#where is the variety?? there's more than one kind of trans person and it's really starting to annoy me that we're not seeing that

[miharuhebinata]

what is with cozy games and making one (1) nonbinary LI that's just a skinny white androgynous-looking person with short hair

[scriptlgbt]

How should I show that a character's nonbinary when they themselves don't know? Should I even do it if they'll just be misgendered the whole story?

They're born in the early 70s (when the main story takes place they're 22). They have trans relatives but I don't think they know there are options beyond (a) staying their AGAB, (b) transitioning to the other binary gender, or (c) drag, which isn't really their thing.

I want to make it deeper than "they think gender roles are stupid" but I don't know where to start in portraying an nb egg.

[I'm assuming a lot about the culture of the particular 70s you're referring to. My POV is that I am "canadian" and much of my own personal knowledge of transness in this era comes from research in US archives. YMMV when it comes to places outside the heavily American sphere of cultural influence.]

So first of all, the 70s had a bit of a renaissance of androgyny. A common thing I'll see in advice columns of the era is someone asking what to do as a customer service worker when they "can't tell" what gender they think someone is, because of their hairstyle and the way they are dressed. I imagine there probably were a lot of people who took refuge in that ambiguity. A fro, a pageboy haircut, all these are something that people of any gender (not necessarily every texture but I digress) could wear.

Secondly, I figured out I was nonbinary before I knew it existed, before I had the words for it. (Though the term genderqueer was the in vogue one in the community at the time I figured my stuff out.) It's just that I sort of saw it as, "hmmm, well, I feel kind of between these things." And I think I'd seen it as sort of "half-trans" until I really understood transness better. (Note: this was for like a week tops.) I also went through a period of time a few years before this where I just sort of saw myself as a crossdresser (not drag - just someone who chooses to dress and cut their hair as they are comfortable and feel happy), but like, that as my gender identity, if that makes sense. I didn't have access to community of other people who felt like I did in order to compare to. But at the time, this also meant that when I talked about my feelings with others, they wouldn't have the same hangups about what it would mean for them if they said they felt the same. There were a lot of people I talked to in 2011ish who basically said they experienced gender as I did, only, I don't think most of them would understand for another 4 years at least.

One day I'd like to post more info about nonbinary history (especially in the 70s), but I'm just dumping info at this point. Something I will suggest for more on the topic is reading Lou Sullivan's diary, and reading autobiographies from trans people who were alive then. Even when they weren't out, they still existed, and lived in a world where they were carving out spaces for themselves.

To my understanding also, a lot of trans culture at the time sort of distinguished "transvestite" (trans people generally? but who haven't accessed medical transition) and "transsexual" (trans people who have or are intending to transition medically). Trans people of every variety might change gender expression based on their outness or the safety they had, and this didn't make them less seen as trans per se. A lot of people who ID'd either way (though more for "transvestite") would have a variety of approaches to things like name and pronouns. If this were the dominant terminology of the time that I were figuring things out, I'd probably have called myself a transvestite, though I would have likely been questioning the transsexual label for a while and ultimately not been able to access medical transition. (Though it depends on when in the 70s iirc - there was a time earlier on where it was easier to access I believe, but I'd need to fact check.)

In terms of general nonbinary egg mode stuff, or at least egg for an era where being nonbinary is not widely known to be a thing, here's some 'signs' (some are just straight up "that's canon if you put that in") I've brainstormed.

admiring specific fashion trends and looks that are gender nonconforming or androgynous (especially celebrities - maybe glam rock musicians, Joan Jett) (Joan Jett was huge for egg me personally...)

finding a lot of different ways to express how they feel in words (the "man/woman in a woman/man's body" phrasing is something that has historically bugged me, but people have used it throughout history) (more examples, dependant on the person, "I feel just as un/comfortable in my body and the way people see me as I would if I'd been born differently." "It's not a wo/man's haircut, it's mine." "I feel like a guy among my guy friends and a girl among my girl friends." "I feel uncomfortable when I go out with my partner and we are assumed to be straight/gay, though I don't know why." "I really enjoyed breeches roles when I did theatre in high school." "It felt good when I was mistaken for a woman.")

referring to themselves in their head with neutral terms

having dreams where they are recognized as themselves

feeling at home around trans people and queer people in general

watching or listening to certain songs/movies/etc that feel Gender for them over and over again

some kind of fixation on facial hair/other body part or lack thereof

it feeling different when different people use gendered terminology for the character (ex: a conservative Girl Guide leader calling everyone "ladies" vs a gay man saying "hey girl"). this is usually to do with what it's assumed the speaker's assigned meaning to the word is.

Re: misgendering through the whole story. A really convenient way to curb this would be to just have the character feel like the way they are (mis)gendered is also a part of their identity, it just isn't the whole picture. Another thing I sort of thought of in my early years was like, if people think I'm a woman, at least they understand there is something off about it. Whether they think I'm a butch lesbian or intersex (which was very regularly assumed throughout my life, at least until the general public started to catch wind of genderqueer identities). It matters to me that they at least understand my approach to gender is queer.

Another approach would be to have the story written from a distant past tense where the reader knows the identity of the character, because everything is told in distant hindsight. This is my favourite approach personally.

-mod nat

[cipheramnesia]

One of my favorite feelings to remember is from a three or four years back, just hitting a point in transition where I started really feeling myself in between fitness health and HRT. I spent more time writing about my trans experiences than I do now, for a variety of reasons. A part of that was expanding how I perceived my own experiences, both from letting go of things that were holding me down and also having different trans people just in my circle, having perspectives from people who weren't all trans women or binary, perspectives from intersex people. What was really, really wonderful was moving from being afraid to talk about my experience with those same people, to both being encouraged to do so, and encouraging them in return.

That period felt wonderful, welcoming, it felt like I was somewhere I fit in. Even more, it made me want to share that, like it fundamentally shaped me towards the ideal of radical inclusion, because belonging somewhere and having my feelings and experiences welcomed as additive felt great. It's the kind of thing I want for every queer person, being able to relate your experiences to other queer people and take their stories to heart.

I think that's the only way to go. The only way those experiences stop mattering is if we try and push one another out of them, gate them off in a garden that says "do not touch," where no one else gets to share. I don't want who I am or who I was trapped inside a border, useless to everyone.

[xf-cases-solved]

S1E14: Gender Bender

Case: In what is arguably one of the most "why did you write this??" plots so far, our dynamic duo (per Mulder's request, I might add) investigate the deaths of five victims who appear to have, like... been fucked to death? Or something?

Actually I have to interrupt my own summary here, bc I just looked up the Wikipedia page (yes, bc I was trying to remember the state, shut up), and Glen Morgan is apparently quoted as saying he wanted "an episode with more of a sexy edge." How that ended up being this particular episode, I cannot say. That is an X-File in and of itself.

But I digress. People are dying of mb really high levels of pheromones caused by super mind-blowing sex. Sure. Also no one is sure if this killer is male or female. (They somehow manage to not even entertain the idea that any of the victims might have been gay, which I thought was an impressive feat of elephant avoidance.)

ANYWAY. Their investigation leads them to Massachusetts, where a bunch of sci-fi not-Amish people are chilling out doing not-Amish people things. Stuff kind of just snowballs from there. Mulder jumps down into the not-Amish people's ritual cellar with no backup and then proceeds to reprimand Scully for being reckless; Scully (for the first, but unfortunately not last time) almost bangs someone bc she is being manipulated due to some supernatural phenomenon; I laugh A LOT alone in my work office bc I had forgotten the stupid twist ending; and Nicholas Lea is a starving artist who has to take the roles he's offered if he ever wants to be bumped up to recurring character status. Sigh. Hustling the club scene used to be so simple...

Does someone die in the cold open: Yes. He is fucked to death. Or something.

Does Mulder present a slideshow: Yes! Of dead people! Who were fucked to death! Or something!

Does the evidence survive the investigation: The evidence doesn't even stay on this planet.

Whodunit: A horny alien cosplaying as a gender fluid Amish person. No, seriously.

Convictions: Zip.

Did they solve it: No. This is my very first explicit no with no qualifiers. They 1. did not figure out the cause of death definitively, 2. did not apprehend the suspect, 3. lost literally all of their evidence, and 4. the government wasn't even hiding anything this time, they just got outsmarted by some horny aliens and were left with nothing. In fact, I bet they actually know less now than when they started. Failure from top to bottom, guys, good work.

[how do i determine if a case is solved? check the scale here: x]

THIS EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY: Anxiously clenching your butthole while crossing your fingers and praying that your faves don't say anything TOO problematic. Are you educated in the systematic inequalities facing minorities in the world? Are you aware of how socially accepted language and behaviors have evolved over time to become more inclusive and less prejudiced? Do you also happen to be watching a show that was made pre-21st century, and "oh god, are they doing an episode that revolves around *gender*? Oh Christ. Oh no. Oh God"? Never fear! Anxiously clenching your butthole while crossing your fingers and praying that your faves don't say anything TOO problematic is here!

*This product is versatile, and can also be used in a variety of situations, including, but not limited to: Seeing your favorite celebrity's name trending online and not being sure why; introducing your trans friend to your socially conservative grandma; or being forced to listen to your boss's opinions on "woke culture" after your coworker casually mentioned seeing a black person in a new TV show.

Get clenchin'!

