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linkspooky · 4 years

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Frankenstein and the Monster

So there is loads of speculation on a connection between Dabi and Frankenstein’s monster. There are several people who have already commented on it, here, here, and even here. (These are all the ones I could dig up recently). Frankenstein is a novel that can be read in many ways, but I believe the themes of the novel parallels and helps illustrate the relationship between Ujiko, Endeavor and Dabi.

1. Endeavor and Victor Frankenstein

To very briefly touch upon the novel for those who haven’t read it, there are several differences between Boris Karloff’s movie depiction and the original novel. In the novel the creature is intelligent, well spoken, and a reflection of the Doctor Frankenstein himself. To summarize quickly, Frankenstein a very dramatic undergrad student discovers the secret to reviving the dead, uses that to create a monster, then upon seeing how ugly it is flees. The monster grows up in isolation, is spurned by every human he comes across, and then returns to his master and says he will kill everyone the Doctor Loves unless he creates him a mate. Frankenstein destroys the mate, and then the monster destroys his wife to be on the night of their wedding then they chase each other around in the arctic until both of them die. If that wasn’t a sufficient enough summary, this crash course video is a good writeup of the book and it’s themes.

Frankenstein has a lot to say about science and treading in god’s domain, but it’s also written by a woman who was a teenager at the time (Mary Shelley) who existed in a soical circle of adult men who were much older than her. Just as much as it’s a novel about mad science gone wrong, there are strong themes of feminism, parenthood, and abuse intertwined in the novel.

Another popular reading is to interpret “Frankenstein” autobigraophically, a reading that was encouraged via 1970s feminist criticism of the novel. Earlier readings along those lines centered Frankenstein as a tale of monstrous birth and look to Mary Shelley’s own experiences with birth, which were pretty terrible.

Mary Shelley’s mother died when giving birth to her, and Mary and Shelley’s own first child, a daughter, died when she was just a few weeks old. And in her journal Mary recounted an incredibly sad dream about this daughter. “Dream that my little baby came to life again; that it had only been cold and that we rubbed it before the fire and lived.” [Crash Course: Frankenstein]

This is just some background information to add context to your reading. Percey Shelley first met Mary when she was 14, and eloped with her when she was 16 and already pregnant with his child (he was around 24 at the time). Not only that but Percey was married at the time when he eloped with Mary, and his wirst wife did not take it well.

Harriet (Westbrook) Shelley was Percy Shelley's first wife. While he was still married to her, he ran off with Mary Shelley, leaving Harriet pregnant and alone with their first child. She committed suicide on November 9, 1816 by drowning herself in Serpentine. [x]

As I said these details are all to add context to Mary Shelley’s life while she was writing Frankenstein. A book in which most of the female characters are severely mistreated and harmed.

There are some pretty feminist critiques to Frankenstein. For instance, the novel clearly shows what harm comes to women (and family and relationships) when men pursue single-minded goals. In fact thanks to Victor’s lack of work life balance pretty much all of the women in this novel die. Victor’s creation of the monster leads to the hanging of the servant Justine the murder of Victor’s bride Elizabeth on their wedding night. [Crash Course: Frankenstein]

To put it as frankly as possible (Haha, get it because frankenstein) there are several points in the novel in which both Victor and Frankenstein act like fuckboys.

You could easily read the story as one of male entitlement. Victor in the first place, deliberately refers to his bride to be Elizabeth as a possession and says it as a term of affection.

And when, on the morrow, she presented Elizabeth to me as her promised gift, I, with childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally and looked upon Elizabeth as mine—mine to protect, love, and cherish. All praises bestowed on her I received as made to a possession of my own. We called each other familiarly by the name of cousin. No word, no expression could body forth the kind of relation in which she stood to me—my more than sister, since till death she was to be mine only.

His actions towards Elizabeth in the novel are also, extremely neglectful. Elizabeth spends the novel passively waiting for him to return and marry her, but Victor has a habit of disappearing from her life for long periods at a time with no contact at all in pursuit of his endeavors. (Get it because I’m comparing Victor to Endeavor).

Elizabeth is someone he feels entitled to own, and entitled to her love (he literally thinks his parents gave him to her) and yet Victor never takes responsibility for Elizabeth and her feelings too wrapped up in his own. When Elizabeth is grieving for the losses of her family, Victor has a tendency to leave her alone to go off to sulk on his own. Elizabeth even pleads multiple times for Victor to come home, to offer some support for the rest of the family with his mere presence and Victor delays these returns home as long as possible.

“Get well—and return to us. You will find a happy, cheerful home and friends who love you dearly. Your father’s health is vigorous, and he asks but to see you, but to be assured that you are well; and not a care will ever cloud his benevolent countenance.

This treatment also extends to the rest of Victor’s family, who are people he seriously neglects throughout the novel, and also people who are the direct sufferers of the consequences of his actions. His youngest brother is killed, the maid is framed for the murder, Elizabeth dies on the wedding night, Clerval his closest friend is killed, and his father dies soon afterwards of old age / implied grief.

The monster who Victor creates is also a reflection of him. After knowing the suffering it is to be created as a creature with no family, and no place of belonging he then instructs Victor to make him a woman. A woman that will have no choice but to love him because they will be the only two alone in the world. The monster, also feels entitled to feminine love because he is lonely, with no thought to whether or not the second monster might have feelings, opinions or her own, or might not even like him.

“You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone can do; and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse.”

The recurring theme is this: a sense of male entitlement, without a sense of responsibility. What do I mean by Male Entitlement?

Male entitlement is a product of traditional societal norms. It is cultivated in men as they join a society which usually favors them over the other genders in their careers, relationships, character-standing, and more. There’s more on it here, and the role of male entitlement in abuse.

Male entitlement is an attitude where men believe they are entitled to power over others, and/ or ownership of the women and children in their lives. Victor calls Elizabeth a possession given to him, and neglects her throughout most of the book. The monster believes he deserves to have a woman to love him. It’s not masculinity. Masculinity is just masculinity. It’s the belief that they are entitled to power or ownership over others simply because they are men born in a society that favors men. Male entitlement can show up in say, a father who believes he is entitled to the love of his children despite never doing any of the actual work of childrearing and pushing it all on the mother. Believing they deserved to be loved simply for being a father, while being absolutely absent for their lives. GUESS WHAT HAPPENS IN FRANKENSTEIN.

So, a lot of people interpret Frankenstein as a story of ambition gone wrong, but that interpretation feels like it’s missing something if you don’t include the feminist angle. Frankenstein when doing his mad scientist undergrad bit speculates how he would be a father of a new species. It is specifically, fatherhood accomplished without a mother. That this new species would owe him love.

A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.

An undeniable part of Victor’s motivation is that as the sole creator the child would owe him all of their love. I mean to once again connect this to abuse narratives how many real life parents believe their children have to love them no matter how poorly they treat them?

No father could claim the gratitude of his child so completely as I should deserve theirs.

Victor in the novel wants not only fatherhood, but also motherhood. He wants to create life which in victorian society at the time is the role of the woman. And yet at the same time, he doesn’t want to do any of the actual work of motherhood and the roles typically described to women.

We can read the novel as an exploration of what happens when men fear, distrust, or devalue women so much that they attempt to reeproduce without them. In some ways Victor is trying to bypass the feminine altogether. He’s creating life without recourse to egg or womb. [Crash Course: Frankenstein]

Victor creates, and then proceeds to take no responsibility for his creation. He abandons the child for the most shallow of reasons (because it was ugly and looked scary), then leaves a sentient, thinking creature with no idea who it was, or why it was alive in the middle of the mountains hoping it starves to death on his own so he doesn’t have to deal with it.

but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart. Unable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of the room and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber.

Victor is the creatures parent, but takes no responsibility as a parent for raising the creature. In fact the child is punished when they are still an innocent, just for not turning out the way their creator intended.

Frankenstein is a novel which portrays consistently men who aspire to greatness as described in their society (scientific invention, and in the framing device arctic exploration) but who consistently fail everyone in their lives at the most basic levels. In other words as Lizzo said, “Why men great, till they gotta be great.”

This is where the fire comes in. The original post talks about dichotomy of fire as something that both helps and harms. Fire is a symbol in this book that can be read two different ways, and I think special context should be given to the subtitle of the story. “The Modern Prometheus”, a story which in classical times is a story of hubris where Prometheus steals fire from the heavens and is punished for it. Hubris in the classical greek sense means that a human acting like they know better than the gods. However, the story has a different interpretation in the Romantic / Enlightenment era where Prometheus is seen as a heroic figure stealing fire away from the gods to give knowledge to mankind.

Fire in the book represents both. Victor is someone who has hubris, he assumes he’s a father who deserves the love of a child and sole responsbility for the creation of another being (effectively making him god), but abandons the creature literally five minutes after finishing him and makes no real attempt to take any effort in raising what is effectively his child. It’s also a story about Victor having ambitions to be great, and to do what no man has done before him. I don’t think the story emphasizes that ambitions are bad, but rather the dual nature of ambition as something like fire, something that can either warm or harm.

He came upon a fire “which had been left” by humans (Vol. II, Ch. III), so a human tool left in nature. He was “overcome with delight” and joy, but touching it brought him pain. “How strange, [he thinks], that the same cause could produce such opposite effects!” He has learned the dichotomy of flame – to save and to hurt. [x]

Okay, now that we’re done witht hat extremely long essay on an english novel let’s actually talk about the manga where a goth stuck in his rebellious teenage phase tries to light his dad on fire.

I’m going to be comparing the novel to Dabi and Endeavor in two aspects.

