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orkbutch · 4 months

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i am a butch now but i don’t know whether that’s true or not anymore. i want to take T, but at what point am i actually just a trans man? have you question that line in the sand at all yet?

Oh boy.

I can only talk from my perspective on this, others may differ, and thats because "whats the difference between a butch on T and a trans man" is such a new sociological concept that its basically in the very beginnings of its infancy. its SO new, and neither Butch nor Trans Man nor Trans Masc have secure, well established roots as social identities or concepts. It may seem like they do and it may seem like there are rules or lines that are firm, but when you step back, zoom out, and consider them in the context of broader society (and especially compared to the idea of a Man and Woman), they do not. These are social contructs that are actually very early in their construction, and we are doing the constructing like, right now, within this ask.

That said, I can tell you why I don't identify as a trans man fairly easily: I don't care about men or the idea of a man. "Man" as a static concept is like... I don't know what that is. Its almost alien to me.

Now, to ramble that point out:

I have considered if I'm a man throughout my life. The closest I've been to identifying as a man was when I was in a period in my life when I considered that there was at least an aspect of me that was drawn to Manhood. Also, as I came to be read as a man in my public life, i supposed that in social situations when I was being treated as a man and I didn't correct people because I didn't care to, and I even enjoyed it somewhat and leaned into that role, I was essentially Being a Man (socially). So Man came to be a role I found myself in occasionally, and Manhood came to be a vaguely defined something that was intriguing to me.

But these moments of Man Feeling ended up being more like exceptions that proved the rule. Anyone can feel a bit like a man in the right circumstance, because gender isn't static; its something we can and often do play with, and phase through. I feel like music puts me in some heavily gendered spaces, like Everyone has a part of them thats a woman when they're belting along to "I'm Every Woman", yknow. Anyway.

I didn't feel like a man that much. I didn't feel like a woman that much either. I felt like a butch more frequently, because when I do things that indulged my masculinity, when I'm consumed by my love and attraction to femininity, when I think about the queers that I admire most, I felt butch, and was drawn to butches and interesting queer women. Leslie Feinberg, Frida Kahlo, Nancy Grossman, Patricia Highsmith, leather dykes and femme pro-doms, transgender queens... I've just never been that drawn to the experience of being a man. I've never been interested in men, frankly. Every man I've admired has been very much despite being men. Sufjan Stevens, Clive Barker, David Lynch, David Cronenberg, John Waters... great and usually queer artists whose gender is irrelevant because I like their work. The only man in that list who I have some personal affection for is Sufjan Stevens. He is an angel.

If I'm going to be a gender, its going to be the gender I admire. That I aspire to. I don't aspire to any man. Perhaps I aspire to a kind of body or a kind of masculinity, and sometimes men do that, but thats just a lack of other non-man representations of the thing I like. When I see in butches, it feels like a depiction of Me. Also WOW do I So Not feel like a man when I'm with my lovers. Sometimes I feel a bit like a man when I'm in a certain headspace while domming or if I'm having the rare T4T(masc) dalliance, but I feel very dyky when I'm with femmes. I just don't FEEL manhood. And I don't really care for man. Edit: I will say, there is a kind of Queer Man Masculinity that I definitely admire and aspire to, like that depicted by Tom of Finland or various other usually kinky gay art. But again, I don't see the Man part as important - its the masculinity. Btw, imo, there is no line in the sand as far as transition stuff. I'm very dysphoric about my body and that's never been about how I'm seen by others; it's my comfort in my own skin, and doesn't change my indifference to men or manhood. and that is my butch vs trans man ramble

#ask #trans things

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i-need-some-advice-on · 27 days

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I need some advice on if I should encourage my partner to transition.

Okay, so I'm in a longterm, committed relationship with my partner. My partner can be best described as a closeted trans woman, but they have essentially decided that its "too late" for them to transition, they can never pass as a woman, etc, so they might as well live as a man. (As a side note they are comfortable with they/them atm)

Reasons why I feel like "closeted trans woman" is the best label for them:

1. They bring up their disphoria frequently, usually they have at least one depressive episode per month lasting around a week. The episodes are focused around "I would be happier with myself as a woman".

2. All of their OCs are women, every time they have a chance to express themselves via a character, it's a woman, and it makes them really happy.

3. Doing some traditionally femme stuff makes them temporarily happy, but is usually soon dashed against the rocks of disappointment when they start feeling like they look too masculine while doing it. (E.g. wearing femme clothes)

When I discovered this facet of theirs, I was essentially immediately encouraging of experimenting with femininity and accepting of them. However, all experiments ended with Point #3 where they thought they looked too masculine by the end of the experiment and got really disappointed and hurt.

After years of these swings between trying to "perform" as a man and experimenting with femininity, they came to a conclusion they could never be a woman who passes, and they should stop trying. I unfortunately see where they're coming from - they're extremely tall, very strongly built, masculine facial structure, receding hairline, and a LOT of body hair. Just to be clear, I find my partner extremely attractive and would continue finding them attractive if they would start transitioning. However, it seems their ideal vision of self is relatively traditionally feminine, and I do see how it would be challenging for them to achieve it with what they have to work with.

I never voiced it out loud, and was always openly supportive of them transitioning, reassuring them I would be attracted to them if they don't pass/look androgynous/look any way whatsoever, and so on.

