#⌖ gender

[radioconstructed]

☕️ gender. Is that too broad a topic? I'm debating my gender atm so I'm thinking about all of it 😂

☕ thots + onions

⌖ It’s a VERY broad topic. What do you want my thoughts on? What it is? That’s all METAPHYSICS! I’M just a RADIO HOST with a BLOG!

⌖ We can start with a single step in my direction, so to speak! It’s a social construct. And I’d like for you to think about what that implies, to you! As far as I’m concerned, it means that I’m not innately anything. To be simplistic, my gender is the social class I move through society as. It’s performative. (I’d take it a step further and say our existences are performative. You don’t find yourself, you create yourself & retain object permanence among your witnesses!)

⌖ I look inside myself and ask, “do I feel like a man or a woman?” and the answer is, “I feel like the ACTIVE DUMPSTER FIRE behind the WAFFLE HOUSE I drunkenly fistfought three people at last month!” And I LIVE & NAVIGATE SOCIETY as a woman because THAT’S what I have to DO to achieve the same level of DYSFUNCTION as the REST of you people!

⌖ (You might find it more productive to focus less on what gender you ARE ‘inside’, and focus more on HOW you want to navigate the world, and why!)

[mangedog]

this is a way better model... you'll still get transphobic & intersexist drs of course but i prefer this to male / female or even having separate questions for gender & sex.

[we can't see the full form, but i'd suggest having a "something else" option and dominant hormone question too.]

[who-canceled-roger-rabbit]

Some spins on the "mostly male team with a token woman" trope:

The woman is trans and stayed in her old circle of bros even after transition

The woman is the only one in her circle of "girls" who didn't turn out to be a trans man

[necromimetics]

can’t stop thinking about my friend’s cishet partner who said last night that he doesn’t think anyone is the same gender. god-tier take.

[animentality]

[allwhiterain]

Matthew Lillard and Angelina Jolie as “Cereal Killer” and “Acid Burn” in Hackers (1995)

[a-gay-poptart]

I have found the best ally

Straight and cis people will say that they are allies, but you will NEVER measure up to my dentist.

Me: "Hey, is it ok if I can change my name on my info from [DEADNAME] to Aspen?"

Random woman that I wasn't even talking to in the chair next to me: "Honey, if that's the name you had at birth, [DEADNAME] is your only name."

My dentist, very slowly turning her rolley chair towards the woman: "Shush."

Random woman: "Excuse me?"

Destist: *closes privacy curtain while staring bullets at the lady*

Me: *pissing myself laughing*

My dentist while changing my name in my info (reminder that English is not her first language, she immigrated from Russia): "There, Sai, you have pretty boy teeth. Smile and make all girls swoon."

Me not having the heart to tell her I'm not transmasc but I'm Agender, and still pissing myself laughing: "Thank you [DENTIST NAME]."

Edit: Ok, I thought I would quit Tumblr, but the fuckin Pinterest posts brought me back, and this blew up apparently??? Thank you all for the attention lol, stuff has changed, and I go by either Damien or Aspen, either name is ok lol, and I'm genderfluid :] (if you don't know my pronouns just use they/them lol use those any day)

[ot3]

pretty cool ship you've got there. have you considered adding another guy to it though

[strawby-jelli]

Okay so I just watched a video of a boy who once identified as trans still got bottom surgery after he realized he was cis and people were so fucking rude? Like just because this cis dude has a vagina people were calling him transphobic and wishing death upon him.

So this is a reminder that when we as a community advocate for bodily autonomy and gender surgeries that means everyone regardless of gender can do whatever they want with their bodies.

If someone who is cisgender wants top/bottom surgery THEY CAN GET IT. If someone wants facial plastic surgeries that we usually find creepy like buccal fat removal or eye lifts THEY CAN GET IT. And here’s the really controversial one but if someone wants to do things that harm their body like hard drugs or diy mods THEY CAN DO IT!

Because body autonomy isn’t just “I can get bottom surgery to pass” or “I can get an abortion” it’s also all the wild stuff that makes us uncomfortable and that’s okay.

[radioconstructed]

Do you feel similarly about orientation as you do about gender? That it's more about how you want to navigate, as opposed to something you inherently are?

ref!

