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nawtponchoesquire · 2 months

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A cute guy likes me on a dating app. After chatting with them for weeks, we decide to go on a date. They are very flirtatious and forward over the app, but not when we meet in person. He admits he thought I was transmasc like him, we laugh about it because his mistake is funny and means I'm not passing but in a silly backwards way. I think his sudden awkwardness in person may be nervousness and flirt with him in ways less forward and aggressive than he'd been flirting with me earlier, and they become cold and distant for the rest of the date. By the time I get home they've blocked me on the app we met on. This case of being mistaken as a transmasc on a dating app will happen 3 more times, and in 2/3 times it results in a similar sudden lack of interest where once they were coming on to me. None of these people will be cis.

I am in a self defense class for queer people, learning hand to hand combat as a community. I have been here months. I notice I'm the only transfem in the classes but there are other trans people there so I don't think much of it. Today I have some stubble as I did not have time to shave before the early morning class. When discussing unrealistic action movie and anime fight scenes I describe on of my favorites, quoting the lines as I pantomime the goofy moves. They smile and laugh along until the word bitch leaves my lips in one quote, then the bisexual woman who only ever they/thems me glares at me like I've committed a grevious crime, and the rest of the class looks at me like a freak in awkward silence for a moment before moving on. I learn bitch is not a word a clocky bitch can "reclaim". I am quiet in classes now, and when I go I focus primarily on the training, when I see other trans women try it out they often give me a sad look and do not return for a second class. I get a sinking feeling that if I ever use this training to save my life one day I'd be branded a violent man instead of a strong woman.

I am texting with a good friend of years who was one of the people who helped me realize I was trans like them and even the one who helped pick out my name loves talking about our shared interests and sharing their favorite smut with me. We bond over favorite stories, artists, characters, and kinks as well as our trans experience. Yet they constantly tell me they could never date someone who's AMAB because of the trauma of being "female socialized" and their genital preferences for vulvas. Every compliment they have ever given me on my appearance or outfit is followed up by "but in a non-sexual way, I could never date you". Today I finally have the courage tell them they don't need to say that every time. They ignore this response. We keep talking for awhile, but they start taking months to respond to my messages and respond with a short sentence at most. They no longer share details about their life and shut me out when I ask or share details about mine, even the most mundane and chaste details. I stop talking to them. A birthday gift I bought them months before this falling out happened looms at me in my closet. I cannot use it as it doesn't fit me but can't bring myself to throw it away, just in case we reconcile one day. I feel pathetic for craving friendship with someone who sees me as "abuser-bodied", that so much of my early stages would've been impossible without their help. I feel a little more lost without them.

I am at a queer/trans/enby kink dance party with some friends. I am scantily clad and wearing a skirt and high heeled boots. I do not pass well so this space is one of the few places I feel safe and free dressing like this. It is packed with queer and trans people just like me engaged in delightful debauchery and wearing very little. The music hurts my ears but I'm happy to be here, I feel overstimulated but alive and authentic. I am approached by a beautiful stranger from across the dance floor, she is graceful and stylish, like some modern Galadriel clad in leather, white lace, and industrial piercings with impeccable voice training. She compliments my outfit, I compliment hers. She tells me I need to shave my armpits if I want to look like a real woman. My two friends stand up for me and yell at her. They assure me she was just being an asshole, that women were supposed to be hairy, but I can't help but notice how both of them have hairy armpits and yet the "advice" targeted me. The wide range of bodies that people here tonight find desirable on cis women don't seem to apply to the women like me. I am the only one of us that doesn't go home with a hookup at the end of the night. I realize now she likely spoke from experience. I am still hurt by her words, but realizing the kinds of experiences she must have had herself to feel her words were kind advice hurts far worse.

