#like if someone is saying something like 'nonbinary people give binary trans people a bad rep!!!! and so I hate them!!!!!'

[crabussy]

man its absolutely crazy how far simple politeness gets you. if you are polite to strangers on the internet who hate your guts 9/10 times they will LISTEN to you and TAKE YOUR POINTS INTO CONSIDERATION????? I've have genuinely very pleasant conversations with people whose worldviews COMPLETELY contradict my own and have come away knowing that they're thinking about what I said and may have even changed the way they think about the issue we discussed. it feels like it shouldn't work but it works almost TOO well. if people feel like you're listening to and considering THEIR opinions and experiences, they'll listen to yours too. it goes both ways!!!!

[gonzo-rella]

Headcanons: Being Wallace Wells' Trans Boyfriend

MASTERLIST | AO3 | KO-FI

EDIT: Although this fic was written with a more binary trans reader in mind, I'm hoping this fic will also be suitable for AFAB nonbinary people who are masc or male adjacent, which is where I might be at. I'm currently working dating hcs for Wallace with a nonbinary reader (which will be suitable for both AFAB and AMAB readers).

Relationship(s): Wallace Wells x transmasc!reader (romantic)

Warnings/info: Trans typical stuff, like dysphoria, transphobia etc. etc., sexual remarks, he/him pronouns for reader, headcanons were written in one sitting, when I was feeling not great. (Let me know if I need to add any)

(A/N: I've been reading a lot of Succession fics over the last few days. Last night I read a Roman Roy fic and for some reason it gave me this overpowering wave of dysphoria that I still have yet to fully recover from. Annoyingly, I have yet to actually watch Succession so this could have been avoided; I just think Kieran Culkin's hot and very gender so I couldn't resist pretending that someone with his face was my boyfriend. Reading about Roman made me think 'oh shit. Maybe I'm a flawed and pathetic little guy on the inside. But I just look like a woman who likes to kiss women and everyone treats me like a girl and uses my girl name and girl pronouns and that feels super gross and makes me want to live in a hole. Now I'm going to feel bad about that for the next few days.' So, yeah, I'm having another transmasc crisis that I'm using fanfiction to get me through. I figured Kieran Culkin started this, so I might as well write something featuring a character of his that I can actually write for. This is a self-indulgent and self-explorative treat for myself, but I hope that transmasc readers can enjoy this, too. If you'd like more Wallace stuff, trans stuff or Wallace AND trans stuff, feel free to send in a request. I really want to provide more fics for transmasc readers because you guys are super underrepresented (and, y'know, Papa Gonzo-rella wants to explore his gender a little more). Also, I swear that I will get around to watching Succession, and I more than likely will end up writing for it when I do.)

Respectfully, Wallace does not give a shit that you’re trans.

Of course, he doesn’t flat-out ignore it, because it’s part of who you are, but it isn’t an obstacle in your relationship by any means, and it doesn’t bother him in the slightest.

If you’re feeling dysphoric and/or otherwise insecure about yourself, he’ll pinch your cheeks and tell you how handsome and sexy you are.

If you’re feeling especially bad, like ‘not getting out of bed and hiding from the world’ bad, he’ll keep you company and say what he can to reassure you.

Being mushy and sincere truly isn’t his thing, so whatever he says will sound either slightly insensitive (but still pretty sensitive as far as Wallace goes), facetious or like he wants you to get over how you’re feeling so he can fuck you.

But, he genuinely doesn’t want you to feel bad and you can tell he cares, because otherwise he wouldn’t be there for you when you're feeling your worst.

Wallace is very affirming, but in his own Wallace way.

He lovingly refers to you as his lameass boyfriend.

If Scott ever compliments you about anything, Wallace will call him gay.

He will shout ‘gay’, like the Senor Chang meme.

"Hey, man, I like your shirt-"

"Ha, Scott's gay!"

"I-I'm not gay! I just like his shirt."

"What's wrong with being gay, Scott?"

"Nothing! There's nothing wrong with being gay!"

"You really need to work on your internalised homophobia, Scott. To think, my gay lover and I share a bed with a bigot."

If you’re doing anything that he knows will make you dysphoric or exacerbate your dysphoria (for example, scrolling through social media and looking at cis dudes that give you gender envy) he’ll shut it down.

Using the aforementioned example, he’ll snatch your phone off you and close the app, saying: “Nope. Make better decisions.”

And, while you’d initially be annoyed at him for grabbing your phone, you will appreciate it in the long run.

If you have testosterone shots but you’re not a fan of doing them yourself, he’ll begrudgingly help you with them.

He will make a very Wallace comment, though

“Stabbing? I didn’t know you were that kinky.”

If anyone’s a dick to you about being trans, Wallace is always ready to go with a snide remark about the other person, because of all the things you could possibly mock his lameass boyfriend for, being trans is at the bottom of that list.

(He should know, as the person who makes fun of you the most.)

Also, he cares about you very, very much and he doesn't want people being transphobic to his boyfriend.

If you’re cool with it, he will make trans jokes, but nothing ‘attack helicopter’ or ‘attack helicopter’ adjacent, because he’s too clever for that and he can come up with better material that isn’t just derivative, transphobic garbage.

If you get your period and it makes you at all dysphoric, be prepared for this exchange:

“Don’t worry. Scott pissed blood last month and cried about it and he’s still a man.”

“Did-did he go to the doctor?”

“I don’t know. He seems fine now, though.”

If you still have boobs and don’t mind them being touched or otherwise acknowledged, he will use them like a pillow.

If you decide to get top surgery, he will make the following request:

“Well, if you’re not using them, can I have them? I need a pillow that Scott won’t steal. And, he wouldn’t steal your tits, because he knows I’d call him gay for it.”

“Why are you like this, Wallace?”

“Selfish.”

Being trans doesn’t make your relationship much different from any of Wallace’s other relationships.

You’re just, for better or worse, another one of Wallace’s boyfriends.

[velvetvexations]

re anon who talked about claims that white people can't be nonbinary, I have seen it. this was The Discourse in a corner of the internet i was in in like 2021. this person kept literally saying white people can't be nonbinary and quite a lot of people were agreeing with her.

isn't it sad this is the world we live in

It's funny (sarcasm) how many TransRadFems go on and on about how awful they were treated when they were still perceived as "feminine/gay cis men" and how being misgendered as a man as a trans femme is terrible (which is true, of course), but then turn around and say that (trans/cis) men/people who are perceived as men/etc don't ever experience anything bad at all ever. Like.... If that was true, you wouldn't have experienced any abuse while in the closet and would be happy to be misgendered, because it would give you more "privilege" to be seen as such. And yet, somehow, you realize that both of those things aren't actually true and that (real or perceived) manhood does actually come with a lot of oppression. But only when it comes to trans femmes, for some reason, and never trans mascs. It's almost as if you do know that trans mascs experience gendered oppression for being both trans and men, but deny it simply because you're a bigot and want to get away with being a transphobe. Hmmmmmm. 🤔

sometimes they'll admit to trans men being perceived as women but with the caveat "being treated as women is our best case scenario!" as though trans men aren't, just as trans women are, seen as deviants that need killing or correction rather than "just" your average every day cis woman

"Ohhh trans men think of themselves as women/AFAB which is badddd" actually I think of myself as a male cursed by a powerful wizard :)

wizards and magical hot springs are the number one leading cause of trans people

Male cursed by wizard here again tho. I do actually kind of feel a disconnect from the wider transmasc community, as I never feel like I was a woman or experienced what it was like to be one? But that's because I am extremely autistic and weird and have thought gendered expectations were ridiculous for as long as I can remember, and as such have been largely dehumanized by my peers in a way that most girls and "girls" haven't, if that makes any sense? But that doesn't mean other transmascs are wrong for feeling connected to womanhood on some level, it's just not something I can relate to at all. (I don't relate to manhood either for that matter, but that seems to be a more common experience)

gender is a wildly complicated thing and takes a lot to really examine, it's usually different for everyone in small ways

"trans men don't experience misogyny if they pass, but trans women always experience transmisogyny regardless of whether we pass or not" is a WILD fucking take. imagine 'we can always tell'ing your feminist theory as a trans woman. could fucking not be me.

soulgender sixth sense is especially sensitive to trans women whose gender is super special and radiates an aura of purity

Crazy take, feel free to tell me im wrong but i dont think anyone is inherently binary or nonbinary unless specified. I think that every single person on this earth has a slightly different gender (humans are akin to snowflakes and i do not mean this is a derogatory sense). You could put a group of perisex cis women into a room together and all of them would have varying degrees and opinions on what their cis-woman-ness means to them and the same goes for every other label and identity group. And just because someone defies whatever cultural and social norms of identity that have been put on them doesnt automatically make them nonbinary.

