fuck man I forgot you can't say shit on this website anymore
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this is somewhat of a vent post & something i said i would not do again but has been plaguing me enough that i think getting it out might feel better. so. has anydoggy else been. Baffled and upset by nora sakavic’s refusal to speak on how terribly aftg has treated its characters of color? with the author of the series coming back with a new book and starting up on her online activity again, and questions of what she’d change about aftg bubbling up, it’s particularly glaring to me that we are all playing this very long game of pretend where we ignore how badly the non-white cast has been treated & her lack of thoughts on it
and i understand not wanting to bring up nicky and thea because people pick on her for it. i’m not trying to discredit nora sakavic’s terrible history of getting harrassed online by aftg fans. but i think it is very cynical, and it is very juvenile, and most of all very cruel, that she gets to ignore the very real ways the books have set up these characters to be hated. i think it’s obvious why the characters who get the most hate are the only canonical characters of color, and i think we do not get to treat this like a deliberate decision on the fandom’s part when the books have put these same characters in degrading and embarrassing and terrible positions in the first place. aftg is not a story about nice characters with clean pasts, but there is a very specific nastiness to the only characters of color being a brown man who sexually harasses and later assaults the main character, a black woman whose only scene is her lashing out at her love interest after being ignored for the first two books, and the japanese villain who gets maybe two lines of complexity before he goes back to being a terrible person. the white cast, in comparison, while not at all free from flaws, are never shown to commit mindless evil; all of their actions are ultimately justified. the book goes out of its way to give them concession after concession. we know exactly who to side with, because aftg tells us who these people are. does nicky’s assault ever get addressed in the books? does riko’s reasoning to be the way that he is ever gets more than briefly aluded to? is thea reserved even a shred of humanity or grace in her one scene?
anyway. it’s been years of talking about this and the fandom has been constantly hostile to criticism in this regard, and more recently any criticism at all, and it’s Grating to be on the other side of this discussion. it’s exhausting to know that in ten years we do not get even an acknowledgment besides the author saying she will not answer questions about nicky and thea anymore. it’s upsetting and it’s ugly and i wish no one had to talk about this again, but we do because what i thought was common sense has been washed away by a sudden influx of no-nuance adoration for the trilogy. basically i hope we all explode
two hours later edit: you're allowed to reblog this! sorry about the confusion
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i was a trans man until after a lot of build up of doubting myself, i finally realized that we are putting ourselves further into boxes by not accepting that we are the biological sex that we are and we can do WHATEVER we want at the same time.
clothes and makeup and certain interests do not equal gender.
and not liking being a woman is an unfortunately natural symptom of puberty and/or experiencing society’s deeply ingrained misogyny. and everyone deserves support for those problems.
but we can all fight together against gender social constructs in a healthy way without prescribing people hormones and invasive cosmetic surgery to make them more like the sex they “should” be according to… social constructs…. and help them be comfortable in who they are
Alright. Its been like 9 fucking months that I have been staring down this ask. What better time than to give TERFs some nuance than right in the middle of a fucking hate campaign going on where people (well... singular person probably) are calling me a TERF. This wont backfire.
This post arrived in my inbox shortly after I made another post about gender, and just how fucking weird it can be, and how I genuinely believed every single person on this planet has a fascinating relationship with gender, and so much nuance and personal identity in theirs. Even cis people. Even TERFs. In the tags, I even begrudgingly encouraged TERFs to talk about their gender on that post if they wanted. I genuinely think that TERFs do have really cool relationships with gender. As I mentioned in those tags, the quickest way to explode a group of TERFs is to get them to start talking about their own relationships with gender, and see how vastly different it is, and watching them stab each other in the back over it. So I told them to ramble away about how they view gender, as long as they stayed the fuck away from the rest of the blog WHICH THIS ANON CLEARLY FUCKING IGNORED.
But... this anon does bring up another topic I want to talk about.
Detransition.
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I am a huge supporter of detransitioning. This is... surprisingly... not a very common stance in the trans community, and it breaks my fucking heart. Like, I get it. I understand why. A LOT of detransitioners, like the person in this ask, end up weaponizing their feelings of gender against other trans people.
My support of transition comes from the intersection of two very central beliefs of mine:
Everyone should explore their gender without feeling a need to commit! This is a pretty common belief in the trans community! Damn near universal in fact! We even have a fun little term we use for people who decide to play around with gender, only to end up a bit closer to where they started and being perfectly happy with that: Cis+. Someone who is cis, but at least put in the work to understand the trans experience, and actually CHOOSE to remain Cis instead of just defaulting to it with societal pressure. Many trans people are much more comfortable around 'Cis+' people, because they know these are people who have taken the time and put in the work of being an ally. Self examination isn't easy, especially not publicly, and doing so is genuinely one of the strongest ways a Cis person could ever show their support.
It is never too late to transition. This is also a pretty common belief in the trans community! It is... sadly not quite as universal though. But it is something very important that needs to be said. You could be 80 years old, sitting in a retirement home, and go "You know what? I think I'd rather wear a dress and be treated like a lady. I don't want to be buried as a man." And I think every single trans person should have that freedom!
I was discussing this with @thydungeongal the other day, far more paraphrased than this post, and she said something incredible that has been knocking around in my head ever since.
"Gender is an ongoing process"
Those five words they said to me sum up my feelings far more than this entire post could. Gender IS an ongoing process. My gender has changed SO MUCH over the past three decades. From the straightjacket of assigned gender that I was once forced into; to the very stylish and still lovable finely tailored suit of femininity that grew a little too stuffy to wear constantly, even though I do still enjoy it and try it on from time to time; to the wonderful and freeing losely fitting clothing of being aegogender, finally feeling free to be myself and just act naturally and feel natural without having to keep up an appearance!
And I think, there is no length of time you can try out being trans, and trying out new genders, before eventually coming to the realization you were cis all along. Even if you started HRT. Even if you got SRS. Heck, I don't even think you should have to call yourself trans to do either of those things in the first place, why would I be upset that someone did them and then realized they weren't trans? No single moment in your life should EVER lock your gender in place into some unchanging, set in stone thing.
So I support detransitioners completely, with my entire heart. They deserve just as much support as every other 'Cis+' person out there.
So anon, while many people may hate you and lash out at you for detransitioning, I want you to know, that I am not one of them. It sounds like your detransition might have been forced by peer pressure, which is heart breaking to hear. No one should ever force their own gender expectations on another. I hope that wasn't the case. I hope you came to the decision yourself, after realizing whats right for you. I will never give you hate for your detransition.
I WILL ABSOLUTELY GIVE YOU HATE FOR BEING A FUCKING TERF THOUGH. YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE WITH GENDER DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE RIGHT TO POLICE THE GENDER OF OTHERS, FUCK OFF. GET THE FUCK OFF MY BLOG, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!
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