#it's like. not a woman definitely not a man. not cis not trans. which sort of defaults me to nb but idk about that either

[queenhawke]

my gender is nonbinary except at work where i present as a woman bc my real gender is none of my coworker's business

[evidence-based-activism]

what are your thoughts on the whole situation with the women’s Olympic boxing competitors Andrea Carini and Imane Khelif? I don’t know why feminists are so mad about it, Imane is a cis woman or has an intersex condition, either way she’s not a man.. I thought feminists were supposed to support women winning

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/s/taXu5IeFZc

Hello!

I expect you also sent the ask with the following link: https://www.tumblr.com/assignedmale/757629682153897984?

So, my short answer is that the situation is complex and I don't believe we have enough information to come to a definitive conclusion. In addition, the current cultural context about "trans athletes" is only exacerbating the already complex issue.

---

My long answer:

My understanding of the situation is that Khelif is a biologically male individual (i.e., "of the sex" that produces the small gamete/sperm) with a difference/disorder of sexual development (DSD, commonly referred to as "intersex") and was, as a result of this DSD, assigned the female sex at birth.

I want to take a moment here to point out that this is the exact sort of situation the AFAB/AMAB labels were created for. The vast majority of individuals are not "assigned" a sex, they are observed to be a particular sex (OFAB/OMAB?). It is in this sort of situation, where the sex is ambiguous or incorrectly determined that the “assignment” comes into play. Further, I will be referring to all AFAB individuals as "she", given the sociocultural context in which biologically male, AFAB individuals are raised and treated as women.

That being said, the participation of people with DSDs in competitive sports is an ongoing, contentious debate that is both separate from and related to the debate about the inclusion of transwomen in women's sports.

In reference to Khelif, it appears as though the original regulatory agency for boxing (IBA) disqualified her on the basis of her DSD. However, they have lost their position due to (either claims of or actual) corruption. The IOC defaulted to determining eligibility based the sex listed on the athlete's passport, which for Khelif is female (as she is AFAB).

The issue here is we do not know what her DSD is. The IBA claims she has XY chromosomes, but there are multiple conditions this can occur with. For example, as described in [1]:

Individuals with 5ARD2 are "genetic males and exhibit phenotypic male features at puberty and during adulthood". They are "raised as girls during childhood" but "usually develop a near-normal male phenotype" after puberty.

Individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome (CAIS) have "no tissue response to testosterone and no masculinization" even at puberty where they can develop a "near-normal female phenotype". This is despite them having testosterone in the "normal adult male range".

Individuals with partial androgen insensitivity syndrome (PAIS) "show a range of phenotypes with progressive masculinization depending on the degree of androgen insensitivity".

Just based on this, the best solution for each of these may be different. For example, it likely would be unfair for someone with 5ARD2 to compete in the female category, although it would be reasonable for them to compete in the male category. On the other hand, it would likely be unfair to prevent someone with CAIS from competing with other women, even with their male-typical testosterone levels.

And speaking of testosterone:

The same article [1] describes how men's testosterone level is substantially greater than women's levels, even in women with PCOS. (If you look at the article, make sure to take note of the log-scale. It highlights that the mean/median level in any male subgroup is more than 5 times the mean/median level in any female subgroup.) But again ... does the amount of testosterone really matter if the tissues don't respond to it (as in CAIS)?

In contrast, this study [2] also takes note that "testosterone exposure at puberty had unique effects such as changing skeletal structure and limb length which estrogen exposure to later in life cannot suppress" in males without a DSD. So, it's unlikely that artificially lowering the testosterone in individuals with 5ARD2 or PAIS (or males without a DSD, as in transwomen) would resolve the advantage.

So ... there are clear and significant differences in testosterone between men and women, even when they have a DSD. But in some cases (e.g., CAIS) the difference may not be relevant, and in other cases (e.g., artificial hormone suppression) a lack of difference may not be relevant.

I mention all of this to highlight how the situation is nuanced, and why I don't think we can make any judgements about Khelif. But I also want to explain how this situation is, in fact, connected to the "trans athlete" debate. It's a matter of public trust —specifically public trust in the athletic regulatory agencies.

Currently, there are regulatory boards that are making decisions that are neither consistent with biological realities [1, 2] or public opinion [3-5]. These decisions allow unambiguously biologically male individuals to compete with women.

Now to be clear, this particular case (Khelif) does not fall into this category. The problem here is one of trust: how can the public (or the other athletes) trust these regulatory agencies to make sound and fair decisions on complex cases involving DSDs if they can't adhere to scientific consensus on far clearer situations?

This is important, because athletes also deserve medical privacy. I am aware that public figures are often expected to give up a degree of their personal privacy rights (although I disagree with the extent of this). However, I expect most people will agree it's unreasonable to expect an athlete with a DSD (or any other medical condition) to release the extensive amounts of personal medical information needed to prove it is fair for them to compete with women. This is why we need trustworthy regulatory agencies, so that the public and other athletes can know that this information was provided and appropriately assessed without it having to be made public.

(And none of this touches on how the current disregard for clarity of language (e.g., claiming transwomen are "biologically female") has created so much confusion that many people seem to believe Khelif was AMAB.)

---

In addition to all of that, the harassment and vitriol being directed at both women in this situation is excessive, unhelpful, and harmful. I've seen racist and misogynistic comments that black women are "more masculine". I've also seen misogynistic comments that Carini is "weak" for exiting the fight. Slurs are being directed at both women, and in neither case is that acceptable.

I understand why the tone of this debate is so hostile, but I do not support the behavior.

For the comic: the claim that "science and experience shows trans athletes on H.R.T are at a disadvantage" is false (see [2]). The rest of the comic neglects to consider the nuance of the situations and the current cultural context. That being said, most people arguing that Khelif shouldn't compete in women's sports are also ignoring the nuance of the situation.

---

All in all, I do not think we currently have enough information to draw any conclusion or make any decisions about this specific situation. That being said, the current sociocultural context has inflamed this debate, created confusion, and eroded public trust in the parties responsible for making the aforementioned decisions. I personally consider that to be the more relevant issue.

References under the cut:

Clark, Richard V., et al. “Large Divergence in Testosterone Concentrations between Men and Women: Frame of Reference for Elite Athletes in Sex‐specific Competition in Sports, a Narrative Review.” Clinical Endocrinology, vol. 90, no. 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 15–22. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1111/cen.13840.

Luu, Tyler. “Should Transgender Athletes Be Allowed to Compete with Cisgender Athletes?” University of Toronto’s Journal of Scientific Innovation, Feb. 2022, pp. 59–65. jps.library.utoronto.ca, https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/jsi/article/view/38091.

Brown, Kim Parker, Juliana Menasce Horowitz and Anna. “Americans’ Complex Views on Gender Identity and Transgender Issues.” Pew Research Center, 28 June 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2022/06/28/americans-complex-views-on-gender-identity-and-transgender-issues/.

Where Does the British Public Stand on Transgender Rights in 2022? | YouGov. https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/43194-where-does-british-public-stand-transgender-rights-1

Where Americans Stand on 20 Transgender Policy Issues | YouGov. https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/48685-where-americans-stand-on-20-transgender-policy-issues.

[sparklemaia]

Heyyy!!

So I've recently read a lot of your comics about top surgery, and I really resonate with your experience (I haven't had it myself but I'd like to). I've recently been exploring my own gender and realising I might be non binary, but I guess I feel sort of an imposter in that I want to keep my name and pronouns (afab), despite feeling like I never got the memo about what a "woman" is, which I know is fine, but I guess I was wondering how the shift from your agab into realising you were nb felt?

Like, you seem to describe your gender as sort of unknowable and indefinable, and I guess that's sort of how I feel? I just want to be... More me. I guess what I'm really asking is, how would you define/feel about that shift into realising you were nonbinary, do you still feel connected to your agab, how do you reconcile the two?

Sorry for the long ask!

Hi, this is such a good question! I actually DO still feel pretty connected to my agab. I feel like I am a girl but also more than a girl but also not enough of a girl, simultaneously. (Weirdly, I never ever feel like a woman, and definitely not a man, but I do feel like an adult at least some of the time.) Top surgery was 100% the right decision for me; my body feels so much more correct and I am grateful every single day this procedure was accessible to me. (I was on a low dose of T for a year and a half too, and I basically just got biceps and a sliiiightly lower voice out of it. We stan.) I simply don't have strong feelings about how these things do or do not map onto gender identity or other people's perceptions of my gender. I am generally perceived as female, and that's fine! Like, close enough! I often feel somewhere BETWEEN cis and trans, or even between cis and nonbinary, and sometimes I joke that I'm just "nonbinary for insurance purposes." I mostly use she/her pronouns, although won't object to they/them. I like my "feminine" name -- I chose it myself years ago for reasons unrelated to gender and I have no plans to change it again. In terms of gender presentation I'm usually somewhere in the "tomboy femme" zone. Basically, I've been through a medical transition but not a social transition. Which is not very common, or at least I haven't seen much representation of it! (Be the bad trans representation you want to see in the world, i guess??)