***

General Total Stats:

(green means stat has changed since last ep; red means new stat added to list)

Total Cases *Definitively* Solved So Far: 6 (streak ended. brutally)

Total Number of "Mulder/Scully, it's me" phone calls: 1

Total Number of Times Scully Has Conveniently Not Seen Something Crucial: 4

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Been in Mortal Danger: 5

Total Number of Times Scully Has Been in Mortal Danger: 4 (upped it another half point, bc i don't thiiiink the guy coercing her intended to put her life in danger. he just ("just") wanted to sexually assault her, but also apparently fucking those guys kills you, so. another toss up)

Total Number of Sexually Charged, Uncomfortably intimate, and/or Flirty Moments Between Friendly Coworkers: 8 (for an episode that was meant to have a "sexy edge," it was deeply unhorny all around, even between our good good coworkers. they should have brought back that horny fire expert from episode 12 to bring up the heat, pun not intended)

Total Number of Autopsies Scully Has Performed On Screen: 1

Total Number of Times Scully Plays Doctor: 1

Total Number of Times Mulder Talks to an Informant: 5

Total Number of Times People Making Out in a Car Are Hurt or Killed: 2 (when i made that stat, part of me was like "mb i am misremembering how often that happens, and it won't even come up that much," and then it happened in the very next episode)

Total Number of Nosebleeds: 4

Total Number of Times Mulder Has Tasted/Sniffed/Touched Something Questionable Without Following Proper Safety Procedures: 2 (don't touch and sniff the weird alien goo wall??? i know for a FACT you keep rubber gloves in your pocket)

Total Number of Times Someone Says "Trust No One": 1

Total Number of Times Someone Says "I Want to Believe": 2

Total Number of Cigarettes Cigarette Smoking Man Has Smoked: 2

Total Number of Maggie Scully Sightings: 1

Total Number of Alex Krycek Sightings: still 0, but like, uh... definitely the closest we've come so far

Total Number of Times I Had to Look Up What State the Episode Takes Place in Even Though I Literally Just Watched It: 4 ½ (yeah i couldn't even pretend that i paid attention)

Total Number of Times I Had to Look at an Episode's Wikipedia Page to Fill This Out Because It Was Fucking Confusing and/or Too Boring for Me to Pay Attention: 2 (i didn't need to, but i did read the wikipedia page anyway just out of pure curiosity, bc why did they write that episode? i mean like, i was entertained, which ig makes it a win, but also just... why?)

[calicohyde]

This is a bit of a weird question, but you're the only one I know about who regularly posts about pirates of any kind (admittedly on your other blog) so I figured I'd ask you: what's some stuff you'd want to see more of in pirate fiction? I'm fucking around with a pirate AU for one of my projects and that made me curious - @transman-badass

TL;DR bullet point lists, bolding for emphasis

Necessities:

even if not going for historical accuracy, make sure character designs accurately represent the setting

queer pirates, in particular trans/GNC pirates

POC (Pirates of Color), in particular Black and Indigenous pirates

pirates with body types befitting their lifestyle

religious diversity

Why did you pick pirates if you're not...

commentating on capitalism, colonialism, class, and "crime"

incorporating pirate legends/superstitions in some way

see above points about diversity

Things I personally want to see:

revisit points on diversity again

antivillains

dramatic irony

song and dance

vulgarity

narrative questions built to have no answers

a wider variety of genres; instead of sticking to action/adventure, fantasy, and romance, try a slasher, slice of life, or heist (etc)

More detail on these points + unintentionally effusive praise for Pirates of The Caribbean and Black Sails under the cut.

This is a bit of a (perhaps?) unexpected answer, but my favorite pirate media (that I remember rip) is actually the original PotC trilogy!

While I love the explicit queer representation in Black Sails and OFMD, as well as the political thriller aspect and social realism + commentary of Black Sails, and I'd obviously love to see more of that, they lack some things the first three PotC movies have that I just really fucking love. I don't think any of them are exclusive to pirates necessarily, but I do think a lot of them are particularly well suited to them, and in some ways when they're not incorporated I personally feel like something is missing.

The og PotC trilogy does have its own political aspect and commentary, it's just a bit less confrontational than BS. I wouldn't say it's so subtle as to be a subplot though, it's still a - if not Thee - primary driving factor to the overall narrative and its plot. In my opinion, no pirate media is complete without some aspect of anticapitalist/anticolonialist/antiassimilationist sentiment at its foundation, even if the pirates are not necessarily heroic or righteous - or are downright wicked (derogatory) - in any other way. Pirates make for the perfect antiheroes, antivillains, and villain protagonists, and the latter two are far less explored than the former. And truly what is the point of having a character cast of primarily career thieves if not to say some type of something about the constructs of money and crime?

Another thing is the incorporation of traditional pirate legends/superstitions! I certainly will not be able to find it at will, but there is a post on this site that I wholeheartedly agree with about how cool it is that PotC has a different set of accepted realities depending on who's territory the story is in - i.e. pirate legends are true when the characters are where there be pirates, but aren't on colonial land. There are also pockets of extra depth to the story and characters that only really occur to you if you look at the work through the eyes of someone who exists within the pirates' world, such as Elizabeth's Kiss of Death At Sea.

It also of course ties in perfectly with the allegory; the further colonialism/capitalism spreads -> the smaller pirate habitat shrinks -> the less magic there is/the more reality is confined to only what Is and can no longer extend to what Could Be, shown most directly by the beached Kraken and Jack's response of "The world's still the same [size], there's just less in it." Which in that particular context also reinforces the above highlighted built-in moral ambiguity/acknowledgement of the beauty and necessity of things that may harm you (or pose a challenge to your conquering power), in that only the movie before the Kraken was a direct threat to Jack, and in fact literally killed him, but he still recognizes its extermination as both an indication of worse to come and as a tragedy in its own right. Also shown really well in how an "incorrect" pirate-drawn map can get you places that, when using an "accurate" colonial-standard map, don't exist. And how Beckett can't get Jack's magic compass to work for him even though he knows what it's supposed to do, only a pirate (or pirate-to-be like Norrington) can use it. The Power of Belief in this way is and always will be my number one homie. I got slightly off topic and just started talking about PotC. Anyway.

The dual accepted realities allow for really great dramatic irony as well. Gods and monsters and cursed treasure and impossibly fast and unsinkable ships and the undead are all real, and the audience knows all that based merely on the setup, but to the characters it's a shocking twist. Black Sails has some dramatic irony that I really love as well. The audience knows that Black Sails is a Treasure Island prequel, and they know the culmination of the featured historical events, but the characters don't. I eat that shit up and it's fucking delicious every time. And I also love that good good opposite of dramatic irony in these too, where the audience will never know something the characters do. BS does it through a well crafted metafiction narrative and unreliable narrators. "A story is true, a story is untrue," and this story acknowledges itself as a story - one told by conquerers, liars, visionaries, and warrior poets. We will never know what "really" happened, and we're not meant to.

Anyway even if pirate legends aren't real or *shrug emoji* in-universe, I again think pirate media is incomplete if a few aren't textually present in some other way.

Back to representation stuff. As I said, while Black Sails and OFMD have it pretty good, there should be way more queer pirates, and in particular trans/gender-nonconforming pirates. I'd specifically like to see a portrayal of Mary/Mark Read as being trans/fluid/whatever, rather than "disguised" or "mistaken" as a man (if the piece features historical figures). Equally so, there needs to be way more racial diversity in pirate media, in particular Black and Indigenous pirates. Probably most of the famous Captains you could name off the top of your head were white Englishmen, but there's a lot of evidence that a high percentage of pirates were not. So tbh I think this is less of a "feels" incomplete thing and more of an IS incomplete thing.

Likewise, there should be more body diversity and religious diversity. These things are obviously inaccurate and a Choice to exclude anywhere, but again imo an extra level of dumbassery to exclude from a pirate thing. Model/movie star body types should be rare; we need to be looking at athletes and laborers when designing Golden Age sailors. We need to be taking into account the available medicine of the time period and the lasting consequences thereof, as well as more of the (known) cultural ideas about body differences, neurological differences, sickness, and death. And as for religion, there seems to be vast swathes of people who think once upon a time everyone was either a Christian (be that Good or Bad) or a Savage (whether Noble/Mystic or not). And that is SO deeply fucking annoying - to say it in the blandest, most diplomatic way possible lol.

Even if you're not going to go in for much historical accuracy, you're doing a fantastical/romanticized/comedic/etc version, or you're making a whole secondary world from scratch, you really should be figuring out what would be accurate to the conditions you create. If your piece takes place on a frigate sailing the open ocean in the tropics for long periods of time while the nearest land is being colonized by monarchic northerners in an approximation of the 17th century, the characters should reflect that just as much as the setting and plot.

Now for some things I wouldn't necessarily be disappointed about being absent, but that I would just be kinda jazzed to see. First: song, dance, storytelling, riddles, foul language, and bawdy jokes. This kind of goes hand in hand with the legends and all, but is an extra layer that isn't put on enough! PotC and OFMD have some song, and BS as already mentioned is pretty heavy on storytelling both diegetically and as a main theme. I just want more.

Second, I'd love to see a wider variety of genres. We're spoiled for pirate action/adventure, fantasy, romance/erotica, and coming of age. I want to see some scifi that isn't just pirates In Space (not that I have anything against pirates In Space or think it's not scifi Enough, but we're not starving for it). Pirate slasher. Pirate slice of life. Pirate whodunit. Pirate time travel. Pirate psychological thriller. Pirate disaster/post-apocalypse. Pirate slipstream/surrealism. Pirate heist!! Pirate procedural? somehow?? You get it.