A local queer photographer who's work I follow is looking for women & non-binary models for a photoshoot. I have become comfortable with getting photos taken of me for the first time in my life since my egg cracked, and had a few small time modeling gigs under my belt. With something like this I could actually have the beginnings of a portfolio. I reach and am told that they are not looking for trans women models, "only women and AFABs". Getting the same line I get from agencies from an independent queer photographer repackaged in "woke" terminology stings. I see many queer and nonbinary models I looked up to take part in the shoot. I have to wonder if they knew that the photographer's definition of woman didn't include trans women, or if like me in my martial arts class they noticed no transfems were there but didn't think much of it because there were other trans people there.

It is years ago and I am still an egg. I am with my partner of 4 years. I am exhausted after a long day. She asks me for sex in the voice that I know means saying no will hurt her. I learned from her long ago men have high and insatiable sex drives, therefore saying no meant I wanted to have sex, just not with her. So I say yes. The sex is painful and unsatisfying, and I simply do my best to thrust through the discomfort until she cums. I feel numb and hurt. She enjoys herself but seems sad I did not cum. I assure her I love her. When we hold eachother after my obligation has been met and I finally feel comfortable and safe. We begin talking. She talks about the trashy women she saw on the street today, describing their cringe outfits and ugly styles and bad hair. All the styles and clothes and hair I yearn to try myself in my deepest and most repressed desires. I change the subject and ask her about work and family. She asks if I'd still love her if she were a man and I say yes. She says she would still love me if I were a woman. Something in that statement feels like a lie. It is months later when we break up and I move out. Now that I am a woman I look back and know from our years together that if I were a woman then she'd hate the kind of woman I'd become. That if I were a woman she'd still have the same expectations of me as a man, that her refusal of sex equated an impersonal not being in the mood but my refusal of sex equated a cruel refusal of love.

A lesbian group begins organizing a queer woman's strip night event. A safe place for amateur performers to shine and women to perform and enjoy sexuality away from the male gaze. I see no transfems in the promotional material or leadership team, and I've learned not to think nothing of it just because there are other trans people there. I do not go.

I am talking with my therapist. They are trans too and an amazing therapist, often providing insights and advice only someone else with the lived experience of being trans can. I express distress and suicidal ideation at the fact I feel like I need to pass before I can dress the way I want. That until I get expensive hair removal procedures and FFS I can never feel safe and welcome presenting authentically. I lament how these things are expensive and may never be accessible to me. They tell me I need to deal with my "internalized transphobia", as if these feelings aren't a result of constant rejection and othering by external forces even within queer spaces. As if the scrap of womanhood others sometimes acknowledge in me does not rely on their perceptions of me.

There is a publication accepting works from trans people of all stripes to document trans experiences. It gets flamed for not having a single transfem as a contributor. The people behind it apologize profusely, they say didn't notice no transfems had sent work in and would do a sequel publication that was transfem-centric. I wonder if anyone had noticed there were no transfems but didn't think much of it because there were other trans people there. I think about the kinds of spaces I've seen like that, and the implications it has about how they treat transfems, and I am unsurprised no transfems submitted.

One of my closest friends for years is very supportive of me when I first begin crossdressing and experimenting with they/them pronouns. She gives me suggestions on cute clothes to wear and takes me shopping as well as asks for pictures. We had helped eachother discover we were both queer as young teens, come to terms with it, and navigate it in a hostile environment, so I have complete trust. We are close enough we are frequently asking eachother advice on serious life choices & relationships, sending nudes for critique + tips before sending them to our partners, and sharing our most secret and vulnerable moments. She often asks me for tips on getting her straight boyfriends into pegging and crossdressing that make me slightly uncomfortable but I don't mind, she is a loyal friend I would endure a great many discomforts for. I host a lunch for us one day, and come out to her as a trans woman. I tell her my new name, say I no longer use he/him pronouns, and thank her for her support on my journey thus far. She launches into a monologue about how by changing my name I am throwing away all our memories together and spitting in the face of my family. Taken aback by her sudden heel turn after being so supportive of me being nonbinary and GNC, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom to get a break and give her some time to process. When I am in the bathroom trying not to cry, she is on the phone. I overhear her misgendering me as she is talking about me being bisexual in a frightened voice. She sounds truly afraid that I intend to be sexually violent towards her. When I leave the bathroom and sit back down I pretend not to have heard. She gets off the phone, saying she was just chatting with her boyfriend. We talk a bit longer, she explains how "the surgery" is dangerous and experimental and she hopes I won't get it. I assure her I won't and do my best to change the subject and hope she comes around after some time to process things, hurt and shocked that what I saw as a natural shift in the path I was already on marked me as frightening in her eyes after knowing eachother for over a decade. That a fellow bisexual suddenly saw my bisexuality as dangerous now that I was asserting myself as a trans woman. I say goodbye to her, and she says goodbye to me using my deadname, I do not risk an argument to correct her. It is months after the meeting we have not seen eachother since and she has not responded to any messages I sent. After reflecting on her reaction further I decide that I don't really want to spend time with someone who thinks these things about me for my own safety and mental health, regardless of our history. A friend of 14 years who supported my queerness and transness gone the instant I crossed an intangible woman-shaped line that marked me as a predator and invader in her eyes.

