#tim is transfem here Because i say so

[dailyhatchetfield]

day 185 - family thanksgiving

[thepunkmuppet]

ok i just looked back through my blog and it looks like my big theory from way back last year has just… disappeared?? which i’m pretty annoyed about tbh, but i want to expand on it and update it anyway because the casting announcement and logo all validate it and make it a lot more interesting SO

my big magnus protocol theory and what i think the plot will be

so, this is a world completely without the Fears, until BAM. here they are. and with the arg, the encrypted messages and the glitchy aesthetic they seem to be going for, now further expanded on by the logo literally being a glitchy computer screen, i was thinking what if as the fears entered the universe, there was some kind of mass signal or energy surge.

imagine all the screens and electronics in the world suddenly go static, and a jumbled-up incomprehensible message (like the “statement remains” audio) can be heard everywhere, all around the world. and it goes on for around 20-30 minutes. and in those minutes, every single person in the world is fucking TERRIFIED. just frozen in absolute fear.

and of course this causes thousands and thousands of accidents and deaths and just generally terrifies everyone, so naturally every world government thinks it’s an attack of some kind. hence why we follow civil service workers, specifically those working for Incident Assessment and Response. this would be quite an incident!!

in these first few episodes following the signal, we also hear from the prime minister. and i originally thought it would be REALLY fun if the uk prime minister in this universe is the og Elias. i love this idea with all my heart for many reasons, but it doesn’t look like ben meredith will be in it, so i’ve had to modify it a bit. so, either the prime minister will be gwendolyn bouchard, who could either be a relative of elias or transfem elias (although, trans prime minister?? in this godforsaken country??) OR the tim fearon character, who could potentially be jonah magnus or a similar previously established character. but personally, i’m betting on miss gwendolyn, so keep that in mind as you read the rest of this.

and so at the end of the first or second episode, we hear this prime minister in a big meeting about the incident, and the episode ends on a cliffhanger that reveals what the unscrambled audio really was.

it’s mag 200. which is why jon and martin are (potentially) on the cast list. the fears are ushered into the universe using their voices.

but i think what would be an even cooler cliffhanger is if after this big reveal, after the tape squeals and basira says good luck, we hear something we’ve never heard before.

“oh, hello. are you still listening?”

OR

tim fearon’s voice.

so this is where the REDACTED names really come into play. idk what the actual plot will be, but my idea is that jon, martin, and the tim fearon character, who i personally think is the voice of the original jonah magnus, are:

1, stuck as “ghosts in the machine” of sorts, living on as disembodied glitchy voices and nothing more

2, are huge eldritch entities, who can speak through anything and anyone, maybe possess people, etc, and possibly act as similar entities to the fears in a way, creating their own avatars and suchlike - maybe to fight the fears in jon and martin’s cases

or 3, the fears use their voices to actually speak, probably through recordings and electronics, meaning the REDACTED isn’t just to conceal their characters, they actually just don’t have names

also this is a much smaller point but because her name and presumed age are so out of place in comparison to the rest of the cast, i think lady mowbray is a psychic or mystic woman of some kind rather than an actual noble woman, and will be able to talk to the new jon and martin, whatever they are

so yeah that’s it i guess! i hope all this makes sense, if anyone has any questions, anything to add or challenge, or just want to discuss it please please do!! i want to see what people think of this in light of all the new information because i LOVE this idea so much that if it doesn’t happen i might just write it myself lol

[amateur-art-critic]

Assigned TERF by trans women (or; we should teach people about Occams Razor)

So this is a new development. I got accused of being a TERF for writing this on a post I reblogged:

So I'm a TERF because I think TMA/TME as terms have set back trans solidarity? Because I think TMA and TME just reinvent the gender binary? That's TERF-y to you?

Sure.

But there's more; OP decided to comment as well;

Me when I'm not a TERF

Yes, that is the point of my blog. To hate TERFs. Because I was harassed by TERFs at one point.

and then her pinned is signaling how opposed to radfeminism [she is].

Radfems/gendercrits/TERFs are the same breed and I use the terms synonymously. There's nothing more to it.

bitch your header has a play on the terfs term TIM.

Yes, because I was trying to co-opt their language to piss them off. @/butchbarbieagainstterfs was the one to introduce me to the concept of using FIT, Feminist Identified Transphobe, as an alternative to TERF.

