#they trans their genders good for them good for them!

[aristoteliancomplacency]

Those other details - details which we all (including them) agree are not innate, or unalterable (and some of which we generally expect for a lot of people will be altered!) are also not alterable on the birth certificate. Clearly the core logic here cannot be that this data is unalterable.

‘Productive conclusion’ is crappy way to try to subtly introduce a bad faith accusation. No one is making the state’s role irrelevant. Don’t make up positions and then attribute to them me.

A newborn baby girl will have to go through life with the wrong sex on her birth certificate after a registrar’s error, which her parents have been told they cannot change. Grace Bingham and her partner, Ewan Murray, were excited to register their first child at the Sutton-in-Ashfield Registration Office in Nottinghamshire last week. But, after nights of broken sleep, they failed to notice the registrar had written the wrong sex on the birth certificate until after it had been submitted. “We were horrified but assumed that, as we saw the mistake just a few seconds after it had happened, correcting it would be an easy matter,” said Murray. “But although the registrar apologised for her mistake – and the area manager also apologised – it turns out that birth certificates can’t be changed.”

this article is interesting because it demonstrates that cis people can very easily apply structural thinking to sex assignment - this couple immediately identifies that their daughter, having mistakenly been assigned male at birth by the registrar, will have administrative problems in employment, education, travel, and so on. they pretty adeptly identify the foundational role that sex assignment plays in the administrative and civil functions of a state, and how incorrect sex markers effectively produce a ‘rational’ reason for discrimination within these administrative and civil arenas:

The General Register Office (GRO), which is responsible for administering all civil registration in England and Wales, and the Home Office have both confirmed that Lilah’s birth certificate cannot be reissued, although an amendment can be made in the margin of the original document. But Bingham said this is not enough. “People reading a birth certificate might easily miss a tiny note in the margin – which means that Lilah could be regarded as male when she applies for school, her passport, for jobs – for everything that she needs a full birth certificate for.”

And given that this was published in The Guardian, this article makes zero mention as to why it’s impossible for this couple to receive an updated birth certificate with correct information (something the author notes was possible to do a year ago), but the reason is obviously transphobia. 

Now one might ask why there’s no exception for cis people whose birth certificates were recorded incorrectly at birth, but this reveals the instability of cissexualism. How would you determine who is a cis person with a mistaken birth certificate, versus a trans person who wants to change their mistaken sex assignment record? Sure, you could say well, this is an infant, of course she’s “really” “biologically” female (something the parents argue in the article as grounds for having their child’s birth certificate re-issued), but 1) that certainly can’t be argued for in all cases, 2) 'biological sex' is understood by medical doctors as alterable through hormones and surgery, which trans people are often required to undergo in order to change their records, and 3) binary sex assignment is already imprecise and discretionary, particularly if infants have sex characteristics that don’t conform to binary F/M assignment standards (which is part of how the category of intersex emerges, framing this failure to conform to state census categories as a biological defect - and in fact, many intersex people do not discover they are intersex until the onset of puberty or later, at which point they are even less in luck if they want to change their sex assignment - and if they don’t, if they are cis but have sex characteristics that do not conform to cis standards, they will be discriminated against anyway). 

Even setting aside the issue of transgender and intersex people for a moment, states fuck up all the time in administration! you've probably either experienced this directly or know someone who's had some kind of record fucked up by the government at some point in their life. If you get married they could fuck up changing your last name, fuck up your disability status, record your social insurance number wrong, print the wrong address on your driver’s license, fail to acknowledge you as a dependent when filing taxes, incorrectly mark you as having graduated when you’re still a student, fuck up your immigration paperwork, record your name wrong during immigration, etc etc into infinity, and this is not even getting into errors that occur when different levels of government pass information between one another. This level of administrative rigidity is purely to punish people who fail to perform cissexualism correctly, and in the case of this couple's child, the administrative error of the state is imputed to them as a personal failure that she and her parents will now have to deal with for the rest of their lives. 

