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#identities and pronouns (or like the basis I mean)
hijinxinprogress · 4 months
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YJ being awful at sharing things (mostly bc they’re used to handling things themselves bc there was no one for them to depend on during their childhood)
YJ is great at subterfuge and lying but they keep unnecessary things on a need-to-know basis like their favorite colors so when people are like “why didn’t you tell me?? I can help! I hope you know you can come to me if you need anything” and yj responds like a stray animal being shown affection for the first time “with what?? nothing’s wrong…go away…” but they’re always injured or about to be whether it’s physical or psychological 
Cissie didn’t tell anyone she was allergic to walnuts until Oliver almost killed her at a mandatory family dinner (they also didn’t know she was in the Olympics or dating Kon until they were cornered by reporters in public who wanted to know if Kon was aware she had a relationship with Oliver Queen) (Roy had a very one sided beef with Kon for about three weeks once he saw the interviews)
Yj is outed for smoking when Bart gets caught with weed and the jl (mostly Barry) are lecturing him about the dangers of marijuana and Wally’s yelling bc they thought it was the titans smoking while bart just shrugs and he’s like “I thought you knew, it’s not like we were hiding it” they call a meeting w/ yj but Cissie’s just like “I mean what are you gonna do about it? You’re a couple years too late to be concerned” and behind them, an irritated Kon passes a handful of bills to a smug Anita
Or Tim’s been stabbed for the 5th time this week (and didn’t tell anyone bc he’s Tim) Cassie tries to hand him tequila and Bart looks at them like they’re stupid “he can’t drink that” and dicks in the background “no he can’t bc he’s literally a baby and so are all of you!!” and Anita reaches over to Kon who’s not paying attention and he’s like “yeah, rob got stabbed like an hour ago and didn’t say anything bc he’s a squirrelly little shit” and dick launches himself across the room holding 17 medical packs (he was supposed off planet for the next three months)
Diana hears yj refer to Cassie with they/them pronouns and pulls them aside to ask if they want to change their name (hero and civilian) and why they didn’t feel comfortable sharing their identity with her and Cassie just goes “I didn’t think it was a big deal”
Most people think that Anita’s raising her children so older heroes with make comments about her being too young to be a parent or being irresponsible for being a parent so young along with how it makes them unable to trust her judgment as a hero (Steph once made an offhanded comment about Anita being a real hero for raising twins after she cussed out an older hero) but no one outside of yj learns the truth until dr. fate shows up talking about irreparable damage being done to the timeline (the nearest speedster gets dirty looks despite not being at fault this time)
Yj invites Greta to the watchtower and she meets Constantine who starts going on about her being death-touched, possessed, and rambling about dark magic so he ends up calling the rest of jl dark which is how the jl finds out about Secret years after the fact
Kon casually makes jokes about Lex’s attempts on his life, Lex and Clark attempting to win him over to get one over on each other, Lex or Clark disliking him, his death, and the period of time Kon was homeless which is usually how anyone outside of yj finds out about things going on in his life
The jl loses their shit when they learn how often yj hide each other in their homes when they don’t have anywhere else to go (batman buys trackers in bulk when he finds out Tim has a secret house) 
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genderkoolaid · 5 months
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Just happened across absolutely yuck take:
https://www.tumblr.com/bichoplaza/730303719824130048/like-men-arent-usually-into-the-nonbinary-thing
I don’t even know what to say to this, to be honest. Hoping you could give a more comprehensive breakdown, if you feel so inclined.
funny enough I already have this person blocked. they're a TERF, for context, so when they say "man" they're talking about people assigned male:
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so the post is basically just typical"trans people assigned male are only trans to hide their misogyny" misandry. but its extremely funny to act like
people assigned male being nonbinary and using they/them pronouns is accepted, as if they aren't constantly rebinarized
trans people assigned male are never accused of misogyny, nobody ever views them as being dangerous misogynists
but like. modern radfems really really want to be Radical and Transgressive against patriarchal society. but they've essentially based the entire current movement off of Trans Bad (with the supporting figure Sex Work Bad). so they have to convince themselves that the patriarchy loves trans people and society at large is extremely fond of and protective over trans people, so they can say things that aren't even slightly based in reality like this. its like when they say "well why do you hear so many stories about transfem predators????" as if they are not the ones popularizing those stories because they are obsessed with the idea of transfems being predators. they don't want to face the fact that their views on trans people are totally in-line with patriarchal thoughts on trans people, and that trans identity is not protective against accusations of misogyny or misogynistic violence. because facing that means that their transphobia isn't radically feminist as much as normally patriarchal, and the traditional radfem theory of transness has literally no basis whatsoever in reality
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dresshistorynerd · 21 days
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Borderline begging you to not erase the gender non conformity of historical women by applying contemporary lenses of gender roles to them. Gender non conforming women existed then and still exist now. Wearing “men’s clothing” does not make me less of a woman and it’s incredibly insulting to see people in 2024 call women “they” and “he” because they wrote extensively about the misogyny they faced on a daily basis and chose to address and protect against by disguising their female form. Clothing does not a gender make—social roles do. Let’s respect historical women by referring to them correctly—not assuming what they would like to be called these days when we have long since dismissed European invert theory.
I'm assuming you are referring to that historical binder post and specifically this part:
Westner was also buried in men's clothing by their own request.
Firstly, I didn't call Ella Westner "he", not sure why you are implying that. I haven't read much about Westner, but I did try to look quickly if we have any record or second hand information of them talking or writing about their gender. I didn't find it, so I don't know what would be the correct way to refer to them. I referred to them with "them" since that is the pronoun in English language when you don't know someone's gender. By all means if you have any evidence to share how they liked to be referred, do share.
This is for all intents and purposes the same ask I got after my Julie d'Aubigny post so I'm going to link my response here (and the answer to the follow up ask) instead of rehashing the same points all over again. But I will rehash couple of main points since it seems they bear repeating. Firstly, I'm not talking about you, you are not Elle Westner and you have just as little access to her mind as I do. I don't have to assume your gender, you said you're a woman, and certainly I believe nothing you do makes you less of a woman. But I can't ask Elle Westner can I? For most historical people, I think it's fair to assume their gender to be the one assigned to them, but if there is evidence that might suggest otherwise, we should not assume. Of course we should neither assume it's not their assigned gender, it's entirely possible it is, but the possibility should not be discarded that their gender is different.
It's a little silly tbh to say I'm erasing gender non-comforming historical women, when literally in the same paragraph I mention how it was quite common for queer *women* to dress in masculine clothing. This is literally what I wrote:
Queer women and trans masc people, who dressed in masculine clothing, (which was pretty common) also sometimes bound their chests, but unsurprisingly that was not exactly celebrated like drag performances were, so there weren't binders made for queer people specifically.
(I admit I didn't mention the "mannish" feminists, who dressed masculinely, but they rarely bound their chests, and like many of them were queer also.)
