#my gender is too complex to be labeled trans man or man

[theevilicecreamsoda]

I love queer and faggot btw like that’s me! That is what I am. Yeah I’m gay and trans I guess but queer and faggot define me much better than specific labels

[gay-otlc]

A fun fact is that "can trans men be lesbians" discourse isn't nonexistent, but it's so much less obnoxious in the real world. I'm a bigender trans man, and I'm actually not comfortable with the lesbian label, but most of my offline friends have said that I have every right to identify as a lesbian if I want to. They understand that my gender is weird and complex and that means my sexuality might be weird and complex too, and if I was a lesbian bigender trans man, they would accept me because their brains haven't been consumed by discourse and radical feminism.

[is-this-yuri]

i think maybe the only thing that can't be yuri is trans men (unless a trans man feels differently about this)

hi let me tell you all a secret

i'm transmasc and also a lesbian. i consider myself butch. i'm in a relationship with a wonderful girl who is also a lesbian, and we joke about being yuri occasionally.

my pronouns are he/him, i have a beard and a deep voice, i've had top surgery, and to the general public i appear to be a cis man. i like it that way! i believe this aesthetic is as far on the butch side of the butch/femme spectrum as you can get. men, even cis men, can be butch. it just happens to be the default for them due to cultural expectations, so we don't generally think of it like that.

i never felt quite comfortable with the gendered expectations of being in a straight relationship. i've been reading yuri since i was a tween, and back then i considered myself a lesbian too. once i realized i wanted to transition to male, i thought i had to let go of the lesbian label, even though i didn't really feel straight. i even felt guilty and creepy for reading yuri, so i stopped doing it for a while.

i've always related to lesbian romance more than straight romance, so i decided to not let go of the lesbian label for myself. i'm also very lucky to be dating such an understanding girl that can look past my flesh shell and love the real me inside, and our love is very gay, despite appearances.

this may be a rare story, but it is real! yuri, yaoi, gay, straight, man, woman, they're all just words we use to imprecisely attempt to describe an infinitely complex reality. all words are like that. we made them up to create pretty much arbitrary dividing lines, and now most people insist on following those lines to a T. even though many people don't even agree on where those lines lie!

the truth is, words are fake. but love is real. self expression is as fluid as the blood in our veins, and true identities are as numerous as individuals.

and while yes, words are useful as a tool to communicate, they should not be mistaken for the reality they attempt to describe. the beauty of a tool that can change is that you can use it however you want. i will respect your words, and i'd want you to respect mine too. we can use different words to describe the same thing and still agree. there's no point in us telling each other we're using the tool wrong, as long as the job gets done.

what i'm saying is we should all take this stuff a little less seriously. describe yourself however you want, and i'll respect that! you can do whatever you want forever. but in a queer and open minded world, nothing and nobody are exempt from potentially being yuri.

[st-dionysus]

it's nobody's business too police labels and identities for other people but I will say the reason you might be getting backlash for calling yourself a dyke is because it is insensitive to lesbians who do get called that in a derogatory way so it's those people who can reclaim it, it's something that though used interchangeably with lesbian and used as a specific lesbian identity is a reclaimed slur so I think it's something that can and should be used but with grace and understanding for those who are sensitive to it.

I get called Dyke as a slur. I have been beaten and faced SA from and by people who have called me a dyke. I have been called dyke when I was a lesbian and I have been called dyke after coming out as a trans man, because to cis society I am a dirty filthy dyke, to lesbian separatists, I am a traitorous self-loathing dyke.

It is insensitive and transphobic to police the language that trans men have reclaimed. It is insensitive and transphobic to refuse to acknowledge that trans men can come from and still exist in the lesbian community. Furthermore, it is insensitive and transphobic to presume that trans men exist on a binary and that we are unable to have complex relationships with are sexuality and gender. Trans men, having been reclaiming dyke for as long as it has been used a slur. It is not a specific lesbian identity -- it has been used by ALL queer women and ALL transmasculine people, including trans men. When I go to the dyke bar, guess what? They have trans men there. When I got the dyke march, guess what? They have trans men there. There are trans men in every single dyke community space that hasn't been overrun by TERFs, Lesbian separatists, or libfems.

It is only online that I have EVER been told that I am not a dyke, that I can not reclaim that identity, that I should be understating/sensitive of the people who attack me and try and police my gender, sexuality, and identity.

Hell, even the TERFs I've dealt with in person, call me a broken deadbeat dyke, and I've reclaimed that. When someone tells me I'm a dyke while they try to misgender me, whether they're just a run-of-the-mill transphobe or a TERF. Guess what? I get to say "Yes I am, and that doesn't make me less of a man, you don't know me and you don't get to choose who or what I am." And I will tell that to anyone who decides they get to police any aspect of my identity.

I do not owe anyone Tumblr/Twitter an explanation for who not only am, but for who I am accepted as by my community.

I am sorry if the tone of this answer comes off as angry, but I am angry, and I have the right to be.

[plinkodiskhorse]

on labels

The back and forth over the use of the word “queer” baffles and frustrates me. I think the arguments, and the term itself, are illustrative of a dialectic. Queer is simultaneously collective and individual, affiliation-group and self-identity, over-arching and specific, degrading and embracing. Until a time comes that all variations and expressions of gender and sexuality (and combinations thereof) are free from social and institutional stigma, queer will never mean just one thing.

