#idk. i’m a gnc person who later realized i was trans | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

radical-brownie · 3 years

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Are you friends with any TIMs or TIFs? Are they really that crazy?

Oh I’m friends with a few TIFs, and I’ve dealt with my fair share of TIMs as well

My friends aren’t very unpleasant people or else I wouldn’t be friends with them, in fact the majority of them were people I knew before they identified as transgender. So it was more like watching them slowly descend into gender madness, but they’re aware of my ideas too so if we weren’t friends from before they probably wouldn’t have stuck around. It’s something we joke about occasionally, just having rapidly different views and all. I know they’d never want to speak to me about their gender troubles considering I wouldn’t nearly give them as much validation as their other friends which although makes me feel a tiny bit sad that I can’t be for them with All of their struggles, but its better than me feeding into something which I know may be harmful to them or be a harmful mindset.

TIFs in general (including my friends) all have had either a large amount of internalized misogyny and this immediately reflects in the way they treat or perceive other women after becoming more masculine or “passing” better, or have had something happen to them (whether online or irl) which made them feel like they were never women at all, this doesn’t apply to all of them (just my personal observation)

I’m sure there are some transmascs who are just enjoying the idea of being a man and not hurting anyone (other than themselves i assume?) but yeah, the ones without dysphoria annoy me the most because its really just them running away from the idea of being a woman at all, or those “trans people can be gnc!” posts, those just get me confused on what they even want.

Some TIFs will go through a “not like other girls” phase, which trans ideology eats up like breakfast, and so they decide they’re not a girl at all, or because of the internet, majority of the girls i meet who end up being groomed, flirted with by someone they weren’t interested in, or even sexualized (irl or online doesn’t matter in this instance since it happens in both), they try to escape that they’re a target.

I don’t talk about myself much but I struggle with dysphoria a lot, and before I found radical feminism, I thought I was trans for wanting to escape all my internal thoughts of how a woman should be that were put in my head by the people around me, (being a brown muslim girl specifically didn’t help) and I thought I was somehow different for not enjoying femininity and not liking my body and not wanting to be a baby making machine (since the only women in my life seemed so content with knowing thats all they were supposed to be) but this community really opened my eyes and gave me the courage to realize that I was never different.

Now, I’ve dealt with TIMs, and they really are just as bad as they say. The first one I met was really just role playing as an anime girl whenever he spoke, he had some trauma with his dad which I assume put some ideas of toxic masculinity in his head so thats why he decided he wasn’t a man at all?? Idk i didn’t ask very well but talking to him was extremely uncomfortable. The funniest thing I remember is that he would act so “submissive” to appear more “feminine” with his little stutters in texts and this whole shy persona. And one day I dm’d him and i said “hey, you don’t have to stutter through text, its kind of annoying” (i was 12 at the time mind you, idk how old he was exactly but i think he was 16-18?) and his way of texting immediately changed. He told me to shut the fuck up, and that i had no idea what he had been through and that I shouldn’t comment on anything he does.

Which completely threw me off cause I genuinely thought this guy was supposed to be nice? I didn’t believe for one second that he was a girl with his voice even as a 12 year old on fucking discord but watching him suddenly shift like that was something I remembered later on. I do purposefully avoid TIMs since interacting with them makes my brain fry, I’ve dealt with worse but this was just one mild(?) example, the rest are just misogynistic slurs being thrown at me for speaking up, blatant racism, very defensive behaviour and so on. TIFs are TIMs biggest defenders and I genuinely don’t have any idea why, they say shit like “transmascs have more privilege than transfemmes so check yourself” its hair pulling level stupid.

Thank god I haven’t dealt with anything as crazy as what I’ve seen on radblr but once you’re aware of something you tend to see it everywhere, even in the smallest form, every time I see a trans activism post I’m immediately aware of the extremist lengths a simple instagram post is leading to. Chanting “free2pee” at an lgbt support group isn’t the quirky phrase you think it is, and even if I could answer your question with “oh no, we’re just fear mongering blah blah i love my trans friends” it still wouldn’t dismiss the many other encounters women on radblr have had, they’re in the right for sharing their experiences and boosting the experiences of other women, so my one statement alone shouldn’t exactly be something to fully go off of. You did ask Me this question so yeah I’m just speaking from experience and personal opinion.

