#what do you mean my gender presentation doesn’t need to effect my pronouns / identity?!?!

[dsm--v]

guysv did you knowg. you donf need to look like a boy to use he him…..🤯🤯

[soulvomit]

stuff with gender anguish about not fitting in with today’s current gender constructions

From another post I made: I need to talk about 20th century gender norms at some point as a living breathing 20th century fossil and how different it was. To most straight people, being gender non conforming meant gay, trans was on the far end of the gay spectrum, and gay was associated with being socially Not Normal at a time when you had to be Normal to get a white collar job. (The whole Normalhood thing im gonna talk about is VERY connected to mid-late 20th century construction of the white middle class.) Apropos of gender specifically... I’m not sure how 90s/00s genderfluid/genderqueer map to NB, or whether they do. It’s a big reason I am weird about IDing as NB - because it seems to mean something else than my particular understanding of my identity as it was formed in the 1990s. (Another thing is my social world being more people over 45 at this point and also I’m in a hetero relationship.) Part of 90s GQ stuff was that you could identify as a man part time, a woman part time, you could contain multitudes. “Woman-identified person with a male side” was a legit identity within that, so was “man-identified person with a female side.” You could be one person in the streets and another in the sheets. You could be several people in the sheets, especially if you were aligned with kinky culture. (And for a long time... I was.) There was a greater sense in the 90s and early 00s in genderqueerness culture that you could be GQ for no other reason than wanting to be and it wasn’t assumed to be bundled with physical dysphoria or even desire to change your public social identity. Some spaces - like West Coast geek culture and goth culture - had enough flexibility baked in that we didn’t really need to go to LGBTQ culture to explore our identities, and there was a whole geek queer sensibility that was evolving alongside of the broader LGBTQ culture that was definitely its own... thing.  And while people *say* that NB doesn’t mean any one particular thing or any of these things, that’s not always the message I get when visible NBs on TV/in film are almost always at present one very specific image or “type” of person, and that doesn’t resemble me. NB representation on TV amounts to presenting NB as a third gender with very specific codified behaviors (androgynous AFAB person who binds and has body dysphoria).   The message I get is that whatever my experience is, is better described some other way. Also the discourse around relationships with NBs is that a relationship with an NB is necessarily a queer relationship yet having been in relationships in and out of LGBTQ culture, I’m not really sure how to distinguish “a queer relationship.” My relationship is non-traditional in lots of ways and we’re both gender non-conforming in lots of ways though it doesn’t parse to most people because it’s along the lines of stuff that shouldn’t have ever been gendered in the first place. What my partner does not ever question however is his actual gender identity.  The thing is, actually publicly identifying as anything but a woman would create weird problems in my life in terms of social dynamics, and other stuff, and probably an unpredictable series of ripple effects downstream. But - that... just means I’m closeted, right? And closeted doesn’t mean your identity doesn’t exist or isn’t as unreal as someone who isn’t? And what if - as a “shapeshifter” - my relationship to myself within my relationship *is* part of that shapeshifting?  One of the things is that I’m in a heterosexual relationship. My relationship *is* one of my few spots where I’m happy in my skin, let alone happy in the world and I have no complaints with how I’m perceived in this relationship, and part of it is that practically every assumption about my gender is true, or has been true at some point, including the fact that I’m fine with being seen as a woman in the context of my relationship.  It’s in other spaces besides the intimate, that gender stuff makes my skin crawl. My deep interior gender identity is “pixels floating in the ether, which can assume any shape or form.” My gender identity among other people in non sexual friend spaces is “friend.” My partner identifies as a cis het man. I don’t feel like my relationship has any special quality that’s different from queer relationships I’ve been in, other than identities people have. If my partner doesn’t feel our relationship is queer then I don’t feel it is, either... though it’s not exactly *traditional.*  I don’t feel like our relationship is different from our hetero neighbors’ relationships regardless of whatever history I have. I have no way of knowing what my ostensibly-female ostensibly-heterosexual neighbors’ interior identities really are, or what their history is. And because we’re monogamous, it just never ever comes up. Our social world is about half queer and half not so nothing has changed. After decades of only dating people who had LGBTQ identities, and having a particular social world, now I’m with a cis het man from that same social world and nothing really has changed about the shape of my life.   I’ve moved between different spaces my entire life, sometimes I perceived myself as a boy in a girl’s body, but sometimes I didn’t, and don’t. And gender is one of the spaces in which I feel like a chameleon. There seem to be a ton of gender expression based communities that disappeared since the 90s that either disappeared or were erased from discourse and that makes this weirder/harder to talk about.  Another thing is that a lot of the discourse around pronouns (if pushed I’ll say I’m she/they but I am literally comfortable in anything, depending upon context) makes me really uncomfortable. Even in LGBTQ spaces it makes me uncomfortable. There’s the me that my friends know, and some of my family knows, and it’s a big enough world to contain that part of me at this point. I would rather not put my identity under a microscope in any space that matters. It’s weird but I wish I could just be “they” in the work, creative, etc, spaces, without the loading of what “they” means. I wish it meant nothing about the people who love me, or who I love, or how I love, or how I live my life, besides what pronoun I use. But it doesn’t mean nothing. That is why I hope more cis identified people will actually identify as they in the public sphere. There are plenty of spaces in the public sphere that I don’t think should be gendered at ALL. My wanting to be a “they” is in some ways more about wanting public anonymity and having formed my sense of self - at a tender time - online, than about my gender identity. Which means I’d be potentially appropriating “they” from people for whom it IS a deep identity, and yet... haven’t I spent half of my blog talking about how I’m not exactly the gender identity I advertise?? Haven’t I spent a long time up to now advocating for “they?” Isn’t feeling like a they, evidence that I’m a they?  And the thing is, this is such a YMMV issue and the problem is that EVERYONE has competing access needs with EVERYONE ELSE. Anything one queer person wants or needs seems to oppress some other queer person, and it sucks. But sometimes I wonder if I even need to just recognize how cis het passing my life is and acknowledge my privilege. The thing is though at that point... is it how much oppression we’ve experienced or are currently experiencing, that alone makes our identity? That’s as silly an idea as saying I’m less of a Jew because I haven’t personally experienced a hate crime. And yes there’s a lot to shared oppression experiences forming group identities, but I’m not talking about group identity. I’m talking about personal feelings of identity.

[mallowstep]

Genetics ask! I know that male torties/torbies are very rare and caused by a genetic mutation, but with those who do exist, are there any prerequisites with their parents? I’m assuming they’d have to carry the red gene since tortoiseshell is one red, one not-red, but I barely know anything. And based on this, is it better to just headcanon cats like Redtail as biologically female?

alright! hello, anon.

since i had to do more research than usual for this one, reminder that:

i am not an expert. i can and will be wrong. you can find my self-corrections under #corrections, but those are only things i or others have noticed, and that i've had the time to write a correction to and explain.

disclaimers out of the way, let's talk about tortie toms. (and torbie toms, and calico toms, it's all the same deal.)

if you know how ginger works, you can skip the next few paragraphs.

orange (ginger, red, etc.) is sex-linked in cats. what this means is that the gene that causes orange cats is on the x chromosome. it is also codominant, which means that having an orange x chromosome (Xo) and a non-orange x chromosome (X) is not black or orange, but both.

basically:

X or XX: black

Xo or XoXo: orange

XXo: tortoiseshell

yeah?

now, for the rest of this post, i'm going to be writing O and o instead of Xo and X because it's one less character and i don't run the risk of putting three x chromosomes together.

okay. so because torties need two x chromosomes, they're typically female. the way tortie itself works is basically, cells activate one of the genes (O or o) at random, creating patches. so you need two copies.

wikipedia says about a third of male torties have klinefelter's, which is the XXY karyotype. while this does have physical changes associated with it, the only way to confirm (humans have) klinefelter's is to test it genetically.

luckily, cats are very helpful about demonstrating it. what with them being tortie and all.

(we're also lumping in the variations of klinefelter's here. you can get XXYY, etc., and they all fit into the same broad idea.)

anyway, the extra x chromosome can come from either the mother or the father. this makes tortie toms...not quite easier, since the prereqs are the same, but y'know. if mom is Oo, dad doesn't matter. if mom is OO, dad has to be o, and if mom is oo, dad has to be O. same rules as usual.

XXY toms are going to be...not sterile, but pretty infertile. using human stats, about 50% can produce sperm, although the likelihood of them having kits is still low. humans with klinefelter's are also taller than average, so keep that in mind.

again, and this might be a correction on my part, i can't remember, but tortie toms aren't strictly going to be visibly different than other toms.

okay, so most people stop at klinefelter's, but there are two other ways to get tortie toms: mosiacism and chimerism. these are often confused/combined, but because i strive for generally being accurate, i'll go over them both.

mosaic cats carry multiple genetic lines, because of a mutation. this can either be somatic (happens in the body, is not hereditary), or germline (happens in reproductive cells of parents, is hereditary).

this is not always a gain of a line, you can lose a chromosome as well. the difference between somatic and germline and how it affects torties goes over my head, so i'm not going to speak to it, other than i'm pretty sure we're talking about somatic mosaicism. i think. again, not a biologist or geneticist, just a hobbyist with an internet connection.

right, so what happens is basically, some cells lose their extra x chromosome, giving you a cat with karyotype XXY/XY. these cats are more likely to be fertile and generally have less effects of klinefelter's. i'm not entirely sure how this affects tortie presentation, if at all, but it does happen.

i suppose you could also have some kind of mutation that gives you an extra x spontaneously, but that would be unlikely to cause torties, because it would also have to mutate into the other O allele.

again, i really want to stress that while i'm not bullshitting, i'm also not speaking definitively here.

last up is chimerism, where two embryos fuse in the womb, creating mixed genes.

i'm using a picture of a dog, here, because this is what goes through my head when i think of chimeras. you'll have to take my word for it, but while this would be a normal tortie cat, it can't really happen in dogs without some kind of mutation. and chimerism, given the extent of the patching, is pretty likely.

right! chimera torties are going to be, afaik, normal levels of fertile, although it's likely that they can pass on either black or red, not both.

(while i'm here, before we move on, there are a lot of types of chimeras. this type is called tetragametic chimerism, and it's rare in humans but more common in other animals. it's hard to know how common it is, because the differences are often very subtle, and hard to test. it's also not mutually exclusive with mosaics or klinefelter's, just to really muddy the waters.)

i don't have statistics for how common mosaics and chimeras are, and there's always, "a different type of mutation that doesn't fall into this category"

for mosaics and chimeras, the rules for inheritance seem to be the same as for klinefelter's. there's the added note that, because there can be multiple sires within one litter, a ginger queen could have kits with a ginger tom, and get a tortie son, as long as she also...ahem...with a black(/brown, etc.) tom. (or vice versa, with all brown and a ginger.)

okay! so that's basically how it happens.

as for the second part of this question, well. "is it better?" is a matter of opinion. i don't think anyone is wrong for having tortie toms. i don't care. (a) it is possible, and (b) we're all just having fun.

i, personally, do not think redtail is karyotype XX, because i like him being sandstorm's father with brindleface. idk. i like brindleface. yes, i know this raises huge genetic problems, and it's not very canon. i don't really care. i read that redtail fic where he thinks about sand&brindle as he's dying and it hasn't left me.

that said, i'm still a sucker for trans redtail. love it. idk, this is kind of hard to explain. like? it's not my headcanon, but i still appreciate it.

anyway! to the point: if you care about statistics and likelihoods and how many tortie toms you've had in the clan, yes, you're probably better off saving your chromosome anomalies for when they need to have kits, and using XX karyotype for the rest.

(under the cut: matthew rambles about trans cats and gender identity for a while)

i'm pretty sure cats don't have the western concept of gender. i don't think they have a human concept of gender, either, but at some point i need to be able to pin down something, and i think a third/fourth gender is closer to what they have.

i've been thinking about this a lot lately, because i decided i wasn't satisfied with my old approach to trans cats. i can do better than that. i decided cats don't have gendered pronouns, so why should the solution be, "trans cats don't really get to do anything about it"

no. i am dissatisfied with that.

at the same time, for specific reasons: i also don't think cats are trans in the western sense of the word.

because if for nothing else, remember that cat sexual dimorphism has a bigger effect on their life than in humans.

like, queens are going to be uncomfortable around male cats they don't hella trust and their kits. that doesn't go away if said male cat isn't a tom. y'know?

i'm in a constant state of tweaks with this, because i basically: form opinion, test opinion, refine opinion. my initial opinion was too harsh. and!

part of what's changed is i decided i wanted fernsong to be able to raise his kits in the nursery instead of ivypool. so i had to adjust how i think the nursery and queens work, slightly, to permit for that. now, i can turn back to gender and think about it some more.

i'm not going to coin any new terms, because i'm not in that kind of mood, but i think there is some idea of a female cat who is not a she-cat. i don't think the cats would call them a tom, but i'm not sure what they would say or how they would describe it.

i think they would just, on some level, get it.

actually okay you know what! i do need some lingo here. queens = cats who are raising kits in the nursery. she-cats = XX karyotype, considers self female (cis, if you will). toms = XY karyotype, considers self male (cis, again). and uh...we'll go with...

god i hate. i don't want anything i say in this ramble to be considered "words i am going to now use consistently" because i literally just need some way to describe this for my own sanity. with that in mind, let us use molly for XY karyotype, but not a tom, and...how about gib for XX karyotype, not a she-cat.

again, i don't want that to be considered permanent, i'm just fishing at words people use to describe cats so i can have something to work with.

right so, i don't think cats think gib and tom are equivalent, but i also don't think they (as a society) care about that.

like, okay, let's say redtail is XX, but not a she-cat. there's nothing to really be done (heck, if he wants to be a queen, that's still fine), cats don't have gendered pronouns or names, but at the same time, there's an intuitive understanding of what that means.

this kind of ties into the matriarchy, kind of? like, hm, queens are an important part of the matriarchy, but at the same time, she-cats inherit family lines. not that cats inherit much, but still.

i'm getting very abstract here. take, uh, like let's say a hypothetical trans mothwing. i think a lot of people have that headcanon?

and i think, like, mothwing would not be considered a tom. if cats had a concept of sexuality, leafpool would not be straight, because she likes mothwing, and mothwing is not a tom.

but! i would still think willowshine probably is the first line for nursery visits, at least when the kits are very young.

and i don't think anyone there would be unhappy with that deal.

right. i just kept rambling for a while, because i've been thinking about this and obviously it's semi-tied to the question.

tl/dr: cats don't care about gender, because they are cats meowing at each other in the woods. if a cat says they're not agab, everyone is just cool with that.

[babyspacebatclone]

All right. So, there is a serious discussion under the cut, but this occurred to me while outlining it and I’m sure at least some of my mutuals will find it funny.

Gender: Writer

Pronouns: Brilliant/Idiot

tl:dr:

I identify as a ciswoman, but am semi-agnostic about gender. I just cannot understand why anyone would - care? Which made it hard to understand why anyone would be willing to undergo the stigma of presenting as transgender. So I thought about what I consider my identity, and, well, the above.And a better sense of empathy.

So, yeah. Gender, what even is that? I mean, I get that it’s a thing for others, but I just can’t understand why.

Hence chosing “agnostic” as my description:

broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god (Merriam-Webster)

I’m not going to argue it’s not an important thing for others, but it just isn’t something I see as part of my life.

And that made relating to the trans experience hard. I knew it was something important enough to some people to be willing to risk utter social rejection over - but I couldn’t understand.

So I started trying to think about different elements of my own identity, and what would be that important to me to be perceived as.

Someone: You’re a guy.

Me: With D cup boobs? Ok, yeah, sure, whatever.

Someone: You’re a horrible day care teacher.

