#kids who get bullied for being gnc will see her and feel hope. where is the sense in saying kids wont identify with

[carpathxanridge]

im so torn between deep empathy for elliot page and... continued disappointment. i want her to be happy with transition, i really do, but she looks pained. i couldn’t read that interview and look at those photos without feeling a deep sense of turmoil, especially when the article discussed her early acting career and discomfort with being sexualized and forced to be feminine. that breaks my heart because i get it, really. feeling like your body isn’t your own, being sexually harassed and objectified all while dealing with internalized and external homophobia... i can’t even imagine how much her dysphoria was exacerbated by working in such a misogynistic industry, where her body was a product for consumption in a somewhat literal sense.

but there comes a point where i have to say... i feel for her, i really really hope she’s okay, but the way she’s using her platform is unacceptable. “Many of the political attacks on trans people—whether it is a mandate that bathroom use be determined by birth sex, a blanket ban on medical interventions for trans kids or the suggestion that trans men are simply wayward women beguiled by male privilege—carry the same subtext: that trans people are mistaken about who they are. ‘We know who we are,’ Page says. ‘People cling to these firm ideas [about gender] because it makes people feel safe. But if we could just celebrate all the wonderful complexities of people, the world would be such a better place.’” it’s entirely dishonest in its framing of these issues. for example, the part about her wanting to play in boys’ sports as a kid... does she not understand that it was fair and acceptable because she’s female? like oh my god there is a difference between ‘playing up’— in age or in sex division— and playing down which is not allowed for a reason. fuck, my childhood soccer team (which i was already playing up by a year in) occasionally arranged to play against boys’ teams, or girls’ teams two years older. and my sister played baseball in a boys’ league because she didn’t want to play softball. those situations are completely different from males playing in women’s and girls’ leagues where they have a clear unfair advantage, and u have to be an idiot to compare the experiences.

and then the suicide guilting part of the interview... what happened to telling queer youth “it gets better?” instead you’re creating an alarmist narrative that trans people will be inevitably driven to suicide if they can’t medically transition. and it’s so fucked when you know statistically that there’s no real evidence that medical transition reduces suicidality. but most random people reading this in time don’t know that, all they hear is “trans people r killing themselves and we can help them by allowing them to transition!” because the argument is presented in this way, there’s no room for thought to whether any of this is evidence based treatment. no recognition to many trans and detrans people alike speaking out against the negative health effects, no consideration of who profits off of the medicalization of gender nonconformity, no skepticism or desire to protect trans people from medical abuse. and then the trans kids argument... that argument alone is so manipulative and misrepresented that i can’t give the benefit of the doubt that elliot is saying all this in good faith, i can’t help but wonder what imperative has driven her to speak so strongly and without nuance on this issue.

and then you frame acceptance of gender identity as accepting human complexity?? when gender critical feminists recognize that all people are complex and don’t fit into sex-based stereotypes. we aren’t the ones trying to put people in boxes. and no, i don’t think you’re “mistaken about who you are,” elliot. in fact, i hope you’re happy with transition and don’t come to regret it, just as i hope the same for all my trans friends. i just don’t believe that your own identity and self-conception should precede my right to talk about and name sex-based oppression, should precede the rights of all women and girls to safety, privacy, bodily autonomy. i reject the idea that having clear definitions of sex and sexuality are somehow clinging to outdated ideas. i believe that the desire for legal and ideological clarity isn’t a meaningless pursuit. and you’d realize that radical feminists’ ideas about gender are actually not “rigid” at all if you listened to what we are saying. we’re saying you can do what you want, express yourself how you want, present socially as a man and ask for your dysphoria to be accommodated interpersonally... all while being female, while being a woman.

i’m really sad that elliot’s realty causes her so much pain. i wish her healing and i hope that the choices she’s made will bring her happiness and comfort and relief. and health! i wish her wellbeing, both physical and mental. and i wish the same for all trans people. but i think we can balance those wishes with acceptance of the reality of biological sex.

also it should go without saying not to mock a gnc woman’s appearance jesus fuck. if you think her haircut looks like a little boy, think about the fact that a lot of butch lesbians have faced the same mockery. ive literally been insulted in the exact same way by homophobic bullies in high school lmaoo. when you mock someone for their appearance, even if you think they deserve it or aren’t impacted by it because of their celebrity status, you’re also mocking all the people reading it who share those traits (e.g. gender nonconformity.) and if you’re saying she looks emaciated and sick and speculating disordered eating... literally don’t. like i get it bc seeing her photos i thought she didn’t look at all healthy or happy and it made my heart break for her. but jesus fuck don’t speculate about people’s bodies and eating behaviors, especially vulnerable dysphoric women’s.

