#this user is a transmasculine lesbian

[lgbtq-userboxes]

[burntoutuserboxes]

[This user is a transmas lesbian.]

[genderqueerdykes]

honestly as a butch, i just gotta say it: that "chivalrous knight in shining armor" crap is objectifying as hell and it's not fun, cute, or validating to apply to us, it provides a burden for us to bear, it makes us paranoid, tired, weary and feel like we're being reduced to a stereotype, or like we're being forced into a mold.

i'm not a knight just because i'm a transmasculine person who looks tough and can theoretically protect femme queers. i'm literally just standing here, being transsexual. i'm not inherently "chilvarous," i don't have any obligation to protect people just because i adopted the label "butch". what if i'm weak? what if the butch needs to be protected? what if the butch is disabled, traumatized, or just scared? i'm a wheelchair user.

why can't femmes protect their butches? why does it always have to be the butch being the chivalrous knight in our yearning posts and poems? why do we have to weave a performative ass narrative of the masculine partner swooping in to protect their defenseless feminine partner? how the HELL is this progressive or subversive at all? this is literally reinventing the binary.

the way the (white) cis lesbian community treats its butches is alienating as all hell. we are not here just to protect other people. we are not inherently protectors. we are not all strong. we are allowed to be weak. we are allowed to be scared. we are allowed to be hurt. we don't HAVE to protect our femmes, if we like femmes at all. not every butch is attracted to femme people in the first place.

butch isn't a lifestyle, it's not a set personality type. it's not a specific set of actions; it's just queer masculinity, that can be expressed by a multitude of queers for a multitude of reasons. it's not one specific set of traits. masculinity is not just found in protecting others and acting tough, it's also in being soft, vulnerable, weak and tender.

just let butches be people, don't turn us into objects before we even get out of the gates. all of this removes the human element of being butch. if the queer community can't afford that, we can't get it from anywhere, because we sure as hell aren't seen as humans by cisheteronormative society.

don't force me to see myself as a knight when i'm the one who needs help just because i'm masculine, or just because i'm a man.

butches need help, too.

[clowncary]

a transandrophobic's guide to transandrophobia

a small and short guide that oversimplifies things so even normies can understand. basically "don't say these things, be normal about queer men."

what is transandrophobia?

transandrophobia was coined around 2017 by a user named Saint (st-dionysus). it's a term describing multiple ways transmascs, trans men, or genderqueer men experience a form of androphobia that has the main goal of separating manhood from trans identities.

what is transandrophobia made of?

transandrophobia is made up of transmisogyny and androphobia. the transmisogyny is the ideas that trans men are either women in disguise, traitors or alien to womanhood, or lost little girls fetishizing lesbians. the focus on trans men as confused women is to assume that women cannot be anything but little innocent girls or servants. if a woman is not of those categories, then they are traitors, snakes, and are not real/pretending to be women. we see this in all sorts of spaces. if a woman is not subservient and tolerable, then they must be a "bitch," or a man in hiding. for trans men, this narrative means that they are failing womanhood because they too are not tolerable or subservient.

androphobia is the fear of men or the patriarchy. it affects women more than it affects men, and most trauma resulting from it comes from direct or indirect sexual violence or misogyny. androphobia in terms of trans men would be the fear of manhood or isolation of manhood from transness. a common pushback against androphobia and transandrophobia seems to be the idea that trans men are just trans, not men. they aren't women, but they aren't men either, so they stay in the gray zone of being defined by their agab or their sex traits.

the isolation of manhood from transness is a tactic used to correctly gender trans men without having to acknowledge their gender as being related to manhood, even if that fear is towards those who uphold the patriarchy - which trans men, by identity, do not fit in the patriarchy. it is why androphobia is known as irrational or abnormal, as all phobias are, but isn't recognized as hate or discrimination. when trans men and cis men are perceived as the same type of manhood, the assumption becomes that trans men are of the patriarchal system instead of being completely outside of it.

why androphobia and not misandry?

misandry was created to be used as a gotcha towards feminism. no one wants that. misandry is real, but is not represented in the term. instead, the subsequent discrimination and hate of men would stem from androphobia's fear. fear is the reason many people say they hate something that could cause it, and it's not irrational to fear, but the consistent anxiety and distrust leading to narratives that affect men who are not of the patriarchy is a phobia.

no one hates cis men for being men, it is hate of their ability to use their cis status and patriarchal power. cis manhood is preferred, it is widely accepted, it is natural.. trans men on the other hand are hated for being failed cis men and confused women, who are then hated for being related to cis men by being men incorrectly.

you might be transandrophobic if..

