#where the only thing we had in common was our transness.

[0w0tsuki]

Hey can we stop pretending like the only feasible reason that a trans woman would not like the term femboy is because she's some puritan anti-kinkster or somehow against men being able to dress femininely?

Like perhaps maybe the group of people who had to go through a phase of having to figure out and explore their femininity while being perceived by society as a man DON'T WANT to police the way men are able to present and express their genders? Like maybe WE DON'T want to make things even harder for transfem eggs. Like maybe we might have an interest in protecting transfem eggs and are speaking from the harm that we experienced as eggs ourselves?

Like maybe it might have to do with the fact that outside of Tumblr your average femboy is a trap fetishist? Like did we all forget the memes of "trying to figure out if the Astofolo icon is a trans woman or a fascist?"

Like some of us were discovering our transness during puberty in the early 2000s. You remember the early 2000s right? Where South Park and Family were at the height of their cultural influence, the R slur was a substitute for stupid, and bigotry was so common that "traps are gay" jokes could be made in polite company without having to worry about backlash. So imagine what kink spaces were like. Especially when you're a teenage trans girl just discovering herself.

I personally was so damaged by that experience that I began to believe that my gender-no my EXISTENCE was a fetish to be embarrassed and humiliated by and to be reviled for. I genuinely did not engage in relationships because I believed I was going to have to give in and tell them that they fell in love with a sex object. I did not believe that I was worthy of love. And it took YEARS of working through that for me to be comfortable with transitioning.

And after I worked through that I still have to deal with them. They haven't left kink communities they had their roots in. To this day there's a kink website I frequent that has community suggestions for tags IE: Unless the OP of the work goes back to delete this feature, anyone can "recommend" deletions or additions to the tags of the work. This is in place to make the proper labeling/searching/blacklisting of kinks easier to help curate content. In practice though it allows transmisoginists to basically graffiti any transfem artwork they come across. And let me tell you Femboy tags are getting added on right after they replace F/F with M/M on a transbians t4t work. And it happens so frequently that I have to check in about once a month to these trans tags to inform the most recent victim about what's happened to their works.

And outside of kink spaces I go into fandom spaces where I have had to deal with trap fetishists positioning themselves as fucking lore scholars when they harass trans positive folks about the Correct and Moral gender of the transmisoginistic character that they've got a fap folder dedicated. I got to see someone rise to twitch fame off the back of trap content turn into a “femboy icon” because he gave some of the trap money to trans charities and has a trans girlfriend. Who is still making trap content by the way.I've gotten to see reddit lose their absolute goddamn minds when the term Trap was banned from r/anime, shitting themselves so hard about it that they made their own separate website with transmisogynistic wojaks on the home page and everything. And then I got to see the fucking Bridget Debacle.

The reason I always talk about Bridgets trans confirmation is that it's the most widely recognized recent event where the exact shit I'm talking about was on full display. The reason why her being confirmed as a trans woman was such a big deal for trans girls was not just because she was one of the anime caricatures with her own folder in the trap enthusiasts masterbation portfolio. It was because she was GROUND ZERO for original coining of the word trap. And the EXACT same guys who deemed her a trap were now coming out in DROVES fuck EN MASS. But this time as self appointed femboys. We had so many examples of fucking Astofolo icon twitter facists trying to drudge up any type of left sounding argument using the femboy identity after having their initial arguments revolving around mistranslation were debunked. Crying that transfems were “stealing femboy representation” and trying to say that it was an “antitransmasculization force feminization trope” ironically. You know the cry of “Let men be feminine!!!!” y'all always bring out in defense of femboys. THAT'S who you're parroting! THAT'S who you got it from! We have had direct evidence of former trap fetishists dawning the term femboy when it became less cool to be openly transmisogynistic and then started appropriating leftist language to give their transmisogynistic arguments an air of legitimacy.

Like y'all need to understand that this magical space we got here is a FUCKING BUBBLE. Femboy communities in literally every other online space are former trap/sissy communities and are fucking cess pits of transmisoginy. I have seen posts by people who's only experience being around femboys was on Tumblr go out and check a place like r/mildfemboys to be horrified by the obsessiveness of the transmisogyny the femboys they interact with. And the femboys here aren't much better by treating being forced to acknowledge that these people exist and that is a still very active part of their community even if they don't personally interact with it as a personal attack on them and their gender presentation.

Y'all just want to pretend it doesn't exist and treat the idea that a Transfem might not WANT to interact with YOU(OH GOSH!!) because of it like it's some sort of personal judgement instead of something you're just going to have to accept happens when there's a large portion of people who share that title who are responsible for traumatizing them. But y'all got to go one step further. Y'all who go on about how femboys are our closest allies and about how “femboys and transfems are actually closer than transfems want to admit”. Y'all treat femboys like they're out little fucking brother in the queer community and it's our personal fucking responsibility to leave behind any personal baggage at the door in order to make them feel welcome.

Y'all can't handle the fucking idea that a trans woman might not be comfortable with sharing community with someone who's average member would call her a trap while jacking off to her selfies if he thought he could get away with it. That's she's not interested in playing the Astofolo icon game with them. Y'all gotta create a backwards narratives where she is against her own interests, where she is for making it harder for eggs in the future instead of you know. Asking for better from the communities those eggs are drawn too.

I have been forced to fucking put up with femboys in nearly every online space I've ever been in. And I

Am sick and fucking tired

Of putting up with femboys

#transmisoginy #trans bridget #bridget #trans #femboys #femboy #f1nn5ter #transmisogyny tw #tw trap #trap tw #trap cw #cw trap #tw sissy #sissy tw #cw sissy #sissy cw

[happysadyoyo]

"Talking about trans men "playing up the F in AFAB" to access women spaces. Please someone send me an ask about this specifically so I have an excuse to go off tomorrow after work."

Fourth time's the charm right?

And I gotta disclaim that I'm one of them transes who sees his past self as the gender he thought he was. Little 11 year old me? Girl. I was a girl up to the point I wasn't and I don't really know where that line is. Somewhere between 19 and 25. But I do call myself AFAB and I do see a lot of my experiences as a child and teen as being both through the lenses of womanhood and closeted/subconscious transness.

So needless to say I'm a little biased and get a little angry when this argument that trans masculine people are trying to play up the F in their AGAB up.

First and foremost, the biggest push away from AGAB language I've seen is from nonbinary and trans masculine folks. So let's jot that down (again though, I have consciously put myself into spaces that allow me to hear these voices over trans feminine voices after nearly a decade of the reverse).

And there's the fact that trans people who present with traditionally "female" reproductive and secondary sex characteristics are typically more vulnerable in men only spaces... we gotta be realistic here. People who look like women are going to be treated like women by strangers and while I'm a firm advocate for not treating all men like dirt... well. We have statistics.

And that's even if there are men spaces... shit like shelters for domestic violence victims oh so rarely allow men in the first place.

Plus, let's not forget a lot of this "playing up the F in AFAB" talk is coming around during the repeal of Roe v Wade in the US, which brought up the discussion of reproductive healthcare and abortion access back into international center stage. We're supposedly leaning on our AGAB by pointing out that We! Need! Healthcare! And our healthcare needs generally line up with those seen as women's only.

A totally stealth trans man who is being denied reproductive healthcare because he's legally a man is going to have to lean on his AGAB to get a checkup with the ObGyn. Otherwise they're not going to see him... because he doesn't look like a woman to him. Sometimes, using your AGAB is necessary, if only because the largely cishet world doesn't get that sometimes women have dicks and men have vaginas, and there are some people who want both or neither.

Finally, and I guess this just irritates me the most because of the above mentioned bias... saying trans masculine and nonbinary folks are playing up their AGAB is outright denying the way so many of us grew up. I was raised as a girl. I was seen as a girl. I had expectations put on me that only women in my small part of Southern Baptist culture would have. I had a promise ring. I memorized the Proverbs 31 wife list. I had nightmares of my wedding night, and I was made fun of and belittled by my own mother for not liking makeup and not taking care of my appearance. My lack of sexual harassment, despite it being a super common thing for girls and women, still has me mentally fucked up despite now identifying mostly male.

I'm not playing up my AGAB by talking about these experiences and saying that I've experienced misogyny because of how I am seen. Claiming the trauma and benefits of womanhood when I saw myself as a girl and when the world sees me as a woman (as it oh so overwhelmingly does currently) is not me trying to play up my AGAB for victimhood points or to access women's only spaces.

Yes, there are trans men, masculine folks, and nonbinary people who were AFAB and currently enter women's spaces where AMAB folks aren't allowed. If I wasn't aware of them before, I certainly am after getting through the first few chapters of Whipping Girl because Julia Serano does not shut up about it. She's clearly salty despite pretending not to be.

But guess what! There's shitty trans women and trans feminine people out there too! Baeddels! TIRFs! The fact that there's shitty trans people like Buck Angel or Caitlyn Jenner is just because they're people! Who happen to be trans! And people will absolutely use whatever they can as leverage to be shitty! That's why there are gay and black Republicans. They leveraged their minority status to become figures in a group that hates them. Shocking.

But for fuck's sake, saying trans men, masculine, and nonbinary folks who happened to be AFAB are trying to express their victimhood through the F in their AGAB both reeks of ROGD as well as a clear yellow flag that maybe

just maybe

these people are trying to find the language to talk about the problems they're facing but people like Serano aren't letting them.

#julia serano #transandrophobia #exorsexism #nbphobia #fuck julia serano so much

[cliveguy]

I had a cis woman 'friend' send me a huge paragraph and block me out of the blue about a year and a half into my transition. The message was long and had clearly come from the heart but the main gist of it was 'even though we've known each other for a decade, and been great friends for all of that, I can't trust you anymore'. The direct quote, that I remember exactly because of how much it affected me, was "I can't trust you now, because you chose to ally with the enemy."

what a wild thing to say right?? So yeah that sent me on a huge depression spiral where I detransed for a few months before my mental health got so bad I had to be sectioned. In my stay at the hospital pretty much everyone was like "please keep transing your gender I'm begging you" and thanks to them I got back on track and stopped taking so much stock in other people's opinions on me and my transition.

This is longgg ik but your post just reminded me. Last I heard from that 'friend' was from one of our old mutual friends, we had a laugh because she shared that post that said 'transmisandry isn't real but I wish it was' and it's like... Yeah if anyone was gonna get close to it, it's her lol

oh yeah sorry that's absolutely a fucked up thing to say to someone and i'm glad you were able to recover from it. unfortunately in my experience it's a pretty common form of transphobia used by cis women. the narrative of transition as a "betrayal" of womanhood and as a form of misogyny is something i used to only see in terf circles but is just sort of everywhere now.

also cis women coopting the transmisandry debate has been really harmful for discussions surrounding any forms of transphobia... so many of them take "transmisandry isn't real" to mean "trans men aren't oppressed" and because this confirms their internal transphobic biases they're very happy to believe it and just like... dismiss forms of transphobia that all trans people experience when trans men talk about them, which just leads to the belief that support for trans people is conditional to them behaving. it all comes down to not knowing WHY transmisandry isn't real tbh, tme people should have to fill out a form explaining what transmisogyny is before posting about transmisandry online lol

#ask #Anonymous #the transmisandry debate has made everything so annoying. and all because some people didnt understand how transmisogyny works. #i don't think it benefits anyone to keep rehashing it honestly. when it was a bigger subject a while ago (tme) people were counting making #fun of trans men as some kind of show of solidarity with trans women #without doing any real work to combat transmisogyny #which about sums it up

[intersex-support]

Hi! I know this might be kind of a weird ask, but I just needed a space to talk about this and your blog appears to be safe.

So I have what has been diagnosed previously as PCOS. I'm seeking genetic testing for various reasons, but the symptoms are relatively consistent. Anyway.

One thing I never see talked about is how people with PCOS can and do face medical abuse and "correction". I was put unwillingly onto puberty blockers - ones not even intended as such, it was a common off-label use that came with potential long term side effects. I'm also trans, but didn't know it at the time. Had I known, I may have chosen puberty blockers, but it was still very much a nonconsensual attempt to "correct" my "precocious puberty".

Then as an adult, due to, well long story, but abuse from my mom, I was convinced to take estrogen-based birth control that in all likelihood contributed to my worsening dysphoria, to "manage" the huperandrogenism I'm now actively encouraging with low dose testosterone. Without constantly being told it's ugly, I love being hyperandrogenous! It makes me euphoric!

Related to this, I also got told I was appropriating intersex experiences for wanting my (already intersex body) to more closely match my being intersex. I admittedly said it poorly, in a way that made it seem like I was generalizing all intersex bodies into a common misconception, but I was trying to say that me being altersex (or another word, I've heard that term can be intersexist but don't have an alternative, if it is I'm happy to change the term I use) is a direct result of me being intergender/intergender (again, don't know which terminology to use, sorry!). I was accused of fetishizing intersex conditions by someone who admitted that PCOS should be considered one.

I don't actually know whether I had any coercive surgery in infancy due to a lot of crap with birthfamily and being removed at nine months and adopted at 14 months. But every other experience I've had has been (mostly perisex and a few bad faith gatekeeping intersex) people coercing me into fitting more neatly into a binary sex, often medically, and often with transphobia on top. I've had people deny that I can experience transness in multiple ways (I use transfem, transmasc, and transneutral/transandrogenous, particularly because I also am plural which just further complicates things.

I just... I wish people understood that I have faced many of the struggles typical to the intersex community. I have never experienced gender like a perisex person. I have always been cautious about speaking to my own experiences because I've tried to be aware of privilege where I have it and to uplift the voices of others with different experiences than mine, even where there are no dynamics of privilege/oppression.

Having people like you say "yes, people with PCOS can use the intersex label, we have shared experiences, you belong" has also been incredibly healing. It's like... I feel like people can often innately recognize when they have shared community in regards to innate identity. I felt drawn to the queer community before my gender/sexuality eggs cracked, for example. I feel like exclusion only hurts people because it- well, essentially is a form of gaslighting. "No, your experiences in this specific aspect are fundamentally so alien to ours that we couldn't possibly talk about commonalities in any meaningful way, and will deny you a belonging that is already yours." Does that make any sense?

I'm not perfect in the way I say things, so I do wanna say that I'm absolutely willing to be corrected if something I have said is harmful.

Just uh,,, thank you for listening to this long vent.

(In case I interact via anon in the future, can I sign off with "starry anon"?)