Queer, as an over-arching term for anyone who is NOT cisgender, heterosexual, or perisex, acknowledges the overlap and interplay of gender assigned at birth, identified gender, gender expression, sexual attraction. A cisgender, butch dyke (a person assigned female at birth who aligns with that identity and is attracted to other women, while expressing her gender in a “masculine” manner) and a faggy, transgender man (a person assigned female at birth who “rejects” womanhood while dating men and expressing an “effeminate” masculinity) may seem very different from one another but can have MANY shared experiences of “queerness.” Both may be targets of transphobia and misogyny — even when one of them isn’t trans and one of them isn’t a woman — and both may be targets of homophobia. “Queer” (can, should) holds space for all of these aspects of self, even when they seem to contradict one another.

(How can a transgender man experience misogyny? When he is not perceived/treated as a man, but as a “failed woman.” How can a cisgender woman experience transphobia? When she is perceived/treated as a “non-passing” transgender woman encroaching upon “women’s spaces.”)

When this hypothetical cis dyke and transfag both claim the word “queer,” there is (or should be, in this umbrella interpretation of queer) an understanding that “your fight is my fight.” We may not be the exact same flavor of queer, but our liberation is interconnected. My freedom, as a transgender man, cannot be won at the expense of women’s freedom. I don’t mean that just in the sense that I would be morally opposed to that situation; I mean it in the sense that the oppression of women WILL impact my own freedom.

The baroque complexities of queerness become further entangled when considering race, religion, and disability. Can “queer” hold the history of racialized gender in America? That black people have been hypersexualized/virilized and subsequently fetishized and denigrated for this projection. That East Asian women have been seen as seductresses or naturally submissive, while East Asian men are desexualized or objectified as seeming young and effeminate. The stereotypes of the hot blooded Latina and the macho Latino. Can “queer” encompass the deliberate destruction of Native gender identities and the subsequent (current) obfuscating mythologizing by white queers? Can “queer” be a place for people who see their gender and/or sexuality as a manifestation of/connection to the Divine while also being a place for those deeply harmed by religion because of their gender/sexuality? Can “queer” accept people with disabilities as people capable of eroticism even if their bodies don’t allow for some forms of sex acts?

As a dialectic, rather than a static fact, queer can hold these things, and there are times that queer will be too broad for all these things and specificity is needed.

As a dialectic, queer is a slur and an academic term. Queer is an acceptable word in a peer-reviewed journal, and has the potential to be “fighting words” interpersonally. What matters is the context and the individual interpretation. And it’s HIGHLY personal.

I was born and raised in Texas from the 90s to the 2010s. I never heard queer used as an insult, except in media from (or set in) the past. If I had heard someone use queer as an insult, my initial reaction would have been confusion. Are you fucking old? Is this the 70s? But I did hear gay used as an insult all the time. And faggot and dyke, if there weren’t any teachers within hearing range. I didn’t really encounter queer until undergrad, as an academic term, an area of study, and then as how my friends self-identified. Because of this, my associations with queer are largely positive.

But I know people who also grew up in Texas, only a 30-45min drive away from where I grew up, who did experience queer as a slur. For them, they may feel more comfortable reclaiming fag or dyke, rather than queer. And that’s their decision to make. And yet, it would be reductive if they were to treat queer as only ever a slur, not as a word with decades of usage in academic and intracommunity contexts.

I like queer as a word that can veil meaning.

It can be a conversation stopper. You don’t get to know the specifics of my gender history, my sexual partners, the roles I take in sex, the acts I enjoy during sex.

It can be a conversation starter. I see you’re different in a way that is similar to how I’m different; let us now ask each other oblique and leading questions that the cis hets around us won’t understand.

I dislike how queer is increasingly absorbed into the corporate rainbow-washing of assimilationists. A company doesn’t get to sell me Pride merch with one hand and donate to anti-trans politicians with the other hand.

I cannot say that queer retains its edge, nor can I say that it has been defanged. I cannot force others to reclaim the word, nor can I gatekeep the word. In the first “queer studies” class I ever had, my professor explained “autonomy” literally means “self-naming.”

There is no right or wrong answer, there is only ever-increasing nuance.

[cock-holliday]

Revisiting this interview ages after I saw it last is so interesting because I remember how it impacted me then. Kate was a little too (fascinatingly enough) transgressive for me. I couldn’t understand going through all the trouble of changing your legal gender only to no longer identify with it. She fought hard to be legally recognized as a woman but doesn’t feel like a woman.

At the time that made me feel so uneasy because I was made to promise I’d never change my mind when I came out to my family. I came out as binary trans and if you’re not your AGAB then you’re the opposite and if you’re not the opposite then you’re your AGAB and you aren’t trans. That possibility horrified me.

Kate Bornstein’s work (and Leslie’s) has been such a piece of reassurance about not being a man or a woman. Leslie’s work spoke to me as someone whose legal documents didn’t match your transgressive presentation. Leslie’s work spoke to me upon trying to figure out butch identity. I thought the label was closed off to someone like me, and Leslie’s work said it wasn’t.

