#adrogyny

[leche-flandom]

This the funniest description of androgyny I have ever seen

[riks-hot-stuff]

*leans fetchingly against the table*

non-binary people don’t owe you androgyny. but if they owe you money, feel free to use your secret mermaid powers to send the message to them that you aren’t playin

[mouseratz]

I ♥️ girly shit. I never grew out of the pink and sparkly toy aisles and frilly things I just don't fit nicely into womanhood

[mylersworld]

SO REAL

"The nonbinary afab who goes by she/her, dresses femininely, and uses a push-up bra when I—" when you what? What's wrong with her?

Is she not nonbinary enough for you? Is the way she experiences her queerness and how she presents not perfect enough for you? Nonbinary people don't owe you androgyny, right? So why is she the exception? Why does she have to hate herself to appeal to your standards? Why is she any less trans—any less worthy of respect—cause it's "not visible"? Queer solidarity my ass. Don't spout this bullshit on Pride, man.

[goose-24-7]

so tired of people saying "goat is masc and lamb is fem!" like are we looking at the same characters (kind of a rant under the cut that you should probably read)

genuinely some of the most adrogynous characters OUT there but nope. masc. fem. totally

and you KNOW its just an excuse to give these canon nb characters a binary gender too bc its ALWAYS "up to interpretation" rather than "this characters gender identity IS nonbinary"

AND I WOULD LIKE TO STATE THAT. this isnt me bashing people who hc them to be masc or fem presenting. im talking about people who say CANON goat and lamb are masc and fem or vice versa

like i know "nonbinary people dont owe you adrogyny" but these characters. objectively ARE adrogynous

[millesbianforce]

How come the only time lesbians are allowed to be fat is if we're butches and/or tops/dommes. Like honest to God people on here loooooove to act like they love fat people but they only like fat people who are masculine because being fat is NEVER a part of femininity and adrogyny to you Ever. I see "fat femme appreciation" but only if they'll sit on your face or crush you with their thighs or whatever.

[destinidestati]

my fave thing about the trans community at present is the gaslighting that no one has ever talked down to trans mascs/trans men. i don't screencap every instance and instead block so i'm exaggerating. it's just a joke, gawwwwwd. right? right?

like of COURSE shit talking about trans men has no greater meaning or consequences. like real men wouldn't get so upset about being talked badly about online. right? right?

cos men are bad right? and attraction to men is bad. and why would you want to fake being a man when you were a perfectly good girl, right? right?

i think it is time to turn off the tumblr for a while because i like being in my trans adrogyny but like. if i talk a little too loud im suddenly a terf even though IM not the one reinventing the radfem wheel.

and again, like some of this shit has been implied to me irl over the years and tbh i still do not necessarily feel safe around other southern queers anymore.

cos i was born with tits and a pussy so i should be THANKful because other people WANT that. it's so immoral of me to be gender apathetic. to be agender. bad bad bad, right.

idk i cant block quick enough now of days.

[zolusbian]

sometimes noa clips the car keys to my belt loops if im wearing jean shorts (i am most often wearing jean shorts) and he doesn't have pockets and then he spends the entire time telling me i look hot like that #butch #butch4butch #adrogyny #gnc

[awwkie]

MCR 30 days challenge

Day 6, Favorite song from Conventional Weapons: Make Room!!!!

Another veeeery hard pick! There are several songs on this EP I love, but Make Room took the cake because of how catchy it is. I also really like the reference to Na Na Na with "everybody wants to change the world but noone wants to die" And the line "Got a taste for the cash and adrogyny", of course.

Honourable mentions:

Burn Bright

Boy Division

[thaoeatworld]

A Safe Place

TW/CW: Transphobia, Racism

As a child, my favourite book series was Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events." Across 13 books and a small collection of extra material, including a pseudo autobiography, Lemony Snicket (or Daniel Handler) detailed the struggles and triumphs of three, hyper-intelligent, orphans, trying to navigate a wicked world. As they end up in rather compromising situations, the children hold onto the hope that they will find, as Handler writes, "the last safe place".

