#i hate agab language so much

[largemandrill]

I desperately need people to stop saying afab when they just mean cis women. I also (for separate reasons) need them to stop saying “afab trans people” when they just mean trans men they don’t agree with.

[jellyfemmedyke]

I hate agab language so much. It gives me hella dysphoria and anxiety. Why can't we just say "uterus, vagina, penis." when talking about reproductive rights, we could say reproductive rights, instead of pushing everyone into fucked up categories that don't tell anyone anything. the gender I was assigned says nothing about who I am currently or my gender.

[genderqueerdykes]

tme/tma has nothing to do with genitals. trans women and other transfems who have had bottom surgery are still affected by transmisogyny.

tme/tma has nothing to do with genitals.

that's a lie and we both know it is. why would you send this to someone thinking this is some type of "gotcha"? people use "TME" as a stand in for AFAB and "TMA" is a stand in for AMAB. it has to do with your gender assigned at birth, not what genitals someone has presently. you're being obtuse on purpose and i'm not falling for it.

trans men and mascs are affected by transmisogyny. cis women are affected by transmisogyny. gender non conforming cis men are affected by trans misogyny. genderqueer people are affected by transmisogyny. gay men are affected by transmisogyny. nonbinary people are affected by transmisogyny. genderfluid people are affected by transmisogyny. agender people are affected by transmisogyny. bigender people are affected by transmisogyny. intersex people are affected by trans misogyny. a LOT more than just transfems & trans women are affected by transmisogyny. that is why these terms don't work.

the point still stands that these terms are utterly useless, and that yes, they are in fact about someone's genitals- just the ones they were born with, not the ones they may have presently. people are using it to ask what other people's AGAB is. it's a stand-in for asking for someone's AGAB. so yes, anon, yes it is about genitals. you can't defend using transphobic, intersexist language with some type of "hah, trans women with vaginas are affected by transmisogyny" gotcha.

of course trans women and transfems who have gotten bottom surgery are still affected by transmisogyny. i never said they weren't. people aren't using TME/TMA like this and you know they aren't, however. if a trans woman is born with a vagina, they're still discriminated against by these terms. they're using it to try to figure out if someone is AFAB or not to bully and discredit them and we both know this. when people get angry and talk about how much they hate "TME"s they are referring to AFAB people and people they perceive to be AFAB and we both know this. denying it won't make that not the case.

you can be obtuse all you want, but nobody using TME/TMA like that and you know they aren't. don't defend this language. it's useless bullshit that's being used to create a divide between AFAB and AMAB trans people, and leaves out intersex people in one fell swoop. care about this.

excellent additions from the tags of another post about this:

[transgenderfabianseacaster]

fuck it ! updated masterpost of my bad kids hcs :)))))

adaine - she/her. transfem. aroallo (specifically arospec. shes not entirely sure beyond that). autistic. has anxiety + depression (but is working on it !!!) and pots. passes out a lot because of that and also The Visions

fabian - he/him. transmasc (has been on t for years. passes well. people just assume hes a cis guy w tits). bisexual demiromantic (he does Not know the latter bit though. he thinks he's allo <33). fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. hard of hearing due to ear infections (related to fasd) in early childhood. he has hearing aids and knows common and halfling sign language. in addition to missing one eye he also doesn't have peripheral vision in the other and his residual vision is pretty desaturated. (the Knife To The Eye thing in freshman year caused an infection that spread to his optic nerve and he didnt . get help . for a bit too long <33.) (he also has epilepsy and gets sick more often due to said infection.) uses a long cane as well as other assistive arcanotech idk. also had bpd (specifically impulsive bpd)

fig - any pronouns. genderfluid. bi. has lupus and fibromyalgia. for her that mostly means chronic pain + chronic fatigue + brain fog. uses a cane or a rollator. adhd + bpd

gorgug - she/they. transfem. pan. type 1 diabetes. autistic + semiverbal (aac user) + ocd

kristen - they/she. nonbinary. lesbian. adhd. hypermobile eds and gastroparesis. their joints are Constantly dislocating. they usually wear various braces and kt tape to prevent that.

riz - he/any neos (esp likes e/em and xe/xem). agender? but in a masc way (goblins have a different understanding of gender than other races. they see gender as very fluid and not tied at all to whatever sexual organs they have. most goblins look similar regardless of gender/agab. no one remembers what riz's agab is lmao. including his family.) aroace. he basically has fantasy multiple sclerosis - autoimmune response after the kalina curse got expelled from his body. he has trouble moving his legs and (increasingly so as of late jy) his hands. uses a wheelchair + wears afos. he cant really feel his legs below his knees. doesn't have strong trunk support so he has a strap to keep him upright. brain fog which is the only part of that he's really frustrated by. audhd.

