#this isn't me making broad statements about these people that i don't know and often still enjoy and respect

[bixels]

You guys remember when Dan Olson's "The Line Goes Up" video dropped and was so damning and incriminating that, overnight, hundreds of the most beloved content creators and Youtubers quietly dropped any and all mention/support of crypto in their videos?

[darcytaylor]

“I also think people need to be cautious about making definitive conclusions based on media portrayal.”

THANK YOU for saying this! In the past 24-48 hours I’ve seen people bring up a deluge of conspiracies. Another blog went from “I’ve been hearing rumors of EF being paired with a 22 year old but have not seen the evidence” to several posts later “Nic is rebounding with JD because EF is in a relationship with a 22 year old”. Isn’t that a big leap, considering this 22 year old must be a phantom lover as there has never been evidence of this. Could it be true? I guess in the reality we live in now - sure, anything’s possible as you say. But let’s stop turning our assumptions into facts, because this is literally what fuels the rumor mill.

(I will caveat that the person who made both those statements initially wrote that response as a hypothesis but may have dropped the “in my opinion” part as asks were getting repetitive.)

Anyway, I’m going to stay in this corner of Tumblr until the winds settle outside. It’s getting wild.

I appreciate your response! It's reassuring to know I'm not alone in thinking this way. Rumours can quickly turn into facts, and that’s where things can become misleading and disingenuous. People can be convinced of something that might not even be true. (This isn't just about the Nicola and Jake situation, this is a broad statement).

I’ve noticed that some people in my asks seem upset with my stance on not jumping to the conclusion that they’re dating without more concrete information. I’m sorry if my response hasn’t been swayed by the evidence - perhaps it’s just how I interpret things based on my own experiences with friends. I’ve mentioned before that my beliefs and skepticism often stem from my personal experiences, which shape how I view these situations. (I think this rings true for most people).

I'm also not even saying it's impossible that they could be in a relationship; I just think we need to be cautious and avoid making definitive statements until we have more evidence.

It's possible that they are only friends. Everything we see could indicate friendship. It's possible that they are in a relationship, I understand why some might interpret things as couple-like.

If people believe they are 100% in a relationship, that’s fine by me as well, as long as everyone remains respectful of differing views and avoid spreading hate towards the people involved.

Honestly, I am feeling a little uneasy with how things are in the fandom right now. There’s so much speculation and intensity, and I want to be careful about what I post. Just to keep some peace in my life. But don't worry, I’ll still be around, and posting when I feel it’s right.

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

To the person who sent me an ask worrying about this article from Consequence TV maybe being the start of OFMD being cancelled, I accidentally deleted it so I'm responding here!

Tl;dr: absent any other information, I'm not worried about it. When I first saw it, it was paired with a headline that said somehting along the the lines of "Taika Waititi hints he won't be returning for OFMD season 3," which seems to have changed and just isn't actually said anywhere in the article itself.

The first part of the article is immediately a bit scary:

When Consequence asks writer/director/actor Taika Waititi if he’s feeling optimistic about a third season of Our Flag Means Death, his initial response is this: “Have you seen the end?”

While this looks scary, I encourage you to stop, breathe for a moment, read that again: crucially, that's not really an answer to the fucking question, and it's presented without context or even any indication that was TW's full answer. It's such a vague opener and without any follow-up it's practically meaningless.

The next parts of the article that a lot of people are concerned about are these paragraphs:

Max has yet to announce plans for a third season but Our Flag Means Death has become a fan favorite for its loving portrayal of its core relationship between Ed and Stede. For Waititi, though, the Season 2 finale “feels like a natural end to their story. Just because I feel like, you know, they’ve been through so much and then wind up in that nice place at a happy ending.” Waititi calls Our Flag Means Death “a really special show,” adding that “I love the show so much and maybe it can survive without Rhys and I. Maybe, I don’t know. I do I think the character of Blackbeard is something I’m really proud of.” Waititi says, though, that “I don’t want it to feel like Rambo III suddenly, you know, when you’re like, ‘Oh man, they have to leave their idyllic life again.'”

When I first read that headline, I was obviously like what the fuck, but when I clicked the link I immediately dismissed this whole article. I'm a person naturally given to anxiety and over-thinking - I'm not saying that to dismiss anyone who is worried about that, I'm saying that to emphasize just how contextless and clickbait-y this article is.

It's important to remember two things: OFMD is a mainstream property that is still generating a lot of traffic due to speculation on whether it's going to be renewed, and Taika Waititi, as a person, attracts a lot of divisive media attention that is often very clickbait-y in nature. He's also the biggest name attached to OFMD.

If we look at this article, all of TW's lines are presented to us out of context. We are not given the questions he was asked or told anything about when this interview took place (other than after the finale, obviously).

A breakdown of what TW says with possible, more likely context:

"The s2 finale felt like a natural, happy ending for Stede and Ed." This is true, and we also know this was intentional in case the show doesn't get renewed. This is not new information.

"Maybe the show can survive without Rhys and I." This is what people are (understandably) worried about, but this is both not a firm statement of "I don't want to come back for s3" and completely devoid of context. A possible explanation is that DJenks has mentioned possible spin-offs; TW could be here referring to spin-offs that don't involve him or Rhys Darby. As an executive producer, there is literally no way TW doesn't know at lesat the broad outline of DJenks' plan for s3.

"I don't want it to feel like they're leaving their idyllic life again." TW doesn't want Ed and Stede's story to be beaten to death, he wants it to have a satisfying, happy ending. Again, this should not be surprising information, it's just presented in a way that makes it seem like he definitely thinks s2 should be the end of Ed and Stede when that is not what he says.

This article is completely devoid of context, and because of that I consider all TW's statements in here to be essentially meaningless because we don't know any of the questions he was asked. I believe the most logical context for these quotations were him talking about the finale and how it was satisfying in case they didn't get s3, speculating about possible spin-offs, and then talking about how he doesn't want the story to be one of those TV shows that go on too long.

A bit of additional context: Consequence is, primarily, a music review and news site. They have a TV segment, where this article is housed, but music is their main focus and they are not a website where you expect to find actual breaking TV news, let alone from big names like TW. Larger film and TV publications we've seen covering the recent release of Next Goal Wins, in comparison, universely refer to the OFMD s2 as "successful" and refer to a "likely" third season - for publications actually focused on TV, the predominant view seems to be that OFMD is successful and a 3rd season seems very likely.

This article is very clickbait-y and tells us absolutely nothing. It absolutely does not say that TW is uninterested in returning for s3 (in fact, it says the opposite, he repeats again how much he loves the show) or that OFMD will be cancelled.

We're okay. Even if we do get news that OFMD hasn't been greenlit for s3, I promise it's not going to break on Consequence TV of all places.

