#like we talk a lot about how trans women are held to very high standards. which is true.

[amouthfulofopals]

I think there is kinda something to be said about how tumblr will go "oh yeah we love and accept trans men! but don't forget, the trans man reading this, to feel constantly guilty over your identity, always triple check everything you do in case you're offending someone halfway across the planet whom you will never meet, never forget you were Born A Woman and therefore Privileged (???), never project yourself onto things unless the majority approve of it, and also we're going to use neurodivergent and transmasc in derogatory ways"

like you're not slick. we know you don't really like us. just because we're men (or masc aligned) doesn't mean you get to take out your frustration with masculinity on us.

[rolandkaros]

i've been ruminating a lot on it because i think i'm bad at putting my thoughts into words but i need y'all to understand that while there are absolutely a lot of Not Good Things about the finals being held in saudi arabia for three years...the way people seem to treat is as morally black and white is shortsighted and unhelpful.

realistically the players traveling there will be protected. it may be uncomfortable, it's certainly not ideal, but they will travel there for a few weeks, play their tennis, then leave. there are a lot of women, a lot of queer people who actually live in saudi arabia who cannot just leave, who are actually subjected to laws and social climates...and to me it just seems very disrespectful to that actual lived experience, for everybody to sort of turn their noses up and get on their high horses. of course, if the players wish to opt out, that is their choice, but that is their choice to make. that's their judgement. not ours.

and then, what about a tournament like miami? florida is literally experiencing one of the worst active regressions that i've seen in the us (granted i'm young). things like critical race theory and lgbtq+ ed are being removed from curriculums, rights for trans youth, trans healthcare, etc. are going backwards. abortion rights? gun violence? and yes i know that the laws and climate in saudi arabia are different gravy, i understand that, but my point is, no one would ever DREAM of arguing against hosting a tournament in miami despite all of these issues. and we can extend this to a lot of other tournaments! i mean, all the outrage about fifa hosting a world cup in qatar, but we don't have any of these sentiments about doha? i've seen other people bring up that the finals were hosted in singapore when gay marriage was still illegal there. we've already talked about italy's fascist prime minister. and i could go on and on and on about the war crimes of countries like the us or the uk - is the us not participating actively in genocide right now? where is the standard? if you argue against hosting the finals in saudi arabia for the reason of human rights, to me it seems you have to uphold that standard for the location you do land on. and i can guarantee, you will not find a single country in the world with clean hands.

i want to be clear i am not arguing that hosting the finals in saudi arabia is a good thing, especially for three years, especially because it's definitely going there because of money, and not for any of the "good" reasons i think some people want us to believe about "improving the region" (which is very weirdly white savior-esque anyway). i don't really have an official "conclusion" to this discussion.

what i am arguing is that i think a lot of the protests against saudi arabiahosting the finals are more an example of implicit anti-arab bias and islamophobia, rather than genuine discussion. key word implicit: i don't think most people are purposefully trying to be anti-arab/islamophobic. or at least, i'd like to believe nobody is. but i also think, particularly in the west, there is already so much of this xenophobic sentiment ingrained. and this is why i think it's really really REALLY important to check ourselves when we talk about it instead of just jumping straight to the human rights conversation without a second thought.

i'll say it plainly: i don't think the finals should be held in saudi arabia. but for me, it has more to do with sportswashing, with the dangers of the way money is thrown around in sports, and because i think it's more evidence that the wta doesn't care about player welfare but rather about making a profit (what else is new). human rights are absolutely a concern of mine, but how is it fair to hold saudi arabia to a standard that we don't seem to care about for literally anybody else?

literally look at the us's ugly ugly history, past and present, and tell me why we deserve to host a tennis tournament.

[tundrainafrica]

i really thought hange was non-binary bc the one who said hanges gender was up for interpretation was kodansha us but isayama asked for gender neutral pronouns right?

here!

I’m gonna answer all of the gender asks in one go because for one, I don’t think I wanna flood my own feed and my own tumblr with the same arguments. 

I think a lot of the questions on Hange’s gender and the topic of  gender and sexuality overall are kinda intertwined and I feel like for anyone who actually reads my stuff, it’s better understood as one big wall of text. 

So I was wondering, is that song the absolute proof about hange's gender?

No. I think the interpretation of the song which people are using to prove that Hange’s nonbinary is very western centric. I actually did research around this song and knowing what I know about Japanese culture, I actually interpret the song as a way for Japanese people to break out from gender norms. 

For people who are not aware, Japan is incredibly strict with gender norms. The LGBTQ community is not as progressive as it is in Western countries (I mean gay marriage isn’t completely legalized yet). And just looking at it from the stand point of gender roles and gender expectations, despite the progressive thinking, there are a lot of things Japanese men and women have to conform to just to be respected in everyday society. Because in Japan, the community has always been more important than the individual and it’s honestly the same for most asian countries as well. 

A lot of the pressure of living in Japan, working with Japanese people is the pressure to conform and I’ve seen my friends do it through small things like getting bangs (because all Japanese women have bangs apparently), wearing make up when going out (because this is generally an accepted for all Japanese people) and always dressing your best because in that manner women are held to an incredibly high standard in Japan. And this goes similarly for men who are constantly pressured to be the breadwinner in the family. If your wife is making more than you, be ready to hear people talk. I know these expectations exist in a Western setting too but Japan is incredibly stiff as a society and this is one reason why, despite having numerous opportunities to moveto Japan myself, I am not at all entertaining that possibility. I have worked in a Japanese company and I hated it and moved to a western company right after six months. I have completely accepted the fact that there is no mobility career wise from a non-Japanese (and a woman at that) in Japanese society. 

In conformity, hierarchies etc, Japan is its own monster. That’s why when songs like Jibunrashiku, Hitchcock (by Yorushika) or Shisoukan (by Yorushika) come out, for one it’s in Japanese so I wouldn’t approach the songs from an English and as a Japanese speaker and someone who is pretty familiar with Japanese culture, I can’t help interpret that song as a social commentary for the shitty parts of Japanese society and how they tend to shoot the concept of an ‘individual’ down. 

But does that mean I completely shoot down the idea that Hange is NB? 

NO. Yams said so himself, Hange’s gender is unknown. But at the same time, Yams recognizes the fact that in the anime and in the live action, Hange is a female. If Yams were that adamant to make Hange NB, I think he would have at least made more of an effort to police how she is depicted in the anime and in the live action. 

 His exact words were:　「ハンジは彼（彼女）みたいな、ちょっと浮世離れした、枠にとらわれない自由な感じで描きたかったんです。」If I roughly translated it to English, “I wanted to draw Hange as someone otherworldly, free from the confines of gender.”

Tbh, I wanted to avoid these gender asks altogether but I’ve seen the environment in twitter and the ways many people approach gender, particularly ‘nonbinary’ or genderfluid and it really just doesn’t sit well with me. For one, what’s up with all these rules on how to approach our nonbinary and LGBTQ friends? What’s up with all these accusations that if we don’t follow them to a T, then we’re suddenly transphobic or homophobic? 

The fact that we’re creating all these rules on how to go about her nonbinary gender for one, just defeats the whole purpose of Hange being a free bird in the first place who wouldn’t have cared and who wouldnt’ ever have been confined to gender in the first place. 

I mean the establishment of set rules and social norms on how to navigate gender, sex, sexuality and gender roles is the reason why we had heternormativity in the first place. And what I can see, yes, we did get progressive, we did start recognizing other genders, other ways of thinking but the danger in all this is that, we’re once again creating frameworks and norms about how people that identify as these genders are supposed to act. And this defeats the whole purpose of why we recognized concepts of other sexualities, other genders and breaks from gender roles in the first place. 

We wanted to show these people that their feelings are valid, that the way they’re navigating their relationships and their identities are valid and the heternormative society we’ve lived in that has been condemning for so long, was flawed, was wrong. 

But the thing is, with the establishment of all these social norms on how to navigate our relationships with LGBTQ people and how to navigate our own gender, sexuality, sex and role is just making us regress back to that shitty heteronormative society of a hundred years ago. Because suddenly, everyone is questioning once again ‘How am I supposed to be feeling if I’m nb?” “How am I supposed to be feeling if I’m trans?” “How am I supposed to be feeling if I’m LGBT?”  

And we’re creating these abstract ideas of how exactly, being genderfluid is supposed to feel like. Am I really supposed to be going by ‘they?’ Am I supposed to be uncomfortable with CIS pronouns?

And If I don’t go through this process… If I don’t feel this way then maybe I’m not NB? Maybe I’m not Trans? Maybe I’m not LGBT? And if I don’t conform to this clear cut idea of what NB is which people set up for me, god forbid I might just be transphobic or homophobic. 

And Here’s the thing, everyone’s journey to self discovery is unique and there is no exact way to go about your gender or identity. I find it terrifying actually that creating all these clear cut rules have built misconceptions in so many people already on what they are supposed to feel like when they decide to identify with a certain gender which is no different from long ago when people had to hide the fact that they liked people of the same gender because god forbid they might just be persecuted for being gay. 