I log online and day after day see trans women getting banned and harassed. Seeing baseless callout posts calling them groomers and abusers getting taken seriously by other queer and trans people. Seeing proof that deep down so many people I consider kindred spirits see me and people like me as worthy of intense scrutiny and policing to keep "the queer community" safe and united. The blocklist grows but everything stays the same. I treasure the people in my life who don't take part in this and would do anything for them, but it seems they get fewer each time.

I'm not making this post to seek sympathy, I am used to this kind of shit and far worse has happened to myself and others. I just make this to illustrate transmisogyny is not some "online-only" issue like people claim. Even if online issues weren't "real" (as healed is fond of saying, "online is real") this has tangible effects in the way trans women are treated offline as well. By communities, friends, partners, colleagues, systems, etc. That's why we talk about it.

So much of the discussions people have paint transmisogyny as some online oppression olympics maliciously trying to divide the community, smear transmascs, and "reinvent bioessentialism". That is not what it is about. Discussions about transmisogyny is about how we are treated for being what we are, and while related to transphobia and misogyny it is seperate because it often represents doors other trans people and women can walk through that transfems cannot. It has affected me in my most intimate moments when I was with other trans and queer people I felt safe around, and taught me that I need to carefully manage my persona and presentation at all times lest my authenticity be branded "male socialization". I am even terrified to express attraction to people who express attraction towards me because I'm so used to being treated like a predator upon reciprocating or being used and abandoned by people I trusted. I am terrified to be too excited about shared interests with friends lest I be too loud or talkative about it and branded with aggressive male socialization. So I make myself quiet and small, and shrink from the community and people I care about, and become more and more isolated.

Anyways, stop platforming anons who spread lies about trans women, stop hopping on TERF harassment campaigns because the trans gal they're smearing "gave you bad vibes", and maybe consider carefully if in your own life where you draw the line for a transfem's behavior is any different from where you'd draw the line for anyone who's not one.

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nawtponchoesquire · 10 months

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Oh god, this manga is about me: Dead Dead Demon's Dedede Destruction

On December 2nd, 2022, a YouTube livestream broadcasted the rollout of Northrop Grumman’s latest technological marvel to thousands of people. Countless hours of R&D, cutting edge engineering, and assembly all lead to this moment. Northrop Grumman CEO Kathy Warden spoke from a podium about “the next generation of capability” and “defining what this nation is capable of when we work together” while the livestream chat gawked and called her Mommy.

After Warden’s speech, the hangar door behind her slowly opened. Blue stage lights cast a powerful aura over a hulking monolith draped in a white cloth. Cinematic orchestra music blared and the lights pulsed with the music. The chat screamed “TRUMP 2024”, “METAL GEAR”, and “MOMMY” still, if you can believe it. The music reached its explosive crescendo, and the curtains dropped: the B21 stealth bomber was introduced to the world in all its glory.

