#but I think it’s very worth noting since a lot of cis and trans men (especially trans) mention feeling unsafe in queer spaces

[iron-bullogna]

I'm going to vent a bit about it here then. I'm a bit flustered so hopefully it isn't all over the place. Over my life I've experienced a lot of cruelty, primarily at the hands of white cis women and men. I grew up in a town of 1,000 people and my graduating class was 32. I went to the same school my entire life. The area was predominantly white and I mean that in a "I can count on my fingers and toes the amount of POC I encountered in my life before 18" way. I was also born AFAB. It was very clear from a young age I wasn't "normal". I have preschool paperwork highlighting my very obvious autistic traits (playing alone, organization, and at one point I could see from one quarterly report to the other how I taught myself to mask a behavior the aids noted as an issue, etc). My first "best friend" was a boy from the Ukraine who no one wanted to befriend because everyone assumed his English wasn't good. I can't even tell you how his English was because I don't remember that. I just remember he didn't care that I was a little weird and liked "boy" stuff and wore boys clothes when I could cause he liked "girl" stuff.

The boy and girl stuff mentioned here are literally as simple as Pokemon and Britney Spears. We were bullied by our peers, family, and parents for just being children. The only female friend I had growing up that I chose myself was bullied for being indigenous, looking masculine, (I believe Shoshone/Cherokee but I was 9 and I can't recall now apologies) and liking "boy" stuff. She moved only a few years later. I did not have another female friend until my senior year in high school and big shocker that a few years ago she was diagnosed with autism alongside her son. I knew from age 12-14 roughly that I was trans. I thought I was a transman back then. This was pre-internet btw folks. I had NO IDEA wtf a trans person was or that it was even a real thing. I just felt like I wasn't a girl and I couldn't possibly be a girl, all because of how those around me treated me. I'm not saying every transman is just a traumatized cis woman, but I know for a fact for me and my personal situation, being told I looked like a boy, all the stuff I liked was for boys, just literally everything about me = well that is what boys do, not girls. I genuinely think in my case, that it impacted me psychologically in a way so deep it gave me a lot of mental health issues surrounding gender. I would go through phases of hyper performing femininity and hypersexuality to try and fit in. I developed a huge complex around my self worth and being desirable that still persists to this day. This is the part Twitter was angry about and wouldn't let anyone interact with. I'm now 34 and it's manifested in a new way since quarantine since I didn't have interaction with people outside of close friends for that entire time. I find myself with an intense fear of pretty cis women, particularly white women. It's a genuine uncontrollable fear response where my entire body starts trembling because I can't stand the thought of being perceived by them. I feel so lacking. I don't even fucking identify as a woman anymore either but I can't even describe the dread I feel about being near them. It isn't even their fault either. They can be the nicest in the world to me but societal pressure and the treatment of women, cis and trans alike, has caused me so much harm I'm actually actively searching for a new therapist to help with this issue. TERFS out here literally causing the issues they say are "plaguing women from being women". Like HUH? You're literally reinforcing stereotypes babes!!! The same stereotypes you say are misogynistic! You're the problem!!! I actually have surgery on Monday and I told my husband I'm more afraid at being perceived by the beautiful women in the clinic (it has an attached MedSpa, trust me, they're all flawless goddesses in there) than I am being awake for the actual surgery. I don't doubt I would still come out as trans (rn I identify vaguely as non-binary/transmasc) because I just don't really vibe with the concept of gender as a whole. I would have just probably figured out that those feelings weren't necessarily me wanting to be or actually being a man a lot sooner. My heart just hurts for Imane Khelif because I can't imagine if she legit is just a normal ass cis woman with higher testosterone how it must feel right now to be attacked like that. And if she is intersex, how much she probably faced a lot of similar treatment that I did growing up. At this point I'm just rambling, but it has all made me very very sad and just brought up a lot of trauma from my own life.

[aardvaark]

let's talk about how to spot TERF rhetoric & what TERF dogwhistles exist, because it's important to make your blogs actually safe for trans people!

unfortunately, i still see TERF posts that seem innocuous enough, making their way to my dash because people don't notice the dogwhistles. or TERF rhetoric appearing in feminist conversations and going unidentified & unchecked. also, it's one thing to say you hate TERFs, but it's important to actually know what it is you disagree with! and to make sure you're not so susceptible to propaganda!

note: "TERF" stands for "trans-exclusionary radical feminist". its worth remembering that TERFs believe general feminism ideas, and almost always consider themselves to be left-leaning in politics. TERFs generally believe that trans activism is in some way incompatible with feminism. this is different to conservatives and anti-feminists who hate trans people for other reasons, like based on their religious beliefs, patriarchal values/sexism, general bigotry, etc etc. and i know, yeah, you can argue that TERFs still ultimately hate trans people for these reasons or that TERFs are inherently anti-feminist, but i'm just here to tell you about what TERFs believe. and thats what TERFs believe about themselves.

TERF terms & definitions. many of these apply more broadly to transphobes in general, but they are very much also used by TERFs.

TIM: "trans-identified male", ie any amab person who is trans/nonbinary, usually trans women, because they believe that trans women are males who identify as trans.

TIF: "trans-identified female", ie any afab person who is trans/nonbinary, usually trans men.

libfem: "liberal feminists" which generally just refers to feminists who are trans-inclusive, rather than feminists who hold liberal political views

radfem: "radical feminists" which is what TERFs call themselves. technically radical feminists are not always trans-exclusionary, however radfem ideas tend to go hand-in-hand with a lot of transphobic ideas, and the terms "TERF" and "radfem" are often used interchangeably on tumblr, by TERFs and non-TERFs alike.

autogynephiliac/AGP: a male who is sexually aroused by the idea of himself as a female, or who has a fetish for being a female within a sexual fantasy. this is what some TERFs believe some/most/all trans women "actually are". it is generally believed that AGPs should not be allowed to transition medically, and that they are perverts or a danger to cis women. part of Blanchardism.

transsexual-homosexual/TSHS: a "real" trans woman, in comparison to an AGP (explained above). within this framework, the "real" trans women must be sexually attracted to (cis) men exclusively, and must have known they were transgender since they were very young due to significant gender dysphoria. TSHS are considered preferable to AGPs, and some TERFs & other transphobes think that only TSHS-types should be allowed to transition.

same-sex attraction: not always a dogwhistle or intentional! especially not in older sources or scientific sources. however, many TERFs are very specific about saying that all lesbians can only ever be attracted to cis women (and opposite way round for gay men). so, trans women are invading lesbian spaces by... existing or dating, i guess.

gender ideology: the "ideology" that sex and gender are different, or that its possible & fine to be transgender. the exact traits of this "ideology" vary wildly between different accounts. its kind of like the "gay agenda" but for being transgender.

TRAs: "trans rights activists", ie anyone who supports trans people.

adult human female: TERF definition of what a woman is, and something you will see TERFs call themselves or put in their profiles. honestly gotta applaud this dogwhistle because its exactly what a dogwhistle is meant to be - seemingly totally innocuous, nothing much you can debate about it, but used to identify their

gyns: fellow women, fellow TERFs. in the way that most people might start a post with "hey guys" or "hey everyone", you'll see TERF posts started with "hey gyns". think "gynecologist", it comes from Greek.

womxn, wombyn, womyn, womon, etc: taking the "men" out of "women", very second-wave feminism. wombyn to include "womb" and emphasise the importance of being afab. (ironically womyn/womxn is sometimes used by trans allies in an attempt to be more inclusive of nonbinary ppl and trans women, but ultimately that's really not helpful either).

biological women, natal females, real women, etc: many TERFs dislike the term "cis", and will replace it with virtually anything else to distinguish between themselves and trans women.

hygienic (as a dogwhistle): not sure how popular it is currently, but some TERFs call themselves "hygienic" in their bios to discretely indicate that they are cisgender & are TERFs.

self-hating women: afab people who are trans/nonbinary. comes from the idea that afab people only transition because of internalised misogyny or body dysmorphia or something similar.

gender critical: opposing "gender ideology" as previously explained, thinking that biological sex is the only important thing. another term that many TERFs will use to refer to themselves or tag their posts with.

the ones that are most commonly used as dogwhistles or which may go unnoticed in bios/popular posts, are; adult human female/AHF, womxn/womyn/womon, hygienic, biological women, and (complaints about) liberal feminists.

now onto TERF-related concepts & TERF rhetoric

remember: not all TERFs believe all of these things. some will believe many/all of these ideas, some will only believe one or two, some might actually have a totally different ideology thats rare enough that i've never even heard of it. also, they might follow these ideologies but disagree that its what they believe, or they might believe these ideas without knowing their origin.

blanchardism: the ideas created by Richard Blanchard, a sexologist in the 1980s-90s. this is where the AGP/TSHS dichotomy comes from, as well as other transphobic ideas primarily about trans women. in regards to trans men,

bioessentialism/gender essentialism: the idea that there are distinct, intrinsic qualities that differ between amab people and afab people. that afab people are biologically predetermined to be X and biologically made for Y, and that amab people are biologically predetermined to be A and biologically made for B, basically. this is also classic sexism, with ideas like "men should go to work, while women should be homemakers" and "women are inherently more emotional and less intelligent than men" being examples of bioessentialism too.

gender socialisation: sort of like bioessentialism, but based on early childhood experiences rather than genes. idea that all children assigned male are treated and brought up one way (which involves "boys will be boys" sort of lifestyle, being allowed to do anything, no responsibility, being taught to be violent, being allowed to harm girls they're attracted to, etc) and all children assigned female are brought up a different way (which involves constant sexism & misogyny, patriarchal standards thrust upon them, huge amounts of responsibility, early objectification, being harmed by boys/men). now, its not untrue that afab kids and amab kids tend to be treated differently, especially if their parents are more conservative or part of an older generation, at least within the western/american cultural sphere (although this disregards the variation that exists in everyones childhoods but... anyway). however, this concept is used by TERFs to claim that (a) amab people are inherently irresponsible, violent, perverted, etc, (b) trans women are all male-socialised, and (c) thus, trans women are a danger to cis women, do not understand what it is to be female, and must be excluded from womanhood.

girlhood/womanhood as suffering: the idea that being assigned female leads to a childhood of suffering (due to gender socialisation as described above) and an adulthood of suffering due to futher sexism, so trans women (who allegedly didn't experience this) must be excluded from womanhood. this suffering is often romanticised in a sorta disturbing way.again, obviously sexism exists and causes a lot of suffering, but its the conclusion of "so trans women are bad" that is... just ridiculous. also holds the idea that trans women & girls do not experience sexism or are totally unaffected by it. and basing entry to womanhood on suffering is fucked up because, like... don't we want young girls to suffer less? isn't that a huge part of feminism? anyway.

trans women are privileged: the idea that trans women benefit from male privilege & also get treated particularly well by the rest of the LGBTQ community. often apparently because other trans & queer people are "too scared" to get accused of transmisogyny if they speak up. idea that theres a "silent majority" of queer people & trans allies who actually dislike trans women and/or agree with TERF ideas, but they're "too scared" to be accused of transmisogyny, so they never speak up. disregards the existence of transmisogyny & assumes that most people are trans allies, apparently.

trans women oppress afab trans people: the above, but specifically afab trans people being "too scared" to go against trans women. paints trans women as evil, controlling, cunning, angry & oppressive. disregards the existence of transmisogyny, often also assumes that trans women are pretending to be trans on purpose. paints afab trans people as poor, fragile, confused women, who have been tricked by evil trans women, and who are in need of saving.

gender abolition: the idea that yes, gender is a social construct, so we should get rid of it entirely. through a TERF lens, that also means that trans people are in the way of gender abolition because they identify as whatever gender they identify as, and that encourages belief in gender.

sex-based feminism: the idea that all misogyny and sexism is tied exclusively to biological sex, and thus feminism, as an opposition to sexism, should be concerned exclusively with the female sex.

gender/sex separatism, or female separatism: idea that feminism is exclusively for women, men can't be feminists, and a lot of bioessentialist ideas about the "impurity" of letting amab people into feminist spaces, whether thats cis men or transfems & trans women. idea that women should run society, or that men should be fully excluded from an idealistic utopian female-only society.

lesbian separatism: feminist movement exclusively for trans-exclusionary cis lesbians. holds the idea that virtually any contact with men (or, really, amab people) is anti-feminist, to the point that even bisexual cis women who are TERFs too but may sleep with/be in a relationship with men, are traitors. usually claims that trans women & transfems are invading lesbian spaces & tricking cis lesbians into having sex, which was already a transphobic concept used by heterosexual men. also, that a cis lesbian choosing to have sex with a trans woman (particularly an individual who hasn't had bottom surgery, but honestly often pefcieved the same way even if they have) is somehow being manipulated by that trans woman and that it is comparable to conversion therapy. this is transphobic, transmiogynistic, AND biphobic. the lesbian-exclusive idea does seem to have diminished a bit in TERF spaces, though - i used to see it a lot more. but the idea of trans women invading lesbian/wlw spaces is still pervasive.

gender dysphoria as body dysmorphia: people who transition actually just hate their bodies, and are encouraged by the "gender extremists" or whatever to transition as a solution.

gender dysphoria as internalised misogyny: the idea that afab trans people, especially trans men, are only transitioning due to internalised misogyny. that they desire male privilege, they have dysmorphia due to patriarchal standards (as described above), they don't want to be sexualised by men, etc.

transition to distance oneself from privilege: the idea that trans women are transitioning as a way to distance themselves from their male privilege. ironically the exact opposite of the above. may also contain the idea that straight people, white people, or otherwise privileged people, "become trans" to give themselves an extra marginalised identity.

gender dysphoria as sexual trauma: the idea that some/many/all trans people only want to transition because they were sexually abused/assaulted. either because they don't want to be seen as the sex they were when they were abused/assaulted, or

gender dysphoria as mental illness: it's in the DSM so obviously it must be just a mental illness! yikes. anyway, they'll point out that many trans people have mental health issues, so being trans must also be some sort of delusion, paraphilia, confusion, or other sort of mental illness.

exclusionism: asexual & aromantic exclusionism, nonbinary exclusionism, bi & mspec exclusionism, etc. the idea that some identities are fake and/or that they aren't oppressed enough to be part of the LGBTQ community. this is harmful in & of itself, of course. but it's also a lead-in to trans exclusionism, since TERFs push the idea that transness is fake in some way or another, and that trans women aren't really oppressed, or retain male privilege.

these are all the examples i can think of right now. if i think of more, or anyone lets me know about more! thanks for taking the time to listen.