[kimyoonmiauthor]

36 Dramatic Situations by Georges Polti (1895)

Free version found here:

The outline on Wikipedia is wrong. (no big surprise there) Not once did Polti argue for conflict. He does not use the term. He looks at these as situations. We've covered conflict language at length.

Things of note (for me, so read it on your own):

This is during the French Third Regime (His president while he was publishing this is Jean Casimir-Perier) during stable democracy. You can feel it in the work oddly enough as he celebrates Polish and French freedom sticking it to Gustav Freytag who called French Theater inferior. (Believe me, Gustav Freytag spent long, long chapters on this. Unhinged chapters.) It is really hard to name someone not German that Gustav Freytag didn't hate as a contemporary... but he really did hate French theater a lot, so I don't blame Polti. BTW, this is near to his introduction.

I can feel him pushing back on Gustav Freytag a bit because he mentions Polish people, French, Chinese, and goes to great lengths to defend Hindus (Indians of the time--remember Indian history with British occupation.) He also names English plays that Freytag would have known. Of course Shakespeare and Greek plays as well. All groups that Gustav Freytag went out of his way to say were inferior to Wagner's Opera, going on and on about Shakespeare and Aristotle. Gustav Freytag isn't mentioned, but the odd admixture kinda of argues to me, that he wanted to try to say no to Freytag. This is before WWI, so maybe said a bit early to boast, but also ahead of his time. Thumbing his nose about Polish and French freedom feels like indirect confrontation with Freytag, especially when he goes out of his way to not argue for superiority or inferiority. AND he definitely knows German and makes several broad statements to that effect, naming German plays as well. It's not likely he missed Freytag.

This is AFTER the advent of Francis Boaz, the social scientist who went to create Anthropology--you can feel his influence when Polti tries (maybe in vain a little) to do some cultural relativism, which is kind of refreshing to be honest. Does he do it well? Ummmm... not really. But I give him the effort. I should note here, that a lot of Early anthropology theoretical work was in France.

He DOES list Chinese plays and tries his best to be international, but mostly lands on France and Italy. The Chinese plays he lists, I can't find, though, so I might have to ask some Chinese people for help on that.

The Avenging of a Slain Parent or Ancestor:–"The Singer," an anonymous Chinese drama; "The Tunic Confronted" (of the courtesan Tchang-koue-pin). I want to know which these are. And what the original Chinese names are.

Some of the reasons why he did it was because he thought it might boost? creativity. He even says he can hear your cries about limiting creativity, but energetically says that's not his purpose. He wants to have some organization, not put down the budding creativity of the time between various movements of writing, such as naturalism, etc. (I cover that elsewhere, Early 19th century story drivers, etc are fascinating).

19th century France was still considered a hotbed of cultural influences and ideas. Works from all over were being translated into French. (This is something that Lit professors go over a lot, and you get this from Art History as well... but this is easy to find) Modernism and other cultural ideas flourished. So when he references all of these different cultural texts, it's because people all over the world--Korea, China, Japan, Germany, English, etc often did go to France. And France also benefited.

He does use the word Denouement, but it's not used in the same way as the later usage. I think the translation might be a bit faulty, but I think he means mounting plot (nouement, according to some) and then the Denouement (dismount) is the deescalation of the tension.

He does abuse Aristotle by making a thesis, and then not backing his thesis. Can we stop doing this? No? Never?

Can I get a quote from Poetics please? He did argue for simplicity. That it should be long, simple and easy to remember. No subplots. But the overstatemets after that I'm not quite sure about.

The majority of his story theory and the reasons why he did it are at the end. Read the conclusion will help more than the categorization.

He never cites the work that he took it from, beyond one name TT Cue me crying in a corner as I blind stab and try to find the original source and hope that it has a translation. He cited Carlo Gozzi. Of which only five of the ten plays quoted are translated as theoretical works.

Later people who cite him use him for structuralism purposes, but if you read his treaties carefully, he's not quite pro structuralism because that doesn't come as a thought pattern until later (early 20th century). He's not arguing for structure or for a particular story theory--he likes the diversity actually and goes to great lengths to state so before, during and after his treaties. He wants the pluralism, but he wants organization too.

He actually cites people knowing they are of other races than white and bends over backwards to try to do it. Not always well, but you can feel his intentions are good, so you can't hate him for the effort. (Keep in mind this is before the big push on sociology and Anthropology, so he's kind of ahead of the curve.)

There is some sexism in it... but I'm willing to give a pass since he doesn't really disparage women as writers directly like some of the other authors on this list. And he's willing to paint men as just as bad as the women in his scenarios to fill out the lot. Victim of his times might apply here, since it's late 19th century and there was the "damsel in distress" type of plot prevalent at the time.

If I were to rank, he's not the worst of the lot. But his energetic enthusiasm, even when wrong spills over onto the page. He really does think he's doing the world a favor, but not in a holier-than-thou way so I can't quite hate him for it. Brecht is still the most fun to read Followed by Selden Lincoln Whitcomb, who really did know what he was doing with his pluralities. And then maybe I'd put this one third for the semi- (proto)-structuralists.

Let's be honest, Percy Lubbock is kinda oppressive to read because he's so convinced of his self-worth and that he has a horrible solution to a problem he should not see with literary discourse. And as much as I like EM Forster pushing back on Lubbock, some of his story theory ideas don't hold water well. (Forster isn't a structuralist though).

So yeah... Not the best to read and entertaining, but you can't quite hate him, even if his exact information is a bit off...? Ya know. But still some of his information is off, so you can't quite reward him. It's like the eager student who means well when they raise their hand, but somehow are only 80% correct. What do you do with them?

Anyway, you can see him in time and space with this contextualization, I hope. I have 3 good candidates for the Antigone diagram. If it's who I think it is, then we have a super awesome figure to cover.

[transgenderism-horror]

i do absolutely think "love negativity" does exist, especially for queer people. being yelled at for holding my boyfriend's hand in public isnt love positivity, thats for sure. even the influx of aros and aces saying they dont want to see people kissing at pride isnt love positivity. i know people like to deny that happens, but as an aromantic who's been openly aromantic for over a decade and in many aromantic spaces, i have followed several aro people who've said they dont want to see people kissing in public, even at pride. which, again, sounds like love negativity to me. specifically directed at other queer people, which also leads into homophobia and biphobia.

i completely understand being loveless and all, but gay people have and do experience oppression for the love that they have. "love wins" is played out, but was vitally important. saying "comraderie wins" doesnt have the same ring to it when im not being comrades with someone im getting married to, im in love with them.

the concept of being loveless, subverting the expectations society has for what being a good person is, and enjoying life without love arent mutually exclusive to people experiencing oppression for their love. aro/ace people arent immune to being homophobic the same way gay people arent immune to being aphobic and the people i have encountered in the aro/ace community have just about the same proclivity to call gay people gross for having sex as gay people have the proclivity to make fun of asexuals for not having sex. ive been shamed for having sex, enjoying romance, and having a long term relationship as an aromantic more than ive had people shame me for being aromantic.

essentially, there's nuance to everything and saying broad sweeping statements like "X doesnt exist" about anything having to do with the queer experience is a massive pitfall in every discourse space. i wouldnt say aphobia doesnt exist just because ive experienced it less, or lesbophobia doesnt exist because a lot of governments didnt know they were real so they couldnt illegalize them, because it negates all the breadth of nuance that the world provides for us. in the good and in the bad.

