#but his transness plays into his disconnect from them

[realbeefman]

rewatching community why is jeff winger so transgender. “you lost the right [to talk about women’s bodies] the moment you decided to grow a wang!” from 2x21 the entire little indian girl story from crit film studies HELLOOOOO

[a-dragons-journal]

i dont "kin for fun" but through tiktok i found out about the whole kin for fun vs actual otherkin... situation ig? im having a really hard time taking it seriously... maybe im just burnt out and bitter from dealing with the worlds current events, and maybe its because on tiktok the only people i saw mad about it were white people, but you're the most reasonable person ive seen talking about it (a lot of other posts have this odd tone that 12 year olds on tiktok saying kin is the worlds greatest opression and it weirds me out) so ig my question is just... why exactly does this matter? why does it matter enough to post about and care about and not just ignore? /gen

Hey! I don’t blame you for being a bit weirded out by it, we’re a weird subculture and we’re well aware of it! xD I appreciate you taking the time to actually look into it past your first knee-jerk reaction, especially considering burnout and the state of things.

I’m not totally sure if you’re asking why otherkinity matters or why the “kin for fun” being wrong matters, so I’ll answer both - they’re pretty well tied together anyway.

The short version:

Otherkinity is an identity. It’s who we are, we can’t choose to pick it up or put it down, and it comes with struggles - though no, ‘kin are not systematically oppressed (though we are pretty badly bullied and, at this point, pushed out of our own words and spaces).

What people calling roleplay/relating to/projecting onto characters “kinning for fun” does is steal our words, make them meaningless, and in doing so, make it difficult or impossible for us to find each other. If someone says “I kin [x],” I no longer know whether they mean “I am [x] on an intrinsic level” or “haha I relate to this character a lot”. I no longer know whether they actually share my experiences or if they’re going to turn on me and call me “crazy” as soon as they realize I’m not exaggerating or joking or roleplaying. It’s done massive harm to the community as a whole because it’s become difficult to tell whether someone is actually ‘kin or if they’ve misunderstood the whole thing - and because antikin rhetoric, which I’m seeing more and more in KFF spaces, hurts far more when it’s coming from inside what you thought was a community space than when it’s coming from self-labeled “antikin.”

There are other words for roleplaying and relating to and projecting onto characters. Hell, there are words for strongly identifying with-but-not-as characters/things, though usually KFF people don’t even seem serious enough for those to fit in my experience. I’m really not sure why these people are so determined to steal and misuse our words, words that were specifically created to mean something else, when they already have their own and are just refusing to use them. (Or, hell, if you don’t feel like those fit, make your own. We did. It’s your turn to put in the work. (General you, not you-the-anon, of course.))

An analogy, if that still doesn’t quite land for you:

Consider, for a moment, the transgender community. I am aware this is a dangerous thing to say, but bear with me. Obvious CW for hypothetical transphobia up ahead is obvious.

Consider if you were part of the trans community (I don’t know if you are or not), having finally found a word to explain why you feel the way you do about yourself, why your experiences don’t seem to match up with those of everyone else around you. Having found a community, a home, full of other people like you, people you never would have met if not for words like “transgender” and “gender dysphoria/euphoria” that were created specifically to describe your experiences.

Now consider if people suddenly stumbled across your community for the first time who were not trans themselves. They see community jokes and lighthearted posts out of context, because Tumblr and Twitter aren’t exactly conducive to making sure people find the Transgender 101 information posts first. They don’t bother to do further research, assuming they understand: ah, these people like to crossdress! They like to pretend they’re a different gender! This seems like a fun hobby, I want in!

They begin to post things like this. They post photos of them crossdressing and caption them “hi, I’m [name], and I trans men!” and things of the like. Suddenly the concept of “transing for fun” seems to be everywhere - and it’s not at all what being trans actually is, but these people either don’t know or don’t care. When actual trans people try to politely correct them, they’re accused of “gatekeeping” - and to be clear, this is not “nonbinary people aren’t real,” it’s “transgender means you identify as a gender other than the one you were assigned at birth, and you’re self-identifying as the gender you were assigned at birth 100% and telling us this is just a fun hobby for you, therefore you’re not trans, you’re crossdressing or doing drag or being GNC. That’s fine, but it’s not being trans - you have other words to describe that, use those.”