...you see trans men as the cis men of the trans community. this is a running joke in some spaces, but it perpetuates the idea that since cis men are of a higher power due to privilege, that trans men must have the same privileges and the same status due to them being men. this is not how you affirm transmasculine identities and frankly, it's downright gross. when you begin to see trans men as trans men instead of removing their manhood from their transness, you see that the manhood is inseparable from our transness and is in close quarters to how our identity functions. without that manhood, we are not trans and we are no longer of that community - we are then lumped into three categories; "non-men," nonbinary, or afab. when trans men say that we do not want our manhood to be reduced/separated from our transness, we mean that the other terms to categorize us are inaccurate, false, or derogatory.

...you don't think theyfab is a slur. it was made specifically to go after those who were assigned female at birth and used they/them primarily. this affects most if not all trans people who are genderqueer/nonbinary and were assigned female. it's a slur and is used that way.

...you don't say trans man, but instead say "tme." tme is transmisogyny exempt, and is known to be used as a stand in for anyone not presenting as a woman. it's a bioessentialist/intersexist term alongside it's counterpart; tma. these terms leave out and actively discriminate against intersex bodies and identities - and if pointed out - those who use the terms tme/tma will have a meltdown.

...say more slurs. if any of this is in your daily or private vocabulary and you actively refer to trans men or transmascs like this, there is a problem.

...you position our HRT or manhood as poison. i don't have to explain this that much but would it be acceptable for a trans man to say that estrogen is a poison and womanhood is essentially harmful by nature? if not, that might be a reason as to not do the same to trans men who need it.

...you position our oppression as lesser or never experienced. trans women face transandrophobia. that's the truth. the fear of supposed men in women spaces is one of the most rampant forms of prejudice against trans women.anyone can experience transandrophobia and transmisogyny. anyone can experience exorsexism. the main point of it is what it is supposed to be attacking. transmisogyny attacks womanhood that is trans or queer. transandrophobia attacks manhood by removing it from transness.

...you ignore the quarrels of trans men against rampant transandrophobia that seem to revolve around fears of being excluded due to not being feminine or woman enough, which the community seems to gravitate towards.

...you make transandrophobic claims that don't make sense at all.

[sirenium]

Do you know what I find funny? The fact that every time I make a positivity post about queerness at its fullest, people only have something bad to say about the lesbian part. They scream at me about how the icky men don't belong in lesbian spaces, because everyone knows all men are predatory (sarcasm).

These people only care about lesbians when it gives them an excuse to hate men. Fuck the fact that the butch community is filled with gender fuckery, and how that involves manhood. Fuck the rich history of transmasculinity and lesbianism. It's all 'lesbians can't be men! They can't like men!'

And when you say 'hey, that's not true. There are historic examples of lesbian identified people who did the very things you say lesbians can't do' you're labeled a lesbian hater. I guess I hate myself then, though since I am to some extent a man who also likes men, I was never a lesbian to begin with according to users on Tumblr dot com (again, sarcasm).

Give me a break. Stop cloaking your misandry with 'I just care about lesbians!' because you don't care about lesbians. You only care about the man hating gold star lesbians who piss themselves at the deeper queer community as you do. You would throw that elder trans man lesbian under the bus, because his identity is 'invalid' to you. You can't handle multigender people, or genderqueer people in general, sullying your precious label with their manhood. You cannot stand to see another lesbian dating a man, because suddenly they're the ones forcing people to date who they don't want to date.

Queerness is supposed to be an acceptance of who you are, as someone who strays from what is expected by cishetallo society. And yet, expectations follow you into the fucking community itself. And I get it, I'm basically a baby queer myself; I've only been out for like five years, and have barely been involved in my local queer scene. But through the little bit of experience that I have had, at least I can mind my own damn business.

