#but I've seen people say they're not trans they're nonbinary and I'm like. well were you born that way

[hell0mega]

I've been genuinely curious about this for a long time so if you're nonbinary reblog and tag this if you consider yourself trans or not and why

[radfemfox5]

Hi there - I'm trans and Jewish and I'd like to share my perspective on the "trans genocide" thing. I don't think we're experiencing active genocide in the US; that's definitely an extreme and offensive statement to make regarding what's happening. However, I do think that the increasing legislation attacking trans rights and autonomy as well as an increasingly polarized public view of trans people points to the potential for a worse situation that moves closer to genocide.

Now, personally, I live in a state where no laws limiting trans rights have passed. I was able to legally begin my medical transition when I was 15, I've never experienced transphobic violence, and the majority of people around me are supportive of my transition. My experience is similar to most other trans people in my area, with varying degrees of familial support.

But nation wide, we have seen an increase of trans people being murdered, and a massive increase in anti-trans legislation. This legislation aims to strip trans people of their autonomy and privacy. It seeks to put trans children in danger, remove information about what it is to be trans or queer from children's access, and enforce archaic ideas about what it means to be a man or woman.

Most of this is happening because right wing politicians can capitalize on moral outrage and fear to win votes. They're scapegoating trans people instead of trying to improve the lives of their constituents. This is kind of politician's thing, so it's not surprising in any way. However, when those policies successfully do win these politicians support, they'll have to make them more extreme. They'll want to make it illegal to exist as a trans person in public.

Now I'm not saying that that's genocide. I think we're an awfully long way off from trans people being mass arrested for being trans, and then murdered by the state. But we are in a rising climate of fear, and I don't think the trans people calling this the seventh stage of genocide are doing so out of bad faith. I think they're doing that because they are terrified of having their right to take life-saving medication, or have protection in the workplace, or be able to use a bathroom, or have children, or wear what they want to wear taken away. And they're terrified of those things because the bills on the table in states across the country put those rights in jeopardy. And if calling this a genocide makes people pay attention? I'm not super mad about it.

Hi, thank you for sharing your perspective on this. I appreciate it.

Your fear is primarily based on sensationalist headlines and interpretations of the law that are unfounded. I can assure you, you are not even in the early stages of a genocide.

But nation wide, we have seen an increase of trans people being murdered

In 2021, the Human Rights Campaign recorded 50 deaths of trans, nonbinary and GNC people.

In 2022, the HRC recorded 38 deaths (source). So. If we take these numbers at face value, that's a decrease of nearly 25% in one year, in a growing section of the population.

Taking these numbers and the size of the transgender population in the US (1.6 million), in 2021, trans people had a death rate of 3.1/100k, and in 2022, this dropped to 2.4. Again, the numbers provided by the HRC include nonbinary and GNC people, and accidental deaths.

Some of these aren't even murders or intentional homicides. They just say they were killed. I wouldn't consider these numbers reliable whatsoever, but they're the only estimate we have for now. There are so few trans deaths that they can fit on a single Wikipedia page, along with a little blurb about their life and who they were. It would be impossible to do something similar with victims of femicide, since there are too many to count. This page lists victims of femicide, only in Canada, only in 2022, and it is nearly as long as the Wikipedia page I listed above.

This is a perfect segue to my next point, which is to compare trans genocide to femicide, which is actually real. Women are killed so often that the UN has to categorize female murder victims as either killings (unnatural deaths), intentional homicides or gender-related killings (hate crimes, therefore considered in femicide statistics).

The intentional homicide rate for female victims in the US is 2.9/100k (data from 2021), and it is steadily increasing after having been on the decline since the mid-90s.

That only includes the pink and red circles shown in the UN's chart, not accidental deaths or unknown deaths like the HRC includes in their counts. Some countries have as many as 10.6/100k women die a year.

TL;DR: The murder rate for trans people in the US is not increasing, it is decreasing. This isn't indicative of a trans genocide in the slightest.

But nation wide, we have seen [...] a massive increase in anti-trans legislation.

As I was saying earlier, this idea stems from sensationalist headlines. It's concerning to me how widespread the misinformation about anti trans legislation really is, when house bills are publicly available online. You can literally do a quick Google search and find that most of these bills are nothing burgers.

Unfortunately, it's easier for you to just go on a website like translegislation.com and have them tell you what these bills say. I'll do some of the work for you and go through how these sites lie to you.

Alabama imposing criminal penalties on providers of trans healthcare? Sounds scary. Let's see what the source they linked, the HRC, has to say.

Ah. So it's specifically regarding transgender youth. As in, minors. This is after going through an insanely long title detailing how bad the bill is. The trans legislation tracker essentially lies by omission, implying that all trans healthcare is being criminalized.

Going to the bill in question, AL SB184, we can see that it actually acknowledges the existence of dysphoria in children.

However, they also acknowledge that this feeling may be fleeting, and that making permanent changes to a child's body solely on account of the child's personal sense of identity is unwise.

I won't go through every single bill here, as this post is already very long, but you get the idea. Feel free to send another ask if you would like me to look at specific bills.

Back to your ask: the way you speak of these bills shows that you've never read them for yourself or know how legislation works, since you're acting like it's the beginning of Armageddon.

This legislation aims to strip trans people of their autonomy and privacy. It seeks to put trans children in danger, remove information about what it is to be trans or queer from children's access, and enforce archaic ideas about what it means to be a man or woman.

I'm assuming by autonomy and privacy, you mean the choice to undergo medical transition and the bathroom/locker room/women's sports issue respectively.

Bills limiting "gender-affirming" care are focused on children, since puberty blockers like Lupron are now known to have very negative and permanent effects. The bills don't ban adults from choosing to take HRT. It's extremely profitable for doctors to continue to prescribe HRT and for surgeons to continue to recommend expensive plastic surgeries. Legislation won't go that route unless there's a massive shift in public perception.

The "Save Women's Sports Act" literally just limits participation in women's school sports to females only. That's it. The trans legislation tracker even acknowledges this.

Most of these bills are copy pasted from eachother, which is why they're all dubbed as "Save Women's Sports." Here's a snippet from HB61 in Ohio:

If someone's sex is brought into question, a simple blood test is all that's needed. Contrary to what the media may have led you to believe, there are no forcible genital inspections. No trans person is being forced to undress for this. Only 6 trans "girls" are affected by this in Ohio, out of 400k total athletes in girl's sports. So I'm not sure why this feels like a precursor to genocide to you.

remove information about what it is to be trans or queer from children's access,

Personally, I don't think children should be aware that medical transition is even a remote possibility unless they are in extreme psychological distress related to their sex. Even then, therapy is usually the best solution. I don't think the "Gender Unicorn," a surprisingly complex graphic created in part by an alleged violent rapist and groomer, should be used in classrooms to teach children about gender ideology. Gender ideology should be taught to college students who are better equipped to form their own opinion, not children who barely know how to read.

There are better, more useful things to push in our education curriculum, like compulsory comprehensive sex ed. That way, young men don't learn about sex through violent pornography, and young girls don't accidentally get pregnant without knowing what it means. This would also be a good time to teach them about sexual orientation. Leaving it up to the parents or focusing on abstinence evidently doesn't work.

enforce archaic ideas about what it means to be a man or woman.

