#knew i was trans and nonbinary. i think she assumed i was a woman. but the way she perceived and interacted with my gender was comfy in a

[project-sekai-facts]

How likely is it that en sekai will botch Mizu5. Not as in like their usual spelling and grammar errors but like. They might genuinely mess up the story because they’re “not allowed to translate it like that” or something else? I’d be absolutely devastated if they did that because her identity is a major part of her character.

it's something i am a bit worried about because of their whole thing with they/them mizuki. it's not really something that works that well with they/them ambiguously gendered mizuki. i've said before how using she/her is what would make most sense for ensekai, she presents as female so by default characters who aren't portrayed as transphobic bullies should use she/her. annoyingly this was never really an option because even before the backlash that made them switch to exclusively mizuki's name or they/them when necessary the official statement was "whatever the other characters view mizuki as" which apparently translated to 'only kanade uses she/her and also ena that one singular time that was probably a mistake'.

like path of thorns hinges on the reveal to ena that mizuki is a trans woman. all of the dialogue from the bullies is stuff like "are you[cis girl ena] secretly a boy as well, why else would you be friends with mizuki" and "we're just messing, we knew you were a real girl [unlike mizuki who was born a boy]" like the trans woman reveal is everything for the last few chapters. that just doesn't work the same way if we go into it from the ensekai perspective of ena apparently viewing mizuki's gender as ambiguous. everything builds to that reveal of mizuki being a trans woman, but on ensekai ena is out here they/themming mizuki giving the impression she doesn't know what mizuki's gender is, or assumes she's nonbinary, which recontextualises that entire scene. like if ena already had these assumptions that mizuki might not be cis that card wouldn't be like that. that card is mizuki's POV of ena seeing her from an entirely new perspective, reevaluating everything she knew and putting the pieces together. LIKE ON ENSEKAI ENA ALREADY ASSUMES MIZUKI ISN'T CIS. THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING. IT'S A STORY ABOUT MIZUKI GETTING OUTED AS TRANS IT DOESN'T WORK IF THE PERSON SHE'S GETTING OUTED TO WHO ISN'T MEANT TO KNOW ALREADY KNOWS SHE IS TRANS. sorry it's 3am i can't word it better.

ensekai just shot themselves in the foot as soon as they decided to use anything other than she/her. the story literally doesn't work in english unless the characters are explicitly viewing mizuki as a woman. like ik pronouns=/=gender but we're talking a product that ensekai went super hard on trying to market to the general audience it's she/her or nothing for a female character. they/them has never made sense for mizuki's story since it implies everyone already is unsure of her gender/assumes she's Not Cis, which completely undoes the narrative of mizuki ACTIVELY HIDING HER TRANSNESS FROM PEOPLE. that is her WHOLE ARC.

ensekai could directly translate path of thorns word for word but it's gonna drop the ball as soon as they get to the bullies talking about "mizuki being a boy and ena being a real girl" because MIZUKI HAS NOT BEEN DEPICTED CLEARLY AS A GIRL ON ENSEKAI. even before the swtich to they/them only they were operating on "whatever people view mizuki as" like they've always treated her gender as ambiguous which admittedly jpsekai kinda did too (? in bio) but japanese rarely uses gendered 3rd person pronouns so it works in that game. you can get away with no other character gendering her for 4 years. english doesn't work like that you have to use gendered terms. if you pick the neutral ones that generally connote 1) someone you don't know the gender of or 2) a nonbinary person, it gives the impression that every other character in the game doesn't view her definitively as a woman.

like i think they'll just leave it intact when TLing but like they cannot keep they/themming her after classmate A or whoever literally confirms that mizuki identifies as a woman. and even if they frame it as a "now mizuki's out we'll be using she/her in TLs" it still removes so much from the original story that they had been depicting her as ambiguously gendered from the eyes of other characters until now. sorry if this is a mess as i said it's literally 3:30am

[annie-ave]

t.w. sexual coercion/sexual content

for the TRA's stalking my blog rn)

i actually have slept with a transwoman before y'know.

it was summer after i got out of highschool, i was on dating apps screwing around trying to forget the female best friend i was in love with, hooking up with random men who were six years older than me in random parking lots. damaging myself emotionally basically, because that's what everyone else was doing.

it was consensual sex, although she did insist on not using a condom bc she "couldn't get me pregnant".

I found out later that the relatively short time she'd been on cross sex hormones meant she could, in fact, get me pregnant. I paid for the emergency contraception myself without even asking (even though i was broke af and had just been kicked out by my parents for fucking women) because I didn't want to risk hurting her feelings on her sex and causing dysphoria.

I was 18 and a massive TRA who cared about everyone's comfort but my own.

For years afterwards, i let her talk down to me about how i'm more clocky than she is as a teenager transitioner, what with my hairy arms, PCOS stubble, and stocky shoulders.

It bruised me a bit then, but I prided myself on being a good ally. I shut my mouth because I'd learned from all my liberal feminist instagram activism pages that trans women were the most vulnerable of ALL women, and that they needed to be protected.

Socialized female in a Catholic home with a stay-at-home mother who left a six-figure salary to stay at home and raise my dads children so he could further his career, i'd been brought up to believe that self-sacrifice in women is a heavenly-endowed virtue.

As an annoying lefty from a really early age (still am despite the amount of ppl who want to insist im not a socialist bc i dont believe female people have a dick and balls), I always really LOVED the self-sacrificial aspect of modern activism.

The idea that I could be alleviating some woman's pain by taking on some of it as mine, even if it meant biting my tongue, was legitimately appealing especially because i'd been brought up to believe this was a woman's role.

This transwoman regularly posted online about her extensive drug use and wanting to kill herself so she could be reborn as a woman (even AFTER bottom surgery). I sent her long voicemails consoling her, trying to convince her she looked perfectly feminine on the outside. More feminine than ME certainly!!

And I wasn't lying. She does, she's stunning. When I was a TRA I'd pull up her photos at the dinner table to show my parents how feminine she was.

"Can you really say she's a MAN!" I'd shout, perfectly unaware of the misogyny inherent in assuming "looking feminine" defines womanhood.

I'd find that out for when we attended a sex party together (I went wild and hedonistic after leaving my Catholic household for undergrad, and many of these stories are regrettable but instructive).

I attended with my lover at the time, a sweet butch who was nonbinary herself. there was already a little tension in her attendance. The transwoman i'd slept with confessed, as if this was some horrid secret, that she'd matched with my lover on tinder and was almost convinced she didnt want to slep with her her becasue she was a transwoman.

I knew for a fact my lover had was a lesbian who had trauma with dicks. I also thought it would have been perfectly alright if she just didn't want dick. I had an embryonic idea that it was pretty misogynistic gay men weren't expected to want vagina to the same extent.

But i didn't want to think about that. I KNEW genital preferences were a "TERF dogwhistle".