Hey, anon 💜

I'm so sorry that you've had to put up with so much judgment, abuse, and coercion from so many people and places that you expected to be safe. You did not deserve any of that. You have PCOS and hyperandrogenism, and you are intersex. You belong in intersex spaces and anyone who says you doesn't is being a complete asshole. There's so many reasons like you've listed here, where you have so many commonalities of experiences with other intersex people, and deserve to be able to find compassion and solidarity. I'm so sorry that you've faced medical abuse, and I think you're brave for speaking up about it and talking about the fact that intersex people with PCOS can and do face medical abuse. You are not alone in that, and it absolutely wasn't your fault.

You are intersex, and there is no way that you can appropriate your own experiences. I sort of do think that altersex is a label that's used in an intersexist way a lot of times and I personally tend to be uncomfortable with it, and I tend to stay away from altersex because of my issues with it. I think altersex is really only being used by people who aren't intersex, so I could see why people might have thought you were fetishizing or appropriating intersex experiences, as if you say you are altersex people are going to think you are saying you are dyadic. You can just say that you're intersex and intergender if that's language that makes you feel comfortable, although I'm not going to tell you what language is and isn't right for you to use--that's a personal choice.

I don't know you and your story and I'm also not going to tell you what ways of experiencing your gender and what labels are okay for you to use--I know that it can get very complicated when we're intersex and we're sometimes reassigned gender or sex in childhood, or at puberty, or undergo certain types of transition that's unexpected for our AGAB. I don't think that it's a free-for-all that any intersex person ever can just claim to be transmasc or transfem or both or that every single intersex person has a claim to every label, but my policy is to trust intersex people when they tell me their labels and trust that they know what the most accurate and affirming language is to use based on their own lived experiences. I think this is something that individual intersex people have to really think through and decide what labels are appropriate for them to use, and be thoughtful about what times we need to stay in our lane and when we follow our instincts. It does get complicated and my approach is to just trust that people know what labels are actually accurate to their life, and I only bring things up if it is an issue. If people are appropriating labels, if they don't have a certain type of lived experience but they are claiming that they do, if they are perpetuating oppression, then I will call people out and deal with whatever they are actually doing. I'm not going to tell you that you can't use labels or not when I don't know your life and story, or say whether you should be doing things or not, and just trust that you have thought through what is appropriate and what is right for you and listened to what the communities you are a part of are telling you.

Even though you did use altersex language, or if you were confused and couldn't figure out the best way to phrase things, you still are intersex and have an intersex body. And I completely understand wanting intersex affirming and gender affirming things to feel more comfortable in your body. I think that a lot of intersex people do have dysphoria and I know a lot of us who really have strong feelings about wanting to return to our natural intersex bodies before medical abuse, or returning to a version of ourselves that we were never allowed to be. I think that's something that makes so much sense, and even though I can see why people would react badly if they thought you were dyadic and using confusing language, know that you are not doing anything wrong by being intersex and having these feelings, and you cannot appropriate your own experiences. You belong in intersex community and are allowed to share your own experiences.

This blog is a safe space for you, anon, and feel free to share your story or come and vent if you need it.

💜💜💜

-Mod E

#asks #actuallyintersex #intersex #to clarify bc we've been having a lot of discussions on and offline about this lately #i don't think that every intersex person ever. can claim to be transmasc or transfem #like for instance i think it would be entirely inappropriate for me to claim to be transfem. i was afab raised female #and even though I went through medical abuse and hormonal conversion therapy #I don't think i live in any meaningful way as a transfem person. because i am a trans man #so im like in my case it would be weird if i started claiming i was transfem u know. bc im not #but i do think that with intersex people. birth asssignment gets tricky #i have a friend who was amab. but then was raised as a girl from the age of 5. and than at puberty transitioned back. and he considers #himself a trans man #so im like okay i think there are times where people's birth assignment doesn't line up with the dyadic birth assignment for a trans experi #so it does get complicated when you are intersex. or when you're intersex and like #you're transitioning one way. in a way that isn't usually expected of your birth assignment #and i dont' think i get to make all the rules for who is what. i think that would be silly #i think that's something that we all just need to think about what labels are right for us to use and what our experiences are #and if we think we're overstepping then we totally might be! if we think we belong in a certain community or certain label #and the community accepts us! that can also be true #so basiaclly long story short: i dont think that being intersex means that now you can just say that you r whatever trans label you feel #like. if you don't have the lived experiences #and i think it's good for us to be aware of that. but i do think its complicated #and that if you do have the lived experiences. if a certain label you use is right for you. im going to trust you #bc i am not in charge and dont feel like you know. telling people what they can and can't do

[aaronymous999]

I think many queer people who are exclusionists have been shaped that way by queerphobia which is incredibly sad.

The flaws in homophobia/transphobia is honestly really aren’t their facts or statistics or the things they say- there’s no logic and even if their is the problem will and always will be their conclusions from the information. For example, the most common argument I’ve seen is “Having more gay representation will make the kids gay.” And the thing is this is an entirely neutral statement, the claim in itself doesn’t really mean anything to me, because it’s vague, there’s no context and there’s nothing inherently wrong with being gay.

Homophobia’s problem is coming to hateful conclusions from mostly neutral statements. Or hyperfocusing on the gay aspect to fuel their hatred.

A lot of exclusionists regret the idea of trans people without gender dysphoria because they feel that there has to be some sort of life threatening reason for someone to be transgender, because internally transitioning for “no reason” is an inherent evil. But that’s what the transphobes WANT you to think. There is no inherent evil to transition into a boy just because you like how boys look or you think boys are hot and want to be one, or any other reason. Of course medical transition needs long consideration but there’s nothing wrong with someone without gender dysphoria just deciding to change their pronouns to she/her and start using a girl name even if they had no problems as a man. The only people who think there’s something wrong with transness in any form are transphobes.

To get a little personal, I do have gender dysphoria and all the typical good gold star exclusionist binary trans person points. However, I don’t think it’s a bad thing that one of the reasons I’m transgender is because I grew up in a majority male household. I think due to my gender dysphoria I would have always been this way but my brothers and father definitely contributed. And for some out there, if they were born in a more gender equal society, they wouldn’t be transgender. And that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with saying that. It doesn’t make you any less transgender.

As for accusations that are inherently negative, the problem is the conclusion and the “evil” drawn from it. Hearing about a story where a trans woman assaults someone, they draw the trans woman from the story and use it as ammunition against trans people as a whole. However the correct conclusion is that we are given little information her and all we know is that someone who happens to be a trans woman assaulted someone. One assumption is taken from hate and malice, and the other is neutral.

Not proofread just some thoughts and your friendly reminder that being queer has no rules and not to let internalized homophobia render you hateful for the members of our community who don’t follow as many “rules”

( I hate that I have to clarify this because I am worried it will be used as a strawman against me or will be co-opted by bad actors but I do not condone pedophilia, racism or anything like that. There is a difference between neo/xenogenders and “genders” that are just racism and pedophilia apology. Queerness shouldn’t involve any of that. )

#aaronymous ramblings #queer #queer community #queerphobia tw #queer discourse #also we need to leave assumptions that others identities mean anything about our own #trans guys identifying as lesbians does not challenge my masculinity in any way #and if it challenges yours? i hate to break it to you bud but you have fragile masculinity problems #someone identifying as a bisexual gay does not make you as a gay person any less valid #the problem isn’t the other person for identifying it that way #the problem is the homophobes who use their lack of following ‘rules’ as a weapon #inherently both these identities are neutral as all queer identities are #exclusionists just make me sad because their internalized transphobia and homophobia is the only reason they think like that #our true enemy is bigotry #never ourselves

[bellshazes]

man. had a convo with my fave [state] coworker and she is so, so lovely. i love her, truly, from the bottom of my heart. you can just tell how much she cares about our members and I learn so much from her. and she comes across as blunt often, but she's always saying things that need heard. sometimes, it's with imperfect language. we were just talking about a trans member who had stopped seeing his gynecologist because, in his words, he's trans and didn't need to see a gyno - and had discovered he had ovarian cancer. my coworker was using she/her pronouns for him - not great! - but she was trying to get the group to focus on what barriers there were to that gynecological care, the ovarian cancer. they kept getting on her for the pronoun thing, which, yes, i also told her that if you're unable to hear the preference from the person themself, opting for the gender they're transitioning to (and this isn't "optimal language" i'm using, but it's where my coworker is at) is better. but she was right about trying to focus on helping the actual situation.

i talked it through with her and about my experiences with being out at work but not with my family, about whether there's trans-friendly gynecologists at all in the member's area or if there was trauma there (how likely that is!). and she immediately lit up talking about how awful it is that providers will claim they are trauma-informed or whatever and then fall short. she cares. she gets it, on some level. her use of she/her was a misguided attempt to express in the only way she knew how to focus on the issue of a person not receiving adequate care and needing support through cancer treatment. despite her ignorance, she was doing her damnedest to be this person's best advocate.

and she was so grateful and open to talking through the complexities! it is in fact important to validate to allies that it is hard sometimes to know what pronouns to use when a coworker is out at work but not in the community but that's part of why we do it anyway, because it's hard and important. she cares so much about trying to keep up with terminology she's unfamiliar with and not being seen as bigoted but she's not got a lot of experience talking to people in contexts where she can really learn. and she talked about being black and knowing as an adult culturally her family and friends just didn't openly talk about being trans or queer but she knows there were and are people who are and were. i brought up the complexities of how race plays into gender and transness, where black women can be denied "true" (quote unquote) womanhood because of their race and so how does that factor into being familiar or not with trans experiences? and if you're not white and you're trans, the ways in which you might be denied a gender you're not IDing with, but that's, well, intersectionality. and she had a lightbulb moment, i think, because i don't know she's ever had anyone say it in a way she's allowed to have something in common with. solidarity forever is the way.

there are a lot of willfully ignorant people, but if you connect with someone who's falling short on the "right" words and language and feelings, there are plenty who want to understand better but don't, who want to keep practicing, who care about you even if they don't know how best to show it. i'm really lucky to know people who keep reminding me of that, and who i know want a better world for the youth they serve.

#work woes #this is not not a tirade against the expectation of perfect language online. but #the point of it and the joy of it is imperfectly moving toward better understanding TOGETHER. #long post

[boyplushie]

i feel so selfish but also im gonna start crying bc of this

#teddy vents #the university i plan on going to is offering gender neutral housing for the first time EVER. #like my first year of school is gonna be their first year of this #& i got really excited at first #& im on the list for it (there's a pretty low number of spots) #but the residence hall they're using for it has no single rooms only doubles #& it seems selfish but i was really looking forward to having my own personal dorm room. where i could be myself #i don't want to have to spend my first year of college in a new program rooming with a complete stranger #where the only thing we had in common was our transness. #& i know there's a chance i would get along with whoever i end up with. but there's no guarantee! #the housing department said i would get matched with a roommate based on the questions i answered in the housing application #but those questions were only are you willing to live with service/support animals + do you get up early + do you stay up late #+ are you okay/not okay with noise #like that's not enough! i don't feel safe or comfortable enough with that #but i don't know if id feel worse rooming with the floor that doesn't match my gender at all #bc in my original dorm choice i was going to be living with 3 or so other girls #we'd have our own rooms but i would still be lumped in with the wrong gender. #i don't know. would it be worth it? what would my parents think? #they're still helping me pay for a lot of college. they'll be there when i move in what will they think #when they potentially see visibly trans people that i would be rooming with. #that's a recipe for disaster right there. #i don't know. i don't know. #they're keeping me on the list until friday which is okay #im gonna see my therapist tomorrow so ill talk to her then about it & what she thinks. #i was so excited for this opportunity & now it seems like it won't even work for me. #i just want to live in a dorm where im happy & comfortable #damn. why did the affordable & scholarship granting school also have to be the most conservative and traditional one too #if you read this far thanks 👍 im kinda distraught #wish this hadn't happened in the middle of the school day im gonna be focusing on it until tomorrow's appointment now

[vaspider]

'only tenet of TERFism is transmisogyny' EXCUSE ME NO ITS ALL TRANS PEOPLE. They don't want any trans person to exist. What the hell.

Some people just gotta center their own suffering always, even when they're hurting other people by doing so. I've seen this a lot in younger queer folx of all stripes, this need to be the one that hurts the most, you know?

There's a reason the phrase Oppression Olympics exists, and it's because it's a common behavior or phenomenon in oppressed communities. I see it in the disability community, too.

What I think is important to understand when we talk about how trans people suffer under transphobia is that different groups are targeted differently. I'm not the first person to say this, of course.

Now, like, this is very rough sketchy stuff, and each person's individual experiences will vary, but in my general experience, the rough breakdown of the way in which transphobia lands on trans people kind of breaks down like this:

Binary trans women tend to suffer under a lens of hypervisibility. Everything they do is seen, analyzed, and torn apart. Their struggles are generally the ones centered in the arguments of allies, "allies," and transphobes. Even when trans women are the focus of helpful attention, that hypervisibility can cause exhaustion, because they need to perform perform perform, and be perfect, all the time. It's hard for trans women to just be without feeling like they're on camera, all the time. A lot of the time, they are on camera, because trans women's bodily autonomy and right to privacy are just never respected by transphobes (and often by supposed "allies" who feel free to ask the most invasive questions and get upset when trans women won't answer them), and even if they're not literally on camera, they're supposed to perform as the best examples of transfemininity, because if they don't, then they become the next 'look at this bad trans, all trans are this bad trans' example that TERFs point at and use as a broad brush to paint all trans women. If they're not perfect all the time and have a day where they snap at someone while someone is recording, or make a mistake, or anything, it has a horrible tendency to go viral. You can think of at least three instances right now off the top of your head, right? Right.

Binary trans men tend to suffer from hyperinvisibility. This comes from inside and outside the community -- a lot of trans men talk about being told they can't lead in community because they've 'got male privilege,' that their struggles are discarded, that they're talked over and unable to discuss the things they face, which means they don't get the support they need. Now, there are TERFs and transphobes who absolutely do focus their attention on trans men to the exclusion of or to the deprioritization of the oppression of trans women -- that's where we get Tavistock and Irreversible Damage and Fourth Wave Now and all the other bullshit which focuses on the idea that trans men are "transing the gay away," specifically "transing our butch lesbians" and "stealing butches." But again, generally speaking, trans men face harmful levels of invisibility where trans women face harmful levels of visibility. That's why transmascs in general have issues like lack of understanding even by supposedly trans-competent doctors as to how HRT affects our bodies, why trans men (and transmascs in general) report things like transphobes attacking them with transmisogynistic comments and assuming that every trans person online is a trans woman, etc.

