#trans people are people. we are all just fucking people.

[app-oh-sigh-oh-pieces]

Also, uh, if you think transmasc transitions make people less attractive, and that this is important enough to mention publicly... you agree with terfs about transmasc transition.

A major terf talking point about us is the "loss of feminine beauty" from testosterone (bc they love to invoke 1950s gender roles, they just get mad when people point out that's what they're doing)

You don't have to say someone is attractive if you don't think it. I am not holding a gun to anyone's head and demanding that. But like... there are people using that train of thought IRL to argue against our bodily autonomy in courts and legislative chambers, and they see all of us as varying degrees of disgusting, tainted freaks—either for being LGBTQ ourselves or associating with people who are. Like a butcher or a safecracker, they are using the tool they think is most expedient to dismantle us, and they are helped when we use it for them.

So if for no other reasons than common sense self-preservation and not spreading LITERAL TERF RHETORIC in queer spaces, shut the fuck up about trans people's bodies if you don't have anything nice to say.

It doesn’t matter how you try to justify it, any amount of framing transfem transitions as a glow-up but transmasc transitions as a glow-down, even as a "joke,” hurts people. Stop saying things that discourage us from transitioning, it isn’t funny, progressive, or acceptable. If you say you find men and masculinity “boring” compared to women and femininity, A) skill issue, us queer and trans folks do some awesome shit with it, and B) so what, I’m transitioning to align with my gender, not to appeal to your interests. Feeling more comfortable in my body is an upgrade no matter what and also I look hot as hell doing it. And if you claim we can take it because we somehow already get privileged/rewarded for wanting to be men/masc, you’re just flat out wrong—transphobia and misogyny exist and already discourage us from embracing masculinity at every turn. Transmasc transitions are beautiful and radical. Show them the respect they deserve or get out.

[genderqueerdykes]

just saw that "you are loved" cuttlefish post on my dash again (idk if you know the one) but it goes through so many identities and just. does not include trans men. pan people, bi people, lesbians, trans women, intersex people, nonbinary people too i think, but not trans men. like maybe I'm taking it the wrong way, maybe I should celebrate that all of these types of people are being celebrated, i especially loved seeing intersex people included, but? the deliberate exclusion just hurts I guess. it would've been so easy to say trans people or just include trans men too.

another thing that makes me feel like I'm just being overly sensitive about it is that I do tend to lean into the nonbinary label sometimes, but it feels very "the only good enby is a femme-lite enby" and I'm. audibly sighing I used to like seeing that post on my dash

i haven't seen the post you're referring to, but i have definitely noticed this with queer positivity posts in general

like people think it's somehow progressive to aggressively leave trans men out of every conversation, ever. like, people have gone too far with profiling people based off their genders to the point where they trick themselves into thinking that trans men are now Cishet Male Oppressors and find excuses and reasons to target, bully, and emotionally abuse us. people literally just think we are undeserving of love and kindness because us disclosing that we're a man suddenly somehow is hurting that person

people are NOWHERE near as aggressive about this with cis gay men. people are not sitting here trying to weed cis gay men out of every space and post as possible. it sends me reeling to realize that people accept cis men more than trans men, even though they love to say how much they hate "all" men. is it really "all" men, or is it just trans men? because it feels very pointed toward a specific group of men that nobody loves to name, but everyone loves to hate.

i know that people who aren't trans men usually can't see the pain this causes us. but so many people just don't care. they assume that we have no feelings because they stereotype men to be emotional brick walls. they think it's okay to leave us out and abuse us because somehow, trans manhood has hurt them. like these people behave like a bus full of trans men showed up at their front door and kicked them to death.

like people really are so threatened by the idea that a "woman" can become a man. why is this an issue?

and good lord that is the ugliest take on nonbinaryhood i've ever seen. "femme-lite". wow. people really just do see nonbinary people as women, huh? nonbinary people aren't cis women jesus fucking christ. masc and butch nonbinary people are still nonbinary and there's nothing wrong with that. jesus christ people are SO scared of diversity. people are SO scared of something they can't relate to.

feminine people and women are not inherently safe to be around. i have been sexually and physically assaulted by multiple women. i have been groped by women. i have had cis women tell me that i'm "basically a woman" because i have a vagina and i'm a trans man. i've had women emotionally and mentally abuse me. women and femmes have stolen things from me. women and femmes are not inherently safe to be around. women and femmes can hurt you.

i'm sorry you're encountering this kind of stuff. people are more proud to talk about who they hate than who they love/like and it's just ugly. they don't care that it's affecting people. but if someone does something to even slightly inconvenience them, like, idk, being a trans man, then suddenly the world grinds to a halt. it's entitled behavior. it's people who want to be in control of the queer community and try to control our narratives.

there are some people who are legitimately a part of the queer community for the wrong reasons. the amount of people who are converting to rad feminism and thinking that the queer community needs to be a Cis Girls Only Club is staggering. people are trying to remove everyone but cis women who are pathologically afraid of an entire gender that hasn't hurt them. this isn't the terf club. stop trying to make this into the terf club.

i hope you're able to feel a bit better soon. people are so fucking shitty and it's time it stops. there's no reason to profile people. that's not what we do here. it's not right to leave people out of our spaces who rightfully belong. ignoring the existence of trans men won't make us go away. we're here and you need to listen to us and care about us because we are your siblings and we have not inherently wronged you by virtue of existing.

