#less my agab every day

[morporkian-cryptid]

On gender, confusion, and labels

I want to talk about my experience of gender, because it’s been a long and complicated journey and I’m finally at a point where I’m not having an identity crisis every six months. I haven’t seen many people with a similar experience in my years on the Trans Website and I kinda wish I had people tell me this earlier. This is not meant to be catch-all advice for all gender-confused folks, just my own story; if others can resonate with it and feel a little less lost, then I’ll be happy.

(This is gonna be pretty long, be warned)

I experience little to no dysphoria, and that’s probably why it’s taken me so long to accept that I’m not cis. What tipped me off to the whole Gender Situation was mostly the euphoria of being perceived as a masculine woman, or mistaken for a guy.

I came out as genderfluid years ago, to about two persons. Six months and a lot of thinking later, I went back on it because it turned out it was just a phase.

Well, not a phase, more like a cycle. After that, I kept deeply questioning my gender every six to twelve months. Most of the time I’d feel like a woman (albeit without any clear idea of what “being a woman” actually meant), and every now and then I’d get clear flashes of “I’m something else” feelig and start to question my entire identity for a couple months; then go back to “nah actually I’m cis”. Rinse and repeat.

I kept cutting my hair increasingly short, event went as far as a buzzcut. I rarely wear makeup. I like when people mistake me for a boy or are confused about my gender.

Every year or so, I found myself looking at binders. Every year I flaked out. At some point I bought compression bras but barely wore them because they were uncomfortable. I like my chest in and of itself, but sometimes I don’t like the way it looks with dresses or frilly tops – I like my chest but I don’t want it to be perceived. (I did buy a binder eventually, for the few days when I want my chest gone. I don’t wear it a lot, but I’m happy to have the choice.)

For a while I played with using different pronouns; I asked my friends to call me he or they for a few days, or I’d introduce myself with those pronouns in talking groups. But most of the time I went back to “she” like an old comforting jumper.

I even changed my name for about six months, then went back to my birth name. That was a very difficult time. I didn’t want to change my name. I like my birth name a lot. What happened was, Elliott Page came out, and I heard the name Elliott and my brain kinda went, “huh I like that name, it fits, I kinda like being a girl named Elliott”; and then it was like an itch that wouldn’t go away unless I scratched it. The weight of that decision scared me. It wasn’t like pronouns or a haircut: a name is what I present myself to the world with, and I was terrified of changing such a big thing about me.

My friends were very supportive, and switched without problem. I was lucky enough to move abroad for a six-month exchange program right when that identity crisis happened, so I got the very rare occasion to introduce myself as Elliott to people who didn’t know me at all, and whom I wouldn’t see anymore after six months. My flatmates were great and called me Elliott without question.

Six months later, the name stopped fitting. I don’t know how to describe it, but it just didn’t feel like me anymore, so I went back to my birth name, and all my friends were chill with that. (I still use Elliott as a pseudonym online.)

The reason the early years of questioning my gender were really complicated, is because for a lot of my life I’ve been really into labels. I wanted to understand things and put them in neat little boxes; and my identity was no different. If I’m not a woman then I must be trans. But I feel like a woman 75% of the time. Can I call myself trans if I identify with my AGAB most of the time? Do I actually identify as a woman, though? Or am I okay with being perceived as one? What does “feeling like a woman” even mean? Technically, by definition I must be genderfluid, which means I’m trans, but that’s a word that doesn’t feel like it applies to me. I can’t be part-time trans. But I’m not exactly cis either. Then what the fuck am I??

I wanted a word to put on my identity, because if I didn’t have one then I didn’t know what I was, and that was really difficult to live with.

It took me years to shed that need for a label, and to get to the point I am at today. Today I see my gender as feelings rather than identity. My gender is too big and complicated to neatly fit into a word, or even ten. My gender is the way I dress, the way I talk, the emotions when I am called miss or sir, the feeling when I look at myself in the mirror after a fresh haircut. It’s a hundred interconnected tidbits that all shift day to day.

The best way I’ve found to describe my experience of gender, is this:

I am not a woman

I am fine with being perceived as a woman

I do not want to be perceived as feminine

These are the three things I’m certain of right now (and they might change later! And that’s okay!), and my day-to-day gender presentation hinges around them. I no longer try to look inside myself and ask “What is my Gender?”, because I’ve never found a straight (ha!) answer, and that’s only ever brought me anguish. What I do now, is look in the mirror and ask myself “Do I like this outfit?”, look at a sentence I wrote and ask myself “Do I like these pronouns?”. I’ve kind of applied the Marie Kondo method to my gender: does this spark joy? Then I’m doing it. In this text I’m sending to my friend, does calling myself “handsome” spark joy? Then I’m calling myself “handsome”. Does wearing a binder under this dress spark joy? Then binder it is. If I want to try out a new name, I can tell my friends and they’ll try it out with me, and if it turns out I don’t like it, I can always ask them to go back to the old one. The gender feelings I’m feeling right now are as real as the ones I felt yesterday or the ones I’ll feel tomorrow, they’re as important and I am allowed to indulge in them.

With labels, I do sort of the same thing, although I’m not quite there yet. The best word I’ve found to describe myself is genderqueer, because it’s vague enough to not imprison me inside a box. Sometimes I’ll say I’m non-binary if that’s relevant to the context of the discussion. I still don’t actively describe myself as trans, because the vastness of that word and the experiences it comes with is still a bit scary for me – but I don’t forbid myself anymore from taking part in things labelled as “trans”, like talking groups, pride events, Tumblr posts and Discord servers. Even if I don’t identify with the word, I identify with many of the experiences, and I do technically fall under the definition of transgender. I’m allowed to be part of that community, even if I kinda just lurk around the doorstep. Maybe one day I’ll be comfortable enough to actually come in, and proudly call myself transgender.

I have been sort of toying with the idea of maybe one day going on T. If I had had that idea a few years earlier, I would have freaked out and had another identity crisis over it, like I did with the name change. As things are right now, I’m just sort of considering the idea and giving myself time to think about it, do research, try alternative ways to change my body first. There’s no rush at all. I know now that my perception of my own gender varies over time, and that I can take years to get comfortable with aspects of my identity or presentation. I can take my time; I can go on T in a few years when I’m certain, or I can decide I don’t want that. I don’t have to make a big decision now.

Seeing transition this way is incredibly freeing.

I’m very lucky to experience minimal gender dysphoria, but because of that, I conflated “being okay with people perceiving me as a woman” with “actually being a woman”. I mostly use she/her and my feminine birth name, not because they describe my gender (they very much don’t), but because they’re comfortable. It’s like I’m goth but I don’t find goth clothes comfortable, and displaying my identity as goth isn’t worth the discomfort of wearing itchy clothes. So I prefer to wear this old sweater that’s super comfy even if it doesn’t reflect my tastes, and stick a couple of skull pins on it so other goths know I’m actually one of them. Just because the sweater isn’t goth doesn’t mean I’m not goth inside. Just because I go by she/her and a feminine name doesn’t mean I’m not non-binary inside. Explaining my actual gender to the people around me isn’t worth the hassle, misunderstanding and possible debates about my identity; the people who understand know, and the others don’t, whatever.

(TL;DR) So, yeah. This is a lot of text to really just say, if finding a word for your gender hurts, don’t try to find a word. Focus on the experiences, do what makes you happy, gender-wise. Labels can be helpful, but if they’re not, you are not obligated to use one. Gender is incredibly complex and cannot be easily summarized by words. At the end of the day, what’s important is your feelings, and trying to make them good feelings.

#i hope this can help someone feel less lost than i used to feel #this is deeply personal but thankfully i'm now at a point in my life where exploring my gender doesn't hurt anymore #so i can be open about it #i never really came out as genderqueer because all my friends were involved in my journey there #so they knew all along there was a Gender Situation going on so an Official Coming Out was pointless #also the whole 'my gender is a fucking yoyo' thing discouraged me from making an Official Coming Out that i might scrap after a few months #i'm queer. my gender is queer. that's all i'm able to say about it and that's all people need to know #personal #long post #gender #gender stuff #genderqueer #non-binary #nonbinary #genderfluid #lgbt #lgbt+ #lgbtq

[yoursimplypluralhandbook]

Hi hi! Not a request exactly, though I must say we LOVE your templates and themes <3

I do have a question though, if you don't mind?

We're redoing our Simply Plural (again, lmao) and are wondering if you have any recommendations for what information would be useful to share? I'm guessing things like name, age, pronouns are a good start, and probably boundaries? But we kind of have no idea what to put...