Male entitlement, believing you deserve the love of a child without acting responsibly as a father.

Fire, ambition as something that both helps and burns.

Victor and Endeavor both are characters that decide to create children for very self serving reasons, and treat their families for the majority of their lives as tools to their own ambition. Endeavor wants a child that will carry out his ambitions for him, that he can live vicariously through. It’s not even an interpretation it’s directly stated text.

Endeavor’s mad science also literally has him treat the woman in his life as tools to use for his own amibition. He fores a marriage on a woman to use her as an unwilling accessory to his eugenics project.

It is not specifically a story of ambition got wrong, it’s also a story of neglect and abuse of all the women in his life. Endeavor’s ambitions all center around personal greatness for him. Shoto will prove his worth as a hero, as a mentor to him, as a great father. The fact that his motives are entirely selfish, (Endeavor is not focused on being the best hero he can be, but rather his own desire to be the strongest) is something that has an affect on his family and children.

Fuyumi, Touya, and Natsuo are literally afterthoughts to Endeavor despite being just as much his children as Shoto. He literally only thinks of Rei in the context of “I needed her to give me a family.” Not only that but he’s also an extremely bad father to the one child that he does take an active role in trying to parent, acting extremely controlling towards Shoto and getting extremely angry whenever Shoto did anything that was outside of Endeavor’s wishes for Shoto to fulfill his ambitions.

Endeavor just like Victor, inspires to greatness as a man and wants the signifiers of that as held up by society, accomplishment (Endeavor wants to be the number one rank even though he technically has far more resolved cases than All Might and the rank is literally just a number), family, and recognition despite having done none of the work. Once again why men great till they gotta be great. At the start of his arc, Endeavor feels entitled to Shoto’s love and obedience, and a role in his life, despite the fact that he’s hideously abused him for most of his life.

Endeavor like Victor, also abandons several children for failing to meet his expectations.

Part of Natsuo’s problem with Endeavor has exactly to do this sense of entitlement, Endeavor practically abandons his kids until they’re in their early twenties to the point where he wasn’t involved in their lives at all (and also separated them from their mother). Remember another point of the book is that Victor wants sole parenthood, to create life without involvement of a woman.

Endeavor does the exact same thing. He separates the children from their mother. Then while he is the only parent left in the household and effectively responsible for all of his children, he neglects most of them and completely fails to raise them.

It’s implied besides trying to teach Shoto to use his quirk, he’s literally pushed all of the housework, and actual parenting you know, labor that is involved in raising a child onto Fuyumi. Fuyumi has cooked most of Shoto’s meals, it’s Fuyumi who attends his school conference in the novels. Endeavor has effectively committed the same crime as Victor, creating life and then running away from it by failing to act in any way as the father to his own children. His sense of entitlement shows in his actions and the way he treats the people around him in his life, he uses them for his own ambitions and they get burned.

Endeavor is someone who has used all of the women in his life for his ambitions. Think Fuyumi, she grew up desperately wanting a family while having effectively no father and all contact cut off from her mother, and also had to take care of household chores and responsibility for both of her younger brothers. Think Rei, who has literally been institutionalized for ten years, and trauma from her experiences that haunts her to this day. Natsuo is someone who has no father, almost no relationship with his younger brother, and is still mourning his other dead brother. Shoto evens tates directly, he views Endeavor as someone to learn how to use his quirk from but hasn’t viewed him once as a father. Endeavor’s never been present as a father in Shoto’s life, despite controlling most of it and giving him all of the attention. He had ambition to pass his quirk from father to son, but never actually acted as a father.

Endeavor’s treatment of his family, and his reflection for his past actions is also shown using this metaphor for fire. All Might’s ambition to become the strongest hero for the sake of a more peaceful society, is also represented by fire. Especially a flame that he passes from one person to the next, that Nana passed to him, and he passed to Deku.

Endeavor is almost always associated with the more violent aspect of fire, when he thinks of the harm he’s done to his family it’s always juxtaposed to the fire on his face.

(The right side fire, the left side Rei’s suffering face.)

Whereas the more gentle associations with fire are almost made with Shoto. Once again the novel of Frankenstein doesn’t decry ambition, it merely explores the consequences of ambitions that were extremely self-interested from the start. Endeavor only wanted to be strong for his own sake. Shoto who wanted to become a hero like All Might who would never make his mother cry, and All Might who wanted to create a safer society are people with strong ambitions that are associated with gentler flames.

2. Dabi and Frankenstein’s Monster

Sins of the Father or Sins of the Fathers derives from biblical references primarily in the books Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Numbers to the sins or iniquities of one generation passing to another. Basically what it means is its a narrative trope where children are punished or suffer consequences for the action of their fathers. It can also mean that children inevitably reflect what their fathers have done to them, and even resemble their fathers.

Everything the monster does is a reflection of Frankentstein’s actions. Everything Dabi does is both a consequence and a reflection of Endeavor’s actions. They are both written as sons to be narrative foils to their creator. If anything Dabi is even more of a frankenstein’s monster than Shoto, because a key element to the narrative is that Frankenstein was abandoned for not being perfect according to his creator’s wishes, he was punished for a defect.

Touya just like frankenstein is a defective creation. One who suffers all of the consequences for what are his father’s sins. Endeavor deliberately took risks with his eugenics experiment that the child might have a quirk not compatible with their body, but it’s the child and not the parent who suffers all of the consequences. Toya literally died - whether he faked his death or not has yet to be revealed but he lost his home and family at a young age, spent most of his life homeless, and has to continually make use of a quirk that burns his entire body. Whether he wants them or not, his father’s sins are pushed onto Dabi.

The flame that Endeavor is so keen on passing to his children, has literally permanently disabled Dabi, and will negatively effect him for the rest of his life. Consequences that Endeavor ought to suffer are passed onto Dabi instead. Dabi is burned by Endeavor’s actions towards him.

This is once again something deliberately brought up by the book Frankenstein. The doctor creates life, takes absolutely no responsibility and leaves his creature to starve to death in the wilderness, and then the first time they meet again calls upon his creation to die.

“I expected this reception,” said the dæmon. “All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life?

The decision to create life irresponsibly was Victor’s, but the person who suffers the brunt end of the consequences is not Victor, but rather the creature itself who just like Dabi has no home, and is constistently hurt by the environment around him.

Dabi is also a symbol of the worst possible aspects of Endeavor’s ambitions.

To compare Victor and the monster briefly. Victor

Has family / friends

Home / Money / Wealth

Arrogant / Well Educated

Self-Destructive

A tool

The Monster

Abandoned

Ignorant (at first)

Homeless

A tool, but a more sympathetic one.

As you can see they are societally complete opposites. This can be said for Endeavor as well, he still gets to keep his family, his place in society despite what he’s done, he’s wealthy, succesful and well-liked in his community. Dabi is permanently disabled because of something his father did, is legally dead, homeless, separated from his family, and is a villain.

While they are completely opposite in status, the monster and Victor are eerily similiar. They are both highly intelligent people who carry a strong ambition within them. The Monster basically learns speech, and reading all on his own, and as soon as he can be becomes as well-read as possible.

Fortunately the books were written in the language, the elements of which I had acquired at the cottage; they consisted of Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch’s Lives, and the Sorrows of Werter. The possession of these treasures gave me extreme delight; I now continually studied and exercised my mind upon these histories, whilst my friends were employed in their ordinary occupations.

The monster also shares several of his father’s sin. He repeats the sins that have been done on to him, in the name of vengeance. Frankenstein’s claim is that he was hurt when he was still an innocent, punished before he had done anything wrong, but he also does the exact same thing to VIctor’s youngest brother killing him when he was just a child.

Victor’s worst sin by far is selfish entitlement, forgetting to consider the feelings of his creation. Yet, the monster knowing how much he suffered by just being created in a world where there’s no one else like him also demands Victor create another creature. This is out of his own personal sense of entitlement, he believes he’s entitled to have someone love him, and if he had this he would be a good person again.

He believes quite literally he deserves an Eve to share his loneliness in. His own personal feelings of grief and hurt matter more than those of: one the people he kills, and two a potential woman who would be created only to love him.

But it was all a dream; no Eve soothed my sorrows nor shared my thoughts; I was alone. I remembered Adam’s supplication to his Creator. But where was mine? He had abandoned me, and in the bitterness of my heart I cursed him.

The monster also feels entitled to punish Frankenstein, but in this reccuring sins of the fathers he punishes people who are completely innocent of the crime that Frankenstein did to him and have nothing to do with his creation, just to get back at Frankenstein. Including, an innocent boy, a maid who he framed for murder, Frankenstein’s friend, and also Elizabeth.

Dabi inevitably reflects his father and the environment he was raised in, and resembles him. Dabi who was raised by a quirk supremacist and thrown out because his quirk wasn’t good enough, kills people he doesn’t find worthy. Dabi’s methods are almost entirely based around his his individual strength because he was raised to believe that was the only good part of him. The same way Dabi was thrown out like burnable trash for failing to live up to his standards, Dabi will enact harsh vigilante justice and kill minor crimminals and heroes who fail to live up to his justice.

Just like for the monster’s actions in punishing Victor, Dabi is called to consider the feelings of family’s of the people he kills. He is also punishing people completely unrelated to what happened to him, in his efforts to hold his father accountable.

Dabi reflects his father, and quirk society the same things that burned him. He continually believes he has to be the strongest individually, accomplish everything on his own, and spurn others around him. Even those who try to make genuine connections with him like the league of villains. Dabi believes that the world has to be changed with the strength of ambitions of a single person, and his ambitions are far more important than the sense of family within the league.