[taylor-titmouse]

2024 Book Retrospective

i did this last year for all the books i released in 2023, and i've been looking forward to doing it again for this year because it was Such a wonky ride. i released 3 new novellas, collected 3 old ones in a new illustrated release, put out a new freebie, and dipped my toes into artbooks for the first time. that's not even including the multiple extra things i wrote this year but will release next year. it felt to me like i barely got anything out in 2024, but looking back i really did plenty.

anyway let's get into it! these will probably contain spoilers for the books because i want to talk about them openly. if you haven't read them yet... they're on sale for 40% off until the new year!

The Masson Circle Collection (1-3), released in January

so! we started out the year with this updated version of some of my earlier works. daffodils, carnations, and laurels were among my first forays into publishing novellas, and were the last of my romances before i transitioned more deliberately into erotica. the distinction is practically arbitrary since i do still write about people in love, but it's not the focus so much as the sexual titillation.

but anyway. because these were romances and not Porn (despite having explicit sex in them), and because they came out before i'd really hit my stride as an erotic author/illustrator in 2021/2022, they never got the attention i'd have liked for them! they were the last before i made the switch to properly illustrating my books; they had sketchbook sections at the back instead. i started the roger crenshaw series shortly afterward, which is when my work really took off. so it's like these stories just missed their window.

but i wanted people to read them! these stories and characters are dear to my heart and i felt like they deserved a fair shake, so i spent a month or so at the end of 2023 revising the text to be closer to my standards (though they were pretty good to start with!) and made 30 new illustrations for it. i kept myself Busy getting this ready. it would be a huge release to kick off the new year!

.... and then it didn't do very well anyway. lmao. maybe i priced it too high, maybe i didn't hype it enough, maybe it's because as much as i love all the characters, they're hard to draw and not as exciting as a monster of the day. who knows! but i'm glad i did it, if only for myself. as i've said, these stories were important to me and my growth as an author. if you like historical queer romance with a crime thriller edge, something like kj charles (because she was my biggest inspiration at the time) you should check these out! i promise they're really good despite being on the older side.

The Long Road, released in May

boy that's a big gap between january and may. so what happened there is i actually wrote the night guest first in january-february, and then the long road in march-april. but IMPORTANTLY, i learned my editor @petitemortality was going to become available for work again in april. it'd been probably a year since i'd had his hands on my work and i was Gasping for it. i've compared it to receiving the sponge treatment--just being put through the wringer and coming out So much better for it after a year of bad habits and complacency building up. so basically i put all publishing on hold until he could Fix Me.

and then i ended up rewriting both of those books practically from scratch based on his advice and godddd they really Were so much better for it. it's AGONY in the moment, but the work is worth it. anyway let's talk about the actual work huh.

the genesis of these characters is So funny, because i don't think a single one of them was created for the purpose of this story, rather they all existed as various mobs/nobodies to draw. the goblins and bandits beside vanesse were just designs i used a few times when i wanted to draw characters getting gangbanged. vanesse and angre were created Just for a patreon suggestion of "trans femme bandit queen fucking a trans masc knight". and tourmaline only exists because i wanted to draw a princess getting gangbanged and eveline didn't feel "right" for it anymore. and i ended up with this perfect mishmash of characters that slotted together into a story so naturally that i remember waking up in the middle of the night and banging out the outline in the notes app before falling back asleep and starting to write it the next day.

and it was received pretty well! it had a ton of buildup from me drawing the characters constantly for the duration of the writing and doing a ton of public worldbuilding for dwarves. god i love the worldbuilding for the dwarves. i'm desperate to get deeper into it, i just need to find the story for it. and the goblins. everybody loves the goblins and so do i. and vanesse. ahhhhh.... i'm just so fond of everybody in this book lol. just a big confluence of Toys.

oh yeah and since last year i picked favorite scenes, i think my favorite is angre's internal monologue at the start of his chapter. we get a lot of the worldbuilding there (so of course i like it) but also the Point of the book comes together. i'd struggled a lot with that whole bit in the first draft, but the final draft really just *chefs kiss* it works, for me.