The lack of self-awareness here is pretty astounding. The trans movement actively enforces these archaic ideas of gender by telling tomboys that they might actually be a boy. This implies that femininity is what makes womanhood, which is objectively untrue.

By telling masculine women that they are men and feminine men that they are women, you're literally enforcing the gender roles you say you're destroying.

They'll want to make it illegal to exist as a trans person in public.

You can speculate about this all you want, but you can't see laws limiting child transition and keeping sports sex-segregated as writing on the wall. We're not even close to that.

Now I'm not saying that that's genocide. I think we're an awfully long way off from trans people being mass arrested for being trans, and then murdered by the state.

I'm glad to hear you are moderately sane.

But we are in a rising climate of fear,

Your phrasing reminds me of US politics in the wake of 9/11. When people act out of fear, decisions are made in haste, and wars are started over made-up WMDs. Being fearful clouds your judgement.

Look around you. You're safe and accepted. The trans flag is flown almost everywhere in June. A trans woman won the NCAA National Champion title just last year. For International Women's Day, multiple companies featured trans women. Time Magazine featured many trans women as Women of the Year. Language is now inclusive, so women don't actually exist anymore. We're just uterus havers. This is all to cater to trans people.

Yeah. It's getting to be a bit much, isn't it? Don't you expect the least bit of pushback, especially from women? We aren't living in fear of some invisible boogeyman. We are angry at how rapidly our hard work has been undone.

We're pissed that after decades of feminist progress, we've regressed to being considered non-men once again.

and I don't think the trans people calling this the seventh stage of genocide are doing so out of bad faith. I think they're doing that because they are terrified of having their right to take life-saving medication, or have protection in the workplace, or be able to use a bathroom, or have children, or wear what they want to wear taken away.

Puberty blockers and HRT do not save lives. They actually haven't been proven to have a substantial enough effect on mental health to consider them an adequate treatment for gender dysphoria.

2. Trans people have the same basic human rights as any other human being.

3. Many places are adding gender-neutral bathrooms in order to accommodate the growing trans population. No one is checking your genitals at the door of a bathroom, no one cares that much. I care about girls being assaulted at school by boys in skirts and the school boards covering it up in the name of trans acceptance (x).

4. Trans people remove their own ability to have children by going on puberty blockers, HRT and even eventually physically castrating themselves. If you mean the ability to adopt or foster children, I don't know. Gay and lesbian couples still have a hard time adopting to this day, so progress can be made in that department.

To conclude this hodgepodge of various facts, screenshots and links, I'll leave you with this:

I fundamentally disagree with you that crying "genocide" is in any way helpful for your community. It's not. Most of Western society might have forgotten what genocide looks like or doesn't even know what the word means anymore, but you should know better as a Jew.

The attention trans people get from saying that they're going through a genocide is overwhelmingly negative from people on both ends of the political spectrum at this point. People are annoyed at trans people for making shit up, which ruins your movement's credibility.

When you have to lie to get someone's attention, you've already lost.

[raavenb2619]

Does coming out lead to too much focus on labels?

(I don't really have a main thesis I'm trying to convince anyone of, I just had a thought and wondered what other people thought.)

When I had recently figured out I was ace/aro/nonbinary, I really cared about finding the right labels for me. And the aspec community in particular has so many unique perspectives and labels that you can apply to yourself. What kinds of attraction do you feel, how do you label your orientations and attractions, what model do you use to think about attraction, how do you think about relationships, how do you feel about sex/romance/relationships, etc. It was super eye opening to learn about lots of different terms, and different ways of thinking about things, and things I'd never even thought about or thought I even could think about, and I ended up applying lots of labels to myself.

But, it's been many years since then, and over time I've grown less interested in applying specific labels to myself. I'm still queer/ace/aro/trans/nonbinary/polyam, but I don't really use other labels. (And depending on the situation, I might end up omitting labels when vagaries work fine.) That's not to say that I don't have affinity with other labels, whether that's "I'm similar to what this label describes" or "this label provides an interesting perspective that I like", I just...don't use other labels to define my identity. If I'm comfortable enough talking about something that I could use a label for, I'll just describe my experiences directly, instead of saying "I'm [blank]".

And, I wonder if that shift from specificity to vagary has to do with coming out. For a young aroace like me, part of why coming out was so nerve-racking was that I felt like I had to prove that my identity was real, and having specific labels I could point to and say "look, this is real, I'm not making this up, other people are like this too" was super helpful. But, it's been many years since I've come out, and I'm more confident and know who I am, and that insecurity that I fought back with fistfuls of labels and well-rehearsed explanations is gone. (With the potential exception of QPR-related discussions, which feel kind of like coming out again; I might make a post about that some time if people are interested.)

Every time I've ever come out, or seen someone come out in real life or in media, it's always been "I'm [blank]", but I've never seen someone come out as "I'm not cis/straight". It's always a declaration that you are a specific thing, never a statement that you aren't something someone thought you were. I remember really wanting to make sure I knew exactly what I was and didn't come out as one thing and then change my labels later, because it would mean I'd have to come out again and it would be embarrassing that I got things wrong and maybe people would start to doubt me and not believe me when I said I was something in the future. But, people don't have to be a fixed, immutable set of labels forever; I'm comfortable with using vague labels for myself and letting myself be vague and nebulous and fluid without frantically trying to label every single part of myself. (And, in fact, I did technically get my labels slightly wrong the very first time I came out, and everything turned out okay in the end.)

So, maybe coming out puts an undue pressure on finding specific labels and making sure they're exactly right; maybe coming out should also be able to be "I'm not cis/straight". What do people think?

(This is not to say that specific labels are bad, because they can often be very helpful! Specific labels were helpful for me when I used them, and their existence can spark conversations and lead to new perspectives and learning. Even as I'm finding vagueness and nebulousness to be better for me right now than specific detailed labels, other people can be finding that specific detailed labels give them a sense of belonging and community and identity. But, I still wonder if coming out placed an undue burden on younger me to find all the right labels when vagueness could have worked just as well.)

[robotslenderman]

It really just bugs me that gender, nowadays, is often just repackaged conservatism.

A tomboy or a butch aren't any less female because they don't believe in gender roles. It's just another way of expressing femininity. Same with cis dudes who like to shave their legs or paint their nails or wear dresses. You can wear a beard and a dress and still be as much of a man as that dude in the Yank Tank with testosterone poisoning and a shitton of misogynistic tattoos.

I get misgendered as nonbinary all the time. I have no idea how - the gender stereotype of enbies is androgyny, which I know is not true, but many people do and yet despite my lowkey and sometimes highkey femme appearance many people use "they" as my pronouns despite being told otherwise. The majority of my friends are trans not because they're my people, but because my cis+ ass is more comfortable around people who play with gender than those who don't. I am a gender expat; I am a guest in their space, but I will never be a native, and yet I'm more comfortable around them than the cis because the cis are so fucking obsessed with the binary and gender roles.

It doesn't help that when I changed my name I changed it to a gender neutral one. One of my friends pointedly made a remark that they were happy that I "get to experience gender euphoria in that way." When I told my psychiatrist about my name change he immediately jumped on the "closeted enby in denial" train that has been following me ever since; he made a long speech about gender fluidity and how I shouldn't take it personally that my family may struggle to adapt to the change. When I told him I was cis, he just smiled. My therapist still uses they/them pronouns for me despite being explicitly told not to. Never mind that I've been questioning my gender for well over a decade; it's hard not to when you're a gender expat and surrounded by people who question their gender all the time. never mind that the answer always is, and always shall remain, "still cis."

