#or you could simply say that she's not a trans woman instead of trying to make these terms fit? 'exempt' does make no sense here

[tinystepsforward]

algerian trans women arent able to compete in women sports at all, but yeah its makes no sense to call khelif tme. youre so fucking smart.

(this is a response to this post) i see you don't believe that i'm quoting one of the trans women in my life about that, which is your prerogative. it's also your right to miss my point entirely both about the ways this alienates intersex people and about the rigidity of a binary that comes down to the same shrinking circles terfs draw when they try to quantify what a woman is (speak up for women, the most organised nz group, have now submitted on the human rights act suggesting that all babies be karyotyped at birth and the results be public, bc they can't establish any other definition they agree on. absolutely fucking nobody, not even their christian or conspiracist allies, agrees with them on this one.)

but you don't have to take my word for it! when i was at that consultation with the nz law commission, i was in a room with many other intersex and trans people, including trans athletes and trans women like lexie matheson who consult on trans inclusion in sports at a high national level. i don't think there's a single person in that room who did not name what was happening to khelif as we spoke as transmisogyny, who did not speak of her as part of a group with whom we all shared something.

at the end of the day, prison abolition informs all of my politics. i believe that we must look clearly and carefully at harm and distinguish it from discomfort or disagreement, and identify its structural sources and true perpetrators. i believe that to build a better future we must be capable of imagining one. i believe that we can build a world where suffering is not the metric by which we determine value or punishment or righteousness. i believe that we can build a world where we centre and uplift those who are most hurt, in every arena — black and brown trans women, here; in some of my other work, it's incarcerated intellectually disabled people, or asian migrant sex workers affected by section 19, the list goes on — without then pitting them against other people who share some of the same story and will benefit from the same deconstruction of the systems that hold them down. i believe we can build a world in which asab doesn't affect so much of your life by beginning that work now.

there's a politics of scarcity — you have it better than me, so we have nothing in common. i saw it all the time in brothels, the idea that the new girl is taking money out of your kids' mouths. the viciousness with which people who are struggling are so ready to abandon solidarity. is it so hard to demand better for everyone? to think less about the ways we're alone and more about the ways we're together?

maybe it is. i know that well enough as a prison abolitionist. people get scared. they swing at shadows, they swing at anyone who seems to be suffering less, they — we, i should say, i am certainly not immune — get blindingly jealous of people who seem to have it easier. that's grief! that's grief for the easier life that we deserve. and we get to mourn, and take that time to feel it, and then we can choose if we want to keep working hand in hand with each other toward a world where that grief is dwarfed by the promise of the future.

[crazy-pages]

Yes - your experiences with RHPC are also there to mistreat and degender trans women. It's indicative of your privilege why these spaces were "welcoming" to you. Learn to realize that instead of shutting your ears.

I am begging you to get out more. Please, actually go to a Rocky Horror Picture Show showing! You don't even have to go in! Just look at the crowd that shows up. You have this absolutely detached from reality notion of who is watching it and why, and I swear on any god you care to name, if you actually go to one you will see throngs of trans women having an amazing time. It's not for everyone, sure, but (and I can't believe I have to say this) no part of the queer community is a monolith and you need to actually try and understand the experiences of others who feel differently than you.

But no, you know what? I'm gonna put a positive note on this.

Buckle in, I'm planning on making up for all the negativity around this with quite a bit of positivity and it's gonna be long.

The very first time I watched Rocky Horror Picture Show, I was in college, freshman year. I knew I was a bi guy by that point, had dated a guy*, and still felt absolutely petrified being openly bi around strangers. I had no idea how messy my queerness actually was by this point.

*She turned out to be a transfeminine mostly woman genderfluid person later, but at the time it was my first gay relationship.

I'd just had a talk with a straight guy on my floor. He'd made some comments about how he supported pride, but like ... not the gay people who are so out there, you know? That's just uncomfortable.

And damn me, I agreed with him. Not because I actually agreed with him but because the thought of disagreeing petrified me. I didn't know how to say that I actually wanted to be one of those out there queer people. That I wanted to have that bravery. I want it to be accepted, of course, but gods I also craved the simply bravery of people who hung pride flags in their own rooms. Who felt confident enough to say any flavor of "I don't fucking care if you want it, I'm here, I'm queer, get used to it."

And then a trans girl I'd met during orientation invited me to watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show with her. I had no idea what this was. But she got what felt like every damn queer freshman in the entire dorm together. Gay, bi, trans, whatever. Our straight friends? Sure. Some of us who turned out to be very queer later and who she somehow clocked? You betcha. She got us all together in the dorm lounge, which was open and faced the elevator. Every single person moving through the dorm that evening would be able to see us.

And she put The Rocky Horror Picture Show on.

It was every single queerphobic stereotype the 70s could throw together. Transmisogyny? Hah! That shit went beyond transmisogynistic depiction, the demons out of the fevered imaginings of 70s straight culture weren't broken down into categories. Faggot? Dyke? Tranny? They all meant the same thing and it was totally indistinguishable to your average suburban straight person in the 70s. They had no damn concept up there being a difference between a guy who wants to fuck other guys and a guy who pretends to be a woman. The decree of vicious stereotypical othering on display was literally beyond current conception. It was everything that straight guy I had talked to was thinking of when he said "gay people who are so out there", distilled and refined.

And it. Was. Joyous.

It was a movie which took hold of all of those stereotypes, even the explicitly predatory and infectious and doomsaying ones, and screamed "YES! SO FUCKING WHAT!? WE'RE HERE, WE'RE QUEER, AND WE FUCKING LOVE IT!" It is a movie which takes the stuffy suburban point of view characters and makes them queer. It does so in a way that embodies every aspect of the 70s fear of infectious homosexual permiscuity and then shows it as joyous! As liberating and wonderful and the best fucking experience of their lives!! Its characters were messy and full of conflict and doomed from the beginning and also gloriously fucking alive and happy to be queer!!!

At the end of it the trans girl I'd met during orientation, who would go on to be my friend for the next decade to this day, asked me what I thought of it.

I said I really liked it.

I meant it had changed my life.

She started gushing about it, and a lot of the freshman went back to their dorms at this point, but the rest of us talked for what must have been longer than the movie itself about all of the queerness in it. Yeah about the trans misogynistic stereotypes and the homophobic stereotypes and the complicated way the movie both mirrors and subverts the way 70s discourse about queer culture and even the way it elided cis queer women. And we did it all in plain view of everybody. We were the queers in your face and it meant the world to me.

The second time I went to a Rocky Horror Picture Show showing, I was actually invited by a straight friend who was invited by some queer friends he didn't know quite as well as me. (It really ended up being the two of us going together.) I was living in Arizona at the time, which is not quite as bad as the Deep South but still pretty damn conservative and it made being openly queer scary as hell.

I had realized at the time that I liked wearing skirts. Like, really liked wearing skirts. A lot. Lots of gender euphoria about it. Now like I said, my queerness is messy. I am very much a man. I am also pretty sure I want to get bottom surgery someday. I genuinely don't know if that makes me cis or trans. Hell I'm not sure what the word for that even is. Transsexual maybe?? But at that time, I was still figuring it all out. I didn't know if I was a trans woman or not. I knew I didn't really feel like a woman or want to be a woman or vibe with feminine secondary sex characteristics, but like ... I dunno when you're getting euphoria over wearing skirts and in the deep dark recesses of your mind you think you want a vagina, it's kind of impossible to not ask that question.

And the thing is, I had never been out in public in a skirt before. I'd never even been out in public with makeup before.

But I had that experience with Rocky Horror Picture Show to draw on. I knew that showings of this movie were where you go to be openly, loudly, unapologetically queer.

So I put on a skirt and a see-through shirt and really intense makeup (not in this picture unfortunately) and the biggest smile I felt like I'd ever worn in my life, and I went to The Rocky Horror Picture Show with my friend.

Now for those of you who don't know, there's a tradition at showings where people who haven't attended a showing before get marked with a V for virgin, and called up on stage before the showing to get kind of lightly sexually hazed. It was very explicitly done with consent at the showing I went to, everybody was made to understand they could bow out at any point and that it was all in good fun and in the service of expanding people's boundaries. Stuff like being asked to kiss other people in queer ways, encouraging a blushing baby lesbian to motorboat a hot older woman in leather, getting two guys to do an overwrought romance improv, etc.