We're a fairly large system, but not introject-heavy (we do have a couple, but not a lot...) if that helps?

Any advice would be appreciated but no pressure!! Have an absolutely amazing day <3

Hihi !! This answer might be rushed since im in bed, but ill write as much as i can think of

In general what you make public for your system is different for every system, so some of the stuff i reccomend may seem like private information for other systems

We like to think of it in layers; general stuff we want to list, info we need to list, safety based, system based, extra

Some of these layers may overlap !!

General stuff we want to list

This usually includes things that we personally want to include, for most this is their name, age, sexuality, gender, agab, likes, dislikes, partners, quotes, birthdays, species ecetera

Info we need to list

This is name, age, roles, pronouns, species, anything we need while searching for members like genders, sources, subsystems, boundaries, warnings ecetera

Edit : guess who posted this instead of drafting this, hold tight folks im gonna continue this below

Safety Based

Boundaries, warnings, int status', ages, ecetera

System based

Roles, species, subsystem, sidesystem, layer, origin, time of forming, age, sources, fictive/nonfictive

Extra

Likes, dislikes, agere information, any other personal details, fun things like moodboards, blinkies, ecetera ecetera

My brain is so fried.

Anywho! Hopefully this gives some starting point, may edit this in the future then i am. Less tired. :3

#endo safe #actually plural #endo system #endogenic #plural community #plural #plural system #pluralgang #plurality #pro endo

[worms-in-my-brain]

Posts that point out that we’re (with ‘we’ being an array of potential minority groups) all the same to them (with ‘them’ being whatever majority group complements it) are good and make a good point, but I feel like they’re missing something.

I’m going to use trans people as an example because it makes it more clear, but this also applies to other groups (and I’ll elaborate at the end). So take, for example, someone saying that all trans people are the same in the eyes of a transphobe.

The thing I feel is missing, is, well… there is a difference, even to them. If there was literally no difference, then people wouldn’t be able to be, in line with my example, transmeds, because bigots wouldn’t even offer them conditional ‘acceptance.’

There is also going to be a difference between a nonbinary trans person who doesn’t have dysphoria and presents in line with what is expected of their AGAB and is comfortable in spaces that match what was put on their birth certificate and a binary trans person who is incredibly dysphoric and is medically transitioning. Because the truth is that, even though both are trans, if a law were to be passed that banned transition, one of the two is going to be more impacted. You don’t need dysphoria to be trans, but trans people with dysphoria, especially severe dysphoria, know that it can be incredibly debilitating if left untreated.

There is privilege in being a cis-passing gender-conforming binary trans person. If someone is able to renounce their community without being immediately forced back in by bigots, it’s a privilege.

I’m more hesitant to call the second situation a privilege because, well, it’s not really a privilege to have your identify erased. But, realistically, it’s at least a situational advantage that means that, sometimes, treatment of them versus someone else in the same minority group will differ.

I’ve also seen this happen in disability spaces—it being said to people with less severe disabilities who lick the boots of abled people.

I guess it bothers me a little bit because I feel like it erases people’s experiences? Like when I read stuff like that all I can think is, okay, then why do I have to live hiding parts of myself from my parents because I know they only would accept me as one gender? How is it fair to say that all disabled people are the same to ableists when people with higher support needs and severe disabilities face ableism every day, sometimes even from the same people who would only notice me on days I need my cane? That someone with depression is the same to a saneist as me with OSDD and ASPD? That I’m the same to a saneist as someone with schizophrenia and NPD?

I know I’m overthinking it and it’s probably not that deep but I kinda just wanted to just get my thoughts down, since it’s something that bothers me sometimes.

[ashtrayfloors]

My life is pretty good, these days. Not perfect, of course, but I’ve had a lot of moments recently when I’ve been in the middle of doing whatever and said to myself, a la Kurt Vonnegut: “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

For a while I was going through an “ugly phase,” where every time I saw myself (in photos, in the mirror), I’d go uggghhh. I felt old and hideous. But I’m past it now. I got over it partly by focusing on other stuff that makes me happy—when I’m focused on other stuff, I care less about how I look, but what ends up happening is that the happier I am with other aspects of my life, the better I think I look.

My gender has flipped again, and I once again feel like a woman. I’ve also gone back to using both they/them and she/her pronouns (like, officially; unofficially I’m okay with they, she, and he, especially if people switch them up a lot), for several reasons which I don’t feel like enumerating right now. Every time something like this happens—meaning I change pronouns or genders, particularly when the pronouns or gender align with my AGAB—I go through a brief crisis of: “Oh my god, I’m not really nonbinary, I was just fooling myself the entire time.” And then I remember that I’m genderfluid, and pronouns =/= gender, and even calling myself a girl or a woman doesn’t have to mean just one thing. Like I wrote in my recent novel-related zine, about the character Whiskey (who is me and not-me): ‘Girl’—or any other gendered term—isn’t a box, it’s a signifier. When you call Whiskey a girl, you’re pointing toward a set of characteristics they have, which may or may not be the same characteristics any other ‘girl’ has. You know what you mean when you say Whiskey’s a girl. If the reader doesn’t get it? Fuck ‘em. That’s their problem.

Saturday night was the big Literacy Council fundraiser at the Roma Lodge, which I was an invited guest at, along with some of the other previous and current Writers-in-Residence. And I got a plus-one, so P. went with me. The dinner was good; they served it family-style for every table, so we passed around salad and bread, followed by fried chicken, mostaccioli, and meatballs. The best part of the evening was the timed Scrabble tournament. Our table won, and they gave us all these really nice journals as prizes; but just the playing itself was so much fun, and full of hilarious moments that I was laughing about for days afterward. And it was great to be around so many of my friends, and to have my husband with me—most times when I’m at an event, he’s home with the kids.

Sunday night I attended an online (Zoom) poetry open mic. A lot of my friends and acquaintances read that night, and it was great to hear them, but then there was this mix-up with the sign-up list so I ended up never getting “called to the mic,” and I was bummed. But then the next day I got a message from the host—he felt so bad about the whole thing that he offered me the feature slot for April. I accepted!

And speaking of April… For years now, I’ve thought about applying for [redacted], and I finally went for it, and I got accepted! So in April I’m doing [redacted]. I’m excited, and a little nervous, but mostly excited.

Monday and Tuesday were super warm—in the sixties, which is incredibly warm for the upper midwest in March, especially here by the lake. I spent a lot of time outside, both days. Monday, C. and I took a quick trip downtown, to get this year’s veggie garden seeds from the library; afterwards, we got gelato at the cafe. Tuesday, we took a long walk, and I got to have my first iced coffee of the year.

Wednesday, late afternoon, the temperature dropped, and I got a massive sinus headache (as I often do when the air pressure changes rapidly). It hurt so bad I got nauseous and shaky and wanted to cry; I had to lay in bed for a while with my heated sinus mask on just to make it even somewhat bearable. Sometimes I think my sinus issues don’t count as a real disability, but then something like that happens and I’m like: wait, the pain is sometimes so bad I can’t do anything? Yeah, that’s a real disability.

Yesterday I hung out with my mom. It’s so weird. Half the time she stresses me the fuck out and I don’t even want to be around her (like—half the time I love her but I don’t like her, ya know?), but the other half the time we have a blast and I’m really glad she’s my mom. Yesterday was a lovely day. We went downtown. She treated us to brunch. I had a twist on an Irish coffee, what they call an “Irish Americano”—a cafe Americano with both Irish whiskey and bourbon in it—and the Mediterranean skillet (eggs served over hashbrowns mixed with red onion, tomatoes, artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, feta cheese, and hummus). We sat there for a long time, even after we finished eating, and had a great conversation. Then we went to the art museum, and I saw a lot of really amazing pieces, and got inspired, and got emotional, and gosh I just love art so much!! And I’m so happy our town has not one but two art museums! And then I splurged a little in the gift shop. Oh, yeah: I have a credit card now! My first-ever credit card, at age forty fucking two, because I never qualified for one before. My bank offers secured credit cards to help people build their credit, and I applied for one earlier this month and got accepted. I purposely set it for the lowest limit possible, and believe me, I’m being very careful not to overspend to the point where I’ll never pay it off. But if I never use it at all, I’ll never build my credit, so…yeah, I splurged just a tiny bit. I bought a gorgeously illustrated book of excerpts from Pablo Neruda poems (that one’s for me and the kids), and a card game that involves both visual art and poetry, which, well, sign me the fuck up.