#sorry for the rant #maybe don’t reblog lol #i just had a lot of thoughts on this #the lack of empathy from some radfems toward her is really upsetting #but i also really understand the frustration because christ #what a difficult read

[kimabutch]

I'm so sorry if you've gotten a similar question but just out of curiosity: What are your favorite things about each of the M9? (It can be just the first thing to come to mind, I just really like hearing your takes on them)

Oh thank you, that’s such a compliment!! Ok, going in alphabetical order (and excluding Molly not because I don’t love him, but because I feel like I don’t have a great handle on his personality anymore):

Beau:

Oh god I love her so much, it’s hard to even know where to begin! Maybe with the fact that Marisha might have my favourite sense of humour of all the cast. Beau makes me burst out in laughter at least once per episode. 

I love her strong instincts to help others — it’s been there from the beginning, with her attempts to stop the circus people from getting arrested, or her tucking in Jester. I feel like her decision to be a better person was a turning point not so much in her care for others, but in how much she admitted that to herself.

That being said, she’s tried so hard to keep that promise to herself, and to keep being better. She tries so hard to be more social. She tries so hard to treat her friends with tenderness that’s never been shown to her. She tries to hard to be an expositor, and to be patient, and to investigate shit. She tries so hard not to lie, and to be more emotionally vulnerable. And she’s succeeding! I’m so proud of her. 

I love that she’s a gnc lesbian, and that this is a big part of her story, and important. I literally cannot tell you how much it means to me that she’s a lesbian. 

Caduceus

Cad has been such a calming, loving presence in the show since his arrival in e28, but most of all I love his cracks — the times when he’s not as “good” as he first appears.

I love that he’s so incredibly judgmental, and has such strong opinions even though he initially appears quite humble and mild. It’s such a cool character choice, and 100% makes sense.

He also genuinely has no idea what he’s doing so much of the time, and I think that’s very cool and relatable of him. 

I really respect how much Taliesin has developed him since his initial creation. Tal has talked a bunch about how much lore he’s made for Cad since that one weekend where he created him, and I think it really shows in the way he’s played him. Having caught up about 5 episodes after he was introduced, I feel like I’ve gotten the chance to watch him being fleshed out in real time. 

Caleb:

Liam has said this too, but I love how even though Caleb is a serious, tragic character in many ways, he can be as much the source of gags as anyone else. He’s hilarious, and you can see his sense of humour shining through even when Caleb is trying his best not to show it.

I like that his story is one of healing. Not necessarily clear, linear healing, but gradual, realistic progress. Even if he “breaks” again — and he might — there have been times when he’s laughed with friends, times where he’s gone a little easier on himself, and times when he’s let other people help. There’s no taking that away, no matter what happens later. 

Despite the last two bullet points, I’ll admit that part of the reason I started listening to CR was for the angst, and boy has he delivered. Sometimes you need sad characters, y’know?

But beyond angst, I’m so glad Liam is playing Caleb with a sensitivity to how trauma works and consideration of real-life mental illness. I don’t relate to Caleb’s story, but I see parts of my own mental illness experiences in him, portrayed in a genuinely thoughtful way. 

Fjord:

Ok so I relate a lot to Fjord and it’s very difficult for me to talk about him without talking about myself 

With that being said: I appreciate that as a character, a lot of his issues stem from him being bullied as a kid. I’ve said it before, but it really helps me when I feel ashamed of being so affected by childhood bullying

I love that he’s simultaneously charismatic/smooth and nervous/awkward, and somehow those two things are both believable and don’t negate each other at all. He can be a bit of a disaster of a person, and yet people will believe what he says. 

I fucking adore warlocks. The first character I ever played was a warlock and they’ll probably always be my #1 spellcasting class.

Jester:

I love how dedicated Laura is with her Jester pranks. Both how she roleplays them even when there might be serious consequences because that’s what Jester would do, but also how they can turn into really cool moments that drive Jester’s character arc forward — from her Bahamut prank to “get out of my temple!”

Every time she cries or is sad, I feel my soul trying to leave my body and enter Exandria through my screen so that I can give her a hug. Laura plays the chinks in Jester’s well-crafted happy armour so well.

Combat clerics are so, so much fun, and so is the entire concept of the Traveler, and Jester’s relationship to him. It’s really different than a lot of clerics I’ve seen. 

