infin-8-morphosis

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Super specific so I feel like I gotta reply, but I actually redesigned one of my purple black-coded characters to be more brown even in their alien form...!

Purple and brown actually go together very well.

I was super happy to make it more obvious that he's supposed to be black, but also not compromise on his purpleness!

hey, I was thinking about giving Salem(fursona) eyes like mine, like, brown/hazel highlights...

i realize even with me I tend to fall down the "giving black characters unrealistic eurocentric features" that kinda made me feel insecure about myself growing up. his eye highlights are a reddish/neon pink to be harmonious with the rest of his design but I want to incorporate a way to put a brown hue within it cuz I want him to be black like me in a loving way.

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Human time again this time you get real paper hoooolyyyy shit

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I feel better about posting this now. Here's my answer to 'What if a gardevoir was a guy and didn't want to be a gallade'

And of course I had to add transfem gallade. They're buddies. He's her knight :]

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Same character

Welp i accidentally somehow deleted the file for this

Might as well post it since I am almost certainly not gonna go back over it

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“I’ll just redo one or two bits. It won’t take long” and then I ended up redoing everything on the first page lol. Here’s my very special boy, Levi! He’s just good :]

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Welp i accidentally somehow deleted the file for this

Might as well post it since I am almost certainly not gonna go back over it

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Things I did today... woah look its art

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— FREAK PERMIT —

No Expiry - Admits All

[ feat. / feet. @thetallgoblin ]

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Just a heads up but I'm gonna post something... interesting probably later today. Not my usual (what even is my usual at this point) but its important to me and my friend. Idk how to tag it properly but I'll slap a #suggestive on it, but I ain't marking it mature cuz that defeats the whole point!!!

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I actually drew something but *sniffs the air* it is not yet its time

Instead here isss... model. Work in progress. Also sort of practice for that mystery dungeon friend area thing i was gonna try

Scenery isnt really 'correct' but i can make it geologically accurate laterrr. Having fun thinking how a flying species would even go about defensive architecture. Answer is lots of vantage points and walkways (flyways?) so far.

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trans women + transfeminine people largely and overwhelmingly accept and love trans men + transmasculine people. btw. I know sometimes the internet might seem the opposite way, but it isn’t. There are far more trans women + transfems who see trans men + transmasculine people as siblings sharing in the same fight than there are trans women + transfems who do not feel kinship or solidarity with transmasculine people. I promise. There are transfems + trans women you’ll come to know who care a lot about transmasculine people and the oppression they deal with, and have suffered for extending that care to their siblings. I just really think it’s important to remind everyone that the loud minority here is just that — a loud minority.

Transmascs + men — trans women are your sisters and they love you and want you here. Do not let anyone convince you that’s not true. There are transfems + trans women affected by antitransmasculinity who see it and care. You’re not alone. If anyone tries to convince you that you are, they don’t have your best interest at heart. We are not alone. This goes to transfems + trans women being told “we’re the only people you are safe with”. People who care about your safety want you to know there are many places you can go to find safety. They want to inspire hope and change not hopelessness and paranoia and isolation.

Anyways, happy new year. Big bear hugs.

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Woah a post

Look at my nasty creature

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This is half a personal thing, but I think it's something worth expanding on as a serious discussion.

But casually, personally, I really dont like when a character comes out as trans, is implied to be trans, or is headcanoned as trans, and people immediately start using the 'correct' pronouns for them

Like. We really cant get away from the idea that the gender is stored in the pronouns. That calling a trans person pre-transition 'she' / 'he' is always misgendering / transphobic. That characters (or worse Real People) who might be trans like... automatically have different pronouns.

Idk. My former self, she wanted to be a guy. My current self, it is a guy. Sometimes. The girl parts of me, they don't contradict that.

Like if I feel like a character is, say, a trans woman, well he might be a woman! Maybe if it was canon she would have different pronouns! Maybe they wouldnt!

Of course there's nothing, wrong? Per se? With switching pronouns. But I think people forget that characters are inherently fixed in place preserved in their narrative. Sometimes... Sometimes it is wrong to think of them as changeable, malleable, because you're not engaging with them as they are but as you think they will be. And there is no will be. (except of course in fan works where you can do whatever you want)

Pronouns do not mean gender. 'I feel like she is a man' is not misgendering unless you *know* someone has in fact changed their pronouns. It's entirely possible that insisting she goes by he is in fact a dick move and transphobic.