Tumblr has some of the most insufferable baby queers known to man, as do other websites such as TikTok and Twitter, because they honestly think they have authority over someone else's identity. They actively try to enforce their ideas of lesbianism specifically onto other people, people who are just living differently. Nobody gets the right to say what a lesbian is or isn't, nobody gets the right to pull the 'invalid' card, because sweetheart, we're ALL invalid as far as the far right is concerned.

I used to find joy in my lesbian identity once I dusted it off, after thinking I couldn't be one the more masculine my gender got, but the amount of hatred I've personally experienced as well as witnessed dampens said joy. And that fucking sucks. So no, I don't hate lesbians, but I sure do hate the ones that have made the community so hostile towards those like me... and not because of their identity either, though they no doubt think that's the reason regardless of what the truth is.

[vaspider]

Hey! You reblogged a post earlier of a comic about lesbians wanting to have sex with each other, but one of the additions on the post was written by an extreme and proud transandrophobe who hates trans mascs. I don't want to say which person here in case this ask is posted because I'm extremely against callout posts and that sort of discourse. So if you want to know, you can message me. I also understand if this isn't something you want to engage in. I'm only sending this ask because the person is very, very proud about how much they hate trans mascs and regularly posts screenshots making fun of transmasculine people, but I don't blame you if you'd rather not know. I hate when people send asks making claims about who is "secretly a bigot," but the user in question is not secret about their harassment of fellow trans people. Anyways, please don't feel obliged to message me, and have a good day

Yeah, don't do this. I post everything, as it says all over the top of my blog. I'm not going to engage with this, and I'm not DMing someone I don't know for evidence or whatever. Either send me things or don't, but don't do this.

[transbutchblues]

about me

Iphis • he/(she)/(they) & ze/hir (no feminine terms) • transmasculine butch lesbian • white • french • autistic • physically disabled (cane user) • undergraduate classics student • hellenic polytheist (worshipping many deities but especially Artemis and Zeus) • learning ancient greek & latin • beginning to learn akkadian as of october 2024 • occasionally a writer

about this blog

mostly classics stuff or hellenic polytheism things • my religious practice is heavily informed by my studies but i make a difference between my personal beliefs and the way i will discuss myths or cults • sideblogs : @greekchoruslikealawyer : personal sideblog, where i post anything about my life but also about classics || @dancingthroughthewilderness : mostly a religious + literary account, only reblogs || @perditaiuventus : for my interest in roman history, but that also tends to go on my personal sideblog

links

— socials

spotify • transbutchblues on discord/insta/tiktok

— posts

The Locked Tomb analysis document (100+ pages, to be updated with new theories)

Divine transsexuality - trans gods & queer worshippers

Reminder : the Gods are everywhere

[prsk2dmv-transparents]

Headcanons for my Project SEKAI x Danny Phantom crossover fic series

Ichika: Nonbinary, bisexual, they/she/he pronouns (in preference order), anxious and autistic

Saki: Omnisexual, she/her pronouns, (juvenile) multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, auDHD, and mobility aid user (usually forearm crutches when necessary)

Honami: Ply lesbian, multigender, she/her pronouns primarily but also pronounfluid, anxious, depressed, autistic, and PTSD

Shiho: Butch, transmasculine, lesboy, he/they pronouns, autistic and depressed

[yentling]

I kinda feel like the term “queerphobia” shows a lack of understanding of. Labels describing oppression. Like it’s not a big deal like I’m not gonna die on this hill but I feel like it’s indicative of this belief that labels describing oppression have to also reflect the individual’s label and that’s not really true imo. Like the reason transandrophobia/transmisandry is bullshit despite there obviously being discourses that are particular to transmasculine ppl is that such a portmanteau implies that men are an oppressed class.

