#trans wome are male

[autistic-and-radical]

A trans identified teenager (17 years old) raped a younger girl (14 years old). The girl was told to refer to him per "she" in the courtroom because her rapist uses she/her pronouns. This happened in 2021, the case was resumed in 2023. The rapist got sentences to 3 years. AND GOT SENT TO AN ALL FEMALE PRISON!!!

[dresshistorynerd]

There is no way to say it pleasantly. Your recent post about Julie... its speculation is a slap in the face of masculine women. Dressing in men's clothing is not a statement against being female, especially in times when male clothes were far more practical than women's. (And especially in the case of a bisexual or homosexual woman!) Behaving "unwomanly" is evidence only in the eyes of sexists. But even today... it is stunning to think that a woman, should her every thought not be recorded, could be deemed a secret man for being masculine! That lingering speculation, despite absence of proof, is rather insulting.

Your reading of my post is extremely dishonest or you didn't actually read the post. The whole time I talk about her as a sapphic woman, because that is what the evidence most point towards. If you think even raising the possibility that she might have been somewhere in the genderqueer or trans spectrum (like some butch lesbians identify as genderqueer and/or trans too), is an insult and means I'm sexist or some shit, there's no way to say it pleasantly, you're probably just a fucking terf.

Now I have no illusions that correcting some of the inaccurate things you said will do anything to change your mind, but because we're already here and I'm allergic to these bad fashion history takes, I'll correct them anyways. This is more for anyone else who happens to see this and actually has some level of reading comprehension.

The women's dress at the time was not necessarily any more impractical than the men's dress. The impractical part of high society women's dress was the skirt that usually had a large trail. But they would also have much more practical dresses for casual usage. High society men wore large wigs that were I would assume pretty impractical. Their clothing, which was well fitted around the torso, closed with buttons and then not very easily adjustable. On the other hand the women's dress was either loose and pinned and belted to fit (in the case of mantua) or laced (in the case of rigid gown) so very easily adjustable even during the day to keep it comfortably fitted to the changes in the body. This would be more practical for anyone, but especially to most afab people, whose bodies can change quite drastically thorough the month.

My point is actually no Julie de Maupin did not have any practical reason to dress in men's clothing. In fact it was impractical for her. As I point out in the post she struggled with the leading female roles, which she wanted to get, partly because her off-stage personality clashed so much with them. (At first) she didn't get as much recognition of performances in leading roles as in supportive roles, partly because the audiences had trouble buying her performances in those roles.

And the other point. The modern concept of fashion doesn't entirely apply to the past. Now fashion is seen as self-expression. Even being into fashion is seen as an indication of certain personality. This was not the case in the time when Julie was alive. Back then fashion was much more social decorum. To be able to participate in the high society you had to keep up with fashion. There were people who were more fashionable than others, sure but they were mostly just the richest young people around, and that made them most fashionable. Fashion was not for self-expression, it was mostly for expression of hierarchy. It was also for political expression. (There's an interesting paper on the contemporary commentary of the politics of the court fashions, which I will link here, when I'm on my desktop.) It was not about what you wanted to wear, but what you wanted others to think about you.

In addition to that at the time clothing was integral part of gender (arguably still is judging from all the conservatives loosing their minds when a man dares to wear a dress). Women in breeches and men in skirts were seen as transgressing on gender. This can be seen even in the mid 1600s conservative reaction to when women's riding habit first appeared (they never change do they?). They complained that the women were basically indistinguishable from young pretty men and like the women were even wearing skirts (seen below)? Part of this was that both the women and men were shaping their silhouettes with their clothing to gain the fashionable feminine and masculine silhouettes, which meant that different shaped bodies could still achieve either silhouette.

Looking through this lens we can ask, why did Julie wanted to be seen as transgressing on gender even though it hindered her career? I think there could be many answers to this question and one could be that she wanted to be seen as not-woman (or maybe not entirely woman). We can never know, because we don't have any of her thoughts about her androgynous expression surviving to this day.

[aurumacadicus]

It's that time of month again, friends! And for June, we're doing something special: Queer-themed books, both a fiction and non-fiction selection! We'll be reading both over the course of five weeks. Tumblr will vote, and the book club will then vote among the top three in Discord. If you'd like to join the book club, send me a message and I'll send you a link to the discord! Keep an eye out for the other poll, and check out the books' summaries under the cut!

