#anyway no hate all genders are valid both real men and women and cis men and women

[trans-estinien]

people really love to conveniently forget trans men exist when they talk about feminism. or if they dont they make us out as also part of the problem as if we somehow are able to have the same amount of privilege as cis men. absolutely wild

[twunkzilla]

Once you meet like cishet dudes that are actually cool and you can dudebro around its the funnest shit I'm like dude imagine for every birthday as a kid you just got barbie dolls and dollar store nail polish and they were like broooo that sounds awful I know your pain

[genderkoolaid]

It's honestly really validating to read your thoughts on butch identity. I kept myself from fully accepting I might be a gay trans man for a long time because being a butch woman was so integral to my identity (I wept after finishing Stone Butch Blues. It was like being seen for the first time) and I hated that it felt like there was no way I could be both. So I was sort of performing trans man comphet and trying to convince myself I liked women just so I wouldn't lose that word. There's so much gender nuance to being butch that I feel like gets lost when we only focus on the sexuality aspect of it.

"There's so much gender nuance to being butch that I feel like gets lost when we only focus on the sexuality aspect of it." Yes!!!!!!

I came out very young (elementary school) as a lesbian, and cut my long hair to a pixie in the same year. And then shortly after began realizing was I was trans as well. I spent essentially my entire life being visibly queer and visibly queer-masculine a lot of the time. And this affected so much, because I latched onto "butch" extremely young and that became my model for my gender. I never shaved largely because, due to reading about butches, I felt that it was part of my path, even though I also knew it distanced me from others. My sense of masculinity and masculine fashion has always been deeply butch, regardless of my gender. Its such a deep and integral part of me and has been my whole life. I truly feel that I can't not be butch. I don't relate to a lot of "female socialization" both due to being autistic and being visibly queer; I always knew that, while being categorized as "girl," I was also never going to be a "real girl," and everyone knew that. Becoming a butch adult felt more natural than puberty.

Which is why its so annoying that people center butchness on sexuality, and specifically romantic-sexual attraction to femmes!!!! Because while I have, in fact, dated femmes (arguably I dated too many cis femme women who I felt I had to walk on ice around to avoid scaring them with my butch gender), like I said, my butchness is a natural part of me. Being queer is a part of being butch, but the way we talk about butchness makes me feel like people can only view it existing in relation to romance (and femmes). And obviously because of radfeminism, trans men & mascs' unique relationships with butchness have been largely ignored in any way besides "I used to be butch, but now I'm a Normal Straight Man!" & also the general erasure of transmasculinity in lesbian history. Lesbian spaces have always been a haven for trans people, because for a long time in the West, your options were generally "move to a new town and go completely stealth for as long as possible" or "find your local lesbians and be a dyke within a community." There's a reason "butch" has always held so much gender nuance. Radclyffe Hall, who wrote the famous lesbian book The Well of Loneliness, has been argued to have been transmasculine- but the idea that butches may truly call into question the gender binary causes too much anxiety, so we have to constantly re-affirm that butches are above all else women. I'm a firm believer that butch4butch relationships have long been a way for gay trans men to indulge their desire for men within the context of lesbian identity (because all the trans guys are fucking each other and always have been).

Anyways. yeah. let butches exist beyond our sexuality. Understand that "butch" carries so much color and cannot be reduced down to a simple binary concept.

(Also anon, if you haven't, you should read this article about transmasculine comphet wrt gayness).

[witch-without-gender]

youre just homophobic, there isnt much else to it. not everyone can be bisexual. not everyone can be attracted to the other sex's genitalia or body. i dont need to call myself superlesbian or some shit because being a lesbian alone should be enough to say "im a female who likes pussy and only pussy" but yall homophobes have ruined that to validate your nonexistant ~genders~ (as in, gender itself isnt a real thing). i can tell you dont think homosexuality is an innate and natural thing. i can tell you think all people have the capacity to be bisexual and experience attraction to the opposite sex.

males and females have different bone structures, especially in the face, and im not at all attracted to male faces. most trans woman still have visibly male bone structure and are therefore not sexually attractive to me (or other homosexual women). even trans women who do have passing facial structures still either have a penis or a faux vagina that isnt even self lubricating, so again, not attractive to real lesbians (aka homosexual woman). id also like to mention to you that if you do your research, trans women will never be able to carry children because their bodies literally dont and cant produce the hormones needed to keep a fetus alive. not to even mention that a male body would almost certainly reject have a uterus put into it.

and btw, lots of (actual homosexual) lesbians would be willing to date a trans person if hes FtM! because sexuality is based in a person's SEX, not something as made-up as gender.

why do you feel the need to help pressure homosexual women into dating people who are male? why isnt it good enough for bisexual women to date trans women? why do us lesbians need to validate them by pretending wed date dick-havers? why dont you realize it would be traumatic for an actual homosexual women to be in sexual contact with a penis?

There’s so much wrong with this I don’t even know where to start. But I guess I’ll start with the fact that claiming to be able to know if someone is biologically male/female is both sexist AND racist. This is literally how you get cis women, mainly cis women of color, being accused of being trans in sports. A lot of them just naturally have higher testosterone levels, which affects both their performance and appearance and because of people like you, they get scrutinized.

As for the “non self lubricating vagina” crap, vaginal dryness is a thing a lot of cis women experience. Sure it’s not exactly the same thing, but are you really gonna dislike a woman based solely on the fact that she’s dry? Bc that sounds pretty stupid to me.

And again, I stated it as a hypothetical. I love how y’all just prove over and over again that you don’t actually read anyone else’s arguments and just throw the same, stale, disproven bullshit at us over and over again.

I haven’t met a single lesbian who would actually date a trans man. Most that I’ve met just acknowledge that trans men are men, and one just hated trans people on the basis of our being trans. Also, just to be that person, if you consider yourself a lesbian but would still find yourself attracted to a trans man who has had bottom surgery, congrats you like dick lmfao.

I don’t want to pressure anyone into dating anyone else. I just want exclusionists to stop treating trans people like a monolith. And you’re doing that thing terfs do where they act as if every trans woman has a penis. News flash, bottom surgery still exists. You were just talking abt trans women with vaginas 5 seconds ago. How do they all now suddenly have dicks again?

Also just hilarious that you’re calling me, a pansexual queer, homophobic. Oh but do go ahead and be panphobic. Please tell me all about how I’m actually bisexual (as if bisexuality doesn’t also include all genders literally in the bisexual manifesto) or straight. Please tell me what my sexuality actually is just like you claim I’m doing to you.

Anyway, seriously get off anon so I can block you or I will stop answering these. I’m tired of having the same argument over and over again with you misogynistic, racist, transphobic fucks. Get over it or get bent.

[misterbitches]

hi! this is long as shit i’m sorry. i hope it makes sense. i ahve adhd and like 5 million learning disorders so this is just word vomit cos there’s so many words in my brain. my b.

i’ve had such a tough day so thank you for replying and sharing! @yeedak​ 

i was thinking about what i wrote and i meant to clarify that as well. some cases are fine for both parties and it’s not like you weren’t consenting and it seems like you were happy! same with my friend who was dating a 20 yr old. if they’re happy you know i’ll clown on ‘em but yea. so for anyone that sees these posts your relationship with your partner who is older or whatever. i’m some dumb girl on the internet okay. ill side eye older ppl tho

i think a lot of people feel the same way you do now (me included.) it feels really good at the time but alter we can see the dynamics playing out. i’m 29 now and i think aging is just such a huge process. it’s wild how you at 31 are a totally different person, right?

and the US racism is probably some of the worst ever in its iteration because of slavery which started from europe etc but USA is so fucking unique bc of columbus bringing slaves here and displacing indigenous peoples or hispanola and because america is so influential the way it views race, particularly with black people as objects, has so deeply permeated into the current historical psyche globally. it’s fascinating to track how necessary anti blackness is to the flourishing of america but also the world at this point. also want to point out how fuckign scary sinophobia is here especially for covid. one is a straight historical line (black ppl + the US) and the other had to be manufactured and to continue to exploit the non-white americans and keep antiblackness in tact.i could go on about this all day. the pain of this place is immense.yet as bad as it is here, this is still the only place i truly feel safe as a black person. because of the unique experience we have in america and through the diaspora especially because we are veyr much ocncentrated here. it would be nice to like move to norway and have some alleviation financially or get free healthcare it’s just not feasible if no one looks like me. it’s fucking tough. 

i hope you don’t hate it here though and people treat you with respect. but as you know being a woman and jewish and an immigrant....shit is tough. the USA is a hellhole. :( america is so deeply tainted and desperately bad because it was founded on strife and blood and there’s no way to reverse that and what this country did in turn when it gained enough power and could capitalize off of the colonial forefathers. this is why we hsould all luv revolution!!!

