#nonbinary people existing in the middle of this binary discourse is just hell

[cardentist]

I’ve been having a hard time figuring out how to word this, specifically because I don’t know how to get at the idea that’s specifically bothering me without opening a conversation about a dozen other interweaving issues. so please bare in mind that what I’m saying is in the context of a broader set of issues that I’m not specifically going to get into here (or at least I’m gonna try not to).

to rip the band aid off, I’m uncomfortable with the fact that trans men have been so minimized in discussions about transphobia and specifically pitted against trans women (as if recognizing their own oppression somehow takes oppression away from trans women) to the point that trans men can’t talk about their oppression in their own spaces without having to minimize themselves.

this isn’t unique to trans men nor is it one-sided, but the normalization of it not just in lgbt+ spaces but on tumblr in General is just mind-boggling.

like even taking the common justifications and logic behind this at face value it’s Blatantly clear that there’s a specific bias in play against trans men. like, it’s insisted that trans men don’t experience misogyny because they are men and therefor they are less oppressed. gay men are men and therefore don’t face misogyny, so it stands to reason that they are less oppressed than lesbians

how many posts about the generalized hatred of non-heterosexuality is specifically referred to as lesbophobia and nothing else. how many posts calling out lesbophobia reminds people that what’s being described could never happen to gay men. how often has a gay man had to derail a post talking about his experiences to clarify that he Knows lesbians are more oppressed than he is or else face the possibility of people getting angry at him for trying to insist that he’s more oppressed than them Because he’s speaking up at all.

recognizing the existence of gay men and their oppression is not treated like a threat to lesbians and their oppression. we all know that it’s important to recognize the differences in experiences between gay men and lesbians but we don’t use those differences as an excuse to speak over or silence gay men. (or rather, it’s called as being wrong when it Does happen.)

the constant minimization here isn’t being used to remind people of where we need to allocate our funds in non-profits or to remind people be Mindful of groups of people who face multiple axis’ of oppression, it’s being used to silence people and push them out of their spaces.

trans men are put in boxes and shaken Far More than their cis counterparts are in the wider community, and I wouldn’t be the first person to point out that it’s terf logic being applied to trans people with the caveat of believing the trans person is correct about their gender. I think that’s also why people jump to the opposite so quickly. people who’ve internalized Men Bad Horrible Invaders and cope with that by pointing it at another target would feel threatened by that target insisting that they’re wrong specifically Because they were already afraid of it being used against them. it’s understandable but it isn’t actually appropriate.

the fact that rowling’s terf manifesto explicitly targeted trans men (and specifically trans men’s reproductive health) while she’s Only been called out for transmisogyny is a problem. the fact that trans men have to grovel and minimize their experiences to be allowed to talk without incident is a problem. the fact that people are allowed to just Announce that specific experiences Exclude trans men without being challenged is a problem (and the fact that people who Do challenge it are painted as the ones doing the silencing is just fucking gross).

none of this is me saying that trans men are inherently more oppressed than trans women, but that at this point I think just asking the question is harmful to the conversation we’re trying to have. it isn’t useful when talking about individual experiences because individual people are going to have their experiences whether it’s more or less likely to happen to them or not. an individual trans woman isn’t “inherently” more or less oppressed than an individual trans man because their identities don’t dictate their lived experiences on their own.

all we’ve done is hurt and isolate people in our bid to “prove” that they’re the loser here. it is, for instance, A Lot More Difficult to have a nuanced discussion about trans men’s experiences with misogyny and how those experiences evolve over time and affect our relationship with our gender and ourselves when half of the live studio audience is angry that we’ve suggested that trans men have experiences with misogyny at all

[analytickle-lezdom-in-space]

Welp, here we are

Tumblr is doing the thing.  It’s hard to say exactly what the thing is because tumblr is poorly executing it and poorly communicating it as always, but suffice to say, unless the decision gets reversed, we’re not gonna be able to do nsfw on this site anymore.  What will this mean?  Will be there a mass exodus?  Seems to be already.  WIll the site survive or will it lose all its userbase and sink forever?  It remains to be seen.  I certainly suspect there’ll always be at least a few users clinging to it to the bitter end.  

But maybe more important, what will I do?  *Shrug* I dunno, really.  Might leave entirely eventually, although probably not right away. This site can be stressful as hell at the best of times.  Plus, fewer TERFs.  Might find another site if a viable alternative really emerges, I’ll certainly try a few of the supposed alternatives out and see if I like where it’s going.  At the very least could be a supplement for tumblr.  I think that’s probably a good way to look at it honestly because a lot of people aren’t gonna wanna leave tumblr easy but no one is saying you have to leave tumblr to try out other sites.  You can keep your options open, try some different platforms, that way you have a safety net if things get cray-cray and also it provides more impetus for tumblr to actually make positive change for once because they know we’ve found other options and need them less and they can’t push us as far anymore without us jumping ship.  

