#non-men

[sickly-sapphic]

This was an info post on instagram and a thread on threads, here it'll be a text post.

On the exclusivity and harm that non-men vs non-women language does.

Have you heard someone say "non-man", or maybe "non-woman"? Maybe you yourself use these terms as descriptive words or to describe queer terminology, but have you ever thought about the effects of these terms and what they promote - whether intentional or not?

With the goal of making queer identities easier to describe and overall more digestible, two terms have been seen more and more often - non-man and non-woman. But these terms aren't living up to the intention, in fact they're promoting what they seek to destroy - harm towards queer people, exclusion and misinformation.

The idea of these new terms is easier description for terms like lesbian, transfem, gay, transmasc and other terms. But in reality, using these terms to define queer people excludes many, many queer people from their own community!! Nuance and complicated identities have always, and will always exist, and gender diverse people are often the victim when this fact is forgotten.

Bigender, genderfluid, genderqueer... many queer people have heard these terms, many even personally know folks who use them, yet they're forgotten and excluded in even the most basic definitions, conversations and queer language. They exist outside of the non-men/non-women binary created, and therefore don't fit under the common definitions of their genders, sexualities, etc.

Even some of the most historically important queer folks are excluded in this language. Butch lesbians can be men and still lesbians, drag queens often had a complicated relationship with gender and existed as men and women, people have bent and broken the binary for centuries!! When we ignore them, we ignore their strength and contribution to the fight for queer liberation, all in the name of digestibility for non-queers.

Queerness was never meant to be digestible, or sanitised, or easily defined. Queerness exists outside of clear defined boxes, and outside of binaries, where blending and blurring the lines is more common then existing within them. Queer language should never squish out hard to define queerness for the sake of a quick definition. We erase queerness itself when we erase weird queers.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Μακαρίσαντες υμών το απειρόκακον ού ζηλούμεν το άφρον.*

Thucydides

Although we bless your ignorance of evil, we do not envy your stupidity.*

My eldest sister, a neurologist, sent me this. She didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

So a lesbian is defined by what she isn’t in relation to men? That’s progressive! Does it also mean that a Transwoman is really a Trans-Non-Man? And they can define a man but still not define a woman? It's pure gibberish.

Louisa May Alcott’s "Little Non-Men" doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?

American gender ideology is the cultural waste land of misogyny. The lunatics have well and truly taken over the asylum. This is beyond parody or embarrassing.

[raqualswonderfunblog]

[shutinthenutouse]

[ckerouac]

So, I really love the selection of Tim Walz for VP and it’s taken me a moment to articulate why. I mean, obviously, Dem bonafides, he’s sharp, he’s funny, etc etc. But everyone in the Veepstakes fits that bill, Harris was spoiled for good choices.

But Walz offers something that the other men in contention don’t that I think will be incredibly useful in combating Trumpism.

He offers an example and an off ramp to the section of men who felt like they were Republicans by default, and so support Trump by default. There are a lot of Trump voters who are full on obsessive, but that’s not who we’re talking to. We’re talking to folks who grew up in Republican areas, or felt their hobbies didn’t line up with who a Democrat was, or didn’t feel represented by their image of a Democrat. You want to see it so you can be it, you know? Which is why Harris is so inspirational to a lot of segments of folks, but Walz is too.

He served in the military. He went to a state college. He’s your favorite teacher from your public high school. He’s your football coach who actually cared if you were passing your math class. He’s the guy you looked up to at school when your family sucked but this guy cared, and he helped you get out and make something of yourself.

He’s the neighbor who helps you jump your car. He’s your uncle who takes you hunting. He’s your Dad who loves teasing you at the Stare Fair. He’s you when he makes a mistake like his DUI and takes responsibility for it, and when he has the chance makes sure other can come back from similar mistakes. He’s you when you and your wife want so badly to be parents and IVF gives you the family you wanted. He’s you when he says ‘it had to be me’ and used his standing and power to protect vulnerable kids sponsoring the GSA at his school.

