#nonbinary writing

[elfboyeros]

🧷Hemlock🧷🖼Drew🖼📇Blythe📇💼Caelyn💼🦯Gwendolyn 🦯

[aspectersthoughts]

“Lately, I’ve felt like a stranger. Whenever this happens, I’m not sure what to do. I see myself in pictures and in the mirror, but that isn’t me. I feel like I’m pretending to be someone I’m not all over again, and it makes me want to die. I wish I didn’t look the way I did. Maybe then I wouldn’t feel as if I were just visiting.”

- the thoughts of a struggling non-binary.

[genderqueerdykes]

i don't care how uncomfortable you are around cis men, queer cis men still need places to go, and sometimes, those spaces will be shared with yours. disabled and neurodivergent queer men and queer men of color especially need a place to go. the queer community isn't the "fuck cis men" community. that is the rad fem community. if you think cis men and people who read as cis men are inherently "too scary" or shouldn't be allowed in queer spaces, you joined the wrong community.

[cityelf]

this poem is about being nonbinary.

[cardentist]

people on twitter freaking the hell out because rebecca sugar drew a comic of pearl and greg having a messy situationship in the aftermath of rose dying wasn't on my 2024 bingo card if I'm being honest

even Less so because the thing they're apparently mad about is that the nonbinary alien rock was supposed to be a lesbian (as if there's anything wrong with a nonbinary alien rock being bisexual, Or that lesbian can't have a situationship with a man without still being a lesbian on the other side.)

anyways, may take on it is: you don't have to consider any of rebecca sugar's sketches "canon," because it's not actually in the source material. rebecca may have a strong influence on how the fandom sees the characters but it does Not actually change the show. so getting worked up about it in the first place is ridiculous.

That Said, it kinda works with whatever they had going on in the show if I'm being honest

[gor3sigil]

Before starting T, when I socially transitionned, I was surrounded by radical feminists who saw masculinity as gross and inherently evil, something to avoid, something to make fun of, something to destroy. The other transmascs in my friend group, sometimes, told me that they didn’t knew if they really were non-binary or if they just were scared shitless of saying “I am a man”. Because they saw this as a betrayal to their younger self who had been SAd and abused.

I saw many of my masc friends and trans men around me hate themselves, not outing themselves as men because it would imply so so much, it was like opening the Pandora Box. Even when we were just together, talking about our masculinity was always coated with bits like “I know we’re the privileged ones but…��, “I don’t want to sound like I have it bad but…”, “Women obviously have it worse, but last time…” and we were talking about terrible traumas we experienced while taking all the precautions in the world in the case the walls were a crowd of people in disguise waiting to get us if we didn’t downplay the violence we faced, or like crying and being upset and being traumatized and afraid and scared and to say it out loud would make us throw up the needles we were forced to swallow every second of every day living in our skin.

Most of us weren’t on T yet, some of us were catcalled every day and harassed in the streets or in abusive relationships nobody seemed to care to help them get out of because they were “strong enough” to do it by themselves.

I was using the gender swap face app and cried for ours when I saw my father looking back at me through the screen. The idea of transforming, of shedding into a body that would deprive me of love, tenderness, and safety, was absolutely terrifying. I knew I couldn’t stay in this body any longer because it wasn’t mine, but I also knew that if I was going to look like my dad, my brother, my abusers, it would be so much worse.

5 years later and I’m almost 2 years on T, and almost 2 months post top surgery.

I ditched my previous group of friends. I was bullied out of my local trans community. But let me tell you how free I am.

I was scared that T would break my singing voice: it made it sound more alive than ever.

I was scared that T would make me less attractive: it made me find myself hot for the first time in my life.

I was scared that T would make me gain weight: it did. But the weight I put on is not the weight I used to put on by binging and eating my body until I forgot that it even existed. It’s the weight of my body belonging to me, little by little. The wolf hunger for life.

I won’t tell you the same story I see everywhere, the one that goes “I started going to the gym 8 times a week, I put on some muscles, I started a diet and now I look like an action film actor”, in fact if you took pictures of me from 5 years ago vs now I’d just have more acne, I’d have longer hair and still look like I don’t know what to do with myself when I take selfies.