Out of all the characters, I am maybe most interested in finding out where Jester’s character development is going. I feel like there’s still a giant dam to break, and I don’t now how it will happen or what it will look like. I think she’s already changed so much in how she thinks about the world and relates to others, but it’s clear that she’s not yet at peace. 

Nott:

It took me a solid dozen episodes to warm up to her voice and now it’s one of my favourite parts of campaign 2. Particularly when she screams. 

Ditto what I said about Fjord and childhood bullying — her backstory is so important to me. Also ditto what I said about Caleb and mental illness: Sam has clearly given a lot of thought to how trauma has shaped Nott, and I’m so glad that her journey through mental illness isn’t straightforward. 

Like with Jester, I find her to be a very cool take on her class, as a rogue who’s terrified to take the lead and who, despite her sneakiness, is among the most willing to use her own body as a distraction to save her friends. I also love the trope-defying fact that she’s a mom. 

I love that she has all of 5 CHA and tells the worst lies, but pulled a lying long con for 49 episodes, both on the M9 and on viewers… but somehow, it still felt realistic that she’d be able to pull that off, because Nott’s deception wasn’t based so much in outright lies about her backstory (she definitely did lie, but many of the lies contradicted each other or fell apart on close examination), but on evasion, her speciality as a rogue. 

Yasha:

She’s soft! She’s so soft! She’s tender and quiet and loves the beautiful things in life, and for me it’s not just about the contrast between her toughness and her softness (although I do appreciate that, especially as someone who’s been told they’re intimidating, both online and irl), but also about how genuine it is: you can feel it in the way she talks and how Ashley moves when she plays her. 

She is awkward as hell, and it’s so good. Yasha’s dialogue, both with NPCs and with other PCs, is consistently some of the funniest stuff in the show. Ashley really lets that 7 CHA, 9 WIS shine through in all its glory. 

I think her backstory reveal was the first time I bawled while watching CR, but it was fun because of the rising anticipation as she revealed that she’s a wlw. 

Her rage is so interesting! Every barbarian so far in the show (Grog, Lionel, Yasha) has played rage slightly differently, and I appreciate them all — but I think there’s something special about how rage is so clearly emotionally fraught for Yasha. I hope and believe that they’ll explore this more after she’s saved from Obann. 

#Anonymous #critical role #I limited myself to four points about each character #please appreciate how much self-restraint that was #my stuff

[gabriella-lost-in-the-big-city]

“...and one day you’ll grow up to be a strong, independent woman just like your mami”

by Gabriella J Bolanos

This is a very sensitive topic about me, but over the course of the past six weeks of this hellish semester, I realized the importance of giving trans people a space of their own in the world of “maternal” / “woman’s” (A.K.A. Cis-woman’s health). I loathed the maternity nursing lecture, mainly because the double dose of problematic WASPs was too much for me to swallow on a weekly basis. However, those five days at Mt. Sinai’s labor and delivery/postpartum floors was such an uplifting, emotional, and sometimes conflicting moment. Let me just put it out there that yes I am transgender, and I own up to being a transgender woman. I am proud to be a transgender woman, and I don’t see myself being anything else. However, society has not advanced enough to where transgender people are respected by women and men as viable women; and science has not advanced enough to where they can put a functional uterus in me. I had a lot of experience observing and participating in the births of numerous children 3 of those 5 days, many of them being families who were introducing their first child to their lives. I enjoyed seeing the face of young fathers and mothers feeling nothing but pure joy as they hold their just born child in their arms. It’s honestly an amazing privilege to be able to witness a moment so intimate, so groundbreaking, so heartfelt, so pure like the birth of a newborn. However, in the back of my head, I could never shake the feeling of jealousy and resentment of these mothers. I will never be congratulated for being pregnant with my child. I will never be congratulated for spending all those hours in labor or overcoming all of the pain to deliver my baby. I won’t feel that overwhelming burst of emotion holding my newly born crying baby on my bare chest. Sometimes I feel like I won’t ever be a “real” mom because I’ll never have the opportunity to do things that our heteronormative society tells us a mother does.

