#if there’s anything I learned it’s that no member of the LGBT community is exempt from homophobia

[hotsugarbyglassanimals]

Acht hating the blatant PDA with Pearl and Marina was only funny to me when I thought of Acht also being sapphic in some way, but some of you are actually making that joke homophobic and it’s really uncomfortable

[fourdaysofrain]

Self-Made Man

Summary: A Trans!Tony Stark AU. 

(Lengthy, personal author’s note below the cut, if you’re interested.)

Natasha Marie Stark was born twelve minutes before midnight on May 29th, 1970. She weighed a healthy seven pounds and two ounces when she arrived. She was the most beautiful thing that either of her parents had ever seen. And she was screaming loud enough to scare the pigeons from the trees outside.

Read on AO3

Well, hey everyone. It’s been a handful of months since I’ve been on here. I want to apologize for being gone, but that feels kind of phony. I don’t know. I missed this, though. I can tell you that much. I still checked my notifications every once in a while. It made me really glad to see people still commenting on my fics or passing my links around. Love y’all. 

I guess it’s about time that I tell you that I’m trans. I have been this whole time. To answer a few quick questions, I first knew sometime in late high school, but it was always kind of in the background my whole life, I just didn’t know how to isolate the feeling. I started socially transitioning (i.e. dressing male, coming out, going by he/him) after my high school graduation, and I started HRT (Horomone replacement therapy, that means I inject myself with testosterone weekly. .33mL subcutaneously into my tummy, if you’re curious) on Oct. 12, 2018. So it’s been almost two years since, and I’ve been completely passing as a man for quite a while. Ass-crack hair, sweat, and all. 

This is a pretty personal fic for me, given the nature of it. I’ve wanted to write it for a long time, and I’ve actually had words in the Google Doc since January. It took a lot of long nights to write. It helped that I was back home. I always have an easier time tapping into Trans Emotions when I’m in my home town, for better or for worse. All the memories and relationships I formed pre-transition follow me like ghosts. 

I’m leaving for college in two days, conversationally. 

I see a lot of trans!Peter Parker fics. I’m not dissing them, I love them to bits. But it makes me wonder why fandom is so quick to headcanon Peter as trans instead of one of the other characters. He’s petite, has a higher voice, and has softer features than the other male cast members. I feel like those attributes definitely play a role. It can be easy to see trans men as “uwu soft bois”, or as Men Lite, or as a more palatable version of “normal” (that is to say, cis) men. Those ideas are often flawed and based on transphobic foundations. The reality is, trans men (and by extension, all trans people) have the ability to be indiscernible from their cis counterparts. Everyone likes to think they can pick trans people out from a crowd, but you’d be surprised how quickly I started being read as male. Androcentrism for the win, I guess. 

I won’t be entirely pessimistic. I understand that people my age project onto Peter (I am by no means exempt from that), and that there’s a greater number of young trans people than old, due to a series of depressing reasons. But I still wanted to try a different take on a trans character. 

My experience as a trans man is vastly different than the one I write about here. If anything, I’m closer to fandom’s idea of trans!Peter. My parents were accepting, I had the financial and social means to transition relatively early, and I can fly under the radar easily. The most important difference is the time period. 

I don’t know a lot about the trans experience of the 80s and 90s, which is what Tony would have gone through. I know of one single trans man who began his transition back then, one of the gender studies professors at my university. Even then, he’s from Canada, which I’m assuming has an entirely different culture around trans lives. There aren’t many older trans men. It’s depressing. There’s a lot of reasons for this. I don’t want to get too deep into them, because it only makes me feel sad. The final scene in this fic is extremely self-indulgent with regards to this. I wrote what I needed to hear. 

That’s not to say I don’t relate at all to what I wrote. There are themes that are almost universal for the trans experience. I hope you can parse those out here.

I also wanted to talk about how I showed the change from “Natasha” to Tony. In the early stages of this fic’s development, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to openly say Tony’s deadname (the name trans people are given at birth, and often, but not 100% of the time, change as a part of their transition), but I soon realized that it would make the story much clearer with the inclusion of it. If you’re wondering, I got the name from Earth-3490, where Tony is born a woman (and marries Steve, lol). I chose to show the change between the two with the use of past tense for the first half of the fic, and switching to present for Tony’s life. Often times, it feels like that when you transition. You start living in present tense. 