And when I got to the door with my friend, there was someone working the door who was some flavor of queerly transfeminine and supremely confident about it. She looked at my friend and immediately asked him if he'd been before and gave him the V. (He came in a tshirt and jeans.) Then she looked at me.

And I'm never going to forget what she said.

She gave me a look up and down, chuckled, and said, "Yeah you've done this before, go on in."

I had not actually done this before, I hadn't gone to a proper showing and so I missed out on the virgin experience, but I could not bring myself to care. Because I was riding the high of her comment for days. I'm still riding it, to be honest.

She hadn't recognized me as any particular gender or flavor of queerness. All I knew was that she had seen a visibly masculine dude with a buzz cut and a skirt and poorly done makeup and said "Oh yeah. You're one of us. ❤️"

Also my straight friend had a great fucking time and we ended up gushing about it for like an hour afterward and I got to pass on a bunch of the stuff I learned from my old trans friend about the history of the queerphobic stereotypes on display and the underlying meaning of aggressively joyous claiming of that from the '70s queer movement.

So yeah. It is a movie which portrays queerness as intrinsically alien to straight society. The creator is a genderqueer man who believes that trans women are women, but an intrinsically different flavor of women, an opinion which has aged very poorly and quite justifiably gotten him scorned by the modern trans community. And some modern queer people, especially trans women who are sensitive to portrayals of transmisogyny, are going to feel uncomfortable with the movie.

And yet.

I've had people in my DMs and anons in my asks yelling at me for saying there are transwomen who like this movie, and that the question of whether it's trans misogynistic is more complicated than whether it portrays transmisogynistic stereotypes. Most of those have involved people screaming at me that they're sure it must have only been trans men and tme (transmisogyny excluded) people attending showings (and you could really feel the sprayed derisive spittle as they typed those terms), that it's impossible for any true trans woman to enjoy showings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

And to those people, and to you, all I can hope to do is share these experiences with you and hope you try to understand the different queer experiences of others.

Not just mine.

But the experience of a trans girl who I'm sure was feeling even more alone and isolated as a queer freshman than I was. Who assembled a whole group of queer kids, who sat with her to take the very nightmare stereotypes which haunted her every day and turn them into a weapon of raucous joy and in your face queer solidarity with her.

And the experience of the person at the door of my first showing, queer and transfeminine and supremely confident about it, seeing some baby queer looking like every damn flavor of masculinity rocking up in a skirt and poorly done makeup. Saying "Hey kid. You're one of us," and watching the baby queer's face light up like a million Christmas trees.

You don't have to like the movie. But the people who like it? Are here, are queer, are - yes - even trans women.

Get used to it.

[menlove]

as a card carrying terf I don’t think trans ppl are disgusting and neither does any radfem i’ve ever met, vast majority of us dgaf about trans people specifically; we want single-sex spaces to exist and btw trans people need those single-sex spaces too. trans women deserve to have spaces for Just trans women and cis women deserve spaces with Just cis women etc etc. i highly recommend doing some actual research into radical feminism instead of repeating the "theyre all conservatives who hate gnc people and find trans people disgustinf and want to kill them" that is simply not true lmao. you may be surprised a what you learn! sincerely a gnc lesbian and proud radfem

I have in fact done much research into radical feminism babe! trust me I have spent hours in yalls spaces! and you simply cannot speak for every single terf just as I can't speak for every trans person. you can't say "come on NO ONE IS SAYING-" just like I can't say that either. do you know every terf? have you seen every blog? have you been a trans person (particularly a trans woman) on the internet trying to just exist in peace? no? then you don't get to say "no terf is SAYING-" because yes, a lot of you are!

"no terf thinks trans people are disgusting" cool so when I was 19 and hadn't touched testosterone a day in my life and had she/they in my bio one of you coming into my ask going "I can tell by looking at you that you'll never be a woman lmfao" bc I'm latine w a shitton of body hair and non-eurocentric features, THAT was out of love for ✨women✨.

when yall (not you specifically but your group you associate with) get on twitter and pick apart the selfies women post telling them they're ugly and following it up by saying you KNOW they're "men" and it turns out 9/10 you've just harassed a cis woman who just doesn't meet eurocentric beauty standards, that's so totally cool and awesome and out of love for cis women and a want for separate spaces right?

when yall go into trans people's asks and tell us to kill ourselves, call us pedophiles, call us rapists, call us ugly... that shit just doesn't happen, right? and yes I'm Aware yall get death and rape threats too. you shouldn't, it's gross on both sides, but really it's not proving your point here.

it's fucking infuriating. you're infuriating. because radical feminism could be something worthwhile (and funnily enough I've met a lot of older ex radfem lesbians who have veered away from it bc of how fucking vitrolic yall are towards trans people). but instead, it is steeped and inseparable from the mire of hatred and disgust that you parrot. you don't give a single shit about women, whatever sex.

I'm an assigned female at birth lesbian who has only ever slept with other people with vaginas (consensually anyway). I can't tell you the amount of hate I've gotten from yall. just for being trans. even though I meet your definition of being a woman and being a lesbian. it doesn't matter because your hatred for people you deem as degenerate outweighs actually fucking advocating for feminism.

I'm not even going to argue with you on how useless single sex spaces actually are bc despite their best attempts there's always going to be problems (namely: fun fact cis women can be awful too AND how the fuck are you going to check and enforce this rule? what is your end goal?).

but what I AM going to say is no, sorry, that's NOT what a lot of you think. that's what YOU think. that's why YOU'RE a terf. but actually fucking look at the people around you. go on a trans person's blog or twitter who's receiving harassment and fucking try and tell me it's to promote "uwu safe spaces" like.... be fucking serious with me right now lmfao

you're not conservatives! but you are a bunch of fucking assholes who care more about harassing trans people than building a feminism that might actually have teeth. if you're using those teeth to attack a group more vulnerable than you, you're just an aggressor.

tldr you don't speak for all of them, go fuck yourself, etc

[edonee]

You asked yesterday for someone to explain what trans people mean when we say we do or don't feel like a gender or sex. My comment is too long to put in the replies to I'm answering here instead. I don't really think this will change your mind at all, but this is the best way I can explain what it feels like to be trans masculine.

Seeing myself and having others see me as a girl was painful. I felt a deep sense of wrongness when people called me "she" and when people described me as a girl. It sometimes made me throw up, it made me cry, it made me dissociate. When I transitioned and people called me "he" or "they", I felt an overwhelming amount of joy. I felt like they were seeing who I was, I felt right. I felt this deep sense of wrongness in relation to my body as well - I couldn't stand seeing my breasts, I couldn't stand having a period, I hated the way my face was shaped. I also often felt uncomfortable when doing things or wearing things considered traditionally feminine, but I think that was because I hated that people used those to associate me with being a girl. Now, I often enjoy wearing clothing or activities that fit feminine gender roles. My point is, my dysphoria and my experience of gender is almost entirely based on how I feel most aligned with the gender designation of man, and not at all aligned with the gender designation of woman - rather than what aspects of those gender roles I wanted to participate in.

I don't think there's one simple explanation as to what it means to feel like a woman or a man or any form of gender that does not fit within the binary. I personally believe that we all have unique experiences of gender, and most people's match up with how they are perceived by society, but others make them feel dysphoric. I honestly agree with the idea of gender abolition - as long as we don't divide people by sex either. It would be great if we could all just exist as people without these arbitrary categories acting as defining characteristics of who we are.

I can't answer if, in that hypothetical society where we don't have genders, I would still experience the dysphoria I've felt about my body. I don't know - I'm sorry. I get that there are a lot of confusing things in play when it comes to gender and trans people, and I think it's great that people like you want to understand, and I get that it can seem suspicious when there are some things that we can't answer.

But I don't think that those areas where there's a lack of clarity need to push you away from supporting trans people. We are not claiming to be trans for some manipulative agenda, or just very swept up in internalized misogyny. Most of us are people who suffered a lot trying to exist as the gender that society ascribed to our sex, and now that we've found another way to exist, we feel freer. I feel like a man because I don't feel wrong when I exist as a man. I don't feel like a woman because I felt wrong when I existed as a woman. I don't see what in that is a threat.

Thank you if you bothered to read all of this! Have a lovely evening.

