#obviously this is not a complete list of everything experienced by every trans person ever but | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jackednephi · 5 years

Note

Hello! Apologies for sending in an ask so late. I just wanted to reach out because I'm not in such a great place right now. I was wondering, if you found out about your being queer at a fairly young age, how you managed to stay in the closet?? (And, you know, remaining alright, mentally) my parents are extremely homophobic, and it's tearing me apart, especially because I really care about them. Any advice would be great, even if it's not much. Best of luck in everything, and thank you so much ♥️

so tumblr doesn’t always let me know when i have messages >(

that said, i’ll do my best to respond but like it’s going to be long and convoluted so imma include a cut to save dash space. PLEASE KEEP IN MIND i am polyamorous, agender/trans, pansexual, and demiromantic. so like there are various facets of my queerness and they all played into my life differently

feel free to skip close to the end for like “how to stealth” if you don’t have the spoons for like a 20 page autobiography with annotated bibliography

so finding out about being queer is a question that has both a yes and a no answer. it’s more like i was experiencing queerness but didn’t have words for it, then repressed it, then dealt with it. so it’s less “i knew ever since i could form words to describe it” and more my journey was in no way linear

see when i was little, like really little yknow when you start getting your first crushes right around prek and stuff, i had all kinds of crushes. i had crushes on multiple people at once and this has continued straight into adulthood. so, like, sign one of being poly. my friends would have one person they would hardcore crush on whereas i was crushing on people around me, characters in fiction, just like so many people. i remember listing crushes in my journals every now and then and i’d have lists of upwards and over like 20. :/ so i am in no way surprised i’m poly

so far as my sexuality, i didn’t realize i was feeling for certain female friends what i was feeling for boys. partly because i’d be like “oh i want to hold his hand” and because i saw m/f couples holding hands all the time i was like ah! yes! obviously romantic! but i never saw any f/f relationships so i didn’t make the connection that the hand holding wasn’t a friend feeling. i had INTENSE crushes on girls too, just as intense as on boys. but i was used to the media portraying rival nonsense like hannah montana and whatnot so i was like “oh. this is my situation”

there was also a lot of repressing going on because i just didn’t see that reflected around me from media to adults. all i saw were m/f relationships. i knew gay people existed but i thought they were all gay men. when i was somewhere around like 10 or so, give or take, i realized i was crushing on my best friend at the time (a girl) and was like “no. absolutely not” shoved that as far back as possible and ignored it

my demiromanticism is more born of trauma than me being born that way and that’s ok. one of my close friends found out about one of my crushes in the second grade and i was RELENTLESSLY bullied for it. every time i got a crush on somebody, i would end up HARDCORE bullied or they would get weird and things would be awful. i also had boys shove their crushes onto me and not take no for an answer. like i’d have my bra snapped painfully, bugs shoved down my shirt, my stuff vandalized, hair pulled just because i wasn’t interested

like when i was 12, somebody started a rumor that i was pregnant :/ and that’s not even covering my abusive ex or the sexual assaults so like everything kind of came together for that

then there’s my gender. which is its own bucket of worms and kind of played in with my sexuality in certain ways

my parents are boomers, born in 50 and 58. “but vann,” you say, confused “you were born at the end of 94″ and you are correct! i inherited pcos from my mother so i’ll let you put 2 and 3 together as to why i was born in 94 and my brother in 96. i say that because, unlike their peers, they raised my brothers and i radically different from the accepted cultural norms

if i wanted to wear baggy shorts, that was cool. pretty dresses? whatever. same (kind of) went for my brothers. if they wanted to spend a lot of time on their appearance, that was fine and not shamed at all. in fact, it was encouraged because it made them feel good. i played with army men, barbie dolls, cars, a train set, tools, swords, sports stuff, had tea parties with stuffed animals, drew and crafted, etc etc. my younger brother played house with me (and often suggested it himself) and would play with my baby dolls. like had my younger brother wanted a doll, they would’ve gotten it for him. but i had them so he didn’t bother asking for one cause he could borrow mine

so like there was no gender segregation of toys or activities. and that sounds kind of like the bare minimum of parenting but you have to remember that both of my parents grew up in the rural south as boomers. gender roles were violently enforced for them. but they didn’t think about enforcing them for us so far as play and, to a certain extent, dress/grooming was concerned. this created a safe environment for us to be our true selves

so for a very long time, i was comfy saying i was a girl. i played basketball after school and then afterwards would find my prettiest dress and watch scooby doo. gender expression was fast and loose in my house

i contribute that a lot to the fact that my father was too disabled to work. even before then, he had been a nurse and a damn good one. my father has ALWAYS been the go to for when we were sick, injured, etc. my mother had this disconnect with how much concern to show. it was either too much or not enough and was pretty much never helpful. even after retiring, when my nephews came around he was the go to caretaker for them. even now at 70, he frequently goes back to where the children are during family gatherings and keeps watch. much like a mother hen

so he stayed home and did the cleaning and other “wifely” duties. not cooking though because his brain just cannot. my mother worked as a high school teacher so typical roles were entirely reversed. when i was tiny and wanted nothing more than to be a parent? you go, sweetie! when i was older and wanted to be a scientist? achieve your dreams, kiddo! like they were very supportive of my goals no matter what they were

so i just??? didn’t realize????? until i hit puberty somewhere around 9

talk about body dysphoria. i went from looking like my brother and every other kid my age to wow ok there’s hair now??? and my face is all weird???? and oh no why does my tummy feel funny?????????? (sexual arousal was a TRIP to discover as a third grader that i would not wish on any child ever) oh my god WHAT IS ON MY CHEST!? and grown men are hitting on me now??? oh no i’m in fourth grade and bleeding!?

