#and knowing that you're likely the only visibly trans person in the whole place and that most on these people have never seen someone

[cardentist]

Fam how can one be trans in the direction of their assigned sex? I'm not even trying to make the idea sound ridiculous or anything. I'm genuinely curious and want to understand. I thought the whole meaning of trans was that you feel or act in the opposite direction of your assigned sex; if you're transfem but you're afab then to me that's just cisgender??? But like please explain to me how that's not the case if that's what you and others strongly feel so I may grow my compassion

Context: [Link]

well ! while I personally am not intersex, I DO want to highlight intersex people first and foremost.

gender and sex are very Very complex, and I think generally people don't consider the way that being intersex can play a big role in that!

there are intersex people who are afab who are also trans women, there are intersex people who are amab who are trans men, there are intersex people with many Many different relationships with sex and gender and anywhere in between !

an afab person can be born with masculine sex characteristics and transition the way trans women often do. that person May identify as trans, they may not ! that trans person may not even consider themselves a woman depending on who they are and what they want !

I Do think there needs to be an effort to be aware of and make space for intersex people within the trans community, and really the wider queer community as a whole. as it's often something that's given a footnote without deeper thought into the ways that intersex people Actually interact with our communities.

which I don't blame people for not already knowing ! that's the whole point of trying to educate people in the first place ^^

.

and as for Myself

labels are, ultimately, a form of gender presentation. what you call yourself is an extension of not only how you see yourself, but how Other People perceive you.

I could call myself nonbinary or I could call myself trans masc, and both would be Accurate. but people have certain traits and expectations and associations when they see those labels. there are assumptions made about the kind of life that I live, the things that I want, the things I might experience, that change depending on which labels that I use.

and that's not Inherently a bad thing ! I mean, that's part of why people Like labels. but it Can be a struggle for people whose gender is Funny.

I could Also describe myself as genderqueer or multi-gender or genderfluid or gnc or-. I've tried on lots and lots of labels, and for the most part I haven't thrown any of them out, I just keep them in a box under my bed and take them out when relevant.

I've been wrestling with the feminine aspect of my identity for a very Very long time. I've been aware that I'm some level of trans masc. that part was easy. I want a deeper voice, I want things about my body to change, I don't want people to look at me and see a cis woman.

but I Also like femininity. I've found that after accepting myself as trans masc and slowly growing an environment where I am Perceived as masculine, I've started getting euphoria at presenting femininely in the Same way that I did (and do!) get about presenting masculinely.

but that feeling doesn't carry over when I'm perceived as a cis woman. it's Quite Uncomfortable for obvious gender reasons.

and while I may not know the exact Words that I'd use to describe it (as I've said, I've been chewing on it for Many years now), I've gotten a clearer idea of how I Feel.

I want to be Visibly trans. I want to be perceived masculinely And femininely. I want to transition masculinely to present femininely (and sometimes butch, sometimes like your dad at the ace hardware store, I contain multitudes).

and of course, figuring out what I have going on has involve a lot of exploration ! it's the same way I figured out the whole trans masc thing in the first place. seeking out other trans people and other Things About trans people feeling things out.

I find ! that I have a lot of shared experiences with transfeminine people. both in how I feel about certain things, some of the presentation that I want, and in how people would React To said presentation.

my femininity Is Trans, I don't relate to cis womanhood. but I Do relate to trans femininity. which is really awkward for me, because it's difficult to describe it to other people fjksldljkasfdjklfasd

(I don't personally consider myself a trans woman mind, but I'm certain there Are people who are trans men and trans women at the same time. gender is complicated, sex is complicated. labels are malleable and sometimes situational)

Could I describe myself with a different label? probably ! I've got lots of them. but when I Don't put emphasis on this aspect of myself people assume that it's not there. insist that it Couldn't be there, and I don't know what I'm talking about. and those people who Would act nasty towards me probably aren't gonna change their mind just because I changed my bio. but it feels Nice to assert that aspect of myself when other people are trying to tear it down.

.

part of me feels like I should post the intersex portion of this by itself, because people tend to engage more with shorter posts and there's nothing Short about my gender situation ljkfdasjkls

but ! I dunno, if this makes even one person understand the gray areas of gender and presentation a little more it'll be worth it.

thank you for taking the time to ask ! and especially for doing so kindly ! I do hope you'll see this

[sunny-mercya]

Safe Arms

Poly! Billy Loomis & Stu Macher x FTMale Reader

Fandom -> Scream 1996

Requested by -> Anon

Masterlist

Warning: Mention of Breasts

Woodsboro had quite the big population. Not as large as Los Angeles or Santa Monica of course, but enough not to feel completely out of place or knowing you would be one of the few—like how it would be most of the times in towns and Villages.

And yet, besides knowing you're not the only Trans-Person in Woodsboro, you do feel out of place—like a fish on land.

Maybe it was because throughout your school years and the slow progress of transition, you hadn't anyone to talk about it—to relate with someone who was like you and perhaps that was the reason why you felt like this, as if you didn't belong here or anywhere.

Though yet again, when you're with Billy and Stu—your boyfriends—you felt just right in where you are—because neither Billy or Stu, they knew about you being Trans since the beginning of your relationship, treat you any differently and saw you as what you truly are. A man.

It were moments like these, which proved your inner nagging thoughts into a silence, that you belonged here—be it Woodsboro or any other place you decided to live—and that you're not alone. Moments like these, which made you fall in love with your two mans over again.

It had been some stressful weeks for you, exams and part-time Job piling up onto your nerves—straining them to an snapping point—and when a wave of dysphoria had rolled over you—taunting your mind and self-confidence, which you build up slowly but steady over the years—to feel comfortable—your high strung nerves had snapped in half and you cried, more ugly sobbing it was, for two days.

You had stayed home the whole week—had forced yourself to go to school last week already, till it became unbearable much to even consider leaving your bed at all, without feeling so disoriented.