I think the ultimate analysis is not that transphobia will become less precise and hit more "wrong" targets as it expands its reach, but that this is the exact same operational logic as all other liberal state measures - if you encounter a systemic issue, it’s your fault for not avoiding it, fuck you, go away. You’re poor because you’re lazy, you’re unhoused because you’re lazy, you’re disabled because you’re lazy, and your daughter is now administratively transsexual because you’re lazy. In this case, we don’t even need to assume the intentions of the state - they outright say it:

The family complained to the GRO but was told the mistake was their responsibility and could not be fully rectified. “The duty to ensure that information recorded in any particular entry is true is the responsibility of the person providing the information and not of the registrar general or the registrar recording the birth,” the GRO said.

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

big question. i'm cis (afab) and my gf is trans (amab) and i'm sorta having a hard time reconciling something. i've been a hard line feminist since i was about 8, by 12 i was a practical library on everything and anything womens lib. i'm spending a lot more time around trans people especially my gf now and i'm sorta struggling to reconcile the trans experience with my feminism. like- i'll see trans women being like "i hate my body :(" "my voice is awful" "i need [x thing to try to pass] ugh" and like my first thought is always "NO! THATS HOW THEY FUCKING GET YOU!!! THE PATRIARCHY WANTS YOU TO HATE YOURSELF SO YOU ENSLAVE YOURSELF TO CAPITALISM AND LIVE IN A CONSTANT STATE OF NEED FOR NEW PRODUCTS TO WARD OFF THE EVER PRESENT SELF HATRED BROUGHT ON YOU BY SOCIETY" and they go "well then how do i pass/transition?" and i honestly don't know and i also don't know how far it goes before its no longer dysphoria but instead the intentional subjugation of women by patriarchy for profit. i wanna help my fellow ladies but i honestly don't know how to like- apply the feminism i was taught as a child to trans women and i want to learn as soon as possible so that i can start doing it like yesterday

hi there,

I'll be honest: if it feels hard to apply the feminism you learned as a kid to your trans friends, that's probably because the feminism you were taught didn't have trans woman in mind.

luckily, the answer to this is something that I consider to be feminism 101: what a woman does with her body is, ultimately, her fucking business.

listen: I agree with you that the beauty industry(TM) is evil. it's misogynistic, it's exploitative, it thrives by making women feel bad enough about themselves to make them spend money on shit they don't need, etc. we all know this.

now, having said that: women who like makeup or wear heels or get laser hair removal or whatever other asinine thing are not my oppressor, nor are they my enemy. dare I say, we have bigger problems.

we also need to consider that many trans women are coming to these choices from a VERY different place than many cis women are. while I think my fellow cis women really benefit from reminders that they're allowed to stop shaving or wearing eyeliner or dieting or whatever, that's because most of us have had those actions forced on us from very young ages and may genuinely need a hand to feel secure breaking out of those behaviors.

the majority of trans women are not coming from a background where they were encouraged to partake in the same personal grooming habits and modes of presentation as cis women; many of them have, in fact, been ostracized, bullied, threatened, and otherwise hurt because of forays into forms of presentation that are considered feminine. no matter how good your intentions may be, approaching your advice indelicately can, unfortunately, make you come across as no different than any transphobe on the street trying to enforce cisnormative societal expectations. it also must be said that, for many trans women, the ability to "pass" is a matter of security - for having their status as women recognized at all, and to avoid harassment and abuse in public spaces. if you live in America, like I do, politicians in power currently have an extremely explicit anti-trans agenda that can make it harrowing to be visible as a trans person, and trans women in particular are frequently targeted for violence.

there are absolutely critiques to be made the way the many trans women are expected to perform hyperfemininity. the notion that someone is duty bound to drastically change their appearance in order to transition at all is itself extremely rooted in cisnormativity, and "passing" is often contingent on being young, thin, able-bodied, reasonably wealthy, and hewing as closely to Eurocentric standards of beauty as possible. that's not awesome! but that's also not the fault of any individual; no trans person asked to be born into a world where gender norms are so narrow and failing to pass can come with a very real risk of physical danger.

