#is to fundamentally not understand what it means to be nonbinary

[gay-ppl-real]

Outfit swap!

All the neighbours who usually wear trousers in skirts, and all the neighbours who usually wear skirts in trousers (or, well, dungarees and a jumpsuit...)

I had fun drawing these. Experimented with how I was colouring and shading a little!

Here's the full page and also a bonus dark version cuz I liked how it looked lmao

Eddie would still want to be professional in a skirt so he'd wear a pencil skirt even though they suck to run in because he's got to look the part!

Wally would think a flowy skirt was fun Frank would not.

[nothorses]

do you know why people say trans women and trans men cant both be targets of misogyny? I was told that saying trans men are oppressed by misogyny was bigoted because it implies trans women aren't

imo it mostly comes from a binaristic and cis-centric understanding of gender.

"Oppositional sexism" (coined by Julia Serano) is a handy term here: the idea is that men and women are inherently rigid and mutually exclusive categories of people. Anything one category is, the other cannot be, and vice versa.

Here, oppositional sexism holds that if women are harmed by misogyny, then men benefit from it; women can never benefit from it, and men can never be harmed by it.

A lot of transphobia is rooted in the ways in which trans people fundamentally defy oppositional sexism, and thus endanger the gender binary. Men are supposed to be big, and women are supposed to be small; but trans men assert that men can be small, and trans women assert that women can be big (to use one overly-simplistic example).

A lot of trans people and trans allies still adhere to oppositional sexism, but claim to do it in a "trans-friendly" way: sex can be changed, but gender is instead rigid and mutually exclusive. Or- perhaps more commonly- gender can be expressed in any way, but the ways in which gender is experienced are instead rigid and mutually exclusive.

Which is how we arrive at this insistence that trans people fall into one binary gender experience, even if they don't actually identify as a particular "binary" gender. "Trans women are women" might mean trans women can look and act any way at all, but it also means they experience womanhood in the same way that all other women do, and that experience is rigid and mutually exclusive of "man" experiences.

It's also why so many people are so eager to create new "inclusive" ways of sorting trans people into the same gender binary using increasingly contrived language: People insist on knowing the gender someone was assigned at birth so they can categorize them as AFAB or AMAB, and thus conclude what gender experience they have: man or woman. People insist on categorizing nonbinary people as either transmasc or transfem so they can conclude what gender experience they have: man or woman. People insist on categorizing trans people as either TMA or TME so they can conclude what gender experience they have: man or woman.

The idea that trans men experience misogyny only implies that trans women don't if you believe that man and woman are rigid, mutually-exclusive categories.

[ugly-anarchist]

I've seen quite a few posts about people who want to "transition to intersex" and it's really starting to frustrate me

Intersex doesn't mean "androgynous", it doesn't mean "both male and female", it doesn't mean "somewhere in between the binary"

Intersex means you have naturally occurring sex characteristics that don't align with what society deems "correct." You cannot transition to being intersex because it's not something that can be done intentionally.

The changes caused by HRT or surgery do not make you intersex and you do not want an intersex body because there is no single definition of what an intersex body looks like.

If you're perisex and want a body that is androgynous, somewhere between male and female, or both male and female then you're allowed to want that. You're allowed to want whatever it is you want your body to look like, but you will never have an "intersex" body and you shouldn't be using the label intersex.

People who say they want to have an intersex body either fundamentally do not understand what being intersex is or they have a very fetishized idea of what being intersex is like. (Ex: they think being intersex means you have both sets of genitalia)

As a nonbinary intersex person I know what it's like to want your body to look nonbinary, but that isn't what makes me intersex. What makes me intersex is the fact that I have secondary sex characteristics that do not match what society deems normal. And, btw, that isn't a nice thing. I'm learning how to accept that part of me but my intersex traits actually give me major dysphoria.

So yeah, TLDR: Perisex trans people stop being weird about intersex bodies.

[genderkoolaid]

hey, i don’t know if you know the answer to this, but from what ive seen on your blog you are really well informed about gender stuff. so i saw someone say that transmedicalism is inherently racist and ableist. i was under the impression that transmedicalism is just believing that you need dysphoria to be trans. how is that inherently racist and ableist? if you don’t know the answer that’s okay and i am sorry for bothering you

For the racism:

Transmedicalism is fundamentally based on a Western understanding of transness as a medical disorder. But throughout human cultures, the experience we label as "transness" is seen in a ton of different ways. Many of these do not place special emphasis on one's discomfort with their assigned gender role (assuming that concept is even applicable). On top of it being a generally problematic way of constructing transness, it isn't relevant to all trans people. Transmedicalism tends to be very exorsexist (not believing in nonbinary identity); this is obviously at odds with cultures that have always had gender identities outside of a strictly female/strictly male binary. Transmedicalism tends to be at odds with a culturally relativistic way of understanding transness because of its roots in the Western medical system, which views itself as objective and authoritative.

For the ableism, I'm not 100% what the person you saw's argument was exactly. But I have seen people make the argument that it is ableist because many people have disabilities that prevent them from accessing medical transition in various ways. Now, many transmeds are more concerned with people's desires than what they can feasibly attain; that being said, the way transmedicalism tends to manifest and the worldview it promotes means that everyone who isn't cis(het)-passing tends to be viewed with extreme suspicion. When you divide all trans people into "Real Transgenders" and "fakers who make us look bad," there's an impetus for everyone to constantly be monitoring others' and their own behavior for any signs of impurity. Which means people who can't afford medical transition, people who physically can't get it, people who don't want it, people who are gender-nonconforming (at least in the "wrong ways"), non-white and non-Western people who don't perform to white Western standards of gender... they all tend to be heavily scrutinized. Additionally, transness being medicalized means its subject to the ableism inherent to our medical system. Transness being a disorder means its seen as a problem in need of solving, as a disruption in need of re-aligning with the status quo.

