#it’s just that they consider respect for people who identify as men is to treat them like all other men

[totally-not-an-awkward-okapi]

Fuck it. Post WIP of Zelda Sophonts.

[genderkoolaid]

I just, I don’t know. I don’t know how to make sure people only see me as a straight cis binary man who’s attraction to women is heterosexual when people are so quick to look for an excuse to call trans men lesbians and associate them with femininity, I don’t want to police other people’s labels because you fall into a cesspool of “acceptable” and “non acceptable”, but at the same time I don’t want to be able to be associated with lesbianism or it’s connotations in any way. I want to be able to say I’m a man and have that convey that I do not want people that consider themselves lesbians or heterosexual men to be attracted to me. I don’t want gender to be fake, at least not for me, and I don’t want the mixing of labels because for me it feels like it is creating the opportunity to be misgendered and forced into being seen as some sort of “half man” or “not really a man”. I want to be a man, just a guy, and I feel like there’s an increasing opportunity with these labels to misinterpret that, and yeah, I’m scared. I want people to be able to do what they want, as long as I will unequivocally be seen as a man.

The thing is... you are, unequivocally, a man. But in transphobic society, there is no guarantee you will unequivocally seen as a man, and certainly not by everyone.

There is nothing we can do that will make our transness acceptable for transphobic society. No matter how hard you try to be the perfect man, or how much you try to distance yourself from anything that could possibly associate you with womanhood, transphobes will not suddenly respect who you are. If there's anything to be learned from transmeds, its that trying to make people shrink their identities to something cis people can understand does nothing to fix transphobia but does everything to perpetuate it and hurt other trans people.

Cis people do not need weird trans people to make opportunities for them to misgender you. They will do that themselves. This is what we mean when we say other queer people are not the enemy; you are, even if unconsciously, blaming other queer people for the bigoted actions of cishet people. You are drawing a line from "being misgendered" to "other trans men calling themselves lesbians". You are trying to find a way to appeal to transphobic society to respect you so that you can avoid the pain of transphobia, but that will not happen. You cannot respectability politics your way out of being disrespected by transphobes. It fucking sucks and there's no way around it until we create a society free from queerphobia. That's why we have to stick together, that's why transunity is vital.

Again, this is very similar to bi lesbians being blamed for giving straight men an excuse to hit on lesbians; they don't need an excuse. I would like you to ask yourself: why do I jump to blaming other queer people for the actions of cishets? Why do I assume that, if they changed how they acted, it would mean my life got easier? Why do I feel that trans people have a responsibility to act and identify themselves a certain way to shape how cis people treat us, as if its our duty to make them stop being transphobic instead of theirs?

[antiyourwokehomophobia2]

i read your post you tagged “if you take nothing else from this blog let it be this”

and i’m glad i did because it paints a really great picture of your ideology

“i have nothing in common with trans women,” you say, and then you proceed to describe in vivid detail some obviously painful memories from your childhood that stayed with you: begging god to “fix” you, being viewed as dangerous by your peers for your identity.

you’re so right, when trans women were children everyone always clapped them on the back and said “great job today buddy we accept you!”

they never felt alienated, they were never treated as predators whilst being mere children, and they certainly never hoped a higher power would make them normal.

nothing human is alien to yourself and i’m sorry you think you have not an inch of common ground with 50% of the earth. i hope you’re very young, that would explain this really defensive, combative and self-isolating stance you’ve taken.

i’m a cis woman who was also bullied in middle school for being gay so unfortunately you cannot write this off as another “angry man” or whatever, but i expect you’ll find some other way to dismiss this criticism, or maybe you’ll pretend you didn’t read it despite me reading your much longer vitriolic post.

i’m not saying you have to love and welcome trans women into Our Spaces—although i wish you did feel that way—but specifically i’m baffled that you think you have NOTHING in common with them solely because they were born with a penis. are genitals really that defining of a human being? i personally don’t find it super feminist to reduce my entire identity and human experience down to my having a vagina.

No, anon, I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t read this ask. I do acknowledge and appreciate two things:

You took the time to read my post. If I can be honest, I thought it’d be a bigger hit, and the fact it wasn’t is at least partially contributed to its length, I’m sure.

Even though you clearly disagree with me, this ask is respectful. I really do appreciate that.

With that out of the way, I would like to give you a response.

““I have nothing in common with trans women,” you say, and then you proceed to describe in vivid detail some obviously painful memories from your childhood that stayed with you: begging god to “fix” you, being viewed as dangerous by your peers for your identity.

you’re so right, when trans women were children everyone always clapped them on the back and said “great job today buddy we accept you!”

they never felt alienated, they were never treated as predators whilst being mere children, and they certainly never hoped a higher power would make them normal.”

I would like to point out that the post I made was specifically talking about “lesbian” trans women. In the beginning, I speak a bit generally about trans women as a whole, but my post was mainly about straight males who claim to be lesbians. I'm willing to accept that I have plenty in common with homosexual trans women (trans women into males) because we are both gay. Not only that, but I can relate to being so gnc that I’d rather just be the opposite sex. However, this part of your ask does not make nearly as much sense if we are talking about heterosexual trans women. Yes. Straight males very much so are considered normal. I think where people like you and people like me get into the most arguments is that we can't decide who is and who is not a trans woman. You seem to view them as tortured minorities who struggled since childhood. And some of them are—mostly the homosexual ones, but the thing is that men with sissy fetishes or autogynephilia also call themselves trans women. “But they’re not!” is what you’re probably saying, right? Those men are perverts, right? Okay, but they call themselves trans women. How do you know who's telling the truth or not? How do we prevent the liars from hurting women? What is stopping a man with a fucked up fetish from identifying as trans, entering a woman’s bathroom, and assaulting someone? You might be thinking that if a man wants to assault somebody, a woman's bathroom sign isn't going to stop him from doing so, but the thing is, if you make it a law that anybody can go into whatever bathroom they want to go into, it then becomes asinine to call the police on him. The police can't do anything because how do they know he doesn't belong there? Do you understand why this whole thing causes women such great pause?

You and I can trade pathos all day. I can tell you sad stories from my childhood growing up gay. You can talk to me about a sad boy crying in his room wishing he was a girl. It always comes back to “who do you care about more?” If a teenage girl talks about feeling genuine discomfort over males being allowed in the school locker rooms and a teenage boy talks about how much he wishes he had access to the girl locker rooms because he “feels” like a girl, whose side do you take? Who do you care about more? I will always choose women and gay people.

I left something out of my post, anon. It wasn't relevant but now I think it is. I've talked about this before but when I was a kid I struggled greatly with the fact that I was black. I can say with full confidence that I had racial dysphoria. I wanted to be white so badly. Both of my parents are black people, but I used to ask people if I could pass as half white. It was pretty bad. Would you have told me that I was meant to be born white? No? Then why do you think it’s okay to tell someone they’re meant to be born the opposite sex? Why is sex the only thing people are allowed to say is “wrong” about them? How ingrained are biases about sex that people look at a little boy playing with dolls, say “he’s supposed to be a girl”, and a disturbing amount of people say “true!”? That’s insane! Imagine if someone looked at a white person eating watermelon and said they were meant to be born black? That’s how people with your ideology sound. You don’t think you sound that way because you’ve had so many people backing you up, but if you can tell me why racial dysphoria isn’t valid but gender dysphoria is, I’ll reconsider everything. It is my “bad” luck I was born black, anon. There is nothing I can do to change that. Some boy wishing he was a girl is a sad thing, sure, but it’s simply a matter of tough luck lmao. He shouldn’t suddenly get everything he wants just because of that.