This so called "safe place" was collectively imagined by the children as a santuary nestled away in nature, away from all the injustice and morally corrupt people they've been encountering. There, they would be at peace and protected. However, as they reach this location, they realise by ignoring the treacheries of the world, they would be also trapped. They would be forced to passify their interest in bettering th world and to accept falsehoods as fact. In the end, they acknowledge that nothing can be simply packed into neat boxes -- things are more complex than they appear is the take away.

For a series I started reading in elementary school, and occasional revisit as an adult, I now recognise that these were some intense themes I was dealing with. I bring them up now, because I find myself accidentally in a similar idealistic thought bubble when it comes to "safety". To some extent, like Violet, Klaus, and Sunny -- I flattened the realities of the world we're living in into binaries of "safe" and "not safe". And in doing so, I left myself in quite a vulnerable position and I suppose this essay is how I am processing it.

It's been almost 8 years since I've come out as non-binary. It happened in a quite cliche way as I often joke -- with a mental breakdown and shaving all my hair off during my year abroad. With a buzzcut, I struggled a lot with my image and understanding of self. I realised I hid a lot of my frustrations and confusions about performing womanhood, woman-ness, and everything in between behind my long hair.

Growing up, both my parents were very militant in this way about femininity. My mother's insights felt more like a typical assertion of either my sister or I being in her image. I also think, as I grow older, it had a lot to do with her experience under the Khmer Rouge regime where they cut all her hair cut as an attempt of standardisation under communism plus a detterent for lice. Either way, long hair, specifically on me, meant a lot to my mother.

On the otherhand, it meant a lot to my father as well -- though in a more annoyingly patriarchal sense. Some gems he said to me a sa child, which now I realise were a part of my gender unraveling of sorts, include: "You're a girl, you need to have pretty long hair." "You're a princess, you can't be anything else." "You can't skate because you'll mess up your legs and men won't like that." What a guy.

One of my cousins was equally as culpable in my gender-unraveling. She used to bully me, my sister, and my other cousin using nicknames meant to harm us. She used to call me "boy" because she felt that I wasn't "girl" enough. Simplistic, enough. Straight to the point. I was definitively not-girl.

Regardless, and expectedly, I resented all of that. It took me 12 years of being out of the closet (knew I was a little fruity at 10 years old, but who wouldn't be after doing so much theatre and being around so many virbrant human beings?) and a handful of gender studies courses to realise I was, well, a bit different. I had my "moment". I shaved off all my hair, focused on performing adrogyny, and updated all my social media account bits where you could add pronouns. I had a very underwhelming conversation with my family members, who still occasionally misgender me to this day. I embraced my perpetual struggle with gender quite openly.

Throughout my graduate studies, I met many wonderful queer people who nourished and celebrated the essence of me that I was still figuring it out. I am grateful for that. However, this journey was not without issues. Upon moving to Italy I faced an impossible struggle with a gendered language and way of life. I found solice in queer-coded spaces like roller derby and rollerskating. Somewhere along that assimilation into my "Italian" layer of myself, I stopped being andrognyous. I stopped thinking that I had to care, because people were already getting EVERYTHING wrong about me because I wasn't fluent in Italian. My appearance of being brown and a migrant (who sucked at Italian) superceded my priority to be acknowledged and identified by my queerness. It was just another confusing layer for most people who weren't that close to me anyway.

It's not to say I have no friends in Italy, because that is factually untrue. It is simply to say that I acknowledge that in the midst of my actual combatative moments of racism, ableism, and arguable emotional trauma from certain authority figures, that I was not experiencing myself, and therefore my gender, in full. I was a shell of a person. I often reflect on this in relation to my romantic break-up with my ex. I think "Well do I blame him? I was a shell of a person during my PhD so why would I want to stay together while he turns into a shell?" Perhaps that just something I tell myself to sleep at night, but to be clear: I am very happy and I wish him all the best in his personal journey.

Anyways, when I received my first academic position, I decided I was going to re-assert my claim towards my gender. I openly explained I was non-binary, to everyone. I was not going to be supressed by the social structures around me, and quite frankly I think the Netherlands was quite supportive of that (or so I thought). In my eyes, I was reclaiming control of myself, after years of well, not being myself.

So far so good I thought. Nothing egregious happened. Somehow I was expecting people to be very actively transphobic, I mean transphobes are EVERYWHERE. What transpired next, is a bit more slow burn, and harmful in its own minute ways.

