#saying this as a dfab person who fucks other dfab people

[isa-ah]

Honestly thank you for your take. Like, I’m easily agitable and get grumpy from stupid things and I *know* from my personality that T /is/ gonna make me angrier. But every time I try to say that, my girlfriend (also trans) tells me it won’t and that’s misinformation. Like…… I fucking know my mood and I’m tired of people invalidating my reasonable expectations for who I am as a person. I think it’s unreasonable to just expect me to be able to keep my cool through T and not have an adjustment period. And I feels like garbage that if I’m somehow affected by an expected change, the alternative is to immediately cannon-ball into toxic masculinity and suck up all my feelings into stoicism.

these tags someone put on the original post vvvvv

#i got some pretty wild mood side effects on t and Yeah it affected my libido #but you know what? #T making me angry taught me a lot about anger #it was an emotion that had been explosive for me Before transition#and i had a really bad temper #T made me angry with enough regularity #that i had to learn to coexist with anger #to let anger exist and pass #i ironically gained a lot More patience because I got angry #i learned that it- like any other feeling- is worth looking at and examining#and now i pretty much never act in anger #i know how to be angry and let it exist and know it's not some Evil Sinful Thing or some Righteous Moral Fury#which i didn't before taking a medication that made me angry!!! #anger is okay! #being angry or horny or loud does not make you surrender all your morals and fundamentally doomed to being cruel to others! #no reaction in your body or emotion or feeling Dooms You to be Evil or Abusive #lots of things make people angry #and it's okay! #it's okay to be angry!

theres also the fact that like, theres a likelihood your gf went through a period of "boys will be boys" where she was allowed to experience puberty and act out and be a wild child freak as most kids experiencing a testosterone driven puberty are, around peers also going through it, around understanding of "well thats just how it is", with male role models to explain to her whats happening, why, and to some extent how to handle it; VS being in your twenties (assuming u are) and being expected to be polite and well mannered going through the Same Type of Puberty as a 13yo boy with all the problems of a 20smtn adult man, with a hearty lack of male role models to help you through it and MOUNTAINS of stress and work and the world burning down that a kids never going to have to deal with.

we dont get the leeway to have an adjustment period, and no amount of baby talking us into believing it wont happen will make it not happen. it just means we have to do the emotional labor to "spare" everyone else. (as dfab people are expected to do from childhood). given that testosterone does effect you in that way cause obviously its not the same for everyone, but you know yourself and you sound pretty damn aware of it.

have a messy transition! act out! be loud! you DESERVE to have the formative experience associated with your puberty, and youll probably learn a lot about yourself in the process. you have self awareness and coping skills a kids not going to have, so you CAN experience your anger, your aggression, and learn how to live WITH it instead of trying to bottle it up.

#obviously not boys will be boysing your gf you get what i mean. the peer and parental treatment likely associated w being young and amab #*likely bc like again obviously no 2 people have the same experience. im talking broadly

[feralfungii]

Small rant

terfs rly are some of the most misogynistic pieces of shit out there and they seem totally unaware of the irony of it. Claiming to be feminist but then the moment someone dfab is like "i dont identify as a woman" theyre like "OH YOU POOR CONFUSED LITTLE GIRL. You clearly have been so terribly misled and tricked!!!! Not to worry, I know you are incapable of critical thinking or making your own decisions in life, so I'M here to tell you your business, to dictate what you do with your body, and to tell you how you, as a woman, should behave!!!!"

Like wow yeah youre such a feminist, trying to dictate what other people do with their bodies and lives and telling them they don't know any better. That's definitely not at all anything like our society's tendency to tell dfab people they're irrational and reactive and don't know what they're talking about and cant be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies.

Terfs are like the pro-lifers who insist theyre feminists - they don't understand that feminism is more than just "yeah i dont think dfab people should live to be subservient to dmab people" or "men suck" or "women are angels and goddesses who can do no wrong." You arent a feminist just because youre a cis woman who's full of herself and raging at people she doesn't consider to be her equals. Feminism is such a huge and nuanced thing and it drives me nuts to see people directly undermining what feminism actually is while insisting to be championing it.

Also, any real feminist would be unabashedly supportive of trans women, that's just a fact. Real, actual feminism is not based in sexist fake science, it's based on "the way we as individuals and as a society treat people needs to be considered in context of many layers of intersectionality, privilege, oppression, and every nuanced thing in between. No one's experience and life should be invalidated and taken from their control based on gender, race, religion, class, or sexuality."

Insisting on gender roles and specific gender presentation and policing of other peoples bodies, harassing and bullying people who dont conform to your personal preferences... I cant think of anything less feminist than terf ideology. There is nothing more harmful to the true purpose of feminism than their weird self-righteous misogyny and transphobia. There is nothing more insulting to the spirit of feminism than to totally invalidate anyone else's personhood and identity based on sexist gender ideology.

If you think that chromosomes and genitals are deciding factors of who people are, who they're capable of being, and what they're capable of doing, you have a lot of internalized sexism to work through. If you think someone's entire life needs to be dictated by their gender, you also have a lot of internalized misogyny and sexism to sort through. You cannot claim to be fighting for women while excluding people who are also suffering under the system feminism is supposed to be fighting against (spoiler alert, the system is run by a bunch of old rich white guys, not by trans people who want to be able to use the public bathroom without getting literally attacked) and also promoting and spreading the same hurtful, hateful rhetoric that people have always used to say women aren't really people. They will literally parrot archaic gender ideology from times when women weren't fucking allowed to vote and claim they're feminists, it's absolutely nonsensical.

Im sure many of them dont actually believe in their own righteousness and just hide behind the smokescreen of feminism so they can use it as a defense when theyre called out for abusing and harassing people. They can just say it's in the name of feminism. They're not abusing and ostrasizing marginalized groups because theyre bigotted! Oh no, not at all, they're just soooo feminist.

But im sure there are also plenty who are genuinely just... women who have been deeply hurt and are lashing out at oppressed groups and minorities in some attempt to offset the sense of helplessness that comes with the fact that so much of their pain is being caused by people in power. They cant punch up high enough for those people to even notice, so they punch down instead. And they get the temporary feeling that they're doing something to counteract whatever or whoever hurt them, that they're helping a just cause by hurting the big bad scary trans people who are clearly the driving force behind the mistreatment of feminine people in our society, and then any time they might have an inkling of "Am I hurting people who are already suffering?" they can turn around and be assured by their echochamber that no, you aren't, because the transgenders aren't people, their suffering is faked to invalidate the suffering of "real" women, and your actions are beyond reproach because the other terfs all agree youre in the right

Cause, yknow, people who dehumanize entire sections of the population and want them eradicated or controlled can usually count on others of that mindset to be able to objectively identify when they're being hateful or going too far. Groups that shamelessly take pride in being "radical" while targeting minorities, who seem to base their victories on "how much harm can we cause to the people we dislike," and whose talking points often seem to be scarily along the lines of eugenics, conversion therapy, or straight up eradication of real people are usually totally reasonable and rational and definitely in the right. Not hateful or bigotted at all.

I get that they hate trans people but man they really fucking hate feminism too for people who include it in the name. Feminist should never have been used to describe such evil.