Hi ^^ good morning, I just read this and I'm going to try to make my point as linear as possible. I want to start off by giving you a definition of sex and gender (just so that there's no confusion over what I'm talking about) I've simply taken the definitions from The World Health Organisation as I find those exhausting and agreeable enough:

Sex is defined as the different biological and physiological characteristics of males and females, such as reproductive organs, chromosomes, hormones, etc

Gender is defined as the (of course variable based on place, culture, and historical period) socially constructed characteristics of women and men – such as norms, roles and relationships of and between groups of women and men.

I want to start by addressing what you said at the very beginning of your argument: you said that people perceiving you as a girl distressed you even to the point of physical sickness, whereas getting gendered as a man made you feel seen as your true self. First, I want to say that your "true self" can't be the social classification of characteristics attributed to either sex. Gender is, by definition, purely constructed, therefore any identification with either gender comes from a personal sympathization with its elements and not from an innate connection to a system that is man-made and cannot therefore borne any biological bond. Secondly, I don't want to make a diagnosis out of your experience, but that simply sounds like an extreme result of growing up as a female. With the way girls are treated in every society it's no wonder that the passage from childhood to girlhood is burdensome. When a male child grows up he becomes a person, whereas a female grows to be a woman. Very trivially, the reason why I used to identify as non-binary when I was around 13-14 was that I felt too complex to fit into something as shallow and one-dimensional as womanhood. Of course I'm not saying that's why you specifically feel this way, as there could very well be another reason personal to you that has shaped your mind and put you in a psychological condition where you feel alienated from your body. But even in that case, the argument of transgenderism still doesn't hold up. Gender is not biological, so of course anyone can identify themselves in and out of it as they please, but that doesn't change two things:

1) the structure of it remains the same

2) a female who identifies as a man is still female and vice versa

You also go on and say that your experience with gender comes from feeling aligned to the “gender designation of men – rather than what aspects of those gender roles (you) want to participate in„

I find this definition quite feeble, as the "gender designation of men" is exactly equivalent to the gender roles linked to it, and nothing more. Again, I can't help but get the idea that the motive of your discomfort with femaleness stems from an underlying uneasiness with the poor way women are treated in a misogynistic society rather than an abstract and impractical affinity with the male sex.

Now, toward the end of your argument you hypothesized a world where gender has been erased, leaving sex as the only undeniable distinction between people, and you said:

"I can't answer if, in that hypothetical

society where we don't have

genders, I would still experience the

dysphoria l've felt about my body"

And, although I don't know you personally, I'm quite confident that the answer would be no. Feeling discontent over your body is not innate, it's learned (subconsciously or otherwise) through socialization. If you feel envy towards the male body and hatred towards your female body it is not because there's something inherently wrong with it, but rather because you aspire to the male gender class. Without sex discrimination & gender existing in the first place, there would be nothing that would make you resent your female body.

However, we clearly don't live in a word free of gender, so does that mean that we should endorse transgenderism for the sake of those people who suffer from dysphoria? The answer is no. Dysphoria is a direct result of gender, therefore the solution is to question the very construct of gender, and not to go through medical procedures to change one's sexual characteristics in order to "be your true self". Just like anorexia can't be cured by starving, but only by deconstructing the underlying fixation with thinness and body image. Not to mention the idea that gender is actually real is harmful to feminism. It does not only solidify gender stereotypes, and promote the definition of certain behaviors as either masculine or feminine, it also strips words away of their meaning, making the fight for female liberation a nebulous movement that stands up for the rights of – who exactly? Females? Anyone who identifies as female? Men who say they are women?

I'm genuinely sorry that there are people who suffer to the point that they want to be the opposite sex, but I refuse to advocate for the idea that you can be born into the wrong body. Believing that your body is wrong is a fucking miserable way to live, and it's also simply not true.

Let me know if you want to ask me anything else, have a good day

[freakattack]

hey since Birdo's original bio says she likes to be called Birdetta, do you think that means Birdetta is her preferred name and Birdo is her deadname or is it just Birdetta is a nickname she likes

So this is something i (like many transgender marioheads) have thought about at length because no matter how you slice it the transmisogyny of the original bio still feels glaringly apparent. Like, on one hand, the original bio tells you that it (and every subsequent mario game with her in it) is deadnaming her and that she prefers to go by Birdetta, but on the other hand the "Birdo->Birdetta" thing itself is clearly intended as a joke at the expense of trans women and so it also feels kind of shitty to capitulate to that too. I've seen many different in-universe interpretations that try to reconcile that; for example, simply addressing her as Birdetta and assuming all other characters would too, or saying that Birdetta is a nickname since she does address herself as Birdo (of course, because that's her official Nintendo-branded name), or saying she originally went by Birdetta and then grew more comfortable being a woman named Birdo instead, or going in the reverse direction and interpreting the original "Birdetta" comment as transmisogynistic in-universe rather than the bio deadnaming her (i really like this comic). Still others will forgo the whole thing and address her by her Japanese name, Catherine, which is a nice compromise, but then you also lose the recognizability of the "bird-" name for people who aren't in the know.

I'm not a trans woman so it's really not my place to say what is "the right answer" to this debacle (besides Nintendo outright addressing it and admitting they fucked up, which will never happen), but although I do tend to lean more towards birdetta I would also like to think that mario and friends are not constantly deadnaming her (something I've also seen trans women express, so I don't fault people for interpreting her preferred name as Birdo for this reason). I personally feel that a good middle ground is "Birdie", as she calls herself in superstar saga, because it could reasonably be a shortened version of both of those options, but also is offered as an overly-familiar pet name and not the punchline to a transphobic joke. This one also loses the recognizability of "birdo" and "birdetta", but the association is still there. But, again, I think any of the interpretations I mentioned here are reasonable; it's really hard to bend this into the shape of a respectful portrayal, and everyone has their own way of trying. TL;DR Birdie deserves better and Nintendo deserves to get egged

[salarta]

Polaris, an Unsung Hero

Anyone who hasn't seen some of my more recent posts, to recap, I think Polaris' chances of good near future treatment out of Marvel are extremely slim verging on nil.

It was already bad enough that Marvel is going all in on unthinking 90s nostalgia, which was terrible for Lorna in how it restricted her to "Havok's supporting character girlfriend." Even worse, the X-Men comics have an element of 80s nostalgia as well, so current X-Factor added the "abducted damsel in distress for Havok to have manpain about it" angle too. Pair that with too many X-Men fans I've run into making excuses for poor treatment (one even explicitly saying Lorna "deserves" terrible characterization) but then getting upset when their own faves like Pyro get similar poor treatment, and it's worse. But the United States 2024 election results were the last straw for me. While I have serious doubts that fuckery isn't afoot, the Dems aren't even trying to stop fascism in any way, and in fact are trying to throw trans people under the bus as an excuse.

So what we're left with is the suggestion that a majority of voting Americans want racist, sexist, trans hating pedophiles running the country as long as they "get mine," an attitude echoed in X-Men fandom ("Polaris getting fucked over is fine as long as my fave is treated well"), and the people with the greatest ability to resist these problems instead eagerly jumping headlong into exacerbating them.

It's fucked. And it's left me feeling like Polaris doesn't have a shot at good work in the short term, cause how do you build awareness of what she deserves and get people to understand and respect it in this atmosphere?

At this point, you're wondering why I said all of the above when it seems far off from the title of my post. It's connected because it's had me thinking differently over the past few weeks.

I don't think I can "fight" for the character, because I don't see a path forward to do it. What I can do, though, is simply share my feelings and what I see.

And folks. I was reminded of something important last night.

Progress in this world isn't something that gets rewarded for the people and forms that initiate it. It gets punished. Daring to break the mold, daring to move the needle forward, daring to pave the way for others, that gets punished sharply.

That's what happened to Polaris.

I don't know how many people know this, but Marvel comics was rife with sexism, and still is but to a lesser degree. Sue Storm started out as only able to turn invisible, and treated very often in the sexist supporting character vein. Some depictions of the Fantastic Four even had Reed threatening to smack her around.

In the X-Men books, at the time Lorna was introduced, Jean Grey was placed in the common mold of female characters at the time. More regressive, more supporting character in nature. Both Jean and Wanda were often set out as the "token girl" for the respective men around them. It wasn't exactly a progressive spot to be in even as just the idea of a woman on a team at all could arguably have been progress (when you compare to how Wonder Woman was first added to the Justice Society as their... secretary).

