#yes people who can't transition are still trans

[momett]

i think too many people on the trans discourse side of this site forgot the tucute vs. truscum debate and how it's a bad thing to use someones willingness/desire/capability for transition as a yardstick for whether or not they're "really trans"

[uncanny-tranny]

Social transition being seen (by some) as this super easy thing that isn't as hard as real transitioning (medical) is bullshit. Be critical of the idea that there are some trans people who just "have it easy" because they are trans or because they are trans in ways you may not be.

Social transition is just as difficult, hard, and rewarding as medical transition. Maybe it is not as hard for some, sure, but that is not the same as thinking that social transition is inherently easier or lesser. If you're socially transitioning, your voice still matters.

[moongothic]

oh my ... what you said about Oda using the "I want to be a man bc women are weak" trope made me think about Kuina.

I am bit upset we didnt encountered a strong swordwoman yet. I hope we will soon. Some people think Tashigi could be Kuina but that would really hurt me. She isnt near Zoro level at all. I dont want Kuina to be right.

This would be stupid.

But.

I think the best case scenario we could have, is if Zoro somehow encountered Ivankov before Mihawk, he could ask for HRT so that he could then go fight and defeat Mihawk "as a woman" and fulfill Kuina's dream for her and prove that a woman could be the strongest (and maybe get turned back into a man afterwards)

That's not how gender works of course, but Oda doesn't get it either, and I'm trying to picture the best case scenario Oda could actually give us

Because the only way Kuina's fears could be proven wrong is if both Mihawk and Zoro lost to a swordswoman at the end, and I do not think that is ever going to happen. Because the clash between Mihawk and Zoro has been like The Ultimate Goal of Zoro's whole story, so him losing to someone else would just feel bad

Like it'd be a lil dumb (from a queer POV (unless Zoro turned out to be a butch trans woman, which to be fair, valid, and I would enjoy the dudebros getting Fucking Angry About It lmao)), but like. Oda does have his issues with the gender essentialism and misogyny, and the way the chesspieces are arranged on the table right now, it's either that or Kuina's fears end up correct. And it definitely sucks

[autism-corner]

they want me so bad (<- asked me for my pronouns)

[ugly-anarchist]

I don't think you're a trans ally until you accept trans people who don't want to transition. And I don't just mean medically.

I mean trans men who look indistinguishable from cis women and trans women who look indistinguishable from cis men and they're happy like that. Who have no intention of changing their style, presentation, or even pronouns.

Some women don't look like the stereotypical idea of "woman" and it's the same for men. But they're still men and women. I need you to understand that gender has no bearing on appearance and people's comfort in their own bodies is more important than the fictional idea of what manhood and womanhood looks like.

And, yes, some people can't transition due to disability or funds or whatever and they're included in this, yes. But you need to accept people who don't want to either. Who willingly make the choice to not transition in any way because that's how they're the most comfortable.

A trans person who doesn't transition is just as much their gender as anyone else of that same gender. Please get that through your head.

To any trans men who don't want to transition or change their appearance in any way: You're a man. You've always been a man. You will always be a man.

To any trans women who don't want to transition or change their appearance in any way: You're a woman. You've always been a woman. You will always be a woman.

The way your body looks doesn't matter in the slightest, your gender is real and legitimate and valid regardless of any other factors.

[euniexenoblade]

tl;dr version: a very frequent and more recent flavor of trans exclusionism, transmisogyny, and transphobia at large has started to bubble up as an overpowering, overwhelming (and fake) acceptance of gnc cis people.

The actual long version:

Trans people, especially trans women, when they want to come out or explore their gender are often met with loved ones, family, or friends telling them "you can just be gnc, you don't know you're actually trans, men can be feminine, you should try that before scary life changes" we often talk about how this is a move by abusive, transmisogynistic people in our lives, who pretend to to care about gnc people, but in reality it's just transphobia manifesting as a false support. They often manipulate trans people into not pursuing transition and then lay on all the manipulation to convince us we were so silly to think we're trans afterwards.

Though there's a lot of people who still see it as honest support for the gnc, most of us are pretty clear that it's transphobic. But, another way this takes form is from other trans people, there are a lot of trans people with internalized transphobia who only view the existence negatively and when you talk about people potentially being trans, you activate their rapid internalized self hate: how can you say that? You can't know someone else's gender! You're forcing them to be trans! Men can be gnc! You're actually the transphobic one!

You also see it take form as things like "egg prime directive." "You can't tell the egg they might be trans!!!" Yes, you can. And you probably should. Trans people are not some mythical once in a blue moon thing. We are everywhere. There's lots of us. Being trans is not a bad thing, it's simply just a thing. Acting like you can't tell people they're trans is treating trans people like we're dirty secrets, a thing to be ashamed of, you're treating it like an insult. The truth of the matter is, telling someone they're exhibiting things associated with trans people can help speed up the process, less dysphoria to agonize over, less confusion as to what's going on, you can help kickstart a path to happiness.