Creating these frameworks, these incredibly strict rules on how someone is supposed to navigate relationships with LGBTs and their own personal identities is only making it all the more dangerous for people who are in the process of discovering themselves. 

Back in college, I used to accompany a friend to a clinic when he was starting HRT treatments and before he started them, he had to consult with a doctor and the consultation lasted months. Before all that, they gave him a checklist of ‘feelings,’ which if he does experience them, he checks it and if he does check enough of them and agrees with a huge chunk of them, then he might have gender dysphoria and maybe the HRT treatments and sex reassignment was for him. It was a hundred item checklist,  pages full of waivers, warnings and questions about his own experiences with his gender identity. And the fact that he had to consult for months after on that? There must be a reason. 

Maybe because the academe realizes, maybe because those adept on the field on gender realize that gender is too complex of a subject to have been boxed into these categories in the first place. 

And this whole discourse or I wouldn’t say discourse more of like, this ‘pushing of agendas’ as to say, ‘this is how being gender fluid or non binary is supposed to feel like’ this is how being transgender is supposed to feel like and if you don’t fit it to a T then you’re not transgender or you’re not nb. Or if you don’t fit it all, maybe you’re just transphobic is dangerous for many reasons. Either it gatekeeps people who want to explore their gender further. Or it forces people to have to conform to these and force themselves to ‘feel’ all of these things in the first place. 

And god, this is just the gender issue, I haven’t even explored the sexuality, gender roles or biological issue.  

i mean pronouns are important but they don’t really reflect someone’s gender??? like there’s people who use he/they, she/they or all pronouns(? they just don’t conform to gender binary ahaha

Given the environment on twitter and having witnessed the bullying first hand that came with one writer who is active on twitter using she/her pronouns for Hange, I feel like my own writing and my own POV on how I go about my writing and how I approach the gender of Hange (since I strictly use she/her) might just be a ticking time bomb and I might find myself at the end of whatever hate war or ‘education’ or as I like to just refer to as bullying, one day. 

I believe though I at least have enough knowledge and awareness of the LGBTQ situation and I think I did put a lot of thought already into this before I made my decision to use ‘she’ to refer to Hange.

(And tbh, you can be nonbinary and you can be female at the same time and I’ve written about that multiple times already BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT EVEN IN THE SAME CATEGORY. And creating this mutual exclusivity between being nonbinary and female just kinda invalidates a lot of those people who are still deciding where exactly they fall in this complex web of identity discovery)

As someone who generally mainly hangs out with LGBT people and i have been doing this since high school by the way, and as someone who has tried all the sexualities on the spectrum, I talked to my asexual friends about possibly being asexual, I have experimented with women and sometimes, I just had dry spells and it just so happened that in the end of all these, I fell in love with a guy but I really believe that gender is such a flexible thing and even though I am with aguy right now, I still simp over lesbians, gays, ciswomen, transgenders because simping isn’t about gender. 

And these set of rules on how to navigate genders is just invalidating the experiences of people who are flitting in between the two identities and it just hinders the process of self discovery for a lot of people. 

Anyway, the point is, there is only one statement I found fundamental when approaching my relationships with the LGBT community and my own perspective on my self identity. 

Recognition of someone’s feelings and their journey to a gender identity and the pronouns that come with it are important.

Then someone might go “THEN WHY DON’T YOU RESPECT HANGE’s NON BINARY PRONOUNS. Because just because someone is nonbinary doesn’t mean they automatically go for they. Just because someone is non-binary, doesn’t mean I have to use every single pronoun on the spectrum. The only one who can tell me what pronouns they want used on them is the person in question. 

(I actually read an argument somewhere that going for ‘they’ just because someone is NB is transphobic lmfao. Assuming someone’s pronouns is apparently transphobic too lmfao.)

AND HANGE IS FICTIONAL. And we will never hear about which pronoun she would have wanted in the first place and I think the great ‘nontransphobic’ in-between is just letting people interpret characters how they want to interpret characters in this fictional world (And Hange can be both interpreted as nb and female). It’s the policing which makes the whole process of self discovery, the process of navigating genders all the more difficult for a lot of people. 

And policing how exactly people should navigate gender and sexuality is just gatekeeping. Hange is everyone’s character. The only gender and sexuality identity people have complete jurisdiction on, is their own. And this policing of what exactly certain journeys to discovery are supposed to feel like is inherently harmful for those who are still in the process of deciding for themselves where they stand. 

And going back to what Yams said “I wanted to draw Hange as someone otherworldly, free from the confines of gender/sexuality/gender roles.” I agree with that. 

Because even though I do use ‘she’ with Hange, I do not firmly believe that Hange is a cisgender heterosexual female either. I just believe there are so many more layers to her whole identity and I believe similarly for every single person. Just concluding for one’s self that Hange is nonbinary with a very narrow minded view of what non binary just generally defeats the whole purpose of being ‘free from the confines of gender’ and hinders a lot of discourse and analysis on Hange’s identity over all.

I mean, I don’t know if people agree with this but in the decades I have spent with my close friends figuring out their gender identities, changing pronouns, transitioning, coming out to their parents, here is one thing I noticed. They weren’t asking for a celebration of their gender or sexuality, they weren’t asking for all these policing on how people should approach them. All they wanted was for their feelings to be validated, normalized as an everyday occurrence. I think the point of all these LGBTQ discourse (and by extension race and sex discourse) were all there to just make all these different identities normalized and to completely eradicate the concept of a negative bias or an other which was generally plaguing society for a long time. 

And as their friends, I have never approached them as this champion who would make sure EVERYONE RESPECTED THEM IN THAT WAY IN TWITTER THEY BELIEVE LGBTQ PEOPLE SHOULD BE RESPECTED. All these nonverbal rules I have set up for myself on how to go about being friends with them is because I wanted them to be happy and comfortable in their shoes. And what were the types of things they appreciated? Me hiding it from their parents until they were ready to come out, me helping make their relationship work with their partner, me respecting the pronouns they requested for themselves, me accompanying them to HRT when their parents refused. 

And you know what, that was only a facet of our friendships. My friends’ gender identities and sexualities never dominated discourse. None of them were the ‘token gay friend,’ the ‘token lesbian friend’ or the ‘token asexual friend’ or the ‘token NB friend.’ They were all people I genuinely care about who just happened to have fallen in love with someone of the same gender. They were just people who just happened to be uncomfortable with their original sex. But I would never just describe them as just that. My friend who just so happens to identify as assexual makes a great companion on a night out drinking. My friend who just so happens to be trasngender is really great with logistics and planning and was super helpful and I was eternally grateful when we worked together on that one project. My friend who just happens to be a lesbian has the cutest picture of her girlfreind on her phone screen. 

I will memorize their favorite orders, what makes them tick, what makes them such a great companion, their talents, capabilities more than I will remember their gender. And that’s the characetr song in question is called “Jibunrashiku” or in English “just like me.” Because in the end a strict society which creates all these maxims of what exactly people of a certain gender should act would of course birth songs like “Just like me” A society which puts so much emphasis on gender and sex  as an identity instead of other things like personality, preferences, skills etc. 

And I don’t know if it applies to everyone. But my friends appreciate it because this journey to whatever gender identity they chose wasn’t rooted in some sort of strict framework on how they should be treated according to twitter. It was rooted in their own experiences and how these experiences made them feel. 

Do they feel weird in a woman’s body? Do they just don’t feel any romantic attraction to the opposite gender?

Just treat them as how you would treat anyone else you respect. Just be a decent person. Just be a good friend.

Respect their requests for their own personal pronouns. If they need help, help them to the best of your abilities. 

And here’s the thing, the approach I use with navigating identities, sexuaities genders are rooted in one very simple concept which can be applied to the race discourse, the feminist discourse etc etc. 

Don’t be an ass. Respect people. Don’t reduce people to one facet of their identity. And by extension, when faced with such a dubious situation, think, discern for yourself what’s right or wrong. When there are people educating you, policing you on what is right or wrong, process that information objectively.  

All I have here right now is my own opinions on the gender discourse on Hange and my own opinions on the discourse overall. 

If you don’t agree with it, then have a nice day and I hope you find something else that will convince you to be more openminded but...

UTANG NA LOOB HUWAG LANG KAYO MAMBULLY NG TAO POTA. MAGHANAP NALANG KAYO NG IBANG PWEDENG GAWIN SA BUHAY MO. 

ANG DAMING NASASAKTAN ANG DAMING NATRATRAUMA ANG DAMING NAWAWALANG GANA MAGSULAT KASI DI KAYO NAG-IISIP. PURO TIRA LANG. 

Okay thank you for listening. Do what you want with the information up there but I have said my piece.