it was not a fun time by a long shot. i started wearing the baggiest tshirts i could possibly find. anything to hide my freakish body, really. so many hoodies. i would swing wildly between hyper feminine expression with tight clothes and heels and hiding everything as much as possible. part of me was smug about being ahead of my peers, for adults to be treating me as more than a kid. but a LOT of me felt like a freak

maturing (mentally) into an adult was a wild experience. i was 13 and looked like i was 21 except for my face. i did everything possible to find comfort with myself from goth/emo expression ro masculine stuff people threw “dyke” at me for and then finally, weaponized femininity. tight tops, tight pants, shortest skirts i could get away with, eyeliner so sharp it could cut god, heels as often as i could including uniform days, perfect hair. i made myself look like a hot, unapproachable goddess

finally, people were too intimidated to approach me and comment on my appearance. i wore makeup like a mask and people who had known me for YEARS were surprised to find out just how big my chest really was. but i walked with murder in my eyes and i was finally treated the same was i was before puberty - completely unapproachable

ALL THAT IN MIND, here’s how i figured my shit out

i was on facebook seeing “gay, straight, black or white, marriage is a civil right” and being typically “it’s a sacred ordinance shyaddap” about it. i ended up on tumblr about idk 15 or so? note, i’d already discovered porn by this time so i was aware that lesbians existed. like just to throw that out there that i wasn’t like totally in the dark when i made my tumblr account. i did it for school to blog about shakespeare for an english assignment. and that’s when my world expanded

bisexual? wow ok! that was a thing! and oh. oh no

there were pretty girls

and pretty boys and pretty people whose gender i had no idea. cosplayers cosplaying as the opposite gender, trans people, and a whole rainbow of people i was suddenly finding attractive. and i had a HARDCORE identity crisis

i liked girls? but was it the same as boys? was i bisexual? that didn’t seem to fit. there was more than two genders right? and trans people existed? bi? was i bi? bi?

bi. probably

but it didn’t feel comfortable like at all. but i discovered a fanfic writer who talked about being pansexual and i looked it up and everything just clicked?? into place????

not to be overdramatic or anything but it was like the stars finally aligned. it felt SO good! so many genders! and it meant all and aliens are a thing, right? who was i to say no to the possibility? but, more than anything, it felt comfortable. like a hug from my grandma. like home

i wanted to scream from the rooftops that i’d figured it out! i found myself! pansexual! I WAS PANSEXUAL! THAT WAS ME! HOME!

and then the reality of living in our society crashed down on me. i continued to talk about the guys i liked around my family but never EVER the girls. i hid my relationship with the person who eventually became my wife. to be fair, i’d hidden all my relationships prior cause i was an IDIOT and had been dating before 16. so that wasn’t hard. but what was was the breakup

previously, i’d been like “you remember that guy i like? he’s a jerk” or some other excuse to cry to my mother. but i couldn’t about cake. so i cried to my bff/twin/sister like i had everything else and moved on. and i just kind of shut up about it to everybody except those closest to me

except that hurt. here i was knowing i was queer and happy about it but people were being homophobic. i don’t know how often i cried myself to sleep after hearing about “those dirty f*gs” cause of the marriage thing. i ended up quietly coming out to my favorite teacher and she dismissed it as trauma response to my then recent sexual assault. she had seemed safe but that was her reaction so i shut up about it

up until, ironically, coming out day october 2011 just before turning 17 that next month. my mother and i were at chilis, she was being homophobic, and i screamed for the whole restaurant to hear that i was queer and the whole base found out. hard to stay closeted after that

i was pretty much out until college when i started going to church in a new place. i just didn’t talk about my sexuality. ever. period. and it was “easy” because i was dating guys. and pretty sure i was a cis woman. so i was stealth passing. and that was ok with me because i was out on campus, vocally and unapologetically

in high school, i dated a trans guy. he introduced me like in a personal way to transness, to binding. i knew i wasn’t a man but it intrigued me. and in college where nobody knew me, nobody knew me as femme fatale black widow i had a chance to explore my gender. i discovered that loose tshirts made me feel really good. as did other comfy things like shorts and sweats. sometimes i wanted to look fancy or felt like wearing a dress. really, i kind of reverted back to who i was in childhood

i felt weird when i heard my birth name. i’d gone by a nickname for so long, i just chopped off the y (vanny) to vann so it sounded more adult. it felt good. so i identified, tentatively, as nonbinary. it was around this time the trans dude i dated and i fell out with each other because he thought me playing around with my gender was like mocking his transness. or something. idk dude was toxic trash

so i wasn’t male or female then? nah that didn’t feel right. i wasn’t some third androgynous gender. but sometimes binding and passing as a man felt good and sometimes passing as a woman felt good. genderfluid then? was i a man who liked to wear dresses? no. didn’t feel right. made me uncomfortable

eventually, things clicked for me with agender the way they had with pansexual the fall of my third year of undergrad. stars aligned, the universe smiled upon me, and i was THRILLED. like gender euphoria is REAL and never before had i felt so comfortable in my own skin. i remember literally weeping with joy. like i’d been going with they/them/their for a couple years at that point