So when she started pouting at the party after being rejected by my lover. for the second time (talkig sadly to me about how my lover didnt even want to KISS her, and that kissing had nothing to do with her dick and how it was so sooooooo horribly unfair that she didn't have a vagina of her very own) I did feel bad for her. I did see she was in pain. I didn't want her to be in pain. I didn't want my lover to be pilloried for transphobia.

when she asked me if i'd kiss her instead, it didn't seem like a hard decision to let her, even though I had zero sexual interest in her after our first encounter.

i didn't say no- I let her grope me a bit without asking, and consented to touching her chest in return. I did refuse to go further.

it didn't matter. she accused my lover of being a TERF the next day. my lover who also identified as trans.

I still visited her in L.A. after her bottom surgery. This was when I was halfway through discovering radical feminism, and still feeling like a bigot for thinking that the research on children transitioning was actually pretty low quality. I internalized what all my friends told me about TERFS, but I'd also accepted I agreed with radfems. I confided in my partner about how evil I was, convinced i'd be single afterwards. My partner told me I would be ok, as long as I didn't start speaking up about it. how really everyone kind of had these feelings and its most important we let people make their own choices. So i decided to bite my tongue some more. and then she asked me to come see her in L.A.

When I saw her she was still in a lot of pain, especially when dilating (but very happy with her results on the whole). She wasn't well enough to go get food with me so I held her hand and got her water while she lay in her hotel room bed.

I've also seen her since I peaked fully, and despite what some of you might think, no dear reader I did not decide to be awful to her about her transition for no reason, use the "wrong" pronouns, say she looked manly (she doesn't), or tell her I was a radfem.

I didn't see a reason too.

Some part of me didn't want to hurt her, but it was also a pragmatic decision given the kind of online reach she has.

We happened to both be in the same city on vacation so we met for dinner. She regaled me with stories of the sex parties she's been participating in since I left for grad school, complaining that at a recent one only 4/10 of the girls there wanted to sleep with her even though she HAS a vagina now!

she didn't seem to think about the possibility that "a vagina" is not the sole determinant of whether a lesbian would want to sleep with you or not. i see her posting on instagram sometimes about how that hoagie murdereress is a victim of state violence.

i do still reach out to her when i see her struggling. i'm not heartless, but i fully confess to feeling differently when I see her featured as a transitioning success story in the news.

We come from a conservative state originally, and she really likes the camera.

i realize that at this point she can't go back even if she wanted too, and like many (if not most!) radfems i dont support banning HRT for adults partially because I worry about the health impacts of people who have gotten so many surgeries that their bodies physically are unable to create their natal hormones.

I don't want anyone to be hurt no matter how much you think I do. But I no longer believe that means I have to stay quiet and prostrate myself to the idea that humans can change sex.

and I want every female person reading this to know, you do NOT have to sleep with anyone you don't enthusiastically want to sleep with. Self sacrifice in women is NOT a unilateral virtue.

[lakesbian]

here's every way wildbow accidentally made pre-meiosis "russel" thorburn transgender that i can remember. if you can think of any reasons i forgot please add on

his parents named his younger sister "ivy," as if the obvious grandmother-pandering name "rose" had already been used up. blake theorizes that they used a male version of "rose" for PMT, but this is nonsensical--there is no male form of the name rose, and everything he comes up with as a possible option (in other words, everything wildbow came up with as a possible option) is a major stretch. most don't sound even tangentially like the name "rose." it makes far more sense to assume that PMT was afab and had the deadname rose. (this also makes sense on a thematic level wrt how rose thorburn jr is supposed to be the Real heir that grandmother is forcing blake to die for, but that's getting besides the point)

rose has memories of being harassed over the inheritance by her female cousins, and the idea of these memories just being wholly pulled out of thin air when basically everything else involves memories either being split btwn blake and rose or erased altogether is weird

blake is friends with, like. a lot of gay people. textually runs in poor gay artist circles. the idea of them adopting this weirdly cool cis straight guy is funny but it makes a lot more sense if PMT was trans + gay and only got turned into a straight guy (and a straight girl) yesterday, due to the homophobia demon

PMT literally thinks "Besides, why devote any more attention to your son, when you could just start over?  Have that beautiful baby girl you wanted, right?" which is also like one of the only pieces of internal narration we get from PMT in the entire story. first girl they named rose ran away and did some shit with their gender so now they have a second girl they can't name rose but can still try to raise to go for the inheritance

in the same chapter as when pmt says that, callan is like ohhh you think youre going to worm your way in-, implied sentence ending being "-to the inheritance," which is, like. the family knows it's going To A Girl. so.

PMT was childhood friends with paige, who is The Gay Cousin. it is deeply sensible to imagine them bonding over this, regardless of whether or not PMT (or even paige) knew at the time

it is, like, fully possible for a cishet dude to get sick of living with his shitty toxic abusive family and abscond at the age of 17, but also homelessness is an extremely prevalent issue among transgender kids in abusive families. the narrative of a transmasc kid growing up in an abusive, catholic extended family where girls are pressured to compete for a very gendered inheritance + leaving at the age of 17 & finding a new home among a bunch of gay artists is Significantly more compelling than the cis dude alternative. it just is.

okay i think im running out of, like, logical errors that make sense only if pmt was trans prior to the Obliteration, so as for the thematic stuff. like i said, rose being the half grammy decided was supposed to be "real" and blake being the half that's supposed 2 die for her 2 exist, rose just being unhappy and disconnected by nature of existence while blake is the parts of pmt that escaped from the constraints of the family + found happiness, so on and so forth. "catholic grandmother literally obliterated her transmasc nonbinary grandchild by splitting them into two binary gendered halves & expecting that the man they could've been die to allow the acceptable woman--literally forced to dress in grandmother's clothes--live on and do as grandmother wished" is Everything, doing the same thing but to a cis man grandchild is significantly less compelling

Others who r very old/operating on what are explicitly stated to be oppressive and antiquated gender roles as per the book's themes about inherited/traditional forms of harm keep mistakenly calling blake she/her and rose lmao

??? probably some other thangs im forgetting

[autisticjonathanjoestar]

Pride headcanons for School Spirits? (I think it’s called that sorry I don’t go there shdjkfkg)

HI THIS MADE ME SMILE SO WIDE!!! thank you sweet anon for just giving me a pass to speak. unfortunately! (or fortunately!) you have released a demon. I brought pictures!

