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gayhenrycreel · 4 months

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i think people need to stop being so angry about people having genital preferences. its not transphobic to not want to eat cunt.

im a trans man and im only attracted to men with a dick and a flat chest (this includes trans men). i cant help it. its just how i am. its not because i don't see trans men as men or something, im just not into pussy.

stop shaming people for not being into girldick or boypussy.

ive also noticed that a lot of these people shaming others about this are also very... weird about bottom surgery. bottom surgery is just as life saving as top surgery. if you actually look on transbucket you can see that it does look real and its very rare that someone completely loses sensation after bottom surgery.

im not as familiar with vaginoplasty, but it seems that people who fear phalloplasty think that scars are hideous and that the first stage is the only stage. thats not true. scars are just a part of someones body, and phalloplasty has secondary stages, after which the neo penis looks just any other dick. stop looking at photos a few weeks after surgery, look for photos a few years post op. it takes time to heal.

people who fear metoidioplasty just think micropenises are gross. thats it. they also think bottom growth is disgusting.

weirdly, all of these people are trans. i have not seen a single cis person on this site go into trans tags and claim bottom surgery is mutilation. ive seen many trans men do it. (the terfs seem to stick to their own tags).

honestly with all the terfs around here its really fuckin weird.

they also seem to believe that there are 4 genders: men, trans men, women, and trans women. thats clearly not right.

they stereotype trans men (they call them boys regardless of age) as being white, submissive, and never wanting to transition. its very rare i see art of trans men who are not white femboys.

they do the same to trans women- sorry, "trans girlies".

interestingly, they always draw feminine women and men, but never masculine anyone. art of masculine people is always drawn by those who are in the process of transition or butch lesbians.

its the terf kool aid. they think masculinity will make them like their oppressors, so they cant imagine that anyone would ever want to be masculine in any way.

they really seem to think bears are gross too. smells like fatphobia.

theyre also weird about trans people who are... not young twinks? why do they keep drawing us in maid outfits? consistently?

and then theres the fanfics. a while ago i made a post about cis people doing this, but since then ive realized trans people do it too. a lot. i am yet to find a fanfic featuring a trans man who is not a submissive bottom. always with tits. always scrawny. always ALWAYS into having his cervix destroyed.

some trans men are like that and they deserve representation, but its the only representation i see.

also, when you look at these peoples bios, you see that they are either cis women in their 20s, or teenage trans guys.

i think they are so out of touch with real world queerness that they have come to believe the stereotypes chasers have made for us.

and thats why trans tags read like fetish tags.

also, transhet people get thrown under the bus. completely erased. i have never seen a fic depicting a straight trans man- sorry, "pussyboy". sometimes i see one saying noooo, hes bisexual. and then he gets railed by a cis man youd see in hollywood.

and why is every fic about trans people porn? do we exist outside of porn or are we just mpreg fetish fuel? yeah, a lot of its mpreg. and they react to REAL LIFE MEN getting pregnant as some kind of joke. they make suggestive comments, theyre just all sorts of weird and invasive. its gross. those are real people.

it fucking hurts to see other trans people talk about bodies like mine as if we're not real actual humans, just sexual fantasies.

i cant go into ftm tags because theres porn everywhere. and its not bots. its young trans men who think trans men are only defined by pussy.

thats not how it works. we're defined by being men. not all trans men have tits and vaginas. surgery exists. this place is crazy.

on youtube men declare that women and faggots are destroying western civilization for wanting basic autonomy.

on tumblr, everyone, except a select few who stop to think, declare that masculinity is inherently restrictive and oppressive and that testosterone is poison. which republicans on youtube also claim. the difference is that tumblrinas think cis men are included in being poisoned by testosterone.

go back to terf island and grovel at the feet of jkr like you have wet dreams about.

just because youre trans doesnt mean you cant be transphobic.

have you heard of tirfs? trans-inclusive radfems. they believe that trans women are women and must be saved from the evil men, and that trans men are men and so are rapists. terfs love them.

you need to understand that transphobia is not the defining trait of terfs. the defining trait of terfism is the belief that men are disgusting, violent, sex driven, out of control, abusive, and rapists in waiting. ive seen them say that male fetuses should be aborted by law. thats eugenics. ya know, like fascism.

because thats what it is. by my definition, fascism is the belief that certain humans are not worthy of life. terfs think men are not worthy of life, and drag trans people into it.

before you decide that trans men, or whatever fetishy term you call us, are all twinks, think. like, at all. is there a reason you think this way? do you have room in your worldview for hairy trans men? hairy feminine trans men? trans bears? trans men of colour? masculine trans men with long hair?

trans men who have surgery and T shots?

or does that seem too much like... i dunno... body horror to you?

thats how these people react to sex changes. they make comments on photos of phalloplasty scars and say it looks like a horrible burn scar. it looks painful they say. "how do you go out in public?", "why would you put yourself through that?".

if someone had a kidney transplant would you say such things about those scars?

both are life saving surgeries. treat them as such.

stop writing the same smut over and over about a woman who can only have vaginal sex and never be anything other than submissive and breedable and slap the word "cuntboy" on it. has it occurred to you that some trans men would like to read about guys like them? not a bunch of white twink clones? fucking hell, it hard to find twink clone smut where the twink even has a flat chest!

it actually makes a lot of trans guys really dysphoric to have so much attention put on the parts we're born with. not all trans guys, but a lot. honestly the lack of representation makes me feel like i have to use parts of me that i cant even look at. ive seen a lot of other guys express this feeling too.

are we not sexy if we don't have sex a certain way? not getting representation hurts. it feels very isolating. the only kind of people like me who get called sexy are called sexy for things i can not do. (seriously i am physically not able to get anything in my front hole without extreme pain. how do you think trans guys like me who are physically incapable of vaginal sex feel about boypussy fetishism?)

anal sex is a thing. do you think its too gross for your twink clone to try? almost like... its unnatural...?... its dirty...?... its... sinful?

good fuckin job, buckaroo, ya reinvented classic homophobia.

there is no form of consensual sex that is sinful. you're just anti kink! if ya think anal sex is gross wait till ya hear about fisting.

youre all "i wanna turn that femboys prostate into jelly" until you realize it in his ass. so you give that femboy a g-spot instead. it doesn't take much to realize that all holes have something gross that comes outta them, not just ya asshole. i mean, blood and earwax is pretty unpleasant too. youre fine with kissing and vomits definitely gross! (your nose is also connected to the back of your throat so if you french someone youre gonna get nasal cavity mucus on your tongue)

if you think anal sex is gross youre just an 80s homophobe.

think of of it this way: i dont wanna stick my dick in a hole that ejects a buncha blood every month anymore than you want to acknowledge that some people prefer to shove something up their asshole. both are equally gross, and neither of them are actually gross at all unless youve been told its gross your whole life.

stop deciding that (however unconsciously) trans men can only be skinny white young twinks. i have actually yet to met a trans man above the age of 20 who is skinny. the trans guys ive met irl are fat and hairy. its quite obvious that the twink thing is just a stereotype.

seriously, yous are missing out on writing smut about fat hairy men, but youre too scared of being *gasp* not perfect under white cishetpatriarchy, ergo it is incomprehensible that someone would be attracted to that let alone want to be like that.

ever since i watched Jumanji: welcome to the jungle, i have wanted to be a fat middle-aged man. i was genuinely confused that that barbie didn't like it. cant remember her name.

yous are the same people who wanna "fuck that old man" arent ya? the people who are usually grossed out when you see an old man above the age of 30? it seems like the same sorta mentality.

if a cis guy got hairy would you call him disgusting and unattractive? not that ive seen. its reserved for trans guys on T.

tldr; theres nothing wrong with having a preference for certain genitals, those people who say its wrong just think its transphobic because they think not being attracted to someone means you hate them. they just don't realize that some people get bottom surgery and that its not a bad thing. theyve been drinking the terf koolaid

#transphobia #trans #queer #queer liberation #transgender #transexual #transmisogny #transandrophobia #trans men #transmasc #transmasculinity #ftm #mtf #bottom surgery #phalloplasty #metoidioplasty

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baptaincarnacles · 2 years

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Octonauts Headcanons (Kwazzi)

Humanized AU!

Cw: Uncensored swearing, mention of injury

Lieutenant Kwazzi

Demi-boy (He/they), Trans (ftm)

Panromantic/demisexual/polyamorus

ADHD and Dyslexia

Looks up to Captain Barnacles more than he does most other people (aside from his grandfather, Calico Jack).

Didn't know their parents too well, but went on regardless.

A pick-pocket when he was younger, often stealing loose change and other things from strangers to bring back to his grandfather (when they were landing for resources).

Always suspected there was more reason behind their granddad's sudden disappearance (once they had convinced themselves they were the cause, later believed that perhaps the pirate, White Beard, had something to do with it).

Spyglass is one of their comfort items.

He never watched cartoons as a child, but spends his time watching them whenever he can now (especially on days where he is not needed on missions)

Binged the Barbie movies (with Peso).

Sees Tweak as a sister figure, and will go to her if they need a quick pat on the back.

Playful insults are his love language but he also enjoys hand holding.

They probably make bracelets for the crew (pride flag colors, or their favorite colors), and they always seem to wear them (Barnacles especially).

Knows the most about Barnacles (out of the main crew) and the depths of his fears and some traumas.

Autophobia (fear of being alone) bothers them quite a bit, as well as heavy arachnophobia (to the point they will hyperventilate at the sight of a spider).

Uses all the hot water when he showers/baths (and gets lectured by a 'car' oil-covered Tweak after he finally gets out of the bathroom).

Has most definitely dressed up to play role in one of Barnacles' reenactments of a play- no matter what he had to wear because "fuck gender norms."

Instead of calling it the f-word, he simply goes, "*insert name* just said the fuck-word."

Probably swears the most out of the crew, Tweak as a close second.

They have only heard the captain swear once and it was when the other had been pinned dangerously close to the edge of a cliff.

Bandages solely for aesthetic- and some minor cuts along his hands from reckless behavior (especially crashing the Gups).

Barnacles hesitates to let them drive any Gup other than the Gup B.

No schedule for anything.

Mx. "I'll sleep when my body decides I need it!"

He's really the kind of person to take April 1st to a whole other level. Faking injury every other hour (with fake blood and everything), though will stop the moment Peso freaks out too much. Though his favorite thing to do is casually prank Barnacles with Whoopee Cushions in random seats, and perhaps pour a bucket of water on the man's head.

Naturally ginger, though people assume that it's dyed or that they wear a wig- and they often complain about it (Peso will laugh at them, but they don't care).

Despite what everyone has speculated about the eye patch, it's worn solely for the preparation of going into a darker room, so he is able to adjust more quickly- he hadn't been injured and required it.

Favorite texture is often the feeling of yarn, so they keep balls of yarn in their room and will often toss it back and forth between their hands.

Life of the party. If he's not there, the party is not there.

Mirrors people often, especially those he looks up to (this includes picking up their habits and wanting to do what they do).

Attention span? Yeah, no, he's already gone.

Once again, this is fairly long so...small break!

Back to the regularly scheduled program!

Owns various pride items to put into their room (including a pan flag directly below their Jolly Roger) and onto their clothes. A lot of the items they gather they view as precious/collectibles.

Loves fidget spinners and fidget cubes, often carrying them in his pockets. If he loses one? Barnacles gets him another. When and where? He has no idea but appreciates it.

If he finds anything left behind by Calico Jack, he holds it close, and he looks everywhere around as if expecting Calico to step around the corner and laugh. When he doesn't see Calico, he is just saddened.

They have definitely cried into Barnacles' shoulder for hours after nightfall, seeking comfort in the older man.

Probably tested prototypes for Tweak, no matter how dangerous that they seemed (and has injured himself after not listening to Tweak).

He had a competitive rivalry with Paani after they first met, but slowly grew to be the man's friend, and later found himself falling in love (and made it so obvious it hurt).

Adrenaline junkie. If there's danger? Hell yeah!

Forgets where everything is, even if it's in their hands.

They know Morse Code for the hell of it (and they secretly communicate with Shellington through it).

Learned a couple of languages during his days as a pirate, mainly Spanish and French where they had encountered those the most.

Swears in French because Paani thinks it's funny.

Their favorite cartoons are Looney Toons and Animaniacs (but they do find amusement in shows like Spongebob, Barbie Movies, etc...). Their favorite show had been Our Flag Means Death, and as you can imagine, the entire crew had to listen to them rant about how accurate they thought it was.

Avid Reddit user and takes it fairly seriously, meanwhile his Instagram/Twitter is complete rubbish he thought of while half asleep.

He used to play drums for the fun of it, and he often still does in spare time (often attempting to teach others to play). As well as playing a bass guitar (very well), and he played a Recorder.

Hides the fact they are a published author from the rest of the crew, the only member that knows is Professor Inkling, and Inkling will often tease being their number one fan.

Flustered incredibly easily.

Frequent vocal stims ("Yeow!", hissing, and various other noises that are connected to cat-like behavior. Dashi gave them the nickname, "Kwazii-Cat" because of this).

While Barnacles is most clearly the strongest, Kwazzi is the swiftest (earning him the nickname 'Achilles' from the Captain).