Kate’s view of the trans umbrella is more and more becoming my stance as I see more and more of my struggles in the lives of people seemingly not like me. The first time I saw this, I wanted “trans” to be exclusive as a term because my own suffering didn’t seem compatible with other people’s joy. My life or death seriousness seemed at odds with people’s playfulness.

“I could be killed for this, how can you think we’re the same when you’re doing this ‘for fun’?”

But we are the same. We have the same enemies. We are often exposed to the same struggle. And we are all targets of the same rhetoric. To dare to transgress on gender roles and expectations and rules is…the same story.

I was still trans when I crossdressed as a “joke” as a teen. If I never got the chance to do shit ironically, I don’t think I ever would have learned that it felt good.

I think of elderly trans women picking out their first dress to be buried in, I think of old haggard butches who use all male terms and lament “ah if I had been born a boy,” I think of every cis person I came out to who said “hey we ALL have thoughts like that” to confront me.

I think you’re right. I think WE (transgressively gendered people) do. What a terrible shame many more never get to explore it. What a shame to never get to try or to let fear of regret stop you entirely.

What luck to have gotten to explore my gender so throughly. Twice!

There will always be assimilationists, cis AND trans. But every transgressive person is my sibling. Crossdressers and drag kings and queens. Impersonators. People doing it for the bit. Trans folks of all genders. Cis+, “cis” and cis folks breaking rules. Intersex folks no matter how simple or complex their relationship to gender.

All the closeted people left to writhe in the discourse and fall mercy to assimilation AND exclusion.

Thank you Kate for giving us a term for all of us: Outlaws.

[genderkoolaid]

An upcoming main cast character in a story I'm working on is a multigender boygirl, and I'd really like to (as with all my writing) make sure my characterisations and writing reflect and represent real experiences as much as possible. I've also started asking other multigender folks so I can get an even better pulse on it than just my own experiences and knowledge, so - the question.

What sort of internal experiences would you like to see expressed in the writing of multigender characters, especially boygirls?

Thank you so much for asking!!!

Some general things I'd enjoy seeingI

In general, I'd love to see the different ways people conceive of their genders. There are so many labels, now and and throughout time- I like boygirl, but also manwoman and androgyne. Some people used to use "bisexual" as a description of gender. And multigender people often have such diverse ways of seeing their genders & the way their genders interact. If one of someone's genders technically aligns with their AGAB, some might feel partially cis and some might see that gender as equally trans. I think it would be lovely to see multigender characters who are really deep and complex and feel like a full person, and also have their genders considered a meaningful part of them.

Multigender sexuality, if it makes sense to incorporate it into the story. It's something that gets very heavily policed (and I personally have had to deal with the trauma of having mine policed) and I'd love to see some represention of what it's like to have multiple sexualities/labels. There's also the complicated topic of relationships, and how multigender people interact with those. There's concerns of your partner/s being comfortable with your genders, and being respectful of them. A couple people on that other post made the good point that multigender people aren't depicted as desirable partners. At least some of us worry if we could ever be desirable, because we fear our multigenderedness makes us too complicated and strange for people to actually consider as partners. & on a less sad note, there's also how different people describe their relationships; spouse? wifesband? boygirlfriend?

Atypical medical transitions! There's still not enough awareness of how genderqueer transitions can look. I, personally, would enjoy seeing a character who is also multigender and salmacian, (although salmacians can be any gender), especially because it's so rarely heard of by people outside of porn. But you could also use stuff like different ways of doing HRT, like SERMs & other stuff (can't be fucked to find links rn but if anyone wants to add atypical HRT methods go ahead)

The daily ins-and-outs of presentation, pronouns, and names. I'm someone who changes their presentation pretty regularly, who sometimes prefers different pronouns, and generally prefers different names based on the dominant gender/s of that day. I also tend to crossdress; I dress much more femme when I'm a man and much more butch when I'm a woman, although I always stay androgynous. Some people may be gender conforming for one or all of their genders, some people may not vary their presentation at all!

Related to above: the struggle of everyday binarism. you are surrounded, especially as androgynes, by the forced choice between genders, especially male and female (just by virtues of those being the most discussed and compared). People expect you to be able to fall in one, OR maybe to fall in male, female, or neutral- but ime people generally don't think about you falling in multiple. It's an issue on things like forms that ask you to choose just one gender, or using bathrooms. It can be daunting to speak up about your experience as any gender, both because it might cause people to view you exclusively as that gender, and because you worry people will discount your experiences because you are multigender. People often don't think of us as fully any of our genders, in comparison to monogender people. You may not want to include discrimination in your story, but if you choose to I would enjoy it because I'm the kind of person who prefers stories that tackle those issues to ones where they don't exist.

Shapeshifting. I feel like it's a near universal genderfluid desire. Absolute ideal body situation tbh

If you have any other questions about multigender characters I'd be happy to answer them :)

[bimdraws]

The issue with being "exact" with language is that language itself isn't exact, unless you speak entirely in scientific language which most of us can't or don't use in general conversation.

I am a gay man(ish), I am attracted to men, but some non-binary people are transmasc, and some trans women don't pursue physical transitions. If I'm attracted in any way to either of those, does that mean I am invalidating their gender by calling myself gay? Should I call myself bisexual/m-spec? Am I really attracted to men at all or just arbitrary social markers of manhood and/or masculinity?

