#putting my own intersex experience to good use

[sylphidine]

I've been writing my human!Swatch as an intersex baby at birth, who had masculinizing surgery as an infant, and identifies as nonbinary as an adult, but have not explained the background as to why in-story during the events of CALL SIGNS.

Should I?

There's a scene coming up in a WIP chapter where Swatch does actually wear what might be considered femme clothing, although I personally think of it as more unisex.

Input and opinions welcome.

[metanarrates]

the bill (post that outlines it from last week) has been signed into law.

the slight good news: the language of the bill has been amended so that children can no longer be criminally charged for using a bathroom or locker room that aligns with their gender identity.

the bad news: literally almost everything else about the bill is the same. adults can still be charged.

in addition to everything highlighted in my earlier post, I would like to highlight that the law will charge transgender adults with trespass if “the individual enters or remains in the changing room under circumstances which a reasonable person would expect to likely cause affront or alarm to, on, or in the presence of another individual." in other words, if a transphobe is alarmed by a trans person existing in a restroom, and the judge agrees, that's a trespassing charge. maximum penalties for trespassing under utah law go up to six months in jail and a $1000 charge.

I don't think I need to explain the violence that trans people, particularly trans women, face in jail, especially if they are sent to a men's prison as a trans woman. I also don't think I need to explain the poverty that the trans community experiences as a result of systemic discrimination, and how devastating a fine can be to a poor person. and even without the charge, being harassed by both civilians and cops who will demand that you prove your gender is traumatizing and humiliating. even though this law does in fact only extend to buildings that are publicly funded (such as government offices, schools, possibly the salt lake city airport,) this will also embolden transphobes to harass trans people in other places. make no mistake, this law is violence.

additionally, the law also can give out charges of lewdness and voyeurism, both of which are sex crimes. being placed on the sex offender registry can be DEVASTATING for a person's job opportunities, ability to find housing, and basic rights to privacy. in addition to the already devastating housing and employment issues faced by ex-convicts, this would make life practically unlivable for anyone convicted.

I'll emphasize again that this endangers the trans community, particularly the transfem community, but I am also scared for black women, gnc people, and intersex people, all of whom are also vulnerable to gender policing and gender-based harassment. I am terrified at how openly this law gives leeway for civilians to act as vigilantes and for cops to demand to know what a person's genitals look like. I am terrified at the escalation of hate crimes and harassment that this will likely prompt.

please show up for the utah trans community. in the next few days, I will put together a list of trans people's gofundmes in the state. I would appreciate it if you would share that as well. chances are, we're going to need a lot of financial help in the future, especially if some of us end up choosing to flee the state.

as always, death to the american police state and all it enables.

[intersexbookclub]

Discussion summary: Left Hand of Darkness

Published in 1969, The Left Hand of Darkness is a classic in science fiction that explores issues of sex/gender in an alien-yet-human society where the aliens are just like us except in how they reproduce. These aliens, the Gethenians, can reproduce as either male or female. They spend most of their lives sexually undifferentiated. Once a month, they go into heat (“kemmer”) and their sexual organs activate as either male or female (it’s essentially random).

Here's a summary of the discussions we had on 2023-08-25 and 2023-09-01 about the book:

HIGH LEVEL REACTONS

Michelle (@scifimagpie): even though it was written by a cis straight perisex woman there is a queerness to the writing that feels true and that she nailed. There is a queerness to the soul of this book that still holds up, that's true and good, and I cannot but love and respect that.

Elizabeth (@ipso-faculty): this book is such a commentary on 1960s misogyny. Genly is a raging misogynist. It takes a whole prison break and crossing the arctic for Genly to realize a woman or androgyne can be competent 👀

Dimitri: [Having read just the first half of the book] I wonder if it keeps happening, if Genly keeps going "woaaaah" [to the Gethenians’ androgyny] or if he ever acclimates. It's been half the novel my guy

vic: yeah a book where a guy is destroyed by seeing a breast makes me want queer theory

vic: [it also] makes me feel good to see how much has changed [since the 1960s]

THE INTERSEX STUFF

A thing we appreciated about the book was how being intersex is contextual. The main character of the book, Genly Ai, is a human from a planet like Earth, who visits Gethen to open trade and diplomatic relations.

On his home planet, and to Earth sensibilities, Genly is perisex - he is able to reproduce at any time of the month and is consistently male.

But on Gethen, Genly becomes intersex. On Gethen, the norm is that you only manifest (and can reproduce as) a given sex during the monthly kemmer (heat/oestrus) period. 

The Gethenians understand Genly as living in “permanent kemmer”, which is described as a common (intersex) condition, and these people are hyper-sexualized and referred to as Perverts.

At this point it’s worth noting that depiction is not the same as endorsement. Michelle pointed out the book is very empathetic to those in permanent kemmer. LeGuin does not appear to be endorsing the social stigma faced by these people, merely depicting it, and putting a mirror to how our own society treats intersex people.

Throughout the book, Genly is treated as an oddity by the Gethenians. He is hyper sexualized. He undergoes a genital inspection to prove he is who he says he is. 

When Genly is sent to a prison camp and forcibly given HRT, he does not respond “normally” to the hormones, the effects are way worse for him, and the prison camp staff don’t care, and keep administering them even if it’ll kill him. 

Two of us have had the experience of having hyperandrogenism and being forced onto birth control as teenager, and relating to the sluggishness of the drugs that Genly experienced, as well as the sense that gender/sex conformity was more important to authority figures (parents, doctors) than actual health and well-being.

Another scene we discussed the one where Genly is in a prison van en route to the gulag, and a Gethenian enters kemmer and wants to mate with him and he declines. He is given multiple opportunities over the course of the book to try having sex with a Gethenian, and declines every time, and we wondered if he avoided it out of trauma of being hyper-sexualized & hyper-medicalized & having had his genitals inspected.

We discussed the way he described his genital inspection through a trauma lens, and how it interacts with toxic masculinity - in vic’s terms, Genly being "I am a manly man and I have don't trauma"

Those of us who read the short story, Coming of Age in Karhide, noted that once the world was narrated from a Gethenian POV, the people in permanent kemmer were treated far more neutrally, which gave us the impression that Genly as an unreliable narrator was injecting some intersexism along with his misogyny

WHY IT MATTERS TO READ THIS BOOK THROUGH AN INTERSEX LENS

Elizabeth: I’ve encountered critiques of this book from perisex trans folks because to them the book is committing biological essentialism, and dismissing the book as a result. I think they’re missing that this book is as much about (inter)sex as it is about gender. I think they’re too quick to dismiss the book as being outdated or having backwards ideas because they’re not appreciating the intersex themes. 

Elizabeth: The intersex themes aren’t exactly subtle, so it kind of stings that I haven’t seen any intersex analyses of this book, but there are dozens (hundreds?) of perisex trans analyses that all miss the huge intersex elephants in the room.

Also Elizabeth: I’ve seen this book show up in lists of intersex books/characters made by perisex people, and I’ve seen Estraven listed as intersex character, and it gets me upset because Estraven isn’t intersex! Estraven is perisex in the society in which he lives. Genly is the intersex character in this story and people who misunderstand intersex as being able to reproduce as male & female (or having quirky genitals smh) are completely missing that being intersex is socially constructed and based on what is considered typical for a given species.

WHAT THE BOOK DOESN’T HANDLE WELL

The body descriptions. As Dmitri put it: “ Like "his butt jiggled and it reminded  me of women" ew. It was intentional but I had to put the book down. It reminded me of transvestigators and how they take pictures of people in public.” 🤮

Not pushing Genly to reflect on how weird he is about other people’s bodies. We all had issues with how Genly is constantly scrutinizing the bodies of other humans to assess their gender(s) and it’s pretty gross.

vic asked: “how much of this is her reproducing violence without her knowing it? A thing I didn't like was how he always judging and analyzing people's bodies and realizing others treat him that way. And I wish there was more of his discomfort about this, that it made him feel icky.”

Dimitri added: “I really wanted him to have a moment of this too, for him to realize how much it sucks to be treated this way. As a trans person it's so uncomfortable. What are you doing going around doing this to people?”

Using male pronouns as default/ungendered pronouns. Élaina asked why Genly thinks a male pronoun is more appropriate for a transcendent God and pointed out there’s a lot to unpack there.

OTHER POSITIVES ABOUT THE BOOK

Genly’s journey towards respecting women, that he still had a ways to go by the end of the book. vic pointed out how “LeGuin was straight, and she loves men, and is kinda giving them the side-eye [in this book]. Her writing about how Genly is childish makes me really happy. It’s kind of hilarious to watch him bang his head against the wall because he’s so rigid.” 

To which Dmitri added: “I agree with the bit on forgiving men for stuff. I don't know how she [LeGuin] does it but she really lays it all out. She gives you a platter of how men are bad at things, how they make mistakes that are pretty specific to them. She has prepared a buffet of it.”

Autistic Estraven! As Michelle put it: “autistic queer feels about Estraven speaking literally and plainly and Genly not getting it”

The truck chapter. Hits like a pile of bricks. We talked about it as a metaphor for the current pandemic.

The Genly x Estraven slowburn queerplatonic relationship

The conlang! Less is more in how it gets used

MIXED REACTIONS

The Foretelling. For some it felt unnecessary and a bit fetishy. For others it was fun paranormal times.

Pacing. Some liked how the book really forces you to really contemplate as you go. Others struggled with a pace that feels very slow to 2023 readers.

WORKS WE COMPARED THE BOOK TO

Star Trek (the original series) - we wondered if LHOD and Genly Ai were progressive by 1960s standards, and TOS came up as a comparison point. We were all of the impression that TOS was progressive for its time but all of us find it pretty misogynist by our standards. The interest in extra-sensory perception (ESP) is something that was a staple of TOS that feels very strange to contemporary viewers and also cropped up in LHOD

Ancillary Justice - for being a book where characters’ genders are all ambiguous but the POV character is actually normal about how they describe other characters’ bodies.

The Deep - for being another book in a situation where being able to reproduce as male and female is the norm. The Deep was written by an actually intersex author, and doesn’t have the cisperisex gaze of scrutinizing every body for sex. But oddly LHOD actually winds up feeling more like a book about intersex people, because it features a character who is the odd one out in a gonosynic society. In contrast, nobody is intersex in the Deep - everybody matches the norms for their species, which makes the intersex themes in the work much more subtle.

