#i have conversations with cis people all the time about transness for instance

[uncanny-tranny]

Stealth doesn’t help the trans community. I'm not saying we have to be an activist, wear a t-shirt announcing our trans status, but we have an obligation to help advance the human rights of the trans community we belong to

These viewpoints, while I can appreciate them, tend not to recognize the full scope of why people are stealth in the first place.

If stealth is not right for you, don't be stealth. However, not recognizing the nuances of stealth doesn't help trans people either. You can be an advocate for trans people without being out because you don't need to be out to help the trans community. Additionally, nobody is obligated to know one's trans status. I'm pretty stealth in my real life because I owe nobody that information about my identity. And I do my best to make trans folks one of my primary interests in my life. These two things coexist in my life, and that's why these viewpoints are generally confusing to me. You don't need to be out - or let anybody know about your transness - in order to advance trans rights. Hell, you don't even need to be trans to do that.

Nobody should ever be obligated to be stealth. The expectation that trans people fade away in society is wholly asinine. However, that doesn't mean that stealth inherently is problematic. Stealth is not inherently adverse to trans rights.

[cardentist]

the insistence that trans men face a lesser kind of oppression than trans women is no different from the insistence that bisexuality is a watered down form of gayness

all of these groups can have different relationships with their oppression thanks to how they’re presented and perceived by society (invisibility in media vs overt demonization in media for instance) but these differences being boiled down to one group being distinctly More Important or More Authentically Oppressed than the other is legitimately harmful.

on the surface both of these ideas seem to make a sort of logical sense. trans men are trans people But Men, and we all know how men are treated by society. bi people are like gay people except they also like people of a different gender, and straight people like it when you do that. add on the relative invisibility and there isn’t much in the mainstream to challenge those ideas. 

the truth of the matter is that invisibility affects more than just mainstream media. this idea that bi people or trans men have lesser experiences with oppression are gut instinct because their voices, their experiences, have a history of under-representation. people don’t Hear the experiences that the people in these groups face and then create conditions within queer (and activist) spaces that treat those people like their voices matter less because they’re privileged. this creates a cycle where these groups are devalued and talked over because these groups are Already devalued and talked over.

this all pares horribly with the atmosphere in discourse (and particularly exclusionist) spaces where identities are used as social capital that is enforced by tearing down whoever it is you think is encroaching on your space. it’s not uncommon to see posts talking about the experiences of one identity that goes out of their way to exclude whatever’s being spoken of from another identity that they see as lesser, deliberately putting another identity down and crushing their voices in the conversation to lift themselves up. (the sheer amount of times I’ve seen a post start with “trans men Never-” while describing something I experience in my daily life is exhausting)

the most insidious thing about this is the fact that when you create an environment where oppression is social capital then someone trying to assert their lived experiences with their oppression when you view them as under you is considered overtly aggressive and is often framed as bigotry within itself, because theoretically if they’re equal to you then your social capital has been lowered. you see this Constantly within ace discourse, with people doing things like calling asexuality Inherently homophobic because they didn’t want to acknowledge another marginalized group’s oppression.

this can be particularly dangerous when it leaks into broader and more serious subject matter and colors how people look at and talk about a marginalized identity’s experiences. one of the bigger arguments in these spaces was that trans men are literally incapable of experiencing misogyny and this notion was enforced by people directly discrediting trans men talking about their experiences (telling people that they’re lying about their experiences, that their experiences didn’t happen in the way or for the reason that they said they did, and sometimes intentionally misgendering the person to discredit it). I had personal experience with that which was, not great I gotta say.

this kind of target vitriol isn’t unique to any of the mentioned groups, in fact it’s something that goes both ways. there are trans men who are absolutely Horrible to trans women. but well meaning people in activist spaces are particularly skittish to stand up for trans men in this situation because they’re Aware that trans women are particularly marginalized (which they are) while also being affected by the lack of visibility for trans men. I’ve seen people who engage with Nasty discourse defending asexuality, nonbinary people, transness in general, bi/pan people, etc who outright Refused to get involved in when it was trans men on the line because it wasn’t Worth it to them. that’s definitely anecdotal evidence on my part but it’s emblematic of a bigger issue.

