#i transed to a man and that was correct and i am a man

[fatguarddog]

So I keep thinking about a trans girlfriend who fattens me as she forcefems me, in a way that's like "oh yes you became such a handsome man all so that you could really be a trans girl" as opposed to like... detrans... not detrans but double trans I guess

Swapping out my T for E, subtly encouraging me to shave because she thinks I look nicer without the beard, slowly replacing my wardrobe with more feminine clothes, making sure I'm always eating well for her so I get nice and soft and curvy all over, touching me so I feel so good as she changes me

I'm pleasantly dumbing down from her conditioning and feedings, so much so that the first time she says "that's my good girl," I hardly notice except for the rush of pleasure... and from there on out I fall deeper and deeper into her grasp and plans as she makes me her perfect fat girlfriend

[thetisming]

i am feeling transgender about & Juliet currently

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

will you please give us examples of resources to look at if we want to learn more about the concept of gender and maybe even transness in Medieval Europe? thanks!

whooooo boy right, there's a lot! I wanna start this by saying that I am very much not an expert, and I only have access to stuff I can find for free and the handful of books I can afford to buy second hand. Most of my research has been around gender as it relates to transness and GNC people. I am absolutely missing stuff, or have forgotten stuff, or simply lack the know-how to find stuff.

There's a few bits I've got on a TBR but haven't read yet - some I've included and some I haven't, depending on the source and how established it is.

Also: this is medieval Europe. The way pronouns are used to describe people don't really align with modern views of sex and gender. Also be aware of old-fashioned language use (for example, some texts talk about "hermaphrodites"). Remember that the way we talk about gender and trans identities is far different to how we even spoke about it 20 years ago.

So with that out of the way... I am chucking this under a read more, because it's long:

---

GENDER

Medieval ideas around gender were different to how we now think about it. The Hippocratic view of gender saw gender as a sort of wet/dry, cold/hot spectrum upon which men were at one end and women the other (and in the middle were intersex people). The male body was seen as hot and dry, and the female as cold and wet. The cold, wetness is what made women try to seek out heat from guys. A lot comes down to humors rather than genitals - if you're hot and dry, that innately means you grow a penis, because the heat sorta forces it out. So the marker is that penis = man, but you only have that penis in the first place because of your hot, dry humor.

Some people believed the vagina was an inverted penis - as in, the penis turned outside in. Some schools of thought believed that both men and women produced "seed", and that both were needed for conception. These thoughts and ideas shifted around a lot.

The Hippocratic view shifted towards Aristotelian ideas around the 12th Century, where the male/female divide was a lot stronger. There were also surgeons throughout all these periods who sought to "correct" intersex genitalia with surgery (how little things change).

This podcast (I've linked to a transcript, because I have more time to read than listen to things) with Dr Eleanor Janega is super interesting. In fact, I'd recommend reading her whole blog, which is fascinating. She also has a book out (but I've not read it so I can't give a yay or nay on that one)

The Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages by Joan Cadden seems to be a good source on this, but I've not read it so I can't vouch for it 100%.

I've listed below some real people who could fit into our modern interpretation of transness, and the fact that all of these people were only "outed" when arrested or at their death makes me think that there were probably a lot more people at the time who would also fit into this category. It does feel (to me, a layman) that you could rock up in a new town and go "hello I'm Jeff the Man" and people would just accept that.

It's also important to note that the majority of sources I've found are about people we could define as trans men (FTM). I've only found one person who could be described as a trans woman. If anyone out there has more sources for trans women, I'd love to hear them - specifically in medieval Europe/England.

There's also a big discussion to be had around the idea of women dressing as men to achieve a goal. People love getting into arguments about it. My general rule is that if someone lived as X gender, and was forcibly outed against their will or at death, then I feel we can more safely assume that their experience maps more closely onto a trans narrative than it does one of a woman taking on the "disguise" of a man.

---

TRANS & GNC ACADEMIA

Here's some of the sources I've been using that examine medievalism through a trans or trans-adjacent lens.

Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, Alicia Spencer-Hall & Blake Gutt - a deep dive/collection of essays about medieval religious figures/saints through a trans lens, specifically about cross-dressing figures. Really fascinating, and available on open access.

How to be a Man, Though Female: Changing Sex in Medieval Romance, Angela Jane Weisl - goes into detail about medieval texts in which characters change their sex.

Transgender Genealogy in Tristan de Nanteuil, Blake Gutt - trans theory in the story Tristan de Nanteuil.

Trans Historical: Gender Plurality before the Modern, edited by Greta LaFleur, Masha Raskolnikov & Anna Kłosowska - A great big examination into trans history/gender. I desperately want this book.

Clothes Make the Man, Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe, Valerie R. Hotchkiss (book, no online source available) - Another look into women dressing as men and gender inversion.

The Shape of Sex, Leah DeVun (book) - A history of nonbinary sex, 200 - 1400BC. Not read this one yet but it's on my TBR.

In fact, I'd recommend all of Leah DeVun's work, which I'm currently making my way through. I'm currently reading Mapping the Borders of Sex.

The Third Gender and Aelfric's Lives of Saints, Rhonda L. McDaniel - An examination into the idea of a "third gender" in monastic life based around chastity and spiritualism

Erecting Sex: Hermaphrodites and the Medieval Science of Surgery, Leah DeVun - an essay about "corrective" surgery on intersex individuals in the 13th/14th centuries. (I've not fully read this one yet but the topic is relevant)

----

TRANS FIGURES

Joseph/Hildegund (died 1188) - A monk who, upon his death, was discovered to have a vagina/breasts.