Overall, as vic put it, “there's something to be said about an honest depiction that's not great, especially when there's no alternatives”. For a long time there weren’t many other games in town when it came to this sort of book, and even though some things now feel dated, it’s still a valuable read. We’d love to see more intersex reviews & analyses of the book!

[hiiragi7]

I have DID and at times I identify with the term transfemme. I am not intersex, and I don't suspect that I am at all - I look like your average white, perisex, cis woman on the street. I am transmasc, but I also identify with that transfemme label, at least sometimes. We are non-binary, transmasc and generally multigender (I'm a man and a woman etc.) but the reason I identify with transfemme is because I don't feel like a CIS WOMAN. I don't know if I'm "allowed" to identify this way. Especially because I worry I might be just drawn to identifying that way because of transmisogynystic reasons. It's not the same as people saying demgirl or something, I consider myself a woman and a man, but not a CIS WOMAN. I've wanted to get someone's thoughts on this for ages, but for obvious reasons, I haven't said anything to anyone.

I can't tell you whether or not it's based in or related to transmisogyny for you specifically, nor can I say what you should do here. I think that's something only you can figure out for yourself. I do think it's good to question why you feel drawn to the label, what it means to you, what "cis woman" and "trans woman" mean to you, what the difference is between them for you. What do you mean by you don't feel like a cis woman? Why does transfemininity feel different from cis womanhood? What does it mean to "feel like" a transfem? Sometimes people do hold biases or stereotypes here, and that's important to acknowledge and work through.

It will likely be a lot of self-reflection and experimenting with various ways of looking at it. You might also consider alternative ways of phrasing it and see if that works for you (ex. "I'm a woman in a trans way"/"I'm trans and a woman"/I'm a trans man + woman"). I recommend reading books from trans women and transfems, read up on the community and history, read up on transmisogyny, follow blogs and channels which regularly talk about transfemininity, meet more trans women and transfems - good things to do in general, really, for anyone. In my opinion, it's always good when people do their research when they're looking to join a community or take on a label. The worst experiences I've had in any community have always been from people who didn't do their research and haven't worked on their own biases. There's always more to learn and putting in that effort when you can is important.

Ultimately, in the end, it's your choice what you identify as and what labels you use. It's your gender, nobody else's.

[nervoustragedyluminary]

Having a femdom kink isn't a replacement for feminism and doesn't necessarily make you an ally to trans women or someone who combats transmisogyny

Doing the performative "I'm not like those other icky men you can trust me look how much I put down those gross sexist pigs/effeminate fake men" song and dance isn't supporting trans women or fighting transmisogyny especially when the trans people you're lying about aren't being transmisogynistic but are talking about their experiences as trans people with transphobia some of it lateral from within the community but the majority of it from cis people

Harassing and threatening trans men mascs neuts intersex people or anyone who you decide is a or is empathetic to "theyfab trender transandrophobia truthers" isn't supporting trans women

Victim blaming mocking people's trauma and denying that what they say happened to them happened isn't feminist activism

Talking like a chaser about trans women interspersed with posts about how "we need to kill/rape transandrophobia truthers they are whiny bitches unlike me I'm a good boy I suffer in silence for my goddess dommy mommy transfem betters like a reel man™" makes you look fucking sus and it's creepy and fetishistic as fuck and seems to be more about something you're trying to work through than about actually supporting trans women genuinely as people beyond your fetishizing stereotypes of them

Like you can be into femdom with consenting trans women that's not the issue it's the using of this dynamic of "look at me I'm a very special boy I hate other trans mascs" transandrophobic and frankly transmisogynistic shit masquerading as "solidarity" from some people I see littered all over tags where people are talking about their real traumas and struggles that makes me gag

Like it's so self centred to as a trans man make your "Im supporting trans women" action all about trans men and mascs and hating them and telling them to shut up

like you're literally not centring trans women you're centring trans men as an excuse to play "I'm a real man because I suffer in silence and you don't " shit like trans women aren't misogynistic cishet men they see through you trying to do that chasery "pick me" shit and no actual advocacy for trans women beyond "harass these trans guys for the good of trans women(most of who never asked or wanted us to harass anyone) "

Actually support trans women and fight for them and with them without dehumanising & objectifying them & yes putting them on a collective pedestal they didn't consent to for your femdom kink and trying to claim that is the same as being anti transmisogyny is objectifying

"benevolent" sexism is still sexism. Trans women are women they are human people not sexual objects to use for your own inferiority complex or kink or to work through your own guilt surrounding being a trans man

[redtail-lol]

Presenting, Enderqueer

[Image ID: 2 6-striped flags. They are the same flag, but the one on the left has an end portal overlay, which makes it darker with lighter rectangular speckles. Colors on the right's, in descending order, are: pink; light purple; dark purple; black; dark teal-blue; slightly dark sea green. The right has darkened versions of these same colors. End ID.]

My own blankqueer label. I've been wanting to make one for a while. Name and flag based on the End dimension from Minecraft.

Core principles of Enderqueer:

The core principles of Enderqueer are as follows

The right to self identification with little restrictions and rules.

Inclusion of non-harmful identities in the communities they say they belong to.

Respecting the identities of people even if you do not understand.

Giving everyone a chance to explain their identity before deeming it harmful; as well as respecting someone's choice to not explain and assuming good faith rather than passing judgement.

Putting experiences over definitions; allowing all labels to have outliers if they're comfortable with the label even when it doesn't fit them perfectly.

Queer liberation and the advancements of our rights.

Destroying heteronormativity, cisnormativity, exorsexism, intersexism, allonormativity, amatonormativity, and mononormativity (all 3 meanings of mono: monosexuality, monogenderism, and monogamy).

Enderqueer beliefs:

On identity, enderqueer believes the following

Most forms of self identification are valid, however anything that is identified with for harmful reasons (such as transphobia, biphobia/multiphobia, homophobia, ableism, racism, etc.) or things that are harmful regardless of reason (such as transabled, transrace for non-adoptees, transnazi, shit like that), are not valid.

It is okay to ask questions about identities you don't understand or think are harmful before fully accepting them without question. However, if a person doesn't want to answer, that is their right, and it doesn't give you the right to argue against or hate their identity. Assume good faith and maybe ask others who have similar identities.

Identity is complicated and every label, regardless of definition, can and will have outliers, and this is not a problem

Experiences and personal comforts are more important than definitions

All mspec identities are valid and are not biphobic

All aspecs are queer unless the aspec person in particular says they aren't.

All Polyamory, ambiamory, and other nonmonogamy is queer unless the polyam/non-monogam person in particular says they are not queer.

Redundant terms are okay

Multigendered and genderfluid people are "really" their genders. The existence of their other genders or the temporary nature of their genders don't make them less real

On paraphilias, enderqueer believes the following

Paraphilias are morally neutral. Paraphiles who's paraphilias are nonconsensual or harmful to themselves or others deserve support and recovery, and paraphiles who's paraphilias are not harmful should be allowed to act on it. Paraphilias that can either be harmful or not harmful should only be practiced in a safe and ethical way.

On flag discourse, enderqueer believes the following

Flags should not be gatekept from certain groups unless they are specific to one identity or one group of identities. people can decide to use your flags based on your beliefs.

Controversial original flags can be used regardless of if you agree with the creators, but replacement flags should not be used by people who don't agree with the sentiments behind the cancellation. Racist transphobes should not use the orange and pink lesbian flag. Mspec lesbians and supporters should not use the new pan or aroace flags. This is because the new flags have a goal: punish the original creator for a belief by replacing their work. Using replacement flags is accomplishing that goal, and if you agree with the original creator, you shouldn't punish them.

Multioriented and abrosexual people are "really" their orientations. The existence of their other orientations or the temporary nature of their orientations don't make them less real

Other things enderqueer believes the following

Queer labels should not concern themselves with non-queer issues, as that is a different part of one's identity. Making queer labels that concern themselves with non-queer issues excludes the people who are either uneducated on the topic or have no business voicing the opinion because they are not a part of the community or even adjacent.

Gender is real. Social constructs are powerful things that can cause real and observable phenomenon in the brain, and gender being real doesn't invalidate any funky gender identity

Gender Abolition is transphobic. Gender is the identity, and taking away gender leaves nothing but biological sex which may still allow binary trans people to exist if they experience dysphoria but will definitely erase all nondysphoric and nonbinary people.

Transmisogyny and transmisandry are real

POC queers are an unremovable and important part of the queer community

What does enderqueer explicitly support?

Enderqueer supports the following identities, actions, or forms of identification:

Unlabeled identities

People who use few labels for themselves

Termcollectors and labelhoarders

All aspecs, including loveless aros, any sex stance for aces, romance stance for aros, friendship stance for apls, etc, and atertiaries

Anti-contact, pro-recovery paraphiles who's paraphilias are harmful to themselves or others

Paraphiles who's paraphilias are not harmful to themselves or others

Paraphiles who's paraphilias can be harmful or can be safe who only act on them in a way that is safe and ethical

Mspec monos

Mspec gays, veldians, lesbians, cenelians, enbians, straights, etc who do not consider themselves monos

Straightbians, straight gays, straight veldians, gaybians/velaurians, and other labels often used by multigender people

Lesboys, turigirls, ceneliboys and ceneligirls, enbiboys and enbigirls, trixiboys and trixigirls, and toriboys and torigirls

Any other form of "contradictory" labels

Aspec and non-aspec SAM

Xenogenders

Xenidens, or xenoids used in reclamation

Allion orientations

Gender nonconformity, including pronoun nonconformity

Neurolabels, when used by people who have those conditions

Reclamation of slurs and derogatory terms, even when used as an identity

Transracial adoptees

Transspecies therians

Transage chronosian or transage age regressors

What does enderqueer explicitly denounce?

Enderqueer denounces the following identities, actions, or forms of identification:

Radqueers

Winterqueers or Winterpunks

Transidentities that are not transgender, transrace adoptees, therian transspecies, or chronosian/agere transage

Pro-contact harmful paraphilias or neu-contact harmful paraphilias. This also applies to unethical or unsafe ways of acting on a paraphilia that can be done in a safe, ethical way

Comp-contact for paraphilias that can never be safe or ethical in practice

Anti-recovery for ANY paraphilias. Nonharmful paraphiles may choose to recover anyway

Anti-contact for paraphilias that are never dangerous or unethical

Radical feminists

Not recognizing attraction to elsegender people as being just as real and valid as attraction to aptobinary people. This includes calling all exclusive lesbians monosexual, saying all sexualities inherently include elsegender people, thinking enbians are choosing to date nonbinary people or cenelians are choosing not to date aptobinary people, rather than recognizing that they are attracted to other elsegender people, potentially exclusively, or calling WLN and MLN labels transphobic or enbyphobic

Bad faith labels such as superstraight, quasihomosexual, animesexual (though animesexual can be reclaimed by fictosexuals), and others made to mock queerness or justify bigotry

What is enderqueer neutral on, or what does enderqueer not believe needs to be part of a blankqueer label?