Even though the words are often used interchangeably, I feel more alliance to genderqueer as a label than nonbinary, because nonbinary feels too clinical and "third checkbox"y to me, whereas genderqueer feels more expansive and undefinable and dynamic, with space for the ways in which I both am and am not performing girlhood correctly. When pressed to pick a gender word for myself, that one feels the closest. But if I'm filling out a government form or whatever? Yeah sure F is fine.

A lot of where I land with this stuff, though, is just kind of relaxing my grip on language. Top surgery was a relief, it helped me feel present in and connected to my body. Ultimately it doesn't matter much to me how much of that was *gender* dysphoria and how much of it was just... something I wanted, a way to make my body feel more like mine, to align my mental image of myself with the thing I had to stuff into clothes and walk around the city every day. I believe very strongly in bodily autonomy, and in making our lives as easy and comfortable and joyful as we can for ourselves, without needing to have a clean and tidy explanation for our choices. It is very possible to know with reasonable certainty that you want something, that it will be a net positive for your life, without being able to articulate, even to yourself, WHY you want it. It doesn't need to have a bigger meaning than ahh yes, this feels right. At this point in my life, I'm more invested in marveling at the sheer improbability of my own existence than in wedging myself into the taxonomy of known and acceptable gender narratives. I'm just a person, here for the merest twinkle of a moment in cosmic history, making soup and knitting baby hats and admiring bugs and singing off-key and cutting my own hair and doing my gosh darn best to light my tiny patch of night sky with stories so that you (and you, and you) feel less alone on your own journey through the unfurling dark. Gender is just such an inconsequential detail in the narrative of my life, and pretty open to reader interpretation anyway.

Not having to wear bras is pretty great though ngl

[our-lesboy-experience]

hiii!!! so uh, this is sorta about 'contradicting' (?) identities in general, but i only recently found out about, like, lesboys and gaygirls and all of that, but what is it exactly? like how does it work? or is that weird to ask? i'm trying figuring myself out but a lot of stuff i've seen doesn't exactly... explain it (or explain it well), and while i guess i do get why, it's just kinda hard to understand it myself for my own identity

also, probably a question you get a lot in a hating way, but isn't the definition of lesbian nonman loving nonman? so then how does lesboy work? like is it for people with more complicated gender identites, like fluctuating genders and bigender? just genuinly confused, my apologies...

sorry for not getting to this sooner- been busier lately and didn't have the time to collect everything I needed to respond!

About what it exactly means to be a lesboy or a gaygirl ('turigirl' is the more common term, 'turi' meaning turian, another word for gay attraction to men. so I'll be referring to it as that from now on), there isn't exactly....one right way to call yourself such. it really depends on the person, but I can give you a basic definition and a list of common reasons someone may call themselves such

im gonna put a read more because this ended up being super long so sorry

lesboy is a term for any lesbian who may have a connection to manhood and/or masculinity. turigirl is just the opposite of that, a gay person (mlm/nblm) who may have a connection to womanhood and/or femininity. common reasons I've seen are:

being multigender or genderfluid

being cusper/in between trans and cis gnc (in between trans man and cis gnc woman, in between trans woman and cis gnc man)

being a system who uses lesboy/turigirl as a collective identity or when identities blur together

a person who uses man/boy or woman/girl as a means of masculine or feminine gender expression but not actually identifying as such

being a trans man/ftm or a trans woman/mtf who still identifies as lesbian or gay for personal reasons

those are far from all the reasons, everyone has their own unique experiences, but the gist is these people may have some sort of connection to manhood/womanhood while still having a queer attraction. personally, I'm multigender, genderfluid, and transmasc. lesboy I find is a nice label to express being both my bigender self and being a lesbian, as it forces people to acknowledge both without separating the two. it's cute and makes me feel validated!

as for "nonman attracted to nonmen" definition of lesbian......it has its issues. it's received criticism all around from all sorts of lesbians in the community. this definition is very new - it emerged only in the recent years, and someone on twitter had date searched it and found it didn't even really exist before 2019. and having that as the one and only official definition that every lesbian has to abide by, when lesbian is a centuries old word with so much history behind it, is a bit ignorant. people who are multiple genders or ftm or bi being lesbian is not even remotely new, going back decades upon decades, and it never stopped existing too. It's a bit weird to have a whole new definition that doesn't include all sorts of lesbians that have been here for so long and just tell them they're not welcomed anymore, right?

that's not even close to the only issue there is with it. it's been disliked for centering lack of attraction to men, or defining lesbian in relation to men, rather than who we're actually attracted to. putting nonbinary people in a new binary of either being "men or nonmen," which not all feel comfortable putting themselves into. especially when considering a definition of gay being "nonwomen attracted to nonwomen," man-woman bigender people are simultaneously excluded from being both lesbian or gay. It inherently overlaps with mspec identity ("attraction to nonmen, which is more than one gender" and "any orientation that involves attraction to more than one gender" kinda obviously overlap), despite people insisting that a lesbian can never be mspec. people have found multiple loopholes in it, (which I can elaborate on if someone wants me to, for the sake of trying to make this as short as possible), and lastly, and term "nonman" (and nonwoman) were found to have existed before to describe the degendering of black people in society. this isn't the only source I've seen for this, but sadly I can't exactly find it (or find it without going back to that hellsite called twitter and I'm not doing that to myself)

oh and as the link points out, defining lesbian by these words also ends up excluding a lot of two-spirit people from ever identifying as lesbian, myself included. which is also really racist. I don't know how you're gonna end up excluding a whole cultural gender that's common for indigenous americans to describe themselves with and try to prove it somehow isn't racist, to be honest

and lastly, some surveys/polls have shown that the definition isn't the most widely accepted by lesbians as people make it out to be. there's this simple poll that someone posted asking how lesbians felt about the definition that received 1,529 responses, and 61.1% of voters said they disliked it. comments gave lots of reasons I've stated already. there was another survey put out that received 211 responses that for any lesbian who had a genderqueer or unique relationship with gender, and one of the questions asking opinions on the "nonmen loving nonmen" as a definition. the average among the group was slightly negative (average 2.838), and reported that the group who tended to feel the most positively about it didn't consider themselves to be trans, with the other positive leaning group considered themselves to be somewhat cis. the group that felt the most negatively sometimes considered themselves to be trans. and of the multigender participants, the average opinion was 2.255 (more negative than the overall average). When concluding, the original poster stated, "When divided by gender, the only groups to feel positive about this definition were "not trans" and "somewhat cis" participants. Multigender participants felt especially negative about this definition"

all of this shows that this definition isn't nearly the best for everyone who considers themselves a lesbian. I know it's been a way to include nonbinary people who are lesbian in it's definition, but I think it really misunderstands why nonbinary people are included in lesbianism in the first place, and just assumes that all nonbinary people aren't men and fails to recognize that multigender/genderfluid people are nonbinary too. and it's not like lesbian has to only have on definition- it can definitely have multiple and depend on each person's experience with it. if someone personally defines them being lesbian around being a nonman attracted to nonmen, and takes pride in not being attracted to men, that's totally fine. what becomes a problem is forcing all lesbians to define themselves like this and make it the standard, or else they're "not real lesbians." it is ahistorical and ignorant to require this or else you'll strip them of their lesbian status, and is really at the end of the day, lesbophobic. especially as a requirement that primarily exists in online spaces. im sure the lesbian who is not at all connected to these circles doesn't particularly care about strict requirements or whether someone is a "nonman" or not. in conclusion, it is not the best nor most accepted definition of lesbian, and deciding which lesbians are valid or not based solely on that definition is pretty exclusionary and ends up policing a lot of lesbians, myself included

[biracy]

I actually find the binarism of a lot of the "female characters vs male characters" Thing extremely exhausting for like, all the reasons I put in the tags of the last rb lol and it's basically impossible to have people take that seriously. I dislike how a trans read is delegated to the realm of "silly nonsense headcanon that doesn't Actually Mean Anything", I hate how trans reads and/or headcanons are expected to only exist as "textually cis woman is actually trans woman, textually cis man is actually trans man" which I think really isn't fair at all to the trans experience and is another example of how trans people are expected to disavow any sort of identification with our "birth sex" and even completely refuse to acknowledge that we were once "the opposite gender", and I hate what the "pathetic meowmeow babygirl who's actually a man but isn't it funny that I compared him to a woman and/or implied he has a vagina even though he's a grown man with dick and balls" "fandom culture", so to speak, has done to the perception of trans analysis and interpretation and projection. I don't wanna say that's the Only reason people will hear about a transfem headcanon and go "well this Must be unserious, because this character is clearly A Biological Male in the source and thus can never count as A Female Character" but it's definitely not helping lol

[miauentity]

Sharing my own TNMN headcanons bcoz why nawt?! (Below the cut)

lemme start with the girlies

♡ The Sverchzt twins are french-russian

♡ Elenois is a lot more shy/reserved and has low self-esteem. Selenne, on the other hand, is quite the opposite. I'm basing this off solely on their nightmare counterparts Lilith and Anazareth, specifically their responses when you ask them about their appearance

For reference, Lilith only says that "everything is in order with her appearance" while the other residents say theyre perfect or in the case with Anazareth, that she's "just as beautiful as ever"

♡ Speaking of Lilith and Anazareth, I really like the trope that they are the polar opposite of each other; from stylistic choices, orderliness to even intimate preferences.