Me: O-kay? I mean, I personally think you’re wrong, and so does my boss, and so do my kids, but I could get another job and survive.

Someone: You’re a lousy writer.

Me: *having already broken the nearest thing to have something pointy to hold to their throat* You. Take. That. Back.

So, yeah. While my primary identity being “Writer” isn’t a surprise, just how important I would expect someone to view me on that identity kinda did.

And it is not comparable at all. I completely recognize this. I don’t go around every day saying “I’m a writer!” and I don’t care if the majority of people never know this about myself.

But being a writer, and sharing that identity, isn’t an everyday experience in our society. It isn’t something that comes up too often outside of Tumblr.

It’s not something people would kill me over - and it’s not something anyone can take away. Whether I’m “transcribing” or not, I’m always writing.

Writing fiction is how I cope, even silly little daydreams while waiting for a red light. Writing is how I process my life, outlining the events of my day like a narrative.

And that is when I started to understand gender - as a lens through which I perceive the world (one of several, but a major one). When I think about my past, I think about it as a writer. When I consider other people, I go through my studies in psychology, but how I understand psychology is directly related to writing tropes, cause and effect, and character archetypes.

And while I can’t understand using gender in that way, I can understand that another person would use their understanding of gender, especially their own, as one of their lenses of understanding and viewpoint.

So, yeah. Something I was thinking of, and because it was me thinking if it it got organized into an informal essay.

Main thesis statement is: Everyone has core parts of their life that they define themselves by. Just because different people think different elements of themselves are more important than how you view them, doesn’t diminish that importance or the need for respect.

[chordata-on-alterhumanity]

Alterhuman vs Trans: Why r they compared so often?

I'm about to use 'alterhuman' as a shorthand for otherkin and otherlinkers. I don't think plurality is ever compared to being LGBT+ ... ? And I'm not knowledgeable enough about other experiences that fall under the alterhuman umbrella to speak on them. I just don't want to write ''kin and 'link' all the time. If anyone else can speak on other alterhuman experiences and how they compare to being trans, I'd love to hear!

Also, I'm about to use 'transgender' as an umbrella term for every non-cis experience.

Having an alterhuman identity is sometimes compared to being transgender. It brings up a lot of controversy, i.e. the discourse about species dysphoria being compared to gender dysphoria. I'm not about to make arguments for why the comparisons are or aren't valid. Instead, I want to present a thought about why the comparison happens so much.

Being alterhuman is about your internal identity, not necessarily related to what you do or what you're surrounded by. Being trans is the same. Of course, our environment influences us, but they aren't identities that are dependent on your environment.

I’ll talk about other types of identities I can think of before I circle back around to my point.

Identity based on actions: Career titles

You might be an engineer and identify as an engineer, but I don't think most engineers identify as one as deeply as they identify as their gender. Why? I can imagine it's because that title depends on your actions. Is someone an engineer when they're not putting their knowledge to use? I can learn to be engineer and then become a painter and never touch my engineer know-how. I won't identify as an engineer unless I actually feel like one (which requires working as one, be it as a job or as a hobby), and in my own and society's eyes, you need to do a job in order to be labelled as a job-do-er (You gotta do engineering to be an engineer). This sounds very rambly, but the point I want to get to is: A career title can be taken away. You need to work as the thing to be a thing. Because of that, we tend to not identify as strongly with our jobs.

-> action-dependant, environment-dependant

Identity based on environment: Nationality

This one’s a tricky one. I hope I can illustrate my points well enough. The country where you grow up has an effect on you. It's what you're familiar with as a child, and it'll stay with you probably for your entire life. Lots of people hold pride for their country. It's usually something very inherent to a person, because of how deeply connected it is to one's upbringing. So why isn't being trans ever compared to national identity? It seems like a weird question at first, since you can't feel about your nationality like you can feel about your assigned gender (nationality dysphoria?), right? But actually some people do feel very uneasy with their nationality, and you can (if you have the means) move to a different country. I think the inability to compare the two might have something to do with how immigrants, no matter how hard they try to fit in, tend to be viewed as foreign in their new home. The bottom line, tho, is that we generally don't view nationality as something a person can change. And the experience of not vibing with your country is very different from not vibing with your assigned gender or human-ness.

-> not action-dependant, environment-dependant

Identity based on actions and environment: Relationships

Someone might identify as a family person. They put a lot of value on spending time with family. Someone might identify as an extrovert. They're outgoing and feel good spending lots of time with people. To an extent, these examples depend on action. The family person isn't really one when they never interact with their family. The extrovert isn't really one when they never talk to people. These identities depend both on actions and environment. Someone can't be a family person without a family who spends time with them. Someone can't be an extrovert if there's no people around. Would they still identify as that if they lack those things? It's not fully an identity that comes from within.

-> action- and not action-dependant, environment-dependant

Identity based on actions: Dietary choices based on personal ethics

I present myself as example. I'm vegan. I identify as vegan, sure. But of course nowhere near as deeply as I identify as genderqueer. Why? I guess because, if I start consuming animal products tomorrow, I'm no longer vegan. It's action dependant. I could say because of that it's not as inherent to me as my gender, but that's not quite true. I feel very strongly about being vegan, and pushing myself to be not-vegan would hurt me a lot, as would pushing against my natural gender expression do. But, even so, it's an action dependant thing. Gender, on the other hand, isn't. No matter how I dress or act, I remain genderqueer and prefer male pronouns, because gender isn't linked to any sort of action. The same goes for alterhumanity. My linktypes aren’t dependant on any actions like my veganism is.

-> action-dependant, not environment-dependent (unless in case of circumstances like illness or food shortage)

Let's go over gender and alterhumanity in a similar observation style.

Gender

You're your gender, no matter how you dress and act. Gender doesn't depend on your actions. It also doesn't matter how you're treated. It's nice to be recognized as your gender, but a lack of validation from other people doesn't make you not-your-gender. Gender identity may be influenced by our environment, but it's not dependent on it. Gender may be fluid over the course of some people’s life, but this fluidity can’t be forced (that would be conversion therapy). A person can’t force themselves to change either.

-> not action-dependant, not environment-dependant

Alterhuman

For some people being alterhuman changes over time, for some it doesn't. This change can’t be caused by force (neither by the person themselves or the environment) without hurting the person. Being alterhuman isn't related to any actions or the environment. An alterhuman identity might be influenced by both those things, but it's necessary. I'm sure there's some birds out there who identify as birds because they're pilots, and birds who identify as such because they have behaviours that they categorize as bird behaviours (I’m thinking, like, having a frequent urge to flap your arms like wings or ‘pecking’ stuff with your mouth), but there’s also plenty who don’t undertake any bird-like actions. You don't have to do anything to identify as a bird except identify as the bird. You're the only person you need to make comfortable about the identity. It doesn't matter if other people don't validate you - it won't make you not-a-bird spiritually/psychologically/metaphysically/etc.

-> not action-dependant, not environment-dependant

I feel like I rubbed my point to mush by writing so much for smth I can wrap up in just two sentences. Being alterhuman and being trans are very similar identity aspects to each other because you're the only person who can judge their validity. Neither your actions nor environment dictate who you are for both.

[therapy101]

(1/2) With a rise in young children expressing gender nonconformity being sent to gender clinics, being taught about gender dysphoria and being ‘born in the wrong body’ in schools, being guided towards pubertal blockers and medical transition, I was wondering if I could ask for your more knowledgeable input please. When treating such children and adolescents, why is the underlying assumption that the dysphoric feelings are valid and the body is what needs fixing? Why is APA/psychologists

(”2/2) allowing medical decisions to be made based on outdated mind-body dualism? We don’t affirm anorexia and offer liposuction, or the delusions of schizophrenia for instance, so why is this the only mind-body incongruence that’s treated this way? Does GD in a developing child really warrant medicalizing them for the rest of their lives? Since we’ve scientifically concluded gender is a spectrum, shouldn’t we instead be promoting gender diversity no matter what sexed body we’re born in?”

There are a lot of things to unpack and understand here. 

1. The underlying assumption is not that “the body needs fixing.” Medical transition is not the first step for children, adolescents, or adults with gender dysphoria. From 2004-2016, only 92 total children and adolescents out of six million total patients younger than 19 seen in the sample received a hormone blocker for a transgender-related diagnosis. Even among adults, current estimates for the United States are that between 25-35% of trans and non-binary adults complete any kind of gender affirming surgery (this means, even enough those who have surgery, it may only be one type of surgery and may not impact all relevant body parts). Getting access to trans-affirming medical care is very difficult, and structural inequalities like racism impact access to care, leading some trans people, especially Black trans women, to have to buy hormones from non-medical sources. That’s one of the reasons why the APA has come out to support trans folks and gender affirming care: because otherwise, these folks don’t get any care, or they get mistreated. The point here is to ensure that everyone gets equitable access to high quality medical and mental health care. That includes hormones, hormone blockers, and/or surgery for some people, but not everyone. 

2. All feelings are valid- dysphoric or otherwise. Sometimes feelings don’t fit the facts, or acting upon them doesn’t make sense, but that doesn’t take away from their validity. The question is not whether the feelings are valid for kids with gender dysphoria, the question is how to understand that dysphoria better and how to identify what to do about it, both in terms of gender identity and in terms of coping, support and improving overall mental health. This is a great place for a therapist with expertise to step in and help the child and their family figure it out. 

Sometimes the child or adolescent has known literally or essentially their whole life, and that may mean no dysphoria (which is great!). From Katz-Wise et al., 2017: 

For some youth, primarily but not exclusively those ages 7–12 years, indication of transgender identification occurred early and was described as “immediate.” One father of an 18-year-old trans boy from the Northeast noted, “It was so immediate that it was just, you know, it wasn’t like he was seven and he said, ‘Oh my god he thinks of himself as a boy.’ It was just kinda always like that with him.”

For other youth, it is a more gradual process, and may take some time to sort out. Some youth also don’t have dysphoria while they are doing that so there may not be a reason to seek out therapy unless there is some other mental health issue they are facing. But if they do have dysphoria, or are otherwise experiencing mental health symptoms related to their gender identity, then seeing a therapist can help. 

3. Supporting a child to identify as trans or nonbinary or some other non-cis gender is not “medicalizing them for the rest of their lives.” Hormone blockers can be removed, and hormones can be stopped- but I disagree that these are “medicalizing” in any case. A person cannot be reduced down to the medications they take or the treatments they receive. Is a woman with cancer “medicalized” because she undergoes a hysterectomy? Are the children on puberty blockers for medical reasons “medicalized” (>2000 of them in the study I cited above, but no one seems concerned about them)? What about those people with delusions who are put on antipsychotics, which are known to have severe side effects including higher risk of diabetes and heart disease, seizures, tardive dyskinesia, overwhelming sleepiness impacting ability to work or drive, weight gain (I’ve seen clients gain >70 lbs in 3 months), and more? 

I would encourage you to read either of these great studies by Katz-Wise et al: 1 or 2 to understand this better. When you ask trans youth about themselves, the medical aspect is such a small part- they are talking about their whole selves, their hopes for the future, their families and friends, and their wishes to be able to be loved and accepted for who they really are. Some of it is about their bodies, sure, and that can mean that some decide to use hormones and/or hormone blockers or undergo surgery (although we’ve seen that those rates aren’t super higher ). But they’re also just talking about being called the right name and pronoun, getting to wear the clothes that make them feel authentic, getting to date and marry and have sex, and: getting to live. Not being ostracized and assaulted and killed. Like this 8 year old who identifies as a girlish boy worrying he’ll never be able to get married AND be his true self (from the second Katz-Wise et al):

An 8-year-old youth participant who identified as a “girlish boy” similarly worried about other people's reactions related to gender norms in the long-term future, as told by his mother,

He said [to me], ‘But I'm not going to get married, because if I married a boy I'd want to be the bride...I would want to wear a dress and people would laugh at me because I'm marrying a boy and I'd be wearing a dress.

He is 8 years old and these are his worries. As a mental health professional, my immediate thought is that he deserves any and all support that makes sense to him and his family so that he doesn’t have to worry like this. So that he can be 8. 

4. Finally, and probably most importantly: gender dysphoria is different because treating it with hormone blockers, hormones, and surgery is literally life saving. 

As high as 42% of trans people have attempted suicide at least once. For comparison, the lifetime prevalence of suicide attempts in the general population is 3%.  

Study after study has shown that there are three primary factors that reduce suicide risk: 1. Timely medical and legal transition for those who want it; 2. Family acceptance and general support from friends and loved ones; 3. Reduced transphobia and internalized transphobia. (1 2 3 4 5). 

Psychologists want to help people live, and live well. Living well means having a life you enjoy and find meaningful. If medical transition means someone’s suicide risk decreases and their mental health improves, then they can pursue the life they want. Being affirmed in their gender means they can have that part of the life they want. It might also help them get to other things they want (like having the marriage and wedding they envision, like that example). These are things we as psychologists prioritize. Period. 

It’s not the same as anorexia because providing a liposuction for two reasons. One: It would not resolve the dysphoria. People with anorexia who lose weight do not feel better about themselves and their bodies. That’s the dysphoria: people with anorexia (and other eating disorders, sometimes) often cannot see their bodies as they really are. Changing the body won’t help. Unlike in gender dysphoria, where changing the body- either in presentation or actually medically -actually does help. Two: Liposuction for an underweight person with anorexia could kill them. As we’ve discussed, gender affirming surgeries for trans people can save their lives. These are not comparable. 

The comparison to delusions doesn’t work very well because there isn’t really a “medical” intervention you would do to affirm someone’s delusion. But, since you may not know this: we sometimes do affirm people’s delusions, and it’s not necessarily psychologically helpful to try to change someone’s mind about a delusion. Delusions are not bad all on their own, and: sometimes things we think are delusional, actually aren’t, so it’s super important not to assume we know someone’s life and experiences better than they do. (Just recently a nurse assumed a patient was delusional, but actually they were quite rich and owned several expensive cars. People can be rich and have a significant mental illness.) So anyway- I don’t know how that applies. 

Overall: we as a field are still understanding the full spectrum of gender identities and how to do good treatment and good science in relationship with that. But what’s clear is that medical transition is sometimes a part of a good treatment plan for both youth and adults, and that it can save people’s lives. It can make their lives better. I am 100% about saving people’s lives, so I am 100% about a medical transition when appropriate and gender affirming care in general. 

References: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

(email me at academic.consultant101 gmail.com if you need full texts)

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[bitch-in-a-bag]

can we talk about how the LGBT movement has changed in the past 15 years?

in the light of the events surrounding Chris chan, and people prioritizing pronouns over the rape of a woman with dementia, I think it displays just how... different things are.

i personally feel like it's been co-opted by the more loud and entitled mtfs/ males/penis-havers/whatever pc term exists for the XY chromosome'd, who go too far and aren't reasonably kept in check. I think terf no longer has meaning anymore because it's just become a word we use to silence anyone that disagrees with a trans woman. immediately you're going to call me a terf, I accept that, but please continue reading. I may suprise you. calling someone who's transgender a terf is kinda messed up anyway, and that's exactly why im writing this.

I also think that everyone else (allies, ftms, etc) have followed suit because they've written this messed up narrative that EvErYoNe iS VaLiD. except for trans penis-havers, bc they're the most oppressed and the most valid, actually, regardless of their experiences.

I never used to believe the above because it was always written off as terf shit, and ignoring it kinda benefitted me, but between seeing ftms getting bashed for refusing to follow new "TME" rules as if they aren't trans too, and seeing outrage around Chris chans pronouns, I think it's time to start saying things that may make people uncomfortable. innocent people are already getting hurt by this, and we need to do better. it's time to get uncomfortable.

