#misgender me and die

[battybiologist]

James Somerton is a misogynist piece of shit, but the way he speaks about lesbians is an infuriating betrayal of the queer community.

Legally, lesbians were and are treated on the same level of bad as gay men. Gay panic doesn't and has never excluded them, same as convertion therapy, same as anti-sodomy laws, same as police brutality, and many more I could mention.

And socially? Women as a whole are already persecuted, so add homophobia to the mix, and I doubt that'd lead to less discrimination than what gay men suffer from. And that's not even getting into how shittily trans lesbians are treated

But frankly, we all know why he said that. The section where he misgenders Nate Stevenson and Rebecca Sugar and throws them under the bus really says it all: it's because, in his fucked up mind twisted by misogyny, there was more "lesbian representation" in media.

The kind of representation where they're demonized, dehumanized, and erased, where their deaths and hardships are treated shallowly and without a hundredth of the compassion spared for their straight leads, where they're fetishized and objectified for the sole eyes of straight men, sometimes all of the above at the same time.

Fuck this guy.

[covington-shenanigans]

christ alive I love my parents and I'm glad I got to see them but they are just. so fucking exhausting

[lununder]

i have been recieving such blatant transphobia lately i think the world is going to break me

[nachosforfree]

Never posting a video with my voice in it again in fact I think I'll jump into the river

[trans-estinien]

i love being autistic cause sometimes i get a glimpse into how regular people perceive things and its like. what the fuck. what the fuck is that? you live like this? and its normal?? i think YOURE the weird one actually. im fine. thanks though.

[summer-sapphic]

Hi I'm mad

[caluski]

i wish transgenderness was simpler. i wish i didnt have to prove anything to other people in order to be called the right name, the right pronouns. i hate having to fight for it over and over again

[tr1ppykay]

"genderfluid people aren't men/women, they're genderfluid" is just "trans people aren't men/women, they're trans" repackaged for the trans exorsexists

[inniave]

so fucking sick of the constant misgendering. it's exhausting. even from fellow queer people??????? who know me?????????? HELLO?????????????

[rabble-dabble]

it took a lot of thinking to settle on knowing if i was a trans guy but what really solidified it to me was being unable to live with the thought of dying as anything but an old man. i can't imagine not having grey facial hair and old faded top surgery scars and maybe grandchildren who call me "grandpa". i just cant live with the thought of my gravestone having "daughter, wife, aunt, niece, grandmother," carved into it along with the name of a stranger. they can't ask me to die as a her. They won't kill me as a her. they wont bury me as a her. Its not fair. They can carve the wrong name into stone and dig up my bones and say "this skeleton makes a woman" but i assure you i'm going to die as a man with the name those close to my heart know me by. and i'm going to live long enough to meet him, the future version of me, because if theyre gonna try to bury me as a woman theyre gonna have to try and kill the man in me to do it. and ill cackle from my casket knowing they had to try to erase me in death because i wouldnt let them do it while i was alive. I wouldnt let them.

[crescent-cubed]

Oh, btw, my memory fucking sucks, so sometimes I will forget people's pronouns if I haven't interacted as much with them, so I'll use they/them in cases where I forgor

[callixton]

yknow i have lots of non-social physical dysphoria but also so much of my daily dysphoria is down to feeling like anyone being able to identify any part of my body as trans is a crime

[sharkneto]

What’s your opinion on writing pre-s3 fics post-s3? As in I have a ton of fic ideas for tua but they would be set before Viktor transitioned. Would following canon and referring to Viktor as his past name & gender be deadnaming him? Or should I refer to him as Viktor and forget that anything else ever existed? I’ve seen various opinions in irl from trans people about this (from wanting to never refer to that other gender or to often talking about it) not sure what to do in the case of fiction

So. This is a question that is going to have different answers from different trans people. I dug up when I last answered a question like this back when the news of Viktor first came out (HERE), but I'll restate my thoughts on it here, too, with a bit more nuance than I gave it then -

First, out of context - referring to Viktor by his previous name and gender would be deadnaming and misgendering.

In context, it all comes down to intent. My position on Viktor's story is his transition is a huge component of it - with his upbringing and the drugs, he never had a chance to figure himself out until he was free of it and off the pills. Even if he wasn't trans, his story over the first two seasons could really easily be a trans allegory, along with just being a queer story. To completely ignore that he is trans feels like it would ignore a significant part of who he is and his journey to get there.

But intent. I do think intent goes a long way. If you're writing a canon-compliant fic set pre-S3, I wouldn't judge for deadnaming and misgendering him (**with a disclaimer at the beginning of the fic/chapter that it is taking place pre-transition** ). I think this especially if his transition is part of his journey or scope of the story. I do this in both my fics Joining Together and Holding It Together, in which JT his gender is never questioned but will be in the long run and in HIT we have a post-transition Viktor present with a pre-transition Viktor mentioned.

That said, if his gender journey isn't part of the scope of the story and he's an especially prominent character... I would consider AUing this one bit. If his transition doesn't play any part in the plot of the fic, it wouldn't affect anything to have it happen earlier so he doesn't get deadnamed and misgendered the whole time.

How's that for complicated advice? At the end of the day, you're showing you care by asking, and you're not going to please everyone - there's too many opinions on the matter with personal emotions involved. No one has a blanket, correct answer. And, like you said - it's fiction. We can't ask him, he's not real an he's just a character being used to tell a story to explore emotions and themes.

TLDR: Follow your gut, write what makes sense to the story you want to tell, do your best. That's all anyone can do.

[isa-ah]

what a fucking awful experience

[sylvleon]

the lord is testing my patience and my dysphoria 3 weeks into testosterone

[nickbutnodick]

i find it kinda funny how utterly fucked up my current situation is.