#yeah thats a trans woman.

[genderkoolaid]

I'm not sure where I read it - I think it was on the wikipedia page of that trans doctor from the 1920s, but I don't remember his name - but basically, it was talking about this trans man's experience being trans in the early 20th century, and his family's reaction. And it made a point of saying how his grandparents were entirely supportive and even wrote him as their grandson on their gravestones. And there's a similar story for a trans girl, also in a similar time period I believe, where her family took her to a doctor when she started Being Trans and the doctor's reaction was literally "Okay, she says she's a girl? Then treat her like a girl! Buy her dresses and call her by whatever name she wants!" and they did!!

Obviously transphobia still existed back then, and it was strong. But throughout time, there have been cases where people heard their loved one say "I am not that gender, that doesn't fit me," and their love and trust in that person overrode any prejudice or lack of understanding, and they just accepted them. Whether it's a doctor encouraging parents to treat their little girl like a little girl, or grandparents marking their grandson's gender in stone (even when, if I remember correctly, his parents had doubts), trans people have always had people who cared for us and believed us and supported us, despite what the rest of society might have said.

UPDATE: IT WAS ALAN L. HART, from his wikipedia page:

Hart wrote later, in 1911, of his happiness during this time, when he was free to present as male, playing with boys' toys made for him by his grandfather. His parents and grandparents largely accepted and supported his gender expression, though his mother described his "desire to be a boy" as "foolish." His grandparents' obituaries, from 1921 and 1924, both list Hart as a grandson.

[aroacechillzone]

shoutout to nb people who started out partially identifying with their birth gender at first before realizing that their gender is actually not related to their birth gender at all and the only reason they thought it was is because society sees them as their birth gender and treats them as such.

(it's me. i'm the nonbinary person)

[sunstar121]

THIS IS MODERN FEMINISM TALKING I EXPECT TO RUN THE WORLD IN SHOES I CANNOT WALK IN-

[hogcranker1984]

this is me when anyone calls bubba a man/guy/etc

[lokh]

testosterone can make ur gums bleed more?????????

[pikslasrce]

pussy so androgynous it causes a major fandom schism approximately 194 times a month

[reinabeestudio]

you stop shaving as a woman and people just dont know what to call you anymore huh

[mcnuggyy]

just remembered the fucked up dream I had last night where like 99% of the population switched bodies with somebody else somewhere in the world, BUT you weren’t aloud to talk about it at all or say who you really are or what your actual body looks like or else the government(?) would fucking kill you, like there was cameras watching us at all times, and people getting shot in front of us was common, it was very dystopian… but it was kind of an unspoken fact that almost all the people who were doing the best job at pretending to be people they weren’t were all transgender for some reason?? to the point where a lot of us had found ways to talk about it without talking about it and could bypass the cameras and shit… and the like guy who was all behind it had to get involved eventually…and he like started interviewing some of us and finally once and for all had us talk about who we really were and it was very dramatic and emotional but I woke up like immediately after saying what I looked like and who I was so 🤷🏻 who knows what would have happened next LMAO

[epicdogymoment]

once again rubbed the wrong way by friends who unintentionally reveal that they dont really engage with my masculinity in any real way and see me as nonbinary (female-lite)

[gnometa233]

Possible Hot Take but most people's problem's with gender as a whole would be gone the minute the majority of the world population gets rid of gender roles and sexism. Lol

[honeyrisuke]

english monolinguals don't know the agonies of the right politicizing the concept of gendered nouns and I envy them for it

[hecksupremechips]

Pose is an amazing show with a lot to criticize but honestly the sheer lack of transbians in the show just starts becoming hilarious at a certain point

[astraltrickster]

I guess I'm on a Somewhat Serious Internet And Fandom Culture Things kick today but

Fandom really, really needs to get better at sitting with the fact that sometimes people don't neatly fit into specific queer labels and that's okay - people in general need to get better at this, really, but this post is specifically about fandom.

There is a bi/gay cusp (I'm on it, hi), there is an allo/gray-ace/ace cusp, the pan/ace overlap is more significant than a lot of people think ("and when everyone is attractive, no one will be"), the GNC/nonbinary/trans cusp is something that has been examined in depth through queer history (please read Stone Butch Blues), while not all intersex people consider ourselves inherently queer our existence very much highlights the inherent problems of framing any and all of these concepts in such rigid binary-based terms, the list of gray areas goes on and on and they even blur into each other -

But I'm not here to talk about that, exactly; I'm here to talk about how a lot of fandom is...superficially okay with this fact in theory, but show just how superficial that awareness and acceptance is when it comes to fictional characters.

If a character is confirmed to be queer, it's not "queerbaiting" to not put a specific label to it. It is not "being wishy-washy and cowardly and refusing to commit," nor is it inherently "making a joke of it". Telling an unlabeled but explicitly queer story does count as representation. It is capable of letting people - out, closeted, or somewhere in between - see themselves reflected with no caveats; people who cannot or do not want to neatly label themselves deserve that as much as anyone else. It is capable of showing people who don't share that experience that, yeah, this is just how some people are - which, some of you are clearly the ones who need to hear it.

Sometimes definitely-not-cishet-but-otherwise-unlabeled is a temporary state. Sometimes it isn't. Headcanoning it as a temporary state in a specific character is one thing - that's perfectly okay! That's 100% fine! Using such characters for self-reflection and self-exploration, well, that's a major part of why fiction exists in the first place! Saying that their queerness doesn't count until they say your specific label out loud, or attacking other fans for not sharing your specific headcanon, on the other hand, is an entirely different beast and very much not okay. It's hardly different from calling an endgame same-gender romance "not real" because it wasn't your OTP.

Your already-confirmed-queer blorbo does not need to be confirmed as [insert specific label here] to "own the queerphobes". The fact that shitty people ignore and erase unlabeled or cusp cases (or mspec people or nonbinary people, for that matter) does not make it right for you to join them in doing so.

[snekdood]

saw a post yesterday that was like "if you dont have trans women as friends u gotta think about why that is" and i really had to restrain myself from saying "it goes both ways my friend!". if you dont have any trans men as friends, ya gotta think about why that is also!