Like... I'm talking about fictional characters mostly. But. In real life this is also a thing.

Sometimes you also have to lie about someone for their safety. Sometimes you don't know what someone wants to be referred to as. You can't just assume you know.

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With this latest round of discourse being "trans men shouldn't complain about being kicked out of women's spaces", I felt the urge to write up a relatively long post regarding the topic, as I feel it is a long tangled mess and involves a significant amount of people simply talking past each other.

To begin, what is a woman's space? I ask this, because "women's spaces" often fall under one of three categories: medical services, social services, and social gatherings. Of the three, trans men need access to nearly everything if not everything included within "medical services" and "social services". These things often need to be considered co-ed anyway, but are still considered "for women" and often are labeled things like "women's health" or "women's defense". Social gatherings- things such as book clubs, concerts, festivals, and other similar outings- can have a nuanced and complicated history when it comes to the inclusion, or exclusion, of trans men.

As an example- I am a binary, gay trans man who has not yet been sterilized. If I become pregnant and need to seek out social services, I must do so via my provider's "Women and Babies" department. I am neither of those things, and yet regardless of whether I am completing or terminating the pregnancy, I must label myself a woman in order to receive care. If I wish to have a pap smear, receive birth control, or investigate my chances of ovarian and cervical cancer, I must do so via the "Women's Health Clinic". I am not a woman, but I must label myself as one in order to discuss sterilization options. Many trans men who have had their gender markers changed prior to sterilization have reported difficulty even booking an appointment, as well as difficulty convincing their insurance to pay for this appointment due to a discrepancy with gender markers vs gendered care. Many have discussed the realities of being a pregnant man, whether they remained pregnant until their child was born, or whether they terminated said pregnancy with an abortion.

It should come as no surprise that the statistics for trans men receiving quality gynecological care are abysmal. It should be equally unsurprising to hear how many trans men have died from botched abortions, untreated miscarriages, infections and cancers of the uterus and cervix and ovaries, and complications during pregnancy or birth. We belong in this space, despite it being labeled "for women", and the only thing pushing us out has done is quite literally what's been killing us.

This is, of course, not even taking into account the numbers of trans men who have been forced to become pregnant via their husbands or families as a means to detransition them, and those who have become pregnant as a result of corrective rape. There is a saying among trans men of my age- it isn't "we all know a guy this has happened to", it's "which of us haven't experienced this? who among us doesn't fear this? who will it happen to next?"

Which brings me to my next point: women's social services. As with women's medical care, nearly everything labeled "for women" as a social service must be inclusive to trans men. Shelters for domestic violence survivors, rape crisis centers, self defense classes, family planning, these are all things that honestly should already be co-ed. But, many times, they are exclusively targeted towards women. I understand why, I do. But with trans men being statistically more likely than cis women to experience the need for these services, it seems a cruelty to close their doors to a vulnerable demographic reaching out for help.

Where should trans men in crisis go? Shutting the door to us without addressing the reason we need to access these resources gives us a single ultimatum: detransition, or die. Go back to being a woman, or die knowing the likelihood that a woman's name will adorn your headstone, and "daughter, wife, mother" will be said in your obituary. Much like the medical services, this incomplete answer has lead many trans men to their deaths. Whether by their own hands, or by their attackers'.

But there are other social services out there that perhaps are not as dire. Women's scholarships, colleges, all girls schools. Girl Scouts, women's sport leagues, gym memberships. Trans men don't need access to these, right?

Well... is the trans man in question out? Has he been living as a man, or is he still closeted? Is it safe for him to come out? Does he pass, or has he just bought his first binder and given himself his first buzz cut? Is he living under the control of his parents, or is he able to freely decide for himself the type of person he'd like to be and the type of life he'd like to live?

You see, I was a Girl Scout once. And, if we are to believe to our core that trans men are men even before they know the words "transgender", this means I was a boy in a girl's space. I didn't know that being transgender was an option for me at the point where my troop disbanded, and another leader to replace the first within my local area was not found until after I had aged out.

But also... I was in 7th grade when my troop disbanded. Two years later, I would learn the word "transgender", and suddenly everything would make sense. Two years later, I would come out to my parents and my sisters. To put this into perspective, I graduated high school in 2010. The Boy Scouts officially allowed cisgender girls and transgender people of all genders to join all programs in 2019.

