#and not for me in particular because I AM NOT TRANSMASC but other people:

[rjalker]

Edit: Can't believe the irony of me having to say this, but I do apparently have to say this: Not wanting boobs and not wanting to be seen as feminine does not mean you are, or want to be seen as masculine. I'm not transmasculine just because I don't want boobs and don't want to be seen as feminine.

You cannot read a post where the point is having boobs does not equal being feminine and go oh! right. Because not wanting boobs equals being masculine! No!! I'm not transmasculine! I'm not trying to look masculine! Kill the gender binary that has a stranglehold on your views of gender!

Stop shoving nonbinary people into a new set of binary boxes!

___

the idea that having boobs gets you automatically and inherently classified as being "female presenting" and "feminine presenting" in so-called progressive circles makes me want to maul people.

I've said this before and I'll just keep repeating it forever: I'm disabled. I can't wear a binder. If I tried I'd dislocate several ribs and that'd be the least of my worries. Like. you know why ribs not being where they're supposed to be is dangerous? Yeah. Yeah. Use your imagination. That's a real thing I have to worry about.

I can't even wear a sports bra that's several sizes """too large""" comfortably.

And yeah, I can use trans tape, but that takes concerted time and effort to put on and take off, and every time you put it on you get different results, and you might just mess it up entirely and waste it, and it can get itchy if you're sweating with it on (and it's 90 degrees almost all the time it's not actively winter here, so that's...literally unavoidable. Even sitting in the living room. Because the electric company charges an arm and a leg for AC during the summer AND won't even give you enough to actually cool your shitty tiny apartment even with all the doors shut and curtains drawn!!!!!), and it's expensive to buy more of.

And especially because this declaration of "feminine presenting" or "female presenting" that gets shoved onto you is not only misgendering you, but placing the blame on you for being misgendered for not looking not-female enough. It's no longer the speaker making incorrect assumptions, they're now literally declaring that this is a concious decision you make. You are choosing to "present" yourself this way...by having a body that you have no control over.

And even when it comes to clothes, the idea that the clothes you wear is another purposeful, conscious Presentation™ of your gender...

Even if we ignore for a moment the fact that being disabled and poor severely limits the clothes you can wear and even just have access to, what about people who literally don't get to choose what their clothes are? Kids whose parents buy their clothes for them, people whose carers choose their outfits for them?

My gender is not "sun-bleached tank top and shorts with a reflective sun hat". That's just what I wear so I don't die of heat stroke every time I set foot outside, and so that my joints are not being painfully constricted every time I move. I literally can't take my hat off outside during the day without developing a headache (or are they fucking migraines? fuck if I know!) within minutes from the sun trying to murder me from my light sensitivity. And it took me years to even realize that it was light sensitivity causing this. I remember in middle school the substitute gym teacher asked if I was a vampire because I moved to the closest shady spot every time we moved to a new area.

And like. Let's be honest. Even if I could safely wear a binder...They're fucking expensive.

It's just really fucking annoying that so many people equate binding with being trans and so many people who are supposed to be allies are just so comfortable labeling other people, who they haven't asked, as "feminine presenting" just because of the presence of boobs. Like we have any choice in the matter. Like having visible boobs just means you're asking to be misgendered.

[transmascpetewentz]

One Challenge For People Who Deny Transandrophobia

I have one challenge for anyone and everyone who denies transandrophobia for any reason that has to do with transmasc advocacy allegedly harming trans women. Seeing as you all are very adamant in your stance against trans men demanding basic respect in queer spaces, this should not be difficult for you to do if you have thought about your reasoning for holding such opinions.

My challenge for all of you is to answer this one question:

What is one way that transmasc activism harms trans women directly, or is transmisogynistic in some way?

Now, because I know that some people will put together words that don't make sense to avoid answering the question but sound intellectual, here are some logical fallacies that your answer must avoid for me to consider it completing the challenge:

You must not include any criticism of the word transandrophobia that does not meaningfully engage with the activism and discussions that trans men have been having.

No comparisons to any sort of hate groups (MRAs, TERFs, etc). Point out the specific ideas that you disagree with instead of saying "this is just like [x]."

You cannot cherry-pick the concept of intersectionality or cite any particular white woman's interpretation of the ideas proposed by Kimberle Crenshaw to discredit transmasc advocacy without engaging with the new ideas we have put forth.

No whataboutisms; do not base your argument around the idea that trans women should be centered in trans men's spaces and discussions.

Avoid making use of a strawman. Try to think of the most compelling argument you've seen for the existence of transandrophobia and refute that instead of trying to attack the weakest possible argument (that probably hasn't been made in good faith).

Acknowledge the fact that closeted, non-passing, and passing trans men exist, and do not treat non-passing trans men as having a less legitimate male or trans experience than those who pass. Don't bring up passing trans men to say that all trans men have male privilege, because just like trans women, trans men who pass still face transphobia.

No projection of cisgender dynamics of gender and sexuality onto trans spaces, as while those aren't totally irrelevant, they are irrelevant to whether or not transandrophobia is a thing that exists.

Acknowledge that trans men are oppressed by misogyny, just like trans women and transfems are. Also, acknowledge the existence of intersex trans men and trans men of color.

Don't bring up individual trans men who have done certain bad things that do not implicate the entire area of transmasc activism or transandrophobia theory.

Do not mention Israel or Palestine, or bring up other irrelevant issues that you may disagree with me or other prominent trans men in these spaces on.

As stated, all that I am looking for is one (1) argument. I have searched through a lot of posts, a lot of articles about this subject, yet I have not found one coherent argument that avoids basic logical fallacies and doesn't just throw words together to sound like it's refuting anything. I can and will respond to all of the arguments that I get that fit this criteria. You can send them to me in asks or in the notes of this post.

[qweerhet]

the thing about tumblr "baeddel" discourse is that it's such a meaningless game of telephone with no real grounding in, like, any ideology or history.

i've been seeing people say lately that it's a "medieval slur for trans women" which i guess shouldn't surprise me given how internet disinfo works & how little most people give a shit about history. (it was an old english term referring to "hermaphrodites," aka intersex people, and linked with pederasty.) (the etymological connection to "bad" is extremely loose, albeit absolutely arguable, and the exact colloquial usage of "baeddel" itself is lost to time.)

trans people of various political leanings and ideologies and genders have been reclaiming the word in various ways for ages. while there was one group of self-id'd baeddels on tumblr who were trans women who subscribed to trans-inclusive radical feminist lesbian separatism, and that seems to be what most of the tumblr discourse is referring to, outside of tumblr, there've been tons of various distinct groups using the term to refer to themselves throughout history to the point of calling any particular ideology "baeddelism" being entirely meaningless. like, when i come into contact with anarchist circles, they tend to understand "baeddelism" to mean queer anticiv nihilist theory such as this shit (unconnected from transmasc/transfem/whatever labels entirely, because it's focused on total rejection of societal structures).

which is to say, someone calling herself a baeddel to mean "i am a trans woman who rejects men and believes trans men are oppressors," and someone calling themself a baeddel to mean "i am a gender-nihilist queer who rejects the totality of civilization and believes in a queerness that attacks the foundations of society" (just to name two of the countless ideological groups that have claimed it as a label!) are like. both exactly as correct as each other. so any discourse about the term treating it as a label for a coherent and distinct movement is doomed to fail imho.

[vaspider]

Been having a very bad time of it lately because of some real shit transandrophobia from someone pretty close to me so we're gonna talk about this for a bit:

It is such a Fucking Problem that transmascs are told over and over again that "testosterone makes you violent" and that people around us react as if we have suddenly become the Hulk versions of ourselves the moment that they know we are taking T that I was actively warned about this when I started taking T, by other transmascs. Not that I would feel angrier, or that I would have a harder time controlling my temper, but that someone or someones close to me would start reacting to me as if I was behaving more irrationally or violently once they knew I was taking T, and that this would escalate once I started showing any physical changes.

No, nonsense, I said. The people near me are all trans-competent and most are trans themselves, this will never happen.