also, if I can circle back to this: again, women who participate in aspects of the beauty industry are not our enemies. there are always going to be some number of women who enjoy doing their makeup or like spending time fussing over their little outfits or want breast implants or whatever. some of those women are going to be trans. my official feminist stance on this is that I don't give a shit, because I believe in bodily autonomy even when it involves things I would not do personally and the choices that individual women make about how they want to style their little meat body don't even crack the top 100 things that I'm worried about right now. it's actually kind of vitally important, politically, that trans people be able to safely pursue their preferred gender expression; while it's not particularly revolutionary for a cis woman to go outside all dolled up, whether a trans woman can do that safely is a pretty basic litmus test for how safe a given space is for queer people. it's a ridiculously low bar, and many places will still fail to clear it.

so, yeah, I don't know, dude. be there to talk to your trans girlies if they want to start unpacking some of the pressure they feel to conform to a very rigid idea of womanhood, but whether or not they can walk down the street in your neighborhood safely is a WAY bigger issue than whether they decide to do voice training or not.

if you really want to cut to the root of the insecurity and vulnerability that the beauty industry thrives on exploiting, your time is much better spent working to ensure the trans women in your life feel safe and supported and have a community where they can find support regardless of how they look.

necessary disclaimer I'm a cis girl, any transfemme folks please share your voice here and feel free to clap my ass if I've said something out of line.

[giirlblood]

caregiver ! vi headcanons !!

requested by @themoondropcollective . spinning around because i LAUV vi , he's one of my own fictional cgs (>/////< " ) . butch cg for eensy butch !! i refer to vi with he / him pronouns .. you can pry tmasc butch vi from my cold dead hands . it brings me comfort as a fellow trans butch to see someone like me :3 .. if you'd prefer other pronouns let me know but i default to he for him . that being said my vi is not a binary man pronouns do not equal gender :L .

vi is the silliest caregiver ever !! more like an older sibling in the sense that he doesn't have lots of rules && can't help but giggle when you get into mischief . he calls you lots of silly nicknames like nugget , bug , && squirt !! he teases you by calling you tiny sometimes as a nickname too but it always comes with a chuckle && a hair tousle .

while its my truth that vi is transmasculine he loves being called "mama" by his littles . you also call him "bubba" but he always melts when someone calls him "mama" or just "ma" . he does Not like being called mommy though . he's also okay with more masculine names like "papa" or "dada" as well && responds better to daddy than mommy though it's not preferred .

always telling you stories !! some of them are made up but a lot of them are about his life . he often gets lost in his tales but you hang onto his every last word .

loves to teach you new things . these little lessons often come with a little story of his own !! he notices you giggling && bites back a laugh of his own . " mama's silly , huh squirt." teaches you how to throw a punch but also about little everyday things like tying your shoes .

SOOOO protective .. literally your guard dog , he will not hesitate to throw a punch or clap back verbally if someone poses a threat to you . king of glares too , he scares away aaallll the meanies . always holding your hand && proudly calling you his little one . he often has his hand on your shoulder as a way to reassure you he's there for back up .

always including your stuffies in everything , he's so playful with them !! if you're sad he'll have them talk to you in silly voices to cheer you up && he has little conversations with them to make you giggle . sometimes he can't help but crack up himself .

he lets you play with his hair && put little clips in it . you love his hair soo much , the color is so AWESOME !! when his hair is longer he lets you style it however you like .

on the topic of hair he loves washing yours . it's super soothing for him && makes him feel closer to you . it's something so intimate that he treasures , running his hands through your hair , doing his best to learn all he can about how to take care of it if you have more kinky hair so he can meet all of your needs .

he's super good at braiding from always doing powder's braids && it's something that calms him down . if you have longer hair he's always happy to braid it — he can do all of the fancy braids !! he tries to teach you but your fingers are a bit clumsy what with you being so little .

even though he himself doesn't always practice safe binding he makes sure that you do . if you whine about it trying to point out that he doesn't he sheepishly says something like , "well you shouldn't do everything daddy does ."

[drdemonprince]

im a they/them regardless but im only interested in transitioning when im horny. When not i am good and don’t particularly have interest. Is this a bizarre Me thing or is anyone else like this? Sorry for sending this to your askbox but im embarrassed to put this anywhere

Me too, dude! I transitioned in large part because the idea turned me the fuck on. You can be trans only when you're horny, or only when you're trying to fuck, if you like -- I've been that way!! During some periods of my life, I've only taken T on the days I wanted to be horny (I use gel, so it's daily use), only binded because it made me feel sexy (or stopped binding for sexual reasons, too), modified how I present with sexual or horny goals in place, grown hair in certain places and had it lazered off in others -- and it's great!! Try it out!! Some people pack or gaff for sexual reasons, present entirely differently at the sex club than they do at work or at friend hangs, get haircuts that can be styled in a variety of gendered ways based on how they feel, transition for a while and then detransition and then back again, get surgeries that allow them to have a dick and a hole or neither because its sexy to them, on and on and on! The possibilities are limitless!