What I will not do (even if you borderline beg) is to erase trans masc and non-binary people from history. Assuming all historical queer and gnc people were their assigned gender without extensive evidence to the contrary (for some people no amount of evidence is ever enough) effectively erases all trans and non-binary people from history, since the way gender was talked about, understood and allowed to express, was often so different from our current understanding and usually erased from historical evidence. That is in fact imposing our understanding of gender to historical people. Yes some women did cross-dress in order to escape misogyny, but that's certainly not the only reason people cross-dressed. Especially since many of them, those who couldn't or didn't try to pass, faced even more misogyny for cross-dressing, but they did it anyway because they had other reasons to cross-dress. The reason why cross-dressing can be evidence of queer gender identity (though of course as said, there are other possible reasons) especially in 19th century, is because in their culture the understanding of gender was heavily tied to gender expression. Even today, when gender and gender expression are seem much more as separate things, if you see a person who looks like a woman, but is dressed in men's clothing, you shouldn't immediately dismiss the possibility that they might not be a woman. Yes, they might be a woman who for one reason or another likes to dress in masculine clothing, or they might not be.
You say I shouldn't "apply contemporary lenses of gender roles" to historical queer people, but also that I should in this historical context dismiss sexual inversion theory, which was specifically a Victorian lens (shrouded in scientific essentialist terms) to look at queerness. Sexual inversion theory is not biologically true of course, like it was proposed, but really none of our sexuality and gender categories are. Because while there probably is some biological explanations for our feelings of attraction and towards our bodies (which we haven't really found yet), how we built gender and sexuality categories around those feelings is entirely cultural. So while sexual inversion theory is not relevant today, it is still relevant to understand the historical context, since it was an attempt to explain scientifically their cultural construction of gender and sexuality. And of course the flaw with all these cultural categories is that they can not contain and represent the whole breath of human feelings, and will always leave people out in their explanations, which is obviously true with sexual inversion theory (but also for example our identity based model). But the societal understanding of these things also shape how we understand and frame our own feelings.
So briefly, in 19th century queer identities were emerging (not seen as just behavior anymore) and first queer communities were formed. In the texts of Victorian queer writers the understanding of sexuality, expression and gender are all very fluid. Edward Carpenter (a Victorian gay communist) notably wrote about "the intermediate sex" and "transitional men and women" which he understood as a sort of third gender category. Basically his understanding of queerness was conceptually similar to sexual inversion theory, but he came from a non-medicalizing and queer liberation angle (though like his writings were not entirely free of internalized queerphobia but still very revolutionary for his time). He wrote about this third gender category as a sort of spectrum that goes from feminine men interested in men, and masculine women interested in women, to cross-dressing people and people living as opposite gender. Today we might see these ends of the spectrum as more or less gnc gay men and women and trans men and women, which to him were more or less extreme expressions of the same phenomena. This also aligns with broader Victorian understanding of gender and sexuality, as gnc queer people were generally seen as a separate gender category, often, especially in case of queer men and trans fems, called fairies. As said, certainly not all Victorian queer people would have agreed or felt represented by these ideas, but this does give us some understanding how at least some of the queer and gnc people might have understood their gender.
Maybe I will need to make a full post about how I think gender should be handled and studied in history, so I can just link it to when I inevitably get yet another one of these.
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cantheykillmacbeth · 4 months
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Let's see...
If a character has no canonical gender (like I think Ryley Robinson from Subnautica does), how does that work? What is their gender considered to be?
Also, fun fact, my dad can kill macbeth. C-section baby.
(Sorry, this is an oddly specific question but I don't think it's been answered.)
An ambiguously gendered character is definitely a case-by-case basis sort of thing. Here's a sort of loose list that I tend to mentally go down for these sorts of things:
If a character is referred to as a 'man' and there is not any correction or rebuttal, they are disqualified for GC, even if the same is true for other terms. If such a moment does not exist in canon but they are referred to with strictly he/him pronouns, we make the (not necessarily correct) assumption that he is disqualified for GC as well.
For a character whose gender identity is fluid (ex. Loki from Norse Mythology), their GC status is also fluid along with them, changing as their gender identity does.
If their gender is something either directly chosen by the player (ex. The Protagonist from Fallout 4) or explicitly left up to interpretation by the audience with no wrong answers (ex. Ori from Ori and the Blind Forest), we tend to disqualify them for the Gender Clause, with 'man' being an option/valid interpretation.
If the character is never referred to with any binary terms or gendered pronouns in canon but not explicitly stated to be up to interpretation (ex. Frisk from Undertale), we would count that for GC, taking it to mean that gendered terms are incorrect for their identity.
There are plenty of cases that are exceptions to these guidelines or that fall outside of them, as gender is inherently a very complicated thing to accurately quantify, and there isn't a lot of media that feels the need to go into the intricacies and nuances of each character's gender identity in canon. If all else fails, we usually just clarify that we are leaving the character uncategorized for that Clause- neither qualifying nor being disqualified- as we have often done for the other Clauses.
(As for the character you mentioned, I couldn't find anything related to a gender ambiguity? All the sources I found refer to Ryley as male, but I could just be looking in the wrong places. Also hell yeah to your dad)
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alaynestone · 2 months
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oh, would you tell us a little more about that repressed transfem dean headcanon and how you think it would play out?
i've been thinking about how to respond to this. ultimately, i think not much needs to change just the way certain aspects of his character are interpreted. it's not my default headcanon, but there is a strong basis for it.
as much as dean reads as both bisexual and definitely some kind of not cis, i don't think he particularly cares about labels or being "out".
dean's character is always defined by a certain fluidity. 6 episodes in he's not only directly paralleled to the shapeshifter but the shapeshifter assumes dean's shape and gives voice to dean's thoughts without permission. and we get the glorious body horror and eroticism of the scene where the shapeshifter strips dean's skin off as (i just wanna be) mary by the death riders plays in the netflix version. dean has no fixed shape.
right from the pilot it's clear he goes through life performing, mirroring, playing into expectations good and bad, clinging to a semblance of agency at every turn. dean winchester might as well be a bigger than life character dean has constructed to survive. now does that mean every aspect of that performance is a lie? no, not really. however his masculinity does conceal and protect many of the more vulnerable facets of his personality until they too are useful. he doesn't so much kill or repress his femininity but it too can only be expressed when it's in service to something else. he can't just exist and want these things. and it's a source of shame that he wants them.
not only is he (at least) subconsciously treated as daughter, wife and mother, there is plenty of evidence he doesn't perceive himself as entirely male. to get more specific, it'd be one thing if he wore lingerie to please someone else, but to admit that he liked it, that he personally enjoyed it even with the ways feminization has been used against him? that it's more than kink? that is terrifying.
so i do think sex is the best way to get him to explore this aspect of his identity at an early stage. putting it into words is much harder than going there physically with the promise of orgasms. i'm pretty obsessed with the idea of sam suspecting these things about dean and trying to make him feel more comfortable about it. there is no way he wouldn't feel honored to be trusted with this and protective/possessive at the thought of dean seeking it anywhere else. even as they continue to explore this, i don't think dean would require a change of pronouns, or start going by deanna. but he would feel so warm and right inside whenever sam called him his girl. something inside him would heal the more this vocabulary was used outside the bedroom. it would take a lot of work and there are plenty of ways this could backfire but i believe in them. i'm a sap, whatever.
