#idk I know people have unique experiences with their transness

[sci-twi]

So my partner and I created some fan-parents for Sonic. He has a dad and a parent. Sonic was created lab-baby style and thus some dormant genetics regarding his brighter color and eyes came through. He was also born with female characteristics. They were not expecting him to have super-speed either as neither of them possess such abilities.

More under the cut.

His father, Dwight, has lightning powers that he will later display and unlock via Frontiers. Ja’ni, his parent, can control and create ether which is the substance through which all life and matter exist and it comes through as star and space-like abilities which lends to Sonic’s future fascination with stars, space, and similar.

Dwight has always been a very cutthroat man, ever since his parents were murdered by GUN-like wannabes for simply being super-powered Mobians- something that the humans never were fond of.

However, his resentment and rage goes unchecked and starts to bleed into how he intends to raise Sonic. He reveals plans to Ja’ni about growing the child into being a sort of super-soldier and leading a resistance against the humans. He wishes for Sonic to be his legacy and to assist him in carrying out his plans to wipe humanity off the face of Mobius and take back their planet. He wants to protect Sonic and his family.

Ja’ni only wishes for Sonic to be a kid and not have to worry about starting a war that he never chose to be a part of. After trying to change Dwight’s mind and failing countless of times, Ja’ni makes a difficult decision.

In the dead of night, Ja’ni ends up stealing Sonic away, traveling across several dimensions, and surrendering him to a group of owls, one of which is Longclaw, to be raised into a happy life away from the hardships and conditioning he would have faced. In this dimension, Longclaw is not killed.

Ja’ni sticks around in the dimension, but takes care to never interfere with Sonic’s life, only keeping tabs on him to make sure he’s… alive. And Sonic seems all the better for it. He’s made a lot of friends, is a world-renowned hero, plus, he’s trans, so that’s cool! Good for him!

But there may come a day where they are all reunited. Especially, when a certain father discovers the dimension where his son has been taken to. However, things are not quite as they were before and that has its own unique challenges.

[genderqueerdykes]

Hey uhm weired question but how does one figure out if they want to medicaly transition or not cuz I know I want to transition socially and legally but I'm still unsure if I want to medical transition or not cuz I know to have the body I want I'd need to but on the other hands there are so many hoops and hurdles to jump through and idk that even if I tried I'd succeed or if one one of the steps someone just goes "your not trans enough" And I have to start over and such I just I'm really unsure rn cuz one one hand I would love to transition and get the body I want but on the other hand I'm not entirely against my current body it's more of a meh and idk if the struggle of getting hurt and surgery is worth it

Hope this makes sence

hey i get that, it's a huge change, a lot to plan for, and a lot to think about! i think it feels very overwhelming at first when you're considering all of the possibilities, and if it's even right for you to begin with. it can be very easy to get weighed down by everything, but i am glad you're considering all the outcomes

i'd say for you, try to figure out if what you want is to change your actual physical body, or if you just want to change how people interpret you or address you. for some, people just want others to refer to them differently without having to make any changes, and that's perfectly okay. for others, there is something about their body that is amiss, and needs changing.

you don't need to experience dysphoria, if you do it's okay, but you don't have to in order to medically transition, it's just more about is there a change you WANT to see in your body? do you actually want your body to be different, or do you want to change the way you present? you can achieve the latter without any medical intervention

for me, medical transition was the answer because i wanted to be able to enhance my naturally high testosterone. i wanted to have my beard and have it be fuller. i wanted to have my body hair, and i wanted more of it. i wanted a deep voice. i wanted to look more rugged, squared, and defined. i wanted more muscle definition and i wanted to change the way the fat distributed on my body. i wanted smaller breasts and thinner hips, etc.

i think those are just a few good things to keep in mind. ask yourself what you want from transition, and don't worry, it's not a contest. i know cis people love to tell you that you have to do everything in order to be trans but there's no checklist, your transition is unique to you and you get to make the decisions, not anyone else.

i hope you're able to figure out if medical transition is right for you! either way , i support you and your journey and transition either way! you define your transness, no one else can =) take care, stay safe

[thotbugatti]

A Love Letter to Twitter

This is going to sound really stupid but I’m prepared for that. Are you? I have been on twitter in many forms since the beginning of 2014. That’s almost 9 years. Over that time, I have made countless connections, discovered unbelievable content creators and comedians; learned a lot about the world and myself. Because of twitter, I’ve been able to become the person I am now.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I, along with probably many other people, really struggled with my sense of gender identity as well as sexuality. I wasn’t going to school, wasn’t going to work; I was stuck in isolation with nothing but drowning thoughts of who and what I might be. At first, I thought I was non binary. That didn’t fit. Could I have been trans? Yes, actually, that’s exactly what it was. Suddenly, my world opened up even more. I was finding trans people on YouTube first, then I discovered an intricate community of other trans women on Twitter. Connecting my experiences with them and realizing more and more that many of the things they experienced were also things I experienced with or struggled with, that really did something for me. Suddenly, I didn’t feel so alone. All thanks to twitter.