On a more general note: transness-as-a-medical-condition undoubtedly emerged from cissexist views on transness & a desire to control trans people's minds and bodies to prevent us from meaningfully threatening the patriarchy. That doesn't mean anyone is wrong for feeling that is the best way to describe their transness. But as a model for transness in general, it has major flaws, has caused clear harm, and there are very good reasons for moving away from it.

[freckliedan]

“why is the possibility of transness something dan needs to be defended from, anyways? it's a compliment and we know dan takes it that way.” god thank you i am so glad you’re back. it pisses me off so bad how much people fundamentally misunderstand dan and BIG. as if he hasn’t mentioned gender at least 10 times this year. as if he hasn’t reiterated multiple times how it was thanks to his audience that he accepted himself as queer and was able to come out. as if he doesn’t love trans people and would never take offense at other trans people seeing themselves in him even if he is cis. i genuinely don’t get people who think it’s less harmful to be adamant that he’s a cis gay man experimenting with self expression like i promise you the line between that and transness is not that thick

mwah ily anon i'm always glad to wade back into the trenches 💛

you're literally so right w all of this but i'm especially seconding that the line between cis gay man experimenting w gender identity and transness being thinner than people think. it's so fucking real and i wish people held more room for that in their hearts.

sometimes a person's experience with gender is such that they need to figure out their sexuality and what it means to them and for them before being able to look at gender and people don't like. get that. sometimes a lesbian figures out they're a lesbian and only after that also figures out they're nonbinary and transmasc. the same can be true for gay men.

and some people only accept & understand it for transmasc lesbians rather than understanding that that doesn't only exist for lesbians. and that's fully due to unexamined transmisogyny.

there are so many lesbians and gay men alienated from binary womanhood or manhood to the point that they keep their sexuality but identify away from their assigned gender completely! there's so many of us with gender identities that seem mutually exclusive with our sexualities but aren't because we just. exist. contradictory and complex gender identities exist.

like. the underlying assumptions people approach dan gender conversations with are so hostile towards people with nonbinary identities like mine that i'm not willing to talk about myself here.

and it makes me crazy. because people constantly say "you're deciding for dan what his label is" or like "you're claiming specifics" while simultaneously firmly labeling dan as cis. and every single dan gender poster i know is saying "isn't it beautiful that dan could be anything, even cis and gnc?"

we're just commenting on probabilities. none of us are claiming sure knowledge.

and i really think trying to deny that dan is exploring gender expression at the very least is laughably impossible at this point.

[ndcultureis]

warning: invalidating talk/venting/cussing

nd culture is when all of the identities you have are done in the "wrong way" (mostly because of tiktok culture)

omg you're a therian too?!! i feel so connected to animals, im still a human though! im not *crazy* haha. what? you're a wolf in "every way"? you should be locked up.

omg you're autistic? me too!! i love little spoons!! what do you mean you have a hard time understanding other people and cant make friends, you're just a psychopath, stay away from me.

omg you're trans? me too!! i hate my body so much i want to die! ill never be a real boy! wdym that you dont feel dysphoria 24/7, you're not actually trans. wdym that you love your body and that you already have a male body. you cant be agender and a boy. you just want to feel special. it/its pronouns? ok now i know that you're just rage baiting.

omg you're pan? me too! wait you feel lesbian attraction to women diamoric attraction to nonbinary people and gay attraction to men? you're delusional, thats not real. lesbian means woman loving woman not queer attraction to women.

omg you have adhd? me too! i get distracted sooooo easily!!!! i can never sit still, lol im so quirky. emotional disregulation? rejection sensitivity? you're just a crybaby, grow up!

these are the same types of people who say that you need to "be yourself!" and that being weird is sooo cool. but the moment someone is fundamentally different then you're a freak.

even people who work in mental healthcare have said stuff like this to me..

yeah i know this kid with asper- what? asperger's was made by a nazi? well guess what, i dont care. its still a valid diagnoses.

i hate all men. wait what? you're a boy? i dont care, i either dont see you as a boy or i do and hate you too.

that is so delulu. wait what? delulu is a slur? wdym, you're just too sensitive.

these are the same people who tell me to "love myself more"

(sorry i kinda went off track, you dont have to post this, i just needed to get it off my chest.)

.

[seen-the-stars]

Very interested in 🌈 if you don’t mind.

i don't mind at all. If this feels a bit clunky, it's because i was avoiding using any pronouns for Buck, so i sort of just used the name a lot. hope you enjoy anyway!

you get: a cookie, and 327 words of

🌈 • nonbinary buck (glitter & crimson, pt. 2)

The thing is: Buck doesn't think Tommy is going to react badly.

Tommy has had his own journey of self-discovery and self-actualisation, and Buck thinks he'll probably understand. Even if he doesn't, he'll probably at least try to hear Buck out. 

And they do have to talk about it, either way. They'll have to discuss what it means for them, for their relationship. Tommy is gay, he likes men, and Buck… isn't. A man. Not a woman, either, but definitely not entirely a man. Maybe something in between. Buck hasn't gotten to a conclusive answer yet.