(Yes, I am aware these things have a history with the trans community - please just ignore that for the sake of the analogy and bear with me on the slightly simplified version of this. “Kinning for fun” does not have that same history with the otherkin community.)

...And then the response to those attempted corrections, in some corners, turns into “wait, you ACTUALLY think you’re another gender? idk that sounds pretty unhealthy, maybe you should see a psychologist or something :\” and “you’re taking this too seriously.”

I imagine, in this hypothetical scenario, you’d also be pretty fuckin peeved.

(Obviously, in this hypothetical scenario, systematic transphobia would be an issue as well, which isn’t the case for otherkin - again, you’re gonna have to bear with me on the simplification for sake of analogy there.)

(EDIT: this is not an anti-MOGAI/exclusionist argument, this is “you’re literally telling me you don’t fit the definition,” explanation on that here)

The long version, which is probably still worth reading if you have the time and energy:

Otherkinity is... pretty core to who I am, who we as a group of individuals are. We live with being otherkin on a daily basis. Many of us spent a long time feeling different and disconnected and not understanding why until we found the otherkin community. Even people like me, who don’t share that experience and still had social connection - I’ve still had to live with weird differences that I had to learn to mask when necessary; instincts that don’t line up with human society well, feeling body parts that weren’t there and that no one else ever seemed to have, things that other kids grew out of because it was just make-believe for them and I... didn’t, because it was never make-believe for me to begin with. Oh, sure, I played make-believe too - I played warrior cats and house and all those things with the other kids, but there were things that weren’t play-pretend for me too. I didn’t have an explanation for it for a long time - it was just how I was, I was weird, and fortunately for me personally I was okay with that (many of those with species dysphoria or more trouble connecting with humans have more problems from that than I did).

And then I found the word “otherkin.” And suddenly everything fell into place, and I had an explanation for the things I’d been experiencing, and there were other people like me. Something I’d assumed didn’t exist. I found others who shared my unique experiences, who were talking about how to cope with the instinct to growl or snap jaws at people instead of expressing annoyance in a human way instead of just saying “that’s weird, don’t do that”, who were talking about dealing with phantom wings and tails, who understood me. I wasn’t weird, I wasn’t broken, I was exactly what one would expect from a dragon living in human skin. I found an explanation for myself. I found a home.

That is why otherkinity matters - it is who we are, it’s not something we can walk away from (certainly not most of us, anyway), and it’s something many of us need the support of the community to help deal with on a daily basis. Being a nonhuman in human society isn’t always easy, but it’s not something we can just magically stop being - it’s core to who we are, we (generally) didn’t choose to be this way, and we (generally) can’t choose to stop. Which is fine - the vast majority of us can cope with it just fine, with a little advice and help and space to be our authentic selves in. We found each other, we built this community from the ground up to make a space and words to make finding each other easier - or possible at all.

Thus we come to the second half of our story.

It was only a couple of years ago that the “kin for fun” trend started getting big. It had existed before that, of course, but it only started going mainstream two, maybe three years ago, from what I can tell. Suddenly people were treating “kin” like it meant relating to, projecting onto, roleplaying as, or just really really liking a character or thing - not being that thing, which is what it actually means. Not long after that, it became hard to tell whether someone saying “I kin this” meant they were that thing, that they were actually part of our community - or that they really really liked that thing and either didn’t know or couldn’t be bothered to learn that that wasn’t the case for us.

Not long after that, it became relatively commonplace to hear phrases like “otherkin are ruining kinning!!” and “you’re taking this too seriously” and “idk, if it’s that serious for you that sounds unhealthy. maybe you should get some help :\” (all directly quoted, or as exactly quoted as I can remember, from things KFF people have said to me or people I know).

It is a special kind of hell, I think, to be told “you’re taking this too seriously, that’s unhealthy” by people who are taking words created to describe your experiences, not theirs, and misusing them to mean something that you do for fun on a weekend instead of something that’s intrinsic to your being.

Perhaps more importantly, like I’ve said, it’s making it almost impossible to know whether someone who says “I kin [x]” is actually ‘kin or if they’re misusing our words to mean something else entirely. The entire point of words is to communicate ideas, and once you start misusing words to mean something totally different than what they actually mean, that communication falls apart and suddenly we might as well not have those words at all. Especially when the community is small enough and obscure enough that we’re starting to be outnumbered by the misinformation. We’re being run out of our own words, words we created to describe our experiences specifically - because we’re a small community that the wider internet can easily drown out by sheer numbers of people who either don’t know any better or don’t care to learn.