moreover, there’s a common trend in and around queer spaces where people identify vulnerable groups based on how established they are and go out of their way to hurt those on the outskirts because they know that it’ll be tolerated. from asexuals to nonbinary people to mogai to neogenders to pan people to intersex people to polygamous people to bi people and beyond. what you’ll see a lot of is transphobic cis women extend performative activism towards trans women while being overtly transphobic towards trans men and justifying it with the fact that trans men are Men and therefore they’re punching up.

this wasn’t really made with one solid thesis in mind and I honestly could keep rambling until the sun died out, but to cap things off I want to remind people of something that I still think about to this day.

quite a few years ago trans men were looking for a term that they could use to describe their specific experiences with the intersection of transphobia and misogyny, particularly when trans men were being pushed out of spaces talking About that intersection. obviously “transmisogyny” was taken, so someone came up with the idea of taking that word as the root and changing it to be clearly and obviously about trans men. which is how the word “transmisandry” came about.

if you’ve lived through gamergate you probably just flinched reading that if it was your first time, which is fair. the point of the term was to make its meaning as immediately identifiable as possible. if you know what transmisogyny means and you know what misandry means then it’s not too difficult to put together what transmisandry is supposed to mean if you’re seeing it for the first time. that said, it (perhaps predictably) sparked quite a bit of controversy. but the criticism it got? was that trans men didn’t Need a term to describe their own experiences. trans men aren’t oppressed for being men, “transphobia” should cover all of their experiences because they don’t Have unique experiences, trans men don’t Deserve a term to describe their own experiences. a lot of this was attributed to ignorance after people started pointing out how fucked up that reaction was, how it was kneejerk, but I don’t think that’s an excuse anymore. I don’t think it should Ever be an excuse.

nowadays people tend to use “transandrophobia,” not because the meaning is any different, not because it’s a functionally better term, but because people weren’t Willing to overlook their kneejerk reaction to Not take a term away from another marginalized group because their ability to talk about their own lived experiences in their own spaces mattered Less than momentary discomfort.

[thiswasinevitableid]

Hey so I would love to write trans stern, but I'm nervous because I'm not trans and I don't want to get it wrong. Do you have any tips?

Okay, so, in the interest of honesty I need to be clear that I am cis. I have professional and personal reasons why I have a decent level of understanding of trans issues. But I know there are other folks in this fandom who could talk about writing trans Stern who are trans themselves who may also have really good advice on this.

The things I keep in mind, and what I’d advice to keep in mind when writing trans characters are:

1) How are you planning to convey that part of the characters’ identity to the readers? Is it through a piece of internal monologue? Through a conversation with other characters? Through a part of their clothing, like a pin or a shirt? If they’re going to come out to a romantic interest, how will that happen? This prevents you from ending up with sentences like, “He walked his trans self down the street because he was trans and on the way to meet his friends, who did not mind that he was trans, all the while thinking to himself about his transness.”

2) How is their being trans relevant (or not) to the story you’re telling? For instance, when I wrote Duck as trans in “Metamorphosis,” the fact he’s trans turns up a few times in his own worries about how Indrid might react to his body in particular, or in how the two of them talk about boundaries related to sex. I included those scenes in part to reflect experiences of trans people I know, but also to show that Indrid is demonstrating he’s trustworthy and respectful of  who Duck is. In lots of one-shots I’ve done, Duck or Sterns transness is basically not mentioned except for physical details to let the reader know that’s what’s going on.

3) If the character encounters discrimination or harm for being trans, ask yourself why are you including that scene and if it really needs to be there? Trans narratives have only really broken away from the “lots of tragedy and suffering” in the last ten years. That’s why I tend to avoid those narratives in my storytelling (those issues still need to be talked about, but lordy have there been too many cis people doing that already. My own rule is that I don’t deadname or use slurs in my stories, because that can be triggering to trans readers and I can convey the thing I need to without doing that. For instance, in “Metamorphosis,” Duck hears a transphobic slur on a morning radio show and it gets to him. But there was no need to include the slur, because it mattered less what was said and more how Duck reacts. And that scene is only in there because I wanted it to set up his conversation with Indrid in two ways: first, it’s how he comes out to Indrid. And second, it’s the first time we see Indrid comfort him. It’s a step in their relationship not only because Duck comes out, but because he comes to Indrid for support about something that’s clearly makes him feel vulnerable.