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drbased · 1 month
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i’m kind of a baby radfem and im learning about being gender critical and i definitely agree with most of it, the only part that i have thoughts about is the nonbinary identity. i believe that a gender non conforming woman and a nonbinary woman can mean the same thing. in that, i believe that you can be a nonbinary *insert sex here* and it basically just means you’re gender nonconforming. and then it’s like well why do we need two different terms to mean the same thing and we definitely don’t, but i think it’s dangerous to conflate being nonbinary with being agender bc it’s not the same thing and it just makes gender rhetoric even more stupid & ridiculous lol. i’ve seen plenty of people identify as nonbinary and still identify with their sex-based gender. i also believe you can be female and see yourself as a woman and still use they/them or even he/him pronouns. what do u think??
(Bear with me on this, this is a long response but I hope you find it illuminating)
People regularly accuse radfems of being nazis/right wingers and I take those accusations incredibly seriously, and as I result I regularly take time to doubt my position. But the thing I keep coming back to is that:
There is no proof, and perhaps there cannot be proof, that gender exists: it is fundamentally metaphysical, spiritual, soul-like, a product of mind-body dualism, the belief that there is some nebulous internal sense of self that happens to share some labels with sex classification but also happens to completely subsume it in modern leftist discourse, despite that
Regardless of whether or not 'gender' is real, it does not form the basis of the male class oppression of women as a class, and the moment you engage with any feminist theory this fact becomes impossible to ignore. There is no true biological backing behind race and yet we are (in theory, anyway) comfortable with being able to identify and codify the oppressor and oppresses classes in that scenario; however, arguments from the mainstream left will vaguely gesture towards sex being 'fluid' as justification for the dissolution of classic feminist arguments. It's important to be suspicious of why this is and who might benefit from it;
To build on point one, due to the fact that gender has no material basis in the real world, the only 'signifiers' for it are ones that already exist as cultural schemas - and these are, naturally, taken from existing sex roles designed to uphold misogyny and, more broadly, patriachy itself. 'Gender fluid' people are at this point infamous for their tik toks of when they're male or female, and the way they demonstrate this is through short hair and comfortable clothes vs long hair and feminine styling.
Occam's razor + feminist analysis will inevitably point towards women 'identifying' with nonbinary, agender etc. simply being women who are uncomfortable with the misogynistic connotations of femaleness, and who naturally wish to disassociate from them. When you see things under that lens, you can immediately notice patterns of behaviour and language that signal the belief system they hold. To 'identify' as anything is fundamentally meaningless, and signals nothing to both yourself and others except perhaps language. As a person recovering from depression, I have been detaching myself from all rigid concepts of classifying myself and instead focussing much more on being who I am in the moment. It it much healthier to be this way (and a lot less stressful, too)
When we call ourselves 'women', this is nothing more a neutral description of our biology. And due to our status as an oppressed class, especially one based on our biology, it is of paramount importance that we retain language that succinctly names us as such. Dworkin states in Pornography that one of the powers that men have is the power of naming. We still live under patriarchy, and the language we use cannot be separated from male ideas and male thought. Men had, and have, no problem naming us as the oppressor class when it benefits them (especially in the case of prostitution and pornography), but as it has become less, let's say' popular to be seen as a man in recent years, we have seen an explosion of transgender rhetoric enter the popular consciousness. Without the ability to recognise ourselves as women, we lose statistics, we lose safe spaces away from the oppressor class, and we lose class consciousness.
As for using 'they/them' and 'he/they' pronouns - well, I'm a straight woman, but I'm aware that there is a certain lesbian tradition of using masculine pronouns. But that's in a very different context to what's being described here. I've already addressed language but let's put a laser-sighted focus on pronouns for a second:
As a culture, we default to 'he' pronouns for a reason. For a long time, we were 'mankind' and everything akin to humanity is given masculine pronouns. Cute little critters are assumed to be male, probably all your soft toys are male, the most basic of doodles are assumed to be male and only allowed to be female once they are given a dress. It should be no surprise that women who want to escape the shackles of femininity want to be called he/him - they want access to the percieved full humanity of men. Meanwhile, the only times we attribute she/her to things other than people are to things like cars, ships, and natural disasters (with the exception of mother nature, of course) - tools of warfare, accessories of masculinity, and symbols of 'hell hath no fury like a woman scorned'.
There is a study somewhere that shows that when you use 'they/them' as a neutral pronoun, people assume male - especially if you're referencing a prestige profession. If I were to say, I went to the doctor yesterday, they were great - you would automatically assume a male doctor. This is no accident - as already stated, maleness is the default. Women who want to use they/them are dissociating themselves from femaleness but in doing so they are accidentally using language that signifies maleness. This is why feminist analysis is so important, and why 'identifying' as something holds little water in the real world. In an ideal world, perhaps they/them could be genuinely seen as neutral - but we don't live in an ideal world; we live in a world where women are oppressed.
So to answer part of your question, no, I do not believe that 'nonbinary' and 'gender non-conforming' are the same thing; nonbinary is an attempt at classifying someone according to some nebulous, unprovable sense of internal identity that has no real material impact - and any attempt to 'express' this gender are simply taking existing sex roles and mashing them together. Gender nonconforming has a different meaning in radfem circles as it does in transgender ones - TRAs take it to mean that someone is indentifying with a different gender than they were 'assigned' at birth, but radfems simply use it to describe the physical act of being a woman (or man) who doesn't conform to expected sex roles. I am 'gnc' but that's just a neutral descriptor of my dress-sense - and it's a loose descriptor because in many ways I'm definitely not gnc in my behaviour, although I am working on my self-confidence, especially in contexts such as physical fitness and DIY. Gnc is useful shorthand for 'not conforming to sex roles in some major capacity enough to be noticeable by others' - and the only reason it's important, especially for women, is because femininity (our expected behaviour) is designed by the patriarchy to dissociate us from our bodies and keep us decorative, fragile, weak and sexually vulnerable to men.
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isomorbism · 6 months
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i might deserve your fate or worse
hi, welcome to my blog! ^_^ you can click on "iso" in my bio to see my about page with my sideblogs and tagging system (you may want to read this post before following but whether you read the about page doesn’t really matter as it is out of date).
iso / he / 17 / aspec / non-usamerican / normalest boy
links: neocities / cohost / bluesky / mastodon / pillowfort (rarely active on these i just made accounts on everything to see)
just a "pretentious teenager" here to poast and have a fun time!
if you think you know me in person i would appreciate if you closed my blog immediately and read no further.
invite to discord server on request for mutuals or people i’ve interacted with
free palestine! 🇵🇸
interests / stuff I post
I like pure math and I'm studying it at university (undergraduate). kind of my "main" special interest and has been since I was a kid.
currently working on and off on my neocities site and learning haskell and c++.