They always gets emotional listening to the Captain and Inkling talk about Greek myths, especially when they understand them more than most other things (definitely read "The Song of Achilles").

Has accidentally referred to Paani as their "Patroclus" at least a few times and immediately apologized.

Sings Sea Shanties with the Captain (and sometimes gets Paani and Peso to join in as well).

Probably encountered Barnacles when they were both pirates (or on the open sea).

And... A (small) photo dump!

#octonauts #kwazii #captain barnacles #tweak bunny #professor inkling #octonauts headcanons #octonauts paani

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vtori73 · 10 months

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It always so... ugh I don't know just ugh.

Just, the LGBTQIA community REALLY needs to work on not being Biphobic for like... 5 seconds at the very least. Just... it's soooo normalized, even bi people who have internalized biphobia partake because they like licking boots of biphobics, I guess.

It's just interesting too to realize how MANY of these assholes don't actually know any actual bi people or our actual struggles and just make shit up to be mad at bi people for. Like, for example these non-bi people were going on & on about how this bi person explaining their experiences sounded like x biracial person/that bi people "stole" biracial peoples fav talking point (specifically white biracial people), etc and just... 1st of all... y'all REALLY don't know anything about Bi-ness, bi people etc because THIS ISNT A NEW TALKING POINT, we've have BEEN talking about this sort of phenomena (we don't feel like we belong in either straight or gay communities) for a VERY VERY LONG TIME. It's not our fault you don't bother having bi people around in your life &/or just educating yourself on our history, texts, & issues. 2nd you can't compare these two things many people known this and some people have learned this more recently but regardless why is it in this instance okay to bring up? Once a bi person annoys you it's okay to make comparisons that don't make sense/problematic?

Not to mention how insidious it is to do so because this makes us seem like we have privilege in anyway that has to do with our sexuality and regardless of your personal opinions on the matter WE don't. "Well what about straight bi's/bi people dating cisheteroallo people?" Well, for one thing while I will admit there probably are a FEW Bi people who get benefits from this sort of relationship it's not JUST because of the relationship but also other factors of how they go about things (& no this is not in regards to closeted bi people) this also isn't exactly a unique phenomena with bi people either (such as cis gays/lesbians who are/were trying to assimilate with allocishetero society) HOWEVER for many Bi people being with a partner that's allocishetero isn't really all that privileged when you realize specifically Bi woman (idk the stats for gay/bi men) are more likely to suffer from IPV compared to either straight or gay woman. And, well, you know how Gays/Lesbians tend to have high rates of x compared to straight people like health issues, for example? Yeah well, the rates for us tend to be even higher compared to either straight or gay people and that's just focusing on cis individuals imagine how worse it gets for trans bi people.

So, yeah, regardless of who we are in a relationship with that doesn't really change the fact that we still struggle with higher rates or health issues, homelessness, sexual assault, substance abuse problems, domestic abuse, and whatever else AND despite us being the biggest community get hardly any funding or resources compared to the LG communities. Sure, MAYBE we don't deal with as much harassment if we are out in public with our seemingly cishetero partner but again this is a much more complicated and nuanced discussion then people are willing to acknowledge considering that the abuse and problems we face tends to get erased and labeled as just homophobia or something. I actually tried to do some quick research too & didn't find much but one article from the UK talking about hate crimes and how the stats weren't all that much diff from each sexuality with 77% gay men & woman participants experiencing a hate crime & 75% bisexual people but this stat actually goes UP when you account for gender (79% for bi woman participants). It also mentions how Bi & Trans people are less likely to report incidents to the police so I can only imagine these numbers are even higher (btw it's 79% for trans participants).

One thing that would REALLY help is if LG people would just... ACKNOWLEDGE this shit, just acknowledge we actually do have struggles and are oppressed just like any other queer identity and us having to deal with our own community not helping & even just flat out hurting us only makes our problems worse. That isn't me calling y'all oppressors though because y'all aren't, BUT I will call y'all oppressor wannabes because why else would you treat us like shit for just existing?

*not entirely sure where to put this above so sticking it down here but yeah the big difference between white biracial people and bisexuality is that bisexuals don't have privilege just for being Bi. White biracial people have privilege due to proximity to whiteness & (usually) colorism something that is visible from the outside. Bisexuality, however, is not some offshoot of straightness and is not actually connected to being straight in anyway (and also sexuality is not really visible just by looking at someone) and even if it WAS we aren't afford any "privilege" because in our allocishetero society any sort of queer attraction is a deviation from what it considers the norm, if you DONT just like the "opposite sex" your not seen as normal. Straight people don't see us as straight (sometimes certain dynamics do cause this like bi woman not being taken seriously & are just "doing it for attention" but that's specifically a mix of misogyny & biphobia NOT straight privilege) and while most of us bisexuals don't give a shit what they think the problem though is that gay people see US as straight people! Because regardless of our queer attractions so long as we don't conform to what they have made being homosexuality all about we don't get to be included. We have to play along with them and join in on the Biphobic jokes and give in to their binaries in order to be included and if not we get cast aside as troublesome. Some of them think we choose or can choose to be in a "straight relationship" when we are done being homosexual but it's so funny in a sad way they end up repeating what conservatives & bigots have said to them, that their sexuality is a choice. No, the Bi person you got dumped for isnt going into a "straight passing relationship" because they were straight to begin with they just happened to start dating someone who was cis & straight & allo afterwords (which isn't farfetched considering you known... the population of cis straight allo people is kind of high). Not to mention this topic gets really tricky/messy when you realize a lot of LG people label anyone who looks straight on the outside as a bi x straight person couple/straight relationship when in reality it could easily be any number of combinations of queer individuals together especially when you take trans people into account and how this sort of rhetoric negatively effects them as well.

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rantrambles · 3 years

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Ever get so upset you make a Tumblr account to vent?

I haven’t even listened to The Penumbra Podcast yet but it’s on my list because it’s insanely popular and the cosplays I’ve seen are hot as hell (A+ to all the cosplayers I’ve seen you’ve done great work). Now, with the recent news surrounding the podcast, I’ll wait till it’s done if I ever do get into it. I’m Asian and part of the LGBT community but I’m not nonbinary so I can’t say much about the trans represention in the art but I wanted to add my two cents on the matter as a person of color and someone examining the situation from the outside. Also, before I get deeply into it, I’m not the only person of color with opinions on this matter so if people have their own frustrations and criticism with the racism in The Penumbra Podcast and/or the new artist they hired, definitely listen to them too. These are my own personal opinions, and I’m sure other people will disagree and that’s fine. We’re all going to have different views on this so bear that in mind. Also, feel free to correct me or add anything if I’ve missed some information. Here’s a great breakdown of the whole situation for those that don’t know what happened. Finally, I was very hesitant to post this, but I felt it was important because I make a statement at the end on how race should be presented in a podcast format so if you are interested in making a podcast and want to have a diverse range of characters, please skip to the end to read those thoughts.

I’ll start off by saying, I’m not even that upset with the new artist that The Penumbra Podcast hired. I know that statement alone is controversial but I don't personally know them, and I’m not going to judge who they are as a person by a few pieces of art they’ve made. They are the least of the problems that I have here. Since the announcement and the backlash, I’ve been scrolling through the artist’s Instagram account and I can tell why people find the designs offensive, but I’m also comparing the designs to the artist’s other work, and I honestly believe that’s just their style. They’ve exaggerated the features of just about every character they’ve made, regardless of race or gender. From what I’ve seen the sharp angles and overly round curves in the anatomy that make some of the character’s features more jarring are how they prefer to draw. I’m sure they’re capable of drawing more realistic proportions but for the most part they’re art aims to call attention, be bold, and create distinguished features. Not inherently a bad thing on its own.

And yeah I’d understand the issue if this were a scenario where the artist heard how these characters acted in the podcast and thought “hey, obviously this character is a black woman because they are super strong and therefore must have big muscles, no other woman could look like that” or “hey, this character has to be Asian because they act super seductive sometimes better draw them as such.” But from my understanding the race was already decided by previous official artists and a general description of the characters were already generated by the audience, similar to how The Magnus Archives leaned towards drawing scrawny Jon with black, greying hair and dark skin. The new artists couldn’t really change those features even if those features aren’t described in canon because a depiction that strayed too far from popular fandom interpretation would make the character’s unrecognizable to the fanbase.

I think the reason this became such a big issue for most people is because the new Penumbra artist used their exaggerated art style when making these characters and people of color and nonbinary folks already see themselves drawn as these exaggerated caricatures all the time (with those images being used to further discriminate against them). I’m sure the artist didn’t mean for their art to be offensive, but that of course doesn’t change how it was received.

According to some, the poses and expressions the artists chose did not fully represent the characters entirely and only served to further perpetuate harmful stereotypes, and I’ll have to take their word for it because I still haven’t listened to the podcast so I have no idea how the characters act. But again much of the criticism is based on the one line-up and doing a deeper dive into the artist’s work I managed to find artwork that was much less offensive. Here some art where Vespa is depicted in a non-violent pose and one where Vespa is in a threatening pose but not an overly violent one. Here is Peter drawn in a non-seductive pose. Hopefully, the artist truly does keep the criticisms in mind as they work on the new official art. I’m just not the type of person that wants to get the pitchforks out and cause this particular person to lose a job they seemed really excited about over their old character line-up, especially when that person is also part of a marginalized group.

Again, that’s just my opinion on that particular artist. Those who are offended by their art are still valid in how they feel, and the artist should absolutely take their criticism to heart to better how they represent the characters.

What I’m more upset about is that I think The Penumbra Podcast should never have released official art for their characters in the first place and that’s their mistake that they refuse to own up about. They have made it clear that the story was never meant to portray characters of colors, a fact emphasized by the fact they hired mostly white actors from the start. They only started releasing art of the characters to get a profit. And the thing is they know what they did was wrong. All I had to do was search Penumbra Podcast racism and there is a note on their website saying that they archived some old official art.

“We have discontinued all Penumbra merchandise that uses the original character designs, and in the meantime, any profits on the sales of that merchandise will go to the For The Gworls project. We also realize that the depiction of these characters as POC, while not appropriate for us to use in our marketing and merchandise, has nonetheless become personally meaningful to many POC listeners. For that reason, and because we do not wish to distance ourselves from our mistake, we are keeping these images on our website for archival purposes. Though we do want to make it clear that many of the main/featured voice actors are white and that we did not write the characters to represent any specific POC experience, you are, as always, free to imagine these characters in any way that you like.”

I went to their shop and they still sell posters and pins with the character’s faces on them, but they are donating it to a good cause so hopefully that stays the same. However, I still find it a little uncomfortable that they are still selling character merch and have plans to continue selling character merch. They have no right to dissuade the fans that already found representation in the characters, but they also have no right to profit off the representation that was built, regardless if they made the story.

Let’s compare this to another piece of popular media. I love Avatar the Last Airbender and, I liked the ATLA voice actors just fine but there should have been more people of color doing voice acting behind the screen too. The voice actors for that show were mainly white too, however, the creators knew that they would be making poc characters. That’s what makes the difference. Did they still choose to go with mostly white voice actors? Yes. Could they have done better and pay more people of color? Also yes. But I’m not as furious at them because they did their research on the cultures they were basing the ATLA world off of and intentionally gave us a show where Asians could see characters that looked like them represented on the screen. The Penumbra Podcast did not do any of that. Again, they openly admitted that it was never their intention to make the character’s people of color when they made the podcast so that goes to show no research was made to properly represent specific cultures. The color of the character’s skin in their official designs therefore became more of aesthetic choice rather than representation, and it wasn’t even their aesthetic choice to begin with!

Race isn’t a color you can just throw onto the character because you feel like it. So I want this to be a lesson to anyone that wants to make a podcast: if you want to include poc characters please do some research into the cultures you plan to represent the way you would with any other form of media. Just because the audience can’t see the characters and just because it’s harder to smoothly introduce the character’s appearance doesn’t mean you’re allowed to be lazy on how you present the characters. Do research before you start writing the first episode and take the time to hire poc actors. Hiring poc actors is actually the least that can be done to show representation. Also, since the audience cannot visually see the race of the characters on a podcast and it can’t typically be described the way you would in a book, you’ll have to be creative. It’s not my job to say how, but my suggestions would be, before the fans come up with their own image of the character, you need to establish race in the first few episodes or release character profiles on a website so that the fans know you canonically intended the characters to be of a certain race even if you aren’t able to mention it in the actual podcast. If you are unwilling to do any of these then the best route is to avoid stating race at all and allow the audience to build their own representation into your form of media. However, once this happens, you are not allowed to profit off popular fan interpretations. You lose all rights to create official art or images of the characters. You cannot use “we have a diverse cast of characters” when you market your story. It doesn’t matter whether you created the content or not, you did not create the representation for those minority groups.

It’s one thing for fans to build their own inclusivity into a form of art like a podcast, but it’s another thing for the creators who never worked to make the representation happen to take advantage of the representation that the listeners built for themselves. Thank you for attending my TedTalk.

#the penumbra podcast #podcast #race #the magnus archives #diversity in podcasts #diversity #tpp #tpp fanart

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vergess · 3 years

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@autismserenity said: Your tags are the most American thing I’ve ever read, we are truly so screwed here

May I interest you in a more complete, and more excruciating, explanation of what I spent the last 18 months doing?