You don't have to transition because you're in abject agony. You can transition for sex and fun! You can transition in small ways, or change your mind, or one of the parts inside you can transition while the others don't! you can play a role during sex, or multiple roles, present as a dude on grindr and a woman on lex, whatever the fuck you want!

[citrusraindrops]

I realise I'm not the intended recipient of this post, but you posted it, so here's some GC 101.

TERFs/Gender critical people don't police gender. They think it doesn't matter, and that it shouldn't matter. They want to abolish it.

We can agree– the concept of 'gender', meaning the socially constructed roles forced on men and women, is useless and harmful. It's meaningless how long your hair is, or whether you like pink or blue, or if you like romance movies and wine or fishing and drinking beer. Those things are arbitrarily connected with whether you're a man or a woman, and those arbitrary connections, which do far more harm than good, should be completely ignored, so that people can be free to do what they want.

Now, if gender doesn't mean anything, what's left? Sex. And sex means a lot. Because one of the sexes is, on average, taller, and stronger, and more sexually aggressive, and can impregnate, and the other is smaller and physically weaker and can be impregnated and receives the overwhelming majority of sexual violence. So there's a good reason for sex segregation to exist; or, at least, for female-only spaces to exist.

But, according to what GC feminists think, sex is the only thing that matters. So, a body-building woman– completely fine, more power to her (although they might critique the heavy focus on appearances/disordered eating present in the bodybuilding community). A man with a baby face? Completely normal human variation. He's still male, and he's still a man. A woman with a beard? Well, that's out of the ordinary, but some women (female) do have hormonal disorders that cause facial hair to grow, and they shouldn't feel like they have to change how they look just because of what society thinks (most RadFems are rabidly anti-shaving for that reason).

"But!!" you say. "The TERFs DO police gender! They criticise trans people for how they act and dress and look just because it's not in line with the gender expectations of their sex!"

Well, that's somewhat true. A lot of radical feminists dislike and are heavily critical of the way trans people –especially trans males– present. But that's not because they're breaking gender roles: As established, GC's are for that. It's because, to a gender critical perspective, these males are acting like their conformity to the roles and expectations used to oppress women makes them women. They're acting like being feminine makes you female. And to GC's who are dedicated to showing the opposite –that female does NOT mean femininity– this is a deeply offensive, reductionist and harmful view.

So, when GC's criticise a transwoman for wearing makeup or skirts or false eyelashes, they are criticising not the break from the expectations imposed on people based on sex, but the use of these things to evidence the claim that he is a woman.

The people who police your gender will police your gender even if you're cis.

Eat them.

[ranticore]

Now that you mentioned it in the tags; I really enjoyed how you did the queerness of characters in-text and I saw you mentioned more than once before how they consider/call themselves gay or anything and I was wondering if you'd be willing to elaborate on that (in Ironwall, MVF etc), but more from a writing standpoint than a worldbuilding one. Hope Im making sense lol

i looked up the invention of the word 'homosexuality' and found that it was invented 6 years after stbh is set

ghksjdg i mean there's more to it than that but it meant that my language was constrained, which also means that the characters' language is constrained as well. i have to think about ways i want this to come across to the reader. at the time i was thinking about how the basic concept of "btw this character is not straight/cis" is communicated in some of the stories i'd read, and one that stood out to me was a comic i read in a fully fantasy setting where the writer brought the narrative to a juddering halt to explain exactly how gender & sexuality are handled by the people here. as in the characters essentially turn to the camera and give the main character a lecture. i really didn't like it, the author's hand was too visible behind the panels.