"No more asks about this" ignored again. Okay okay

And it's funny that if, you read my post again, I was talking about a very broad concept of love, not just romantic. I in no way denied the oppression what people who date the same gender go through! Which would be a funny thing to do! Because I'm a same-gender attracted person and I identify as lesbian in the past! You'd be surprised how much I know about these issues, so you don't need to explain it to me at all! Funny thing, isn't?

I was referring to the fact that, even though certain forms of love are demonized, people still expect us to love. People still expect us to experience family love. Friendship love. Love in general. And we have to love in the right way, in the neurotypical, white way, built according to western standards. And if we don't live up to these expectations, we are ostracized and dehumanized. Love is a requirement for humanity. This is not a problem specific to just one context.

And about the "camaraderie" thing, I was just responding to the argument that "love wins" is an anti-war slogan, which honestly, seems very reductive. Love is not something inherently revolutionary. And it's not the only positive emotion there is. Also, love, in technical terms, says nothing about what someone thinks of another person. In a christian context, people often say that God "loves the sinner, but does not love the sin". My shitty father also says he loves me, like many shitty fathers. Okay, you love me. But do you respect me? Do you understand me? Do you perceive me? There must be more than just love to change the world. But anyway, this is just me commenting on my personal view on love.

I think I derail a little, but whatever. I'm not in a good mindset to provide an answer. I just want to say that I think you didn't understand me at all and at this point I'm too tired to explain myself.

[trixree]

so... this claim about XY sex chromosomes but phenotypically female development (you made it on a post) ....... I have 2 thoughts there. 1 is that this occurs because specific genes, like SRY, that are critical to male development in humans can be absent/nonfunctional on that tiny Y thus rendering the person actually X- (single X) in terms of gene expression, which leads to being female but often with health complications. That is an important distinction to me... just from a intersex/DSD health and research standpoint. Not only does it not produce hermaphrodism (there is no true hermaphrodism in humans) ... it isn't someone "magically" having XY and being female out of nowhere. The "being female" part happens for a reason, and that reason isn't gender/society-culture related. It's a unique genetic event with very specific causes. And it's reasonable that a lot of people don't know about it or skip over it in casual discussion, and it still means functionally, if you have a functional Y, you develop male. My 2nd thought is I just don't get what disorders of sex development have to do with gender to you. It's its own thing.

Hi! I don't know exactly what post you're referring to, so I can't make direct reference to it.

I'll answer your second question first, cause that speaks to my answer for the first question!

I bring up disorders of sex development often when discussing gender broadly because disorders of sex development help complicate the binary model most people are working off of. It's an important starting point when many folks are coming at issues of transition and gender from a foundational knowledge that says "there are two distinct ways of being, male (XY) and female (XX) and anything else is a rare aberration". Historically, it is actually intersex people who shaped our models of normative human sex/gender; and I take care to say "sex/gender" here because at the turn of the 20th century, it's important to note that these concepts were not distinct - "gender" as we think of it didn't really enter the scene scientifically until 1940 and was popularized in 1970). Challenging this fundamental misconception that this male-female sex binary is both natural and discrete - it was not natural nor discrete, but constructed out of experimentation on intersex bodies (usually of children) as a project of normalization - is important foundational work for understanding parts as seperate from people and identity.

Which leads me to this statement you made, that "there is no true hermaphrodism in humans" which is simply not correct in the way that hermaphroditism functions as a meaningful political and medical category. While "true" instances of hermaphroditism are rare (OVO-DSD or XX-intersex), hermaphroditism historically has meant broadly anyone with ambiguous sex organs, which today would cover all intersex conditions (of which OVO-DSD/XX-intersex is one) This broad category crucially helps us renders violence against ambigous bodies (often queer and trans bodies) more visible, both in our present moments and in our history.

In this book, I use the general term "hermaphrodite" for all so-identified subjects of anatomically double, doubtful, and/or mistaken sex (that is, supposedly mislabeled sex). But I do this not because I think the category 'hermaphrodite' is self-evident or because I think it forms a clearly bounded, ontological category that cannot be disputed [...] I use hermaphrodite to refer to my historical subjects first because it simplifies my narrative. A single so-called hermaphrodite could, in the scientific and medical literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, go from being officially labeled male, to female, to hermaphrodite, to a subject of mistaken sex, to a subject of doubtful sex [...] it is simplest to use the word hermaphrodite for anyone whose 'true' sex fell into question among medical and scientific men. Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex, Alice Domurat Dreger (1998) - From Chapter 1, Doubtful Sex

It's important to know that in many cases of intersex children, the cause of the intersex condition is never known, which begs the question is the particular diagnosis ("true hermaphoritism" vs other intersex conditions, which can be much more ambiguous) especially meaningful in terms of ones' daily life?

Your example regarding Sewyer syndrome (the non-functional SRY gene on the Y chromosome) is correct, but I'm not following your reasoning that this constitutes an "important distinction". Why is that an important distinction? You say, it's not "true hermaphroditism" and it isn't "magically having XY and being female", "being female happens for a reason, and that reason isn't gender/society-culture related." Again, I don't know the original post you're referencing, but I'd agree with you that this isn't "magically being female"! We do understand the mechanism of this genetic anomaly. However, the reason that a person who develops female secondary sex characteristics (i.e., looks female), regardless of their chromosomal sex or the presence of any sex anomalies, is most likely to be raised female. This is, quite literally, the way our gendered society is intended to work.

So, when we uphold the uncomplicated binary model of sex, when we don't talk about interesex people in conversations about gender identity and queer/transness, we obscure the complex nature of gender identity and ones' sex assigned at birth. (While simultaneously erasing a history of sex that was literally build on the bodies of intersex people as living laboratories.) This history is intentionally made obscure and the voices of those intersex people silenced in their own records and in our own queer history.

Now, anon, if you're still with me (and I hope you are!) I'd like to tell you one of these stories of a real intersex person - a child diagnosed as a hermaphrodite in 1915 who was treated by leading professionals in the field of sex development and endocrinology at the Harriet Lane Home at John Hopkins (emphasis added):

In his memoir, Young describes a 'case that did not end happily' to introduce [Robert] Stonestreet. As Young remembers it: 'A boy was brought to us years ago for operation on account of a genital defect. Dr William Quinby... discovered that the patient was a girl, and advised the father allow him to carry out operations to make his child normal." Like Young, Quinby was most interested in the possibility that overactivity of the adrenal glands from fetal life on had resulted in the masculinization of Stonestreet's body, leading to his assignment as male at birth despite his having "female" gonads. Stonestreet had been raised without question as a boy for ten years and unambiguously understood himself to be a boy. Indeed, when the Stonestreets brought their child to the Institute, the reason was "hypospadias and undescended testicles", not hesitation over his sex.