Another user (lesbianchemicalplant maybe? Idk) said this already but I’m gonna piggyback on it so late me restate it here: lesbophobia is a useful term because it describes the intersection of misogyny and homophobia. I don’t really think it’s accurate to call, say, a county clerk denying me, a lesbian, marriage unless for some reason they are letting gay men get married and not gay women. Like I think that would just be homophobia. I personally would also describe two women being attacked for being “dykes” as lesbophobia regardless if one or both aren’t actually lesbians because again, we’re describing the oppression of people who are both “gay” (in this case with a same-gender partner) and women. I guess a comparative scenario would be if I had a partner who justified abusive behavior because they believed I was going to cheat on them with a man—this would be biphobia despite me being a lesbian.

I do get why people might argue for the term “queerphobia” bc if we’re defining homophobia as “oppression of homosexuals” then you might say well it’s not that bigots have a problem with specifically gay ppl it’s queerness in general. Which sort of makes sense and again is why I’m not dying on this hill. But in my perspective anti-queer rhetoric still comes from beliefs irt same-gender relationships (homophobia), transphobia, and misogyny. Like if I, a nonbinary person who still aligns themselves somewhat with womanhood, started dating a guy, bigots would dislike us because it seems gay (homophobia), I’m not being a woman correctly and, by dating me, the guy would be seen interpreted as emasculated (misogyny), and I Have Pronouns (transphobia). To me, describing that as “queerphobia” sort of obfuscates the belief systems at play.

[mogai-headcanons]

Luz Noceda from The Owl House is a dragonkin autistic partially blind polyamorous bisexual transmasculine catgender boyflux age dreamer with ADHD, depression, PTSD, insomnia, and a self-harm addiction who uses he/him, they/them, hiss/hisses, and mew/mews pronouns, and mew is dating Will and Hunter!

Will Park is a polyamorous pansexual transmasculine nonbinary person with a male preferences who uses they/them pronouns!

Hunter Deamonne is an autistic polyamorous bisexual intersex transgender demiboy age regressor with PTSD, depression, hypermobility, insomnia, schizophrenia, BPD, DID, and albinism who uses he/him pronouns, and he has one alter, the Golden Guard!

They're all friends with Luz's ex-girlfriend Amity Blight, an arospec asexual lesbian who uses she/her pronouns!

Luz's younger brother Vee Noceda is a vincian intersex trans boy cane user with chronic pain who uses he/him pronouns!

Gus Porter is an autistic GNC bisexual middle regressor with anxiety and an undiagnosed schizoaffective disorder who uses any pronouns!

Luz's mentor Edalyn Clawthorne is a polyamorous bisexual trans woman who uses she/her pronouns!

She's in a QPR with Raine Whispers, a transmasculine genderfaun nonbinary vincian!

Raine is dating Darius Deamonne, a gay man!

Darius is good friends with Lou 'Lulu' Clawthorne, an asexual transgender man who uses he/him pronouns and is in a QPR with Hooty!

Eda's child King Clawthorne is an intersex bigender transgender titan who uses he/him and they/them pronouns!

Bo is a nonverbal polyamorous bisexual genderfaun autigender seagender person who uses they/them, he/him, boat/boats, sea/seas, and burn/burns pronouns, and they're in a polyamorous relationship with Eileen and Selene!

Eileen is a demiromantic deathcute liminalgender person with psychosis, depression, social anxiety, and insomnia who uses it/its and bite/bites pronouns!

Selene is a polyamorous xeno4xeno xenofem person with symbrachydactyly and a hoard of space xenogenders!

dni link

[tanjirou-no-au]

Yoichi: Trans Man. Bisexual. He/him.

2nd: Cis Man. Gay. He/Him

3rd: GNC Cis Woman. Aroace. She/They

Shinomori: Bigender Trans Woman. Undefined Sexuality. She/He.

Banjo: Cis Man. Gay (In the closet for most his life). He/Him.

En: Transmasculine Nonbinary man. Bisexual. He/They

Nana: Trans Woman. Lesbian (lost her wife, not her husband). She/Her

Toshinori: Trans Man. Biromantic Asexual. He/Him

Deku: Enby Cis Man. Biromantic Demisexual. He/They

---

(Gestures to Yoichi, En & Toshinori)

AfO: The ‘lovely young girl’ to ‘Bastard Man OFA User’ is a heartbreaking phenoma that affects a third of OFA users by volume.

Toshinori, ex-Quirkless Vigilante: Jokes on you! We were never nice young ladies!