Well, dear reader, it fucking has, and I am devastated by it. No, I'm not going to name names, and I'm not going to talk about the intimate parts of my life that I keep off of here other than to talk about these things in very general ways that allow me to talk about transandrophobia in general.

Because I'm not angrier, or more violent, or more upset. At all. In fact, I'm much more calm, I raise my voice less often, and I'm more at home in my skin. However, any expression of displeasure on my behalf -- no matter how calm -- is characterized as me "screaming," and I have been repeatedly told I'm "more aggressive" than I used to be.

What was really the nail in the coffin for me was someone -- a transfeminine person, another trans person, someone who has known me for a long time -- telling me that "because I perceive you as more masculine now, any time you are visibly upset is now threatening to me, so you need to behave differently." I'm not allowed to look upset or sound upset, because my masculinity makes me threatening. I'm the same person with the same behaviors, but now I'm not supposed to sound upset because my voice is deeper.

Really.

This comes from a couple of different things, including this person's personal issues and trauma. (Which is its own problem: if someone's changing appearance or how they sound triggers your trauma, you can't make that the fault of the person whose body is changing. You need to work that shit out on your own. Can you imagine saying that shit to a teenager? Jesus. If you can, that's fucked up too.) But it also comes from the particular intersection of misogyny and transphobia which creates transandrophobia. On the one hand, my anger wasn't taken very seriously when I was perceived as a woman, so it was easier to shrug off as not that big of a deal. That's misogyny, bog-standard. On the other hand, my anger is perceived as far more out of scope because of my transness, because of the ways in which my body has changed. Not just because it is how it exists now, but because my body has changed and my voice has changed, I am now more threatening. This person is not threatened by other people close to them who have much deeper voices than mine -- they are, however, constantly characterizing my behavior as "yelling" and "screaming." Sometimes this happens when I am simply speaking normally, but if I do things like "speak more loudly to be heard over noise," I am "screaming".

On top of that, this whole "you are more irrational now" and "your feelings are XYZ because of this hormone" is just another way of reframing the "are you on your period" which is used to dismiss the emotions of women. It's a reframing of a misogynistic way of blowing off real feelings as "just due to hormones".

Because, look, even if my feelings were more extreme now (they're not), they're still real feelings. It's not permissible to simply strike someone's feelings as 'not legitimate' because you think they're based in hormones. That's bullshit.

(The funniest part of all of this is, because I microdose due to being non-binary and because my T was actually dangerously low when I started HRT, my testosterone levels right now are actually slightly low for a white cis woman, as of my last blood tests. I'm literally no more "swamped with testosterone" than the average cis woman, which should show you how much bias and how little reality goes into these assessments of me, my presentation, and my behavior.)

The fact that it is such a bog-standard transmasculine experience that "the people around you are going to perceive you as more threatening even when your behavior doesn't change one whit and they will tell you that T is making you more aggressive when your behavior isn't changing" that people warned me about it, and it turned out to be true even when like 90 percent of the people I allow myself to be close to are trans themselves is a real mindfuck.

I'm not really okay right now, and I don't know how long it'll be until I'm okay again. The last couple of days have contained me thinking about just stopping T because I'm so sick of being treated this way by the people close to me, and that was kind of a warning sign to me that I needed to deal with this shit, but I continue to be blown off by the person who is doing this to me, so, we'll see.

[racharii]

coming from an enby whos tme (tho i myself am not transmasc), i feel like a lot of transmasc people are doing this "have their cake and eat it too" thing where they want to be perceived as men or men adjacent, in our society a part of the oppressor class, while also still wanting to benefit from structures meant to protect against said class. specifically ones that have been set up in queer spaces. ive met quite a few trans men who were just as vehemently misogynysitic as your average dude bro. and (this is speculation based on convos ive had with trans men im not in every transmascs head) a lot of transmascs have a lot of internalized misogyny that they project onto trans women. ive had an irl ex friend of mine say something that i think encapsulates this particular issue fairly well. this was like 8 years ago, we were talking about trans rep in media (specifically orange is the new black iirc) so im paraphrasing; 'its messed up that we (afabs in this context) are sidelined for people who used to be men, we cant escape the patriarchy.' that was horribly transmisogynistic, so lets unpack it.

it assumes that trans women are just men

it assumes sex essentialism, that they and i were just women. that we were just poor Females having 'our space' encroached on by mean 'former men.'

im not saying that all transmascs think like this ofc. #notallmen. im saying that some do, and enough transmascs have internalized misogyny and not enough self reflection.

just because you are trans doesnt mean you are immune to bigotry and recouping oppressive structures. none of us are free of Sin™️. you as an individual have to make an effort to reflect on your thoughts and actions and how they might affect yourself and others, so that you are not a willing participant of our communities oppression.

for example, ive talked a lot privately about my journey to being a better person, (and pobodies nerfect, its always a learning process, you always will have things you can improve on. and thats okay, were all just human) i initially hated it/its pronouns. 'it' gave me the ick. i was called 'it' as a kid incessantly to make fun of my gender presentation, i couldnt fathom someone else finding peace and even euphoria in using it/its. i bought into the conservative talking points about neopronouns and it/its being detrimental to the trans community. they were "the bad transes" and me? well i use they/them but shakespeare used the singular they so im fine :), im one of the good ones. then one day, i was listening to some video essay idr what or who, but something they said stuck with me, "if it/its makes me happy, why do you care? how does 'it' hurt you really?" my trauma is not everyones trauma, people will find comfort in things that i wont, and thats okay. 'it' hurt me when i was young, by cruel kids and uncaring adults. why am i hurting my community, my fellow transes, by continuing to deny them their autonomy to identify how they like? so i got over 'it.' i saw the real harm was the fucking wedge being driven between us by conservative grifters trying to pick off the weakest in the herd before they go in for the rest of us.

visibility isnt necessarily a good thing for marginalized people. transfemmes are the biggest target of hate in our community atm. they unfortunately serve as the canary. global fascism is on the rise and to be frank, a targeted hate campaign against a trans woman is asking for her to be killed. outed, paraded as a freak, doxxed, swatted, killed. protect trans women, fascism doesnt stop with one group nor will you be saved by being "one of the good ones." trans solidarity, even the people you dont like, even if you think theyre icky or gross or whatever the fuck else you do Not give up trans solidarity. you dont make callout posts, you dont send death threats, you dont send hate mail, if you dont like someone Block Them and move on.

we stand together or we will be eradicated.

[vveakfish]

do you have any thoughts about the core four whose gender(s) are basically just a trans fruit cocktail that you would like to talk about? because I would love to listen

oh boy DO I !!!

I have So Many thoughts about them Anon, so thank you for giving me an excuse to try and put it into words beyond “Damn, these bitches trans! Good for them.”

Honestly, there are so many different ways to explore these characters genders based on how you choose to interpret their life experiences, and their aesthetic changes, and their relationships with each other. I am of the belief that any of them could be trans in any direction

But, that said, I Do have particular gender headcanons for YJ that i am very fond of, so thats what I’ll be talking about today.

(Small disclaimer. I have not finished all of the comics referenced in this. I am using the information i have to inform these, but you know, i might come back to this post at some point in the future and look at it like “wow, i don’t agree with any of this anymore.” And i think thats okay.

I’m just here to have fun, and i thoroughly enjoy these little guys, and think abt them alot, so enjoy

(also if you dont want to read 4.1k words of blorbo gender analysis, or would like to avoid spoilers for Superboy (1993), Young Justice (1998) & (2019), and Red Robin (2009) in varying degrees of detail, or you just want to see what lables i assigned them, scroll down to the bottom <3))

lets get started.

Bart:

Bart's gender is the most complex, but his thought process about it is also the most simple. I think his view of gender would be very much influenced by the fact that he grew up in VR in the future like…

A body is just an avatar, do what ever the fuck you want with it.

That said, the lil guy has always given me transmasc vibes. These vibes, however, are by no means binary.