I think I've talked enough now wkgoiuwksk.

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/748698755825582080/since-weve-been-on-the-same-topic-for-quite-some?source=share

From my experience, it's both the projection stuff + cis writers responding to what's popular in fandom, but I also think some of it is because when trans fic started getting really popular, you had a lot of trans BNFs in various fandoms who insisted that writing these characters a particular way was THE right way to do it or you're offending them personally. I think that tends to be disproportionately likely with people who prefer pre-op or non-op vs. prefer post-op or don't care, both because if you care more you're angrier about it, but also people in the first category are more likely to be newly out (and thus in that obsession with their identity stage that plagues every LGBTQ+ person when we first come out) and younger and more online. So they're more likely to fit into the demographic of "people who obsess over what fic other people are writing" or "antis" in general.

I remember in Yuri on Ice fandom circa 2017-18, there was this one newly out pre-op trans guy who projected hard on to Yuuri and therefore insisted that any fic with cis Yuuri was hurting him personally. But it went beyond that.... Yuuri also had to be a bottom, because he was a bottom, and also this guy seemed to think that having a vagina meant you were automatically a bottom if your partner had a dick? Which made the whole thing kind of funny in a way... imagine declaring yourself the spokesperson for all trans men in your fandom (which he clearly did see himself as that, he clearly saw what he was saying as the One Right Way To Do Transmasc Rep) and yet being seemingly unaware that strap-ons are like, a thing that exists in the world, lol. That pegging exists. (Or at least, it would've been funny if he wasn't an obnoxious anti who harassed people, and had this parasocial fixation on someone who wrote a lot of bottom Yuuri and age-reversal Victuuri which he decided was the absolute worst thing for some reason.)

So just from that, I do have to wonder if some of these patterns in writing trans fic are just more popular vs. they're baked into fandom because some obnoxious individuals in a variety of fandoms (because he definitely wasn't the only person and YOI wasn't the only fandom where I saw that shit, though he was the worst) at a particular time were insisting that was the one right way to do things.

I was able to resist what he was saying even though I'm cis, just because I've had enough trans guy friends IRL to know that what he was describing as the One Right Way to Write Trans Sex is suuuuuper dysphoria inducing for a lot of trans men. Like, a lot of people who write M/M trans fanfic would be floored at how many pre-op trans men find that PIV is just completely off-the-table for them. They don't want to be penetrated at all, at least in the vagina. So much trans fic treats PIV as the gold standard. Like, it's weird to think gay trans men wouldn't be into butt stuff as much as cis gay men are? Am I the only person who thinks it's kinda weird how often that's assumed?

I have no idea what the state is like for trans women in F/F - even though I read a lot of F/F, there seems to be way less trans fic for whatever reason, even the stuff written by trans women IME seems to prefer to focus on cis women or at least women who both have vaginas - but while I've known fewer of them than trans men who just really don't want to use their vaginas during sex, a fair number of trans women just really don't want to use their penises during it either. Like, people, there's a reason that "bottom surgery" exists.

--

[love-toxin]

miss ellie i'm realizing now that i never told you now revolutionary your ocs are. like. i've been on this website for literal years and the day i found your blog was with an oc post where you introduced such a dynamic lineup with so much variety, it was the first i had ever seen. maybe i wasn't looking hard enough but you had poc yanderes AND trans yanderes it was the first time i had ever seen any (i know it sounds crazy to say but i'm being so fr rn.) even when i look through your old posts and reread them i just get blown away by how each one is different and has their own personality even though you have so many?? anyway it's late and i just wanted to say that ty <3

will you marry me?? 🥺

LOL to be for real though that makes me sooooo happy you don't even understand, I'm really glad i get to be that way for you and all you lovely people 💕💕 it's a blessing to be able to write & post my work and I'm genuinely happy to see people connecting with it.

tbh, the representation i try to portray accurately is a really long-standing relationship i have with writing & authorship in general. this might not be a terribly interesting bit of lore but back when i was in my teens and consuming a lot of fanfic online in the early forms of it (ff.net my love </3) that was something that hit me a lot in reading self-insert fic, because I'd always been a huge reader and was just then tapping into self-inserts and community fiction posting rather than just books. and i remember distinctly (i think partly bc I've always grown up in multicultural neighborhoods/had mixed family growing up) reading fanfics and having the thought of "huh, i can relate to this description or this experience, but that makes me wonder whether other people can."

funny enough, it was partly when i would read descriptions of the author giving a self-insert long hair or referencing their hair in some way, and I'd start wondering how girls who wore a hijab would read that same piece, cause i went to school with a bunch of girls who wore it or a full niqab. and so i started wondering more like "if i was black, would i relate to this experience in this fic? if i was trans or gender non-conforming, are there characters i can relate to? if i were a mix of these things, could i find somewhere i belong in this setting?" and since then it kind of became a focus in the way i wrote stuff going forward.

i think using inclusive language in fic writing is really integral to a greater horizon of people enjoying it, and thinking on my ocs i always wanted to have characters that people could really relate to. I'd stop a lot in my process of creating my initial sets of characters and try to keep in mind those thoughts that i had in reading fics; "if i were this or that, could someone in that position relate to the stories I'm writing? and if not, what can i change to make that happen?" because if people are going to enjoy my characters or find comfort in them i want everyone possible to have the ability to. it's kind of intimidating at times to write for experiences i haven't had personally but it led me (and still leads me) to do a ton of research, and in doing so I've been able to learn lots of really fascinating things in the process. in doing so, it made it really easy for my characters to develop their personalities through my writing because i think they inherently have identities that are complex, which is always the goal you want for any character in the first place.

sorry that this kinda went off on a ramble LOL, but after so many years of writing and with my degree under my belt i still really think about it a lot. I'm really glad what i wanted to do has come across and i hope you continue to enjoy my ocs!! ❤️❤️

[maluarty-blog]

Raise your child.

Get to know you new job and new people that come to your life.

Allow yourself take a break .

Find or not a romance for yourself.

Fight for justice in a city where  injustice thrives.

After years of working as a prostitute in one of the wealthiest areas of your city, you find a job as a caretaker of a duke who has been wounded by the war. Hired by his sister, you are invited to live in their mansion with your son. Life really does seem to be giving you quite an opportunity, doesn't it?

(Liah Chancellor) THE BLACK WIDOW: Female

She's the woman who hired you, Cesar's older sister.

She returned to the city after her husband passed away. Her personality is calm, carefully rehearsed, perfect, worthy of a duchess.

Appearance: The duchess has long curly hair tied up in a low bun and dark skin, her dark brown eyes do justice to her striking appearance. She is short and is always seen wearing black garments.

(César Chancellor)  THE LOST KIN: Male

He was a war hero, but his glory days have left their mark.

You've been hired to look after him and his needs. He seems to judge everything you do, sharp dark blue eyes that seem to look for any mistake, or does he simply want to get to know you better? There's no way of knowing unless you break through his invisible barriers.

Appearance: His skin is dark brown, marked with old scars. His long, wavy hair reaches his back like the light waves of the sea. His stories were grand, but the man in the wheelchair seems nothing more than a vague ghost of what was left behind of his greatness.

(Tiana Reed)   THE EXILED CHILD: Trans-Female

Tiana currently lives with Liah and her brother. She left home after her gender transition, losing her job as a lawyer and consequently her circle of friends. Many say that in childhood her hand was given in marriage to Liah, but the engagement was cancelled for unjustified reasons. With a light-hearted personality, she always seems to have a smile on her face, even if it sometimes looks worn.

Appearance: Her skin is fair and her blonde hair is cut short, she is of medium height and has round blue eyes. She is quite fashion-conscious, enjoying dressing up in a variety of outfits.

(Bruno Vanverd)  THE KIND HEART: Male

Bruno is a childhood friend of Dimas, your older brother, and consequently yours. The son of one of the biggest merchant families in the region, Bruno has always liked to be with people and be close to them, even if it's against his family's wishes.

Appearance: He's tall, towering over almost everyone around him, his messy brown hair and fair skin are well known on the streets of your neighbourhood, as are his careful, attentive honey eyes.

(Jean Campbell)  THE REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE: Female  or Male

Jean is what they call a real troublemaker and a challenge for their family. Not even their lessons have been able to fix the rebellious person who only thinks about enjoying life's pleasures, without bothering about their family's problems. 

Appearance: Red hair (short and wavy if male, or shoulder-length and wavy if female) and fair skin. They're tall and their eyes are a shade of brown.

                  ⚠️Trigger Warning: This game is rated 17+⚠️

Currently it has : prostitution, objectification and alcohol.

LINK: https://maluarty.itch.io/what-lies-in-the-past

[drdemonprince]

I'm AplAroAce 99% of the time. I have very particular taste in women. I'm also trans, autistic, a person of color, and have cPTSD.

It doesn't seem like finding someone "normal" in a "normal" way is going to work for me. My few relationships have failed spectacularly bc people like the idea of me (I'm conventionally attractive and mask) but not ME (I have a lot of pain inside but am not abusive etc)

How will I ever find the partner I'm looking for? I've been alone - physically, mentally/emotionally - my whole life.

I'm always working on bettering myself physically and mentally. Advice?

It sounds like people are falling in love with the mask -- and ergo, the only way for people to be able to fall in love with the unmasked you is for them to have the chance to meet that person. I recognize feeling comfortable enough around someone to unmask takes a great deal of time. It takes me years, under most circumstances. There are dear friends of mine who have only seen me unmasked but rarely. So yes, finding someone who is compatible with you and appreciative of the person you actually are, rather than the person they think they're meeting might take time.