I'm not saying my poor widdle cis ass suffers the same oppression as trans folk. If that's what you take away from this you're not paying attention.

The truth is that my femininity is understated. Anonymous. It's never been a loud and in-your-face hot pink and barbie flavoured experience. Just because cis female is a single category doesn't mean that cis female is so rigidly defined. It's loud and in-your-face hot pink. It's Barbie. It's also oil and grime and cars, and loud and opinionated and argumentative, as much as soft and delicate and compliant. It's pink and frilly, but it's also blue and dirty. It's cis men in drag and cis women who have never worn a skirt in their life, and everything in between. It seems like I run into a lot of people for whom gender isn't an experience or lens or point of view, it's interest and fashion sense. Or someone's name. I'm seen as less of a woman for my chosen name and people tell me that's okay, not everyone is female! I just say, it's not okay because of that, it's okay because it's okay not to be your idea of what a woman is.

I met a man called Harriet* once. He wasn't any less a man. His wit was acerbic, and he always fronted comments on his name with sarcasm and "yeah, laugh now, get it out of your system." And yet he never changed it. He wasn't less a man for having a traditionally female name. I'm not any less a woman for having a nonbinary one. Just because male and female are opposites doesn't mean they should never touch for the cis.

I don't fit into the '50s box of "you're female, therefore you should wear a dress." Neither do I fit into the '20s box of "you wear a dress, so you must be female." The truth is that gender roles and expectations are just as baffling for people who are nonconforming as for people who are, and that we'll never be truly free of the gender binary as long as we adhere to it. And the truth is that even if you think you don't adhere to that binary, it's so ingrained in your subconscious and our society you almost certainly do. My friends who not-so-secretly think I'm a closeted enby in denial are as much adhering to it as some idiot who thinks my vagina means I should wear a dress and poo out babies.

Being nonbinary is a spectrum. But so is being male or female. You'll never break out of a black or white binary until you realise that it doesn't exist - not even for cis people. We can't truly break out of the binary until we realise that it doesn't exist for ANYONE.

You either believe in the gender binary or you don't. And if you believe that cis people have certain experiences or present in certain ways, if you believe that binary trans people adhere to those same standards, you believe in the gender binary. No matter what you say. You can claim until you're blue in the face that you don't believe in the binary, but if you're shoving other people in the box of what binary means, you are lying.

(* Not his real name - he's a patient and I'm adhering to patient privacy laws. But he definitely had a "female" name that isn't even ambiguously gender neutral. I'm not even talking Meredith or Tracy, names which used to be gender neutral but are female. I've never once in my life met another male "Harriet" despite meeting dozens of strangers every day.)

[philsmeatylegss]

Honestly, as someone who has worked with both high-needs and low-needs autistic kids...I can see where people are coming from. Most of Phil's weird kid stories are about him doing oddly specific, or repetitive actions and taking things people said too literally. There were a few in particular that made me raise an eyebrow. However, I'm also irritated by people armchair diagnosing them. I think it's one thing to say "well I'm autistic and Phil/Dan does this thing I can relate to so maybe he is also" and another to say it with certainty like I've seen many people doing lately. It's just rude. You're claiming to know that person better than they know themselves, which when you take a step back and live in reality for a second...is obviously not true. We don't actually know them, only a carefully curated image, like you said. Some people are determined to force them into an identity that more closely resembles their own so they have someone to relate to. Phil/Dan isn't (necessarily) autistic just bc you are. They're not (necessarily) in a QPR just bc you're asexual and want their relationship to live up to your ideal. Dan isn't (necessarily) trans/nonbinary just bc he wore a dress and eyeshadow and you want him to be your perfect NB/GNC icon. The point is that when people give dnp labels that they haven't given themselves, it takes away their agency. We should just accept what they tell us about their identities. If they decide to tell us more one day, great! But if not, we need to accept that it might not be bc they haven't figured it out yet or don't want to talk about it, but bc it's not reality.

Putting it perfectly bestie <3

[capslock3284]

Lizard Thoughts on Goodbye Volcano High

Beware of unmarked spoilers!!!

Goodbye Volcano High is a furry visual novel with rhythm game elements released last year in 2023, nearly to the day. The game has a modern era dinosaurs setting, with the player as a nonbinary pterodactyl named Fang, who is hoping to make it big in the indie rock scene after graduating from their senior year.

However, the tail end of chapter 1 reveals that the same asteroid in the real world that ended the Cretaceous was spotted, with the rest of the story about Fang and friends making the most of what time they have left.

Overall, I liked the story of GVH! The emotional struggles both Fang and their friend group go through feels very close to some things I've gone through this time, including issues regarding transitioning and being socially accepted. For example, multiple times in the story Fang gets deadnamed and misgendered by their parents, which is - at best - waved away as 'trying' (though they get better by the finale). While it kinda stings that there's no option to censor it, I'm also a bit grateful that there isn't because it's a real struggle a lot of trans people have to go through today and it's not right to brush that kind of thing off.

Meanwhile, the overarching plot about the asteroid feels very allegorical to Gen Z anxiety over the future - or rather, feelings of the lack thereof. While it's not literal armageddon in our world, the portrayal of it mirrors sentiment I've seen over modern climate and economical issues.

===

As a game, though... I've got mixed feelings. It's incredibly linear, and while it's presented as a standard 'your choices matter' type game all it does is unlock extra scenes with characters you side with more. Additionally, this same system encourages multiple playthroughs to see all optional scenes, flashback comics, and to 100% the photo gallery. However! You only get one save file, and there is no option to go back to a specific point in the story - you keep going or you start from the beginning.

This doesn't mention the several errors I've noticed in animation, with characters having an extremely limited set of premade poses for them to alternate through, Seth MacFarlane style - not to mention the continuity errors (the most notable one I spotted was partway through chapter 5, where the same guitar changed its model from acoustic, to electric, and back several times.) There were also several times where audio or entire scenes cut out about a half-second early - while this didn't cut out entire words, the sudden cut to the next line without any pause was jarring.

Despite all of these problems, Goodbye Volcano High works very well with its strong points, that being dialogue choices and the rhythm game portions. Even though I mentioned the game is very linear, it feels like it's by design - you're not completely controlling Fang, you're nudging them in specific directions according to how they're thinking, which is represented by different effects around dialogue boxes. Angry thoughts are burning, despair is broken in half, and intrusive thoughts are blurred out by static the moment you hover over them (incidentally, this stops you from picking it with an extra thought from Fang telling themselves to not say that.)

The soundtrack is pretty good. Don't have much to say about it, though I like how it's used diegetically with about 2/3rds of the tracks being written/performed by Fang in the story.

==============================

Overall, I'd recommend Goodbye Volcano High. However, skip it if you're a completionist due to the high number of playthroughs needed to 100% it on steam, or if you just don't like visual novels. Get it on sale, borrow it through Steam library share, or just watch a six hour no commentary playthrough if you're on the fence.

Steam store page here!