The Night Guest, released in July

as i mentioned before i actually wrote this one much earlier into the year! and immediately had known it wasn't ready, and so backburnered it for months until my editor could essentially fix it. and he fixed the hell out of it. it was a directionless mess in the first draft because i hadn't figured out the characters' voices, what they actually wanted, why they behaved how they did, none of it. it was his idea to structure it more deliberately like an old folktale of a woman outwitting a best, and it snapped into place. of course it was a nearly total rewrite that added like 7000 words (and to this day i'm still not sure how) but it was completely worth it. i feel like i've said that multiple times in this post but it's always true. i cannot stress enough how much i was gasping for a good editing. it's like a cleanse.

this is another story that just sort of Happened out of nowhere. mrs. arakawa was a side character in the dragon double feature 2, and people liked her, and asked about her getting her own monster boyfriend, and so toru was born. partially to get practice drawing that bodytype, partially because i think onis are hot, and then the general shape of a story came to me and i started writing it. without a perfectly clear vision of what it would be. and that's how we got to where we were at the start of this. oops.

i have two favorite parts, the first being this illustration:

when toru is describing the oni woman he was supposed to marry. his entire narrative arc and personal struggle was constructed for the purpose of this joke. i agonized for DAYS, maybe weeks, trying to make his motivation of "i didn't want to get married" work with mrs. arakawa's own feelings about marriage and him having to leave at the end and come back and all of that. it was killing me. but it worked out in the end and i'm so happy it did because i still think the joke that he didn't want to marry a shoujo nadeshiko archetype because he thinks she's ugly is fucking hilarious.

my actual favorite scene is him and mrs. arakawa telling each other stories about themselves. i had a lot of fun trying to ape the rhythms of kabuki performance and rakugo with it.

Spring with the Unicorns, released in June

technically this ought to go before the night guest because it came out first but considering i wrote the first draft of the night guest in january *waves hands* it's all loosey goosey anyway

so this came about because i had the idea to do a book called Season's Breedings (so many of my books happen because i thought of a title and worked backwards from there) and it was literally just going to be the breeding habits of fantasy fuckworld creatures arranged by season. i wrote this one first because it seemed the easiest and then it was less than 4k words, and every other story i had in mind was going to be Much More than that and also didn't come together as easily. so on a very last minute whim i illustrated this and threw it out for free on the last day of pride.

it's me at my loftiest because i was going for a sort of third person omniscient fable type beat, because that's what unicorns deserve. i like it, and it's a good little treat to give out for free. especially because everybody loves the unicorns and loves asking me the same four lore questions and i can just say 'go read the free story' lmao.

it's too short to really have a favorite Scene but barberry is my favorite unicorn. just love everything about that guy. angry little bastard.

Poker Night with the Arizona Dogs, released September

it's not prose but it counts! this is the first artbook i've ever released, though technically not the first i ever made. the unicorn stockades series came before it but will be released sometime next year. it's a bit more spring-seasony. but anyway.

these are a lot of fun to make! i am, at my heart, a comic artist (my day job is graphic novels, buy my graphic novel it comes out in february) so telling a single story in multiple illustrations is kind of my bread and butter. and free use/gangbang stuff is like. perfect for it. everybody has to get a turn! and on top of that it lets me play in a space in a way prose doesn't. prose feels so much more official, more canon (which is how i think of the difference between my drawings and my books--books are canon, drawings are not). but with something like this it's easier to say it was just for fun. because it was! it was a lot of fun.

my favorite illustrations were the jackie-ralph licking ones (because i think i did a good job with the mouths and the folds and all) and the one with johnny with his hand over roger's face and hiding his own. jackie-ralph is probably my favorite of the dogs to draw because he's easiest but johnny is certainly my favorite of the Boys.

Objects of Affection, released in December

boy, this one huh! there is so much to say about this one. this one has like three separate catalysts that blasted together at the end of the summer and it just Happened all at once. there was a person requesting variations on "a mechanic taking advantage of an android they're repairing" for a few months on patreon that i kept meaning to do because it kept winning second place. there was another story i wrote that was too short to publish alone that i was like "okay what if i make a sci-fi anthology and one of the stories is robots..." and then i started rereading chobits for inspiration and it Pissed Me Off So Much how little it wants to engage with its own ideas.

and then the sci-fi anthology idea became only about the robots and i never published the original little short (which will come out next year as a freebie). and then my editor's computer Exploded for two months and he wasn't able to edit it ; ; the wait was Agony because this was one i really, Really did not want to release without proper feedback. something fucking Possessed me with this book and what it says about women and consent and masculinity and all the shit. like those are themes i've already touched in my other works, but in this one it was like turning the knob on a pressure cooker.

it's tough to think of what to say about it that i didn't say in the days after it was released. i've always been frustrated with robot stories that preoccupy themselves with the Theory of rights for artificial life and not the reality of rights for the people we already have. i'd watched astro boy 2003 and pluto shortly before starting (so i guess that's actually 4 things that came together) so Robot Rights!! stories were fresh in my mind and i'd found astro boy particularly frustrating with its insistence on pacifism from the oppressed robots as the government and populace kept abusing them. it is very hard to watch something that says "violence is never the answer! don't fight back, choose peace!" while your own country is aiding and abetting a genocide and obsessing over retribution for a single attack born of decades of settler violence as if they are in any way equivalent.