“nothing human is alien to yourself and i’m sorry you think you have not an inch of common ground with 50% of the earth.  i hope you’re very young, that would explain this really defensive, combative and self-isolating stance you’ve taken.

i’m a cis woman who was also bullied in middle school for being gay so unfortunately you cannot write this off as another “angry man” or whatever, but i expect you’ll find some other way to dismiss this criticism, or maybe you’ll pretend you didn’t read it despite me reading your much longer vitriolic post.

i’m not saying you have to love and welcome trans women into Our Spaces—although i wish you did feel that way—but specifically i’m baffled that you think you have NOTHING in common with them solely because they were born with a penis. are genitals really that defining of a human being?  i personally don’t find it super feminist to reduce my entire identity and human experience down to my having a vagina.”

50% of the population? You and I have been talking about trans women this whole time. Are they 50% of the population? Are you talking about men when you say this? Why? This is a bit of a freudian slip, anon. Seems like I’m not the only one here who knows trans women and men are the same thing.

I do think that “nothing human is alien to yourself” is a beautiful phrase, and I do agree! There are men and straight people I can relate to just fine. But I don’t agree with calling males lesbians and I don’t agree that people can be born in the wrong body. I am defensive and combative. Women and lesbians are actively being threatened. Self-isolating though? No, I don’t think so. I don't feel isolated at all. In fact, I think being open about my views has led to me being close to people I never would’ve thought. And even if my views did lead to my isolation, I would much rather be alone than with people who are actively hurting women and gay people.

“i’m baffled that you think you have NOTHING in common with them solely because they were born with a penis.” I can concede that saying “nothing” was more emotion based than logic based, but I think that the straight male experience is pretty damn different from the lesbian one. The male experience, in general, is pretty different from what I’ve had. That’s what I was speaking about. 

“are genitals really that defining of a human being?” I don’t know about how much they define a human being, anon, but they definitely do contribute a lot to how the world treats you. If you have a penis, the world treats you a shit ton better than they do if you have a vagina. That’s just facts. Nobody can help being born with a penis, but the world is not a fair place. Also, for a trait that is apparently so neutral, people with penises manage to commit 90% of all violent crime. What do you make of that? If genitals are really neutral, why isn’t the crime rate between people with vaginas and people with penises a 50-50 split? You said yourself that nothing human is an alien concept to other humans, so if women go through the same experiences men do, why is there such a large disparity in crime? Why can women go through the things men do (and worse, let’s be real) and generally not end up as criminals? What is it about having a penis that contributes to this?

“I personally don’t find it super feminist to reduce my entire identity and human experience down to my having a vagina.” I never said women are only their vaginas. If I tried to talk about racism, I would not be “reducing black people down to their skin color”. There is no reason why talking about the female experience should be met with claims I’m reducing women down to their vaginas.

[stardustizuku]

Part 1: The Politics of AoB

When I was first reading Ascendance of a Bookworm, I found something rather odd, and that’s: the politics of the light novels. More importantly, the way that a good 70% of the story was focused on the politics of noblemen, yet it very rarely bothered to engage with politics from “our world”. 

For the longest time, I chugged it off to me simply being unable to understand the japanese politics it was engaging with. And I still do believe that a large part of the political message being conveyed is something I can’t understand because I lack the cultural context of it. 

But as I read further, it became clear that there was a political context there that I could actually read in. Proven to me was simply at the end of Part 2, where it’s revealed that Fran is a victim of CSA, at the hands of the previous orphanage director. The way that CSA referring a man is handled - that’s to mean with respect - and how Arno is framed (as someone so diabolically evil for blaming Fran, not only for what happened to him but the orphanage’s director death, to the point of even warranting his death) is definitely a statement. One that not even I, someone so culturally removed from the situation, can overlook. Paired with the way Wilma is treated in regards to her trauma to men, as something she needs to overcome but not something to be pushed by others, led me to believe that: yes. 

Ascendance of a Bookworm is in fact, trying to speak about politics. In specific, gender-based politics. It’s trying to critique certain power structures, based on gender and perhaps even a critique to nobility. 

And, while I was able to identify the gender politics, the nobility critiques were a bit harder to parse through. At one point, I was just straight up lost. 

I could understand that Ascendance of a Bookworm was trying to say something to me, but I just couldn’t grasp what it was trying to say. 

Again, for a while I simply waved it away as me, being unable to properly understand the culture it was created from. Maybe there’s parallels to the government I can’t pinpoint, maybe the experience of a woman in Japan is too fundamentally different from that of a Mexican woman, that I had no hope of ever fully understanding what it was trying to say. 

That, however, changed when Part 4 started, because it took me that long to identify just how much of an unreliable narrator Rozemyne truly was. Sure, I knew she had a different set of values from nobles, but until the Royal Academy (and the side characters in the Academy’s POV) it was difficult to identify just how off her values and upbringing differed from other nobles. Not only that, it took me that long to stop seeing Rozemyne as just “someone from our world who doesn’t fit in the isekai new order”, but as someone from our world, who even by our standards is pretty wild and unconventional. 

And, can you really blame me?

Yugersmitch works are so fundamentally different from our world, that things we may consider morally bad, aren’t framed by the REST of the characters as such. The only true moral judgment ought to be Myne. In any other Isekai, her job would be to tie us to the moral understanding of our world, while trying to compare and contrast. “These backward people aren’t doing things how they should be doing them, so I will teach them how to do it correctly”. 

(There’s definitely an imperialist undertone to it, but that’s a topic for another day).

BUT AoB approaches it differently, precisely because Myne's internal understanding is off.

I haven’t been the first one to point out there’s a high likelihood of Rozemyne straight up being neurodivergent, and I think the faster you come to terms that she works on entirely different logic, the faster you can understand the themes implanted in AoB, and Rozemyne as a character. 

I do not struggle to understand her actions, her tendency to interpret things as  literally as it can be and ignore things that aren’t important to her - can absolutely lead even people from our world to find her annoying, hard to understand or even illogical at point. She’s an extremely unreliable narrator, not only because she has no Noble Context to guide her, but because even her definition of hard work, love for books and strong values are just something that can be alianting. 

For one, hard work to her has the connotations of a Japanese work culture, yes. That means, you have to work a lot, constantly trying to improve yourself, for the betterment of others. But those aren’t her only attributes that make her a great leader. She knows about task delegation and focusing yourself to the areas you are better at - things that anyone from our world would see as highly valuable, yet she sees them almost trivially. Doesn’t seem to understand just how valuable they are, and by extension, her ability to use them seems to go unnoticed. 

Her hyperfocus on books, permits her to have a clear and focused goal, but at the same time it’s not exactly considered “normal” even by our standards. Many have pointed out that her obsession with books can be off putting or unrealistic, just to have neurodivergent kids say that it’s an accurate portrayal of their experience. Including the idea that these types of people gravitate to one another, even if the light novels refer more to it as “highly skilled people attract equally as skilled people”.

So this creates a situation where Myne’s internal logic sometimes doesn’t align with the reader’s, and Myne’s own internal logic does not align with commoners, commoner’s logic does not align to those of the Nobles in Ehrenfest, and those Nobles (namely, Sylvester and Ferdinand)’s logic does not align with the rest rest of the Nobles in Yurgenschmidt. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4 respectively. 

