#is this trans. is this binary trans behaviour

[ttaibhse]

do you support trans people?

let's just assume youre asking this in good faith despite this being an extremely vague question that doesn't really ask anything specific lol. so i'll give you answers to a few different interpretations of it and you can let me know if i've missed any that you're especially concerned about 👍

oh and bear in mind the context that i have transitioned medically and lived as both stealth ftm and openly trans/nonbinary and have experienced being trans first person 🙏

do i support trans people's right to live safe and happy lives free from harrassment and discrimination? yes, of course

do i support trans people's right to present themselves however they want to? yes, of course

do i use the correct names and pronouns of trans people that i interact with in real life? of course!

do i believe people when they tell me their gender identity? sure. i have experienced gender dysphoria lol. i get it

do i support trans people's right to good healthcare? yes of course

do i support adult's decisions to transition medically? if they have ACTUAL full informed consent, sure. many many MANY people are not being provided with FULL, INFORMED consent before opting for medical transition. this is not their fault.

do i think it's irresponsible and stupid to tout medical transition as a risk free, reversible, totally harmless way to experiment with gender? yes

do i think any of this should mean that women should scrupulously monitor their language and behaviour at all times to make sure that no one might possibly feel excluded or offended by anything at all? no

am i personally going to walk on eggshells with the language i use to avoid being called names online when anyone with a working brain knows exactly what i'm talking about? no

am i going to police my own presence online to make sure i'm not interacting even remotely with any bloggers who might have different or even distasteful beliefs or opinions to my own? no

do i think the existence of people with gender dysphoria and people who choose to reject binary gender labels and/or whatever other interpretations you might have of any variety of trans identities means that biological sex is suddenly somehow irrelevant and should be ignored? no

do i think that ANYONE AT ALL AT ANY TIME, regardless of identity, has the right to sexual access to women's bodies? no

do i think that any woman should be obliged to date or have sex with anyone she doesn't want to date or have sex with, for any reason at all, including to make that person feel validated? no

do i think that trans women face the same struggles and experiences with misogyny as cis women? no

do i think that you're being wilfully stupid if you claim these two groups of people are indistinguishable? yes

do i think women should have to prioritise the feelings and sensibilities of any other group, even marginalised groups, over their own safety in the face of being raped/forcefully impregnated/abused/killed by men? no <3

anon as ive said before, you're welcome to make your own decisions about me based on these answers & the content of my blog. you can ask me more questions if you want. but i'm not going to give any black and white sweeping statement answers to appease random anonymous tumblr users and i'm not going to pretend i don't see, experience, and understand material reality. i'm not going to pretend that women aren't my priority lol. i'm not going to pretend that i care that much about being careful to use inclusive language instead of just saying "women" and "men". if that's your priority then that's great for you but it's not mine and it doesn't have to be lol

[tomurakii]

To me the non-op trans experience is. Designing a bg3 player character with the opposite sex characteristics than you were born with and then feeling guilty the whole time

[sunflowershark]



aigis is so gay that even when you romance her as a dude it still somehow feels gay

[nest-being]

the way i like something tagged feminism and immediately get a bunch of terf posts recommended to me it's fucking infuriating FUCK ALL TERFS FUCK GENDER ESSENTIALISM. if you're a terf you are NOT a feminist- you stand for fucking fascism.

[jinzouacting]

i think umm i think that prev (nyancrimew) post is pretty cool and im not going to say smth annoying in her tags but it reminded me of something related to the subject re: perception of trans people / bodies / things perceived as gendered

[aliosne]

Anyway. I would just like to get through one (1) casual conversation with a parent without them saying Weird Gender Shit to me

[leikeliscomet]

The aspec community REALLY needs to add intersecting identities to these analysis' instead of making general statements. How helpful is 'ace women are seen as pure because everyone thinks all women are asexual' when we look at the sexualisation of Black women and the Jezebel, the idea Black girls are 'fast' and the general sexualisation of women of colour e.g. spicy latina trope? Are we factoring in how the desexualization of women of colour e.g. the Mammy, the 'submissive' East Asian women trope, the virginity myth isn't acceptance of female asexuality? Does 'ace men are expected to be more sexual' factor in the sexualisation of Black men and other men of colour e.g. 'savage' Arab trope and the antiblack trope that they're inherently predatory? Or the desexualisation of East Asian men? How easily can we define the ace men v ace women experience at all if trans and non-binary aces are missing from most ace representation despite facing the brunt of anti ace discrimination? If we're solely defining these experiences by cis aces? How easily can aroallos 'just have sex' when you factor in the demonisation of gay sex, HIV/AIDS crisis and seraphobia and how this affects gay, lesbian, bi and pan aros? How easily can alloaces 'just partner up' when you factor in the ban of gay marriage that is still in many countries across the globe and the historical policing of 'homosexual behaviours' and this impacts gay, lesbian, bi and pan aces? And this isn't even getting into disability, religion etc. yet. When there's SO many factors that play into how an individual participates in sex and romance, or if they're even allowed to participate at all, how much can we clearly cut the aspec experience into alloace v aroace v aroallo. Or sex favourable v sex indifferent v sex repulsed. There's A LOT we can learn from each other.