breathes out

so anyway that's why i chose to write about robots who undeniably do not have sapience, humanity, or rights. because we haven't come even close to solving the issue of rights for ourselves, particularly women (an admittedly easier topic to approach in an erotic work than the horrors of racially motivated war). and between chobits, which suggests a world obsessed with androids but doesn't deeply explore the social ramifications of a female-shaped servant class, and my research into real dolls, the closest thing we already have to fuckable brainless androids, there is a lot of material to draw inspiration from. how a person treats an unperson, particularly one shaped like a woman, will reflect upon how they treat a real person, a real woman.

to be less of a bummer and talk about the Stories, ratna's was the first i wrote, and went through the most revisions between drafts as i tried to figure out her whole deal. she was always going to be a stone butch dyke mechanic, so how would that sort of person feel in her line of work? would she be a stereotype of man-hating lesbian, and sympathetic to the android girls she has to send home with them? or would she be an unrepentant sleeze, just as bad as everyone she works for? i think i ended up somewhere in the middle. she doesn't like men, but doesn't think of herself as better for not being one. she thinks she's better because she isn't better, but at least acknowledges it. and figuring that out was important to figuring out the character. and also going in way harder on the beauty of the mechanism. that was mainly for You Guys, but it was crucial to her character working.

touma and shima's story came to me like a lightning bolt as i was leaving for a vacation. it was going to be, if you can believe it, Even More toxic yaoi. touma ws going to jerk shima off from behind as he fucked mari-ko, it was going to be way more explicit that he was mainly attracted to shima. but ultimately none of that served the actual purpose of the book, about treating people as objects and tools, so i dialed it back. but don't get it twisted touma is still insane and obsessed with shima and wants to touch his cock. but the story as it exists is a more realistic place for him to be at.

and samart and marinette's story was pretty much unchanged from first to final draft. the concept waffled a bit before i started writing, where my first idea had been that he makes her participate in taboo fantasies (calling him big brother, telling him no etc) and the narrative basically asking the question--is this wrong? is it better because she's not real, because he's doing it with her and not a real woman? does her 'no' matter if it's a 'no' she was ordered to say? is it worse because she can't meaningfully consent to the play either way? does any of it matter beyond the effect it has on him?

but as much as i'm interested in unpacking those concepts, i decided they would be too difficult for the audience and potentially open me up to scrutiny and abuse, because you can't even breathe the word "incest" without having your doors beaten down. the book as a whole is difficult, and i want it to be difficult, but i didn't want it to become about That. so instead i went with exploring the sort of loneliness and misanthropy of a person who lives the way he does, and i'm satisfied with it. i think it's the sharpest of the three stories.

wow i had nearly twice as much to say about that one than the rest. lol.

but that's it! that's everything i released! as i hinted throughout there were several other things i wrote this year that will see release next year. i have a free short, a $3 short, a novella awaiting editing, and at least two more artbooks to release. there'll be plenty for me to write about in next year's retrospective.

my writing goal for 2025 is to finish a novel. i did actually reach a finished draft with starbuster, the novel i've been pecking at for the past two years, but having done so and mapped out all the work it needs to be submission-ready, i've put it down semi-permanently. it simply needs too much and it's a bit too niche for traditional publishing, and it's in a genre (contemporary) i don't really want to write more of. so the best use of my time is on something else. it's a shame, but it's for the best! hopefully something will crack me upside the head with inspiration and it'll just Happen like all my best work seems to, lmao.

but if you've read all of this, or just read some of it, thank you!! thank you for supporting me for another year, or the first year if you just got here. if you haven't read everything i put out in 2024, it's on sale until jan 1st! go pick it up for cheap!!

[velvetvexations]

i know you dont usually get caught up in polyamory discourse super often but good fucking lord, anti-polyam people are so insane. "if someone im dating said they wanted to be polyam, it must be because im Not Enough For Them and i'd [describes graphic suicide and/or murder]" like. wow. one: your romantic partner should not be your sole emotional support, and two: if you were "not enough for them" they would probably just. leave you?? asking to be polyamorous means knowingly and willfully preserving their relationship with you in a world that tries to force monogamy on everyone. it really should be interpreted as an act of continuing commitment because they weighed the options between breaking up w u to pursue someone else and still trying to stay with you while adding a third person and still chose to stay with you. speaking as someone who made that decision once in my life, i chose to be polyam because i loved two people with equal intensity and the idea of being forced to choose between them made me want to die.

the way these people speak in such violent and hyperbolic hypotheticals just really makes me think of conservative parents who talk about beating their kids if they turn out gay/trans. like seriously. anti-polyam people are so drenched in jealousy that they imagine killing themselves at the mere THOUGHT of having a polyamorous partner and it drives me insane that people will say shit like that and then turn around and try to eject polyamorous people from queer spaces on the grounds that polyam ppl aren't oppressed or mistreated. like. polyam ppl cant get married to all their partners. huh. it's almost as if the right to get married to those you love isn't considered an important fundamental right in society any more the moment the assimilationist gays got their gd white picket fence fantasy bullshit.

sorry but i just see so much hatred for polyam people and it gets so fucking old. societally enforced monogamy IS oppressive, some people just refuse to see it as such because they're personally monogamous and knee-jerk hate anyone who isn't. almost like theyre, yknow, bigots or something.