But the sparkle in my eyes, my smile, tell the whole story way better than this long ass stream of words could ever.

I want to say some things that I wish someone told me before starting medically transitionning.

It’s okay to take your time. It’s your body, it’s your journey, if you don’t feel comfortable taking full doses and want to go slow, the only voice you need to listen to is your own. Do what feels right.

If you feel overwhelmed, it’s okay to take a break, it’s okay to ask for support.

Trans people are holy. Everyone is. You didn’t lose your angel wings when you came out because you want to be masculine. You are not excluded from the joy of existence, from being proud of yourself, from being sad, from being scared, from being angry. The emotions and feelings you allowed yourself to feel while processing what you experienced when you grew up as a girl and was seen as a woman are still as valid as before. Nobody can take that from you. If someone tries to, don’t let them.

It’s perfectly normal to grieve some things you were and had before you started to transition, like your high soprano voice or even your chest. Hatching is painful. You can find comfort in things that don’t feel right, so making the decision to change can be incredibly scary and weird and you deserve to be heard and supported through this. Wanting top surgery doesn’t make the surgery less intense, less terrifying, less painful to recover from. When it becomes too much you have the right to take a break and take some deep breaths before going on.

You don’t have to have a radical, 180° change for your transition to be acceptable or valid or worthy of praise. Look at how far you’ve come already. It doesn’t have to show, you’re not made to be a spectacle, you’re human and it is your journey.

Oh, and last thing, you know when some people say “Oh this trans person has to grow out of the cringy phase where you think that you can write essays about being trans or transitionning or just their experience because it’s weird” ? If you ever hear this or see this online, remember all the people whose writing you read and, even if they were not professional writers, helped you more than any theorists did ? If you want to write, do it. It won’t be a waste. It can help people. Or it won’t, and even then, if it helped you, that’s enough.

Love every of my trans siblings, take care of yourselves. You deserve the world.

[whereserpentswalk]

Reblog to get the creature to come to you. Like to give them a little gift of some sort.

[nekhcore]

HEY YOU!

Yeah, you! Are you trans? Do you like reading books? Or watching movies?

Do you like media about trans men/transmasculine characters but don't know where to find it?

That's sooo crazy because I have this little spreadsheet I'm working on where I'm trying to document all media with protagonists/major characters who are FTM or transmasculine.

The spreadsheet currently has 400+ entries spread across the following categories:

Books

Manga

Memoirs and non-fiction

Movies

TV Shows

Graphic novels / Comics

Webcomics

Audio dramas

Books and movies are also sorted by:

Which character is trans (MC, love interest, antagonist, etc)

If the trans character is POC

The trans character's sexuality (Because I saw lots of transhet guys sad about only being able to find gay romances)

If the author/actor is also trans (if we know for sure)

It's free to use, and free to add to as well! Editing permissions are on, and I check on the spreadsheet every now and then to make sure everything is in order and to clean up.

If you know something that isn't on the list, please add it! You don't have to fill in every single column, but fill it to the best of your abilities.

If you don't want to use the big ass long link below, you can also use: bit.ly/FTM-protags

I made this because I want it to be a community resource. So even if you're not a trans guy or transmasculine person, please reblog!

[puppyboibutch]

Oh, you actually like when I’m a little bit mean to you? Aren’t you just pathetic! It’s adorable, really, how desperate you are for me to bully you. Come on, say it. Tell me how much you want— need— me to bully you. How much it affects you. You need it to get off, don’t you? How absolutely pathetic. Need a big, scary butch to remind you how weak you are? Awww, then beg.

[paperbackribs]

"Hey, it's 'they/them,' dickheads," Steve interrupts exasperatedly.

Modern non-binary Eddie who is out but the kids just don't really let it sink in. Don't think about how Eddie increasingly flinches every meet-up as they exclaim during the campaign, calling out that 'he' has said this and that about the current monster in their tracks.

Steve though. Steve, feeling a little stupid the first time Eddie had haltingly told him about why it was so important to them. That the euphoria of 'woman' or 'man' was actually reserved for the fizzing feeling of rightness when gender was mixed and erased for them.

Steve, who felt the cogs in his head rubbing slowly together but had fixed the idea firmly in his heart--for the person in his heart--interrupts as the kids draw up their last play.