By the end of it, we have this confusing swirling mess that is highly difficult to put into words just what part of it is the “correct” answer, the “correct” solution, who is evil, who’s an ally, or even who is worth redemption or not. 

This ends up with very little room for a sound moral basis, and as a consequence, very little way to compare and contrast the correct and the incorrect way of running things. And that’s the thing. There’s no good or bad sides, there’s no good or bad characters. Rozemyne herself says as much in Part 3 Volume 5. 

“To complicate matters further, not everything those nobles had said was untrue. It was fair to say I was the reason Veronica had broken the law, since the specific intention had been to sell me to Count Bindewald, and an argument certainly would have been made that Ferdinand was pulling the strings from the shadows, since he had long been working to remove the High Bishop. From Bezenwanst’s perspective, he had set out to commit one simple crie, only to have Ferdinand dump a huge list of violations onto him - violations so small that even Bezewanst himself had forgotten about them. It would be harder to think Ferdinand hadn’t lured him into a trap”.

That’s by design, Ascendance of a Bookworm, at the start, is more interested in the hows and the whys of the past policies in this fictional world - just lightly trying to adapt them so that they don’t completely crumble, rather than a strict 1:1 translation. It’s more of a case study on how certain systems would behave and taking as seriously as it can the Royal and Nobility drama. 

Take Hasse for example. 

While from our moral standing selling children is wrong, and kicking a temple isn’t grounds for executing an entire town, neither the nobles nor even commoners of the duchy see anything wrong with it. This is our first true and brutal introduction to the politics of this world. The cultural shock Myne receives rings as true as our own. Where human life is not as inherently valuable or equal to another. 

And if we want to save the town, we have to play the mind games nobility has established.

Again, rather than forcing her own ideas of right and wrong, Rozemyne is quite literally forced to adapt to these new values. If she wants to survive, and if she wants to help others, she has to play the game. 

Although Myne herself never surrenders most of her values, she does adapt her reasoning for them to better integrate them into society. No longer does “you can’t kill people” become her argument but a “we can have a better punishment that serves us”

That’s how, instead of saving an entire town, Rozemyne has to work a plan to save as many people as she can, while navigating the politics of nobility.

For the longest time, I thought that was just it. How do you navigate these situations? Like an interesting puzzle to solve, with as much creative thinking and outside the box logic. Genuinely, I thought this was the “Politics” part of AoB. I never thought it was trying to convey a particularly interesting message other critique other than "politics are complicated"

Until. 

Part 5 happened. 

Something interesting happened in Part 5, and that is that Ferdinands is gone. While it’s a honestly traumatic thing for Rozemyne, narratively wise it marks a point of no return. Ferdinand acted as her guide in Nobility, as well as a sturdy shield - both to contain her from others, and others from her. 

Without Ferdinand there to, basically, put her on a right-path track, she was forced to build her own path. 

And this, THIS, is where Ascendance of a Bookworm truly starts.

MASTERLIST >> NEXT

[souryogurt64]

fall out boy ughhhhhh like yeah they’re cute but they’re evil rich 40 year old men. patrick wearing a pin is nice yeah doesn’t mean he’s starting a revolution. i think he was cuter with the cardigans anyway.

ALSO mad respect to you i fuck so hard with this blog x

I mean I think Patrick looks nice and it’s very nice of him to support different causes onstage. However, I have noticed that he pointedly does not include women’s rights or feminism in what he supports. I actually think this is very intentional and the right call, as he seems to be very aware and intentional about not identifying as a feminist and of how hypocritical this would be considering Pete’s behavior and the band’s history and the stuff Pete is currently doing like the daddy kink music.

Anyway, people in the fandom chronically refer to his gay pride stuff as a “feminist shirt” or “feminist pin” when it’s not and Patrick has outright said he doesn’t identify as a feminist. It’s important to support gay rights and gay rights and feminism should intersect, but these are not feminist causes and it really bothers me that fans are obsessed with saying all this crap constantly about how Arma Angelus threw the first brick at Feminist Stonewall or whatever because they can’t handle the cognitive dissonance required to accept that Pete hates women and is unbelievably cruel to women in his life and a lot of fans are women but FOBs music still speaks to them so strongly, so they create this parallel universe that isn’t real where FOB aren’t like this and like log on and tell lies about The Feminist FOB Concert and excommunicate anyone who doesn’t participate in pantomiming this mass delusion

This isn’t even that big of an issue I just hate Pete for how he reacted to my Gray essay and I hate FOBs idiot fans for obsessively treating me so badly and hatestalking my blog when I tried to vent about it because they know I’m telling the truth and know he was in the wrong and they can’t handle it. If people actually thought I was severely mentally ill they would’ve just ignored me and felt sorry for me, not continually lurked on my blog and antagonized me about everything I posted (even non-FOB related) for months until I blocked them. What Pete did really affected me and it literally was because he hates women so I’m going to be annoying forever and ever

[cazort]

Why "Men DNI" Excludes Transfem People, Is Unclear Communication & Promotes Gender Essentialism

I see increasing numbers of people on Tumblr saying "men DNI" and treating it like it's normal or acceptable to say this sort of thing. First I wanna say, I always leave these people alone. I don't message them, I don't comment on or reblog their posts. I err on the side of caution when trying to respect people's boundaries. But I want to talk about what comes up for me when people say this, and why I don't say this and why I don't really think it's good for anyone to say it.

I'm AMAB and nonbinary, and whenever people say "men DNI", I never know if, in their head, they think it applies to me or not. Plenty of people are overtly transphobic, and to them, all AMAB people are "men". And, me being transfem is like, the ultimate sin to these people, I'm a "man pretending to be a woman" and they will direct hate my way if they put me in that category. This is, BTW, one of the main motivators for violence against transfem people.

Some people (probably a much bigger group) are at least somewhat acknowledging of trans women and transfem people's identities, but in practice I know that many of these people don't really care how you identify, they just gender you based on how you present. And it's always a crapshoot, like do I tick enough of the "man" boxes in your head that you consider me a "man"? Cause that's really what it's about, it's not about who I am, it's about how your brain processes me. To a lot of people, even people who acknowledge the validity of some trans people, I am "not trans enough". I'm not trans because I'm nonbinary. I'm not trans people I look too masculine or not feminine enough. I'm not trans because I haven't chosen particular aspects of medical transition "that I would want if I were really trans". These are all things I've had said to me by cis women.

And I really just hate that. Like when you say "men DNI", you're asking a certain class of people not to interact with you.

But I'm not in your head. I don't know how you're going to gender me. So you're not expressing your boundary in a way that is actually clear to me. It's poor communication.

And like before some cis woman turns around and says: "You're overthinking this, you know very well that I am not talking about you I just am trying to discourage all the harassment from cis men." let me ask each and every one of these cis women: how do I know? How do I know that you're safe to interact with? I don't.

I live in a world where there are an awful lot of people who will direct a lot of hate and negativity at people for being transfem. And I never know who those people are going to be until they do.

This whole phenomenon parallels a thing that goes on in in-person spaces that advertise they are open to "women and nonbinary people". If you show up in these spaces and are too male-presenting (such as a nonbinary person, either transmasc or transfem, who looks sufficiently like a cis/gender-conforming man, or a trans woman who is gender-non-conforming and not conforming to enough norms to be consistently gendered female), people can sometimes react really negatively.