Non-binary (here used as an umbrella term for all identities outside of binary man/woman, to include agender, genderfluid, non-binary, and infinite other identities) AFAB people tend to suffer from a different, very specific form of hypervisibility, unless they start to appear too masculine, and then they slip into hyperinvisibility. This is where we get things like "women and non-binary people" that codes all non-binary people as "AFAB people I can sort of squint and view as women," and people who fall into this category tend to get a lot of attention, a lot of derision from all sides of the spectrum. This is the "blue-haired tenderqueer" sneering that we get from both within and without the queer community, where there's an assumption that these people are just cosplaying an identity, that they're not really trans, etc. Having been in the visibility category and slipped into the invisibility category within the last, oh, year or so, and having two binary trans women in my family to compare notes with, the experiences are unnervingly similar. The difference between the experience that those women have had and the experience that I have had is that according to transphobes, I'm a traitor to my womanhood and performing femininity wrong and taking on a fake identity to escape female oppression because I'm not strong enough to bear up under it, but too cowardly to become a trans man, or... something, whereas they're taking on a fake identity to sneak into women's spaces because they're perverts.

Non-binary (umbrella identity etc) AMAB people tend to suffer from their own very specific form of hyperinvisibility, unless they start to present "too feminine", and then they slip into the hypervisibility which affects binary trans women, but with a little different fuckery in which everyone just assumes they're a trans woman, and therefore they get misgendered by everyone across the spectrum of queer/non-queer/etc. Non-binary AMAB people are generally treated like they don't exist, and when they are spoken about, are often discussed in the context of 'they should just admit they're trans women or gay men,' or if they present 'too feminine,' are subjected to the same sort of horrific attention that trans women get.

Again, a lot of this is very simplistic, and doesn't add in a lot of other complicating factors like race, disability, class, etc. Trans men of color, for example, can run into a different sort of hypervisibility because as they move further through their transition, they begin to be seen in the world as a man of color. It's not really mine to speak on beyond that, but I don't want to neglect saying 'this is really really simplistic and there's more to it than that' over and over.

I really hate breaking it down this simply because it feels like creating another binary (our society does like a binary!) for non-binary people, but like, I can't really talk about my shared experiences with other trans people without putting some framework around it. Someday, I'll be able to do that without categories. Wouldn't that be awesome?

I think we do our entire community a huge disservice when we talk about transphobia as if it's a single snake trying to take bites out of only one part of the community, and not a many-headed hydra, able to attack us from multiple different directions. I also think that focusing on one form of oppression keeps us from forming meaningful solidary and coalitions; the more divided we are, the easier it is for the people who literally want us all to stop existing to pick us off one by one. We see this all across the queer community and it's only ramping up as the attacks on our community escalate from without; people tend to turn on the ones closest to them when they get really scared, and to blame the person standing next to them for the pain they're suffering. It's the "close enough to hit" phenomenon, and it's why we see ridiculous things like "bi women make cis men think that lesbians can be won over," rather than acknowledging that bi women aren't the ones causing that: cis men are the ones causing that. The bi women in that case are close enough to hit. Transmascs are close enough to hit. Trans women are close enough to blame for the problems of transmascs, which makes it possible for TERFs to lure transmascs in and attempt to detransition them, subjecting them to gaslighting and manipulation and then using them as sock puppets.

TERFs do focus a lot on transmisogyny. They focus a lot on transmisandry, too. Debating which one is more prevalent and 'worse' not only misses the point, because transmascs and transfems face very different and totally rotten attention from cis society as a whole, including cis queers. We need to like, not do that anymore: we need to give each other the space to talk about our unique circumstances, but we also need to work harder on looking at each other through a lens of solidarity and trying to see that our struggles are different but not unrelated, and that if we keep downing on each other like this, we're not going to get anywhere except in a much more difficult situation as the people who don't want any of us to exist keep picking us off.

#transmisogyny #transphobia #transmisandry #queer issues #trans issues #long post

[star-anise]

An ask I got recently:

hi so i’m a transmed and i’m not sure if you’ll answer this because of that but i saw your post about transmedicalism and was wondering if you could expand on that? you seem like a genuinely kind and judgement-free person, thank you darling x

My response:

Heh, you call me “judgement-free” and ask for my opinion on a topic I’ve formed a lot of judgments about… I get it though, I’m not into attacking people for what they believe so much as providing FACTS. As a cis queer, my insight into transmedicalism isn’t really about the innate experience of trans-ness so much as using my education and professional experience to talk about social science research, diagnostic systems, and public health policy.

This ended up really long, so the tl;dr is, I think transmedicalism as I understand it:

Misunderstands why and how the DSM’s Gender Dysphoria diagnosis was written,

Treats the medical establishment with a level of trust and credibility it doesn’t deserve, at a time when LGBT+ people, especially trans people, need to be informed and vigilant critics of it, and

Approaches the problem of limited resources in an ass-backwards way that I think will end up hurting the trans community in the long run.

TW: Transphobia; homophobia; suicide; institutionalization; torture; electroshock therapy; child abuse; incidental mentions of pedophilia.

So first off I’m guessing you mean this post, about not trusting the medical establishment to tell you who you are? That’s what I’m trying to elaborate on here.

I have to admit, when you say “I’m a transmedicalist” that tells me very little about you, because on Tumblr the term seems to encompass a dizzying array of perspectives. Some transmedicalists believe in what seems to me the oldschool version of “The only TRUE trans people suffer agonizing dysphoria that can only be fixed with surgery and hormones, everyone else is an evil pretender stealing resources and can FUCK RIGHT OFF” and others are like, um… “I have total love and respect for nonbinary and nondysphoric trans people! I qualify for a DSM diagnosis of dysphoria but that doesn’t make me inherently better or more trans than anyone else.”

Which is very confusing to me because according to everything I’ve learned, the latter opinion is not transmedicalism. It’s just… a view of transness that acknowledges current diagnostic labels and scientific research. It’s what most people who support trans rights and do not identify as transmedicalists believe. But I kind of get the impression that Tumblr transmedicalism has expanded well past its original mandate, to the point that if a lot of “transmedicalists” saw the movement’s original positions they’d go “Whoa that’s way too strict and doesn’t help our community, I want nothing to do with it.”.

Okay so. Elaborating on the stuff I can comment on.

1. DSM what?

The American Psychiatric Association publishes a big thick book called The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, called the DSM for short. This is the “Bible of psychiatry”, North America’s definitive listing of mental disorders and conditions. It receives significant revision and updates roughly every 10-15 years; it was last updated in 2013, meaning it will likely get updated sometime between 2023 and 2028.

The DSM lists hundreds of “codes”, each of which indicates a specific kind of mental disorder. For example, 296.23 is “Major depressive disorder, Single episode, Severe,” and  300.02 is “Generalized anxiety disorder.” These codes have information on how common the condition is, how it’s diagnosed, and what kind of treatment is appropriate for it.

Diagnostic codes are the key to health professionals getting paid. If there isn’t a code for it, we can’t get paid for it, and therefore we have very few resources to treat it with. The people who actually pay for healthcare–usually insurance companies or government agencies–decide how much they will pay for each code item to be treated. They’ll pay for, say, three sessions of group therapy for mild depression (296.21), or they’ll pay for more expensive private therapy if it’s moderate (296.22); they’ll pay for the cheap kind of drug if you have severe depression (296.23), but to get the more expensive drug, you need to have depression with psychotic features (296.24).

Healthcare companies, especially in the USA where the system is very very broken and the DSM is written, are cheap bastards. If they can find an excuse not to fund some treatment, they’ll use it. “We think this person who lost their job and can’t get off the couch should pay this $1000 bill for therapy,” they’ll say. “After all, they were diagnosed as code 296.21, and then saw a private therapist for five sessions, when we only allow three sessions of group therapy, and you’re saying they haven’t had enough treatment yet?”

A lot of the advocacy work mental health professionals do is trying to get the big funding bodies to pay us adequately for the work we do. (This is a much easier process in countries with single-payer healthcare, where this negotiation only needs to be done with a single entity. In the USA, it needs to be done with every single health insurance company in existence, as well as the government, sometimes differently in every single state, and then again on a case-by-case basis as well.) Healthcare providers have to argue that three sessions of group therapy isn’t enough, that Medicaid needs to pay therapists more per hour than it costs those therapists to rent a room to practice in, or else therapists would lose money by seeing Medicaid clients. DSM codes exist a tiny bit to let us communicate with each other about the people we treat, and a huge amount to let us get paid. The fact that their existence lets people make sense of their own experiences and find a community with people who share common experiences and interests with them is a very minor side benefit the DSM’s authors really don’t keep in mind when they update and revise different diagnoses.

So when it comes to convincing insurance companies to pay for treatment, humanitarian reasons like “they’ll be very unhappy without it” tend not to work. The best argument we have for them paying for psychological treatment is that it’s economical: that if they don’t pay for it now, they’ll have to pay even more later. If they refuse to pay, let’s say, $2000 to treat mild depression when someone loses their job, and either refuse treatment or stick the person with the bill, then that person’s life might spiral out of control–they might, let’s say, run low on money, get evicted from their apartment, develop severe depression, attempt suicide, and end up in hospital needing to be medically resuscitated and then put in an inpatient psych ward for a month. The insurance company then faces the prospect of having to pay, let’s say, $100,000 for all that treatment. At which point somebody clever goes, “Huh, so it would have been cheaper to just… pay the original $2000 instead so they could bounce back, get a new job, and not need any of this treatment later.”

Trans healthcare can be kind of expensive, since it often involves counselling, years of hormone therapy, medical garments, and multiple surgeries. Health insurance companies hate paying for anything, and have traditionally wanted not to cover any of this. “This is ridiculous!” they said. “These are elective cosmetic treatments, it’s not like they’re dying of cancer, these people can pay the same rate for breast enhancements or testosterone injections as anyone else.”

So when the APA Task Force on Gender Identity Disorder (a task force comprised, as far as I can tell, entirely of cis people) sat down to plan for the 2013 update of the DSM, one of their biggest goals was: Treatment recommendations. Create a diagnosis which they could effectively use to advocate that insurance companies fund gender transition. Like when you go back and read the documents from their meetings in 2008 and 2011, their big thing is “create a diagnosis that can be used to form treatment recommendations.” So that’s what they did; in 2013 they made the GD diagnosis, and in 2014 the Affordable Care Act required insurers to provide treatment for it.

A lot of trans people weren’t happy with the DSM task force’s decisions, such as the choice to keep “Transvestic Fetishism,” which is basically the autogynephilia theory, and just rename it “Transvestic Disorder”. The creation of the Gender Dysphoria diagnosis, basically, was designed to force the preventive care argument. They didn’t think they could win on trans healthcare being a necessity because healthcare is a human right, so they went with: Trans people have a very high suicide rate, and one way to bring it down is to help them transition. One of the major predictors of suicidality is dysphoria. The more dysphoric someone is, the more likely they are to attempt suicide (source).  Therefore, health insurers should fund treatment for gender dysphoria because it was cheaper than paying for emergency room admissions and inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations.

I have spoken to trans scientists about what research exists, and my understanding is: The dysphoria/no dysphoria split is not actually validated in the science. That is, when you research trans people, there is not some huge gaping difference between the experiences, or brains, of people With Dysphoria, and people Without Dysphoria. Mostly, scientists haven’t even thought it was an important distinction to study. The diagnosis wasn’t reflecting a strong theme in the research about trans experiences; that research showed that trans people with all levels of dysphoria were helped with medical transition. The biggest difference is just that dysphoria is a stronger risk factor for suicide. Experiencing transphobia is another strong risk factor, but that’s harder to measure in a doctor’s office, so dysphoria it was.

(I’ve seen some transmedicalists claim that dysphoria’s major feature is incongruence, not distress. And I’ll just say, uh… in psychology, “dysphoria” is the opposite of of “euphoria”, literally means “excessive pain”, and is used in many disorders to describe a deep-seated sense of distress and wrongness. As a mental health professional, I just can’t imagine most of my colleagues agreeing that something can be called “dysphoria” if the person doesn’t feel real distress about it. If you want a diagnosis that doesn’t demand dysphoria, you’d need Gender Incongruence in the upcoming version of the ICD-11, which is the primary diagnostic system used in Europe, published by the World Health Organization.)

2. Doctors are not magic

Medicine is a science, and science is a system of knowledge based on having an idea, testing it against reality, and revising that knowledge in light of what you learned. We’re learning and growing all the time.

I don’t know if this sounds painfully obvious or totally groundbreaking, but: Basically all medical research is done by people who don’t have the condition they’re writing about. Psychology has a strong historical bias against believing the personal testimonies of people with conditions that have been deemed mental disorders, so researchers who have experienced the disorder they’re writing about have often had to hide that fact, like Kay Redfield Jamison hiding that she had bipolar disorder until she became a world-renowned expert on it, or Marsha Linehan hiding that she had borderline personality disorder until she pioneered the treatment that could effectively cure it. Often, having a condition was seen as proof you couldn’t actually have a truthful and objective experience of it.

So what I’m trying to say is: The “gender dysphoria” diagnosis was written and debated, so far as I can tell, by entirely cis committee members. The vast majority of psychological and psychiatric research about LGBT+ people is written by cisgender heterosexual scientists. Most clinical and scientific writing has been outsider scientists looking at people they have enormous power over and making decisions about their basic existence with very little accountability.

And to show you how far we’ve come, I want to show you part of the DSM as it was from 1952 to 1973. It shows you just why so many older LGBT+ people find it deeply ironic that now the DSM is being held up as definitive of trans experience:

302 Sexual Deviation This category is for individuals whose sexual interests are directed primarily toward objects other than people of the opposite sex, toward sexual acts not usually associated with coitus, or towards coitus performed under bizarre circumstances as in necrophilia, pedophilia, sexual sadism, and fetishism. Even though many find their practices distasteful, they remain unable to substitute normal sexual behavior for them. This diagnosis is not appropriate for individuals who perform deviant sexual acts because normal sexual objects are not available to them.

302.0 Homosexuality 302.1 Fetishism 302.2 Pedophilia 302.2 Transvestitism […]

Yes, really. That is how psychiatry viewed us. At a time when research from other fields, like psychology and sociology, were showing that this view was completely unsupported by evidence, psychiatry thought LGBT+ people were fundamentally disordered, criminal, and incapable of prosocial behaviour.

