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nerdygaymormon · 2 years ago

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Affirmation Conference 2023

I traveled to Provo, Utah for the 2023 edition of Affirmation’s International Conference.

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I arrived on Thursday and had lunch at Crown Burgers (I had a pastrami burger) with friends of mine who live in Eagle Mountain, Utah. I’ve known them for a long time, they used to live in Florida. Aaron and Sara are really wonderful. Aaron’s twin brother is gay and this has opened their eyes and they see the many issues the LDS Church has for queer people.

Sara volunteers at the Encircle House in Provo. They’d like to do more to support queer people who are/were LDS. They’d like to open their home to have regular get togethers where queer LDS people and their family & friends can gather to feel loved and supported. If you’re interested, contact me and I’ll put you in touch.

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Thursday evening was a social held at the Encircle House in Salt Lake City. I was an hour late and when I arrived, I was informed a group had come asking for David and I wasn’t there. The President of Affirmation got very concerned, wondering if there’d been a problem with my flight, was I okay, would I be on hand for the 2 sessions I’m supposed to do at the conference on Saturday. I’m very sorry to have missed those who came to meet me and I didn’t intend to make anyone worry. Sometimes things don’t go according to plans.

I did meet @jacclo and really appreciate that he came and waited. I felt like we had a good conversation and that I learned more about him and his journey. Honestly, getting to meet and connect with other queer Mormons is one of the greatest things.

My favorite room in the Salt Lake City Encircle House is the music room. They have filled the wall with black & white photos of famous queer people. I find seeing all that queer greatness very moving.

They also have a black sheep in the room, which is such a good symbol of how a lot of queer people feel their role is in their family. The Provo Encircle House also has a black sheep, I wonder if this is something they put in every one of their homes

When you walk in the house, the door swings open and you don’t see the hidden message until you’re ready to leave and open the door from the inside and see the words painted on the inside edge.

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Friday I spent much of the day in Board meetings and in trainings. That was a new experience for me as a new member of the Affirmation Board of Directors.

Lacey Bagley, the founder of Celebrate Therapy, is on the board and in our meeting she said something that struck me. I sometimes hear people complain that in the LDS Church it is cis gay white men who are seen and heard and who dominate the conversation. Lacey reframed this by calling them the Founding Fathers of the LDS LGBTQ space because they were able to break through the silence and bring visibility and some understanding. They were the most palatable to the wider community and thus were the ones who were listened to. AFAB women and gender nonconforming people are now having a moment and this opportunity has come thanks to the door being opened by those Founding Fathers.

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Then I went to the Provo Encircle House for a social. I met some very cool people and learned things about the house, including that it was originally home to a polygamous family. My favorite room was the meeting room on the 2nd floor. The walls feature black & white pictures of teens & young adults who came to the house during its first week of being open. Seeing the very people who are helped by this house really touched me. Plus, the window with the rainbow colors frames the Provo City Center Temple in a beautiful way.

The outside of the home is beautiful and I learned the landscaping is done so that there is always something in bloom no matter the season.

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Friday concluded with dinner and the opening plenary session of the Affirmation Conference. Álvaro Mora was the speaker and the big take away from his remarks was that no one is going to die for you so don’t live your life for others, live life and live it for yourself.

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On Saturday, the conference had 4 rounds of break out sessions. You could choose the sessions and groups that most interested you. I was in charge of 2 of the sessions. The first one was called Navigating Living Waters, and the second one was about building community for LGBTQ members in our churches. I was happy to meet @raspberryusagi when she attended one of my sessions.

In the evening Tekulvē Jackson-Vann spoke about how people often say they don’t see color, and how that feels so invalidating. It’s the same as if someone were to say they don’t see queerness, instead they see everyone as just the same. It’s a way to avoid uncomfortable conversations. If you can’t see all of me, you get a muted version of me. Can you imagine watching the Barbie move in black & white, you’d miss so much!

Tekulvē ended by asking a series of questions, for which a person of color gives mostly the same answer and white people have a different answer for each question: What color were you when you were born? What color are you when you’re hit hard? What color are you when you’re sick? What color are you when you’re cold? What color are you when you’re dead? And yet, I’m the one who is ‘colored.’

Laurie Lee Hall also spoke and the big message I took is “Live a life that leaves a mark that cannot be erased!”

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Saturday night, @loveerran and I went for ice cream at Leatherby’s in Orem, Utah. Their serving sizes are generous. We met @sky-the-trans-guy00 and had a very good conversation. I learned some more about him. He is a high-quality individual

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On Sunday, Stacey Harkey was the keynote speaker at the plenary session and he is very entertaining. He followed his remarks by doing a Q&A in which he was open and vulnerable.

He spoke of a dung beetle and how it is conditioned to roll dung, and will never roll a precious gem. Likewise, we are surrounded by people who have been conditioned to prize the dung, and that may cause you to wish to be dung, but you are not. Don’t be ashamed to be you. A gem is valuable because it is uncommon.

The main points of his remarks were: Be who you are! (you have to explore & discover who you are) Live who you are! (as you come to understand yourself, start living true to you) Own who you are! (you don’t need to apologize for being you, you get to be you and be proud of who you are)

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After the conference, I have extended family who hosted dinner for me and some of my friends. Being surrounded by friends and family in a space that is warm, loving and supportive was a great way to end my trip.

#Affirmation #highlights from the conference and my trip #Álvaro Mora #Tekulvē Jackson-Vann #stacey harkey #long post

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nonbinaryresource · 4 years ago

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hi. i wanted to ask whether or not it’s ok to take comfort in a person that has not officially come out as trans but has included many forms of gender expression in their work? i’m trans and when i listened to this artist’s work (harry styles - she & fine line) i connected with the songs immediately? i found a lot of people in the community who too connected to the songs and interpreted the lyrics as a struggle with one’s gender identity. at first i was against calling harry trans because i thought it was wrong, but then after reading master posts i discovered that he constantly portrays gender in his work (using the trans flag on his album cover; being ok with his friends referring to him with she/her, miss, ‘sue’ instead of ‘harry’, and sis; his obsession with babies and especially wanting to get pregnant; relating himself only to female artists; etc.) and now i’m really confused. it feels comforting as a fan to relate to him and i, and a lot of other fans from the community, sometimes refer to him with he/she/they instead of he/him (he never said his pronouns are he/him). is that wrong? every time my (trans) friends and i refer to him with pronouns other than he/him or tell people not to assume he’s cis as he never specified that, other (usually cis. a trans fan called me transphobic and told me to stop seeking validation from cis white men.) fans will start calling us transphobic and delusional and attacking us to the point we had anxiety attacks over it? i’m just really confused right now. i don’t want to misgender anyone but i don’t understand why relating to someone who, from their actions, could be part of the community is wrong. i’m not out to anyone irl and sometimes i wish people caught on to the little things i do and recognise that i am part of the community. i don’t understand why people keep shutting down the idea the harry could be trans when he never said he was cis and was ok being referred to as she.

he has previously said that there are no lines between what's masculine and what's feminine for him anymore. i'm sorry this is so long and thank you

(You also sent in the song lyrics - thanks for the easy reference! - but I’m clipping those for length reasons.)

Disclaimer before I dig in: I am not a Harry Styles stan, I know very little about him, most of what I am going to say specifically about him is stuff I researched about specifically to answer this ask. I want to speak mostly generally to your question.

Okay, so you posed a pretty succinct, straight forward question. “i wanted to ask whether or not it’s ok to take comfort in a person that has not officially come out as trans but has included many forms of gender expression in their work?“ However, there’s also a lot of context to this ask that makes things not so straight forward, and there are several distinct issues touched upon here I want to delve into. But it seems a good a starting place as any to start with the direct question you asked.

Yes, of course it’s okay to find your own meaning in art and role models and relate to art your way from your perspective based on your experience. In fact, that’s nearly the entire purpose of art! And it makes sense too, that we as social creatures would look up to and be inspired by celebrities, artists, mentors, role models, etc. Feeling connected to and less alone because someone in the spotlight plays with gender presentation like you might or want to makes a lot of sense!

However, we have to remember that A) sometimes art is just art, and B) someone being in the spotlight doesn’t mean we actually know or understand them or are/should act familiar with them.

As an example, a couple years back, Will Jay released a song called “Never Been in Love” that pretty much exploded with aros and aces and became a bit of an anthem for a lot of us. Many wondered if he was aspec himself and there was a lot of queries about it (and I saw quite a few blogs reminding folk that they were allowed to relate to the song even if it meant something different to Will Jay or he wasn’t actually aspec). Earlier this year, he released the song “Lies” where he admits that he was writing songs he thought people would relate to and he actually had been in love even before writing “Never Been In Love”. That should do nothing to diminish how meaningful the song was to people, though! If we related to the song, we related to the song, and if it was meaningful and made us feel seen and understood, that’s great! A lot of times, art is personal, but sometimes art is just an exploration.

This concept applies even more to people themselves. It is soooo easy to idolize and romanticize people you’ve never actually met and really only see the persona they want you to see. Yes, they share personal information with the world and they experience a general lack of privacy that makes you feel like yeah, you really know who they are. But how can you really, personally, intimately know someone without interacting with them, chatting with them, getting to know them one on one? It’s fine to have role models and feel represented by and relate to a celebrity - just do not lose sight of the fact that what you’re feeling is personal feeling on your own end. It’s not something that this celebrity has actually built with you.

To put this another way: it is fine to headcanon fictional characters, but it’s not okay to headcanon real people.

Now, what I’m building up to here is that there are a lot of assumptions I am seeing - from both sides - that we cannot truly know because all we know is what Harry [or anyone] chooses to share with us. I’d like to break this down by going through some specific points.

at first i was against calling harry trans because i thought it was wrong

Okay, there are two sides to this.

1) It is wrong to apply a gender label/descriptor to someone without their permission.

2) In a cisnormative society, “cis” is the default gender label/descriptor to apply to everyone, and that’s equally wrong, so I get why it feels like a rebellion of the system to go “well, there are Reasons they could be trans, so I’m just going to go ahead and call them trans”.

We should get away from automatically labeling everyone as “cis”. However, the way we fix this isn’t to just decide we get to apply whatever label/descriptor to someone we want.

If someone hasn’t clarified or specified their gender (and you can’t/it isn’t a good or safe idea to ask them), it’s the safest bet to go by what they seem to be majority being called or what you can find of them referring to themself as.

In some cases, when someone seems to be specifically avoiding labeling themselves or uncomfortable with labeling themselves, it may be most comfortable for you to also avoid labeling them just as much as possible.

being ok with his friends referring to him with she/her, miss, ‘sue’ instead of ‘harry’, and sis; his obsession with babies and especially wanting to get pregnant; relating himself only to female artists; etc.)

It’s worth considering - is this something for friends only? Or is it open to fans and other public sectors?

Usually if something is for friends only, it’ll be kept out of public eye, but if only friends are doing this, is this something that is only being shared with you or is it something you’re entitled to as well?

Aaaaaaaaalso, it has to be pointed out that it’s binarist and cisnormative in it’s own way to equate different names/pronouns automatically with being trans or being a specific trans identity. Wanting to get pregnant? Do you know how many cis women I’ve heard go on and on about wanting a penis so they can pee standing up (like... all of them anytime we’re outside or camping)? Plenty of cis people use pronouns you might not expect! You don’t have to be trans/nonbinary to use multiple or ‘atypical’ pronouns. Cis people are allowed to use other pronouns as well! They’re allowed to have names typically associated with other genders! Not all gender nonconforming or genderqueer people/people queering gender are trans! Not everybody exploring their gender nor gender presentation is trans!

not to assume he’s cis as he never specified that

It’s great to not assume someone is cis! But that doesn’t automatically make them trans.

i don’t want to misgender anyone but i don’t understand why relating to someone who, from their actions, could be part of the community is wrong.