He understands that in the 21st century a lot of people do not have his sort of “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” approach to gender, so he’s okay with being put in the box of Boy™. But his gender is a lot more * hand waves vaguely *

Clothes don’t have gender in his eyes, they’re fabric you put on your body. Wear what ever you want forever!

Bart in skirts is something i have seen many people draw/talk about before, and its something i agree with wholeheartedly. He likes hair clips, and like, those loud (actually loud and visually loud) beaded bracelet type things that ravers wear. He like nail polish. He doesn’t grow facial hair, but he wouldn’t care if he did. He’s not on hormones, but he definitely considered it for the bit. “Gotta drink my boy juice” Kind of vibes.

For him gender has Nothing to do with performance, its all about comfort. About wearing what feels right, regardless of whether or not he’s adhering to expectations of masculinity.

Yes, he Will wear that god awful outfit out of the house, haters can die mad

Cassie:

Anon, I need you to understand how much i love early yj98 cass. She is everything to me — her process of coming to terms with herself, and being able to watch her start to feel at home in her own skin. It makes me absolutely feral.

lets see if i can explain why… succinctly

When we first meet her in yj98, her identity as “Wonder Girl” is this sort of amalgamation of What it Means To Be A Hero in her eyes. She has her party city blunt bob wig (Because Diana is who she looks up to), the gloves, leather jacket, goggles combo (that so clearly take inspiration from Kon).

At this point in her life Wonder Girl is not really her. Its very clearly a mask she’s putting on. which is what makes it the perfect avenue for her to explore gender expression without it having to actually be about her gender.

I think the part that specifically makes me feral though is her… we’ll call it admiration of Kon.

The girl is a self proclaimed Superboy stan + theres all the weird not-drama between Cassie and Cissie over wanting attention from Kon. (And i say Not Drama bc its like… Kon flirting with cissie (which like… have you met 90’s Kon?? he flirts with everything that moves) and Cassie being upset that he’s Not flirting with her. and cissie is just along for the ride. She’s not quite as much of a flirt as kon is, but she has her moments)

All of this to say i feel like its impossible to have a conversation about Cassie’s gender without also talking about her experiences with comphet and lesbianism.

At the beginning, Cassie sees Kon — this cocksure, conventionally attractive boy with powers that (at first glance) seem very similar to hers, and felt something about it. And, in the way of teen girls who have been told since grade school that they’re supposed to like boys, Cassie comes to the conclusion that what she feels for Kon must be romantic in nature, right?.

All of this, the jealousy over Kon and Cissie flirting, basing her costume off Superboy’s (intentionally or otherwise), the fact that she wont let her team see her without the wig and goggles at all for so much of yj98. To me it all reads as the tangled mix of undiscovered lesbianism and gender dysphoria that the poor girl simply doesn’t have the words to define yet.

So, then what IS cassie’s deal with gender???

i am so very glad you asked.

She, too, is a transmasc of the nonbinary variety.

I think her relationship to femininity is complex, and ever changing. She doesn’t feel comfortable performing femininity the way the world expects her to, but she is also part Amazon. And i think having a relationship with both Diana and Donna would greatly influence how she felt about femininity as a whole.

The Amazons are strong, their femininity isn’t about beauty, or being soft spoken — it isn’t about Men at all. On Themyscira, to be a Woman is about bravery, honor, skill, and in some ways, divinity. Getting closer with her Amazonian sisters would change her relationship to womanhood immensely.

But it still wouldn’t feel Right. She would be able to see that womanhood can be defined differently, but that wouldn’t change the connotations that womanhood had as she was growing up. She’d never be able to lean into it the way Diana or Donna do — they both grew up only having woman defined as strong and brave and confident. Their experiences are not analogous.

The baggage of growing up a girl under the patriarchy wouldn’t just… vanish because she sees that it Doesn’t have to be that way. In some ways, the knowledge that it didn’t have to be that way could make her dysphoria all that stronger (especially if she hasn’t quite deciphered that dysphoria is what she’s feeling).

but i think there would be a point where two things sharpen into focus for her.

fiirstly she has a big fat crush on cissie king-jones.

and second (which would only come AFTER realizing her feelings for cissie) is that what she feels for Kon is Not the same as what she feels for Ciss.

She didn’t want to be with Kon romantically, she just wanted his gender.

I could see her experimenting with wearing a binder, liking that she can get rid of her boobs if she isn’t feeling them that day.

She already has her short hair, and her leather jacket and jeans, and shes big and buff and strong (because she deserves to be butch!!! okay???).

I still think she would use she/her pronouns, but she wouldn’t be picky ab it (if she gets called sir while at the pizza place, she’s not going to correct them.)

But here’s the kicker — I think leaning hard into her masculinity would be EXACTLY what she needs in order to actually ENJOY expressing femininity again.

When putting on the mask that is ‘womanhood’ becomes something that she can Choose to do, rather than something that is being forced on her, it can be pleasant. Like playing dress up.

She has a new appreciation for it, especially since her friends respect her gender, and she knows at the end of the day, when she takes the makeup, the clothes, and the wig off, underneath it all she’s just her.

(Small addendum re: TT’03 Cassie’s fem phase. I have Many thoughts about this as well, and while they end up in roughly the same place, i exploring her experience with comphet and her decision to dress in a more traditionally feminine in that run is something id like to explore in another post (once i’ve actually read the run too.)

Cissie (bonus):

This one should be shorter than Cassies, mainly because my reasoning for it is much simpler.

YJ'98 (#11)

She lists all these names, all of them feminine except for Fucking Ralph. “One weird phase” she calls it.

To me, Cissie is a transgirl through and through. She has this huge list of femme names she tried on while she tried to find the one that fit best. She mentions ralph in this off handed way, as if its not important, and i think thats just her way of dismissing her deadname as something of little consequence.

(that said, i think there’s lots of fun to be had with transmasc cissie, or tried transing-her-gender and realized it wasn’t for her Cissie. But as a transfemme, tgirl cissie is So important to me <3)

Kon:

other people on here have made posts about Kon’s gender that are much more coherent than this will be, but i’m putting the words down anyway. bear with me.

Kon’s experience with identity (especially in his earlier years) is almost entirely about the external rather than the internal.

Kon has his whole life planned out for him from the moment he opens his eyes. It’s simple really — become Superman.

So you have this freshly hatched teenage boy, saving the world as Superman (not the Only one, but definitely the coolest one (Kon would argue)). All eyes on him, all the time. In some ways, performance is inseparable from who he is. From the very beginning, everything he does is on display.

He starts his life with a Name (Superman), a life path (…again, Superman), and all the confidence of a sixteen year old jock with nothing but wins under his belt. then it all gets taken away.

Turns out Clark ISNT dead, and the world doesn’t need its pint sized superman anymore now that its got the real thing.

enter Superboy

Kon’s entire identity, his whole purpose for being alive, was to step into the shoes of a dead man who is no longer dead. So where does that leave our genetically engineered test tube baby?

lost, and extremely confused.

But he’s good at using his charisma as a shield, and even better at keeping himself busy. His problems aren’t there if he doesn’t have the time to think about them, right?

and i think that’s true about his gender as well.

Similar to Cassie, his discovery and exploration of his gender feels incredibly tied to his sexuality (to me). If you’ve read sb93, you know Kon’s deal with women. He is cute & conventionally attractive & he's like superman with a fashion sense, so of course there are people fawning over him.

And he loves the attention. He likes that people want him, or that they are looking at him. The issue is he doesn’t have the life experience to realize that their reasons for paying attention to him are often very shallow, manipulative, or selfish.

He isn’t treated as a person very often. He’s a brand, a product, a tool, a weapon. He’s arm candy, he’s a photo op, he’s a headline, he’s a paycheck. And it takes him a long time to be able to tell the difference between someone Liking Him & someone Using Him.

For the longest Time, Superboy is all he is. He doesn’t have a name outside of that identity (except for the various pet names the women in his life give him (kid & pup, mainly)).

And even when Clark does give him his real name, Kon-El, its still Attatched to his identity as Superboy.

I dont think that he would really even be able to start dissecting how HE feels about his identity until he’s much older.