HOWMEVERRRR 

boy oh boy oh BOY OH BOYYYYYYYY. well wlecome to the world of BL lmao especially as an adult with some obviously deep perspective just given your background. it is a fucking mess and it’s a hard mess to like but it pulls you in. i approach it like i do with soap operas since these are essentially telenovelas, you know? just like the drama at a billion. but the tricky part of that is like....what parts of it do we understand for critiquing? because so many of the shows are so bad at being like good pieces of things to look at just production wise and story wise. but i feel like these shows ask us to take them seriously, so why shouldn’t we take the content seriously? and this is being primarily peddled to young girls. 

i bring this up often but i read this thing about yaoi and the interest younger women/girls have in BL and its fascination with pederasty essentially. this component i think is key when we talk about who gets affected by these things the most. society in general is bad 4 girls bla bla we know lmao but in “more sexually conservative” societies it may be harder for these girls to feel safe even expressing normal emotions romantically and sexually and particularly with guys. some people hypothesized, and i think i agree with this hypothesis, that they can live through the casualness of BL. they don’t feel threatened because they can put themselves into the shoes of the other character. oftentimes, the more feminine or the younger. this was in conjunction with the age gap aspect (they say pederasty as well because there’s unethical age gaps that r gross and that is indeed what we would at least call a touch of sexual abuse if people dont feel like calling it an obsession with youth and power and uhhh young ppl and perhaps kids) where maybe girls could see themselves in these situations as the person being saved, loved, taken care of, and sadly also sexually active and penetrated. 

i think that’s just one aspect of it but i do think there’s validity in who gravitates towards it. i cannot imagine seeing this stuff and not getting enough information as a young kid, i sure as fuck know i didn’t!, and seeing these things and you look at it with 0 critique because you’re young and you may have no interest in it or you simply cannot understand what is wrong. no one is teaching you these things and these shows confirm it. and it is wild how intrinsic patriarchy is to BL although in its existence it also can’t be in line with patriarchy given the nature of two [cis] men!

it begs the question about the replacement aspect. is it just so girls can put themselves in these characters shoes? if so then that means we believe that gender is so interchangeable within our relationships and interactions and that doesn’t seem right. there’s more to lgbtq+ than just existing; it’s finding ways to communicate, finding a family, safety, your people, being a free person. there’s a lot to gain and a lot a lot to lose. and a gay man is also not a woman because those are also two distinct experiences.  especially in societies that have a more hidden aspect to sexuality (idk how to word this bc the BL industry would NEVER survive in america but in a way there’s a more “progressive” look at homosexuality but it’s still fucked up because we live in a Society, you know? at the same time look at what we are doing to trans kids. literally waging war so it’s bonkers how we all collectively have some real progress happening but at the same time not at all. the concept of ‘ladyboys’ and the frequency we see trans people in thai shows is wild and something that we absolutely do not see here in the US. still, none of these groups feel safe or are getting better material conditions in either place. we just show the ways we can try and tolerate oppression witout eliminating it imo)

to me it is clear: it’s money. which most things exist to make money so. but also who is the audience for these shows? and they have to market towards them. all that said all hope is not lost there are some decent shows. it’s just like regular media on TV though where it’s so fucking saturated as an industry that it’s literally sifting through garbage. and there are some days when you can handle the trash and others where it really fucking hurts to watch the violence, the rape, the manipulation, the violations, the stupid messaging. i have never seen more people trying to do mental gymnastics and seeing if things were “technically rape” than in teh BL fandom and that is so fucking sad.

i came into these shows at 28 with almost 0 clue of what as media BL was like esp as media that countries can use as soft power with the revenue. but i realize like...i’m 29 now and so many people don’t have a sizeable, though not huge, amount of life experience. and i wonder for people on the internet who are usually searching for something if they spend so much time on it like what a 15 year old girl thinks. what a 20 year old girl thinks. 

it is incredibly problematic and so awful but there’s also some rewards. if you haven’t i would definitely watch i told sunsset about you which i don’t think i’m going to finish and i doubt i’ll watch the second installment (watch this be a lie) but when i say some fucking impeccable storytelling and art? phew. now that is a fucking piece of media that works. it takes from moonlight heavily and you can see like...the artistic dedication is there and the story makes its world and sets up its stakes extremely well. 

i think because this is marketed towards much younger people too they know they dont have to try as hard. but they SHOULD because then you can have a fucking masterpiece like that. i think even this prolific gay thai filmmaker (who is like solidly against the government) who is so respected (and who i like a lot! if u wanna know i can tell u lmao but the films are very uhhhhhhhh “artsy”) would like i told sunset about you. i wish more people had budget like that and also just cared about the stories. it’s the fucking magic of art to figure out what you can do but there is very little incentive honestly. idk i am very pessimistic. there are days when it’s really a great pick me up and distraction but it is never a place i would love for to feel seen or heard but i’m more of the mind of i never trust the mainstream until they prove me wrong ;) 

or i never trust the mainstream and i still buy into it anyway and then cry when i don’t like what i see adn i yell “BOO GET OFF THE STAGE!” when an old man won’t leave a teenager alone

[5typesoftrash]

warning: this is going to be a long post. transphobia and bigotry under the cut

I am posting this rebuttal of a person who got (hilariously) angry at someone who Does Not Care (me) and wrote an entire-ass essay on this post because apparently this is how I spend my time. Defending my identity which does not need to be defended because it is immutable from transphobic trolls who won’t even see it cause they’re blocked from this account.

Anyway. Be careful looking under the cut.

TERFs, gender-crits, radical feminists, transmeds, nb-exclus, anti-mogai, and anyone else whose ideology promotes transphobia and/or trans erasure, please kindly do not fucking touch this post. I am not kidding when I say that I will report you all to tumblr for hate speech if it takes me all fucking night.

Image Description

Two screenshots of a reblog from tumblr user homosexual-means-gay. The post reads:

please tell me how literally every single gay man being repulsed by ppl with vaginas hurts you! tell us why it’s a problem gay ppl aren’t attracted to the opposite sex like straight and bi ppl are!

homosexuality isn’t a political movement it’s a regular natural innate sexuality. gay men aren’t attracted to biological females and it hurts gay ppl when you side with conversion therapists and it hurts bisexual ppl who actually are attracted to both sexes when you erase them for your homophobic agenda. you’re not a victim. you’re happy to eliminate homosexuality from existence as long as you’re able to reinforce heteronormative gender roles the gay community has always opposed. your bigotry harms trans homosexuals too, not that you transhets care about the gay trans ppl either.

erased from history? you want gay ppl correctively raped out of existence bc you love socially constructed gender roles more than human rights. you deserve all the hate you put out into the world. im sorry our innate orientation and culture prove how flimsy and useless the gender roles you define yourself by are, but homophobia will not improve your self esteem. you’re driving away ppl who would be happy to support your made up identity by attacking how we were born same sex attracted. sorry you can’t relate bc you’re straight. sorry you think you can use your privilege against us. but it’s not something we’re doing to you. it’s not something we can change and it’s not something we want to change. there’s never been a gay man in existence who likes pussy, not even the gay trans women like marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera. you’re a sad little straight girl alienating all potential allies.

hurting us doesn’t validate you. it doesn’t hurt you that no gay man will ever like pussy.

End ID

(If someone wants to do a better ID that’s fine, I just wanted to put everyone on an equal playing field when it comes to understanding the content of this post.)

I’m going to go line-by-line and refute every single bullshit thing this person said.

> please tell me how literally every single gay man being repulsed by ppl with vaginas hurts you!

factoid actually just statistical error. TERF Tommy, who has committed multiple transphobic hate crimes, is an outlier and should not have been counted. I know many cis gay men who are attracted to trans men because they are MEN, not because of the genitalia they have. And I know you want to say ‘that makes them bi’, but no, it doesn’t. You want to accuse me of homophobia? Telling another gay person that their identity is invalid just because they express it in a different way than you do is literal homophobia.

>  tell us why it’s a problem gay ppl aren’t attracted to the opposite sex like straight and bi ppl are!

because... some are? And you don’t speak for the entire gay community? Especially not the other side of it, for the opposite binary gender than yours.

>  homosexuality isn’t a political movement it’s a regular natural innate sexuality.

and transness isn’t a political movement either, it is a regular natural and innate gender identity. You know that gender identity is inherent, right? When people say ‘gender is a social construct’ all that means is that it is not a natural thing. Humans created the concept of gender and assigned value to it based on what we could perceive as a means of giving order to the world around us. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t important and it doesn’t mean that there aren’t parts of it that are inherent to individuals.

>  gay men aren’t attracted to biological females and it hurts gay ppl when you side with conversion therapists and it hurts bisexual ppl who actually are attracted to both sexes when you erase them for your homophobic agenda.

