#gibberasks

[gibbearish]

Hihi there. I came from an ‘am I trans quiz’ that I’m pretty sure was made by you. It’s weird- recently, I’ve been thinking nonstop about how much I would want to be the opposite gender. But I haven’t felt like this at all until just recently. I mean, sure sometimes I think about it, but it’s not at all like it has been up until now. I’ve wanted to look a lot more like the opposite gender. Like, yknow, different hair styles and different clothing styles and such.

Is this like a phase or something, and will I get over it?

those last two questions unfortunately are something i will never be able to answer, until it either comes to pass, or it doesnt. i can't tell the future. what i can tell you, however, is that something being a phase does not discount it from being a valuable use of your time, nor does leaving that phase mean you were wrong in the first place. it just means that your desires have changed, and that's fine! like, think back to any phases you had in your childhood that eventually passed over - perhaps dinosaurs, perhaps greek mythology, perhaps emo/scene, you get the gist. does the time you spent in those phases feel wasted? have the lessons you learned, the perspectives you gained abandoned you? or are they now simply one part of the tapestry that is you?

it may be a phase, it may not, who's to say. certainly not me. the only one who gets a say in that is you. you are allowed to say "this might be a phase, but i'm going to do it anyways, because it would make the version of me that i am now happy."

do not live your life in such a way as to leave behind a perfect corpse for others to marvel at. live for you. live now, and live happily. and if the life that would make you happy is one of a different gender, well, then, go on and live! and if some day you do change your mind, decide that the life you chose no longer suits you, that just means it's time to enter the next phase. thank this one for spending time with you, for teaching you the lessons it did, for bringing you comfort when you needed it, and move on to the you that you want to become. marie kondo that shit and live your best life. i believe in you

[florencepout]

steeveharrington replied to your post “its super difficult to listen to james marsters with an american...”

he was in a few eps of torchwood i think and honestly??? mood

i saw a behind the scenes video of the buffy musical episode once, and he just sounds wroNG??? i don’t understand

[gibbearish]

im kind of bawling my eyes out because i took your am i trans uquiz for just any help or advice or just answers and it really helped me find the words i needed to tell my mum and i just wanted to say thank you and i love you for indirectly helping me in some kind of way

AUGH THANK U FOR THESE NICE WORDS !!! + HECK YEAH am glad i was able to help and that it sounds like it went well, am v happy for you!!

[gibbearish]

hello i’m questioning if i’m transmasc rn and i took your am i trans uquiz and the parts about wishing you were a ‘real’ [agab]/feeling like you’re not good at being your agab and feeling like a ghost possessing your own body hit me like a train. i’ve taken so many am i trans quizzes over the last couple days. this is gonna sound weird but i hope i really am trans so i don’t have to be perceived as a girl anymore. i get random gender crises every few months but this one is the worst i’ve ever gotten and i can’t figure out if i’m actually trans or not 😭 i feel like a fake because i never showed any signs as a kid and also this particular gender crisis only started about a week ago and i felt pretty fem before that. also my best friend is a trans guy and i hang out with him literally all the time so i’m scared i’m just copying him or something (i also get really jealous that he gets to be a boy lol) anyway sorry for rambling in your askbox but if you’ve got any advice for me i’d really appreciate it 😭

sometimes when yall from the uquiz message me i have to physically restrain myself from saying "my advice is to read back everything you just said." and usually i can manage to tamp down the urge and handle it a lot more delicately, but. i am losing that battle currently. you arent having random gender crises every few months, youre having one ongoing crisis that you keep talking yourself out of. i try very hard to avoid giving solid answers on these bc no matter how obvious it can seem, i still have no way of knowing for sure but. like. dude.

youve taken a bunch of quizzes about this, and based on what you've said here im assuming youve gotten similar results from most of them. you keep having this same crisis every few months. you want to be trans so you dont have to be seen as a girl. youre jealous of your ftm friend because he gets to be a boy. look me in the eyes here and tell me you dont know exactly what all of that means