Eleanor Rykener (1394) - A (likely) trans sex worker arrested in 1394 (and another source that isn't wiki)

Katherina Hetzeldorfer (killed 1477) - An early record of a "woman" being executed for female sodomy. Katherina dressed and presented as a man, and some scholars read them as a trans man.

Marinos/Marina the Monk (5th Cent) - A monk who was born a woman and lived as a man in a monastery. Marinos was accused of getting a local innkeeper's daughter pregnant. Their "true sex" was discovered upon their death.

-----

ROMANCES* & GENDER

If you're interested in the idea of gender presentation and trans-adjacent stories, I very much recommend taking a look at some contemporary sources. I've tried to take a sort of neutral approach to pronouns for these descriptions, but it's hard to marry the medieval and modern ideas of sex and gender! The titles are all links.

*Romances here means Chivalric Romances: prose/verse narratives about chivalry, often with fantastic elements. Not, like, falling in love Romances.

Le Roman de Silence (13th Cent) - in order to ensure inheritance, a couple raise their daughter as a boy. The baby is called Silence/Silentius/Silentia. The poem features the forces of Nature and Nurture, who argue about Silence's "true" gender - Nature claims they're a girl, and Nurture claims they're a boy. Silence has a variety of adventures, largely referred to in the text as a man with he/him pronouns, and at the end their "true gender" is discovered and, as a woman, they marry the king.

Yde et Olive (15th Cent) - to avoid being married to their own father, Yde, a woman, disguises themselves as a man and becomes a knight. They end up in Rome, where the king marries them to their daughter, Olive. After a couple of weeks, Yde tells Olive about their "true gender", but the conversation is overheard. The King demands Yde bathe with him to prove they are a man. An angel intervenes and transforms Yde's body into that of a man.

Iphis and Ianthe (Greek/Roman myth, but also in Ovid's Metamorphois, which first came to England in the 15th Cent) - Telethusa is due to give birth, but her husband tells her that if the baby is a girl he'll have it killed. When she gives birth to a girl, she disguises the baby as a boy. Eventually, Iphis is engaged to Ianthe. (Incidentally, this is also a really early example of same-sex romance, as Iphis struggles with their love for Ianthe "as a woman"). Before the wedding, Iphis and Telethusa pray at the temple of Isis, who transforms Iphis into a man.

Tristan de Nanteuil (11th/12th Cent) - from the Chanson de geste, after his alleged death, Tristan's wife, Blanchandin/e, disguises themselves as a Knight. Clarinde, a sultan's daughter, falls in love with them. Blanchandin manages to hide their "true sex", but when Clarinde demands they bathe with her to prove they are a man they flee into the woods. There, they meet an angel who asks if they want to be transformed into a man. Blanchandin accepts and he is turned into a man for the rest of the poem. (Incidentally the angel gives him a giant cock. Yes, the text specifies this).

Le Livre de la mutation de fortune (1403) - written in the first person by Christine de Pizan, the poem describes how the narrator is transformed by Fortune into a man after the death of their husband during a storm at sea. They maintain that 13 years after the event, they are still living as a man. (They also mention Tiresias, a Greek mythological figure who was a man transformed into a woman for seven years).

Okay, for now - that's about all I can think of. Happy reading!

[pastadoughie]

can non intersex trans people please stop putting intersexism and bio essentialism shit on my dash like??? all the time???

whenever i try to talk about nuance in transphobia and point out blatant intersexism i am simultaneously made out to be a stupid naive little bitch woman who doesnt know what shes talking about and an evil misogynistic man when i am neither. its textbook erasure and dehumanization no matter how polite and understanding i try to be. and i am talking SPECIFICALLY about trans people. often because perisex trans people are WORSE at recognizing and correcting their intersexism because they view themselves as "above" bioessentialism for their transness,,, its honestly tiring

the way sexism presents is the fundamental idea that :

women by default have LESS agency

and men by default have MORE agency

i feel like i shouldnt have to tell you that this is dehumanization of BOTH, but ill do it anyway. someones agency in a given situation depends on a VARIETY of different factors, like class / race / disability / location / & the political views of the community they are in

moreover "man" and "woman" are not actually defined terms. for example, being a victim of misogyny has ZERO correlation to whether or not you are a woman, in BOTH ways that people categorize womanhood. either as a biological trait (or a collection of traits) or as an identity label

if you get catcalled on the street that is not because you ARE a woman but because you are PERCEIVED AS ONE by the catcaller. someones profiling of you as a woman being accurate DOESNT MEAN IT ISNT PROFILING. literally NOBODY has a chromosome detector 3000.

so many forms of gender based discrimination perpetrated in the queer community COMPLETELY skip over these nuances in discrimination and often get EXTREMELY ANGRY when you try to point them out! this is often because people have this inherent belief that they are somehow transcendent and that they DO magically have a chromosome detector 3000, that their profiling is magically always correct, and this belief is tied to their ego.

moreover people mischaracterize sexism as just "hating women" and NOT actually as "sorting people arbitrarily into boxes for their perceived genders", if you are a TERF you are EXACTLY THE SAME AMOUNT OF SEXIST as someone who believes women shouldnt be allowed to vote. they still hold the fundamental idea of men by default having more agency.

i think TERFism is a wonderful example of how people can be sexist against men and the harm that it causes, because that is the ideological core of radfem politics.