Enderqueer is stanceless on the following:

Syscourse

Shipcourse

Self diagnosis

Furries

Alterhumanity (OP supports and it's close to queer discourse but ultimately I decided it was far enough removed that it didn't need to be included)

Engaging with problematic media and/or creators

Kink at pride (I know this one is super relevant but I don't have any strong opinions and the ones I do have are very mixed)

Enderqueers may have no opinion on the above issues, or a stance that they do not believe is important to a blankqueer label. Or they may just agree with everything else included under enderqueer and choose to use it.

[khaleesiofalicante]

Hi! Absolutely loved the last chapter of LDV!

I just wanted to ask for a few recommendations, mostly about trans people in sports competitions and events like the Olympics

You see, where I'm from, it's still a pretty "controversial" debate. People think trans people shouldn't be in sports because "they got an unfair place" let it be an advantage or disadvantage.

I know most of the people that say that, don't really care about trans people, they only care about excluding them.

But others are ignorant. Myself included. And I'd like to educate myself more about it, about the rights of trans people and how they are constantly discriminated (it can also be in other places, not only sports. God knows people like to turn a blind eye on that too) because I'll like to point out the discrimination and unfairness of all this, but I don't have enough knowledge to give a solid argument

Even with my friends, they agree with those people sometimes. And I know they don't do it out of cruelty rather than ignorance, but I would like to call them out and make them see the reality, not just what transphobic and misogynistic people tell them

Sooo, do you perhaps have some research or books about it? Anything is welcome! I've been wanting to ask this for so long, but I don't know why I just never got around to do it.

Thanks <3

Oh, I’m so glad you asked about this. The reason why I include these topics and information in my fics is to make people think and to encourage more conversations like this! Good on you for wanting to know more! 

The first thing is that each country (and its governing sports body) has its own regulations about including trans people in sports. But two common things across most countries are - a) it primarily affects trans women. They are the ones who are scrutinized and subjected to examinations and then banned from the sport. b) the main ‘test’ used to eliminate trans woman from sports (mainly athletics) is their testosterone level. Each country (and even the Olympics committee responsible for this) has a bar/standard for the acceptable testesterone level for female athletes for various sports and if you have more than this, you can’t compete in it. 

Now while the above might sound fair to many, the things to consider here are that 1) the limit they’ve set is concerningly low. This means that some cis women (like those who have PCOS or any other hormonal condition) might even be cut off because of this strategy to eliminate trans women from various sports. 

Some countries/states on the other hand, like certain states in America (As we’ll see in LDV) outright ban trans people from participating in certain sports. This includes Idaho, Texas, Tennessee, Alabama etc. At least 20 of them, if I’m not wrong. It’s the same in my country. In many countries too. 

You are so right to point out that a lot of people would actually prefer trans women out of sports because they think trans women take up spaces that are meant for (cis) women. But if you really think about this, this whole “trans women are trying to take your place” argument was created to distract us from the real barrier to women’s sports - which is the patriarchy (this is a whole other topic and I can rant all day). But pitting cis women against trans women for the sake of ‘fairness’ is truly awful, but we do see it happen a lot - mostly out of ignorance, not malice. 

I did however bring intersex into the conversation - because the experience of intersex athletes are so different from that of trans athletes. Some intersex people don’t even know they are intersex, and then they suddenly find out about it when they are put in situations like this where their participation in a sport is banned/eliminated because of their testosterone level. The people who are usually targeted are masculine-looking and extremely well-performing athletes in women’s sports. If you fall into this category, then you might be asked to do a testosterone test (just because!) and then you might be eliminated from the sport. 

But wait. It gets worse. We’ve had actual cases where intersex athletes have had forced surgeries performed on them under the guise of allowing them to perform in the sporting event. Can you believe this is an actual thing that is happening and people aren’t talking about it? Some famous case studies you can read/watch about is Caster Semanya (which is very recent and literally ongoing). 

I didn’t know much about this either (I learned about it in my sexuality class) and decided to include it in LDV because it seemed so fitting. But I’m glad you want to know more. 

Here are some quick resources. I’m sharing both reading and watchable materials depending on your learning preference. 

VIDEOS:

A great!!! video about understanding trans people in sports - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fb48tivB-0

Intersex people and their olympic experiences - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rAHqh9OghY AND https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWP6OuifFOw

READING MATERIALS: 

A good introductory article that has some research too

A case study about intersex people and the olympics

https://www.katrinakarkazis.com/testosterone-an-unauthorized-biography (Definitely read Katrina’s work!)

I hope this is helpful. Keep looking for answers and ask good questions! 

[daybringersol]

Hey ! I’m Sol, Juno, Chip or Art, whichever you prefer, and you can use he/him, eon/eons, myr/myrrh, hy/hymn, it/its and masculine terms for me. I’m a paradox, I don’t abide to labels and stuff like that, not in the way that I don’t use them, more in the way that I just go with what feels right in the moment, without forcing myself to stay static. Right now, I’m anarchaqueer, biaro & androgyne, but I’m fluid, so don’t get attached too much !

more pronoun options [link]

read CROSSTALK [link]

Working towards being an editor professionally, so open to beta for fics or other stories, just DM me !

JRWI : Just Roll With It (TTRPG Podcast) - PJO : Percy Jackson & the Olympians (Book Series) - TPP : The Penumbra Podcast (Fiction Podcast) - TMAGP : The Magnus Protocols (Fiction Podcast)

I’m currently trying to cut back on political commentary on here, both in reblogs or in my own posts, because it triggers my moral OCD. Please note that you cannot extrapolate how much activism someone partakes in based on their tumblr activity.

I’m for the liberation of Palestine, against antitransmasculinity (as not being so would betray my own life experiences), for the independence of Québec, against antisemitism, for a kind of aspec solidarity that includes non-aroace aspecs and respects the differences in our experiences, against the police & the current psychiatric system, for the destigmatization of kinks, fetishes & ‘scary’ mental disorders, against exclusionism & label policing in the queer community, for the exploration of complex topics in fiction (including in ‘lowbrow’ medias like fanfiction), against both gender & sex essentialism, for the demedicalisation of intersex bodies, against the criminalisation of drugs & sex work, and passionate about much more topics than those included in this short list. I believe that morality is not determined by your thoughts but by your actions, and that what kind of bigotry you’re affected by is not determined by your identity but by how & if it is perceived. If you’re planning on harassing me about any of these beliefs, I’d recommend simply blocking me instead, as I will not answer any questions I don’t believe to be asked in good faith.

I’m 21 so keep that in mind. There should be little NSFW stuff on here, pretty much only artistic nudity & jokes.

Please note that I do have a separate (appropriately tagged) NSFW account, and that if you go looking for it, it’s your fault for seeing things you don’t want to see. Bringing here what I post to that account, or ‘exposing’ it to others with the goal to judge or mock me is sexual harassment. There’s a reason those accounts are separate.

I’m fully fine with (appropriately tagged) NSFW topics being explored in fandom, including JRWI (as those same things are explored in the source material). I believe the council’s boundaries are to not do RPF and to not show them porn of their characters. Feel free to block me if that makes you uncomfortable.

I’m not going to tag every time I talk about my own experiences with abuse, addiction, SA, C-PTSD, pure O (internal OCD, in my case moral) and stuff like that, so feel free to block if that’s something that could trigger you. I don’t talk about it often though, and will tag it if it’s too graphic.

If you tag me in stuff where you have to tag your friends and then they tag their friends, I enjoy and appreciate it, but I most likely won’t tag other people cuz it makes me anxious !

I usually do PTs, IDs and/or alt text on my flags and userboxes but I don’t always have the energy that requires of me, so sorry about that.

Flags can be used on tumblr without credits, and userboxes can be used without credits as long as you reblog the post, but please don't repost the rest of my art (paintings, drawings, sketches, poetry, music, ect.) without credits. If you repost my flags on other website or put them on wikis, I would very much prefer to be credited (at least a link).

[anonalous]

since I don’t generally feel comfortable/safe putting a lot of my own intersex thoughts and experiences on my main blog, I have now created this side blog for sharing those experiences. all I ask is that you be respectful and act in good faith when interacting with this blog.

some posts will tread into undeniably sexual topics but I don’t foresee any being pornographic in nature, that may be something you want to be aware of before following or interacting with this blog. I’m an adult, my intersex traits affect sexual facets of my life, that’s just how it is

and before anyone mentions it, I know the word anomaly can be a loaded term. for me personally, its a word i want to own and reclaim. and I spelled my url this way because of how I’d rather stay anonymous when sharing details that pertain to my anatomy and body while using a site that does not give much control over audience

[johannestevans]

Hi, this is the anon who was asking about the afab term stuff 👋

Firstly thanks for the longer explanation, I hope it wasn't too frustrating for you, I really don't mean to bother you, so if this is too many questions feel free to ignore it

Secondly, this has actually kinda explained a couple things about my own experience with the terms, like how people asking if I'm afab/amab (which doesn't really apply to me in a binary/dyadic sense) has always felt a little like someone asking my deadname. So thanks for making me consider that more from a different perspective

Thirdly, my experience from having my identity heavily medicalised (intersex healthcare in the UK is a mess) and from being raised by a doctor is that female sex vs female gender were two separate things, and that one doesn't always correspond to the other. I never really approached the idea that female/male sex weren't useful/real categories because their meanings to me were entirely anatomical definitions of a collection of parts that are usually found together. To me it would be completely the same to refer to them as Sex A and sex B, with the understanding that there are people who fit neither category. Intersex anatomy is often talked about as if its the crossover in a Venn diagram of characteristics, between the two categories of 'male sex' and 'female sex'. For this purpose having those categories for communication purposes, is somewhat helpful, e.g to say that an increase in my testosterone will cause my male characteristics to become more prominent. The categories serve a purpose for communication more than anything else.

If the categories weren't using the words female/male do you think it would be any better of an experience for you? Aka if the terms used to describe them had no relation to any gender identity, but there was still two prominent categories.