I was not expelled from my Girl Scout troop. My leader simply stopped showing up to meetings, and my troop disbanded to go our separate ways when leadership could not find someone quickly enough to replace her. But... if this had not happened, I would have been a recently out transgender boy in a girl's social service, still wearing push up bras and frilly shirts because that's all my parents would buy me until I became an adult and moved out and had a job with my own money to re-purchase myself a wardrobe. Indistinguishable from any of the others, outside of what went on inside my own mind.

I would not have been accepted into the Boy Scouts, if Girl Scouts had been taken from me as abruptly as it was from a different transgender boy in the same state I was born and raised. Which would have left me with... nothing. Neither. And the only reason I even joined the Girl Scouts was because I had wanted to join the Boy Scouts and the local troop had refused to allow me, because they had labeled me a girl.

I don't believe I'm the one that coined Schrodinger's Gender, but I do reference it often. In this situation, one is both a boy when it hurts, and a girl when it hurts. Even if that gender label changes by the second, the point is to use your gender and your assigned sex to hurt you.

But then, why do these services even have to be gendered to begin with? After all, Boy Scouts just updated to be The Scouts, and has removed (on paper) the insistence on gendering.

Well... I certainly agree that the majority of gendering these services is at this point a concept that needs to be reformed, but I'm unconvinced that we will be able to completely integrate without addressing the reason they were segregated by gender in the first place.

Women's gym memberships are gender segregated for two reasons. Women and girls- and anyone labeled as women and girls, regardless of true identity- are frequently not afforded the same access to resources as cisgender men and boys. Women and girls- and anyone labeled such- are frequently at high risk of predatory sexual behavior and physical violence. Both of these problems are symptoms of a larger system of misogyny at play, and both of these problems directly affect trans men especially those who have not transitioned in a way that makes them pass for cis men.

Regardless of the truth of my identity, the reality is that I was seen as and treated as a girl when it came to physical fitness, and thus barred from the same activities freely offered to the boys. Regardless of the truth of my identity, I have experienced predatory sexual behavior from cis men as young as 8 or 9 years old, continuing past when I came out and began to transition socially.

If the problem is not addressed, cis women cannot re-integrate with cis men. But, additionally, if the problem is not addressed, the choice still remains clear for trans men. Detransition, stay closeted, or go without.

A common complaint of trans men is the invisibility and erasure our demographic faces. It should be easy to see why this happens. The problem of a misogynistic society is one that continues to this day, and without addressing the problem we cannot hope for success in creating a more inclusive space. At the same time, trans men are being pushed out and isolated as they realize they must make a choice.

As for social gatherings, such as a woman's retreat or a woman's music festival? Of course, it may sound odd to say that a trans man should feel welcome there. But the truth of the matter is the majority of the trans men asking for the ability to stay are trans men who have been within that space for years already, prior to coming out, prior to realizing some things about their genders, prior to taking their first steps as men.

I'm pretty good friends with an older butch who told me that I am the first person they ever told that they were a nonbinary man. This person is in their 50s. They're married. But the wife doesn't like it, and they love their wife too much to cause friction in the relationship, so they keep it to themselves, and they keep quiet, and they don't say anything about being transgender, but in their head they aren't a woman. This person is not a woman, by their own insistence. Should this person be forcibly ejected from their local lesbian community, which they and the wife helped form decades ago? Should they divorce their wife, since that would make her not a lesbian anymore?

What harm is it, truly, to allow this person to stay? Social isolation kills people. The trans man suicide statistics are just as abysmal as any of the others I've mentioned here. Forcing someone to burn 20, 30, 40 years of their lives and their friends and their achievements because they are finally living as themselves is a deeply hurtful and isolating experience.

The majority of trans men asking to be included in these spaces are not trans men like me- who never really jived with the idea of womanhood and distanced ourselves as much as possible the moment we saw the opportunity. They are men like my friend, often existing outside of the binary, often with a deep love and appreciation for womanhood despite realizing that perhaps the label does not fit them as well as they once thought. They often have many years of connection, entire lives spent intwined in these spaces.

What good does it do to chase them out? What harm does it to do let them stay?

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I emerge from my silence to give you: Incredibly specific redraw of that World Is A Fuck meme but with me and my companion's fursonas + text rewritten to match their species lore

Enjoy

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And nothing you will ever silence.

My existence cracks the rotten foundation of your world.