[haveyouevertriedtofuckabox]

I need to vent about this fucking person

Tw: emotional manipulation/abuse, alcohol abuse

I got close to someone I used to work with and because of car troubles and other personal shit I ended up spending a lot of time with them since they had a stable car and housing situation. Over the course of a few months I notice a pattern of them purposefully doing things to get reactions and attention from me. It was small at first like doing silly faces in the car to a song and wanting me to validate that with a smile or laugh. Eventually that turned into something where if I didn't get them positive reactions in response even if I was having a fucking awful day, they would say that I hate them or that they're annoying me (which most of the time they were) forcing me to placate to them and give them validation

This behavior started becoming more and more obvious as time went on, but I wasn't allowing myself to think those thoughts because I was convincing myself otherwise just so I could get through the work day. Honestly I was really attracted to them and how charismatic they were, I felt like we had a lot in common and I was really easily convinced by the love bombing they did. I had just gotten out of a different horrible situation I couldn't let myself believe I had gotten myself into another one

They are poly and I was open about wanting to date them but they have been in a long term relationship and I understood that person was primary and I was fine with that. We're both non-binary, but I'm dfab and they're not, and they would use that as a reason to not be in an intimate relationship with me, that my body was too feminine and made them feel too dsyphoric and while that really hurt to hear I tried to be okay with it and move on. One day after then having 3 shots at lunch (which was a basically daily occurrence) they wanted to stop at the liquor store so I did and they said they were ready to be intimate with me. At this point we had a romantic relationship but I had been open about being physically attracted to them and wanting to have sex but of course only if they felt comfortable. They would make comments about really wanting to, how attracted they were to my body and the sexual thoughts they had about me, but ultimately say how it wasn't about me but their confidence and I understood that completely I never want to pressure someone into an experience they aren't ready for. I go into the liquor store and get the usual, we go back to the apartment, and they proceed to take 5 more shots. I know at this point they are too drunk for me to be comfortable having sex, they start to get tired and decide to take a nap and ask me to wake them up in two hours. Two hours go by, I know that nothing will happen at this point but I wake them up anyway, just to let myself believe that maybe finally this person thought I was androgynous enough to not be seen as having a female body. I told them what happened, they didn't remember what went on after we got home. Still drunk, they laughed and said I shouldn't have let them sleep because now they wouldn't be ready to have sex with me for years. They went back to sleep, I stayed awake and cried, feeling disgusted about my body and disappointed with myself.

Throughout our "relationship" they saw other people which I knew and was fine with but, always people who identified as men or presented more masculine than I am able to without access to hormones. It became clear that they just weren't attracted to me, but loved the attention I gave them. They liked to purposefully do something physically that turned me on and then never do anything further. I would try to say not to do certain things because it turned me on and I didn't want to make them uncomfortable, but they admitted they knew it did but just liked doing it because they liked knowing it did. It was because they just liked that feeling of being desired and having control over me, with no intention of ever having an intimate relationship.

Their actions became impossible to ignore, they would fake emotional distress/physical injury "as a joke" but it was a test, seeing how I would react, because if I ever responded negatively they would accuse me of hating them or not caring about them. They are also an alcoholic, and forced me to take care of them a lot. Anytime they were sick I would care for them and they really milked it. Near the end of our relationship and me realizing how they have treated me I started to distance myself as much as I could, and not give them the validation they would always try to squeeze out of me. One week they were sick with a stomach thing, and I had a cold. After we both return to work they confront me and said they felt really hurt that I didn't come over and take care of them. They felt like they had done a lot to take care of me during panic attacks and it was unfair of me to not return that (even though in my eyes I did the most for them everyday). We had established that our relationship was purely platonic but they wanted me in the role of best friend, which in their eyes, meant they had expectations of me beyond the expectations of their main partner. I had sacrificed my own emotional energy to supply them with validation, I had to take care of them, I had to entertain them, I helped them with college papers while they took my ideas at work.

They showed through their actions that I had to put them first, but they would always put their primary partner over me. I had to give everything just to keep them emotionally stable throughout the day, and if I didn't they always came back to claiming it was because I hate them, how I didn't really care. They knew my emotional weak points and used them to gain validation.

Cut now to a few months after I had the big realization. I left my job that I had with them. At first I maintained contact because they have some of my artwork, but slowly I tried to accept the loss. They have contacted me a few times, trying to spontaneously hang out without any text or prior notice. Each time it's been clear the only reason they contacted me is for validation, no attempt at really trying to talk with me, just to get attention. An hour ago they texted me, and it's always like this, weeks of no contact just "Hey!" I reply, but they call me. They sound pitiful, asking what I was currently up to clearly so they could ask me to come over. I told them I would have to reschedule for Sunday, I could hear the manipulation through their words, trying to get me to feel sorry for them and come over. Now that I know what they're doing it's so obvious it's frustrating. I knew it was bad but I didn't let myself think about it or tell anyone, because I knew how the person would react. I have decided to rescue my artwork from their house on Sunday, but I'm trying to decide if I want to confront them. The safest option is to play it off and fake it until I leave, then I ghost their ass. But I have so much anger towards them, I want them to know they're a fucking asshole. I can't see a situation where that ends well, I just hate having to fake like I don't hate this person and how they treated me. They don't deserve an explanation, but I deserve to be able to tell them just how exactly they used me and made me feel worthless. I know I won't get that, I can't. I have to do what's best for my mental state and protect myself.

Everyday it feels like I have a new realization of how they manipulated me, how they would use me, and how despite promises otherwise they never really did much to support me besides owning a functioning car. I'm trying to forgive myself for not doing something sooner to get away, even when I knew it was bad. I tried to set boundaries but they were always disregarded. I have to believe I did everything I could at the time, what I thought was right. I have to stay strong and not let this person back into my life. I will get my fucking things back.

#usually i would write this in my journal but i needed to get this out of my mind #heres to hoping i dont explode on sunday

[transmascissues]

im transmasc myself and while i agree w the stuff in your pinned readmore thing im a little confused on how we are supposed to have grown up inherently different from cis women, or how our dicomfort with our gender is somehow innately different because we came to the conclusion we are men or otherwise trans. i dont think i completely agree. i think a lot of cis women go through much of the same, and possibly the exact same, discomfort we do because being interpreted as girls in society, or being dfab, is a difficult experience for most, especially for people who are gnc.

i think it really comes down to how we decide we are going to label ourselves or whether we pursue medical transition? a cis woman may be dysphoric in the same way we are, but decide she is not trans and is going to try to be comfortable with her body the way it is for whatever personal reason. she wont face the same stigma we do navigating society as transmasculine people, but we dont have to have an innate difference from her for our identities and our systemic oppression to be real, ykwim? like i can share the exact same thoughts and experiences as someone who decided they werent trans and still be trans myself, because being trans is an action i have taken to treat my dysphoria. i dont have to not feel like other girls (not saying this in a demeaning way just phrasing it like the post you made)

here's the thing: being trans as someone who was afab is about WAY more than just discomfort with being seen as women

first of all, it's not just about the discomfort - my experiences of gender euphoria are far more indicative of my gender experience as whole than my dysphoria is - sure, a cis woman could feel uncomfortable with what being perceived as a woman is like, but do they feel the same absolute joy when they're called a boyfriend or a brother or a dad or when they see their name next to "mr"? do they feel like everything in their life just makes more sense when they fit into it as a genderqueer man (in my case), or do they just not like what it means to fit into it as a woman? because there's a big difference

my point is, at the end of the day, it is impossible for me to have the "exact same thoughts and experiences" as a cis woman because those thoughts and experiences include Not Being A Woman, so anyone who shares my exact thoughts and experiences is necessarily not a cis woman

i think the real problem here is that you're viewing transness purely as a series of actions (social transition, legal transition, medical transition, etc)

sure, it might be that to you, but for the majority of trans people, it's so much more than that - i'm not trans in order to treat my dysphoria, i'm trans because my gender isn't the one i was assigned at birth, and that would be true regardless of what actions i take, because for me and most other trans people, transness as an identity and transitioning as an action are two separate (albeit often closely related) things

sure, our experiences don't HAVE to be innately different from cis women's for them to be valid, but that doesn't change the fact that (at least for most of us) they still are innately different - sometimes things are just true even if they don't need to be

and i would caution you to be VERY careful generalizing the idea that being trans is nothing more than a treatment for dysphoria, because that's the exact logic a lot of t/er/fs use to argue that we should just find "other treatments" (aka usually conversion therapy) and not let anyone transition

and on top of the t/er/f issue, this logic also suggests that discomfort is the main experience of being trans, which allows cis people to keep portraying it as a mental illness / generally bad thing, and also fucks over anyone who wants to transition to achieve euphoria even if they don't have the associated dysphoria (for example, i'm not dysphoric about my lack of facial hair but i AM euphoric when i see myself with facial hair so one of my transition goals is getting some facial hair - it doesn't matter that i'm comfortable without it because i would be even more comfortable with it and that's what SHOULD matter)

to give you a somewhat simplified answer to your question: our discomfort with womanhood is different from a cis woman's because our discomfort is part of a much larger internal experience of a different gender, and theirs likely wouldn't be solved by living as a different gender because that wouldn't align with their internal experience (as evidenced by the cis women who have transitioned and later realized it wasn't the right path because that wasn't the real source of their discomfort), so while the discomfort might feel the same on the surface, it comes from a different place and will have different experiences attached to it

#ask answered

[scyllascriptor]

"I know you CLAIM to be queer but it SEEMS like you only talk about dudes so-" Said someone on an an artist discord server I hang out on.