(Note: Moby Dyke's full title was too long for the poll option. The full title is Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America by Krista Burton.)

Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam

A groundbreaking global history of gender nonconformity

Today’s narratives about trans people tend to feature individuals with stable gender identities that fit nearly into the categories of male or female. Those stories, while important, fail to account for the complex realities of many trans people’s lives.

Before We Were Trans illuminates the stories of people across the globe, from antiquity to the present, whose experiences of gender have defied binary categories. Blending historical analysis with sharp cultural criticism, trans historian and activist Kit Heyam offers a new, radically inclusive trans history, chronicling expressions of tans experience that are often overlooked, like gender-nonconforming fashion and wartime stage performance. Before We Were Trans transports us from Renaissance Venice to seventeenth-century Angola, from Edo Japan to early America, and looks to the past to uncover new horizons for possible trans futures.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel

Distant and exacting, Bruce Bechdel was an English teacher and director of the town funeral home, which Alison and her family referred to as the “Fun Home.” It was not until college that Alison, who had recently come out as a lesbian, discovered that her father was also gay. A few weeks after this revelation, he was dead, leaving a legacy of mystery for his daughter to resolve.

In her hands, personal history becomes a work of amazing subtlety and power, written with controlled force and enlivened with humor, rich literary allusion, and heartbreaking detail.

Dinner on Monster Island: Essays by Tania de Rozario

In this unusual, engaging, and intimate collection of personal essays, Lambda Literary Award finalist Tania De Rozario recalls growing up as a queer, brown, fat girl in Singapore, blending memoir with elements of history, pop culture, and horror films, and current events to explore the nature of monsters and what it means to be different.

Tania De Rozario was just twelve years old when she was gay-exorcised. Convinced that her boyish style and demeanor were a sign of something wicked, her mother and a pair of her church friends tried to “banish the evil” from Tania. That day, the young girl realized that monsters weren’t just found in horror tales. They could lurk anywhere—including in your own family and community—and look just like you. Dinner on Monster Island is Tania’s memoir of her life and childhood in Singapore—where she discovered how difference is often perceived as deviant, damaged, disobedient, and sometimes, demonic. As she pulls back the veil on life on the small island, she reveals that sometimes kind, sometimes monstrous side of all of us. Intertwined with her experiences is an analysis of the role of women in horror. Tania looks at films and popular culture such as Carrie, The Witch, and The Ring to illuminate the ways in which women are often portrayed as monsters, and how in real life, monsters are not what we think.

Moving and lyrical, written with earnest candor, and leavened with moments of humor and optimism, Dinner on Monster Island is a deeply personal examination of one woman's experience grappling with her identity and a fantastic analysis of monsters, monstrous women, and the worlds in which they live.

Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America by Krista Burton

A former Rookie contributor and creator of the popular blog Effing Dykes investigates the disappearance of America’s lesbian bars by visiting the last few in existence.

Lesbian bars have always been treasured safe spaces for their customers, providing not only a good time but a shelter from societal alienation and outright persecution. In 1987, there were 206 of them in America. Today, only a couple dozen remain. How and why did this happen? What has been lost—or possibly gained—by such a decline? What transpires when marginalized communities become more accepted and mainstream?

In Moby Dyke, Krista attempts to answer these questions firsthand, venturing on an epic cross-country pilgrimage to the last few remaining dyke bars. Her pilgrimage includes taking in her first drag show since the onset of the pandemic at The Back Door in Bloomington, Indiana; competing in dildo races at Houston’s Pearl Bar; and, despite her deep-seated hatred of karaoke, joining a group serenade at Nashville’s Lipstick Lounge and enjoying the dreaded pastime for the first time in her life.

While Burton sets out on the excursion to assess the current state of lesbian bars, she also winds up examining her own personal journey, from coming out to her Mormon parents to recently marrying her husband, a trans man whose presence on the trip underscores the important conversation about who precisely is welcome in certain queer spaces—and how they and their occupants continue to evolve.

Moby Dyke is an insightful and hilarious travelogue that celebrates the kind of community that can only be found in windowless rooms soundtracked by Britney Spears-heavy playlists and illuminated by overhead holiday lights no matter the time of year.

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. And the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia’s intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears.

Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity—what it means and how to think about it—for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere.