#i speak #thanks for asking!#sorry if i get wordy at the end of my answers #i get nervous because i dont wanna answer wrong and ruin someones perception #radfems please touch #terf safe #terfs please touch #radfem safe #radfem #terf #tw grooming #long post

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rittz · 4 years

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thoughts about being trans, idk where else to put them so here u go

it’s not like i don’t have trans guy friends to talk to about this, it’s just usually in the form of jokes or passing comments rather than an actually serious conversation. also, the transmasc people that i’m closest to identify more with the label “nonbinary” than i do-- it’s not like they couldn’t understand or relate to things i’m saying, but i’m just assuming that they probably don’t feel the exact same way i do

anyway, as a trans person we get often asked “so why do you feel like a [gender]?”, and the answer is usually some variation of “i just feel like it”. this is the most accurate but also vaguest possible answer, so i kinda wanted to break down my personal answer to that question?

basically, i identify as a man because i identify with men. in a general and also personal sense. gender stereotypes are something that trans people by necessity both embrace and reject. i relate to gender stereotypes about men more than those of women-- i’m less outwardly emotional, i like being handy, i don’t like kids, i have questionable personal hygiene, etc-- but obviously these things alone don’t make someone a man. however... you can’t deny that there is some general truth about behavioral differences between men and women (bc of society, not biology). men and women both experience different problems in the world, and each have trouble understanding the experiences and problems of the other. generally, i can relate to the experiences and problems of men more than those of women, even if it seems like i shouldn’t (for example, i am not afraid of walking alone at night, even though i am very tiny).

i, from a young age, have had a constant yearning for more male friends. i would occasionally choose to play video games as a male character. i was upset that i couldn’t be in boy scouts. i have been jealous of my younger brothers being treated by my parents the ways i wished i was treated. when i imagined myself older, i pictured myself less like my mom and more like my dad. when i’m around men, i want them to treat me like one of them. i want to be seen as a man.

and i think that’s what being trans really boils down to. wanting to be seen as someone other than how everyone sees you. wanting what you see on the outside to match how you feel on the inside. this obviously extends to nonbinary individuals, who face their own struggle when it comes to presentation. but at the end of the day, i think that presentation is equally important to gender identity as internal feelings. i mean, i think we’re all familiar with the research proving that transitioning makes trans people happier. surgery is an invasive, expensive, painful process that i DON’T think is necessary for every trans person, and HRT isn’t always easy to get. but changing a name, getting a new haircut, dressing differently, binding, etc. counts as transitioning. you don’t have to hate your body to be trans, but wanting to alter it in order to better connect your internal identity with your presentation, i think is necessary in order to consider yourself to be trans.

i will admit i am confused by “GNC trans men” i see on tumblr and insta, who use he/him pronouns but exclusively present femininely. i’m not talking about trans guys who don’t yet pass, i mean trans guys who don’t want to. i don’t harbor any ill will, i’m just confused. if i understand being trans to mean “wanting what you see on the outside to match how you feel on the inside”, you can see how. doesn’t that make you feel dysphoric? don’t you want people who see you to read you as male? how is your life different from when you didn’t identify as male but presented the same way? this isn’t me trying to gatekeep on who’s “trans enough”, and especially when it comes to nonbinary identities it’s arbitrary to harp on presentation like this. but like, what’s going on here?

taking a turn here that will come back around, an extremely key component to why i identify as and with men is my sexuality. i have always idolized, envied, and evoked various queer icons from media and real life. the hunky, grunting, macho, hetero version of “man” never appealed to me the way that the fashionable, artsy, flirty, homo version of “man” did. drag queens, my mom’s hairdresser, glam rock stars, i could go on. associating my more feminine qualities with GAY stereotypes instead of FEMALE stereotypes suddenly made more sense, and made me feel less dysphoric. it’s also something that took me a long time to realize, because i had surrounded myself with queers who were mostly attracted to women. transmascs and butch lesbians historically have a lot in common, but personally, i didn’t relate as much to lesbians as i did to drag queens. in dating and loving men, i developed my understanding of them. but my attraction to men was why it had taken me so long to realize i felt more like a man-- i thought i was just some weird straight girl.