En, assasin turned vigilante, and Yoichi, angry feral man: *nod in agreement*

[eldorr]

Shadowlesbian

Official Flag (left), Original Flag (right)

An orientation term where your lesbian identity is affected by the fact:

One is transmasculine, a trans man, transneutral, nonbinary, or just not a woman (includes multigender and genderfluid/genderflux/fluidflux individuals), as one is either too dysphoric about being called a woman, experience a disconnection from traditional womanhood, and/or simply doesn’t identify as a woman or with womanhood. They may describe their attraction as any of the following: MLW; MLNB; MLX; NBLW; NBLNB; NBLX, etc – but they don’t identify their labels as WLW; WLNB; or WLX due to reasons listed above. With a multigender and/or genderfluid/genderflux/fluidflux identity, one feels not straight when with a woman and/or has a fluctuating level of dysphoria when they sometimes view their attraction as sapphic/lesbian in nature, or as WLW; WLNB; WLX. To express that disconnection, the prefix shadow- is used.

This term also includes those whose orientation is fluid and/or flux, who may not 100% identify with the label of lesbian; due to barely ever experiencing attraction to women (or attraction period), having an attraction to women that feels lesbian but also not, having an attraction to women that’s fluid between being queer and queern’t, and/or experiencing attractions under a lesbian/sapphic lens.

In simpler terms, a shadowlesbian may be defined as the following:

Being multigender and/or genderfluid/genderflux/fluidflux but never WLW, yet feeling like their attraction to women is gai/queer.

Being m-spec and not WLW, yet feeling a connection to the label.

Being too dysphoric about being called a woman/girl/being thought of as one, yet being either NBLW, MLW or XLW with a connection to the lesbian label.

Having a fluid/flux orientation where one’s not 100% a lesbian due to any reason, but retaining a connection to the lesbian label.

Simply feeling as if one’s lesbian, but also not.

.

This term was originally reposted on June 27th, 2022.

So years (July 19th 2020) ago I coined the Shadow- terms on my original mogai blog. Since then I’ve deleted that blog and one-half of the Shadow- terms do not have rebloggable posts out there, so I decided I’d repost the terms.

A while after (February 27th 2021) another tumblr user (@/thepokedexisgay) decided to make simpler alternate flags to these terms. I’ll be posting a link to their flags at the bottom of these posts.

I made the original flags based off of my original all inclusive lesbian/gay/vincian/etc. flags, and since I’ve remade those and posted them, I figured I’d remake the Shadow- flags as well, simplifying them and following the color schemes of my new flags. So yeah, some “official” flags for these terms.

That being said, I made the new Shadowlesbian flag based off of my Flowerbed Lesbian flag, so along with that if you ID as Shadowsapphic/ShadowQ4W or whoever else I mentioned could use the Flowerbed Lesbian flag, you can also use this flag if you feel your orientation is Shadow-.

(I’d prefer people use these flags as the official versions versus the originals, however if u personally like the other flags whether it’s Alois’s (thepokedexisgay) or the original ones, or feel like making your own based on an alternate lesbian/veldian/enbian/etc. flag, feel free to go on ahead.)

Yes, most of the definition in this post is ripped directly from the LGBTA wiki, with some changes to it due to my current knowledge of labels.

Here is the link to the Shadowlesbian flag made by @/thepokedexisgay, and here is the [link] to the Shadowlesbian page on the LGBTA wiki.

[anonsystemblog]

꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷

About user!

We are an Anon System

We are 19 bodily, Transmasculine Queer, Lesbian, Aroaceflux and polyamorous, we are a paraphile (🗺️/⚰️)

Our collective pronouns are : he/him it/its hy/hymn xe/xem rot/rots and 🫀/🫀s

Our stances are: Anti-Contact, Pro-ship, Pro-Fiction, Anti-Censorship Anti-Abuse, Radqueer

Antis will get blocked

꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷꒦꒷

[calamityquellerei]

new pinned! pretty similar to the last one just with some added clarification as well as a DNI/BYI.

my name is Ei. i also go by Aoi, Baiyu, and Arabella!

in terms of marginalized identities i'm a bit all over the place. i'm a POC (Black, Falasteeni, Chinese, Japanese + others*). i'm queer as in fuck you and also as in lesbian and grayaroace. i'm intersex and transfeminine. i'm physically disabled and chronically ill. i'm Mad/mentally ill, including schizophrenia, personality disorders, and others. i'm a traumagenic disordered plural system. i'm intellectually disabled, autistic, and adhd.

