#i want to be feminine and boyish in the way trans women are | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hazel2468 · 1 year

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Ok also I just gotta...

I see people being like "trans men/transmascs aren't oppressed, people see them as butch lesbians or tomboys! They get a free pass!" and I KNOW I've said this before but like...

In what fucking WORLD. Do you LIVE. Where being a butch woman or a tomboy is a "free pass"?

I spent most of my life as a cis girl and woman. I spent my ENTIRE childhood as a self-described tomboy.

I also spent my entire childhood being fucking TORMENTED for being too "boyish" to "not like a girl". For the most basic innocent things like, to name a few, liking Pokemon, liking ninjas, for wanting to be fucking JANE from Tarzan because she was apparently not REALLY a princess because she wasn't girly enough (Which, I will admit, in hindsight makes me cackle because holy shit). I was picked on by boys and girls, peers and adults alike. My fellow students would physically and verbally harass me. The adults who express "concern" about me not fitting in with the girls enough and ignore the bullying even when it was directly brought up. Anyone who dared to be my friend, regardless of their gender, was tormented for being friends with "a lesbian" and "a tomboy" and, on a few occasions, "a dyke" (a word I didn't know back then).

And when I hit high school? And I started leaning into femininity, in part because I did like it but undeniably because it was what was expected of me if I wanted to take part in the social activities and dating life that everyone else was? The torment turned fucking sexual. Guys would hit on me in the GROSSEST of ways and tell me I should be glad because, as a dyke, I should want to PROVE that I was straight. Girls tortured me in the locker room and tried, on several occasions, to kick me into the guy's locker room because "that's where lesbians should change". Bear in mind that, at the time, I was 100% cis and I was so far in the closet even I had no fucking idea I was queer.

So forgive me if, when I see these fucking transphobes (because that's what you are, when you talk about trans men and transmascs like this) going off about how "afabs" get a "pass" and we aren't "as oppressed" because "no one has an issue with masculine women" it makes me just a little absolutely fucking livid.

#transandrophobia #transphobia #queerphobia #like people who say this come off as ignorant morons as best #and malicious cocknuggets at worst who just hate transsmascs

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whitehairedanimeboyfriend · 4 months

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Trans men DONT pass easier though. That's a myth. The majority of trans men are not hyper masculine bears with beards.

yeah that's my point. the problem is that a lot of people who know popular trans men on the internet only know of the rare ones that do pass very well, because they're the only ones seen as their gender being legitimate. Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but in my experience, in queer and progressive spaces, the bar for a trans man being seen as a man is set much higher than the bar for a trans woman being seen as a woman.

I want to believe in good faith it's because it's a lot more socially acceptable for women to be masculine than it is for men to be feminine. So a lot of people will see

someone reads as afab + has short boyish hair, no makeup, baggy clothes, etc = tomboy or butch

someone reads as amab + has long feminine hair, makeup, dresses, etc = this person is clearly trying to be seen as a woman and therefore is a woman that's the only explanation

it's not passing per se but it's a lot easier for trans women to telegraph that they're women. But basically the only way for a trans man to telegraph that we are men is if we look amab. The only people I know that never misgender me are the ones that didn't realize I was trans. (and I don't know how that happened because I do not pass.)

#transandrophobia

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aimlesswalker · 1 year

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I just want to be some guy

As a trans man, I don’t really feel like I belong anywhere in the lgbt+ community because I’ll never be attractive to anyone (which is why I ID as queer but even then I feel outcast) and it…. it really hurts sometimes. I’m simultaneously too masculine and not masculine enough.

in the men who are attracted to men spaces, most people when they see me think I’m a twink because of being short/small and/or for being trans/nonbinary. They think I’m hairless, feminine, boyish, submissive, etc. I’m…. at this point in my life I am really really not. Testosterone has made me male and everything that entails. I’ve gained (healthy! good for me!) weight and my stomach sticks out, I’m covered in body hair, I am partway to balding. All the things that are conventionally unattractive about men. All the things that are demonized in trans men. I’m too masculine to fit their idea of a nonbinary person. But masculine in “the wrong way”. I have to either be muscular/fit or small and hairless to be wanted here. I don’t even count as a bear, you’d probably just call my shape a “dad bod”. This isn’t just some vague feeling I get in these spaces- people have legit said to me “oh I love twinks” or “oh I love femboys” and I have to awkwardly explain that no I’m not one actually. I’m not what they want me to be. And I’m really tired of people placing that expectation on me- that I’m a slender hairless twink who is submissive and likes bottoming. Just because I’m small and/or trans. so gross.

and then in the women who are attracted to men spaces well… they’d never look twice at me. I’m short and not at all muscular/toned/fit. Again, I have gained weight, am hairy, and halfway to bald. Bedsides not being conventionally attractive- they usually want a man who can “provide”. I am disabled and can’t work. I can’t drive. I can’t give them flowers or pick them up for a date. I can’t be any of the things they’re looking for in a partner. Being disabled makes me seen as “less than”. Being dependent on other people is a trait that is endlessly mocked in men. I’m not masculine enough.

so where the fuck does that leave me? I’m not even going to talk about how being aromantic in queer spaces alienates me further. I love testosterone, I love what it’s done for me and how I feel healthier on it. But like. fuck. I don’t feel like I’m ever going to be attractive to anyone. I never get to feel pretty or handsome. I never get to feel happy about my appearance anymore and that makes me so sad. I used to derive so much joy from picking out outfits and accessorizing and applying glittery make up. I’m too sick to leave the house ever so I don’t do those things anymore, besides the fact that I *can’t* present feminine anymore without risking my safety. People would assume I’m a trans woman and act accordingly because they see a man attempting to be feminine. I am fully man and fully nonbinary, but I never get to exist as both at the same time. I can’t be feminine without people invalidating/forgetting my manhood. I can’t be masculine without people invalidating/forgetting my nonbinary-ness. I’m too masculine for nonbinary spaces and too nonbinary for masculine spaces. I just…….. I get incredibly sad about this.