people perceived as "male" when placed in a community full of people seen as "female" are automatically seen as predatory for their perceived privilege (regardless of if those privileges actually apply in that setting at all! look at transfemmes! they get literally zero benefits from their perceived manhood, and yet are still seen as predatory because of it ). when i speak about "misandry" however loaded the word is- this is what i am referring to, the assumptions and discrimination that comes from being arbitrarily placed in a gender category seen as having universally more agency.

because agency isnt innate or biological this sorting into categories is ALWAYS sexism even if they benefit the person!!

this is why i think phrases like "TME" are inherently harmful, because weather or not someone is seen as a "man" or a "woman" is completely arbitrary and can differ wildly depending on not only the person doing the profiling, but also the context of the situation. trans-misogyny, being seen as a "man" trying to "invade" a "womans space" is not exclusive to transfemmes nor even universally applies TO transfemmes.

moreover its why i hate the word "trans-androphobia" because its not even descriptive of the perception of being a "girl" trying to be a "man"

i think in general the shorthand the trans community uses lacks so much fucking nuance and is baked in with intersexism and bio essentialism  pretty much as a rule.. i think it's infinitely more clear to use words corresponding to what exactly the profiling of whoever is being bigoted is far more helpful and clear, but in order for something like that to be clear it needs to actually be used with nuance and keeping in mind the fact that discrimination is based on PROFILING and not off of any kind of objective reality. In which words that just mean "the type of discrimination transmen go through" is ambiguous and unhelpful on every level.

if you wanna be less intersexist YOU NEED TO LET GO of the idea that certain people universally have more/less agency AS WELL AS THE IDEA that you are universally exempt from or included in any kind of gender based discrimination

[0w0tsuki]

Hey can we stop pretending like the only feasible reason that a trans woman would not like the term femboy is because she's some puritan anti-kinkster or somehow against men being able to dress femininely?

Like perhaps maybe the group of people who had to go through a phase of having to figure out and explore their femininity while being perceived by society as a man DON'T WANT to police the way men are able to present and express their genders? Like maybe WE DON'T want to make things even harder for transfem eggs. Like maybe we might have an interest in protecting transfem eggs and are speaking from the harm that we experienced as eggs ourselves?

Like maybe it might have to do with the fact that outside of Tumblr your average femboy is a trap fetishist? Like did we all forget the memes of "trying to figure out if the Astofolo icon is a trans woman or a fascist?"

Like some of us were discovering our transness during puberty in the early 2000s. You remember the early 2000s right? Where South Park and Family were at the height of their cultural influence, the R slur was a substitute for stupid, and bigotry was so common that "traps are gay" jokes could be made in polite company without having to worry about backlash. So imagine what kink spaces were like. Especially when you're a teenage trans girl just discovering herself.

I personally was so damaged by that experience that I began to believe that my gender-no my EXISTENCE was a fetish to be embarrassed and humiliated by and to be reviled for. I genuinely did not engage in relationships because I believed I was going to have to give in and tell them that they fell in love with a sex object. I did not believe that I was worthy of love. And it took YEARS of working through that for me to be comfortable with transitioning.

And after I worked through that I still have to deal with them. They haven't left kink communities they had their roots in. To this day there's a kink website I frequent that has community suggestions for tags IE: Unless the OP of the work goes back to delete this feature, anyone can "recommend" deletions or additions to the tags of the work. This is in place to make the proper labeling/searching/blacklisting of kinks easier to help curate content. In practice though it allows transmisoginists to basically graffiti any transfem artwork they come across. And let me tell you Femboy tags are getting added on right after they replace F/F with M/M on a transbians t4t work. And it happens so frequently that I have to check in about once a month to these trans tags to inform the most recent victim about what's happened to their works.

And outside of kink spaces I go into fandom spaces where I have had to deal with trap fetishists positioning themselves as fucking lore scholars when they harass trans positive folks about the Correct and Moral gender of the transmisoginistic character that they've got a fap folder dedicated. I got to see someone rise to twitch fame off the back of trap content turn into a “femboy icon” because he gave some of the trap money to trans charities and has a trans girlfriend. Who is still making trap content by the way.I've gotten to see reddit lose their absolute goddamn minds when the term Trap was banned from r/anime, shitting themselves so hard about it that they made their own separate website with transmisogynistic wojaks on the home page and everything. And then I got to see the fucking Bridget Debacle.

The reason I always talk about Bridgets trans confirmation is that it's the most widely recognized recent event where the exact shit I'm talking about was on full display. The reason why her being confirmed as a trans woman was such a big deal for trans girls was not just because she was one of the anime caricatures with her own folder in the trap enthusiasts masterbation portfolio. It was because she was GROUND ZERO for original coining of the word trap. And the EXACT same guys who deemed her a trap were now coming out in DROVES fuck EN MASS. But this time as self appointed femboys. We had so many examples of fucking Astofolo icon twitter facists trying to drudge up any type of left sounding argument using the femboy identity after having their initial arguments revolving around mistranslation were debunked. Crying that transfems were “stealing femboy representation” and trying to say that it was an “antitransmasculization force feminization trope” unironically. You know the cry of “Let men be feminine!!!!” y'all always bring out in defense of femboys. THAT'S who you're parroting! THAT'S who you got it from! We have had direct evidence of former trap fetishists dawning the term femboy when it became less cool to be openly transmisogynistic and then started appropriating leftist language to give their transmisogynistic arguments an air of legitimacy.