I want to remind you that perception is both the relying factor, and also the downfall of newer lgbt theory. if my profile were mtf coded, maybe it currently is, you'd call me a self hating trans and I wouldn't be that big of a deal. terfs would probably target me.

if my profile was ftm coded, I would be absolutely skewered for daring to speak out about these issues, even though they do actually affect ftms disproportionately. terfs would try to convince me that being trans is a plague and a mental illness, and to just ~be a cis woman~!

and if assumed cis, I would 100% be assumed radfem terf, and everything I say would immediately be dismissed because of the genuine damage terfs have done. but terfs would still probably flock to this post and berate me for daring to validate trans people At All, because to them, being transgender is a mental illness akin to an eating disorder, and "giving in" to it is "self harm". clearly I don't believe that, so hopefully you'll give me at least some benefit of the doubt.

so, does my identity matter? i have a feeling you'll say yes, because it gives us a good idea of experiences I do and don't have expertise in, and thus room to talk about. but I refuse to directly identify what I actually am because I want the focus of any resulting conversation to be my message and not my self identification. if you read between the lines and figure it out that's just fine, but I would like to be heard first and foremost.

my profile is thus an attempt at being cis female coded, somewhat out of comfort, and that is likely what I'll be assumed to be due to the beliefs I am expressing, even though there is a substantial risk of getting misgendered and dismissed, no matter what my birth sex may actually be. i will give you a hint about my identity: I am transgender, on HRT and everything, and I have been personally affected by all of this. rest assured, this is well within my lane to speak about, and it does matter if you misgender me.

I want you to really think about that. before you respond, really think about if someone saying words on tumblr, talking about their OWN experiences and their take on recent history that applies to themself, really more worthy of being misgendered and harassed than... someone who said they transitioned so they could date lesbians, and then raped their own mother with dementia.

is that fair or just? or is this just a new way of letting people with penises do whatever they want? I personally think it's the latter. we need to hold people like Chris chan accountable without getting caught up on something as minor **in comparison** as misgendering and self identification. Is it sad and confusing that someone who self IDs as transgender became 1:1 with the most dangerous stereotypes that exist for trans women? Of course it is. But it doesn't mean that self identification is suddenly more important than a literal crime being committed.

I would normally dismiss it as a fluke or outright trolling if the evidence weren't so damning that this is in fact a real event that happened. If I hadn't seen this happen to other people, and if I didn't literally know another mtf person who used their dysphoria as an excuse for date rape on multiple occasions and never got any consequences for it.

It's not a one time thing, it's a developing problem that we need to stop before more people have their lives ruined. I can't even imagine how traumatizing and messed up it is for an FTM person to be date raped, by another transgender person no less. When I, an abuse survivor, told people of this MTFs red flags, people violently silenced me. People who didn't know I was trans called me a terf and transphobic. We, as a community, could've protected someone from getting date raped, and we didn't. Trans women can be awful, horrible fucking people, because they are people. Protecting them at all costs is wrong. Protecting them from transphobia is what we should be doing.

That being said, misgendering is still skeevy, and I haven't done anything like raped a disabled woman who is no longer able to consent, or date raped my own partner. if you give a shit about respecting my identity, please use they/them for me. if not, use visual perception and make assumptions that will most likely be incorrect, skew your own argument, and put me on the same level as a rapist, and arguably a fetishist. And I do need to remind you that calling someone transgender a rapist and a fetishist without evidence is still definitely classic transphobia, to the letter, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that.

as someone who is same sex attracted, I also want to bring this up as well.

in the US in the past 15 years, the movement as a whole pretty much went "YEAH BORN THIS WAY" with Lady Gaga, and then jumped ship to prioritize mostly mtfs at every angle. do mtfs need support? absolutely. but they don't need misguided toxic positivity, and that's what it's turned into.

it's gotten genuinely homophobic to the point where actually homosexual people are constantly being erased and demonized via "genital preferences are a fetish uwu", and vulva havers, especially the trans ones, are constantly being told to shut up about their experiences.

as much as you want to deny bioessentialism, its still very much well and alive with newer trans movement sentiments when we classify ftms as not worthy of speaking about their own issues with terms like "TME". it's also incredibly ignorant towards FTMs who pass, but dress feminine for comfort, and get mistaken for MTF, and treated like garbage because of it. They are not remotely exempt from misogyny, transphobia, or the intersection of the two, and it is not anyone's job to tell them they don't ever experience that when they do. Turning ftms and biological homosexuals into our enemies-- especially when the actual cause is transphobia and harmful gender stereotypes-- does nothing good or healthy for our movement.

Dont be mistaken, though, passing isn't the focus or end all be all here, it's the perception of others that ends up drastically effecting your experiences. There are words like misogyny that imply treatment via birth sex, however this too can be reliant on external perception. If an MTF individual either transitions very young, has an abundance of resources to transition, or just gets lucky and passes well, chances are she will experience a lot more misogyny than people may give credit to. inversely, someone who just started questioning yesterday, but lived as a male their whole life up until then, they genuinely cannot speak about misogyny with that much room because they simply haven't experienced it at an accurate enough angle or for enough time to understand it as a repeated and sociological force.

It works the other way as well, though; someone who's known that they're trans for a long time and haven't had the resources to transition, or do not or cannot pass in the eyes of society; these people suffer pain that we don't neccesarily have a word for yet, imo. It makes dysphoria worse and it makes living seem hopeless. And as a community, we deal with this is in a really messed up way by over-validating them instead of solving the core issue at hand. and people who suffer from this, but also acknowledge they can't claim what they haven't experienced, are left with nowhere to go.

And its important to acknowledge these things because they're integral to the over-encompassing trans experience. Instead of lying to everyone and telling everyone they pass/giving out unconditional positive regard, our focus should be making it so that it **doesn't matter if you pass**. that you're still worth respect and dignity if you're transgender, no matter what passing is or what it means to you, and no matter how you present. But also, if you do something awful, you still need to be held accountable, especially if you use yourself, your body, or your trans status to contribute to other axi of oppression.

Transphobia is a word that encompasses and addresses all of that, regardless of birth sex. "TME" shuts that down in favor of only letting MTF's speak. Which is still very bio-essentialist, and I can't help but feel like we've gone full circle.

Once upon a time you couldn't even get married if your partner had the same genitals as you. in the US, this was less than 7 years ago. and if you care about human rights activism, you know damn well that legal modification is not the end all be all. people who are genuinely homosexual are still oppressed, but the trans movement has started stepping on them to make ground we don't deserve. homosexuals are ok and valid. it's not a genital preference, and the prescence of trans people doesn't make conversion therapy sentiments ok, ever.

we've gone full circle, and it's not right.

[ardenttheories]

turnfagshithead replied to your post “I'm honestly very close to writing a post on how the trolls coming out...”

wait dont the trolls have both slimey dicks and coochies or am i misremembering something??? how would they transition??? how would...they have an assigned assigned assigned gender?

They do, and that’s part of the problem. 

In a species with sexual dimorphism, males and females are determined by the characteristics that define their sex - most prominently that males have penises and females have vaginas, but it can also include things such as antlers on bucks or brightly coloured feathers on birds. 

This distinction is used to understand which member of the species hosts the babies, essentially, and which fertilises the eggs. It’s an important distinction only in so far as it’s important for the propogation of the species, and (for instance) in the wild, you’d need to keep an eye on the ratio of males to females to ensure that you have a stable population. 

(This is also how you can calculate if a species is going extinct or not. Not only can you take into account the general population drop, but also if there are enough males/females to breed without the issue of inbreeding.)

The problem with sexual dimorphism in a developed and sentient society, however, is that we then start putting values of importance on one sex over the other. This is where you get the concept that “men are the superior species and women are the frail sex”, because testosterone allows for an easier time creating muscle mass and because (as a general rule of thumb) men tend to be taller. It’s also what allows for the perpetuation of male aggressiveness, and the oppression of women through supposed “biological” fact. We then enforce these concepts as assigned gender.

The point of this being, of course, that when you make a society structured entirely around the genitalia someone has and whether or not that makes them capable within your society, people are going to start fighting back against those structures. E.g. butch lesbians, who are considered to portray more masculine traits, or femme gays, who do the same but for feminine traits. They begin to act “outside” of their assigned sex, which honestly just means “outside of the way society has structured and understood sex to work”, because all sexual dimorphism actually does is state the whole baby thing. There’s no other implications to sexual dimorphism than what we put onto it. 

So, as an intelligent species, we then have the ability to consider the gendered structure of our society and decide that it’s not sufficient. It’s also just our prerogative to understand what “gender” as a concept is, and to figure out what we think or feel about the sex we were born with and how it conflicts or agrees with how we understand ourselves. This, naturally, is when you start to see trans identities coming forward!

In our society, where we present sexual dimorphism, being trans is a legitimate event because our sex doesn’t always align with our gender expression. Someone can come out a transmasc because we have a specific set of biological, physical, and society factors that make up what a “man” is, and we have ways to help someone transition from one state of sexual dimorphism to another. We also simply have ways to express our gender identities outside of transitioning, since once we undersand that our gender identity can be anything regarding our sex and how we societally view it, you can start considering nonbinary identities as well. 

Or, I suppose to put it more simply, we can transition because there’s something to transition from and to - but we can also just disconnect our sexual dimorphism from our own understanding of us. 

The trolls, however, aren’t a species that present sexual dimorphism. I’ve gone over this before, actually, and you can probably find it on my blog under “#homestuck biology”, but the gist of it is that:

As a species based heavily on insects (which have a different gender system based on their roles in the hive), with an outside factor that allows them to breed (the Mother Grub), and with a canonical explanation that every troll has a nook (vagina) and a bulge (penis) that is only used for sexual gratification/the creation of the genetic slurry and isn’t used to have the species birth their own young, there’s literally no reason for sexual dimorphism to exist within the trolls. 

It’s at this point in reading that you usually click with the idea that Hussie didn’t know how to write a species that didn’t adhere to a strict male-female divide. It’s not surprising, as a cis male, that he immediately leant towards what he knew: girls and boys, with the girls having tits (and most of the time, lipstick) so that you can recognise them as girls. It’s a fairly solid choice in a cis viewpoint. Not so much from a trans one, and definitely not when you then consider the actual lore he provided with us to begin with.

Trolls quite literally cannot transition - not in the way we understand it. There is no male sex or female sex, and therefore they’re not transitioning from one thing to another. There’s not even an inherently strict binary that they can then exist outside of (or on a spectrum of) that allows for nonbinary identities as we understand it. In all technicality, there shouldn’t even be a male-female divide in the trolls at all - it serves genuinely no purpose in a species that doesn’t bare their own young and doesn’t have sexual dimorphism as a result. 

So, there’s this really big issue when the writers then try to say that the various characters are trans, or that they do or don’t face transphobia. Why would Vriska have a dead name? Why would that name be gendered when there’s nothing to inherently define her as male or female? Why would her lusus - or Eridan’s, for that matter - care what pronouns their charges use when there’s nothing to state what assigned sex or gender they are? Why would these trolls face anything like the genuine transphobia we experience in daily life in a society that has no structures built around gender presentation?

It comes across as very fake and hollow. No, Vriska and Eridan and Sollux can’t be trans. They quite literally cannot understand what it means to be trans, to have an assigned sex that determines everything that people who see you believe of you. They do not know what it is like to be misgendered on face value because of a lack of tits or because of facial hair, or becuse of a rounded or sharper jawline. These differences just don’t exist for them. They do not face the same experiences or the same issues that trans people do. Trying to force our identities onto them - onto their society - waters down the issues we face in real life. 

It also just ruins the actual lore behind the trolls and their biology, and the fact that we could have had an entirely different understanding of gender and gender expression shown through their society.

It’s like, great that they’re trying to give us representation through the trolls, and I’ll admit that it’s nice to see the attempt done at all, but it’s quite literally only being done because a cis man could not imagine a society without sexual dimorphism and the effect that would have on the society’s gender expression.

[baphomet-media]

Blaster Caster - An Ikenfell Review

Genre: Adventure Subgenre: Tactics RPG Developer: Happy Ray Games  Publisher: Humble Games Platform(s): PC, Switch, Xbox; Reviewed on Xbox Series X Release Date: October 8th, 2020

Ikenfell immediately caught my eye in a marketing email from Humble. The art style looked charming, and it stayed on my radar for a while until I gave it a try on a whim from Game Pass, needing something to sink my teeth into on Xbox. I was a little wary at first, as tactics games can sometimes be difficult to get into (I’m looking at you, Fire Emblem), but the art style and whispers of praise I kept hearing drew me in. Does it hold up, though? Let’s dig in!

Story

The story of Ikenfell follows Maritte, an “ordinary” (non-magical) girl who travels to the titular school of magic to find her missing sister, Safina. After suddenly gaining magical powers of her own, Maritte soon realizes that something that happened at the school is causing the world to destabilize and magic itself to distort in strange and unusual ways. Best of all, Safina seems to be right smack dab in the middle of everything.

Along the way, Maritte will meet a number of students of Ikenfell, friends and rivals alike of Safina, with whom she will partner in order to get to the bottom of the strange happenings at the school. One of the best things about the game is its diverse cast of characters, seemingly all of whom are queer to some extent. It felt really nice to have some representation that didn’t try to make a huge deal out of the characters’ identities. That being said, I found it somewhat difficult to keep up with characters’ genders, pronouns, and sexualities, since it’s rarely mentioned by the game. One idea that could alleviate this is if the game could remind you of the characters’ pronouns on their status pages. Additionally, while some characters, such as Maritte, Gilda, and Pertisia, felt fully realized and fleshed-out, the other half of the party seemed to languish in stagnation. While Rook and Petronella had a bit of development regarding their relationships to Safina, Ima had basically no backstory and felt forgotten.

The game has plenty of side characters as well that help to flesh out the cast, particularly the bumbling dandy Ibn Oxley and his surly protector Bax. These two were pretty adorable in their relationship, and I’m always a fan of the incompetent braggart archetype, however I feel like they didn’t do much except constantly get in the way throughout the entire story, and I felt like I was always cleaning up after them. The headmistress, Baudovinia Aeldra, has a very touching, and surprisingly dark, backstory, and she becomes something of a tragic antagonist throughout the course of the story.

Perhaps the thing that impressed me the most was the game’s scope of worldbuilding. In one chapter, you ascend a tower as the game drip feeds you bits of its mythology, and I was really into it. Additionally, I like that there are small hints about the world at large outside of the play area, which made me feel like the school was only one part of a larger world, even if it was effectively the center.

The story itself is fairly basic and somewhat on the short side. There were plenty of touching moments throughout, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was just chasing Safina’s coattails the whole time, as she’s all that anyone can talk about. What’s worse, outside of flashbacks, Safina doesn’t actually do anything the entire game, which was a disappointment. I was looking forward to having a sororal bonding moment that didn’t really come until the epilogue, and even that was a bit lackluster.

Gameplay

At its core, Ikenfell is an RPG. The battles take place on a 12x3 grid, and on each character’s turn, they can move and cast a spell from their repertoire. As opposed to other games that have MP or a fixed number of spells, Ikenfell’s spells are thankfully unlimited. Instead, some spells have a cooldown time, though this is rarely an issue, as most spells with cooldowns are powerful spells anyway. Additionally, each spell has its own effective range, so proper positioning is constantly important. Most spells can be categorized as one of the following:

Single-target damage dealing 

Area-of-effect damage dealing 

Ally buffing 

Enemy debuffing 

Placing a trap 

Other, or some combination of the above 

Despite this, most spells feel different from a combination of their ranges and other unique properties. For example, while Pertisia’s Retaliation spell hits multiple targets for damage, it has the unique range of hitting all allies that are orthogonal to her or her allies, incentivising close-quarters play. This pairs well with Gilda’s Teleportation ability, which lets her teleport to the other side of the battle grid and immediately take a second turn. In all honesty, I found the combination of Gilda and Perty so powerful that I spent most of the game using only those two and Maritte, who becomes so physically powerful by the end of the game that she’s a must-have. Unfortunately, I never found much use for Rook and Ima, as their spells never really stood out much to me, aside from being the only characters able to set traps. Traps become useless pretty quickly, since most enemies can fly or teleport to their destination square, meaning unless they land right on a trap, it’ll more likely hinder your own movement. Nel at least had unique abilities in being the only character able to cast healing spells, but the spells are so difficult to actually perform, and they’re so miserably weak otherwise that it doesn’t feel useful to include them, which is really sad considering their backstory!

