#if you try to point out that as a transmasculine person you have no voice you are treated as an invading man

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

having complex feelings about gender stuff recently but i don't really know how to put it into words. some of it is about the self-erasure that becomes necessary when you try and talk about medical misogyny you've experienced as someone who isn't a woman but who is perceived by the world as one. some of it is about no longer feeling connected to female-centred stories of a kind you used to enjoy as a teenager because they always feel alienating but also not liking your own emotions about that because you should be able to enjoy stories that weren't written for you, it's just that they don't feel like stories that even allow space for you to exist in. but shouldn't men be able to enjoy women's stories too? but you're not a man. but you're not a woman. but the stories are about and for people who look like you but you're not one of them. but you would have been them if you lived in those worlds because nobody would have seen a difference, and that's viscerally uncomfortable, and impossible to enjoy--

and some of it is about looking for stories you could exist in and only finding stories that are profoundly unrelatable because they're only ever about characters who knew they were trans since puberty and had access to transition care in their teens and you didn't figure it out until adulthood and also that's not legally available in your country so that would never have been on the cards in the first place. or people who figured it out in adulthood but they're so certain and they're so ready to take risks and they'll change the world for a chance to become themselves because they know what they're aiming for. some of it is not being sure what you want but knowing you'll always have to be certain about it enough to fight for it because you're not going to get it any other way. some of it is not wanting to be an activist, not wanting to agitate, not wanting to have to resist every goddamn second bc you're just trying to exist in the world, but the only way anyone will ever give you a modicum of what you need is if you put all your energy into the struggle for it--

some of it is about feeling an ongoing tether to the experience of being a woman in a bad way but no tether to the experience in a good way and there's a weird kind of mourning in that, and a self denial, and an inability to reconcile your own contradictions in a way that feels comfortable. some of it is about feeling pressure to experience gender differently and to opt in to something else if you're going to opt out of what you were given but you don't want to do that either. and a lot of it is constantly self-policing your own emotions and thoughts and being convinced you're doing it all wrong somehow because you see other people being so free with their genderfuck, so unencumbered by expectations, so easily able to get it right for themselves and other people, and you're still misgendering yourself half the time in your mind because you don't even know what the right words would be at this point when you still have scars shaped like being a girl even though you're not a girl and you can't talk about them without doing yourself another piece of damage

like. i am who i am because i was thought a girl and maybe because i thought i was a girl and maybe i still don't understand why i'm not a girl but in my not-girlness i no longer feel i have any access to any kind of womanhood that doesn't hurt but i don't want to police myself out of femininity just because it isn't all that i am anymore

[defectivevillain]

give you all my poison

pairing: Peter Hale/Reader

reader's pronouns are he/him; race is ambiguous.

Derek shakes his head in disbelief. Then he falls silent and squints at you. “Peter’s right, you do smell a bit weird.” He frowns, his eyebrows furrowed. “Should I be concerned that everyone’s smelling me?” You ask. “We’re werewolves.” Derek says flatly. Yes, you suppose that is a suitable excuse.

You’re not quite sure what Peter Hale’s obsession with your scent is about. You just know that he doesn’t seem to care what you think, because he’s constantly breaking the distance between you and sniffing at your neck with a confused and irritated expression.

word count: 4.8k | ao3 version

Warnings: mentions of skin-peeling/shedding (molting); canon-typical blood, injury, violence, and supernatural stuff

author's notes: The reader is male/transmasculine. His race is ambiguous.

This is canon divergent, maybe even canon non-compliant. This fic’s pacing is pretty quick and it’s dialogue heavy. But I thought of the idea yesterday and just had to share it. I’m obsessed.

I'm bad at creating my own titles—this one is an edited lyric from Thank You for the Venom by MCR. Because duh.

“You smell very strange.” A familiar voice says in lieu of a greeting. You look up from the couch to find Peter standing in the opposite doorway, his nose scrunched and a pinched expression on his face. He looks effortlessly casual in his cardigan and jeans, and his gaze flits about your form before settling on your face. 

“Thanks.” You say wryly. You’ve long grown used to Peter’s somewhat blunt, borderline rude personality. He’s clever and has a sharp wit, making him rather entertaining to speak to. You thought you had grown used to his sardonic nature, but that remark hurts a bit. 

“You know what I mean.” Peter says, appearing moments away from rolling his eyes. 

“I really don’t.” You admit. You know werewolves have a particularly strong sense of smell, but you’re not sure why he’s pointing it out to you. 

“You smell-” Peter breaks off, annoyed. He takes a step into the room and freezes, falling quiet for a moment. “-strange. You don’t smell like a human.”

“What?” You ask, growing a bit worried. What’s that supposed to mean, exactly?! Are you not human? “Wait, what do I smell like, then?”

Peter takes that statement as permission to break the distance between you and start sniffing your neck, to which you try to push him away. He chases you for a moment before leaning back with a focused expression on his face. “You smell acidic.” He concludes. 

“Maybe my pH levels are off.” You mutter dryly, ignoring how your heart had jumped at his sudden proximity. 

Peter hears the remark (damn his werewolf hearing). And damn it, that means he can probably hear your heart racing. Ugh. “No.” Peter responds, breaking you away from your thoughts. “You don’t smell like any human I’ve met.” 

“Do you go around smelling humans a lot?” You ask, attempting to alleviate some of the tension in the air. 

“You could take this seriously, for once in your life.” Peter says, entirely unimpressed by your jab. 

“That’s ironic, coming from you.” You smile. “And take what seriously? You just said I smell weird. And then you proceeded to smell me without warning.” 

Peter looks at you for a moment and growls, walking off into the nearby hall. You stare after him in confusion, before making peace with the fact that he’s not going to explain himself. 

Several minutes pass before another presence enters the room. You’re about to ask Peter what the whole smelling debacle was about when you realize the new arrival isn’t Peter, but instead his nephew, Derek. He gives you a stiff nod from his spot in the doorway. You raise your brow expectantly, sensing he wants to speak with you. 

“You seem to be…” Derek then says, trailing off for a moment as he evidently struggles to find the words. “...Particularly good at annoying my uncle.” He then notes, taking a step to the side and leaning against the wall. 

“I try my best.” You say.

Derek shakes his head in disbelief. Then he falls silent and squints at you. “He’s right, you do smell a bit weird.” He frowns, his eyebrows furrowed.

“Should I be concerned that everyone’s smelling me?” You ask. 

“We’re werewolves.” Derek says flatly. Yes, you suppose that is a suitable excuse. 

“Okay then.” You relent. That still doesn’t give you an explanation, though. “Why is it such a big deal?”

“Werewolves use their sense of smell to distinguish between friends—or pack members—and enemies.” Derek explains. 

“Well, can’t you just look at me to do that?” You ask. Derek scoffs, as if it’s an incredibly dumb question. “What?” You say defensively. 

“It’s not that simple.” Derek says, vague as always. 

“So… what’s the problem with me smelling weird?” You eventually prompt him. 

“It’s not a problem, necessarily.” He remarks. “But all humans have a somewhat similar smell: blood and sweat. Either you have strange genetics, or…” You stare at him expectantly. Derek just exhales. “Or you’re not human.” He finishes. 

“Oh.” You remark, not quite sure what else to say. “Fun.” The prospect of you being supernatural is definitely overwhelming. But maybe it’ll just be a fluke. Maybe you just have some undiagnosed health issues. Surely there’s a logical explanation for this. 

“Yes.” Derek says, a hint of a smile on his face at your sarcasm. It quickly fades as he considers the statement. “So you could be some sort of supernatural creature.”

“Wouldn’t I have known that by now, though?” You frown. 

“It depends.” Derek murmurs. “Not all creatures have to undergo a bite or formative event to trigger their powers. Some are born that way, others are created through science.”

“Huh.” You remark. “You know a lot about this stuff.”

“Thanks to me.” Stiles chimes in, popping up in the opposite hallway. Derek’s eyes immediately shoot over to Stiles and you resist the urge to laugh, instead following his eyes and looking at your friend. 

“Hey, Stiles,” You greet him. 

“Hey!” He says brightly. He’s tapping his fingers against the wall. “So, I heard you’re joining the supernatural gang?” You know him well enough to know that the smile on his face is a devious one. You may be in trouble.  

“Not yet,” Derek interjects, before he can get too excited. 

“Well, you can be an honorary member,” Stiles says with a nod. You feel yourself start to relax at the remark. “And don’t let Peter get to you. He’s kind of a dick.”

“Stiles,” Derek warns him. “Okay, so he’s definitely a huge dick.” Stiles corrects himself. Derek groans in annoyance and walks off, leaving Stiles and you in the living room. “Mind if I sit?”

“Go for it; I could use some human company. Or semi-human, I guess.” You move over to give him more room. 

“I fit the bill,” Stiles hums in agreement, stretching his legs to let his feet rest on the coffee table. Derek always hates when he does that, you note with amusement. You get the feeling Stiles has started doing it on purpose now. “So, you think you’re supernatural?” He asks. 

“I don’t think so.” You frown. “I mean, if Peter hadn’t said anything about me smelling weird, then I wouldn’t have even considered it.”

“Peter said you smelled weird?” Stiles blinks, before face-palming. “Idiot.” You get the weirdest feeling there’s something you’re missing. But you can’t focus on it for long before Stiles is continuing to speak. “Don’t worry. He’s probably trying to make something out of nothing.”

“I hope so.” You sigh. 

“Hey, don’t panic,” Stiles remarks. “Even if you are somehow supernatural, then we’ll be able to help. You’re definitely in the right place.” 

“Thanks, Stiles.” You smile, appreciating your friend’s support. 

“Don’t mention it.” He says casually, reaching for the TV remote. “Now, wanna watch shitty reality TV? How about 90 Day Fiance?”

“Hell yeah.” You respond affirmatively. 

As days pass and bleed into weeks, you slowly start to forget your unusual interaction with Peter. You continue studying and focusing on school, occasionally meeting up with the pack when they need another set of eyes on things. Ultimately, your spring semester is shaping up to be a normal one. 

But then some strange things start happening. Beacon Hills is a strange place—you’ve grown to accept that. It’s home to all sorts of supernatural creatures. Hell, you’re friends with werewolves: you can handle a bit of weirdness.  Usually, you’re not directly involved, though. You’re always a bystander, which you’re more than fine with. Things don’t necessarily happen to you, which is why it throws you when you wake up one morning to find your skin peeling—and not just a normal amount. It’s… Well, you don’t even want to think about it anymore. You just feel like a snake shedding its skin. The thought makes you shudder. 

And then there’s your strange tolerance for heat. You’ve never quite loved the summer months in Beacon Hills, since it can get very warm outside. You’re usually okay if you stay inside. But this summer, for whatever reason, you’re not only comfortable in the heat—you find yourself actively seeking it out, moving to sit in the sun instead of the shade and going outside more often. You also find yourself feeling less fatigued, as if you’re expending less energy. It’s all so weird. You would try speaking to Stiles about it, but the pack has been pretty busy lately with the appearance of a few hostile Darachs. Besides, you don’t even know how you’d begin to breach the topic. 

It all comes to a head on one particularly sweltering summer afternoon, when you find yourself seeking out the sun’s warmth instead of resting in the air conditioning like the rest of the pack. You had gotten some incredulous looks, but you couldn’t quite focus on that. You can’t rationalize this behavior of yours—you just know that it feels right, somehow. 

“What are you doing out here?” Peter scoffs, clearly trying to sound disinterested. You squint and look over to find Peter standing next to you in a tank top and sweatpants. There’s a note of something close to concern in his voice. You pretend not to notice, instead considering the question. 

“Relaxing.” You just shrug, crossing your legs and taking a slow breath. 

“It’s practically a desert out here,” Peter points out. “You’re crazy.”

“I’m fine,” you reassure him, noticing the worry hidden behind the insult. “It feels nice.”

Peter leans forward and brings a hand to your forehead, frowning. “You don’t feel warm.” He notes. 

“I told you,” you say quietly, without venom. Peter just mutters something under his breath about stubbornness before walking away. You glance around and find him retreating into the cool, air-conditioned house. You hum and turn your attention back to soaking up the sun’s warmth. It feels quite nice—almost rejuvenating. 

Then a sudden sharp pain bleeds through your ribs. You gasp and bring a hand to your abdomen, feeling as if it’s tearing itself apart. Your back is aching persistently too, adding insult to injury. You’re leaning down to the ground now, a hand on the grass as you try to breathe past the stabbing sensation in your chest. What is happening? One moment you’re fine; the next, you feel as if your entire body is stretching and ripping at the seams. 

You blink and submerge yourself in darkness. When you open your eyes, you realize you’re on your feet again. Except… you’re taller than normal. And your lower half comprises eight inky black legs. There’s something weighing your back down; you manage to turn around enough to see a giant stinger. Are you… a scorpion? You stare down at your form in disbelief. Everything from your waist up is human; from the waist down, you look like a scorpion. 

“Jesus fucking Christ.” Peter’s voice breaks through the silence and you look over to find him staring at you in complete disbelief. He’s standing just past the stairs to the house, regarding you with an unreadable expression. 

“...Hey.” You manage to say awkwardly, your heart racing in your chest. 

“That’s all you have to say for yourself?” He exclaims incredulously. "Hey?” 

“I didn’t know this would happen!” You quickly defend yourself.

Between the likely indicators of your distress—your accelerated heart rate and pained breathing—and the commotion from your argument with Peter, you’ve successfully drawn Stiles and Derek out of the house. Derek doesn’t look super surprised, only a bit wary; and Stiles looks excited. His eyes are practically glittering. “I knew it, dude!” He exclaims, sending you a thumbs-up. You feel some of your nerves fade at the friendly gesture. “Supernatural gang! Hell yeah. You look so fucking cool!” You fight off a smile. 

“Stiles.” Derek admonishes him. But he’s hiding a smile. 

“I knew you smelled too weird to be a human,” Peter says triumphantly, a victorious grin on his face. He seems to have gotten over the whole scorpion transformation thing pretty quickly. 

You just huff in annoyance. You have more important things to worry about at the moment, like returning to your human form. “Any advice on how to…?”

“Go back to normal?” Peter supplies. He’s studying your tail with particular interest, hunger flickering across his face. You hope he doesn’t want to eat you. “No idea.” He shrugs. 

You look at Derek helplessly. He sighs. “I’m not sure either.” He admits, before glancing at Stiles. “Any ideas?”

“Finally someone asked,” Stiles huffs, crossing his arms over his chest. “Thought I’d be standing here twiddling my thumbs the whole time.”

“Stiles.” Derek says exasperatedly. 

“Right, right, not the time,” Stiles sighs, before taking a step closer to you and looking up at you. “Okay, so I’ve done some reading. Because, well, emissary stuff. I guess. Anyways! I remember the process being similar to werewolves—having something anchor you to your humanity.” 

“How am I supposed to do that?” You ask helplessly, starting to feel a bit scared. 

