by how much more sexual she got in regular conversation.

We started hanging out when she did her shot every week, because she had started really sexualizing it. I started helping her do it, and she would pull her pants way down and show me her whole ass when I put the needle in. She liked seeing me get hard over her.

One time, when she'd been on it for about four months, she asked me if I wanted to see her bottom growth, and I said yeah. Her clit had gotten huge. Apparently the order in which changes happen in HRT can be pretty random, and for her, it seems like her body went full tilt on growing that clit.

She stroked it with two fingers to make sure it got all the way hard, and kept gently playing with it as I got down on my knees in front of her to get a close look. I'm sure she could feel my breath on her labia. She started stroking herself harder, then she said "fuck," like something in her had broken, and she grabbed my head and pulled me into her cunt.

That became part of the ritual. I'd come over, inject her bare ass with a drug that made her clit swell and caused debilitating horniness, then I'd suck on that clit until she came three or four times. And of course, that escalated. I'd masturbate while I ate her. Then she'd slide down to my cock and put it in her. I'd suck on her tits. She'd eat my cum.

We started skipping the shot part and going straight to fucking. Her sex drive never returned to pre-T levels. In a couple months she came out to our friends as a cis lesbian, while she was still gorging herself on my cock every Thursday.

When I had to move for work, we kept our weekly appointment via phone sex, and she kept me up to date with fresh nudes, her own and the ones girls were sending her. Somewhere in there she started dating men, too, and I guess started saying she was bisexual.

The guy she ultimately married caught us together in his bed when I was visiting her in Providence. This dude went full cuck in zero seconds flat—she made eye contact and kept riding me, and he took his dick out and started stroking to us. He came fast, and she looked at me and said "That's why you're underneath me right now."

After that she started letting her friends use him as a sex toy, and he's never been happier. I drop in unannounced and fuck her in front of him whenever I'm in Rhode Island.

[dont-offend-the-bees]

Fuck I hate being an adult. I need a more adult adult to help with the volatile emotional situation.

[featureenvyproductions]

"Why does everything need to be Gay now it's so shallow to make men attracted to each other when they could be Pure Platonic Friends -"

oops sorry I can't hear you over the sound of me Doing What I Want Forever because I have been watching movies, TV, and animation since the 80s and have watched enough shallow heterosexual romances that would have been stronger as mlm-wlw solidarity friendships to fill the space between stars in a galaxy

[bitchkay]

"Did you just she/her me?😕" Me asking if someone still perceives me as a woman because I'm offended they misgendered me.

easy to get over

—

"... you think I'm lying when I say your attractive..?😕" Me being offended that someone dosen't still perceive me as a woman because I have a crush on them and they imply that their straight and I have mixed feelings because yes you did gender me correctly and I love you for it but that means you're not attracted to me because I'm not straight or a woman.

i'm in shambles

[autumnoakes]

"why don't you correct people more when they use the wrong pronouns for you?" because that would mean outing myself. full stop.

i do not feel comfortable enough with my identity and in my community to be entirely, 100%, out to people i barely even know. it takes a lot of vulnerability for me to stop and correct someone i've only spoken to in a classroom or professional setting and go "actually, i'm not a woman and my pronouns are they/them." much less constantly remind people about it. yes, i do put my pronouns wherever i can, and the people who i do feel comfortable around know and respect my pronouns and identity, but not everyone does.

also, there isn't always a place for me to share my pronouns judgement free. a lot of the time, if i want to, i have to voluntarily out myself. which is not something i'm always up to doing.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

aita for calling out someone for being manipulative towards a trans friend? Names have been changed for privacy reasons and TLDR at the end because this is long.

I (24f) am cis but have had a lot of trans friends (binary, nonbinary, and neopronoun) throughout the years and am very supportive so i take this very seriously. So I met this girl my first year in college (we were 18 at the time) and we became friends. We're polar opposites, she talks a lot and I don't, she parties a lot and I like to do more sophisticated things, she's a typical extrovert basically, and I'm more introverted. Anne (24f) was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. I don't know when, she just told me this years ago. I've seen tiktoks about bpd and researched Google about bpd a little so I know all about how they have fave persons and will "mimic" people in the friend group and become clingy, manipulate, etc. I've seen pics of her in high school, noticed that she was a theater kid, she said she was good at acting and even said she thinks her bpd helped with her acting although I'm not sure how, but she said she only joined the theater club because a boy she had a crush on was in theater. That should've been my first red flag but I was naive. She has a degree in something else (not theater) because our second year in college her favorite character in a TV show did a certain job, she got interested in that, and now she also does that as a living. She doesn't talk about her bpd, she's only mentioned it a handful of times. I can count on one hand how many times. And I get it because she said someone once told her people with bpd should be sterilized and not be allowed near children. Which is really messed up and I hate that someone said that.

However on with the situation. One of our friends Mike (25m) is a trans man. We met him four years ago. He's very handsome, broody, introverted, intelligent, great listener, very accepting and understanding, similar to me but opposite to her. Now we didn't know he was trans until two years ago, because I asked him on a date and he turned me down, and when I asked why he told me that he was mostly T4T and only viewed me as a friend. We were like woah you're trans, okay that's cool, etc. He explained that he was lucky enough to get on puberty blockers and transition young etc which is why he passes. I said okay I'm not trans and you're mostly T4T fair enough.

Well last year Anne suddenly tells us that she is trans too. She says she's bigender. She says she is okay with either she her or he him because she feels like a man and a woman at the same time. Some days she's a woman, some days she's a man, and some days she's both, according to her. She says she does not like they them pronouns. Suddenly her and Mike are spending all this extra time together. Last month he confided in me that he thinks he's in love with her, after years of him only seeing her as a friend, and then they started officially dating.