But: Just because Tommy probably won't react badly, doesn't mean Buck isn't scared of it. Coming out as bi was one thing (and even that was nerve-wracking enough), but this feels more… substantial, somehow. Like it goes way deeper than sexuality. The fundamentality of it all is terrifying.

And so Buck keeps putting it off. Keeps waiting for the perfect moment, when all the stars align and nothing could possibly be distracting or go wrong. When the mood is exactly right, and neither of them has had a bad day or anything to get to. 

The moment never comes.

Instead, what happens is this:

Tommy comes home earlier than expected one day.

He shoots Buck a text to say he's on his way, apparently having moved something in his plan around, and it sends Buck scrambling; up the stairs to change, then back down again to wipe all of the make-up off. Something inside Buck is protesting, but Buck isn't ready. Not yet. It's too soon. Buck needs to figure out all of the answers first.

When Tommy's car pulls up outside, Buck thinks everything looks inconspicuous enough. Sure, there's a sinking feeling in Buck's stomach and blood rushing much faster than necessary, but that can just be blamed on having a weird day, on having woken up feeling restless. 

Buck heaves in a deep breath and hopes for the best.

[pt. 1 on ao3]

[this is now finished and on ao3!!]

[more nonbinary buck]

[make me write]

[lastoneout]

I actually do think like the basis of the argument biphobes use about bi people only facing homophobia and never facing any backlash when we are single or in an m/f relationship is because they just fundamentally do not understand what bisexuality actually is and don't care to correct that.

Bi people have been screaming forever about how we aren't half and half anything, we are an entire new identity based on being attracted to multiple genders, but the queer biphobe doesn't believe that. They see us as half gay and half straight. Without even realizing it they are openly admitting they do not listen to bi people when we talk about our identity and then they weaponize their willful ignorance to harm AND silence us at the same time.

They do not conceptualize us as a new identity, we're basically just a fucking math problem to them(and since these types also tend to lean aphobic and truscum and radfem they think of all oppression like a math problem, but I digress). Like their logic goes: no one hates people in straight relationships but they do hate gay ones, and gay people obviously would never hate another gay person for being gay just like straight people would never hate you for being straight, so you are clearly only experiencing homophobia and maybe some misogyny and that ONLY comes from cishet people, any "bigotry" coming from the queer community is just you being a whiny homophobic loser with passing privilege who is pretending to be oppressed and mad gay people don't want to date you because again, you can only be hated for your gay half and gay people don't(or can't) hate other gay people for being gay.

But there's no math to do. You can't do math on oppression anyway, but bi people are not half anything. Again, we are a whole new identity in of itself. "Half gay and half straight" is not the definition we use, we have almost NEVER used it except in like, jokes and memes and shit. The way we define ourselves is as people who expirience attraction to two or more genders, and that doesn't even always mean being attracted to both men and women! There are loads of genders, bi doesn't inherently mean men and women and thus "half gay half straight" can NEVER be a definition that encompasses all of us. And you'd KNOW that if you actually LISTENED to us.

We are hated because our society still expects people to be attracted to one gender. Even in monosexual queer spaces there is the expectation that you only like women or only like men or only like nonbinary/genderqueer people, you HAVE to pick one. Refusing is deviation from the norm and is punished with violence and exclusion and bigotry from BOTH sides. And until biphobes can finally get their heads out of their asses and actually LISTEN to us when we do something as basic as DEFINE WHO WE ARE ON OUR OWN TERMS WITH OUR OWN LANGUAGE they will never be able to accept the existence of biphobia or their ability to take part in it.

They don't believe it exists because deep down, they don't believe bi people exist. We're just two identities in a trenchcoat, that can be easily divided with simple oppression math. We are not whole people with a whole new identity, we're a gay person and a straight person trapped in the same body, pretending to be something we aren't, facing "half" the oppression, if that(OR we're really just a confused gay or straight person who will figure it out eventually and give up that "bi" nonsense). And they don't care if they're wrong because that would mean they're bigoted and doing harm and they can't possibly accept that they are capable of being bigoted and causing harm, especially to other queer people.

Anyway, listen to bi and other multisexual people when we talk about our identities and problems. It's not hard. We're begging for people to take us and our problems seriously instead of pretending we don't exist or trying to fit us into a framework that cannot fully express our existence and acting like that means we can't be oppressed for being attracted to multiple genders. And tbh I don't think that being biphobic is something you can't come back from, but you have to sit down, shut up, LISTEN TO US, realize that you don't fully understand what you're talking about, accept that you have held harmful beliefs, and then work to be better.

It's hard, but bi people need allies. So please, at the very least just listen to us when we tell you who we are and what we go through. Just listen.

[goldnhourwrites]

league of legends characters i hc as trans

explanations (read: paragraphs of rambling) under the cut

headcanons are for runeterra only!! different skinlines/AUs get different headcanons.

leona: i don't remember who wrote it but i read a leodia fic once with t-girl leona and now it's canon to me. if you're out there thank you so much

graves: isn't cis but he hasn't figured that out yet

nilah: edge case between "fucked up" and "genderfluid, etc." because i think the demonic influence DID fuck up her gender but she was already in the genderqueer category before that even happened

soraka: not even from runeterra BUT i think when she decided to stay there she picked a gender she liked and rolled with it. also she's old as fuck so it's weird by default

swain: "im probably nonbinary but i have a job so idrc about that rn"

talon: go read teeth by shxme on AO3 (@no-shxme on tumblr) (i've put him in the "genderfluid, etc." category because my headcanon for him is slightly different but my recommendation stands nonetheless)

vi: gender is butch. no more and no less

zyra: has picked out a human gender but it's uncanny valley to most people because she is a plant.

