#its mostly cis people doing it too

[princesslesbo]

i need literally every fanfic writer ever to stop using the term afab as a replacement for woman like right NOW.

quit saying afab when you just mean woman who has a vagina. PLEASE.

not everyone who is afab is a woman dear god.

[boyfeminism]

need desperately to find anyone other than cis men to watch play games or talk about fucking anything at all on youtube.

[snekdood]

so i posted one of my characters i really thought other queer ppl would really enjoy and theres not even a single like on the image.

so, im just gonna say this rn- dont come at me talking about representation ever. the fuck. again. bc yall dont even like the characters i make that are literally everything you would like if it was literally anyone else that posted it, but bc it was me now yall are gonna try to find a reason to have a problem with it. fuck yourself into oblivion and reach enlightenment.

[alientopsurgery]

i used to get so uncomfortable when strangers would call me she/her, but now i just find it amusing 🤭 i don't think i really care that much what random people call me, i'm not gonna see them again most likely, and honestly they can just believe whatever they want about what gender they think i am, i really don't care 😝

[genderqueerdykes]

trans women & transfems have to jump through near impossible hoops to be gendered correctly and seen as real women. it's very true, very present in just about every pocket of society in general including trans spaces. it's so hard for other people to accept trans women as real women no matter what they do. this is important to discuss. there is something else to add to the conversation of the struggles trans people face, which is that trans men & mascs also have to jump through these same hurdles

if a trans man is not a hyper masculine or "normal" level of masculine cis passing dude, they're misgendered. if trans men do not or refuse to appeal to toxic masculine standards of what a "real man" is they're misgendered and disregarded as a stupid cis girl who's too stupid to think for themselves and is misguided and doesn't know what manhood "really" means. if trans men don't painstakingly try night and day, increase their T doses and focus on doing nothing but masculinizing, going to the gym, having only "male" interests. hanging out with only cishet men. if they don't do these things, they are not seen as men at all and are viewed as dumb cis girls.

if they're a masculine trans man, they're a "Confused butch lesbian" or a "tranny dyke". if they're a feminine trans man, they're called "quirky cis girls who need to feel special" or "transtrenders". if they're a gay man they're called a "tranny fag" or a fujoshi or a cishet woman. if they're genderfluid or bigender they're either called "AFAB" enbies or cis girls wanting to be special. if they're a feminine nonbinary person, they're called a quirky cis girl wanting to be special. if they're bigender they're called a quirky cis girl who wants attention. people threaten trans men & transmascs with corrective sexual assault in order to "force them to realize they're just stupid women", and unfortunately, this happens within the queer community as well as the tons of people outside of the community do it, mostly in both rad fem & specific transfeminine circles, though many other people do it as well.

trans men & mascs are constantly reduced to their genitals. people will say it's great for transfems & trans women to have penises, but it's gross for trans men to have vaginas. trans men who do have vaginas are reduced to them, and referred to in very disgusting, sexualized fashions when that trans man never consented to that or asked for it. trans men & mascs are reduced to sex objects & being women if they have vaginas. they're just stupid cis women who need to be fucked in order to remember that. if they have penises, they are mocked and told their penises are gross, among way worse things.

are we noticing a pattern here?

trans men & mascs have to perform to the most extreme toxic masculine standards in order to have anyone, cis, trans and everyone else to accept that they are masc/a man. when someone finds out someone is a trans man and/or masc they instantly start finding ways to reduce them to "quirky cis girls". people start instantly finding ways to misgender and de-gender them and all kinds of invalidating things such as questioning everything about them and treating them like they're too stupid to think for themselves.

trans men & mascs also do not have it easy and its okay to say that. i'm not saying that trans women & fems don't face these exact same things with being gendered correctly in fact, i'm saying they're very similar and just as bad. these are serious things to discuss at once in order to reveal just how bad transphobia is and how many people it affects. it's okay to talk about these things at the same time, it provides insight into what is happening to other trans people as well. we all have unique struggles. its okay to acknowledge that, and use words to describe it so that we can create open ended discussions and long lasting conversations that prove that what we are going through as a community is brutal and eats us alive.

we are all struggling. let that unite us so we can provide safety, comfort, understanding, and protection. the more we understand each others struggles, the easier to protect each other becomes, and it is a mutual thing, it is not purely one sided!