Rn they seem to have settled on performing as a guy. They seem to be fairly stable emotionally for the last year or so and found an outlet through RP with me and OC development.

Would it be wrong of me if I keep nudging them toward transition thoughts, trying feminine things that make them happy, and so on? Or would I just be reopening a wound?

They say they're okay with being a guy and just living out fantasies, but I don't entierly believe them. Most of our sex life is built on various femininity-adjacent kinks and our OC fiction we work on together revolves around their character who transitions and builds a happier life for herself.

Some additional context:

They were raised very religious and are still dealing with unresolved religious trauma regarding other aspects of themselves.

We are currently in a very queer friendly state.

It's very likely both of our families would cut support to both of us and go no-contact if they transition. However, we plan to become entierly self sufficient within a year, which is when I plan to start bringing up transitioning again IF the general consensus is that it's something I could do without being a massive dick.

Thank you for reading!

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catbountry · 11 months

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This is the third time I am writing this post because I feel like the idea I'm trying to convey keeps slipping away from me as I keep piling on context, and really, all it is... is just making excuses. I held transmed beliefs and questioned the validity of nonbinary gender identities back on Kiwi Farms. Now, I feel like if circumstances were slightly different, I probably would identify as enby.

Honestly.

The only reason I don't is because my feelings towards being a woman are pretty neutral. All of my problems I had in regards to gender growing up was not so much being a girl, but being constantly told by other girls and older women that I was being a girl wrong. Being a woman is perfectly fine with me; it's the sexism and policing of what is acceptable gender expression I have a problem with.

I don't think I can fully identify as queer, even though most of my friends are and I feel like they get me, so I feel perfectly at home. At the end of the day, I am fine with being a woman, and I am exclusively attracted to men. And I hate to say it, but it's cis men and maybe AMAB enbies who are okay with presenting more masculine. I just really, really like dicks. I don't really like vaginas, even though I imagine most people who would look at me and how I dress myself would assume that I am. And I know this, because I have been called homophobic slurs in public.

Is simply being gender nonconforming enough to be queer? I'm not sure, because I don't know if I'd ever be in a relationship that would be in danger because of legislation being passed. I could, however, see myself getting shit for my gender presentation, because I get people trying to clock me as either a trans man at the start of their transition or genderqueer. I'm in a pretty blue state, in a college town, surrounded by a lot of people younger than me who are overall much more accepting than I had been at their age, though, so realistically, I'm probably not in danger of being targeted for possibly being queer. Would that make me queer adjacent, though? I don't fucking know, but at the same time... I feel at home hanging around a bunch of queer folks. One of my friends joked that I'm straight, but I'm pretty gay about it. There are a lot of times where I will feel like one of the only cishet people in a group. Maybe it's because I've refused to give up the general subculture aesthetic and have been wearing graphic tees, ripped jeans and Chuck Taylors since high school, and I'm not going to stop anytime soon. I still get mistaken for being in my 20's so I am going to ride that shit into the ground, baby.

Things have changed a lot. Culture has changed. The internet has changed. I've changed. Everybody's on the goddamn internet now, including a lot of people who seem utterly clueless about its culture and history. I don't have anybody in my circles of friends that would ever identify as "anti-SJW" anymore. There is no debate in any of the circles I'm in on the validity of trans people at all, or nonbinary people. I look to those who I might have either associated with loosely or engaged with their content, and they just seem like they spiraled into increasing extremism, and for many of them, it doesn't seem like it's just to keep the grift going. They're true believers. And a part of me finds it kind of sad, actually, because they're going to just be miserable fucks for the rest of their lives if they keep their current trajectory. The momentum of the trans rights movement is not going to stop. Normies are getting sick of politicians focusing on transgender people. And within the trans community itself, the infighting has pretty much stopped because of just how tight the screws are being turned as conservatives go all out on the last socially acceptable group they can go against. They're being much more blatant about their bigotry in a way that's so flagrant, it would have been unthinkable ten years ago. We've got bigger problems.

Why am I even writing all of this out? I don't know. It's not like these posts are going to show up on Google when people look me up and see "callout" after my username in the suggestions. But it's important to me to map out these thoughts, I suppose, because actually changing means a lot more than grovelling and saying sorry to be accepted by people who wouldn't be willing to hear me out in the first place. I don't even think I fully regret being on Kiwi Farms; I more regret sticking around as long as I did, and if you've been paying attention to me posting about major life events I've been dealing with recently, you may have noticed I kind of have a problem with sticking around toxic people or places out of some misplaced sense of loyalty.

I guess I'm just stubborn.

TL;DR I feel pretty bad about not believing nonbinary identities weren't valid because I feel like I almost kind of sort of feel that? Also trans rights forever and ever,

#tl;dr #not fan fiction #about me #drama #kind of?

