#and ‘i’m a transvestite’

[phoenix-is-the-hottest-thing]

I love that moment in 1979 Opera Rock Starmania (watched the 2022 edition) where everyone is partying someplace called Naziland because fascists are winning elections via controlling public opinion with fear and manipulation and everyone is incredibly depressed and traumatized by everything going on so they just want to dance their problems away for a night

including a couple of queer folks— a psy-op transvestite woman who created much of the terror via goading a homeless band of queer-coded boys into becoming a real threat of a terrorist gang, and a gay boy who accepted to go to the party as a DJ because that’s the high road to his dream and he doesn’t care who gives it to him, betraying his best friend for this

only for the whole place to get blown up to high heaven with almost every character in it.

by the queer coded gang that put the fascist there with their fascists-manipulated-them-to-do-it crimes. the irony is lost on absolutely fucking nobody

didn’t even mention the ego tripping fascist dating and marrying a suicidally depressed sex icon to get more votes

the fact that a very popular song called Le Blues du Businessman is from there and you’re suddenly no longer laughing about how a song says “I wish I could’ve been a singer” because it’s the half-propaganda half-honest complaint of someone who was so good at winning the capitalist game that he lost everything that made him human to the point that he orchestrates mass deaths to win more

or the two whole songs about queer people being soooo hot, including “i have blue hair and pronouns and you want to fuck (and be) me so bad it’d make you betray all your morals”

1979. I love this show. Requires all the content warnings. Discourse about whether it’s queerphobic would be a mile long and I don’t want to hear any of it. I loathed the first half until I didn’t. I am so autistic about it. I need to watch it again

also the english version of the songs take all the raw bleak nuance out, fuck that. google translate the french versions if you’re interested

[queenqunari]

hate that I can’t casually say that I identify as a nonbinary transvestite. It’s my favorite way to describe what my deal is. Alas, the general populous doesn’t have the nuance to grasp what the term actually means and how cool and sexy I am for being a trans transvestite.

[pinkys-plan]

I stuck my gum on the rim of my cider can and now every time I drink I taste mint instead of cider bc of the smell of the gum,,,

[klonopinandketamine]

When is someone going to remove my cause…. But not my symptom?

[orionadrien]

DR X (SEX SEX SEX!) WILL BUILD A CREATURE

[minniti]

the horror and alienation of being a woman mainly attracted to men who looks likes this

[blodeuweddschild]

While reading up on queer history would be very beneficial for people who revolve their lives around online queer discourse, I think watching rocky horror picture show could fix like half of them by itself

[moonstoneunivs]

Hey guys so I have an idea for you to try it’s a pride play list for you to try. It’s based off the pride colors and their meanings.

Red is Life: A song that gives you life.

Orange is Healing: So a song that has healed you is or is healing you.

Yellow is Sunshine: A happy song

Green is Nature: A song that’s nature theme.

Blue is Art and Magic: So a magical artistic song.

Indigo is Serenity: A song that’s calm and soothing.

Violet is Spirit: A song that represents you not what other people think of you what you think of you.

BONUS Pink! Sex: Just a sexy song.

So I would love to hear your guy’s playlist and happy pride and remember love always wins and to love everyone a little bit of love goes a long long way.

[genderkoolaid]

Tranny. Many people don’t know the history of the word, they assume it was an assigned hate term or slur along the lines of the “n” word. That’s not how it happened. Tranny was invented by us in Sydney, Australia in the 1970s where drag was a big deal, and still the best drag shows ever are in Sydney, Australia – they’re amazing. So a lot of trans-identified women who were assigned male at birth did drag, that’s how you made your living. And so they were transsexuals, transvestites, drag queens, and they were all doing drag to make money. They all bickered amongst each other who is better than who, “Well the drag queens are better,” “No, the transsexuals are better.” “You are all freaks, we’re better.” And on and on and on. But they worked together and they were family together, so they came up with a word that would say family and that was tranny. In Australia they do the diminutive, that’s how they come up with words. So tranny. I learned the word in the mid-1980s, late 1980s from my drag mom in San Francisco, Doris Fish, who was the city’s preeminent drag queen and she’d come from Sydney. And she schooled me in this word tranny, she said, “This way it means we’re family, darling.” “Thank you mama.” [...] So we used it and we were trannies together. And F to M was just beginning to start, the trans men were just beginning to become visible, Lou Sullivan was a neighbor of mine around the corner, and he was the first big out trans man, wrote his book. So trans men and cross dressers . . . cross dressers were also family. Transsexuals, we were all trannies and that felt good. That got into the sex industry and became a genre – there was tranny porn, there were tranny sex workers – chicks with dicks, she-males. [...] And, my only guess is that people who . . . because the only way they would have found out about the word is if they were watching tranny porn or having been with a tranny sex worker and then hated themselves so much that they turned it into a curse word. So it’s not really technically correct to say we’re reclaiming a word – it was always ours. So, many people mistake the word for the hatred behind the word and, in my generation, and I’m sure in future generations of trans people, tranny is going to be a radicalized, sexualized identity of trans in the same way that faggot is a prideful identity in the gay male community – not all gay men are faggots, but those who are are proudly fags and those who are dykes are proudly dykes within the lesbian community, trannies are proudly tranny within the transgender community. Does that mean we can’t call ourselves that because some trans woman does not want to be called a tranny? No. I’m going to keep calling myself a tranny. To the trans woman who gets called tranny, I’m sorry – as soon as . . . you’ve got to look at why you’re getting called tranny and if you don’t pass, you’re going to be read as a transgender person and then you fall back on the cultural view of trans folk which is freak, disgusting, not worth living, we can hurt you. It has nothing to do with the word, it has everything to do with the cultural attitude. So the word has stirred up a shit storm, but it’s not the word.