[subbing-for-clones]

Stranded Part 2

Savage Opress x Reader

Word Count: 2.7k

WARNINGS: Mentions of death and decomposition, mental illness, fear terror and FLUFF

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       Savage's eyes fluttered open to the sun shining brightly through the trans-durasteel panes that decorated the walls seemingly without rhyme or reason. The little one was frying some kind of thin meat strips on the stove and sipping hot caf. Without turning her head, she called over to him.

"How ya feeling?"

"Not great but better."

She turned and strode over to him, still laying down.

"I couldn't do this yesterday but I can today."

"What do you mean..?"

    She placed her hands on his bare broad chest and closed her eyes. A warm tingling sensation wafted over him. It felt like sunshine, utter joy and flying all at once. When she pulled away her eyes were a little fuzzy.

"It takes a lot of energy but you can transfer your life force to something and heal it. I was kinda low yesterday," she turned matter-of-factly back to the stove.

    Savage had only ever had painful experiences when it came to using the force or having it used on him. He hadn't ever thought of it as anything other than a weapon. He wanted to ask about it but shy away from the topic. Instead, he stood and stretched. He didn't have an ounce of pain. This woman who found him once again amazed him.

While the two unlikely pair ate their breakfast, her eyes didn't leave him, slightly squinting.

"You haven't been like this very long?"

"No. I was altered by the witches of my home world."

"Huh. Did you ask for this?" truly curious she stopped eating.

"No." she cocked a brow at his response, waiting for an elaboration.

"My species is subservient to our women. We live separately and go through deadly trials to be chosen by one for breeding or whatever they want really." He continued eating as the information he provided was simply normal for him.

"Was this..." she waved her hand at his body. "For breeding?" his cheeks slightly tinged in a deeper gold.

"No. I was chosen to act as a weapon for one of the sisters. She abandoned me when I didn't live up to the expectation." the woman noted as his eyes darkened. Wanting to change his mood she lightened up.

"Well, I'm happy you're here Savage. You have much to learn in the ways of the force.. you're strong but your energy is incredibly dark but you... you do not feel that way....." she trailed off in thought and muttered, "certainly an enigma. Very interesting," she tapped her finger against her chin.

    Savage's heart fluttered. He had never received any kind of praise from a female before and he didn't really know how to process it. His flush only deepened when she once again undressed in his line of sight, slipping on a shorter, loose grey dress.

"When you've finished, dress and meet me outside,” she skipped out the door and shouted something unintelligible into the trees.

    Savage silently hoped she wasn't completely insane while he quickly washed the dishes for her. He pulled on his pants and his long black kilt. Remembering that she had cut off his shirt for a sling he huffed and left the tattered remnant. When he came out, he saw what could've been a scene in a holovid. She stood with under a ray of sunlight, skin shimmering in the glow with a bright smile gracing her face. Her hands were pressed to the forehead of a green Varactyl while a dozen small song birds of every color fluttered around her.

"I think I should call you 'princess,'" he stepped forward cautiously.

She giggled melodiously.

"Mira here won't hurt you I promise. You think I look like a princess?" she flushed and batted her eyelashes.

"More than anyone else I've ever seen."

She extended her hand out to Savage.

"Come here," she cooed. He slowly made his way to her and took her hand. It was soft and warm, she held it for just a moment, running her thumb over his knuckles.

"Do not be afraid. Mira is a friend," she placed his hand where hers was just a minute ago on the Varactyl's head.

"Close your eyes and reach out to her with the force. Gently."

    He stood there for a minute before he felt anything. All of a sudden it felt like wind was rushing around him. He could see trees flying past him and a breeze danced against his skin. He leapt from trees, gliding through the air.

    She watched with satisfaction as his and Mira's eyes were closed and their breathing synced slowly. She felt their signatures meld for a moment. Savage pulled his hand away and looked at her wide eyed but grinning. Mira chirped happily beside him.

"Good, you made the connection. Rather quickly I might add. Mira is a receptive one. Very friendly. She's been with me a couple years now."

"I...I felt what she feels when she hunts," he was smiling at the creature fondly.

"Yes, that seems to be a favorite time for her."

"That felt much different than any other time I've used the force.... was that the light side?"

"I'm sure the Jedi would say yes but I am no Jedi. I don't see the force as light or dark."

Savage looked confused. Everyone called the force light or dark. The woman continued,

"Take a knife for example. In the wrong hands... a knife can take an innocent life, used to rob someone or threaten them other ways. However, in the 'right' hands it can be used as a medical instrument, carve wood or simply chop produce. I think of the force in the same way. The intent is what matters to me. Did you want to hurt Mira when you reached out to her?"

"No..no I didn’t," he stammered.

"That’s why it felt different."

    Savage understood what you were saying and turned back to Mira. The animal nudged him gently with her head affectionately.

"Let's go for a ride. I wanna finish stripping the ships you landed on. I haven't been to those ones yet. If you have anything else there, now’s a good time to get it."

    The woman strapped large bags onto the sides of the Varactyl. She hopped up onto Mira's back and once again extended her hand out to Savage. He climbed up and took his seat behind her. When Mira lurched forward, he gripped the woman's waist tightly so he wouldn't fall off and she laughed.

"Hold on tight handsome it's not a long ride but it's a turbulent one."

"A-alright princess."

      The added weight did nothing to slow Mira down. She was light on her feet and graceful. Leaping high into the air and gliding back down into the canopy. Princess whooped and cried out in excitement whereas Savage just held her tighter. His chest swelled with the rush. He was terrified but also having fun. He was a little disappointed when it ended and the ships were in sight. He slid off first and held his hands out for the princess. She beamed down at him and let Savage lift her by her waist with her hands on his shoulders. Her breath hitched when he pulled her down to him to set her on the grass underfoot. Quickly turning away to hide the heat rushing to her face.

"Alright, anything you wanna take, toss it in the bags. I'm gonna look through some of the others.”

    They parted. Savage always traveled light so he didn't have much to take with him. Some extra med gear and clothes, that was it. He hesitated in the cockpit looking down at the talisman that Mother Talzin gave him. It lay in pieces. He exhaled a silent apology, acknowledging that he probably wouldn't find his brother anytime soon. He slipped the pieces gently into his pocket and made his way out. After securing his few belongs in the saddle bag on Mira, he turned around to look for the princess. He could sense her nearby but couldn't see where she was.

"SAVAGE!"

He ran back to the hazardous pile of crashed ships.

"WHERE ARE YOU?"

He sighed relieved when she popped out behind his transport smiling ear to ear. His heart still pounding.

"It’s not huge but there's a Kriffing cargo ship buried under your transport and a fighter. Help me lift them. Cargos are gold mines."

    She stood shoulder to shoulder with him; well, shoulder to rib. Both of their arms were raised. It was shaky at first but they managed to move Savage’s large transport off to the side with the force. The fighter was much easier to shift. She grabbed his wrist and cried out excitedly, pulling him along to the sealed door.

"Could you cut it open with your saber?"

He smiled as she watched him ignite his saber and cut through the thick durasteel.

"Yes! Cutitopencutitopencutitopen!" she chanted excitedly and squealed.

Once he kicked the obstacle out of their way she shrieked and dove practically head first inside. When he entered, he was hit with the heavy scent of death. Four Weequay bodies lay scattered and half rotted around the cargo bay. Savage covered his nose with a disgusted look on his face.

The woman however didn't seem bothered by it as she sifted through the containers.

"This was a pirate ship... I haven't seen many of those," her whole top half was inside a rather large container while she spoke.

"Usually lots of credits, jewelry, spice.... not really useful to us right now but if we ever make it out of here, we'll be rich." He made his way to the sleeping quarters and took the standard med gear and hygiene supplies that was fairly standard to each room.

    When he came out, he found her pleasantly surprised as she held up some lovely dresses in bright colors to her form.

"I think I can tailor these to fit..." more thinking out loud than actually talking to him. She walked deeper, into the cockpit and tried to fire up the engine to no avail. She didn't have hope, it looked like they nose-dived into the ground anyway. She sighed and checked the common area.

    Rations, some cook ware in better shape than hers was, liquor... other odds and ends that would be decently useful. Savage found her holding a Sabacc deck.

"Do you know how to play?" She asked coyly?

"Yeah... some of the other nightbrothers taught me when I was a pup. Do you?" She shook her head.

"Well, I'll show you. We can play together." Her face lit up and something warmed in his chest that he'd never felt before. He pointed his thumb back towards the cargo bay.

"I found something you might be interested in.." she followed him; arms full. He fiddled with a small electronic box and powered it up.

"It won't connect to the net out here but it looks like there are some downloaded holovids,” he turned back to face her. She had dropped everything she was carrying and stared at him in amazement.

"I...I've never seen a holo-player out here before," he smirked.

"Well princess if you can charge it, we can see what's on it."

    The two of them loaded up what they had onto Mira. Princess did a thorough once over of the other ships. Finding a blaster with a decent amount of charges was the second best find next to the holo-player. They found a few sewing kits, more rations and med kits, and some crop seeds which also excited her.