And if anything, it's a play on TIF (trans identified female), because it uses the exact same letters as FIT.

Your entire blog is predicated on transfem exclusionism

No it's fucking not? Never have I excluded transfems and trans women. I focus on transmasc and trans men's issues because they fucking apply to me.

This is the most "i like pancakes"/"so you hate waffles?" argument ever.

you ain't slick

Neither are you.

Then @/june-egbert-official decided to add onto OPs reblogs with an "analysis" of my bio, from the view of me being a TERF;

"Shrödinger's Woman" - Shrödinger's Cat was a thought experiment of being unable to measure something without investing it [...] - in other words they want to be allowed to look at your junk.

Or, maybe, we Occams Razor this: maybe I am both a woman and not a woman. You won't know unless you ask, but everyone always assumes and argues I'm one or the other.

In other words: I'm fucking nonbinary, you dumb fuck. I'm not a woman and I am also not not a woman, because I'm also not a man. And saying I'm "Shrödinger's Woman" is a subtle nod to TERFs assuming I'm either a cis woman, a trans man (who they see as women) or a trans woman (who they see as men, but I don't) when I argue with them.

I don't think I have ever in my life seen a more bad faith argument.

Aforementioned TIF as a play on TERFs TIM shit.

Well, if you knew anything about TERF lore outside them targeting trans women and transfems, you would know that "TIF" is already a term coined by gendercrits for trans men and transmascs.

I recognize that it's probably just a spelling mistake, but I just want to clarify in case it isn't. But, if it is;

But I digress.

Actively calling out where TERFs should go.

Or, and bare with me here, I want TERFs off of Tumblr. That's literally what I say in that sentence in my bio! Can you not read between the lines when I call TERFs an "invasive species" and how they "cause an imbalance to the tumblr ecosystem"?

Tumblr is the only social media left that I feel safe on and I don't want TERFs to poison it for me. So I would rather send them to an echo chamber of equally insane people than to other popular social media.

Just how much bad faith do you have to read my bio with to jump to this conclusion?

Calls themself a female pink and purple toed tarantula (generally considered "feminine colors, for what that's worth) [...]

...I just fucking like purple and pink. And I like spiders.

As for the "female" part, I'm literally just stating the sex I was assigned at birth. I may be female, but that doesn't mean I'm a woman.

Once again; Occams Razor.

[...] and, probably at least a little tangential, they become aggressive against males this time of year.

That's not tangential, it's just straight up wrong. Not the spider facts, but that you think that it's implying I'm aggressive towards males because I have a female spider motif. It's not symbolic of anything other than that I like spiders and that I was assigned female at birth.

To end this, I would just like to ask both @/june-egbert-official and @/0w0tsuki, in the small chance either of you are stalking my blog and reading this; Why did you think I was a TERF? Do you just see all AFABs who disagree with you as gendercrit radfems?

Or was it because I believe that transandrophobia is real you see me as a TERF? Because I can't find any other reason as to why you would call me a TERF other than the fact that I'm nonbinary transmasc and I disagree with trans women.

[gencrittransvestite]

No, I am not being a troll

As my url states, I have autogynephilia and by common definition I am transfem/TIM, but I also support radical feminism generally and its stance on trans people specifically (I know that a lot of you consider "TERF" a slur, but I picked it as more open, because a lot of people here are trying to make radical feminism trans-inclusive by removing sex-based oppression from it).

Why do I believe in sex-based oppression?

Because it obviously exists and you can see it in how transmasculine people are treated

Because it's the only meaningful explanation of emergence of patriarchy

Because sex of trans people still affects our lives and everyone recognizes it

I went through a brief period of detransition because of severe doubts, and it made me realize that attempts at describing patriarchy as "gender-based oppression" fail to address cases of detransitioners

My stance on trans people

(This has gotten long, but TL/DR: sex and gender are different, and both are valid in different contexts)

I don't think that trans people are purposefully being predatory and inherently wicked, don't come at me with this thing.

I don't think that gender identity is innate the way sexuality is, I do believe that it's constructed, but I don't think that it's not real altogether. It's real the same way ethnicity or religion are - there is nothing in your brain that makes you Swede or Catholic, but this identity has meaning to people and affects their lives. And I don't mean masculinity/femininity by it, I have masculine female friends who I am not trying to trans, and GNC trans people are real.