But these people don't. Cuz they don't *want* people to be trans, and very specifically don't want people to be transfem. I don't need to get into the polls that showed most transmascs think telling a friend they might be a trans woman is morally wrong, you've seen it already. I don't need to tell you about how a transfem mentioned a specific person in the media seemed transfem, just for people to harass them (idk pronouns) off the site, just for people to confirm that yes - the individual in the news was likely transfem. And with that realization didn't come an apology, didnt come a new understanding, the trans and "pro trans" harassers stuck to their guns "recognizing transhood in others the way you see it in yourself is the same as transvestigation, the right wing transphobic conspiracy theory!"

This topic has been talked about a lot this past year, with the egg joke discourse, people getting harassed and ran off the site for correctly mentioning someone seems transfem, the constant harassment and blog deletion of trans women, the onslaught of harassment from the transandrodorks and terfs, etc etc. but I feel like it never gets correctly classified as a form of exclusionism. We easily recognize truscum exclusionism as what it is: "youre nb? You don't try to pass? You don't shave? Lol fake trans" it's the blue hair with pronouns schtick. It's gatekeeping the community. But, in the same respect, the "you can't just say people are trans" "it's ok to be gnc!" anti egg joke types of people are just as exclusionary. One end it's "you aren't a true transexual" and the other is "be gnc instead, being trans is a bad thing."

It's the projection of internalized transphobia into a policy. You can't tell anyone they're trans because you don't see trans people as anyone, you see them as weird monsters. That's a really depressing form of exclusion, but exclusion all the same.

[jingerpi]

[do not use this as justification for sexist bigotry, this is a personal thought relating to the investigation of ideas and not a statement meant to be derisive towards feminist theories.]

disclaimer out of the way, I've been thinking about transmisogyny a lot lately and it's really interesting to consider the nuances of. I think a lot of the objections to transfeminist theory simply come from sexism, but there is one point of potential critique that I think warrants further inquiry. to get at this we have to first clarify something else though.

the distinction of tme/tma might sound like an issue to a lot of transmisogynists, but most of their objections die away as soon as you clarify it's not "never ever experiences transmisogyny" and is perhaps more accurately "trans misogyny exemptable" as this gets at the reality of trans women facing transmisogyny regardless of what we do, there is no way out, we are the intended targets. other people face transmisogyny as a sort of warning, a clarifying statement that "if you are transfeminine we will Other you" and they're able to exempt themselves from this in most situations by clarifying "I am not a trans woman" regardless of the particular form that takes.

not everyone is able to exempt themselves from all gender related bigotry though. you cannot, for example, make this distinction (of not being transfem) to escape intersexism, which is why many intersex repeatedly experience gender based oppression and cannot opt out of it. this is oppression is fundamentally not an result of transmisogyny, it is a result of intersexism.

with that clarification out of the way, I think there is an understandable critique regards the simplification that

"men have power over women" <- correct, easily verifiable, almost everybody agrees. "Black men have power of Black women" <- still correct and non controversial (at least in feminist spaces). then you go to "trans men have power over trans women" and everybody freaks out, yeah? like people start to object to this understanding suddenly, even though we've only changed 1 thing, which we've changed before and nobody found issue with it in those other areas. many of these objections come transmisogyny, but I don't think it actually tells the whole story to write all of this off as transmisogyny.

I think why we run into an issue with this understanding (again, critique, not refutation) is that trans people's gender is often, perhaps even usually in flux. the statement "men have power over women" is trivially true, and is a statement on gender and misogyny. this comparison can be brought to trans men and trans women, but it's not without nuance, as the most basic information we can get from this is applied to gender, something which is often actively shifting for trans people.

the reason is don't see this as some kind of disproof of transmisogyny or something should be clear though, for two reasons (aside from the obvious statement towards trends rather than specific instances)

1. transmisogyny is fundamentally not the same thing as misogyny at large, and

2. though trans-gender is often shifting, we can use the prior distinction of exemptable and intended targets to largely do away with this problem.

despite the framework of misogyny not applying 1-1 onto trans people (many who identify as trans men have 'correctly' experienced misogyny), we can still see how it is useful to look at the intersection of misogyny and transphobia. While yes, trans men often experience both of these things, it is often not simultaneously like it is for trans women. As trans women transition our closeness to womanhood tends to increase so as our experiences of transphobia increase, so too do our experiences of misogyny- where as the opposite goes for trans men. it's not that one can't be sexist and transphobic to a trans man, they're not transmisogyny exempt in some metaphysical sense, but rather that for trans women our transness and our womanhood have a positive correlation, our transness and our womanhood are inseparable, we cannot denounce one by leaning on the other.

on the contrary, while trans men will still face transphobia and sexism which denies the validity of their transness and treats them with misogyny, as they transition their relationship begins to more closely match that of men, because of course they are men, this leads to them being able to escape transmisogyny not by being part of some magically 100% transmisogyny excluded class, but because they have the ability to meaningfully denounce trans feminity, to put down womanhood and to become "one of the guys", it's conditional, yes, but often the conditions are not to "pass" in the traditional sense but rather to express views aligning with the patriarchy and derision of feminity, i.e, misogyny.