but i took it as a learning exercise as well on what i didn't want to do. i didn't like the neon signs pointing at any instance of non-heteronormativity and i also don't like stories that market themselves based on the characters' gender identities, particularly stories which do not involve a coming-of-age/character learns to discover themselves narrative. it's a book about two trans men but it's not a book about being trans. that's none of the reader's business, that's hidden from you (particularly in islin's case, intentionally). i never wanted to foster a sense of voyeurism towards trans people particularly knowing that most readers, statistically, will not be trans. crucially the characters are stealth to literally everybody but like 3 people. their transition is done.

i never wanted a coming out moment, or an "i'm here i'm queer" moment either - not even because Society in the setting just because i don't like those things. to completely normalise it in the narrative between these characters is the goal - almost to the point of never even pointing it out at all except when it has to be. the vibe i wanted was like... hanging out in not necessarily a gay space, but with gay people, talking about random other stuff. i didn't even like the One coming out scene i had to put in (senca being like "i only fuck women" to bowman so that he would stop hitting on her)

so when writing i had a pretty good idea of what i didn't want. for the setting i had some strict rules to follow as well. characters would not identify as gay or bisexual or even some fantasy equivalent because those were not identities, they were acts. and heterosexuality wasn't an identity either, it wasn't even "the natural way of things", it was the means by which wealth could transfer between generations. if you do not marry, then you are not conforming to your gender. the four unmarriagable men in mvf are all denied entry to normative manhood for many de-gendering factors (disability, unmanly hobbies, vow of chastity, etc) but the culmination of those factors is that they can't marry, which is the whole POINT of being a man. three of them are entirely denied generational wealth - forcing them into poverty (it's not a coincidence that gay people are overrepresented in the criminal organisation)

from a writing standpoint this leaves them in a grey zone. when writing i tried out different language to see if it read nice to me (19th century equivalents to 'boyfriend' etc) and they all rang quite false, because outside of the whole 'can we put a label on something that doesn't officially exist in society' thing, the characters themselves are not the types of people to think that way. Bowman was dating Léa but he was never dating Félix. you can't date another man. the only people who date men are women, and Bowman is not a woman. therefore he is not dating Félix. to give just one example. ultimately for the language used i found that just leaving it as-is worked the best for me.

so after working all that out i wrote tha thing and then wanted to kind of explore - at what point does it become romantic? is there an actual border between romantic and platonic when you've kind of already fallen between the cracks in society into the grey zone where nothing is defined because it doesn't affirm the power of the ruling class. and in these particular friendships, where they've already been all things to one another, they've already done everything together, good or bad, does adding 'romantic love' to that list of things wildly recontextualise it retroactively or does anything change at all? just like the ending reveal of stbh says: who actually is the guy we've been thinking of as 'félix ortega' ? does it recontextualise everything we've just read? no, right? (or does it?)

the usual 'will-they-won't-they' romance plot isn't a factor in the book, we already know they will, they have, they won't, and they refuse to, all at once.

(jean-baptiste thinks of himself as an invert because he is Learned and has read some fascinating journal articles about cutting-edge sexology, and his relation to his sexuality is very very different. it's not something he shares with his closest friends in spaces without scrutiny; his entire life is scrutinised and his social system is predicated on marriage. like i think i said in the book, probably, i don't remember: he and renard are two guys clinging to the same life raft. they hate each other! but if you push the other guy off the life raft, then you're just one guy alone at sea, forever.)

[squiggle3worm]

A problem I have with Rick is that a lot of the time when he writes an lgbtq+ character, he writes them for a specific purpose like putting Reyna, the only aroace character, in the hunters of Artemis or that Alex Fierro, the only trans character, is a child of Loki.

Rick kinda brought up this problem in his good reads q&a section:

“… Are you going to add another trans character besides Alex?

Alex for instance just made sense as a child of Loki. So, basically I don’t know. I’m hoping to write about Irish mythology (if I ever get enough time with the other projects going on!) and gender fluidity is most definitely a concept that appears in the Irish myths, so that is a possible logical place where a trans character might appear”

I agree with him that making Alex a trans character makes sense but my problem is that trans characters can exist outside of having a gender fluid godly parent. People are gender fluid without having to be shape shifters and people are aroace without having to commit to celibacy or swear off dating.