Maddie is a bi ace-spec demigirl !! & her pronouns are she/they. Nicole and Si make fun of her all the time for being the stereotype of the bi girl with the lame straight boyfriend. every boy they date comes out as bi afterwards like they're a harbinger of bisexuality. doesn't ID as trans but does ID as nonbinary

Si is a trans girl (I have decided on calling her Sidney I think), her pronouns are they/she, & they're not super concerned with sexuality labels but ID as sapphic bc their attraction to Maddie is the most important thing. lol. but she has been/will be attracted to men at least conceptually

Xavier is bi ... he doesn't bring it up often but he doesn't shy away from it either. also I think he calls himself 100% cis and only uses he/him in daily life, but he has neopronouns in the bio of his private twitter (it/hx/they)

I haven't figured out 100% where I fall with Wally gender-wise but he is definitely 100% painfully bisexual. even if it took him a while to acknowledge it. my guy was born in 1965 and didn't have his first pride until 2024 ... sad </3 someone else had a very compelling case for trans girl Wally also ... which I definitely fw I've been chewing on it. either way there are some gender roles here that need unpacked

Rhonda is 100% a DYKE!!!! a girlkisser. a girl lover. her comphet has done horrible horrible things to her unfortunately but I think once she realizes that liking girls is actually a thing she can do, and girls' crushes on girls are actually real, she'd be unstoppable. I think she'd be kind of ambivalent about pronouns, like... she's never felt uncomfortable being a woman but she knows she's not the most feminine person in the world so if someone was like “well have you considered pronouns...” she would tell you to use “whatever” but it doesn't make her not a woman. GNC cis I guess

Janet is an ace lesbian !! she doesn't care about sex she cares about beakers and such. it's not a label she comes across on her own (especially considering her upbringing & when she grew up) but she feels such an immense relief when it's explained to her. ever since she was a little girl she knew she never wanted to marry a man. I think she'd stick with she/her bc she's just glad that being a woman is less of a prison than when she was alive. it's still kind of a prison but much less.

Quinn is a pan trans girl (she/her) <3 I think she came out as trans as a little girl to her family but started actually transitioning (at least socially) in middle school. she came out as pan as soon as she heard of it & I think she would love putting little pan flags on everything she owns

Yuri cares NOT for labels!! he's not gay but he's not bi but he's not pan, he's not cis but he's not nonbinary, he's definitely queer but beyond that he's just himself. he mostly uses he/him pronouns because he's been using he/him pronouns for like 50 years, but if you sat down with him to have a conversation about gender he talks about it being made up and that he's not a man, but he isn't not a man, because what makes up a “man” is a stupid concept anyway, and you'd say “so are you nonbinary?” he would shrug and go back to his pottery wheel

Nicole & Claire are both cis lesbians I think. Claire is deeply deeply closeted though I think, she's kind of into her own image (especially towards the beginning of the series) & especially concerned with how her parents see & treat her. I think hooking up with boys she shouldn't is her desperately trying to have some control over her sexuality (it's not really working). plus Xavier looks kinda like a butch lesbian if you squint so it's fine. Nicole's sexuality isn't a big deal to her (I also think she's into Maddie but assumes she has no chance with her because Maddie always has some lame boyfriend). she's not out to her parents but is out to her brother + on social media

bonus: (since I ran out of image space) I think Mr Martin is aromantic & gay but probably wouldn't call himself aromantic. and does not want to acknowledge that he's gay because he has enough problems. this is why he killed himself after his female fiancee left him because he cannot pretend to date another woman. imo

[dracunettes]

Primos — LGBTQ+ Headcanons

I've wanted to make a post like this for a while, but just now got around to making a little edit after I watched the latest episode yesterday. Here are my HCs for each of the primos' genders/sexualities!

Tater — I kind of went back and forth on this one for a while, but I definitely think she's bi! I really like GwenTater as enemies to lovers, but I also could see her having a crush on Aaron G. from the series bible, assuming he still exists in the universe of the show.

Nellie — I didn't get into this headcanon until I watched a video on it, but Nellie is nonbinary and transmasculine (he/they)! I'm afraid he was born to be an annoying little brother 😭 I do think he'd still use/keep the name Nellie though, it just fits them!

Cousin Bud — I feel like I'm the only person who's on board with the HC, but he just gives me such strong trans vibes. I don't know why, but he just does! I also feel like he's someone who is capable of being in a relationship with almost anybody, and would probably describe himself as pan. (Gordita wants to give him top surgery as a science experiment and he strongly refuses out of fear that he'll die in the process even though he appreciates her being supportive)

Big Nacho — He's probably the straightest of all the primos to me (but not in like, a bad way lmao), but I also think he's a big ally to all of the others! (One time, the Skid called Cousin Bud, Tabi and Nellie slurs so Big Nacho punched him into Fresadena)

Lita — Bisexual -- it's literally canon! This might be me projecting, but I also think she has a preference for dating non-men/women.

Tere — Bisexual as well. I could definitely see her being the most boy crazy out of all her sisters! My headcanon is that she has a crush on a boy that plays basketball at her and Tabi's middle school. Plus, she's a Cristina Vee character — almost every character of hers I'm familiar with (and I've watched so many animes she's in + every episode of Miraculous Ladybug several times) has major bi vibes lmao.

Tabi — Trans lesbian. I started to headcanon her as trans after finding out that her voice actress, Nomi Ruiz is a trans woman, and I feel like it would make for a really good backstory for her and Tere's relationship with each other. My headcanon is that Tabi's known ever since they were super young/before Toñita was even born; since her and Tere are only a year apart in age (according to the pitch bible; in my HC they're 16 months apart specifically), they would fit into the same clothes, and one day, she tried on some of Tere's clothes because she thought they were really pretty, and loved the way they made her feel. Tere found out after a little while, and Tabi told her that she felt more like a girl, and even though they were super young and didn't really know what it all meant, Tere always supported her! Ever since then, they started wearing matching clothes and their parents encouraged it (even though they didn't know Tabi was trans yet). Then, when they found out they were getting another sister, they finally told their parents and thus, the T-Sisters were born! My HC is that she has a huge crush on her classmate and friend at school who's on the girls' soccer team, and is also Carmela's younger sister — that's how the T-Sisters knew her before Big Nacho did!

Toñita — This one is kinda subject to change, but I feel like she's an ally. She doesn't really have a crush on anybody (considering she lives in an overwhelmingly female family/house boys her age prob disgust her lmao), but is super supportive of her older sisters and all her primos!

Scooter — Bisexual. Because he's so shy, he didn't really want to ask questions or let anybody know, but seeing Lita be open about her sexuality really helped him come to terms with it, and helped them bond with each other a little more.

Lotlot — I feel like she isn't straight, but wouldn't really use any label/sexuality to describe herself. She's just Lotlot!

Gordita — Normally, I don't always headcanon every nerdy/smart character as aro-ace, but in Gordita's case, I think it actually fits her.

Nachito — Gay, and has a crush on a boy he plays sports/goes to school with. Only his older brother knows for now, but he's super supportive of him, and all the others would be when they find out as well!

ChaCha — Ally. She doesn't entirely understand what it means (she's 4 and a wild child), but that doesn't stop her from being supportive!

Lucita — Also an ally. Her brother and sister have been a good way for her to learn about people's differences, and I feel like she ends up being really close with Alex after they start dating Lita!