Conventional dating scripts and social mores are designed for a very particular type of person -- one so uncomplicated and compliant with the dominant social order as to probably not even exist. It sounds to me like you've already arrived at the correct conclusion: dating in the conventional way and following conventional scripts is not going to suit you. The thing is, this also applies to one's conceptions of what a relationship is, and what dating and romance are for.

If conventional dating norms don't suit you, it's pretty likely conventional relationship structures and social expectations surrounding them also aren't gonna be a good fit. So really sitting down with yourself and articulating what you want a relationship to look like, and why you even want one, is probably the place to start. It's hard to imagine a completely new world and lifestyle from the privacy of one's bedroom, admittedly, so you'll also have to expose yourself to a variety of different relationship models, and structures, and people building relationships with one another, in order to envision for yourself something that might work.

It's impossible to build genuine and nourishing relationships when one is pretending to be a person that they are not. It's also impossible to do so when one is seeking a relationship that society says one is supposed to want, but which doesn't actually align with your personal needs and values. Being able to articulate more or less what is workable for you and what you need will also help point you toward the communities and spaces where dating is most likely to pay off.

But for now, I think the best thing to do is work on building lots of kinds of relationships with lots of kinds of people -- friendships, shared hobbies, clubs, discussion or support groups, casual dating or sex if you want to, cuddle buddies, mentors, volunteer gigs, young people you mentor, neighbors you get to know better, etc etc etc -- because this will aid you getting to know yourself, work on unmasking, and in taking in the full breadth of human diversity and the diversity of what relationships can be. Who knows where you'll find yourself, and what you'll discover along the way works best for you.

[angelgendered]

i'm in love and it's made me so inexplicably happy that they love me too, i can't over estimate that tbh! (like my love life has been tumultuous at best for years and being able to settle in with someone is so lovely. that regularity of contact daily, soft conversations, finding out little things about them as time goes on, feeling whole and complete and HAPPY!!) I genuinely think that along with it just being Hadley znd the fact that i adore them, the fact that we're both some variety of queer is healing, too. I don't have a trans joy tat for nothing, and being with someone who accepts you and your body and your bad days and good? Someone who accepts your transition journey for what it is, and affirms your gender and presentation at every damn turn? It's amazing.

i'm becoming more independent again after a major disabling event/illness/syndrome/whatever you wanna call it too, with the help of my wheelchair and mobility aids! (and it's so nice that my love is accepting of my need for help too. their only request? that when i'm using my chair, we can still hold hands. i mean. how lucky am i!!!)

i'm sorting out my mental health too! it's so much better than it was two years ago when i was dx'd bpd/eupd (tho my gp thinks i'm autistic and it could be a misdiagnosis as psych tablets don't help me much if at all even tho I'm on lots of them for dual nerve pai a nd psych reasons) and that's down to letting myself have a better life! i'm daring to hope things for the future where before i didn't see any future for myself two years ago. i thought i wouldn't make it to 33 and yet here i am, a month away from that and so happy i could burst

i still have bad days and low days but they're so much fewer than they once were. at one point it was all day every day and i felt overwhelmed and sad and paranoid and it's all melting away now. v slowly, but it is. i feel like my old self again, pre-angelique which was years ago but had such a heavy effect on my relationships that i couldn't hold anything serious down, and pre-cauda equina too. i will never physically be the same as before ces, but i'm beginning to think i can be who i was when i was like 21 or 19 and genuinely happy with my life.

i will likely never hold down a job. that's just something i have to accept. but. despite that one thing i can't change at all, i'm so happy lately!! i'm accepting my limitations and pushing where i feel able to. hadley has made me so happy, just by being there, and being them, and loving me in return. i feel so desired and loved and wanted despite never having really been the kind of person who believes that about themselves before now, (especially not where my physical body is concerned bc of dysphoria and dysmorphia but! hadley loves me for me and god, isn't that refreshing!!) my improving mobility and mood can't be understated too, while I'll probably always need a powered wheelchair cos I just can't walk long distances, getting around indoors is easier at least. I'm actually doing my physio since my ces too which is def helping.

Idk. All this to say that I'm so damn happy with my life and I never thought that I'd feel this way again. More than I did before, even, in fact. Things do get better. You will find a person, or people, who love you for you. Whether that's romantic, platonic, or you're someone who doesn't distinguish between the two. You'll find love of some kind. And it'll heal you. Along with gently pushing yourself to get better tbh. If I wasn't pushing to get better even before hadley told me that they love me, I don't think I'd have been in the heads pace to accept that and love them as wholly as I do. It's hard to love someone and accept their love when you feel broken, so its good that I was on the mend while we were becoming closer, too!

It's corny. But it does get better. I promise. From someone who thought they wouldn't be alive now. Trust me.

[fioras-resolve]

More Style Savvy (2008) Notes

-…I just, really like that the customers all say my name. It's nice that they talk to me directly and appreciate what I, Angie Nyx, do for them. I love being able to see them and nearly say "You're beautiful!" out loud.

-There is the other side of it where like, as the clerk for a boutique, I am trying to maximize profits for the company, so when I have the choice between two options that would probably satisfy them, I'll usually go for the more expensive one within their budget. I feel a tiny bit scummy about it, but hey, It Works.

-I wish there was a bit more animation variety among the customers, because they all have unique personalities, right, but the girlboss politician and the laid-back model have the same body language. This is probably something the sequels would change since they get more of a budget. Right?

-Man this feels like a low blow but the body diversity is non-existent. I GET that this is because doing separate models for every single clothing item for more than one body type would massively eat into dev resources, but what it means is that the only kind of pretty I can be is a thin person's pretty. And that's a shame.

-Okay, even keeping that in mind, the fact I get this much control over how my character looks, I mean, come on! Character creators appeal to trans people for exactly this reason!

-Oh my god, a workplace that lets you take breaks whenever you want, this truly is a fantasy.

-The omnipresent bell-bottoms are fucking awesome.

-Oh my god the tie-dye.

[becausegoodbye]

'Moving Into a More Transfeminine Space': An Investigation

A little under three weeks ago, I started hormone replacement therapy. Once a day, every day, I swallow a tiny quarter-pill of Cyproterone and rub a little bit of estradiol goop on my thigh. These two innocuous rituals will, surreally, gradually shift my body's hormonal balance from a male one to a female one. They'll give me softer skin, weaker muscles, and breasts. My fat will start migrating down from my belly more towards my hips, and my erections will be softer and fewer. Instructions which have been dormant in my DNA my whole life – dusty folders in the back of my body's filing cabinet labelled activate in the event of estrogen – will start getting cracked open and followed by my body's dutiful cells. And there'll be a variety of mental and emotional changes, all of which seem highly personal and difficult to anticipate.

The obvious question is: why am I doing this?

The truth is I only kind of know. I'm not in the position of 'always having known I was a girl', or even of having a locked-in ambition to pass as a cis woman. When I've talked about the transition I'm undergoing, I've described it as 'moving into a more transfeminine space'. Just making a daily, iterative decision to feminise my physical existence, and seeing where that goes. Once I've been on it for longer, I'll probably be in a better position to say whether 'trans woman' is the inevitable destination here, or whether I'll keep finding something important in a looser, fuzzier, and more nonbinary kind of transfemininity.

Either way: there are plenty of read-as-masculine signifiers that HRT doesn't change, and even years down the line, passing as a cis woman may honestly just take more effort than I'm willing to put in. (Whatever kind of transfemme I turn out to be, I genuinely think it's important that I get to be a bit lazy about it.) So I'm not really imagining myself as passing or glamorous or anything; I'm just imagining myself happier. I'm imagining myself as a kinda goofy transfeminine person with a confusing palette of gender-signifiers, a warm vibe, and a bunch of books and board games. That feels like a harbour I can sail towards.

This is going to be a extremely long post (6000+ words lol), so it's really only for the genuinely interested. The tl;dr 'action items' are basically:

I'm going by Ada in most contexts now (not work or official stuff yet, but pretty much everywhere else)

I'm using both she/her as well as they/them pronouns

'nonbinary transfemme' is probably my favourite nomenclature for myself at the moment.

But for anyone who's interested in an extravagant amount of detail about how I've come to this point:

Part 1: One Must First Become Aware Of The Body

Going back now to read the post where I originally named being nonbinary and agender is an interesting exercise for me. Some parts induce a tragicomic wince – like, imagine making a big deal out of identifying with a J.K. Rowling character in the post where you're coming out as trans, lmao shoot me – but I mostly stand by it! It was how I understood myself at the time, and within the pragmatist framework it lays out – aspiring towards gender as a self-negotiated tool for pleasure and meaning, as opposed to a site of coercion and limitation, and labels as only being good insofar as they're useful – were all the foundation I needed to have eventually arrived at the place that I have.

One omission in that piece that's fairly glaring in retrospect, though: I don't really talk about my body at all. I briefly mention that I felt disassociated from it growing up, and I later make the polite reassurance that 'I’m not looking to alter my body in any way'. But those are the only lines my body gets in the whole production! The rest of it takes place in the realm where I'm obviously more comfortable: in words and ideas. Part of this is just a reflection of the cerebral, head-in-the-clouds kind of person that I am, but another part is rooted in the specific philosophical framework that enabled me to come out as nonbinary in the first place: Rortyan pragmatism.

