#she has ALWAYS liked feminine things

[picklewednesday]

transfem donatello

[gideonisms]

It's crazy how much people still don't understand that you can be a woman and wear masculine clothing or have a short and practical hairstyle. I really feel like even though most people even here in texas understand that a person can be gay or a lesbian, we haven't at all made progress in accepting that people can dress how they want regardless of their gender

[wonder-worker]

Wild how we know that Elizabeth Woodville was officially appointed to royal councils in her own right during her husband’s reign and fortified the Tower of London in preparation of a siege while 8-months pregnant and had forces gathering at Westminster “in the queen’s name” in 1483 – only for NONE of these things to be even included, let alone explored, in the vast majority of scholarship and historical novels involving her.

[thepoisonroom]

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

[possamble]

i wonder if you have any thoughts about how marcille always seems to dislike it when falin wears men's clothing ( i bet she wears it out of its comfiness rather than because she prefers masc style tho, although i hope both lolol) and super short hairstyle

I wonder if it's just her interest in cute feminine fashion in general or maybe there's something more

For the clothes, at least, it's like... Marcille is probably more horrified by the clothing being actually made for and marketed to men than anything else. I bet she'd be fine if Falin wore the exact same things but they were in the women's section, or at least, branded unisex. She would be so so silly about arbitrary stuff like that in a modern setting.

The hair I think is a tangled issue of Falin's resemblance to Laios getting a little too obvious for Marcille's mental health, and Marcille's own very intense relationship with how (female) mages should treat their hair. Also, since it's mostly a joke doodle, I kind of took it as a flanderized Bad Taste Marcille being horrified by a woman with short hair because she buys into gender norms. Some people are... weird about what women do with their hair and unfortunately I can fully see how Marcille can be weird like that in a vacuum joke setting.

(there's also something to be said about how this kind of femininity policing could also be used as plausibly deniable homoerotic subtext. like, girl, why do you care that much about how cute another girl looks? hm?)

[milfygerard]

but fr outside of my contracted madness i absolutely refuse to give joe alwyn gold rush like how is that song at all related to their relationship the lyrics clearly spell out a relationship that either never existed or only existed in implication and fantasies and maybe-maybe nots and its so bitter and yet desperately soft in the bridge where it almost projects a sense of envy, of wanting to be them as much as you want them. It continues an interesting oft ignored lyrical trend of taylor wanting just as much to be her lover as to have them, envying their easy charisma (you were flush with the currency of cool/i was always turning out my pockets) or quiet dignity (your integrity makes me seem small) dating back to her earliest songs (the kind of flawless i wish i could be). Theres a projected self hatred and yearning to be better that twists itself into both romantic and sexual lust for her partners thats so fascinating and speaks to how all of her songs regardless of who theyre about are also an act of self reflection on who she is and who she wishes to be.

[woodlaflababab]

Aang and Androgyny

This is gonna be a bit ramblish but I've been thinking about it, A Lot.

I keep seeing people describe Aang as 'feminine' and that's always kinda sat wrong with me but I couldn't really tell why because they usually had a point, but recently I've realized it's because Aang isn't feminine, he's a great representation of androgyny but people see an absense of masculinity (especially in comparison with Sokka, Zuko, and even Toph) and read that as feminine.

He has a few 'feminine' moments, like the flower crown and the jewlery making, and he also has plenty of 'masculine' moments, the first that come to mind being him shutting people up in The Great Divide and him giggling with Sokka over buttresses.

And I've heard people point out that he has many personality traits associated with women, passivity being a big one, along with his empathy and care, but he also has plenty associated with men like confidence and, uh, I don't know what the word for it is, the only word that's coming to mind is tomfoolery, but that vibe. Being a tomfool.