And people generally don’t care??? the sentiment seems to be that trans men who are masculine, who pass, who are stealth, etc don’t belong in the lgbt+ community, shouldn’t be in lgbt+ or queer spaces. They’re not wanted there because of being masculine. These spaces are only for “non-men”. But the second you talk about your struggles as a trans man as a reason for why you should be included, you get pegged as an owo twink femboy to most people. It’s always one or the other (demonized or infantilized) and I’m really fucking sick of it. It hurts. I just want to be some guy.

#transmisandry #transandrophobia #trans masc #nonbinary #trans male #transgender #disability #fey talks #idk how to tag this at all #i hope this will resonate with some people #i've completely given up dating at this point although i dont want to #i just dont have the energy to sift through 99% of the people who want nothing to do with someone like me #I dont feel like I have any community at this point in time even in online spaces #i dont feel like I fit in anywhere and it is incredibly isolating #i wish i could see myself as handsome or attractive in any capacity #can we please stop shaming men for being bald and hairy #can we please stop infantilizing disabled men #can we please stop calling all trans men twinks or femboys solely bc they are trans #sometimes i want to stop T just to be accepted again #but i cant i need the T for my health issues #does being both man and nonbinary at the same time make me multigender?

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baeddel · 1 year

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is boymoding crossdressing? many such questions

it's interesting right? because in one respect i want to say, as a woman, when i wear female clothes, it is obviously not crossdressing. however, if you insist on this most of the uses of the term 'crossdressing' that have ever been said become impossible to understand. these are perhaps no more than two observations of the same phenomenon: the shallow, abstract, somewhat fictional system of gender which we learn and the deeply acquired sense of gender which often disagrees with how things should be. since i'm thinking about language all the time recently i want to make an analogy on that basis, perhaps between grammar and acquired language—after all most native speakers think they speak their own language a bit wrong and will often say, 'i say x, but you're supposed to say y...' we are capable of accomodating multiple points of view in this way.

and trans-, as in transgender, means exactly the same thing as cross-, as in crossdressing, anyway.

however isn't there something about 'going back', backpassing, using your deadname, and so forth, which feels very like a kind of crossdressing? once i settled on calling myself a trans woman i stopped doing a lot of things i used to do—wearing a lot of makeup and jewellery for example—even when i was not hiding who i was for safety reasons, because they no longer had any satisfaction for me. because i had to recloset in real life i stopped wearing my female clothes, and i had male clothes that i wore unhappily. but i then acquired a special, third set of clothes, which i would wear only in situations which were (to use what is i suppose now medical terminology) gender-affirming, such as calls with my trans friends, which were also menswear, for the reason that i was trying to do more of a masc or butch presentation. now i don't really do that, but it's something that i feel became quite common throughout the 2010s up to now, and i wonder if or how it existed previously, at least it seems common online, which is that transfems, when around other transfems, want to appear more boyish or masculine, and passing is not interesting and might even be a bit shameful. especially among girls who are my age and have been in the scene for a while. and which you might interpret as a kind of specifically in-group form of crossdressing proper to a situation where camabs wearing women's clothing is expected rather than surprising. i have known some trans men who look and behave femininely for similar reasons but i don't know enough to say it's the same phenomena. anyway it reminds me of something that Jackson Crawford, an Old Norse youtuber guy, talked about, which is that where he lives in the South in the US when he was younger you would have to take off your stetson hat when you went in a diner because that was the decorum, and if you were sitting in a diner with your hat on it was seen as extremely rude. but today if you go in a diner guys like that are all wearing their stetson hats, and he says it's because there's a change in the signficiance of the hat, and what became most important was signalling your group affiliation to the out-group rather than the in-group signalling of your knowledge of proper decorum. well maybe there is something like that, we have developed at least in some contexts a situation where in-group signalling is more important, because when you were younger the kind of expectations you were chafing against were enforced by mom and dad, while today they are enforced by WPATH.

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oofensteinsmonster · 5 months

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Detransitioning.

First and foremost I want to address the transphobic people/right wing/terfs in the room and say this isn't for you. You are not allowed to take my story and use it to deny gender affirming care to trans folk. If anything I want it ABUNDANTLY clear that my access to both hormones and spaces to explore my identity is what rooted my self esteem and made me who I am today, even if my identity looks different than it did a year ago, and I have absolutely no regrets about the decisions I made for my body. I was informed of the process every step of the way, I did all of my research, I knew exactly what was going to happen. Kapeesh?

Kaposh.

With that out of the way.

I will be referring to my genders in the third person when I feel it is relevant to alluding to how the situations made me feel. I do not have multiple personalities, but the following situations did cause me to disassociate from aspects of myself.

My experience with my gender has always been at odds. I grew up without a positive and consistent mother figure in a misogynistic southern state, and the male figures in my life were turbulent and terrifying. This mattered to me as someone who mirrors what they see in order to understand the behavior. My friends before I became a teenager were mostly boys because I enjoyed rough housing, games, and exploring the neighborhood. When the adults started separating my age group by sex I had a hard time relating to the girls in my age group who were already flirting with the boys and trying on make up. It wasn't that I didn't like boys (or girls for that matter), quite the opposite, and it wasn't that I didn't like make up or clothes or traditionally feminine things, it's just that I didn't have a lot of experience with that stuff and when I did try it out I was laughed at because I wasn't allowed to be feminine at that point, but because I was a girl I also wasn't allowed to be masculine.