My favourite retelling of the decades of activism it took LGBT+ people and allies to get the DSM to change is from a friend who did her master’s thesis on the topic, because she leaves in the clown suits and gay bars, which really shows how scientific and dignified the process was. The long story short is:  It took over 20 years of lobbying by LGBT+ people who were sick and tired of being locked up in mental institutions and subjected to treatments like electroshock training, as well as by LGBT+ social scientists, clinicians, and psychiatrists, to get homosexuality declassified as a mental illness. And that was homosexuality; the push to change how trans people were listed in the DSM is very recent, as seen in the latest version listing “Transvestic Disorder”, a description very few trans people ever use for themselves.

Here are a few more examples of how people with a condition have had to take an active part in the science about them:

When HIV/AIDS appeared in the USA, the government didn’t care why drug addicts and gay people were dying mysteriously. Hospitals refused to treat people with this mysterious new disease. AIDS patients had to fight to get any funding put into what AIDS is, how it spreads, or how it could be treated; they also had to campaign to change the massive public prejudice against them, so they could be treated, housed, and allowed to live. Here’s an article on the activist tactics they used. If you want an intro to the fight (or at least, white peoples’ experience of it), you could look into the movies How to Survive a Plague, And the Band Played On, and The Normal Heart.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is a little-understood disease that causes debilitating exhaustion. It’s found twice as often in women as men. Doctors understand very little about what it is or why it happens, and patients with CFS are often written off a lazy hypochondriacs who just don’t want to try hard. There are basically no known treatments. In 2011, a British study said that an effective treatment for CFS was “graded exercise”, a program where people did slowly increasing levels of physical activity. This flew in the face of what people with CFS knew to be true: That their disease caused them to get much worse after they exercised. That for them, being forced to do ever-increasing exercise was basically tantamount to torture, so it was very concerning that health authorities and insurance companies began requiring that they undergo graded exercise treatment (and parents with children with CFS had to put their children through this treatment, or lose custody for “medical neglect”). So they investigated the study, found that it was seriously flawed, got many health authorities to reverse their position on graded exercise, and have made strides into pointing researchers to looking into biological causes of their illness.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rare but debilitating disease that isn’t researched much, because it affects such a small portion of the population. The ALS community realized that if they wanted better treatment, they would need to raise the money for research themselves. In 2014 they organized a viral “ice bucket challenge” to get people to donate to their cause, and raised $115 million, enough to make significant advances in understanding ALS and getting closer to a cure.

A common treatment for Autism is Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), which is designed to encourage “desired” behaviours and discourage “undesired” ones. The problem is, the treatment targets behaviour an Autistic person’s parents and teachers consider desirable or undesirable, without consideration that some “undesired” behaviours (like stimming) are fundamental and necessary to the wellbeing of Autistic people. Furthermore, the treatment involves punishing Autistic children for failure to behave as expected–in traditional ABA, by witholding rewards or praise until they stop, or in more extreme cases, by subjecting them to literal electric shocks to punish them. (In that last case, they’ve been ordered to stop using the shock devices by August 31, 2020. That only took YEARS.) Autistic people have had to campaign loud and long to say that different treatment strategies should be researched and used, especially on Autistic children.

So I mean… I get that the medical model can provide an element of validation and social acceptance. It can feel really good to have people in white coats back you up and say you’re the real deal. But if you get in touch with most LGBT+ and transgender groups, they’d say that there’s still a lot of work to be done when it comes to researching trans issues and getting scientific and governmental authorities to recognize your rights to social acceptance and medical treatment.

Within a few years, the definition you’re resting on will turn to sand beneath your feet. The Great DSM Machine will begin whirring into life pretty soon and considering what revisions it has to make. You’ll have an opportunity to make your voice heard and to push for real change. So… do you want to be part of that process of pushing trans rights forward, or do you just want to feel loss because they’re changing your strict definition of who’s valid and who’s not?

3. Scarcity is not a law of physics

One of the major arguments I see transmedicalists push is that there’s only a limited number of surgeries or hormone prescriptions available, so it’s not okay for a non-dysphoric person to “steal” the resources that another trans person might need more. This makes sense in a limited kind of way; it’s a good way to operate if, say, you’re sharing a pizza for lunch and deciding whether to give the last slice to someone who’s hungry and hasn’t eaten, or someone who’s already full.

When you start to back up and look at really big and complex systems–basically anything as big, or bigger, than a school board or a hospital or a municipal government–it’s not a helpful lens anymore. Because the most important thing about social institutions is that they can change. We can make them change. And the most important factor in how much the world changes is how many people demand that it change.

I’ve talked about this before when it comes to homeless shelters, and how the absolute worst thing they can have are empty beds. I used to work in women’s shelters, which came about when second-wave feminists started seriously looking at the problem of domestic violence in the 1960s and 70s, It was an issue male-dominated governments and healthcare systems hadn’t taken seriously before, but feminists started heck and did research and staged demonstrations and basically demanded that organizations that worked for the “public benefit” reduce the number of women being killed by their husbands. Their research showed that the leading cause of death in those cases were when women tried to leave and their partners tried to kill them, so the most obvious solution was to give them someplace safe to go where their partners couldn’t find them. Therefore the solution became: Women’s shelters. When feminists committed to founding and running these shelters, local governments could be talked into giving them money to keep them running.

(Men’s rights activists, the misogynist kind, like to whine about “why aren’t there men’s shelters?” and the very simple answer is: Because you didn’t fight for them, you teatowels. Whether a movement gets resources and funding is hugely a reflection of how many people have said, “This needs resources and funding! Look, I’m writing a cheque! Everyone, throw money at this!” In other news, The BC Society for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse does great work. People should throw money at them.)

When the system in power knows there are resources it wants and doesn’t have, it finds a way to make them appear. For example, in Canada, the government knows that it doesn’t have enough trained professionals living in its far North, where the population is scarce and not very many people want to live. Doctors and teachers would prefer to live in the southern cities. But because it’s committed to Northern schools and hospitals, they create incentives. For example, the government offers to pay off the student loans of teachers or health professionals who agree to work for a few years in Northern communities.

Part of why trans healthcare resources are so scarce is that for a long time, trans people were considered too small a part of the population to care about. Like, “Trans people exist, but we won’t have to deal with them.” Older estimates said 0.4% of the population was trans, which meant a city of 100,000 people would have 400 trans people. A single family doctor can have 2000 or 3000 clients, so the city could have maybe 1 or 2 doctors who really “got” trans issues, and all the trans people would tell each other to only go see those doctors because all the rest were assholes. And the cracks in the system didn’t really seem serious. A couple hundred dissatisfied people not getting the healthcare they needed? Meh! Hospital administrators had more to worry about!

But the trans population is growing. A recent poll of Generation Z said 2.6% of middle schoolers in Minnesota were some kind of trans. which is 2,600 per 100,000. That’s enough to make hospitals think that maybe the next endocrinologist or OB/GYN they hire should have some training in treating trans people. That’s enough to make a health authority think that maybe the state should open up a new gender confirmation surgery clinic, since demand is rising so much.

Or well, I mean. Hospitals have a lot on their minds. This might not occur to them as their top priority. They’d probably think of it a lot sooner if a bunch of those trans people sent them letters or took out a billboard or showed up by the dozens at a public meeting to say, “Hello, there are a fuckload of us. Budget accordingly. We want to see your projected numbers for the next five years.”

When you’re doing that kind of work, suddenly it hurts your cause to limit your number of concerned parties. Sure, limited focus groups or steering committees can have limited membership, but when you put their ideas into action, to protest something or lobby for political change, you need numbers. If you want to show that you’re a big and important group that systems should definitely pay attention to, you don’t just need every trans or GNC or NB person who’s got free time to devote to your campaign, you also need every cis ally who can pad out numbers or lick envelopes or hand out water bottles or slip you insider information about the agenda at the next board meeting. You need bodies, time, and money, and you get them best by being inclusive about who’s in your party. Heck, if it would benefit your cause to team up with the local breast cancer group because trans women and cis women who have had mastectomies both have an interest in asking a hospital to have a doctor on staff who knows how to put a set of tits together, then there are strong reasons to do it.

Basically: All the time any marginalized group spends fighting over scraps is generally time we could spend demanding that the people handing out the food give us another plate. If you don’t think you’re getting enough, the best answer isn’t to knock it out of somebody’s hands, but to get together to say, “HEY! WE’RE NOT GETTING ENOUGH!”

That kind of work is complicated and difficult! It’s definitely much harder than yelling at someone on Tumblr for not being trans enough. But if you do any level of getting involved with activist groups that fight for real systemic change, whether that’s following your local Pride Centre on Twitter or throwing $5 at a trans advocacy group or writing your elected representative about the need for more trans health resources, you’re pushing forward lasting change that will help everyone.

#staranise original #transmedicalism tw #transphobia tw #homophobia tw #my problems with sj let me show you them

[mercuryislove]

Don’t hate me but… I kinda want you to answer all of the deep dive WIP asks 🥺 if that’s unreasonable tho, just 2, 9, and 10 please!

I am SORRY for the delay!!! i answered every question for BOTH projects so you're in for like.... several thousand words of shit that makes absolutely no sense, but i hope you you enjoy it! :)

1. Who are two characters that don't like each other? What do they reveal about each other to the readers? Will they ever learn to put aside their differences?

White Crane: okay this is hard because like. so many people do not like each other. (I know I made a post once about how terrible it would be to be one of twenty-eight people that have the power of dead gods but are trapped in stupid human bodies and you're all a thousand years old and hate each other so so so so so much because you all SUCK.) But for the sake of simplicity, I will talk about Ciaran and Sihla who never got along but only played nice to keep Anwei happy. They absolutely do NOT put aside their differences lmao once everything kind of, um, blows up between the three of them, all they want to do is KILL each other. She makes it her life's goal to make him suffer, and he basically loses his sanity in the process of trying to find a way to kill her for good. The beef is unbelievable. ANYWAY, what they reveal about each other is that Ciaran is not nearly as innocent in anything as he likes to pretend and Sihla is not as guilty as everyone says she is. I mean, she is still a terrible person in many ways, but that does not excuse the things he did to her all those years ago. She hates him for many, many good reasons.

Old Blood: Andhira HATES the entire Ekion family, but specifically the oldest son (who does not have an official name yet.... oops). He doesn't much care for her either but is usually too busy trying to better his social standing to worry too much about her. Except when they're in the same room together (which happens semi-regularly because her brother is kind of in love with him lmao). They hate each other for the exact same reason and it's that they're both SO arrogant. They look down on everyone around them (which in Andhira's case is like. fair. She's the firstborn of the two most powerful people on the planet, and the only person that comes close to that level of power is her twin brother who was born a mere fourteen minutes after her) but think the other is completely unjustified in their actions. Really all it reveals to a reader is that they both kind of suck and need to get over themselves because all that behavior does is make people resent you. They only put aside their differences because she does kind of need his help once or twice, but they would gladly spit in each other's face and/or push each other down a flight of stairs in the name of pettiness.

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2. What do you hope your readers will take away from your wip? Is there an intentional theme to the story?

These can be answered together! I started writing these stories because I wanted to have fun but they've both kind of morphed into a long-winded way of saying that like. it's okay to be messed up and hate yourself and have major internal struggles because there are people who still love you. I KNOW it doesn't sound like that from uhhhhhh literally everything I've ever said about this stuff but bear with me. The BIG theme is that love is EVERYTHING. All kinds of love. It's the reason to keep on going. You are never alone, even strangers can love you in their own way, etc etc etc etc. Also gay love fucking prevails always and forever.

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3. What do you love most about your protagonist?

Yixing is funny and weird and definitely a horse girl and he kind of sucks sometimes because he's stubborn as hell and has terrible people skills and maybe also a drinking problem, but he is kind and empathetic and despite the absolute hell he's lived through, he still sees the good in people and knows that it's easy to make mistakes and that most people deserve second chances in life. Also I like him because he is without a doubt the ideal man and I made him that way on purpose. And god I wish we could drink together. I'm talking stumbling drunk, crying on the bathroom floor, please-hold-my-hair-i'm-about-to-throw-up kind of drinking. We would have a great time being stupid together I think.

Vera is resilient and mean and stubborn and cold and off-putting and hard to get to know, and she sucks for those reasons but it's also why I love her so much. She has also lived through hell and it didn't make her try to see the good in people like Yixing does. It just made her bitter and resentful. She warms up over time, but she fights tooth and nail against it. I also love her so much because she is the archetype of like. the washed up former prodigy that has to return sort of against her will to her old life, and she realizes that she misses it in some ways but also remembers exactly why she left. I would Not want to drink with her (because she doesn't drink anymore), but I would love to take one of her art classes.

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4. Is there anything in the story that is implied but not directly stated? Will this become more relevant later on? How perceptive would a reader have to be to pick up on this?

White Crane: This is hard because I'm so invested in my own shit that it feels obvious to me, but I try to lay out a little candy trail that tells the reader that Ciaran and Anwei are Not What They Seem right from the start. It’s hard to explain without specific examples but it’s in the way they talk, they way they interact with other people, the way certain things they say don’t line up, etc etc etc. And there is a Big Hint of what will happen to Ciaran in the second and third installment, but idk if that counts. Also there are definitely implications that Yixing is trans but that's neither here nor there (honestly I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not he should be explicitly trans or if it should be left to reader interpretation because well... I don’t know if I'm capable of writing the nuance of transness because I'm not trans despite my complex and confusing relationship with gender but I'm also not a thirty-something year old Asian man NOR am I a god NOR am I a former vampire hunter NOR am I like. any of the things I write about other than a mean lesbian so. who knows?)

Old Blood: TRUE FANS already know this one, but regular degular readers that haven't participated in funny question friday or read my random late night posting would not immediately know that Josef and the Sovereign were once involved. Basically the only characters in the story that know are Josef, Luka, the Sovereign himself, and Tahire. But there are definitely some hints peppered throughout conversations and perhaps some photos and trinkets that Josef has kept after all this time... It has like no weight on the events of the story but I just think it's fun. Once again I am way too invested to know if it's easy to pick up on or not but I think it takes some theorizing about maybe? Other than that there aren’t any significant secrets.

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5. Which character has the most intricate backstory? Is this backstory common knowledge from the start, or is it revealed later on? How does the backstory affect the narrative?

White Crane: this is unfair because some of the characters are almost a thousand years old and some of them are like. 35. I DO have a full timeline written out of the thousand years of history that Ciaran and Anwei have lived through, if that counts as an answer. Like it doesn't have every single day and year, but it has all the big events for sure. Barring that, Yixing definitely has a pretty complex backstory. The man gets around lol and I try (and maybe fail?) to make him seem not too complex initially but then things get revealed and you learn more about him and are like “oh my god no wonder this man has Problems.” Also if he was like. “normal” and perhaps “well-adjusted” the story would not exist at all because he is the way he is and makes some of the stupid decisions he does because of his weird little life.