They had ended up spending much longer than she wanted to searching through the wreckage. The sun was starting to set and it was falling fast.

"We need to get going. It gets dangerous at night... things come out.." she shifted uncomfortably on her feet looking up into the trees. Mira let out a quiet warning chirp. Savage lifted her up and put her on the Varactyl's back, climbing up behind her. This time when he held her waist it was more protective.

"I think I can sense them... what are they?"

Mira took off but it was slower, more cautious than when they came here to begin with.

"I don't know.. I've never seen them clearly. I know they have two arms, and three long sharp claws. Their hide is tough and... very rough. No fur.."

    Savage held his saber in one hand, not yet igniting it. He could see in the dark but these creatures still hid. The sky was a deep, dusty blue as dusk swallowed the atmosphere. It felt different at night. Like the air was hungry.

"I will keep you safe," he said as his eyes darted around. Once they broke the tree line it was only a short distance to the cabin. They unhooked the bags from Mira and she dashed behind the house up the barren hills, as far away from the forest as she could get. Savage and princess walked into the house.

"I've never seen them leave the forest. They've never come out of the trees into the clearing so the house and the yard are safe as well as the hot springs and hills behind us. Savage nodded in understanding.

"Stay here," his voice rumbled, "I'll fetch wood for the fire."

    She nodded before he left with his weapon in hand. Princess started putting away their various findings and set some rations out on the table. They were going to have to go hunting again tomorrow. She felt his shift in the force. Fear had a particularly unique wavelength. She took the blaster and right before could get to the door he kicked it open with his arms filled with wood. He hurried inside, dropped the wood and latched the lock. His face was blanched.

"Are you alright?" she asked slowly reaching for him.

"They just stood there. Behind the trees. Watching."

"You have night vision?"

He nodded and looked down at her.

"I... I’ve never seen anything like them. So.. gangly. Tall and.." he shuddered and shook his head, controlling himself. If she lived here for so long it was safe but when he turned back to face her, she had regressed.

"Beasts in the trees....." she still stood but her eyes were blown, her arms crossed over her chest; trembling.

"Beasts in the trees...." she repeated

He quickly gathered her up in his arms and sat on the bed. Her terror radiating off of her. He shushed her softly and rocked gently. With a finger under her chin, he tilted her face up to his.

"Come back to me princess," he whispered soothingly.

"It’s alright, you're safe. I will keep you safe. I've cut down bigger and scarier things in my life. My planet has a rancor infestation. I have you. It's alright," he continued to whisper and hold her until she came down. She splayed her hand on his chest over his hearts. Their strong beat acting as an anchor. She buried her face in his neck. Her breath hot on his skin.

That warm feeling pooled in his chest again. He ran his fingers across her forehead, swishing away the hair that had fallen over it. She finally pulled away to look into his eyes.

"T-thank you Savage... I don't know how much longer I could've lasted alone out here. I feel like I'm breaking as soon as the sun goes down." He thought about his next words carefully as he stroked her cheek.

"My people live in darkness. I have lived with and fought against its terrors all of my life. I swear to you I am strong enough to keep you from harm. Today I found myself... almost glad to have crashed here. Because of you, and what you can show me. But, mostly you princess," his face was hot. She pressed a tender kiss to his cheek.

"We should eat. You especially. I imagine you're starving. The rations aren't bad with the hot sauce I found," she smiled coyly at him.

    They ate in a comfortable silence. This time he watched as she slipped off her dress out of the corner of his eye. A feeling of want tingling under the surface. When they crawled in bed together, she wrapped her leg around him and lay her head on his chest. Listening to his hearts beat while he held her close to him.

She stayed like that all night and for the first time in years, she slept through the night.

[kirbyluvr63]

drag.

i watched Gay USA some days ago and there’s a bit where some women discuss drag and what they think about it juxtaposed with drag queens saying what drag means to them and it’s clear that there’s a lot of misunderstanding about it. it got me thinking.

a couple of the women said they felt like it was a mockery, but i don’t undersand. mockery of what, exactly? for one to think that drag is a mockery of femininity one must also believe in the sanctity of femininity to a certain degree - one can only mock something held in high regard. maybe what sets them off is that the men can take the dress and make up off and be free of femininity, while women are required to maintain it their whole lives, but i think this misses the point that men do not have an easier time being feminine than women.

the difficulties of a woman being feminine and a men being feminine aren’t the same. to us (in this im including cis/trans women and afab) femininity is a requirement that we didn’t have time to think about if it was something we truly wanted/liked or not, this inherent imposive nature make us feel trapped in it, miserable when we can’t meet it’s standards. to them (in this im including cis/trans men and amab) it’s something that other men rush to supress, to shame, it’s something that often times is unconscious and difficult to suppress. this is anedoctal, but i’ve heard of tales of gay men filming themselves walking and trying to “walk more like a men”, watch how they sit, how they talk, eliminating any trace of femininity. to them femininity is not a requirement, it’s something strictly forbidden, so for them to embrace it in it’s highest form - big hair, big makeup, flamboyant dresses, high pitched voices, etc - can be liberanting. something they’ve been taught to repress, out in the open.

femininity isn’t a bad thing, it isn’t a good thing either, it simply exists and the way we define it changes from time to time. femininity is a tool of expression - be it of gender or artistic intent. and the same thing is true for masculinity. this is also anedoctal, but there was a time in my life where i disavowed femininity completely and questioned my gender - thinking back, it probably had a lot to do with me figuring out i was a lesbian and wanting to distance myself from the male gaze -, during that time i still wan’t very happy, i just went from one extreme to the other and that bothered me. during that time i found what worked for me. i like dresses, i like skirts, funky jewelry, short heels, but i also don’t shave my legs or armpits, i don’t really use makeup, i keep my hair mostly short and i expanded what womenhood and being a woman means to me. i’m a woman because i am, not because i was asigned at birth and i’m happy about it. does my family bother me about not shaving? eh, mostly my mom sometimes, but they’d talk about me anyway, if not for that for the “being a lesbian” thing.

sure, that are some aspects of drag culture that are sexist, just like anything in our society, but it also has an important role in highlighting the absurdity of femininity, and for that i’m grateful, because it made me less afraid of being lighthearted and laugh about it.

i’m aware that i’ve not mentioned women (cis and trans) that do drag and that’s because they mostly go unmentioned when women criticize drag, at least the ones i’ve seen.

sometimes it’s just fun to dress up and be someone else

[star-anise]

why would your social environment affect if you identify as a woman or nb?

I don’t know if you meant it to be, but this is a delightful question. I am going to be a complete nerd for 2k+ words at you.

“Gender” is distinct from “sex” because it’s not a body’s physical characteristics, it’s how society classifies and interprets that body. Sex is “That person has a vagina.” Gender is “This is a blend of society’s expectations about what bodies with vaginas are like, social expectations of how people with vaginas do or might or should act, behave, and feel, the actual lived experiences of people with vaginas, and a twist of lemon for zest.” Concepts of gender and what is “manly” and “womanly” can vary a lot. They’re social values, like “normal” or “legal” or “beautiful”, and they vary all the time. How well you fit your gender role depends a lot on how “gender” is defined.

800 years ago in Europe the general perception was that women were sinful, sensual, lustful people who required frequent sex and liked watching bloodsport. 200 years ago, the British aristocracy thought women were pure, innocent beings of moral purity with no sexual desire who fainted at the sight of blood. These days, we think differently in entirely new directions.

But this gets even more complicated, in part because human experience is really diverse and society’s narratives have to account for that. So 200 years ago, those beliefs about femininity being delicate and dainty and frail only really applied to women with aristocratic lineages, and “the lower classes” of women were believed to be vulgar, coarse, sexual, and earthy, which “explained” why they performed hard physical labor or worked as prostitutes.

Being trans or nonbinary isn’t just or even primarily about what characteristics you want your body to have. It’s about how you want to define yourself and be interpreted and interacted with by other people.

The writer Sylvia Plath lived 1932-1963, and she said:

“Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars–to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording–all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery.”

She was from upper-middle-class Massachusetts, the child of a university professor. A lot of those things she was “prohibited” from doing weren’t things each and every woman was prohibited from doing; they were things women of her class weren’t allowed to do. The daughters and sisters and wives of sailors and soldiers, women who worked in hotels and ran rooming houses, barmaids and sex workers, got to anonymously and invisibly observe those men, after all. They just couldn’t do it at the same time they tried to meet the standards educated Bostonians of the 1950s had for nice young women.

Failure to understand how diverse womanhood is has always been one of feminism’s biggest weaknesses. The Second Wave of feminism was started mostly by prosperous university-educated white women, since they were the people with the time and money and resources to write and read books and attend conferences about “women’s issues”. And they assumed that their issues were female issues. That they were the default of femaleness, and could assume every woman had roughly the same experience as them.