Yeah, that's all fucking bullshit anon. I'm polyam as well and we kick ass. <3

[quarterlifekitty]

This might be random, but I love seeing COD have such a fun and girly fandom.

For years, it's been this macho game for macho boys. Like the player base was always gross and toxic and misogynistic. And as a nerdy gamer girl back in my tween/teen years, I was always at the end of that.

So having girls come in and take over and take this ultra serious macho thing and make it fun? Make it silly and goofy and soft? Take these huge macho men and call them our husbands and edit them with bows on to techno beats? It's so healing man.

Okay, so I wanna start by saying this is not a personal attack, I’m not trying to be mean, just something I wanna give a little statement/rant about.

Firstly, I have been in a similar boat much of my life. I have always been a nerd girl and have struggled with the atmosphere created by male fans. Obviously the worst of the worst is in online games. In most games I keep voice chat and text chat off at all times for online play. It’s a toxic environment.

But I think referring to what’s happened to the COD fandom as being a girl thing is reductive. In my little corner of this website, a lot of very prominent writers are not women and/or not gender conforming. In many fandoms I’ve been in during my adult years, trans men in particular have been a huge driving force— especially in writing fanfic.

(I’ve also seen a lot of COD art that looks Tom of Finland as fuck… we cannot appreciate the modern art of the male body without giving some respect to those who laid the foundation! Many of the kinks and subcultures that I and many others associate with COD owe much of their prominence to gay men. Bikers, leather, pup play, piss, and so many more have a rich history in cruising!)

Struggling with toxic masculinity in fan spaces is not something suffered only by girl nerds. Like in most places in society, the issue is intersectional. It’s not just a space where women have been excluded, but where LGBT people, POC, neurodivergent people, and so many more are excluded.

Also, while I do not take issue with how anyone else chooses to engage in the fandom— I personally try my best to remember that at its core, COD is military propaganda. So even if we were to say “COD is for the girlies” or some such, I would not call that a “win” for women. It’s a very “do you think Margaret thatcher effectively utilized girl power” type of thing.

[indiestsnake]

I am of the opinion that In Stars and Time does the best kind of minority representation, that being silent representation. It does not explicitly state that it is doing representation. It does not even acknowledge any variety of “us vs them” conflict. It just shows us a world where it’s a normal thing.

Lemme explain. In the game, there’s this random conversation about how in vaugarde, most people have multiple names. Just cuz it’s a thing with their culture of change. And they mention that it’s helpful for changing genders cuz you’d already have a few choices from ur other names. And then Odile says “ok what are ur guy’s other names if u don’t mind” and Isabeau says:

“I’ll keep them secret. So that way, if I ever decide to change again, you guys won’t already know what to call me.”

THAT.

THAT RIGHT THERE. TAHT IS THE SHIT.

It implies that Isabeau is FTM bcuz he used He/Him. BUT ISABEAU ALREADY PRESENTS LIKE AN EXTREMLEY FEMININE CIS DUDE. THE GUY HAS HANDS THAT COULD CRUSH SKULLS YET PAINTS HIS NAILS.

So to the characters, it’s a normal sentence. But to us (or at least me, a dude still shaking off growing up in an environment where cis/het is the norm) it’s a fucking liver shot bcuz it raises a million questions about his preffered gender and appearance and how it works and all that non-conforming stuff that left me REELING from confusion. AND THEN THEY JUST MOVE ON ITS PERFECT

it does not give any fuel to the idea that Trans folk are abnormal because it doesn’t even bring up the concept. it spits in the face of cis/het being “normal”. And completely avoids subconsciously reinforcing that being Trans is fundamentally odd.

I have no clue if this is coherent but I love representation like this. Representation that treats itself as representation can lead to a subconscious undertone that lgbt people are weird or abnormal, even if they’re accepted. “Oh they’re definitely weird, but we love them anyway!” Is what it ends up reading as to me. But silent representation, the representation In Stars and Time does, ends up feeling like “they are people, and we love them.” It fully normalizes it. It shatters the barrier between Cis and Trans, Straight and Gay and all that.

Very sorry if this is nonsense or comes off as rude. I love gay people I swear I am a gay people actually. I just wanted to talk about this. In Stars and Time punched the cis/het side of me in the nose and I love it for that.