Old Blood: ONCE AGAIN, this is unfair because the Sovereign is like older than god. And Vera is 37. But like. I haven't fleshed him or any of the old ass vampires out nearly as much as Vera so there's your answer I guess? And I guess the important things are known from the start (that she was a prodigy, that she retired because terrible shit happened and she couldn't handle it, that she suffers from significant ptsd because of it, etc), but there is a lot of detail that doesn't come out until much later when she has to confront her Feelings (ewww feelings). Uh... the backstory affects the narrative because it wouldn't exist at all if Vera wasn't plagued by her fucked up blood nightmares lol

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6. Which two characters have the most complicated relationship? How does their relationship develop over time?

White Crane: Ciaran and Anwei totally. They love each other because they're brother and sister and were all the other had for a VERY long time (and even when they were still uh mortal, they relied on each other constantly), but also they hate each other because they're brother and sister. You know how it is with siblings. I love my brother and sister to pieces but I can't imagine being immortal and having to put up with the both of them for all eternity (sorry guys if you are reading this somehow.... I love you but we are all so annoying god bless). They handled their newfound godhood very, very, very differently and it kind of colors their relationship for the rest of time. There were times where they were extremely codependent and other times where they didn't speak to each other for DECADES. At the start of our story, they're on much better terms and have buried all their hatchets, but it doesn't take much for that to change....

Old Blood: Probably Vera and Andhira? They're only brought together because of their shared fucked up blood nightmares, and neither of them like that thought. They both resent the other for everything they are, and Vera is pretty much completely hostile to Andhira about it for a long time (and Andhira is only just barely cordial lol), but obviously a significant part of the plot revolves around them like. falling in love so they DO get over it after a while :)

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7. What is the most heart-wrenching scene in your wip? Why?

White Crane: When Yixing fucking DIES. I feel like this one should be self-explanatory. But I mean if you would like further explanation, it's unpleasant and slow and agonizing and nobody can do anything to stop it (haha....... unless?) so Ciaran gets to hold him for a long time and feel really bad about it lol

Old Blood: idk if there are any really heart-wrenching scenes but there are definitely some miserable and uncomfortable scenes like where Vera relives in vivid detail the days that she witnessed the gruesome deaths of her young apprentice and her last lover. They're upsetting because those are the two days that basically ruined her life (and one was the final straw that sent her spiraling completely out of control) and it's painful to watch her have to live with the guilt of what happened even if it wasn't her fault.

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8. What is a song that you associate with your wip? Explain.

White Crane: not to be basic but absolutely without a doubt in my stupid mind “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears lol it's because uh. well. Everybody wants to rule the world right? Basically way back in 2019 when I was crafting the ideas for the dnd campaign that became this thing instead, I was definitely having a metal gear moment (honestly I’m about to have a metal gear moment NOW lol) and was listening to a lot of like. mgs adjacent music and latched onto this song (and also promises, promises by naked eyes lmao) as some like thematic element. Like my brain making amvs. You know how it is. ANYWAY the point is. The concept was originally way different and was supposed to be more about the immediate aftermath of the so-called end of the world (yes Yixing was still there and yes he was still just some guy), and it focused a lot more on power struggles between all of these insane people that were granted godhood in the wake of the dying world. Which........ is something I'd like to write about at some point because it's intriguing in its own way but at the time I was unequipped to write about that when I really just wanted to write about people who are, for all intents and purposes, quite average getting caught up in the batshit drama of higher powers. (fun fact: Ciaran was supposed to be a tyrant king that ran a death cult and Anwei and Yixing were working together to figure out a way to kill him. Which is. Kind of what my dnd campaign is like now lol BASICALLY he's like if Big Boss was unkillable and could also rip souls out of people's bodies and eat them. I absolutely do not remember what this question originally was. Something about a song?)

Old Blood: THIS is the reason it took me so long to answer this whole thing. I thought long and hard and looked through all my playlists and listened to random songs that came to mind but it turns out the song I was looking for was right in front of me the whole time. DUH. It's “Golden Light” by Twin Shadow :) In my humble homo interpretation, I think it's a song about being afraid to fall in love and. Well. That's the whole point. Also #spoilers but the first time Vera sees Andhira and is like “oops I think I have feelings” is when they've just arrived at Andhira's home and the sun is rising and she looks over at her as they stand at the top of a hill and she has her eyes closed to the sun and she's bathed in golden light and OOUGGGGHGHHH poetic cinema. (honorable mention goes to “Groove is in the Heart” by Deee-lite because it’s quintessential early 90s music that Vera would be super into)

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9. What does your protagonist want most? What would they do to achieve this? What is something they wouldn't do to achieve this?

White Crane: Yixing wants to be happy for once. Like actually really happy instead of just. getting by. There's a scene where they're making wishes for the next seasons during the summer solstice and someone asks what he wants and he's like “uh I guess I want to still be alive at the end of the year?” and the other person is like “isn't that what everyone wants? Raise the fucking bar please. What do you REALLY want?” and he's stands there for a really long time and thinks about it before finally saying “I think I just want to be happy for once” and everyone else is like. wow. Way to kill the fucking mood dude. Anyway. He has had fleeting moments of happiness in his life but wants nothing more than to feel that way forever. It's kind of hard to say what he wouldn't do for that because like. there's not really much you CAN do in the first place, so I feel like there's even less you couldn't do. I guess he wouldn't like sell his soul to the devil or something lmao (though by being involved with Ciaran he's pretty much halfway there)

Old Blood: to be left alone. Vera just wants a normal life. She really truly does want to pretend that none of the horrible shit happened to her and that she was never a world-famous hunter. And she wants to teach art classes and live a quiet life!!! I mean, she is already mostly doing that exact thing when we first meet her, but obviously she has some hindrances (aka fucked up blood nightmares). She is begrudgingly helping Andhira because she assumes that will fix her problem and that she'll be able to get to that quiet living as soon as all is said and done. The only thing she really wouldn't do to get what she wants is like... live somewhere far away from Josef and Luka lol She likes having them close by more than she wants to be left alone.

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10. Within your story's world, were there any events that impacted every character (or most characters)? How would they be different if this event never happened? (Alternatively, erase an important even from on character's backstory and imagine where they'd be now.)

White Crane: well. If the stupid old gods didn't all kill themselves and almost end the world then I guess none of this story would exist lol But the actual answer is like. If Yixing had never run out on his girlfriend of ten years then he wouldn't have moved across the continent to Jengmi and wouldn't have made a name for himself way out there and wouldn't have been scouted and recruited and wouldn't have met Ciaran or Anwei and wouldn't have gotten in the middle of the batshit grudge between a bunch of ancient petty gay people and wouldn't have DIED and wouldn't have made one of the ancient petty gay people in particular lose his grip on his humanity via a lust for power in a desperate attempt to guarantee his safety and wouldn't have been the reason that tens of thousands of people die in his name and wouldn't have accidentally set off a chain of events that resulted in him having to hunt down and kill the Actual God that started it all in a fit of jealous rage. So like. maybe he should have just gone through with the wedding. All things considered, his life would have been way less stressful.

Old Blood: uhhh, that's tough because the stuff that happens only really has any effect on the mortal characters (I mean yeah people still try to kill the Sovereign but they're too dumb to know the ACTUAL way to kill him.... haha unless??), so it would be more like a what if Vera didn't witness the violent deaths of both her apprentice and her lover and have a full blown nervous breakdown and abandon her career? Well...... I think most things in the plot would transpire more or less the same, except she would be WAY less pissed off about it. In fact, she would probably be hyped as hell to get the chance to make the acquaintance of the Sovereign's family like Josef had before her. The thought of Vera being upbeat and not a sleep-deprived asshole that hates being dragged back to her old life..... ew. Not that I enjoy her suffering but you know what I mean. It just wouldn't be the same.

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11. What is something from your wip that you just really want to ramble about?

Are you sure you're ready for this. This is going to be so so so so long I'm sorry in advance. It's Saturday night and I'm alone and kind of sad so I'm just going to let loose.

As I hone down plot elements for next two installments in my little trilogy, I have kind of become obsessed with the passage of time and how different it must feel to someone that, well, lives forever. One of the ways I'd written (that has since been kind of changed) for Yixing to start to figure out what Ciaran really is was that he would casually be looking through his bookshelf and find an old photograph of Ciaran, Anwei, and their mom standing backstage together after one of his performances. And when he eventually asks Ciaran about it, he gets upset because how dare you touch the one thing I have left to remember my mother? To remember what my life used to be like? There are so many names and faces and places and foods and sensations that I've forgotten in the 940 years I've lived like this and I would give anything I have to see any of it just one more time because I didn't know that the last time I would ever speak to my mom we would have an argument on the phone about how I need to go to the temple and pray for good fortune on my birthday, or that the last time I would ever see my best friend would be at 6am when we both came into the studio to practice and he asked me to go out to breakfast and I said no because I thought a nap would be more important. And there are so many people that I've watched die whose names I never learned and whose faces I forgot the moment I turned away, and there are so many others that I loved so dearly that I had to leave behind because they grew old and I didn't. And I have lived lifetimes in solitude to keep myself a secret from other people and I have died more than any person should ever have to die and I have witnessed atrocities no one should ever witness and I hate everything about this life so much but I love everything about this life so much and I wouldn’t trade it for anything but I think I would give it all away in an instant if only to remember the scent of my mother's favorite perfume and I think I would give it all away in an instant if it meant I didn't have to watch you turn to dust in my arms.

ANYWAY. I think a lot about the agony of loving things that aren't permanent and how it really DOES drive you mad because lately I have been unbelievably nostalgic for certain things that weren't even that long ago but..... I didn't appreciate them at the time and I feel so guilty about it. (And like. I too would give up my entire life to be able to remember the scent of my grandmother's favorite perfume.) And all my pent-up sadness is for things that only happened in my childhood. I have pictures and videos and other people to share those memories with, but what does it feel like to be one of very few people that watched the entire world fall apart and rebuild itself and have nothing to hold onto from that time? What does it feel like to foster dozens of generations of children and outlive every single one of them? What does it feel like to have only fragments of memories of entire lifetimes? How lonely is it? I mean, Ciaran and Anwei have each other and that makes a difference but it still has to be the most isolating feeling. And then there's the pain that comes with memories that have faded or otherwise become hazy. I doubt either of them remember their father's face. They hadn't seen him in years even before it all happened. If it wasn't for that single photo he has, they wouldn't remember their mother's face either. Do they still remember her name? Or her birthday? Do they remember anyone else? Cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends, coworkers? If they do, do they even want to talk about it? One thing I worry about in my own life (and this is how I know I have Problems) is that I'm so afraid that talking about memories will alter them somehow. There are so many things that I don't even like to share because once the words are spoken the little vhs tape that has all my memories has been recorded over, even if it's just by a single frame. Something about it has been changed forever each time I talk about it. Do they feel the same way and keep things to themselves instead of sharing the sadness? I think maybe they used to talk about the “old days” or whatever much more often back in the past, but as the years went by.... they just learned to keep it to themselves.

I think maybe I have a lot of anxiety about the passage of time and of being forgotten!

Anyway again. The passage of time drives me insane. And I think it would make me even more insane if I had been chosen to carry the mantle of a dead god and would live forever. My dog died a year ago and I still cry like every single day thinking about her. If I was doomed to live forever I don't know how the sadness wouldn't swallow me whole! No wonder all the people in this book are fucking CRAZY!!

And don't even get me started on the Sovereign lol he's like “oh boo-hoo you've lived for not even a thousand years? Bitch they hadn't invented fucking GLASS yet when I was born. The horse wasn't domesticated yet. Cry harder!!”

#oc talk #4000 words later!!!!! #uh i hope this makes ANY sense at all lol #i wrote the responses to all of these at like 1am last night and the night before so. you'll have to forgive me if they're stupid

[nevermindirah]

i am so thoroughly in my trans immortals feelings now, i want to read a billion fics about immortal healing HRT. do you have any trans joenicky headcanons? (totally fine if not, i know they're not your main ship, but shdhfhdg pls someone trans joenicky headcanons)

Hi anon I am SO WITH YOU on being in my trans immortals feelings!!

I happily read JoeNicky and AndyQuynh but I don't randomly think about them throughout the day like I do with Nile and Booker. But I feel pretty lonely in my trans immortals feels sometimes (maybe Book of Nile corner is more cis than other parts of TOG fandom? or maybe Captain America fandom was more trans than the average fandom? or maybe I'm just deep in quarantine isolation and extra sensitive about this stuff?) so I'm gonna jump in with some trans JoeNicky headcanons completely off the top of my head, no thoughts only typing, let’s make more of the stuff we want to see!

Nicky's a trans man, he went on Crusade as part of ~proving himself~, a full one thousand years later he's still untangling all the YIKES of that

Joe's a trans man, his family accepted him, it made it easier to leave his community when he became immortal bc then he didn't have to deal with their marriage expectations, but it made it harder to leave his immediate family — 800 years later this becomes a point of bonding between him and Booker

Joe's a trans man, Nicky is an asshole about it at first, yet another thing that Nicky had to get his shit together and apologize over

both of them are trans men who get hooked up with immortality T about 975 years before the rest of us have access to anywhere near that kind of HRT — two bodies go on T at the same time, who grows a beard first, whose click gets bigger first, is there jealousy about whose chest shrinks first, when in all of this do they start fucking / fall in love, do they have gleeful dick measuring contests or whatever because they’re nerds fascinated by we’re immortal now and also our bodies are finally doing gender things we actually like this is so cool

Nicky is a trans man, Joe is genderqueer, yet another thing where they misunderstand each other until they start to communicate at length and then they realize how much they have in common

Joe and Nicky are both trans women, someone wrote beautiful modern AU trans girls Kaysanova fic and if you don't already know it here it is go read it immediately omg it's so good

but above all, trans people have always been here. Joe and Nicky, in whatever specifics of transness, meeting other trans people, across centuries and continents and cultures. by the time Nile Freeman is mumbling into Joe's shoulder "I'm not really sure what exactly I am but can you try using they/them for me?" they are so prepared to welcome their new baby sibling into a long, long, fucking long trans lineage.

#fandom friends #trans things #trans tog

[nothorses]

(🔶) this could be long and have multiple parts so I put the emoji at the start so the parts don't get mixed up w other multi-ask things ||| So I don't think I've seen this talked about anywhere, but I'm pretty sure the way body positivity was taught to me prevented me from figuring out I was trans for at least a few years, and I think it could've been more if I hadn't somehow realized it last year,, (1/?)