Lilith likes to be clean and tidy. She's also a masochist (not necessarily in a sexual way) which is why she likes to wear insanely tight corsets. Anazareth doesn't care about the messes she makes, and certainly prefers to see others suffer her wrath.

♡ Lilith is a lesbian (Elenois too). Like really, the Lilith?! The first woman made from soil at the same time but not with Adam's flesh??? The first feminist !?!?@, 😍😍. Ok in all seriousness, both could be sapphic-leaning and im open to that

♡ Lilith and Anazareth aren't actually who they were named after. They were named after two mysterious "evil" spirits who helped their mother out during difficult times. Eventually, all three were unjustly executed for worshipping "demons" and engaging in "witchcraft" in the victorian era

♡ Angus is trans. But doesn't know that it's not a common cis experience to want to be a woman as a self-identifying man

♡ Despite separating, Francis still harbors feelings for Nacha and is a bit creepy about it. Though, Nacha has moved on (sort of). Francis continues to be a milkman despite the crappy pay so that he could regularly deliver cases to her restaurant. He also sneaks in bottles for Anastacha

♡ ok this depends on the doorman you interpret but if they are young, Margarette would definitely treat them as her own nibling/grandchild since she's never had her own. She is quite affectionate, would teach the young doorman how to crochet and invite them for tea occassionally

♡ Lois is as hospitable as Margarette. Roman is too wary of strangers and gets a bit cranky whenever there are visitors coming over. But honestly its ok bc Lois keeps him grounded

♡ Robertsky also suffers from low self-esteem. But unlike Elenois, he copes with it by being conceited. He is jealous of Albertsky for being "more popular with the ladies" when in reality, it's just an exaggeration of his perception of his brother.

♡ the Peachman brothers own their shoemaking business

♡ Arnold publishes educational books and writes activist journals. He is quite popular for his involvement in politics and almost crossed the DDD once... in response, the DDD secretly sent a doppelganger of him with stitched eyes as a warning

♡ Steven is a former veteran and likely suffers from PTSD. He switched to becoming a regular pilot in the local airport since there was a very high demand for the job

♡ Mclooy managed his own restaurant before officially retiring. He is a really, really good cook and often volunteers with Nacha when the neighbors gather for a potluck/ cookout.

♡ Rafttellyn only married Alf for the money 😭😭😭😭 i mean come on, shes young, married a lawyer whose probably leagues older than her, is a housewife and carries expensive jewelry and a designer bag 😳

♡ I really like the idea that Mia and Afton are just each other's beards. Mia probably has a crush on Nacha and may or may not be subtly flirting with her.

♡ On the flip side, if they are in a genuine relationship, I do think that Mia resents Afton and is falling out of love. Maybe because Afton is too obsessed with his job that he doesnt give enough attention to her

[genderkoolaid]

basically, being an afab genderqueer woman feels a lot like being straight and trans in the sense that my identity is technically "correct," or what it's "supposed" to be according to cishet norms, but i do that "correct" identity in the wrongest way possible.

like, i'm straight, which is supposed to be the "right" sexuality according to heteronormativity. except i'm straight in a trans way, so my straightness doesn't exactly count as straight.

similarly, i'm a (genderqueer) woman, and i was afab, so woman is what my gender is "supposed" to be. but i'm also a man, so i'm not really doing womanhood in the correct cis way.

both of these identities also put me in a weird position where i actually have to come out as the "default" identity, which isn't something most straight people or afab women have to do. i came out to my parents as a lesbian forever ago, so being straight is a coming out the way it really isn't for most straight people. and a lot of people don't really understand the whole multigender thing, so they understand me as a monogender trans man, which means i'm now in the closet about the fact that i'm sort of a woman also.

my straightness and genderqueer womanhood both just share that weird feeling where my identity is technically "normal" but i'm definitely not doing it in the way i'm "supposed" to. i'm straight in a way that's closer to gay than typical straightness, and i'm a genderqueer woman but in a way that's closer to trans womanhood than cis womanhood.

in conclusion

and i am shaking my own hand

!!! Love this explanation, I definitely relate to Being A Woman Wrong for multigender (amongst other) reasons. It's an interesting experience of doing the "right" thing on paper but fucking it up in a way people really don't like– to me it's just as fun as doing the "wrong" thing in the first place. Sorry we're out here queering heterosexuality & AFAB womanhood & AMAB manhood & there's nothing y'all can do about it >:)

[euniexenoblade]

honestly the most fair criticism of tme I've seen is #1 that some people are using it to mean -just- transmascs, for example there are posts like "tmes would never understand [insert something that either cis men or cis women(both of which are definitely tme) would understand(or hell, even some transmascs so the entire point is moot)]" and it's like, just call them transmascs if that's what you mean. When you don't refer to transmascs as transmascs all you're doing is just erasing their transness and their masculinity/manness, like I hope you can see that referring solely to a group of trans people (and not cis people too) as an acronym"tmes"(which in the wrong context is dehumanizing) is fucked up. Because some people definitely do that and that's where most of the discourse(that I've seen) comes from. But yeah I agree that tme and tma are generally neutral terms that literally just mean you face transmisogyny or dont. It depends on how people use them. And -some- people use the term tme in a wildly fucked up way. Criticism #2 has to do with intersex people who do not fit neatly into tme or tma, so perhaps there needs to be a way to assign a "transmisogyny nuanced" option or even not have everybody flip their shit when a transmasc is, in fact, tma?

I dunno, doesn't seem like on the surface tme/tma should have discourse, so there's definitely something underneath that needs to be looked at

Sorry for any bad english

Ok that first paragraph is really large so don't get mad at me for breaking it down (adhd can not do large paragraphs like that).

"that some people are using it to mean -just- transmascs"

the thing is, I've seen so few examples of this and when I do it's not any different than how transmascs on their side bitch about the transfems being "transradfems" or whatever. Like, the transandrodorks throw around all sorts of weird offensive terms that just mean "transfemmes" and "women" so some random trans woman occasionally saying "tme" just to mean "transmasc" doesnt seem like a big deal to me.

"for example there are posts like "tmes would never understand [insert something that either cis men or cis women(both of which are definitely tme) would understand(or hell, even some transmascs so the entire point is moot)]" and it's like, just call them transmascs if that's what you mean."

Ok, but like, to me, this example doesn't mean "transmascs." Like, yeah, it could be meant that way, but it feels like you're reading into it to have special meaning. Maybe you need a real example and not a vague generalization, but this comes off how you're seeing something and not necessarily how it's written. Also, people can just be wrong about shit. Maybe the post in question DOESNT mean "transmascs," and theyre just wrong about a concept.

When you don't refer to transmascs as transmascs all you're doing is just erasing their transness and their masculinity/manness.

I again don't see it this way, this is once again feeling like more of how you're reading something. Calling someone TME doesn't mean "not trans" or "not masculine," it means they are not the targets of transmisogyny, so to automatically equate it to denying transhood or denying masculinity just comes off transmisogynistic to me. That's not what the terms mean, and even misused it still can't imply that. You have to give them entirely new meanings to do that.

"I hope you can see that referring solely to a group of trans people (and not cis people too) as an acronym"tmes"(which in the wrong context is dehumanizing) is fucked up. Because some people definitely do that and that's where most of the discourse(that I've seen) comes from."

I agree! So please tell transandrodorks to never use "amab" or "transfems" or "mtf" again cuz I actually hate all of those, and I swear I get called "amab" all the time by them.

It's really just hypocritical to me, a lot of these points are things they're doing to trans women. Like, the transandros constantly misgender me, call me male, deny my womanhood, deny my nb identity, reduce me to an acronym, like all this is stuff they do, so why am I getting it in my inbox.

