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la-principessa-nuova · 1 year ago

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I need someone in my life other than my family. Right now the only people in my life outside of transactional relationships like coworkers (I have had actual friends at work before, but not now) are my siblings, who I talk to most weeks, and my parents, who I vary between seeing a few times a week and daily.

But outside of them I have nobody, which makes me feel very dependent on them for emotional support, even though they’re not good at that. And the truth is most of the stress in my life is from them, and the rest is from things I need to unlearn from dealing with them.

Strap in for another long rambly venting post.

For whatever reason, my parents are extremely judgy and I’m only starting to realize the ludicrous extent of it now. In preparation for coming out, to make it less jarring, I started showing my hand a little (I mean that as a playing cards metaphor, not literally) and trying to allow femininity wherever it didn’t cross the line into presenting femininely.

But the thing is, my parents’ line for what I’m allowed to be is a perfect trace around what I’d been. I started off so simply by just wearing a shirt with some bright colors. It wasn’t even anything out of the ordinary, like I see men wearing shirts like this any day I go out in public, but they absolutely freaked out about it.

Like I walk in and immediately get the comments where someone says something looks bad without saying it looks bad, so i do the normal thing of explaining it as I’m trying to wear more color and that I knew they’d be surprised by it but basically politely asking them to get over it and move on. So any reasonable person would think, “OK, I told this person I don’t like their shirt. I can move on.” But they didn’t.

My mom then proceeded to refuse to drop the topic the whole time I was there and keep trying to explain why it’s objectively bad and trying to reason that her opinion was fact, but my dad just gets in this bad mood where he’s grumpy about it and any time I say something to him he makes a joke or comment about the shirt before responding.

So after a bit of waiting for them to get over it, I went home and cried.

So then a couple months later I’m now privately wearing a more feminine pair of glasses I prefer but wearing my old pair when I leave home so my parents don’t see the new ones. But I’m getting sick of my old ones because they feel more masculine to me now (even though both pairs are technically labeled as gender neutral) and because honestly the style is about 15 years out of date at this point.

Side note: I just went to look up something about my glasses and on the manufacturer’s website, they’re listed as women’s glasses, but on the site I bought them from, they’re listed as gender neutral and have a photo of a male model wearing them. Either way, I think gendering of glasses is pointless and I’m only even looking into it now because I’m trying to be technically right for when I argue with my parents that I have the right to wear the glasses I like.

The only thing explicitly feminine about my new glasses is that they’re rose gold colored, and even then only fading into rose gold on the sides and a bit of the front, with the rest being normal gold colored, so after a while I decided I wanted to just get a second pair in the regular gold color and start wearing those instead.

So today they arrived and I was very excited, but I was going to see my mom at an event in public and didn’t want to have to deal with her reaction during the event, so I didn’t wear them until afterwards, when I went to my parents’ house. Again, I anticipated some initial comments. After the last time I even anticipated some hostility, but they were just blatantly rude on a level I don’t understand. Like I couldn’t even believe they were like that because if I was ever like that to somebody in front of them they would yell at me for it.

Once again, my mom tried to explain why she’s not liking them as an objective truth, but my dad was even worse, just repeatedly talking about how he didn’t like them. This time, I pushed back and said basically, “OK, I figured you wouldn’t like them, but I do, so you can stop saying it,” and even in response to that, after saying how he just can’t help but point out the truth, he continued repeating himself about how he just doesn’t like them.

Like, sure, if he really does not have the self-control to not say when he doesn’t like something, fine. Whatever. I can deal with him saying it once. But if someone has explicitly told you they’ve heard your opinion and please stop saying it over and over because it’s hurtful and saying it again is just bullying at this point, it is bad enough to argue that it isn’t bullying, but to keep saying it? IT’S A PAIR OF GLASSES, and they’re on MY FACE.