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officialpenisenvy · 5 months

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Sorry if this sounds ignorant, but couldn't you just be non-binary or something like that? There are plenty of non-binary lesbians out there

i am nonbinary, in a sense! i definitely perceive myself outside the boundaries of manhood and womanhood, i identify outside of that binary, so by definition i am nonbinary, and i have used the specific label of "nonbinary lesbian" for a handful of years until very recently. right now im a person much less concerned with my interiority and individuality and much more concerned with the place i want to occupy in the world: the fact is i live in a society where it is impossible to exist as anything other than male or female, and as much as i hope to see that change within my lifespan, pragmatically i have to think about how i want to exist in the world, how i want other people to interact with me. i don't care how strangers interact with me, and i enjoy being seen as a man, but i also want to be seen as a lesbian by fellow lesbians, and i want my experience of systematic oppression to be as nonexistent as possible; in a society where i have been assigned female and have to decide whether to remain female or transition to male, being a masculine lesbian woman is the only thing that can give me a level of masculinity, a lesbian dating pool and as little transphobic oppression as possible. if any of these wants were different, for example if i was attracted to men or wanted access to a straight man's dating pool, i would very likely transition to male, simply because the transphobia alone wouldn't be enough to deter me.

so yeah, that's kinda where im at right now! as you can see this is all very broad, of course in real life everything varies with different people and contexts: many close friends know im nonbinary and understand that my outwardly womanhood is a matter of presentation moreso than identity (a sentence that could be judith butlered to hell and back), and of course in queer spaces i can potentially be as nonbinary and genderfucky as i want. i hope this is understandable enough, but do feel free to ask for clarifications!

#i also want to add that i am incredibly unhappy with everything and do not find mine to be a healthy or optimistic approach #i am in a profoundly doomeristic rut and i think there is no hope for anything. my understanding of my own self reflects that.#also this doesn't explicitly touch on my intense dysphoria but it's very clearly there if you squint

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mischas · 2 months

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What I find so interesting abt the tea that's coming out regarding M&B is that we definitely saw a reconnect between the two of them in S3, as during this time, she was single and his jealousy was not raging. They were playful and flirty in some of those scenes and not for nothing, I think Ben enjoyed it more since no one was vying for her attention. And I'm sorry, but the scene in which they slept together, Ben definitely noticed that sheet sliding down and copped a look. Her reaction was too almost too spontaneous to have been scripted.

I think he was very attracted to M from the beginning, and to act on it and pressure her to have sex (because that's how it comes across) is all levels of sleazy. Nowadays, that would be all over SM, and we'd see another hashtag for another movement. What M went through on that set was absolutely horrible.

Oh yes I think there was a detente if not more at the start of s3. Especially 302. I think he was fresh off all that Junebug promo and feeling good and she was having a hot girl summer post-Brandon. Mischa was hanging out a bit with Adam/Rachel that summer and went to a few of Adam's band's shows. One of which Ben also attended. I don't believe they'd socialized outside of work events (or even AT work events) in a year and a half until that summer.

Yeah, he's a sleaze. Mischa says in her Harper's essay in 2021 that the person she first had sex with pressured her into it and that she felt guilty for 'letting it happen'

"Even being a virgin at the time in that context made me feel like a fraud. I had cultivated the persona of a New York-based, young and streetwise woman who was well beyond her years. Here, I was playing a confident character who was fast and loose and yet I was still a virgin. The kids in the show were quintessential rich, privileged American teenagers drinking, taking drugs, and of course having sex. I knew it was important to get this thing – my virginity – that was looming over me, the elephant in the room if you will, out of the way. I started to really worry that I couldn’t play this character if I didn’t hurry up and mature a little. Did I ever feel pressured to have sex with someone? Well, after being pursued by older men in their thirties, I eventually did the deed. I feel a little guilty because I let it happen. I felt so much pressure to have sex, not just from him, but society in general. This was early on in those critical days and when I finally met someone new and wanted to remove myself from the situation, it created a toxic and manipulative environment. I felt controlled within an inch of my life."

#ask #anonymous #mb tea #bleh

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an-inkling-of-life · 1 year

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Entry 05: November 13, 2022

Why the heck not? The flags are listed by order by the way.

Progress Pride

The two versions of the progress flag had been subject to scrutiny due to people thinking that these designs look cluttered. Frankly, I agree, BUT I began to prefer them over the plain rainbow flag due to the type of infighting I have seen in the community.

I've seen so many transphobes and anti-intersex rhetoric even amongst other LGBT+, so I think the progress flags communicate my stance better.

Agender, Neutrois, Abinary, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, Xenogender (specifically Monstergender & Eldrigender), Agirl

I primarily refer to myself as agender/genderless due to this being the most accurate simplified sum of my gender identity; however, beyond the lack, how my genderlessness feels specifically is more complex.

The neutrois identity pretty much describes how I feel neutral towards my lack of gender. Neutrality and nonexistence pretty much blur to me. Being an abinary nonbinary emphasizes how my gender identity isn't strictly male or female and how it isn't within the spectrum between male and female at all. Genderqueer appears to be a much older term that's very similar to nonbinary, but I understand why not everyone may desire to use it, because of having a slur in its name. I personally love reclaiming slurs, so this descriptor is something I fully identify with.

I also consider myself as xenogender and xenic-aligned. In its most metaphorical sense, I experience my genderless identity in a way that makes me feel like my human body is only a vessel or form that's like clothing rather than something innately me. Gender envy manifests as wanting the ability to shapeshift. Gender euphoria comes when I represent myself as a monster. It's everchanging in shape and desired expression, but the sense of gender is continuously absent still. I don't think people will understand what bodily forms I actually want access to and how I view my living body. Basically, the absence of my gender is replaced by a sense of inhumanity (monstergender), and I can never really know why so and maybe fully understanding it is impossible and headache inducing (eldrigender) seeing as how I can relate so many words to a simple sense of nothing.