I write stuff occasionally like poems and "fanfiction."
I post about things I read or watch sometimes. I like death note.
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I identify as nonbinary but for most purposes you can refer to me as a guy and use masculine terms. only he/him pronouns please.
asks are welcome but I am sometimes very slow (as in it takes months sometimes) at answering them. I'm trying... very sorry everyone I am not ignoring you I am just so bad at this.
for privacy I don't want to share some things like where I'm from and I would appreciate if you don’t ask this type of question. if I say I don't want to answer a question just leave it at that.
you can ask nicely if you need something tagged.
english is not my first language but I'm at c2 level. I generally use american rather than british terms where there is a distinction.
please tell me if you think something I said was mean, bigoted, or problematic so I can improve in the future!
sometimes I will talk or reblog something about the discourse du jour but this is not a discourse blog.
no dni, anyone can like or reblog or comment on my posts, but I may block you if: you harass me or my followers, if I think it's likely that you will, or for other reasons (although I rarely do and mostly accidentally tbh). if I blocked you, you can ask to be unblocked.
please make a post or some indication you are not a bot.
do not take any of my posts as a call to violence towards any individual or group of individuals.
do not put discriminatory rhetoric on basis of race, skin color, ethnicity, nationality, assigned sex at birth, gender, sexual orientation, or disability on my posts.
miscellaneous positions/opinions on stuff
I'm a socialist (closer to a marxist than an anarchist on most issues but I don't use a more specific label. I try to stay open to learning about different ideas) and a (mostly classical) utilitarian.
I oppose imperialism by the US and western countries and by other countries like russia too.
I'm an inclusionist, as in I think it's fine if people have any good faith and harmless identities, even contradictory ones. this doesn't include "radqueer" identities. I don't participate in queer discourse.
I do not want to hear or be asked about shipping discourse.
reblog ≠ endorsement of everything the OP ever said. also note I will sometimes interact or follow people I don't agree with on everything or even most things. I will sometimes reblog posts that are interesting but I do not necessarily endorse.
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wander-over-the-words · 4 months
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for that ask game: 🏳️‍🌈 for nick valentine and benny :3
send me a 🏳️‍🌈 and a character name and ill share my gender/sexuality headcanon for them Nick:
Nick is asexual!! He has zero interest in that area. Does not want any. Incorrect buzzer noise. It was one of his (MANY) concerns when it came to getting with Nate, but fortunately for him Nate is ace too so he just "Nick you have no idea how okay that is like seriously"
He himself does not know what he Likes romantically. He's always liked ladies, but y'know. Nate's a man. He's the first man Nick's looked twice at. So Nick doesn't know if Nate has Awakened Something in him or if Nate is just an Exception for some reason. Doesn't rly matter to him either way, and he doesn't rly care to think on it cause he's with Nate for the long run so. who cares y'know c:
Nick identified as a man at first cause the Old Nick did. I imagine one of the first things he did when trying to separate his identity from the Old Nick's was taking a moment to think on it, but he was content to still identify as a man, so. nothing new there. He was built without gender in mind like any other pre-Gen 3 synth so. he's genderless but identifies as a man. He's a man. A metal man.
Benny:
SOMEBODY CALL UP THE FOUR SEASONS CAUSE THIS IS A BI BI BABY. Tragedy: game where you can canonically be bi can't see when it has a Massive Bisexual as one of its main characters smh. He has a preference for ladies, but he is a BI MAN. I've said it before, I'll say it again: the reason the male courier can't fuck him is that he didn't feel like having gay sex that day. Had gay sex yesterday. Ask him tomorrow, see how he feels.
Benny is the most Cisgendered Man I have ever seen. I 10000000% respect anybody who sees him as trans or nb, but personally. He Is the Most Cisgendered Man I Have Ever Seen. To the point that I've always headcanoned him as. hilariously ignorant to stuff like gender.
Not prejudiced in the slightest and like. he knows who/what trans people are. he's met and slept with trans people. He just doesn't know the Ins and Outs of it. Like he's asked Ethan how come he has a moustache and where his charlies went. Has a "you can do that???" response. stuff just blows his mind in a good way. his baby's a badass cause he got his charlies cut off by a Mr. Handy INTENTIONALLY. he PAID for it. he stabs himself with a NEEDLE on a REGULAR BASIS just so he can have a MOUSTACHE AND DEEPER VOICE AND STUFF. you WISH your baby was that badass.
He's accidentally said insensitive things, like asking Ethan what his "girl name" was or wording it "used to be a broad" (I know some trans people are cool with that but Ethan is not). but to his credit he genuinely doesn't mean any harm. he's an asshole but not that much of an asshole. just uneducated (and a little stupid). He's learning. he doesn't understand what dysphoria is but he'd physically fight someone for causing Ethan to have a dysphoric episode. someone says Ethan "throws like a girl" and Benny's sitting there like >:O!!! even tho Ethan doesn't find that offensive in the slightest (hell, he'll agree with it). Ethan shows him a childhood pic and Benny just "baby that's not you?? that's a girl." and Ethan just Stares until Benny has his "oh. right." moment. any involvement Benny has with the topic of trans makes Ethan look at the camera like "he's a little confused but he's got the spirit."
He'll shoot ya in the head but Goddamn will he respect your pronouns and gender identity.
(for added hilarity: Benny's the only Chairman who's Like That.
Swank vc: get woke Benny.)
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By: Andrew Doyle
Published: Feb 22, 2024
Since when did it become the business of the state to audit our emotions? In effect, this is precisely what is happening by means of the various “hate speech” laws that have been implemented throughout Europe in recent years. In Ireland, the imminent Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence of Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill would represent one of the most draconian forms of hate speech legislation yet produced. And how is “hatred” defined in the Bill? The following is a direct quotation:
“hatred” means hatred against a person or a group of persons in the State or elsewhere on account of their protected characteristics or any one of those characteristics
So hatred means hatred. Glad we cleared that up.    
This kind of circular definition is what we have come to expect from legislators when it comes to this most nebulous of concepts. In his book Censored, Paul Coleman helpfully includes all of the existing legislation on “hatred” from across Europe and, in doing so, reveals that no two governments are able to agree on its meaning. In 2012, the European Court of Human Rights concluded that there “is no universally accepted definition of the expression ‘hate speech’” and a manual published by UNESCO in 2015 accepted that “the possibility of reaching a universally shared definition seems unlikely”. 
When it comes to the statute books, one would have thought that precision and detail would be of paramount importance. After all, we have seen how vaguely-worded legislation is wide open to exploitation. Consider, for instance, how trans rights activists are now claiming that the reference to “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 connotes a sense of “gender identity” rather than the biological designations of male and female. If the state is empowered to imprison its citizens on the basis of “hatred”, surely we need to know what that means.
Hatred, like any emotion, cannot be legislated out of existence. Will we be seeing laws against “envious speech” on the statue books? And what about codes against wrath or pride? If the government were to prohibit narcissistic speech, most of the flag-waving pronoun-declaring gender ideologues would have to be incarcerated. And while this would doubtless create a much more sane and serene society, it would also involve the obliteration of our fundamental values. 