[gibbearish]

wyd tonight king

laundering anons hbu

[gibbearish]

i’m just going through gender crisis rlly bad rn and idk what to do,it’s crossed my mind many times but it’s usually easier to brush off. i’m assigned female and love my female parts sometimes but other times i want a flat chest more than anything? something that stops me is the way alot of males are portrayed, i don’t wanna be seen as that. i don’t think i wanna be seen at all

hey friend, as far as this goes it sounds kind of like you know where you want to be identity-wise but your issues are coming more from societal perceptions. the way that men are in media is not reflective of real life and is not a death sentence, good men do exist and you could add another one to the world if you want. you don't have to base who you are off of what the people around you want you to be.

also, dysphoria irt specific parts but not others doesnt discount you from transitioning. i want top surgery at some point but dont want bottom surgery, and even went to a pelvic floor physical therapist to help w a disorder i have so that i could actually Use what i was given. youre allowed to be a boy with "girl parts" if thats what would make you happy:3

[gibbearish]

just wanted to thank you for the “amni trans” uquiz!!! it helped me a lot

aaaaa ty!! im rlly glad💕💕

[gibbearish]

I took ur trans quiz and I want to tell my parents I'm trans but I don't know how, do you have any advice

hey there! i have to offer multiple apologies here, both for how long its taken for me to respond to this but also that the answer i have is not going to be very helpful ;0; way before i knew i was trans, i knew i didnt want my parents in my life or want them knowing much about me as a person, so p much all of my experience is in the exact opposite direction of this kwjfksbfkdbfkd

i will however post this ask publically so if any followers have advice theyd like to weigh in with that would be swagtastic

[gibbearish]

re: your post about vaginismus. idk if that's specifically what i have but i definitely have some sort of pelvic floor disorder going on and i was wondering if it's not just an option to never ever partake in any sort of vaginal penetration ever? everyone always acts like you HAVE to treat it by, you know, putting things in your vagina. but i am just not okay with that even remotely even a little bit ever at all. i would genuinely consider any kind of penetration to be sexual assault and would never ever consent to it, not even for medical purposes.

i tried pelvic floor therapy that involved "external" work like breathing & muscle exercises but it really felt like it wasn't helping and was so unjustifiably expensive that i honestly feel like i got scammed :/

i've even spoken to two separate sex therapists about it and all they did was tell me my feelings were valid but never actually offered any helpful insights or advice, leading me to believe they've never encountered anyone like me before, like i'm maybe the most uniquely messed up person in the world to the point that not even sex therapists—whose whole job (i perhaps falsely believed) is helping people with sexual issues—know what to do with me.

so what is someone like me supposed to do?

so before i say anything else, i do just want to offer a disclaimer that i am not a medical professional and everything i say should be taken with a grain of salt, everything im gonna be saying here is speculation based solely on the things youve said and my own personal experiences. i also want to add my generic "if youre in the united states, do everything through planned parenthood" advisory here, they have excellent service and idk how they vet their references but it's kept me from having bad experiences through them so far, so it seems to be working and i highly recommend going through them for anything sexual health related if you have the ability.

now, with that out of the way, on to some more specific advice. so firstly, no, you do not have to treat it. your body is yours and you choose what happens to it. however, that doesn't automatically make every choice a healthy one. you could choose to never brush your teeth or go to the dentist, and anyone who tried to pin you down and forcefully clean your teeth would in fact be assaulting you, but that wouldn't change the fact that we brush our teeth for a reason yknow? it's your body and your choice, and you are allowed to make unhealthy choices if you want, but you should be able to ackowledge them as what they are. and i understand penetration can be scary and hard, believe me, but there are genuine health reasons for doing so. pap smears are how they check for cervical cancer (i just got one done today!), and even outside of that there are things that can cause major problems if left unchecked. for instance vaginal atrophy can make the walls of the vaginal canal dry out and stick together, and if that happens for an extended time with nothing to separate them, those walls can then fuse to and grow into each other. in severe cases, the vaginal canal can fully seal shut, the worst case i read about was a woman in an old folks home who had atrophy from menopause and no sexual activity, so she only found out when the growing skin sealed her /urethra/ shut.