Young and Quinby undertook an external and internal physical exam, followed by radiographs, a urine test to establish kidney function, a syphilis test, a blood pressure check, and a blood count [...] Finding nothing out of the ordinary, aside from the appearance of the genitals, they moved on to an exploratory laparotomy. Finding 'an infantile uterus with tubes and ovaries of normal appearance,' Young and Quinby were faced with a contradiction. According to a gonadocentric paradigm, the presence of ovaries would trigger a diagnosis of 'female pseudohermaphorditism' and sex reassignment as a girl. 'The sex of an individual must always be determined by the nature of the gonads, regardless of the presence of other abnormalities either of other parts of the genital system or the secondary sexual manifestations of the body as a whole [...] Consequently, this patient is of the female sex; and this in spite of so many secondary sexual characteristics of the opposite, male sex.'

According to Young, when Quinby advised Stonestreet's father 'that the patient was a girl', the response was 'that he had six girls and that this boy, although only ten, was a valuable worker on the farm. He refused to have another girl added to the family and departed.' The Stonestreets might have also recognized their child's self identity as a boy as real, choosing to reject the medical model.

Twenty one years later, Stonestreet returned to the Brady Institute. Now in his thirties, he had lived his whole life as a man and was engaged to marry a woman. Their priest, however, had refused to perform the ceremony because Stonestreet's father had told him about the childhood hermaphroditism diagnosis. Stonestreet now demanded that Young provide medical proof that he was a man, not a woman. 'After a careful study I had to tell him,' Young claims, 'that no mistake had been made. The two left in tears.' Three days later, Young was summoned to the Institute. He found Robert Stonestreet there, on his deathbed. An autopsy found that he had committed suicide by taking a lethal dose of mercury. Young took advantage of Stonestreet's death to verify his theory of adrenal hyperplasia during the autopsy. A few years later he published photographs of Stonestreet's autopsied adrenal glands in his memoir.

Histories of the Transgender Child, Julian Gill-Peterson (2018) - From Chapter 2 - Before Transsexuality

Let me ask you this: what matters more, the way that Robert understood himself to be (unquestionably male) and the way that he lived his life (as a man) or the diagnosis of hermaphroditism that rendered him "female"? That rendered instutitions, like medical and marital ones, incapable of seeing him as he actually was? I'll ask you directly: do you know your chromosomal configuration? Do you know your full genome, every condition or aberation in your body? No! Even the most highly medicalized among us (those living with multiple diagnoses, chronic illnesses, disabilities, or otherwise in close proximity to medicine and medicalized life) would contest the idea that our most fundamental biology matters most, that we can (or even should) know everything about our genes, or even that this information has great bearing on who we become. But I'm certain still, without having the full sequence of your sex chromosomes in front of you or without submitting to a medical examination of your genitalia, you already have some understanding of who you are. Our genetics are not reflective of who we are and who we understand ourselves to be; they never have been a reliable picture of who we will become.

[thebreakfastgenie]

I don't know if you wanted other people's opinions or not, so feel free to ignore this, but I can't say I agree with your take on war narratives having good things happen to the characters sending the message that the war was good.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you were saying (or it was just a matter of person taste not a broad statement), but it seems to me like if you don't portray any good happening within a war, you're flattening it to the point of it becoming one dimensional.

Like, obviously if your message is somehow "it was all worth it" in that kind of love conquers all way, sure, that's ignoring the subject matter to give an ending that's comfy for the audience.

But that's not the same thing as acknowledging that good things happen during wars.

Because like, good things really do happen during wars, and to ignore that seems like ignoring people's lived experiences. Like, I'm sure there are plenty of people who discovered their sexuality as a part of their time in the military, and it seems weird to me to deny that as a story you can tell in a way that isn't also anti-war, particularly given the history and present day state of gay people in the military (though maybe you meant fluff because that seems pretty much impossible to do)

Also if you make a war so entirely horrific all the time I feel like your audience will check out. They'll become desensitized, or bored, or just stop caring because you haven't given them reason enough to care because they know it will be awful. And like, if that's what your going for, fair enough. Accurate depiction of most of modern wars. But that's not what every war narrative needs to be.

(with that said I don't really read much M*A*S*H fic so I can't speak to how those treat the characters and themes. Also again sorry if I misinterpreted what your point was or if this in any way comes off as aggressive, it's not)

First, let me say I always welcome opinions!

So, I was partly talking about personal preference, and that's where the sexuality part comes in. I have negative interest in reading that in M*A*S*H fic and no particular interest in reading it generally, though an original story that includes that could interest me.

I was speaking more generally about war stories, and you are misunderstanding, but maybe that's my fault because I don't know how clear I was. I did not say war stories cannot show good things happening without saying war is good. However, I think it is very difficult. Audiences, for various reasons, are hardwired to romanticize depictions of war. You can show the bleakest, most painfully realistic war drama, and a lot of people will come away thinking the characters are heroes whose actions were admirable. It happens a lot. I think that's why a lot of successful anti-war narratives are comedies: Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five, MASH (1970), M*A*S*H... comedy emphasizes the surrealism and absurdity of it all. In fact, I prefer an absurd, comedic war narrative. I don't particularly like narratives that are over the top horrific. I think they often fail.

So I'm certainly not suggesting that good things can't happen, and I've written about this before. Good things happening in M*A*S*H is part of the tragedy, because they're all poisoned by the war. But you also can't just not live your life while you're stuck there, so they have to build relationships and have good times, even as they are desperately trying to escape the place that allows those relationships in the first place.

But it's something M*A*S*H was very conscious about from the beginning. They didn't want to make the war look fun. And it's just very hard not to when you create a cast of likable characters. The natural audience response is to insert themselves into the fantasy. And I think the longer M*A*S*H was on, the audience's love for seeing those people in that setting and the cast's enjoyment of being on that set together unavoidably cut into the message that none of the characters wanted to be there a bit. Like I said, I don't think it was entirely avoidable, and I think M*A*S*H did about as well as they could.

Of course in real life good things happen to people who were in wars, and people who were actually in them have a range of complex feelings, including positive ones, about the experience. Depicting something in fiction is different. Real people living their lives don't inherently send a message. Fiction does, whether it means to or not. It's very easy to get from "these characters met under X, Y, and Z circumstances" to "I'm so glad X, Y, and Z happened so these characters could meet!" And that gets a little thorny when the event in question is a real horrific war. I don't want to catch myself thinking "I'm glad the Korean War happened" even if I'm just thinking about it in the context of fictional characters. A kid I knew in elementary school said something once about all the cool toys we wouldn't have without wars. I don't want to be like that.