it's all just words

What do you think of the "drag is misogynistic" discourse? To me the argument I see is "they're cosplaying being a trans women and thats bad" Which.. sounds exactly like a terf argument but with the word trans slapped in it.

it's a TERF argument and I'm not even into drag

Every time I remember the blahaj discourse I want to simultaneously laugh & light a votive for the trans community's mental health. I am being told by folks who are younger than my personal obsession with sharks (22+ years running let's go!!!) that I cannot possibly fathom the appeal of a stuffie in the shape of a shark, and if I get one anyway, it's appropriation. And yeah, that discourse died pretty soon out of the cradle, but holy shit! It existed! I really hope, for the sake of all involved, that they feel sheepish in the future; better the embarrassment than doubling down on such a — frankly! — ridiculous mindset.

your AFAB man brain simply can't comprehend the true transfymynyn nature of sharks

Idk if this makes me racist but like. It is actually pretty uncomfortable seeing people use non European cultures having 3rd (or 4th or 5th or 6th etc) genders as proof transphobia is a western thing or whatever. Like. Idk I'm biased but as a (relatively) binary trans individual, I don't want to be relegated to a 3rd gender..? Id like to live as any other man, not some 3rd or 4th category of woman-that-acts-like-a-man. I'm happy for the people that see themselves in 3rd genders, but for me it just feels like a painful reminder of how otherized trans people have been historically.... (also I think it's kinda gross to prop up non European cultures as inherently so much better and great and a homogenized soup of betterness instead of. Yknow. Nuanced cultures with their own unique problems and bigotries and positive qualities. Like indigenous cultures don't have to be perfect for colonialism to be bad actually. But that's a separate thing)

yeah it's such an over simplification

just saw someone compare trans women to the omelas child I hate it here.

hard to overstate how much of a pathetic worm one would have to be to say that about themselves with zero irony

help a post appeared on my dash saying "trans men benefit from male privilege" and one person who reblogged it had "transphobes DNI/transandrophobia truthers DNI" on their header

yeah that's the people you wanna put out there first as a DNI trans men who think they're oppressed

Sorry if your inbox is a bad place to vent about this, but I'm so sick and tired of the way Go To Therapy is slung around these days, both as a stealth insult to imply someone is 'crazy' and needs to be 'fixed', but also as the genuine go to (often only) advice that treats it as some sort of fix-all solution. I was deeply traumatized by therapy as someone who's been in and out of it since pre-k and only finally decided to stop going for good in their 30's and being bombarded with the advice to Go To Therapy in every online space I'm part of is exhausting and triggering to the point that I have the word Therapy blacklisted on tumblr. And I can't like, talk about it without being told I just had the wrong therapist and need to keep trying until the right person magically comes along to fix me, as if I haven't spent my whole life trying to force myself into the mold of recovery. Someone not being able or willing to keep trying to heal in the Approved way is often treated as a red flag and a moral failing, and even my own closest friends have this idea in their heads that therapy is absolutely good for everyone and the only valid reason to not be in therapy is not being able to afford it. I'm just tired and I don't want to heal anymore because I don't think I'll ever be healed enough to satisfy anyone, I don't want to get up over and over and over, I want to stay down and rest.

love you anon <3

[spacelazarwolf]

That reply completely glossed over op's point that if you're GNC and you want to go to a business meant to aid you in your presentation (an explicitly GNC presentation!) you're more than correct in feeling unsafe. The kind of nb people they're referring to are explicitly non-GNC in their presentation. Every time I go to the barber I feel anxious and worried at what their reaction to me, extremely non-passing trans man, will be. The same goes for a non-passing trans woman (augmented, even)

The most the average nb person who isn't going out of their way to present differently from their agab (which is VALID, btw. Like the op said they don't *owe* anyone androgyny) would have to deal with is misgendering, but for the most part I don't think a nail salon is going to ask for your pronouns when you come in and refuse service if you give the "wrong" ones

yeah i think people were getting very fixated on that example and not really understanding what the point of it was. part of it i think is because the op didn't explain it very well, but also this is tumblr dot com where we piss on the poor daily. the point wasn’t “asking for a trans friendly business if you’re not visibly trans is stupid and bad”, it’s “are you afraid someone isn't going to understand that you're nonbinary and will assume you're cis unless you say something? or are you afraid someone will refuse you service or treat you poorly?"

when i was pre t and looking for places to get my haircut, when i kept it longer and more "feminine", i didn't have a problem finding places to go. i just showed up, said i wanted a trim, and that was it. when i decided i wanted to cut it shorter and get a "men's cut", i had a lot of trouble finding someone who would even do it. over and over i would get hairdressers (all women) who would give me pixie cuts instead of men's cuts. i once spent two hours at the salon repeatedly telling the hairdresser "go shorter" because she literally would not just buzz it and insisted we go little by little in case we went "too short." but they still provided me service. it wasn't until i found my current hairdresser, who is a gay man, that i started getting the cuts i actually wanted. and now that t is making my voice drop and most importantly in this context changing my hairline in a noticeable way, it is imperative that i have a barber who is trans friendly. because people can absolutely react badly to discussions about pronouns, but when there is a physical marker of Gender Difference, that's when i noticed people started getting more aggressive. that's when i started to notice "oh this isn't just really uncomfortable and shitty anymore, this person doesn't want to mock me, this person wants to hurt me." both sucked, but one was significantly more terrifying to experience.

an example that is probably more relevant to the topic and what's currently happening in my life is a conversation i had with a friend of mine who is nonbinary, was assigned female at birth, presents feminine, and has no interest in any aspect of medical transition. love that for them! but trying to talk to them about losing my access to hrt is nearly impossible because they simply do not understand the severity of it. they have compared me losing a job because my coworkers found out i was trans, and being unable to do anything about it because my state is an at-will state, to their coworker misgendering them their first day at work when they were not wearing their usual pronoun pin.

does getting misgendered at work suck? yeah. does it suck to have to wear a pin with pronouns on it just to get people to use the correct ones? yeah. is this indicative of a larger societal problem with cis normativity and the gender binary? absolutely. but the sting of being misgendered in the moment and having to correct someone (who from then on used the correct pronouns) is absolutely not the same as losing your health insurance and only source of income and housing all within the span of two months.

the problem isn't that You Must Be This Oppressed To Talk, the problem is that interrupting a conversation about the government legislating your right to exist to center a moment of personal discomfort is an asshole thing to do.

[threepoint14art]

HELLOOOO for pride month i wanted to share our headcanons for fnafhs!!!!! coupled with some edits with our designs!!

Under the cut there's individual commentary about all of em!

Freddys afab, and only goes by he/him with the animatronics. He didnt tell them he's male or anything. What happeend was they they were all talking to eachothet, getting to know eachother, when chica realized she forgot to ask his name. Meanwhile freddy had though he heard Fred, so he wss on his own little world and asked to the air ‘Fred?’ so they took that as his name and he hasnt ‘corrected them’. (This is my (loop’s) work around for those twins basicallly having the same name.) Hes called Freddy and not Fred bc Chica gives them all nicknanes , Freddy, Foxy, Goldy, instead of Fred, Fox, and Golden. ( Bonnie… you bastard you already fit…. cannot change his name to Bon without nuking Bons actual name). He hasn't thought about his sexuality because he thinks he's undatable, Dysphoria levels are very high, hes contantly ‘out of it’ in his own body. feels like hes just, piloting it, distant from himself and the now. whenever he does come back doen it feels awful fir a bilion reasons 👍 this makes it hard for him to identify the feelings he has about himself since its all so fuzzy and distant. hes not thinking about his sexuality, he doesn’t think anyone would really date him so, fuck if he knows! Bonnie is cis demironantic and unlabled. Goes by he/him. One of his names is María (Bonnie María) so that plus his longer hair means he gets misgendered as a CIS guy and I think its rlly funny. He's not thinking about romance because "no one would go out with him", enter Bon with a nuke Chica is cis and Bisexual. Goes by She/her. Her bisexual awakening was magnet hatsune miku lmao Fox is afab trans guy, stealth about it, and bisexual. Goes by he/him. He figured out he was trans PRETTY early on so no one but his family really even knows, he practically has no dysphoria. Golden is amab nonbinary and pan (they/them). Being famous is the worst thing ever you could do to them, people know their dead name and sorta treat them as a gay man rather than someone nonbinary and it's really bad!!! Sort of wishes they fell into some binary so something about them would "change" and so that people would realize they have changed, there is no way to "pass" as nonbinary and it drives them a lil crazy Fred has not been born (sorry low blow), but if they were they'd be amab, nonbinary and bisexual. Still figuring stuff out but eventually he will settle for going by He/they Meg is afab, genderfluid and pan, goes by any pronouns, idek what else to say <3 Bon is afab trans guy and gay, goes by he/him. He and Malva (usagi) are twins and just switched names and lives and gender! so he's stealth to everyone EXCEPT his sister, this includes their father! who is awful!! and this makes him super repressed and ill about being gay, yeah. Both he and Malva lied on legal documents to look cis since they exchanged identities and all that joy is amab trans girl and bisexual, goes by she/her, also famous so people also know her deadname </3