[genderkoolaid]

Over the years, I have observed that it’s easier for people to digest sex work when it’s done in a subversive way. Think of the way pro dommes are celebrated because their job is “to treat cis-men like shit”, or of the recent marketing trend around “ethical” porn. Yet, being a true ally means accepting sex work in all of its forms. If you find sex work praiseworthy when it’s queer and anticonformist, but you frown upon it when it’s done for the male gaze, I would like to invite you to examine your feeling as internalised whorephobia. What you praise is not what most sex work is like. The majority of sex work is not queer and it’s not anticonformist — the majority of sex work is focused on cis-men. It’s true that doing sex work for the male gaze mostly perpetuates social gender dynamics, but I would like to ask how damaging that really is if it’s done consciously and consensually. It’s a little bit like kink and domination: women who decide to be submissive in BDSM are replaying social gender dynamics, but they choose to do it for different reasons. I would apply the same line of thinking to sex work. If what we do in traditional sex work is consensual, it’s infantilising for people to call us out as pure objects of male desire without agency – that is objectifying us too. If you think that sex work is not feminist, that’s because the society we live in is not feminist. This discussion is too complex and nuanced to be tied to the black-and-white view “no male gaze equals empowerment” vs. “male gaze equals disempowerment.” Violence against sex workers is everywhere on this planet, and one of the factors (besides bad laws) that contribute to that is people seeing us as lesser humans, deserving of little or no respect. That makes us easy targets, the punching bags people can abuse without feeling guilty or ashamed. That’s why it’s important to produce a cultural discourse where sex workers are respected for what they do, even when it’s for the male gaze. Dancing for the male gaze in the strip club might not contribute to changing society, but the question is: is the strip club or any of our workplaces the right place to change society? Doesn’t change come from other places? From schools, from families, from social circles? Our workplaces are for the exact purpose they are called: for work. I never saw anyone asking a plumber to be responsible for societal change. We still have bills to pay, we happen to pay them by exploiting the male gaze, and it’s whorephobic to condemn us for that. Sex workers are tired of being scapegoats for society’s problems.

[plaidos]

Hello. So, the leap at the beginning of my anon was based on the assumption that most trans men don’t live in progressive countries. Since most people in general don’t live in progressive countries. Sure, in the past it was easier to go stealth because 1. there wasn’t a big phenomenon of gnc women, so that wasn’t an immediate assumption. Butch lesbians went “stealth” as men all the time, too. Which they couldn’t today. 2. obviously, documents and stuff. That’s why I said most, and I still think it’s a pretty correct assumption.

I think you use male privilege a little liberally. It’s a specific thing that manifests in specific ways. If a trans man passes as a cis woman, he is actively targeted by misogyny in every single way a cis woman is, which is to say, a traumatic amount. The patriarchy isn’t affording trans men male privilege by treating them like cis, probably gnc women. What I was also trying to say at the end of the anon, was that trans men who don’t pass would be treated as cis women and have the same privilege that cis women have practically over trans women, but I can see how that doesn’t work if the person in question is openly trans (I was mostly thinking of mostly closeted people since that’s the experience I have). I still don’t think the patriarchy would afford male privilege to a perceived woman just because they’re trans. I think male privilege comes from being perceived as being cis men, only, because I mean, that’s how it’s been since its conception and that’s obviously how the world’s structured. I think that’s where a lot of the frustration comes from, though the response is obviously not right. I think you can say trans women are treated worse, and say it���s because transmisogyny is a more insidious kind of discrimination than whatever combination of misogyny and transphobia trans men experience, without saying it’s male privilege.

Rereading this anon I come across as sort of arrogant, but I promise I didn’t mean it! Just trying to discuss.

i mean, no, you are totally wrong in your belief that "male privilege comes from being perceived as cis men" -- you just get lower returns on male privilege if you are trans. the same is true for men of color, disabled men, poor men, gay men. any men outside of the ordinary will get a lower return of male privilege. would you say that men of color, disabled men, poor men, gay men do not have privilege above women of color, disabled women, poor women, gay women? why are we comparing trans men's male privilege to cis men's? nobody is saying trans men are treated equal to cis men. we're saying they're afforded male privilege that trans women obviously are not.

...but even all the traumatic experiences of facing all the misogyny a cis woman would does not compare to the experiences trans women have. you accept & agree this -- but i'm trying to tell you that a demographic gap between the privilege trans men face vs trans women is inherently male privilege, even if those men are not universally recognised as men. disabled men, men of color, gay men, intersex men -- these are other examples of men who are considered not "full men" and yet they still obviously have a male privilege above women of their demographic.

plus, you're still approaching this from mainly the position that trans man predominately don't pass. this isn't true, and besides, in trans & queer spaces, trans men are still more likely to have their voices & experiences listened to than trans women, regardless of how much they pass.

some of the things you're stating here have a rather wicked & deceitful implication of "trans women who aren't out the closet still benefit from male privilege" but i can tell you, as somebody who was maligned for her gender long long before she came out, that isn't true.

it doesn't matter if trans men aren't afforded the patriarchy as much as cis men (of course they aren't? that's how intersectionalism works.) we aren't talking about cis men -- we're talking about trans people. and no matter how you slice it, no matter which way you flip the issue over in your head or redefine it, trans men are certainly afforded many more benefits of the patriarchy than trans women, period. no ifs, ands or buts. period. trans men have better employment rates, housing security, they're less likely to be homeless & less likely to be targeted by violent hatecrime than the women of their demographic. what the fuck do you call that if not male privilege?