I think we can see this in the popular responses to tme/tma discourse within the trans community: many trans men correctly recognize what is happening and stand in solidarity, transmisogyny is a genuine problem and it makes sense to talk about the intersection between misogyny and transphobia, trans men even experience both at times, so it is a good idea to stand against. Then, some men begin to talk about their experiences with denial of who they are and the misogyny that can come with that. This too is rather sensible, though it doesn't somehow counteract or disprove transmisogyny generally, it can be studied and acknowledge much in the same way we understand cis men are tested with transmisogyny to enforce what others call "toxic masculinity", despite them not being transfeminine. Then we have a third and wildly popular group, who appropriate the struggles of the second group, where co-option occurs by men who buy into or express sexist ideas for the sake of more fully exempting themselves from transmisogyny. Along with this, instead of recognizing the basis for transmisogyny as intersecting gender based oppression, because doing so would show their fleeting relationship to it, they redefine it as being intersection of two metaphysical identities generally, and thus "transandrophobia" is born, posed as being on an equal to transmisogyny, after all, they're both born from intersecting identities are they not?

of course, we know Androphobia is not something which actually exists, nor is Misandry - these arent axis' of oppression, and they largely know this too, but their goal is to obfuscate the ways in which marginalized men still benefit from their manhood. it takes what I think can be a rather genuine expression that trans men experience both transphobia and misogyny, and instead of grappling with the ways they can societally put down others to gain exemption from transmisogyny, the way their relationship to it is transient, they instead cling to it and invent new terms or fall on old bigoted talking points to justify doing so. "transandrophobia" yes, but also "sex based oppression" and "male/female socialization" these terms and rhetoric are regularly used against transfeminists by these trans men who have exempted themselves from transmisogyny, who have sided with patriarchy over their trans sisters, instead allying with the general terf movement at large and often implicitly misgendering themselves in the process.

and just to be clear, not exempting yourself doesn't mean you will experience the brunt of transmisogyny or to the same degree trans women do - you may be called slurs by bigots, may be harassed in given instances, or sometimes worse, but the systemic forces of transmisogyny go far deeper than negative interactions with individuals, and these transmisogynistic forces are again, aimed specifically at trans women. While I want to recognize the ways in which transmisogyny permeates all of society, do not see this and mistake it for support for the idea that everyone experiences it equally and their relationship is only changed by putting down transfemininity, it is and always has been about targeting transfemininity, the reason I clarify exemptable is due to society's constant enforcing of transmisogynistic ideas on everyone, even if the worst persecution is specifically and intentionally reserved for trans women

Lastly I want to say that these ideas are still developing and my understanding of them will likely change with time and discussion. I dont think these ideas are particularly new, they seem to underpin a lot of discussion on these topics, but this is my attempt to bring them from an implicit unspoken agreement into a more firmly expressed position. Doing so is necessarily going to expose flaws and I see that as a good thing, as doing so is required to elevate understanding of these theories to a higher level. Some of these flaws will be with my expression and understanding, and I will work to correct those, but some will likely be with the ideass themselves and it will take time for them to develop. Please read in good faith, thank you.

[drdemonprince]

so first off, sorry bc this is super fucking heavy.

re: commonalities between cis and trans men, and that other ask. something I've had to come to terms with is how even as a teenager before I had the concept of transitioning in my head - I still got all of the societal messaging wrt misogyny, etc. I totally benefited from it, even as a woman. I put other girls down. I was the cool chick. I cashed in where I could with it. i was absolutely a chauvinist when I transitioned. I felt inhuman as a woman, but I understood that ultimately that's the way women were *supposed* to be, as much as I wished otherwise. it took a long time to unlearn that.

my personal experience makes me very uncomfortable when I see other trans men talking about gendered socialization, or how overly negative people are towards men as a class. I wonder if they have ever sat down and really reconciled with the way they have, and do, benefit from their gendered position, or if they've convinced themselves they can't be a "bad person" by virtue of their birth sex.

I can't find a nuanced way to talk about this that won't be read in bad faith as essentialist rhetoric. rape culture is the system by which consent violation is normalized, its all the music and books and movies and bad relationships I assumed were normal and romantic as a young adult. I really, really hurt people, and I did it as men are encouraged to do, and as they are rewarded for doing. I found affirmation in hurting people, and it is so fucking easy to do this without even really thinking of it because it's the entire culture you've come up in.