As for “hate crimes”, there is no need for mind-reading in order to determine the appropriate punishment. If I am physically assaulted, it makes little difference to me if the assailant was motivated by homophobia. I would prefer the sentence to reflect the crime itself, not to be moderated according to speculations about the perpetrator’s private thoughts. The state should have absolutely no licence to probe inside our heads, any more than employers should insist on compulsory “unconscious bias training”. In a free society, we are entitled to think and feel as we see fit. And so long as that does not interfere with the liberties of others, that includes the right to hate.
But even if one were to accept the premise that the state must crack down on hateful thoughts – which I most assuredly do not – hate speech legislation is wholly ineffective. Censorship of hateful ideas does not cause them to disappear; it drives them underground, where they can fester unchallenged. Moreover, hate speech laws are easily weaponised by activists seeking to silence their political opponents.  
For example, in the UK we have seen people arrested for “misgendering”; that is to say, for accurately identifying the sex of another person. The journalist Caroline Farrow was investigated by police for six months after an appearance on Good Morning Britain. According to a complainant, Farrow had referred to another contributor’s female-identifying child with a male pronoun during a conversation that took place off-air. And although such instances have not led to convictions, we all know that the process is the punishment. 
As one who has received my fair share of online abuse, I understand that free speech has its downsides. But I choose to ignore those of the obnoxious and hateful ilk rather than call for them to be censored. The price we pay for living in a free society is that unpleasant people are going to say unpleasant things. But their right to do so is precisely the same right that allows us to counter them. If we attempt to silence even our most abusive critics, we are essentially surrendering our principles at their behest. 
No doubt the trans-identifying individual who was described as a “faggot with tits” in a recent case in Spain did not relish the experience. But it should concern us all that the state has intervened and sentenced the woman [I understand that it has subsequently been clarified that this was, in fact, a trans-identifying man] who posted the offending words to six months in prison, suspended on condition of the payment of a €3,850 fine. In addition, she has been banned from employment in teaching and sports for three and a half years. This is the very definition of authoritarian overreach.
Those who are sceptical of gender identity ideology are particularly susceptible to the misapplication of hate speech laws, and there is no way of knowing which other beliefs will eventually be criminalised. Once a state has outlawed “hatred” and failed to define it, the law becomes a cudgel to beat anyone who holds heterodox points of view. Who is to say that a future government might not deem it “hateful” to criticise its policies? What starts with the chilling of free speech ends with the criminalisation of dissent. 
And this would seem to be where Ireland is heading. Last year, the Irish Green Party Senator Pauline O’Reilly made no effort to disguise the authoritarian nature of the new Bill. “We are restricting freedom,” she said, “but we’re doing it for the common good”. Hasn’t every tyrant in history made an identical claim?
In her speech, O’Reilly invoked the notion of “safety” to justify state censorship. “If your views on other people’s identities go to make their lives unsafe, insecure and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace,” she said, “then I believe it is our job as legislators to restrict those freedoms.” It is a common tactic of activists to claim that certain opinions make them feel “unsafe” as a means to provoke a censorial response, either from employers or from the state. This is linguistic sleight-of-hand, and the strategy has been remarkably effective. 
The Irish hate speech bill goes further than most of its equivalents in other European countries. It will give the state the right to prosecute those who cause offence under the catch-all of “inciting hatred”, and those found guilty could face up to five years in prison. Even more worryingly, a citizen can be jailed for two years simply if they “prepare or possess” material that could potentially “incite hatred”. And so if you have a gender-critical meme on your iPhone, that could be sufficient to see you jailed. 
In the UK, hate speech laws exist in the form of the Public Order Act 1986 and the Communications Act 2003.  Three thousand people are arrested each year in the UK for comments posted online that have been deemed offensive, and in some cases have even been imprisoned for jokes. If we are to tackle this problem, we might start by repealing Section 127 of the Communications Act, which criminalises online speech that can be deemed “grossly offensive”. Of course, no attempt is made to define “grossly offensive” in the legislation, and so anyone could be vulnerable. 
In Scotland, the situation is even graver. When First Minister Humza Yousaf was Justice Secretary, he was instrumental in the passing of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act. Disturbingly, these new laws can see citizens prosecuted for words they have uttered in the privacy of their own homes. I’m reminded of a speech by William Pitt the Elder, delivered in the House of Commons in March 1763:
“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake, the wind may blow through it, the storm may enter, the rain may enter, but the King of England cannot enter. All his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.”
Evidently, these sentiments would not be echoed by the SNP. 
Given that “hatred” and “offence” are entirely subjective concepts, we should be resisting any attempt to codify in law restrictions against them. No two figures of authority will interpret these terms in the same way and, as human beings with frailties and biases, they will doubtless be tempted to wield such laws against their detractors. If the state is willing to dispense with our right to free expression, there can be no guarantees for any of us. Hate speech laws are an affront to human liberty. It’s time to ditch them for good. 
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queensectonia · 6 months
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is it this one? i'm sorry to have... offended (?) you? i wasn't specifically thinking of you when i made it though, i don't think. i wrote that a while ago.
the intention was not to discourage people from calling elfilis/elfilin they/them though or to insult they/them (and be extension it/its) characters though. it was to say that i don't see a problem with calling them something other than they/them and respecting other people's interps too. kinda like if someone hc'd a male character as a tgirl. i might not agree, but i would respect it. gender hcs should for fictional characters should be a pretty chill thing imo.
again, i'm sorry if you didn't like it or if i hurt you. if you spotted some legitimate issues with it, do tell me! but for now i stand by my points. i really hope we can sort things out since i don't quite like being called a horrible person.
hey man, nowhere in my post did i call you a horrible person. i said some of your reasoning was transphobic, which is a trap anyone can fall into, because unwittingly repeating unfortunate rhetoric is very much not a moral judgement.
and i wasn't offended by your post, because it's a sentiment i pretty much agree entirely with, just couched in some kind of silly reasoning and a broad misunderstanding of what people are actually complaining about.
most of the folk saying things like this aren't complaining about people using different pronouns for established characters (elfilis, in this case) in their own headcanon. as it was stated in my post, we're frustrated about people straight up misgendering elfilis on a universal basis.
this is an extremely widespread and specific problem with characters whose pronouns are they/them, or god forbid it/its. look at any given character whose pronouns are they/them and you will see countless people in the english-speaking sphere flat-out refusing to gender them correctly. for just a couple examples, look no further than frisk undertale + kris deltarune, the gems from houseki no kuni, and yes, indeed, elfilis. this is such an ingrained and common problem where people just innately reject the possibility of a character using they/them pronouns, let alone the idea that they might be nonbinary in any way, and because of it, you get people constantly misgendering these characters and bending over backwards to justify themselves: "oh, well, you know, this character just doesn't seem like a they/them... it was never stated directly... i'm just more comfortable using he or she..."
it's a longstanding, observable issue. elfilis, predictably, doesn't escape it either, and thus you have rafts of the english-speaking fanbase ignoring this character's proper form of address.
and elfilis' pronouns are in fact canonically they/them and it/its, by the way. this is part of the transphobic reasoning i was referring to: in both real life and regarding fictional characters, it is transphobe standby number one to insist and insist and insist and sealion into infinity that there's ~plausible deniability~ on they/them pronouns. it's used because we haven't met this character! we were never told for certain that this character uses they/them! it's for literary ambiguity! they/them are plural pronouns so it's the text referring to multiple people!