Like y'all need to understand that this magical space we got here is a FUCKING BUBBLE. Femboy communities in literally every other online space are former trap/sissy communities and are fucking cess pits of transmisoginy. I have seen posts by people who's only experience being around femboys was on Tumblr go out and check a place like r/mildfemboys to be horrified by the obsessiveness of the transmisogyny the femboys they interact with. And the femboys here aren't much better by treating being forced to acknowledge that these people exist and that is a still very active part of their community even if they don't personally interact with it as a personal attack on them and their gender presentation.

Y'all just want to pretend it doesn't exist and treat the idea that a Transfem might not WANT to interact with YOU(OH GOSH!!) because of it like it's some sort of personal judgement instead of something you're just going to have to accept happens when there's a large portion of people who share that title who are responsible for traumatizing them. But y'all got to go one step further. Y'all who go on about how femboys are our closest allies and about how “femboys and transfems are actually closer than transfems want to admit”. Y'all treat femboys like they're out little fucking brother in the queer community and it's our personal fucking responsibility to leave behind any personal baggage at the door in order to make them feel welcome.

Y'all can't handle the fucking idea that a trans woman might not be comfortable with sharing community with someone who's average member would call her a trap while jacking off to her selfies if he thought he could get away with it. That's she's not interested in playing the Astofolo icon game with them. Y'all gotta create a backwards narratives where she is against her own interests, where she is for making it harder for eggs in the future instead of you know. Asking for better from the communities those eggs are drawn too.

I have been forced to fucking put up with femboys in nearly every online space I've ever been in. And I

Am sick and fucking tired

Of putting up with femboys

[orphee-aux-enfers]

So, I'm asking honestly and in good faith to better understand Orthodox attitudes toward queerness. Suppose you had a son, who is male according to halacha, and he wants to have an intimate relationship with another man (who is similarly male according to halacha). How would you feel about this? How would your wider community feel? Do you think other Orthodox Jews in your community would feel the same in that situation, or is there a spread?

Hi anon. Thanks for the kindness in asking politely, though that should be the bare minimum. Not sure why you're asking me of all people, though. I'm an intersex transsexuel who identifies literally as a "tranny fagdyke". I am married to another transexual who also IDs as a tranny. My wider community absolutely accepts us, but it is still community dependent. So. If my son was also queer, I expect he'd be similarly loved and supported and given free food and hospitality and invited to gatherings and such because we would not be in an unaccepting community. Personally, I've never been shunned at any stage of visible queerness or transness. Maybe I've been lucky. But 7 ish communities is an awful lot for me to feel it's a fluke.

I think the thing people need to understand is that while orthodox Jews at large may not have prior knowledge, or understand, or approve, many refuse to speak out or discriminate due to lashon hara. This means you have acceptance without understanding which is MORE THAN SUFFICIENT for me, especially because the secular world is incredibly hard for me to exist in even if I'm NOT visibly religious, which I very much am. I would much rather be supported by someone who doesn't understand me than outright treated with hatred by someone who uses the politically correct terms of transgender as a slur and calls me a k*** to my face for being a Jew (my experience in secular, queer liberal spaces).

So. Lashon hara. A thing that I think EVERYONE should learn!!!! Because every SINGLE orthodox Jew I know practices it, well, religiously. Including about our trans and queer members of the community. No one chastises as harshly as a bubbe hearing someone call someone names behind their back, to be honest.

Obviously I cannot speak for every community, or even my community's private opinions because I'm ONE PERSON. I've never lived in a New York or New Jersey community. I've mostly lived in Europe, where Orthodox Judaism is often more frequently just... Judaism. It's very unfair to paint all communities with the same brush, based on what seem to me to be minority experiences within an already tiny minority. I understand it's not everyone's experience, but honestly and truly, I know more queer orthodox Jews with good experiences than I know queer orthodox Jews with bad experiences.

[velvetvexations]

different anon but kinda just wanted to vent about the trans men in media:

a lot of times when we have so little representation that we start head cannoning other characters as transmasc we're treated like predators or just straight up called perv fujoshi or whatever. like I (an adult trans man) literally got called a "teenage girl" when I jokingly head cannoned Kurapika as FtM, and I just straight up chose not to correct them because I didn't want to get harassed even more on the basis of my transness. I also got yelled at because "he's just a feminine man!" like yeah?? so am I??

idk. my partner and I have talked about this before and I remember lamenting to her that I wish our community had someone as recognizable to others as Bridget from Guilty Gear is to the MtF community, someone that you could see in a profile picture and use it to almost like. flag them as part of your community. it feels so lonely.

I promise you aren't alone anon. <3 It disgusts and infuriates me that people will do that to you while screaming about it being a human right to headcanon men as transfem. The unreality these people live in when they claim everyone is fine with transmasc headcanons but dogpile transfems makes my blood boil. I really truly hate them so dadgum much.

I'm just so sorry. I wish I could rephrase it more creatively because I want to say it a million times a day.

[solisaureus]

I’ve noticed you criticised the barbie movie multiple times for its misogynistic portrayal of femininity and if you don’t mind I would like to understand your point of view more? I have a hard time really grasping why the movie came out as a message that traditional stereotypical femininity is the correct way of showcasing womanhood in your opinion. Yes, it’s shown through the aesthetic of barbies, but I don’t think it pushed that vision as superior? Would love to know your interpretation and the reasons for it! 🫶

Oh jeez. Are you sure you want to know lol

Disclaimer before i start bitching: I enjoyed the Barbie movie on a level of pure entertainment, the music and costuming and set design were fun, and Ryan Gosling certainly put everything he had into the role of Ken. The astronomically high budget was apparent from every angle.