BONUS:

aelwyn - she has psychosis and is autistic. she masked a Lot in childhood but is now beginning to unlearn that ! she's also aroallo. im adaine and im aelwyn the aroallo autistic sisters

ayda - she/her. transfem. audhd

ragh - has fetal alcohol syndrome as well. helps fabian unlearn the self hate he has surrounding it 🙂‍↕️ also psoriasis

mazey - she/her. transfem. deaf

younger applebees siblings (only sadie as really figured this all out at this point though) -

sadie - (formerly bucky) she/her. transfem. bi. i love her so so so much did you guys know. i lvoe her. ouagh.

bricker - he/him. gay. bidactylous symbrachydactyly (left hand)

cork - any pronouns. genderqueer. aroace.

they all have adhd

OCS:

felicity 'lissie' faeth - (fig and fabian's little sister.)she/her. sapphic. unilateral cleft lip (hallariel had her get surgery for it but there's still a distinct scar). fetal alcohol spectrum disorder + anxiety. eldritch knight fighter

runa gorrash - (lissie's partner <333) she/he. autistic and has sturge-weber syndrome, which in her case causes a port wine birthmark, glaucoma, weakness on left side, and seizures. sometimes uses a cane and/or braces (knee and shoulder). she has a service bear, ukul, who alerts for seizures and is also her primal companion. orcish ranger/cleric. fat genderfuck butch !!!! my best friend

lio - (fabian's half sibling, theyre both kids of bill seacaster. raised in leviathan, ayda's childhood friend.) they/any. transverse forearm deficiency. aka their left arm ends about 2 inches from their elbow. also a scar on their forehead from where whitclaw tried to suck their brain out lmao. human rogue/sorcerer

[this-is-exorsexism]

I just saw a post about how transmasc and transfem aren't labels you can "opt out of," how if you transition like this then you ARE transmasc and if you transition like that then you ARE transfem, whether you like it or not. Because it's just a "fact" about your transition, not an identity.

And it just made me so sad. I'm transneutral. Sure, my transition might look binary to an outside observer. Yeah, people might look at me now and see me as far more masculine than I was before I transitioned. But that's other people. Not me.

Does this count as exorsexism? I feel like it does but I'm also worried that they're right, and maybe my identity is offensive and maybe I AM lying for not calling myself transmasc. I don't know. I just feel really bad and insecure right now.

this is exorsexism.

through and through.

i'm assuming this post was by a trans person, because cis people tend to be less educated about trans terminology in the first place, and will often just parrot whatever is popular but not think of it any further.

a lot of trans people, even some nonbinary people, seem to be really invested in upholding the gender binary in its various forms. "these are the two options you have, and you cannot be neither" is just gender binary 2.0.

people want to group especially nonbinary people by our AGAB, because a lot of people can't handle the fact that us simply saying "i'm nonbinary" doesn't give them any information about our AGAB, about "where we came from" the way that "trans woman" or "trans man" does. never mind the fact that some intersex people who were (c)afab are trans women and some intersex people who were (c)amab are trans men, but these people usually aren't just exorsexist, they're intersexist too. if the term "trans woman" doesn't necessarily tell you what gender someone was assigned at birth anymore, apparently the term loses all its meaning, since everything hinges on AGAB... somehow. but i digress.

and people have definitely started using transmasculine and transfeminine as "acceptable" shorthands for AGAB language, whether they admit it or not. if you were afab, your only options are cis woman, trans man or transmasculine nonbinary, and if you're transmasculine nonbinary we treat you like a man anyway, and vice versa for amab folk.

bonus points if it all hinges on transition steps, i.e. if you were amab and take oestrogen, you're automatically transfem regardless of how you identify (and if you don't take enough transition steps you're basically cis anyway - their line of thinking, not mine).

because we're definitely dismantling cissexism by still acting as if hormones are inherently masculine or feminine. we're definitely deconstructing the gender binary by just changing the words from male and female to transmasc and transfem. (heavy sarcasm)

so much of it goes back to people really just upholding cissexism and the binary, probably without even realising it. by saying it's about "what we were born as" or about how we transition, people are just using the same violence on nonbinary people as cis people use on all trans people. just because cis people assume you're masculine, trans people somehow think it's what you want and do it as well.

transmasc and transfem nonbinary people obviously exist. it's part of many people's identity. others actually do just use the term as a shorthand to what they're transitioning from, where they're transitioning to, how they're transitioning, certain experiences of transmisia, etc. and that's fine - if you use it like that for yourself and don't force it onto others.

and people also love framing words that have a heavy nonbinary association as somehow offensive, dirty or otherwise bad. people will go so far to avoid saying the word "nonbinary", they hate the word "enby", in fact, they hate when we have any term that is more specific than nonbinary, and they also hate our trans- terms, be it transneutral, transandrogynous or the many others. they really hate when we're actually somewhat equal.