Enter Polaris. Although her introductory issue had a tinge of the "for a dude" in how Iceman got to save her at one point, the majority of her first appearance - and of some (not all) depictions pre-Claremont - made her very progressive in her time.

When her powers and relation to Magneto were learned, the X-Men feared her. Before learning those things, they saw her as just another woman in need of help. But after, they saw her as a full-fledged threat who could really tear them apart if she so chose. By herself. Not even adding in the potential mutant army at her beck and call there. But then, she decided to resist the "evil blood" of her father (note: this was before Magneto was established as Jewish, when Magneto was a mustache-twirling white man villain and nothing more) and follow her own path.

We had two progressive acts in her first issue. She was established as a truly dangerous woman, and she decided to be her own woman rather than simply do something because that's what her father would want from her. Then some depictions between this and Claremont let her speak more feminism by chastising Havok and Iceman for fighting over her instead of caring about the mission at hand, or by Lorna saying she's "nobody's girl" when Jean started suggesting it.

This progress was punished.

Gradually, Lorna was reframed as "Havok's girl." As his almost property. As a character who isn't allowed to have her own thoughts and feelings, only caring about what Havok wants and what matters to him. Claremont exacerbated this with his tenure by not only reinforcing the idea, but turning Lorna into a punching bag for villains and even other X-Men like Storm. Got bad enough that Claremont even had Zaladane steal Lorna's powers and then add extremely generic powers (super strength, invulnerability) alongside basically a "hate sink" power where the concept was for literally everyone she ever meets to feel their most negative emotions and want to kill her (even if they kill themselves in the process) just cause she's there.

That's where Lorna's stuck. Any time she makes any tiny modicum of progress, she gets forced back into the role of damsel and punching bag, if not explicitly like Claremont then implicitly with jokes and insults aimed at her (see also: 2020s X-Factor having Lorna say she's a "big gun" and then immediately having possessed Siryn mind control her and outright call her stupid for being written as stupid).

Every time I think of all of this, it makes me sad and angry. Polaris deserves a fuckload better. Even if you pretend she wasn't made until Claremont or until the 90s, like so many at Marvel like to do, she still deserves better. She's been wronged and savaged and had so much of what she offers torn apart and handed off to other characters.

Did you know they recently "created" a new character to "follow in Magneto's footsteps" named Magnetrix? Using Lorna's own first codename from before she was given the Polaris one, to promote a brand new character meant to steal yet another thing from her, the notion of her as heir to Magneto's legacy. While she's stuck as a supporting character girlfriend on X-Factor that gets abducted for Havok's sake.

Yet in my recent thoughts, after all the apologism from X-Men fans, after the US 2024 election, I find myself looking at something else here instead of the horrific injustice that looks like it'll never get fixed in my lifetime (maybe not even in the lifetime of anyone alive today).

Even though Claremont set it, ironically, Polaris is a very appropriate code name for her. Because it represents the north star, a guiding light. It steers people in the right direction within the darkness.

If someone uses that star to get where they're going, the star is rarely given accolades when they show up as needed. People don't go "Let's hear it for the guiding star! Yeah!" They just revel in where they are.

That's Polaris and her influence in a nutshell.

Yes, the progress seen in Sue Storm, Jean Grey, Scarlet Witch, Storm, the bulk of it comes from good work focused on them. Just like the bulk of a ship getting to its proper destination comes from the good work of those people on that ship who moved it along. But that ship needed a guiding light for those efforts to matter. That ship needed someone or something to light the way.

Polaris lit the way for all of those female characters and more.

I know most fans of those characters will balk at the suggestion. They'll say it was all self-powered, that Lorna did nothing for any of them. Some of those fans will even say Lorna made it harder for their faves. And I can understand why they would be so defensive of their faves in that way, I really do.

But the truth is, you need someone else to go first. You need someone else to stand out, take the beatings, set the precedent.

None of these characters, including Polaris, would have gotten anywhere if not for Wonder Woman and any characters who inspired that character. Wonder Woman set a precedent herself by being a female superhero who actually got shit done, and being extremely progressive in her time (even despite the sexism of things like being assigned secretary of the Justice Society). Just being a female superhero was blazing a trail.

Polaris blazed a trail herself by introducing most feminist ideals with her coming onto the scene. She created an opening for Jean and Storm and all of them to be able to get more progressive characterization. Lorna took the beating so they could move forward.

That's what happened. That's what's still happening. To this day. She built up the value of Magneto having an heir with his same power set, and now not once but twice, Marvel's introduced two female characters meant to take Lorna's place in that role so they could send her back to sexist treatment land. The upcoming "Magnetrix" is just the newest. There was also a recent story set in the past with a different character whose name I can't remember doing the same thing, seemingly carrying Magneto's legacy.

When Claremont decided to make Lorna into a hate sink for her power set, as shitty as it was for him to do, the truth is he was just making the implicit into something more explicit.

No matter what good Lorna does, no matter what trails she blazes, she's never rewarded for it. All she ever gets is punished and put down. All she ever gets is people saying she deserves to be treated shitty. Or people saying she doesn't deserve to be Magneto's daughter. Or people insisting she can't be anything more than Havok's girlfriend on X-Factor, and that X-Factor is all she's good for.

But despite all of that?

She's in the end doing good for everyone. Even though Marvel and too many X-Men fans at large will never, ever respect her for it.

They'll happily take advantage of the openings she creates. They'll love how she makes it easier to make their own faves do the things she already did, but that they can take credit for it with a different (sometimes new) character. They'll never give her her due. They'll just take take take.

And I guess... that's her real legacy. And why she's an unsung hero.

She gets nothing for the beatdowns in and out of the fiction. She gets nothing from the repeated character assassinations, the taking away of everything she is to hand off to other, "more deserving" characters. Any time she makes progress, it's instantly lifted for others to reap the benefits.

She's never going to be who and what she should be, and should have been for decades.

So maybe the best approach is really just to bask in the afterglow of what she accomplishes in secret.

Without her, what progress we do have wouldn't exist. Jean Grey and Storm would not have solo books today. Or at least, it would've been a much harder uphill climb for them to get those solo books. So many paths and ideas within X-Men and wider Marvel comics that get celebrated for being progressive, simply would not be if she hadn't taken the bullets for daring to stand out.

This doesn't mean I'll start reading Jean Grey or Storm comics. I'm not really interested in either of them, and truthfully, the way my brain works, reading those comics would actually just leave me more upset that Polaris will never get anything even remotely close to the same thing. I don't like to engage in stuff that just upsets me in a bad way like that.

But from afar, I can still think of how much my favorite character has done in secret, with no accolades and respect to show for it.

[toxicroyjamie]

pleaseeee give us more bigender jamie thoughts the concept is too good

Bigender Jamie my beloved….

He uses he/she pronouns <3 she doesn't mind they/them (pronouns are like. not very important to her honestly. she probably couldn’t tell you what a pronoun was if you asked LMAO) but she just doesn't really connect with gender neutrality/androgyny as much as she does with manhood and womanhood as separate and coexisting entities yk

When Jamie's super little, he starts asking Georgie why there are only boys and girls and he can't be both, and instead of jumping to tell him that's just the way it is (because she wants her bub to be a free thinker. obviously), she thinks about it for a while and is like. Well. I don’t know. I suppose you can be both if you’d like? And Jamie is like “ok :) yay :)” and runs with it

Georgie lets Jamie wear/do whatever he wants. She’s a very busy woman and simply has bigger things to worry about than her child wearing a pink shirt or whatever the fuck. As long as she can afford it, she'll buy it for him, because she's just trying to keep him happy and pay the bills yk

So Jamie amasses a small collection of what he calls “girl stuff," like these types of things

which he absolutely loves and has so much fun w. He's never pressured to identify any certain type of way or change anything about himself, always allowed to experiment, and he's very comfortable until he meets his dad

James starts coming around again when Jamie’s like 10ish, and he’s horrified by Georgie’s lax stance on masculinity and makes Jamie break/cut up/throw out her "girl stuff," because he doesn't think it's at all appropriate for his "son"

Having to destroy his favorite clothes and toys while his dad berates her is super traumatic and completely alters his perception of her gender/gender as a whole. When it was just him and Georgie, Jamie sort of took it for granted that he had room to experiment and didn’t realize that most people really don’t think it’s okay, and so it's a big shock and really forces her into the closet for a long time