We also had a neat interaction with one of the gift shop cashiers—he’d seen the umbrella I was carrying when we walked in, a University of Michigan umbrella, and told us he’d recently moved here from Michigan. We asked him what part, and he said Flint, and we were like hey! We lived there, too! He’d lived there his whole life up until six months ago when he moved to Wisconsin, whereas we only lived there for six years (and left 34 years ago), but still. Small world.

Last night, P. and I had some wild, passionate sex.

On the not-so-good front: this morning, P. started coming down with some unspecified yuck. He’s testing negative for CoViD so far, which is good, but I know there’s a gnarly non-CoViD chest cold floating around right now, too, as I have some friends who’ve had it. Unfortunately, this means we can’t go to the St. Patrick’s Day parade tomorrow, which sucks, but what’re you gonna do? I’m trying to take precautions—I’ve changed out the sheets and towels, aired out the bedrooms, wiped down surfaces, and taken Emergen-C. P. is keeping to himself as much as possible. So far, the kids and I still feel okay, so hopefully we don’t get whatever it is (or that it’s mild, if we do).

I had to go out and run some errands today (post office, grocery store), so I masked up and went out (I’m not perfect about masking 100% of the time, but I always mask if I have any symptoms of anything or if I know I’ve been exposed to something). I had a lovely interaction with an old woman at the grocery store. (I say she was old not as a pejorative, but because she was definitely in her late eighties or maybe even in her nineties.) We were both entering the liquor department at the same time, and she said: “I love your hair! I used to be a redhead, too, before it went white.” “Thanks! This isn’t my natural color, though.” “I know,” she said. “No one’s hair is that shade. But it suits you! And I love your boots, too!” (I was wearing my tall black boots with all the buckles, that I got for my birthday.) “Thank you!” I said again. “And I love your jacket!” (She was wearing a very pretty yellow jacket.) Then we happened to both be going for the Jameson. She laughed and said: “I can’t drink like I used to—I used to be able to put ‘em away with the best of ‘em—but you have to have a little Jameson on St. Paddy’s Day!” “Or just because it’s a day that ends in a ‘y’!” I said, half-joking. She laughed and said: “Oh, I love your spirit, too! Perhaps I will just take you home with me!” I don’t know if she meant that in a queer way or an “you’re the granddaughter I never had” way, but either way, I appreciated it. I love encounters like that with elderly folks; I like knowing that one can live that long and still have that kind of energy.

What else? It’s Pisces season, still. Which means I have strange, intense dreams nearly every night, and during the day I’m either horny, or sad, or both. I know, I said I’m mostly happy these days, and I am, but I’m still sad a lot, too. Maybe ‘melancholy’ is a better word for what I mean.

I have a crush, my first proper crush (i.e., not a friend-crush, and not a crush on a celebrity) in a while. Her name is K., I first met her back in November, and for a while I tried to convince myself it was just a friend crush. “No no, I don’t have a crush on her,” I’d say to myself, “I just think she’s neat and wanna hang out with her.” But then when I compared how I feel when I run into her or see pictures of her, or just even think about her, vs. how I feel about my friend-crushes, I was like: “Ooooh, okay, no, she definitely gives me pants feelings and a little flutter in my tummy. It’s a crush crush.” Nothing shall come of this crush, but that’s okay. I’m fine with casually crushing on her. It’s nice just to feel those feelings again. Gets the blood flowing, makes me know I’m still alive, y’know? Plus, since she’s also a poet and spoken word performer whose work I love, I’m using some of the crush energy to try and impress her with my literary artistry.

And I have been missing past loves, what else is new. I’ve been missing A.D. and A.C., my two boys with the same first name from the same Chicago suburb. I’ve been missing "Sullivan," and S., and F. And of course other than the two A.s, I haven’t seen or spoken to any of them in years and years. And even with the A.s… I realize that I don’t know them anymore, so when I miss them I’m missing who they were—and I’m also missing who I was back then. What’s that quote about desire? About how it’s not just a desire for a person, place, or thing, but rather a desire to be the person who fits with that person, place, or thing? It’s like that. When I miss old loves (or old friends, or places I once knew, etc.), I don’t just miss them, I miss being the person who fit with them, once upon, however briefly.

But then there’s the flipside to all the yearning for new crushes and old flames, and that’s realizing: I do have a lot of amazing people in my life. I’ve lost a lot of friends over the years, but I still have so many wonderful friends, both old and new. In the past year, I’ve even reconnected with some people whom I thought were out of my life for good, and it’s just good to know—though some friends may leave my life forever, others will come in and out of it. Maybe "Filia" was right, all those years ago. Maybe some “see yas” really do mean “see ya down the road,” not “goodbye forever.”

And romantically—every day, I look at P. and am just so happy he’s my person. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs over the course of our relationship—as of June, we’ll have been together fifteen years—and I know we’ve both had times when we’ve thought of calling it quits. But we’ve always managed to work it out, and our relationship has gotten stronger and stronger, and I just love him so much. I can’t imagine having anyone else as my primary partner.

The kids have been flooring me lately, too, in the best possible way. Again, there are struggles, but overall I’m just amazed by them and love them more every day. Especially as they’ve both been getting into music—both playing it and listening to it. D. has gotten really into Pearl Jam, which is so funny. Partly because until fairly recently, he was ambivalent about rock music, and was more into techno and hip hop. Which is obviously fine; I like music in both those genres, and I’m definitely not the type of parent to force my kids to like what I like. (I introduce them to stuff I like, but I don’t make them like it, y’know?) So it’s kinda cool that he’s coming around to rock and its various subgenres on his own. But it’s also funny because he’s twelve, and it was around that same age that I first got into Pearl Jam.

I’ve been rekindling my love for Shakespeare’s plays, recently. Not that it ever really goes away completely, it’s just that it’s such a long-running special interest of mine that it’ll go on the backburner for a while, and then something will spark and it’s like oh no, I’m obsessed with Shakespeare again. Which is what’s happening currently. I’ve decided that I’m going to study Shakespeare with D. as part of his curriculum next month. We’re going to cover one comedy and one tragedy. I’ve already chosen Hamlet for the tragedy (he’s a moody tween, I think it’s perfect), but I haven’t chosen a comedy yet, because I love all of Shakespeare’s comedies so much.

On a related note: my mom recently had me go through the few things of mine that were still at their house, and one was a book called Shakespeare for Beginners, which I got when I was 15 or 16. I wasn’t even really a beginner at that point—I’d already seen many Shakespeare plays, and had been in A Midsummer Night’s Dream twice!—but I think I got it for a school project because it does have pretty good summaries of all his plays and a bit of his poetry. Anyway, I was flipping through it, and I found a letter inside, from the American Birding Association, thanking me for registering as a Young Birder of the Year, from the year I was 16/17. I laughed my ass off, and thought of that quote from Tight Pants zine about being the strange, smart kid. Because that time in my life was full of similar dichotomies. Yeah, I studied Shakespeare and was an amateur birder. I also had sex with boys and girls, went to punk shows, and got stoned. Punk? Punk! Or, you know, to quote Whitman: Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself.

The other week, in my Facebook memories, I saw a post I made in 2017: I declare this year my year of writing like hell and resisting despair. I reposted it, saying that I was gonna try to match that same energy this year, and so far I have been. I’ve got my novel in progress, I write 1-2 mini-zines a month for my zine subscription thing + the occasional installment of my Substack newsletter, and I’m still averaging 1.5 drafts of new poems per day. And then, Wednesday, I did my weekly tarot and oracle draw. This time, I drew one card from the Art Witch oracle deck, and one from the Rust Belt Arcana tarot deck. Both the cards I drew have to do with abundance, fertility, inspiration, and creativity—the Rainbow from the oracle deck, and The Empress from the tarot. I reread the chapter about The Empress in The Creative Tarot by Jessa Crispin, and in a creative sense, The Empress is all about having the ability to take creative ideas and bring them to fruition—and not only that, it’s all about being able to work on many different projects at once, successfully! So, that’s excellent news. Guess I can continue working on my novel, mini-zines, and Substack and still manage the [redacted] in April.