If I played with dolls I was called a sissy, and if I built forts with the guys and wore traditionally boyish clothes I was called a gay slur by my father, or by the older neighborhood boys…and eventually by my friends as well.

There wasn't a safe place for me to retreat into as far as identity went, every outfit felt alien, and eventually I fell into being reclusive and kept to myself.

When I entered my 20s and moved to Texas I was introduced to the idea of different gender identities and it felt right.

I was able to experiment, and for the first time I had positive feedback. I could be feminine, I could be masculine, I could be both and neither. It was liberating and for most of the decade, while I had considered physical changes, like hrt, I was mostly content with where I was and who I was.

This was until my last relationship.

For the sake of the story let's call him Red. Red came into my life at a time that I desired a more assertive lover, and because I am also kinky, I needed a Dominate. This is just my prefered dynamic, I don't buy into that alpha male “all women/femmes need to be subjugated” bullshit, it's a kink that happens to coexist with my more docile and domestic nature, but I can and will still put on my own pair of boots and be a boss bitch when the situation calls for it you feel me? Great. I also want to mention that other than this situation I've had nothing but great experiences in the kink community and am not trying to blame kink on my trauma in any way, shape, or form. It is a community founded on consent, and the people that ignore that are ignoring what makes said community what it is and what it stands for.

Carrying on.

Red started off being everything I thought I needed. I mistook tolerance as acceptance and celebration because I wanted so badly for everything he fed me to be true. He was my “twin flame” *vomit* my Sir, my Master, he saw what he thought I needed and he gave it to me.

At a price….always….at a price.

Without going too much into detail, because I still have a lot of process and heal on that front, he took my feminine side …and used her well past the point of my consent. She was raped in every sense of the word. Abused. Objectified. My traits were no longer my own, they were simply a fetish. I wasn't beautiful anymore, I was “sexy”. My name that I had fashioned for myself for 10 years was discarded for one that he gave me, which in D/s is fine, except he'd only use my real one when he was upset or angry. I was no longer myself, I was what he wanted me to be, and because of that and because of never being given time or space to come back into myself I eventually completely detached from my femininity. I buried her far beneath where I thought he couldn't find her just to keep her safe.

But I still had my masculine side, who

…did not embody my rage and grief but rather helped me juggle them. He held them when I was tired of carrying them around, and when the time came he helped me stand my ground when I finally got rid of Red and his influence in my life.

It was easy for me to assume that this was my true form, and because I'd always batted around the idea of hormones, I decided to try them out. It was a low dose, because in my state of mind I understood that diving in head first was not the wisest decision ( FOR ME…you hear me terfs? F o r. m e. ) I started going by a different name, I cut my hair (note: Korean boy band hair not my best look ) I put away all my dresses ( in my car, just in case ) ( clothes don't have a gender but this was my process ) and that's what I embodied for 7 months.

And I had a wonderful experience with it! My support structure was unmatched, my household never struggled with addressing me by what I wanted to be addressed by, my friends were super supportive the whole journey, my assigned Doctor was extremely clear and concise and never once did anyone make me feel “less than”. It was part of me I needed to pay attention to and explore, even without the trauma that led me there I still think I would have ended up wanting to experiment the way that I did. My masculinity became a place to rest, he said to me “ Let me take it from here for a while. Heal. “ and I will always be thankful for that.

It wasn't until after I finished grieving the break up that I realized I might not be a man. Plus, the changes to my body weren't feeling as at home as I wanted them to. More on that later. So I stopped using the gel for a little while just to see how I felt…and I never picked it back up.

Eventually the parts of me started gravitating back together, and while they don't fit the same way they used to, they are at home within me for the first time in years.

And if I hadn't had the freedom to discover that for myself…if my access to gender affirming health care had been denied or I had been shamed, or put on some kind of fucking registry like Ken Paxton was trying to collect ( fuck that guy ) or thrown into some kind of conversation therapy, I'd still be lost. I'd be so much worse off than I am.

People who detransition make up less than 1% of trangender folks. I am the only person I know that has ever decided to stop. I am the only person I know whose decisions were swayed more-so by personal traumas rather than a sense of long standing identity. I didn't have a sense of identity. And maybe if gender roles hadn't been so strictly enforced/contradictory when I was a child, maybe if I had been celebrated in my curiosity and my fluidity I would have gotten here a lot sooner. Which isn't to say that I am in any way resentful of having gotten here a little later than most.

So if you were wondering if I regret it, the answer is no.

This next segment is to answer any potential questions about the physical changes I experienced while on Tgel, how they made me feel, and how my body detransitioned after I stopped using it.

Note that every single body is different, so what I went through is not going to look the same for someone else.

Skin: As an autistic with sensory issues, while I knew my skin was going to change…it did not change the fact that I hated how itchy everything suddenly was. Your skin becomes more rough with T, and hairy. I never really experienced acne just because my genetics are pretty good on that front, but I did get significant leg hair growth. This did not go away when I stopped taking T, which I expected. But that's ok because it's just hair and I just needed to get a more durable razor. Big whoop.

Also I did have some very hard to notice fuzz under my chin, but that kind of went away. Along with the roughness.

Voice changes: I actually love my voice now. It was a few octaves higher before T, and I feel like it's more bodied and lovely. Not masculine, more androgynous. It didn't go back to normal, and I'm perfectly happy with that.