Part of this would come from the space to be someone else that gaining a civilian identity would give him. As Superboy, the goal has always been to stand out, to be seen, to shine like the sun.

As Conner Kent, he has to blend in. He doesnt want to draw attention to himself, or the Kents, or Clark. He has to fit in, which was never something he had to do as Kon. And i think it would kind of chafe at him ��� but he wouldn’t really know why.

I think he’d chalk it up to how different of an experience it is. Not being loud, having to be normal™. And so i think he’d just… continue to play the part. For a while anyway.

And like, part of being Normalest Boy Conner Kent would also involve actively un-queer coding himself for the sake of fitting into the ecosystem of Smallville High. and its like…

Young Justice, as a friend group, is SOOO queerplatonic. The lines between romantic and platonic intimacy are so blurred, and Prior to Kon’s YJ days he he was also like… living with these woman who he had complicated relationships with that also blurred the lines between platonic, romantic, and sexual (…looking at you, Knockout).

So learning where the line is when it comes to how he can acceptably interact with his civilian friends (particularly the boys) would Really open his eyes to just how close he is with Bart and Tim, and how similar his feelings for them are to his feelings for… lets say, Simon Valentine.

But i dont think That is what would actually tip the scale. I think realizing that these feelings for his friends aren’t considered ‘normal’ would make him shove them down deeper. As ‘Conner’ anyway.

from here it could go two ways, right?

Either we get Teen Titans ‘03 t-shirt Kon, who sheds his GNC 90s swag in exchange for adhering closer to traditional (read; boring) masculine gender roles.

or we get a Kon who leans Harder into his punk roots, but its a conscious choice now.

(this isn’t even digging into how he would feel once Jon comes into the picture, because while Kon cares for that boy Deeply, his feelings abt the new kiddo in the family could also be very complicated. But that’s a post for another time.)

Personally i prefer the second one.

Kon has always been a curious kid, i love the way he makes pop culture references, and how he bases his behavior off of 90’s teen tropes that he Most Definitely learned from TV. In his early days this wasn’t done in a research way necessarily, but he Did want to learn what it was like to Be a Teen™, and TV was the easiest way to figure that out.

(and, playing in the space of Kon adaptations, his love of media/pop culture, and just over all thirst for knowledge, are present both in the Reign of the Supermen Movie, and in his iteration during the n52 (which is one of the few things i personally have internalized from reading n52 Superboy/Teen Titans)).

But post gay awakening, i feel liked he’d be interested not just in behaviors, but also the context of them. Digging into punk as a subculture rather than as an aesthetic. Learning about its connections to queerness, and community, and self expression. And i think this would be extremely freeing for him. (especially if this were around the time of Jon becoming Superboy v.3, but again, not the point of this post.)

this all culminates in Kon being like yk? gender just… isnt for me. Like, it takes im a long time to get to this point, but realizing that the path that was set out for him is just one of the potential paths he can take, and while he might not know where this new path will take him, its his, that that matters.

And also like, Because his friends are who they are, he’s seen different versions of queerness, and transness, but i think it would take him a bit to see himself as someone who Isn’t Cis bc like… he doesnt have dysphoria in the traditional sense.

He’s still the beefcake he’s always been, but i think he’d start playing with makeup when he realizes it makes him feel good (he shows up the the cave one day with smudgy eye liner and Cissie is immediately like a) you look so good and b) can i Please do your makeup? (and then she does it, and he looks so pretty, and he gets these weird giddy feelings that he doesn’t realize is gender euphoria until his friends start talking abt gender euphoria)

His uniform starts to get more personalized too, like the designs where he has knee patches, and all his little belts, and stuff. maybe he starts experimenting with showing skin. bc he deserves it

(’its for maximum sun exposure!!!’ is the what he tells clark… he’s not sure if clark bought it or not)

And hey, exploring gender presentation more as Superboy might help him do the same as Conner. Cassie will take him thrifting, he’ll try of a flowy skirt or a sun dress or something and then its Over. Gender euphoria part two, electric boogagloo.

In the end, its about realizing that adhering gender roles (and truthfully, any socially imposed ‘rule’ about self expression) is something he can simply Choose not to do. And i think this freedom would be something that benefits him in his civilian life as well.

His gender is: literally what ever, man.

Tim:

Ok, here’s the thing about Tim and gender, right? I think he’s kind of just comfortable as he is. He’s good at playing the roles he needs to in what ever situation hes thrown into. ‘Robin’ and ‘Tim Drake’ (and even ‘Tim Drake-Wayne’ if you want to split hairs) might be masks he wears, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less him. if that makes sense. like…

Lets look at the differences between Bruce (or Brucie) and Batman for a second. They really are different people. Batman is who bruce is at his core, ‘bruce’ is this sort of liminal space between the cowl and his public persona, and then theres Brucie™, and well, you know how he is. These are personas that Bruce puts on.

With Tim its like he just highlights different aspects of himself when a situation requires it. (oh no, the autistic!Tim head canons are being loud today.) But like, he’s Always been masking. And i think this is something he would look at as like… getting a good grade in adapting. or something. He’s comfortable, all the roles he plays are ones he’s familiar with, and he doesn’t really question who he is outside of who he needs to be.

That is, until Caroline Hill makes an appearance.

I feel that the decision to go undercover as a woman was a wholly practical decision in the moment. It’s what the mission required, and therefore tim stepped up. Its just another mask, right? Surely this wont awaken anything in him…right?

But this is an entirely new mask. And i think it might like… shift the way he looks at/thinks about the other masks he puts on. He was able to step into a role that was very foreign to him, and it Worked. (and he felt pretty, which like… woah, thats a new feeling. and he kinda liked it? file that under ‘thoughts he doesn’t have the bandwidth to process right now.’ Bruce needs him back at the cave! its time to debreif! and he has a biology test tmrw! no time for gender scaries!!!).

I think it would take a while for him to be able to admit it to himself though. Because like… hes Not uncomfortable with his body, but he also keeps thinking about how good he felt dressed up femininely, and how he felt powerful, in a way. That putting on that mask felt just as good as putting on his domino.

Personally, i think itd be funny if instead of coming out right away, Tim doing undercover missions essentially in drag becomes a recurring thing. And i imagine some people give him a hard time. (not in a transphobic way or anything, i just mean like, teasing him fondly or what ever.) (Also, i like to imagine that when cissie Did kons makeup, bart and Tim jumped in there too bc like hey why not, and hoooooo boy, if Tims egg hadn’t cracked before then, it sure would have cracked after.)

The thing about him is, i’m not sure if he’d come to the realization himself. You know, that he would like to present femme sometimes, in a situation that has Nothing to do with a mission.

I could see Tim convincing himself that its a pointless or frivolous desire, which is Why he relegates his time presenting femme to when he can prove that it’s useful.

but i have this image in my mind, right? Of him, taking his makeup and wig off, and hes chatting with whoever is in the room with him (literally anyone else mentioned above… or Dick). And Tim’s just talking about how he wishes he could present this way in situations other than missions.

and the other person in the room is just like… i mean, you literally can.

and hes just like…. shit you’re right. i Can :0

I could probably go further into depth abt this, but i think this just frees him to start playing with gender more as Tim. and start to recognize when he’s feeling more masculine, more feminine, or somewhere in between.

His gender isn’t consistent, its this thing he’s constantly listening to, and trying to understand. but in the mean time, he can paint his face, and wear pretty clothes, or dress like just Some Guy, or be a hedgehog dressed in traffic light colors, or what ever his heart desires.

As far as like… how He describes his gender, i think he’d say something corny like bi^2 (bi of both the sexual and the gendered varieties). Or shrug, handwave, generally give a non-helpful vague description. Or tell who evers asking to buzz off.

(small addendum wrt Kon and Cassie in TT’03. I haven’t read this run yet, so i didn’t really include it in this post. But i Do have thoughts about what might cause the two of them (my gnc besties from my comics books) to lean sooooo hard into traditional gender roles after being So Queercoded in their other appearences. Before i talk abt that though, i want to read the comic. So, that will have to be a post for another time)

ANYWAY, heres that TL;DR i promised.