That’s the harm it does - the harm it is doing, right now. That’s why it’s important enough to post about. That’s why it matters - because we’re fighting desperately to hang onto our own words so that others like us can actually find us. Because we’re seeing young nonhumans go “this isn’t a kin, I actually am this” and screaming “No, I’m so sorry that this is what the misinformation has done to you, that’s exactly what otherkin means, you have a place here, please don’t let these non-’kin misusing our words drive you away from the very community you’re looking for and that you belong in.” Because we can’t even communicate effectively about our own experiences anymore except in semi-closed spaces like Discord servers and forums (and the number of Discord servers overrun with KFF people is absurd).

......This got very long. Hopefully it at least explained why it matters so much to me and others a bit better ^^; Thanks for hearing me out, and thank you again for looking into this beyond your initial knee-jerk reaction - I really do appreciate it.

(For further reading, if that text wall didn’t blow you out of the water completely, I recommend my “kin for fun” tag, which has more posts like this in both short and long form.)

[hillbillyoracle]

Some Thoughts on Why White Pagans Need to Heal Their Relationships with Christianity

Note: I've been trying to write a piece like this for months and the only way I know how to write this is to be very vulnerable and personal. So just please keep that in mind as you read this. It isn't very refined and it's something I'm still very much in process with, to borrow a phrase from my charismatic Christian upbringing. It's more a diary entry than a finished piece and none of these thoughts are original or eloquent. My hope it's helpful to see someone thinking through these things though.

If you're white and you don't want to further colonization and imperialism in your spirituality, then going back to Christianity in some form is pretty necessary; to do the work of decolonizing it's doctrines and to prevent taking from traditions that aren't ours.

This is just the conclusion I've arrived at after a lot shadow working in and around both my ancestors and my religious trauma. My ancestors aren't all white Europeans. But given that I'm white and I don't have any way to carry on the traditions of those that weren't, I feel like the best way to honor those non-white ancestors is to go back to the spiritual traditions I do have access to and doing the work of reshaping them into something less harmful.

I have read and intellectually understood that culture forms the foundation of spirituality and that when you remove something from it's originating culture, that concept or tool no longer works properly, if at all. In working with my non-white ancestors, I really got it on a practical and emotional level. There was this sense that they'd love for me to know their traditions but that it required an understanding that just isn't possible for me given my upbringing and disconnection - "you don't know the words and there's no way to find a person who can teach you" as one ancestor put it. It was an important reminder that "this isn't for white people" isn't merely a categorical assertion but a cultural and practical one.

They've generally asked I stick to practices I have a cultural grounding in when honoring them, even though it is not theirs - the cultural and linguistic element is that important to them. They would rather an authentic expression of gratitude and care through a ritual that isn't theirs rather than an imitation of one that is or being left out of my practice all together. Which makes sense to me in a relational way I hadn't fully grasped before.

In working with my white ancestors, I've come to more viscerally understand that the present understanding of Christianity is wildly different than other historical understandings. One thing that surprised me was that some of my more recent ancestors have expressed more discomfort around my queerness and transness than many of my older ancestors but both root their understanding in the Bible. I enjoyed one ancestor who, when I explained that I'm partnered with a woman, to mean that I would have a life of service - "no men to distract you from God" - which I mean is not wrong on several levels. It really highlighted for me that Christian doctrine is far more flexible than I'd initially thought. It challenged ideas I'd picked up through traumatic religious experiences. So much of what I'd assumed was Christianity itself seems to be more Christianity right now.

The historical angle is really important me. One of the things that drove my interest in Paganism was trying to understand what came before Christianity, to connect with whatever had been cut off in that process. The more I've come to learn about imperialism within Europe - how various empires conquered and destroyed localized traditions indigenous to parts of Europe - it clicked for me that my white ancestors did to others what had been done to them. It is intergenerational trauma in a nutshell.

It's also striking to me that so many people term the traditions pagans pull from as "dead" religions or at the very least "not living". For years I took that to mean they were "safe" to take from, that I wouldn't hurt anyone by doing so. But I hadn't really understood the weight of what "dead" meant - that there was no one left alive who could teach me, that I can't live in a context where all of the beliefs, tools, and traditions make intuitive sense. And if it was important to my ancestors who had had a connection to their traditions, then what was I missing by reanimating these traditions without that link?