i'm not telling you these things to scare you, but just to hopefully give you some perspective on why medical professionals are so insistent about it. the purpose of invasive tests like pap smears is to prevent having to do much more invasive work down the line to fix things, like cancer treatments or surgically reopening your pee hole. and that's not to say if you don't try to treat yours, those will 100% happen, my point is that if youre not able to work through this fear, you simply won't be able to take those preventative measures. like i said, its your body and you choose what happens to it, but like. there is a legitimate reason for people wanting treatment for vaginismus beyond just sex, i know some people do come at it from an angle of "rrgh sex is what makes us human you must be able to have sex ragagagahg" which is obviously fucked up, but a lot of it does actually come from a place of genuine concern for your health. also, this is just a sidenote, but the breathing and muscle exercises /do/ help, however if youre unwilling to consent to penetration then they don't really have a way to check if it's working and give you pointers on which exercises would actually help you the most. obv you know your situation better than i do so use your best judgement as to whether other factors point to it being a scam, but as someone who's been through that therapy i can confirm that those steps are a normal part of the therapy for it and aren't useless. it's just that therapists can only really help as much as you let them.

and with that, i want to move on to something else, and i know i said this before but i want to reiterate that everything im about to say is entirely speculation. that being said, im getting the feeling that maybe youre not being entirely truthful with yourself about this. you say that you don't want penetration and would never consent, but youve visited multiple doctors about it and are now reaching out to me for answers too. im not sure if the reply i got on that post to a similar tune around the same time was also you or not, but if it was then you reached out through multiple channels as well. and to me, that says that maybe you /do/ actually want to try treating it, but are being held back by fear. whether that fear is due to the previous bad experiences youve had or something else in your past, i couldnt tell you, but given all of that and esp the "maybe i'm a uniquely messed up person" part, i get the feeling that youre not as ok with having it as youre saying you are, and as id wager you mightve told those sex therapists? like. that to me doesnt sound like the statement of someone who is content with the way their body is functioning. to me, it sounds like you are unhappy with having this disorder but your previous attempts to resolve it have stalled out or gotten you nowhere, so youve convinced yourself you're fine with it rather than risk another failure.

because here's the thing. im very careful when talking about this disorder publically not to say that it makes one broken or that sex is a necessary part of being human. and ive been paying closer attention to how misunderstandings like these happen lately, and ive noticed that you can usually learn a lot from people based on what they get defensive about; "if the shoe fits" is a saying for a reason, after all. so when people read my post simply offering resources to those struggling with treatment and come away from it hearing "you are broken and should fix this," it tells me that that interpretation was likely already in their mind before they started reading, that that was the lense they were already viewing my words through. so when they hit a part that seemingly confirmed it, they got defensive. and again, this is all 100% speculation, i know nothing about you beyond this ask and can't know if this is accurate or not. all I'm saying is like. really take some time to sit with your feelings about this disorder and assess if you genuinely are fine with having it. idk if this was included in the version you saw, but in one of the additions to that post i mentioned that like. for a long time i felt the same about my disorder, i'm transmasc so there was something validating about only being able to do sex like a gay man, of not physically having the vaginal option, but. after a while i realized that was just a bandaid for me, an excuse to be ok with it rather than an explanation. whether i wanted to do it "the girl way" or not, i didn't like not getting the choice.

and that's a theme ive actually seen repeated in the tags of that post a bit, ive gotten comments from quite a few ppl saying "i'm ace so this shouldnt matter to me. And Yet...👀" because. like. its your body!!! you want to feel like you have full control over it!!!! choosing not to have sex or not to allow penetration can feel fundamentally different than basically having it dangled in front of your face your whole life but just out of reach. like, there are a bunch of people out there getting treatment because of this post specifically so that they can be ace but Harder. so like. idk, i think what im trying to say it that like. you dont have to try to make yourself be ok with penetration for any reason if you dont want to. but to me it sounds like having the choice could being you peace. reading your ask back, i notice that you didn't actually say youre ok with having this, just that youre vehemently /not/ ok with penetration, and idk. to me that sounds less like peace with where youre at and more like fear. and i think dealing with that fear might get you much further in accepting this part of yourself if just trying to be ok with it on its own isnt getting you anywhere.