i came out to my parents about that one pretty shortly after realizing it because i was OVERJOYED. they’d been working on calling me vann for awhile at that point and the pronouns. i’ve since learned that so long as soebody has my name, 90% of the time i legit do not care what pronouns somebody uses. im aware that people perceive me differently and it’s fine. i mean neutral pronouns fill me with euphoria but like it’s fine. so long as somebody doesn’t mistake me for cis

my parents are like so great about it now. they correct people who deadname me (except my grandma cause she’s like 85 and i gave her permission years ago) and my mother straight cut contact with family members who refuse to respect me. except my brothers but like she makes it clear whenever they’re going to be awful that she WILL NOT tolerate it. like they don’t dare trash me in front of our father. he’s old now but he will backhand one of my brothers for that and they know it. so they try it with our mom and she’s like “try it again and you won’t hear from me until you apologize for trashing your sister”

i realized i was poly when cake came back into my life. that was a serious mess involving their abusive ex girlfriend but we clicked and it ended up working so yknow. that was my easiest coming out actually. my parents were like “yknow, you always seemed to love people when you were a kid. and you had SO many crushes. makes sense” which was awesome. it was the most difficult emotionally but the easiest because i’d already come out twice before so it was whatever

the demi thing was discovered in therapy. and like it doesn’t have much in the way of impact like the other things do. so i never really came out about that? there wasn’t really a point? like i talk about it when it comes up but it’s just whatever. i honestly have no idea if i ever told my family?????

WITH THAT NONSENSE IN MIND, HERE’S HOW TO STEALTH AND BE OK MENTALLY

you said homophobic so im gonna assume you’re not straight. no idea about gender and, honestly, so far as gender goes i’ve seen it’s safer to lean into masculinity than it is femininity. so if you’re amab, i don’t really have tips or tricks for that as i’m afab. with being afab, lean into the tomboy aesthetic so you seem acceptably (safely) your assigned gender. i recommend fun lipstick and nail polish colors. sparkly nails did wonders for me honestly

but for like not straightness. that’s a tightrope that is but a gossamer thread to balance. like there are ways to stealth gender expression and feel affirmed but queerness is a different animal or it was for me

so i had AT LEAST one space in my life where i was 100%, unapologetically, loudly out. like i’m here, i’m queer and flying my rainbow flag and not at all sorry about it OUT. for awhile, it was just my very closest friends in the whole world. then it was tumblr. then i made a facebook for people irl i could trust. 0 family and 0 people who couldn’t be chill about it

like having a carved space for you to just be the authentic you, whatever that is. for me, that’s all this queer mess, the polycule that is my family, my faith, my absolutely foul mouth, my mental illnesses, my love of good coffee or a glass of wine every now and then as a rare treat, the good and the bad the ugly and the uncategorizable all together. the struggle with the word of wisdom AND the love of my spouses. all of that

it’s affirming to have this space where you’re yourself and people accept you for who you are rather than what gets your engine revving. but you’ve also got to try and stealth that into wherever you can. you want a dyke spike? go for it and say it’s a pixie cut. plaids are in right now which is a lowkey signal to other queers you’re a queer too no matter your gender. just depends on what shoe you pair it with and other queers will take notice while non queers will just think you’re trendy

it was also fun for me to get that pan flag aesthetic wherever i could. like blue/pink galaxy type eyeshadow that wasn’t too peacock flashy so it looked Hot without being Obvious and a pink lipstick and yellow nails. like it was subtle but i knew what was going on and it felt good. i did the same with rainbows but i had more to work with there. like i’d have an inconspicuous notebook where i’d paint/paste a rainbow on the inside cover so that it was Normal from the outside and BAM! GAY! on the inside. did that with highlighting my notes too

i just kind of stuck it everywhere i could possibly get away with. people were excited to see me go from emo to bring colors becuase “oh wow! you’re finally not sad!” lol no i’m just stealth queer over here

i also wrote SO MUCH queer fanfiction. i didn’t publish any of it just in case but i have notebooks full of stuff. i also rped with people as a way to live vicariously through characters. i also READ a lot of queer fanfiction actually. i saved all kinds of fanart and photo manipulations of certain pairings together. like i couldn’t be out so i could have fiction where others were

i also poured myself into hobbies. i fenced, did karate, learned japanese, participated in drama club, played in a band, took piano lessons, taught myself to draw, journaled, learned to cook, read amazing books, played video games, learned to sing. like i’m sure there are other things i’m forgetting? basically, if it was EVER covered in a young women’s activity pretty much anywhere in the world, i learned at least those basic skills. like i can embroider now even

so like that’s how i stealthed and stayed sane. i was also in therapy where i was out to whatever therapist i was seeing at the time which ABSOLUTELY helped. i also made like queer playlists i would listen to. like same love, i kissed a girl, born this way, etc that i would listen to when i needed to just sink into it. music in general is super cathartic and i’ve gotta say green day, acdc, evanescence, bon jovi, etc got me through some tough shit

i also yelled at god. i yelled at god a LOT actually. like i know we get told “pray for comfort” but sometimes you need to bawl your eyes out and just SCREAM at the almighty. dude can take it. he’s god after all. he can handle our anger. it isn’t disrespectful. like if you ever do cross a line, he’ll let you know. like your thoughts will hard stop. you’ll know

but empty your lungs screaming in pain. let him know it isn’t fair, you’re not happy. beg for relief from the nightmares you’re living. demand to know if or when it’ll ever get better. burn yourself out yelling and crying and fall asleep drenched in tears. then wake up the next day and live your life and you know what?

