#non rb

[debaucherri]

light yagami evil autism (original img under the cut)

[the-count-and-the-raven]

Will’s Words and the Shake pears

[mystical-myths]

man i love you tragic characters who fight against all odds just to be happy

[imoanurparentsnames]

"Affirmation" & Malgendering

"Fine, I'll 'respect' your gender, but I'll make it absolutely miserable for you. What? You don't like the way I'm 'affirming' your gender? Guess you'll have to stop being a (trans) man then."

I want to put something out there about what I call "malgendering". I see trans men talk about the phenomenon and acknowledge it as a part of antitransmasculinity but not the concept of "malgendering" itself and what it's purpose is, and as trans men and transmasculine people are especially caught in the lose-lose situation between misgendering and malgendering I think it is an important concept to establish. The erasure of transmasculinity, particularly as a unique gender and gendered experience, also serves to keep the transmasculine trapped within this double-bind, positioned between the gender binary of cis patriarchal ideas of womanhood and manhood, where for us there is only misgendering (being abused with the Woman gender) or malgendering (being abused with the Man gender).

I define malgendering as the practice of "validating" someone's gender identity only when it can be used against them and to hurt them, and malgendering almost always involves the enforcement of only the most negative sexist stereotypes available onto the victim with none of the "positives". If misgendering is forcefully pushing you back into your 'proper place' such as by calling you a "girl" or a "her" and showing you that you're really a woman through sexual assault -malgendering is scaring and traumatizing you into it by using your own gender against you. Malgendering is the realization that you don't need to misgender someone to hurt them or to punish them for the way they identity and push them towards the gender they're 'supposed' to be - you can do all that through 'validation'. It's psychological warfare on the sense of self.

This violence and abuse under the guise of "respect" and "identity affirmation" creates plausible deniability of intent and places the blame on the victim for "identifying that way", so much so that even other trans people will defend it and believe it's not maligned (especially because "but being seen as and treated as your gender is what trans rights is all about!" and "errm but its transphobic to not treat u this way?/ur misgendering urself by wanting to not be treated this way :/" with the hidden message being "don't like it? stop being trans"), even when faced with evidence of the (very much intended) effects it has on stalling and outright eliminating transmasculinity (ie. repression, detransition, suicide).

Some examples I can pull off the top of my head:

A transphobe is talking about a pregnant trans man. The whole energy of the Facebook video is 'comedic', and while calling birth the most “feminine” thing someone can do and alluding to how the trans man is really a woman, they still use he/him and call him a “guy” (in air-quotes). Not out of any respect but because the idea of a man being pregnant, calling a pregnant person a "he", and the very existence of the trans man in question, is the whole joke. In doing so, the transphobe has turned the act of using the proper pronouns and gendering him into a source of humiliation and made the experience of being properly gendered a demeaning one.

The Ukraine military situation where all males aged between 18 and 60 were banned from leaving the country and obliged to serve in the military. Trans women were denied passage out of the country "because they were men", and trans men were similarly denied passage out of the country "because they were men". With the discrepancy between invalidating the gender of trans women and "validating" the gender of trans men, you'd think the motivation behind this would be obvious - that trans people are expendable meat and it's better they die than cis people. It shouldn't of needed to be said that "I'm only affirming your gender because it allows me to put you in a position where you will likely suffer and die and put the blame for it on you" is not 'respect' or 'affirming' at all but somehow this was taken as evidence for the idea of that trans men are more 'respected' and seen as their genders than others (and are thus 'privileged').

A common one almost every trans guy deals with at some point is cis people threatening to beat trans men up (and often following through), because "If you're a man and not a woman (anymore) that means I can punch you," using the proximity to masculinity that transmasculine people claim as a justification for violence. Every other week there's a new story in online transmasculine spaces about someone having their ribs broken with "Since/if you want to be a man so bad-" preceding the attack.

The above is in a similar vein to when accounts of violence done to transmasculine people by cisgender men are brushed off and they're told something along the lines of "welcome to being a man", "that's just what men do to each other", "that's just the way things are with men", etc. along with the insistence that their attack had nothing to do with antitransmasculinity, making it an immutable problem with (cis)men as a whole - creating a sense hopelessness and that this is all they have to look forward to.

Transmasculine individuals being refused treatment, tests, or insurance for gynecological issues, especially cancer, despite the knowledge that they are transmasculine, because "men don't deal with these problems" and they don't want "men in women's spaces", and if you don't want to be 'treated like a man' and get the care you need (and not die), you're going to have to go ahead and detransition, change that M marker back to an F.