And I don't want to deal with this so I just stay out of these spaces.

This is why I perceive "men DNI" as a sign that not only I, but most trans people and most nonbinary people, are unwelcome. I think someone who really cared about trans people, including nonbinary people and AMAB transfem people, would understand these concerns, because they would have heard us talking about these things, they would listen to us, and they would care, and as a result, they wouldn't say something like that. It's like, a statement that ends up reinforcing gender essentialism and gender conformity and is just kinda hostile towards queerness in general. Saying it is like one of the strongest ways to advertise to me that you are not safe for me to interact with.

[aronarchy]

[CW: transphobia]

Transmisogyny is misogyny, transphobia is patriarchy.

The only main difference is that trans people are more oppressed than cis women so while cis women have gotten relative progress from feminism trans people are often left behind by cis feminists, and “progressive” transphobes will even naturalize patriarchal gender roles and definitions and manufactured constrictions, specifically bringing them out or bringing them back when it comes to defending transphobia.

This dynamic is especially exacerbated by racism, colonialism, Orientalism; the cultural imperialist Western gaze targets racialized trans people and even cis women and queers to naturalize or essentialize the patriarchal oppression they experience, treating it as an arbitrary cultural quirk occurring because of happenstance which must and/or can only be preserved, rather than a historically contingent form of oppression with specific material causes and consequences which can and should be overthrown. The relativist authoritarian often chastises consistent anti-authoritarians for supposedly being racist, white-privileged, disseminating “Western” viewpoints, etc. (erasing the non-white/Western intersectionally marginalized people who are the most harmed by such discourse, of course), but don’t be fooled: they’re the ones leveraging structures and ideologies originating in Western imperialism (the notion that The East and The West are ontologically different in grand historical ways, that nothing “Western” can be related to anything “Eastern” and vice versa, that The East is static and unchanging and underdeveloped, that The East’s cultures, values, practices, etc. are mysterious, exotic, inscrutable by The West, and so on), and when we expose this we peel away their façade (an important step that they always struggle to prevent by any means possible). (I don’t just say this in a vague abstract online discourse way; these dynamics also pop up in day-to-day personal political contexts, often the mechanism of violence/abuse; they are behind a great deal of material oppression in the real world today and have left a great deal of trauma upon marginalized people.)

It doesn’t occur to relativist transphobes that if someone doesn’t consider themself a woman / man because they feel they aren’t allowed to identify as or be one because they don’t fit the cissexist standard of having to be able to give birth (and fulfill the hegemonically defined (subordinate) wife role) / impregnate (and fulfill the hegemonically defined husband (patriarch) role), then that might possibly be a result of internalized patriarchy/misogyny/(cis)sexism and not an ideal state, and their mental health and self-image might improve and they might be living lives more closely in alignment with their internal selves if some friend went up and told them it could be an option. This is liberal choice “feminism” but specifically a version targeting trans people and transphobic oppression under patriarchy.

If a (white) infertile cis woman / cis man vented about feeling like they’re a failed Other rather than a real woman or real man because they can’t give birth / impregnate and the society around them says Real Women / Men are people who can give birth / impregnate (respectively), would people like this say as readily that it’s true they really are an ungendered unwomanly / unmanly Other, despite their own desire to be a woman / man and feelings which align with that? Or likewise for other forms of gendered nonconformity among cis people. (Much less likely, I think.)

Would they say, “cis women without children” is a whole separate gender from “cis women with children,” a third gender after “cis women with children” and “cis men with children”? Then “cis men without children” as a fourth gender. What about married with children versus married without? Then split the above into eight. Some trans people do get married, either while closeted, as an attempt at conversion or punishment by family or society, while passing for their correct gender (if they have a gender from the binary), or with updated laws which have assimilated trans people more. Trans people can have children too, even if not in the same patriarchal way which secures intergenerational patrilineal inheritance. More gender-categories for them then? (It’s obvious where this leads: there are in fact as many ways to be women and men as there are women and men, and different gender roles and social gender locations are assigned or designated in a gradient or internally distinguished way for all gender differences or social role differences, but there are some general categories which could be broadly termed different “genders” which group together, and thus it would be irrational/illogical and arbitrary to exclude trans women from womanhood or trans men from manhood under such a linguistic system.)

The transphobic takes above prioritize what “society” says, what other (cis) people surrounding someone says about what gender is, what their gender must be, as if what they say matters so much in defining us (or even at all), and then also equates the viewpoint of oppressive surroundings with the viewpoint of the oppressed individual (as if the oppressed will always just bow down and accept their oppression). That is not how we define gender or determine what anyone’s gender is, because that literally goes against the whole point of transness in the first place, which is that we define our own identities, we say what our genders are, we don’t limit ourselves by a cissexist society which constrains people by setting rigid inaccurate definitions; the subversiveness, the contradiction with surrounding norms, is literally the point; it wouldn’t be transness if there were no preexisting cisness (top-down/nonconsensual gender assignments) to struggle against in the first place.

It’s especially nasty to imply that Western trans people identify as “really” the gender they feel they are because the West’s social definitions of gender uniquely recognize that women don’t have to be wives, childbearers, and mothers (for patriarchs) and men don’t have to be husbands (patriarchs) and property-owning child-investing patrilineage-obsessed reproductive futurists. That erases the fact that there’s rampant institutionalized socially prevalent patriarchy in the West too; many people do believe that still; the point is, no society, no culture is a monolith. But it’s very obvious why sweeping portrayals of white, Western PoVs highlight the “progressive” parts while sweeping portrayals of non-white/non-Western PoVs highlight the “regressive” parts (racism, Enlightenment teleology). (And yes, people oppressed by racism can also be racist themselves.)

That also implies that trans people and our feelings and desires are dependent on cis people and their choices. That none of us will think against the grain until cis people create the conditions which allow for it. This prioritizes cis feminism and cis women’s rights over that of trans people, telling us they’ll always come first, we’ll always need them (though they won’t ever need us), if they’re not class-conscious yet then there’s no scenario where we might be more class-conscious already, which erases how we’re actually pressured to know much more about feminism than them, to understand their issues and ours and to be able to argue perfectly for both our rights and theirs in order to be relatively tolerated. These notions are only legible because of cissexism.

Trans people whose gender includes one (or both) genders from the binary are only treated as not being “allowed” to be “properly” considered as people of that gender because of cissexism. This denial is a form of oppression and social subordination, not something neutral or good or just naturally occurring. It’s cruel and it’s wrong. Notice how such discussions about “difference” never say that, e.g., “cis men are Different(tm) from trans men because they occupy different social niches, and trans men are more manly than cis men, because cis men don't fit into our/the Paradigmatic Image of What A Man Is(tm) and we only begrudgingly acknowledge cis men as probably ‘men’ in some way because of their self-identification but that won’t alter how we fundamentally categorize ‘men’ and we couldn’t possibly put forth a cis man as Paradigmatic, Archetypal, or Representative because smh he’s cis not trans, we couldn’t do that, that doesn’t intuitively make sense, a Man(tm) is a trans man unless otherwise specified?” (or likewise for women). Which makes it clear that this is about a power imbalance, a hierarchy placing cis people above trans people of the same gender and prioritizing cis people, which pushes out trans people from equal recognition and epistemic authority. (And no, the “unless otherwise specified” is not good enough, it’s still implicit misgendering; it’s just a half-assed attempt to cover the problems with your ideology; we want more.)