[icaruskeyartist]

"Talking about trans men "playing up the F in AFAB" to access women spaces. Please someone send me an ask about this specifically so I have an excuse to go off tomorrow after work."

Fourth time's the charm right?

And I gotta disclaim that I'm one of them transes who sees his past self as the gender he thought he was. Little 11 year old me? Girl. I was a girl up to the point I wasn't and I don't really know where that line is. Somewhere between 19 and 25. But I do call myself AFAB and I do see a lot of my experiences as a child and teen as being both through the lenses of womanhood and closeted/subconscious transness.

So needless to say I'm a little biased and get a little angry when this argument that trans masculine people are trying to play up the F in their AGAB up.

First and foremost, the biggest push away from AGAB language I've seen is from nonbinary and trans masculine folks. So let's jot that down (again though, I have consciously put myself into spaces that allow me to hear these voices over trans feminine voices after nearly a decade of the reverse).

And there's the fact that trans people who present with traditionally "female" reproductive and secondary sex characteristics are typically more vulnerable in men only spaces... we gotta be realistic here. People who look like women are going to be treated like women by strangers and while I'm a firm advocate for not treating all men like dirt... well. We have statistics.

And that's even if there are men spaces... shit like shelters for domestic violence victims oh so rarely allow men in the first place.

Plus, let's not forget a lot of this "playing up the F in AFAB" talk is coming around during the repeal of Roe v Wade in the US, which brought up the discussion of reproductive healthcare and abortion access back into international center stage. We're supposedly leaning on our AGAB by pointing out that We! Need! Healthcare! And our healthcare needs generally line up with those seen as women's only.

A totally stealth trans man who is being denied reproductive healthcare because he's legally a man is going to have to lean on his AGAB to get a checkup with the ObGyn. Otherwise they're not going to see him... because he doesn't look like a woman to him. Sometimes, using your AGAB is necessary, if only because the largely cishet world doesn't get that sometimes women have dicks and men have vaginas, and there are some people who want both or neither.

Finally, and I guess this just irritates me the most because of the above mentioned bias... saying trans masculine and nonbinary folks are playing up their AGAB is outright denying the way so many of us grew up. I was raised as a girl. I was seen as a girl. I had expectations put on me that only women in my small part of Southern Baptist culture would have. I had a promise ring. I memorized the Proverbs 31 wife list. I had nightmares of my wedding night, and I was made fun of and belittled by my own mother for not liking makeup and not taking care of my appearance. My lack of sexual harassment, despite it being a super common thing for girls and women, still has me mentally fucked up despite now identifying mostly male.

I'm not playing up my AGAB by talking about these experiences and saying that I've experienced misogyny because of how I am seen. Claiming the trauma and benefits of womanhood when I saw myself as a girl and when the world sees me as a woman (as it oh so overwhelmingly does currently) is not me trying to play up my AGAB for victimhood points or to access women's only spaces.

Yes, there are trans men, masculine folks, and nonbinary people who were AFAB and currently enter women's spaces where AMAB folks aren't allowed. If I wasn't aware of them before, I certainly am after getting through the first few chapters of Whipping Girl because Julia Serano does not shut up about it. She's clearly salty despite pretending not to be.

But guess what! There's shitty trans women and trans feminine people out there too! Baeddels! TIRFs! The fact that there's shitty trans people like Buck Angel or Caitlyn Jenner is just because they're people! Who happen to be trans! And people will absolutely use whatever they can as leverage to be shitty! That's why there are gay and black Republicans. They leveraged their minority status to become figures in a group that hates them. Shocking.

But for fuck's sake, saying trans men, masculine, and nonbinary folks who happened to be AFAB are trying to express their victimhood through the F in their AGAB both reeks of ROGD as well as a clear yellow flag that maybe

just maybe

these people are trying to find the language to talk about the problems they're facing but people like Serano aren't letting them.

[lighthousegod]

Recently, my cis lesbian roommate made a comment about "he/theys" that kinda stuck with me. She said these people, on her dating app, were matching with her and ignoring that she had lesbian in her bio.

We'd had convos about whether trans mascs and trans men could be lesbians (im a transmasc person, but not a lesbian, although ive identified with the label before), and I'm all for he/him lesbians and trans men who are lesbians- I've researched, I know Stone Butch Blues, I don't think telling anyone they can or can't be anything is right.

So this sorta stuck with me. I went, "but. They probably identify as nonbinary if they use they, and even if they don't, trans guys sometimes ID as lesbians too." And she was like "well, but I'm not attracted to masculine people." And I brought up that she does usually like butch lesbians (who definitely use other pronouns besides she/her sometimes!), and she sorta brushed me off, saying there was a different "vibe" between transmascs who use he/they and butches (even though they... sometimes are the transmascs she's talking about???)

So I was like "well, do you have 'looking for femmes' in your bio or something?"

"No."

"Then how are they supposed to know??"

"I don't know it's just my preference!!"

It was super. Odd. I should say, my roommate is cis but uses she/he pronouns. She is, in fact, a lesbian who uses he/him sometimes, as he identifies as bigender *but not a man, ever.

I just find this all so confusing. I mean, let's think about it, fr.

So the popular idea today is that lesbians cannot be men, so trans men can't be lesbians.

Now, here's what that implies: if trans men can't be lesbians, then they are always in the same category as cis men. Now, of course, some trans men ARE in that category, usually binary trans men- and they're all men, right, so every man is under that umbrella. But still, gender isn't so simple. Trans men and transmascs have vastly different experiences between each other and especially cis men. This isn't to do with internal identity, but outward perception. Regardless of whether I'm a man or not, the world has seen me as a woman all my life. That makes it very hard to be accepted and comfortable in mlm spaces, especially when theres so much transphobia in the cis gay community. Plenty of trans men are stealth, or simply have a supportive community, and are welcomed like a cis man would be. But that's not the case for everyone, and not every trans man WANTS to be treated in the same way a cis man might.

But whatever, okay, let's go with that. Trans men are men and lesbian means non-man attracted to non-man, so they're not included cause it's invalidating to (some) trans men, regardless of if they've identified with the label lesbian for years or feel unsafe in mlm spaces bc of how overwhelmingly cis they can be, or whatever else.

So... what about nonbinary men, then? Nonbinary women seem to be accepted, not just nb fems but those who identify as both nonbinary AND a woman- so why are nonbinary men not?

"Because they have man in their identity and lesbians can't like men"

So.. what about bigender people? People who are both men AND women. They can't be lesbians? I guess not.

But let's say they can, and we're just excluding binary trans men from the term lesbian..

People often bring up "would you accept a cis man identifying as a lesbian?" As an arguing point here. Bringing it back to my original point, would you accept a "he/they"? What if they were amab, and had no interest in transitioning? Or a transmasc person who DID? I just saw a transfem lesbian saying she couldn't possibly let trans men with full beards into lesbian spaces as it was transphobic and wrong- aren't there transfem lesbians who don't want to shave or get their face lasered? What do sex characteristics have to do with it? I thought we were trying to avoid labels based on that sort of thing.

So at the end of the day, I guess it really is about the label of "man." What's that even mean? That's literally just a word. I'm so confused.

[asexual-means-no-attraction]

I have a question about sexuality labels. So anyone can be bisexual (attraction to all), even nonbinary people. But what are nonbinary people if they're only attracted to one gender? They can't be gay or straight. But I'm wondering what your take on this would be if you believed nonbinary people were real.