Ah, but you see. I don't like them in a straight way, because I am not straight. (Serious queer-ass shit under the cut)

It took me until I was in my late 20's or early 30's to realize that even if I experience attraction toward a cismen my attraction is not heterosexual because I am inherently queer. That's why I say "pansexual" too - because whatever you think my attraction is you're incorrect.

It was one motherfucker of a mindjob realizing that the way I was attracted to cismen was COMPLETELY fucking different than my cishet women friends. They'd say things that were like... completely alien to me, but for them it was just normal and natural. I couldn't wrap my head around some of it, let along smile and nod along. And that was also part of realizing that no... I wasn't just kinda butch and a little gay.

It was terrifying, too. Understanding that as an already awkward person with something different about my wiring, that... it would make me hard to love. Not unworthy of it, just very difficult to find someone who fit against that comfortably. Unpack that one for a hot minute.

By the by that's why I never really established deep friendships with folks who ID'd as cishet women when I was younger, and still struggle now. Everyone assumed it was the whole "tee hee I'm not like the other gals", when it wasn't. It was being so gently, casually, expected to fit a specific mold that was alien and sometimes upsetting to me, and the self-hatred it caused when I couldn't (and sometimes absolutely brutal bullying). Sometimes being around very "stereotypically feminine" people triggers absolute pants shitting dysphoria and feelings of inadequacy. I'm nearly 40 and I'm still trying to deprogram myself.

This, as you might imagine, is also somewhat distressing for straight cismen who miss the fact that while I was DFAB, I am not a "she". Because, y'know... they're usually expecting their normal, which is alien rituals to me, and I'm over here in my normal which might as well be a Clive Barker novel to them.

And I can't explain it. I can only show you the emotional bruises and scars.

And that sets aside the whole learning curve of trying to figure out whether you think someone is hot, or whether you're just enamored by how beautiful the whole shape of them is with absolutely ZERO interest in them as a sexual being or romantic partner with special bonus added complexity that you never asked for.

OR whether you actually just wish you could look like them (shout out to Willem Dafoe in "Loveless"). THAT one's a real motherfucker to get a hold on. AND sets aside the whole OTHER part about attraction toward other genders and how that interplays with the whole inherently queer thing.

Anyway I guess the gloss on this is: Don't be that person on the art discord. That shit's an asshole move and you have no idea what someone else's experience is, or where they are along the winding and unpleasant road to processing it. Were I even a few years younger or in a slightly less okay place with "everything" - that would've really fucked me up and put me in a very dark place.

Normalize being like "It's rude as shit for you to even make that statement in the first place and you aren't as woke as you think you are. I'd politely request that when it comes to my identity you keep your commentary to yourself."

Normalize: "I don't categorize you as a potential partner and therefore won't discuss the minutia of that topic with you."

Normalize: "Oh I'm gay as fuck but I just don't talk about women all that much because most of you are straight women and gay men so there's less frequently an opportunity to say that Sigourney Weaver can put me in a half-nelson and personally introduce me to god (respectfully)."

Anyway. IDK. Maybe an overshare, but I typed it all up to chew their face off and then they got banned. It felt like something that just... could bear stating.

#wait so it's all gay? always has been

[sas-afras]

alright, didnt think id have to make this post, but whatever. here we are.

(for the record, if youre someone ive personally talked to, this post is not about you. this is about someone who ive never interacted with, who has never interacted with me. that should inform you on how ridiculous it is)

recently i made some nsfw ship art with yes and arcade. (not going to link it, because i know some of you are minors and im not gonna take the risk.) someone has come after me saying its “straight p*rn” and that im homophobic for making it. some other people have believed this claim without any proof, and will not seek proof out themselves.

listen. yes is nonbinary. they use they/them pronouns. im tired of people fucking it up. it’s a simple thing, its stated everywhere, i remind people every week or so. youd think after saying something so many times, people would get it, but i guess not.

just because yes is DFAB and femme does not make them any less nonbinary. full stop. it just doesn’t. saying otherwise is truscum rhetoric and im not gonna allow it on my blog.

and here’s the kicker- gay identities do not exclude nonbinary people. being gay, for arcade, could mean he’s attracted exclusively to men, or it could mean he’s exclusively not attracted to women. i headcanon the latter, hence the ship art. it is not homophobia to have that headcanon, nor is it homophobic to draw that art.

im tired of people coming after me for petty bullshit. whoever you are, it needs to stop. find something better to do.

that’s all i have to say. im not going to be entertaining anything else on this topic.

thanks for reading.

#not art #long post #rant #transphobia #homophobia ment #pronoun discourse

[profictionoverhaul]

Low-key Antis are sexist and also stupid as fuck- a quick rant

Seriously, why do they go into female/dfab oriented fandoms and media (especially reader-insert writers) and basically go "omg you make child porn??? You wanna fuck a child???? He's 17 and he's murdered but that's a child;!!!! A minor!!!! You pedo;!!! I'm literally sobbing and throwing up and shitting myself how could do this!!!"

First of all: Online fandom (especially fanfiction) was created by queer women, so write that fucking down. AO3 was made to stop LGBTG+ content from being censored on other sites, that great site with tons of tags and easy filtering? The one with millions of warnings and fanfiction, thousands upon thousands of pairings, and you can just, not click on fanfics, you are given ample tags to see what is and isn't in the fic.

Twitter? Pixiv? Privatter? All give lots of warnings and labels and tags! Twitter gives you the ability to block creators, tags, and even prevent certain media from being shown without a filter. (yes that's a thing, turn on your sensitive media blur!) Pixiv (a Japanese art sharing site) filtering, blocking, ratings and warnings. (Plus all 18+ art is something you have to have an account to view). Privatter is literally meant for fucking private photos you fucking NUMBSKULL, you HAVE to click on it (and in many cases, input a password/be accepted into a Twitter list) to view that content.

All artists will give warnings and labels, and YES ALTHOUGH THERE WILL BE PEOPLE WHO FORGET, and/or will leave it untagged maliciously, that doesn't mean that every nsfw artist is like that and stop holding the honored many to the faults of a shitty few.

Also I'm gonna say it, calling women who look childish/short/young "pedobait" or "attracting pedophiles" is sexist as all fucking hell, women aren't for male gaze and more importantly, you ever heard of body positivity? You can't celebrate women's bodies when they're not obese or overweight or something?

Seriously fuck the twitter/tumblr obsession with everything being "correct" or "wrong", something can be wrong for you but correct for another person you know? That goes for lots of things, coping mechanisms, body size, interests, activism, etc. There are GRAY AREAS. And some of y'all really need to accept that not everything is black and fucking white. You know how some people murder out of self defense? That's a gray area, while they may have been justified, it doesn't mean they didn't commit a crime. You've seen gray areas before, don't deny that you haven't.

One last thing though, I really really hope y'all know that being a minor (underage) isn't a fucking race? You're not a minority because you're a teenager you fucking idiot. Being underage is a temporary state of body that you will age out of. You don't age out of being POC???? Comparing your age group being "censored" to being Black in America isn't the progressive as you think it is.

You being a minor and not being allowed to look at 18+ content is not oppression. And you going "oh well the anime porn includes minors so minors should be looking at it!" No, porn is porn, it's not meant for minors no matter what is in that content. Plus other Antis will call it child pornography, so that means you're looking at illegal images???? And encouraging other minors to do so?? If it actually WAS Child Porn, do not FUCKING ENCOURAGE ANYONE DO LOOK AT IT. If you even THINK it's child porno, do not share it, do not like it, so not screenshot it, report it to the cybertip hotline, report it to the website, and most importantly, do not engage with the post at all.

Anyways that's the end of this rant, I'm sure I'll make some separate posts about some of these topics so look forward to that, uwu.

