#other trans people were just like... idk‚​​ pretending gender isnt real?

[contagious-watermelon]

I think we went wrong with emphasizing the distinction between sex and gender. People have taken it to mean that sex is immutable and that gender is whatever you make of it

Transphobes in instagram comment sections get refuted with "hey, he may be female, but he's still a man!", completely conceding to the "lol still a female" comment by faceless user 06873. People call trans women "male women," seemingly unaware of the fact that terfs often call them exactly that same thing... well, the nicer ones do. I'm not going to repeat the meaner things they say.

Maybe it's not that distinguishing sex and gender was a mistake. Maybe it's that the trans community never dealt with its transphobia, and pulled out the band-aid of excising gender entirely from sex whilst not questioning its beliefs about the immutability and inevitability of biological sex.

The trans community as a whole, I've noticed, doesn't seem to really believe that we really are our genders. They act like it's an impossibility for a trans woman to be female — or mostly female, or infertile female, or with a mix of both sex characteristics, or — and that it's insane to suggest that a trans man really is a man.

They seem to be of the opinion that transphobes are right about the science, but wrong in their treatment of us, and that therefore we must find ways to deny and circumvent the science. “If we reduce gender into an entirely amorphous and nebulous concept, couched with words like "identify as," we can obfuscate our sex so that it becomes irrelevant.” Nevermind that trans people really can and do change our sex. Nevermind that even if we don't, we still don't have the same gendered experience as a cis person of the opposite gender.

[armillary-spheres-lover]

Hey

Idk if you ever got the answer to your thing. But I’m a person who is queer but regularly uses the term lesbian to make things simpler. I can tell you why I hate the phrase monosexual- it feels transphobic to me- I am not attracted to men at all, but I am attracted to women, non-binary folks, gender queer folks, and agender folks. If I was with a partner and they transitioned to be a man I would still love them. That wouldn’t change. Sexuality is fluid and calling someone monosexual seems to erase that and really put people in boxes. Everyone has exceptions. And as someone who has identified as bisexual and pansexual in the past and find those not to suit me and fit right (especially since I am not sexually/romantically attracted to people physically/based on appearances- it’s more about personality and what I could do with a person)

I don’t mean this in an antagonistic way, I really hope it doesn’t come off that way(I’m bad expressing myself sorry).

(I’m sorry, I know you’re not trying to be rude. My answer, however, will sound rude and upset because you touched upon some stuff that needs a lot of unpacking to me lmao. Just know this anger is not necessarily directed at you but at biphobia in general.)

Why do bisexual people may need to use the term monosexual?

A. It is descriptive

I see what you mean but as you said you're queer and lesbian is a term to make things simpler, right?

So I wouldnt call you monosexual because you’re clearly not attracted to only one gender (but if you want to who I am to stop you?). Monosexual is someone who is almost exclusively dating/is attracted to people of one gender. There are plenty trans people that are straight or gay that would NOT date a partner if they realized they were a different gender. For real: kat blaque made a video (here it is if youre interested) on youtube about this - she’s trans and she wants to date men and wouldnt feel comfortable on continuing dating if a partner of hers realized they were actually a trans woman all along. She wants to date guys not girls and that's FINE it just means A. She actually recognizes the girl gender, obviously B. She's straight af and that's wonderful! It’s not a box if that’s how her experience is and she likes it that way!

Also how is being monosexual transphobic? Cant a girl just like guys exclusively (both cis and trans) or like girls exclusively (both cis and trans)? It's not even enbyphobic since you dont need to be attracted to a person to support their rights. (Gay men arent attracted to women but can be 100% feminists.) Being open to fuck somebody is not the same as supporting their rights: fetishization is a thing. Again, I refer to the video Kat Blaque made.

Sexuality IS fluid but to some people (like me and you) it is more than others. Some people don’t feel comfortable dating people that dont fall into the gender theyre usually attracted to and thats 100% okay.

B. It helps in talking about biphobia and panphobia in society

Biphobia and panphobia are for the large part based on the assumption that you cant be attracted to more than one gender (not even non-binary and so on) and that if you do you're weird/disgusting/mentally ill/a sexual predator. I can tell you 100% that's the narrative both straight and gay people can and may perpetuate since I struggle w this kind of shit every single time Im attracted to someone no matter their gender (YES, EVEN IF THEY'RE A GUY, BECAUSE THE OTHER DAY I WAS ATTRACTED TO A GIRL AND NOW I FEEL LIKE A FUCKING ANIMAL THAT CANT CONTROL ITSELF, even though it makes NO sense because if it was two girls or two boys the actual number of people my hormones activated to wouldnt change, but it would make my experience not subjected to biphobia!). I’m not saying gay people are the same as straight people. But I do feel alienated BOTH from heteronormative society AND from (subtly biphobic) gay spaces because of my bisexuality. I costantly feel like I’m outside both of those worlds and you know how humans are: I just need a term to encompass it all easily, to say “I don’t identify with any of this” (which is both straight and strictly gay spaces: ie, monosexual). To me is literally the same as saying non-bisexual/non-pansexual.