If you read this far, thanks! I love this show and these characters sooo much :)

[velvetvexations]

I think we need to like place the term socialization on a high shelf until people will learn what it means properly. Like it's just a term to indicate social messages and influences people receive due to traits and perceptions about them and where and how they grow up. There is no one "male socialization" and socialization isn't even something that Is it's something that one Experiences. Like I wouldn't say that I was "socialized female" unless I had to really really dumb down a concept (especially cause due to being fat, possibly noticably queer, having parents very different from my peers, and most importantly to my own interpretation of my life, a "Weird Kid" growing up, I experienced a set of social forces very different from most of my peers, even those who shared my gender-as-assumed-by-adults. Almost as if the concept of socialization is very complex and intersectional 🤔) but I would say I was influenced growing up by the assumption by those around me that because of my body I Should act a certain, gendered way, which has influenced me, but also in some ways that are contradictory to expectations of some mythical "female socialization" that only exists on the broadest scale imaginable.

Socialization is incredibly intersectional and context dependant and is a process that people experience rather than a determined set of traits about a person. A trans woman might have experienced a so called "male socialization" in that people assumed she was a boy and pressured her to act a certain way and develop certain perspectives, but it's just that: a pressure; It has no guaranteed influence on her in any way. Most discourse (terfs misusing sociological terms to be transphobic, and then people attempting to push back against that while still misguidedly arguing within that exact same framework (often ending up transradfemmy(eg. Trans women were socialized female cause every single young trans girl knew things about women were about them and the opposite is true for trans men(disregard nonbinary people entirely) and all trans women are the same in this)) flattens the idea of socialization into this binary all consuming force that affects every person of x identity the exact same and has no nuance ever and everyone will act as if you're attempting to set them on fire for daring to say that there's nuance to the concept and people can have their own interpretations about their experiences with gendered society

I've seen trans women say they feel they experienced male socialization and those that don't feel that. I've seen trans women talk about how their experiences were shaped by attempts to force them into Proper Gender Based On Body Parts (that all people, cis or trans, experience) directly conflicted with their internal sense of self which impacted how they view themselves and their genders. I'm not going to argue with them about their own experiences of gender and society!? Its shitty to act as if it's a net good to try and force people's lived experiences into the box of Correct Theory just to make a point.

Tldr: it bugs me when people use socialization in the most ass backwards ways to try and prove a point when they clearly don't understand what the term is meant to convey: it's a set of social forces that individuals experience on an individual scale. Not a one size defines a person's entire personality prescriptive label that is unchanging throughout life. People just hate nuance

Socialization is always diagnosed in others rather than based in self-reporting about one's experiences. If someone says "I was pressured to be my assigned gender and that affected me in this way" that's obviously a normal trans experience, but socialization as a term exists to explain the way people are, to take a pattern of behavior and say "this is why that person behaves that way". There's no great way to spin that.

[miscbones]

I am nonbinary.

I used to look like a woman, and now I look like a man.

I'm still nonbinary.

there are people who would argue that because I now look like a man, that I've actually always been treated like a man, that other people could tell this about me even before I knew how I wanted to present myself.

there are other people who would argue that I'll never be treated like a man, because I used to look like a woman and people can tell that about me even though I look like a man now.

I lived for thirty years as a woman, being treated like a woman. being a little girl expected to wear pretty dresses and not get dirty, talk politely, put up with unwanted hugs and kisses from relatives. growing up I learned to laugh at misogynistic jokes and go along with men being coercive for my own safety. I grew into a butch, but being butch didn't save me from being talked over and paid less and valued based on my fuckability. male customers didn't take my advice seriously and would ask the same questions to get the same answers from my male colleagues, female customers came to ask me questions specifically to avoid being judged by a male colleague for not knowing something. it was assumed I couldn't lift heavy things or help customers carry items.

now I look like a man, male customers will try to banter with me about their wives and girlfriends, and I don't laugh. female customers defer to me and apologise and put themselves down to me. male customers listen to me without getting a second opinion.

even so, my doctor still insists that I might want to become pregnant at some point and refuses to do anything "too permanent" in terms of contraception. colleagues, after almost 4 years being out at work, still call me she. it's still expected that I can't lift heavy things, that I'll use the ladies toilet. colleagues will ask male coworkers for advice over myself, interrupt me when I'm talking and ignore what I have to say.

part of this is that I'm lightly gender non conforming, I have longer dyed hair and paint my nails, I have a fruity voice from my voice breaking not voice training. I'm only 5'6". but unless these things are clocked about me by someone, or it's prior knowledge to them that I'm transgender, it's assumed I'm a man and I'm treated as such. I have most of a beard, but if I'm wearing a mask it's 50/50 whether I'll be gendered as male or female. women are more likely to misgender me and less likely to correct themselves at any point during our interaction.

part of this is just transphobia, but not 'transandrophobia' or 'transmisandry'. transmisogyny is the special intersection of transphobia and misogyny, but transmascs don't experience some special intersection of transphobia and..... what? structural anti-male discrimination? not a thing. it's just transphobia, or misogyny, or occasionally misplaced transmisogyny depending on how we're read by strangers.

I never grew up being treated like a man or with male privileges, even when I was a butch. and now I *do* experience male privileges, but only circumstantially, and ready to be ripped away and treated even worse for 'tricking' the person into thinking I was a man, who's now angry that I'm an unfuckable woman and is taking it out on me. people who know that I'm trans don't treat me like a man, because they know I used to be a woman and that's still all they can see when they look at me.

I don't think I have a decisive point here, and I think that's the point. I've seen a lot of posts that are really frustrating to me. some insisting that, in the same way that transfemme people will often be treated as women before they come out, that therefore transmascs must be treated as men. one thing can be true without needing an equal and opposite truth. some people claiming that transmascs experience unique transandrophobia, which when described is just regular transphobia and/or misogyny directed at a transmasc. being treated like a woman isn't an experience unique to transmascs lmao. I've seen posts that might as well be describing my own lived experiences to a T end with "- and this is something transmascs will *never* understand".

I think it's gender essentialist to say that transmascs have an innate maleness that can be seen by everyone even before we know ourselves. what about genderfluid people, and people who consider their transition "I used to be a woman", what about people who only look male but don't consider themselves male, what about transmasc lesbians?

I think people want things to be easy, cut and dried, black and white, and I think transition is much much more complicated than that. I'm in no way denying that trans women are taking the absolute brunt of the current political climate; policies and laws are made to target them first and foremost and hit us as a side effect, in a paternalistic and misogynistic 'protect the poor stupid women from themselves' kind of way. but I didn't immediately gain male privilege the first time called myself 'a guy', or the first time I injected my hrt, or the first time someone called me sir. I wasn't born with it stamped on my forehead in a way everyone but me could see until I figured myself out. hell, there are plenty of gay men who actually are men who don't get male privilege because they're 'too gay' to count as a 'real man' in a way that's immediately clockable and impossible to hide.

maybe being nonbinary in an incredibly binary system let's me see this from a weird angle, idk. my gender hasn't changed, but the way some people treat me absolutely has. but also a lot hasn't changed at all.