I don't have a full visceral understanding of what I'm missing to be honest. I have a feeling that'll develop as my practice evolves. But that question alone has marked a pretty important change in how I understand myself spiritually.

The living and cultural element to my practice is more important to me now. For me, just given the family, community, and area I was raised in, that means Christianity is the living tradition I have access to and I've been revisiting it. I was reading an interview the other day with someone who is both a Catholic theologian and a practicing Buddhist. I liked the way he put it when he referred to Catholicism as "one of his sources of wisdom". That better captures my relationship with Christianity that's been unfolding over the last few months.

Making sure that intergenerational spiritual trauma stops as much as possible with me is really important. I had mistakenly thought that meant abandoning Christianity all together, that it was the problem. Which in hindsight, is fucking wild - I hugely fucked up there. There's nothing stopping me from just enacting the harm I learned in the context of Christianity in a different context, a Pagan context. It doesn't get to the root of the issue. At the end of the day, I just want to be sure I do not use my religion, any religion, to further the harms of structural inequality and colonial oppression. That's the goal.

In reading around about this, I've come to feel pretty strongly that one of the best ways to work toward that is to strive toward animism. Animism has been a great antidote to the spiritual entitlement that colonial religions cultivate (including white paganism). Animism also builds a relational spirituality rather than a goal/individual centered one. White paganism isn't inherently animistic since white culture teaches values that undermine quality relationships - individualism, competitiveness, and seeking domination of some fashion in order to feel safe. An animistic lens requires you unlearn those values and cultivate new ones - mutuality, respect, and accountability.

So all this is to say that given my current understanding, I think trying to build a practice out of New Age concepts while trying to avoid appropriation sounds impossible and hellish. I also think it doesn't deal with the work that needs done. I'm choosing to take an animist lens to the living traditions I do have to see if that's a better space for both my spirituality and my evolving understand of decolonizing to grow in.

People will rightly question my use of the term "shadow work" given this perspective. Shadow work is a problematic term for a lot of different reasons that are beyond the scope of this piece.  Where I'm at with it right now is that most western religious traditions seem to have some understanding of what we might call shadow work which points to it being important and useful. However they all used different terms given their contexts so I'm still unsure of what term might be the most appropriate given where I'm at. So for right now, you might see me use it less in the title or body of work I write from here on out, but I still might use it as a tag to make it findable. There's a good shot this doesn't go far enough and I'm not sold on this approach. Just know it's something I'm trying to figure out.

So that's where I'm at right now. I think white pagans really need to be more serious about animism at minimum and hopefully also looking at the role living religious traditions play in their current practice as well. I think white pagans' unhealed reactivity around Christianity too often serves as a justification for spiritual appropriation and furthering colonial harm. Changes are definitely needed. What that looks like in practice for individuals will likely vary a ton. I'd love to hear from other folks doing work in this vein. What's worked for you so far? What hasn't? Where are you in the process?

[wearequeer-andwearehere]

hey, aryan! i came across some conversations and i’ve just … been confused over some things since then, and i think you’re rly good at explaining things so i’m gonna ask for ur opinion

firstly, how would u define being trans? i think that our experiences are all so diverse and a lot of circumstances play into it, so it’s difficult for me to try to put a clear definition to it. for me, i realised i wasn’t cis bc of an internal sense of feeling disconnected from my agab, but not everyone’s experience is defined by that

and do u think that being trans can be considered as being a choice, at least for some people’s personal experiences? i just. Don’t understand what “choice” entails in this context, i guess. i think that if someone wants to be Not Cis, they can just. Be not cis. can that classify as being a choice???

honestly this all doesn’t rly matter but i’m just super confused by the complexity of all of these things 😭

Hi anon!

Hmm, that’s a complicated question! For me I define transness as being myself and being happy, I also define my relationship to transness as finding joy in masculinity and euphoria in romance and gender connection, but that’s more of a personal thing.

Transness in general is quite hard to define, and you’re right in saying it’s complex and diverse! 

Honestly, if someone says they’re trans, and they are saying it with honesty, then they are trans. That’s the definition, pretty much.