[chainmail-butch]

i was talking to a friend who's a trans woman about this. she used to be really weird about butch trans women, but ended up being butch herself. she told me she was adverse to it because "it was like watching someone leave their house completely naked. you feel maybe a little embarrassed for them but you're mostly scared for how other people are going to treat them too. [she] thought "well, [she'd] be embarrassed doing the same and maybe they were having a hard time passing. but then finding out they're doing it on purpose, [she] thought that they were making a joke of being trans, like they were enforcing the stereotype of just saying you were a woman despite not making any effort to look like one. [she] was confused as to why anyone would do that, especially when she'd been having a hard time being treated well even though she did everything to make herself like a cis girl." she hated having to put in so much effort into looking feminine but did it because she was sure that's just what you had to do. obviously, probably regardless of how she looked, she was going to be treated like shit on the principal of being trans and after actually talking to butches and thinking about it more, she decided to just dress how she felt comfortable and still be proud of being a woman.

That's very interesting to hear. That is the consistent impression I've gotten from well meaning trans women.

I had to wrestle with the whole, "declaring myself a woman without making the effort," thing. When I first transitioned I put on dresses, tried on makeup, and got cute jackets. None of it felt right. I knew, entirely, that I was a woman. But doing all of the things women were supposed to be doing made me feel even worse than when I had lived as a man, which is saying something.

I eventually figured out that there is plenty of effort to being a butch woman. There are still styles, there are still pieces of gendered clothing, there are still gendered actions, they're just hidden in plain sight. They're all the things I wanted to do and all the ways that I wanted to be perceived that I couldn't understand until someone (Leslie Feinberg) held a mirror to my face (SBB) and said Butch. Then it all clicked.

I've been doing HRT for three full years now. I've been socially transitioned for three full years now. It is work. It is a challenge. It is walking out of the house with nothing but your soul and what you choose to armor it with. For some women the armor is a dress and a full face of makeup. For me its leather and boots.

I love my sisters deeply. I love women deeply. I love womanhood deeply. But my womanhood is also deliberately not womanhood. My selfish desire is a world where I can be exactly who I am without having to justify it to every woman, trans or cis, that crosses my path. But that's not gonna happen any time soon.

As so many butches, cis and trans, have said, It is a difficult road to walk and I have no choice but to walk it.

[femsolid]

I saw that one post you made about a trans dude and I have a few questions (please don’t cuss me out like the others did before, I’m a minor).

Why can’t trans men be men?

Why isn’t being transgender/transsexual “being yourself”?

Why pressure a AFAB person to be a woman when they don’t want to be one?

These questions have been in my mind for a while, especially since I have trans friends myself, as an unlabeled/agender person.

Radical Feminism feels too “restrictive” to me, because it excludes transgender people, under the guise of being “gender critical”.

As an autistic AFAB person, I’ve always been judged and bullied for being myself, so to see RadFems pressure a transgender man to be a cis woman instead of just accepting them as they are, disturbs me.

Conforming is hard to do, even impossible if you’re someone like me.

The feeling of not being a woman/man doesn’t go away just because you get therapy or “accept yourself”. That feeling sticks with you for a lifetime, and I’ve learned this the hard way.

Yeah, you can be masculine, cut your hair, and many other things and still be a woman, but transgender men aren’t women and not all transgender men are masculine or cut their hair.

That’s all I want to say, since that reblog you made of that trans guy kind of disgusted me.

Sorry for the disgust, I guess? But thank you for keeping it polite.

"Why can’t trans men be men?"

Factually? Because biological sex is a reality. And it's immutable. Artificial hormones, surgery, clothes and pronouns can't change that. What makes a man "trans"? Being born female. Therefore not a male. Therefore not a man.

Morally? We're dealing with oppressed people desperately trying to become part of the oppressor group. We're seeing plastic surgeons, mostly men, and unethical doctors willing to hurt girls who try to escape misogyny, gender roles and homophobia. Men create an illness and sell its cure. Keep women compliant, make them think they are the problem and need to change themselves, instead of society. It's destroying class consciousness and solidarity among women and it's preventing women from organising against/out of male supremacy.

"Why isn’t being transgender/transsexual “being yourself”?