“It’s okay, you’ll be okay.” Stiles says, evidently sensing your distress. “We’ll get you out of this soon, don’t worry.” He placates you. Damn it, Stiles always knows just what to say. You want to be embarrassed, but hell, you just turned into a half-scorpion! This is far from normal. 

“Your anchor can be a person, a relationship, an object,” Derek adds. “Anything that reminds you of your human form.”

You take a slow breath, attempting to calm yourself down. You can do this. You don’t need to rush it, either. You’re not in danger right now—Peter, Derek, and Stiles are here. They’re not scared by you, and they didn’t shun you. You’re going to be fine. You’re safe. You repeat that notion like a mantra in your head. You’re safe. You’re okay. You’ll be just fine. And slowly but surely, you start to believe it. The stiffness and discomfort slowly bleed out of you and you feel a sudden pressure in your knees before you crumple to the ground. 

“Not bad.” Peter says, the words sounding garbled through your ringing ears. He’s standing far closer than you thought he was—if you were to stand up, you’d probably crash into him. 

“Ugh.” You just groan, attempting to peel yourself off the ground. Your limbs are aching and there’s some sort of liquid dripping from your fingers. But otherwise, you’re back to your human form! Small mercies. 

Peter doesn’t even offer you a hand, instead just bending down and hauling you to your feet like a stray kitten. You blink and wobble a bit, set right by his rather tight grip on your upper arm. “Thanks.” You say to him, before looking down at your dripping hands. “This is probably venom.” 

“Probably, yes.” Peter says with a smile. 

Stiles and Derek approach you, vastly different expressions on their faces (intrigue and skepticism, respectively). Stiles leans in to scrutinize the liquid for a moment. “It won’t hurt you, because you have resistance, I’m sure,” he reassures you. “But it’ll be poisonous to us. Maybe even corrosive.” Stiles analyzes. 

“Corrosive?” You echo. 

“Look.” Stiles inclines his head down to your feet. You follow his gaze to where you had first fallen after your transformation. There’s a sizable chunk of ground caving in on itself, evidently from where the venom had fallen to the ground and eroded it. “Hey, you should try shooting it.” He proceeds to shoot his wrist out like Spider-Man shoots his webs.

“I’m not Spider-Man,” you huff. Peter lets out an amused noise; you decide to follow Stiles’s instruction, if only out of curiosity. Unsurprisingly, the venom just drips off of your hands. You smile knowingly. 

“Hey, it was worth a try.” Stiles defends himself. He seems eager to change the subject. “Anyways, now we have a shit ton of werewolves, a Kitsune, a spark, a Kanima—Jackson’s lucky he’s even being included—and you. Nice. Sounds like the start to a really bad joke.”

Derek just rolls his eyes. He probably doesn’t realize it, but his eyes are gleaming with fondness as he looks at your friend. You catch Stiles’s eye and smile, which he returns with a smile of his own. Maybe one day he’ll notice Derek’s pining. Maybe one day. 

“Let’s head back.” Derek suggests. “You should probably be in our company for a few days, to ensure you don’t transform accidentally.” 

“Yeah, that wouldn’t be good…” You hesitantly agree, thinking about transforming into a half-scorpion in the middle of your lecture hall. That’s one easy way to fail your classes. You stare down at your hands, relieved to find that the venom has been absorbed into your skin once more. Where exactly that venom goes is a mystery you don’t particularly care to solve. 

“I can do some research.” Stiles offers, practically bouncing on his heels at the thought. “Some light reading.”

“You call those thick ass books ‘light reading’?” Derek mutters disbelievingly as he heads back towards the house. 

“Yes.” Stiles frowns, walking behind Derek. “And that’s not how you say ‘you’re welcome,’ sourwolf.” 

You don’t really have the wherewithal to comprehend what they’re talking about, so you instead just focus on not tripping over your own feet as you head back to the house. Peter still has a hand on your arm, which you’re secretly grateful for. You sort of feel like you’re walking through a thick sludge. Evidently, the transformation will take some getting used to. 

You can’t be more than a minute’s walk from the house, but you’re still tired by the time you get up the steps. You pause in the entryway, bracing yourself with a hand against the wall. You can feel Peter’s inquisitive gaze burning into the side of your face. “You’re about to pass out.” He reminds you. 

“Thanks, I hadn’t noticed.” You say dryly. The remark lacks your usual bite, instead sounding a bit pathetic. 

“You’re welcome.” Peter smiles sweetly. You roll your eyes. Despite his acerbic remark, his grip on you tightens as he leads you to the living room. You pretty much collapse on the sofa, feeling all of your adrenaline promptly seep out of your bones. 

“Get some rest.” Derek practically orders. Stiles lets out a pointed cough and he lets out a strangled breath. “You’ll need it.” He says a bit more kindly. 

You don’t have the time or energy to contemplate the weird expression on Peter’s face as he stares at you; or notice the meaningful look Stiles gives you, his eyes flitting between Peter and you pointedly. Within moments, you’re succumbing to exhaustion and falling asleep to the ever-familiar sound of Stiles and Derek’s bickering. 

You would think, in the time since you learned you’re a Girtablilu—which is the official word for a creature like you, according to Stiles—that Peter would abandon the whole scenting issue. You’re pretty surprised, then, when he walks into the room and freezes again, a frown rising on his face. 

“You smell different.” Peter says. 

“Not this again.” You protest. But it’s too late—Peter’s already getting up in your space and sniffing you. You remain still this time, if only because you know resistance is futile. 

“You smell like the banshee.” He concludes after his impromptu inspection. 

“Lydia?” You ask. Peter knows her name—he shouldn’t be calling her ‘the banshee.’ You sigh, knowing that’s an argument you’re not going to win. “Yeah, we’re roommates. I’m surprised you’re just now noticing.” Indeed, you’ve been rooming with Lydia for the entire year. 

“Co-ed dorms?” Peter questions. 

“Yeah, our residence hall is all-gender.” You reply, confused by this particular line of questioning. 

“Interesting.” Peter says. The irritated expression on his face suggests that it’s nothing of the sort. “And she’s your girlfriend?” He clarifies. 

You stare at him in complete disbelief. He stares back unflinchingly. “What-? No.” You choke out. Where in the hell did he get that idea?

“You’re sure?” Peter asks, a smile on his face as if he’s amused at your expense. It looks a little strained. “You smell like her.” Okay, now he definitely sounds annoyed. 

“Positive,” you respond firmly. “Lydia likes women; she’s dating Allison.” And the two of you live together—it’s only natural that her scent will carry over to you, if that’s how the whole scent thing works. You’re still very confused by it. Thankfully, that’s not really your problem—since you don’t have an enhanced sense of smell like the werewolves. 

“Oh.” Peter remarks.  

“Yes, oh.” You say, resisting the urge to roll your eyes. “And I’m gay too. So we’re just friends.” Peter doesn’t say anything for a long moment. “We get that question a lot.” You then explain, needing a reprieve from the awkward silence. 

Peter just hums. “I didn’t realize you like men.” 

A pause. “Well, I do.” You say somewhat helplessly. You have an idea of why he’s so interested in that particular tidbit, but you don’t want to get your hopes up or read into it too much. 

“I do, too.” Peter says. 

Your eyes snap to him so fast you nearly give yourself whiplash. For a moment, you’re struck silent as you just stare at him incredulously. Fortunately, you’re saved from stammering out a response when Derek storms through the door, looking furious. “I’m going to kill Stiles,” he hisses, surging through the room and heading to one of the adjacent hallways. The tension that had been settling between Peter and you is promptly broken, leaving you both standing in the living room somewhat awkwardly. 

Unfortunately, it seems Peter hasn’t lost his creepy fixation with your scent. The first and second time, you weren’t expecting it. This time, you manage to see it coming. 

“You smell like Stiles.” Peter says as he enters the room, studying you intently. 

“Okay, no need to test it.” You say quickly with a shake of your head, leaning away from him before he can start sniffing you again. You’ve since learned from your mistakes. “What’s with you and this scent thing?” You demand. 

Peter just smiles, entirely unashamed of the stunt he just tried to pull. “Why were you with Stiles?” He asks instead, proceeding to entirely ignore your question. 

“You know him,” you answer exasperatedly. “He’s a ‘slut for research,’ in his own words. He wanted to see what kind of scorpion I am.”

“And?” Peter prompts you.

“Well, we’re not quite sure.” You begin. The research process was pretty entertaining. Stiles was fanboying half of the time, which was a bit flattering, honestly. “We couldn’t test if my tail grows back without cutting it off, which we didn’t want to do, obviously. But I am fluorescent, supposedly. So that’s fun. And then my venom’s toxic too.”

“I guess I was molting last week,” you recall. Peter’s entirely silent, which convinces you to keep talking. “Scorpions can live up to a year without food, but we can’t test that either. They also have low metabolic rates. That’s about it, I think.” Some of that information is from Wikipedia, but he doesn’t need to know that. 

“I’d never met a Girtablilu before.” Peter admits. That statement feels more impactful than you can comprehend, for some reason. There’s a certain weight to it. 

“Me neither.” You then huff. Peter’s expression cracks into a slight smile. 

“You’re something of a rare breed.” He teases. 

“Don’t say it like that,” you argue insistently. “I’m not a pet.”

“You’d be a cute one,” Peter continues, uncaring of your objections. “Just put you in a tank, throw you crickets every few days.” 

“Perish the thought.” You say with a shake of your head.  

“Take you out for walks.” Peter continues, if only to irritate you more. 

“I’ll sting you.” You threaten him. 

“You won’t.” Peter says. 

You both know it’s an empty threat. “I won’t.” You agree. 

“I have diplomatic immunity, it seems,” Peter notes. He looks smug now. 

“For now,” you emphasize, wanting to wipe that damn smirk off his face. “Don’t get comfortable.”

“Oh, I won’t.” He says. The sharpened teeth in his grin send a bolt of something down your spine. “I’ll be watching you very closely, sweetheart.” And, in typical dramatic fashion, Peter’s gone before you can respond. That’s probably good for you, because otherwise, he would’ve noticed the flustered expression you’re sure is written all over your face. 

You’re starting to think something’s wrong with Peter. Maybe he’s sick or something. He’s just been acting a little… strange. For one, he keeps on touching you—casual gestures like a hand on your shoulder, the nape of your neck, or your back. He doesn’t behave like that with anyone else. Next, he’s being weirdly evasive. Every time you try to speak with him, Peter almost seems distracted. 

In hindsight, maybe you should’ve expected this behavior to manifest in other ways. Because surely that’s the only explanation for why he thought that pursuing multiple Chimeras on his own would be a good idea. Peter’s strong, sure, but not that foolish. At least, that’s what you thought. 

Safe to say, once you all learn of Peter’s absence, you’re the first to volunteer yourself to go after him. Stiles had tracked down the location of the Chimeras the previous day, so it won’t be hard to find. Furthermore, your venom will prove useful—since the creatures have very few weaknesses otherwise. Derek doesn’t seem happy about it, necessarily, but Stiles manages to distract him long enough for you to make your daring escape and go after Peter. 

You find him in the same clearing Stiles had labeled as the Chimeras’ hideout. He’s fending them off, but you can tell his balance is slightly lopsided and he’s slowly losing ground. You sigh, resigning yourself to a messy evening before transforming into your Girtablilu form and fighting off the creatures at Peter’s back. 

After what feels like far too long, you’ve successfully defeated all of the Chimeras. You take a slow breath and calm down, embracing your human form once more. As you return, you stumble and shoot an arm out, bracing yourself with a hand on the tree Peter’s leaning against. The transformation still isn’t as smooth as you want it to be, but you know it’ll improve with time. 

“Maybe don’t go off on your own again.” You say breathlessly, looking down at him with a tired smirk on your face. “Also, you’re welcome.” 

Peter’s staring at you with wide eyes, his gaze roaming your face as if drinking in the sight of you. You stare back at him, a bit curious about his sudden intense scrutiny. He doesn’t explain himself, instead keeping quiet and just looking at you eerily. 

Eventually, you extend a hand to him; he takes it and allows you to tug him to his feet. You move to release your grip, but Peter’s grasp is steadfast and unrelenting. The two of you stand there for several moments, far closer than what is socially appropriate. 

“You’re difficult to impress.” Peter eventually murmurs. 

You blink. “You were trying to impress me? Why?” The thought is almost ludicrous. 

“Because I… care about you,” Peter says, his voice almost dripping with condescension and revulsion. You recognize the bravado in the gesture—knowing he’s masking his uncertainty and nerves. Then you process the statement and everything finally makes sense: the scenting; the physical contact; the look on his face when you first transformed, and the look he gave you just now; the concern disguised with sarcasm. 

“Oh,” you breathe. 

“Yes, oh,” he repeats, clearly taking delight in calling back to the last time you said those same words. Suddenly that conversation about sexuality makes a lot more sense. 

“Well,” you drawl, sounding a lot more confident than you feel, “Are you going to do anything about it?”

“Does that mean what I think it means?” Peter’s eyes are glittering. 

“Yes,” you confirm, your voice wavering ever so slightly. Peter’s expectant gaze is only making you more nervous. “I care about you too.” 

“Good.” Peter states, before surging forward and kissing you. You’re quick to embrace him in return, your arms looping around his shoulders. It’s far from a sweet or harmless gesture—Peter doesn’t do sweet, and you think his claws are digging into your waist somewhere. But… you wouldn’t want him any other way. 

“Well.” A familiar voice says far too soon. Peter and you break apart, both of you turning to investigate. “I guess you guys had it handled after all.” 

“...Hey, Stiles.” You sigh, recognizing your friend at the edge of the woods. Stiles sends you a wave. 

“Derek thought I should check on you,” he explains, shoving his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “He’s gonna kill me, though: I bet him that you guys would get your shit together by the end of the week.” 

“So, thanks.” Stiles says with a smirk. “I can’t wait to rub it in Derek’s face.” 

Peter and you exchange a look before sighing in exasperated defeat.

©2025, @defectivevillain | @defectivehero, All Rights Reserved. Reblogs are greatly appreciated—just don't steal or share outside of Tumblr, please.

I had to look up werewolf scenting for this. and then I immediately got embarrassed and stopped and deleted my search history. And now I'm talking about it here and leaving a permanent digital footprint. sigh.

thanks for reading! <3

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[slamminslamminmcgill]

I LITERALLY ONLY FINISHED EP 1 OF TLOU BEFORE WRITING THIS 😭 this man just has me going fucking insane rn i had to word vomit. spent my whole day on this bc im delulu

warning: homophobia and transphobia, trans fetishization, degradation/humiliation, slurs, vaginal sex, rough oral sex, NASTY daddy kink (like… borderline incest rp and ddlb maybe idk i just work here), hanky code, spit kink, breeding kink, gags, drug dealing (weed and opioids), reader is a sex worker/weed dealer with clit piercings

anatomical terms: cunt/pussy/kitty, clit/(t-)dick

It started as a drug deal. A bad habit picked up after top surgery. A rumor that this guy sold opioids. A wink and a nod of the head from across the plaza during a hanging. A few hankies tucked in your jeans, two shades of blue on the right, light green and a flag on the left. You were never sure if he knew what they meant. You’d never had the chance to ask. Until today, you happened to have a favor to ask him.