Good things happen, yes, but in my opinion it's important to avoid suggesting the good things make the war worth it. Individual people can decide if they feel their personal trauma was "worth" whatever good came out of it, but war is a much bigger thing. And like I said before, if you asked Hawkeye if he would accept never meeting BJ in order to make the war have never happened he would not hesitate to say yes. But you don't get "would you go back and change it" opportunities. You just have to live with the life you're dealt.

There is, at least in my mind, a difference between "good things happening" and "I know who I am now! I am finally free to truly be myself!"

A lot of fanfiction, across fandoms, relies on stock queer narratives, and the latter is one of them. Though I should add, I don't think this only applies to discovering sexuality. Queer fanfiction tends to be about the "being queer" part because that's where the author's interest and experience lies. Thats's fine! But I'm not into it.

[educating-bimbos]

I guess that just moves my question along to something like this: "What do you mean by promoting femininity?"

One of the reasons a lot of people talk about patriarchy as an idea is that it described pressures and punishments that coerce people into their assigned roles. Boys who express emotion, for example, or girls who pursue technical aptitudes, are punished for doing so and adapt - often through pain - to conform to respective ideals of masculinity and femininity. It's damned effective at encouraging people to adopt those roles, but it can be immensely damaging to those who don't effortlessly fit into them.

Even when we aren't directly punishing people, it still strikes me as perverse to try to tell people whom they should grow up to be, and I am having difficulty conceptualising "promoting femininity" as anything but.

You mentioned being open to "varieties of femininity", but what does or doesn't qualify? Where does variation stop and heresy start?

Okay so femininity to me is just like a set of social functions, rituals, behaviors, and attitudes associated with social categories expressed commonly by women and femme people. A bit self referential, but that is kind of a limit with language past a certain point.

As for your statements on patriarchy, I don't really have the breadth of vocabulary to really get into it beyond the following. I enjoy the idea of being a stay-at-home housewife and kind of a 1950s advertisement aesthetic, do with that information what you will. There are also just some beliefs I hold for myself and what I want out of a relationship or social group. My goal here is to make the broad argument that there is a healthy way of managing that lifestyle that isn't buying into a number of other tangentially related, but not ideal sociopolitical prescriptions and normative beliefs. The idea that you can keep the sundresses and single income household and ditch the racism and antisemitism prevalent in the 1950s.

I don't believe in punishing people or socially ostracizing them if they don't fit in. If you go through my post history you will see time and time again me making the point that gatekeeping and broad attacks against identity groups is really dangerous and inhumane. I am just not fully certain what you mean by that when directed at me.

I did cast a broad net in that regard, but let me try to break it down just a bit because this is already a long answer and I want to get back to talking about dnd with my friends. So with the above statement on what I envision when I think of femininity, I think a number of different social groups, identities, social presentations, and performative ideas that exist on tumblr and elsewhere fit in such a way as for me to think "wow that is really cool." Examples being cottagecore tradwives like myself who tend to identify with an idealized view of "old ways" femininity as described in the second point where we adopt some older ideas or fashion trends and do away with other, less ideal facsimiles associated with being "traditional" whatever that means. There are also women in the bimbo community who also kinda fall into the rabbit hole of "what is a bimbo" which I myself grapple with from time to time and I still don't have a satisfying answer. I think that being a bimbo is cool and it takes a lot of work to keep up on what looks good in fashion, makeup, and maintaining a good physique. There are also really cool feminist blogs I follow that, while I may not agree with them on everything, I think there is value in a multi-polar dialectic and I am honored to share a space with them. I also do enjoy the aesthetic of the "dyed hair feminist" because I know so many people who pull it off and look really good despite me choosing to stick with natural hair color. Though it is the butt of many lazy jokes, I think it has grown past it in a way and that is absolutely worthy of celebration. Finally, as a non-religious type of person I do think that the spiritualists I know are really cool and I could talk for a long time about how each of them incorporate their beliefs and culture into their life and how it expresses itself through their art, their music, or their clothing.

This is an exceptionally long post so I am going to leave it here. I do want to thank you for asking some tough questions, but for now I may just have to leave it here for brevity's sake.

[official-lixy]

It frustrates me how much of a branding problem a lot of leftist ideas have. Phrases like "defund the police" or "prison abolition" are guaranteed to cause pushback, because conservatives and right wingers aren't sitting down and actually educating themselves on what buzzphrases like "defund the police" actually mean. They see "defund the police" and whether through actual or feigned ignorance, paint a picture of out-of-touch leftists arguing for something stupid or unreasonable and completely ignoring the facts and evidence supporting these ideas; centrists and liberals will um and ah about how its unfeasible or too radical without actually engaging with the topic at the level it needs to be understood. And I don't even necessarily know there's anything anyone can do about that. What else are people supposed to say?

The left has a brand issue where the problems of the world are complicated and nuanced, and the solutions the left pose are often just as complicated and nuanced in return while the right gets to sit back and make broad, simple and easily understandable statements. "Build a wall" isn't any more complicated than it sounds when you boil it down. "Tough on crime" is just that. Sure there are some nuances, but can anyone seriously say they were swayed by either of those until they dug deeper and saw what they really meant? No. You get the complete picture from those simple phrases. Something like "defund the police" though? If you're not already engaged in the discourse, what are you meant to make of that? If you have the right education or experiences or background you can absolutely get what thats meant to mean, but if you're a white, middle class, middle aged democrat whose biggest concern is about your safety or your property? Looking at it at the surface you might be reticent, or scandalised by the idea. And again, I don't really know what you can say to change that without having to sit down and explain the theory and policy something like that actually entails.

It just feels like the right is so much more united. They can rally behind the simplest phrases and talking points because they have a shared understanding of what their aims are. Resist change, establish supremacy, maintain control, exercise power. They're not picky. On the other side, the left has to be talked around to agreeing on what we should be doing, where our focus should be, who should be taking responsibility. We can't agree on anything. And in a vacuum removed from actual politics and reality, I think that's a good thing. We're engaged with the topics, we're debating, researching, talking about things. But when we're trying to enact change and solve problems its like we can't stop tripping over each other.

And if frustrates me. Because its a fundamental part of being progressive. Change and evolution and thinking about things are part of that. I don't know what we can do about it

[fursasaida]

Do you have any advice for someone who loves learning and reading about all kinds of stuff but isn't academically trained to understand lots of things? Tbh, I'm curious about everything but I feel stupid when I read things I don't understand right away. It's like I lack critical thinking which makes me endlessly sad because that's something I'd like to develop but idk how. It feels like I passively absorb info, and even the things I understand, I tend to forget or don't know how to articulate :(

I think it would help if I had a concrete example or some more details about what exactly you’re struggling with, but I can offer some general thoughts. (I’m procrastinating on some research by answering this, so it got long. If anything needs clarifying, feel free to come back and let me know.)