Toddy is afab and cis, she's NOT aware of either of her flags, comphet queen, "dating" bon because it helps them both feel so normal but its not working out and it never will! Seeing the nigthmares all date eachother made her think "oh wow not being monogamous is a thing" and if she thinks of malva and joy thats HER BUSINESS and her business only. Also fun fact her parents are divorced not because they hate eachother but because they realized they were both aroace, epic. Goes by she/her Deuz is amab bigender gay and poly, the nightmares are a polycule. She is not that dysphoric most of the time and goes by He/she Maggie is afab trans guy, bi and poly, Femenine trans guys are epic and he is one, gets misgendered a lot because he doesn't bind and wears makeup and croptops and all that. Goes by he/him and she/her ONLY with his partners. Onnie is amab agender, gay and poly, it used to be forced to have really short hair because it's dad is awful (also bon's dad, yay siblings), so when he ran away he grew it out a lot, goes be he/they/it Onyx (oxy) is afab trans guy, bi and poly, he got kicked out when he came out as trans, he's super happy now tho. He/him Pup(pet) afab demi-boy, his legal name is puppilo i know it sounds dumb thats why they go by pup. He's queer in some way but its impossible to find out given how he experiences feelings and all that (lore tm) so, fuck if i know. Goes by he/they Mai afab demi-girl and sapphic, yay for twins, her legal name is marinette but they go by mai only, she really wants to date but due to how she and pup operate thats kinda impossible and shes super hung up on it. Goes by They/she Lily is afab cis aroace!!! Eak is afab trans guy and gay, he does not really pass that well so he's misgendered quite a bit at school. Goes by he/him Tony is amab cis guy and gay, he's dating Eak, he used to question if he was REALLY gay before eak came out and was super confused about it and then he found out hes a guy and all is well lol Cami is afab aromantic bisexual and nonbinary, though she has not thought about the whole nonbinary thing that deeply at all. Eventually she will use all pronouns but currently she goes by She/her Loon is amab bigender bisexual and poly, is super dysphoric and hates dressing too femenine because it "doesn't fit her", "not cute enough to be a girl and not handsome enough to be a guy", goes by loon when masc and jj when fem. Goes by he/she Malva is trans and lesbian! Unlike Bon she's normal about being lesbian, mostly because their dad thinks she "doesn't look like one" and because generally girls just get an easier pass to be mushy and close to eachother (eugh), goes by she/her Owynn is afab trans guy, demiromantic, ace and poly. Damn share some flags dude you are hogging them. Stealth at school but percieved as a femenine guy and therefore called gay (as an insult) a lot, lied in legal documents to be seen as a guy! he's dysphoric despite passing really well because of very minor things people don't really notice, female scorpions are taller than male ones and he's tall, female scorpions have bigger hands than male ones and his hands are big, etc etc. He goes by he/him Background character jumpscare! Mesero who is named Vincent here, Owynn's older brother who is amab cis pan and poly, he thought he was straight for a LONG while and hated people calling him gay as an insult because he had long hair, sorry to burst your bubble but you are not straight, he eventually became normal about it but it did hurt that people were "right about him" Spring!!! Is amab cis unlabeled and poly, he never thought about labels or anything for the longest time because he thought he was undatable and also was busy with ten trillion jobs, fly low, goes by he/him Bg character again! Novia (ghghg) who is named Leticia here! She is afab cis straight and poly!

Also sorry for not having any of the funtimes, we haven't really thought about them aside from lily, so we have nothing ToT. Any funtime lovers please share what you think about them we really need it

[solarmagickstar]

Not super into Jessie Gender, but I watched their video on "how we talk about trans men" and I've gotta say it was disappointing asf.

As a trans masc/guy I feel like I can't really have an opinion? Like for me it's like I'm too scared to be angry, like if I am it's just gonna be thrown back at me like "oh it must be those testosterone hormones coming out" or "well of course your all angry your a man" like men can't be sensitive at all or something? It's almost always said in a way to "give me euphoria" cause that's how we're supposed to treat men.

At times it really feels like we're being pushed out of queer spaces because we'll if your a guy you wouldn't wanna be a part of the marginalised group ya know cause "we're escaping to get to privilege" right?

I don't feel like our experience with gender is allowed to be expressed openly and we're absolutely not allowed to be GNC. And honestly the same could probably be said for GNC trans fems too, I don't see a lot of them either.

I feel like in Jessie gender's video they kinda didn't *actually* wanna sit with what they said originally? Like when it came to the Barbie movie I wanted to participate in the conversation of girl hood and how that's still relevant to me and how it's shaped me as the person I am today, how much I enjoyed the Ken dolls experience and how they played with masculine fashion in a way I hadn't seen in a while. But honestly I felt like well this movies for the girls so I probably shouldn't say anything.

Sometimes I wonder if we partially do this to ourselves because a lot of us keep to ourselves and don't really wanna be seen half the time. I haven't talked to the trans masc I knew since we all left Facebook, it's so lonely out here and the more I look for trans content the more I see trans fems and basically only white trans masc (with like maybe 2 poc ones but is that really all we get?) It makes me feel like I don't exist. The only places I can see poc trans masc viking or existing is on sites run by a variety of trans people or is run by a trans masc person living free.

When I see that I think, thank god your fucking real. Thank god I see someone like me thriving and existing out there.

I wanna see more of y'all, like actually see y'all, I feel like I'm fading away as more and more content keeps talking about how bad trans fems (oh and non binary but let's not define what you mean or who you're talking about we just throw them in there cause let's be more inclusive right? But only to you? Great) but the amount of trauma that's in the trans masc community is horrific and is not talked about or addressed at all.

In men's spaces there's not room for queer most of the time, so to find a place to belong and essentially get told my issues aren't as important or that trans fems ("and nonbinary" cause again you're lying to yourself by saying this even if your non-binary) then you're fundamentally missing out on our lives. I don't even feel like we have enough data on us because even the trans masc get lumped in with nonbinary or GNC like that's just fucking normal.

I remember a study was out on trans masc and GNC women about how often all of us deal with sexual assault and it's the closest I've seen and it wasn't even good findings it was depressing. I wish I could find it again. But again that study put us with GNC (pretty sure it was cis) women!

Please not this is coming from someone who's been SA'd pre and post coming out as trans. Did you know some people see us as a way to see if they're gay or bi? Like experiment on us, get us drunk and tell us we should just take it because "well you're supposed to be a man right?" We can't even get to these conversations yet and I'm worried we never will.

Do we even exist? Are we allowed to voice our opinions? Are we allowed to be mad? Are we allowed to be upset with our community? Can we do our own studies? Should we be more visible? I'm scared to, I don't wanna show my face I'm a very private person, but do I need to address that? Is that a bad thing? Is it perpetuated by my environment?

I don't know and honestly I just wanna see more variety of trans masc people, I'm scared we're just gonna stay under the radar and continue to deal with the bullshit we always have.

Ps. Jessie gender 100% did the I have a trans masc friend, no matter how much they said "I'm not doing that" they literally were doing it and there was almost no self reflection on that at all. This wasn't really the video I think they thought it was cause all it did was tell me they don't talk to us very often and that at this point I've just seen heart reacts to comments on their video's comments and not any actual responses to what anyone's said on there. It'll be a process I get it but this video was not good at all and I feel like any trans masc who's getting excited about being seen by a bigish YouTuber is like me desperate for anything validation cause that's kinda how starved we are out here tbh.

[earlmothraoffangbanger]

Thoughts on Community, Media Literacy, and How One Conducts Themselves on the Internet.

Before I get started I would like to preface this with the fact that I am currently sick from coming off of medication. I will do my best to be coherent and concise in my writing. Thank you for your patience. Feel free to send Asks if you would like to hear more from me or need clarity.

CW: Mild mentions of abuse, SA, as well as harassment in general. Feel free to not read, your mental health is more important than my ramblings.