How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures by Sabrina Imbler

A queer, mixed race writer in a largely white, male field, science and conservation journalist Sabrina Imbler has always been drawn to the mystery of life in the sea, and particularly to creatures living in hostile or remote environments. Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such creature, including:

-the mother octopus who starves herself while watching over her eggs,

-the Chinese sturgeon whose migration route has been decimated by pollution and dams,

-the bizarre, predatory Bobbitt worm (named after Lorena),

-the common goldfish that flourishes in the wild,

-and more.

Imbler discovers that some of the most radical models of family, community, and care can be found in the sea, from gelatinous chains that are both individual organisms and colonies of clones to deep-sea crabs that have no need for the sun, nourished instead by the chemicals and heat throbbing from the core of the Earth. Exploring themes of adaption, survival, sexuality, and care, and weaving the wonders of marine biology with stories of their own family, relationships, and coming of age, How Far the Light Reaches is a shimmering, otherworldly debut that attunes us to new visions of our world and its miracles.

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out by Jeremy Atherton Lin

As gay bars continue to close at an alarming rate, a writer looks back to find out what’s being lost in this intimate, stylish, and indispensable celebration of queer history.

Strobing lights and dark rooms; throbbing house and drag queens on counters; first kisses, last call: the gay bar has long been a place of solidarity and sexual expression—whatever your scene, whoever you’re seeking. But in urban centers around the world, they are closing, a cultural demolition that has Jeremy Atherton Lin wondering: What was the gay bar? How have they shaped him? And could this spell the end of gay identity as we know it?

In Gay Bar, the author embarks upon a transatlantic tour of the hangouts that marked his life, with each club, pub, and dive revealing itself to be a palimpsest of queer history. In prose as exuberant as a hit of poppers and dazzling as a disco ball, he time-travels from Hollywood nights in the 1970s to a warren of cruising tunnels built beneath London in the 1770s; from chichi bars in the aftermath of AIDS to today’s fluid queer spaces; through glory holes, into Crisco-slicked dungeons and down San Fransisco alleys. He charts police raids and riots, posing and passing out—and a chance to encounter one restless night that would change his life forever. The journey that emerges is a stylish and nuanced inquiry into the connection between place and identity—a tale of liberation, but one that invites us to go beyond the simplified Stonewall mythology and enter lesser-known battlefields in the struggle to carve out a territory. Elegiac, randy, and sparkling with wry wit, Gay Bar is at once a serious critical inquiry, a love story and an epic night out to remember.

[blackamite]

Said a while ago I might post on why my sexuality was confusing so here we go. I’ve never known my emotions super well so who knows if I’ll interpret it different in a few years but whatever.

1. Hyperfixations

This one’s kinda simple, but I tend to randomly get obsessed with things (minecraft, gothic cathedrals, cats.... idk) and sometimes it’s a character which everyone always interprets as a crush but is not a crush. 

2. Faces

Ngl I didn’t really used to look at facial features much. They kind of all looked the same and I’d mainly identify people by their hair. One thing that helped a lot with this was recognizing the difference between how men and women looked (partly because I was seeing more gnc people and it’s easier to tell what’s actual features and not just societal apparatus) and that both changed how I saw gender but also who I was attracted to. After I started really seeing people’s facial features first thing, suddenly men were a lot more ugly. I remember seeing a trans man and thinking “huh he’s cute but like in an anime guy way” except now when I see anime guys I see their male features and they don’t look that androgynous anymore. I really didn’t used to see secondary sex characteristics as much unless I really looked hard.

3. Female objectification + uncomfortableness w/ oneself

Ick with the female body, combined with wome sort of madonna whore complex, makes seeing the female body in a sexual way feel pretty gross and make dysphoria worse. Doesn’t affect me now but did before I desisted. Also doesn’t help when the height of ‘attractive women’ is usually portrayed as pornified looking with exaggerated proportions which is often just gross/not attractive regardless.

4. Fictional vs. real

This is sometimes described using the word ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ which is silly because that’s different. There’s nothing compulsory here, it’s just being attracted to men from a distance in a vague ‘he’s hot but only cause he’s on a screen and should also keep his clothse on’ kind of way. I don’t know if this makes any sense. But anyway, not actually having any sexual experience can make it feel like you’re bi even if male genitialia seems absolutely nasty and you want nothing to do with it (especially if you don’t even know what female genitalia looks like :\)

[rotationalsymmetry]

I am feeling a perverse need to explain Trans Stuff. My brain is not working well, so this will not be good, but it might be hilarious. I am going to be addressing popular conceptions about gender, so, some transphobic ideas ahead. There will also be a non-graphic reference to transmisogynistic violence, and a reference to surgery performed on intersex children. (This is mostly about trans stuff though, and intersex issues aren’t centered.)