So, for example, middle-class white women in post-WWII USA were expected to stay home all the time and look after their children. Feminists concluded that this was isolating and oppressive, and they’d like the freedom to pursue lives, careers, and interests outside of the home. They vigorously pursued the right to be freed from their domestic and maternal duties.

But in their society, these experiences were not generally shared by Black and/or poor women, who, like their mothers, did not have the luxury of spending copious amounts of leisure time with their children; they had to work to earn enough money to survive on, which meant working on farms, in factories, or as cooks, maids, or nannies for rich white women who wanted the freedom to pursue lives outside the home. They tended to feel that they would like to have the option of staying home and playing with their babies all day. 

This is not to say none of the first group enjoyed domestic lives, or that none of the second group wanted non-domestic careers; it’s just that the first group formed the face and the basic assumptions of feminism, and the second group struggled to get a seat at the table.

There’s this phenomenon called “cultural feminism” that’s an attitude that crops up among feminists from time to time (or grows on them, like fungus) that holds that women have a “feminine essence”, a quasi-spiritual “nature” that is deeply distinct from the “masculine essence” of men. This is one of the concepts powering lesbian separatism: the idea that because women are so fundamentally different from men, a society of all women will be fundamentally different in nature from a society that includes men.

But, well, the problem cultural feminism generally has is with how it achieves its definition of “female nature”. The view tends to be that women are kinder, more moral, more collectivist, more community-minded, and less prone to violence. 

And cultural feminists tend to HATE people who believe in the social construction of gender, because we tend to cross our arms and go, “Nah, sis, that’s a frappe of misused statistics and The Angel In the House with some wishful thinking as a garnish. That’s how you feel about what womanhood is. It’s fair enough for you, but you’re trying to apply it to the entire human species. That’s got less intellectual rigor and sociological validity than my morning oatmeal.” Hence the radfem insistence that gender theorists like me SHUT UP and gender quite flatly DOESN’T EXIST. It’s a MADE-UP TERM, and people should STOP TALKING ABOUT IT. (And go back to taking about immutable, naturally-occuring phenomena, one supposes, like the banking system and Western literary canon.)

Because seriously, when you look at real actual women, you will see that some of us can be very selfish, while others are altruistic; some think being a woman means abhorring all violence forever, and others think being a woman means being willing to fight and die to protect the people you love. As groups men and women have different average levels of certain qualities, but it’s not like we don’t share a lot in common. The distribution of “male” and “female” traits doesn’t tend to mean two completely separate sets of characteristics; they tend to be more like two overlapping bell curves.

So, like I said, I grew up largely in rural, working-class Western Canadian society. My relatives tend to be tradesmen like carpenters, welders, or plumbers, or else ranchers and farmers. I was raised by a mother who came of age during the big push for Women’s Lib. So in the culture in which I was raised, it was very normal and in some ways rewarded (though in other ways punished) for women to have short hair, wear flannel and jeans, drive a big truck, play rough contact sports, use power tools, pitch in with farmwork, use guns, and drink beer. “Traditional femininity” was a fascinating foreign culture my grandmother aspired to, and I loved nonsense like polishing the silver (it’s a very satisfying pastime) but that was just another one of my weird hobbies, like sewing fairy clothes out of flower petals and collecting toy horses.

Within the standards of the society I was raised in, I am a decently feminine woman. I’m obviously not a “girly girl”, someone who wears makeup and dresses in ways that privilege beauty over practicality, but I have a long ponytail of hair and when I go to Mark’s Work Wearhouse, I shop in the women’s section. We know what “butch” is and I ain’t it.

But through my friendships and my career, I’ve gotten experiences among cultures you wouldn’t think would be too different–we’re all still white North Americans!–but which felt bizarre and alien, and ate away at the sense of self I’d grown up in. In the USA’s northeast, the people I met had the kind of access to communities with social clout, intellectual resources, and political power I hadn’t quite believed existed before I saw them. There really were people who knew politicians and potential employers socially before they ever had to apply to a job or ask for political assistance; there were people who really did propose projects to influential businessmen or academics at cocktail parties; they really did things like fundraise tens of thousands of dollars for a charity by asking fifty of their friends to donate, or start a business with a $2mil personal loan from a relative.

And in those societies, femininity was so different and so foreign. I’d grown up seeing femininity as a way of assigning tasks to get the work done; in these new circles, it was performative in a way that was entirely unique and astounding to me. A boss really would offer you a starting salary $10k higher than they might have if you wore high heels instead of flats. You really would be more likely to get a job if you wore makeup. And your ability to curate social connections in the halls of power really was influenced by how nice of a Christmas party you could throw. These women I met were being held, daily, to a standard of femininity higher than that performed by anyone in my 100 most immediate relatives.

So when girls from Seven Sisters schools talked about how for them, dressing how I dressed every day (jeans, boots, tee, button-up shirt, no makeup, no hair product) was “bucking gendered expectations” and “being unfeminine”, I began to feel totally unmoored. When I realized that I, who absolutely know only 5% as much about power tools and construction as my relatives in the trades, was more suited to take a hammer and wade in there than not just the “empowered” women but the self-professed “handy” men there, I didn’t know how to understand it. I felt like I was… a woman who knew how to do carpentry projects, not “totally butch” the way some people (approvingly) called me.

And, well, at home in Alberta I was generally seen as a sweet and gentle girl with an occasional stubborn streak or precocious moment, but apparently by the standards of Southern states like Georgia and Alabama I am like, 100x more blunt, assertive, and inconsiderate of men’s feelings than women typically feel they have to be.

And this is still all just US/Canadian white women.

And like I said, after years of this, I came home (from BC, where I encountered MORE OTHER weird and alien social constructs, though generally more around class and politics than gender) to Alberta, and I went to what is, for Alberta, a super hippy liberal church, and I helped prepare the after-service tea among women with unstyled hair and no makeup  who wore jeans and sensible shoes, and listened to them talk about their work in municipal water management and ICU nursing, and it felt like something inside my chest slid back into place, because I understood myself as a woman again, and not some alien thing floating outside the expectations of the society I was in with a chestful of opinions no one around me would understand, suddenly all made sense again.

I mean, that’s by no means an endorsement for aspirational middle class rural Alberta as the ideal gender utopia. (Alberta is the Texas of Canada.) I just felt comfortable inside because it’s the culture where I found a definition of myself and my gender I could live with, because its boundaries of what’s considered “female” were broad enough to hold all the parts of me I felt like I needed to express. I have a lot of friends who grew up here, or in families like mine, and don’t feel at all happy with its gender boundaries. And even as I’m comfortable being a woman here, I still want to push and transform it, to make it even more feminist and politically left and decolonized.

TERFs try to claim that trans and nonbinary people reinforce the gender identity, but in my experience, it’s feminists who claim male and female are immutable and incompatible do that. It’s trans, nonbinary, and genderqueer people who, simply by performing their genders in public, make people realize just how bullshit innate theories of gender are.. Society is going to want to gender them in certain ways and involve them in certain dynamics (”Hey ladies, those fellas, amirite?”) and they’re going, “Nope. Not me. Cut it out.” I’ve seen a lot of cis people who will quietly admit they do think men and women are different because that’s just reality, watch someone they know transition, and suddenly go, “Oh my god, I get it now.”

Like yes, this is me being coldly political and thinking about people as examples to make a political point. Everyone’s valid and can do what they want, but some things are just easier for potential converts to wrap their minds around.. “I’m sorting through toys to give to Shelly’s baby. He probably won’t want a princess crown, huh?” “I actually know several people who were considered boys when they were babies and never got one, and are making up for all their lost princess crown time now as adults. You never know what he’ll be into when he grows up.” “…Okay, point. I’ll throw it in there.” Trans and enby people disrupt gender in a really powerful back-of-the-brain way where people suddenly see how much leeway there is between gender and sex.

I honestly believe supporting trans and enby people and queering gender until it’s a macrame project instead of a spectrum are how we’ll get to a gender-free utopia. I think cultural feminism is just the same old shit, inverted. (Confession: in my head, I pronounce “cultural” with emphasis on the “cult” part.) 

I think feminism is like a lot of emergency response groups: Our job is to put ourselves out of a job. It’s not a good thing if gender discrimination is still prevalent and harmful 200 years from now! Obviously we’re not there yet and calls to pack it in and go home are overrated, but as the problem disappears into its solution, we have to accept that our old ways of looking at the world have to shift.

[cabin6halfblood]

Cut your younger selves some slack, please.

Our younger selves should not be held accountable by the shows we enjoyed.

I’ve seen several posts where people state they were embarrassed by being a part of the superwholock fandom when it was huge on tumblr I thought a lot about it and I wondered if I felt the same.

I’ve seen people try to hide the fact they were fans or act as if it was the worst thing in the world or proudly state they are very glad they’re no longer into those shows.

