#it’s like it proves that being trans exists in nature

[2econd2ight2yd]

I just read about how a female amazon water lily eventually becomes male and turns all purple and pretty. what if. what if I told you I was an amazon water lily

[endusviolence]

Rowling isn't denying holocaust. She just pointed out that burning of transgender health books is a lie as that form of cosmetic surgery didn't exist. But of course you knew that already, didn't you?

I was thinking I'd probably see one of you! You're wrong :) Let's review the history a bit, shall we?

In this case, what we're talking about is the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or in English, The Institute of Sexology. This Institute was founded and headed by a gay Jewish sexologist named Magnus Hirschfeld. It was founded in July of 1919 as the first sexology research clinic in the world, and was run as a private, non-profit clinic. Hirschfeld and the researchers who worked there would give out consultations, medical advice, and even treatments for free to their poorer clientele, as well as give thousands of lectures and build a unique library full of books on gender, sexuality, and eroticism. Of course, being a gay man, Hirschfeld focused a lot on the gay community and proving that homosexuality was natural and could not be "cured".

Hirschfeld was unique in his time because he believed that nobody's gender was either one or the other. Rather, he contended that everyone is a mixture of both male and female, with every individual having their own unique mix of traits.

This leads into the Institute's work with transgender patients. Hirschfeld was actually the one to coin the term "transsexual" in 1923, though this word didn't become popular phrasing until 30 years later when Harry Benjamin began expanding his research (I'll just be shortening it to trans for this brief overview.) For the Institute, their revolutionary work with gay men eventually began to attract other members of the LGBTA+, including of course trans people.

Contrary to what Anon says, sex reassignment surgery was first tested in 1912. It'd already being used on humans throughout Europe during the 1920's by the time a doctor at the Institute named Ludwig Levy-Lenz began performing it on patients in 1931. Hirschfeld was at first opposed, but he came around quickly because it lowered the rate of suicide among their trans patients. Not only was reassignment performed at the Institute, but both facial feminization and facial masculization surgery were also done.

The Institute employed some of these patients, gave them therapy to help with other issues, even gave some of the mentioned surgeries for free to this who could not afford it! They spoke out on their behalf to the public, even getting Berlin police to help them create "transvestite passes" to allow people to dress however they wanted without the threat of being arrested. They worked together to fight the law, including trying to strike down Paragraph 175, which made it illegal to be homosexual. The picture below is from their holiday party, Magnus Hirschfeld being the gentleman on the right with the fabulous mustache. Many of the other people in this photo are transgender.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of a group of people. Some are smiling at the camera, others have serious expressions. Either way, they all seem to be happy. On the right side, an older gentleman in glasses- Magnus Hirschfeld- is sitting. He has short hair and a bushy mustache. He is resting one hand on the shoulder of the person in front of him. His other hand is being held by a person to his left. Another person to his right is holding his shoulder.]

There was always push back against the Institute, especially from conservatives who saw all of this as a bad thing. But conservatism can't stop progress without destroying it. They weren't willing to go that far for a good while. It all ended in March of 1933, when a new Chancellor was elected. The Nazis did not like homosexuals for several reasons. Chief among them, we break the boundaries of "normal" society. Shortly after the election, on May 6th, the book burnings began. The Jewish, gay, and obviously liberal Magnus Hirschfeld and his library of boundary-breaking literature was one of the very first targets. Thankfully, Hirschfeld was spared by virtue of being in Paris at the time (he would die in 1935, before the Nazis were able to invade France). His library wasn't so lucky.

This famous picture of the book burnings was taken after the Institute of Sexology had been raided. That's their books. Literature on so much about sexuality, eroticism, and gender, yes including their new work on trans people. This is the trans community's Alexandria. We're incredibly lucky that enough of it survived for Harry Benjamin and everyone who came after him was able to build on the Institute's work.

[Image ID: A black and white photo of the May Nazi book burning of the Institute of Sexology's library. A soldier, back facing the camera, is throwing a stack of books into the fire. In the background of the right side, a crowd is watching.]

As the Holocaust went on, the homosexuals of Germany became a targeted group. This did include transgender people, no matter what you say. To deny this reality is Holocaust denial. JK Rowling and everyone else who tries to pretend like this isn't reality is participating in that evil. You're agreeing with the Nazis.

But of course, you knew that already, didn't you?

Edit: Added image IDs. I apologize to those using screen readers for forgetting them. Please reblog this version instead.

[comicaurora]

I'm sorry that the terfs made their way onto your blog but it does feel good to see you support trans people. Thank you for that

Always.

I think, charitably, that the discourse going down on that post is an extrapolation and over-focus on one element of the point I was making: that for me, determining with certainty that I was cis was a rather fraught process. I was presented with many alternatives, but underlying their imposition on me was the oddly regressive idea that the things I liked, the principles I valued, the parts of myself I was proud of were not permitted of women. My whole life I got smacked with the background radiation that I couldn't like being strong because women aren't allowed to be stronger than men. I couldn't like being loud and boistrous because women aren't allowed to take up space. I couldn't be a math geek because women aren't smart. It was all deeply regressive misogyny from day one, but I started getting hit with it slathered in a fresh coat of paint - all those assumptions still held to be true, but now there was the out that I could do all those things if I just wasn't a woman.

Concluding that the underlying bioessentialist premise was wrong was very important. Absolutely none of those statements were true, and were only ever maintained by cultural saturation, goalpost-readjustment when they were actively disproven, and the occasional bout of lying with statistics to pretend they weren't just Shit All The Way Down. The core premise that certain things were only permitted of or possible for men was bullshit, and I didn't need to surrender the gender I liked best in order to play in the spaces I wanted to. I could simply exist the way I was already existing. I didn't need anything else.

The misinterpretation is the assumption that this being true of me means this is everybody's relationship with gender. I turned out to be cis, so for me, feeling that holding onto my assigned gender wasn't allowed was distressing - just another invocation of the same bioessentialist bullshit I'd been dealing with since the preschool playground. This is because misgendering is fundamentally denying that a person has the right to express themself the way they want. When aimed at me, it says I'm not performing traditional femininity well enough to deserve my pronouns. The same disrespect is the root of misgendering when aimed at trans people. "Perform your gender to my satisfaction or I will confiscate it."

The problem is, bioessentialism is 100% ingrained into the terf playbook, which is why, for instance, all their shitty talking points about trans athletes eventually boil down to "no woman can ever defeat a man in any contest because we are simply naturally weak and stupid and there is nothing we can do about it" and quite frankly nothing disgusts me more than the defeatist acceptance of the very lie that feminism is dedicated to overcoming. Instead of accepting that the paradigm of bioessentialism is a false dichotomy right from the jump, they embrace and weaponize it against the people whose existence proves the dichotomy is a lie. If gender essentialism is fundamentally false, then it is nobody's fucking business what anybody does with their gender. If the lines don't exist, nobody needs to enforce them. And yet there the terfs go, hunting down people whose lives are none of their business and trying to argue that they represent some great and terrible evil, some downfall of society made flesh, something that makes it totally correct and normal for them to spend so much time thinking about strangers' genitalia. They want this to be a noble crusade so badly they won't even examine what flag they're flying.

I love and support the trans people in my life and will always, always stand on the side of your right to exist, but alongside that, terf rhetoric especially disgusts and infuriates me because it is, at its heart, utter cowardice. The world told them they were weak and stupid and inferior and they fucking believed it. And now they think Fighting The Good Fight For Women means turning around and using the same paradigmatic weapon that hurt them to hurt the people whose existence outside the binary proves the weapon is a lie. They're the same shithead schoolyard bullies who made me believe my entire existence was foundationally wrong for years of my life and I will never, ever side with them or the shitty, cowardly rhetoric that contributed to the loneliest years of my life.