I've written about the way pragmatist philosophy enables us to conceive of gender before, but without getting too in the weeds: Richard Rorty is an important guy for me. I felt pretty indifferent towards a lot of the philosophy I studied in my bachelors degree, but when I finally encountered Rorty in my third year, it felt like being given a fresh oxygen tank on a long underwater trudge. Finally, someone asking all the same questions I was! He had this marvelous way of seeing all the different ways you could conceive of the world as different 'vocabularies', which he had the gift of being able to take on and off as smoothly as hats. In Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity in particular, he gave me a vocabulary of his own to describe the internal project of self-creation: the way in which an individual can, without imperialistically assuming that it must be the same for everyone, "work out their private salvation, create their private self-images, reweave their webs of belief and desire in the light of whatever new people and books they happen to encounter." There's this sense, reading Rorty, of the self as a fundamentally poetic project – responding to the destabilising chaos of a godless universe not with terror or ennui, but with the gusto of an artist – and as a 22-year-old, it absolutely sang to me.

But Rorty also placed certain limits on how far you ought to take these private projects of self-creation. He was extremely committed to liberal democracy, and made a strong distinction between public and private. In private, Rorty says, you should feel free indulge in whatever poetic fancy of self-creation you like – there, you make the rules – but in public, you still need a common civic language. You need to be able to be intelligible to your fellow citizens, and to be able to communicate with them for collective ends. This was essentially Rorty's way of reconciling all the postmodern wibbly-wobbly truth-shattering with the liberal democratic societies that he was so fond of (and which had, after all, produced the postmodernists, who he was also very fond of).

At the time of writing my nonbinary post in early 2015, I would have happily told you about how my understanding of my own nonbinary identify was influenced by Rorty's poetic approach to self-understanding. In retrospect, though, I can see that I was also really influenced by his notion of the public/private split. That original post is suffused with the idea that 'this is how I've come to understand myself – I think it's neat – but don't worry; I promise I'm not going to make anyone else do anything about it.' I instinctively shied away from the idea of making my gender stuff anyone else's problem. As much as I didn't enjoy having a male body, the idea of transitioning to the point where a cashier or a stranger on the street might be confused by me – i.e. making myself less intelligible to my fellow citizens – felt like an imposition on others that I couldn't face making. I couldn't countenance the idea of modifying my body, because in some sense that would be making public an aspect of my self-creation that Rorty had coaxed me into thinking of as fundamentally private.

To be clear, I'm not dragging Rorty here. Being the person I was, I think I needed that purely private space of self-creation before I could be capable of making any of it public. And even as the public/private split gave me some particular anxieties, it also valuably alleviated some. I've spoken to so many baby transes who've been panicked about making sure they're labelling their gender "correctly", that they're using the right language and slotting everything into its ultimate place in the true taxonomy of reality, and the biggest relief I can give them is simply permission to stop worrying about the goddamn metaphysics. With Rorty's framing of the question of self, you can just stop asking gender's unanswerable questions, and start asking more grounded and productive ones. Not "what am I?", but "what would I like to be?" Not "is this label correct?", but "what does this label do for me?" What possibilities does it open up? What might it foreclose? How do you feel about what you could make of yourself with it?

It's pure pragmatism! It's focusing on the language here as a customisable set of tools whose value lies in what they allow us to do. It's a turn away from metaphysics and towards self-understanding as a practical private poesis. (I usually don't say that to the baby transes in quite those words, but the point gets across.) I continue to think Rorty's pragmatism is a pretty brilliant frame to have in beginning to think through your gender; it gets you asking the more helpful questions.

At the same time, though: my starting on hormones is clearly a step away from Rorty's public-private split. HRT is a process that will (slowly, eventually) inscribe this aspect of my private poeisis onto my visible body – the body I take into the public square – and I've had to become comfortable with that. Rorty died in 2007, so I never got the chance to take his temperature on the subject, but I have to think he'd at least be interested in nonbinary identities, in the same wry way he was interested in all eccentric projects of self-creation. But by the same token, I suspect he'd be a bit more purse-lipped about the idea of someone like me going on hormones. Somebody who needed them to relieve otherwise-crushing dysphoria, I imagine he'd be okay with, but a more marginal case like me? That feels less certain.

If I were to argue my case on a purely philosophical level, I'd probably try to interrogate how the 'civic democratic language' is constructed. Like, sure, after being on hormones long enough and carrying around a bunch of mixed gender signifiers, I may confuse some people in public. But I'm a citizen too, and is it really a shared democratic language if it isn't created democratically? It seems like a mistake to overstate the value of the false intelligibility gained by me going out into the world in man-drag, when what I'm offering instead is an opportunity to rework our social scheme of gender intelligibility that demonstrably isn't serving the populace particularly well. Plus – on a more specific and groundedly ethical note – it's increasingly true that most people don't actually want to misgender others, so hiding my gender in public may not actually be the obvious 'thoughtful' move it once seemed.

Really, though, my way through this problem hasn't been philosophical at all. It's just been a steeling of nerves. It's been facing my body, getting more and more certain that I want to act and be related to from a more feminine position than my body predisposes, and realising that I can actually change that. But because of how useful Rorty's framework was in allowing me to articulate my gender stuff to myself in the first place, convincing myself that it's okay to expand that desire out from my most private and intimate relationships – and more into the public sphere – has genuinely been the hardest aspect of all of this.

Something that helps, ironically, is when misogynist pseudo-intellectual twerps like Jordan Peterson complain about the social unintelligibility of nonbinary people. When I'm worried about it for myself, my anxiety can lend it the heft of a real imposition, and it can produce real fear about taking up unmerited space in other people's apprehension. But when it's a dickhead like Peterson voicing it from the outside, it becomes massively easier to just be like "Oh, go fuck yourself! You can be confused if you want to be, but it's really not that hard! If you just treat people with baseline human respect you'll actually be FINE!"

Distastefully, up to this point in my life, if I'd ever had the misfortune of meeting Jordan Peterson, he'd "know how to treat me". Perhaps he'd smell something queer on me – and his hackles would certainly be raised as soon as I said anything – but I would be more or less socially intelligible to him as a man. But honestly, he should be more confused than that by me. I'm a different kind of queer than he'd likely assume, and there's obvious negative utility to the scheme of gender intelligibility as he practices it. Given that his response to nonbinary people is not actually merely confusion, but active hostility for daring to make him confused, it makes my response pleasantly straightforward.

"Sounds like a you problem, my guy!"

Part 2: The L word, or, the breeze in the valley

Okay, now I have to put my money where my mouth is. I made a big deal in Part 1 about having grown more confident in letting these private gender-things be more public, but this is the part I'm by far the most nervous about talking about. Did I keep putting off this section and have to circle back to it after I'd written everything else? Did I put a bunch of philosophy before this so that fewer people would see it? Who can say.

Because the truth is, in this gradual shift from 'agender nonbinary' to a clearer sense of my transfemininity, the formative word – the guiding lantern steering me to where I want to go – hasn't been 'woman'. The formative word has been lesbian.

I'm just such a fucking lesbian already! Every relationship I've ever had has either had lesbian vibes and worked, or tried to be a straight one and failed miserably. Queer people usually understand this a million times better than straight people: sexuality isn't just about who you're attracted to; it's also how you want to be found attractive. And when women find me attractive as a guy, I shrivel up like a time-lapsed leaf. Sex doesn't work; I'll dissociate and clear right out of my body within 30 seconds of genitals becoming involved. Even being flirted with by someone who's clearly experiencing me as a guy feels rotten, like I'm fraudulently advertising something that the store simply does not stock.

But every time there's ever been a flash of a woman or transfemme finding me attractive in a gay way ... Christ, that's a whole different thing. It feels impossibly good, 'getting away with something' good, good in a way that I'm not sure I'll ever entirely feel that I've earned. I honestly never dared to think of myself as a lesbian before other people – romantic partners in quiet moments – started naming it as something that felt obvious to them. In the less-lit corners of an intimacy, you can build a lot of curious shapes without necessarily having to name them. It was only when these partners started naming these shapes I kept building that I was able to see, briefly, light breaking through fog, a glimpse of what they saw.

And look, I know that there are going to be cis lesbians for whom this is contentious. I'm sure I'd get into less trouble if I confined myself to the roomy expansiveness of queer (with its "principled and deliberate fuzziness", to borrow a phrase of Rorty's I always loved). But – I don't know what to tell you! Lesbian just captures something vital about the way I love and want to be loved. Look how clearly the pull of it was present in the 2015 nonbinary post:

Another thing I can understand a lot better in the light of this realisation is how much, ever since I was young, I’ve loved and identified with gay women. I don’t mean ‘gay women’ in the sense of some big homogenised group; I mean specific gay women, who made me feel things that no-one else in my life did. God, I’ve had so many crushes on queer girls. I used to have a whole stand-up bit making fun of myself for it. Over and over, I kept having these strong feelings for musicians and actresses and characters who I would only discover later weren’t straight. I kept feeling weird about penis-in-vagina sex, and secretly preferring all the other kinds. I kept surreptitiously reading Autostraddle.com (”they have great taste in books!”, I’d say to the imaginary inquisition in my head). I kept having these experiences of feeling deeply at home amongst gay women, but only being able to talk about them in really cryptic ways (look at this post from 2010, at the way I grammatically absorbed myself into “the crowd”). I kept crying reading Adrienne Rich. This is … whatever it is, it’s a thing. And it makes sense, right? If I’m not actually a man but I am attracted to women, of course I’m going to feel more drawn to queer women than straight women. Of course I’m going to feel more of an affinity for queer and lesbian relationships than heterosexual man-woman ones. They’re closer to something I could actually feel fully seen and affirmed in. They’re closer to the kind of people who could find me attractive, not for the man I’m supposed to be, but for who I actually am. They’re closer to who and where and how I actually want to be. 