It is, I need to emphasize, fucking nasty. Don’t feel obligated, especiallly if you’ve already had A Day(tm).

There’s a lot of disease, a lot of worker abuse including sexual and racial abuse, a fine portion of letting people die for not being white enough for real medical care, all leading to homelessness.

For NDA reasons, because my former employer was just as vile as any tech company has ever been, I cannot be super specific about who I worked for. However, I can say that we handled the records and patient contact for all COVID testing for several states, as well as 2 of the 5 largest metros in the US, and several dozen smaller ones ranging from the approximate population of San Francisco, down to little towns, as well as the testing for several public school systems and at least two government agencies that I am not at liberty to disclose.

I tell you this for a sense of scale. When I say shit like, “my boss was more than happy to let thousands or hundreds of thousands die” I am not exagerrating for effect. We handled hundreds of thousands of tests a week.

Again, I need to emphasize, government agencies. Ones you would know if I named them. Ones everyone in the country knows.

And we were in charge of getting their test results from the already over swamped labs back to the patients, who often were not allowed to quarantine while awaiting results.

The fastest we got our turnaround time to on any consistent basis was about 30 hours. Often it ballooned well into weeks.

There were a number of factors for this, but the big one was always understaffing.

The staff we did have were treated like trash. One of the big selling points of this company is how “trans friendly” it is to work there. That is a lie. Every trans employee on payroll had their dead name displayed to all other staff, and until I personally changed the system setup on my arrival, patient facing trans people’s dead names were displayed to patients.

Remember that thing about “hundreds of thousands of tests a week”?

I was able to change the way patient-facing names were displayed. I was not allowed or able to alter the way internal systems displayed trans people’s names. But I was assured that it’s fine, because once you get a legal name change, you’ll be given new system accounts with your new name!

Your old accounts with your dead name would still be displayed and associated with the new ones though.

This is the “trans friendly” working environment. We were allowed to be out of the closet, as long as we were willing to put up with that. And any attempts to get it altered were the result of those nasty little transgender ingrates not being thankful enough.

Meaning that by asking to use our own fucking names we were already in the disciplinary shitter.

Another big selling point is the ~racial diversity~. The CEO was a man of colour, and so were like four other people on staff!! Wow!!!!!!!

This, too, was laughable.

Once numbers started coming in about the care gap for COVID between English and Spanish speakers, and our Southwestern US service area began to have a separate and brutal backlog just of Spanish speaking patients, my employer encouraged me to interview potential hires who speak spanish.

Fair enough! We all wanted to do our part to help close the already massive mortality gap.

So, I found candidates, did interviews, hired them, trained them, etc. But I don’t speak Spanish. As a result, I appointed 2 assistant managers who do speak Spanish to assist me in managing, you know, like the job name.

So when my super contacted them directly, completely skipping me on the chain of command, and told them to stop all of our Spanish speakers from translating helpful simple messages to send to patients, and instead start translating medical and legal documents, they very reasonably assumed I was in the know and went ahead with it.

TO BE CLEAR, that could have ended my life, theirs, basically everyone involved. Everyone in the company would have been completely fucked. At that point, my subordinates, the people for whom I am wholly responsible, were doing everything from practicing medicine without licenses, to encouraging spanish speaking patients to enter contracts that no one on the fucking executive tier could even read.

The moment I found that out, I and the A.M.s immediately started trying to get actual medical translation services to do our documents. We collected them in a neat folder. We queried translation services. We got quotes. We contacted my super and the CEO, about this over and over again for months. In the late autumn, we received approval for one of the translation services.

The CEO decided at the last minute that having people with no medical or legal training draft medical and legal forms was fine and good actually, and refused to sign the contract or send the documents for translation.

The excuse I received was that the COVID emergency HIPAA relaxations would protect us.

That’s not how that works.

Throughout all of this, Spanish speaking employees were told to either keep doing medical and legal translation work, or lose their jobs.

Oh, did I mention everyone was working between 30 and 80 hours a week, and all of us were marked as “contractors” so the employer could tax evade? Don’t worry, we filed complaints with the labour bureau.

So the entire department was let go, and “rehired” as temps through a temp agency, which because it was a temp agency could keep them marked as contractors regardless of the facts.

This change was presented to all of us, myself included, as the company getting a new accountant to handle payroll.

So if you’re keeping score, we’ve covered racism, queerphobia, medical negligence, fraud, and a frankly uncountable number of deaths.

Let’s talk about the sheer negligence towards employees ourselves. If you’ve worked in near-death medical care before, or any number of emergency services really, you know that the standard benefit suite includes either a dedicated therapist for your staff, or access to peer support groups with other emergency and medical servants through your employer’s benefits program.

Do you know what our mental health benefits were for this company?

The CEO got on a fucking zoom call with us all one (1) time, and said that if we were feeling suicidal or traumatized by the work, to talk to him about it, and he would be our therapist.

Do you know how many people per fucking day we had to contact only to be told they had already died because our understaffing delays killed them? He doesn’t. He never listened when we told him.

But let me put the cherry on the “Oh baby, you can talk to me, oooh” sundae.

Anyone who “looked” or “sounded” female, regardless of actual or assigned gender, was subject to constant flirtations and slimy, overly personal compliments about our appearances. Fortunately, at 3 levels removed from the CEO (Executives > Department heads > Managers > Employees), most of the people under my management had relatively little contact with him.

I was not nearly so lucky.

The CEO of this company has a watersports (urination) fetish. I know this, because he told me so and attempted to get me to join him in it. I have no idea how many other people in the company he did this to. I mean, what the fuck was I supposed to do, risk losing my job to find out? I have a fucking family to support, people.

Not that it mattered.

Eventually, all of these abuses became too much for my subordinates. Productivity fell off a cliff. Delays were getting worse and worse. In a medical emergency like this, delays=deaths.

So, like a fucking idiot, when the department heads reached out to me to ask what they could do to improve productivity, I shot down their frankly insulting suggestion of raffling a $20 amazon gift card to patient facing employees, and instead suggested a very simple, “enroll us with a peer support group, every single person in this department has PTSD from working in this pandemic.”

They were confused by my assertion of PTSD. I was asked to compile a document of complaints, concerns, and weaknesses in our patient facing services.

I and the A.M.s did so. It was roughly 40 pages long, with each page given a known problem, the reasons why it was a problem, and some potential solutions that might inspire further solutions or be able to be implemented. We submitted it. There was no response.

A week passed.

I had been working 80 hour weeks for most of a year. I hadn’t even been able to take weekends. I took my first sick day, in a company with “unlimited vacation days.”

I received a call at 3PM.

I had been fired for “differences in communitcation.” If you’ve ever seen that “Problem Women of Color in the workplace” chart? Yeah.

So had most of my department, including every transgender member of the department, and several of our extremely limited in supply Spanish speakers, who were presumed to be “on my side.”

Some of them, I barely even knew beyond the formalities of the job, and they were punished anyway.

I lost my insurance, and as a result I lost access to my medications.

But the real problem? I lost my house. And not due to lack of payment.

I lost my house, because when I got the job we waited 6 months for stability’s sake, and then readied to move out of the area. I got a mortgage on the basis of my employer’s written guarantee to the bank that I would continue to be employed for the next year at a minimum.

With the mortgage approval in hand, we entered a sales contract on our existing home.

We got and accepted an offer just days before I was fired. To keep our house meant paying a 25,000 dollar broken contract fine. We didn’t have that. We had a 10% down payment for a modest fucking place in a cheaper area, which is less than half that.

But without a job, my mortgage approval was also voided, meaning we couldn’t buy a house either.

All of a sudden, we were homeless during the plague, because my employer wrote and signed a letter to a bank guaranteeing my future employ, and then changed his mind when too many people died due to his own negligence.

Oh yeah, one last thing: the job paid less than Pandemic unemployment Assistance.

...After that, well, it’s homelessness until just last month. I... if you’ve never been homeless it’s.

It blurs. Everything is happening constantly, except for all the ways in which you are endlessly, mind breakingly bored. Bored, overloaded, and always uncomfortable.

Obviously my health would have declined regardless. Malnutrition, stress, everything.

But I was also unmedicated.

It was hell. I was in hell. I don’t know if I can recover from it, to be honest.

I bounced back from being homeless as a child. Children are as resilient as they are stupid, and the monstrosity of homelessness was little more than a vaguely remembered loathing and a panicky fear that it would ever happen again.

A child who is dying is worthy of sympathy, even if it is meaningless coos from passers by. If they have family, they may be able to rely on them too.

An adult with the indignity to die homeless and crippled, according to the average passer by, is worthy only of disgust and perhaps even punishment for being such a worthless waste.

My reward for nearly killing myself in a desperate bid to help stem the tide of COVID was the destruction of not only my life, not only my entire family’s lives, but the lives of every single family of every single employee who worked with me.

And you know what’s worse?

Each one of us still did more to limit the lethal impact of COVID than the entire united states government.

It breaks something in you, going through that.

It makes you realize that hope is a fool’s game.

But, I have ever been a fool, and so, I continue to play.

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sigynpenniman · 3 years

Text

Julian Bashir Playlist Time!!

Apple Music playlist (if you're a heathen and subscribe to apple music like me) here

I know that there's plenty of people making playlists, but I really feel like this is an under-utilized brand of fan content. Instead of attempting to create a list of songs that Julian would listen to, or a playlist of songs which were all lyrically directly applicable (though there certainly some of those in here) regardless of genre, I tried to create something which captured, above all, his vibes instead, by choosing songs that balance at least somewhat relevant lyrical content with the energy or feel that I associate with the character. What it means matters, but not as much as how it makes you feel. That said, I signed up for apple music and read a TON of those overwrought iTunes store album review descriptions while I was making this, so I have a whole lot to say about all my choices here. In depth explanation of my symbolism and methodology behind each song under the keep reading. (I love tumblr. I want to write 1,000 words of analysis about why I picked songs to represent Julian Bashir and some of you are gonna read it. This is where I get to pretend to be one of those iTunes music writers. I feel joy.)

Good Morning - Two Door Cinema Club TDCC's Gameshow is high on my favorite albums of all time list for nebulous reasons I myself don't really understand. It was this album, though not this song (but one that will pop up later) that actually inspired me to make this playlist to begin with, as for some reason, from the color scheme of the album cover, to the overall vibe, to the ever-present references to illness, injury, surgery and healers in the lyrics, the whole thing feels inescapably Julian to me. And with an opening like I'm a sinner/I'm the victim/I'm an alien when I'm myself/I'm a healer/I'm a fixer/I'm a present danger to my health/I'm so strong/Doing what I'm supposed to do/ There's something wrong/With somebody like me, it's hard NOT to think about Julian when you hear this song, and I can't think of a better way to start this off.

Sweater Weather - The Neighbourhood I think there's a joke somewhere about bisexual people all liking Sweater Weather, and yeah, I resemble that remark. Sweater Weather is just good. You'll notice there's a sort of chill-indie-alt-electronic thing going here, and that is very much the vibe I'm sticking with. Sweater Weather slots in beautifully, both sonically and thematically. As the singer looks to warm and protect the person he's with from the cold, you can't help but feel a loving coziness coming off of this one. It always makes me feel cozy, at least, so it's here.

Gooey - Glass Animals I have nothing to analyze here because the artists themselves have said that the lyrics of this song have no meaning, they're just meant to capture a vibe, and capture it they do. Close your eyes and ride the vibes of this one. The energy is right, I love it, it belongs here.

Blue - Mika I could probably write a couple hundred words on Blue alone, in any context. This might be my beloved Mika's magnum Opus. Opening the song with the inherently counterintuitive lyric Blue is a feminine color, Mika manages to pack it ALL into this 3 minute song: questions about gender; concepts of sadness, joy, and their intersections; of the perception of melancholy as a flaw and loving people despite, or maybe because of, those "flaws" and anything else about them; a powerful first person reassurance that made me start weeping in my car the first time I heard it; just the phrase "why are humans cruel to you." And oh boy, ARE there questions of gender. Why is blue NOT considered a feminine color? Is that a good thing, a bad thing? In 3 minutes of artful poetry, Mika manages to wrap up sadness, love, joy, pain, the feminine that exists within the masculine and the masculine that exists within the feminine, in the simple color of blue and then, in one lyric, validates it all. And on a much simpler and more obvious note, this is in fact all a philosophic musing on the symbolic meaning of the color we see Julian wearing almost all the time (when he's not in uniform, almost all his civvies are also shades of blue.) I feel like this is one of those songs that's hard to analyze because it does what music and poetry does best - communicate something that cannot be communicated any other way. With these broad themes of loving others around the things they can't love about themselves, you can decide for yourself if this one is coming FROM Julian or directed AT him, either works. I find myself struggling for exactly the words to explain this one, but listen to it; you'll understand.

Little Dark Age - MGMT Another choice with no obvious lyrical relevance, but the tonal fit was just too good to pass up. The vibes pass.