now, am i calling these “GNC gay trans men” with long pink hair and poofy skirts and conventionally attractive bisexual boyfriends “weird straight girls”? ...well, not to their faces. but i have to admit that i’m thinking it. these people would never go to a predominantly-male gay bar, these people would never be harassed on the street. i’m not saying i know someone’s identity better than they do, but i don’t agree with the liberal utopian ideal of “let everyone do whatever they want as long as they aren’t hurting anyone” when taken to mean that we can’t question other people’s choices. “why do you feel like a man?” is a question that, coming from another trans person, isn’t inherently transphobic. it’s not “forcing” someone to “prove” their “transness”, no one “owes” me an explanation of their identity. i’m just confused. i don’t disapprove of the way these people live their lives, i just want to know why.

a straight girl being feminine is different from a gay man being feminine, because it has less to do with personality and more to do with society’s historic view of gay men as closer to female than male because of the loving and fucking men aspect. an AMAB gay man wearing makeup and a crop top probably just wants to look good, but he is also signaling to other men that he’s gay via gender non-conformance. by being AFAB and female-passing, wearing makeup and a crop top is not GNC. in fact it’s pretty GC, and gay men will not recognize you as a gay man.

it’s easy to say “gender is fake so do whatever you want”, but like, we have to acknowledge reality. time is a social construct too, but we still use days of the week when talking to each other. strangers will treat you differently depending on what gender they interpret you as. different people will be willing to date you or not. you have to choose which public bathroom to go in. if being misgendered doesn’t bother these people, then who cares? but if it DOES, which it usually does, wouldn’t you want to take steps to prevent being misgendered in the future? if your desire to present femininely is stronger then your desire to be seen as male, then like... why call yourself a male at all? ultimately nothing these people do will really affect me in any way. it just makes me wonder if these people will eventually go on to present as male, or if they will later ID as nonbinary or even cis. i encourage people trying out different labels and exploring their identity, so it’s not like i think these people SHOULDN’T identify as trans guys. it’s more like, i wish they were able to articulate WHY they identify as trans more than “because i said so”. not wanting to be a woman doesn’t automatically make you a man, it just makes you not a woman.

maybe i’m particularly cynical because of the MULTIPLE times that people with larger online followings who identify and present this way have later turned out to be lying, manipulative people. hopefully it goes without saying that i do NOT think that everyone who identifies and presents this way is a toxic liar. the reason i bring it up is because some people genuinely can’t understand the possibility or purpose of misleadingly claiming a marginalized identity, but it can and does happen. an analogy could be made here about white people claiming indigenous heritage. we all WANT to believe what people say about themselves, and asking for “proof” is a social no-no. but we shouldn’t just... automatically trust everything someone says about themselves, right? and as bad as i WANT to live in a world where gender doesn’t matter and everyone default uses neutral pronouns and there are no divisions in clothing stores and bathrooms, we don’t live in that world (yet). when you are AFAB, /extremely/ femininely presenting, and have little to no plans of transitioning, saying “i am a man” will not make other people see you as one. and if you don’t want to be seen as a man, then maybe you aren’t one.

#lgbt #ftm #long...

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soulvomit · 5 years

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I'm really feeling that *when* you grew up, can have really profound impact on sense of self and identity in some pretty all-encompassing ways, and childhood experiences (not merely exterior socialization, or that would be all kinds of essentialism about everything, but probably a mix of interior and exterior experiences) can even feed into identity formation differently based upon when and where that childhood took place.

I had to form my identity at a time when there was still a major zeitgeist of there only being Weird and Normal. "Weird" cliques tended to be more often be Big Tent.

People weren't talking about autism (the stereotype of autism was an institutionalized individual with profound disabilities) as a spectrum. Geeks and nerds were basically the same thing still (in the 70s through early 90s, there was no mass consumer fandom culture). There wasn't the big public scrutiny over fanfic because most people didn't even know about it. (When something is deeply subcultural, it often becomes a place of refuge from "the norm." But then becomes subject to scrutiny by people who don't understand that thing or its history, when it becomes better known.)

You were normal or you were one of The Freaks(tm). If you were a middle class or working class person and you did ANYTHING or had ANY interest that wasn't basically whatever your gender, class, and race prescribed interest by 1980s society, then you were a Weirdo. Basically all weirdos were lumped together. WE WERE NOT USING THE WORD "GEEK" YET. We only barely used the word "nerd" at that time.

