#all 4 of those trans guys have excluded me from my identity

[nururu]

I don't understand why there's such a pressure on representing your gender identity outwardly when it's literally so fucking dangerous. If you're brave enough good for you. If you have enough mental strength, good for you. But y'all need to stop taking that and using it as an example of how trans ppl should present themselves and then making them feel less than and invalid when they don't do it your way. It takes a lot of strength and a lot of bravery and a lot of mental strength, to be able to do that. Like an astronomical amount. Expecting everyone to have that ability is weird. And I know, logically, people don't expect that. When you actually sit down and have a nuanced conversation, everyone understands this.. but the way trans ppl who don't pass or don't outwardly represent a binary gender on their bodies, get invalidated and treated like they're not good enough bc they're not as brave as you,is ridiculous. It needs to stop.

[smallnico]

Are you a Gold Star lesbian? (Just in case you don't know what it means, a Gold Star lesbian is a lesbian that has never had the sex with a guy and would never have any intentions of ever doing so)

EDIT: i’ve been told this anon is a bot, and a lot of people have received this same message. who would program a bot to do this and why is a mystery to me. assuming no harm is done in doing so, i’m going to keep my response up instead of deleting it because i spent a good amount of time writing it, and i think it’s informative, which is why i wrote it in the first place.

~~~

i’m going to do you a favour here and assume you didn’t mean any harm by asking me this, that you just didn’t know better or didn’t think it through. i’ve said some pretty weird things to people on impulse, so i know how it feels when people react aggressively when you weren’t trying to insult them or freak them out or anything. normally, i would just block you for something like this and delete the ask, but given the number of asks i’ve been getting these days after a long drought of interaction, maybe it’s a good idea to re-establish some boundaries, not to mention explain to someone who might not know better why i have so many objections to the concept of a ‘gold star lesbian’.

first off, even when i’m hosting a frank discussion about sexuality on this blog, i never want to be asked about my sex life. some people are comfortable talking about theirs on tumblr -- i am not one such person. people are welcome to enjoy this blog and ask the occasional question, probe me for opinions, but my personal life is not open for spectators. there’s a meaningful difference between asking me about my sexual orientation and my experiences as a queer person, and asking me who i’ve had sex with. one is an opportunity for education, and the other is inappropriate and invasive. i’m already really dodgy about answering questions about my personal life, about friends and location and whatever, so already that ought to be a good warning to never ask me about my sex life. it is none of anyone’s goddamn business. this is a recipe for an instant block, and to restate, the only reason i’m not blocking this anon is because it’s a learning opportunity, and i’m feeling generous today.

the other reason i’m answering this question is because it’s an opportunity to save you, anon, from the trap of believing in ‘gold star lesbians’. i already know what the term means, and i’ve long since formed a firm opinion about its uselessness. 

1) a lesbian is not a better or worse lesbian for having/not having sex with men. there are a wide range of lesbian experiences that have room for a sexual history/future with men, and nobody -- absolutely nobody -- has the right to claim superiority over these people based on their comparatively “”pure”” sexual history. some lesbians formerly identified as straight, bi, pan, etc., and some may identify with those labels in the future. some older lesbians went their entire lives thinking they were straight, being married to men and having children before discovering who they are, does that make them less of a lesbian? does that make their current identity less qualified? i’ve been questioning my sexual orientation since i was thirteen years old, and not that it matters, but i don’t even identify as a lesbian anymore. am i tainted somehow? 2) let’s not pretend it’s not about purity, and let’s not pretend that purity means fucking anything when it comes to the spectrum of human experience. nothing is pure, nothing human will ever be pure, and anyone who claims their whatever the hell makes them pure is inflating their own pride at the cost of others they’ve arbitrarily declared are dirty. 3) men are not dirty. sex with men is not dirty. people who have sex with men are not dirty. you don’t get an award for not having sex with men, and the idea that ‘not having sex with men’ is a reward in and of itself is deeply unfair to both men and the people who find men attractive. there are a lot of excellent reasons people choose to have sex with men. the choice to have sex with men is not something i’m willing or even inclined to slander, even if the person making that choice is a lesbian, and even if they’re making that choice for pleasure.  4) sometimes, it’s not a choice. let’s not pretend rape in all its inglorious forms doesn’t count as sexual history, and hopefully we can all agree that, even if you’re 100% certain someone has never been raped, asking them to recount their sexual history to see if they qualify for some kind of honour is, at best, a rude and senseless violation of their privacy.  5) let’s also not pretend the concept of a ‘gold star lesbian’ isn’t borderline transphobic. i’ve seen a lot of people define ‘gold star lesbian’ as “a lesbian who has never touched a penis”, which naturally frames trans and some intersex women as dirty, while also discounting their womanhood. even if the term isn’t meant in a transphobic way, it has altogether too much flexibility as a concept for use by transphobic lesbians and terfs and not enough value in and of itself to bother reclaiming. 6) the label seeks to frame a specific lesbian experience as superior to any other experience, and does so at the expense of other queer people, and for what? is there a point to policing people’s identities and sexual experiences beyond “proving” one person is “”more queer”” than another? it’s ludicrous. it invalidates their experiences to make a select few people feel like they’re inherently better than everyone else, and i’m against that dynamic on principle. 7) if anyone thinks i’m reading too much into this, two things. one, it’s one of the only things my degree qualifies me to do, and two, just look at how the phrase ‘gold star lesbian’ is worded. you get a gold star. it’s a reward, an accomplishment, a sticker on your nametag, something which separates your from and prizes you above others because you did something good. in this case, ‘others’ is functionally everyone else in the queer community, and ‘something good’ is abstaining from sex with men. we’ve already been over why sex with men should never be seen as an inherently bad thing, and we as queer people should know better than to exclude each other for failing to conform to an arbitrarily ‘standard’ experience of sexuality.