In class and to my peers I always emphasise that I don't "keep score" for misgendering. I don't. However what I curiously noticed is that by being open about being non-binary, there was a shift in "carefulness" and emotional labour. More times than not, I ended up consoling people for misgendering me, despite me being very open that it was a joint learning process. I had more people looking at me for validation that I personally judged them to not be a shitty person. I had to tiptoe around conversations about LGBTQ+ and "gender stuff" because everyone's eyes were bulging in my direction whenever it came up. In some way, it felt like they were trying to gauge "how far" I am on the radical-queer-human-political-spectrum. Um yeah, okay, we're all a monolith I guess.

As a lecturer it's very public-facing and intimate. My whole job is being on display for students to stare at, contest, and pick at. I am the first point of contact when they're pissed at course work, methods, or anything relating to their learning. I'm not afraid of this -- of course. As a performer in cabaret, drag, and an avid science communicator. I'm used to being in the spotlight. Also, as someone who has fought very ruthlessly to escape my marginalising contexts, I'm used to it. However, this does not mean I'm fully equipped to handle every situation nor be capable of enduring long spans of pain and suffering.

And yet here we are. I have recently come to face with situations which have caused me to critically reflect on, and genuinely feel pain about the dual responsibility that comes with being out, and open, as "the queer lecturer". Much of the criticism from the "far right" (whatever that could mean) is that we're in an age where "everyone is queer". This always makes me laugh, naturally. We have always existed. LBGTQ+ people have always existed! We were just actively ignored, oppressed, and murdered throughout history. Do you know how terrible that is? Imagine having the capacity to just acknowledge that you have the opportunity to exist without thread of being senselessly harmed, outright murdered, or a focal point of distress and shame for loved ones. Imagine being able to just be, without having your guard up. Imagine. Imagine the toll this has on LGBTQ+ people every second. I'm not here to fetishise my own sadness nor other LGBTQ+ people. I'm just here to ruminate a bit on the weight which many of us, carry internally.

I feel that one of my responsibilities is to be an example to my students, but also a resource for those who relate to me and my identities. I am a safe place for people like me. That's so much work isn't it? Not only am I bound to be a good educator, I'm also entangled in the micro-politics of being a "good" person to so many kinds of people. I'm a "box-checker" for crying out loud. I'm first generation American and university student. I'm brown. I'm queer. I'm disabled. I'm an immigrant. I'm from a working class background. My parents are refugees. I'm probably some sick "progressives" wet dream. These are the pains I carry, histories which shape the very foundation with how I see, engage with, and experience the world. It's so much.

It's impossible to please everyone. I know that. I'm sure everyone knows that to some degree. But all I wish, genuinely, as I lay here very sick with the weight of the stress I am feeling on my entire being that I could stop apologising to everyone for being human. Even when I am physically sick from stress and pressure, it is impossible for me to tear myself away from "work". This just links back to my reflections on burning out doesn't it. Have I begun to burn out again? Is this the initiation of another unraveling? The GENDER edition?

I'm not sure. I hope not. Because I learned nothing before, so what can I learn this go around? Pedro in his attempts to console me these last few days remarked "I'm sure you'll learn something at the end of this." Will I? Will I learn to be "stronger" perhaps? Why must I be hard when I am so effortlessly soft? I enjoy my tenderness within the world, it allows me make such meaningful connections with ideas, people, and things.

In this moment of concern I wanted to shave my hair again. My mom always told me that in Khmer culture, we shave our heads when there has been a great pain. People often do it as a part of funeral rites, for close family members. I watched my aunts, uncles, and cousins shave their heads when my grandpa passed away. When my mom went through a fissure in her relationship with a sibling, she shaved her head. It is how I guess, "my people" and I mourn and grieve. If I shave my head, will people stop misgendering me? If I shave my head will my students see me as a "stronger" resource or "safe place"? These are some of the thoughts that rattled my brain. I haven't cut my hair yet, but I'm still thinking about it.

[myriadism]

So I am being schooled in notes on this post. It seems that even as a nonbinary person myself I have a fair amount to learn about adrogyny and gender and lack thereof and not judging the based upon how like a cis person one may look on the outside. I think you all have convinced me around to your ways of thinking, and perhaps I should have considered longer before writing this post up so late at night. I'm glad to see the enthusiasm and to find that the new show is beloved by so many who are thoughtful in the topics of non-binary gender identities.