Here's the problem: she has not changed her outward appearance, her name, started any kind of medical stuff, joined any groups, bought a binder etc. We all continue to call her she and her because she fully presents as female and doesn't have a problem with it. Also she's very effeminate in body language, the way she talks, etc. I know technically I could call her a he or a him, too, but she never asks me to or corrects people when they call her she because well technically she is a she too. Mike is the only one who uses he and him pronouns with her as often as she and her, but she has never thanked him. It really feels like she's saying she's trans and then going about her life exactly as a cis woman simply to convince Mike to date her.

First off, Anne and Mike are NOT compatible. She likes to party, smoke weed, talks a lot, I'm not sure how she graduated with such good grades or why she does so well in her job because she is honestly a LOT to handle and I'm saying that as nice as possible. Mike would never touch weed or go to clubs and he says he would be fine staying home while she does those things but how could you trust someone to party while high and not hook up with others? I've seen her make out with five people in one night at a frat party. They also had wildly different childhoods, such as she grew up in a conservative community and doesn't speak to her family, and he grew up in a liberal area and is close with his family. But more importantly she has a history of joining theater because she had a crush on someone in theater (plus she admits she is good at acting, so maybe she is acting now?) and getting a degree and job in a field because a favorite fictional character did that and now this? It feels like she was attracted to him, found out he usually dates other trans people, and found a way to continue being cis but claim to be trans without having to do anything trans related, basically mimicing her favorite person. As soon as they met they hit it off, or should I say she clung to him and pretended to have the same likes and dislikes whenever they were alone I assume.

It sounds terrible I know, which is why I discussed this with a group chat first that neither of them are in, and the group chat not only agreed that she is far too "obnoxious" for him (those were NOT my words!) but that she is faking being trans in an attempt to make him fall in love with her (which seems to be working.) I would NEVER have gone further without making sure with them first. So then a few of the people in my group chat and I held an intervention with Anne alone. The six of us (the others don't live close enough to come) met up with Anne at her place and told her what she was doing was wrong and gross and that she needed to get help for her bpd and to stop catfishing Mike. She didn't take well to what was said, which I anticipated, but she went crazy. She was screaming at us, insulting us, sobbing while yelling etc, literally said if we ever contacted her again she would call the cops, so we left.

I immediately called Mike before she could and asked him to meet me at a restaurant nearby and that it was very important. Since Mike doesn't know anyone in the group chat I went alone and I explained EVERYTHING before she could gaslight and manipulate him even further. He left, did not finish or pay for his food. I messaged him several times, but a few hours later he texted me to never to speak to him again, and then blocked me on everything. I showed up to his house and Anne was there. Mike said if I ever contacted him again he would get a restraining order on me so I left. I've discussed this with the group chat and now suddenly half of them changed their mind and don't want to talk about it anymore. Several of them left the group chat. Not only that but several of my friends who know either Mike or Anne or both have blocked me on everything. When I've tried to contact these friends through other means and explain everything, they either didn't respond or said for me never to contact them again because I was being transphobic. Listen I know under NORMAL circumstances you shouldn't question when someone comes out but this is NOT a normal situation, and now I am concerned Anne is unsafe for Mike but also an unsafe person to know, as she literally is trying to destroy my life because I called her out on some seriously messed up and abusive behavior.

TLDR am I the asshole for trying to protect my trans friend from a potential stalker?

What are these acronyms?

[wraithdance]

https://www.tumblr.com/wraithdance/765961917651140608/i-really-liked-your-explanation-of-the-whole?source=share

I am really bad at articulating my thoughts but I think about this a lot as someone who hopes to 1- major in neuroscience (i'm 18, going to uni next year) and 2- is trans. I know being trans is not the same thing at all as POC experiences with fic, very cognizant of that, but more to the point where I relate to the aspect of not being able to get over the like mental wall of seeing "neutral" readers as me? I don't know what my brain is doing when i read certain fics but sometimes i can't do it.

I feel like I should close read some of my favorite fic and least favorite fic to see if there are triggers I didn't notice on the first read. does that make sense or seem similar to what you experience? Again I know it's not the same thing, but like i am so curious as to what cis straight white people put in their fic that makes it so obvious that they're cis straight white.

I am sorry if this bothers you, really not my intentions, I am obviously a future brain nerd and i can't stop thinking about this

Congratulations fellow Nerd! You've activated my interest in Race theory and fandom writing from an academic perspective!

Writing reflects life and to answer this question properly, I have to talk about life shit to catch you up to speed, (this should help if you take a sociology or cultural anthropology class lmao) So, Welcome to:

Calvary yaps: Sociology & Intersectionality in fandom writing 101!

Disclaimer: I'm just a random bitch on the internet who loves English and the ridiculousness of social hierarchies, this will be referencing American social constructs and in groups only, with a focus on my experience as a Black American woman who reads a shit ton of books. Don't fight me if you hate my explanation, I will simply not respond.

Read my house rules before sending me an ask, I'm just being a dumb ass rn and word vomiting my interests, so pls i beg no follow up questions unless I say I'm open to em later.

Definitions to know:

Socialization: the act of preparing individuals to participate in society by learned social norms taught in ones family or social settings like school/friend groups. (one can be socialized in gender, race, cultural practices, etc.)

Social Hierarchies: systems of social organization in which some individuals enjoy a higher social status than others (in my opinion this is a lingering safety measure from lizard brain cavemen hunter/gatherer days)

Intersectionality: A term coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw; The process of acknowledging the unique parallels a marginalized person experiences when they have more than one marginalization (ie: race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, size, etc.)

Matriarchal society: Social groups/family structures that center female figures as representatives of authority.

Implicit Bias: Unintentional bias a person may have towards a group or individual based on learned stereotypes, prejudices, perceptions based on another's background or state of being.

first, yes anon you are making sense! So the main question:

'What cis straight white people put in their fic that makes it so obvious that they're cis straight white?'

I've been mulling this question around in my head for a few days and tried to figure out how to articulate this without going into depth in Sociological theory, but I can't! So here we are lmao, this is long as fuck so TLDR here.

I've talked to a LOT of Black and PoC people over the last months because I thought I was the only one who felt strange or could tell immediately when a writer was white, despite doing the best job they could to be neutral.