The City - The 1975 This song is one of several present because it leans on medical symbolism to get its point across, though I would be lying if I said I fully understood what that point was. But the entire second verse, apparently about the song's subject suffering from some kind of illness and reassuring him that the next one's the M.D./You'll be feeling just fine, seems somehow to transmit the discomfort of illness directly to the listener. I don't know how or why, but the effectiveness of the empathy the second half of this song elicits, in me at least, puts it squarely in the "odd medical vibes" category.

Surgery - Two Door Cinema Club THIS is the song that inspired this whole playlist, mostly because of its title and general vibe. Another example (of many) of medical/anatomical references in this album (another of the songs is called Fever, etc), this song just feels like Julian to me.

The Other Side Of Paradise - Glass Animals I really like Glass Animals. That is probably becoming obvious. Aside from its delightfully cohesive vibes, this song opens with what's simultaneously the slyest and most brazen gay lyric I have heard on the radio recently, as the male singer says When I was young and stupid my love left to be a rock and roll star/HE told me... The song seems to be about a man whose male lover left him in pursuit of fame and fortune, and eventually ends up with a woman, leaving the singer behind. It's got simultaneously subtle and obvious gay themes, it's got confused love affairs, it's got so much bisexual energy. I cannot think of anything that could be more Julian.

Sit Next To Me - Foster The People Kind of like Sweater Weather, this whole song is built around a rather cute and sweet "sit next to me," and you can't help but feel a bit warm and cozy when you listen to it. I think it pairs with sweater weather well, and slides in with the rest of the picks very nicely.

Nothing Better - The Postal Service (the original band of the lead singer of Death Cab For Cutie) Another example of heavy surgical symbolism, the very first lyric of this song is Will someone please call a surgeon. This is actually a duet, and the singers speak of their real hearts to represent their emotional ones. Something about Your heart won't heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures always gets me and always will. And it vibes good. It vibes so, so good.

&Run - Sir Sly Sir Sly's &Run is my favorite song for driving too fast. It does an amazing job of musical onomatopoeia, talking about running while making you want to run. It's a song about running out of plans and running as far as you can instead, which is all very "I'm illegal by definition so I went to the farthest possible reaches of space." And like everything else here, it just feels good. It's also one of the only highlights here that I can actually see Julian listening to.

Cosmic Love - Florence and the Machine It's no coincidence that it seems like most of us who are invested in Julian Bashir are some flavor of genderqueer, be it trans, nonbinary, questioning, or something else entirely - the man's got a Gender with a capital G, and there's a whole lot going on in there. Between the words that were written for him on the page, and the words that were actually spoken, and the way he carries himself, Julian always seems caught between the white, western, and frequently toxic masculinity that the writers often seemed to want to imbue him with, and the very different, racially and culturally distinct masculinity Sid actually brought. But there's an undeniable element of the feminine in Julian too, at least by a traditional definition. The presence of this part of him at all, much less the fact that, in-universe, it's the more traditionally "feminine" parts of himself - the caregiving and nurturing aspects - that Julian seems proudest of or to like most about himself, is a large part of what makes his character so interesting, at least to me. So there was no way I was getting out of this without acknowledging that somehow, and I can't think of a better way to acknowledge a complicated relationship with the feminine side of one's own gender than with this world's own Celtic divine feminine, Florence Welch. I can't think of any better artist, at least that I know of, to represent femininity as a nonspecific ethereal goddess-concept. I basically spun the wheel of Florence here, as anything would have worked, but Cosmic Love felt very appropriate for a character who does in fact live in space. There could even be some Garashir in here, I think.

Dream Sweet In Sea Major - ミラクルミュージカル, or Miracle Musical, a sister act made up of members of Tally Hall I also couldn't leave off without acknowledging Julian's affection for classic lounge music, especially since it's the only thing about his taste in music that we actually know. But instead of tacking on some rat pack, instead I'm polishing this off with the incredibly chaotic and somehow also perfectly cohesive and calm Dream Sweet in Sea Major. It's got all of the vibes of a lounge singer but gone completely off the rails, which just seems perfect somehow. And it's also a very nice feeling to be left with, so it seems only right to put it at the end.

and if you've read all of this, I love you. Y'all didn't know I was this into music did you. but I am. oh boy. I AM.

#julian bashir #playlists #Spotify

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mariaiscrafting · 3 years

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now I'm curious about your opinion on ContraPoints. I really like her videos on social issues (transphobia, pronouns, terfs) but I'm slightly hesitant because of some things she said about nonbinary people (I'm nonbinary). overall I definitely think her videos are worth watching, but I guess I disagree with some parts in her canceling video about her own drama (again, this are just small things like insinuating that some people criticizing her for collabing with buck angel were neo nazis, which just doesn't sit right with me but it's a good video regardless). feel free to use this ask to talk about her (positively I presume), I'd really like to hear your opinion.

Hmm, okay. So, frankly, I didn’t particularly understand the issue people were having with her comments on being nonbinary. As I understood it from Twitter, the issues arose from a comment she made about liking her pronouns being assumed sometimes, and how it felt othering to be in a group of clearly cis women and have to go around naming each of their pronouns just because they knew or thought that she was trans or nonbinary. She’s talked a lot about her own struggles with being genderqueer for a period in her life, and about passing and clocking and the like, and it never sat with me as enbyphobic. They all just seemed like genuine concerns from someone whose understanding of her own gender has shifted drastically throughout her life. She’s the person who helped me realize I’m probably not a cis woman, and I find her bluntness refreshing. All the tweets I’ve seen criticizing her have either been from taking her tweets out of context, like the aforementioned one (which simply looks like she’s dissing on the practice of naming pronouns for the sake of nonbinary people, which isn’t what she meant at all) or not understanding her specific brand of joke/satire. I haven’t watched her in a while, so I apologize for any inaccuracy in my memory, but one such instance I can remember was where she sarcastically made a tweet that seemed like it was dissing on nonbinary or trans people without dysphoria or something. Thing is, I didn’t even know people would interpret it like that, probably because I’ve watched her videos a stupid number of times and am very familiar with the exact tone of voice and phrases she uses when she’s impersonating and making fun of transmedicalists and TERFs, so that’s how I read the tweet (which is how she intended).

All of that being said, I can’t fault you for not liking anything she’s said, and there’s probably stuff that I’ve misremembered or just never heard of that I’ve left out, so feel free to call me out.

Regarding the Buck Angel critique response, I was kinda annoyed that she only lightly seems to understand why people were genuinely mad about that. Like yes, I understand the defensiveness, coming from a trans woman who has been villified and attacked so fucking much online who was now being turned against by the trans community she had found a place in. But still, I feel like there was nuance to the subject that she was missing, and yeah, I pretty much agree with your take on her seemingly insinuating all the people who were criticizing her were right-leaning...

Idk man, there are lots of things about Contrapoints that deserve critique, like the entertaining of “all sides” in debates that maybe don’t warrant that much leeway, the decadence she (ironically, given how far left she is) indulges in, and the leaning towards white academia, but there are things that deserve critique when discussing literally any content creator. Regardless, I still fucking love her videos. I’ve rewatched them all so many fucking times, at first because I started getting scared when she started privating older, pre-transition videos that I wouldn’t ever get a chance to watch the old content again, and then just because I like her voice and use of rhetoric and brand of humor. She’s done wonders for the shift of the Youtubesphere to the left, especially in the aftermath of the anti-feminist, “logical free thinkers” era of the mid-2010s. She also probably stopped me from going down the alt-right pipeline, and for that, I’m ever-grateful.

#oof cant believe i made a contrapoints rant on a mcyt blog #contrapoints #asks #not mcyt #Anonymous

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werevulvi · 2 years

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i followed back when you were radfem and respect you now even when your views changed, so i love reading your reddit posts, but i noticed in one you posted something about sex-based het/homosexuality being transphobic in a way, and i was confused by that since you posted about not liking vagina/being open to trans women? do you mean transphobic like chasers or trans-attracted people who misgender (ex terfs who like ftms but call them butch women) or something like that as phobic?

I'm not sure what you're referring to, but like although I would never consider someone's attraction or lack there of transphobic, I do feel iffy about certain behaviours in dating and rejecting. Like yeah, for example being into ftm's because you see them as masc women is a little iffy, although I understand you can't just force yourself to see them as a man if they look female to you. But like that's quite likely to be upsetting, and I think, for good reasons. If you want only ftm's who look like masc women, I'd say it's better to just go for masc women instead, tbh. But then if you want ftm's who look like men but still have vaginas... well, that's the kinda people I generally seek to date, but even that can be tricky. Because on one hand it can be flattering, and on the other hand it can make me feel like I'm their porn fantasy. What it ultimately comes down to is: do they treat me like a sextoy, or like a person? If it's the former, that feels chasery and transphobic to me, but if it's the latter, that's just totally fine trans attraction.

Same with wanting to date/fuck mtf's only because they're some kinda "chick with a dick" porn fantasy to you. Because that tends to feel kinda dehumanizing. It's kinda in the same vein as straight men who treat women as collections of boobs and pussy, which I think most women would feel awry about.

So it all comes down to behaviour. Do you see attractive trans people as people you find attractive, or as collections of body parts for your pleasure? The latter is just never a good look. Comes down to that people are more than just the sum of their parts. I mean even just for hookups, most people want to be treated with some dignity and have their bodies respected. Regardless if they have a typical/normative body, or an unusual/atypical kinda body.

Same thing can be applied to how fat people, POC people, or disabled people also often are treated as either un-datable or fetishized. I don't mean to speak for them, but I think it's the same issue at heart, really. People having a hard time not beibg very judgy of people whose bodies don't fit... certain (white, western, gender conforming, abled bodied) standards, which leads to a mix of reactions like either disgust/fear or overly sensationalizing. Most people don't like being treated like a freak, whether that be as a sexy freak or a scary looking freak. In a sense... porn has become the modern age freakshow, and it affects real life people in negative ways. And I think most of us can probably recognize that as at least kinda racist, ableist, fatphobic, etc... so why not also kinda transphobic?

But that said, even I can be in absolute awe over very gnc males because it is intriguing and beautiful to me. But I have to keep in mind that they're first and foremost human beings, and not sex objects. That they're people who go to work, take out the trash, probably lounge around in sweatpants at home, sometimes smell like sweat, sometimes say weird things, have quirky habits, etc. And I also keep in mind that if it's feminine men I'm into, I probably shouldn't be dating trans women, because the ones I find attractive, I do see as feminine males. Likewise, it would be equally iffy if it was women with male traits I wanted to date, but then went for gnc men and treated them like women. It might seem extremely subtle, but I think you may be aware of how some people for ex treat butches like "basically men" and femboys like "basically women." Then flip that around and apply it to trans people.

That doesn't mean I'm not open to dating a trans woman, or that if I did, I would work hard to treat her as a woman and not be a blunt ass about seeing her as male, but fact is most trans women would not wanna date someone who sees them as a fem male, even if they are clocky/non-passing. And this makes me extremely hesitant to ever pursue a relationship with a trans woman, because I know that what I want is to date a man, a male who's fine with being male, even if he's very gnc and even if he's dabbling with estrogen, hair removal or even feminizing surgery to a certain extent. So it's not really accurate to say that I would date trans women in the sense that I would fully enjoy the idea of having a girlfriend who happens to be male. It's more so like I'd be fine with having a male partner who happens to be my girlfriend. And knowing that deep down, I wouldn't even particularly want to be treated like that by a partner. The idea that I would date a trans woman will most likely remain hypothetical, and not ever end up being functional in actual reality. I'm just vaguely open to the idea, really, as in it's not a dealbreaker, but also not what I truly want in a partner.

And point is, because I wouldn't likely be comfortable dating someone who would rather be with a woman who wants to be treated as a woman, but can put up with me wanting to be treated like a man... I don't wanna do the same thing to someone else. Not really. And I do kinda battle with myself whether that would be kind at all. Treating someone like "yeah I can tolerate your gender identity, just because I want your genitals/body a lot." I don't see how that would not cause resentment further down the road, basically. Like starting to wish they'd detransition or reclaim their birth gender identity. And that does feel kinda anti-trans. Like I'm not against trans women identifying however and transitioning however they want, but if that's not what I truly want in a partner, maybe even I would start acting transphobic in a relationship with one, just because what I really want is a man. Like I'd probably start hoping that that specific person could embrace being a man then. And this is something I see happening in other people's relationships, and how grating it tends to be for the trans person.

Likewise, not being attracted to trans people is also totally fine, but if you get really nasty about it when rejecting them, like saying shit like "I'd never date such a disgusting freak like you" or "ew, I thought you were a real man/woman" is just really uncalled for, and I would say is transphobic, because it's expressing disgust against trans people. Like I don't have any issue with being rejected by people who aren't into trans, but when I get told shit like that from people on dating apps, it's really hurtful and I wish they had just said "sorry, not into trans" and left it at that. Again it's totally fine to reject trans people, just... try to do it in a nice way. Treat people how you'd wanna be treated. You probably wouldn't wanna be treated like despicable garbage by people who aren't into you, and if you'd think a simple no or brief explatation is enough, then I'd suggest that's a good way of rejecting people you're not into. I don't think it's transphobic to not be into me because I'm trans, but that is transphobic to call me gross for being trans just because they're not into me.

I dunno, I hope that cleared up my stance on transphobia in regards to dating/attraction! It's kinda hard to put into words.