I also want to make it clear that transitioning isn’t as simple as shown here. From the beginning of mapping out this fic, I was stressed about “Oh, how will he be able to graduate as Tony if he doesn’t start transitioning until after he gets to college,” and “How will Howard react to him coming out?” and “How will he have a playboy persona if he isn’t able to have sex with someone without them knowing?” and a zillion other ideas. It was very freeing for me to let go of some of these obstacles and leave it up to the reader to decide. I alluded to some of the solutions that I came up with, but for the most part, I glossed over the paperwork and bureaucracy aspect to transitioning. But in real life, there are countless red tapes you have to cut for even the simplest of actions. I went to the state court to change my name and sex in March of 2019, and I still have cards in my wallet with my deadname. I had a consult with a plastic surgeon for top surgery (the colloquial name for the double mastectomy that trans men often go through to masculinize their chests. If you’re wondering, genital reconstruction surgery is normally called bottom surgery to mirror this) last December, and I still don’t have a date set. It took me a few months to start T, and I only got it so easily because I went through my unviersity, which does informed consent. Some places have to have proof of 6 months of social transitioning and a letter from a therapist. There is a lot of medical gate keeping in the trans community. I don’t know what I would have done had my parents not been accepting enough to help me through the processes. I am extremely thankful for their support. 

But it’s a lot easier to write about transition happening smoothly. Money helps, which I don’t touch on a lot in this fic, but oh my God, does money help. I’m lucky enough to be able to afford my ~$20 a month T prescription (which I will be taking until the end of my days, likely), and I’m in the process of saving for top surgery. Thankfully with Tony, I can just presto most of the problems away because he’s canonically a billionaire. Eat the rich, folks.

There’s also the intersection with race that is very impactful for trans people, as it is for everyone. Both Tony and I are white, which gives us societal privileges that trans people of color don’t have access to. As well as the fact that transitioning from female to male is a much different experience than transitioning from male to female. We don’t experience trans misogyny, which is a special kind of misogyny specifically related to trans women. (Think of old sitcoms where the joke is that it’s a man dressed in women’s clothing, and that’s what makes it funny. That’s a fairly tame example of trans misogyny. It gets ugly fast.) 

I’m veering dangerously off-topic, but it’s important to talk about. It’s easy for white trans people (and LGBT people as a whole, I suppose) to distance themselves from talking about white privilege or male privilege because they aren’t straight and/or cis. But it’s important to recognize that while we may face unique oppression, we also still benefit from historical white supremacist and patriarchal structures present today in society. 

Sorry, not sorry for getting political. And if I haven’t said it on here, Black lives matter. Of course. 

If you end up having trans-related questions, I want to be a resource for you. Seriously, I’m narcissistic and love talking about myself I don’t mind helping you understand the trans experience. I can’t promise that I know everything, but I also have my own group of trans friends who might know what I don’t, and we can learn together. 

Again, love y’all. Thank you for the continued support you give me. I can’t promise that I’ll go back to my normal level of activity on here, but I might dip my feet back in the pool. <3

[la5t-res0rt]

fun fact fucko no one cares that he’s trans, gnc, or autistic. all they care about is that he said someone wasn’t bisexual all because they hate them. thats fucked up no matter who you are. being austistic isn’t an excuse to be an utter dick hole.

alrighty folks strap in because we are in for a long one today

to start off i will begin by saying that i care about the identities of people i like and call friends i care enough to listen and learn from them because they have different perspectives on issues that i as a person who is none of the things that this person is will ever understand

it is important to listen to people and learn from them not just shine a light out of your ass for someone out of a weird place of blind worship thats honestly so cringey but that isnt what this is about this about you and likely others harassing ad sending death threats my friend and comrade betel bitches

i will now be going under a readmore to spare the dashboard

so lets recap what exactly is he being harassed for

as you all are no doubt aware there is a blog called nether receipts where a certain user we shall not name catalogs instances where members of the beetlejuice fandom are harassed correction its a blog where this person catalogs instances where flaws in their character as well as the characters of the people around her are highlighted and critiqued with the occaisional off color remark and threat which i obviously do not approve of who would

anyway following reading some ill-informed and not-so-well-phrased comments from a certain narcissistic user about their sexuality my friend had this to say

this was the post that got them put on this receipts blog which really exists as a source of people for a certain cluster of the beetlebabe fandom to harass and try to drag or cancel 

this is the post that has made people call him biphobic and here is why thats wrong and stupid

you said in your ask that he only is saying that this icky person is not bisexual because there is malice between them and while yes its true that there is malice orion never once said that this person wasnt bisexual