I don't know how to end this.

[livingthedragonlife]

happy multigender awareness day!! i am aware of you!! have some q's from that ask <3

1, 2, 6, 7, 12, 21, 23, 30 :DD

yay thank you!!!! i am perceived <3

[here is the ask game in question]

1) What are your genders? Either labels/terms or descriptions :)

I’m a bigender man/woman! The double binary! I also like saying I’m a trans man/cis woman. Cistrans manwoman. Tee hee mashing words together

2) Describe your pronouns. What are they, and why?

I use he/him & she/her, and I usually write it fully out like that (instead of he/she or she/he or something) so that nobody gets to ignore one for the sake of the other, or assume it’s a typo or something. I also say it out loud fully too, so no one can mishear me.

6) Do you identify with any umbrella terms that can encompass being multigender, like "trans" or "nonbinary"?

I am trans, but I am not non-binary.

I guess by definition I’m non-binary? Like I technically fall under the umbrella, but I’ve never identified with it. People tend to assume that “non-binary” means “genderless” which is the exact opposite of what I have going on. I’d rather strangers just assume I’m a binary trans man tbh, because at least then they’d be half-right!

7) Are your genders more fluid or more static?

Static! I am 100% a man and 100% a woman at all times. They are inseparable and making out.

12) Does your gender influence your sexual orientation? I’m double gay. All my sex is gay. Get bigender’d, idiot.

Real answer: I figured out I was bisexual way before I figured out I was bigender, and that hasn’t changed. I think since I’ve started transitioning, I’ve allowed myself to connect more with being a queer man attracted to queer men. My attraction to men has always felt queer, and something did feel “missing” from it even when I discovered being bisexual, so I think transitioning has let things click into place a bit more. My attraction to women never felt “incomplete” in that way, probably because being a woman attracted to women was already queer, so I never had to worry about being misinterpreted as a straight person lmao. And of course attraction to other trans/non-binary people feel queer because duh.

21) What are your favorite things about being multigender?

Getting to do both, I guess!! I don’t have to pick one gender and completely sever myself from the other, I can take the things I like from both and use the pieces to build one whole genderful self!

23) What unique parts about your identity are you proud of?

I feel powerful in being opposites. I’m a man and woman, I’m a cis and trans person at the same time, and most people—including other trans people—would view that as contradiction that would default not make sense, one would disqualify the other. But not for me! I contain multitudes and you WILL be confused by me.

30) What do you wish more people knew about being multigender? Well first, that it exists. That it’s easy and it’s free to be two or more genders at once. So many people straight up aren’t aware that such an option exists—except they probably know about being genderfluid. But you don’t have to be fluid to be more than one gender at once, there’s a whole spectrum of options out there. You can do whatever you want forever!

But close second is that it does feel inherently exclusionary in most queer spaces to be multigender. There’s a bisexual meet-up in my city that I’ve never been to (and never will), because they separate people by “women and femme non-binary” and “men and masc non-binary”—oh, but don’t worry, “you can decide which group you feel most comfortable in!” If I show up there, which room would they decide I belong in? This is a good microcosm of being multigender in all cishetero society, but unfortunately, indeed, in the queer community as well.

A LOT of queer spaces are separated by gender, sexuality, or presentation. I’ve had to wonder which places and people are going to be safe for me to interact with as my whole self, and which ones are going to dutifully ignore the half of my identity they like the least. I have to wonder if people are going to feel betrayed when they learn I’m a trans person who’s still cis, and try to deny me my own feelings and how I relate to my gender. I have to wonder if I’m “too woman” to date queer men, or “too man” to date queer women. Especially now that I’m on T—how long before people start assuming I’m exclusively a man instead of exclusively a woman? What’s going to happen when they find out they’re wrong?

So yeah, I wish people would keep this in mind more often.

[lotuseaterconference]

Like 12 years ago I was a weird little shut-in with gender issues who went to LGBT Center support groups a lot, and one of my friends had a semi-popular blog where they gave people permission to Explore Their Genders and Be Trans. They would also post memes about the beauty of choosing your own gender, like, "Gender is a game and I'm here to win!" Idk, in retrospect, I guess it was typical tucute stuff. I remember people mocking some of their posts on Tumblr in Action and insisting that my friend would never transition because nobody on Tumblr transitions, to give you an idea of the discursive landscape around nonbinary transness at the time.

And it was just... apparent to me at the time, though not articulated as such, that this was just some kid giving other kids advice, and that this person barely knew what they were doing, and also there were forms of gender exploration that they actually disliked quite a bit. Their rl friend came out as a trans dude and they DM'd me on Skype about how it upset them because men suck, etc. They would brag about their Kevin Bacon number re: this trans woman blogger who thought trans men shouldn't exist and everyone should just be a woman or woman-aligned nonbinary person. (People tend to exaggerate about weird gender politics stuff on 2010s Tumblr, esp where trans women are concerned, but this was legit what she believed and spent a lot of time posting about.) And even though I was like, agender in 2013, I remember seeing that stuff and going "Oops, that's about me", and wondering if I actually could come out as a dude and not lose my small support network. Lest I come off better than my friend here, I was still saying weird hostile shit about trans men and railing against "trans male positivity" at the time, because I bought into this trans-inclusive misandry shtick and also assumed that trans men would think I was an annoying trender because I looked like a "theyfab". (I don't use that word for other people but that's basically what was going on with me.)

And it was also weird to me that the tone of my friend's posting about gender was so, like, triumphant, so effusively "you can do whatever you want forever", when the actual reception of their nonbinary identity was not great, in ways that seemed to be kind of undermining their relationships with people irl. I remember they came out to their favorite teacher in high school, and she didn't like the idea of using singular they for them because it seemed ungrammatical. Their parents also didn't really get it or put in much effort to switch name or pronouns at all. Even people at the LGBT Center, where giving your preferred pronouns was somewhat normal, constantly slipped up re: my friend, and I know my friend found all of this super distressing.

Anyways, that was how a bunch of trans stuff (esp nb stuff) felt in 2013-- like it was a bunch of kids educating each other and hyping each other up. Older people either rejected it out of hand as impractical and weird and thought you should just kind of deal, or were curious and trying their best to take it seriously as a concept-- but they were getting all of their info on it from people in their late teens. The adults at the LGBT Center (like, 30s-50s) were very much like "Wow I've never met a nonbinary person before! Huh, that's kind of intriguing". One of them (lesbian in her fifties) was like very obviously considering whether she would have been NB if this had been an option for her growing up. But none of them could offer advice for how to deal with our gender issues or like, mentorship. There was no real sense that you could be an openly nonbinary person in your 30s or beyond, or what that would involve. So it fell to a bunch of very online late teenagers to give strangers permission slips to have pronouns.