Figure out who you are and do it on purpose. Find the real source of the misery in your life and try fighting that instead of the other crabs in the bucket. Trans rights.

[official-megumin]

I'm both trans and intersex. Not just intersex by technicality either.

I was born with both male and female primary sexual characteristics, it affects me every day. Chronic pain, discrimination from doctors, you name it. My life is a constant attempt at convincing the world that my body genuinely does not fit the binary of male and female.

I was still assigned male despite this, so most of my life has been shaped by that, most of my trauma around my gender comes from being trans. But still despite that, I identify closer with my intersex identity.

I do that because even within the trans community there is little understanding or respect for intersex people, we're often made to fit a perisex trans understanding of sex and gender, and that's frustrating.

This means that I primarily fight for intersex rights, even more so with how most of the world refuses to acknowledge our existence even in this age of better understanding of trans people.

I simply have to with how the world works.

But...

The fight for intersex rights and the fight for trans rights is essentially the same. It's a fight to not be limited by the majority, a fight not to be forced to conform to the status quo rejecting out nature.

It's as unnatural to force a trans person to comform to their AGAB as it is to force an intersex person to undergo surgery or forced HRT.

Both are violations of our individuality and our bodily autonomy, both are entirely fueled by a refusal to understand or adapt to reality.

The reality is that trans people are the gender they claim to be, and that intersex people don't have to be clearly male or female to be complete people.

This is why transphobes will ALWAYS be at odds with intersex people

To any terf or otherwise transphobe out there:

You're not our friend, you're not on our side. And you'll never be speaking for us when you try to put down trans people.

You'll always be our enemy, you'll always be our oppressor, and ultimately, you'll be left in the dust. Being nothing nothing but a villain in the grand scheme of human history, just like all other bigots before you. You can claim to be right all you want, but in the end. Life proves you wrong. You can't fight that forever.

Edit: When I say intersex by technicality I don't mean to exclude anyone, no matter how minor your intersex condition may seem, no matter if it's visible or not to those around you. You're still intersex, and your experience matters.

I was just trying to shut up bad faith actors who've tried to attack me by implying I wasn't truly intersex in the past. Which ironically is what I have done here.

For that I am sorry

[drdemonprince]

Hey, I just wanted to thank you for your honesty and willingness to explain how queer spaces can be a lot less transphobic than discourse within the trans community can make it seem. A lot of the past few years for me have been spent closeted out of fear that reactions around me would be uniformly hostile. Things are obviously going to be different for me as a transfem, but I have a much easier time being optimistic now!

I am so glad! Listen, the people who post online all the time about how miserably hard it is to find a place for oneself as a trans person create a kind of reverse survivorship bias. They are the people who have already convinced themselves it's best to forever remain closeted or that forging any kind of accepting community for oneself is impossible. Often, they are also people who once harbored unrealistic fantasies about just strolling up one day into a pre-existing community that was perfect for them, not realizing that we must form our relationships painstakingly one by one (it tends to be the white eggs/unhappy lonely trans people who are most prone to thinking of community in that way). there's plenty of trans guys who are doomers like this too and they really tend to actively encourage one another to remain locked away. it's like incel kind of behavior when it's taken to its most extreme form. sometimes, it can be outwardly really nasty homophobic shit too (especially among "afabs" who complain about "cis gays" never accepting them and being super privileged). in its milder form, it's just extreme trauma brain.

The people you do not hear from so much are the people who are busy out in the world going on dates, acting in plays, getting their asses spanked in dungeons, playing tabletop roleplaying games, and going to farmer's markets with their three also transgender wives. Those are the people who know (that is to say, have learned!) how to interact with their fellow queer people, have spent some time out in the community, and in all likelihood have many rich friendships with cis lesbians, cis gay men, enbies, asexuals, bisexuals, straight ish poly people, and everybody else under our big umbrella.

I don't want to be overly pollyannaish because of course trans people have a tough time, and especially trans women have unfortunately to be on the lookout for really vile transmisogyny. But I think when people are wounded and traumatized by these things, they sometimes make the entire world sound incredibly unwelcoming, which creates a self-limiting feedback loop of isolation and mistrust. That is what trauma does! But it is not the truth. and we only learn otherwise when we give other people the chance to prove our worst fears wrong.

Like, just for an example, this Sunday I was at a silent book club at Dorothy, a gay bar on the west side that skews lesbian but is for everyone. I'd never been there before but it was an absolutely charming experience! Dozens upon dozens of lesbians draped over couches and curled up in chairs with their books, quaffing cocktails, alongside a few random dots of gay and/or trans men. Trans women were just a natural completely unremarkable feature of this environment. I couldn't even tell you how many t girls were there. It would be like counting plus sized girls or butches at this lesbian function. If it's a good lesbian function, there's gonna be a diverse crowd and it won't be weird or a big deal to anyone, they'll just be like any other women there. a lot of the big lesbian events here in Chicago (like Strapped) are organized by trans women, so of course there's a robust trans femme presence there.

And all of these groups at this function were getting laid. the couches were overflowing with women, so many that girls were grabbing pillows to sit on and huddle together with their books on the floor. Girls canoodled and cuddled on couches. I saw a cis alt girl covered in facial piercings flirting with a very prim and proper trans girl who was dressed like a victorian governness. they didnt know one another, but after the silent book club hour was done, they left for a while together, then came back with some food. across from me and my friends, i watched them gathering up on the couch, the space between their bodies slowly closing up into nothing over the course of the evening. they flirted and touched and then left the bar together to (and im no expert on body language but i could pick up on this one) fuck eachothers tits right off.

and of course plenty of other lesbians and wlw paired off or tripled off and had their fun too. again, just like steamworks, fat people, thin people, black and brown people, white people, disabled people, neurodivergent people, trans people, older people, younger people, everybody was there. like any good queer space, it was just a reflection of humanity. there is always more that can be done to make these spaces more broadly accessible to full community. but part of that is by putting ourselves there.

again i dont mean to make it sound like finding and making one's space is easy! especially not for trans women! but I also don't want people to get seduced by the hopeless jadedness that some foment online. there are spaces that some trans women I know will never go to -- even an explicitly trans affirming bookstore like Women and Children First gives many trans women I know bad vibes they cant quite explain but all feel (the store is owned and run by old white cis lesbians, it's not surprising to me that it's a little fucked no matter their good intentions) -- and ive heard people say transmisogynistic stuff at events, particularly from "ill date anybody but cis men" type t boys (my brothers, i hate you). shit can be tough. very tough. but also, the world isn't all uniformly as hostile as it's made out to be. there are people who are desperate to meet you. I hope you will come out to find them.

[genderkoolaid]

is it weird to feel like i was still treated/classed as a faggot before even knowing i was a boy (i'm transmasc)? i was never called a dyke or derisively called a lesbian or any of that. but i was a tomboy, always was. and i was always heavily derided for crying or "being a crybaby," derided by boy and tomboy friends if i ever liked any Girly Things with comments like "that's so gay (derogatory)", and being masculine but still interested in boys was regarded as this weird and disgusting thing. it's like being a tomboy and, for at least for a part of my life that being accepted, i had this expectation of masculinity placed on me that led to me being castigated by my peers for stepping outside it.

there were still expectations placed on me for "being a girl" and i was punished for not doing that correctly and i experienced heaps of misogyny, but there are so many instances in my life where i was specifically punished for being a tomboy who wasn't masculine in the right way but instead in a gay way. i never felt targeted by anti-lesbian sentiment but always felt very heavily targeted by anti-gay man sentiment. but despite desiring my whole life to be a boy i didn't truly know and accept that i was one until i was 18 and didn't start living as a man until i was 20

idk man my experience with gender growing up was always so weird and confusing and people's assumptions about what i Must Have Experienced based on agab and identity are always incorrect and it's just so incredibly alienating.