"They," Steve cuts in, firm and with a gimlet stare at the boys who frown up at him in confusion.

"They what?" Mike asks in exasperation, clearly expecting Steve to stutter and back away despite Steve never having backed away from a fight in the entire time the two guys have known each other.

"Who what?" Dustin mutters absently as he adjusts his gold count. "We're nearly done." He licks the tip of his pencil before returning to his count of the loot.

Lucas eyes the hardening stare on Steve's face, flicking over to Eddie's suddenly wide gaze and pokes Dustin to look up, "I don't think it's that."

Mike sighs at Steve's hands falling to his hips, recognising the chastening posture even as he doesn't understand why. Eddie though. Their expression falls from wide surprise to understanding and something with a touch of awe that Steve doesn't quite understand from his friend.

"They, you dickheads," Steve repeats, lips pursed. "Eddie is not a 'he.' They're not 'her.' They are 'they.' They are 'them.' It's not hard. I literally used it like a million times already today."

Steve sniffs into the air and Mike scowls, "It just happens; Christ, Steve."

The light dims in Eddie's eyes, but he nods gamely, voice even and-- Steve can tell--deliberately light, "It's no big deal, easy to do. Don't worry about it, Stevie."

"But it hurts you," Steve insists.

Mike's eyes widen in surprise and Lucas winces.

Eddie hurriedly shakes their head with a forced laugh, "It's not like I've not gone by 'he' for nearly my entire life." They wink at Dustin, who had raised his head suddenly.

"You did a thing," Dustin says slowly, putting down his pencil next to a dragonborne figurine and miming an exaggerated wince and flinch. "Two hours and--" he checks his Casio watch, "thirteen minutes ago when the orcs invaded. I said our dungeon master was a right man of a bastard."

Eddie softens, genuine amusement lighting their face, "I'm used to you lot cussing me out, Henderson."

"But it wasn't the swearing," Lucas says, remorse filling his voice even as he pinches Mike. The other kid yelps but quietens when Lucas leans in, heatedly whispering and Mike goes red then white in the face.

"Oh shit, I forgot."

Teeth gritted, Eddie repeats, "It's not a big deal. Now--"

"Okay," Steve interrupts again, pulling a seat over to sit next to Eddie, thighs almost touching, "then it's no skin off our nose if we start practising for you, right?"

He turns to the boys, expression pleasant for the first time, "Eddie said it's no big deal, are they right?"

Mike blinks three times before pointing to his character sheet, "Eddie should have given me experience points for the giant spider but they stiffed me."

In an uncanny echo, Eddie blinks at Mike for his word choice.

"They were right," Dustin argues. He points at Lucas, "He figured out the clue and stabbed it--" he turns his finger to Eddie, "--and so they made the right call."

Eddie blinks again with eyes that look a little moist while Lucas continues with the cues given to him by his friends. He makes a loud boinking sound, "Sucks to be you. Hey, Eddie, can I have the spear these two bozos found?"

And with that, the sound of squabbling fills the room.

Steve looks on contentedly as Eddie leans back in their throne, eyeing the boys as they confidently back the adventurers into a corner while teasing the idea of a new battle simultaneously.

Steve leans back into his small frame of a chair too, a smile playing at the sides of his mouth as he listens to his favourite people love each other in their own special ways.

[genderqueerdykes]

im sorry rad fems sold you the lie that butches are only Non Threatening (TM) cis women with short hair who wear T-shirts and jeans with a carabiner, but the reality of the situation is a lot of butches are trans, genderqueer, physically imposing, big, male impersonators, hairy (especially including facial hair), sweaty, muscular, "ugly" and/or fat. some butches are into extreme body modification. some went bald. some are body builders. some are transfem butches who don't wanna overperform womanhood, take estrogen, or medically transition. some butches start testosterone strictly to feel more like a butch. some butches pass as cis men, and some need to do so in order to feel like their butch selves. soft butches are great, but that's not the "One Right Way" to be butch. the butches i'm attracted to would make a rad fem scream and cry and piss themselves on the floor.