There is a (very obvious) reason why, despite having very different contexts at times, all patriarchies share certain common characteristics (patrilineage; intergenerational private property/power transfer of some sort; socially-mandated, enforced, or disproportionately incentivized binary heterosexual marriage/the couple-form; child-ownership by the patriarch; rigid definitions of “woman” as childbearer and mother and “man” as the one who possesses/owns the children (and “girls” and “boys,” respectively, as future “women” and “men,” requiring coercive socialization/indoctrination); condemnation of autonomous deviation from the prescriptive binary definitions of gender (in desire, in self-regard, in private or public identification/claiming, in differences or alterations in aesthetics/appearance/biological sex characteristics or role performance); etc.). Of course it’s not just arbitrarily landing on that every single time. These are social structures which arose from a historical process during which children, women, and queers were domesticated or forcibly excluded (as colonialism is imposed through an initial conquest and then ongoing counterinsurgency), relatively stabilizing after the patriarchs won the battle.

There is no reason why “man” or “woman” (or male, female, wife, husband, mother, father, boy, girl, masculine, feminine, gender, sex, “two genders,” “third gender”) would be terms any more transhistorically relevant, self-evident, coherent, or applicable than “transgender,” “nonbinary,” “trans woman/man/girl/boy/female/male,” etc. (And for that matter, “transmasc(uline)” (and “transfem(inine)”) shouldn’t be treated as “safer” terms to slide in third-gendering of binary trans people to avoid using the words “trans man” or “trans woman”; there’s no reason why they would automatically be more accurate either.) The people who would be called “trans” here today have existed and will exist in every society, and there will always be trans people under any patriarchy, and some language that would apply (whether a word or set of words or phrase or set of phrases or way of describing) to denote people rejecting or not aligning with their birth-assigned gender, so long as gender is assigned at birth. There will always be resistance, at least somewhere, sometime, when there is oppression. You will never have 100% internalized acceptance of cissexism. It’s time that relativists recognized this.

[itgetsbetterproject]

Generation vs Generation! ⚡️ For LGBTQ+ History Month, we asked our It Gets Better Youth Voices and Outwords Archive storytellers the same questions, so we could see how their answers change (or remain the same) as our LGBTQ+ history evolves!

We matched up Youth Voice Eli, a trans activist, artist, and student filmmaker, with Jude, a trans activist, therapist, and sex educator who made headlines as one of the first trans men to receive gender-affirming surgery in 1972!

🟣 Do you have a favorite LGBTQ+ film? What is it and why?

Eli: "Oh I have so many! But the first two that come to mind are Portrait Of A Lady On Fire by Celine Sciamma and Milk by Gus Van Sant."

Jude: "I could not choose just one! My favorite LGBTQ+ films are Some Like it Hot; Victor, Victoria; Tootsie; Mrs. Doubtfire; The Naked Civil Servant; and Yentl."

🟣 What LGBTQ+ landmark would you most like to visit and why?

Eli: "I would like to visit the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York. It’s such an important landmark and sort of the birthplace of the more modern LGBTQ+ rights movement."

Jude: "The Stonewall Inn. I am very happy that it was made a National Landmark. It represents a pivotal time in our LGBTQ+ history. I am very aware that Stonewall was NOT the first such event important to our history. I hope that eventually other such sites will be recognized/honored."

🟣 Which of the Pride flags do you feel best represents you and why?

Eli: "I like the progress pride flag, because it has both the trans flag and the rainbow pride flag. And it's a reminder that as a community we are always moving forward and changing."

Jude: "I like the transgender pink/white/light blue flag because it best represents me as a trans man. But I also like the newer, most inclusive of Pride Flags because I consider myself as part of the larger LGBTQ+ community."

🟣 What’s one fact about the LGBTQ+ community that you think everyone should know?

Eli: "There are so many different kinds of people and identities within the community. We all deserve to be treated with respect and to live a happy life identifying however we choose."

Jude: "We are here, all around you. We have existed since the beginning of time, in every culture. We are every bit as valuable and as worthy of respect, equal human rights, and pursuit of happiness. I do not want your 'acceptance. I do not want your 'tolerance'. I want you to join me in celebrating me and other LGBTQ+ folks as we truly are!"

We'll have more matches for ya throughout Oct!

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

They (the ear piercings) look gendered to /you/! This is actually internalized sexism, as in, you were taught that it was "girly" when you grew up and now are under the impression that there is any kind of correlation between being a girl or a boy and the kind of piercings you wear (or more generally the way people decide to dress).

The impression that boys or men can't have the same ear piercings as most girls without being men or without it being at least a bit feminizing is incredibly sexist.

The same thing goes for girls and women and everything people consider masculine. So what? A girl can't play football without being a tomboy? Can't play in the dirt and be rowdy? A woman can't be loud and take place, wear short hairs and wear comfy clothes?

None of this is against you, this is a societal problem, but we could all do with more awareness of it.

All of this to say, I don't think you should feel bad about the ear piercings looking girlish (even if it can be hard). Not submitting to gender stereotypes is rad as hell, you could feel proud of it.

Pardon the anonymous ask, reading your post made me feel bad for you while making me really angry and by the time it was better I had already written all of this. I could delete it all and go on my way, but I still hope maybe it will help you feel better about your piercings.

Feel free to ignore it if you want.

I'm going to stop you right fucking there.

This is stealth TERF rhetoric, and you should be careful who you are learning this from and who you are repeating it to.

Listen to me you little shit <3

Recognizing that external culturally normal gender signifiers are read by OTHER PEOPLE as signifying gender isn't "Internalized sexism U.U" It's called understanding social norms.

People also gender me "female" more when I concede to wearing a dress or wearing pink. Because that's the common bias, not because it's what -I- believe.

And I don't need to be told I ought to feel comfortable wearing pink otherwise I am sexist.

Understanding what the common bias is doesn't mean I believe it myself, you absolute wad.

You should be aware that what you are spouting is TERF rhetoric.

Where "abolish gender" only applies when someone is trans. I am going to charitably assume you might have meant this by accident, or aren't thinking straight right now and dignify this with a response.

Telling a trans man he should "just wear pink and dresses and have pierced ears, because that shouldn't be considered gendered, that's on you U.U" is fucking TERF rhetoric Telling a transmasc that he "can like programming and cars and mechanics and be "tom boy", but can -and is implicitly encouraged to- still identify as a girl u.u"

IS FUCKING TERF RHETORIC

I am not going to ignore it because I have more respect for you as a human being than that.

Either this is "just say'n" U.U softgirlTM TERF bullshit done knowingly...

Or you should be aware you are being led down dark path.

I would like to reiterate that the pierced ears do not make me internally uncomfortable because they "feel girly" to me, they make me uncomfortable because OTHER PEOPLE take them along with other visual cues as an excuse to keep misgendering me.

I am not being sexist, I am recognizing that I live in a sexist society and am being perceived by other people who treat me differently depending on whether I pass TO THEM. There is a big fucking difference.

Pierced ears don't just look girly to /me/ they look girly to every chucklefuck around me who tries to call me "mam".

I don't even normally think about my ears, I'm just very aware they are one of the "gender signifiers" people pick up on, along with boobs or longer hair, to add together and have them say "miss" instead of "sir".

There is a REASON one common transition surgery for trans men is to have their ear piercings REMOVED. It is explicitly because people read it as a gender signifier.