However. I am extremely frustrated by its messaging and even more frustrated by how often I see otherwise progressively-minded people herald it as a feminist masterpiece. This movie was Not Feminist. Here are some reasons why I think that:

First and foremost, it is a transparent marketing venture. This is Mattel and the Barbie brand rehabilitating their image and inserting themselves back into the cultural mainstream. This movie was made primarily to profit a brand and market products. Any art or meaning that it conveys are entirely secondary.

The adherence to the idea that identity politics are liberating is clear throughout the film. Barbie is feminist because a woman is president, Congress and the Supreme Court are women. I won't get into how much of a shallow, weak fallacy this is but you can easily google it.

There is a pervasive message that womanhood=hyper-femininity. Not a single one of the Barbies is even remotely gender non-conforming. The one female character who was even slightly less feminine was Sasha, and by the end of the film she starts wearing more feminine dresses and accessories. They never had to say outright that hyper-femininity was the superior way to be a woman. There was simply no alternative in their perfect gendered utopia. This is also a standard that Barbie (the brand) has been criticized for pushing onto young girls for decades.

There is a clear message of bioessentialism. When Barbie loudly announces that she doesn't have a vagina in response to being catcalled, the joke is that she's a doll (a Barbie doll which famously do not have sex organs), not a human. At the end of the film, when Barbie decides she wants to become human, her first big step of womanhood is going to the gynecologist. Barbie's womanhood and humanity are tied to her having a vagina.

There is absolutely no room for queerness and transness in the utopia of Barbieland. Barbieland is dominated by a heavily enforced gender binary, and at no point are queer or trans people acknowledged onscreen. I've seen some people argue that Alan was the "nonbinary option," and that's fine if it's their headcanon, but I would caution against giving the producers credit for that. Let's be clear, Alan is a man -- a man that doesn't feel as served by the patriarchy as other men, but that could mean many things. If the writers wanted to make Alan nonbinary they could have easily done so. I can't imagine that with everything else going on in this movie they would've felt stifled by that creative choice. I don't need Barbie to be a queer story, but if it's going to tackle the patriarchy in its central thesis, then it feels really intentional to exclude queer and trans people.

There's an uncomfortable theme of motherhood being the peak of womanhood. In fact as I recall there's a spoken line that says "Mothers stay in place so that their daughters can look back and see how far they've come." Is the implication here that a woman stops growing as a person as soon as she becomes a mother? How is that feminist?

One of the climactic moments of the film is when Barbie gets depressed by the Kendom and gives up as soon as things get a little bit difficult, and Gloria gives her a rousing speech about the unfair expectations of women that spurs Barbie back into action. How is it feminist for the white heroine to rely on the Latina supporting character to do all the hard work and coddle her? How are we supposed to think positively of Barbie after this?

This isn't directly related to feminism but the whole portrayal of Mattel executives as clueless bumbling fools seemed really insidious. These represent real people that are not harmless or incompetent.

The whole bit about Depression Barbie struck me as shockingly ableist. It contributes to so many negative misconceptions about depression, such as like...that it's the same thing as disappointment regarding a failure (which is the thing that launches the whole bit in the first place. Barbie is "depressed" because she couldn't reverse the Kendom). Depression is blatantly reduced to some weird shabby, (literally) marketable aesthetic with this scene. Look at this haha hilarious hashtag relatable funny #bit about Depression Barbie! She has messy hair and wears sweatpants and eats ice cream and watches BBC pride and prejudice! Depression is a catastrophic, life-threatening disease. People die from it every day and it ruins the lives of countless others. This joke was horrifically ableist and disrespectful and perpetuates harmful misinformation about what depression is.

This Letterbox'd review points out many of my other criticisms and disappointments with this movie.

Honestly, overall, this movie felt like it was priming a generation for tradwife messaging. If I'm being completely tbh honest. This movie was funny but it was NOT progressive. Even the valid feminist points (like Gloria's invigorating speech) was extremely basic, surface level, white, cishet feminism. And in 2024 I really don't think that deserves any applause from progressive audiences.

[skull-doggery]

I'm a Trans man, and its taken me a long time to come to accept that and even more find out who and what I was in my new identity. I first discovered what I was through another character entirely 5 years ago though a Youtuber's community. I had discovered I was trans through roleplaying as that youtuber's Darkiplier esc character named "Hacknine" with friends, and said friends kept connecting me with masculine attributes and using He/Him Pronouns on me, as if I was Hacknine himself. This helped me come to the realization I am Trans, but I still never did fully understand WHO I was fully. I knew I was a trans man, and I knew I wanted to go by a name that was close to my dead name so that my parents and family would accept me better. I was living as a trans man, but not to my fullest extent due to the fear of being disowned and belittled by my own family.

But now that I have had Top Surgery, Ive been 2 years on HRT, and I've grown older, I have started to understand myself more and how exactly I want to be seen and how Exactly I want to express myself. This all came to me when I was playing Pressure with friends, we were talking about Sebastian and general Pressure lore, when my friends started referring to me as Sebastian by name. I tried to correct them that Sebastian wasnt my name, They apologized but had mentioned that the name Sebastian fit me better than my old name. After that comparison, I started thinking more and more on my name and how I express my self, AND how I was not true to myself about my transness. I was expressing myself in a way that was palatable to others and so they could understand, and not where I could understand myself.