[nonbinarynow]

Do you ever notice how the majority of nonbinary characters are just straight up not human beings? The majority of our non-binary rep is inhuman, which shows how binary society still views us as a literal societal impossibility despite us being here, real people, on earth with them.

I feel like this feeds into the whole thing of enben being seen as like "eldritch horrors" or "other worldly." Even though it might be claimed to be only in jest, it still displays how we are implicitly seen as a human impossibility because of the pervasiveness of the gender binary in society. It's taught to us as "natural" and how "humans have always functioned" despite our modern bourgeois, patriarchal, white-supremacist gender binary originating as a tool of colonialism. That was very recent in anthropological history. (Also note how capitalism is intertwined with binary supremacy here.)

When you delve into this it's wild. It starts surface level but it reveals the core exorsexism and classism of the capitalist society for one, but how it permeates into jokes ("I can identify as an attack helicopter!" "Nonbinary people are little frogs/eldritch beings!"), representation (most nonbinary representation is of inhuman characters) and our legal status (inexistent, which means no civil rights or legal protection of any kind.)

[inkskinned]

okay if you're really cool about things, i can be honest with you. before you read further, decide if you're a girl's girl. if you're cool and actually cool or like not cool.

men don't talk in my book because i was fuckken tired of the way they're the center of every fucking story. i was tired of how every story takes a moment to let them talk. men can shut up for literally one fucking book.

unfortunately not everyone is cool. professionally what i usually say is i didn't want to add violence to the world. the only men in my book are abusers, so they don't get to talk. they don't get to take up space. they ruined my life, they don't get to have their words echo anymore.

because like, yeah! you find practically any story about a person surviving trauma and... there's a man at the center. men are often rescuing us from these things. a "good man" is always standing around, being a good man, proving to the victim that good men are the real men. that her experience was unique rather than universal.

the redacted text has not been taken well by all of my early readers. there is this weird, crouching growl that keeps occurring with men-of-a-certain-age. why don't we hear his side of the story?

when i sat down to write everything that happened to me, i couldn't look at the frank brutality of my abuser's words on a page and think to myself: i actually let him speak like that. i had to redact his words from the manuscript. i then left it redacted. no victim is going to read this book and hear the person who hurt them. it is a book for the victims to speak. abusers shut up challenge, forever. for eternity.

my father once told me, chuckling, i should just have a page of redaction where i let the man just finally talk. it is funny to joke about how we should make a whole page in my book about a man that hurt me. this was not the only time someone commented - it feels like you're hiding things. how do i know you're actually a victim if he doesn't get to speak?

there are books where women aren't even present. i even genuinely like some of those books. like, who doesn't like the hobbit?

i keep running into people defending this imaginary man. the default narrative is so true to some people that they will defend any man, just by virtue of the assumption - "if he's acting like that, you had to push him." certain people need definitive proof that you didn't accidentally make your partner into an abuser. they need to decide if you deserved it, because they want to be able to judge you.

which makes sense, i guess, from a hind brain perspective. if you can figure out "why" someone was cruel, you can protect yourself against it. if you defend the bully, the bully might side with you. i don't really know their explanation for feeling this about a character in a book. trust me, i wrote the guy. he is not going to protect you.

i guess i just - there was a time in my life where i desperately wanted anyone to defend me. where i could have really used someone saying holy shit are you okay instead of what did you say to make him act like that to you.

instead, over dinner, a friend-of-a-friend i just met is pouring herself wine. i heard you wrote a book, she says. she gives me the kind of chilly smile i associate with knives. i heard it's unfair to men.

[t1oui]

awkward jason grace. jason grace who speaks more like a politician than a teenager. jason grace who secretly beats himself up long after he and piper break up not because he wants her back, but because he thinks he's supposed to want her back. jason grace who becomes best friends with nico di angelo. nico who isn't straight. nico whose internalized homophobia reminds jason of himself, even though he's straight.

jason grace who isn't straight. jason grace who might not even be cis, but who is too busy focusing on leo's curls and his smile and his stupid jokes to think too hard about that, at least not right now. jason grace who doesn't understand sex and who doesn't want to. jason grace who is the least cisallohet member of the seven, and who learns to love himself after spending years not knowing how.

[whereserpentswalk]

Reblog to receive your transformation, look under the cut to find out what it feels like to transform.