I guess all I’m trying to say is that Rick shouldn’t limit himself to have a specific reasoning or trope that always have trans characters be children of gender fluid gods or aroace characters always joining the Hunt. He shouldn’t limit a character’s queer identity to their parents or anything.

[forwomenbiwomen]

Sometimes I decide to see what the "other side" is talking about and I lurk on anti-terf blogs and gyns I have to say. I'm continually stunned by the fact that I thought it was normal as a TRA. The rabid "everyone can do the most outrageous shit as they want forever and ever and to engage with other opinions is literally catholic nazi conservatism 🤪🤪" is so... idk how to describe it, but reading their blogs completely overstimulates me 😭

It's always go go go go don't stop to think about it go go go FUCK TERFS here's a stunning misinterpretation that we can't even absorb deeply enough to actually question that'll be passed about like candy go go go trans rights go go trans women are women and cis bitches should die!!!!!1!1! but not really because we love women but only the ones that let their natural predators in uwu let's spam their tags with furry porn guys <3333

It's a lot!! And I forget that that's the other side of the spectrum on this issue because they're so online and fringe and... cringe is dead but they're really trying!!!!! I got used to dealing with normies but these people are insane about it and I'm genuinely taken aback. On here we have our issues, sure, but we're not so fast and groupthinky. We have our arguments but that's almost comically preferable to passing around a blocklist so you can keep yourselves in your bubble.

Like I'm always open to changing my mind that is an OATH that I take really fucking seriously. I read their blogs in good faith and engage with their thought processes because I NEED to know I'm making the right choices here. I'm surrounded by it on a daily basis and I come to the same basic conclusion that women deserve female spaces and a word to describe our femaleness and our humanity together and that word is woman. No postmodernist "gender is a social construct anyway so it doesn't matter what I use it for" erases the system of oppression that gender is and the fact that women are oppressed on the basis of sex and always have been. And they hate us. They hate us for expressing this quite simple and mild feminist take.

And somehow they've got this far with it lmao. Zero respect for the radical feminist women that came before them unless they call men transwomen and GNC women transmen. They would have fought the suffragists tooth and nail and put posters up of "wanted women".

[blackkatmagic]

Ms. Kat; I apologize is this is going too far-feel free to ignore/call me out. It is my understanding that you are both a therapist and a member of the LGBT community. My parents keep misgendering my friend. Not malice, habit (known them all their life, ‘he’ is habit). It’s just that they don’t seem to want to change that habit. I was wondering if you, as a therapist/LGBT, had any suggestions for resources on misgendering+mental health? I think that might help them understand. Thank you.

It depends on the situation. Since it sounds like your friend is out to your parents, I'd try to have a conversation with them about what being trans actually entails and means on a personal level to that friend. Resources are always good, but usually a personal connection is the best foundation to build on. Also, giving people time and grace is always good - older generations often have a harder time adjusting to people with different sexualities being more open about it, even if they're accepting. Gently correcting and making a point to use the correct pronouns/name often can help a lot over time.

I'll link a few articles that might help, but it's hard for people to connect with dry academic articles or lists if they don't understand why they need to change their habits. Sit down with your parents, maybe go over one of the articles with them, connect the different points back to your friend. They'll figure it out if they're given space to, and if they won't, you'll at least know to protect your friend from that mindset.

[mightysuns]

hey guys.

it’s christmas time and i want to remind everyone that it’s okay. all of it. all of you is okay.

as a queer person — your love is strong and passionate and beautiful and sweet. if you want to be, you will be a parent. you will do better than they did. there is nothing wrong with how you look or present, and there certainly is nothing wrong with your gender. people might not understand, but they don’t need to. they need to love you. and if they can’t— i love you.

as a disabled person — i’m sorry that they stare. i’m sorry they ask questions. i’m sorry they don’t believe you. you don’t owe them proof or answers or patience. take breaks. don’t push yourself. remember your accommodations are not a burden. you are not a burden. it’s not your job to fit in with them, it’s there job to make room for you. if they don’t— there is room for you here.

as a trans person — only you define who you are. it’s not your job to soften it to make it easier. you’re trans and you are not sick. you’re trying to be happy. remember your name and repeat your pronouns without shame. if your family is still holding on to someone else — i’ll welcome you with open arms.