Do you specifically, absolutely need to gender someone in order to relate to them?

i don’t understand why people keep shutting down the idea the harry could be trans when he never said he was cis and was ok being referred to as she.

I’ve only recently seen a tiny bit of this ‘discourse’ around on twitter, but what I see is a few issues/points:

A) It’s not up to us to claim someone as trans if they have not come out as trans. Coming out is an extremely personal choice and should be up to each individual. “Claiming” them is basically dragging them into something that very well may be not theirs. And if it is theirs, why would you want to steal that moment of getting to determine and declare that away from them?

B) We are all so done with cis, able-bodied white folk being prioritized above the rest of the queer community!!! There are actual, legitimate, out trans people that can be your trans role models and they’re being shoved to the back of the closet in favor of a privileged, white Schrödinger’s Trans. Let’s uplift our actual community instead of getting stuck on someone who may or may not be a part of community - and may not even want to be a part of it!

All that being said, I do want to say something really quickly on Harry himself because it ties back into the assumptions we’ve been talking about. Harry’s sexuality has long been a question on fans and journalists minds, and Harry has pretty consistently made it clear that he’s not really interested in labels or boxes. Harry’s gender is not something that has been asked about, talked about, or answered on much. And his comment on masculinity and femininity? Let’s remember that, like pronouns, masculinity and femininity don’t automatically or inherently relate to one specific gender or not. And, quite frankly, it is faucet of toxic masculinity and cissexism to equate a gnc man/man in a dress with being trans. Men are allowed to wear dresses and makeup and heels! Men are allowed to be soft and nurturing and to cry! Cis or trans, men are allowed to be these things, and arguing that they’re trans simply for doing or being any of these does continue to enforce dangerous and strict views of the gender binary.

Okay, it feels like I kinda put you through the wringer, so I want to go back and reiterate: it is 100% valid to relate to and feel connected to/inspired by someone on the basis of their presentation and gender exploration. It is not valid to claim ownership over their identity because of this. It is possible for two people to experience same or similar things and yet come to different conclusions about themselves!

If Harry Styles as an icon is important to you, I’m glad you can have that! But not everyone will or has to share your connection, and the only one actually qualified to speak on Harry’s gender is Harry himself. Harry could be trans, but it’s his right and his right only to claim that label. Any assuming we do is just that: an assumption. And I want you to be careful with your own feelings getting too attached to the image of Harry you’ve built up in your own head only to potentially have them shattered if Harry decides to speak on things and it turns out his feelings don’t mean what you thought.

Your identity is valid regardless of how Harry Styles feels or identifies. You feeling validated and seen and represented by Harry’s actions is valid regardless of how Harry Styles feels or identifies. It’s great to have role models and be inspired by people, but remember that at the end of the day, you need to be able to rely on yourself to keep up your ego and determine your sense of self.

~Pluto

#long post #mod pluto #identity #role models #discourse #gender #gender binary #cisnormativity #cissexism #mod tera #Anonymous

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biracy · 2 years ago

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I can only see, like, the crunchiest of cis people even beginning to fathom a distinction between "transgender" and "transsexual," let alone like. the transphobes you guys want to "make flinch" lmao. Debate around transsexual vs transgender really only exists as a weird inter-community generation gap thing (with a lot of its revival being for like weird trans neoclassical and/or transmedicalist reasons although obviously not all of it is). It's basically, like, trans Hispanic vs Latino. Terms that ultimately, functionally, mean nearly the exact same thing where neither is better or more progressive or more radical than the other and one just can sometimes make you sound a little old

The other thing is a little more interesting - it's kinda unique to what's happening in this country Right Now and let me be clear, I DO think that legislation that targets drag queens is transphobic legislation even though drag queens do not NECESSARILY equal trans women (people seem to forget that a lot of drag queens are trans and/or nonbinary lmao). I just also think it's honestly really stupid to act like there is Zero distinction in ANY transphobe's mind between a trans person and a cis drag performer/crossdresser/otherwise gnc person. Like, yeah, I'm sure that to a bunch of old people and idk some guy who works at a gas station in the middle of nowhere there's absolutely zero distinction between the two, but people seem to forget that a LOT of transphobia comes directly from gnc cis lgb people or people who are using them as a shield. The idea of like, "protecting our tomboys" or "lesbian extinction" or whatever is Really prevalent, and watch the way any weird nerd talks about "femboys" versus trans women. For a LOT of people, the issue with trans people is not the way we dress, but that we say that we're not the gender we were assigned at birth. A LOT of people are okay with the most masculine of cis women and the most feminine of cis men as long as they never say "I am not a woman, I am a man" or "I am not a man, I am a woman." If everyone REALLY saw absolutely zero difference between gnc cis people and trans people, there would be absolutely zero "why can't you just be butch??" or whatever. So yeah, a ton of cis people can absolutely distinguish between a gender-nonconforming cis person and a trans person. Sometimes they don't care, but very often they do

Ultimately we're at a very weird point in posting where people seem to believe that there is any sort of meaningful distinction between "transgender" and "transsexual" in the eyes of cis people, but ALSO that every cis person on the planet is completely incapable of distinguishing between like a crossdressing cis Twitch streamer and a trans person. Neither of these are true but it's weird to see them coexist at once

#so no one gets on my ASS i know the intricacies of hispanic vs latinos. i mean among latin americans there's like. very little difference #i use both interchangeably and this is my post it's about ME #open mick night #gender #not rlly sure where to go with this but like it's on my mind. basically people on here don't understand how real cis people work lol #or how real transphobia works. they don't give a fuck what you call yourself as long as it's still some kind of trans lmao

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emjee · 5 years ago

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The Glorious Queer Potential of Viola and Orsino in Twelfth Night

for Shakespeare Appreciation Week - Day Three - Lovers Day

This is a long-promised essay/ramble and I’m chucking it under Lover’s Day because it mostly concerns Viola and Orsino. I suppose an alternate title for it could be Orsino: He’s as Queer as the Rest of Them.

Before we begin, brief caveat: queerness exists in many forms and means many things to many people. This is my reading as one (1) singular queer person. Also, as you will have noticed if you read this far, I’m using the word queer. Not only is it an academically accepted term and one of my personal identifiers, it is in many cases the best descriptor for people and relationships in a play written in a time where gender and sexuality were constructed differently than they are today. Am I going to use the word “bisexual” when I talk about Orsino? Probably. But overall, the play’s just queer, in terms of gender, sexual attraction, and social relationships.

Let’s start with Viola (another heads up, I’m going to refer to her mostly as Viola because that’s how she seems to think about herself, and I’m going to use she/her pronouns). I believe @shredsandpatches recently made an argument that Viola can be read as a trans woman, which is an argument I love—she’s clearly uncomfortable with her masculine disguise (“Disguise, I see, thou art a wickedness, / Wherein the pregnant enemy does much. / How easy is it for the proper-false / In women's waxen hearts to set their forms!”) but she also passes as a man marvelously well. Like, people make a few comments about her higher voice, but nobody actually seems to suspect that she’s a woman until she’s finally in the same place as Sebastian and everyone goes “twins?!” Viola being a trans woman would also make the whole “she and Sebastian are literally identical” thing much more plausible, although one should never let “biological technicalities” get in the way of a good twin plot. I think there are also arguments to be made for playing Viola as a gender nonconforming cis woman who thinks, “It’ll be safer if I just pass as a man”, or with some other relationship to genderqueerness. (And by the way, when I say “arguments to be made”, sometimes that can mean the argument is “I, a queer person, feel like playing Viola this way.” Sometimes you just gotta do it for the queer joy, you know?)

So, Orsino. The two most memorable Orsinos I’ve seen have been Nicholas Bishop in the 2017 RSC production and Oliver Chris in the 2017 National Theatre production (truly we were blessed with Twelfth Nights in 2017). The RSC production chose to look at Orsino and immediately go, “This is not a Straight Man” which was valid of them—from the get-go, you understand why Orsino might go for a person who’s got some excellent gender-fuckery going on. In the NT production, Orsino is much more of a jock and, to my interpretation, definitely Thinks He’s Straight, which is fun because you get to see his heterosexuality crumble before his very eyes. (The moment where Viola reveals herself as a woman and Orsino lets out a long “oh thank God” breath can read a little too close to “no homo” for my liking, but Oliver Chris is good at making even asshole characters weirdly endearing, so I will let it pass.)

With both of these productions, you also have to consider the era they’re set in: the RSC is in the Victorian era, the NT in the 1970s (I think. I’m pretty sure it’s the 70s. Could be the 60s?) In the RSC, one could infer that Orsino’s commitment to getting Olivia to love him stems from the homophobia of the society he’s living in. Would he love to be able to just get with men? Sure. But the odds of him getting away with that for his entire life are low. The show’s design really makes this production Shakespeare-by-way-of-Wilde: the sets, the costumes (especially Antonio, who’s literally wearing a green carnation in his lapel). By evoking Wilde and his persecution, the production reminds the viewer that plenty of the people in this play—Antonio, Olivia, Viola, Orsino—can’t show the outside world their true queer selves, however much they might want to be.

Now, the NT production’s version of Orsino reads to me very much like someone going through a bisexual awakening. Source: I have undergone a bisexual awakening and I took one look at Orsino in this production and went *John Mulaney voice* “Oh, okay.” To me, Oliver Chris’s Orsino is going through the motions of compulsive heterosexuality. By all accounts, he should be in love with Olivia. It makes sense to him. He knows all the motions to go through. He’s talked himself into loving her because that’s what you do when you feel you need to be visibly in love with a woman and she’s the most suitable person around.

But once Orsino meets Viola, he seems to immediately adore her, in his own bro way, for herself. This isn’t what he’s used to attraction being like, he doesn’t immediately recognize it because Cesario is a guy, sometimes guys are just friends with other guys and do a lot of homoerotic boxing practice (still not over it) and it’s just dudes being bros and chilling on a table at your fortieth birthday part five feet apart because you’re not gay (spoiler: you’re actually really gay, and by gay I mean pick your favorite flavor of polysexual queerness).

Orsino continues to refer to Viola as Cesario up until the end of the play, mostly because Viola is still wearing men’s clothes. In early modern England, clothes were a huge part of gender expression. Cross-dressing was against the law (I’m 99% sure, someone please correct me on this if I’m wrong; it’s been several years since I discussed queer early modern stuff in a formal setting). Orsino referring to Viola as Cesario even when he knows she’s a woman is one of those things that has a reasonable historic explanation, but can also be read nowadays as: he likes it. Orsino’s into genderqueerness, and good on him. Genderqueerness is attractive as hell.

I know we sometimes lament the end of Twelfth Night along the lines of “But Will! Tell us what the original super-gay ending was!!” I totally understand why people want to see Olivia and Viola wind up together (Olivia—another raging queer who I didn’t even get to in this ramble—does seem to be truly in love with Viola and it’s hard to leave her disappointed at the end of the play), and I think we’re all heartbroken for Antonio (he just loves Sebastian so MUCH). However, I want to point out that men and women can still have queer romantic relationships with each other. A love story between Viola as a straight trans woman and Orsino as a bisexual cis man is still a queer love story.

Happy Lovers Day, my loves! Have a fabulously queer day.