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i mean this in the kindest possible way: you are just incorrect here, on multiple points. there is absolutely nothing ambiguous about elfilis' pronouns. multiple times, elfilis is strictly, directly referred to with they/it, where elfilin is referred to with he/him. the game is not being ~vague~ here, it is presenting you with plain information. the game not telling us elfilis' precise, discrete gender identity is not the same as the game not telling us elfilis' pronouns. elfilis is referred to with neutral pronouns in every language except for the ones that literally don't have neutral pronouns.
(even french has a well-known and accepted neuter pronoun these days, but our good friends (derogatory) l'Académie française refuse to ratify it so NoE didn't use it in the localisation.)
additionally, kirby is not referred to with gender-neutral pronouns. i assume you're referring to japanese here, in which case you've been misinformed by a common misconception spread by people who don't speak japanese. kirby is never gendered at all in japanese. it's not "kirby is canonically non-binary in japan!" or "kirby is canonically they/them in japan!", kirby is canonically nothing in japan. they go out of their way to not mention it. depending on your translation standards, japanese doesn't even have "they/them" as a singular pronoun. i explained this in my post here, and there's an additional post i made on the topic regarding a slightly different version of this fandom misconception here.
anyway, tl;dr, no-one is complaining about people giving elfilis different pronouns in headcanons and AUs. we're complaining about the exhaustingly common phenomenon of people forgetting how to be normal about gender when a character uses they/them.
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I have a question that I'm kinda scared to ask.
Is it okay for me to put like. god/godself in my DNI? I have nothing against the people who use those pronouns or even the pronouns themselves, I just feel really uncomfortable using them for anyone that's not God. I just feel like it's best for me and people who use god/godself to not associate with each other. Does that make me transphobic?
Much love ❤️🫂
I think a lot about the folks who won't use it/its pronouns because of potentially dehumanizing a person. I think about people who have had their first names places on people's trigger lists. I think about "such-and-such mental illness DNI" on DNI banners because that person experienced abuse from someone with that mental illness.
Your personal hangups and your comfort mean less than someone's identity, especially in an age when we're struggling to be seen as real and valid. Putting someone's pronouns on your DNI list shows you are no ally to people who use those pronouns.
We're already kicked out of churches and told we're going to hell for being trans. We don't need people in our own community pushing us away on the basis of religion.
We're godlike by design. We name our children Jesus and Mary and Abraham and Sarah. Why is that not offensive but godself pronouns are?
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adammurrays · 10 months
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okay since it's pride month might as well kick it off with the promised queer headcanons! so here's my pronouns + identities for the tmc cast :)
mark: he/him, cis and aroace. not much to say about this guy! for a while he thought he was "broken" for not experiencing attraction like anyone else but cesar was there to reassure him that is not the case at all <:)
cesar: he/him, cis(?), bi/aromantic and demisexual. he's never felt strongly about anyone really and was never really bothered by it. that attitude helped mark go through his troubles. now i don't know what the fuck is up with his gender. and he doesn't either. i think he went through a Realization in his isolation post vol 1 but he has more pressing matters than figuring out that he's nonbinary
adam: he/it, technically agender, bi/grayromantic and sex repulsed asexual. all of this is kind of influenced by his alternate-ness lol. he actually doesn't care if others were to use different pronouns for him for whatever reason, he was just used to being called per "he" all his life so he might've as well rolled with it, it/its pronouns is something that he reclaimed post catalyst. it also sees relationships differently from most people, hence the weird bi/grayromantic area (his relationship with evelin was... complicated. it's hard to describe whether it truly was love as humans comprehend it or something else. but he did like her and care about her a lot!)
jonah: he/they, nonbinary and bisexual. figured out they were nonbinary during one of their trips with adam whose reaction was simply 👍 that's cool bro. i mean thing. whatever it is you want to be called now. he actually has a preference for pronoun usage depending on the person. they're way more comfortable with having they/them used by people close to him or that he knows well. they do appreciate it being switched up often though
sarah: she/any, transmasc and lesbian. i am obsessed with her gender presentation she's simultaneously the type to wear cargo shorts and go fishing and do dad activities while also spending hours on her makeup and nails. she goes to slumber parties with evelin and do girlish things but then goes hiking and comes back covered in bugs all bruised up
evelin: she/her, intersex and questioning. her whole life she never felt the need to question whether she's attracted to anyone other than boys. the breakup with adam left a really REALLY bad taste in her mouth and she kind of realized that hey. maybe there are other options. good for her!
thatcher: he/she, genderfluid and bisexual. whether he feels like a "man" or a "woman" fluctuates sometimes even on a day to day basis. it drives her alternate crazy sometimes tbh. her egg cracked when ruth jokingly offered him her old dresses that did not suit her anymore. the bisexuality unlocked after a dare at a party in high school
ruth: she/her, cis(?), demiromantic and bisexual. her two best friends being trans leaves her pondering. if she survived i think she'd figure out she was genderqueer eventually. she always knew she was bi she just never had a word for it
dave: he/him, trans ftm and gay. he has that t-boy swag middle aged man edition. to me. fun fact one time jonah accidentally used neopronouns on him and he was like wait... hold on... do that again. he's still pondering 👍
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fqirycollective · 2 years
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Dissociation Help From Professionals: Part Two
Hey! We recently received a list of dissociation coping tools from the person we work with and we thought we'd share as a part two to the original post that had been made. We haven't been able to try all of these out yet and some of them take time to practice, but here we go! Note: Part one has more sensory techniques. This part includes cognitive techniques.
Reminding Yourself
This means reminding yourself where you are, the date, and the time. This helps ground you and brings you back into the moment due to reminding your brain "Hey, I'm here. Not in the traumatic moment." This also goes for those of you who are no longer in traumatic situations. You can remind yourself that the trauma is over and you're safe in the current location at the current time. This has about a 40% success rate for us, as we're constantly in the dissociative states to varying degrees, but it may help others.
Coping Statements
There are all kinds of coping statements online for all kinds of mental issues. You can simply just google ones for trauma, PTSD, anxiety, stress, etc. A few we have are "I am safe now." and "I can feel anxious and still deal with this situation." These are kind of like affirmations. They help remind yourself that you can handle what's going on and it tells your brain "Maybe I don't need to dissociate away from this."
Talking to Yourself with Compassion
This one isn't necessarily for dissociation. But changing the way you talk to yourself and your parts can help you calm down, see things in a different way, make parts feel safer, etc. It helps your brain feel like it's okay to react the way you're reacting, and so you don't need to dissociate away from your reactions. I hope that made sense, I didn't really understand it at first when it was explained but I think I understand it better now.