For now, I have the body of a woman. I don't hate this body. It just feels like one of many forms. I like expressing femininity but still feel heavily disconnected to womanhood but indifferent to it most of the time. Having a perceived manhood makes me feel heavily dysphoric. I suppose this makes me an agirl.

That said, just because I'm an agirl doesn't mean I will tolerate being maliciously misgendered. My indifference comes from disconnect, a laziness to explain my identity in most circumstances, knowing that not everyone I meet knows who I am, and seeing words as gender expression rather than actually gendered depending on the context of use. I am feminine and not a woman. Transphobes better not play dumb, because context can be observed, and I will know if you impose me as the latter rather than as the former.

Femininity and womanhood are not the same. Femboys/Rosboys are still men even when they are feminine. My femininity doesn't stop me from being agender.

Aspec Bisexual/Biflux (Demiromantic Graysexual)

I think the funniest part about my sexual and romantic orientation is that I actually debated with myself, going back and forth with identifying as bisexual and aromantic asexual. It turns out that both are technically correct terms as I'm in the aroace spectrum. 99% of the time, I am aroace, but slightly more so on the aro part. I don't really recall feeling romantic attraction towards someone other than my current boyfriend. He's my first genuine crush and I was 18 by that time. I never felt the same for anyone before or after and I'm 20 now. He's also the only person other than my mother that I feel immense emotional attachment to. As for sexual attraction, I have very rare but insignificantly weak ones where I don't recall the specifics. I guess that makes me demiromantic graysexual. The bisexual/biflux end is that in the very rare occasion that I do feel sexual attraction, my preferences tend to fluctuate.

Ambiamorous

I can feel happy in both monogamous and polyamorous arrangements. Although, I may appear functionally monogamous to some due to my very rare interest in others. I do have to say that I feel a lot more comfortable with dating a polyamorous person. I just saw too many people sucking at monogamy that I'd rather my partner tell me they date multiple people than lie to me about being "the only one" and then cheat on me.

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dramawatch · 10 days

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Why this

Dear Reader, IRL I begin my discussions of Asian drama with either a rebuke of American media for it's failure to meet my specific requirements (if the listener is not already a convert), or I bring out my oral manifesto on Why I Like Asian Drama. I will spare you both of these, not only because I'm a tad tired of hearing it myself, but because online such as we are a present, you can walk away very easily, and I won't even see you do it. This eases the tension quite a bit for both of us, if I'm being honest, so I'm going to give it all to you as succinctly as possible today and let the chips fall where they may, so to speak.

All media, IMHO, works within its own parameters. It may be done well, or poorly, or even done in some oxymoronic way where bad becomes good or vice versa. (There is probably jargon media experts would use right now to express this, dear Reader, and if you are one of them, I apologize for all the eye rolling you may be performing. I'm not a media expert.) However, no matter how well a particular media is executed, it is not guaranteed to suit everyone. We all have our own needs and tastes. My needs and tastes are not met by the parameters of American dramas.

You may be wondering at my use the word "parameters." Perhaps if I was someone else, who thought slightly differently, I'd be writing about originality or being forward thinking or something else in the context of media. But what I think about is parameters. Everything has parameters. Parameters help lend definition to something. Although they are literally limiting, which can seem like a negative, it is very difficult to get anything done without them. Even this blog. It's easier for me to be creative within the confines of this austere, questionably attractive blog format, than I would if I were spending energy on being slick or savvy. If I had many fancy options, I'd bouncing off them endlessly, instead of just getting down to writing this here today.

The parameters of Asian drama hit my pleasure center just right.

There is tremendous of variety amongst them, for one. The number of episodes varies drastically, from 6 episode long Japanese web dramas to 60 episode long Chinese costume dramas. It can be fantasy or historical, contemporary or futuristic, romance-centered or mystery-centered, or combinations of them all. There are many tropes and archetypes. Meme bingo cards have been made of them, they're so prevalent. But a trope or an archetype is just another kind of parameter, and I'm all for it.

I'm not anti-innovation or creativity, dear Reader. In my defense, I'm going to drag in Jane Eyre.

Jane Eyre one of the most famous Bronte novels. We've all heard of it, even if we don't know much about it, per se. It's part of our popular culture. Why is that? What makes it so great?

It's because Jane Eyre is a play on the dominant romantic paradigm at the time, the Gothic novel, where a beautiful young heroine meets a dashing, handsome, virtuous man, and is rescued from supernatural and earthly horrors by him and Live Happily Ever After. Jane Eyre is a young woman, but she is neither beautiful, nor such a paragon of virtue - she doesn't forgive just because people ask, and she is not entirely sheltered from cynicism. Edward Rochester is the main love interest, but he is also not handsome, nor particularly charming, and he has some obvious faults of character that those who have read the book know very well. In a typical Gothic novel, Rochester would have been the villain. This is what makes Jane Eyre great: Bronte turns the Gothic novel on its head, and doing so, wrote the first modern anti-hero.