I dont mean to say lesbians or gays have it easier or are just like straight people. But we do have different experiences and I need terms to express that. It honestly doesnt matter to me if you identify as lesbian or queer (though I think you’re implying you’re more queer than anything). But I do need a term to talk about how society at large treats sexuality; ie, as a monosexual thing. Another concept that’s been thrown around is bi erasure. A strictly monosexual society is bound to view a girl dating a girl (or girl presenting) as if theyre both LESBIANS and erase a queer person the moment they’re in a m/f relationship, because people cant COMPUTE that it may not be the case and that the girl dating a cis straight dude isnt betraying her queerness.To think so is basic biphobia.

In some ways, I think it’s the same as when transgender people started using the term cisgender - which is applicable to both straight people and queer/gay people. They simply needed a term which meant “not-trans” as they were saying “I dont identify with this” (ie the cisgender experience). Does it imply that cisgender people, no matter if queer, have something in common? Yeah, yeah it does. Does it imply that queer people are just the same as straight people, or face no oppression? Of course not. Seeing people being offended upon being called monosexual feels like people being offended upon being called cis to me.

Also, saying that the terms bisexual people use are transphobic is almost implying that bisexuality is inherently transphobic? Or reeks to me of that kind of rhetoric. I use the terms I need to use, just like any other marginilized group does, and nobody outside of that group has any right of denying me that. It’s like I’m trying to create a safe space for myself and people like me and yall come around to judge us YET AGAIN. And I'm just tired of hearing this bullshit. I could accept this kind of criticism only if it came from a trans person themselves, I guess? But it’s not usually trans people who accuse us of being transphobic, in fact, many trans people identify as bisexual and use bisexual terminology lmfao.

“Hearts not parts” rhetoric

Finally, about personality being superior to physical appearance. That's amazing but I do want to note that, not you necessarily, but many people who are into the “hearts not parts” rhetoric are, how can I say this. Slut-shaming people? I’m not sure if you are doing this but I feel it needs to be said just to be sure. A lesbian trans woman can be just attracted to a girl for her physical appearance and just want to fuck her - and THAT'S OKAY. That's fine. I am a sexually attracted to people and that doesnt mean I have to form a deep bond first. Sex positivity is about accepting that people can feel like this and not shame them for this. "Hearts not parts” rhetoric has in the past infantilized, sanitized or outright shamed other queer experiences. It's fine if you feel that way but dont start acting like you're morally superior because of that. That's catholicism with extra steps. My bisexuality its not the symptom of some predatory and animalistic thing that should be purified into something more palatable and less sexual. That’s the same thing they used to say about gay people and now gay (biphobic) people are using this against us. That’s also the kind of thing trans women (especially if they’re sapphic) constantly hear every fucking day. Queer people have a good part of their discrimination rooted in the shaming of purely sexual desires. Forcing ourselves to be more palatable and less sexual is just respectability politics. I’m tired of it. (This is obviously different from being on the asexual spectrum: but you dont see ace people going around pretending they’re morally superior than everybody else, and many are actually very sex positive)   You would still love your partner if they were a different gender: that’s great, but that’s not how some (most) people feel, and they aren’t superficial because of this, just different from you.

Also, I think you’d really benefit from hearing a trans person say they don’t care if someone has genitalia preferences. Here it is. This obviously doesnt mean that every trans person will feel like she does, but it does mean that we can’t generalize trans experiences/preferences/what they feel transphobia is. Just like straight people dont get to say what’s homophobic or not, cis people dont get to say what’s transphobic or not. The definition of those terms relies entirely on the community that is targeted by these things.

I hope this wasnt excessively confusing but I wanted to make my point clear.

[gendermesenpai-blog]

6:40pm

itjeitjijeijtj

Just finished the new Contrapoints video finally. Really intense. Lots of deep introspective moments. I couldn’t help but compare similarities. Bawled my eyes out when she sang Three Times a Lady at the end. And then switched back into Time Warp and I was crylaughing.

It is a weird subject, the whole AGP thing. I am super glad she pointed out that it doesn’t really actually matter, like it’s kink-shamey yes but also deprives people of agency to say what reasons are ok to be trans and what reasons aren’t. I understood what she meant by saying that the phrase makes her and other trans women uncomfortable because it misrepresents them. I feel like maybe she was too defensive about it though? idk

The degree to which my gender identity is tied into my sexual identity, and the degree to which they overlap and intertwine with each other and are thus generally confusing, makes this difficult to explain. Leading up to my breakdown where I realized I wanted to transition I was watching a lot of feminization hypno videos. I feel ashamed about this and it’s dumb. I think it is partly leftover puritanical bullshit from my mom shaming me about watching porn when I was younger. But also it’s this AGP stigma shit where I’m supposed to be fucking like 100% chaste with no sex drive or I’m not REALTRANS™. 