“I feel stupid when I read things I don’t understand right away.”

I think it’s very important to understand that being smart or being stupid are phrases so broad they barely mean anything. Understanding a text right away means you have certain skills and knowledge that enable you to do that. It says nothing about your potential to develop those skills and that knowledge base.  I am very good at understanding texts, which means people say that I am “smart” because that skill is valued in a particular way. If you asked me to plow a field I would suddenly be “too stupid” to do it, because I do not have the skills and knowledge. But I could learn them!

And for that matter, even if you never become someone who “gets” texts right away, so what? A lot of people could stand to slow down, if you ask me.

This brings me directly to:

“It’s like I lack critical thinking”

That feeling of running into a wall is actually one of the best tools you could have for thinking critically. Many, many, many people who easily understand academic/analytical writing fail to question what they read, precisely because they can just sort of gulp it down. If you are getting snagged on what someone is saying, it’s not because you are incapable of grasping the Expert Truth they are conveying; it’s because on some level you disagree, or don’t share the worldview that underlies their thinking. (Or also, and this option is not always given enough credence, because they’re a bad writer. [Coughs in Donna Haraway’s direction])

This is true even, or especially, if what’s snagging you is that you don’t understand what they’re saying. This is because in their writing they have assumed their readers share a lot of contextual knowledge and assumptions. That’s not bad in itself; if everybody stopped to fully explain every single term, connection, and assertion in everything they wrote, shit would be impossible. But I want to emphasize that if you happen to fall outside the bounds of those assumptions, it not only does not mean you are stupid, it means you are especially well equipped to question and criticize them--so long as you do the work to understand them, in good faith.

(I add that last corollary because there is a problem where people don’t bother to understand where things are coming from before attacking them, and that’s not useful to anyone. But clearly you are not one of these people. I’d like to encourage you to consider these “I don’t get it” moments not as reasons to give up but as a genuinely good starting point for developing the critical skills you so badly want to have.)

An author makes a statement. The statement doesn’t make sense to you. Why not? Are there words you don’t know? Look them up. Look up their etymology, or examples of their being used in sentences, if you need more than the definition is giving you. Is it the content of the statement itself? Then clearly the author and you are coming at whatever the subject is with different background information and assumptions. (This is still true if it’s a subject you know nothing about! That’s a prime example of coming at it with different assumptions. The author assumes a lot of things about the world that you don’t, because you haven’t learned them.) The important question is not What’s wrong with me that I don’t share this author’s assumptions? Rather, the question is Can I figure out what is behind this author’s statement? And once you arrive at some idea about the answer to that, the task is not necessarily to bring yourself into agreement with it, but to decide whether you think it makes sense or not.

This is where an example would be helpful, because “figure out what the underlying assumptions are” is very vague and I’m sure you’re sitting here like, “Oh, sure, just like that.” So, to start with: The things that pull you up short are the things you should ask questions about. What is it in my understanding of the world that makes this statement not make sense? (One way to look at this is: is there a different but related statement that does make sense to me? What’s different between the two, and why does it make such a difference to me?) What would I have to believe, or assume, for the statement to make sense to me? Why did this person mention this example and not those, and can I interpret this choice as something that makes sense to me? Or as a clue that reveals something about where this text is coming from?

And to be clear, when I say “underlying assumptions,” I don’t mean that this only/always means sussing out bias or prejudice in the usual way those words are used. I also mean the things that author learned in their field before writing the text, which you have not. Like, a lot of what I write now depends on the assumption that there is a difference between “absolute space” and “place.” You might have to read up on that a bit to know what I’m saying at a given moment because you aren’t specialized in what I’m specialized in. You might then decide you think this distinction is bollocks! Reading up on it isn’t necessarily just to get you to agree with me. It’s to get you to where you can make an informed decision about agreeing or not.

Often the biggest assumptions lie in the simplest statements. I’m reading about the Cold War a lot right now. If someone says, for example, “The Cold War was the dominant structure of international politics between 1945 and 1989,” this seems very obvious and straightforward. It’s a basic statement of what most people mean when they refer to “the Cold War” at all. It’s “a historical fact,” a piece of information for those interested in history to “absorb.” But there are a lot of questions worth asking about this! Are we sure there was only one, singular (“the”) Cold War? Was it really “the dominant structure” for everyone, everywhere, that whole time? What is a “structure” and what makes one “dominant”? Are we completely sure about those start and end dates, and do they apply everywhere?

Now one can imagine that if I were to ask all these questions of someone who referred to the Cold War this way in a dinner conversation or something, I might appear very ignorant--or “stupid.” But being critical means not accepting things at face value. I may know perfectly well exactly what this person is referring to, but if I want to question the assumptions built into that reference, I have to ask about things that are “obvious” or “well known.”

The good news is that when you’re reading a text, you don’t have to worry about other people at the table judging you. It sounds like right now you are doing that to yourself, and I would very much like to encourage you not to. Having “dumb” questions is being critical. The only difference between “I don’t understand this sentence about the Cold War” and “I have a critique of this sentence about the Cold War” is that in the first case, I have questions about the sentence; in the second case, I have developed answers to my own questions about the sentence. But both of them involve looking at the sentence and saying “this doesn’t add up to me.”

Criticism is a process. Developing expertise does mean getting to a point that you don’t need to do extensive research every time you read or criticize something, but there will always be new things you don’t understand and have to put in the work to be able to critique. The vast majority of ~inspiration~ among academics, if you read/listen to them talking about their research projects, comes out of bumping up against something they don’t understand and just not being satisfied until they could account for it. That could be anything from the way the word “democracy” was used in the Iran-Contra hearings to the everyday social fact that women are routinely expected to have longer hair than men in much of the United States.

So. You are actually in a great place to get better at this, because everybody who is seriously and honestly trying to be critical has to start from making the obvious not-obvious--from not understanding something.

That brings me to the last thing I want to address:

“It feels like I passively absorb info, and even the things I understand, I tend to forget or don't know how to articulate.”

Criticism, or just--learning--isn’t just a process; as what I was saying about academics above already suggests, it’s a project. This is not only true of academics. Plenty of people who aren’t academics do research or study things on their own just because they’re interested. But the kernel of that interest is a desire to understand something, whether it’s for a practical purpose or not. Maybe you’re teaching yourself to sew and having a lot of trouble with a particular stitch, and you want to figure out if that stitch is standard because it’s actually the most functional or if there’s some other reason, which would mean you could use something different. Or maybe you just really want to know what’s up with sea turtles. Either way, there is something you want.