i’m sure there’s more, but i’ve already spent enough time on this response. anon, if you’re reading this, it’s okay if you didn’t know better, and i hope i could teach you something today. i do get the feeling you asked this question in earnest, so as long as it doesn’t happen again (in which case, again, you will be blocked), no sour grapes. but to you and everyone else following this blog, this is an example of an inappropriate question -- for reasons on top of how many objections i have to the ‘gold star lesbian’ label. we have fun here on smallnico.tumblr.com, but i’m a real human being out there in the world, and this blog is my platform and spectacle, not me. there’s a reason i’m on tumblr and not twitter or instagram. 

[ibroughtthisonmyselfpixels]

Let’s Statistic 4: The Stats Strike Again

Thinking of making this a bi-annual sorta deal.

I have twenty-seven Sims who have been officially placed and ranked in BCs old and ongoing (including Sini), ten who are currently making the rounds, twenty-seven whose BCs or involvements are no longer active or otherwise dubious, and nine in reserve for future competitions or story-based projects. This makes seventy-three Sims in total. Ten new arrivals, four of them reservations. One of them I made just a couple of days before this update came out.

I added a new section to my spreadsheets at the beginning of the year: the Special Snowflake Summation Sheet. This is to head off any more anons who may ask whether any of my Sims aren’t “special snowflakes”. Considering being trans, being queer, and being disabled as the indicators of such, we have twenty-three Special Snowflakes, twenty-three that nearly count, fifteen that barely count, and twelve that do not count. (Mind you, among the twelve, only four - Sammy, Dalibor, Auguste, and Al Wilbur - have “no” in all three slots. All the others have ‘sorta’ or a question mark in at least one field.)

Of the seventy-two, thirty-five are designated as male in-game, while thirty-six are designated as female, and Alex and Eun are still their own thing. That’s two new DMACs (Oz and Octavio) and eight new DFACs; I’m taking care to make the gap between them narrower, as you can see, and until the latest one they were at exactly the same level. I want to maintain this closeness from here on out, however easy or hard that may be.

None of the ten new arrivals so far are cis - literally none. As established in Percy’s profile, I have set myself a goal to, unless absolutely required, never make a cis Sim again, which I have been sticking to quite well so far. (Lisa is the only possible exception, but only possible. Depends how I feel when I release her.) Twenty-seven cis Sims, counting the loss of Percy after the shift to demiguy*, out of seventy-two accounts for 37% of my contestants... or, put another way, 63% of my Sims are un-cis.

If we take into consideration almost all of the Sims I know for certain are not cis (excluding Butch, since Butch does not yet have a confirmed pronoun set at all), nineteen of my non-cis Sims use standard pronoun sets and nothing else, defining ‘he’ and ‘she’ as standard in this instance. Thirteen use a combination of standard and non-standard sets, which includes Sims who have a penchant for all pronoun sets; another thirteen completely use non-standard sets. If we consider ‘they’ to be a standard set in the sense that it’s the most universally accepted NB pronoun, those numbers become twenty-four, ten and eleven respectively.

Counting each explicit pronoun-set use only once, my non-cis Sims have nineteen unique pronoun sets between them, including ‘no pronouns’. This is a ratio of 17 non-standard to 2 standard, or 16 NS to 3 S depending on if you count ‘they’ as standard or not. So gitte would not have heard of a maximum of 89% of the pronouns I use, which I guess is close to the 99% she claimed when she first brought this up?

Fifty Sims are confirmed to be on the LGBTQ+ spectrum through either sexuality or gender identity; thirteen more are assumed to be through any category; Butch and Xyq are unknown. That’s a range of fifty to sixty-five of my seventy-three contestants - 68.5% to 89%.

It’s interesting to note that three.5 of my Sims so far have had their gender or orientation change over time, in an organic sense rather than a ‘this has been clarified when I wasn’t sure before’ sense as with Myron. Calfuray was initially made to be straight, but later gameplay put him as bisexual; Madison was initially cis before becoming a demiwoman early in death; and of course Lyra Maurer’s realization and transition. Percy’s aforesaid shift to demi-guy*, while made before he became a public download unlike the others, still counts as a .5 on the grounds that Clover got access to him before then and played him as cis accordingly, hence there was something there to be changed. 

One could teeeeechnically argue that Castor counts as well, since Castor’s aromanticism was hit upon post-MMBC and public download; I will defend this, though, on the grounds that Cas’ aromanticism is only half of the split attraction model that Castor operates under, and their pansexuality is not affected.

Myron remains the only Sim I have ever had to have been killed specifically for being on the spectrum. (Though Oz was singled out for it, and probably eliminated because of it, he wasn’t killed per se.)

* = For some reason, my spreadsheets are telling me I did this to Peter Jernigan as well, shifted him to demi-guy. The thing is, I don’t remember ever deciding on this directly or setting it in stone with anyone? But it must be something I’ve planned, otherwise the spreadsheet wouldn’t reflect it? So he’s in the ?? category for now. I may make this change explicit once Peter is released to the general public, or I may not. We’ll have to see.

Forty-five of the seventy-three, or 61.6%, are disabled (Skylar has been placed at no, but only for now, so subject to change). Twenty-four of those forty-five have at least one mental disability; twelve have a physical one; two have both; seven are hidden.

The three Sims to join the ‘hidden’ category are Oz, Alice, and Octavio. Oz has undiagnosed bipolar I, and Alice is, as I put it, “Implied to be an abuse victim? How much this impacts nym is up for debate”. So same case as Stellan, really. Octavio is hidden on the grounds that her low empathy could be a symptom of something, but not necessarily, and as of yet nothing else about her neurology is overt.