Every person I spoke to agreed they could tell right away even if we don't share similar racial backgrounds.

The answer I've come up with to why that is, is because white people are socialized (taught by society/their parents how to behave) in a way many black and PoC people are not, so their reader characters will often act in a way PoC people have learned not to, so it flags for many of us.

I plan to answer another question about this at a later date so an example is with shit like:

An over deference to hyper masculine male characters (for PoC cultures like certain Black/Latine groups that are often matriarchal in nature and don’t ascribe to as many traditional gender roles, this is a flag), lack of interpersonal/familial connection, over meekness, no challenging of external factors so things just HAPPEN to the reader and lack of awareness of surroundings to name a few. 

A lot of the language of the irl world places white cis people from Western countries as the default and everyone else as others. In which, PoC people have learned to navigate the world very carefully with a hyper-focus on what will potentially bring them harm/scrutiny/ostracism especially in white dominant spaces.

That extends to when we have down time while reading or partaking in media smfh.

I'm sure you've had to learn the same as a trans person navigating cis spaces and it's the same with any marginalization! If you are disabled you have an awareness of able bodied people and their expectations, same with being fat amongst skinny people, etc.

The more marginalizations you have, the louder the rules of social hierarchies become. Which is why many marginalized ppl stick close to those who 'get it' in their social groups as an act of safety in numbers. (Many of us attempt to have strong family connection/harmony because of this)

So referring to your comment about being trans is not the same thing at all as POC experiences with fic, it is when you are a Black or PoC trans person! My angel face @/buttdumplin has spoken a lot about that as a Mexican transman reading fics by cis people!

(Please for the love of God no one come to me explaining how marginalized they are so they shouldn't be lumped in with the white ppl PoC are cognizant of, I will check myself into a psych ward)

So what does that gotta do with reading fics?

No matter what anyone thinks, it is damn near impossible to not frame your writing from the perspective of your lived experiences. It's why even when I try my hardest to make my characters not sound Black, they will always read that way because I have been Black all of my life!

And it doesn't just happen with race, go on tiktok and search male authors writing women. (or here's another article lmao)

Also ask a Southerner how they know someone has never been to the South and don't know shit about our accents when they write Graves. There are linguistic tells that flag off and why we flame actors who pick up southern accents for their roles.

(They chew on that terrible goddamn Appalachian or Louisiana Accent not realizing Southern accents come in many fonts.)

So when I read a fic about Kyle Garrick from a non black person, I can tell the writer is non black by linguistic implications, the things they emphasize about him and what they don't. It doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy reading fics from non black people, I can just tell!

And sometimes that means I, and other PoC's associate the Reader as a white OC while reading fics.

For example, all black people are not monolithic because of our cultural and regional experiences, but many of us share common threads. That's usually family involvement, colloquialisms, that stupid fucking cookie tin our elders put sewing supplies in...

Other non Black PoC people might share similar cultural practices, so when I'm reading fics from say a latina, I will cock my head and go wait.... are you...? And surely enough, they are a person of color. 

But even while reading from a non black PoC, I have to tread carefully because anti black sentiment exists in many cultures, which is why you'll hear me say Black and PoC/Non black people interchangeably.

It’s how the conversation of Implicit bias comes up, because unknowingly non white characters can sometimes be written with a hyper focus that makes them seem inhumanly one characteristic or with little to no background while the other characters are fully fleshed out.

like the character of color is just a stand in to move the plot around white characters forward. 

So all that to say, without sometimes meaning to white writers will always sound off to me in a way that my brain can pick up on in the most minuscule ways because my awareness of my blackness/otherness has been drilled in from birth and reinforced by social norms.

I can even tell immediately if a white person has been around only white spaces their whole life with the jokes they tell lol.

In the grand scheme of things the race of the writer is most important to me when something jarring comes up that slaps me away from the experience, it explains so much of the disconnect.

Every marginalized person has a threshold for what they can ignore as a ‘trigger’ before they’re ejected from reader inserts, mine is usually the association with racial historical happenings, certain gender dynamics, etc.

It's why I mention crying like a little bitch when I read my friend Jess's (Kyletogaz) TF 141 Hair series, Dragon’s (Dragonnarative-writes) Transferrable Skills, and even Xavi's (Buttdumplin) Piercing fic.

Reading those fics felt like safety and familiarity. It was a moment where I realized I could drop the mental load I had no idea I was carrying, where I was trying to prepare myself for potential emotional damage and just READ.

It's also why as a Black person who fucks with kink and sex work it's been so touch and go when navigating dark fics/kink fics/fics about Sex workers.

Because there are different rules of engagement non white kinksters have to be aware of and that leads to a point on the collective vs. Individual experience as a PoC in kink, that I’ll eventually make a post about at some point or another. Maybe…

So yeah I’m tired of yapping. I hope this long shit was enough of an explanation!! Thanks to my friends Kiko, Jules, Xavi and Folded for yapping with me so I could articulate this better!!

[theyjustadmitthathuh]

Hi I'm not a radfem but I'm a believer in learning about all political idealogies/opinions so that I can better construct my own beliefs/opinions

It's pretty obvious what the radfem opinion on trans women is, that you think they're invading women's spaces, predatory, etc, but I'm curious what the opinion of trans men (or trans identifying women, I think your term is?) and nonbinary/genderqueer people. I don't see it talked about super often so I'm just sort of curious what radfems think about it.

btw this is not meant to be a hate ask to to stir up shit or anything, I would just genuinely like to know so I can expand my understandings of different political views

I’d like to start out by saying that trans women are no more predatory than cis men, and that predators will flock to any movement that gives them deniability. This means that I dont believe that trans women inherently by the fact of being trans or crossdressing or taking hormones, are predators, nor do I think that male predators are inherently more apt to be feminine or crossdress or take hrt. I think it’s more comparable to teachers (or cops but teachers are a safer analogy).