There is one project I’ve decided to…well, not give up on, just approach differently. I’ve decided not to pitch my book idea about [redacted] to [redacted]. I talked to a friend who has published in the [redacted] series, and… For one thing, they no longer offer advances, so even if they did accept the pitch, I’d have to bust my ass for six months to write it and not see a dime until it was published—which could be two years from now! And for another thing, based on what he said, I don’t think I’d have enough creative freedom with it. So I’m still going to write something about [redacted] eventually, but I think I’m going to self-publish it in zine form or as installments on my Substack (or both). Basically, I have such limited time these days, and so many projects I’m already working on, that I’m not going to take on another one unless it pays incredibly well (and fast) and/or I’m super passionate it about it. So I don’t want to start on a project that I wouldn’t see any money from for years and that I wouldn’t get to write the way I want.

Funny side note: The last time The Empress was coming up for me a lot was in early 2017. And yes, that year was incredibly fertile, in a creative sense. I did write like hell, and resist despair. But it was also the year I got pregnant with and gave birth to C. Thankfully, since P. had a vasectomy, I know that this time it means only the creative sort of fertility.

I made coconut curried salmon for dinner tonight, and it was awesome. Now I’m in bed, drinking a lil’ Jamo with ginger ale and lime, about to watch a movie, and crossing my fingers that I don’t come down with the yuck.

#ashtrayfloors #dear livejournal #i told y’all i’d be back to personal posting on this blog eventually! here i am! #long post #there’s too much in here to tag so #read at your own risk #oh and sorry for all the redacted b.s. #i just don’t wanna announce it until i announce it

[tropical-starlight]

ok im posting oc lore because ye

ok so the world is called "Fish Moon" and its got kinda a weird concept but please just hang in there with me

basically theres this large continent that replaces antarctica in this world called "noxturnia" (pronounced: knocks-turn-ia)

and its called this because its only daytime ONE DAY a year. meaning execpt for one day, noxturnia is constantly in a permenate state of night.

you'd imagine that a bunch of plants and animals adapted to live without the sun, and your correct! the plants are now magic-based instead of sunlight-based, plus a lot of animals that live here have good night vision

for some reason, the marine life hasnt changed much, in fact, theres a lot here. various different species from around the world PLUS some kinds only seen here.

also the marine life can....float? yes, float. for some weird reason the marine life here can just come out of water and start floating around like its no big deal. they're pretty chill though. both marine biologists and magiologists (in-universe term for the study of magic) are baffled by this specific occurance but some speculate that it has to do with the magic of the moon.

the main species which live here are demi-min. which almost share zero similarities to humans execpt for the fact they stand on 2 legs and can talk or reason

demi-min are shapeshifters, now this would be really powerful...if they knew how to use it because the majority of demi-min dont. instead, they subconsiously shapeshift into a form that represents who they are. that form may be based on a animal they think is cool, a activity they live to do, their favorite color, and more

demi-min may sometimes also shapeshift if they are in a great time of stress or if their or their loved one's life is in danger. but usually these changes are small and usually made to help defend themselves such as larger teeth. stingers, horns, etc..

....however there are a few demi-min who CAN control what they shapeshift into, but they are very VERY rare and very powerful.

usually a demi-min's induvidual powers depend on what they appear as. for example: lady (one of my ocs) can summon a army of tiny, glowing, blue, spiders to attack a foe or to just do other stuff

demi-min who are related to eachother may have some design theme (such as color, pattern, thing they take the form as, and more) but no two demi-min will ever look exactly the same

for internal antatomy, all demi-min are mostly the same internal wise, no matter what form they take.

all demi-min have sharp teeth, and are all considered semi-aquatic omnivores.

demi-min are made up of 50% water and 50% magic, they are pretty magically attuned, especially when it comes to ocean-related magic

demi-min lack genitals so they reproduce asexually. demi-min do still have assigned sexes at birth however, but its decided by the number of hearts they have

if theres one heart, it means the demi-min is amab

if theres two hearts, it means the demi-min is afab

if theres 3 or more or if one heart is smaller than the other it usually means they are intersex

scientists are unsure why afab demi-min have 2 hearts, but its assumed that its to make their body tempature warmer so they can keep a baby warm

(agab in noxturnia is less like a gender-sterotype thing and more like something to help demi-min describe themselves better once they figure out how they identify..sorry if i phrased that bad im horrible at describing stuff lmao)

when it comes to eyesight, demi-min have great night vision. in fact they can see pretty much every color you'd see during the day. one difference is that demi-min can see ultraviolet so thats pretty rad.

and yeah thats pretty much all i can think of! more lore might come soon, idk, but yeah this has been floating around in my mind for a while :3

#the lorebrary #axol rambles

[reddiscourse]

this is how you sound

"I'm sorry if I get heavily offended and insulting when a male says that they identify as a woman. It's not like I'm surrounded with sexist and misogynistic micoagressions every day. It's not like men harass women for their appearance. It's not like there r so many male misogynists making fun and over exaggerate "mimicking" female stereotypes . /sarc

Yes, I see "transWoman" as fetishising, sexist, and a crude mockery."

TERF rhetoric. As I said, you can't exclude trace people without recycling terf rhetoric

A few things.

1. I am a man, thus I have no connection to being a woman. I see nothing wrong with identifying as either man or female no matter your AGAB, as that is not the same as diaracial.

2. If you wanted to hit home with me, you could've edited to be "I'm sorry if I get heavily offended when a female (really? "A male?" How insulting is that? "A female" is just as insulting) says that they identify as a man (I literally could care less). It's not like I'm surrounded by toxic masculinity and manly stereotypes every day. It's not like women treat men like the scum of the earth because "every man is the same." It's not like there are people who believe that to make the sexism they face valid they have to tear down the other gender." Which still, wouldn't change how I feel about the situation. Transgender is not the issue, diaracial is.

3. White women will have more privilege than a black man. A white gay man will have more privilege than a gay Asian man. A white transwoman will have more privilege than a native transwoman. Gender is a large barrier between privilege or not, and that privilege is further divided up by race. White people are not perfect, they face their rounds of insults and stereotypes for being white, but that doesn't stop the fact that they have more privilege nonetheless. Men face our rounds of insults and stereotypes for being men, but that doesn't stop the fact that we do have more privilege. This level of privilege is unjust, but it is still there.

3a. This is not me saying that only white people can be diaracial. This is me stating a rew facts about racism and sexism. You cannot compare race and gender. Race and gender can play hand in hand, ie, a woman of colour. A woman of colour will face more oppression than the men of their race. Women of colour will also face more oppression than women who have more racial privilege. A person of any race can be racist. People of a race can be racist towards people of their own race. Men can be pro-toxic masculinity. Women can be anti-feminist. Etc.

4. Race can come connected to culture, religion, politics, history, racism, nationality, etc. There is no "women culture" or "men culture"- and if there is, there's a high possibility that they are gendered stereotypes. Racial and ethnic culture is important. It's a connection to your history, where you come from, how people like you celebrate, foods of high intense flavour. You can appreciate a country, their religion and culture, without bastardising it. If you are not born with a connection and/or raised with a connection, that is not your connection to speak on, or speak over, or speak as.

My gender is something that pretty much anyone has the ability to experience. My race and culture is not.

Edit: The fact that you are trying to make me pro-diaracial because I see no problem with being a transgender person is a manipulation tactic BTW. "You support x so you have to support y or else you don't really support x" is a manipulation tactic. The fact that you need to defend diaracial/transid in that way says something; you can only get non-diaracial people to support diaracial's appropriation of their race through manipulating them. Do better. Saying someome is "recycling an argument" is not an argument or a statement. If you believe I am recycling an argument recycle the counter-argument in return.

#anti transid #anti transrace #anti transx #anti ​diaracial #transrace discourse #anti transracial

[clockworksteel]

Well, if one of my goals this year is to try to sort out my gender further, let's at least start with my current ideas.

Definition

I'd previously tried to define what a gender even is to me, (https://clockworksteel.tumblr.com/post/695061189249712128/i-guess-part-of-why-im-so-unsure-of-my-own-gender) over a year ago, but missed one important point when I said "If I had to try to define gender, I’d say it’s an analogy for what someone is like." That is, I didn't mention that my understanding of analogies is that they're good at explaining a limited part of something, but are never literally the thing. As is said in software development, "all abstractions are leaky abstractions".

That is, as soon as you get outside of what's intended by bringing up the analogy, it ceases to be useful. The bus analogy in Super Mario Bros speedrunning is great for explaining "frame rules" which result from code that takes a player to the next level every multiple of 12 frames if the current level has been beaten, and make it the case that going faster in a level only helps the end time if a player can catch the next earlier frame rule, like catching an earlier bus. The bus analogy in Super Mario Bros speedrunning is bad for explaining that frame rules aren't randomly late or early, and that there's no other way to move to the next level so you have to wait (there's no 'car' of going to the next level because you're not just trying to traverse physical space). Computer code isn't a bus so it will be unlike a bus in some ways.