All of this functions to create contention, and eventually a rift, between the individual and their sense of gender identity. Creating an association between being gendered 'correctly' and 'respected' as your gender (and ultimately existing as a transmasculine person) with abuse, violence, helplessness, trauma, fear, isolation... and by making transmasculinity and transmanhood uninhabitable and driving a wedge between the individual and their sense of gender identity you can more easily drag them back to their 'proper' place. Plant seeds of doubt by making being transmasculine an exceedingly unhappy experience. Make them think that everything that's happened is their own fault for choosing to be transmasculine or trying to be a man. That maybe since they're so unhappy this isn't for them. That living as a transmasculine person is just too difficult and they're not cut out for it, that if they "gave up" and were to be women again things would be easier and they would be safer and happier.

This also all serves to maintain cis patriarchal ideas of gender and the gender binary and police the boundaries of manhood, in a way I can't articulate right now.

Through all this, despite being called "men" during malgendering, we are not actually perceived as such. We are always an "other". Acknowledging us as "men" is just another weapon, and why some transmascs flinch at the phrase "trans men are men". Our own genders are used to beat us.

Using a scrap from my .txt journals:

"[...] on the subject of having a core aspect of yourself taken from you and turned into a weapon to beat you with, with the result being that aspect of yourself now becoming a source of trauma and pain so you abandon it and lock it away like an awful secret, that’s exactly what happened with my gender.

Being genderless and a(nti)binary is what I’m most comfortable as, a(nti)gender is my ~real gender~, but I have to admit a lot of this is because I have been traumatized out of any gender with binary associations and have consequently come to know gender itself, and the act of gendering, as violence. Gender is but a designation for what exploitation, abuse, and violence can be enacted upon you and the justification there of. When someone asks whether you are "masc" or "femme", behind their back as they face you is a hammer in one hand, and a knife in the other, and what they are actually asking is if they can pummel you or lacerate you. When it comes to the “direction” I’m transitioning in though, it is obviously “masculine” (as much as a negation of "femininity" is always taken as stepping towards "masculinity") and you wouldn’t be entirely wrong to call me “transmasculine”, though I have been scared to death of being acknowledged as such."

My first encounter with malgendering was when I was 13 and had just started to realize I was "ftm" and looking for community online. My first exposure to any affirmation of transmasculinity was someone I came to respect reblogging a post about how Kill All Men includes trans men. This would set the precedent of the next decade of my life of existing while transmasculine. A decade of only hearing the words "trans men" and "transmasc" used negatively and as the butt of jokes that served to reinforce patriarchal ideas of gender. The consistent and relentless denial of transmasculinity as a unique gender and gendered experience, the denial of transmasculine reality especially in regards to misogyny, and continuous abuse and threats of violence, all under the guise of affirming trans men's genders as men (and affirming the gender binary in the process). A decade of having antitransmasculine sentiment fed to me in every way possible.

For me, the experiences of antitransmasculinity and malgendering from non-transmascs has effectively "chased" me out of my transmasculinity and any acknowledgement of it. For years I have hidden my transmasculinity and presumed "AGAB" out of fear, even in queer and supposedly trans-friendly spaces. I have not been able to associate with any “masculine” language in reference to myself without feeling that I am in imminent danger, have made a grave mistake, and suffocating in anticipation of punishment. I have always been scared of posting any of my art that eludes to my transmasculinity. I have always been terrified of being referred to or perceived as “transmasc”, a “trans man”, of being called a "guy" or “dude” or “bro”, of using "he/him" anywhere. All of it. Deep down on some level I do desire it, but it’s been forbidden and only aggravates existing wounds.

And this, in turn, pushed me out of associating with other transmasculine folks out of fear and internalized antitransmasculinity towards other transmasculine people, isolating me from any community or connection with anyone similar to me, exacerbating my loneliness and alienation as a youth to the point where now as an adult my ‘normal’ human social needs – connection, community, relationships, empathy – are completely broken. I don’t feel loneliness anymore, or the desire to connect to anyone, despite in ways being even more alone now than I was then. In a way I believe antitransmasculinity shaped the path of my schizoidism. Isolating and divorcing me from my transmasculinity and the world at large is what I understand to be yet another point of this type of antitransmasculine rhetoric - because when you've destabilized and isolated someone from their whole sense of self and community, they are much easier to control.

[verdantmeadows]

To me the joy and beauty of vocal synthesizers has always been that they don't sound real and exploring that to create artistic expression that can't be achieved by human voices, so seeing them become more and more realistic is disheartening, almost? Especially since a lot of artists make the same voice banks sound so different and have their own personal charm. I'm glad that people will be able to make things that sound realistic, but I'm worried that songs that intentionally play out of sounding as realistic as possible will be sidelined, discouraged, no longer created, impossible to find, or unsupported by fans of vocal synthesizers. I don't want things to just push towards being as realistic as possible. There is beauty in how everyone's usage of the same voice banks sound different. There is beauty in the lack of realistic sounding vocals in vocal synthesizers.

