#intrinsically masculine—and i. any case women could do them and still be feminine

[spacelesscowboy]

i hate doing the readings for this class they make me so upset

[things2mustdo]

We are all too familiar with the SJWs’ “muh feelings” pose. We are also familiar with the Leftists’ manipulative stance, be it through their sanctimonious bullying, guilt-tripping, appeals to a pseudo-consensus, veiled threats, or constant emotional blackmailing. The maelstrom of emotions the Left plays with makes tempting to withdraw emotionally. We might be led to think that the higher good lies in “cold, hard facts” alone. But if we do so, we easily forget that cold facts do not prompt for any action, and if we merely describe while trying to get emotionally disconnected, we cut ourselves off the game.

Passions are part of the game

When the infamous Karl Marx wrote that modern capitalism “drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation,” he had a point. The bourgeois world of classic modernity is emotionally lacking, and both the bohemian artistry and Communist radical politics stepped up to fulfill the void. This historical point is still relevant today. Conservatives fail to make stands because they are much more passionate about their personal interest than about defending anything they pretend to stand for. SJWs, on the other hand, went very far into shrieking and bullying because they are usually passionate for their points. Different motivations lead to different outcomes. And a strong motivation, not to say a deep or passionate commitment, greatly helps to build a strong character.

The far-left was able to pick up people’s passions because the bourgeois would not, and perhaps could not, do that. The bourgeois idea of progress was about people becoming farm animals, individuals reduced to the status of producers and consumers in a world where nothing really new or interesting could appear anymore. In such a world, there is no need for passions and no need for politics, isn’t it? Well, the individuals would not let themselves get boiled down to the status of mere economical agents, and many preferred embracing some ridiculous strand of new-age spirituality, worthless artistry or even becoming Communists than living through the bourgeois-conservative nothingness..

Rejecting the passions and emotions, or at the very least trying to put them aside as to ignore them, made men weak and unable to take a stance. It has also made women unhinged, shameless, and willing to do anything for short-term pleasure, as no men were able to give them a proper sense of boundaries. Plus, passions being powerful motivators, the far-left mastery when it comes to stirring some made it tremendously powerful as well.

We must face passions, not as an annoyance, but as a resource that has to be mastered. This is true for ourselves and others. First, when we are aware of our emotional states without being directly prompted (“triggered”) by them, we gain the ability to choose consciously what we do and want to do, and can follow our own intuitions instead of getting framed by an alien narrative. Second, when we are also aware of others’ emotional states, we can steer them in a specific direction.

The latter is especially true for women: today, they follow fashions and MSM approval, when not following their own sluttiness and attention-whoring… but if men were able to reward, shame, and inspire proper passions in them, they would follow us instead. If we want this to happen, we have to take over the empire of passions and stir up some emotions in the public’s hearts, be it through discourse, artwork, or daily conversations. Here are three emotions I think we should be keen to stir.

1. Empathy

According to Dr. Neel Burton,

Empathy can be defined as a person’s ability to recognize and share the emotions of another person, fictional character, or sentient being. It involves, first, seeing someone else’s situation from his perspective, and, second, sharing his emotions, including, if any, his distress. (Burton, Heaven and Hell, chap.21, p.153)

As empathy fits well with maternal instinct and motivates nurturing tendencies, women are naturally prone to it. Up until a very recent time, they took care of babies and small children, participated to local charities, worked in shelters for the homeless or went through menial but important tasks as nurses. They did so because their natural empathy motivated them to act this way.

By contrast, a striking feature of feminism is that it destroys womanly empathy and nurturing tendencies. From a feminist point of view, men are enemies or at the very least potential oppressors and children are a burden. Feminism reverses the empathy, turns it into defiance or even hatred. Worse: after women have lost their ability to feel positively towards the men they should at least respect, cultural Marxism stirs their natural empathy towards “minority” identities. Thus we see grrls caring about thugs, invaders, or weirdos, who are all positively portrayed in the media, more than they care about what should be their community.

The lack of empathy is also a problem among white men. Though black men often exert violence against each other, the majority of them always bonds when it comes to attacking the depleted white majority. The same goes for any community out there: they empathize with each other more than they would ever empathize with us. We, white men, are the only ones who do the exact opposite by being hypercritical against each other when we should actually be supportive and look at the positive rather than the negative.

There should be a lot more empathy towards us than there currently is. Others should be more sensitive to our plight, suffer when we suffer, or at least feel compelled to suffer when we do. We are the proximate [prochain?], not the Big Other. We, too, should have more empathy among ourselves: nice guys, for example, should not be considered as “jerks” or “bastards,” as say some red-pilled guys who seem to have internalized a negative framing, but as misled victims who proved some nobility by trying to conciliate “respect” for women with the healthy desire to get a deeper relationship. Along the same lines, the working- or middle-class average Joe who got disenfranchised should be painted on a positive and humane light so that wealthy liberals cannot ignore or merely sneer at him.

2. Hope

Here is an emotion the Left has really abused from. Remember 2007-8, when the first “black” president was supposed to end the racial tensions in the US as well as the neocon foreign wars? Democrat activists at that time wrote without batting an eyelid about their hope for a world without losers, for an outcome where everyone would win. Then, the racial tensions have never been so high, the white majority is more dispossessed than ever, and the same liberals who were trumpeting about a world without losers have no shame calling us losers—from their choices and politics. Hope has been abused from, and we have to take it back. In fact, we have already started to.

Hope can be defined as the desire for something to happen combined with an anticipation of it happening. It is the anticipation of something desired… To hope for something is to desire that thing, and to believe, rightly or wrongly, that the probability of it happening, though less than 1, is greater than 0. (Neel Burton, Heaven and Hell, chap.14, p.103)

Trump is a wild card who comes with no guarantee, for sure. He still gives us something no Obama could ever give us—hope. The Alt-Right, manosphere, and the whole flourishing of high-quality dissenting intellectual efforts give us hope as well. Someone wrote that “the Alt-Right represents the first new philosophical competitor to liberalism, broadly defined, since the fall of Communism.” Someone else, here on ROK, noticed that more and more women were fed up with misandric grievance-mongering and longed to become mothers. These trends are more than interesting: they seem to point towards a better future that we still have to conquer.

On the other side, the liberal status quo and Hillary in particular mean pure hopelessness. If Hillary gets elected, we will have even less jobs, anti-white and anti-male organized groups will attack even more, the wealthy globalists will get fatter at our expense, and so on. Interestingly, liberals today use arguments of a conservative kind: when they shriek something as “the 5 last US presidents tell you not to vote for Trump” or “the Alt-Right and deplorables are un-American,” they look more like McCarthyists than hippies. They are the establishment clinging to the status quo and worsening. We are the embodiment of hope for a positive change.

3. Love

While hope should be spread among any decent people and is pretty straightforward once we agree on the intrinsic value of its object, love appears a bit trickier. In a relationship, whoever loves the other most is dominated whereas who loves less has more room to take action. If a man falls in love, he falls in the sense that he gets dumbed down, pedestalizes the girl, who in turn will get bored and look for a more challenging partner. Thus, seduction must be used to stir love in women: they must love us as well as their children. Both as a mistress and a mother, both as sexual and nurturing, a woman exerts love.

In men, love must be exerted in a more distilled and thoughtful form: when we protect our dear ones, toil for them, care about their interests, these efforts are an expression of love as well—although this form of love must be more distant as to allow ampler room for action. In any case, the feminine element must love the most and more directly.

It should be added that masculine and feminine can be conceived, not only as absolute, but also as relative terms. Esotericists consider that we are all “feminine” when considered under a higher point of view: the most fierce, courageous and risk-taking warrior remains “feminine” relatively to a genuine spiritual authority, and any human is “feminine” relatively to God as the ultimate Father. The Bible compares the good ones to a bride that shall get married to God (Revelation, 19). Hinduism recommends bhakti or devotion, i.e. religious love, to those belonging to the warrior caste, whereas the spiritual authority is more “masculine” as it enjoys a higher and more direct knowledge of God. These considerations might seem a bit far-fetched, but they were already highly relevant before the tiniest stint of modern degeneracy was born. Just remember that being in love is acceptable for a man as long as it never equates to pedestalizing a woman.