Your are your body. Your personality comes from your body. It's the result of your organs, cells and neurons interacting with each others and your environment. Being yourself means living in your body.

When you take artificial hormones, get on the operating table and beg people to pretend you're not what you are, you aren't being yourself, you're fighting against yourself.

It's very in keeping with religious propaganda to think that your body is an enemy that needs to be tamed.

And it's very in keeping with capitalist propaganda to think that your body can be customised, tailor made and advertised as something else.

You should be weary of anyone who tries to make you believe you can be anything you want. They're most likely snake oil salesmen. Reality comes with limitations and part of being an adult means accepting it.

Why pressure a AFAB person to be a woman when they don’t want to be one?

Misogynists are the ones pressuring "tomboys" into thinking that if they don't follow sexist stereotypes, or if they are lesbians, they aren't real girls and should "transition".

And men harass girls, sexually assault them and tell them that boys are superior. How's that for "pressure" into trans escapism?

Just because you don't want to be something doesn't mean you aren't. Being told it's okay to be yourself is not being "pressured". But being told that not obeying gender roles is wrong and unwomanly, certainly is.

Radical Feminism feels too “restrictive” to me, because it excludes transgender people, under the guise of being “gender critical”.

Radical feminism is not a club, it's a political movement. Our goal is not to include everybody. Our goal is to free women. We are opposed to pornography, bdsm, child brides, surrogacy, prostitution, religions, the nuclear family model, rape culture and sexist stereotypes, among other things.

We promote female class consciousness, female only spaces, female solidarity, female health, emancipation, freedom, autonomy and self-acceptance. Radical feminists created the first shelters for rape victims and they are the ones who put forward the fact that PTSD is most present among women as a result of domestic abuse and rape.

We support all women against misogyny; that includes the women who want to be men, so we are not, in fact, "exclusionary". The only people not included in radical feminism are men. And that's why we have become the primary target of the trans movement, which is an anti-feminist movement.

"Gender critical" women are typically not radical feminists. That's why "gender critical" exists as a separate term. They are women who oppose gender ideology for a variety of reasons, not all of them good.

RadFems pressure a transgender man to be a cis woman instead of just accepting them as they are

You've got the situation reversed. Misogynists are pressuring a girl to be either "feminine" or a fake man, and radical feminists are offering a third option: to just be herself instead.

I'm sure you'd agree that it's not healthy to think there's something wrong with you and that you were "born in the wrong body".

Conforming is hard to do, even impossible if you’re someone like me.

Radical feminists are not for conforming, quite the opposite. We are radicals after all.

The reason a lot of autistic girls end up affected by trans ideology is precisely because they have a hard time conforming. Trans ideology offers you the opportunity to conform to the point of absurdity. It invents new boxes for you to fit in. But a box is still a box. Radical feminists say there shouldn't be any box to begin with, because each woman is unique.

The feeling of not being a woman/man doesn’t go away just because you get therapy or “accept yourself”.

It did for me, with the help of feminism. Accepting myself, accepting reality like a mature person, stop focusing on how others perceive me, on the way I look and understanding that there's nothing wrong with being a girl and that being girl doesn't mean being an NPC in a man's world. That did it for me. Getting rid of the misogynist in my head. Women are varied, women are interesting, women are fun, women are valuable and I'm no different.

And given the way men behave, I really don't want to be anything like them now.

If you have more questions I highly recommend checking out my post about the radical feminist VS gender identity debate. I tried to make it as clear as possible.

[left-in-latin-is-sinister]

I think I've realized why there was such a fundamental difference in how Tom perceived Amanda's relationship with Clarissa as the creator of the character (attracted to her but overall not too bothered when she only wanted to be with Mark) and the general fandom perception (she is deeply in love with Clarissa).

It comes down to the way that queer attraction is or is not typically expressed in queer-straight female friendships (or at least, friendships where someone is presumed straight).

(This may well also be true for male friendships, but I wouldn't know enough to speak on that, and also it's irrelevant to this ship.)

For this analysis, I'm going with the idea that either Clarissa is straight or she hasn't explored or shared her non-straightness, due to the way she never once expresses interest in women, and seems very oblivious to Amanda's attraction.

Ok! On to the crux of the issue:

For the most part, homophobia and its effects either don't exist or are very toned down in SFTH plays. And that's for good reason - a comedy show where you're trying to get general audiences to have a good time isn't the best place to seriously explore that topic, and (mostly) straight and cis men probably aren't the best people to tackle it either. So when Tom as Amanda is hitting on Clarissa, he's doing that without worrying about homophobic or similarly negative reactions, because he knows his scene partners won't take the story in that direction, and he wants to portray a corner of the world where that just isn't an issue.