[edonee]

Nowadays I so often see young teen girls state that they are lesbian while having "they/he/it pronouns" in their bios/carrds and whatnot, while constantly ruminating online about their feelings about gender and how they do not feel like women and do not want to be seen as girls/women and how confused and lost they are, etc. ... and it is just SO utterly depressing to see, it genuinely hurts my heart to watch. This is basically the norm now, social media has made this woke "totally-not-just-enforcing-gross-gender-stereotypes" gender ideology shit so widespread and mainstream, nobody can tell me it is not a trend... unlike sexuality and discovering one's same-sex attraction, this million-gender million-pronoun bullshit is genuinely just insane. And the fact that if you are LGB, you are automatically expected and pressured to support it unconditionally with no questions asked, otherwise you are labelled as a horrible demon who wants to murder trans people... Most people have completely lost their ability to think critically and acknowledge nuance, and social media in the last several years has only been festering environments where such behaviour and mindsets and propaganda absolutely flourish and spread more and more. There are just so many things wrong and backwards in this "community", and I am so, so, so tired. And frankly, I am terrified of what the future will bring...

seriously i feel like we're regressing so much 💀💀 women identifying as non-binary because "I'm not a woman, I'm just a person!"; homosexuality being basically the same as bisexuality, since gays/lesbians have to include transgender people of the opposite sex too; everyone regurgitating gender stereotypes "but in a queer f*ggot gender fuckery t4t-and-whatnot way xD"

i am tiredddddd

[johannestevans]

Yentl: A Trans Man Studying Talmud is Distracted by Gay Thoughts

Yentl (1983, dir. Barbra Streisand) and Yentl the Yeshiva Boy by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Any of us would be distracted from study by Mandy Patinkin. Via IMDb.

It’s a sad thing, hearing cisgender people talk about Yentl — especially the short story — and think they understand it, that they’re getting everything from it, while at the same time, they can’t conceive that transgender people even exist.

It’s a strangely joyful short story to read as a trans man, as sad and complex as it is, and the film has a similar bittersweet warmth to it.

“Yentl — you have the soul of a man.” “So why was I born a woman?” “Even Heaven makes mistakes.”

From Yentl the Yeshiva Boy, by Isaac Bashevis Singer

At the beginning of Yentl (1983), we see Barbra Streisand as the titular Yentl walking around in Yanev, ostensibly to buy groceries — including a fish — for dinner. She’s bored and distracted as the other women discuss how to study a fresh fish or how to distinguish between the different types — the bookseller is coming through town, calling out that he has novels and picture books for women and sacred books for men.

Yentl approaches the bookseller and surreptitiously takes one book from the men’s shelf, a book exploring the mysticism of creation and the similar mysticism of language that was being discussed by some yeshiva students a moment ago, and the bookseller interrupts her — “You’re in the wrong place, Miss. Books for women are over there.”

He tells her it’s the Law that women can’t study such books; she retorts, “Where is it written?”; he says, “Never mind where: it’s a Law.”

She says the book is for her father, Reb Mendel, and the bookseller finally relents, whereupon she goes home and reads the book herself.

Mendel is a widower, and although he scolds Yentl gently for not being an adept cook and tells her that studying is for men and not for women, he studies with her anyway and teaches her — it makes Yentl the subject of gossip in town, with one of Reb Mendel’s students remarking that his father says a woman who studies Talmud is a demon — it doesn’t help that Yentl is unmarried.

From the short story:

But Yentl didn’t want to get married. Inside her, a voice repeated over and over: “No!” What becomes of a girl when the wedding’s over? Right away she starts bearing and rearing. And her mother-in-law lords it over her. Yentl knew she wasn’t cut out for a woman’s life. She couldn’t sew, she couldn’t knit. She let the food burn and the milk boil over; her Sabbath pudding never turned out right, and her challah dough didn’t rise. Yentl much preferred men’s activities to women’s.

From Yentl the Yeshiva Boy, by Isaac Bashevis Singer

As a trans man, I’m always keenly aware of the things many of us cite in childhood of the first things we knew weren’t right for us and the things that were — Yentl has no skills that should be right for a woman, mentions that she cannot sew or knit or cook, and she prefers to study.

Many of us played with “boy’s toys” or took interest in “boy’s activities” instead of girl’s ones, wore “boy’s clothes” and did “boy things” — the label as to the boyishness or girlishness to most of these being arbitrary.

But Yentl’s first thought here is the rebellion in it — not only will she be forced to begin bearing children and raising them by the circumstances of her marriage, but she’ll be forced to submit to her mother-in-law’s will and orders.

In my experience as a trans man, cis men are rarely the biggest enforcers of the gender binary, nor the ones who most policed my incorrect or flawed gender expression as a child.

When cishet men do complain and correct gendered behaviour, it’s often to do with what they perceive as a desirable woman or girl being kept from them — their complaints are far more to do with dress or physical appearance because, to a cishet man, the first thing that matters in a woman is her sexual availability and her aesthetic value, particularly in regards to her sexual appeal.

Cishet women’s aggressive and virulent desire to correct what they feel are gender transgressions are more subtle than that and are far more about the deeper social value a woman holds — about her ability to cook and clean, to raise children, to exist in a space with other women, to manage the men in her life and to willingly submit to parenting adult men as if they’re also her children.