Of course I can see the issue with when people assume that you fall exactly into one category or another, so regardless of name/language no number of categories should ever be assumed to be a universal set, but that doesn't mean that the terms don't have positive uses. Our language exists for us to communicate, so if terms to describe a category of anatomical parts help us do that, surely they still have meaning/usefulness?

Nope, don't worry about it, Anon! If anything bothers me so much that I don't want to answer it, I'll say or I'll just delete the ask.

I absolutely think that some people do ask after ASAB because they want to just find out what people "really" are and whatever, have just internalised the whole gender aspect and do think of some trans people as being female (good) and male (bad), and there's so much transmisogyny baked into it, but also just... misanthropy, you know? Like a real distaste for the variety in humanity and a desperate desire to force everyone into particular categories.

The thing about current medicalised perceptions of intersex identities is that there are dozens of so-called "intersex conditions", but we literally have 0 way of knowing how many people are the "pure" standard of female with the exact female anatomy and the "pure" standard of male with the exact male anatomy without like, MRI-ing and later dissecting massive swathes of the population and comparing them all, and we don't do that because people want the male/female divide to exist when like.

It doesn't, not in the way people want to imagine it does.

These are broad categories people have projected onto people, and while I agree that medical professionals knowing someone's physical anatomy is valuable, I actually think that the M/F binary actually is more likely to harm them than otherwise.

Many doctors will meet someone who they assume was AFAB, and therefore they must have all this anatomy, and then they'll just put any abdominal or even chest pain down to their period, on top of not really caring how much pain they're in - and then they won't even check for shit like appendicitis or gut problems or even more significant uterine problems like endometrioisis, but also like... testicular torsion.

I frankly don't agree that "female sex" and "male sex" are genuinely useful categories. They're just weaponised too much for me to believe that - I think we should do away with M/F categorisations on birth certs and medical records, and that doctors should have to fucking, God forbid, examine people to see what their problems are.

I'm so sorry that you've received shitty treatment for intersex medical issues, several of my friends are intersex and experience just roadblock after roadblock - even as a probably dyadic trans dude with a few chronic issues it's just painful to navigate, and I just get pissed off because it's complicated by doctors religious devotion to a cis medical binary that's not nearly as important as they desperately want to believe it is.

[a-beneficial-union]

Howdy, salut, the Alighted was mildly musing about junk she often does in the quiet period after her work shift and she realizes that she’s never actually put this stuff on proverbial paper.

So! The bedrock of A Beneficial Union is that the characters seen in the show as “Eon’s Servants” had to come from somewhere, and something had to have happened to ‘em after the fact. Since Eon is presented as having been something of a student for Paradox, I decided that the latter was the one who got the ball rolling here, artificially segmenting and isolating two timelines he found useful and dividing them up into what eventually became the ten branches. Once Paradox’s research was done, he left them be— but they just kept on going in their altered isolation.

Paradox’s experiment is left intentionally vague because it is supposed to have taken place thirty years prior to the modern day, with everyone who was directly involved being gone for one reason or other and all the documentation for it having disappeared. I like playing with what different -ens think happened and how they feel about their existence being the direct consequence of someone playing god.

The branches can be organized roughly into three categories: timelines in which the Ben alternate was adopted by his canon parents before or around age two (branches 1, 5, 7, and 9), those in which they are kept for a while longer (or just are kept) (2, 4, 6, and 8), and the outliers (3 and 10). The closer to the “Good End” the timeline is, generally the better their life turns out.

Because Paradox would have tried to standardize his participants (hence isolating and altering the timelines), they all come from the same genome. Everything in their life is supposed to be the exact same up until the point of change— meaning that factors relating to geography, ethnic/racial background, etcetera, are supposed to be the same. Examples: Carl Tennyson is a nurse and Sandra is a veteran who was mobilized to Iraq at least twice before Ben and Gwen are born.

The problem with that is, when all of the characters are carbon copies of each other, it’s boring. Boring to draw, boring to write, just boring all around. I was talking about this at a friend of mine a few months ago (specifically, I was worrying about how pasty all the characters are) and their advice was to just make them not that.

A loophole around my own rules is that coming from the same genome says little about one’s phenome. There are gradations of the same traits and different ways that they are recognized in social contexts. I come from a very mixed household in which I am the palest person present, and I’ve seen quote a few different ways that people (siblings, parents, friends, strangers, etcetera) respond to said differences.

For Ben’s fixed traits, I decided that they are from immediate Irish, Syrian, and Italian descent (with Grandpa Max’s parents coming from Syria and Ireland). The options for full names are “Benjamin-Lorenzo Kurby Tennyson” (“Ben”) for adopted amabs, “Mildren-Aria Sionnon Tennyson” (“Ren”) for adopted afabs, “Jennifer Shannon Tennyson” (“Jen”) for kept afabs, and “Stephen Benjamin Tennyson” for kept amabs. All afabs are intersex but this is not evident until secondary dimorphism comes in around puberty.

They are agender (usually sticking to their assigned pronouns), demisexual and aromantic. They have mild autism and severe ADHD combined type (with notably constant hyperarousal, which is often mistaken for anxiety). While being born with a painful sort of hyperempathy, they lack a filter and do not naturally grasp what they’re supposed to do about certain cues. By adolescence, they almost always have empathy burnout and become a patchwork of apathy and intrusive compassion. How well adjusted they are is extremely dependent on their parents’ competence. They require intense socialization from an early age or else they become reclusive, spend a good amount of time early on in speech therapy or else their sentences are incoherently disheveled, have quite a few sensory sensitivities bordering on full on sensory issues, and are vehement seekers of physical contact (despite their low social threshold).

In infancy and toddlerhood, they experience frequent trips to the hospital due to lung-related infections. This, as well as the birth parents’ willingness to raise such a ‘defective’ child, is why they get adopted out. They will experience similar complications to breathing throughout their young lives, normally manifesting in late night coughing fits and the perpetual sting of a sore throat. At sixteen or seventeen, they develop sensitive skin (normally eczema) and irritable bowel syndrome. At eighteen, they develop chronic fatigue, soreness, nausea, vertigo, etcetera— which is totally not the writer projecting onto a character, nooooo.

Onto inclinations, and this is a part that I’ve been going back and forth on for a while. Humans have natural inclinations which are often summarized as the various forms of intelligence or, in cases of singularity, specialization. Having too much of one of these inclinations often comes with a deficit in an opposing one.

From what we see in canon, Ben is a proficient drawer (his doodles in class), musician (of at least three instruments), lexophile (constant use of wordplay), and… I have no fancy way of saying this one- understanding people, their new forms, and situations very quickly. I deduced, evilly, that their primary inclinations are naturalistic, linguistic, interpersonal, and musical. They experience deficits in mathematics (lowkey having mild dyscalculia) and kinesthetics (needing a lot more practice while young in order to do the basics, hence why he’s put in so many sports).

For special interests and hyperfixations, I decided that they should have two or three special interests from which various hyperfixations circulate. Canon Ben is obsessed with his various forms, has the prominent comfort show of Sumo Slammers, and is heavily oriented around ‘hero work’. He has the nickname pre-canon of “monster freak”, which I take to mean that he was focused on monsters prior to being able to shapeshift. Alternative fixations of the foremost include mythology, monsterology (of video games), and zoology. I am a simple person with simple desires, and so often make one of their early fixations be on dragons.

I’ve mostly worked on the first two branches, but the further down they go, the more different the above traits are applied.

I’m now tired, bye.

[whiskey-bumblebee]

tips to make your fanfic more accessible (1/?)

When it comes to writing reader insert characters, or even original characters that are meant to be broadly relevant to your audience, it's important to write in a way that doesn't exclude people with marginalized identities from reading and connecting with your work. Everyone deserves to feel loved and represented! Since fanfic is an escape for so many of us, it's so crucial that the language we use is accessible and embraces the variety of people who might be reading your fic.

Disclaimer! I am a white, cis, plus size woman, and I would hate to misrepresent something, or leave things out, so I would LOVE to hear from some Black, BIPOC, trans, and/or minority readers about things that make you uncomfy/take you out of the story. I can add them to this post w/ credit, or you can comment below :)

Physical appearance:

-A big one here is hair. Not everyone has a hair texture or style that someone can lovingly comb their fingers through. Some readers (for extremely valid reasons, including the fact that in some contexts it can be rooted in racism) might not like the idea of a fictional character putting their hands in the reader's hair!

-The fix: think about what you're trying to convey with the action of hair-touching. Is it affection? Closeness? Foreplay? Could the character stroke the reader's hair instead of running their fingers through it? Could they trace the reader's ears?

-Another big one! Body ody ody! There's so much to say here, but I'll start with shape and size. Not everyone will be able to fit into their favourite fictional character's clothes. And for some plus size folks, it is just not realistic for a character to pick them up and throw them around. I love my body, and I don't know a single fictional character who would be able to lift me! This isn't embarrassing or asking for compliments, it's just my bodily reality.

-The fix: what terms do you use to describe the reader's body? Are they exclusive or implicitly biased? Is your reader lithe, with long legs and "a handful" of breast tissue? Is someone throwing your reader around like a sack of potatoes, or pinning them up against a wall, with no additional support?

Ability:

-This is a self call-out as well, but I've noticed that there aren't a lot of multi-chapter fanfics which include characters with disabilities. This is tricky, as I think a lot of writers might not necessarily have lived experience with needing mobility aids, or things like blindness and deafness, etc. I don't necessarily think that able-bodied writers should be attempting this, but it's something to think about.

-The fix: Could your character achieve their movements with a prosthetic limb? How might they experience things differently if they're overstimulated? Uplift fic writers with disabilities and diverse lived experiences! Reblog their work!

Sex and gender:

-This one is also a bit complex because writers might not know exactly where to start when it comes to writing someone with a different gender identity, or mode of presentation. Especially when you're writing explicit sex scenes, I think it's okay to write things with a specific anatomy in mind, as long as you're clear about who you're writing for from the outset (e.g. character x fem!reader in the chapter notes or A/N).

-Not everyone who likes being called "good girl" has breasts and a vagina. Some men don't have penises. Trans and intersex people exist and are incredibly LOVED and CHERISHED on this blog. <3

-The fix: If you're writing a fic where anatomy is less important, go for gender neutral terms of endearment, and gender neutral pronouns. Maybe switch things up and try writing a reader character with a different gender identity to your own!

_________________________________________________

TL;DR- 1) Uplift fanfic by underrepresented communities (this can vary by fandom, but queer/LGBTQ+, BIPOC, disabled, and neurodivergent authors are a great place to start!)