I found myself in the situation I often find myself in when I have a bad dream where my dad is being a jerk, where I just want to scream back in his face and swear and let out all the anger I have towards when he acts like this. In the dreams I always do it and it feels so good, but in real life, I think of the consequences.

I wanted to shout in his face that he can take his opinions and fuck off, go home, and block his number. But I had just taken the first bite of my burger so instead I said

if this is how you're gonna be, I'm gonna finish my burger and go home, and I'll see you on Christmas. Have fun taking care of your mother's dog.*

and it didn’t have the same punch behind it (edit: idk reading this back, maybe it kinda did???)

And I left out the worst part. Lately my dad keeps looking at me with this look like he’s worried and disappointed about something. I’ve been wondering if either he saw something and found out I’m trans or is starting to suspect it from the things I’ve done to stop limiting myself to the tiny box they’ve put me in.

In response to my glasses, after telling me they looked like they’re for girls and me explaining that they’re gender neutral just like all my previous glasses, he looked me dead in the eye and asked, “Are you gay and not telling me?” Not the usual “If you’re gay, you can tell us,” or the preferable, “If you’re gay, we don’t have a problem with it.” It was “Are you gay and not telling me?” with a face like he was interrogating me about something I’d done wrong.

In the confusion after that question and me acting offended by it rather than answering and my mom chiming in that it’s not an appropriate thing to say to someone in response to their glasses, I managed to avoid answering, and managed to just brush it off as him being mean about my glasses when he asked again (exactly the same wording).

Ignoring how NOT OK all of it is, and how NOT OK I was after this for a moment, I want to unpack why this question is so difficult for me in particular. As a closeted trans lesbian who has trouble lying especially to my parents, this is a very difficult question to be asked for many reasons:

If I say yes, the implication is that I am a man who likes men, which is just completely wrong.

If I say no, I’m lying, which is completely the right thing to do, but especially in the shock of the moment I can’t handle.

If I explain the actual truth, I have to come out as trans, which is especially difficult when my dad fully buys into the transphobic conspiracies, and on top of that doesn’t even remotely understand any of it to begin with, because even before this recent push of extra transphobia, back when he tried to be accepting, he got confused and would ask things like, “Trans woman? Does that mean boys dressed as girls or girls dressed as boys?”

The fact that the question is always gay and not trans makes me wonder why they always say it that way. Because even when there’s implied acceptance in the question, it’s still acceptance of being a gay man. Which is less of a technicality than you might think, because their acceptance of gay people is way further along than their acceptance of trans people. So it makes me wonder are they thinking trans in their head but saying gay so they don’t promise acceptance they can’t give but can ask the question? Or is the idea of me being trans so unthinkable that they see me being feminine and wonder if I’m gay? Or do they still think trans is a type of gay?

It’s hard to open up to people who have historically been so judgy of me, and especially when they’re in the middle of judging me.

It’s hard to open up about this stuff in general because my whole life I’ve avoided talking about my romantic feelings and gender IRL at all as a result of being conditioned from a young age that if I mention a crush on a girl I will be teased for it (and in my dad’s case sometimes within earshot of a girl that I consider a friend and he started teasing me about when I mentioned she exists, starting when i was too young to even like people yet anyway), and being rewarded for being more masculine and teased for being more feminine.

It just makes me want to cut off all contact when they do things like this, because every day I spend so much effort trying to live up to their expectations and so much effort trying to unlearn that these expectations because they’re overly harsh compared to what most people think (e.g. never wear any pants other than jeans, khakis, khaki shorts, or swim trunks), and on top of that I have to mask my gender and mask my neurotype, and it’s just too much to keep up with, and if they weren’t in my life, I could just deal with the issues that are actually issues.

It’s also just like, if this is their reaction to new glasses, what are they going to say when I come out?

I don’t know if that’s the end of this rant or not, but I’m falling asleep typing now so I guess that’s it.