Bottom growth (tmi warning): I don't care about sharing this information so long as you don't ask for pictures you weirdos. But I started off with a teeeeeeeeny tiny little clit even in comparison to others. So now it's just kind of an average size, and hey I have better orgasms now. Win/win.

Body temperature: before T I was cold natured, and now I'm hot natured. That hasn't changed yet, and I'm not sure if it's going to. I feel pretty neutral about it at least until I try cuddling someone with the same body heat as me in which case *I hate it*.

Periods: still haven't had mine since I stopped which… I probably need to go see what's going on about that but from what I gathered it does sometimes take the better part of a year to restart the menstrual cycle. I'm not in a hurry, though. That was one of the perks of being on T, instantly stopped my period.

Will check back in if there's any issues on that front, however I will say that I have pcos which causes unpredictable cycles to begin with so, again, my body is different.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask, I'm posting this publicly because I want more awareness about detransitioning and debunking a lot of what I feel is being weaponized against the transgender community regarding it.

I will not react or respond to bigotry or hatred, I will delete any fetishizing of my identity or my body, I want this corner of the internet to remain safe.

Wrap up:

Remember that no matter how many changes you experience in life, you are just as valid today as you were yesterday and will be tomorrow. Nobody can tell you who you are, or who you're not.

Whatever you're doing, so long as it isn't hurting anyone or yourself, you're doing it perfectly. 🥰

Be well my loves,

Theo (She/they/ and sometimes it)

#transgender #lgbtqia #ftm detransition #detrans ftm

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merkleymrack · 7 months

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i haven't been vulnerable on tumblr in a while because i'm an adult and i'm not supposed to do that ... i guess ... and now i have a lot of friends to talk to about the things that bother me. but still. there's some things i want to get off my chest and maybe someone can relate.

being genderfluid & transmasc is so very lonely. i'm lucky to have supportive friends and people to date and hook up with but still i feel like i haven't truly "come out". i've had a few phases of trying to "embrace my womanhood" and it never really felt right. all my friends know my identity, i tell other queer people. but i'm sort of closeted to the world, i move through it generally as a cis person would. it's easier on me and i already have a hard time with very serious anxiety issues but on the other hand i sometimes disgust myself. i act the way i think other people would expect me to. i don't really know how to act more like myself without people thinking i'm rude and withdrawn. i don't know if that's an autism thing or a trans thing or just that women are expected to be highly social and accommodating and sweet all the time. i'm not like that all the time. and for some reason i feel like killing myself when someone thinks i'm being standoffish. i struggle with being warm and friendly, i can do it, i sometimes do it quite well, but not always and it doesn't really come naturally a lot of the time. it doesn't help that i often feel anxious and that makes me tense up and just kind of go on autopilot. maybe this is only really an issue around people i probably just don't feel comfortable with.

i know i look very feminine because of my natural features, i've tried having short hair but i feel like it doesn't really suit me and it makes me look "boyish" and i'm not really into that. i like having long hair, i want to get more comfortable being warm and affectionate, i like being flamboyant and faggy and silly and cringey. i like wearing a binder but it feels confronting, because again, i'm kind of closeted to the world. i wonder if anyone will perceive me as androgynous if i go on hrt, i wonder if my hairline will change because there's a lot of early onset male pattern baldness in my family on both sides. i wonder if it will make me feel ugly. i wonder how long i will manage to stay on hrt, because i don't want to stay on it for the rest of my life. i don't really want to be "a man", at least not in this life, i would like to be somebody's man, but most men will never accept me into their ranks, and i will never be the right type of man for most people. i know that whatever my parents have to say about it will break my heart. i know my friends will be there to support me.

in the end i don't think i will even look that different, or be that different. i've been myself most of the time but i am trying to be less self-conscious about it. maybe my voice will sound more like me and i will mumble less. i think by the time i'm 30 or 35 all of this will matter much less. i think i will make it to 35 and i'll be really happy i stuck it out. maybe i'll be single. maybe i'll look at my body and think i was really stupid for having so many hangups over it when i was 23, and then when i get older i'll just keep thinking about how stupid i was when i was young, but i won't be bitter about it, that's just how life goes. maybe one day someone will tell me they love my voice or my confidence or the way i smell or the feel of my bicep or the way i cook or the way i walk or the way i laugh and i'll be really grateful to my younger self for making the hard choice to keep looking after myself day after day. i think i should be more grateful to my younger self for refusing to give up.

i'm sometimes shocked when people tell me about things i said or did years ago, i forget how ballsy i was, i have a tendency to see that part of myself in a negative light, but the people who like it really like it. i was trying to fight my own sense of shame, trying to lay claim to my sexuality and have some kind of ownership over my experiences. i didn't want sex to just happen to me. i wanted to be an active participant and outspoken about my desire. i still feel that way, i still act that way to some extent, but i'm trying to confront the desperation i feel. i'm trying to recast this side of me in a new more adult more mature form, i don't really know how. it's hard, i suppose i got myself to act that way because i thought "what do i have to lose?" but now... well i do have something to lose. i don't want to lose my sense of self or my peace of mind. my time, energy and feelings are valuable, just like anyone else's. i'm trying to make healthy choices.