#theplaysthething2020 #twelfth night #shakespeare #viola x orsino #harry-leroy #mg says stuff #queer ramblings

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mxbitters · 4 years ago

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hey so i think i might be trans (ftm) and since ur genderqueer and stuff i wanna ask, did you feel dysphoria when you were really young? i don't remember getting it when i was younger that six maybe, but it got a lot worse once i turned around seven or eight. idk. do u have any advice?

hey!!! it’s great to hear you’re exploring this stuff, and i’m honored that you reached out. i kinda consider myself both genderqueer and transmasc so i get you there.

that being said, there’s no one standard dysphoria experience. i’m gonna talk about my experience with dysphoria and finding out i’m trans as this was the approach that helped me, i’ll give you the long answer first and then the short answer.

long answer:

when i was younger, around third grade or something, i think i may have dealt with some sort of social dysphoria, and definitely found myself separate from girls and always wanted to like, prove myself worthy of attention from other guys (i really craved that kind of friendship, i felt like i fit in with some of the more “nerdy” guys around age eight) but i can’t recall any sort of body dysphoria. of course that was all way before puberty so there’s that too.

i think my first possible experiences with more physical dysphoria and the notion of “passing” that i can name were in middle school. it may have been when i was getting more into anime and bands and stuff, i saw these somewhat gender nonconforming men and started trying to replicate those looks and i think what really got me was when i was either in eighth grade or freshman year when i was first dying my hair. i would look up to all these musicians, the only female musician i was like looking up to was hayley williams and i thought i had to perform that kind of femininity and when i tried to it felt even worse.

it took experimentation with my expression, communication with some people older than me in a sort of mentor position, etc. for me to really realize i was trans, i think. i was in a relationship at the time, one in which that partner had told me she was trans. i don’t remember what set me off, but one night i just lost it and realized that something about femininity just wasn’t working, nothing felt right. i remember specifically someone suggesting that maybe i could try the label “genderfluid,” see what works. and that honestly just blew my mind. as soon as that door was opened, i immediately gravitated towards masculinity, he/him pronouns, etc.

of course, the way i view my gender as opposed to back then is very different, i don’t focus so much on “passing” and filling any specific gender role. it takes a lot of time to actually realize what works and again, it’s all about experimentation and giving it time. my gender as i view it right now will not be viewed the same way in a few years, i can guarantee it, and you know what? that’s okay. that’s healthy and it’s good. i’ve changed and grown a lot, i know people who seem to stay with a similar expression for a while, i know people who explored their gender and turned out to be cis all along and honestly? all of these are valid experiences.

short answer:

first of all i think “nothing feels right” was the way i experienced dysphoria back then, it was almost synonymous with my depression, and differentiating the two took a long damn time. my experience with dysphoria was initially social, but at some point around 14-15 i realized i would look myself in the mirror and not recognize myself. it took experimentation and talking to other people i trusted to actually get started.

second, advice:

- experiment! try going by the name/pronouns you prefer on your blog, or if you don’t want to use them right now on your current blog, make a sideblog or use the pronoun dressing room!!! there, you can try out the pronouns/name you’re considering and also learn more about other pronouns too :) there are also a lot of blogs on here that do a very similar thing, writing little sentences and such referring to you by your preferred name/pronouns, based off interests, etc. that’s how i realized i like he and they pronouns! and if you’re nervous to send that to somebody else, you could also send them in an ask to me if you want :’)

- talk to people! you do NOT have to go through this alone, you can talk to a friend, a therapist, a trusted family member, hell you can message me if you want, etc. but in general just know this journey isn’t one you have to do on your own.

- don’t give up. i couldn’t have imagined the spot i’m in right now as opposed to where i was in 2016 or 2017, and i’m glad i kept going. hell, i’m still going through it but i know in the future i’ll be grateful i pushed through it. being trans is a beautiful thing, and in my opinion, it’s a gift. it may seem hard, but keep going. i promise, it’s worth it.

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i sincerely hope that this helped, i’m sorry this was such a long post! let me know if you need anything else, you got this dude!!! :D

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ianv-s · 4 years ago

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Okay I saw something and it really made me smile. I found comfort in their words :)

So, I'm here to share it in case it can help anyone. It is a quote from a Quora post about what it means to be nb for you. Lim Shu Ning is the author of the following text.

"One of my greatest difficulties when exploring my gender identity has been trying to wrap my head around what gender even is. Many of these things are nebulous and difficult to articulate because language is imperfect, and I have been feeling my way through them the past two years.

I think that gender is a cluster of things that resists simplification. It is very tempting to declare that "all gender is just X", where X could be: biology, power, socialisation, performance, chromosomes, whether you like dolls or trucks, dysphoria etc etc, just to avoid having to think about this mess.

When people say things like “only two genders penis and vagene!!11!” I hear their discomfort with complexity and desire for simplification. This is understandable, but such statements are simply not true. People use the word "gender" to mean different things in different contexts, and it is impossible to say anything useful about gender that is absolutely true all the time, except the most frustrating simplification of all: "a woman is someone who identifies as a woman".

So if gender is a cluster of things and not just one thing, so is being a certain gender. Just as every woman would have many different responses to what it means to be a woman, I have many responses to what being nonbinary means to me personally.

Colour is an analogy that has been very useful for me. If we think of the two binary genders as blue and red for example, I see my gender as green: a third gender, not derivative of or related to the two existing one, that is just its own thing. In this analogy, non-binary people who see themselves as somewhere on the spectrum in between male and female would be a shade of purple, and agender people who simply do not have an internal sense of gender would be white. Incidentally, the genderqueer pride flag colours are lavender, white and green, by similar reasoning.

It has been quite clear to me for a while that I am indeed genderqueer, even though I am even now still figuring out what that means. To extend the colour analogy, I think it’s like being a toddler and knowing what my favourite colour is even though I cannot explain what colour or vision even is, or WHY.

Here are how I personally relate to a small selection of the aspects of gender, which I see as facets of being non-binary/icing on the gender cake:

I feel affirmed when people refer to me using they/them pronouns, or when strangers alternate pronouns randomly. It is quite upsetting when friends who should know better forget or don’t try hard enough

I like to be referred to in gender neutral terms, occasionally feminine terms by certain people, sometimes masculine terms in certain contexts

I relate to the political struggle of womanhood, trans people, and gender minorities. I experience misogyny, and am policed for being gender nonconforming. I’m a queer trans feminist and fight the cisheteropatriarchy (the system of power in society which privileges cis straight men)

I experience discomfort with the gendered attributes of my body sometimes

I prefer to be in mixed gender groups, and feel uncomfortable in large groups with too many men (cis men may not know what I mean; I think it’s a common feeling among people who aren’t cis men)

I enjoy genderfuckery and messing with people’s expectations and assumptions

It is very important to me to be out to most of my friends and family and for them to understand that I am not a man or a woman

Ideally I would like strangers to read me as genderqueer, but failing which I would like them to be confused about my birth sex. In practice I am actually generally read as either a masculine woman or a man, and I’m not sure which I prefer, I feel quite ambivalent currently

Before I started really thinking about gender and taking good long hard looks at my feelings, I didn’t feel strongly about any of these things. I took for granted that because I was assigned a certain gender at birth, I would (have to) be referred to and live and present myself as such. Only when I started to explore my options and break apart all these things did I start to become more aware of my actual preferences and internal sense of gender.

I still don’t completely know what gender is, nor can anyone. But these days when I sit quietly by myself and introspect, I “feel” genderqueer, and sometimes a bit like a woman. What does that mean??! Well, it's all the above listed things, but also a bit more than that. It is an innate internal sense that I've developed/become more aware of through questioning and experimentation. Gender identity, I think, is greater than the sum of its parts. Some of it is ineffable, and we can only try.

Side note: Lots of people, cis and trans, are born with a strong sense of gender and know by age five. But some cis and “cis-by-default” people who don’t experience distinct easily identifiable discomfort with or have any other reason to question their assigned genders, simply don’t. They are hence assumed cis and live as such, possibly forever, or until such time as they do have a think about it. "

#enby stuff #enby pride #afab enby #enby #transisbeautiful #trans enby #lgbti #lgbtqiia+#lgbtq+#lgbtq community #lgbtq

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auroraborus · 5 years ago

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Warning: Mention of dysphoria, self harm

Sexuality and gender are confusing. Even after years wearing one label you may find it's not quite right, other times you have to face the fact that you don't conform to the "standard." I've recently realized- Or more accurately; admitted- That I am not cisgender. As I have mentioned before, I've been closeted to all but a few people my whole life. Sexual orientation (or lack thereof) was loud and demanded to be dealt with, but I feel like gender was quieter.

We live in a society where gender isn't questioned. We don't sit around and talk about our genders like we talk about sexual orientation. If the default for sexuality is to assume straight until proven otherwise, this is ten times more true for gender. It's not just that we don't talk about it, we actively avoid questioning it or bringing it up.

I'm reminded in this thread of a trip my family took to Key West in Florida, USA. Key West is famous for its nightlife, music, and most of all; drag queens. Cross-dressing is so prevalent in Key West that it almost becomes more of the norm than the minority at night. My parents took me on a walk down main street and I saw many new and exciting things. Women wore whatever they wanted, some barely anything at all. Men openly wore skirts and dresses, often decked out with heals and make-up even when they weren't in full drag. All through this wonderful experience, however, I remember my mom reminding me over and over "These are just men having a good time. Some are role playing as characters who will sometimes hit on guys, but most of them are actually straight. Even if they wear dresses and big earrings they are still men." In the words of John Mulaney, we don't have time to unpack all of that.

What I'm getting at here was the strict reminders and clear message that even when men did feminine things, they were still men. (If only she had this stance of trans men) At no point should you question their gender or sexuality even if they were making it clear they didn't fall into the heteronormative societal roles. I'm also reminded of a crossplaying panel I attended hosted by an AFAB non-binary cosplayer. They mentioned that even wearing a full beard people would still refer to them with she/her pronouns. People stuck to the role that they thought they belonged in, even with an obvious outward sign that they were nonconforming. Both of these are examples of this unwillingness to open the discussion at all. People are so afraid of stepping outside of the binary structure as they understand it they will willingly misgender a person.

With a society that works to ignore binary-non-conformity I feel like gender exploration becomes taboo. It was much easier to ignore my own discomfort than confront it, especially when I had no idea what else there was. Experimenting with labels and pronouns is really only possible anonymously online until you are pretty sure of your place, and when you are ready to bring it up it's a big deal. The fear of people saying your feelings and experiences are "just a phase" can make it really scary to experiment in case the label or pronouns don't fit.

What the hell is actually wrong with phases, anyway? Sure you are going to grow out of them, but that's natural. You can't teleport from point A to point Z, there are a lot of places to go through in between. I had a phase of being a child, but I became an adolescent and eventually an adult. (by age at least) If I tried to buy alcohol with an underage ID it wouldn't be legal, even though my age is just a phase. See, we need phases to grow. Everything has phases. Until we as a society accept that; experimentation is going to remain terrifying.

So here I am. Living on my own. Out from under the roof that forced me to stay closeted, but rather than feeling free I felt more trapped than ever. It was like loosening the lid on a shaken soda, more space just increased the pressure. It wasn't the first time I had experienced dysphoria, but it certainly was the worst. There was one day where I couldn't manage to put on clothes for hours since my entire wardrobe reeked of binarism. I wanted to cut my hair off, all of it at once. I wanted to cut myself. Suddenly the quiet discomfort that had been growing inside of me for years was very loud and very present. I was forced to use introspection, something I had procrastinated for far too long.

Why, though? Why did I avoid confronting the topic until it became life-threatening? It's not that I am afraid of LGBTQIA+ topics, I already went on the whole journey of realizing I was asexual homo-romantic, which is definitely not one of the garden variety labels. I have many friends who are trans and/or non-binary, as well, so it's not like I was unfamiliar with the subject. I think it really boiled down to two problems, one internal and the other external.

First, I didn't feel like I deserved to have a "special" identity, basically I told myself I was close enough to Cis to deal and therefore didn't need to make my problems other people's problems by talking about them. Dumb, I know, but this type of thought process happens when you struggle with anxiety and self-hatred.