On one hand, it might seem so silly to be upset about the loss of something so trivial as twitter, yet I am. Many others probably are as well but don’t want to admit that. I do. When you lose something that has been part of your life for so long, you’re bound to. If it does indeed die, I am going to miss it so much. I’m going to miss the people tho, not the platform itself. For all intents and purposes, twitter is a house of popsicle sticks held together by rubber bands and stick glue. I think had Elon Musk never even stuck his toes into purchasing twitter, we might have it for many years to come. But he did, and here we are. I’m going to miss the people. I love so dearly being able to connect with others from all over the world in a way that doesn’t feel so unbelievably one sided. With something like TikTok or Instagram, something that isn’t almost entirely text based, it feels as though you’re not interacting with a person. It feels more as if you’re interacting with the vision of a person. It’s worse with YouTube and TikTok, where there are, more than likely, billions of hours of videos that you end up just endlessly watching and scrolling past. Even with tumblr, while I am having fun with it, I feel it’s so hard to find exactly what I want to see, to find the people who I want to follow. I’m not sure how it is on the webpage, but the for you tab on this app just doesn’t seem to work. Things that were there last week still permeate at the very top. I want to be able to scroll, I want to be able to read what people are saying, I want to be able to find the most up to date news. I feel that that is a very uniquely twitter experience, and we’ll likely never see anything like it again. That’s very sad to me.

Transness is a very isolating and lonely experience. You might run across a trans person in real life, but it’s not a common thing. Even if you did, how likely are you to actually talk to them? Ultimately, you probably end up walking right past each other, maybe sharing a glance or a small smile, but nothing more. You’ll probably never see them again. This is my experience living in a very rural area. My high school had one trans person (not including myself because I didn’t know at the time). I often think about her, wondering how she managed to do it. If you live in a city like Chicago, New York, LA, San Francisco, wherever, you’ll come across more trans people to be sure. If you’re still in college, same situation. For many of us who aren’t in school anymore or live in the middle of nowhere, we aren’t very common. Twitter. Twitter opens up that world for many of us (or tumblr idk ymmv).

There’s part of me that still believes that twitter won’t die. Elon Musk will sell it off before he crashes and burns because, at the end of the day, he cares more about his money and his ego than he does anything else. There’s another part of me that is standing on the deck of the twitter ship, watching the iceberg grow ever closer. It’s sad, and it’s scary. Maybe it’ll be a good thing, but I can’t help but wonder what could come from the downfall. Maybe I’ll be able to actually get some work done. Maybe there will be less relative negativity in the world. Or maybe more anti trans and anti lgbt legislature will silently pass, with nothing around for people to bring light to the bigotry that blights this country.

So, Twitter if you do hit that iceberg, if you do sink, it’s been an honor. If it doesn’t however, I’m going to look like a big goober for spending over half an hour of my time writing a big long post about it while sitting on the floor at work. 🖤

[arlens-entries]

Personal/Vent

I'm feeling an enormous amount of grief this winter break as a result of my being trans + in college + ADHD

Idk for the longest time I was able to escape awkwardness with people, especially family, by just presenting as a weird girl but since starting testosterone I can't really do that--my voice has dropped enough to notice and because I'm so damn comfortable in my body rn I am actually more awkward and unhappy as just a weird girl

At the same time, my extended family (who I haven't seen yet but will) doesn't even know I'm gay, let alone trans and I have absolutely no idea how to approach that conversation

I've never really felt dysphoria as a social thing before this, more just a deep feeling of wrongness with certain IDs, but now I'm having to navigate my family's reactions to my transition and make mental space for their own adjustments.

I don't think they took my transness seriously before HRT, and now that they're actually seeing me differently they're awkward about it

Idk I'm not mad or anything, just uncomfortable and a little lonely and I'm not sure what to do about that. I know this isn't a unique experience, and tbh it was coming eventually but it's just hard.