Enemies also get the same mechanics as the player, which usually meshes well, however it seems like most enemies get way more turns than the player, especially certain enemies that can use actions that immediately give them an extra turn. It pretty much requires you to use Gilda to provide speed buffs and debuffs just to feel competitive. This is felt particularly strongly during boss battles when bosses can summon minions and then immediately take another turn. It can get overwhelming quickly, especially if one character gets knocked out. Fortunately, if you’re leveled up enough and you stay on top of healing and taking out minions, you should be fine in any battle, though this does put the player in an odd dichotomy where you either stay on top of everything for the entire battle, but you make one mistake and you basically lose outright.

The other mechanic to battles is the timing mechanics. Every spell has a specific timing for pressing the A button in order to deal max damage or buff. You also use the same timed button press to defend against enemy attacks, which gives the battles a slight Paper Mario feel. Unfortunately, I found that timing was often inconsistent. Some spells have helpful visual indicators for letting the player know when to hit A, but many are best used slightly before or slightly after the visual trigger, making it frustrating when you whiff a spell or take major damage despite looking like you were right on time. The game has some accessibility options that can bypass this, by making your attacks auto-hit or skipping battles altogether, but this feels more like cheats than balance, so I didn’t use them.

As far as the overworld goes, you travel between areas to reach various story objectives, giving strong Mother series vibes from your party following along behind you. The game allows you to save your progress by petting cats around the school, which is automatically an A+ from me. The cats also refill your HP, so you don’t have to worry too much about healing outside of battle.

I really enjoyed the equipment system in the game as well. Aside from weapons, each other item can be worn by any character, and usually offer both benefits and drawbacks, so it’s up to you to decide which stats you want to optimize on each character. Though it wasn’t a really tough decision, as there are only 5 stats (HP, Attack, Defense, Speed, Movement), and most equipment only modifies the middle three. I ended up speccing Maritte into Attack, Perty into Defense, and Gilda into Speed, since those seemed to match their play styles and base stats.

There isn’t much in the way of side content in the game, the main sidequest being collecting hidden gems throughout the world. These gems can be exchanged for special accessories that give unique effects. Unfortunately, these accessories don’t provide any stat bonuses, so I didn’t find any of them as useful as just buffing stats. Lastly, the game has a few optional bosses to defeat, which basically require you to hit the, admittedly low, level cap of 30. These bosses were interesting, but at that point I was getting sick of boss battles.

Presentation

Ikenfell is a gorgeous game. There’s plenty of great pixel art throughout, particularly in the environment. The character sprites are very expressive, both in battle and on the overworld. I wasn’t a huge fan of some of the portraits (Perty particularly has some oddly lumpy cheeks), but for the most part they’re perfectly fine.

The music in the game is wonderful, and is largely done by electronic musical group Aivi & Surasshu. Most of the background tracks were a wonderful blend of chiptunes and melancholy instrumental which is definitely my thing. Unfortunately I wasn’t all that fond of the vocals on some tracks, but that’s likely just a personal preference thing. My partner loved them, so your mileage may vary.

Conclusion

JK Rowling wishes she could tell a magic school story this good. At the end of the game, I loved the characters and felt good knowing that I had accomplished everything the game had to offer. I loved just exploring, seeing the different locations, petting cats, and listening to the music. Definitely give this game a try if you love RPGs, queer representation, good stories or music, and DEFINITELY if you have Game Pass.

Score: 8 / 10

[cassolotl]

Just submitted my response to the Trans Inquiry 2 (England and Wales)

You can see the call for evidence from the W&EC here on Twitter, and submit your evidence here. It requires a Word, ODT or RTF file to be uploaded. You can write as much or as little as you like.

The deadline is tomorrow, Friday 27th November 2020.

My response is below the cut, because it’s over 3,000 words long...! But please, be aware that you can write 20 words if you need to. You can just say “I’m trans and the reforms still don’t allow me to have a gender recognition certificate. They don’t go far enough, because the process is unnecessarily medicalised and still doesn’t accommodate nonbinary people.”

~

ABOUT ME

I am 34 years old. I live in Powys, Wales. I am nonbinary - specifically, I feel like I have no gender at all. My pronouns are singular they (they/them/their/theirs/themself, plural verbs). I learned what nonbinary was when I was 24, and immediately came out and began my transition. I have been attending the NHS gender identity clinic (GIC) in London since April 2012, about 8.5 years. Throughout that time I have presented as openly nonbinary, and have had surgeries and hormone treatments from the NHS to aid in an androgynous presentation. I have all the records and paperwork that I would need to receive a gender recognition certificate (GRC), if one were available to nonbinary people. I am openly nonbinary with everyone I see and interact with on a regular basis (social workers, support workers, landlords, friends and family, etc).

~

SUMMARY

The Government’s proposed reforms are positive but only a fraction of the changes needed to ensure trans people have equal rights and sufficient trans-specific medical care.

In particular, three additional gender clinics in the NHS are horrifically insufficient, especially for children and adolescents facing the body-horror and permanence of the wrong puberty, resulting in preventable major surgeries. Requirements for obtaining a gender recognition certificate remain excessive, demoralising and unnecessary. The financial cost currently involved is much greater than the £140 fee, making a fee reduction seem like lip service.

The gender recognition process remains needlessly and discriminatorially medicalised, unacceptably has higher standards for gender recognition than the NHS has for medical transition, and allows for stalling and abuse by spouses because UK marriage laws are needlessly gendered. It also does not account for Gillick competence in the case of legal gender recognition for children.

There is a complete lack of provision for nonbinary people, which is unacceptable, especially now that the courts have found that nonbinary people are protected under the transition characteristic of the Equality Act 2010. This means that nonbinary people are unable to marry or parent children while being authentic in their genders, and are unable to receive a correct pension.

These barriers presented to trans people mean that still only a minority of trans people will access gender recognition certificates, which results in unnecessary and preventable problems for trans people, but also for the systems that have to accommodate them in accordance with the Equality Act 2010.

~

RESPONSES TO PROMPTS

The Government’s response to the GRA consultation:

Will the Government’s proposed changes meet its aim of making the process “kinder and more straight forward”?

Yes, but only marginally.

Three new GICs: Each month the NHS makes several months’ worth of referrals to GICs. Nowhere in the UK is it possible to access a GIC within the 18-week NHS-set timeline; the average wait is 18 months, which is horrific for transgender adults, and devastating and traumatic for transgender adolescents who are forced to go through the body-horror of the wrong puberty while waiting for two appointments to be prescribed puberty blockers. [1] It follows that in order to bring this waiting list down to lawful amount of time we need to increase the number of NHS GICs not by 40% but by 400%.

Fee reduction to “nominal amount”: I have still seen no reason to delay making this process a demedicalised case of submitting a form declaring a change of legal gender, much like changing one’s name by deed poll. We are not charged to update our details with HMRC, so we need not be charged for updating our details at a General Register Office.

Placing the procedure online: This is something that should have been done decades ago, but better late than never. It is also an attempt to repair the Titanic with superglue as it sinks. The system is difficult to access for all trans people, but not because of the method of application. The problem is that we are required to apply to the gender recognition panel at all.

Should a fee for obtaining a Gender Recognition Certificate be removed or retained? 

It should be removed. It is arbitrary, and other administrative changes of a similar nature and risk level do not have fees associated.

Are there other financial burdens on applicants that could be removed or retained?

The requirement to provide medical evidence for change of gender is unnecessary and costs money. For example, living in rural West Wales means that for the 8 years I’ve been attending the London GIC I have been paying for accommodation in London, because it is not physically possible to travel to London by public transport and back in one day when attending a GIC appointment. Each trip costs me at least £80 or so out of pocket, because I have to find accommodation close to the GIC for me and a PA (I am disabled and receive direct payments). I am entitled to have my travel costs refunded by the NHS but others are not, so attending GIC appointments will cost them money even if they don’t have to stay overnight.

At the moment the wait of in some cases several years for a first appointment followed by 1.5 years waiting for the second appointment means patients being referred today will be waiting 4-5 years for their first hormone prescription or surgery referral, so a significant number of people who would like a GRC have to pay for private treatment to get the proof they need within a reasonable timeframe.

Should the requirement for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria be removed?

Yes. Legal gender need not be a medical issue. As when changing one’s name, legal gender need only be a case of signing a document with witnesses. The two reasons I’ve heard cited against demedicalising the gender recognition process are (1) fraud prevention and (2) protection of vulnerable women in single-sex spaces.

(1) We already have laws against fraud, and it is very easy and cheap to legally change one’s name in the UK. When you consider how “identifying” something like a gender is when compared to other identity metrics such as photographs, dates of birth, names, etc. (i.e. not very), it seems absurd that gender is so difficult to change. Existing fraud laws would allow for prosecution as easily if changing one’s legal gender were a matter of a statutory declaration only.

(2) We already have laws against abuse of women, women’s spaces are already protected even taking into account the Equality Act 2010, and in general the women responsible for protecting those women-only spaces currently accommodate and welcome trans women and have done for a long time. [2] Birth certificates are not required for accessing women-only spaces such as shelters, toilets and changing rooms. Other ID that might be required in a less free version of our current society, such as driver’s licences or passports, do not require a gender recognition certificate to have the gender marker changed, so demedicalising the gender recognition process has no effect on provision of necessary gender-exclusive services.

Anyone wishing to use an alternative gender presentation for fraudulent or abusive purposes does not have a more difficult time in the crimes that they are attempting to commit thanks to the Gender Recognition Act. The fact that currently only 1 in 10 transgender people have a GRC suggests that the system can currently accommodate people whose genders don’t match their birth certificates or tax records, so presumably making it much easier for people to make all of their IDs match will make no difference to fraud and abuse incidence, and may make it easier by removing discrepancies.

I would also argue that the current “gender dysphoria diagnosis —> correct ID” situation is back-to-front. Wanting ID that reflects a gender that is different from the one you were assigned at birth is evidence of gender dysphoria, and so applying for a birth certificate that shows a different gender to the one you were assigned at birth should be considered evidence of gender dysphoria for a diagnosis. It doesn’t need to go through a doctor; wanting to change the ID should be enough on its own.

Should there be changes to the requirement for individuals to have lived in their acquired gender for at least two years?

Yes. Being transgender isn’t something that comes on suddenly later in life. It is a neurodevelopmental issue, considered by some medical professionals to begin in the womb. Having to wait two more years to have that gender recognised in law seems arbitrary and unnecessary.

Most transgender people have known that their gender was different to the one they were assigned at birth for years before they begin their transition. I would say that making it very difficult to change one’s legal gender is, among other factors, something that contributes to this unfortunate tendency.

I understand that living in a new gender role for two years is considered proof of commitment to that gender role by the state. Proof of this nature is not required for other administrative matters such as change of name or title. Let’s imagine the same situation for something that might be considered harder to change because it is by its nature decided by biology: date of birth. If one’s date of birth had been entered incorrectly on a birth certificate and the individual or their parents noticed some years later, the birth certificate could be corrected with, at most, medical records showing that the baby was born on a different day. Likewise, to change a gender marker on a birth certificate should require, at most, medical records showing that the individual’s gender was assigned incorrectly at birth. This would be a copy of a letter from a doctor diagnosing gender dysphoria, which requires only 6 months of a specific type of discomfort. The legal system therefore is four times more strict about changing legal gender than the NHS is about referring for permanent gender-affirming surgery or prescribing hormones that cause permanent physical change. This is unnecessarily stringent. It could be considered discriminatory under the Equality Act 2010: trans people are less able to change incorrect records relating to their gender, in accordance with GDPR, because of the additional barriers.

If the gender recognition process was easy and cheap, and for some reason a person changed their gender marker on a whim and then wanted to change it back, it would be very easy for them to do so - but as you learned in the first Trans Inquiry some years ago, countries such as Ireland, where it is easy and cheap to change your legal gender, have not seen this happen. In general, we know that when it is easy and cheap to change your one’s legal gender, people tend to do it once and then never again.

What is your view of the statutory declaration and should any changes have been made to it?

I have no problem with the statutory declaration aspect of the gender recognition process. It seems acceptable that a change intended to be permanent should require the signing of a binding legal document, and that people who do so for fraudulent or otherwise harmful reasons be subject to criminal proceedings.

I am opposed to a spouse’s consent being required for married/civil-partnered people, as it gives another person unnecessary and potentially harmful control over their spouse’s transition.

Does the spousal consent provision in the Act need reforming? If so, how? If it needs reforming or removal, is anything else needed to protect any rights of the spouse or civil partner?

I understand that when one person in a marriage is changing their gender that changes the legal status of the marriage from a different-gender marriage to a same-gender marriage, or vice versa, and I agree that a spouse must consent to that change as an equal participant.

In order to resolve this issue, I would suggest making marriage law gender-neutral. There is no reason to have a same-gender marriage be any different than a different-gender marriage in law. It need not be “men can marry women, men can marry men, women can marry men, women can marry women” - it can simply be that an adult can marry another adult. That way, if one of the spouses changes their gender, the marriage is unchanged.

This would also prepare marriage law for legal recognition of nonbinary genders.

Should the age limit at which people can apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC) be lowered?

I am not aware of any reason why it would not be appropriate. In the UK, the NHS has a policy of assuming that children are capable of understanding and consenting (or not consenting) to medical treatment. It should be assumed that a child can also consent (or not) to having the gender marker on their birth certificate changed.

What impact will these proposed changes have on those people applying for a Gender Recognition Certificate, and on trans people more generally?

Moving the process online will allow people to apply electronically, which would likely have a positive impact on the environment due to being less CO2-intensive. It may also make the process faster, which would be positive.

Making the process cheaper will allow poorer people to apply for a GRC, which is positive.

The NHS providing 3 more GICs will allow some patients to travel a shorter distance to access care, which is positive.

However, I don’t think these changes will have a significant impact on the most serious issues affecting transgender people. I consider these to be: excessive waiting times for transition-related treatments, difficulty of access to change of legal gender, the demoralising and humiliating nature of the gender recognition process, and the complete lack of legal recognition of nonbinary genders in UK law.

What else should the Government have included in its proposals, if anything?

Legal recognition of nonbinary genders (including availability of gender recognition certificates and X gender markers on state-issued ID), legal gender recognition by statutory declaration, 400% increase in the number of gender identity clinics in the UK, and no cost for GRC application.

Does the Scottish Government’s proposed Bill offer a more suitable alternative to reforming the Gender Recognition Act 2004?

Yes.

Living in the “new” gender role is required for only 6 months, in line with diagnosis of gender dysphoria. A diagnosis of gender dysphoria is not required, as living in the “new” gender role would suggest that the person has gender dysphoria to the extent that they wish to live in the “new” role and the official diagnosis would be superfluous. A statutory declaration is required, which seems acceptable. All of this seems positive to me.

Requiring applicants to wait for three months to consider their application seems unnecessarily patronising and patriarchal, but the proposed Scottish Bill is still much more fit for purpose than the current and proposed England-and-Wales model.

~

Wider issues concerning transgender equality and current legislation:

Why is the number of people applying for GRCs so low compared to the number of people identifying as transgender?

