“It’s not about demographics but about the current way the trans community functions.”
I’m so tired. We’re just supposed deal with being the community’s punching bag until it gets bored and picks a different target? A community I can supposedly claim as mine? At this point I don’t know if I want to continue interacting with it.
Coming out was supposed to be a joyous thing. It was supposed to make things better. Instead it’s just this garbage. Forget people adjacent to me, if I can’t even count on my fellow trans men to have my back then what’s the fucking point? Might as well go back into closet. It’d be awful but I don’t see how this is any better.
I've been exactly where you are, and I'm so, so sorry. Encountering all this discourse and feeling hated, rejected, and invisible in my own community very very nearly caused me to detransition.
But I thoroughly believe I can promise you it will not be like this forever. And I don't think it will be a matter of getting bored and things going back to the way things were a few years ago. As painful as all this infighting is right now, it is stirring real, necessary conversation about transphobia. People who hold ideas like "manhood isn't an intersection" and "trans men don't experience misogyny" and "oppression only affects the primary targeted demographic" are being challenged. I didn't feel this way a year ago, but now I firmly believe that transandrophobia theory or at least something resembling it will be integrated into mainstream transfeminism, and the gendered oppression of trans men and mascs will be acknowledged. It will mean something to say someone is being transandrophobic, and it won't be okay to talk over and stereotype and make fun of/"punch up at" us.
I love the trans community, and I do it by choice. It doesn't feel like home for me right now the way I expected it to be when I came out. But I will make it a home, for me and for every single trans man and transmasc out there. We deserve recognition, we deserve space, we deserve a voice, we deserve resources, and we are going to get them. It's okay to disengage with the community for now if that's what you need. But I hope folks like myself will help make it somewhere folks like you feel comfortable and celebrated. Because trans manhood and transmasculinity should be celebrated; our identities are just as wonderful and radical as other trans people's. One day, likely sooner than you might think, other folks will recognize that too.
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I swear I have read your big post regarding Peter Parker's neurodivergence and why it is best to avoid labelling him, but he definitely has a weird brain
Can't find it and feel kinda sad about it cuz I deeply related to it
i know exactly which post you're talking about and i can't find it either! i've raked through my archive, and it's just - nowhere to be seen. i think tumblr eated it (it happens.)
really, tumblr's search functionality is so so useless, i don't know what to tell you. there are plenty of keywords i can search to find it that post, but the search functionality actually just does not work!
undiagnosed audhd-addled peter parker, my darling, my light, my life, my everything.
i think peter parker's such an interesting creature to write, because a lot of people will point to a certain behaviour about him and say "this is an autistic thing, right?" but a lot of those behaviours are actually, in my head, tied to certain traumas in peter's life too.
people say "oh, the food thing, peter's a picky eater because he's autistic" and yes, absolutely. but also it's tied to his trauma with his parents.
peter gets overstimulated, and yes, it's an autism thing, but also he was bitten by a radioactive spider and his senses are dialled to 11.
it's a similar case i've found for myself, too – where a lot of friends i have kind of diagnose me because i have autistic traits, but actually - i'm hesitant to claim the label or pursue diagnosis because, actually, i know where these certain behaviours come from, and they come from certain traumas. there are events i can pinpoint in my life and say "yep. that's where this behaviour comes from."
so - i think there's a lot of overlap between trauma and autistic traits. the brain is very complex! i think the reason for that overlap is maybe as simple as the fact that people with autism and people with trauma are both doing the same thing - developing behaviours to protect themselves or soothe themselves. so - i think it's nice to be able to see a character like peter parker, who may or may not be autistic, but recognise behaviours in him and see yourself in him.
people who go undiagnosed for whatever reason - people who are really good at masking - so good, in fact, that they have no idea they might be on the spectrum - everyone and anyone at all can look at peter parker and recognise themselves. because i think we discredit the thought that every single brain does the same thing! develops certain behaviours in order to survive. every brain has that same software - we've just all been faced with different hardships that we need to overcome, and that's were all the differences come in.
autism is a spectrum, i guess - everyone falls into it to some degree. and i think events in your life probably push you along on it. but i don't know, i didn't study brain science. probably what i'm saying is very stupid and uninformed. of course there's brain chemistry involved. but i know people in my life living with autism and certain events in their life have exacerbated certain behaviours or made coping with it a lot more difficult. so maybe trauma is a catalyst.