*Side Note: Why is there no gender-neutral term for “person that gives birth,” it’s always when the mother does this or when the mother experiences that or when the mother holds her baby for the first time… mother is clearly a gender-charged word, but in reality, it’s not always a cis-female that gives birth, there are transmen out there that give birth, and gender non-conforming people that give birth – and I highly doubt that they would want to be referred to as the “mother.” One time during lecture, one of the instructors “tried” to be inclusive and kind of touch on this idea that LND may not be as heteronormative as we tend to think it is. However, things quickly went south when she started to bring up the example of trans people giving birth. And so she says “ I had a colleague tell me that she one time had a transgender mother, male to female, give birth…” and I don’t know about you, but as far as I know, transwoman cannot give birth – and if somehow they can, PLEASE LET A GIRL KNOW. So essentially, I am 99.99% sure that she meant to say that there was a transgender man who gave birth but instead chose to mis-gender the father who gave birth. Anyway, I hope one day this changed and we see a bigger presence and respect of LGBTQ (esp. Transgender people) in maternity health and in woman’s health in general.*

I have always wanted to be a mom since I could remember, or I guess I’ve always wanted a family of my own and I didn’t know that meant becoming a mother until I realized that I was a transgender woman. A part of my desire to be a mom comes from a desire to make up for the mistakes my mother made raising me – in no way was she the worst mother to have, but we never really saw eye-to-eye, she internalized most of her emotions, she never really understood me, she never really could sympathize/empathize with me, she was never pushing me to go after my goals, it took her forever to accept the fact that I was trans, and along the way made me feel like a complete, worthless piece of shit for being who I am. However, at the end of the day, although I can’t 100% forgive her or honestly say my relationship with her was healthy and beneficial, she is still my mother and luckily she eventually got it together and now accepts me for the woman I am today, her daughter. I want to learn from my parent’s mistakes and be the parent I always wanted/needed growing up to my future children. Additionally, there is a bond you can’t recreate or break between a child and their mother. For example, I wouldn’t say my sister is the most positive mother, she can let her frustration and anger get the best of her around her child, she can be overwhelmed with work or too focused in her personal life to spend whatever time she does have with her child. However, no matter how many times my sister yells at him, spanks him, or leaves him behind to be cared by someone else, my nephew will always tell her how much he loves her and comes to her defense whenever me and my sister fight. This was a complicated lead up to the fact that I part of me wants to have a child so they can unconditionally love me, because I feel so lonely in this world sometimes, to know someone loves me, means the world to me. Although some parts of my desire to be a mom come off as selfish, in all honesty I want to have kids one day to take care of them and smother them with nothing but love, raise them to be “woke” individuals in society, take them to soccer practice or piano lessons, help them with homework, remind them that they matter and no matter how stressful things get, they will overcome all obstacles eventually, support them with whatever career/academic decisions they make, take care of them when they are sick, give them advice on love and life, the list goes on and on. I even have baby names picked out, even though adoption will most likely be my route of raising a family (unless someone wants to give me their second child) – so if I have a newborn son, I want to name him Brandon Mauricio Bolanos, and if I have a newborn girl, I want to name her Jacqueline Celeste Bolanos – cheesy names, I know. So Brandon comes from my obsession of Beverly Hills 90210 from the summer (Brandon Walsh was definitely my dream guy) and Mauricio comes from my father’s middle name and my original birth middle name – a part of me has a little guilt for being trans as I am my father’s only child and I know how important it was for him to have a “son” and I would have been the only person to pass down the family name as all of my cousins on that side of the family are girls. Therefore, I want to give back to my father somehow, but naming my son after him – not that I have a reason to feel guilty for being trans. And in regard to Jacqueline Celeste Bolanos – I just really like those names, it's different, and not something you hear every day. And ideally, I would like a third child (my favorite number happens to be 3), but the name on that one is a TBD for now.

I love the idea of being a mom, and can’t see myself not having a family of my own, but I can’t help to have my fears about it as well. Honestly, my biggest fear is getting into a fight with my child and having the phrase “well you didn’t give birth to me, so you’re not my real mom anyway” – I honestly believe if this ever happens I would kill myself right there and then because that would just crush me beyond the point of any possible repair. I also worry about if my child going to accept that I am trans? Is the world going to accept me as a transgender mom? Are the kids at school going to say to my child about me being trans? Is he going to get bullied for it? What are the moms at the PTA going to say about me? All of these thoughts, good and bad, swirl around my mind whenever I see a birth, or see a pregnant woman on the subway, when I see a baby in a stroller, or when my friends complain about never wanting to give birth, or when people randomly ask me if I want to give birth or if I am a mom. I don’t know if I’ll ever accomplish this goal of becoming a mom, finding someone to help raise our children, I hope that one day they would look up to me as their loving, successful mother and eventually I’ll be trying to keep up with the numerous grandkids I’ll be expecting. Until then, I’ll continue to hold babies like they are my own, envision a future of a full, loving family, and hold my tears back whenever things get emotional, and be optimistic that one day I’ll hear the word “mami” come out the mouth of my son, daughter, or GNC child.

#transgender transwoman womenshealth motherhood transmotherhood