[evilwickedme]

When I was in twelvth grade my school brought in a trans man to talk about his experience and I wanted him to know so bad that I had changed my name and that I accepted him and I was weirdly jealous in a way I did not understand bc I was perfectly happy being a teenage girl, right? In eleventh grade I decided I wouldn't shave my legs for a year because I was sick of beauty standards and then my dad time me I was hairier than him so obviously there was something wrong and when I got diagnosed with pcos my parents dragged me to laser hair removal, and then reminded me I needed to keep going every few months. I kept going, even though I hated it. I miss my leg hair. When I was 15 I changed my name. When I was 18 I shaved my all the hair on my head off even though I'd always loved my curls because they were too damaged to deal with anymore, and when a haredi man approached me to ask me if I wanted to put on tefillin, mistaking me for a boy, I spent the rest of the week strangely giddy and entirely unable to take it out of my mind, even though he'd immediately taken it back. I used to say before I came out as bi that I was an ally and didn't want to speak over queer voices, and I said the same thing about trans people, but I kept feeling like I had some much to say, like this mattered in ways I couldn't put into words. I've wanted a hysterectomy for years, and was devastated to learn it's incredibly unlikely that a doctor would agree to perform the procedure, since I was a young woman.

I thought, again and again, about that man. He thought he was a lesbian for the longest time. He used to avoid gendering himself, even in an incredibly gendered language, had gotten so used to it it came naturally. His partner considered herself a lesbian, except for him. I didn't know how to feel about that. What does it mean to keep your identity static when the people you love change around you. Is it easy to accept?

I changed my pronouns to she/they, then they/them, then in Hebrew I said please pick either she/her or he/him but stick to one or the other, then I said stick with he/him in Hebrew, then I switched to they/he. I said I was a demigirl, then I said I was nonbinary but didn't feel comfortable being called trans, then I started applying the trans umbrella to myself, then I said was transmasc. Around me so many of my friends were transitioning, mtf, ftm, exploring using gender neutral pronouns before settling back on their agab, exploring gender neutral pronouns and stopping there. A friend of mine told me that they were jealous of me because I was so sure of my identity as a person in their early twenties, while they were thirty and only just discovering themself. Did I know my identity? I wasn't sure. Another friend told me, they're currently nonbinary but they could see a future where they detransition. I cannot understand why my mtf friend was so sure she's a girl, when I didn't know, I had no clue, I didn't know where to go from here.

I thought of that man again.

I wanted to take my tits off and put them back on again and take them off again, just to see how it felt. I bought a binder, I told my parents it's just to fit into my button up shirts. I hadn't worn a dress or a skirt since the year after I graduated high school. I stopped wearing bras. I wore a button up shirt and a blazer whenever I could. I tried to find myself in the performance of gender.

I changed my named when I was just about to turn to fifteen, and a teacher followed me from middle school to high school, and she asked me if I was still going by that, cause she wasn't sure if I'd meant it, if it would've stuck. It stuck for ten years, even as I asked myself, is this really what I want? Is this my name? Would it be okay if I changed my name again, is it allowed? I told everyone who'd listen it's okay to changed your name for any reason, at any time.

I don't remember that man's name. I don't remember most of his story. I remember picturing him walking around, remember wishing I could pretend I wasn't a girl just for an evening. I wanted...

Well.

[transgenderpolls]

I also want to say this as a transmasculine nonbinary person that I’ve seen a LOT of trans men be uncomfortable with the term being universalised to include them. Transmasculine started out as a nonbinary label (I think, I could be mixed up) that described enben who were transitioning to a more masculine point instead of a neutral one. Obviously trans men can use transmasculine if they feel like it fits, but still I think it’s best to not just lump us together with the label because there are so many trans men who aren’t comfortable with it (I’ve actually seen a lot of people saying that it straight up makes them dysphoric because they take it as being seen as less of a man)

Same goes for non-transmasculine afab nonbinary people— there’s actually a lot of people calling to just get rid of the terms because they see it as just an indicator of agab. I’ve actually encountered more transneutral afab enben who hate being called transmasculine than I have trans men who hate it. It makes sense, the entire point for transneutral enben is transitioning to some sort of complete middle, or outside of gender alltogether, and aligning them with a specific gender is not only just incorrect but also very uncomfortable and dysphoria inducing for a lot of them. A lot of people also really don’t like the idea of t being ‘transmasculine transition’, which I totally get because I feel the same way when someone says that t is inherently ‘male transition’