#pro shipping #pro ship blog #pro ship safe #anti anti #anti antis #proship #miracide

[nightcoremoon]

still cant get over the fact that somehow it's totally okay for people who self identify as lesbians or as homosexual men to experience attraction towards people who are not the same gender as them- lesbians, which is as far as I know defined as women loving only other women, can be attracted to dfab nonbinary people (who are not women) and preop trans men (who are also not women), and also that gay as in homosexual men (which I say here to distinguish specifically gay men from gay used as an umbrella term since until the antiqueer dipshits get it through their thick fucling skulls that queer is not and never was a slur we have to use gay as the umbrella term to appease those fucking morons and so I have to use the term homosexual here even though it is apparently also actually a slur according to some people but I'm using it as an adjective so it should be fine but who fucking cares since I have to have 37 fucking footnotes on an otherwise simple post because discoursing assholes need everything spelled out for them or else "oh you didn't specifically say you don't hate nazis so you're an antisemite" even if you are talking about idk BREAD or something else unrelated) who as far as I know are defined as men who are attracted only to other men, can be attracted to dmab nonbinary people (who are not men) and preop trans women (who are not also men, terfs you're cunts so shut up die and fuck off)- and all of this is fine and dandy

I'm not going to step on the "all sexualities are inclusive of nonbinary people" stance since it comes from nonbinary people and my opinion as a binarily identifying is irrelevant here, okay

(except for my quip I say every single time it comes up, that nonbinary people are in fact excluded from asexuality since asexuality is in essence a lack of sexual attraction to anyone, ha ha funny joke goddammit somebody laugh)

but

how the fuck is that shit okay and yet it's bad for someone to say "hey I'm attracted to men and women and people who are both or neither and even though it's functionally the exact same as bi and the literal only difference is which prefix root you use and what color flag you rally behind I personally prefer to identify as pan"?

how is lesbians and gay men being attracted to people who are not other women/men okay but pan people are not okay? that's fucking stupid.

panphobes you're fucking stupid. eat shit. die.

"oh I can't believe you're such a big meanie you told someone on the internet to die" if I took a shot every time I saw some fucking cunt tell a pan person to kill themselves then I would die from alcohol poisoning, so shove your bullshit virtue signaling up your ass, or I'll do it for you

this isn't a platform for discussion. any attempt to argue with me will result in an immediate block. I do not give a shit if you disagree with me. I do not care about your opinion. I am not going to engage in a dialogue with you. I am going to ignore you because you are worthless to me. I am not here to please you. If what I say hurts you in your fee-fees then unfollow me. you are responsible for your own tumblr feed.

if however you find some incorrection in my definition of lesbian and gay concerning the attractions towards nonbinary people, that's fine. I'd love to hear differing perspectives on the issue in a polite respectful & civil manner. since it's not fighting or attacking me, it's you informing me of your point of view. you're ok.

[unluckyxse7en-moving]

So I was thinking about aphobia the other day. I was thinking about why people don't understand that it is an actual struggle to be asexual or aromantic in this day and age.

And I remembered something I'd forgotten all about from my own experience with it growing up. Nothing shocking. Probably not The Proof any aphobe would ever accept as valid enough. But to actually think about it, it says a lot.

At some point after I reached high school, I had formed a resolution. I told myself that if I ever found The One, that person I wanted to have a lasting relationship, I would let our relationship be an open one so that my partner wouldn't try to ask me to do anything sexual with them, or so that they wouldn't use my refusal as an excuse to cheat on me. So long as they communicated with me, and if they did fall for someone else they'd fucked (which I knew would be an inevitability), I just wanted them to tell me and break it off honestly.

That was my "Happily Ever After" scenario. That I'd let my partner bang whoever else they wanted if it kept our relationship happy, until they fell in love with someone who would bang them, and then would leave me.

I was actually fortunate when it came to the people around me, in terms of being ace. My family knew early on I was just, honestly, repulsed by the human body growing up, they didn't understand it for a while but accepted it once it was clear all the teenager hormones in the world wouldn't change a thing. The idea of grandkids was brought up, but not pushed. My dating history consisted almost exclusively of friends, most of the relationships crashing in record time as I didn't understand how to date or what being 'in love' actually felt like. I'd had my last crush in eighth grade, and upon entering high school until I moved to college a year after graduation, hadn't really had a solid crush since. I'd told myself if I liked them as a friend I could easily switch gears to romance... right?

If anyone outside of my friend circle had asked me out, I don't know what I would have done. I was fortunate enough it never came up. I do know I'd tried to imagine it. One of my commonly planned initial responses was to lay down the groundwork: "if we date, I will never want to screw you. I'll be ok with going out and hugs and kisses, but I will Never go past that." I rehearsed it in my head frequently.

Growing up dfab in general, it's not good. Society as it is codes girls and those raised as girls, as only having worth if they were dateable - and in subtext, fuckable. And only to men naturally. I'd sort of ignored the coding to a large extent - I wasn't 'like most girls' and besides I was open to the concept of dating another girl anyways so that societal pressure never really took root like it could have.

But it still sunk in more than I'd realized. As insecure and scared of abandonment as I was already by nature, I had resigned myself to a future where someone would have to 'settle' for me. Because supposedly it was a need, to be able to have sex. A basic human need. If I couldn't provide that, when so many others out there could, already I'd settled into the mindset that I'd be lucky to have someone be so nice as to consider me dateable.

I'm fortunate enough to live somewhere where I'm not shamed, or harassed, or sent to """therapy""". I've had a supportive family and friends who have understood enough not to mock me or make fun of me. I didn't get bullied for any of it as far as I remember

And still, as a result of toxic societal standards, look how I felt. What I thought I was and wasn't worth.

Once I began settling into the online community I luckily abandoned this mindset pretty quickly. Because finally I'd found others like me. I'd only known one person in school that for a fact held similar sentiments (hi if you're reading this 👋💖). I assumed it was just. Severely uncommon, and that statistically speaking whoever I did fall in love with, would never see eye to eye with me on this, never understand. But now I know otherwise. And the toxic mindset I carried before was just. Forgotten until now.

I know that if any aphobes read this, this alone probably will not change anything for them. I expect that there will be those who continue to ignore it as an actual concern. But to those of you who claim we aren't oppressed; that we're the reason people think kink is allowed in pride marches; who think we ARE part of the kink community instead of the rainbow community-

There is oppression. There is dangerous inhuman 'therapy', there are murders and violence, there is toxic societal coding. We don't exist except as gag characters, we're expected to go along with it even if we don't want to. There's danger of being outcast by family, blackballed by peers.

And the rainbow community, above all else, is tied together by its oppression and history of being erased, invisible, or villified. We too, share that bond.

The A definitely doesn't stand for Ally.

#long post #aphobia #ace #asexual #aromantic #aro #aroace #lgbtqa #rainbow community #blablablah #been thinking about this since an incident in a server i had a month or so back #several members left that server as a result of what happened because they felt unsafe #i too left because ultimately i didnt feel entirely accepted #and this is why

[dysperdis]

tw: traumablogging, talking about suicide & abuse, sexual trauma.

I need to get this shit out, in one big chunk, before I lose track of it.

I keep wondering why the fuck Beru decided to spend so long treating me like shit. Do they just hate me? Was I just a convenient target? Did they realize they'd let their mask slip in front of me & decided I needed to go? Why did the abuse start so immediately? 

Beru basically started moving in within a week after I said it wasn't fair of the two of them to jump straight into the "overly-obsessed new couple" stage of a relationship without so much as a heads up to the other two people involved with this relationship, long before I had any inkling that they were actually already fucking by that point. By week 3, the complaints were pouring in about how "unwelcome" I was making Beru feel by, say, insisting that they tell the other people living in the suite when they're going to spend the night before putting on their pyjamas and setting up on the couch, or letting me know to make food that Beru could eat without taking over the single bathroom in the house for most of the evening (& of course, they "didn't want to make extra work" by saying anything when I was asking them to simply let me know before I started making food!), or literally any frustration I expressed over my boundaries being ignored, all of which were delivered to me by Monica, not Beru, but very clearly as a result of Beru's complaints. I wasn't allowed to set any boundaries; I could be lying half dressed in my bed with Monica with the door shut having a conversation & Beru would invite themselves not just into the room or conversation, but *into my fucking bed* without so much as a word to me. These violations were constant, and at the same time I was pressured into doing more to facilitate the relationship, including chauffeuring the two of them around so they could go to Beru's apartment (did I mention yet that Beru lived alone, and could have been inviting Monica to visit them instead of invading my only available workspace & telling me that wanting to work there made me an asshole?)