the "fucked up" category is largely for things that at one point had an average human gender but sure as hell don't anymore

yone: came back from the dead fucked up AND transfem. kind of falls into the nilah category

the cis spectrum. they're all cis to me but arranged (more or less) in order of how chill they are about gender. goes from supportive and understanding -> supportive -> indifferent -> doesn't really "get it" but eh -> asshole

jayce: JAYCE GIOPARA. LEAVE JAYCE TALIS OUT OF THIS THAT'S A WHOLE DIFFERENT GUY

"off the gender spectrum entirely": some of these guys have a Vibe but i don't think that corresponds to a Gender. like bel'veth has a genderous Vibe but fundamentally bel'veth is an ageless void un-creature that ate a fucking city

"other" category:

yordles - i think yordles do have genders but their concept of gender isn't compatible with human gender. exception: veigar (gender is "evil")

the kids - too young to have a gender yet

briar - briar's got her own fucked up thing going on but she doesn't get to be in the Fucked Up category because she didn't even come from human gender. whatever gender briar has is worse

the rest of them - they have a gender but it's not a human(oid) gender

varus: he's varus.

bonus round: my favorite headcanons to come out of this chart

shyvana comes out as transmasc and jarvan iv has an existential crisis

quinn knows sona and eventually graduated from "cis and indifferent" to "cis and trans ally"

yasuo spent a lot of time hanging out with taliyah. that's his daughter now.

kayle and morgana both have fucked up genders but in polar opposite ways

singed doesn't give a shit about the concept of gender but will give you whatever HRT and body modifications you want, no questions asked

lucian gives me such dad vibes. i love the t4t senna/lucian headcanons but to me senna is a patient woman explaining what "genderqueer" means and lucian is just like "well i don't understand it but as long as she's happy." i love lucian he just reminds me of my dad who does not Get It but loves me nonetheless

thank you for coming to my ted talk

[sparklyeevee]

Thinking about the options for trans people who can channel in the show, and wondering if they're gonna be able to figure out something to do with trans men that's like, good or interesting. I'm gonna presume mainstream Westlands norms re: channeling here, but most of this translates pretty well to Windfinders and Wise Ones, although not to the Seanchan.

Bioessentialist version. Trans women channel saidin and are regarded as men who can channel, trans men channel saidar and are regarded as tomboyish lesbians like Juilaine. Transfemininity treated as madness, transmasculinity not acknowledged. Nonbinary people channel according to their chromosomes or whatever.

Cis feminist bad allyship version. Trans women channel saidar, trans men also channel saidar, because the taint on saidin (which is obviously all there is to channeling saidin) is specific to those bad, icky cis men. Everyone gets to be an Aes Sedai, no one gets to have a complex relationship with masculinity. Nonbinary people also channel saidar. Most upsetting version I personally consider at all plausible.

The show isn't transphobic but the characters are version. Trans women channel saidar, but are regarded as men who can channel and severed from the source. Trans men channel saidin, but are permitted to become Aes Sedai if they have the spark inborn (Aes Sedai cannot sense the ability to learn to channel saidin, so trans men without the spark will never be taught - they would have to actively demonstrate their ability to channel). Transmasc Aes Sedai eventually develop madness and rotting sickness, and are quietly severed and confined if they don't kill themselves first. Nonbinary people might channel saidin or saidar but are handled by Aes Sedai according to assigned sex at birth.

As above, but trans men and nonbinary people assigned female are birth are not permitted to become Aes Sedai because women who can channel can't sense or test their ability to do so. They are turned away from the Tower and live and die (horribly) without ever understanding what's happening to them.

No transphobia, no complexity version. Trans women channel saidar and can become Aes Sedai, trans men channel saidin and are regarded as men who can channel, nonbinary people who can channel are mysteriously absent from the show. (This strikes me as a reasonably likely direction for the show to take).

Let's not get into all that version. Trans women channel saidar and can become Aes Sedai, there are nonbinary Aes Sedai who channel saidar, trans men are mysteriously absent from the show. (This also strikes me as reasonably likely.)

Souls are not gendered let's fucking talk about it version. Most trans people channel according to their gender, although due to the availability of infrastructure to learn, there are more trans men channeling saidar than trans women channeling saidin. If you first touch the source accidentally, you will usually (but not always) touch the half of the source that lines up with what you currently believe your gender to be. There is no clear pattern to which half of the source nonbinary people with the spark inborn touch first, but here too the availability of teaching means more channel saidar than saidin, including anyone who needs to be taught in order to channel. The Tower's secret histories even contain a few examples of cis people channeling the "wrong" half of the One Power for no clear reason. Once you have channeled one half of the Power, you're kinda stuck, which can be a source of dysphoria for some trans people.

Fuck it, magic itself isn't gendered, but we're being a little victim blamey about it version. Saidin and saidar have no fundamental differences, they're just different ways of accessing the same thing, and it is possible to switch up how you do it. The saidin way, which tends to come more naturally to men for complex societal reasons, means you also have to deal with the taint, but maybe makes it possible to handle more of the Power at once. Cis men who can channel could learn to use saidar and be safe, but just... don't. Most trans women either start with saidar or start with saidin and switch before they take serious damage from the taint, depending on when, whether, and how they're taught to channel. Most trans men start with saidar and stick with it, but a few who transition late and have the spark inborn figure out the saidin approach first and have to learn the saidar way later. Trans women can become Aes Sedai. Trans men can become Aes Sedai too if they're willing to be aggressively misgendered as Novices and Accepted and lightly misgendered thereafter.