I am not sure. I imagine there are several complex and intersecting reasons.

I think cost is probably an issue. I think that the amount and type of evidence currently required by the gender recognition panel is not very easy to obtain, and the applicant is unable to sit before the panel in person with or without a legal representative, and so there is a high risk that applicants will not meet the panel’s obscure criteria or be able to persuade them or answer their concerns/questions in person. If the application fails the money is lost, and the (significant) effort involved in application is wasted. The latter is offputting for everyone who might consider applying, and the former is a bonus barrier for poorer people.

I would speculate that it might also be because because living as a different gender than the one you were assigned at birth and getting medical treatment are easier and more medically urgent than changing one’s birth certificate, especially when compared to the frequency with which one has to show one’s birth certificate (and therefore “out” oneself, if one does not already have a GRC).

I think there is a tendency for people to think, “well, how often do I have to show my birth certificate or my tax records to people I have direct contact with? And how often are they going to be indiscreet and transphobic about it? Hardly ever, right?” But by the time they find out that transphobic people do exist and do make an issue about it, or by the time they have to show their birth certificate to someone they’d rather not come out to, it is too late and they are not able to apply for a GRC and get their records updated in time. Not having a GRC is therefore always a problem in the past, which removes urgency.

By comparison, gender dysphoria is a chronic and acute daily psychological discomfort, which is much harder to ignore.

Are there challenges in the way the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010 interact? For example, in terms of the different language and terminology used across both pieces of legislation.

I understand that the Equality Act 2010 has now been tested in court by a nonbinary person in an employment tribunal and found to protect nonbinary people under the characteristic of gender transition “beyond any doubt”. The Gender Recognition Act doesn’t accommodate or provide for nonbinary people, and is therefore in breach of the Equality Act 2010. [3]

Are the provisions in the Equality Act for the provision of single-sex and separate-sex spaces and facilities in some circumstances clear and useable for service providers and service users? If not, is reform or further guidance needed?

I think the guidance for the Equality Act should explicitly state that nonbinary people are protected under the characteristic of gender transition. I do not feel that I am knowledgeable enough to comment on any other issues.

Does the Equality Act adequately protect trans people? If not, what reforms, if any, are needed

Now that the Equality Act 2010 has been shown in court to protect nonbinary people under the protected characteristic of gender transition I have no complaints.

What issues do trans people have in accessing support services, including health and social care services, domestic violence and sexual violence services?

A lot of trans people just don’t report hate crimes to the police because the police often don’t do anything about it. [4]

Because trans people face extra barriers in matters such as housing, employment, and primary and secondary medical care, they need additional support from e.g. Social Services. This means they have the barrier of having to ask for more than other people do, and for that request to be considered by individuals in the system who may also be transphobic, before being granted.

There was a women’s shelter in a city I used to live in, which said on a sign at the door “no men allowed!”, but then on their website it said “women only”. I emailed to ask for clarification, because I am nonbinary and it was unclear whether I would be allowed on the premises. They said that if I identified as a woman I was welcome to enter. As I don’t identify as a woman I didn’t enter. I would presumably also be barred from entering a shelter for abused men. The difficulty for nonbinary people is that there are no provisions for us whatsoever, whether provided or funded by the government/local authorities or otherwise.

Are legal reforms needed to better support the rights of gender-fluid and non-binary people? If so, how?

Yes. We need to be explicitly written into laws and guidance relating to the following:

- Marriage

- Passports

- Driving licenses

- Adoption

- Sexual violence (as victims and as perpetrators, in matters such as disclosure of transgender identity and medical history, definition of rape, etc.)

- Birth certificates (as parents, e.g. language relating to mother/father, birth parent)

- Pensions

- Hate crime

- Provision of public services and facilities (public toilets, changing rooms)

- Any law that has gender-specific statements or provisions

… and probably more.

~

[1] https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/08/13/nhs-trans-patients-laurels-gender-identity-clinic-south-west-waiting-list-yeovil-pride/

[2] https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/08/03/domestic-violence-shelters-transgender-no-impact-on-services/

[3] https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/gender-is-a-spectrum-landmark-uk-ruling-61650/

[4] Not a reputable third-party source, but a well-described and typical anecdotal example. https://twitter.com/JayHulmePoet/status/1328995596670267392 “Once I reported a hate crime to the police. They dropped the case without telling me, and then when a hate crime advocate called them out on it they took no action AND blamed it on me being open about being trans. I've not reported a hate crime since. The irony of the police telling me not to tell people that I'm trans so I [don’t] get hate crimed (again, not how hate crime law works) is that there's precedent for trans people to be charged with sexual offences if they have sex with someone without disclosing that we're trans.”

[raavenb2619]

Do you know why I might feel a connection to the pronouns fae/faer? I'm a cis woman who has always felt comfortable being female (except for some instances that people have had crushes on me, but that's due to my aroaceness) but I've never really cared much about how I look. I almost always wear jeans or long pants, a t shirt, and either a sweater or a jacket, and I don't like shorts or low necklines, and I can't wear bikinis because they make me uncomfortable, I have to wear [💜 anon]

[💜 anon] a full top and a skirt bottom when I swim. I like to look pretty occasionally, but not often, and I don't wear make up or put my hair up or stuff like that. I wouldn't say I'm gnc because I still look feminine, and I wear sports bras but don't bind, but I honestly care more about whether what I'm wearing is comfortable rather than attractive looking. Sorry this got so long, I just don't understand myself lol

One possible explanation is that you’re actually agender or demigirl, and you feel connected to fae/faer pronouns because of complicated gendery reasons that ultimately come down to why nonbinary people feel connected to different pronouns and/or neopronouns. But you seem pretty confident that you’re a cis girl, and you’re certainly more of an authority on your gender than I am, so for the rest of this ask I’m going to assume that you’re right and focus on answering why you might feel a connection to fae/faer pronouns if you’re a cis girl. 

Gender presentation (which includes pronouns) can be informed by gender identity, but presentation can also be “unexpected” or “uncorrelated” with one’s gender identity. For example, some boys like wearing dresses. It doesn’t mean that they’re secretly women, because some boys just like dresses. You seem to have a good sense of how you like to present, with regards to clothing, hair, make up, and so on. You mention being uncomfortable with other people crushing on you and that you’d rather wear comfortable clothes than be attractive looking, so it’s possible that fae/faer pronouns fits into this. They’re neopronouns and “weird” and potentially make you seem way less attractive/desirable to other people because it doesn’t fit the expectation of how attractive cis girls are. 

It’s also possible that you feel connected to fae/faer pronouns because you just feel connected to them. Gender is super complicated and not everything makes sense or has a clear cause-and-effect progression. There might not really be an explanation for why you feel connected to fae/faer pronouns, but that’s okay; you don’t need to justify why you feel the way you do. As long as the connection isn’t intentionally malicious (which I doubt it is), you can just...feel connected to them, and use them if you want. 

Hope that helps, as always feel free to ask for clarification/any follow up questions. 

[homenum-revelio-hq]

Welcome (back) to the Order of the Phoenix, Gabe!

You have been accepted for the role of REMUS LUPIN! We loved your thoughts on the darker, more difficult layers of Remus’s friendships and fears and we were fascinated by your ideas about lycanthropy’s effects on his gender transition! We’re so happy you’ve come back to Homenum Revelio, and excited to see you on our dash again!

Please take a look at the new member checklist and send in your account within 24 hours! Thank you for joining the fight against Voldemort!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME: Gabe

AGE: 22

TIMEZONE: GMT-3

ACTIVITY LEVEL: Honestly pretty active, I’m still quarantined and will stay that way for a good while, probably. Remus is just one of those characters that comes easy to me, so good chances that I’ll be around a lot, hah. I’m most active on the weekdays! Weekends my sister usually tricks me into watching a billion movies or a new show, so I end up being less present.

ANYTHING ELSE: Nope!

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Remus John Lupin

AGE: 21

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: trans male, he/him/his, he’d rather not classify his sexuality as anything other than not-straight.

Remus didn’t start taking the wonderful Attisgalli Corrective Draughts until he joined Hogwarts officially, as his parents wanted to wait for that before they started him on the gender reassignment potions. That’s not to say they didn’t support their son’s identity, which he’d been frankly very vocal about since he could talk, they just wanted to be sure that he would be safe. He already had a lot on his plate. Being a werewolf, they needed to make sure the potions could even be safely used with someone like him, so they waited to talk to Dumbledore and his trusty team of potion-makers about it. Remus was on corrective draughts for all of his puberty and he’s currently on the heavier dose that only needs updating every few years. He has a few annoying side-effects after taking the wrong dosage too early. He doesn’t suppose many people know about this, and he doesn’t particularly care to tell anyone, apart from the people who already know.

As far as his sexuality goes, I don’t think he likes any of the labels he’s stumbled upon, I don’t think he openly – or even privately – calls himself anything when it comes to sexuality. He just doesn’t give it much thought. He likes whoever he likes, and if you were to say “oh, so you’re pansexual, then”, he might simply offer you a tired grunt and an unhappy twist of his face. He doesn’t feel comfortable in any boxes. “Queer” as an umbrella term would be the closest he’d get to labeling himself. All that being said, as the writer, I’d personally put him as a 4 on the kinsey scale, but that’s between you and me.

BLOOD STATUS: Half-blood/Half-breed

HOUSE ALUMNI: Gryffindor

ANY CHANGES: Don’t think so! I’m keeping the fc of Charlie Rowe after surfing through many others because I think he does Upset & Angry right. That’s really important for a Remus, he’s working through a lot right now. I also really considered to go for Paul Mescal from the new show “Normal People” because I think he has a great normal face and (from what I can tell, maybe) some pretty scars on his chin and he has some great scenes BUT he currently has no resources. Also considered Louis Hofmann, from netflix’s Dark, but decided he looked too young, even though he’s in his twenties, too. Anyway, just wanted to briefly take you with me on that faceclaim journey, the conclusion is that I love Charlie Rowe and I didn’t know him before so I thank you guys for suggesting him!

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

PERSONALITY:

Remus today is very different from who he was in Hogwarts. That’s no surprise, of course – who doesn’t grow out of their weird teenage years? But it feels different with him, and that’s because at seventeen, Remus already had enough baggage to count for an adult. So where does that leave you, at twenty-one?

He is a lot of things. He is tired, he is angry, he is devastated, he is young. If before he was only a boy, crushed under the weight of all the things that happened to him, now he is a man, standing tall but hardened by life’s constant beating. He hasn’t so much overcome his issues as he has simply grown friendly with his demons. His edges have turned sharper, his hands have grown colder, he’s losing contact with his faith.

That’s not to say his core has changed. Remus is kind, before anything else. He hasn’t lost the warmth his mother taught him, because that kind of empathy is not something one easily shrugs off. Even the war couldn’t take this from him. It wears him down these days, being selfless, having a caring vein and needing to look after others. He’s already lost so much, and he doesn’t see this changing anytime soon, as they continue to lose battle after battle, but this is still who he is. He wants a better world, he wants the good side to win.

Remus is also very secretive. He can come across as cold or distant to people he doesn’t know, because he had a lifetime of keeping himself concealed. It’s his defense mechanism and it’s how he’s kept himself alive after all these years.

In fact, he’s not even fully sure how his few friends managed to slip under that armour so easily. Sure, his armour wasn’t so well-built when he was a child, but it was still some work. He was once simply a scared eleven-year-old, eager to learn and be a good student, and suddenly he ended up in a lifelong bond with three other idiots. In a lot of ways, he owes so much of his personality to the Marauders. He bloomed in Hogwarts, he had a safe and healthy environment with people he loved, he could finally grow into a normal boy; he cracked jokes and he made fun of himself and he learned not to take things so seriously. He was not just a werewolf, not just a monster. He’s a great friend, he’s funny on his good days, he’s sarcastic and kind and protective of his friends. He owes this to them.

Remus is a trans man who started taking corrective draughts as soon as he entered Hogwarts. Dumbledore was the one who encouraged his parents to allow this, promising he’d keep an eye out and take care of Remus. There wasn’t exactly any research done on whether or not the potions would affect a werewolf’s body differently, so they’d have to be cautious, but several potion makers insisted nothing should go wrong.

They were right, technically. The potions didn’t react any kind of way with his blood, they did their work normally. It also perhaps helped that most of the side-effects were all things that Remus had been dealing with his whole life, due to the curse: muscle and joint aches, mood swings, headaches. The only catch was that every time he turned, every full moon, when he came back into his human form, the draught had completely worn off.

This made things a little more complicated. It didn’t mean anything to his health, thankfully, all he had to do was take another dose of the potion in the morning and he’d be back on track. It was something about his metabolism overworking, the fact that his body healed itself after each moon. They could never quite fix that little quirk – every morning after the full moon, he’d wake up in a body that didn’t belong to him.

This was when he was on a small dosage of the draught, of course, still going through puberty and taking the so-called “Children’s Corrective Doses” that had to be ingested every week.

Despite the general crippling discomfort of briefly being in the wrong body once a month, it was fine when he was making the turns by himself at first. Then the Marauders joined, and that was weird; it took him a while to agree to their presence and it wasn’t only because they could be in danger. He was scared of being that vulnerable, too.

Because of this monthly hiccup on the process, potioneers instructed that he should be on this smaller dose for as long as possible before he transitioned safely into the “Permanent Corrective Dose”. Five years at least, seven if he could, before he switched to the potion that he’d only have to take every two years or more. This shouldn’t be a problem, he thought innocently, hearing this at age eleven.

By sixteen, the temptation of the Permanent Dose was too grand. It stopped being bearable after a while, the whole “waking up in the wrong body once a month” experience. And the temptation was there because the potioneers said that an adult dosage would likely fix that monthly issue. All he wanted was to stop worrying about this thing – wasn’t the fact that he turned into a murderous beast more than enough? Besides, he was turning seventeen soon, he was most likely done with puberty, he had done the smaller doses for six years already.

So the Marauders made a grand plan. And out of all the illegal, morally questionable things Remus has done, he probably holds this one as the best. They managed to buy him a vial of a Permanent Corrective Dose, and he drank it without thinking twice.

This didn’t come without consequences. Dumbledore was mad. His parents were mad. Every potioneer he knew was pretty annoyed. He frankly couldn’t give a damn, he was overjoyed – it had worked. The moon came, and for the first time when he came back to his senses, he was in the right body, his body. He didn’t care if anyone was pissed at him.

He still doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about the debilitating migraines he still gets as a side-effect. He doesn’t care that his muscles will sometimes cramp, or that his skin sometimes feels raw. He can handle all of that – quite frankly, he’s happy to deal with all of that, if it means keeping his body through the transformations.

It’s important to take from this that Remus Lupin doesn’t shy away from many things. He likes to deal with things head-on, he is a Gryffindor, after all. Once Dumbledore sent him to live with the werewolves shortly after graduating, he made sure to take another permanent dose, a heavier one, to last him however long he stayed out. This time the draught was acquired legally, since he was already of age, but the higher dose in this short amount of time wasn’t exactly what the mediwix ordered. This ended up aggravating his side-effects.

Still – and perhaps that is a testament to his stubbornness –, he’ll tell you this was all worth it.

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY:

Remus grew up in a happy home. Well, as happy as a family could be, while plagued by the curse of lycanthropy. So maybe not so happy at all.

He doesn’t remember much of his early childhood, if you ask him. He remembers the looming sense of despair, he remembers seeing his parents cry through cracks of barely open doors, he remembers quiet dinners and he remembers feeling awful. He can’t remember not being a werewolf, but he thinks they were the happiest before that.

They were okay after it, eventually, too. They all had to learn to navigate it, and once he grew a little older, things were easier, as easy as they would get. He remembers that time a little better – the times just before he went to Hogwarts and his time at the castle, too.