i've always had a tendency to be compulsive in my desires, not just with sex or love, with everything i want, i get fixated. there is something so intoxicating about fixating on something and then finally getting it, it makes life simple: either you have or you don't have. even the anticipation is fun, sometimes even more enjoyable than actually getting my way. i feel this way not only about sex sometimes, but sometimes about receiving things in the mail that i ordered online. is this way too vulnerable? i swear my relationship with sex is generally healthy but i am just incredibly neurotic on all levels. and it's all coming full circle too: not only does it feel impossible to be chill about sex when it can potentially lead to disease or pregnancy, it's doubly impossible when it's one of the few ways i can feel fully affirmed in my gender expression. there, i said it, i like having a penis. it'll only ever be a fake one but i made it a part of my being at a pretty young age. and now what? maybe wearing a packer would fix me (i'm kidding!). i even tried out the whole femdom thing, as in, maybe i'm just a weird girl who likes pegging, that would be okay right? not only would it be okay, it would be very easy to fetishise! but that isn't really it and we all know it. ("we" being me and everyone who is privy to my sex life, which is actually quite a few people at this point... ah shit.)

being myself is terrifying, but i'm going to keep trying because i've made it this far, and it has been far too enjoyable just to quit now. but i reserve my right to complain. that's all for now.

#transmasc #mine #long post

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curhartwrites · 1 year

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Cultivated Queerness

Much of the time, we consider gender as something individual and innate - something that is born in us, even if we don't discover it until later in our lives. When I began to realize that I'm trans-masculine, it was tempting to then look back on the previous years of my life and paint them with the wide brush of secret boyhood. It's true that hindsight is twenty-twenty, and of course there were signs (like my love of Peter Pan, and my textbook-transmasc insistence on carrying as many stacked chairs as I could), but I didn't navigate my childhood or early adolescence "pretending" to be a girl, and certainly not consciously. There were definitely times when being a girl felt like playing dress-up, but being a boy felt that way, too. All gender was dress-up to me when I was younger. Sometimes it still is. Figuring out who I am is largely a process of rummaging through a big box of things that other people have left behind in my life, trying to find what feels good and what doesn't. My experience of gender now, as an adult nonbinary trans person whose gender weathervane spins most reliably toward the masculine, is still shaped and informed by the experience of girlhood - and in particular, southern-fried queer girlhood. Yes, some aspects of gender are inherent. Yes, there are people in the world who have always known. But gender is also cultural. We learn what gender is, what it looks like and how it speaks and walks, from the people around us. And during the time in my life when I thought that I would grow up to be a woman, my models for womanhood were deeply and subversively queer. My mother is queer, and her friends are the kinds of Appalachian butch women who spring fully formed from the wet clay ground at lakeside music festivals, cigarette in hand. They have buzz cuts and wear men's clothes. They rescue dogs, play guitar, keep rifles in their trucks, compete in chili cook-offs, and curse like sailors. They're loud and fat and strong, and their hands smell like tomato vines. I have loved these women as long as I have been alive. Those are the women who raised me, and my relationship to masculinity was shaped in part by their example. Their culture. Later, when I left my hometown and began to explore what it meant to be trans-masc, I began to drink in the warm, kinky leather-and-whisky brand of masculinity that is so historically holy to the realm of queer men. This, too, felt like something that belonged to me (or something to which I might belong). But there are overlaps and intersections between the world of trailer park dykes and the world of smoky-bearded bears. There's a common thread here of rebellion, power subversion, community-building, and intense loyalty. That common thread is the tightrope I am walking in my journey toward self actualization. It shifts. It changes shape, comes in waves, moves with the moon and the seasons. The rage in me is a woman's rage. The tenderness is boyish. I have in me the warring desires to be seen as a safe port in the storm for queer women, and to be welcomed with an arm around my shoulders into the Greek camaraderie of queer manhood. The other night I had a dream about giving birth (to the child of my trans-feminine wife, who is growing out her beard again right now and looks impossibly, ethereally beautiful). After a childhood spent running barefoot in back yards full of singing frogs while a coven of dykes sat around a fire close by, I still want these things: to carry a child and feed them from the wellspring of life that is my own body. To care for my home. To nurture. To be called "Momma," maybe. I don't know.

The love that I have since received from queer men who have welcomed me into their spaces and helped me to carve a home for myself has also shaped who I am. The physical freeness of queer masculinity has helped liberate me from much of the trauma that I have held in my body all my life. It reminds me, in a lot of ways, of the Good Ol' Boys I grew up with back home who stood around someone's fixer-upper chewing "backer," boys who loved their families and weren't afraid to hug each other or cry on one another's shoulders. Here is another overlap. Another common thread whose stitches hold together the disparate pieces of what I consider to be my Self. The leather boys in the alley are the redneck boys in the field. These experiences of gender, these bright impressions left on the insides of my eyelids that inform how I move through the world, were not there when I was born. They were given to me. They are gifts imparted by the people who have loved me into being. Treasures.

#transmasculine #nonbinary #southern queer #queer jews #butch #dykefag #personal

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k1201a · 2 years

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it’s never a matter of not “supporting femininity in men” but the truth is that wwx is not like that. if a character loves to doll up and crossdress and identify with traditionally girly stuff then by all means do whatever you want with them, apply as many feminine traits on them as you want and no one will say anything. but wwx is not. he’s boyish and thinks and behaves like a typical wuxia man archetype and he thinks of himself as the husband in many occasions and flirts and courts the way men traditionally do. these are all masculine-coded behaviors. he’s described as handsome, dashing, and he himself described himself as handsome. what is there to argue about? it’s all in the text! anon being so worked up over a character they’ve drastically altered speaks a lot about themselves and their reading comprehension more than anything else.

yup, wwx is peak classic wuxia aesthetic

cross dressing is a mainstay trope in period cnovel, it's liberally used in both wuxia targeted at men, BL and BG targeted at women. it's a very versatile device for disguise, identity intrigues, misunderstanding and comedy. if these people read jin yong, and see a part where a female character successfully disguises herself as a young man, they probly would think she's a trans or she's masculine 😂 it's just a thing that happens in the genre.....