Second, and possibly more importantly; I was afraid to go outside of my gender box. I was scared that other people would call me a snowflake. I rationalized that I would never pass as anything other than my assigned gender, and I reasoned that my family would be confused and disappointed in me if they found out. The same reasons I struggled with my Ace label, but with a new and fabulous seasoning of "my gender identity doesn't actually affect my life that much." The hypothesis obviously being disproven by my own mental health problems.

I thank God that I do have supportive and accepting friends, but my main concern after finally admitting my gender situation to myself was still "am I confident enough in this to tell other people? Could it be a phase?" Sexuality is hard and gender is confusing. The lack of ability to comfortably experiment is what makes self-exploration so frightening.

You would be bored to tears if I detailed the amount of research I had to do just to find reliable information on gender labels. This not mentioning the self-reflection required to determine how long I had felt disenchanted with binarism and what parts of my identity were direct results of my Asexuality. It took a lot of painful time. Painful? Yes. I felt anguished, out of place. You can wear shoes that are the wrong size for a short amount of time but if you wore them all day they would start to hurt badly. Longer than that and they would reach the point where they were unbearable to wear and you were unable to walk. I had reached that point, and I couldn’t wait to slip into a better fit. The more shoes I looked at, though, the more I thought about my aching feet, and the worse I felt.

Alright, alright. I have danced around it for a long time, I'm sure you are dying to know what shoe- I mean gender- I picked. To continue using the dead analogy with the shoes I realized I was better off barefoot. The only labels that felt okay were genderqueer and agender, agender being the more comfortable of the two.

I honestly don't know at this point if that's always how I will identify. Also, the finer details of pronouns and names are difficult. I like my name, it's not my fault it belongs to an arbitrary binary system where certain syllable combinations are code for which genitals I had at birth and are associated with assumptions about my gender, personality, and upbringing. Pronouns are weird, too; at the moment I'm just going with whatever people assume since I have no kinship with any particular set, however, this still feels uncomfortable. Gender is an adventure just like everything else in life, and I haven't reached the story goal just yet.

Sexuality and gender are still confusing, but I think healthy exploration and education can really improve the experience. I don't know right now if my labels are permanent, but that's okay. Everything has phases, even the moon, and everything has ebb and flow, even the ocean. I'm learning to accept myself a little more all the time.

#gender #questioning #questioning my gender #dysphoria #gender dysphoria #agender #asexual agender #aspec #personal #self harm #trigger warning

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midnight-fox-boy · 5 years ago

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More About me/Views/Etc.

Hello everyone~! This post will explain more about me, my views, and anything I flnd important to add. This will be kinda long so please buckle up ;3

General Information

Age: 19

Gender: Demifluidflux trans guy

Pronouns: He/him, they/them is cool too

Sexual orientations: Gay, Demisexual

Romantic orientations: Gay, Demiromantic

Alterous Orientation: Homoalterous

Other: Polyamorous

Relationship status: Taken

I love anime, video games, drawing, singing, and just browsing the web. I like to learn new topics, and explore new ideas and sciences. I want to be a therapist someday, but if it doesn’t happen, that’s chill too. I’m polyamorous currently in a monoamorous relationship. I don’t usually participate in discourse but I do have opinions/views on different topics. I am mentally ill and prefer not to be attacked. If I do something wrong or say something offensive, I don’t mean it, or I’m simply uneducated on the topic when I thought I was. I’m happy to take polite criticsm and never mean to do harm to others. So nothing I say is ill-intended.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Views on certain discourse topics

Aspec Discourse: I believe that aromantics and asexuals are inherently LGBTQ+ and should be welcomed. However, it’s up to them if they choose to identify with LGBTQ+ or not.

Nonbinary discourse. Yes there are more than two genders. And no it doesn’t mean “Neither male or female” Nonbinary means: “Not explicitly a single binary gender” Which can mean someone can be both binary genders, one binary gender and other nonbinary genders, no binary gender, etc etc. So yes. I CAN be a guy and nonbinary.

Xenogenders: I may not be able to comprehend it 100% But I KNOW that gender is diverse and confusing and you can label your gender however you want. Just be you! You have my support.

Nonbinary Gays/Nonbinary lesbians: YES nonbinary people can be gay or lesbian. Many of them are nonbinary women or men. Meaning they identify with womanhood/manhood no matter how that is. Maybe they have a primarily woman or man gender, maybe they’re man/woman aligned. Whatever. You do not get to dictate who is gay enough or lesbian enough :)

(NO)MAPS: Are scum. Do not interact, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars.If you support them then get the f**k off my blog please! I am a CSA survivor and will NOT tolerate pedophilia.

Am I a transmed/truscum? Am a tucute?: Well, no. I’m none of those. I do not believe dysphoria is required to be trans. As many studies show gender incongruence is all you need, dysphoria manifests in some trans people as a result of incongruence. Gender euphoria also exists. This is not a topic I would like to debate. However, I do believe that dysphoria or incongruence should be medicalized in SOME form in order for trans people to be able to get gender affirming treatments. (Hormones, surgeries). I would love to live in a world where those things are free regardless, however :/ (P.S. I am dysphoric)

Kink/BDSM: Well. I participate in BDSM and kink, but I do not post about it or discuss on my blog. I have spaces for that and this isn’t one of them. So no worries about running into any kinky posts on my blog. That wont happen. If it ever does, it was an accident.

Transtrenders: I DO believe that RARELY, some cis people will pretend to be trans, not necessarily as a “trend” but to gain something in return, usually online. They may use it as an excuse to chase other trans people, or to have more “power” in a trans based argument. However, when people are accused of being trenders, they are usually not, they are just not what YOU feel gender should be. And people who fear they’re trenders? Impossible. You would know if you were faking.

Self Diagnosis: I’m divided on this. You shouldn’t self diagnose many things. Like a heart condition, or cancer, or other extremes. But if you know you’re depressed all the time and can’t see a therapist, you probably have depression. If you haven’t been diagnosed with PTSD but experienced something trauamtic and show symptoms of PTSD, You probably have PTSD. If you were confirmed to likely have a certain mental illness but perhaps didn’t fit the “age requirements” for said diagnosis, you can probably take that as an unofficial diagnosis. As long as aren’t flaunting it to seem “cool” (and most don’t) and are using those self dx’s to find help resources online and such, you’re probably good.

Fujoshis: Touchy topic I know. I do not agree when this word is used in specific contexts.

1) when girls think MLM relationships are “hot/sinful/sexy/dirty” , especially IRL MLM relationships, I think that’s fetishization, much like how many cishet men view WLW relationships 2) when it’s directed as a hate word towards gay trans men. I’ve been called a fujoshi for being a gay trans guy, and many of you probably have to. It’s wrong y’all. Gay trans men are gay men. Gay nonbinary men are gay men.

Pansexual vs. Bisexual: Both are valid labels. All multisexual labels are valid. Labels are for you to feel comfortable with, and as long as you aren’t choosing one over the other due to biphobia/internilized homophobia, you’re probably good. Bisexual attracted to all genders? Valid. Pansexual with preferences? valid. Bisexual attracted to many genders? Valid. Pansexual and feeling attraction regardless of gender? Valid. Bisexual and identify the same way? Valid!

Genital preference: Another touchy topic! The sad truth is that genitals DO matter to many people. Maybe it’s from truama, or an actual repulsion to a genital set. However, it should never EVER be used to excuse transphobia. You can not want to date a trans person who is pre-op, that’s fine, your loss not theirs. However, you cannot use that genital preference to see them as lesser, or as not “real” men/women. I personally have a preference for penises, but it’s only a preference. I would still potentially date a trans guy who is pre-op or never-op, but I prefer penises. But as I’m also gay, I likely wouldn’t date a trans woman who is pre-op/no-op. Because well, she’s a woman. So to summarize, genital preferences are OK as long as you aren’t a dick about it, or transphobic. :)

Trans people and gender conformity: Alrighty. This is a favorite topic of mine. Do trans people owe gender conformity? Do nonbinary people OWE people androgyny? Nope. Cisgender people are gender-nonconforming all the time without dysphoria. We see butch cis women and Fem cis dudes all the time. So I say, why do trans men and women owe something different? While it is true that early in transition being GNC CAN cause dysphoria, that isn’t always the case. Early in transition I usually avoided feminine things and interests unless I was in the comfort of my home, but now I’m open to, and embrace my feminine and androgynous side. I’m in no way a woman, I just happen to enjoy some stereotypical feminine things. Many trans men do. As for nonbinary people, they can present however they want. Androgynous, feminine, masculine, fluid presentation, mixing it up, genderf**k, whatever. Their body, their choice. Sometimes you may be able to “tell” someone is nonbinary by looking at them, and that’s totally okay. There is no “looking nonbinary”. All looks on a nonbinary person are nonbinary.

Anti/Anti-Anti?: Honestly I’m still confused in all of that stuff. Fiction CAN and HAS affected reality. That’s not to say that you can’t enjoy certain thinsg seen as “taboo” but there is a line that shouldn’t be crossed. PEDOPHILIA. You should not write, nor consume, fiction that presents a CHILD with an ADULT. It’s true that some pedophiles will write these to bring minors in and harass them. Even then, it gives stories for those sick f**ks to read. Do you REALLY want a pedophile reading your story? I guess I’m anti-ish. You can enjoy things that are otherwise problematic as long as you don’t let it affect how you treat people in the real world. Maybe you liked reading that fictional story about kidnapping and got off to it or something weird like that, as long as you aren’t trying to kidnap anyone or shit like that, I guess you do you, keep it to yourself though.

“NB” - Nonbinary or Non-black?: I went with POC voices on this. I will no longer use “NB” to mean nonbinary on my blog. You will likely just see “nonbinary” or “enby” used by me.

Aspec, autistic spectrum or Asexual/aromantic spectrum?: I’ve seen very little evidence or claim on the side of “autistic spectrum” being the term. Many responses ive seen and sources claim it means asexual/aromantic spectrum, and has even been echoed by autistic people, a lot of them. If I see evidence suggetsing otherwise, I’m happy to change my language. I don’t want to be ableist.

Butch/Femme, lesbian terms only?: I say no. I’ve seen a lot of articles, personal accounts, and history on the use of butch and femme. And none suggest they were terms only used by lesbians. From what I can tell, this idea seemed to be spread by “radical” lesbians and TERF’s. In history, many lesbians tried to distance themselves from all men, and encouraged non-lesbian women not to associate with men. This is obviously just a small tidbit of what they did in that time. However, I personally don’t use butch or femme, and don’t really plan to.

Specifically “weird” or crazy seeming kinks/BDSM styles: All I say is, you do you. If all parties are adults and consent to it, good on you. Just, keep it to yourself or in spaces dedicated to those things. As long as you don’t get off to ACTUAL CHILDREN, or try to bone or jerk it to an animal, you’re probably okay. Also don’t do incest, that stuff is bad.

!!If there’s a discourse topic you’d like to see here, you can PM me or send me an ask. I’m happy to shed my opinions on stuff, but they will go here!!

#About Me

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thecinephale · 7 years ago

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Brushing the Trans Away: ’Ace Ventura’ and ‘Pose’

Have you seen Ace Venture: Pet Detective? How about Family Guy? The Naked Gun 33 1/3? The Crying Game?

Only one of those is known for its transgender character. Or, rather, it’s known for a ten second clip where one character sees another character’s penis and then goes into the bathroom to vomit. The rest of the movie is actually pretty touching. It’s not the best trans representation, but it’s also far from the penis-forward marketing campaign Harvey Weinstein launched in 1992.

It’s not the other three titles listed above.