Doing Mental Exercises
These help prevent you from focusing on the bad, any worrying thoughts, etc. and instead redirects your focus onto certain activities that helps you stay in the moment and not drift off. Some examples would be: counting back in threes, crossword puzzles, Sudoku games, and other logical games/activities that keep your brain focused on certain things. These things came from google except the counting back by threes, so you can just google some ones to try! However the ones more focused on dissociation and mental health are ones that usually need to be practiced a bit.
Reminding Yourself About You
This helps with the identity confusion and disconnect from identity experienced in dissociation. Examples of this would be: name, age, pronouns, gender, sexuality, friends + family names, etc. It reminds your brain and yourself about the basic basis of your identity and so helps with the identity aspect of dissociation.
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theasexual-jackson · 14 days
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The terf pipeline that assigned female at birth trans folks are just “little girls with internalised misogyny and want to be males to escape misogyny” is bullshit! Feat. My experience as an afab transneutral person.
Hi, everyone! For those who don't know me, my name is Angel and I go by all pronouns (neos & xenos included), and welcome to this simple, but big, post.
I think everyone knows the radfems, also known as terfs. You know, these women whose feminism is just transphobia, racism, ableism, generalisation of womanhood and plain exclusion of anyone who isn't a cishet, white, middle to high class women. Maybe, a little bit of queer women, but only in their criteria.
And I think everyone here knows on their infantilization of trans men and assigned female at birth trans people in general. They always say: “Oh, poor little girl, consumed by outside and internalised misogyny, so she tries to be male so she can try to live happily!! =((”
And I say, bullshit, bullshit, FUCKING BULLSHIT! Talking from experience, even!
You see, even though I was raised and socialized as a girl... I didn't experience that much of misogyny. Hell, probably not at all.
“Omg, that's impossible, how would you do that?” Rapunzel. That's the secret, I lived and live to this day like Rapunzel.
I don't go out to stores that often, I only have one way on my daily basis: Home → School → Home. That's it, that's all it. This is how my life goes since forever.
And when I go out somewhere, I'm 9/10 times around one of my parents or my brother. So, my chances of getting catcalled, s/a'd or something are quite low.
I am a hyper protected kid, that's why I am a pussy. And while my mom was mean and a bigot in general in many points of my adolescence, she had enough sense to not be misogynistic throughout my childhood (things started to go wrong in my life, between me and her, when I started to show signs of non-cisgenderness and gender non conformity, to summarize).
And that gave me time to discover my identity without women hating structure of patriarchal society on the way (gender imposition on max.). In fact, I was reluctant to accept that I identified in a masculine way sometimes, because cis femininity (and probably some internalised transphobia) was too impregnated on my brain, at that point. So when I started to feel side effects of an misogynist society, my identity was already constructed, I already knew who I was, so misogyny couldn't really play a role in it.
To give y'all an idea, the first time I've ever been a victim of misogyny was in 2023, when I was 15, close to turning 16 years old, and I was getting romantically harassed by a boy (he changed schools, so I won't see that nigga's face ever again, THANK YOU LORD 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽) and that same muthafucka went on to say, in the middle of class, that women bad and they be the reason why we fail (based off that fucking Adam and Eve story, btw), directed at everyone who was read as a girl in that class, aka all the girls of my class and me. And, since I'm closeted, I had no choice but only be disgusted at that remark of his.
But, key word, disgusted. Not guilty, not deeply affected like any normal woman would; But disgusted. Because misogyny is disgusting to everyone who's not a misogynistic.
See where I'm getting into? My first contacts with what is misogyny in practice came too late to be experienced from a girl's perspective. Maybe from a fem presenting perspective, since I'm closeted, but I only can view it from a transgender perspective, now.
My transgender identity cannot be affected deeply by misogyny now, because misogyny came too late.
And that's not a case only for me, but for many other trans minors. Many trans kids understand that they diverge from the gender they were assigned at birth, even before getting a grasp of misogyny and/or gender related violence, even when they don't even know the existence of the word trans.
So, in conclusion, transness is not a result of internalised misogyny, but being a nasty girl who dismiss other girls just to get male appreciation is (and not only that, tho, patriarchy has many faces other than just sexual violence).
Bye!!! =3
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butch-reidentified · 10 months
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okay, but here's what I don't get: if your philosophy is sex/gender doesn't matter, that your chromosomes shouldn't dictate what you do or wear, why does it matter if someone changes their pronouns, wears a dress, gets top or bottom surgery, whatever?
idk what you want me to say to this bc I've answered all of this like easily a few dozen times. this is either a lack of reading OR a lack of reading comprehension. please read #2a on my Pinned Post.
this anon genuinely kinda worries me bc this is not a hard concept to grasp. your chromosomes are not the primary defining aspect of your sex. I really never talk about chromosomes on my blog, so why are you? sex is defined according to gametes & the anatomy/physiology biologically associated with the production of each gamete.
also it's literally in my bio that I got top surgery and in my url that I'm butch, do what on earth do you even mean by "why does it matter if someone gets surgery or wears a dress?" obviously it doesn't matter to me in the way you seem to be implying, or I wouldn't be happily flat-chested, hairy, bare-faced, not owning a single skirt or dress, etc. The issue is that none of these things make me any less female, just as none of these things could make me any less 5'5"....
your sex doesn't dictate ANYTHING about your personality. but also, your talents/skills/interests/hobbies/aesthetic preferences/etc. aren't indicative of your sex (or your "gender") either. again, if you read the post linked to in #2a of my Pinned, you will understand much better than I can possibly explain right now in my current emotionally/mentally/physically exhausted state, but the bit of that post that's in purple text summarizes why the concept of gender identity doesn't make sense to me (though the concepts of gender dysphoria and sex dysphoria do).
sex ABSOLUTELY matters - in a perfect world, it wouldn't matter in pretty much any context outside of medicine and orientation, but in this (patriarchal) world, it most certainly does matter. gender is not the same thing as sex, but I also never said gender doesn't matter; rather, it shouldn't exist at all bc it's an oppressive system whose function is to force people to conform to one of two sets of all-consuming stereotypes on the basis of one's sex: "masculinity" forced on male human beings and "femininity" forced on female human beings.
I could get into this in a LOT more depth, dive into the nuances and address why "femininity" is inherently oppressive, but honestly, a woman can only post the same thing so many times before she starts to go insane. I've made my old posts pretty damn acessible despite Tumblr's desire to make finding posts wholly impossible. read them 🤷
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actualbird · 7 months
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Before the actual ask, i have a suggestion: maybe add some general non-tot asks/req rules? bc i'm writing this rn like "this may be uncomfortable but i don't want to make you uncomfortable but i don't know if it will make you uncomfortable but-" 😭😭😭
now um, my ask:
i'm currently getting struck by gender dysphoria at very random moments and i don't like it. thing is, i don't know what my gender might be since it goes both ways and I was wondering, if you wouldn't mind sharing: how did you figure out you're trans?