Sebastian as a character has helped me discover more of myself, and helped me improve my own mental health and emotional health. Seb has helped me better myself personally and help discover who I truely am. And I cannot thank The Pressure team for creating such a phenomenal chartacter, thank you.

And I also cant thank Thaf enough for the character that first helped me discover who I am, despite all that has happened, and That im in different communities now, I will nevber forget the character who helped me start my Trans journey. Thank you.

[nerves-nebula]

i feel sooo sick haha like. what words am i allowed to use for my oppression as a trans masculine person, genuinely. how am i supposed to express the intersection of the systemic misogyny i face with my transness cuz despite it being an intersection of transphobia and misogyny we can't really use transmisogyny (which is reasonable. Like, i get it, that'd be confusing and that term wasn't made with us in mind) but like. where IS the term made with us in mind? where's one that hasn't been run into the ground by people who take it in bad faith?

where's the terms and theories made by us about our place in and outside the gender binary and how we're a threat to it that society hates, where's those theories that are taken seriously by other trans people! and if they exist outside of a few rambling tumblr blogs then why haven't i seen them.

every time i see a term coined to address my specific set of intersections people absolutely HATE it because they hate the idea that anything even vaguely masculine could be the point of oppression. i'm not even a man, i've got no affiliation with men, i've got tits and a beard. people call me she and her every day. there is like bare bones nothing for me.

every day i see people insist over and over that terfs and transphobes don't target us, that they never targeted butches, that because in some places girls can have short hair we're prolly just fine. as if terfs and transphobes don't use "mutilated little girls" as a talk point and see us as traitors and try to correctively rape us- as if they don't want us as dead as everyone else just because you don't pay attention when they say they do.

andd like. nobody gives a shit??? about us?? ever??? about our rates of rape and suicide?? about our reproductive rights?? we are almost always an afterthought and our terminology is ridiculed mercilessly or we're called "afabs" and told we're trying to talk over transfeminine experiences even when we're actively trying to point out the similarities between different kinds of trans peoples lives! i see myself in you and you can't see me as anything but an annoying "afab" whining hysterically??!!!! how is that not misogyny??? cuz i've got a beard????

AND DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON HOW WHITE PEOPLE FACTOR INTO THIS.

and i go on here and see all these posts that are trying to be progressive about shit but do it by separating us into afab and amab and insisting that our experiences are just SO DIFFERENT. its miserable. i am miserable. it's so isolating.

[a-polite-melody]

I know this is 100% On Me

But like. While it’s nice that people are up in arms about a video about HRT including a quip about no one on the writing team having experience with feminizing HRT, and it’s entirely correct to point out that it’s transmisogynistic, and even then go on to make comparisons like “a team of only cis men writing about giving birth” to show how unacceptable it is, because it is unacceptable…

I know in the back of my head that there have been times where trans men and/or mascs were not included within a cis-led discussion which includes trans people as some of the participants about overall transness, and how horrible trans men and mascs have been treated when those instances have been called out.

And also that the example of a 100% cis man led discussion about childbirth is a fine comparison to make, but also ends up a weak one to make because in the back of my mind is also the fact that many actual discussions of childbirth are 100% cis women and that there’s only lately been very minor pushback about this, and even then it’s hedged with “but (cis) women need their own spaces even if this affects trans men, so maybe it’s okay that some childbirth discussions are like this.”

There’s a bitterness here that, again, is On Me, but exists because of how I’ve watched people like me be treated and the whole, “if I had to suffer why should anyone else get better?” that it comes from. But it’ll get me nowhere to not acknowledge where I am with it.

[a-faggot-with-opinions]

I just wanted to drop in with some links to some now-deleted but still very good articles on Transmasc Comphet (which is a term I think needs to be spread around more when discussing Transmlm social pressures)

"Transmasc Comphet (and the road to faggotry)" the original article - web (dot) archive (dot) org/web/20210109231028/https:// medium (dot ) com/@neilklein/transmasc-comphet-and-the-road-to-faggotry-62ed750f391f

"Transmasc Comphet — the Followup" - web (dot) archive (dot) org/web/20210124071417/https://medium (dot) com/@neilklein/transmasc-comphet-the-followup-46fddbda7c4

I think a lot of it is stuff you and others who discuss anti-transmasculinity already touch on but I think it's another piece of language we really should be using (even though I know someone is going to find some reason to hate us more over it). Thanks so much for everything you do on the blog my guy

Every gay trans man on the planet needs to read this.

In all my many years of being alive, there has not ever been one other article that I have read that has resonated with me even close to the way that these two have. I used to think I was either a lesbian or a bi woman and would pretend to myself that I'm attracted to women when I am now, and also was at the time, repulsed by the idea of being romantically involved with women. I remember for a while I called myself a butch lesbian because it felt like the closest thing to what I thought I was (a masculine woman).

But something still wasn't right, because I'm not a masculine woman, and it didn't feel correct even at the time. I brushed it off and kept going on with my life as one does. For a long time after that, I thought I just had a fetish of myself as a man. But I think that accepting myself as a gay trans man was inevitable after I got really invested in the FOB fandom. Now, I am a gay trans man, and I feel so much better than when I identified as bi or a lesbian because this is who I really am.

Talking to a lot of other transmasc MLM has made me realize that my story is not unique. So many baby trans men identify as bi or straight for this reason before realizing that they are actually gay. And that's not to invalidate straight trans men—they exist—but I am saying that so many of us are convinced that we're straight because as men, that's what society pushes onto us. And even before we know that we're men, we subconsciously know that we are in some sort of societal role where we should love women, which is why, I think, so many gay transmascs identify as lesbian or bi before even realizing that we're trans.