* This is in reference to the fact that he kept asking for me to adopt his mother's dog, who she was struggling to handle, but knowing that I have a very strained relationship with her and don't want her in my house, which she would very much want to come visit if her dog lived there. (edited in later for clarification)

#transgender #trans #vent #vent post #personal vent #venting #unaccepting parents #emotionally immature parents #the glasses incident

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serpentface · 6 months ago

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What's the Wardi cultural take on Akoshos sleeping with/partnering with/marrying other Akoshos?

It's not highly regulated to a degree that there are overwhelming cultural norms about it. There's a lot of societal focus on akoshos being theoretically suitable sexual partners for both men and women due to being dual-gendered, but not to an extent that relationships with One Another are stigmatized.

They also largely get to escape from the most severe concerns about penetrator/penetrated power dynamics because they're not regarded as Men (they're regarded as dual-gendered, and they're a female social class on every practical level), there's no status of manhood to Lose by receiving sexual penetration. The only real thing you see in that department is people assuming that one acts as 'the man' and one acts as 'the woman', but this is largely due to preoccupation with a notion of sex being Penetration With A Penis (and that Penetration With A Penis means that one person is in a Man's Role and one person is in a Woman's Role). But this will not be regarded as unnatural as in same-gender male relations, akoshos will Have to take up a position in this sexual dichotomy if they want to have Real Sex (Penetration With A Penis) with each other, and this is not unnatural and doesn't involve gaining or losing status since they are simultaneously male and female, not men.

So like you might see individual culture critics finding stuff to nitpick about it as their annoyance of the week or a singular Guy here or there who thinks it's weird, but this isn't a widespread norm. The vast majority of people don't give a shit about akoshos having sex with each other. The worst thing you're likely to experience Solely by virtue of being in an akoshos-akoshos relationship is someone asking you (probably with genuine curiosity) which one does the man stuff and which one does the woman stuff.

Akoshos also don't experience Hard expectations for marriage (though there are societal pressures that make marriage an attractive safety net all the same, ESPECIALLY marriage to a man) so unofficial life-partnerships between akoshos are pretty much the Only same gender partnerships between unwed people that are going to go unquestioned. ((Sworn brotherhood is technically a same gender life partnership for men that is Functionally similar to marriage (in that it's a kin-making practice between unrelated adults), but the tradition is Built upon the assumption that both parties will be married to women and that a primary goal of this kinship is to provide security for both parties' wives and children)). Marriage obligations in general are more lax in the economically secure but not Wealthy lower mercantile classes (as obligations to support and perpetuate one's family are universal, but these obligations can be filled simply by having at least One son who can get hitched, and marriages in the lower classes have no political functions and therefore there's less reason to ensure All your children are wed (there's still incentives like dowry, but this is not desperately needed when a family is economically secure)). So akoshos in this class group tend to have a Lot more freedom in terms of their life arrangements and chosen partners (though still experience the limiting frameworks of structural misogyny in other capacities).

The only thing that is out of the picture is akoshos/akoshos marriage. Marriage in this society has a predominantly reproductive function, the concept of reproductively non-viable marriages is generally considered absurd. This is not JUST this culture's form of homophobia, as marriage is a very practical arrangement at its core - both in a reproductive capacity and as bedrock for the patriarchal blood-kinship family system that forms the core social unit. The idea of same gender marriage isn't just absurd because 'ewwww weird' it's like, that Cannot work within this system, it Cannot fill core functions of what a marriage intends to do here, the ways on which marriage and kinship are BUILT makes same gender marriage practically (rather than just socially) untenable.

The sole exception to the 'marriage = reproductively viable" rule is that akoshos can be married to men (which in practice is almost always as a remarriage after a man has secured At Least an heir). This has a Little bit of internal logic here in that they perform predominantly female social roles (thus are suited to being a wife, even if they can't bear children) (and also on practical levels of them having the same legal status as women) but it's really more of a 'this is just how it's always been' kind of thing. A lot of the older pre-Wardi identity dual-gender roles that got mashed together under the 'akoshos' name would have involved marriage to a man as a second wife/concubine, in addition to his primary wife who would bear his children. Men potentially having multiple spouses has not been retained as a cultural practice, but the notion that an akoshos Can be a wife to a man has survived into modern day legal and doctrinal practices around marriage.