Changing my label doesn't really work for me. The circumstances in which I would need to call myself m-spec are maybe 2% compared with the rest of my dating experience, and not once has it been a concern to the people I date because we're adults who understand it's none of our business what another person calls themselves.

I argue you don't have to change your labels in order to validate other people. Our use of language is generally more practical than it is technical and it's also personal. I see you as the gender you tell me, I'll use your prefered pronouns, I am in constant community with trans people and even started transitioning hormonally myself, I KNOW trans people are the gender we say we are. But attraction is an individual experience, sometimes exceptions happen, sometimes it changes, and I don't see why you would have to change an everyday label in order to account for potential exceptions or for the one woman you dated ever (it's also fine if you do btw).

My experience of sexuality is unique, and so is everyone else's, which is why I'm very much against trying to tell other people what they are. It's pushing a label on people who don't have a real use for it based on YOUR experience of sexuality, not mine.

Again, it's fine to be exact if that works for you, but it doesn't do the job for everyone. If I needed to be exact, I'd say I'm m-spec gay, uranic, homoflexible, which would still be an issue for a lot of people who don´t like microlabels and would require me to give little essays everytime I explain my sexuality, and if I said I was bisexual, I'd be invalidated by everyone who sees me dating men 99% of the time. I can't win naming myself after OTHER people's opinions on sexuality, so fuck it. I am a gay man, I am also non-binary, and that's the label I'm sticking with 'till I feel differently.

There's never gonna be a way of describing sexuality that works for every single person because language is limited like that, and that's is why we should attempt listening to people with unconventional labels instead of acting like our community isn't built on creating language for ourselves and dismantling prescriptive language.

An issue that is brought up is that if I'm not 100% closed off to people with even slightly different genders to binary male I should call myself bisexual, because if not I'm then opening a door for people to start pursuing others who are 100% closed off, that it's MY fault if a guy pursues a lesbian because he thinks he can "convince her" as if our niche, inside community discourse affected how straight people perceive us... as if the primary issue with that wasn't a violation of consent but the critical exercise of language I'm engaging in within my community.

TLDR: don't go around telling people what labels they should use because gender and sexuality are too complex to boil down to simple terminology that fits every single person.

[the-delta-quadrant]

people trying to gatekeep "conflicting" labels for multigender people only is not a take i ever expected to see but here we are.

like, you all can understand how a monogender trans guy can be a dyke but if he's a fagdyke your head explodes because he's not multigender?

you all can understand how a nonbinary person can be achillean but them being sapphillean blows your mind because they're monogender?

you all understand that both straight and gay are umbrella terms in a queer context but a monogender person identifying as a straight gay is too much?

talk about "supporting" "contradictory" labels.

it also all goes back to this idea that people think multigender always has to include male or female or both.

queer and especially trans and nonbinary people will have funky relationships to gender and orientation. trans and nonbinary people literally transcend gender. so many of us have experiences of being seen as a woman or a man or a failed woman or failed man and literally anything else under the sun. of course these things may become part of our identity. this is not and has never been exclusive to multigender people.

i'm a dyke because i failed at being a woman and i'm a fag because i failed at being a man, it's a fundamental part of my maverique experience. i also used to identify as lesbiveldian while considering myself a monogender maverique and later a monogender androgyne.

imagine trying to gatekeep the complexity that we all experience to one specific group, based on an exorsexist idea thereof.

[plutobie]

♡ Plutobie ♡

a very personal (but open for use with required credit) gender/term i made for myself when i realised there was nothing around that fit my experience. it is not a xenogender or neogender; it is its own gender with no umbrella other than trans or nonbinary.

Plutobie is intended to be used as a noun, ie; "I'm a plutobian." but can be combined with prefixes or suffixes or be made into an adjective, ie; "this gender is plutobian."

it comes from "Pluto," which symbolises regeneration, transformation, rebirth, courage, bravery, and the strength to overcome. -"bie" comes from Barbie, a toy which might symbolise childhood femininity.

Plutobie is supposed to represent the experience of being a trans man or trans masc being while still wanting one's past girlhood acknowledged and appreciated without misgendering. it represents struggling with transandrophobia (for lack of a single, defining term...) and the experiences that come with it as well as the too-strong dysphoria to identify with womanhood completely. to be a Plutobian is to be contradictory, relate to transfeminine people more than other transmasculine people, to heavily relate to the song "IDK If I'm a Boy" by Blue Foster, to cry over lost girlhood, and plenty of other personal experiences.

any pronouns can be used. to be a plutobian is to be masculine inherently, but to be a plutobian is to never be completely aware of every detail of this experience. (Yes, this definition is long and specific, but it is personal. This is a post-definition disclaimer <3)

♡

[ Image IDs for the images above:

transcriptions are top to bottom, left to right.

Image 1: A seven stripe flag with colours in this order, from top to bottom: berry red, light pink, lavender, light blue, lavender, light pink, and berry red. The stripes are wavy. There is a berry red pluto symbol outlined in light pink in the center of the flag.

Image 2 is a copy of Image 1, except there is no symbol in the center.