I have fifteen CAS-intended Supernaturals out of seventy-three; five of the fifteen are witches. (Skylar, despite claiming to be a Nogtail, doesn’t count as a witch in this instance. More on that when ce happens.) The three ‘story’ Supernaturals remain the same; three non-occult Sims join the death-induced Ghosts (that aren’t ghosts in the download file) - Ruya, Jake, and Calfuray Odell, who killed himself early into 2017 by my headcanon.

Thirty-three Vanilla Sims, five van/ban cusps, six Banilla, one ban/berry cusp, and twenty-eight Berry.

Four of the ten news have three pieces of CC, making 13 total (I think I forgot Percy counted as three too with the freckles? Or something like that). Vanilla is the first of my downloadable contestants to break four pieces of CC, but this was mostly for the purpose of showing off the new skin I’d made, and I do not expect this to become the norm. Two pieces is still the majority at 23 out of 73, but three is catching up fast.

Thus far, I feel like this year has been the year of Changing Categories, and taking contestants across multiple projects. Sera’s transferral from her old MMBC to Ostkaka MMBC and Lyra’s clean-up for use in Slaughter or Salvage was made concrete and confirmed, but on top of that: Oz underwent the same process to become a future MMBC host of his own; Percy, Seth del Bosque, and the secret-pending that I still can’t talk about just yet, were officially brought through from what were initially one-shot side projects to be canonized as contestants and future contestants respectively; and Auribus was similarly pulled from first being a Sims 4 baby to then being in line for a Rosey project to then being actually submitted to a melien project.

Of the ninety-eight in-game traits available for my use (discounting Unconventional), I have now successfully used all ninety-eight of them in my Sims. That’s... that’s got to be worth something, right?

I’ve used: ten traits once; thirteen twice; twenty-three three times; twenty-one four times; twenty five times; five six times; five seven times; and one trait a whopping eight times. (Keep in mind I am including contestants I have not officially released yet in my trait calculation.)

My most frequently used trait is Snob: Cashlin, Shabnam, Jake, Jack, Akakios, Hopkin, Lisa, and Percy. Friendly, Hot-Headed and Proper haven’t been used on any more Sims since the last incarnation of the statistics list; but Alice has brought both the use of Good from six uses to seven and the use of Coward from five to seven alongside Vanilla.

Obviousy, Octavio is the most recent Sim to have a unique trait. The rest of the single-use traits are Commitment Issues for Elanor, Hydrophobic for Cree, Handy for Lyra, Born Seller for Casey-Mae, a mistaken use of a bad trait for SLIP, Equestrian for Riba, Heavy Sleeper for Elliot, Loser for Butch, and Animal Lover for Percy. McQuoddy has lost Gatherer to Daisy; Stellan, Loves the Heat to Vanilla; and Karla, Eco-Friendly to Oz.

The Sim with the ‘most unique’ / ‘rarest’ trait distribution is Cree; three of her five traits do not go above two uses each, and the most used one is Daredevil at five. Conversely, the Sim with the traits who have had most use among my set is, of all people, Akakios; her traits do not dip below five uses, and she has both Good and the most-used Snob. (Cashlin technically has more traits with high usage, at two sevens and an eight, but the low-use of Sailor balances out that number.)

All in all, including every single repeat, my contestants share a grand total of 363 traits between them.

Let’s round off by talking about the Fifth Place Squad! It consists of seven Sims as of right now: Midnight, Castor, Lilavati, Stellan, Myron, Cree, and Cashlin. (Shockingly, contrary to my expectations, Cordelia has not made the fifth place squad.)

Five of the seven are ‘special snowflakes’; the other two nearly qualify for such. This is because Lila is the only one among them that is cis, while Cashlin is the only one that is for sure neurotypical and able-bodied.

There is a 3-4 split on the rig in mild favour of DFAC; same for occult distribution in favor of not-ordinary-human (though Cree is the only one to be CAS intended, and she’s an Imaginary Friend); same for coloration in favor of Berry (two vanilla, Myron is banilla).

All of the disabilities among the six of the seven that have them are mental ones, though Castor and Lila are still the two that double up with physical ones, by sheer coincidence!

None of the seven have zero pieces of CC, strangely. Three have one piece; two two, one three, and Castor as usual is the awkward outlier. The CC of four of the seven pertain to custom eyes; an overlapping four, to custom hair. Myron and Cree have both. Cree also holds the dubious honor of having custom hair, skin AND eyes, a distinction they share only with Madison outside of the Squad. 

The most popular traits among the seven have two uses apiece: Daredevil (Castor and Cree), Diva (Castor and Myron), Hot-Headed (Castor and Cashlin), and Natural Cook (Lila and Myron). None of Midnight or Stellan’s traits are repeated among the group.

[quantumgender]

pride ask game by @.hogwartsonline!

i wanted to do this but know i don’t have enough followers here yet to get asks, so i did it myself! under the cut bc it’s long!

1 - What do you identify as and what are your pronouns?

i’m quantumgender! its a polygender identity that looks nonbinary/xenic, but is actually made up of man, woman, nonbinary, and xenic identities! i am also pearlian - it’s basically a term for being mlm wlw nblnb and everything in between! i also call myself bi, nonbinary, and trans!

i have a bunch of pronouns, but some of my favs right now are ne/neo, xe/xeno, thon/thons, foe/foes, 🧪, 📟, 🪐, and ⚡! i also use he/him, and it is also my aux if you can’t use neopronouns or emoji pronouns because of neurodivergence or incompatible tech with emojis.

2 - How did you discover your sexuality, tell your story?