But us as fans are contextualizing what we see in the play from what we know of real life. And so so often, if you're just passively attracted to a straight close friend, especially a best friend since childhood, you won't mention it for fear of changing the dynamics of the friendship, or at worst, having it ruined entirely. There's the risk of true homophobia if you haven't talked about LGBT people (particularly lesbians) enough to know the straight friend's true feelings on them. And there's some people who are totally okay with the concept of gay people, but when someone close to them is attracted to them, suddenly it's gross, and it unearths some deep-rooted homophobia. Even if you think that's an unlikely outcome, just the chance of it is enough to make many people think twice. And then even if you know your friend is 100% not homophobic, there's the risk that knowing one of the people closest to them is attracted to them will still make them less comfortable around you in some ways. Female best-friendships tend to be super close, and bringing one-sided attraction into it has the genuine potential to destabilize it by making certain things, like physical contact, sleepovers, changing in the same room, etc, suddenly seem take on a different layer of meaning once the feelings are out in the open.

So, keeping in mind that risk, for many people, the only thing that would cause them to hit on their best friend as consistently and enthusiastically as Amanda does to Clarissa is being so in love with them that they decide that they want or need to express that. Maybe it's killing them to hide it any longer, or they want to take the chance at a relationship, however small, because if it works the reward would be worth everything. If the attraction wasn't that serious, many people just wouldn't take the risk, or would feel that it wasn't even worth mentioning.

(Disclaimer: of course this isn't always true. There are definitely straight friends who make it clear that this kind of thing 100% would not bother them, or queer friends who are forward enough to take the risk anyway, or friendships where quite intense flirting is the norm. But I'm talking about the statistically common experience, and the experience that so many queer coming of age stories have used as a trope, etc.)

So when the audience, many of them queer, see this portrayal, they're bringing their own experiences as well as the common tropes of the queer experience as context. And that leads them to believe that Amanda is 100% in love with Clarissa, no matter how much she downplays it, or how Tom says that it wasn't his intention with the portrayal of the character.

[everything-transmasculine]

I've been kinda annoyed by some posts I've seen insisting on when people (which is pretty much always trans men) talk about top surgery positivity they need to include trans women getting boob jobs and like, you can have boob job positivity in your own posts no-one is stopping you. You can even confusingly call it top surgery when pretty much top surgery has always been a way to refer to breast tissue removal not augmentation. Like whenever it seems like there's a space for trans men to be able to talk about their own things there's a bunch of people pushing in to say that all trans issues need to be talked about. But if there's people with a trans fem post and someone adds in their trans masc similar comment on a reblog then they get shouted at to stop tagging along on trans fem experiences like so are all trans people supposed to be included in stuff or are we allowed our own separate spaces.

I remember there was a tiny zine a while ago which was about trans people, but all the people who submitted to it were trans masc, and then it became a huge thing that this one tiny zine was erasing trans femmes ? Like how does a small project with like 10 people do that which no-one knew about which is apparently doing that, but no one seems to care that all the popular books and movies and media said to be for trans people focus on trans women, and often when they talk about trans men do so in what feels like mostly negative ways, such as nevada, manhunt (as far as I know in the story, don't know what's going on with the movie), the people's joker, and like various popular essays

there is definitely a push for the erasure of transmasculine people under the guise of progressivism currently. i think what tends to happen is these people want to have their cake and eat it too - for example, trans issues are for EVERY trans person (except the ones that dont perfectly conform, that dont perfectly present, and that arent hypervisible in society.) its not a transfem vs transmasc issue, its a issue of hypervisibility vs hyperinvisibility - which both have their pros and cons, but its asinine to pretend that transmasculine people are somehow “lessening” the movement, the impact, etc by simply existing in their own spaces.

transmasculine people making things for transmasculine people is NOT erasing transfeminine people. anyone who says otherwise is an idiot, and obviously does not understand how discrimination and community works. at the very least intracommunal respect is essential for the furthering of transgender rights - not everyone is going to get along, but it is so very clear to me (and many people i have spoken to, cis or trans, online and offline) that there is no respect for eachother amongst the community. it is so obvious that there is a current issue of the “us vs them” mentality invading trans spaces, and driving us apart. we dont have to like eachother - in fact, i dont think anyone should be forced to like someone - but you HAVE to respect one another, regardless of our differences. this means that when a transmasculine person makes a post by and for transmasculine people, others shouldnt derail it to speak about the issues of the total community (and the same goes for transfeminine posts by and for transfeminine people!) the current movements of baeddelism, trans separatism, and trans supremacy (that exclude and put down transmasculine people for their ASAB) are killing the movements before they can even leave the nest. if your ideology posits any one group as inherently better than the other based on gender, sex, race, etc… thats not an ideology, thats bigotry, full stop.

trans rights are human rights - but that includes ALL trans people, not just the hypervisible ones (or the ones you can make caricatures of.)