Some people are trans because of life-long physical dysphoria, some because they detest social expectations, some internalize homophobic or sexist stereotypes, some do it because of AGP/AHE (which is not some dirty perversion), some have culturally-specific reasons, and much more. Obviously, different groups of trans people have different needs, and some of them wouldn't be trans in different societies or won't be in the futue, but they are trans now and that's something you can't dismiss.

However, one's gender identity doesn't erase your sex (though a lot of trans people tend to emphasize with people of their gender rather than sex), and doesn't make you entitled to be included in someone's sexuality. Sexuality is about body as much as it's about personality, and it's bodies that we have innate attraction to. Existence of trans people and especially medically transitioning ones does complicate categorization, because some people may be only attracted to men in daily lives but also wouldn't mind transmasc partner who is on T but didn't have SRS, some would dislike even fully operated partner because other features or even because of their AGAB (and it's fine), and some people may have no preference in bodies but strong preference in gender identity, and so on. But in the end of the day, for a lot of people it's either birth sex that matters or they are bisexual, and it's completely fine.

This attitude is especially gross when it comes to gay people, because on top of trans people simply not being attractive to them it provokes their trauma response.

Why do I call myself AGP?

This is complicated and some of it is just for edginess.

But also I recognize that my physical dysphoria is pretty insignificant and incomplete, and I can't even prove that it won't go away. That's why I decided to not transition.

When I say AGP I mean that I feel a thrill when I think of myself as a girl etc. I don't get hard from it and don't enjoy being degraded for femininity, as transphobic caricatures say, but I think that foundation of my AGP is at least partially in attraction to women.

It also highlights the fact that I am probably not a "true transsexual" or otherwise absolutely inborn woman, and I accept it. Whatever.

Some additional information:

My chosen name is Belle

This blog exists as my attempt to build bridges from transfem side (transmascs both do it themselves and some cis women reach out to them) and to provide insights both about lives of transfems and views of radical feminists to anyone who asks

I am into women, but I don't call myself a lesbian because it feels like too much of an intrusion. I won't describe my sexuality further here, but asks are open

DNI: misogynists, homophobes, racists (including antisemites and zionists)

If you feel uncomfortable about me - just block me, I won't feel bad

I admit being male, but I still dislike it. It's always fine to point how being socialized as a boy or being perceived as male changes my social life, and I recognize sexual dimorphism in reasonable (i.e. real) terms, but I would like you to not go out of your way to trigger my dysphoria. Thank you

[a-polite-melody]

"According to a detractor screenshotting (some of) this post, neither of these two statements are actually in any way essentialism."

This is wrong! She said the first statement by terfs IS bioessentialist while the second one isn't. Whether you agree with her or not everyone is greatly misrepresenting what she has actually said and it'd be nice if someone actually responds to what she really said!

Lmao

It would also be nice if her followers didn’t come at me all thinking that I think the bioessentialist part targeted transmascs as well because of her not actually responding to what I said at all and literally saying I said things which contradicted even what was shown in the screenshot. And technically, even if she did say that the first example was bioessentialist, which… I’m dubious about but I don’t fully remember, she literally did not think I was saying what I was saying. Her followers who came after me for the first while all thought that I thought TERFs use “TIMs” and “males” to target transmascs. I don’t understand how she could think I was talking about actual bioessentialism and agree that it is bioessentialism while also portraying me as being wrong on what I’m saying. That doesn’t work. Either I was talking about bioessentialism or I think TERFs target transmascs with that stuff making it not bioessentialism but something else.

Also cutting off half of my post which directly calls out the harm done to transfems to paint my making the post as having been malicious to transfems.

But yes, I’m over here doing so much misrepresentation. Boo hoo. Someone coming at me in such a way that THEY WERE ACTUALLY BLOCK EVADING ME BUT HEY is the real victim here because I’m the big bad transmasc.

[lonniemachin]

lonnie for the character ask thing :)

always. always.

Sexuality Headcanon: i bounce back and forth between whether i think lonnie wouldn’t label his sexuality or whether the act of labeling his sexuality (+ gender for that matter) would be something that feels good for him, but i’d say what either describes it best or IS it is bi. im also fond of aromantic lonnie and both at the same time.