What would Yentl experience from her mother-in-law? Picks not just at her appearance but at her behaviour, her priority, and her thoughts. It’s not enough to perform gender correctly — they want you to internalise it and to be entirely beaten down with it.

All your thoughts as a cishet woman, especially in a traditional M/F marriage, should be about the men around you and their needs — sacrificing your own needs and desires should come naturally to you. A lot of cishet mothers will completely confidently say that sacrifice of the self, of personal identity, of privacy, of rest, is an integral part of motherhood, and they will become very angry at the idea that it isn’t, or that it shouldn’t be — pointing out that the same expectations are not made of fatherhood will if anything make them angrier, and they’ll say blandly that men and women are different, and refuse any further word about it.

Why are men and women different?

They just are.

Why do they have to be?

They just are.

There was no doubt about it, Yentl was unlike any of the girls in Yanev — tall, thin, bony, with small breasts and narrow hips. On Sabbath afternoons, when her father slept, she would dress up in his trousers, his fringed garment, his silk coat, his skullcap, his velvet hat, and study her reflection in the mirror. She looked like a dark, handsome young man. There was even a slight down on her upper lip.

From Yentl the Yeshiva Boy, by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Obviously, trans men and mascs’ gender shouldn’t be judged by the extent of their ability to pass, but a thing that I really like about this aspect of Singer’s short story is that it puts aside the argument of sex essentialism.

“Men and women are different, and you can tell they are different because they look different — if they were meant to be the same, why wouldn’t they look the same?”

And here, Yentl has the soul of a man, and his body is not wholly that of a woman’s and can easily be “disguised” as a man’s because it already has some men’s characteristics — tall, thin, bony, not much to the chest, without the wide, child-bearing hips people often want or expect of a cisgender woman. Once Yentl is dressed in the right clothes, she looks like a dark, handsome young man.

If men and women are truly so irrevocably different, if they are truly two sides of a wide binary with a great chasm between them, everyone would always be able to tell trans people and crossdressers and intersex people and anyone else outside or in-between from a line-up, and you can’t.

Read on Patreon / Read on Medium

[lesbiskammerat]

In many ways this is sort of a non-issue but I think people might end up talking past each other when it comes to "women and femmes" and similar stupid terms because there are two (maybe more?) completely contradictory ways that people use them.

For some people, women and femmes is about presentation, and people who use the term like this often conceptualise misogyny/sexism/patriarchy as being, at its root, a devaluation of "feminine" things and behaviours, like the colour pink, wearing dresses, make-up, fashion, nursing work, etc.

For other people, women and femmes is about "female experiences" while growing up and navigating society. What counts as a female experience is pretty nebulous but usually it ends up boiling down to birth assignment.

For the first use of the term, trans women and gay men can be part of the group provided they're feminine, but masculine non-binary people or butches, regardless of birth assignment, don't count or are only conditionally included.

For the second usage, trans men can be part of the group if they still find "AFAB" to be an important part of their identity, but trans women are not part of the group, or are only conditionally included.

Both of these are pretty terrible ways to categorise people and understand society, and their use is very revealing about someone's biases about gender, but they're different types of wrongness.

[she-is-ovarit]

Trans research and scientific consensus

(2020) - Study of 139,829 students finds that in comparison to other students, transgender identity, especially non-binary identity, is associated more with perpetrating bullying than being bullied. Non-binary identity was most strongly associated with involvement in bullying, followed by [transgender] opposite sex identity and cisgender identity. 

(2023) 21 leading experts on pediatric gender medicine from 8 countries wrote a letter to Wall Street Journal expressing disagreement over how gender dysphoria in youth is treated, voicing concerns against things such as the affirmative model and research conducted outside of the US has found hormonal interventions for gender dysphoria to be without reliable evidence. Among these international experts is Dr. Rita Kaltiala, chief psychiatrist at Tampere university gender clinic and author of several peer-reviewed studies on trans medicine and Finland's top authority on pediatric gender care.

(2023) Landmark study from Denmark on 3,800 transgender patients pulled data from hospital records and applications from legal gender changes and discovered 43% of this group had a psychiatric illness compared with 7% of non-trans group, and despite "gender affirming care" and legal gender changes, still had 7.7 the rate of suicide attempts and 3.5 times the rate of suicide deaths. Researchers state this rate is likely even higher due to missing data.

(2016) Study finds association with increased risk of multiple sclerosis for trans women taking estrogen/reducing testosterone levels.

(2023) Metadata study shows, at best, no improvement for patients in gender-affirming care. "The conclusions of the systematic reviews of evidence for adolescents are consistent with long-term adult studies, which failed to show credible improvements in mental health and suggested a pattern of treatment-associated harms. Three recent papers examined the studies that underpin the practice of youth gender transition and found the research to be deeply flawed. Evidence does not support the notion that “affirmative care” of today’s adolescents is net beneficial."

(2011) Long term follow up of 324 transgender people having undergone sex reassignment surgery in Sweden, found that trans women retained male patterned incidents and rates of violence and had a greater significance and rate of rape and sexual violence than cisgender men. The study also found, "Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group."