Not all teachers abuse students. Abusers do not inherently feel the desire to teach children. And yet, many teachers abuse students because teaching is a profession where only few people can actually say no to or question you. Teachers have a boss- they can be stopped there, although usually not- teachers have students’ parents to question them, but many parents are burnt out, overworked, or just do not care. This means as long as abusive people are smart about their methods, an abusive person could become a teacher and have plenty of victims with no way out who truly believe this is correct and fair. Doesn’t that seem appealing to them? But! If they taught at a different school, perhaps one where the principal stops this kind of thing or the parents are very involved, the abusive person would either never get the job or get fired/arrested quite quickly.

This is what we’re saying is happening with some trans women. I’d like to stop here in my explanation to expound on another fact that often gets misconstrued when we have these conversations: i dont believe anyone is inherently trans. I believe that “being trans” or “having gender dysphoria” (which I do believe is a subset of body dysmorphia) is caused by negative sexist stereotypes and the inability to live up to them. What is there to make one feel like a different sex other than stereotypes about the other sex? I mean truly, in order for me to feel male, wouldnt I have to know how it feels to be male? How would I know that? All I know is the stereotypes about being male, and those stereotypes are sexist. If I’m relating to male people more than female people in daily life, that’s because men are human and maybe I need to work on why I cant relate to other women. (Side note: working on relating to other women over relating to men has helped my gender dysphoria more than crossdressing or being called sir)

So anyway, with that covered, you have a group of (most gay/bi) men who don’t fit in to sexist stereotypes trying desperately to live their lives. Sad, but not hurting anyone. Then it became a mainstream theory. “What if people actually did have souls and they got switched up? Or maybe it’s in the brain?? It could be inherent! Should it be a protected trait?” Still no one is listening to the gay men who could tell you why they did it. (And nobody knows about the trans men who exist now because they NEED it that way for escaping misogyny)

So now those gay/bi men are a minority, and this culture of questioning a trans person being the same as murder came out. Are you seeing the parallels yet? This is the culture, the atmosphere, the environment, that is alluring to predators. We may as well be running a church with the way questions and outside sources get you blocked by everyone who once called you a friend. And tell a predator going to prison that all he has to do is go by she/her to keep abusing women and he will do that. So we have all these trans women, who are not transitioning in the original spirit, being predators and ruining the public’s understanding of what a transgender person is and is trying to do. Basically, men kept abusing women and being predators, but now they have a new deniability to try on when it suits them. I know the argument “it’s a lot of work to transition why would they do that?” Well it’s a lot of work to become a teacher or a minister or the pope or a gynecologist, but there are all men who’ve admitting to doing those things to get victims that couldn’t fight back.

So, now that hopefully, you understand that I’m not a lunatic who thinks that estrogen in a male body makes a man abusive or that somehow abusers crave estrogen and frills, we can move on to your question about trans men.

Basically the same thing except women dont have the social power to abuse that men do. There’s no posts going around like “if a trans man rapes you no he didnt” or “youre just a trans mans flesh doll” or “if I hear that a trans man is racist then I’m going to assume whoever told me is transphobic” (quotes of posts i’ve seen reblogged about trans women) because there’s little to no female solidarity like there is male solidarity (the concept that a man will side with another man he hates or disagrees with over any woman, even one he agrees with), so I’m not saying that men being predatory is biological or anything, I’m saying that trans men simply do not have the social power nor class solidarity needed to call predators to their ranks in droves. Are there predatory trans men? Yes there’s predatory every kind of person.

So, if there’s very little social power gained with becoming a trans man, why are there more female trans people than male trans people? Because women are oppressed on the basis of sex. Escaping that oppression is the number one reason for transitioning (whether ftm or nb) for female humans. Whether it be sexual assault, harassment, or misogyny intersecting with other things like racism, homophobia, or the oppression associated with gender non-conformity, most trans men have a story to tell of a time they would have been treated better as a boy or man or a time they would have been not hurt if they were male. I know my transition story centered around my hatred of being a lesbian. I’m coming to terms with that in a more healthy way now, and not by pretending to be a straight man.

Other than the vague theories surrounding the movement and the real consequences of it, trans people are just people. Some are shit some are cool. Some realize what theyre doing and just think this is the best way to live with their shit, some are unaware and truly think they were born into a body that is not their own, and some are running a game.

Here, I’m mostly concerned with using logic to try to get people to become a little more self aware. (And passing the time at work) But if I can reblog a rant about “afab trans women” and make someone realize that we’re all saying the same things here and maybe we can reach an agreement and work together, great! If I can reblog a misogynist rant in the disguise of a trans rights rant and get someone to notice what theyre agreeing with, great!

If not, well this is a silly little blog. Radical feminism is much much much much much more than the trans issue. I’m busy helping women in abusive situations and trying to foster female friendship and solidarity. Imo, if we could get female solidarity with all female humans (cis women, trans men, female nbs) that would truly be a better world than one where no woman transitions but also no woman stands with one another.

(I know you also asked about nbs and genderqueer ppl but as I dont believe any form of trans is inherent, there is little difference to me between a trans man and an afab nb genderqueer person in terms of identity. Obviously each person is unique in terms of personality.)

I enjoy these types of questions, and if there’s anything that wasn’t clear or anything that you’re still wondering about, feel free to send another anon or dm me or whatevs! Thanks for the question! 😊

[pawberri]

thank you for all the posts you've made, your takes are always so refreshing to hear.

I want to know your thoughts (if it's okay with you, you can also totally ignore this) about all the "men hate" I see online. like I (poc transmasc non-passing) get it, there are genuine societal gender problems. transmisogyny does exist-women face more challenges than men do. but it genuinely hurts when women, especially trans women, think it's funny/quirky to call men trash or say they want all men dead or whatever. idk I just am hoping someone else understands, you know?