Conclusion

Passions and emotions matter. If we set them aside as irrelevant, someone else will push our emotional buttons—and the girls’—and spin us in no time. The philosopher René Descartes wrote that “all the good and the bad in this life depend from the passions” and that we had better be able to use them wisely. Ironically, the word “Cartesian” now denotes a logical, rationalistic, supernatural-denying mindset. This is accurate for the young Descartes, who was among the top scientists of his time, but tosses aside an important twist: the philosopher eventually lost his only daughter, Francine, and the sadness he felt while mourning her made him aware of the power of emotions. Yet, instead of being dominated by said emotions, Descartes strove to gain cogency about them, and he wrote a very interesting little treatise to expand a whole theory of the “passions of the soul.”

Our case is the same. Most if not all of us have been blue-pilled since infancy. Cultural Marxism was shoveled down our throat by school teachers, media figures, movies, social pressure. At each step of this process, our emotions were stirred and directed by spinsters so that, for example, we would feel a high empathy for so-called minorities while ignoring the homeless “white males” dying of cold at winter.

Ride the tiger of your own emotions and of (some) others’ as well if you don’t want sinister globalists to.

https://www.returnofkings.com/11010/how-to-control-your-emotional-state

We all have our ups and downs. Some days you feel on top of the world, you ooze a sexy masculine confidence that women love whereas other days you couldn’t be bothered to shave — you scowl at the thought of doing anything interesting and avoid all outside contact. Many guys accept this with a “que sera, sera” mentality. They feel it is just the natural ebb and flow of things, that taming your emotional state would be too chaotic of a task.

Those who do wish to change usually use hokey terminology talking about “energy” and the “universe.” They’ll seek guidance from another source so that they do not have to take responsibility for letting their emotions get out of check. People also seek a quick cure for a continual state of happiness, but what they do not realize is that happiness is transient.

I do believe there is a way to wrangle your emotions that relies on you, your habits and the power you have to respond to various stimuli. Essentially you must minimize the negativity and maximize the positivity in your life by altering certain habits.

Minimize Habits That Lead To Negativity

Take a moment to think about any time you’ve lost control of your emotions. When did you last get angry, depressed, hateful, etc.? What do you do when you’re out talking to girls that hurts your success? Do you have unreasonable limiting beliefs? Do you believe you always need to be happy to be successful? Do you get frustrated when you have anxiety because of any of the above?

If you think about the above long enough and are mindful when such emotional states occur you will begin to notice a trend in what triggers them.

For me the biggest habits that lead to a negative state of mind, in which I lacked motivation, was depressed, and stayed inside all day, were my nutritional habits. I started to recognize a pattern: I’d go out drinking or eat highly processed foods, I’d wake up the next day tired and dehydrated, then I’d stay inside all day watching movies because I didn’t want to go to the gym or talk to people. The cycle would just endlessly repeat until the natural ebb and flow of things took me to a high point.

Maximize Habits That Lead To Positivity

Repeat the exercise above. When was the last time you felt on top of the world, when did you last feel invincible, when did you last have no anxieties? When were you on fire when talking to girls, what were you doing that made you so successful? What were the thoughts running through your head?

Again if you pay attention you will begin to see patterns. You’ll start to realize what habits lead to a great mood.

For me I felt the best when ‘rewarded’ with something. Whether it was having great sex, sharing something with a friend, new PRs in the gym, busting my ass in the library and getting a good grade, or learning a new skill.

The Keystone Habit

Roosh brought up keystone habits in a recent article titled “One Approach A Day.” Essentially it is an innocuous habit that has a much larger effect than planned.

For me I started a few keystone habits: I started the day off with a nice cold glass of lemon water and my vitamins. In doing this I started drinking more and more water leading me to be less dehydrated, more energetic and making better food choices.

I also made a rule that as soon as I start talking myself out of something reasonable I would force myself to do whatever it was I was trying to rationalize my way out of. Maybe I’d start thinking “I’m kind of sore and I still haven’t seen the new episode of Game of Thrones, I think I’ll go to the gym later.” I know I wouldn’t go to the gym later so I would immediately get up and put on my workout gear. Just by doing this I started getting in the mood for lifting — I’ve also heard of guys packing a gym bag every night and leaving it in their car.

The peaks and troughs of our emotional state should not define us. As a man, whether it be through eliminating negative triggers or forming positive habits, you should be fully in control of your emotions. Use the power of a keystone habit to enact much larger scale change so you can be in a perpetual state of positivity, or at the very least, neutrality.

Read Also: How To Change Your Bad Habits

[edsperegrine]

Musings on gender

So I want to talk a little bit about gender, specifically my gender and my feels around it.

Where to begin... my external and internal bits are what you'd expect from a cis woman (breasts, vagina, uterus, ovaries, wide hips, &c).  Hormonally it's a bit more complex - I have very low circulating estrogen (apparently below that of a standard postmenopausal woman, apparently this is due to being on hormonal birth control), barely menstruate (I haven't had a full-on period in probably more than a decade now), and (thank goodness) no longer have cramps. Plus my vagina is dry as a desert, and I have difficulty with penetrative sex due to vaginismus resulting from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome's effect on my pelvic floor musculature (long story short: my muscles are in permanent spasm holding my hips together, which makes penetration really hard because I physically can't relax the muscles). Pre-birth control I had heavy irregular crampy periods and I can't say I miss them much. Never been pregnant, have lactated once due to medication (fun! not actually fun).

So that's the biological side of it. I'm definitely not intersex or anything on that spectrum; the hormonal weirdness started after birth control treatment, and hasn’t been a lifelong thing for example.

When I was a teenager I wondered if I was FTM trans - oddly I grew up knowing about trans* folks before I knew about queerdom in general, mostly because my stepfather's roomie in college was an early MTF trans pioneer activist, and trans* identity was seen as a good, normal thing people could have (I was super lucky in this, most folks I know never had this as a normalized phenomenon as kids). I put it down at the time to an inadequate supply of good female role models in my fantasy/sci-fi literature and never really thought about it much. I've always been a tomboy, uncomfortable with typical performative "feminine" things like makeup, hairstyling, fashion, going to the bathroom in groups, yadda yadda. I wandered through most of my young adulthood pretty sure I was a cis woman. I certainly wasn't a trans man, and those were the only choices, right?

I met a few nonbinary folks in grad school, and it honestly took me a while to come to terms with the existence of gender as a non-binary phenomenon; I was fine with the idea that you could cross from one bank of the river to the other, but confused by the idea that you could exist somewhere in the middle, or outside the whole thing entirely. It took living with an (awesome!) nonbinary person during postdoc #1 to wrap my head around gender as a complex phenomenon rather than a simple binary switch, but now I'm firmly on board and a bit shamefaced about how long it took to get there! Whoo cis privilege.

Fast forward to postdoc #2, where I do fieldwork in Panamá. Compared with other places I've lived (USA, UK, Switzerland), the gender culture in Panamá is very different, far more 'typical' Mediterranean. Most relevantly to me, women (or anyone appearing different, actually) are subject to street harassment at a painful rate, ranging from elevator eyes, catcalls, invitations, horn honking, slow driving, and even police harassment. Very few Panamánian men are completely innocent of this behavior; the majority I interact with in person are like this, and it's disgusting. There is no good answer to this; although we talk a lot about fieldwork safety we usually discuss being targeted by other fieldwork colleagues, not being targeted by the culture as a whole. Oh well.

My months in Panamá were a whole new ball game where street harassment was concerned. In the US I'd occasionally dressed androgynously when I knew I might be a target (late night bus rides in Seattle come to mind), and I'd been a target on occasion, but it was fairly rare. In Panamá it was every day. I began to feel less and less female as time went on, and I was there for five months. When I returned to the UK it was a revelation - men on the street didn't stare, didn't catcall, and I could trust that the average man wasn't thinking about me as a sex object. Wow. I felt more comfortable being female in the UK, where being female doesn't automatically mean being sexually harassed on a daily basis.

So now, what is my gender? I'm not sure. I know I'm not male, I don't identify as trans* either. Demigirl doesn't feel quite right either (I prefer demiwoman, actually, it feels less... juvenile? patronizing? but if it's not my identity it's not really my place to say anyhow). I feel somewhere in that gray area between female and agender, with no tinge of male. I don't feel particularly fussed about pronouns; I use female ones because I'm used to them and it's what people default to based on my appearance. I am happy with singular they as well. Male pronouns feel a bit weird but not objectionable most of the time. No draw to other pronouns.