Let’s start with mainstream western cultural assumptions about gender. That there’s two genders, that there are two biological sexes, that these line up in predictable ways, that you can reliably tell someone’s gender and sex by looking, that you should be able to tell someone’s gender and sexual characteristics by looking and that if you’re wrong then the person was actively trying to deceive you and is a bad person (specifically: that if you see a trans woman and it turns out she’s got a dick (or maybe just was born with one) then she was deceiving you — this particular assumption is strongly connected to violence by insecure straight men against trans women.) That gender is entirely determined by physical characteristics and can’t possibly have any meaning outside of this.

You will observe that this worldview doesn’t allow for trans people to be what we think we are.

You will also observe that a lot of normal Western people don’t exactly believe those things these days. Due to an awful lot of sustained hard work (and fending off horrifically invasive questions etc) on the part of trans people and cis allies, the default is now something more like: biological sex is a thing but sometimes people’s gender doesn’t match their sex, and those people are called transgender, and they modify their bodies and dress like the gender they identify as, and I guess also there’s this nonbinary thing, but it’s very confusing and possibly grammatically incorrect.

So, let’s address these.

1. There’s two genders. Well, kinda? Gender is made up. (Linguistically, gender is a language thing and might be related to being male or female or might not be. If a Spanish speaker calls a cat a “gato” and uses male terms, does that mean the Spanish speaker doesn’t think cats can be female? Not really.) Many cultures recognize more than two genders and/or recognize that some people take on gender roles that don’t match their body parts. Why should there be two genders? Should there be two genders even when some people are “yeah, the idea of having to be exactly one or the other makes me miserable?”

2. There’s two sexes. Kinda? There is some sort of bipolar statistical distribution where if you put most humans into male or female boxes, you get two more or less coherent groups. There’s also some people who don’t fit this model, who are called intersex, who sometimes are comfortable with the gender assigned to them at birth (intersex people getting assigned a binary gender is a thing that happens in Western culture but not all cultures) and sometimes not. Being intersex is often treated as a medical condition — as a problem — that can be treated hormonally or surgically, including on babies and kids who are not be considered old enough to make these decisions for themselves.

3. Sex and gender always line up. Again this is a made up concept that people either think is true or don’t. You can’t absolutely say this is true or not. What you can say is: some people have the subjective experience of feeling like their gender and sex don’t line up in the way they’re supposed to, that this can cause a lot of distress, that this can cause other problems like substance abuse, that living as a gender that doesn’t match their agab makes them happier and mentally healthier.

4. Sex is unambiguous and immutable. Cool, so, then, what is sex? Some people have both sets of plumbing when it comes to genitals, some people have chromosomes other than XY or XX, some people have genitals that don’t match their hormones/body shapes, some women have lots of body hair, or facial hair, some men have quite a lot going on in their chest areas, some men sing soprano and some women sing baritone. Some women are 5’11”. Some women have Adam’s apples. Some men can’t grow a beard to save their life.

And those things are certainly not immutable. Fat distribution (eg wide hips) comes down to hormones, tits grow with hormones and can be removed by surgery or flattened with clothing, how easily you cry comes down to hormones, apparently trans women can experience PMS, facial hair is hormones, genitals can be influenced by hormones and changed entirely by surgery. Reproductive capacity can be lost through accident or on purpose by surgery. No individual aspect of biological sex is both universal among non-trans people who are identified as men or women, and also incapable of being altered. People are extremely capable of having some physical attributes characteristic of one sex and some physical attributes characteristic of the other one.