I consider the anti-hero considerably when I'm consuming media. I enjoy exploring all the incarnations of archetypes and the way they can be played with or mutated. Sometimes it can be frustrating, but it can also be very satisfying. Asian dramas bring in a wider variety of archetypes and tropes than American media and are not shy about it. I can't tell you how many arrogant CEO romances I've seen, some of which wouldn't be too ashamed to put that in their title like a Harlequin Romance, and I still have room for more, because even if it's a remake, it's still not quite the same.

I'm going to end this admittedly not very succinct post with a recommendation for my favorite arrogant CEO drama:

Lost Romance. An editor (and voyeur) at a romance publisher witnesses the attempted murder of the handsome CEO through a drone and ends up falling into the novel she is editing as the female antagonist. If you want to see a lighthearted rom-com wherein a female underling can talk her way free of consequences after being caught watching her boss shower, this is for you.

#asian drama

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notmanagingmymischief · 3 years

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Taking a break.

So...this really hurts to say. So I think I should give some backstory first.

Hi. I'm Bex. And I have really severe and clinically diagnosed ADHD, along with multiple other mental illnesses. Now I don't want this to be taken out of context; I know there is a huge stigma around the statement "mental illness", which we as a society really need to work on. I of course don't mean this in a negative connotation, it's simply the best way to describe it. I am mentally ill. There's nothing inherently bad about that, but it poses more than a few issues.

The biggest one for me, personally, is hyperfixation(s). A hyperfixation, by definition, is "being completely immersed in something — whether it be a video game, movie/TV fandom culture or a hobby like crocheting." And I suffer from these hyperfixations a lot. I find a TV show, movie, book, whatever it is, and attach myself to a certain character. I can't prevent this, I can't help it, as much as I wish I could just watch something and then forget about it, I just...can't.

Now why is this a problem? Everyone has interests and things that they get hyped about for a while, so why should this be any different? Well the thing is, with me, these fixations can last much longer than neurotypical people's do. They can last for months, years at a time. I get so attached to a character and I hold onto that attachment until it's borderline obsession. This can get so bad that I will get physically ill, have panic attacks, go into complete mental breakdowns and depressive spirals, because it will suddenly without warning hit me that these people aren't real. See, I don't get fixated on real people or things; it's almost always fictional characters.

My most recent infatuation has been Miss Alma Peregrine. It started off as "Oh, she's hot. I should write fanfiction for her." And that was it. I was attracted to her and wanted to imagine being with her. But within the past few weeks, this interest has turned extremely dangerous. Sure, I'm not in any bodily danger, but when you're throwing up, hyperventilating to the point of fainting, and crying yourself to sleep nearly every night over a fictional woman, that's when I have to put my foot down. This is affecting my personal life, and with school having just started, I need to back down.

And it hurts like hell to have to post this, to have to step back from one of the only things that makes me happy, but if I don't then I'm afraid this will become too much to handle. Every song I hear makes me think of her, every time I see something pretty I think "Oh, Alma would love this," and it's hard to separate yourself from a fandom when everything makes you think of another scenario that you'll never be able to experience, and that hurts. It hurts so, so very much. And I know this will upset some of you, since I know that (and I'm not trying to be narcissistic) a whole lot of people really enjoy my writing, especially my Miss Peregrine stories.

Just the other day, I cried for most of the day over the fact that I'll never be able to meet her, never have her hold me and wipe my tears and tell me it'll all be okay. Because she isn't real. And sure, maybe shifting is real. Or maybe it isn't. I'm starting to think I imagined the whole thing, and that's affecting my mental health even more. It feels like I'm going crazy.

Like I said, this isn't something I can just stop, flip some switch in my brain and just forget about her. I wish like hell that I could, because that would make all of this so much easier. But that's not how ADHD and fixations work, no matter how much I and everyone else around me wants it to.

In conclusion, I'm going to be stopping my writing for Miss Peregrine, indefinitely. At least until I can get over her and stop my entire life from revolving around her and that universe. This doesn't mean I'm stopping writing for anyone, not at all. Unless, of course, this happens again with someone else. I'll be posting much less frequently, of course, what with school starting and all that, but I promise that you'll still get at least short imagines for other characters.

I'm sorry. I am truly sorry, from the bottom of my heart.

Please forgive me. I'm sorry.

#personal #ranting #venting #I wish I didn't have to post this #And I'm so sorry #But please understand this is for my own health and safety.#Please forgive me.

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thedeadflag · 5 years

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so this is something I've been mulling over for a while now - do you reckon it'd be possible to make a version of a/b/o that isn't fundamentally transphobic, or would it reach the point of "this is so different that you might as well not call it a/b/o" before that? off the top of my head you'd have to take out all elements of g!p, mpreg, and biological essentialism, and it'd probably be possible to write a version of a/b/o with that framework, but I don't know if I'm missing anything.

a/b/o is a reactionary trope that relies on cissexism-derived biological essentialism to function. Like, that’s the engine that powers the bdsm/power dynamics, cisheteronormative breeding/family building, “dub/non-con”, etc. elements that draw people to it, and led people to create it in the first place.