Happy holidays to all celebrating, and a good rest of the season to everyone else :]

[ezradogteeth]

You seem so unselfconscious and joyful in ur gender experience/expression.. how'd u get there? I feel so self conscious making any sort of gender affirming changes bc I don't want people to see, which seems kinda contradictory bc isn't the point of gender expression that people see it. Idk. How do u manage to be so genuine and know urself so well? Or is that just the side we see here<3

2/2 Also sorry lol I know u get a lot of gender asks prolly but it's cuz ur full hearted gender journey is so aspirational/ inspiring (to me) :,]

i think how i got to where i'm at with my gender joy can be broken down into 4 rough factors:

access to medical transition & choosing to do it

growing older and having been trans for longer

internal changes in my mindset

community and loved ones!

to elaborate, 1. it's so so so difficult to feel pride in your identity if it brings you pain. like i've always felt joy and pride in my queer sexuality because it has brought me the joy of queer love, but for a long long time i just wished i wasnt trans because it had only ever made me miserable. i was a teenager, and public trans visibility was very small compared to today, and no matter what i did i could never pass. the few years (age 16-18) leading up to when i started hrt were especially excruciating. i didn't even consider going on T until i was 18 because i'm nonbinary and hadn't heard about nonbinary people going on T until i saw the artist chella man around then. it was super difficult to decide to go on T because i was so uncertain and afraid of permanently altering my body and i didn't know anyone else on T. i decided i needed to try it and if i regretted it down the line then i'd deal with it then. my relationship to my gender immediately improved, it was so insane i was so stoked to have a gender and be exploring it. i was feeling genuine unfettered euphoria for the first time. i'd had small doses before from wearing a binder and changing my name etc, but it was always overshadowed by my greater discomfort. but now i was like YIPPEEEEE i can be a boy WOOO and then i got top surgery which was the ultimate act of reclamation of the self and the body and brought unimaginable joy because for the first time in my life i felt completely congruent with how i wanted my ideal self to be.

2. honestly it's just like every other aspect of your unique personhood, you get more comfortable with it the longer you live with it. i understand myself better over time, i know what i like and what i want and how to get it, i have more practical autonomy and sense of self. acceptance takes time :-) i had a lot of years of misery and uncertainty before this

3 & 4 are super intertwined - i've accepted the "you can do whatever you want forever" and "transness is sexy and epic" mindsets because i've been lucky enough to be surrounded by beautiful diverse trans and gnc people. being in love with other trans people has been holy and made me feel desirable and celebrated For my transness not in spite of it (thank you trans women), which has been integral to my love of my gender. having space to be myself exactly as i want to be and being surrounded by people who will see me as i want to be seen has been crucial.

honestly at the moment i'm in the best place i've ever been with gender stuff and it's largely because i moved to a place with a lot of trans people and i feel normal and beautiful and strong because i have a place among such a spirited and resilient community where i am valued (thank you trans women). when i was living in italy i was internally confident in myself but externally meek and hated how different i was from literally everyone around me. gave me brain damage.

but there is still an unspeakable isolation i have as a genderfluid person, where even when nothing about me externally has changed, i will be a boy or a girl or etc on a given day, and it is still a process for me to accept that i can simply Be the gender i am at any point, i don't have to justify it to myself or anyone else, i can just know for a fact that i am what i am.

ummm so yeah in conclusion i'm this way because ive been immensely lucky to have the resources to transition and have people around me support and inspire me to do so. it does also take some internal courage, you have to choose self-acceptance and take steps forward even when it's difficult, for example with transition stuff that people will see, i also have felt uncomfortable with the public nature of it, esp when i was first starting hrt, and changing my name, both stuff that took a lot of simmering in discomfort.

overall my advice is to take your time and don't be afraid. build connections with other trans people however you can, read about our history and participate in our present moment.

and as a last note, yes, there is always some disconnect between how i am on here and how i am irl, its unavoidable. im sure i come across as more solid and put together, i am more erratic and messy and uncertain and complicated, but everything i say here is genuine for sure, just cant encapsulate personhood into a blog. its also really hard to question your identity publicly. i always post after im more sure of myself so i can be confident - i wasn't posting my intense back-and-forth about starting T, i was posting about how much i loved being on T after i'd made my choice; i still dont post about my regrets and drawbacks from having top surgery, though i do intend to, its just difficult to be nuanced in this format.

thank you for your message i hope something here has been helpful your words were very very kind and i appreciated them, let me know if you want to know more about anything ive said here since its all pretty surface level !!

[a-dragons-journal]

i dont "kin for fun" but through tiktok i found out about the whole kin for fun vs actual otherkin... situation ig? im having a really hard time taking it seriously... maybe im just burnt out and bitter from dealing with the worlds current events, and maybe its because on tiktok the only people i saw mad about it were white people, but you're the most reasonable person ive seen talking about it (a lot of other posts have this odd tone that 12 year olds on tiktok saying kin is the worlds greatest opression and it weirds me out) so ig my question is just... why exactly does this matter? why does it matter enough to post about and care about and not just ignore? /gen

Hey! I don’t blame you for being a bit weirded out by it, we’re a weird subculture and we’re well aware of it! xD I appreciate you taking the time to actually look into it past your first knee-jerk reaction, especially considering burnout and the state of things.