Gender Headcanon: transfem + genderfluid (i tend to use she/he interchangeably for her). and i read it into her narrative too. the way that she always felt a disconnect from her peers that tied into her apologizing to her parents that they weren’t able to bring up the “all-american boy” and the way that her parents emphasize that she’s different from other boys, how the anarky costume has a mask that reflects the faces of the people that look into it back outward + how i feel that through giving so much of her life to being anarky she’d get used to being this entity that’s referred to by terms other than just he and him and man and boy etc. until she unmasks and it defaults back. i think after a while there’d be a disconnect and it wouldn’t really hit until after red robin when she has to deal with just Being Lonnie (and Moneyspider) for longer than she’s ever had to after taking up her mission. and i think that gender fluidity of anarky, despite if she sticks with the identity or not, would be something she decides to embrace for herself as a person. i’ll stop there. but basically its real.

A ship I have with said character: i’ve already been over timlonnie on my tim post so i’ll make my stance clear right here, right now: i like stephlonnie but in my own “their characterizations align with how they were pre-flashpoint and rebirth never happened” way. i think the base concept of lonnie falling for steph is soooo cute and having it be her of all other gothamites would be very fitting. i think he and steph could also bond over quite a lot from the way they approach vigilantism to their complicated relationship with the bats and the joker paternity debacle vs. having the cluemaster as a chromosome donor.

A BROTP I have with said character: lonnie does not have many friends and that is a purposeful thing. i already mentioned tim on my tim post so instead of saying he + mia dearden, which is entirely made up in my own mind but nonetheless has me in a chokehold, i’ll say he and oliver queen, which is one of my favorite out of the… 3 big dynamics he has with other vigilantes. oliver is the one older person who, despite distrusting him at first, came to approach lonnie’s way of doing things with an open mind and actually teamed up with her twice. partnering with lonnie reminded ollie of the ideals he holds dear and of his younger self in a way that prompted good introspection. i think having someone like ollie around, who is an experienced leftist vigilante willing to see things her way while also providing a bit of natural guidance and even potentially a community would be good for lonnie… and i forever mourn the team-up comic that was proposed but never got made. hard traveling heroes 2 forever.

A NOTP I have with said character: ummmm. rebirth stephlonnie? born of horrid characterization. there are not many people he’s interacted with enough to ship him with. i guess i’ve seen people ship he and bruce in the far dark corners of earlier bat fandom which should go without saying but fucking sucks ❤️

A random headcanon: aside from her 12-year-old self’s job as a paperboy, she likes biking. being active in general too but she should probably slow down because there is no way 9+ hours of exercise a day is healthy

General Opinion over said character: my favorite comic book character and i can’t see that changing soon. lonnie means the absolute world to me and more. getting a little personal, i’ve met some of my best friends through liking and talking about anarky, and for that i’m forever thankful. digging into the history behind his creation and his use in the bat narrative revealed just how much passion was put into him as a character which makes him even better and more meaningful to me even if he went in a direction i wasn’t the biggest fan of. despite less than 100 appearances, she’s a complex character with some of my favorite comics under her belt and an unforgettable debut appearance. what she means when put up against bruce and the potential that held is something i never tire of discussing. i wish every single day that dc would stop marketing her as a batman villain. i think she should’ve been disabled and had what happened to her during Red Robin centered around her because i think it would’ve been an excellent way to both give her more prominence and develop her along more after such a period of being so isolated + putting her whole identity into her mission. i never get bored of reading through her comics over again, it makes me genuinely so happy to do so. machin nation forever and im serious.

[unerringcaprition]