Bart: NB Transmasc Cassie: NB Lesbian (of the transmasc variety) Kon: Agender Tim: Fluid (bi-gender) + Cissie: Transgirl

Thank you soooooo much for giving me the opporrtunity to ramble abt the silles and how Not Cis i think they are. Love you forever.

[ferretwhomst]

sleepover ask! what's a headcanon you really like and want to talk about? :]

why am i blanking the second i receive an ask like this. UM. I HAVE SO MANY FUCKING HEADCANONS DVJSJD AND MY BRAIN HAS BEEN EMPTIED OF ALL OF THEM

OKAY NEVER MIND I REMEMBERED!!!!! putting this under the cut because it's LONG but TL;DR it's my take on transmasc Scrooge and Donald + transfem Della

alright. everyone here knows that i headcanon scrooge as transmasc. but i also imagine that he's closeted to the general public and the kids. with the public it's not for any particular reason, he's just... been around for so long w/o people knowing that it'd feel weird to come out Now yk. and with the kids he doesn't see it as a relevant piece of information, like if someone brings it up he's not going to hide it but he's not gonna mention it if it's not relevant (it probably does get brought up eventually because...... duck triplets transgender real!!! but maybe when they're older)

DONALD AND DELLA KNOW THO. personally i hc them both as trans (yes i know logically that doesn't make sense given i'm pretty sure they're identical twins but shh it's a cartoon), difference being donald made the realization as a teen and came out to della right away. he waited a little while to tell scrooge because he was worried he'd react badly, only to be pleasantly surprised by the fact that he's Also trans lmfao. they probably bond over it a whole bunch. scrooge being the Elder Queer to donald's Baby Queer and telling him stories about what it was like to be queer in the 19th/20th centuries is something that lives rent free in my brain

della on the other hand... i figure she only ever fully Realized when she was alone on the moon with nothing but her thoughts. i mean i think it was probably pretty obvious, just that she never thought much about it till then; like. as a kid she loved drawing herself with longer hair and when playing pretend she always came up with a girl character for herself, when donald came out she was like "wait so my sister can just decide to be a boy instead? that's a thing you can do? awesome, good for him" and moved right on without thinking about what that means for her SDJFFJAKSDF. then as an adult she's all "oh i want to lay eggs in the most cisgender male way possible" "all cis men dream about being women lol no biggie" that sorta thing. but on the moon she was like. Y'KNOW WHAT. i can be a girl here if i want!!! it's not like anyone can judge me!!! <3 i'm gonna call myself DELLA!!!! and then when she went home she was like Oh fuck right i forgot people are going to perceive me

...can you tell i think a lot about transfem della

OH ALSO! i like to think that right after donald comes out, scrooge starts referring to him and della as "The Boys" (which donald greatly appreciates, For Gender Reasons). when della comes back she still lets him call them that because she still thinks it's cute and funny, although he doesn't do it as much because now that title is mostly reserved for HDL lol

[space-writes]

wip questions tag

jumping on the excuse to do this from @ceph-the-ghost-writer (post here). it’s been a minute, but I really want to do this for claws honestly, as a little treat~

What was the first part of your WIP that you created?

The characters - Vivien and Rainier are based on the modern AU versions of Vizaeth and Pharaun from my Obsession fic series, so they were the entry point for the story. I guess also wet was kind of a first foray into the story; it’s Viz/Pharaun modern AU fic, but it sort of has the Vibes that later became claws.

If your story was a TV show, what would the intro song be?

I’d want it to be a dark cover of a love song, like the Happy Together cover by Filter I have on my wip-playlist. Something that originally is very sweet and loving, turned sinister.

Who are your favourite character(s) and why?

Vivien my beloved <3 <3 <3

He’s the main character, and I just love everything about him. He’s got the most specific worldview I’ve written (aside from Vizaeth) and he’s got very particular ways of seeing and interpreting the world that are so fascinating to me. His dichotomy of victim/villain is so juicy, and his high emotions make his reactions to everything 10x more interesting.

Plus he’s a transmasc nightmare murderboy, which is my favourite, AND he’s a scrubby little punk/goth kid. All around delicious.

What other pieces of media could share a fanbase with your WIP?

NBC Hannibal would have a fun amount of fan crossover, I think. Maybe Interview with the Vampire. claws has a lot of messy queers in it, i think those fandoms would have fun with them.

What has been your biggest struggle while writing your WIP?

Getting it drafted without worry too much about realism - resisting the urge to go research instead of write. It’s drafted now, and I have a lot of problems to solve with it now, so that’s the new struggled - fixing all the issues discovery drafting for the first time in over a decade has cause me :p

Are there any animals in your story?

Spiders! Lots and lots of spiders! Which is going to be so much fun to research for accuracy, because I don’t actually enjoy spiders very much in real life. I’m better with them than I used to be, but yeah. This is a very arachnophilic book and I…am not that.

How do your characters get around?

claws is in a modern setting, so they use contemporary transport - cars mostly feature. Rainier has a too-expensive BMW with a vanity plate because he’s That Kind of Asshole.

What parts of your WIP are you working on right now?

Currently it’s marinating, so next steps are: reading/devouring lots of Relevant Media to help with vibes, doing research for areas of the book I just kind hand-waved (some science things, aforementioned spiders, various medical bits and pieces…there’s a lot), and later re-outlining it for a neater first draft out of the messy zero draft I have right now.

What aspects of your WIP do you think will draw people in?

the fact that it’s messy queer horror about toxic love. judging by the comments on my wip intro, that’s the thing people seem to like! i do also hope that the characters will captivate readers as much as they’ve captivated me. i’d love for people to be as obsessed with Vivien and Rainier’s fucked-up deal as I am.

claws taglist: @belovedviolence @foxboyclit @coven-archives @noblebs @mjjune @revenantlore @sarandipitywrites @k--havok @asterhaze @verba-writing @indecentpause @bootstrapparadoxed (ask to be +/-) (and stealing from ceph, feel free to count this as a tag as well if you want to talk about your wip!)

no-pressure tagging @winterandwords @mjjune and @viscerawrites

Blank questions beneath the cut

CUT

What was the first part of your WIP that you created?

If your story was a TV show, what would the intro song be?

Who are your favourite character(s) and why?

What other pieces of media could share a fan base with your WIP?

What has been your biggest struggle while writing your WIP?

Are there any animals in your story?

How do your characters get around?

What part of your WIP are you working on right now?

What aspects of your WIP do you think will draw people in?

[prismatoxic]

'usual chilaios headcanons' i agree with your takes alot so if you're willing to share i'd love to hear them! even if its paragraphs long, especially if its paragraphs long! your writing tickles the brain in the best way possible

thank you anon... i'm glad you enjoy the bullshit i say and also make

it's hard for me to summarize i think in particular because i am quite fluid with how i approach headcanons. characters tend to stay close to canon (more or less depending on how much i like canon and also what story i'm doing), and the ways in which they differ vary from fic to fic, roleplay to roleplay, drawing to drawing... i know i HAVE defaults but let me see if i can actually come up with something to say about them.

trans chilchuck is one i use a lot, and while i do actually quite like cis chilchuck and greatly enjoy the things my friends do with him, it feels so me like i should put in the work if i want more trans chilchuck stuff out there. i feel like this comes across as it being all i like, but no; i'm just being fed already by all the cischuckers. besides, i love writing transmasc characters, so it works out for me. i wouldn't even say i have any compelling reasons for it. i just like it. i like the idea of him and his wife both being trans and him being the whole who had their kids.

now, as for some others i default to... i love gay laios. i think you can make a compelling case for a lot of sexualities with him, but i'm very fond of him being gay and it just not being something that ever reasonably comes up. i think i probably default to pan falin so there'd be this solidarity between them at the same time as laios realizing he doesn't also like just anyone. he's got a lot going on, and interests that far outweigh romance (especially given his feelings on people), so he doesn't typically consider doing anything with it. (this is also part of why the mage before they brought on marcille couldn't get anywhere with him; it wasn't just him being socially clueless, it was also him having 0 interest in her the way she wanted.)