But I think the kicker is, the two (positive) traits I see most often associated with him are his love for fun, and his wisdom. Both of which are genderless traits. When you think of wisedom you either think of an old man or an old woman. The gender of 'wise' is old. And fun loving is also not a trait strongly tied to either gender either, it's one that bring to mind children or the 'young at heart' (and isn't that interesting, that Aang can be most well known for acting both too young and too old)

Even Aang's basic character design has andogyny in it. He's bald, which is something usually associated with older men bc they lose hair. Among the young, both men and women can be bald, it's an unconventional hair choice either way. His outfit for two thirds of the show is one that is canonically genderless, it's simply the outfit given to those who are learning airbending, regardless of gender or age. And even when he gets out of that one, what does he go to? A school uniform. One both boys and girls wear. His final outfit is sorta ??? on the gender scale because like, clearly a woman would need to wear something under that, but also looser more revealing clothing is typically reserved for women (looking at Katara's fire nation outfit). I feel like there's a reason most genderbent art of Aang I've seen retain his outfit just with wraps underneath.

Aang is almost perfectly androgynous in just about everything he does. He's literally the fucking avatar, the symbol of balance, a being that has been both male and female many times.

But, because he's a boy, people see androgyny and think feminine, just like people see girls who lack feminimity as masculine. They're not. Androgynous is a thing a person can be.

I'm not saying like, Aang is genderqueer or anything, his reaction to the Ember Island Players alone shows he's connected to his sense of gender, but I just don't like people calling him feminine, or watching people debate this by pointing out masculine traits. He's neither.

He's just Aang.

[dattebabunn]

Do you ever think about how transfemme hcs are treated with so much less credibility and kindness than transmasc ones. It's an extremely frustrating trend I see

I am transmasc btw

[murmurmurl]

I actually find gender swapping characters really interesting (what part of their expression is dictated by gender norms vs certain events in their life vs their personal preferences that wouldn't change either way, etc.) so now I wanna draw what that would look like in my ocs except I am in pain rn so I'm forced to just lie there and be plagued by visions

[yourinaudiblename]

ughhhh why is gender so hard to figure out. my body is like boom gender dsyorphia but won’t tell me noone about my identity

(I accidentally made an entire vent in the tags lmao)

[mishkakagehishka]

I just . Repeating "characters are tools" you end up erasing so much about arashi's character and motivations and interactions with other characters if you avoid using her pronouns aka avoid showing she's transgender. It's on the same level of frustration with the translators i had when i saw they had Mika speaking standard English, there's a LOT that gets lost if you don't show those little things.

[stamplerfag]

im gonna answer the other ask later but TRANSFEM SCARY I WAS. ALSO THINKING HBBBGNN

[website-com]

since pepper was asking for it something that girls do that always makes me think 'cool gender' is not change their names despite it being historically masculine and re-defining the name through their identity and relationship to it.

[wasabikitcat]

Has anyone in this Olympics women's boxing argument ever stopped and thought about whether it would make any sense for women to be more susceptible to being injured in boxing than men? Like sure, it's a fairly common assumption that men are physically stronger than women, and therefore a man would have an advantage at boxing because he can punch harder... But how would that make you more resilient to being punched in the nose? Like I would think the assumed advantage would be that women can't hit as hard and therefore would require more effort to take someone down, but what everyone is arguing over is a woman having her nose broken from a punch to the face, when a man's nose would be just as broken from the same punch. Women don't have like, daintier and weaker facial bones or something. Being punched in the face "by a man" when you're a woman is literally no different than being punched in the face by the same person as a man. If we are to assume that men (note: the person being debated about here isn't a man or even a trans woman, she is cisgender, but I digress) are so Herculean that their punches are just too dangerous for women, then men's boxing should be banned outright because it's just too dangerous for men to be punching each other with that strength when a punch to the face is exactly the same for a man as it is to a woman.

[bookishjules]

i feel like the 'i could make/do that' mindset is so invaluable to have. i don't mean in the sense of like going to a modern art museum and insisting that you, a non-artist, could have made the art just as easily. no, that is condescending assholery. the mindset i'm talking about is one more of confidence, of optimism and.. i guess the willingness to put yourself out there, to ask the right questions, to try something new. and to fail, or rather for your vision not to come to fruition. maybe you don't have the tools yet, maybe you haven't acquired all the skills. but at least you could try. and you have confidence in the level of ability you do have to start. oftentimes actually sitting down and doing something is the best way to learn, and the only thing that could stop you from starting is telling yourself 'i could never make/do that'

[t-u-i-t-c]

nightmare scenario