“Look, you know I’m usually reliable, right? If you could just gimme more time, I promise I’ll get you an ounce on Monday, on me.” That was a pretty decent offer. You usually gave him a quarter of bud every trade, so an ounce for the same price was surely nothing to sneeze at.

“If you’re not ready today, you ain’t gettin’ shit today. Sorry, kid.” Fuck. Ah, well. At least he wasn’t mad at you. Plus, he always called you ‘kid’. It made sense, since he was definitely old enough to be your dad. Maybe he had a soft spot for you. And he certainly met the diagnostic criteria for DILF, but goddamnit, your gaydar couldn’t get a reading on him. You figured the best way to find out for sure would be to offer up your other goods and services and see if he takes the bait.

“Well, uh… maybe there’s…” You took a step closer to him, putting all your weight into your hips hoping they’d jump out at him, “…something else I can offer you?”

They didn’t. His stare never shifted from your face. “Like what?” Joel asked unclockably.

You took the tips of your hankies between your fingers and held them out to him, spreading your wings, a display for attracting mates not unlike that of a peacock. “You know what these mean?” You asked with a quirk in the brow and some devious faggotry in your voice.

Joel crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, a cocky, almost sort of try me type stance. “What do they mean?”

You named your hankies, one-by-one. Green, “This one means I’m a sex worker,” Trans, “This one means I have a pussy,” Navy, “This one means I get fucked,” and Cyan, “This one means I suck co-“

“I’m sorry, that one means what?” Joel interrupted, and pointed at your trans flag. He wasn’t just gonna let you gloss over that, just as you’d hoped.

“Oh, this one?” You pinched the tail of the trans flag and let the rest fall to your sides. A cheeky, cherubic, chaotic smile on your face as you taunted him. “It means I have a pussy. I’m trans.”

Joel’s face contorted in a few spasms of different emotions. A blink of shock, a blip of disgust, a second of intrigue, ‘til he landed on confusion. “So, uh…” His eyes crawled downwards to your crotch, then back up to you. “…how’s that work?”

Sure, you could give him the polite conversation explanation of the transmasculine identity, gender dysphoria and its treatments. Or, you could give the simplest and sexiest possible definition that would appeal to Schrödinger’s Straight Man over here. “Was born a girl, cut my tits off, shot up testosterone, and now I’m a man, but I kept my cunt.”

“Fuckin’ Christ…” He grunted, then cleared his throat, trying his damndest to remain calm and bloodbend his newfound erection away. Today was the wrong day for the light wash jeans. His growing bulge was the visual feedback of your influence on him.

A by-the-book boypussy sales pitch. Testing well with the focus group. You took another step with a sway of the hips, encroaching on his personal space but not penetrating it just yet. “Well? Whaddaya think?”

Joel bit his lip and said nothing for a moment. It seemed he was taking his time to figure out what exactly he did think about your revelation. “…Just 2 pills?”

“Just 2 pills…” You nodded, “Just enough to last me the weekend…” and took another step closer, then one more, until you could reach out and rub his bicep. “I’ll bump you up to an ounce, get it to you on Monday…” Your curious fingers started to trail down his arms and over to his delightfully soft dad-bod tummy. “And I’ll show you a good time today… Show you something you’ve never seen before…”

To say you were coming on pretty strong would be a massive understatement. And, hell, touching him? You were coming on like you had a death wish. Your hand slid downward, down to the heat he was packing in his pants, and stroking his rifle in your game of tactile Russian Roulette.

You loaded the chamber…

“All for just two little pills. So?”

Spun the barrel…

“What do you say?”

And pulled the trigger.

“Please, Daddy?”

And with those two whorish words, he snapped. Joel grabbed you by the wrist and slammed you into the brick wall behind him. You gasped in shock and winced in pain. It happened so fast, you barely had any time to think about the mistake you’d just made, but before you could choke out an I’m sorry, his lips were on yours. You moaned into the kiss and he snarled into it, slobbering all over each other in a fit of lust.

“Bratty little fuckin’ queer. So you’re saying you have a cunt, huh, boy? No bullshit?” Joel sneered as he shoved his hand between your legs. He grabbed your crotch and squeezed it tight, delighted to find no bulge, nothing in his way but a few layers of clothing. “Ooh, damn, kiddo, guess you’re right. Ain’t you fuckin’ special…” He let your wrist fall so he could grab your jaw. “Open,” he commanded, and your lips obliged. He spat into your open mouth, and then his lips were back on you.

Your hands scrambled for purchase on his back, eventually clutching his hair and his shirt for lifelines. The second you’d laid eyes on this guy, you knew he’d be a good fuck, and you couldn’t believe your luck. That monumental gamble you took just now had won you the jackpot, and now it was time to bask in your victory.

Joel grabbed a fistful of your hair and yanked you out of the kiss. “You want your fuckin’ pills, cuntboy?”

“Yeees…” That was why you originally came to him, yes, but now you wanted a whole lot more.

“You want those fuckin’ pills?”

“Yeees, yes, I wan-em…”

“Say please.”

“Pleeease…”

“Please, what?”

“Pleeease, Daddyyy… P-Please, Daddy, I wan- I wan’ the pills…”

“You gonna suck your Daddy’s cock for ‘em?”

“Y-Yeees, Daddyyy…”

“So do it.”

Joel dropped you and let you stumble onto your knees in front of him. You rocked back and forth impatiently as he undid his belt and fished his cock out of his jeans. As you suspected, it was massive, flushed an angry shade of red, and throbbing painfully. He gave it a tantalizing stroke, peeling back the foreskin and pulling it taut on the rebound. You licked your lips at the precum leaking from its slit, waiting for his instruction.

“Open,” He demanded once more. You acquiesced, opening your mouth wide enough for him to stuff his cock in your throat. He let out a deep, husky, growl as he slid down your airway. “Yeahhh, that’s it… That’s it, kiddo…”

Even in your dickdrunk, cockgagged haze, you could guess what was coming next. In preparation, you braced yourself with your hands on his hips, and relaxed your throat as best you could for him to fuck it. Turns out, your intuition was right.

“Fuck, yeah, fuckin’… Fuckin’ choke on it, whore… Choke on Daddy’s cock.” He grunted, grabbed your hair, and held you still while he thrusted into your mouth unforgivably. Tears, snot, and drool were running down your face in no time, and Joel was loving it. “Aw, look at that, yeah, good boy…”

You whined reflexively at the praise, accidentally sucking some spit into your windpipe and choking you in a less sexy and more dangerous manner than intended. Your eyes bulged open and you slapped his thigh twice, tapping out. Thankfully, he got the hint and let you go.

You coughed up the spit and smacked your own chest to clear your airway. “Sorry… Wrong pipe…”

“Take your time.” Joel replied, “Not try’na kill ya.”

Once you could regulate your breathing and you were sure you weren’t at risk of death by blowjob, you got back to work, at your own pace this time. You had the chance to explore him. Stroking and squeezing his shaft and his sack, fluttering your tongue underneath his tip, licking long stripes from the balls to the head. Less force, but no less intensity.

“Ngh, little faggot sure knows his way around a cock, don’t he?” Joel snickered and ruffled your hair. “So good at this, I would’a never believed you don’t got one yourself.”

True, you may not have been blessed with a cock attached to you, but you’d gotten plenty inside you. Not exactly your hometown, but familiar terrain nonetheless. When you felt like you could, you swallowed his length whole, swiping your tongue along his balls as you gagged. Joel threw his head back and moaned into the air, and then, you rode him with your throat again.

“Fu-u-uck, oh, shit, yeah… Yeah, you suck Daddy’s cock… Suck your old man’s cock for pills, and you’ll get ‘em, son... You’ll get ‘em, you fuckin’ junkie.”

You’d honestly forgotten this was about pills. You just got so caught up in the love of the sport, it had totally slipped your mind. Though dangling the carrot of oxies in front of your spit-drenched face was as good an incentive as any, and despite the burning in your windpipe, you sucked him with more power, more speed, more emotion, and more determination. You could taste victory leaking and throbbing on your tongue.

“F-Fuck… I-… I can’t…” Joel’s face was a picture of overwhelming pleasure. He had to pull you off. His wet, pulsating cock popped out of your mouth, and he huffed and puffed wiping sweat from his brow. “As much as I’d like to dump a load in your stomach…” He nudged his boot in between your legs, right up against your burning cunt. “I need to see your specialty, first.” He extended a hand to help you off your knees, then when you stood, hugged you to him and spanked each of your ass cheeks, jiggling them both as he gave his next order. “Take off your pants and bend over. Let Daddy see that pretty kitty of yours.”

You giggled, a goofy, stupid slutty smile on your face, and nodded. “Hehehe, okay… Okay…” You unbuckled your pants and let your jeans drop to the dirt. You stepped out of them and kicked them aside. You turned 90 degrees, put your hands on the brick wall, and stuck your ass out to Joel. He took his place behind you, grabbed your ass, and spread you open to take a peek at your holes. You shivered as the cool breeze ran over your dripping cunt.

“Fuck, I can’t even remember the last time I saw a cunt like this…” Two of his fingers traced your slit then spread your lips, exposing yourself even more to him. He chuckled when he saw your dick piercing. “‘Specially not one with these fancy hood ornaments.” He couldn’t resist the urge to tug on the jewelry.

Naturally, your knees buckled beneath you and you slid down the wall. “A-Ah!” You squeaked, “F-Fuck! S-Sen-Sensitive!” You tried to warn him, but really you were showing off your weak point with the conspicuousness of a video game boss fight.

“Oh, yeah?” Joel scoffed and supplemented it with a smack on the ass. You could feel him kneel down behind you, and he said, “Good.”

And then his lips were on your t-dick and sucking it like a leech.

You had to scream, bad, but it was broad fucking daylight and FEDRA could show up at any second. Instead, you bit down on your hand, sinking all the energy into your teeth as your body collapsed in on itself. Before long, your cunt was dripping down into his mouth, so much so, that there was an audible splash when his lips let you go.

“Christ, you’re a mess. Gonna ruin my fuckin jeans, ‘f I don’t take ‘em off.” Joel stood up and out of his own pants then tossed them beside yours. You heard some more rustling of clothing, felt a swipe up your pussy, then a tap on your lips with wet fingertips. “Open,” he instructed yet again.

You opened your mouth to lick and suck at his fingers, or so you thought. Instead, they pulled away and gagged you with one of your own hankies. Judging purely by the texture, you deduced that it was the trans flag. You relaxed and let him tie the gag more comfortably.

“There.” Joel said, patting you on the ass affirmatively. “Now I don’t gotta worry ‘bout you bein’ a fuckin’ screamer.” Two strong hands took your hips and lined him up with his target. You could feel his head prodding, but not breaching your hole. “Ready?”

You bit down on the gag and nodded feverishly at him. He poked your hole once, then twice, then started to push in and ohmyfuckinggodhe’shugeimeanyouknewthatalreadybutfuckitfeelsbetterthanyouthoughtitwould.

Without the ability to articulate any of those words, you whimpered through the gag and clawed at the wall like a cat trying to get in the bathroom.

“Biiig stretch, kiddo, that’s it…” Joel groaned, “That’s a good boy… Daddy’s almost in…”

Almost in? What the fuck did he mean by-ohshitthatswhatthefuckhemeantbyalmostin… He was so fucking thick that the stretch nearly burned, and long enough to feel like he was excavating your pussy to make room for himself. It was mind-numbing how big he was. He took up not only all the space in your cunt but in your brain as well. You’d never had someone dig so fucking deep.

“There you go, nice and full.” He leaned down to kiss your neck and pin your wrists together above your head. “Daddy’s perfect little cocksleeve…”

He withdrew his hips, practically taking your cunt with him on the way out since it refused to let go, and then speared his cock back into you. His thrust was a shockwave that rocked through your whole body. You let out a garbled moan into the spit-drenched fabric each time he did it. Eventually, he had a steady tempo going.

“Nghhh, so fucking tight… Real fuckin’ tight for a whore. And you’re fuckin’ soaked…” He gave your ass another swat, then stopped moving for a moment. “C’mon, slut, fuck yourself back on your Daddy’s dick. Ride your Daddy’s dick, now-yeahhh, that’s it…” He purred as you started to bounce your ass on him. For a little extra encouragement, he reached out to pet your hair. And for some guidance and a little extra oomph, he slammed his hips forward in time with yours, making his cock hit you twice as hard. “That’s a good boy…”

It was unbelievable, almost intolerable how good he felt. You almost couldn’t bear the thought of fucking any of your regular clients ever again. This was a Flowers for Algernon-type dicking, the absolute pinnacle of nasty sex for just a little while, and you’ll spend the rest of your sex life downhill from here. You’d like to hope that wouldn’t be the case, but none of the other dick you’d gotten in the past could even compare.

And it all stemmed from asking for a front on some oxies.

Joel reminded you of that when he said, “Next time you’re needing a front, I’ll-ngh… I’ll make you work for it, whore… Take you home and fuck you in the ass instead… Let you scream as loud as you need to… Let that little pussy weep for me and it’s gettin’ nothin’… You want some painkillers, then you gon’ hurt for ‘em, son…”

Honestly, the idea of a ��next time’ had you excited regardless of what hole he wanted to bust open. If you were lucky, maybe it’d be out of mutual enjoyment rather than an exchange. Soon, he struck that special spot inside you, that inner button that has you seeing stars and screaming obscenities into the flag gag. Your hands balled into fists and pounded at the wall. It was getting to be too much to bear. Of course, with your flag in the way, your cries of Fuck! Fuck! I’m gonna come! sounded as, “Auck! Auck! Ah gah-ah cah!”

Luckily, Joel spoke fluent slut. “You’re gonna cum? Gonna cum for your daddy?” He knotted his fingers in your hair and yanked you up against his chest. He shoved you both forward until you hit brick, and without an inch of space for you to squirm, he rutted into you relentlessly. “Then do it, slut. Cum on your daddy’s cock. Daddy wants to feel his little man cum all over him.”

God, how could a sentence be so nurturing and so nasty at the same time? So sweet and yet so fucking sick? Regardless of Sigmund Freud screaming ‘I told you so’ somewhere in your head, you came buckets, splashing Joel’s thighs with pussy juice on his every thrust. Your legs gave out around the fourth or fifth gush, and Joel had to hold you up for him to finish.

“Fuck, yeah, keep coming, keep coming, baby, Daddy’s close…” Joel groaned. Every word he said grew more vile and more primal than the last. His only need was to breed. “Daddy’s gonna knock you up, son… Gonna dump some brothers and sisters into ya… ‘N’ you’re gonna fuckin’ take it… Ngh, gonna take my fuckin’ load in ya ‘cause you’re a little cumdump pussyboy whore… ‘S what you’re meant for-shit… Shit!”