No matter how you ty to define it, though, some people will almost always end up being left out, so I think it’s better left undefined. 

As a bisexual transgender person I hold this view for both bisexuality and transness—if it resonates with you, if it makes you happy, if you like the label, go for it. Definition are personal things. 

That’s their personal experiences, and if it was a choice for them, I support them! 

I didn’t choose to be trans—I’ve been trans for as long as I can remember and experienced dysphoria for as long as I can remember. Being trans wasn’t a choice, but identifying as trans and saying “I’m not cis” was a choice.

Idk if people who say they chose to be trans are referring to being trans or identifying as it, but I understand the lines are blurred, and I support their choices!

And I get that it’s confusing, but honestly after time passes you learn to stop being confused and just learn to appreciate it. There is so much beauty in this diversity, for we are all different, but we are tied together by our experiences with gender. It’s like a complicated web, there is so much diversity and it’s beautiful and it makes us stronger and our differences bring us closer and it’s beautiful and I love trans people, I love us and I love our community.

[campgender]

hey, would you mind talking about your most recent poem? I really resonated with the vibes it was giving off, but I don’t really understand the specifics. obviously it’s okay if it’s personal and you don’t want to explain, but I thought i’d just ask.

oh my god i would Love To, i appreciate any reason to ramble about my writing lol. & thank you for asking so kindly! honestly i’m gonna use this opportunity for all it’s worth and take it line by line because i’m excited ☺️ the poem is here (link) for anyone who’s curious

“closer to 22 than anything else, i’m still thinking about that professor / who said she wished everyone could transition. ma’am, i don’t see you / picking up a needle. stop making my body nothing more than a metaphor.” so the whole piece is about HRT and cis people’s various expectations about and reactions to it, & the disconnect between the narratives they try to force on my transition and my own narrative/concept of it.

i took a women’s and gender studies class a little over two years ago, long before i started HRT, and there was a lot of transphobia in it, made even worse by how i wasn’t braced for it the way i am in engineering classes. my prof was kinda super dehumanizing in the way she talked about medical transition, but under a progressive veneer, like “oh i wish everyone could have that process of introspection and changing, and knowing what it’s like to live as both genders,” which, yikes. i’m like, that’s rich when you’re saying that but i’m the one actually doing it, paying & bleeding for it, yk?

and like, this is my body. it doesn’t exist to teach people some deep truth about themselves or be cis women’s savior in destroying the gender binary. i don’t exist to represent someone else’s experiences; i exist, full stop.

“a cis friend calls me after the diagnosis & i say i know it isn’t the same, / but he doesn’t let me put that kind of distance between our bodies.” a friend was recently diagnosed with testicular cancer and underwent procedures that mean he’ll be on testosterone injections for the rest of his life. because his circumstances aren’t very common, he asked if he could talk to me about my experience with hormones, & i was really surprised when he didn’t treat our experiences as totally disparate. like yeah, they’re definitely different, but it meant a lot that he wasn’t uncomfortable comparing himself to a trans person—he handled it really respectfully, treated HRT like it was normal, not some strange and otherworldly process the way my prof did.

“(neither would the boy, if he was here.)” i’ve gotta slip a little t4t content in lol so here’s a reference to the (trans) guy i like

“so here it goes: / yeah, i still hesitate, but i don’t flinch. print that out & tape it / to her office door. burn that goddamn book” the hesitate but don’t flinch part is directly about giving myself injections, but it’s also about my increased willingness to point out and dismantle transphobic rhetoric in the past couple years. doing painful things anyway even though they’re difficult, and being used to the pain of it, coping with it.

the book referenced is a memoir we read in that prof’s class which included a trans guy being misgendered, outed for shock value, and having his abusive behavior connected to his transness. his transition was a source of fetishizing curiosity and fascination for the author, and i’m still disgusted by it.

“& say into the phone / yes. just to be safe.” directly about when the cis guy friend asked if i aspirate when doing injections, but safety is something i’ve been thinking about a lot lately. it’s complicated; being visibly trans makes me less safe, but my mental health improved so much after starting HRT, which is its own safety. i want so badly just to be safe, but that often isn’t an option, or it’s not worth the consequences.