"And -some- people use the term tme in a wildly fucked up way."

I have genuinely never seen this and every time someone tries to point them out to me as fucked up, I just see them projecting a completely different meaning onto a normal post. Almost every example drawn up of "this is fucked up" has always only been possible by changing the meaning of the acronyms.

"has to do with intersex people who do not fit neatly into tme or tma"

I've said it before and I'll say it again, this is just silly. Intersex people fit into tme and tma just fine. Plenty of intersex people have spoken about this. There is nothing about these acronyms that excludes intersex people. They can only exclude intersex people by, once again, changing their meanings.

"so there's definitely something underneath that needs to be looked at"

I don't think that's the case. I think a handful of people who are well known transmisogynists on tumblr threw a fit that trans women made new acronyms, and just convinced a bunch of ignorant and naive people who tend to lean transmisogynist in principles. That's how it went when trans women started using camab/cafab, that's how it went when we started using transfem/transmasc, and it's what's going on now. These are the same people that hate every new step we develop to talk about transmisogyny, and they always have a way to wrap bioessentialist trans people, truscum, and other relatively uneducated individuals up in their webs. And being that the transandrophobia shit is started by actual terfs and homophobes, it's just not very surprising they have a hate for stuff like tma/tme.

I am not trying to be mean to you, but you have a very one sided view that doesn't actually appear as nuanced as you want to be. You come off as both siding in the worst kinda ways, tme/tma are just acronyms to talk about transmisogyny. That's all. They serve no other purpose.

[spacelazarwolf]

i keep seeing that post about how after you stopped wearing makeup and cut your hair you started being treated worse.

i have never worn makeup, cut my hair very short, have a bit of a mustache, and dress neutral/masc most of the time, and i still find that people are very friendly/nice. i live in a sorta-progressive area, but also... not really. we have legal protection from the state but locally the area is much more conservative. maga signs etc. and i am not white (hispanic).

so i guess my question is, do you think the way you were treated has more to do with the perceived loss of your femininity than just the fact that you started presenting more masc? like, if they hadn't already known the avishai with the makeup and long hair, do you think they'd've treated you better?

no, because i noticed it in interactions with strangers too. i don't know which of my posts this is referencing so i'm not sure if i mentioned it in the post, but it definitely had a lot to do with the fact that fat women (which i was being perceived as) are expected to perform hyperfemininity as a sort of apology for fatness. so when i stopped doing that, i stopped getting the shreds of respect i was getting before in exchange for that performance.

now that my body is being read a million different ways depending on the situation, it's always a crapshoot whether if i dress feminine people will first perceive me as a feminine man or trans woman (MaleTM not adhering to the assigned Gender Rules) or fat cis woman (FemaleTM who should be punished for fatness), or when i dress masculine or just wear a tshirt and shorts if people will perceive me as a fat guy (Gross and Bad) or a fat masculine woman (Gross and Bad and also not adhering to the assigned Gender Rules or making the Necessary Apologies for being fat). of course all this also depends on what they think when they see my kippah, especially if it's a bukharian kippah bc sometimes they'll decide actually they don't care if i'm a man or a woman or fat they just hate that i'm Ethnically Other. it's been a weird and stressful experience, and ngl these past few weeks i've avoided going out because of it.

[communistkenobi]

(genuine question, sorry if any of my language is incorrect/outdated) I was reading that post you reblogged about the distinction between gender and sex and how both concepts are linked and oppressive & the ask you answered where you said that we should abolish sex distinctions on medical records. and I don’t disagree with your point, but I’m wondering how feasible it is? Or I guess, how we would then navigate the medically differences between different groups of people. Because the unfortunate truth is that some biological factors do affect your predisposition to certain diseases or how you’ll react to medication.

For example, Black people in the US are more likely to have diabetes. and obviously a lot of this is due to poverty and other socioeconomic problems, but if we were to abolish the concept of race (before solving the underlying issues), it could lead to people not being diagnosed with the correct illness as quickly, since there’s no longer that demographic information available (I’m realizing that diabetes was a bad example for this specific problem, but I’m drawing a blank on a better example).

I remember for years growing up that there was a push to recognize that the stereotypical “pain in left arm” depiction of a heart attack was more common among cis men, and cis women usually presented differently. And I’m a cis woman with ADHD, but when trials were being conducted to prove that medications were effective, they focused only on cis men, so now I just have to deal with my meds being way less effective whenever I’m on my period.

The example you gave of a trans man’s insurance denying him coverage for a pap smear seems more like an issue of the insurance company linking gender and sex, rather than respecting that someone saying that they are a man on government forms doesn’t inherently describe what organs they do or do not have. Which seems like it would be a point in the favor of people who draw a distinction between gender and sex. Yes, he is a man, but he has organs that need to regularly be screened for cancer, the same way a trans woman might need to be checked for prostate cancer.

The medical field is definitely sexist and transphobic (and just about every other -ist and -phobic), but couldn’t abolishing both gender and sex exacerbate these issues? The only thing I can think of is, like, checkboxes for what organs you have, but that seems like it’d still be the concept of “sex”, just in slightly different language.

so, a couple points before we get into this conversation:

Current gendered distinctions in the medical field to address health issues are not nearly as helpful as you are suggesting

You cannot abolish the concept of race (or gender or class or etc) without addressing the underlying systemic violence and inequality that gives those social categories power in society

Like, baseline - how helpful is it to sort all of humanity into 2 bins, male or female, medically speaking? To use a hypothetical, if you were to sort all human beings into 2 categories, either “young” or “old,” what medical information about those people could you glean from that alone? The answer is probably more than zero, but it’s still not a lot, and if we were to construct an entire insurance and medical apparatus on the basis of whether you’re young or old alone would be very silly.

Now what you’re talking about is using a collection of demographic information - gender, race, age, weight, etc - to construct standard benchmarks by which to measure medical outcomes in people. However, the origins of things like gender and race are not medical, they’re social, and are used to enforce social positions in society that may produce specific medical outcomes as a result of either oppression (eg, certain racial minorities are more predisposed to certain health conditions) or inference (eg, “only women can get pregnant”).

You, as a cis woman, telling your doctor you’re a cis woman, does not actually describe your ability to get pregnant, only a rough probability. If we want to describe the group of people in society who can get pregnant, we should call them “people who can get pregnant.” then we’re including everyone who can, and not including anyone who cannot (infertile cis women, some intersex people, trans women, some nonbinary people, people who have had their uterus removed, post-menopausal cis women, etc). That results in a de-gendering of pregnancy, and allows for a more precise description of what medical resources those people may need access to.

Additionally, race is not a biological determination of health (it is not biological at all). It is a social position that we all occupy different positions in, which, by virtue of being in those positions, gives us access to different social and physical environments that produce varying health outcomes. If you are black and live in a food desert, and suffer health problems as a consequence, that is not a biological difference on the basis of your race, that is purely a social one. The solution there would not be to codify race as a biological determinant of health, it would be to alter the built environment so that no one lives in a food desert. White supremacy is what produces these outcomes.

To use your ADHD trial example - the problem there is that it is assumed that the gender of cis men is medically trivial while treating all other genders as significant; they are presented as the human default, and anyone who does not fit that standard (ie, roughly 50% of all human beings) is a deviation from normalcy. We see this most especially with race, where white people are assumed to be non-racial, existing outside the construct of race, and therefore we act as a handy baseline by which all other races can be measured (which is bad). The solution to this problem is not to draw more precise gender or race boundaries around symptoms, conditions, or medical trials, but to decouple gender and race from it entirely and describe in exact terms what affects whom. Race does not affect health outcomes; white supremacy does. Gender does not affect health outcomes; patriarchy does.

This is where systemic solutions come in! These are tricky because they’re comprehensive and require mass upheaval of existing institutions and norms. To use a historical example - the USSR* instituted a policy whereby women would be fully compensated for all reproductive labour (child-rearing, domestic labour, etc), effectively making housekeeping a full time job. Does this abolish patriarchy? No, but it certainly helps reduce misogyny in society by offering economic equality and enshrining domestic labour as being on par with productive labour. This also does a lot to help women medically, socially, legally, etc. by reducing economic dependency on their husbands and therefore reduces abuse, unhappy marriages, all of those things. this is the kind of policy that acts as a handy starting point for thinking about systemic solutions to systemic problems.