He squeezed your body tight and growled into your ear. Hot spurts of his cum flooded your battered cunt. On any other occasion, you’d cringe at some rando calling his load your siblings, but it just felt so good. You couldn’t give less of a fuck what he called it. And it’s not like he was your actual father. He was committing to the bit, a bit that had you mewing and sobbing with pleasure and repressed emotion, but that was a problem for your therapist later.

The world went still as you both came down from orbit. The rest of the QZ didn’t exist in that moment. It was just you and your “daddy”, a man twice your age that you trade drugs with and who just busted a nut in you. Honestly, still a better father figure than most. Closest thing to a dad you had for damn sure.

You felt that paternal vibe from him as he kissed the side of your neck. “You okay, little guy?” Joel asked tenderly. He untied the gag and tossed the flag by your jeans, letting you answer him.

“Mm… Mhm… I’m okay…” You stuttered, still counting on his grip to keep you standing.

“Good boy.” A few quick pecks to your neck and he slipped out, a few drops of his kids pooling in the dirt below you. “Now get dressed. I got shit to do.” He demanded with a final slap on your ass.

You stumbled over to your pants, leaning onto the wall to guide yourself. Even after dressing himself, Joel got to them first, and held them out for you to step into.

“Yeah, there you go, kid. You’re okay.” He cooed, and then clapped you on the shoulders to get your attention. Your head snapped up to see him reach into his pocket and pull out a plastic bag wrapped in tinfoil. He fished out two white pills and gave them to you, just as you agreed to.

“Thanks. I really appreciate it,” You gave him a shy smile, feeling grateful for the front and the frenzied faux-father-son fucking he just bestowed upon you. “Oh, and, uh… I… I had a good time, s-so if you ever wanna-“

“I’ll see you Monday, kid.”

[ultrakill-confessions]

No idea if this goes against the rules, I re-read them a bit to make sure, though I'm not 100% confident. This post isn't intended as a vent, although it may read as one. ULTRAKILL has both helped and warped(?) parts of my life. I have a really horrible fixation on ULTRAKILL. I don't tend to scale things because trying to say "I'm a bigger fan than you are because X, Y and Z!!!1!1!" has always pissed me off and generally rubs me the wrong way. However, for me, I do feel like this is in a similar vein (vein like castle v-), and is GENUINELY to a worrying degree imo. Maybe someone else can relate? Unsure.

For context on some of this, I deal with a dissociative disorder, and I'm a split of V1. Even with that, I can only think of one other instance where it complicated an interest of ours this badly. I think about ULTRAKILL every hour on the hour, I'm not even sure if I go ten minutes w/o thinking about it. And I live a healthy (relatively) life! I'm able to do things, go outside, enjoy life to the best of my ability, hold a job, college, etc. and have gotten better w/ socializing (autism really messes w/ this one); I am just fucking insane about ULTRAKILL. This shit consumes a large chunk of my frontal lobe, hand to God. I constantly plan out and/or make fanfictions (though never post em because being an ao3 author is a little spooky, can't lie gehshe), drawings, animations. Dawg I even get GYM MOTIVATION from ULTRAKILL. Body goals? THE MACHINE. I listen to the soundtrack while I work out (my bias to Order, Death of God's Will, Colliding Stars and The Abyss and the Serpent really poke out here). In fact, ULTRAKILL even helped with my gender and sexual (not inherently trying to be NSFW here) identities! Legitimately made me come to the realization that we might align more with being agender than transmasculine, and that we have no idea what our disaster of a sexuality is collectively, so we just say queer! And even though it's still hard to express ourselves, that has helped so much in feeling more .. at comfort? Correct? I dunno. There’s also a lack of need for labels at all now. It feels so fuckin’ goofy to say this because it HAS consumed a part of my life to the point where I feel like I'm peak brain-rotting at times, however it's also really helped, too?? Like in the most oxymoronic way ULTRAKILL has helped me develop as a person. The imaginary scenarios and art I use aids me in my expression and thought and even brings out more of my creativity. Ironically, despite not really wanting to be perceived as a human being, it has made me feel more like a person. I have a love-hate relationship with it only for the intensity of how much I adore it. It makes me upset when I no longer feel like I’m “me” enough, and yet ironically it has helped me to be healthier in other areas. lowkey use it to cope w/ the religious trauma sometimes too haha I will say, though, for a while I thought (and still sometimes do think) it was ruining my mental state. The identity issues, artist envy, missing my source/individuals from it (+ pseudo-memories and heavy dissociation as a whole if I'm being real), and general hyperfixation woes get very heavy at times. Interest so bad I have to look away sometimes when I see voice actor work, SFM's, etc. Not very proud of that. I never express these issues heavily to anybody except my sibling and a few close friends, simply due to the nature of people, especially on the internet, along with the complexity of having to explain an illness that is so severely stigmatized. My current issue is just holding back from spending my money on merch lmao (I may just draw myself with it to cope /hj). I am cringe and I will soon be free! Apologies if this post is depressing and/or repetitive. uhh, I've seen some anons name themselves, so camaraderie anon here?? LOL sorry. (p.s shoutout to the sisyphus likers and people who hate his mischaracterization YOU ARE THE REAL ONES!!!)

-

[genderkoolaid]

i have a lot of serious issues with the way you frame the kinds of transphobia one experiences as based on how theyre perceived. that to me is very much only part of it. a trans woman whos in the closet is still a woman living in a misogynistic society and bombarded with what it entails. the oppression doesnt hinge solely on personally directed acts. this also is a big issue i take with the transunity manifesto, the way it frames experiences too strictly around being perceived externally by others. there is a very dismissive eagerness there to describe trans womens experiences, unless they "pass", as those consistent with maleness. i think the above does a huge disservice to the whole idea and highlights the lack of transfem voices in this movement. you have the right to describe your own experiences with the language you find helpful, but you need to extend that courtesy to others as well.

I think there is a problem with this phrasing. Whenever I say that transphobia is based on perception, I don't mean to say that people are not affected by transphobia even when they are not out. I think the creators of the manifesto would likely agree with me that trans people can very much be deeply affected by transphobia even if they are not perceived as trans, because they consciously or subconsciously know themselves to be trans.

But because there's been a lot of claims that you can only count as "affected" by a transphobia if you are part of that group. Specifically in the context of interpersonal transphobia, like a hate crime done against you. So emphasis is put on perception to make it clear that people who aren't actually trans[fem/masc/other] can still be victims of all types of transphobia, and that all those victims should be in solidarity together.

But you are right that this is very focused on interpersonal violence and doesn't take into account the internal impact of transphobia. In the future I will try to take that into consideration when talking about how transphobia works.

However, I do want to push back a little against this ask. You frame this phrasing as something harmful to trans women specifically, and a sign of the lack of trans women's voices in transunity, but this is very much not something exclusive to trans women. Closeted transmascs and closeted genderqueers can also be deeply affected by transphobia while in the closet. And, in fact, part of the discussion of anti-transmasculinity involves pointing out how people often discuss trans men's experiences with transphobia assuming all trans men pass as (straight, white, gender conforming) men, which ignores the experiences of closeted & nonpassing trans men. So while your criticism of the focus on perception is good, I am uncomfortable with the way you assume this is something which uniquely harms trans women and not any other trans* people.

[sandutita]

sandu • 20yrs • they/them • finnish • digital artist

hi there! i'm SanduTiTa or Sandu for short. i make digital art and post it on my art blog @sandu7174 :)

on this blog i mostly just reblog whatever appears on my dash from funny and stupid memes to serious political stuff. i hardly ever tag with content warnings when i reblog on this blog, but with original posts (#my post) and on my art blog, i always do (at least i try to).

more info under the cut:

so what type of person am i? well, art is a big part of my life. i mostly make digital art but i do have a musical side to me as well, it's just not blossoming as well as my visually artistic side is. i'm also an aspiring writer. i wish to make a dramatic comic book someday.

when it comes to social interactions, i am quite shy but i've been trying to work on my social anxiety (and i've been making progress lately). i've always struggled with loneliness but since last year i've been managing to fight that off a little as well. being autistic interacting with people has always been problematic for me, since i tend to overthink things and get things wrong.

i also tend to ask a lot of questions, which annoys some people. being an overthinker and a question-asker and trying to find the middle ground between asking too many questions and not knowing enough, it's... distressing :,D. like i don't wanna be annoying, but i also want to know if i'm being annoying, y'know? but recently i've been asking fewer questions since i've slowly been learning that the voice inside my head which tells me i'm being annoying is lying to me most of the time. but i'm also asking more questions since i'm not as worried about people thinking i'm annoying as before. that's confusing...

i'm transmasculine and nonbinary and i wish to go on HRT someday. since summer 2023 i've known it's something i want to do at some point. unfortunately, i have to get my life together first before i can actually pursue this opportunity, which has turned out to be challenging... (yes, i have depression, how did you know?)

i'm also asexual, greyaromantic, panromantic, and agender.

i'm a very enthusiastic supporter of topfreedom and the Free the Nipple -campaign, and it shows in the posts and the art i make. we as a society need to work towards eliminating this misogynistic double standard that sexualises female-presenting nipples if we value gender equality and wish to move towards a fairer world. anything men can do topless (i.e. go to the beach or a public swimming pool, appear on tv and social media etc.), women should be allowed to do as well. there is no gender equality without nipple equality. if you claim to be a feminist but don't support topfreedom, you're a hypocrite.

tags i use the most: #finnish #swedish #my post #my art #important #topfreedom #abso fucking lutely (i use this tag on posts with hot takes) #character inspiration (i use this tag on posts that give me ideas for the stories i'm working on, so if you see me reblogging your post and using this tag, that means i might implement whatever was in your post into my own characters and stories) #a magical place (i use this tag on posts that include imagery of environments that have magical vibes. it's inspiration for my story involving magic.) #incredible future (i use this tag on posts that have futuristic vibes. it's inspiration for my story involving a futuristic setting.)

if you wanna talk to me about something, don't be afraid to send a message! i'm always up for making new friends :)

more info can be found on my carrd: sandutita.carrd.co (seriously, check out my carrd, there's a lot of info there)

last updated: 27.1.2024

[mitamicah]

Some fun transmasc angst ahead /s to those who dare enter

Maybe I should've listen to the voice inside telling me that posting that last blog post to my diary blog was a mistake.

Honestly I am so very close to delete the post.

Everytime I see notes coming on it I feel worse.

I know that you are trying to help me, but it makes me feel quite bad.

Before I continue however let me say it once (and definitely not the last time)

It is not your fault.

Hearing people saying 'it is not that bad!' and 'I have had it worse!' or 'I'm a cis woman and it happened to me'... I understand it is meant to cheer me up. It is not.

Because then the voice inside me starts to whisper:

"See? You are pathetic! You are making mountain out of ant hills again! Your insecurities are so dang tiny, and so the only logical conclusion is that you are worthless for even thinking about them in the first place."

Don't get me wrong, I know this is not what you meant to say. And I understand where you are coming from. It might not look bad. I have come to realise that it is probably worse in my head. I am on my way to learn to live with it and hopefully starting to like it because what is the alternative really? Yet I'm still far from there so it haunts me at times thinking about how I've seen the spots get bigger and bigger day by day for three or four years and I have had days full of worry that my hair would fall out (my grandfather was bald at 25 so it is in my genetics) and what I'd do then as (I believed I was back then) cisgender woman!

Now I know I'm a transmasculine person and so baldness is not that big of a deal. Still this is a sore subject, so hearing you say it is nothing?

Again, I don't blame you. But at the same time I cannot control my feelings. Especially not gender dysphoria.

I admittedly half chose to start minoxidil to hopefully make these spots smaller - so who knows if they have actually closed up a bit since April where I began on the dosis. (I definitely know that I've gotten way more chin hairs and upper lip hairs since starting!)

And to the well meaning cisgender woman - you telling me, that you experience this as your gender is sadly not making things better; it reminds me that I am biologically closer to you than I am to a man. And so it only feeds my dysphoria.

I must sound like a broken record but I do not blame you, friends and random people I've never met. This is just one of my biggest bodily insecurities and it hurts hearing it being made out to be nothing. Because if I stress over nothing, am I worth anything myself?

This post is having no point other than have me write out my sadness so hopefully the few people bothering reading it is okay with me repeating myself and being a bit cry baby yet again. One would think I've grown out of my teenage vainness but jokes on me I guess.

[galesgremlingrotto]

I used to love to read. As an undiagnosed ADHD kid (I'm a transmasculine non-binary person so I was born and raised female), reading was my escapism and my hyper fixation. My advanced reading level was a gift. We were raised homeschooled and then moved to a private school, and during my private school days my big boast was that I could read the entirety of the Harry Potter series in less than a week. As a sheltered 10 to 13 year old, struggling with anxiety and unchecked ADHD, reading was my safety.

Then for 8th grade, due to my parents financial situation, the lack of growth from the private school I was attending, and the building of a new middle school in my area, my parents sent me into the public school system.

And reading became a nightmare.

I continued to read on and off during high school, but the number of books I read and the size of them dwindled. Eventually by the time I hit my Junior and Senior year I would go months without reading a proper fun book. By the time I left school, I physically couldn't. A combination of a ruined experience, and an unchecked mental disability.

My sophomore year English teacher ruined it mostly, with all of his focus on what the author was trying to say through their books versus what the book actually said to us, but all of my reading tests weren't about the characters, or the plot, or the morals. They were about the definition of words, the use of grammar and the technical aspect of reading comprehension.

I read less books in my years in and out of high school than I did in a week of private Middle School.

I'm headed off to college now and have started to listen to audiobooks and I've already finished one and started a second in the span of two weeks, and I was reminded of where my love for media in general came from.

My love of art, my love of creativity, my love of storytelling and characters.

Even though I'm a visual artist now and I draw many of my own, it all started with reading books. Reading a bunch of stories. Imagining the characters based on their descriptions in my head.

My artistic passion was founded on the love of books, and though it has been built to different and equally wonderful places, that foundation crumbled in the public school system, and just now at the age of 20 and a half, am I trying to patch the cracks in that foundation.

I'm not saying the public school system is worse than private school. I detest private school for many more, much stronger reasons.

Religious brainwashing is a hell of a thing.

But the public school system ruined things for me too, in different ways.

And now I'm desperately scrabbling to hold on to my hobbies as I head off for college, plan to move out, enter the workforce as more than just a minimum wage retail worker.

But I see many more audiobooks in my future, many more stories.

And having just finished the audiobook A Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki, I can tell you for certain that if I had not been able to finish that book, it definitely wouldn't have had as much of an effect on me as it did, and it probably wouldn't have gone down on my list as one of my favorite books of all time.

Stories are not meant to be read halfway.

What is the point of growth if there is no conflict to show that you've grown at all? To put that growth to the test?