if people want to support trans character, jin yong wrote a really famous one, Dongfang Bubai. It's just so obvious to me that it's not about support for trans characters or feminine men, these people just want lwj. I don't understand why it's so impossible for them to lust for lwj without using wwx's character and making him a woman.

feminine male character are so popular in cnovels, i don't understand why this is considered "woke" here. femboys are not just popular in BL and BG with the female audience, even male writers who write for dudebros write them. In the Novaland: Eagle Flag novel, the author described his protagonist as "looks a bit like a girl".

also, we mainly like feminine male characters for their physical attractiveness. hobbies such as using makeup is not a draw, makeup is not fun to read about when a female character does it, it's also not fun to read when a male character does it.

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a-confused-teen-venting · 1 year

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Quick question for any girls, trans guys or afab genderqueers with very short “boyish” hair:

Do I need to go to a barber to get a short haircut?

I’ve been trying to get a short boyish hairstyle for almost a year now, but all I ever go to are women hairdressers who give a feminine spin on it or don’t know how to properly give me the haircut I want.

Apart from that, I’ve been told by them that “I shouldn’t cut my hair short” and that “I look beautiful with long hair” which just makes me second guess how I’ll look with the hairstyle.

I’ve become more insecure about my hair not looking the way I wish it did, which end up turning into dysphoria breakdowns and getting impulsive thoughts of cutting it myself.

Any advise or help some of you can give me, I’ll greatly appreciate it!

#girls with short hair #genderqueer #trans ftm #lgbtq community #lgbt #lgbtqiia+#lgbtq #lgbt advice #short hair #lgbtpeople #literally anyone who can help me plz

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starlightrosari · 1 year

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I used to feel invalid for being nonbinary because of my lack of body dysphoria, but something I realized recently is that I do have dysphoria when I present ultra feminine, I just often forget I can have it because I’m so small that my body is already kind of agender in appearance. When I was a girl, I often found myself relating to trans women because I felt I had to work extra hard over other girls I’d see to pass as a beautiful woman, but now that I’m trying to look more masc leaning androgynous and identify as nonbinary, I find a similar struggle in looking masculine because my body isn’t particularly feminine or masculine. I have a chest, but it’s barely even A cup. And while my face isn’t super masculine, I can look like a boy pretty easily because of the shape of my face. In general my body is pretty pencil shaped without much to my figure. The most prominent things are my small hands, shoulders, short legs, and very small height. My voice even is naturally a bit deep (when I was young and identified as a girl I even would try to feminize my voice because I wanted to “pass” better). I do wish I were taller, but other than that it’s pretty easy to make myself look boyish, so I think it sort of makes sense that I don’t feel a need to transition because I already have a body that I’m comfortable with for the most part. I won’t feel invalid for something out of my control. The way I see it now is that I’m lucky for my trans body. If I had been developed more curvy or something, I might not feel this way, and then I probably would want to follow the standard transition pipeline. But right now, although it’s not the type of tall slender sexy androgynous male body I’d ideally want, I already essentially have a twink body and I accept that. I don’t feel I have to ID as less of a trans person for my lack of dysphoria, that rhetoric only confused me because actually as it turns out I don’t feel like a girl or a demigirl

#nonbinary #enby #lgbtq+#lgbtq #trans #transgender #transneutral #trans positivity #transmasc #demiboy

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blossoming-witness · 2 years

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Gyns, have you watched Prayers for the Stolen? It's on Netflix, go watch it.

This movie is the Mexican nominee for best foreign language movie at the Oscars, it has gained a lot of attention and recognition since it came out and it's an amazing movie. But also, I think it has an underlying differentialist point of view. It's open enough to interpretation to avoid the radfem tag (which is good in the age of cancel culture), but it very clearly recognizes the struggles of being born female regardless of gender identity.

The movie is about the women of a community, deep in the Mexican countryside, that is under constant threat of the narco. We see the older women dealing with their husbands, who abandoned their children, we see them finding murdered women on the streets and fearing for their daughters, and, very central to the movie, we see the mothers hiding their young daughters by dressing them as boys. The movie explores the confusion and sadness of these girls having to hide their sex, which feels to them like having to hide their whole identity. But to their mothers, the fear of warlords finding them is much greater... Because they know that young women are taken, raped and murdered in that world. Hiding them as boys is the only way to keep them safe.

The movie is never preachy about the gender and sex dynamics of the community, it even has a documentary approach where the scenes are shown without a strong narrative connection. But the struggles these girls face are clearly the result of their sex and not their gender presentation. Even so, I think there is space for an interpretation where the girls' feelings of discomfort with presenting as a gender they don't identify with can be seen as reciprocal to the feelings of dysphoria of trans people. I don't think the movie denies (or even cares much about) trans life experiences, but it does make a clear statement of the fears of being born female. Any of the girls in the movie could actually identify as a boy (the three characters we follow don't), feel comfortable with her short hair and boyish clothes and would still be in danger of being taken. But the movie doesn't really care about this perspective, even though it would be a valid variation of the same issue, because in general LGBT people in the Mexican countryside face their own kind of dangers. Instead, the movie focuses on the development of puberty in women, both on a physical level and in a social one, and how girls start growing up in complete innocence, playing around with their femininity, wearing lipstick, starting to have crushes and wanting to be liked by them, and not understanding what it is that adults mean when they say that a girl was "taken".