Dabi effectively distances himself from two families, the found family of the league, and also his original biological family. Think about how much it might save Natsuo to lean that his brother is still alive. Shoto at least, doesn’t want to see his father roasted alive on live television.

Dabi’s ambitions are as self destructive as his fathers, as he only knows how to fight by completely burning his body up. He harms himself over and over again by using his quirk to try to change things.

3. Endeavor and Ujiko

The book ultimately poses the question who is responsible for the actions of the monster, Frankenstein or the Monster itself. However, I think an element missed in a lot of analysis is that the mosnter accepts that most of what he has done is wrong, he just wants people to be held equally accountable for their actions.

“You, who call Frankenstein your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my crimes and his misfortunes. But in the detail which he gave you of them he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I endured wasting in impotent passions. For while I destroyed his hopes, I did not satisfy my own desires. They were for ever ardent and craving; still I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there no injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all humankind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his friend from his door with contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic who sought to destroy the saviour of his child?

The monster’s problem is not that he shouldn’t be held accountable for his actions, but rather that he’s the only one whose ever held accountable for his actions. The Monster also spends most of the narrative being treated as a monster, whereas Frankenstein faces no real consequences for what he’s done from the people around him, never loses his standing in society, never is cast out for his wrongs. Frankenstein continually avoids any and all responsibility towards the monster up until his death, and only takes responsibility in violently trying to kill his creation.

There are also oppurtunities for Frankenstein to take responsibility, which he chooses not to do anything. An innocent maid is about to be executed for a crime that Frankenstein knows she did not commit, and instead of trying to help her by explaining to everyone his creation of the creature, and also that the creature is likely responsible for the murder he says nothing. While not responsible for the women’s death, he is culpable in that he could have taken action to save her but didn’t.

Franketnstein’s actions are again and again always to run away from the monster and avoid responsibility. From the beginning he runs away from the monster due to it simply being ugly. Both the monster (and also Toya) were punished when they were innocent children who had not committed any kind of crime, by the person who was responsible for raising them, educating them, and giving them everything they needed to become happy adults.

“Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.”

While Frankenstein and the Monster both entitled, their reasons for entitlement come from entirely different places. Frankenstein’s comes from his own arrogance, believing that he’s destined to do great things, and be a man of status and accomplishment. Why men great till they gotta be great.

The monster believes he’s entitled to a family, because his father abandoned him, and he’s been homeless most of his life. The monster is violent, but only after he’s endured violence from people several times over. The monster is ultimately a victim of circumstance, and Frankenstein is the one who created that circumstance.

Considering Frankenstein and the monster are foils, there’s a reason that Frankenstein fears and abhors the monster before it’s even awake. It’s because the monster reflects the ugliness of his own actions. The ugliness in himself that he is completely unable to face. He is a negative character foil in a character sense, and a shadow created by Frankenstein’s actions.

The monster shows Victor what he is, selfish, entitled, and violent. Victor can’t ever confront the monster, because he can never confront those flaws within himself.

Dabi is a reflection of Endeavor’s violent, abusive nature. He is also the direct consequence of all of Endeavor’s actions. So the question is, has Endeavor confronted the monstrous side of his actions? The answer is most likely no, because despite doing things as bad as any villain in the story he still views himself as the hero.

Shoto even tells us directly. Endeavor the hero and Endeavor the father are so different they’re almost like two different people. Endeavor continuing to be a hero on the television and coming home to his family is not taking repsonsibility for his actions, not truly, because he still hasn’t accepted the worst of what he’s done.

In the narrative Endeavor currently feels guilt, and also a desire to atone but we’re also told again and again that atoning means taking responsibility and carrying everything. No building a house where his family doesn’t have to be around him and taking steps to distance himself isn’t taking full resposnibility because Dabi is still running around. Dabi is the embodiment of the absolute worst of Endeavor’s actions, the toxic environment that literally killed Toya, burned Shoto, and hospitalized Rei. I would say Endeavor still hans’t seen the worst of his actions because he still views himself as the hero, just the hero who has made mistakes. We’re shown this in foiling, the same way Fankenstein rejects the monster, Endeavor doesn’t recognize Dabi even though he is literally his own son.

The strongest evidence of this is Endeavor and Ujiko’s foiling. They are two characters who have a lot in common, they both used children as experiments in their attempts to create stronger quirks including their own family members (Ujiko experimented on his own nephew).

They’re both men of incredible wealth and status in society, who have deliberately used their status to cover up their cimes. Endeavor used his status to hospitalize his wife for years, he used his status to marry her in the first place, Ujiko uses all of his money and resources to find people to experiment on, and deliberately takes advantage of people in need by using his orphanage and hospitals to farm for materials to make his Nomus with.

They’re both motivated by their own personal ambitions. They also feel entitled, Ujiko’s specific issue is that the scientific community failed to give him the respect and funding for his research that he thought he was owed.

The source of Endeavor’s pain is that no matter how hard he works he’ll never become the strongest. The source of Ujiko’s pain is that nobody recognizes his work and achievements in his scientific community. They both want their hard work to turn into achievement, for their efforts to pay off, which again is not a bad thing until they get angry when they’re not given what they think they’re owed.

Ujiko and Endeavor both become so desperate to accomplish their ambitions that they manipulate people to become tools to fulfill their ambitions for them. Shoto has to carry on his legacy, and learn to use his flame side like Endeavor always wanted. They both create children that they are technically the parent of, but don’t act as fathers. Endeavor is responsible for Fuyumi, Natsuo, Touya, and Todoroki but fails to live up to that responsibility. Ujiko creates the Nomu, which just like the monster in Frankenstein are new life created from the corpses of other people, and then just uses them and disposes them as tools.

Ujiko even utters a line that is incredibly similiar to Endeavor in the regards to the way they treat Shigaraki and Shoto.

However how does Endeavor react to Ujiko? Does he understand the harm that he’s done in a new light? No, he falls back on his hero narrative. I am the hero, and Ujiko is the utlimate evil.

Endeavor so far, like Frankenstein, fails to truly confront the monster. Even when he finally realizes the destructive nature of his desire to be stronger than anyone else when he fights the Nomu, his response is to burn it alive. What is Endeavor’s response? To play hero, and defeat a villain.

The thing about jungian shadow arcs is that you don’t destroy your shadow, you reintegrated it. Endeavor can’t symbolically murder his past self because that won’t make his past actions go away, he can only accept them. The question now is: will he do the same thing to Dabi?

When confronted with who Dabi is and his role in creating Dabi, what will Endeavor’s choice be? Is he going to play the hero, and destroy the villain he sees in front of him. The same way he did with the Nomu, the same way he did with Ujiko, the same way he’s trying to do with Shigaraki (who is, you know a heavy parallel to his own son Toya, and another abused child).

Will Endeavor act as a hero, or the remorseful father he also is? That choice is utlimately what Endeavor’s entire character is written around, does he want to finally be a father or does he want to keep being endeavor the hero? What is more important to him his own ambitions as a hero, or the people he’s harmed?

Just like Victor, Endeavor’s entire arc revolves around Dabi. He is a hero directly responsible for the creation of a villain. Dabi would not exist if it were not for Endeavor’s direct actions. Not only that but his future will be determined by how he chooses to interact with Dabi once he knows the truth. Endeavor cannot truly take responsibility until he takes responsibility for Dabi.

#mha meta #mha dabi #dabi is touya #dabi #enji todoroki #endeavor #frankenstein #mary shelley's frankenstein #Sometimes you gotta wake up in the morning and decide to spend your entire day writing an incredibly long essay about classic literature

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manic-panic-sapphic · 4 years

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How did u figure it out you were a lesbian because I have no idea I can’t tell if I find boys attractive or if I just think they are cute (I don’t know how to word it) or if I think girls are attractive or if I just want to look like them. Can u offer any advice to figuring it out? Sorry to bother you.

You're not bothering me at all my friend, I'm happy to offer an answer! Well... I'll try, I'm not a good talker but I'm happy to do what I can to help ^^~♡

Now, before I say anything: I want u to know that its okay to be confused about sexuality, attraction and it's fine to question it - I sure as hell did! The best advice I have is to just take a deep breath and let it come to you. Let yourself fall in love and get into relationships in your own time. You don't have to label yourself, you can simply say "I just like people, I like what I like and I dont want to give it a label". Nothing wrong with that ^^ it's also okay if you dont know what kind of attraction you feel, romantic, sexual or otherwise - you can be pan- or bisexual and have certain preferences/attractions towards specific genders, I.e. you might really be into the idea of dating men but the thought of having sex with men grosses you out, whereas you could feel sexual and emotional attraction towards women. This doesn't make you explicitly lesbian, you're still pan/bi/label-less/whatever you choose to identify as, but just have a stronger preference for women. And that is okay - doesnt make you any less valid, so dont feel pressured about finding a label just yet ^^ it might come to you one day, it might change, and if you never figure it out, that's also fine! Sexuality is so fluid for some people that sometimes you physically can't narrow it down to something as simple as gay or straight.