“i’ve touched more alcohol swabs in the past 11 months / than ever before—that’s the kind of thing i think about, not whatever kind of / evolution you’re expecting. you & i, with all undue respect, / are the same fucking species,” going back to the way a lot of cis people treat medical transition as something Serious and Deep and Heavy that you have to have equally serious, deep, heavy thoughts about or make serious, deep, heavy art about. & as i allude to earlier, there are certainly serious aspects, and every trans person feels differently about it, but overall for me it’s just a thing that’s happening to my body. it’s so normal.

& then i couldn’t resist a play on words with evolution to reiterate that medical transition doesn’t separate me from cis people in general & that professor in particular the way they act like it does. we’re more similar than they think, and that scares them.

“& when i say yes to my mentor’s for the rest of / your life? she winces, but i beam.” the third and final cis person who had a totally different attitude about HRT than i did: my mentor, who i love dearly & who was so happy for me when i told her i was starting testosterone, and who was (understandably, imo) upset that i’d have to inject myself once a week for the rest of my life. but as much as i get why she reacted that way, it’s not how i feel about it—the thought of injecting myself for the rest of my life is exciting, not dismaying, because it means i’ll be able to exist in & with my body the way i want to.

[androgynousblackbox]

I just watched “About Ray” or “3 generations” movie, something I was kinda hyped about since I hear it was going to be about some trans guy, but boooooy, did I hated that fucking movie with all my soul and I am going to tell you why: -Their safety regarding binding is all out of whack because first time we see the dude binding? Ace bandages, which is fucking bad already because his family can afford a nice fucking place, it has been 5 o 6 years since Ray came out but in all this time apparently they couldn’t be bothered to get him an actual binder? And when Ray does get an actual binder he is seen EXERCISING with it? Despite how that can really fuck up your lung capacity and the movie makes a big deal of how he trains completely alone, so he wouldn’t have that much dysphoria to actually need a binder on those moments, especially considering that later on the house he goes around the house without binder without a single problem, basically making this “but he NEEDS to bind!!” kinda pointless and very dangerous if some trans guy assumes you can just do that. -Also, either this movie wants me to believe that there are NO other trans people or trans communities in the entirety of New York, which is fucking absurd as it is, or they won’t ever related to the trans community they do know because Ray think “it’s full of freaks”. Like there is this scene where the mom wants him to go to a reunion of something and Ray he doesn’t want to go, and like what the fuck am I supose to take from that? That other trans people are weird but Ray is not, because he just wants to be a “normal guy with a normal life”, unlike those freaks, or that Ray has some serious internalized transphobia that goes entirely uncalled for the entire movie? Like, you know how much of the angst would go away if Ray could just talk to other trans people who know exactly what he is going through and how to reaffirm him? Community can be life saving for many trans people. To this movie to just throw that like it doesn’t matter or it’s not worth it seems just dismissive and unnecesary. To frame it as “of course Ray does’t want to relate to other trans people because he wants to be nOrMaL” is such an insulting way to look at it. -The grandma is a straight up terf, insisting for a big chunk of the movie that Ray is just a lesbian, that they can find “alternative solutions” to transitioning (which is code for converstion therapy), consistently misgendering him without anyone calling her out on it or telling her that is fucked up, treating it more so like a tiny annoyance from a stubborn grandma, calling transitioning a mutilation (even though Ray was 16 and just considering taking T, not do any surgery?), comparing it with female genital mutilation and talking big shit about how she has worked soooooo hard for little girls to be whatever they wanted to be and now her “grandaughter” was a boy, like it was such a cruel tragedy. The resolution to this, though? Nothing. The grandma just got stuck on a gas station and apparently that was enough to change her mind about everything, because the next scene she is already totally accepting of her grandson. She doesn’t even apoligize for the disgusting, horrible things she said, she is just like “you are man in our family” and that is enough. -The mom, despite having spent 5 O 6 YEARS talking with doctors, psychologists and pressumably other trans people, despite Ray having come out to her about how he has felt like a boy his entire life, STILL misgenders him, STILL doubt his identity, STILL refuses to give him HRT and STILL acts