One of the things I've learned from drawing and doing visual art and theater is that you can put in the practice or you can do the performance but you don't get better at either if you don't do the other.

Practicing in a studio with your voice teacher is all fine until you have no confidence on an actual stage, and no time singing into an actual mic. Performing a play is nothing if you haven't put the rehearsals in to memorize your lines.

You can study all you want, but it's difficult to see if you've learned anything if you don't draw a full piece, but on the contrary, drawing a full piece becomes much more difficult without practicing and doing the studies.

Watching tutorials and trick videos are all good, but you have to put them to use, in actual practice, to cement them in your mind.

You can't tell the conclusion of a story without learning how the characters got there.

And there's no point in telling a story about where the characters are going if you don't tell the part about where they wind up.

Now not everything creative has to have a point or a purpose, I am 100% for the act of creating for the sake of creating, in fact I encourage it.

But how is the viewer supposed to get that if they don't see the whole thing? They might assume there was a point, or assume an incorrect point if they don't partake in the whole thing.

Of course some art is subjective, but is it really proper to form any opinion, if you haven't seen the whole thing?

I have gotten extremely off track here. Just know that the decrease in the use of stories in schooling, the forced speed up of learning, the cutting things off so that you can just quiz the kids more,

Frustrates me beyond all belief.

The technical, almost mathematical process of schooling. The inhuman, mechanical, methodical modes of constant testing. The loss of so many extracurriculars, the forced sterilization of curriculum and the enforcement of turning so many kids into mere cogs in the machine,

Disgusts me.

One of my coworkers, probably barely 10 years older than me, spoke of how he attended woodshop class. A class that was only one trimester in middle school and not a thing in my high school at all. The movie Grease features mechanic shop class, another thing unheard of at most high schools these days, and that was a specific extra program through a completely different building at mine. The arts are dying, begging for money. There were protests and petitions at my school just to keep half of the choir classes. Many of my favorite teachers who taught my favorite classes taught only one period of those classes and had to fill the rest of their schedules with other, more conventional, more traditional forms of their subjects.

The American school system in general is taking a dive and it is so incredibly rarely because of a teacher, more often it's the system in itself. A principal increasing the sports budget but decreasing the arts budget. University's offer more scholarships and full ride tuitions for athletes than they do for artists. The government makes a law that makes more difficult to teach the more out there subjects versus the basics. The changing curriculum spends more time on testing and learning to do tests then on actual learning.

Tests are weighted for 60% whereas homework is waited for 20.

And don't get me wrong I hated homework. Thanks to my brain and the way it works homework was a living hell.

But I would so much rather be told to read an entire book, then be told to answer questions about the first half of it.

This is long, and it's late for me, but as someone who struggled so much with school, I'm incredibly passionate about it.

So TLDR: Schools don't focus on stories as much as they do test scores anymore, and it saddens me greatly.

Why Kids Aren't Falling in Love With Reading - It's Not Just Screens

A shrinking number of kids are reading widely and voraciously for fun.

The ubiquity and allure of screens surely play a large part in this—most American children have smartphones by the age of 11—as does learning loss during the pandemic. But this isn’t the whole story. A survey just before the pandemic by the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that the percentages of 9- and 13-year-olds who said they read daily for fun had dropped by double digits since 1984. I recently spoke with educators and librarians about this trend, and they gave many explanations, but one of the most compelling—and depressing—is rooted in how our education system teaches kids to relate to books.

What I remember most about reading in childhood was falling in love with characters and stories; I adored Judy Blume’s Margaret and Beverly Cleary’s Ralph S. Mouse. In New York, where I was in public elementary school in the early ��80s, we did have state assessments that tested reading level and comprehension, but the focus was on reading as many books as possible and engaging emotionally with them as a way to develop the requisite skills. Now the focus on reading analytically seems to be squashing that organic enjoyment. Critical reading is an important skill, especially for a generation bombarded with information, much of it unreliable or deceptive. But this hyperfocus on analysis comes at a steep price: The love of books and storytelling is being lost.

This disregard for story starts as early as elementary school. Take this requirement from the third-grade English-language-arts Common Core standard, used widely across the U.S.: “Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, distinguishing literal from nonliteral language.” There is a fun, easy way to introduce this concept: reading Peggy Parish’s classic, Amelia Bedelia, in which the eponymous maid follows commands such as “Draw the drapes when the sun comes in” by drawing a picture of the curtains. But here’s how one educator experienced in writing Common Core–aligned curricula proposes this be taught: First, teachers introduce the concepts of nonliteral and figurative language. Then, kids read a single paragraph from Amelia Bedelia and answer written questions.

For anyone who knows children, this is the opposite of engaging: The best way to present an abstract idea to kids is by hooking them on a story. “Nonliteral language” becomes a whole lot more interesting and comprehensible, especially to an 8-year-old, when they’ve gotten to laugh at Amelia’s antics first. The process of meeting a character and following them through a series of conflicts is the fun part of reading. Jumping into a paragraph in the middle of a book is about as appealing for most kids as cleaning their room.

But as several educators explained to me, the advent of accountability laws and policies, starting with No Child Left Behind in 2001, and accompanying high-stakes assessments based on standards, be they Common Core or similar state alternatives, has put enormous pressure on instructors to teach to these tests at the expense of best practices. Jennifer LaGarde, who has more than 20 years of experience as a public-school teacher and librarian, described how one such practice—the class read-aloud—invariably resulted in kids asking her for comparable titles. But read-alouds are now imperiled by the need to make sure that kids have mastered all the standards that await them in evaluation, an even more daunting task since the start of the pandemic. “There’s a whole generation of kids who associate reading with assessment now,” LaGarde said.

By middle school, not only is there even less time for activities such as class read-alouds, but instruction also continues to center heavily on passage analysis, said LaGarde, who taught that age group. A friend recently told me that her child’s middle-school teacher had introduced To Kill a Mockingbird to the class, explaining that they would read it over a number of months—and might not have time to finish it. “How can they not get to the end of To Kill a Mockingbird?” she wondered. I’m right there with her. You can’t teach kids to love reading if you don’t even prioritize making it to a book’s end. The reward comes from the emotional payoff of the story’s climax; kids miss out on this essential feeling if they don’t reach Atticus Finch’s powerful defense of Tom Robinson in the courtroom or never get to solve the mystery of Boo Radley.

... Young people should experience the intrinsic pleasure of taking a narrative journey, making an emotional connection with a character (including ones different from themselves), and wondering what will happen next—then finding out. This is the spell that reading casts. And, like with any magician’s trick, picking a story apart and learning how it’s done before you have experienced its wonder risks destroying the magic.

-- article by katherine marsh, the atlantic (12 foot link, no paywall)

[kidkintsugi]

another epic transmasculinity moment in combination with everything that went to shit recently.

tw for below cut: dysphoria, slight n/s/f/t topics

aye so this week was absolute bullcrap?

i started hating my flatmate with a burning passion. i tried to excuse his laziness multiple times but ive given up on him. hes just an ass and a useless one at that.

i usually dont talk about other people like this because it makes ME feel bad because im being "mean" or whatever but with him? holy COW hes crossed multiple lines. very little to no remorse on this one.

he does not clean his shit and makes me buy things that are shared, like soap for example. i bought a new container of soap once i noticed that were running low, not ONCE did he make the effort to get some soap himself. its like this with other things as well.

his only humour is making a fool out of me (which i can handle. its just annoying) or sexual shit (also mostly involving me) and since im running a 2 person household on my own essentially i had some type of meltdown/breakdown this last weekend. developed a nervous tic because of it too which gets worse the more tired/frustrated i am. i also seem to have some stomach problems whenever im out of it nowadays and its gotten to the point that people asked me if im hungry because its just. that loud. REALLY uncomfortable especially in class.

today he overslept, which happens multiple times, but today was also the first day he actually had some consequences due to it which i like! but THEN he has the audacity to ask if i "tried to wake him up" which, to me, implies that he thinks im obligated to. almost yelled at him right then and there i had to leave the fucking room.

its also kind of my fault i guess? i could just communicate my problems with him more openly, directly order him to clean/buy/whatever but then i remember.

this guy is as old as i am.

i am NOT his fucking dad or something he should be doing these things UNPROMPTED when living together with someone he barely knows!!

on another note, the guy that realized that im trans is spending more time with me recently and i genuinely enjoy spending time with him as well, hes one of the very few people that doesnt get on my nerves. he plays my favorite videogames with me which are my special interest :)

this comes with a problem however: were both mlm and openly mlm at that, so people began "shipping" us (eugh. hate to use this word in this context).

usually i would find it funny, he finds it funny too because we both know that its not gonna happen but this comes with a certain problem.

people begin putting you in boxes, whether conciously or unconciously. especially with gay relationships, a lot of people seem to be fascinated by the idea that same sex couples still somehow have to fit into heteronormative "standards" (stuff like "who wears the pants" "whos the woman" "who takes it up the ass")

obviously im in a bad position. next to my friend, i am smaller. have wider hips, the face of a twelve year old and when i get nervous my voice goes higher in pitch.

if we WERE in a relationship, i would be percieved as "the woman".

that is so, so painful. no matter how hard i try, unless i end up with a super feminine twink bf (lol purposefully exaggerated im sorry), im gonna be the more feminine one and that is extremely shitty when it comes to passing in public.

had it happen today: i go out to grab boba with my friend.

this might just be my paranoia, but i have a feeling that for mlm couples, due to the way that society is, we dont really look like couples to the average heterosexual because unless we were to make out right in front of them homosexuality just isnt a possibility that comes to mind.

so we go up to the counter to place our order and the guy asks if "my friend is paying for me". nothing unusual BUT my language uses the same word for friend platonic and boyfriend/girlfriend romantic in some cases, meaning that it was very, very ambiguous, but to us it sounded like he meant it romantically.

my friend of course just laughs it off and i would like to be able to laugh too, but the truth is that HE was the one referred to as my "boyfriend". what does that make me in the eyes of a heteronormative society? with wide hips, a high voice and a babyface?

exactly. the girlfriend. checkmate.

dysphoria has been bad in general this week and in combination with all the other shitty feelings i couldnt shower. lower body dysphoria reached its peak too.

people joke about me being the bottom, stereotypically the more feminine one in the relationship and its beginning to hurt because they dont even KNOW. i just kinda wish i could talk about it, say that it makes me uncomfortable but that would make me suspicious and everyone in my class is already suspicious enough.

theres nothing i can do. i will have to live like this forever probably. i think i need to readjust my personality again just so i dont come across as androgynous or whatever. i also really need to get rid of my customer service voice, as i like to call it.

[nothorses]

Interview With An Ex-Radfem

exradfem is an anonymous Tumblr user who identifies as transmasculine, and previously spent time in radical feminist communities. They have offered their insight into those communities using their own experiences and memories as a firsthand resource.

Background

I was raised in an incredibly fundamentalist religion, and so was predisposed to falling for cult rhetoric. Naturally, I was kicked out for being a lesbian. I was taken in by the queer community, particularly the trans community, and I got back on my feet- somehow. I had a large group of queer friends, and loved it. I fully went in on being the Best Trans Ally Possible, and constantly tried to be a part of activism and discourse.

Unfortunately, I was undersocialized, undereducated, and overenthusiastic. I didn't fully understand queer or gender theory. In my world, when my parents told me my sexuality was a choice and I wasn't born that way, they were absolutely being homophobic. I understood that no one should care if it's a choice or not, but it was still incredibly, vitally important to me that I was born that way.

On top of that, I already had an intense distrust of men bred by a lot of trauma. That distrust bred a lot of gender essentialism that I couldn't pull out of the gender binary. I felt like it was fundamentally true that men were the problem, and that women were inherently more trustworthy. And I really didn't know where nonbinary people fit in.

Then I got sucked down the ace exclusionist pipeline; the way the arguments were framed made sense to my really surface-level, liberal view of politics. This had me primed to exclude people –– to feel like only those that had been oppressed exactly like me were my community.

Then I realized I was attracted to my nonbinary friend. I immediately felt super guilty that I was seeing them as a woman. I started doing some googling (helped along by ace exclusionists on Tumblr) and found the lesfem community, which is basically radfem “lite”: lesbians who are "only same sex attracted". This made sense to me, and it made me feel so much less guilty for being attracted to my friend; it was packaged as "this is just our inherent, biological desire that is completely uncontrollable". It didn't challenge my status quo, it made me feel less guilty about being a lesbian, and it allowed me to have a "biological" reason for rejecting men.

I don't know how much dysphoria was playing into this, and it's something I will probably never know; all of this is just piecing together jumbled memories and trying to connect dots. I know at the time I couldn't connect to this trans narrative of "feeling like a woman". I couldn't understand what trans women were feeling. This briefly made me question whether I was nonbinary, but radfem ideas had already started seeping into my head and I'm sure I was using them to repress that dysphoria. That's all I can remember.

The lesfem community seeded gender critical ideas and larger radfem princples, including gender socialization, gender as completely meaningless, oppression as based on sex, and lesbian separatism. It made so much innate sense to me, and I didn't realize that was because I was conditioned by the far right from the moment of my birth. Of course women were just a biological class obligated to raise children: that is how I always saw myself, and I always wanted to escape it.

I tried to stay in the realms of TIRF (Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminist) and "gender critical" spaces, because I couldn't take the vitriol on so many TERF blogs. It took so long for me to get to the point where I began seeing open and unveiled transphobia, and I had already read so much and bought into so much of it that I thought that I could just ignore those parts.

In that sense, it was absolutely a pipeline for me. I thought I could find a "middle ground", where I could "center women" without being transphobic.

Slowly, I realized that the transphobia was just more and more disgustingly pervasive. Some of the trans men and butch women I looked up to left the groups, and it was mostly just a bunch of nasty people left. So I left.

After two years offline, I started to recognize I was never going to be a healthy person without dealing with my dysphoria, and I made my way back onto Tumblr over the pandemic. I have realized I'm trans, and so much of this makes so much more sense now. I now see how I was basically using gender essentialism to repress my identity and keep myself in the closet, how it was genuinely weaponized by TERFs to keep me there, and how the ace exclusionist movement primed me into accepting lesbian separatism- and, finally, radical feminism.

The Interview

You mentioned the lesfem community, gender criticals, and TIRFs, which I haven't heard about before- would you mind elaborating on what those are, and what kinds of beliefs they hold?

I think the lesfem community is recruitment for lesbians into the TERF community. Everything is very sanitized and "reasonable", and there's an effort not to say anything bad about trans women. The main focus was that lesbian = homosexual female, and you can't be attracted to gender, because you can't know someone's gender before knowing them; only their sex.

It seemed logical at the time, thinking about sex as something impermeable and gender as internal identity. The most talk about trans women I saw initially was just in reference to the cotton ceiling, how sexual orientation is a permanent and unchangeable reality. Otherwise, the focus was homophobia. This appealed to me, as I was really clinging to the "born this way" narrative.