I've personally always been a little on the fence regarding my sexuality. I dont think I've ever been into guys at the same level as a standard straight person... I've always felt pulled towards girls even if I couldnt really name the feeling. I just wanted to spend time with girls. Me being somewhere on the asexual spectrum and all, I don't really experience sexual attraction to any genders generally speaking, and throughout my high school years I never cared about finding a partner. I did not understand what my friends meant when they said "this person is so hot", be it male or female. I lied about a lot of my male crushes in high school because I thought there was something wrong with me and didnt want to be called out for being different. I wasnt too afraid of the 'lesbo-label', I've always been self confident in staying true to my identity, but the "you dont feel attraction? you must be a violent emotionless serial killer" rumours really scared me, especially because I was really into horror and black metal 😂😂

In terms of me realising I was a lesbian, I think I sort of figured it out when I came to the realisation that I had this massive need to protect someone, and to be the strong, dominant counterpart in a relationship. Unlike other girls I knew I didn't want a guy to protect me, to cuddle me, to buy me presents because I wanted that role. I've nicknamed it "the knight in shining armour complex" 😂. I preferred the company of girls, especially girls who were more feminine than me and physically smaller than me, who I could impress by showing my physical strength to them and taking stupid risks like trying to skateboard when I had no skill for it *cringes*. I didn't really like the idea of making myself look attractive to guys, or male attention, and I've always seen guys as equals in rivalry and friendships rather than people I'd like to date. Anyway I was 14 or so when I started silently identifying as bisexual because I realised how I was seriously into my best friend. I was like you at the time, not sure of what attraction I felt towards guys or girls, which is why I didnt jump straight to the lesbian label, but spending time with this girl who I'd known for 4 years sparked emotions that no guy ever had. I was the athletic one and always had a need to show her how "masculine" I was. I wanted to protect her from everything, I would feel so excited by little touches and hugs and when we'd share a bed at sleepovers, and I was really into the inside joke we had that she was my wife. She said it in the best friends way but I really wanted it to be true. I'd get super depressed and moody at her when she told me about male crushes because I wanted to have her for myself - again, I wasnt sure if it was me being a lesbian or a protective best friend. But yeah, it took me a year to think it over before I finally accepted that I might be a bit gay, hence why I took the bisexual label. Once the bitch I once called my best friend stabbed me in the back and caused me life long trauma and trust issues concerning relationships (thanks Kaye, really appreciate it), I didnt have any crushes on anyone for 3 years and just stuck to the bisexual ace label for that time. I was still really confused about sexuality but I had exams and university to think about so I thought 'screw it' and figured that it would just make sense once I found a partner... and it did. I met my first girlfriend at university, and spending time within a lesbian relationship made everything make sense: I had a 'eureka' moment where I was like "this is exactly what I've been wanting. This is what's been missing from my life. I now know for a fact that I like girls. I want this, I dont want a guy.". So in conclusion it took me near enough 5 years to work out that I was gay, and occasionally I'll meet a real soft super sweet guy and think "am I bi after all???", so even though I'm like 99% sure I'm lesbian and can't see myself ever getting married to and settling down with a man, that 1% swings by every now and then and makes me question everything.

I guess what I'm trying to say in a really really unnecessarily long answer: take your time. Embrace those emotions for guys and girls, and let it come to you. Theres no easy way to work it out, unfortunately, but You'll find the right people by just taking it one step at a time. I believe you'll come to a conclusion that works for you by just taking it easy and not forcing yourself into slots that you don't necessarily fit in. 😁 hope I was able to help at least a little~ 💕💕

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wdfa · 3 years

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bro my gender is getting really confusing. like i’m definitely a boy. but i’m??? also a girl???????

like i don’t like it when people treat me like a man (getting called “mister” or “sir” is confusing because…. that’s not me lmao) and i dont like anything dudebro-ish/i dont feel comfortable hanging out with guys. but i also don’t like it when people say “miss” or “ma’am” ? but im way more comfortable hanging out with girls!

i also like feminine terms of endearment like “princess” or “baby girl” and stuff like that. and i really liked it when my ex called me his girlfriend or his wife. and i love being called “pretty” and more feminine-coded descriptors!!!!!!

also i tend to relate more to the stereotypically female experience than i do to the stereotypically male one?? like the social function i perform is very much female, i REALLY relate to all those “oldest daughter” experiences of trying to caretake everyone all the time.

and i want to wear florals and cute skirts and pretty dresses!!!! and i know boys can do all that too but honestly i dont always feel like a boy. but i sometimes i do!

body-wise im really happy with how i look like getting top surgery was absolutely 100% the correct decision for me, i like most of the effects T gave me. i like my body hair and the pitch of my voice! i wish my booty was a little better but idk if thats fat redistribution or if its just me not working those muscles.

idk man all i know is gender is... certainly Something. we really do be existing in corporeal forms to be perceived by others.

#this is much longer than i intended it to be but w/e #just my onion #gender is a journey

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nonbinary-support · 4 years

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I'm pretty sure I'm enby, I think. I don't feel any particular attachment to any gender, really. But I'm confused. I don't mind she pronouns, it feels the same as he or they. I like it when my husband calls me his wife. I hate it when people call me a woman. I hate it even more when people call me a "Frau" (German for woman). Shouldn't it all be the same?

gender is complicated!! some nonbinary people are uncomfortable with any gendered term, some nonbinary people change day to day what theyre comfortable with, some nonbinary people are comfortable with gendered terms associated with a specific binary gender, everyones different! i personally am definitely nonbinary but still prefer masculine gendered terms over feminine or even neutral ones. being called a guy or my moms son or my partners boyfriend makes me rlly happy!!

basically theres infinite combinations of ways to experience gender and you could totally be nonbinary and still consider yourself someones wife, etc

-mod basil

#anonymous

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mrsq8geek · 4 years

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Advice for an aspiring author hoping to write lgbt muslim characters?

Hi, thanks for your question! This is quite the rabbit hole, so I can't cover everything, but I did my best. Some general guidelines and then my own view:

1. Do not write this story unless it is from personal experience or with the direct express written permission from the person it’s based on, and I hesitate with that second one. Like many other experiences, this story hasn’t been told all that often, so unless you’re one of the above, you don’t have many points of reference and will probably get it wrong and, I suspect, as ‘exotic’.

That said:

2. Start by examining yourself. One of my favourite resources is @writingwithcolor, which has many great references for this. At this point, we're asking questions such as "Why do you not want to represent us?" and "Why do you need to tell this story right now?" among others. Do check it out.

3. Please, please don't write an apologetic acceptably assimilated model minority. I don't know where you're from, or where you intend to set the story, but we're all influenced by American media, so I feel it's important to mention. We generally don't have positive feelings towards those characters, let alone relating to them, at least not to the aspects where they're supposed to represent us.

(My personal pet peeve example is Abed Nadir from Community, a Muslim enamoured with Christmas and is an all-around Acceptable Arab... played by an Indian actor. It's extra irking because the show was touted as being Better Than Big Bang Theory, and it seemed okay addressing many other nuances, but when it came to this? Think of it this way: why didn't they cast an Asian actress to play Britta or Annie and called her white? Or, indeed, an Indian actress to play Shirley and called her black? Because clearly they believe the audience can't tell the difference? Arabs are black or white but not brown, guys. Not all Arabs are Muslims and vice versa. Some Muslims are (gasp!) white.)

Anyway, the point is Abed, and others like him, are non-threatening. They reject their own identity and are desperate to be Just Like Us Default White People. While this is definitely the case for some people, 1. it's not the case for most people, 2. it's just a really tired trope especially in current times, and 3. the other side of this trope’s coin is that in order to be acceptable for The West, they have to rebel against their character’s original identity, which is just as tired.

But I digress. You already know by asking this question that it’s controversial. Why not play it straight instead? Pun unintended. Do your research, whatever way you choose to go.

4. Speaking of doing your research, do. your. research! Muslims are a diverse group of about 2 billion people*. There are two major sects and many smaller ones. In the major ones, homosexuality (etc) is a sin, haram, full stop, end of sentence. Any level of presenting like the opposite gender is not only haram, it’s cursed. Yes, there are many people coming up with exceptions and loopholes, or just doing what they want regardless, and if you want to write about them, that's your prerogative, but:

* so Kamala Khan, for example, is completely unrelatable to me. (See: 9)

5. You know what else is considered haram in majority Islam? Extra-marital sex. Pork. Alcohol. Drugs, yes including cannabis, in fact even nutmeg. People do all that anyway! Especially in non-Muslim-majority countries where the laws don’t make it harder for them, or in poorer Muslim-majority countries where people don’t get educated in religious matters, or indeed all over everywhere because not all people of any religion actively practice that religion. It's a non-issue by this point.

5A. The only reason LGBT Muslims is An Issue, and it’s An Issue Now, is because America’s making it one. It’s no different than, say, modern white feminism. They stir the pot, we deal with the mess.

5B. Muslims are people, and people aren't perfect. We know this, and we've addressed it as nauseam… and that’s just it, we’re allowed* to talk about these things because we know ourselves and our experiences. It’s more acceptable coming from us to us because we have a common ground to start discussing things.

* I wrote allowed, but it really depends on the situation. Sometimes you’re not allowed simply because you don’t want to make it an issue, and that’s okay too.

5C. Since you’re asking, I’m assuming you’re not a Muslim yourself, and that puts a layer on scrutiny on you. We don’t know where to begin to talk to you, and it’s worse if you represent us in any controversial way or in any way less than perfect. Less than perfect by whose standards? It depends. Nobody knows! (See: 3)

5D. Examine yourself, research the topic, and know just what you’re trying to say.

6. That said, here’s my personal take on it that I’d love to see someone do, but haven’t so far. I don’t know how people arrive at their sexuality, whether it’s by nature or nurture, but they do end up there one way or another. When it comes to Islam, you’re highly encouraged to (heterosexually, to be clear) marry and reproduce. You’re discouraged from sex outside that framework. If you are unable to marry for whatever reason, you’re supposed to find a way to deal with it. Fasting is often recommended.