like it’s such a tragedy because “i have to grieve for my daughter”, like WHY CIS PEOPLE ARE OBSSESED WITH THAT NARRATIVE. Why the fuck they always frame it like “my kid died, uwu, poor me, I suffer so much”. Like news flash, I don’t care how tough is for you to understand your kid was never who you thought him to be, even if it has been 5 O 6 YEARS fucking already, your grieving bullshit is nothing compared to what your kid is going through when you make him feel like he just killed someone just for being himself. Honestly fuck the mom. I know the movie wants me to see her as such a good mom because she is oh so supportive and she tries, but after 5 O 6 YEARS, you have no fucking excuse to still misgender your own fucking kid and still doubt them. -”It’s like his brain is disconnected from his vagina. It’s like a cruel joke” is an actual line that is actually in the movie, coming from the mother to try to “convince” the father to sign the HRT paper, and like WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT THAT WAS SOMETHING GOOD TO PUT ON. Being trans is not a cruel joke, and even if some individual trans people feel that way, that is NOT something you should use to describe transness as a whole, holy shit. ESPECIALLY NOT COMING FROM THE MOTHER OF A TRANS KID, FUCK. -Speaking of the mother, I absolutely fucking hate her story because SHE is the center of all, she and her shitty drama, she and her shitty problems, and Ray has BARELY anything to do on a movie that is about him. The movie is not about any trans guy coming to terms with who he is and his family learning to accept him as such, it’s about this mother and how hard is for her to talk with her ex who she cheated on for the sake of her kid. -Ray has no agency and barely a personality on a movie that is about him. He is merely the catalist for everyone’s else development. And what little we do know about him? Don’t like him. Like he has this video that is fucking pointless because it’s never shown on it’s entirety, where he talks about this girl he likes, and like does she know she was being filmed? Did she gave her consent? For who is this video? To publish online? Because if so, publish a video with images from a girl that didn’t consent to be on that video only to declare how much you want to be her boyfriend is a major creep move. But also, that ended in shit? Like the two of them just share one single moment in which she misgender him and the next moment Ray is saying to his friends “I would hit that, but I don’t love her” because that is a sure fine way to make me like your male character, except no, it doesn’t and I don’t like it. Like if the idea was to show he was getting over her or that he doesn’t want to reveal how much he is in love, I am sure there were less gross ways to go about it. Besides, what I am supose to take from that? That Ray talks like that because “he is one of the boys”? That is not cute. -Speaking of shit that goes fucking nowhere, there is a guy the mom has a one night stand and the only reason it exist is so the mom can ask this guy about if he wouldn’t prefer to have a vagina instead of a penis. Yeah, I don’t know why either. The guy legit doesn’t even have a name. There is one scene where the guy is shyly trying to talk to her only to be completely ignored and the next scene there are awake on his apartment, and then poof, nothing fucking happens. That whole shit was just fucking weird. Like sure, somehow I know this was meant to show the mom SOMEHOW trying to come to terms with Ray’s desire for transition (I hope at least, unless I am supose to take as a quirky trait she just randomly ask guys if they want to have other genitalia), but A. Make no fucking sense and B. That is fucking weird. -Also, maybe this is because I know this is a cis woman on a trans role or something, but I didn’t believe the performance of the lady who played Ray at all. Literally at no point I was abled to buy it. -To finalize, this movie sucks, it’s just another example of a movie that is supposedly about trans people but is really in fact about the cis people who are so affected by the transition thing, and how this is so hard on them and how they can’t understand and how brave and good they are for still accepting the trans person, like The Danish Girl, that I also hated, and the only thing it did is make me wish so hard there was a quirky teenage romantic movie about trans people, because this “trans only exist in drama or as a joke on itself” is boring as shit.

[nomorefreerent]

How do you know if you're trans? (I've been thinking about it for literally years but I still can't figure it out)

Jake answers:

content notice: dysphoria, breasts, vaginas & penises, eating disorders, weight, menstruation

That is an excellent excellent question. There isn’t one answer for this, but I will try to answer in a couple ways. First I’ll talk about how I know/didn’t know I’m trans (a man given the sex female when I was born) and give you some background into my life. Then I’ll link to ways others have answered your question - because it’s not the same for every individual.