This ended up being a gateway to two split camps - TIRFs and gender crits.

I definitely liked to read TIRF stuff, mostly because I didn't like the idea of radical feminism having to be transphobic. But TIRFs think that misogyny is all down to hatred of femininity, and they use that as a basis to be able to say trans women are "just as" oppressed.

Gender criticals really fought out against this, and pushed the idea that gender is fake, and misogyny is just sex-based oppression based on reproductive issues. They believe that the source of misogyny is the "male need to control the source of reproduction"- which is what finally made me think I had found the "source" of my confusion. That's why I ended up in gender critical circles instead of TIRF circles.

I'm glad, honestly, because the mask-off transphobia is what made me finally see the light. I wouldn't have seen that in TIRF communities.

I believed this in-between idea, that misogyny was "sex-based oppression" and that transphobia was also real and horrible, but only based on transition, and therefore a completely different thing. I felt that this was the "nuanced" position to take.

The lesfem community also used the fact that a lot of lesbians have partners who transition, still stay with their lesbian partners, and see themselves as lesbian- and that a lot of trans men still see themselves as lesbians. That idea is very taboo and talked down in liberal queer spaces, and I had some vague feelings about it that made me angry, too. I really appreciated the frank talk of what I felt were my own taboo experiences.

I think gender critical ideology also really exploited my own dysphoria. There was a lot of talk about how "almost all butches have dysphoria and just don't talk about it", and that made me feel so much less alone and was, genuinely, a big relief to me that I "didn't have to be trans".

Lesfeminism is essentially lesbian separatism dressed up as sex education. Lesfems believe that genitals exist in two separate categories, and that not being attracted to penises is what defines lesbians. This is used to tell cis lesbians, "dont feel bad as a lesbian if you're attracted to trans men", and that they shouldn’t feel "guilty" for not being attracted to trans women. They believe that lesbianism is not defined as being attracted to women, it is defined as not being attracted to men; which is a root idea in lesbian separatism as well.

Lesfems also believe that attraction to anything other than explicit genitals is a fetish: if you're attracted to flat chests, facial hair, low voices, etc., but don't care if that person has a penis or not, you're bisexual with a fetish for masculine attributes. Essentially, they believe the “-sexual” suffix refers to the “sex” that you are assigned at birth, rather than your attraction: “homosexual” refers to two people of the same sex, etc. This was part of their pushback to the ace community, too.

I think they exploited the issues of trans men and actively ignored trans women intentionally, as a way of avoiding the “TERF” label. Pronouns were respected, and they espoused a constant stream of "trans women are women, trans men are men (but biology still exists and dictates sexual orientation)" to maintain face.

They would only be openly transmisogynistic in more private, radfem-only spaces.

For a while, I didn’t think that TERFs were real. I had read and agreed with the ideology of these "reasonable" people who others labeled as TERFs, so I felt like maybe it really was a strawman that didn't exist. I think that really helped suck me in.

It sounds from what you said like radical feminism works as a kind of funnel system, with "lesfem" being one gateway leading in, and "TIRF" and "gender crit" being branches that lesfem specifically funnels into- with TERFs at the end of the funnel. Does that sound accurate?

I think that's a great description actually!

When I was growing up, I had to go to meetings to learn how to "best spread the word of god". It was brainwashing 101: start off by building a relationship, find a common ground. Do not tell them what you really believe. Use confusing language and cute innuendos to "draw them in". Prey on their emotions by having long exhausting sermons, using music and peer pressure to manipulate them into making a commitment to the church, then BAM- hit them with the weird shit.

Obviously I am paraphrasing, but this was framed as a necessary evil to not "freak out" the outsiders.

I started to see that same talk in gender critical circles: I remember seeing something to the effect of, "lesfem and gender crit spaces exist to cleanse you of the gender ideology so you can later understand the 'real' danger of it", which really freaked me out; I realized I was in a cult again.

I definitely think it's intentional. I think they got these ideas from evangelical Christianity, and they actively use it to spread it online and target young lesbians and transmascs. And I think gender critical butch spaces are there to draw in young transmascs who hate everything about femininity and womanhood, and lesfem spaces are there to spread the idea that trans women exist as a threat to lesbianism.

Do you know if they view TIRFs a similar way- as essentially prepping people for TERF indoctrination?

Yes and no.

I've seen lots of in-fighting about TIRFs; most TERFs see them as a detriment, worse than the "TRAs" themselves. I've also definitely seen it posed as "baby's first radfeminism". A lot of TIRFs are trans women, at least from what I've seen on Tumblr, and therefore are not accepted or liked by radfems. To be completely honest, I don't think they're liked by anyone. They just hate men.

TIRFs are almost another breed altogether; I don't know if they have ties to lesfems at all, but I do think they might've spearheaded the online ace exclusionist discourse. I think a lot of them also swallowed radfem ideology without knowing what it was, and parrot it without thinking too hard about how it contradicts with other ideas they have.

The difference is TIRFs exist. They're real people with a bizarre, contradictory ideology. The lesfem community, on the other hand, is a completely manufactured "community" of crypto-terfs designed specifically to indoctrinate people into TERF ideology.

Part of my interest in TIRFs here is that they seem to have a heavy hand in the way transmascs are treated by the trans community, and if you're right that they were a big part of ace exclusionism too they've had a huge impact on queer discourse as a whole for some time. It seems likely that Baeddels came out of that movement too.

Yes, there’s a lot of overlap. The more digging I did, the more I found that it's a smaller circle running the show than it seems. TIRFs really do a lot of legwork in peddling the ideology to outer queer community, who tend to see it as generic feminism.

TERFs joke a lot about how non-radfems will repost or reblog from TERFs, adding "op is a TERF”. They're very gleeful when people accept their ideology with the mask on. They think it means these people are close to fully learning the "truth", and they see it as further evidence they have the truth the world is hiding. I think it's important to speak out against radical feminism in general, because they’re right; their ideology does seep out into the queer community.

Do you think there's any "good" radical feminism?

No. It sees women as the ultimate victim, rather than seeing gender as a tool to oppress different people differently. Radical feminism will always see men as the problem, and it is always going to do harm to men of color, gay men, trans men, disabled men, etc.

Women aren't a coherent class, and radfems are very panicked about that fact; they think it's going to be the end of us all. But what's wrong with that? That's like freaking out that white isn't a coherent group. It reveals more about you.

It's kind of the root of all exclusionism, the more I think about it, isn't it? Just freaking out that some group isn't going to be exclusive anymore.

Radical feminists believe that women are inherently better than men.

For TIRFs, it's gender essentialism. For TERFs, its bio essentialism. Both systems are fundamentally broken, and will always hurt the groups most at risk. Centering women and misogyny above all else erases the root causes of bigotry and oppression, and it erases the intersections of race and class. The idea that women are always fundamentally less threatening is very white and privileged.

It also ignores how cis women benefit from gender norms just as cis men do, and how cis men suffer from gender roles as well. It’s a system of control where gender non-conformity is a punishable offense.

[yaatrickyassification]

YOOO!

CAN I REQUEST SAMUEL, GUN AND DG WITH A TRANS MASC S/O⁉️

just general hcs on how they'd react when their s/o comes out to them

LOVE UR WRITING BTW <33

Thank you for your request!

I'm not intelligible about this subject and have based my research on the internet, so I'm sorry if some things may get interpreted as wrong or offensive!

[ Samuel Seo, Park Jong Gun, DG/ James Lee x Trans masc! Reader ] - General headcanons on how they'd react to their s/o coming out to them.

Samuel Seo:

You broke down right in front of him, carrying this burden for so long was mentally and physically straining. He's immediately on you, a hand on your back that was awkwardly patting you to help anchor your emotions down. And his other hand was on your waist.

He pulled you closer to his chest, and though his affection and comfort were awkward and stiff, you knew that he meant well. His voice was deep and soothing, he was trying his best and it was enough for you. A genuine small smile now gracing your lips.

"Sorry."

A shake of his head was the answer to your apology, his lips now quirk upside down into a frown. "Don't be."

He never told you but he was quite confused about what Transmasculine is and what it entails, he then turned to the internet to research more about it. He wants him to be more knowledgeable about this subject so that he can make you feel much better about yourself.

He even resorted to asking Eli or his other colleagues at work, they didn't give any good ass advice though. So he just decided to man up and work this out himself together with you throughout this journey.

But he does manage to get his point across and tells you that he's fine with it and will accept whatever decision you come upon.

"No matter who you are, you'll always be my lover to me and that will never change."

Park Jong Gun:

He's clueless but he is observant, he does notice that something is wrong like you're hiding something from him but he doesn't pry into your matters, he isn't nosy.

And besides, he trusts you, if something bothers you, he knows that you'll come to talk to him. And if it's a person by chance, well, don't you think they kind of deserve to have their 206 bones in their body to be broken?

He is quite good at breaking things or limbs in question, after all.

When you finally talked to him about it, he was very relieved. Gun doesn't want to admit it but he was very worried about you, he thought he did something wrong and decided to buy you snacks, and peace treaties.

He hugs you after you come out to him, Gun hugs you like you were the fire in the middle of the snowstorm. You felt like your bones were cracking with how tight his embrace was. A gentle tap on his shoulder snaps him out of his reverie. "I can't breathe."

He smiled before letting you go out of his arms, "sorry, got overwhelmed for a bit."

"Aren't I supposed to be the one getting overwhelmed?"

When you explained one of your worries to him, he straight out gave you his black credit card and patted you on the head with a gentle expression on his usually scary face. "Don't mind what the other people will say, if they ever try to say bad things about you just buy all of their properties I have enough money to do that. And call me, I'll beat them up for you."

DG/ James Lee:

He knows about this topic a lot more than the other two, this man is constantly surrounded by the internet. It'll be a miracle if he didn't ever find out about it through his fans or social media.

He would also be able to pick up signs and will subtly interrogate you about it, but he won't force you into anything if you're uncomfortable, he's just curious.

When you finally confessed you were a nervous wreck because he just sat there with a cold ass expression on his face, you would have burst into tears if he didn't pull you into a hug. And it was all settled in a good way.

He will spoil you and buy you all of the things that you want with no hesitation, he has enough (too much actually) money for that.

He asks you about things that you are comfortable with and vice versa, and also asks about your pronouns and a new name, he loves saying your new name and will constantly mutter it to himself.

"[y/n], [y/n], [y/n]." A hum was let out of your lips as you turned your attention to DG's direction. "Hmm? What is it?"

"Nothing, I just really like your name, it suits you. I love you."

[talisidekick]

I hope this reaches you anon, because I hope this will help and I hope other transmascs see this too:

You are not the only one to get misgendered as she/her despite being he/him. Cisgender men get this treatment constantly, passively, and consistently.

This isn't a you thing. Growing up, I denied the living hell about being trans fem. I dressed masculine, cut my hair masculine, walked masculine, talked lower than my natural voice, went by he/him, and despite being AMAB, I still got called "she/her" and "miss" by random strangers.

Why? I wasn't wide shouldered, I wasn't stocky or muscular, I wasn't 6 foot. I was 5'9 - 5'10, skinny, scrawny, and had hips because not every AMAB is is built like a triagnle or a perfect brick. But the expectation that men are triangles or bricks ... that was enough to confuse people about me despite having a dick between my legs, and the voice of gravel if it could talk. People even misclocked me as transmasculine despite being closeted trans fem.

What people define as men and women, girls and boys, is inherently flawed. It wasn't until 24-25 that it finally stopped. And the change was I stopped shaving so that this:

Which I took prior to transitioning (during covid so I hadn't had a hair cut in 3 years). Looked instead like this:

Which is a 2019 picture of me, pre HRT and still an egg.

So it sucks, it does, but there's one thing about being masculine and a guy or as close to "guy" as you want be that I know but never could pull off; don't let other people question or mistake your masculinity. Masc folk get misgendered all the time as feminine, but being masculine is about laughing about it and correcting it.

"Excuse me miss." - Miss? You need to get your eyes checked.

"You're a girl/woman." - pffff. You wish, closest you'll get to me in a skirt is a kilt.

"Oh, she's ..." - She? Do I -look- like a girl to you? Don't answer that, it's "he".

Or just repeat the misgendering portion: "Miss?" "She?" "Her?" And wait for them to correct. If they stop and look at you and don't, correct for them.

This was CONSTANT for me. It was endless. I was AMAB and this was just shit boys that aren't jocks or gym bro's deal with. I'm sorry it's happening to you, but welcome to misandry. The ride is shit, but you and some cisgender men have some stories in common now: "the time some person mistook me as a girl/woman".

End point: as an AMAB in denial I went through the same crap you are right now. T will help a lot, but as an AMAB that had hips, Testosterone didn't help me all that much. So instead, be overwhelmingly confident about who you are. Laugh at it, even though it hurts when you get misgendered. Try to make it funny for both you and the misgendering person! If a teacher or professor goes "miss" or "ma'am", just ask, "late night teach/prof? Cause uh, I'm a guy/dude." Be YOU and don't back down, because you're the one someone else will eventually see amidst all that crap and go "damn, he handles that well." There's another boy out there like you getting this shit who has no idea what trans is, and stuggles like you do. So go be a guy, go do what I couldn't. I know for a fact you're rocking being a boy than I ever did. I caved and admitted I was a girl, so go be the man I couldn't and don't ever give up. You can do it. You got the strength. You are masculine. And don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

warning: gender dysphoria talks

today, i went to another school for the exam. i felt a huge dysphoria about my clothes, but not only that made me feel shitty. i have seen many girls there looking masculine, even though they didn't do anything to look like that - they just had jeans/pants, a track top on, and short hair. only. and i just don't understand what i am doing wrong? why can't i look masculine as well? why, even in male clothes, people still consider me a girl? what i am doing wrong? i try to do everything i can to represent myself as male, but why does nothing help? because of these thoughts (and because of everyone calling me by she/her), i sometimes wanna just stop trying to look masculine and just put up with me being a boy in a terrible girl's body. i am just so tired of proving my identity to people. i am just tired of telling myself that i will go on t one day and make surgeries, and everyone will see me as male. i am so tired. wouldn't that be easier to give up and live my life as a female, just to get used to this body and shitty pronouns only to stop it all?

please, give me some advice, please

Submitted April 13, 2023

[uncanny-tranny]

that specific form of fetishisation is misogyny n transphobia. unfortunately ppl still view us as women in some manner and treat us accordingly :/

That's what the post was mostly about, but I think it's important to also remember that different trans men/transmasc people or those presumed as transmasc or trans men will have different relationships to this phenomenon.

For instance, as it was pointed out, the narrative shifts after one transitions - especially medically. The narrative shifts to demonizing the effects of testosterone, such as calling a trans person's facial hair "neckbeards" or mocking the way hormones change our bodies, voices, bodily hair growth, our reproductive abilities, and so many other things. A lot of the fetishization which transmasculine people are subject to seems to be at least partially done to scare them away from (medical) transition if that's something they'd like ("you don't want to be an ugly man, don't you?"). There are many reasons, ranging from the disdain of men, to us being viewed as baby-making factories, to us being seen as incapable of making decisions because we're viewed as women, and likely a lot of other things.