I’m not totally sure if you’re asking why otherkinity matters or why the “kin for fun” being wrong matters, so I’ll answer both - they’re pretty well tied together anyway.

The short version:

Otherkinity is an identity. It’s who we are, we can’t choose to pick it up or put it down, and it comes with struggles - though no, ‘kin are not systematically oppressed (though we are pretty badly bullied and, at this point, pushed out of our own words and spaces).

What people calling roleplay/relating to/projecting onto characters “kinning for fun” does is steal our words, make them meaningless, and in doing so, make it difficult or impossible for us to find each other. If someone says “I kin [x],” I no longer know whether they mean “I am [x] on an intrinsic level” or “haha I relate to this character a lot”. I no longer know whether they actually share my experiences or if they’re going to turn on me and call me “crazy” as soon as they realize I’m not exaggerating or joking or roleplaying. It’s done massive harm to the community as a whole because it’s become difficult to tell whether someone is actually ‘kin or if they’ve misunderstood the whole thing - and because antikin rhetoric, which I’m seeing more and more in KFF spaces, hurts far more when it’s coming from inside what you thought was a community space than when it’s coming from self-labeled “antikin.”

There are other words for roleplaying and relating to and projecting onto characters. Hell, there are words for strongly identifying with-but-not-as characters/things, though usually KFF people don’t even seem serious enough for those to fit in my experience. I’m really not sure why these people are so determined to steal and misuse our words, words that were specifically created to mean something else, when they already have their own and are just refusing to use them. (Or, hell, if you don’t feel like those fit, make your own. We did. It’s your turn to put in the work. (General you, not you-the-anon, of course.))

An analogy, if that still doesn’t quite land for you:

Consider, for a moment, the transgender community. I am aware this is a dangerous thing to say, but bear with me. Obvious CW for hypothetical transphobia up ahead is obvious.

Consider if you were part of the trans community (I don’t know if you are or not), having finally found a word to explain why you feel the way you do about yourself, why your experiences don’t seem to match up with those of everyone else around you. Having found a community, a home, full of other people like you, people you never would have met if not for words like “transgender” and “gender dysphoria/euphoria” that were created specifically to describe your experiences.

Now consider if people suddenly stumbled across your community for the first time who were not trans themselves. They see community jokes and lighthearted posts out of context, because Tumblr and Twitter aren’t exactly conducive to making sure people find the Transgender 101 information posts first. They don’t bother to do further research, assuming they understand: ah, these people like to crossdress! They like to pretend they’re a different gender! This seems like a fun hobby, I want in!

They begin to post things like this. They post photos of them crossdressing and caption them “hi, I’m [name], and I trans men!” and things of the like. Suddenly the concept of “transing for fun” seems to be everywhere - and it’s not at all what being trans actually is, but these people either don’t know or don’t care. When actual trans people try to politely correct them, they’re accused of “gatekeeping” - and to be clear, this is not “nonbinary people aren’t real,” it’s “transgender means you identify as a gender other than the one you were assigned at birth, and you’re self-identifying as the gender you were assigned at birth 100% and telling us this is just a fun hobby for you, therefore you’re not trans, you’re crossdressing or doing drag or being GNC. That’s fine, but it’s not being trans - you have other words to describe that, use those.”

(Yes, I am aware these things have a history with the trans community - please just ignore that for the sake of the analogy and bear with me on the slightly simplified version of this. “Kinning for fun” does not have that same history with the otherkin community.)

...And then the response to those attempted corrections, in some corners, turns into “wait, you ACTUALLY think you’re another gender? idk that sounds pretty unhealthy, maybe you should see a psychologist or something :\” and “you’re taking this too seriously.”

I imagine, in this hypothetical scenario, you’d also be pretty fuckin peeved.

(Obviously, in this hypothetical scenario, systematic transphobia would be an issue as well, which isn’t the case for otherkin - again, you’re gonna have to bear with me on the simplification for sake of analogy there.)