Then she starts at the academy and everything around her is super masculine all the time, and she really tries put it behind her and convince herself that it was a phase and she doesn't have any need to indulge in that part of herself, since she's comfortable as a man and doesn't exactly feel disconnected from manhood

But as hard as he tries to convince himself otherwise, he always feels like he's missing part of himself. He's content with the life he's living and absolutely loves being one of the lads, but there's just something missing and it's undeniable and uncomfortable and always bubbling below the surface

So she's stuck in that limbo until she starts dating Keeley. He shows her an old picture where he’s wearing a Cinderella costume at daycare or something and tells her how he used to want to be “a girl and a boy at the same time” + about the “girl stuff” and how James made him destroy it, and he recounts the whole thing like it’s a funny story (because that’s just how he processes things) and is expecting Keeley to laugh with him, but she just gives him this really sad look and tells him she's sorry that happened to him and she hopes he feels comfortable expressing himself authentically with her

Which he doesn't at first, but he acclimates, because Keeley is willing to meet him halfway and work it out with him <3 She does his makeup on occasion and they experiment with phrases like "good girl" and "girlfriend" and even subtle public expressions of femininity like jewelry and nail polish and "women's" soap/shampoo, which Jamie really loves mixing with his generally masculine presentation

At one point Keeley asks her if she thinks she's a trans woman, and she's like. ":/ I don't think so, like I don't want to be a woman all the time, I just wish I could be a lady without having to give up being a lad 😔”

And Keeley of course is like "oh like bigender?"

She says it like it's nothing, but it's the first time Jamie's ever heard that and he had no idea that that was a real option and genuinely feels like he's found something he's been looking for his entire life and literally almost cries

(You can't spell "lady" without "lad" <3)

So Jamie starts to get Girl Stuff again (including some early-aughts nostalgia items identical to the things that James made her get rid of, which is very healing) and present the way she wants to present and has never ever been happier and finally feels whole

I have a LOT of thoughts about Jamie's gender identity and his relationship with Roy and the internal conflict/shame that would arise from that, but this post is already soooo long so you guys will have to let me know if you want me to talk about all that in another post

She's mostly pretty comfortable with her body, so she forgoes gender affirming surgeries, but she does start estrogen in her mid-late 20's, which is a game changer because it makes it easier to present feminine when she wants to while also allowing her to present masculine when she wants to

He doesn't really ever come out to the team, because that's not his style. They can figure it out on their own. (If you assume she's cis that's on you etc.) And they do!!! Dani starts calling her "amiga" on tuesdays thursdays and saturdays and "amigo" on mondays wednesdays and fridays or something like that lmaooo

He does come out to Georgie and Simon tho <3 Georgie is not surprised at all and takes to adding "baby girl" and "my daughter" to her repertoire very quickly, and at the end of the day she's the person whose opinion matters most to Jamie, so it's just a huge weight off his shoulders

(Simon makes her a bi flag cake and is like "love is love <3" and Jamie is like. Hm. Well. Thank you. You're a little lost but thank you)

[cath-lic]

hello!!!! first of all, i love your blog and i love how you embrace your sexuality and love god :3 what would you recommend for someone who was hurt by religion? (particularly catholicism). it made me paranoid, scrupulous. as a neurodivergent woman with disability, i always felt that i don’t fit, so i’m no longer religious. is it okay to not like THE church (as an institution) but still love God? and do you have any other social media so we could speak more on it? ♥️

hello my sibling!! thank you very much for the sweet compliment.

to be honest, (and assuming you’re also american, though pardon me if i’m wrong), i think we’re all scarred from american christianity. i’m not trying to minimize your trauma; rather, i’m letting you know that i can empathize with you a little bit.

this might need its own post, but i’m seeing scrupulosity becoming more and more of a problem in the current online age, on both sides of the political spectrum. i think you’d be surprised at how many people feel very similar to you, even if they’re not religious, either. tumblr culture, especially, emphasizes scrupulosity (and to be honest, i think all social media does—i’ve been thinking about doing a social media cleanse recently because of this very thing).

you may feel as though you don’t fit in, but i’d like to remind you that mary magdalene, one of christ’s closest disciples, also faced her own problems with mental illness. scripture states that she was possessed by demons, and although of course we can’t be sure whether it was actual possession or mental illness, i think it’s safe to say that she would absolutely know where you’re coming from. (i say this not to go “you can conquer your mental illness if you believe enough,” but instead to assure you that our beloved blorbos from the bible would understand our struggles even today).

there are many disabled people in the bible. though, of course, they are very often the subjects of miracle healing, it is telling that jesus emphasizes that their disability is not a mark of sin or a matter of “deserving it,” it’s simply a facet of them.

there are countless stories i could cite, but i think it boils down to this: jesus is with the poor, the disabled, the meek, the unclean, and the ostracized at all times. jesus was poor and ostracized. he is not with one singular nation or ideology. if he sees someone being mistreated, regardless of who they are or what they’ve done, he is with them.

i promise you, you fit.

as for whether it’s okay to not like the church, and for what i might recommend—again, i can’t offer religious advice, but i can offer my opinion.

i think it’s fine to dislike the church. to be honest, they haven’t given us a whole lot of reasons to like them! god was here before the church and he’ll be here after the church. some might say that loving god is loving the church, which is a whole other discussion, but in short, god understands. IMO, it is more important to love yourself, your neighbor, and love through and with god, than to devote yourself to an institution. after all, contemporarily, the big institutions of the time weren’t exactly super hep on christianity.

part of strengthening my relationship with god was through finding a church i really enjoyed. this, of course, might not be desirable or available to you. i would say that finding a community who can accept both your sexuality & your faith (easier said than done) is the truest way you can establish your own version of church.

building and supporting a loving community is probably the most rewarding thing i can think of, regardless of someone’s faith/lack thereof. i’ve often dreamed of establishing a little trans christian commune, actually, although i know it’s just a fantasy. but i think creating a network of people who care for one another and can live and work in harmony is about the closest we can get to heaven on earth!

while i do have other social media, i don’t have any other faith-related accounts. you’re very welcome to make a side blog and message me here, or join the trans catholics discord. if these aren’t options for you, though, i understand—you’re ofc welcome to send me another ask whenever you’d like.

good night, my sibling. have a wonderful weekend, and god bless ❤️❤️❤️

[succubus-interactivefiction]

New IF Project

The Bloody Nightmare, Immortal Slayer, Fang Clipper, just some of the names the vampire population know you as, to them you are an unholy terror. To your fellow mortals on the other hand you are a hero, putting down the ravening hordes, saving maidens, and making the night safer. Everytime you save someone from a vampire they inevitably ask the same question, "Why do you hunt vampires?”

Your childhood was a good one with parents who loved you, few bullies, and a best friend you knew would have your back regardless of whatever trouble you found yourselves in. It was just after your eighteenth birthday when you lost your friend to a shadow leaping from the dark. All you remember with any certainty is the glow of red irises and sharp teeth glinting in the moonlight. When your parents and the town elders forbad you from going after the local vampire lord in revenge you snuck out of your home that night and left.

Twenty years later you find yourself returning to the one place you never wanted to see again, your home. One of your parents has died and you feel the need to return, if only to say goodbye. Now a deadly and highly trained hunter you stand apart from your former neighbors, but the more you reconnect with them the more bitter you become and the overwhelming need to discover what became of your best friend takes control as you ride out to take revenge. Things take a turn when you are instead captured and forced to serve the vampire who took your best friend from you. Will you be able to escape your coming fate, or will you simply give in?

Step into the shoes of a member of the Hunters Guild and one of the few who specializes in hunting vampires. Return to your home town after twenty years because of the death of a parent and be drawn into the intrigue of the local vampire lord’s court after you try to track down a long lost friend. Try to survive as you are forced into the role of the lord's assassin and try to retain your humanity as you strive to free yourself, your friend, and the entire region from the clutches of your monstrous master.

Play as a cis or trans woman

Full customization control of your physical appearance, how your personality has changed in the last twenty years, and how you dress.

Choose which style of combat you prefer, are you a gunslinger, do you prefer the sword, or is magic more to your liking.

Hunt down and kill your master’s rivals and those who threaten the tenuous peace of the local lands.