Maybe you don’t even remember there being trans characters in those three titles. Maybe like me you haven’t seen those two movies or an episode of that show for several years.

But you’ve probably seen them, at least one of them.

What these titles have in common is a scene where a cisgender man finds out that a woman he kissed is trans. In each instance the man vomits. A riff on The Crying Game certainly, but without any of the tenderness and forgiveness and love that fills the 45 minutes following “the twist.”

The scene in Ace Ventura is quite extended. And for some reason the vomiting isn’t really what stuck with me all these years. Nor the burning of his clothes, nor the crying naked in the shower, grossly meant to mirror the common sexual assault survivor trope. What’s stuck with me all these years is the teeth brushing. The vigorous, desperate teeth brushing followed by the gorging on a tube of toothpaste. Trying so very hard to scrub her out of his mouth.

(Watch the scene at the bottom of this post.)

***

After just one episode, Pose, the new show on FX, has done so much. Hell, before it premiered it did so much. Just seeing the posters around New York City has personally improved my day to day mood these past few weeks.

I feel uncomfortable labeling things “firsts.” So often “first” really means first to be recognized by cis straight white people of a certain economic class. Trans people have existed since people have existed and while cinema is an artform that lends itself to gatekeeping there have still been trans artists telling trans stories long before our current era.

But Pose is certainly the first major network TV show with this many trans actors and this many trans creatives. And it’s especially exciting that it’s about trans women of color, since the shows that have probably come closest, Sense8 and Transparent, centered white trans women. It’s thrilling to watch actors who I’d mostly seen in supporting roles be front and center, to see actors who I’d seen on stage or in readings or in a web series, get work that’s worthy of their talents at this production level.

I have no grasp of what Pose will accomplish but I’m so grateful already. No show should have the pressure of being the “first” nor that of changing any sort of landscape. I just hope these amazing artists get to keep telling their stories on their own terms.

*** Okay, but what does this have to do with Ace Ventura? Well, there’s a scene in the first episode of Pose that felt like a cleansing of that damaging cinematic memory. I don’t know if it was a direct response or just a coincidence but my brain immediately made the connection and felt relief.

One of two requisite cis white male characters is Stan, a young father of two recently employed by the future 45th president of the United States. Stan is also (secretly) drawn to trans women, or maybe he’s just drawn to Angel, played by the amazing Indya Moore (watch this year’s Saturday Church to see Moore and Pose lead Mj Rodriguez steal all their scenes). Angel is a sex worker and Stan picks her up one evening. They spend a lovely evening together, lying next to one another in an upscale hotel room talking about their hopes and dreams. When he drops her off they share a passionate, tender kiss.

Cut to Stan in his bathroom pulling an Ace Ventura, brushing his teeth like attraction and plaque are one in the same. This isn’t a pleasant moment. But it’s unpleasant in a markedly different way than the scene in Ace Ventura. There’s no joke. There’s just shame. Instead of the medium framing behind Ventura, we’re tight on Stan’s mouth. We feel the harshness of the brushing. And it feels like such a self-destructive, and absurd, response to the touching scenes we just witnessed.

(Watch the scene at the bottom of this post.)

Now there’s an argument that he’s only reacting this way because he feels he’s cheated on his wife. That’s a part of it. But it ignores the stigma in our society around attraction to trans women, a stigma that results in several deaths each year of trans women of color.

***

That’s the key point here. A movie like Ace Ventura may have filled me with self-loathing, it may have contributed to how long it took to come out. But that’s the least of it. Scenes like that, language like that, contributes to death. Straight men who feel insecure about their sexuality are incredibly dangerous.

Maybe it’s odd in a show as celebratory and emotional and exciting as Pose to single out a harsh moment featuring a cis white guy. But this moment, and its connection to the moment in Ace Ventura, clarified to me just what this show can accomplish, along with the work of other trans film artists like Sydney Freeland, Lilly and Lana Wachowski, Yance Ford, Rhys Ernst, Zackary Drucker, and Silas Howard, who directed a later episode of Pose and has a movie, A Kid Like Jake, out right now (not to mention sooo many others).

We can write back and write forward. We can reframe our lives and the lives of those we know in a way that’s real or aspirational or both. We won’t be able to change how trans and gender nonconforming bodies were portrayed in the first hundred years of mainstream cinema, but we can determine how we’re portrayed in the next hundred.

Pose is one giant step.

vimeo

#Pose #FX #Ryan Murphy #transgender #LGBTQIA #queer cinema #Janet Mock #Our Lady J #Ace Ventura: Pet Detective #The Crying Game #Indya Moore #Evan Peters #Mj Rodriguez #Silas Howard

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technologyshapeshistory · 7 years ago

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Here & queer

I find it’s easiest to come out as queer and bi with folks I just met - where I have more control over the narrative and peoples’ perceptions of me. It can be awkward to bring up how I identify with people I’ve known for a long time, which is why some family and friends who I know and love well may be hearing this for the first time here (hi!). Particularly in work or family environments, it can be hard to find the right segue into talking about my sexuality. It’s not often that we give ourselves or the people we love much runway to redefine who we are.

But I have been coming out more and more often, and the reactions I’ve gotten are mostly positive. The reception can often feel underwhelming or, at worst, diminishing. My queerness - this part of me that takes up such a massive space in my brain - can feel small and insignificant when its received with a “Huh, okay…” or a nod and a change in conversation. The worst is hearing something like, “I didn’t know that was something you were still doing…” or having friends I’ve come out to continue to refer to me as straight. These reactions give me that sinking feeling many bi folks are familiar with of not being queer enough. At times when I am feeling inadequate or alone, pockets of queer and bi folks on the internet have been a really affirming place for me.

I think often the blasé-ness with which my coming out can be received is because progressive folks (particularly straight progressive folks) feel a duty to normalize queerness, because that’s what an ally does. I think people worry that it would be abnormal or unaccepting to ask respectful questions of someone who’s just come out.

But for me, identifying as queer is just the beginning of a conversation. My queerness is something that’s brought me a lot of joy and a sense of shared community in large part because of how dynamic and multifaceted sexual identity can be. Queerness is so beautiful because it holds space for so many different ways of being. I appreciate how we can embody and celebrate gray-ness and nuance and create pathways for being that are not shown or celebrated enough.

The best response I’ve ever gotten to coming out is when someone asked me, “So what does being queer and bi mean for you?” I think that’s a question we could all use a lot more when people we love share vulnerable parts of themselves . What does _______ mean for you?

Photo from @_miss_meadows_

Being a queer, bisexual person in a straight-passing relationship has been a tricky space for me to navigate. I’ve known I was queer since before Aaron and I started dating. Its something we’ve discussed since the earliest days of our relationship, but I wasn’t confident enough in a queer identity to claim it as my own back then. I used to think that I would wait until we broke up to explore and understand my queerness. But that break up seems less and less likely. Picturing future future plans with Aaron gets easier to do as we continue to make one another enormously happy most of the time. The idea of spending a life in a fulfilling, joyful relationship that will probably look pretty straight to most people has been the catalyst for seriously navigating and owning my queerness now. Aaron’s ability to love, support, and communicate with me as I’ve increasingly come out has continued to prove to me that we have something pretty solid and pretty special.

Earlier in our relationship, I worried that coming out would make people question my commitment to Aaron or how happy I was. Conveniently, as I get older, that thing all of my thirty-something friends said would happen has been happening, and each year I care a lot less about what other people think. Being able to look back over the years Aaron and I have spent together and recognize them as the happiest in my life also helps.

But it does feel daunting to think about a lifetime of being perceived as straight when I know I’m queer. I don’t quite know what to make of it yet. I’ll get back to you on it. I take comfort in the idea that it’s not a challenge that’s particular to my relationship with Aaron - that as a bi person, I’d need to continually, consciously assert my identity no matter who I’m with. I very much vibed with bisexual writer Ben Freeland, who wrote that, “Like Schrödinger’s cat, we bisexuals exist in something of a superpositional state, appearing either straight or gay whenever ‘observed’ — i.e. observed doing something gay or something straight. And yet, when nobody is looking, we happily go our own way, occupying both identities at once.”

Something I’ve often bumped up against in my own sense of sexual identity is the idea of being “born this way.” To me, the “born this way” statement assumes that if you were to choose queerness, it would be the wrong choice. You just can’t help it - you were born this way. It’s out of your control. It feels, in some ways, in contradiction to being a person in a straight-passing relationship who must consciously choose again and again to come out as queer. The way I show and actualize my queerness necessitates choice.

“Born this way” also assumes that you need to have a lifetime history of queerness to really be queer. For me, it took moving away from the place I grew up in to give myself permission to understand my sexuality on my own terms. I think it’s like that for lots of people. If “born this way” is a good and affirming thing for you, I want it to continue to be that. If you’re someone like me who has wondered if you’re really queer because you can’t think back to an early childhood crush on someone of the same sex, I want to affirm that there’s another queer person like you out there who still feels at home in a queer identity.

https://www.reddit.com/r/bisexual/

I went back and forth a lot on writing and publishing a coming out piece. It’s a vulnerable thing to do - to put this affirmation of my sexual identity out there in a concrete way - no matter how small the audience for it is. I’m a strong believer that sexuality and gender is fluid, and a lot of times I wonder what the point of labels is when we’re on spectrums of all sorts. Bisexual does feel insufficient in its assumption that there’s a gender binary at all, so I prefer the modern way the definition has grown to encompass attraction to all genders. My sexual identity is subject to and will most likely change again over time. I believe most folks are at least a little bit queer inside, and we’re all better for it.

But I also believe that the more I’ve come out, the better my life has gotten. I say that with the knowledge that that statement will not be true for lots of people, and that I have all sorts of other identity-based privilege (especially my straight-appearing relationship) that make that so. With all that acknowledged, coming out has still been a fundamentally good thing in my life. (And, lucky me, I’ll get to do it again and again and again many times after this.) I think as women, we learn that naming and claiming our own desire is not important. That it’s secondary to men’s pleasure or that it’s something we shouldn’t think or talk about too much. Coming out has helped me feel more tapped in to who I am and what I want, and has made it easier to be truly present in many parts of my life.

There’s a great Rhea Butcher joke that includes the line, “Labels are what someone else puts on you. Identity is something that, when you find it, feels like a big hug.” (You can listen to her album if you want to get to the punch line.) Being queer and bi feels like a hug. It’s an identity that feels right for who I am right now - that celebrates the wholeness of my own sexuality and desire without detracting from the love I have for my partner and how much joy I take in our life together (a life I hope to keep sharing for a long, long time).

I admire lots of queer women and gender-nonconforming folks. I love hearing about the different pathways of being they have laid out for themselves and for their communities. I look up to bi women like me who are in relationships with straight cis men and still hold tight to their queerness even when it would be more convenient not to. It’s part of what makes me feel more comfortable and confident taking ownership over my identity now. Saying it here feels like something I’m doing not just for myself, but for other people who are questioning themselves or feeling invalid or worried they are not enough as they are.

My hope, like my hope with everything that I write that really means something to me, is that someone will read this and think, “I always felt that way and I thought I was all alone. It’s so good to feel like I’m not.” That feeling is what inspires me to keep writing, and it feels good to take this important chunk of my identity and declare it in this way with that intention.

I’m grateful for some space to claim this identity, and I’m down to answer any respectful questions if you have them.

#lgbtq #bisexualilty #bi visibility #pride

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transstudiesarchive · 7 years ago

Video

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I’m Sick – Max Turek

They tell us we’re sick.

That something is wrong with us that needs to be fixed,

& they aren’t wrong…

We have been infected by a sickness that ails this community…

I’m just now beginning to feel this sickness, and in order to irradiate it once and for all, we must call it out by name…

I’m really SICK of these white cis lesbians and gay men claiming that we need to respect them because they “Fought for our rights”; Cis gay men and women who reduce our identities to our genitals, know nothing about our community, and who have never participated in the gay liberation movement a damn day in their life.