⌖ Orientation works a bit differently for me. I DO have an INTERNAL experience of attraction (or LACK THEREOF). There’s SOMETHING inherent there that exists IN THE ABSENCE of societal organization. Now, the way we parse out ‘types’ of attraction, the way we TAXONOMIZE orientation, and the social CONSEQUENCES of that taxonomy, ARE constructed and UNSTABLE over time.

⌖ I’ve fit the criteria for ‘aromantic,’ ‘asexual,’ ‘bi-’, ‘bisexual,’ ‘gay,’ ‘homosexual,’ ‘queer,’ -- whether regarding my internal experience, or regarding how I’ve navigated partnership & my subsequent social position-- at some point in my existence. This isn’t because I changed. Rather, the CRITERIA & USAGE evolved! (When I was alive, there wasn’t a distinction between homosexuals & bisexuals -- hell, there wasn’t even a clear-cut one between homosexual men and transsexual women! ‘Bisexual’ didn’t enter the mainstream vernacular until the 40′s. Orientation terminology that parsed out sexual, romantic, and other attractions didn’t become established until a few decades ago!)

⌖ So, I employ whatever ‘label’ most efficiently communicates what I wish to communicate, based on the context of the conversation. (That’s usually when I’m asked what orientation I ‘identify’ as. I DON’T! I IDENTIFY as REDHEAD ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION, my sexual preference is A HOLE IS A HOLE AND GIRL, I’VE READ THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO, keep it moving!)

⌖ Now, I DO want to elaborate on what I said in the previous bit! I said that it might be more productive, in the context of debating one’s gender, to focus more on how you want to navigate the world.

⌖ There are, and have always been, humans with a very clear sense of what they feel they ‘are,’ or ‘should be,’ or 'should have been.' In contrast, there are humans who identify a sense of unease at their current position, but hit a roadblock beyond that. The current language is, sometimes unhelpfully, particularly granular, and it attempts to neatly categorize experiences (internal or external) that aren't always different!

⌖ If a specific term resonates with you, WONDERFUL, USE IT! But if you’re unsuccessfully attempting to determine whether you’re internally ‘half-woman half-nothing’, ‘a woman, but just, gender-non-conforming’ or 'slightly to the left of Woman,’ you MAY be playing five-dimensional chess against your own brain! I have the same advice if you’re losing sleep over whether you’re ‘actually homosexual’, or ‘technically-weakly-bisexual-with-no-interest-in-pursing-m/f-relationships,’ and what you ought to call yourself. You're better off determining what you want to DO about any of that, and skip right to that! Change your presentation in a way that feels authentic! Kiss a man on the mouth! Commit arson (BUT NOT M/F)!

[reallybadblackoutpoems]

imagination (1963) - harold ordway rugg

"chekhovs cat / schrödingers razor / occams gun"

[starlightseq]

this is silly.

inspo.

[gendercensus]

The 2024 Gender Census is now open!

[ Link to survey ]

The 11th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th June 2024.

It’s short and easy, about 5 minutes probably.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful - it’s what helped us get 40,000 responses last year.

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

For the curious, you can also spy on some graphs and demographic data for the incoming responses here.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

Image credit: Malachite and rhodochrosite.

[literallyaflame]

how do conservatives think talking to children works? if a four year old came up to me and said “i’m a cat!!” i would say “really? what makes you a cat?” and they’d say some shit like “i have claws >:)” and i’d be like “oh wow, you do have claws. but wait, i thought cats had pointed ears!” and they’d say “they DO!!!” and then i’d pull up a picture of an elf and ask “is THIS a cat?” and they’d yell “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

u wouldn’t say “fucking hell, Emily, get it together. this is the real world”

[thepioden]

I see your "Laios is trans" but that dude is THE most apathetically agender person on the planet. Laios does not have time for gender. Laios does not even HAVE a gender identity, he removed it to make room for more Monster Facts.

[muffinlance]

My baby daughter got her adorable puffin-print dress absolutely CAKED in mud crawling around the yard and my first thought was "oh no her beautiful dress"

And my second thought was "oh huh it really WOULD be easy to unconsciously steer her away from playing in the dirt. Unlike my son, whose outfits are usually some kind of solid dark easily washed pants plus a shirt that doesn't trail in the dirt like a dress does."

Anyway something something gender roles start getting shoved on kids from literal birth, but with a little time to think about things, YOU TOO can let your children of any gender absolutely destroy their clothes in the dirt pit they're digging in your garden