I'm not even talking like, obvious cases here like phyrical domestic abuse & intentional date rape. there are so many subtle boundary erosions, there's weird gray areas around drugs & alcohol, there's attitudes and expectations in established relationships, there's the potential to exploit community for personal gain. there are partners who will fear you, and freeze and fawn and will not tell you "no."

a lot of the "we need a special word for masculine transphobia" types seem to also disavow the possibility that they hold male privelege. but we need to look at that shit, sexual or otherwise. it's scary to see guys who see women talking about it and they knee-jerk shout back "I'm not a rapist" and "not all men." guarantee some of them are, and just aren't aware of it. i was.

Thank you so much anon for this really brave, candid message. I think it's something that a lot of the trans guys crowing in my inbox about how cis men "are the bad gender" need to hear. (yes, someone literally said that to me). Portraying gendered categories, especially ones based on birth assignment!, as ontologically more evil or pure than others sets people up for abuse. Separating cis men out from trans men erases the ways in which trans guys can both leverage power and the ways in which toxic masculine norms are transmitted culturally to everyone regardless of assigned sex at birth. Lots of trans guys are palpably uncomfortable with their power, and can only see that relative to cis men, they experience transphobia and misogyny in greater amounts, and so they presume they must be in a highly victimized category. But they dont ever consider that as men they can and do often wield power over women -- especially trans women -- and they've got to fucking learn how to handle that reality responsibly, which many cis men actually do know how to fucking do. Especially multiply marginalized cis men who have been preyed upon and exploited themselves.

I think it's really powerful to hear you taking ownership of the actions you've taken that have hurt others, and the allure such actions had. Very few people have the courage to look their lower moments in the face and affirm that it's actually a part of them. If we're ever going to stop abusing and talking over women we've got to own up to our shit. I've seen what can happen when men come together to be vulnerable about their struggles, own their wrongdoing, and seek to change -- back when I was working in a men's drug treatment program. We can overcome this shit and take responsibility. But a lot of the birthday boy trans guy squad is incensed by even the idea of owing anything to anyone. Like a lot of MRAs.

[olderthannetfic]

This is might end up being super edgy or smth, but I believe that a certain subset of transwomen, especially those who transitioned late in life, don't understand that they did benefit from male privilege for a significant portion of their life and that they socially don't understand the social oppression women, transmen, and generall AFAB people experienced growing up as "women" from birth. And that at certain points they'll still recreate that privilege subconsciously. This does not negate the experience growing up trans, queer, or with other marginalized experiences, it's just one puzzle piece making up an entire human being.

Experiencing a female upbringing is something you can never relate and experience if you just never did so in your formative years. That also applies vice versa. Meanwhile these subset group of transwomen still try to insert themselves into a conversation where they just genuinely have no experience with. This isn't some game to see who's more oppressed, or who's a "true woman" or some other bullshit. Transmen are men who also experienced a formative female upbringing, that doesn't mean that they're any less men because of it. This is legit just about how your upbringing from birth and your formative years shape you in your later years, and yes that it something you can't "catch up" with, either you went through it or you didn't. To make this about transphobia or trying silence transwomen's voices is dishonest, and makes absolutely no sense, and I don't understand why this is some times framed as such.

--

[genderqueerdykes]

the election results have me feeling really bummed out as a closeted/pre-everything transmasc person. i feel like im grieving a version of myself that will never get to exist because im too scared

hey it's okay to feel this way, i'm sorry you're so scared right now

something i'd like everyone to keep in mind is that it's literally impossible for trump to change everything overnight. i hate our government but it has to fight with itself in order to function. individual states in the country are proposing some very questionable and unsafe bills, but it's not a reason to give up hope. there will always be states in our country like California who have and maintain strong enough trans protection laws that people will still have somewhere to go

change when it comes to government is gradual. it doesn't happen over night. that's how transphobes and republicans want you to feeel. they want you to give up, to become defeated and to never, ever try to transition. youre not wrong for feeling bummed, but do not give up on your transition because of them. that's what they want. fight like hell for your future. fight like hell for your comfort and identity

if anything now is the best time to get started. trump literally cannot do anything until January. and even then that's the motion of attempting to put bills and laws into action. attempting. there's no guarantee anything will be passed. reminder that we lived thru 4 years of trump before and barely anything happened. republicans are not as scary as we think they are. trump is a fascist yes but he can only do so much when it comes to bickering with the rest of the government

government moves slowly. change happens gradually. if you need help relocating to a safer place, feel free to ask. pursue transition now if you have the ability to. don't let some fascists get into your head and make you think it will literally be impossible. i promise it won't. they want you to get scared and feel like they're so powerful you can't do anything. fortunately the're not. you don't have to give up on your future. you don't have to give up on transition

take care of yourself, okay? it's okay to feel bummed but don't let them get too deep into your head. thats exactly what they want. they want all the trannies to detransition, go back into the closet, or never transition. and it's okay if people do this. but this is what they want. im going to continue being shamelessly trans. im going to continue being a tranny who looks acts and sounds queer. i know not every queer can do this. i know not every trans preson has that luxury

if you genuinely can't medically or socially transition it's alright. a lot of people just can't. it genuinely is very unsafe for many people. but i just want to stress that things will not become 1000x worse over night. you still have a chance. and there are people fighting for your right to transition right now. we will continue to fight harder. defeat is not an option- we will not let it be.