The "sleepovers" happening at random most nights a week over that summer were undermining my ability to do any work for the upcoming events I was paying for table space at, space I shared with Beru because I wasn't confident of my own ability to fill a table & thought a "friend" might be able to help. I was explicitly told that wanting to work in the living room overnight for creative work when no one else was awake to use  it was an unfair attempt to monopolize and dominate the suite's common space. Even after I asked Beru to spend time away from the home  because I felt like the lack of boundaries was incredibly unhealthy for me, I still felt obliged to facilitate the relationship in ways that continued to deny me a chance to set any sort of healthy boundaries because of the previous months spent harping on how "unfair" I was being by expecting Monica to prioritize the relationship she was still referring to as her "Primary" relationship & the health of the partner she was calling "husband" over the happiness of her continuing affair with Beru.

I'm pretty sure I paid for 100% of all the tables, including the Canzine table Beru had entirely to themselves because I knew if I went I'd end up pulling out the zine I made to vent about how stressed I was about everything going on, and all of the gaslighting I was starting to notice even then but let myself ignore. I don't know if knowing the answers to any of this would help me, but it probably would help Monica, if it's not another thing she already knows and has been trying to deny while everything burns around her. But I'm not sure if I can ask without my bitterness making it sound like pure pettiness. I kinda wish I had gone to Canzine and taken the zine & let it all blow up then, I would have felt bad about it afterwards but I doubt it would have been anywhere near as terrible as I've been feeling for the last 2 years, but I  wasn't willing to toss 6 years away for someone who only inserted themselves into our lives so substantially a few months prior.

When I told Monica about my discomfort, that I couldn't have this person involved in my life, she acted like she understood. She made a new friend during this time, and started visiting them "going out for coffee" a lot. She kept finding excuses for why I shouldn't worry about giving her a ride, and finally she admitted that it was because she was still seeing the person she had cheated on me with, and pressured me into agreeing that it was "incredibly unfair" to demand she either stop cheating, or stop pretending to respect our relationship. She told me she wanted to work on our relationship, while targetting my insecurities to convince me that expecting honesty and respect for my boundaries was abusive, and that I was overreacting. Throughout this time, I was gradually scheduling my life more and more around when Beru wanted to see Monica; the solution Beru, Monica, and Liz decided on for "letting me get Beru out of my life" was to continue seeing Beru while never mentioning their name, or giving me details I needed to know how to schedule my own day-to-day life. If you ever wanted to know how someone could participate in abuse without actually directly interacting with them, well, there's you're answer- you continue as a shadow presence in their life while your fellow abusers take all the direct action. And, every time the subject came up, Monica didn't actually want to break up with me, and agreed to "work on things" (tell me how I needed to forgive her & stop ~getting in the way of her happiness~, but also maybe planning 2 or 3 "date nights" with me before getting distracted & falling immediately back into the same habits. At some point, she started using the insecurities she had learned about me thru the years to start convincing me that I needed her, and that I wouldn't be able to survive without her. She knew exactly what fears to prey on, and I believed her. Meanwhile, Monica had a whole new circle of friends, who Beru has been telling that the reason I can't stand to be around them is jealousy or some shit. I thought I was imagining the distain in their voices when they realized I was there, but no- Beru has been telling lies to them about me, and Monica is too concerned with them liking Beru to intervene, so now she's surrounding herself with people who don't like me and are enouraging her to dislike me.

As for Liz, she pretended to be a neutral party throughout, shutting me down any time I tried to bring up concerns about the effect Beru's shadow presence in my life by telling me "she's Beru's friend, too" so it was inappropriate to talk to her about it- even when I had literally just tried to kill myself for the second time in 4 days. I had long ago noticed that Beru seemed to get upset any time word got back to them about me complaining about the various issues I had with their relationship with Monica & the implications of my own & that when that happened, Monica started taking it out on me; between that and a desire to "protect" Monica- who was slowly but surely picking up a lot of Beru's cruelty and boundary issues- from judgement because a) she was the one who was doing most of the direct harm, even the stuff that was clearly initiated by Beru, and 2) Beru has a bit more social padding to protect them (a cutesy autistic dfab enby vs a recently-transitioned trans woman with a history of ~scary~ mental illness DXs). So I stopped talking to friends about my issues. I'm not going to go into details about the boundary issues except to say that being surprise face-fucked the first time I tried to give head at 14 by a dude who was loudly disappointed I didn't swallow is no longer the most traumatic sexual violation I've experienced.

Meanwhile, Monica (and to a lesser extent, Liz) were encouraging me to distance myself from my last remaining safety net outside of that garbage fire of a relationship because the idea of coming out to anyone in my family made them uncomfortable. So, instead of dealing with it, they turned anything that involved me interacting with my family at the house for more than 5 or 10 minutes into a sign that my boundaries with my family were still too weak, and I needed to make them stronger. I needed to not talk to my elderly grandma because of how stressful it was for me (mostly because I kept having scramble to come up with more lies about so many details of my own relationship, because being honest with someone who had no way of outting them to anyone they'd care about even if they were inclined to do so was too uncomfortable.)

By the end of the relationship, when Liz walked out the door with less than 24 hours actual notice of her move out date (and no, a single spoken sentence a week before to a person who was between back-to-back suicide attempts, trying to keep track of a 3rd person in the convo who was bouncing rapidly between mania and an extreme suicidal state, and also on T3 & a bunch of antibiotics with harsh side effects does not fucking count, no matter how much she pretends otherwise,) someone tried to get me to see her side by asking me if it didn't make sense that she was avoiding actually giving me anything that resembled a reasonable amount of notice because she felt "awkward" talking to me, and I fucking snapped.

Maybe if she had sucked it up and had one or two of those "awkward conversations" a little earlier, I wouldn't have needed to ask her to hide the pills so I didn't go through with the plans I had made to kill myself that night (I was literally double checking my math on the dosages when she got home). Instead, she pretended to be a neutral bystander in her own relationship, while taking advantage of my subservience and inability to set boundaries in most situations. Most of the private time I sought out with Monica ended up including Liz because I felt I wasn't allowed to say no to that, either.

I was accused of driving away my support network by calling out Liz and saying that any other abuse apologists who wanted to defend Beru to me could piss off with her, but I strongly disagree. Considering Liz part of my support network was a dangerous mistake that could have gone much worse, if she had decided to stay out a little longer or something that night, or had snuck to her room without me noticing (a common occurrence, I had taken it as a sign that I was still taking up too much space by existing in the common spaces of the house.)

Basically, all three of them were fucking awful to me over the last 2 years, and used any negativity I displayed about the situations they were putting me in to beat me over the head, telling me how "unfair" I was.

#traumablogging

[sn0tcl0wn]

all im sayin is that i was on those boards ten years ago back when i did actually think it was a joke and because they assumed i was a straight white boy they actively did shit trying to induct me. the joke thing was one of the first ways they got me in and one of the first ways they taught me to normalize verbalizing my bigotry and hate. it was always just supposed to be a joke but then one day i realised it actually wasn't and never was and i was in danger and spiralling down into a really bad place of self hatred and internalized bigotry i'm still growing and healing from to this day. i was friends with and even dated those kinds of guys most of my teens. they're not all outright pure evil and a lot of them aren't actually violent or outwardly hateful if you're white and conservative enough for their liking. they can be very kind and when those people say it's just a joke, you tend to want to believe them. and that's why they're taught that. because they know no one will just assume they're racist (especially when they were hangin out with me). but there always comes a time when they have to admit it isn't a joke, even if they don't realize it. they always expose themselves in their actions or even in some of the "nice" things they say. we need to stop shrugging off these "jokes" because not everyone is making them for the edge-factor like when i was a kid and was introduced to the kinds of people who hurt me for existing and eagerly tried (and in the case of an ex, bragged about) making me a traitor, and the people who are going into those boards for the lulz not realizing it isn't a bunch of trolling edgelords but the real deal using that language and culture to thrive and indoctrinate young, lonely, and naive people. we cannot just let them make "jokes" anymore. satire without meaning is not satire, it's just punching down and being a dick for the sake of your own amusement and the amusement of sadistic warped minded fucks like you. and the rest of society got dragged into it cause deadass no one wanted to think little timmy down the street who likes to goosestep in the park to get a rise out of people is an actual nazi even after he tells his mixed race girlfriend to stop being such a n*gger in public. no one wants to assume that shit ever because it's scary and sad and we all want to believe people are inherently good and that bigots are a rare breed you hardly encounter in the modern age but i think it's high time we fuckin start jumping to conclusions more because i know too many people who got away with that shit for too goddamn long because it was "just a joke". we go on and on about how we fought a war to keep nazis out but then the majority of people encounter honest to god nazis and have no fucking clue how to even determine that because they're too busy coming up for other less gross reasons for why that person is saying those things. and for every edgelord who's just joking, a dozen fash bastards are jumping in and hiding behind them because "well she said it and she clearly isn't a nazi so idk why i can't joke like that too" and everyone goes "yeah that's fair" even if the person saying that escalated the conversation to a point where someone spoke up with concern.