[thebreakfastgenie]

I mean... I don't usually put a footnote on every post I make saying (I am trans) any more than you footnote your posts saying (I am a cis feminist lesbian) or... any other identifier? I don't personally think it's really okay to jump in and cissplain transphobia just because no one announced they were trans. It would also be weird to mansplain feminism even if no one said (I am a woman) in their post. I think you also know full well that I did not mix you up with someone else since you went on to explain the context of how and why you did it. And just on a related note... if identifying transphobia in the feminist movement is so important to you, then why have you been going to such lengths to soften the blow of the impact transphobia within feminism has? Continually pointing out that it's bad but that it's not AS bad as other things. Saying that while it's bad, it comes from a place of "hate the sin, not the sinner". Making sure we know some TERFs don't even hate trans men, just misgender and bully them out of "love"? And don't fret - it could be worse! At least the people bullying you don't have societal power. This isn't meaningfully addressing transphobia in the movement. It's minimizing it.

Most of what you are saying isn't wrong. It is important to remember the power of right wing politicians. But also, TERFs suck, and sometimes they have a meaningful effect on our lives too.

Okay, yes, I’ll cop to being sarcastic with the “you must be mixing me up with someone else” thing, but can you blame me after this many asks?

I’m answering this one because it’s very important to me that it’s clear to anyone who may be reading this that I was not minimizing TERFs or saying it’s “not that bad.”

I may have erred in using “hate the sin love the sinner” as a shorthand. I assumed it was widely understood that that rhetoric was bullshit. It is hate, but it’s a condescending type of hate that claims to be for the victim’s benefit. A lot of trans people smarter than me have written about the way some TERFs talk about trans men vs trans women. That’s what I was referring to. I wasn’t saying they were truly acting out of love, and I’m sorry if my choice of idiom suggested that.

It was not my intention to minimize the impact of TERFs by discussing their relative lack of institutional power in the United States. I think that’s interesting and worth discussing. You can argue that bigots with institutional power aren’t necessarily worse, but they are different. The distinction matters to me.

I don’t expect people to identity themselves as trans in every post. But that also means the OP can’t expect that I will treat this as a situation where I would be cissplaining by responding to the post. And when OP responded to me they did not say I had done so. If someone wants to cite their lives experience in a discussion then at that point they do need to disclose the relevant identity, but that wasn’t happening here.

The original post was primarily about feminism, not transphobia. I brought transphobia up because the commenter I was responding to mentioned TERFs but didn’t mention transphobia, instead calling TERFs misogynists and patriarchs. My original point was that I think it’s better to call TERFs transmisogynists or transphobes rather than misogynists, even if they do harm women, because I think it’s important to highlight that what defines them as a group is their hatred of trans people. Focusing on TERFs harming cis women in my opinion carries the (probably unintentional) implication that their rhetoric isn’t bad enough if it doesn’t affect cis people. I probably would have let it go if that post hadn’t also called them patriarchs, but that pushed me over the edge.

I simply did not at any point come onto a trans person’s post and cissplain anything. Most of the discussions about transphobia have been on my own posts because I’ve been getting anons like this.

TERFs are bad. I believe that bigotry can be more effectively combated if we understand the nature of it so it’s important to me that we hate TERFs accurately.

[thedreadvampy]

Ok please if you don’t mind saying - who is Stuart semple and what did he do? I’m so confused. Like I recognise the name and I think he might the an artist or something but I have no idea

He is indeed an artist! He’s a English multidisciplinary fine artist best known for his ongoing beef with English sculptor Anish Kapoor over the 2016 exclusive licensing on the process to make Vantablack colour coating, which meant Kapoor was the only artist allowed to use it. Then Stuart Semple made Pinkest Pink pigment and said it was available to everyone but Anish Kapoor, and there was a big blowup which there’s a lot of documentation of - it was very memed.

Since then, Semple has made a bunch more pigments, most of them with the available-to-everyone-but-Anish-Kapoor disclaimer, and the beef periodically flares up, although I will say as time goes on it seems to me to have got increasingly one-sided given that Kapoor has pretty much wandered off.

(I’ve used several of his colours, btw. Pinkest Pink is pretty good. Blackest Black, his attempt to make the blackest possible paint (as opposed to Vantablack which is a nanofibre coating) I was pretty disappointed in, I’ve honestly had better light capture from mid-range art shop paints. His other pigments vary in quality - some I really liked, some I was meh on, but I think Blackest Black is the only one I was actively unimpressed by)

Anyway. Where I come in is much less exciting. 

A few months ago I reblogged a post on Tumblr asking about Semple from a discourse tag (my reblog did not tag or @ anyone), and I made a glib comment where I said (very truthfully) that while I thought he was pretty decent at pigments, both his paintings and his online persona came across pretty adolescent to me.

so it turns out Stuart Semple is an inveterate name searcher (hi Stuart if you’re reading this!) 

(Side note: I actually should have guessed this from 2019 Twitter when he saw and commented on an untagged thread I wrote about him and Kapoor’s beef (which was because I’d seen an article in which Kapoor, a British-Asian man, said that the racist Prevent strategy was liable to drive young British-Asian men into the arms of terrorist groups by making it clear their country hates them reblogged on Semple’s account with a caption claiming Anish Kapoor was pro-terrorism, which, while tongue-in-cheek, isn’t a neutral statement for a white person to make about an Asian person and was a pretty phenomenally bad-faith reading of Kapoor’s actual words) and in my thread I pretty much said that when the story had broken, I, like everybody else, had found it very funny and been firmly on side with Semple’s bit, but I felt that a) after a couple of years it really wasn’t very relevant any more and it had started to feel less like Fighting The Power and more like bullying the amount of Semple’s web presence was devoted to talking about Anish Kapoor; b) that it was a shame that Anish Kapoor was increasingly only known as The Vantablack Guy given that I really like a lot of his work and c) that continuing to frame a Jewish person of colour as the Face of the Artistic Elite was a bit weird given how overwhelmingly white the high-end art world is. but I digress. Semple responded to that thread, I don’t really remember what he said, it wasn’t an acrimonious response but it was a bit Oh I Didn’t Do Anything To Tag You?)

so anyway he found my reblog and commented saying ehhh I don’t remember, something along the lines of not feeling like I was being very kind and that he was trying his best. also I think he said I had accused him of being racist? which again the actual Tumblr post literally just said I thought his art and persona came across as juvenile and I think in the tags? I mentioned that I thought it was time for him to step off the Kapoor beef. 

then he screencapped my post, including my profile picture and username, and posted it on all his socials with a kind of :( people are so mean on Tumblr :( caption and um

idk if you know this about Being A Public Persona With Tens Of Thousands of Followers but. if you post someone’s identity and say ‘I do not like what this person is doing’ it. can get messy fast.

uh I don’t follow Stuart Semple (see the original post I made) but he commented to make sure I knew he’d posted my post on Instagram and “all my followers like your wig :)” which. according to my partner who did go and look at the time, the Instagram comments were largely about how I was an ugly non-passing trans woman aka “man in a wig” which. throw the whole suitcase out. There were a good few days where I got a lot of angry anons, ranging from ‘stop bullying Stuart Semple!!!!!’ to ‘die in a ditch graphically’ to ‘how can you claim to have opinions on art when You Are On Tumblr’ (I have been a freelance illustrator for 7 years and I have a Masters in art and design) to ‘your art sucks and you’re fat and ugly’ and my personal favourite ‘how can u be cis and use she/her pronouns you dumb snowflake’

(within that furore was a whole branch where someone was like ‘sex worker huh bet you’re bad at it’ and I was like ‘yep! that’s why I don’t do it any more! it’s hard work and it involves a lot of self-promotion and customer skills which I don’t like and am not good at!’ and this was a Whole Thing where they kept trying to insult me (much like today’s anon) about my supposed failures as a Slut Who Is Bad At Sex and I kept going like ‘ok but here’s how that just. doesn’t make sense in reference to what sex work actually is so like, ok?’)

and Stuart Semple and I were also having a conversation which, depending on your perspective I would call his attitude either conciliatory or passive-aggressive, there was a lot of ‘me and my followers would never say rude things about you :) keep up the art kiddo :)’ and being charitable I would say he was trying to be nice while being angry, and to avoid escalating (but with the added context I got later about the wig comment, I think that interpretation of his behaviour maybe. has some cracks?) and ultimately he took down the posts, we had a brief conversation about keeping pet reptiles (apparently he has a lizard) and we left it on, if not good terms, at least peaceable ones. 

however I still periodically get messages about it from angry Semple stans. and I’m not sure the argument was resolved, in that I still very much think it’s fair to make criticism, including quite harsh criticism (which I’m not sure ‘adolescent’ is), on art which is put out for public display and enjoyment, and that it isn’t a personal attack to post a criticism of someone’s public-facing work and statements on social media unless you actively target it towards them (for example, @ ing them), and Semple still thinks there’s no difference between a random blog with under a thousand followers criticising a public figure’s work and a public figure with 100k followers on most platforms criticising that blog (out of context - he clipped out the post I was reblogging from and my explanatory tags, and looking at my blog you may notice that 90% of my nuance is in the tags) while giving his followers all the information to find said blog.

(also as multiple people have remarked. if you want to say it’s an unfair criticism to call your online presence immature, being a middle-aged artist who as far as I can tell has a net worth over a million who spends your time name searching yourself in order to get mad at untagged mild criticism from strangers on the internet and share it on all your socials for your followers to join you in Being Big Mad is uhhhhhhh. it uh. it’s not like. not super thin-skinned and immature)

(also also I just googled his net worth and unsurprisingly I can’t find a source on it I’d consider reliable, but I did find multiple articles about him getting in trouble for breach of contract and nonpayment for gallery employees, including two accusations of him writing a big defensive blog post then changing it after a few hours to a very short post saying I LOVE YOU so like idk how true that is but it does seem. consistent with the above interactions.)

[ailuronymy]

Hello! I was searching for some trans warrior cats post on Google when I saw your account, I would really like some advice for handling a trans warrior cats character I'm writing in my AU.

He presents as a she cat at the beginning but later on comes out as trans, I was wondering about how should I approach the transition itself. The first ideas I had are: for him to do vocal exercises with the medicine cat which will help lower his voice (that is one of his main insecurities) , his clan mates will switch to male pronouns and he will get extra food so he could grow larger and more masculine looking (Cats that have a stable diet while they're growing are going to be bigger and stronger) along with herbs that are supposed to stop/repress ovulation in she cats (I'm not that great at biology but I think that would also affect his hormone levels)

Do you have any other ideas?

PS: Thank you for your help and time!

Hello there! Thank you for writing in, but I’m sorry, this blog is not here to provide this kind of help. If you look in the tag here, I’ve done what I can in the past and I hope some of it is useful to you, but as I’ve said before, I’m not looking to talk more on the topic. It’s not wrong to want to write about trans characters, so you’re not in trouble for asking or anything, but I’m not comfortable being consulted for this information.