Image 3: A seven stripe flag with colours in this order, from top to bottom: berry red, light pink, lavender, light blue, lavender, light pink, and berry red. The stripes are straight. There is a berry red pluto symbol outlined in light pink.

Image 4 is a copy of Image 3, except there is no symbol in the center.

End image ID. ]

Flag Colour Definitions:

[ Image ID:

a seven striped flag with straight stripes with colours in this order, from top to bottom: berry red, light pink, lavender, light blue, lavender, light pink, berry red. there is text on each stripe.

it reads:

"Berry Red - Love, Passion, & Relation to Music Light Pink - Childhood Femininity & Connection to Girlhood Lavender - Inherent Connection to Masculine Love Light Blue - Transmasculine Happiness & Peace Lavender - Inherent Connection to Masculine Love Light Pink - Childhood Femininity & Connection to Girlhood Berry Red - Love, Passion, & Relation to Music"

berry red stripes have text in a lavender colour, the light pink stripes have text in a dark pink colour, the lavender stripes have text in a blue colour, and the light blue stripe has text in a lavender colour. all text is outlined in a darker shade of the same colour as the text.

End image ID. ]

When using, please tag this blog or @bor-ous!

do not use if you're transandrophobic, against contradictory or complex labels (ie mspec gays/lesbians), radqueer/proship. if i dont like your use of this term/flag due to other boundaries, i will block or ask you to consider taking down the post. thank you!

[hadeantaiga]

A radfem argument that I would like to spend some time discussing is the idea that trans people "reinforce gender roles/stereotypes", or that we "reinforce gender" itself, and therefore we are reinforcing the patriarchy.o it to "prove" she was a "real woman".

To act like trans people, who come in a huge variety of presentations, genders, and sexes, are "reinforcing the gender binary / gender stereotypes / the patriarchy" shows a complete lack of understanding of who trans people are and what being trans is. It simplifies the trans experience to something binary and conforming, when many trans people exist outside the gender binary entirely and do not conform to any gender expectations whatsoever. From the trans side of things, it seems crazy anyone would ever accuse us of these things. We see every day how we are breaking out of the gender binary and defying gendered stereotypes.

But through the discussions I’ve had on here, I can see where some people get this idea from. For example, trans people often talk about the experiences we had that opened our eyes to the fact that we were trans. If one simplifies the trans experience down to moments like this with no further context, it can look like we are reinforcing the gender binary.

"I first thought I might’ve been trans when I tried on men's clothes for the first time and felt euphoria".

From a narrow point of view, this looks like the trans man is saying "wearing men's clothes makes you a man, and women cannot like wearing men's clothes". That is obviously not what trans people are saying. Trans folks are saying, "this incident was part of what made me aware I was transgender, but it is not the whole picture, and my gender is far more complex than my clothing preference”.

Being trans is not just about clothing or aesthetics, just how being butch is not just about clothing. Being butch means so much more to me than just my clothes, and that goes for all butches. I have seen butches describe butchness as a sort of gender identity all on its own. Some feel it is woman-adjacent; some butches are fully cis; some are butch and trans. It's a blurry label, and that's part of why I love it. Some butches go on T, too – and I’m one of them.

Another claim I'll see is folks trying to say that "trans people only transition because they think they can't do XYZ as a man/woman, so they must switch their gender to participate".

This is absolute nonsense, and if you talked to a trans person for longer than two seconds you'd realize this. Like in my case, I did my most macho thing (joining the Navy) while I was still a woman. I'm not on T because I want to do masculine things; I did them already! Me taking T after getting out of the Navy sort of throws that whole argument out the window.

---

I know binary trans people who completely pass and conform to gendered stereotypes are highly visible in media. And if that's your only exposure to trans people, then I get why you might think trans people as a whole "uphold gender stereotypes". But that is a tiny minority of who we are.

And furthermore, there's the fact that some of those trans people were forced to conform to gender roles to be classified as trans to access the care they needed. Many trans elders talk about how, if they’d had the language we have today, and the choices we have today, they would not have gone for a binary transition. So, to use these folks against the trans community is incredibly harmful.

Gender non-conformance and transness go hand-in-hand. Many of us are GNC. You need to listen to us, beyond the quips and the short quotable sentences that you can twist to make us look like we’re upholding gender roles, because when you actually listen and see who we are and what we do, you’ll realize we are actively breaking down gender roles every single day. We are active participants in feminism's fight against gender stereotypes!

We are gender liberators.

[gay-otlc]

I'm once again thinking about the "non men loving non men" phrase, and where does the man/non man line even get drawn?

I know gender doesn't exist as a linear spectrum, but since these people are unable to process gender complexity or multigenderness, let's envision gender as a number line from -10 (male) to 10 (female), with 0 being perfectly androgynous.

How far male is too male to be a lesbian? Are you only excluded if you're a -10 on this scale, and you're included if you're a -9.99999? Does the 0.00001 really make all that much difference? How are you going to determine whether someone is a -9.99999 on this scale versus a -10? If there's a number above -10 that's the cutoff for lesbian masculinity, where is that number? Is it anything below zero, any masculine-aligned enban? Or is it more like -5? Who decides this?