I’m SICK of these gays who continue to to use trans women and gender nonconforming folks as platform to step on in order to place the othering and marginalization from society onto someone else.

Their façade of equality drenched in rainbow capitalism of their “Target pride collection” makes me fucking sick.

I am NOT a commodity.

I am a FUCKING human being which you have mistreated through your lack of being able to see any perspective that is not shot through your own camera lens.

These cis gay people, who in one breath claim to be accepting and in the next, ask me questions about my genitals, my sex life, my surgeries, and my previous legal name; But it’s okay because “We can all get married!” right?

Well how the hell am I going to get married when every time I go on Grindr, I am rejected because I don’t have a penis.

Or even better, when gay men only want to fuck me because they see me as a fetish.

And the thing is, I have it good for a trans person.

I think daily about the fact that I could have been born black, could have been born into a lower class, or, could have been born a trans woman.

Oh yeah, on that note! I’m really SICK of these lesbians excluding trans women and claiming that “their space” is being “infiltrated”, as if trans women have not already been assaulted, raped, or harassed by men on a daily basis. As if these women have not stood up against a Patriarchal society already.

It’s these cis lesbians who have invoked a fear in me which I feel every time I go to pee in a stall sitting down.

These women are the reason society sees us as a threat, claiming trans people are sexual predators, and I am still reconciling not hating every cis lesbian with a radical feminist logo visible.

I am also still trying to reconcile not hating every doctor that walks into my vicinity because I know that they have the resources to help us, and yet choose not to…

I’m SICK of educating them and explaining to them things that they should have been trained to understand.

Sometimes I have to remind myself that they weren’t taught these things to maintain my sanity.

A doctor’s office has come to resemble an exhibition for me.

Not a fun exhibition with clowns and cotton candy; No, the kind where you’re locked in a cage, put on display for everyone to gawk at.

“I don’t know what my mastectomy has anything to do with the flu, but I guess I’ll tell you about it anyways so you don’t treat me like shit.”

And as if this weren’t enough; Having all of this outward hate; We hate each other within as well, infecting the very fiber of our community.

We create new social hierarchies of who is trans enough and who isn’t.

On this list of requirements:

Dysphoria: Check

Surgery: Check

Hormones: Check

And the list goes on, and it goes on to exclude those who can’t afford or don’t want these things, and it goes on to exclude those who need community the most…

…but we’re not there.

We’re too busy rebuilding the very systems which sought to put us down in the first place…

We claim this all in the name of gay liberation, prompting me to ask:

“Do you even know what the fuck that means?”

I’m starting to believe them when they say that we’re sick, but not for the reasons you may think…

I think we’re SICK of being put down and are willing to put others down to escape the scrutiny we’ve faced for so long.

I think we’re sick of fitting in to a society that has us checking off boxes that can’t or don’t even apply to us.

But most of all, I think we’re sick of being made to look sick when we’re not;

They are…

#trans

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lilyliveredlittlerichboy · 2 years ago

Text

Okay, hey, this post is getting really long. I would be happy to keep this conversation going in dms or something cus I have so much more to say! And wow, it’s really refreshing to have a conversation with someone radfem and it’s not devolved into name calling and hostility yet! Wow. I am genuinely amazed tbh I think a lot of people on either side of this debate are just way too trigger happy with the “we dont agree so ima dehumanise you” approach. I’m not about that life.

Putting my response under a readmore cus it is morning once again and I have a lot to say.

I think mostly what I’m getting from your argument is this:

Sex-based oppression is one of the biggest problems still today, and affects women (/females) disproportionately.

Post-gender radical feminists would prefer it if we could keep the conversation “on topic” so to speak, and not derail with gender nonsense which has little basis in material reality. (Not my opinion just summarising what I got from your response.)

A lot of concern here is about two things:

Male-bodied people having access to female-only spaces.

Female-bodied people being told that their discomfort with misogyny is dysphoria and choosing to transition rather than examine the discomfort or take steps to dismantle the misogyny.

I think at ths stage I need you to know that there is a lot of fearmongering and misrepresentation in gender critical spaces, concerning ftm transition specifically regarding point 2, as well as the rates of trans women assaulting cis women in women’s spaces, regarding point 1.

I think thats really most of what I have to say on point 2. Gender affirming care is still very much inaccessible enough that I doubt this is as big a problem as terfs would have you believe. Wait lists are years long. No one is doing trans surgeries on children. And I think it’s a bit rich to assume that women are that easily swayed into a whole nother gender, just by misogyny existing and trans people being a tad more visible than they were a decade ago. Are women really that weak, impressionable, gullible? Is transition really a better deal than dealing with misogyny as a woman? Knowing the struggles trans men face (especially if they’re marginalised in literally any other way - disabled, Black, intersex etc) I really doubt that there’s significant privilege gains associated with trans maleness, at least not until/unless you are fully passing/stealth, which brings its own problems, and a lot of trans men don’t even want this.

I can kinda see where the concern is coming from though. I think if trans stuff had been as visible as it is now when I was a teenager, I might have chosen to transition early. But there’s no way to be sure and the fact that I’ve been out as trans for nearly eight years and haven’t really done fuck all in terms of medical transition kind of points to child!me also not rushing shit like this. And even if I had? I’d be some years on testosterone now and may have had top surgery and that would be okay. At this point I doubt I’d regret it. No way to be sure of that but I don’t have a probem with my body and if it was a testosterone dominant, boobless body I doubt that would be different. At this point I’m actually quite sure that if I’d been amab, I would be trans too. Maybe more so than I am now because cismasculinity is so much more limiting, imo, than cisfemininity. And there are fewer safe ways to explore gender nonconformity if you’ve been amab. Like you said, it’s not my body that’s wrong, it’s society. (Ppl should still be free to body mod as much as they want to imo, just like with piercings and tattoos and stuff. Bodily automomy! I can only speak from my own experience.)

Regarding point 1 of the above: I’m not good at stats and all that and terfs love to pull up article after article about trans women assaulting cis women in women’s prisons, bathrooms, shelters etc. Most of these articles are just about one single incident though. Gender crits as a whole seem to have made a jump from “this happens in isolated cases” to “this is a massive large scale problem”. I kind of? Doubt that it is, tbh. Just statistically there are a minuscule number of trans women compared to cis women. Statistically, I doubt more trans women are assaulting cis women than other cis women assault cis women.

Here’s my other problem with this thought.

Say a trans woman has been out and living as a woman for five, fifteen, forty years. (I know some who have been out that long.) So in all that time, she will have encountered plenty of garden-variety misogyny, as well as transmisogyny. At which point does she get to claim to be a “real woman” then, if womanhood is mainly based on oppression? Trans women are statistically the most likely to be assaulted, raped or murdered out of our whole community - does this oppression not count? Do you count it as “toxic masculinity” in which men’s fragility cannot handle another “man” dressing up as a woman?

And what alternative would you offer to a trans woman, who’s been out 30 odd years, estrogen treatment has made her a lot weaker, she may have had surgery who knows, and now shes been abused by her male partner, been denied access to help and support? What would you say to her if she wants to go piss in the ladies cus in the men’s she will get a black eye, at best? Would you still say she wasn’t allowed in women’s shelters? She has the same problem with the men’s shelters as she does with the men’s toilets. More actually, since men’s shelters are few and far between, and she’s still very likely to get violence rather than help there.

(The reality of the situation is that trans women are already in women’s spaces. Womens shelters accept trans women. Trans women go into female toilets all the time. and most women are safe from them most of the time, just like they are from other cis women. I’ve seen plenty of stories of marginalised women, like Black or fat or disabled women, who do NOT feel safe in women’s spaces cus Other Women will be violent or harrass them. So a trans woman is really not that much more of a threat. Chances are she just needs to pee. Or she just needs support. Or she just wants to use the gym. Etc. If it helps, this is exactly the kind of fearmongering you used to hear about lesbians: They will assault the other girls, they are predatory, they will harass girls and try to convert them to lesbianism etc. A lot of demonisation of queer people going on in this whole thing.)

Plus, another problem, based in material reality: How would you enforce this?

This is a big one, actually. Plenty of women have already taken it upon themselves to “enforce” the no men allowed rule in women’s spaces. Which has led to gnc cis women being attacked in their own spaces. It’s led to legislation like in the states, which allows young girls to have their genitals checked in order to be able to participate in sports. Isn’t that so fucking invasive? Isn’t that assault? Isn’t that misogyny? “Yeah you can play womens sports but you have to PROVE that you have a VAGINA first! And in order for you to prove that, you’ll have to let me see or touch your vagina!” Isn’t that assault? How many cis girls are you okay with being assaulted like this, in order to keep one trans girl out of girls sports? (Everyone loses in this scenario.)

And in the case of the 30 years transitioned trans woman, who may have had surgery, who may “pass” better than some cis women, how do you keep her out? Or do you not keep her out cus she’s sufficiently womanly? How would you even know that she’s trans unless you’re gonna badger her about her birth certificate or something? Physiologically she may be indistinguishable from a cis woman. Where do you draw the line?

And anyway, if you’re that concerned about men being in women’s spaces - what about male cleaners in toilets and gyms? Men don’t have to dress as women to get access to their spaces. Men in many cases already have access to women’s spaces. It would be much easier for a cis man to, say, get a job as a prison guard in a womens prison than to impersonate a woman while committing a crime and then get sent to the women’s prisons.

And if you agree that afabwomen-only spaces are practically unenforcible without some serious invasion of privacy, what’s the alternative? You can still label things women’s spaces and hope that everyone who goes in is sufficiently womanly enough to make you not feel unsafe. Which is the system currently. I think most people in the trans community are aware that women’s toilets etc are important safe spaces that we don’t want to take away. Just want them to be inclusive of some other people who might not feel safe in the men’s.

I think this is one of my biggest problems with radfemism. Like, I get it. I was born female and grew up female and there were some things about that that certainly weren’t great. I’ve met some disgusting men in my life and heard worse stories about others. Men can be horrible, for sure.

But the worst abuse I’ve personally suffered has been at the hands of other female-bodied people. My mother has the worst trauma from her abusive mother. I know plenty of people who have been fucked up by women in enormous ways. I think radfemism tends to forget that women can be horrible as well, and the deep emotional scars this can leave. OR if it’s not forgotten about, it’s sidelined. “Yeah but men kill and rape us surely that’s worse.” or “you are buying into misogynist propaganda about how all women are evil witches.” I wish there was an ability for more nuance in this subject, rather than just a whole lot of “god forbid women do anything” jokes.

Especially since I personally think feminist separatism is counterproductive.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been lucky to be raised by a gentle, loving father. Maybe it’s because I’m surrounded now by people of any and all gender/genital configurations and I’ve noticed that nobody is inherently evil. Some people consistently make terrible choices that hurt other people and I can recognise that and distance myself from those particular people. But far be it from me to think “This person who’s behaved in awful ways is a member of x group therefore x group is composed only of awful violent people”. You may recognise this line of thinking as bigotry. At the very least it’s stereotyping and discriminatory. People are just people who make choices. Choices that are heavily influenced by their society. And you know this, society is kind of a shitty place these days. It primes people to dehumanise each other in a myriad ways. Misogyny is just one of them. One of the big ‘uns for sure but not the only one, nowhere near.

Hyper-individualism and capitalism have a vested interest in people not working with each other. The male/female divide is one of the most massive things that ordinary regular people hold up and reinforce every single day, which prevents us from having a big joint class struggle. Same with racism as well and basically any kind of discrimination, which usually comes from either classism, misogyny, ableism, racism or a mix of any/all of the above. Capitalism uses its power and systems to uphold racism and sexism and ableism and everything else. Capitalism profits when we are divided.