4) How are you talking about their body, especially if you’re writing smut? Are you over-focusing on the fact that, if a character hasn’t physically transitioned in some ways, that part of their body doesn’t “match” their gender identity? Or are you making the scene about their whole body and experience? What words is the character comfortable using in relationship to their junk? If your character has physically transitioned in some way, be sure you know what that actually entails and how it may or may not affect things like sex.

Hopefully that helps you feel a little more confident? That’s not an exhaustive list by far, but it’s the things that I know I really run myself through when building a story with trans Stern.

[askanonbinary]

(1) Hey! I wanted to add something to the conversation about dfab and dmab being slurs or not. I agree with what Danny added about them at times being used in a cissexist way, as saying the person is trans but 'really' is m/f. I would add here that this is by no means a cis people only thing, there are plenty of trans people who either don't 'believe' in gender outside the binary, or police other ppl's (binary or nb) transness! But to add, i also think it's often used in an unnecessary way.

(2/3) I mean unnecessary in the sense that, often it does not matter how a person is assigned at birth. For example, when talking about someone you know who is NB, and wondering how to be a good friend and ally, hardly ever does this person’s assigned gender play a role? And even when talking about bodily features, for instance, one could just name the body part or issue without having to refer to assigned gender. And, it’s a matter of personal preference and identification as well, some ppl use

(3/3) cafab/camab instead, or do not want to use these terms at all, so I would say they are mostly useful for self descriptions (eg i might talk about being a femme afab nb and how that makes me doubt my gender sometimes), or, when making more general statements (eg discussing how amab nb people generally are made to feel less welcome in queer spaces). So that doesn’t mean i see them as slurs, but I do think they should be used with caution, if that makes sense!

The thing about the agab language and usage is it’s hugely personal. In an ideal world, such language would never be necessary. However, we do live in a society that focuses on the gender binary and individuals’ relationship to it. And for many people, the way that they relate to and interact with the gender binary has played a huge role in their lives, often in a formative way. 

This could be present in the way they were raised, or gender roles assigned to them growing up, it could be in the way they perhaps use their agab as camouflage in an otherwise unsafe environment.  It could even be in the way their agab plays a role in their nonbinary identity (such as in genderflux, genderfluid, demi-genders, and even one-binary-one-nonbinary-bigender individuals).

One disturbing, and potentially dangerous, use of this language is that it can in a sense “out” someone in regards to their assigned gender at birth. This is an argument I sometimes see in the binary trans communities, in that FTM and MTF can be used to say that a binary trans person is “really” the gender they were assigned at birth, and the same could be said of both agab language, but also of discussing individual body parts. As previously mentioned, our society is almost militantly binary in regards to the way it views gender, so to talk about an individual body part that is seen as being “only” present on or in one gender versus the other can effectively out a person’s assigned gender at birth in a similar way to saying it directly.

It’s true that sometimes people–both cis and binary trans–use the agab language to try to police others’ identities, as has been pointed out both by Danny and by you, dear anon. It’s an unfortunate reality, but it’s one that we cannot allow to keep us from expressing ourselves in the way that we feel most comfortable in doing so.

Ultimately, the choice to use such language as afab/amab, dfab/dmab, and cafab/camab is up to each person, individually, to decide for themselves. To be quite frank (I’m not trying to be rude, and I am so, so sorry if I come off that way), it is not up to you, me, or anyone to decide how any particular person chooses to refer to themselves in relation to the gender they were assigned at birth, cautiously or otherwise.

~Mod Ceibh

[colorisbyshe]

You don't need to answer, I know this is personal stuff, but: do you consider yourself to be transgender? I ask because, like you, I am an agender (afab) wlw, but I don't use trans outside of gender/sexuality discussions? Am I cis? No. Am I *trans* trans, tho? I don't think so. I feel uncomfortable using the label because it means something that doesn't relate to my experiences and then I end up feeling like a fake :(

I wrote a post about this maybe 6 months ago that described it better than I am going to right now but I think trans has two contextual definitions.

Trans can (and does) mean “does not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth,” and... that’s me! But trans also means to identify across (trans) gender and that’s... not me. Sort of like how gay means “same gender” when talking about like “gay relationships” or “gay marriage” or “gay rights” and... that’s me! But when it means “exclusively attracted to the same gender,” that (probably lmao) isn’t me.