(2020) Largest study to date on 641,860 people finds association with autism and "gender diversity", "Gender-diverse people also report, on average, more traits associated with autism, such as sensory difficulties, pattern-recognition skills and lower rates of empathy — or accurately understanding and responding to another person’s emotional state".

(2022) US study examining 10 years of data on 952 people finds large percentages of young adults prescribed hormones for trans identity no longer getting the drugs 4 years later. Discontinuation rate for both sexes combined = 30%. Female discontinuation rate as high as 44%. The standard disinformation pushed is that only 1-2% of people who begin medical transition end up desisting. But these figures show that in this cohort of young adults, the overall rate of discontinuing hormone treatment ranged from a low of 10% to a high of 44% within a space of just 4 years.

Abruzzese et al. 2023 'The Myth of “Reliable Research” in Pediatric Gender Medicine: A critical evaluation of the Dutch Studies—and research that has followed'

More to come.

[pumpumdemsugah]

I hate white people that talk about gender. You criticise them and they hide behind their gender identity and the fact there is a culture war as If other oppression has stopped on their behalf . The most common reason I see them bring up white supremacy and slavery is to talk about their gender identity and you lot pretend that's some cool solidarity moment and not insane narcissistic white behaviour

They love to bring up Black women to project their body insecurities as something that's " always been a part of white supremacy". I've seen them straight-faced claim hairiness and board shoulders is an anti-Black stereotype ( we're literally seen as balded headed and since when ? ) because they're hairy and feel ugly and they see Black womanhood and a dumping group for things that are undesirable. The things I've seen claim are misogynoir...since when ? Why lie ? ' Black women weren't seen as women' has gone from a line to talk about how white people abused Black women because they saw Black people as animals so not men or women, to pretend that there was gender confusion so the whites can centre their gender identity in slavery but misinformation is fine If it makes a white person feel valid

The only context they bring up women of colour is when they want to talk about what's ugly but white people have never brought up non-whites as a benchmark of inhumanity to feel superior, so don't be suspicious of this behaviour. They said gender, colonialism and trans so there's no way they're bringing up racism as a way to position themselves as normal or too transcendent for human labels unlike the Blacks and Browns who simply exist as " not fitting European gender binary"

Let's not even get on how they love pretending misogyny doesn't impact WOC because MOC can be targets of racism #intersectionality apparently. I'm sorry you're too stupid to understand how misogyny works

[lgbtqiamuslimpedia]

Boyah

Boyah (plural: Boyat) was subcultural identity of AFAB non-binary,tomboy,demi girl & trans-masculine folks of Persian Gulf. Boyat are asigned female at birth,but express gender atypical behaviour. The origin of this queer subculture is unclear, some boyat claimed that it was started through online forums & groups. [citation needed]

Boyah subculture was more visible in Gulf states (including Kuwait,Oman,Saudi Arabia,UAE,Bahrain). Boyah identity may fall under the modern Transgender and Non-binary umbrella. However some people may considered them as people of forth gender.

Sexuality

Boyat folk's sexuality can be confusing in various cultural contexts. Most of the Boyat had intimate and romantic relationships with cis-girls in their past life, but they do not consider themselves as homosexual.

The term Boyah itself does not mean lesbian in arabic.In later life many Boyat had to pursue a heterosexual marriage & had children.Because marriage is a obligatory in local arabic customs.In addition to this, some boyah were androsexual & interested in boys only.

Culture & Lifestyle

Trans-masculine/tomboys/AFAB non-binary/AFAB genderpunk took the “Boyah” cultural identity in their early adolescence. On the otherhand, some boyat took the male role to challenge societal gender norms and stereotypes in Arabic Gulf States.

In general, a boyah is characterized by no make-up, no feminine expressions, no feminine name,feminine pronouns.In boyah subculture, Boyat community may use a massive masculine watches.Boyat people worn loose-fitting male cloth with a touch of the military, vibrantly coloured dresses,shirts and boyah jeans(which are baggy with big prints all over them). Since the age of internet Arab's boyat community started informal groups,online forums.

Most of the boyat have to lead double lives because gulf states has strict cultural gender roles especially for womxn.Many of them are forced to get married.In general Boyah phenomena is considered a disgrace to an arab family's honour.Additionally atypical gender expression is seems to be indecent and deviant in GCC states.Many boyat face stigma for not adhering with rigid patriarchal gender roles.

After leaving home, many undergo a radical transformation,changing their clothes at school/college or a friend's house.While in transition ,they run no real risk of being caught because,while in public, Emirates women are required to wear the national dress - a long black over-garment called an abaya, which makes it easier to switch roles without drawing attention.

Media

In general, Gulf media portrays queerness in negetive ways. A Boyah named Abeer appeared on the Saudi TV Show “Ya Hala” where he/ze said that he/ze was attracted to women while still at school. He/Ze had a complete love relationship with a classmate for a long time. Another person named Hamood joined a show of Radio Sawa where he/ze explained ze was rebelling against social (gender) norms and his/zee family’s restrictions through this boyah phenomena.

On a national television of UAE, a boyah named Bandar openly spoke about his queer relationship with another girl and expressed the desire to marry her and have children with her through IVF. His statement on Abu Dhabi's national television shocked the whole nation.