In this section, I will cover things I have seen in the trans community that I feel need to be addressed. The most pressing issue I feel is this presumption of guilt or innocence based on an individual's gender identity. Point blank I want to say it is not okay to assume ill of someone purely based on their gender. This is misogyny and there's no other way to skin it.

I've seen this weird idea that Trans Women are infallible to criticism or being called out on bad behavior just because they are trans women. On the opposite side of the spectrum, I have seen people say that all trans men are terrible based on the fact that they are men. If you believe this you are playing into misogyny and mysoginysic ideals. No one is absolved of criticism in this world especially if they are actively doing bad things. You can still be a trans ally by calling out the bad behavior of a trans person just because they're being a bad person or behaving poorly isn't a reflection of their transness it's a reflection of who they are as a person as a whole.

The whole point of the feminist movement is to give people more freedom regardless of gender. To break down the barriers that gender poses. This is not only for cis women but trans women as well as cis and trans men and people who fall under the nonbinary umbrella. Saying trans men have it better than cis and trans women is actively counterintuitive to this goal. Saying cis men have no issues is also counter-intuitive to this goal. For example, many men are taught the only emotions they can have is happiness, anger, and horny and because of this many cis men have poor emotional regulation While this can and does harm society we also need to remember the negative impact this has on cis men be it men that fall under the binary as expected by society, are nonconforming to said societal standard, or trans men who are already not seen as a man enough for some people and constantly have their manhood under fire. Cis men also continuously have their manhood under fire if they dare show any sort of "vulnerability" such as crying or actually being in love with someone. This also comes back around to harm cis and trans women as they can be seen are not feminine enough if they have even just one masculine trait.

This is not to say that cis men don't have an advantage in society, I am painfully aware of this fact. We just need to remember misogyny affects EVERYONE.

Another thing I notice is that trans women can tend to be treated overly delicately which is something that stems from how society treats women in general. For example, there is this media "critic" (if you know me you know who I'm talking about) who despite having actively harmful and downright racist and fatphobic takes on the media she attempts to criticize there are those who think she can do no wrong because she is trans. Her fan's arguments are always "She is a trans person of color there by default you are over-criticizing her." This is actually harmful as it the person in question is not expected to take any responsibility for any of her harmful retoric and actions. And that's just about her takes on media. I'm not even going to get into to the actual allegations of crimes levied against her.

I'd like to conclude this section that just because someone is (insert characteristic here) doesn't mean that they are by default a good or bad person. you need to look at them as a whole and what they're actually doing and saying.

Next, I just want to say not all media has to be happy and nice to be good media. Some media has darker stories to tell and in doing so bring concepts to people that they may not have thought about before. For example, I would have never known that my father was abusing me had I not watched shows that painted his exact behavior as abuse and not okay. Up until that point, I had just thought "Well dads are just like that." Sometimes the stories that are being told bring much-needed awareness to those who need it. That is not to say that you have to consume this media I'm just saying it has a right to exist and a purpose.

Lastly, this is a comparatively small section but I feel is just as important. If you tell people that you want to rape or sexually abuse them or you tell them to kill themselves or you doxx them you are a bad person. There's no other way to look at that. I've seen so many people do this over just little things like disagreeing on headcanons or even someone just liking a character. This could not be a more extreme overreaction. Stop doing this and if you see people close to you doing this stop them too they deserve consequences for their actions. It's disgusting when people get away with this.

Thank you for reading my rambling and have a good day!

[friendsofmedusa]

How could you claim to know anything about the whole of trans people when you solely go off of the people who are bad, who just so happen to be trans?

I am an s/a victim, both of a cis male, and years later, of a nonbinary person. To avoid your mockery, I won't say anything about the fact that although I am still skeptical of men, I try hard not to judge, I will only say it of nonbinary people.

I am a skeptical person, and I don't trust others as quickly as I do women. I can acknowledge that there are bad people who are trans. But I'm not going to see a problem with them as a whole.

What I can't understand, I will give voice to, and what I have a problem with, I will give voice to as well. But I'm not immediately going to dismiss it because I'm angry or don't understand.

So I don't understand why TERFS or " radical feminists "—you're not radical, by the way, you're nothing new—claim to know so much about others' lives, despite the fact that they don't understand anything at all about why trans people feel the way they do so much as assume how they feel, based off of a narrow‐minded, extremist outlook that will only ever see the negative of anything that isn't immediately understood.

Standing up for women and speaking on the struggles they go through, talking about the trans people who happen to be bad, standing up for assault victims, talking about the men that are bad and what's wrong with male culture, that's not wrong, at all. I don't even need to say so, but I would like to clarify it.

But you are extremist. How can you accurately or impartially assess anyone's life—especially one you would never fully understand, even if you were supportive of it, or humble enough to try and learn about it—from a standpoint like that?

How can you talk so knowingly of the minds of people you don't take seriously, anyway?

First of all, I'm deeply sorry about what you went through, that is horrendous and I hope you are well and recovering.

Now, addressing the rest of your ask.

I don't base my opinion of trans people solely on the bad ones, that would be stupid. I've met plenty, both on the internet and in real life, who were good people. And I do believe there are some genuine transexual people, whose dysphoria is so severe that transitioning is the only valuable option for them.

That said, I don't believe in the concept of gender. Or, I think it's a concept we should actively work to dismantle instead of enforcing it, as it's the main tool men use to keep us women under their heel. Gender is nothing but a stinky pile of conservative and downright sexist gender roles and expectations, why shouldn't I be against it when it's actively harming my life as a woman?

And before you say something along the lines of "But trans people are redefining the gender binary yadda yadda yadda", let me just say: no, they are not.

There is literally nothing as sexist as claiming to be of the opposite sex because you don't conform to society's expectations of how you should dress, act, speak. I should've transitioned years ago if that were the case.

But moving on.

I don't see a problem with the whole of trans people. I fully support their rights to housing, jobs, healthcare, you name it.

Who I have a problem with is men, aka adult human males. Reason why, scroll my blog and you'll get the gist. And trans ideology is offering men new ways to torture women.

Just look at all the inmates id-ing as trans to be moved to women's prisons. It's either one of two cases: one, there's an alarming number of rapists among trans women, and women are fucking right not to want them in their spaces; two, you can't take someone's word at face value when it comes to psychiatric disorders (because let me remind you that gender dysphoria still is a psychiatric disorder).

And when you say that radfems don't know anything about the trans experience, you are just plain wrong. Many, many of us are dysphoric women and detransitioners. We've been there, we just didn't fall down the hole of medicalisation.

And that's really the crux of it. You say I'm an extremist, and for what?

For saying we shouldn't unnecessarily medicalise children? For saying that SRSs are Doctors playing fucking Frankenstein on depserate people? For saying that therapy should be the primary form of medical care a dysphoric person should receive, instead of going straight to irreversible surgery?

If that makes me an extremist, glad to be one.

[redtail-lol]

"Critinclus accepts x and y" no it doesn't ur fundamentally misunderstanding the term critinclus

Critinclus doesn't have a strict set of beliefs. It doesn't have any set of identities that it does and doesn't accept. Critinclus people define their own level of inclusion.

Critinclus simply means that you accept people, regardless of how they identify, but you wish to understand why they identify that way before fully accepting them. This is different from an exclusionist, because exclusionists are reactionary. If they don't understand from just the name, they would rather go "wow that's fake" than bother asking. Critinclus assumes the people mean to use their labels in good faith and seeks understanding to determine if an identity really is in good faith. Exclusionists also believe all queer identities have strict rules, or queerness itself has strict rules, while a critinclus accepts and acknowledges that the "rules" are very flexible and that definitions are moreso guides, with outliers in every label, and they simply want to understand the outliers they encounter and know what makes them feel compelled to identify with something they don't "technically" fit under. It is also different from radinclus because radinclus often implies "you're valid because everyone has a right to self identify however they wish!" Which is a good sentiment, and I could see myself being fully radinclus, but to a degree I want to understand why you might feel like a lesbian as a binary monogender trans men (note, I already had my own epiphany about this and don't need it explained, I know now, it's just an example) or why someone would identify their gender as being related closer to animals than femininity or masculinity (I also already learned about this it's just an example) but unlike an exclusionist I wouldn't be reactionary and simply call them invalid because it doesn't make sense on the surface. Instead I would ask, "I don't think I understand, could you please explain it to me?" If they didn't want to explain, I would respect that and respect their identity, but I'd still try and ask similar people why they identify that way to try and understand the first person better.

Warning. This next section starts relevant then I go on a tangent and lose my train of thought. You might waste your time.