In fact, if I’m totally and maybe a little brutally honest with you, I think that if you’re at the stage of writing about a complex and highly personal experience where you’re asking random strangers on the internet for advice, you’ve probably got a little way longer to go before you’re ready to actually write about the topic and I’m sorry if that’s difficult to hear. My guess is that you’re probably not transgender yourself, because otherwise why would you be asking me about it? Surely you know your experience better. 

I don’t think that means you can’t write about this topic eventually and I think there is genuinely a good intention in trying to seek out information, but please consider the sources from which you’re seeking this information. There are literally books (both fiction and nonfiction) written by transgender people and I feel like reading work by those people--i.e., the people who have first-hand experience--is a great place to begin learning about how to write on this topic. 

I know you’re coming to my blog because it’s about Warriors and you’re looking to write about a transgender cat, but I think before you can try to transpose this concept onto the world of Warriors, you need to really learn about the concept itself in detail from a variety of sources and then you can focus in on how it might be interpreted in a different context--i.e., in cats. 

For example, you’ve mentioned “male pronouns”--but actually there’s no such thing as male pronouns. He/him is traditionally assigned to men, but there’s a lot of lesbians who also use those pronouns. There’s nonbinary people. There’s a lot of transgender women who haven’t come out. I understand what you mean to say when you say that, but pronouns are actually just one aspect of identity and performance of self and they’re as fluid and open to interpretation as the rest. 

It’s all constructs and I personally think if you want to write in a space that is actively discussing gender and what gender is and what gender can be and the kind of inherent boundary-breaking and remaking and reworking that comes with that territory, it’s worth really sitting down and thinking about these things and being careful with how you actually want to position your character and story and the language you use, etc. etc., and again, I think if you’re asking me for guidance, there’s probably a chance you’re not quite there yet. 

I want to mention as well that “coming out” stories in general are greatly over-represented when it comes to ‘queer’ stories by non-queer writers in mainstream media. You’re writing fanfiction for fun and that’s allowed and okay, but it does seem that the story you’re looking to tell is ultimately about this character coming out. You’ve focused a ton on the transition aspects of this character and if I’m totally honest with you, that strikes me as maybe not a great move, since it’s a very cis approach to writing about transgender characters to fixate on the “process” (often with an invasive, objectifying kind of lens). I’m not saying that your intention or necessarily what your story would be, but I do feel it’s worth pointing out so that you can be sure to avoid it. 

Also, as a side note that might interest you, cat voices don’t actually work like human voices. In human sexual dimorphism, testosterone levels rising in puberty result in a low voice--but cats don’t experience this in real life! Male cats don’t have lower voices than female cats, and the spectrum of “normal” cat voices can span from the very high to the quite low and gravelly regardless of the cat’s sex. To offer an anecdote, I have a skinny old Siamese who has an extremely deep yowl (which his mother also had) and a fluffy ginger cat with a very high, squeaky chirp, and they’re both male and desexed. So basically what I’m saying is transposing human experience onto cats (or frankly any animal) in this instance might be less straightforward than you’d expect, depending on how many cat characteristics versus human characteristics you want to include. 

Anyway tl;dr: I strongly recommend undertaking genuine research into lived transgender experience as written by transgender people before attempting to tackle any kind of story like this. You’re welcome to look through the tag I’ve got on this blog for ideas on adapting that research to a Warriors context when the time comes but I really have to stress that this is a topic that requires effort, humility, and a willingness to both learn and acknowledge the limitations of your own perspective as a writer. I’m sorry if that’s not the feedback you wanted to hear, but I can’t in good conscience not say it. 

[jewishconvertthings]

Something I’ve noticed come up again and again in conversion-focused/prospective convert spaces is a fascination with orthodoxy. I think a lot of what drives this is the desire for universal recognition and to do things the “right” way. And, since Jews both inside and outside of orthodoxy tend to hold up orthodoxy as the gold standard for halacha and for conversion in particular, people who would never otherwise consider converting orthodox still end up seriously investigating the possibility and/or even attempting it. This becomes especially painful to watch when, for one reason or another (or several) the individual in question simply cannot convert orthodox without making life changes that are, frankly, not worth it or even impossible.

I say this as someone who absolutely, 100% went on this ride.

(This is a Very Long Post, so I’ve put it under a cut)

I am a queer non-binary person in a relationship with another queer non-binary person who is not Jewish and has no plans on converting. Now, at this point in my life, I present in a traditionally feminine way 98% of the time (and was assigned female at birth), the aspects of physical transition that I have accessed are not visible or are easily able to be masked, and for a number of extremely personal reasons I won’t get into here, I have also reached a point in my life where my ability to be attracted to cis men is not something that I automatically reject.

So on a pragmatic level, if I wanted to be orthodox I had two choices: (1) Stay with my partner who I love and have built a life and a home with, who supports my Jewish journey and observance 100%, who loves me no matter how I present myself gender-wise, and whose life experiences as a fellow queer non-binary person allow us to have a profound understanding of each other; or, (2) Leave my partner, and also most likely also make an effort to stamp out or at least conceal the queer and non-binary facets of myself.  

I think it’s pretty clear that I opted to not take path #2, which left me with the decision to either pursue a Conservative conversion or accept being a Noachide. Fortunately, I happened to already have a Conservative community that I really loved and three Conservative rabbis for my beit din, each of whom I tremendously respect. Therefore moving forward with a Conservative conversion did not cause me all that much cognitive dissonance. To be perfectly honest, all told, I think my theological framework fits better within Conservative halacha anyway and there is plenty of space for me to exist and be respected as a queer non-binary person with a non-Jewish spouse.

But despite what I feel is an overall very good outcome to this problem, I still went through a whole grieving process for letting go of the idea of ever converting orthodox, and looking back I felt it was really important to interrogate why. I could of course take the easy way out and say that it was because I was sad to lose this particular shul as my primary community, but that’s not completely true. I still go there sometimes and enjoy it when I do, and also by the time it became clear to me that this was not a community I could convert through, it was no longer my primary shul. I’d already switched.

I could also say that it was because I deeply desired living and sharing community with a congregation where the majority of members took halacha very seriously and lived by those convictions. While I have deep love and appreciation for my Conservative community, the reality is that I am in the minority as someone who keeps a strictly kosher kitchen and one of a handful of people who make much of an effort to be shomer Shabbos. At the same time, I have found and built friendships with those who do take a more traditional approach to observance who also share other values of mine as well. So I have ultimately ended up in the exact kind of community I desired, even if it isn’t the numeric majority of the congregation as a whole.

There was also a very real period where I needed to sort out my understanding of what I believed about what Torah even is, and how I wanted to build my Jewish observance from that understanding. (Namely, that even though I can never say that I believed with perfect faith that the Torah was given directly to Moshe by G-d on Mt. Sinai in its entirety and in fact believe that most of the evidence points away from that understanding, I also felt it was important to essentially accept it as an underlying assumption for interpretive and halachic purposes. I have . . . evolved a bit since then, but honestly haven’t moved too far from that position.)

The point is that there were actual, real reasons other than just for the validity.

But if I’m being extremely honest with myself, while it was far from being the only reason or the “real” reason, it was nevertheless a not-insignificant reason for why I was disappointed and felt a loss. I understand the other pieces pretty well at this point, and so with the benefit of time and some emotional distance, I decided to examine this a bit more deeply.

I think the problem is two-fold. First, I think that the same intense beliefs and emotions that drive someone to do something as drastic as converting to Judaism to begin with also create a desire to do so in the most intensive way possible. Amongst myself and the many other conversion students and converts I’ve met, irrespective of our many differences, our passion for Judaism and our enthusiasm in Jewish engagement are near-universals. For better or worse, that tends to manifest as a desire for a high level of observance and for a community that shares that commitment.

Second, I think that converts of whatever background, but especially those of us who are marginalized in other ways, tend to be under a great deal of scrutiny from the rest of the Jewish community as to our motives and our processes for becoming Jewish. While I don’t doubt that this is painful for anyone, this can hit especially hard if you have experienced some other kind of serious invalidation, erasure, and/or rejection in other areas of your life.

So I think, after having sat with this a bit, part of that feeling of hurt and loss comes as a sort of echo trauma from having been erased and rejected as a queer non-binary person. The invalidation I’ve received both outside and inside the queer/trans community has been significant enough that the idea of stomaching more rejection, more invalidation, and more treatment as an interloper was a tough pill to swallow. Combine that with my genuine passion for Judaism and desire for an observant Jewish life and community, and you had a perfect storm of me reaching for a community that was, all told, not a good fit.

I eventually moved past that stage, and ended up quite happy in my Conservative community. So what’s the problem? Why am I bringing up such a painful topic if it turned out fine?

Here’s the thing: I’d seen other people ride this emotional rodeo before and so while I anticipated these feelings of rejection, I was afraid of experiencing them and tried to avoid doing so by being hyper-aware of the possibility. It didn’t work. Unfortunately, this was just something I had to figure out on my own. However, there was another effect I’d seen as well, namely that once people had processed the immediate sadness, there was usually a bit of backlash afterwards. I saw this especially with a particular friend who regularly expressed not just legitimate criticisms of orthodoxy, but lashed out angrily towards anyone who expressed an interest in orthodoxy or who happened to be orthodox and talk positively about their experiences. This was serious enough that it almost ruined our friendship.

I did manage to mostly avoid this latter effect because I actively built relationships within my orthodox community and maintained them even afterwards, and because I refused to make that rejection a personal thing. I also gave myself ample space from that community and have only engaged to the extent that I can do so in a healthy, comfortable way. But it’s worth noting that despite controlling my outer reaction, I definitely had to process and work my way through that same anger internally.

I raise all of this for the following reason:

I haven’t seen anyone talking about this much, and what I have seen has not been constructive or compassionate. While I don’t think reading about my seemingly typical (even cliché) experiences as someone who was not a good fit for orthodoxy trying to shoehorn myself into it for understandable (but ultimately futile) reasons will spare anyone the emotional ride of having that experience, nor do I think it will likely help anyone avoid having to experience it themselves to be sure, I do think that it may help with a couple issues. First, I think it may help outsiders who have observed this trope have a bit more compassion for those going through it and be able to offer some better responses than derision or telling folks to just get over it. Basically, realize that these are growing pains, and try to be kind and mature about it.

Second, I think it may help people who are on the verge of going through that experience and/or who are in the middle of it to understand that it is A Thing, that it is not an inherently bad thing, that they are not bad people for having to go on this emotional journey, that it is reasonable for them to have hard feelings about it, and that the only thing they really do need to be careful of is how they treat the people in their communities and not take this out on them. Ultimately, if you are unable to convert orthodox for reasons outside your control (or even just realize that you inherently don’t have the right worldview for orthodoxy/have an actual desire to live an orthodox lifestyle) there are usually other ways of meeting your community and observance-related needs and it is best to start exploring them sooner rather than later.

Collectively, I think I would challenge conversion students and liberal converts who are considering an orthodox conversion to seriously consider if there are other ways to meet your spiritual and community needs. If so, why pursue orthodoxy? You really do need an honest answer to that question, even if it takes a bit of soul-searching to get there. If it’s about universal recognition, you need to stop immediately and reconsider. (Understand that there basically is no such thing. Then understand that this means that you will have to build an internal Jewish identity that is unrelated to how random people without community decision-making power view you.) Finally, I’d ask that you try really hard to separate the larger trends and systems within orthodoxy from individual Orthodox Jews you happen to encounter.

And of course, I would challenge folks to leave passing judgment on any given conversion student’s process and motivations up to their sponsoring rabbi.

[nosunsetsjustsilence]

The Manics and Gender Identity, Part 1

There is a lot to unpack in Nicky and Richey’s early lyrics pertaining to gender, particularly in terms of identifying with women. Richey approaches the subject — as he is wont to do — with regard to the exploitation and degradation of the female image, while Nicky’s attitude is more inquisitive and casual. Both use lyrics to express their own personal “What if?”

Make no mistake: I’m not claiming that either Nicky or Richey is/was non-cis or trans or anything other than curious. But it’s clear from their personal lyric struggles and hard-won lifestyle choices that this was a different time they were living in. In the 1990s, gender identity was not a topic with any kind of mainstream recognition, at least beyond those who wanted a “sex change” or girls who were considered “one of the boys”. I think it’s fascinating, at least from my perspective, to go back and examine the themes of gender dysphoria, identity, and frustration in lyrics written before any of it was part of popular conversation, and in a way that emphasized the then absolute cultural disconnect between desire and society.