5. Sex, or at least gender, is worth organizing all of society around. Sports teams. Bathrooms and locker rooms. What words you use to describe people (what’s a female mailman?) What names you can have. Who you can ask to stand next to you at your wedding (I don’t even mean who you’re marrying, I’ll get to that later, I mean your bridesmaids or groomsmen.) Boys get blue things and are expected to like dinosaurs and construction equipment, girls get pink things and are expected to like ballerinas and unicorns. Men aren’t supposed to wear lipstick or skirts. Women get form-fitting pants with shallow or no pockets. Men are expected to have firm handshakes. If you need something heavy lifted, get men. If you need a babysitter, get a woman. Have a girls’ night out, or a boys’ night out. If you dance, which part you get depends on your gender. If you act, which part you get depends on your gender. If you have a friend, what meaning other people assign to that friendship depends on your gender. If you have a romantic partner, whether your relationship is considered normal or weird depends on your genders, and if you’re “normal” you get all sorts of arbitrary expectations placed on each of you, and if you’re “weird”, people want to know how they can round you off to normal. If you’re a parent, the expectations on mothers and the expectations on fathers are strikingly different.

Ask people what information people usually give first when ask to describe themselves. Age, occupation, marital status, kids, religion, where they live? Often people will identify themselves by their gender first and foremost, and not even realize they’re doing it. It just goes without saying that gender is the most important thing to know about a person.

6. You can tell by looking. Ha.

7. You should be able to tell by looking. Ew. (You’ll notice these last two hinge on point 5. If we didn’t organize society around gender, would it matter if sometimes people mistake each other’s gender? It would be like assuming someone’s about 25 and then learning they’re 32. Who cares.)

8. OK, but being trans is rare, right, and if you were trans you’d know? You would have known since forever? Anecdotally, an absolutely astonishing number of trans people who are extremely happy with identifying as trans and have been for some time (and often with some level of medical transition, and even more often with “presenting” as their chosen gender) have experienced a profound level of self doubt and second guessing and feeling like an imposter during the process. I think that’s just sad. While I’m sure there are some people who thought they might be trans and later decided hell no, anecdotally it seems not that common.

The broad assumption that of course everybody is cis (that gender and sex line up, or that gender and sex almost always line up and that if you’re an exception you’ll just know, no matter how many times you’re told by people that you love and trust that you’re really a boy/girl) effectively gaslights a lot of trans people into assuming they’re not, of course they're not, maybe other people can be trans, but not me.

I prefer the assumption that most people are a little bit trans, and that while most (definitely not all) people can fake being cis with relatively little personal cost, most people have a little bit of trans in them. Somewhat analogous to the idea that while most, but certainly not all, people can fake being 100% straight with relatively little personal cost, most people aren’t actually Kinsey zeroes.

It may help to keep in mind here that I understand trans to be an umbrella term that includes gender non-conformity: having a gender identity that doesn’t match your assigned gender at birth is a type of trans, and so is having a gender expression or acting out gender roles that don’t entirely match your agab. (Often the difference between being gender non-conforming and having a different gender identity is a bit arbitrary anyways: for some people the distinction is very important and they are definitely one and not the other, but for others, it’s just a matter of perspective.)

9. What is this not two genders thing? If gender is made up anyways and doesn’t have to be something we organize society around and doesn’t automatically line up with sex (which also isn’t strictly binary)…why would there be exactly two genders? Some people are happier (“happier” sometimes meaning “not in constant psychological agony all the time”, and sometimes meaning radiantly overwhelmingly ecstatically happy, and sometimes just meaning moderately more happy which is enough reason to identify as trans) thinking of themselves as: not having a gender, having sort of half a gender, having their gender change over time, having more than one gender (me), or having a gender that’s something different from male or female. And who’s to say that’s wrong?

It’s all made up anyways. We might as well make up things that let people be happy.

Oh, back to the deception thing: It’s none of your business. Trans people aren’t “lying” when they don’t say they’re trans any more than someone with a random medical condition — I was going to say mom-contagious, but you know what, including the contagious stuff —decides that’s private and none of your business. If you’re making assumptions about other people, that’s your problem, not theirs. (The “deception” idea also based in #3, that someone’s “real” gender is based on their biology/chromosomes/junk/agab. It’s not being upset about being deceived that someone is trans, it’s being upset about being deceived about someone’s “real” gender.)

[stevishabitat]

Milk Junkies: Trans Women and Breastfeeding: A Personal Interview

So far, this blog has exclusively addressed issues faced by transmasculine folks. I started writing it from my personal experience, and I am transmasculine. However, I've received several questions from trans women who are interested in breastfeeding. After doing some Google searches, I realized that just as there is little to no information for trans men on this topic, there is not much written for trans women. In particular, I haven't found any personal accounts or interviews. I will try to do my part to fill a little bit of this gap. This is part one of a mini-series on trans women and lactation. Enjoy!