2) Do an accessibility proofread- does your reader have any characteristics that aren't broadly applicable to readers? Are these characteristics essential to the plot?

3) If you're part of a minority community, embrace the things that make you unique! Let writers know if they're excluding you. Or as a writer, write yourself down. Produce some of the representation that you can't find elsewhere (if you feel up to it).

4) Write from a place of love. We love what we write about, whether it's characters, story worlds, or one bed tropes. Extend that love to all of your readers :) <3

[theartistknownaslymond]

Gotta have some faith in the sound / (You got to give what you take)

Sorry it's Them again! Jerott/Danny post-canon (mid-90s ish) post-finally-getting-together fluffy, happy smut! Body positivity all the way for intersex Danny, who is into sensation play and who now has a boyfriend who knows how to give both good massages and good head. Jerott is just so happy to be there with someone who wants him and gets him, and if Danny decides to praise him along the way, well, he might just learn something about himself :')

Happy non-denominational smutmas to all my followers 🙃

thank you as ever @stripedroseandsketchpads for your enthusiasm, encouragement, researching, fannishness and for this excellent prompt:

holding hands making love prompt? 👀

---

Jerott closed his eyes and inhaled the sickly floral scent of the oil, rubbing it between his palms meditatively.  "Jasmine isn't a traditional Ayurvedic oil, Danny," he said with a smile.

Danny made a sound of pleasure and amusement, and Jerott heard the bedcovers rustle as Danny's body shifted against them.

"This isn't an Ayurvedic massage, remember?" Danny purred.

Jerott let out a laugh of acknowledgement. He looked down and felt his heartbeat skip to a quicker signature. His lover was lying on their bed, naked from the wispy puff of strawberry blonde hair on top of their head to the painted toenails at the end of their feet. In Danny's eyes was something of the wry challenge that was their customary way with new experiences, but these days Jerott found he could also read the anticipation in Danny's mien: the pale, freckle-dusted skin was flushed red in patches. On Danny's cheeks and neck there were blotches of colour like poppies painted in aquarelle: they bloomed out from Danny's sternum, filling the valley between the soft rises of their breasts and colouring the tops of their thighs as though Jerott's hands had already manipulated that flesh as he intended to.

This was not an Ayurvedic massage. If it had been, Jerott wouldn't have been totally naked himself - his body's appreciative response to the sight of Danny's body wouldn't have been visible, and Danny wouldn't now be biting their plump bottom lip with rakish glee, eyeing him up in return.

Jerott ran his gaze over Danny again, feeling spoilt for choice, uncertain where to begin. He would have happily fallen to the bed and smothered Danny with his kisses, with his body, with the desperate, disorderly wandering of his hands - but he'd been the one to offer the massage when he'd seen the way his touch could make Danny shiver with unexpected, honest delight.

The techniques he'd learned came from the ashram at Pune. They'd been honed on a body he didn't care to think of - broader than Danny's, muscled and infused with the scent of ground spice and patchouli. Then he'd used his skills professionally on the ashram in Nevada - he'd seen all kinds of bodies with these hands, unknotting muscles, rebalancing energies and loosening purse strings as he worked on behalf of Rajneesh's great message.

For years afterwards, he'd done his best to forget the lessons of the ashrams - the cod psychology, the smug anti-conformism, shallow in the face of the leader's demands. The massages had seemed like just another trick thought up by Rajneesh, exploited by Geetesh, designed to win them rich backers. But when he'd finally returned to the Indian subcontinent on his own terms, when he'd reached the country of his father's birth, he'd let himself rediscover things that had existed - oblivious to the manipulative gloss put on them by one movement or another - for spans of time beyond the reckoning of someone as small and petty as Graham Reid Malett. What was one megalomaniac to such a deep-rooted, enduring culture? Jerott had seen his former master's power atomised in the face of an ancient and indifferent spirituality and realised he was free.

He drew a deep breath and sent thoughts of his past out of his mind. This wasn't an Ayurvedic massage - not like he'd given to clients at the Nevada ashram, not like he'd given to Peder and his friends in Denmark when he'd come back with a renewed confidence in himself. This was something new - between him and the person he was deeply, terrifyingly in love with.

Jerott climbed onto the bed and straddled Danny's hips and Danny whimpered in anticipation.

"Shh," Jerott murmured habitually, smirking down at Danny's torso, still working his hands together to warm them to the temperature of the oil.

Danny's hips twitched provocatively beneath Jerott's seat and he began by running a teasingly light touch up the centre of Danny's body, fingertips tracing the line of the chakras... No. Tracing the sensitive skin from Danny's navel up to their throat, out over their shoulders and arms. Jerott drew the pads of his fingers along Danny's skin, echoing the feeling of a silk blouse being pulled down and away from Danny's body, like he was opening up the layers of the person lying beneath him.

If he were doing an Ayurvedic massage he'd start at the head - so Jerott shifted his seat a little and rubbed his thumbs over Danny's hips instead, making circular motions, now soft, now increasing in pressure, thumbs now sliding inwards, following the line of the pelvis down, bringing heat and colour to the surface of Danny's skin.

He watched his own brown fingers work, the gloss of oil on them transferring to Danny's body. It was as though, beneath his touch, he was bringing each muscle and sinew to life - glowing and eager. He ran his hands over Danny's belly, feeling soft flesh yield, feeling the hardness of muscle beneath puppyish fat. He didn't tell Danny to relax - he didn't need to. His fingers furrowed the land of Danny's body, unpicking tension, even undoing Danny's tightly wound anticipation, freeing Danny from the control they were used to maintaining.

In answer, Danny sighed and arched their back a little against the bed as Jerott's hands worked up, his touch again feather light at first, caressing inwards around Danny's ribs, his thumbs tracing the undersides of Danny's flat breasts, gently building until the strokes of his digits squeezed as they circled, until Danny's nipples had become hardened points that Jerott's thumb-pads could pass over as softly as the shadow of something on the wing.

Danny moaned at the hint of touch and watched, open-mouthed, as Jerott's thumbs scudded over the pink peaks again.

Jerott circled his thumbs this time, applying a little more pressure and eliciting another sound of pleasure that made his own stomach flip and his cock start with interest. Helpfully, Danny rolled their hips up against him and Jerott let out a breathy laugh of appreciation.

He dipped his fingers in the cup of oil at the bedside again and ran his palms up the planes of Danny's pecs, reaching for Danny's shoulders with clever, squeezing caresses as he shifted and bowed down to lick and suck at the nipples he'd just been teasing with his thumbs. The jasmine oil didn't taste great, he'd be the first to admit, but what did it matter when he felt Danny's whole body shudder beneath him, and that witty tongue, normally so ready with a snappy remark, was reduced to supporting the gasps and moans of Danny's undoing.

Jerott's hands massaged Danny's shoulders, upper arms, shoulders again and neck, and Jerott felt Danny melt in his hold, whimpering some inarticulate command as Jerott's teeth grazed sensitive, puckered skin and his thumbs moved in patterns of pressure up and down the vulnerable contours of Danny's neck. Then he swapped his gestures, stroking down over Danny's chest, gripping each small breast and palming muscle and flesh as he leaned in to suck hard on Danny's earlobe.

Danny's voice slipped into a higher pitch and they shivered and moaned again beneath Jerott's mantling body. Jerott shifted his weight and nudged one knee between Danny's legs, drawing ferociously on the soft flesh of Danny's earlobe with his lips and tongue as he did and eliciting his own name as a desperate plea from Danny's throat.

"Mm?" Jerott answered, pausing to nuzzle kisses into the hot skin behind Danny's ear.

"Don't stop," Danny said in a strangled voice, so Jerott nudged Danny's head the other way on the pillow with his nose and took the second earlobe in his mouth as he worked his other leg between Danny's knees and rolled his hips and hard cock against Danny's body.

It was enough to break down another part of Danny's control: they could no longer lie beneath Jerott pretending to be a passive recipient of such devoted attention. Their hands came to Jerott's back, smoothing up his spine and pulling him close - and it was enough to remind Jerott that he was meant to be delivering a massage, not plunging straight into sex, no matter what his nerves seemed to demand.

He released Danny's ear and kissed Danny's mouth instead, and rubbed Danny's earlobes between his thumbs and forefingers, feeling the little specks of scar tissue where Danny's piercings were. He had to stop and refresh the oil on his hands again, and then he fingered the hot cartilage of Danny's ears and worked his touch slowly, meticulously - soft and then hard and then soft again - down Danny's oil-glistened body until his hands were at Danny's hips and he was left kneeling, poised between Danny's legs.

Danny's hands remained on his back, his shoulders and arms, until Jerott was too far away to reach, and then, reluctantly, they returned to the sheets, gripping and twisting the cotton each time Danny let out an appreciative sound.

Mostly, Danny's eyes were closed - it was easier that way to sink into the sensations of Jerott's touch, and Jerott didn't begrudge himself the opportunity to stare back openly at Danny's rose-gold lashes, to watch the way their nostrils flared as they breathed deeply through the pleasure, to note the severe line of their jaw, which wasn't usually visible but now, from the angle Jerott saw it, rose like a peak at the top of the bed as Danny's head pressed back into the pillow.

Jerott ran his hands lightly over the skin of Danny's thighs, down not halfway to Danny's knees and then back up again to the pale drifts of hip bones lying beneath fat. He swallowed and licked his lips, but made himself wait as he made Danny wait, moving his hands down - smoothing hairs so fine and sparse they were invisible - and up again - ruffling nerve endings and heightening the anticipation of his next stroke - down, smoothing, soft as silk, light as soap washing off Danny's body.

He continued the movement as he finally lowered his mouth to Danny's cock, taking the firm stub of tissue in his mouth and sucking, drawing his tongue up the base in broad strokes that covered over the line of scar tissue where some part of Danny had been sewn shut by a doctor desperate to recreate normality.

Fuck normality, Jerott thought with savage glee, grasping Danny's hips and flicking his tongue from side to side over the soft, silken texture held in his mouth.

He ran his hands down Danny's thighs again, his grip firmer this time, his thumbs caressing the marshmallow-white flesh on the inside of Danny's legs, rubbing in circular motions up to the apex of Danny's thighs, his digits competing with his own face for access to Danny's most sensitive areas.

Danny whimpered and then cursed in French and, to Jerott's delight, in Yiddish. He'd never made that happen before so he repeated what he'd done and Danny's pelvis arched off the bed, pushing back against Jerott's mouth.

Jerott sucked the nub of Danny's cock and then laughed into the damp, downy tuft of hair above it. "Vraiment bien, puce?"