(EDIT: this is not an anti-MOGAI/exclusionist argument, this is “you’re literally telling me you don’t fit the definition,” explanation on that here)

The long version, which is probably still worth reading if you have the time and energy:

Otherkinity is... pretty core to who I am, who we as a group of individuals are. We live with being otherkin on a daily basis. Many of us spent a long time feeling different and disconnected and not understanding why until we found the otherkin community. Even people like me, who don’t share that experience and still had social connection - I’ve still had to live with weird differences that I had to learn to mask when necessary; instincts that don’t line up with human society well, feeling body parts that weren’t there and that no one else ever seemed to have, things that other kids grew out of because it was just make-believe for them and I... didn’t, because it was never make-believe for me to begin with. Oh, sure, I played make-believe too - I played warrior cats and house and all those things with the other kids, but there were things that weren’t play-pretend for me too. I didn’t have an explanation for it for a long time - it was just how I was, I was weird, and fortunately for me personally I was okay with that (many of those with species dysphoria or more trouble connecting with humans have more problems from that than I did).

And then I found the word “otherkin.” And suddenly everything fell into place, and I had an explanation for the things I’d been experiencing, and there were other people like me. Something I’d assumed didn’t exist. I found others who shared my unique experiences, who were talking about how to cope with the instinct to growl or snap jaws at people instead of expressing annoyance in a human way instead of just saying “that’s weird, don’t do that”, who were talking about dealing with phantom wings and tails, who understood me. I wasn’t weird, I wasn’t broken, I was exactly what one would expect from a dragon living in human skin. I found an explanation for myself. I found a home.

That is why otherkinity matters - it is who we are, it’s not something we can walk away from (certainly not most of us, anyway), and it’s something many of us need the support of the community to help deal with on a daily basis. Being a nonhuman in human society isn’t always easy, but it’s not something we can just magically stop being - it’s core to who we are, we (generally) didn’t choose to be this way, and we (generally) can’t choose to stop. Which is fine - the vast majority of us can cope with it just fine, with a little advice and help and space to be our authentic selves in. We found each other, we built this community from the ground up to make a space and words to make finding each other easier - or possible at all.

Thus we come to the second half of our story.

It was only a couple of years ago that the “kin for fun” trend started getting big. It had existed before that, of course, but it only started going mainstream two, maybe three years ago, from what I can tell. Suddenly people were treating “kin” like it meant relating to, projecting onto, roleplaying as, or just really really liking a character or thing - not being that thing, which is what it actually means. Not long after that, it became hard to tell whether someone saying “I kin this” meant they were that thing, that they were actually part of our community - or that they really really liked that thing and either didn’t know or couldn’t be bothered to learn that that wasn’t the case for us.

Not long after that, it became relatively commonplace to hear phrases like “otherkin are ruining kinning!!” and “you’re taking this too seriously” and “idk, if it’s that serious for you that sounds unhealthy. maybe you should get some help :\” (all directly quoted, or as exactly quoted as I can remember, from things KFF people have said to me or people I know).

It is a special kind of hell, I think, to be told “you’re taking this too seriously, that’s unhealthy” by people who are taking words created to describe your experiences, not theirs, and misusing them to mean something that you do for fun on a weekend instead of something that’s intrinsic to your being.

Perhaps more importantly, like I’ve said, it’s making it almost impossible to know whether someone who says “I kin [x]” is actually ‘kin or if they’re misusing our words to mean something else entirely. The entire point of words is to communicate ideas, and once you start misusing words to mean something totally different than what they actually mean, that communication falls apart and suddenly we might as well not have those words at all. Especially when the community is small enough and obscure enough that we’re starting to be outnumbered by the misinformation. We’re being run out of our own words, words we created to describe our experiences specifically - because we’re a small community that the wider internet can easily drown out by sheer numbers of people who either don’t know any better or don’t care to learn.

That’s the harm it does - the harm it is doing, right now. That’s why it’s important enough to post about. That’s why it matters - because we’re fighting desperately to hang onto our own words so that others like us can actually find us. Because we’re seeing young nonhumans go “this isn’t a kin, I actually am this” and screaming “No, I’m so sorry that this is what the misinformation has done to you, that’s exactly what otherkin means, you have a place here, please don’t let these non-’kin misusing our words drive you away from the very community you’re looking for and that you belong in.” Because we can’t even communicate effectively about our own experiences anymore except in semi-closed spaces like Discord servers and forums (and the number of Discord servers overrun with KFF people is absurd).

......This got very long. Hopefully it at least explained why it matters so much to me and others a bit better ^^; Thanks for hearing me out, and thank you again for looking into this beyond your initial knee-jerk reaction - I really do appreciate it.

(For further reading, if that text wall didn’t blow you out of the water completely, I recommend my “kin for fun” tag, which has more posts like this in both short and long form.)