Also, it’s important to note that both Nicky and Richey have presented gender in ways that don’t have anything to do with lyrics. Nicky is comfortable in traditionally female clothing and wears dresses on and off stage; both band members wore makeup and feathers on a regular basis. I’ve tried to write about gender in terms of lyrics only, but at times I do take examples from visual media.

Finally, keep in mind that yours truly is non-binary, and the discussion will hopefully not reek of a cis person watching queer men from behind bars in a zoo.

Special thanks to @sinisterrouge for vetting this before I posted <3

Little Baby Nothing

Although Richey seemed to find comfort in claiming that his lyrics were about the larger world — in the case of Little Baby Nothing, feminism and the way women are perceived in media — a closer look usually reveals a personal stake. When I discussed the meaning of this song previously, I emphasized that the “Little baby nothing” in question is clearly Richey himself, writing in the first person and deconstructing his own image to align with a kind of mindless female groupie used for sex.

My mind is dead, everybody loves me Wants a slice of me Hopelessly passive and compatible Need to belong, oh the roads are scary Hold me in your arms I wanna be your only possession

Richey often refers to himself as a “slut” and a “prostitute” and uses self-referential porn star imagery in his lyrics (So Dead: “You need a fix I’m your prostitute”, Yes: “there’s no lust in this coma even for a fifty”), aligning the industries of pornography and music performance in very vivid ways most often pertaining to exploitation. Appropriately, singing pivotal stanzas on this track is none other than Traci Lords, arguably most famous (especially in the early 90s) for an underage porn scandal.  

What’s more, in the lyrics booklet for Generation Terrorists, there is a quotation or excerpt included for each song. The following corresponds to Little Baby Nothing:

“The male chromosome is an incomplete female chromosome. In other words the male is a walking abortion; aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.” -Valerie Solanos.

Ninety percent of what the Manics said and did in their early years was intended to be shocking and/or ironic. Of course they were trying to incite anger and riots, the questioning of institutions, and a teardown of normalcy. But the fact that Richey later used part of this radical statement as the title to one of his songs (“Of Walking Abortion”, natch) proves that he took it somewhat seriously, even if only in the most simple sense — that part of him resented his own maleness.

Life Becoming a Landslide

This is another song I’ve previously discussed, mostly in the arena of Nicky and Richey individualizing their distinctive voices into lines that can clearly be attributed to one or the other. In a song about nature vs nurture and the plastic confines of greater humanity cracking down on who or what someone is really supposed to be, we have:

Life becoming a landslide Ice freezing nature dead Life becoming a landslide I don’t wanna be a man

As far as writing style goes, Nicky was always fairly straightforward. Richey loves to convolute his message with proper nouns and alternating verb cases and a lack of a subject just to throw  people off, but here’s Nicky, my boy, just saying, “Dude. Being a man sucks. I don’t like this.”

He could mean that being human in general sucks. But, since his attitude towards women leads me to believe he would not abbreviate humanity in this way, and given his and Richey’s track record with gender and Nicky’s well-documented gender presentation, I think it’s clear the lyric means that he doesn’t want to be male. Because he feels it doesn’t suit him, for whatever reason. And that nature failed by making him a man instead of a woman.

Yes

‘Yes’ is an incredible song. Its major-chord melody juxtaposed against Richey’s raw portrait of degradation is truly a thing to behold. The theme? Being used, prostitution both literal and metaphorical (“For sale? dumb cunt’s same dumb questions”), exploitation in the name of capitalism (“In these plagued streets of pity you can buy anything”), and reaching the lowest possible point of existence (“Purgatory’s circle, drowning here, someone will always say yes”). But the chorus — the chorus boasts one of the rawest images of sexual violence the band has ever used:

He’s a boy, you want a girl so tear off his cock Tie his hair in bunches, fuck him, call him Rita if you want

Wow. Okay. Where to begin? The implication here is that gender, along with everything else, is mutable if you have enough money and power to abuse people. However, it appears the change would be made not to entertain others, but to appeal to a specific person, sexually (“fuck him”). The “you” in question is clearly attracted to women, so the narrator offering to mutilate himself to please them can be seen as a last-ditch act of desperation. (“It feels like this massive defeat,” said a friend. “You can make him a woman to pleasure someone, but what’s left to change after that?”)

Richey wrote most of the song; “Rita”, obviously, is the name used for an alternative female identity. But who would Rita be? Richey seems to be wondering. Would she still be me? And would the change even be worth the affections of whomever he’s speaking to? If the means are so drastic (and difficult to picture without experiencing secondhand pain), that answer would usually be “no”. But the song is called “Yes”. I would say yes to anything at this point, Richey is saying, even the most extreme sexual violence imaginable, if that’s what you wanted.

4st 7lb

This is an extreme example of Richey using world issues to examine his own nature. Although anorexic himself, Richey writes “4st 7lb” from the point of view of an obsessive young girl admiring thin models. There could be multiple reasons for this, not the least of which is that when a person fails to fit the “classic” case of an eating disorder, they are often ignored. So, Richey says, you need me to be a teenage girl? I can do that. 

(Note that in 1994, when this song was written, any eating disorder demographic outside the “white girl who loves fashion too much” model did not exist by medical standards and was usually subject to ridicule.)

Karen says I’ve reached my target weight Kate and Emma and Kristin know it’s fake Problem is diet’s not a big enough word I wanna be so skinny that I rot from view

Embodying the anorexic female stereotype allows Richey to criticize both the world and himself; by creating a parody of a young girl with an eating disorder, he creates commentary on how ridiculous and counter-intuitive her thought process actually is. The song is brutal and often focuses on nudity and sexual imagery, as it has been suggested in studies that eating disorders occur in those who are trying to annihilate their own puberty. Though Richey was well into his 20s when he wrote this, he often expressed a loathing of aging and the entire concept of adulthood.

Stomach collapsed at five Lift up my skirt my sex is gone Naked and lovely and 5 stone 2 May I bud and never flower My vision’s getting blurred But I can see my ribs and I feel fine My hands are trembling stalks And I can feel my breasts are sinking

Ultimately, “4st 7lb” hits hard as both an experiment in identity and a vicious satire of the rich white girl eating disorder cliché. Although the lyrics do not express a desire to become female, they do indicate that Richey feels everything might be easier and fit more neatly into a box if he were a girl.

[Coming in Part 2: The Girl Who Wanted to be God, Tsunami, Born a Girl, and Pretention/Repulsion.]

[thecorteztwins]

A Primer for Intersex Characters

I hesitated on writing this, since I am not intersex. But I’ve seen a lot of intersex characters around, a lot of common tropes and mistakes, and not any guides on how to write them accurately or respectfully. I cannot claim to have any experience relevant to being intersex, so I’ve simply tried my best to read the words and voices of many intersex people and relay them here. I welcome correction if something is wrong, since my goal here is to help stop misinformation and misunderstanding, not spread it further. Okay, let’s begin with the physical/medical stuff. - There are multiple terms for people who are NOT intersex, including perisex, endosex, jutasex, and dyadic. Please use any of these rather than “normal”. Cisgender is also not an acceptable substitution, as it conflates intersex with being trans (and some intersex people *are* cisgender) The term “hermaphrodite” is offensive and inaccurate; it is to be used for animals for whom true hermaphrodism (being fully reproductive as both sexes) is the norm, not for people. That said, I have encountered intersex people who use it as a reclaimed term. But if you are not intersex, you should not be using it for your character. - Intersex people are not a third sex category unto themselves ,nor are they both sexes at once. Intersex conditions are variations on male or female, and many intersex conditions are in fact sex-specific. - Intersex is not one thing. There is no single condition called “intersex”. It’s like “mentally ill”  or “disabled” it’s a category containing many different conditions, each with different symptoms and presentations. If you are going to have your character be intersex, please have them have a specific condition (even if they don’t know it/have not been diagnosed/etc) and research that condition thoroughly. Being intersex is always attached to a condition, and there are a limited number of said conditions in existence, and, again, each has specific symptoms and presentations, it’s not just a random mix-and-match. - Most of these conditions are not just cosmetic, there are often MEDICAL PROBLEMS. Most of the time it’s bone and/or heart problems and a need for more screening for reproductive/gonadal health issues, but some have more specific issues. For instance, CAH comes with excessive hairiness and ambiguous genitalia in females, but also something called excess natriuresis, also known as salt-wasting, which can lead to death, and a lower level of cortisol in the blood that puts them at a constant risk of adrenal crisis. So it’s not just about how the body LOOKS, or just about reproductive/sexual function, the entire system is often affected by too much or too little sex hormones. Sometimes there are even cognitive effects; Turner’s Syndrome can cause nonverbal learning disorders, difficulty in perceiving spatial relationships, and issues with motor control, while Klinefelter’s Syndrome can cause learning delays in general. Again, please research if your character is going to have this, and consider the effects. - Not all intersex conditions affect the genital configuration at all. For instance, in Persistent Müllerian duct syndrome, someone who looks externally like a completely normal cis man will have parts of the female reproductive system internally; many of these men never know this til they’re adults and it’s discovered in a medical examination for some other issue and it gets discovered by accident. Likewise, someone with AIS is often going to look totally cis female and be raised as such, and only find it out when she sees a medical specialist because her parents wonder why she isn’t getting her period yet. Ultrasounds, blood tests, and genetics tests are all much better indications of an intersex condition than a mere visual examination of the genitals, as well as kinder and less invasive. - Some conditions that DO affect the genitals still don’t make them ambiguous in any way, just not configured in the usual way. For instance, in Mullerian agenesis, a woman is just missing the uterus and thus infertile, but doesn’t have any “male” traits. Nor does having XXX chromosomes masculinize a woman at all, but it is an abnormality of sex chromosomes and thus classed as intersex. Sometimes it’s not about the sex being ambiguous, but about something that’s missing or not arranged as it should be. Again, it’s not a sexy disorder, and can result in a lot of unpleasant medical and mental effects depending just what’s going on. - Most intersex conditions result in infertility. Depending on their particular condition and its severity, someone may be fertile, but they are NEVER going to be fertile BOTH WAYS. There is no such thing as someone who can both impregnate another person and be impregnated themselves, not unless they’re some kind of mutant, alien, etc., and that’s obviously not what’s being discussed here. - Intersex people should not be used as an excuse to make fetish fantasy fuel. If you want to make a beautifully androgynous boy who can get pregnant or an Amazonian goddess with a big dick, just make that and be honest it’s your personal porn fantasy, but don’t call them intersex or claim it’s representation of any sort. Especially since there’s no condition I’m aware of that’s going to result in either of these things. Being intersex is often fetishized or treated as a freakish curiosity, sometimes both at once. If your character is extremely sexual or sexualized, and their intersex status is a large part of that, reconsider. If your character is depicted as bizarre or monstrous, and being intersex is part of why, don’t do that. - It varies with the specific condition, but most intersex people are actually not going to look androgynous like many people seem to think. Most, in fact, are going to look like perfectly ordinary men and women; you probably have met an intersex person and didn’t know it. That said, there are sometimes phenotypical symptoms. Again, this is NOT androgynous beauty or elegant gender ambiguity as I think people often hope/fantastize, but more like, say, the webbed neck of Turner’s syndrome, or the gynecomastia of Klinefelter’s (which are NOT big perky tits), etc. I am not trying to say intersex people are ugly or these features are anything to be ashamed of, but rather that if you are going to represent people with these conditions, to include the real features of their conditions, even the ones that don’t appeal to you, rather than defaulting to, again, fantasies and fetishes. Now comes the real thorny territory--- common ideas and presumptions I’ve seen around what intersex people think, identify as , etc., and addressing those. Again I am not intersex so I don’t want to speak on “what intersex people think” merely relay what I have seen, and what it comes down to is---there is no one thing all people who are intersex think! - Please be aware of the many issues intersex people face, be it medical problems stemming from their specific condition, being used as a political football by other groups, or finding doctors who will treat them respectfully and compassionately. Medical abuse of intersex people and trying to “fix” their genitals via surgery on infants and children is a rampant thing, and something that many intersex people are opposed to. It’s also worth noting that the terms “AMAB” and “AFAB” originated in the intersex community, as it CAFAB and CAMAB. I’m just trying to cover basics here but if you’re going to write a person with an intersex condition, these are all worth looking into further. - Many people with an intersex condition see it as just that, a medical condition. Many do not see themselves as something besides male or female, just as men or women who have a medical condition, and many may in fact be offended by the claim that they are a third category. It is for this reason that many dislike being used as “gotcha” to the claim there are “only two sexes” especially when it’s by people who don’t actually know or care anything about intersex people or the issues they face, and just want to win an argument, because it’s saying they’re NOT a man or NOT a woman because of their condition. - Many also do not consider being intersex to be LGBT and don’t wish to be included under the umbrella as such. - But, by the same token, some DO consider themselves a third category and DO feel that being intersex should be part of the LGBT umbrella. - I’ve noticed there seems to be an assumption that all intersex people are inherently nonbinary, genderqueer, trans, etc. Firstly, that’s not true. Many intersex people identify within the gender binary as a man or a woman, and many identify with their birth sex. I think this idea, while progressive on the surface, actually belies a very cisnormative way of thinking---the idea that the body must match the gender identity, so therefore someone with an “in-between” body must have an “in-between” gender identity! Which is really quite an offensive assumption, and no more true than the idea that everyone with a vagina identifies as a woman or that everyone with a penis identifies as a man. This is not to say that having a genderqueer/genderfluid/nonbinary/etc person with an intersex condition is automatically wrong either, there are non-binary intersex people in real life too, I’m saying that it isn’t an automatic part of being intersex. - Likewise, I see an assumption that all intersex people are going to be queer, pansexual, etc., or that their partners by definition must be pansexual, etc. But many intersex people are heterosexual. Many are also gay, or bi, or ace, and so on. And those who are monosexual are not less gay or straight for being intersex, nor are their partners. Believe it or not, there’s a ton of regular ol’ cishet people who have an intersex condition. - There’s also an assumption I’ve seen that all intersex people are all automatically going to be trans-supportive/trans-inclusive or count as trans by default. This is also not the case. There are seen intersex people who were trans/enbyphobic, just like anyone else can be. Many do not see themselves as comparable to trans people, and resent the idea they are the same or comparable. Some just don’t give a fuck either way. - Some intersex people have deep and complicated relationships with their status as intersex. Some see it as no different than just having diabetes. Some are activists and very knowledgeable about a host of intersex topics, both the physical aspects of various conditions and the political issues surrounding being intersex in general, and are very opinionated. Some people just know about their own condition and nothing more, and have no involvement in any kind of activism, no particularly strong opinions, etc. - Some people always knew they were intersex, some didn’t find out til puberty, some didn’t find out til in their adult life. It depends vastly on their condition and how it presents, as well as the access they had to medical care, whether their doctors were qualified or not, what decade they were growing up in and where, whether their families told them, etc. - There is debate on if PCOS counts as being intersex or not. I’ve seen a lot of people with PCOS argue it does, and a lot of people with other conditions say it’s in no way the same. I am not taking sides, as I don’t have either, just something to be aware of. At the moment though, no intersex rights organization or doctor classifies PCOS as intersex. So basically what it comes down to is that there’s a big diversity of conditions, and likewise a big diversity of experience, identities, and opinions. Do your research, and listen to intersex people, including the ones whose opinions you don’t like or whose opinions are contradict those of other intersex people. Find what fits your character best, think very critically on why you want an intersex character in the first place and why you chose what you did, and, above all, be respectful. 