(editors note: denial by hyperbole! the common alternative to 100% chastity isnt watching weird fetishy transmysognist shit on pornhub. AGP pseudobisexual gender communist confirmed)

But anyway when I watched those videos I definitely felt turned on at the thought of being a woman. Being a woman being fucked by a man. Sometimes videos would pop up in the related or suggested sidebar like “reverse feminization hypno” where it is supposed to turn you masculine again or something. None of this shit actually does anything lol. But every time I saw one of those thumbnails over there I remember being like “no I don’t want that” lmao. I stopped watching hypnos since around the time I began hormones in part because I felt guilty about it, like it was some kind of proof that I’m not actually trans. 

But at one point I was watching them like everyday. I would talk back to the video, it would say like horrible misogynist shit like “you love dick, you need it” or whatever and I would just be like “mm yes.” lmao. Sometimes between all the dick worship it would say shit like “you are not a man anymore, you are a girl now” and I would just be like oh god yes please. I am going to be unraveling all this shit for years. 

Like when I was younger I was like “oh I’m dominant with women and submissive with men.” But when did I ever actually pursue a girl in any kind of dominant way? They always came after me and I was just like oh ok.

(edit: well I guess I did try sometimes but I always felt like I was just fulfilling some sort of bizarre contract I had made with the world, like if I’m going to be alive in the world I am expected to pursue female romantic partners. This is not to say I didn’t want relationships with women or to imply I wanted relationships with men more, although I have never hooked up w anyone from online except guys, but just to say I never really wanted to be in the role of pursuing them and always resented that it was expected of me)

And I always ignored the fact I could often be submissive with women. I just refused to acknowledge I was even doing it lol. I was always like arching my back and moaning all weird and couldn’t control it at all. I loved being choked. A single finger anywhere near my ass had me practically drooling and incapable of concentrating on anything else. Let’s be real I was probably always bad at sex because I was pretending to be dom. Ok I’m gonna change the subject now wew *loosens tie*

Saw the therapist yesterday. We talked about a bunch of stuff. I said how the novelty of the treatment is starting to wear off and the reality is setting in. The wave of euphoria I was riding from coming out to myself is starting to settle. I talked about how scary the muscle loss is. Mentioned how it took me half an hour to get down to her office and it used to only take 15 minutes, that’s 50%. But I wasn’t being fair to myself because my knee is still swollen and it was extremely windy.

We talked about M for a bit and how annoying and reactionary he is. She reminded me that there are probably things I see in him that I don’t like about myself. This is kind of a basic observation about human social dynamics that I have known for a long time but tend to forget. We also talked about free will and how people end up being predisposed to certain behaviors or whatever and to what extent they are responsible or their parents or environment are responsible etc blah blah. 

I’m so tired of that debate. M is just a shithead and I don’t care if his parents sucked. I just bought weed off him today and it’s midsy ugh. But he ended up buying J’s car off him, my roommate’s car. Because he fucking wrecked the car he had just bought. It was totally his fault. So now my roommate has a bunch of his money and bike parts. Karma is real.

She asked me if I looked at the link she sent, I think it’s some kind of trans support group or meet up or something. I said I hadn’t looked at it and tried to explain my social anxiety problems and how it makes meeting people difficult even without the trans complication. But she pointed out that I don’t have to go anywhere or meet anyone to look at the link and I admitted that I’m actually avoiding trans groups because I still have internalized transphobia regarding nonpassing trans women.

I explained that part of why I realized I needed to transition was having a breakdown in reaction to HRT timelines, mostly (no, not mostly, literally 100%) passing trans women. I still look at those timelines and I still scroll past the women who don’t pass. I had to convince myself that I could maybe pass one day in order to start hormones. If I thought I would never pass I wouldn’t be doing this. I explained that this is why I haven’t changed the way I dress at all or started wearing makeup or styling my hair, because I know I won’t pass yet. This is all very sad and bigoted and it makes me feel like shit.

I mentioned seeing that Colin Mocherie from Who’s Line is it Anyway has a trans daughter who just came out and he’s been very accepting of her, even going as far as to do interviews together. I was so excited about this I went looking for the interview. I clicked on it and watched for a second. She doesn’t pass. She just looks like a boy wearing lipstick. I couldn’t watch the interview. I had to close it. At this point in recalling the story to my therapist I started crying. I was like “what the fuck is that.” She didn’t know either. But she just comforted me by reminding me that my upbringing was fucked and my parents were shit and all that. Idk if it really made me feel any better or not. I think I ended up just changing the subject to something else but I don’t remember what.

I wrote a song both yesterday and today. I am getting to the point where I don’t care about the lyrics anymore. I know the beats I’m making are good. And if writing lyrics for them is what’s keeping me cranking them out like this then that’s what I’m going to keep doing. And if all that comes of it is I end up selling beats as a producer and no one fucks with me as a rapper, that’s fine too, I get money either way. 

This is super long I’m gonna go watch SNL from last night. Work tomorrow yay. God damn this weekend fucking flew by.