I’m not telling anyone how to act or how to view something, but I wondered about it.

Nowadays sometimes enjoying something that has a huge cult following is seeing as bad, unoriginal.

To be honest, I understand. Who’s never enjoyed a new show so much and wanted people to be a part of that good feeling only to see the same old three shows trending on tumblr, no one even aware your new show’s name?

The show’s popularity only growing, adults, kids and teens all watching the same thing, different maturity, world views and understanding levels all around boiling under the same pot, all posts under the same tag.

Adults telling children they shouldn’t like something or even bullying them, teens trying to get what’s the right side of an issue but only seeing posts like “you either look through something this way or you’re cancelled.”

Sometimes a bitter feeling appears when that happens and some people want nothing to do with that popular show.

I get it, of course I’ve felt it too, I’m fucking human.

Last week I saw one post that the op was stating that comparing a new show like good omens and superwholock was stupid and that these fandoms should be left in the past, tags filled with justification that it wasn’t a hate post because they liked these fandoms too before, but also full of embarrassment for having done so.

I think that’s when I decided.

What’s it fucking worth, judging what we liked when we were younger? Is it gonna change anything today? Maybe you’ll be ‘cool’ all around for dissing on something that was popular once, still won’t change the fact that you enjoyed it.

I’m so tired of holding my younger self to such a high standard. It’s so much time wasted hating someone who just didn’t have the same maturity level of me right now. Worst thing is that someone is me.

I had never seen a same sex kiss until I was 12, I didn’t know what “feminist” meant until I was 13. I didn’t know what “trans” was or what gender fluid was supposed to be. What did it even mean to be right or left when people were talking politics (still figuring that out)? Why was it upsetting that white people used dreads or wore native costumes on Halloween (something my country does not even celebrate)?

Hell, I didn’t even know the English language until I was 11.

Took time to understand things like words that shouldn’t be said because of racial reasons or homophobic backgrounds and then adapt my understanding that some words get reappropriated, took time to understand that some curse words were demeaning to women in some contexts but in others treated as a slang.

I’m not gonna expect a kid today to just know these things. I’m still constantly understanding them.

But I’ve seen adults bullying kids for shipping something problematic while they don’t even know or understand why it is problematic. Adults expecting kids to fight against said problematic issue when a kid should be only worried about enjoying their childhood and innocence.

I don’t hate my 14 year old self for enjoying supernatural, for loving doctor who or staying hours ‘deducing’ sherlock.

Do these shows have problems? Of fucking course. I’ll be damned if I’ve seen a show that’s 100% perfect because tv shows are made by humans and humans are fallible.

I’m in no way denying problematic things, but we are not born filled with all knowledge in the world, we grow up and we have phases. We’ve all had a haircut we are a little embarrassed about, done something we’re not proud of or loved something intensely once that we just don’t anymore. We all go trough phases and we’re all in constant contact with a developing world, constantly developing our own selves (I hope).

I’ve decided I’m gonna cut my younger self some slack. Focus on being my best self right now.

 I’m an adult now, I can fight and protest that tv shows stop their problematic behaviour so kids can enjoy something that they can safely copy in the future and be better adults themselves. 

But I don’t think I should expect kids to fight with me, of course they can, but it’s my view that it’s not their responsibility to. They’re just trying to figure out the world right now, just like I did then. While I’m gonna keep trying to be a better adult, I’m gonna cut kids and teens some slack too.

I hope you can too.

[soulvomit]

I feel like identifying as non-binary would totally be impossible with how my life is set up. I do business with fairly square people in my own age group and older. I'm in a heterosexual-presenting relationship with a heterosexually identified man.

In the social group I'm adjacent to that's accepting of and encouraging of non-binary identity, I'm "othered" for other reasons (being Jewish, being over 35, and actually not being geeky/fannish enough.) And I'm not androgynous the "right" way (the young, skinny, Manic Pixie Dream Person art student way) for them.

I don't know, sometimes, where I fit.

It might have been different 20 years ago when I was mostly among LGBTQ people, except *then* I wondered if I was trans (possibly because this conversation was just not happening yet).

Even then, I wasn't gender non-conforming in the *right* ways. I wasn't a butch lesbian with a nonetheless homosocial social setup, who prioritized women in every part of my life. I was a snarky bisexual computer nerd who had mostly male friends and liked lots of "guy" media. I felt pressure to identify as lesbian from my 20s, believe it or not, mostly for the sake of the comfort of women - especially my male friends' spouses and partners - but also because of the "sibling" dynamic I had with *men* and not wanting to give that up in order to date them.

One reason I didn't date much is because it was a confusing mess and being in *any* relationships, fucked with my sense of identity and self, even though I've no desire to change my body or dress like a man. I dated a lot of guys in my teens but had fucked up dynamics with them, because I wasn't the kind of woman they were expected to be with by their entire social world. Whenever a guy liked me, he also expected to change me. It was just constantly humiliating and debasing and I got sick of it and preferred a sibling dynamic with men. But then I discovered that I wasn't womaning right for lesbian and even bi women, either. Whenever anyone did like me it so often conflicted with their assumptions about themselves and their sexual orientation and *that* got old quickly.

For a long time, my gender was my job, as long as I picked the right job. I couldn't do front-facing service jobs without being nitpicked to death about gender conformity stuff and I wish people understood that this is not about how one wears their hair. It's about stuff like facial expressions, body movements, how one speaks, etc, and when you're a woman who isn't gender conforming then you risk being seen as uncooperative/unlikable. My voice was nitpicked to death. It's a reason I thought I had Asperger's for a long time.

What helped was discovering that I got on better in environments where women are allowed to have a "serious" persona. Computers in the 90s, were a great environment. But a big reason I couldn't go back in, is because of the MPDG persona being so compulsory among women geeks/nerds now in ways that it wasnt in the 90s, and it being reeeeeally amplified in nerdy/geeky environments. The one environment I was accepted in, I now feel chased out of. I feel like I'm supposed to have a bright hair color, giggle a lot, talk like I've been sucking helium, and bounce around like I drank 4 Rockstar drinks. (Has anyone considered that this is ageist, btw, and an ageist performance that's required of lots of LGBTQ people and women in some environments, but *not* cis men, *ever?* In every environment I've been in where this is expected, cis men got to just be reserved dudes in polo shirts. There is NO unmarked manner of presentation for any other group. Maybe I'll even venture as far as to say cis het men.)

Another great environment was health because tbh I experience much less of the skin crawling in very ethnically and socially diverse spaces, less being held to one specific (white, upper middle class) behavioral standard. The women I did work with in those spaces? Super down to earth, we got along great! I could be a totally serious person. The requirements for being seen as nice and likable as a woman in health care are different from the requirements in customer service. Also: SCRUBS AND UNIFORMS. Some women wear hypergendered scrubs, but I could wear black, tan, or blue and it wasn't a big deal because plenty of women wore those, too. It was the only space where there was actually a gender neutral standard of any kind.

I'm in art now and it's a *major* cause of absolute skin crawling discomfort, because male artists can look like anything but there's a *very* gendered performance that's popular with female artists - the young manic pixie dream girl with a high voice.

And I have to market *myself* which is filling me with absolute dread.

I want to disappear from the world, I can't just be in the world as myself as any kind of public figure (and I can't just be in the world as myself anymore, anyway, because of the social space I now move in. At least business clothes and business spaces give me a way to make my private self private, because of weird social rules around people in business dress and business spaces. A businessperson or professional is allowed to be impersonal and have a closely guarded private self, to a much greater degree.)

[gws201-blog]

Graduating High School.. Nine Months Pregnant?

20 Pop Culture Stereotypes We Must Debunk (Because    They’re Fucking Stupid)

1.   Race determines class

“White people were equated with richness and land” (Williams, pg. 431). Who’s to say you can’t be a person of color and also be loaded?! Sure, the Real Housewives have women of color who are ~loaded~, but the majority of shows depict non-white individuals and families as poor. Have you ever seen the TV show Everybody Hates Chris? The whole show is about a poor, African American family living in Brooklyn, NY—constantly worrying about money. Their father, Julius, is even so tight on money that he kept a picture of himself in his own wallet to keep as a reminder to not spend money. Shows like this may be hilarious, but continual negative portrayal of race and class hurts those who are included in the stereotype.

2.   Race determines education level

“Members of society are judged, and succeed or fail, measured against the characteristics that are held by those privileged (Wildman & Davis, pg. 111).” Why do we put less pressure on some people to go to college, and others are just assumed they’ll go, or maybe it’s assumed they’ll never even finish high school? How can we look at a 16-year-old black high school student and compare them to a white 16-year-old student, and think that we have enough information to label one of them as academically frivolous, and one as a failure?

3.   Race determines actions

Being white will never make you an angel, being a person of color will never make you dangerous. The media constantly portrays black people to carry guns, Middle Eastern people to be terrorists, and white people to be trashy, yet, more responsible with guns…? However, according to Chris Wilson with Time, mass shootings from the past 35 years were overwhelmingly white, male shooters. So why do we allow the media to make it look as if the white man is innocent in shows and movies, when in reality they’re the ones who are dangerous?  