[occultbooks]

Please tell me all your trans Wilson headcanons OP

oh my goodness is this.... an excuse to talk about trans wilson...? oh my goodness ok let me get my affairs in order, no pun intended. I dont know what you want specifically, but a lot of these are just thoughts about how the idea of wilson being trans ties into canon

I think being trans is where a lot of wilson's comphet comes from. not only will being with a woman make him look "normal," but also like a man, and by extension, he will be viewed as a "normal man"

he absolutely would have done the legit porn part of feral pleasures if he had had the equipment at the time. in fact, there are a lot of things he would have done if he were a cis man. but, c'est la vie

he's stealth, but told cuddy because they're besties and wilson felt like he could actually trust her, despite having known house for longer. house found out accidentally, but doesn't tell anyone because (his words) "I'm not a monster, jimmy"

he went off T in his 30s because he thought it would dampen his sex drive and save his marriage (it only worked for a little while). he didn't get back on T until around 2005, which is why he looks so twinkish and young in the first season.

he was in girl scouts as a kid. yes, this is me projecting.

house did his phalloplasty and wilson still does not know how he let that happen. both of them, however, are happy with the result.

before top surgery, he used to fall asleep with his binder on all the time. its a miracle his ribs are intact.

he gets dysphoric about random shit. his paranoid ass looks in the mirror and goes "do you think my teeth are too feminine?" and it gives house a headache

the mcgill sweater was absolutely his chest dysphoria sweater

he used to go on trans internet forums and soak up all the insane information about "how to pass," like shaving peach fuzz, or not eating chocolate because there's too much estrogen in it, or standing in a superhero pose, and he did it, even though he knew it wasn't scientifically sound. again, I am projecting

taub is the only other person who knows because wilson approached him about facial masculinization surgery. he opted not to get it because the way taub said "no offense, but why do you need that?" made him feel like it probably wasn't necessary

he shaves his face for professionalism reasons, but he's actually a very hairy man. being hairy is important to him, mostly because its another arbitrary thing that makes him a "normal man," but also because he knows that people (women and house) find it attractive.

his family is not super duper understanding, but they try their best. his mom beats herself up because she thinks he didn't have a strong enough female role model in his life. they're trying.

that's all I can think of right now. I hope this is sufficient :3

[chlover-my-shingles]

Im kinda bored and moving so heres a smth to make it more fun (its mostly just stuff i want to do but i know id procrastinate on it if i don't so smth like this)

note game time!!!

10 notes : i write a diary

20 notes ; i make up a language ( i have way too much free time) and write the diary in that langaige

50 notes ; i actually interact with people and actively seek social interactions ( i know scary)

100 notes : i keep programming and make a lil game

250 notes : Imake a fanfic of some media (idk yet my brain doesnt do thinking)

and

1000 notes (orbly wont happen) : i do something a bout the fact that i am probably maybe mot cis (idk i have no idea ehat im thinking or doing but its always been like that)(i might come out to some close friends or family members (unlikely), seek personal help, take care of myself and change idk im questioning)

might add or change some stuff depending on how many notes this gets, i dont expect much

EDIT : whatl i wake up amd 110 notes?? in like 9 hours????

[lumsel]

the issue that i have with people comparing tme/tma to something like nonblack/black is that even the "nonblack/black" dichotomy is not actually as simple as that, because mixed race people exist! i know two mixed race siblings who have the same parents (one black, one white) and tho their skin tone and facial features are very similar, one has 4c hair and the other has straight, flat hair, and they are treated in completely different ways and have completely different racial identities as a result, even though, by most peoples standards, because one of their parents is black, they are also black. on the other hand, the straight-haired one does not really consider themself to he black.

beyond that, there is a ton of discourse within the black community as to who qualifies as "black" in the first place. like some argue that biracial and multiracial black people are not actually black, others argue that modern immigrants from africa are not black because black in america is an identity that was so strongly linked to and developed by the trauma of slavery and segregation. some people think ppl from the islands dont qualify as black either because it is considered such a usamerican-specific identity, and some people would consider dominicans to be black based on their appearance, although they themselves typically do not see themselves as black. so to say that "black/nonblack" is a straightforward binary that parallels our own. still-- considering that the concept of "black/nonblack" is based largely on the personal identity of the involved person, it is preferable to the muddled mess of whether someone can be considered affected by transmisogyny or not, which is a (mostly) external factor in contrast to creating a dichotomy that is a simple "transfem/nontransfem" which makes more sense. if we used the affected/excluded language to apply to blackness, it would be "anti-black racism affected" and "anti-black racism exempt" which is kind of a preposterous idea-- i mean, how can you describe racists as "exempt" from anti-black racism? they clearly are affected by it or they wouldnt be racists lol. maybe im being too pedantic, but i really think these issues are going to keep coming up as long as this clunky language exists, because it was poorly thought up by some random layperson who clearly has very little grasp of the implications of the language they chose to use outside of their own personal experience, and because it is such a serious and sensitive subject, objections to its clunky nature and poorly defined characteristics are all understood as transmisogynistic attacks