(btw this is all stuff I’ve heard from these groups, I’m not just saying what I think goes through their heads or anything)

On a personal note, I also don’t like the universalisation of it because it feels like aligned enben can’t really have a term to describe ourselves— like, being a transmasc or transfem nonbinary person is a very complicated experience, most of us really struggle with this sort of balancing act of androgyny and maleness/femaleness, we’re like an in-beteeen of an in-between and it’s really fucking hard to deal with. It would just be nice if we could have our own label and space to discuss it and help each other with it. But I also get that now a lot of trans men resonate with the term and it would very much be a dick move to just say ‘nope, you can’t use this anymore, fuck you lol’, like, no

idk, I think about this a lot and the topic comes up quite frequently so I have a lot to say on it, but I can’t exactly articulate it, so I hope this made sense sorry

if anyone has sources to show otherwise i'd be happy to see them but i've always been under the impression that "transmasc(uline)" and "transfem(inine)" were umbrella terms first and foremost, with origins in the world of medical transitioning, particularly HRT, that sought specifically to include non-binary people and therefore not imply that everyone going through [medical] masculinization or feminization necessarily identifies as a man or a woman. whether the end goal is conceptualized by the individual as a masc/fem role, it's just a matter of having useful, succinct language to describe shared experience. i really don't see it as denoting agab any more than the term "trans man/woman" does. like if you really are not comfortable denoting your agab at all, it sounds like you're not comfortable talking about being trans period.

as for the binary trans men who hate it i'm gonna be real, i cannot comprehend being mad about someone using an umbrella term simply to address you and others who have significant things in common with you in one breath. i'm a binary trans man and i won't lie, i have had my phase of whining about being "lumped in with non binary people," but like... that's what it was. it was a phase that i'm over because i've grown up and now realize that it doesn't actually dilute my identity to simply have things in common with other people. it would be like a square being mad about being called a rectangle because "you're erasing the fact that i am SPECIFICALLY a square!" literally no, no one is erasing anything. especially not in the context of a poll that's just trying to not draw really arbitrary lines, and which you also literally don't have to answer.

i think it's completely valid to be made dysphoric or uncomfortable by any terminology, but there's a point at which you kind of have to accept that that is a you thing? if a term's literal function is to be inclusive and you feel excluded somehow bc you don't like that you're not being acknowledged as fundamentally different than the others who that term applies to... like i'm sorry, that's kind of ridiculous. you have to accept that it's ridiculous and not anyone else's problem.

also i truly think that if it's coming to contentions such as "just because i'm a man doesn't mean i'm masculine" or ppl otherwise trying to draw hard lines between masc and man/male as definitions... i truly think you are just trying to make this more complicated than it is. like we do need words to describe things, lol.

in any case my thing - at least on this blog - is always gonna be in the context of making polls. firstly i'm working with a character and option limit. secondly, the questions being asked make it sometimes relevant to use some terms that lump groups together, denote agab, etc. the more i think about it, i don't think there's going to be a solution that satisfies everyone, and i also don't think that there's a huge problem with that.

(btw none of this is directed at anon, you articulated yourself fine, i'm just jumping off of your talking points)

edit: irt anon not liking the universalization of "transmasc" - it just occurred to me, would "transmasc nonbinary" not simply work? like it seems to me that you just need to add the word nonbinary and now you're gucci

[anti-transphobia]

I do feel bad having a lot of reblogs centering around transmasc issues specifically and not more posts about transfem and nonbinary people, but unfortunately, repulsive lateral violence is the current discourse, which means that a lot of posts made about those issues are said BECAUSE "who is actually the most oppressed" is the current topic of discussion. So even posts that seem normal or even agreeable have language you have to look suspiciously at and when you check op you do in fact find that those posts about transmisogyny are because they got mad trans men are speaking up about the violence they face.

It's very similar to how ace discourse was. Completely normal seeming posts, in the context of a really bad couple of years where saying you're ace/aro publicly even once led to getting anon hate, were actually criticisms of the idea that other people face hardships. Hell, though people scoffed at it when I said it, even completely unrelated FANDOM posts could be clocked as being made by someone whose current fixation is hating on aspec people by the way they keysmashed. Because it wasn't just a discourse, but like a fandom, and fandoms follow quirks and trends and I could read it in a keysmash easily, check their blogs, confirm I was right, and block.