Two things influence my gender as well: my asexuality and my perhaps-autism-spectrum. As someone who is firmly asexual, I... don't get sexual attraction to people of any gender (maybe once or twice ever). I don't understand how sexual attraction even works! In some ways I feel that if I were e.g. heterosexual I would find defining my gender more easy because it would be the opposite of (or at least different to) what I was attracted to. Since I can't define my gender by my sexuality, out the door that goes. On the second point, I don't have a formal diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but I am probably on the spectrum (it sure explains a lot of childhood & adulthood stuff). Lydia X. Z. Brown has discussed the term 'gendervague', writing:

"For many of us, gender mostly impacts our lives when projected onto us through other people’s assumptions, but holds little intrinsic meaning... For many (but certainly not all) autistic people, we can’t make heads or tails of either the widespread assumption that everyone fits neatly into categories of men and women or the nonsensical characteristics expected or assumed of womanhood and manhood." (https://www.aane.org/gendervague-intersection-autistic-trans-experiences/)

This feels close to me - in some ways I feel that I don't "get" gender the same way I don't "get" sexual attraction. What is gender anyways? What is it for, how is it useful? I sure don't use it to choose who to hit on in a bar! I don't precisely *forget* what gender an acquaintance is, but when I think of, say, Bob, the first thing that pops to mind sure isn't Bob's gender, but instead his hobbies, how we know each other, etc. I could describe Bob as a man, but it feels irrelevant somehow.

So, what am I, anyways? My body is a somewhat hormonally weird female body (in my case I am comfortable referring to my body as female for shorthand's sake, though I understand for many people this may not be an okay way to refer to their own bodies). My gender feels like it exists in some weird space between agender, female, demiwoman, and gendervague - the closest major category is probably nonbinary, with fluctuations on a daily basis (but genderfluid feels wrong, since the fluctuation space is relatively small most days).

In "Brave New World," Huxley introduces the term "freemartin" to refer to humans (as opposed to its traditional use in cattle) - XX people who are given a dose of testosterone before birth, rendering them sterile, and likely qualifying them as intersex people. In cattle, freemartinism happens when a cow is carrying twins; the female receives some cells in utero from her brother and becomes a chimera, externally female but infertile, somewhat masculinized. With my weird low estrogen levels (never had the other hormones tested), in some ways I feel like a freemartin - bodily surely female, hormonally less female. Though obviously not intersex, so maybe it's not such a great term, but it just FEELS right somehow.

So perhaps I exist as a freemartin, nonbinary human. I'm still not sure; this is a living, evolving phenomenon for me.

[ievani-e]

Gender Identity: A Very Loose Metaphor

Part 1:

A Hypothetical Conundrum

What’s your favourite colour?

I want you to think about that for a moment before you continue reading. Think about the name of your chosen colour, or visualise it if you prefer.

Do you have the answer in your head?

Good.

What’s your favourite colour: black, or white?

If you were already thinking of either black or white specifically, then you’re in luck. You can answer the question without any hesitation. But if you had been thinking of another colour instead, you might now find yourself thrown for a bit of a loop. It’s a lot harder to commit to whether your favourite colour is black or white when your favourite colour isn’t either of those at all. Nevertheless, those are the two choices with which you are now presented.

You could interpret the question as meaning, “which colour do you prefer out of black or white?” In that case, you could answer, “Out of the two, I prefer [black/white].” And that wouldn’t be lying. But it would still feel a bit disingenuous, because the question wasn’t, “What colour do you prefer?” The question was, “What colour is your favourite?”

Imagine the person asking you the question expects a simple answer. They expect it to be one of the two. The thought that there might be more than just those two options hasn’t even crossed their mind; it needs to be one of the two. And if your answer isn’t one of the two given, it’s impossible to answer without feeling insincere.

So you shift uncomfortably in your skin and you say either “black” or “white.” You keep it simple, like they want you to. Nobody wants to hear you going off on a tangent about how those choices are extremely limited, and how your favourite colour is actually <insert shade or hue here>, when you know that you’d only be talking about things nobody else understands. Nobody wants to hear you critiquing why it needs to be either black or white in the first place; that there are many more colours out there, and we don’t need to restrict ourselves to just two. As far as anyone else is concerned, there are just two. Two colours: black and white. That’s the way it is.

Now let’s imagine that you look out at the world, and everybody is wearing only one of two colours. Everyone else wears only black, or only white. You, on the other hand, are clutching a shirt (or dress, if you prefer) of your favourite colour to your chest.

Do you dare to wear it? Do you dare to put it on, and step out into the world at large?

If your favourite colour is black or is white, there’s no problem. You’ll fit right in. No-one will look at you strangely; you’ll blend in with the crowd and won’t draw any special attention. But if your favourite colour is literally any of the other hundreds (or potentially tens of thousands, depending on how you define it) of options out there, then maybe you’re not so sure. Wearing anything but black or white would draw attention to you.

And sure, maybe you’re proud to be different; maybe you’re proud to be who you are, and don’t care who knows it. But for many, that is a daunting thought. It can even be dangerous. And in either case, you still feel alone. It seems like everyone else is fine with black or white. Nobody else is wearing colour. It seems like no-one else is struggling with what should be so simple of a concept except for you. It seems you are the only one who hesitates.

Let’s extend this metaphor of a black-and-white world one step further. Not only does everyone wear either black or white; everyone is expected to. For the sake of argument, let’s say that all girls/women wear black, and all boys/men wear white. If you are born female, you are expected to be a girl/woman, and thus are expected to wear black. If you are born male, you are expected to be a boy/man, and thus are expected to wear white. In this way, everyone wears colours “appropriate” for their sex, marking them as either male or female. You, as a denizen of this hypothetical world, might not even think of it this way; you might not be aware of this association that “black=female” and “white=male”. Your mind may not necessarily go as far as to think about a person’s biological sex, or what their sex “must be” depending on their clothes. But nevertheless, intrinsically you know that if you see a person wearing black, they must be a girl/woman. If you see a person wearing white, they must be a boy/man. You just accept that as truth.

If you had been born into this black-and-white world, you would have been told what to wear since your birth. Your doctor would have told your parents whether you were male or female (or, in rare cases, intersex), based on your genitals. That also would have determined what colour to assign to you; the colour that you will go on to wear for the rest of your life. If you are intersex, your doctors and parents would have had to make a decision about what colour they ought to assign to you when neither colour was readily apparent. If you aren’t intersex, they just use the colour that matches your associated sex.

In any case, after that, your genitals themselves aren’t mentioned very much. Instead, everyone references the conclusion drawn from your genitals and treats it as an immutable and independent truth. Your sex becomes self-evident at any moment, even without seeing your genitals, based on how you are dressed or how you were raised to behave. Conveniently, no-one acknowledges that those things are often based on your assigned sex at birth, and that the different sexes are treated differently, leading to many of those perceived differences; they’ll just take those things as proof in their own right that you are, in fact, the sex they thought you were.

In this way, your parents are told whether you are male or female, and they raise you accordingly. Your parents will have, in turn, told you; and they tell you again every time they call you “boy” or “girl” or refer to you as “he” or “she”. Every time they buy you toys or clothes is also a reminder, because they will buy either white clothes and white toys from the white section, or they will buy black clothes and black toys from the black section. Nobody thinks to look at the other section. It’s all very simple and straight forward: black for a girl, white for a boy.

If you were born female, then you’ll have worn black all your life. That’s what the norm is. You look out, and you see every other girl and woman wearing black. That’s what they are doing. There might be a wide range of apparel; some might be wearing T-shirts and shorts; some might be wearing suits; some might be wearing sundresses — but regardless of the style of the apparel, they are all wearing black.

Maybe you like black. Maybe it’s your favourite colour; maybe it’s something you love, or perhaps it suits you well. If you love it anyway, then maybe it feels perfectly natural to you to go out into the world, wearing black every day. Maybe you wouldn’t want it any other way.

Likewise, if you were born male, then you’ll have worn white all your life. That’s what the norm is. You look out, and you see every other boy and man wearing white. That’s what they are doing. There might be a wide range of apparel; some might be wearing T-shirts and shorts; some might be wearing suits; some might be wearing sundresses — but regardless of the style of the apparel, they are all wearing white.

Maybe you like white. Maybe it’s your favourite colour; maybe it’s something you love, or perhaps it suits you well. If you love it anyway, then maybe it feels perfectly natural to you to go out into the world, wearing white every day. Maybe you wouldn’t want it any other way.