Part of my discomfort with it also breaks down to "yes I agreed to get them pierced, but under the impression I could take them out after a day and let them heal shut, only to find out my step mother was making it her personal mission to make sure I kept them specifically because they are a gender signifier."

Choosing how to adorn your body is very different from having that choice forced onto you.

Choosing to wear pink as a transmasc is different from being FORCED to wear pink and being told that if you don't like how it makes people see you, that you're the one who's sexist. You need to unlearn this shit.

[makuzume]

Genshin Characters and their Gender

🔸Liyue women edition🔸

Note: Personal opinion! I respect everyone else's opinion as to what they think the characters' gender are. I do not claim these to be facts or the only acceptable gender. For fun only! (since there are no official genders stated by Hoyo)

Other blogs: [Masterlist] [Liyue Men Gender]

🩵Shenhe - Agender, Straight

Agender - not identifying self with any gender.

She was only 6 years old when she was abandoned by her family and raised by Cloud Retainer, so she mostly grew up with adepti mindsets and behaviors.

Since adepti can take up any form, gender may not be relevant to them. Shenhe may have also believed that it is not necessary to know these, and she assumes that she would also be genderless- that she would be agender (Though she does acknowlede that she has a female human body)

Though despite this, my opinion would be that she still would have romantic and sexual attraction towards men, it's just it would take her some time to fully understand these feelings of attraction sicne these weren't taught to her (and she grew up with adepti, thus lacking interactions with people, especially men, so she lacks the exposure to these feelings)

❤️Hu Tao - Lesbian

Lesbian - woman attracted to women

Seems like the type that most people would assume she is straight but is actually more romantically and physically attracted to women in general. (Gives the same vibe from lesbians I know irl)

❤️Beidou - Biromantic/Bisexual

Biromantic/Bisexual - romantic and sexual attraction to both female and male

Beidou is free spirited and adventurous, she has probably been with men and women of all sorts, going with the flow on who she could be with, considers herself bisexual.

She would really get along with either a man or woman. For man, it would be someone strong in strength, personality, and free-spirited like her. For women, it would be when she would want a somewhat sweeter relationship and she can sometimes be the 'gentleman' in the relationship (while also receiving some gentle affection back from the woman as well)

Additional: based on those events and dialogues with Beidou and Ningguang- It's hard to say that they are NOT into secretly dating.

💛Ningguang - Lesbian

Similar to Yae Miko (Inazuman gender headcannons coming soon from the drafts!), she is more interested in women since she believes that the only people who would truly understand a woman, such as herself, and her needs is another woman.

Makes her very flattered if a woman compliments her looks compared to if a man did it; She is the type to think if a woman compliments her appearance- it means much more to her since only women would understand the effort she puts into her make up and clothing.

Might be displeased with the male dates she has been in, she still somewhat accepts such dates for networks, information gathering, and Mora purposes. However, she was uninterested at all and might've even thought it was a waste of time.

🧡Xiangling - Straight

I imagine Xiangling to be straight, though she may sometimes think she is a little bi because she gets 'girl crushes' and is open about it, but she is just genuinely straight. For girl crushes, it's just never getting romantically or physically attracted towards them. Though she is highly supportive of all gender identities!

💙Yelan - Bisexual

Very similar to Ningguang, except her standards are just MUCH much higher for men.

When she dates men, she wants to be treated like the queen that she is, being spoiled, and she leaves them hanging after she's done with them.

Same thing that she will do for the women, except she would be more caring about how the woman is treated (since Yelan is a fellow woman herself) and she is more polite towards them, even after she's done having a date with them/being together with them. They might even share a pleasant conversation if they run into each other after splitting up.

The only exception that she would be kinder to a man would be if the guy was truly a good man that Yelan can trust without her having any ulterior motive towards the guy.

No headcaonnons for Yan Fei, Yun Jin, Ganyu, Xinyan, and Keqing :')

[genderqueerdykes]

I hope this is alright to ask. I am a perisex trans person and I want to learn and understand. Would you be willing to talk about your identity as a transfeminine person, and why that label speaks to you? So often I see the term being used synonymously with AMAB, and I want to try and break out of that mindset.

hello! i really appreciate you stopping by to ask, that's awesome!

while a huge portion of transfeminine people are AMAB, there are lots of other transfeminine people of varying agabs & intersex people make up a sizeable portion of the community! I'm glad you are trying to expand your mindset, in general, it's important to consider that intersex can and do identify as any queer identity you can think of, and exist in every queer space, so there are always going to be trans men who are not afab and trans women who are not amab!

the reason why i began identifying with the label transfeminine was because of a breakthrough moment i had while hanging out with several irl transfem friends and while i was listening to them discuss their relationship with womanhood and seeing people who loved being women and generally speaking just exuded feminine and female energies without it feeling stifled or forced, it helped me get past a lot of my deep rooted internalized misogyny and helped me stop hating the parts of myself that are a woman

they helped me realize that i never hated being a woman or a girl- when i was in middle and high school, i loudly and proudly identified as a girl, then woman. i never realized that it wasn't me who hated being a woman, but rather, it was society that hated me for being a woman in my body. before puberty, people were relatively okay with gendering me as a girl, though some didn't bcus of how i acted. however, once i hit puberty, it divided people.

some people would come up to me and say "you're not a real girl, you can't wear makeup," or "you're not a girl, why are you carrying a purse?", things like that. i also got "you're not a real boy, stop dressing like that", "you dyke/butch/bulldyke"'d a lot as well, because people just could not decide on what my gender was, if i even had one.

it took me years to cope with the fact that i was heavily targeted by transmisogyny, however, and to realize that i have been treated like a trans girl my entire life due to my naturally masculine features from living in a high T intersex body. i wasn't rly allowed to cope with the fact that i wasn't allowed to be a girl, because i had started associating myself so heavily with misogynistic men at the time that it made it harder.

i've realized now i do not have a cisgender relationship with womanhood, and i never will. i have always existed in a high T body, once puberty happened, my gender became an anomaly, and a point of distress for others. i have had to fight tooth and nail to be seen as a woman or feminine in a way that is respectful and flattering. i have a feminine deadname and people still give me trouble.

anyway, hope that answers some of your questions! it's very hard for intersex people to easily define our experiences, as we often time experience numerous types of oppression or violence and don't realize that we have internalized a lot of hatred because of other people's prejudices. if you have any more questions, feel free to ask! take care!

[horny-for-cuddles]

I was planning on leaving this issue alone because I hate conflict, but I'm tired of holding in my comments on the matter. I'm done.

Bi lesbians will never have my respect. Here's why.

When I was in middle school, the word bisexual started floating around. Women attracted to women! Wonderful! That's what I am! But it came along with attraction to men, too, and even though I didn't have it, I figured it was a requirement. I was only aware of heterosexuality and bisexuality. I dated a lot of men, and never liked any of them. I'd already attached that label to myself and change scares me.

I took a convoluted path to lesbianism, after that, but now I'm here. Congrats. Made it. Backstory over.

I love lesbians. I love transbians. I love bisexual women too! But bisexual women are not lesbians. They're bisexual. They have a word already.

They do not need to take mine.

A defining factor of lesbianism is exclusive attraction to women. I don't care how it was used historically, because frankly, bisexuals were always treated as needing to pick a side, so it makes sense that people shoehorned those women into lesbianism.