I've always been fairly skinny so body positivity directed at me was always "oh you don't need makeup/big b00bs/things like that to be pretty! You're perfect the way you are you don't need any changes!" And. I don't know if either it was taught to me wrong or if I just misunderstood (I'm 90% sure I'm ND which would probably be part of why I misunderstood if I did. That and I was a Child) but by the time I hit puberty and started feeling bad about my body I told myself "that's stupid. Ur pretty and skinny, you have no reason to feel like this." (Keep in mind I didn't even know trans people existed yet)

I then proceeded to shove those feelings away as hard as I could (achieved by never thinking about my appearance more than I needed to- which wasn't much as I'm homeschooled since birth and pretty sheltered- and by avoiding mirrors as much as possible) and I somehow did that so well that I kinda forgot that I felt bad about my body to begin with (however it didn't make me feel better. I still felt awful and possibly even depressed, but now I didn't have a reason I could blame so I just felt like an ungrateful brat on top of it all)

And when I discovered that trans people are a thing I didn't even think that I might be a trans man because I thought I didn't have any dysphoria and the only reason I realized I wasn't cis when I did (sometime in 2019) was because of the thing I do where I go "I'm the main character of this media now" and daydream about that, and in that specific instance I had to pretend to be a boy (ouran highschool host club transed my gender /j) and was like "hey I actually vibe with this a lot??" And then was like "wait fuck I'm not a girl" and I think if I hadn't done that and felt like that it probably would've taken years- possibly even never- to realize I was trans...

I don't know how to end this but that's all I have to say for now I think, if I send asks again in the future the 🔶 is my anon sign off,,

(I cleaned up some of the numbers/formatting a lil for reading comprehension, I hope that’s alright!)

I think it’s very common, honestly, to confuse gender dysphoria with other kinds of body issues! I definitely confused my discomfort with my body with internalized fatphobia for the longest time, because while I’m sort of just an average weight, my mom made constant comments about it- never openly fatshaming, but nitpicky and faux-supportive in a way that made me feel incredibly self-conscious.

Body positivity is wonderful, and has helped me distinguish my feelings a little bit, but it’s definitely lacking in terms of like... helping folks identify the actual reasons for their discomfort. It seems to insist that all discomfort with one’s body is born of fatphobia, and the “just don’t feel bad about your body! It’s perfect how it is!” stuff can feel stifling when that isn’t necessarily the answer for the majority of people with gender dysphoria.

Where the answer to internalized fatphobia is to break it down and accept your body as it is, and the answer to thinking you’re ugly is to break that down and accept your body as it is, that doesn’t really work for a lot of gender dysphoria.

Those feelings aren’t because we hate everyone of our AGAB, or feel inferior because of our AGAB. They’re because we are not our AGAB. We have treatments with high success rates; we can change our bodies in order to feel more comfortable in them, and we should!

It’s good to learn to love your body as it is, if you can, but promoting the identification of gender dysphoria along with the rest of body positivity would be genuinely helpful to a lot of folks.

#trans #transgender #Anonymous

[aroworlds]

Fiction: The Pride Conspiracy, Part One

December isn't the best time of year for a trans aromantic like Rowan Ross, although—unlike his relatives—his co-workers probably won't give him gift cards to women's clothing shops. How does he explain to cis people that while golf balls don't trigger his dysphoria, he wants to be seen as more than a masculine stereotype? Nonetheless, he thinks he has this teeth-gritted endurance thing figured out: cissexism means he needn't fear his relatives asking him about dating, and he has the perfect idea for Melanie in the office gift exchange. He can survive gifts and kin, right? Isn't playing along with expectation better than enduring unexpected consequences?

Rowan, however, isn't the only aromantic in the office planning to surprise a co-worker.

To survive the onslaught of ribbon and cellophane, Rowan's going to have to get comfortable with embracing the unknown.

Contains: A trans allo-frayro trying to grit his teeth through the holidays, scheming aro co-workers, a whole lot of cross-stitch, another moment of aromantic discovery, and many, many mugs.

Content Advisory: A story that focuses on some of the ways Western gift-giving culture enables cissexism and a rigid gender binary, taking place in the context of commercialised, secular-but-with-very-Christian-underpinnings Christmas. Please expect many references to said holiday in an office where Damien hasn't figured out how to run a gift exchange without subjecting everyone to Santa, along with characters who have work to do in recognising that not everybody celebrates Christmas.

There are no depictions or mentions of sexual attraction beyond the words "allosexual" and "bisexual" and a passing reference to allo-aro antagonism, but there are non-detailed references to Rowan's previous experiences with and attitudes towards romance and romantic attraction as a frayromantic. Please also expect casual references to amatonormativity and other shapes of cissexism.

Length: 4, 914 words (part one of two).

Note: You'll need to have read The Vampire Conundrum for many references to make sense.

Rowan should be assumed an Australian character in an Australian city. Our Christmas, therefore, involves hot weather, short sleeves, barbecues and confusion at certain holiday traditions common in the Northern Hemisphere. 

They’re aromantic. How isn’t he obligated to help decorate her desk in as many pride-related ways as possible? 

“It’s Secret Santa slash December Holiday Gift Exchange!” Damien emerges from the meeting room, shaking a paper-scrap-filled jar with the gleeful attitude of a toddler attacking a pile of presents. In order to give the occasion suitable gravitas, he draped a rope of red tinsel over his shoulders, the fronds glittering in the flicker-prone lighting. “Come gather!”

Rowan looks up from his computer, biting back a groan. This isn’t a surprise, given that Shelby answered his interview questions about “workplace culture” with descriptions of their celebrating capitalist-infused Christian holidays, and the office more than lives up to that promise. A tree sits on the front counter, its branches crammed with baubles. Tinsel hangs on everything from which tinsel can be hung and rests in snake-like coils over the computer towers, screens, desk partitions and the large corkboard. Ribbon-wrapped pencils topped with felt trees, stars and stockings flowered, overnight, from everyone’s pen mugs; Melanie gave Rowan three of them for his frayro mug. Every desk features a red bowl of tree-shaped marshmallows, candy canes or that weird Christmas lolly mix common in dollar shops.

Only the lack of music renders bearable this explosion of festivity. Damien said he drew that line last year after Melanie and Shelby alternated between Michael Bublé and Josh Groban’s Christmas CDs.

Rowan doesn’t want to think about that sublime horror.

Christmas to him means slipping a few TSO tracks into his melodic metal playlists and gritting his teeth until the new year.

“O come all ye faithful,” Melanie sings, spinning her chair around. Every day this week she’s donned a different Christmas-themed T-shirt; today’s features a screen-printed Rudolph head with an apple-sized nose made from red minky fleece. Rowan doesn’t understand the American “ugly Christmas jumper” thing—why?—but Melanie appears to be replicating the trend via short sleeves and jersey knits.

Damien jerks his elbow at the largest whiteboard, half filled with the Banned Holiday Decorations List—items including “music, carols, hymns and singing”, “all types of fake snow” and “Cadbury Crème Eggs”. “Didn’t we talk about carols?”

Rowan doesn’t want to be accused of being a dreadful, fun-loathing millennial about which too many articles have been written on dislike of office gift exchanges … but he doesn’t know how not to be one, either. Why do people like this? Buying presents for people who aren’t strangers but aren’t friends, hoping that his attempt isn’t too generic only to open something tailored to feminine cliché ... followed by the apologetic explanation or justification that Rowan isn’t easy to shop for.

Can’t he save himself fifteen bucks and skip the disaster?

He’s never understood how he presents a difficulty that isn’t cissexism and a lack of imagination: buy him good thread, expensive coffee, dress socks, a nice mug, food storage containers or fancy kitchenware. He’ll even take a cheap box of chocolates, since his housemates will eat anything should they believe it food. Just get him something that isn’t a floral-patterned bath set followed by the hand-wringing apology that the giver just doesn’t know what to get someone as confusing as Rowan!

Why don’t they ask him what he wants?

He’s over spending money and time on gift exchanges only to receive cissexism, dysphoria or stereotype wrapped in paper and tied with a bow.

Rowan draws a breath and slips his fingers under his thighs. He should have sent Damien an email when Melanie started decorating, but Rowan was thinking about pushing their print date back two weeks and not thinking about Mum’s out-of-nowhere request that Rowan attend the family Christmas. “Uh … Damien? Can I … quick word?”

Why did he get himself a new psychologist? One who says terrible words like assertiveness?

“Give us a minute.” Tinsel rustling, Damien crouches beside Rowan’s chair. “Will here do?”

If everyone overhears, Rowan can pretend he’s talking to one person while knowing they all benefit from his explanation. Besides, going into the meeting room makes this a thing. “Yeah. Um. I … I don’t usually get the right presents from people in gift exchanges. By which I mean ... presents that aren’t a reminder that they think me female, and if they give me enough nail polish and heart-shaped jewellery and glittery handbags, I’ll admit it. I don’t want that? Really don’t want that?”

Why do his parents want to play at being a happy family? Does Mum want to show off to Uncle Keith and his new wife? Have they forgotten how badly last Christmas went? Or is this just more cissexist assumption that Rowan will discard his masculinity when needed? If they behave as though Rowan should fit their expectations, will he—eventually—surrender to them?

I’m not being difficult because I want my masculinity and transness respected. I’m not...

Melanie leans over to poke Shelby’s shoulder, her bright red lips forming a ring.

Damien blinks, hesitating as if he doesn’t know how best to respond. “That ... sounds like my niece’s favourite birthday. Although she took the bag, put one of my sister’s dumbbells inside and swung it at the boy over the road who wouldn't stop calling her pretty. And then made an army of neighbourhood girls wielding heavy unicorn bags.” He shakes his head. “I mean that … you obviously aren’t a certain kind of eight-year-old or into glitter, so...”

If only Rowan had the nerve to do that to Aunt Laura! “I bet he never did that again.”

“No. I’ll make sure … that the person who has you gets you something appropriate.”

Inappropriately-feminine gifts aren’t his only difficulty. Rowan doesn’t how to voice something so complex (to cis, gender-conforming people) about gender and gift-giving without sounding like he’s complaining for the sake of complaining—the demanding, difficult trans man of his parents’ accusations. Most often he endures a cis female celebrity’s latest perfume, but well-intended “accepting” people give him an Old Spice gift set—acknowledging his masculinity at the cost of his personality. How do cis people not chafe at gift-giving traditions that assume people can be reduced down to one of two categories with narrow behaviours and interests ascribed to each?

It’s easier to draw the line at gifts that only avoid being the embodiment of the giver’s cissexism and donate everything else, as much as Rowan yearns for one year with a good present he doesn’t buy himself.

Will cis people ever understand that being trans means holding back on responding to cis nonsense?

“Thanks. Yeah, thanks.”

“Secret Santa slash December Holiday Gift Exchange rules!” Damien straightens, shaking the jar; paper rattles against glass. “Twenty-dollar limit, keep it fun, don’t give anything inappropriate for a professional environment. I want to be eating mince pies, not taking people into the meeting room for discussions on adulthood. We exchange on the last day, December 20.” He reaches into the jar, the neck a tight fit for his hands, and tweezers out a folded piece of paper before handing it to Rowan.

Damien shakes the jar again before offering another slip to Melanie and then Shelby.

Don’t people draw names themselves from the bowl or jar? Nobody else seems concerned by this lapse—Melanie starts laughing when she sees her name—so Rowan shrugs and opens his, deciding it must be normal enough.

The Aro Gods must be inclined to a little seasonal kindness, for he sees “Melanie” written in Damien’s handwriting.

No need to struggle through generic alternatives like food or wine; pride pins will make her happy enough. A pen? A mini aro flag? Choosing may be Rowan’s worst problem, but he can get her a few things and give her whatever’s over the limit after the exchange.

They’re aromantic. How isn’t he obligated to help decorate her desk in as many pride-related ways as possible?

“Rowan!” Melanie bustles over; he quickly slides his paper up his sleeve. She makes metallic jangling noises—words like “ringing” or “pealing” don’t apply—as she moves, thanks to a gold chain bracelet decorated with small bells at each link. Matching earrings dangle from her ears, clinking out of tune with the ones at her wrist. “Can I ask you something?”

He nods, hoping she’ll let pass unremarked his description of holiday cissexism.

“Where did you buy your flag patches? I want one. Well, maybe more than one, because there’s the aro flag, and the ace flag, and maybe one of the aro-ace flags, but I haven’t decided which one I like best since there’s several that are nice, and...”

Once-in-a-lifetime inspiration hits Rowan with finger-twitching force. “I don’t know,” he lies once Melanie runs out of steam. “Uh … a friend gave them to me and ... I don’t know where they bought them. Online, probably?” He swallows and tries for distraction, gambling his poor ability for falsehood against Melanie’s likely ignorance. “Maybe look on Etsy? I’d look on Etsy.”

“Etsy? What’s that?”

“Handcraft eBay,” he says in relief, thinking through his thread stash. “Where people sell handmade things. I don’t know when I’m seeing my friend next, but I can ask...?”

He’ll need purples, greens, greys, black, white—oh, and blues! A little orange, a little yellow. Has he enough fabric? What about time? Should he do the main ones first and then others as he can squeeze them in?

On the way home tonight, he’ll start by stopping at his local sewing store.

***

Rowan hits “send” on an email to Damien, ignoring Mum’s latest text, as Shelby bounds up to his desk. Like Melanie, she’s added Christmas T-shirts to her daily ensemble; unlike Melanie, Shelby’s T-shirts appear to come from a department store’s children’s section. Today’s shirt shows a cute-but-scientifically-inaccurate dinosaur in a Santa hat holding a red box. Also unlike Melanie, Shelby hasn’t added earrings, pins, necklaces, bangles or socks in honour of the season. “Yeah?”

Damien added “battery and USB-powered light-up objects” to the List after an office vote provoked by a flashing necklace that resembled miniature string lights.

Shelby whispers, meaning that she speaks in a raspier tone with volume enough that her standing on the other side of a crowded football oval needn’t impede one’s hearing. In fairness, Rowan has heard her speak over a hundred gossiping Year 7 students until they surrendered to the stubbornness of an older woman who doesn’t go to bed caring what they think of her. “Can you go through all the … the identities? Can you show them to me and tell me what colours go with them? Do they all have their own colours?”

Rowan can only sit and gape.

“Please? I need someone to go through them all.”

He lunges for his half-filled mug, hoping his perpetual need for coffee conceals his surprise. “You mean pride flags? Queer pride flags?”