There's a lot of nuances to this question. First, I just want to caution against focusing too much on trans girls as the perpetrators of this. A lot of the asks I get from trans men seem to really fixate on trans women as the perpetrators of hard line gender essentialism. I really think trans girls are not the main people we should be focusing on here. If a trans woman is saying this stuff, take the time to analyze her ideology outside of that pithy comment and consider how much trauma and how little power she has in the world. That said, trans women are affected by this kind of ideology just like us, and they rarely have the power to wield it against others in the way cis people can. I know it hurts to feel isolated by your own community, but that kinda gets into my second point.

Part of dealing with this is learning an impulse progressive cishet dude have had to get used to over the decade. Sometimes, "men are trash" or even "kill all men" are not literal phrases. They are things women say when they're in the throes of trauma to vent their frustration. "Men are trash" in particular is generally pretty lighthearted and used to complain when you have a bad date or something. You have to get used to analyzing what someone actually means and airing on the side of empathy. You, as a man, are the one with some amount of systemic power over that woman, so you are the one who needs to prove you are dedicated to not being a misogynist. The same thing happens when my friends say they hate white people. I have to assume they don't hate me given that I'm their friend, but that I still have some of the negative traits of whiteness. I need to care enough to be a good friend by being anti-racist and checking myself on my behavior. I need to be willing to prioritize their comfort over mine. That includes not becoming this meme:

Now that that's established, there ARE times when "all men are evil and should die" is an actual ideology. It's an ideology that hurts tons of minority groups before it hurts the most powerful, but it's also not really great if we assume it only hurts cishet white guys. Following it to its logical conclusion, it just proposes a reversal of oppression dynamics. This gender essentialism is a key part of radical feminism, trans exclusionary or not, but it leaks out of that community to general feminism all the time.

As a young person on Tumblr and Twitter, this deeply affected me. I internalized the idea that you can "just be a girl." It was repeated by some trans girls, but also a LOT of TME people. It was framed as trans inclusive, but it's trans inclusive in the way "political lesbianism" is lesbian positive. It posits gender as a moral choice that is completely up to the individual and unrelated to biology. It's the lazy version of "gender is a social construct." I felt sick and disgusting for wanting to be a boy because tons of well-meaning friends of mine had made it clear that "being a boy" was a choice, and it was the wrong one. "Boy" was a social category that could and should eventually be eradicated. Trans women were conditionally supported because they, in theory, made this future possible. This didn't amount to actual support, of course. It was an ideology mostly spread by afab queer people that mostly benefited afab queer people. There were a few trans girls who spread it, maybe some due to genuinely believing in the ideology and some due to social pressure, but there were also a lot of people straight-up grifting as trans girls who used this thinking to feel powerful in a niche community of teens. Remember fucking Yandere Bitch Club???

At a certain point, I genuinely thought of being a man as an unambiguous moral failing, and I lashed out at out trans men because of it. I wanted to feel powerful, and here was a type of man in my community I could shame and exclude. I still feel bad for making a bunch of ~girls only~ stuff in HS that excluded the one out trans dude at our school, my friend, because he was just a ~binary man~ and leaving him with no friends and no community. I treated transphobia like it wasn't a real oppression on its own and, in doing so, perpetuated transphobia. It happens a lot.

I wasn't really able to accept that there was nuance to the concept of manhood until I read this article while struggling to accept my own gender:

This is a pretty seminal piece of writing. It has its flaws, of course, but the empathy and intersectionality it highlights was life-changing. It also shows that this kind of thinking is largely perpetuated by TME people and hurts trans women greatly.

Gender essentialism is a bad ideology, it's a transphobic, transmisogynist, racist, etc etc ideology. It's literally essential to patriarchy. But it's also very easy to repackage into leftism and easy to dogwhistle. As a result, it's natural to be hesitant when you see someone saying they hate all men, but you have to tread extremely lightly and actually care what they're attempting to express. Because, yeah, men as a social class still hold power over women. They still have reason to fear and hate men.

I'm writing a comic about this stuff, actually, so look out for it in the future..........

[riotsux]

I know it's scary sometimes being trans in this world so here are some wonderful stories from my life (preface: I grew up in a large metropolitan area and went to an arts conservatory for high-school that housed IB, naval and neighborhood schools in the same building):

- one time in the breakfast line I was talking to a cis male friend (former "no homo" and "faggot" as an insult dude) about why I wanted to take testosterone and I mentioned my voice and he said "you sound like a dude now, like a 13 year old but still a dude"

- I once won a hairy leg competition against cis men pre testosterone

- once upon a time I was in a band and after a gig this twink came up to me and said "you know, we need more queers in metal" (I was wearing a "faggot" tank top)

- when I started testosterone, I asked the only older trans person I knew at the time to come with (a key holder at my job), it brought along a few friends and between the 4 of us, we all had only two hair colors (neon red and lime green), the nurse helping us all with our paperwork was very confused

- that same day my insurance was acting up and my clinic waived my fees completely for my first year of testosterone

- a girl my sister met in outpatient wasn't doing to well and being the only other trans person they knew at the time, asked me to write the girl a letter, we met again years later, she's an incredible drummer, and after a gig, I was waiting with a pedal board outside the lead singers car and she's hanging out her friends window pointing at me and yelling "this mother fucker saved my life!"

- when my own mother was working at a methadone clinic, she met this older trans woman, hoping to give me some guiding light, she connected us, she kept an eye on me for years

- the day after I came out publicly, during my freshman year of high-school, my brother's friend's (upper classmen) all clapped for me when I came into the lunchroom

- my senior year I was barely in class but one day this girl I had known for years stops me to tell me I was on her "top 10 hottest guys in the school" list

- in high-school whenever a boy was being unhygienic in the group (typically someone's boyfriend) I would be used as an example for how he should be (ex. Putting on chapstick properly)

All I'm saying is there's kindness out there for us, amidst the violence there is so much love there, there's humor to be shared when others are comfortable with us.

I know I'm privileged to have grown up surrounded by queer people and to have been so accepted but

It's all here, I promise, and I promise you can find it

If you can't find it at the moment, make it

[ohara-n-brown]

[WARNING: Rant]

Sometime made a post going 'Love the trans women in your life while they're still here'

Someone added 'Trans men and Nonbinary too!'