[beyond-a-name]

"both sides", "petty squabbles", "actual problems", when the "petty squabbles" are about how trans women are actively demonized by other people in the community, and this is framed as "both sides" "going at each other's throats". transfems being murdered and sexually assaulted and shunned even by other queer people is framed as not an "actual problem", like it's all nonsense that we're supposed to just get over

that invalidation, levelling, and aggression painted onto trans women standing up for themselves is exactly the perfect kind of example of this sort of thing. just the DARVO playbook paraded out and dressed up in liberalism

and it's neatly rounded out by a reminder of the force we're under, that if we don't just get over it "they'll kill us either way [if you don't shut up and take it]". what disgusting priviledge such a statement comes from, to see we're both under the boot (and to pretend its weight falls equally) and to say it's only our job to change because you know you have the power to not have to, to tell us to do the work while we're being murdered and isolated and you sit comfortably complicit in our deaths and misery. to ask us to be meek for you to save your own skin when you excuse all that is done to us

if you actually give a fuck about solidarity or community or "infighting" or whatever the fuck, then stop throwing transfems under the bus or demonizing them for standing up for themselves. stand up for us for once.

"infighting" is a dogwhistle

[missmistborn]

Being trans right now is a lose in every way scenario. There's a couple of avenues you can take, and they all result in being fucked in one way or another. Say you want to create content and/or become a public figure. You're immediately starting far behind anybody else because a large portion of the population will just refuse to engage with anything you do. If you don't publicize that you're trans (which frankly is something that only some trans people can do in the first place), you'll be attacked for not using your platform to support other trans people. If you don't want a platform, you have to deal with being steamrolled by the current political climate, and having your right to exist as you are be a constant battleground. If you have it in you to speak out, there's only so much you can do and it feels like a losing battle. Depending on what you can and/or want to look/sound like, you may not ever get the chance to speak out or be immediately batted down if you do. If you want to cite sources, you have to practically get a degree in public speaking and know how to actually study papers or else you'll be spoken over and around. If you do all that, you'll be viewed as less trustworthy because you must be inherently biased, and thus even the people who are on the fence can be easily convinced to throw out anything you say.

Right now, I can't be me and fight for my rights without at absolute best a significant mental toll. This is why now more than ever, we need allies. This is a fight we cannot win alone. If you care about trans people--- maybe you have somebody in your life, or you just think that we are human and deserve the right to live without hatred being spewed at us all the time--- then please donate what you can whether that be your time, your love, your energy, or anything else that would help.

[genderqueerdykes]

Just a rant about some things I have been seeing for a while now on some videos.

Basically the videos I'm referring to usually have something to with LGBTQ+ (Mostly TQ+) and then when I go to the comments I see something like this,

'I'm a gay/bi/lesbian and I don't really care about the TQ+ side and because of (random thing that really isn't an issue like pronouns) this is why the LGB is divorcing the TQ+ side day by day."

It really just annoys me how people can be acting like this to their own community. They make it sound as the TQ+ is the 'louder minority' as so they put it they are less normal than them the other people that a part of this community.

It really just annoys me, with the way they say 'The LGB side should divorce the TQ+ side because they're weird and making us look even stranger than we already are!' Like buddy, I have actually seen those stuff twice, one when I was a homophobe and the second one when I realized I was multigender and cupiromantic/demisexual.

And let me honest, my first reaction to those comments the first time were literally, 'Oh hush, you all still weird as fuck with or without the TQ+". Because seriously, no bigot sees any difference between the casual gay person and trans person. All still abominations in their eyes, talking from my point of view before I stopped being homophobic.

Plus, they are all meant to correlate?? Like you can be trans masc and be gay. You can be a nonbinary lesbian. So people who say the stuff genuinely confused me as I myself is a gay multigender who also so happens to be trans.

It really just hurts how some people don't understand we need to stick together.

yeah i've literally never understood this logic either ??? thanks for coming to point that out, i've been thinking about this a lot lately. like when i see "lgb without the t" my brain just goes ??? because it just makes literally no sense

like why on earth do some people think the queer community "belongs" to cis perisex lesbians, gays and (sometimes, not always) biexuals, and that they're just "lending space" to trans people, intersex people, other queer people, questioning people and so on. i've literallly never understood the logic that cis perisex gays, lesbians and bisexuals are the "real" community, and then everyone else is toxic weirdos trying to "invade" their community. where did they get this from, because it's not historically accurate at all

it's disturbing that this is about controlling the queer community to folks who say "lgb witout the t(q+)". nobody should be in control of the community. we all share it together. equally

trans people have been fighting for queer rights alongside cis queers since the beginning. genderqueer, gnc, genderfluid, agender, multigender and intersex queers have been standing right beside cis queers at marches and rallies. trans people have been writing about homophobia, lesbophobia, biphobia and intersexism alongside the cis queers in modern queer history. why do people think they need to erase that? why would you erase progress for the sake of being petty??

its wild as hell that people genuinely think like this, i agree, it's one of the most unhinged takes i've seen in the longest time. like imagine if us trannies said "gbtqi+ without the L" literally all hell would break loose. tumblr's servers would crash from the monstrous level of backlash people would be facing. you'd be shot dead in the water. but for some reason, it's perfectly okay when you slice off a huge, very important chunk of the community because some people are uncomfy with not being able to tell what genitals a stranger has. it's so petty

i hope people who think this way get past it soon. it's dumb. like you said, queerphobes see us all as gross nasty freaks. it doesn't matter what you identify as. the thing nobody fails to realize:

the queerphobe can't tell what you actually identify as.