I've heard things very similar to this from a lot of trans(+) people. I myself have been out since I was very young and spent the majority of my life openly (gender)queer which definitely shaped how I experienced gender socialization.

This is the problem with using socialization as a Gender Binary 2: Its Inclusive Now! While there are broad trends, people can have such wildly different relationships with gender. Some trans people have always felt targeted based on their assigned sex, some people have always felt targeted based on their gender identity, some people have felt both.

The thing about the patriarchy is that it's a liar and you should never trust anything it says. The patriarchy claims to be a strict gendersex binary for control purposes, but it also must grapple with the existence of queers (gays, trannys, intersex folks) whose existence proves that what it claims to be natural is constructed. Because the ways in which misogyny and transphobia actually function are not tied down by any logic other than "stay in control." Demonizing queer&trans+ people for being "monstrous" for blurring the boundaries between (cishet) men and (cishet) women is like, alongside misogyny, a core part of how gender oppression works. Whenever people expect us to have the exact same experiences as cis people, whether based on gender identity or agab or socialization, they are trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

[xxlovelynovaxx]

Listening to Epic the Musical and went to join the discord server, only to find this:

I'd like to preface this by saying I am a member of a DID system that experienced intense childhood trauma. We identify as "mixed origin", meaning in our case we do not believe trauma was the ONLY cause of our system, but we do believe it likely played a part in the formation of our multiplicity. Now, onto talking about this screenshot.

1. Pluralkit's creators are inclusive of nondisordered systems. It's one thing to say "no OCs" (which pluralkit is fine with, but some servers simply aren't for purposes of ACTUAL roleplay and that's fine), but to say "only OSDD/DID systems are allowed to use this" and imply that all other systems are "roleplaying" is just bog-standard anti-endo bigotry. Also, UDD and other lesser-known disordered systems are of course excluded.

A reminder that the creators of the Theory of Structural Dissociation, the DSM-V-TR, the ICD-11, and the APA all recognize the existence of nondisordered systems, and that they haven't met a high enough standard of proof to claim explicit causation via trauma of dissociative disorders. At this juncture, every actual scientist abides by the cardinal rule of statistics - correlation is not causation - and another important basic rule of logic - that "x causes y" does not prove "ONLY x causes y". Or in other words, neither the converse nor inverse of a true statement are automatically true. In mathematics, these logical fallacies are referred to "affirming the consequent" and "fallacy of the inverse".

2. Short of someone actively telling you "I am faking a mental illness", you CANNOT tell if they are. It's not possible even for psychiatric professionals to determine this, let alone random laypeople. Even screenshots "admitting" faking could be photoshopped, but more than that - that rule makes the server unsafe for every SINGLE system, even those with OSDD or DID. On what grounds do they claim a system is faking? Having the audacity to claim that our narrative of our own experiences is most reliable and that we are capable of determining our own origins? Having too many or too few alters? Enjoying aspects of even disordered systemhood? Achieving functional multiplicity?

Fakeclaiming when done to any kind of system, but ESPECIALLY disordered systems, will often severely worsen dissociation and internal communication and can even make amnesia more severe. Even most professionally diagnosed disordered traumagenic systems struggle a lot with doubt, in part due to the very nature of the disorder, which often is a response formed as coping skill for severe trauma which masks itself from both external and internal scrutiny for safety.

It is not worth risking this harm to "protect" systems this doesn't even help, much like it's not worth say, denying SSI to 90 percent of people who need it just to keep the extremely small fraction of a percentage of fraudsters (who are willing to try to live in conditions of extreme poverty without ever being able to marry or save money) from getting it.

(It also seems to stem in part from a pluralmisic society which obscures and erases the very experience of plurality, so that many of us don't discover the labels for our experiences until late enough in life that it shatters a long-held view of ourselves that we then have to contend with as a fundamental shift in our understanding of ourselves. A similar thing occurs with trans people in transphobic societies doubting our transness due to spending our whole lives thinking we were cis, but just in the wrong way, and that everyone is miserable trying to be their assigned gender at birth.)

3. "Alters under age 13 are not permitted to speak in this server as per Discord TOS." Discord's TOS is entirely dependent on legal age and therefore bodily age. Littles and middles are childlike entities in an adult brain and body, and it is therefore up to each system to determine what is safe for their own non-adult members to handle. While some littles and middles may be very like actual children and therefore their systems restrict their activity, some systems have littles and middles that are perfectly capable of using the adult brains' faculties to safely navigate normal interactions. Note that this isn't a restriction on nsfw interaction, which is strictly prohibited in the server iwrc, which while offensive when done "for littles' safety" is at least something reasonable to refuse consent to interact in that capacity with a little for your own personal comfort.

4. "Factive alters sourced from EPIC collaborators are required to speak through an anonymous proxy or base profile when interacting with the server". So, essentially, the comfort of singlets is more important than the health, functionality, and safety of systems. It can be destabilizing to have to mask or pretend to front as someone else.

It is also saying "it's not okay to be openly an entirely separate individual with your own life, consciousness, and experiences, simply because you were unintentionally created by someone's brain based on a different living individual". In this case, the people saying this also believe the only possible reason for this unintentional influence on an alter's existence is due to a severe mental disorder - that they likely believe is only caused by trauma. (They likely consequently believe alters can only be SPLIT through trauma!)

So what they are in effect saying is "if trauma caused a person to exist inside your brain whose formation was influenced by one of us and who therefore shares a name and maybe mannerisms with one of us, they are not allowed to be openly themselves around us". Imagine if an autistic person who often mirrored mannerisms shared a name with them!

5. Re: the last point. They claim that people using pluralkit are people, but notably, they only recognize them as individuals. They do not recognize the personhood of non-parts based systems. "When speaking with someONE who uses pluralkit, remember you are speaking with A real PERSON". Now, they could be referring to the individual alter fronting at the time (and just not acknowledging cofronting out of ignorance or forgetfulness). Except for the damning line:

6. "Please note that Pluralkit is a bot used by INDIVIDUALS with DID/OSDD to facilitate communication". Now, I wanted to touch on, once again, that pluralkit's creators are open to and even intend for the bot to be used by nondisordered systems and even roleplayers. Once again, I have no issue with servers not allowing its use for roleplay purposes, since that doesn't dehumanize any actual systems nor refuse to recognize the personhood of individuals within any systems. But also... they literally are refusing to recognize the existence of actual DID and OSDD systems who identify as multiple people, not individuals!

While it is possible that the creators of Epic the Musical were simply trying to create a safe space for systems and are simply ignorant to the harm that sysmedicalism and creating a culture where fakeclaiming is allowed and even encouraged DOES, I find it more likely that a moderator, creator, or system that is close to one of the above is a sysmedicalist.

Below the cut for brevity of this post is a primer on system discourse (syscourse) and sysmedicalism for those that may not be immersed in the plural community.

Tl;dr of the part above the cut: This server is unsafe for even DID/OSDD systems, discriminates against and violates the autonomy of littles and factives (misunderstanding what littles and factives actually ARE in the process), and does not recognize the actual personhood of alters and headmates and multiplicity of disordered systems. This is just ableism, and extremely disappointing as a DID system that is a fan of the musical.

For those that don't know, sysmedicalists are plurality's version of transmedicalists. They believe that the only way to be many people or parts in one body (which is what plurality is) is to have a severe mental disorder that causes extreme distress and dysfunction, as a result of severe long-term childhood trauma, usually between the arbitrarily named ages of 9 and 12. Like transmedicalists, they believe that multiplicity is inherently a mental illness, and that you can't be plural if you don't experience extreme distress around it.

To be a [identity]medicalist is to pathologize and medicalize an experience that is not inherently either to the point of claiming all nonpathological and nonmedical forms of the experience don't exist, and usually also involves defining an identity primarily by the severe distress it CAN cause in some individuals, staging an arbitrary standard of suffering as a prerequisite that if not met is grounds for fakeclaiming anyone who derives any happiness or positivity of any kind from said identity.