And this was the response.

My response: Cut this shit out, you're acting literally ridiculous.

First of all - no it's NOT an All Lives Matter moment.

ALL LIVES MATTER was created by white people who DON'T experience racism to silence the experiences of those who DO experience racism and die at the hands of it.

A transmasc or nonbinary person saying 'Us also!' is a not the same.

It's a group of people who DO experience transphobia adding to the experiences of those who ALSO experience transphobia.

It's A LOT MORE like a black person going 'BlackLivesMatter' and sometime commenting '#StopAsianHate too :)' and OP going 'wow fuck you read the room you're being racist.'

That's like a Gay person speaking out against homophobia and how it's wrong. And then a trans person says 'Transphobia too!' and suddenly it's 'Read the room. This isn't about y'all. Why do y'all have to bring yourself up always. This isn't about gender. Read the room-'

Sounds familiar to y'all? It should. I'm reading the room and the room is saying you just fucking hate another group of oppressed people lol

Another oppressed person who experiences the same violence as you adding their voice to your choir is NOT the same as white people using their privilege to silence others who experience racism when they themselves don't.

SECOND OF ALL - (tw death mention under cut)

YEAH THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO ADD 'Celebrate your trans brothers while there here' on a post you know..

considering a transmasc non-binary person got fucking beat to death on school grounds exactly a month ago.

Remember that??? The one whose death is being actively covered up by school, law, and state officials on a systemic scale??

Also - a fucking trans man from NJ is still missing as we speak (Elliot Ganiel)

But calling attention to that is like being a MRA??? Talking about a children deaths in a school bathroom and missing people are like being MRAs whose main concerns are women playing video games or some shit?

No. No it isn't.

Y'all misusing terms like MRA and yelling 'That's like all lives matter!!!' clearly show youdon't understand how oppression works in the slightest.

If you try to compare any white racist movement to an oppressed group of people - YTA.

One of us gets fucking killed with no justice, LGBTQ crisis line calls skyrocket, and when asked about it state officials say and I quote 'We don't want that filth in our state!!'

- and when we talk about it amongst people in our community it's 'read the room!!' or 'wow really MRA like'

Fucking bite me.

And before - 'Oh but they didn't have to put it on THAT post, they could've made their own'.

Did you not hear what I just said. A transmasc teen was beat to death and misgendered publically statewide.

Maybe transmascs would like to feel included by the community at this time? So they can feel safe? Safety in numbers? And maybe want to feel like the wider community cares when shit like this happens - which clearly.. y'all don't.

Cause when a transmasc kid is literally killed - and we see a post saying 'Love your transfemme friends whine they're here!' and add the same - only to be told to read the room - it tells us 'You only have a month or so to morn. They died last month? Why are you bringing it up now on a post about appreciating trans people before their death??? Read the room. That was for us only. Stop trying to hog all the attention'.

Like damn sorry for wanting to feel like my community would care if I got wiped off this fucking earth silly me. Silly us.

When we start the conversation on our own we're ignored. When we try to contribute our experiences to other conversations we're told to shut the fuck up and read the room and then compared to actual racists and sexists.

You constantly compare us to people who DO NOT face oppression - cis men and white people - in order to silence us, despite the fact you know we face oppression in ways both groups could never even imagine. You think you're slick. You're not.

BITE ME. HARD.

[the-great-ladyg]

So, I watched the James Somerton second apology video so you don't have to, this are my highlights, feel free to add more if I missed something important:

He monetized the video to donate to HBG's team and Wikipedia, apparently, he said also he has reached some of the people who he plagiarized but still, if he did he would have explicitly said "I'm donating to them"

Did he really said "well, I'm a white cis gay man, I don't have the same experiences as others in the community" as an excuse on plagiarizing others' works? And the "I thought I might be able to won over some people" sounds like some white savior shit

He still throws Nick under the bus, it really shows that James doesn't regret any other times he did that and it sounds like he hired Nick as a shield for criticism and not to have a more diverse work team

He apologizes to Jessie Gender and many others, but doesn't explicitly addresses why he might have offended them on first place (except for the police incident), yeah, he says he was reactionary, but he has been on many occassions. I'm not expecting a full detailed explanation, but at least he could have said "for the Nebula drama" or something like that

James says that at one point, due to covid economic consequences, he and Nick became poor and that led him to plagiarize more since they had to upload more videos, and look, I suck at organizing my time, I tend to do everything with little time before the date, and I wrote most of my thesis on the last minute with one or two days of investigating and I still didn't plagiarize, I could cite all of my sources the correct way, if my early 20s procrastinating ass could wrote a 70 page thesis on my own without plagiarizing, he could write a script with a second person without stealing but he prefered to do it anyway

Also the alegedly head injury, I'm not going to say that's a lie, but knowing how this guy uses any card on his favor, this might be something he pulled from his ass to justify himself

I don't know why but some of this Telos drama explanatiom sounds again like he didn't even know how to do all of this, and I get what is to start a project having little to no idea on how to start or continue, but he tried to do so much with so little without asking for any help when he clearly needed some help other than Nick, and also sounds like another excuse to justify plagiarizing

"Misinformation made its way into our past videos", no, my friend, it doesn't make its way when you investigate or check a site other than the first one you see, James loves to say he likes to investigate but still says things like this. "It wasn't malicious", (seriously, the audacity of this bitch), oh yeah, there's nothing malicious coming from the mysogynist biphobic and transphobic dude who misgenders trans people and erases a woman's bisexuality, specially when this lady told you she wasn't a straight woman as you said and this was a known fact for a few years

The ADHD thing feels like some ableist shit, like "don't blame me, I have ADHD uwu", James has offended many groups and communities through his youtube career and in his apology video he still finds the way to insult another group that suffers from many harmful stereotypes

As I said on a post addressing his first apology video, James can't create a space for everyone if he's transphobic, mysogynist, acephobe and racist, and he pretends he's convinced he was creating an "inclusive space"

Just as many people have said before, he didn't address anything of the things he's been accused of except plagiarism, he only says "I'm sorry to everyone who I have offended", no dude, you don't address mysogyny, racism or transphobia this way, James is a piece of shit and a coward.