My brain works best in numbers, but another metaphor might be a pink to blue gradient, purple in the middle. Can you draw a line saying exactly where purple ends and blue begins?

Can you draw any line saying where nonbinary lesbian ends and straight trans man begins? Because spoiler alert, you can't, and if you try, you will end up excluding nonbinary lesbians.

The entire point of the initial "non men loving non men" definition was to be inclusive of nonbinary lesbians. Please listen when we tell you that using this label to police the lesbian community actually hurts us.

[blood-moon-night-coining]

Hi again! I asked on your other blog but I figure I'd restate for context/convenience: I'm researching a paper on xenogenders and queer online culture, and I'm just reaching out to some people in the community to ask about their identity, experiences, and anything they think I should know/should be included in the paper! :>

I’m someone who has a fairly complex identity, who I am I’ve taken years to understand but even than I still struggle to properly understand myself. It doesn’t help that since I am a system (P-DID), it can make it hard to process things! My sexuality for example, I am primarily attracted to woman (I’m neptunic) and would say exclusive, but, I have and am currently dating a man (and woman). I’m a complex person and it can be represented by my labels.

Also, just a fun little metaphor I like to use for xenogenders! Xenogenders can be used like keys, most will have a main house key (ie: trans, cis, Bigender, agender, etc!) and multiple other keys for things like doors within your house, boxes, sheds, etc. (these are the xenogenders). They technically are not necessary for every person but for those who feel more secure with, it can help make them feel secure about their state of being!

Some personal experience stuff I’ve had over my time, people tend to trash on things like micro labels, gender identifies, etc. a lot. Ive had people tell me I’m “lesbian but more complicated”, “xenogenders are racist” & “xenogenders promote gender stereotypes”, “Demi is just a normal relationship”, “Neos are too complicated and invalid” to name a few. Most of the time it comes from people who just don’t understand or who don’t want to understand.

I apologize if my thoughts are random and not really cohesive. If I need to clarify anything or write something again feel free to send another ask or just comment. Thank you so much for reaching out to me for this (technically you reached out to my other blog @redacted-coiner but eh)

[avelera]

hello! just dropping in to say I’m loving all your wonderful fics :) CLWM gives me such a feeling of..comfort?? with being butch & bisexual that i so rarely experience while reading & it’s been such a gift. the recent chapter made me wanna stand up & scream “yes!! that’s exactly what it feels like to be bi!!” their gender doesn’t change how u feel about a person u love just the.. shape of that attraction? if that makes sense? & I cant listen to never let me go without getting super emotional about GS, lol! anyways. ur fics have made many a gloomy day much brighter thank u for writing them :)

Thank you so much!! 😭 Definitely, “Come live with me” is a VERY bisexual story at its heart. It’s about Hob falling (deeper) in love with Dream (and vice versa) while navigating loving Dream in private as a man loving a man and in public as a man loving a “woman”, at least in the eyes of society. It brings with it a raft of complexity in that respect, sometimes I truly wrestle with even how to label everything that’s happening with Dream in terms of his sexuality, gender identity, and what pronouns to use, given he is a magical shapeshifter and an anthropomorphic personification and his exact experience can’t and never will be perfectly mirrored in the real world (is he bi? Pan? Genderqueer? Cis or trans male? He’s certainly living a trans male experience in public as Morfea but even that is complicated by the shapeshifting making all of it temporary for him, even as I see him as an entity with a stronger and preferred sense of having a predominantly male self as his choice of identity and pronouns, which Hob respects and indeed prefers, given it’s how he’s known and been in love with Dream the longest, and because as far as he can tell, it’s Dream’s preferred identity that he chooses when not under duress).

Whereas Hob, our POV character is in my mind, VERY comfortable in his gender and sexuality, having had plenty of time to truly experiment with it over the centuries, and as such firmly identifies as cis male and bisexual. He is so comfortable in his gender that he’s curious to experiment with having a “woman’s” body in the Dreaming just to see what it’s like but he is genuinely nervous about getting stuck that way because he’s happy and comfortable as he is, while also aware of the fact that not everyone is. (Language gets a little fiddly here, particularly given the fantasy elements, and I’m typing on my phone so forgive me for any terminology slippage and understand every use of “male/female, man/woman” is meant to be trans inclusive).

But yes, anyway! It’s meant to be a very gender/trans/sexuality positive fic and the deeper we go into how Hob and Dream live together and fall in love in this complex situation of being in a “het” marriage in public but being far more complex in private but shading towards m/m when given the choice, the more I’ve been sort of thinking about these elements and trying to bring that positivity to the foreground, like making sure there is also a trans male human character (John) as a reminder that the life Dream is living ISN’T just a fantasy this WAS a lived experience in the 1800s too, (“we have always been here” re: the queer experience) and making sure that it’s clear that John’s story is a happy one with no hidden “gotcha”s. And I think some of the importance of that for me IS as a bisexual cis woman (leaning somewhat towards “non practicing” cis woman/butch myself as well!) and exploring without necessarily answering what it’s like to love someone as much as Hob does Dream, both as a man and as a woman? It’s been a lovely experience and idea to explore so I’m always so pleased when people enjoy! Thank you!