my main issue with it is that nobody seems to be clear (or interested in clarifying) as to where nonbinary ppl amab fall on this binary. if these people can be called transfems, then surely they qualify as affected by transmisogyny, but at the same time, they may appear to be indistinguishable from cis men and have no interest in legal or medical transition, so its unclear if there is the requirement to be transfeminized in a legal or medical sense-- which then begs the question, at which point does one become tma? there is the matter of cis men who dress in drag, too-- which is why i think people argue that it is inherently related to genitalia, because people will say that a cis drag queen and cis crossdressers can be affected by transmisogyny whereas a trans man who passes as male in all ways but does drag or crossdresses himself is not-- what element, then, besides genitalia or birth assignment, can be said to truly ensure that one is "exempt" from transmisogyny? and i know that people like to noodle around with the secondary definition of exempt that means put aside from, but why not just pick a different word if theres actually this much grey area involved? clarity of language and nuance can only improve our discourses, cramming ones fingers into their ears and going "BLAH BLAH BLAH I CANT HEAR YOU WE SHOULD KILL ALL THEYFABS" is just incredibly unhelpful lol. i mean i use the terms myself so as to not offend my friends but still lmao

sorry i wrote an essay in your inbox lol

On the term "black": in Australia "black" is most often used to refer to Indigenous Australians. The notion of "black" as in of African descent is also understood, of course, we're pretty well americanised so the terminology is imported. And then at that point, when you're using "black" to refer to two completely unrelated cultural groups, then also extending that term to islanders or dark-skinned Arabs is uncontroversial from there. The result is that "black" is just not a coherent political category here (unless meant as shorthand for "indigenous") and so the black/nonblack binary carries even less weight.

[destroyerofgirls]

Having trouble seeing myself as a guy, I always get this urge to detransition because people used to like me more that way. I know it’s not what’s important but I used to get so much male attention before and I miss being wanted. It was so bad for me that I had a rumor started black in the beginning of high school that I was a prostitute so that guys felt okay to harass me and slap my ass in the hallways because I was labeled as a slut. i know it’s fucked up but I miss being wanted like that and I’m afraid I won’t be ever again. Idk what I’m asking, maybe I just want some motivation or attention. Maybe I just need you to make me a guy again. Idk

real talk, I think a lot of guys feel this way. I definitely do. I recently went down detrans blogs again, not pleasant.

i get it, you feel like you'd get more attention as a girl. I mean you're on my blog, so I assume you're attracted to men. you get sucked into wanting to find a partner that you end up basically wanting to please men. which let's face it, majority of the men on this earth are cis, which are mostly straight. and like dating is so hard as a trans person. its hard to find queer people in my area, I'm in a long distance relationship and he likes detrans. it's rough. it's really rough. it just feels easier to go back to being a girl.

but, let me tell you something. you will never be able to go back. you found out who you actually are, you're stuck with it.

we are not girls, period. we are not cis men. we are trans men. as much as you want to pass as cis, me too. our genders are beautiful in themselves. we don't have to be beautiful like women are. we don't have to be beautiful the exact same way cis men are. we are beautiful in our own ways.

cis and trans are adjectives. they describe us. we may look different from cis men. we may think differently from cis men. we love differently, we are unlike everyone else. we are unlike each other. but at the end of the day, we are still men.

we are masculine, we take up space, we are divine. we have the blessing to love ourselves deeper than anyone else. we are blessed to be able to recognize the joy of the little things. we are men. and we're better for it. we are comfortable in our own skins. we are happy.

and I know it is hard. I know that the world tells you to shut up and get back to your place. I know that a lot of us are getting our rights taken away. I know that we feel small.

but we stick together. we lift each other up. we love each other. we support each other. we have built community, and we will continue to build it up.

I refuse to let you give up on yourself.

[crossedwithblue]

Balance and fair exchange in the Scholomance

I'm fresh out of my first Schlomance reread, and, besides thoroughly enjoying the foreshadowing, I have Thoughts about the ideas of balance and fair exchange in the series. I'm a scientist by training and Indian by origin, and both of those come into it.