I think if you identify specific questions about or interests in the world and pursue those, you will have an easier time building these skills and retaining information. (This doesn’t mean you have to give up your general curiosity! Just that at any given time, you are focusing on a few specific things.) Information sticks with us because it’s useful somehow. If your goal isn’t just “know things” but “figure out this thing, specifically” then information about that thing has an actual use for you. So think about something that you’ve had a lot of trouble understanding and that you want to understand--not because you feel like you’re supposed to, or because you feel ashamed that you don’t, but because you want answers to your questions. Your project is now satisfying that curiosity.

I find the more I think about a question I have, the more I start to see information that’s applicable to it popping out of the world all around me, everywhere, even when I’m not actively “working on it.” And I remember those things because they are not just “information.” They are of significance to something I am trying to do, which is answer the question. And that question is not assigned to me by anyone else, not even the author of a text I don’t understand. I can only assign it to myself (I have to want to understand that text!).

And you can support this with the way you read! Reading is interactive (yes, even when it’s just you and a page and you’re not making any noise). The more you approach it that way, the more you will retain of what you read--even if you end up disagreeing with it--because you are not trying to be a container for information to fill, which is absolutely bound to leak. Instead you are looking for things that are useful to you, which may or may not be findable in the text you are currently reading. You are not a receiver. You are a spelunker.

So what does it mean to read interactively? It can mean almost anything. For people like me, it often means a lot of making notes, annotations, and so on (the physical act of annotating a text does a lot to help me retain things, for example). I have files upon files of notes and quotes and outlines from different research projects. I write out paragraphs of musings to try to articulate how my questions are shifting as I learn, or what exactly the thing I’m struggling with is. (You mentioned struggling to articulate; writing things out for yourself is one way to practice at this. So is bouncing things off a friend, which I also do a lot.) But it doesn’t have to look like this.

If you are pursuing an interest, then ultimately what you’re doing ought to be pleasurable. (I don’t mean that it should make you jump for joy every second, but the feeling of making progress toward a goal, even if a particular step is unpleasant, is still pleasurable.) If “taking notes” for you looks like drawing, then great. I once outlined a paper by drawing it as a floor plan for a two-story house. I make research playlists that I consider to be functionally identical to syllabi. I have tagged collections on this tumblr that represent some of my thinking through one set of questions or another. What I’m trying to get at is that in working to answer your own questions, you are not just abstractly trying to “understand” something, which miraculously happens or doesn’t depending on whether your mind is ~good enough~ to receive the Content. You are interacting with statements, pieces of information, images, texts, etc., which you are collecting and arranging and rearranging in order to try to reach a place where you’re satisfied. All of that is part of the process of “understanding,” and if you’re genuinely interested in that process, then the work involved shouldn’t feel like homework. So the literal things you do as part of it don’t have to be similar to schoolwork, if those kinds of things are boring or painful or just unhelpful to you. Do whatever! You’re in charge!

So, to summarize all of this: I think the first thing you need to do is think of yourself not as ignorant, stupid, or uneducated, but as someone who is actively wanting and trying to engage and learn about the world. This is admirable! This is exciting! Thus your goal is not to “absorb” information to make up some deficit, or to become some other, “smarter” person who would understand things the first time you look at them. Your goal is simply to answer your own questions about the world. From that point of view, not-understanding is not a problem. It’s necessary. It’s where the questions come from. If you have to answer a lot of sub-questions along the way--if it takes you weeks to really get what a single essay is saying--this does not say anything bad about you. It just means you’re doing the damn thing. But in order to succeed at it, you do need to have some motivation; it needs to mean something to you. (One of the biggest tricks the devil ever pulled was the idea that inquiry could ever possibly be impersonal.) And whatever that personal meaning is is good enough, I promise.

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

This isn't to be rude, I'm just legitimately curious. What's the point in being transgender if you don't have dysphoria? Is it just because of the disconnect between the brain and the body? So, being trans helps you to feel more connected and at home in your body? There just isn't any distress? And if you don't have physical/body dysphoria, you shouldn't medically transition, right? I've heard doing so can cause you to develop body dysphoria. So, you should just socially transition?

Lee says:

“What’s the point in being transgender”? People are transgender because we are- it isn’t like there’s a point, it’s just the way some people are. That’s true for all trans folks, regardless of their experience with dysphoria.

Not having any distress from dysphoria doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t experience distress from being trans at all though- being trans in a transphobic world means that you’re going to be coming up against some transphobic people and uncomfortable and unsafe situations and all that because if you’re trans then transphobes aren’t going to ask you “hey, do you have gender dysphoria?” before they discriminate against you or shout at you in the locker room or something. So I think that trans people do share a common experience of minority stress from being marginalized even if you don’t have distress from gender dysphoria.

Yeah, I’d say that it seems like a lot of trans people who don’t identify as having gender dysphoria do tend to experience gender euphoria, and accepting that you’re trans if you’re trans is usually the first step towards helping you to feel more connected and at home in your body and more comfortable with how you move in the world. The Being trans without dysphoria post gets into that a bit more.

Gender dysphoria is defined in the DSM-V as “the distress that may accompany the incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender” (DSM-V, page 451). So some folks may have that incongruence but it isn’t necessarily causing them that distress. But if you don’t fully identify as the gender you were assigned at birth 100% of the time, you can call yourself trans. That’s it, there’s no other criteria you need to meet to be trans. 

As for medically transitioning, I think that’s something each individual needs to figure out for themself. You have to decide whether the changes on HRT you want are worth the other changes you aren’t as excited for. You can do low-dose HRT and have the changes happen slower so you can stop when you’ve had enough, but some changes are permanent so it’s important to only start HRT if you’re reasonably sure that you’re okay with the permanent changes that you’d get. You don’t want to start HRT to find that it only makes you more uncomfortable. 

There are some people who may find that medically transitioning creates some features they’re dysphoric with, and there are other folks who may feel that they felt neutral about their bodies beforehand and not necessarily distressed by them, but felt even more comfortable and happy after transitioning- a shift from neutral in either direction is possible.

For example, you might be…

Neutral & non-dysphoric about your bod pre-medical transition then dysphoric post-HRT/surgery

Neutral & non-dysphoric about your bod pre-medical transition then happier and euphoric/more positive post-HRT/surgery

Neutral & non-dysphoric about your bod pre-medical transition then still neutral, no particular emotional change post-HRT/surgery

Some non-dysphoric people may feel neutral about their bodies as they are so they don’t necessarily feel like they need HRT to be comfortable in their body, but they may want other people to recognize what their gender is and so they may find it easier to pass if they start hormones or get surgery and passing is often associated with safety in certain situations so that’s a valid reason to transition- if they think they’re okay with the HRT changes. 

