#the original is from December 25th 2021! A few days before i first talked to my friends online...

[kowtownart]

Redraw time!!!

The original drawing was made before Birb was a thing! It was just Spamton with Kris in his hands :3

Though i did make an edit with my sona back then, i never posted it lol

[rjalker]

Welp, since the OP turned off reblogs on the original post:

My original reblog:

Okay, I know RTD has fucked all of this up by using the words "male-presenting" in this way, but male-presenting is NOT a synonym for "looks like a man" or "wear's men's clothing".

Saying that butches could be considered male-presenting is just. flat out wrong. That is not what these terms mean.

You can IDENTIFY yourself as male-presenting or female-presenting. You cannot assign those terms to anyone else, which is one of the major things RTD did wring with this scene!

No one asked the Doctor how hea identifies, everyone just went "well you're played by David Tennant now so you look like a man so that means you're purposefully presenting yourself to the world as male" and that's not how this works! At all!

Trans women not being out or able to socially transition doesn't mean they're male-presenting.

"male-presenting" is not a synonym for "looks like a man" or "assigned male at birth" or "wears mens clothes".

It is not something you get to assign other people, it is strictly a self-identification term, saying that you are choosing to present yourself as male, or masculine, or whatever descriptor is being used.

And I'm not even going to bother getting into the whole "the Doctor was a woman (because Jodie Whittaker had the role) five minutes ago" because again, that's literally not how gender works. Looking like a woman because a woman is playing the character does not equal "the character is a woman now" when it's just been established in this episode that the Doctor is nonbinary.

You can, and should, point out the biological and gender essentialism in this scene. But you shouldn't be ignoring the fact that the Doctor is being misgendered by being assigned male-presenting by people who have not asked, and are literally just deciding that for themselves because they think the Doctor looks like a man.

Do not use "x-presenting" language for other people --including fictional characters, which as we can all see from the fallout from this scene makes people think they can do this to real people-- unless it's something that person self-identifies as.

Calling anyone "male-presenting" or "masculine-presenting" or "female-presenting" or "feminine-presenting" without them first telling you that's how they identify is literally just misgendering people but pretending to be progressive about it.

Which is the most fucking damaging impact of this scene. And I'm getting really tired of having to explain this over and over again when people have been talking about why these terms are not okay to assign to other people for years now. Russel T Davies just came along and fucked it all up by making people think this kind of misgendering is okay when it's not even remotely.

= = =

@daily-sloop-john-b:

Okay, I'm —ing confused.

@rjalkers-polls can you please send me where you're pulling the "presenting" definition from?

And what's the word(s) for referring to that outside shell to which onlookers ascribe a gender?

No animosity meant at all; you seem to have a very specific idea of it's usage, and I'm curious what community it comes from.

= = =

Me:

this isn't a definition you're going to find in any dictionary, because it's not an "official" thing in any way, it's what many trans and nonbinary people have been talking about over the years.

I can link some posts of people talking about it if that'll help.

in no particular order:

4 days ago

September 2023

June 2019

2 days ago

November 2021

December 2021

And there's a whole lot more on my blog but tumblr doesn't want to let me find them at the moment, mostly because I didn't think to create a tag specifically for it.

Try searching any of the variations on tumblr or google.

Before November 25th 2023 you'll find a mix of people using them as self-descriptors, people talking about how it's misgendering to be called it without permission, and a few people assigning them to other people thinking it's okay.

And now after November 25th 2023 you'll see a massive surge in people throwing these terms around willy-nilly in the most absurd and bigoted ways.

The proper way to describe people without assuming and assigning gender to them is to describe them in factual statements. Are they tall? Short? Fat? Thin? Long hair? Short hair? Big chest? medium chest? Flat chest? Light skin? Dark skin? Round face? Angular face? Eye color, ect.

And if you know someone's gender, you can call them by that. A man, a woman, a nonbinary person, an enby, ect. At no point is it necessary or okay to describe them as "x-presenting", because as I say above, that's taking your internal bias and saying it's something they're doing on purpose.

If someone calls me female-presenting because they think I look like a woman, that's misgendering. I'm not presenting myself as female, I'm literally just existing in a body that happens to have boobs, through no fault or choice of my own.

= = =

@walks-the-ages:

Here's a post I reblogged nine years ago that captures the essence of why using “x-presenting” language is misgendering; you’ll notice that the post makes no mention of x-presenting language, because that only really started popping up in the last…. hmm, maybe three or four years? It became a popular way to describe someone whose gender you didn’t know, but was thankfully shot down pretty quick when trans and nonbinary people pointed out this is just a new way of misgendering someone but trying to sound progressive, by looking at someone’s appearance and assuming that what you think they look like (aka, like a man, or like a woman, or androgynous) “must be!” what gender they are.

[ID: a text post by user Viciere, posted October 31st 2014, that reads: “if somebody wears a dress and copious amounts of makeup and has ass-length pink hair and they say they are a boy you call them a boy gender stereotypes are not an excuse for misgendering someone it doesnt matter what gender you think they “look” like. respect the gender they ARE.” End ID]

If you look at the tags and replies of many of the posts made about the “male presenting” line in the Star Beast, you will find countless, countless trans, nonbinary, and even cis people expressing how they have personally been misgendered by people referring to them as ‘x-presenting’ based purely on their clothes or their physical appearance, which is especially hurtful to trans and nonbinary people who already suffer from negative body image and body dysphoria, especially if they can’t afford or physically cannot safely get top or bottom surgery, wear a packer, or padded bra, or even safely wear a binder.

TL;DR: “X-presenting” language should only be used as a self-identifier, or exclusively for those who have given you express permission to refer to them as such. Using “x-presenting” language for someone you don’t know is the same as misgendering– if you don’t know someone’s gender, just ask :)