[pseudoneiiric]

meta post: lili and her gender

let me go on the record to say that i fucking love lilian eyler with my whole heart, like, i typed all this out and im so fucking emotional about her! in the past, i've written things about hello charlotte and how the lgbt representation is... lacking, let's call it, and i've also made a few headcanon posts here and there about lilian's transition and her relationship with gender. so i thought, you know, let's actually write a whole ass thing about it. so here it is.

content warnings: gender dysphoria, suicide attempts, homophobia/transphobia in the original source material

PART 1: ETHERANE'S BAD TAKES so... etherane did not handle lgbt stuff well, like, in the slightest. lili is canonically genderfluid, as seen in one of those little profile things that etherane drew that doesn't actually show up in any of the games. but her genderfluid identity isn't handled well at all in the actual source material. actually, in general, hello charlotte is pretty transphobic. to cite one example, there’s this journal entry in hello charlotte 3 talking about “defective” charlotte vessels, and one of the things that can make a charlotte vessel “defective” is for them to be born amab or intersex. this already has some really bad vibes, but then we remember also that one of the big functions of charlottes is apparently for them to be sexualized (yikes!!!!!) and so we also get this weird kind of like, “trans people aren’t hot” kind of take?

but anyway. when it comes to lilian specifically, she never actually states in canon that she’s genderfluid or otherwise trans, not even in the spinoff visual novel, which, by the way, would have been the perfect place to address her gender identity, and she consistently uses he/him pronouns. we don’t actually get to see any of her thought processes about her gender at all — like at this point, i can’t even say it’s a non-issue because that would imply that they even mentioned her gender in canon. the only time we can potentially extrapolate from canon that lili might not be cis is when anri mentions that charlotte is lili’s self-insert oc. that’s kind of heavy-handed with the whole “charlotte being the female name for charles”, but that’s another matter. the point is, with the lack of any canon basis that lilian’s even vaguely questioned her gender, the reveal that she’s actually genderfluid with like, two pieces of artwork that are detached from the actual game feels very pxrfxrmxtxvxly xnclxsxvx (performatively inclusive) especially considering how.... etherane talked about lilian’s gender in particular within the actual canon material.

after all, the story behind lilian is effectively that, after she was born, her mother was forced to abort her second child, a daughter that she would name scarlett. doing so plunged her into a really deep depression that eventually took on delusional qualities. so ever since lilian was about three years old, her mother has been referring to her exclusively as scarlett, asking her to ‘ be a good girl ’ and similarly raising her as a girl. we can see here that etherane seems to have implied that genderfluidity is something that happens because other people make it so, and isn’t an identity and lived experience. (bad take!) although, albeit unintentionally, i think etherane did lay some groundwork to talk about lilian’s relationship with her gender, specifically with regards to her projection onto her oc, charlotte. in high school, when she’s more active on the internet, we see that she’s going by charlotte and using she/her pronouns. anri, her irl friend, is pretty openly critical of that, but she sort of brushes off anri’s complaints and continues to present as feminine online. now, there’s this fanfic writer who goes by the pseudonym “c”, and lilian very quickly takes an interest in him. the way she talks to c, who doesn’t know her irl, compared anri, who does, is just like flat-out like they’re completely different people.

compare, her with c:

to her with anri:

i also wanted to mention that lili does occasionally act more “femininely” with anri, but it’s never to the extent that she does with c, and in general, affectionate banter is sort of... outright ridiculed in their friendship both ways. see this one exchange:

anri: >:) always up for some roasting lili: right? <3 <3 anri: now you’re the one being gross

unrelated but it fucking kills me that anri was like “ily <3” and lili went “gross” so she went “kys” and lili deadass goes “that’s better” like that’s what anri is referencing when she says “now you’re the one being gross” and im like... please just be healthy friends who don’t wish death on each other???

it’s also worth noting that c doesn’t know that she’s not “actually” a girl, and literally when they meet, she goes like, “it’s you who should be disappointed in me. charlotte turned out to be charles, whoops! i bet you were hoping that i’d be a cute girl.” and that’s... really depressing, like, she ended up really leaning into that cutesy side of her when she was talking to c and now she feels the need to be a lot more... sarcastic and bitter, like how she is with anri, because now c “knows the truth about her”, that she’s “actually been a guy all along”.

in any case, i think the intent that etherane was going for with this was kind of like... “lilian’s actually a repressed cis gay man!” which is . not great. it gives off this really gross vibes where it’s implied that since lili was raised as a girl and is into men, she got “confused” and started going by she/her online because she couldn’t come to terms with her sexuality or whatever. and that’s just such a bad take!!!

not to mention that a really important part of lili’s backstory is... her germaphobia. she has persistent delusions accompanied by visual hallucinations where she sees people as “parasites”, which visually manifests as them rotting or decomposing. because of that, she wears gloves all the time and is repulsed by physical touch. but when she meets c (whose real name is vincent) in person, she pretty much instantly goes for skin-to-skin contact with him, where she takes off her glove and holds his hand. and like, sure, that’s sweet, but that’s really not how mental illness... works. in the slightest. she doesn’t react at all when his hand touches hers, despite the fact that she has literally had panic attacks in canon from touching things without her gloves. and it gives off this implication that mental illness can be cured with romance somehow, and that’s a really bad take!

this feeds into fandom understanding that like, well, if lilian sees vincent as pure and allows him to touch her, then Obviously she’d let him kiss her, they could probably have sex, etc. and like... she’s canonically asexual though! and that brings us to the other implication, that asexuality is somehow... caused by something. like, there’s nothing in canon to state that lilian experiences sexual attraction (or even really romantic attraction, like i know etherane went off in heaven’s gate and did a lot of ship tease, but she never really outright says she’s crushing on anyone), but judging from the way etherane handled lilian’s gender identity, i have a sneaking suspicion that she established lilian’s asexuality with her mental illnesses specifically in mind. lilian’s autistic, germaphobic, has severe ocd, and she’s been sexually assaulted in the past. therefore, she must be asexual! that’s the sort of vibes i get from the game, and im not here for it. similarly to how her genderfluidity was handled, she makes no actual statement in canon that she doesn’t experience sexual attraction. the closest she’s ever come to this is when she says to anri in heaven’s gate that she is just straight up not interested in kissing (to which anri is like, “well what if it were vincent owo??” which. ugh. anyway). it just seems really strange to me to design a character with severe mental health issues with regards to physical touch and then just sort of treat it as a given that she’s asexual. it’s another example of etherane implying that lgbt identities are results of traumatic experiences or symptoms of mental illness and not an identity or lived experience. you can be sex-repulsed and not be asexual, and while i understand that many people do identify as ace due to trauma and other such things, it still feels like really bad rep when taken with the way lilian’s genderfluidity was portrayed.

PART 2: HOW “CHARLES” IS DIFFERENT FROM “LILIAN”

throughout hello charlotte, lilian identifies herself as a passive observer, someone who doesn’t directly interfere in events. this applies mostly to her existence in false realm, where she’s like... a god, and doesn’t want to interfere in the balance of the world. but i believe she also has always seen herself as an observer. in her very first scene, the one where she and anri are watching someone get bullied, she’s the one who tells anri that there’s no point in getting help. because her role is just to observe. to take pictures for anri, to be a good girl, to say yes to everything and to never express her opinions, feelings, thoughts.

and honestly, i think the main reason for that is that she’s dysphoric. whenever she talks about herself, she’s really self-deprecating, especially compared to when she talks about charlotte. i feel like the main reason why lilian detaches herself from the world and refuses to really perceive herself is because she’s fundamentally disgusted with her gender presentation. and like, we can see in the two times that she’s presented femininely (with c and in that one comic) that lili is just so much happier and more bubbly when she’s presenting as feminine. you can literally see her stop dissociating and becoming more present in the moment because she’s just. so much more comfortable in her skin. compare:

these pictures with this one:

it’s funny i was going to say that there is a picture where she’s presenting as masculine and actually smiles like a person, but guess what! she’s texting c! so she’s actually performing femininity!

but the point is, like... when she’s presenting as masculine, especially in the canon pictures rather than etherane’s art, she just doesn’t look... happy. and then we compare that to how much more present she seems when she’s presenting as feminine, and how much more comfortable she seems in being, like, happy! and cute! but there is a downside to this. and that is...