Being bisexual didn't fit me because of the inherent attraction to men. Being a lesbian doesn't fit bisexuals because of the absent attraction to men. "Bi lesbian" creates confusion about which lesbians are attracted to men. Lesbians ALREADY have men in their DMs asking if they like men or not. The lesbian label is ALREADY barely a deterent.

Which brings me to another issue.

If some lesbians are attracted to men, what happens to those who aren't? It's already hard enough to justify to some people that, no, we will not just find the right man someday.

Are we unable to find a place of our own, now? The lesbian community of Tumblr is something I've actually grown quite attached to. I haven't found anywhere else that I can get a large amount of exclusively wlw content. I'd like to keep that, if I can.

If you identify as a bi lesbian, please consider why. Please reassess. I cannot stop you from putting yourself on the internet however you wish, but realize you may do harm to other women in the process.

[scoutpologist]

i see a lot of people refer to raine as sapphic/a lesbian or lumping in raeda with wlw couples (down to marking them as wlw on ao3, despite having the option to mark them as a nonbinary pairing), and while i more than understand the complexities and reasons why someone might be completely separate from womanhood and still identify with those labels (i even id'd as a nb lesbian for fucking ages and have only started to question that label recently), it’s really… strange to me that there’s the immediate assumption that raine would be okay with being sorted into a binary category. just because we might like men or women doesn't mean we suddenly become aligned with man or womanhood ourselves. that’s not how it works!!! at all!!!! it's so fucking weird!!!!

i think there’s this assumption among a lot of people that because nonbinary lesbians/sapphics and nonbinary gay men/achilleans exist, every nonbinary person attracted to women or men is a lesbian or a gay man respectively. but that’s just not true lol? just because those are valid identities doesn’t mean that’s the right word for every nonbinary person. a lot of us would probably consider being labeled like that personally misgendering?? the land of nonbinary identities is literally infinite and treating all nb people who are attracted to a specific gender like they have to be aligned with that gender is weird as fuck???

and yeah on the other hand, there really aren’t agreed-upon words for how we love, especially how we love each other, and when terms do emerge, they’re either considered “cringe” or people just flat out don’t know what it means. what do you call a nonbinary person attracted to women without using binary words? what about to men? to other nonbinary people? we don’t have common language for it yet and it’ll likely take a while before we can fully settle into the words to describe ourselves without linking back to the binary. but i don't know. i don't think it's chill to so flippantly use gendered terms for a nonbinary character.

nonbinary gayness is a very complicated thing that is grounded in very human and cultural aspects. they don't have that in the boiling isles. there's no homophobia or transphobia. there isn't even evidence that the boiling isles has terms differentiating gay and straight and bisexual people, let alone trans people from cis people - the only character to come out as a specific sexuality has been luz, despite the majority of young queer characters being in the demon realm. if the terms of lesbian, sapphic, and wlw exist, i don't like the assumption that raine would identify with them just bc they like women (or at least A woman). it's just weird to me idk!!!

don't take this post like. too too seriously, but i'm just. idk. it's bothering me cause i'm so excited about them and seeing so many people insist on gendering their attraction is annoying to me personally

[feminineinharmony]

Introduction

Hello, my name is Kathryn. I am 17 years old, and I love to read. I am not a white supremacist nor a nazi (I'm American Indian, to be honest)- I'm just a recently discovered Christian.

I grew up in a 'split-faith' home, where my mother claimed to be Christian and my father considered himself an atheist. My mother identified as 'bisexual', and rarely took me to church. I did, however, relish going when I got older, for I enjoyed getting to talk with others and listen to the stories of the priest. I was, in name, raised Episcopalian.

My life was easy in a lot of respects. I grew up poor, but I never knew it, for my parents fed me before they fed themselves. Any issues I have with my parents are due to my religious or political ideas, they do love me.

However, not everyone in my life treated me with the same kindness as my family, and I will likely not go into detail about that in this blog. Due to in-person issues of being stalked, I likely won't post my face, state, etc. on here either. I was in online school growing up, which meant I struggled to make friends. My added time online led me to crooks and nannies of the internet I should have avoided, and I found myself surrounded by other 12-year-olds in the "LGBT" community. I will not fully push the blame on other children who were as confused as me- I have struggled with same-sex attraction, and I am working to resolve it so I can live a normal life. Fortunately, I don't feel like all men are unattractive, so I can probably get to a point where I don't feel the need for that kind of attention.

Because I wanted to fit in with my newly found friends, I quickly identified as whatever was the most 'trendy' at that time. Bisexual, lesbian, transsexual, etc.

It recently ended this month. I've removed from my life everyone who was a part of that time, including my long-distance girlfriend of 3 years. It has been incredibly difficult, but I think it's necessary to live the way God wanted me to.

I'm struggling with feeling feminine and like a woman again- for example, as part of my rebellion, I had shorn my head, and now my buzzcut is slowly beginning to grow out.

I feel alone, as my immediate family is nonreligious liberals, and there is no way for me to go to a church that aligns with my values, seeing as I am 17.

That's why I started this blog- I hoped it could help me at least see people with my values.

Thank you for reading this far.

[alicent-vi-britannia]

Kallen and the problems with her mother

Although episode 9 of R1, Refrain, presents us with the first adventures of the Black Knights and the oppressive and painful situation of the Elevens, it is clear that the main conflict is the relationship between Kallen and her mother and this will be the main narrative thread.

In this episode we take a deep dive into Kallen's double life. On the one hand, she escapes from home at night to carry out her clandestine activities in compliance with her duty as a Black Knight. And, on the other hand, she tries to keep her public life afloat as a student at Ashford Academy. But Kallen's difficulties lie not in balancing both sides of her life while she tries to cover up her secrets, but in her private life: her mother works at home while enduring all kinds of humiliation and scorn from the lady of the house and the same Kallen respectively; her brother, the only person she got along with and understood her best, is dead; she's treated badly by her stepmother (come on! She's straight out of fairy tales!) and her father is conspicuous by his absence and none of you will convince me otherwise (Mr. Stadtfeld is no different from Charles zi Britannia and Genbu Kururugi, the series doesn’t leave him well planted as some fickers believe).

But why is Kallen cruel only to her mother and not her father, who is worse for not assuming his parental responsibilities? No, this has nothing to do with the fact that the plans for her father were scrapped, Kallen hints that her relationship with him isn't bad in her conversation with Milly in this episode. Why does Okouchi only focus on working on the relationship with her mother? Well, remember I told you that fathers are role models for men and that is why Suzaku and Lelouch have daddy issues in my other post? I suspect it's the same for women with respect to their mothers: they are models that they embrace, reject, or idealize or demonize (I just thought of Brave, Freaky Fready, and Black Swan, movies that deal with the relationship between mother and daughter, and it seems that they give me the reason). Like Suzaku and Lelouch, Kallen rejects the model that her mother represents.

Kallen values, among many things, rebellion, self-sufficiency, freedom, and independence. Her mother is the antithesis of all that. She is a docile, passive and resigned woman (qualities that Kallen detests with all her soul). Meanwhile, Kallen gets up to fight Britannia, her mother kneeling and bowing her head to Britannia. I'm sure her delicate family situation inspired Kallen to fight. She will have seen the abuse that her mother suffered and decided to make a change (in the same way, her brother was an example for her to follow). After identifying as Japanese (and expressing her sympathy towards an oppressed social sector), she will have thought: "I’m not going to put up with harassment or lead a submissive life like my mother". That's why she claims him for depending on Britannia, a man and drugs. Deep down, Kallen is reproaching Mrs. Kozuki for her inaction.