4.   Race determines where you live

Similar to race determining your class, race also doesn’t dictate where someone lives. For example, in the show Shameless, a white family is actually living in the poor, “ghetto” area of town that they refer to as the South Side. However, back to Everybody Hates Chris as I mentioned prior, TV loves to show people of color living in shitty places as if it’s normal. We can’t let the world tell us you must live within constraint or restriction because of your skin; it’s 2018—love thy [literal] neighbor, dammit.

5.   Class determines your future, or lack-there-of

“Everyone knows that money brings privilege” (Wildman and Davis, pg. 111). Sure, it can. I won’t pretend that money doesn’t make it easier to afford things such as college. People act like student loans don’t exist, that grants don’t exist, FAFSA (even though they suck, but it’s whatever), loans, etc. do.not.exist.But these are excuses. Millions of students who are set up for failure because they can’t afford college or because their parent’s don’t have the money, but that doesn’t stop them.

6.   Class determines your likelihood to end up an addict

Face it—TV either depicts drug/alcohol addicts as either extremely poor, or extremely rich. No one ever seems to care about a middle-class addict. What’s worse though, assuming that being rich or poor increases your likelihood to be an addict, or by not paying as much attention to addicts who are neither of these classes. The rich have money to blow on, well, blow…. and the poor just somehow are expected to be more likely to hang out with the wrong crowd, try a drug once, and then do everything and anything they can in order to get money to keep on getting the drug—none of this is something that we should stereotype.

7.   Class determines the likelihood you’ll get pregnant at a young age

Your class and status don’t determine when you have sex and if you’re using protection, your decision to have sex without protection or situations of birth control failure are how you get pregnant at a young age (I’m leaving out situations of rape from this so I don’t write a novel). According to studies done by the US National Library of Medicine, socioeconomic status doesn’t determine the age you get pregnant at, but may determine to different pregnancy and birth complications due to lack of money to afford things such as healthcare, diapers, medicine, etc.

8.   Being feminine means you’re gay

“The new man is non-sexist, believes in gender equality and relates to women as human beings” (Milestone and Meyer, pg. 116). Apparently, the ‘new man’ is seen as a gay man to many. What even is femininity? A guy isn’t gay for wearing pink, giving a shit about how he looks, having female friends, or for his hobbies—I personally appreciate a man who takes care of his appearance, shows his feelings, ya know, showers and stuff. Kidding—I promise I have higher standards than a guy just showering. But anyways, what I’m trying to say is that none of these surface-level features give anyindication that a man is gay. And if he is, who even cares?!

9.   Being masculine means you’re a lesbian

*See #8*

Kidding, but really. Stop judging people based on how they look, dress, act, whatever. 

10.Gay people are promiscuous

First off, not your business. Second, you can just as easily say something dumb like that girls in sororities are sluts (trust me, I was in one and I got this comment a handful of times). I don’t even know how this stereotype came about, but I know that my gay friends joke about it al the time. If your gay friends make a joke about it, cool, it’s funny to talk about his “dick appointment”, but it’s different between a good friend making a statement, and you being an assumptive asshole.

11.Gay people have HIV aids

Every commercial I’ve ever seen on TV about medical treatment for HIV only show gay couples. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, gay and bisexual males are more susceptible to getting HIV because they tend to have anal sex, sometimes unprotected, which then puts them at serious risk. Sorry not sorry, but these commercials can’t just pretend straight couples don’t have unprotected anal sex. HIV doesn’t discriminate, so neither should we.

12.Gay people can’t have children

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. How do women who can’t conceive have children? Adoption, IVF, surrogate—there’s tons of options, and these are options for gay couples as well.

13.Gay people can’t be religious

There’s this notion that gay people must not believe in God because some people believe that homosexuality is a sin—even though God definitely says to love thy neighbor and that he loves all of his children, aka all of us. Shows such as Modern Familyare great examples of this. A gay couple, Cam and his husband Mitchell, attend church and even take their adopted daughter, Lily, with them. Sure they live in California where there’s more acceptance, but the fact that the show even displays this is great for ending this stereotype by showing it as normalized.  

14.Teen moms won’t graduate

I talk about Shamelessand Teen Moma lot, but hey, they’re perfect examples for a lot of these stereotypes. Shamelesssupports this stereotype by showing a 15 year old named Debbie who gets pregnant and drops out of high school. !!!BUT!!! Debbie eventually gets her GED and becomes a certified welder. Hell yeah. Teen Mom, which is a reality show, rarely shows teens graduating or getting any type of certification to better their education. Girls who are in similar situations may see this and be like “well shit, if they didn’t finish school and they’re fine, I’m not finishing either!”— then the girl and her baby daddy end up relying on their parents for everything. I graduated with a girl who was nine months pregnant, literally about to pop, and now she’s a young mom, yes, but she got to go on and attend college and is almost finished with her degree. By supporting pregnant teens and giving them the push they need, they can attempt to better their future and give their baby a great life (not that it won’t be great without education, but you know what I mean).

15.Teen pregnancy is easy & fun

If you’ve seen Teen Mom, you know that teen pregnancy isn’t easy. Yes, the show does glorify it sometimes by being like “oh, get pregnant at 16, you’ll get on TV!!!!” but they also show the raw, uncut scenes of the girls and couples hardcore struggling. Imagine missing class, missing prom, missing fun experiences you could be having with your friends when you’re not even twenty years old. Imagine the judgment by friends, family, and strangers because they assume you weren’t being careful. There’s a lot more to being a teen mom than being on TV and picking out cute baby clothes—don’t let TV and the media make you think you should get pregnant for fun.

16.Teen parents = unfit parents

I’ll be honest, this is a stereotype that I’ve believed for a long time. Teens are young, haven’t experienced life yet, aren’t fully educated, and aren’t always very mature—so why would they make good parents? Good question. Answer: no one is ever ~ready~ for their first kid. If you’ve never had children before, you’re in the same position as everybody else who has also never had kids. It doesn’t matter if you’ve babysat for years or if you have a college degree, having your first child isn’t something anyone can fully prepare for. You can have money, buy the best diapers, whatever, but you’ll still be learning how to care for the baby day by day no matter what age you are.

17.Trans people are confused

“you’re confused”

“it’s a phase”

“you’re just gay.”

-all quoted from a dumb ass, probably

For this, let’s go back to Linda Alcoff’s “The Problem Of Speaking For Others”. You don’t know how someone realized they weren’t the gender assigned to them at birth. You don’t know how they feel in their own skin every day. You don’t know the hardships and troubles and braveryit took for them to come to terms with being trans and be open about it to others. If you speak for them and try to say “oh, she’s confused” or “he’ll grow out of it”, all you’re doing is demeaning them, belittling them, and you’re lying to yourself and to them. Being trans isn’t easy. Support your trans friends or coworkers or whoever, and let them know that they’re always welcome in your life as they are.

18.Trans people are drag kings/queens

Similar to the last stereotype, being trans isn’t something you dress up in for fun and then change out of later. Anyone can dress in drag, not just transgender people. As Janet Mock discussed in Redefining Realness, drag can empower people and make them feel pretty and good about themselves. However, it doesn’t make you trans just because you partake in drag.

19.Trans people are predators

“Can you be guaranteed to find a public bathroom that is safe and equipped for you to use? (Taylor, pg. 296). Think about it—there’s a higher chance of a trans person being assaulted by someone because of who they are than a cisgender person being attacked in a bathroom by someone who’s trans. As much as I hate to get into this—I’ll be brief. No, trans people aren’t creeps. No, they’re not lying about their identity. No, they do not want to use the female restroom for ANY other reason aside from beingfemale.

20.Being who you are is easy

“We tend to forget the thousands of minute decisions that consciously construct the artificial world that has been created” (Smith, pg. 128). Though this quote is about movies, it’s true for real life. We make decisions every day that can drastically alter our lives. The thing is, we make these decisions in order to please others; we make choices that define us once we think about how it impacts others, what they’ll think, and what the worst-case scenario of these decisions may be. This is where it becomes difficult to be who you are. It’s hard to be yourself when you’re worried about what other people think more than you worry about yourself and your happiness. Put yourself first, worry about yourself, and make yourself proud—fuck everything else.

                                                Citations

Alcoff, Linda. “The Problem of Speaking for Others.” Cultural Critique, no. 20, 1991, p. 10.,       doi:10.2307/1354221.    

Bornstein, Kate, and Evin Taylor. Gender Outlaw: on Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. Vintage   Books, 2016.

“HIV and Gay and Bisexual Men Understanding HIV/AIDS.” National Institutes of Health, U.S.   Department of Health and Human Services, 5 Apr. 2018, aidsinfo.nih.gov/understanding-          hiv-aids/fact-sheets/25/81/hiv-and-gay-and-bisexual-men.