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on the Who Could Survive Being Xander's Bisexual Awakening front I see a chunk of people casting their votes for Jesse if he'd lived and while I understand the childhood best bros appeal we have to remember that he was childhood friends with XANDER and WILLOW, two of the most notorious "exes-by-age-6 who can't acknowledge an obvious crush between them for literally our entire lives until we start seeing other people and make it their problem" in media history
do you really think the remaining third of their trio who was absolutely important to them we swear for this episode and then never again sticking around would really make their horrific communication any better if he was zero help with willow's xander crush despite being around their entire lives
and worse Jesse was into CORDELIA so if we ended up in a scenario of a Willow -> Xander -> Jesse -> Cordelia -> Xander sometimes(?) love dodecahedron where Cordy is catty with Xander bc of her being attracted to him against her will and he's extra catty with her for both the same reason and his not-a-crush best friend constantly hitting on her and Jesse won't take no for an answer from Cordy and Willow won't verbalise anything to Xander but get mad at him for being interested in Cordy and/or Jesse regardless then jesus christ we would literally never have time to help Buffy. jesse had to die for the good of the WORLD
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i am not going to touch several queer discourse topics going around with a ten-foot pole but i will say that i think perhaps people would be more chill and less quick to jump on being angry if they actually grasped that nonbinary people exist and intersex people exist, and both of these groups are (generally speaking) not going to have a traditionally acceptable experience with gender and sex.
the binary is not real, both in terms of gender and biological sex.
there are complex experiences beyond your own, ones that you may not understand. you get to decide how you react to that.
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some people are so weird about talking about opression as if its just a very cut-and-dry idea that ONLY EVER affects These people and never anyone else. when thats. really just not how anything works.
and then people act like saying this is trying to silence people and not let them have a word to define their oppression or something and its like ??? thats not what is being said ??? have words for certain types of oppression absolutely! its good to be able to have a term to use to spread more knowledge about what certain groups tend to go through!
but oppression for different groups overlap. to claim that x thing only ever happens to y people is just fucked up, because then YOURE the one trying to silence other peoples experiences.
and of course, just having a word to define what oppression a certain group goes through isnt inherently saying no one else experiences it, but some of yall certainly act like thats what it means and that perception is only going to divide you from other people and what things they also go through that are the same or similar to yours.
and it can easily influence the idea in ones mind that x people is The Most Oppressed and everyone else is The Oppressor (when oppression is an action, not an inherent quality of any individual of a non-ideological group), even when theres so many people that are hurting right alongside you and yall can be supporting one another and FIGHTING FOR EACH OTHER instead of with each other. remember, people that are actively trying to oppress others will ALWAYS benefit from people being divided and infighting.
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gay/bi mike wheeler discourse is so hilarious from my pov. I'm here sitting on my bench watching you all going at each other's troaths virtually, eating popcorn and knowing that Mike is straight, that the Duffer Brothers are lazy and they wrote Will to be in love with Mike because they wanted to take the safer route : sad gay kid pining over his straight best friend. They didn't add a new character for Will in season four because it wasn't suitable for Will and Mike storyline. If Argyle wouldn't have existed and in his place there would have been the new Will's love interest, what the fuck would Mike have done for eight episodes ? Will's storyline would have been different, he couldn't be Mike's counselor. Will and Mike's storylines in season four are attached not because there is this big plot twist around the corner and by*ler will be endgame, it's because of cheap, lazy writing. They didn't know what to do with both of them. So it's really funny reading this whole online discourse "Mike is clearly gay" "Mike is perfect bi representation" when i am here with a bitter taste in my mouth thinking that in good hands, in hands that really cared about queer identity and queer representation Will Byers would have been treated differently.
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Looking at people responding to that video of a high school circa 2002 and realizing that a lot of my demeanor and general outlook has been informed by the fact that id found a solid niche that kept people from fucking with me by the time that i was in early high school. already by then i had slid comfortably into the identity of "smart snarky person who keeps to himself but will deliver a withering take-down the moment you ask him his opinion on anything" that both classmates and teachers found enjoyable to be around. i cant really say it was masking. it was more like an optimized build capitalizing on the attributes that were already there. but also, my high school was just not a place where all that much bullying happened? it was middle school were i saw and personally experienced a whole hell of a lot more of that. to the degree that i thought movies and tv shows depicting bullying as a high school thing was like, fake
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