[ribghoul]

Tbh... idk if I'm really trans or not. Gender isn't something I think about often- i don't really care what pronouns people use for me or what people see me as. Does that make me nonbinary?

i think that whether or not you are trans is simply a matter of how you want to interpret how you feel about your gender. i know there is a culture of gatekeeping "transness", but to be honest there is no "correct" way to be trans and every person experiences their gender in a unique way.

if calling yourself nonbinary is something you feel helps describe yourself, i think it’s perfectly valid to consider yourself trans. there are no prerequisites for being trans - you can go by any and as many pronouns as you want, you can present however you want, and you don’t necessarily have to spend a lot of time thinking about your gender.

[sontagfag]

i think i love the way philosophy tube came out so much because it deeply resembles the way i wish i could have come out. i wanted to be able to take hormones and start transitioning and feel more comfortable in myself before i exposed that part of myself to other people. honestly it wasnt an option for me because i was a minor and coming out was a matter of survival in that i think if i waited any longer to come out i would have attempted suicide. my parents were not the type of people who would allow me to hide my transness and in fact their first question to me after i came out was what we were going to tell my extended family. also i think i also felt like i really owed people an explanation even though more than anything i did not want to give one? like so much pressure is put on trans people to say “i am in so much pain that transitioning is the only option” as if suffering is the first requirement of being trans. and i think it particularly angers me now because i feel a lot more comfortable in myself than i did when i came out and i realized i have no obligation to explain my unique experience with gender to cis people and that if i do what i want to put out into the world is trans joy, not pain. pain is unavoidable, particularly for trans people, but for me i just think its my continual desire to purge the cis gaze from how i express myself particularly in public settings. its a struggle, not in the least because i know its dangerous, though im very lucky to be a short white androgynous person so relatively less so. idk this is just a bunch of thoughts and ruminations

[butyouvealwaysbeenthecaretaker]

Sort of related to that, but the newest Tales of the City on Netflix is just so hilariously earnest and po-faced I can’t handle it.

I’m a huge fan of the books, but I only tuned in because I thought a narrative about a trans man possibly coming out as a gay post-transition was an interesting one to see.

And it’s dreadful, it sort of functions like a tumblr educational post. The way that the cis gay men around him are supportively neutral about his exploration process and positive about him coming out, the way that his cis girlfriend who has just agreed to an open relationship earnestly talks about how she misses being seen as a lesbian, it’s...you know, there is a fantastic movie to be made about this story, but you have to treat your characters as people rather than ideological widgets in which everyone is behaving correctly.

It’s queer-utopian to the degree of being actively unrealistic. Now, realistic doesn’t have to mean horrible. But the show just has everything just working out for the characters the way it’s supposed to, and it just doesn’t read as sincere. I didn’t see a story I could relate to.

~*~

A really good comparison point is actually Jake’s introduction in Michael Tolliver Lives, the book in which the character is introduced. Michael Tolliver is the author’s stand-in-self-insert who he’s been writing since 1970-something in a series of like, 7 books; he’s a HIV+ gay man and widower. Unique for the TOTC series, this story is written in the first person from Michael’s perspective.

Michael picks Jake up at a bar, they hook up, and afterwards stay friends and Jake becomes a series regular.

You’ve got Michael’s inner monologue of like, being worried that he’s going to mess up somehow and hurt Jake’s feelings, which reads as legit to me - he knows this isn’t as simple as a tumblr post about inclusion. And you’ve also got Michael making this strong connection between Jake’s transness and his own HIV+ status. Another guy at the gay bar outs Jake nastily to Michael when they’re in the loo; and it reminds Michael of the era in which people did that about him, when being HIV+ meant being a pariah. Michael thinks about how attracted he is to Jake, not only physically but also to his confidence, wondering how often he does this and knowing he is probably scared.

Maupin wrote the first trans character in american literature as far as we’re aware; he doesn’t always get it spot on, but his heavily autobiographical books always come from a place of inner truth and personal experience.

Like, I don’t want trauma porn or to see a character like Jake - my fave trans man in literature! not that there are many to choose from - harmed on screen, but I also don’t want this bland pollyanna-ish utopianism, especially when the original source handles this scene so well. I want complexity - I want conflict. Conflict doesn’t need to mean anger or violence, but it does need characters with fully-realised inner lives like...Jake and this random guy going home together, and the experience not being a simple one for either of them. It doesn’t need to show shame or abuse to be realistic, but it does need to be surprising or a moment of discovery, perhaps discovering something unexpected, or something that changes a person or is mixed, rather than just - and it was all OK. How often do trans people have sex with a stranger and the experience is one where “...but they supported and validated my gender identity, and that’s all I really needed, so I had a great time!” is the total reality of the experience.