"Vraiment," Danny said from between clenched teeth. "Now come up here, I have something for you."

Jerott cocked a black brow at the head on the pillow but didn't immediately obey. He let his thumbs repeat their massage of the inside of Danny's thighs and he met Danny's tousled expression with an arrogant smirk.

Danny groaned and their legs shivered under Jerott's touch.

"Come here..." they repeated, with a new edge of despair in their voice.

Jerott came slowly, his hands and mouth retracing their way up Danny's body, now guided and tugged at by Danny's impatient touch on his shoulders, back and arse.

When Jerott reached Danny's lips Danny squeezed his arse cheeks vindictively and pulled Jerott's body flush against theirs. Jerott let out a gasp inside Danny's mouth, rolled his hips desperately against Danny's body, and ran his palms down over Danny's nipples again.

Danny's fingers covered Jerott's, pressing his touch down on Danny's chest, and then Danny took Jerott's hands in theirs and sat up, pushing him back with insistent kisses until he was half kneeling, half sitting. Clasping Jerott's hands in theirs, Danny guided his touch around to the small of their back as they leaned, chest first, against Jerott.

"You have something for me, hm?" Jerott asked between kisses, speaking into the softness at the corner of Danny's lips.

"Yes," Danny smirked, their cheek curving beneath Jerott's mouth. They held Jerott's hands in place behind their back and shuffled closer, leaning into Jerott until Jerott shifted his legs out from under him and sat with them splayed to either side of Danny. Danny wasted no time in moving into the space between and wrapping their thighs tight around Jerott's hips.

"What is it?" Jerott tested Danny's grip gently, attempting to run his hands round Danny's waist only to find that his lover's tight hold arrested the movement, keeping him close in their embrace.

Danny pushed their body closer, closer to Jerott's until Jerott felt the unmistakeable demand to lie back and let Danny straddle him, as he had earlier straddled Danny.

He let himself sink down to the sheets and Danny allowed his hands to move around to rest on their hips. They looked down at Jerott with a regal air: chest puffed out, streaked and glistening with jasmine oil like it was war paint, eyelids low over a gaze sparkling with lust. Flushed red lips, a body drawn in indistinct outlines that were as remarkable as any work of art Jerott had seen - Jerott's cock twitched insistently, trapped as it was  beneath Danny's warm arse cheeks.

Danny's smirk was devastating. "What do I have for you?"

They shuffled, one knee then the other, holding Jerott's hands to their hips, up Jerott's torso until they only needed to lift their legs over Jerott's arms and they'd be poised to sit on his face.

"Me, of course," Danny said in silken tones. The certainty, the pride and confidence in those words made a sound rise in Jerott's throat. He swallowed and licked his lips and ran his eyes over the body above his, hungry to taste Danny in his mouth again.

Danny beamed down at him and released his hands so that they could shift their legs and position Jerott's head between them.

Jerott groaned happily as Danny lowered themself to his mouth. He ran his freed hands up Danny's arse and lower back, rubbing and massaging flesh as he went until Danny's hands grasped his again.

Danny threaded their fingers through Jerott's and held his hands against their arse as they ground their body down against Jerott's open mouth.

When Danny did this it never felt suffocating or uncomfortable: Danny paid attention to the way Jerott responded and moaned encouragements that made Jerott's skin prickle. He could hold all of Danny's small cock in his mouth without his jaw aching or feeling like he was about to choke when Danny rolled their hips down. He could find his way around the rest of Danny's anatomy with his tongue, running it softly at first over places that could either be painfully sensitive or dulled to touch by old scar tissue - he worked carefully, like he would do with his hands during the massage - working out what felt good to his lover and what didn't.

And Danny was always happy to help him find the right spot, moving their body and delivering gasped instructions.

All it took was for Danny to breathe an honest "Oy...you're good at this," and Jerott felt his nipples harden and his hips squirm against the bed, his cock responding instantly to the praise. He made a grateful sound against Danny's body and Danny whined and rocked against his mouth.

They tightened their grip on Jerott's hands and then guided his right one away from their arse. Danny reached behind themself, arching above Jerott to draw Jerott's hand away from their body. Danny stretched back, pushing Jerott's fingers towards his cock, and Jerott felt how smooth his own hand was, softened by jasmine oil and hot from the use he'd put it to.

"Don't forget about yourself," Danny purred, looking directly into Jerott's eyes. They released the hand they'd guided to Jerott's cock and sat forward again, reaching down to gently sweep the hair off Jerott's face.

"Ok?" Danny checked. "I'm not smothering you?"

They clocked Jerott's mischievous expression immediately and let out a low laugh. "Careful how you answer that, doudou..."

Jerott, who had no interest in occupying his mouth with mere words when he had other means at his disposal, dipped his chin a little and sucked pointedly at the smooth, domed head of Danny's cock, pressung his tongue up against it.

Danny laughed shakily again and groaned. "...Good answer," they conceded, and Jerott knew that when they opened their eyes again and looked down at him they'd see the satisfaction, the smirk in his expression.

His arms were pinned beneath Danny's body still, but he didn't need to move much to jerk himself off, not when he was already this hard. His right hand moved rhythmically up and down his cock even as Danny held his left hand still, their fingers knotted together behind Danny's back.

Jerott didn't let any of it affect the attention he gave Danny - his own pleasure wasn't a distraction or a splitting of his goals, rather it was like singing while playing guitar, or even just using two hands on the one instrument to make the perfect music. He did what felt good to Danny, Danny told him how good it was, and Jerott's hand quickened with pride, his blood rushed with the thrill of knowing he was making Danny feel that way too.

It could take time and patience to make Danny come, and Jerott enjoyed the challenge - besides, even if Danny didn't get there, Jerott wanted to be certain he'd made them feel exquisite in any case. So long as he was occupied with Danny's pleasure, time stopped and pure sensation ruled: Danny's soft thighs squeezing his cheeks; the warm, wet air Jerott breathed that tasted of the mingling of their bodies; Danny's fingers gently combing through his hair, squeezing his hand tightly behind their back; the feeling of his cock against his palm, as eager for Danny's release as its own.

When his neck felt stiff he shifted and kissed the insides of Danny's thighs, applying pressure with his tongue or plunging his teeth into yielding flesh to leave bruises that made Danny yelp with delight.

Another exclamation in Yiddish - Jerott grinned and nipped Danny's leg playfully. He took another mouthful of skin and sucked, like he'd suck on Danny's cock, and Danny whimpered, their hips bucking, their arse cheeks clenching. French insults mingled with Yiddish; an agonised "hob rachmones!"; a litany of evocative terms that made heat gather in Jerott's groin, spoken as they were with such awe.

He was on the edge now, and he took Danny's cock in his mouth again in case they were too. He tasted their anticipation, and rubbed his tongue against the underside of the head, and as they said, "That's it, that's it, you're an artist!" he felt himself lose the vestiges of his own control as thought and sense and intent all suddenly rushed down to his groin and left the rest of his body flushed empty of all but a ringing pleasure.

Danny's unashamed cry harmonised with the singing of his nerves and Jerott gasped as he let his head fall back to the mattress, satiated and exhausted and fizzing with a vital glee he didn't think he'd felt in years.

Danny released his hand and climbed off him, and Jerott lay in a state of near shavasana, his eyes closed and a smile on his lips. He waited, knowing Danny was coming to him, which Danny did, stretching out alongside his body and stroking his hair back around his ear with the utmost tenderness. They kissed him slowly and deeply and Jerott murmured happily into it.

"You're a treasure, doudou," Danny said against his lips.

Jerott smiled and heard Danny tut immediately. "But don't let it go to that pretty head of yours. You'd be insufferable if you knew..."

Jerott blinked and looked at Danny in sleepy puzzlement, wondering why they'd stopped mid-sentence.

They were staring at him intently, thoughtfully, more seriously than he'd expected. Their lips were red and their cheeks blotched pink; their hair was a disordered, sweaty mess. Without make-up they still looked vulnerable and new to Jerott - beautiful but often wary, a warrior without their armour on.

"If I knew...?" Jerott prompted, lifting a heavy arm from the bed to stroke Danny's chin with his thumb.

Danny's lips moved, and a puckered, vexed smirk fought its way onto them. "You'd be insufferable if you knew how much I love you."

The words still made Jerott's body blush with sensation - instant heat, instant gratification making his skin prickle. He offered the bravest, lopsided grin he could. "Lucky I have you to keep me humble, hm?"

Danny smiled toothily and kissed him. Jerott accepted the insult that followed in all its fondness.

[falsebooles123]

Finding The First Gay Kiss - Diary of a Big Ole Gay 1/7/23

Edit: Yes I know that I published this three days late, suck my dick.

Hey Whores, Today I am sad, not because of movies but just because being unemployed is depressing and I am someone who deals with ... that sort of thing.

(also thank you tumblr for checking on my mental health, you real for that)

I don't like to talk about my depression because honestly its not that bad like compared to some peoples, like I can always get out of bed in the morning, I'm not suicidal. Its just sometimes even when everything in life is fine I just have no energy and I want to cry for no reason. or I sleep for 10 hours everynight and I still feel tired.

and I know that my pain and sickness is valid as much as everyone elses but I feel that I'm stealing valor for being someone with like mild depression symptoms. What I'm saying is that I'm a fake emo.

(go on fuck me emo boy go on fuck me emo boy, wait what was I doing...)

Its Day 4 of the job hunt and I'm typing this up before I go job hunting today but its just so hard when life sucks not to catasphize I hate this feeling of freefall, of feeling like you have slipped off of the tight rope of life and you are just falling

falling

falling

falling

sure at any moment you will either hit the net or feel every single bone in your body break simultaniously. The body eletric, a petit mort of estatic orgasmic pain before nothing.

and I know that that isn't true, i know that I am capable that I am strong, that I am more then the obstucles that get put in my way. and even if thats not true I could always be a nihilist and know that the human desire to keep on keeping on will keep my mortal flesh in pained wretcheness for awhile longer.

Well now that i was a little emo about this shit lets actually talk about the movies I watched this week. BTW I rented a bunch from my local library so thanks taxes.

Glen or Glenda (1953) dir. Edward D. Wood Jr.

Glen or Glenda is something else. On its surface its almost the transsexual Anders Die Al Aldern, complete with a psycologist and plee for sympathy, on the other hand it is a bizarre acid trip of imagery that is impossible to discribe outside of 1940s experimental film, on the third hand it is a anderson-esque autobiography work where wood confronts his own desires for transvesticism to the point that it greatly misreads the room.