you’ll feel better. maybe not a lot sometimes and maybe everything is cool for once in forever. but it definitely helped me a lot. like dude listens and you WILL feel better even if the things around you dont get better. you get some strength to get through and be ok and it’s super helpful

but that’s what i got. also bear in mind that i came out to thousands of people by yelling at my mother in a restaurant when all the ships were in because everybody in said restaurant texted everybody they knew and my texts were flooded in like an hour of “DON’T TELL ME YOU CAME OUT TO YOUR MOM LIKE THAT OMG” and “you’re queer!?” so like

i’m not the best when it comes to stealth queering so take my advice with a grain of salt

#long post #like reeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllyyyyyyyyyy long post #i cannot overemphasize how long this post is #advice #i tried :/#Anonymous #anon #vannswers

2 notes · View notes

tentacleteapot · 6 years

Text

failing at my 5-year plan was the best thing to happen to me.

My name’s Daphne, I’m a biracial trans lesbian, and on August 14th 2018 I’ll turn 31 years old.

I say this because back in 2015, I promised myself that if I hadn’t accomplished my five-year plan — socially transition, get HRT and laser hair removal funded and completed, legally change my name and medically transition via SRS — I wasn’t going to live past the age of 30.

In 2015 I was dangerously depressed, barely functional aside from sleeping, working, playing video games, and wrestling with the worst isolation and dysphoria I’ve ever experienced. I knew I was trans — I had a five-year plan for transitioning, with everything sorted out so that year by year, I accomplished more and more of my goals and was ‘officially done’ at age thirty. And I decided that if I wasn’t ‘done’ by age thirty — if I hadn’t checked everything off my list, ending with bottom surgery — then I wasn’t going to stick around to see 31.

Then real life happened. I moved to a new state with my oldest sibling, which basically saved my life: instead of drifting along barely functioning, I had someone who needed my help paying rent, had their own problems to deal with, and was figuring out their own identity as their life began to change too. I didn’t have the option of shutting down. So I got a job, I kept saving up, and… shit kept happening, whether it was cars breaking down or jobs being lost or mental health failing. I couldn’t afford hormones. I couldn’t get laser hair removal. Electrolysis was so rare and expensive that after a while I abandoned it, and felt like I was failing again. I was publicly out, but I was constantly misgendered or pandered to and I got a lot of unwanted attention on the internet and in real life. I wasn’t a person, I was a curiosity. I kept going, but I believed my five-year plan was going to fail. I actively planned on killing myself when I turned 30 in 2017. Which, obviously, I didn’t.

Because real life happened again.

I won’t bore you with the details. By now my family knows I’m trans — my grandparents disowned me, my parents took a while to figure it out but eventually came around — and so do lots of other people, people I trust. It’s information that I kept quiet for a long time, a secret I didn’t want people to know, because being trans makes you a target. Lots of things make people targets, obviously, there’s so many reasons for people to want to hurt you or do you harm, but being trans felt like an even bigger target than being obviously Not White, so I kept it a secret when I could and didn’t let on unless I had to. It’s not something I like to talk about, but it’s something that I HAVE to talk about. I hate when people know I’m trans and treat me differently because of it, but I have to say this. It’s so important to me that I do.

I have to talk about this because four years into my five-year plan I realized that even if I didn’t ever get surgery, or HRT, or my name change, or laser hair removal, I had things to stick around for. Things to stay alive for. Suddenly I realized that I wasn’t planning on dying at 30. I’m saying this because the me from five years ago wanted to die, planned on dying, and maybe hearing a story from someone like me would have helped me back then.

If I’d heard from somebody like me, five years ago, that I’d live long enough to have a job I love, to get my name changed, to get HRT and be a session into laser hair removal with some very promising results already… if I’d known I’d have a wonderful, amazing found family that’s been such a blessing and the strongest support group I’ve ever had in my entire life, if I’d known I was going to feel safe and happy and be renting a house and see my little brother at work every day and be such good friends with so many amazing people, and finishing the first draft of a novel about being gay and trans and also a demon, I… I think that would have been huge. It’s possible I’d never have even considered giving myself an expiration date and planning on enforcing it.

If you’re trans or questioning or just scared and confused, you need to know, from a thirty-year-old woman with a birthday in two weeks, that what you’re going through is survivable. What you’re feeling is scary, and intimidating, and stressful, and that’s okay. Your feelings are normal, reasonable, rational, and completely appropriate to have. You have a lot you need to figure out, and it’s going to continue being scary sometimes — it might never completely stop being scary — but you can survive this.

You may need help. Lots of people do. You might deal with the urge to hurt yourself, or suicidal impulses or intrusive thoughts, or all manner of mental health issues and physical issues I can’t fathom and don’t go through. But I truly believe with all my heart that if you reach out to people, whether it’s friends and loved ones or medical health professionals, or both, you can get the support and the strength you need to survive with people’s help until one day you look around and realize you’re surviving on your own.

I did.

It’s scary. And it’s hard. And setbacks like how my grandparents treat me, how people outside of trans and queer circles treat me and people like me, and things like the utter fiasco that was my name change, can really hurt you and discourage you from trying. But I am telling you that this is survivable. It’s possible. Yeah, it’s scary and hard and sometimes all you can do is stay in hiding and suffer in silence until you get out and get to a better place. Some people are in living situations I don’t know how to cope with and couldn’t guide them through. I respect that my experiences aren’t universal and my journey is unique. But you have to at least hear from one person who’s surviving, one person who’s still alive and still fighting, and see where I’m at and how far I’ve come, and know that you can get here too, if you reach out to the right people and you keep them with you so that someday you can support them the way they support you.