Similarly, the analogy of "what if you had to pay spoons to do things?" is great for explaining that there is a lasting loss of energy that is just as permanent (at least for the day) as giving up a physical object. You might even be able to extend the analogy by thinking about spoons dropping out of pockets sometimes or something like might happen with a physical object you're carrying more than 10 of. It's less good for explaining that you can't just buy more energy whenever you run out.

So I'm still at "A gender is whatever someone intends it to be". It might include one's aesthetic, one's personality, one's role in a relationship, or none of those things. However, people aren't personifications of words, so something will always be missing even if the most fitting gender possible is chosen. This way of looking at things can provide useful results in separating gender from sex and in understanding that xenogenders mean something. However, this way of thinking definitely has some limits and is also certainly not how everyone looks at it. It's simply my best attempt for myself. The biggest limitation at the moment is that using it for my own gender would require already knowing exactly what I want to express. It doesn't provide any sort of framework for experimentation or enough of a theory to make predictions.

I'm not exactly sure how to resolve all that, but it's my understanding not everyone needs to define gender to determine theirs.

"Masks"

Stepping away from definitions for a moment, because they're not doing anything useful, I remembered seeing the idea that trying genders is like trying masks, and thought that it might help to take inventory of my "masks". Though I personify these in the descriptions a little, to be clear, I'm not a system. Also, I've never actually gone by half these names.

"Joseph": the default male/AGAB mask. It's still useful but isn't exactly fun. Physically presents in casual clothes with little care put into appearance, and will wear formal clothes when necessary but doesn't like it.

"Clyceer" and other internet names: The gamer mask. They/them or he/him pronouns (some bios only list they/them, but it's inconsistent and the changes were generally done quietly so he/him is still accepted). Borrows a physical form from the previous active mask but would prefer not to have one. Simply plays games and is cool while doing it (ideally). Can be rather cold to things that aren't real people, but won't really go out of their way to be mean to fictional beings either.

"Alice": The feminine mask. Used privately from Sept 2022 to Nov 2022. I felt more motivated with this one, but it seems to require more belief in possibility than I've had for a long time. Her ideal self is probably being the stereotypical healer in a fantasy world: not necessarily in the spotlight, but useful and kind. It feels like with this one appearance is more important, but the ideal is also unreachable while maintaining the other masks. For one, she's afraid that, as the head of household, there could be a rather awkward encounter if someone were to come to the door. Would like a couple more dresses, a purse, and a necklace anyway, though. Also really misses having hair long enough for hair clips, but mom wanted to cut it while I was visiting for Christmas and decided on a buzz cut in the dead of winter.

"Kayra": A gender neutral mask that may have been an attempt at making "Alice" not require as much belief in possibility. Tries to be a little feminine, but isn't willing to take things quite as far. Frequently wears a grey t-shirt dress with sweat pants, but not the flower-print lounge dress.

Other Notes

I've also been writing any notable gender-related thoughts/events I've had over the last month and kept them with my new year's goal notes. I don't think I'll share them all publicly (interested mutuals who have me on Discord can ask there), but here are a couple: -Jan 17: Remarked to someone that, while I have a lot of dreams where I get anxious about my parents finding out I have dresses, I don't have many about just enjoying gender. That does match my experience in real life though: Haven't been a gender enjoyer lately. -Jan 24: Thought that my trans situation is kinda like playing Murder Trivia Party and you know the answer but don't have the finger that lets you choose it anymore, so I'm just going with the closest option I can still choose in case I was wrong anyway. I've never even played Murder Trivia Party. Not entirely sure why the situation feels like that.

Maybe what I need now is to RP another lady. And to voice train in case the RP group ever does a voice call.

#clockwork-gender

[9mt7vcoec0snpczpztn9m5foxwjtis2p]

Like im at a point where socially I've pretty much detransitioned except to a core friend group that I don't see irl. Almost all my irls just see me as my agab again. I still do little validating things that people can't see but I can feel, and it hurts a bit less now. I still cry about it every other day but it's more tolerable than when I was trying to transition and getting resistance and hate for it

#trans tag

[zomaeliet]

Sometimes I wonder if my gender dysphoria comes from the stigma I always felt surrounding my AGAB, like being born as a female was somehow gross and made me less than.

Having a uterus made me feel dirty, and that enjoying makeup, frilly clothes, the color pink, or anything "traditionally feminine" made me pathetic.

I'm finding comfort and joy in my gender, in my body, and how they are connected yet also completely separate, and it's up to me how I present myself, how I adorn my body because that's what it is, MY body, my first home, what should have been my first love that was taken away from me.

I love how strong my legs are, I love my broad shoulders, my wide hips, and my fat arms, I love my face, my curls, and I'm learning to love more of me with each passing day. I still don't love having a uterus, I still feel a disconnect from my sex, but I know that I'm becoming proud of it every step of the way.

I know that being born this way can be beautiful, and I want that beauty for myself and I want to feel secure in my identity and I'm getting there, and I hope everyone can find themselves through whatever process they deem fit - my queer friends, you're beautiful and amazing in whatever body you have and/or whatever one you are working towards.

#queer #lgbtqplus #lgbtqia #lgbtqia+ #queer stuff #nonbinary #lgbt #happy pride 🌈 #pride month #gender identity #gender #gender discussion #queer community #queer gender #afab nb #afab dysphoria #afab gender neutral

[0ceansodaz]

My Neopronouns + Gender Pool

HI HI !! So I wanted to make a blog post here that explains my Neos and Xenos I am genderfluid and so my identity shifts from time to time. Primarily with Oceanic themes and with Tidalgender involved with my gender identity. I want to give credit to @xeno-aligned @aquariclione @soporine and @squidgoric for the description and terms of some of these! With that now out of the way let's start with some pronouns before I show you around my gender reef! NOTE: I MAY BE ADDING OR REMOVING FROM THIS LIST AS TIME GOES ON AND HOW I FEEL ABOUT MYSELF AND MY IDENTITY!! THANKS! PRONOUNS Shey/Shem/Sheir/Shemself (PRIMARY) Epi/epipel/epipelagic She/Her/Herself (USE LESS) They/Them/Their/Themself (USE LESS) Tide/Tidal/Tidalself Splash/Splish/Splosh/Splishself Oce/Ocem/Oces/Oceanself 🌺/🌺s/🌺self

GENDER REEF Oceanic: An alignment to the ocean (unspecified if it’s a gender alignment or an orientation alignment), for nonbinary & aro- and/or acespec people. Aquarine: Similar to soporine and kenochoric, it is an umbrella term surrounding the themes of aquatics, the ocean, water, marine life, and anything related. It is not a xenogender, nor is it xenic, xenine, or XIN!

Laprasgender: A pokegender subtype connected to the pokemon lapras. Tidalgender: Similar to the tides of an ocean, tidalgender is a gender that rises and falls in intensity every few hours, days, weeks, months, or even years. The lower levels of tidalgender are called low (gender) while the higher levels are called high (gender), so for example you could say you feel like you’re high stargender, or low demiboy, or even high genderflux and low genderfluid simultaneously. Oppoquigender: A (multi)gender term related to identifying as your agab partially, but in a completely different or queer way. Reefgender: Has characteristics of Coralgender, however, it does not feel sharp or pointy. Reefgender feels safe, home-like, and comforting rather than a hardened protective barrier. Reefgender, like Coralgender, enjoys harboring other genders within it. Reefgender is a surface oceanic gender and rarely consists of having characteristics of the abyss or deep sea. (coined by myself, f2u for anyone else interested!)

#trans pride #gender coining #mogai positivity #mogai label #mogai gender #xenogender #neopronouns #transgender #genderfluid #trans

[worms-in-my-brain]

You know, I’ve never seen anyone talk about how traumatising gender dysphoria can be. I still have nightmares where I wake up and I’m my AGAB again.

I already had shit going on as a kid, but gender dysphoria that I didn’t know how to recognise didn’t really help. Looking in the mirror, seeing yourself, and then dissociating heavily for the rest of the day isn’t the best way for your mind to develop (and probably contributed to my development of a dissociation disorder as an adult).