Romance an exiled witch, your childhood friend, a Dullahan bodyguard, or even your vampiric mistress, with one polyamorous triad option.

Noemie | 131 | ENTP-T | The Witch 🚩

One of the few non-vampires to live in the castle with your master, Noemie is as much a prisoner as she is a diplomat for her own coven, being forced to live in the massive fortress after the end of a war between your new master and Noemie’s own family. To most other people Noemie presents a cold, yet professional demeanor when interacting with others. There are few exceptions to this behavior but she has formed a close friendship with Elea while she cared for your friend when she had slipped into a deep depression after being turned.

Despite this frosty exterior she truly cares for those she becomes close to and would do anything to keep them safe even if it meant becoming something truly terrible. This extreme is the reason she was chosen to play hostage and diplomat by her coven as she had caused problems in her zealous protection of a former lover. At first she will have deep suspicions regarding why the MC has come, believing that they intend to take her best friend Elea from her, but if you take the time to become her friend she will always have your back.

Elea | 39 (20) | INFJ-T | Your Best Friend **

With you for the majority of your first eighteen years, Elea was your best friend, confidant, and an overall good influence, and the two of you were nearly inseparable from the time you could both walk till the moment she was taken from you. Elea was loud, boisterous, and always loved being the center of attention, dragging you along with her whether you wanted too or not. The day she was taken from you was one that you would never forget as you had just confessed your romantic feelings for her, which she reciprocated, only for her to be taken almost immediately after.

Since that day Elea has gone through more than most people ever would, having to deal with the depression of being forcefully turned against her will, depression that led too two failed suicide attempts in the first years after her change. It was only Noemie’s friendship and Charlotte’s constant vigil that brought her to the point she could bring herself some measure of peace with what she had become.

The Elea you knew as a child is dead and only time will tell if the two of you still have something between you, whether that is friendship or a renewed relationship.

Charlotte | ??? | ISFJ-A | The Dullahan Bodyguard **

As much bodyguard as caretaker, Charlotte was assigned to watch over Elea after her first attempt at suicide. Like Elea, Charlotte had been forced into this life at the castle after losing a duel to the castle Mistress. Because of ancient magic and law Charlotte had no choice but to serve the one she had challenged or suffer the curse of mortality.

Because of this Charlotte has grown very close to Elea but only expresses herself when they are in private and can be sure no one is watching. Charlotte takes her duties very seriously and after a visiting dignitary insulted Elea, calling her weak, Charlotte cut the man down faster than anyone could see, even the vampires in the room. The castle Mistress adored this action as she felt that the power of the bodyguard reflected well upon her.

Elea reacted differently however, she was disgusted and could not believe that Charlotte acted the way she had over nothing but a few words from someone so pathetic. This caused a rift between the two that has never fully healed and while they remain close there is a distance neither one can seem to repair.

Adriana | 788 | INTJ-A | Your Vampire Mistress 🚩

Adriana has been the ruler of her duchy for well over four centuries and is one of very few vampires who live in the open, her vampiric status common knowledge to all. Despite this she has maintained her power base with very little opposition and is generally seen as a benefit to everyone under her rule, with people able to live their lives without fear of starvation, persecution, or banditry.

Very few of the common people know anything about her beyond the fact that she is a vampire and rules her territory with an iron fist. Those who have met her in person have found her to be cold, calculating, and uncompromising in the way she rules. There are rumors however, that underneath the mask she wears is a vulnerable woman who simply wants to keep the people under her protection safe, even if that means she is seen as a monster by those same people. Whether or not this is true is up to you to discover.

** Polyamorous Triad

[epithet-beloved]

what about Naven comforting a trans reader through a rough dysphoria day?? it can be platonic or romantic, or whatever you think best fits the story you want to tell :))

Naven + Reader with Gender Dysphoria

synopsis… Headcanons on how Naven helps out a reader with gender dysphoria!

ft. Naven Nuknuk

tags… epithet erased spoilers, but only if you squint, platonic, slight hurt/comfort, gender dysphoria, reader identity kept vague, headcanon content

word count… 661

a/n… Naven is so trans to me. Trans masc? Trans fem? No one knows. (I’m personally a genderfluid Naven truther). ((Nyoom/Zapped Apples is actually sapphic if you pretend real hard)). Comfort character writing to ward off the malaise lesgo!! ✧ 🦝

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 Epithet God bless this guy i mean it

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 He feels so deeply for you.  If he could, he’d wipe away any indication in your mind that you had to transition, that you simply are how you identify.

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 But, alas, he cannot, even if he really really desired it.  That’s not how life works, he so begrudgingly knows.

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 But… that doesn’t mean he can’t try.

“Oh, I love that outfit on you!”  Naven would compliment you as you pass him one day, wearing something you feel particularly brave about for once.  His bright grin is infectious, and you can’t help but feel flattered when he says, “it suits you very well.”

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 I personally headcanon that Naven had a great fascination with the rise of the punk scene and ideology, especially when he was a teenager.  Thus, he always sort of had a loose relationship with his gender, preferring to present himself exactly how he wishes.  As he grew older, he felt it would be more professional to be a bit less brazen, but he still wouldn’t care if you refer to him with she/her or something.

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 His experience of transness is a little bit outdated compared to young trans people today, but Naven hopes he can validate you in any way that he can, from the subtler things to the widespread action.

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 If you frequent STEM, he’ll push for gender neutral bathrooms, for example.  Actually, considering certain people he’s worked with, I don’t doubt that he already has some in the building!  He does all he can to make things as welcoming as possible.

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 On a more personal level, Naven checks in on people face-to-face quite frequently.  If you bring up your gender dysphoria to him, he smiles sadly and tells you that he understands, and sort of guessed, based on your tells.

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 He offers you to tell him if there’s literally anything he can do to help.  Your comfort is his priority, after all!!

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 He’s a secret sucker for clothes shopping for others.  If you’re close enough, he’s totally here for shopping with you and buying aaaaannnyything you want (cause let’s be real he’s probably loaded).  He doesn’t care if it’s expensive, he’ll get you that gender euphoria!

“How about this?”  Nave points at a certain belt from your selection of clothes on the fitting room door.  From where he’s seated, he makes a great judge of your new outfits, and he’s always clapping and chittering gladly about how something looks on you. He stands up to pick up the belt and compares it with what you are wearing.  “Yes, this would go great with your style!  Let’s give it a shot, hm?”  You can’t deny his eagerness to see what the belt looks like, as you turn and go back into the changing room.

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 If you’re transfem, Naven actually likes to help you with vocal training!  His voice is rather effeminate himself, so he has some tips on how he gets his voice sounding more like a woman’s.  (How does he have this knowledge?  You always forget to ask.)

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 If you’re transmasc, Naven likes giving you jobs that kind of makes you feel more ‘manly,’ as it were.  He’s the teacher that asks “are there any Strong Boys who like to carry these chairs? :)” except he picks out the girls (or repressed trans mascs) to help instead.  He really well and truly is a teacher.

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 If anyone, anyone, were to question whether you “really are” a certain identity… Oh, you should see the glare Naven gives them.  Despite his squinted eyes, his furrowed brow and tight frown really makes your blood run cold.  Trust that person will get a stern talking to later… Maybe a little more. ^^

𓆩ꨄ︎𓆪 Also entirely separate note if there are any artists out there PLEASE give Naven a cute long skirt i’m on my knees he deserves to be pretty PLEASEEE 🙏🧎

[ayaisokay]

Tgirl Moans about Labels

Despite the title, I'm going to be moaning about microlabels (and briefly, pansexuality); however, you should be aware that I DO NOT think less of people that use obscure neo pronouns or labels.

Why we use labels

Labels like "gay" and "straight" indicate the scope of your attraction. Homosexual & Homo romantic create a distinction that clarifies the nature of your attraction. They help adequately and simply communicate who we are while also allowing people of our likeness to realise there's others like them— the inclusive element.

How do microlabels get in the way

If you ask me, some microlabels border on hyper specific obscurity that either communicates information that isn't necessary (from the outside looking in), or the information that is supplementary and better falls under "your type" or personality traits.

As an example, I have a friend that was looking for a label that encompasses them, as a bi person that only liked feminine expressing (not indentifying) people. Why does that need a label? That is deadass just your type. You like girly girls and femboys.