And this idiot has put on public display some of his videos, specially the ones that show his racism (yeah, the Killing Stalking and Painter of the Night videos), I'm not clicking on them but I'm pretty sure he didn't cut his racist mysogynist rants, because they might not be plagiarized (if James is to be trusted) but they show the worst parts of him when he's trying to be original, and putting this shit videos on public shows he regrets nothing on being a piece of shit.

[transgymbro]

Do you have any advice for overcoming the insecurities about not being able to lift as much as my cis gym partner? I just started taking weights class in my school for PE credit, and I've never really lifted before so I can't lift very much. We got put in groups of 2-3 because there's a limited number of equipment and so we can have a spotter, so I work out with the same guy every day. He's also new to this, but he can do way more than I can. My max for squats is 85, his is 95. For bench, he can do 85, but I can only do 55 and when I tried 65 I almost dropped the bar and he had to save me. I know everyone is different and my masculinity is not dependent on what I can physically do, but I still feel insecure. I keep trying to lift weights that are heavier than I probably should, and I think my form is suffering because of it and I'm worried I'm going to hurt myself. I also get injured pretty often from skating so I'm not always able to do all the exercises because I twisted my ankle or whatever, which means I'm not getting all the benefits I could be. I really want to both get stronger physically and have more visible muscles, especially in the arms and chest area because I think it will help me pass better. I recently started testosterone and I'm hoping that will help, but I don't know how long it will take. I hope this isn't too personal, and you don't have to answer unless you're comfortable with it, but are you on T and if so did it help? Sorry for the long rambly ask, I just feel like you might understand better than the people I know in real life

Rest assured, friend, just because you can't lift those numbers right now doesn't mean you won't catch up in the future.

What might help your insecurity is reminding yourself that you will catch up, and that injuring yourself by doing too much now is only going to slow your progress.

Yes I am on T, and have been for over 2 years now, but I had already been lifting a year by the time I started T and had some pretty decent numbers too (75 lb goblet squat, 120 lb leg press, wasn't really doing too much in the way of squats or bench press at this point due to wanting to be super careful).

The thing is with T is that it takes about 6 months of consistent doses for the muscle growth to kick in. And that's after you and your doctor find the dose that works for you.

Was T helpful when it finally did kick in? Yeah. But I also don't know how much of my progress came from T and how much came from long term consistency and hard work.

If you want to increase your strength, I've heard it's best to go for higher weight, less reps, but without sacrificing form too much. Make sure you're listening to your body and knowing the difference between good pain (muscle strain of the targeted muscles) and bad pain (really painful, doesn't feel right, etc). Increase your protein intake too. If you need to, you can modify an exercise or do a different one that hits the same muscles to make it easier on any injuries you might have.

Feel free to reach out if you have any further questions, and good luck!

[opossumanon]

I just got reminded of an experience of mine a year ago now that serves as a pretty good example of the kind of shit trans men, transmascs, and transneutrals often go through.

(Full yap session ahead)

So I'm sitting with my new friends at the same spot in the hallway as always. We aren't exactly a small group. We're all different, but one thing that's obvious is that in the eyes of bullies we're all fucking losers.

So this one group comes up to us and starts to make fun of us. Every fucking day. Like clockwork. They're puny little shitheads who have barely started puberty. Their leader, who was shorter than me, couldn't even say "cavalry" correctly and was pronouncing it as "chavalry" for some fucking reason.

Every day, this kid and his buds come up and try to harass us, often by asking us about gay shit and asking me about my pronouns. Every day, I roast him and the group into oblivion and they sulk away to regroup and come back the next day.

One day, this kid is mad enough about me making him look like a small-dicked loser in front of his friends, that while walking away he calls out at me "I would fight you but I don't know if you're a boy or a girl"

He never acted on the threat thankfully (Probably cuz I literally chucked him out of a classroom), but the point still stands that this fucker and his friends were threatening to attack me for being trans.

This fucker and his friends looked at me, someone they knew had a vagina and tits, but used a deep voice and had short hair, and they couldn't tell if I were a binary tranny, a nonbinary tranny, or an ugly dyke. They wanted to beat me up for it, and also cuz my tranny/dyke self was making them feel emasculated.

This is the kind of shit that trans men, transmascs, and transneutral people put up with more often than some of yall realize.

(To clarify right now NO, I AM NOT SAYING THAT TRANS WOMEN, TRANSFEMS, AND FEMININE CIS WOMEN DON'T GO THROUGH THIS. THEY DO. WE ALL KNOW THIS. I AM SIMPLY POINTING OUT AN EXPERIENCE THAT MASCS, AND NEUTRALS TEND TO HAVE THAT THE REST OF THE COMMUNITY TRIES TO DENY THE EXISTENCE OF)

We're still threatened with violence. Our existence makes perisex cis men uncomfortable, makes perisex cis women disgusted, and makes both scared for one reason or another. The more masculine an "afab" queer person is, the appropriate it is to beat the shit out of them. Because she's a man, right? If she wants to be a guy and wear guy's clothes and speak with a guy's voice, then she can take the fucking beating that we give her, because that's just what guys do.

So transmascs will walk into a queer space and become the emotional punching bag of insecure queers, and then turn around and walk into a cishet space and become the literal punching bag of insecure cishets. We just can't win.

Obviously the queer space is still safer, which is why we're still invading with our disgusting testosterone-filled bodies. But it isn't exactly fun to try and engage with people we see as "like us" (queer) only to be pushed away because we're men, and if we're men we never deal with oppression, right? We can handle violence, cuz that's what men do. As men, it's our job to let the ladies and fems verbally diminish us because they were hurt by men and so they have a right to take out their pain on us. If we don't agree to this, then we're misogynistic pigs, and then "trans men really are the men of the trans community".