Trans women, individuals who were assigned male at birth but identify and live as women, CAN breastfeed. It is possible, and totally awesome! Health care providers, volunteer breastfeeding counsellors, and trans women themselves need to learn this important, empowering fact.

Over the last few weeks, I spoke a couple of times with a trans woman and mother, who we'll call Sarah, to better understand how she became a parent and successfully induced lactation. Sarah's baby is now more than a year old and they still enjoy a wonderful breastfeeding relationship. I'll give a bit of background here on conception and then launch into our lactation interview.

[micah-is-a-rock]

20, 25, 36

20. What do you wish you could have told your younger self about being trans?Way to go for choosing like the most emotional question for me so GET READY. First off, i just wish i could have known earlier that trans people even existed. I didnt begin to realize what was up until high school when i became friends with a trans person (to whom i owe my LIFE) and learned about what it means to be trans and that, shockingly, trans people are just regular people.One very distict memory i have is being in the grocery store checkout line where all the tabloids are and seeing a magazine whos cover read "pREgnAnT MaN!!!1! hoW COuLd ThAt evEn BE POssiBLe????" (I mean, more or less). Anyway, i was intrigued and asked my mom how indeed that was possible, to which she answered, "well...uhhh.... SOME people just CHOOSE to not be their actual gender. This is ACTUALLY a girl who LOOKS like a boy." What a great first way to learn about gender expression. I wish i could go back and actually give myself an explanation that was 1, accurate and 2, respectful, because that one instance left a gross smear on me for a very long time.Generally, i would want to tell myself that trans people exist and are people and that its okay to be trans.25. What do you wish cis people would understand?I mean a lot of things. Specifically, i would very much like to have a way to explain to cis people exactly what its like know you are not the gender that your body would otherwise denote. Like, there are plently of explanations that people have come up with but it just doesnt cover everything, you know? Like "imagine you are your current gender but everyone else calls you by the opposite gender regardless of what you tell them" is a good one but there still seems to be a disconnect. Ive gotten "but wouldnt they be able to SEE that im a [gender]???" Like okay you totally missed the point but great.Also can we please make it common knowledge that trans people are just people like yaint gotta freak out about it it just happens sometimes36. Whats the difference, if any, between your gender identity and expression?I identify pretty solidly as male, but having been raised as female, i have aquired a lot of hobbies/interests/preferences that are "more feminine". Only recently have i felt like ive been allowed to enjoy "more masculine" things, were still working on that. Anyway, for example, things like womens clothing are far more exciting and fun than mens clothing; if you are a man, that means you have a choice of only three types of shirts in four choices of solid colors, and two styles of pants in two colors. Wear a hat, it makes you a Man™. Meanwhile in the womes section, there are endless cuts, styles, colors, patters, accessories, if you can imagine it you have it. Because of this i greatly prefer shopping in the womes section (also apparently men dont come in sizes smaller than 5'6" so nothing in the mens fits anyway).HOWEVER. I feel increasing pressure to not wear the "feminie" clothing i have in order to pass better. I have an EXTREMELY hard time passing as it is and i feel like i have to other choice than to give in to typical male fashion. So, while identifying as male, my -optimal- gender expression does not align 100% as male. My goal one day is to have some sick facial hair, big muscles, and wear crop tops.Thanks anon! Im always a sucker for talking about my feelings!

[sadapantoehahaha]

Black Gender is Political

Reading Sapphire and Ruby as butch or femme or lesbian or same sex is not helpful to a critical analysis of the show. I think about Trans*, Paris is Burning, and our discussions on Black Gender.

Because all biopolitical categorization and regulation is ultimately in the service of Whiteness (which is dependant on the dehumanization and disenfranchisement of Blackness) gender as a concept does not account for black embodiments. Black Gender as told by Sojourner Truth and Laverne Cox operates separately if not in opposition to colonial notions of gender. Black Women is a political category because neither blackness nor womeness were ever rewarded viability in the same way as whiteness or maleness. The intersection that black women embody is particularly vulnerable as they are unable to access privilege or “protection” from whiteness or maleness. “Black Women” is political because it reveals the necropolitical agenda of the white-cis-heteropatriarchy. Calling attention to the fabricated reality dominant forces depend on to sustain themselves is fucking dangerous because ultimately Neoliberal Society depends on naive complacency with hierarchy, power, and violence.