I also found out that Skarsgård is an executive producer of the show and not so much an actor who was selected from a long list of auditions as he is the fellow who identified with Murderbot and stepped up to play him. That clears up many things and is good to know. Props to Skarsgård for such an empathetic portrait of the construct SecUnit we all know and love.

I simply must say, as much as I have been enjoying and delighted by the adaptation of the murderbot TV show... I am having trouble referring to murderbot with its proper pronouns when it is being played by such an obvious cis male actor guy. I suspect that they chose Skarsgaard(sp?) because he is a good height and perhaps also has experience doing stuntwork and is willing to get into choreography and inhabit the physicality of Murderbot. And his facial expression and voice intonation is spot on, the fellow has all my respect. But I still find myself slipping into he/him on occasion and I wish that they'd managed to settle on someone a little bit more androgynous looking. (The blank like a kendoll cgi is well done but it weird me not that Murderbot is all flesh colored with no visible inorganic parts when nude too) And someone not so white even though murderbot's looks are entirely undisclosed in the original novels.

It's all good though. Now I have a way to distinguish early fans who developed some non-white not so masc murderbot designs before the TV show and the TV show fans who will have a smorgasbord library of fannon designs to appreciate should they get tired of drawing Skarsgoard(sp?)

Edit: it's Alexander Skarsgård! I was close

[infiniterichesinalittleroom]

This again is why I despise Prince William and Prince Harry.  There’s a crackdown on possession of firearms in England, but the only people we ever see with guns are the stupid Royals, yet nobody says anything! I think violence is ingrained into our societies because of the abattoir or slaughterhouses, and we usually find that however a person is allowed to treat animals is also the way they feel entitled to treat humans. On the subject of gender, I think Gertrude Stein was the first image I saw of someone who just wasn’t prepared to follow on behind. But it isn’t always simply a question of heterosexuality or homosexuality. There are as many variables in heterosexual society as there are in homosexual society. Describing a person in terms of their sexuality actually tells you nothing about that person. The human race is a lot more varied than we are generally encouraged to believe. So, I therefore found such as Gertrude Stein to be interesting because their androgyny seemed to unite male and female in one, and didn’t close off any new or further experiences, which sounds very healthy to me. This is why early David Bowie and Patti Smith seemed like messengers, yet most of us still live in societies that insist upon painfully limited gender roles, and the assumption of male heterosexual rightness is still the absolute face of global politics.

MORRISSEY

[radsmutt]

Only because everybody said it couldn't be done. See what the boys are adding you have to take away. They're adding their hips and the busts. And you're taking away and you are doing just the opposite. You're taking away from it. You're trying to compensate; in other words, your face doesn't match your body but when you're on stage it looks that way. Men's jackets fit loose but the pants were skin tight. And if I ever took my jacket off on stage the dirt was out. But you know the strange thing is I never moved any different than I had when I was wearing women's clothes. The only thing changed...they only saw what they wanted to see. And they believed what they wanted to believe. You couldn't fool children though. The little ones, never. You tell them, 'Oh, that's a guy,' and they say, 'Oh no, mm-hmm, that's a lady.' Some say sir and some say ma'am and that's the way it is. I never change the expression. It makes no difference to me.

Storme DeLarverie from Storme: The Lady of the Jewel Box

[birds-and-the-enbys]

Some body types will never appear ‘adrogynous’ in the stereotypical way

Curves will make you appear feminine, and it’s not always as simple ‘wear baggier clothing’

Certain face shapes and dark body hair will make you appear masculine, and it’s not always as simple ‘use contour, shave more often’

Some ppl can’t use the same methods as other trans ppl to pass for medical or personal reasons

Think of this before you say ‘you’re not even trying to pass’ or ‘if you look like [x] how am I meant to remember your pronouns’

Yes, some nonbinary ppl don’t want to look adrogynous and we don’t have to be

But for some nonbinary ppl, androgyny will always look differunt from the stereotype of what androgyny is and we’re important too

[sugar-coated-saphic]

Don't lose yourself in other peoples ideas and expectations

[jkontumblr]

Mike David