I’m sorry this is literally incoherent. To reiterate: some gay men ARE attracted to assigned females. Yes, siding with conversion therapists hurts gay people. No, I am not siding with conversion therapists. I have never once stated -- in fact, the entire point of my post was the opposite of this -- that anyone should EVER have sexual interactions with a person they don’t want to. Even if the reason for that is because they have a genital preference, which is NOT the same thing as a sexuality.

(I know I’ve been over this before but here it is again. A sexuality is a measure of what GENDER/S you want to have sex with. A genital preference is a measure of what genitalia you are willing to get all up close and personal with. Both are innate, one can be manipulated. They are not the same thing.)

Hurting bisexual people... hey, fellow bis, am I hurting you by *checks notes* existing in time and space?

>  you’re not a victim. you’re happy to eliminate homosexuality from existence as long as you’re able to reinforce heteronormative gender roles the gay community has always opposed.

I am literally A GAY PERSON. Even by YOUR MEASURE I am a victim. And I do NOT want to eliminate homosexuality, I just want people to acknowledge that language evolves and definitions can change as our society does. Also, have you ever met a trans person in real life? Because like 80% of all the trans people I’ve ever known have been gender non-conforming, so like. That invalidates that point. The trans community opposes gender roles as well.

>  your bigotry harms trans homosexuals too, not that you transhets care about the gay trans ppl either.

Please point to where it says I’m straight. Please. I want to see it.

>  erased from history? you want gay ppl correctively raped out of existence bc you love socially constructed gender roles more than human rights.

At this point I’m just repeating myself. Please see the above points for rebuttal.

>  you deserve all the hate you put out into the world. im sorry our innate orientation and culture prove how flimsy and useless the gender roles you define yourself by are, but homophobia will not improve your self esteem.

Says the person berating a minor for *flips notecard over* agreeing with them that people shouldn’t be forced into sex. I’m sorry that you’re so hurt and angry that you have to push your pain onto other people just to feel better. I genuinely am. It makes me so sad to see how much some people are hurting. But I won’t just sit and take this kind of verbal abuse. I don’t deserve it, quite frankly.

>  you’re driving away ppl who would be happy to support your made up identity by attacking how we were born same sex attracted.

I doubt anyone calling it a made-up identity wants to actually support me. Next.

>  sorry you can’t relate bc you’re straight. sorry you think you can use your privilege against us. but it’s not something we’re doing to you. it’s not something we can change and it’s not something we want to change.

Again. I am not straight. I do not have any straight privilege to use against anyone. Even if I was cis I still wouldn’t be straight because I’m aroace and attracted to anyone and everyone. My gender identity isn’t something that I can change, either. And even if I couldn’t, I wouldn’t want to. I love being a man, and I love being a trans man. 

>  there’s never been a gay man in existence who likes pussy, not even the gay trans women like marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera.

I’m sorry, WHAT. Marsha P Johnson and Sylvia Rivera can’t be both gay men and trans lesbians. Which one are they? You gotta pick, babe.

> you’re a sad little straight girl alienating all potential allies. hurting us doesn’t validate you. it doesn’t hurt you that no gay man will ever like pussy.

So am I a transhet or am I a straight girl? Also I’m not sad, I’m quite happy with where I’m at in my life. I do not feel validated by hurting anyone, because I don’t enjoy pain. I’m not masochistic or emotionless, I am in fact hyperempathetic due to my autism, and I don’t like it when anyone is hurt. This can be evidenced by this post here where I wish well upon a group of people who have directly hatecrimed me in the past. 

I will repeat that. I have literal trauma from physical violence as a result of the actions of this group of people, and I am still wishing them good things. 

Nor does it hurt me that ‘no gay man will ever like [AFAB genitalia]’ because this isn’t even a true statement. As I have mentioned previously, I know personally multiple gay men who are attracted to trans men. And reader, please note the fact that this person uses a slang term, a deliberately vulgar one, where in my original post I used the medical term ‘vagina’.

Hope this clears some things up.

TERFs, gender-crits, radical feminists, transmeds, nb-exclus, anti-mogai, and anyone else whose ideology promotes transphobia and/or trans erasure, please kindly STILL do not clown on this post. I am once again not kidding when I say that I will report you all to tumblr for hate speech if it takes me all fucking night.

[sevynspeakstothesky]

In rebuttal to Buckbreaking(2021) By Sevyn Sky Selby Wednesday June 9, 2021

If you have not seen Buckbreaking, a document by Tariq Nasheed, here is a breakdown: Black men, including Rizza Islam and Joe Brown, sitting around giving what they preserve to be a historical take on the history of homosexuality in the black community. They bestow not only brutality but genius on the white race as being the source of all alt sexuality and identity. They are in fact ignorant and forgetting that many of us, like myself are native to the Americas where Two Spirit people were and are to this day revered. The term Two Spirit is the Native American all-encompassing term for LGBTQ individuals where white Americans coined the term bisexuality from. White people are not the creator of non cis identities or non-straight sexuality. The men in this documentary give them way too much credit. However, the film makes some points like black people, especially black men where on the receiving end of anal rape and degradation for centuries.

Very violently, the disdain for the LGBT community is spit out in this docuseries. To that I ask, were the commentors sons or daughters either feminine or masculine presenting and self-proclaimed as gay or trans what would you do? I think I know the answer. They would beat and mentally, emotionally abuse their children into submission. If that did not work, would they kick them out in the street. A tale too many of us are familiar with. How are we as black LGBT people being punished for what they claim as a white created problem? Homo same relationships and gender role reversals were well documented before slavery and often as black people we equate the beginning of our history as slavery forgetting the richness of our rule and ancestry. In the documentary same sex relations and trans people are linked to pedophilia but people failed to realize the pedophiles are in everyday life, in parents, in men, women, pasters, uncles, aunts, strangers, friends and more times than often not committed acts by trusted authority figures. But calling Two Spirt people abusers because we choose not to acknowledge their sexualities and identities as valid is an easy scapegoat for ignoring these facts. We also forget that for every child failed in anyway the culprit is 9.9/10 times the fault of a cisgender and proclaimed straight parent.

What the documentary gets right is that white people are depraved and that conjunction with Christianity and so-called organized religion, a once great two spirited community became demonized. What I see is a group of black men oppressing a subgroup of black people by comparing them to their white counterparts. How can a divide be inclusive? If they had done their studies, they might find that the racial divide is just as big amongst gays. Or that black LGBT folks suffer from homelessness and poverty at way more alarming rates than their Caucasian counter parts. In black and brown communities, sexually fluid and gender non-conforming youth are thrown out as soon as they are no longer controllable in the worst-case scenario. This leaves them subject to real predators and pedophiles on the streets and often forced into prostitution rather than being abused and not being able to live their truth under a roof by their own parents. This is what the youth are experiencing. It is not fair to hold black people to a higher and harsher standard than the actual culprit of crimes against humanity, the white male and by extension the white woman.

If black and brown gay men and transwomen are the victims of mental manipulation, feminization and ritual abuse as the film suggest, how does the attack on us make the situation better? Why do we have to further stand the abuse from our own community by what was done and is still being done today. Why is so easy for us to oppress our own and not see ourselves in ourselves or our youth?

A whole community is suffering mentally and emotionally because they are not being able to express themselves or believed when they tell you who they are and their stance. And when we believe them, they are demonized. We are contributing to this detrimental atmosphere of systemic and mental slavery where our children cannot grow. This is the remanent of slavery we should be worried about and what these men could have used their platform to bring awareness to. Again, let’s not forget, the conditions we find ourselves in today stem from the failures of cisgender, straight parents. The foster system is filled by them, the gay community is thrown out by them and mental abuse is perpetuated by them. While there are historic points made, we have more important things to worry about, like better ways of parenting and letting our children express themselves.

An important conversation being had today is Dwayne wade and his daughter Zaya Wade who is accepted and thriving. I commend Wade and Gabrielle Unions parenting. I’m interested to see the growth of a young trans person who is allowed to flourish. We need more voices like Dwayne Wade and less like rapper Boosie who has been labeled as transphobic and homophobic in his career. In light of the Zaya Wade news, Boosie proclaiming to Zaya’s father in a social media video, “don’t cut off his parts man,’ misgendering and referring to the genitals of a 13-year-old Zaya. Boosie has also been called out for not only referencing a minors private but also suspected homo same comments and an obsession with the male phallus on serial occasions. Boosie is a voice of a generation of ignorant misinformed melaninated people who choose to subjugate those under the umbrella of LGBTQ+. His and other voices like his are the ones people want to flock to instead of the Wades of the world because we have been so indoctrinated with a sense of self oppression. Think of all the children and adults who have suffered mentally anguish due to these views and religion. A great example being Donnie McClurkin who just this year has said how unhappy he is and proclaimed himself as asexual because of conflicting feeling within himself.