[nothorses]

This is a genuine ask and I hope it doesn't come off as rude, obviously people can do whatever they want forever, but what is the logic behind a lesbian dating a transgender man? (By lesbian I mean someone who is only attracted to women), wouldn't that exclude binary trans men then since trans men are men? Or is it like "Trans men can be lesbians because they have vaginas" which just feels like bioessentialism with progressive wording...

I think the core misunderstanding here might be in your use of the word "logic". And there's a super high chance I'm extrapolating more intention than you put into that word choice, but hear me out.

On a super basic level, I think it's important to understand the reasons people use words like "lesbian" and "trans man" in the first place. In certain contexts, it makes sense to assign these terms more rigid definitions: a study would likely have a single, clear definition for those words in order to talk about some research results. An academic essay might need a shared definition if they're talking about broad trends and systemic issues.

But when we're talking about an individual's choice of identity labels- the words they use to describe their own personal experiences and relationship to gender and orientation- it doesn't make as much sense to apply someone else's definition of those words to that individual's use of them. They're trying to describe their own internal world to you; what matters in that conversation is how they understand the words they use, and why they chose them.

Don't get me wrong: common understandings of a word can play a part in that conversation! My understanding of what "gay trans man" means has been shaped almost entirely by other people. I chose those words for myself because of what I think most people will understand them to mean. In twenty years, it's possible that the common understandings of those words could change, and I might use different words to better communicate the same internal experience.

But I also might not. I might decide that my personal connection to those words is more important to me, or even that saying I'm a "gay trans man", as a person 20 years older than I am now, better reflects my internal experience as one that was shaped by the time I came to understand myself in. Maybe it'll be important to me to communicate that I understand myself as a "gay trans man" because of what those words meant 20 years ago. Maybe it'll be important to me to ask tomorrow's queer people to learn about my context, and my story, in order to really understand me.

And maybe, when I fill out a survey for a queer study in 20 years, I'll read the definitions they use for all of these identity labels and categorize myself accordingly, even though I don't personally identify with those definitions or words.

So yeah, I could talk about all the reasons someone might identify as a "lesbian" and still be attracted to trans men. I could talk about trans men who still call themselves "lesbians" because of what the words meant 20 or 40 years ago, or some unique definition they heard in one place and decided they liked enough to keep, even though nobody else has even heard it. I could talk about lesbians whose partners turn out to be trans men, and who still feel attracted to them afterwards; whose partners are okay with, or even feel validated by, their lesbian partners still calling themselves "lesbians". I could talk about nonbinary trans men, and bigender or multigender trans men, who are women and/or lesbians as much as they are trans men. I could talk about bi and pan lesbians, who may find themselves attracted to one trans man or a handful of men- trans and cis both- but otherwise mostly experience attraction to women.

But like, the point shouldn't be to find a good enough reason to justify it. The point isn't the "logic". The point is to understand that everyone's internal experience is fundamentally different from yours, and to be curious about each individual.

It's great that you asked this question in sincerity, but I'm the wrong person to be asking.

When someone says they're a lesbian who's attracted to trans men, they're trying to share something about themselves with you! That is a precious, unique thing you are being entrusted with. Get curious! Ask them what those words mean to them, and take the opportunity to get to know them better. Learn their story! Connect!

I can't tell you that person's story any more than you can guess it on your own, no matter how much you try to logic it out. That's exciting! The world is big, and it's full of unique stories and perspectives you couldn't even dream of inventing! That's so much better than a logic puzzle, don't you think?

[indignantlemur]

Not sure if this got asked, but are there trans/nonbinary people in your headcannon of Andoria? (Or the equivelant for Andorian culture)

As a courtesy: please consider this a content warning for the discussion of alien asexuality, alien perceptions of gender and identity, and alien cultural taboos surrounding infertility. Answer below the cut.

This question was inevitable, of course, but I still spent some time considering my answer. The following answer is based upon the biology and evolution that I set out for Andorians over twelve years ago, with some minor updates as I've returned to writing.

Firstly, and perhaps of eminent importance to this discussion: Andorians are not Humans. While there is overlap in some aspects between Andorians and Humans on a cultural and psychological basis, they are biologically different on a fundamental level. It is not fair or correct to assume that they experience the world, and themselves, in the same way that Humans do.

Again, I must stress that down to the very structures of their brains, Andorians are inherently different from Humans. Applying Human ideals, cultural standards, and anything that could be classified as a Human notion to Andorians is nonsensical.

So, to answer your question:

Do I think that there are Andorians who do not feel that they are male or female, but rather something in between? Sure - but it's relatively rare.

Andorians do not experience body gender dysphoria - or even body dysmorphic disorder - as a percentage of Humans do. A Human could describe either phenomenon to an Andorian, but while an Andorian could parse the information intellectually there would be no basis for comparison within Andorian psychology. A real world comparison would be that, in much the same way that I could describe my chronic pain to a healthy individual, no healthy individual can truly understand what it means to actually live with chronic pain. (I certainly didn't, until I developed a chronic, complex disease myself. I thought I did, but I now know that my previous understanding was woefully shallow.)

Typically, when an Andorian feels the need to take on an identity other than the one they were born with, it is a trivial matter that can be handled in an afternoon, barring surgical alterations which may be more complex and require more time.

If Bashir can make Quark a functional Ferengi female in an afternoon, hormones and all, by DS9's era then I see no reason why the beginnings of those procedures could not exist in Emigre's era. They might be less refined or less efficient, as there's quite a bit of time between the two eras, but at this point who exactly is going to stop me from handwaving the details?