"Whatever it is, it's a thing." I was terrified to publish that back in 2015, because I was (and still am) low-key terrified of ever being thought of as intruding on lesbian territory – but it was all just getting harder and harder to ignore. An interesting wrinkle that's developed in the intervening years: in the original post, I listed a bunch of examples of "musicians and actresses and characters" who I had unaccountable strong feelings about, all of whom identified at the time as lesbians, but two of whom have since come out as transmasc. (I have more than one ex-partner who has too.) There's a whole fuzzy topography of feeling here, where sometimes what I can pick up on in people is a kinship in the way each symmetrically working our way around our gender, and an unshakeable sense that this is a person who could see me. I'm making a big deal out of the word 'lesbian' here, but I don't mean it particularly restrictively. This is what I wrote about my own gender in that 2015 post:

When I look into the deepest parts of myself, outside of how I’m treated and read and understood by others, I don’t feel any gender at all. I just feel a still, calm, responsive space.   An open enclosure; a gentle valley. A response waiting to make itself. And a particular kind of yearning to make it. [...] If the core of me is this adaptive, bendy, pragmatic neutrality, the main thing I have available to listen to is the quiet voice (the breeze in the valley) telling me who I want to adapt to. And that breeze has only ever blown in one direction.

I was being coy and poetic about it then, but "who I want to adapt to" is queers and trans people, and always has been. The breeze in the valley is lesbianism. I know that might sound like a strange, thin, rebounded way of identifying my desires here, but it's the direction I've been travelling in since I first learned to walk, and the light by which my relationships make by far the most sense. My last partner, especially, was remarkable for the unshakeable and clear-eyed solidity with which she experienced me as a lesbian – even before I'd actually fully articulated it to her – and that was huge. It made it so clear not only that it was right, but also that it was simple.

Like, realising in my 20s that I kept getting crushes on lesbians was one thing. (That can, with the right spin, merely be quirky.) But realising that nothing makes me feel more whole and seen and myself than being loved as a lesbian?

Well, shit. That's a whole different thing. And it puts me in a much more vulnerable spot.

Part 3: :3

Some years ago I saw (or possibly hallucinated) a tweet that's stuck in my mind ever since. I haven't been able to find it again, but that's probably unsurprising, as it's the exact kind of thing a person might tweet high on weed gummies and then delete 12 hours later. It was from a trans woman, accompanying a photo of her estradiol and spironolactone pills, and to the best of my recollection, it read as follows:

"just taking my little faggot pills :3"

Now, look, I'm a cautious kind of person. With the reclamation status of the word 'faggot' still so niche and contested, I probably wouldn't personally throw around the word so cavalierly. It's honestly impressive how many different political traditions would be entirely aghast at that tweet, for a whole variety of different reasons. But at the same time:

What a sentence, right?

To my mind, the tweet has power because it's a silly and ribald articulation of a genuinely powerful truth. By taking HRT, you're making the deliberate choice to make your body, your sexuality, and your existence more deviant and confusing from the perspective of heteronormative society. It's deviant behaviour, yes, but it's also inscribing that deviancy in your body's material composition. You're choosing to actively increase the likelihood that somebody will, at some point, in anger and as a way to punish and demean you, call you a faggot. They are, in this extremely literal social sense, little faggot pills.

(Obviously there are straight trans people, but I think the point still holds. Even the trans people most committed to staunchly performing straightness and being "one of the good ones" – your Blaires White, et al – are still extremely liable to have 'faggot' lobbed at them at any moment, even by their fans. It's not a word with a particularly precise definition; it's just a hammer.)

But when queer people pick up the hammer ourselves – perhaps do a gay little dance with it – that can lend real courage. I haven't liked to talk about this much, but years ago, I got a death threat on the street for wearing a skirt. I was waiting for a tram less than 100 metres away from where I was living in Brunswick (Brunswick! Lefty progressive Brunswick!), largely presenting as male except for a lovely fuchsia wool skirt. A gaunt, balding, middle-aged man walked up close to me and whispered in my ear, "If I had a gun, I'd shoot you in the head."

I wish he'd shouted it.

At the time, I convinced myself that I was okay, more or less. It was clearly an empty threat, and I obviously knew I signed up for the possibility of this when I started dressing in more gender-variant ways outside the house, right? But the truth is: I pretty much stopped wearing skirts outside after that. Not straight away, but after my resolve had slowly but steadily drained out of that puncture-point. It became a calculus of "is it worth the hassle" and "ugh, I just really don't want to be so visible today", which more and more frequently led me down the path of least resistance.

Which means that the abuse worked. Even though I could tell the story in a way that made me sound cavalier about it, I let myself be cowed. One of the really significant things about HRT is that, in a certain way, hormones are like a skirt you can't take off. Obviously there are always presentational decisions you can make on the basis of safety, but once you've been on hormones long enough and your body has really changed, it can become tough to fully boymode. Even if you're not passing as a cis woman, your gender weirdness is written on your body, in a way that would probably anger my gaunt Brunswick murder-wisher just as much – and for exactly the same reasons – as the sight of 'a guy in a skirt' did.

This, I think, is why I've always been so captivated by the 'faggot pills' tweet. To have such a fun, silly, gleeful attitude towards becoming a faggot, towards the choice to actively make oneself more faggotlike (in the deeply real social sense of 'liable to be punished as one') – there's a source of queer power in that which is basically thermonuclear. It could power all of the gay submarines. It could Superman-spin the world forwards. May we all live in its glow.

Part 4: Dysphoria, A Ghost Story

The history of the medical gatekeeping of trans people has mostly been a nightmare: a small cadre of creepy cis men holding all the levers of power and witholding healthcare to any trans person they didn't find sufficiently fuckable, or sufficiently willing to parrot their own theories back to them. At most times and places when doctors have been in charge of deciding whether not a trans person should get access to hormones, I straight-up wouldn't have qualified. The medical model of transness has always made suffering its yardstick, and I've just never had the kind of loud, acute, "unable to live as a boy" dysphoria that could have made me certain from a young age that I wanted to transition. It's all been a lot foggier than that. And when the model is "HRT is medicine purely to alleviate the symptoms of gender dysphoria, which is one thing and defined by distress", people like me aren't gonna make the cut.

Here's the problem, or one of them: the instruments needed to locate the gender dysphoria are pretty ruinously vulnerable to the exact forces they're attempting to measure. If I've gone through life feeling disconnected from my body, that could potentially be a marker of dysphoria, but it also means that I don't have any of those viscerally strong feelings people sometimes describe of having the wrong body. The disconnect is such that I've just never been able to access any strong feelings about my body at all. What exactly is one to do with that? It certainly doesn't sound very sturdy on an intake form. To the extent that I have gender dysphoria, it seems that one of its primary effects has been to bury in sand my ability to access my own feelings about my gender and about my body.

Don't get me wrong: it wouldn't be hard to line up a bunch of facts about my prior history – for instance, the way I always took every opportunity to play girl characters in video games; the way I refused to even contemplate going to an all-boys school when that choice was offered to me; the wobbly little smile I'd get whenever anyone mistook me for a woman online or from behind; the way I once broke down sobbing at a stupid "what would you look like as the opposite gender" photo filter; the way I kept dissociating through straight sex – and say I dunno man that sounds pretty dysphoric. But there always seemed to me to be other potential explanations for them, which I've spent the last 20 years dutifully exploring and exhausting. And the truth is, at most gender clinics historically, none of that would be enough to get me a diagnosis.

Because – and I know this is in a very deep, unpleasant, grey way – I could pretend to be cis. if I couldn't transition, I wouldn't die. I'm a very accommodating person, with a bone-deep aversion to 'making a fuss'. If transitioning weren't an option for me, I'd just get on with things, live a cis life, and try to find as much happiness as I could in the seams. At most gender clinics historically, if I told them this, they'd immediately say, 'Oh okay then! Well, no need to transition then. To be honest, we only begrudgingly allow it for the people who insist that they couldn't stand living otherwise (and even them, we make insist it for years and years before we relent). Feel free to take a lollipop on your way out.'

It's only been in recent years that an informed consent model has started, quietly, in some places, to be put in place for adults seeking hormones. Informed consent is essentially where, when you come to an endocrinologist wanting to be put on gender-affirming hormones, they don't see it as their job to assess whether you're 'really transgender', but rather – assuming that you've thought about it, and it's your decision to make – they see it as their job to make sure you know exactly what the hormones will do, exactly what the risks are, and how to take them safely. This is the model my GP and endrocrinologist have used with me, and I honestly can't express how grateful I am for that.

In my first session with my endocrinologist, we had a 10-minute chat about what my deal was and why I wanted to try them (friendly and non-invasive, and I guess just checking for the most obvious of red flags), and then the rest of the hour was straightforwardly about the practicalities of what the hormones would do. It was perfect. If I had to go through the kind of interrogative, invasive assessments that are still common practice – which are better than they used to be but which still ask a ton of "are you really just a pervert" questions – I honestly don't think I would have made it. I wouldn't have wanted to lie. I wouldn't have wanted to smooth out the bumps in my story to present a more standard narrative. I wouldn't have been able to deal with the violations of privacy, the insinuations of ulterior motives, and the need to fit into a tiny diagnostic costume. Even if I'd had a relatively compassionate doctor simply following current WPATH standards, I strongly suspect that I'd be knocked back.