You ever see that funny story of a gay man who looks like a Twink and a lesbian who's butch flirting with each other thinking the other is a femme lesbian/bear gay man, only to completely lose interest in a very hilarious fashion as they realize who they each actually are?

When it comes to nonbinary that scenario is what comes to mind. But unlike with male and female, there is genuinely no way to know or even guess if someone is nonbinary. Some people who are nonbinary also I'd as men or women, some don't. Some change their style, some don't. There's no way to look at someone and know they're nonbinary, thus there really isn't any way to specify sexuality with them in mind. Just like how trans people can sometimes bring in a gray area, I think nonbinary does too. Like, regardless of my views on nonbinary as a whole, when it comes to their sexuality I think it's just up to them.

I know there are terms for nonbinary people who like only one gender. And I think that's certainly a way to go.

The thing I don't like is when nonbinary people change the definitions of words just to fit them. The redefining of lesbian for example to "non men attracted to nonmen" is shitty. Lesbians get enough people revolving their sexuality around men, and this just enforces it. Literally putting men in the definition. It's women who like women. And perhaps a trans or non binary person will fall into a gray area and use that label. That's up to them. But changing the label isn't ok.

Especially when we've already seen people use that new messed up definition to claim lesbians can be attracted to men. Sexualities don't always fit who you are, and you need to be able to accept that. Love yourself for who you are and let go of the label that you want. Learn to love the one that actually fits you. And if none do right now, it's ok not to use any. Be yourself and the right one will follow.

Plus the groups of nonbinary people who go around saying they can be whatever sexuality so they decided to be gay since it's "more fun" just feels low key homophobic. It's treating sexuality like a game rather than an actual part of who someone is. Plus, lol, if you got technical: "attraction to the opposite gender/not your own gender" would fit them the most unless they're into only nonbinary people. Meaning they'd really just be straight.

I know I've sorta jumped all over, and this was more of a ramble than anything else. Don't take this whole thing too seriously. Like I said, it's just a ramble, not anything crazy. But a quick summary:

1. I believe they'd fall into a gray area and it'd be up to the individual since the group is too diverse to define even broadly (saying they don't ID as male/female doesn't even work since a lot of them still do). For some it's a cultural thing, for some a gender thing, etc etc. No way to really define sexualities within a group that's not even well defined about what they are.

2. The nonbinary community has an issue with redefining words to fit them and it's definitely caused issues. It's caused a lot of confusion and lesb/homophobic ideas/events to occur. And honestly, I don't know if there's even a way to fix that.

[transingthoseformers]

Technically, every single transformer is nonbinary even in canon and here me out on this because I'm going to deconstruct a misconception.

Think about how the the majority of people* interpret the therm nonbinary. In fact, what do you see when you hear the term nonbinary? They/them pronouns, androgynous, an alternative lifestyle... a stereotype? I don't think i have to say on tumblr of all the places that nonbinary people come in a wide variety of shapes colors and personalities. But i think a common misconception is that being nonbinary is some magical third gender. And tbh that always makes me sad because can you imagine growing up thinking there's only two colors, red and blue, and oh maybe you learn that yellow is also a color and you go "cool so there's three colors", then realizing that holy shit wow there's an infinite amount of colors and shades out there! It's one of the things i actually miss about when i first started realizing because that beautiful learning feeling.

This is when I reintroduce transformers into the conversation. The meta reasoning is originallythe audience they wished to sell the cold war propaganda toys to, modeled the characters after the image they created, and only added the girls when they realized how gay the show had become. I believe the various idw comics were the ones who decided that on Cybertron the glyph(s) for he/him pronouns were considered neutral. A headcanon that I'm not sure if it's fanon or canon is that the Cybertronians came to Earth and went along with the genders and pronouns that the humans assigned them. Which I've seen many irl nonbinary people explain their genders like that "oh I'm ____ but I'm willing to let people assume I'm ____" which i admit I'm guilty of and has came to bite me in the ass.

How does this mean they're nonbinary? Well they quite literally do not exactly fit into the binary that human society has created because oh i don't know Robots who don't have the same culture as us. In a way they're all trans as they kinda transitioned from cybertronian gender to the human genders or otherwise alien genders. A character can be a man while also being nonbinary. A character can be a woman while also being nonbinary. A character can be genderfluid. A character can straight up just Not state a gender like Nightshade which is valid as hell; you don't need to sit there and explain your entire set up to nosy people valid valid. They're also you know fictional characters! You can have headcanons and popular fanon and an adopted take you saw one time. One of the major reasons I became an active member in this fandom rather than inactive is because of how much variety there is here.

*at least people who are allies because ofc transphobes are going to just. Not acknowledge us in any meaningful way and think of us in very impolite ways. They'll hear the term androgynous and think "I'll guess what your AGAB is and automatically assume you have the characteristics I associate with that and will refer to you as only that [often insert slur here]* if i have to hear the blue hair thing and the goddamn attack helicopter thing one more time i will end up killing someone and i know where i will hide the body.

[theglitchywriterboi]

Some annoying queer things I see online

Lets start with "If you're cis you have to have your pronouns in your bio"

It's always "CIS PEOPLE PUT PRONOUNS IN BIO !!! My sweet lil trans babies do what you feel safe doing :((" Until it's celebrities.

For one, unless someone says "I'm cis/trans" there's no way to KNOW their gender identity. & that's not even factoring in people who say they're cis but are questioning/will question their gender in the future. This isn't to say all cis people secretly are trans either not ready to come out yet, or they don't even know they're trans - not at all. I do know most of cis people who say they're cis know are actually cis, but I am saying that FORCING people to add their pronouns puts TRANS PEOPLE in danger/forces them to either allow people to misgender them [if they're not ready to come out yet] or forces them to out themselves when they're not ready.

Also, making it either cis people who hate trans people & trans people who don't wanna put their pronouns in their bio for whatever reason, isn't the epic trans ally win y'all think it is ? Like do you know how many trans people I've seen get accused of being transphobic - not because of what they've said, but purely because they didn't have their pronouns in their bio & people just assumed they were a transphobic cis person ? Way too many.

Plus cis people should be allowed to want to keep parts of themselves private as well. Like I do know why people want cis people to add their pronouns - I want more cis people to add them cause I know it normalizes it for trans people. But we can't encourage people to explore their identity & then erase the fact some may want to keep it private. Cause I'm sure for some people, including cis people, their gender is personal, & we shouldn't be making it our buisness.

here are some [but not all] people may not want to have their pronouns anywhere on their account:

One: They don't wanna deal with transphobes. Normally this is for trans people, but I'm sure theres a cis person who also hold this stance

Two: They aren't out or ready to to come out. Just because someone is in the public eye, doesn't automatically mean they're safe to come out. I've seen a lot of non-famous queer people say they don't wanna come out because they love their parents but know/think they won't be accepting & they don't wanna lose their family, and the same can be said for famous people. A lot of them may not feel safe to come out

Three: Gender is personal to a lot of people !!! I forgot who said it cause I didn't frequently watch them, but I saw a youtube video where they said they're nonbinary, but they don't talk about it online [& in turn, don't have their pronouns anywhere on their profile] because their gender is personal to them. It's not that they don't feel safe/comfortable to come out, its just that their identity is for them [& people they wanna tell IRL], not strangers online.