We cannot continue to allow hate pieces like Buckbreaking to be made where a whole community is likened to child abusers when people like Boosie are praised. We cannot allow people like Rizza Islam, who loves and idolizes Prince and Michael Jackson, both men who were on the extreme feminine side of the spectrum, then turn around a exclaim how much of a sin gay people are. This documentary stunk of gender inferiority, patriarchy, and perpetuated slave mindset. The melanated Two Spirit and LGBT community is here, always has been and always will be. A goal of ours as melanated people must be to remember who the real divider and manipulator is and unifying to fight that energy and not creating schisms and oppressing parts of our own body.

[friend-o-dorothy]

Full disclosure, I support trans and non binary people. But I don’t really understand the “terf” standing? I would really appreciate it if you explained the argument that if they pass a law stating that identifying as a woman is all u need to do to enter women’s spaces - it will result in men pretending to be trans and entering women’s spaces? Has that happened before and is it likely? Even if u have a link to smth that explains it, it would be greatly appreciated. Thank u!

Hey! I’m honestly not one to keep receipts around and it’s pretty late, so I’ll put this out there and hope followers reblog with links. If they do I’ll reblog it here.

There are cases of men posing as women to get into women’s spaces to harm women. Bathrooms are sensitive and vulnerable spaces for women. Trans women have the same rates of violence as their cis male peers. Imagine being 11, starting your period, wanting to talk about that with your friends in the bathroom, and sharing that space with a male bodied person. Do little girls not deserve privacy? It’s also important to know the history of the bathroom debate. There used to only be male bathrooms in many public spaces because women didn’t enter those spaces. Women fought long and hard to be able to have bathrooms because it was unsafe for them to use public restrooms with men. Here we are having the same debate.

I think the obvious solution is to have more unisex single stall restrooms. I empathize with trans women in the sense that men are violent towards transwomen usually due to homophobia. Single stall restrooms (most places already have them anyway), are safe for anyone who may prefer more privacy. But I have to wonder if it’s really about safety. Because if it was about safety, the movement would be pushing for single stall, especially since they talk about how TERFs are violent. If we’re so violent and you’re vulnerable then why would you want to be in a space with us that makes you vulnerable? It’s not about safety, it’s about validation. And I don’t believe that the safety of females should be sacrificed for the validation of males.

I think the broader issue here, beyond immediate safety is the argument of what makes a woman a woman. Does femininity make a woman a woman? If so, are masculine women, butches, tomboys, athletes, those that like short hair, those that don’t wear make up or shave—are they not women? If femininity and gender roles do not define womanhood, then what DOES? Our biology. And the basis of our oppression has always been our biology. I won’t pretend that trans women don’t experience violence at the hands of men, but it is not because they are women, it is because they are men who dare to be feminine. Our experiences are not the same.

As someone who has been to female only festivals and TIM inclusive festivals, I can say there is a difference. When we celebrate our biology with pussy hats, with art about the vulva, with the vagina monologues—when we celebrate the bodies we have been socialized to HATE, we are told we are transmisogynistic and exclusionary. When we talk about our real challenges with menstruation, we’re either faced with an onslaught of misogynistic insults in which we’re referred to as “bleeders” or are expected to grin and bear it while a TIM tells us about phantom cramps while we suffer real ones from conditions like PCOS and Endometriosis, both conditions of the female body with next to no research on how to treat or correct them.

We need female-only space. We still have work to do in terms of female-specific oppression. And when we allow our oppressors to enter our spaces, our goals, our liberation, our work is put on the back burner while the relentless task of validating the identities of trans women who think they’ve identified into an oppressed class come to the forefront. I would never presume to enter the spaces of trans women or black men, or Spanish-speakers. Because their experience is unique and I would not come unless invited. The experience of being female, of being raised female, of the pain that comes with the oppression of the female sex, is unique to us. We deserve to find spaces of common experience where we aren’t silenced because our stories may make someone feel invalid.

[vegannaise]

boys deserve love

i started realizing around 16 that i wasn’t cis. i flipflopped back and forth between different nonbinary identities, occasionally wondering (in private) if i was just simply a boy. i was already out as gay, and people already regarded me as a “tomboy”, so that helped alleviate some of my teenage discomfort.

I didn’t date a lot in highschool, partially because i was incredibly intimated by girls, partially because boys didnt pay too much romantic attention to me, and probably a little bit because i had 0 interest in sex all throughout my teenage years.

when i was 17 i had my first “serious” relationship. it was with a boy that coerced me into hooking up with him while i was nearly black out drunk (wow,, what a catch right???!!! thats a whole different story). as sad as this is, i finally felt like my existence was valid. i felt like i had finally achieved this unspoken goal of having someone love me in a romantic way, having someone find me desirable. i was happy for the first time in years.

of course, i was still trans and in the closet during all of this. one night, i was completely swallowed by my dysphoria. i was either on the floor or in front of the mirror crying because of how my body looked. i even ended up giving myself a stick n poke to avoid self harming. Mason (boy in question) was texting me throughout this, i think i had told him i wasn’t feeling good, but i didn’t want to tell him why. he eventually pressured me into telling him what was wrong, and i told him “i dont like my body. i want my body to be a different body. i want to have a BOYS body”.

for just a second, i pictured myself years in the future with a flat chest and stubble and a deep voice, my arms around Mason, who still loved me even though he was “straight” and i had transitioned.

sadly, this fantasy was violently ripped away as soon as i came back to reality. Mason had responded with clear discomfort, saying he wasn’t gay. i told him i knew he wasn’t gay, but wouldn’t he still love me for me??? i would still be the same person, so wouldn’t he still love me????? to which he prompty responded, firmly and bluntly, that if i were to transition and call myself a boy, he would break up with me.

this experience made me go back into the closet for 2 years.

fast forward to when i was 19, i was in a relationship with a transguy. since i grew up in a tiny homophobic town i was never able to date another trans person, and most likely put this person (lets call them...... Pickle) on a big ol’ pedestal because of that. Pickle had been out as trans for almost 5 years, and had been on T almost just as long. they were the first person to tell me that nonbinary people can be trans. they were the first person to actually make me feel seen and valid as not only a trans person, but as a boy.

i ended up coming out to them, in tears, as a transguy. i still felt really confused, i was a boy but didnt really feel connecting to masculinity. i wanted nothing more than to be a pretty boy but recoiled at seeing myself as a Man™. even though that relationship was incredibly toxic, Pickle supported me unconditionally through getting on hormones, they even bought me a new binder. they were the support i had desperately needed.

we had been dating for 8 months when i left town for a few days. something seemed off when i would text them, it felt like something was wrong, but they werent telling me what. Pickle was staying with me at the time, so i saw them as soon as i came back. they said they had something to tell me.

they told me that while i was out of town, they had had a major identity crisis, and realized that she was actually a butch lesbian. of course, i gave her a giant hug, i told her i loved her and that i was so happy she had figured this out about herself. thats when she started talking about us.

she told me that since she was a lesbian and i was a boy, we had to break up; as if this shouldve been obvious to me...... it wasn’t. as she sat there telling me things like “i still love you” and “and i wish things could be different” we both cried. a lot. i still couldnt wrap my head around what was happening. here she was, telling me she wishes things were different so we can be together, why couldnt we just be together as is??? if you want to be with someone, why does it matter if they’re a boy or a girl??? especially when you’ve already been together for 8 months??? it felt like it had a lot more to do with other peoples perceptions of us, it wasn’t because i was a boy, it was because she didnt think she’d be seen as a lesbian dating a genderqueer boy.

the next day i confronted her about this. i was so confused, i had given myself a headache and multiple panic attacks trying to figure out what the fuck i was feeling. she told me that she felt like we should break up anyway, that her realizing shes a lesbian was just “the final nail in the coffin”. i found myself even more hurt and confused than before. id told Pickle all about Mason, how i went back in the closet because i was scared of him leaving me. i told her about all the shame i had accumulated over the course of my relationship with Mason. despite her knowing all this, she still decided to scapegoat our own identities, rather than just own up to the fact that our relationship was falling apart already.

this experience made me question my entire identity, the identity i had JUST started feeling valid in. this experience made me eventually stop taking hormones. this experience made me feel more invaild and undesirable than ever before.

during this time, i started to also ID myself as a (nonbinary) lesbian. i had felt my attraction to men dwindle, and i was grappling with my attraction to women. but more than anything else, i convinced myself that being a boy = being hated. looking “like a boy” = being ugly and undesirable. not only did this feed into terf rhetoric, but its a result of being told my whole life that my worth is directly tied to my level of attractiveness, and that no one would find me attractive if i looked the way i wanted to.

it felt so much easier to stay how i was. all i wanted was to be seen as queer, and since people already read me as a lesbian, i might as well just settle for that, right? at least people would get it. at least people would see me.

i’m 22 now, and ive really only just started to deconstruct these things and unlearn my internalized transphobia and self hatred. about 6 months ago i started calling myself a boy and using he/him pronouns again, and for once i actually feel safe. for once i actually have a good support network. for once i actually feel seen. for once i actually feel loved.

to anyone who actually bothered to read this all the way through: healing is not linear and our identities sure as shit arent. if you’re in the closet right now, or if you’re questioning your gender/sexuality for the first or fifth or tenth time: i see you. i love you. you are so valid in your fear and confusion. the world still actively hates LGBT people, and that internalized fear is so real and deserves to be acknowledged, but please believe me when i say that there ARE people out there who hold the deepest love, appreciation, and camaraderie for you, even if you dont know them yet. your existence as an LGBT person in this world is inherently radical, please don’t ever forget that.