And ditto with things like, the girlfriend’s response being so even-handely “I want to support him, but I miss being seen as a lesbian and I’m not sure how I feel about this being an open relationship” like, get angry, girl! Or, repress it. Or throw yourself into supportiveness as a cover for how you’re feeling. Or get a new girlfriend and have some proper poly drama. Or throw something at him, or throw him out, or endure it politely, or say no. Don’t just behave the way you’re supposed to in a single tell-not-show dialogue scene. Humans are messy! The conflict between what a person says they want and what they actually want is a ripe source for storytelling! What if the girlfriend has the worst possible response in the world, while knowing that it’s unethical and unkind, and her story is about trying to reconcile those two parts of her experience? I’d watch that.

(Case in point, I really love the protagonist’s wife in Victim (1961) - she’s a fantastic character, really nailing this middle ground where she doesn’t want to cause harm to her closeted husband, and she isn’t depicted as some kind of cludgel to beat the gay character for being destructively gay; but she’s still strong, about her own need to be in a real, mutual relationship, about feeling deceived. Perhaps the best line of dialogue in the film is hers, something like “I’m a woman, not a life raft, and I want to be loved for myself”. It’s fantastic writing, maintaining empathy for its closeted character in a way that’s radical for the period but also holding empathy for this wife as well, who quite rightly wants more from her life than to be a life-raft or a savior figure or a beard for this messy guy. idk how a 1961 movie arguing for gay rights has more compassion and understanding of the “ally spouse having a hard time with new information” character than a full 2010s series focused on queer people of all kinds)

[thedeadflag]

shadywobblerpalacerebel replied to your post “Genuine question : what's wrong about mpreg ? '-'”

I Just want my gay bois in my stories to have biological children... Why is that transphobic? I don't get it...

Your answer is found in the post you responded to, so let me bring your attention to it since you skipped past it.

Well, I’ll first quote some trans dudes and NB AFAB folks, because they’re the demo harmed most by them (along with uterus-owning intersex dudes):

“daily reminder mpreg is transphobic. like some men can get pregnant and these men have vaginas and uteruses. stop inventing shit that doesn’t exist to invalidate those who do.“ -user: daddybackes

“I hate mpreg. like all these fic writers everywhere going to ridiculous lengths when they could just have trans men but apparently either a. we don’t exist or b. aren’t worthy of love/sexy enough to be in their little stories. i just hate mpreg.“ -user: daddybackes

“now that i think about it mpreg is one of the weirdest, literary concepts out there especially when it involves cis het men. IRL though trans men totally have the option to go through pregnancy and it’s completely normal. IDK, man, I hate when (more than likely) straight girls take something that is something that is uniquely trans and then apply it to straight CIS men. they want to erase us so bad because we’re not “real men” so we don’t get to be involved in their fan fic. They’d ltierally rather make up a whole other set of organs in men to justify mpreg than be like “well some men have uteruses.” Besides i’m not asking cis people to write about the trans experience, becuse they don’t know it, but they can at least just write a man and be like “also…vagina” that works too. so yeah exactly.“ -user: daddybackes

“because it’s ignoring that (trans) men can get pregnant (trans men specifically, but anyone born with a uterus can get pregnant, with any gender identity) and just making both parties cisgender“ -user: bpd-lance

“Like you don’t need magic for men to get pregnant. It’s not an alien thing. I am literally a man who can get pregnant I’m writing this post right now. It’s further otherization of trans bodies combined with gross misogyny when it’s actually used as a trope in fiction (I’m lookin at you, a/b/o fics). It’s always a cis man getting pregnant some how and then he’s treated like shit for these “feminine” things. There’s nothing inherently feminine in giving birth so why are the characters who do give birth in mpreg fics suddenly treated like they’re women (and therefore like shit) because they’re pregnant.If I got pregnant right now, I would not suddenly become a woman. The use of misogynistic language and actions (which are often not outright) towards a pregnant character upholds the idea that pregnancy is a woman only experience, which just isn’t true. It isn’t. I hate mpreg a whole lot and I’d love to have a conversation with other like minded mpreg haters” -user: bokuroho

“another cool tip: don’t write trans male characters to fulfil your pregnancy/mpreg kinks!the coolest tip of all: trans characters don’t exist to carry out your shitty kinks so have some fucking respect “ -user: rabbit-hearted-boy

“to people who write mpreg so their m/m ships can have babies:trans people exist mpreg and f*ta are transphobic (+ pretty  intersexist too but i’m dyadic and not an expert so i’ll put that aside for the momet). they fetishise the idea of a man or woman having bodies that they aren’t “meant” to have. they fetishise transness. it’s gross and horrible and as a trans person i’m gonna complain about it.and that second part… uh. i mean that you could have a cis dude and a trans dude as a couple, because most trans men can still give birth to kids. (so long as they haven’t had surgery + aren’t too dysphoric to do so, of course.)” -user: autistictatsuyasuou

“why do people still use cis men to write mpreg stories when trans men existwhy do authors still use cis characters to write stories about gay couples conceiving a child when trans men exist why do writers come up with convoluted ways to get cisgender, men-identified characters pregnant when transgender men exist and need representation” -user: benjiscloset

-------------------

So, with that all said, there’s basically a few issues here:

1. Trans men are being ignored in favour of cis men, despite the cis men characters embodying traits of trans men in order to create/progress a certain narrative. This is textbook fetishization.