listen i could go on and on about the joke thing. it's one of the most harmful things to come out of cybernazis because it's so fucking innocuous and impossible to argue without even the most decent and level headed person in the room telling you to just take the joke and move on with your life. they all tell you to let it go every time because most people don't notice. you only notice if you were on those boards or actively educated yourself on how they behave. and that's why it's so scary to me. i know for a fact it isn't just a joke but people won't even believe me because "well if they really were racists why did they hang out with you?" as if the token queer mixed dfab person isn't the IDEAL bigotry shield for teenagers and young adults trying to get away with their nazi bullshit when they know damn well their loved ones and authority figures won't stand for it. it's most likely why they all seem so normal until they hit their twenties and have more freedom even tho if you asked their peers or looked at their online presence, you'll see the warning signs were always there and they were actively taught to hide it. and i can never stress enough that one of the first things you learn when being inducted into cyberfascism is that it always needs to be "just a joke" even if it's not.

[bucketofchum]

I have this Italian coworker and he’s a really interesting guy. So he’s one of my absolute favourite people in the lab - a real affable guy, incredibly sociable and he is brilliant. Extremely competent in so many ways - always asks challenging questions, on top of his shit, but in a very nonchalant type of way. 

But he’s a bit of a male chauvinist and I find that it seeps through the cracks from time to time and idk it caught be entirely off guard the first time (we were having a complicated conversation about relationships and he was essentially excusing cheating/adultery and I was just kind of appalled?). It caught be really off guard anyhow the first time and it definitely made me see him differently, but idk now it’s just more interesting to see him and know that that is a part of him and see how all the different parts of him make up this very complex person.

Several people I have talked to about this chalk it up to “Ohh he’s Italian!” as if it excuses things, but the frequency at which this is a response to this situation is really interesting. Italy has this culture of male chauvinism? 

What’s also fun and interesting about this guy is that he’s not insecure in his masculinity at all, and that’s wonderful. He goes to gay bars and clubs because one of his best buds in the lab is the gay Spanish post-doc. He makes jokes about being balding or sometimes jokes about having a small dick. He’s fine in his masculinity and he’s a really charming and fun guy, so he is an absolute joy to be around. Everybody loves him. He’s also not a dick at all - he’s really great. 

But sometimes he’ll say some stuff that just reminds me of that side of him I happened to learn about. He’ll just say some Straight Cis Male Shit™ that makes me hmmm. Sometimes he’ll share crude sex jokes (normal - everyone does that,  but it shocked and appalled one of the girls in the lab). 

But the most recent thing that made me laugh was just two nights ago when we had a fun evening outing and when we ended the night, we have bisous (cheek kisses) to say good night/good bye. If you are unaware, normally, bis are given between women and women, women and men, and very close emotional moments between men. But usually between men, it’s handshakes. But we had such a fun time this evening, that we figured -- why not. Bis for the men too. We said our goodbyes, each gave cheek kisses (there were two girls, two guys, and me), and when the Italian guy gave the other guy the cheek kiss (both of them have beards -- I do not -- or at least not enough that it can be felt hahaha), he recoiled in shock and discomfort. Spent a while being like “ughghghhg that was so uncomfortable -- feeling a scratchy beard against my face.” Which, ironically, had been a comment that I hear a lot from women and especially women/dfabs who come from Not France, where cheek kisses are not customary. So I tell him that that’s what women get to feel every time they exchange bises. He says “I don’t know why women like it --” and I, and the other girl who was there were like “Maybe they don’t.” “--But they do” he responds, “tell me why.” And the girl says “Or maybe we don’t and we just don’t say anything so that men aren’t bothered so they continue to believe that we like it but actually we don’t.”

He ends up making comments about how he doesn’t like the feeling of body hair touching up or up against him -- imagining feeling a hairy leg or a hairy face sends shivers up his spine. And I was thinking that perhaps women also might not enjoy coarse hairy bodies rubbing up against them, but that’s the norm so they kind of figure they have to accept that? And it’s not like men shave their whole bodies. He makes a funny joke about how he does indeed shave his whole body -- look, he’s even shaved his head (he runs his hand over his thinning bald patch), and we all have a good laugh. But it’s not the first time when he has made blanket statements like “Women like __” that are not necessarily true. Some women might like body hair or facial hair? Some women might not? Some women don’t care and just like the person regardless of the body hair? It’s just really interesting to me when he says things like “Women like beards” -- in the same vein as him saying “Women enjoy being pregnant.” (And when I replied “Not all women? Some women don’t ever want to have children” -- but then he replied “I think even if they didn’t want to at first, when they are pregnant, they probably enjoy it.” and I’m just ????? that sounds???????? kind of rapey???????????????) so idk. Just small things like that.

This guy is just tremendously interesting to me tho bc it’s so hard for me to wrap my head about this guy - he is so smart and so capable. And yet the women he is attracted to are like ?? bimbo types?? like the most attractive quality he looks for in women is not like.. a best friend or someone he can laugh and have fun with and spend a lot of good quality wholesome time with. He wants an attractive women with whom the sex is really good and it’s super important that she has a sexy feminine gait when she walks. That’s his criteria. And idk that just kind of blows my mind. This guy is so fucking smart -- he speaks 5 languages (4 fluently and he reached near fluency in French in literally 3 weeks from absolutely zero), he is so fucking competent in all his domains, able to absorb, process, and ask questions about topics that are within his domain and also outside of it. He asks hard questions that stump every presenter. He is super affable and really amazing. And yet? What he looks for women seems so?? Base? Like he doesn’t look for someone to intellectually stimulate him -- he’s looking for a sexy housewife I guess idk. It’s just wild to me. 

He’s said that he cannot be attracted to someone he is friends with -- and actually, our gay Spanish coworker has expressed the same sentiment. They can’t have Feelings™ for someone they know too well. They can’t imagine having feelings for a friend. Meanwhile, my demi ass here is the exact opposite. I literally cannot have feelings for people UNLESS they are my friend? Like I’m not gonna get attracted to just anyone - I have to KNOW them and already love them as a friend. I’m not saying he is wrong. Not at all. But it just made me realise how very different we are and how different so many people are. 