Let's start with mass in and out of the school (because that was the start of this post). The seniors grow over the course of their four years - a lot. Between 14-18, most boys are going to have several growth spurts, and many girls might have reached their adult height but they're still gonna fill out into their adult body types*. We also know that the freshers get a very strict weight allowance. My hunch is that the collective allowance is the difference between the incoming freshers' and the outgoing seniors' bodyweight. This would preserve the mass balance within the school such that no mana is wasted on importing or exporting excess mass (more on that in a minute!). Presumably, the collective allowance is equally distributed, since if the enclavers had managed to skew it in their favour, it would most definitely be mentioned, plus this also fits well the the Scholomance's impersonal fairness**.

N.B. the collective weight difference is probably less than you'd think. Personally, I (cis woman) was already pretty much my adult height and weight at 14, it just redistributed itself a lot, from my tummy to my hips and breasts. The boys would definitely mostly pick up in height, but given that they were all fed up before initiation, even they'd probably have less of an overall weight difference than you'd think - which is why the weight allowance is so strict. Then again, any equipment they're taking out with them helps push it back the other way.

*(the malnutrition they face in the Scholomance would admittedly hamper their growth, but given that the boys manage to shoot up in height and the girls get their periods, and that they're able to keep up with the gruelling study and graduation-prep schedules, and that multiple people including El are described as putting on muscle, it does seem like the school is at least able to feed most of the kids well enough that they're reasonably physically healthy)

**(slightly but not entirely jossed by the short story in Buried Deep - it could still work in the framework of my theorising, if this was changed after the events of canon).

I typed all that out and then questioned how it makes the magical ingredients work. Food and water take care of themselves via excreting about the same, as do gases. My extremely morbid answer to this is, uh, dead bodies. And the mana generated by the schoolwork and the suffering and the deaths, I guess. IIRC people can very easily lose stuff or have it turn 'bad', so perhaps that helps with the balance of mass too.

Back to my point about importing/exporting mana - mana is a lot of things in this universe. It's bargaining power, it's currency, and it's energy. My headcanon is that the mana is actually the energy that should be wasted through heat when you do anything at all, but wizards have the ability to recapture and store it somehow - which is why everyone has a finite capacity. They're just, IDK, as close to a perpetual motion machine as you can get? Obviously far from perfect, since they have the aforementioned finite capacities and still need to eat and sleep etc. But the way mana is talked about is pretty similar to the way energy behaves in the real world, IMO. The Scholomance isn't terribly hard-rules with its magic but this is one that's pretty consistent. You can't create or destroy energy. You can't get something from nothing, that's not how the world works. Someone, somewhere, will pay the price, even if you don't know who or how or when.

This ties in extremely effectively with the idea of balance and fair exchange that's central to the Scholomance series. The enclaves can't stabilise space out of nothing, they have to borrow it from somewhere (plus the whol deal with enclaves in the first place - I won't spoiler it, but iykyk!). You have to do the work to build up mana, and malia use has its own terrible costs. Aadhya and El's friendship starts with Aadhya brokering deals; El respects and likes her because she does so fairly. The universe is a horribly, wonderfully fair creditor and debtor: it will always, always collect, but equally, it will always fulfil your sacrifices, even if you could never predict how any of it comes due.

For me, El and Orion being drawn to each other fits in with this. As far as I know, karma doesn't work in a 'sins of the fathers' way - why would it, when you're going to be reborn into your own consequences anyway - but El was born to be Orion's counterweight and balance, the golden child illuminating the dark void. I'm sure it's been said before it's very obvious symbology, but still worth including in the list of points. (Side fun fact: 'Deepthi' means 'light' in Sanskrit - it's a very popular name, and of course is El's prophetic ancestress's name. Coincidence? Maybe, but I doubt it very much).

I've talked quite a bit in my previous post about how it seems like Indian philosophy is very deeply baked into the worldbuilding of the series, and I think this is another case of that. Everyone's heard of the concept of karma, of course, but the Western notions of it aren't Thee most accurate. Karma in Indian philosophy and religion is a more long-term thing, there's no 'instant karma'. Most of the time, the karmic consequences won't manifest until your next life at the earliest - and, of course, your karma determines what your rebirth will be. Good karma means you end up as a noble animal, bad karma means you'll be an earthworm, just as examples. This also fits in pretty well with the mana/malia stuff, which I talk about a bit more in the first post.

So that turned into a bit of a ramble of science and culture in the worldbuilding, less coherent than I originally planned, but I hope someone finds this interesting and/or food for thought! Novik does such a masterful job of weaving allegory and philosophy into this series, I love it.