my journey to discovering my sexuality is actually pretty triggering, so please don’t read if you’re uncomfortable with sexual coercion

for a very long time i knew i was attracted to guys! however, i didn’t know i was attracted to girls. i did however, exhibit a lot of signs to be attracted to girls that i didn’t realize - like refusing to go into victoria’s secret, not wanting to watch straight prn because it had women in it, etc. i always thought if i looked at a woman in a sexual sense it would “make me gay” - not realizing that most straight women don’t mind naked women and don’t think looking at them is weird. because i was pretty obviously attracted to women but didn’t know it, this led to a group of “friends” using my inability to back down from dares in order to make me do a lot of sexual things involving women that i otherwise would have been terrified to do. they were a group of wlw that made fun of me for not being “wlw” (i was unaligned nonbinary at the time and they constantly misgendered me). they would tease me until i would write sexual things about women, view sexual imagery of women, or even do sexual acts with a specific girl i (unknowingly) had a crush on. 

this did help me realize that i was bi, and i came upon the label bi immediately because i did then (and still do) have a slight preference for men. even though the road to me discovering my sexuality was very uncomfortable, i am still very proud to be bi and i love my identity

3 - Have you experienced being misgendered? What happened and how did you overcome it?

i have been misgendered multiple times! i don’t have too many specific stories because as i am mostly closeted, i am misgendered every day of my life and i’m kind of numb to it. because of that, the most glaring examples of me being misgendered were in LGBT+ spaces.

i used to introduce myself saying that people could use he or she pronouns for me. (actually, even though i do not have them listed, i do use she/her pronouns. i simply do not list them online because i get she/her’d constantly in day to day life so i prefer different pronouns online). a lot of cis people would find this confusing and instead of choosing one pronoun to reference me as, they would default to “they/them” which i have never been comfortable with as a pronoun choice. sometimes i have let this slide, but the one time i did speak up, the cis person looked almost pissed off at me for doing so. to combat this i just started introducing myself as “she/her” so i wouldn’t be misgendered by people getting confused by my multiple pronoun sets and defaulting to “they/them”

the worst was the group in the previous question though. the girl who i had a crush on would always refer to me as they/them even though i told her multiple times those weren’t my pronouns. i never felt like my gender was recognized when i had my (very very short lived) “relationship” with her (it was like 2 weeks long so i don’t think it counts). 

4 - Who was the first person you told, how did they react?

i don’t remember who i told first that i was nonbinary (this is the first LGBT+ identity i ever realized i was). it was a really long time ago. it might have been the person who introduced me to tumblr, and if so, they were probably really excited for me :)

5 - Describe what it was like coming out, what did you feel?

i do not consider myself “out.” although on my college campus i was able to present in a way that aligned more with how i wanted to present (in a fluid manner, switching between wearing masculine, androgynous, and feminine clothing), i still was not “out.” and i didn’t tell anyone besides my friends and a few close teachers what my identity was (bi nonbinary). my parents, many of the people i went to high school with, and in my future job, i will be completely closeted because i live in an incredibly conservative area and could easily be denied a job or rejected (probably only partially, but it would still hurt a LOT) but my parents. 

6 - If you’re out, how did your parents/guardians/friends react?

i’m only out to my friends, they all took it very well. some of the teachers i’ve told seemed really shocked. this is mostly because i only outed myself to speak out on things they were teaching that were blatantly queerphobic, or to give context to a story/argument. 

7 - What is one question you hate people asking about your sexuality?

i really don’t like when people assume that because i’m bi i don’t date trans or nonbinary people. like, ffs, i am trans and nonbinary! bi does not mean two, it has always been inclusive, and i really don’t like when people (mostly gatekeepers) try to rewrite history in a way that insinuates that bi is a transphobic identity.

8 - Describe the style of clothing that you most often wear.

i have two distinct wardrobes - a “grunge/vintage” wardrobe, and a “alt/punk” wardrobe. my vintage wardrobe contains a bunch of flannels, ripped jeans, and band t shirts from classic rock bands - i have van halen and the who, for example. this aesthetic involves a lot of muted colors like mustard yellow, rust red/orange, and olive green. 

for my alt wardrobe, i have a lot of black. i have shirts that say things like “they came from outer space” in old-timey horror font, some band t shirts (my fav is from my friend’s metal band), a zodiac themed crop top, and one crop top with a pentagram in the back! 

i like these styles because i can wear them as masculine, androgynous, or feminine. i tend to wear a lot of denim and i love my converse and my docs! 

9 - Who are your favourite lgbt+ ships?

um for canon ones kaworu and shinji’s relationship really is important to me personally! it was the first LGBT+ relationship i saw in a piece of media i actually loved beyond the representation.

for other ships i really love, a lot of them are my personal ships/headcanons. i really like cable and deadpool together, and i like imagining luke, and leia both being married/partners with han! 

10 - What does makeup mean to you? Do you wear any?

makeup for me is an artistic expression! i wear it sometimes when i have the time and energy. i can do a bunch of looks - i can even make myself look more masculine with makeup, which helps when i feel dysphoric about the way i look.

11 - Do you experience dysphoria? If so, how does that affect you?

yes, i do! i experience a bunch of different kinds of dysphoria, but none are sever enough that they would be classified as clinical dysphoria (i mean this that they do not cause me severe depression, dissociation, or other severe symptoms). 

i experience a lot of social dysphoria when i am referred to a girl very often, or explicitly excluded from masculine related things (for example, if somebody said i was “too dainty” to lift something [which would not happen because i’m pretty muscular] i would feel dysphoric). i feel euphoric when i am included with both men and women, or referred to with attributes of both of these genders.

as for physical dysphoria, i experience a lot of genital dysphoria, especially surrounding sexual acts. in my day-to-day, i don’t really think about my genitals much, but when it comes to sexual acts, i am very dysphoric about the parts i have.