hi replies are off so im gonna say it here uhh idk! i agree with the general thing of this post but TME is a bit of a weird fucking term? (transmisogyny exempt) that's such a weird fucking concept to have in your head. (also, i'm transfemme!! hi!!!!) but yeah, no, transmascs ABSOLUTELY experience transphobia and misogyny and i think calling them TME is a bit fucking weird because maybe its true strictly speaking but uh... yeah. no. weird term that is just completely unhelpful and divisive. unnecessary, tbh! you really didnt have to use that term and you could have easily used something else. (also additionally, if we're going to be throwing around the term TME, uh, what about "transmisandry exempt"? thats the same fucking acronym. how does THAT work? hm!!!! i would assume that we only use TME to refer to "transmisogy exempt"? GEE THIS SURE SOUNDS LIKE TRANSMISANDRY TO ME. the fuckin. like. ugh. yeah if i catch anyone using the term TME in the future i'm defs gonna say "yeah what a fucking weirdo you are for saying that." this is actually making me so rabidly angry and i dont know if im even being coherent about it. what the fuck would the acronym for transmisandry exempt even be. what the fuck. this isnt gender theory, this is just being shitty towards transmascs (and non transfems). there's no like, there's no inverse(?) here. this is just!! exclusively a term yall made up to be shitty to our brothers n shit !!! there's not even any thought put into it!! i swear to god i saw "TME" and my brain instantly went to how terfs say shit like "TIMS" and "TIFS"!!!! what the fuck!!!! like my brain did a lil fucking loading wheel for a sec like. hold on. this is written by a trans person. but they're saying something that sounds terfy. what.)

>looking for a new anthology of stories written by trans authors

>ask the editor if their anthology is by all trans authors or just tme trans authors

>he doesnt understand

>pull out illustrated diagram explaing how trans women are often excluded from and underrepresented in publishing, even in publishing supposedly for trans people

>he laughs and says “it’s a good anthology ma'am”

>read it

>its just tme authors

[gerrydelano]

i’ve been sitting on this for a while, but i’m tired.

there is an undercurrent of transmisogyny here, as is true in every space, and i’m far from the first person to point it out. however, a recent, more direct instance of it has made it clear that some more explicit conversation is in order.

this post is only intended to encourage you to ask yourself some questions, as we should all be doing anyway. so, if you haven’t done so in a while, this is your sign to pause and reflect.

EDIT 3/15/2021: okay, really quick! i received a heads up that this post has some unintentionally misleading phrasing, so i’m going to fix a bit of it, but i want to make some things EXTRA clear from the start to avoid any misinterpretation.

while this post is talking about transfem HCs on a broad scale, it did start in response to a specific instance regarding an amab nb/transfem guy HC, and i want to make it very clear that when i talk about him, i’m not HCing him as a trans woman.

in trying to make this broader and more educational, i DID miss a few steps, and for that i apologize! i was admittedly caught up in my feelings about that situation and in turn didn’t broaden the discussion quite enough — i should have said most of this when i first wrote the post.

-

as a rule, and as many trans women have said themselves, do not portray canon men as trans women. don’t do it! just don’t. 

it gives off the impression that trans women are just men, or are related to them in a fundamental/functional way, which is bioessentialism and transmisogyny.

if you’re going to HC anyone as a trans woman, look at the female characters in whatever you’re consuming! they are right there. they could be trans! 

so do NOT base your trans HCs on the sound of someone’s voice, or anything physical like that. it speaks loudly about how we view trans women, and it’s rooted in some dangerous lines of thinking.

-

in terms of myself, i want to make clear that the HC i primarily discuss here is not my only transfem HC. i personally HC sasha and georgie as trans women, jon as amab nb who rejects western terminology altogether and never transitions in any way, and gerry as a transfem gay guy who just goes on E as a major part of his recovery process, and as a way to reclaim his sense of self. that is it! so in no way is the discussion below about gerry insinuating i HC him as a trans woman: i emphatically do not, and reject that idea loudly.

for more information on how “transmasc” and “transfem” encompass a wide array of experiences, check out this post that ren linked in an ask they got dismantling the idea of a trans girl tim HC, which is a bad move.

once again, the post below did mainly begin in response to a conversation about amab nonbinary visibility, and i should have been more careful about shortening it to “transfem” broadly because it could have been read as me saying that this guy character is a trans woman. not at ALL what i meant, and if any TME folks reading this do that kind of thing yourselves, i kindly ask you to cut that shit out.

so, now, i’m just editing some of the wording below to align with these clarifications, but i still wanted to be fully transparent about the fact that i did overlook how certain phrasing might sound and achieved the opposite of what i meant! full responsibility, am very thankful that i was told. here we go!

for context: a friend of mine made a post about how some trans HCs actively diminish important elements of the story and of those characters, and it received an unsolicited, frankly hostile response that more or less said, “you’re right that [character] reads as amab nb in canon, but i still HC him as transmasc because i want to lol.”