chilchuck is bi for me, and he's both casual about it and also generally unwilling to talk about it. once he's more comfortable with his friends i imagine he just tosses it out there, but before then, his sexuality is another one of those things you couldn't pry out of him if you tried.

god, after that... i dunno. either i stick to their canon backstories/personalities with a little personal flair, or i have them behave differently for an AU. i could probably come up wiht more for specific questions, but tragically when left to my own devices i can be kind of aimless. gomenasai 🙏 i hope this was fun anyway

[prettyboykatsuki]

i just want to clarify this again though i do not necessarily mind people using the words transmasc for my writing (i did before!! but that has changed after a bit of reflection) that i do not typically tag things that way because i myself do not feel like i experience gender in that way

my experiences are closer to gender fluidity and queerness so i dont want to assign any gender to my readers bc i dont want to isolate anyone from reading if that makes sense. my tags are purely functional. unless gender is by some means is relevant to the story (which it is sometimes, and i will always try to make that clear) - i tag words and actions that might incite discomfort and allow people to engage with my work however they want

coming into my own gender stuff - it was very difficult for me to engage with it in x reader because i never quite felt like i felt into any particular box. i dont mind any gendered language or presentation. im not really a girl or a boy. words are words and things are things and none of it particularly bothers me.

because of that i dont want to people to feel like they have to fit any experience to read, engage, or understand my work. with masc!readers especially, i dont want to write something that always addresses it.

while narratives about the trans experience or dysphoria are deeply important, it helped me accept myself more to read things that didn't make it feel like the elephant in the room. i am me, regardless of the way i look or sound or act.

and i want people to be able to read my work the same way. i know that distinction might be silly to a lot of people, but x reader community is like my home. ive been consuming and reading fic this way forever and i want to be a place for other people to do that.

you can be anyone and read anything i write based on your own comfort and discernment. the choice to let you engage and not feel guilt or confusion about that is important to me. it is more important to me to create a reader that can compel regardless of those things. anyone can read anything i write. in fact i hope u read things that dont apply to u at all if you so choose.

[nothorses]

Hey! I was looking to get your thoughts on something I've been thinking about if that's alright. I've been thinking about the transmisogyny vs. transandrophobia word debate and the reasons for coining transandrophobia and as a black person, I've also been thinking about words like misogynoir which describe the specific intersection of misogyny and antiblackness that black women face.

Using a similar logic, I thought there should be a word for the specific intersection of androphobia and antiblackness that black men face. I thought it could be called misandronoir or something like that to match up with misogynoir.

In my experience, though both face stereotyping and racism and all the things that come with that, they can definitely present in different ways and lead to different problems.

For example, being pressured to straighten your hair seems to be a more common experience among people perceived to be black women than people perceived to be black men, at least as far I've noticed, but I believe black men have higher rates of incarceration and stuff like that. There's also trans word equivalents like transmisogynoir so I thought there could be a similar word for that too like transmisandronoir.

I will say that while I am very honored that you thought to come to me with this & want my thoughts on it, I'm probably not the guy to weigh in on this particular conversation!

And also, I have seen similar points brought up by other folks who think there's something to be said about the specific intersections of manhood with other identities and experiences- and it seems like black men's experiences are pretty frequently brought up in conversations around "transandrophobia" because both experiences share a lot of overlap, and because black manhood is so demonized.

I think "transandrophobia" also includes overlap with classic misogyny, and the fact that transmascs are often perceived as women is pretty integral to what shapes those experiences. The reasons we're targeted are less that we're men and trans at the same time, and more that we're doing gender wrong, and transmasculinity is one specific way of doing gender wrong.

That's not like, "here's why we can and you can't", either. I don't even think there needs to be overlap in order for a term like that to be legitimate and needed; "Transandrophobia" boils down to "the unique ways in which transmasculinity is targeted", and it doesn't need to be describing an intersection of two separately targeted identities to be a legitimate and needed word. I think just needing to describe a set of common unique experiences is plenty reason for a word like that, and it seems pretty clear that black men absolutely have that.

But like, so much of "transandrophobia"- the coining of the word and conversations about it- has been tailored to the specific community, the way others perceive us, the way we talk and think about these things, and what's going to be most effective in achieving our goals with this conversation.

I definitely don't know enough to weigh in on any of that. But I'm supportive of folks naming their experiences, and I'm really interested in where that conversation goes.

[ripaxed]

Sugar and Heather for the character ask?

Evil women <3

Sugar!

Sexuality Headcanon: Lesbian! Nothing too deep about it

Gender Headcanon: I don’t really have one? I generally default to thinking of her as a cis ally but I vibe with her being trans too.

A ship I have with said character: Skygar <3. Their team up went hard idc. Also I don’t really think about it much but her and Leonard is cute

A BROTP I have with said character: Not really a friendship but I think the alliance she offered to Shawn would’ve been interesting if he agreed. Her laughing at Max is funny also.

A NOTP I have with said character: Sometimes people would talk about her and Owen and it’s so. side eye

A random headcanon: With her making it far in Pahkitew, Sugar was offered more role in tv and commercials. Which let her eventually go to veterinary school, like how she wanted if she won the million.

General Opinion over said character: Sugar suffers from Pahkitew’s weaker writing a lot of the time, but I still really enjoy her. Her huge personality makes her a standout even in the season of zany characters. Plus I find her rather interesting, with her history in exploitive child beauty pageants resulting in her underhanded and competitive attitude and her lack of trust in others around. If Pahkitew theoretically somehow had a second season, she’d be the number one character I’d have wanted to see expanded on.

Heather!

Sexuality Headcanon: Unlabeled! I think Heather struggled to accept she was queer for a long time, in part because no label felt “like her”. Finding out she didn’t have to fit into any particular box made it easier for her to understand herself.

Gender Headcanon: Transmasc. I have. many thoughts about this hc that I should save for it’s own post. But I first thought of it when I started to read the line “I’m the good guy?” as equating to gender euphoria and Heather being tied to being labeled a villain as she is to being labeled a girl.

A ship I have with said character: Ah Sceather, the crackship made as an inside joke that I turned unironic and I am obsessed with. Outside of that, Aleheather is so good. Genuinely just a fantastic canon ship and the backbone of World Tour. I also really really like Gweather and H-bombs.

A BROTP I have with said character: Her and Harold again! They work super well together both platonically and romantically to me.

A NOTP I have with said character: Uhh, I guess I’m not a fan of her and Courtney? Not in the sense I hate it I am just incredibly indifferent to it. Shearing sheeps pops off tho

A random headcanon: I hc they work as a union negotiator in adulthood! Based on that scene in action about her knowing union rules and wanting to organize against Chris

General Opinion over said character: Heather <3. A favorite character easily and forever. I’m obsessed with her. I think she’s under appreciated in Island. She’s not very complex but she brings such an energy that almost all of her scenes are entertaining. Also season one would be impossibly dull without her srry </3. She’s so good in the Island special where her confidence is totally shattered. In Action not only do we see her at her most pathetic /pos but also at some of her funniest. I love you bald Heather <3. In World Tour, well, what can I even say that someone else hasn’t. She’s at her peak, she’s funny, she’s completely hated but manages to scrap her way to finale, and she’s the best winner of any gen 1 season by a mile. Her history of unpopularity and horrible parents and being rejected by everyone around her it just- I love her. Heather sweep.

[incubus-puppy]

the pinned post i should've made forever ago

AGE IN BIO. I DO NOT GIVE WARNINGS. YOU WILL BE BLOCKED.

if you'd like to help a little doggy out, you can find my kofi here; no pressure, but anything helps and is appreciated!

you can call me hezekiah or hezey. I'm a 24 y/o transmasc mainly-t4t switch that posts a pretty large variety of kinks. probably more than most other things, this is a petplay blog and this is a piss kink blog (more on specifics later). my partner is pax (@tismrizz). my backup blog will be @occult-puppy if i get termed. i also have a hazbin sideblog @old-redemption-flair

anyone is free to interact, but I'm really only into masc-aligned people and men. if you're not sure, no big deal, just ask. or don't. only really relevant if you're trying to interact with me as a person and not a blog runner.