Some of us formed our identity through this and began calling our cliques "the freaks" or "the weirdos."

Though crowds of Freaks(tm) like my own often contained people who would have modern identity labels later, or later be diagnosed with clinically based reasons for Not Being Normal, these weren't actually what made a person Weird.

What made you Weird was simply Not Being Normal, and 80s Normal was a very specific thing. Ever notice that the "losers club" or "the group of outcasts" trope in 80s kid stories, often contains Jewish kids and POC kids as well as really smart kids and kids with disabilities? That's how specific 80s Normalcy was. (And certain kinds of weirdo culture were heavily gender-specific. I basically formed my identity as the female token in Weirdo Space.)

I struggle with where I'd fit into modern youth culture, because we didn't have all of these boxes: just one or two giant ones.

And my identity was largely already formed, I'd come to terms with being Weird. When I left my old group, things were already starting to change (that or the Bay Area has a much more atomized culture than LA does, idk.)

I actually have a lot of resistance to trying to further atomize my identity, or trying to in any way medicalize my weirdness. Gender norms and lack of cultural and class fit were the main reasons I thought I was autistic. It was my involvement in LGBTQ culture coupled with being around autistic people IRL (not online!) and learning about the deeply homophobic, transphobic, and misogynist history of psychiatry, that made me realize that if "female autistics can be taken for having a male brain" (ugh, but it was a common emerging trope of the 90s and 00s) then some version of the reverse must also be true - and based on my connections with Boomer aged gender non conforming people who endured medicalization during their 50s and 60s childhoods, often being GNC *was* the main thing "different* about them.

The idea of interior feelings of gender non conformity having nothing to do with hobbies or clothing preferences, just was not even on the map yet. But fuck, I've been in social settings where merely being AFAB and SPEAKING IN COMPLETE SENTENCES made one gender non-conforming. (Lots of us aren't aware of this. It's in the air we breathe.) I'm not sure at that point what is 1) my internal reality being different from most people's (how would I know?!) and 2) my external reality's rigid ideas of "normalcy."

I understand my weirdness as in no small part being because of culture. I feel like I have friends whose lives were ruined because the culture hadn't caught up to them. What if my best friend, a 6'4 trans woman, had been able to transition earlier, or live her best life in the 80s and 90s, instead of being a reclusive agoraphobe. What if my 40something friend who was diagnosed autistic in recent years, had gotten earlier recognition - before dropping out of school. I think about this all the time.

But I understand my own weirdness as being a combination of gender, cultural, and class based forces. I did not understand this until my 30s and 40s, when I started interacting with social justice culture. To some degree I'm weird because my parents are weird and raised me weirdly. Being raised weirdly makes a person weird.

There is a lot of stuff I held myself back from, or was held back from, because of being falsely medicalized. I used medicalization to fuel imposter syndrome: your interests are your talents and passions and gifts but mine are merely "special interests." Somehow over the course of my life everything that was actually a feature in other gendered and class settings was a bug in the ones I was raised in.

My believing I was autistic, was based on enough early life, school, and clinical data to be supported by clinicians who agreed that my early narrative sounded like a typical Aspergers narrative.

What the clinicians didn't know is that early in my life, I lived in a neighborhood where none of the other kids even spoke the same language. I had a father who raised me gender-neutral in many respects and I'd had more boy friends than girl friends as a child. My parents were always more privileged than our neighbors. Nowadays people would say we were the artsy first wave of gentrification, because people love to simplify things like whoa, but in reality many of the places I lived never gentrified at all and really we were just the one white family sometimes and later, the one computer family. I had white privilege in the real world but had parents who raised me to not think of myself as having white privilege or often not see myself as white. (That took a long time to unpack.) Finally if you are AFAB and have an IQ over 90 then you are probably already the “normative” society’s definition of Weird.

All of this would make anyone feel weird.

It's in big tent, mixed-use Pan-Weirdo Space that I found a home.