conversation about the issue of erasure did continue and become more civil, but it didn’t result in a change in behavior which leads me to believe they have no idea what their intial response implies. so, i just want to shed some light on that, because there are things we ALL miss, and it’s good to have a chance to correct ourselves. even this person should have that chance, and they won’t know to seize it until someone points it out. 

i’ll end up repeating this a bunch of times to be sure i’m coming across: this isn’t me getting petty about someone’s HCs just because they’re not my own. no one can stop you from doing what you want, i’m not an authority, and i’m not saying transmasc HCs are suddenly problematic. i’m literally transmasc myself, and share in many of the popular HCs around here, too.

this is just me saying the justification that was given in that response to the very idea of a character being an amab trans person didn’t come out of a vacuum. this is about the reason, and its foundation.

frankly, it comes down to rejecting the idea of particular anatomy, and that is tied to all sorts of rhetoric many of you claim to stand against.

this isn’t just about one person. there are a lot of people here, and in other places, this is also about. the amount of people who respond to ANY sort of criticism or undirected, thorough attempt to broadly raise awareness with “just let people have fun” is tone deaf. it means you have a deeper problem that you need to examine that has nothing to do with fictional characters.

even some people in the tags of ren’s recent post have completely missed the point that:

horizontal erasure is still erasure.

there is a time and place for projection! we all do it, it’s natural, it’s so much fun, it can really bring life to something and make our depictions of things all the more organic. this isn’t saying don’t project; that’d be hypocritical of me.

it’s about how seeing something that is not about you and deciding that it Should be about you Instead is ALWAYS a bad look, no matter what marginalized experience it’s about. chiara wrote a wonderful analogy before that explains it pretty well, too.

making the active decision while fully informed, to just go “But What If I Do It Anyway” does not actually set you apart or excuse you. in fact, it sort of makes you worse than someone who hasn’t put enough thought into it to even consider the possibility because now it’s a choice. you’re not the only person saying “but what if i do it anyway.”

break once again to remind everyone that this still isn’t me coming for your HCs. i’m a big boy, i know how to scroll past things that aren’t my cup of tea.

what i can’t just ignore is seeing just how easy some of us find it to knowingly dismiss our trans sisters, amab nb people, any transmisogyny affected person because you... can’t relate to them? 

i know how to scroll past HCs that aren’t my own, and even enjoy, respect and uplift them. but the frequency with which i would have to scroll past things like that is just an example of how the conversation that sparked this post is not an isolated thing.

so, what you need to ask yourselves is: 

what is it about transfems that you can’t relate to?

why are you afraid to portray them? what are you scared of doing wrong? 

who do you fear conversation with a transfem who might point out a mistake? what do you think will happen?

why is the wide spectrum of transfem experiences not interesting enough to explore? do you polarize it into meaning only trans women? do you just not consider it?

if you do only think of it as trans women, why are they not enough?

what is it that makes these experience something you just can’t depict with love and care?

-

what are you projecting, exactly, that means you can’t just... pick a different character to project it onto?

what does being transmasc lend to that character in the first place, if you fully acknowledge that it doesn’t align with the story that you already relate to?

why can’t you relate anymore if they’re transfeminine? why does that make what spoke to you about their story just go away suddenly? what is uncomfortable to you about saying that you relate to a transfem?

even if you think you have an answer that doesn’t rely on bioessentialism, chances are you still have some underlying instinct to distance yourself from our transfem sisters that you need to address within yourself.

transfeminine people are still trans. amab nonbinary people have, like, next to no visibility and are treated horribly in many community spaces if not outright turned away at the door. there are going to be differences in our axes of oppression, but that does not take away the root of it being that they are trans, and their stories do need to be told? the commonalities between our experiences don’t go away, and our stories are not more important than theirs. do not fall into bioessentialist traps.

the point of this post is mostly to raise some awareness for the following things:

this has happened multiple times in this space

people can see it when it happens

it has been brought up before

and it does have an impact

if you feel threatened by ANYTHING that was said in this post, then yes, it must be about you. no, that doesn’t mean i’m going to come to your house and steal your computer to delete any and all of your content where our HCs don’t align. it doesn’t mean anyone is holding a gun to your head and making you change your designs and depictions. that’s never been what this post is about.