Pre-medical transition, I was scared of how testosterone might make me undesirable and ugly and gross, and this was because the fetishization of transmasculine people relies on convincing transmasc people that we're desirable, good, and ultimately more attractive when we don't transition. Being told over and over how ugly men on testosterone became made me upset, because the only thing that mattered was my consumability. My body was the product, and others could take what they wanted from me. It seems I'm not the only one who felt this way, either.

I'm adding this here as this anon made me think more about how I felt about this, as well as other ways I think the fetishization of transmasculine bodies and experiences manifests. Transmasculine people still experience misogyny, but it's entangled with the transphobia of other people not respecting us and trying to force their views of us onto us.

[toadwarts]

Special Delivery

Companion piece to Safe At Last.

After two humans escaped from an abusive home and found a new home working alongside Duke, they have begun settling into their new lives as merchants and their polyamorous romance with The Duke. Our primary character (aka the Reader) is struggling with the way he is perceived by the villagers, but is pleasantly surprised when The Duke returns with a special gift... Just the thing to help him feel better.

Fluffy hurt/comfort poly oneshot written in first person but made so that you can insert yourself if wanted. This story centers on a transmasculine protagonist!

Read on A03 or Fanfiction.net!

I sat in the back of the Duke’s caravan, lonely and bored. Both the Duke and my primary partner had been out for hours, making deliveries around the village and to the factory. I had stayed behind to look after the caravan and make sales to anyone who might approach--not to mention I wasn’t terribly keen on meeting any of the four lords yet. It had been months since we began staying with the massive enigma of a man, and only a few days less of that time since we had become a delightful little polycule. 

Life in the village hadn’t been easy--there were a lot of mysterious dangers, and you had to be cunning with both your words and weapons. Even still, it was as if The Duke commanded respect of all who lived within the confines of this little world, and so the three of us were safe/ When asked, The Duke would simply flash an award winning smile and say, “I suppose it’s one of the perks of having world class customer service!”

Still, The Duke being so...enigmatic could be exhausting, and perhaps a little bit annoying at times. But he was a good friend and even better lover, and always made sure that we were cared for. If he wanted to keep his secrets, I suppose it was his business. One day, after building up plenty of trust...perhaps we would be privy to them. After all, we had our own secrets too.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” 

I startled at the sudden noise, hopping up to my feet. No one had approached the caravan all day, but I needed to make sure my customer service was perfect, else The Duke would be most displeased!

“Hello,” I said, my voice chipper. “How can I help you out today?” The customers seemed to be a couple--a thin man and woman, dressed all in black with their hats pulled low on the crowns of their heads. Their hands were intertwined, both of them shivering in the cold. 

“We were looking for meat. Sausage, if you have it. And a few nails so we can fix our fence.” The man said, fidgeting with his jacket. 

“Of course! Anything to help out a loyal customer. Just let me go and grab them from the back.” I said cheerfully, forcing a big smile. I wasn’t prone to very much facial expression myself, but trying to mimic The Duke definitely helped. It was almost like putting on a costume.

I traversed back into the caravan, rooting around for what was needed. I kept my ears perked to listen to the customers as I unraveled a rope of thick sausages, placing them gently into a pristine paper bag. 

“I wonder where that girl came from. The boy too.” The woman said. “The Duke has seemed to take quite a shining to the two of ‘em, and it looks like The Lords don’t mind them too much either. Surprised Dimitrescu hasn’t taken that maiden for herself.” 

I felt ice shoot through my bloodstream. The girl. The boy too. A sour feeling entered my mouth. My partner didn’t go by any gender, and me… Well, it seems that my binder didn’t work well enough today. Really, I suppose it was my voice that gave me away. I had always felt disconnected from its lilting, high pitch. I hunched my shoulders and huffed, finishing packaging their order. It couldn’t be helped. A lot of people couldn’t understand.

I approached the front of the caravan, wanting this transaction to be over as soon as possible. “Here you go.” I said, doing my best to open up the back of my throat and make my voice sound deeper. Foolish and a waste of time, I’m sure. “Everything is packed up now. I hope that you find it all to be of the highest quality. If you have any qualms, please come back to see us.” 

“Thank you ma’am.” The woman said as her husband dug around in his pockets for the appropriate amount of lei. “Such a sweet young girl. Where did you come from, dear?” 

My stomach twisted, and I did my best to keep the discomfort out of my voice. “Um… Further away. I left home, and stumbled across the village while looking for somewhere to camp.” I didn’t see the point in correcting them and starting up a whole new conversation that they likely wouldn’t or couldn’t want to understand. 

“How unfortunate. We’ve been having a lot of problems lately, miss.” The man said, counting up his lei. 

Tch. Did they have to keep gendering literally everything they say?! Geez.

“Like werewolves?” I couldn’t help but smirk a little. “Well, it’s definitely a step up from where I came.” 

“I suppose so. Especially with special treatment from the merchant.” The man sniffed, flinching when his wife elbowed him. 

“I’m sorry about that. He didn’t get enough sleep last night,” The woman apologized, handing me the lei. 

I nodded, smile tight and strained. “No problem! I do hope you get to feeling better.” I handed them their items and swallowed hard. “Have a wonderful rest of your day and good luck fixing your fence!!” 

They waved me off, and I slunk back into the caravan. I knew the village definitely had a few gossips, but I hadn’t imagined it would be so annoying. I had already heard some adolescents talking about how funny it was to see a woman with such short hair and a flat chest, chattering about my partner and I… I’d argue that the most dangerous thing in this village wasn’t the werewolves, but perhaps the strain on the villagers that had them biting at each other’s ankles… Or mine, at least. Maybe they’d eventually warm up to me like they did The Duke though. Even my partner was having an easier time settling in to it all. 

I guess I just felt out of place. The only time I did feel right was when I was curled into The Duke’s soft side, my hand entwined with my primary partner’s across his ample belly, their soft breaths lulling me into a comfortable slumber. 

My ears perked as the door to the back of the caravan opened. My primary partner stood there with a broad grin, eyes shining. “Hey there, dear!” They said happily. “We have a surprise for you. Well, Duke does, I’m just happy and along for the ride!” 

I cocked my head. A gift was certainly something to perk up the mood--and The Duke was certainly top tier at finding the perfect gifts… Who knows what he may have brought?

Speaking of The Duke, he leaned on his cane as he squeezed into the wagon. “Hello, my dear boy!” He said happily. His words sent flutters of delight through my stomach, making me smile. “I’ve got a bit of a gift for you. Something you’ve mentioned a few times. I hope you might like it!” 

I stepped forward, eyes glinting curiously. The Duke turned a bit, shutting the door to the wagon behind him. When he turned, a small black box was in his hands, seemingly procured from thin air. Without skipping a beat I came closer, feeling my cheeks pinken with shyness. “What is it?” 

“Well, you’ll have to open it to find out, won’t you?” The Duke smiled broadly, holding the box out. 

I took the box from his hands as he sat down, my partner bouncing with giddiness. I carefully unfolded the top, seeing that whatever was inside was wrapped in deep red satin, the color of blood. Fitting, for the village. Gingerly, I pulled the satin back, curiosity thrumming through my fingers. 

I gasped. 

A little vial, full of clear liquid, and a set of alcohol swabs, syringes, and band-aids. 

It couldn’t be. 

“Is… Is this…?” The words were so small in my throat, barely breaking out of my mouth. 

“It is.” The Duke nodded, clasping his hands together and smiling softly. “Testosterone.” 

Tears sprung to my eyes, a laugh emerging unbidden from me. Ever since I had come out, I had wanted to transition--but I had never had the opportunity in my old abusive home, and I imagined somewhere out here would never hold the chance either. I had dreamed of the changes for so long--a deeper voice, bottom growth, body hair, facial hair… Hell, even building more muscle easier so I could achieve the musclechub look I had always been enamored by! 

“How did you do it?” I choked out, pressing the back of my hand against my watery eyes. My primary partner was at my side, arm around my shoulders. They planted a kiss on my head, holding me tight. 

“Why, I can procure any goods I need!” The Duke laughed heartily. “It is only a matter of time before an item is in my hands. And now it’s yours, free of charge.” 

I sniffled. “Duke… I don’t know what to say. This is amazing. This is my greatest dream. Thank you. Thank you so much!” I handed the box to my primary partner and ran to him, throwing my arms out. He leaned forward, hulking arms wrapping into me and pulling me into him. “Thank you!” 

“Of course, my dear! Anything for you.” He planted a gentle kiss on my forehead as he pulled me up to his chest. “And I know from our conversations about hormone replacement therapy before that you had concerns about vaginal atrophy and hair loss. Remedies for those are on the way as well!” 

“You are amazing.” I said breathlessly. After all the abuse my primary partner and I had endured over the years, I never could have imagined that we would have ended up in a place so terrifying and yet...so safe. So like home. A place where dreams could come true. 

“Well thank you, my dear. The customer is always right!” He said cheekily. 

My primary partner approached, holding the box as if it were the most prized thing in the entire world. “My good sir,” They said with a flourish. “I believe it is time for your first injection of boy juice!” 

“Boy juice.” I repeated. “Wow.” Then took a deep breath. “Yeah. Let’s do it.” 

“Let me administer the first shot for you, to show you how it’s done.” The Duke said, lowering me into the seat next to him. 

I nodded, suddenly feeling my palms get sweaty. “Yes. That sounds nice. I’m a little scared of the needle.” I laughed nervously. “Hey hon...you think you could hold my hand?” 

My primary partner nodded, fingers intertwining with mine. “I’ll be right here.” 

The Duke took the box, balancing it on top of his belly. Carefully, he loaded up the syringe with the testosterone, making sure to get the air bubbles up and load the approximate dose. “Now now, my boy, the friend I got this from let me know that this is a subcutaneous injection, and we’ll be starting off with a lower dose to start, and then you can choose if you want to go lower or higher from there. If we can get a bit of your blood later, I’ll have another friend of mine run tests on it to make sure it’s safe.”

“Wow, you really can do anything and everything…” I smiled, shaking my head in disbelief. “You’re incredible, Duke.” I lowered my pants, revealing the skin on my thigh.

“Perhaps so, but you must know that you are just as wonderful. It is a pleasure to get to share my life with such a wonderful man.” The Duke said pleasantly, swabbing some skin on my thigh. “Truth be told, I had grown a bit lonely myself. Having you two as companions and then something more… Well, I have to say it’s the happiest I’ve been in a long time.” He sighed. “Ah, to love and be loved. One of life’s greatest joys, right next to lei.” 

My primary partner grinned. “Always with the lei.” 

“I’m a man who knows what he wants in life!” The Duke tapped the syringe with one finger. “Now, are you ready?” 

I looked to my primary partner, feeling as if some holy light was glowing behind my eyes. Starting now, I would be transitioning. I would be something new, something self made. I would be myself. They squeezed my hand, nodding encouragingly. “You got this.” 

I took a deep breath. “Alright, Duke. I’m ready.” 

[lilshotgun]

So here's why i've been inactive for the past couple months on tumblr:

As many of you know, I've been a fairly avid content creator for the warrior nun fandom creating a ton of content for free. I joined a Warrior Nun discord server named Future Warrior Nuns (which is a ridiculous name considering in the show Ava says there will be no more warrior nuns but that's besides the point) and the treatment I received there was amazing. At the beginning. I spoke up about racism and injustices within the community because you cannot escape it anywhere unfortunately and I believed I'd found a community that would protect me and be there for me if i was ever faced with racism or hate.

For clarity, anyone in blue is a moderator. As you go on to read this their usernames and profile images might change so I’ll clarify who is who. I’ll only be using the names I’ve been presented with and only the ones that are most relevant to the situation. 

Fiesta  (white American cis woman) aka Doesn't Kelly, Witch Rhyme

Taz (white Australian cis woman) 

Milan (a very sheltered American transmasculine poc whos uncomfortable talking about racism because they've never had to deal with it) aka Who The Fuck Is Kelly

Rory (white Australian cis woman) aka Stronger Kelly

 But after a while, things slowly started to change. It was subtle and if you hadn't been there from the beginning, you wouldn't have noticed. It started with the moderators spending less time in the server because they had made many of their own servers and spent far more time over there. Which is understandable when you’re a group of friends that all have a common purpose. But the lack of leadership was palpable. I had to sometimes direct fellow server members to proper channels or do a few other things that were supposed to be things that the moderators were supposed to take care of and their lack of care for the server was becoming more relevant. If you were in their little group of friends or kissed their ass then they wouldn't target you unnecessarily. 

    Exactly three weeks later, (and only one week after my birthday in which everyone was super sweet and nice to me) the love and friendship they claimed to have for me vanished completely. For context, people in positions of power, especially in a server, should be people you can come to if you ever have an issue with anything or anyone. They should also be people that can come to terms with admitting their behavior was incorrect when being told so. So here is what happened:

I have always been open about being a transmasculine person of color on all my platforms, and if you know me on any platform you know that. The behavior shown here between me and the moderators was absolutely appalling to me. They pushed my voice aside and only acknowledged Narcissa, a cis white woman, who was agreeing and saying the same things i had because i had asked her in private to help me out because i felt it was unfair that two server moderators were coming at me so aggressively. 

As you can see from the screenshots, they claimed that I attacked Fiesta when i was simply pointing out that her behavior was hypocritical and unfair especially because she is in a position of power and that's something people of power should be aware of. 

I was the only one brave enough to say what everyone was thinking. And that's something I have always taken pride in. Speaking up for others when they are too scared to do so themselves. And that was shown through multiple people coming into my dms to tell me they either felt the same way I did or they felt the way I was treated in the conversation above was unfair. This next screenshot is from a private message from a former manager. 

Narcissa (white cis woman)  received a few apologies from the server managers privately, yet my dms stayed vacant. At this point, they made a “public apology” towards everyone in the server which I forgot to screenshot, and not a single server manager reached out to me in private. But they did share these in the server for everyone to see:

They then opened an anonymous feedback form for us to share if we had any issues privately, which of course, I did, and so I filled it out saying “wheres my fucking apology ~king” so they would know exactly who the response was coming from. I was angry and hurt that they treated me the way they did. I regretted wording it like that almost instantly after sending it. But the deed was done and it was unchangeable. And not too long after, this was posted publicly in the server feedback channel so that everyone in the server could see:

Whether I shared that it was from me or not, she violated the server moderators unanimous statement saying that everything posted in the feedback form would stay anonymous and made my response public using the excuse that me sharing my name made it okay for her to show it to everyone. I was also being informed by other people I’m friends with that the forms that were being submitted were not staying anonymous and that they were being shared from other moderators privately in other peoples' dms.