Like, my best attempt at describing a non-transphobic, non-shitty typical a/b/o adjacent fic would include:

Werewolves (let’s face it, werewolves can be really cool if written well, and there’s a lot of really good ways to write them, a lot of ways to subvert tired subtropes within the trope)

Found Family-focused family/pack building (because wolves often adopt wolves from other packs into their own, blood lineage isn’t really a thing; much like vampires being created, newly turned werewolves of any age can be considered their sire’s child; if it needs to have a pregnancy arc between two men or two women, there’s IVF/IUI, or magically/spiritually-induced pregnancies, and of course writing a fully fledged complex trans character with their own non-pregnancy arc and virtues/flaws/goals/etc. and getting relevant trans beta writers who aren't your friends to keep it on track if you’re a cis writer)

A flexible, non-binary gendered society (rather than the rigidly structured biology-is-destiny a/b/o society) that’s trans inclusive either explicitly, or implicitly if it’s a new social universe with different rules.

If mating seasons have to exist, they’re cultural more than biological, and no biological processes that could impede or trouble a person’s ability to properly consent.

No inherent, glorified or reified power dynamics, certainly none rooted in or fostered through biology.

That doesn’t seem very much at all like a/b/o to me. It’s a werewolf AU, which is the reason why a/b/o was created in the first place. It wasn’t enough. It needed something more than just a supernatural bent

I’ll continue on below for a bit on some simplified functions of a/b/o, but it’s mostly just some ramblings.

Like, to quote the originators of the genre/trope:

I'd like to see Alpha male Jared, and Bitch male Jensen. Jensen is a snotty prude (think Lady from lady and the tramp) he may be a bitch male but he's not just going to let anybody take a go at his sweet little ass...until he meets Jared...then prudey little Jensen turns cock slut for Jared. Bonus points for J2 being OTP, Jensen was a virgin before Jared, and now that they met each other, it's for life.

...

There are three types of men, alpha males, beta males, and omega males. Alpha males are like any ordinary guy with the exception of their cocks, they work just like canines (the knot, tons of cum, strong breeders, etc) The beta male, is an ordinary guy without the special cock. Omega males are capable of child bearing and often called bitch males.

Like, I want you to look at that real close and see what’s going on in there.

This was created to be a trope where there’s a world where women, as we explicitly know them, don’t exist, but where a subgroup of men take up the functional role of the woman in the heteronormative social structure of the world. It’s also not surprising that (assumedly cis) women created and initiated the spread of this trope.

Look at the language used. This is heavily, explicitly gendered for a reason. If you’ve read much of anything about how the male gaze impacts female sexuality, you’ll know a common response is for women to position themselves out of the proverbial frame entirely, so that no part of them can explicitly exist as an object, where they can take on the role of a subject. There’s no women whose experiences will directly link to her own and her own perceptions, comfort/discomfort/etc.

However, many of these women also have been heavily affected by the male gaze and heteronormativity, and that combined with not knowing what a real gay male relationship is like, what it looks like, what experiences might be unique to it...they fill in the blanks with their own conditioning.

And maybe seeing a lot of that toxic masculinity in media content was unsettling because of how women get treated in that content, and how they in turn might feel in those shoes. But if a MAN, even if it’s a heavily female-coded man, were to undergo that...well, it’d be easier to appreciate those tropes and dynamics they’ve been force-fed to believe were arousing, hot, desirable. Especially if they can have two hot men in it. They can enjoy that self-created taboo, bypass their own discomfort and insecurity, and project it onto a type of person different enough to suspend their disbelief and maintain that difference, even if they’re pumping that guy full of all the typical misogynistic tropes and experiences they’re not comfortable having directed towards them and other women.

In short, it’s a way to get off on heteronormative norms/tropes, using another as a vehicle in order to keep up their cognitive dissonance.

Of course, this eventually spilled out into the Het fandom (makes perfect sense, since many of the a/b/o originators and proponents were het women), and then worked its way into Femslash fandom by piggybacking on g!p in order to meet the necessary criteria for PiV sex.

Just, in this case, you necessarily shift some of the puzzle pieces around. Trans women take the place of the “alpha”, acting as an acceptable vehicle for a toxic masculine cis man, since lesbians aren’t into men. Even if the trans woman is generally written, in nearly every way aside from part of her body, as a toxic cis man. The original a/b/o’s “Bitch Male”/Omega Male is swapped out for the Omega Female, usually a spunkier, more in your face version outside of romantic/sexual contexts in the media content, but let’s be real here, she’s still by and large submissive when it comes down to it.

In a world where more wlw grew up feeling predatory for their attraction to other women, for feeling sinful, for being rejected from female intimacy het women enjoyed with each other after coming out, etc., it’s pretty common for a lot of lesbians to lack initiative, not be able to read or communicate romantic/sexual cues between each other...to essentially be “useless lesbians’ as the joke goes,and to feel isolated and undesirable.

So writing a F/F fic where some hot woman modeled in the image of some hot cis woman pursues you? Takes the initiative sexually/romantically? Doesn’t beat around the bush, but is blatant? Who can’t control her lust around you? Who can give you the perfect nuclear family you’ve been conditioned to want in order to feel value in our heteronormative world, but were told you weren’t worthy of or could never feasibly attain? Who gives you a sexual encounter you have some education in and some emotional stake in due to common conditioning of PiV sex > all else? Who can give you plausible deniability for a number of contexts due to a lack of ability to explicitly consent? etc. etc.