One other thing that I resonate with that Klein brought up is the fact that it's impossible to separate my homosexuality from my transness because sexuality and gender don't exist in a void separate from each other. This is the main reason that I identify as nonbinary and am uncomfortable describing my gender as a man unless I'm making it clear that I'm oversimplifying my actual experience. By saying that my gender is male without elaborating, what I'm saying is that I'm like other men in some way, and that my experience of gender is similar to other men.

But that just isn't the case for me. I tend to think of myself internally as a third gender, separate from male and female, largely due to my experiences with being gay. In the framework of maleness, I'm GNC, femme, or whatever else you want to call me that basically means the same thing. The simplest way to describe my gender identity, and in my opinion the most accurate, is that I'm gay. I am like others who are gay, and I fit into that community. My expression, then, is built around a framework of being gay.

Often when cis people talk about people like me, they tend to put our transness first, and think of our homosexuality as being something that exists because of our transness while in my experience transness and homosexuality are equally important parts of my identity that can't be separated. I am not me if I am not trans and gay. To put it in simpler terms, there might be an alternate universe where I am female due to my transness being something innate to my being that I feel would still exist even if I was amab, but there is no universe in which I am not exclusively attracted to men.

[halfd3af]

I Think I Might Be Agender

I have some feelings about how I’m viewed in society. Shocker.

I do not like being put in a box.

When I am assumed to be a "cis man" by cis people, because I pass constantly as one, they make incorrect assumptions about my life, such as (white) male privilege or boyhood/manhood.

When I am viewed as a "trans man", both cis and trans people make assumptions about my body, but I am intersex, and I will never fit those expectations of my experiences with sex and gender.

Also, while the existence of“late bloomers” of a variety of ages isn’t a totally uncommon experience, many people will incorrectly assume I must have known I was trans from a young age, and I didn’t.

There was no assumption that something was “off” about my gender until I was 17. It hit me like lightning that I was not experiencing "some self-esteem issues", and that it was not normal for a person to be smothering every aspect of their gender through neutral clothing (hoodies, loose shirts, and jeans) or avoiding looking in the mirror as if it could turn me to stone.

Lastly, when I am viewed as "nonbinary", there are STILL assumptions being made about my gender presentation, that I must be someone who engages in visual gender nonconformity. In my opinion, the occasional usage of black eyeliner does not make me gender nonconforming overall, but I can understand how in an isolated moment, to cis people, it is viewed as such. My hair is also viewed this way by cis people—a former manager at my internship, 100% completely unaware of my transness, would misgender me as “she” behind my back due to my hair—though it being a curlier version of Kurt Cobain’s style seems… laughable, in my opinion, to call GNC, but I digress.

The main reason I chose the label of nonbinary was because I do not fit in with cis men or trans men due to being intersex, and now I'm realizing that I don't think I fit in with most nonbinary people, or at least the expectation set upon nonbinary people that they must be people whose presentations of themselves Do Not Conform To Gender.

My presentation could be viewed as similar to cis gay men, where being myself is viewed as “different” without any particular visual identifiers of queerness, but calling myself a gay man is not correct because I am not cis nor do I aim to mimic it through being a binary trans man.

So, I think a term like agender resonates with me. I’ve seen definitions of the identity include “the rejection of the concept of gender” and “feeling that gender is irrelevant”, so that’s why I think I might identify with it. I am not necessarily attempting to be genderless, because I do wish to be viewed as masculine and nothing but that, but I AM attempting to reject the “weight” of gendered expectations being thrust upon me because of gender. I want to acknowledge its irrelevance. Its meaninglessness.

I chose my name because of what space represent to me: a sublime, romanticism of the universe that will always be outside of our reach. And I think that's what my gender feels like. Something that others project their ideals upon, but is inconceivably vast. Ultimately untouchable and unknowable.

Like how no one can know me and my gender as intimately as I know myself.

[chadgamer]

i have a post from my Trying Really Hard to be a Woman phase getting notes again rn and while i stand by the sentiment of the post itself its hard to not feel a bit cringey about how hard i was trying to make "being a woman" work for me bc i didn't think i "was a man" and had yet to fully conceive that being "both/neither" was an option on the table for me specifically (obviously for other people yes but i've always been one step behind with my own relationship to gender - in large part because i was introduced to transness through a hardcore transmed guy who did not think being nonbinary was "scientifically real" and it's taken a long time to shake that) it's hard to articulate exactly how harmful it was trying to force myself into the shape of the "woman" label and how hard i tried to force that label to fit me, and how i used getting really into feminism as a way to do that. i was correct at the time that the way other people defined womanhood was misogynistic and restrictive and that women can be and are all sorts of things, and that womanhood does include women who are Like Me... but like... at this point especially seeing conservative transphobes describing people like me as "betraying" womanhood i'm kind of like. yeah i guess i am! i can be someone who cares a lot about misogyny while also not really giving a shit about "womanhood" or thinking it matters as a concept. i think it's a bit evil quite frankly but full respect to anyone who finds freedom or comfort or community in it. i feel the same way about "manhood" of course..... actually maybe not. i think "manhood" has very few redeeming qualities if not connected specifically to queerness and i am quite suspicious of anyone who gives too much of a shit about it. this is probably in part why when my tenuous identification with "manhood" crumbled i flipped over to the thing i had any feelings about. but the real thing i have feelings about isn't like, being a woman, it's just that i have extremely little tolerance for oppressive gender bullshit

[sword-dad-fukuzawa]

ok ngl i sent you several asks now but im pretty sure you're the reason why i've accepted that i am actually a guy with a pussy (i just had a mini breakdown abt that today and i found your blog like. a day or so before?)