Four: They're questioning. Sure, at the end of their questioning, could they end up going "Whelp, I'm cis gender !!!" but that doesn't mean the time they spent exploring their gender was any less important. & people questioning shouldn't have to tell you, a stranger on the internet, that they're questioning their identity. Thats an incredibly personal aspect of their identity & a personal experience.

Theres probably more reasons, so these are just a few but yeah. Don't yell at people - even celebrities/influencers, to add them to their profile. Even if they've explicitly said they're cisgender. Until they've said otherwise, just use what they allow [So if they present as a guy, use he/him, if they present as a girl, use she/her, until they say otherwise].

Also, I think this just assumes people are cis. I remember people make those "Look at my babygorl" Jokes about Gerard Way, & they've publicly said on twitter they use he/they, but since he doesn't have them in any bio, people just assume they're a cis man, which goes against the whole "Cis people add them, trans people do what you feel comfortable doing !!" [& I know pronouns=/=gender, so Gerard very well could prefer he/they but still I.D as cis, but you get my point]

[Also before you say "Why not add this symbol to say you can't add them" WHAT ??? Like if YOU like having a symbol in your bio that means you can't have your pronouns in your bio, thats fine. But you do know if everyone who couldn't add them [ESPECIALLY celebs] used a certain symbol, it'd make the symbol useless cause cis people would look it up, know what it means & boom pointless now. Plus if I didn't feel comfortable or safe adding my pronouns, I personally wouldn't feel safer adding a symbol telling everyone I don't feel safe/comfortable adding them ? Again, if you like it, go off, but it won't help everyone.]

NEXT UP, MAKING BIGOTED JOKES ABOUT QUEER PEOPLE TO CISHETS

I mean that in the sense of seeing a feminine man, who either publicly has said hes straight, or has at least said he's not gay, yet people "Jokingly" call him slurs, say shit like "Omgggg the closet is made of glass XD Just come out already haha", etc.

This is shitty for a lot of reasons I already stated above [They might be queer but either haven't accepted themselves, may not be ready to come out, or may not even realize they are. Or maybe they know but their queer-ness is personal to them & they don't wanna tell a bunch of strangers online, etc]

But it pushes harmful bigoted stereotypes. Like I have never once seen someone call The Rock for example any queer slur or say he's SURELY gay. I've only seen this about dudes who have more feminine mannerisms [at least feminine in societies eyes] or do things that are seen as traditionally 'for girls' such as painting their nails, wearing pinks & purples, wearing skirts & dresses, etc. Which only harms everyone, because whether you're trying to or not, you're pushing the notion that "girly" things are for girls or queer men, which isn't okay.

It doesn't matter if you yourself are queer making these jokes, you can still spread bigotry towards a group while being a part of that group, which if you make those jokes, you are. While not the main focus of the video, I think Dan Howells coming out video explains the impact of this well, so if you haven't seen it, I'd check it out.

Anyone is allowed to be uncomfortable with those jokes being directed towards them. It doesn't make them bigoted to not wanna be called slur or have people say that because they do X, Y, Z they're obviously gay/queer & in the closet. [& yes, I have seen someone say w/ their full chest that because they [the person making the jokes] are queer themselves, the person they're directing the jokes toward [as far as we know a cishet man] isn't allowed to be upset at the jokes because that'd be bigoted of him]

"If I had KNOWN they were queer I wouldn't have done that !!!" Thats not at all okay. You shouldn't harass people period, & you're just demanding they reveal an incredibly personal part of themselves just so YOU can show them basic respect, which is harmful. Plus you're still spreading bigoted stances, it doesn't matter if you're queer, it doesn't change the fact you are.

SAYING REAL PEOPLE CAN QUEERBAIT

Real people can't do that & saying they can only hurts queer people. I made a whole post about this, but I'll restate it here.

It doesn't matter if they way rainbows everyday & have the most colorful wardrobe [& honestly, if you're saying they're queer because they fit into queer stereotypes, that's bigoted. Idc if you're queer, it's harmful to go "You fit into stereotype ??? YOU ARE QUEER OFC !!!" Like what ?], if they kiss the same gender on the daily but still insist they're cishet, etc whatever. They aren't queerbaiting because real people can't do that.

Like I've said a lot throughout this post, saying real people are queerbaiting forces queer people into a corner where they have to come out to stop being harassed.

I may add to this later, but this is all for now. Stop this shit, it's annoying & doesn't actually help queer people. I hope this post makes sense, it's hard to articulate everything :/

[gay-otlc]

re: gender and sexuality. i’m a lesbian but i’m also maybe transmasc and definitely not cis and been considering if i’m a ‘straight trans man’ and. i mean, i think that’s sort of why queerness is beautiful in a way? because you don’t have to be one or the other, you can be both or neither or a mix. it’s a good reason to just say your sexuality is queer (despite assumptions that means bi, which sorta irk me because that’s against the point of queer rlly), or just… not be labelled. or say you’re a trans man who identifies with both straight and lesbian. in queer history, there weren’t always these easy terms and categories… there were people who socially transitioned to men but their partner would consider themselves a lesbian, there were people who we don’t know if they’d call themselves a gay male drag queen or a straight trans woman today, there were people who we can’t tell if they were bi or gay or straight-but-experimented-with-sexuality, there were trans binary and cis people who might have been nonbinary if they knew it was an option. are they any lesser than modern queer people? no, of course not. no one can tell you what you are, but i can tell you you’re valid. i can tell you your queer ancestors would be proud of you. maybe even, 1000 years ago, you had a distant relative who felt just like this. they would be proud. no matter what terms you use.

Hmm. You're right. I think I would like to use both straight man and lesbian, mix and match labels. I've just seen so much backlash in the queer community against confusing or contradictory labels and I'm not sure I want to deal with that sort of identity policing. And for how I'd like to label myself for in-person scenarios, I wish I could boil it down into a few simple terms that wouldn't lead to me giving a powerpoint on the complexity of gender/sexuality and how I can be both a lesbian and a straight man. I've tried explaining the more complicated parts of my identity before, but when I'm talking out loud I can't quite get the words out right. It would be easier to just pick a well known word that was right all on its own.

Your ask helped, though. They're just words! It doesn't have to be stressful, I'm just here & queer & vibing :)

[legion-gringo]

// this is heavy and personal //

It's supposed to be my 4 year HRTiversary but something happened.

A few months back I stopped feeling as much like a girl, then I started taking T as well as E, then I stopped taking E, then I stopped wearing women's clothing then I stopped wearing makeup. I might go back to E/being a girl at a later date, but I might not.

Now I wear suits, use the men's toilets, go by he him pronouns, and I'm happy - or as happy as I was as a girl. I still feel trans, but I'm not really transfeminine at this point, and I'm clearly not transmasc either.

I don't think i count as transmisogyny affected, even. I just seem to most people like an effeminate gay man (they're not wrong, but it's more complicated than that, same as it is for anyone really)

I don't have any regrets - I look at my tits (small and perky) and I think they're neat. I like that estrogen gave me a softness and a connection to my emotions I had previously been lacking, but I like that T has given me the composure and poise to push back the tears and communicate to ppl how I feel instead of just falling apart and letting people see how I feel from that.