When Billy and Stu didn't saw you in school, they grew a bit worried about you—especially when you ignored their calls—having a good hunch of why you stayed at home—and once they've asked your older siblings and they confirmed their suspicions, Billy and Stu decided to visit you and do a sleepover.

~~~

Sitting in the middle of your bed, in nothing clad but boxers, you let Billy take off your binder—he's careful not touch whats beneath it—although you being on transition, the much needed operation to remove your breasts would only become real, when you had saved up enough money for it—and once the soft material was off from your skin, you wanted to curl into yourself and hide away.

The feeling of your breast—these ugly breasts, those lumps of flesh—which are now hanging freely on your chest, racked a shudder through your body—visible flinching away from Billy's hands and crossing your arms over your breasts—wanting to hide them, to make them disappear once more.

Billy pry'ed your arms from your chest, pulling one of Stu's shirts—which in terms of size—even though Stu's more lanky limps than bulky wide, he still wears shirts in size of XL or XXL—looks so massive on you, that it looks like as if you're swallowed whole in the material—over you.

You sighed out in relief, closing your eyes, when your breast were now covered—feeling more secure and comfortable again.

Stu, after setting up the dvd-player for tonight's movie marathon—which, despite being summer, consisted of the whole Halloween Chronicles and other Horror and Slasher movies—had crawled onto the bed as well—engulfing you in his long lanky but strong arms and covers your face with little smooches of butterflies kisses.

»You looks so sexy in my shirt, [Name], I could eat you up right away« Stu grinned, licking over his lips—thought about to lock you into a tongue battling french-kiss, but with your current mood it wouldn't be such a good idea to do so, didn't want to make you uncomfortable and cry—when you're already feeling so in the down—so instead Stu decides to give you a big final kiss on the cheek.

»Horrorfilms again?« you asked, cuddling more into Stu's side, when he had pulled you down to the mattress.

You had nothing against Horrorfilms, just to watch them 24/7 a week and throughout the year, could be a bit—a tiny bit—tedious to do so for your eyes and mind.

»What can I say, they are the best to watch. Aren't they? But don't worry, pretty boy, we will watch your favourite movies too.«

Billy calling you „pretty boy“ makes your heart soar—brought a small smile onto your lips—because that's what you are; a boy.

»Yeah, I am a pretty boy.« you repeated, voice still in a hushed whisper, but with confidence in it.

Billy placed the bags of chips around you all, getting into bed himself—pressing the button of the remote to start the first movie—and laying down next to you, draping an arm around your shoulders.

»Don't be a such a hogger, Stuie. I want a share of our darling boy too.«

»You're more a hogger than I am!« Stu furrowed his eyebrows slightly, pouting childish at Billy.

»Such a lie. You definitely hog him more.«

»Boys, I'm in the middle and you both get a fair share. So now, no more fighting and let's watch these movies now.« you said, patting each of their legs—knowing well that once a discussion between your boyfriends would break out, it could last the whole night and probably would go into the nasty side of insults.

Although you had a shitty week and still feeling in the dumpster—as if you didn't belong anywhere anymore at all—having Billy and Stu next to you, their arms around you, felt like the safest place on earth.

[romanarose]

Joel Takes a Strap

Written for Married Joel sits on you 2024 by the amazing @beefrobeefcal !!!

Joel Miller x trans!reader

Join my taglist : Masterlist

Buy Me A Coffee : Kofi : Go Fund Me

Summary: Joel takes a strap.... send tweet.

Warnings: sex toys, praise, body worship

Immersivity: Reader is trans and able bodied. Reader has had top surgury.

A/N: promt via Beef, must include this line "Marriage had been good to Joel. His mental health and financial stability had improved, and he seemed over all a happier person. The only drawback seemed to be the effect it had on his waistline."

A/N 2: My taglist is back!!! follow the link to join <3

Divider by @animatedglittergraphics-n-more

It was a life few people really understood. Jackson was pretty open minded, considering there were bigger things to worry about than gay shit. Still, in 2003 someone being trans was pretty much the punchline to a joke if you knew what it was at all. So, when a transman came to Jackson, it wasn't exactly the warmest welcome.

Joel would like to think he'd have always been kind and welcoming. Maybe not the friendliest guy, but still. Joel didn't care what anyone chose to do to themselves, but he thought of Ellie. He thought of how she'd been treated at the tipsy bison that night, and Dina, Joels now-daughter in-law-... he wasn't able to be a safe person for her to come out to during that time but he wanted to be safety for someone else.

He had no idea you'd become his safe place as well.

Joel wished he could have been there for Ellie to come out the way she was ready to, but then things turned around. He'd repaired their relationship in a lot of ways, and now... now she was the one he came out to when he started seeing you. The ceremony had been small, little JJ as the ringbarrer.

Marriage had been good to Joel. His mental health and relation ship with Ellie improved and he seemed over all a happier person. The only drawback seemed to be the effect it had on his waistline.

This, however was not a drawback to you. When the world fell apart, if someone had an ounce of fat on their body, they were called obese, torn apart on the covers of grocery store magazines... but you saw Joel's weight gain as something beautiful. It meant he was safe. He was relaxed. He wasn't on the run. He was yours.

And you got a surprise for him.

You had made sue to clean it, and clean it good... but you had found a strap on while out, and were ready to use it on Joel. Joel was more inclined to top, but that didn't mean you didn't take control sometimes. He regularly takes several fingers up that cute-but-flat ass of his, and today you'd prepped him well, making sure to add lots of vasiline to the strap to ease him.

Now, Joel Miller had his legs spread across your lap as you sat on the edge of the couch, covering above your strap.

"You don't gotta do nothing you don't wanna." You reassure him.

Joel shakes his head, murmuring as he looks down. "It ain't that... I just don't wanna crush yuh, s'all."

You can't help smile at that. "You won't Joel. I love feeling you on me, l love the weight. You're fuck'n perfect."

And he smiles at that. Soft, but he smiles.

So you tease him. "Better take it now, I know Maria wants a turn for Tommy."

Joel visibly cringed at that, but laughed and the tension was gone from the room. Joel was happy, you were happy, and he had the support of his family. What everyone else thought didn't matter.

When Joel sinks down on you, feeling the weight of him push you into the couch cushions, you can't help but smile and feel his hands grip your shoulders.

"Good boy..." You praise the old man whose boyhood was far behind him. "Take my cock... just like that" If Joel was a boy, the strap is your cock. Who cares. In moments like these you can forget all the horrors of the outside world, forget reality.

"So fucking hot..." Breathy, Joel praises you back as he takes the whole strap up inside him. His hand goes to your chest, palm paying no mind to the surgery scares. "My handsome husband."

"Mmmmm... My handsome husband..."

Joel begins to move up and down, bouncing on you, his thick thighs working hard as he fucks himself. His cock slaps against your stomach. "Wanna make you cum too... how does... does that w-work?" You can see him bit his lip, pleasure filling his body.

You take his hard, leaking member in your hand, stroking him after you spit.

"Don't worry about that. We'll figure things out as he go, right now i just want you to focus on feeling good, Joel. Can you do that for me? Be my good boy and cum?"

Joel nods, a little curl falling on his forehead that is begining to sweat.

"yeah, I can do that... I can feel good... your cock feels good... I can feel good."

You love when he gets like this, lets go and lets his subby inner nature come out.

"I bet you can, Joel. I know it."

Thank you all so so much for reading!!!!

Want more trans content?

I wrote About a Girl which is Joel and tranfem reader and You'd Love me if I was a Worm, Would You Love me if I was A Man? which is reader transmasc reader coming out to santi and Big Boys Dont Cry which is trans reader AND trans santi

I hope to write a santi and trans reader series soon

How to keep up with my work?

Follow @romana-updates

ask to join my taglist

join my tumblr community

follow me on ao3 @romana_rose

Love you! hope to see more from Beefro's event!!!

[roguekhajiit]

TW: Transphobia

I had my first ever encounter with a transphobic member of the LGBTQ community this week.

At work on Monday, I overheard some co-workers discussing Transgender Day of Visibility and how President Biden issued a statement acknowledging Trans Day. Since it just so happened to occur on the same day as Easter this year, my very close-minded co-workers took that and Biden's statement as evidence that Trans people are trying to take over Easter!

Now, I consider myself to be Non-binary (specifically Demi-girl/Agender), but I tend to fly under the radar, which is very helpful since I live in a very, very red state. It doesn't hurt that my normal sense of personal style is very casual and all black. So, I can wear traditionally "men's" pants, and no one pays much attention to me, which is the way I prefer it. I hate anything that draws attention to myself.

So, I bit my tongue and hyperfocused on my work. Then, when I went home, the non-binary gremlin in me just couldn't be contained anymore; I opened Reddit and made a post about how no one is going around trying to steal stolen holidays.

Now, I was fully anticipating pissed off Christians to rain their uninhibited fake outrage down onto the comment section (which happened) but I wasn't anticipating a self-identified 60 yr old gay man to come into my comments saying things like, "Why would you put a Trans holiday anywhere near a religious holiday knowing every seven years it's gonna land on said holiday" and "As a gay man I believe that the one part of our community is stifling the rest of us."

Tell me you're transphobic without telling me you're transphobic.

Now, since I can't just ignore the sheer inaccuracy of his math; according to Google from 2001 to 2100, Easter will only land on March 31st 5 times. Five times in an entire century. The last time Easter was on March 31st, it was 2013. So, 11 years ago, or over a decade ago. No one gave a shit in 2013 that Easter and Trans Day were on the same day. But let the president acknowledge it in a statement and everyone loses their fucking minds.

So, why would you avoid celebrating something important in your life on the off chance that it might coincide with someone's religious holiday? Of course, you wouldn't. If your birthday is on Christmas, do you no longer have a birthday?

"Next, why wouldn't you place it in the month of pride then each day of pride month could have a different day celebrating each letter of the lbgtq+ community."

Yes, that is what Pride Month is for, celebrating the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community. But are you gay only in June?