*others refers to racial identities that i am not as connected to, and therefore am not comfortable listing.

full disclosure that i am also thin, hearing, seeing, non-religious, and usamerican. i only list these so people know what experiences i cannot speak on.

i'm an activist! i'm currently part of @bfpnola's advocacy committee, advocating for intellectually disabled, intersex, and Falasteeni lives.

i'm semiverbal (all the time not "go semiverbal") and a full time TTS user. i have been semiverbal my entire life.

i'm also a cult/OA survivor, although i don't talk about it very often and would prefer to not be asked about it.

DNF/BYF under the cut!

Before You Follow: - i support all plurals including nontraumagenic, nondisordered, median, spiritual, etc. plurals - i support the full decolonization of Falasteen. i do not support israel's existence as a state. - do not ask who is fronting or which alter made a post, even if we are good friends. - i support and love transmascs! i believe in transandrophobia and i firmly believe transmascs face unique oppression/discrimination because of their transmasculine identities. - i do not believe in TME/TMA labels, as nobody is "exempt" from any form of oppression. - i reclaim some slurs but not a lot and not often. if you reclaim a lot of slurs very often i support you! - i use support needs and severity labels for my autism (i have medium support needs/moderate autism).

Do Not Follow: - people who are going to drag me into syscourse. i'm pro endo, but i also don't mind interacting with most anti endos and neutrals and idc if you follow me as an anti as long as you're not going to harass me or try to make me do syscourse with you. - israel supporters, two-state "solution" supporters, anyone who doesn't support the full decolonization of Falasteen. - people who don't believe in transandrophobia - people who use TME/TMA labels - people who think support needs labels for autism are useless or "dividing the community" - anyone who regularly posts about shipcourse or is going to drag me into it - people who say "go semiverbal" or "go nonverbal". this only rly applies if you've been educated and choose to ignore the people educating you, if you genuinely didn't know and are open to education that's different. - people who use the term "theyfab" outside of an educational/reclamation context. even if you think the person deserves to be called it or if you claim it's not a derogatory term.

[hitaka5ever]

Pride Month YCHs (Infinite Slots for now)

I'm currently taking Pride Month YCHs with DA user michifishu's pride flag bases. I wanna start early so I can be sure to have all of them done by/in June

Price: Color: $27 Shading: $32 # of Slots: Unlimited for now

How to order: Email me at real.rockyfuller@gmail.com with a ref sheet of your OC/sona, their species and orientation (if it isn't on the ref) your PayPal email, and how complete you want it (just put "color" or "shading") Note: I will send you an invoice to pay. Please try to pay within 1 week so I don't waste my time making something, only to be snubbed. You will NOT receive the finished piece until the invoice is paid off

About me: I am a transmasculine enby that uses he/him pronouns and I live in a country where anti-trans healthcare and legislation is being passed in several states. I don't think Oregon will be changing anything bc we're a democrat state, and our Governor is a lesbian democrat. But the biggest concern is 2024, where Trump has already threatened to make being transgender illegal across the country. If he or any of his cohorts (DeSantis is running) wins the presidency, the lives of trans POC, trans Jews, and all trans people will be in jeopardy

Most of the profits of these commissions are going towards my livelihood, as I wish to be a full time freelance artist going forward, but I will send a small percentage to pro-trans charities, especially for POC and Jews, who have more at stake than I ever will as a white atheist

Thank you for reading and I hope you will consider buying a pride flag YCH slot. I also have other types of commissions if you want something else instead (I currently do human/anthro reference sheets, headshots/icons, and other YCHs. I do not do full drawings or comics at this time)

Stay safe my fellow LGBTQIA+ family! We can get through these scary times if we stick together and not give up hope