i took the liberty of sifting through the harassment asks he received yesterday because you all love receipts so much i took the liberty of grabbing a few and adding some highlights so you dont miss the important bits

orion never once said this person isnt bisexual he stated that equating doing femme on femme  pornography to bisexuality is a biphobic statement and is in fact a problematic thing to say

there may be crossover between bisexual people and people who do femme on femme but they are far from the same thing doing pornography is a choice you actively make and you do it for compensation however being bisexual is simply part of who you are it is something you dont choose 

although this person would perhaps disagree

and before you come for me this person posted these for the world to see and obviously i have as many receipts as my drive can carry furthermore how does this argument make sense why would you care so much about heterophobia if youre not heterosexual why are you so pressed oh wait is it perhaps

because this person is using the split attraction model for woke points like this screams that this person sees women as sex objects or perhaps this person is comphet and is denying themselves because heteronormativity is so deeply ingrained in their being that they wish to cling to heterosexuality to keep up their squeaky clean white feminist woman persona or maybe theyre just not well informed on lgbt+ issues

editors note the editor is an ace person who considers using the split attraction model is situations like this isnt exactly helpful like i cant stop you from doing it but you shouldnt have to say im a bisexual heteromantic person you can just be a  bisexual woman and keep dating men you dating men doesnt erase your bisexuality saying that you would have sex with a woman but not romantically be involved with them makes the editor think woman = sex object and as a feminist the editor has to say thats fucked up

i will reiterate implying that doing pronography of any kind is equitable to a human sexualty is harmful to bisexual people and if youre like uhhh im bi and i think its okay guess what you do not speak for every single bi person so you should try harder to be compassionate for other peoples level of comfort

in any case statements like these are hurtful to bi people equating voluntary sex work to a sexuality isnt okay and its something that person should maybe address and consider apologizing for but since this person only listens to people in their inner circle and they dont even really listen to them its unlikely that this person will ever make amends for past biphobic tendencies because as everyone has been so quick to point out being bi doesnt excuse biphobia or homophobia or anything of the sort editors note heterophobia is not a legitimate issue im sorry if you feel oppressed for your straightness but really thats a you issue 

here is one more screenshot where my friend basically covers what i have just said as well as reminding the world that the owner of nether receipts is a narcissist 

being a bisexual person does not excuse you from saying biphobic things and there is literally no identifier you can use for yourself that exempts you from criticism for your actions and it doesnt mean that people cant demand that you address the wrongs youve done or said

you dont have to listen you dont have to do anything but dont be surprised if you say something shitty to a group of people and they get mad at you

also all that being said what orion said was not biphobic if anything he is raephobic but lets be honest who isnt ok there thats my one funny haha for you

we have every right to criticize someone who creates simulated cp and shares it with minors in 18+ servers or someone who equated bisexuality to voluntary sex work or someone who accuses people who disagree with them of being fascists or nazis or someone who goes out of their way to repost and edit art in a mocking manner or someone who actively claims to own a fandom like these are all critique worthy behaviors that all come from the same person who never explains their actions never holds themselves accountable for the shit they cause like we as people who share the same space as this person have every write to call bull roar when we see it

it is no secret that i dislike his person and it is also no secret that i will not hesitate to the the opportunity to drag them for being a shitty person whenever the opportunity arises and since their most recent beef with me was about how i was a bad friend i guess i figured this would be a good time to come forward for one of my friends who received dozens of harassment messages and several death threats over his commentary on the actions of this one vile individual

and i am addressing them now if they ever end up reading this or when it is inevitably sent to this person 

if youve got a problem with the way he and i or other antis critique you maybe come out from behind your wall of dipshit cronies and talk to us your damn self i am very sick of having to deal with nasti or morgan or that one minor or suz or that person that runs the rp blog or any of the others in your little hoard im tired of them trying to be slick like we see you we see all of you

all of your simulated cp aside youve said some really shitty things that you could easily amend since youve likely learned more about what it means to be lgbt+ since it is now a community you see yourself being a part of 

part of being human is learning from your past and making a better version of yourself for tomorrow and although i think you are a really awful person i dont think youre above self betterment and self reflection and self awareness 

also you dont seem to care at all when threats are being tossed around by your buddies but no matter how much me or orion or any of the others dislike what you do no person in their right mind would be okay with sending death threats and you shouldnt either you should at the very least extend that courtesy 

anyway

fuck you asker youre full of trash garbage and i hope you have a not so good day like i hope it rains or something invalidate my friends identity and ill yell at clouds