“Making Systems of Privilege Visible.” Making Systems of Privilege Visible, by Stephanie M Wildman and Adrienne D Davis, p. 111.  

Milestone, Katie, and Anneke Meyer. Gender and Popular Culture. Polity, 2012.

Min, Kim. Socioeconomic Status Can Affect Pregnancy Outcomes and Complications, Even With              A Universal Healthcare System. U.S. National Library of Medicine, National Institute of                 Health, 5 Jan. 2018, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5756361/.

Mock, Janet. Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & so Much More.       Simon & Schuster, 2015.

Smith, Greg M. “It's Just a Movie: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes.” Cinema Journal, vol. 41, no. 1, 2001, p. 128., doi:10.1353/cj.2001.0025.  

Williams, Claudette. Gal... You Come From Foreign. McGraw Hill, 2002.

Wilson, Chris. “Mass Shootings in the US: See 35 Years in One Chart.” Time, Time, 2 Oct.         2017, time.com/4965022/deadliest-mass-shooting-us-history/.

[everythinginasockdrawer-blog]

Seasoned Gay

On AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/11254284

 It’s Friday and Maggie is more than happy to spend the evening holed up in one of the local gay bars drinking scotch and enjoying the feeling of scantily clothed women pressing around her on the dance floor, feeling the pulsing music around her as she danced somewhat jerkily with some blonde girl that she’d bumped into shortly after making her way onto the dance floor, happily letting the rest of the week fall away.

Or it would be if she could focus on the girl in front of her (and how she was gonna get her home) and not the beautiful red head sitting slouched at the bar, cradling her drink in her hands and scanning the bar with a look of nervous excitement plastered across her face. Definitely a baby gay… And a cute one at that… And… That’s a dude…

She watched as one of the straight guys that hung around the bar trying to pick up chicks approached the girl and started trying to talk her up. Maggie felt her body tense and she looked between her dancing partner and the girl at the bar and made a split second decision.

“Gotta go save the baby gay at the bar, dudebro’s hitting on her and she doesn’t seem to know what to do.” The blonde glanced towards the bar and after catching sight of the scene in front of her she scowled and shook her head.

“You have fun with that, try not to break his nose, I know it’s tempting.” And the girl’s already turned around and found some other girl to dance with and Maggie’s making her way towards the bar where the girl is leaning as far away from stereotypical surfer playboy as physically possible. Maggie got to the bar just in time to catch the tail end of what he was saying.

“...And I know I can show you a better time than any of these bull dykes could ever dream of. I’m pretty well endowed if you catch my drift.” He winked and none to discreetly pawed at his junk, causing both Maggie and the red head to scrunch their noses up in disgust at him.

“Yeah, I’m still good.” The other woman downed her shot and signaled the bartender for another one. The guy leered at her and scooted his stool closer to his so that their knees were touching as he moved his hand onto the girl’s thigh.

“Come on babe, seriously I’ll show you a better time than any dyke in this bar could possibly imagine.” Maggie half groaned before firmly inserting herself between the two, knocking the guy’s hand any and forcing him to pull back from the other woman.

“Excuse me, sir, but I’m fairly certain the lady already said no so if you’d kindly move along…” Maggie left the sentence hanging but makes sure to level her gaze at him so he wouldn’t take it as a sign of her feeling intimidated by him. He sneered down at her and tried unsuccessfully to brush her aside.

“Fuck off, she was just about to come home with me, weren’t you hot stuff?” Maggie glances behind her just in time to catch the girl roll her eyes at his question and take a long drink of her beer (the bartender still hadn’t refilled her shot glass).

“Yeah, only in your dreams.” Maggie gently reached behind her and placed a hand on the girl’s knee, she wasn’t sure how much of her couldn’t care less attitude was simply a front to make the guy leave her alone and she figured the comforting gesture might be appreciated.

“See? Now go find someone else to bother, fucking buzzkill.” The guy tried to move around her but Maggie stayed firmly in place between him and the girl (whose name she probably should figure out).

“And you’ve got one of the worst cases of selective hearing I’ve ever seen. Now why don’t you run back to your friends the lick your wounds and try hitting up a bar where the girls actually find your oppressive masculinity attractive and leave us all alone.” The guy scoffed and tried (for the third time) and failed to get her to move from between him and the other woman.

“You’re just jealous she’d rather go home with a real man like me instead of a midget like you. She knows I can fuck her real good, unlike you you little dyke, don’t you baby?” Maggie winced internally at the jib at her height, something she was still self conscious about even at the age of twenty two. She felt the woman behind her shift and somewhat tentatively run her fingers up her side, causing an unexpected shiver to run down Maggie’s spine.

“Oh no… She’s… Definitely the one I’m interested in.” He sputtered, finally hearing something she said for once. About time…

“Why the hell would you be into the tiny lesbo over me? Have you seen my abs?” He lifts his shirt to show off what to most might seem like an impressive six pack, Maggie rolled her eyes but decided she wasn’t going to stoop to his level trying to engage in some display of dominance. The other woman scoffed out loud and glancing behind her Maggie realized that apparently she didn’t have any issues showing the guy up, cause her shirt was tugged up to just below her breasts and was showing off her own six pack with a challenging gleam in her own eyes.

“You act like that’s supposed to impress me.” She dropped her shirt and Maggie none too discreetly wiped at the corners of her mouth to make sure she hadn’t started drooling. “Now I can think of a lot of reasons to pick her over you, starting with the fact I’m gay as fuck and she’s definitely a woman, you are a woman right? Like I’m assuming here based on appearances and that’s kinda transphobic and I really don’t care if you’re trans or not, I meant it’s cool if you are like I’m totally fine with that…”

“I’m a woman.” Maggie interjected before the other woman could get lost in a offtrack tangent.

“Okay, yeah… So there’s that. She’s also hot as hell which you definitely are not.” Maggie forced herself not to chuckle at the offended look on his face. “And you’re an asshole and I wouldn't be interested even if I was into guys cause I have standards that you don’t even begin to meet. So if you’ll move along I’d really like to chat up my super hot savior now.” She made a shooing gesture and the guy finally left with a grumbled fucking dykes . Which left Maggie standing super close to the rather beautiful red head who was definitely giving her bedroom eyes like no baby gay should know how to do. “So… What’s your name?”

“Um… Maggie… My name’s Maggie…” The other woman smiled warmly down at her and held her hand out for her to shake.

“Alex. So what are you doing this evening? Besides saving young lesbians from straight men.” Maggie blushed slightly, turning her face away from Alex.

“You hardly needed saving. I mean… With the abs and the sassy comebacks and the abs…” Alex smiled at her, an amused glint in her eyes.

“You like the abs?” She wiggled her eyebrows as she slid Maggie’s hand under her shirt up her washboard abs. Maggie let out a quiet groan and bites her lip. Not to be outdone by a baby gay she quickly moves Alex’s hand over to her own stomach and slides it under her shirt and up her own abs.

“I can most certainly appreciate them.” She was pleased to note the other woman finally seemed a little flustered as she subconsciously ran her fingers along Maggie’s abs. “Now, what do you say we hit the dance floor and show that prick how us ‘lesbos’ do it?”

And they do, they get drunk and dance and make out in the corner like teens and when the bar finally closes at two she calls them an Uber and then continue to make out like idiots in the backstreet until they get back to Maggie’s apartment. And then they’re making out in the apartment (okay, say what you want about picking up baby gays but holy cow this one was a hell of a good kisser) and on her bed and damn you’d love to have her way with the woman moving above her but the voice in the back of her mind reminding her they are both very drunk wins and she finally pulls away.

“You’re drunk.” Alex moved down to start muzzling in her neck, nipping and sucking at the skin there.

“So are you.”

“We probably shouldn’t do this right now.”

“Probably not.”

“I’m going to get some water and aspirin for in the morning. If you feel like it we can carry on then.” Maggie offers getting up and heading into the adjacent bathroom.

“Oh trust me, as soon as I’m not either drunk or hungover I’m going to be all over you.” Maggie put the stuff from the bathroom on the nightstand and climbed under the covers, Alex following quickly behind her.

“I’m looking forward to it.” Maggie mumbled sleepily, Alex laughed.

“You should, I’m told I’m excellent in bed.” Alex winked at her and Maggie’s eyebrows scrunched up in confusion.

“And who told you that?”

“Why the string of women I slept with in high school, I was quite the catch back then.” She winked again and Maggie’s eyes went wide.

“High school? How long ago was that?”

“About five years, why, jealous?” Maggie’s jaw dropped.

“I thought you were a baby gay!” Alex let out a full belly laugh at that comment.

“Nope, I’m definitely a seasoned gay at this point.”

“Oh boy, what did I get myself into?” Maggie mumbled as Alex began running her fingers languidly up and down her side.

“Oh darling, you have no idea.”