But sadly, even some in our diverse community isolate and vilify trans individuals just like what this old gay dinosaur is doing. For 15 years, a vast majority didn't know or even give a shit that Trans Day existed. That is until a president acknowledged it.

"May I point out there's no gay holidays that coincide with Yom kipper or Ramadan."

True, Yom Kippur and Ramadan don't coincide with any "gay holidays," but Shavout is directly in the middle of Pride Month. Any outrage there?

"So just piss off the Christian's so they have one more thing to hate us for. I find many in our community asking for acceptance while giving none, just my opinion and nothing more."

How very accepting of you to say, my lord.

"Maybe it's time we all in the gay community and cis people give the whole year to the Trans community."

But they aren't asking for the year, or even a month. They just want one day that is their own. And even members of our own LGBTQ+ community can't even give them that.

"I'm gay so I can't be transphobic."

Your statements say otherwise. Just because you're gay doesn't mean you are absolved of your transphobia.

Perhaps it's time we stop placating these dusty ass old gay dinosaurs and call them out on their hateful thinking. Their "I got mine" attitude only harms our communities. Just because you won the fight for same sex marriage doesn't mean you're safe. The fight for equality is never-ending.

More and more of us are having our rights stripped away right before our very eyes. Roe v. Wade has already been overturned, and they aren't going to stop there. They never planned to stop there. They are very methodically chipping away at our rights. Right now, they are focusing their efforts on the trans community, slowly outlawing their very existence. And while they have you distracted by that, they are quietly overturning same sex marriage laws. Your rights aren't safe and never will be safe as long as we have members in our communities who subscribe to this kind of thinking.

[thebutchtheory]

I've seen people say 'antitransmasculinity doesn't exist its just white transmascs being pussies' which. Fucking. What's your problem??

long post ahead.

long story short, the people that say that are trolls and/or a minority of people who don't represent the entire argument, so please don't take arguments saying that transmascs don't experience any problems for being trans seriously. they're not arguing in good faith. also, i have a lot of nuanced opinions on these subjects, lol.

when it comes to the whole discussion of talking about transmisogyny and anti-transmasculine transphobia, there's too many people with obsessively strong opinions on the subject and take absolutely no nuance to the discussion, and that's personally what i find irritating.

i don't believe the people saying that the transphobia transmascs/FTMs experience doesn't exist are a large enough crowd to really be worth paying attention to. sure, they'll make you mad, but that's not what the majority of the discussion is about, but most of them are either trolls or baeddels or some other form of person with a huge victim complex and/or a lack of nuance to the forms of oppression in place against transmasculine people.

yeah, transmisogyny is very blatant because people see men in dresses as jokes, and transfems are constantly treated as predatory men trying to force themselves into the spaces of "real innocent women". there are systems in place directly perpetuating these violent belief systems, which are usually more visible than the systems in place oppressing transmascs.

but there's a whole discussion to be had about the blatant misogyny transmascs experience by virtue of being born/perceived as women. you can't say that we don't experience misogyny because we're men/etc, or that it's "misdirected misogyny" because that's not how this works when you live in and move through the world as a woman whenever people don't know that you're trans. almost every argument toward, especially pre-t, transmascs is rooted so deeply in misogyny that the two cannot be separated.

we are treated as objects because women are treated as objects. the feminine beauty they project onto us is not something that we have control over, they are pushing this concept onto us because to them, our beauty belongs to them. women are (sexual) objects for cisgender heterosexual men and even other women to ogle at, and that's why trans men existing is such an unbelievable concept to them.

patriarchal beauty standards force women to pluck and groom and color themselves into something unrealistic to be seen and treated as vaguely a person, and the second we stop, they lose their shit over it. if we do it in a way they don't like, they lose their shit over it. if we realize that we're men and we don't want to do that all of that extremely particular grooming and makeup stuff anymore, they lose their shit. if we can only reclaim and truly feel our femininity in the context of being a man, they lose their shit.

literally every argument about pitying and saving the poor, generally pre-t, transmascs and saving us from mutilating ourselves is directly rooted in misogyny because no matter who they are, they believe that perceived women are too stupid to know what they want, so we need other people to tell us what we want for us.

but it's disingenuous to act like transmascs who pass are not treated as predatory groomers tricking "young girls" (pre-t transmascs) into believing that they're dirty disgusting trannies who will ruin their bodies and fertility and become no longer sexually attractive to cisgender heterosexual men who want to treat them as objects or cisgender heterosexual women who want to project themselves onto every (perceived) woman they see.

like, the transphobia that transmascs experience, i feel, is a lot more about misogyny than about being trans itself, or otherwise deeply intertwined with misogyny such that the two cannot exist without the other when a transmasculine person experiences transphobia.

and to be clear--this isn't me saying that trans men are trans men because of the patriarchy. this is a discussion about bodily autonomy and how (perceived) women aren't allowed to step outside of the boxes we're given by society without people telling us that we don't know what we want because (to them) we're women, or because we'll no longer be sexually attractive or sexually envious to them if we do something they don't like, from not shaving our legs to transitioning.

when we do this, we've been beaten, raped, sent to psych wards, lobotomized, cut off from the world, murdered, and more. in the experience of myself, a lot of my friends, and literature i've read, it's butches and transmascs that experience quite more violence related to being masculine and stepping outside of the lines of femininity in comparison to other cisgender queer people.

that's why there should be more solidarity between transmascs and butches, because we're not being treated this way specifically because we're trans as much as we're being treated this way for being perceived women stepping out of line of what the patriarchy wants us to do with ourselves.

this is also where the solidarity between transmascs and transfems needs to grow further, because transfems experience the very same thing, in the reverse.

they're not respecting what society wants from them as perceived men, and they experience misogyny directed at them specifically for daring to choose to be women, (because in the eyes of the oppressors, they're men and being a woman is the worst thing that a perceived man can be). they're stepping out of line for what the patriarchy wants for them and getting beaten down for it.

the people saying that the issues of transmascs aren't to be taken seriously lack any kind of reading into what transmasculine people experience and aren't worth arguing with because like i said, they're often trolls or part of the very small minority of people who don't believe transmascs have real problems, and that minority is a group of people not worth arguing with because they're essentially trans doomers and aren't open to having actual discussions on these topics.

they're not representative of the majority of people involved in the discussions surrounding transmisogyny and transandrophobia/anti-transmasculine transphobia, and i'm tired of seeing their takes being represented that way. there is a genuine discussion to be had, but i think a lot of problems from the transandrophobia side stem from people being unwilling to see that those arguments come from a small group of people that don't represent the whole argument and becoming vitriolic, whereas a lot of the arguments that the anti-transandrophobia side come from seeing those misdirected takes poorly trying to argue with said minority opinion and arguing against that, and/or seeing bad takes from people who straight up haven't read any queer literature or even people who straight up haven't experienced the genuine or truly vicious transphobia that i and many of my other friends have, because they come from accepting environments and blue states, so they have no idea what they're talking about in comparison to many of the transfems i know of or older queers i know of.

dose that many any sense?

there's a lot of things i have to say about what's largely white, middle class, blue state trans people (particularly transmascs) from accepting families dominating the conversations around being trans(masculine) and the oppression that comes with it, and how that will very much affect the way that they feel entitled to oppression, but that's a conversation for a different post.

[maranull]

Thought dump —I guess rant— prompted by the last rb. If it doesn't make sense it's because I don't give a shit about how easy this reads, actually.

Some folks, queer and not, see trans people as trans first and people second, if they even view us as people at all.

Every piece of media, of social voices, of queer history, of everything screams that a trans woman wants and has to fight. Has to be out and proud in a country that wouldn't think twice to attack or kill us. Has to be strong, has to be a rock for other queers, has to be the idea of the legends that were Sylvia Rivera and Martha P. Jonson and all the others. We also have to be pretty. We have to want to fuck every single person. We have to be loud and we have to be funny and we have to be this idea of a trans woman that internet people have.

I personally can't be that ideal of transness the internet has. I'm constantly scared as hell. I'm both on hrt and also stealthing like my life depends on it, which tbf, it does in one way or another. I now have to bind and I hate it, yet I do it and a binder is on its way to continue to do it better. I look like shit and that's not self-deprecating bullshit, rather a fact that I accept more than I accept your expectations of me. Would I prefer to be out? Yes. Can I do that without placing my livelihood and potentially life at risk? No.

And again and again, both media and other queer people try and tell me if my country, my culture, and my social circles are safe or not. As if they know better than me. "It's hard but it's manageable," says the rich trans woman on the TV. "It's fine, really," says the one with a supportive job and social circle. "You're overeating," says the asshole from a progressive culture.