Also, when it comes to asking questions, exclus can also ask questions but they're done differently than critinclus. When it comes to good vs bad faith, critinclus ask good faith questions, and exclus ask them in bad faith. Since it's something my sister constantly brings up, let's say there's a critinclus who doesn't understand non-binary people vs an exclus who doesn't get it. The critinclus would ask, "I have heard a lot about nonbinary people, but I'm not quite sure I understand it. Do you think you could explain to me what it means to be neither a man nor a woman? How do you know if you're nonbinary?" The exclus would ask, "I have heard a lot about nonbinary people but I don't think it makes any sense. I don't understand any of it. You can't be- how can you not be a man or a woman? That's not real!" Exclus don't really want to understand, they just ask questions for rhetorical reasons and are meant to make you feel interrogated, under pressure, and leave you unable or unwilling to answer their questions. Critinclus make it clear they want to learn and are willing to accept any answers. Exclus also tend to make it clear what their stance is when they ask, and won't actually care what you say. If a critinclus asked me about my enby identity, I'd say "well, ever since I knew about nonbinary people and the possibility to be something other than a man or a woman, I always felt some connection to the concept. It was always something that resonated with me. But I didn't identify with it for a really long time because I was still a girl and didn't want to give up being a girl. I did know about multigender people but because I'm bigendermeld, I didn't think I was multigender. I briefly identified as a demigirl because of the connection but I am actually a hypergirl and stopped identifying with it when I argued with a gender abolitionist and felt such a strong connection to my girlhood. When I realized I could be nonbinary and still be a girl, I finally felt like I had figured everything out. It resonated with me so much and I'm so happy to know. My gender in particular feels like it's not masculine nor is it feminine, it's completely disconnected, but yet it's not nothing. It's a gender of it's own right. That's why I personally identify as aporagender or aporine, with nonbinary as an umbrella term. Thanks for asking." However, I don't really answer my sister because I know she doesn't want to understand. She wants to lecture me, argue, and convince me nonbinary people aren't real.

I feel like I've gone off topic by now ok bye bye

[goose-books]

3 for Anna and Errans, and also 20 and 21 :3

i meant to remember to answer these before the last day of pride month. and then! anyway,

3. How did your oc discover themself? Did something cause them to question, or did they always know?

(godsong WIP page with links) (for context, anna is god's specialest girl ever and the main character, and she's a transfemme nonbinary lesbian. errans is a minor side character with terrible sideburns and transmasc unswag)

anna grew up in a city where priests have a special gender and pronoun, and she was designated a priest at age 11 by the gods, so her transness started as sort of an occupational thing; she was like, "okay, i'm priestgender," and then progressed to, "wait, i like this gender stuff." you are allowed to be priestgender and also another thing, and getting to explore her presentation at the temple lead to the realization that her Other Thing was womanhood (nonbinary-flavored). more a sister than a woman etc <3

as for the lesbianism, i don't think that was ever a discovery for him; there's no homophobia in ivander and his parents are in a bisexual polycule, so i think he just always knew his future person would be a woman. (i say "person" because ivander doesn't have legal marriage, but there is a religious equivalent if you want to dedicate yourself to someone long-term; otherwise you can just do Whatever. city that is absolutely bursting with gender and fruitiness)

errans i'm less sure about dskhfkdsfkdsnfsd. i know he came out as trans when he was around sixteenish; i think he knew he was bisexual first, and the image coming to me is errans experiencing the "do-i-want-to-date-that-guy-or-be-that-guy" about someone he probably never actually spoke to. i don't get a vibe like he ever loathed being a woman, more so that eventually he just realized he could simply be a man. for free. and was like. "well this is clearly so much more what i'm supposed to be doing"

now i'm thinking about awkward teenage errans and his awkward genvy crushes. god bless him

20. Have your ocs helped you in self discovery? How?

sigh. well i have to tell the story don't i. POV: you are [max], age 12, working on the first iteration of the story that will become TMR (my on-hiatus YA transgender evil-faerie high fantasy). you give the character who will become moon marigold all of your uncomfortable feelings about your body, feelings that are certainly not physical dysphoria because you are cisgender. about a year or so later, you realize that this WIP is full of cishet white people (i have since remedied this), and you should really add some diversity. hey, moon's got weird body feelings! what if you made her genderfluid? that sounds great! you are not thinking at all about where those weird body feelings may have come from or how this may reflect on anything at all.

POV: you are [max], still age 13ish, and you've got a new WIP (it's my also-on-hiatus NA monsters-in-NYC thing). you are going to put a binary transgender person in it. not for any specific reason. you just wanted to. who can say why. certainly not you. anyway you've never done this before and you are a little nervous because how can you, as a cisgender person, accurately represent a trans character? you muse about how to write dysphoria as you dress up for an orchestra concert, in an outfit that is extremely feminine. halfway through, you get derailed by crying real tears about said feminine outfit, because now the boy who sits beside you in the orchestra will know that you are a girl (because your long hair and name clearly couldn't have tipped him off beforehand). could you draw on this experience to describe dysphoria, you wonder? or maybe that other time you cried in the shower? but that's bad and wrong, isn't it? because you're cisgender. so comparing your own... whatever this is... to dysphoria would be an APPROPRIATION of dysphoria! how villainously cis of you! how horrible! you'll have to figure out some other way to write this character.

...anyway. thank you to moon and augustus for that. my kings my brothers in arms. and they BOTH do arson in their respective WIPs, so maybe i have another plot twist in my future?

21. Free ramble card wee

FREE RAMBLE WEE... hmm, well, since i've already touched on it a little in this ask, one of the most interesting things about worldbuilding for godsong is that most of the major settings don't have homophobia/transphobia/misogyny the same way that our world does. (i say most because ambergris is stuck in misogynyville. it's probably fine and i bet she won't get violent.) i honestly didn't think super hard about this; i just wanted to write a high fantasy world where women and nonbinary people and bisexuals and lesbians can hold positions of (sometimes corrupt) power, or where the chosen one can be a transfemme lesbian whose issues aren't transphobia but how to complete her quest.

except then i realized that not having homophobia/transphobia/misogyny invites so many other questions about the social fabric of a society. i mean, the modern legal concept of marriage is rooted pretty solidly in heterosexual relationships wherein women move from one family to another, right? so if gender relations are entirely different, do these places even have marriage? do these places even have gender? this is something i'm still figuring out (and honestly, if anyone has suggestions for media that pokes at this kind of thing, i'd love to hear them!). the two main cities in godsong are ivander (a theocracy) and farria (a democracy with a new revolution every tuesday), and i've been playing around in my head with some of the differences--for example, in ivander, being trans is generally considered holy, because the city's patron god is many-gendered; in farria, being trans is something nobody thinks twice about, because everyone is focused on Just Getting By. in ivander, there are at least three defined genders (man, woman, and priest) which can all overlap. in farria, gender doesn't define social relations so much as a parallel hierarchy of military and/or governmental power--eg, farria's very own neopronouns marc antony isn't afraid of "emasculation" in the gender sense, because xir gender is "if you like me you're gay," but xe's terrified of emasculation (for lack of a better word) in the sense of being seen as weak/submissive. in farria these things are way less connected than they are in our world. i'm still working out a lot of the details, but it's been a lot of fun to think about :3

wow that sure was a free ramble. thank you for the asks rook i love you so much <3

(pride asks!)

[tumblasha]

on being a woman [1] in praia, cabo verde

(small warning: men being gross but nothing too too bad, dw)

i just think it's a little sad that my whole time i've lived in boston i have the urge to live in a society where people are kind, where people help each other when they can, and where people say "hello" and "goodnight" to each other. then i land in this lovely city and a handful of people kinda make me wanna stop participating in society

(a) the concert cab driver

i went to go see neyna w some friends! however bc of some logistical things i had to go alone via taxi. in this 15 min taxi at 1am [2], the driver asks me about where i'm from, i answer, and i talk the way i do to all cab drivers. while i was building up the courage to ask him for his number [3], he offered his number. i thanked him!

he asked me if i like to drink, if i like to smoke, and we laughed about how good the nightlife / beachlife is in praia. in the ten seconds before stopping the car outside the venue, he asks me if i want to go smoke with him after the concert. i nervously laugh no i'll be tired with my friends, pay him, and open the car door. i saw him stretch out his arms. i agreed to the hug (ppl are touchy, i wasn't really surprised at the gesture)

and then he kissed my cheek. not in the latam, descendant-of-the-iberian-peninsula, be-polite-to-your-aunt way. he let out a laugh and said "see you later"

my friends and i leave the concert a few hours later. thankfully a taxi that just dropped off some ppl (going to the venue as a 4am night club lol) picked us up! for whatever reason i sorta hide my phone when i'm in public / crowded places, so when i go into my apartment, i notice i have missed calls. i have unread messages. his name pops up on my screen and i tell him i got home safely, that my friends called a taxi before i could tell them about him

after a sunday morning text, i decided to mute his notifications, and forgot about it

(b) dinner tonight

some of the students are celebrating that it's someone's last night in praia (he and his boyfriend are island-hopping before they head back home). and stories pop up.

my nonbinary friend (that self-describes as being man-presenting and does the gender-binary-at-travel thing too) talked about a taxi driver asking them to sleep with him after the ride.

the white woman phd student talked about getting a cab driver's number, ghosting him, and accidentally getting into his cab a few weeks later (she didn't recognize him). how he was quiet until she realized it was him, how he asked why she didn't respond Halfway through this 10 min ride, and how she had to pretend not to understand him (when she perfectly knows kriolu, port, and eng).