it is only meant to make you ask why getting defensive might be more important to you than simply asking yourself the above questions. if you want to be told you’re not being transmisogynistic more than you want to reject and fight against transmisogyny without being asked to: that isn’t enough.

if your own answers to those questions make you uncomfortable, you may be regurgitating lines of thought that you should reconsider. 

needing to unlearn something is not the end of the world! the inability to accept that you can be/have been wrong in the past is the real thing that will stop you. 

but being able to admit that you might have been wrong, or biased, or had been going by a sour belief takes a lot more guts than standing your ground when you’re hurting people and they’re telling you step by step how you can stop. it’s a lot more respectable, that’s for sure.

this conversation has been going on for a while, and not just here. this isn’t new.

so, to fix this specific problem you might not have realized you had? 

talk to transfems. talk to trans women. talk to transfem gay guys! talk to amab nonbinary people. they are out there, and they are incredible.

follow more of them on social media and listen to what they have to say. 

read more books about their history, their experiences, their joy and success and love.

consider the ways that you could just buckle down and include them with the same ease with which you write about yourself and whatever other experiences outside of yours that you consider digestible.

but overall, just. consider being respectful when something is not about you. do not be that guy. be a better guy, and remember that you honestly owe transfems everything. all of your pride, all of the rights that were fought for, we owe transfems everything. particularly trans women.

so do whatever you’re gonna do with your HCs. this still isn’t me individually policing your content. i have no power over you and what i say has no bearing on what you create unless you let it. i’m sure you have your reasons. 

i am just asking you to be mindful and examine why you might be averse to change, to learning, and apparently to the overall transfeminine existence in specific. fandom is only an escape for the privileged. don’t be another part of the reason it can be so hostile to everyone else.

[thekisforkeats]

@theartistichuman​ replied:

Hiyo! I’m a trans tma fan and (ofc if you’re willing to) explain some examples of infantilism of trans Jon, because I’m pretty sure I know what you’re talking about, but I want to ensure that I don’t consume or promote content that does do those things. I can obv identify the obvious, but as I’m also white, there might be things I’m missing. Ofc you absolutely do not have to respond!!

Okay I’m actually very willing to answer this because it digs into issues I have with trans representation and not just PoC representation, but like, those two things are linked.

*cracks knuckles*

Alright. So. I see a trend in some fics where Jon winds up written as basically unable to handle anything. There’s a range of what exactly happens, whether Jon’s too scared to act, totally incompetent (or believes himself to be) and immobilized by that, or is just written as very immature.

There is a universal trend to these fics: Jon is transmasc, almost always a PoC. There is someone else who is usually not trans and usually white, often Martin or Tim but sometimes Sasha, who “protects” Jon from the big bad world that he cannot handle. I never, ever see this from someone who’s written Jon as transfem/amab; it may occur but I have not seen it once.

My least, least, least favorite is “Jon is so unable to take care of himself that Martin must basically mother him at all times” without that dynamic ever... changing. One of my favorite things about Jon/Martin is that they save each other. They help each other. Yes, Martin takes care of Jon, but Jon also winds up reaching out and helping and taking care of Martin.

Some of these fics are almost certainly written by young people, and particularly the ones where everyone is trans I am willing to give more of a pass, because I feel like that’s more likely to be a teenager projecting. But that doesn’t change the trend.

There is also a tendency among smut fics--to the point where I almost don’t read smut with Jon in it--to have Jon as the transmasc PoC as the “bottom” and Martin or Tim as the cis (and often white) top. It follows a more general trend of transmasc as the bottom and cis dude as the top in smut fic including transmasc folks and it drives. Me. Crazy. Like, I don’t begrudge people their specific thing they’re into, maybe all of it is written by transmasc folks who want to be topped by a cis dude, but there’s still... a lot.

The thing is that generally speaking, “incompetent/too scared to act” Jon is wildly OOC. Even in his first moment of true freak out, in MAG 39, Jon does manage to act, and honestly his reaction is normal and natural for that kind of situation; it doesn’t imply he’s a person who will always freeze in those situations, and we see proof later that he does not.