And the way I see it, finding yourself not being attracted to the opposite gender is just one reason to not marry. “So I NEVER get to have sex?” Yes, just like your straight brothers and sisters who realize they can never marry for their own reasons. Maybe their health prevents them. Maybe they have family depending on them, especially financially, and they realize can’t add a husband or wife into the mix. Maybe they’re incompatible with the person they wanted.

The West worships Romantic Love (also money, but that’s another thing), but it really isn’t everything in life*. Just see any post here on tumblr dot com discussing the different kinds of love the Romans acknowledged and wrote about extensively. Yes, it’s a powerful drive, but again, it’s not the only thing in life, and coming to that realization is its own journey.

* (Something something Harry Potter)

I am so, so sick and tired of characters who don’t practice their religion (“hi, I’m Muslim/Jewish/Christian/Hindu/Buddhist/whatever, but I will have that pork, that beef cheeseburger, whatever”*), and equally tired of characters who are the personification of their religion (“hi, I’m religious, hear me act out my stereotypes”). Don’t get me started on characters who exist just so the authors can bash that religion.

* a recent disappointing example was the show Crazy Ex Girlfriend. When Rebecca is first introduced, I was excited to learn the show was about a Jewish character, finally a religious character portrayed as practicing! But it was quickly revealed they were focusing on the cultural aspects, and not only is she non-practicing, she doesn’t even believe any god exists. Snore. In contrast, see: Shepherd Book from the show Firefly. Not just a practicing Christian, an actually interesting character in his own right. Not a perfect person by far, but someone who’s doing his utmost to live his life and still maintain his faith.

I want a Muslim character who finds themselves attracted to whomever, someone from the same gender or whatever you want, or feeling like they want to present as not their birth gender, and then proceeds to do what so many of us real-life Muslims do: find ways to deal with it and come to terms with it. Acknowledge it and make peace with it. Make the choice, the conscious decision, to remain faithful to their beliefs and maybe not pursue a romantic relationship with the other person… and instead interact with them like a human being they care about. Help them reach a goal or achieve a dream, keep them safe from harm, something. Maybe focus on the traits of the other gender that are accessible, or fight the toxic effects of the patriarchy, something. Writing like “a happy ending == they end up together”, and any and all other outcomes are Bad and Tragic and Void, is boring and unrealistic.

Just as a black woman being soft and feminine is a rebellion against the mainstream, a religious character sticking to their faith above all else is way more interesting than yet another character breaking the rules.

Addendums:

7. “But Islam is homophobic?” No, Islam has rules against intentionally engaging in specific behaviors. You’re not faulted for having low alcohol tolerance, you’re faulted for the act of consumption. You’re not faulted for being addicted to drugs, you’re faulted for making the decision to try it the first time, or if you were tricked into it, for not trying to get clean once you’re there. However! People, all people, hashtag not just Muslims, often try to enforce rules by creating fear and hatred around them. It’s a convenient societal shorthand, even if the consequences can be different than intended. It’s the same mechanism that leads to “abstinence = zero sex ed” in the US. Abstinence isn’t the issue, people trying to enforce it by making information around sex opaque are the ones causing problems.

So some Muslim people end up homophobic, and some Muslim people go all in the other direction, because the balance is delicate and difficult to find.

8. “LGBT stories aren’t just about sex, what about asexuals, transsexuals, etc?” True, but most LGBT stories tend to go in that direction, and I’m keeping it as broad as I can here.

9. Even if your character is Muslim but not Arab, it’s probably going to come up, in your research if not in your story. Although the most populous Muslim nation is Indonesia and the most famous “Muslim” terrorists are Afghani, the most prominent Muslim sites are in Saudi Arabia and Palestine. The branding is there. With that in mind, required reading is the film Reel Bad Arabs, and any primers you can find on Orientalism, Colonialism, and Imperialism.

***

Honourable mentions:

Check out the Saudi series Masameer by Myrkott on YouTube, many episodes have subtitles. They recently made a movie and it's on Netflix internationally! You can't escape American Imperialism any more than you can escape British Colonialism*, but we're all way past being enamoured by them. The Emirati series Freej is also in Youtube, sans subtitles, though the DVDs have them, and I’ll leave it at that. Hashtag quarantine let us catch up on shows? Stay safe, stay home.

* she said, in English.

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transamorousnetwork · 4 years

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Letters@The Transamorous Network

Editor’s note: In this series, we’ll highlight conversations with our readers/viewers. We think folks will benefit from these conversations. All names are made up to protect everyone’s privacy. This particular exchange we are sharing because we strongly believe the narrative expressed by the writer has value for trans-attracted men, as well as transgender women who are capable of being compassionate towards women impacted by men struggling with their trans attraction. Trans attraction is serious business and is NOT A FETISH. It has long-term impacts for everyone involved. We at The Transamorous Network understand this and have compassion not only for the men, but for the women (both trans and cis) impacted by their short- and long-term decisions.

SECOND WARNING: This exchange contains material that may be highly offensive and triggering for transgender people. We strongly suggest that if you are triggered by content that may be perceived by you as invalidating or erasure, you should NOT read the following.

"My wife never measured up because she couldn’t. She wasn’t trans."

How fucking sad this statement is. Do you have any idea how much this destroys the woman who tries to measure up? To the man dressed as a woman and her husband who cannot admit his sexuality.

Forgive me, but I resent these men who want to call themselves women. Maybe my resentment is displaced for my husband whose attraction to these men dressed as women has utterly destroyed my self-esteem.

I’m not sure where to place my anger – for these men who are GAY and dress/transform into women so they can be with men OR for these men who are GAY who enjoy being with men who dress/transform as women but are confused by their sexuality and attempt to live a “straight” life.

My husband and his denial have utterly ruined my self-esteem as a woman and wasted a good amount of my life to be in a genuine relationship. I am angry, hurt and frankly bitter towards the porn industry that introduced him to these men. My life is destroyed and my heart is broken.

Meena

Hi Meena

I understand your resentment, your anger and frustration. I also understand your unacceptance of the people for whom your husband is attracted to.

How did you come to this website? What were you searching for? If you’ve looked around our content, you’ll notice something (although this may be extremely hard to hear from where you currently are): your self-esteem isn’t ruined, although I know to you it feels that way. At the same time, since you believe that it is, it is true for you: your self-esteem is ruined.

But it’s also not.

Just because you believe it is ruined doesn’t mean that truth is objectively real, like separate from your thoughts. You can have a quite-intact self esteem AND, believe it or not, still love your husband, even though you two may no longer be together.

I get though how that feels so out of reach right now.

There’s another reality in which you both have gone on your individual way, and along those paths both of you are happy. No resentment, no bitterness. Everyone happy.

Someday that will be your truth. But I get that right now, it’s not.

TTN

Dear TTN

Thank you for your thoughtful response. Forgive me but I think it is easy for you to respond in this way because you are living on the other side of the coin. While you talk about your wife in this article, do you really know how deeply this affected her?

Is it easier to brush it away as incompatibility or just both parties are happy now. I really think this is a delusion to help men (like you and my husband) to feel ok about the choice you have made. After nearly 20 years of marriage, I am devastated. I truly believe that my entire marriage has been a sham and that i must not be pretty enough, feminine enough or good enough. Your response makes you feel better for the choices you have made. I believe my husband is a COWARD who destroyed my life and self-esteem in order to live a facade of a life he thought he should.

So, I’m supposed to be ok because now he has found himself and can be in an authentic relationship. I think this is what you guys tell yourselves to make yourselves feel better for the TRUE women that you destroy. We are left in your aftermath to pick up the pieces and try to put our lives back together and find some sense of worth again.

I found your site after searching up the issue in a desperate attempt to find understanding and comfort at the sham of my last 20 years.

My only response to both you and my husband is I hope it was worth it. I hope denying your attraction at the expense of another human being and destroying that person so you could be with your transsexual [SIC] was worth it. I hope it was worth it that i became suicidal. I hope it was worth it that are children now live in a broken home. I hope it was worth it that I now require anti-anxiety and antidepressant medications in order to function. God, I hope my peace of mind and life were worth it.

Meena

Hi again Meena,

Rather than replying at length here, I would like to offer this: let’s talk on the phone or via Skype or Zoom where we can see one another or at least hear one another. I know that were we to talk in real time, you might find enormous relief from these feelings you’re experiencing and the actual physically real experiences you’re having.

It’s not an attempt to silence you here in the comments section. As you see, I’ve posted your comments verbatim, immediately and unedited. It’s more that, despite what you’re claiming here, I really do understand what’s happening with you and with my ex-wife and with your former husband. And, it could be helpful for you if we shared that knowledge together in real time.

This is a fee offer Meena. And I’m willing to talk with you as long as or as many times as needed.

Perry

Hi Perry,

Thank you for responding to my comment and the offer to talk with me via phone/skype/etc. I apologize for posting my comments on your site and appreciate your thoughtful and compassionate responses.

I don't wish to talk with you at this time as I am under the care of an AASECT (American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists) and am currently working on keeping myself safe. I am fearful that talking with you may push me further towards my self-destructive behaviors. At this time, I am working under a contract with her so I don't need to be hospitalized for my suicidal ideation. Please forgive me, but I believe talking to you would only further my desire to find quiet and peace in my mind.

My husband's lies and betrayal have frankly devestated me and sense of safety and security. I may find forgiveness for him eventually but right now I am simply working on surviving for myself and my children each day. I fear talking to you about this issue will only validate my feelings of worthlessness - as you are like my husband and have given up your marriage for someone you found better and more attractive.