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hi anon!!! lemme go thru this one by one but first, i wanna preface everything with: dont worry, none of this makes me uncomfortable and you said nothing wrong. theres nothing here that cause for panic on ur end, it's alright, ur alright :D
okay so
on general non-tot asks/req rules:
i do have these rules!! theyre just not as Many as my tot-specific ones, but on my rules page u'll find these in the 2nd section :D
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theyre like, reaaaaally general but the overall rule for all other asks is basically "be nice, i cant read tone well, and dont spam" so no worries, ur all good. i dont wanna make these rules any more specific because everything else seems like a case to case basis yknow
and now to the bulk of my answer
on trans stuff:
short answer on how i found out i was trans: it made me happy. god, it made me so happy and it makes me happy to this day.
long answer: come with me, anon, through my gender journey through the years....JKSDHVFKJSDHVKFSD
ok so for the longest time i knew i wasnt completely woman aligned in the gender department. like, from ages 14-20 i had identified as a bunch of different genders. first i identified as bigender, then i backpedaled and went back to just having "she/her" in my bio because i had a Moment Of Panic wondering "no no the Genders are for people who Really Truly Identify (whatever that means) and i shouldnt co-opt these terms because im not even sure what i am!! im not allowed to identify as bigender until i really figure it out!!*", and then for a while i identified as nonbinary, and then the pandemic happened which i think hilariously due to the lockdowns had the cool side effect of many people figuring out Personal Things and at some point in 2021 i was like ".....hey im a guy, actually. it makes me happy to be a guy"
*sidenote 1: this "but am i allowed to?" worry is a common thing i see a lot from other people also going through their journey of questioning their gender, and i wanna talk about it specifically later on in this response, but bACK ON TOPIC FIRST---
sidenote 2: yes, like a pokemon trainer, i have collected the three starter pronouns. she, they, and he. KJHAVFLASVFALSJK
backtracking through the other genders i had identified as, i'd chosen them all at the time for similar reasons: joy. i identified as bigender because i felt recognized for the first time, an identity where i could be both feminine and masculine. i identified as nonbinary because i adored the comfort of that freedom and that fluidity. i identify as a trans guy now because i realized that i can find joy in being a guy and still enjoy expression of "non-guy" things because guys who like pink and frilly fashion and plushies is still a valid and real type of guy, it's the type of guy i am. and these are more on the positive markers of gender expression, the opposite of gender dysphoria: gender euphoria, the happiness when gender stuff feels just right
btw, you are indeed using the term gender dysphoria correctly. that simply pertains to any kind of distress or upsetness due to gender things Not feeling right. within that definition, theres no requirement for you Already Having To Identify to use it, because otherwise thatd mean anybody who found out they were trans only after experiencing gender dysphoria was using it incorrectly, which seems rather silly. and even if the definition Did have that requirement.......who cares? JKHDFVSKDJHFVKSD i mean that in the most genuine and sincere way ever, because so long as it is harming nobody, who cares what word you use? sure, a Bunch of people care actually, and a bunch of people will pitch a fit policing on being allowed to use certain gender words and whatnot. but in general ive taken to trying to remember that like.....gender stuff is a Personal thing. it is the business of the Person Themselves, as it is our identity. it is up to us to define it, to explore it, to make our own choices on it. and well....generally, people who think your expression is any of their business is, at best, nosy, or at worse, a bigot.
i went on a tangent there sorry VSDFLJBFL, but my point is dont worry, youre using the term right. if youre feeling Not Good because something about The Genders doesnt fit, yeah thats dysphoria. and im so so sorry youre experiencing this, because it sucks
i said before that my main marker for realizing gender stuffs was the presence of a positive emotion, instead of the presence of a negative one. but i also experienced gender dysphoria, it just wasnt as big of a thing in my own journey. for me, it was less of a wrongness and more of a vague...discomfort. like wearing shoes that dont fit. it's fine some days but other days i couldnt stand it but my legs still work and i was much more focused on the times i Did find figurative shoes that fit immensely well.
.....oh something i think that wld be important for me to mention is that i kinda....somehow always knew i was of Another Gender. but i kept hesitating and kept backtracking because, kinda like what you say, it went both ways for me
im a guy. but i also really liked things that are traditionally seen as feminine, i still do. ive got a closet full of lolita fashion dresses, mixed in with the ridiculous amounts of plaid shirts ive got. throughout my life, i was never really regarded as masculine by other people, more often i was seen by others as some kind of manic pixie androgynous being. and these things, they made me hesitate. how can i be a guy if so much of who i am is seen by others as Not-Guy stuff?
well, eventually it's cuz i figured that what others think should have nothing to do with who i am and who i choose to be. relating back to what i said about Genders being a personal thing yknow. why was i so worried about what other people thought of a thing that only concerned me?
yknow one of the most gender affirming experiences ive ever had in my life was back was i was in college. i was just going out and about for a group work thing, and the classmates along with me were rowdy manly cisguys and i was feeling low and it showed, i was all meek and sad and shit. and then this lady came up to me, and i didnt get to know if she was a transwoman or a femme presenting gay man, but she sat with me and chatted with me and eventually she asked
(this convo happened in filipino but roughly translated it went)
her: do you want to be a boy?
me: yes (i answered so instinctively. at the time, i was identifying as nonbinary, but she asked a question and i gave my honest answer. yes. yes i did.)
her: well, youre very handsome! youre more handsome than any of them //gestures at the cisguy classmates
and that stucks with me to this day. another queer person asking Me what I Wanted, and affirming that. didnt matter that i looked like how i looked, that i obviously wasnt as objectively or normatively masculine as the cismen around us. what mattered was what i wanted, and i was handsome for it, and that was that.
after that we just talked about pop music, but i felt so good the rest of the day
now...on the unwritten question here of "how do you (as in, anon, or any other reader out there) know you're trans (or any kind of other gender designation)?" or if you already know you are some other gender, how do you figure it out? who do you ask?:
im sorry for how cheesy or seemingly unhelpful what im going to say next is, but i cannot stress how crucial it is: the only person who can ever answer these is You. ask yourself what makes you happy, what would alleviate your discomfort, what would cause comfort, what youre drawn to, etc.
but if i can give any unsolicited advice on that....itd be to make sure that the person youre asking, the person who is giving the answer, is really You. not the thoughts or opinions of other people, not the rules of what is considered 'norm', not the fears or the worries circling around the question, dont ask those things dont find the answer in those things. the person to give the answers is You.
and btw!! You can change sometimes. and sometimes your answer can change too, and thats okay if ever that happens. all my prior answers to this question changed in through life, and it doesnt mean any of my prior answers were wrong (sans the time i backpedaled, because then i wasnt getting the answer from Me, i was getting the answer from Worries). it just meant that those were the answers for Me when i was at that stage of my life.
tldr: i figured out i was trans because it made me so damn happy to be and also because i stopped giving a shit about what other people thought
i hope this response makes sense and that theres something in here that can help you out. im wishing you the best, anon <3
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