None of them have seen the disgust and the hate in people's eyes. One has a car, the other is with company and the third is miles and miles away. They haven't seen a whole train wagon quiet down the moment a trans woman enters, they haven't seen how they looked at her. How her shoulders and head were fallen and how tight her jaw was. They haven't seen how ready to fight she was and more importantly, had to be, just taking the train for two stops.

Only one trans woman, a random one in a random article, said it how it is in Greece: Every step as a visible trans woman is a risk. Every walk through an empty road, every interaction at a store, every conversation with a stranger, every appearance in a public space and every time you let someone learn where you live is a potentially life threatening risk. It's a coin flip each time. Do I return home unharmed or not? Heads or tails? Will I be safe in my own house? Heads? Or tails?

And some are brave, some have support, some are rich and some pass perfectly and some do make it unharmed. Others get assaulted, forced into sex work, killed in their own homes, go "missing", get buried with their dead-names by families that hated them. I'm not able nor willing to take that on, until I reach the point were I'll have to. I'm not the internet's idea of a trans woman. I am a trans woman, like an actual fucking person, in a highly hostile environment with absolutely no one having my back.

And I come here, and the progressive internet in general, and I occasionally see cunts from progressive states and countries that act like that being conforming is the most vile thing you can do as a trans person. Passing? Wanting to live without turbulence? Wanting to not have molotovs thrown at your window? Fake tranny. Acting as if transness is a specific nonconforming ideal that all "real" trans people must achieve. And as if we all have to want to be queer ambassadors. As if we all have the freedom to be. (Since this is the zero reading comprehension website, I'll add that I'm not saying that being non-conforming is somehow bad or that everyone that has that as their gender or appearance goal is an inconsiderable asshole.)

I don't have a point to make, I don't think. But I do have a gigantic FUCK YOU to anyone that sees trans people as their idea of transness and not as individual people in varying cultures, situations and mindsets. Guess that's my point. We are people, not ideas. And stop enforcing your ideas on our individualities.

[susansontag]

It's really not that hard to understand that their whole thing with hp and jk is the fact that the game is a turning point in letting jk get away with her views and funding of anti trans laws in the uk. She has her hands IN what gets passed there and the lgbt community sought to use her game as a lesson that you can't get away with being a racist antisemitic transphobe anymore. Unfortunately no one wants to listen to the community, because no one wants to stop and think "Hey how is this impacting my friends or youth today? What would it mean to them if we did this for them?"

And if you stopped to think you'd realize that if this had been a successful boycott, it would've been a very good opening for the lgbt community to direct our attention to important matters like the anti trans and anti abortion laws being passed in the u.s and the anti trans laws being passed in the uk.

People think they aren't fighting for other things or that they're hypocrites for only caring about hp when in reality you are treating the lgbt community like a hive mind. HP is big therefore people think it's the only thing the community cares about but it's not. You don't care about them from how dismissive you immediately are so you don't see that there are trans people fleeing states or countries because there has never been a safe place for them to exist.

All these laws have brought out the worst in people towards the lgbt community and boycotting a simple badly made video game is the easiest thing they could've asked us to do instead of telling us literally anything else that is a worry atm. It could've been a lesson to transphobes and antisemitic people that you can't be a visibly shit person anymore and get away with it but unfortunately no one cares enough to use some critical thinking skills and realize that one of the biggest ip's in the world being used as an example would've been the fastest but also the biggest way to push back on the sudden vocal hatred going on towards poc, jewish communities, and lgbt people.

I don't expect you to answer this in fact I'm sure you'll make fun of this ask but have a little empathy in your life instead of calling lgbt people (who again aren't the only ones condemning jk) hypocrites for not boycotting everything in their lives when you know it's not realistic and they know it's not realistic to ask you of this. It's why they chose hp. Because it was the easiest ask of the century and even that was too much to ask of everyone.

indeed, the lgbt community are not a hive mind (I have never claimed this), hence my disagreeing with you. boycotting the harry potter game would not get a message out about anything and isn't effective activism anyway. you just don't know what you're talking about so it is genuinely hard to get through to you and people who speak like you do... I know that's harsh, but you blatantly conflate uk debates about trans healthcare and women's spaces with us debates surrounding it, despite their being two different countries with different political balances of power having in some cases significantly different discussions. do you even know the details of these 'anti trans laws' you discuss? have you even skimmed any of the reports regarding trans healthcare, for example the cass review submitted to the nhs in the uk? do you even know the content of these debates?

trans people likely are fleeing certain countries, but they certainly have no reason to flee the united kingdom. this is an incredibly safe country for trans people; so safe, in fact, that any trans refugees should probably consider fleeing to here. there absolutely are safe places for trans people to exist and it's exceptionally irresponsible and alarmist to go around claiming otherwise

you seem very convinced that boycotting a video game will actually alter structural racism in some way, and well. I'm not even going to engage with that one, sorry. I do not need more empathy. people like you need to 'educate yourself' on issues you claim to be authorities on, because the careful consideration, the mindful debate, the baseline knowledge? it all seems incredibly lacking in people writing these strongly worded posts on social media websites

[batboyblog]

Things I like about Tumblr, 2022

first off, Tumblr isn't perfect, it's full of people, and people in general and on-line can be pretty crap, but in a rare move for me I'm looking at the good.

you are not expected to post under your own name/face. In fact people would think you were pretty freaking weird if you did. To the Best of my knowledge only one person posts under their own name with their face as a profile pic, Hi Neil Gaiman! If we keep this up Tumblr will not become a semi-work space like twitter

No one knows your follower count (and honestly you shouldn't know it either) The level of brain rot I see on twitter around having a big follower count is so embarrassing, "help me get to X million!" is so very cringe, much like blue checks its a meaningless thing and we're all better off not knowing who's "popular" there are popular posts not people.

I have a very popular post about the long term nature of Tumblr so I won't go too much into it other than to say that it's nice that we can have long term jokes and memes on here, because we're able to reblog things from the past without any shame and judgement and so a culture and in jokes and yearly (or weekly) events happen here in a way I don't see on more "now! now! now!" social media.

You can do whatever, linking to #1 because we're not a semi-professional webpage where people are selling their "brand" etc there's little to no pressure (outside of yourself) to stay on topic or theme, you can and should reblog that gif set of a funny show from 10 years ago, that moody art shot of a field before a storm, and that short video of puppies falling over, wild out.

You decide if people see your likes. How many times did people get busted for having porn in their Twitter likes, where here no one can judge you, again we're not a work space so if you like that picture of a man in jock strap, go for it reblog that shit, but if you're shy don't worry you can enjoy what you enjoy without having to share with the class.

We hate crypto, we hate NFT, we always have we always will and thats very sexy of us

you can (still) say what you like. The need to make platforms safe for advisors and influencers has lead to "unalive" and other ways to try to get around using bad words. On Tumblr I can say that Elon Musk sucks a whole bucket of monkey shit and I hope he's pushed down the stairs at Twitter HQ.

Tags my beloved, tags are funny, lovely cool little notes, a way to add a joke, say something heart felt etc without worrying "is this needed?" and guess what if the answer was "yes it was" someone will screen shot them and add them to the post for you, win win.

Long form thought, I know this is a semi-jokey list but like no joking I think having all our politicians, journalists and "thought leaders" spending all day on and mainly communicating through a webpage with a very small character limit was/is very bad for our society. Tumblr (as you can see) you can write an essay (I don't think those people should come here, but I never run out of characters)

there's nowhere better for formatting gifs or picture sets, I honestly can't imagine trying to post a series of gifs or pictures on Insta or Twitter and having them all folded up rather than laid out in order all visible at once (and not cropped down, well most of the time)

There's no algorithm, everyone says it but it needs to be on the list, there's no real hand holding pushing you to this or that, there's nothing boosting or hiding your post, you pick what you like and follow it, and then those blogs do something weird and different and thats chill and you keep on.

we're the gay trans sex website, pretty much no where else on-line can you find this much dumb, non sequitur queer humor or as supportive of the trans experience, yes there are TERFs but they are more fringe here than basically any where else.

we just don't matter, back to #1 we are not a place where you can market yourself or your brand or whatever, as such things are just not that serious, this is a social media website made for fun, to enjoy TV, books, and movies mainly but really whatever you do enjoy.

negative I'd like to address before I go, the on-going porn ban, I'm not in favor of porn itself on here, I don't think we need gif sets of studio porn or whatever. But once Tumblr was a safe space for a lot of queer performers to spread their self made work. It also was a safe space for Queer art, both photographic and drawn, to express sensuality and sexuality. And a safe space for Queer artists to draw art of characters totally fucking the shit out of each other. It was a place where enjoyment of the human form and sexuality could be mixed with all the other parts of life as normal. There were for sure problems, however in an ever more censored and sex negative world I think a freed Tumblr is more needed than ever, so I hope we figure that out soon.

[polyamorouspunk]