#i feel like in California the geek culture absorbed a lot of people who had been kicked out of other big tents #you find a hobby or setting inclusive when others aren't accepting you and soon you have a new big tent #i feel like Bay Area and SoCal geek culture were the spaces for lgbtq people who didnt otherwise fit in with local lgbtq culture

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lostmyurl · 7 years

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This is a personal post about my own identity, about some realizations I have long since been coming to, something I need to get out and organize and get off my chest, so please don't come here with any generalizing comments, or about how I'm generalizing people. This is me, my experience, my dysphoria, my life. If you want to reblog or leave a comment or something, or inbox me, or something, you're more than free to, just please, please realize that this is about a post me and my self-image alone. As a kid, I always wanted to be a scout. Always. I never did, though. We only had Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts back in Texas, and in Poland, too. Idk. It just didn't sit right with me to be included in "oh, just girls here" or "oh, just boys here." I don't like gender-separated areas, and I never did, even if I didn't know why it put me off so much. I mean, I guess I didn't know when I was that young that it was dysphoria speaking up? But as I got older, and I started to hit puberty, shit just started getting a LOT worse. I had a period of time where I decided, nope, you're DEFINITELY a cis girl, I wore so much pink it was bizarre and outrageous. I like the color still, just… I feel bad because I associate it with that period of time really intensely. So I can't wear it at all or I just… hm. It's a shame, really. It's such a nice color. But it's just tied to so many memories of trying to wipe out anything I felt that didn't fit. After that, it was a period of 'so what the fuck are you?' Anybody who knew me about two years ago knew I kept changing my mind, trying to figure out what was going on because nothing felt right. A friend had to suggest it, if maybe I wasn't just imagining things/had low self esteem/was gnc, and really, for the longest time, I wondered if I was a closeted trans boy. But while being addressed as "he" helped, it didn't feel right, either. It was SO LONG until I realized that what actually felt right wasn't the decision to use "he" or "she," it was the actual moment of hesitation, the fact that I was presenting androgynously enough for it to be unclear. It's… still really really frustrating and muddled, but I've figured out enough about reading testimonies from trans people to know that what I'm experiencing is definitely a combination of dysphoria and euphoria. Here's the thing, though. There's a distinct line between nonbinary and gender-nonconforming (gnc). Being gnc would mean that I wouldn't feel uncomfortable or wrong when somebody used a set of binary pronouns for me in accordance with my assigned sex, or even the one across the binary. You can be gnc and cis, or gnc and binary trans, and one doesn't preclude the other. And neither of those means nonbinary. It's an identity that's… okay. TMI, I guess, but ideally? In a world of people who identify as men and women, I'd like to inspect my own body, go on a character selection screen, and remove all primary and secondary sex characteristics traditionally thought of as belonging to binary genders. Penis? Wrong. Vagina? Wrong. Boobs? Wrong. Facial hair? Wrong. Hourglass figure? Wrong. "Dorito" figure? Wrong. Et cetera. Et cetera. I'd like to be freed from all of those and I don't know why it's weighing on me so heavily. Delete, delete, delete, even if it meant leaving me a near-featureless default doll. Before anybody accuses me of hating people, I don't mind any of those traits on anybody else. This is my own body I'm talking about, a truly personal experience and an idealized dream. In dreams, I am occasionally perceived as male, rarely as female. Regardless, whenever I can remember, I have always been "other" in my dreams. You know- like on multiple choice exams, 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' 'D,' 'none of the above is correct'? Like that. I first learned that nonbinary genders were a thing from a classmate. Pejoratively. Like they were other, lesser, freaks. "What do you mean, neither? You can't be neither." It was religious studies class, that I remember. Of course, that wasn't the word they used. It was "homo-niewiadomo," a partially reclaimed slur that literally translates to "homo-who knows really" and doesn't just refer to gay people but any people falling under the queer umbrella as a whole. I was torn between "what???" and this kind of "that's a thing?" My next experience was on tumblr. I met a wonderful person who actually lives in my city. We've met nowadays. Years later. I was a kid then, maybe 15? 