[cock-holliday]

I have some thoughts about how the terms butch and femme get mishandled a lot. I think people need to stop pathologizing certain lesbian characteristics as "femme only" or "butch only". Why should only femmes get to wear dresses? Why should only butches get to wear cool jackets? I'm a femme. There's some butch fuckery going on but when the chips are down I'm a femme. And I will spend HOURS at axman surplus. They have so much cool shit!!! I like wearing suits! They make me feel powerful and sexy! And I love leather jackets! They make me feel like a badass! If we pigeonhole femmes into "delicate flower that can't do anything for themself and can only cook and clean and read and has to be the uwu smart one all the time and always looks flawless and exists only for butches and never other femmes" and then we pigeonhole butches into "they ONLY count as a butch if they have short hair and small boobs/bind and wear MANLY MEN clothes and wear ALUMINUM PAINT deodorant and GREASE THEIR HAIR and WORK OUT AT THE GYM ALL THE TIME and are only for femmes and never other butches" no. Stop it. You're reinventing the heteronormative gender binary and I will not stand for it. Shit like that is the reason why the times I do feel butch, I don't want to say it because I don't want to get pigeonholed into the "basically the man of the relationship." First it was AMAB/AFAB. Then it was TMA/TME. Now it's butch/femme. Stop reinventing the gender binary. That is not what these terms are for. Anyways reading through your blog and your posts about gender shit helped me form these thoughts that have been swirling around for a while into something coherent so yeah, feel free to comment on this, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Love your blog!

I mean really you hit the nail on the head. People love to cling to binaries like you said. Man/woman, AFAB/AMAB, TME (aka transmascs)/TMA (trans women as long as you agree with me and we’ll throw in the figurative transfemme who I’ve decided are interchangeable with trans women and by god if you deviate from that I will shit a brick), butch/femme, top/bottom. It’s tiring.

Labels are helpful to put words to your experiences. It helps you find more people like you. But they are supremely not rigid boxes and it’s annoying that queer people reinvent binaries, it’s disappointing when trans people do it. The most binary stereotypical Man trans guy is still evidence of the flexibility of the man/woman binary, must we continue to go “oh yes, that binary doesn’t count but this one does”?

It can be so irritating but then I meet he/him AFAB lesbians who make it very plain they are not men. I meet feminine women with thick full beards. I meet drag queens who have a hard time separating what’s performance and what’s gender. I meet the toughest bulldykes in the world sporting a taylor swift intensity level red lipstick. I meet folks who look like the most stereotypical Man in the world, whose gender is so complex it makes me rethink my own. I meet people who use it/its. I meet people who are systems and the different members have different genders and it is such a genuine and authentic expression of themselves that I’m a bit in awe. I look at all these people and the parts of myself I thought were too messy or didn’t belong under categories I liked and go “oh, we can just do whatever, huh?”

Anyway, as a butch that for a number of reasons “”””does it wrong”””, cosigned.

[obsidianflow]

The Major Issues about anti Mspec Lesbian debacle

SO I’m a little insane and i decided I’d make an entire essay about this because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to sleep!

I’ll preface this by saying that this isn’t room for Anti Mspec Lesbians to get in my notifs and send me shit like ‘ummm actually you’re wrong’ because this is literally just for me anyways, just putting it here so people can see and possibly share thoughts, idk. If you send me anything about how wrong I am that’s really short I’m just going to block you, as a fair warning lmao

1: The whole ‘Lesbian means Non-men loving Non-men’ argument

Now I dont think its hard to see that this is transphobic, but I’ll explain anyways because I like explaining! Now first off, the major thing that’s face value. Non-men is just. A new way to shove nonbinary people back into the binary (Which we all know is the opposite of the entire fucking point) This ‘non-men’ and its counterpart just completely ignores multigendered and fluid gendered people! As well as just.. People with more complex relationships with their masculinity/femininity than just ‘not a man’ and ‘a man’.

And another thing not relating to transphobia now, definitions of these labels _will _vary from person to person. That’s the beauty of queerness, we all define it differently for ourselves! And that’s _okay. _Queerness isn’t, and never has been, about being understandable. Its about comfort, the labels are just there to find other people that are similar to you, and have a community! We’re here for a good time, not laying down and being as understandable to the cishets as we can. Whether or not they can understand us isn’t going to change their feelings about us, a majority of the time. They just say ‘its too weird’ as a way to make fun of us, not an attempt to understand or learn or listen. They don’t care either way.

2: Men can’t be lesbians

I get it if this one feels a little weird, we’ll get through it.

Now, the issue with this is that this is just going to keep queer people out of their own spaces! This doesn’t acknowledge multigendered, genderfluid, people who identify as a man for their own safety, as well as trans men who just don’t feel comfortable identifying as straight (Which I don’t blame them, because a large part of our community demonizes straight people, who would want to be the butt of their peers’ jokes?)

And that’s only a few examples, there’s plenty of experiences I’m sure that aren’t encompassed here. But that’s the thing! There are 8 billion of us on this planet, we’re never going to document every single sexuality experience out there. In general, this is meant to exclude the ‘enemy’, which a lot of people have conveniently made the Male Gender their scapegoat, but it more often than not just excludes other queer people. Which, we understand excluding other queer people isn’t the best idea, right?