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thatheathen · 3 years

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Isn't it weird how you just....identify as oppressed? You make up some fake gender and then cry oppression when other people don't validate it because gender is meaningless?

I don't "identify" as oppressed. Never did. That's ridiculous. I'm white and not homeless, so I'm pretty privileged, but I still receive daily or weekly death threats from people online like you and worse, just for being trans. We trans folk receive systemic discrimination and hatred no matter how successful or well off we become. We exist deal with it.

I'm not crying that I'm oppressed, where is that located that I did this? I shed tears and express fears for OTHER trans people and trans youth who are living in dangerous situations or experience extreme discrimination for being trans not harming anyone. Black Queer folk are hated even more than any white LGBTQ person. And then there's the trans people in prison not being able to get the medical care they need.

Transwomen are being murdered monthly SOLEY for being trans and that of course doesn't alarm you, women being hunted down or killed by insecure lovers. I'm not selfish, I'm selfless. I have chronic depression and slowly learning to love myself more and more, but that's not a cry for help or wanting people to pity me yada-yada. I will go to literal war for transwomen and transmen. Fuck all the way off.

You have no right to deny our existence, like how I don't have a right to deny your existence. This doesn't mean you have to like us or support us. Really don't give a shit how you feel about trans people, it's your actions are what I care about and watch transphobes closely doing. You're free to be a transphobe and a bigot, just don't expect freedom from consequence. If you attack trans people in any way or help push anti-trans policies created by the GOP, then we're gonna have problems. There's no point in arguing with you people because you're always gonna find something to scream and outrage about.

Gender is a social construct to an extent, but more of a spectrum. Gender within our western civilization is strictly binary and it's forced upon people to fit in a specific (gender) role when in reality it's ALL is made up BY THAT CULTURE. So if people are imprisoned and shackled to the binary gender roles rejecting it and don't realize it's an indoctrination, they'll no doubt hate that gender construct and render it meaningless. So yeah, the basic western idea of gender is meaningless. Weird huh?

Gender (regardless of the era) is 100% constructed or fabricated by human beings like anything humans created. These are just basic understandings of life and reality we are still learning about; gender, biology, astrophysics, gravity, neurology etc. are not truisms or laws that can't be broken or improved upon. Science hasn't finished understanding our cosmos that's absurd and very arrogant to assume. We are not slaves to our biology we go against it all the time; hence our manipulation of nature to build cities and bombs - is that natural? Science isn't set in stone it's always evolving. All life evolves even the concepts of gender that get you so upset. You're obsessed with policing peoples gender expressions and that's kinda oppressive no? Or do you think oppression is only through state sanctioned violence and that if you see it you'll know it? Doubtful.

There's nothing you can do to stop LGBTQIAP+ people from expressing themselves and creating new gender concepts that don't go along with your outdated dominator culture constructs and behaviors lol! You're a slave to the old ideas you defend. Isn't that Weird?

Every civilization throughout history has had a myriad of different genders and were socially expectable. Weird huh?

Gender Critical Cults are a tiny hate group along with TERF's and other fascist hate groups who tend to ally with conservatives to hate trans people together. The size of these anti-trans hate groups is puny compared to those who are trans and those who accept all LGBTQ folks, cisgender people showing their solidarity by putting pronouns in their bio's on social media or showing up to marches, pride, or protests. There's more of us than there is of people like you.

You're just a miserable bigot who hates queer people expressing themselves freely without much fucks given. Isn't that weird?

#fuck transphobes

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trekkie-in-space · 3 years

Text

KakagaiWeek2020 - Day 5 - Mirror

Author : JackB

Rating : General Audience

Words : 2436

Resume : Kakashi come back from a mission exhausted, Gai come to pay him a visit and end up caring for him.

Tag : exhaustion, fluff, trans kakashi, gender dysphoria, caring, body nudity, non-sexualized nudity, baths, haircut …, prosopagnosia, confusion, not established relationship but damn close, domestic, touch starved kakashi

___

There is always a moment after a long mission, when you finally step inside your home knowing you’re free of duty for the next hours or day, where the exhaustion accumulated just come crashing all at once. For Kakashi this time it’s right when he locks his door behind him. He wants to let himself fall on the floor but then he knows he won’t have the strength to get up. Or, at least, it would take too much effort to.

Instead we walk slowly through his modest flat and strip down from his uniform, placing all his weapons and gear exactly where they should be, cleaning is for tomorrow but it doesn’t mean his flat has to be a mess. As he unfolds his hitai-ate he can feel his hair fall on his face. They were already long when he left, almost time for him to cut them but the mission had started earlier and during the six weeks he spends on it he didn’t quite find the time to cut them during the mission. They are always required to leave as little trail as possible, leaving strand of hair somewhere doesn’t quite fit with that.

His hair annoys him. They are not that long but long enough to cause him problem.

He walks to his bathroom and the picture the mirror send him of himself is not one he likes. He pushes his mask down and rub some water on his face. His fingers pass on his week-old beard and he hates it too. Cleaning can really be impossible during missions, he feels filthy. And to be fair, he is.

He pushes his hair back and can make a pathetic excuse of a pony tail with his hand. Like that he looks like his father. He releases his hair and now he looks like a girl. The exact two things he doesn’t want to look like.

Normally he would take scissors and start cutting but he is too tired to even organize the step in his head to do that. He knows he needs a haircut, but to do it now feels impossibly exhausting. But it’s not like he’s going to go to bed without one. So he stays, staring at his reflection, as anger and disgust birth in his chest the more he looks at himself. He hates it, he hates what he sees. But all he can do is await for his own will to do what he needs to do. To erase the person he has in front of him and find himself again.

He looks at the bathtub.

Why does everything has to be exhausting ?

He hears his window being open but doesn’t have time to wonder who is intruding before he hears the joyful voice of Gai calling for him. “Kakashi ! You’re back !”

Gai, of course.

It’s been nearly two months since they last saw each other, of course, Gai would come at the instant the word of Kakashi return from his mission passed on to him.

“Where are you ?” He says as he close distance with the bathroom. Kakashi doesn’t bother informing Gai where he is, his flat isn’t big enough for one to get lost in it. As he see the door of the bathroom open, he doesn’t bother putting his mask back up. Gai is the only person he doesn’t mind seeing his face, mostly because Gai can’t remember his face anyway. It’s pretty harmless.

“You’re back.” He says fondly, his smile is wide and it gives Kakashi a certain sense of comfort he is definitely lacking right now.

“Not now Gai. I’m tired.” His tone is pathetically weak.

“Are you crying ?”

“No.” He has to check in the mirror to make sure.

It’s not a lie, he is not crying, he is just on the verge of it. It’s just exhaustion searching any outlet to let go, or maybe the disgust he has to see his own face that way. It doesn’t matter in the end. He is upset and he need to rest.

“What do you want ?”

“Just wanted to see you, I leave early tomorrow.” Kakashi nod. Watching his reflection again, he plays with his hair, up and down, up and down. Gai watch him silently.

“Look.” Kakashi turn to him and hold his hair in a ponytail. “I look like my father.” Then he releases his hair. “And now like a girl. My father.. A girl.” He sighs and mutter a ‘hate it’ under his breath.

Gai walk to him and gently grab his hair to fold them in a ponytail. They are dirty and greasy, full of dirt, sand and dried blood. The warm touch is almost too much for Kakashi, he wants to lean in Gai calloused hands but resist the urge.

“Even like that you don’t look like your father.”

“You don’t even know what my father looked like.”

“Fair, but still, you’re not even close to look like him.” He release Kakashi’s hair and they fall back on his face. “And you don’t look like a girl either.” Kakashi roll his eye. “You look like you.”

“I look like shit.”

“Yeah that too.”

He walks past Kakashi to open the water for the bathtub, the liquid flow abundantly, soon steam will cover the mirror.

“Now let’s get you out of this.. ” He grabs what is left of Kakashi uniform and push it up. Kakashi comply easily. Layers and layers are removed until the only thing left is Kakashi’s binder.

He removes it himself, sighing with ease and immediately stretching. He looks up to Gai, busy searching for his hair scissors and combs. Normally he wouldn’t remove his binder in front of people but Gai already saw him naked on more than one occasion and he is too tired and sore to care. Gai never made him feel like out of place even bare and raw like that. The bath is filling up nicely but not yet enough for him to sink in its warms.

“Sit here.” Gai guide before leaving. He comes back with two wooden boxes and pause as he sees Kakashi strip down from his pants. His eyes dart away more for privacy than anything else, but again, it’s not the first time he’d seen Kakashi naked and the snort he gives him is enough for Gai not to care much more. Even if it’s been some time, they’re pretty unbashul about their own nudity in front of each other. Gai never saw him for less than who he is, regardless of details.

“Brought us food before coming.” He hands his rival one of the boxes.

They start eating, Kakashi with more eagerness than he thought he had. He guesses he just want this out of the way.

Gai stay pretty silent, and Kakashi is grateful, because he doesn’t have much strength to talk nor to listen. The few words they exchange are more practical than friendly. ‘Are you injured ?’ ‘Do you need anything in particular ?’ ‘was the mission successful ?’

His answers are short, and he doesn’t bother to care about anything. Gai will tell him when the bath is ready.

Sinking in the water is an absolute pleasure. And when he emerges, head wet, Gai hand are already on him. Gently rubbing the soap in his hair until there are enough matter and foam to work. His hands are gentle yet firm, solid on his scalp and Kakashi swear he could sleep under them as Gai massage his scalp.

“I thought you came to see me, not take care of me ?”

Gai snort. “I came to see you and saw you could use an extra hand with how tired you are.”

“Hm.. ”

Gai thoroughly combs away the dirty and blood from Kakashi’s hair until they are clean. Then grab for the scissors. Kakashi is not too worried, Gai already cut his hair a few times, he knows what he likes. He’s more than ready to get rid of the extra hair, as Gai comb his hair straight he feels how long they are and he hates it.

“So, we go for a bowl cut then.. ”

“No !” Kakashi roar with a quick move back. A move of his hand and he splatter Gai with water. The latter explode in a big laugh.

“I’m kidding.”

“Don’t you dare touch my hair.”

“Don’t worry, your hair are too much of a mess. You could never rock a bowl cut as great as mine.” He says while moving his head a bit, letting his hair flow easily with the movement. Soft and supple as always. Gai is proud of himself and manage to drag a small laugh from Kakashi. He reaches for his hair and Gai let him. They’re like silk to the touch, not rough like his tend to be.

“What do you do to get them like that ?”

“It’s the power of youth !” He says brightly.

“And concretely ?”

“Youth and passion Kakashi you don’t need much more.”

“Then my hair is telling me I’m an old man.”

“Also your soap doesn’t fit for your hair.”

“Soap is soap.” Gai shake his head. “Soap is soap !”

“I will buy you soap and you will see.” Kakashi roll his eye. “Do you think your hair will get whiter when you grow old ?”

“If I grow old. And they are silver, not white. I already have a few white one though, it’s weird.” Gai chuckle and make a move of the hand for Kakashi to come closer. “No bowl cut !”

“No bowl cut.” Gai agree.

“Make it messy.”

“I know.”

Gai start cutting, careful to make it messy in a fitting kind of way. He slaps Kakashi’s hand away.

“Stop touching your hair when I’m cutting I need a global view.” Kakashi pout and barely stop, Gai finish on one side and he is already checking the length.

“Make it shorter.”

“Did I say I was finished ? I will come back to this side.”

“Waste of time.”

“Haircut need precision.”

“Yours do.”

“Turn around I will do the back.”

A few hair falls in the bath but mostly Gai pile them on the side. It’s getting messier and messier but it’s always like that with haircut and wet hair.

When both Gai and Kakashi seem satisfied Kakashi ask for a mirror, instead Gai bring back a razor and cream.

“I can do it myself.”

“You will cut yourself, you’re too tired.” He says while handling Kakashi’s face in his hand to cover his beard with cream. “Plus the mirror is covered with steam.”

He’s firm yet gentle and with an assured move start shaving his face. Careful around Kakashi’s mole, he makes quick work of it. Which is a shame because his calloused hands on his freshly shaved skin feel good. Kakashi touch his face and smile, it’s smooth just how he likes it. Gai is rubbing the mist out of the mirror and hand it to him.

“You like it ?”

“It’s good.” He yawn. “It’s better.”

Next, Gai grabs the soap and rub it against a washcloth. Dirt and blood come easily out of Kakashi after he’s been bathing in the hot water, both are washing out the filth, Kakashi mostly focused on the part he doesn’t want to be touched by someone else, like his chest. While Gai focus more on his back and arms and Kakashi can’t help but relax to his touch. During the mission being touched is dangerous, in the safety of the village and his home, it’s a rare delight.

He is not used to being touched, but sometime, like right now, he wishes he could have more of it.

Gai is about to leave Kakashi the washcloth so he can continue down but Kakashi grab his hand and plunge it in the bath, guiding it to his legs. Gai follow the movement easily and stop when he sense where it’s going. Feeling his restrain Kakashi whispers.

“What about this extra hand ? To help me.”

“It’s just that generally you prefers do it yourself.”

“Hm, just help me finish this quickly. I need to sleep.”