They claim that a term coined and primarily used by trans systems is transphobic, because "transness isn't a mental disorder and systemhood is!" They fail to recognize that like transmedicalists truly believing transness is only a mental disorder incorrectly, they are also clinging to a claim that only the disordered form of a wider experience of being "many in one" is valid or real, and that everyone else are just "fakers" "stealing resources from real trans people/systems".

See iirc @livseses wonderful post for further similarities on transmed and sysmed arguments, which I will link later if I can find.

On the other hand, even psychiatric professionals, in an industry known for disregarding the experiences of neurodivergent and mentally ill people in favor of the narratives that neurotypicals with degrees in the subjects of our lives make up based on their external experiences of us, agree that nondisordered systems can exist. Most now also believe that trauma is not a prerequisite for plurality.

The DSM acknowledges cultural experiences such as mediumship (not all of which are from closed practices), and the ICD goes further to state that the same experience of "two or more distinct personality states" they describe as one of the requirements for DID does not "indicate the presence of a mental disorder". They also use cultural multiplicity as one example, clearly stating that the same experience of multiplicity present in DID can be present in the absence of a disorder.

These disorders are also very purposely not categorized in the "trauma disorder" section of diagnostic manuals, but rather in a section for "dissociative disorders". Even personality disorders, which are well-recognized as being mostly traumagenic in origin, are also not categorized as trauma disorders, for the same reasons of both lacking a high enough standard of proof that trauma is the only possible cause, as well as for the simple reason that dissociative and personality disorders are much more highly self-similar than they are to trauma disorders. Anyone claiming that "DID/OSDD are trauma disorders" and that to claim to the contrary is misinformation is themselves spreading anti-scientific misinformation.

It is also worth noting that by all modern definitions of disorderedness, a mental disorder requires either distress or dysfunction (and in some cases, both). Therefore, a DID or OSDD system that achieved functional multiplicity would not longer be considered functionally disordered.

Traumagenic is the term used to describe systems formed due to trauma. There is zero proof whatsoever that the trauma that forms a system is required to occur in childhood, and in fact seemingly previously healthy war veterans have been acknowledged in medical literature as displaying symptoms of complex dissociative disorders. While there is not a high enough burden of proof to discount the possibility that every single case was just a covert system's presentation made overt by the recurrence of trauma or development of PTSD, there is likewise not proof that trauma that occurs later in life (particularly for neurodivergent individuals with developmental disorders, as the parts of our brain involved in multiplicity often develop in different orders or at different rates.

Endogenic is the term used to describe systems formed for reasons other than trauma (and by most members of the community, for mixed origin systems that were not FULLY formed from trauma. The coiner maintains that full lack of trauma is required for "correct" use of the label; see my previous posts about the harm of prescriptivism and the ludicrousness of defining a term for an identity you don't claim and a community you are not in).

Endogenic does not necessarily mean nondisordered, as anything from trauma occurring after initial system formation to simply the brain's "wires" getting crossed, so to speak, may be able to cause a dissociative disorder even in the absence of the usual stimuli of trauma. Basically, if your brain has a "push in case of emergency" button, there's always a possibility however many failsafes are built to prevent this happening that it will accidentally be set off in the absence of an emergency. Likewise, traumagenic does not inherently mean disordered, as in the case of previously disordered systems who achieved functional multiplicity, or again, weirdness in an extremely complex organ we barely understand causing the brain to push the emergency button but only part of the stuff that is supposed to be caused by the button happening.

Plurality is simply a form of neurodivergence. People can be multiple consciousnesses or "people" (the defining of which falls more under the purview of philosophy than psychiatry) in one body without there needing to be a reason. Assuming singlecy (being a singlet, a nonsystem) is the default is as based in pluralmisia as assuming being straight is the default is based in homophobia.

It's also worth noting that the majority of psychiatry and psychology, as soft sciences, are based entirely in self-reporting. While yes, dissociative disorders can obscure knowledge of trauma until a system is ready to process said trauma, in the absence of any other notable amnesia or other disordered symptoms, it's actually more likely just from a logical standpoint alone that a person is simply right about saying "there are multiple people in this body" than they are unaware of trauma, let alone just "roleplaying" or "faking". There are simply too many endogenic systems for that to be the case.

Why would total amnesia around exactly the chronological bounds of the trauma, despite a system not having any periods of time missing from their memory, be the ONLY symptom experienced? In a society where even if you HAVE a disorder treatment is often inaccesibly expensive and the majority of people regard anyone who identifies as multiple as "insane" at best and "dangerous and needing to be locked up" at worst, what is to be gained from identifying as plural if that's not truly who you feel you are? It's the same tired arguments of nonbinary and nondysphoric/nontransitioning trans people in general just "pretending to be trans for fun". No one does that!

Also, traumatized people are not helpless crazy people that need "help" being paternalistically told what our "actual" experiences are because we're too ill to ever be right about our own lives and ESPECIALLY our subjective internal thoughts, emotions, and ways of experiencing the world and our selves. That's just extremely basic foundational sanism.

Some will claim it's not "for fun" but as a result of delusions or other mental illness that endogenic systems "claim to exist". They claim that delusional and mentally ill people need to be forced into treatment "for our own good", even if the alleged delusions are neither causing distress for us, dysfunction in our lives, or influencing us to act in ways which cause any material or quantifiable harm to others. And no, being offended by the existence of a subgroup of people within a marginalized group is not harm. That's just bog-standard bigotry.

This is also just basic sanism. It's the idea that if someone holds uncommon beliefs or is in any way abnormal, that those beliefs and abnormalities need to be suppressed and stamped out for "our" own good and for the good of society. It's the same (fascist) rhetoric that causes everything from autism [Coolsville sucks] spe/aks seeking a eugenicist "cure" for autism to white supremacy. Note: neither autistic people nor nonwhite people nor any other marginalized group are inherently "abnormal". They are simply minorities LABELED as such by those in power.

I know someone might try to take that line out of context to claim that I AGREE that marginalized peoples are abnormal, coolsville-sucks-style, hence my clarification and inclusion of that in brackets to make any bad faith actors have to at least black it out if they want to screenshot that out of context. That way, anyone bothering to actually fact-check will see immediately that they are twisting my words and acting in bad faith. I've been around the syscourse block long enough to know people WILL do this.

There's further arguments to be made that "normality" is simply a descriptor for things that do not significantly deviate from arbitrary averages and that abnormality itself is therefore morally neutral, but I digress.

I do however, want to encourage people to look into the subject of "mad liberation" for more on questioning and challenging the assumptions that anyone with any mental disorders or trauma is incapable of being a reliable source on their own experiences and existence.

Anyway, plurality has existed for as long as humans have been recognizably human. Many past and present peoples acknowledge forms of it, both in open and closed cultures. Most reputable psychiatrists and psychologists acknowledge the existence of nondisordered and endogenic systems, and further studies are being done into this form of neurodivergence already. The few professionals that don't are typically those like the ones present in the video released by McLean Hospital which fakeclaimed actual professionally-diagnosed disordered systems (which also goes to show just how fakeclaiming only ever ends up harming the people it's claiming to be used to try to protect).

Finally, "plural" is a term coined specifically to be inclusive of all systems, regardless of origin or disordered status. Plural was never a term that belonged only to disordered traumagenic systems, and to claim so is to actively speak over the inclusive systems responsible for coining the term and spread misinformation.

Tl;dr Endogenic and nondisordered systems exist, are valid, and should be believed about the ways they experience their own consciousnesses and brain. This is backed even by doctors in the field of "dismiss people who have abnormal experience of consciousness and supplant their narratives with what neurotypicals THINK is going on based on how we experience the actions of neurodivergent people. Trauma is not the only way to form a system, and intensely distressing mental illness is not the only way to BE a system.