Crying every night because you can’t touch your own body without breaking down, not being able to sleep because you can feel your body being wrong, cutting yourself off from everyone because you’re uncomfortable with the way people see you and you don’t know why, suppressing your emotions because you can’t stop feeling this all encompassing feeling of your skin not fitting you correctly, and just so many other things…

There’s a reason trans kids who are denied transition (I mainly mean social transition here, but medical transition is also often necessary) have such a high suicide rate. Being trans and having severe and untreated dysphoria is torture (NB: being trans isn’t torture, and you don’t need dysphoria to be trans. This only applies to a portion of trans people and is largely reflective of my own experiences).

Even if you have supportive parents… even if you’re that 1 in 1000 trans person whose parents are high-key allies and let them go on hormone blockers as a teen… if you dealt with dysphoria, it can still suck.

And, to me, this is one of the reasons we need to support each other as trans people. If I didn’t have people online who knew what I was going through and who I could joke with about it, I might not be here right now.

I might make a follow-up to this later when I’m less exhausted… one that talks about the other side of the coin: euphoria, and finding happiness in being trans. I like talking about that a lot more. In the end, I think being trans is much more that than it is anything I’ve written here. But my pain in the past defines how I respond to things now. I’m so happy for trans people whose stories are different, but for me, my pain is part of my picture. I guess that’s why I wanted to write this. Thanks for reading :)

#trans #transgender #trauma #dysphoria #truscum and transmeds FUCK OFF #just cause I’m talking about dysphoria doesn’t mean you’re invited to the convo #:)

[knife-at-a-knife-fight]

It’s a fun genderfluid moment when you have no clue how you’re feeling in the gender department, but something happens and you just go “oh. OH. oh ho ho! not that. Fuck that. That’s wrong.”

It’s a process of elimination and rarely does enough happen to get down to the bottom of it, but as much as things can be very gender, they can be very not gender, too. 

“thank you, miss.” NO. “miss” ain’t it. Not a miss today, I want to crawl out of my skin after hearing it. 

“excuse me, sir.” NOPE, that ain’t it either. Surely you’re not talking to me, because I am not a “sir.” 

“as they were saying...” they? me? I am not a they, I am most certainly not a they in any form. 

And the not knowing doesn’t bother me, usually. But others perceiving me does. I don’t blame any of them, no one means any harm in any way. But while I sit content in my ambiguity, others come to conclusions that I do not control. I am more than fine in a limbo space, but even if you tell someone “I don’t really know what gender I align with,” they will more often than not want a way to refer to you. There’s nothing evil or malicious in that. But they want something that I cannot give them. 

And the inconsistency of it all does make it worse, in my opinion. Coming out to people is often rather difficult unless they are the same (or a similar) brand of queer as you or VERY well read on queer topics. Even if they are supportive, even if they mean well, it ends up being  “what pronouns should I use for you?” “well it varies” “how can I tell when I should use which ones?” “you can’t.”

what am I supposed to do? Short of sending out a mass text every time the wind changes direction and live tweeting my gender, I’m stuck in a space where people who know I’m genderfluid still REALLY only know me as my AGAB, they only use the pronouns socially expected of my AGAB. 

It’s disheartening and demoralising when I read in a group chat that someone is referring to me by the only name they know me to have on a day where I don’t connect with that name in the slightest. But I know that if I say anything, then they probably won’t use it again. And while being well intentioned, I know that that will lead to me feeling bad about it on a day where that is the name I connect with. 

I don't want to be constantly explaining, but that means that I will be consistently misgendered. 

Really, I would like for others to not want to categorise me as much as they seem to. I don’t want to be left in a single box, and I don’t want to be jumping between boxes all the time. I want there to not be boxes - or better yet, I want the boxes to be less important. I don’t want it to be such a big deal. Because while people are trying to organise everyone into their nice little boxes, I lay here on my mound of cardboard after having pulled the sides off of all the boxes, and later I’ll cut up and use the torn rectangles to form a singular rhombicosidodecahedron to my liking. 

How do you categorise something that our language wasn’t designed to communicate? How do you label me when labels don’t hold space for variation and the constant flow of change? How do you define something that won’t be the same by the time you’ve worked out how to word it?

Cardboard boxes aren’t meant to hold fluids. Fluids seep through and destroy the integrity of the box as a whole. Fluid can’t be contained by paper, no matter its form. 

None of this is to say that I am in any way confused. More often than not, I know who I am and how I feel. Rather, this is all to say that I wish this was easier to communicate to others. I wish there was a way for them to understand how I feel in any given moment without me having to write a dissertation to explain it. Short of getting into the difference between gyana and vidya, what I want is to be understood in the way that I understand myself. 

Sadly, I’m not sure that’s possible. So for now, I will accept confusing explanations and consistently being misgendered no matter what option they go with as the best I can currently get. 

#genderfluid #lgbt #lgbtq #queer #little gay rant #mine

[floridabaiter]

the cornerstone of self-idolization and lack of self-preservation: our ex-twt stan + has a cc as a sibling rant

preface: my system joined mcyttwt a while back (i can't remember exact times due to personal reasons) and it genuinely contributed to the downfall and spiral of our mental health in the past year. especially from my perspective as a protecter alter, i saw the brunt of things that stressed us to the point of detriment. our sibling has half a million followers on some platforms (not mcyt) and we have seen firsthand through him how pressure from online can affect ccs. (we will not be speaking on his experience as they probably do not want us to publically.) also sorry if this is a little incoherent we had a seizure this morning- this is just to get everything off our chest.

DEHUMANIZATION + STANDARDS:

b4 i start here's the dictionary definition of dehumanization: "transitive verb. : to deprive (someone or something) of human qualities, personality, or dignity: such as. a : to subject (someone, such as a prisoner) to inhuman or degrading conditions or treatment "… you treat people with respect, you get respect back." + heres smth from brenebrown.com "Maiese defines dehumanization as “the psychological process of demonizing the enemy, making them seem less than human and hence not worthy of humane treatment.” Dehumanizing often starts with creating an enemy image."

the dehumanization of content creators on mcyttwt is disgusting. they are placed on pedestals and expected to walk on eggshells when creating their own content and writing THEIR OWN tweets and messages- they are expected to drop FRIENDS over what teenagers on twitter who don't know them personally thought of them. they were expected to respond to death-threats and criticism and harassment with a big smile and an apology for whatever they did. they are people who are not treated as people by stan twitter- they are treated as higher-than while simultaneously lesser-than when they are normal people who make mistakes. this is not okay. having interpersonal relationships + making mistakes & learning from them are basic parts of life that these content creators are being stripped of by twitter's cesspool of a community and it's so blatant and disgusting that they are faced with daily swarms of harassment for simply making mistakes + making friends + having lives while making content.

(side-note: another form of dehumanization is the fact that twitter consistently strips people of their privacy and private lives. cc or not you are expected to put everything about yourself out there [face included ie: selfie day] and that's blatantly unsafe for minors and adults alike. the way they dig into personal histories and pasts and relationships while simultaneously preaching "respect boundaries" is disgusting and deplorable.)

twitter's policy of "i stan this person, i like their content" while simultaneously harassing the ones that they claim to enjoy content from is confusing at best. it is detrimental to any cc's health. the villianization of ccs is fucking ridiculous.

WHITE SAVIORS:

coming from a poc person, twitter has a rampant disgusting problem with white saviors 👍🏼. i don't even need to get into it, everyones seen it and you all know. also i'm not even getting into how mcyttwt treats mexicans 👍🏼 i'm not your little maraca drug cartel "ayyy man" meow meow, emily.

white people on twitter: we are not your toy for activism. we are not yours to use to excuse your harassment of real people. fuck you. shut up. let us speak for ourselves and uplift our voices when we ask. (also stop with the "ugh 🙄 white people" shit. we're talking about you ❤️.)

PERFORMATIVE ACTIVISM:

twitter preaches to not be performaitve in lifting up voice and then is preformaitve.

there's countless threads that are out there just for clicks and likes (ie. "things not to say to a trans person" *states the most obvious shit like 'don't call them their agab'*) for fucking popularity. it's all the time, people chase clout under the guise of pretending to care about minorities. it's sickening, especially when they bring race or ethnicity into these threads for their ""activism"".

MISOGYNY:

twitter's gender bias is again, blatant.

female ccs will call out the same behaviors male ccs get praised for calling out and will get degraded and put down and have their name trending under "[name] neg //" for hours after the tweet is sent, they'll be harassed for days afterward and shamed. their bodies will be judged by fucking randoms who have no place saying anything (women aren't objects!). they get shit for the same thing male ccs do with no consequences. it's disgusting, it's blatant, and it's not being talked about or addressed.