I never got that surgery. Maybe I never will, it’s really expensive. But I also had emotionally given up on changing my name and I got that done. I’d given up on getting laser hair removal and I got that started, too. I’d given up on ever being loved and I have a bigger family than ever and I just celebrated my two-year anniversary in June. I am in a better place than the Daphne from five years ago could ever have dreamed. Even if I’d written down how I wanted my life to be five years from then, it wouldn’t have been as good, because it wouldn’t have been this. I don’t have all the answers, and I never will. But I have the people I need to keep myself safe and fulfilled and loved. I have things to look forward to and aim for that’ll keep me going for at least another thirty years. I have no idea what the rest of my life is going to be like, since I legitimately didn’t expect to live this long, but I’m going to find out. Whatever the hell else is going to happen to me, I’m going to be there to see it and figure it out with my family right alongside me. I’m gonna be there to see it.

I’m gonna be there to see it and I really, really, really hope you stick around to see where you are in five years too.

If you know someone who you think might need to see this, or if you need to see it for yourself, so you remember, please reblog this. I owe it to me from five years ago, and any other kids out there trying to figure out the same gender shit I was, to make sure people know how far I’ve come so they can go worlds farther.

#long post #trans #transgender #i know if this gets big the wrong kind of people will see it and start giving me shit but #i hope it reaches and really helps somebody #that would make it worth it if anything bad happened because of this post #daphne intensifies #sorry mobile users #i tried

84 notes · View notes

quantumgender · 4 years

Text

pride ask game by @.hogwartsonline!

i wanted to do this but know i don’t have enough followers here yet to get asks, so i did it myself! under the cut bc it’s long!

1 - What do you identify as and what are your pronouns?

i’m quantumgender! its a polygender identity that looks nonbinary/xenic, but is actually made up of man, woman, nonbinary, and xenic identities! i am also pearlian - it’s basically a term for being mlm wlw nblnb and everything in between! i also call myself bi, nonbinary, and trans!

i have a bunch of pronouns, but some of my favs right now are ne/neo, xe/xeno, thon/thons, foe/foes, 🧪, 📟, 🪐, and ⚡! i also use he/him, and it is also my aux if you can’t use neopronouns or emoji pronouns because of neurodivergence or incompatible tech with emojis.

2 - How did you discover your sexuality, tell your story?

my journey to discovering my sexuality is actually pretty triggering, so please don’t read if you’re uncomfortable with sexual coercion

for a very long time i knew i was attracted to guys! however, i didn’t know i was attracted to girls. i did however, exhibit a lot of signs to be attracted to girls that i didn’t realize - like refusing to go into victoria’s secret, not wanting to watch straight prn because it had women in it, etc. i always thought if i looked at a woman in a sexual sense it would “make me gay” - not realizing that most straight women don’t mind naked women and don’t think looking at them is weird. because i was pretty obviously attracted to women but didn’t know it, this led to a group of “friends” using my inability to back down from dares in order to make me do a lot of sexual things involving women that i otherwise would have been terrified to do. they were a group of wlw that made fun of me for not being “wlw” (i was unaligned nonbinary at the time and they constantly misgendered me). they would tease me until i would write sexual things about women, view sexual imagery of women, or even do sexual acts with a specific girl i (unknowingly) had a crush on.

this did help me realize that i was bi, and i came upon the label bi immediately because i did then (and still do) have a slight preference for men. even though the road to me discovering my sexuality was very uncomfortable, i am still very proud to be bi and i love my identity

3 - Have you experienced being misgendered? What happened and how did you overcome it?

i have been misgendered multiple times! i don’t have too many specific stories because as i am mostly closeted, i am misgendered every day of my life and i’m kind of numb to it. because of that, the most glaring examples of me being misgendered were in LGBT+ spaces.

i used to introduce myself saying that people could use he or she pronouns for me. (actually, even though i do not have them listed, i do use she/her pronouns. i simply do not list them online because i get she/her’d constantly in day to day life so i prefer different pronouns online). a lot of cis people would find this confusing and instead of choosing one pronoun to reference me as, they would default to “they/them” which i have never been comfortable with as a pronoun choice. sometimes i have let this slide, but the one time i did speak up, the cis person looked almost pissed off at me for doing so. to combat this i just started introducing myself as “she/her” so i wouldn’t be misgendered by people getting confused by my multiple pronoun sets and defaulting to “they/them”

the worst was the group in the previous question though. the girl who i had a crush on would always refer to me as they/them even though i told her multiple times those weren’t my pronouns. i never felt like my gender was recognized when i had my (very very short lived) “relationship” with her (it was like 2 weeks long so i don’t think it counts).

4 - Who was the first person you told, how did they react?

i don’t remember who i told first that i was nonbinary (this is the first LGBT+ identity i ever realized i was). it was a really long time ago. it might have been the person who introduced me to tumblr, and if so, they were probably really excited for me :)

5 - Describe what it was like coming out, what did you feel?

i do not consider myself “out.” although on my college campus i was able to present in a way that aligned more with how i wanted to present (in a fluid manner, switching between wearing masculine, androgynous, and feminine clothing), i still was not “out.” and i didn’t tell anyone besides my friends and a few close teachers what my identity was (bi nonbinary). my parents, many of the people i went to high school with, and in my future job, i will be completely closeted because i live in an incredibly conservative area and could easily be denied a job or rejected (probably only partially, but it would still hurt a LOT) but my parents.