Anyway my point being that the issues, general and more specific, faced by non-transmasc trans people INCLUDING those issues caused by other trans ppl is EXTREMELY important to me, however I just unfortunately don't see a lot of people talking about it in good faith. And hell, me talking about my experiences about how afab trans people have harassed, sexually assaulted, misgendered, body shamed me, and leveraged their agab specifically to harm and exclude me for not being like them is something that I can't talk about without worry of it coming off as "trans men are evil". That's just the current culture. A reasonable worry of a post sounding like thinly veiled transphobia is silencing victims of the thing these transmasc oppression deniers claim to hate.

Anyway I definitely do reblog good posts like that when I see em but I'm really not on Tumblr much anymore

[mtg-player1]

based take:

afab/amab language for bodily features is explicitly exclusionary [not my original]

I know I've already hated on the terms before, but they can never be hated too much tbh.

But yeah, this was a reply with context so yeah basically it's about how gender affirming care and intersex variations exist. Like people use "afab"/"amab" to mean:

"person who was assigned [insert sex] at birth, lived as a [insert gender associated with that sex] (was treated completely as one, no one figured out they were trans if applicable, experienced [gendered] Socialization ™), experienced a traditional [insert sex] puberty, has not medically transitioned, may or may not be trans (incl nonbinary)".

(this is my definition, based on observations from conversations. Feel free to dispute or add to it)

And half of those things may not apply to the people you're actually referring to when saying "amabs" or "afabs" or "amab nonbinary people" or "trans afab people in the us" etc. experience / experienced / know how much [effect of puberty] sucks / are affected by this law / etc

[small disclaimer at the end that this mostly applies to universal claims (not "many", but "all", and "the", not "some"). And it doesn't apply at all for personal identification. But in general I urge you to use specific terms, or in by another method avoid such binaries. Or just not specify who it applies to. ]

another addition: don't refer to people you don't know if are comfortable with it as "agab".

[commodorknotanymorrington]

I hate agab language so much watch me just start saying I'm amab when I get bottom surgery this summer to fuck with ppl who use that shit in situations it doesn't need to be used in

[doriana-gray-games]

If it`s a strange question, feel free to ignore it. Heads up, English is not my first language. You said that Sherlock`s gender will affect the gameplay, right? I have a thought or two about fem mc, but nothing on nb one. Will we be able to experience "misgendering" of some sorts? Yes, we were referred as "Ser" so far, but considering the time period we are bound to have some...episodes: Sir/Madam may appear (or Sherlock`s agab may pop up in general), some prejudice towards such people,etc.

Not a strange question at all! ☺️

This is similar to the topic I discussed the other day, in that, I still have decisions to make about it and nothing is completely decided yet. As the game is written right now, which I only did because that’s how I saw most games I played handle it, is that nb characters are treated very “unrealistically” for 1800s London. Meaning that, they are always referred to correctly or vaguely by NPCs. Which is probably not how Victorians would act. Most content right now is the same as either the man/woman Sherlock versions, with some light variations sometimes. So far the story doesn’t have as much unique nonbinary Sherlock content as I might like.

I would say I’m leaning towards changing that. Making the nb experience more “realistic”, include more unique content / references, but the problem with that is it comes with some negatives.

My idea was that I could add an option that was something like: you were born male/female? But you are neither (or something else—still working on it). And so some NPCs might misgender you, or ask for your preference, or be unsure what to say at all. If I did that I think it could make internal story logical sense to add more unique content around the player being nonbinary, as it would already be a topic that NPCs would bring up. But also, some players very much dislike, or feel really bad, when misgendered in a game. So it’s… hard, to decide. No matter what I do, quite a few people will hate it :(

One fix to it all would be to include everything, and to separate pronouns from nonbinary expression, and ask if the player wants to always be correctly gendered. I know that is what would be best. And I would like to make everyone happy. But I just, I think I would get owerwhelmed, to be completely honest. The games is complex as it is, especially juggling how NPCs treats the player in such instances, and I think I would be in danger of putting too much on my shoulders should I attempt it all.

As an aside, If i decide to add the more complex/”realistic” nonbinary game variant I would like to add the option for Watson to be nonbinary too. It’s something I’ve thought quite a bit about. But it would also be something that will be implemented later rather than sooner, and I can’t make any promises.

So, again, your opinions are always important to me. If you feel you are an affected player in this, know that commenting or sending me a message (anonymous or not) definitely sways my decisions. (Especially if cordial).