But it’s also possible that, maybe — just maybe — you question it. Maybe you don’t like black or white — whichever colour has been assigned to you. Maybe you go so far as to hate it; or maybe you just love another colour more. Maybe you don’t understand why you have to wear it, even though it makes you miserable, just because every other member of your sex wears it. Maybe you look across at all the boys and men wearing white, or the girls and the women wearing black, and maybe that appeals to you more. Maybe you have always felt an affinity for white more than you have for black, or for black more than you have for white. Or, maybe you are drawn to another colour altogether.

Imagine that you try to have a conversation about how you are feeling; about how the assigned colour doesn’t seem to really fit you. Maybe the conversation will go something like this:

You: Are there any, you know, other colours? Maybe I could wear something else?

Others: Why? What’s wrong with [black/white]?

You: Nothing’s wrong with it. It’s just… I don’t really like it, is all. [Black seems a bit depressing/white seems a bit boring/literally any other reason] to me.

Others: Oh, so now we’re all [depressing/boring/whatever other adjective], is that it?

You: No, no, that’s not what I meant! I’m just talking about me. I don’t really like it for myself, is all. It doesn’t really seem to suit me.

Others: What are you talking about? You look really good in [black/white]! Do you just have low self-esteem, maybe? Do you think you’re ugly? Because you aren’t, you know. Is it that you think you aren’t good enough? You should really just learn to embrace yourself and accept yourself the way you are.

You: No, it’s not that, either. I just think I would feel more comfortable in something else. I think I’d feel more comfortable if I wore [white, like the men do/ black, like the women do/ another colour entirely].

Others: Oh, so is this about feeling like you don’t fit in with other [women/men]? Is this about not feeling [feminine/masculine] enough? Because, you know, you don’t have to be [feminine/masculine] to be a [woman/man]! Plenty of [women/men] aren’t [feminine/masculine]! Maybe what you’re taking issue with is the style of dress. But there is a wide range of clothing options out there! If you don’t like one thing, try another! If you don’t like dresses, try wearing trousers! If you don’t like shorts, try wearing skirts, or vice versa! It’s perfectly fine to experiment with different styles and find something that feels more “you”.

You: Yeah, I know; I know there are lots of different ways to be a [woman/man], and lots of different ways to express it. But even if I changed the type of clothes I wear, I’d still be wearing the same colour as always, wouldn’t I? What I want is to change the colour.

Others: Oh, so we’re back to this again… I thought you said there was nothing wrong with [black/white]?

You: There isn’t. Not for other people. If they want to wear it and like wearing it, that’s fine. I’m not telling anyone else not to wear what they want to wear. But I personally don’t like it, is all. I personally don’t think it suits me. I want to try wearing another colour instead.

Others: But you’re a [woman/man]! You have to wear [black/white]!

You: Well, why do I have to?

Others: Because you’re [female/male] and that is the norm!

You: Yeah, but why? What does it matter if I’m [female/male]? If I like [white/black], why can’t I wear that, too? Why do you need to be [male/female]? Can’t I just wear the colour that I prefer?

This is the question that transgender people struggle with, in a way that cisgender people do not. Cisgender people like the colour that was assigned to them. The colour that they wear is the colour that suits them and matches them perfectly.

If you’re cisgender, even though you, too, were just arbitrarily handed one of only two choices at your birth and expected to live up to it, you don’t really notice it as much because that choice aligns with your own preference. For transgender people, that is not the case.

Part 2:

Gender Identities in a Black-and-White World

Using the above metaphor, I shall now attempt to explain and describe a few common gender identities as they would present or fit into this imagined world.

Cisgender:

In this hypothetical world, cisgender women wear black clothes and cisgender men wear white clothes. Those clothes might be of any style, fit or cut; they can be dresses, gowns, dungarees, polo-shirts, shorts, sportswear, etc. They can lean more towards the masculine side or the feminine side, or anything in between. But nevertheless, while cis women and cis men may experiment with their femininity or masculinity, and express it in ways unique to them, they still feel perfectly comfortable wearing clothes of the assigned colour, and feel like they fit in with other people wearing the same colour as them.

Experimentation with one’s gender expression (whether you present yourself as masculine, feminine, etc) may manifest itself as being gender non-conforming. Gender non-conformity is where a person feels comfortable with the colour assigned to them at birth, and considers themselves as belonging to the group which wears the same colour; but they do not abide by all the rules for the group, or may challenge them or question them. A gender non-conforming person may present more “feminine” (if male) or “masculine” (if female); but being “feminine” or “masculine” is not the same as being a “woman” or a “man”. You can be a feminine man; a masculine woman; anything in between; or any combination thereof.

Gender non-conformity is not by necessity the same as feeling as though you are (or should be) a member of the other group; it is more about exploring the boundaries of your own group, and questioning and challenging what can and cannot be done.

In keeping with the established metaphor, gender non-conforming cis women would still wear black; just maybe they’ll wear what are typically considered “men’s clothes”, or a “masculine style of dress”. Gender non-conforming cis men would still wear white; just maybe they’ll wear what are typically considered “women’s clothes”, or a “feminine style of dress”.

Trans binary:

Someone with a trans binary identity would have been born female or male, but feel more of an affinity towards the other colour more than their own assigned colour. Males who were expected to wear white may feel more at home wearing black. Females who were expected to wear black may feel more at home wearing white. They may feel like they belong with the other group more than their own.

They still fit into the binary of wearing either “black or white”: it’s just that their preferred colour is the one “across” from or “opposite” the one assigned to them based on their biological sex. Trans men will seek to wear white and assimilate themselves within the existing group of men, while trans women will seek to wear black and assimilate themselves within the existing group of women.

It is also possible to be both trans and gender non-conforming, in the same way it is possible to be both cis and gender non-conforming. Non-conforming trans people may know themselves to be a trans man or trans woman, but want to explore their gender in a wider range of options than traditional gender roles allow, even within their preferred gender.

The same applies as before: gender non-conforming trans women would still wear black; just maybe they’ll wear what are typically considered “men’s clothes”, or a “masculine style of dress”. Gender non-conforming trans men would still wear white; just maybe they’ll wear what are typically considered “women’s clothes”, or a “feminine style of dress”.

Non-binary:

Non-binary individuals won’t feel comfortable in either black or white. They will seek out a different colour; one that speaks personally to them. Alternatively, they might want to wear a mix of black and white, or black on some days and white on others. There are many different variations and presentations when it comes to identifying as non-binary, just as there are many different colours that exist other than just black or white.

For example, some non-binary individuals may identify as agender; neither “man” nor “woman”, but not any other gender, either. For this metaphor, let’s say that they choose to wear grey, as that is not “black” or “white” but also isn’t a colour of another kind. It is what feels the most neutral.

Other individuals may pick out a specific colour for themselves; something that feels like “them”. Some may wear yellow; some might wear green; or purple; or blue; or pink. Whatever it is, each individual will express and manifest their own identity in a way that feels right for them, and it will be different and mean different things for each individual. It is a very subjective thing. Such individuals may identify as genderqueer.

If a person identifies as gender-fluid, what this might mean is that, instead of wearing their chosen colour every single day, they might have some days where they feel like wearing one colour and some where they feel like wearing another. They’ll wear a mix of different colours, depending on what speaks to them at the moment. They might shift between black and white; maybe grey as well; or a range of other colours.

What every non-binary individual has in common is that they do not fit exclusively into black or exclusively into white. It might be both, or neither.

Part 3:

Conclusion

If you are cisgender, you proudly wear the colour that was assigned to you, and you see that most other people in the world do, too. If you are transgender, however, it can be really scary to look out at the world and see only black and white; or, more specifically, that only females wear black, and only males wear white. Even if you want to wear black or white, it can feel discouraging if even when wearing black or white, which is the norm, your preferred colour nevertheless seems unavailable to you just because of your sex.

Females should be able to wear white if they want to. Males should be able to wear black. Theoretically, nothing is physically stopping you from putting on the clothes or the colour of clothes you want. And yet, subtly and not-so-subtly — directly or indirectly — our society still reinforces the idea of what is “proper” for a person based on whether they are male or female. It may feel like “female=black” and “male=white” is the only option. Even more generally than that, it may feel like “black or white” is the only option. It isn’t until we challenge these norms, and provide more options, that things will change.

In the meantime, the onus is on the transgender person to figure out that they don’t have to be penned in by traditional social roles, even while those social roles continue to exist. It’s up to the individual to figure out that, despite the pressure to conform, they don’t have to; that there is another way. Even though all they see is females wearing black and males wearing white, it’s still up to them to think, “Hey! Maybe I could wear [black/white] anyway! Maybe I’ll be happier in [black/white] than I am in [white/black]!”