“Please.” Shelby nods, grips his arm and gives a meant-as-comforting nutcracker-like squeeze before lowering her hand to fidget with her phone—a device likely dug up with the fossils from the dinosaur on her shirt. It doesn’t have a cover; he guesses she covered the back with multiple layers of washi tape coated in (yellowing) clear nail polish. He doesn’t ask why. “Maybe you can start with the ones you use, and that one Melanie has, and then tell me the other ones? There aren’t that many, are there?”

Rowan, lukewarm coffee in his mouth and heading down his gullet, chokes.

Several moments of spluttering and coughing, aided by Shelby’s enthusiastic back-pounding, pass before he can answer. “Uh … there’s lots, actually. Lots.” He considers explaining about Tumblr before deciding on the appropriate answer: a thousand kinds of nope. “Do you want gender ones, or sexuality ones, or aromantic ones, or...?”

Shelby’s blank, brow-creased expression shows that, if she read Rowan’s leaflet, his emails and the hand-outs provided by Damien’s trainers, the knowledge hasn’t stuck with her.

(They weren’t better than Rowan’s own and only mentioned aromanticism as a way of being asexual.)

“The ones you and Melanie use...?” She lowers her voice to a point where someone may, in theory, be unable to hear her from the other side of the room. “I want to get Melanie a little extra … something, this year. With a flag, maybe?” She jerks her elbow in the direction of Melanie’s mug, currently filled with something smelling of camomile and dish-water. “But I should know more about the other ones, too. Like yours. Can you show them all to me?”

There’s no way in this tinselled hell that Melanie can’t hear Shelby, yet Melanie appears engrossed in deleting emails.

Last week, Rowan said “aromantic” once to their newest volunteer in a conversation about the pride flags on their website. Seconds later, Melanie materialised from the hallway, passed over one of Rowan’s leaflets and introduced herself as aro-ace before giving a five-point rundown on ways to avoid casual amatonormativity—not that she’s yet comfortable saying the word—in the workplace. There’s no way she’s contemplating the mysteries of her trash folder while Rowan talks to Shelby about aromantic pride flags! Breathing “aro” aloud is now akin to summoning a demon—one revelling in the discovery of the identity that makes belated sense of her life.

“You want me to show you aromantic flags?” Rowan asks to clarify, baffled.

Shelby beams at him. “Yes, please.”

Melanie, frowning, deletes an email.

Did Damien have a word with her? Did the volunteer complain?

Rowan can’t say that he wants to play tour guide through the world of queer vexillology, but Shelby has gone five weeks without saying the phrase “you trans people” and two months without reassuring Rowan on the subject of pronoun-correction. He also knows Melanie and Shelby are friends outside of work, bonding over stage shows and music. If Shelby wants to support Melanie in her aromanticism, how can Rowan refuse?

While Rowan sat there planning the politest way to navigate the glaring error in the trainers’ leaflets, Melanie stood up, exclaimed that aromanticism isn’t the same thing as asexuality and demanded that they do some reading before engaging in “obvious aro denial”. He owes her. She scares him a little, but he owes her.

(Should Rowan master the ability to handle conversations and presentations, he may consider becoming a sensitivity trainer. That two-day workshop, while decent enough on gender and sexuality, left him again concluding that most queer alloros have no idea how to reference and include aromanticism in their conversations about queerness.)

Another Mum-authored text flashes up on his phone, displaying the words “Christmas”, “clothing” and “appropriately”.

No, no and hell no.

“Yeah, okay.” He bends down to grab his satchel, tucked against the left-hand side of his desk. A decent collection of patches and badges now covers the front flap, including his cursed-but-memorable “aro” patch. “That’s the trans pride flag, with the blue, pink and white, and beside it is the bisexual flag. The flag with the greens and black is the aromantic flag, and the allo-aro flag has the greens and gold. It’s pretty much the same as the aro flag, except with yellow and gold instead of grey and black.” He points at each patch as he moves through his explanation. “Allo—allosexual—aromantics are aros who experience sexual attraction.”

He’ll stick to simple definitions with Shelby, even if they lack ideal expansiveness.

Shelby nods, smiling.

“For me, it means I’m aromantic and bisexual. Aro-aces, like Melanie, are aromantic and asexual, meaning she doesn’t experience sexual attraction.” He almost asks her if she remembers what “aromanticism” means before realising that he’ll sound like a condescending primary-school teacher. “This flag with the blues, white and grey is the frayromantic flag, which designates the specific way I’m aro. The flag on Melanie’s mug—”

Shelby leans against his desk, her grey braid trailing over one arm. “So you have an aromantic flag and an allosexual aromantic flag? A special aromantic flag?”

Are they heading towards the sort of conversation that involves anger over “making up” identities outside the speaker’s reckoning of acceptable? Or does she mean “distinct”? “Ah … kind of? The green and black flag represents all aros—Melanie and me. The green and gold one’s just for me, and I don’t use her blue and orange one.”

For the first time in living memory, Melanie pays Rowan and Shelby no attention.

“I see! You want to reflect different types of aro.” Shelby almost says the word without unusual stress; Rowan considers applauding her but decides he won’t risk undermining his point on avoiding excessive overreaction to queer terminology. “Do you ever put the flags together? Like if you want to be both things at once?”

When isn’t he the state of multiple identities at once? Rowan decides she means “represent” instead of “be” and nods. “Yeah? Some people put a heart with the stripes of the aro flag in the middle of the trans or bi flags, but I don’t like that because using a heart to represent us all is a bit … eh. You know, heart, love, love hearts? Lots of people don’t care, though. I’ve also seen folks split them in an image, or have the stripes fade into each other. Like trans stripes fading into aro stripes.”

“And you like that better?” Shelby blinks, her blunt nails tracing the edge of the case. “Would Melanie like that? The aromantic flag fading into another one?”

There’s no way Melanie didn’t hear that—and no reason for her to say silent! Last month she told Rowan and Shelby to get mint chocolate cake for her birthday after walking in on them debating sponge versus cheesecake in the meeting room!

(Sponge, in Rowan’s opinion, is the classic cake format.)

“Yeah. It shows my identities together without using symbolism I find awkward.” Rowan lowers his voice, leaning closer to Shelby. “Melanie will probably go for the aromantic flag fading into or combined with the asexual flag, if you’re doing something with two flags. I don’t think she’d be into hearts, but a split image or fading? That’d work.”

Shelby straightens, beaming, and gives Rowan another firm arm-squeeze. “That’s great! Thank you so much for helping, Rowan!”

“Don’t you want to know more about aro-ace flags...?”

“No, that’s great!” Shelby, heading towards her own desk, no longer attempts to speak at anything not normal volume. “Aromantic into asexual! I’ll remember that!”

As Shelby turns, he catches a glimpse of the cracked screen on her phone—or, more specifically, the movement of her hand as she presses stop on her recording app.

Is that legal? It surely isn’t normal? Or is she an auditory learner, meaning she’ll learn best by playing the recording over … but in that case, why not say so? He could have directed her to YouTube videos and podcasts! Perhaps, though, she only shows her ignorance in digital etiquette, in the same way Rowan took Melanie aside to explain that the use of caps lock for the body of a promotional email violates good manners as much as—more than!—she thinks signing a form in red ballpoint? Should he complain about something suggestive of her willingness to understand him?

Rowan stares, shrugs and shakes his head as a third text pops up.

Sometimes it’s easier to just not ask.

Too bad that can’t apply as easily to family.

***

Rowan stands, yawns and stretches. His lunch half-hour beckons: sunshine spent with food, cross-stitch and a flock of pigeons tame enough to perch on the far end of his bench. Since today involved apologetic emails followed by a contrite phone call to his goddess amongst printers, time free of people feels like looming perfection. Just him, the pigeons, a sewing needle and the homemade pasty he hid from Matt inside a bag of frozen peas.

Any day in which he gets to enjoy his own cooking can’t be too terrible.

Perhaps he should do as his psychologist says: put a chest freezer in his bedroom and a lock on his door.

“Rowan!” Damien, his hair tousled enough to make Rowan think of a woolly mammoth in a sharp suit, carries a plate of something smelling like honey and chicken into the office. “While Melanie’s out, can you show me your mug shop? You said there’s a lot of aro-ace flags, right? Or would she want one like yours, the green one? I don’t get her something like your blue and green shield one, though?” He shrugs and sets the plate down on Rowan’s desk. “My wife’s friends with her sister and we got invited out, but there’s another swap. I don’t want to get her the wrong thing. Do you mind?”

At least Damien does the sensible thing of asking while Melanie’s out on lunch. Maybe this won’t take too long: Damien’s a terrible photographer with unreasonable expectations of Photoshop, but he does know how to buy things online.

“Yeah. Hold on.” Rowan opens up his browser just as his phone beeps. Nope, ignoring that. “I’ll show you what mugs I think she’d want.”

He hadn’t realised how many people here are friends with Melanie outside of work. It must be nice to have a regular social life that isn’t “being at work” and “sighing at housemates”, but there’s advantages in possessing the short holiday shopping list of family, a work gift exchange and a couple of friends. Besides, does anyone want one’s co-workers to know what happens at an outside party?

“Don’t ignore your phone because of me.”

“It’s Dad.” Since Rowan can’t find a pithy or amusing way to explain that Dad’s text message will be a guilt-trip ordering Rowan to come to Christmas for the sake of the family’s happiness followed by a second guilt-trip explaining how much his refusal to confirm has upset Mum, he just shakes his head.

You talked about this with the psychologist. Guilt. Trip.

He made an appointment for the second week of January; he should have made one in December as well.

“That bad?”

He can’t remember the specifics of his rant that day atop the desk, but he must have suggested at an interesting relationship with his parents. “Yeah.”

Did they forget telling Rowan that if he doesn’t like how they treat him, he can leave? They told Rowan that he isn’t welcome while he remains intolerant of them—while I expect them to treat me as I deserve. He left. Now they want him back to smile for the family photos?

What’s worse? Enduring a day of misgendering, deadnaming and cissexism, which shouldn’t result in unknown voyages of horror if he bites his tongue? Or avoiding short-term discomfort while gaining the long-term torment of the family’s schooling Rowan in appropriate Ross respect for blood and holidays? What chance is there of avoiding harassment if he doesn’t go?

Maybe he can leave off shaving for a week before Christmas and turn up with his new, albeit patchy, facial hair while wearing an op-shop debutante gown, so he “dresses appropriately” and “doesn’t confuse the relatives” as requested.

How many truckloads of Valium will he need for that?

“Rowan? Are you okay?” Damien, now sitting on an office chair, peers at him as though waiting for Rowan to do anything more than stare at the computer screen.

“Ugh. Sorry. Just thinking.” Rowan sighs and types in the shop’s name, bringing up their website, and then opens a second tab to another archiving different pride flags.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Damien asks in that gruffly-gentle voice, one that makes Rowan want to smash his fist through a window.

“Yeah, no.” Rowan draws a breath and points at the screen with a hand a too trembly for his liking. “So you’re going to want to know what flags represent what, because there’s a drop-down menu where you can choose from different flags...”

It’s easier to talk, easier to run through all the different flags in a depth of explanation Damien doesn’t request, easier to think about something that isn’t family—a subject with complexity enough to distract but without provocation enough to distress.

He doesn’t know if Damien asks questions from curiosity or kindness, but Rowan’s pasty becomes pastry crumbs scattered over his desk and keyboard; Damien’s chicken, half-eaten, sits cooling on its plate.

“So cupioromantic is the one where you want the relationship but you don’t feel romance?” Damien frowns and runs both oversized hands through his hair, now resembling a befuddled bear emerging after a long hibernation. “Why have a word for that? I mean, everyone feels like it isn’t one of those movies and dates anyway, so why specify that?”

“Where you don’t feel romantic attraction but desire a romantic relationship,” Rowan says, telling himself that Damien unknowingly regurgitates the tired “demiromanticism is normal” argument. Isn’t this better than looking at the fifth text message? “Some people need it to be a word. Movies aren’t that divorced from reality. They’re … too easy, too glossy, too perfect, too unrealistic, but...”

He sighs. Not dating brings many benefits, but Rowan has to admit that he misses the fun of falling in love, even if trouble always follows. Misses the fun of dreaming, hoping and fantasising; misses the bright, happy glow of being caught up in someone else. At risk of being considered a bad aro, he likes that glorious limerence pushing him to navigate people despite his gibbering anxiety! In some ways, knowing he’s capable of falling in love over and over feels heady and powerful; amatonormativity more than the nature of Rowan’s frayromanticism bestows difficulty on its aftermath.

I want to fall in love with you ... and after getting to know you, do it again with someone else, all the best bits of romance’s beginning on eternal repeat.

Instead, he avoids dating and the inevitable development of his partner’s hurt, surrendering to a world where his shape of attraction isn’t acceptable or reasonable. Albeit with a trace of bitterness that frayromanticism will be easier to navigate should Rowan not be an anxiety-plagued, bisexual trans man!

Of course, discarding romance makes pursuing his shape of sexual attraction unacceptable and unreasonable...

“How are they real? Nobody just sees someone and falls in love like that—”

“Dude, dude, I’ve fallen in love like that.” Rowan shakes his head and launches into the speech that’s the spiritual duty of any card-carrying aromantic: “Do you fall in love after you get to know someone? After they love you back? Do you know what ‘fall in love’ means to you? Because it’s easy to name all sorts of feelings ‘love’ and think they’re romantic when the world says you have to be alloromantic. It’s even easier to not be romantically attracted and not know! Have you thought about it?”

Damien, his eyes so wide that he reminds Rowan of a zebrafish with a brown wig, shakes his head.

“I swear, alloros like romance movies because while they’re a … a simplified, idealistic version of romance, they’re close enough to what people feel—or think they’re supposed to feel—that they … ring, resonate. They wouldn’t do that if it were complete invention. Just like science fiction isn’t real but talks enough about human experiences to have meaning to human audiences. Unreal, in so many ways, but just real enough. So—”

Damien holds up both hands, palms facing Rowan. “Stop. Stop.”

Now the anxious part of Rowan’s brain realises he’s lecturing at his supervisor in a way no need to avoid thinking of his family justifies; he gulps, fingers trembling. While the office code of conduct doesn’t specify things like unwanted speeches questioning another person’s belief in their romantic attraction, he doubts this acceptable behaviour. “I … shit. I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I just...”

Will he ever stop causing a mess at work?