When talking about the abolition of a given social category (gender, race, etc), addressing the violence that social category does to the people who end up on the bottom of it is how abolition works. It’s not merely changing language or expanding existing norms (which are not useless of course, but they’re insufficient). Doctors offering HRT to trans people after we receive a mental illness diagnosis is like, better than not having access to care at all, but it still sucks! Trans people, in some countries, are in the process of being folded into the medical institution and are being constructed as a special medical class of people. That doesn’t get rid of transphobia and it doesn’t help all trans people, just those lucky enough to access it, and then the even smaller group of us who are lucky enough to convince doctors and psychiatrists to write the prescriptions and diagnoses and referrals required for us to be respected as our own gender. I could not legally change my name and gender marker until I had the sign-off from a doctor who was treating me medically for gender dysphoria, a professional person who knew me for at least five years, and a lawyer - and I’m in the incredibly privileged position to be able to get all of their signatures. That’s not freedom, that’s just paperwork!

The institution of medicine does not exist external to societal pressures; phrenology and eugenics are medical concepts that are deeply destructive and violent. Accounting for human variation does not require us to rely on social constructions of gender and race; we have precise terminology that we can use that will more accurately describe those things. I’m not a medical doctor, so I don’t know what those terms will all be, nor can I pretend to know what a fully equal medical institution looks like. but for example, I’ve seen people describe human bodies in terms of “estrogen dominant endocrine systems” and “testosterone dominant endocrine systems.” Is that better? Maybe! It’s probably a lot more useful of a description of a human body than man or woman is.

*me invoking the USSR as an example is not an endorsement of the entire state across its 70 year lifespan, nor is it an invitation for people to tell me how bad it actually was

[girldragongizzard]

Epilogue 2: Valentine's Day

The afternoon walk from Fairport Communications Company inc. (Printers) to Meghan's coffee shop is meditative today.

The sky is mostly blue, with those smallish clouds that look like cartoonists had something to do with them. And, that means that in about an hour and a half, when the sun sets and starts turning things pink, the whole sky is likely to become a trans pride flag of sorts for a moment.

Everything feels light and relaxed. Even the birds, which are usually fighting with each other over scraps, or dodging a particular dragon, are chill and just chatting with each other.

There is a moment of absurdity, though, when Chapman comes within three blocks of Mandy's Botanical Hand Basket, which mostly sells flowers. The thick flow of almost entirely cis het men to and from that shop is almost identical to the behavior of ants, as if the shop is the colony. With just a few things reversed, since they're taking bouquets away from the central location, rather than to it. But most of them are following the same trails as the others, because there are only a few parking lots nearby, and all the street parking is full.

Upon first seeing this phenomenon, which sie has definitely seen many times before, Chapman can't help but stop to watch it.

Courting rituals are an ancient tradition across all the species that exhibit sexual reproduction. And, really, Chapman has seen it all. But there is something about experiencing this particular ritual while also inhabiting a human body, especially one that isn't obligated to participate on either end of it. There's this weird mix of feelings. The feeling of, "this is what my people do," combined with the feeling of, "they don't want me to be a part of it," and, "thank Entropy I'm not!"

Because of hir experience of recently growing up in this culture and in this time, Chapman hasn't been immune to the socialization surrounding Valentine's day in any way. Sie remembers first experiencing the day when buying mass printed cards for all of hir classmates in first grade. Sie also remembers receiving flowers from a boy as a senior in high school, despite the fact that sie had already come out as asexual and non-binary at the time. But, sie has always been seen and treated as an outsider to it by most people, and knew that hir developmental path as someone inhabiting a human body would be one that deviated from the norm.

And as sie stands now, no cis het man is likely to feel obligated to buy hir flowers or chocolate, and none of hir partners have expressed a desire to receive them.

Though, Meghan, being a dragon, will almost certainly always appreciate a gift of some sort. She hasn't talked about that much, but every time someone has given her a gift, Chapman has noticed a particular gleam in her eye and a restless resettling of her posture that indicates some kind of excitement. And it's totally within the history and makeup of dragons to yearn for gifts.

The problem is that Meghan doesn't really have much space to keep anything. So most gifts for her work best if they're food, or consumable in some way. But Rhoda's apartment would probably have room for flowers.

Huh.

Chapman wonders if sie is seriously considering participation in the activities of that throng of compelled men over there.

Flowers really would be a good idea. Meghan is a trans woman, after all, still within her first year of coming out. She should get to experience that. If the flowers have any sort of a scent, she's going to find tasting it on the air interesting. And, again, Rhoda will appreciate them, too, probably. Probably.

Sometimes, flowers are really a bother, or feel pointless. But Rhoda will almost certainly understand even if she doesn't care for them herself.

But maybe not chocolates.

Maybe…

Sushi.

Oh.

That would be another bouquet of scents for Meghan, and a kind of food that would be easy on her digestive system and full of nutrients. And it might be closer to what her body needs than what she's been eating lately. That tail barb has always struck Chapman as something useful for catching fish.

And a sushi party would be so good!

Hm.

OK, fight for the flowers first, then grab sushi from the Co-op on the way to the cafe. It'll make hir late, but then it'll give hir a chance to mix it up with the guys, which should be amusing.

Chapman straightens the skirt of hir heart print dress, adjusts hir waistcoat, then flicks the brim of hir top hat, and steps into the fray.

—

Rhoda's been in and out of the shop all day, checking in on people she knows at times they're usually there. And Kimberly has just not left the place, even though her shift has been long over.

The girl is practically melted in her seat against the wall and draped across a third of her table, with hooded eyes and the kind of relaxed grin of someone stoned and amused by a particularly complicated dust mote. But as far as Rhoda knows, she hasn't popped outside for a smoke. She's been in that spot, in that pose, ever since she clocked out and flopped there, apron still on.

Occasionally, someone will ask her how she's doing and she'll say, "Yes!"

There's an untouched to-go cup full of cappuccino on the table near her right hand.

Now, since Meghan has extended her rounds to include the territories of her favorite neighbors, she can be expected to be gone until late afternoon. And she'd said something about trying to return around 4:30 to meet her and Chapman, which is why Rhoda's here now. But neither dragon nor Artist have shown up yet.

So, after ordering and receiving her tea, Rhoda chooses to sit at Meghan's favorite table, facing the door, which puts her right in front of Kimberly.

Then she looks slyly over at the off-shift barista and observes, "You've been like this for two days now."

"Woof," says Kimberly. And then she breaks into uncontrollable soft giggles that jerk her whole body just a little bit.

It was a full moon the night of the twelfth. So, for the whole time that the moon was visible in the sky, Kimberly got to be a big poodle. And from what Rhoda understands, she just spent the whole time lying around her apartment because she forgot to arrange for someone to come give her a walk or something. But clearly that was just wonderful.

"So, that was a good choice for you, then?" Rhoda asks.

"Oh, yes. I think so," Kimberly says, without moving or opening her eyes any further. "I do think so."

Although she herself does not understand the need to be a dog, even for a short time, or what it's like to be a dragon, Rhoda finds herself wanting to cry over it anyway. In happiness for Kimberly, and in sadness for those who won't get the chance to be their true selves. But, here in public she chokes that back, and says, simply, "I'm so glad."

Watching the world become this new thing, a place where the secret, the spiritual, the soulful, and the fantastical can become something physical in a way that was never, ever before possible, has been a powerful experience. One that shakes her heart deeply, every day. And, even though she's somehow supposedly the catalyst for this transformation of reality itself, she somehow feels more like an observer. An auntie watching her nieces and nephews coming of age and reaching for the stars and actually grabbing them successfully.

And she thinks she is really so fine with that, honestly.

She really can't wrap her mind around the idea that she's the incidental center of it all. She'll take the protection that offers, but she's not sure she can ever fully believe it. Better to be a person amongst people. And if everyone else is more relaxed and happy because they get to be who they are, so much the better.

It's nice, and maybe today can be another good one.

And then Nathan has to have the audacity, during a lull between customers, to look up from the till and ask, "So, Rhoda? What are you all doing for Valentine's day?"

"What?" the word leaps from her mouth before she's even aware that she's uttering it. "We all for what, now?"

"It's the fourteenth," he says.

"Yes?" she prompts him, narrowing her eyes.

"Valentine's Day."

"Please don't say those words together again," she tells him, spearing him with a meaningful stare.

"OK," he says. "But you are aware you've got yourself a girlfriend who's experiencing this day for the first time as a girl, and she's a dragon, and she has a personfriend who has a lot of experience with this sort of thing."

"You do not have to lecture me, young man," she quips. She's pretty sure he's older than she is, but he deserves it right now. "She can get the lovey dovey shit from me every other day of the year, and I'm not withholding it today – mind you – but I ain't having nothin' to do with this." She gestures at the world expansively. "Got it?"

"Got it," Nathan says. "That's fair. It's a shitty day for a lot of people. Forget I brought it up."