Decline of Boyah Culture

In the Persian Gulf region, boyah identity became very controversial since 2007. In 2007, the Kuwaiti parliament amended Article 198 of the country’s penal code so that anyone “imitating the opposite sex in any way” could face up to a year in jail and/or a fine of 1,000 dinars ($3,500). A further problem was that the law made no attempt to define “imitating the opposite sex” So it was basically left to the discretion of the police. Within a couple of weeks at least 14 people had been arrested in Kuwait City & thrown into prison. Boyat made their debut as a public concern in 2008 when Dubai police denounced cross-dressing - its chief, Dahi Khalfan Tamim, called on the Ministry of Social Affairs to find out how widespread the practice is and what causes it.

In 2009, Dubai launched a public campaign under the slogan "Excuse Me, I am a Girl", which cautioned against ��masculine” behaviour among AFAB queers & tomboys and aimed to steer them towards "femininity". The impetus for this was a moral panic which swept through several Gulf states at that time, regarding the Boyah phenomena. 2 months after announcing the campaign the police persecuted 40 people (for their gender atypical expression), imprisoned them for 3 years in jail.In addition, trans-masculine/trans males,trans women,gender-queers were also shamed & abused by the UAE's police team.

Public Attitudes

Many conservative patriarchal arab people see a greater danger in the Boyah subcultural practices; they fear it can become permanent and cause great distress for the women and their families.

Psychiatrist Yousef Abou Allaban says, "It can go extreme, where they change their sex and have an operation.'' Saudi journalist Yousef Al-Qafari said in an interview on Radio Sawa that family disintegration and lack of true love have led women to act like a man. Al-Qafari said education was the best way to tackle this phenomenon.He called on the Ministry of Education to take up this role.

Social worker Nadia Naseer said, “Families play an essential role in such cases. Families should monitor their female members, especially when they start acting like men by cutting their hair short, wearing men’s clothing, or refusing to wear women’s accessories”. She also said, when a girl or woman does this,she is looking for attention & sending a message that she is a boyah.

Saudi writer Randa Alsheikh, in one of her columns, said that she attended a social gathering where she saw a group of females who appeared almost completely like men.“I would not be exaggerating if I say I could not tell the difference between them and men,” she wrote.She said that they looked, talked and walked like men & “even worse” some appeared to be in their 40s. We need to quickly address this phenomenon to contain these girls so that they are able to build good families and a healthy society,”

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for "feeding my ex's internalised transphobia" by refusing to date a man as a lesbian? TW for internalised transphobia, mentions of rape and SA

TLDR: i am a lesbian. my teenage partner was sexually abusive to me for a year, mostly through enforced sexist rp scenarios. now, they are out as non-binary and accuse me of misandry and transandrophobia because i once told them i would not date a man regardless of his agab

I (NB20) started dating my ex (NB23) when i was 15. I was always openly a lesbian. When we met a year before we started dating, they identified as a butch. Throughout our relationship they explored their gender identity more, toying with the idea of being vaguely transmasc. I never had a problem with it; i enjoyed being in a butch/femme relationship and honouring their masculinity as much as I could.

For context, I am a very outspoken hardcore feminist; I don't like to generalise and i have a lot of love for the men in my life, but I have also made a couple of "kill all cishet men" jokes at a safe setting, with people who know exactly where I actually stand. I don't hate men, I just don't find them attractive and think they should be raised better. One day, they asked me if i would still be attracted to them if they fully transitioned and started living as a man. I told them I wouldn't; in my head, being butch/masc is extremely different to being a man, and I appreciated their presentation as a part of them being a lesbian (gender expression =/= gender identity, after all). They assured me that this was just a hypothetical question and just them being curious about my boundaries and limits, ended the conversation, and never brought it up again. My ex was very into roleplay during sex, and I was on board with it initially. After a while, however, the scenes they wanted to act out began to get extremely degrading, bordering on abusive, where they were embodying a man in a position of power (something that i was extremely uncomfortable with), while I was a vulnerable woman (usually a sex worker) getting degraded or even raped. Although I was deeply disturbed by some of the things we did, I was a child at the time, they were my first and i wasn't theirs. I wasn't ready to have sex yet and didn't know how to defend myself. Even when I tried to set a boundary, they would press on and claim it was their way of processing trauma, and that I was manipulative for attempting to withhold that from them. Eventually, with the help of a therapist and my family I ended things between us. I dreaded talking to or about them to anyone and mostly kept quiet about it all. Back to the present day, one of my old mutuals found my new account and texted me. They told me that my ex was posting about me, and that I should be ashamed of myself if what they said was true. I gathered up enough courage to view the posts myself. Their story is very different from what I remember. They claim I was being a misandrist and by extension transandriphobic (in their words, my distaste for the behaviour of cishet men was very damaging for masc people. it is weird, because healthy expressions of masculinity are the last thing i would judge a man for). They also claimed I made their internalised transphobia worse by refusing to date them if they transitioned. I have moved on with my life, but now other people are mixed in and im honestly at a loss. I never forced them to be someone they weren't with me. I never shamed them for their masculinity or discouraged them from exploring their identity, I just stated that dating a trans man wouldn't agree with my sexuality. A healthy response would be to be honest with me, and give me the right to decide for myself whether i would stay with them through their transition or only be able to support them as a friend. They could even just leave without justifying anything.