3: Men are going to infiltrate our spaces and harm us

Men who feel like they can ‘fix’ lesbians are going to infiltrate your spaces whether you like it or not, but they’re not going to identify as a lesbian to go about doing that. Have you ever heard a story of a man actually doing this to groom lesbians? Because I sure as hell haven’t, and I’m always open to hearing stories about stuff like that.

But unlike that what if, I have heard stories of ‘Cisgender’ men identifying as lesbians and subsequently finding out they’re trans at some point afterwards (or even stories of ‘cisgender’ men identifying as lesbians despite being openly trans!) I’ve Met people from these stories, I’ve talked to them about those stories! There’s an entire phenomena about it at this point, it happens a lot more than you’d think. 

When you base your identity off of being hurt, and only ever stay in that hurt, never look out to better things, you’re just going to harm others. It’s happened time and time again, I’ve seen so many communities that have this same issue. The term Lesbian and generally any other sexuality labels should be based in Loving, not hate of some identity group you’ve been hurt by.

If your sexuality is impacted by your trauma, and other factors of being hurt, that’s okay! What I’m saying is we shouldn’t be morphing entire identity labels to be based only in hate of their abusers, when the original definitions were always based in love and only love. It seems like a waste of a good thing, honestly

4: Just make a new label

I hate to tell you this bud, but making a new label isn’t really going to work for everyone when there’s already a label that’s perfectly applicable. Why would you make a new term if one already works? The only reason I think would be to avoid hate from people who dislike the label you’re using, but that’s more of ‘avoiding getting rocks thrown at you’ than being happy with yourself and defining yourself comfortably. And it’s not even really something you share with absolutely everyone, either. It’s for you primarily. Why should you be conforming to someone else’s ideals just so they’re comfortable, when opposed to you being even more ‘weirdly’ queer than them.

5: I’m not comfortable with someone identifying this way

That’s fine! You don’t need to be comfortable with their identity. But that doesn’t mean its inherently harmful to your identities, that doesn’t make their identity inherently lesbophobic. In general this is an issue that a lot of white queers have, automatically assuming anything that makes them uncomfortable is an attack on them. Not everything is against you just because you’re discomforted by it!!!

6: This is a new label coined by someone on tumblr in 2016

Well my first question, if you’re seriously saying this, is ‘Have you ever actually gone looking for the history about this label? Have you ever researched this label?” Because if you did do any research, you’d probably find that bi dykes have existed since the 80s

I use these posts as a general just place to look at some history stuff, just some stuff I’ve found myself! They include sources, and more information.

<Post 1> <Post 2>

I’d also like to add that if you’re going to argue history, the original definition of lesbian is much closer to the modern definition of sapphic than the modern definition of lesbian. Lesbian meant the queer attraction to women, or generally Not Adhering to Female Gender Roles. It’s very different!

7: Lesbians need to separate from Bisexuals

Yikes. Never got over the lesbian separatism movement, did we?

8: I don’t understand it

That’s fine. You don’t need to understand it! It’s complex, it’s different, it’s strange. Of course you’re not going to fully understand it. That’s okay. All we’re asking here is you open your eyes a bit, and try to be more open towards different experiences. Don’t give into the stupid echo chamber of ‘X is phobic’ without any complex explanation into it. Topics like these that have so much nuance can’t be explained so easily, that in itself feels like more erasure than the mlm flag being similar to the sunset lesbian flag.

Non rebuttals

I haven’t even finished with everything either, because it still goes deeper than just that.

A majority of the people I’ve seen who are anti mspec lesbians are white, which plays a very major role in the whole thing. It just goes on where white cis women are taken more seriously than black trans women, and it all cycles out of control. And the majority of mspec lesbians I’ve met have been POC, my own partner is a POC mspec lesbian! I think at the very least if your side is majority white and the other side is majority POC, there’s something wrong there, and you should be thinking harder about the whole issue. At least start by trying to hear the other side’s argument!

This is just history repeating it’s self, honestly. Queer history has been demolished because of homophobia time and time again, so we don’t know the history and are doomed to repeat it. It happened with trans people, it’s happened with nonbinary people, it’s happened with pretty much every queer identity under the sun. We find a new scapegoat and run off with hating on them, despite us all being queer together. The cycle of hatred is more than a little annoying at this point. Everyone preaches about being so inclusive, and in the same breath rants about mspec lesbians being an issue. That isn’t inclusive, if you’re wondering.

A very major thing I think the Anti Mspec Lesbian side needs to realize is that you can’t make such bold claims as another queer person being against your identity without at least hearing their argument first and genuinely listening. You have to make an effort to listen to them, and deconstruct your own thinking to see if it truly is such. We recognize that people shouldn’t be put in jail without a fair trial, we should probably extend that to each other outside of the courthouse! I personally don’t think someone putting an identity label on themself is phobic of another identity, I think it’s a little absurd that even came around as a concept. It feels like reaching for straws, really.

In general, this doesn’t even go over everything either. Throughout this entire thing, all the arguments I went through, white supremacy is riddled throughout them. The need to have things be understandable, the need to separate, etc. It all very easily comes down being white supremacy.

Anywhoo! That was long. If you have any thoughts, feel free to add on, but here’s my essay