#idk how to tag #personal #I still really like him but ngl I definitely felt a lot further from him after that weird conversation where he was trying to convince me #that all women enjoy pregnancy #I like analysing people #and seeing what makes them tick #and I am interested in his life hah #and how he is as a person #I hope he finds happiness with a partner who doesn't mind being cheated on I guess

[detectivenyx]

i swear to fuck if i hear another “uwu i can’t believe miku invented harry potter!!! so talented!!!” post in response to the completely obvious news that r*wling is a TERF i will lose my shit

it’s not like minecraft where now Microsoft and Mojang owns it and not some crusty antisemite, r*wling’s the only owner of Harry Potter and as a far more specific universe there’s so much more insidiousness to her work through the lens of a TERF. that boys can’t go into the girls room but girls can go into the boys room, that she’s written trans characters and trans-coded characters that are explicitly described as being very masculine looking and using their appearances to ‘deceive’ others (and also a book unrelated to harry potter she ghostwrote in which the protagonist straight-up threatened a pre-op trans woman with prison rape!), that slavery is okay, that being a pureblooded magic user is better until you decide to commit genocide against non-magic users or magic users from non-magic families (i.e casual racism), that the goblins are all long-nosed bankers, and the list goes on and on

you CANNOT just separate all that from r*wling. her transphobia, her racism, her antisemitism, is baked into the text, and divorcing the author from what she wrote doesn’t help you. acknowledge that she wrote it and acknowledge its shitty subtext. saying ‘oh miku made this what a talented trans girl’ i get is for internet points, but it’s primarily cisgender people, nonbinary people (ones mostly DFAB btw) and trans men, white people, and goyim, who are saying shit like ‘miku made harry potter she’s got so much talent’. you’re also essentially saying that the work of a transphobic racist antisemite is worth calling ‘talent’ so long as you just divorce the actual human from the text and not all of their beliefs.

acknowledge your magical wizardy book is written by a terrible person. that’s not saying ‘don’t enjoy it’, it’s saying ‘don’t divorce it from its transphobic, racist, and antisemitic elements just to save your own skin’s comfort’. 

#aquos is a dork #i get it's a joke but it's people who are just 'allies' who make the joke #it was funny the first few times but now it just seems like you're too afraid to acknowledge the thing you like has a shitty creator #long post

[peachyteabuck]

I feel like i’m such a weird position with my transness and lesbianism. i’m never, like I've never been perceived as trans. people only seem to get that “Oh Transgender Alert” look when I say my name, and even with other trans people i’m never...like i feel like they don’t pick up on it? ik a lot of that is connected to my dfab-ness, and that I dress ‘femininely’ (or feminine-adjacent) enough that I can kinda blend in. and part of me is happy about it! I can easily blend in when necessary and since i left high school I can like, walk around and not get harassed by transphobes and im ugly enough men don’t interact with me. still, I feel like that’s the one time i’m unhappy I've scarified something for safety. I have no problem applying to jobs with my birthname ( I mean, I do, but ya know), I don’t correct ppl when they misgender me. my profs call me by my full first name instead of my nickname bc I don’t want to, like, double-correct them. im 18 and i’m just now being okay having a trans flag thing on my backpack and my waterbottle. i’ve never bought any trans/lesbian/gay gear and don’t have a pronoun pin - the only clue im non-cishet is an audre lorde quote abt queerness i have on my wall and a small painting.  i’ve swallowed my old boss continuing to be a transphobe bc i don’t trust my institution to hold him accountable. i haven’t been in an lgbt-only space in my sophomore year of high school (maybe, probably freshman year). i didn’t come out to my roommates until a month into school. the first time i spoke super publicly about my experience as being trans was senior year and then over the summer i did a queer theory lecture and barely spoke about my own experiences. im still not out to my parents and family and never plan to. 

i just. idk. the longer im in college the more i realize my coming out experience really affected me, esp since i got to see so many people after me who came out and were well-received. i had a friend who was a trans guy and everyone loved him (despite him being a rich fuck who, the more i talked to people, i realized everyone just...tolerated him). i’m not about to fake being a good person for respect, but i also wonder if i had let people trample over me would i have had/would i now be able to be a little freer. 

#idk im gonna go read the same anita brady paper i always do and like #cry while i finish this project #lukis says things #nature wants me as i am;

[pojkflata]

Please don’t turn your back on us

It’s so scary being trans here in Sweden right now and the only people on tumblr talking about it are r*dfems who are ecstatic over this recent development, I’m begging you please don’t ignore us just because it’s not happening in the US

On April 3rd, the Swedish national television channel SVT, funded by tax payer money, aired an episode of the show Uppdrag Granskning about trans issues. What’s wrong with it? Well fucking everything, but for starters

- The episode is named The Trans Train and the Teen Girls. We’re only on the title and they’ve already misgendered thousands of DFAB trans people, and it’s only a harbinger of things to come. The Trans Train thing is self explanatory in its horridness

- The episode is extremely biased and alarmist in its portrayal of trans healthcare. Swedish trans healthcare is infamous for being subpar, with only 6 facilities in the entire country (the 5th biggest in Europe by area btw), long waiting times and lacking education, but you wouldn’t know that from watching the episode. They make it seem like the time between coming out and receiving treatment is 6 months or less. This is demonstrably false, it takes years of jumping through hoops to get adequate healthcare

- The epidode takes rare cases and clings onto them like a leech. First they keep yelling about how ”they have cut off the tits on AT LEAST one 14 year old” conveniently omitting the fact that this 14 year old was extremely suicidal due to dysphoria. They never talk about what happened to this 14 year old post-surgery, probably because what he would have to say would not jive with their narrative that all trans people regret transitioning. Speaking of which

- They talk to a detransitioner who literally cannot stop speaking over trans people and misgendering them. This isn’t about her journey in detransition, it’s just a pissing contest

- They blow the amount of detransitioners out of proportion. Let’s look at the Netherlands, shall we? Trans healthcare is more accessible there, so there ought to be more detransitioners, right? Except their 2015 study found that 0.3% of trans men and 0.6% of trans women regret transitioning (source). Not only does this fuck over the entire narrative of detransitioning being common, but it also shows that trans men are less likely to regret it, which especially goes against everything UG is trying to say. Uh oh sisters!

- But of course UG dodges this by not mentioning this and claiming there’s no research on this ”new demographic of girls who want to be boys”. Because trans men were invented just a few years ago I guess?

- UG is being very alarmist about the increase in open DFAB trans people in the last decade without considering the underlying factors. First of all anyone with a functioning brain cell knows how accessible info on being trans is these days and how many trans rights milestones have been passed in the last ten years, one of which is abolition of forced sterilizations. In Sweden forced sterilizations of trans people weren’t abolished until 2013, of course that’ll make more trans people seek healthcare. Instead UG erroneously claim that hormone blockers have a sterilizing effect. Why are yall suddenly so concerned with sterilizations?

- Instead of using their brains, UG finds it more convenient to portray DFAB trans people as mentally unstable and confused girls who can’t make decisions for themselves, citing a high rate of mental illness, because the idea of a trans person being mentally ill because of transphobia rather than the other way around is completely preposterous, right

- And now to the part that makes me want to die most of all, UG talks with parents of trans men and they throw a pity fit about how much they hate having a trans child, misgendering their children. On national television. Using pseudoscientific r*dfem rhetoric like R*pid-Ons*t Gender Dysphoria to justify treating their children like this. One of the kids of these parents has stepped forward and said that his mother was lying through her teeth for the entire time and that she had straight up told him she was ”afraid the LGBTQ cult had recruited him”

- So I know what you’re thinking, this all sounds pretty fucking bad, did they let any trans people speak, like, at all? Not in the programme itself, but in a televised debate about the episode. They let a trans man speak for 2 minutes. The rest of the debate was the host and UG’s representative yelling at a doctor ”HOW CAN YOU DEFEND CUTTING OFF THE TITS AND REMOVING THE OVARIES OF 14 YEAR OLD GIRLS”

Please, I’m begging you, contact SVT, contact Uppdrag Granskning and let them know this is not okay. Be there for Swedish trans people in this tough time. And please spread the word about this so that everyone can know about the harm UG is doing to us

#long post - #okay to reblog

[hamelin-born]

Umbrella Academy/FFXV Ficbit

@charlottedabookworm

The Umbrella Academy/FFXV ficbit that I’ve been promising myself that I’d write for. A while. As originally brainstormed into existence on the FFXV Story Discourse. Set post-season one Umbrella Academy, and pre-canon FFXV, and featuring dfab trans!Ardyn who took advantage of Bethista’s forays into researching dimensional barriers to go strolling through alternate dimensions for a lark. 

Un-beta’d and, for the most part, un-edited. 

Coming Home

“I”, the individual who is somehow, incredibly, Klaus’s birth-parent says, “Am not a kind man.”

Sir Reginald Hargreeves makes a sound. Sir Reginald is also currently pinned against the far wall by an individual force, arms and legs glued to his sides by bonds of coruscating crimson light. The be-hatted man (and really, Klaus manages to spare a half-hysterical moment to think, it is an awesome hat) doesn’t bother to acknowledge dad’s indignant, muffled protest - his eye (golden, golden as coins on a dark night, yellow as venom, sharp as envy) are fixed on Klaus to the exclusion of all else. 