PERSONAL AFFECTS:

it never allowed for enjoying content. it was contestant stressful pressure to keep up with every minute and miniscule detail of what a cc did, constantly choosing sides and never being allowed to speak outside of what the collective group on twitter thought. having an opinion other than "this is wrong and should be the downfall of this human person" was not allowed. there was an issue every day, we felt like we couldn't say we enjoyed anything without someone coming in our dms like "um.. did you know [insert something mildly problematic]... you should delete that post about liking them." and god forbid when "cc neg //" would trend because everyone couldn't maturely move on from something that wasn't a big deal. twitter has made my system SPLIT NEW ALTERS because of the stress and obligation we felt to keep up with every minute detail. (albeit we are polyfrag and prone to splitting, and our co-host at the time was an emotionally volatile dream introject during a very dream-critical time. that still doesn't excuse the toxic environment that caused the splits in the first place :|.)

what twitter does to people- especially ccs, is unsafe and unpleasant at best and traumatizing at worst. these people need to grow the up, put on their big boy pants and realize that not everything is about them.

all of this is off the top of my head too :| we've been waiting to rant about this since we got ON twitter. this doesn't even scratch the surface of the abelism and babying of ND ppl or people with disabilities + the other horrid shit that happens on that app.

tl;dr twitter touch fucking grass and do it FAST holy shit. please go outside and talk to people. get a job. read a book. do some math or something idk.

#rant #vent #i guess #cw negative #twitter talk #009post #long post #cw Twitter critical #cw critical #sorry i just really needed to get this off my chest. like badly #ask to tag

[cipheramnesia]

This is a combination vent/semi anonymous coming out, and you don't have to post it, I understand why people would be hesitant to. I'm 18 years old, when I was 15 I got taken from a very queer friendly city to a small town in the most Republican county in my state. I came out to my friends and mom as enby when I was 16. I thought I was an enby girl, I had internalized a lot of radfem rhetoric and was ashamed of my own masculinity and manhood, then a soft trans boi, and trans man, and now which is "I'm pretty positive I'm genderfluid and/or multigender" but, even then, my experiences with gender, dysphoria, and euphoria are almost always unorthodox. I was assigned female at birth, I want to be a [feminine gender], but I feel like I was born in the wrong body, I relate most to and feel at ease with identity terms used by trans women.

Everyone tells me I'm cis and just have body dysphoria, or that im misinterpreting my own feelings, that im actually just a feminine trans man, that I'm a mogai snowflake, a crypto terf, a radfem, transmisogynistic, fetishistic, an invader, hell, that I'm playing into the "transphobic born in the wrong body narrative," that I must see trans women as men or as still being their agab because of this (I dont, its exclusively a me thing that agab has anything to do with it). But my experience with my body, and my own conceptualization of my gender, my womanhood, my femininity, is not cis. I have never aligned with the kind of womanhood assigned to me, I have never related fully to the girls and women in my life, my girlhood was wrong, when people look at me and call me she it feels Wrong because I know they dont see Me. And even if I were born male, I would still be trans, more comfortable and less conflicted probably, but still trans, I would probably still transition, I would still have dysphoria and euphoria but I would be able to call myself a trans woman. Even my own transition feels wrong because I'll be going on testosterone.

My friends support me, but they're not transfem, and I want so badly to reach out to trans women and transfem communities because I read posts and I see pictures and I relate and im jealous and I hate it, I'm so bitter and I dont want to be, I just, I feel like I'll never be able to live authentically and have people accept me in cis or trans society. I know why the idea of an "afab trans woman" sets off red flags, I know terfs and transmeds alike took that and bastardized it to hurt people, I hate them for doing that. I was so excited to find people like me for the first time when I learned what circumgender was, only to realize there just how people felt about my experiences. I recloseted myself, I've forced myself into other boxes, I've made myself a more acceptable flavor of trans, but it doesnt work and it doesnt go away, I used to be so naive but now I'm starting to feel suicidally depressed over it and I'm so scared people are going to hate me, they already do. No one understands, and that's what they tell me, that I cant be a trans woman because I'll never experience what it is to be a "real trans woman," but they dont understand everything about my experiences either, that goes both ways but no one is willing to take me at face value and focus on similarities instead. I'm so alone, and I'm so tired, and every day im reminded with this tme shit, this "only x can call themselves y" shit, how much I dont fit.

I want to be seen as a trans woman, I want to be clocked as genderqueer in a transfem way, and I know the dangers, I know the risks many trans women dont want that come with being visible, and people tell me im appropriating trans womens struggles, that I have a choice and they dont, but it's not a choice for me, and no one seems to understand that. And when I say I want to look visibly transfem people think I have a transphobic idea of a what a trans woman looks like, that's not true, I only know what I would want to look like if I was one. I used to use those words, but more and more these labels became segregated, and I get it, the biggest defense I've noticed is that people with very specific experiences need to be able to find each other, and broadening what "trans woman" or "transfem" means makes that harder but, are all transfem experiences the same? Is that more important than my ability to live comfortable and authentically? Maybe it is, honestly. I don't know how to feel anymore, thank you for your time, sorry for dumping all this in your ask box.

It sounds like you're going through a lot of complicated gender things right now. Let me just start at the top with the two salient points I plan to explain in detail, the tldr if you will.

First, gender is a fuck. I'm never going to enforce someone into or out of gender boundaries. Gender does not break into identifiable components in ways that matter. Your lived experience is what you have, and should be acceptable for others.

That said, second, "circumgender" seems to originate with transphobes, terfs, etc. For this reason, I would encourage you to forge a path away from the specific term. I won't insist something like "afab people cannot have any trans feminine gender experience." Only that you should separate this lived experience from an idea proposed by a hate group.

Third, which I say a lot but I wanna say again - I'm not the queer police. I am, if anything, fumbling my way through all the gender and sex and stuff as blindly as anyone else. I have a book of matches for light, but I'm still mostly in the dark.

Okay, now that we have the article summary, I'll try and go into some discussion and hopefully it will be of use. Where I want to start is with the current state of the gender which is... question mark? Gender has become increasingly nebulous because all the components we use to categorize can, to greater or lesser degrees, be separated from definitional absolutes. Everything from genetics to hormones to clothes and social roles does not have a clear, definitive binary gender distinction. Good.

This also means more people are aware that gender as a "man/woman" experience exclusively is not correct - gender can be experienced in an extremely diverse way. Consequently there's something of an awakening of people realizing they've never really fit into male or female genders. It has created a free space to explore the self via gender, but the same free space can be confusing, particularly if you haven't felt as if any of the particular orbits of gender feel correct for you.

And you know, like anyone trying to figure out where they belong, you can get sucked in by people offering easy answers, which is a radfem deal, which it kinda sounds like what you went through. It also does sound like you're experiencing more than a single isolated particular gender, to me, and while I don't want to say "don't be this gender" I don't want to shove you into a feminine category if you feel like you have other aspects to your gender. For the "variations in gender" in addition to the more general nonbinary there's also genderfluid, genderpunk, genderflux, bigender, and good old genderfuck - plus more.

Or, to put it another way, it sounds like in the space of exploring gender, you've been pushed around a lot and feel discouraged from trying to explore any kind of masculine or feminine feelings, or even seeing what neither one might be. This is all really abstract, for which I apologize. Like I said, I'm also feeling my way trying to understand gender stuff.

But altogether, some further internal consideration might be in order, maybe even see if you have any way to secure help from a therapist who has experience with more than just a gender binary? I know not everyone has this option, but consider it, if you can.

On the side of wanting to read as trans feminine, that's, as they say, complicated. Some people read saying "born in the wrong body" as a problem but I'm kinda whatever on that. I know people who have that experience, I know me who never did, it's different for everyone.

The issue with wanting to look trans femme, I think, is that there's not like... a specific look. I honestly could not say what it means to look trans feminine. I don't want to throw out examples but there is really no end to the scale of how trans femme people look.

This is also illustrative in a practical way of why "circumgender" as a term is more in the realm of transphobic than useful identity. It's kind of the opposition to the whole current thing with gender, which is that taxonomic or absolute classification doesn't exist. It says "I have defined and identified what a trans woman is, independent of trans women generally, and I am that."

The more inclusive and open experience of trans women is more like "I can identify that I am not cis, and my gender is a binary woman, or trans woman." I know this seems a bit like hair splitting, but one of the approaches for exclusion is to draw a line around something (eg, Woman) and then declare things which are excluded from it based on internal prejudice, systemic oppression, social mores, etc etc.