I love you all 🖤🤎❤️🧡💛💚💙💜

[notmuchtoconceal]

bro, i know i just said never, but also --

i have way too many opinions about thomas harris's novels and i honestly feel like bryan fuller is one few nerd alive big enough to get into the nitty-gritty of this man's heroic grappling with his projected mental illness and latent bestial nature in a manner which is cathartic and revelatory, but also -- the man fucked himself over by staying too engaged and doting too hard on his audience of mostly tumblr users.

his de-masculinization of Margot Verger may be the only time i have felt compelled to deliver a hot-take. for those of you not in the know, the literary Margot Verger is a bodybuilding butch lesbian who was rendered infertile through steroid usage and is now reliant on his (I'd meant to write her, but this may be revealing) abusive and disabled child predator brother for semen, so that she may sire an heir with their family's DNA and so claim their father's meatpacking inheritance through him.

he had expressed concerns about portraying a --

I'm not sure, I believe he felt that Margot Verger was a transman and didn't wish to portray his transmasculinity as a product of abuse, but to me that is an over-literal reading of the text. I believe the passage in the Hannibal novel he may be thinking of //

(I had, before my sole viewing of the Hannibal TV series, re-read the original trilogy, as well as watched Silence of the Lambs twice, before and after the source novel, as well as both adaptations of Red Dragon and Ridley Scott's film of Hannibal. I was hyper-attuned to the origin of every one of his remixes, and every time I watched an interview where he stated he was remixing, I could see exactly what he was doing. I was quite impressed -- just by the first episode -- by how he was so cleanly able to take various choice selections from a wide-array of contexts in the books and chain them together into an entirely new argument/persuasion. It's sharp, yet dense. I feel the show has an exhausting quality, for it is not only visually lush, but dedicates a great amount of time to both revealing and obscuring through speech.)

\\ I believe the passage in the Hannibal novel he had in mind, when floating the idea that Margot was a transman because of abuse, was suggested by an obvious homophobe. The section is narrated by -- I forget his name. The main FBI douchebag. He's a token chauvinist, a fairly route middle-manager bully, and knight of the patriarchy. He's the same man who, in the film adaption, Hannibal slices his scalp open and feeds him his own brain. In this same section, standing around in the billionaire pedophile's palatial bedroom, feeling like he's made it, he also floats the suggestion that Clarice and her roommate were bull-dykes, and that Hannibal himself is a faggot due his fondness for "tea party food" because being gay also means being wealthy and European and better than you in all arts (this line was also used in Ridley Scott's film, as a direct verbal taunt to Julianne Moore's Clarice in the FBI basement.) You can see, his thoughts are intended to portray a carousel of moronic straight-boy stereotypes. This is a simple man. It may be easy to read him at face value, if one is sensitive to these slights. Straight nerds, you know -- in some ways it's much easier for them to detach from homophobia, not actually being gay.