(and tbh i do like being a girl but sometimes im just. not. and i dont have to force myself :) also. i love that you dont like transmasc hcs bc same lmao i thought i was like. transphobic but no. there's something going on here but it's not bigotry idk ig it just hits too close for me?)

I’m blinking at you like a stunned owl right now. Congratulations man I’m glad I could’ve helped in some way :] this is such a crazy ask to wake up to LOL (sorry if I’m not too eloquent, it’s buttfuck o clock in the morning but I thought I’d answer this as quick as I could)

You really don’t have to force yourself. I think every trans person has a complicated and deeply personal relationship to gender and at the end of the day it’s whatever makes you happiest, at least to me. Personally, my conception of my own gender fluctuates; presentation and androgyny are strong influences on how I feel; transmasc and genderfluid are just the simplest (and thus most useful for my purposes) labels even if they’re not 100% correct for me. Queerness is one of those things that can be hard to catch by the ankle and wrestle into a label. Although for some people it is! Not to be wishy washy but it’s all different.

Anyway. I didn’t talk at length about why I don’t really fuck with transmasc headcanons (I’d rather not get accused of transphobia on tumblr) but it’s really just that transmasculinity is my real actual life. A lot of my life already centers transness by default, which is not, you know, a bad thing. It’s just how it is. And again I have a complicated relationship with gender.

So while I’m a firm believer that other people should make their paper dolls look and fuck how they want, my paper dolls will almost always be cis guys. Something about the fantasy of having a dick, something about me personally finding dick on dick action hot (points at myself. fujoshi.) something about not wanting to write about all the intricacies of transness and worry about if I’m “portraying it correctly” or “representing the community well”…it’s too much and quite frankly I’m an erotica writer having too much fun on the internet, and that’s how I like it. A mutual described all that as “the politics of pussy” and that sums up the aversion I have to writing about transmasculinity when I write for kicks and giggles. I want to do it “right” even if I simultaneously hold the belief that there’s no “right” way to write most things and that kind of cognitive gymnastics is tiring.

As always I have exceptions. You’ll find at least a couple works on my ao3 that feature explicitly transmasc characters or are vague about the sex of the characters on purpose. This is either because someone paid me to write those (which is not a dig, I wouldn’t have accepted the commission if I didn’t want to!) or because I was just in the mood to write trans porn, lmao. It’s difficult to be specific about What Exact Flavor of Transmasc is the kind I’m willing to create or eat on the internet, which a. kills nuance and b. isn’t obligated to cater to me specifically.

Trans erotica played a large part in helping me accept myself and my sexuality as a trans person. Trans headcanon also tends to be close enough to home that engaging with it 80% of the time is not fun. I think, too, that headcanon doesn’t reflect your beliefs as a person; what matters is how you treat real actual people.

But yeah, sorry for going on for so long. I have terminal yapper disease LOL. Congratulations on the realization and I’m sorry about the breakdown, hope things get clearer and easier for you in the coming days :]

[antiterf]

Starting off, this is speaking about cis people and our transphobic society more than it does about trans people. I want to say this because when theorizing around transphobia, it can seem like you hold those views if someone starts a post and gets too pissed to finish it.

I've come to notice that the stereotypes and struggles that trans people face can depend on agab and the gender roles around that. Yes, we're all expected to play into transnormativity* and if we don't we get even more dismissed as not trans enough, but on a broader scale on how trans men, women, and nb people are treated separately.

Trans men are passive, invisible, confused, gullible, and victims when it comes to the news. Trans women are hypersexual, violent, perverted, and loud when it comes to that same news. These stereotypes are pushed to hurt all trans people through institutions, but they also align with the negative stereotypes around femininity and masculinity. Nb people aren't focused on, but its not uncommon for me to say "they're nonbinary" before having the cis person go "but what's their sex" to which the correct answer is almost always "none of your fucking business" but that's besides the point. When nb people are stereotyped on a large scale, it's usually with the assumption that they're afab despite plenty amab nonbinary people existing. I've seen terfs specify what the birth sex of the nb person was just to place them in the stereotypes I've mentioned for trans men and trans women. Other than that, the unknown regarding nb people just makes people outright pissed off about the "more than two genders" and the infinite amount of genders deal. Which is kind of cool to see people implode on themselves when they can't register birth sex, but still obviously hurts nb people.

And obviously I don't have this all figured out, right? I'm posting this for input. Transmisogyny will combine the factor of transness within womanhood to make the perverted violent man notion into also a sex object for consumption. I am White, but know that Black trans men experience being seen as way more violent and as a threat, and that other trans poc experience the intersection of their race and gender identity. You can't just separate those by each facet easily if you can at all. I can't just go "but that's just race and since we're not talking about that it doesn't matter" because it does matter. If theory doesn't connect with the lives of the people you're talking about then what's the fucking point? I am trying to take this from a news circulation perspective, about general narrative, but I admit that I could be ignorant to other forms of narrative.

*Transnormativity: The expectation for trans people to go under full transition and fulfill gender roles as well as possible. Basically live up to the cis, dyadic, notions of gender to be held at value.