I stuck around in the server because the people that I had formed friendships with were there and they were special to me and I wanted to be able to talk to them still in spite of everything that had happened to me up until this point. I was much more subdued at this point, I was posting less art and as you noticed I practically disappeared from twitter as well. 

My love for Warrior Nun was decreasing rapidly because the environment had become so toxic and unwelcoming that I felt scared to say much in the server in fear of being banned after seeing one of my trans poc friends banned for saying hi to another member. They had been looking for a reason to ban him for being on my side instead of theirs and apparently found the “perfect” excuse. They deleted his messages and claimed in their private admin channel that he had harassed someone in the server without screenshotting the false evidence first. How do I know this? Because I had a person on the team that valued me as a person instead of as a content creator and what I could give to the server.

I proceeded to curate the server for what fit me best, considering the ridiculous number of channels they created that had nothing to do with the show at this point. And there was an option for members to do that so I used the tools they had provided with and opted out of channels I no longer wanted to see. I consolidated it down to 35 out of 66 channels because some of them had no opt out option. And still, it was way more channels than I'd prefer to be in. I narrowed it down to only ships I actually cared about instead of having a bunch of channels I was never gonna read or say things in. And that's when the manager that cared about us provided me with these telling screenshots.

Why put me in “jail” over removing some roles? It may not have been explicit, but the internalized racism of putting a person of color in “jail” for curating what they wanted from a server is frankly off putting to say the least. "Implicit racism includes unconscious biases, expectations, or tendencies that exist within an individual, regardless of ill-will or any self-aware prejudices." 

And what does carl bot do exactly? It logs EVERYTHING. But only if that feature is enabled. And clearly, in Future Warrior Nuns, it is.

 They didn’t care about me and didn’t care that I was a consistent content creator. For lack of better words, I was one of the biggest reasons the actual part of the server that was dedicated to the show was constantly active and once I became quiet, along with a few other content creators I talked with, the activity decreased immensely. I said things here and there but that was about it. Until I was looking through their emotes. I noticed that they had trans, gay, demi, bi, aro, and ace heart emotes but the lesbian one wasnt there. Which was honestly surprising considering how much of the fandom identifies as lesbian. So I asked for it to be added and after it was, so many people were super happy because of it.

One day later i asked for more Mary emotes because they hadn’t completely brushed me off after requesting for the lesbian pride one. I noticed that Ava, the white character, had 72 animated and still emotes at the time while Mary, the black character, only had 18. And only 4 out of those were positive emotes. Here's that conversation:

I offered up my services to create Mary emotes for them considering I was an artist and content creator and it would be no issue for me at all to contribute but they declined, saying they were working on some themselves and that they would eventually add them to the server. The ones that they had created all looked terrible. They didn't know how to color correct her skin so that it wouldn't look ashy because of the filters used in the show and instead of asking for help from me, an artist of color, they simply did their own thing. And from 18 emotes, it went up to a dazzling 24. 

Needless to say, the racism they claimed not to have was pretty evident at this point. It was shockingly clear that they didn’t care as much about the characters of color than they did for the white and white passing ones. After this entire debacle I didn't even bother trying to ask for more emotes for Lilith considering how warmly I was welcomed with asking for more Mary emotes. 

A little less than two months after the initial incident, I still hadn’t been contacted by anyone on the admin team about absolutely anything in private. It wasn’t until people asked Fiesta if she had reached out to me or even bothered with an apology before she sent me this:

The “apology” was worthless. Too much time had passed since I was publicly humiliated and portrayed as the evil transmasculine person of color to them, and only a select few people interacted with me. I felt completely shut out because of how the admin team handled a difference of opinion. Instead of correcting themselves and admitting they were wrong, they doubled down on the intimidation and bullying  by changing their rules so that they could find excuses to ban or punish anyone they felt was not on their side. 

At this point, my grades were heavily declining. I was already struggling with keeping up with everything on my own due to covid and my mental disabilities. Being a victim of this racist behavior made everything worse. I couldn’t get out of bed, I was barely eating a meal a day because I had no motivation to work so I had little to no money to buy myself food. I was starving most days. And I didn’t ask my mom for help because I felt everything was my fault and that I really was in the wrong and shouldn't have said anything even though looking back at it I wasn't wrong for what I said. I had also been informed that my dad died because of covid and because of all of this stress and depression I had officially failed my classes. 

This is really difficult for me to say because I’m a very private person and I hate asking for help or sharing anything about my private life, but for you to understand everything that was happening to me at the time, this is stuff you unfortunately need to know. 

There’s many more things that I could say about this server but this thread is already long enough as it is and it was hard enough to write this all down. But behind closed doors, the admin team had some of the nastiest attitudes and behaviors you could’ve seen. Had they realized we had someone on their team that actually valued us and others as people, they probably would have kept their blatant ignorance and dislike towards server members hidden better. But white people like oppressing others when they know they can get away with it and this is just another sad unfortunate example that cost me and my fellow friends of color some heavy emotional and psychological damage.     They did wrong and refused to acknowledge it and instead tried to find a way to ban us for not having the hivemind that they so desperately want to control everyone with. If you want to see for yourself, feel free to find a link to a discord server named Future Warrior Nuns. If you look back through their channels, you’ll find most of these conversations either gone or have many messages missing. I hope my story will help understand why I’ve been gone from tumblr for so long and i hope something like this never happens to you.

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Why is it that people seem to always support trans women more than trans men?

 Lee says:

If you’re part of an online forum community that is primarily transfeminine, for example, then there’s going to be a lot of resources for transfeminine people.

But if you’re part of an online forum community that is primarily transmasculine, for example, then there’s going to be a lot of resources for transmasculine people. 

And just as there are particular online spaces and communities that tend to be predominated by a certain group, there are also IRL ones that are primarily transmasculine or primarily transfeminine even if they are not explicitly defined as such. 

If you feel like you aren’t being supported enough in the space you’re currently in, see if you can find a community that does focus around the resources you’re looking for! 

As an example- you may have noticed that the transmasculine post-op community on Tumblr is pretty small. There definitely are multiple bloggers out there, and I think I actually follow all of them, but this isn’t really a thriving hub of phalloplasty information or support, or a large community of transmasculine folks who are post-op and post-transition (Thanks, Tumblr NSFW ban!).

So instead, I seek out the spaces where the community I want to be a part of actually is gathering. Now I’m part of many different transmasculine lower surgery groups on Facebook (over 20 of em lol), I’ve attended IRL transmasculine lower surgery support group meetings in person, and now I’m in two different Zoom-based transmasculine bottom surgery support groups. 

I also believe that if you want to see more of a particular thing, you should be a part of putting that thing out there! So I still maintain my transition sideblog here on Tumblr, where I will eventually document my phallo when I get stage 1 in May. And that’s how I support the transmasculine community, in my own way. So if you want to see more supportive posts for transmasculine folks, start typing!

We also have to remember that uplifting transfeminine doesn’t automatically occur at the expense of support for transmasculine people. We aren’t trying to tear each other down, so being resentful of the transfeminine community for the people who support them isn’t a good look. Transfeminine people can never have “too much” support!

I do think that there are certain spaces online that tend to focus on positivity and support for transfeminine folks, and there’s nothing wrong with that- again, yes, transfeminine people do deserve support! Transfeminine people often face the brunt of society’s violent transphobia, and it’s important that we recognize the way that trans women specifically are targeted more than other groups are. 

Trans women are often hypervisible and a lot of transphobic movements are aimed at them as a result; bathroom bills because transphobes don’t want “men” in women’s bathrooms, banning trans athletes because transphobes don’t want “men” to take over women’s teams, trans people being banned from gendered homeless shelters because transphobes don’t want “men” to sleep in the same room as women, and so on. When you listen to any of these politicians who support these gross things, you’ll hear them constantly talk about the “danger” that trans women pose (while insisting on gendering them as “men” and refusing to recognize that they’re even women). Trans men aren’t even an afterthought.

Being culturally hypervisible in the media means you’re the target of a lot of hate and the recipient of a lot of support, which is all happening at the same time. On the other hand, the transmasculine community at large is less visible in the media which means we often slip under the radar as a community which of course does tie into the erasure of the community. Transmasculine people more often slip under the radar on a personal level too, because many transmasculine people are able to pass by at least 5 years on testosterone and many choose to go stealth as soon as they’re able to.

That doesn’t mean that all transmasculine people can pass or want to pass, or that transmasculine people don’t face transphobia and violence either, or that the vitriol targeting trans women doesn’t invalidate us as well or affect our rights too, or that we shouldn’t get to share our experiences or ask for support. 

We can and should talk about transmasculine people’s experiences as well, and transmasculine voices shouldn’t be erased. Studies have shown that suicide attempt rate for trans boys is approximately 20.9% higher than it is for trans girls, for example, and there are many similar statistics showing that trans men struggle in many ways and face a lot of discrimination, which of course deserves acknowledgement.

Experiencing discrimination and subsequent mental health struggles isn’t something that should be glossed over, yet there are many pseduo-progressive folks in the LGBTQ/feminist communities whose posts can sometimes come across as “men are bad and trans men are men so they’re bad!” When you point out that there are plenty of marginalized men out there who need support, people are quick to say “Well, I’ll support you for being trans but I don’t need to support you because you’re a man since men have privilege and therefore perpetuate oppression!” But in the case of trans men, supporting someone for being trans is the same thing as supporting them in being a man, you can’t separate the two.

And you can spend all day talking about in what situations transmasculine people have access to male privilege and in what conditions the privilege applies and so on, but that is a separate conversation from the point here, which is everyone deserves support and that includes trans men (and gay men, and disabled men, and Black men, and Indigenous men, and Asian men, and so on). 

Things like body-shaming men for having neckbeards or small penises is seen as okay even though body-shaming women for having body hair or having small breasts is recognized as misogynistic. Sometimes folks respond by saying something like “you can’t oppress your oppressor” which... makes no sense in this context. Making people feel that their bodies are bad goes against the whole body-positive feminist movement, and that’s true no matter which people you think you’re targeting. 

It’s also pretty obvious that being a man doesn’t inherently make you a bad person, but a lot of the hate and anger directed at men (whether it’s posted as a joke or said seriously by someone who went through trauma) can make it difficult for trans men to recognize that they’re men because they don’t want to become the thing everyone hates. 

So how do we navigate allowing marginalized people to vent about groups who have privilege without causing collateral damage to other oppressed people? 

Some people have tried to solve it by saying “I hate only cis men, not trans men!” but then of course you’ve created a new issue which is the arbitrary distinguishment between a cis man and a trans man. A trans man can be just as misogynistic as a cis man, and being trans doesn’t mean anything about who you are as a person, all it says is something about the gender you were assigned when you were born.

When you say that you only hate cis men, you’re implying that you don’t hate trans men because you think they’re different than cis men in some way in their thoughts/behavior/actions which is a transphobic assumption. 

Or you’re saying you know that trans men and cis men can be identical in their thoughts/behavior/actions because they’re all men, so the reason you don’t hate trans men is ... ?? because they had certain genitals at birth (which they may not have anymore) ?? And that’s also transphobic because it’s saying you hate people solely because of their bodies which they can’t always control or change and implies having a particular type of body is morally wrong somehow or that your body makes you a bad person.

When someone makes a point of telling a trans man that they hate men, it’s sometimes a deliberate transphobic tactic used to make the person feel like having a male gender identity is inherently bad and makes you bad because it’s who you are, so the only way to become a good person is to not be a man which means not being transgender. And this is some how TERFs try and convince trans teens who were AFAB to re-identify as women instead of embracing being men. It’s hard to embrace being something that people have told you is problematic so people try to repress their feelings and ignore who they are.

Yet folks who don’t say “I hate all men” and instead say “the patriarchy sucks but it’s okay to be a man and not all men are bad” have found that statement controversial too. 

Even that phrase, “not all men,” is a red flag because it’s primarily used by the “men’s rights” folks who try and defend their misogyny and push their anti-feminist agenda while denying the ways that they personally benefit from the system. All men benefit from the system of patriarchy if they are recognized as men by the system, but that doesn’t mean every individual man is personally responsible for actively perpetuating oppression or that every man is a bad person.

So when someone points out the ways that men are taught to hate themselves by people who are constantly bashing on men in hurtful ways, or the struggles that men face (even if they aren’t struggles unique to men), there are people who just freak out because they think that acknowledging this is in some way trying to say that men can’t be oppressors, or that pointing it out is somehow delegitimizing women’s experiences or part of a pushback against women’s rights because the MRAs have tried to stake a claim over the entire topic.

So any nuanced conversation about ways that we actually can support men and break down oppression and uplift marginalized folks has been silenced because this toxic group has dominated the conversation and nobody wants to accidentally seem like they support those things, so they don’t support anything that focuses on men at all.

Similarly, when someone posts about something that affects trans men people (usually cis people TBH) often will respond with “trans women have it worse with that issue, and everything else too!” which isn’t a helpful response because while it’s important to recognize the way that trans women face multiple axes of oppression, uplifting trans women in a way that makes it impossible for another marginalized group to have a conversation doesn’t help anyone. It’s okay for some posts to not be about or for trans women without starting to play the Oppression Olympics games because transmasculine people also need support and space and allowing transmasculine people to talk about their experiences doesn’t mean that transfeminine people are being ignored.

All that being said, I would argue that people definitely don’t always support trans women more than trans men, and I wouldn’t even say that people usually do so. It very much depends on the space you’re in. While I do believe that there are a lot of positivity/supportive posts about trans women on Tumblr, this is, in many ways, a direct reaction to counter the large volume of hate that’s also actively being directed at trans women on Tumblr. And while there are plenty of “love trans women!” posts, there is also an issue with the lack of practical resources and material support for trans women because most of the content does not go beyond the surface level heart-emoji type post.

So in what I’ve noticed on Tumblr specifically (as this varies depending on the platform you’re using and the space you’re in), there can be more vocal (aka performative) support for trans women but it mostly tends to focus on their identities saying they’re valid women and so on but doesn’t give them much information or material support or anything else that I would deem a useful resource, whereas there might be less support for trans men in terms of “gender identity positivity for being male” but there’s more practical resources and information that they can use to aid in their transition.

Again, whatever you do, don’t complain that transfeminine people have too much support- that’s not the same thing as saying that you’d like more support for trans men struggling with X issue.

And yes, while we do have many things in common, there are some differences in the struggles the community faces and the experiences we have, and it’s okay to want to talk with other folks who are going through the same thing. That doesn’t mean that you don’t care about transfeminine people or that you think they should have a smaller platform or something, it just means you’d like support for your identity and transition (which is wholly unrelated to how much support there is or isn’t available for them).

So if you are looking for more support for trans men and feel like you aren’t getting what you need in the online or IRL spaces you’re currently moving in, you should try finding the spaces that are meant to be supportive communities for trans men and join them, whether they’re specific blogs, Facebook groups, Discord servers, or in-person/on-Zoom support groups, and also do what you can to create the support you want to see for your community!