let that sink in.

they are guessing. they can't read your mind. even if your pin says "I'm a genderfluid trans neutral butch!" that does not mean a queerphobe knows what the fuck that means. queerphobes see: dyke, faggot, tranny: one of them queers. that's all they see. that's it. they don't know what anything else is. it's not trans' peoples faults that they see us as dykes and faggots, so how is it trans people's faults that other people get slurs hurled at them? it's not. they hate you for being queer. that's. it.

blaming trans people for other queer people's oppression will never make sense. thanks for stopping by! take care. this shit pisses me off too, i'm glad it's not just me

[nataref]

Been thinking on it more recently, and.. I'm so sick and tired of AGAB language and its substitutes. I'm sick of AGAB being used as a cudgel against transwomen, I'm sick of division and binaries, I'm sick of seeing people misattributing traits/behaviours to the genitals you are born with instead of attributing these traits/behaviors to societal structures and to the individual as a *human being* not "AMAB" not "AFAB" just human. Just a person. Because that's all any of us are. The only meaningful difference in human sexual dimorphism is how it impacts your reproductive capabilities & healthcare needs.

A transman is abusive or toxic? Cool, thats because hes an asshole. Not because hes a transman. Anyone can be abusive or toxic. Its not attributable to his AGAB/Transition history/gender. He would be shitty either way.

A transwoman is sexist? Cool, its because shes a woman who happens to also be sexist. Alot of women are. It's not because of her gender, or her AGAB, or any other aspect of her gender identity. Guess what? Anyone can be sexist, it came free with your worldwide systemic misogyny. To single out a transwoman as being sexist *because she's trans* is transphobic. Shes sexist because shes a person who is sexist. Thats it thats the whole story case closed, can we all stop with this ridiculousness now?

My point being, the toxic traits and bigotry, whatever they might be, are NOT STORED IN THE GENDER. It is stored in the person. The individual, and the larger sociopolitical structures which enforce these ideas. The toxicity is stored in the human person in front of you, to try and endlessly argue otherwise betrays a tendency to dehumanize, degender, and categorize (usually trans) people. To see their behaviour as a reflection of a group rather than the reflection of that person, you know, the full human being you are talking to/about.

I just... I hate this. I want people to put their money where their mouths are and understand that gender being understood as rigid categories that largely dictate how a person behaves, looks, and feels, has always been the fucking root of the issue (transphobia, sexism, misogyny, intersexism, etc). I'm sick of boxes I'm sick of persistently being told who I am, and who other people are, because of AGAB. I'm sick of it in every form it takes. So sick in fact I've honestly decided from now on I'm never telling anyone who doesn't already know my AGAB what I was assigned. Because it doesn't fucking matter. It's never mattered.

And maybe, just maybe, if you don't get to pry that information out of me- and other trans folk- at every possible opportunity anymore, you'll start seeing me as a person first, and transgender second. A person with flaws and strengths, a person who is whatever way I am *because I'm me* and not because I'm part of whatever category you want to shove me into. And maybe, just maybe, it'll make some of you stop and actually seriously think "why do I even want to know so badly?"

Thats all rant over goodbye 🚶

[ankles-be-bitten]

idk, i just feel like if your primary argument against transandrophobia/antitransmasculinity theory is that you think it's transmisogynistic you're not being intellectually honest. who does it hurt when trans men and mascs coin a term to describe the intersection of transphobia and sexism as it most frequently affects them? because it does hurt trans men when they're told that they're not entitled to speak on the discrimination they themselves face.

what I'm hearing from people who oppose the antitransmasculinity movement is that transmisogyny is when trans men talk about their problems 👍, but obviously that's not true. i know that's not true. you know that's not true. so then what is the issue? genuinely, enlighten me. you want trans men to shut up and listen? I'm listening.

[velvetvexations]

Gonna be so real velvet - as someone who was out as enby for five years before (re)coming out as a trans dude I am no longer capable of being polite about the binary privilege (or advantages, or whatever) discussion. I’ve fucking seen it clear as day. The difference in how my OWN trans community treated me is STARK. It’s the same discussion as the monosexual privilege/advantages discussion. Our society is absolutely set up to favor binary gender (and monosexuality) and if you (general you, nothing you’ve said at any point in this convo has implied otherwise Velvet!) are so obsessed with the “lumped in with my oppressors” boogeyman that you refuse to meaningfully engage on the topic I will assume all your intersectionality is just as garbage and treat you accordingly.

I think there's like, a legitimate thing where someone does not want to say they have more privilege or power than they have - like with TMA/TME - but it also costs nothing for us all to be aware of how specific situations can be set up to disadvantage others where we might benefit. I think the term "privilege" has a lot of connotations to it that aren't necessarily accurate to every situation where we might use that term. Binary trans people aren't oppressors of non-binary people but there are times and places where being binary is a slightly smoother ride.