Overall, Remus grew up with a good family, he’d tell you. They didn’t have many distant relatives, so it was always just the three of them, and his parents were supportive – mostly. Hope was the warmth of the house, and if anything, she only grew closer to Remus after he was bitten. She was overprotective, and stern, and she had trouble handling when things didn’t go exactly her way, but those are hardly things kids notice about their parents when they’re still kids. He could tell you this today, but his memories of her are still all sugar-coated, tinted pink, gentle.

She didn’t understand his gender identity at first, his father once told him. Hope still had too many roots in the muggle world, it took her some time to wrap her head around all of these ideas. Lyall was the one who had to sit her down and explain to her about the corrective draught, and how common it actually was, how safe. She was the one who wanted to wait for a talk with the Headmaster before she let him take the potions.

Luckily for Remus, he was so young by the time she was having those first doubts and issues with his identity, he doesn’t have any bad memories of that. To him, she never mistreated him, and he never felt anything but accepted. She protected him with all of her heart, and that included all of him, her son, and a werewolf.

In fact, one of his fondest memories of her is getting a haircut, before his very first day in Hogwarts. He usually wore his hair somewhere a little above shoulder-length, a little choppy; he just liked how it swung when he ran, to be honest, and how it splattered water everywhere if he spun his head really fast in the shower. But he was terrified of having magic classes for the first time, he was scared of being thrown into a castle full of people he didn’t know, far away from his parents, the only safe haven he knew. She was the one who suggested a haircut first. They sat and flipped through silly muggle magazines until he found a cut he liked on some cologne ad, and she did it herself. Looks somewhat similar to what he still has as a haircut, if only with more bowlcut-esque qualities back then.

Lyall was more distant, growing up. Hope had little trouble getting over her bias of gender to accept his identity, but his father couldn’t do the same for his curse. If you asked Remus, he never really accepted his child being a werewolf, he was ashamed of his condition.

If you asked Lyall, the story’s a bit different. He was distant, but only because he couldn’t deal with all of the turmoil within himself. He couldn’t look at his child without thinking that he was the one responsible for Fenrir’s attack. He was responsible for his son being a werewolf, cursed forever – how could he look at Remus and see past that? Of course he was distant. Of course he dedicated his time trying to find a cure. As the turns hurt Remus, they hurt his father just as much. Every moon, he suffered with him.

It was hard for him, looking past that, but not because he was in any way ashamed of the condition. He felt sorry, and he didn’t know where to put all the guilt. He didn’t want to spend all of his time pitying his child, but he did. And it was easier to be distant when he felt undeserving of his son’s love in the first place; there would never be anything he could do to make up for this.

In conclusion, they were good parents, but it would also be unfair to completely ignore that Remus has such an issue with being a werewolf, as an adult, and – given that he was closeted about that his whole life –, this must’ve come from his parents. Their efforts to protect and hide Remus’ lycanthropy have not done him any good on the long run, they have not quite focused on the “but also, love yourself” part of their speech. Not to fully blame them or anything, of course there isn’t a “how to raise a werewolf” manual out there, and they had to deal with so much since he was just a little boy, they did what they had to do to keep their child safe. Remus truly believes they did the very best they could, and that they were perfect parents, given the circumstances.

I don’t think it registers to him that they may be the very root of the crippling self-deprecation he feels, and frankly, I don’t think it ever will register. This is not the kind of thing you unravel within yourself without some serious help.

Nowadays, since Hope’s passing, the two Lupin men have managed to grow closer. The hurt is still there, Remus still thinks his father is too cold and ashamed of him, and Lyall thinks he’s guilty and that Remus must hate him. They’re not big on talking about feelings, but they’re warmer with each other now than they ever were. That’s not saying much, it’s barely anything more than the occasional back pat and smile, but Remus likes to think Hope would be happy.

OCCUPATION:

He currently still works with the Dissendum Task Force, as he feels truly at home taking care of that part of things. He wants a job, he always wanted to be able to take care of himself, of course, I imagine he put up a fight when it came to depending solely on James’ money. He always intended to pay it back, to eventually find something for himself. He grew comfortable, the slightest bit, with James’ money, knowing he had that safety net while he figured things out, and while they all had bigger things to worry about. Now he has lost his friend, and he needs to find something, anything, to keep himself afloat, and all of this on top of the grieving, it might just make him reach a breaking point.

ROLE WITHIN THE ORDER/THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ORDER:

Remus feels like a paradox within the order. He feels both at the very center of it, as well as standing on the outside, looking in. He believes in them wholeheartedly, even if he’s not so sure he stumbled upon all of this belief himself, or if it’s been drilled into him by one very dedicated James Potter. And now that James is gone – how should he know how to feel?

More and more, he feels like he’s simply floating around in this war, a walking mystery, neither here nor there. He does as he’s told, he helps whoever he can help, and he won’t say a peep but he is starting to question his own faith, at this point. It’s difficult not to. He had a problem going with the werewolves, of course, and that time was generally awful, but he owed Dumbledore too much to say no. How much of what he does really is his choice, or someone else’s? He’s starting to grow tired of it.

He loves his friends more than anything, therefor he loves the Order, but he’s afraid of how long this might last.

SURVIVAL:

Remus is always on the move, but that’s nothing new to him. He’s been on the move since he was a kid, occasionally dragged off from one side of Europe to another, their family led by his father’s blind ambition towards finding a cure. He never felt like he could truly stop, and he grew up to embrace a sense of restlessness. The first place he truly understood the meaning of “home” was the castle, and even then, he knew his time there would have an end. In a way, this has helped him survive. He stays alert, he stays on the move. He’s always ready to pack up and disappear, as long as he knows he has the right people on his side.

His current living situation is, I imagine, complicated at best. He wouldn’t want to get a place on money that’s not his own, and he’s never been able to make his own money, at least not substantially. First, he was out with the other werewolves, he followed them anywhere and slept wherever he could when he needed to.

Then, he stayed at the McKinnon estate, and even though he knows he can stay there, he’s still often looking over his shoulder, waiting for the day they’ll kick him out. It still doesn’t feel right. It never does. He hasn’t felt at home since Hogwarts – or, perhaps, the odd times in between when he couch surfed wherever Sirius, James, or Peter were staying.

Now, he’s with his father momentarily, hiding. He hasn’t told Lyall anything that happened, he just packed up and showed up at his father’s doorstep. The contact isn’t ideal, but Remus needed the full recharge, even if just for a day or two. Lyall welcomed him with a brow heavy with concern, but he put the kettle on for some tea anyway, and he didn’t ask questions he didn’t want the answers to. Remus deemed that good enough.

RELATIONSHIPS:

Oh, boy. Things are a mess. This is the emo part of the app.

I must start this section talking about how much friends mean to Remus. They mean everything. Everything he heard since he was five-years-old was how much he needed to hide himself, how badly he needed to keep this secret, or everything would end terribly. He was a monster. He was capable of horrible, despicable things, and no one could accept him. By eleven, he’d come to term with this. By eleven, he barely even believed he’d get the chance to study. This is the weight this little kid had to carry around.

And then – enter the Marauders, the best, most miraculous thing to happen to him. A boy with a curse, suddenly welcomed into the coolest group of kids he’d ever met. He honestly felt like it was some kind of lie, or an elaborate prank. Those very first months after they met, he’d wait until the others all fell asleep and he’d write letters to his mom, telling her all about them. He’d write fast and he’d write over several sheets of parchment, talking about all the wonderful, terrible things that boys their age did. He was happy.

Eventually, he stopped waiting for the other shoe to drop. They grew close, the others found out his secret, they never once turned away from him. They helped him. They loved each other, the lot of them. And it was so, so much more than a monster could hope for – still, to this day, he’s not sure how they do it, how they can love him. He owes them so much, but it’s not even about that, it’s not about owing. If he did, he’d owe them his entire soul. There’s not enough space in his body, in his heart, for how much he owes them.

They were, and they continue to be, everything.

And then the war happened. They parted ways, and by the time Remus came back, things had shifted. Things felt off. He was certain the love was still there – it has to be, it has to –, but it felt like it was stained, tainted by something else, something ugly. Suddenly, he’s not sure he can trust them anymore, but he doesn’t know if that’s his gut speaking, or if it’s paranoia.

That’s the duality of man, and the duality of monster, he supposes. Everything trails between gut feeling and paranoia. He’s scared of being doubted, so he’ll turn a pointing finger right back. If they think he can be a mole, then they can be a mole.

He’s terrified of losing them. More than anything, Remus really is terrified of losing his loved ones. He knows he can survive it; he’s lost his mum, he now lost James, you would think he’s hardened enough by now to be able to take it, but he’s not. In his eyes, they are his humanity. What is he, if he doesn’t have his friends? What’s a monster if he isn’t loved?

They all knew going into this that it wouldn’t be easy, sure, but sometimes Remus feels a little alone in how much he feels. It seems like the world keeps turning, the war doesn’t stop for grief. And it feels like everyone else picks themselves up and moves right along with it, but he can’t. Every death weighs on him, every loss has just been piling and piling up onto his shoulders and he doesn’t know how much else he can take. He feels like everyone else is so much better equipped for this. They all mourn, sure, but… do they? They can’t be feeling this like he does, because if they were, they’d be feeling this crippling dread. They’d be feeling how hard it is to move, how shaky his hands feel all the time, how his heart seems to be broken into a million pieces and all of his insides have rottened.

He resents that. He wants to be able to grieve openly without feeling like he’s slowing anyone down. He wants to be able to feel things, and give them time, before they’re running into the next death trap that could easily take another one of his loved ones. He really needs the time to stop and feel this, because it’s crushing him, and he doesn’t feel like any of his friends understand how bad it is – which in itself is the most crushing part of it. When did they all become these sort of robots programmed for war? And why didn’t he get that memo?

James Potter – Don’t get me started on the duality of being so hurt by the fact that your best friend outed your biggest, most damning secret to everyone, and then died. I mean. What the fuck, James. In all seriousness, this is a lot to handle, which is why he deserves to be mentioned in this section even if this doesn’t exactly make for new plots. Remus doesn’t know how to feel; normally he’d be upset at that betrayal, accidental or not, but he didn’t even have the time to process that, before grief steamrolled into everything. He wants to be angry. He wants the right to be mad, to maybe yell at James, to hear his apologies and immediately forgive him, because of course he’s not really angry, he’s just scared. And instead, he gets silence.

Sirius Black – Sirius always has a way of filling up every room he walks into. Remus always thought he’d be better off if he was a little more like Sirius, and maybe that’s why they work – how opposing their energies are. Remus is always trying to make himself smaller. In a way, this is also why they don’t work, on the times they don’t. Sirius was probably the person he trusted the most, even if they didn’t always see eye to eye. It hurts him a lot to think that maybe this trust is broken now; that maybe after all of this, they’ll end up too cold and distant to have the friendship they used to have. He hopes, blindly, that’s not the case.

Peter Pettigrew – He feels protective towards Peter. Maybe that stems from their years in the castle, how Peter was seen as the little kid who trailed behind them and not one of the Marauders himself. Remus never liked hearing that. And Peter is different than the others to him, he always seemed a bit smaller, a bit more innocent; Sirius and James have no trouble taking care of themselves, that’s not even a question. Peter, on the other hand. Remus feels like he needs to help him any way he can.

Lily Evans – He loves Lily like a sister. She reminds him of his mother, sometimes, with her warmth and her determination. She’s the strongest person he knows, and he think he’d probably trust her and follow her blindly anywhere – or, at least, he felt like that when they were all in school. He still wishes they were closer nowadays, he wishes they spoke more.

Marlene McKinnon – She’s too cool for him, honestly. Plain and simple, somewhere in the core of his being, he’s still just a really lame teenager who thinks she might be too cool to hang out with him. He’s grateful that he gets to crash at the estate, but he’s also well-aware of her family’s view of the half-breeds. He can’t quite relax while he’s there, he keeps expecting to be discovered and kicked out any passing second. Now that his secret is out, he fears she’ll turn on him.

OOC EXPLORATION:

SHIPS/ANTI-SHIPS:

I ship Remus/chemistry first, always, of course! I always find that you have to throw characters together in action before you start planning anything, you never know where the chemistry will be. I’ve taken part in many a ships in my time, Sirius/Remus probably being the main one, but in this context, everything’s a little trickier! It’s a very unstable, difficult time, and this is a very sad and angry Remus. He wants something, he wants to have someone, I just don’t think he even knows how, or where to begin with. I think he pushes the idea of romance so far back in his brain, thinking he can never have it, that it’s almost an impossibility in itself because of it. I think he’ll have a very difficult time believing anyone wants him like that, even if it does happen. I really look forward to possibly exploring any ships if chemistry happens! And I don’t think I have any anti-ships, currently. All is fair in the rp land.

WHAT PRIVILEGES AND BIASES DOES YOUR CHARACTER HAVE?

It is safe to say Remus has a bias against werewolves, in the saddest, most twisted way possible. Yes, he is one, and he doesn’t deny that to himself, but there’s a reason why he’s so careful to hide it from everyone else, why he was so reluctant in letting even his closest friends help him out – he agrees with all the stories and tales. He doesn’t feel proud to have this curse, he wouldn’t defend it if someone were to attack it.

They are monsters, once a month, under the moon. It doesn’t matter if his friends for years tried to convince him he’s a good person, he won’t believe it until he lets go of these horrible ideas he has of the curse itself. Even after meeting so many others like him. He may think hating it – hating himself – makes him better, a higher moral ground on the scale, as opposed to the werewolves who flaunt it. He may think some of them, like Fenrir, are worse than him for this, but it doesn’t make things that much better for how he views them.

As far as privileges go, Remus recognizes he has it pretty easy as far as his family life goes. He had loving parents – as far as he can tell –, he had a normal home life; he’s a half-blood, which meant he usually flew under the radar, considering how other wix seemed to view muggleborns, in contrast.

But as far as privileges he doesn’t recognize, I’d say that’s probably more interesting. Remus thinks of himself as a monster. A werewolf, bitten while he was still so young. His bite scar sits on his shoulder, now grown and shifted but the pale scar tissue never gone, an ugly mark. He doesn’t think himself particularly handsome, he doesn’t see many talents that stand out. He thinks he’s pretty much at the very bottom of the food chain.

Which is all kind of untrue, he’s blinded by his self-deprecation. Everyone has privileges, he is no different. He’s a werewolf, and that’s terrible, but other than that he’s not exactly doing too bad. He was always a good student, he liked studying, good grades came easy. His looks had never proven to be a problem, even if he believes it is. He had a good home, dedicated parents, he never ran out of money for books and robes and chocolate bars growing up. If you strip Remus of his lycanthropy – and lord knows he’s dreamed of that –, the truth is, he doesn’t have anything else to feel sorry about. And he’s so stuck feeling sorry for himself all the time, that he has a hard time recognizing his privileges and biases.

To him, he’s a monster, but to anyone else who doesn’t know of his condition, he’s really just another regular guy fighting the war. Of course, now, with everyone’s discovery – things will change.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO?

Well, I’m not new to this scene, hi, hello! So I already know everyone here is an amazing writer, and I adore you admins (I promise I’m not just sucking up for the sake of the app, it’s true). I love Remus, it’s been a few years since I last played him but he’s the muse that’s always alive in my head – this is the fastest and longest bio I ever wrote, to prove my point, aha. I especially love this Remus, the mid-war, post-Hogwarts, “can’t get a job”, “questioning the loyalty of the people I love the most” Remus. He’s feeling a lot. He’s tired, he’s angry, he’s grown sharp edges from the soft boy he once was. There’s so much to explore, and while it’s definitely a little scary to fill in someone else’s shoes, I’m really looking forward to writing with everyone and exploring all the many plots and relationships possible!