So like this being said, marriage as it is legally defined is only between a man and a woman, a man and an akoshos, or a woman and an akoshos. In practice the latter two are comparatively VERY rare- a man/akoshos marriage cannot provide children (though an akoshos can practically fulfill all other obligations and duties of a wife), a woman/akoshos marriage Can provide children (and while akoshos cannot function as a male heir, these children Will take their akoshos-parent's family name (though the wife retains her father's family name)), but akoshos are legally grouped with women in terms of rights and privileges (including being permanently under legal domain of their father unless they have been legally handed off to a male husband) and Cannot provide hard power patriarchal support that this family system is built upon and therefore depends upon, which makes these marriages socio-economically insecure. They can obviously still be a good partner and parent, but this is not the same as having the Legal hard power of a patriarch.

Akoshos marrying each other would be reproductively and socially nonviable, and is treated as a similarly absurd concept to a man marrying a man or a woman marrying a woman. It's just not a part of the marriage and kinship framework, it's not a thing that you can Do.

#Akoshos are also probably like.... 1-2% of the population. Like its an Accepted gendered space but not a large one so it's less #'managed' in a lot of senses #It's actually kind of hard to 'access' the akoshos space to begin with. Like parents look for Signs In Early Childhood and most #akoshos are typically assigned their gender early.#If you don't manage to access this space there's a good chance of being Stuck as a man with any deviance from your expected #gender roles being the HIGHLY unaccepted 'male effeminacy' which is a VERY different concept than (though obviously has tensions With)#being akoshos. A lot of akoshos self-label as adults after losing support from their families in part for being '''effeminate men'''#(this is also kind of the only instance in which gender self-identification occurs on a basis that will be Broadly accepted. Though #this happens in the context of already being detached from one's familial support network and people not knowing you self-assigned)#There are also certainly Some cases where akoshos self-identify as adults and this is accepted by their fathers. For a variety #of reasons but unfortunately often it's going to be like-#'we must have missed something but whatever. glad our kid is actually supposed to be this way and isn't just effeminate'#Also much less likely to be accepted if they're an expected male heir without brothers to take up the role in their stead #And VERY unlikely in upper classes where family members are public figures. If you've been introduced as a man here you're probably #out of luck.#(Like you'll see accusations that adult-assigned akoshos are just pretending in order to disguise being male effeminates)#This position isn't freedom from gender norms or like. The equivalent of an accepted trans identity. It's its own assigned gender #space in an Expanded but strict binary with expanded but strict roles #Also the societal trends over centuries are showing signs of increasing collapse between the notions of 'effeminate man' (bad)#and 'akoshos' (normal). At this point the concepts are still very separate but the current societal trajectory is leaning towards the #akoshos role being phased out of its normalization (in tandem with Wardi culture becoming more intensely patriarchal with #the collapse of Wardi groups into one identity)#Like 600 years ago there was NOT a concept of 'effeminate man' and proto-akoshos roles were a #more central concept that enveloped divergences from expected masculinity. Whereas now the akoshos space is significantly narrower #and the concept of 'effeminate man' exists in tandem as a stigmatized descriptor. And things have gotten to the point of #people claiming that ''effeminate men'' will 'pretend' to be akoshos #The akoshos identity becoming stigmatized/phased out isn't inevitable but the tensions around it are definitely growing #Though there's also a sense that Peak Patriarchy has been hit and you're starting to see people pushing back at these norms in fairly #notable ways. There's not going to be like. A feminist revolution but civilian women getting more political freedoms (while the overall #context stays patriarchal) is a likely outcome which could also have side benefits of relaxing masculinity standards Somewhat

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