6 - If you’re out, how did your parents/guardians/friends react?

i’m only out to my friends, they all took it very well. some of the teachers i’ve told seemed really shocked. this is mostly because i only outed myself to speak out on things they were teaching that were blatantly queerphobic, or to give context to a story/argument.

7 - What is one question you hate people asking about your sexuality?

i really don’t like when people assume that because i’m bi i don’t date trans or nonbinary people. like, ffs, i am trans and nonbinary! bi does not mean two, it has always been inclusive, and i really don’t like when people (mostly gatekeepers) try to rewrite history in a way that insinuates that bi is a transphobic identity.

8 - Describe the style of clothing that you most often wear.

i have two distinct wardrobes - a “grunge/vintage” wardrobe, and a “alt/punk” wardrobe. my vintage wardrobe contains a bunch of flannels, ripped jeans, and band t shirts from classic rock bands - i have van halen and the who, for example. this aesthetic involves a lot of muted colors like mustard yellow, rust red/orange, and olive green.

for my alt wardrobe, i have a lot of black. i have shirts that say things like “they came from outer space” in old-timey horror font, some band t shirts (my fav is from my friend’s metal band), a zodiac themed crop top, and one crop top with a pentagram in the back!

i like these styles because i can wear them as masculine, androgynous, or feminine. i tend to wear a lot of denim and i love my converse and my docs!

9 - Who are your favourite lgbt+ ships?

um for canon ones kaworu and shinji’s relationship really is important to me personally! it was the first LGBT+ relationship i saw in a piece of media i actually loved beyond the representation.

for other ships i really love, a lot of them are my personal ships/headcanons. i really like cable and deadpool together, and i like imagining luke, and leia both being married/partners with han!

10 - What does makeup mean to you? Do you wear any?

makeup for me is an artistic expression! i wear it sometimes when i have the time and energy. i can do a bunch of looks - i can even make myself look more masculine with makeup, which helps when i feel dysphoric about the way i look.

11 - Do you experience dysphoria? If so, how does that affect you?

yes, i do! i experience a bunch of different kinds of dysphoria, but none are sever enough that they would be classified as clinical dysphoria (i mean this that they do not cause me severe depression, dissociation, or other severe symptoms).

i experience a lot of social dysphoria when i am referred to a girl very often, or explicitly excluded from masculine related things (for example, if somebody said i was “too dainty” to lift something [which would not happen because i’m pretty muscular] i would feel dysphoric). i feel euphoric when i am included with both men and women, or referred to with attributes of both of these genders.

as for physical dysphoria, i experience a lot of genital dysphoria, especially surrounding sexual acts. in my day-to-day, i don’t really think about my genitals much, but when it comes to sexual acts, i am very dysphoric about the parts i have.

i also experience varying levels of physical dysphoria. i have a lot of height dysphoria, and i dislike how wide my hips are - i like how large my thighs are, but not how wide my hips are (they’re not even that wide, but when i bind they’re more pronounced without the stuff on top to level it out). i am also dysphoric at times due to my jawline since my chin isn’t as strong as i would like it to be. and, ofc, sometimes i bind. these physical dysphoria features fluctuate from day to day. specifically with binding, sometimes it’s more “hmm, do boobs go with this outfit?” rather than a matter of dysphoria.

12 - What is the stupidest thing you’ve heard said about the lgbt+ community?

oh god, so many things. i think the most harmful one is that the community is full of p*dophiles who abuse children... this one really harms me in particular because i’m a teacher. like no, we are not “harmful sexual deviants” we just experience gender differently and love different people than you do...

13 - What’s your favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?

i love the supportive parts. i love having a group of likeminded people who i know will respect me when i talk to them. even if i have nothing in common with them, just seeing LGBT+ people open and proud on tiktok makes me feel incredibly loved and validated.

14 - What’s your least favourite thing about the lgbt+ community?

the gatekeeping and discourse within the community itself. for the love of god, please just treat people like human beings. t*rfs and tr*scum especially make me feel incredibly unsafe and like i have to hide parts of my identity in order to even navigate spaces that are meant for LGBT+ people. i also get incredibly, irredeemably angry at people who joke “those are the weird LGBT+ people we’re the normal ones” and shit like that. like you’re not quirky, you’re just bullying people for clout.

15 - Have you ever been to your cities pride event? Why or why not?

yes, i’ve been to pride in 2 different cities! 1 i went to before i knew i was bi, and 1 after! personally i wasn’t old enough at either of them to truly enjoy the event, but it was nice being able to get some LGBT+ related stuff! i got a tiny rainbow flag!

16 - Who is your favourite lgbt+ Icon/Advocate/Celebrity?

i love keiynan lonsdale! i don’t actually keep up with too many LGBT+ celebs...oh wait! kesha’s bi! i love her...

17 - Have you been in a relationship and how did you meet?

i’ve been in one real relationship. we met on tumblr.

18 - What is your favourite lgbt+ book?

i’ve only read simon vs... i honestly don’t read things just because they’re LGBT+, and reading in general is really difficult for me to do now because i have a lot of trouble concentrating.