[troytr]

Carlos Sainz - Singapore 2023

[ishootcops]

[debaucherri]

imagine trying to tell light yagami a knock-knock joke and before you can even get to the punchline he's already pulling this shit

[the-count-and-the-raven]

Wwattober 🤯

Ignore how smudgy it is im scared of inking it

Day #10: rats + Day #7: self-ish

Prompts under cut :)

[batw1nggg]

Metamorphosis of Man

2023, acrylic on canvas

[black-eyed-seas]

I have done nothing but yearn for the sword for the past three hours

Help.

[faaun]

last night i got home kind of tipsy and very much in tears and my mother told me the force you exert to keep someone in your life is proportional to the force with which they will leave your life. if you have to fight tooth and claw to keep them, their leaving will be just as hard, just as harsh, and just as definite.

[multigenderswag]

Lesbianism masterpost

Discourse about lesbianism pops up on this blog every so often, and I'm sick of hearing the same argument over and over again, so! If you disagree with my opinions about lesbianism, you should read some of these posts so I don't have to repeat myself arguing with you.

Links in bold are the ones I recommend the most

Some basic explanations

Male lesbian/lesboy infographic

Lesbian trans man interviews

Trans man in a lesbian bar: Do I belong here? (bonus: https://medium.com/@florence.ashley/the-irreducibility-of-belonging-transmasculinity-and-lesbian-bars-91ac73a37ee4)

How can men be lesbians?

How can someone be an mspec lesbian?

History of bi lesbians

Some more history, and other basic explanations

Problems with the men/non men binary

Attraction isn't a binary between "attracted to men" and "not attracted to men"

How do multigender men fit into this?

Gender venn diagram

What do genderqueer lesbians think about NMLNM?

Where does the line get drawn between men and non men?

Nonbinary isn't a third gender

This definition centers men

Exclusion of multigender men

Lesbian as a gender identity

Definitions don't have to be rigid

Do hippos count as dragons?

How to define a color

What do you want a definition for?

Definitions are not static

There is no one true definition of lesbian

Lesbianism is multifaceted

Inclusive definitions of lesbianism

Mspec and male lesbians aren't harmful to other lesbians

Lesbianism is diverse, and that's okay

It's their identity, not yours

We're not forcing you to be attracted to men

Deconstructing an exclusionist carrd

"Men can't be lesbians" + TERFism

We're not "ruining" the word lesbian

Fluid sexualities and non-fluid sexualities can coexist

Questions for those skeptical about bi lesbians/bi gays

[midesastremanifiesto]

Carlos has driven like this MANY times, some people is just noticing now. The only thing I hope it changes this year is him not caring about the team so much and not accepting team orders when they are stupid. Apart from that, he has always been an amazing driver, I don't understand the surprise.

[entropy-sea-system]

Do not assume what kinds of relationships aromantics do or do not want. Do not assume friendship is universal. Do not imply that the only connections aros can have are friendship just bc you think all aros are plato favorable, romance averse, ace, and sex averse.

Do not imply that every aro must want and immensely value friendship bc its 'the only thing left other than romance and I assume sex is out of the equation'. Aplatonic and/or plato averse or nonfriending aros exist. We matter. Aros who are romance favorable and/or experience some romantic attraction exist.

Aros who are sex favorable and/or alloaro or are otherwise not ace exist. There are other relationship types than the ones I mention in this post, such as qpr's. Don't forget aros who may not fit your ideas of what an aro person looks like.

[Do not fucking add your commentary on how you like friendship or whatever. You're allowed to like friendship obviously! Just maybe try to give a shit about ppl who don't, and don't fucking derail when we talk about our experiences. Make your own damn post or literally add on the numerous posts about liking friendship. I don't care if this post makes you sad for some reason. Alloplatonics and/or Plato favorable ppl you can rb but don't clown.]

Reblog this edited version instead of the original please!

[saturdays--sun]

i am once again saying that there is nothing wrong with being a non-sharing selfshipper. there's nothing wrong with blocking people who share one (or multiple) of your f/os. there's nothing wrong with telling doubles not to interact with you. setting boundaries for yourself and your online space is a moral neutral and has nothing to do with being "insecure" or some other negative. if you find that insulting or belittling, that's on you; not on the person setting the boundary. quit trying to make non-sharers into bad guys.