What an era dude.

[catboymettaton]

L gender thoughts

ive talked about this before but I cannot recall if it was on discord or on tumblr so here you go. basically I think L would look generally the same regardless of gender, and I believe that even as a woman L would find it most convenient to allow others to assume she's a man.

let's run down the possibilities!

variations on L as a man

cis canon. no notes

trans I headcanon that if L is trans, he realized at a very young age. I believe Watari would support his transition and get him started on T very young so he would pass very well, basically indistinguishable from canon.

if he started transitioning after starting estrogen puberty L would not bind he would not be able to handle the sensations. I don't think he'd care enough to get top surgery, he'd just keep slouching in his baggy shirt and no one would notice. even if other people clocked him they wouldn't do anything about it because hey this is L, the best detective in the world, you do not want to get on his bad side. alternatively if anyone is like hey L why do you look kinda feminine he'd just be like what the hell are you talking about you're imagining things

variations on L as a woman

cis I believe any version of female L would be extremely aware of how her gender would impact how others see her. cis woman L would be willing to let others assume she is a man because that means they'll take her more seriously. she probably deepens her voice with the distorter. also she still dresses exactly the same and does not wear a bra on account of the sensory issues. I imagine her voice is on the deep end for a cis woman and that helps. when the task force finds out she's a woman, she enjoys playing into their shock. like oh yeah you thought I was a man didn't you? gotcha!

trans (disclaimer before this section that I am tme) along with misogyny, transfem L must be very aware of transmisogyny and how to navigate a world where she is at the very bottom of the gender hierarchy. she has a choice to make: live as a man and be taken more seriously, or live as a woman and be happier. I believe that even if she realized as a child, she is already very aware of this dynamic.

Watari is still supportive and willing to find estrogen for her, but he also knows that she will have an easier time being taken seriously if she operates a man. this may play into why she operates so anonymously: both for safety against her enemies, and safety against "allies" who would turn against her if they knew about her gender. she probably avoids being seen as much as possible, thus heavily relying on Watari's laptop and the voice distorter. when she meets the task force, she cuts straight to the point and does not bother to acknowledge any of their surprise that she's a woman.

she still dresses the same because L's fashion is driven not by gender but by autism. I do like the idea of her growing out her hair a little longer though and maybe she paints her nails. maybe she would wear a crop top once in a while but again I don't think she really cares that much about style compared to comfort

-

I don't have much to offer about nonbinary L sorry. I think xe would still look exactly the same as every other L if that helps. nonbinary is such a wide range of genders that anything I could write would be reductive.

[rederiswrites]

I know I'm a day late and a dollar short, but I guess I haven't been Visibly Genderqueer in a while. So sure. I can talk about my trans-adjacent experience.

That's the thing, though. I am not. Visibly genderqueer, that is. If you're a traditionalist, you'd definitely notice that I utterly and completely fail to perform femininity--but then, you also might not. People tend to be very focused on specific features and assume gender and stick with that. My neighbor used to get grumpy because even though she routinely dressed her sons in camo and sports gear, they both had long, beautiful hair, and were both id'd by strangers as girls very regularly. Me, I have big breasts and wide hips, thick thighs, a cute, upturned nose, a fairly conventionally attractive face, and I top out at 5 foot 3 (160cm). I know perfectly well what basically anyone around here sees when they look at me.

They see a woman, married to a man (a very Manly man, at that, both in appearance and habits), with two children. I know that. Even though I am out to anyone who's been around long enough to hear me mention it, I haven't asked for a pronoun change. For me, it's just too much bother. It'd be different if my nonbinary experience were different, but I'm agender. I just don't have a connection of any sort with gender. It's just a sort of void space, a blank incomprehension, though I can observe that This Thing matters a great deal to nearly everyone else.

Well, there's a reflexive avoidance. Long before I had heard words like genderqueer or agender or even trans (when I was young, these words were limited to the queer community for the most part, and certainly not used where I lived), I had a reflexive avoidance of all things feminine. It wasn't a thought. I just knew that I absolutely did not want to wear lace, or pink, or ruffles--yes, we still wore ruffles in the 80's. My freshman year high school picture appears to be a fresh-faced ten year old boy, with short hair, a red and white striped turtleneck, and brown corduroy overalls. But I didn't have thoughts for that, only a feeling.

I envy younger people their confidence that people can and should and will treat them according to their personal relationship with gender. Maybe at 42 I am too old to learn that optimism, even though things are changing so much. I think about going by they/them, and it sounds like teaching multiple overlapping communities how to handle the idea of an agender person. Exhausting. Even though there are trans people in some of my in-person communities, and those communities are making honest efforts to welcome that, a person who just doesn't have any attachment to gender at all feels like going even further back to the beginning, undoing even more of their basic beliefs about the world. Ah, yes, you've begun to accept that sometimes the categories of "man" and "woman" can flip around. Now, how would you like to just reject the entire notion that people necessarily have gender? How would you like to just trash-bin one of the defining elements of Self?

And all this effort, over a concept I don't understand at all. It just doesn't feel worth it.

I am me. My name is Red. I look like this, and I like how I look. It comes with assumptions. Many of those assumptions are wrong. Some of them chafe. But I do not have the time or energy to individually disabuse people of every wrong assumption. I'll just live the way I live, and if that shatters a few assumptions along the way, all the better. And honestly, if you're calling me she or her, I'm probably not there to be bothered by it anyway.

[splatoon-edits]

I'm of the assumption that you're a Shiver fan do you wanna explain some HCs or reasons you like her?👂👂 I'm interested (I like her too 😋)

oh boy. do you even know what you've done? I am going to talk about this blue creature SO MUCH!!!!! (no but fr thank you for enabling me to talk about one of my fav characters!!!)

I'm just gonna be rambling with no general direction, so i apologize if this gets a smidge confusing..... Everything else will be under a read more since i don't want this post to make it hard to scroll through my blog if it gets too long.

so.. Splat 3 was my first game in the series. I knew about the other splatoon games obviously, and i was eagerly awaiting splatoon 3 since by the time i got a switch it would have been a waste to buy splat 2. So i went into splatoon 3 with very minimal knowledge of the characters/setting.

But when i saw Shiver in the Deep Cut announcement trailer??? It was love at first sight. Blue is my favorite color and the swag Shiver has is off the charts. Plus the hype around a potentially nonbinary character?? And imma be honest, i'm a sucker for smug characters. Especially the ones who are secretly failures. It's just one of my fav tropes.

So in short: Shiver was a character who had a lot of appeal for me in the beginning. But slowly over time as i came to learn more about her and the rest of Deep Cut, i came to appreciate them even more in new ways. Shiver is smug, sarcastic, and can come off as mean or over the top. But she is also silly, quirky, and has a lot of love in her heart for others. She cares about Frye, Bug Man, and all of Splatsville. She says silly things that don't make sense. She likes puns. She takes the time to listen to Sheldon's rambles. She is so much more than what you see on the surface. And it can be so easy to see her teasing her bandmates and assume she is mean or cold hearted. But she genuinely is such a fun character!!!!