i'm going through somewhat of a questioning period right now after trying to get into the poly scene and discovering that, like, literally everyone i talk to says that poly is "the practice of choosing to date more than one person" and that referring to it as an identity you can have without choosing to date multiple people is offensive. (this isn't just a few people, it's like, the entire scene in my town! at first i thought it was just a few people, but then as i started to going more groups and stuff i realized *everyone* was talking about it like that, and then i hopped on poly Reddit and realized everyone *there* was talking about it like that too??)

they're not like, against identifying as poly if you're single, but the way they talk about that is like, you're single but if you *were* dating you would be open to dating more than one person. or if you're only currently dating one person, you don't plan to stop dating if you meet someone else you like, you just haven't met other people yet.

so here's my thing. i'd really been invested in the queer poly community online for a while, and most of us talk like you, where it's an orientation and we can choose to not act on it if there's other factors influencing our lives. like in my case that i think you relate to somewhat, where i have unprocessed baggage and i need to wait til i'm in a better place and don't have toxic jealous behaviors before i actively date multiple people. for me also there's covid problems because i'm immune disabled and nobody is masking in my town so i *can't* date until people start masking again (if they ever do -__-). still poly, just not acting on it right now. but according to the scene in my city, and apparently commonly across the country according to Reddit, that's offensive and "hijacking the queer community"??? and i DO NOT know how to talk to these people about it without them going off on me about "appropriating struggles" (that i LITERALLY ALSO HAVE, i'm visibly trans and they can see that, lmao). thoughts would be nice!!!

That’s wild. Most people I know talk about polyamory as either “the practice of dating more than one person” or “the inherent desire to date more than one person” where it’s either or, like you said. Like not just a queer identity, but both. There was a booth at Raleigh pride when I went the first year that was literally a polyamory group for… polyamorous people… at pride… so like I *assume* it was there to be a queer identity but I mean idk churches are there and stuff too so maybe not? Unfortunately I live almost 2 hours from Raleigh so I can’t be making meetings there, because I would love to know what that group things. I still have their card in my wallet almost 5 years later. Idk because it’s like. Are you gay if you just “choose to date people of the same sex/gender”? Are you aro if you just “choose not to date anyone”? Like you can’t erase the fact that for some people it is their queer identity, and that it’s tied to their gender and sexuality like gender and sexuality are tied to each other. It’s a third category of “sexuality, gender, and relationship preference” to me. I think I would be offended (and I have been offended!) when people insinuate it’s not queer, because for me it is. I mean you know what else is queer to me? My fashion! Maybe someone else dressing in the same way isn’t queer to them but me dressing the way I dress is queer to me. But I like yeah I know at least one person I came across on tumblr had a whole “polyamory isn’t inherently queer by the way. Neither is being asexual or aromantic.” And when I, I guess, uncovered that, a LOT of people came to me and was like “woah I really liked this blogger I can’t believe they’re aphobic” and that had literally nothing to do with me I was just talking about the polyamory part so to me, also, since polyamory and aromanticism/asexualism is so inherantly linked, sometimes I feel like when people say polyamory isn’t queer they also end up sounding like (or being like) aromanticism and asexualism ALSO isn’t queer which is… bad.

[adamthealien]

Last month, I was invited to play behind the lens, taking photographs to promote upcoming events put on by The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Abbey of St. Joan. As a photographer, I absolutely loved working on this project! The experience was both fun and creatively fulfilling. Pictured here is the first completed promo using one of my photos! In just two sessions, we've already snapped a bunch of promotional photography for fun events occurring now through at least November. I'm pretty dang proud of this particular shot. It's definitely one of my personal favorites from the recent photoshoots!

Kai-Kai is a new monthly event from The Abbey of St. Joan, the nonprofit local Seattle chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Every third Saturday they're hosting themed competitions, starting with Amateur Stripper Night on August 17th at Massive, from 8:00-10:00 PM. Door entry is a suggested $10, and you can register to compete for prizes for just a suggested $5.

For those who don't know, The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence are an international group of queer, charitable activists that emerged on the scene in San Francisco during Easter of 1979. They're a wonderful group of people who take on a variety of approaches to aiding, educating, uplifting, and fostering connections in the communities they serve, all while celebrating a life that embraces fun and sensuality.

My first exposure to The Sisters was at a Trans Pride march and rally in Portland toward the end of The Before Times (honestly, everything before the pandemic seems like lifetimes ago, now). They caught my attention not only because of their flamboyant nun attire, but because of the simple actions they took to make the rest of us feel safe and comfortable. With their outfits and extravagant makeup, they were visible in a way that made the rest of us, if we so wished, better able to blend in. And when the transphobes came, waving signs of hatred, The Sisters took flags and banners and created a visual barrier between the bigots and the rest of us.

As someone still very new to going out in public as my whole self, expressing myself in ways I’d been made to fear, I don’t know how to fully express what that simple action meant to me. I was nervous to be there, to participate without actively hiding some part of who I was. The Sisters helped me feel secure in the knowledge I was not as vulnerable as I felt, because I was surrounded by a community of people who were looking out for one another.

In my short time in Seattle, I’ve been very lucky to begin getting to know the Sisters of The Abbey beyond just a comforting presence at Pride. They’re a driving force in bringing people together. They take their place in the community seriously, while also knowing how to cut loose and get people to have some fun. It’s hard to forget a good time spent with The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

So if you're in or near the Seattle area, come on out to Kai-Kai at Massive on August 17th for a good time with great people! Enter to compete and show off your sexy stripper skills or just buy a drink and enjoy the show!

[trans-advice-for-all]

I'm non-binary or maybe trans, I was wondering if you have any advice if I want to tell my parents and school that I want to change my name? My school is technically an all-girls school, so it would be great if I could be advised further about that.

I'm sorry I never got a clear notification for this question! I don't know if this is still relevant but just in case it is or useful for anyone else:

If your parents do not already know you're trans/nonbinary, then bringing up the idea of a name change may come as a shock to them, especially if you're wanting a name that is more neutral or masculine. In that case, I personally would take the route of coming out first (even if it's a "I'm questioning my gender" type of coming out). But before doing this it would be helpful to know how your parents feel about LGBTQ+ topics as a whole. If they're generally accepting to your knowledge then coming out isn't as risky. If you don't know how they view these topics, you can bring it up using other people as examples. "This actor/actress in this show/movie I watched is trans" for example and gauging the reaction.

If they DO know you're trans/nonbinary and are accepting but you haven't brought up a name change before, then you can bring it up in various different ways. "What would you have named me if I had been born the other sex?" Can be a good discussion topic. Or "I've been thinking about it really hard about it and I think I want to change my name (list reasons here)". Sometimes it can help to engage your parents in this process as it can help the whole thing feel less "jarring" for them. Like showing a list of names you like.

If you don't want to outright come out but want to go by a different name, sometimes people will try and come up with a neutral nickname, either based off of their birth name or something that has some sort of meaning to it. This works especially well with schools, at least where I live they do. I'm not sure where you're located and how they handle people who use nicknames in place of their full names (like someone who goes by Alex but their full first name is Alexander)

I'm not really sure how this works with schools that are single gender, as that's not something I have any experience or really any knowledge in. I live in an area that doesn't have anything like that as I live pretty rural. Do you know of any trans people at your school? Do you know what your country/state/province/etc. Laws are when it comes to gender identity and schooling?

Overall I think the first steps here would be gathering information to make an informed decision. Like laws, policies, parental views/opinions, if you have any peers that are trans, etc.

For my own experience with schooling while trans that may or may not be relevant as my situation was different: we simply told the school(s) that I was trans and what my chosen name was. They made sure my chosen name was what was used by teachers and faculty, and my (prior) legal name was only visible where legally necessary and as a part of school based logins for websites. The area I live in has transgender protection laws in place so they legally couldn't give me too much issue.

[cozycreaturescorner]

That picture of you made me gay panic a bit 👀🥵😳

hahafsgg i'm so glad <3 i strive to make as many people panic about how gay they feel about me as possible

[keingleichgewicht]

if you're comfortable with me asking, why do you personally use it/its pronouns? /gen i recently had a bad conversation with my sister where she reacted badly when i told her i was thinking of using them. i want to explain to her why i like them but i dont know how. do you think you could give a perspective on it?

man, yeah, i guess. i mean, there's a couple reasons, and some of them are as banal and obscure as "it's grammatically more convenient in german". and i figure if you want to be able to explain it to your sister, you might need to be able to give her your reasons, not mine. but yes, sure, i can talk about pronouns!

i like it/its because it represents to me... a certain radicalism of form; a hard rejection not just of gender, but maybe more importantly of gender having fuckin' anything to do with personhood. it challenges a lot of assumptions people make along those lines, and conveniently does so every single time they want to refer to me. i like it because it's very hard to sanitize or ignore, because it trips people up, 'cause it makes them think.

there's this leslie feinberg quote:

For me, pronouns are always placed within context. I am female-bodied, I am a butch lesbian, a transgender lesbian—referring to me as "she/her" is appropriate, particularly in a non-trans setting in which referring to me as "he" would appear to resolve the social contradiction between my birth sex and gender expression and render my transgender expression invisible.

and it's that last part that's really important to me, that "render my transgender expression invisible." that idea that she/her is preferred in public precisely because it goes against the grain, because it doesn't conform, because it sets up a contradiction. and what you want to be a contradiction. what you want to be is outside of the way they imagine you; you want to make yourself unimaginable, except to the people who'd get it right.

i don't like gendered pronouns, in general -- and as dearly as i do love neopronouns and other gender-neutral pronoun sets, they're still gendered, in the sense that they're meant to be a function of your gender identity; they make it necessary for that information to be included every time anyone wants to talk about you. i don't want people to talk about me in terms of gender at all! but because pronouns = gender is so hellishly baked into culture at this point, even gender-neutral pronouns (they/them, etc.) kind of can't actually escape it. at best to me they're still talking in terms of (the lack of) gender, which doesn't quite do it for me.

whereas it/its feels different, 'cause courtesy of it being a pronoun explicitly Not Supposed To Be Used For People, it messes up this whole system! it's Not Supposed To Be For People, which is a vibe that suits me just fine, because i'm not what people are supposed to be anyway (e.g. possessing a gender, among other things). and it sets up an instant contradiction in terms, like leslie feinberg talks about. it makes the transgender expression incredibly visible.

it DOES still convey information about my gender identity, naturally, because that shit's inescapable, but at least all it conveys is more or less exactly Queer As In Fuck You, which is actually fine with me: queer as in fuck you; it/its as in fuck you; it/its as in if you must imagine me as gendered to imagine me as a person, then don't imagine me as a person, you fuck, on account of i have no interest in being a person by your definition of it anyway. (and on the other hand if you imagine me as a person without needing to imagine a gender, then frankly you can use whatever pronoun you like, because you've already got it right. the dang things are only words; they don't mean anything on their own.)

in short: pronouns are literally just charming little grammatical doodads, they serve a useful linguistic purpose, they shouldn't have to make existential statements about who you are. and i like to fuck up the structure that demands that they do by picking one whose existential statement about me has "INHUMAN" written where the gender slot was meant to go

[system-of-a-feather]

Have you considered that the whole Super straight/bi/lesbian/gay thing came about specifically because y'all are so quick to call people transphobic? I don't understand why supporters of trans rights are so interested in whether or not people are willing to date trans people.

Like, if that's your biggest problem, you're doing well. Genuinely, what is this oppression trans ppl face if the biggest concern is getting a date? And if someone doesn't want to date a trans person, why, WHY would y'all wanna pressure them into it? What does that do for you? Isn't it dangerous for the trans person to pursue the issue once they've been turned down? Why are you encouraging them to be in a place of danger? Who cares if some people don't want to date trans people? If they're as oppressed as y'all say, that is literally the least of their concern.

I absolutely fully agree with that. It absolutely isn’t an okay thing to do and people aren’t transphobic for not wanting to date or be with a trans person. I have absolutely nothing against that.

What *does* bother me is how people go about using the “trans people are mad that we won’t date them” to straw man that most people that say that follow it up with saying “trans men aren’t real men” or combine it with “I only want to date real and natural men” which is inherently transphobic.

I fully support anyone who is just not interested in dating trans people. That’s fine, and I really don’t care. We are a blog of people who have been traumatized, abused, and sexually abused and forced upon. We would never put that upon anyone else. Our blog is first and foremost about trauma and consent and harassments is absolute big “N-O”s for us

If the majority of the people who said they didn’t want to date trans people didn’t start using “real” women and men lines, then I would have no issue with being “super straight” or “super lesbian”.

Similarly to you assuming everyone who is against it cares about if you can get a date or not and is upset about it, we are forced to assume everyone who thinks it is about that is going to use and talk like a transphobe / TERF and de-legitimize their gender identity. Most of the shit talking and memes in the Super Straight tags are dissing “new” gender labels like nonbinary or whatever and trans identities and all that, so don’t act as if this is all about predatory trans behavior and not about people being disgustingly transphobic.

If your tag and movement was solely about addressing toxic behavior in the trans community that is predatory, I would be standing with you and in support, but instead a large majority of the people in your “movement” take it as an opportunity to diss, disrespect, and let blatant transphobic / TERF rhetoric spew disgustingly on your floor and I just can’t stand for that.

As for the Trans community, our largest issue **isnt** getting a fucking date. It has never fucking been getting a date and if you really think that is the largest issue, god are you blind and deaf. 

I think the largest issue would be the overall stigma hatred and disgust many people in society hold towards people who are trans. There are also all the people who regularly threaten violence and state that they would kick the head in of anyone who they saw if they were trans or saw “a man in a dress.” There are people thinking people who are trans are secretly just pedophiles that want to fondle children. There are people who murder people for being trans. There are people who just regularly bully and make fun of people or completely cut ties with people because they are trans. There are people assaulting - physically and sexually - people who are trans just for being trans.

“In 2009, 17 percent of all reported violent hate crimes against LGBTQ people were directed against those who identified themselves as transgender, with most (11 percent of all hate crimes) identifying as transgender women.8 The remainder identified as transgender men, genderqueer, gender questioning, or intersex.” - x

“People may assume that being visibly transgender or having a transgender history is a direct cause of sexual assault. There is some truth to this: A number of murders of transgender people (particularly transgender women of color) have taken place when new sexual partners "discover" their sexual partners were assigned male at birth and/or have a penis. “ - x

I promise you, almost any of the bigotry and exclusion that people who are lesbian, bi, and/or gay experience, people who are trans also experience, but they also get it from people who are lesbian, bi, and gay.

If you want to have a discussion about the predatory nature of some people who use being trans as a means to attack and pressure people into sex or a relationship, we would be more than glad to sit down and talk about that. It is a huge problem and a disgusting one. 

If you are trans and you get rejected and then use your trans identity to try to pity and victim cry yourself a date or sex, then you are scum and worse than any transphobe out there. You don’t deserve to look at this blog or group yourself with us. Don’t be a fucking predator.

If you are one of those people, lick my boot and cry because fuck you. 

I’m not against “supers” because I think they have a right to your body. I’m against “supers” because they parade behind “I don’t like the predatory behavior!!” to be transphobic.

I understand that if some of your have been pressured into shit like this, it might be a trauma response and I understand that. I’m not actually mad at you for that because I very much understand how that works. We have been there before and have generalized horribly, but please do know a large majority of the community is not just about sexuality and who they will date. We aren’t predators. We are just people and most of us just will handle rejection like a normal god damn person. Please don’t generalize us with abusers because of a negative experience you or someone you know might have experienced.

A lot of people who are trans are far more busy and concerned with how having to choose between who they actually are and living in a constant lie to themselves and others, and being their true self and risking to upturn their entire life, loose many acquaintances, and naturally have a target on your back if you aren’t living in an area that is considerably tolerant and even then its still a risk. I don’t know where you got that getting a date is the largest issue about being trans because it never was and never is.

Please, take some time to really try to listen to us and our experiences and please don’t immediately group all trans people in with abusive people. A lot of us really don’t care about getting in people’s pants and most of it is really just about trying to live and be ourselves.

I understand the experiences are horrible and anyone who puts that pressure is horrible, but don’t let that be an excuse to spread rhetoric and hate on a group that already has an insanely high suicide rate. 

People aren’t killing themselves because they aren’t getting dates. They are killing themselves because being trans is hard and insanely difficult. Dating someone is a speck of sand in a desert.

Please don’t use that straw man on us and please don’t use it to paint all trans people as bad and worthy of hate.

Thank you.

-Ray (Gatekeeper)

[unicornprincessinthetardis]

My (often relatively reasonable) dad: ...so Enoch Powell was right, what he said has happened.

Me: and you don't think maybe he could've said it without inciting racial hatred and literally saying that in time the rivers might run with the blood of 'native' British people because of immigration, do you?

My dad: no, you're being ridiculous, it had to be said, and there really are areas of cities that are majority black or Muslim now so he was right in his predictions, and it didn't change how things were anyway

Me: *goes away to calm down and read up on the 'Rivers of Blood' speech*

[I already knew some of this but here's a précis for those unfamiliar: in April 1968, in Wolverhampton, UK, a Conservative MP, Enoch Powell, made a speech, about the proposed 'Race Relations Bill' (which subsequently made it illegal to refuse housing/ employment/public services to people on the grounds of race/colour/ ethnic & national origins).