PART 3: DIFFICULTIES IN LILI’S TRANSITION

in my sort of... “main verse” for lili, i have it so that her suicide attempt failed and that she was somehow... saved from drowning. mother passes away and she starts to... soul search a little bit and find a reason to live, and somewhere along the line she starts to transition socially. that means she starts transitioning at a pretty... extremely vulnerable point in her life. in the year between 18-19 years old, she’d be a wreck. she’s growing her hair out, but she feels insecure about it. she starts to wear skirts, but only at home. she buys makeup and never wears it. it’s a long process for her, because it’s one thing to go by she/her online or to claim she’s just a gender-confused gay boy and a completely different thing to come out as a trans woman and to actually see herself as a woman and not some kind of imposter. considering that she was raised as a girl, she would have a large amount of guilt over transitioning, feeling like she’s going to be seen as confused, or that her gender identity is a direct result of her childhood trauma. but she’s not just worried that others will see her that way: she’s worried that she’s going to see herself that way.

and for a long time, she probably does see herself that way. for a long time, scarlett would probably treat her transition as some kind of attempt to personify her unborn sister and comply with perceived expectations rather than an attempt to feel comfortable in her own skin. she’d get nervous that she’s somehow becoming scarlett, because though she’s always thought it would be easier if she’d just been her sister, she’s never really wanted to be scarlett. she’d be scared to wear mid-length skirts, scared to put her hair up in a bun, probably even scared to wear red for a time, all because she’s scared of somehow losing herself and becoming her alter.

because of her caution and concern with identifying as a trans woman and not as the “safer“ gender identity of genderfluidity (where she can say she’s trans but never actually have to “push boundaries” by wearing feminine clothing or using any pronouns besides he/him), it would likely take her a very long time to take the step to medically transition. she’d likely never get any gender affirmation surgeries just because of how invasive the procedure is, but hormones would probably be something she’d look into once she’s much older and has a more stable income.

i mentioned before that before her transition, she uses dissociation and observation as a way to cope with her gender dysphoria. she saw herself as someone who didn’t really participate in the world, was a class ghost, invisible to everyone and a minuscule part of a vast universe. but upon transitioning, she’d feel much more actively self-conscious. once she starts to present in a feminine way, she’d feel like she’s being seen, like she’s actually participating in the world, and that’s both a blessing and a curse.

she’d be much more prone to stammering, especially when saying her name, and would blush far more often. she’d be afraid of saying the wrong thing or messing up somehow. and on top of that, she’d likely feel predatory for talking to others, always wondering if others find her cute or repulsive, always wondering if someone will perceive her and harm her in some way.

she’d very likely also feel really guilty about her own emotional experience. because she’s so used to being a passive observer, a puppet that only does what others want, she would feel like it’s selfish to be just... content. she’s so actively disgusted with herself before she transitions that she’s never allowed herself to be mentally present for a happy moment in her entire life. she always second-guesses, always dismisses positive things as a mere coincidence, and after she transitions, when she starts being more present in her life, she’d feel so guilty for just allowing herself to be happy.

because of that, she has some trouble with presenting as feminine consistently — she’d vary the “level” of her feminine presentation from day-to-day, where she might go full femme one day and another day stick with a beanie and a pair of slacks. she’s much more comfortable with presenting as more traditionally feminine when she’s at home or with trusted friends in a private space, but around 19 years old, she makes a vested effort to remain in public spaces. she’d time herself, saying, “for one hour, i’ll stay in this café while wearing a skirt, and then i can leave,” and she’d gradually increase the amount of time she spends in public spaces. and eventually, eventually she does end up feeling really comfortable with her gender presentation and falls into a more static sense of style. she really likes clothing design, so she ends up wearing a lot more dynamic outfits when she’s more comfortable with herself, and she probably also mildly gets into cosplay.

i also like to think that she reconnects with anri during her young adult years. either it’s like, right after her suicide attempt (i’ve written before that she’d had anri listed as her emergency contact and forgot to change it when she moved), or it’s at some point after she starts transitioning socially. i think it’d be really sweet for them to be friends in a more real way, and the sheer concept of anri teaching lili how to properly apply makeup and to set her hair is just so fucking sweet i might die. they both deserve to have friends so i think this is just a step up from hello charlotte canon.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

I don’t want to reblog the thread for... quite a few reasons, tbh, but my take on the “classic millennial sex pickle” thing (lord, what a dreadful combination of words) is this- 

In my very early queer discovery days, fantasizing about having a bisexual boyfriend was pretty much the first internal manifestation of my queerness, particularly on an affective level, rather than an “intellectual curiosity” level. I also often imagined myself in a poly dynamic with two bi men, and generally existing within a larger social group of queer people (who were, in fact, in this scenario, mostly queer men, because I’ve never felt particularly drawn specifically to lesbian communities.) 

I know now that I’m also bi, and, more importantly, that I’m nonbinary, and that that kind of identification with male bisexuality stems from my own experience of gender. And I’m not saying that’s necessarily what’s going on with this woman, but I will echo some of the sentiments in that thread that feeling deeply alienated from heterosexuality, to the point of wanting to pursue bi guys on grindr, is really not typical behaviour of a straight, cis woman. (In fact, even some of the nastier folks upthread pick up on that, given the “this isn’t really as common as she’s making it out to be” observations.) And I really wish that the person who responded to that letter were more versed on how trans/nonbinary sexuality can manifest, so they’d at least been able to suggest that possibility to her. 

(*I’m also not sure why people are assigning political lesbianism to her, both in that thread and in another thread relating to that letter that I’ve seen. She never says anything about wanting to date women. And even if “politically opposed to heterosexuality” could be taken as invoking some sort of separatist “battle of the sexes” rhetoric, I think it’s pretty plausible that it could be taken as feeling put off by heterosexual frameworks of relating, and feeling more at home with queer sensibilities, especially since she’s pretty clear about wanting to date men. Which - even if she is completely straight and cis, I’d consider that a good thing! Wanting to be more deconstructive and challenge the heteronormative assumptions that go into how we think about relationships is something I’d encourage in anyone, regardless of orientation!)

(**It’s also worth noting that “only wanting to date bi men (and not straight men)” is extremely common among bi women. It’s a sentiment I’ve heard over and over from bi women I know irl, and that I’ve seen echoed a lot on here. I’m not saying this woman is a closeted bisexual, or that she necessarily has any attraction to women, but the dismissiveness towards that preference felt like it was edging very close to biphobic rhetoric, and the idea that relationships between bi men and women don’t “count” as queer.)    

[jazzhandsmcleg]

Friendly reminder that I’m nonbinary! And I recently switched to they/them full-time (she/her is still, generally speaking, acceptable -- but I get enough of that from my family and at work, so...)

I’m still working out how much of my partial ongoing identification with womanhood is a feminist thing -- how much I dislike calling myself a woman is because of the infantilization of women (see: if I do anything of the sort I’ll call myself a girl) and how much is because I genuinely don’t feel like the label applies to me (and if anyone has any resources or thoughts about untangling that by all means please point me at them).

Similarly, I’m sure a lot of my sense of independence and DIY is tied up with my drive to demonstrate what women or people who are read as women are capable of. This is absolutely not unreasonable of me. Being a woman or visibly AFAB or whatever comes with structural disadvantages, and it’s always good when I’m a personal part of dismantling or pushing past those. But when I’m as laissez-faire about gender as I am, I think the whole thing can have kind of a chameleonic affect on my true thoughts on the matter, so, yeah, that’s been fun. How much is principle vs. how I actually feel? How much of what I actually feel is left over from years of thinking I was cis just because I didn’t know any better? I’m pretty sure I know the answer and also pretty sure that thinking about it won’t get me very far (as it seldom has before, with these things), but it’s worth examining anyhow.

I do not identify as a guy nor do I use he/him pronouns (more about pronouns later but generally speaking, while I have no strong feelings about the pronouns in and of themselves or the male gender in and of itself, I have no desire to align myself with masculinity in such an obvious way and since I haven’t got strong feelings on most of the rest of this I might as well listen to the ones I have, right? -- and by the way that reluctance is definitely tied to feminism, I recently untangled that one so it’s not like I’m not making strides with this).

HOWEVER, in the last couple of years I have developed a tendency to refer to myself as a a simple man with simple needs, as a “man down” if I fall, that sort of thing. Again, at first I felt kind of bad about this from a feminist perspective, since I already said I had no desire to link myself to masculinity. And I’m still not sure why that’s okay but using he/him pronouns isn’t?? Maybe because it’s pretty clearly in jest. But I just recently figured out that it feels transgressive to me and that’s why I like it! Like, you know, I very clearly read as AFAB and for the most part I’m either happy with how I present (i.e. my hairstyle, my voice) or at least fine with it (with the notable exception of my interest in a top surgery appointment somewhere in my hopefully-not-too-distant future). So I feel like if I don’t indicate to people (especially if I’m not out to them) in a few tiny ways that I’m not cis then I’m going to be perpetually read as such. Muddying that reading isn’t a lot but it makes me happy.

-- Also, like, being nonbinary and expressing it doesn’t make me non-feminist. I despise the use of “he” as default pronouns for theoretical figures and all the related trappings of men as emblematic of humanity as a whole, but calling myself a man, even if I’m not one, is definitely not doing that. It’s a difference of scale as well as intent. And I wouldn’t call someone else a man, even in jest, if they didn’t identify as such, so that’s that.

And now I feel better about my life!

One further note on pronouns before I wrap this up. Like I said, I have no problem with he/him in and of itself; it’s the connotations that bother me. Similarly, I’m used to she/her on account of using it all my life, and in some cases it seems appropriate for feminist goals as stated previously, but it carries this tang of assumption, you know? I like they/them the best because it acknowledges my gender weirdness, even if I don’t mind the others.

Also, frankly, I’m concerned that if/when I come out to people, if I say “either she or they is fine” then they’ll completely disregard they/them and use exclusively she/her and that’s...not what I want. It doesn’t have to be all the time, but I want to be acknowledged if I go to the hassle of filling people in on this. It’s not too much to ask for and I know this.

(As for labels, nonbinary is still the easiest but I think agender is probably the most specific, and I also recently came to include myself under the trans umbrella, so that’s fun.)

In conclusion, *jazz hands*

[grellsuke]

do you have any good lgbt manga recs? i just finished shimanami tasogare and loved it

yes!!!

Authors:

yuhki kamatani - the author of shimanami tasogare! kamatani is x-gender (and ace!) and thoroughly incorporates lgbt characters into their works. the others aren’t like focused on the lgbt experience like how shimanami is, but they’re all wonderful and beautiful and have lgbt characters and i highly, highly rec them.

akiko morishima - a lesbian mangaka who i really like! she’s really good abt tackling the traditional stereotypes in yuri manga as well as writing stuff about older characters and frankly discussing sexuality and shit. she also has works that are not yuri manga-centric but iirc a good chunk if not all of them still have lgbt characters, so they’re worth checking out as well! (she does have a few works with some fuckshit in them tho, fair warning)

takako shimura - i don’t personally know what her sexuality is (tho shes a woman, i know this), but shimura is pretty well-known for her lgbt works. wandering son and aoi hana are probably her most famous, at least over here in the west! she also tends to incorporate lgbt themes into her works that don’t center on lgbt characters as well.

ebine yamaji - another lesbian mangaka! yamaji’s works are very... realistic, usually about lesbian working through things. there’s a lot of trauma and a lot of sadness in her works, as well as sexual content, and i really love her art. i haven’t read ALL of her works, but what i have, i’m enamored with. they’re sad but rarely TRAGIC.

hiyori otsu - i don’t actually know otsu’s sexuality, but she’s a shoujo ai/yuri mangaka who writes a lot of genuinely sweet stuff. her works tend to very much be on the softer side of things, even if they can be bittersweet, and i’ve really enjoyed all i’ve read by her. it’s nice to just, be able to read a simple and nice lesbian manga without any major angst or tragedy or even sexual content sometimes, you know?

Autobiographies:

honey x honey by sachiko takeuchi - a slice of life little manga about the author and her girlfriend! it is abt a decade old, which you can see some of, but it’s a really cute peek into their lives and japanese lgbt culture. there ARE sequel(s?), but i unfortunately haven’t managed to find any english translations for them. if you do, let me know!

my lesbian experience with loneliness by kabi nagata - i own this manga! i keep it squirreled away in the bottom of my desk and pull it out every few weeks or so because it’s deeply, deeply relatable to me. the first time i read this manga i sat down and cried because i felt it deep in my soul. absolutely rec!!! there’s also a sequel, my solo exchange diary.

the bride was a boy by chii - a cute little manga about a trans woman named chii, recounting her early years up to her current life, her transition and how she met her husband (+ abt their relationship). it’s super cute and sweet, and very informative!! an absolute rec!!

i was born the wrong sex! by mayufu konishi - i haven’t quite finished this one yet, but this is a highly informative manga about a trans woman heading to thailand for her surgery! it’s extremely extremely informative about every single step of the process, and the author is an absolute delight, so it’s one i’d absolutely rec.

our journey to lesbian motherhood by emiko sugiyama/koyuki higashi/hiroko masuhara - have you heard of the lesbians that got married in disneyland tokyo? this is them!!! this is their autobiographical story of, well, their journey to lesbian motherhood! it’s very good, i definitely enjoyed it - it IS a sequel to another manga by them, but i sadly couldn’t find an english translation anywhere… it’s completely understandable without having read it, though!!

fictional manga:

my brother’s husband by gengoroh tagame - this is one i haven’t read myself, but is pretty damn high up on my ‘next to read’ list. the author is a prominent gay bara author - this is his first dabbling into more family-friendly series. he’s also recently started another family-friendly one called our colors that may be worth looking into as well!

whispered words by takashi ikeda - it’s been a good long while since i’ve read this, but i really enjoyed this when i was younger! (has it already been almost 8 years since it ended?? i feel old) it’s about two lesbians who are best friends - one of which is secretly in love with the other. unfortunately, she’s very much not her friend’s type. :( i vaguely remember some kind of weird crossdressing shenanigans with one character, tho, so tread lightly with that.

koimonogatari by tohru tagura - if you liked shimanami, this is also probably right up your alley! it’s a very realistic manga about a boy finding out that one of his classmates is closeted and gay - and he promptly decides to tell no one because he’s not an asshole, which leads to him being one of this boy’s main confidants. it realistically deals with the homophobia that gay people face, as well as the main character’s slow realization that he’s not necessarily straight, either (or at least, that’s my hypothesis - it’s still ongoing!!). i really enjoyed it.