He gives the real life example to these men that they can be that football, fishing, hunting family man who wants to provide for his family, be that powerful, respected member of the community and use that power to feed kids in school. That it’s normal to enthusiastically work for a boss like Harris. That yeah those other guys are fucking weirdos, and you’re not a weirdo, are you?

That there’s a place in the Democratic Party for them. That they don’t have to default to being fucking weird.

I hope those guys see this example of masculinity and go… yeah, that’s me. That’s who I’m gonna be.

[genderqueerdykes]

listen to me: you can love and support trans men and trans women at the same time. you can love and support transmasc and transfemmes at the same time. you do not have to make things into this-or-that decisions. you do not have to turn everything into us-vs-them, friend-vs-enemy, sports team ass dynamics. transfems and transmascs are not at opposite ends of ANYTHING, and we will never, ever be enemies or polar sides that cannot intersect or co-exist peacefully. you can support more than one type of trans person and distribute that support equally. i promise you fucking can.

[gor3sigil]

Before starting T, when I socially transitionned, I was surrounded by radical feminists who saw masculinity as gross and inherently evil, something to avoid, something to make fun of, something to destroy. The other transmascs in my friend group, sometimes, told me that they didn’t knew if they really were non-binary or if they just were scared shitless of saying “I am a man”. Because they saw this as a betrayal to their younger self who had been SAd and abused.

I saw many of my masc friends and trans men around me hate themselves, not outing themselves as men because it would imply so so much, it was like opening the Pandora Box. Even when we were just together, talking about our masculinity was always coated with bits like “I know we’re the privileged ones but…”, “I don’t want to sound like I have it bad but…”, “Women obviously have it worse, but last time…” and we were talking about terrible traumas we experienced while taking all the precautions in the world in the case the walls were a crowd of people in disguise waiting to get us if we didn’t downplay the violence we faced, or like crying and being upset and being traumatized and afraid and scared and to say it out loud would make us throw up the needles we were forced to swallow every second of every day living in our skin.

Most of us weren’t on T yet, some of us were catcalled every day and harassed in the streets or in abusive relationships nobody seemed to care to help them get out of because they were “strong enough” to do it by themselves.

I was using the gender swap face app and cried for ours when I saw my father looking back at me through the screen. The idea of transforming, of shedding into a body that would deprive me of love, tenderness, and safety, was absolutely terrifying. I knew I couldn’t stay in this body any longer because it wasn’t mine, but I also knew that if I was going to look like my dad, my brother, my abusers, it would be so much worse.

5 years later and I’m almost 2 years on T, and almost 2 months post top surgery.

I ditched my previous group of friends. I was bullied out of my local trans community. But let me tell you how free I am.

I was scared that T would break my singing voice: it made it sound more alive than ever.

I was scared that T would make me less attractive: it made me find myself hot for the first time in my life.

I was scared that T would make me gain weight: it did. But the weight I put on is not the weight I used to put on by binging and eating my body until I forgot that it even existed. It’s the weight of my body belonging to me, little by little. The wolf hunger for life.

I won’t tell you the same story I see everywhere, the one that goes “I started going to the gym 8 times a week, I put on some muscles, I started a diet and now I look like an action film actor”, in fact if you took pictures of me from 5 years ago vs now I’d just have more acne, I’d have longer hair and still look like I don’t know what to do with myself when I take selfies.

But the sparkle in my eyes, my smile, tell the whole story way better than this long ass stream of words could ever.

I want to say some things that I wish someone told me before starting medically transitionning.

It’s okay to take your time. It’s your body, it’s your journey, if you don’t feel comfortable taking full doses and want to go slow, the only voice you need to listen to is your own. Do what feels right.

If you feel overwhelmed, it’s okay to take a break, it’s okay to ask for support.