Nonbinary is MEANT to be distinct from cisness and transness as we commonly understand them. If it was a binary experience, we wouldn’t call it nonbinary, y’unno? We’re blessed and cursed to be straddling that line and I think every nonbinary person’s mileage will vary, especially when we reach more nebulous and more conceptual identities like “woman aligned agender.” Like as someone who fits in that space... I see how silly it is and how sort “galaxy brain” it seems at first but I also recognize exactly what it means to ME (i don’t identify with womanhood but respect the fact that my lived experiences are defined by my being read as a woman and in very rare instances--like being a wlw--that feels okay to me).

Gender is what you make it to be and no two people are going to occupy gender the same way. Lesbians and straight women don’t occupy gender the same way even though they have the same gender. AFAB agender people and AMAB agender people don’t occupy gender the same way even though they have the same gender. Fuck, women who present “femininely” and women who present “masculinely” don’t occupy gender the same fucking way either!

I think there are ways to recognize that some nonbinary people are “more trans” and some are “less trans” in the ways they define/present/live their genders. Which I KNOW isn’t a pc or fair way to describe it... but it’s true. I’m saying this as someone who does occupy the “less trans” space.

I am afab and I know there are women who feel the SAME exact way about their gender that I do and still are women. Womanhood is inherently alienating and abusive and restrictive. There are women who “present” their gender in the same non-masculine/non-feminine ways I do where they don’t really consider gender when getting dressed whether it be to live up to it or subvert it. There are women who hate womanhood because it means they are expected to be mothers and wives and whatever the fuck else. We feel the same way about our genders, I just responded to it differently than they did.

I am much like women, especially cis women, and yet... I’m not. And I’m not like trans women or trans men either. I didn’t get assigned one gender and go, “Yeah but actually I’m this,” I just got assigned one gender and said “Mmm, no thanks, I’ll pass but also can I hold onto this wlw thing?”

So, nonbinary is... non binarily classified. You’re never gonna have a distinct “category” that you’re gonna fit in every time. There are cis conversations you can’t ever really be a part of because you don’t fit there anymore. And there trans conversations that you can’t really be a part of either. Fuck, there are probably agender or general nonbinary conversations you can’t relate to either.

And that’s okay! There isn’t a singular “trans” experience. Or nonbinary experience. You can be “trans” when trans is an umbrella term and bow out when “trans” means something more specific. I would be mindful of when conversations don’t apply to you and expect people ot be mindful of when conversations that don’t apply to them. That’s all there is to it.

[forgottendance]

Why saying “trans and nonbinary” is just...not a good idea

tl;dr a super long, pseudo-academic, vaguely sourced explanation of why saying “trans and binary” actually suggests that nonbinary people aren’t trans and has some real world consequences. Plus, a crash course in Critical Discourse Analysis. Mosty a crash course in Critical Discourse Analysis. This is a conversation that came up in a tumblr exchange recently and I felt like writing this all out here because this is important and I like being able to make claims with sources already in them, so no one can fling back "source?????" at me. That said, the most important source here: I'm nonbinary, I experience this, I spend a lot of time with gender theory in artistic and academic settings, I know what I'm talking about. If you want to ignore the academic stuff, skip to the last section, that's the real explanation… 

A Note on Methodology  I am using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) here. There are no comprehensible explanations of it, but it is more or less built on the concept that language builds our world. I'm going to use van Dijk's Aims of Critical Discourse Analysis as my foundation here because it is definitely one of the more understandable write-ups of the method and because my copy of the book that lists out the how of CDA is currently in a box on a boat coming to me from another country. However, I may refer to the "tools" of CDA and, if you want to check me on that/know more, that mainly comes from Richardson. That book is a lot more needlessly complex, but it pretty much boils down to a lot of media and discourse analysis that we are already doing on tumblr, so if you can slog through the nonsense, it's a good ego boost. I may also refer to the Handbook of Discourse Analysis for these.

I tried to find one single book to point to for my social theory and couldn't really because I jumped into it without ever doing an introduction. Generally, my social theory/methodology reflects Thompson's "Ideology and Modern Culture", although I do not have it on hand, so I can't refer to it specifically to verify. 