lonely wolf, lonely sheep by fuka mizutani - two women with the same name, same birth month, and same injury end up meeting by complete coincidence at the hospital. i genuinely adore this manga and all it is. despite it only being one volume long, it deals with heavier topics such as depression, self harm, homophobia, and iirc even suicide. it’s really, really good though and i wish all the best for them.

kono koi ni mirai wa nai by morihashi bingo - i recommend this one tentatively, as the last two chapters are not yet translated (as of 1/11/19), but i enjoyed what was there. despite the label as BL on many sites, this story is actually about a trans woman (tho there is also a gay man in the manga!). the note left off on the most recent chapter, chapter 10, was a very uplifting note that she is not alone and that how she feels is completely, utterly normal, and i have hope for the last two chapters! the art’s really pretty, too, and the metaphors. but again - who knows what could go down in the last two chaps. fingers crossed!

i hear the sunspot by yuki fumino - PLEASE read this one. this manga is about two college-aged young men who end up meeting when one LITERALLY stumbles across the other. kouhei, one of the boys, is hard of hearing - and the other boy, taichi, starts taking notes for him in class in exchange for lunch, and thus begins a friendship that will blossom into romance! it absolutely gets in depth on the hoh/Deaf community in Japan, and is definitely informative - and the guys are just genuinely so sweet (as well as the other characters!!!) and I wish them all the happiness. it’s STILL ONGOING so like, warning on that, but i’m really enjoying it so far. i think there’s also a movie based off it!

cirque arachne by nika saida - this one has some sexual elements to it, so fair warning on that, but i really enjoyed it! it’s a single volume manga about two acrobats that fall in love. the art was cute and i genuinely liked the characters, quite a lot. would definitely rec.

yuureitou by tarou nogizaka - i have not actually read this manga, but it’s another that’s amazingly high up on my to read list. it’s a supernatural horror manga, and the main couple is a trans man and a cis man! i’ve heard good things about it - from people i know personally, as well as just in general - and it’s one i can’t wait to check out.

ohana holoholo by shino tarino - i FEEL like this one is completed, but if it is, the translation isn’t done. either way, i did love what i read from this! ohana holoholo is about a bi woman raising her son along with her ex-girlfriend and their neighbor, nico. it’s really good, one that i HIGHLY recommend, and one of the woman is implied to be trans, too! (fingers crossed they explicitly state it please please please-) overall, i absolutely rec it, please check this out!

no. 6 by atsuko asano/hinoki kino - who HASN’T heard of no. 6? no. 6 is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the government is, well, the government. it involves two young men working to take it down alongside others and they fall in love. and one of the other characters is non-binary! ...honestly that’s probably the best i can describe no. 6 because WOW is it a wild trip. it’s a wild trip that i highly, highly recommend though! you want gays taking down the government alongside killer bees and a magical bug goddess? this is the manga for you. please read it.

asagao to kase san by hiromi takashima & bloom into you by nio nakatani - two shoujo ai manga centering around high schoolers that i haven’t actually read yet, both of which recently got animated adaptations!!! i have heard genuinely fantastic things about both of them (ESPECIALLY) the latter, and bloom into you is actually next on my reading list. they absolutely sound fantastic and i can’t wait to read them!!

seven days by rihito takarai/venio tachibana - a two-volume manga about two high school boys. every week, a boy named seryou goes out with a different girl - he treats them very well, showers them in attention, and then promptly breaks up with them at the end of the week because he didn’t fall in love with them. out of curiosity, his upperclassman, shino, asks him out one week - and thus begins their seven day romance. i really loved this, i really really did.

tamen de gushi by tan jiu - it’s an on-going webcomic about how two girls, qui tong and sun jing, meet and fall in love. the characters are all absurdly fantastic, from the two girls to all of the supporting characters around them, and it’s an absolute TREAT to read. i would highly rec it, there’s some lovely shenanigans in there.

last but not least, i highly rec manga written by the year 24 group. this group was a non-formal group of female mangaka in the 1970s that really revolutionized and influenced the shoujo manga genre. many of their works are considered classics today, with works such as kaze to ki no uta, claudine...!, the heart of thomas, and shiroi heya no futari among them. a lot of their works really dug in and examined sexuality and gender, and you can find some of the original shounen ai, shoujo ai, and trans manga among them. i’m a sucker for the classics, and i highly recommend them. i honestly could have listed every single of one these mangaka in my recommend authors list, but decided it was just easier to promote the group as a whole. the best for last, you know?

hope this helps, anon!

[nevermindirah]

I read the post you recently reblogged about the practice of [cis]gender swap fan works being necessarily transphobic, and I was thinking about it wrt the gender swap I wrote in several past fandoms and the gender explorations in the Hobbit fandom, which canonically had a very small number of female characters. On the one hand in current fandom, "Think about what you're doing" seems to carry a silent corollary, "and you'll decide not to do it," but on the other...[to be continued]

Not least coming from a group that tends to get one single story told about us, I don't want to write trans people like that, which is one of the reasons I only wrote a couple stories about trans characters so far instead of writing all my sexswaps (a more accurate term, I think) about trans women. Which statement brushes up against another thing people often say, "I don't want to get X group wrong so I'll never write them," which is NOT what I want to say here. [third part will be last]

At any rate, your reblog reminded me of my ongoing self-debate about whether or not I should take those stories down, and since I think I can trust you to take my thoughts in good faith, and you have clearly thought about this subject, I wanted to ask you for your perspective.

I love a good-faith question like this! I also love fic that explores how gender affects the characters we love. I think it's possible for genderswap fanworks to be trans-affirming and add to the richness of fandom. It just takes a broader understanding of what gender means than the average cis person often has, so, education!

My favorite examples of this are Known Associates by @thingswithwings, which explores Steve's experience of being femme both before and after the serum and goes really deep on what it would be like to be genderqueer in post-serum Steve's body and with that set of Captain America cultural expectations, and the Boy with a Scar series by dirgewithoutmusic, a bunch of Harry Potter "what if" stories including two different versions of what if Harry were a girl (a version where she was assigned female and another where she was assigned male).

Both of these works are beautiful examples of what can be good and great and important about genderswap because they get into the nitty gritty of these characters' internal experiences of their gender and the weight of other characters' gendered expectations of them. And crucially, they show these characters as well-rounded people including in their authentic sexuality but they don't sexualize them on other people's terms (either other characters' or the author's).

Within the trans community there's disagreement about whether sex and gender are the same thing or different things. For me, making a distinction between sex and gender feels like a profound discounting of my experience. I'm nonbinary, and I was assigned female, and I have boobs and a uterus but I don't know what my chromosomes or hormone levels are so I could be intersex for all I know! Either way, somebody telling me that I have a "female body" is both misgendering and not actually based in science, just assumptions based on how I look. Some trans people feel differently about this, and it's not a conversation for cis people to weigh in on.

A genderswap fic that seems to just be the author wondering What If Popular Cis Male Character Had Boobs feels shitty to me personally because it reminds me that there are so many people I'm forced to interact with in order to function in the world who think that because I have boobs I'm therefore a woman, or "at least" "female-bodied". It's a way of understanding gender that leaves no room for me as I am. I think that "female-bodied" people are people who (1) identify as female and (2) have bodies. I have a nonbinary body. Steve Rogers in Known Associates has a body, and in the '30s fairy is an identity term he uses, and in the 2010s genderqueer is an identity term he uses, and his identity words change because the linguistic culture around him changed not because the serum changed his body. In The Girl Who Lived and The Girl Who Lived (Again), Harry has a female body because she's a girl, and in one of those stories she's a girl with a vagina and in the other story she's a girl with a penis.

I've never been in LOTR fandom but I do remember that line in one of the movies where Gimli says something about dwarf women having facial hair. There's a lot that's rich to explore there! How do we know most of the characters in LOTR are men anyway? Looking from the outside, it's because JRRT was coming from a harshly cissexist and misogynistic cultural context, but within the canon itself what information is actually present about characters' gender experiences? Maybe Gimli is trans and his transition didn't involve the years of waiting for a beard to grow in that many human trans men's transitions involve! Maybe dwarves are like bees and have multiple genders (queen, worker, drone, etc) and JRRT who came across and translated all those primary sources just did the same thing that other British historians of his era did when translating primary sources from human cultures that had more genders than Imperial Britain allowed.

Bottom line, here are a few questions you might find helpful in measuring whether a fic you want to read/write/delete/etc is using genderswap in a transphobic way:

1: Is this fic thoughtfully exploring what gender means for this character and the society they're in?

2: Is this fic assuming that my society's normative understanding of gender is The One Right Way that all beings experience gender? (And to specify the most common form of this among Westerners: Is this fic assuming that someone's body parts necessarily tells us anything more about them than that they have those body parts?)

3: Is the genderswap element just there to turn me on?

If you answered Yes to 1 and No to 2 and 3, go forth with my cheers! If you got different answers or you aren't sure, I'm not going to police you, but if you're considering policing yourself it's probably worth thinking about it harder, and if you're the author maybe rewriting. In the specific case of these fics you wrote a while ago, you could update your author's notes to say these works reflect an understanding of gender that you've since evolved on, and you could even link to this or other commentary! If you feel like your past works are atrocious in light of new-to-you information about trans experiences and deleting or unpublishing them feels best to you, go for it, but I think leaving them up and adding an author's note does a lot more to educate our fellow fans and show healthy call-in culture and growth.

[realtransfacts]

I was just wondering if maybe anyone could relate. I'm a trans man attracted to women, and I'm having trouble thinking of myself as straight, because when I think of straight men, I think (cis men and) toxic masculinity and objectification of women. But the way I like women is distinctly Not Straight. I still feel like I align heavily with wlw/lesbian labels (kind of because I'm pre-t but also) because I feel more tender love and don't think of women the same way a cis straight man would.

A lot of trans men who are attracted to women feel attached to the wlw community at some point or another. (Going back in history, trans men and butch lesbians weren’t all that different so they did share a community like that. But that’s not as much the case anymore today sadly.)

It usually takes a long while to disassociate yourself with the wlw label if you’ve used it before. As is the case with most labels that you’ve felt really attached to and that has been a big part of your identity, even if they no longer apply to you.

But I also think you need to understand that straight men aren’t incapable of tender love. And vilifying men as some kind of creatures that can’t possibly love women the same way that you can is very much a radfem/terf thing. So I think you should work on trying to unlearn that. Cis men are humans just like you and are perfectly capable of loving women just like you do.

It’s also worth noting that you don’t have to use the straight label if you don’t want to. “Straight” usually means more than just an orientation - it’s a place of privilege in society. A place that trans people don’t ever truly fully occupy. So a lot of trans men who are only attracted to women prefer to just call themselves “hetero” because of this, since that focuses only on the orientation.

Then there’s also labels like “womasexual” and “gynosexual”, if you don’t like the hetero label either. (Although the gyno- label has mostly been used by terfs, there are trans people working on reclaiming it.) So there are always plenty of options to choose from.

[cuddleslutloki]

SO! i have been asked to give advice a couple times by a couple different writers in fandom who are cis and want to know how to/if it’s okay to write trans characters, so here’s my take and a few pieces of advice. it’s gonna be a little long lol

to answer the question “can cis writers write trans characters?”