If we make hyper-specific labels for every aspect of ourselves, we will struggle to fit in anywhere because our label becomes far more individualistic than inclusive— it gets isolating in a way.

Moreover, people change. Your hyper-specific label might be invalidated by a single event that alters the way you think and feel. Then, you're stuck trying to find or craft a whole new obscure label.

When you finally figure that out, you gotta hope and pray people discover it, recognise it, understand it, and use it.

Pansexual's take on pan

I used to identity as pansexual but decided it didn't feel quite right. Not because of me, but because of the identity itself. But why?

Pan does whatever the plot requires

I liken pansexuality to a poorly explained fictional power. The scope and nature is never outlined by the story, so to the reader, the power seems to work (and fails to work) whenever it is convenient for the plot.

Pansexuality isn't a grounded label that every member of the community views the same way— to a worse extent than terms like Gay or Lesbian (more on that later).

In high school, lgbt friends described pan as being "bi with extra steps." Others have claimed pan is just bi with a minor somantic difference. Some people say that pan is just being bi but also being inclusive for trans people. From my understanding, pansexuality was an attraction not based on sex/gender. Personally, I think that idea makes pan more of a microlabel than a sexuality.

With that last concept of pan, it doesn't actually communicate a sexuality (i.e, who and how you're attracted to someone (or not in the case of asexuals)). Instead, it communicates details about the sexuality. It's like if I asked you who your friend is, and you told me that they play Pokémon. It's nice to know that detail ABOUT them, but that doesn't tell me WHO they are.

Based on the aforementioned idea of pan. You could theoretically be sexually/romantically available for members of all sexes, or a singular sex. But, just saying "I'm pan" fails to communicate which is the case.

Gay and Lesbian

When I was growing up, Gay and Lesbian fell under "homosexual." An attraction to the same-sex. Personally, I prefer the idea that it denotes attraction to the same gender. But, that's the newer take.

As a trans girl, I don't think it's fair to tell an older lesbian she's transphobic for claiming her lesbian status as a reason not to date a trans woman— why? Because, to her knowledge, that's NOT what the label means.

In that kinda situation no one is right. The use of the labels isn't actually universal and that creates in-fighting and division.

If you ask me, the entire damn system needs to reworked.. and no I did not write this entire thing with nothing in mind.

Where is your system

As I said, I do have something in mind.

THEN SHOW ME

but, I'd like to see if this post gets me slandered or something crazy first 🥲

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

You know, the parentification thing...

So my mom would say how there was only one time when I threw a tantrum, and it was cause their was this stuffed dinosaur I wanted and was tired, so they ended up leaving but coming back another day

Well, couple years back somehow this comes up with my dad and he kind of pauses and is like...

"What happened is that there was a stuffie you really wanted, and one your mom really wanted, and we didn't have enough to get both. So you were around 3, and you were sitting there trying to find a way to both get what you wanted and make your mom happy, and it upset you so much you started crying about it"

So uh... yeah... I don't know... can't really talk much on this stuff cause like... this is all stuff I normally repress to get by on. Just uh... yeah. Had to pay my mom's rent one time when I was like 10... eh, don't really like to think about it but... there was a fair bit of stuff with her and having to play parent

Wouldn't normally bother mentioning it, but since people are talking about demographics a lot on that post, I'm an only child and a boy so... there you go

Hope you have a nice day though. Just uh... thought I'd weigh in. Probably could offer other examples but... even just remember this has me not doing so keen so rather not search for any other memories

Yeah, parentification and emotional incest are....a hell of an experience.

My wife is trans and like. I get that for a lot of people when you're trans, you were "always" your gender just "misperceived" as your AGAB, but wifey doesn't see it that way. She lived nearly 30 years as a queer black man with 2 sons, and has only recently found herself in the position of associating with herself as a black woman with two brothers. Funnily enough, both changes happened in tandem, in part because she felt that she was officially done raising her boys (the youngest had his 18th birthday shortly before my wife came out and had moved out on his own before she told him) and so her life was no longer about being a mother to them, and she felt more able to be a woman without being a mother, just as she finds it easier to be a father without being a man.

Between my personal life and my professional life, I have seen a lot of parentification in a lot of demographics (women, men, youngest siblings, oldest siblings, kids in 2 parent families, kids in single parent families, it literally does not matter). The emotional/cognitive processes that result in parentification aren't concerned with who "should" have which responsobilities, they are simply incapable of holding themselves accountable to it rather than foisting it off on the kids.

My mother and my wife's mother both equally depend on us for their self-validation as good and loving mothers who cared for us despite their utter failures on all counts with each of us, and they both put the same responsibilities on us despite our different AGABs because it was never about us. It was about THEM. It was about their need for an adult companion who could support and validate them and the utter emotional imaturity that drove them to seek it with their children instead. It was the way that being a child made us captive audiences to our mothers' self destructive tendencies. It was the way our money paid the bills without ever staying in our hands long enough to better our own lives. It was the way they looped us into every interpersonal conflict they created with their misbehavior. It was the way they treated us like friends when they needed validation but like property when we dared to have needs that weren't compatible with theirs. It's the way they comodified and fetishized aspects of our sense of self as something that they could use to control, humiliate, and erase the reality of us from their awareness. It's the way they raised us to know deep in our souls that there is no distinction between them and us to the point that we routinely sacrifice our boundaries again and again in their name without it even occurring to us that we COULD have boundaries there. What they want was always what we wanted, and after a while it's hard to tell how much of that is real.

That's the parentification. And hey, we can even talk about how eldest daughters in particular can struggle to identify what they went through as parentification because of how normalized it is for them to be treated this way! But we do that by acknowledging that what they went through WAS IN FACT parentification rather than by insisting it was some special different thing. That actually reinforces the same cultural issues that make it hard to call out eldest daughters being abused through parentification.

[raelynnteam]

A blog post from Jaina, 12/3/23

Friday December 1st the associate superintendent Karen Arnold singled me out under the guise of enforcing policy. She claimed it was against policy for me to be wearing a white shirt. She was too cowardly to address it with me personally. She went to my counselor and had HIM direct me to change my shirt. Ashley and I later discussed it with the counselor and asked to see the policy that directed us to exchange all our white shirts for grey ones. No such policy or written directive exists. Instead we were shown a state issue property list that is absent any mention of white shirts however, the clothing room was still issuing white shirts after this property list was added to policy, they had simply switched to ordering only grey shirts at that time. So to interpret this list to be a directive to exchange all white shirts for grey ones is simply a convenient weapon to turn against me. There is no such policy that says I am not allowed to wear the white shirts issued to me by this prison's own clothing room, that is absurd.

This is the same associate superintendent who was firmly convinced that Ashley and I were guilty of the previous bogus accusations. So convinced that she ignored the Unit Supervisor's investigation and conducted her own, spanning over the course of 90 days.

That same day I watched several other inmates wearing white shirts to whom nobody said anything. Another administrative staff member was in the unit the same day having a conversation with an inmate wearing a white shirt. Nobody directed this other inmate to change their shirt. Even my celly was wearing a white shirt, and still does.

Her complaint was that you could see my bra outlined through the white shirt. (Oh god, can't have that, someone might mistake that faggot for a woman.)

Side note: Please forgive my profanity, sarcasm, and facetious humor. My goal is simply to illustrate the point. I include hateful speech because it underlines the subtext of hateful actions against me, and I want my readers to feel the outrage that I feel.

Targeted for being trans in prison, what else is new?

I'd wager that woman misgenders me on purpose when I'm not around. She is incapable of seeing: a woman assigned male at birth trying desperately to present as female. She just thinks I'm: some faggot trying to sexually entice men. It's really sad too, because her attitude isn't just damaging to transwomen, it also serves to reinforce the patriarchal ideal that women in general are just objects of male sexual desire.

Her defensive posturing with the counselors was to express her concern for my safety as there are many sex offenders here. It saddens me that she feels compelled to force me to disguise the fact that I am a woman and hide my femininity for fear that her staff could not otherwise ensure my safety.

Also, let me just say that I was wearing was not at all provocative, and I am appalled by her attitude which is closely akin to: "she was asking for it, I mean did you see how she was dressed?"