For non-binary individuals, it can be even harder. We are used to seeing the world in black and white. Even when we are told things like, “The world isn’t just black and white”, we still nevertheless tend towards trying to see things in black and white, and only adopt other, more complex outlooks if we fail. Even if we accept that black and white are not be-all and end-all — even if we accept they are more like two opposite ends of a gradient, and think of it like a sliding scale — we still tend to think that all that is in between is grey.

It can be extremely challenging (and terrifying) to find your colour in a world that only understands black and white; especially when the world, even as it comes to understand transitioning a little better, nevertheless can only understand it as transitioning from black to white, or vice versa.

That’s why it is so incredibly important to support LGBTQ+ communities in general and especially transgender people you personally know in particular, and to listen to and believe the people you love when they tell you they are questioning their role in society or wondering if they might feel happier/ less miserable another way instead. Even if you yourself find it hard to understand, strive to listen to them with an open ear, an open mind, and an open heart. Trust that, while what they say might not be true for you, it is true for them. Even if you cannot decide their path for them, you can still be there and hold their hand. That will already make an enormous difference to the individuals who have most likely struggled in silence for a long, long time before daring to voice their thoughts aloud.

We don’t all fit neatly into boxes; but eventually, we might all realise that we don’t have to. There is a whole wide beautiful world out there, and a whole wide beautiful spectrum of colours.

That is why, in a sea of people wearing black and white, you’ll see me wearing rainbow.

[xeno-aligned]

copy & pasted under the read more in order to have a local copy.

A Brief His and Herstory of Butch And Femme

BY: JEM ZERO 16 DEC 2017

When America’s LGBTQ+ folk started coming out of the closet in the 1950s, the underground scene was dominated by working class people who had less to lose if they were outed. Butch/femme presentation arose as a way for lesbians to identify each other, also serving as a security measure when undercover cops tried to infiltrate the local scenes. Butch women exhibited dapper and dandy aesthetics, and came to be known for being aggressive because they took protective roles during raids and other examples of homophobic violence. The image of the butch lesbian became a negative stereotypes for lesbians as a whole, leaving out femme lesbians, who are (pretty insultingly) considered undetectable as lesbians due to their feminine presentation.

In modern times there’s less need for strict adherence to these roles; instead, they become heritage. A great deal of political rebellion is wrapped up in each individual aesthetic. Butch obviously involves rejecting classically feminine gender expectations, while femme fights against their derogatory connotations.

But while butch/femme has been a part of lesbian culture, these terms and identities are not exclusive to queer women. Many others in the LGBTQ community utilize these signifiers for themselves, including “butch queen” or “femme daddy.” Butch and femme have different meanings within queer subcultures, and it’s important to understand the reasons they were created and established.

The Etymology

The term “lesbian” derives from the island on which Sappho lived—if you didn’t already guess, she was a poet who wrote extensively about lady-lovin’. Before Lesbos lent its name to lesbians, the 1880s described attraction between women as Sapphism. In 1925, “lesbian” was officially recorded as the word for a female sodomite. (Ick.) Ten years before that, “bisexual” was defined as "attraction to both sexes."

In upcoming decades, Sapphic women would start tearing down the shrouds that obscured the lives of queer women for much of recorded history. Come the ‘40s and ‘50s, butch and femme were coined, putting names to the visual and behavioral expression that could be seen in pictures as early as 1903. So, yeah—Western Sapphic women popularized these terms, but the conversation doesn’t end there, nor did it start there.

Before femme emerged as its own entity, multiple etymological predecessors were used to describe gender nonconforming people. Femminiello was a non-derogatory Italian term that referred to a feminine person who was assigned male—this could be a trans woman, an effeminate gay man, or the general queering of binarist norms. En femme derives from French, and was used to describe cross-dressers.

Butch, first used in 1902 to mean "tough youth," has less recorded history. Considering how “fem” derivatives were popularized for assigned male folks, one might attribute this inequality to the holes in history where gender-defying assigned female folks ought to be.

The first time these concepts were used to specifically indicate women was the emergence of Sapphic visibility in twentieth century. This is the ground upon which Lesbian Exclusivism builds its tower, and the historical and scientific erasure of bisexual women is where it crumbles. Seriously, did we forget that was a thing?

The assumption that any woman who defies gender norms is automatically a lesbian relies on the perpetuation of misogynist, patriarchal stereotypes against bisexual women. A bisexual woman is just as likely to suffer in a marriage with a man, or else be mocked as an unlovable spinster. A woman who might potentially enjoy a man is not precluded from nonconformist gender expression. Many famous gender nonconforming women were bisexual—La Maupin (Julie d'Aubigny), for example.

Most records describing sexual and romantic attraction between women were written by men, and uphold male biases. What happens, then, when a woman is not as openly lascivious as the ones too undeniably bisexual to silence? Historically, if text or art depicts something the dominant culture at the time disagrees with, the evidence is destroyed. Without voices of the Sapphists themselves, it’s impossible to definitively draw a line between lesbians and bisexuals within Sapphic history.

Beyond White Identities

Another massive hole in the Lesbian Exclusivist’s defenses lies in the creeping plague that is the Mainstream White Gay; it lurks insidiously, hauling along the mangled tatters of culture that was stolen from Queer and Trans People of Colour (QTPOC). In many documents, examples provided of Sapphic intimacy are almost always offered from the perspective of white cis women, leaving huge gaps where women of color, whether trans or cis, and nonbinary people were concerned. This is the case despite the fact that some of the themes we still celebrate as integral to queer culture were developed by Black and Latinx LGBTQ+ folk during the Harlem Renaissance, which spanned approximately from 1920 to 1935.

A question I can’t help but ask is: Where do queer Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color fit into the primarily white butch/femme narrative? Does it mean anything that the crackdown on Black queer folk seemed to coincide with the time period when mainstream lesbianism adopted butch and femme as identifiers?

Similar concepts to butch/femme exist throughout the modern Sapphic scene. Black women often identify as WLW (Women-Loving-Women), and use terms like “stud” and “aggressive femme.” Some Asian queer women use “tomboy” instead of butch. Derivatives and subcategories abound, sometimes intersecting with asexual and trans identities. “Stone butch” for dominant lesbians who don’t want to receive sexual stimulation; “hard femme” as a gender-inclusive, fat-positive, QTPOC-dominated political aesthetic; “futch” for the in-betweenies who embody both butch and femme vibes. These all center women and nonbinary Sapphics, but there’s still more.

Paris is Burning, a documentary filmed about New York City ball culture in the 1980s, describes butch queens among the colourful range of identities prevalent in that haven of QTPOC queerness. Despite having a traditionally masculine physique, the gay male butch queen did not stick to gender expectations from straight society or gay culture. Instead, he expertly twisted up his manly features with women’s clothing and accessories, creating a persona that was neither explicitly masculine nor feminine.

Butch Queens Up in Pumps, a book by Marlon M. Bailey, expounds upon their presence within inner city Detroit’s Ballroom scene, its cover featuring a muscular gay man in a business casual shirt paired with high heels. Despite this nuance, butch remains statically defined as a masculine queer woman, leaving men of color out of the conversation.

For many QTPOC, especially those who transcend binary gender roles, embracing the spirit of butch and femme is inextricable with their racial identity. Many dark-skinned people are negatively portrayed as aggressive and hypermasculine, which makes it critical to celebrate the radical softness that can accompany femme expressions. Similarly, the intrinsic queerness of butch allows some nonbinary people to embrace the values and aesthetics that make them feel empowered without identifying themselves as men.

Butch, Femme, and Gender

It’s pretty clear to me that the voices leading the Lesbian Exclusive argument consistently fail to account for where butch and femme have always, in some form, represented diverse gender expression for all identities.

‘Butch’ and ‘femme’ began to die out in the 1970s when Second Wave Feminism and Lesbian Separatism came together to form a beautiful baby, whom they named “Gender Is Dead.” White, middle class cis women wrestled working class QTWOC out of the limelight, claiming that masculine gender expression was a perversion of lesbian identity. The assassination attempt was largely unsuccessful, however: use of these identifiers surged back to life in the ‘80s and ‘90s, now popularized outside of class and race barriers.