Admiral Christopher W. Grady called it an “Airborne Extended Deterrent”. In his speech after the reveal, Grady waffled a bit about national security, and about how this plane REALLY matters and was, like, TOTALLY worth the tax dollars, guys. “This isn’t just another airplane. It’s not just another acquisition. It’s a symbol and a source of the fighting spirit that President Reagan spoke of” he said.

Livestreams and marketing of this nature aren’t uncommon in today’s late capitalist dystopia. Gun manufacturer Heckler and Koch shows off flashy trailers of their submachine guns, edited with a slow-mo Booj and the musical timing of a Battlefield trailer. At the time of writing, there’s even an extremely late sale on their website for “MARCH MAG-NESS”, with a toggle at the top for civilian and law enforcement of course.

When looking at these pieces as part of my research for this post, I’m left with a sinking feeling that’s hard to describe. I feel swallowed by a culture and a system so determined to casualize warfare, to justify violence against a perceived, sometimes invisible threat. As the planet warms, the rich elude responsibility, and I whittle away my days at an office job, precisely one thought bounces around in my brain: “I can't wait to go home and play videogames”.

This exact feeling is captured in amber by Inio Asano’s latest finished work, Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction! (henceforth referred to as Dead Dead Demon’s). Set 3 years after a UFO appeared above Tokyo, Dead Dead Demon’s follows two high school grads just living their life while the literal and figurative “end of the world” looms overhead. What starts off as an unassuming pre-apocalyptic slice-of-life unravels into a deeply fascinating vivisection of our current geopolitical climate and how its effects trickle down to the youngest generations like countless streams of Ronald Reagan’s piss.

It’s impossible not to see the political implications of Dead Dead Demon’s. After the giant UFO suddenly appeared above Tokyo, The Japanese military panicked. They shot down the countless smaller UFO’s that poured out of the main craft, raining debris down on Tokyo’s denizens. Thousands were killed, including Kadode Koyama’s father. Kadode’s mother, left traumatized and paranoid after this tragedy, becomes the manga’s version of a conspiracy truther. 3 years after 8/31, Kadode’s mother leaves Tokyo and her daughter behind to live in a commune with her new boyfriend.

In the midst of her high school graduation and early college career, Kadode is left alone. Or, she would be, if not for Ouran Nakagawa, her childhood best friend. Ouran is Kadode’s rock-solid foundation. As the manga comes back to time and time again, they are absolute; an unwavering, unconditional love connects the two in a way that’s rarely portrayed in manga. A running theme throughout the manga is that the people you love can pull you through anything, not through fixing your problems, but simply by being by your side. Or at least, it would be. More on that later.

The duality of Kadode and Ouran is explored throughout the manga in such a way that it builds the two protagonists to be distinct but codependent. Kadode, a victim of bullying in elementary school, developed a discomfort with how easily society labels its ingroups and outgroups. Her only respite from relentless bullying was Isobeyan, an ongoing gag manga that her father worked on.

The titular Isobeyan and his incredible technological gadgets allow a neurotic teenage girl named Debeko to find wacky solutions to her problems. Debeko, unable to escape her own cycles of narcissism and self-loathing, constantly relies on Isobeyan’s gadgets to get her way. Kadode sees her own destructive tendencies in Debeko, and fantasizes about using Isobeyan’s gadgets to fix her own life; it’s a potent fantasy to give someone who is marginalized. Full-color snippets of the fictional manga bookend each volume of Dead Dead Demon’s, serving as a clear visual and structural metaphor for the invaders and how their advanced technology would seem to be able to fix anything.

While Kadode Koyama is cynical but reserved, Ouran Nakagawa is a firehose of sparkly anticapitalist rage. She’s brash and completely unfiltered, swinging from scathing cynicism about the future of Japan to raucous joy about the latest patch for her favorite FPS within literal seconds. Ouran is the candle that burns twice as bright and twice as long, loudly proclaiming herself to exist in equal parts joyous laugh and viscous battle cry.