But, I think, the more important question here is: do Andorians make a fuss about non-binary individuals, or individuals who transition from one identity to another?

The short answer is: No, not really. It's literally given no more importance than the state of the weather aboveground, in most parts of Andoria. Given that Andorians live in subterranean colonies... well, enough said.

Andorian society cares about exactly one thing - the preservation and perseverance of the community. In simplistic terms, this means babies. As long as your quad is popping out babies, the rest of society does not care what's in your pants, what you do with it, or who with.

Their entire evolution as a species and as a society has been geared towards surviving Andoria's harsh conditions and ensuring that the maximum number of offspring survive to adulthood. Everything after that is rather... secondary? Tertiary, even, as a concern.

In a same-sex quad? Doesn't matter. At least one of you needs to contribute to making a baby (or four), and the government doesn't care who with or how so long as the child's bloodline is tracked to prevent inbreeding.

One of the quad members is infertile? Andorian society's response as a whole is: don't ask, don't tell. Infertility was, and still remains a huge taboo in polite society amongst Andorians, but as long as someone in your quad contributes to the population it doesn't need to be publicized or critiqued. Track the bloodlines, and as long as the population replacement remains positive no one cares to look more closely.

Asexuality is more complicated amongst Andorians, as some Andorians genuinely aren't interested in playmates or breeding in spite of being otherwise healthy. However, much like how introversion is considered a symptom of a deficiency of trace minerals in the diet, a sudden loss of libido is often a sign of a severe hormonal imbalance. But - again - as long as the population replacement level remains positive and someone within a married quad contributes to that, society doesn't care.

All of this, hilariously, means that what Andorians would consider 'queer' or 'outside of social norms' is actually... just being childless. Everything else, everything that Humans have struggled to accept and incorporate into society for hundreds if not thousands of years, is considered so normal and par for the course that it barely merits any mention in Andorian society at all.

[communistkenobi]

i know next to nothing about queer theory, but i did exist online during (what felt like) huge exclusionary periods (ace discourse, bi/pan discourse, and transmedicalism were the big ones i remember)

i wonder if the first drive for sexuality being something unchangeable and intrinsic to you had something to do with those things, that queerness was fixed and definable, which meant that there were strict lines to be drawn about who was and wasn't gay/lesbian/bi which was only made worse by trans and nonbinary people who didn't exactly fit the previous molds

ill be doubly honest and say i only interacted w/ the community online at the time bc living in a homophobic country doesnt give you a lot of opportunities to meet up in person which means my view of the whole thing is skewed. im not sure if this makes any sense

What I’m about to say isn’t a diagnosis of the causes behind those discourses (partly because i don’t think there is a single reason animating those arguments), but like I guess in general a very baseline authority people fall back on is biology. Dominant reactionary discourses describe being gay trans etc as a lifestyle choice, as an active decision to participate in sexual and gendered degeneracy, and so a very appealing counter-claim to make is to point to biology - we are born this way, we can’t help who we are just as cishet people cannot help who they are, so you should accept us because we can’t change our identity. That rhetorical strategy requires/assumes a stable sexual and gendered ontology, a primary authority of the body that can’t be altered. While I believe this argument is fundamentally flawed, I think this is a straightforwardly easy argument to make re: sexual orientation. With trans and non-binary people this is more difficult because the foundational claim to our existence is that gender is mutable, is alterable, is subject to change (and also “I’ve felt this way since I was a child” is a pathological model of gender dysphoria that is enforced through medical and psychiatric institutions, not a reflection of lived reality for many, many trans and non-binary people). That doesn’t necessarily mean being transgender is a “choice” (although if someone said they woke up one day and chose to be transgender then that is a perfectly authentic justification), especially because “choice” in these discussions is often framed as individualised, private, detached from the social world - we are all just free agents making rational autonomous decisions in a field of equally rational choices, etc. which I think is a very impoverished way to understand choice and agency. Gender is an institution, it is a set of behaviours and performances that we choose to engage in in many different ways, and my use of the word ‘choice’ there does not imply these choices are free from coercion, violence, or harm. I chose to transition, I chose to engage in performances and behaviours that signal to the social world that I am a man - where that desire to make those choices arises from is another matter, and honestly not one I’m super interested in figuring out. Like if I discovered the ‘origin’ of my transness it wouldn’t make any difference to me. Similarly, how I choose to signal masculinity is very obviously bound up in dominant gendered assumptions. Trans people get accused of upholding gendered norms a lot, but that’s only because we aren’t taken seriously unless we do so! It is a survival mechanism that allows us to better navigate incredible amounts of violence and social exclusion, and arguing that our desire to do gender with our bodies comes from some grade-school assumption that dress = woman and pants = man or whatever is pure projection on the part of cis people. cis men think if they drink pink wine they’ll become gay - trans people are not the ones enforcing these norms here.

Getting a bit far afield here, so to loop back around - I think a stable state of sexual and gendered subjectivity or “being” is very appealing to a lot of people because it’s a way to dismiss reactionary fears and to justify to yourself that your oppression is entirely out of your control (which is true obviously!). Again I think these arguments are flawed because they buy into cisgendered and heteronormative ideas about gender and sexuality, that it is a biological burden imposed on us, that deviance is not a choice, that gender is done to us as opposed to being gendered agents, that we are similarly trapped in a sexual prison and should be accepted on those grounds, etc, but they have massive rhetorical power.  