This film greatly misunderstans transness, it conflates crossdressing, (which is presented as a fruedian fetishism for lace and fur), with being trans and it doesn't spend a lot of time exploring either of these ideas well. Psuedo-anaylsis is applied to find the roots of their GNC and tbh a lot of this films messaging is outdated.

However I have also had the good fortune of reading a book on the subject, (the name escapes me and I'm to lazy to look it up), and a lot of the way that transness is discussed is period accurate. A lot of people that were getting medical care, (including the influential christina jorgensine), were doing so because of hormone inbalances or because they were intersex. transmedicalism has been the bread and butter of trans health care and while I absolutely don't support it political for a variety of reasons it is the framework people had at the time. The notion of gender identity or even dsyphoria, (are modern transmedical metric)), are woefully modern.

that being said it should also be noted that a lot of people really didn't care about the distinction insofar as it purtained to being part of the queer community. The desire to be GNC was seen in itself enough and our distictions of queer identity are also more modern in the same way that before the 1970s bisexual wasn't a weirdly used label or the notion of asexuals, (who were under the bi umbrella), didn't politically branch off until the 1990s or later.

I don't want to excuse the politics of this film but I do think it is a queer work, dealing with one mans experience of bigotry and trying to heart-felt make an acceptance piece. The fact that this film is so deragated, not by a trans audience, but by a mainstream one, to me comes off as aggresively queerphobic.

I am not going to say that this film gets to be in the cult status of problematic faves like RHPS or its even more problamatic cousin Hedwig and the Angry Inch but I do think that it is being cut from a very similar cloth.

The Detective (1968) dir. Gordon Douglas

At some piont around the 60s and into the 70s Crime Prods went into this almost ACAB era, where instead of explicet copaganda, (y'know like the post-9/11 stuff), they were shown as almost anti-villians and this film is no different.

Usually this gets compared to Serpico or Victim, I don't watch a lot of '60s films so it reminds me of Cruising(1980) which came out later on.

Basically ol blue eyes is a third generation pig and he's investigating the murder of a gay man. but see hes one of the good guys because he doesn't think its nice to call the queers f*ggots, oh and be clear the pigs are very homophobic in this. they love calling us fags and fudgepackers and fairy queens and who the fuck knows what else.

But see Sinatra is a good guy so he only emotional abuses his unfaithful wife a little, and also totally didn't beat a confession out of a innocent man and get him sent to jail.

Its differcult with these films because on one hand pigs are pigs and its at least honest but on the other hand these films do glorify this violence. I don't know i'm not a film scholar, (I say as I write my academic ass essay on this subject).

I do want to rewatch Cruising at some point one causes its very hot.

(i literally had to type in the year and director because tumblr won't let me search for Cruising. What if I want to see a man get sucked off in the bushes tumblr-bumbly thats my progative)

and second because the film I feel has a more neutral idea of cops. I think that depicting them as all racist pigs and all good guys as a gun is a disservice. Being the jack boot thug of the regime is obvious a moral gray area and while I refuse to sympathize with shit like "The boy in the stripe pajamas" I do have some interest in see people deal with a corrupt system.

Rope (1948) dir. Alfred Hitchcock

There Lesbians Harold.

so first before I discribe this film let me first discuss how gay the origins of this are. For those not in the know Rope is based off of a 1929 play Ropes End, (well in the broadway run), which in turn was inspired by the case of Leopald and Loeb.

There were two young students, (teenaged at the time I believe), who murdered a 14 year old boy because they had read too much nietzche

Not only were the two murderes but it turned out that they were indeed gay lovers, with the sexual relationship feeding into the more toxic dom/sub aspect of the killing team, (OK I watched a lot of criminal minds and they fit the model to a tee).

this of course was tawdry and shocking and of course it feeled the fucked up imaginations of people and so the gay codependence of these two murderers found there way into Ropes End which dramaticised the events.

This was then picked up somewhere by Alfred Hitchcock and given to Arthur Laurents, also gay, (btw according to wikipedia he got set up with his partner by Gore Vidal of all people).

Also both of the main actors in this John Dall and Farley Granger were MLM. Another fun fact was that the Prof, (who was explicitely a daddy in the play), was originally offered to Cary Grant, a man who has never been accused of liking other men. He turned it down supposedly to the queer intonations of the work, (I want to be clear that Grant has stared in other queer works but thats not the point).

Laurents discusses in Rope Unleased (which was nicely enough included as an extra on the DVD I borrowed from the ibrary), how the whole movie was about "It" and everyone was in on it. And it kinda is.

The Murder scene is sexual, with the men holding up Davids prostate body, one with there hands around his throat, the other having his hand inside the jacket feeling his heart beat slowly stop. This death is in someway Le Petit Mort.

Laurents says once again in the doc

"Hitchcock was fascinated by the fact that they were gay murderers, if they were gay he wouldn't care, if they were murderers, but both"

(I'm paraphrasing here)

and this film conflates murder with sex in a way that is palpable. The body becomes almost this symbol of there homosexuality something that can be revealed and outed. Theres another prescient quote by Dom Prof along the lines of

"You Know Phillip, I wish I could come Straight out with what I know

Unfortunetly I don't know any, I merely Suspect"

and lets be clear there is a lot of lines in this work that have that kind of double meaning.

This Movie is gay, it is so fucking gay and everyone knew what they were doing. Good Shit.

Michael (1924) dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer

Michael as has been stated before on this blog is based off of the 1902 novel by Herman Bang. This film is a lot more explicet in the plot probably for the fact that this film wasn't mostly lost. Theres more drama with the characters and overall its basically about a guy whose boyfriend/little starts getting bamboozled by this scammer and ruins his life because of it. Its in a weirdly weird way Its about toxic queer love but like in a way thats not problematic. Which is nice.

What I mean by that is that in modern queer storys tend to have a lot of gay trauma, its a lot of repression and homophobia and people being called faggots and dying of aids.

(you get what I'm getting at)

However in this film its more that these gay people just have like a toxic relationship that has fuck all to do with being gay. Its straight people nonsense but for people who are not straight. Which is honestly kinda refreshing.

[flowgninthgil]

Pinned Post!

Current PfP from Taken form there, made by BeautySnake

All past PfPs can be found in my mess

I'm an openly anarchist person, probably from the same reality as you, and reblogs are gonna show that, but I also like arts and silly things, things that put joy in your life, but also things that allows you to see things from many different angles, all of those things that creativity only can give.

I use any pronouns by the way, literally, I usually take the exemple of cactuses, beats me why.

you know those things that are greatly limited by the fact that it takes time to create, the time you need to get the money that you need to keep on living?

We work to earn the right to work, to earn the right to give ourselves the right to buy oourselves the right to live, to earn the right to die.

Bat - > (㇏(•̀ᵥᵥ•́)ノ) < - Bat

Anyway, this also serves for me to get some posts easely accessible 'cause I really like them and I like too many things to just search them back in the list, so here they go:

Thanks!

Always seek the root of the problem:

If you have an abusive family, this is a good number of advices to help you until you can safely leave:

Internet:

Artists.

Artistic Consent VS AI, Part 1: Glazing.

Artistic Consent VS AI, Part 2: Nightshade.

Privacy

People should try PiHole, I assure you, your privacy on internet matters.

I mean it, your privacy is important.

"Slow the Fuck Down"

Protexting private information can be hard, sorry

Cool things that internet allows you to do.

HTML is awesome.

Too many imbed for tumblr, switching to not-cool links from here.

Piracy.

Keep the Windows open:

Fuck windows, opt out those useless things

Fuck Google, here's some websites you won't find.

Google Algorythm is fucked and full of spam.

Twitter's Community notes are not Universal Truth.

Trick to get some disk freed up on your computer.

Fuck Spotify and the others.

The Cloud! Off-site SSD.

Please, take care!

Your body and mind matters.

It's OK to not be ready, or saying no.

Lazyness doesn't exists.

Learning how diet actually works is important, pizzas are supposed to be healthy.

Your posture matters, take care of your spine.

Breast Cancer CAN affect you, no matter who you are and what your biology is.

Know how you feel and what it means.

Say "Thank you" instead of "Sorry".

Fuck Depression.

Caring about others requires knowing about them.

Communication is key, in every interraction you can have, even the bad ones.

Look out of intersex people, especially at birth.

What is Ableism and what does people mean by it? (Thinking of things concerning disabled people from an Able point of interest.)

To Disabled Persons in the United States of Central North America, get a Abled Account.

Sex education is important for kids.

Explaining Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Don't keep everything to yourself, it's not good for anyone.

Autistic lack of empathy.

Explaining Borderline Personality Disorder.

Down Syndrome does not keep people from being normal people.

Hey, people in rehabs and mental health facilities are people too.

It ends up making a very interesting point about disabled people.

Creation is an art!

AO3 & tips:

AO3 search filter.

If you don't private them, authors can read your bookmarks on AO3.

Compression Sleeves can help you when drawing.

Training is key! and this is awesomely simple!!!!!

Grey vs Gray!

From stories:

bittersweet, short, fantasy story.

Introducing a character:

Sci-Fy but it's not bad:

Changing your point of view.

Remarkable movie about Trans People!

Pokémon Lore!!!!

To Imagination!

Here's how to make fantasy names:

More fantasy world logic!

The Organic, the Mechanical, and the Holy.

But with reallife origins.

People need glasses, and imaginary people too.

Your work is actually Great.

It's about feminism and how all women are normal, but I think it can get you some useful bases on dressing up people.

Rude Compouds on Reddit.

Cultural mixity create great food!

Awesome person, horrible surroundings.

And History is a tool!

It explains,

Paper on cool alt people

Diversity of Arabic languages.

Exploring Music throughout history:

How bad can I be? I'm just building the economy!

And remember.

Did you know girls were awesome?

People lived here before you.

Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights.

Former capital of the armenian kingdom:

Company town is not new.

Cool Dutch gay guy which tried his best to help during the occupation

Nazis didn't burnt book randomly, they knew what they were burning.

Fuckers and Nature All Around the World:

Helping people DOES help, don't prevent them needs in fear of scams, differences or such:

A little bit can do a lot for people.

More than anything, Welfare helps people.