[silenthillmutual]

Hey! For the ask meme, 5, 9, 12, 16, 21 :) Is that too many???? I think that's too many but oh well ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(actually i dont think its too many but ily you anyway!!)

5. what makes you feel validated?all my family members (except my mom) not even asking when i change names, just saying “hi [insert new name]!” like i do wish they cared a lil bit more than they do about what’s going on in my life but that part at least!! feels good

9. what does your name mean?tbh, weeb ass got it from noriaki kakyoin initially just as like, an rp nickname? bc i used to rp kakyoin a lot. but i dont want to go by noriaki since i’m white and i know ‘nori’ by itself pops up as a name or nickname in other cultures, although outside of japanese & arabic i can’t find it right now.

tbh i really like that it just sounds like ppl are calling me seaweed, although i’ve also seen that depending on the kanji used it could also mean doctrine/belief. i wish i could find the use of it in other cultures but scrolling through baby name websites is both nauseating and unhelpful, although one person said that in lithuanian it means “wants”

i was going to go by kieran as a middle name until my mom ruined that (like she did with luke) but atm i’d rather accept link - like from legend of zelda, since link was designed to be androgynous and a lot of trans ppl relate to him (although ppl trying to find a deeper meaning to the name on baby name sites is hilarious - ‘lincoln’, really? just admit u like video games) - or cas. cas is apparently dutch for “imperial” but i just took it from the character castiel on supernatural, and his name is probably derived from the archangel cassiel. ‘cassiel’ has a ton of different spellings depending on which religion’s texts you’re reading and which translation, but that name means “speed of god” or “god is my anger”, according to wikipedia. he’s sometimes depicted as the angel over saturn, or the angel of saturdays. he’s not depicted in the bible, but shows up in jewish/islamic/christian mystical and occult texts.

(i think its also worth noting i had a hard time finding these names on baby name sites and like, i do live to be difficult!)

12. favorite trans headcanon?

there are just so many good ones!!! danny fenton & timmy turner (made esp great by the fact that butch hartman just fucking hates it) being trans, that cow from the barnyard show on nickelodeon, reigen arataka, mob (as either trans masc or trans fem), link - and for that matter, any character when you see them shirtless and they don’t have nipples? they had top surgery and elected not to have the nipples put back on. 

i think sam porter bridges from death stranding could easily be read as a trans man or trans woman, and i like both. on the one hand, he needs an stand-to-pee device (literally, that is a part of your equipment); on the other, the game has heavy themes of motherhood and he is able to use technology to be connected through what i can only describe as an umbilical cord to the bridges baby. and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the gender commentary was entirely intentional on kojima’s part. for that matter, i also love trans solid snake and trans hal emmerich in metal gear solid. 

i also think danganronpa deserves a special shoutout, not just because you can pry canon trans girl chihiro fujisaki from my cold, dead hands and i’m sick of seeing cis bootlickers harassing ppl online over that transphobic as fuck storyline, but for real? nobody’s birth name actually spells out “diamond” with their sibling so mondo and daiya oowada are both trans (it’s also one of the only ways to make any part of case 2 make any goddamn sense), yasuhiro hagakure and celestia ludenberg having plotlines where where they have to reveal those aren’t their birth names? congrats they’re both trans now. 

i wish there were more headcanons about characters being trans women that didn’t rely on stereotyping. i know thats a big problem wrt seeing muscular or tall women and ppl focusing their trans headcanons on them, so i actually kinda head canon aoi asahina as trans and wanna eventually write that for fic w sakura ogami being cis bc people tend to look at sakura and go “well obviously shes trans bc shes muscular” (and then they do the opposite when it comes to trans men, but i’ve seen a lot of trans masc hcs). i also don’t see a lot of nonbinary hcs being given to amab people…. we need to fix that!! but alas i have already rambled a lot so thats a post for another day.

16. song that gives you Big Trans Feels?

if we’re not including music that is literally about being trans (like “transgender dysphoria blues” by against me!) then, “twin size mattress” by the front bottoms! the lines “it’s no big surprise you turned out this way / when they closed their eyes and prayed you would change / and they cut your hair and sent you away / you stopped by my house the night you escaped / with tears in my eyes, i begged you to stay / you said, ‘hey man, i love you, / but no fucking way’“ always sounded like he was talking about a trans girl friend of his, but i dont know enough about the band to say for certain what that song is about. it probably helps that i felt that song extra hard when i was first coming out and w how my relationship w my mom was like.

21. what makes you feel euphoric?

back when i first started going by luke (and then later by nori), my dog bingley would just blink at you and not react if you told him to go get [deadname]. he only would come find me if you told him to go get luke / nori.

he’s such a good boy. i hope somebody steals him from my mom.

thank u for asking!!!!

trans asks

[tumblunni]

Randomly, i do like the misdirect involved in Kaine's backstory. Like you think that the people of the Aerie hate her and treat her as a monster because of her Shade-arm, but no that all happened AFTER they treated her like shit. They were just bigoted against a small child for being born intersex. She only got her Shade powers as a consequence of this shit village pushing her and her grandma to the edge of the forest and doing nothing to help when they were attacked by shades. Kaine was treated like a monster, so she became one in order to live. And she used that power to help people, even as she was treated as EVEN MORE of a monster because of it! kaine is so damn strong. She has every right to be a goddamn tsundere when her life was so shitty, god...

Tho i still kinda dont understand what exactly happened with Tyrann, tho? Like at first i thought the shade that possessed her was the same one that killed her grandma, but no that was apparantly the lizard boss you defeat shortly after meeting her. So where did Tyrann come from and why did he decide to save this kid and possess her body? I hope its not something like 'oh she was indeed born cursed and he was always trapped in her soul until that moment awakened him'. Like i mean that could have a bit of problematic connotations since i mean this is a male character possessing a female one and itd be messed up if they said she was only intersex because of the possession or something. Instead of just the fact that many women across the world are born this way and it doesnt make them any less of a woman.

Anyway its still not exactly a good representation of intersex people because of the whole fetishization of her and the DAMN STUPID excuse that she likes wearing lingerie 24/7 because it makes her feel 'more like a real woman'. :P But still man its literally the only case i've ever seen of an intersex character who's just intersex, yknow? Like not a 'magic alien whose species is always like this' or 'a magic fusion of a cis man and cis woman' or some other fantasy excuse to portray a real person in a way that validates that they dont exist in real life. Nonbinary people often get the same treatment, since conflating gender and biological sex is a big bigoted cliche, sigh. Like man intersex people have the exact same rates of being queer as anyone else, there is literally no correlation between genetalia and being more likely to be trans. Execpt that intersex people end up with very similar types of predjudice and hell, because of the way society treats them. The absolutely disgusting medically accepted practise of amputating functional genetalia and tertiary sexual characteristics from LITERAL ONE DAY OLD BABIES because they're intersex is just so fuckin messed up! And most of the time these kids are never even told by their parents that this was done to them, so they just grow up with all these health problems and dysphoria while being gaslit about the cause of them. Like seriously when you're rolling a damn dice on which gender to turn your kid into with goddamn invasive plastic surgery, of course its gonna be wrong half the time! You're just picking what they fuckin 'look like', before theyre even old enough to know! Its so relateable to the trans expperience yet EVEN WORSE because you know your parents knew ALL ALONG and they consented to mutilating you to try and "fix" it! There's so much real life predjudice against intersex people and honestky i would say there's even less awareness or acceptance than for trans and gay people.

So yeah its REALLY IMPORTANT to have positive and realistic representation of intersex people. And not just lame corner-cutting where the character is technically intersex yet the story treats it like an impossible fantasy thing and refuses to address any of the real life issues these people face. So yeah man at least Nier does indeed have an intersex character who is indeed intersex and is canonically stated to have been born this way and also canonically stated to be a real woman and only villains treat her as anything less. But it still sucks that the positivity about her also escalates into gross 'lol f/uta sex object' stuff. *sigh* Again, another way the predjudiced depiction of nonbinary trans people gets mashed into the same thing by bigots. And hell there's also the conflation of cis gay men with trans women, because seriously bigots have no damn concept of any sort of reality, apparantly...