As I’ve said before I’m a pretty staunch believer in Butler’s assertion that it is social all the way down, that gender is not discoverable in the body but rather the body is the medium through which gender is done in the world. Cis people choose to do gender just as much as trans people do! The only difference is that institutional architecture is set up to facilitate and make invisible (in very misogynistic and racist ways) those gendered practices. I think the stronger counter argument to make is that cis- and het-normativities are deeply violent and miserable status quos that need to be dismantled and discarded, that true choice can only emerge vis a vis gender and sexuality once those institutions are abolished, and that choice is actually a desirable end-goal - I want people to be able to participate in gender and sexuality as free agents, as non-coercive practices that are sites of great joy and wonder and pleasure. And this world is only possible if we accept that there is no gendered or sexual ontology, that it is all smoke and mirrors, that this current system’s primary function is to reproduce the nuclear family, to maintain the hereditary nature of class and wealth and race, to provide a standardised system of labour division, to maintain a distinction between the public and private labour realms, and so on.

So again like, is this what animates discourses about who gets to be counted as lgbtq/queer/whichever label you want to use? I don’t know. Probably some of it has to do with that. Queerness is in party a pathological category that is used to describe a failure to meaningfully reproduce cishet norms and practices, it is a set of relationships you have to legal and political and medical and administrative institutions (which is especially true for trans/non binary people). I like this definition because built into it is the possibility of change - I do not want trans people to be assimilated into cishet society, I want society to become transgender, thereby making transgender an irrelevant medical and legal category of person. Much like communism aims to abolish class by universalising the proletariat, I want to abolish gender by universalising the legal and political and medical mechanisms of transition. Only then will cisgenderism be abolished.

One thing I have been thinking a lot about is something a friend said to me, which is that human rights to do not begin with a definition of human - in the same way, I think trans rights do not require a definition of transgenderism. Just universalise and de-pathologise the mechanisms through which transition is expressed. Make it easy to change your name, remove all barriers to hormones and surgery, make everyone economically secure enough that they can change their wardrobe however they please,  desegregate all gendered spaces, de-gender clothing, remove gender markers from all documents, and so on and so on. Doing so would make both cisgender and transgender an irrelevant legal and political category and, again, allow choice to emerge as a meaningful mechanism of gender expression. 

This isn’t a comprehensive policy platform, there are many things I’m sure I haven’t thought through and a large portion of this discussion has to contend with the colonial and white supremacist nature of the western binary gender (bringing us into discussions of decolonial efforts, socialist efforts, and so on), but this is already getting long and I feel like I’m rambling. But like fundamentally I believe in a radical political imaginary that argues that all of this is subject to change and therefore any arguments about an essential gendered or sexual being is, at the end of the day, a reactionary description of gender and sexuality 

[xxunnanaxx]

i feel like a lot of younger queer discourse fails to account for their own ability to be stuck in a particular world view. for example; gender. it's good to want to challenge the system and broaden who it can include, but a lot of us limit ourselves to making the box bigger.

Women can do jobs men can do, men can dress in feminine clothing, that's all well and good, but ask yourself: Where are you drawing the line?

Are you going to draw it at people that want to change their gender? Draw it at people who want to move back and forth between them? What about people that choose not to identify with either of them, and pick something else?

We're spending our time talking about who's nonbinary, is ace queer, is it problematic to use traditional ideas of femininity to pursue a trans identity (skirts, dresses, makeup etc).

Consider this next time you see this kind of discourse: Are we *really* progressing peoples' idea of gender, or orientation? Or are we still playing the conservatives' version of the game?

Years ago, I used to be pretty conflicted about a question i had: Is gender a social construct, and not real? If so, how can I be transgender? How can I be the wrong of something that doesn't exist? If wearing a skirt makes me feel feminine, am I reinforcing gender stereotypes and adding to the problem?

The solution in the end is pretty simple to me: The problem isn't whether gender is 'real' or not, it's that I'm making the assumption that my mind exists in a vacuum, and ignoring the greater context of how my mind associates and identifies with things.

There isn't one "proper" way to be a woman. The disconnect here is assuming that gender exists before the person, not the other way around. On my own in the culture I grew up around, I saw the world and developed my own idea of gender, the associations therein.

In my mind, I developed my own personal 'archetype' of the type of woman I idealized, a combination of associations that grew with me, and became the platonic ideal of what I want to be like.

Now, armed with that image in my mind, I pursue it. I came first, and my gender came second, and it was up to me to experiment and learn what all those associations had become. It's up to me to decide what being a woman means to me.

I think the fundamental goal of gender progressivism is to change our understanding of what gender actually IS and what it DOES. Attempts to categorize and sort people in these boxes presupposes the underlying belief that there ARE, in fact, boxes to sort people into.

We shouldn't focus on WHERE the boxes are, we should focus on if those boxes were real in the first place. We came first, then those boxes, and we need to have a long hard look at what parts of gender are a tool for self-expression, and what parts are a tool for policing others.

At the end of the day, that's what the push and pull of progression vs conservatism is; What can, and can't people be allowed to do? Who decides? What are the rules, and who polices them?

Don't play the conservative version of the game. Gender is self-definitional, and a tool that anyone can make anything of. Trying to subvert that because it's "weird and annoying" isn't progressive, it's trying to simplify something so you don't have to learn anything new or think about it.

You aren't erasing any lines that way, just moving them to where you're comfortable. And buddy, the fascists have way more experience laying those lines than you do.

[pupintransit]

Something fun i've noticed in the last couple days is that the novelty of my pussy has worn off.