[corpsentry]

pick your battles

[lazylittledragon]

hey idk which anxious pre-t babe needs to hear this but i didn't get to when i was younger so. testosterone will not make you ugly. it won't make you a horrible person. it won't 'mutilate' or ruin your body. if you want to go on testosterone then literally all that happens is it makes you really fucking hot and REALLY fucking happy.

[aishabellasbigblogofeverything]

I love it when women hate men. I love it when women are allowed to vent to each other about how horrible and creepy men are. I love it when women form friendships with and prioritize each other over relationships with men(whether they're attracted to them or not). I love it when women put men dni in their bios and on their nude photos and on posts on their blogs. I love it when women refuse to mollycoddle and accommodate entitled male feelings with "but this doesn't mean I hate all men, I know a few men who are great, I love my father/sons/brothers/uncles/male cousins/guy friends" I love it when women complain about men WITHOUT "not all men" being a disclaimer. I love it when women avoid socializing with/refuse to be around/befriend/get close to men because they know men can't be trusted. I love it when women make "kill all men" jokes. I love it when women offer absolutely no concern or care for men's feelings and if their misandry offends men whatsoever because why should we, men are the oppressor class who have raped and killed and abused us and kept us as subjugated as second-class citizens for millennia, they regularly mistreat us and the women in their own marginalized communities still every single day and make this world so much harder and more awful for us to be in, and if we choose to hate them and not spare them any sympathy then so be it, and I don't just mean "men as a class" either, you can be a woman who doesn't want to have anything to do with any man on an individual basis and completely cuts off men from her personal life too and ykw I will love and fucking support you in that because men deserve absolutely NOTHING from us. If they're so tough and strong then they can handle it just like they can handle being lonely. If you are a woman who hates men, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE A LESBIAN AND/OR A TRANS WOMAN, then just know that I love you. I love you, I support you, and you are safe here.

[demon-girl-izalith]

Oooh if you meant what saint you chose pre-transition... well for me it was Francis of Assisi... Sure he's perhaps a bit cliche for patron saints but he was chosen by pre-transition Izalith cuz he's kinda queer af? and had some sick takes with his immanent ideas of God. To a heretical pantheist/panentheist like me that was cool.

"Official" Roman Catholic teaching says that you can change patron saints post-confirmation because it's between the person and God iirc? At least that's what a bishop told me a few years back. But since you're the pope, ofc, the final say is up to you. But since I'm a heretic anyways I say I get to choose mine. You could call me pro-choice in that way.

Regardless, Joan of Arc is so fucking cool. They were literally killed for their based crossdressing by the institutions of the time who held the power and that claimed to speak on God's behalf, only for her to later be called a saint by the current ones. Really hits hard as a trans person in these times lmfao

My dad was a music minister as well, btw, but we stayed with the Roman Catholic church and moved between parishes across my country a few times whenever a shitty priest became his boss lol. These days I do my own thing tho... Wearing demon horns and a 3d printed demon tail to church isn't exactly the vibe allowed in a Catholic church and I think that sucks (I still wear my arm warmers with the trans flags to Christmas mass when I'm in town tho) but like what happened to "all are welcome" hmm? Demongender/kin people like me are left out and I think the j-man would disagree with this hypocrisy. Like what just cuz I'm a demon I can't be a theologian? Kinda stupid imho

Oh, btw, since you're the pope now, are demon girls allowed as clergy in your ministry? Can I be demon transbian clergy, foone? I must know...

Thank you for your time, your eminence,

-Demon girl Izalith

When you are confirmed, you pick a name of a patron saint, and from them on you'll get different special abilities based on which one you picked.

Personally I went with St. Isidore of Seville, which gives me a percentage bonus to my computer skills.

I had considered St. Francis de Sales, for the writing bonuses, but he's also the patron saint of Columbus, Ohio and I don't want any Ohio-related bonuses cluttering up my stats page. I've spent most of my life attempting to maximize my distance from Ohio, as have many Ohioans I've met.

My dad picked St. Cecilia for the musical skills. And her bonuses are doubled if he's doing music for the church, which ended up being the driving force behind my father's faith. We switched denominations every time my dad got kicked out of the church band.

Which happened surprisingly often. "leader of the church band" is one of those roles that attracts the worst kind of petty tyrant, and my dad (like me) doesn't really think authority is really something you should give a shot about, so he'd just be like "eh, screw you, I'll go find another church band" and now we're Baptists instead of Presbyterians.

Me and my sis used to joke that were only a couple church disagreements away from showing up at a synagogue or mosque. My dad believed in Psalm 98:4 "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth: make a loud noise, and rejoice, and sing praise". He belonged to the Church of the Joyful Noise.

Anyway the cool thing about selecting St. Isidore is that the programmer socks bonus stacks with it, so I can be doubly bonused and really get into some deep programming.