I seem to have reached the maximum of links someone can add to a Tumblr Post... Can't even be a linklog on this tumblelog website! Anyway, here's the links and the name I gave them, they just aren't clickable:

Disgust is no reason to shame or be unsupportive. (Kinks and fetish are valid, because far-right is using them to bring you down.)

https://www.tumblr.com/bemusedlybespectacled/740639295563546624

Fuck racists.

https://www.tumblr.com/anarchistmemecollective/745001874298667008/anarchistmemecollective-willowdove

A Philosophy for Queer Labels.

https://www.tumblr.com/brightlotusmoon/736464664779702272/i-did-that-to-a-guy-he-wanted-to-be-a-wolverine

Learn from others around the world (Anarchy)

https://www.tumblr.com/fuck-yeah-anarchy/721841471755567104/zoe-samudzi-on-a-black-feminist-anarchism

Unlearning White Supremacy. (I guess some people need to.)

https://www.tumblr.com/anarchistmemecollective/746430184276836352/whiteness-as-property-pdf

You missed it out, but it's okay, we just have to give it to others to make it up. (about trans people missing out on growing up as a teenager.)

https://www.tumblr.com/idiot-trashpanda/746303006847418368/i-try-so-hard-to-get-over-this-because-i-cant-be

Cool story about how talking about sex is considered bad. (School director filming educational/humanising porn with his wife and publishing it on the internet without telling anyone getting fired for it.)

https://www.tumblr.com/theprofessional-amateur/738092201016492032/i-want-to-see-this-legal-battle-we-cant-do

Economy! (Seatle people burning up medical depts of people.)

https://www.tumblr.com/enkiduofvideogames/727566517643919361/thing-is-the-debt-companies-hate-this-because

Nature is beautiful:

Biology VS. gender norms. (Little informative drawings)

https://www.tumblr.com/obsidian-hollow-archives/733229447184089088

Fishes are not stupid, you know? (actually watched a documentary about it, fishes shows every signs of intelligence you might think of.)

https://www.tumblr.com/evergreenbutch/741135011848273920

Gretta Thumberg's growth. (lost the link :Sadge:)

Deep Sea livings. (Cool and dangerous in strange ways)

https://www.tumblr.com/plaguedocboi/729081806036647936/this-is-the-irukandji-jellyfish-which-has-venom

Science!

https://www.tumblr.com/supreme-leader-stoat/662522956249972736/i-love-the-pitch-drop-experiment-some-guy

TERFs and Nazis:

J.K. Rowling is both.

https://www.tumblr.com/joerojasburke/744953450298769409

You're not Destroying nature. (Big corps are.)

https://www.tumblr.com/anexperimentallife/736626826502356992

What is Blood Quantum? (American way to force amerindians to get erradicated.)

https://www.tumblr.com/anarchistmemecollective/713843341642563584/blood-quantum-was-designed-to-eliminate-native

Pearl Harbour on the Cost of Giving Birth in the USCNA (United States of Central North America)

https://www.tumblr.com/doubleca5t/742160965275172864/explanation-japan-bombs-pearl-harbor-which

Corporations are a Platypus. (Phineas and Pherb is awesome.)

https://www.tumblr.com/prettydumbloverboy/634121884908322816/corporations-are-a-platypus

& more to come

Redesigns of enby, ace, aro, and agender by @the-unicorn-nick, trans flag by @vampk1zzer, and colours from here by @caninophobia.

[ipsogender]

Book review: Love, No Matter What by Komal Ahuja

While looking for book options for @intersexbookclub, I found this book on a list of intersex books and couldn't find any reviews of it from actually intersex people, nor any content warnings for the book. So, for anybody looking for such information, here's my review of the book:

Content warnings for the book

Rape by a spouse

Rape by a teacher

Domestic violence

Transphobia

How I felt about it overall

The book is neither awful nor great. I'd say 2.5 stars. It has some nice queer found family in it, and some lovely trans-intersex solidarity that was heartwarming. It centres on a perisex parent of an intersex child and the centring of perisex experience was disappointing for me (I am intersex).

Book Summary

Neira gives birth to Devi, who is born with ambiguous genitals. Her husband wants nothing to do with the baby. Luckily some hijras stop by to bless the newborn, and seeing an intersex baby, offer to take the baby in. Chandani, the Guru of the local hijra community comes to an agreement with Neira. Devi will live with the Guru and be raised with the hijras where she'll be accepted, and Devi will come over in the afternoons. And so Devi grows up.

When it comes time for Devi to enrol in school, Neira's best friend Naveen steps up to be the father on the paperwork since the birth father continues to want nothing to do with Devi. He winds up gettting fully involved as a co-parent.

Spoilers follow.

Devi grows up, has a mixed estrogen/androgen puberty, and experiences a bunch of hardships due to being intersex and the stigma of being associated with the hijras. This includes a sexual assault, struggling to get access to education, issues of filling in forms, and the psychological toll of being her birth family's dirty little secret. But through the support of her queer found family she pulls through, gets her education, starts a company, marries a transmasc, and becomes financially independent.

The good

Queer family! 🌈 Devi's birth dad was awful, but it was heartening to see Chandani and Naveen step up so Devi grew up with two mothers and one dad. The queer co-parenting that emerged was lovely.

Trans people showing up for intersex people! The trans hijras like Chandani do a vital job in ensuring Devi gets bodily autonomy and a chance to grow up in an environment that is accepting 🏳️‍⚧️

Devi is explicitly described as healthy - (i.e. being intersex doesn't mean she is unhealthy)

Surgery isn't forced onto Devi! At the beginning of the book the doctors are recommending surgery and thanks to Chandani adopting Devi this doesn't happen. As an adult Devi chooses to have surgery for her own sake, and Neira is like "but why?"

The scene where Devi is upset at the science textbook not including intersex people! She first gets upset because the science textbook has nobody like her in it, then when Chandani explains her anatomy, Devi decides that the world of straight people sucks because "There is not even a mention of us in the text book." 🙃

Non-Western queerness! The hijras escorting Devi to school during times when there has been increases in anti-trans violence felt all too familiar, sadly. That and the pain of filling in forms when your sex/gender isn't one of the usual two.

This book knows the police are the problem and cannot be trusted

The bad

The editing. There are a bunch of typos, plot elements pop up randomly or out of order, there are minor details that are inconsistent, and the voice/style of narration is also inconsistent. The pacing is also all over the place.

Plot inconsistencies. The reasons given for why Devi can't attend school like the other kids are inconsistent throughout the book - at first it's because they're worried she'll have an unusual puberty, but later it's because of gender markers on her government ID. Devi faces issues because of the sex on her birth certificate. But they forged Devi's birth certificate to put Naveen down as the father but didn't alter it to change the gender/sex on the form. Why didn't they just try to pass Devi off as female?

Just so much sexual violence. When Devi is sexually assaulted by a tutor, she is consoled that "it happens to normal girls and boys too" which just WHAT A RESPONSE. At least the tutor gets beaten up by Chandani and another hijra. But when Neira's husband rapes her it is passed off as "oh you know how men are, they have no control". 🤮 The scene is incredibly upsetting and to have it passed off as acceptable was infuriating.

Neira's husband. I get that his role in the book is to be a cowardly bigot. But he neither gets commeupance nor comes around to accepting Devi. Over the course of the book Neira learns to take him less seriously but never goes as far as to leave him. He totally gets away with raping his wife. 😶

Plausibility in the end. Devi starts a company with the other hijras and it just goes too well. It launches without any snags, no bad reviews, no supply chain issues, no lost shipments, no cash flow issues, and so on. I've never started a business but this read like total fantasy. The company goes so well they get a government award and everything about the award ceremony and again it all goes too well to be believable. It veers into inspiration porn territory.

At one point Devi asks Chandani why the hijra are oppressed and gets a response that blames other's bigotry but also that "We [the Hijra] don't raise our voice against injustice." Victim blaming much?

The disappointing

There's still a bunch of conflation of sex and gender.

The book is pretty vague on what Devi's intersex variation is. It's clear Neira has access to doctors, and they order blood work and imaging, so you'd expect there to be a diagnosis. Devi is described as having "both organs", a penis and "a female reproductive organ". Why the vague euphemisms about female anatomy specifically? I don't acutally know if this means vulva/labia, vagina, ovaries, and/or uterus. The reason this bothers me is a lot of perisex authors don't differentiate between intersex variations and wind up creating physiologically implausible intersex variations. Devi is described as having a puberty that involves developing breasts, a muscular build, and some facial hair that she removes. PAIS maybe? Could also be 5-ARD or 17 beta? But it's never really clear and I worry that muddies the messaging.

Neira's parents-in-law are bigoted and excused with "they are far too set in their prejudices to … change". They won't be changing with that kind of attitude!

The choice of protagonist. This is not a book about an intersex person, this is a book about a parent of an intersex child. I recognize there is need for media for parents, especially to get them to stop forcing harmful treatments on their children. I find it upsetting that parents can't listen to actually intersex people directly, that even in a story about intersex it centres perisex experience.

Neira is lionized for having anything to do with Devi. There are a bunch of bits on how amazing she is for doing this bare minimum and how amazing parents are. And biological parents are still favoured - Chandani doesn't get anywhere near as much credit for raising Devi as Neira does, despite being the one who gave her a home and taught her about trans and intersex issues in a way that was accepting.

The Indian

The book is written in Indian English. Some language will feel inappropriate to North Americans like using transgender as a noun. Some language made me do double-takes. Did you know "tuition" can refer to classes/studies? I didn't - I'd only ever seen the term used to refer to school fees. Turns out that's very North American of me. TIL. I appreciate that author didn't try to internationalize the English.

There are a bunch of Hindi phrases that show up in dialogue. It's mostly comprehensible from context, but there were some bits where I couldn't follow what was going on.

I am a white Canadian. I am in no way able to judge the realism of this book in the Indian context. I don't know if it is a realistic or accurate depiction of hijras (the author is not hijra). I'm not sure if "hijra" is even the right term to use. In the book, they present themselves as a third gender, and I don't know if this is what they want. The book also middle-class-ifies the hijras by the ond of the book and again, not sure if this is what they want. There's a lot I don't know and am just going to have to trust/hope the author got this right.

I was stunned that the doctor didn't tell Naina that the baby was intersex, instead only telling the birth father and leaving it to him to tell Naina. Not sure if this is normal but just uuuuugh callbacks to how mere decades ago doctors wouldn't tell women basic things and instead leave it to husbands/fathers to decide 🧐

The gender roles in this book are real something. Wives exist to serve their husbands meals. Daughters exist to be given away to another family via marriage. Devi chose well in deciding to stay in the Hijra community. 👀

Overall rating: 2.5 / 5