“You’re talking so fast,” Damien says, slow and careful in the way of a man talking to a panicked horse, “that I can’t keep up.” He sighs and runs one hand through his hair. “This isn’t something I thought we’d be talking about! I just wanted to check that everything was right...” He shakes his head, but he doesn’t sound annoyed or outraged. Just bewildered. “Okay. Right. What about all those sorts of things that we think are love? What do you mean by that?”

At some point during the resulting afternoon, Rowan sends an email thanking his printer for her willingness to amend the job queue, ignores his brother’s entry in the competition to provoke the most seasonally-appropriate guilt, and scribbles a note to ask the higher-ups if they’ll spring for a basket of expensive coffee and chocolates sent to said printer.

Damien nods several times, takes dot points on a flyer print-out and the back of the report draft for last week’s holiday event, asks more questions and promises that he’ll remind the higher-ups of their involvement in submitting January’s flyers two weeks late. After eating the rest of his re-heated honey chicken at Rowan’s desk and narrating the story of how his future wife followed him from pub to pub during a crawl for his brother’s buck’s night, Damien concludes that he only experiences attraction for someone after they express attraction for him.

Melanie, having rested her arms on the back of Damien’s chair to overhear the last half of the conversation, gives him a smothering hug and welcomes him to “the quiver” before cackling at Damien’s blank look.

Find a recipro mug, Rowan later scribbles on the bottom of his to-do-list.

At least that job doesn’t involve relatives.

#aromantic #aro writing #arospec creations #alloaro #fiction #original fiction #original fiction and prose #contemporary #christmas #christmas mention #aroace #frayromantic #recipromantic #physical intimacy #cissexism #aromantic and bisexual #frayromantic and bisexual #aromantic and transgender #romance mention #romance #love mention #love #long post #very long post #extremely long post #k. a. cook #aromantic and trans #familial relationships #anxiety #mental illness

[uninterestiing]

i liked your post on matteo taking his time to process things, so i'd love to know what your thoughts are on david being outed?

hhhhhhhhh well from what i’ve seen in the tag, i disagree with like 90% of youse and was gonna hold my thoughts till later… but since you asked… yeah i reckon its good writing actually.

(beware under the cut, this is long)

so disclaimers before people get big mad: i’ve actually been in the situation depicted. i’m a gay trans guy who came out in year 12 & to me, it’s extremely realistic. teachers in my last year of high school pulled me aside to say all kinds of nasty shit and the rumour of my transness spread around pretty fuckin quickly. it was a fucked time in my life but i didn’t have any issues watching the last clip, i enjoyed it and found it pretty relatable honestly, especially the teacher bit because its a really common thing trans kids go through to be harassed more by staff than students, but i’ve never actually seen it be depicted before… but i’ll also say, im really not easy to upset and almost impossible to offend when it comes to trans stuff. i work as an openly trans person in the media and my skin is very thick, 17 year old me who was experiencing it real-time would have probably been shaken up a bit.

that said, like i discussed in my other post about this, realism doesn’t automatically equal good storytelling! so what is good storytelling?

big subject obviously, but rn i’m gonna define it as a consistency of theme, tone, and character. (its also how well you tie all those things up at the end but i wont comment on that because… druck ain’t finished yet and we need to remember that!) plus, of course, it’s just… whether you like it? which is completely subjective, and something i can only comment on for myself!

so i think the main issue here is that people expect things from druck it never promised them, and from the very beginning was never going to be.

take the perspective issue for example, which effects tone & character immensely. i’ve seen numerous complaints that the show isn’t depicting the trans issues from an internal perspective. which is interesting, since from the very start, we’ve known that was the case. we knew it was matteo’s season, and we knew how very, very closely skam shows follow their protagonists. everything is from their perspective. so i knew it was never gonna be about trans issues from a trans perspective because david was not the main character, he’s the love interest. that was evident from day one ya’ll it’s how the show is structured. and that is Not Inherently A Bad Thing, it’s just not what some of you wanted.

however… druck has stretched the limits of perspective more than any other version. the texts, for instance, are not just the main’s, and do a lot for fleshing out the background characters. also (and this is thematically important) it showed the way outing / spreading of rumours actually happens irl. re-watching the last clip i noticed that they leave matteo’s POV for a second, and “switch” to david as he’s coming down the stairs, realising what’s happening. not so much as to break the consistency of the show’s structure, but enough to make the audience really understand the gravity of what’s happening. it’s done really fluidly and i thought it was a genius way to both keep it matteo’s story, but also, give that moment a much needed trans perspective, because i really don’t think all that ringing distortion sound was matteo’s panic. 

and really, i just don’t think a trans person needs to be the main character of the show for it to be good representation. i think they have done an exceptional job of not tokenizing david by making sure to establish his whole character & his relationship with matteo before his trans identity was confirmed on the show, in the exact same way they do with the other evens and their mental illnesses in every other version. and honestly, when it comes to trans men, there’s very little media stereotypes or negative tropes that they could have conformed to because there’s not enough representation yet for those to have actually formed. like, we know druck won’t kill david off, and i don’t really know any other tropes that exists for trans men in storytelling at the moment. a lot of the show is covering new ground subject wise, they don’t have a script to follow, so some minor blunders are to be expected.

over all, the fandom jumps the gun every damn time. the show decides to have conflict or deal with a social problem and everyone looses it, as if that’s not been the entire ethos of skam since the OG. skam / druck is a teen show that deals with identity issues. every season picks topics to educate on through the story, and they do it with a lot of care and research.that’s the whole deal, it’s why the show exists, fucking of course they aren’t going to brush over trans issues, it amazes me that people thought they would, and that there would be no conflict and it’d play out like fanfiction fluff. here’s another really good post about it.

so obviously, this season is about about being gay and being trans, but specifically about outing, and has stressed this theme all the way through, way more than any other version. so friday’s clip is what i’d call a natural culmination of theme and narrative. in terms of the queer experience, and the trans experience, i think it was a very good idea to take on coming out / outing as a central thematic and narrative through-line, because it’s one of the central things gay and trans people have in common. and then analyzing them both in comparison and contrast throughout the story, really works and makes for good fucking writing, pacing and - yup, you guessed it - consistency.

i find the choice to situate a trans man as the love interest, and therefore, an object of desire, incredibly subversive. and though yes, stories with trans protagonists are lacking, literally any form of story where trans people exist is lacking, and the creators of druck wanting to tell a story about what it means to love & be in a relationship with a trans person is just as important a story to tell as any other, and complaining about what “type” of trans story is more important to tell first, or which aspect of trans existence to highlight more, is ridiculous. at the end of the day, one story cannot cover everything, and the writers had to make choices as to where their focus would lie. and there’s literally nothing wrong with their specific choices in subject matter (being trans in the context of relationship & outing, mainly), other than personal preference.

so like i said in my previous post: wanting a comfort show where trans characters exist, but the trans experience is not plot-relevant, is fine & cool. i really want that too, but not here. getting angry or upset that druck did… exactly what skam shows do… is stupid. and then turning around and blaming your dislike, which is born out of judging a show by the wrong genre standards, on “bad writing”, is just plain wrong. this show is amazingly produced. just… c’mon guys. chill.

(also @ every weird cis person in the tag giving fuckin condolences & saying their askbox is open if someone needs to talk…… stop. literally nobody asked. its so weird. we didn’t put a call out for you to be upset on our behalf. its just a tv show. like its super important rep for us… but its also just a tv show that people can just not watch if its not your cup of tea.)

tl;dr the friday clip was fucking good and made sense because druck is well written, acted, researched and produced, is really not transphobic (in fact i’d say it’s pretty subversive), and it’s also not the creators fault when you’re disappointed by the direction taken in a show that was crystal clear what direction it was headed into!

#druck #ask #well fuck me this was long #please don't @ me i'm tired #mammamiau

[dandelionpath]

while im still not fully convinced that the answer was legitimate, i do appreciate your thoughtful answer. ive just heard all that stuff about nb genders before. that they're uncommon, just a phase, hence why it's more common in youth. and i dont think OP being NB changes this. anyone can hold prejudice.

sorry anon, i’m going to lose my mind HSDHGJDSKL i wrote up a really good response to this but then i accidentally closed the tab I was writing it on LMAO!!! ANYWAYS LET’S TRY THIS AGAIN LOL.... (RIP to that half hour I spent writing.... UGH)

I dont know if I understand what you mean by legitimate in this case? From what I understand, Bear was speaking from her own experience, which is about as legitimate as one can get when working with spirits!

I do completely agree with you that one can still hold prejudice/be -phobic even when they’re part of the minority group in question! I just thought I’d mention that piece about her being enby, because it’s much different from a cishet person saying it than a queer person saying it. But yes! You are absolutely right with that!

I think that the issue here is that animals and humans probably have very different ideas of gender! 

Here's a couple snippets of msgs I sent to a friend when we were discussing this after your anon bc I'm really interested in this topic and wanted to hear my friend's thoughts and ideas on the topic

1. "i do not know that much actually and i dont think i really have An Answer to it all?? bc i'm still learning and i'd need to do some research and also ask like,, the spirits themselves LOL and even then it's all just MY experience and i think it'll be impossible to come to any actual conclusive fact-based answer tbh" 2. "i think [the animal kingdom is] mostly just concerned abt staying alive and furthering the species and making the animals around them happy and like,, fostering connections and care between each other if they're social animals!!! idk it's like,,, all A Lot and it also depends on the animal i think bc like... elephants have much different brains than birds for example LOL"

humans have very different brains than other animals! elephants and primates and dolphins and crows etc are some of the animals that have closest to where humans are at in terms of intelligence. this is not to say that other animals are not intelligent, just that they have DIFFERENT intelligence and very different brains! so i think perhaps gender is more of a human thing? I'm not entirely sure, though, and can only speak from my thoughts and what little research I've done. I think animals are mostly concerned with like... "do my sex organs match up right w this animal's sex organs so we can reproduce, and are they a suitable mate so our offspring will be strong and survive", but this doesn't explain homosexuality in animals, so thats INTERESTING and shows that animals are capable of far more thought and care than many humans give them credit for!

I keep catching myself talking in circles LOL because I'm not entirely sure on what my thoughts on the matter are yet, and I'm not sure if I'll have A Proper Answer (as i said in the first snippet of message I sent to a friend that I've shared here).

What i CAN say, though, is that there are most certainly nonbinary and trans animals out there, even if it's much different to how humans classify such gender experiences. Frogs (and certain insects i think?) are the one specific animal I can think of off the top of my head that shows cases of nonbinary gender. In the case of frogs, certain species will change their sex if they need more of the other sex for reproduction purposes. BUT THAT ONLY ADDRESSES REPRODUCTION, NOT GENDER! A good example of transness (and possible enby experience) in animals, is the trans lions! (I need to refresh myself on trans animals LOL, it's been a hot minute since I looked into it!) There was a case of a lion of one gender who acted as if they were of the "other" gender, but this does not do anything for reproduction or furthering the species so obviously there is more going on in animals minds than just reproduction when it comes to gender and gender expression! (though, this may have something to do with possibly being intersex and thus having both sex hormones? I'm not entirely sure, I'd have to look into it more!)

I do NOT think nonbinary genders are uncommon or just a phase/a fleeting experience. I've been nonbinary all my life, even if I didn't realize it yet. I know people who have been nonbinary all their life and had many "nonbinary experiences" throughout their life, and there are plenty of older (40+) nonbinary people who are of all ages!! Nonbinary identities have existed for centuries, since the beginning of it all, and we're not going anywhere soon LOL. I do think gender experiences change as one gets older, because of how our society works - puberty/sexual maturity changes things! all of a sudden girls and boys are treated differently and thus exacerbates the differences between genders and you realize that "oh gender is a thing actually and this kind of sucks". So it would make sense that this would be similar in the animal kingdom! But I do think there are definitely nonbinary and transgender animals out there, especially spirits since animals gain a newfound sense of awareness when they become spirits (though this may just be because we get to understand them better since communication barriers are broken).

OKAY SORRY I'VE SAID A LOT AND I HOPE THIS HELPS???? idk how it would at all LOL, but! TL;DR  animals and humans probably have different experiences of gender, and there are absolutely nonbinary and trans animals out there!

#comet answers #animal spirit work

[androgynousblackbox]

There's a pro-ship blog called discourse-spinel and they're a transmed who is 'anti-neopronouns' but pro-nonbinary and I don't know how to tell them how those things CONTRADICT one another. I just blocked them cause I'm a trans guy with a nb datemate and truscum/transmeds make me seriously upset and uncomfy

 oIt’s a common thing from transmed to be contradictory. “Oh, I support trans people! As long they are binary and rEaL transes, that is, not like those trenders!” When they make the low bar thing of accepting non binary people are a thing, they still have to put rules: you can’t be mad if people misgender you when you look too femenine/masculine, you can’t go to whichever bathroom it pleases you because of your gender, you are valid but not trans, you can’t be too exotic or that reflect badly on all trans people, you can be trans and can be non binary but you can’t express that outside of using they because then it’s all a joke.Why? I think it’s a insecure thing where they feel they must control what is acceptable or what isn’t, where they must be the ones to draw the line, because if everyone just play along and play according to their rules, then everything should be fine. If all non binary people agree to only using they and present on a way reasonable to their gender, nothing of that glittery beard while wearing dresses nonsense, then we will be accepted. If all non binary people accept they are not trans then maybe cis people will accept the transes. If we all accept that being trans is a mental disorder, dysphoria is necesary and such, then maybe we can get people to understand our plea, how none of us would have ever taken this choice if we could help it, that nobody would chose to be trans because is so horrible, so at least they take pity on us and let us exist.Suffice to say, that is a fantasy, one that has never helped anyone or will do in the future. It’s nonsense devoid of any reality. To a person like that, there is really no more clear way to say it: if you must put conditions that factor into the acceptance of a group, you don’t really accept that group. Non binary are allowed to exist whichever way makes them feel less alienated or they are not, and you don’t get to determine which way for them, even if you are non binary yourself but especially if you are not.I will be blocking them too and I recommend others do the same. We have enough garbage as it is without them.Edit: Holy shit, I just watched their bio and this is awful.Transmed/tumid (what even is this), Exlusionist, Anti Endogenic/tulpa/quiogenic systems, pro-choice, anti-mogai, vegan, pronouns = gender (anti he/him lesbians, anti-neopronouns), pro-nonbinary, pro-kin, anti-cringe-culture, pansexual = bisexual, pro-gnc trans (BEING A LESBIAN AND USING HE/HIM IS GNC, USE NEOPRONOUNS IS GNC, THE FUCK YOU TALKING ABOUT), anti-anti💖Also another panphobic ass, great, we didn’t had enough of those already.

#blocklist #panphobia