I don't see where you could bring me any comfort. I wish you and your dating network all the best and hope you find success - hopefully not at the expense of other human beings.

Meena

Hi Meena,

I think you’re presuming what my intentions are, and that’s ok. I only know that I could help you find peace and calm, mental and emotional clarity and then empowerment pretty much immediately. That’s why I was offering. Conversing with me wouldn’t “push you towards more destructive behaviors”, instead, it could quite quickly reconnect you with your feelings of empowerment, security and knowing; the exact opposite of what you have expressed as a fear.

But I understand where you are, not because I’m trans-attracted and divorced, but because I understand other things you and I (and everyone else) shares.

Just so you know, I didn’t leave my wife because I found a trans woman. My wife divorced me because she found other men she preferred. It was a great move on her part and I don’t blame her or vilify her for her choices. And no, I currently am not with a trans woman. I prefer to focus on my growing enterprises.

Hopefully this provides the clarity it was meant to offer. The offer I made earlier still stands should you ever choose to act on it.

As for your comments on The Transamorous Network, you don’t have to apologize at all because your comments, as painful as they may have been to share, will help more people than you know as they seek their own understanding and freedom in the new reality we all find ourselves in.

Be well Meena.

Perry

Dear Perry,

Thank you for your kind and compassionate response. I feel that you are a very caring and empathetic person who is trying to help me.

I'm not sure I am in a place to find empowerment. I have an 18 year marriage that is a sham. I have been married to a man who was sexually attracted to something other than what I can offer. We have struggled with sex for 18 years - he always claimed a lower libido that me - and I am so stupid that I tried for so long to try to be what he said he wanted and liked. I discovered his transattraction early in our marriage and I allowed him to convince me that it was just a fetish and that his primary attraction was to cis-gender women. After all this time and recently discovering some sexting activity on his part (while recovering from breast cancer none the less - but who needs real breasts when your husband prefers the implants attached to a body with a penis), I realize I have been in denial because I love him and he is the father of my children. He wants to be with a tranny - though he says he never has had sex with one - but at different times in his life he has met ones he found attractive.

Never the less, as a cisgender woman, I can tell you that transsexual women maintain a certain masculinity that is extremely obvious to real women (because they are NOT real women) - no matter how much surgery or hormones they have had. As a result of being married to a man who is transattracted, I have begun to worry as a CISGENDER FEMALE - are my features masculine? Do I look like a tranny? Is that why he was attracted to me? Do other people think I look like a man dressed as a woman? I have lost all sense of self-confidence and esteem as a woman as well as my sense of safety and security.

I think it is easy for you to chalk this up to well, both parties can now be happy. He can be with a transsexual and I can be - I don't know - because I can't imagine that another human being would want to be with me - (i must look like a tranny and my husband of 18 years is attracted to MEN - albeit dressed like women with breast implants and a shit ton of make-up). Right now, I see no happy solution to this. I am so glad you can find the sunshine and rainbows in this. I'm sorry but after 18 years of marriage, this is destruction of another human being because he is too macho to admit to himself, his friends or family that he likes men who dress as women! I found your site in a desparate attempt to understand and frankly, reassure me that he actually does just have a fetish and truly is into REAL women. Your site only confirmed my worst nightmare. I am lost and devastated.

You can keep your site going and kid yourself that all will be well for men who are into trannies and destroy their marriages in order to indulge in this sexual fetish. And frankly, it will - despite all the women it destroys and leaves in the aftermath. How could you really make a difference? Save two lives? You should focus your efforts on younger men who are struggling to understand themselves - before they enter into a heterosexual relationship - and help them enter into relationships for their TRUE nature. This would save so much destruction and possibly some lives. You see, the only people who come out on top in this scenario are the men you help to find their TRUE authentic nature and marry, date or have sex with trannies all the while destroying those women who have committed to them and thought they had a husband who loved them.

I apologize for my hostility and anger - I am still searching for peace and answers - and your site has provided me with a horrible ugly truth that is very hard for me to accept. I kept searching for answers that lead down a different path - one that confirmed my marriage, confirmed that I hadn't married a man who preferred to be with MEN, confirmed that I am an attractive, desirable and worth while woman deserving of a relationship and not some pathetic hideous woman who can serve as as a facade/sham for a man who truly is into MEN.

I thank you again for your compassionate response to me - as I know my thoughts and ideas are very attacking of your entire endeavor.

My only hope is that my pain might help save someone from this horrible experience and ultimately save their life.

Meena

We offered Meena a free live engagement to help her. To date, she has not responded.

This exchange shows how serious this is for everyone involved. If you're trans attracted and feel shame and embarrassment about this natural part of you, we encourage you to consider this: the sooner you come into owning who you are, the better off everyone will be.

That being said, stories people tell create their reality. Often "stories people tell" blind them to their own intuition, which is always accurate. As you can see in Meena's experience, several times her intuition led her to evidence in response to her questions, which came in the form of suspicion. Instead of listening to her knowing, she told stories which caused her to ignore her knowing.

Everyone is a match to the partner they are with. In other words, it always takes two.

Whenever a person ignores answers they receive, and everyone always receives answers they seek, such answers will get bigger – more intense, harder to ignore – until the person "gets it". By then, a lot of cleaning up may be required.

It's possible to avoid all this. If you're in a long-term relationship or marriage, or you're contemplating marrying a cis-woman, but you are trans attracted, we urge you to consider the significance of your choices.

And, at the same time, it takes two. Meena's struggle reflects her husband's struggle as both create one another through stories they tell.

Find out more. We are available to everyone.

#transgender #trans #transgirl #transawareness #transamorous #transattracted #mtf #trans-attraction

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klausesdiego · 5 years

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the trial of my gender by maggie c.

below is the personal essay i wrote for my creative nonfiction class. it documents and talks about my struggle with accepting who i am and how i identify in terms of gender. please read the whole thing and be kind.

I sat at my dining room table, in the middle of the night, watching YouTube videos about people documenting their gender transition. It was fascinating to me, much in the same way that an outside observer would see any scientific study or conduction. To me it was simply that; I was an outside force that was interested in learning more about this topic. For research purposes. I was in 8th grade, so my fascinations tended to fringe to the edges of what was normal. I loved British panel shows, documentaries about serial killers, and even How It’s Made videos. Basically, I watched a large variety of videos that a typical 13 year old wouldn’t think to even look up. And one day I stumbled across the genre of gender transition videos. I believe I was looking up hair dying tutorials because this was around the same time I started experimenting with my hair color; regardless, I ended up watching voice comparisons, post-op surgery reports, and just vlogs in general of people venting their gender concerns. It wasn’t then and there that I realized that being transgender was a thing. I knew of it before that moment. But it was at the moment, the dining room deathly quiet and dark as night except for the illumination of my computer screen that I began to question my own gender.

Gender dictates everything in life. Everywhere you go, even from a young age, you are determined your worth through gender. And maybe it’s not as clear and forthright as you may think I’m trying to convey it as, but a closer eye can see that nearly everything in life, is based on gender. From an early age, even preschool or kindergarten, you are divided by gender. They tell the boys to be a group and the girls to be a group. And at that young age it is ingrained in everyone’s brain that gender is a binary. Gender is male or female and there is no inbetween. It won’t be until high school,l at least, that people will learn that sometimes people fall outside of those binary lines. Maybe you were a male who dressed or acted a little too feminine for everyone’s liking. Maybe you were deemed a “tomboy” simply because you prefered board shorts to bikinis. But at the end of the day, the people around you will label you as a gender that is either male or female. And that isn’t the case. If gender is a binary code of 1’s and 0’s, then everything that doesn’t fit within that code is labeled “nonbinary”. Gender non-conforming, transgender, androgynous, agender, genderqueer whatever you want to call yourself, there are things that lie beyond that binary.

Even when I was young, I didn’t know where I was supposed to fall in the gender binary. I knew that because of how I was born that I was deemed female. Assigned female at birth. That’s what some people call it. But it didn’t really seemed assigned. It didn’t feel like a government assigned label, like a social security number. It truly felt like a piece of my identity. At least, partially. When I was a freshman in highschool I finally berated my mom to the point where she let me cut my hair short into what I called a “pixie” cut. I tried to find the most feminine word for it, hoping that it would sway her opinion. This was soon after I learned the wonders of gender transition videos and watching them soon became a daily habit. In the end I looked like Justin Bieber from 2009, but I didn’t care. I was in love with it. My face was too rounded, my lips were too full. But my hair seemed right, finally. When I was a sophomore in highschool I came out to my parents as transgender. I wrote the date down in my calendar but said calendar has long since seen the trash can after one too many times of me cleaning my bedroom out of anxiety-ridden panic. I told them I wish I was born a male. And the funniest part about that? I don’t even think they remember. Sure, we had a good cry and my mom hugged me, telling me she would love me no matter who or what I wanted to become, but after that night, we never spoke of it again. My parents kept leaving little hints here and there that I might be a lesbian, saying things like “whoever you decide to marry” or “your future significant other”, but they never mentioned my gender. I was always going to be their little girl. And for a while, only my closest friends knew about who I was.