Let’s start at the beginning, because I could start anywhere really, but chronologically seems easiest to follow. For my third birthday I got a big plastic toy dump truck and two green Tonka tractors with trailers. Apparently I’d asked for them, though I didn’t know that until a few years ago. Side story: my siblings and I had a babysitter because both my parents worked and my brother told them the toys (MY toys) were his and nobody questioned it and I forgot cause I was three. This is NOT how I knew I was trans. I feel like so many times you hear the narrative of MTFs (male to female transpeople) that says “I always knew I was a boy and only played with boys toys and then I was a tomboy when I was older and always knew.” This is not me. I played with all the toys Really they shouldn’t be gendered, that’s dumb, see decision tree below:

So I had the dump trucks and also videogames and barbie dolls and toy soldiers and played soccer and swam and danced and did art and dressed up as a princess and had nerf guns. When I was a little kid I didn’t feel disconnected from my body or feel like I was in the wrong one. People just told me “you’re a girl”, and I didn’t give two tapdancing fucks - as Aaron Ansuini would say (link to his youtube here)

When I was about eight what would happen to by body in puberty started to sink in. I realized I would get breasts and wanted no part in that. In about 5th grade (11 years old) I started to go through puberty and thus began me feeling disconnected with my body. I remember the day actually that I noticed my nipples felt different and remember being so sad. I absolutely hated wearing bras and would instead layer clothing to conceal my developing breasts. I had a bra for gym class because we had to change into gym clothes in the locker room. I always felt super out of place in the girls’ locker room, didn’t want anyone to see my, and changed in a stall. Nonetheless, I had a bra just to fit in. Immediately after school I’d rip it off. At some point though, not wearing a bra made me more aware of my boobs because they’d grown so I started to wear tight sports bras. I even wore them to sleep, not the best for the body I know. I didn’t know that this was gender dysphoria until much later when I started watching trans guys on youtube. I also had and have dysphoria surronding my hips and tried to combat that in a very unhealthy way beginning in 11th grade (16 years old).

When I was 16 I realized that if I lost weight I wouldn’t have as much boob and would loose some of my curves. Let it be known that I was a very normal and healthy weight. Over 4-8 months I lost about 25 lbs (~11 kg) and although I was still in the healthy bmi range, I had very very little fat on me, lost my period, and was tired and irritable all the time. That restricting soon turned into binging and binging and purging when I injured my wrist and couldn’t exercise. That sparked a fast and dark downward spiral right before I started college in 2010. After one semester of school I knew something was wrong though I was not about to admit that it had to do with my eating behaviors. I eventually took time off and accepted I had developed an eating disorder. Over the next few years I was in and out of treatment. It was like I would realize one layer of my identity, get scared, use food/lack of food to cope, and then try to build back up to where I could work on myself again.

So my eating disorder really kept me in the dark in regards to my gender. Most importantly it allowed me to disconnect myself from my body. Treatment was great in the sense that I learned to “accept” and nourish my body, but I took acceptance to mean “ignore your body cause you can’t do anything to change it. It is what it is.” I would have moments of identity awareness. When I was 19 I came out as gay, and though the word never quite fit me, it helped me to feel a bit more free. It was progress!

So I was on Youtube watching videos about being gay and eventually I found some transguys and started watching their content as well. I think the first person I watched was Dana (his Youtube here). At one point in 2012 I was watching a video and realized some things 1)holy shit this is me  2)HOLY SHIT  3)I CANNOT DEAL WITH THIS, I’m gonna pretend I’m not trans (and keep watching these transguys’ videos tho). I think what helped me a lot was watching all these transguys on Youtube without pressuring myself to label my own identity. I’d always had a the inkling that there was more I needed to realize, one more puzzle piece I had to find, before I could be 100% in recovery. Slowly I started to realize that my body was fine, it just wasn’t the body for me! Though I don’t feel like I’m in the wrong body, I do now feel like I went through the wrong puberty. This year, for whatever reason, everything started falling into place. It had been an immense build up, each new part of my gender identity building on the one before until my transness was finally undeniable. (There is a lot more here, but I’m trying to not write a novel). There were still doubts even when I realized I was probably trans. Coming out, changing my name and pronouns, and trying all that out is when really validated “yes, I am trans, this feels right, I feel free.”

I don’t have dysphoria to some parts of my body that some other transmen do. I am fine having a vagina, “female” genitals, and periods. I am pursuing physical transition (testosterone and top surgery) and hope to start T August 25th!

I know some of this is disjointed and clumsy, feel free to message me or ask more questions!

Links to Youtubers I thought were incredibly helpful:

thegreatwhaley

uppercasechase1

brittasaurus

theslofox

valjamesp

ftmtranstastic