as someone who’s lost a loved one — this is a scary, lonely time. whether people pity you or tell you to get over it, don’t accept it. grief is love without anywhere to go, you never have to let go of that. remember them in anyway you choose. i like to light candles. if you need that extra support — the kettle is on.

if you are celebrating alone — by choice or unwillingly, i hope your holidays are wonderful. enjoy good food and relax. you’re welcome to stop by or give us a call. i’ll drop by a care package in the morning if you’d like. being alone isn’t always a bad thing.

as a neurodivergent person — this is overwhelming and overstimulating. take what you need, fidget toys, headphones, comfort objects. don’t let anyone tell you what you need and don’t. you know yourself best. take time. be kind to yourself. and if you need there’s a quiet room upstairs.

[intothedysphoria]

If you ever wonder what it’s like to grow up trans, I think this sums it up pretty well:

I was 14 in 2017 and in a PSHCE class about queer people. I was the only openly queer person in that class and had been struggling with my gender identity openly for a good few years. Three guests come in. Two lesbians and a trans guy.

For some context, I’d already been experiencing pretty severe homophobic bullying.

They explain what it’s like to be queer and give us all a sheet to work on about the queer experience in groups.

Our group is given the task to write about being trans.

My cis teammates barrel on about what *they* think being trans obviously must be like.

Me, the sole trans person in that little group, am completely ignored whenever I try to speak, to stop them in their revelling of writing this tragic trans experience.

I asked that school to change my deadname to my preferred name on the register. I was told I was being disrespectful. And the bullying got worse, which included kids from that PSHCE class.

I’m a 21 year old man now and much more confident than my 14 year old self could ever be. But I still find myself thinking about that classroom, every now and then.

A group of cis people deciding what the trans experience must be like and ignoring the one trans person in the room. Doesn’t that sound familiar?

[nekrotiize]

It may be a stupid question, but why/how did t*rfs decided to use aphobia as a recruitment tool? [I in general have a quite, simplistic? view of them (terfs that is) as being very racist, transmisogynistic gender-essentialists, but aphobia is (unsuprising) news to me].

Thank you for anwsering, and I hope you have a good day.

Aphobia is a socially accepted bigotry, and a lot of Aphobic talking points intentionally mirror/recycles Transmisogynistic ones. This is something that's been known and commented upon since, like, 2016. It's a great way to boil the frog. If you normalize one form of bigotry to someone, then pulling them into other forms becomes incredibly easy. Here's a good post full of links and elaboration on this:

The Aphobe-to-Fullblown TERF pipeline is extremely real and has been admitted to by TERFs for years. It's a rare instance where something is not just observable, it's outright confessed to. Learning to be okay with Aphobia teaches you to be okay with other things. Since it recycles Transmisogynistic talking points, the next step is to become Transmisogynistic. Then it's to become Transphobic generally, Sexist generally, Racist generally, Classist generally, so on and so forth.

Bigotry clusters together, because they're all connected by the same emotions and the same language. There is no acceptable form of bigotry. The socially accepted bigotries serve merely as stepping stones to a pipeline of more and more hatred, whether people like it or not.

[heyitsspaceace]

don't let their seemingly straight-passing tension fool you, they are still very gay and dysfunctional

[sualne]

have some trans swan lake barbies

[redotter]

I went down an anti-men tiktok spiral because I kept arguing with people in the comments (ikr play stupid games win stupid prizes) and here's some popular takes I've seen - no sources unfortunately, and most of these are paraphrased:

Men are inheritly evil because of their gender and my supporting evidence is this list of horribly crimes commited by men

The Taliban is evil because its members are men, it's men silencing women and no other factors

Gun violence only exists because of men, guns are good as long as only women have access to them

Men are disgusting for not having a skincare routine or for only using one shampoo and one body soap

Men are annoying as fuck for having any interest in the stock market, cryptocurrancy or the economy

Men who play video games all day long and live with their parents are looser virgins (I'm a mental health and neurodivergence advocate uwu)

I would LITERALLY (and I double down on literally) rather run into a bear in the woods than a man because I expect that any and all men would do horrible things to me

Trans men are not included in the Man vs Bear discussion; they are of course pure and special and the only men I would choose over a bear but my reasoning is not trasnphobic I swear

And whenever someone tries to point out how this kind of narratives push men right, there's always someone going 'well this just means they are prone to being evil to begin with / it's not my responsibility to protect their feelings / they had it too good for too long / why are they such cry babies and can't take some criticism' and the thing is that even if you think all of this... isn't the goal to have less men leaning right? Like, just pragmatically speaking, if you know that protecting men's feelings (not at the expense of women!) would make them vote left, then suck it up and protect their feelings for the greater good. Either this or admit that you don't care much about politics or social justice and that all you wanted was to vent / be spiteful / feel powerful etc.