Like, yeah, that’s going to feel comfortable for a lot out there. That’s going to seem pretty hot/arousing. It’s a way to get off on the norms and expectations thrown on women in society, but in a way that lets them distance themselves ever so slightly from men by shifting it from text to subtext, explicit to implicit.

Don’t just take my word for it, though. Here’s a few snippets from one of the most popular g!p/omegaverse femslash writers (if not the most popular) that help illustrate how/why this trope has found an audience

Why Do I Write G!P?The elephant in the room. It arouses me, but it’s also a form of self-comfort. I grew up in a very fundamentalist home. Women being with women was at first unspoken, and then derided, both by my church and at home. I felt insanely guilty for my attractions, so I developed ‘cheat codes’ to deal with it.

It was okay if the woman I had sex with in my dreams had a penis, for example. It was okay if she forced me to have sex with her. It was okay if we basically simulated heterosexual sex.

Because of my childhood (which included conversion therapy), I found myself falling into heterosexual roleplay patterns, at least sexually. It was a lingering thing from my childhood.

It’s still there, and I know I’ll never be rid of it.

...

I associate penetration with power. You know, being steeped in sexism from an early age turned some problematic thoughts into kinky lemonade. And since I’m a femme sub, taking power away from the top by ‘penetrating’ them can ruin the mood for me. I mean, I can write power bottom scenes with the best of them, and I enjoy them, but… *shrug* if I’m going to write omegaverse or g!p, someone’s getting fucked, and it’s not the top.

There are rules to a/b/o. There are specific reasons it’s sought out, read, and created, and that’s why it’s hard to imagine a version of it without those harmful elements, because the trope requires them for the audience to be satisfied.

It’s why all gay male a/b/o fits a pretty specific pattern. it’s why femslash a/b/o fits a very specific pattern. There’s nearly no deviation as a rule, because there are so many parts that have to be in play and functioning in a specific way in order to get the desired result.

I could go on for hours about this, and the above is all a pretty damn simplified take of what’s going on in a/b/o for it to exist in the way it does and meet the needs of the audience, and I’ve already written a lot about this in the past, so I’ll try to cut it short here.

#a/b/o #omegaverse #trans fetishization #creative responsibility #transmisogyny #cissexism #genitals tw #genital mention tw #long post #fandom dynamics #fandom meta #heteronormativity #g!p #biological essentialism #Anonymous

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dawnfelagund · 5 years

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So I just listened to your presentation about the Tolkien fandom - which is really good btw, very informative - and the point that transformational fanfiction is mostly female got me thinking (mainly bc in my experience fanfiction in general seems more female, I have knowingly read only three authors who identified as male). Do you think that's bc most fandoms have a distinct lack of fem characters, so fem writers have an incentive to write transformational fics that male writers don't?

Oh my, oh my this is such a good question that I fear I will not answer it as well as it deserves. But I’ll try!

(Here is the presentation mentioned in the ask, for anyone who wants context. Both video and text are available at the link.)

Why transformational fandom trends female is complicated and has been the subject of much discussion/debate since the advent of fanfic studies back in the early ‘90s. Early scholarship focused on women using fanfic to expand the original texts so that the better reflected the women/author’s own experiences, especially where emotions and relationships were concerned. From Jenkins’ Textual Poachers (1991):

Fans want not simply internal consistency but also what Ien Ang has described as “emotional realism.” Ang (1985) suggests that Dallas fans viewed the program not as “empirically” true to real-world experiences of upper-class Texans but rather as “emotionally” true to the viewers’ personal lives…. (107)

Female readers entered directly into the fictional world, focusing less on the extratextual process of its writing than on the relationships and events. … The female reader saw her own “tacit inferences” as a legitimate part of the story …. Moreover, male readers tended to maintain the narrative’s pre-existing focus on a central protagonist, while female readers expressed a greater eagerness to explore a broader ranger of social relationships …. (108-9, citing David Bleich [1986])

Camille Bacon-Smith, author of Enterprising Women (also 1991) writes:

Fanwriters, like soap opera fans, want to see characters change and evolve, have families, and rise to the challenge of internal and external crises in a nonlinear, dense tapestry of experience. Whether because of innate qualities or socialization, women perceive their lives in this way, and they like to see that structure reproduced in their literature. The writing experience becomes one of participation in the lives of the characters. (64)

Jenkins and Bacon-Smith really established fanfic studies as we know it, so I include these ideas to show how foundational they are and, I believe, underlie more recent resistant/reparative motives. Underlying this early assumption is that mainstream media and literature doesn’t represent the experiences of women, so we have to create it ourselves. Hence what we’d now call transformational fandom: the shifting of authority onto the fanwriter to rework a fictional universe according to her own experience of reality. I think this holds true in Tolkienfic fandom, although it is more complex than the theories above (rooted in media, not book, fandom) suggest, in that my research shows that Tolkienfic authors engage in much more negotiation with canon details and (most importantly) Tolkien’s authority. In other words, they care about how to create that “emotional realism” but within the confines of the canon, which many would take to include Tolkien’s views, unstated in the texts, on the canon and even his moral prerogatives.