Y E S 

i would personally love it, and i know other trans people who would also love it, if more cis writers wrote trans characters. the only limitation that i’d ever put on this is to say that i wouldn’t want to see a cis writer writing about trans self-discovery or a Trans Journey bc... i mean... those are our stories to tell, y’know?

generally most of the trans people i know feel the same way. we want to see ourselves in stories, even if we’re not the main characters. we want to know that you see us and think us worth writing about. representation matters. 

but if you’re writing a story about female friendship and you wanna make one of those women trans? please do bc we need more normalized representation. seeing these really intense Trans Journey stories is great, it is, but it feels one-note when it’s like.... practically the only thing we ever see.

wanna write a story about brotherhood and the bonds of found family and male friendship? make a dude trans! he’s a dude! who’s trans! 

quick advice for writing trans men:

not all trans men bind. i don’t. i have a triple D chest, so yeah it’s kind of obvious that i have tits. with the full beard it can be a confusing look lmao. your trans male character doesn’t have to bind, and it doesn’t have to be bc he’s had top surgery, or because he’s flat chested. some of us just don’t want to have the damage done to our bodies that binding can and will do if done consistently enough for long enough.

not all trans men use packers, which are prosthetics made to give a bulge where trans guys don’t have one. 

trans men can top lol. it isn’t just skinny cis women using strap-ons, and a guy can cum using a harness bc of where it sits. also, emotionally, that shit is fantastic (speaking from personal experience). 

if you’re writing erotica, then be aware that some trans guys are okay with the word clit, some aren’t. this is more of a stylistic choice on the part of the writer, but if you’re using AFAB language for trans male genitals then make a note bc for some men that’s legitimately triggering. personally, i’m fine w/ my vagina, he’s a chill dude.

testosterone doesn’t make you taller, and it won’t make your character taller either lol. physical changes from T are increased muscle mass, changes in fat distribution on the body, voice drop, hairline receding around the temples, facial and body hair growth for some (takes 6+ months usually), clitoral growth, some men experience vaginal dryness some don’t, in the beginning there’s an increased sex drive which tends to even out once T levels are stable, since it’s basically a second puberty a lot of trans guys do get acne, hair can become coarser over time texture wise, and tends to thin

testosterone is administered via injection or with androgel which is topical, generally. if you want to write about a guy giving himself his T, then he’s probably on a weekly or bi-weekly injection schedule at home, or he’s using androgel which is daily and gets rubbed into the skin and has to dry fully. there’s no option right now to take testosterone orally that i know of. there’s also the option for a 3-month dose of testosterone to be given via injection, but it’s always done by a nurse and every trans guy i’ve talked to who’s had it has said they can’t even sit down for an hour afterward bc it’s injected into the ass and it hurts like a motherfucker. however it’s also only once every 3 months. personally i don’t mind my wee thigh shot lol. 

if anyone has more specific questions for writing trans male characters send me an ask and i’ll be glad to help

full disclaimer that i’m not a trans woman, but here’s some advice for writing trans women based on what i’ve heard from them:

unlike with T, where trans men can basically just start T and begin the process of a testosterone-based puberty, trans women first have to go on T blockers so that their T levels drop to where they should be for a woman, then they go on estrogen, which is usually??? a pill (not dissimilar to birth control)

when trans women have been on estrogen for long enough they can have multiple orgasms like any other woman, which is a pretty nifty perk

loss of muscle mass is common

breast growth happens differently for everyone, but breasts become more sensitive and as they grow a lot of women can experience some tenderness, and if the chest is struck/prodded that tenderness can be painful. (as someone who naturally developed breasts as a teen, i remember fucking crying when someone hit me in chest once bc everything was so sensitive)

trans women have natural hormone cycles and can experience period-like symptoms! so yeah! a trans woman can wake up and be >:( and have mood swings!

the penis and balls will shrink over time on estrogen, some trans women stop getting hard, some don’t

some trans women tuck their penises, some don’t

trans women have to make the choice to raise their voices, as most of the effects of testosterone-based puberty cannot be reversed. T thickens the vocal chords, which is what makes a trans guy’s voice drop, but if a trans woman is transitioning after she’s experienced a full T-based puberty, her voice isn’t going to raise. a lot of trans women do vocal training to get used to talking in their head voice versus their chest voice. some even pick out like a celebrity or a character to emulate bc it’s a lot easier when you’ve got a goal to aim for.

facial hair generally doesn’t stop growing. the follicles being active doesn’t change when testosterone levels drop. hair growth can slow, but it’s probably not going to stop entirely without laser hair removal or electrolysis. same with body hair. 

hair texture can change, though, and become softer over time

if any trans women followers want to add to this feel free :D

your character might not have IDs that match up w/ their identity. having your government docs changed can be a pain in the ass depending on where you live, and a lot of places require some kind of surgery as “proof” which is bullshit but... y’know, it happens. 

big thing to remember: not all trans people want surgery. not all trans people fall into the gender binary. the way i define being trans is that your gender doesn’t match what you were assigned at birth. that’s it. i consider non-binary people transgender bc. y’know. they fucking are. not all of them want to ID that way or feel like they can, but if they do then i fully welcome them bc they’re my people. 

i think cis writers can feel like it’s a taboo or a no-go to write trans characters bc “well what if i do it wrong” and i think it comes down to being really caught up in the fact that the character is trans, rather than them just being a trans character. like. here’s my day as an out, transitioning trans man:

i wake up between 6am and 7am, i dick around on my phone, i let my dogs out, feed them, have breakfast, go to work, eat lunch, work more, come home, eat dinner, dick around on my phone more, go to bed. repeat. my weekends consist of writing, primarily, and watching stuff on netflix. and every other sunday i give myself an injection of testosterone into my thigh. every couple months i see my endocrinologist and maybe have a blood test.

diabetics have a more rigorous schedule than i do, health-wise. 

me being trans is part of who i am, a defining part even, but it’s not all i am. if someone were to write a story about my life and make it all about me being trans, they’d first be ignoring like... the first 25 years of my life, but also everything that happens to me in between these big transition milestones. 

not everything with trans people is about being trans. sometimes it’s about being bored. or wanting to play video games.

on another personal note, some of the signs that i was trans weren’t very obvious. they make a lot of sense in hind sight (like when i was 4 and told my mom i was going to wear a suit to prom, or when i was 5 and told my dad that my husband was taking my last name bc that just seemed how shit should work to me) but at the time they were just these small, weird little quirks that no one saw as anything more.

in fandom a lot of our stories tend to veer toward the romantic or erotic, so let me just say that you don’t need to write about dysphoria or remark on the topic within the story. i know this is a sticking point for a lot of cis writers bc most of them haven’t experienced dysphoria so they don’t know how to write it. good news is you don’t have to, a trans person can be happy with their body, especially if they’re far enough along in their transition, and it can just be a smutty, smutty story about people fucking lol.

this is a really loose guide w/ very loose bits of advice and seriously if anyone ever wants to ask more specific questions or my opinion you can DM me or send an ask on or off anon and i’ll be glad to offer any help i can

[gnostic-heretic]

I'm an aph lithuania fan who is considering the hc that he's trans. Any reasons to adopt this headcanon? ( or like... what about Liet screams 'trans' to you or how does this compliment his character?)

Ah well I think it does compliment his character in a way, though I’m not sure how to explain it.

I guess it’s just that I came up with an entire backstory and a long series of headcanons related to his gender identity I guess... and I love the idea of him being trans because I project a lot of my feelings on this low budget anime man and plus... I love the idea of characters I like being trans in general.

Maybe I can talk a little about my headcanons for him? Idk it’s just a really hard question to answer anon. Because to me that alone is enough to like it and if you flipped it upside down — why should I headcanon Lithuania as a cis man? Why and how would that compliment his character?

... let’s just say people don’t ever ask this question because cis is perceived as default state of being for humans and that’s a bad idea in and for itself. But I’m going to assume you’re engaging in good faith here because it sounds like you are!

Like first of all for me it’s a way (just like all my other trans headcanons) to see more different kinds of trans people in a story and concept I like (hetalia). Cis characters in fiction usually get multifaceted portrayals but trans stories are reduced to pity porn about transitioning and how hard and sad it is and usually written as really sad people. I don’t think that’s necessarily accurate... our lives and history are filled with things that, as Mari Kondo might want to say, spark joy and more trans characters = more chances to show that. Plus we all think of ourselves and our own identity in different ways, its not necessarily simplistic as most portrayals (x trapped in y body is a popular one) would make you think. Lithuania is trans but he doesn’t think about himself and his gender in the same way Poland does for example. That’s something I love to write :D because it shows that we are all different.

I think Lithuania would be very proud of who he is and how far he’s come. His gender identity is important to him because he’s always felt like he’s a part of his people, and wants to be closer to them- so he views his own “transition” not necessarily as “female to male” (because he never thought of himself as “female” in the first place) but as the gender neutral nature of a “nation”, who is dehumanised and put on a pedestal, to “man” — the feeling of finally belonging with other humans. Tolys is a man because it’s what felt most true to him and his sense of self- and he’s lived as himself since he was very young, so his confidence is rarely shaken at least when it comes to his own sense of identity.

(I guess this is aspirational for me in a way but oh well I’ve warned you about projecting)

Also when I say “cis characters in fiction are mulitifacted while trans characters get only to be one dimensional” I also mean that the usual trans narrative is completely centered around gender conforming straight trans people when it’s... not necessarily so. In fact most trans people I know aren’t straight

For one thing views on sexuality and gender have changed so much throughout history that when a person has lived for hundreds of years there’s no such a thing as “gender conforming”. I headcanon Lithuania as bisexual with a preference for guys so decidedly not straight! And as far as presentation goes. When Lithuania first started presenting as male (the Middle Ages) in the Baltic area long hair was considered standard for men to wear. And even in this age he likes to keep his hair long because that’s how he prefers it to look and it’s a good low maintenance hairstyle— plus I wouldn’t call his sense of style masculine as much as I would call it a disaster, he just likes what’s comfortable and cheap and not too flashy. Which usually lines up with men’s fashion but not necessarily in an overtly “masculine” way

Its interesting to have a trans character like Lithuania or really all hetalia characters who lived for hundreds of years across different and very relevant historical changes because he has seen his own “position” change so much throughout history. For starters while trans people have existed forever, the label of “trans” and medical transition science are a fairly recent thing... which is why in historical fics I never use the word “transgender”, but reduce it to the bare fact of life. Lithuania knew he was a man and meant to live as one so that’s what he did.

Now take everything I say as basically speculative fiction based on OTHER pagan religions across the ancient world because there’s not much we know about Baltic paganism in the Middle Ages and the few records we have come from Christians- they’re biased, incomplete and sometimes untrustworthy. I’ve looked into the stances of modern Baltic paganism (Romuva) on lgbt people but found nothing at all— which doesn’t surprise me and wouldn’t surprise me if their stance on lgbt rights was negative because after all in Europe we live in a society (cit) that is strongly shaped by Christianity even if we try to steer away from it.. and Lithuania isn’t the most lgbt friendly place in Europe for that matter— neither is Italy, by the way, this is no moral judgement. IF anyone who knows more than me wants to correct me and or add more info I’d be not only extremely grateful but STOKED please tell me more about the forbidden romuva knowledge because I’m dumb and can’t speak Lithuanian so a lot of (i would even say most...) sources aren’t accessible to me. 😔😔😔

BUT,

The way I base it on other pre-Christian religions across the world Lithuania’s gender variance when he was a young teenager was not perceived as a negative or strange thing. For one because he’s a nation and nations were and are perceived as supernatural beings (sort of demigods) and unquestionable, at least by humans. And secondly because I like to think that in pagan times gender variance wasn’t perceived as a threat to the “natural order” (Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve and so on) but as a part of that same natural order. So a person identifying as a sort of “third gender” or “no gender” (like I headcanon nyo Lithuania would) and a person kinda deciding that their birth assigned gender doesn’t fit and he’d rather be a man, socially (because back then medical transition didn’t exist) wouldn’t be met with fear or disgust but with sympathy.

Lithuania got to transition socially in a supportive environment and then was kind of thrown into the Polish court to a complete 180 in terms of acceptance. The thing is trans/gender variant people used to be a less-known phenomenon until a few decades ago, let alone centuries ago, it used to be easier to be stealth when the regular joe had no idea what a “trans” was — so that’s what he did. And while he found support and solidarity and (gasp) romance in the company of Poland, he also found someone who conceptualised his own identity in a wholly different manner (but this is a post about liet so I won’t get into it ffs) — I don’t think it must needst be remarked that the Russian empire and Soviet Union were just as unsupportive — if not more unsupportive, but we are not here to pass moral judgement. Being stealth would have made dealing with it more simple but being stealth comes with risks and that comes into play a lot when it comes to his anxiety.

...However I think the problem would’ve been and still be mostly humans because fellow other nations (people who- again- have lived hundreds of years and likely have seen a trans person before if they’re not trans themselves) would be open to understanding and learning and not thinking of Lithuania being transgender as a big deal. In the canon hetalia lore we have chibitalia and Hungary as examples of nations who lived as one gender for a long time and then as another. And whether you see this as a trans narrative or not (I sure do) it’s worth noting that we don’t see anyone in the hetalia canon giving them a hard time over it, or being outwardly unaccepting of their gender.

TLDR I hope I could convey even just 0,0001% of my love for trans man liet to you and if I didn’t... well this is just my headcanon and I’m not forcing it on anyone, you do you. Thank you for being open to hearing about it anon because a lot of people just discard the idea before they can even consider it— but most excuses for it (it’s unrealistic, it is weird, i just can’t see it) are based on biases (are trans people not real? why are we seen as “weird” in the first place? why does our existence seem like an impossibility?) and imo not very good. So to wrap this up my question would be how does headcanoning Lithuania as cisgender compliment his character? Well in my opinion it doesn’t— it takes away nothing and I don’t mind it, but it also doesn’t add all the interesting possibilities that being trans gives to his character at least to me. :D