good luck, i hope you're able to feel better soon. take care of youreslf, no matter what you choose it's okay. but remember that change happens gradually. we will adapt

[is-this-yuri]

i think maybe the only thing that can't be yuri is trans men (unless a trans man feels differently about this)

hi let me tell you all a secret

i'm transmasc and also a lesbian. i consider myself butch. i'm in a relationship with a wonderful girl who is also a lesbian, and we joke about being yuri occasionally.

my pronouns are he/him, i have a beard and a deep voice, i've had top surgery, and to the general public i appear to be a cis man. i like it that way! i believe this aesthetic is as far on the butch side of the butch/femme spectrum as you can get. men, even cis men, can be butch. it just happens to be the default for them due to cultural expectations, so we don't generally think of it like that.

i never felt quite comfortable with the gendered expectations of being in a straight relationship. i've been reading yuri since i was a tween, and back then i considered myself a lesbian too. once i realized i wanted to transition to male, i thought i had to let go of the lesbian label, even though i didn't really feel straight. i even felt guilty and creepy for reading yuri, so i stopped doing it for a while.

i've always related to lesbian romance more than straight romance, so i decided to not let go of the lesbian label for myself. i'm also very lucky to be dating such an understanding girl that can look past my flesh shell and love the real me inside, and our love is very gay, despite appearances.

this may be a rare story, but it is real! yuri, yaoi, gay, straight, man, woman, they're all just words we use to imprecisely attempt to describe an infinitely complex reality. all words are like that. we made them up to create pretty much arbitrary dividing lines, and now most people insist on following those lines to a T. even though many people don't even agree on where those lines lie!

the truth is, words are fake. but love is real. self expression is as fluid as the blood in our veins, and true identities are as numerous as individuals.

and while yes, words are useful as a tool to communicate, they should not be mistaken for the reality they attempt to describe. the beauty of a tool that can change is that you can use it however you want. i will respect your words, and i'd want you to respect mine too. we can use different words to describe the same thing and still agree. there's no point in us telling each other we're using the tool wrong, as long as the job gets done.

what i'm saying is we should all take this stuff a little less seriously. describe yourself however you want, and i'll respect that! you can do whatever you want forever. but in a queer and open minded world, nothing and nobody are exempt from potentially being yuri.

[lyinginbedmon]

Howdy folks!

I'm not really comfortable making posts like these, because I'm extremely accustomed to just getting by Somehow without getting outside assistance. Historically I've just made do with whatever I had and over the years I've gotten pretty good at making "very little" seem like "just enough" at least, sometimes even "quite a bit".

But I recognise that's a long-term trauma response and, what's more, that I can't overcome this particular obstacle without external support.

So here's the situation: I have been on a waiting list for healthcare since 2019 and the most I've ever heard back to be sure I'm even still on that list is the occasional newsletter. There's a chance I'll hear back properly in November, but also every likelihood I still have years to wait.

Moreover, there's every possibility that the UK general election on July 7th will see a considerable crackdown on the availability of healthcare support for people like me. The current government just last week issued an emergency ban until September on medication for children of my demographic in the span of just 62 minutes.

The medication I've been taking since June 2020 has to be sourced from the grey market, and that makes it expensive, especially so if I don't order it in bulk. Which I frankly cannot afford to do due to a bunch of different problems over the last year. Whatever savings I had to the effect of paying for medication (or anything else for that matter) had to be dumped to prevent my bank from taking action against me just for not having enough money at once. I am not physically capable of working any more than I already am, and therefore have no available options to increase my income to resolve this myself.

So here's the rub: It's Pride Month, and my birthday is in 4 days.

If you have any spare change, please consider putting it towards the GoFundMe linked above. If you don't, please reblog this post so it hopefully reaches someone who can.

My supply will last less than 2 more months before I start to deplete parts of it, 3 months at the most overall. It's a dark time here for the trans community, and particularly for someone as far below the poverty line as me, so for my birthday all I ask is for a bit of assistance making it a teensy bit brighter.

[bloomshroomz]

I don't understand the whole, "You can't explain gender stuff to kids; they're too young to understand" argument. Refusing to explain anything just results in more confusion.

As a kid, I thought that trans people were a really cool hypothetical, but didn't realize that could actually be a real thing until years later. I used to try to find portals where I could step in and swap my gender in elementary school, because I thought that would be the only way.

In third grade, we had a project where we were given the letters of our names and pictures of our faces, and we were supposed to draw the rest for a sort of classroom student book thing. I dropped some of the letters in my name to make it masculine, cut off the hair, and drew stuff that I thought was cool.

The teacher saw this and said, "Is that really how you want people to remember you?" clearly expecting me to say "no."