My sense is that there is a definite connection between the early ideas of women creating fanworks to see their realities and experiences represented in the fictional universes they love and the present-day idea of fanfiction as a form of resistant reading. (Here, I am perfectly willing to have my hand smacked by people better versed in fan studies history if I’m mangling or missing key pieces of the relationship between these two schools of thought. Just speak up.) Because part of the experience of being a woman is opening a history book and not seeing the lives of women represented or going to a film where women usually make up a minority of the cast (and are often cast into stereotyped roles). Part of our experience as Tolkien fans is coming to terms with our love of a book (LotR) where, to borrow the wince-inducing stat cited by Una McCormick, there are more named horses than women. (The Silmarillion fares better in terms of named women but still isn’t great, as I have argued elsewhere, in providing those named women with roles and agency equal to that of the men.)

(Here I’m going to focus on the Tolkienfic fandom. I know your question was broader than that, but I study the Tolkienfic fandom, and as a fan, I’m monofandom myself, so I’m hesitant to speak about the norms and practices in other fandoms, nor am I as familiar with their scholarship. Others with insights about other present-day fandoms, please do add on.)

Una McCormick has a fabulous essay in Perilous and Fair that positions Tolkienfic as a form of what she calls “reparative reading”:

The complexity of such reading and writing practices and the ambivalence of the creative labor involved in making repairs upon such texts have driven some women readers to find a presence for themselves in The Lord of the Rings through writing fanfiction as a creative-critical response to Tolkien’s text. By weaving female characters into the familiar narrative, or else focusing upon marginalized characters such as nurses, servants, and non-combatants, these authors write themselves–or those like themselves–into the events of the War of the Ring. (310)

Una is a fanfic writer herself and a Tolkien scholar, and her work is unique in this sense, because she is intimately familiar with the Tolkienfic community as a participant and also because she has written one of the rare fanfic studies pieces focusing exclusively on our fandom. However–and I don’t think Una would disagree–reparative reading is just a part of Tolkienfic fandom, so I don’t think it fully explains the “transformational is female” trend. It is certainly part of it. My survey data shows a strong interest among Tolkienfic authors; 78% agree that “Writing fan fiction lets me explore the perspectives of female characters.” (80% of readers “like reading fan fiction about female characters.”)

What is interesting is that there is not a big difference in how women and men respond to the statement “Writing fan fiction allows me to explore the perspectives of femalecharacters.” 78% of women agreed; 73% of men agreed. Where there is a significant difference: 90% of nonbinary survey participants agreed with this survey item. (It’s worth noting that the sample of men was small. Less than 4% of survey participants identified as male.)

I also feel that I have to note that, historically, Tolkienfic fandom has had contingents hostile to including women characters in Tolkien-based fanfiction. Many who started in the fandom when I did (mid-2000s) will remember when “OFC = Mary Sue” (itself a term that I find sexist since the number of scrawny, nerdy dudes who become superheroes in comics attests that adding a dose of Awesome to a whopping pile of Ordinary is not inherently deserving of derision), and many people avoided writing women characters because they were a flame magnet. Key to this piece of history, too, is that, in my experience, the detractors and bullies of creators who wrote about women? Were, like the rest of the Tolkienfic fandom, a majority women. This was not guys trying to preserve a boys-only treehouse in the canon; this was women policing other women’s production of fanfiction, often using the canon itself as a tool to do so.

It’s also worth noting that changes in fandom perception of women characters has been due to the concerted effort of fans to draw attention to sexism in the canon and in the fandom and to celebrate fanworks that feature strong women characters. @vefanyar‘s concept of the textual ghost is the prime example in my mind, in that she not only drew attention to the problems in the canon–simply scrolling through her Textual Ghost Project is a visually provoking experience–but the potential for fanworks creators to address those problems in the reparative way that Una McCormick identifies. @vefanyar, among others, has paired this work with the canon with a concerted, years-long effort to encourage and celebrate fanworks about Tolkien’s women, creating a climate where, finally, it feels like writing about women comes with more rewards than risks.

So. To conclude. I think that the scholarship, my data, and my own experience as a Tolkienfic author/archive owner points to an answer to “Why is transformational fandom overwhelmingly female?” in the context of Tolkienfic fandom, as: It’s complicated. Yes, some of us are working to address the inequality both in the number and quality of female characters in the canon. But as my presentation states, this is just a partial picture because Tolkienfic fandom is not fully transformational, and women are attracted to this fandom for reasons that have nothing to do with establishing gender parity in the canon. I earlier held up the stats of 78% of authors (and 80% of readers) enjoying fanfiction about women to suggest that there is an interest in telling women’s stories in the fandom, but I’d also say that the one in five not interested (or not sure if they’re interested) in stories about women aren’t insignificant. This is still a sizable contingent of the fandom, a majority of whom are women. The desire to produce transformational fanworks runs deep in women fans and may hearken back to Jenkins’ and Bacon-Smith’s broader ideas about women’s experiences, may suggest a difference in how girls/women are socialized, may reflect barriers to entering more affirmationally oriented fan communities, or may come down to something else (like the social/community aspect of fandom) entirely.

#tolkien #tolkien fanfiction #tolkien fan studies #tolkien fandom history

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