The Epic the Musical server is unsafe for any systems, which as a DID system, makes us feel sad and angry and hurt.

Anti-en/dos, just block us. Even if you can come up with a new argument instead of the same repetitive and inane misinterpretations of scientific literature (or those actively disproven by scientific literature, no less) and pseudoreligious baseless beliefs about plurality, all I would do is tear apart the foundation of the new "argument" for bigoted exclusionism. I've already weighed more evidence than you've ever read, and I won't be convinced that this time the group just trying to live their lives and be accepted as they are is ACTUALLY harmful evil invaders faking and stealing resources because trust you bro. We also know more about our own mixed origins than you as a stranger are capable of ever discerning.

We've been harmed enough by fakeclaiming as a multiply physically disabled and neurodivergent queer traumaendo DID system to ALWAYS side with the people against fakeclaiming anyway, we BELIEVE minorities and especially neurodivergent people about what's going on inside their heads, and quite frankly, we just don't like exclusionist bigots (like you) and don't want exclusionist bigots (like you) interacting with our posts.

[denimbex1986]

'It should come as no surprise that Russell T Davies, the man behind Queer As Folk, the one who first made Doctor Who tangibly gay, has returned to the franchise with what might be its queerest outing yet. But even we were surprised by quite how integral LGBTQ+ themes would be to the story this time around.

Much has been made of David Tennant and Catherine Tate's return, yet it's Yasmin Finney's brand-new character Rose who's at the heart of this Star Beast special.

Donna's daughter befriends The Meep first, and she's also the one who saves London when The Meep reveals itself to be evil. What's special about this is that it's Rose's trans identity specifically that proves key to her victory.

When we last saw her mother, Donna had absorbed some of the Doctor's energy, creating a 'metacrisis' that would have killed her if the Doctor had not erased her memories. But when she's reminded again of the Time Lord's existence in this latest episode, Donna survives intact, and that's because when she gave birth to Rose, she unknowingly split that energy between them, halving their potentially devastating impact.

As Donna's memories return, Rose's innate Timelord energy is then activated too, enabling her to stop Meep with newfound knowledge and abilities from her position on the ground.

Rose's non-binary identity stems from The Doctor's. (The show finally acknowledges them to be gender-fluid after they presented as both male and female over the course of the franchise). That means the source of Rose's power comes directly from her nature as a non-binary individual, positioning her as a hero because of her gender identity and not despite of it.

That's not to say Doctor Who shies away from the difficulties trans people face in real life. Earlier on in the same episode, bullies deadname Rose in the street and soon after, Donna's own mother, Sylvia, accidentally misgenders Rose as well, despite her good intentions.

Donna's response to all this? "I would burn down the world for you, darling," and honestly, that's how we feel after seeing some of the negative feedback these scenes have received online.

Despite scoring strong reviews from critics and the majority of fans, it seems not everyone is celebrating Doctor Who's much-lauded return.

On Rotten Tomatoes, trolls are review-bombing the episode, bringing the audience score down to 41%, which is a huge contrast from the critics rating of 89%. Of course, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and the episode won't be to everyone's tastes, but when comments suggest the show 'needs to stop pushing talk of pronouns onto kids', it's safe to say most of these opinions are grounded in hate and ignorance.

Imagine being shocked that a show about an alien who regularly changes their body and gender would dare acknowledge such concepts?

In the days following the special, a hashtag named #RIPDoctorWho continued this backlash on X/Twitter, to which Doctor Who casting director Andy Pryor said the following:

"Just stopped by to say that on @bbcdoctor who (or any of our work) we don't work hard to cast inclusively for publicity. We do it because we like stories. & stories should speak to all of us & include all of us. And if one person feels a little less alone, then."

With more queer cast members on the way, including Neil Patrick Harris as the villainous Toymaker and Ncuti Gatwa as the new face of The Doctor himself, the future of Doctor Who is looking queerer by the day.

But it's not just the future that's queer.

To those who baulk at more inclusivity in future seasons, we can't help but wonder: What show have you been watching this whole time? Because Doctor Who is super queer — and it always has been.

Yes, even before Jack Harkness slapped a guy's arse or Bill Potts fell for a puddle named Heather, the Classic era channeled queerness with how it defied the establishment and stood up for those who need it most. It's hard to exaggerate how much stories like this resonated with LGBTQ+ people at a time when positive representation was almost non-existent on screen.

It's no wonder then that a sizeable chunk of Doctor Who's fandom identifies as queer, even if the show wasn't able to address LGBTQ+ fans directly until (queer lifelong fan) Russell T Davies regenerated the franchise in 2005.

But now, all these years later, The Star Beast ushers in a new chapter for Doctor Who where the show can finally live up to the inclusive ethos it's always striven for.

That's not to diminish the positive steps other showrunners have taken in the interim. 2015's 'Sleep No More' featured Doctor Who's first trans actress, Bethany Black, and season twelve's 'Praxeus' successfully flipped the 'Bury Your Gays' trope, although the less said about how season 13 handled #Thasmin the better.

And it's not like everything is suddenly perfect now. Rose's metacrisis abilities could feed into sci-fi tropes around trans/non-binary identities being considered "alien", plus the inclusion of Rose's deadname has garnered a mixed response from the trans community online.

While some argue this has given trolls the opportunity to use that name venomously against her character, others point out that transphobia is a reality the show shouldn't shy away from.

The moment when Rose calls the Doctor out for assuming Meep's pronouns might feel a bit-on-the-nose for some too, although if this kind of talk immediately heralds the end of the franchise for you, you might want to cast your mind back a few decades to 1972's 'The Curse of Peladon' where the Doctor and Jo discussed Alpha Centauri's pronouns at length.

But still, seeing trans and non-binary identities celebrated to this degree is very much welcome regardless, especially in a family show with such a huge fanbase like Doctor Who. This is the kind of storytelling that saves lives, trolls be damned.

And now, with the impending arrival of more trans actors and characters in Yasmin Finney's wake — including Jinkx Monsoon, Mary Malone and Pete MacHale — Doctor Who's next season promises to be more inclusive than ever before.

If you have a problem with that, remember that your hero, the good Doctor, would never discriminate against trans people, or any other marginalised group for that matter either. So why would you?'

[bogkeep]

hmm

so a sentiment i've seen repeated many times over the years is "advocate for intersex people because we deserve rights, not as a gotcha to prove transphobes wrong" and obviously i 100000% agree with this, human rights are their own merit and argument!!!

HOWEVER i am struggling to wrap my head around, like... How do you educate about gender Without talking about the reality of intersex people? i will fully admit that i might just not be plugged in enough to the intersex community to have experienced the particular phenomenon that's being referred to. there's probably discussions i'm fully unaware of.

like, theoretically, even if sex WAS a very rigid, strictly binary phenomenon, we would still have to advocate for the rights of transgender and non-binary people on the basis that we deserve human rights and dignity.

but "biological sex" is NOT a very rigid, strictly binary phenomenon. to me, the understanding of biological sex as an incredibly diverse spectrum is FUNDAMENTAL to understanding gender. when i was volunteering for the queer youth organization, i was taking courses on how to educate teens about sex and gender. what that particular education initative had found, through experience, was that teens best understood what was meant by "gender assigned at birth" and gender as a social construct when we started the whole section by explaining that intersex people exist and that "biological gender" is a lot more complicated than we're often taught.

i think the thing is maybe, like, that intersex people as a category are frequently thought of as outliers, 'defects' even, when we're not. intersex people are a part of the natural diversity of humans. our existence is as natural as the existence of any non-intersex person. like that's the THING. is it a gotcha to reinforce the reality of our existence? to remind bioessentialists over and over that they're the ones denying the observable truth?