(c) the walks to the beach

the beaver school cohort (all women-presenting) sharing stories about the ways that men approach us and ask for our numbers one day and walk down the street holding their girlfriend's hand the next day. how walking from the beach to our apartment at night became a "no-no" not because of common sense but because of common lived experience.

(d) a conclusion

this is prob common everywhere that has a more "friendly" society [4], but i feel like it's shocking me bc for the past four years i've been used to strangers not caring about each other (disease scares, less catcalling, less help when i drop something on the floor, etc), so idk how to be.

soz for the non-conclusive conclusion, but i wanted to share in case ppl have any tips on how to live as smn who's not a cishet man. tyty

(also pls go to cv! sometimes if ur a tourist ppl give u free things <33)

---

[1] much like oomf's vegetarianism, i'm nonbinary ("veg") in the usa and still nonbinary outside internationally but act as a woman ("meat-eater") there. i think it's easier not to correct ppl when in other countries bc language barriers, cultural barriers, and rare (perceived) availability of trans neutrality / acceptance (the "vegan food" of this simile) ... in which i turn invisibility into a privilege (joke) ??

[2] the concert starts at 2am lol

[3] the venue was far-ish from the main part of the city. it's common, even advised, to get a driver's number to make sure that u Have a way back home

[4] how i learned NOT to wear my high school uniform to the local mall once i turned 15

[multigenderswag]

Apologies in advance if this is too venty or whatever. I just feel really bad because I was in a strange argument about the validty of lesbian men, vincian women, trans men who are lesbians, etc. It was honestly exhausting to go round and round, back and forth with him repeatedly (idk if purposely but I wouldn't be surprised) missing my points and arguing that yes, vincian women (for example) are mlm but they are not gay because gay= non-wome loving non women.

I probably shouldn't have engaged at all but I just get so defensive about transmultiphobia because barely anybody takes it seriously and and even less people are open minded enough to actually hear you out, even when you approach relatively politely. I just feel like I have to say something every time I see something because nobody else will and it really sucks. There's no winning against someone who's already made up their mind.

My self worth as a vincian bigender fluid woman is not based on the validation of strangers, but it does admittedly take a toll on my confidence to even call myself a gay man when it's repeatedly insisted to me that I'm not and that I should just make up my own sexuality or use labels that actually apply to me instead of "twisting preexisting ones into something they're not". Not a direct quote because I blocked but close enough-

idk man. I understand that these are unusual concepts to grasp for people that aren't already deep into these issues, but this person was, not trying to give out too much on him but he was under the nonbinary umbrella so I was really shocked when he was regurgitating the same points used against binary trans people but for trans men lesbians, vincian women, lesbian men, etc.

I just want it to get better for multigender people. Unrealistic as it is I would want nothing more for everyone in the lgbtq+ community to collectively decide not to be transmultiphobic anymore and not die on weird exclusionist hills. That's never gonna fuckin happen but still, I'm glad this blog exists because it gives me some hope that eventually people will listen.

(very sorry for not answering for several weeks jflksdajfsd)

It's ridiculous when people get so caught up in their fake progressive "non men loving non men" definition of lesbianism that they think women who are attracted to women can't be sapphic (and the reverse for mlm). It would probably be funny if it weren't so stupid. Queer people are fighting for our lives rn and transmultiphobes would rather throw a fit over people using sexuality labels that don't fit with their concept of gender as neat distinct boxes.

The "twisting pre-existing ones into something they're not" is what gets me because lesbianism has always been about attraction to women and gayness has always been about attraction to men and it's so silly to twist that into what genders they exclude. Why don't you (not anon, the exclusionists) log off and read some queer history and think about the beauty of queerness and how wonderful it is that so many of us refuse to be put into boxes and then maybe you'll feel better.

[cazort]

Hey just a heads up, a terf with the username @/rabid-tarantulas is following you. Just wanted to let you know so you can block if you need

I have a lot to say in response to this ask. So first, thanks for writing and I do appreciate the desire to help.

I am aware of this user, I discovered them through this post of theirs, which was explicitly affirming of intersex openly not identifying on the gender binary, which is something I support.

Now a big comment here, that I'd encourage you and everyone to reflect on: I don't ever like using the term "terf" to refer to people. TERF is an ideology, Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism. Calling a person a "terf" is problematic in a long list of ways, one of which is that people don't adhere to the idelogy in an all-or-nothing way. When we call certain people TERFs and not others, it gives the wrong impression that you can cleanly categorize people into the TERF or non-TERF bin. I've noticed that a lot of people who claim to oppose TERF ideology, actually hold a lot of views that seem TERF-adjacent. I can't even count how many times "progressive" people who openly advertise that they support trans rights, have suddenly flipped on me, throwing my pronoun preference and nonbinary identity out the window, and attacking me as a "man", just because I disagreed with something they say. It's like, oh, trans people deserve respect and I'll acknowledge their identity and defer to their pronoun preference but only if they agree with me. Yes, I've had both cis and trans people treat me this way.

But it's also problematic to call people "a terf" like as a noun, because it's a negative label. It's a personal attack. But it's also not particularly truthful the way it is used. For example, I've been conversing with the user you drew attention to here, and they are certainly not someone who fits the profile of "typical TERF" viewpoints.

Over the years I've conversed with a lot of people who identify as radical feminists, "gender critical" feminists (the newer term for TERF ideology used by people who support or adhere to those viewpoints), and lots of others who hold varying degrees of TERF-adjacent viewpoints, and one thing that is clear is that there is a huge range of viewpoints among people who post TERF or TERF-adjacent content. These viewpoints range from stuff that is overtly hateful towards trans people, to stuff that is aggressively dismissing of trans people's identities but not overtly hateful, to stuff that is dismissive of trans people's identities but more respectfully worded. TERF ideology is also frequently associated with man-hating, but the degree to which people get into this varies hugely.

I think a lot of the ideas in TERF are untruthful, and as such I think it's important to challenge them. However I also think some of the disagreements between TERF and mainstream progressive ideologies surrounding trans people, are more a question of semantics or differing definitions than anything else. I also sometimes dislike how mainstream trans activism has pushed ideas into the mainstream, and some of those ideas can be problematic at times too, and just like TERF, it can be problematic how these ideas are advanced.

For example, I know a lot of older trans people who use terms like MtF, FtM, and use language like "I was born a woman / I became a man / etc." and I have seen people who use the newer terminology attack, argue with, and publicly shame these other people, saying they are "wrong" or are promoting "transphobic" viewpoints when they're just using the language that helped them through their journey of discovery of their trans identity.

I get really uncomfortable too with the idea that it's bad to interact with someone just because you disagree with them, and with any sort of social norms that encourage people to push out and ostracize others.

Like the fact that you wrote an ask to me, about a user who has only liked and reblogged a few of my posts, starting in the past 24 hours, makes me wonder how many other users you have contacted. I recognize you are probably trying to help, but I also am not sure that what you are doing is going to be having the effect that you think it has. What would happen if anyone who ever voiced any TERF-adjacent viewpoints, were totally shunned and ostracized by the community of trans-supportive people on Tumblr? It's not going to ban these people, it's just going to isolate them to where they only interact with other people who have viewpoints that are not particularly supportive of or respectful to trans people. It virtually guarantees that these people will become further radicalized.

Do you want to create a world where people are isolated of people into echo chambers where everyone is surrounded only by people who think exactly alike?