now, all of that aside, if that speculation is wrong and it is just outside pressure giving you conflict, that gets a bit more difficult and idk how helpful my advice here can be. my first thought would be to try reaching out to a regular therapist rather than specifically a sex therapist, that way if your aversion to it turns out to be like trauma related or smth, they could help you deal with it, whether by helping you unwind that aversion or by figuring out why external opinions are influencing your self-image so much. other than that, maybe just. try really driving home that its not the penetration aversion thats giving you problems, but your feelings /about/ the aversion? im not sure how you brought this up to them but therapists can sometimes do this thing where they latch on to one specific idea and ignore what youre actually telling them, so i can imagine them getting easily sidetracked into thinking the conflict was about the penetration itself so when you said you were ok with not doing it, they were like "oh! cool well problem solved then, they just needed validation that theyre allowed to not want sex!:))!!!!!" which. sucks massively that that can happen, but therapists are human too and are not immune to having their own internal biases. either way, unfortunately without knowing more about your specific situation+therapist experiences, i don't think i can offer much specific help? it could have just been issues with those specific therapists, or it could have been like with the breathing+muscle exercises where there was something more going on behind the scenes that you werent aware of, or it could be that your issues with this are entirely unrelated to sex which is why sex therapists werent able to help. i would encourage trying more therapists, but i also very very much understand the mental exhaustion involved with that whole process (currently procrastinating setting up my own therapy appointments because my last three have sucked, so seriously, i /very/ much get it kwbfksbfkd) so i get it if that advice rings hollow. i will say though, ive heard from a friend who's currently in therapy that good therapists will indeed ask follow up questions and actually dig up the part thats bugging you, whether you entirely want to give it up or not, but i don't know if that translates for sex therapists. i should hope so but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ who knows. either way though, them not being able to help does not mean youre uniquely fucked up, it just means that they werent the therapists for you.

the only other idea i really have is to just like. maybe familiarize yourself with signs of cervical cancer? i know very little about it myself so i dont even know if there are other external signs, but id assume yes and that people dont just Randomly Drop Dead One Day. so i would research like. what pains to keep an eye out for, changes in urinary habits, things like that, bc if it were me i think that would probably help me feel better abt the whole situation would be knowing i had a backup for the medical aspect.

this got really long and idk if there's a tldr that could do it justice but i think if i had to condense all of this down i would say that no, you are not broken for having this disorder and you do not have to fix it if you don't want to, but i kinda get the feeling that you maybe do want to? however that is entirely a guess that could easily be wrong, so if it is, then i would reach out to a non-sex therapist, because either way it does sound like these feelings are effecting you negatively quite a bit. you deserve to genuinely feel happy with your body, not to feel like the most uniquely messed up person in the world, and a good therapist can help you get there regardless of where those feelings are coming from.

but yeah, i hope this is helpful in some way and that the speculation was ok, it just. really sounds to me like your feelings on this might be more complex than you're letting yourself feel. and i hope that in the event i am wrong, i offered enough possible alternatives to still be helpful 💕 best of luck

[gibbearish]

anon im not gonna post that one, not bc of anything you said dw, im just not 100% sure if we are thinking of the same person bc i havent been paying attention if the posts i saw all came from the same op, and even tho there's no names in either of our things i still wouldnt feel comfortable spreading that w/o having seen it firsthand. that being said, in the event that we are: jesus fuck???

[gibbearish]

Hi! I saw the post you made on that post that was made on the stuff going on with tumblr staff and whatnot. I just wanted to say that it was such a relief that I wasn't the only one who saw it and went "that can't be right" I was starting to think i was going nuts.

You wrote that post super well btw

ok bye have a nice day!!!

when making that post i anticipated my askbox would be getting more action than it's seen in a long time but i . did not anticipate it being like this. yall are being so nice i feel like i physically cant not have a nice day. idk how to put it into words so enjoy this artistic rendition of my current state

[gibbearish]

got probably trans in your quiz. what does it mean if every time I get 'you're transmasc' or I go to that turn-me-into-a-boy website and click on it I get tears in my eyes :' like are those good tears or bad tears I'll never figure out (silly question you don't need to answer take care of yourself <3 )

actual question is the whole 'oh I wish I was a 'real' girl I wish I was better at being a girl' (I'm afab, you can replace girl with whatever the agab is of the person) a trans thing??? I always felt so weird and overdramatic about that because it's like I have the. tools that'd make it easier to 'be' a woman in a sense by virtue of being afab and having feminine characteristics but I hate them except so when I'm like 'wish I liked these and I could just be a woman' I'm like HUH??

anon i want you to reread the first three words of this ask and ask yourself if they already answer your question

[gibbearish]

Sorry, detective anon here. I was asleep.