i also just think that advocating for intersex rights and trans rights are deeply intertwined in so many ways. so much of the societal fear around transition and detransition strikes me as a fear of intersex bodies. by accepting the capability of a human body to change, to exist within multitudes, to not be beholden to our silly little categories nobody has ever fully belonged to perfectly to begin with - to accept women with beards and men with boobs as not only possible but perfectly natural, to prioritize our own health, wellbeing and bodily autonomy above the tyrannical categorization of the gender binary...

idk!!! my personal intersex experiences are vital to how i experience and talk about gender and how i advocate for trans rights. i can't separate them. maybe it's different for me because i do self-identify as intersex. maybe i'm just clueless about what the criticism is directed towards. this is my personal and biased opinion, please don't take my word over that of far more established intersex activists :')

[certainty2witch]

For Crocodad theory, imagine if the way everyone finds out isn't either of them admitting it. It's Sengoku being mad after the events of Marineford and deciding to hand over declassified info on the revolutionary army, collected by Cypher Pole, which proves that Crocodile is Luffy's birth parent, to Big News Morgan. Imagine everyone has just started their two years of training when they pick up the daily newspaper and right on the cover is confirmation that Crocodile is Luffy's parent.

Since you mentioned the revolutionary army, I suppose you’re talking about my revolutionary crocodile au, even if you talked about Marineford.

And i take some time for adding a bit of lore for my au because is important:

(Answer for anon’s ask after the ‼️‼️‼️)

Crocodile was never evil and with so he never did something wrong in Alabasta. But, he’s still a warlord, and a fake pirate, because he’s a revolutionary undercover.

But let’s say that the marines discovered Crocodile is a revolutionary and that’s a way for putting him in impel down?

Iva obliviously, since is there too, save him and bring him at level 5.5, they both wait for the right moment for escaping (imagine Croc being uncomfortable around all that extravagant people, he doesn’t like loud people, and Iva likes to torment him because they think Croc miss Dragon and Croc says he doesn’t.

Is the truth btw he just wanna run into Dragon’s arms and kissing him).

And with so, Impel down arc happens, but Croc is always with Iva instead of being locked at level 6. His reaction to his son almost dead is pretty devastating, just imagine that… I mentioned in a recent post that they have a deep and special bond when Luffy was little. With older Luffy this keep existing!

So Marineford is pretty the same with Doflamingo bothering him (lmao, sorry babe your love is busy with the world’s worst criminal, he’s not a single man), with him protecting Ace (this time for Luffy and only for him💕) and other canon stuff.

And he suffers seeing his son losing his sense after his brother’s death. He obliviously protect him and Jinbe from Akainu (in every au he always saves him in that scene *sigh* good daddy).

So after Marineford he and Luffy separate, and he finally reunite with Dragon.

‼️‼️‼️

And now about the ask.

But first i add little warning.

Cw //mention of gender dysphoria!

Somehow Sengoku knows and decides to reveal everything (my god you should just close that trap sometimes, stupid marine) I honestly can’t imagine why he would know something like that, maybe due to Garp? (Close that trap too!!) because yep Garp knows Croc is trans and Luffy’s other dad.

Crocodile never liked the idea of people knowing his secret: him being Luffy’s other parent. He knows in that world people like him are seeing in a bad way and if others will discover he isn’t cis, my god I’m sure people will keep misgendering him… and he would hate that. I imagine his past full of transphobic people, keep using wrong pronouns with him and forcing him to just be like “Mother Nature made him”… you know useless things like this. So well he grow up frustrated and angry, Iva was his light, the revolutionary army were his light. Even after hrt, Crocodile felt the oppression of not being cis (mostly when he got pregnant of Luffy). But in this Au, he with the support of others started to feeling more and more comfortable just being himself. He’s not cis? Who cares!

But if people will discover he is Luffy’s dad too and with so, the father that gave birth to him, i like to imagine him asking his friends (and love) some support. He is more comfortable being trans, but something like that is hard to handle anyway, because nobody asked for his consent! If that was his secret, and he wanted to keep that hidden, well there’s a reason.

I hope I explained everything at least in a decent way, feel free to ask for some more if you are curious or to ask something else in the ask box.

And correct me or tell me to change something, if you think is inappropriate please.

For a dear anon that i still didn’t answer, if you are seeing this, just know that your idea inspired me. I will draw what you said, because I know what to draw hehe but i need time because i have other art first 🙏🏻

[doberbutts]

one thing to make clear is that from what ive seen people aren't saying transmascs are claiming transmisogyny doesnt exist, but kind of the opposite? as in, transmascs are trying to co-opt specific experiences transfems go through when they dont have that same lived experience, and thus cant offer as meaningful insight. this is basically the crux of the whole tme/tma discourse, though i think it'd be easily resolved if we were just allowed to have our own language to talk about our experiences

Oh there's absolutely people saying we think transmisogyny doesn't exist literally right now in the tag.

But you're also right that there's also people saying that somehow by discussing our problems, we're somehow stealing from trans fem discussions about theirs.

I don't really follow the logic of this to be perfectly honest. I think there is very little that trans fems experience that doesn't either have an equivalent experience for trans mascs or that trans mascs don't experience something also terrible in its stead, just like I think that of the other way around: there's very little that trans mascs experience that trans fems don't have an equivalent or equally terrible experience for. I think that is the nature of us both being affected by the specific intersection of transphobia and misogyny, just gendered in specific ways to hurt us as individuals.

Pretty much any post I've seen on this matter has made a lot of assumptions one way or the other that completely ignore the lived reality of both trans mascs and trans fems, and it's very frustrating to try and engage with this problem because it feels more like people dedicated to screaming at each other than anything really particularly productive.

I also think it is impossible to be exempt from oppression. Not being the target doesn't mean the bullet can't hit you if the shooter can't aim for shit.

And it's genuinely WEIRD to me that trans mascs are talking about suicide and rape statistics, medical gatekeeping, rejection from social groups upon coming out, politicians making laws targeting their ability to transition, erasure and also weaponization of trans pregnancy, resources for the most vulnerable of us requiring detransition at minimum for entry if we're allowed in at all, the rates of violence from domestic partners and family members, struggles with male beauty standards and eating disorders... all stuff stemming from transphobic cishet society and the patriarchy... and somehow we're stealing from trans fems or blaming trans fems for the shit that 99% of the time is lived experience coming from being targeted by fucking cis people in the first place.

Like, how is me talking about getting beaten up while being called a tranny and a heshe and getting pantsed and groped to "prove" my status as a girl due to being incredibly GNC and also intersex prior to figuring out that I'm trans co-opting anything from anyone? I'm talking about something that happened *to me*. It wasn't trans women who sent me home with bruises and scars every day, it was my shitty cishet classmates and their shitty cishet older siblings in an ultra-conservative environment. I don't think trans fems are at fault for what happened to me at all? I just don't like to be told that I'm "victimized myself" by talking about my very real trauma as a kid by someone who isn't even a trans fem claiming to be defending trans fems on my posts about it.

[kid-az]

All Tomorrows: Vanga-Vangog’s Grazer Hc’s

As the fanmade descendants of the Titan’s from the original novel, Vangog’s fanmade Grazer’s are, in a way, their antithesis. While the Titan’s are the largest of the posthumans and are likely to have been gentle giants, the Grazer’s are much, much smaller, (Merely the size of a buffalo) and far more aggressive to compensate for this lack of size. (Basically chihuahua syndrome on Satyriac crack) As a people, the Grazer’s are very hierarchical and herd-like in structure, with governments almost exclusively consisting of absolute monarchies and dictatorships, and only a few dominant men having acccess over the woman.