However, that’s not the whole story. Beneath the mask is a deeply empathetic high school girl who really just loves the people she surrounds herself with. She may tease her friends after a bad date, but she’s there to hug them while they cry. Although she talks a lot of shit, she clings to her friends like they are the most important people in the universe to her. Ouran embodies both the hopeless circle-jerk of being at the bottom rung of late-stage capitalism and the boundless love that powers us through the worst of times within that system. And yet, further beneath that, something stirs within her. More on that later.

The alien invasion is a clear allegory for (INSERT HOT-BUTTON GEOPOLITICAL TOPIC HERE). It’s equal parts climate change, refugee crisis, and 9/11. The so-called invaders don’t exactly live up to their name, being about the height of a grade-schooler and waddling around with cute old-fashioned submarine helmets on. They are about as unassuming as an extraterrestrial threat could possibly be, and we even get some chapters with the invaders from their perspective as they try to survive in Tokyo’s quarantine zones. To them, Earth is a hellscape they did not intend to die on. And oh my god, do they die.

This is the part of Dead Dead Demon’s that pulls on some horrible discomfort deep within me. The genocide of the invaders is sponsored by tech industry giants like Samsung and Google, literally mowing down crowds of child-sized invaders with machine guns, while Kadode and Koyama go about their daily lives just a few blocks away. The dissonance between high school antics and the screams of what look like dying children hits close to home. It’s impossible not to see the parallels between how we, as consumers in a post-industrial society, often live willfully ignorant to the cruelties our lifestyles enable.

I’ve grappled with the question, “what is Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction about?” ever since I first sat down and read it. After a third re-read, I’m not sure that I could boil it down to one specific, sexy thematic clause, and that seems intentional. Inio Asano, the manga’s author, is notorious for creating stories that revel in complexity. Dead Dead Demon’s welcomes, interrogates, and explores a whole host of questions about life in the modern era. And then… the big reveal happens at the midway point; the truth of what this story was really, always about.

Spoilers from here on out, folks. The manga takes a pretty significant turn, one that I actually really like, but it will give you whiplash if you aren’t ready for it.

Okay. So. Time Travel.

The Ouran we’ve seen throughout the first half of the story is without a doubt eccentric. The glimpses of her that we see in flashbacks, however, look like a totally different person. As a child, Ouran is shy and quiet and rolls with the punches. She even stands idly by as Kadode is bullied by her awful classmates. For lack of a better term, she’s perfectly normal. Somewhere along the way, something seriously changed for her.

When Ouran and Kadode were young, they barely spoke. The story goes that they grew close over a summer cram school stuck together, but the secret that brought them together builds out the world and history of Dead Dead Demon’s in a pretty surprising way: Kadode and Ouran found an invader 8 years before the invasion of Tokyo.

Kadode and Ouran go full ET mode and keep the invader disguised in Ouran’s bedroom. After some debate on what to do, the invader finally speaks up for themselves using a small alien device as a translation tool. The invader’s purpose for coming to earth is clear; they are a scout sent by “the home country” to see if Earth is a good place to finally come and colonize.

The interaction here between the scout and these two schoolchildren is fascinating. The scout speaks in vague terms, but they make it clear that humanity exists on earth to create a breathable atmosphere for the invaders, much like how trees create a breathable atmosphere for us. Invaders are beings that aren’t so strongly tethered to a body or physical form; compared to humans, the invaders are actually much more spiritual and transitory. Their child-like bodies only exist as a vessel through which they interact with the world around them.

Kadode and Ouran are bestowed with an impossible burden. They believe that they must prove themselves, and by extension humanity, as welcoming and friendly to this alien civilization. The scout is content to watch this with scientific, unobtrusive collectedness. If they can get a clear read on humanity and its potential threat to the home country anyways, the scout might as well entertain these two girls’ efforts.

Through actively volunteering to do good, the girls feel like they are painting a good picture of humanity for the invader to see. However, it soon becomes clear that the system they are a part of is too big for two small girls to change. Kadode and Ouran can’t do anything about the scandalized politicians, con artists, and criminals. Kadode, fully grasping the situation and its implications, decides that she can do more. No, she needs to do more.