In fact, I wouldn’t even say that someone shouldn’t start HRT if one of the changes from HRT would make them dysphoric about something they’re not currently dysphoric about. It’s up to them to decide if that changes is worth everything else they’d be getting. Sometimes a little bad is worth a lot of good- it depends on the person and how they feel about it! And it isn’t a decision that should be taken lightly, but it also isn’t something that should be policed by random strangers on the internet.

I personally do have dysphoria and I’m on T and had top surgery, a hysterectomy, and I’m getting phallo, but that doesn’t mean that I am/was uncomfortable with every single aspect about my pre-HRT and pre-surgery body. Before I started testosterone, for example, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about getting facial hair. It wasn’t one of the changes that I was really looking forward to. Now I’m about 2 years on T, and I’ve found that so far I don’t have very much facial hair anyway but I just shave now and then, as plenty of folks do, and if I have literally 0 regrets about being on T and it was definitely the right decision for me. In my case, the change I didn’t particularly want (facial hair) was totally worth everything else. 

I know that some non-binary people feel that they wouldn’t be fully comfortable with either all the changes from estrogen or testosterone. These folks may decide that either way they’d still have dysphoria about certain things, so starting hormones might create new areas of dysphoria but alleviate other areas, and they have to decide which things would be harder to cope with- the things they had before, or the things they don’t want about HRT changes. So for example, if a non-binary person really doesn’t want say increased body hair growth on T but they really want a lower voice, they may decide that getting dysphoria about their body hair is worth getting rid of the voice dysphoria because they can manage the body hair easier by shaving and the voice changes will be more noticeable in how they interact with strangers or something. 

It’s all very complicated and it isn’t an easy decision so saying big general categories of folks shouldn’t medically transition and but people should often oversimplifies all the different variables that trans people are grappling with- and there are almost always a few exceptions to every rule. So making broad generalizations might exclude and marginalize some people who legitimately need to transition while including folks who might not want to. Some folks with dysphoria may choose not to medically transition and some folks without dysphoria might choose to medically transition, and there are often really good reasons why they’re making those decisions and that should be respected. Nobody should feel pressured into medically transitioning if they don’t want to do it, even if they have dysphoria, and the reverse.

So I really don’t feel comfortable dictating categories of folks who should or shouldn’t medically transition because life is more complicated than that. Each person who is interested in medically transitioning needs to spend some time thinking about it, and it can help to create like a concrete pro/con list of how they think they’d feel about each change. If they think that surgery and/or hormones is right for them after careful consideration, that should be respected. Not everyone decides to medically transition which is valid, and I couldn’t say whether medically transition is even a particularly common choice for non-dysphoric people to make, but we should respect other people’s bodily autonomy and trust that they can make choices for themself.

Followers say:

guiltyidealist said: Being trans isn’t “a disconnect between the brain and the body” because not all trans people feel like they’re “”“"born in the wrong body,”“”“ and sex =/= gender

Lee says:

Yes, exactly! I didn’t fully address that statement- some trans people may feel that there’s a disconnect between their brain and their body, but that isn’t true for every single trans person, as the follower above wrote. 

You can’t be “wrong” about the way that you feel about your body- although it is transphobic to say “All men have X parts or want X parts” because that isn’t true. For example, one trans guy may say “My body is male because I am male and this is my body,” and another trans guy may say “I want to medically transition in every way that’s available to me because I don’t see my body as being fully reflective of my identity” and both of those feelings are valid. 

I know this is all a lot to unpack and unravel, especially when different folks are using different definitions for the same words, but again, in the end it comes back to bodily autonomy and the right for folks to make their own decisions about their own bodies.

If you don’t fully identify as the gender you were assigned at birth 100% of the time, you can call yourself trans. That’s it, there’s no other criteria you need to meet to be trans. If you want to medically transition, then that’s your decision.

[thecoachsdiary]

Matrimonial food:What do they really want?

I've attended a few bridal showers in my relatively short life.

I've also been party to many a conversation that revolved around this question: "What do men want?"

A lot of times, (actually, most of the time,) I've heard this statement: "A man has two stomachs. If you satisfy both, he'll be happy." A statement that's been a staple in relationship and marriage advice for as long as I can remember.

Now, if you've never heard this sentence, first of all, you're a very lucky soul (and I truly mean that); and secondly, you can probably guess what it means. But for purposes of this conversation, I'll make it clear: Essentially, if you give a man food and sex, that's a surefire way to keep him happy - and to keep him.

(I see your concern, you that caught that other little problem with my previous paragraph. We'll also need to talk about the "giving sex" mentality very soon.)

Let me be clear: Food is nice. (If you know me, you know I like my food.) So is sex. (If you know me... Never mind me and my jokes.) Food and sex together... Well, I want to believe that's an exciting prospect for most humans, regardless of gender. So this is in no way to minimise how amazing those two things are, especially when they come together.

However.

I think it would be fair for me to say this: Men are not driven by food and sex alone. (And gents, if I lie at any point here, feel free to correct me.)

I often say it in conversation as a joke, but there's meaning to this: Men are often just as (and I use the following phrase very cautiously) "complicated" as women are typically cast as being. And this is a thing that we need to start acknowledging - that men feel. Men feel joy. Men feel sorrow. Men feel pain, remorse, guilt... To varying degrees, but the range of emotions exists.

These emotions also exist in relationships.

He feels hurt by things that are said. He feels a sense of affirmation by the positive. He feels anger when wronged. He feels disappointment when some expectation or other isn't met.

He feels.

And as he feels, he also connects. Or disconnects. Just as any human would. And no amount of food and/or sex compensates for human connection. Because connection is a fundamental human need. A connection that's often made strong by acknowledging that people feel what they feel, and responding appropriately to those feelings.

Which brings me back to this: He feels.

I started off with the context of a bridal shower because I've been to one too many where this is the primary line of thought. Wind your waist this way... Wear lingerie... Make sure you feed him as soon as he gets home... Always look sexy for him... This list can get long.

I've also been in a marriage support group where, again, this line of thought is often perpetuated. That man is a primal being living by the strength of only two things in life (say it with me): Food and sex.

I don't believe this to be true.

I believe men are a lot more complex than that. To reduce men to such a simple two-dimensional caricature is a disservice to meaningful interaction, whether in a relationship or not, whether in a marriage or not.

But at the same time, I want to be very careful not to again use broad strokes for my argument here. I say this acknowledging that caricatures are sometimes based on some level of truth. A truth that may hold steady for some, whilst completely irrelevant to others.

So to close this from me for now, I'm not here to claim to be a guru on the subject of the male mind, nor am I some sort of spokesperson for men. (Spokesman?) What I do request is to consider this: That in asking that opening question ("What do men want?"), you may be seeking to understand one particular man.

My suggestion? Rather than asking it that way, as with any other human, ask that specific male human.

Ask him: "What do YOU want?"

My bet is that his answer may go a little beyond food and sex.