Transmascs with functioning uterus' are conveniently left out of abortion rights discussions, and when we try to announce our presence we're told to shut up. Transmascs who are passing are conveniently left out of trans discussions, and when we try to announce our presence we're told that we don't count because we aren't oppressed because we fully pass now. Transmascs who don't pass are conveniently left out of safety discussions, and when we try to announce our presence we're told that we don't count because we pass as cis women, and cis women have more privilege than trans women. (That last one is a real line I've seen on this site btw)

Trying to say "I want acknowledgement" as a transmasc present at a more friendly queer space doesn't result in vitriol, but what happens instead is that there will be a "transgender recognition" night that has maybe one trans man if we're lucky, and then dozens of trans women and more feminine-looking nonbinary people.

I'm gonna cut this post off right here before I accidentally type out a full-blown book of all the gripes I got, but the point is that you can't apply the baby-level radfem idea of "man bad, woman good" to the queer community. It's dumb as fuck in the cishet world, and it's so much worse in lgbt spaces. Literally the point of being queer is to fuck with gender roles. This doesn't just mean everyone is feminine. You can't walk into a queer space and go "men are evil" without it affecting half of the queer population. Trans men aren't attacking trans women by saying "I want to be respected as a human being, please". Trans men aren't trying to trick gay men into fucking them by saying "I want to be respected as a gay man, please". Trans men aren't trying to trick lesbians into fucking them by saying "I want to be respected as a boydyke, please".

If everyone in the community were to take a fraction of the energy and love they dedicate to feminine queers and use it to "reach across the isle" and try to connect with and understand masculine queers, the community as a whole benefits. Also masculine queers deserve to be treated well even if it doesn't give good things to the entire community, cuz we're people too. We deserve decent treatment because we're human. Who woulda thought.

(P.S. I still see the leader of the dumbfuck squad walking around sometimes. He's still shorter than me, but his hair is taller. I swear it looks a little more tall every time I spot him.)

[bloggingboutburgers]

cw: discussions of bullying and aphobia

Hearing aroace peoples' existential crises over their friends discussing crushes, as someone who was socially isolated and severly bullied for their whole childhood and most of their adolescence so had NO friendgroup until adulthood and NO community or inclusion in literally anything (and when it came to sex and romance the other kids explicitly considered my potential involvement in either to be impossible / laughible because of how "weird" they found me (my autistic traits before I even realised I'm autistic)), felt like starving while listening to someone else complain about the food they're actively eating.

Food intolerances and dislike of different foods (as metaphor for being aro/ace) ARE important and difficult to grapple with when you're expected to eat specific foods in specific proportions at different times - but man did it sting until I realised why I felt that way and gave myself a talking to since my trauma doesn't justify belittling the very real struggles of aroace people.

I guess since the choice between 'stay alone or conform' was never really a choice because I was rejected no matter how cis straight or allo I was it taught me to go "fuck it" and accept myself regardless of what other people do or say (which ironically has lead to me becoming dramatically popular all of a sudden at uni, which has been weird to get used to since I have literally no experience with any of this - platonic or otherwise - which did lead to some advantage being taken of me but f*ck it we ball ^^'). And I guess it's just been difficult understanding why anyone would care so much about whether they're "normal" or not? You really have nothing to gain from that, safety is not guaranteed in conformity so best to live aroace and damn all aphobes to hell if they have a problem with that.

It's a mindset I'll never understand and that's only ok now insofar as that lack of understanding no longer results in misplaced anger at people who, for a time, I had once considered spoilt, ungrateful and out of touch. Basically, I'm full of sh*t and to every aroace person reading this you deserve good friends that actually respect you for who you are and do not even TRY to get you to change your mind about sex or romance. Have a lovely day x

Sincerely,

An aggressive emotional support anon

I'm genuinely sorry for all the hardships you went through. I don't mean to equate at all, truthfully from reading you and considering I WAS asked some of those questions as a kid regardless (the "who's your crush" bullshit and whatnot), it definitely sounds like I had it less hard than you did, but... I was bullied in elementary school and middle school, also not necessarily because I was aroace (I don't know why it happened really, I don't know if anyone ever knows, I boil it down to... me being me and there being something fundamentally wrong with me ig), and I definitely also get some of those feelings of "oh boo hoo you call that struggle" boiling in me when people discuss their own past struggles sometimes, so... Yeah, every one person's experience is unique, but I can at the very least very much sympathize.

I think a way it manifests in me is that I now have that compulsive, debilitating fear of being "othered" in any way, shape, or form, so I guess being aroace doesn't help my case. But at the same time... Well, like you brilliantly put it, when you're in a situation like that, no matter what you do, you won't be accepted anyway, and having that knowledge back then is probably also what lead me to figure myself out as aroace so early in life. Because I was treated as this much of an outsider, I ironically had that much room in my own head to form my own identity, far apart from others and the need to conform. Yeah, that identity may include a "piece of shit that doesn't deserve to be supported of part of a group" side that's been forced in, buried deep down and can't be erased, but... It also includes asexual and aromantic, and it's been cemented so hard from so early with such self-affirmation that later down the line, it saved me from a lot of stuff. I never had to force myself into a romantic or sexual relationship because I was undoubtably aroace – and people saw me as an outsider and an eyesore anyway. I spent years of being scared to go to school or out in the street every day, but later down the line, somehow, I feel it saved me from doing so many things I wouldn't have wanted to do.

...Bleh, sorry, didn't mean to turn this into me-me-me crap when you had the courage and sincerity of not only showing your experience, but finding the strength to show more love, understanding and support than a lot of people probably cared to give you for so long, despite all the pain you felt for so long. I guess I just wanna say... This take is definitely inspiring, so thank you on behalf of myself and others I'm sure, but also... I hope that, for yourself, you're also managing to own what you lived through in a way that allowed you to affirm yourself more strongly (it sounds like you are, I hope it IS the case), and most importantly, I hope you're in a much better place in your life now and you'll never have to return to that level of loneliness again.