Which means, I guess, that I can't feel too much chagrin about having 'taken this long' to start hormones. If I'd attempted it even 10 years ago, I probably wouldn't have been able to. I wouldn't have been able to find an endocrinologist willing to prescribe on an informed consent basis, I wouldn't have had the stamina to endure all the invasive assessments, and I definitely wouldn't have had the nerve to self-medicate. Informed consent was the only way I was ever going to be able to transition. Which, given how immediately and obviously the right decision I feel it to be, should probably give us pause about the whole medical model of transness.

Here's something that I think is illustrative. Recently, some clueless cis person on Twitter posed this question:

The reaction from trans people I saw was pretty much universally negative. People compared the prospect to a lobotomy, to conversion therapy, to brainwashing, to being killed and replaced by someone different. Now, if you asked those same trans people whether they would accept becoming cis as their gender, I suspect you'd get much more mixed results (though still far from universally affirmative). But when it came to the prospect of simply 'taking away their dysphoria' – turning them into someone who was, in the language of those old awful clinics, 'content with their birth sex' – virtually every trans person replied with the horror and revulsion of someone facing the prospect of their personhood getting wiped from existence.

If HRT really was treatment for an ailment called gender dysphoria, you wouldn't really expect that, right? Like, if you offered people with kidney stones a magical new treatment that could simply get rid of them painlessly, pretty much 100% of sufferers are saying yes, with no hesitation. Ailment after ailment, very few people are saying no to instant painless miracle cures. But transness is clearly different, right? Even though the medical authorities have always focused so exclusively on the pain of being trans as the problem in need of medical redress, that's clearly not all that's going on. Trans people don't want the kind of 'cure' that tweet proposes, because transness is genuinely so much more than the pain caused by being it in a transphobic world. It's a core ingredient in our stew, a central thread in our life's narrative, a fundament of our self-concept. It's inextricable from the people we are, to the extent that the 'miracle cure' proposed in that tweet could literally only function by destroying the person.

Now – before I get too over my skis – it's obviously politically important to recognise trans HRT as healthcare. Hormones are a medically complicated dimension of the body, and I do think it's generally a good idea to have a trans-competent endocrinologist involved (at least in the beginning) to do blood tests and explain the risks and be on the lookout for the kinds of medical complications we might miss. But at bottom, I feel like hormones are a question of bodily autonomy. We should simply get to do this with our bodies if we want to. We shouldn't need a 'diagnosis', as though what we have is a disease in need of cis people's cures; we should just be able to decide if we want to shift ourselves in this way.

Here's the truth of it for me. When I think about my daily ritual of taking my Cyproterone and rubbing estradiol goop on my thigh, I don't experience it as a medical treatment. I certainly don't think of it as 'medicine' I'm taking for a disease I have called 'gender dysphoria'. I think of it as a change I'm choosing to make to my body for my own reasons: more akin to the way that some people choose to tattoo themselves, or exercise in pursuit of a particular form. Those analogies might risk coming across as minimising, but I don't mean them to be. Starting HRT feels like one of the most important decisions I've ever made – a fundamental reorientation of my relationship to myself and to how other people will relate to me – and even if the experiment ends up leading to me going back off them, it'll still have lifelong repercussions. But while it's clearly medical in the sense that it involves making some alterations to my body chemistry, it's honestly difficult for me to conceptualise my own HRT as a treatment. Not in the way I've been treated for other health problems I've had. For me at least, it's just a fundamentally different kind of project.

Whimsically, my organisational instincts were already gesturing at all this before I'd really articulated my thoughts on it. When I first got my hormones, I kept in the bathroom cabinet. Obvious place for them, right? But after a few days, I realised I had this nagging sense that this was the wrong spot for them. I'm very particular about the organisation of my belongings; I like to be able to see everything at once, and get a lot of satisfaction out of having everything well-categorised. And having my trans stuff in my medicine cabinet, I realised – alongside the cough medicine and diarrhea-relief capsules and antiseptic gargle – was rubbing dissonantly against that instinct. These things are in different categories. So I took the HRT stuff out of the medicine cabinet, and instead arranged in on a dedicated little shelf beside my bed. On it, in a neat little row, sit the pills, the gel, a little plastic pill-splitter, and a pair of scissors for opening the little sachets the goop comes in.

It was a great decision; my organisational instincts satisfied. Ever since, I've often found myself just looking fondly over at the shelf – all the tools laid out for my favourite daily ritual – and sharing a little smile with myself.

Part 5: The bottom line, the simple truth, the thigh in the ointment

All of what's preceded this amounts to an explanation of why I started hormones, but it doesn't secure any particular outcome. This is an experiment, and like any good scientist, one must be prepared to get all sorts of results. If I try them and they end up doing nothing for me, I am perfectly prepared to accept that. If I stay on them for years but eventually stop appreciating the changes and abandon the whole idea, I am steeled to accept the more permanent changes as dignified monuments to my willingness to answer a question that was worth asking. ("Why do I have these tits? For science, dear boy. For science.")

But listen.

It's early. It's obviously stupidly early. But so far the experiment's been going great.

I've been in a consistently ebullient mood: grinning at nothing, dancing in the shower. I've started exercising (which I've never done uncoerced before in my life), because it turns out that once I make a single real decision in relation to my body, I feel more invested in it, and find myself wanting to use it / shape it / be in it more. I wrote this whole blog post, which (however self-indulgent and meandering it may be) is the longest-form writing I've managed to do in ages. I even went to a local market today and bought a mirror, which probably doesn't sound like much, but it's literally the first time I ever have. I've always recoiled from mirrors. But now, somehow, even before any visible changes whatsoever have occurred, I find I just don't hate the idea of seeing myself anymore.

Now, I obviously have no way of separating out to what degree any of these are actually chemical versus simply the excitement of embarking on a big and long-awaited change. It's probably always a mixture, and ultimately the exact ratio isn't terribly important. But one perceptible effect that I'm confident is chemical (cut to the Cyproterone looking guilty) is the way that my sex drive has vanished without a trace. That'll probably sound ominous to a lot of people, but I've honestly experienced it as a pretty pure and profound relief. It's led to me feeling much friendlier towards my genitals: like they're gentler and chiller and more a real part of me. (Contra's bit about the feminine penis was, I'm realising, a little bit life-changing for me. It was the first time I can recall somebody articulating a physical effect of hormones that I was capable of realising that I wanted.)

This will all keep shifting, of course. In relation to the sex drive, I've heard a number of trans women describe the process of sexual rebuilding on estrogen as like: your old sex drive gets absolutely nuked from orbit – no survivors – but then, slowly, something new starts growing, not quite 'in place' of the old thing, but in a slightly different place, which can make it tricky to even recognise it as a sex drive, because it feels so different from the only reference-point for that you've ever had. That's not been every trans woman on HRT's experience – every part of this is variable – but I genuinely hope it's mine. I'm really curious to know what might start growing in the places inside me I don't know about yet.

There's one last little story I want to relate. A few days ago, I was sitting on my couch reading and listening to Carlo Giustini, when I glanced up from the book and looked over at the Lucy Dacus poster on my wall. I suddenly remembered this essay she wrote about coming out, and all the little ways we usually don't get to have it happen on our terms, and I remembered the line "Coming out can feel like giving in", and before I knew it, I was crying.

I've always been a decent crier; this isn't some stoic facade that's never been pierced. (My facade is and has always been a pincushion.) But something about how close to the surface those tears were did feel meaningfully new to me. Historically, my crying has required a slower build than that: a steady uphill walk up to the emotional precipice. But this was like: five seconds ago I was reading about something completely unrelated, and now I'm crying. Which –

I'm sorry, I know this probably sounds chintzy and cornball, but ... is that not more me? Is that not drawing closer to me my more inhibited and authentic feelings? Me suddenly crying because of a line from a Lucy Dacus essay about being queer is obviously not the strange bit here; that makes all the sense in the world. The strange part is that, when I first read the essay last year, I didn't cry. I really liked the essay, and shared it with a few people, and remembered it – but I didn't cry. And like, clearly that's where you've got a problem, right? That's where you've got a body clogged with alien chemicals gumming up the works, rusting the pipes, and getting in the way of the business at hand, which is being a weepy lesbian.

(ಥ﹏ಥ)

Look: there's a lot more here that I don't know than that I do, and almost all of what's going to happen is still to come. It feels ludicrous to say given how long this post has turned out to be, but there honestly are a ton of aspects of this that I haven't even touched on. (Visiting a sperm bank! Wild new HRT virility research that means I may not have needed to visit the sperm bank! The complex semiosis of facial hair! Questions of differential outness! My name!) But in the interests of having this be readable by anybody at all – if you're still here, I love you – I'm going to wrap it up here.

So far, I feel really good about the decision to start HRT. It's making me feel more like myself, and making 'myself' feel like a better thing to be. It feels surreal and satisfying and obviously where I want to be going, and I don't know what more I could ask from a tiny quarter-pill and a little goop on my thigh.