19 - Have you ever faced discrimination? What happened?

i haven’t faced anything too bad. i’ve heard a lot of discriminatory things said (mostly by parents who i can only sometimes argue against). one time a kid in 8th grade called me the d slur, which was horrying as a 13 yo who didn’t even know he was attracted to girls at the time. but again, i’m closeted so i haven’t experienced much

20 - Your Favorite lgbt+ movie or show?

sense8!!!! it has a mlm relationship, a wlw relationship with a trans woman... i really loved it, i’m still so upset it got cancelled :(

21 - Who are some of your favourite lgbt+ bloggers?

i’m going to skip this one, sorry! i love everyone that i follow tho!

22 - Which lgbt+ slur do you want to reclaim?

i personally don’t reclaim any slurs. i refer to myself as queer, but i don’t count it as a slur personally, as it’s an identity for me, not just a word. i do respect people who are triggered by it though.

23 - Have you ever gone to a gay bar, or a drag show, how was it?

there aren’t any gay bars where i live, so no.

24 - How do you self-identify your gender, and what does that mean to you?

i self-id as quantumgender! it’s a gender that on first glance, looks like one thing, but once you look up close, you see it actually has many small moving parts that make up the whole.

on the outside my gender looks “nonbinary” or xenic. i love both of these terms and they’re great for describing my overall experience. however, when you look up close, my gender is actually parts man, girl, nonbinary, and xenic, and they fluctuate (like they would on a quantum level!) so it just... describes my gender very well, especially how my gender fluctuates!

25 - Are you interested in having children? Why or why not?

i don’t think so. there’s a lot of reasons and many of them are personal and i just.. i don’t think so.

26 - What identity advice would you give your younger self?

this isn’t identity advice so much as kindness advice but - don’t look down on others for their identity and don’t let anyone else convince you to treat people like they are less than human. we should support each other, not tear each other down.

27 - What do you think of gender roles in relationships?

these gender roles taste disgusting

28 - Anything else you want to share about your experience with gender?

gender go brrrrrr aeiouaioue john madden

29 - What is something you wish people know about being lgbt+?

being LGBT+ should be about lifting each other up even if their experiences don’t align with our own, and helping other communities that need our support. if you don’t love black LGBT+ ppl and other LGBT+ poc, if you don’t love disables LGBT+ ppl, if you don’t love mentally ill LGBT+, if you don’t love trans and nonbinary people... you’re not LGBT+, because you don’t support everyone that is included, supported, and loved within our community. if you don’t love all of us, you are poisoning our spaces of positivity and social change and you don’t belong with us.

30 - Why are proud to be lgbt+?

i... i don’t know. to me, my identities are just a part of me. they aren’t something to be happy or sad about, or proud or ashamed of. they just... are, and i love them as a part of me.

#personal #long post

0 notes

designcontextsbh-blog · 7 years

Text

Response: The Representation of Sexuality and Relationships in Games

Games have a unique opportunity when creating characters because they don’t have to rely on physical acting so they can create a character to be any race or gender and find the voice actor that fits. The issue with this is that developers tend to create characters that appeal to what they believe is their largest audience, so straight white males are a popular character for games. It seems like deviating from the norm and introducing alternative character types opens up a world of fear that it will polarise too many players. For instance, 2013 was branded as the year of the female protagonist because there was a total of 3 big games announced that had a female protagonist: Tomb Raider, Bayonetta 2 and Beyond Two Souls, then Call of Duty decided they would include female characters in their upcoming multiplayer for Call of Duty: Ghosts. The industry and players rejoiced that finally there would be more females in games, well, the male ones did at least. It seems that people in the majority think that having one or two characters that fit into a minority automatically makes everything more diverse. A few gay characters here, a female protagonist there and maybe just for kicks they won’t all be white. That’s not how diversity works. Having one character in one game that fits into a minority doesn’t suddenly eradicate the massive amount of sexism, racism, homophobia or transphobia that exists. With realism and immersion becoming more popular we see some developers scrambling to implement romance systems and making the most stereotypical LBGTQ+ characters ever seen, like repeating the ‘year of the female protagonist’ with less effort. The problem is you can’t really get away with butchering things that we experience in real life without anyone noticing.

Developers don’t seem to know how to handle increasing the amount of LBGTQ+ characters in their games, instead of looking at the competition and standing out from the crowd they seem to rely on the same old character types. A lot of games work with a pre-made character, they tell the story of a character the studio has created that the player will follow on their journey. They tend to have a limited opportunity to express much in terms of sexuality and relationships due to the story taking priority over the few characters that the player interacts with. But it seems that they constantly waste the few opportunities they do have by choosing the majority over and over again. Even games with large casts with the option to pursue a relationship arc seem to struggle with sexuality. Take Bioware’s massive RPG franchises Mass Effect and Dragon Age, even though their romance subplots are a big draw for players, they still keep the homosexuality to the bare minimum. One gay option is available for each gender, one bisexual option and the rest are either straight or non- romanceable. It seems a wasted opportunity to have such a strong system and then limit the options for any players that want to create an LBGTQ+ character. As levels of realism in games increase, so should the diversity of the characters we play.

In an interview with games journalist Kate Gray, she highlighted how allowing players freedom and full immersion are important to players “If games want to have full immersion, and are already aimed at adults, I think it’s hugely important. I don’t think every game needs sexuality and relationships … but I also think that, if you’re going to include it, it should be done properly… Romance is so personal that it’s vital to have options that cover the majority of your players.” This is all very true, not every game you play should have you romancing everything that moves or trying to tackle the massive issue of sexuality but maybe some more should. If even one game this year attempts to portray such issues in a way we’ve never seen, we’d notice a huge difference in how we speak about it.