I don't know. Maybe my trauma is blinding me, but I keep going over the memories in my head trying to figure out how I might be the one behind all that hatred and violence. I don't want to be unfair to them, even if it's just in my own mind, so I'm just speaking up about it for the first time in my life through an AITA tumblr post. Any advice or insight is appreciated.

What are these acronyms?

[steakout-05]

i might get some hate for this depending on where this post goes but i think lesboys are so valid and the discourse about them is so ridiculous. like you guys shouldn't have to deal with all that and it frustrates me that people throw hissy fits over an identity that literally does not affect them at all.

"but men cant be lesbians-" wrong. butch lesbians and trans men have a really closely connected history with each other that practically intersects and you should really do some research on that before you make blanket statements, not to mention that gender and sexuality is weird and wobbly and fluid and a very personal experience. it means a different thing to each person. being a man can be something completely different and saying stuff like this ignores people like demiboys, demigirls, genderfluid and genderflux people etc. these people will really preach "demolish the gender binary!! love is love!!" until someone's relationship with gender and sexuality is a little too freaky for them to handle and be challenged by lmaoo

"ohhh but what about the cishet men who say they're lesbians to prey on women-" YEAH WHAT ABOUT THEM????? THIS AIN'T ABOUT THEM BRO!!!!! this argument also REEKS of terfy "trans women are just predatory men!!!111!!1" rhetoric and it grosses me out. yeah some men are gross and do try to pull this but that does not negate someone's entire identity completely just because of a few bad actors, you know that right? actual black and white behaviour.

queer discourse is silly and i don't know why it's a thing. just let people exist. it isn't that hard. we have worse things to worry about than whether someone calls themselves a lesboy or not. i think we need to unplug our ears and yank our heads out of the sand and remember that the queer community is what it is because of our unique and amazing diversity. arguing over labels like school children isn't gonna help that. damn.

[vile-bestia]

why mizu is, in fact, not cis

Everyone is very angry at everyone about how to see or not see Mizu’s identity; being unable to shut up, and having fixated on the show a bit, i’m excited to finally join my first to-the-death-tumblr-discourse-battle.

I'm going to use mostly he/him for Mizu, but please read the premise below. Read the colored strings of text 😭

The main argument for Mizu being a woman is that which has as its basis the fact that cross-dressing is for Mizu an external need: for one, it is a need for protection from patriarchal bonds; secondly, it is a need for independence - Akemi’s story is one of independence as well, of feminine independence, and we have more than one woman pursuing such thing; we could go on with an analysis of brothels as a feminine space, but, alas - and thirdly, it is a need of obligation: Mizu needs to maintain the masculine identity in order to attain the object of his vow. 

I find, however, that while the argument stands as perfectly sound (and as canon) it isn’t exhaustive enough of the layered experience of gender in BES.

The trans coding is simply undeniable to me, whether it was intentional or not. I do not mean to say that Mizu is a binary trans man; that would be an approach as reductionist as confirming she is exclusively a woman. However, I find that some behaviours of Mizu’s are coded as dysphoric reactions.

Most of my justifications for this reasoning come from episodes 2, 5 and 8.

In episode 2,

Ringo is vowing to never reveal Mizu’s secret: “I’ll never tell anybody you’re a g-“; and as soon as he’s about to say girl, Mizu is just as ready to slice his throat. Mizu being worried about someone else hearing or witnessing the interaction doesn’t seem completely plausible to me: they’re alone in snowy woods, and, most likely, Mizu wouldn’t have confirmed time and again how readily he’d kill Ringo. 

Then comes episode 5,

which is in my opinion the most layered and the most exhaustive in regards to Mizu’s experience of gender, especially regarding his experience of the feminine. First and foremost, it tells the ultimate teaching: that gender isn’t but a performance, just as the gender roles are portrayed through theatre in the episode. As for the dysphoric reaction, it's the whole thing. Mizu is miserable even when we suppose that the marriage could be a relatively happy time. That's another reason why I suppose the puppet theatre tells Mizu's internal sense of self as well (see paragraph 4).

(And, about gender being performative, see how kabuki theatre was born in the Edo period and how, before being banned from acting, women cross-dressed to play male characters, and men cross-dressed to play female characters. See “professional transvestites” trained to be prostitutes, Kagema being trained from a young age to „act" like members of the other sex; see how by the beginning of the 18th century AFAB sex workers would try to figure out a way to set themselves apart from wakashu, creating an entirely new space for female crossdressers in the adult entertainment sphere; see ukiyo-e representations - chigo monogatari and yukiyo-zoshi literature; stories by Ihara Saikaku that are full of "transgender behaviours" and more)

Back to ep 5:

1. Theme of performance

The theme of performance, which also is the one of Mizu performing femininity for Mikio (in function of the well-being of Mizu’s mother), but being at once unable to suppress masculinity as the only space in which Mizu seems to be comfortable: e.g., it’s a little detail, but Mizu’s only good in the kitchen when cutting vegetables, because comfortable with blades, certainly not with cooking; again Mizu having to perform femininity is when he does makeup to “make-up”, to soften Mikio’s spirit, who feels invalidated by Mizu’s masculinity when it starts to interfere with his pride, and such other details; I even thought of the sword as a symbol for “learned” masculinity: the first time this thought occurred was when it was characterized by sensuality in the scene where the spouses spar: “Unsheathe it. Let me see your blade;” and I interpreted it as masculinity being the only space that allows intimacy as well; then comes the time where Mizu learns he does not need a sword to fight, meaning to me that she can embody masculinity without having to prove it to others. And then comes the reforging of the sword’s meteorite to include “impurities”, and the rite that Mizu performs. I assume that “a sword too pure” is the symbol of, again, learned hypermasculinity to appease patriarchal expectations, and is too pure because it’s Mizu rejecting part of himself, trying to exclude all “impurities”, whether they are being half white, or being half woman. Taigen himself is the one to tell Mizu he can fight without a sword (ep 7, but done in ep 3 or 4 and ep 6 already), and then the situation starts to bear sexual tension, which I directly link to the sensual connotation of the sparring cited earlier up. Possibly, this particular situation could also mean acceptance of Mizu's lack of a native "sword".

2. Gender roles

But a more sound consideration is (i would like to hope so) the one about the whole marriage being told through puppets, and the puppets themselves. While they are different characters, first of all we see an inversion of gender in the roles: at first Mizu is the Ronin because he performs a masculine role of protection, an “active” role; then, Mizu’s role is reversed in function of his marriage. We see Mizu surrendering (forcibly, being manipulated) to femininity as soon as his mother guilt-trips him into marrying, and the ronin puppet assumes a submissive pose, long before the role reversal.

3. A note:

it yet does not seem to me like the role reversal is, so to say, complete: even after the reversal, the narrator tells details about the ronin that are actually details about Mizu, e.g. when the two marry, and despite the positions of the puppets match the ones of the spouses, it is said that the ronin's loyalty is no more turned towards his "path of revenge," (Mizu's) "but to his bride" - in the perspective explained below, perhaps Mizu's own femininity. Also, i find Mizu might perceive Mikio as the bride, and himself as the husband - as an argument it can't stand alone, or it would bare no strength, but I will use it in correlation with the other points made, until now and later, to argue that Mizu thinks of himself as a guy.

4. Performance of Mizu's sides, assimilable to when she has the vision of killing his white side, shortly before facing the four fangs or whatever their name was

This, and one more tiny detail, bring me to think that not only do we talk about external roles, but about Mizu’s self-perception. I'm referring to when it is said that “for the first time in many years, the ronin felt the storm rage inside him.” The storm is a symbol belonging to Mizu (literally it occurs in the first 2 minutes of the episode), and it is explicit that it isn’t something that happens for the first time, but rather returns. By this point, the gender roles were reversed, and yet it seems to me like it isn’t anymore about the marriage itself, but rather about Mizu’s hatred for and slaughtering of his own femininity, and, of course, the experience of betrayal; with his family (especially his mother, see below), and with his femininity, which wasn’t enough to keep him comfortable or Mikio on his side. (...betrayal which is also about mizu himself betraying akemi, i'd add. Mizu is justified here, but it's important to note the parallels between the two timelines i guess?)

5. That random ass baby

There is, at a certain point, a situation of peace, which I think is represented when one of the puppets is holding a blue baby (supposedly a little ronin) in its arms. I want to suppose that the baby represents newborn love between Mizu and Mikio, before it all fell apart. But the love itself is a masculine love, as we see that it is based on masculine exchanges (fighting, doing fieldwork, taming horses, riding together, whatever) and, it seems to me, assimilable to homosexuality between samurai, which was widespread (insert something about Taigen here). Also Mikio wanted to marry a bro lmao. Aside from that, on the level of Mizu’s self-perception, it might represent comfortableness, a sort of congruence, or, rather, a compromise, that Mizu is able to live in, between natural masculinity and performed femininity - opening up to show vulnerability, love fragile as a creature that cannot defend itself, innocent, naive, trusting. 

6. About Mizu’s mother.

The puppet used for Mizu’s mother before the role reversal is the same that is supposedly used for Mizu after, but I latch onto a detail: the pattern on the puppet’s kimono is the same as the (real life) Mother’s kimono (see for example minute 12:30). I support this by noting the more obvious parallel between the blue worn by Mizu and the blue of the Ronin puppet, but at the same time I'm forced to note that after a certain point the mother has her own puppet. In any case, I see the mother and the feminine puppet wearing the same kimono as being about femininity, and about the mother’s betrayal of her child, rather than about Mizu herself. For one, manipulating him into marrying and abandoning the vow. But also we learn (ep 8) that the woman isn’t Mizu’s mother at all. One could discuss the reliability of Fowler’s statement, but I feel there are more clues regarding the mother’s betrayal: the episode starts with the Ronin, who feels the storm rage inside him at the killing of his lord (Mizu’s actual mother, perhaps) by the hands of a clan whose crest was the Phoenix (which I suppose are the white men, and the curse of whiteness for Mizu). I’ve thought about the four white men dealing guns (Fowler), flesh, opium (and I’m not sure what role “Violet” has in this, but I think they're the opium dealer), and thought that if Mizu’s “mother” was a substitute, the opium she smokes could point to Mizu’s potential father, perhaps even at the surrogate mother keeping contact, and at the surrogate’s betrayal at the same time. But it’s also true I watched the show while stoned, so I would dismiss this.