Kadode manages to steal a few powerful tools from the Invader. A small device that sends a devastating force out from its tip, enough to send a car tumbling sideways. An invisible cloak that perfectly obscures its wearer. A device worn on the head that allows one to fly. When these technological marvels are put together, Kadode goes from being an unassuming grade schooler to something else entirely: a vigilante dead-set on purging the horrible people from this world.

Before long, news started to break of a train wreck, and of a politician turning up dead after a hospital stay for a minor medical issue ended with a bullet-shaped wound. Ouran’s favorite pop band member quit, and suddenly the concert was canceled thanks to a technical accident. Over the course of a few days, Kadode has been tracking down horrible people, nearly killing them, and asking them one simple question, “Tell me the worst person you know.”

Ouran finds out that Kadode has been doing this vigilante work, and for the first and only time in the manga, they fight. Kadode, grappling with the sheer weight of trying to fix our world, is left cold, distant, and apathetic. Ouran finds this new side of Kadode to be frightening and alien, like she doesn’t even know who she is talking to. After an argument and a brief physical confrontation, Ouran is left alone for the first time. She is devastated.

Kadode doesn’t show up to class for a few weeks. Then she moves away. In one last ditch effort, Ouran goes to Kadode’s new home and asks to speak with her. Kadode is disheveled, but seems somewhat happy to see Ouran. Therapy has convinced her that Kadode hallucinated or dreamed up her vigilante spree, but talking to Ouran reminds her all too well that what she did was real. The people she killed, the burden of proving humanity to be good, and the destruction of her relationship with her best friend, all push her beyond her limits. She can’t do this anymore.

In the middle of their brief conversation, Kadode jumps from the fourth story of her apartment building.

This series of events, observed by the invader, force them to come to one conclusion: Earth cannot be trusted and should not be visited by the Home Country. Hopeless and devastated, Ouran asks the invader if there’s anything they can do to bring Kadode back. While the invader can’t bring back Kadode, he can do something else: transplant Ouran’s consciousness to a different timeline. This would come with all sorts of risks, such as mental deterioration, but it would allow Ouran to relive her summer school cram days to do things right. Ouran could direct the timeline so that the two never encounter the invader all those years ago. Ouran ultimately accepts the invader’s offer.

I’m kind of obsessed with this decision because it underscores the tragedy and beauty of Ouran as a character. The crazy, chaotic Ouran we’ve been with for the entire story is actually a time traveler from another timeline. Since she never met with the invader, the Home Country was not notified that Earth was dangerous, and thus they appeared above Tokyo, killing Kadode’s father among thousands of other people as collateral damage. When given the choice between inadvertently destroying humanity and losing the one person that gives her life meaning, Ouran chose for herself. I really can’t blame her for that. What good is humanity anyway?

There’s more to this story, entire twists and plotlines I’ve glossed over and cut out of this post, but this moment speaks to the core of what this manga is about. Dead Dead Demon’s is about aliens, time travel, and corporate espionage, but it’s also about the people that need to live beneath those exact colossal forces battling overhead. When the system is this fundamentally broken, filled with flashy ads for the newest line of submachine guns, giant alien-destroying mechs sponsored by pop stars, and live streams where the CEO of a death machine company is called Mommy, it’s impossible not to feel weighed down by it all. The sheer scope of capitalism has never been more visible and more damaging to its denizens.

I often feel like my life is a rollercoaster. Right now, I feel like I’m at the part of the rollercoaster after the big buildup, where an amazing view beckons to me. I’m at the top, but I can feel gravity subtly pulling me down. In our current moment, the system is buckling under the weight of problems created generations prior. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and basic hopes like owning a house or even a new car are well out of reach for many, many people. Without sweeping change, we’re fucked.

I can’t wait to go home and play videogames.

#manga #essay writing #dead dead demon's dededededestruction #inio asano #essay

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