The intimacy of relationships may be hard to translate into a 40-hour game and not just feel like a lecture on how to they should work but a few developers appear to want to avoid even trying to portray something real. Bioware once again comes up short in the representation department. Simply pick the right options in conversation, do their loyalty mission and you will unlock the ultimate ‘prize’ for game relationships – sex. In the later entries in their two biggest franchises, Mass Effect and Dragon Age, there is an attempt to portray platonic relationships between the player and the NPC characters but it still seems to suggest it won’t take more to become more than friends. But as Gray pointed out, that’s not how it works “Friendship doesn’t have a “win state” like romance does - sex - and though I obviously disagree with sex being a “prize”, I can see how it’s easy to gamify. That doesn’t exist with friendship, which is more of a sliding scale.” But for games, the focus is always set on winning the prize in every category including relationships. There are varying degrees of these prizes of course: for Mass Effect, it is a sex scene while in Harvest Moon it is a baby. Even though it may seem odd to compare a SC-FI action RPG to a farming game, their idea of using “friendship as a step to romance” is always the same - do or say the right thing for a little while and you will win that prize every time. That may make perfect sense for games, they aren’t exactly the most realistic forms of entertainment, I can become the ultimate warrior or a highly skilled spy by sliding a disc into the tray but just because people want to escape when playing a game doesn’t mean they don’t want something real in it. Expressing ourselves is a massive part of life and games, we can customise the character’s hair, voice, clothes, skills – the list is endless really. Sometimes though, you may want to make a character that reflects you as a person and without something as basic as sexuality you won’t really ever get to have that choice.

There are so many players that are underrepresented in games today as developers still play into the white straight male-centric view that people have of the world. So many people are LBGTQ+ these days that the choice to exclude them makes no sense. Developers are missing out on strong characters, world building and storytelling because the fear of being boycotted by the loud minority of homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic and racists who will make it their mission to have your game tank is stronger than the need to represent people who will still pick up your game and play it.

Fable is a great example of a game that implements sexuality so subtly you might not even notice it. When you are walking around in any Fable RPG you might notice some hearts above NPC’s heads, they indicate that they are in love with you. Look closer and you will find some above both women and men, in the second and third instalment pulling the left trigger will bring up some more information and you will find that Albion is filled with gay, lesbian and bisexual people. It makes the world feel more real and although Fable doesn’t have a big focus on relationships, it allows the player the choice and that is the big difference. It is done in a way that you can completely ignore it and just focus on the main story or you can decide to start a family with whoever you choose.

In the past 50 years expressing yourself as an individual has slowly become an integral part of life, it allows people a freedom that was never explored before. Dye your hair, dress how you like, listen to whatever music you like, date who you want to. It has all become so common place that most people wouldn’t bat an eye at someone with neon blue hair walking down the street. However, we are still faced with bigotry in regards to race, gender and sexuality in a world that preaches acceptance. Where this acceptance has flourished is in the forms of escapism we live our lives surrounded in. TV, movies, music, the internet and games all offer a few hours of being cut off from the world, of experiencing new things and broadening our horizons through someone else’s eyes. Take RuPaul’s Drag Race as an example of a TV show that opened people up to the niche world of drag. It showed how much of a market there is for simple expression of self in a time where people are still attacked for who they love or how they dress. And since Hollywood and big TV companies crumble under the protests of close-minded people, wouldn’t games be the perfect place to allow someone to express themselves within a fictional world? To experience the struggles faced by people under attack for being themselves through the safety of a computer screen? It is sad to see such an amazing industry that can create entire fantasy universes shy away from problems faced by so many of their consumers.

That being said, games are a wonderful thing. They tell stories, create universes and let you escape into a fantasy at the push of a button. But they lack in an area that has become so important and so fundamental in the last few years that they are quickly coming under fire from their dedicated players. Representation is an overlooked issue in every entertainment industry these days that the excuses we hear are becoming so predictable it’s almost laughable. The highest rated TV shows and movies this year? Probably starring the same straight white guys we’ve been watching for years. The artists taking home the most awards at the big music events? I can name the top five of them without even trying to think about it. This year’s biggest games? Well hopefully in the industry that creates its own stars, maybe we’ll get to see a few surprises this time around. It isn’t that every game needs to have a gay, trans ethnic lead to be inclusive – far from it in fact - but maybe if just here and there we got something a little different than what we’ve seen a million times before, then we can be proud to say that we include people for who they are when everyone else is pretending there isn’t an issue.

References:

Please note that throughout this response I didn’t access outside material other than game names and my interview with Kate Gray. Therefore these references are purely games that I mentioned.

Tomb Raider. 2013. [computer game]. Crystal Dynamics

Bayonette 2. 2014. [computer game]. Wii U. Platinum Games

Beyond Two Souls. 2013 [computer game]. Quantic Dream

Call of Duty: Ghosts. 2013 [computer game]. Infinity Ward

Dragon Age. 2009. [computer game]. Bioware

Mass Effect. 2007. [computer game]. Bioware

Harvest Moon. 1996. [computer game]. Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Amccus

Fable. 2004. [computer game]. Xbox. Lionhead Studios

RuPaul’s Drag Race. 2009. [tv show]. World of Wonder

0 notes