As people, they do not sound pleasant in a first point of view, but the same could be said of the Killer Folk, Asymmetric People, and even the ever selfless and kindhearted Modular’s, atleast in terms of appearance. Although their culture is incredibly regressive and violent, Grazer’s we’re still individuals with their own thoughts, goals, family and friends, just like us, their ancestors.

TW for transphobia in HC 5. If there is any issues you have with the Hc’s I made up, please tell me.

-Inspite of their herbivorous nature, Grazer’s did have domesticated animals. One of these animals were the non-sapient descendants of Titan’s, smaller than the sapient wooly ones but still absolutely huge! (Twice as large as the Paraceratherium.) They were often used as very powerful draft animals, capable of moving dozen of tonnes of ore, wood, and people.

-Although having evolved from grass eaters, the Grazer’s throughout their history only ate wild grass out of necessity during times of war and starvation. In more peaceful and plentiful times, their food often consisted of root vegetables similar to radishes and pumpkins, tree nuts, and heavy starches like domesticated wheat and tubers. Often, the crops they grow were selected to grow extremely large. (Their wheat-based crops were 4 meters in height and their potatoes were around more than 2 meters in diameter) The Grazer’s posthuman cousins often joked about how “Everything’s bigger in the Grazer’s homeworld except for the Grazer’s themselves!”

-Their societal hierarchy was historically divided into several sections. At the bottom were the non-dominant males, who were meant to respect and follow the leads of the much more dominant men at top, and the woman in the middle of the hierarchy. “Third gender” or nonbinary people were often a priestly or the advisor caste in societies that recognized them as an official gender. Nonbinary people were the only ones allowed to transition for much of their history, with both biological sexes being allowed to transition.

-Their modern society was a little less strict in the overall herd hierarchy, with less dominant men, woman, and nonbinary folk being allowed a leadership position if they were to prove themselves worthy. (They did this via very, very difficult competitions involving both strength and intellect.) Dominant caste members could also be demoted if they were considered incompetent or a threat to the overall herd.

-Children however are mostly raised by the female caste communally, and these children were not called a specific gender during their childhood. What caste they go to when they grow up is determined by their skills and gender identity. See Hc number 3.

-Even today, their societies do not have any respect for trans people who aren’t nonbinary. Historically, these two groups would be brutally killed for existing, and even today they are ostracized and kept out of most positions in society, comparable to India’s Dalit or Untouchables. Thankfully, there are organizations and groups, (Both of their people and other posthumans) who have come to their support, providing safe housing and food for these ostracized people, some of whom have even been protesting or aiming to get on top of the hierarchy to stop this discrimination.

-Grazer’s of each caste did a lot of stuff communally due to their herd behaviors, from watching movies, to eating, bathing, and even sleeping in the same living spaces with one another. This was not exclusive to the non-dominant male caste either, as all of the castes did stuff in a communal manner. Indeed, most Grazer’s are often very happy and willing to share their food or whatever item they have on them to another person. Indeed, the concept of “private, personal property” does not exist in their culture, as even the dominant caste will share ideas and spaces with eachother.

-This also meant the Grazer’s never developed an actual currency system or system of capital, with all castes existing (In theory) to support the overall herd. Grazer’s were also surprisingly open-minded on disabled people due to this herd lifestyle, with them making sure to provide support and accommodation’s for these individuals.

-As for entertainment, people of all castes enjoy plays and theatre together, often joining in to support their friends and loved ones. They also enjoyed mass feasts, sports, concerts, and the occasional swimming/mud bathes to keep their skin clean and parasite-free.

[noellevanious]

Alright. This is pissing me off now. More "drama" regarding my friend Avery and DemilyPyro below the cut.

Summary: Avery got harassed, Demily didnt apologize, blamed other things like her autism and memory issues, and other despicable things.

Context:

my friend Moira posted yesterday about local tumblr user Demilypyro being a shithead, after talking about how she had personally experienced her being shitty before. Because of this, she was getting harassed enough by Demily Fans that she relented and posted "Receipts" they were asking for (in quotes because.... she just said she was being shitty, no receipts should be needed)

The screenshots showed Demily clearly being shitty last year, talking rudely about a friend Moira had after the friend had posted a selfie in a channel they were both in.

Moira was told that Demily was apologizing, and considering the hatemail she was getting, I don't blame her for hearing that and going "Alright, awesome, I don't want or need to talk about that anymore! Leave me alone please and stop sending me hatemails/moving goalposts to prove that Demily is literally Worse than The Devil!"

I was looking through my blog, and, out of curiosity, I checked to see, and...

post screencaps above are from

(post screencap above is from)

(no link cause im on mobile and this shit is hard but. the post should be locatable)

(link post above is from)

(link to post screencap is from)

.... blaming her autism, memory issues, and echoing fans levying suspicions about it being about her being trans, among other bad faith shit.

Doing this is despicable. Insulting trans women and mocking how they look and using questionable terms (they may or may not be dogwhistles, thats the nature of dogwhistles, and so I don't hold that against her, but still. questionable) and acknowledging that that actually happened is bad enough, especially when you're also trans. Infighting during a surge of transmisogyny, where straight women are being killed because people think they're trans, is nothing short of catastrophically stupid.

But to then, instead of just outright apologize, let your audience build it up as som witch-hunt and push the blame onto aspects of your life you can't control, is... something else.

I have autism, as do many of my friends. Not only is autism an obscenely variable mental health variable, but it also is not how South Park portrayed it once, where you impulsively shout out insults. Dulling your social senses is not the same as outright insulting trans women.

I also have friends with serious memory issues, as well as close relatives (my grandmother developed alzheimers in 2021 before she passed early this year). It's devastating in both directions.

To use those as scapegoats so you don't have to take responsbility for... being a shithead? Fucking despicable. No better word for it. Disrespectful, insulting to other people that have those issues and don't use them to excuse being shitty, apathetic at best.

Now, what is my point making this post? Besides this genuinely pissing me off an insane amount, I wanted to use it as a teaching opportunity -

You know how easy it would be to have made these "drama" not exist? Two magic words:

Take. Responsibility.

If you're ever in a situation where people are telling you you're being a shithead, and you know in the back of your head "Yeah, this stuff is really shitty, and it did come out of my mouth" - just fucking own up! Take responsibility for your shitty actions! "I'm sorry. I said shitty things. I'm going to strive to do and be better. I take full responsibility."

It's literally that simple - because it shows that - you know you made mistakes, but you have the capacity to learn from those mistakes! Like every fucking human being ever! Don't hide behind other things to avoid that responsbility!Don't passively promote your fans saying shit like "Hmmmm maybe other trans girls are calling you out because youre trans!" or "Hmm maybe they just hate you and want you to suffer!" Just fucking own up!

I don't know where this post is gonna end up. I fully expect more demily fans to harass me, I've already blocked Demily herself (because I don't want to even interact with somebody that badmouths other transgirls because they don't fit their beauty standards).

But, I do want to clarify and stress: I do not want, or care about, any more of this "drama" beyond her apologizing and owning up.

Seeing her fans mock and insult and harass my friend who already constantly deals with shit way more than anybody should, and then going on her blog and seeing her not only play the Woe is Me appeal to ethos bullshit, but also promote fans that are passing the blame around on boogeymen like her being trans, is dangerous, insulting, and made me furious, and I wanted to get it out of my system.

[1o1percentmilk]

I'm just very affected by stereotypes around masculine vs feminine fields... I like fitting in, at least superficially, and I want to be liked. Growing up I was never actually told that I couldn't do anything because I was a girl, but I felt it... like, "girls are worse at math" and "girls naturally don't want to go into stem"... So I, as a girl who was good at math, felt an obligation to succeed in STEM, and prove to everyone that a girl could do these things! Even more, I wanted to prove to everyone that a trans man who was socialized as a girl could do STEM, and fight the stereotype that trans men are relegated to the arts and humanities, or only take up artistic careers. I wanted to be different and prove that trans men had the same capabilities as cis men.