I don't. I find this idea horrifying. And we already see this on a lot of the other social media, like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter, where the algorithmic feeds show people more of what they want to see and create echo chambers and reinforce groupthink. And predictably, politics gets more polarized, extremism rises in many different forms. I've seen the shift over the past two decades of my life and it's been horrific. Back when I was a teenager, I could converse with people with a wide range of political views and they'd more-or-less be respectful of me and of each other. Even the worst presidents in my life, like Reagan, were respectful when they talked about their political opponents. Now we have unhinged people like Trump, and people think that anyone with views other than theirs are necessarily hateful people, bad people, and "the enemy". It's terribly unhealthy. And it contributes to mental illness too.

I can protect myself. I block people on this site almost every day, if you count bots, and still pretty frequently if you only count real users.

If a user posts stuff that I don't like, I won't follow them. I don't need to block them unless they're either messaging me disrespectful stuff, adding disrespectful commentary on reblogs of my post, or posting content I find disrespectful or annoying in tags that I browse.

But no, I don't want to block this user, at least not unless they become much more disrespectful to me than they have been. And I would encourage you and anyone reading this to reconsider both the practice of labeling people TERF's, and the practice of encouraging people to block anyone they see voice TERF or TERF-adjacent views. And I'd also encourage you and everyone to introspect and consider whether or not you harbor any TERF-adjacent views yourself, because it's something that, in my experience, a lot of people actually do harbor.

And on top of that I would also encourage you to more broadly, embrace the idea that it is good for people who have different viewpoints to interact. Sometimes people are disrespectful and then you can block them. That's fine. But it is rare that it is in any way warranted to go around warning other users about someone. That would require a truly dangerous level of negative behavior far beyond anything I have seen here.

[hasellia]

OP's words are solid, and I honestly wish I had someone around to reassure me with what they said.

I only realised how I feel about my gender very recently, so other folks, feel free to hop in if I give bad advice or am hijacking. But Anon sounds like they're in a similar position to how I felt very recently.

1. It's okay to mess around with your identity. Say you feel trying new pronouns, but it ends up not working for you. How that makes you feel can help orientate you to something that DOES work for you.

2. Look inside yourself. You're questioning, so you've already done a good chunk of work on that. What helped me, personally, was realising other people looked inside themselves and saw a perfect reflection of their assigned gender. Others see the opposite. Some don't see either binaries and see something that can't be materialistically tied to the human experience. Like a tree, an animal, an inanimate object, or even just a sheer void of a black hole. For me, it was realising that, even outside of my body, I saw myself as a model replica of a man. As opposed to strictly being one that most AMABs see themselves as. That really helped me come to terms with my gender.

3. I don't know the community's opinion on them, but maybe have a dig around a few lgbtqi+ wikis. I would particularly recommend the nonbinary wiki. Just remember; you don't have put any strict labels on yourself. These are just for to get a feel of what resonates and what doesn't with you. If you're like me, you might find something to be loosely fitting only for it to click with you later down the track. Maybe it doesn't work, and you reject it.

4. You might be cis by the end of your journey. AND THAT'S OKAY TOO. Finding your gender and what it means to you doesn't automatically make you transgender. In a healthier society, more people would explore themselves with these topics including both cis and trans people.

In the end though, you know yourself better than anyone else does. I can't tell you who you are, or who you aren't. I would call you by your username first, and you would have every right to tell me that's not who you really are, and what you would like me to call you by. Even by supplying the nonbinary wiki link, I am giving you my own suggestion of your gender, rather than what it is that you personally identify by.

It's just like OP says. You don't need a check list to define you. Be what you want, be happy.

Hi!.... I just wanted to ask, how did you know you were enby? You see I was born afab in a very Conservative country and only recently started to question my gender and sexuality after moving to Europe. I figured out I am asexual pretty quickly but I still don't know where I would put myself on the gender spectrum. Like I am pretty traditionally feminine, so I don't necessarily mind the she/her pronouns, but at the same time they also feel like something outside of myself you know? I can't put that feeling into words and I don't know if that necessarily means I am non binary but how do I recognise if it is? I just feel confused sometimes because it does not feel debilitating in the way a lot of trans people describe their experience so does that mean it's not real? I am not sure what my next steps should be so I thought to ask an Internet stranger who is experienced in this😅. Also sorry for the rant I have adhd so I'm all over the place sometimes.

The amazing, beautiful thing about being Non-binary is that it is a challenge to all of conformity.

There is nothing that anybody can say, do, or diagnose to interpret your "validity." She/her, hyperfemme? He/they, bro dude? They/them, androgynous gender fuck? All valid enbys.

But here is the real takeaway: This applies to the entire gender spectrum. You do not need to go through some kind of checklist that ends with a "Yes you are" and "No you aren't".

What you'll find is that anyone thats looking for "proof" in who you are won't believe or support you no matter what you say. They have appointed themselves the gatekeeper. It's plain and simple bigotry.

Presentation =/= Gender

Pronouns =/= Gender

HRT & Dysphoria =/= Gender

Be who you want to be, because that's who you are. Fuck anyone that ever tries to limit you from finding that happiness.

[flightlessnightingale]

On Lesbianism

I’ll state it at the top here, because many have not understood my stance. The purpose of this essay is not to say that Lesbian cannot mean “Female homosexual.” Rather, my objective is to show that Lesbian means more than that single definition suggests. Female Homosexuals are lesbians, unless they personally do not want to use that label. Now, on with the show: Lesbianism is not about gatekeeping, and I don’t want to have to keep convincing people that the movement popularized by someone who wrote a book full of lies and hate speech then immediately worked with Ronald Reagan is a bad movement. In the early ’70s, groups of what would now be called “gender critical” feminists threatened violence against many trans women who dared exist in women’s and lesbian spaces. For example, trans woman Beth Elliott, who was at the 1973 West Coast Lesbian Feminist Conference to perform with her lesbian band, was ridiculed onstage and had her existence protested. In 1979, radical feminist Janice Raymond, a professor at the University of Massachusetts, wrote the defining work of the TERF movement, “Transsexual Empire: The Making of the Shemale,” in which she argued that “transsexualism” should be “morally mandating it out of existence”—mainly by restricting access to transition care (a political position shared by the Trump administration). Soon after she wrote another paper, published for the government-funded, National Center for Healthcare Technology — and the Reagan administration cut off Medicare and private health insurance coverage for transition-related care.

Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism is a fundamentally unsustainable ideology. Lesbianism is a fundamentally sustainable existence.

There used to be a lesbian bar or queer bar or gay bar in practically every small town — sometimes one of each. After surviving constant police raids, these queer spaces began closing even Before the AIDS epidemic. Because TERFs would take them over, kick out transfems and their friends. Suddenly, there weren’t enough local patrons to keep the bars open, because the majority had been kicked out. With America’s lack of public transportation, not enough people were coming from out of town either.

TERFs, even beyond that, were a fundamental part of the state apparatus that let AIDS kill millions.

For those who don’t know, Lesbian, from the time of Sappho of Lesbos to the about 1970′s, referred to someone who rejects the patriarchal hierarchy. It was not only a sexuality, but almost akin to a gender spectrum.

That changed in the 1970′s when TERFs co-opted 2nd Wave feminism, working with Ronald fucking Reagan to ban insurance for trans healthcare.

TERFs took over the narrative, the bars, the movement, and changed Lesbian from the most revolutionary and integral queer communal identity of 2 fucking THOUSAND years, from “Someone who rejects the patriarchal hierarchy” to “A woman with a vagina who’s sexually attracted to other women with vaginas”

How does this fit into the bi lesbian debate? As I said, Lesbian is more of a Gender Spectrum than anything else, it was used much in the same way that we use queer or genderqueer today.

And it’s intersectional too.