— Kate Bornstein on the word "tranny" in this oral history from the Digital Transgender Archive

[mars-ipan]

this christmas was really good ^^

[umelcom]

People who are coming from twitter go touch grass challenge

[starkie-md]

I’m a faggot. I’m a dyke. I’m a tranny. I’m a crossdresser. I’m a transvestite. I’m a pervert. I’m a queer. I am everything and anything and nothing if I want to be. I am every gay, lesbian, trans, ace, bi, nonbinary, queer person that walked this earth before me and will walk this earth after me. No one and I mean no one will ever strip my identity away from me. I am alive. I am here. I am you, your friend, your relative, your coworker, your neighbour, the stranger you opened the door for. No dirty fucking bootlicker will ever get to extinguish my existence. No fucking law or legislation will ever erase me. I will scream, I will bleed, I will fight, I will riot like the elders before me did. My history is written in blood and in sex and in community and in love. I am the passion and filth and desire and hope and anger and hurt and love of all of us. You can change laws, you can silence us, you can try and fucking kill us but we will never die. We will never be erased. We will never stop fighting. You can not kill us. We are everywhere and we are filled with more rage than you can possibly fucking imagine and our love is stronger than your hatred. My brothers, sisters, siblings, fags, dykes, trannys, and all of my queers will outlive you because you can’t kill us. You’ve tried so many times and we’re still here. We will always fucking be here. You want a fight? We’ll give you a fucking riot and we will burn it all down. Fuck you.

[queerasfact]

Happy birthday Sylvia Rivera!

Born on 2 July 1951, Sylvia Rivera was an activist in New York City for over thirty years, fighting in particular for people who she felt were left behind by the gay rights movement: trans people, queer people of colour, and queer people living on the streets.

In 1970, along with fellow activist Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia founded STAR - the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries - which aimed to provide food, housing, legal aid, and other necessities to homeless trans youth.

Sylvia herself was assigned male at birth, but around age eleven, in the presence of a large group of friends she had met living on the street, she was rechristened by a Pentecostal minister as Sylvia. She had relationships with both men and women, and said late in life: “I’m tired of living with labels. I just want to be who I am. I am Sylvia Rivera.”

[elierlick]

Very concerned about the resurgence of people using the term transsexual without knowing its history. I’m pro-reclamation but it’s always been an elitist word meant to divide our movement. Cis people popularized the term to pathologize and exclude, not foster community or solidarity.

I recently saw a professor claim transsexual is a *more* radical identity than transgender. Perhaps this is true in niche, elite academic circles that support gender nonconformity today. But historically, the term delegitimized nonbinary/transgender people (or “transvestites” as they were called in the 1950s-90s). It was meant to distinguish those worthy of care/support from those who were not.

Is it ethical or helpful to keep the old definition of “transsexual”? Can we revitalize the term to reclaim the bonds we have with our non-transitioning siblings? Or does it simply delegitimize their identities as it did in the past? These aren’t easy questions, but they're necessary to grapple with the term’s origins.

[partypuppynastja]

Transgender Day of Remembrance

This year’s official list has 327 names:

Those murdered were disproportionately women, usually around my age, more often women of colour. Many more will have gone unreported, and/or misgendered in their deaths.

One of those murders is from my native UK—there was also an attempted murder not far from here though, a trans woman stabbed on her doorstep. Fortunately, she survived. I wonder how many other non-fatal attacks were made in the same year.

51 were in the US; that’s more than one per state. Brazil was worst, with 96 (with a similar population size).

9 were tortured to death; another 3 burned alive; another 3 dismembered.

It can be hard to understand why people hate us so much. We’re mostly just trying to live our lives. I guess we’re an easy target, and dehumanised enough in popular media that our deaths elicit little care. I remember the first time I read in a newspaper about a trans woman being killed, the headline was written as a punchline, “transvestite beaten to death with hoe”, and the article was worse. 

Fast-forward and today the jokes normalising such violence get Netflix specials, and the more serious hate-mongers get #IStandWith— hashtags in their support, as they go on their “I’ve been cancelled” tour and given every platform available. Politicians debate, and “sensible centrists” call for understanding from both sides, which tends to amount to “well we must understand that trans people can’t help being trans, and trans people must understand that we have Legitimate Concerns™ that if we don’t take seriously enough will just result in violence against trans people”. And so the microphone gets passed to the transphobe-du-jour.

Eventually, the world will get better. Education improves, community (and thus a little safety) is easier to find, transphobes start to realise history will judge their crimes like every other bigotry and ‘phobia and ‘ism. Those who are “not transphobic but” will learn to put aside their biases; those who are openly transphobic will become “not transphobic but”. It may never die out, just like racism hasn’t, just like homophobia hasn’t, and so forth, but it will get better. We just have to live to see it.

And that gives me strength sometimes, gives me an extra reason to survive when I don’t always want to. Transphobes want to see me die, and I will do my level best to thrive instead. It’s not easy and sometimes I feel like a flower growing through concrete. 

But like a flower growing through concrete, I know where I’ve come from and I know where I’m going. I can’t know whether I’ll make it, but I know I must keep trying, and the further I get, the easier it will get along the way. It doesn’t mean there won’t be the occasional storm, or freeze. But, there’s sunshine too. There is love in the world; there is hope.

We owe it to the fallen to live, to thrive, and to strive to make things better in this world.

[wethegingersnaps]

I keep accidentally calling it peachy horror show like I’m expecting a sweet transvestite from transsexual, transylvania to show up at any moment