(Also: When I used ser I meant it to be non-gendered, I googled quite a bit to find some good non-gendered titles, but perhaps I was mistaken)

[blinkbats]

Ok so your tags got me thinking. I have said “i am a woman” and i also hate how women are perceived, and being perceived as a woman. Does hating being perceived as a woman make me less a woman or more a man or not a woman entirely? That on the face of it seems false but it also looks like what I would be saying if I said I was genderqueer for this feeling. Would that make woman the status of being down with being perceived “like how woman are perceived”…? Despite that being a recursive statement. If so is sexism “caused by” people identifying as women in part? Like if we didn’t identify as women that would constitute not perpetuating the sexist cycle with our own self belief (about womanly roles) and so to identify with woman or man itself is sexist(??) regardless of agab. Gah it’s all so mystifying in the worst emptiest way. I think I might just check out and focus on math. Where shit makes sense and is useful to me.

Thats the thing is I don't think gender is like math at all I think it's a very vague thin silly thing like we made it up. It's the same as language you can make up new rules if you want or drop them entirely it's up to you to figure out the way you wanna move through the world. I don't know about the sexism part of it tho unfortunately I haven't spent nearly as much time thinking abt that over the years but I do think both men and women would benefit from freeing themselves AND each other from the strict concepts of man or woman and perception thereof. I can't do math at all btw I checked out in like 5th grade but have fun with um. What's a math word. Graphs and polynomials or whatever.

[westcoastbroadway]

starship is a trans allegory: a masterpost

this will be long as shit and i'll probably condense and clean up my thoughts later but for now

lets get cracking

right off the bat, bug discovers a different way of life complete with language that his world doesn't understand, especially through the internet

as all the bugs talk about their jobs and future, they all talk about what they want to DO, but bug talks about what he wants to BE. they want to do various things but his dream is to be someone else fundamentally

tell me you don't see the parallels between the way farm planet lets you name yourself after things you like and how trans/nonbinary people usually pick new names for themselves

you could parallel being trans with wanting to be a starship ranger pretty easily but then bug literally says "there's no choice involved in what you are given/one mind, one voice, one body to live in"

homeslice literally wants a new body what more do you need

just kidding we're going to keep going

"who are they to say what I am?"

"my name's bug" "like a bUG?" "...no." vehemently denying that your name is a "AGAB" name

also just the general plot line "february has never seen bug's body and thus thinks he's a human" and he doesn't know how to tell her that that's not his "natural state" or however you wanna put it

"oh bug, you're a real man" "...I sure am"

"you sure are a beautiful woman" "incorrect statement" "you don't think you're beautiful? :(" "I am not a woman" nonbinary megagirl rights

"sometimes I don't feel very much like a man..." also nonbinary tootsie noodles rights

this is the biggest reason: to achieve his goal, bug has to physically alter his body. he can't become a starship ranger without transitioning

again, repeating "there's no choice involved in what you are given/one mind, one voice, one body to live in"

and the repetition emphasizes that being a starship ranger = being a human/transitioning because the "you wanna be a starship ranger" motif comes in immediately afterwards

i mean like all of status quo

but also specifically "to always be a starship ranger/it's everything, it's everything i am"

again, the other people view their jobs as just that, jobs. but bug sees it as his core identity

okay so bug becomes a starship ranger and by all accounts he should be totally happy and vibing but no because he feels like he's lying to february since he wasn't always a human

the conflict once again doesn't stem solely from bug wanting to be a ranger, it also stems from his physical transition to get there

and how many trans ppl can relate to the "i know they love me now but they hate trans ppl so if I came out it'd ruin our relationship"? bc replace trans w bug and that's exactly what's happening

like "you're perfect and wonderful how I hoped you'd be/but it's really enough for you to be just a human being/and I know you'll agree that's all we need/to make all our dreams come true"

also, i loVE that they directly parallel commander up who has explicitly undergone changes to his body (not even considering that he's lost parts of his body that are often directly conflated with gender identity) to bug here

"what if someone likes you, a lot, but they only like you because everything they know about you is a lie?" "so this is about me...and how i've been lying to you",,, could it be more explicit

like of all the injuries Up could have gotten, he literally lost the one thing that transphobes and much of cis society says is what makes you a man

and then Up saying that if bug can accept him, february can accept bug aww

+ february "irreconcilably" hating bugs

tootsie changing his last name to megagirl :')

bug's confession that pincer helped him switch bodies and thus he is not a starship ranger bc being a ranger is inextricably bound to physical form in his eyes

+ everyone turning on him just like he feared they would

"i used to think that i was the proof you didn't need the balls to be tough, but now I know...you, you are the proof"

"why did you lie to me bug?" "...when pincer here gave me the chance not just to be with you but to be one of you? I took it. but i didn't think, because being a starship ranger has been the only thing i've wanted more than anything my whole life"

"So i lied"

"I know the truth now, everybody. I'm not a starship ranger. I'm a bug"