The speech was strongly anti-immigrant, calling for 'voluntary re-emigration' and for moves to be made to stem the tide of immigration, else Britain would be 'overrun' and sooner or later white British people would find themselves fully second-class citizens, and that in some ways they already were. He also talked about a "tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic", which I take to mean immigration in the USA to the similar end of white people no longer being in charge - which in 1968 was so far from the truth, and just horrible baseless fear-mongering, playing on people’s xenophobia and racist prejudice - and compared pro-immigration/anti-discrimination newspapers to the ones that had denied and hid the rise of fascism and threat of war in the 1930s. Plus, he talked about a constituent of his, a woman who lived on a street that had become occupied by mostly black people, who lost her white lodgers and complained to the council for a tax rate reduction because she wouldn't take black tenants, and instead basically got told not to be racist, and presented it as a bad thing that she'd been treated like that.

The speech's common name comes from a phrase he quoted from the Aenid (because he was also a Cambridge-educated classics scholar), 'I seem to see "the River Tiber foaming with much blood"', although he just called it 'the Birmingham speech' and seemed to be surprised by the uproar he caused.]

Me (to self): So it didn't change things did it? How do you explain the attacks against nonwhite people where the attackers literally shouted his name and repeated his rhetoric? Oh, they would definitely have happened if he hadn't made that speech, wouldn't they? And the British people of foreign descent who were so afraid they might be removed from their lives just for not being white they always had cases packed to go? And the fact that experts says he set back progress in 'race relations' by about ten years and legitimised being racist/anti-immigrant in the same way UKIP and some pro-Brexit types have done within the last few years here (fun fact: immediately after the Brexit vote, people were being racially and physically abusive to visibly Muslim and/or South Asian people, telling them to leave because of Brexit, which was of course extreme nonsense because their presence would be nothing to do with the EU, and more likely the British Empire and the Commonwealth, but they were doing it because it seemed suddenly okay to be openly racist, because Nigel Farage and his ilk, and a legally non-binding vote surrounded in lies, said so) and others have done elsewhere, in the US and Europe and Brazil and so many other places.

Powell was interviewed about the speech in 1977 and stood by his views, said that because the immigration figures were higher than those he had been 'laughed at' about in his speech, he was right and now governments didn't want to deal with the "problem", were passing it off to future generations and it would go on until there was a civil war!

He also said he wasn't a 'racialist' (racist) because he believed a "'racialist' is a person who believes in the inherent inferiority of one race of mankind to another, and who acts and speaks in that belief" so he was in fact "a racialist in reverse" as he regarded "many of the peoples in India as being superior in many respects—intellectually, for example, and in other respects—to Europeans." (I mean, I know I can't hold him to our standards but a) that's still racism and b) he did think that mankind was divided into very distinct, probably biologically so, races, which, yes, normal for the time, but the whole 'each with different qualities and ways in which they were better than others' is iffy)

Me: *goes back to Dad to make my point and definitely not get upset* So here are some things that literally happened as a consequence of the 'Rivers of Blood' speech...

So even if he was correct to say what he did (I mean, he wasn't but you have to tiptoe around Dad and I had points to make), he shouldn't have said it the way he did

My dad: so you think the truth should be suppressed? You're only looking at this from one perspective (he thinks he knows better because he was alive at the time and my brother and I weren't despite the fact that we're both into politics and history and, y'know, not into scapegoating, behaving oddly, and laying blame because people are different to us - he and mum also have issues with trans people and we're trying so hard to change their views/behaviours but I'm not sure it's working & that's a whole different story) and there are these areas that really are Muslim-only (because informal lending and wanting to keep the community together is such a crime, right?) and they don't integrate and want to impose Sharia law (only he couldn't remember what it was called right then) and you don't know what it's like (he is an engineer surveyor and travels all over to inspect boilers and cooling systems and all sorts of stuff, and this includes into majority-Black or -Asian (Muslim and otherwise) areas in Birmingham - which is not a no-go area for non-Muslims, I'm a deeply agnostic white woman, it's my nearest big city and I wish I went there more often but it's tricky as I don't drive, public transport is bad/inconvenient, and I have no friends to go with except depression and anxiety [which are worse 'friends' than the ones that I found out only liked me in high school because I always had sweets and snacks at lunch so when I got braces and my mouth hurt too much to eat much of anything which meant I certainly didn't have snacks, they dropped me pretty quickly] so apparently he's the expert on all such matters)

What I wish I'd said: *staying very calm* well, and that's your opinion, I'm going, I've got sewing to finish *leaves*

What actually happened:

Me: have you considered that they are able to buy up areas like that because white people leave because of their prejudice against the 'influx'?

Dad: they buy up great areas because they buy in groups (I think this refers to a sort of community lending thing to be compliant with various parts of Islam? [Please correct me if I'm wrong] which is effectively what building societies/credit unions were, at least to begin with, and he doesn't take issue with those) and want to stay together. Why do they do that? Sikhs don't do that, they buy big houses and aren't bothered about being close together.

Me: different religious ethoses? I don't know... But you do know that they people who want the UK to be a caliphate ruled by Sharia law are just a minority, and that most Muslims would not want that at all, just like you?

Dad: but they still do want it, and it could happen, if there was a charismatic leader,

Me: *incredulous* you know it's about as likely for that to actually happen as for strictly Orthodox Jewish people to be able to make this country into another Israel, right? Besides, there are the police, and the armed forces, and intelligence agencies, not to mention the Government and civil service (thought I'd got a win there, he hates the unchanging upper-class-public-school-Oxbridge nature of the people who effectively really run the government, constant no matter the leaning of the elected party, but no) who have a vested interest in preserving themselves in their current state so would be able to stop anything like that

Dad: yes, but the cutting of funding to police and public services means they might not be able to stop it (I realise now that he's oddly economically left-wing but also really quite socially conservative in some ways)

Me: *getting angry* but it's still an absolute minority, most Muslims would be horrified if it really did happen, and have you ever considered that maybe they wouldn't be so ill-disposed to us and to integration if we didn't demand it of them the moment that they arrive, demand that they assimilate or go away (he often uses the phrase "yes, but they're in somebody else's country, they should make an effort") and maybe young people wouldn't be so easily radicalised and people generally mistrust the people who don't try to understand them, you know, want them to change everything about themselves (for instance, Dad is violently opposed to the burqa etc and not really a fan of the hijab - still doesn't get that it's a choice and people can do what they want because apparently 'anyone could be wearing one of those things' - burqas/niqabs, I presume - and that it must all be forced because who would possibly choose to dress like that - I have half a mind to show him those sites about Christian modest dressing (one was a shop and a lot of their range was pretty cute!) that I once found, just to see if that'll prove to him it is a choice thing) *tries to leave*

Dad: *angry* You stay there and listen to me! You're just looking at it from one perspective and that's not the truth, you're so biased and closed-minded, you only look at things your way!

Me: *furious* Really? Really? Am I? *Scoffs/incredulous exhalation* I'm closed-minded, am I?... *Storms out, shouts as I go* I'm not the one who said Enoch Powell was right!!

This is all heavily paraphrased, because I've been writing this for literal hours now and I was angry and don't remember well at the best of times, it may have been worse than how I'm writing it

Also, going to be tricky to patch up but right now I stand by what I said, because I know my perspective is limited, but at least I actually admit that and try to find out what people different to me think, rather than basing all my opinions and things on my own experiences which can't be universal, as he seems to

Other bs my dad said during the two conversations: "don't get so upset about it, it's only history" (which is bold, considering it was the 50th anniversary this year and he was literally 11 years old when it happened so probably saw/heard news coverage)... "Yes of course far right groups use 'Enoch was right' as a slogan, it doesn't mean anything"... Reiterating the 'nothing changed' thing multiple times... Dismissing the fact that Powell said there'd be a civil war because apparently just because the British/Europeans were aggressive conquerors anyone else who came in numbers anywhere would eventually have that aim and how ridiculous that view actually is... Dismissing the fact that Powell basically incited racial hatred and violence with the inclusion of an irrelevant Classical phrase which spread fear on all sides...

I could go on but I'm so tired and don't want to make myself more upset

I love my parents but I really don't like them very much lately but I don't know if I just put up with it or leave sooner or later and if I do leave I don't know where I'd go because no friends

Basically I'm so sorry for my parents' prejudices which I'm still trying to unlearn myself - I apologise wholeheartedly to all Muslim and Jewish people and honestly pretty much everyone they're prejudiced against

[maria-marsden]

“No more fiendish punishment could be devised, were such a thing physically possible, than that one should be turned loose in society and remain absolutely unnoticed by all the members thereof”. – William James, (1890),The Principles of Psychology.

“I is for Intersex, not Invisible!” – a popular LGBTQIA+ Pride slogan.

I am intersex, but I have not always identified as such. An intersex person is someone who is born with variations in their biological sex characteristics that do not conform to what is biologically or culturally considered typically male or female.

Sex characteristics are genitals, reproductive organs, chromosomes and hormone patterns.

In my case I was born with Mullerian Aplasia (aka MRKH or Mayer Rokitansky Kuster Hauser Syndrome) and unilateral gonadal agenesis. MRKH affects about 1 in 9000 of the world population. Intersex people as a whole number >1.7%. We are more common than autistic people. We are more common than people born with natural red hair.