PLOT DROP IDEAS (OPTIONAL):

I’m terrible at these, I’ll admit, but I am open to everything you may want to throw my way! I also think I’ll need to take a second to acclimate into any of Remus’ pre-existing plots before throwing around any specifics of my own.

That being said, though, something that I’m excited to explore is his current unemployment. I want him to search for some kind of proper job to try to pay things for himself. I think he’s too proud to ask anyone else for help at this point, and he might have several emotional breakdowns on this process, but he’s gonna do his best. Also anything to do with his current (quite terrible) side-effects from Attisgalli Corrective Draughts, or exploring his gender identity in general, I’d love that!

ANYTHING ELSE? I was gonna do a pinterest board but I’ll spare you guys the trouble for now, this is already 11 pages long. Oops! Thank you for reading!!

[dekuinthelake]

Why I’m okay with people knowing I’m transgender

Firstly, I want to start off by saying that if you’re trans and for your own comfort and safety you don’t want to be “outed” that’s 100% understandable and you should not feel bad about that. We all need to move at our own pace when discovering our social limits and confidence. My journey will have not been the same as yours. I live in Colorado, a state that is fairly trans friendly and am a trans man, meaning I’ve most likely had a safer time than I might have elsewhere. Trans women have it especially difficult, and if you feel unsafe in a situation that’s up for you to gage. It doesn’t make you less valid or a coward or anything like that.

Just know that I’m writing this for you and other trans/nb folks. I want our choices to transition to feel like the right one, even when people who don’t understand are making you second guess.

Context:

From the time I was 16-23, I was immensely depressed. I dropped out of highschool because of an immense disillusionment for the future. Primarily, I believed I didn’t have one. I’d always been bad at school, so collage was out of the question. I thought I was too ugly to get married and so that traditional Mormon thing my mother specifically had impressed upon me, which was having kids obviously. Most people disliked me because at the time, I had an extremely aggressive and compulsive attitude thanks to being absolutely lost emotionally. I hated my body and my mind and was convinced the things I despised could never change.

Ironically, one of the thorns in my side was how I always wanted to be a man instead. I recall coming home from school some days and just curling up in bed and sobbing about it.

“If I was a boy, people wouldn’t make fun of my ugly ass body.” Something I felt primarily about my chest. Once I strangled a kid for pointing out my bra strap through a white shirt. No joke. I was volatile and pissed all the time because of dysphoria. Comments about being feminine quite literally triggered me growing up. Every violent fight I remember growing up was caused by someone making fun of me in relation to female gender.

Despite this problem being so obvious, my religious parents took me to Mormon operated therapy. The suggestions I was given by councilors was typically “Have you tried praying about it?” Or “Are you going to Young Women’s every Sunday?” For those of you who don’t know, in the LDS church, they separate Sunday school for age groups based on gender. In particular, they forced all girls to wear dresses.

Having that identity forced on me every Sunday against my will from a very young age caused me to resist in aggressive attitude. Hit a kid in the face with my bible bag once for telling me I should be in the kitchen.

Another unfortunate side effect of the Mormon upbringing was literally not knowing that trans people even existed. I recall seeing trans people (like with waiter we had once) and being a little perplexed but not too bothered. But no one had ever explained the concept to me until much, much later.

After I had dropped out, a friend of mine came out and at the time the concept was alien. I’d spent so much time in my life trying to choke down any hope of being a guy because of religion it seemed impossible to even change genders. But then a mutual friend between me and my trans one (who is now my roommate) explained to me in a car ride I still remember vividly about what testosterone does to your body. Bit of a side note, but the ‘micro phalus’ thing was something I straight didn’t believe and OH BOY LMAOOOO.

Anyway, with that information now tumbling around on my mind... I accepted my friend and continued to ignore my obvious feelings!

Life marched on. I sunk in to gaming addiction, depression, and repression. I think I first tried to kill my self when I was 20 years old. I had quit my job thanks to a car crash I got in to and sunk in to doing absolutely nothing but playing MMOs for months. Eventually I just convinced myself there was no possible way my life could anything meaningful or productive. I had a fairly unhelpful stay in a mental hospital. I got out, got a job at the Denver zoo as a janitor.

I coasted for a few years there. That job taught me a lot. People skills, how to work hard, how to care about the future... And one of my coworkers was a trans man. We didn’t talk much about his transition. Mostly we just talked about cool things at work and how shitty customers were.

I think that kind of interaction was so important to me. To everyone, him being trans was just natural. No one cared and he seemed pretty happy.

With that information I started to do a bit of research on my own. I’m not sure how many months of consideration I had before coming out subtly to my current roommate in a car.

At the time, pondering coming out to everyone around me and having to confront my body every day in mirrors I cleaned for a living became a sort of hell. I worked the 4am shift and had no one to talk to for the entire duration of my work day, leaving me with lots of time to watch videos and think. I mean I mentally battled myself to the point I was in a lot of pain. So I started taking pain killers, mood stabilizers, drinking, and smoking weed in excess. Since I worked in the dark alone, no one would know how fucked up I was. The primary wrench in me finally accepting my own needs was again that feeling of hopelessness. The process of transition seemed so intimidating. It’s expensive. It will take effort. What if I fuck this or that up?

Early 2017, I tried to kill myself again after months of tormenting myself. I remember when they put me in the ICU and asked for my name, I told them Mike instead of my now dead name. The nurses asked if I had a pronoun preference and I just couldn’t say anything at all. But the chart whiteboad hanging on the wall in front of my bed said “Mike’s”. Everyone who came to visit me saw this. In a way, I had forced myself to come out. My stay in the mental hospital provided the same information as the last, but this time I was more ready to accept it.

One of the exercises we did was write plans for the future. Before, I had left it blank. But this time? I had goals. One of them was to come out officially in a far less destructive fashion. My dad seemed to accept it but not fully support. Due to family tensions that were somewhat unrelated to coming out, I ended up moving out in Late September 2018.

Soon everyone in my personal life knew. I got laid off with my entire department at the zoo. I remember coming out to some of my coworkers based on how religious they were the last day. My next job, I introduced myself as Mike and even got a name tag.

At the end of 2018 I started on hormones after a battle to get ahold of a doctor. Since then, I’ve been a lot happier.

I’ve lost over 100lbs and started working out.

I’m currently working the highest paying job I’ve ever had.

I’m living in an apartment with people I really care about.

The people I keep around me accept my pronouns and are proud of me coming out.

I’ve grown a mustache I love so much I can’t bare to shave it.

The power of self actualization

In every respect, coming out and presenting myself in exactly the way I want to has improved my life. For me that included medically transitioning. It’s like I finally have something to look forward to. All the little changes make me excited and more confident in what I like every day.

Even minor things like clothing are now these exciting vehicles of self expression. I never used to buy things I liked since my parents controlled what I was and was not aloud to wear. And even when I got my own money, those standards forced upon me by Mormonism held me back. Every pay check has more meaning when I’m replacing the old life that I hated so much. I seriously love this tiger shirt I got.

I’m proud to tell people I’m trans because finally admitting to myself has improved my life and mental health and unimaginable degree. I went from wanting to die basically at all times to having excitement for what comes next. I’m enjoying activities that I never would have before. Going to gay bars and dancing has been so enriching for me and I absolutely never would have done that before when I was all angry and bristly.

Being trans can be such a possitive experience. It’s freedom. It’s being able to live your life comfortably.

I know there are a lot of people who don’t understand or don’t want to because of their upbringing... and if you are one of those people who managed to read all this, please know they if you’re anti-trans, you’re anti-freedom of expression, anti-mental health, and anti-social.

Coming out was like removing a clog from my life. I’ve FINALLY been able to start living. And that’s something I want people to know about me. I felt dead before I changed my name and pronouns.

By the way. I’m Mike. He/him. 25. And I’m not going to try and kill my self ever again because I’m enjoying my big trans life.👌

[actuallyrandomperson]

I wanna ramble about how I experience dysphoria as a genderfluid person for a bit, and my identity in general, so I figured Tumblr was a good place to do it.

So, for starters, I should probably clarify how I'm fluid, as all of us are a little different in how we experience gender. I was assigned female at birth, and, to be completely honest, I wish I was amab. This shocks some people, especially as I tend to sit on the female/demigirl/nonbinary side of things, but it's true. Realistically, I know my life would be a lot different if I had been, and I would have experienced a different set of struggles, but in an idealistic world, where nothing would change about me except the way my body looked and what pronouns were used for me, I'd want to be assigned male. I could not care less what genitals I have, especially since I'm ace so it has no real effect on how I'm gonna live my life, this relates back to the two other most obvious issues with being afab: Periods, and boobs.

I hate getting my period. As most people do. I don't even have particularly painful ones, just some semi-bad cramps on the first day or two, but I hate it anyway. 9 times out of 10 I'm non-binary on the first day of my period. Whether that's related to hormone levels or some subconscious part of my brain whispering "hey periods suck being a girl sucks why were u born a girl", I do not know. I just know it happens.

I also hate my boobs whenever I'm not female. Including when I'm demigirl. I don't hate the idea of boobs in general when I'm demigirl, and don’t think I need to be completely flat-chested to feel happy when I’m non-binary (but that could come back to me doubting I’ll get fully flat without surgery), I just hate my boobs. That is because I am incredibly busty, especially for someone who is 5'1/155 cm tall. I'm an Aus 10G/US 32I, I have small shoulders (my straps slip down no matter how tight we pull them), and a large part of what made figuring out my gender identity hell was the constant question of whether me hating my boobs was an ace thing (not wanting to be constantly sexualised) or a gender thing. My best fitting bra actually helped me figure that out, as reportedly it made me look smaller (i.e. technically less likely to be sexualised) but it had the side benefit of making my boobs, well, actually look like boobs, and when I looked at myself in the mirror I wanted to claw my eyes out. So. 90% of the time I hate my boobs because they're so big, and 100% of the time I hate my period.

You might be sitting here, reading this, and going "but Em, are you sure you're genderfluid? Not just demigirl or nonbinary or agender or any of the other non-binary identities?" My answer to that is, well, sorta no. And sorta yes. No, in the fact that I've never been sure about anything in my life. Maybe time will go on, and I'll begin to identify with some other label, or no labels at all. Yes, in the fact that genderfluid feels right right now, and that's all that matters. Humans change. In turn, labels can change too. Hell, as a genderfluid person, my labels technically change on almost a day to day basis! That doesn't make my feelings and my identity at any single moment any less valid. It also doesn't mean that long term, I'll wake up one day and realise that I actually just identify with x gender. It just means that it could happen, and that’s ok, just as it's okay that my identity is changing constantly at the moment. Side note, while we're talking about labels- you also don't need to identify with one! I personally like to use them, as they bring me comfort, but everyone is different, and y'all who choose not to use labels for whatever reasons are entirely valid.

I have 4 main types of day, gender-wise. Days where I feel like a girl, days where I feel kinda like a girl, days where I feel non-binary, and days where my gender is that 'women' shrugging emoji (that I use all the time because long hair babeyyyy also their shirt is purple on iOS and purple rules). Day 4 I mostly lump under demigirl, as with day 2. Day 3 could probably be most accurately described with agender, or a similar identity label, but I find it personally easiest to just refer to myself as non-binary on said days.

In a hard to explain way, I feel as though I experience less dysphoria on days where I am demigirl than on days where I am fully female. This is not entirely accurate, and is almost certainly as a result of me having unintentionally put in place coping mechanisms for said days in terms of how I present myself for years now, and probably isn’t the right terms for me to use, but it's true.

You see, I dress in a fairly gender-neutral way. My presentation has still always come off as feminine, as I love my long hair and enjoy nail polish, but I've always hated shaving, and I avoid wearing dresses and skirts as much as possible in my day-to-day. I don't mind wearing dresses etc when I'm demigirl, I just don't gravitate towards them, and when I'm demigirl I generally present as a not-overly feminine girl whose a little uncomfortable with their body shape and likes to be comfy, and wears heels in an effort to be taller rather than as a fashion statement.

But when I'm fully a girl, I often love being feminine. I usually want to wear dresses/skirts, and jewellery, and lipstick (not any other makeup though, years of dance and stage makeup ruined me- if someone puts it on for me and it's not heavy/powdery I'm not actively adverse, though), and have my hair braided, and generally just to Get Prettied Up. But that’s not 'me' to other people. That’s not the person I've presented myself as for years. I've spent my entire life catering to my demigirl and non-binary days because they're more common, and whenever I do lean into my feminine self on girl days my family and a lot of my friends are kinda surprised. I wore lipstick and nice clothes to two separate movie hangouts with two different friends, and one of them (who I hadn't seen in a while, to be fair) commented on how it was unusual for me while the other looked visibly surprised. It's not a coincidence that the two irl people I'm out to outside of my schools lgbt+ club are my brother and my best friend- both of whom complimented me (in a non-creepy way with my brother slvjfk) when they saw me wear lipstick for simple things last year, without making a big deal out of it. My mum still acts shocked and gets excited about me being feminine when I express an interest into buying clothes from a particular brand (Princess Highway/Dangerfield in general, for my fellow Aussies, as I don’t think they exist in the US) even though I've been getting presents from there for a few years now. She's talked about slowly starting to replace my clothes with 'fashionable stuff' from places like Dangerfield as the years go on now that I've 'expressed an interest in nice clothes' and I feel anxiety start to ball up in my stomach, because I don't want to wear fashionable clothes all the time, because fashionable for me, closeted and big-chested as I am, means feminine. When I present or show interest in presenting in a more feminine way on my female days, my mother and a few people I'm surrounded by unintentionally make me feel guilty about not wishing to present like that all the time, make my dysphoric for my future and past self, and make me doubt myself as a genderfluid person because I wish to present as my birth gender on one day.

So rather than dealing with all that, I don't present in a more feminine way unless I'm going out, and even then, avoid wearing lipstick if my mum is home, or coming with me. If I can, I'll stick a tube into my bag to apply when I get to wherever I'm going, but it's not always possible. I have Safiya Nygaard’s colourpop collection hidden away in my room. I continue to present myself in a way that aligns more closely in my mind to my demigirl days, with the slight change of being able to actually look at myself in the mirror for extended periods of time, being ok with my slightly more tight-fitting tops, and being chill with wearing my best bra. And I feel, as a whole, dysphoric on these days. I am not happy with how my gender presentation is, because it does not reflect how I want to present. Dysphoria is probably not the exact right term to use to describe these feelings, given I'm afab but it is the easiest way for me to put it, as it most closely reflects the unhappiness I feel with my presentation on my non-binary days, it's just my non-binary days come with a whole lot more body-related dysphoria piled on top. A song I like to listen to on female days is Platform Ballerinas, by MIKA, as it helps remind me that I am a girl, and the way I'm presenting as a girl is valid even if it's not exactly how I want to (it doesn't actually fully come back to societal expectations placed on women because I might shave my armpits but my leg hair still stays, and I genuinely want to get prettied up rather than feeling like I should to be seen as a girl, it's just something I want to do and not being able to makes me feel whack, but the song is definitely more focused on the whole 'societal expectations suck y'all are all valid' thing).

Non-binary days suck in the same way I've heard a lot of trans people of all varieties discuss. I hate walking past mirrors, if I have to wear feminine clothing for whatever reason I feel like I'm going to cry, she/her pronouns kinda make me want to die (generally I'm chill with she/they, and on female days they/them is okay, but she/her on nonbinary days makes my dysphoric as hell), and I generally Do Not Have A Great Time dysphoria wise. But hey, one day I’ll have enough money for a binder. Eventually. I always feel weird about entering giveaways given there are people who experience extreme dysphoria around their chest every day, I can deal on my demigirl days and survive on my non-binary ones.