I instant-block interacters who are:

a minor (or don't have an age in your bio/pinned), a pedophile, a pro-contact sympathizer, or post p*dobait.

user of any of the "t33n" or "p3do" tags. i get ageplay, but I've had too many experiences seeing actual minors and actual child abusers use those tags. icky tags are fine.

similarly, people who give me reason not to believe the age in their bio.

into raceplay and a white person.

rules for interaction (no messages, blacklisted tags, etc) if your blog is about or features:

ageplay. while I'm not into ageplay personally, i do not block for this alone. if you leave comments or tags about ageplay in reblogs from me, you will be blocked.

feederism/weight gain. i am in eating disorder recovery and will not be fetishized about this. i block for weight-related comments not obviously in good faith (fat people are hot, not because they're fat, but because they're multifaceted human people), and for blogs that are weight-centric. if you don't want blocked but regularly post feederism, make it tagged and easily blacklist-able.

detrans/misgen. same as the above, but also DO NOT interact with any explicitly t4t or trans posts on my blog (by anyone, not just me).

incest/fauxcest. I won't block just for posting, but don't leave comments or tags.

raceplay as a person of color. same as above.

i block at my own discretion. try it and see what entitlement gets you.

what you can expect (bold for most common):

✔️ omorashi, petplay, intox, breeding, cnc (tagged as [ tw: cnc ]), cg/l, hitting/cutting, knife/gunplay, abduction, bondage, humiliation/degradation, praise, manipulation, overstim, dacryphilia/crying, omutsu/diapers, hypnosis, use of reclaimed slurs, mindbreak, whump, somno, extreme violence (tagged as [ tw: violence ]), watersports, orgasm control/denial, free use, exhibitionism/voyeurism, furry stuff, blackmail, boots/bootblacking, hard cnc/rapeplay (tagged as [ tw: rape ]).

what you might see on occasion, but not often:

❗impreg (but not pregnancy-focused) (tagged with [ tw: preg ment ]), snuff (rare, particular, and purely fiction, tagged [ tw: snvff ]), objectification, monsterfucking, needles (tagged with [ tw: needles ]), object insertion, abdl-adjacent (long story, tldr in a disability and doggy way and not an ageplay way), mommy/daddy kink (not into it, but usually willing to overlook it depending on the post content), tickling.

what you will not see:

❌ ageplay, emeto, scat, internal or consumption pissplay, sounding, detrans/misgendering, forced fem, feederism, incest/fauxcest, necrophilia, gutspill, raceplay, huffing/general scent stuff, probably more that I can't think of.

joke posts that involve anything related to the above will be tagged [ i jest ], so if you're especially sensitive to those topics i suggest you blacklist that tag as well.

everything i post applies to me as the dom or the sub; basically all of my kinks are reciprocal.

i rarely repost mutual aid that i see floating around, but i will occasionally reblog aid post by/about mutuals. if you have nothing to give and it causes you grief, the tag to block is [ mutual aid ] (this is a decision that holds no moral weight; i do not blame you if you decide to filter this tag. people in hardship who have nothing to give and minimal platform must also care for their own mental health).

feel free to ask or dm! I'm just really bad at replying. open to engaging platonically, romantically, or sexually, but at my discretion.

my images under the tag #meposting

[icannotgetoverbirds]

You replied to a post saying you used to be a terf, what changed your mind?

Honestly, it was a long process. There wasn't any one thing that changed me. It started with the fact that I was a sympathetic TERF - my worst standpoint was that people had a right to be afraid of trans women in women's restrooms - and even then I recognized the importance of legal rights and protections for trans people, even if I didn't think they were the gender they said they were.

I was a particular brand of TERF that wasn't particularly unhinged or cruel - I turned to radical feminism out of a mixture of frustration and misguided kindness. Radfems tell you that womanhood is suffering, and so they're very appealing to transmasc eggs who haven't realized their identities yet - they recognize and acknowledge something that transmasc eggs experience, even if they apply the concept far too broadly and incorrectly.

Essentially, I was tired of screaming that women deserve better to people who thought womanhood was all sunshine and rainbows, so when radfems acknowledged the pain I was in, even though they misattributed it, they won me over to their side by being the only people that seemed to listen to that sentiment.

Nonetheless, I was determined to be as kind as possible, and I recognized that dysphoria was real. I believed that it was real because I subconsciously understood that I was experiencing it. I thought that every woman, given the chance, would transition into a man. I thought my experiences were inherent to womanhood.

It truly baffled me when cis women would tell me that being misgendered hurt them, that being masculine was uncomfortable, that being seen as a man or stripped of their womanhood was a punishment. For me, all of that meant that I was being taken more seriously as a not-woman (as misguided and incorrect as that interpretation is) because I recognized the societal connotations between masculinity and competence (not correlated at all btw).

And what baffled me even more was the fact that trans women existed. See, I recognized gender dysphoria as valid, and i reasoned out that it would make sense for it to go both ways, but what I didn't understand was why any trans woman would transition, given the layers of oppression that she would experience.

I could recognize that trans women were oppressed, that they were at high risk of assault and didn't deserve to be relegated to the men's restroom. I understood that bathroom-based sexual violence happens and is much easier to commit without transitioning to try and sneak in or some bullshit.

I saw gender dysphoria and gender euphoria and concluded that trans people still deserved kindness, even if I didn't think they were right about their gender. I saw the pain and recognized that it was real, and I saw the joy and recognized that it was real. I recognized that trans people weren't doing any harm to others - I only thought that they were harming themselves.

Beyond that, I understood bodily autonomy to some extent, and while I wasn't as radically for it as I am now, I understood that I wasn't the one who got to choose who got to do what with their bodies. I'll admit, I did think that they needed more time in therapy before they'd be allowed to transition, and that it should've only be a last resort if nothing else was working, and that was something I had to fix.

If there was anything that changed it for me, it was deconverting from Mormonism. I'd become more accepting over the years as I'd learned more, even to the point that I recognized that queer people deserved rights within the structure of religion, that the prophets could have made a mistake or misspoken or been misinterpreted when they drafted The Family: A Proclamation To The World.

After all, that'd happened before with black men being unable to hold the priesthood. Why couldn't it have happened now?

But then, the other question arose. I realized that the only justification the organization had made for its discrimination back in the day was, aside from human flaws, the idea that the world was not yet ready for such things. It occurred to me that the world seemed more than ready for queerness to be accepted (I was much more entrenched in my persecution complex at the time and believed the outside world to be rampant with 'sinners' and their sympathizers, aka leftists, whether they were good people or not), so why couldn't that have happened now?

To me, it just didn't make sense. To me, the world was ready. To me, the waiting would cost lives, and that was unacceptable. Unfortunately, I had been trained well in thought-stopping techniques, so I didn't truly stop to ponder what that meant for a while.

Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Suddenly, I wasn't going to church every Sunday. Suddenly, I was tired all of the time. Suddenly, my mental health was crashing, and church was making it worse, somehow. Suddenly, the whole world was upside down, and it shook a few things loose. I came out to my mother as a genderqueer woman - not ready to fully break the mold yet - and decided that the church was wrong about this thing.

After things had settled down somewhat, I started turning over concepts in my mind, about how the one true church had had shortcomings in this day and age. About the prophets that had failed to protect their queer spiritual siblings. About the audacity to tell trans people that they cannot transition, despite medical and scientific evidence proving the benefits and even necessities. About the audacity to tell gay people that they cannot love the way they truly love.

Funnily enough, that's not what broke the shelf. No, get this - it was weed.

See, I'd been delving more into advocacy and had gained an understanding of the war on drugs and the true implications behind criminalizing substance use, especially with its history and current implementation. I had decided that it was a good idea to decriminalize all substances for the safety of the people addicted to them. I had also recognized that marijuana was by and large harmless if not outright helpful for many people.