i also experience varying levels of physical dysphoria. i have a lot of height dysphoria, and i dislike how wide my hips are - i like how large my thighs are, but not how wide my hips are (they’re not even that wide, but when i bind they’re more pronounced without the stuff on top to level it out). i am also dysphoric at times due to my jawline since my chin isn’t as strong as i would like it to be. and, ofc, sometimes i bind. these physical dysphoria features fluctuate from day to day. specifically with binding, sometimes it’s more “hmm, do boobs go with this outfit?” rather than a matter of dysphoria.

12 - What is the stupidest thing you’ve heard said about the lgbt+ community?

oh god, so many things. i think the most harmful one is that the community is full of p*dophiles who abuse children... this one really harms me in particular because i’m a teacher. like no, we are not “harmful sexual deviants” we just experience gender differently and love different people than you do...

13 - What’s your favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?

i love the supportive parts. i love having a group of likeminded people who i know will respect me when i talk to them. even if i have nothing in common with them, just seeing LGBT+ people open and proud on tiktok makes me feel incredibly loved and validated. 

14 - What’s your least favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?

the gatekeeping and discourse within the community itself. for the love of god, please just treat people like human beings. t*rfs and tr*scum especially make me feel incredibly unsafe and like i have to hide parts of my identity in order to even navigate spaces that are meant for LGBT+ people. i also get incredibly, irredeemably angry at people who joke “those are the weird LGBT+ people we’re the normal ones” and shit like that. like you’re not quirky, you’re just bullying people for clout.

15 - Have you ever been to your cities pride event? Why or why not?

yes, i’ve been to pride in 2 different cities! 1 i went to before i knew i was bi, and 1 after! personally i wasn’t old enough at either of them to truly enjoy the event, but it was nice being able to get some LGBT+ related stuff! i got a tiny rainbow flag!

16 - Who is your favourite lgbt+ Icon/Advocate/Celebrity?

i love keiynan lonsdale! i don’t actually keep up with too many LGBT+ celebs...oh wait! kesha’s bi! i love her...

17 - Have you been in a relationship and how did you meet?

i’ve been in one real relationship. we met on tumblr. 

18 - What is your favourite lgbt+ book?

i’ve only read simon vs... i honestly don’t read things just because they’re LGBT+, and reading in general is really difficult for me to do now because i have a lot of trouble concentrating.

19 - Have you ever faced discrimination? What happened?

i haven’t faced anything too bad. i’ve heard a lot of discriminatory things said (mostly by parents who i can only sometimes argue against). one time a kid in 8th grade called me the d slur, which was horrying as a 13 yo who didn’t even know he was attracted to girls at the time. but again, i’m closeted so i haven’t experienced much

20 - Your Favorite lgbt+ movie or show?

sense8!!!! it has a mlm relationship, a wlw relationship with a trans woman... i really loved it, i’m still so upset it got cancelled :(

21 - Who are some of your favourite lgbt+ bloggers?

i’m going to skip this one, sorry! i love everyone that i follow tho!

22 - Which lgbt+ slur do you want to reclaim?

i personally don’t reclaim any slurs. i refer to myself as queer, but i don’t count it as a slur personally, as it’s an identity for me, not just a word. i do respect people who are triggered by it though.

23 - Have you ever gone to a gay bar, or a drag show, how was it?

there aren’t any gay bars where i live, so no.

24 - How do you self-identify your gender, and what does that mean to you?

i self-id as quantumgender! it’s a gender that on first glance, looks like one thing, but once you look up close, you see it actually has many small moving parts that make up the whole.

on the outside my gender looks “nonbinary” or xenic. i love both of these terms and they’re great for describing my overall experience. however, when you look up close, my gender is actually parts man, girl, nonbinary, and xenic, and they fluctuate (like they would on a quantum level!) so it just... describes my gender very well, especially how my gender fluctuates!

25 - Are you interested in having children? Why or why not?

i don’t think so. there’s a lot of reasons and many of them are personal and i just.. i don’t think so.

26 - What identity advice would you give your younger self?

this isn’t identity advice so much as kindness advice but - don’t look down on others for their identity and don’t let anyone else convince you to treat people like they are less than human. we should support each other, not tear each other down.

27 - What do you think of gender roles in relationships?

these gender roles taste disgusting

28 - Anything else you want to share about your experience with gender?

gender go brrrrrr aeiouaioue john madden

29 - What is something you wish people know about being lgbt+?

being LGBT+ should be about lifting each other up even if their experiences don’t align with our own, and helping other communities that need our support. if you don’t love black LGBT+ ppl and other LGBT+ poc, if you don’t love disables LGBT+ ppl, if you don’t love mentally ill LGBT+, if you don’t love trans and nonbinary people... you’re not LGBT+, because you don’t support everyone that is included, supported, and loved within our community. if you don’t love all of us, you are poisoning our spaces of positivity and social change and you don’t belong with us.

30 - Why are proud to be lgbt+?

i... i don’t know. to me, my identities are just a part of me. they aren’t something to be happy or sad about, or proud or ashamed of. they just... are, and i love them as a part of me.

[tebbyclinic11]

Simone Jacobson Is the Cultural Connector D.C. Nee...

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Simone Jacobson Is the Cultural Connector D.C. Nee...

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We’re honoring Simone Jacobson as part of Healthyish Superpowered, a new kind of dinner party celebrating women around the country who are redefining wellness. Join Jacobson, the Healthyish team, and our partner Caviar at Timber Pizza Co in DC on September 12th, or see when we’ll be in a city near you.