But... as I get further and further into my tech career... I feel guilty because in my case... the stereotypes are right. I'm not good at math beyond calculus, and I don't have any motivation to pursue programming projects of my own. I'm not good at physics and while I'm good with computers, I don't go out of my way to get better at it. There are blips of enjoyment here and there and I try my best to cultivate interest, but the truth is that I am deeply unhappy with what I study. What I really want to do is to sit around and read and draw and talk to people. But I'm scared to admit it, because then that means they were right, and I can't do anything useful. In some form it strips away part of what makes me feel masculine and I don't feel comfortable with that.

I think that part of it is a burden on me to separate gender from profession and field, because I definitely do have a lot of hangups around that. I'm majoring in Computer Science because it makes me feel "malebrained" and I don't think that's like, a thought process that any normal person has. (I am not normal). But I think the other part is that it shouldn't be on me to represent an entire population of people. It's a good thing to do, certainly, but trying to be "good transgender rep" in real life shouldn't be any single person's goal.

Why should I be a more virtuous person, put more effort into my day, count my missteps more, for the reason of being a minority population? Why should I push myself to do things I don't enjoy for the purposes of pointing to someone that "HEY! I'm a man too! And I can DO STUFF just like men! Because hey! Men and women can do the SAME THINGS!" Maybe I'm making up a person to get mad at, someone who really believes that "female brains" aren't wired the same as "male brains."* But why can't I just be allowed to exist and make mistakes just like anyone else?

I don't want to have to be a shining pillar of society just to be a human.

*this footnote is here because I am quite sure that these people exist; in fact, I had a rather notorious Computer Science professor, Stuart Reges, for one of my first classes of uni, ever, who wrote an article titled "Why Women Don't Code." It's as bad as you expect, and is my Roman Empire.

[impunkster-syndrome]

Anyway I have thoughts about the Gaming University youtube channel which is Super Horror Bro levels of understanding conditions like DID and any other stigmatized condition (To say, basically no understanding and using it due to being stigmatized for the "Ooh! Scary!" factor to try to make analysis more compelling).

Waterloo World as a Psychonauts level illustrates this. I hate this video so much, but I have to link it for context.

This analysis literally just reads as taking the DID trope ("split personality" is often associated with systems and implies MPD) and going "It must be that" at a very surface level reading. Like, internal monologues exist and those are typically considered singlets.

I've experienced DID since I was very young (Think at least four years old). The way this analysis seems to think DID is just "People go away as soon as an internal struggle is resolved, and they must be able to hold conversation with each other," is extremely reductive to plural representation in the same game such as Ford Cruller. Even later on, the video's idea of "Mulitple fragmented personalities" (seeing alters as not actual people) is ignorant of how Ford's alters (The various versions of him that share no memory and have roles like specific jobs) still have a degree of separation that make them different people. While shown differently through the world of Psychonauts, don't forget how both games are explicitly about mental health and Ford is DID representation that is canon in the series. The handling of Ford's DID and even Cassie O'Pia's potential median system are very different compared to this level.

The way I see it, this level is more about a commentary of ableism in the professional fields that claim to treat the mentally ill and neurodivergent. While I have not been in an asylum, I have been in a psych ward overnight and have seen numerous therapists, some extremely ableist towards me in subtle ways that messed me up later on. I consider myself lucky to not have been involuntarily hospitalized for the psych ward visit considering the circumstances (plus the fact that I could literally only eat an orange I was given because someone left my celiac off my chart and my lactose intolerance. The fact that there were no gluten free alternative meals is gross).

The ableist professionals I have seen for both my physical and mental health all have had a unified trait of seeing me as lesser in how they practiced their profession. They might not personally say that they do, and likely won't. You don't have to be hurling slurs at me in the office to be ableist- sometimes it is the small things, like the unspoken assumption that my neurodivergence makes me unable to understand things and be smart. To my neurologist, my DID and dissociative amnesia made me too unreliable to believe I experienced seizures and knew the difference between those and migraines. My period pain and resulting belief that living entirely without a uterus would make me happier due to it (plus being trans) when younger was something that made a counselor harshly push a body dysmorphia diagnosis instead of considering that perhaps my pain was not all in my head and those kinds of thoughts are a very natural reaction to having severe monthly pain. (I did end up having body dysmorphia, but not like that at all.)

The kind of ableism Fred is taking part in is a very real kind of ableism in the lives of disabled people like myself and Crispin when we come into contact with professionals. Anything we do to prove we are able to understand what is happening to us is seen as something we should not be able to understand. So Crispin winning a game of chess? That is something Fred believed to be entirely out of his grasp.

So the moment it happens, Fred's entire idea of disabled people being less capable compared to him due to his status as a professional in some capacity is abruptly flipped on its head. He cannot cope well.

While the level is focused on Fred, it indirectly helps him not see disabled people as lesser, or himself lesser than a disabled person. The whole level is indirect, but the memory vault is the core of the level.

That's just my interpretation. Fred is having an internal monologue and sees himself as lesser than a disabled person because his ableism was disproved in a very personal way and he doesn't know how to cope.

[transenbyconfessions]

I just wanna get this off my chest… i feel so lonely and disconnected from other non-binary people (and trans folks in general tbh) recently, but not for the reasons you might expect?

bcuz for me being non-binary is freeing. it means being comfortable with who i am and not needing to prove it to people, it means dressing and acting like i want without worrying, and embracing the parts of our endless shared cultural history that feel “right” to me.

and don’t get me wrong; im not rly a super happy person. i’ve spent over a decade struggling with depression and its been really rough at times. but being non-binary has never caused that? instead its been a refuge, a reminder that I know who i am and am comfortable with that and can continue to discover new, happy things about myself.

but the thing that’s frustrating and makes me feel lonely, is that no matter where i go I can’t seem to find a non-binary space where people feel the way I do. its just endless person after person struggling with dysphoria, people who worry they aren’t non-binary enough bcuz of the way they look, people who are filled with dread and anxiety because the world is this hostile angry place to them.

when i see that part of me wants to help them, to grab them by the shoulders and shake them and cry and scream that it doesn’t have to be like that, that they have it all wrong and that this is a happy thing and that it can help them feel safe and peaceful and make their world a better place! they don’t have to feel validated or invalidated by other people, the rest of the world doesn’t have to acknowledge them because they are who they are, and the very nature of existence protects that.

but the rest of me is just tired bcuz i’ve tried. i’ve tried to be a source of positivity and happiness - but most of the time my words don’t reach people and they just get upset.

they probably feel im invalidating them and their feelings, and that means i probably am, and that just makes me feel worse.

and even when someone does hear me, it never feels like they really believe me or get it. it just feels like im performing mental health triage on an endless tide of broken hearts and empty spirits. and its exhausting.

that’s what makes it so lonely. i feel like im trapped in all this bitterness and despair and just want to find a place with people who feel the same way i do. other people who find being non-binary a joyful, comforting thing, who love to play with gender in their fashion and have fun with their voices, who revel in the fundamental humanity of what we are and have seen the light and joy the future can hold, even if its sometimes hidden behind clouds! people who hear me say things and go “omgg same tho!!!” and then share their own stories, and I can see myself in their stories too and feel that special spark you get when someone else understands a thing that is very deeply important and connected to who I am!

only i can’t seem to find any place like that. and i have precious, wonderful friends who listen to me and can empathize, but they don’t quite get it. either they aren’t non-binary or their experience with their gender is different enough from mine that a gap is left that i can never quite cross.

so that joyful special part of me that i want to share just kinda. sits there. and tries to keep being positive and happy despite the fact that they feel like they’re unwanted and useless and incomprehensible to binary and non-binary genders both.

it sounds really sad when I put it like that, huh?

Submitted March 20, 2023