But it’s... just... really prevalent, alongside the “PoC Jon” headcanons and the “transmasc Jon” headcanons, and it all merges into a fanon Jon that is incompetent and scared and completely unable to take care of himself. It also merges right into takes where Jon is bad because he was totally unqualified and incompetent and never should’ve been Head Archivist, or where Jon is making all the mistakes or... ugh, it’s just... frustrating?

I know I’m not really getting to this quite properly, and I’m sure someone else could explain it far better than I am, like, I’m not even quite touching on the racism except that I will note that “person of color can’t do anything without a white person helping them” is a sadly common trope. Like, it’s so common that I almost forgot to note it.

I’m not going to say that’s all that’s going on here; I cannot speak for certain to  exactly what is going on here, except that as a person of color and a trans person of color I just would like white fandom to examine “well why do I HC Jon as a person of color and Martin as white” more or “why do I HC Jon as a trans PoC and other people as cis and/or white,” like, the relationship between trans PoCs and cis people is different than the relationship between trans white people and cis people. This may be a YMMV thing, but like, as a transmasc PoC I would not turn to a cis person for comfort and protection, particularly a cis white person; cis white people are dangerous until proven otherwise. So specifically “Jon is trans PoC and Martin is cis and white” just rings so painfully hollow.

This is, admittedly, a big part of why my Archives Gang is all trans. I want them to be friends, and that’s easier for me to write if they’re all trans. :)

I am, by and large, not a person who’s going to dig in and attack people for what they write. For all I know someone writing Jon as a trans PoC in a way I don’t like is themself a trans PoC. But as a general matter I think it’s good for us, as a fandom, to examine this stuff, and for white fans in particular to think about it all carefully.

Been reading your posts about TMA and racism and I am in this weird place where as a PoC I want very much to re-imagine TMA with different themes (because let tell you stuff like John *Amherst* hits way differently to actual Native Americans). But I'm also aware of like, how much white fandom isn't thinking about it all?

My own HCs for the main characters are a lot more white than most people's and I found it weird until I started reading your stuff. Jon and OG Sasha remain PoCs in my head but everyone else is white aside from those stated otherwise and I think what you've said is why? Like so much about Tim especially just doesn’t work for me unless he's white, you know?

I have read fanfic where someone has very specific HCs of characters as various backgrounds and I can tell it's from their own experience and I appreciate that but a lot of the fanon is just so clearly coming from white people and I have... SO many thoughts about Jon in particular getting almost fetishized as either some sort of near-infantile trans PoC or demonized as "can never do right" in the same vein.

Anyway I'm not sure I have a point beyond damn being not-white in fandom spaces is weird. There is enough pain in the world and I want to just enjoy my comfort characters but I do not have the option to do so uncritically.

yeah!!! like, i ENJOY my headcanons of most of the cast as poc. i LIKE indian jon, and i have strong feelings on filipino martin, and like... it's fun. it rly is fun as a person of color to use these characters to sometimes tell my own story.

but then like, what's fun for me as a fan of color is not necessarily... good practice, on the part of the creators OR on the part of white fans, bcos jfc white fans are! the worst!!! there's the treatment of jon, there's tim being widely headcanoned as a poc and then made way more promiscuous and angry and into this like, scary stereotype of aggressive over-sexualized irresponsible moc, and like... y'all i hate it. and actually most white fans seem to consider martin white, which with his status as the uwu soft super caring 'more human than jon' one as well...... hm. suspicious, one could say.

you're also right about how it would change the themes of the story so much. if jon was consciously written as a person of color, the way his white boss treats him, his clinging to what power he has, his treatment at the hands of police and white people, even his relationship with the fears in the context of, lbr, a bunch of ancient white british ppl having defined them as they are understood by him--all of that would be VERY different. there would be a fascinating nuance! but he's not written that way (and lbr jonny sims, good intentions and all, is not the person i would choose for writing it), and fandom does love to ignore like. what those implications are, in favor of a very casual, sometimes offensive, headcanon.

like, i said i like to use these characters to tell my own story. but sometimes, as a poc, i have to ask myself like... why am i using a white man's undefined, written-as-white-but-not-named-so characters, to tell my story? they were not intended for that. they, in their actual canon, do not have my story, not really. they lack the life experiences i fabricate for them.

it's fun! but if there was more media for people like me, and if white fans actually got INTO media with real representation instead of 'aracial' media, it wouldn't be necessary. there would be like, more options. i still might do it! but maybe not.