Vampire: You can feel it, slowly changing you since you were first bitten by that creature. You felt stronger at first, not needing to eat, not needing to sleep. It was like the burdens of a human form were lifted from you. The only thing you needed was to drink blood, which isn't that hard to come by. Then the physical transformations began, your body becoming slenderer and more androgynous, until soon you barely are recognizable. One day you wake up and your eyes are pure black, slowly your mouth grows sharp teeth, and special joints and seams in your flesh that allow you to open it into a massive mess of fangs and teeth but close it back up into something humanoid if you want it to. As the last of your humanity goes away, your sex characteristics and body hair entirely disappears, leaving you feeling wonderfully smooth. Perhaps in the past this body would be disturbing to you, you barely look like yourself, but now, looking at yourself and feeling so much more confident, this just feels like you, like what you are meant to be.

Incorporeal: You've lost yourself. You can't feel anything. No skin, no blood, no organs. You can only really sense the vague nature of the room your spirit is inhabiting. If you want to move you just think of yourself as going to that location, and if you want to pick something up you just think of yourself as lifting it. Even your appearance is no more than a sort of hologram, able to be changed at but a thought. You feel strangely comfortable this way. Nothing can hurt you now. It takes a bit of time, you have to focus on how you look a bit to look in a way that feels really you, but it eventually feels way more like you then anything in your old body did. It's weird, your old form just felt like a vessel that you needed, but in leaving it you feel entirely free, like you just don't need that type of body anymore. You look at your old body, lying dead upon the floor, and you can't help but know that that just isn't you anymore.

Lycanthrope: It was slow harnessing the changes. The werewolf who bit you didn't tell you much when she passed on her curse. It's something you can work will, you slowly figured out how to harness small changes, modular yet more modular as time passes on. You can just give yourself the eyes, or ears, or teeth, or feet, if you need to by now. Decide exactly what is wolf and what is human. It's more normal not that you realize how fluid your body is, that every part is just a single state that part can be in and not it's permanent fate. You can choose how much of a wolf you are at any time and that's fine and normal now. And sometimes you like fully being a wolf, like how it feels to run on all fours, how it feels to taste meat freshly on your teeth, how it feels to howl at the moon. You also like being a full human at other times, especially now that that doesn't constrain you anymore. Most of the time you're just something else though. Most of the time you're just you, not wolf or human but something your own.

Cyborg: You can feel parts of your body being cut away. You don't know why but it doesn't bother you as much as you thought it would. Your legs being painlessly sliced off, those legs that hurt when you walked on them. You can feel your torso having it's organs slowly drained out of it, no more stomach pain as you have no more stomach, no more shortness of breath as your lungs become medical waste. Your fat and muscles and bone are cut from your body, leaving your body type null. A mask of sorts is closed over your skull as the skin of your face, a face you were once stuck with for your entire life, is finally taken away. And in your discarded body parts place new mechanical parts are added, and these parts are finally your own, you picked out the designs, you control exactly how they look, the art style that your new body will be drawn in, the form your form will be able to take. And if there's anything you dislike, it can always be replaced, you can't be trapped in your body anymore, and you can't be hurt by it now.

Melted: You can feel your new form, slowly writhing like the slimes you felt before did. You have no distinct parts, no bones, no limbs, no organs. All you have is the form. It feels weird, you see and feel so much differently now it can barely feel like seeing or feeling at all. It's like playing with goo in your hands, but you don't have hands anymore. Slowly but surely, you sculpt yourself a new appearance, allowing your body to be something to thrive in instead of just something to survive within. You can't control your color but everything else is up to you. It's like sculpting, even limbs and heads and eyes are all metaphors when it comes to this new universal substance that is your form. You're not sure how others will see you when you're something so strange, but you like what this means for yourself, at least for now.

Flight: Your arms have slowly been stretched out, each of your fingers longer than your entire arm once was on both hands, and this strange tight skin between them. Your body is strong in some places, but weirdly skinny in others, it all feels so different, so new. Your feet have been changed to work more like hands, now that your arms can't be used to grasp, and walking is no longer as much of a requirement for you. You feel weird, like everything is there, but it's hard to see how it all fits together. Still, now that you do get to fly it's wonderful, seeing the ground below you, seeing the sky above you, feeling so free while you're completely in the air, seeing how impressed everyone is looking at you doing that. Maybe it was worth it. Despite how much it takes getting used to you don't dislike how any of it feels, and despite what some people might think of it, it feels so nice to be able to just go through the air like that without anything restraining you anymore. You wouldn't go back at the very least.