2. Mpreg, as a category, is the fetishization of trans men’s bodies to primarily pursue male pregnancy above all else (often involving plenty of smut), more often than not ignoring any and all trans experiences that either don’t fit the narrative they want to tell, or are too ‘difficult’ or ‘scary’ for the writers to write. This is deeply fetishistic in a world where there’s next to no representation of trans men that doesn’t include the fetishization of their bodies and the sexual use of them in ways befitting the cis gaze and standard dehumanization.

So essentially, cis men are used instead of trans men, which is fetishistic, but even when trans men are used, it’s nearly always fetishistic in how the characters and narrative are handled.

There is one type of male person in the world that can get pregnant, and it’s trans men. So when people remove that unique experience from trans men, and discard all of their other traits and experiences, and plop that ability to get pregnant into cis men, that’s absolutely fetishization. It’s fetishizing a whole social group of people, which is dehumanizing and misrepresentative, so it’s transphobic, yeah.

Ultimately, when it comes to any trans representation in media, the primary goal has to be the humanization of the trans characters, because by default, we are dehumanized, which is why nearly all trans representation in media is fetishistic.

If trans representation wasn’t overwhelmingly fetishistic and transphobic, maybe there’d be a little leeway, but as it is, any media content that doesn’t explicitly humanize trans people will end up being transphobic. They cannot be used as a vessel/vehicle for a certain plot device or narrative. They cannot just be used as a means to an end.

Like, a good test is this: Take the mpreg character(s). Remove any and all sexual narratives and scenes. Remove any and all narratives and scenes that are in any way related to his genitals and biological functions. Is a full story told? Can one be cobbled together by what remains? Is the mpreg character still a key element? Are they a departure from transphobic stereotypes (of course, if they’re not trans, then the work is a transphobic write-off)? Are they fully characterized at least at the level of the other main characters? Etc. Etc.

In reality, mpreg doesn’t explicitly claim to be related to trans (or intersex) people, but it cannot be viewed outside of that context in a world where trans and intersex people are also displaced from our bodies and our realities by cis dyadic people, in a world where our body parts are literally objectified and fetishized and removed from our humanity. I literally don’t give a crap what anyone’s intent is, that’s the reality of it, that’s representation that harms trans and intersex people, and if people fail to realize that, then they’re harming trans and intersex people, categorically.

Besides, we should be propping up adoption in fiction, because it’s just as damn valid and wonderful and real and natural as pregnancy. Putting nuclear family ideals over fetishization and oppression of trans men and trans masc nb folks and otherization/devaluation of is super shitty and there’s no reason for it. 

[clueless-arting]

Fun fact I'm a trans man. I'm also... atheist? I don't believe in a god. More specifically, I don't particularly care if there is or not. These two things aren't super related, but knowing people who don't accept my transness (? Idk if that's a term) due to religious reasons got me thinking. I think, if there was a god and they cared a wit about some individual, they would've made me trans because the experience, as it has been so far, has been a great teacher. I have learned how to listen - because I have had need of someone to listen to me, and I learned how to listen from those who did both well and poorly at doing so. I learned how to stand up for myself, and continue to do so; it is not an easy task to try and encourage a change of pronouns and names. I've also learned that I need to be stronger because I don't correct those around me even when it hurts. I've learned a great deal of patience. My friends, when I first came out, went through a phase of very loudly correcting and apologising when they made mistakes, which hurt and was embarrassing. They got much better though, and I was proud of them. I learned how good I have it with the people I am around. They've accepted me, and supported me, and even held a dick party for me. How many people can claim that? I have found resources and knowledge that would have never come up otherwise, and been able to help others out. I have met people I would not have met otherwise, and connected with them in a way I never expected. So... I don't quite understand why, if they believe a god has created all and made this world, a person would believe being trans is wrong. I feel like being trans has done nothing but made my life more rich. Not to say being cis would not have allowed richness - but it's in a unique way that I appreciate and came to love, even if being trans and the process is difficult. I like being trans. I like being gay. I like me. And if it was because a god said, "hey see that fucker there? Make that one queer" then, thank you god.