#to make it absolutely clear - i do still read and enjoy the various therian hrt comics on occasion

[ayoitslilith]

Does anyone else notice a weird particular kind of vibe from the "reddit transfem" artists on here? Don't get me wrong - a lot of people in that demographic are genuinely really nice folks, and a good lot of their art is cool - I was super vested in ayviedoesthings's Dragon HRT when she started making that - but I can't help but get this particular vibe from a lot of that kind of stuff. I don't know if self-importance is the way to describe it, because it's there even in the things that aren't meant to be very important at all, but it's something related to that (I think)? Maybe it's that all of it is a relatively vanilla way of looking at femininity, even if through a queer lens? Like, it's obviously less vanilla than cisgender heterosexual femininity, but it still feels weirdly normalized.

The way the transgender body is made to look identical to the normalized cisgender equivalent as an ideal (the "HRT" often making the transgender person look even closer to the normalized image of the feminine body, but as some kind of creature, fantasy or otherwise), the way they almost always get preachy about acceptance, the way the world around them is portrayed - it almost feels as if, despite how their narratives typically are about becoming "outsiders" through bizarre and unconventional means in ways that are meant to consider every mundane nuance, they consistently become stories of the grandiose purpose one finds through change and the total acceptance from the world around them. There's even the total lack of demographics present outside of "transfem" - I would be hard-pressed to find the same kind of community around a transmasculine equivalent, or even a perspective that isn't only white. I think that might be my issue with the sense of weight placed into the notion of transitioning - it's always treated as the worst thing in the world, as if there's no worse demographic to be than trans - specifically transfem in this context.

It's been driving me up the wall. I still enjoy them, but the feeling's been harder to shake. Writing this has been helping me pin down what's been bugging me about them - it's not just the importance that is so often assigned to the act of transitioning, it's the grandeur, it's the way it unintentionally reinforces a very specific kind of community around a very particular kind of suffering. In a way, it's as if these stories are permanently locked in that period of when one first comes out as transgender, when it feels like the worst thing in the world and you need to shout it from the rooftops - and when every little revelation needs to be spelled out as a grand message to the audience, even when it's not the full picture yet, even when part of living is never having the full picture. Yet the stories assume themselves the full picture, again, much in the way one does when they first come out. Or honestly - when they achieve any kinds of development in identity. I suppose, then, that it's only natural that these stories are like this - Dragon HRT was created in the wake of ayviedoesthings coming to terms with both her plural and therian aspects, why wouldn't it be stained with the teenage-like feeling one gets when they evolve their identity? Yet, it still exists as a compounding aspect of that "reddit transfem" artist culture, the endless comics made by transfems who started receiving validation for the very first thoughts they had once they started transitioning. The preachy qualities, the snappy one-liners, the championing, the naive obliviousness - they all existed in that particular comic subculture, why wouldn't they exist here?