I also feel that Kallen treats her mother with disdain in order to induce her to leave home because Kallen is aware of the suffering her mother is going through: the vendor scene of hot dogs is an echo of Kallen's mother's situation and Lelouch's words hit her hard (I don't think she refuses to admit that her mother is having a hard time, considering that she knows full well the hardships the Elevens face, since it would be a contradiction on her part, even if she have mistakenly assumed that her mother decided to work as a servant to be with her father). And, of course, Kallen herself literally says it once when she snaps at her mother for her to meddle in her business, when she comments that her daughter has gone to school more often: "please, just go away".

It doesn't help much that Kallen is an Enneatype 8 (according to the Enneagram), since one of the difficulties with people and characters that type of personality faces, if they are average or unhealthy, is that they don't like to feel vulnerable because it makes them uncomfortable. If you notice, when Kallen finds her mother drugged, she scolds her for being "weak" and that's the ideology Britannia is founded on: being weak is wrong and Kallen opposes that (she's also an Enneatype 8 social subtype and is the type of personality most involved in social justice). Therefore, this type of personality tends to protect themselves with a shell and live on the defensive, reacting belligerently to threats because they want to avoid being harmed at all costs (yes, Larry, this problem extends to Lelouch). . Hence Kallen is in utter denial. It's one of the contradictions of the character, but don't get me wrong, it's in a positive way because it shows Kallen's humanity: in the same scene with the hot dog vendor, she slaps Lelouch because he says hot dot vendor can live a better life if he submits to Britannia. Kallen knows that this isn’t true through her mother's experience, so Lelouch's comment is very insensitive to her. Throughout the episode Kallen is telling herself that she doesn't love her mother (and I would add that's why she is cruel to her too). It is her way of saying to herself (and, thus, convincing herself): "this does not affect me", despite the fact that her actions and her micro-expressions indicate the contrary.

By the way, it's almost impossible to tell what Ms. Kozuki's MBTI Type is, but her eneatype is obvious: she is a 9 (or the Peacekeeper). I have no doubts and yes, many tests (enneatype 9 is the complete opposite of eneatype 8, the Challenger, and you want another free fun fact? It’s also the eneatype of Nunnally).

Fortunately, Mrs. Kozuki isn’t a neglectful mother like Genbu or Charles, she loves her daughter, her love isn’t twisted like Marianne's, she is the stereotype of the self-sacrificing mother/woman that Fyodor Dostoevsky likes, and her intentions are made clear in the same episode and our favorite redhead assimilates them, acknowledges her mistake, decides to forgive her mom and reconcile with her (I'm glad Okouchi didn't extend this conflict beyond this episode as it would have been quite annoying and hateful for the viewer to see Kallen cold-shouldering her mother over and over again). So we can conclude that her problem found her solution in communication (like almost all problems). Honestly, I can't blame Mrs. Kozuki for not telling her daughter about her since, putting myself in her shoes, it's easy to think that Kallen would suffer for this choice and not consent to it at all; however, it was necessary to save himself from this horrible misunderstanding.

Personally, I am heartbroken by what Mrs. Kozuki says under the Refrain: "I'm so happy for you, Kallen. Now you can be a British. Now no one can hurt you. You can use the phone and even travel." In short, she enumerates some rights (which are here privileges) that Kallen can enjoy as a Britannian woman, and only at the terrible price of giving up being her mother (I think Kallen, too, may have resented her mother for giving up rights and duties maternal).

I really liked that in episode 9 they show us a photograph of a little Kallen with her brother and her mother and on her face there is a sticker, which anticipated the tense relationship between Kallen and her mother, and when we are in the Code Geass epilogue, we're shown the same photo, but the sticker no longer covers Ms. Kozuki's face (and, sure, her hand makes a cameo and from the brief gesture they exchange, it's a fact that things they are fine with each other).

One of the best episodes of the series and one of the most touching relationships anime has ever built.

PS: I also analyzed at the hot dog vendor scene because I think it's underrated and it's a very powerful scene. I would like to upload it one day here.

[discyours]

I know it was probably not just one thing but a chain. What made you detransition, made all of it fall apart for you? Also i wonder whether your experience living as a trans man made you more aware of misogyny in some ways or not really?

It absolutely did. I went looking for this post from when I still identified as trans and was first starting to connect the dots.

But without expecting it - which made it even more impactful - the way people treated and viewed me completely changed. People actually listen to me, and respect me. Instead of bitchy, I’m assertive. Instead of being difficult, I’m strong-willed. Confidence, something I was terrified to display before, is now one of my most desirable traits. It’s the main thing that allows me to pass. How fucked up is that? Confidence is seen as so inherently masculine that displaying it easily makes people assume you’re male.  Mentally going over the option of “detransitioning” or reidentifying as a woman, something a radfem friend challenged me to think about, there are so many things I would have to give up in order to fit into society. My personality traits are only seen as acceptable for someone “trying” to be a man.

I didn't actually detransition for feminist reasons though. I was considering it (also found this post while looking for the last one) and had started to "dip my toes in" (changed my sex on a dating app I was on, went on one date with a woman who just saw me as a masculine woman and didn't even know I identified as trans) but never actually took the leap. I was too dysphoric. Then I started an SSRI and my life pretty much fell apart. I was actually doing pretty well at the time but due to a 10+ year history of depressive episodes I didn't want to be overconfident that things would just stay good this time. I finally felt equipped to handle potential side effects and started on medication with the hope of staying stable.

The first few weeks were weird but doable. Got extreme dry mouth and fully lost my sense of taste. Became restless and slightly manic. The physical symptoms went away and I no longer felt manic, but I became extremely anxious and my restlessness only got worse. I'd go on 3 hour walks in the middle of the night. Stopped going outside during the day, was too anxious to be seen, got an extreme form of imposter syndrome. I don't know how to explain it other than feeling like I wasn't a person and was a horrible person for tricking people into thinking I was, had to isolate myself as much as possible to avoid the impending disaster of people finding out I'd been misleading them like that. I became extremely self destructive, had unbearable intrusive thoughts about harming myself in all sorts of ways. I became re-involved in the kink community because it was a form of self harm and the only way I knew how to talk to people who were okay with treating me like I wasn't a person (meaning as far as I was concerned, they were the only people I wasn't manipulating into believing I was something I wasn't).

I was kind of in limbo for a few months in terms of trans/detrans stuff, you don't really have room to see or assert yourself as a man/woman in particular when you don't even believe yourself to be an actual human being. Actively presenting myself as anything felt like I was misleading people. I kept dressing the way I was used to because that was my default. Ultimately it was men I was involved with through kink who pushed me to start presenting more feminine. A lot of it wasn't voluntary and the parts that were were more about wanting to stop being a target for it than anything else.

I was only on the SSRI for a few months but I feel like I've never really recovered from it tbh. I never regained the 20 pounds I lost and I didn't really get my sense of personhood back either. I've stuck to presenting more feminine because it feels safer, and because it became the new default and I'm still not really comfortable asserting that I'm... anything in particular? I do think radical feminism/gender critical ideology played somewhat of a role because I generally don't see transition as a particularly productive way to deal with gender dysphoria so I don't see a reason to go back to it even if I did feel comfortable doing so. But my current acceptance of my womanhood is not a feminist thing, and it'd look a lot different (read: free of artificial femininity) if it was.