For a graphic design class I took in college, we had to construct a poster series about a serious issue that we were concerned about. The professor used his personal example of heroine usage in York, Pennsylvania and shared stories about it affecting his life directly. At this point in my life I was pretty confident in being unconfident in my gender, so naturally, I gravitated towards transgender-related topics. I learned that every 4 days a person who is transgender gets murdered. I made the poster in the style of a calendar with a bouquet of flowers every 4 days with the flowers being the color scheme of the transgender flag. I thought it was somber but albeit fitting. Learning that terrible fact was a shock for me. I knew that people who were transgender were discriminated, harassed, assaulted, and killed. But at that rate? It made me scared for my life. I was glad, for once in my life, that I presented myself as my biological gender. It was my safety net. Plausible deniability.

Rewind to high school, sophomore year to be exact, I started going by a different name, a more masculine name, online in gender support groups. My closest friend to me, the only one who knew about this whole thing, asked me if I wanted her to refer to me as a boy. I told her it didn’t matter. It did matter to me though. I wanted to be referred to a boy but I didn’t want to go through the hoops of having to change everything about my outer life to simply appease the gnawing feeling inside of me. At night, I wished that I could just wake up one morning with a different body and a different background. It didn’t matter to me how or why, I just felt that all of my problems with who I was would be solved if I had been more biologically male.

One of my friends from middle school is transgender. He started transitioning in his freshman year of college and I followed his journey of finding himself through Instagram. He seems genuinely happy and I feel happy for him everytime I see one of his posts. A different friend of mine, from highschool this time, thought he was a lesbian at the time, and it wasn't until he graduated high school that he decided he wanted to transition to male and be who he truly was. Even at college now, I know of people who have found themselves and their gender through time and experience. They say that cancer affects everyone because everyone knows someone who has been a victim of it. But this works the same for the transgender community. Nearly everyone knows someone. And if they say don’t, then they probably know a closeted person.

For a few years after sophomore year, I decided to let my gender identity go to the back burner, after all I had more important things on my plate: college applications and getting my driver's license. It wasn’t until I was a freshman in college, going to my first meeting of the Gay Straight Alliance that I realized I could reinvent myself No one here knew who I was. So when it came time to say my name and pronouns, I said my birth name, a name I still hold very dear to my heart, and the pronouns “they/them”. It may look like dipping your toe in the water to some people, testing to see if it’s the perfect temperature, but to me it was like taking a running jump and going into a cannonball. I was out. No matter what I was. No matter what I identified as. I was not cisgender anymore.

The idea of cisgender became a hot debate online in forum posts all around. Some people saw the shortening of it to “cis” as a slur much to the way that transphobic people would call transgender people tr*nny’s. But, in reality, it was just a label that society had created to say that your birth gender matched up with the gender you identified as. Most people are cisgender and for a lot of people their knowledge ends just there. Maybe they don’t even know the term cisgender at all. Maybe they are blissfully unaware of the struggles that people go through everyday just by existing. Maybe they just don’t care.

My cousin came out as transgender in an odd way. Through Facebook. She just posted briefly that she had begun hormone replacement therapy. She was already known as the extreme left-wing of the family. She had moved out to California to pursue a degree in gender studies. We all assumed she was just gay, not that she was actually a she. My sister-in-law’s sister came out as transgender, deciding to transition in her late 30’s despite having a wife and daughter. It was then that I realized that being transgender, having a different idea of who you are than from when you were born, isn’t just a fad that people on the internet were adhering to. This was a real thing. I felt justified in that moment. And my feelings felt like they had some grounding for the first time in a while.

In the gender support groups online, I was still a pretty active member at this point, I started going by masculine pronouns instead, still keeping my name the feminine one I was given at birth. This raised a lot of questions as to why I wanted to keep my name, but ultimately it boiled down to the fact that my name didn’t bother me that much. In reality, it just seemed to bother other people more. Like they couldn’t imagine someone by the name of Jennifer being a male. But I knew that it didn’t matter what other people thought of me. I started wearing exclusively sports bras, trying to smother my chest as best as possible. I was on my way to becoming who I wanted to be.

A lot of people who are transgender call their birth names their “dead names”. They see it as exactly that. That other person is dead to society. They have reinvented themselves much like how a phoenix rises from the ashes. While I had experimented with other names, more masculine names, as stated above, I felt a deep connection with my birth name and I didn’t see myself changing it anytime soon. But then again, my reluctance to not change my name was not really based on my affections for said name. Rather, it was me, once again, not wanting to go through the hoops and hurdles of having to change my outer life so much to fit the way I saw myself inside. In my head I knew who I was. What did it matter that other people saw something different? At the end of the day I know that by the end of my gender journey if I decide to change my name, or at least go by a different name, I would be perfectly fine with that. But my birth name would always hold a dear part in my heart.

I came out to my parents as bisexual in an unusual way. It was actually before I went to college. We were on a road trip to visit one of the colleges I had been accepted to and we stopped at a Burger King for lunch. It was bisexual awareness day and so I posted something on Instagram about it. My mom turned to me, and just said, “So, bisexual, huh?” And it was left at that. You might have sensed a theme that my parents aren’t the best with continuing communication by now. I think, some strange part of me deep down inside of me knew, my parents were glad that in their eyes I wasn’t “fully gay”. There was still a chance I would settle down with a nice Christian boy and have 2.5 kids with a white picket fence. And there still is that chance. But there is also the chance that I find a nice girl and we settle down, opting for cats instead of children. I remember, years later, talking to my parents in my living room about weddings. My sister was getting married and I dropped the bomb casually that I may end up marrying a woman. My mother, my closest friend in the entire world, started crying at this. It left me shattered in a way that I haven’t fully recovered from. She told me she would always love me but that she didn’t know how she would feel if she had to have my father give me away to a woman instead of a man. I left to my room heartbroken and sobbed myself to sleep that night.

After I came out to my parents as transgender, I did a lot of research about hormone replacement therapy and how parents view their children who were transgender. I would sit on the bus on the way home from freshman year high school and Google terms like “what to do if my child is transgender” or “female to male teen transition”. I was trying to research what I imagined my parents would be researching. In reality, we know that they never mentioned again to me so for all I know, they never did any research. For all I know they erased that day of their lives out of their memory. For me, however, it will be forever ingrained in my memory. It was the first day I started being true to myself. I was truthful when I told my parents I was transgender. I was truthful when I told my parents I wish I would have been born a male. I just left out the part where I didn’t actually want to live my life as a male. Not fully. I was nonbinary. Genderqueer. Agender. Or even, all of the above.

My experience with gender isn’t anywhere over and I don’t see it being over anytime soon. As of right now, I identify as nonbinary, dancing in some weird abyss of not being female and not being male. I see it as more of a burden than an identity. The fact that I can’t pinpoint exactly who I am is frustrating, but a lot of people don’t see it in the same way. That’s the magic of it being a spectrum; there will be people who feel everything at every point in said spectrum. Some people out there will love being nonbinary and the freedom that it gives them. Most people don’t feel like me. Most people don’t see being nonbinary as a burden or something at fault. But for me, I hope to one day find myself and who I truly am, even if that is what I already know.

When I first cut my hair short freshman year of high school, someone asked me if I was gay. Gay, in today's terms, sort of means the same as queer. Anything other than the normal. Gay emcompasses anything revolving around the LGBT community for some people. I told them no. It felt like cutting a piece of myself out. One of the deadliest sins a Christian can commit is denying their Lord. When asked if you are a Christian, a Christian must respond yes, or else they sacrifice their ticket to their afterlife. To me, answering no felt like I was denying myself that ticket to the gay afterlife. If asked that same question today, I would look them in the eye, think of the LGBT heaven I was destined for, and say yes.

#text it #rm #yeah #me #mine:writings #?? i guess

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deadlypressure · 3 years

Text

Some Wardrobe Ramblings and Self Image Struggles

I hate tight clothing. I hate the way it makes me feel about my body, I hate how it impedes my motion, I hate that I can’t wear anything tight/restrictive across my hips without massive pain from the waist down after 5 hours.

I like long, full skirts, I like the way they flow and make me feel elegant.

I like heavy denim/leather jackets and thick soled shoes, I like that they make me feel strong. Heels do this too, with more elegance. I like how light and quiet my feet are in converse and vans, I like how convenient they are. Same for flipflops. I like how cute my sparkly converse are, I wear them with men’s jeans and giggle at how confused some hyper detail-oriented super-cis would get at the combination.

I don’t like that I don’t have the patience for makeup and hair styling, I hate that I don’t know how to deal with either one. It makes me feel immature and kinda like I fail as an “adult” woman

I like how comfortable my men’s carpenter jeans and t-shirts are, I even kinda like how they look. I don’t like how immature it looks, I feel like I look like a 13 year old boy. It’s really bad with any kind of graphic t-shirt.

I like to pair my carpenters with tight-ish tank tops, I used to wear men’s undershirt tank tops, they looked good once I stretched them out just right. They were form fitting without being skin-tight, had an alt/punk look with my jeans and work boots, and were easy maintenance too. But I didn’t like the cultural connotations of the wife beater shirt. I haven’t found a suitable replacement yet, women’s shirts seem to all be made of that soft knit that pills after just so many washes.

I like to wear long sleeve button downs, like flannels and twill work shirts, as jackets. I buy them from the men’s department, the women’s shirts are always too small through the shoulders and bind and pull funny. Oddly enough, a size small, slim fit men’s button down will be more flattering and fit around my chest and hips better than a women’s size medium or large. It makes me smile to think about that. Sometimes I buy them grossly oversized, just for the aesthetic, but I also buy them so they fit as intended.