Gai comply, he is careful in his touch but Kakashi doesn’t seem to care regardless, helping a bit but mostly letting Gai do the job. It lead to much proximity between the two. And Kakashi realise how natural it feels. He lean closer watching Gai’s face with attention taken by the moment, he grabs Gai by the collar and press his lips against his. Gai turn his head away.

“I thought you liked me.” He is confused and bitter.

“I do more than just like you.” Gai emphasize the word ‘like’ with disdain and nearly disgust, as if just liking Kakashi is an insult.

“Then why ?”

“Because you’re exhausted, you don’t have a clear mind. It’s not the right time.”

“What if it’s the only time ?”

“What if it’s just now ? Your only chance. You will pass it ?” Gai doesn’t need long to think.

“Yes.”

“Well, I don’t know what else I expected.” Gai chuckle. “Still it’s not f..” Kakashi give a long yawn that leave him even more shut down than before. “Fun.” Gai passe his hand in his hair and he close his eye to the touch.

The rejection isn’t too bitter, because he already forgetting the moment and also because Gai never stop being loving toward him. He feels himself falling asleep and rest his head against his rival’s shoulder, helping a bit with the washing because the faster they finish the faster he can go to sleep.

He barely registers when he is pulled out of the water, he awakes an instant drying himself quickly as Gai gently dry his hair. A loose shirt and clean underwear later, he clung on Gai, pleading for his bed.

Gai guide him, resisting the need to lift him to be quicker. When he lay in him bed Kakashi doesn’t want to let go.

“Sleep with me.”

“You’re sure ?”

“Hm yes.”

“Alright, let go.”

“No sleep with me.”

“Give me a sec, I will join you.”

Gai strip down from his own uniform and borrow one of Kakashi loose shirt before joining him in bed. Kakashi, who refused to sleep until Gai joined him, promptly fall asleep against him.

When he awake the next day, Gai is already gone. How long will it be until they see each other again is pretty uncertain. But he looks forward to it.

End.

#KAKAGAIWEEK #KKGWEEK #KAKAGAI #KAKAGAI WEEK 2020 #KAKASHI #MAITO GAI #GAI #KAKASHI HATAKE

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potatopossums · 3 years

Text

Insecurity and Boundaries: A Necessary Coexistence

Content Warning:

This post includes discussions / mentions of:

bodily insecurities, explicitly including dysmorphia, dysphoria, and implicitly including but not limited to eating disorders, weight

childhood trauma including shame, humiliation, fear

coping mechanisms, both healthy and unhealthy, including anxious avoidance, projection, masking, reflection

mentioned references to all of the above through lenses of morality, cis white feminism and sexualized body positivity

adhd

—

Author's Note:

Written through the lens of adhd, anxiety, depression, queerness, transness, nonbinaryness, aromanticism, alterous attraction, and as always, questioning.

—

Ngl I've had the opportunity to date/"be with" (in whatever capacity) several quite attractive ppl, and the last couple have been great examples of something that actually kind of triggers me / turns me off.

I didn't really know what to make of it then, and I felt bad about it then too because I thought I was just being judgy. Not saying some of that isn't potentially still there, but i think i understand better now.

It honestly kind of scares me when I have the opportunity to have close relationships with people with bodily dysphoria/dysmorphia or strong insecurities. My brain has a really bad habit of being reflective when I'm feeling vulnerable. I just match people. It's a way of masking while relating to people. It's a defense mechanism. But it feels quite real in the moment and i often don't realize it's happening until it has already happened.

But as a nonbinary person who gets misgendered a lot at work, I've spent a lot of time now very acutely aware of my own body (as if i wasn't already). I don't tend to hate my body in a vacuum. I actually enjoy my body. I like how it looks in certain clothes; I like how I can trick the eye and make it look another way with other clothes, and then surprise, it's a different body underneath! I like how my body feels when i masturbate, i like how my body feels in the warm sun, i like how my body feels when i self-soothe. Even when I'm in pain, in some of those moment, i like that my body exists because I know something is happening inside me, something systematic and programmed, something beyond me that does it's evolutionary purpose, no matter how flawed. I've always had a curiosity about bodies in general (gender and sex completely aside). So when i say i love my body, i mean that.

Does it mean i don't struggle with dysphoria? Of course i struggle. And it makes me feel like shit.

Sure, I've got that Cis White Feminist Self-Loathing Intervention Voice in my head that says "all bodies are beautiful" (and she really means all women are beautiful but I'll co-opt her lines to fit my agenda). That voice is problematic because like. I like being beautiful, but why do I want to be beautiful, and what happens when I'm not beautiful? How do I guage whether I'm beautiful at any given moment? Isn't that largely subjective even with an overarching cultural & social standard? When I feel "ugly" — my cowlicks sticking up, teeth unbrushed, i feel too short, i feel i look too childish, I'm afraid my boobs are showing in a way i don't want to be seen, etc. — who's to say that someone else doesn't find some of those things attractive? So attractiveness is a poor method of confidence, despite how influential it still is on my brain and personality. That influence is fear based.

All that in mind, when I hear other people struggling with their bodies, especially in a Trans/Non-Binary/Dysphoric way, it really scares me. I mean, any bodily struggles scare me because I have my own insecurities to deal with. And when I'm in that state of really wanting to keep a connection because abandonment trauma + adhd, my vulnerable brain says that in order to impress someone, I must reflect relatably. So that has me digging back into my bodily insecurities. And I explore them as if I should be feeling them.

Let me unpack that. I'm avoidant with my anxieties. I don't talk about them, and I don't think about them much if I can help it, because when I think about them, that result can be largely painful, dramatic, and too emotionally volatile for me to handle. I always want to look put together, I want to feel secure enough to not need to ask for help, because those few times it went badly when I asked for help still stick with me (regardless of how long ago those moments were, and regardless of how many good times I've had where received actual help since). I remember the embarrassment and humiliation, the shame, the fear, the guilt. I remember wanting to make myself smaller, and how crushing that felt to do. I remember how little I understood of these wild and complex emotions, and all I knew was that I felt violated and disgusting. And I turned that inward. Because I had no external support.

So me saying that I explore my anxieties "as if I should be feeling them" is multi-pronged. It's Cis White Feminist Body Positivity, it's all those family members who modeled and normalized self-hatred for me from a young age, it's bodily dysphoria/dysmorphia at being misgendered, it's me trying to convince myself that my body truly is okay and that my negative inner voice doesn't know what it's talking about due to it's poor influences, and it's me ultimately not being able to reconcile all that on my own (or fast enough, thanks adhd) and resorting to anxious avoidance of my insecurities as if that solves them.

And then, when I hear someone I might kind of want to be intimate with start to talk about their insecurities, my brain panics. It says, "If you go in there, you will lose it. You will fall into the same hole they're in. You will have to suffer just as much for them, and for yourself. You will lose all your energy and you will start to hate yourself. They will treat your body the way they treat their body. You will be made to hate yourself."

And even though I know plenty of people with dysphoria/dysmorphia and other bodily struggles absolutely won't do those sorts of things, I also know that projection is a thing. And considering how poor I am at boundaries and how I tend to adopt unhealthy relationship dynamics due to my avoidance, I know that it would just start a bad cycle for me. Even with all the empathy and understanding in the world, I simply cannot root myself in a situation that would cause me to loathe myself.

And again, in case this wasn't clear: this is absolutely not a statement about people with bodily confidence issues as a whole. I am not trying to villainize or demonize or moralize their experiences. That is markedly the opposite of what I intend here.

But it took a long time for me to get to this point in my self-awareness. And i wanted to share it because i want other people to be able to reach an understanding of themselves too, whatever that understanding might entail. Yeah, it's a little cliche, but our projections and fears about others can have a lot to do with our fears about ourselves. It's important to be self-aware, even if that doesn't immediately solve the problem(s).

I tend to really like confident people because of this. That attraction has it's own roots in confidence issues, and its own potential flaws. And until I can change my own avoidant anxiety, I'm going to find new ways to project my avoidance and shame onto others, regardless of whether they are confident or unconfident, dysphoric or not.

But, just because I'm projecting doesn't mean that I'm unworthy of boundaries. Even if my behaviors are unhealthy, even if I do need to work to change those things (and even though I actively want to change those things), it is still healthy for me to know my limits. It's healthy to know what triggers me. It's good for me to realize these things and step back, even if the relationship I'm leaving/not starting is arguably "good." (And that assumption is a whole other topic for another post.)

So, along with whatever other epiphanies you might have received from this read, here's my major takeaway that I want to leave you with:

Your boundaries are okay. Even if they're based in anxiety, even if they're based in unhealthy coping mechanisms, even if you want to change your unhealthy behaviors/mindset. Your boundaries do not need to pass any social justice or morality tests in order to be valid. Your boundaries do not have to "make you grow." Your boundaries are not bad, even if you feel like they keep you from being the best version of yourself.

The only way you can actually grow is if you respect yourself enough to respect and enforce your boundaries. The only way you can feel comfortable and happy and healthy is if you respect your boundaries.

So please do that for yourself. Please respect your boundaries. I know it's very hard, especially for people-pleasers. I know it's hard for you avoidant types. I know it's hard for those of us who mask and reflect.

But please, just a little bit at a time, respect yourself. Even if that means disappointing or hurting others with a "no."

And please, please, please surround yourself with people who respect your boundaries and stand up for you. Of all the work I've tried to do alone, nothing compares to the effectiveness and growth I've experienced when I've been around radically affirming people — people who fought for my right to say no; people who defended my boundaries no matter what they entailed; people who stood up for my pronouns at work; people who validated my life experiences, labels, queerness, and questioning. It can be difficult to find people like that in real life, but please stay in the company of people who do that for you. Even if they're online. Stay near people who model self-respect for you. They will help you practice how to treat yourself.

—

#tw body insecurity #tw dysphoria #tw dysmorphia #tw eating disorder #adhd #masking #reflecting as a coping mechanism #trauma #relationships #alterous attraction #questioning aromantic #nonbinary #agender #queer

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carrigerpigeon · 4 years

Text

On THE ENFORCER ENIGMA

Okay, y’all.

We need to talk about The Enforcer Enigma because I have many, many problems with it.

I’ve been sitting on my feelings for this book for a month or so, after I got my ARC of it and I read it. It’s been hard to decide what I was going to say, how I was going to approach this. Like I’ve said before, my relationship with Gail exists in a liminal space between fan and friend, and is even more complicated than that.

I’ve decided, as both a fan AND friend, that I can’t ignore the problems in this book.

Which is where this post comes from.

When I first I heard it was dealing with the Selkie mob I was excited, because I loved how ridiculous they were in the short story and I think the concept is gloriously ludicrous. But this book overall felt very contrived, very basic, and very tone deaf in a racist way. The gay boys felt objectified and cookie cutter, and the racist treatment of Judd made me very, very upset.

I’m going to get to my issues with the treatment of Judd, as best as I can as a white person with a lot to learn, but I want to start with something I am able to speak better on, and that’s the gay characters in this book.

So let’s get into it. Spoilers, obviously, and lots of talk about systematic racism and homophobia, antiblackness, stereotypes, etc.

(Also, Gail, since you follow me on this blog and I know you’ll probably see this—READ THE WHOLE THING. Think about it. And then if you’d like to talk about it, you know how to contact me.)

This is going behind a cut, not because of the content but because it’s almost 6 pages long.

The Gay Boys

Okay. Look.

I love a catty, fabulous gay boy as much as the next queer. They have a space and a place in our community. But not EVERY gay man is like this IRL. Meanwhile, in SAS, it feels like every gay male character (or close to) in this series is a waspy, catty, faaaabulous gay. Isaac, Marvin, Max, Trick, even to some extent Alec and Bryan…they’re just all the exhausting waspy, catty, fabulous gay boy that we see exhibited heavily on Drag Race and other mainstream platforms.

And like. I get it. Colin is repressed and gay and wants to be a fabulous twink. That’s fine. But it just felt like he was slipping into the stereotype all the other gay male characters inhabit in these books, and that’s really, really exhausting.

Also, I am from the East Coast, where according to my West Coast friends we apparently grow gay boys differently. I can’t say with any accuracy how much of this is true. BUT MOST OF THESE GAY BOYS ARE FROM THE EAST COAST. They lived in Boston before moving to California. So why are they like this?

It feeds into this larger trend I’ve seen in Gail’s word with fabulous, savage gay boys—from Akeldama and all his drones, to Biffy, and even Lyall. Seen over the spread, it’s harder to sweep it away as just a “modern storyline” thing or a “California storyline” thing. It’s a trend, one which I find very uncomfortable as a queer person.

There is a place and space for Queer people to take back the tropes and stereotypes that have been used against us and write them our own way. But what I’ve seen as a longtime reader isn’t that. What I seem is lazy stereotyping and an overarching stereotype and characterization that feed into the larger the ways I feel gay men are objectified by female authors (no matter how queer the author is).

Many more people have covered this topic better than I, but it explains why I’ve felt so uneasy about this series from the get go. The sex and the relationships in these books don’t feel real—it feels objectifying. There’s lots of talk about big and strong sexy, muscle-y men but very little else. And while there is something to say about having a partner who thinks you’re sexy—that’s important, and I want everyone to have that…. this isn’t that.