Her grace, her gnc swag, her cringefail aura, everything about her makes her an amazing character.

And now, for some headcanons in no particular order:

I kinda see Shivers gender as "whatever is funniest/best in the moment. Commit to the bit of genders. But if i had to pick one thing to headcanon them as it would be pangender or maybe genderfluid. Uses all pronouns plus some shark themed neos like bite/biteself and fin/finself and anything else like that. Im gonna be mostly sticking to she/her and they/them for this post just cuz i think that's what people will be most used to. But really any gender hc for Shiver is correct in my head. MTF? Correct. Nonbinary? Correct. FTM? Correct. Genderfluid? Correct/ Bigender? Correct. Anything and anything goes an i love seeing everyone's takes on it!

I'm gonna go ahead and say trans woman Shiver has a special place in my heart. I just feel like i never see anyone hc this but i also feel like it works?? Idk... The same can be said for genderfluid Shiver. I myself am genderfluid so i rlly like that hc!

Mayhaps has a touch of the tism. (me too) I just feel like she doesn't read social cues well. Can mask really well but doesn't do it around Frye and Big Man for the most part. I think all of Deep Cut is autistic tbh. With Frye having ADHD as well. (ME TOO)

I'm caught between the headcanons of "secretly rlly strong cuz of archery" and "lowkey weak cuz it would be funny to contrast w Frye being strong". But i lean more on the side of both of them being strong. Just Frye having more obvious muscles. But if you look at Shiver she def if strong. And graceful. Like a predator built for ambush or stalking. She moves with purpose. Ya know what i mean? Like she seems very graceful and delicate at first but that is NOT the case.

I gotta be careful or this will turn into general Deep Cut hcs cuz i wanna talk about Big Man and Frye as well lol

Loses her temper easily. Can be petty when things don't go her way.

Master Mega is very special to them. She spent a lot of time with him when she was younger and her parents were busy.

Shiver whistles a lot as a stim/just for fun.

Big Man and Frye are the best hype men ever for Shiver. There are certain points in the game where she says absolute nonsense but those two are right there to back her up. They also don't understand what he's saying, but they are gonna act as if it's the smartest thing ever. Shiver thinks she is the coolest thing ever and those two only enable her. (dw. every once in a while they knock her down a peg by returning her teasing)

Shiver is the type of person to spend 30 minutes making her food look pretty before she serves it. It has to look good or else.

Is a decent cook. Frye likes to steal bits of food from whatever she is working on so Shiver will playfully smack her with her fan and shoo her out of the kitchen.

Is very proud of her singing. She worked very hard to get it as perfect as it is.

Probably used to have a violent streak in middle school, would bite people. Has since learned to control her anger better.

Very confident. Isn't afraid of things like public speaking.

Gets annoyed easily when overstimulated. Sometimes snaps at people when the environment is too noisy/bright or if she is tired. Tries to apologizes afterwards.

Speaking of apologies, she is the type of person to do something nice for you or get you food/a present for you rather tha admit she is wrong. Is embarrassed easily and instead prefers wordless apologies.

Is flustered easily. One of the ways to easily make her lose her cool is to do anything remotely flirty or to bring up something embarrassing she did in the past.

I could probably ramble more but it's LATE and i should head to bed. Thank you so much for the ask!!!! I had a fun time talking about my favorite blue goofball. <3

[tincansamurai]

a long post about my exp figuring out gender

i'm seriously so glad that it's so easy to find information about gender these days. just knowing certain things are possible is so important to figuring out who you are.

when i was like 11 and becoming a Junior Poster, even with all the lurking i did i only saw people talk about trans women. of course, this was because people are fucking horrible and love to make fun of trans women. i liked to read webcomics and therefore also read people talking about webcomics and webcomic drama. there was this one woman who got shit on all the time. her webcomic was bad, that's true, but there was also a lot of precursor-kiwi-farms type shit about her personal life and her other website about being trans. people were accusing her of being a groomer (wow! things sure have changed!) because she had a quiz up for boys to take to see if they were trans. for some reason who knows why i was really fascinated by this and read a lot of drama about other gender-y webcomics, and of course i took that quiz. the result was essentially "you're not trans, you're a regular boy." i didn't really know that you could be trans in a way other than being transfem, so i just kinda shrugged and went "ok, i'm not trans". like, i wasn't stupid, and even the tg fetish webcomics everyone liked to laugh at included women turning into men sometimes. but no one talked about those fictional moments with the same terms, and i didn't have any examples of real life people, so i guess i assumed that transmasculinity was a separate, theoretical thing. and if it was only theoretical it couldn't apply to me, of course.

then when i was around 13 or 14 i was reading tab's khaos komix and when a gay trans dude was introduced i kind of broke. like, wait, you can be trans in that direction, for real? wait, you can be trans AND gay?? two big parts of why it was obvious i wasn't trans crashed around me and i absolutely had a crisis about it. entirely internal, of course, because i knew how much everyone hated trans women. and if they thought being a trans woman was stupid and fake, there was no way this new (to me) thing would be well received either. i can perfectly picture standing in the shower, staring at the faucet handle, completely still - or more like stuck, and thinking "i'm a gay man". without qualifiers and everything, no "i think" or "i might be", like i 100% came to that conclusion. it made sense.

i talked myself out of it because it was terrifying. some of the stuff i used to talk myself out of it turned out to not be signs i wasn't trans, but signs i wasn't binary, but i wouldn't know that existed for even longer. plus i had mentally shock therapied myself hard enough that when i did find out you could be nonbinary, i avoided learning more. honestly thank god for tumblr and patient art school mutuals, who have probably (more like hopefully) completely forgotten me arguing with them about how nonbinary identities don't make sense, lol. sorry for being a dickhead. but thanks to this space i couldn't avoid exposure anymore, and that was really good for me. i can't even imagine how miserable i would be. actually that's a lie, i can picture it pretty easily lol.

anyway the fact that kids can get online and learn about just about any kind of gender anybody has ever thought of, and find real people talking about their experiences, and form or join any kind of community about those shared experiences is so so good. meeting nonbinary kids makes me so fucking happy. i'm so glad that it's at least a little easier to figure out who you are these days.

[sorin-sunchild]

This reminds me of a conversation I witnessed between a cis person and a couple of trans people. This poor person was really trying hard to express basically the above sentiment. She didn't enjoy or want more places to ask her which pronouns she preferred because aside from not really liking they/them she didn't really care if she was called she or he that much. In fact she knew that a lot of cis people like herself didn't actually have an attachment to their pronouns in this way either and that being asked that question (what are you preferred pronouns?), innocent as it was, was forcing them to choose an option that did not feel true for them. At the same time she did not feel agender and didn't like being told that was what she was experiencing them. That a cis person couldn't possibly just not have agab associated preferred pronouns.