16? They said… I don't remember what it was. Gender-questioning? Something like that? I didn't pretend to understand, not yet, but I wanted to know more. All this sounds like I've had a lot of influence, but really, so much of it was based on introspection, questioning, doubting. Yeah, self-harm happened, too, whether by actually drawing blood or intentionally forcing myself to embrace hyperfemininity or by pushing myself to the point where I can't wear a color I love because it has all those negative associations with things I did to myself, things I said, trying to cut off unwieldy and inconvenient parts of my personality and decide I'm "moving on." I did the same thing about being autistic, about being ADD, and I look back on that now and realize that all I was doing was ensuring both my mental health and my physical health suffered. And my grades. Those dropped too. Performance in all respects. I ruined a lot of friendships that way. I guess some of that is a behavior learned from my parents. Forbid anything that's not productive or conductive to school that you're too "dependent" on. It's… really the worst fragment of their parenting (I think it's how they approach themselves, too) I could've possibly internalized. And something that disappeared basically overnight as soon as I was old enough to point out it wasn't actually helping, it was hurting. Now it's just there in my head, eating at me. They're not bad people. They're not bad parents. They treat us like human beings, instead of like enemies to trap in a maze of "because I said so" and arbitrary obstacles, like so many fakey-nice perfect suburban American families I've seen. They're learning, too, their home lives weren't perfect and they're not prepared to deal with a neurodivergent (not "normal") kid at ALL. They're always so confused about how "brilliant" I am and how I have trouble with "easy" stuff, about how I get overwhelmed with too much input. About how no, exposing me to that input doesn't help, it just increases the chances of a grown adult having to lock themselves in a dark room bawling into a pillow because it's /too much/. The truth is, I don't know. I know that what I need to alleviate dysphoria is basically impossible. That unlike a binary trans person I do not have the possibility to transition and eventually attain the body I identify with. This is why I can't go back to the Bible Belt, or attend a super-religious school I might've gotten a good scholarship from. I can't. If I had to go back to all that, to dressing up and doing makeup and "girl talk" and asserting over and over and over that I am like you, I am like you, I am like you, I would lose my sense of identity completely. What fragile sense I've even built up for myself. A person I can be now, somebody I almost like. Not quite, but almost. It's progress. So much progress. I'd go back to hating myself for not being like you, yes, of course I'm crushing on a boy, oh, yes, absolutely, please help me look more feminine more often, I'm just a clueless tomboy who doesn't know what she's missing :) :) :) If you're a girl who loves engaging in typically feminine activity, I support you and your interests, as I would if you were anybody else and your interests didn't hurt anybody. But it's not for me, and honestly, it's silly, but so many of my nightmares involve people turning on me and deciding they'll help me look more like I'm supposed to, be like I'm supposed to. "You have such a beautiful woman's body! Don't throw it all away!" you can have it you can have it you can HAVE it please take everything, take the horrible breasts, take the horrible curves and the horrible cinched waist and the awful "delicate features" right off my face. I don't want these. I can't be grateful for something that I look in the mirror and I feel can't belong to me, it shouldn't. It's wrong. That's not me. Please don't tell me "you're a pretty girl, you should appreciate it," don't tell me I'd like it more if I wore more skirts, I promise, I TRIED that. I did. I tried all the possible ways of loving myself and embracing a female identity in both gender-role-conforming ways and not. It doesn't work. It's like a software patch called "gender" was installed in almost everybody's brains except my own. All I'm left with is extraneous hardware that acts as malware without the driver patch. In a way, though, things are looking up. I've managed to figure out a thousand and one ways to avoid the entire (gendered) past tense in the language I speak at home. I've figured out a thousand more ways to avoid revealing, I've learned to see when I'm succeeding and when I've slipped up, when their eyes shine in triumph and they finally use binary pronouns without asking. Would it be so hard to ask? I'm not even sure what I'd say except "thank you." It's only happened once to my face without snark and it was the best thing I'd ever heard. I blew it. I wasn't expecting it. I shrugged and said "whichever you please" because I got so flustered, I didn't know how to respond. It was unexpected. It was wonderful. I should've said "neither, really." I could've said "I'd prefer not to say." If I hadn't been speaking Polish, I would have asked for “they.” Maybe. If I had the guts. "Whichever you please" was a step in the right direction though… right? This post doesn't have a point. Not really. Just laying some stuff out in text because they finally make sense that way. If you want to send hate, save it for other posts, okay? Have a shred of dignity and comment on posts tagged discourse, or posts in which I express an opinion about something that isn't this introspective.

#personal #Lynn speaks #nonbinary #ok to reblog #genderqueer #queer #familial #self harm TW

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