There is no man alive today who actually set up the original male/female divide. This system has been handed down to us for millennia. We’re not going to dismantle it tomorrow. Chances are none of us will live to see the fall of the patriarchy. Which sucks! I’ve been fed up with this shit since I was old enough to be fed up with anything. And it’s taken me a really long time to see this, so it may not be obvious to a lot of people (especially those heavily traumatised by men).

But men, ordinary regular people who happen to be men, are not actually the enemy.

N I’m gonna start sounding like a marxist now but the true enemy are the people who exploit and harm working people for profits without any regard for safety or happiness of those working people. And they have a vested interest in keeping us, the working classes, divided.

Along stupid bullshit fault lines such as Black and white, or male and female, or disabled and abled. Rich and poor, even. Since even most “rich” people are still working class, this is still a bullshit divide when it comes to the vast vast vast majority of people you will ever personally meet.

Here’s what I’m thinking.

(you’re still going? oh my god) (yeah this is maybe halfway im so sorry)

Feminism has accomplished a lot. The suffrage and the right to work and all that. The metoo movement did a lot to raise awareness. Women (well, white women in rich countries) are miles from where we were two hundred years ago. We certainly have all the theory and a high public awareness of feminism these days.

And yet we have things like Iran; things like FGM; people like Andrew Tate who are super keen to go back to 2008-style “women belong in kitchen hurr hurr” misogyny and teach that to young boys. Even things like the Depp V Heard trial which (completely regardless of outcome or who you believe to be the abuser) has led to many people going into outright misogyny when talking about Amber Heard and has led to women being silenced and not taken seriously or accused of being an abuser when they speak up.

This is shit, right? It’s awful. Too many men (and women. tbh) are still very fucking misogynist and they have very little reason to stop.

Feminist separatism aims to widen the gap between male and female. I think a lot of this gap is just not understanding each other; being under equal but opposite societal pressures will do that to you.

Women are told they are nothing without a man, they must be in servitude, they must raise children and keep house and be pretty and demure. Told not to ask for too much; told not to be too unfeminine.

Men are told they are useless without a woman. They can’t handle the intricacies of domesticitiy without one. They certainly can’t raise children on their own. Any deviation from the set rules of masculinity will be severely punished, especially as young boys, by other boys and men, but by plenty of women also. Men are only good for providing, and if they’re not doing anything they’re worthless. They’re also worthless if they’re not having sex. So women hold the key to men’s worth. Violence is inevitable; it is very heavily reinforced by traditional masculinity. Women are portrayed as weaker, and yet holding the key to their worth: Plenty of men learn that violence is one way, perhaps the only way, of getting what they want.

It’s so fucked. It’s so fucked!! And yes of course it is very fucked for the women on the receiving end of that violence. But I maintain that is is very fucking fucked for men to be receiving all of this conditioning in the first place. And I think if we want a truly equal, genderless society, we need to include this in the conversation.

The principle of restorative justice states that sometimes, offenders can keep from reoffending if they become immersed in the community that they hurt, if they maybe get to know the victim more, or if they help undo the aftermath of their actions.

I think the metoo movement has done a lot to show men that this kind of behaviour is not acceptable to women. A lot of men are terrified of being seen as threatening! A lot of men have to don a mask of goofiness or something, so they don’t get peoples backs up simply by existing.

But I still don’t think this goes far enough.

I think while the solution to women’s problems has been a collective approach, acknowledging that this is a society wide problem and we can only really fix it by fixing society, the solution to men’s problems has been heavily individualised.

“Go to therapy!”

This, in my opinion, just reinforces capitalism’s need to hyperindividualism. Hyper agency, I’ve heard it called. Men don’t have community based around oppression (and helping each other) like women do. Men have community based around, idk football mostly from what I can tell. Superficial attachments and they get ridiculed if they ever show vulnerability. Men are meant to be strong, take on problems by themselves, never ask for help.

But men are human!! Men are people. They need help sometimes and they need to break down sometimes and they need to be able to talk about their issues without being accused of mansplaining or traumadumping. What happens if a person who’s been conditioned to see violence as the only legitimate way to let off steam, gets really overwhelmed or stressed out?

And this is a societal issue.

Maybe not one quite as violently pressing as the misogyny. But, I think, it’s just as important. Just as urgent.

Men haven’t been allowed a place in activism, really. They can be allies sure; they can be a part of the G in the lgbt movement, or BLM or what have you. But they can never just go out on the street to say “Yo, the way yall treat men is fucked, fix it please.” Cus that’s seen as misogyny even though women weren’t even ever mentioned. It’s seen as whiny: “Not all men.” It’s seen as victim blaming or violence apologism even when it’s not about women at all.

Because societally, we see “oppression” as “group x oppresses group y”.

When that is a super reductive and plain wrong idea of oppression.

Plenty of women uphold misogyny. Racism can hurt white people also. Homophobia and transphobia can affect perfectly cisgender heterosexual people. Oppression isn’t something that one person from group x does to one person from group y. Oppression is a deeply interwoven net of systems and societal ideas that have been passed down for eons. If someone is rude to me, are they being misogynistic? homophobic? transphobic? or maybe are they just having a bad day and I happened to be there? It could be any of these. But I like to give people the benefit of doubt, until proven otherwise.

Radical feminism often dehumanises men. I just can’t get on board with that.

I just think if we take public discourse to say “YES actually, men you are also oppressed! We hear you, your lives are hard too! You're punished for deviating from your strict gender roles too! You are being hated just for being men too! Some of you Are being silenced when you raise legitimate issues, and it’s a Problem! It’s not (just) the women doing it, it’s men doing it too, it’s the whole system, we need everyone to help on this one, and it’s a societal problem that you as an individual have very little power to fix but if we work together we just might! It’s not on you personally although we all have to work to improve ourselves as people and you’re not exempt from that, but any changes you personally make can only be truly effective if there is meaningful societal changes that go along with it.”

We might reach the Andrew Tate’s of the world before they go “Uhuh I see the feminists hate me I guess that means I’m justified in hating them (& all women) right back.”

If we see it as a societal problem on Every Level, maybe we can finally have true solidarity. Maybe we can understand each other better. Maybe we can actually go towards this free, genderless society.

But I need you to understand also that in the meantime, we are all living under the pressures of gender until further notice. We are all given a choice of how to react to that. Being radfem is one way to react to it. Being trans is another. All we are all saying is “Well the gendered pressures on me suck and I would like less of that, or (in the absence of that) maybe at least change it for a different set of gendered pressures.” Maybe the grass really is just greener on the other side where transness is concerned. Or maybe a society that teaches and internalises gendered everything in us all, also produces people who are innately trans. Who innately do not identify at all with their set of assigned gender pressures, who may also not identify with any other gendered pressures, or find it easier to live under the opposite ones. I think, “some people have innate gender” and “some people rebel against their societally set gendered pressures early on (or otherwise) and grow up to be a different gender” are functionally the same, in the world we live in currently. There’s no meaningful distinction you can draw between the two. None of us know what it is like to live in a truly genderless society. I can’t say why some people are trans. But I can believe them when they tell me things.

What a fucken essay. It’s not morning anymore.

No pressure to reply.

my american friend sent me a post about hoping my night is good and tomorrow is better, and i was like yeah okay but here it's already 8am.

they said but time is made up!!

it's a slightly silly thought but it reminded me of the way terfs talk about gender.

and it's true: time is a social construct alright, but we didn't invent night and day. we simply looked at the world and named what we saw.

we didn't invent male and female: we simply observed the world and found that many humans came in one of two forms. and we named them, and then socially constructed gender around them, with all the oppressive roles and stereotypes that we know today.

But here's the thing.

Day and night isn't all there is. There's dusk, dawn, twilight. There's the full moon which makes the night bright, there's eclipses which make the day dark.

Not to mention that depending on which part of the day it is, "day" and "night" look different.

8am is different from 3pm. 11pm is different from 4am.

8am is morning, 3pm is afternoon, 11pm is past bedtime, 4am is almost morning again.

(don't judge me for my bedtimes)

So yes of course we have day and night. But they are not absolute truths. There are lots of stages in between day and night, lots of times that aren't quite either, like 5am or 6am. If you live anywhere near the poles of the earth, the boundaries of day and night shift all the time. Some places get dark for months on end, while on the opposite side of the world the sun won't set until the end of the season.

Which brings me to another important point.

Perspective.

To you it can be 8am, but that doesn't mean it isn't 2am a handful of timezones back. If you say it's day, this will inevitably be untrue for part of the world. That doesn't mean you're wrong though: it just means you don't speak for everyone.

Perspective matters.

Male and female exist, but they aren't absolute truths. Both biologically and within the framework of gender, there are grey areas, people who are neither or both, or a secret, third thing. People who are solar eclipses and bright moonlight, people who are the dawn and the dusk and the morning and the evening.

You can call yourself whatever you like. You can be a woman or an adult human female and that's perfectly fine and good for you, but you do not get to tell others what gender they are.

That's like being in the 3pm timezone and realising that someone else is at 1am, and throwing a tantrum.

Or even quietly going, "Yeah sure I will support your delusion. You can keep pretending it's 1am, but deep down I KNOW that it's actually 3pm!!"

Like, you're just wrong. About the other person's experience and perspective. You know your own well enough, but now your making the mistake of assuming your perspective is universal.

It is not.

Believe people when they tell you things. That is all. Tbh.

#terfs cw #just putting this tag here for my blog catalogue & also in case anyone wants to filter #radical feminism #i need a tag for my own rambles #i do need a fucking tag. dont i. several perhaps. i just earlier went 20+ pages into this tag on my own blog to find my prev pinned post.#it is too much i ramble too much ahah #anyway yeah if u wanna chat further i would prefer to take it off this ridiculously bonkers long post. if u dont mind

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lifeafterthewake · 6 years ago

Text

09.03.2019

So I’m at a friend’s house for a party. She had birthday last week so me and my partner came up with an appropriate present, asked the guests whether they want to join in, we split the costs, I got the present and got there (moderately early).

I’ve recently changed some things on my facebook so that it reads more feminine but I haven’t really talked about it with my friends yet so I’m really not in a position to argue against introducing me with my boy name. I guess it would have been nice if someone asked me but it’s more or less fine.

The party... well just goes on. More people come in. I talk to some, I avoid some. I discuss feminism, some anthropology, drink some wine, talk about university yada yada. Eat a lot of gluten cause life is stressful and people don’t have any snacks other than those. Apart from herring that was brought by my friend’s parents later but yuck, fish.

At some point I start using feminine verb endings (we’re not anglophones, we conjugate). Cause why not. I feel somewhat okay with it, at least around people I’ve more or less recognized as safe. Had they asked me why I’d tell them, why not. So it’s going okay, we talk about the academia, then I start talking about my masters, about gender of the brain, we move to the couch.

One of the male guests decides to sit by at some point. He’s drunk, most likely hetero, smaller than me. A person I wouldn’t normally talk to - there is just a certain type of aura around some men that I avoid, it’s hard for me to name it. I’m sitting with two girls, one of them my friend, another a girl one year younger than me who came with her husband. So he sits by and shoots me up with “Are you taking hormones?”.

It was so sudden that I just angrily replied “No.” To which he says either “If I were you I would be.” or “I think you should be.”