These are muscle-y, strong, sassy gay men for cis white women to coo over on Facebook and feel good about. But to me, a real life nonbinary queer person, I feel uneasy and frankly uncomfortable with the objectification of them.

And since we’re talking about queer representation, after having a decent wlw spread in the Parasolverse there are two WLW (specifically lesbians) in SAS (Trickle and Pepper) and they (a) barely get any screen time and (b) feel stereotypical to me. And they are side characters, so I get it, but seriously?

And also while we’re on queer representation, there’s Mana, aka Manifest Destiny. Mana is the drag queen and arguable trans woman* who started off alright BUT was named after the colonization and violent taking of Native and Indigenous people’s lands and wrapped up in patriotism. Gail has said she made a mistake, that she meant her name to be Mana From Heaven, and that this would be addressed in the upcoming book (aka The Enforcer Engima).

It was not.

There is talk, from what I understand, this issue will be addresses in the upcoming short story about Mana and Lovejoy. But there are several throwaway lines about Mana in this book, her work in LA and her becoming a drag queen superstar (I guess akin to RuPaul?). So why wasn’t her name change discussed or even mentioned there?

[*Sidebar: Mana has been quoted as saying, “I suppose I should be transgender, under modern parlance. But I like drag queen. It suits me. I like the fabric roughness of drag, and the royalty of queen. It's a nice change to have the luxury of choosing one's own semantics, if not one's own situation." But whenever she appears, it seems she’s always in face/wearing false eyelashes/wearing women’s clothing.

I’m not going to police Mana’s trans experience because gender is a spectrum, and I as someone under the trans umbrella know that. But it feels…weird and off to me.]

Regardless of my sidebar, the name she was supposed to have, Manna from Heaven is…also sort of problematic? If I understand the reference correctly, it refers to the Biblical story of the food that God miraculously provided to the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness. It means as a phrase the coming of unexpected benefit or assistance, especially when that benefit/assistance comes at the time when it is needed most. Which is what Mana is for the pack—she lets them live in her apartment in Book 1, she swoops in to save the day in Book 2. But it feels…very white and more than a little gross to name a character with Chinese and Japanese ancestry after something from the Bible.

And then there’s Judd.

Oh, Judd.

I really wanted to like Judd. The premise of his character was interesting, a Black, Pre-Saturation werewolf shifter, and I liked his cameos in the other books. But then we got a book about him, and it all fell apart.

Judd is a gay Black character, pre-Saturation, meaning he’s old as hell (from the Parasolverse time). He is objectified like the other gay boys, and there’s a lot of talk about how hard and strong his muscles and how sexy he is. He’s depicted on the cover this way.

And that’s…fine I guess, but gay Black men frequently have their bodies objectified as Black and muscley and strong. He’s also a pack Enforcer, so he’s depicted as not very smart and very violent. All of those are racist stereotypes that Black men deal with constantly, and they are racist stereotypes and tropes that are constantly hurled at Black men by the system and by society.

Additionly, Judd, the only Black member of the pack, is the only werewolf in the series to carry a gun.

A Black man. Is the only member. To carry a gun.

Yeah.

It gets worse.

There is mention of Judd’s backstory—very heavy inferences to Phineas/Soap (whose problematic naming convention and descriptors have been talked about especially by jhenne-bean ) being his mentor until he gets kicked out of Sidheag’s pack—but it falls very flat. I understand not wanting to write too much history of a Black character as a white writer, especially after tenuously connecting that history to the traditionally published series you’re Not Connected SAS To Not At All….

But.

Judd is over 150 years old.

He lived through some of America and Canada's worst racial discrimination, discrimination which would have affected him and his habitus and the way he moves through the world. He’s a gay Black man, and his gayness and his Blackness does not appear to affect how he interacts with the world at all. The police are called at the beginning and he’s OKAY ABOUT IT? AS A BLACK MAN? He basically says, “Thank God, the cops are here.”

You had a BLACK MALE CHARACTER SAY THAT when we’ve had a nationwide conversation since 2013, a conversation that has been reignited in the past three months?

Like????

And I was willing—perhaps whitely and naively—to give Gail the benefit of the doubt with Soap/Phineas. E&E was written in 2011, before Black Lives Matter was founded, before we began to have this nationwide reckoning with how Black and brown folks are treated systematically and especially by police violence. These conversations were definitely being had in 2011, but they were seen as fringe discussions and not necessarily part of the mainstream narrative as it is today.

However. It’s not 2011. It’s 2020.

It’s been 7 years since BLM was founded, and there have been countless discussions happening about racism and systematic issues in publishing and with white writers writing Black characters since that point.

Soap/Phineas has been mentioned or has cameo’d in The Custard Protocol and in Meat Cute. There’s been no conversation about his name or the way he has been described And both he and Judd fall into the Caring-POC-Partner trope which has been discussed very heavily in romance circles and in ways I am not necessarily equipped to discuss in this post. But I will link to this post for everyone to read: https://medium.com/@ashiamonetb/queer-love-interests-of-color-and-the-white-gaze-8928b7b5e6ad

It’s 2020. These conversations have been being had, quite fervently, for many years, so there’s absolutely no excuse with how Judd is approached or treated in this book.

And here’s the CRUX of all this.

This book isn’t even really about Judd.

It’s about Colin.

Even though Judd is on the cover of the book, in all of his objectified Black body goodness, the plot of the story is about Colin. It’s very much entrenched in Colin’s issues with his family and his identity. Judd is there to take care of Colin and ~guide~ him and ~teach~ him things. To protect him. To be sexy to him.

See the medium article above. See the conversation about objectification above.

So if this book is SO MUCH ABOUT COLIN, why is Judd on the cover?

Why is Judd naked and glistening and Black on the cover of the story about the trials and tribulations of a white twink?

…Do I really have to say it? Maybe I do. It’s racist.

It might not be intended that way, but it is.

And look. There were parts of this book that I found enjoyable. I am still a fan of Gail’s wit and the way she writes. I’m a sucker for the found family trope, which all of these books have, and I really like Trick and Marvin. I’ve been where Colin is. I’ve fucked around with my gender presentation and been scared to out and fabulous or be perceived a certain way because I present a certain way.

But I’m really frustrated and frankly ANGRY with the racist stereotypes and gay stereotypes present in this book. It doesn’t feel like this was sensitivity read at all, by anyone. The book feels like a culmination of racist and homophobic trends that make me feel that Gail hasn’t been paying attention or listening to the cultural reckoning happening nationwide or in publishing.

And yes, there is a lot of “don’t idolize authors” talk, but here’s the thing.

Gail isn’t some anonymous author to me, someone I can just cancel and be done with.

Gail is a mentor to me. We’ve hung out at multiple cons, shot the shit about publishing, and talked about queer shit together with. We aren’t close, but she’s a friend (liminal space, etc). She gets a Christmas card from me every year, she asks after my partner when we chat. We’ve been in each other’s orbits for TEN YEARS.

I have this entire sideblog dedicated to her books, for fucks sake.

So when I read shit like this, it makes me upset. This book is a pile of microaggressions that stacked into a macroagression. It’s insensitive, definitely hurtful, and feels exceptionally tone deaf (AT BEST) to have written and released this book.

She has people in her inner circle who could have caught this if we’d been allowed to read it before hand, if we’d been a part of the beta process. But we weren’t. And it shows.

Gail, this is a message directly for you: You talk a lot about supporting people. You reblog lots of #ownvoices work and have been plugging a lot of #ownvoices fiction. I know (or at least hope) you’re a good person.

SO WHAT HAPPENED?

Why is this book such a disaster?

Have you been listening at all?

And I get it, we all have things to learn and things to unlearn. As white ally, and as a member of the queer community, as someone in your inner circle and as a friend (liminal space!), I get it.

I’m also saying this isn’t ok.

This book that you’ve written is not okay. Not even a little bit.

Here’s the thing: you can fix it (or you can try). It’s gonna be hard and require difficult conversations and actions, but you can.

If you want to know more, if you want to talk: you know how to contact me. I’ll give you my number. We can email, Skype, Zoom, text, call, whatever. I know I’m not the only member of the Pigeons that feels this way. You have people here to help.

As for everyone else:

As might be apparent I have…a lot of feelings right now. I’ve loved these books for so long, made a friend (liminal space!) with the author through social media. Genevieve Lefoux, and Sidheag, and Aggie, and lots of other characters mean a lot to me. Gail’s books have helped me through hard times and hard places, and she’s influenced a lot of whom I am as a writer.

But right now having this blog, dedicated to all these books with this massive subthread of racism and stereotypes, feels…not great.

And I don’t know if I can continue to support Gail and continue to be a fan (and a friend) if she keeps up with this.

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terfs-r-trash · 4 years

Note

I've been reading through some terf

-blogs lately. I don't agree with the blatant transphobia, but the handful of blogs I looked at had basically three takes on trans people and gender (trans women can't talk about a lot of feminist issues because they were raised as boys and have different sex organs; gender is a construct and society would be better without it; lesbians shouldn't be told to sleep with trans women if they are only attracted to female sex organs). I think it's funny, that there are terfs with the exact opposite-

-views that apparently rely heavily on gender roles and stereotypical body image (cis women don't have body hair and can't be muscular). Meanwhile other terfs are out there reblogging pictures of butches who basically look like men. Do these different groups of terfs ever talk to each other?

--------------------------------------------------

Hey there, Anon

Even the TERFs with “opposite views” to the blatant transmisogynists are virulently transphobic and toxic. I would wager that the more “tame” blogs you’ve been perusing are a gateway into the more violently transmisyginistic TERF rhetoric.

The first point, “male socialization” as it’s called, has already been refuted and rebuffed numerous times. The gist of it is that, no, trans women do not have “male socialization” the way they experience gender, even before coming out and even before realizing they’re trans, is vastly different from cis men. There’s also the fact that even people with the same sex organs face different issues. Medical history, age, lifestyle, and so many other things can effect how someone’s sex organs function. Hell, white women are fighting for their right to sterilize, but there are plenty of groups of WoC fighting to NOT be sterilized, something they have in common with trans women.

When TERFs say, “gender is a social construct” they don’t actually mean they want to do away with it. This is one of the reasons I consider them reactionary rather than radical. What TERFs mean when they say that is that they want to do away with gender roles... but keep all the biological existentialism bullshit. I saw a post going around from a TERF about a post-gender society. I can’t find it now, but the image was of two public restrooms: one with the venus symbol ♀ and one with the mars symbol ♂. I think that post really highlighted how TERFs don’t really want to see gender abolished, just replaced with a system which allows trans women and men to be grouped together.

That last thing is a huge topic in TERF circles. The thing is... no one is saying lesbians have to have sex with trans women? Heck, no one should be saying that someone has to have sex with their partners, regardless of either one’s gender or orientation. What TERFs have twisted so badly is simply us going, “Hey, maybe you guys shouldn’t loudly proclaim how you’d never date a trans woman out of nowhere. That’s pretty shitty and she’d probably not want to date you anyways.” along with, “There’s no way to know nor do you need to know that your partner is trans until/if you get in their pants; maybe not even then.” What TERFs seem to forget is that, what typically attracts you to a person isn’t their genitals. Like, I’m aro, so I’ve never dated anyone, but I usually don’t need to know what’s in someone’s pants before thinking, “Huh. Cute”. Trans women are a diverse group and plenty of them are attractive even by our western standards of beauty. I’m serious here: 1. People should think critically about why they are so adamant and also feel the desperate need to share that you won’t date someone of a certain demographic. 2. If you’re dating someone, sex is not something that will necessarily happen. Even if sex happens, it shouldn’t be any type of sex you’re uncomfortable with. This is true regardless of who your partner is.

So yeah, that last topic is a part of a huge disinformation campaign to paint trans women as predatory.

Even TERFs who don’t express “blatant transphobia” are dangerous. I don’t know if you actually bought into the claim that that’s something that’s actually happening that TERFs are rallying against, but that’s one of the reasons why they’re sometimes more dangerous than the blatant TERFs. I mean, if you see someone saying trans women are men and and perverts and should be locked up, then you’re gonna disregard them as a terrible human being (rightfully so). But, if you see someone saying that they just want “female-only” spaces for their comfort or because trans women just can’t understand what their going through? If someone says that they just want to abolish gender and trans women are upholding toxic gender roles? If they say they’re protecting lesbians? They say they don’t want women hurt by misogyny to be forced to identify as trans men or nonbinary to escape it? Well, Those all sound like pretty reasonable things. Maybe they’re right about some other things as well? Maybe I’ve just been seeing the wrong side of the movement? The context, of course, makes these statements a lot more insidious, but it’s not like they’re going to be putting a disclaimer on their posts when the entire goal is to get you to take them at face value.