“But.” He says softly, and his voice - “I will never lie to you.” 

And the noise in Klaus’s head - stills, for the briefest of moments. 

“I have frightened you. I apologize.”

(The first Klaus had known of the disturbance was the noise - the house had shuddered on its moorings, and his head had jerked upright, exchanging bewildered glances with his siblings. He didn’t remember - nothing like this had happened the first time around, not that he could recall, and by the expressions on their faces, they’d come to the same conclusion.

And then the man had appeared in the door. 

A black overcoat patterned in silver over a black vest and white undershirt, lace at his cuffs, a scarf around his neck, and that hat - and the eyes. Bright, almost inhuman gold as they skimmed across the contents of the dining hall before fixing unerringly on Sir Reginald. 

Who obviously knew him if the expression on his face was any judge. “You - “ 

Dad was half-way out of his chair when the stranger had flicked two fingers at him as if knocking a particularly irritating pest to one side, and dad had. 

Dad had. 

Dad had gone flying across the room before slamming against the wall, and Luther had yelled and Five had blinked backwards and a noise had escaped Klaus’s own throat and the man had ignored them all as he stalked forward until he and Reginald were eye to eye and then he’d opened his mouth to speak and he said

He’d said. 

He. 

“You stole my son.” And the noise in the room had vanished in an instant and something inside of Klaus had gone still as dad hadn’t denied it.

Had, in fact, displayed an admirable lack of self-awareness as he struggled to look down his nose at the stranger and insist that ‘the boy’ had potential and that he wouldn’t have manifested any of it if the stranger had been allowed to keep him, that said stranger hadn’t accepted his perfectly generous offer to recompense him for ‘the boy’, that it was really for the best, that it was for the greater good - 

“You stole my SON!” The stranger had hissed, and there was something - there was something - 

“Number Four, despite his obvious defects has potential and I will not allow you to - “ And Klaus felt himself go numb as he stared, stared, stared - 

“You kidnapped my son, and you gave him a number instead of a name.” The man drawled, a smile - no that wasn’t a smile, it was something else, it was a promise - spread across his face. “Such irony. Now, be quiet, will you.” And the glowing energy had risen and spread across dad’s mouth, had bound him hand and foot and left him pinned to the wall - 

And then the stranger had turned, and looked directly at Klaus.) 

“I carried you and bore you - and it was something of a surprise a surprise to find myself pregnant and giving birth in the course of half an hour. Not the least because I had reasonable cause to believe myself sterile. You were - something I had long since given up hope of wanting.”

“And then they placed you in my arms.” The stranger says softly, and he is looking at Klaus. Looking at him like he matters. Like Klaus is - is the only person in the room, like he’s actually taking his wants and desires and him into account.

“They put you in my arms, and I looked into your eyes, and I loved you.” There is something wistful, something half-disbelieving in his tone, and Klaus. 

Klaus believes him. 

(He’s been loved and known himself to be loved exactly once in his life. His siblings care for him, but they’re family, they’re supposed to care - but love? Only Dave ever loved him. Until now.)

“He stole you from me.” The stranger states simply. “And I have spent years trying to find you. It was not until something disturbed the fabric of time and space that I was able to cross worlds once more - back to this world, to you.”

Well, Klaus thinks dizzily, that explains why this man hadn’t shown up the first time around. 

“Are you saying that you’re an alien?” It’s Five - the oldest and the quickest of them all who asks the question, voice sharp and probing - but not flagrantly disbelieving, so it. It. Might actually be real?

“Certainly not.” The man sniffs, not looking away from Klaus. “I’m simply from a different dimension, and happened to be taking a stroll on this planet when I found myself unexpectedly pregnant. I was summarily - and involuntarily - summoned back to my birth dimension shortly after this piece of filth stole my son from me, and I have spent - a considerable amount of time and resources finding my way here once more.”

“Would you like to come back with me?”

And Klaus. Klaus is.

“I see dead people.” Klaus blurts out. 

“So have several individuals in my extended family.” The stranger responds, not batting an eye. 

“I’m an addict.”

“As am I, although I haven’t touched a drop of alcohol in quite some time. I find that my tastes have mellowed as I age - I much prefer verbal repartee these days to losing myself in the comforting embrace of mild-altering substances.” 

“I - “ Klaus stares. No one’s ever, ever - “What. What’s your name?”

The expression on the stranger’s face cracks ever so slightly. “Ardyn Lucis Caelum. And, may I ask - what is yours?”

“Klaus.” Klaus licks his lips. 

“And how old are you, Klaus?”

“Thirteen.” The response is automatic. The stranger sighs. 

“You are not.” Ardyn responds, voice brooking no opposition. “Please, don’t do me the discourtesy of lying to my face. I am - something of an expert in these things. Your age?”

“…thirty.” Klaus whispers.

The stranger - Ardyn - nods. 

Nothing in his body language or expression changes. 

He still looks at Klaus with tightly controlled longing. There is still an open softness in his gaze as he stares at him, as if attempting to memorize his face, his words, his bearing. 

He still. 

Wants Klaus.

“Would you like to come home with me?” Ardyn repeats himself softly, still holding himself rigidly in place. “I would care for you, to the extent that you allow me. I warn you, I am - not kind. I have done terrible, terrible things. But I love you, and I would try. I want very much to try. I will never lie to you. I will never hurt you. I will never cage you. I will never, and I swear this, I will never cast you aside.”

“I - “ Klaus licks his lips. He doesn’t. This is. He hasn’t - “I’m a fucking druggie in the body of a kid. I’m rude and disrespectful, and why would you want me?”

“Because I love you, and because I want to be family. If you would permit it.” And there Ardyn goes again, giving him the choice. 

“Why?” Klaus bursts out, glaring up at him. “It can’t be that fucking simple - people don’t have to love people just because they’re family - “

“I choose to love you.” Ardyn interrupts, eyes bright and head held high. “I choose to love you, and I choose to want you.”

“I.” The seance stares. “How do I. What guarantee do I have that.” That you won’t change your mind. That you’ll still want me, even after you know what I’m like. That this is real. 

A thin, almost bitter smile crosses Ardyn’s lips. “Some time ago,” the man says softly. “My brother attempted to kill me. My birth-and-blood brother killed my fiancee in front of me, and then ran be through with an exceptionally large sword. I hate him more than you are capable of imagining.” He sighs. “And yet I love him still.” Ardyn’s voice is tired. 

And Klaus. Klaus gets that. 

“I will not stop loving you, Klaus.” Ardyn tells him softly. 

And Klaus. 

He shouldn’t. This is too good to be true. What about the timeline? But. 

But. 

“My brothers and sisters?” Klaus manages. He wants. He wants to. 

“Do you care for them?” Ardyn asks him bluntly.

Klaus glances around. At Allison, staring at him. At Luthor’s dumbstruck expression. Five’s calculation, Diego’s fierce smirk, Ben’s mouthing ‘go for it’ at him, Vanya’s teary grin - “Y-ees.” He responds slowly. 

Because what can you depend on in this world, if not family?

“Then they are my sons and daughters as well, and I love them.” Ardyn responds simply, and just like that Klaus can tell that he means it. For the first time since this conversation begins, his gaze lifts from Klaus’s face and turns to the other members of the Umbrella Academy. “Would you like to come with me?” He asks them, plainly and bluntly. “I can promise to care for you until my dying day, and provide for your needs - physical and otherwise - as I am a man of some property in my own right.”

Klaus barely hears the conversation that follows. Five arguing that this is their best bet to change the timeline, an unexpected variable that they would be fools to dismiss, Ben’s simple declaring that if Klaus is going, he is going, Diego’s fierce seconding of Ben’s opinion, the hope in Vanya’s voice as she cautiously agrees, staring at Ardyn as if she has never expected anyone like him could exist, Allison exchanging a glance with Luthor before both of them nod slowly and. 

And. 

And Ardyn holds out his arms, and Klaus. 

Klaus steps forward, and lets himself fall into his father’s open embrace. 

“Yes.” He lets himself whimper, whisper, hope. “Yes.”

#ffxv #the umbrella academy #my fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #fusion