Looking at all this put together, I have to say that it’s a mystery to me why so many lesbians, primarily white, believe that their history should take precedence over… everyone else that makes up the spectrum of LGBTQ+ experiences, even bi/pan Sapphics in same-gender relationships. If someone truly believes that owning butch/femme is more important than uniting and protecting all members of the Sapphic community from the horrors of homophobic and gendered oppression, maybe they’re the one who shouldn’t be invited to the party.

As a nonbinary lesbian, I have experienced my share of time on the flogging-block. I empathize strongly with the queer folks being told that these cherished identities are not theirs to claim. Faced with this brutal, unnecessary battle, I value unity above all else. There’s no reason for poor trans women, nonbinary Black femmes, bisexual Asian toms, gay Latino drag queens, or any other marginalized and hurting person to be left out of the dialogue that is butch and femme, with all its wonderful deconstructions of mainstream heteronormative culture.

It is my Christmas wish that the Lesbian Exclusivist Tower is torn down before we open the new chapter in history that is 2018. Out of everything the LGBTQ+ community has to worry about already, petty infighting shouldn’t be entertained—especially when its historical foundation is so flimsy. Queering gender norms has always been the heart of butch/femme expression, and that belongs to all of us.

[bi-asstronaut]

hi! a good friend of mine doesn't understand nb genders (especially the fluid ones & agender). she thinks nb ppl have a mental problem, bc as she sees it- gender is about deciding (between female/male), while nb is not deciding. in general she's very understanding and open, but I couldn't explain her (plus I'm cis and don't want to say something harmful). how would u answer the question of "why are nb genders are actual genders? why are they not a problem of making decisions?"

Hi Anon! Thanks for sending me this ask. I’m not an All-Knowing Expert on nb genders because I’m nb myself, since everyone experiences their gender differently, but I’ll do my best to answer your question.

It can be very difficult for non-nb people to understand what being nonbinary means or “feels like”, simply because they’ve never experienced gender outside the binary themselves, so I understand why your friend has a hard time seeing where we’re coming from. Nonbinary isn’t a disease or a mental illness, just like being binary trans (a trans man/woman) isn’t, and it’s also not about not making a decision. If anything, I think being a cis person has more to do with not making a decision than being nb does - Cis people are comfortable with the gender they were born as and don’t have to go through any of the processes nb people (and binary trans people as well in some cases) may have to; processes, which, to me, are filled with decisions. Am I really nb? Do I want to change my name? Do I want to alter my body in any way? How should I dress to best express who I am? Does dressing how I want to/expressing my gender have any consequences for me? etc. I hope that answers your question of why I think nb genders aren’t about not making decisions.

To understand why nb genders are actual genders, I think it’s important to understand that gender is largely a social construct. What many perceive as being something inherently “girly”, feminine, “boyish” or masculine is actually just… stuff. It’s just objects and concepts. A dress or a skirt is just a piece of fabric cut and sown in a certain way, but lots of people think it’s inappropriate for a man or a boy to wear because it’s “girly”. And to think that the notion that gender is determined by chromosomes can shut down any argument because it’s biology is actually wrongful and completely ignores… actual biology. For example, a quick google search gave me Klinefelter syndrome, a genetic mutation where a person is born with an extra X chromosome, so that their sex chromosomes are XXY. In rare cases, they can even have two or three extra Xs (XXXY or XXXXY). Physically, this shows as low levels of testosterone, which means less-developed “male” characteristics and more-developed “female” characteristics. An example that may seem even more out of this world are people who have a genetic mosaic, where they possess XX chromosomes in some cells and XY in others. How are we supposed to determine whether this person is male or female if we go by chromosomes alone? I think it’s much easier to just ask what the person feels like.

(Not to mention the fact that the biology argument completely erases the existence of intersex people, but I don’t know enough about this subject to speak about it.)

With that said, I think one of the keys to “unlocking” how someone can be nb is being able to differentiate between sex and gender. Typically, sex is defined as what’s going on with your body, while gender defines what goes on inside your head. That means that your body and your gender don’t have to match up whatsoever. Trans women are still women and trans men are still men if they identify as such, regardless of how their body looks. This also goes for nb people - We’re still nb, no matter what our physical characteristics may be and how we choose to dress.

I’d also like to point out that a large number of non-Western cultures recognise more than two genders and otherwise gender non-conforming people, but these genders are often intrinsically linked to that culture’s traditions and beliefs and should therefore not be used by people outside that culture. A relatively well-known example of such a gender is “two-spirit”, which is used by some indigenous North Americans to describe “certain people in their communities who fulfill a traditional third-gender ceremonial role in their cultures.” (Wikipedia) The fact that many non-Western cultures recognise and have recognised more than two genders for centuries should be a good indication that identifying as nonbinary isn’t a new thing made up by hipsters and teens who just want to be cool and different.

tl;dr:- gender is a social construct built on concepts and things that have come to be seen as “girly” (feminine) or “boyish” (masculine), but which have no inherent gender, such as clothing- sex/physical characteristics and gender are two different, separate things and they don’t have to match up- using chromosomes/biology as an argument against trans and nonbinary genders is wrongful and erases intersex people- more than two genders are recognised in many non-Western cultures

This got really lengthy, but I hope it answers your questions and questions your friend may have! If you want me to elaborate or answer another question, feel free to shoot me another ask.

And if there’s anything in my reply that’s offensive, wrong or could be worded better, please let me know.

Further reading and watching (I’m on mobile so I apologise for the ugly links):- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlc8H4WUqEs (“Proof that there are more than two genders”, uploaded by Riley J. Dennis, a nonbinary person)

- https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjIGlYSe6iDxaIAsFhQ7eLoYlo35JNAKy (“The ABC’s of LGBT+”, uploaded by Ash Hardell)

- For your friend about being genderfluid and agender specifically: http://gender.wikia.com/wiki/Gender_Fluid (the definition of being genderfluid)

- https://www.google.dk/amp/s/www.teenvogue.com/story/what-is-agender/amp (a rather lengthy article that includes an agender person talking about what being agender means to them, a doctor who works with gender, pronoun usage, and other things) (I only skimmed it, but it seems respectful and good)

[thescurfofworse]

i just wrote to This American Life about their “Testosterone” episode.

I wanted to add my thoughts and criticism to the thoughts and criticism found in this article. here’s what i said to them:

**cw for me talking about my own history of misogyny, femme erasure, transphobia, etc, and passing mention of experiences of sexual assault, trans and queer phobic heckling/assault, etc.**

!! i am fully open to being criticized about what i wrote below, but if you are here to tell me that testosterone DID make you a sex-crazed manbeast who can’t keep their eyes off people they want to fuck, you can fuck right off with that and go think about who you really want to be in the world. !!

“Hi TAL folks.

Love your show generally! It's so important that you're able to do such deep investigations of people's stories, and connect broad experiences together.

Did NOT love this show, and I'm sure I'm not the only one letting you know that. I know it's a re-run from 17 years ago. That's a long time and I think you are probably already kicking yourself for re-airing this without some edits. It's insulting for a lot of folks.

I wanted to talk to you about it for a few reasons. Firstly, I think that while the strength of This American Life is in its reporting on people's lived experiences, the weakness in this episode is the danger of not fact-checking and providing balance. This imbalance is scientifically inaccurate, and leaves room for misogyny.

Which is the second and most important reason I'm writing to you. I'm sure you've seen or been sent the article "You Were A Misogynist Before Testosterone". This article does a great job of outlining the behaviours Griffin embodies before and after testosterone as misogynist, and the ways in which his behaviours were positioned by the show as natural and normal.

Before I took T, I readily described myself as “a hundred footer.” That means that I was identifiable as queer from 100 feet away. My use of this phrase is a pretty good example of the kind of queer I was – I was invested in championing female masculinity, butchness, and visible, aggressive queerness. I overwrote a lot of femmes, bi folks, and other queers who didn't occupy the same kind of visibility I had. I benefited in queer communities by this masculinity – I was desireable, respected, and looked up to. I took this benefit as my due, because I suffered for it in general. Even protected as I was by my whiteness and my able-bodiedness, I was heckled by teenagers, subject to violence and harassment by grown men, and generally considered unemployable and not worth taking seriously. As a teen in high school, I was silenced in science classes for being a woman, and then harassed in the hallways for being too masculine. All this aside, it's important that i reiterate – my masculinity in queer circles meant I was given space to be a sleaze-bag. I wrote objectifying poetry, pursued women aggressively who I see now didn't have the space to say no or assert their own desires, and silenced femmes in organizing communities because they weren't “assertive” enough for me to take seriously. I was a misogynist, even as I railed against men and the patriarchy in general.