Fact is, I wasn't doing anything inappropriate or else I would have been infracted. If the policy did in fact call for everyone to exchange their previously issued white shirts for grey ones by a certain date, then she should have enforced it the same for everyone, rather than singling me out for matters related to my gender. She just felt compelled to harass me about something, because she dislikes that I'm allowed to be a woman.

Hilariously, as it turns out, you can still tell I have breasts when I'm wearing a grey shirt, so maybe they should just put chastity devices on all the sex offenders since we can't keep them all separated from the apparent temptation of a woman within reach of their rapist paws. Oh wait, some of the staff are women too! Cisgendered women who look distinctively feminine without going to great lengths to present as such! I guess the only solution for women to be safe within these gates is to castrate all the rapists. No wait, just have all the women disguise themselves as men, so the rapists can't recognize them. Of course we would still have to worry about the GAY rapists mistaking us for men...

OR MAYBE THERE COULD BE CAMERAS ALL OVER THE PLACE AND UNIFORMED OFFICERS WALKING ABOUT WITH PEPPER SPRAY AND RADIOS, and women could just be ourselves.

Q.E.D. Nobody's safe in prison (or everyone is safe because the supervision is adequate).

Don't make silly excuses to justify your prejudice. I will always call out your transphobic bullshit.

[happilyvaliantkitten]

So I met a trans woman who asked me why I identified as trans when I was comfortable wearing a dress. I'm not upset at her. She was just trying to understand a different experience. I just explained that my gender is non-binary and I wear whatever I want.

And then I got home and realized something else. I'm fat and carry my weight in my chest and hips. Most masc clothes simply don't fit me off the rack. I would have to get them tailored. That fact has given me so much dysphoria in the past, but I just locked those feelings away so that I could wear the feminine clothes that actually fit me. I'm legitimately okay with wearing those clothes now, but it was really hard to get to this point. I sometimes think of myself as non-dysphoric, but that's not entirely true. My dysphoria just comes in waves, and the water is currently calm.

I'm genuinely not upset at the woman who asked me. I wish I had shared a little more of myself in that conversation, but we were in public, so I didn't feel entirely comfortable announcing all that to the world.

I just want people to stop making assumptions about trans people based on how we dress. A lot of us don't have many options for clothes that fit well due to how our bodies are shaped. I know that transfem people experience this too, but I don't want to speak for someone else's experience. I welcome all trans people to share their experiences with this. Also, if you are going to comment, please don't say anything unkind about the woman who asked me. I'm glad she asked about my experience instead of assuming. It's all t4t solidarity here.

[kittymeow180]

Honey (and I s2g I'm not saying that in a condescending way), if you realize gender is a social construct and was created as a way to control/oppress/other certain people, what's the issue with others defining their gender? It doesn't hurt you if a trans woman says she's a woman. It doesn't hurt you if a nonbinary person says they're genderfluid. I agree with you with what you said about gender! You're 100% right, and I'm saying this as a trans person. But we are not hurting you by defining OUR genders for OURSELVES.

If you wanna come for anyone, come for cishet men, especially cishet white men and ESPECIALLY cishet white male politicians. Because THEY are oppressing you. THEY are taking your rights. THEY are trying to hurt and control you. But we aren't. I promise we aren't. There's no reason for us to do any of that; it literally just wouldn't benefit us in any way to harm cis women like that.

I promise you, trans people and cis people have more alike, more in common, than many would like to think. And I really wish we could just realize that and treat each other better.

Sorry this was such a long message 😭

if gender is meaningless and doesnt exist then why are we so chill with normalizing hating ur body and spending thousands on surgery??? the only thing gender does is push gender roles further on us, being trans relies on the existence of gender which is intertwined with gender roles. because of this it took away any meaningful discussion for sex based oppression, same sex attraction. it pushed the idea that gender is having shorter or longer hair, that if a child likes something of the opposite gender roles then they arent their sex. that if you dont feel like your gender ( which makes sense because its a strict set of gender roles ) then you arent female or male. it reduced being a woman to just a 'feeling.'

gender doesnt exist so why do we make it this hard for ourselves? we literally have people suffering and feeling like they are in the wrong body and for WHAT? something that doesnt exist and was made up to control us? whats the point of us hating our bodies, why are we told the only way to fix these feelings is to pay thousands for surgery instead of yknow, this thing we used to call accepting ourselves. you wouldnt tell an anorexic person that the only way to accept themselves would be to get skinnier would u? of course not thats mental illness. but why is it ok for us to tell kids that they will kill themselves if they dont get surgery and that theres no way they will ever be comfortable in their own body unless they get surgery because YEAH ACTUALLY your born in the wrong body and you actually shouldnt learn to accept yourself but instead you should know you will forever feel like this and it wont get better unless you get surgery. think about why you are so uncomfortable with ur sex and the gender pushed on u and just ponder about it for a little. think about everything you feel uncomfortable about gender wise and then think about the root of that

GENDER DOESNT EXIST sex does, and were simply just people. yet we allow ourselves to suffer so much for what?

yeah your right male politicians are oppressing us and taking away our abortion rights yet we arent even allowed to call it what it is anymore ( misogyny ) because then it will be like " um ackshually its not misogyny its just they like controlling afab bodies specifically "

you gain nothing from 'defining your gender.' you acknowledge its there to control and hurt us so what do you benefit from it? what are you suffering for? think of how much less we'd all suffer without it.

[byemizumikahago]

Source (DEC 12 EDIT: old link is broken. Use this one instead.)

"Self-proclaimed gay trans men" Notice how she uses the words "self proclaimed", as if to say that when these people state that they are trans, there is actually no "real" "proof" that they're trans, and you, the reader, should question these people's identity, because they might be lying.

Bro what the fuck is this closeted transphobia now?

And, again, she assumes EVERY komahina shipper MUST be a yaoi-fangirl, because of course that makes logical sense /s.

BTW, Mizumi provides no proof or sources for her claims that many of the trans/gay male komahina shippers she interacts with are faking their identity. So much for her calling this an "improved rant (with sources)" if she can't be bothered to source the most egregious of her claims. (That's a huge problem with her whole rant, in fact. She claims right in the title that this rant is an improvement over her previous one bcuz she gives direct credit, but... the things she links sources to... don't actually matter in the context of the whole rant. Like, as an example, she'll claim "the sky is blue", and provide a source that supports her claim that, yes, the sky is, in fact, blue. But when it comes time to link to sources that support claims like, say "My pwecious hajime-baby HATES nagito, and cheered with joy when he died", suddenly she has... no screenshots or links to show for it. Hm.)

Back on topic, Mizumi basically assumes that all trans men that ship komahina are actually just cisgender girls, who are faking being trans online to live out a... yaoi fantasy of being a gay man. God, that's the stupidest sentence I've ever had to type out.

Mizumi doesn't provide evidence that these hypothetical people are faking being trans, and even if she tried, what """evidence""" could you even use? Are you gonna, for example, show a real photo of this person that shows they're in a fem-presenting body, as proof that they're "faking being trans"? Are you gonna show footage/screenshots of their family/friends calling them by the wrong pronouns, and them not correcting them, as "proof" they're "faking"?

That's incredibly insensitive and stupid. There's tons of reasons why trans men would do any of those things. The reason they might be in a fem-presenting body could be because they just haven't transitioned yet. They might not be able to afford surgery/hormone therapy, or maybe they're closeted bcuz their transphobic family won't allow them. Likewise, the reason people (family, friends, etc.) might be referring to them by the wrong pronouns could simply be bcuz they haven't come out publicly yet.

Maybe, just maybe, the internet is one of the few ways these hypothetical trans men are able to freely be themselves, maybe they like komahina because the community around it were the first place where they could belong, hell, komahina might've even been their AWAKENING, the thing that made them realise their identity, and as such, they're really attached to it. All of these are just hypothetically, and there's no way to tell if this is what's actually happening in these people's lives.

And you know what? That's fine.

We shouldn't be making hypothesis, or speculating, or be prying into trans people's lives, asking them to "explain themselves" on why they act like this. It's insensitive, dehumanizing, and incredibly invasive to try and make assumptions based on these people's identities, just because you don't like that they ship something and you wanna talk trash about them on your rant, and demonize them by claiming they're "faking being trans for their yaoi-fantasies".

Fucking hell, I thought it was bad enough that Mizumi straight up did innapropriate roleplay with minors, but then she has to go and be a fucking transphobe, too. How much scummier can this woman get?