The movie is amazing, and is incredibly sad, but I really recommend it to all of you.

#my posts #radfem #feminismo radical #feminism #radical feminism #feminismo mexico #Noche de fuego #prayers for the stolen

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farlynthordens · 3 years

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Is Gen gay-coded or just an entertainer? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ random thoughts/observations about his speech in Japanese

Warnings: LONG. mentions of gendered language and homophobic characterizations

The concept of “role language” is super important in Japanese fiction, because how a character talks can tell you a lot about their personality. Unfortunately, it’s often lost in translation because languages like English don’t have the ability to play around with formality levels, pronouns, etc as much.

Ever since I first watched the dcst anime like a year and a half ago, I’ve had no idea if Gen is intended to be the “gay friend” character or just the “quirky famous guy,” or maybe both? I figured that writing out my thoughts might be interesting for some people! Take everything with a grain of salt tho since I’m not a native speaker

1. Backwards speech

I want to first cover backwards speech (localized as pig latin in the English manga) because this used to confuse the fuck out of me. It felt like a quirky teen thing or internet slang, but it’s actually [zuuja-go] (“jazz” written backwards + “language”) which originated in the 40s-50s.

It was revived primarily by male TV stars and comedians in the 80s-90s, and to this day zuuja-go is regarded as a type of [entertainment industry-specific language]. However, it’s hardly used anymore. It’s kinda weird then that Gen, who’s too young to have lived in the revival period, would use zuuja-go, but my guess is that it’s a funny and somewhat original way to show his “popular entertainer” background. I personally don’t know any other characters who use it as regularly.

2. Choice of pronoun + speech patterns

Gen ends nearly every sentence with ~ne, ~yo ne, ~yo, or ~sa, or otherwise no particle at all. Questions almost never have an ending emphasis particle, putting the rise in intonation on the final word (the standard is to end with ~ka, ~no ka, etc). He also always contracts the verb ending ~te shimau into ~chau/jau (Senku always uses the contracted form too, but a more boyish derivative (chimau). It probably sounds crazy but trust me). There’s more I could list, but these are the most notable points lol

This kind of speech pattern is associated with teen girls/young women, so when it’s applied to a perceived male character, it’s used to indicate that they’re an “effeminate man”. In most cases, “effeminate” = gay/trans (yeah it’s shitty and outdated thinking). It’s also been applied to male characters who are idols or internet stars, possibly as a dig at their masculinity or making fun of their attempt to appeal to female audiences.

One example of the latter is Pyotr from Carole & Tuesday, who’s their universe’s equivalent of an Instagram celebrity. His sentence structure is almost identical to Gen’s, with the girlishness turned up to 11 because of the very high pitched, nasal-y voice given to him in the show. More on this later.

We also can’t forget how he calls everyone -chan. It’s diminutive and cute, but literally no one uses -chan that much. Even in fiction, female characters normally use it for female friends or children, and guys almost never use it except for children and maybe certain girls they’re close with. It’s definitely the most exaggerated cutesy trait he has. “Effeminate male” characters often address others - regardless of gender - with diminutive honorifics or cute nicknames even when not necessarily appropriate, so this is just gay-coded behavior from what I can tell lmao

One thing that’s different about Gen compared to other characters with the same "effeminate male” speech pattern (that I can recall, at least) is his pronoun. He uses the masculine “ore”, like Senku, Chrome, and most of the other young male characters. In text, his “ore” is even in kanji (俺) like theirs. Had it been written in hiragana or katakana, it would have given more of a casual or stylish vibe. Just as a sidenote, this is also why his name itself is written in mixed hiragana/katakana instead of kanji! It’s a typical thing for Japanese celebrities to do with their names to seem cool.

Anyway, characters who are meant to be portrayed as “effeminate men” will almost always use watashi or atashi, the standard “female” pronouns, or at least “boku” which is generally male-aligned but softer than “ore” (Pyotr uses boku, as an example).

Pronoun usage is way more nuanced in real life, but for fictional characters, it tends to be broken down into these kinds of stereotypes based on Tokyo-dialect Japanese.

He also is missing some other key points in his speech pattern that would more clearly identify him as gay/trans-coded, like using the feminine ~kashira (”I wonder...”) instead of ~kana.

3. Voice acting in the show

I love Gen’s Jpn voice honestly, but it does play into the “effeminate man” stereotype a little. His voice is a bit higher pitched than the other guys and somewhat nasal-y, which are both common traits of this stereotype when used with the speech patterns I talked about above. The way certain syllables are stressed also highlights his feminine speech pattern. However, he’s comparably tame to “effeminate” characters in other series. For example, his Jpn voice actor does raise the pitch of his natural voice for Gen, but it’s not a falsetto imo. It’s pretty common for male voice actors to do falsettos for “effeminate” characters.

Gen also doesn’t fall under a lot of the tropes that plague many gay/trans-coded characters and quirky celebrity types - such as being a “diva” or uncomfortably flirtatious - which tend to get amplified in voice acting.

---

This stuff combined with my previous post about his clothes makes me wonder even more about what was intended for his character. There’s a lot about him that is notably “feminine” without him leaning too hard into gay stereotype territory. And it’s just like, why did you do that.

If you survived reading this far, I’d love to hear your thoughts<3

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trans-stuff · 2 years

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Thoughts on Whipping Girl

So this, and my following posts on the subject are going to be focusing on the erasure of trans men and nonbinary people within Julia Serano's Whipping Girl, mostly the former because i am better equipped to talk about that. For the record i think this book is incredibly important and groundbreaking for its time. These are just my thoughts on some of the blind spots in it.