Gah the whole thing pisses me off! It also sucks how its hard to represent intersex people in anything except an M-rated game like Nier. (Tho kinda ironic that they can show all this gore and sex but still dance around in metaphors when explaining this..) Like I mean its absolutely possible to talk about being intersex without talking about how people have sex, like seriously saying otherwise would be just as bigoted as saying trans people or gay people are inherantly sexual. But to an audience of cis people who dont know much about LGBTQ community terms it would be kinda hard to make it clear when a character is intersex rather than trans or nonbinary. Like before i read the artbook details i thought Kaine was just a DMAB trans woman based on how its described ingame. And saying 'someone who is both a man and a woman' would be implying intersex and nonbinary people are the same thing, when most intersex people still identify as male or female rather than nonbinary.

Like the only time i've seen intersex representation handled more clearly and more canonically confirmed than Kaine was Angel in DDS2. It was a really good way of explaining it respectfully to a cis audience, just "Angel is a woman but she's both Sera's mother and father". (Due to some complicated in-universe sci fi science where she could extract both her sperm and egg cells and use them to make a clone of herself that could telepathically communicate with the sun. This story is kinda weird lol.) But on the other hand i dont really count that as much of good representation as Kaine, since this one singular sentence about her being intersex is very hidden in an optional area. Aside from that all you get is characters mentioning how she has an 'androgenous beauty' and her boss battle transformation is designed to look 'half male half female'. (Tho at least its 100% tasteful and just a nonsexualized monster vaguely shaped like a dress and a trenchcoat split down the middle, with half lipstick.) Oh and yeah also she's a friggin villain and a manipulative abusive parent, so yeah. She is a synpathetic villain and she's apparantly reincarnated into a happy life with her dead boyfriend at the end, but still she's the primary evil force for 75% of the whole series and never atones for what she did to her daughter.

So yeah sorry this just turned into a rant about how the Two Only Intersex Characters In All Of Fiction So Far are kinda not perfect, and also both from pretty old games too. I really hope i can find some more representation someday, sigh...

[transsurvivaltransdefence]

Victim’s statement on Hyde Park violence:

“Wednesday's (13.09.17) scheduled event, “What is Gender” was to be a platform for questioning the validity of trans people's gender identity, let alone existence, by 'debating' the impacts of the Gender Recognition Act which would allow trans people to legally change gender. The speakers, Julia Long and Miranda Yardley, are TERFs (Trans Exclusionary so-called Radical so-called Feminists) have a long history of harassing trans women and presenting blatant transphobia as ‘education’ and ‘debate’. The attempt to disrupt this event was our only option to protect people of trans experience, especially trans women, from another public TERF attack. TERFs view trans women as a threat based on the assumption that anyone who possesses a penis (not all transgirls have penises by the way) is inherently violent or sexually aggressive. This rhetoric is used to defend those that rape and murder people of trans experience because of their trans status. It is necessary to stop this small group of self-gratifying bigots, rather than leaving them be only to be faced with a fully grown hate group in the future.

Over in the States, TERFs have even sided with a far-right conservative Christian group to push forward anti-transgender laws. The same group promotes anti-abortion and other politics that limits the rights of women, both cis and trans. Siding with them against other women is anything but feminism. Ganging up on women who have a different experience of womanhood is not feminist.

The events of Wednesday night have been grossly misrepresented by TERFs and the media outlets that have written their biased story as truth. They claim that a group of trans women purposefully assaulted an older woman in a premeditated attack but in reality it was a group of people attempting to defend and ensure the safety of a person that had been mistaken for a trans woman.

I am what TERFs would call a “biological female” and yet, they could not tell me apart from trans women, that they so hate and harass. They in fact assumed that I was a transwoman, so the violent treatment that I have received from them, is a good example, of what they do to trans women. The TERFs thought they were getting their hands on a trans woman when they grabbed and restrained me in a headlock, and tried to punch and kick me. Maria Mac, claims to be the victim while also admitting that she was trying to "kick him as hard as she could" (quoted from her own statements), even the police at the scene told her she was in the wrong.

The video of when she claims to have been attacked clearly shows her restraining me from behind so that somebody had to interfere for me to be able to get out of it. I was a target of misplaced violence from TERFs, who claim to be victims while harassing and attacking trans women or those like me they mistake for trans women. The TERFs have once again exposed the shallowness of their politics. Who sets the criteria for what a 'real woman' is anyway?

Since last week, a number of trans women have been attacked by relentless campaigns of online abuse and harassment. This tactic is one regularly used by both fascists and TERFs. When a TERF puts a camera in the face of a trans feminine activist, this is a show of violence to come, as her face and her identity will become a target for abuse. In the online backlash, TERFs make a point of misgendering (using “he/him", referring to trans women as men) every trans woman at every opportunity. They fear proposed changes to The Gender Recognition Act because it would criminalise their behaviour for what it is - violent hate crime.

Trans women are continually and relentlessly oppressed and attacked. Cis women are not under attack from trans women, either physically or by attacks on their identity. Transphobic harassment and violence is a brutal daily reality for trans women, fighting against that is not violence.

As we said on Wednesday night, and will continue to say until people of trans experience are safe from transphobic hate, WHEN TERFS ATTACK, WE FIGHT BACK.

Solidarity with our trans sisters; we will fight for you now and always!"

[gabrielvidrine-blog]

I Never Got to Be a Boy

*Record scratch*

*Freeze frame*

Yeah, that’s me. Bet you’re wondering how a shy introvert got to be standing up in front of hundreds of people, in the freezing cold, talking about being trans masculine and non-binary.

Public speaking scares the bejeezus out of me. I did it anyway.

I did it for the trans children that are now being attacked by our government for merely wanting to go to the bathroom. The right bathroom. The one that matches their gender identity.

I also did it for me. The past me, the “girl” who never got to be a boy.

No, I never got to be a little boy. I never got to have my first kiss as a boy. I never got to ask out a pretty girl (or boy) to the prom. I never got to have my first date as a boy. I never got to be a part of the men’s drill team in ROTC, or take part in anything other boys get to do. I was never a boy.

I had to have my first kiss as a girl. I had to wait to get asked to the prom. On my first date I had to wear a hated dress. Instead of being in the men’s silent drill team I was forced into the women’s drill team. We were basically Rockettes in military uniform. It was humiliating (for me).

I just didn’t know why, back then, I was so uncomfortable with my body, with my lot in life as a girl. At least I was lucky in one regard: it was the 90s, when wearing baggy flannels and jeans was fashionable, and for the first time in my life (and only time since) I was considered “in fashion.” I could cover my traitorous body in layers of flannel and a leather trench coat, be round-shouldered (to hide my breasts) and androgynous with my short hair and combat boots.

Back then, I didn’t know what being trans meant. I didn’t know there were trans masculine people. I barely knew there were trans women, and those only from shows like Maury Povich and Jerry Springer.

Because of this invisibility, it took me a long time to figure out my gender identity. I didn’t have anyone to look up to, to tell me what I was feeling was valid and real.

When it takes 30 years to figure out your gender identity, like it did for me, there’s a lot of guilt and pain that weighs heavily on you. The questions I ask myself the most are, “Why did I not figure this out sooner?” and “Why did I waste so much time in the closet?” The answer to both is because trans masculine people are not visible.

Trans masculine people just aren’t visible anywhere in the movement. Still, today, trans men are erased from the conversation around trans rights. Just last month, a trans boy was forced to wrestle girls instead of the boys he wanted to wrestle (and should be wrestling). He is taking testosterone, making it, frankly, unfair that he had to wrestle the girls. Parents were rightly upset, but not for the right reasons. The rules were intended to protect cis girls from losing to a trans girl, due to the erroneous idea that trans girls have some sort of unfair advantage in girls’ sports. No one considered what might happen if a trans masculine person was forced to wrestle the girls.

The bathroom bills are the same. Bigots want to put trans men (who often, but not always, pass as cis men due to testosterone) into women’s restrooms, because they fear “men” (i.e. trans women) in the women’s restroom. It’s because they forget that trans men even exist and don’t care how women would feel should a trans man enter a woman’s bathroom.

When people talk about trans men there is always at least one person who misunderstands and assumes trans women are being discussed. Because they just don’t know there is such a thing as a trans man.

Trans masculine people are told we’re just confused lesbians (considering I’m married to man this is funny to me) or that we have it “easy” because we can vanish into cishet-hood, which is laughable because many of us are not heterosexual at all. Nor would many trans men want to vanish into cishet society even if they could. I do not consistently pass, even after nearly 2 years on testosterone, and I’m very clearly married to a man. The question that follows is if we wanted to sleep with men, why transition at all? As though our gender identity had anything to do with our sexuality.

So when the opportunity came to be a voice for trans masculine people, I took it. I stood up for all those trans boys who don’t see themselves represented in media, who don’t see people standing up for them. I stood up so we can’t be ignored or erased or misunderstood, even by well-meaning allies.