A clue would be good! I was assuming there was some ama I missed, or it was a paid thing.

;33

[gibbearish]

Hey, just wanted to say thank you so much for making that post calling all that stuff out. Maybe it's me blowing smoke out of my ass, but it feels like the posts that try to pin blame on transmascs for this don't seem to understand that the ban shit going on right now's not just been going on for a long while, but has basically been affecting everyone. Transfems like me might be getting hit the most noticeably at the minute, but from what I've been hearing this site's had a rep for screwing everyone who isn't "normal" over.

Maybe folks try to pin the blame on others because its easier to send anger towards people who can be bullied compared to a CEO who... apparently can also be bullied but can also just leave and ignore it all whenever the fuck he wants.

Again, thanks for calling that shit out. Hope your day goes good.

aaaa thank you /w\ + i think it might be less about who it's easier to attack (although that 100% is part of it) and more about like. taking advantage of mass anger / mob mentality by redirecting them to their personal target if that makes sense? like. not saying these are equal at all but just using it as a metaphor, from what I've heard neo nazi groups have stepped up recruiting during the i/p situation because when everyone is already mad at Israel The Country/Government, it's easier to push them towards being mad at Jewish people in general if it's something they were on the fence about / had biases about that just had never gotten a chance to be expressed before. i would argue this is similar, although obviously with VERY difference circumstances.

or for a more directly related metaphor, TERFs tend to step up their recruitment after some trans woman does a crime, because they can push people from "this person is bad and also happens to be a trans woman" to "this person is bad BECAUSE she's a trans woman," and then from there to "and trans women are bad because they are men".

basically hate groups will use big events to slide watered down versions of their ideologies into mainstream discourse to try and lure in people who either a) already agree with them but hadn't found the community yet, b) are generally progressive but have biases they're not aware of that can be used to boil the frog into outright hate, or c) genuinely do not agree but just didn't know the warning signs and will bail as soon as they figure it out, but will still spread things in the meantime as well as absorb at least /some/ of the ideology. people have worse judgement when they're mad, mobs trample people they don't actually want to hurt. righteous anger and vigilante justice feel good, so hate groups slide a group juuust close enough to who you were mad at before into your sights to keep that anger flowing once the actual target is gone.

although i guess now that i think about it, this is less "part one thing part the other" and more. your thing is the why and my thing is the how? i dunno. either way i hope your day goes good too:3

[gibbearish]

don’t wanna clog up the notes on your post too much so i’ll say here instead: genuinely so much appreciation and respect for you taking the time and energy to break that post down in such a clear way. I literally saw your post just after going on my own rant on the new subreddit about how frustrating and seemingly hopeless the state of this discourse is on tumblr when people are so ready to eat up all kinds of terrible misinformation with 0 evidence, and how exhausting it is that trying to point out this kind of thing often just leads to being ignored and/or harassed no matter how carefully you word your argument. like it’s ridiculous the amount of self-policing one has to do on tumblr to call out bullshit within queer circles while avoiding pitfalls that will lead to being willfully and woefully misinterpreted, which I think is part of why it sometimes genuinely takes an entire essay to say “this person is lying.” I think you did an excellent job at explaining everything while navigating an absolute minefield of discourse and I applaud the effort, courage, and skill that must have taken 👏👏 people like you genuinely make me feel sane again

yet another example of the piss on the poor website. this is precisely the opposite of what i requested. F-

[gibbearish]

Name yourself Audio

ALSO SORRY FOR FORGETTING TO ANSWER THIS ONE I TRIED TO COME UP WITH A FUNNY RESPONSE BUT COULDNT AND THEN THE NOTIFICATION WAS GONE SO IT EVAPORATED FROM MY BRAIN