Language/Society 

I want to start with this interesting feedback loop between the reader of a text, the text, and the writer of the text. I'm saying "text" here because I'm sort of focusing on written language for this, but "text" is a substitute for "discourse", which is more than just aphobes being assholes, it encompasses what van Dijk calls a "communicative event" (van Dijk, 1995, p. 18) , which includes text and speech, but also images, sound, gesture…anything that communicates. 

At first glance, information goes: 

Writer --> Text --> Reader 

Except, when you read a text, you bring yourself to it. For example, a trans exclusionary radical feminist (terf) will read and interpret the phrase "trans and nonbinary" differently from a nonbinary person. A binary trans person may even read it from a cis source and bring their own knowledge of a binary trans identity to interpret the phrase. Basically, no matter who writes a text or how it is written, it is read differently by every person. So, we actually have: 

Writer --> Text <--> Reader 

Except writers are also readers. No one simply writes, you need to get information from somewhere. Maybe a binary trans person will read a text without context that says "trans and nonbinary" and, without having the context to understand it fully, then write it out instead of "trans" the next time they're writing about trans issues because it seems more inclusive, or maybe a TERF reads a thing about how nonbinary identities are the New Big Deal and then decides to write about how "trans and nonbinary" identities are ruining womanhood. What is read impacts what is written. So we have, in fact: 

Writer <--> text <--> Reader 

In which information is constantly being passed via text between people that are both readers and writers. 

So, point 1) Everything that is written has an impact. It will be read and interpreted and will affect the discourse of anyone that reads/interprets it. Nothing is ever a single, one-off, innocent instance. 

Point 2 from this (CRUCIAL for anyone with even the vaguest interest in social theory, or surviving in society) - Language establishes ideology. Even seemingly neutral language expresses an ideology or a stance. These ideologies will then inform the ideologies of society.  This is a huge part of what builds social constructions. 

We all like to yell a lot about how gender is a social construct (it isn't, that's another essay), but what really is a social construct? Society is an abstract concept that we build. Something like gender roles or how we understand gender is built slowly through repeated practices in language and behavior that's shared and interpreted among members of the society until it becomes part of society. Overall, Western society is based on a binary gender system - there are two gender roles and members of Western society are conditioned from birth to only understand gender in these terms. Our language use reflects and strengthens this ideology, it is a social construction that has been built over time and is reinforced (legitimized) through discourse.  

Finally - that obnoxious little "and" 

Of course, as before, we're not all preprogrammed zombies doing what society tells us. Most of us have individual experiences that we bring to our interpretation to social construction, which is part of what allows for social change - we build and then we rebuild over and over and over again. Which is how we get to members of Western society saying something like "trans and nonbinary" unironically without realizing the danger of propagating that tiny little powerful "and". 

Linguistically, "and" suggests that the two things being linked are not the same thing. So, here, it is actually creating a gap between the words "trans" and "nonbinary" and then being the bridge between the two things. This suggests that nonbinary and trans are not the same thing. As this spreads and is repeated constantly, that underlying assumption is also spread, usually to ignorant people that don't quite know what "trans" or "nonbinary" means to begin with who then continue to spread it. 

Its propagation legitimizes more onerous things - excluding nonbinary people from trans discussion while including gender non-conforming cis people, the issues of not feeling "trans enough" that most nonbinary people experience particularly sharply (though, I believe this is an experience that binary trans folks experience too, my one response to that is that I can't prove it, but I think that the way we treat "nonbinary" as a secondary version of transness means that nonbinary and binary experiences of the "trans enough" nonsense are going to be different), lack of support for nonbinary people, particularly in terms of medical care, because they do not fit ridiculously strict (wrong) definitions of transness, the invisibility of nonbinary people as binary trans people continue to be the main image of trans communities…it goes on and on… 

It's small, it's easily corrected, it seems pretty meaningless, but what that "and" says is that nonbinary people are not trans. And any time we say that, it has real, dangerous consequences because it reinforces a social norm in which nonbinary people don't exist and are outside socially acceptable standards of identity. And the more we spread it, the more that particular ideology will embed itself. So, let's just be careful and watch our language and hopefully build a society that allows for the existence of nonbinary people instead!