I believe Margot Verger's identity is complicated. Physically, she is undeniably a woman. She has faced repeated attacks, psychological, physical and sexual, and so is always on edge ~ Rather, if Margot is more a transman than a butch lesbian, I see no reason to assume his transmasculinity was the product of abuse, or rather -- I don't see the compromise to his or her masculinity as being in any way distinct from how other people have their masculinity compromised. Truly, I think the scenes with Margot and Barney in the novel are beautiful. She always tries to come off as tough, like she isn't intimidated by him, big burly black orderly (it's okay to admit that sometimes a black man is sexier than a white man and it's not suspect to say it ~ you have no hesitancy whatsoever about finding white men sexy without giving any though to racial supremacy. let black beauty ride u. he is majestic) who could hold his own against the witty all-knowing psycho-demon who eats men alive. She's assertive, chiding, all bravado, eager to flex. Though also -- she's never befriended a man who was this tolerant, this compassionate, this genuinely understanding. She doesn't know how to take it. She likes men, or at least the idea of men, but you know -- she's had so many bad experiences with men. Things most people would never even want to talk about. All the indications she's giving Barney are that she wants to be a bro and work out -- by this point in the story, her brother is keeping him close, not only for he is a competent medical professional and he is bedridden, but also because of his fetishistic preoccupation with all things Hannibal Lecter. Barney was one of the few men alive who Truly Knew Him. Margot and Barney see each other a lot in the private gym they share. One day Barney gives Margot a firm, robust athletic smack on the ass in the showers. She crumbles. It's all too much. She may have either a masculine mind or a mind which appropriates the masculine (do recall that Clarice herself, in emulating her lawman father, is on something of an mirrored journey to Buffalo Bill -- he wants to become physiologically female, she wants to become psychologically male, and the true question of appropriation and predation remains disputable), but she has a female body traumatically wired into subservience to monsters who can't love her. How could she possibly be with this man who ... charming, lovely and burly as he is ... simply makes her want to die? Simply can't stop making her remember? Margot is herself not depicted as a beautiful woman. Her masculinity is a source of pride, strength, but also a constant reminder of her pain. Chasing her masculinity -- altering her body through hormones -- quite literally has left her infertile, and now dependent on the abuser she tried to overcome by embracing roids. Regardless of her Gender Identity, Her Masculinity Is Real, Arguably Toxic, and Yet She Remains An Abused Woman. There's a level of finesse here which is difficult to parse, for it is difficult to endure, it is such a raw and painful portrait of a product of human exploitation, in a novel which is already lined to the wall which faceless disfigured child rapists feeding people alive to giant pigs. Margot in the book goes so far as to forcefully ejaculate her brother with a cattle prod, collecting her sample, then deep-throating him with his own pet electrical eel which eats through his throat as it electrifies him alive. Perhaps, if Margot's transmasculinity is the product of abuse, it's simply because we need to tap into unconventional or otherwise unsuspecting parts of ourselves when placed in novel or desperate situations, and "queerness" is, in a literal sense, the discovery and adoption of divergent survival strategies. Perhaps we simply needn't be ashamed of ourselves or where we've come from, and to demand recognition from ego-blocks which would appropriate us for revenue and prestige is to become complicit with them if we lose sight of what's really important, that is our freedom to be and to love.

I'm thinking of a comment made a film reviewer named Diamanda Hagan, speaking on John Waters's film, Desperate Living. That one had a character, Mole, an AFAB person in a relationship with a woman, and she (as she was referred) impulsively got a cock to dick his lady, but she was immediately grossed-out and they castrated herself. She had said the gag had begun life as an offensive lesbian stereotype, now it's an offensive trans stereotype, and it had managed to remain offensive because you really couldn't tell what the film thought Mole was. John Waters -- he is, of course, sympathetic to people's interior essentialized states, but he's also hip and savvy. He knows people are adaptable, need to market themselves, and identity is largely contextual. I'd gotten the impression that, although a woman, she wanted to treat her girlfriend like a woman, and so give her the man treatment. Her woman then had the opposite reaction, feeling her lady was compromising herself for her sake. I think her woman enjoys her masculinity, but also enjoys that she's a woman. I think plenty of women like women who like themselves, and people generally who are comfortable being themselves. I think it's easier for women to compartmentalize and "become" men, as men are already single-minded and task-focused, so being a man is much like turning a part of yourself off. If she has an essentialized "masculine" quality it may simply be because she's the dominant partner in her relationship.

Now, as for the supposed hot-take -- I don't think bryan fuller has anything against lesbians, though he may feel a low-level visceral repulsion when confronted by a woman who seems too masculine, in much the same way a heterosexual man would seem threatened or put ill-at-ease by a man who appears too feminine. It might confuse him. He may be more horny for butch lesbians than he'd care to admit, or may be more susceptible to heterosexual assumptions that he'd like to admit. He might like Margot more if she fit into a more clear and defined idea of what it was to be a woman. Truthfully, I find the ambiguity of Margot's transsexualism one of her most compelling aspects, for I feel he is both, though also damaged, and she would remain both, regardless of his damage. Damage simply occurs to us, and we have to find some way to reckon with it. He's also a sharp-dresser who works in show business. All adaptations pretty up their people for the screen, even if they make them uglier by making them more conventional. The world simply wasn't ready yet for the real Margot Verger, with all her messy complications. It may not be for some time. I would always love my sister. Even if she were a steroid-abusing lesbian who's too frightened to be a man with me. You don't know how hard it is. You're so brave, to keep it all together.