Because of my loathing for men in general, I put off taking T for a long time. I even felt betrayed by my trans friends who did follow through with T. Like they were leaving me there in my visible queerness to embrace passing male privilege.

Finally, after years of depression, I took the plunge.

Listening to Griffin, I can see, in part, where he's coming from. I want to clarify that his experience is his experience, and it doesn't have to be wrong. I just think attributing it to T is essentialist, and there are other ways to explain his changes.

First, the racing images and increased desire. Yes, when you first start T (or any other hormone protocol for transness reasons), you go through a second puberty. It might well seem like this second puberty is different than the first, more sexual, more vibrant, more active. But remember that often, if you are trans, your first puberty might have been made complicated and a less embodied experience because you might have been alienated by it! I was weirded out by my breasts and zits, and as a sexual assault survivor, I felt unsafe being read as closer to a woman, more readily sexualized. Generally speaking, even without any kind of trans experience, I think the puberty that leads to being gendered a woman can be scarier! Because the patriarchy! Rape culture! These things are real! And we know it's frowned upon for teenage girls to feel sexually engaged, while teenage boy sexuality is championed everywhere.

Even with these factors, I remember my first puberty as a wildly sexual time. All I thought about was undressing people, touching bodies, trying things out. This is not everyone's experience of puberty, but it was mine, and the same followed for my second puberty at 26.

It could be that especially at first, and especially on such a high dose (unusually high – who is this guy's endocrinologist???), Griffin would feel more sexual, more visual, and more driven to pursue sex! That does not mean that this increased sexuality is intrinsic to testosterone as a hormone. Sex drive, as we know, varies wildly across genders and sexes and sexualities. There's no rule that “men” want sex more than “women”, nor even that men have more testosterone in their bodies than women! If it were even possible to rest solely on biology, which it isn't! Culture is so heavily invested in making sex complicated for people read as women, and pathologically rewarding men for being sex-obsessed. Obviously Griffin was into sex before. Testosterone gave him permission to embody these desires more wholeheartedly, and more problematically. I thought about sex more after T because I felt sexy in my body, but it also made me aware that I was read as a man on the street. Because I have empathy for the women in my life, it made me check myself, and try to be as non-threatening as possible to the strangers around me. It made me keep my eyes even more to myself, and keep the physical space I took up small, and unassuming. I felt safer on the street after T, and was thus able to take up less space and behave more approachably and kindly. And my mind was less consumed by my own embodiment, so I could think about others and how my presence might make them feel.

Second, the “interest in science.” This is just absurd. This is where I will talk about increased confidence, though. This is something that happened to me as well, partly because I was more at home in my body, and partly because the entire damn world loves a white man. I was immediately more employable, more respected, and “safer” to talk to and approach. Other men complimented my facial hair and tattoos, older men offered me job opportunities and life advice, and older women asked me about my partner and my dreams for the future. Strangers would never have spoken a kind word to me before. Now they were praising my thoughts and hopes, and trying to help me out of the blue. All of this made me feel safer, and that increased sense of safety meant I could take risks in my interests! I could talk about something I read about string theory the other day and people would listen! This does not happen to women or people read as women. It's not that people with marginally less testosterone in their system are not interested in science. It's that people with marginally less testosterone in their system are not listened to when they talk about science. We know this! You know this, This American Life! And this is not the only path Griffin could have taken with this new confidence. He could have become more interested in flowers, or cooking, or vehicle maintenance. My point is, whatever Griffin's interests, they would be taken more seriously post-T, and this really does make it easier for your brain to grasp things. If you are not constantly battling other people's doubt, your brain can hold onto ideas better, and explore them full force.

As I mentioned before, I spent a lot of my time before T being very angry and very aggressive, and very invested in ideas of “belonging” to queerness. I was so invested in being read as masculine, I pushed away anything potentially read as feminine with disgust. As I started passing as male, and still wanting to be included in queer spaces, I came to challenge my previous self. I was also less on guard for criticism. I remembered all the times people in my communities had challenged me and I looked back on those challenges with gratitude. Because I was safer and more confident, I was able to check myself, and to learn about the kinds of misogyny I was engaging in as a butch. I'm still learning, and will always be learning, but in my case, testosterone helped me to be less of a misogynist, and a better ally to women and femmes around me. And I can accept and embrace those feminine parts of myself that I had previously rejected.

Testosterone for me has meant that I have finally come full circle in my interests, back to the dream I had as a pre-teen. Because that dream has a lot to do with me embracing my desire to care for people and animals, and a lot to do with going back to school for the sciences, I had to work through my fear of things presumed feminine AND my trained fear of the sciences from high school. So here I am, writing to tell you another transmasculine experience. Testosterone for me made me better at consent, a better listener, and more invested in care and caring. Testosterone is in everyone's bodies, and has different effects on each of us. It does not turn us into sex-obsessed animals who cannot control ourselves. We give ourselves permission to become who we are in the world. Championing this misogynist trans narrative is lazy work on your part, and I truly hope you take steps to correct it in future episodes. I know you can do better.

Also? Everyone has estrogen and progesterone too. Do an episode on them as well? Talk to some actual scientists? Not just some guy who wrote in GQ one time or some trans man who reaffirms whatever sexist notions you want affirmed?

Thanks for your time.

You can feel free to reach me with any questions. I'm happy to help you do the work of re-working a Testosterone episode if you're interested. That said, I’m just a white able-bodied trans masculine person with a buttload of male passing privilege, so maybe pass the mic to someone without those privileges.

[matsitle]