But I said "Yes," and the teacher argued against this for a bit, before giving in and allowing me to use the art that I made. They still made me create a version that aligned with my AGAB, though. The masculine version was only kept in black and white.

(Fun fact: My chosen name is actually almost identical to the name I chose in third grade. I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted, even with my limited knowledge on what I could do.)

I fantasized about being able to change my gender a lot as a kid, whether that meant being a boy, or being neither a girl nor a boy, or being between/some sort of boygirl. I wished that I could "genderbend," because that was the terminology I knew.

I learned that trans people actually exist in like... Middle school? And people were super transphobic at the time, so I internalized that for a few years before accepting that I'm trans. That pain could've been avoided if I had been taught from a young age that trans people exist, and that it's okay to be trans.

I was a trans kid, and I didn't know that was what I was until I was a teen, because I wasn't given the opportunity to know. Trans kids exist, regardless of whether you give them language to express their experiences or not.

And I've met trans kids who knew that terminology, and knew that they were trans because of it. I've also met kids who weren't trans, but still experimented with pronouns and gender expression for a short while to see how they felt, because they were given the freedom to do so. It's good to let kids explore who they are.

I'm also openly trans, and I don't hide this from anyone. Kids understand, even if I'm the first to explain it to them. It's not a hard concept to grasp. My little brother was introducing me to his friends as his big brother even when I was expressing myself very femininely, and hardly any kids batted an eye. Some of them were curious why I looked so feminine for a guy, and it was easy to explain. It has also been easy to explain what being nonbinary means.

Kids latch onto concepts like gender more easily than you think. Out of everyone in my family, my little brother (who still isn't even a teen yet) has been one of the most supportive people when it comes to my transition. I can't think of a time when he has misgendered me- not in years, at least. He caught on fast, and he never gets it wrong. He even corrects people who misgender me. I get misgendered by the adults in my family much more than the children.

Kids get it. All you gotta do is explain.

[velvetvexations]

My early socialization experience was weird as hell.

My mother wanted a daughter to treat like a doll with all the extremely gendered nonsense that entails - and was also a second wave radfem and former political lesbian, which...yeah she was half all in on the gendered shit, but also half in weird denial about it. My dad...is the one I got my auDHD from, and the result was that he raised me exactly the same way his parents raised him - which was also very gendered, but he didn't notice that. He didn't notice how differently they treated him and his sister. He just noticed what they did right by him and what he wanted to repeat. He taught me how to use tools and rebuild car engines and be handy and outdoorsy; while my mother was giving me the whole "oh sweetie don't get your dress dirty (: oh yes you should be a #girlboss in STEM but fixing a chair is too dangerous for you to do alone why don't you get your dad to help (: are you suuuuure you can lift that 8-pound object???" thing, my dad was teaching me how to operate a forklift and training me with good lifting technique and encouraging me to haul shit twice my size and letting me learn the kinds of lessons that can only be learned by minor injury. Damned near the only thing he WASN'T doing was the whole "man up" schtick, but even THAT I kinda got a detoxified version of; there was a lot of value placed on keeping my complaints in perspective, building my emotional regulation to the...best of my limited ability, and trying to solve problems independently - again, his WHOLE thing was pretty much just "what would I repeat from what my parents did to me? What would I change?" With absolutely no regard paid to "what was different for my sister? What would have been different if I'd been a girl?" Because he straight up didn't notice that shit.

As a result I fundamentally don't care that he can't quite get gendered terms right for me, because whatever, he's always treated me like just a she/her boy anyway.

Meanwhile, like I said, my mother considered herself a feminist, full on tried to force herself to be a lesbian about it in her 20s, and yet she STILL constantly underestimated my physical strength, treated my appearance like it was the most important thing about me, and kept pushing me to sit down and "be polite" - but she usually didn't SAY these things had anything to do with me being a girl, and in many cases probably didn't even realize they were herself. "Girls can do anything boys can do - but also if you fight back against your [also prepubescent, but male] bullies They Will Kill You To Death They Are Stronger You Cannot Win" was a sentiment I got (in much less clear terms) ALL THE TIME from her through elementary school. She was obsessed with my appearance, in that distinct radfemmy "well sure butches are cool but uh by butch you still mean skinny in form-fitting clothes with a pixie cut, right?" kind of way. She would never say I should dress "more ladylike" and would get angry at family members who WOULD say that out loud - she even introduced me to the concept that crossdressing is fine (sometimes) and that trans men exist (in which she made it clear she thought of us as just weird butch women) - but she would get really, really weird and cruel if I wore jeans she considered "unflattering".

And that's just the thing, about why all flavors of radfems are wrong about how "socialization" does and doesn't impact people! She never tied gender to a good half or so of those messages, so even after I started transitioning, they still felt like they were always aimed at me. Meanwhile, I got the same kind of auDHD from my dad that made him never see the gender of his own upbringing, only "things my parents did that I would repeat vs. things they did that I would not" - I only realized just HOW aggressively gendered my mother's behavior was by studying sociology years later.