See, if you were to try to ascribe a rigid, biological, or localized model of an identity across multiple cultures, it will fail. It will exclude people who should not be excluded. ESPECIALLY Intersex people. That’s why “Two Spirit” isn’t something rigid- it is an umbrella term for the identities within over a dozen different cultures. In the next two sections, I have excerpts on Two-Spirit and Butch identity, to give a better idea of the linguistics of queer culture: This section on Two-Spirit comes from wikipedia, as it has the most links to further sources, I have linked all sources directly, though you can also access them from the Wikipedia page’s bibliography: Two-Spirit is a pan-Indian, umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people who fulfill a traditional ceremonial and social role that does not correlate to the western binary. [1] [2] [3] Created at the 1990 Indigenous lesbian and gay international gathering in Winnipeg, it was "specifically chosen to distinguish and distance Native American/First Nations people from non-Native peoples." [4] Criticism of Two-Spirit arises from 2 major points, 1. That it can exasperate the erasure of the traditional terms and identities of specific cultures.           a. Notice how this parallels criticisms of Gay being used as the umbrella           term for queer culture in general. 2. That it implies adherence to the Western binary; that Natives believe these individuals are "both male and female" [4]          a. Again, you’ll notice that this parallels my criticisms of the TERF definition of Lesbian, that tying LGBT+ identities to a rigid western gender binary does a disservice to LGBT+ people,—especially across cultures. “Two Spirit" wasn’t intended to be interchangeable with "LGBT Native American" or "Gay Indian"; [2] nor was it meant to replace traditional terms in Indigenous languages.  Rather, it was created to serve as a pan-Indian unifier. [1] [2] [4] —The term and identity of two-spirit "does not make sense" unless it is contextualized within a Native American or First Nations framework and traditional cultural understanding. [3] [10] [11] The ceremonial roles intended to be under the modern umbrella of two-spirit can vary widely, even among the Indigenous people who accept the English-language term. No one Native American/First Nations' culture's gender or sexuality categories apply to all, or even a majority of, these cultures. [4] [8] Butch: At the turn of the 20th century, the word “butch” meant “tough kid” or referred to a men’s haircut. It surfaced as a term used among women who identified as lesbians in the 1940s, but historians and scholars have struggled to identify exactly how or when it entered the queer lexicon. However it happened, "Butch” has come to mean a “lesbian of masculine appearance or behavior.” (I have heard that, though the words originate from French, Femme & Butch came into Lesbian culture from Latina lesbian culture, and if I find a good source for that I will share. If I had to guess, there may be some wonderful history to find of it in New Orleans—or somewhere similar.) Before “butch” became a term used by lesbians, there were other terms in the 1920s that described masculinity among queer women. According to the historian Lillian Faderman,“bull dagger” and “bull dyke” came out of the Black lesbian subculture of Harlem, where there were “mama” and “papa” relationships that looked like butch-femme partnerships. Performer Gladys Bentley epitomized this style with her men’s hats, ties and jackets. Women in same-sex relationships at this time didn’t yet use the word “lesbian” to describe themselves. Prison slang introduced the terms “daddy,” “husband,” and “top sargeant” into the working class lesbian subculture of the 1930s.  This lesbian history happened alongside Trans history, and often intersected, just as the Harlem renaissance had music at the forefront of black and lesbian (and trans!) culture, so too can trans musicians, actresses, and more be found all across history, and all across the US. Some of the earliest known trans musicians are Billy Tipton and Willmer “Little Ax” Broadnax—Both transmasculine musicians who hold an important place in not just queer history, but music history.

Lesbian isn’t rigid & biological, it’s social and personal, built up of community and self-determination.

And it has been for millennia.

So when people say that nonbinary lesbians aren’t lesbian, or asexual lesboromantics aren’t lesbian, or bisexual lesbians aren’t lesbian, it’s not if those things are technically true within the framework — It’s that those statements are working off a fundamentally claustrophobic, regressive, reductionist, Incorrect definition You’ll notice that whilst I have been able to give citations for TERFs, for Butch, and especially for Two-Spirit, there is little to say for Lesbianism. The chief reason for this is that lesbian history has been quite effectively erased-but it is not forgotten, and the anthropological work to recover what was lost is still ongoing. One of the primary issues is that so many who know or remember the history have so much trauma connected to "Lesbian” that they feel unable to reclaim it. Despite this trauma, just like the anthropological work, reclamation is ongoing.

Since Sappho, lesbian was someone who rejects the patriarchal hierarchy. For centuries, esbian wasn’t just a sexuality, it was intersectional community, kin to a gender spectrum, like today’s “queer”. When TERFs co-opted 2nd Wave feminism, they redefined Lesbian to “woman w/ a vag attracted to other women w/ vags”. So when you say “bi lesbians aren’t lesbian” it’s not whether that’s true within the framework, it’s that you’re working off a claustrophobic, regressive, and reductionist definition.

I want Feminism, Queerness, Lesbianism, to be fucking sustainable.

I wanna see happy trans and lesbian and queer kids in a green and blue fucking world some day.

I want them to be able to grow old in a world we made good.

[neopronounsmybelovaed]

So, a while back there was a decent bit of discussion about books with neopronoun characters- I just got a copy of Meet Cute Diary and read it within two days. So. I figured we could have a chat about the use of neopronouns in the book!

First of all, summary. The main character, Noah, runs a tumblr blog called the "meet cute diary" about trans people finding happy relationships. All the stories are made up, but it does help people. And then someone writes a callout post to expose the stories as fake, so he enters a fake dating AU to earn back his reputation. This will go great. (This does not go great.)

The author- Emery Lee- uses e/em pronouns! I'm an author who uses neopronouns working on a book with a character who uses neopronouns, so it's really awesome to see em and eir book- it gives me a lot of hope for my future, honestly.

Plus, e's a talented author. I think e also has a book coming in 2022, that I am definitely going to keep an eye out for.

This isn't really related to neopronouns, but the protagonist of the book ran a tumblr blog trying to bring hope and positivity to trans people. And then encountered a lot of stress and harassment. Which was interesting to see written out, to say the least.

The character who uses neopronouns is named Devin, and e uses e/em. There's a part of the book where e briefly uses xe/xem, briefly uses they/them, and e uses he/him on the beginning, but at the end it seems like e/em is what works for em.

So, Devin. E is smashing those nonbinary stereotypes. First of all, e is absolutely not written as "woman lite" or whatever. E's AMAB, which- in a culture that sees most nonbinary people as like, a woman with short hair and jeans- is definitely something that deserves some representation.

Another big stereotype we're all familiar with for neopronoun users is that we're all young. Devin is still young, because the story centers around teenagers- but e's a year older than the main character and presented as pretty mature.

The book also dispells the notion that nonbinary people HAVE to use they/them. E uses they/them for 22 pages of a 391 page book (and a lot of those pages don't even include em.) Eir pronouns at the beginning are he/him, even if e identifies as nonbinary from the beginning. Which, nice. Binary-using nonbinary people are valid as hell. And the use of neopronouns is also very very cool!

We loving holding a middle finger up to stereotypes.

Introducing kids to pronouns from a young age is done in the book and explained why that's important.

Page 170

"Why'd you start by introducing your pronouns? Kids don't even know what that means."

"Maybe not, but they're going to hear about that stuff somewhere, so why not start now? I can open them up to it here, or I can wait for someone else to teach them wrong."

Hell yeah! And the kids don't totally get it (One girl says "I'm Bailey. I pronounce she.") but they've got the spirit and it's being normalized from a young age!

Another good message about pronouns- that I really need to internalize, don't I?- is that they're your pronouns, bitch, you don't need them to make anyone else happy.

Page 190

"I don't want to make things too complicated, though. I just- I'm not sure how comfortable I feel with he/him anymore."

"Devin, they're your pronouns, You don't have to consider anyone else before you pick them."

Also! Noah shows us the 100% CORRECT reaction to an unfamiliar set of pronouns: "I've never heard those sounds before in my life, but I nod anyway. It's not my job to tell Devin what pronouns xe can or can't use." (213)

And then he uses those pronouns for em until e tells him not to. No "your pronouns are made up." No "you make our community look bad." No "whatever other transmedicalist exclusionist bullshit rhetoric exists somewhere." Just acceptance.

The book also uses xenogenders. Not explicitly- like, e doesn't say "I'm xenogender"- but the concept is there.

Page 223

"The truth is, if I had to describe it, I'd say I'm like two percent milk."

I turn to em, eyebrows scrunched. "You're like what?"

"You know, two percent milk? Like I'm two percent boy, but no one knows what the hell the other ninety-eight percent is."

Which, that's pretty similar to a xenogender. Even if e doesn't start identifying as two-percent-milk-gender, the concept is there. It's a metaphor because common terms like masc, femme, neutral, don't work to describe a gender. So e uses an object that describes eir gender- milk. Two percent milk.

And though Noah does correct em on how two percent milk actually works (it's not 2% milk, 98% something else. 2% is a fat measurement), he doesn't ridicule the metaphor. Good job dude.

Devin also, obviously, cycles through some different genders and pronouns before settling on 2% boy and e/em. Before the book, e identified as a trans girl, before realizing that wasn't right either. Some people off-screen were assholes about that, but Noah looks at that reaction and goes "that's bullshit!" And he is absolutely right.

Characters are also corrected when they mess up on eir pronouns.

Page 248

"Well, you still talk about him like you think he's pretty cool."

"Devin uses e/em pronouns," I say.

All in all, excellemt use of neopronouns in this book. A lot of other fun stuff too. Would recommend.