Mind upload: You can't feel anything. But you can see, the image of what you'd expect a computer monitor to display take up the totality of your vision. You can't feel a mouse or keyboard or anything, but you can move the cursor as much as you once could move limbs. If you hadn't asked for this it would seem like the worst of punishments, but this was your desire. You can look at any website you want, and no longer do you have to worry about time, about food, about sleep. You can contact anyone online just as you once did, without any breaks. The mortal world is no longer your worry.

Limbs become longer: You know you won't be like the other giants; you'll be somewhat in-between, you're not sure if you are thankful of that fact or not. It's a lot to deal with either way. You can feel you skin and bone stretching oddly, your arms and legs doubling then tripling in their length. It hurts but you can think of all the ways you won't be human anymore. You won't fit into most spaces; you'll need certain accommodations. But you still want this despite everything that it implies. It feels strange when your torso changes, with your limbs it's just bone that's moving, but with this you can feel your organs extending and changing. Too late to change things now. You wonder how people will see you? Will they be scared? Maybe that's what you want from them now?

Pyromancy: You can feel the burning inside you now. Even when you don't focus on it in any way it's in you, your warmth, your blood always hot, the feeling with every breath that you could shoot out fire. Other people with powers need to learn how to extend them to be actually useful, not you, you had to learn how to keep yours under control. It just feels right, to be able to use fire, to feel the fire as part of your body whenever you pass by any. You find yourself fidgeting with it easily, letting the fire move alongside you, because it's just so natural. You'll light up a bit in your hands, or around your face, in the middle of conversation. It doesn't burn you anymore, it feels good, it feels better than almost anything else you've felt in your life to feel fire on your body now. A few people are afraid, but you try to keep yourself calm. Even so, it feels so good to let it burst out of you, to shoot balls of fire into the air, or breath it from your mouth, it's hard to go a long time without doing something like that. It's not just something you have but it's part of you, it's part of you that was always meant to be there perhaps.

Frog: You slowly feel yourself shrink down. It dawns on you that you're going to change a lot. But you've said your last goodbyes to your humanity either way. You can feel your hair and teeth falling out, your bones reshaping and getting smaller and more delicate. Your biology completely changing. It's a lot to get used to and it all happens within a few seconds. For a moment you're worried you'll lose your human mind, but it just doesn't happen, mentally, emotionally, you're entirely the same as you always were. But you don't have to worry about human things anymore. Frogs don't have to work jobs, or pay taxes, or pay rent, you're allowed to finally just be. When you choose to go naked, and walk on all fours, you don't even have to let on that you're human at all anymore. You can exist in peace as long as you exist and forgo the responsibility of human things unless you choose to want them.

Demon: You feel the last of your human blood get replaced with the blood of that creature. It hurts for a moment, but then you stop feeling such pain, you feel a tyle of prowess you haven't felt before. Your eyes glow, you can just feel that they glow now. Your human form begins to change, perfectly growing into your ideal body type and look, and everything feels so right. And then things go beyond just that human form. Horns grow from your head, and your teeth grow sharp, you can always feel them, even when you aren't paying attention, and it makes you feel so very cool. Your reproductive organs are replaced with a neck and head of a serpent, completely genderless, but more able to feel pleasure somehow. Wings grow on your back, and you flex them, feeling the strangeness and wonder of having new limbs and joints. You grow a scorpion like tail from the base of your spine, that equally feels so strange and wonderful and new to move. You can shapeshift back into any human form when you need to, you can even effect what people do and don't recognize as your old self, but this form, your truly demonic form, that's what truly feels like it's you.

Murder: you can kill now. No description needed.

[puppyboyslutz]

i wanna be held down and fucked and mocked for how wet n easy i am. i wanna be told what a whore i am for being so fuckable, how needy and desperate i must be. i wanna be forced to admit how needy i am before im allowed to cum