So, that’s been me rambling into the void about gender for almost 2000 words, how are y’all doing? Also, if anyone actually read all of this I’d appreciate like,,, a like. Or something. I kinda want to know if people have actually seen and read this.

[daely-trans-life]

Thoughts on gender and other matters (letter to a friend)

Dearest [Friend],

I finally got around to writing this email, god knows it's long overdue.

You've asked me to explain what lead me to the realisation that I might be transgender and well, that's a larger subject than what I can summarise in a text message (in fact this email might turn into a novel, in which case I'm very sorry), so here we go.

I can see how from an outside point of view it might come as a surprise, albeit for me this realisation is something that's been long in the making... Probably ever since I became aware of the concept of gender itself. 

To begin with, I need to explain a little bit about the culture I was raised in, because it ties into the delay significantly. It has to do with the societal expectations as much as the language... Hungarian has no gender markers for words and doesn't use gendered pronouns at all, which also means that in a way, the concept itself is way less defined and pronounced in the cultural context. That, coupled with the strict and rigid code of conduct regarding politeness and formality means that it's generally not discussed in society on any level, neither in family, between friends nor in public education.

It's a binary concept that's dependent on one's genetic makeup and primary sexual characteristics that is assigned at birth and never discussed further. It doesn't involve choice or exploration, and it's not viewed as a  spectrum the same way as it is customary in Western countries. But at the same time, traditional gender roles are built into society on every level, and while it's never mentioned, it's enforced and engraved in people way stronger than it is in for example Denmark.

So while as a teen/young adult, I could feel I didn't fit into the box of "girl" or "woman" the way others around me did, I had no vocabulary to describe my experience, and I definitely didn't have a platform for exploring it. On the few occasions when I mentioned it to some friends that I kind of view myself as both a man and a woman or maybe neither, the general answer was something to the effect of "well no shit?! are we meant to be surprised by this?", which was both baffling and very validating at the same time.

And then I moved out of the country and a whole new world of concepts and options and spectra opened up to me, where I also had the opportunity to learn more about my identity when it came to gender and sexuality. I quickly discovered that me not being straight was definitely a thing, and I learnt about labels that finally fit my experience and I found a community that welcomed me and that had people similar to myself in it. And that was all great, but it also taught me that gender was a Thing, and not only that, but it also had way more to it than just binary man and woman. 

And I went down that rabbit hole hard. I started identifying as non-binary, tried on a lot of labels and pronouns, some really out there ones too, mostly privately, while trying to find the one that felt right. And of course in the meantime I've met and learnt about trans people, and it kind of hit me how that specific experience resonated with me. But of course, I couldn't just BE a guy... Could I?

Well, no, of course not! Because I had parents that raised me as their daughter, I had a husband who married me to be his wife, and I had always been presented and perceived as a woman... It's not like I could just uproot my entire identity and claim a new one just because it would make me happy... I had others to think of and consequences to dread, and in general, I was too fucked up anyway to really be concerned with something like what noise people make to address me or what concept do they identify me with. So I buried the question deep, never touching it, because as long as I wasn't looking, it didn't hurt and I didn't get confused. And this worked for a while, until it obviously didn't.

And then years had passed and a few things happened. For one, I met my other partner, who also identifies as non-binary and who is way more into the queer aspects of life than my husband. And with Them, I got to talk about the things that have always bothered me and that I previously was unable to talk about. They taught me the language to express myself, not only with words but also with presentation. And while confined in the safety of our shared home, I've stepped onto the Rocky Road of Recovery, that involved a lot of mental healthcare, therapy, exploration and coming to terms with my identity in more than one way.

In a way, unraveling the tangle of issues I've been carrying around helped a lot too. I've been living with the vague sense of "there is something wrong with me" for so long that it just became the everyday reality of my life, and I kind of accepted that all the things I now know are symptoms of certain conditions, were just how life was supposed to be, that the world was supposed to be this hostile, low-key but always uncomfortable place with occasional bursts of horrible pain. And through all that, I still held myself to the expectations I was presented with by my upbringing, because throughout my life, whenever I tried to ask for help in any way, I was generally met with blame and dismissal, and I was taught that the only option was to bite my tongue and power through. So I bit down and did what I could and every time I broke down, I just dug my heels in and kept going until one day I couldn't go on anymore. 

And in a way, this was a blessing. Because finally, at the point where I completely gave up, I was presented with an abundance of care and actual help I've never received before. I went to psychiatry, I got my diagnoses, I got a social worker to help me, I got a therapist, and a damn good one for that, and I got the time to heal and figure myself out without having to worry about things like where I was going to live or what I was going to eat. And lo and behold, things started getting better. Of course, a year of therapy cannot undo 20 years of trauma and abuse, I didn't expect it to either, but it gave me tools to work with, ways to address and manage my symptoms and space to explore ways in which I could be happier, healthier and more stable than I've ever been before.

I'm on a good path, and in a good place now. I'm engaged to my partner, still happily married to my husband and we live in a loving, if a bit crooked family in a beautiful place at the countryside. For the first time I'm hopeful about the future and I feel like I have realistic expectations about my life and what I would be able to make of it. Of course there is still a lot of work to be done and a lot of ways I wish to improve, but these dreams had finally stopped being just that, and slowly morphed into goals, things I could actually achieve and I can see ways in which to do so. 

And so, now that happiness suddenly became a viable option, I started wondering about the questions of identity again, and well... I guess I just felt like my time has finally come. I'm almost thirty. Yeah, that's a bit late compared to many who had this figured out by their late teens, but hey, I'm young, I have most of my adult life ahead of me! And I finally have the space and the support network that gives me enough confidence to pursue my true identity and everything that comes with that. 

I'm taking it slowly though. It's scary as hell, and it's a huge step, and I still have a million questions and a million obstacles to overcome. But if my journey so far had taught me anything, that is that no decision is irreversible, there is no such thing as too late to change things, and that fear is never a good enough reason not to do what's right for you. I'm at square one right now, and I don't know if this is the path I'll stay on forever, but I feel like I owe myself to at least try. If I never committed to anything just because it might not last forever, I wouldn't be having the amazing life I have today, if I was even still alive. 

So that's where I stand. Sorry about the insanely long ramblings, now you know everything you never wished to know about my inner workings, but I don't quite know how to explain this in any other way than the extremely winded one. 

I miss you. I wish we could hang out and I could be, you know, not an absolute wreck for once :D I swear I'm a way funner person these days than I was when we used to hang out.

Lots of love,

Dae

P.s.: I guess this DID turn into a novel, sorry about that again! :$ xoxo

[janamelie]

LGBT+ Characters

What This Isn’t

A claim of “proof” of the sexuality and / or gender identity of any of these characters.  We don’t need that or anything else to “justify” shipping.

What This Is

A reference post to collate instances in canon which could indicate LGBT+ characters.  In the case of regulars, I won’t include every instance as it would simply take too long.

Rimmer

As I was saying… :p

Honestly, Rimmer is so obviously LGBT+ to me that I don’t know where to start.  How about his reaction to Ace in “Dimension Jump”?

RIMMER: "Commander Rimmer!" I ask you.  "Ace!" Barf city.  I bet you anything he wears women's underwear.  They're all the same, this type, you know, Hurly-burly, rough-n-tumble macho marines in public, and behind closed doors he'll be parading up and down in taffeta ballgowns, drinking mint juleps, whipping the houseboy.

KRYTEN: Sir, he's you!  It's just that your lives diverged at a certain point in time.

RIMMER: Yes, I went into the gents and he went the other way.

KRYTEN: I assume, sir, you are making fatuous references to his sexuality.  If I may point out, if --

Or how about Low Rimmer?  Surely Rob and Doug could have got their point across a little less graphically?

Or if you prefer something less rapey, this passage from “IWCD”.  Unlike the show, Rob and Doug had more time and leeway to explore the characters and this is what they chose to include for Rimmer:

“Rimmer began to regret his outburst. He didn’t like to see his other self upset, and he even contemplated briefly going up to him and giving him a manly embrace. But in a brief moment of homosexual panic, he thought his double might get the wrong idea. Not that he would, of course, because he was him and he knew for a fact he wasn’t that way sexually tilted; so obviously his double wasn’t and obviously his double would know that he wasn’t either, and it was simply a manly embrace meant in a sort of mano a mano kind of way…Perhaps he was tired…Two or three days in bed and he’d be his old self again…Who cared if his copy saw it as a sign of weakness? He’d suggest it anyway.” Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, Grant/Naylor, pg 233.

And this from the end of the “Better Than Life” novel, when Holly - whose IQ has been restored - comes up with a way to bring Lister back from the dead (no, not as a hologram):

“Rimmer stood in the hatchway and his face yielded to a grin, which in turn gave way to laughter.  Not his normal hollow braying empty laughter, this was an altogether different noise.  This was a noise his vocal cords had never been called on to make before.

It was the laughter of joy.”

Better Than Life, Grant/Naylor, pg 218.

I know some fans read Rimmer as asexual and you can certainly make an argument for that, most obviously in “Marooned” where he describes his younger self as not “particularly highly sexed”.  Of course, that wouldn’t preclude him also being homoromantic or biromantic.

Lister

No-one’s denying Lister’s obvious attraction to and affection for women, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t be bisexual or pansexual.  In fact, his “I’m not gay!” protestations in “Duct Soup” is a fairly common way for people attracted to more than one gender to describe themselves if they don’t feel comfortable using labels.  Given that he was talking to Chloe!Kochanski to whom he’s attracted, it makes sense that he’d prevaricate like this.

And then of course, in the very next episode “Blue”, he dreams about kissing Rimmer.  It’s not only the fact of this, it’s the subsequent scene drawing a direct comparison between him missing Rimmer and Kochanski missing her Dave - her boyfriend.  And despite the ending of this episode, when Lister actually meets Rimmer again, he’s delighted.  Until he realises it’s not HIS Rimmer and even so, he gets used to nano-Rimmer and they eventually become quite chummy.

Not forgetting the chemistry between him and Ace, of course.

Kryten

I know he's a mechanoid, but no-one has any problem reading his relationship with Mechanoid - and later Blob - Camille as romantic and Camille literally says herself that both she and her husband Hector are actually androgynous, which makes Kryten - at the very least - panromantic.

And that’s before we get to his very obvious love for Lister which he states himself in “Back In The Red”.

Holly

Holly was actually conceived as a female character and became male due to Norman Lovett’s original casting.  Sources: “Stasis Leaked” by Smegazine writer Jane Killick and “The Unofficial Red Dwarf Programme Guide” by Smegazine writers Chris Howarth and Steve Lyons.

With Hattie’s replacement casting and later Norman’s return, Rob and Doug may not have intended to create a trans or genderfluid character, but that’s what they ended up doing.

Holly is also bisexual - male Holly was attracted to Hilly and female Holly to Ace.

George McIntyre

It was actually Rob and Doug’s audio commentary on the pilot version of “The End” on “The Bodysnatcher Collection” which alerted me to this possibility.  I know it’s a stretch but I’m including it precisely because I’m indifferent to George as a character and it makes no difference to me whether someone believes this one or not.

During George’s speech at his “Welcome back” party, he says “I don’t want you to think of me as someone who’s dead, more as someone who’s no longer a threat to your marriages - I think Joe knows what I’m talking about!”

We see a man and a woman laughing and the woman playfully pokes the man in the arm.  He stops laughing and looks a bit sheepish.

Rob and Doug comment confusedly to the effect of “Shouldn’t it be the other way round?  This is one of the things we had no control over at this stage.”

Come on, Rob and Doug.  Not only does this scene appear intact in the final televised version of “The End”, you also included extra background on George in “Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers”, showing the events leading up to his death.  Unlike the hologram he replaces, Frank Saunders, there is no mention of George having a wife or indeed any partner, so as far I’m concerned, we shippers can read whatever we choose into this scene.  We would regardless, but the way canon leaves it is particularly open-ended.

Deb Lister and Arlene Rimmer (“Parallel Universe”)

See previous entries.  If their male counterparts are LGBT+ then so are they, plus I always got that vibe from the performances anyway.

Camille

Yes, everyone uses female pronouns for her as that’s how she presents to the crew, but she says herself: “We’re androgynous, but I suppose you could call [Hector] my husband.”

Noel Coward Waxdroid (“Meltdown”)

Mr Coward was gay in real life and his fictional incarnation here greets Rimmer with “Delighted to meet you, dear boy!”  I rest my case.

Nirvanah Crane

And arguably the entire crew of the Holoship according to her speech: “It's a ship regulation that we all have sexual congress at least twice a day.  It's a health rule … Here it is considered the height of bad manners to refuse an offer of sexual coupling … We are holograms.  There is no risk of disease or pregnancy.  That is why in our society we only believe in sex -- constant, guilt-free sex.”

Does that sound as though they’re fussy about the genders of their partners?  It certainly doesn’t to me.  So:

Captain Hercule Platini

Commander Randy Navarro

Commander Natalina Pushkin

Commander Binks

Sam Murray

From the Series V DVD booklet:

“Briefly revived in “Holoship”, it came as a surprise that Sam was male.  In the original pilot script - and Series 1′s deleted funeral scene - deceased crew member “Sam Murray” is said to be dating “Rick Thesen”.  Possibly Red Dwarf’s first gay couple?”

Cop (“Back To Reality”)

I’m sure it wasn’t written as such and maybe he didn’t intend to, but the way Lenny Von Dohlen plays his character’s reaction to the Voter Colonel just pings my gaydar.

Frank Todhunter (“The End”)

I know the conversation in “Duct Soup” (which also includes a reference to a gay crew member nicknamed “Bent Bob” *cringe*) where Kochanski tells Lister that the Todhunter in her dimension was gay is played off as something she made up to take Lister’s mind off his claustrophobia, but she never actually says as much.  There’s nothing to say that at least part of what she was saying wasn’t true.

Ackerman (Series VIII)

In the Series VIII DVD documentary, actor Graham McTavish says he was playing Ackerman as someone who enjoys sex with women “or at a pinch, men dressed as women”.  So onto this list he goes.

Big Meat (“Only The Good”)

I don’t blame you if you’ve blocked this one out as I find the scene almost unwatchable, but he’s the big prisoner who takes to the idea of being Cat’s “bitch” unexpectedly quickly.

Katerina Bartikovsky (“Back To Earth”)

Credit to @clueingforbeggs for noticing that in “Pete Part 1” Ackerman claims to have been “having jiggy-jiggy with the Science Officer’s wife” and connecting that with Katerina being a Science Officer.  There’s nothing to say that the Joy Squid didn’t conjure up the image of an actual crew member.

But maybe the ship has more than one Science Officer?  Well, the way it’s said makes it sound as though there is only one but in “Holoship” Kryten gives Rimmer a mind patch from two officers, one of whom is Science Officer Buchan.  There is no mention of Buchan’s gender so who’s to say they aren’t also female?

Begg Chief (“Entangled”)

“We prefer the ship of green.  And the sexy light man with the lady legs so long and luscious!”

Chancellor Wednesday (“The Beginning”)

Actor Alex Hardy says in Series X DVD doc “We’re Smegged” that he was playing the relationship between his character and Dominator Zlurth with a homoerotic undercurrent and you can see it subtly in his performance.

Dolphy (“Cured”)

All I’ll say about this one is that if Messalina had behaved towards Lister as Dolphy does in this episode, nobody would have doubted that she was into him.

Ziggy (“Timewave”)

Proof that LGBT+ characters in this show work a lot better when Doug isn’t intentionally writing them as such.  Sorry.

Feel free to add any examples I may have missed.

@lord-valery-mimes  @aziraphale-lesbian   @notalwaysweak  @feline-ranger  @downonthepharm-red-dwarf  @hologrammette  @rosecathy  @cazflibs​