Trans people are holy. Everyone is. You didn’t lose your angel wings when you came out because you want to be masculine. You are not excluded from the joy of existence, from being proud of yourself, from being sad, from being scared, from being angry. The emotions and feelings you allowed yourself to feel while processing what you experienced when you grew up as a girl and was seen as a woman are still as valid as before. Nobody can take that from you. If someone tries to, don’t let them.

It’s perfectly normal to grieve some things you were and had before you started to transition, like your high soprano voice or even your chest. Hatching is painful. You can find comfort in things that don’t feel right, so making the decision to change can be incredibly scary and weird and you deserve to be heard and supported through this. Wanting top surgery doesn’t make the surgery less intense, less terrifying, less painful to recover from. When it becomes too much you have the right to take a break and take some deep breaths before going on.

You don’t have to have a radical, 180° change for your transition to be acceptable or valid or worthy of praise. Look at how far you’ve come already. It doesn’t have to show, you’re not made to be a spectacle, you’re human and it is your journey.

Oh, and last thing, you know when some people say “Oh this trans person has to grow out of the cringy phase where you think that you can write essays about being trans or transitionning or just their experience because it’s weird” ? If you ever hear this or see this online, remember all the people whose writing you read and, even if they were not professional writers, helped you more than any theorists did ? If you want to write, do it. It won’t be a waste. It can help people. Or it won’t, and even then, if it helped you, that’s enough.

Love every of my trans siblings, take care of yourselves. You deserve the world.

[trans-androgyne]

I read too many stories of "women" throughout history who lived as men and wore men's clothing getting beaten and arrested for it, sensationalized in the press as "man-woman," painted as perverts and monsters, put in literal freakshows, and forcibly institutionalized to sit by quietly while non-transmascs loudly and confidently claim that "female masculinity" has never been targeted as much as "male femininity" has. Read some trans and queer history that isn't only about gay men and trans women before you open your mouths about butches and transmascs, or better yet just listen to us about our history and experiences in the first place.

[codewitch]

The women’s gymnastics floor routine is always so funny because they’re clearly 1000% focused on their tumble routines aka the things they’ve trained their whole lives for and are being scored on, but in between those they gotta do their little mandated dance breaks. Go to your corner and mentally prepare to do 8 whole flips but first, mandatory 10 second dance break.

[transfemstarscream]

this post was made in derision to the suggestion of male characters being inherently more complex simply by virtue of being male. it was made in frustration to the suggestion of female characters being inherently less complex simply by virtue of being female.

it was not an invitation to discredit, dissect or detract from m/m works, nor suggest the dominating percentage of it in fandom culture was solely a result of misogyny. it was not an attempt to shame creators, more of whom are women, for their sexuality i.e. exclusive attraction to men (which would be hypocritical of me) or for not creating works centered around f/f.

[ette-lette]

And you smell like How angels oughta smell

[beyond-mogai-pride-flags]

Man NonMan Pride Flag

Man Non-man (boy nonboy, male nonmale or nonman man): someone who is man and nonman.

This includes multigender people whose genders include boy and non-boy/not boy (simultaneously or fluid), a centrigender between male and non-male genders, men who feel represented by or reclaim the term "nonmen"/non-men (and vice-versa), enboys/xoys, bxys, those with complex genders or contradictory identities, etc.

[raqualswonderfunblog]

[shutinthenutouse]

[justdavina]

Such a kissable transgender gurl! She's wonderful! She's adorable!

[genderqueerdykes]

i got to thinking about something i said... going to turn these into prints, stickers, shirts, buttons, etc. soon. thought folks might like this, i'm way more pleased with the design than i thought i would be (: consider adding more flags too!

happy pride to everyone who refuses to be cisgender (or cissexual!) in the face of a world that demands we bow to their needs. we do not owe anyone cisgenderism or cissexuality- we owe it to ourselves to be who we are instead.

you can buy these prints here on a variety of items!