#ArtLivesHere

It all starts with an inquisitive child, eyes wide open, held tilted forward, right on the edge of the frame. The problem with children – or at least mine own biggest problem with them – is that they always ask the difficult questions. It is no surprise that in some of our cultures children are usually discouraged, sometimes violently, from asking too many questions. It is even worse, I found out on Wednesday evening at the Blend Restaurant and Bar, when the question is a silent one. A stare. That is, when one is tasked with interpreting a child’s silent stare. Which is exactly what Mo Matli’s lens burdened us with at her maiden exhibition “Intrinsic Melanin” for Bloem First Fridays. The photograph of the boy is one of many adorning the Blend’s meshed wall. The boy with the menacing poser is staring down at us as we ask Rashid Vries, the main model of this exhibition, if as a person living with albinism feels black, or black “enough”. What is blackness vele? And what are the degrees to blackness – how much of it is enough? Is it the melanin perhaps? I choose to go with the photographer on this last one; ‘Intrinsic melanin’. Blackness in not just – to correct Biko’s formulation – a question of pigmentation. It is intrinsic in the centuries of dispossession (of land, labour and sense of being) that mark us all. No amount of pigmentation variations – be it natural as in the case of albinism or cosmetic as in bleaching – can alleviate blackness. Try as you might! (And I secretly root for those who try; who wouldn’t wanna escape?). I hear the boy whisper Fanon’s sagacious words to my ears; “I am over-determined from without. I am a slave not of the “idea” that others have of me but of my own appearance.” Kids and their bloody questions! I panic; can we move past the albinism of Rashid? Is he not a beautiful man – of course he is! That is the reason Mo shot him. Did he not just say he’s an engineering student? How did he manage to make the transition to being a model? And would he be doing more of this modelling thing? Can. We. Just. Not. Make. Him. A. Slave. Of. His. Appearance? We all know what that is like – it is our collective pain. We enter and nervousness engulfs the room. We attract security escorts in shops. We don’t get served in restaurants. Then why do we do it to him! But we were enslaved by his appearance – do albinos make albino babies? The boy in the top right corner of the wire mesh quizzically, even whimsically, asks a question that would’ve saved us four centuries of msunery had we knew the power to pose the question when the three ships docked at the cape; ‘aninyi perhaps?’ A question Ayanda Mabulu asks of white patrons of the #Amandla![Re]form,Debate,[Re]dress? exhibition catalogue book launch at the Oliewenhuis Art Museum the very next evening. The exhibition has been running from December last year, and it is one of the few that is decidedly black – in both the artists and the subject matter. Also curated by a black woman – another “milestone” in the museum’s history. Laughable really, the whole thing, were it not so painful. And indeed the artwork was painful. On opening night in December I thanked my imposed masculinity for not breaking down in tears when I confronted Reatile Moalusi’s photograph – titled #FMF III – of protesting students holding a placard with the words “police we are your children”. I was, in the words of Ayanda, paining. And this pain permeated through most of the artwork on display. This was, after all, ‘resistance art’. On the Thursday however, as I walked up to the Museum, I was joyously singing Makeba’s version of ‘Bahlelibonke etironkweni’. I was dancing even. Not one iota of my being told me there was something intrinsically wrong about finding joy in a song – a lamentation really – about black people (someone’s parent, child, lover) languishing in jail for daring to be. Enter Ayanda! I got to the museum and like a dog wishing to mark territory headed straight to the loo. The song still ringing in my head. I went straight for Moalusi’s photograph afterwards – it elicited fokol in me. I moved right along. All the artworks were quite. Boring even. So I gave them all a cursory look just to maintain my lie as a cultured person (we are responsible for the upkeep of our lies). One oil painting did manage to insult me though; Martin Steyn’s ‘Die land is ons land.’ A white man laying languorously on a large expanse of land. But only enough for a ‘Nxa!’ I went and took a seat and waited for the show – for that’s what it was, pre-Ayanda, a show – to get started. Sooner it ends, sooner I can check-in and say something banal like “what a lit time we had at Oliewenhuis” and live another day known as the patron of the arts. But Ayanda wasn’t about that life. When asked to introduce himself, after the flurry of self-congratulatory speeches from those involved for doing something so “radical” and other artists had literally just stood at the podium and said “Hi my name is….” and left, Ayanda recited ithakazelo zakhe. At their tale end he excused the ‘unsophisticated juvenile tongues’ of our paler counterparts and gave them a pass to just call him Ayanda. It got uncomfortable; but the kind of discomfort that makes things ‘lit’, that will have us tweet ‘bars!’, but threatens very little. He too must have noticed he was playing into the masochism (we seem to enjoy performing our pain) of the zeitgeist; a candidate for a meme. He went further. “We are not entertainers…we are not going to dance for you.” Some uncomfortable laughter could be discerned. Loso logolo ditshego akere? But how long will we hide behind laughter? He goes deeper. “You are worthy to be protested.” He tells the 1652s. We are now lodged in Fanon’s black abyss. There is no way we could laugh our way out of this one. Someone attempts to clap him off the podium. “Wait I am not done!” He must have heard IceBound on how applause kills. “This is not art…this is our pain!” He stands in front of Asanda Kupa’s “Situation right now.” A painting that painfully reminds one of the haunting line “the children are flying, bullets are dying” in Makeba’s ‘Soweto Blues’. Indeed this is our pain, it is not something to pretty up some dining room in Woodlands. “Fuck that! And fuck you.” He leaves the mic and walks away. “Thank you,” the curator, Tshegofatso Seoka, walks calmly to the stage, smiling away all that just happened. Time for the formalities is over, we hear, now let’s go mingle. But clearly her smile and infectious charm are not enough, she comes back after leaving the podium to disclaim that “Ayanda’s views” (not our collective pain, our immutable truth; just one man’s views in the melee of our wonderful freedom of competing ‘views’) do not represent the museum nor anyone who cares to distance themselves from such ‘anti-nation building’ sentiments. So much for encouraging debate! On Friday though at Pacofs “Lipstick” was looking to entertain and dance for us. But the perennial party-pooper I am (what with my constant search for meaning), what was meant to excite my baser instincts, led me to some very uncomfortable questions regarding black sensuality and femininity – the later a topic any black man must avoid like a plague in these perilous times. (Hotep policing alert!). It would seem to me, from the show and elsewhere, that black South African sensuality and femininity (I point out femininity specifically as it has been assigned by patriarchal determinism as the bastion of sensuality) is couched in white femininity on one extreme and black American sensuality at the other. It was quite telling that the women on stage all wore blond silky weaves, and displayed the Monroesque damsel in distress and non-patriarchy threatening feme fatale type of femininity. One that is very white in character. In this instance they looked to the music that'd be churned at a Mystic Boer karaoke night. All not local – important point this. When they got sensual, seductive, they looked to the Trace playlist; of course your girl B! led the pack. Again – all American. Femininity – white . Black – hypersexuality. This dichotomy is worth annals of literature. But let us not digress, the question here is where is our organic femininity and sensuality – one rooted in the soil of you will. The music says it all as to how the writer and director imagine femininity and sensuality. It is here that we need the wisdom of king Hlaudi's 90%. Music (and culture in general) influences how people imagine themselves. Music in particular speaks specifically to how we imagine ourselves in the libidinal economy. It is worth noting that when Hlaudi took the logical decision to play 90% local music on public radio, the loudest critics where Metro FM’s Sunday’s ‘love movement’ listeners. They begged profusely that 90% not apply here; as there simply weren’t enough romantic songs locally. Dare not ask what is more romantic than Masekela’s ‘Marketplace’ or Mahlasela’s ‘Kuyobanjani’. It became apparent then that South Africans don’t deem ourselves capable loving – being romantic – on our own terms (not that we do much on our own terms, the colony we are). This is especially surprising from a people that (admittedly mostly when selling ourselves to tourists) describe ourselves as ‘musical’. We can compose a struggle song one time! – as Tatz Nkonzo ably demonstrated – but to express the love in our heart, we need to cross the sea and search for our dictionaries and twangs (the current Lesedi FM TV advert is a welcomed deviation from this abnormality). This is highly disturbing. It also explains why Babes Wodumo blew up so big; despite a largely mediocre album. She represented something that has been absent from South Africa’s popular imagination for a long time; authentic township black female sensuality. Lipstick though stuck to the colonial script; no “I love Hansa and fucking” Brendaesque ‘bad girl’ sensuality, or cheesegirl fragile femininity was invoked. Never mind a new kind of black femininity or sensuality outside the confines (be it submission or rejection) of patriarchy being imagined anew. But because God is a lesbian and o hana ka seatla, there was another happening not too far (listen to me lie!) from Pacofs where we could surely not suffer the dearth of local music. Protential Inc. was hosting ‘Love & Hip Hop’ at Club Zanadu. The people were beautiful; all seemed to be genuinely happy to see us. We were home. We were happy. The line-up was packed, the stage was never lonely – Mafia Code especially owned that space, their energy and fresh sound (christened Koriana-Trap) puts them miles apart of most upcoming and established artists. The bar too. Conversation centred around there – a few pleasantries were exchanged, not enough insults, and mild curves all fought for space on that counter. The pool tables too had plenty of company. It was a Dostoyevsky paradise – everyone had somewhere to turn to. Local music too aplenty – but the incorrigible amongst us insisted that the DJ must play local local music, from Bloemfontein, from the Free State. “Don’t all these rappers dotting the place have EPs? Play those!” But they were sad to learn that rappers were begged to submit music for the playlist but dololo. ‘So what to can must happen?’ the organisers asked. These people and their bloody questions! We thus failed dismally to Hlaudirise that set. CJ though – still very much part of Simple Stories! – heeded Hlaudi’s leadership somewhat on Saturday evening at the Blend. His set, an eclectic mix of original compositions and covers, had a healthy dose of South African covers. One novel thing he did was to cover a living and still active South African artist – Zahara. This was refreshing as our local artists, on the rare occasion that they do cover local songs (ironic this), stick with the dead – the “legends” (another word Rampolokeng warns us about). I guess this gives credence somewhat to Mosoeu’s gripe that all black people are good for is dying. CJ and his girlfriend also set the bar high, and simultaneously cut wings of unsupportive lovers, by Skyping throughout his performance – twas the romantic thing ever! So long as there is an IP address no lovers should be apart on such occasions. He dedicated a song to the three of us sitting in the front row, about women who bluetick us kanti they’re curving the greatest experience they could ever have. He was right, as least in my case (coz vele mna yhu ndiGreat, ndiWow, in this thing of loving), and for that I will give him a pass for (correctly, we must concede) assuming our sexuality and relationship status. We were all shocked when he confessed, on a Beyoncé classic, to having a big dick – aaram skepsel. But artist are known for revealing a bit too much of themselves. We just sang along; sans the confession. He led us through a medley of emotions and genres. We travelled from RSA to UK to USA and back home. All the time, like a good captain, he kept us in the loop. And landed us safely into the comfortable bosom of the night. A lovely cloudy cool night. We were free to do the things that made the pots disappear. When all was said and done, all that could be done the Sunday after the Saturday was braai meat, recount our failures and plan for more so that we can fail better next time, all because #ArtLivesHere.