[lost-technology]

So, I came across a tumblr post that brought to mind one UNPOPULAR headcanon of mine. I sometimes feel like I'm the only person in Modern Trigun Fandom who headcanons Vash as cis-gendered, or at least something "close-enough." Almost every fanfic I see and many, many fanarts that are a little more of the nudery variety will give him mastectomy scars (on top of the stuff he already has), a "plantussy" as the common tongue goes, the tag "vash the stampede has a vagina" and etc. And I'm sitting here, in my lonely world remembering the 2000's fandom where people loved joking about Vash's "fourth gun." Anyway, I have my reasons for my headcanon. The first one is "I just don't think Nightow was thinking about it." - It was a '90s manga. Any trans characters in those tended to be rather prominent. In Trigun Maximum, Elendira the Crimsonnail was explicitly trans. Zazie had their body-surfing between human hosts of both male and female variety and can't really be said to have a gender known to human understanding. I think there were probably some background-characters, too that I can't pick out off the top of my head. And it's like... Vash was just a guy? The second one is that he is shown (manga and OG anime), peeing at a urinal. He goes standing up. This is not exclusive to cis-men by any means, it just seems the easiest track to take given the above. And then there's my more hopefully tumblr-acceptable reason. I have a personal cis-headcanon for story-related angst reasons, which I've shared on this blog before. Click for ANGST!

I have, up until now, been afraid to share my thoughts on this (save my little angst headcanon) becasue... well... tumblr... I know it. I've been afraid that I'd be dogpiled and accused of transphobia and that it would cause some kind of Category 5 Tumblr Event in the fandom, ending in me getting harassed, fought with and blocked by most of the fandom. And it's like... no, I am not transphobic, I just have a differing headcanon than most on one particular character. I do definitely lean in appeal toward the "alien" headcanon, though - as in a situation that would allow "something different" that still has the peeing standing up thing going on. In one of my other fandoms, nearly the entire fandom headcanoned a male-presenting alien species as "kinda having both" - typically in a "hidden penis tucked up inside the body when not in use" combined with a cloacal-vent. It was pretty specific, cool, and something that fandom came up with entirely on its own because the intended age-rating for the show did not allow for vivid details on anyone's naughty-bits.

[hyggehooligan]

(Also last night at my wife's high school athletics event) she was catching up with one of her teammates she hadn't seen in a while and we were asking about her kids, and she said "we have a 6 year old and also 3 year old twins" and I said "oh twins! We have twin nieces and we love them!" And she basically brushed me off and said "haha well being a parent is a lot harder than being the aunties" like ok???? Casual misgenderjng aside, why the fuck would someone say that? First of all, my feeling with polite conversation and small talk specifically is the same as with improv: "yes, and." You want to be able to volley with people. I was trying to relate to her and she just shut me down. Also it's not a competition, I didn't imply it was, actually I implied that twins are very cool and fun! But she didn't want to hear anything about my experience.

Additionally, it was a special kind of shit feeling to be told that my experience was "less than" just because they aren't my children. I've always wanted to be a parent with my own children and it is becoming more clear that that might not happen, I am processing it, it is what it is; and I'm working on building other areas in my life to fulfill that need. I really enjoy my work with animals (cuddling some foster puppies as I write this) and I love my nieces and all my friends' kids and I feel so lucky that I get to be in their lives as they grow up. I want my own babies but I can't do that for a variety of reasons. As a queer trans person, logistically that is complicated and expensive. As a person with physical and mental illnesses it makes full time childcare difficult. But I have a lot of love to give and I give it freely where I can. Love takes many form and there are so many different types of families. We don't have to compare. We just need to support each other.

But I think it's very important to be sensitive to the struggles people might be going through in their families, whether we know about them or not, whether they are your friends or not, because these kinds of casual comments can really hurt. And the thing that gets me is that it was just such a rude and unnecessary response.

[hopeymchope]

Honestly I always saw Chihiro as more of an allegory for trans men more than anything else, in terms of how their storyline was treated. If there were ever an international/American live-action adaptation, I’d expect Chihiro to be explicitly adapted as such, television being television. Same with confirming Hiro is black (which apparently is a controversial idea in part of the fandom, at least on Twitter)?

Note: I'm reasonably sure that this refers to the first point I made in this long answer.

ON CHIHIRO FUJISAKI:

Oy... I find that the smartest move when it comes to Fujisaki is to treat them like the first two rules of Fight Club :P

I love the character, they're a sweetheart, but — as this anthology story accurately stated — the second you refer to Chihiro as either male or female, you're going to cause a, um, "heated debate." (Which is putting it mildly. It can swiftly explode into an outright war.)

It's the touchiest subject in the fandom. People who interpret the character strictly either way tend to not want to hear from the other side and have DNI warnings on their blogs and bios and all kinds of shit. I think this stems in part from just how personally people relate to Chihiro. They can be a very personal source of comfort for people with specific experiences.

Depending on how you interpret them, you might relate to the pressure Fujisaki's under to conform to normative gender roles/expectations OR their difficult experience with secretly being trans and being unable to share their truth.

If we look at the game strictly as it's written in the text, the character is about the former issue. But Danganronpa was released in 2010 into the Japanese market — not only a place where LGBT rights are well behind where they stand in America, but also two years before the issue of trans rights really started entering mainstream discourse in the West. So it's not out of line to suspect Chihiro's a stealth allegory about the trans experience.

AHHH, but the layers of the argument run even deeper! Because even among people who interpret the character as being trans, there's the separation of those who see Fujisaki as transfem vs. those who see them as transmasc. The former seems to be the more popular interpretation among the "Chihiro is trans" crew.

I keep using "them" and "they" because I just don't even wanna be in this debate. Clearly. Shit, I've never done any fics involving the character because then I'd probably have to say "he" or "she", and I just CANNOT. Too dangerous. I wish this wasn't the case, but this is where we're at.

HOWEVER... !

I do have ONE version of Chihiro Fujisaki who I think I can make a strong case for being defined a certain way. It's a post I've started to write twice and never had the guts to finish because, y'know, Chihiro fucking Fujisaki = first two rules of Fight Club. Suffice to say there's ONE particular "official" AU where I think there's an especially strong argument for one specific take on the character.

Maybe one day I'll break down that theory. Maybe. And then lose like a couple hundred followers the next day or something :P

ON YASUHIRO HAGAKURE:

I don't think I've ever heard/seen it posited that Hagakure could be interpreted as black before now, but I find the suggestion intriguing. I can definitely see where you're coming from. I think that'd work really well. Although then again? Maybe it's not much of a compliment to make Hagakure representation of black people in the DR1 cast, given that he's kind of a moron. :P

Japanese people are born into a variety of skin tones that can range from pretty deeply tanned to practically white as a sheet, but the typical beauty standard enforced in the culture is that the ideal = the whitest, most porcelain skin. "Whitening" products continue to be a major part of the beauty industry there today, which I think is a sad situation. So I always just assumed that Hagakure (and by extension, also Asahina and Owari) were representing the under-appreciated/put-upon darker-skinned contingent of the Japanese population.

But you know, when you take his hairstyle into account? It becomes VERY easy to interpret Hagakure as being of some African descent.

Furthermore, he actually looks a little darker-skinned in DR3 than he does in his DR1 sprites, which further fuels that potential.

It does seem logical to me that, if some international adaption were to be made? They'd probably take these darker-skinned characters as an opportunity to represent multiple races/nationalities. Black, Latino, etc.

[luckyladylily]

Hi, I saw your posts on the Trans Thing and just wanted to say, you seem really nice and eloquent. I was reading about that whole thing on demily's blog and by the time I hit that other person's addition I was starting to feel kinda bad.

I'm also trans, but my own experience isn't exactly the classic "I knew all along" (I only realized it recently, and while I'm still young I'm not exactly in my teens anymore), not to mention I'm not a binary trans person. My feelings surrounding my own transness feel markedly different from most other people I come across, and I sometimes feel discouraged talking about it because I worry my words might be misconstrued, a bit similarly to this situation. I also feel at the moment that I have no shot at transitioning and worry that I might never go through with it (the process is complicated and the world is growing increasingly transphobic these days). Hopefully this will change one day.

But yeah, what I was trying to say is that I'm glad I saw your responses after a whole thread that made me feel like experiences similar to my own were inherently transphobic (not that I believe this, but it's still not fun to read)

I appreciate you saying it helped. I don't want to take too much credit here, I really just think I have had a much wider range of experiences with queer people than some have (and much narrower than others) and I know what it is like to be young and unaware.

The trans narrative you get online in places like tumblr is really narrow. People who's transition was relatively straight forward often dominate the scene, and people for whom medical transition has not been easy or possible often don't speak up too much because we don't want to discourage people from trying. But the simple fact is that sometimes a satisfactory medical transition, even when hopes and standards are low, is beyond the reach of people for a variety of reasons. And that is to say nothing of a proper social transition.

I know a woman who is unable to medically transition for medical reasons, for example. She can't take hormones. I've known people for whom gender is complicated, where the goal is difficult to define and a transition might be far more difficult because they struggle with what their end goal would be at all. I've known many people who are unable to transition medically or socially for social reasons. I also know people who have tried a medical transition and the results were very poor. Some people can be on hormones for a couple years and see a huge transformation. Others can be on them for nearly a decade and see almost nothing.

Sometimes, even with low standards for what would qualify as a success, a physical transition is a practical impossibility. The same is true of social transitioning, sometimes it simply cannot be done for practical reasons. It happens, that is some people's reality. Struggling with that lived experience or the possibility of that kind of outcome is reasonable, and expressing that difficulty and the emotions associated with that pain is not an insult to people who don't struggle in that way.