I recognized that requiring a doctor's approval for weed in a country without good, socialized health care was classist and would lead to unwarranted suffering, and that the Mormon organization's influence in attempting to require such in Utah was overreach. I also was biased, as I wanted to try weed myself.

And suddenly it occurred to me that I didn't really care what the church thought I should and shouldn't do anymore. It occurred to me that their cruelty was intolerable, and that I couldn't have one foot in the queer community (as an asexual genderqueer woman) and one foot in such an intolerant organization. It occurred to me that I wanted to try weed, and I didn't care that the Mormon leaders had advised against recreational substance use. So I turned it over in my mind, taking time to actually consider it.

I didn't believe. I had never believed. I had been trying so hard to force myself to believe, to pretend that I believed, and for what? A god that never answered - or whose answers could easily be construed as the mechanisms of the world, as happenstance? Surely an all-powerful and loving god wouldn't leave me in the dark like that, especially considering how hard I had fought, despite everything.

And so the shelf broke, and I got excited, and started to think about what I wanted to do. I thought about tattoos, and piercings, and a double mastectomy, and a hysterectomy, and bottom surgery - oh.

Yeah. That was a bit to process. I realized that I had some learning to do, some media to rewatch with a fresh perspective, some concepts to understand, etc. And it took me a while to come around to the realization that I had, in fact, been a TERF and had, in fact, held harmful beliefs.

From there it was just a matter of learning more about activism, keeping an open mind, and fixing the holes that the manipulation of the mormon cult had left in my understanding of the world.

[coffeewritesfiction]

WIP Questionnaire

Tagged by @bee-barnes-author, thank you!

Gently tagging: @slenders1ckn3ss @kmlaney @bardicbeetle @astras-rambles @meerawrites @musingsbycaitlin @andromedaexists @dyrewrites and an open tag! Blank questions below the cut

For "Farewell Vesperos":

1. What is the first part of your WIP that you created? For the Runner Owen series as a whole, it was all spawned by a single image of a gothic city floating in the sky. It's changed a lot since then, over five years ago I think. I don't remember the first part I came up with for Farewell Vesperos itself, but it was probably the Vesperos family it's named after.

2. If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be? For Runner Owen? Instrumental, for sure. Owen, my protagonist, walking through the foggy, crystal-lit streets of Theris. Being watched by people in brighter windows, or following him in the darkness. He turns around and lifts his lantern to see... Cut to the title screen.

3. What are your favorite characters that you made? Why? I adore Owen and his two enemies/LIs, Aurum and the Scarred Man. Explaining why is hard, but they and their chemistry just make me happy. There's also Locke and Nora, who are dear to my heart - I think some people I've talked about this with like Locke a little too much, but I don't blame them. For Farewell Vesperos in particular, GOD, I am loving how Lawrence Rhyne is shaping up. He's such a charming fuck.

4. What other pieces of media do you think your fan base would share? Kind of a confusing question. But uh, I've been told [combining the comments of different people] that Farewell Vesperos reads like Jane Eyre with an Agatha Christie type plot, so if you like either of that, you might like Farewell Vesperos. People who like darker fiction - hell, maybe even dark romance specifically! - might enjoy the dynamics between Owen and his two LIs. We'll see how that shapes up though.

5. What has been your biggest struggle with your WIP? Settling on the plot. This is the third edition of this story I'm writing and if it evolves on me again I might just scrap the whole fucking thing.

6. Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them! Not at this point, but the vampires in it can turn into animals. The Scarred Man in particular can become a raven.

7. How do your characters get around? (Ex. Trains, horses, cars, dragons, etc.) There are trains, powered by crystals, a la Victorian steam trains. Most people get around with the draconics that humans have allied with, those being small dragons that cooperate with humans for their own reasons. They function like horses, except some of them can fly.

8. What part of your WIP are you working on right now? Right now, I'm trying to figure out the villain's motivations. I have a terrible habit of imagining awesome things happening and then going 'but wait - I know this character would do this, but why?' Kind of annoying at this point.

9. What aspects (tropes, maybe) of your WIP do you think will draw people in? Well, there's the murder mystery! Lost heirs, arranged marriages, malicious vampires with dreams of conquest, wicked vampire hunters led by callous royalty who will do whatever ruthlessness needed protect humanity, enemies to lovers extreme slow burn [I'm talking over several books], spooky Victorian houses, lots of racially diverse characters, a transmasc protagonist navigating a society with specific gender roles for trans people... And just. Gothic fantasy in general.

10. What are your hopes for your WIP? I don't expect to get a lot of money writing this lmao, but I'm not writing it just for the money. I'm writing it because I know there's guys like me out there who want and need to see themselves as wanted - both as men, and as romantic and sexual partners. I want transmascs like me to feel desired. And I want people that aren't transmasc to really get that we are desirable, and attractive, as any other person. Ultimately though? I just hope people enjoy reading the damn thing and don't rip it to shreds over some stupid plot hole I missed pffft

1. What is the first part of your WIP that you created?

2. If your story was a TV show, what would the theme song/intro be?

3. What are your favorite characters that you made? Why?

4. What other pieces of media do you think your fan base would share?

5. What has been your biggest struggle with your WIP?

6. Are there any animals in your story? Talk about them!

7. How do your characters get around? (Ex. Trains, horses, cars, dragons, etc.)

8. What part of your WIP are you working on right now?

9. What aspects (tropes, maybe) of your WIP do you think will draw people in?

10. What are your hopes for your WIP?

[ihateliterature]

I'm really sad. Let me tell you why I'm sad

So this whole debate is going on over on twt about wlw content and I see a lot of people giving their experiences with the wlw fandom and it's really disheartening. And from what I see the problem is not that the rest of the queer fandom is overwhelmingly mysoginistic or lesbophobic, it's that the wlw fandom is unbearable

No, really, there are so many people talking about how they've tried joining the wlw fandom but it was too toxic or they were afraid of doing it in the first place because they've seen people who had to deal with them. And the people saying this are not only gay men and transmascs, they are overwhelmingly other queer women

And I understand this, hell, I am one of those ppl afraid of the wlw fandom. That's because every time I've witnessed it they were harassing and dogpilling people for the most minor of things. I can still remember one particular occasion when the author of Percy Jackson tweeted that he sees Artemis as ace and qrts were full of people borderline threatening him and being aphobic until he backed down on it

And this is not the only time. I've seen people getting threats for headcanoning a character as bi or pan, shipped a character with a man or headcanoned a character as ace/aro. I still remember how it was in the SU fandom with Peridot

I wish it wasn't like this. I know for a fact there are nice and civil wlw fans, but a large number of people, myself included, can barely fucking find them behind all the assholes

The explanation, which I gathered from queer women active in the fandom or who used to be part of it, is that the wlw fandom is INFESTED with radfems top to bottom. Which created a hostile environment for EVERYONE including some queer women, especially bi women. All of it leading to a space dominated by radfem ideas, exclusionism and antis. And also to a very stifling creating environment, as many queer women with experience in the fandom I've seen talking about it have said that anything straying from wholesome is heavily policed

And I find it horrible, because so many queer women felt the need to distance themselves from a fandom that is FOR them, because of how toxic it is, depriving themselves of what should have been a wonderful fandom experience alongside other people that can understand and relate to them on that level. I hate it how radfems have infested every corner of the community, warping it and creating conflict. To a point where many of us get red flags when seeing someone with a lesbian pfp because of past experience. It should not be like this. I don't like doing it this, doubting my own family, but I feel like I have to, for my peace of mind at least. And yes, I mean family, because as hard as lesbian separatists tried to drive us away from each other, to make lesbians as insular as possible, to paint transmascs and bi women as traitors to womanhood, lesbians are still my family, just like any other queer out there, and it breaks my heart seeing them becoming the boogie man of online queer spaces and a shield for TERFs

Idk where I am going with this anymore it's just that. . . I'm sad, I wish it wasn't like this