"bug, you may be a damn bug, but you are the finest starship ranger I have ever seen" and finally bug can see that no matter what he is he can still be a ranger

and then at the end he gets a modified job that he can still do as a bug

"well I thought I hated bugs, but there's one that makes me feel like I'm more than I ever thought I could be" "it's that bastard pincer isn't it?"

cause this is where starship differs from the little mermaid which it's loosely based on. ariel gets to keep her legs, but bug has to stay a bug. yet february and his friends love him anyway.

eep op ork this show i stg

[axeknee]

Im honestly kind of disappointed in the obsession with agabs in the trans community. Its incredibly useful to describe some of the needs and vulnerabilities a trans person might encounter, but the way its become omnipresent and gotten even into cis vocab and regular discourse is terrible. I feel super alienated by it at times as its become another vector for stereotypes and gender expectations and lateral agression. Its needed but i often hate it.

It mske it hard for me to communicate myself as it makes me wary and reticent to communicate the masculine and nonbinary parts of myself fir fear of the immediate push into a binary box. Bc it is a binary, and ik thats a reflection of the binary forced from birth, but its a piece of theory and language that doesnt really reflect my trans experience and i think maybe for others too.

Yeah my agab affects shit but also everytime Im in the outside world, i am having a gender and a set of expectations applied to me and that changes the treatment i recieve daily. People assume im a trans woman or a trans man or nonbinary and then they get to pick what type of nonbinary they think i am "the afab" or "the amab" and then what set of stereotypes they get to apply to me and its really just "your personality is defined by what i think your sex is".

And community spaces arent better! Even trans people get very offended if you tell them they were wrong abt your gender or act against their expectations. And as I transition physically, those genders i get pushed on me are gonna change too as well as the expectations and issues that come with it. Like my experience is nonbinary because people insist on binaries no matter where you are, even if theyre familiar with and accepting of nonbinary people!

So yeah. I fucking hate agab talk dominating discussions. Bc that piece of theory can only tell you so much abt people's experiences. Eventually you have to listen. And the amount of people i see using agab as an excuse to ignore the experiences of trans people is enormous.

[when-youre-demi]

So, I’ve been questioning my gender

A year ago, I discovered I’m demisexual and demiromantic. And ever since, I’ve been wondering about my gender.

I’ve always identified myself as a woman, my assigned gender at birth. Mostly because for most of my life I didn’t know other genders existed, but also because I just never thought it could apply to me.

But thinking about it now, I realise how I just never connected to other women and girls. I always said that being friend with girls was hard for me because went it came to “girls things” or even just things about being a women, I just never related. Of course, I never related when it came to dating and all that, I’m demiaroace and never dated anyone, so there was that, but just, I never totally fitted with them. With my (girl) friends, I always felt like I only showed a part of my personality, that I was being fully myself. When I was with my guy friends, I never felt that. With them, I’m fully being myself.

Also, I never fitted into any boxes people created. I always hated how society defined women, I could never relate to it, but I always thought it was just the feminist in me. I was also rejected and bullied at school for being different. By girls and boys. What I liked, how I was and what motivated me was always wrong in the eyes of everyone. The bullying stopped when I was 17 and finished High School (I’m from Québec, Canada, just so you know). When I started Cegep (a Quebec school we have to go to before going to university), I wasn’t bullied anymore, but I still didn’t fit anywhere. There was always something that kept me from being close to others and for years I’ve been wondering what was wrong with me, why was I so different. When I got to university, I was able to connect with people better because we had the same interests, but I still wasn’t that close to anyone. There was only one girl who is still my friend with who I truly feel myself with, but she’s also different and is really supportive. I came out to her as demi too. But funnily, making friends on internet was always easy for me. I’m maybe going a bit off topic, but I’ve been wondering if this lack of connection with others have something to do with my gender.

Also, my interests and what I like have always been a mix of what people consider men’s interest and woman’s interest. But for me, everyone can like what they want and it does not define their gender! But I often heard things like “Oh, you like that? You’re such a tomboy” or “Oh, you like that, you’re such a girl.” And I always hated it! Like, I can wear makeup if I want and I can also do sports if I want, that does not make me a man or a woman. Overall, I always hated gender rules and always wanted to destroy those ideas, even as a kid. My mom thinks pretty much the same, so I was raised that way. My dad too. So maybe that’s why I never thought I could something else than a woman? I don’t know.