Like many intersex people, l was born with more than one intersex variation. My uterus was not formed properly, I was born without a cervix and 3/4 of my vagina canal has been absent since birth. I ovulate and have very bad period pains, but have never “started my periods” in the typical understanding of the term.

At birth, I was presumed to be female. I had a vulva that appeared typically female. At puberty, I developed breast tissue, pubic hair ET cetera. However, by the age of 18, l had still not started my periods. I was very thin then and at first, doctors thought this was due to me being underweight.

In 1989, I had a laparoscopy. The female doctor informed me that I was born without a uterus and with a very short vagina [ about 2 centimetres ]. She said that I would never be able to have sex without surgery and also suggested that I might find it very difficult to find a partner who would accept me.

“But there are a few nice men out there,” she said. I was told that I should come back and have surgery when I was about to get married. The surgery would involve cutting skin off my arm and grafting it into a vagina. It’s a lot to take in when you are 18.

I was actually just about turn 18 at the time....traditionally the age of reaching adulthood. I reached a state of something, but I couldn’t articulate what it was. I couldn’t articulate what I was.

Of course, there was a part of me that really wanted to challenge the doctors. I wanted to say things like, “what do you mean I can’t have sex? I can already have orgasms.” I wanted to say, “How do you know that I am heterosexual? I might be a lesbian for all you know.” (I hadn’t answered the question of my sexuality then. This medical trauma always intruded on my attraction to women.) I wanted to shout, “How do you even know that I want to be a female? I might want to have a penis!” [ I didn’t, but l certainly considered this option] I wanted to ask, “but what about anal?” But I didn’t dare. [ I was a shy, withdrawn 18 year old. ]

I did have sex and healthy relationships, including penetrative sex without dilation or surgery. I’m happily married, but for a long time I thought that by having sex without medical treatment, I was doing something wrong. This is one of the perils being diagnosed a malformed female.

Whatever you do misdiagnosed as a malformed female, you're always going to think that you're doing something wrong... that you are wrong or inadequate in some way.

When I tell people that I am intersex, a lot of folk assume that being intersex is a term that medics diagnosed me with. The truth is that since the beginning of gynaecological medicine, doctors and surgeons have hardly ever diagnosed anyone as intersex.

When medics first became interested in what they termed “hermaphroditism” or “people of doubtful sex”, their interest was not in diagnosing intersex, but just the opposite. Medics were then (and still are) only interested in finding intersex patients so that they can diagnose our true sex as female or male and force treatments or surgery that will make us less queer in the minds of those around us. Politically and throughout Western history, this is to maintain white cis heteronormative male privilege.

At the age of nearly 18, I wasn’t diagnosed as being intersex. I was diagnosed as a malformed female who hadn’t formed properly and would never do so without intersex genital mutilation [surgery] or prescribed self harm [ dilation with a glass dildo/test tube].

Medics suggested that as much as possible I keep what little information they have given me about my body to myself. For the most part I did. I spent the next 30 years of my life living in shame and secrecy. This shame and secrecy was compounded when my female friends talked about their periods or sex life. I was different. I didn’t have a language for describing my experiences.

I didn’t have the exact same experiences in terms of rights of passage assumed to be common to all women. I felt included in the category of female, only in as much as I was excluded by a body that didn’t conform and the lack of language for my experiences. I felt invalid as a female and invisible.

I didn’t have intersex genital mutilation. I was almost persuaded to, but I became traumatised by the pre op dilation and the thought of having to continue to do this.

Being diagnosed a malformed female destroyed all sense of my personal and body integrity. The only way that I could keep myself together, was to tear myself apart. I was ending up in A and E every other day with severe self harm. The only way to make myself visible, was to visibly disappear. I became anorexic. I had been starved of the opportunity to grow up knowing other intersex people. I was in my own prison of shame and secrecy and on a hunger strike.

I ended up spending two years as an inpatient in various institutions in the psychiatric system. I was further pathologized and invalidated by the psychiatric system in the UK . In addition to my diagnosis as malformed female, I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.

BPD is basically the mark of Cain of the DSM. When a BPD diagnosis is put on a person, whole heap of assumptions are made about that persons personality. These assumptions include, manipulative, attention seeking, passive aggressive, incapable of healthy personal relationships, emotionally immature, unable to grow up, promiscuous, reckless, impulsive ET cetera

Indeed a number of studies and critiques have shown that sexual minorities, trans, non binary and gender non conforming people are more likely to be diagnosed with BPD. Some psychologists and mental health professionals even have the audacity to suggest that what psychiatrists now term “gender dysphoria” is caused by having a borderline personality disorder. One psychiatrist had me fill out a questionnaire to see how much my gender conformed to what is considered typical for women. (To this day, l don’t know why).

I certainly did not come out to psychiatrists as being agender/non binary. I did acknowledge identifying as a lesbian and experienced some psychiatrists trying to tell me otherwise. Despite never having had surgery, one psychiatrist felt it necessary to put in my medical notes that l had a vaginoplasty (even though l had no such thing)! He even asked me if l hung around dark alley ways late at night so that l could get raped. (WTF??????)

Not all the psychiatrists l saw agreed that l had “borderline personality disorder”. The psychiatrist whom l did get along with and who was my main psychiatrist diagnosed PTSD and depression. He said that “borderline personality disorder” was just psychiatric speak for “bugger off and die!”

At that time under the 1983 mental health act in the UK, BPD was deemed “untreatable”. This meant that if a psychiatrist diagnosed a patient with BPD and they committed suicide, the psychiatric team would not legally be held accountable. Indeed, in one hospital a psychiatrist who had insisted that l had BPD said that if l were to leave the hospital and jump off a multi storey car park, he wouldn’t try and stop me!

I did not have a borderline personality disorder. If l was guilty of anything, it was a kind of “trauma re-enactment”. Traumatised by medical violence and psychic mutilation at age 18, I turned to mutilating myself and seeking help from the very same people who had traumatised me in the first place, [the medical system].

Self mutilation led to more psychic mutilation at the hands of the psychiatric system. Now, not only was my body and sex malformed, I was told that my personality was malformed too.

With the help of some good friends who were also psychiatric survivors, I eventually managed to recover and distance myself from the psychiatric profession, challenging their assumptions about me. It took me a long time after that to feel brave enough to reach out and find other intersex people like me.

In 2020 during the first Covid 19 lockdown, I reached out to MRKH groups and found others with the same variations in sex characteristics as myself. I wasn’t alone anymore but I was still a female with missing pieces.

I found the missing pieces in Esther Leidolf’s “The Missing Vagina Monologue and Beyond”, the documentary “InterseXion”and Hida Valoria’s book “The Spectrum of Sex”.

I learned that I wasn’t a female with missing pieces, but an intersex person who had been mistreated, misunderstood and misdiagnosed as a malformed female. I found my community, my anger, my grief and I found myself.

I admit, that when l first learned that MRKH is considered an intersex variation by intersex activists, l had a huge fear of reaching out to those communities. In many ways, l was afraid to become the person that l am today. I was afraid of being someone who could talk just as easily about being intersex as l could about being autistic.

I was also afraid that if l were to come out as intersex, people might make assumptions about my genitals. To be honest, l got so much support from the intersex community that l very quickly realised that other people’s assumptions were not my problem.

It’s much easier now that l am comfortable being intersex to chat with my female friends when they talk about their periods or sex life. As an intersex person, l am not incomplete, invalid or inadequate, l am just different from the majority.

The main benefit of connecting mostly with intersex groups (as opposed to MRKH “syndrome”) groups is that l no longer have to focus on what is supposedly “wrong with me”. I don’t have to see myself as broken. I have had trauma certainly, but I am no longer broken.

I still connect with the MRKH community. As an intersex activist, it’s important that l understand the issues faced by those who identify MRKH as a female variation or condition. I certainly would not have found my way to the intersex community had it not have been for some of my MRKH Sisters and Siblings.

I spent the first thirty years after my laparoscopy, diagnosed as a malformed female, forced into a space where I would be alone with my difference, silenced and invisible and unable to grow.

Finally, having found the intersex community, I feel like I have found an environment to nourish me, to enable me to grow my way and become my myself. I am unlearning and learning continuously about myself. I have some new language and l am beginning to create my own words and terms.

I am nearly 50 now and have come to the conclusion that life is too short not to be myself and l don't give a shit about what other people might think or gossip about me.

I use identity first language. The natural variations in my body and mind are not disorders. I am an autistic intersex person, rather than a person born with autism and an intersex variation. I mean how many people say that they were born with maleness or femaleness?

And just because l describe myself this way l am not saying that being intersex and autistic are the only things about me. Yet to me, they are important things about me because l would much rather have been born with a very fertile mind than a fertile reproductive system.

Many intersex people are autistic or neuro diverse. I feel that l am "inter" in many ways other than just biological sex characteristics. I travel between worlds and have had visitations since childhood from other worlds. The indigenous people of America understood this. Intersex autistic people were seen as the "bridges between worlds" and had important roles in the healing of their communities and as peacemakers. Perhaps this is why l have developmental topographical disorientation. (l can read physical maps well, but get lost in familiar places). I am not broken, just different. Where l lack development in one area, l excel and am evolved in others. Nature does not make mistakes.

XOXY