So, moving back to having a trans feminine feeling, I guess what I'm saying is that if gender is pretty nebulous, and trans femme can look like a lot of different things - it's not a question of what you can and can't do with your gender as much as it is that what you feel affinity for something that does not itself have any defining traits? This has nothing to do with afab or whatever, more that you've got a bit of a moving target.

This is good, because it means for one you can explore a larger understanding of trans women's experiences - get a good handle on how many different ways we have of doing or being a gender just on that single category of binary gender alone.

And also it means you can see the convergences of "not cis" and "feminine" through the lens of something that doesn't require one specific way of doing the feminine.

So I guess what I'd conclude with is to think about other ways to articulate your gender that don't require predetermination of the gender of someone else. You have a good amount to start with - "feminine but not cis, affinity for masculine, but in a feminine way (if I understood correctly)."

Some of this is probably a bit off the mark of what you are trying to deal with, but I hope it generally or overall is useful to think about.

#cipheramnesia #long post #discourse #transgender

[henshengs]

About Rule 63 fanworks

I was asked yesterday to elaborate on my genderbend opinions, as a trans person, which I’m happy to do, and I’ve thought about it a bit today to make sure I’m not saying something off the cuff and not thought through. Still, this is a sensitive, complicated topic, and I’m open to discussion on it.

This also got long, so I’m putting it under a cut.

So, obviously I can’t speak for all trans people. No minority group is a monolith in our opinions and this is particularly the case for the transgender community because our experiences are so very diverse and individual.

I am very rarely hurt or offended by genderbends/genderswaps/rule 63 fanworks. I know people for whom this is not the case, and I believe the pain involved is very real. The thing is... living in this world is inherently kinda painful when you’re trans. This world’s not built for us. All kinds of random things can cause me pain throughout my day. Store mannequins. My own reflection. Lesbian poetry. Pictures of other trans people. When something triggers my dysphoria or feelings of alienation, I have to stop, acknowledge the feeling, and then consider whether the thing is, outside of hurting me, contributing to the ignorance of and hatred of people like me by its very existence.

I don’t think the basic act of asking, “What if this character who is a cis man, was a cis woman instead?” does that. I think if anything, it opens the door to then ask “what if he was a trans man? Or a trans woman? Or nonbinary?”

Asking “what if this story was about a cis woman” lets cis women talk about their experiences and see themselves in stories, something I think is valuable! and also can lead to stories exploring sexism and misogyny, things which affect all trans people too!

In the rest of this post I’m going to use the terms “rule 63″ and “genderswap” to refer to the act of creating a fanwork changing a cis/presumed cis man to a cis or not-specified-to-be-trans woman, because this is the vast majority of the work under that label, because most fictional heroes and iconic characters are cis men, and because people who create cis man->trans woman or cis woman->trans man content, in my experience, usually use terms like “trans headcanon” instead.

(A lot of rule 63 fanworks don’t explicitly specify that the now-female character is cis. We can presume that most artists aren’t even thinking about the possibility of the character being trans, but we can presume that for 99.99% of all art, anywhere. It’s not a unique evil of rule 63.)

The claims that rule 63 is inherently transphobic, rather than just something where it’s good to be extra careful to avoid transphobia, as far as I’ve seen, use two arguments: A) that making the character a cis woman is wasting an opportunity to make them a trans person, and this is transphobic, and B) that rule 63 fan art is gender essentialist and cissexist, because it ties gender to physical characteristics.

Argument A doesn’t hold up for me, 

because couldn’t one then say that reimagining an abled white cis character as an abled white trans woman is racist and ableist? that reimagining them as an abled trans woman of color is ableist? No transformative reimagining can cover every identity. We say “write what you know” and talk about Own Voices, and that includes cis women who want to write about the experience they know. 

It’s also not fair to tell trans people that we must always think about trans experiences, even in our fiction. A lot of the time we don’t want to have to write or think about dysphoria and discrimination and we want to live in the heads of cis characters or even just characters whose AGAB is not mentioned! 

And it is also, imo, not a great idea to pressure people who may not be educated about trans experiences to write about trans characters just because they want to explore sexism or write about lesbians. 

many, many trans people first begin exploring their gender identity through creating cis rule 63 content, because it’s ‘safer’ than directly engaging with trans content.

With argument B, I agree that a lot of rule 63 art looks like this

and this sucks. To me, though, it’s important that it’s not the genderswap aspect that makes it suck. Artists who do this are also designing original characters with sexist, gender essentialist designs. Artists who don’t draw sexist art in general, also don’t draw sexist rule 63.

(yes, I know She-Hulk is not a rule 63 of regular Hulk. But you guys know the kind of art I’m talking about.)

I’ve also noticed a genre of fanfic that’s like, “if these characters were girls, they’d be sensible and conflict avoidant and none of the plot would happen!” or “what if these violent, tragic male characters were Soft Lesbians who braided each others’ hair” and again, I assume these authors write canonical women the same way. The genderswap part isn’t the bad part, the sexism is. 

Non-sexist rule 63 actually, in my opinion, fights gender essentialism and cissexism. When a character is exactly the same except for the ways a gender essentialist world has shaped and pressured them based on their AGAB, that’s a strong statement on the constructed nature of gender! 

But the argument that making /any/ change is gender essentialist, is... I understand where it’s coming from. I am a trans person who presents androgynously and I am a hypervisible freak because of it. I would love to live in a society where visible gender markers weren’t a thing! Unfortunately, we don’t live in that society. We live in one where we are constantly under pressure to conform to one of two profiles. There are almost no gender non conforming male characters in popular media. And changing a gender conforming cis man into a gender conforming cis woman seems to me to be a neutral action at worst. Not to mention characters from historical canons, who would be under a ton of pressure to conform. 

For physical body type characteristics... 65% of all speaking roles in Hollywood are cis and male. It’s harder to get statistics on other forms of media, but it’s undeniable that overall, most stories are told about cis men who do not have breasts or wide hips. Changing the story to be about a cis woman who has those features is introducing more diversity! 

I typed “rule 63″ and “genderswap” into the tumblr search bar today, and I saw a lot of art of women with a variety of aesthetics and body shapes and characteristics, who looked like people I’d see out at the mall.

Again, I sure do wish we lived in a post gender society. But we don’t, and in our society, everyone, myself included, looks at a picture of a person and gender categorizes them based on appearance. It is not wrong for someone to draw “Geralt the Witcher as a hot butch woman” and give her some physical markers generally agreed upon to denote ‘butch woman’ rather than ‘gender conforming man’ to tell the viewer that that is what they have drawn. Just as it is not wrong to draw “my OC who is a hot butch woman who fights monsters” and give her those markers. 

Finally, both arguments against genderswaps are, in my opinion, flawed because they implicitly posit the act of creating fanworks of the original, cis male gender conforming character design, as neutral. I think this is incorrect. I think that if you’re going to argue that drawing a cis male character as a cis woman is transphobic, you have to also argue that drawing the character as a cis man is transphobic. But I’ve only seen people do this when a trans headcanon becomes extremely popular in a fandom.

Again, I’m just one person. I’m also biased, because firstly, as I mentioned, rule 63 doesn’t usually trigger my dysphoria; secondly, I almost always come down on the side of “don’t limit what people can explore in fiction; ask them to explore it more sensitively or with more content warnings instead.” 

I definitely encourage creators to seek out and listen to a variety of trans opinions. But this is mine: I love rule 63, I make a lot of it myself, and I think if no one created it we’d lose something awesome. 

At the end of the day, what I really want is more trans content*, but I’d rather have cis rule 63 than just stories about cis men. 

Also: I personally have nothing against the terms genderswap or genderbend. I don’t think it reinforces the gender binary to acknowledge its existence by saying you’re ‘swapping’ the character from being cis with one AGAB to being cis with the other. But I can definitely see the argument against it, so I don’t blame anyone for going with rule 63 instead.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading; I hope you have a nice day, and have fun creating and consuming the fanworks your heart desires. I’ll end by linking this comic, which is just eternally relevant.

(*by which I mean: trans content created by other trans people, that matches my hyperspecific headcanons, likes and dislikes, and doesn’t set off any of my often changing dysphoria triggers. See what I said at the start, about transgender existence being constantly mildly painful. There are many awesome aspects to being trans! This is one of the less awesome.)

#rule 63