I mean, realistically that's the goal right? You go through untold eons of feeling wrong about your body, you take the opportunity to correct it, and by X units of time it feels normal. Like you've always had this body, like walking around and simply vibing was always your reality. I remember that I possessed a penis and testes and i remember what they looked like on my body, but how they felt is becoming more and more of a distant memory.

My vulva feels natural to me now. I think all of the mental remapping my brain had to do in order to get accustomed to the change is over and done with. My folds and textures are second nature to me now, like i can look at myself in a mirror and think "Yes, I know what that part of me is supposed to look and feel like now, i don't actually have to reach down there to find it."

I reach down anyway of course. Have i mentioned how much fun masturbating is yet? I could literally do it for hours now and it feels just as natural as jerking my cock did. Moreso!

I'm taking a minute now and trying to remember the feeling of my balls dangling between my legs. I can describe it; sweaty, delicate, loose if the temperature was a little too warm. It sort of felt like a floppy stress ball that you weren't supposed to squeeze too tightly. I can recall, too, how those physical sensations made me feel, and remembering is making me physically uncomfortable already. Now though, when i turn my minds eye toward my body those sensations are absent. Of course they would be, right? I don't have those parts anymore. But I did for 30 whole ass years. It was a fundamental component of my being, and now i can only recall those feelings if i but an active effort into doing so. How dope is that shit?

I know folks who have said that their pre-op memories get changed ever so slightly after they get gender affirming surgery. Say you're thinking about a vacation you were on were the shower in your hotel wasn't working, and you get blasted with freezing water when it should have been nice and warm. That version of you would have your post-op or post-HRT body instead of what you had back when that memory was formed. That's so interesting to me! I'm not at that stage yet but i'm really excited to see if it's something i experience.

I think now's a good moment to mention something, and against my better judgement I'll probably write about how this relates to The Discourse™️ of my flavour of nonbinary, but your dysphoria doesn't actually have to be crippling in order to qualify to gender affirming care. I could still masturbate and wash myself pre-op without significant distress, for example. You don't have to "earn" it by proving you're sufficiently. If HRT or gender affirming surgery would improve your quality of life, if you can explain that without lying to your care providers and demonstrate you understand the medical risks, then that's all you need to do to "earn" your medical care. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you, even if they themselves are transgender.

Especially if they themeselves are transgender.

If you're pushing back against nonbinary indenities, or people "inventing" new genders, labels, and definitions, or even just against kink in the trans community, i hate to tell you that it won't make the people oppressing us think you're one of the good ones. Us living authentically isn't setting the trans acceptance movement back, it's what it's supposed to allow us to do in the first place. I would really encourage you to rexamine why you have those beliefs, and why me getting a cunt installed as someone who passes as cisgender constitutes a net negative for our community.

Anyway that concludes the ranting portion of today's mini-essay.

Every time i think i've hit an apex with my joy it keeps getting stronger and stronger. This is the best decision i've ever made, not just because it made my body finally make sense to me, but because it made feeling normal so boring. I can't ask for a better outcome than that.

[velvetvexations]

I'm tired as fuck so this might be incoherent but as a genderfluid bitch I feel like, taking the argument in good faith (which. Given how often it's brought up to make non binary people shut up. Is probably unwarranted.) then the problem is one of imperfect, messy language.

Bc like. Which binary? We have this broader construction of The Binary, but like. We're all aware that this is made of many smaller, equally wrong binaries conflated together, right? Not to do the 101 shit again but the "100% Exclusively Man or 100% Exclusively Woman" is conflated with the the "Male or Female" which is in turn a fucking mess of "Have X Trait or Don't Have X trait", no room for X trait to be ambiguous or found alongside other traits that the opposite binary sex has. These are different concepts that get rolled into one.

So there is a sense where all trans people break the binary? But we typically understand "non binary" to be referring to outside that first mentioned, 100% Man OR 100% woman binary. That's the connotation. And whilst I do think there is a scale of innocent ignorance to active malice, to then say "but aren't we all nonbinary?" is inherently disingenuous. That's not what anyone using the term day to day means. Being 100% a woman, who challenges any of the ideas that woman = female, female = assigned sex, or female = [cluster of traits]*, is breaking different binaries than not being 100% Exclusively a man or woman. It just. Is.

We're talking in terms of binary trans people vs non binary trans people for lack of better phrasing to express the distinction of those experiences. It's not that one is more special or cool or oppressed or w/e than the other - it's that it's simply different. And the nuances of those differences matter to both groups.

Saying "all trans women are non binary" fundamentally misgenders a binary trans woman by using that conflation to insist she has a different gender to a cis woman, and it talks over the nuances of exorsexism and what it's like being anywhere outside the gender binary. If we're all non binary bc we're trans, then there's no specific subgroup who exorsexism is (primarily) targeted at. Making it impossible to talk about lateral aggression between non binary & binary trans people in any given direction.

Idk. That we break that ultimate conflated binary is a wonderful thing to have in common. But we each break different sub-parts of it, and that's fine, so long as we don't lean on that conflated binary to talk over each other.

*Idk if this the best phrasing; I'm trying to leave space for the all the self conceptions of "female, regardless of what I was assigned", "female who happens to have XYZ traits", and "male, and no less a woman for it" without imposing any one on anybody. If that made any sense.

...actually, if any of this made any sense. Apologies for the long ramble lmfao.

their intentions are born out of a deep seated insecurity from the start so trying to appeal to what rationally actually helps people is unfortunately not as effective as it should be