Basically yeah people are very eager to hate entire groups for traits outside of their control because of the actions of some, and nobody sees why this is a dangerous mindset to get comfortable with.

Y'all have got to stop virulently hating men. Like, I'm sorry, I fucking hate the patriarchy too, but the patriarchy isn't just men and saying it is just exculpates complicit women. I am the mother of a young boy, and I look at this precious, empathetic 8 year old boy I'm raising and I don't know where online is safe for him. Places like this will say he's evil just for his gender, and other places will say "we'll be your friend if you hate with us," and still others will radicalize him in other ways. Where is he supposed to go? Why are we saying the radicalization is the fault of the kids just trying to find a place to hang?

Like this is seriously getting urgent. You have got to fucking stop conflating the patriarchy and men. 53% percent of white women voted for Trump. Men aren't the problem. White supremacy and Christian patriarchal structures are two examples of patriarchy-reinforcing structures that aren't solely couched in maleness. Men aren't the problem, and pretending they are drives more men into more welcoming extremist spaces and also ignores all the parts of this that are forwarded by people who aren't men.

What I see happening all over is scared, depressed, lonely people looking for someone they're allowed to hate automatically, unquestioningly - someone they're allowed to place all the blame on. Fascism says people of color, non-Christian people, queer people, etc., are the ones they're allowed to hate.

And way too many of yall answer that no, it's leftist to hate men instead. You are doing *the exact same thing they are.*

Fucking knock it off.

The answer is we're not supposed to hate anyone automatically based on their immutable personal characteristics. Hate the specific people who've hurt you. Hate the self-reinforcing systems that let them get away with hurting you. Hate the strangers who prop up those systems. Hate the fascists. Hell knows I hate Donald Trump, but it's not because he's a man, it's because he's a piece of shit.

Hate the pieces of shit, not the gender.

But don't hate men just because they're men. That's unhelpful, stupid, insane, and entirely counterproductive. Fucking. Stop.

[drdemonprince]

hey, i respect the hell out of you! i love seeing your posts, and i have your book on my shelf. i think there is a lot of overlap between trans men and cis men, especially on the grounds of queerness where that is relevant

however, i cant help but feel like any time trans men say "this is specific to us," it gets taken in bad faith. i think there are some experiences trans men have that are specific to them

do you have thoughts on ways to articulate that difference without being "toxic"? i tend to just say 'transphobia' to describe such experiences, but sometimes it feels like any expression of "this is different for me" gets parsed as "im special." im not sure how to navigate that tension, other than trying to be verbally precise, but not everyone has that skillset or luxury.

i want trans men and cis men to find unity, i just also want trans men to feel like they can talk about their marginalization

btw for clarity i am not a trans man, but i am transmasculine so i feel like i have a horse in the race

I appreciate the good faith question, thanks for the message.

What are you referring to when you speak of unique transmasc experiences? I can't think of anything that doesn't fall under the banner of either "transphobia" or "misogyny, caused by transphobia," honestly. Obviously the content of the transphobia looks different for trans women and trans men, because they are different gender identities getting invalidated differently -- but it's still invalidation, entitlement to our bodies, cissexism, lack of healthcare access, and on and on.

If you could give me an example of what you have in mind when you say "this is different for me," I'll let you know what I think. My general reaction that idea is that if you haven't had a trans woman's experience, or a cis woman's experience, or even a cis queer man's experience, how would you know that they don't undergo similar things? Lots of cis women believe that lack of reproductive healthcare access is a uniquely cis women's problem, for instance, completely oblivious to the fact that trans men face even greater barriers to care, and trans women's reproductive needs aren't even considered by most women's clinics at all.