"Thank you." She appreciates he doesn't delve any further or ask anything, and that Kimberly is too out of it to get into it too. She'd rather not recount that part of her history.

"Want a day old?" Nathan asks, holding up a plastic wrapped cookie with a look on his face that's not not a smirk. "It's on me."

"Is that a snicker doodle?" she asks, squinting at it.

"Yep!"

"You do know the way to an old woman's heart," she says, reaching her hand out across the room to wait to receive it.

"It's my pleasure, young lady," he says, taking a few steps out from the counter to place it in her hand. And then, in the process, he sees Kimberly out of the corner of his eye and stops to look at her. "And you, my dear, should go home. Have you even touched your cappuccino?"

"Huh?" Kimberly raises an eyebrow and cracks an eye open to peer at him. Her hand that's near her drink doesn't even twitch.

Nathan steps up to her, to loom over her, fists on hips, and fills his gruff, stern voice full of mirth to say, "You know, we need these seats for paying customers. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to move along."

"Wrong coffee shop," Kimberly snorts.

"You got me there," Nathan says. "You need anything, kiddo? You doin' alright?"

"Like a… big bowl of water, maybe?" Kimberly asks.

"You got it," Nathan chuckles. And then he says over his shoulder as he goes to get the drink, "But you're getting one of the big cups, because the salad bowl's claimed and its owner is due any minute."

"Oh, of course. Thank you!"

"OK," Rhoda says, placing the cookie down on the table next to her tea, and turns to Kimberly. "I'll bite. What's it like?"

Kimberly perks up, sitting up straight and stretching, her eyes widening, "Oh, OK." She looks up at the ceiling for a moment, jaw slack, then says, "So, it happens more than just the one night. It doesn't have to be a completely full moon, so I get the effects for like, six to seven days a month. Which, for me, is like, I guess I get to call it my period or something. And that's pretty fun. But, then. For several hours each night, I don't have to worry about shit, Rhoda. Nothing." Then she tilts her head and stares at something in the middle of the room, and furrows her brow a little. "OK, I do need to worry about shit, specifically, and pee. But nothing else. Like, I don't have thumbs. It's fucking great."

"Do you notice a difference in the way you think and feel?"

"Well, I'm still me, if that's what you're asking," Kimberly says, leaning forward with elbows on knees. "But, yeah, like. I'm colorblind when I'm a poodle, and that's different. I notice that. And everything smells different. My whole body's different, too, and I feel a big relief from that, actually. It's so freeing. But I haven't really been around people yet, so I have no idea if I understand, like, words, or anything like that. But when I have to make decisions and shit, I'm just me. I know what I'm doing. I think the part I don't like is the loneliness. But I've never liked that. I need to find some cool roommates."

"Do you think you'd get along with another dog?"

"Sure! Maybe? Depends on the dog, of course. Same with people."

And then Kimberly's head twitches as something behind Rhoda, outside, catches her attention. So Rhoda turns to see.

All the tension and stiffness in her body loosens, and all the coldness in her bones warms, as she watches Meghan land on the corner across the street. A fizzy golden light rises in her being from her heart to her head.

Meghan in the afternoon sun truly is like a piece of heraldry in stained glass come to life, the indigo diamonds along her back glowing almost as strongly as her eyes. The way that her muscles and bones work together under her gleaming scales to accept the weight of her body and fold those intricate wings safely against her back, is as beautiful a sight as any other creature on Earth. And the way her head snakes around on that swan-like neck to peer into the window of the shop, to see if she, Rhoda, is already here, conveys the eagerness between people. To make a reconnect after a time apart, even if was just a day.

Yeah, that's her dragon.

Already her mind is slipping into the patterns of planning what they'll do together. The things to share and talk about. The work she's done on her book, the passages she's eager to share with her partner. To hear word from around the city, to learn what their friends are up to. Which tea to drink tonight. And maybe talk about what camera to save up for, someday, to get back into photography maybe.

Meghan is getting a bit big. She'll have to take her protective coloration, as she likes to put it, to get through a door. But that just makes her a more formidable doorstop when she's asleep at night, and Rhoda likes that, too.

There isn't much that she doesn't like about Meghan right now, and a whole lot that brings her joy and excitement, and she knows that's a distortion. Seeing only the good because things are going so well for once, like at the beginning of a relationship. But she'll take it for as long as she feels it.

It's been too long.

—

There's Rhoda in the coffee shop, in my spot.

She knows that's where I like to sit, so I can watch the other customers as they walk in and order their drinks, but she got to it first fair and square. She's waiting for me!

I now what the day is and how she feels about it. We talked about that a long time ago, and how the abuse from her ex has made it hard for her.

So, our goal is to treat it like any other day between the two of us, and I'm so cool with that. I never really thought of it as my holiday, either. I gave up on it a long, long time ago. And then I started seeing all the commercial pressure heaved upon men to perform for it, and honestly, it felt contrary to absolutely everything I'd been taught about feminist theory and fighting the tyranny of the division of the genders and binary sexism.

Also, we're not truly a romantic couple, are we?

We're something different, I think. An autistic ace dragon and her wise woman. We're certainly not doing anything straight, in any case. It's a friendship, of course, at the very least. Though it's definitely more than friendship, too, and has room to grow.

Before the dracomorphosis, cross species relationships were always referred to as pets, service animals, charges, and things like that. But the vast majority of us dragons have human parents and human relationships of all sorts. Some say we're the children of humans, and humans are the parents of dragons. And though I know that that's not truly the case, it's close enough to help everyone feel a bit better about how it all might work.

Now, related to that, it turns out, of course, that for the Southern hemisphere dracomorphosis happened just before their mating season. So we actually now know something of what to expect about that, since those of us up North calmed down enough from our own turmoil to read up on their experiences. It was chaos for them, because there was the political upheaval around all that at the same time as millions of horny dragons started courting everything.

I think I've got a better handle on my instincts now than I did a few months ago. I'm feeling prepared for it. So, I think I can ultimately restrain myself when necessary.

But, Hailing Scales as Chapman would say, I sure as fuck can't keep myself from skipping and strutting when I see that look in Rhoda's eyes!

To try to contain it, I start to put on my royal ball gown of starlight halfway through the crosswalk, feeling the weight of that tiara settling into my braided hair. But it doesn't help all that much.

I bounce lightly on bare feet up to the front door and open it with a flourish.

"No shoes, no service!" Nathan calls out to me, the smirk on his face betraying the joke.

I am the one exception to that.

"Hi, Rhoda," I say, and curtsy in front of her on my way to the counter, pulling the bottom of my dress out wide and high between thumbs and middle fingers, pinkies flared. And then I twirl to the counter and relax out of the camouflage, claws clicking on the floor. "The yooj," I chirp.

"You got it," Nathan says and turns to reach for my stainless steel salad bowl. "Put it on your account?"

"Yes," I confirm, and then hop over to our table, pushing the chair aside to settle down into what's usually Rhoda's spot. Then I pull my third tablet, a brand new one, out of my third purse, a near identical replacement for my last one, and put it on the table in front of me. And as I'm turning it on, Rhoda speaks.

"You took your time," she says. "Everything OK out there in Dragonland?"

I notice the huge stupid grin on Kimberly's face as I lift my knuckle to do my typing. And I spare her a thought, mentally congratulating her on her second transition. I'm so glad it's going so well for her. It gives me so much hope for others, and I feel an echo of her euphoria as a kind of compersion.

"Well," I say. "Astraia and Caleb trying get me play D2R with them, but need gaming rig. I had explain that."

"I don't even…" Rhoda starts to say, then her gaze lifts up as the door chimes again with the entrance of someone else.

My head twitches to the side enough to put them in the center of my right eye's vision.

I see a heavily laden pride striped grocery bag with a huge bouquet of roses and lilies above that, swaying precariously through the door in front of a gray and black top hat with a red and white heart print dress, and a pair of self decorated Doc Martins. Of course there's a person in there.

Before I can piece the visual clues together, my tongue lashes out to taste the air, and in addition to the scents of the coffee shop I pick up fresh fish, vinegared rice, wasabi, soy sauce, the flowers, and…

It's Chapman!

[helsex-moved]

Posted this as a thread on twitter because I got fed up with them so might as well put it here.

Why mspec lesbian hate/discourse is just the same old bigotry and terf-like exclusionary mentality in a new font:

Where the problem starts is making hard and fast 'rules' about any label, sexuality or gender. Like, lesbians can only be non-men attracted to non-men, or lesbians can only be attracted to someone feminine identifying.

That there's a 'point' to any sort of definition like that. Labels are not boxes not for the wider populace to smash you into, they're for you and only you.