7. Onryo (note: characteristic in kabuki)

When the birth of the vengeful spirit occurs, I see very well how plausible it is to say that, actually, the rage that Mizu feels is feminine rage, and I agree with that. Mizu’s femininity is his rage, it is heavily related to the mother-daughter relationship, despite the fact that at a certain point the mother has her own puppet. At the same time, however, it is to me the result of the slaughtering of the performed femininity needed to respect the obligation (we remember the wedding was also to ensure the “surrogate” mother safety, especially financial, as well as to keep Mizu bound), just as accepting you’re able to fight with any tool puts an end to the compensatory movement by which you’re trying to prove masculinity to an observer (which, say, Taigen does as well, wanting to prove to Mizu he can beat him - plus, Taigen himself is the one to reassure Mizu on the complete unimportance of it, see how I read the sword symbol a few paragraphs earlier).

In this perspective, the "dye washing away from her kimono" to me means two things: that being what he is is inevitable, and that the feminine rage sets in; Mizu tries to make up for being a "demon", but in the end rejects the obligation towards his husband, and towards her mother; the pattern is not the same anymore, and Mizu is somehow more like his own person, returning on the path of vengeance, strengthened by the feminine, as the reforged sword will be strengthened by the very ritualistic yaki-ire.

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Episode 8,

I feel, speaks instead for itself,  for the dysphoric reaction is to me extremely clear. Reacting that way to being called a Miss is not a cisgender reaction. You’ll tell me: it’s not a dysphoric reaction! It’s a reaction of disgust to being fetishized for being a woman! And that’s plausible, supported by the “you just keep getting better,” with clear sexual implication, except I think that is also a fundamental trans experience and one cannot limit the way they read the scene to an exclusively feminine experience.

In conclusion,

I don’t think it might be all boiled down Mizu being a masc woman, because of the trans coding. Mizu thinks of himself as a guy. If not a guy, not a woman either. You’ll tell me: “Of course she does, because she’s grown up that way; she was forced to sustain the lie to preserve her life! It's a matter of conditioning!” And while it is true that the initial context points towards crossdressing, and not inherent feelings of gender non conformity or transgenderism, I feel that if Mizu really felt like a woman, he wouldn’t have such exaggerated reactions, and I don’t think they come from his temperament either. And it is disproved that conditioning someone to have a different sexuality or gender identity works in any way - I doubt Edo period Japan or a particular protagonist would make an exception. "But Mizu herself tells Mikio she didn't want to be a man, she had to be one!" Yes, because it is true. But it points to crossdressing. If it were aimed to explain the whole of Mizu's experience of gender in her self, it would invalidate the entirety of episode 5.

In any case, even in situations where he couldn’t be discovered, Mizu does not allow feminine terms or titles, or tries as best to stop them from happening; plus, it’s rather obvious how difficult the relationship with his body is. 

While, once again, reading Mizu as a binary trans man is not enough, I feel like reading him as cisgender isn’t, either. As if, in any case, the feminine experience and the transmasculine one didn’t overlap in many aspects, also during the most tumultuous parts of transition, if pursued.

What is funniest above all is that the whole discourse is substantially useless. The layers of the show open to an infinite variety of interpretations, none of them fundamentally wrong. Mizu’s just quite literally Mizu. It’s a queer unlabeled thing and that’s it. If you take the Lacanian concept of the Real as the hole, properly uninteligible, surrounded by the Symbolic, you'll find that "Queer" is exquisitely representative of the Real, and therefore every label (the Symbolic) is reductive of the perceived experience (indeed the Real). The fundamental lesson about gender that you can derive from the show is that gender is a performative construct. What it pushes you to do is deconstruct your principles, especially if you are queer, since we are all entrapped in the modern western white need for strict labelling; that’s where this whole debate comes from, and it is, once again, pointless.

So, instead making fun of other people because of a set of pronouns, perhaps it would be better to imagine that more options can cohabit together, or that there is no need to label at all. Also be careful about accusing others of a complete lack of media literacy - you should thoroughly examine yours first.

Interesting articles i guess:

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Algoso, Teresa A. "'Thoughts on Hermaphroditism': Miyatake Gaikotsu and the Convergence of the Sexes in Taishō Japan." The Journal of Asian Studies 65, no. 3 (2006): 555–573. Algoso, Teresa A. "Not Suitable as a Man? Conscription, Masculinity, and Hermaphroditism in Early Twentieth-Century Japan." Chap. 11 In Recreating Japanese Men, edited by Sabine Frühstück and Anne Walthall. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011, 241–261. Mostow, Joshua S. “The Gender of Wakashu and the Grammar of Desire.” In Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, edited by Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson, and Maribeth Graybill. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press 2003, 49–70.

taken from this post asking about transgender men in the edo period: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/p6x4jk/comment/h9ttgv4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

As a final unrelated note, I haven’t seen anyone praise the MASTERFUL sound design 

bye 🪳🪳🪳🪳🪳