The guy to my left is balanced upside down on his head, feet shooting straight in the air. Meanwhile Simone Jacobson is telling us all to “go upside down.”

I’m at Jacobson’s “Yoga for Every Body” class, aimed at people of color, queer and trans people, or anyone who’s ever felt they out of place in a yoga space. This particular session is in a studio, but Jacobson teaches similar classes at the public library and DC Jail. If you can breathe and move, she says, you can do yoga.

But anything resembling a headstand? Not my body. With my head tucked in my palms on the mat, I give a small, sad kick in the air. I give up. But Jacobson knows I can do this. With her buzzed head and Buddha-like smile beside me, she calmly coaches me to kick up higher and higher. Then, finally, for a few brief seconds, I too am upside down.

Empowering other people is Jacobson’s superpower—not just in yoga, but in her countless other roles. The 34-year-old is the Deputy Director for Words Beats & Life, a non-profit that aims to transform lives through hip-hop. She helps organize festivals and cultural events for Smithsonian museums. And she co-owns a “Burmese bodega” selling all kinds of Asian foods and products.

Jacobson calls herself a “multipotentialite,” a term she picked up from a TED Talk about having more than one calling. After all, as a kid, she wanted to be both the first female president of the United States and a “Fly Girl” on ’90s sketch comedy show In Living Color. As an adult, she’s encountered a lot of pressure to pick a lane but prefers to be a “Jill of all trades.” And while her wide-ranging lineup of gigs and projects can seem random at first glance, underneath it all is a common theme: “What can we do that is truly for everybody?”

Jacobson’s dad is a Jewish lawyer originally from Pittsburgh; her mom is a former English and art history teacher from Burma, whose family fled the country after her journalist father was briefly imprisoned following the 1962 military coup. Growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, most of Jacobson’s classmates had never even heard of Burma. Like many people from mixed-race backgrounds, she grappled with her hyphenated identity.

“I care so much about inclusion because so much of my life, in small and large ways, I was excluded,” Jacobson says. “It’s this feeling of being from everywhere and nowhere, belonging in all places and in no places.”

Photo by Scott Suchman

Jacobson doing yoga at Meridian Hill Park in Washington, DC

Still, Jacobson has always been extremely proud of Burmese roots and finally traveled to the country for the first time in her twenties. There, she tried her first falooda, a parfait-like dessert with basil seeds, ice cream, and flavored gelatin. Jacobson says she and her mom, Jocelyn Law-Yone, have always come up with “get rich slow” schemes. One day, they thought, why not open a falooda shop?

In 2016, Jacobson, her mom, and friend Eric Wang launched Toli Moli, a pop-up cafe serving gourmet versions of falooda. Over the past two years, the venture has evolved into a Burmese bodega or “cornerless corner store” inside DC’s Union Market food hall, selling a small menu of Burmese staples and family recipes like catfish curry and coconut noodles alongside Asian products ranging from Korean face masks to Thai chili sauce. Law-Yone is the chef, Wang is the manager, and Jacobson runs behind-the-scenes tasks from payroll to marketing. Together, they’ve made the space a community hub, hosting cooking classes and supplying books by and about people of color.

“We are artists and teachers,” Jacobson says, “So we share food and we share stories, and that is our role in keeping Burma on people’s minds.”

Jacobson’s role as self-proclaimed “cultural connector” now goes far beyond the bodega. Last fall, the Freer Sackler, the Smithsonian museum of Asian art, hired Jacobson to help organize its IlluminAsia arts and culture festival, which included a night market on the National Mall. Jacobson brought in the food vendors and other artists and community groups. The 50,000-person event ended up being the largest in the Freer Sackler’s history.

Freer Sackler program manager Matthew Lasnoski says that, after the event, Jacobson organized a dinner for all the food vendors. No one asked her to do it, but she insisted that all these Asian-American chefs and restaurateurs get know each other. “Building community is just a natural part of what she’s interested in doing,” Lasnoski says.

In February, Jacobson started her newest community-building gig for hip-hop non-profit Words Beats & Life. As Deputy Director, she oversees adult programs—like classes where you can learn how to be a DJ or a graffiti artist—that help fund the free activities for kids.

Even though it seems Jacobson has a million things going on, she tries to be selective about projects. ”I’m very protective of my time, and I think one of the healthiest things we can do, especially as women, is learning the compassionate ‘no.’”

To help keep herself grounded, Jacobson turns to yoga and meditation. “Yoga also helps with having a hyperactive mind. Sometimes you need to turn it off,” she says. “Yoga for me is that full power down.”

Jacobson started practicing yoga after tearing her ACL and meniscus in an informal hip-hop dance battle in 2008. She couldn’t dance, but she knew she needed to move—somehow. Last year, she became a certified yoga teacher. Jacobson has since gravitated toward Yoga Activist, a non-profit focused on “trauma-sensitive and inclusive” yoga. She started teaching at a public library, then, last October, helped launch programs at the DC Jail. There, she’s practiced alongside inmates from all backgrounds and abilities, including some with bullets in their spines, and helped them try to find peace amid constant noise. But, Jacobson says, the classes aren’t that different than those in a studio. “Everybody has a body, and the bodies move, and that’s it,” she says.

Jacobson’s next step is to train more people to teach the classes. While she prides herself on being able to do it all, she wants to build things that can thrive without her.

“There are a lot of people who start things and they feel like it can’t run without them. I’m the opposite. I’m like, ‘Can it run without me?’ Great, next thing,” Jacobson says. “Not because I have a lack of attention span, but because I want to leave as many thriving things as I can.”

Join Healthyish Superpowered to celebrate Jacobson on September 12th in DC.