We contain multitudes, humans are vastly complex, our feelings and identities cannot be explained by one label with one fixed definition and they shouldn't have to be. Reducing a label to a simple meaning for your own convenient understanding is foolishness. You don't have to understand the intricacies of everyone's identities, you just need to respect it.

But engaging with that argument on the terms that there are set limits of labels, this ignores HUNDREDS of years of queer history. People have been using 'conflicting labels' for centuries. If we say it can only be 'non-men' that asks us to define ourselves what qualifies as a 'non-man' which makes us no better than the republicans trying to ask people to define what a woman is.

Gender and sexuality are different to every single person and everyone will only be able to define their own view and experience with it.

But ignoring that nuance it still disregards people's gender identity.

There ARE transmasc and transmen lesbians, lesbians who fully identify as men but also as lesbians for various reasons that are all personal and valid.

There are genderfluid and sexuality fluid people as well as multigender people who one day are gay men or lesbian women or lesbian men and gay women!! Or all of those at once !! Gender and sexuality are messy and it's so wrong to go around and police it based on your arbitrary standards.

Hell butch lesbians are right there!!!! A lot of them identify in large part with, or even solely with, masculinity NOT femininity. I myself identify at butch and am transmasc with no connection to femininity or womanhood.

Before policing what identities people can have in this way it was policing whether or not trans women are valid lesbians. Or nonbinary people. Or even just cis lesbians who use he/him or other pronouns. These arguments are still used by TERFs. Do you really want to be on the same side of thinking as a terf?

It's all rooted in bigotry and feeling entitled to label someone, not respecting the label someone makes for themself, it's a tale as old as time but now we're labeling it as progressive.

All labels made up in the end. They're just vague social constructions and definitions we use to try and explain how we feel to others but can never fully explain our entirely nor should they be expected to.

Good faith identities do not hurt you. Good faith identities do not hurt the community.

Bigots hurt the community. Infighting hurts the community. By standing against rather than with people who are more similar to you than different you are perpetuating bigotry in new flavors and wasting energy infighting while there is a genocide waiting on our doorstep. By attacking what you don't understand you aren't any better than the bigots

To bi/pan/mspec lesbians who have been subject to seeing so much hate for them from the community that's supposed to be theirs, I love you <3 happy pride.

[princessefemmelesbian]

The Lesbophobia on this site is really getting out of hand.

All you have to do is say that lesbians do not fuck men in order to be attacked, dogpiled, and called a terf! It’s sickening!

Take this asswipe for example:

I see lesbophobes are intentionally deciding not to have basic reading comprehension.

“Does your ability to fuck men just disappear” Ain’t nobody said that lesbians are physically incapable of fucking men. When we say that lesbians can’t fuck men we’re saying that we don’t want to because we’re not sexually attracted to them. And we’re saying that if you’re a woman who fucks men then you can’t be a lesbian by definition. You can’t be a lesbian and also enjoy fucking men. Stop intentionally warping and misrepresenting our words because you want to jump through hoops to erase our identity. You’re all so fucking stupid. And at this point I think you assholes know you don’t have an argument so that’s why you have to resort to these “semantics”.

“Lesbians can do whatever they want including fucking the occasional man if it makes them happy” y’all are just blatantly spouting false bullshit at this point omfg what part of LESBIANS AREN’T ATTRACTED TO MEN DON’T YOU FUCKING UNDERSTAND?! No fucking men doesn’t make us happy because then we wouldn’t be lesbians fool, but you know who it does make happy? Men. Because men fantasize about getting into lesbians’ pants and robbing the one group of women and non-binary people who do not desire or identify as men of that right to unavailability to men. They get off to the idea of a woman they are attracted to but who isn’t attracted to their gender having that lack of attraction overridden and being forced to make themselves accessible to men. And you guys are giving these men more validity, so yeah. Thanks for that.

”You don’t speak for all lesbians” bitch I know for a fact that all lesbians are unattracted to men and want nothing whatsoever to do with men in the slightest. We don’t want to have sex with or marry or date a man whether cis trans nonbinary or whatever the fuck. Because we’re not attracted to men, which because you’re a lesbophobic idiot I apparently have to fucking spell out for you. Show me a “lesbian” who is attracted to men and I can guarantee you that they aren’t actually a lesbian because ACTUAL LESBIANS aren’t into men. That’s just how it is. That’s just life. It’s our sexuality and if you can’t respect that then just go step on a Lego.

God I am so sick and tired of y’all.

Also this dumb bitch @/mlembug decided it would be a good idea to screenshot my friends’ posts about lesbophobia, and this other idiotic fucking clown named @/theotin reblogged from mlembug and tagged it #radfems. When all the posts did was say that lesbians are not attracted to men, to not interact with them if you are a bi “lesbian” or “les”boy, and that the lgbt community needs to pay more attention to lesbophobia in the community and that lesbians shouldn’t be the only ones calling lesbophobia out. One of them was even explicitly in support of trans people and including trans women in lesbianism! (Although I’m friends with these people so I know for a fact that they are all trans-accepting and despise transmisogyny, just like most of the lesbian community, mind you) And yet they were all called radfems for the vile sin of being lesbians and calling out lesbophobia. At this point you guys are just saying the quiet part out loud. You all hate lesbians for existing. It doesn’t matter if we’re explicitly against transphobia of all sorts. You don’t actually care about defending trans people. You just hate lesbians for not being attracted to men and try to pretend/convince us that we are and you’re unashamed of it. Disgusting.

I can’t believe how widespread the lesbophobia on this site is. But then again, I’m also not surprised. Keep entertaining yourselves with your pathetic little daydreams that lesbians can fuck men because you’d rather have something in common with cishet men who watch corrective rape porn than us. Just don’t be surprised when the “mean” lesbians don’t wanna be friends with your stupid, annoying, sorry asses.

[villainanders]

terfs don't fucking touch this post

gender rant below cut

the merry go round i have with gender (for me!! this is my relationship with my gender and lots of people have very different relationships!!!!!) is like. i really do think i'm a woman because i was assigned to be a woman at birth and only see myself as such bc that's the social role I've always occupied. i don't identify as a woman as an intrinsic part of my identity outside of recognizing that it is the social class I've been a part of and a feeling of solidarity with other members of that class (both cis and trans). but i always chafe at the word cis even though i GUESS it's accurate bc it's always seemed to carry an implication of active identification or an inherent ~gender~ that i really just don't have. on and off I've identified as nonbinary (and sometimes still do in a weird way i don't KNOW) because of this but i think ultimately that label (or lack thereof. given how you approach it) doesn't work for me because in a weird way saying "i'm opting out of the binary!" feels like (to me, in my own relationship to gender) it's enforcing the binary's validity? like if i say "i don't feel like a woman because XYZ" it's also saying "but having these culturally enforced connotations around this violently enforced arbitrary social role is fine and good. i'm just not involved." like i identify as a woman entirely through solidarity i guess. if i had been assigned male at birth i'm not sure if i would sort of passively identify as a man in the same way or if i would identify as nonbinary in some way due to a lack of interest in gender as a concept. i really don't think i would still consider myself a woman. again (i know i keep qualifying myself here but i feel like radfems try to use these type of gender feelings as a breeding ground so i really want to reiterate) people have lots of different relationships with gender and in the vast scope of human experience and our varied relationships to this social construct (which takes vastly different forms across cultures, obviously my own feelings come from the usamerican culture I've lived in my whole life) i'm definitely not trying to say being nonbinary or anything else is secretly reinforcing the gender binary. i just feel like for me, with my own lack of interest or real sense of identification toward basically any gender i can think of, it would be

[johannestevans]

oh patron saint of boy sluts, how do you know if a guy is a chaser? I recently downloaded grindr and I really don't know where in a conversation that mostly consists of "hey what's up" "what are you looking for?" "want to hook up rn?" I would like ask a question to find out (what question even) or find out otherwise unless they say something about how they are only into afab people with a front hole/ trans men or something lol. Like if I'd ask if they're a chaser and or if they like cis dick as well they would probably lie if they are a chaser? Maybe I just hook up too quickly and I should talk more and longer to find out but uh do I want to keep talking? Not really. I suppose maybe it doesn't matter whether he's straight or not since I'm just gonna get fucked and never see him again but i don't really want to fuck a straight guy/chaser

Nah, it absolutely does matter.

If a straight man sees you as a woman, he's more likely to have a blasé approach to whether you consent to sex, let alone whether you enjoy yourself, and that's not something you need to deal with or open yourself up to - there's no need to deal with creeps who want to misgender you or only see trans people as fetish objects.