But in this whole struggle with people in general, fiction have been my comfort zone. I started reading novels and stories when I was 8. I never stopped ever since. And one thing I’ve noticed throughout all those years is that my favorites characters are often, if not always, male characters. And that I never fully related to female characters. And I never really understood why. Sometimes, the female characters were poorly written, so there’s that, but often, the female characters were really nice and I liked them a lot, despite having a preference for the male characters, but I still couldn’t relate to them. I however know I’m not a boy, but I’ve still wondered why I could only relate to male characters.

As for how I present, I’d say, as feminine. I have curves and big breasts. I used to have butt length hair, but I cut them short (above my shoulders) in 2019 and I don’t plan on having long hair again. I actually went them even shorter than I have them now. I also love makeup (I used to be emo and still is my my heart because emos never die), but I don’t wear it as much as I used too (and also never considered makeup to be a woman thing, I always loved when boys were wearing makeup). If I didn’t have so much curves, I would probably look more androgynous, but even if on some days I wish I could look more androgynous, my woman body never bothered me. I don’t mind my big breasts and I don’t mind looking more feminine on some days by wearing skirts or dresses (I actually wrote skirts during my entire time in High School for my uniform, but only because it was more comfortable than the pants and I liked how my legs looked like in tights). I however know that how you present yourself doesn’t change or indicate your gender and clothes have no gender But you know, it’s still something that still makes me question if I’m really non-binary or not since I don’t mind looking and being referred as my agab.

And one thing that came to mind during this year was how I always used to say that I have an androgynous personality/brain. I never saw myself as fully woman, even if I never imagined not being a woman. And even now, it just seems weird in my head and I’m so lost. The terms demigirl and demifluid seemed like fitting terms, but still, there’s something that doesn’t seems right for me. Non-binary, which is an umbrella term, could be a good fit since I can’t define what I feel when it comes to my gender and I just can’t seem to get it, but at the same time, all my life I’ve considered myself as a woman… And also something that stops me from using that term is my first language. I speak French and for those who don’t know, it’s a much gendered language. And I never really minded it, it’s what I’m used to. I don’t see myself changing how people refers to me. I’m a proud big sister, I’m a proud woman. In English, I started using she/they pronouns to see how I feel about it (for now I really like it), but in French, I don’t see myself using the “iel” pronouns. As for my name, I love it and I don’t want to change it. In French, it’s a name used for girls, but in English (because my name is also used in English) it’s a gender neutral one so changing it doesn’t really change anything. I however always loved when my friends referred to me as Momo (my nickname) or just Mo.

But yeah, I’m just really lost about all of this and I’ve been reading and watching a lot of non-binary experience and educating myself on the subject, but I also wanted some feedback on my experience to see what people think about it, so don’t be afraid to send my an ask, message me or reply to this post, I’d love to have your thoughts! Thank you for reading this long ass post! Love you!

[starlightrosari]

Rant: Why I’m not cis (afab)

I thought back on why I’m trans and not cis, and I remembered that gender is so much more to me than stereotypes. Cis people often criticize nonbinary identity because they don’t understand why you can’t just be a nonconforming version of your agab (especially with afab people since it’s becoming very acceptable for women to present masculinely or be independent of themselves), but my gender goes beyond defying expectations and stereotypes. For me, what really made me realize I’m nonbinary is that I don’t like to imagine myself within the concept of women and I never have. It always felt reducing to who I am. I got along better with men than I did women because we had a shared sort of competitive nature and shared interests, but I also have a more feminine soft and intuitive side to me as well which makes me feel like neither binary is right for me because I don’t abide to either one entirely. I always felt this made me different than other people because neither binary group felt exactly right for me in the way I saw it was right for people around me. Then when I thought of myself as nonbinary finally, it clicked. It really explained who I am and always have been. Aside from my nature feeling nonbinary to me, I also realized I have always hated being referred to in feminine language and terms. Words like “girl, sister, women, pretty” always made me uncomfortable to hear, and in reflection I like more masculine language or neutral language a lot more. Words like “boy, kid, dude, bro, sibling, person, cool,” these words mean so much to me and make me feel so much more comfortable. I don’t just feel like I’m nonbinary because I’m different, but I also feel like the language around being nonbinary makes me a lot more comfortable. I also feel like there was a point in my life where I knew I was different then other people, so I performed a heavy amount of femininity to try and be the girl everyone wanted me to be, but that made me so uncomfortable and lost in who I was. I began to exist for other people and not myself. Being nonbinary feels like reclaiming who I am and taking back what was lost during that time to finally be me. Each day I feel a little more certain of myself since questioning things. I know better how I want to look, what I strive for, what my passions are, what my interests are, what my sexuality is, what feels right for me, and so much more. Being nonbinary is a scary thing, but also a very healing thing for me. I am so grateful I found this identity and allowed myself to connect with it.