HEY YOU!
Yeah, you! Are you trans? Do you like reading books? Or watching movies?
Do you like media about trans men/transmasculine characters but don't know where to find it?
That's sooo crazy because I have this little spreadsheet I'm working on where I'm trying to document all media with protagonists/major characters who are FTM or transmasculine.
The spreadsheet currently has 300+ entries spread across the following categories:
Books
Manga
Memoirs and non-fiction
Movies
TV Shows
Graphic novels / Comics
Webcomics
Audio dramas
Books and movies are also sorted by:
Which character is trans (MC, love interest, antagonist, etc)
If the trans character is POC
The trans character's sexuality (Because I saw lots of transhet guys sad about only being able to find gay romances)
If the author/actor is also trans (if we know for sure)
It's free to use, and free to add to as well! Editing permissions are on, and I check on the spreadsheet every now and then to make sure everything is in order and to clean up.
If you know something that isn't on the list, please add it! You don't have to fill in every single column, but fill it to the best of your abilities.
If you don't want to use the big ass long link below, you can also use: bit.ly/FTM-protags
I made this because I want it to be a community resource. So even if you're not a trans guy or transmasculine person, please reblog!
6K notes
·
View notes
The scene in the Barbie trailer when Barbie is skating around with Ken and asks "Why is everyone staring at me?"
THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO BE AN ADOLESCENT GIRL.
Living in Barbieland (childhood girlhood) but then suddenly you're all grown up in the real world subject to scrutiny and sexualisation (the guy slapping Barbie's ass) and feeling like existing is a crime?
Being forced by adult men into a box (which leads to the not like other girls syndrome) and exploring the 'real world' (being forced to grow up too quickly) while fighting the realisation that maybe the world sucks and being a woman is so difficult while hoping with all your heart that it's not always going to be this way.
Losing touch with the very things that made you happy because they're considered immature and girly? (The group of teens that said they hadn't played with Barbies since they were five.)
Older women telling you that you have to learn the truth about the world and that you can never have your old life back (Kate Mckinnon's Barbie) despite it being the only thing you yearn for, but also older women being a bright spot and support (the old woman on the bench) in the endless slough of life.
And this is just the trailer!!! I'm so excited for this movie I can't breathe, Greta Gerwig the woman that you are 😭
17K notes
·
View notes
Thinking about Weird Barbie and how she's the very obviously queer outsider of the Barbie world, she straddles the lines between Barbie and the Real World. She's the most aware of the performative nature of it all. She supports Barbie while also gently mocking her panic at losing the hyperfeminine perfection. Her weird house is also home to the discontinued reject weird Barbies, the outcasts (including very gay earring Ken) who never fell into either the original matriarchy or the Kentriarchy brainwashing.
The other more classically heteronormative and beautiful Barbies both pity and fear her, and at first the narrative pities her as well. She's the vessel of girls going weird and crazy and feral on their dolls and that's amazing. Weird Barbie is aware of who she is and how the world sees her and she loves it. She's Weird Barbie and She Owns It.
6K notes
·
View notes
Pop culture reduces It's a Wonderful Life to that last half hour, and thinks the whole thing is about this guy traveling to an alternate universe where he doesn't exist and a little girl saying, "Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings." A hokey, sugary fantasy. A light and fluffy story fit for Hallmark movies.
But this reading completely glosses over the fact that George Bailey is actively suicidal. He's not just standing there moping about, "My friends don't like me," like some characters do in shows that try to adapt this conceit to other settings. George's life has been destroyed. He's bankrupt and facing prison. The lifetime of struggle we've been watching for the last two hours has accomplished nothing but this crushing defeat, and he honestly believes that the best thing he can do is kill himself because he's worth more dead than alive. He would have thrown himself from a bridge had an actual angel from heaven not intervened at the last possible moment.
That's dark. The banker villain that pop culture reduces to a cartoon purposely drove a man to the brink of suicide, which only a miracle pulled him back from. And then George Bailey goes even deeper into despair. He not only believes that his future's not worth living, but that his past wasn't worth living. He thinks that every suffering he endured, every piece of good that he tried to do was not only pointless, but actively harmful, and he and the world would be better off if he had never existed at all.
This is the context that leads to the famed alternate universe of a million pastiches, and it's absolutely vital to understanding the world that George finds. It's there to specifically show him that his despondent views about his effect on the universe are wrong. His bum ear kept him from serving his country in the war--but the act that gave him that injury was what allowed his brother to grow up to become a war hero. His fight against Potter's domination of the town felt like useless tiny battles in a war that could never be won--but it turns out that even the act of fighting was enough to save the town from falling into hopeless slavery. He thought that if it weren't for him, his wife would have married Sam Wainwright and had a life of ease and luxury as a millionaire's wife, instead of suffering a painful life of penny-pinching with him. Finding out that she'd have been a spinster isn't, "Ha ha, she'd have been pathetic without you." It's showing him that she never loved Wainwright enough to marry him, and that George's existence didn't stop her from having a happier life, but saved her from having a sadder one. Everywhere he turns, he finds out that his existence wasn't a mistake, that his struggles and sufferings did accomplish something, that his painful existence wasn't a tragedy but a gift to the people around him.
Only when he realizes this does he get to come back home in wild joy over the gift of his existence. The scenes of hope and joy and love only exist because of the two hours of struggle and despair that came before. Even Zuzu's saccharine line about bells and angel wings exists, not as a sugary proverb, but as a climax to Clarence's story--showing that even George's despair had good effect, and that his newfound thankfulness for life causes not only earthly, but heavenly joy.
If this movie has light and hope, it's not because it exists in some fantasy world where everything is sunshine and rainbows, but because it fights tooth and nail to scrape every bit of hope it can from our all too dark and painful world. The light here exists, not because it ignores the dark, but because the dark makes light more precious and meaningful. The light exists in defiance of the dark, the hope in defiance of despair, and there is nothing saccharine about that. It's just about as realistic as it gets.
35K notes
·
View notes
Ken was more than an antagonist/villain but a representation/metaphor for all the sweet boys in our lives who eventually grew up to be misogynistic men. Who take more than they’ll ever give. They are the boys who felt under-appreciated and unloved and found validation from Andrew Tate podcasts.
A lot of women if not all can relate to that on some level. Son. Brother. Friend. Cousin. Nephew. Uncle. It happens so much more than we want to think about. It’s so prevalent and sad that despite everything Ken did, Barbie apologized to him and received no apology in return.
Barbie Land was far kinder than Kendom. The Barbies were dismissive about the Kens, yes, but they were always treated kindly and with some decorum. Kendom literally made the Barbies their servants designed to cater to their every whim. Just look at that. And even then, Barbie apologized. President Barbie gave them a (admittedly low) position in the courts as a token of good will. A fairly realistic take right there but so sad considering the harm they’d done.
He stole her dreamhouse. He stole Barbie’s dreamhouse. And she apologized for hurting him.
6K notes
·
View notes