I'm going to be breaking this down by chapters and doing a few chapters per post. I am reading the second editon published in 2016 so keep that in mind. I am also largely using the lauguae she used, tho i would not usually use some of these words.

Preface

This was overall good in my opinion, not much to say tbh, just that she tends to focus very heavily on binary trans womens experince, but that's understandable.

She also emphasizes this was early and mid '00s and that some things have changed since she wrote it, which is a positive.

Intro

She talks about how not every trans person has a personal desire to "shatter the binary", which i think is a good thing as there is a tendency in trans spaces to forget about gc and binary people, but at the same time forgets trans mascs.

She explains how misogyny has has had a bigger impact on her gender experince than transphobia, but then goes on to say this means that other trans people, specifically trans men, can not/ must not have a similar experience, which is bs. She seems to be under the impression that trans mascs do not face the same policing of gender expression (including policing of femininity).

She equates transsexuals with binary trans women repeatedly, or at least seems to.

Says that trans womens perspectives "take a back seat" to other trans peoples experiences, specifically in queer and trans spaces. Maybe it was different in 2006, but now that is most deffinently not true. I am not saying hypervisabilty is a privilege (it is not) but in no way are trans masc or nb perspectives valued over trans fems, in any space.

Trans Women Manifesto

Serano claims fairly early on that trans women are the most opressed sexual minority. This is true in some instances, but i would argue that its ALL trans people. Especially as to the avarage cis person we are all one homogeneous group.

This is where it goes down hill. She says trans mens masculinity is "not ridiculed". I don't really have much to say in response to that, except that i wish.

"When women's... events open doors to trans men and not trans women that is transmisogyny not transphobia". I dunno how she missed the bit about how they allow us in (tho i suspect most trans men don't want to be in those spaces in the first place) only because they see us a women or at lease not 'true men'.

At the end she circles back around to "butch and boyish" people having it easier than feminine ones, which is true only in the case that they are cis (usually white and perisex) men.

Overall i was not super impressed with this essay.

#whipping girl #whipping girl thoughts #transandrophobia #he speaks

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hardtchill · 2 years

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To add to all those excellent points you were making - I was assigned female at birth, right now I'm questioning my gender, I think I might be non-binary or just very butch lesbian, I don't know yet. But I was always more "traditionally masculine" presenting (and I mean always, I remember being 3 and asking my mom for those cool sweat pants all the boys in the kindergarten had and If I could have a couple of different pairs of them) because I liked boys' clothes, toys, I also played a lot with other boys, so I was called a tomboy.

Then when I was around 14 I cut my hair short, first to a sort of a feminine haircut (which I hated because it was not what I asked for at all but the hairdresser just assumed that I wanted the haircut I showed her but made more feminine, which was shitty AF on her part by the way). I then slowly started getting more boyish cuts and started wearing men's clothes only, now I even go to men's barber where I'm probably the only afab person.

The more I looked like that the more I felt like myself, I even could breathe more easily because anytime I had to wear something feminine I was getting anxious and tense (I even think I had a couple of mild anxiety attacks because of it) and now I could finally relax. But I was also feeling more and more uncomfortable in public bathrooms or wherever in places like shops and restaurants because I would be called "sir" or referred to as "he", which I didn't actually mind that much when I was on my own (unless I had to correct them because for example I was somewhere in a formal capacity and needed to give my personal information and that was awkward af), but it was a whole other story when I was with my friends or family because it would either make them laugh at me or they would give me sympathetic looks, like the most embarrassing thing just happened to me and they were feeling sorry for me.

So I guess, the point I'm trying to make is that if anyone needs protection, it's trans women and from cisgender women. Many times I felt awkward and/or unsafe in bathrooms and locker rooms and classrooms and restaurants and different types of offices, and virtually anywhere you can think of, because of the way I look, and 80% or 90% of that was because of something a usually straight, always cisgender woman would say or do. I've been laughed at, I've gotten the most disgusted looks and really mean comments, all from cis women. Young and old alike. A trans woman never made me feel unwelcome or unsafe, never traumatized me. Even men's bathrooms feel safer, so I often use them if I know there are cabins inside.

So yeah, TERFs are so worried about being in danger they don't even notice how are they hurting others, sometimes even other cis women, who just don't look the way they would want them to.

YES ALL OF THIS.

Literally every single fucking Terf i ever talk to is so concerned with the fake danger Trans people pose while they completely ignore the fact that Trans people are targeted by everyone at all times (usually even without the CIS people noticing). They are so worried about the pretend danger they could be in, yet they choose to put Trans people in that exact danger.

Just look at the whole gender neutral bathroom debate. Terfs always say women will be attacked by men pretending to be women if you allow Trans people into the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. Meanwhile this has been legal in the Netherlands since forever and there is no increase of attacks anywhere ever. So they are throwing a tantrum over a pretend danger while forcing Trans people to go into bathrooms in which they literally aren't safe, which is a fact supported by actual research instead of fear mongering.

And yes, you don't even need to be Trans to experience that. Granted i now identify as NB, but up until like 2-3 years ago i really wasn't sure and basically identified as a butch lesbian and i never felt safe in a women's restroom or god forbid a locker room. In classrooms i always felt left out because the Cis women didn't accept me even when i was still considered a Cis woman.

As a Trans person (or really anyone who doesn't fit in the norm), you're constantly looking for the place you're supposed to fit only to be told you don't and it's harmful as fuck.

It's about time certain Cis women take responsibility for the harm they cause, instead of complain about the danger that exists only in their messed up heads.

#ask #trans rights #non binary #cisgender

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