(Also, I don’t think it’s appropriate to say that butches “basically look like men”. I’m not a butch, however, but I’d just err on the side of caution)

#Anonymous #not a TERF #TERF ideology #TERF talking points

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majuuorthrus · 3 years

Note

While trying to send you asks tumblr accidentally made me unfollow you :P anyway 7,15 24 (for persona and good omens, since that has an "xxx" but the others can be for whatever),

7. Is there anything you used to like but can’t stand now?

I used to be a Superwholock sort-of fan? Mostly because Doctor Who got lumped in with those two and I got curious. Sherlock didn’t hold my attention for long - Moffat can’t balance his insufferable geniuses properly and they get annoying (this also happened with Doctor Who - in most eras, the Doctor’s insufferableness is balanced, by genuine warmth and care, allowed to be wrong and to do silly things, and also by a cast who is willing to tell them off if they’re being annoying or morally wrong. Under Moffat, not so much.) Supernatural held my attention a little longer, but it turned into a zombie after season 5, and also something very much rubbed me the wrong way about a show with an almost entirely white, abled, cis, straight male main cast who went around hunting ‘monsters’. Not a big fan of the Always Evil trope anyway, and when you throw in the lack of diversity... yeah.

15. Unpopular opinion about the manga/show?

Five may have gotten better storylines than Six, but Six is a better Doctor than Five. I find Six more engaging as a character. No offense to Five fans, he’s just not my type.

24. Would you recommend XXX to a friend? Why or why not?

Yes, to both Persona and Good Omens, because they are great fun and have interesting concepts and execution of such. However, I would include content warnings, both for actual content (Persona contains a lot of murder and suicide imagery, for instance) and for writing (for instance, regardless of whether you think Naoto is GNC or trans, the treatment of them as a person questioning their gender identity and presentation was awful - ‘you got girl parts, therefore you’re a girl, and the way to accept yourself is to become a girl even if it makes you hideously uncomfortable!’ - and whilst Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman have both demonstrated sensitivity to queer issues, the book of Good Omens was very obviously written in the late 80s.)

I mean, I’d give suitable content warnings for anything I’d recommend, but those two have pretty big writing issue caveats even though I love them.

#fancyfade

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queerhargreeves · 5 years

Text

Makes sense

nb Klaus and trans Diego are the only acceptable headcanons

here’s a lil self indulgent fic i wrote :’))

—————————————————————————-

It had been a few months since the Hargreeves had avoided the end of the world. At first they were all sort of shocked. Nothing felt quite real - nothing felt the same. They didn’t feel the same. They’ve been working together to regain some sort of normalcy in their lives. All seven of the siblings had their own unique “quirks”.

Luther was learning how to be an actual person without a mission. He spent 30 years aimlessly following orders and now that he has this newfound freedom, he’s working on trying to find his “thing”. Right now he’s experimenting with painting. He had spent about $1,500 of their fathers money on art supplies and his siblings fully supported that use of his money. Often times he’d end up painting the moon and the sights he saw while up there.

As time progressed Diego’s stutter started to reappear and not just when he was emotional. He would wake up every morning and say the same line to the reflection.

“My name is Diego Hargreeves and I am here.” That line became his new mantra. He affirmed his existence every morning while seeing where his brain and his body lined up that day. Sometimes it wouldn’t come out of his mouth as clean as he’d want. Sometimes it wouldn’t come out at all. During those times he signed for the day. Klaus and Diego had learned the basics as kids. They would sneak in the library and find the ASL books and cram as much information as they could in their heads before they got kicked out of the room. Klaus wanted Diego to know there was more than one way to communicate; he wanted him to know that he could express himself without words. Diego had been busying himself in boxing once more. Him and Luther turned one of the rooms downstairs into their own personal gym. He found it to be a good stress release even if he wasn’t living at the boxing rink anymore. He was still competing and his family came to every event to cheer him on.

Allison may have lost her voice but she didn’t lose her passion for acting. She’s been interpreting for shows and musicals. She even auditioned for Deaf West Sprint Awakening with the encouragement of the other six Hargreeves of course. Vanya was not the most fluent in ASL. She wanted to help her sister with rehearsing and also wanted become more fluent herself. She felt like Allison deserved at least that much. The two sisters spent many nights together rehearsing the lines, making sure she was as good as she could be. She got the role. And Vanya is playing in the pit with her. Allisons siblings made sure she didn’t lose that part of herself.

Klaus, newly sober and doing well, painted his nails weekly and has started experimenting with makeup. He had bought just about every palette he could get his hands on and everyday he would look like a different person. The siblings always made sure to comment on the look of the day. Even Luther was able to tell he was improving. They spent too long not taking Klaus seriously that the least they could do was give him the affirmations he deserves. And every week he’d have a new nail color; this weeks being hot pink. He had his “weekly appointments” with Allison that involved gummy worms, soap operas, and nail polish.

Five made sure to make a marshmallow and peanut butter sandwich every morning for breakfast with a hot cup of coffee. He often read the newspaper and usually Ben was the only one up early enough to join him. The 13 year old body had been touch deprived for 45 years and the 20 year old had been unable to get in contact with anyone for 10 years. Ben and Five always made sure they had company within each other in the mornings.

Ben was able to be physically present for about 12 hours of the day. Klaus and Ben has been training hard so they could have their brother in their life again. All Ben wanted to do was spend time with his family. He helped Luther pick out the brands of paints he should from his research of art. He also made sure to research the best, non problematic makeup brands for Klaus to buy from. He even accompanied Vanya’s students on piano as he was an avid player until the day he died. If he wasn’t physically doing things with his family, he would be reading with them.

Even after all that happened Vanya is still playing violin. She’s not currently in school as she’s already a grad student. She doesn’t have any intentions on getting her masters in violin performance. She’s content teaching kids at home. Her family has made it a big thing: Grace always made sure the children had plenty of “brain food”. Allison helped turn one of the many bedrooms into a studio with creative design rightfully going to Klaus (or more so he insisted).

However one thing that Klaus didn’t expect to happen was the euphoria he started to feel. Not only was his family actually acting like a family, but he was able to actually discover who he is. His brain has finally been given a break. He’s able to have clear, cognitive thoughts that were entirely his own without the cloudiness or influence of any substance. This was the first time he was able to do so in 17 years.

Since he started playing with makeup he realized something. He wasn’t sure if he was really a “he” at all. Klaus knew he wasn’t a girl like Allison or Vanya are. But he knew he wasn’t a man like Diego or Luther.

Klaus learned about the difference between gender and sex after a long talk with Ben. Ben had found his sibling staring at their reflection in front of the, noticing the way they eyed every centimeter of their body with confusion one night. They had on black overalls with a black and white crop top underneath and their buckled booties on. They had a simple makeup look: just winged eyeliner and a red lip. They had grown out their curls long enough to where it touched their shoulders however they had it tied up in a bun.

“I just...i don’t feel like a guy.” Klaus finally let out after he noticed Ben’s gentle presence.

“That’s okay.”

“But I don’t feel like a girl.” They shifted, looking away from their reflection and staring at Ben’s. They weren’t sure what they were saying this out loud for but Ben has been their clarity filter for quite a few years now. He always knew what to say.

Ben came up right behind Klaus and peaked his head over his shoulder. Although they were taller than Ben, Klaus had never felt so small.

“Tell me what you’re thinking. What are you seeing?” Ben asked softly, putting his hand on the small of Klaus’ back for support.

They blinked at the question. They weren’t too sure how to answer that.

“I uh,” they paused and tugged at one of their sleeves and pulled it down, “I see a lanky person who doesn’t look like anything.”

Ben nodded and waved his hand as a sign to make them elaborate.

“I think I’m...I’m not anything? I’m just Klaus.”

“And just Klaus is good enough for me. Good enough for all of us. Have you considered that you may be nonbinary?” Ben spun their sibling around so they were now facing each other.

“Non-binary...?” Klaus’ voice tapered at the end. They had never heard of such a thing.

“From what I’ve read, nonbinary people are individuals who don’t identify as male or female. They don’t fit within either binary. They simply exist as a person regardless of the binary genders assumed of people. Some go by they/them pronouns,” Ben explained, “so like ‘oh that’s Jay’s jacket. They must have left it here when they went home’. It’s completely grammatically correct. Others are comfortable with he/she pronouns. Or all of the above! It all depends on the person. This identity fits under the trans umbrella which a lot of people don’t realize.” Ben found himself rambling which he usually did when educating someone about a subject. Even if he didn’t know the most about a topic he always appreciated when anyone would listen to him.

“You can do that? You can...you can actually live like that?” They were in shock. Everything Ben had just said felt like it came right from their brain as if he had peaked inside their head at their most intimate inner thoughts about themself.

“Absolutely.” Ben put his hand on their shoulder and gave it a light squeeze. Klaus’ eyes started to sting as they started to tear up. They immediately wrapped the shorter man into a hug, careful not to get makeup on his hoodie.

“Thank you. I think...I think that’s it. I’m nonbinary.” Klaus took a step back and wiped a tear from their eyes, looking up as they did so to not mess up their eyeliner.

“What pronouns are you comfortable with?” Ben inquired with a grin on his face. He loved seeing his sibling this happy.

“I...want to try they/them.” They stated, “if...if that’s okay.” Their head always made them feel like they were asking too much of people. They didn’t want to add any unnecessary stress to their siblings lives, not anymore.

“Of course it is, Klaus. Should we tell the others?” Ben nodded towards the door. “There’s absolutely no rush though.” He added, not wanting to make them feel like they had to announce their identity to the world.

“No yeah, I’d like to. I want to be 100% me to everyone.” Klaus agreed, a grin forming on their face.

“Alrighty then, family meeting time!” Ben marched to the door like a soldier which caused Klaus to bark out a laugh.

“Yeah okay buddy.” They rolled their eyes and followed suit.

They didn’t think they’d ever have to come out again. To say they weren’t scared would be a lie but they knew the could do this. Ben was on their side after all.

Ben grabbed Klaus’ bell on the way out and rang it through the halls.

“Non emergency family meeting people! Let’s go let’s go let’s goooo~” Ben chanted as each of their respective doors opened.

“Okay c-cool it with the bell, Ben. We heard it the first th-th-thousand rings.” Diego yanked the bell from his hand and ruffled his brothers hair.

“Fair enough. But you know I always need to make an entrance now.” Ben laughed as they seven of them seated themselves in the living room.

Ben walked up to the front with Klaus basically attached at his hip. It wasn’t unusual to find the two of them this close but they way Klaus was closing in on themself worried the family.

“What’s this about? I know you said nonemergency but,” Luther gestured to Klaus, “is this about-“

“Did you relapse, Klaus?” Five interrupted. He didn’t sound mad or accusatory, just concerned. His brows were furrowed and he was twirling his fingers in his lap.

“What, no? God no, don’t worry. I’m okay.” Klaus reassured their family as they waved their hands in front of them.

The rest of them immediately relaxed and all shared glances.

“What is this about then?” Allison signed carefully.

“I wanted to tell you guys I’m. Uh,” Ben gave them a nudge and a nod, reassuring them they can do this.

“I’m nonbinary.” They blurted in one breath. Their eyes were wide and he was frantically looking at each of them awaiting their reaction.

“I’m not familiar? What is this term. Nonbinary?” Five asked and leaned forward, ready to listen.

“It’s um, well, Ben knows more about this then I do but basically I don’t identify as a man. Or woman. I’ve never felt like either so...” Klaus trailed off

“Well I can’t really say that’s a far fetched concept to wrap my head around. You’ve always just been Klaus so this makes sense.” Luther pondered aloud almost like he was talking to himself.

Allison nodded. “I love you no matter what Klaus.” She signed and gave him a big smile.

Klaus signed thank you, feeling themself already getting emotional again.

“I could’ve told you that, K-Klaus. Is that name ok-okay still?” Diego asked and signed.

“Mmhmm! And I don’t think I really like he/him pronouns. They make me all,” they waved their hands in a dramatic motion and made a “ufjsjfjs” sound

“Dysphoric?” Diego finger spelled, knowing all too well what that felt like.

Klaus took a sharp inhale and snapped their fingers.

“Yes! Yes that’s it. It makes me uncomfy.”

“Now there’s two trans people in the family, one ace, five queer, and only one cis straight.” Vanya giggled and pointed at Luther at the last bit which earned the roll of his eyes.

“I’m the minority now.” He retorted in a fake ‘hurt’ voice and pointed at himself.

“It gets better.” Allison signed next to him and pat his shoulder.

The entire family bust out laughing, the quiet house filled being filled with their joy.

“Thank you for trusting us with this, Klaus.” Five stood up and walked over to his sibling and stopped right in front of them and turned around expectantly.

“Family hug time!” Vanya exclaimed and jumped right up. She attacked her sibling with a hug and the rest got up to do the same.

“Who ever would’ve thought it would take the end of the world for the Hargreeves to finally develop communication skills.” Ben’s voice was muffled in the middle of the 7 bodies but everyone heard him clearly.

“Let’s go shopping, yeah? I want to blow more of father dearests money on some new dresses. The ones I have are a bit dated.” Klaus suggested as they tried to wrangle themself out of the hug to go fix their makeup.

Everyone broke apart and watched their sibling dash up the stairs before giving anyone a chance to respond. Guess they were going to the mall.

But they would be going together. Even if that meant spending an hour in and out of the changing rooms as Klaus put on their own fashion show. They all enjoyed their time together nonetheless.

#ben is the best brother #klaus hargreeves #the umbrella academy #trans diego #diego hargreeves #ASL #ben hargreeves #allison hargreeves #nonbinary klaus #nb klaus #number five #vanya hargreeves #luther hargreeves

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