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Creating Welcoming Gym Environments for Trans and Gender Nonconforming Athletes

It’s no secret that working out and strength training can have positive effects on our mental health. Exercise can reduce anxiety and depression. 1,2 It can also contribute to increased self-confidence and help us feel more at-home in our bodies.

Transgender individuals tend to struggle with depression and anxiety at higher rates than the general public, due to the increased discrimination, stigma, lack of acceptance, and abuse that they often face. 3, 4 So it should follow that transgender folks are eager to come into the gym as part of their self-care and wellness routines, to reap those same benefits so many people enjoy, right?

Yet… it’s not quite that simple.

Harassment and Discrimination

A lot of people worry when they first visit a gym, and at the root of much of that worry is their fear of judgment from others.

Will everyone else be super fit?

Will it be obvious that I don’t know what I’m doing?

Will my body be ridiculed, or will my body type be noticeably different?

Am I going to be the only woman in the weight room, or the only person of color?

Do I belong here?

Daye, a trans woman, experiences a lot of anxiety going to the gym. She is only comfortable going with a friend, and avoids the locker rooms and bathrooms due to fear of being outed.

Going to the gym, says Daye, brings with it “the intimidation and fear of entering a space that doesn’t feel like it’s for me.”

Transgender and gender nonconforming folks may have even more anxiety about training in a gym than cisgender people do, and lot of that anxiety centers around locker room and bathroom access. (If these terms are new to you, please see this article for some basic information about gender identity.)

According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality, the majority of transgender respondents reported facing frequent harassment when using bathrooms in public places. 5

More than half (59 percent) avoided using a public bathroom in the past year due to fear of confrontation, being denied use of the facilities, or even physical or sexual assault.

Nearly one-third (31 percent) experienced discrimination, harassment, or assault while trying to access a place of public accommodation, meaning places that provide services to the public like stores, restaurants, hotels, and yes, gyms.

Tre, a transgender male, shares an experience he had while transitioning: “…there was an aggressive, muscular guy utilizing three weight benches on a day when the gym was very crowded,” he says. “I cleared away his weights so I could get a set in while he was using another bench. He started yelling transphobic and homophobic things at me, making a scene in front of all the gym patrons, and eventually threatened to follow me home and beat me up.”

Besides the threat of physical abuse, Tre’s worries largely centered around locker room and bathroom access. “Most of my gender-related issues at commercial and semi-private gyms have involved locker room access,” he says. “In the early stages of my transition when I still self-identified as female yet I was presenting and often perceived as male, I felt generally unwelcome in the women’s locker room.”

“Women… would ask me what I was doing in there, why I was in the women’s locker room, or they’d flat-out tell me to get out. When I started hormone therapy and identifying as male, I stopped going to the gym altogether because I didn’t want to make people uncomfortable in the women’s locker room, and I was afraid of using the men’s locker room.”

Mirroring Tre’s experience, one in five transgender people did not use at least one type of public accommodation in the past year because they feared they would be mistreated. 5

While these statistics are quite high, this data was collected before transgender restroom use became the subject of intense and often harmful public scrutiny in the national media and government.

Transgender people are not pretending to be something they’re not in order to victimize women and girls in public spaces.

The reality is that anti-discrimination protections allowing transgender people to use the facilities that correspond with their gender identity have been around for years, and there is no evidence that this leads to attacks in public facilities. 6

In fact, transgender people are more likely to be the victims of assault in restrooms. 7,8 Really, they just want to use restrooms — and the locker rooms — in peace and anonymity like everyone else.

Caleb, a transgender male who trains in a university gym, shares: “I am always low-key worried that I may get harassed in the locker room. I do change openly… and though I realize it’s incredibly unlikely, I fear somebody may notice and recognize my top surgery scars and question my right to be in the men’s locker room.”

Even Janae Marie Kroc, world record-holding powerlifter and bodybuilder, sometimes experiences discomfort with accessing gym bathrooms and locker rooms as a transgender female and genderfluid/nonbinary person.

Though people usually know who she is in most gyms, she still experiences “lots of stares and some level of awkwardness or people being a little uncomfortable.”

Janae describes how she changed her routine to avoid using gym locker rooms: “Typically I had to change before heading to the gym and couldn’t shower until I returned home. I tried hard to use the restroom right before leaving for the gym, because I did not feel comfortable using either of the restrooms designated as male or female due to fear of complaints from other patrons.”

She said that small “Family” locker rooms were helpful, and mostly used by individuals who needed the privacy.

Trans-Friendly Gyms Do Exist

Some gyms are making an intentional effort to be welcoming to people who span the gender spectrum. Having at least one gender-neutral private bathroom or changing area is key, but that’s just the beginning.

Morgan Vozobule is a full-time coach at CrossFit Center City and Owner of Liberty Barbell Club in Philadelphia. She describes the gym as being “a haven for members from all walks of life.” Says Morgan: “Regardless of previous athletic experience, our gym recognizes that trying the things you’ve never done before can be a deeply frightening experience. We have built this gym knowing that healthy people are defined by not only their bodies- but their relationships, their minds, and their sense of belonging.”

Asked how the gym is trans friendly and competent, Morgan says “Not only do our gym members represent the wide spectrum of LGBTQ athletes, but our staff does as well …We are moving away from the conventional idea of gendered weight recommendations, we host a free monthly trans-friendly CrossFit class called Strength in Numbers, and above all, we have created a welcoming and incredibly diverse group of members that are ecstatic to share their safe space with everyone else.”

In addition, the entire coaching staff at CrossFit Center City completed an introductory education program. “The training covered trans-inclusive language and practices, with a specific focus on the challenges that trans athletes may face,” says Morgan. “As a result, we as a collective staff can better understand the difference between gender identity and sexual orientation, appropriate language and definitions, the disproportionate marginalization the trans community faces, and how to be a better allies.”