It's hard though. Am I detrans? Not really but I do make some people uncomfortable, I suspect. Or a joke that I could have made without a second thought suddenly becomes a minefield of "is he allowed to say that"

There's another detrans grifter in the media. This one is complaining that testosterone made him bald so he "may as well" keep being a guy even tho he regrets it. Fuckin idiot. Men go bald. If I go bald I think I'm gonna cry, (only I can't cry now.) Does this make me a hypocrite?

What's a HRTiversary anyway - it's a big deal for some, for others it's just "the earliest date possible they could get on hrt."

There's other people like me, irl and online, doing similar things - retransitioning rather than detransitioning - but I don't really feel that connected to them either. I know people desperate to tell you that they're a boy (but a girl really!!!!) and try and look as clocky as possible - this reads as weirdly transphobic against the tboys. There's a way to honor and appreciate trans beauty without fetishising clockiness, that's chasershit to me.

Idk where I'm going with this tbh. I don't really understand it but I am starting to resent the constant attempt by other trans people to categorise me into something safe, or at least nameable .

"so have you detransitioned"

"no"

"so you're still a girl"

"kind of but not really"

"are you a man?"

"yeah I guess"

"oh you're nonbinary"

"no"

"oh! You're genderfluid"

"idk no I don't think so"

"oh you're just nonbinary but you don't like the word"

"..."

It's funny as well how many people are completely in denial about what's happening in the same way that my family/coworkers were at the start of my first transition.

*turns up to a party in a suit*

"gurl you look amazing"

*uses men's bathrooms*

"wow she's so fierce"

*gently corrects misgendering*

"Hun you are so butch"

What I've really learned as well is how fuckin godawful girlie culture is from the outside. You go to a trans night in London and everyone's making the same tired jokes about praise kinks and headpats, catgirls and thighhighs, whether they're 19 or 50. Some stranger tried to pat my head at a punk gig my girlfriend was playing back in april and I told her to go fuck herself. If I tried that now I'd probably get booted from the community. Fuckin hell we got Imogen Binnie, Lou Sullivan, yknow there's actual cool parts of The Culture that you can engage with/riff on (like Jackie Ess did with Darryl and its links to Nevada) - why are we content with memes about sword lesbians and blahaj?

I'm part of the problem, too! I did that stupid "gifted boy to burnout girl with a praise kink" post from last year that I've seen go around twitter, Facebook, insta, tiktok, I'm feeding the cultural rot.

I fully expect to lose followers over this, cause it's upsetting to hear. i avoided detransitioners (still not a word i identify with) like the plague ever since i transitioned, not just cause they're normally creepy and weird but i think i genuinely believed that they'd somehow social-contagion me (Torrey Peters is occasionally capable of making a salient point, turns out!)

Anyway whatever. Burn it all down. Love and solidarity to my trans siblings, if this is creepy and weird to hear, catch you on the flipside in like 6 months when i get bored of this and go back to being a girlie

[multiplekittens]

Hello. I think occasionally I will do an embarrassingly earnest long post about my reflections on whatever media I'm currently thinking about. I'll tag them with #long poast so you can mute it if you want. I'll also put most of it under a read more.

This one will be tangentially about Bocchi the Rock, but it's mostly a personal essay that uses Bocchi as a jumping off point. I'll be talking about a character who shows up late, and I think you'll be fine if you want to read but don't know shit about the character. If you want to avoid spoilers at all costs, I wouldn't read, but otherwise I think you're probably fine. I'm also gonna talk about homophobia/transphobia in the US (specifically about the "groomer" conservative trend and accompanying legislation), so be aware of that too.

I finished Bocchi the Rock months ago and while in general it was very much a "she's just like me fr" experience (like it is for a lot of people) I literally cannot stop thinking about Bocchi and Kikuri's friendship. I remember watching the second-to-last episode and seeing how Kikuri was supporting and teaching Bocchi and just treating her like a regular person, despite the fact that it was clear Bocchi was working through Issues, and just starting to cry. Even though it was not supposed to be a particularly emotionally resonant scene, it was just such a good example of how important friendships between non-related adults and kids could be, and I couldn't help but think about how that concept is being litigated to hell in the US right now.

I don't think I really need to explain on Tumblr to my 100% American followers what's happening right now, but just in case I'll summarize a bit. The current conservative push to call trans and gay people "groomers" for being around children at all while not lying about their identity is obviously extremely harmful for gay and trans people, but I also think that the accompanying stigmatization and criminalization of any non-related adult having any sort of friendship with a child is also going to be incredibly harmful to children, as well. You can see this with how teachers and librarians (not even gay and trans ones!) are treated -- those are the two positions where it's most socially acceptable for adults to interact with children regularly, and they're being accused of "brainwashing" kids just for providing them with books.

I'm worried about how this is going to affect kids, because I've been on both sides of relationships like that and I've seen how important they are. I used to tutor math in a rural southern town, and when I moved across states to where I live now so that I could finally come out as a nonbinary lesbian, I remember having to break the news to all my students that I wouldn't be teaching them anymore. I remember one fourth-grader I tutored who really only needed someone to tell her she could do math begging me not to move so I could stay and tutor her. I remember her asking for a hug after our last session, and I constantly think about what her parents would have to say about me giving it if I hadn't been closeted. I also wonder what would have happened if I went through this process just a couple years later.

Of course, I've been the child too; I remember seventh grade, when I first moved to an entire new state into a tiny K-12 school where everyone knew each other already. My twin and I started doing plays and made friends with two high school seniors, Mae and Tsuki (not their real names). Despite the fact that we were young, extremely awkward, and anxious, they were always extremely kind to us, letting us sit next to them on busses during Science Olympiad trips, exchanging emails (!), and generally letting us hang out with them even though I'm sure we were annoying, cringy, and just generally seventh graders.

Looking back, I realize they probably didn't have a great time in that school either. They were the only furries in the entire school, and at least one of them came out as bi after school was over. I'm almost certain the average adult would not have approved of our friendship, but out of everyone at that school they were the only people I ever knew who were actively encouraging of our interests; one of them even got me a piece of original film from Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, a gift I still treasure and have to this day, over a decade later. (I would go on to be bullied and othered over my love of star trek, sci-fi, and not stereotypically "girly" things for the rest of my time at that school). They made an otherwise very rocky year much more bearable, and helped me to feel that maybe I was someone who people would like to be around when I really needed that. I think there's next to no chance they could read this and I have no way to contact them, but I hope they're doing well now and I wish I could let them know how much their friendship meant to me, even now.

I think that friendship is why the relationship between Kukiri and Bocchi resonated so much with me, and why I'm heartbroken about the US trying to litigate those relationships away. While Kukiri isn't explicitly queer, a) come on of course she is and b) she's definitely not what an adult would call a "good influence." She's constantly drunk around Bocchi, sometimes offers her alcohol, takes Bocchi's money so she can buy more alcohol, and teaches her how to illegally busk. But at the same time, I know firsthand how much a "cool" adult (or nearly-adult, in my case) taking you under their wing can mean, and how much it can help low self-esteem for someone like that to believe in you when you can't even begin to believe in yourself. If US conservatives have their way, then experiences like these will disappear for good. For everyone's sake, I truly hope they don't succeed.