The conversation was getting off topic and out of hand, but she was fighting for her life to express that many cis people simply do not have an attachment to their gender or their pronouns. Not in a way that makes them trans or nonbinary, but in a way that makes them cis without having a real attachment to being a man or a woman. To these people they just Are these things, or are perceived as these things, and that's fine but they could take it or leave it.

I think quite a few cis people don't understand being trans or needing certain pronouns used to feel yourself because these things don't impact their identity at all. So they have to get their heads around why such things could be So Important to others (not saying it's good especially when they're transphobic just that I've seen this confusion happen many times irl). Once it's explained many just go 'oh okay I guess I get it' but they personally probably wouldn't care if they woke up as the opposite sex tomorrow. They'd just get on with it. You can call that agender or Gender Apathetic if you want but for these people they're just cis. It's also possibly why they don't like to have their gender labelled as being 'cisgender' too. They're non-attachment to gender means they 100% completely do not want it labelled and 'cisgender' can feel like an untrue labelling of something they're just pure vibing with.

Not to say that no cisgender people feel strongly attached to their gender of course. Just that it's really nobody elses place to assume that anyone without a strong firm attachment to their gender and all associated words can't possibly be cis or must at least understand how others feel about gender. Acceptance of this way to experience gender would go a long way into understanding the wide spectrum of gender experiences that everyone has. Not all cis people are the same, just like not all trans people are the same, gender is personal and sometimes the personal experience of gender is just 'I dunno I just work here yeah I like it here I guess it pays the bills what do you want from me?'

contrary to popular belief not everyone has an innate sense of internal gender or care to have one or seek a name for it, some people go their whole lives without questioning their occupation in one of two gender roles, but for some people, if pressed, they don’t feel that internal sense of ‘i am a woman’ or ‘i am a man’, and in that case i feel the switch over to transgender vs cisgender relies on active identification of a gender other than the one they were assigned. if someone’s like ‘idk dude I just work here’ then that’s valid

[fanonical]

Ideas for other characters that would be trans/the various societies' views on transness?

i’m taking kind of a slower approach to deciding which characters are trans, feeling it out & listening to my heart. strangely enough the first character i knew i would make trans was Kass, because who could say no to a travelling transmasculine parrot musician??? other than him i’m not totally married to any particular ideas — just that i want to inject as many trans & non-binary stories into pre-existing BOTW/TOTOK characters, so expect all flavours of trans characters — guys, girls, nonbinary people, closeted, stealth, out, transitioning etc i guess with an emphasis on how their gendered experiences are different across the four corners of Greater Hyrule.

Gorons obviously do not have a gender binary, and i think that whilst they would get it right most of the time they would struggle with pronouns. all pronouns. any pronouns. Gorons are rocks! rocks don’t have genders.

Gerudo, like in the base game, are all “female” with a single exception every 100 years, but my introspection of the Gerudo would also i think address Gerudo trans guys, their relationship to their hometown. like Gorons seem to be able to pass through Gerudo Town, because they’re genderless, so i wanna explore how Link might observe other interestingly gendered people and how the Gerudo treat them. i think over all the Gerudo are culturally on the more trans inclusive side — but perhaps that they expect a commitment to presenting a certain way? in BOTW it seems clear to me that many of the Gerudo in the town actually fully clock Link but just don’t care that she’s not a cis woman — this happens multiple times in this part of the game; i want to incorporate this into the fic. plenty of people will be able to tell Link is trans (or exploring her identity) but she’s not gonna get kicked out over that

Hylians have a very similar deal to us going on — i think there’s a bit less cultural transphobia (but also less cultural recognition of being trans as like an option) but an assumed gender binary that limits their imaginations a bit sometimes. that being said, Hyrule is full of magic. i think if you told somebody from Hyrule that men can become women and some people intentionally seek this because they’d prefer to be women, most Hylians would be like “oh that makes sense i hadn’t thought of that” they have bigger things on their mind i think haha

Zora & Rito i’m still working on, but i kind of want to give them unique gender structures too? or at least explore different parts of MY experiences as trans in these fictional cultures. unsure! i kind of like the Zora just already having a firm understanding of transness that doesn’t really translate well to Hylians? again, not sure yet. fantastic question though!!

[nothorses]

I'm not sure if I'm the only one, but I've identified on and off as a trans man for about five years. I have a very strange idea of what manhood looks like. I don't know what it is or how to experience manhood. I feel like I just float around space, as nothing, until I have strong feelings of masculinity. But I don't even know if I experience masculinity or manhood. Those "strong feelings" are desires to look a certain way (overused word, but "gender envy" describes it mostly). But I don't look like a man. People assume I'm a lesbian (which I identified as for a while) when I'm mainly mlm now. Family and family friends use feminine language (she, girl, woman, daughter). I was out as nonbinary because I feel like it was a good compromise. I am kinda nonbinary in the sense that I have funky views about gender but I have such a strong and irresistible urge to be a man I want to curl up and cry until I drown in my own tears.

I want to be a man. A full man. But I'm pre everything and sometimes I don't know if I'm a man because I work myself into a hole and feel like I can't call myself one.

But part of me doesn't want to lose my feminine side. I feel like I'm grieving and holding on to my femininity. I feel like I can't be a trans man who acknowledges femininity and genderqueer-ness. I'm so scared to accept my trans man identity, which is why I am on and off about it. I was taught to squash it by so many sources.

How can I feel manhood in all its beauty? How can I accept it and love it and hold it close? How do I even know if I'm a man? If I can call myself one?

If you want to be a man, you can just be one. that's what being trans is.

I kinda get how you feel, though. I couldn't feel like I was a man until I transitioned a whole lot more, and though I described my gender to people as "trans man", internally I thought of myself more as "want to be a man" or even "want to be a trans man". As I transitioned, it became easier to call myself a man. It's still something I'm working on.

But I think that was an easier place to be in, at least. Thinking of myself as "wanting to be a man" and "going to be a man" was better than thinking of myself as "idk what I am but I wish I could be a man, I wish I knew who I was, I wish I knew what to do, but what if I'm wrong???" all the damn time. That kind of uncertainty gets exhausting, and even having that goal- of transitioning and "becoming" the thing I, by all valid definitions of transness, already was just by virtue of wanting it- gave me a level of certainty and hope that I was severely in need of.

So if you need a stepping stone, here it is: you don't need to believe you're a man right now, if that's too hard for you. You want to be a man, and it is within your power to become one. You will, if you want to, become one. If you change your mind at any point, you can just... stop becoming one, or become something else. It doesn't matter what that makes you now, because this is temporary, and it's not who you ultimately are.

idk if that helps, but either way, I hope you're doing alright and I wish you the best. 💙 good luck.