I want trans boys to be able to be boys. I don’t want them to have to wait 30 years before realizing who they are inside. I don’t want them to miss out on the first kisses and first dates, and all the other experiences they should have as boys, not as girls. It makes me die a little inside every time I think about what life would have been like for me had I grown up a boy. I don’t want any other boy to ever have to go through that.

And so, there I was. Standing in the snow, shivering with fear and cold, to speak out and give voice to all the trans masculine kids who are invisible, who are suffering. I never got to be a boy, but I will do what I can to make sure they get to be one. Even if it means doing what terrifies me most.

If you want to know more about me and my story, I have an essay about how I discovered I was trans in the #Trans anthology. You can order it here (Amazon) or here (Smashwords).

This post is also part of a blog tour! Find out more about the anthology and the blog tour here. Please check out the next on the list, coming out on March 24th, Velvl Ryder.

[noctomania]

Expression (please excuse the novel length)

I remember back in elementary school when my school district voted on whether to turn my school to uniform policy. It was a public school and i had never felt so attacked before then or felt such a strong opinion about something personally. Mind you, i was maybe...10-12 yrs old (if that). This was a time when my self expression was about to take off and bloom. Suddenly though it was halted by uniform policy. I had heard both sides of it and valid points existed on both sides but i still feel it was wrong to enact because i am an advocate for open self expression (i mean without encroaching on other's rights so like my self expression couldn't be to sit on stranger's laps without invitation for example), mostly because that is how i connect best with people. I can't easily just strike up convo with strangers (trust me i have tried). Back then, it was usually a snarky message on my shirt that would draw people in to talk ("good morning is an oxymoron" or any emily strange stuff for example) I've always relished in (and grateful for) having autonomy over my appearance, it's one of the most rewarding things to be able to almost turn yourself inside out and tell the world "see? Do you see me now?" Whereas uniforms...they felt like a prison, like the erasure of my individuality. It also made everyone else seem so 2-D. Schools sometimes had trouble with students showing up in tshirts advertising alcohol or with inappropriate language on them, which is where I think the uniform idea came through most strongly. The economic hardship was left to the families though. Luckily i was allowed to wear pants and not forced into a skirt. I highly doubt guys would have been allowed to wear skirts though, but i never experienced any situations of that at my particular school. I wasn't social enough though to be sure it never happened. Something similar did occur in my high school years later though but instead of a skirt it was my friend and he would wear makeup but was repeatedly sent to detention for it because it was "distracting" I remember also in high school when i was going to be getting my senior picture which I didn't want in the first place. The senior photos were binary traditional and you had to wear this funny neck garment according to your, or what they assumed to be your, gender. This was all before i knew trans and i just knew i preferred the tux one to the one that looked like a dress. The photographer refused unless i got permission from the journalism teacher and I think the only reason she allowed me was because i was a "good quiet" student. But she was sure to let me know she felt it was highly inappropriate. I remember when i got a free leatherman jacket from being in my high school book club (i am The Coolest™) and we got to choose what name we wanted embroidered on the back. I'm proud to say i have my current name, andy, on it because even though the book club leader/librarian did try to push back on my request and tried to sway me into putting my birth name on it, i was insistent. I still have it and still wear it and otherwise i may not have even taken it. (It was free so turning it down wouldn't have been a big deal to me though I woulda been bummed to not get one even though they kinda forced me to take one anyway? It's complicated and thats all besides the point) See I'm someone who craves expression. I bottle up enough shit. Some things i wanna wear on my sleeves. Or my face. Or my hair. My gender expression has been pretty strong since day one. Not to say I wouldn't or have never gone more feminine in my appearance, it's just to say that i have not been the type to adopt an appearance based on what someone else says i am or should be. I don't feel the need to be absolutely masculine 100% i dont fear that which is feminine or androgynous. And i still remain critical of the unnecessary binary that is forced in societies. The products "for men💪/for women🌼" the bullshit of women just cannot be as strong as men the bullshit that women are inherently emotional moreso then men the absurd concept that to be a woman means to have a pussy and tits and to be a man you needa have a package (because clearly you just lose your identity when you get breast or ovarian or testicular cancer). "SO DUH ABOLISH GENDER SO MEN AND WOMEN CAN BE TREATED THE SAME" To turn a blind eye to the differences and intricacies along the gender SPECTRUM (or any innate identity spectrum) is to pretend we don't all have our own distinctive experiences and issues and is in fact a rejection of them. My gender is expressed how i see fit. Perhaps it is quite masculine and yes i did in fact get some surgery but no surgery is going to turn me cis, no hormones will remove all the experience i had as a AFAB for 20yrs no surgery is going to change my interests. I didn't seek hrt or surgery because of anyone else or to spite anyone or to attack anything, i did it to achieve a sense of Self I had never experienced before due to the limitations of my physical expression. I did it because i know how my mind perceives my body and it's never fit right until now. Like ive been a mismatched set of Tupperware that's finally been organized properly. My lid fits, i am a complete set on my own now, as opposed to trying to fit the mold of other's lids. I didn't change to be someone else, i changed my appearance to match who I Am. FORCED gender roles/expression is detrimental, not because of the gender, but because it's forced; because it's someone exerting (or trying to) inappropriate control where they have no right. Are cisfem who choose to take on the ultimate 50s nuclear family housewife life/look any less valid than a cisfem who refuses to fit any gendered life/looks? Or should both be seen as equal and valid in their accession of and right to their autonomy to identify themselves and express themselves how they see fit without any external criticism/dictation as to what is "right" or "appropriate" based on antiquated and/or irrational factors/ideologies? The point of identity is nobody can tell you what​/who you are. Perhaps they could guess, but that doesn't mean they are right or that they have authority over your identities. it's not a problem that gender exists. It's a problem that is has been monopolized and mutated and mythologized by people (yes of all varieties bc ideologies know no bounds) trying to dictate other's lives. It's a problem that it has been used as a tool to oppress rather than express. I've met just as many misogynistic women as i have men or even trans and non-binary folk. Everyone has the ability to be oppressive of someone else. When you have been oppressed, or fear being oppressed, you might take on an oppressive role yourself as a form of offense before you ever have to face bein on the defense, if you aren't critical of or moderate yourself. Though the effort may come from a place of self-preservation, it can still cause unnecessary harm and even be counterproductive, if not hypocritical. If we approach the problem for what it is (insertion of opinion where it is unwarranted and unnecessary) instead of attacking it's symptoms (gender expression), we will get to the real resolution with less inner-community squabbling. Don't pretend like you can tell someone who they are. You can argue your point without doing this. Don't pretend you are the ultimate source of knowledge for what you are fighting for. If it were all up to you there wouldn't be a movement, just you. Terfs and radfems may believe i should not have transitioned. Perhaps they feel I could have easily just continued to be a "tomboy", as i was frequently referred to as, and just bind my chest for the rest of my life and never feel a real connection with my Self. I would have remained in a state of self loathing and not only forever feeling less than i was meant to be (not because of my female form but because I wasn't able to be my Self) but forever having to face people identifying me incorrectly and always feeling that disconnect in communication when someone rejects or denies your identity. While being trans does still make me (only slightly due to passing standards and me being white) a target for hate crimes, before resolving my identity i was more likely to take my own life on top of still being a target for harassment due to being untraditional in my expression. Me being me, I've never had an issue with bein an untraditional person (very little about me is traditional), but when you have an inner war going on and you know you can do something good about it, I would never sway someone away from resolving that. Honestly i felt more a distance from feminism before transitioning because i never felt right if i tried to "proudly proclaim" bein a woman/womyn. i felt like a fraud which ultimately made me question if i was a feminist at all. Like I didn't not like women, and i was/am a proud feminist, i just didn't feel as if i was a woman and felt more like i was lying when the words came out which did to an extent feel like a form of betrayal to women and it wasn't til much later i understood it wasn't. I tried various forms of gender expression as a female but even in the best case scenarios it didn't sit right. Not knowing who you are foundationally makes it hard to know how you feel about others or how to accept others. Empathy and compassion require a certain level of knowing yourself so you can identify with another on our human level. If you're at fault with yourself it can be hard enough to love yourself much less anyone else. I feel trans-exclusionary feminists are stuck in that same stage i was stuck in when i was resolving my gender identity. But removing the issue from the context of gender kind of helps. Its not the identity itself that i hate, it's being forced into an identity i am not, never have been, and never will be. Imagine being forced to be a different person. How people identify you is all wrong and any time you try to assert your identity it is rejected. It's not an identity you can change (like a religion or a political leaning that may or may not change), but it's something not readily apparent, or is obstructed by the predisposition people may have about you based on what they see you as. You can call a bear a silly man who needs a shave and wears a fur coat but that's not going to change the fact that the bear is a bear, not going to change the bear's needs or instincts (reference from The Bear That Wasn't) I guess my point overall is: distinctive identity titles are born out of necessity, because thise identities exist. Identities also present the opportunity for us to recognize one another's differences and to learn how we connect and where we lack understanding of one another. Identities allow us short hand how to express ourselves verbally, yanno when interpretive dance is out of the question or inapplicable. Expression of identity is integral to feeling a sense of Self, to be able to trust yourself, and to be able to trust others. Identity should never be erased whether it be gender, sexual orientation, race, ability etc. Before I understood my gender identity i was compensating my lack of masculine appearance with overly-masculine attitude instead, which inevitably lent itself to toxic masculinity. I would catch myself acting that way sometimes and earnestly didn't know what was wrong with me. Now i know i was insecure. Now, I'm much more neutral and comfortable in my attitude since I'm not feeling the need to compensate for my appearance with my attitude. My transition was good for me and those around me. It allowed me to be a little less concerned with my issues and more concerned with the issues of a wider community. So I know this is long and I'm sorry. I don't expect anyone to have read this and i doubt that anyone who disagrees with me read it thoroughly (3 times top to bottom) as they should (to avoid making themselves look impulsive and irrational or cherry picking) before asserting their opinion, but here it is now and it's not goin anywhere. Thank god it's my weekend coming up... (Please if you respond do so respectfully. If you only wish to spit at me, do so in a direct message and leave the notes on this open for respectful conversation/debate, thank you kindly!)