The response to CrossFit Center City’s Strength in Numbers class has been positive. “The attendance from our own members, other affiliate members, and people who have never stepped foot in a gym before has been tremendous,” Morgan says. “Strength in Numbers has been an attempt to cultivate something much larger than a place for people to work out.”

Liberation Barbell in Portland, OR rejects the common fitness industry message that “our bodies are never enough — or more commonly — that they are too much.” Lacy Davis, who co-owns Liberation Barbell with Christina Cabrales, shares: “We are founded on the idea that physical fitness should be accessible to any body regardless of age, race, ability, gender identity, sexuality, current health, or size.” She adds that Liberation Barbell approaches fitness “through a lens of anti-oppression and with an aim to always grow and better serve the various communities that thrive in our space.”

This means that at her gym, they take the time to ask trans clients what they might like to see, and to continuously educate themselves about the actual experiences of trans people. “It is extremely important to take a moment to educate ourselves and listen.” Assuming that she and her co-owner will sometimes make mistakes, one of their core policies is “to constantly be teachable.”

“Trans and gender nonconforming people deserve to feel at home in their bodies, just like the rest of us! To me, it seems if we are excluding people from the opportunity to strengthen themselves, then we are actively screwing up,” says Lacy.

Nathalie Huerta, owner of The Queer Gym in Oakland, CA, would agree. Her gym is “a body-positive gym space free of homophobia, transphobia, and fatphobia.” Like Lacy Davis, she describes learning as an important part of her gym’s process to be transgender competent. “We genuinely wanted to learn,” she says, “and celebrate all of our queer community, not just parts of it.”

“We are the first [queer gym] in the industry… so it took us being proactive about seeking the answers to our questions and learning what was important for people under the entire queer umbrella to have in a gym space,” Nathalie says. “We spoke to members and different organizations and got the staff trained.

From there, we realized our membership base also needed this information, so we created a workshop called Queer 101. We require the staff to attend, but also open it up for our members and the community to come learn.”

Nathalie says the response to her gym has been overwhelmingly positive.“I thought someone would smash my windows or tag up our gym, but luckily [knock on wood] none of that has ever happened!”

Creating a Trans-Inclusive Gym Environment

A few key points came up repeatedly among trans gym members and the owners of transgender friendly gyms.

It is imperative that gym owners educate themselves and their staff on the discrimination trans people may face in general, and especially on the discrimination they may face in a gym environment.

Provide single stall or gender neutral bathrooms, locker rooms, and changing areas. At least one private changing area goes a long way to making trans folks feel that they can change safely at the gym.

Avoid delineating “men’s” and “women’s” workouts or weights.

Have a zero-acceptance policy against harassment that includes harassment based on gender identity. State this policy explicitly on your gym’s website.

Don’t be afraid to learn from your mistakes. “I think people believe that to invite trans and gender nonconforming people into their gyms they must be perfect, but I disagree,” says Lacy. “I think we must take care to learn and be humble when we screw up.”

Creating a gym that is welcoming to transgender athletes is not about providing special rights and privileges to a group of people. It is about leveling the playing field so that people can come into a gym environment and not worry about experiencing discrimination or difficulty specifically because they’re transgender.

“I think that starting a gym routine can be intimidating for anyone,” says Morgan, “and the pervasive, systematic isolation that members of the trans community face every day make it that much more daunting… it is our duty as wellness professionals to give each individual the tools necessary to pursue their own fitness journey.” Morgan feels strongly that gym owners can be the pioneers of “creating more inclusive establishments that broaden our community and strengthen our connections to each other.”

“It’s every person’s right to have access to a space where they’re not concerned about being physically, sexually or emotionally harassed while they’re just trying to get healthier,” adds Nathalie.

“If we limit the access of trans and gender non conforming members, we are essentially denying them the right to health, wellness, and fitness.”

References:

Paluska SA, Schwenk TL. Physical activity and mental health: current concepts. Sports Medicine. 2000;3:167-180. https://link.springer.com/article/10.2165/00007256-200029030-00003

O’Connor PJ, Herring MP, Carvalho A. Mental health benefits of strength training in adults. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 2010;4(5):377-396. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1559827610368771

Schreiber K. Why Transgender People Experience More Mental Health Issues. Psychology Today. December 2016. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-truth-about-exercise-addiction/201612/why-transgender-people-experience-more-mental-health.

Robles R, Fresán A, Vega-Ramirez H, et al. Removing transgender identity from the classification of mental disorders: a Mexican field study for ICD-11. The Lancet Psychiatry. 2016 Sep. 9(3):850-859. http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(16)30165-1/abstract

James, SE, Herman, JL, Rankin, S, Keisling, M, Mottet, L, & Anafi, M. Executive Summary of the Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality. 2016. http://www.transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/Executive%20Summary%20-%20FINAL%201.6.17.pdf

15 Experts Debunk Right-Wing Transgender Bathroom Myth. Media Matters for America. https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2014/03/20/15-experts-debunk-right-wing-transgender-bathro/198533. Published March 19, 2014.

Brady J. When A Transgender Person Uses A Public Bathroom, Who Is At Risk? NPR. Published May 15, 2016. http://www.npr.org/2016/05/15/477954537/when-a-transgender-person-uses-a-public-bathroom-who-is-at-risk

Herman, JL. Gendered Restrooms and Minority Stress: The Public Regulation of Gender and its Impact on Transgender People’s Lives. Journal of Public Management & Policy. 2013 19(1):65-80. http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Herman-Gendered-Restrooms-and-Minority-Stress-June-2013.pdf

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