So at first I freeze, fuss a ltitle. Then I get angry and ask why does he feel like he has any right to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do with my body. He is defensive about it. In general he was coming up with bs that popped in his head. The more I tried to talk about why does he feel that he should give me his expertise the more he was going the route of “oh so you feel special” “oh you must have had a hard life”, asking me have I wished my mother happy women’s day to which I reply “no because I don’t have good relationship with my family” (which is true) to which he goes “that’s what I thought”. It’s just fucking unberable. A random guy with whom I haven’t even talked that evening gets up my goddamn medical business, while misgendering me throughout, victimizing me. Fucking pity from a cis-dude who has “friends like that” whom “hormones have helped”. This is fucking XXIst century, people. This is the pinnacle of fucking social progress. A heterosexual cis dude telling a person that reads at least as gay if not as gender nonconforming to go get her hormones therapy.

For what fucking reason should I get my hormone therapy? Do I go right this moment? Shoot myself up with whatever the fuck? To alleviate my dysphoria or to make him more goddamn comfortable with himself? And when my beard stops showing am I good enough then or not wearing makeup is still a sin? Do I speak in a higher tune and become more receptive to the words of critique? Is that good enough?

Since when is he an expert in telling me what to do with MY BODY. Maybe he is fucking right about me being wounded and anxious. But he wasn’t the one having each symbolic and physical hand of his fucked up mother on his body. He wasn’t the one bombarded with contradictions about how he should be. He wasn’t the one denied the right to be his own person. I was. I am a property. I am raised a property. A doll, a shell, a trophy. A music box to say what is expected. A mind to expect and to fear what must come.

And maybe I would like some pity but not from someone who comes in and shoves it up my ears. Not from someone who came to be oh so helpful to a transgirl while calling her with her boy name and using male-gendered verbs. Not from someone who brags how he has friends whom HRT has helped. I don’t know how they still call him their friend, maybe they are normative as fuck and it’s all fine and dandy in that weird word.

That made me angry.

But what made me sad was my friend and the other girl sitting with me explaining how it doesn’t matter, how it’s an opinion from a total stranger whom I don’t even know. ‘If you knew him and came up for an advice then you would be right to feel angry if he had said something insulting’, ‘it doesn’t matter’. I even asked my friend, attempting to somehow explain how I felt, ‘[name] shouldn’t you have a baby soon?” (obviously acting out an unfortunately popular scheme and I made sure she was aware of it). She brushed it off. She said that people say that to her sometimes and she doesn’t feel the need to fight them. That some people say those things.

I do not want to live in a world where people, especially women, are blind to policing of their bodies. In a world in which they get BANGED OVER THEIR HEADS WITH CULTURE SO LONG that they become completely desensitised to it. To someone else telling them how they should be.

The other girl sitting with us said that when, after coming back from abroad, she put on her husband’s coat and hat to go for shopping (because they were unpacked) he asked her ‘Are you going out like that? This is men’s coat!’. And she brought it up simply to say that she doesn’t care. That some people say these things.

Men and women say these things and I don’t know which is more enraging. Women say these things because they were taught to believe in them, taught that is how they should be, how a woman should be, and, by proxy, how every other woman should be. And men say these things not even thinking twice.

We are the panopticon but it’s always a man gazing. A man, some men - looking, objectifying, policing, victimizing, justifying, having expertise. Having oh so much expertise.

I am sad, I am angry, I am sick. No amount of estrogen will calm this feeling. I may be coming from the outside into what we call femininity but I certainly don’t feel like this is something to brush off or just accept ‘as it is’. I want a world a little better and a lot less male-centered than the one we live in.

My women’s day wasn’t happy. I didn’t call my mother and I won’t.

To all women out there: get angry. And if you already are angry - stay angry.

#women's day #feminism #transwoman #anger #angry #sad #venting

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lostmyurl · 8 years ago

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This is a personal post about my own identity, about some realizations I have long since been coming to, something I need to get out and organize and get off my chest, so please don't come here with any generalizing comments, or about how I'm generalizing people. This is me, my experience, my dysphoria, my life. If you want to reblog or leave a comment or something, or inbox me, or something, you're more than free to, just please, please realize that this is about a post me and my self-image alone. As a kid, I always wanted to be a scout. Always. I never did, though. We only had Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts back in Texas, and in Poland, too. Idk. It just didn't sit right with me to be included in "oh, just girls here" or "oh, just boys here." I don't like gender-separated areas, and I never did, even if I didn't know why it put me off so much. I mean, I guess I didn't know when I was that young that it was dysphoria speaking up? But as I got older, and I started to hit puberty, shit just started getting a LOT worse. I had a period of time where I decided, nope, you're DEFINITELY a cis girl, I wore so much pink it was bizarre and outrageous. I like the color still, just… I feel bad because I associate it with that period of time really intensely. So I can't wear it at all or I just… hm. It's a shame, really. It's such a nice color. But it's just tied to so many memories of trying to wipe out anything I felt that didn't fit. After that, it was a period of 'so what the fuck are you?' Anybody who knew me about two years ago knew I kept changing my mind, trying to figure out what was going on because nothing felt right. A friend had to suggest it, if maybe I wasn't just imagining things/had low self esteem/was gnc, and really, for the longest time, I wondered if I was a closeted trans boy. But while being addressed as "he" helped, it didn't feel right, either. It was SO LONG until I realized that what actually felt right wasn't the decision to use "he" or "she," it was the actual moment of hesitation, the fact that I was presenting androgynously enough for it to be unclear. It's… still really really frustrating and muddled, but I've figured out enough about reading testimonies from trans people to know that what I'm experiencing is definitely a combination of dysphoria and euphoria. Here's the thing, though. There's a distinct line between nonbinary and gender-nonconforming (gnc). Being gnc would mean that I wouldn't feel uncomfortable or wrong when somebody used a set of binary pronouns for me in accordance with my assigned sex, or even the one across the binary. You can be gnc and cis, or gnc and binary trans, and one doesn't preclude the other. And neither of those means nonbinary. It's an identity that's… okay. TMI, I guess, but ideally? In a world of people who identify as men and women, I'd like to inspect my own body, go on a character selection screen, and remove all primary and secondary sex characteristics traditionally thought of as belonging to binary genders. Penis? Wrong. Vagina? Wrong. Boobs? Wrong. Facial hair? Wrong. Hourglass figure? Wrong. "Dorito" figure? Wrong. Et cetera. Et cetera. I'd like to be freed from all of those and I don't know why it's weighing on me so heavily. Delete, delete, delete, even if it meant leaving me a near-featureless default doll. Before anybody accuses me of hating people, I don't mind any of those traits on anybody else. This is my own body I'm talking about, a truly personal experience and an idealized dream. In dreams, I am occasionally perceived as male, rarely as female. Regardless, whenever I can remember, I have always been "other" in my dreams. You know- like on multiple choice exams, 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' 'D,' 'none of the above is correct'? Like that. I first learned that nonbinary genders were a thing from a classmate. Pejoratively. Like they were other, lesser, freaks. "What do you mean, neither? You can't be neither." It was religious studies class, that I remember. Of course, that wasn't the word they used. It was "homo-niewiadomo," a partially reclaimed slur that literally translates to "homo-who knows really" and doesn't just refer to gay people but any people falling under the queer umbrella as a whole. I was torn between "what???" and this kind of "that's a thing?" My next experience was on tumblr. I met a wonderful person who actually lives in my city. We've met nowadays. Years later. I was a kid then, maybe 15? 16? They said… I don't remember what it was. Gender-questioning? Something like that? I didn't pretend to understand, not yet, but I wanted to know more. All this sounds like I've had a lot of influence, but really, so much of it was based on introspection, questioning, doubting. Yeah, self-harm happened, too, whether by actually drawing blood or intentionally forcing myself to embrace hyperfemininity or by pushing myself to the point where I can't wear a color I love because it has all those negative associations with things I did to myself, things I said, trying to cut off unwieldy and inconvenient parts of my personality and decide I'm "moving on." I did the same thing about being autistic, about being ADD, and I look back on that now and realize that all I was doing was ensuring both my mental health and my physical health suffered. And my grades. Those dropped too. Performance in all respects. I ruined a lot of friendships that way. I guess some of that is a behavior learned from my parents. Forbid anything that's not productive or conductive to school that you're too "dependent" on. It's… really the worst fragment of their parenting (I think it's how they approach themselves, too) I could've possibly internalized. And something that disappeared basically overnight as soon as I was old enough to point out it wasn't actually helping, it was hurting. Now it's just there in my head, eating at me. They're not bad people. They're not bad parents. They treat us like human beings, instead of like enemies to trap in a maze of "because I said so" and arbitrary obstacles, like so many fakey-nice perfect suburban American families I've seen. They're learning, too, their home lives weren't perfect and they're not prepared to deal with a neurodivergent (not "normal") kid at ALL. They're always so confused about how "brilliant" I am and how I have trouble with "easy" stuff, about how I get overwhelmed with too much input. About how no, exposing me to that input doesn't help, it just increases the chances of a grown adult having to lock themselves in a dark room bawling into a pillow because it's /too much/. The truth is, I don't know. I know that what I need to alleviate dysphoria is basically impossible. That unlike a binary trans person I do not have the possibility to transition and eventually attain the body I identify with. This is why I can't go back to the Bible Belt, or attend a super-religious school I might've gotten a good scholarship from. I can't. If I had to go back to all that, to dressing up and doing makeup and "girl talk" and asserting over and over and over that I am like you, I am like you, I am like you, I would lose my sense of identity completely. What fragile sense I've even built up for myself. A person I can be now, somebody I almost like. Not quite, but almost. It's progress. So much progress. I'd go back to hating myself for not being like you, yes, of course I'm crushing on a boy, oh, yes, absolutely, please help me look more feminine more often, I'm just a clueless tomboy who doesn't know what she's missing :) :) :) If you're a girl who loves engaging in typically feminine activity, I support you and your interests, as I would if you were anybody else and your interests didn't hurt anybody. But it's not for me, and honestly, it's silly, but so many of my nightmares involve people turning on me and deciding they'll help me look more like I'm supposed to, be like I'm supposed to. "You have such a beautiful woman's body! Don't throw it all away!" you can have it you can have it you can HAVE it please take everything, take the horrible breasts, take the horrible curves and the horrible cinched waist and the awful "delicate features" right off my face. I don't want these. I can't be grateful for something that I look in the mirror and I feel can't belong to me, it shouldn't. It's wrong. That's not me. Please don't tell me "you're a pretty girl, you should appreciate it," don't tell me I'd like it more if I wore more skirts, I promise, I TRIED that. I did. I tried all the possible ways of loving myself and embracing a female identity in both gender-role-conforming ways and not. It doesn't work. It's like a software patch called "gender" was installed in almost everybody's brains except my own. All I'm left with is extraneous hardware that acts as malware without the driver patch. In a way, though, things are looking up. I've managed to figure out a thousand and one ways to avoid the entire (gendered) past tense in the language I speak at home. I've figured out a thousand more ways to avoid revealing, I've learned to see when I'm succeeding and when I've slipped up, when their eyes shine in triumph and they finally use binary pronouns without asking. Would it be so hard to ask? I'm not even sure what I'd say except "thank you." It's only happened once to my face without snark and it was the best thing I'd ever heard. I blew it. I wasn't expecting it. I shrugged and said "whichever you please" because I got so flustered, I didn't know how to respond. It was unexpected. It was wonderful. I should've said "neither, really." I could've said "I'd prefer not to say." If I hadn't been speaking Polish, I would have asked for “they.” Maybe. If I had the guts. "Whichever you please" was a step in the right direction though… right? This post doesn't have a point. Not really. Just laying some stuff out in text because they finally make sense that way. If you want to send hate, save it for other posts, okay? Have a shred of dignity and comment on posts tagged discourse, or posts in which I express an opinion about something that isn't this introspective.

#personal #Lynn speaks #nonbinary #ok to reblog #genderqueer #queer #familial #self harm TW

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