[tumblunni]

ALSO TO FIX EXCELLUS

Because tangeants again lol

Recognise that its fuckin stupid and bigoted to expect us to believe someone is a villain INSTANTLY after seeing that they're queer, before they even do anything. Don't spend your entire damn game having the characters go "eww its that disgusting person of ambiguous gender we should kill them because gross" rather than.. Yknow.. "Excellus fuckin murdered those people". Recognise that literally doing this is gonna make your character LESS villainous and MORE sympathetic long before you finally get to goddamn showing them do anything bad except say "ohoho i wanna be a princess". And it'll make bunni REALLY PISSED OFF because nobody wants to feel sad for an asshole murderer yet THAT SADNESS IS FOREVER ENGRAINED IN MY SOUL NOW

Seriously fuckin hell it even made the heroes look less heroic! I felt like Excellus was almost justified in becoming a murdering selfish monster if she spent her entire life being treated that way by both sides in this big good or evil conflict. Why the fuck should she give a shit if she's being degraded? Like FUCKIN OBVIOUSLY murdering people and wanting to conquer a random japanese country as a mad dictator is not a remotely logical reaction to being misgendered. But like they could have changed some stuff and made a perfectly good sympathetic villain who gets manipulated by the bigger bad because of her sad past of being treated like shit and like she feels like this is her only option to be herself. And then maybe you can reignite her hope in the world and her self esteem and moral centre and help her redeem herself and team up with you to take out the real horrible fucks with no sympathetic motives. Instead she's friggin played as THE one who's evil cos she has no sympathetic motive. Like that's her whole Thing, she's supposed to just be selfish and greedy and horrid. Your damn bigotry somehow failed your own story as well as failing all trans people ever!

Or like yknow.. If you want an asshole fuckboi then actually write an asshole fuckboi. Scrubby scrub the trans = bad shit from this plotline and you do indeed have a selfish monster who murders a bunch of innocent people and gets his just desserts. You had a ready made simple character archetype and you were so preoccupied shoving your transphobic screed into your game that you fucked it up!

So yeah i think either make this goofy ohoho trans auntie a good character, make the asshole ohoho bad character a cis man, do both at once, or like even i'm not opposed to having a trans villain exist but like seriously make them a synpathetic villain. If they're the only trans character in the plot its already gonna send a bad message if theyre in the role of "worst most underhanded jerk villain", even if it WASNT also transphobic as fuck. So a sympathic trans villain or adding more LGBT characters so it doesnt seem like this one individual was designed to make a statement on your entire feelings for a minority.

ALSO

like seriously please do not do this stupid thing of mooshing every stereotype together from every LGBT identity and acting like theyre all the same thing?? Like man i fuckin HATE that anime trope that yknow.. The gay man says all this trans stuff cos he's ~just that flambouyant~ Like being a drag queen is what 100% of gay men are, 24/7, and anyone saying theyre a trans woman is just one of those drag queens who's really getting into character. Or just.. I dunno. I cant even wrap my head around what train of logic must have led to that stereotype in the first place! And its so fuckin annoying as a queer person trying to talk about why this is bad queer stereotyping, it just makes me extra sad to straight up not know what pronouns to use for the character so i feel like i'm being just as horrible to them as their creators were. Like man i've only settled on going for "she" for Excellus cos after years of looking into it it does seem like the original japanese was indeed specifically using stereotypes of trans women and not trans men or nonbinary people. Though all languages do seem to call the character male it seems pretty strongly to be a "i believe that trans women are men and can never be women" kind of thing, rathe rthan the character herself calling HERSELF male. She calls herself a woman in both english and japanese, and its just that the english has everyone else use male pronouns for her and added the non-canon "explanation" that she only acts like a trans woman because she has something wrong with her balls. (Ugh!) And in japanese on top of calling herself a woman she also uses feminine (and specifically trans/drag queen coded) variants of "I", and other common speech pattern traits used for negative stereotypes of trans women. Though again we do have other characters calling her a disgusting perverted man instead. Sigh!

Ok ok ALSO BIGGEST FUCKIN FIX! dont draw the character like a horrible distorted cariacature goblin in an entirely different art style to everyone else. Seriously its so annoying how they tried to make you agree with "excellus is disgusting just for acting queer" by LITERALLY DRAWING A DISGUSTING CHARACTER. If you take away the weirdass overdetailed horror movie monster face, there is nothing ugly or even "manly looking" about her! She's just like somebody's perfectly normal chubby aunt or something. You could go out in any street all over the world and see five of her! I hate it cos its almost like psychological manipulation or something? Like i've seen so many lets players who arent bigoted but merely oblivious still agree that excellus is ugly and disgusting and comical because of it, cos all the implications of transphobia/homophobia flew over their heads and all they saw was a character drawn to look monsterous. And just.. This is so common. Its the overwhelming japanese stereotype of trans women. Draw them looking INFINATELY MORE MANLY than the cis male characters. So manly that it really hammers home how "obvious" it is that a man in lipstick or dresses "just looks wrong" and of course there's NO way they could ever pass and ha ha look how deluded they are that they think they look pretty. It's horrid. It really is. Seriously I like to point at Tabitha from Pokemon ORAS for a good counter example, cos he's also an ambiguously transgender character from a game that came out around the same time and by some weird coincidence they look very similar. Except for the literal entire face. The literal entire exact same face, just its drawn hideous and distorted on the one who's supposed to be a negative trans stereotype, and drawn exactly like everyone else on the positive one. And there's not one example in the whole game of anyone calling Tabitha ugly because he looks trans, or even insulting his weight or anything. Same damn character design, just drawn without bias and treated like a human being. I mean seriously right down to them having the small "evil eyes" but with Tabitha he's always drawn with them in a perpetual sort of happy face and then his pose with them looking similar to Excellus is supposed to be a BADASS MOMENT of this comic relief villain showing his worth! And hw literally has red eyes on top of it! His design is even MORE "evil" yet just not drawing it as a stereotype entirely changes the player's perception and he became beloved by many. Whereas with Excellus even the trans people in the audience couldnt relate to her and just felt fuckin sad.

Oh also i guess Excellus is implied to be a trans woman and Tabitha is implied to be a trans man? But i don't think game freak was trying to say anything about trans men being more valid or whatever, cos the first canonical LGBT character of any sort was a trans woman npc in the battle maison. And tabitha being trans isnt really confirmed as clearly as she was. i hope someday theyre able to confirm an LGBT main cast member but until then i will forever hold onto the glimmer of hope that was given to me by Beauty Nova.

Also seriously Tabitha and Excellus both also look EXACTLY LIKE ME IN REAL LIFE so I kinda took Excellus extra hard and latched onto the Tabitha headcanon so much more because it was good healing after all that nonsense. Tho I also did considee nonbinary Tabitha at the time, because his japanese name is a gender neutral one that's merely like 75% female, rather than a 100% feminine one. But then his old RSE design was very masculine so i think maybe a trans man is what they were trying to imply if they did indeed do it on purpose. Anyway i probably would have translated his name as Ashley cos it has the same "technically neutral but more popular with girls" aesthetic while also keeping the same fire pun as Homura. I have no idea how on earth Tabitha is supposed to be a joke, honestly. Tho i meam maybe he's just the one type specialist on the entire poke-earth who doesnt have a joke name?

ANYWAY thank you terrible transphobic stupid manga i read today for reminding me that i love Tabitha. And also the developers love Tabitha. And also all the characters in universe love him, like seriously the only difference between the devon dialogue of him and Shelly is that they mention the other scientists nicknamed him tabitabi. And its so cute how seriously they said it too?? Its like "our boss tabitabi,the most feared and respected genius man".

Lovv dat tabb