I personally think chasers are creeps, and I don't fuck self-identified straight guys or closeted bi guys who don't hang out with other queer men, have a lot of internalised homophobia, and are attached to the straight label, just because like... You have to unpack a lot of stuff and be quite vulnerable to embrace your attraction to other men, and that vulnerability is important when realising not only your own sexual desires but the needs and wants of other people.

When someone is like "Oh, I'm not queer, I'm just into transgender people," it's often from a place of objectifying us and seeing us as fetish objects as well as insecurity about their own desires, and when someone lowkey sees you as an object and is reducing you just to your fetish appeal, there's no reason you should trust them to treat you well or safely. This applies not just to being trans, but also from a racial POV, as a disabled person, etc.

Completely fine to engage in this sort of fetish play with a trusted partner if that's your thing, but if chasers give you the ick, it's a completely normal and understandable one to have.

This is from my Grindr guide for trans men, the section on chasers at the end:

How do I deal with chasers?

Some people fuck chasers — I definitely think there’s degrees to how much someone is weird or uncomfortable. Some people are fine with being someone’s fetish or someone specifically getting off on them being a man with a cunt or whatever.

How do you know if someone’s a chaser?

I’ll be honest, if I see a cisgender man and he’s found my profile via the ftm or trans tag — which you can tell when he messages you — I put him in the chaser box and normally just block. If a cisgender man’s profile says he’s “into Trans and femboys” or something similar, I normally just block. If a guy says he’s into “smooth” — which means hairless — I normally block, because I’m hairy as fuck, and he’s only assuming I wouldn’t be because I’m transgender.

A lot of people aren’t being intentionally weird or unkind when they have this shit in their profile, or even when they ask stupid questions — a lot of cis people are just ignorant as fuck, and don’t know shit about trans people.

You will have people who think you’re a trans woman, because they think “transgender” = trans women exclusively.

But some people who are chasers just act weird as Hell — they might feel entitled to touch your body or think about it in a certain way, you might be an “experiment” in a way that feels uncomfortable for you, they might want to ignore certain boundaries (eg, not wanting your chest touched, not wanting your front hole penetrated), etc.

One of the tricks that I use to see if a cis man is gonna be a freak is I just correct him on a bit of language. I personally am pretty indiscriminate about the language I use for my body parts, but I might correct him on a small thing — if he calls it a “clit”, I might say “I prefer cock, actually”; if he says “Pussy”, I might say, “call it a cunt, please”.

If he has a tantrum about it or generally acts like a bellend, that is a sign he’s probably going to be worse about other boundaries I set.

[englishmagic]

Wanna read about my gender journey?

A youtuber asked "what was the moment you realised you were trans?" and I tried to put it into words in a comment. Instead, it became... Longer than any youtube comment that anyone would read. It feels more appropriate to put it here, so I am going to. But since it is, uh, long, I will put it under a read more.

For me, it was many small moments stacking up, starting around puberty. I was a little girl, but when I outgrew girlhood, growing into womanhood felt incredibly wrong. I started (very unsafely) binding my chest when I was about eleven or ten, but only to look at myself in the mirror with a flat chest, because I didn't want anyone to notice and ask about it. When I was a teenager I referred to my assigned sex as a "y chromosome deficiency". I remember crying after a row with my mother where I asked why I had to be a boy or a girl and not just a kid, and was told that I wasn't a kid anymore. When I floated the possibility of being a boy, the conversation jumped straight to "okay so should we schedule invasive surgery on your genitals??" and obviously that scared me away.

Reading feminist theory I got very preoccupied with gender socialisation, and thought through nearly every choice I made with the question "would I choose differently if I hadn't been raised a girl?" Seeing feminine-looking men made me excited, because if they could look like that and still call themselves men, maybe I could be a man sometimes, too. I became vaguely aware of nonbinary people when I started using tumblr around 2010-ish, but I was always under the impression that it was some sort of medical condition that you were supposed to pity, but which I envied instead, and that made me feel like a bad person, like I was fetishising someone's struggle by wishing it upon myself.

All of these were things I thought, did, and said, while convinced I was totally cis, and just… Weird, I guess. Desperate for attention, maybe. In fact, while I tried to express support for trans people outwardly, for the longest time I had trouble understanding the whole concept - after all, my "biologically female body" was the only reason I was a woman; I felt no ties to that identity beyond physical categorisation. If that didn't make me a woman, then what did? Spoiler alert: Nothing.

(added for tumblr bc less censorship: It was so weird to me that someone would go through all that trouble just to have a vagina and boobs. Because that was the reason I was a woman, nothing made me a woman except vagina and boobs. The rest was just behaviour I'd been molded and manipulated into, just gender roles, really, and those are made up bullshit anyway. What do trans women experience, do they just look at their crotch and go, there should be a vulva there and the fact that there isn't upsets them? In no way did I realise that maybe if I feel like possession of a cunt was the only reason I was saddled with the title "woman", then maybe the title didn't mean much to me at all. I was only a woman because the shape of my body dictated it. And when I finally internalised the fact that it doesn't, I immediately stopped identifying as that gender.)

I'm not a woman. I think I settled on that conclusion probably around 2016, but it has been slow going and honestly a lot of it has been subconscious. I'm mostly out of the closet now, but I'm also still not entirely sure where my identity falls. It feels awkward to be figuring myself out in my thirties, too vague, too little, too late, but "definitely not woman" is something I'm 100% sure on.

And here I put an apology for writing such a long comment. Instead of apologising, I will here make the comment at least twice as long. More signs along the way, for one - by the time I was like, fourteen, 80-90% of my self-insert characters in writing were male. I'd pretend to be a guy on online forums, or just not specify a gender and get really happy when people didn't assume I was female. I put that down to internalised misogyny. I also took on a male sounding nickname with my friends - and if there's any reason I'm glad I didn't transition as a teen it's that I'd probably be stuck as Seth. I would spend ages in the bathroom making myself look more masculine, slicking back my hair and pretending I was a guy, practicing (atrocious) drag king makeup that I washed away before anyone else could see it.

As an adult, I've also realised that I am much more comfortable with sexuality if I am seen as masculine. I have quite a feminine appearance. And I do identify as aromantic asexual, that label makes me feel seen and gives me peace of mind - but sometimes I suspect part of my discomfort with romance and sexuality is that being attractive to people has always been a gendered experience to me. I've got a pretty face, and I like compliments as much as anyone, but the moment someone calls me attractive, sexy, hot, anything like that, I feel like I want to dig a hole and bury myself underground. There are pieces of clothing I've loved, but that I haven't been able to make myself wear after someone made a comment about me looking hot in them. However. I posted a selfie with one of those "this app will put a beard on you in exchange for training material for our AI" filters on it to a facebook page, and when people called that sexy, handsome, and "daddy" - that didn't feel gross. That actually felt empowering and exciting and flattering and I realised maybe that's how being told you're attractive is supposed to make you feel?

As mentioned above, I'm still not entirely sure about the man thing. But it feels better than woman. For now, I'm comfortable with being nonbinary, transmasc, certified non-woman.

I still feel like shit a lot of the time. I look in the mirror and I see a woman and I wish she was allowed to exist, because she looks so nice. I wish I wanted to be her. But the very idea of it makes me feel, well, the way people expressing their attraction to me as a female creature does. Uncomfortable, nauseous, sometimes borderline suicidal. It feels wrong to deny the world access to this person who would be so much better liked, so much more of an asset, than the absolute weirdo hiding behind my face. I struggle with the intersection between internalised fatphobia as I've gained a lot of weight in my late twenties, early thirties, and the despair of that fat settling in places that make me look ever more womanly, with curves and all of that shit which is great on other people, but drags my body further and further away from what I want it to be.

I'm still in the situation where wanting to change my body kind of requires me to be a dude, especially if I want anything medical, which I don't dare to think about too much. And I still think it feels too extreme, somehow, to commit to being a man. I like my femininity. I enjoy looking like Galadriel sometimes, I enjoy giving off strong lesbian energy occasionally, I have "girlsonas" that are important parts of me. I just don't like dressing like a woman around other people, because at the back of my mind I know my appearance will be seen as proof that I am in fact a woman. And I know that I shouldn't care what people think, I shouldn't care what I look like, it's what's inside that counts and as long as I know my truth - but "my truth" is kind of foggy at the moment. So being identified by others as the only thing I'm 100% sure I am not is not helpful.

Sometimes being nonbinary seems to boil down to "say you are nonbinary". And yeah, that's true. But what's the next step? I'm not happy where I am. Saying I'm nonbinary isn't enough for me. I don't know what I need, I think I need help figuring that out and doing whatever I need to do, but I have no idea where to get that help. If anyone read this far and has a suggestion, I am open to those I guess...

Thank you for reading this, if anyone does. I don't expect anyone will. Maybe just writing it will be good somehow, I don't know.