Terfs are wrong that early socialization is destiny, everyone responds to the same messages the same way, and GNC "men" are treated wonderfully.

T[i]rfs are wrong that we all ONLY ever internalize messages aimed at our ACTUAL genders and trans men can just shake off misogyny because it's not REALLY aimed at us, regardless of whether that claim stays in the realm of "because WE know deep down that something is off when we're being called the wrong thing" or gets all the way into the batshit belief that everyone has ESP for people's essential soul gender and GNC men ARE treated just fine and it's ONLY eggmode trans women who get mistreated (and they all do regardless of how well they do or don't perform masculinity) and trans men are all totally raised as men and never treated misogynistically in the first place because of that soul gender ESP.

And ALL radfems are wrong that there's a rigid, universally applicable set of rules as to what socialization looks like based on your gender - just because there ARE broad patterns that DO need to be acknowledged doesnt erase the fact that from person to person there's a LOT of variance for a LOT of potential reasons, and that ends up meaning that in order to figure out what it means for trans people, you DO have to do a whole individual level examination - including by diving into the whole dysphoria-inducing disaster that is being perceived as the wrong gender and all that comes from it.

Also I sometimes half-jokingly identify as cis-bigender because between the thing with my parents, the fact that when I hit puberty it became apparent that I'm actually intersex, and the fact that I'm pretty sure I'd have been on the femboy-transfem cusp had I been AMAB, over 10 years into transition I finally feel manly enough to go high femme when the mood strikes, and I've finally gotten comfortable calling myself a girl when it's funny, I think that's a very fun label and about as accurate and honest as any single term comes.

I wish I could frame this ask.

[ugly-anarchist]

While yes intersex people can use intersex as their gender identity, that isn't what intersex is. Intersex is a natural biological variation that cannot be transitioned into or out of. It is a description of the natural state of our bodies. It is the same as me being autistic, white, and short. These are descriptions of things about me that I cannot change but are still important facets of my life as a human being. (Obviously some are more important than others)

(While the body can be changed, there are separate words for someone who willingly changes the natural state of their body, like altersex. Intersex people can also be altersex.)

On the other hand, gender identity and transness are personal identifiers that can be chosen. (And by chosen I mean that while you can't choose your gender you can choose the label you use for it) And it is also fluid and can change over time. Gender looks different for everyone and isn't based on any material thing that can be observed in the physical world. Gender is based more-so in what makes you happiest, and the most satisfied with your life. Gender is just as real as everything else I've mentioned, but it's just not a physical thing.

This is why transness is self determined and intersexuality is not.

Trans and cis are adjectives that describe a person's experience with their gender. A trans man/woman is just a man/woman who has a different experience with their gender than cis people do.

But if a person exists who is rejected by both cis and trans people, then what are they? What are they supposed to do? How are they supposed to identify? Cis and trans as labels were not designed with intersex people in mind and often do not fit our experiences, but we're forced to use this binary because perisex trans people insist that you must be one if you're not the other.

But, trans people also insist that being intersex is inherently trans. Any deviation from the sex binary is seen as trans. Intersex history is seen as trans history, intersex animals are called biologically trans, and intersex experiences and terms are often taken by trans people and applied to themselves.

We're inherently trans but the trans experience is inherently a perisex one. Our experiences are identical to trans experiences but only trans people are allowed to say that. Our bodies are deemed the ideal trans bodies but the natural state of our bodies is used as proof that we don't fit in with trans people. Trans people wish they could gain access to the violence done to our bodies. Our bodies are held up as proof that gender and sex is a spectrum but if we talk about our complicated experiences with sex and gender then we're called terf psyops and cis invaders.

Where exactly are intersex people supposed to fit into the trans/cis binary? Our experiences cannot be defined in the same way that perisex trans people define themselves.

When an intersex person identifies as transfem when they were afab or as transmasc while they were amab or calls themselves cistrans or transmascfem or transfemmasc, this isn't an attempt to invade spaces we don't belong or destroy the trans community. We're trying to describe our very complicated experiences with gender with the limited tools that we have, the tools that have been forced on us but simultaneously denied to us.

Can we just let intersex trans people have their weird gender labels in peace? This isn't about you, it's not an attack on you or your community, it's just us trying to exist comfortably.