[fennthetalkingdog]

It's Gendering Time Baby (aka Fenn's weird thoughts about his gender in essay form)

Okay, so it's really late at night while I'm writing this (not the same time that I'll post probably) but my brain's going on a spiral tangent thing so I wanna go down it while I can. So I'm prolly gonna ramble, I apologize in advance.

So anyway, I feel like my relationship with my gender is... unique? I don't know, I see a lot of people talk about how they feel like a man or woman or nonbinary person, or how they feel like nothing or something neutral or "just themselves" but from what I've heard the latter usually call themselves agender or neutrois or something like that. If I had to pick one, I legitimately don't know what I'd say. I know your experience as a kid isn't the end-all-be-all for your identity, but I tend to look back at mine a lot to make sure I'm not adopting a label that doesn't represent me at all—but when I was a kid, I had no conceptualization of gender. It just wasn't something I noticed. Hell, I noticed differences in height more than I noticed differences in gender at the time. If you asked kid me, they'd probably just say, "Huh? What do you mean? How can you feel like a gender??" So that's not particularly helpful.

I didn't really start noticing gender until I learned that trans people existed (high school; had Christian parents and was overall pretty sheltered). And I only really learned about it in the context of "some people feel so strongly about gender that they wish to transition." So of course little me, who barely noticed gender at all, thought that they must be a demigirl because they were born a girl but didn't really feel anything. (I know now that's not what "demigirl" necessarily stands for lol but give lil me a break.) But their parents rejected them and of course, since they now had no other way to express this potential side of them, little me went exploring more. They found labels like "agender" and "neutrois" that seemed to fit their experience so much better, and so the demigirl label was dropped. But it still didn't feel like them, and they still don't feel like me.

You see, my gender is a pretty complicated thing that I like to ignore most of the time. But there was one time I tried to give a friend a metaphor to describe it, and that's the best thing I've got even now so here it is. I have a slightly interesting physical problem when whenever I strain my shoulders too much, the skin on my back becomes really sensitive and if I move in the slightest, it feels like my shoulder blades will break through my skin (consequence of carrying too heavy bookbags in grade school). But sometimes I can feel it starting to get bad because it feels like a hole is forming between my shoulder blades, like a cavern, where muscles that should be chill and calm feel almost like they're being sliced. (I promise this isn't a medical problem.) And my gender almost feels like that cave: a wide, open space lined with smooth, water-worn stone and closed to the open air, with a massive lake at the bottom and a single stalactite hanging from the ceiling. Water occasionally drips down from the stalactite and into the lake, and that's my gender, except the lake feels like nothing and my gender is diluted once it hits the surface of Me. I have a gender, maybe, but it's in parts per million instead of wholes.

So I'm basically agender, right? Or I'm some sublabel like libramasculine if my gender feels important to me still, but problem solved, right? Well, those labels technically fit from a technical perspective, but they still feel wrong. I may not have a gender, or at least a strong one, in the sense of having strong preferences about how I'm treated or seen, but at the same time I do? But it comes more in the form of likes and dislikes. I like being seen as a masculine (gender-wise) person over a feminine (gender-wise) person. I like being seen as a feminine as fuck (presentation-wise) dude instead of as a girl who doesn't care for themself. These feel like they come more from my personality than from a gender, so my gender is still technically nothing, but it still feels wrong to label myself as agender or something similar when I have such notable feelings about the matter.

So what do I do instead? Well, I play gender, like how a toddler "plays" as an animal or how a kid "plays" as a character from their favorite TV show. Everything I perform is still me—it's my desires, dislikes, and personality—but I get to be a boy thing instead of what people wanted me to be. If my birth gender is old and crusty and doesn't fit, then I get to choose something cooler, a new role I can play. The difference doesn't really matter on a day-to-day basis, does it? No one can tell if I knew since birth or if I'm faking it or if I'm somewhere in between, so what does it matter? What I know for sure is what I want to do with my body: I want to lop off my boobs and I maybe want to take testosterone. And I like being a boy in a dress. So, technically I don't really feel a gender? But I still don't identify with agender or any of the adjacent "lack at least some gender" labels because it feels weird trying to put a label on something that isn't there. I just call myself a transmasc nonbinary boy/man and move on with my life, because if I stop and think about it I'll confuse myself all over again.

[sarinotsari]

My Issues With Gender and SRS

So lately I've been feeling less and less comfortable with she/her pronouns. That's not me saying I'm UNcomfotable using them, though. It's just that it doesn't feel... right. But none of the other pronouns I've used (he, they, fae, ve) feel like the right fit either. And I've done some research into other possible pronouns to use, but nothing seems like the right fit. And my issue with pronouns is that I use the labels "trans woman" (which in society immediately connects to she/her) and "nonbinary" (which connects to they/them), but the "norms" don't feel like the right fit for me. It also doesn't help that I go through phases of femininity, masculinity, and androgyny, making it even more difficult to find a pronoun I feel can encapsulate all of them while also feeling like a correct fit for me.

"NSFW" under the cut (references to genitals, but not exactly graphic)

Disclaimer: various abbreviations will be used which may not be medically accurate, but for the sake of this post I'll be sticking with them

These things also very loosely tie in to the type of SRS (sexual reassignment surgery) I want to have. There are varying different procedures, both surgical and non-surgical, that I want to have in order to feel comfortable in my own body (not all of which have to do with gender). But for the sake of time, I'll stick to simply SRS. I know, without a doubt, that I want both top and bottom surgery. For top surgery, I want a typical breast augmentation (BA), regardless of gender identity. I could suddenly start identifying as a cis man, but I still want I BA. For me, personally, it's not so much about gender, it's just about wanting breasts, but I'm including it because it is often seen as a gender related surgery. As for bottom surgery, there are three very different types of surgery I'm considering: vaginoplasty (VP), phallus-preserving vaginoplasty (PPV), and penile enlargement (PE). There are at least two types of VP I know of, and I'm not entirely sure which I'd want if I were to go through with this particular surgery. The most commonly discussed is penile-inversion, so it does definitely seem like a popular choice. I do think this would be a good surgery for me, but there are also cons. As for PPV, I believe there's only one type, which preserves the penis but removes the testicles in order to construct a vagina. I have seen mentions of testicles being preserved as well, but I'm not sure if this is an actual surgery or just something people want done, I'd have to do more in-depth research. While this seems like the most ideal surgery for me in theory, there are a lot of different reasons I can think of why I wouldn't want this surgery (which isn't to say I won't get it someday). And, finally, with PE, again I'm not certain on the amount of different types, but I personally am looking into a Penuma, which increases both girth and length. Despite being a trans woman, I've never hated having a penis. However, I've also never really cared about having one (hence being comfortable with a full VP). But if I am going to keep my penis, I'd want to have a PE just for personal preference. I haven't done any research, and I'm sure there'd be very little to see, but I'm not entirely sure if a PPV can be done following a PE, which is why they're listed as different procedures here. But, if possible, I'd consider having both done. My issues with VP and PPV, though, are that they are permanent (a PPV can later be turned into a full VP, but cannot be reversed). However, a PE (at least, a Penuma) is reversible. While I know I want some kind of bottom surgery, I wish that none were permanent so that I could have what I want when I want them through different phases of my life.