I’ll definitely stay for at least a little while, focus more on text posts and advice stuff, still including kink, but minus any actual porn.  Probably will also focus more on fandom stuff and photography.  Might make an entirely sfw sideblog eventually and if so I’ll let mutuals i trust know about it.  

I guess if I do stick around long term, it’ll be for this:  When I started on tumblr, it was mostly just because I wanted to share stuff that I thought was cool. But I also wanted to use it as an outlet for parts of myself I had a hard time being open about, my queerness, my thoughts on social issues, kink, my polyamorous relationships, romance.   And over time I began to find that my experiences were ones that a lot of people didn’t really even seem to exist?  There was a lot of misunderstandings about transgender and nonbinary people, oftentimes from other trans/nonbinary people and a lot of people consciously talking about the world in these very exact and narrow ways that didn’t fit the realities of my situation and as i began to see that a lot of other people were also being excluded by these narrow definitions I decided that even if I didn’t wanna actively wade into tumblr discourse and argue with or call out people, I did want to actually talk about my experiences, do my best to raise up and signal boost the experiences of other marginalized and ignored people without speaking on their behalf, and just create a space for people to learn and have their preconceptions challenged.  

Because, I don’t really fit into a lot of the boxes people tend to put on our experiences even in social justice circles in a lot of ways.  I am a transgender woman, assigned male at birth. I don’t experience body dysphoria.  I am a lesbian.  I am a nonbinary woman, my identity does not exist within the gender binary.  I am GNC, butch in particular, and don’t perform femininity.  I have a beard, for God’s sake.  And I didn’t even change my name at first, and I’m still probably gonna keep my birth name as a middle name because I like my new name more but my old name still represents a part of my existence and I didn’t change genders and my old pre-transition self wasn’t me pretending to be someone I wasn’t, I just hadn’t fully learned who I was yet.  Every trans person’s experience is different, but the ones commonly presented as “the default trans experience” never represented me in a lot of ways, even among other trans lesbians. 

 And it really doesn’t stop there, I have ADHD, and BPD, and might be on the autism spectrum.  On a smaller, less social justice related scale my sex life isn’t especially “normal” either.  My trans identity doesn’t mean being submissive or playing along with traditional femininity and certainly doesn’t involve any backwards ass sissy kink nonsense. I am dominant, in and out of the bedroom.  I am the full spectrum kind of dominant, but not really into pain.  I’m a gentle femdom type but not into men despite 90% of gfd content on this site being male sub focused.  I like tickling, one of the more fringe but not actually very out there or extreme kinks that the rest of kinky tumblr keeps at an arm’s length for some reason.   I can occasionally bottom/submit in bedroom situations but that doesn’t make me less of a domme.  I am polyamorous and have a wide variety of different relationships with different people but they aren’t less special or intimate because of it.  I am a deeply religious protestant christian despite how openly sexual and queer I am.  I am a sex positive feminist but I want to protect the rights of people NOT to be sexual and promote sexual safety too, not just wild celebrations of sex without any consideration of who might get hurt.  I am an nsfw blogger but I try to make my space as friendly to ace people and easy to block the nsfw parts as possible and those things share space with random dragon age memes and music and my thoughts on animal welfare issues.  In ways from the minor to the major, I’ve always felt on here like I am kinda the standard bearer on a lot of issues, the only really prominent blogger in some of these communities representing for some of these backgrounds.  And there are others that don;t get much voice that I will never be part of being an able bodied white Christian perisex, allosexual/alloromantic, non-male-attracted person.  And I want to use my platform to listen to those people as well.  My therapist gave me a good piece of advice when she taught me that I can’t argue away the narrow minded and all I can do is just stand there and go “Whether or not you want to acknowledge me, here I am.”   And that’s what tumblr is for me.  A place to be the most radical thing it’s possible for someone like me to be:  me.  A place where I can make my existence and my experiences and the things I’ve learned known and other people can listen and learn, and where I can try to do the same with other people.  And  Ithink that’s valuable.  So I may just decide to leave yet depending on how frustrating tumblr decides to make things, but I am not leaving in the immediate future.  

I am investigating other possible ways to do what I am doing though, and make sure all of y’all can still talk to me if I get deleted or leave, so: 

I have kik, discord, skype, fetlife, whatsapp, and instagram, and I might invest in a snapchat at some point, plus i have email.  If y’all wanna talk to me, ask me about the possibility of chatting on one of those platforms

I’m looking into stuff like Ello or Pillowfort or Mastodon so stay tuned for my thoughts on those 

And I will keep on here in the immediate future at the very least.  We’ll see where I go from here.  I’ll try to keep y’all in the know.  Wishing you all happy trails wherever you go!