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

hello mod goldmary here is the promised essay about alear's gender

so. let's start with the obvious. the "dragons as a metaphor for gender" thing. it is very easy to slot Fell Dragon and Divine Dragon into agab and gender identity respectively. Alear was a Fell Dragon, now they're a Divine Dragon. Alear used to be their agab, now they're something else.

i don't have the spoons to find screenshots rn so uh. just take my word for it lol. but in Chapter 20, after Griss does the big reveal (which can be read as outing in this interpretation), Alear's friends assure them that they are who they choose to be, not what they're born as. Timerra literally says "if you wanna be a Divine Dragon, you're a Divine Dragon." actually fuck it we're going all in with the metaphor. so Chapter 20 in this interpretation is basically: Griss outs Alear and Alear gets (understandably) really distressed; they lose all confidence in themselves, they believe their friends are better off not associating with them, they feel like they've been lying to everyone, and they're worried that the people around them will see them differently because of this. Alear's friends assure them that it's okay, Alear is their friend, they're not lying about their identity, and they even affirm Alear's identity (see Timerra's quote above).

speaking of affirmation, let's look at a place where. there isn't much of it. yippee, Sombron's transphobic now. "No child of mine shall live as a Divine Dragon. Death was this one's inexorable fate" yeah fuck you too bitch. in Chapter 20, Sigurd mentions that Sombron "turned his back on [Alear]" and that Alear's "life was in danger." basically, Sombron disowned Alear for being trans and threatened them with physical violence, which unfortunately happens too frequently to trans people. Eveyle also disowns Alear in her boss dialogue in Chapter 21. i don't remember the words exactly but basically Eveyle calls Alear a coward for turning to Lumera (in this metaphor, finding a support network that affirms their identity) and says that they are not her sibling.

Sombron then kills Alear in what is obviously a transphobic hatecrime (this is a joke, the actual scene fits better as a metaphor for child abuse)

the Chapter 22 flashback (the one where tomato Alear commits PatricideTM) is. augh. as Alear is dying in Lumera's arms, they lament how they wish they could be more like her. Lumera is their role model. Lumera is everything they're not in their mind, even though they did something heroic. they are who they wished they were, but they can't see that beyond all the pain and trauma they've suffered. the fact that they're a Fell Dragon is at the forefront of their mind when they finally fall asleep. their last thoughts before the coma are literally their dysphoria like. ough agh ow.

can you tell i'm normal about past alear

also yeah. the blue hair is just. dragon transition. lol

i will admit i'm. not totally sure where Corrupted Alear fits into this metaphor. uh. BUT Emblem Alear is Alear fully embracing their gender identity. they've had doubts in their Divine-Dragonness before (aka they wonder if they're really their chosen gender identity), but here they embrace it. congrats to them on their transition. i've always wanted to make that joke. the really interesting part is that they don't totally reject their Fell-Dragonness, though. yes, their Emblem form is fully divine, but their normal form? still red and blue. there are multiple ways to interpret this and I love all of them equally.

oh yeah. Alear's immune to transphobia now. Griss rubs Alear's Fell Dragon lineage into their face, essentially saying that Alear will always be their agab in this metaphor. Alear's response? "Lol ok. why are you such a bitch." pop off king (gender neutral)

AND THAT BRINGS ME. TO CHAPTER 24. i have. an entire thing written about it. on my blog. lemme see if i can find it

OK HERE IT IS:

ok so if we're going with the idea that Alear is a trans allegory then

does that mean Past Alear's interactions with Alear in chap 24 could be read as gender envy

(incoherent word dump about Alear's gender thoughts under read more)

“this is like looking in a mirror. what I see... bothers me”

suddenly i am not normal. i am pointing and screaming and sobbing

it's like if you ever look at someone who is everything you wished you were, and you hate yourself for it, you hate how you are, you hate that you were born like this, and attaining that is so clearly unachievable, it is literally physically impossible to change the body you were born with to ever match that. you hate yourself for even having those thoughts in the first place, because this was how you have always been and always will be, no matter what

and you have no idea it is actually possible to change this, because you grew up with the idea that this is what you are, you have to fulfill that role like this this and this, and if you don't you're defective and wrong. if you want to throw that label away in favor of something else, you're a failure and don't have the right to live. you grew up with this label and it doesn't fit right at all, like a shirt 5 sizes too small, but you have no idea it's possible to change that label into something right. that label defines you and sticks to you everywhere you go, it defines your relationships with others, it defines your relationship with the world around you, and you wish you were born differently, that you weren't so aware of this crawling feeling in your skin.

but you push all of that aside, because if your father realizes you feel this way, he'll kill you, like he killed all of your other siblings, and that terrifies you. you keep walking down this path that you hate, because it's the safest option you have. and being safe is better than being yourself when you don't even know what "yourself" is.

----

tldr Past Alear has really bad dysphoria but can't really do anything about it because they don't even know being trans is possible. and also that trying to experiment is incredibly dangerous in this environment

again i want to point out how Present Alear doesn't reject Past Alear. in fact, they seem to come to a greater understanding of themself afterwards.

when it comes to like. the trans lens of Present and Past Alear's relationship, i've always seen it as Present Alear coming to peace with their dysphoria. Past Alear vents all of their frustrations with their life, with themself (Past Alear comparing themself to the Corrupted and then immediately following that up with how much they hate the Corrupted. ough), and Present Alear listens. they provide assurance to Past Alear, and though that assurance falls on deaf ears, Present Alear never stops being kind.

so. yeah. Alear trans :thumbsup emoji:

👀