When I want to both wear pants and feel semi-formal, like date night or job interview appropriate, I feel like I have to wear tight pants. This is literally the only reason I keep women’s jeans anymore. I feel like dress pants are too formal for interviews or dates anymore, unless it’s extra important somehow, but loose jeans are too casual and skirts aren’t generally suggested when walking into an interview for a job in a traditionally masculine field that typically involves some amount of grime and lifting. Irritating, but not the point. I feel like tight jeans are the only step between loose jeans and dress pants in terms of formality in pants, and I hate it. Again, if I try to wear a button down with my loose men’s jeans, I feel like a 13 year old boy.

I like loose sweaters, they feel comfy and cozy. I pair them with my button downs and feel classy.

I like necklaces, long and short chains. I like to layer them, just two at a time. I like rings, I think they make my hands look longer and more elegant. I’d wear earrings, but my ear piercings are weird and wearing any kind of earring for any length of time makes my earlobes itch. I feel no need to get a nose ring, the upkeep seems like too much for an aesthetic choice I’m not terribly fond of, but I like the idea of getting gauges in my ear lobes. I like the look of the 5mm, just big enough to get some cool tunnel designs, small enough to conform to conservative looks with the right plugs. Stone plugs are cool.

I wish my eye brows were longer and fuller, that my chin was sharper. I like my eyelashes, I wish my lower lip weren’t quite so wide, sometimes I wish my lips weren’t so full. Sometimes my head seems too big, sometimes it seems too small. My eyes sometimes seem too small. I’ve finally embraced my long legs and thick thighs, they’re not double c thick, but they are by no means small. I don’t mind my foot size, they’re just big enough that I can sometimes get adult men’s shoes and can still wear some kid’s shoes

I can’t seem to get comfortable with my chest, it’s not that showing cleavage makes me uncomfortable anymore, except when I bend over, just the feeling of them. Bras are uncomfortable, even when they fit, I hate the tightness over my chest and shoulders. I don’t like the feeling of my boobs moving, though, and I don’t like to feel them resting against my chest wall. I don’t like the feeling of my stomach spilling over my waist band, I don’t like to see the double lump in the front of my shirt from it, and though in some lighting on some days it doesn’t bother me, I still hate to see it most days.

I used to get really uncomfortable and uneasy at the stares I got when I wore shorts or a lower cut top. There’s still some of that, but it’s pretty heavily diluted with irritation. If I’m wearing anything remotely empowering, odd, or alt, I might even feel slightly... Smug? I guess? Uhg, that sounds kinda gross in writing. Basically, it’s just me reveling in the attention I draw when I wear anything remotely odd or flattering, feeling powerful because I made a distinct impression on a stranger without hardly trying. It’s shallow and petty, but I can’t deny that I feel satisfaction in it.

I like to wear black, it makes me feel strong. I like to dress elegantly, and I wish I could do it more often, but it’s draining and feels like it takes so much effort just to wear the clothing, like it has to be for some specific reason or else it’s just not worth it. It’s kinda draining to wear virtually any feminine clothes anymore, even if it’s casual. I want to wear more green, I feel like wearing black too often makes me more irritable, like I need to wear more green, blue, or pink to take a break from the heightened aggressiveness that I get from wearing black. I like to wear green when I want to feel like a dryad. I wear pink because it’s a cute color that makes me happy and makes me feel cute. I wear blue when I’m not feeling hype enough for green or pink, and just want to be a mellow kind of positive. I have a lot of disparate styles of clothing and can’t commit to one specific aesthetic image. By far the most common, though, are a selection of aggressive, all black outfits of varying levels of formality with heavy alt influences, but are still largely purchased from mainstream providers. Uncommitted alt or noob alt, I guess you could call it.

I know that clothing has no gender. I know that wearing makeup or not, styling my hair or not, does not make me any more or less of an adult or a woman. I know that I shouldn’t care about other people’s opinions, that I shouldn’t live for them or dress for them or societal standards. That tight clothing means nothing. That clothing does not inform maturity, or make a personality. These are just weird, inescapable feelings I have towards myself, my body, and the clothing I put on it. Honestly, this is just me trying to sort out some of my gender issues and maybe force myself to take an honest look at my wardrobe choices. Verbalizing like this and shouting it out into cyber space helps in a way that talking it over with family or writing in journal just doesn’t seem to. It’s kinda all over the place and confusing, the language is kinda disjointed, but that’s just how disorganized my thoughts on all of this are.

I know that labels aren’t necessary, and that you can just like something without going so far as to associate yourself with the community attached to it, and that gender is a spectrum and that you can just say you’re unspecified and leave it at that, but I have literally no firm associations for myself. I’m white. I like the weird bouncy music that pays attention to clever word play that good kids shows like to use. It’s part of why I like Steam Powered Giraffe and Aurelio Voltaire. I like music that features layered instrumentals and complex vocals, rather than focusing on electronic sounds and a simple single lead and back up vocals. I require daily dosage of music with a heavy bass sound and strong beat, I like the older Disturbed albums. Deep voices make the serotonin go brrrrr. I’m not Judeo-Christian, and that has been a consistent source of ostracization for me. I don’t do the social well. I’m paranoid and have troubles getting out of bed or otherwise finding the motivation to perform simple tasks to fill basic needs, I get fixated on unsolvable problems. I have a nasty gossip habit and an unhealthy reliance on my mother for social interaction and validation, which are definitely connected. I am touch starved, I have always had to ask for prolonged physical contact. I’m terrified of vulnerability, and it prevents me from taking the chance of rejection to make friends or explore my sexuality. I have low self-esteem and often find myself using stupid, arbitrary things to make myself feel superior or victimized. I tend to sound like a snob when discussing my tastes in music and humor or my relationship with religion.

All of this, I know for a fact about myself, but nothing to connect myself to a larger positive culture. No social community to offer new avenues of interaction, if I have to move to another state, there’s no place I can go to reliably meet someone with some kind of common ground or shared experience. The only source of social interaction I get is family and work. This ties back into my gender issues, am I only questioning my initial assumptions about my sexuality and gender because there’s this enormous community out there that I could be a part of without even knowing it? Could relative mental stability be one teet-yeet away? One magical answer to all of my unsolvable immaterial mental issues? Would it be such a consistent gnawing concern if I were the societal norm, or is it just my indisputable anxiety taking hold of an untrue thought and refusing to let go of it? Yeah, my brain is a mess, and I need a therapist to work through this with me, rather than just smearing my emotional waste all over the internet. At least the tag based system means no one will ever find this.

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sundrenched-smilez · 7 years

Note

odd numbers for the lesbian asks! (if it's too many just do every 4th one maybe?)

1. Femme or butch?

for type, im vry easily wooed by butches tbh

as for myself, im genderfluid + heavily lean towards butch-ish for one gender + have been gettin more comf w that term for myself. the 3 genders i switch between, ive described as sharp, dainty and tired, for reason of not really being comf w gender labels aside from nonbinary. sharp/tired r kinda butchish, moreso sharp. like leather jackets, ripped jeans, dress pants/shirts, defs flannels (which r a given for any mood im in tbh) while tired is like mb softer, more focused on flannels + loose tank tops/shirts, shorts + certain skirts, comfy clothes, and the like

ive found that i’m leaning more towards butch lately too, like i’ve been a lot more comfortable with pants and a nice top than i have w dresses or most skirts + im wondering if i was just hanging on to femininity for sake of society, so those r things 2 think abt. i still feel comf in them sometimes, but it’s getting much less often. gender’s weird, i still cant cling to one bc of how pressuring that is so genderfluidity is still smth for me + it shifting to different percentages is okay (im thinking out loud @ this point, but its helping so i hope its interesting to read)

3. Plaid button-ups or leather jackets?

both, but primarily flannels/plaid buttion-ups

5. Describe your aesthetic

aaahh theres a lot of diff aesthetics i could go into, but i have a tag if ur interested in a visual representation? basically, cosy homes, forests, wooden steps and bridges, cats, girls/nbs, water, plants, and old video game stuff, and clouds/skies. i’m sure there’s more in there, but for a good rule of thumb !! as for like dressing aesthetic, i like to look rly gay + attractive and a lil showy? like my shorts r Short and i love crop tops + a lot of my shirts show my bra thru them, + i like showing it when i can, like sports bra + a tank top is a fav look of mine bc i can make it look like my bra is a trim on the shirt + it’s cute. i’ve been wearing dresses less often, but occasionally, i like to rock one. id love a pair of combat boots but i have like size 11/12 feet + most stores dont carry that size + im hesitant to buy some online.

7. Favorite pair of shoes?

its rly hard to find any, i have like walmart converse knockoffs atm + theyre a beige/grey color im not that huge on, it kinda reminds me of sandalwood but depressed

9. Any haircut goals for the future?

there was the undercut!! and i have that down now c: next step is to dye it blue and mb some purple. i wanna bleach it if i’m gonna dye it, but im hesitant to do that bc of how damaging it is, but since my hair’s been cut a cpl time almost all the color is out now, so i think itll b ok if i take good care of it.

11. Describe the worst date you’ve been on

i went to a cafe w someone (i think they were nb but i cant remember, it was like 2 yrs ago about ) and they were impossible to talk to bc they just kept saying “im awkward sorry” @ everything and like any conversations i tried to maintain were all one-shot responses, and like that was a lil frustrating. like i dont hold it against them or anything, more in a sense of i was rly tryin 2 carry it and just couldnt

13. If taken, talk about your girlfriend/wife!

whooh i wish i was taken, i need affection + to b cute w someone

15. Describe your dream wedding

hmmmm i havent thought much about it !! i know when i was younger i wanted to wear a black wedding dress but now im thinkin mb a suit that switches to dress @ the bottom?? that could b cool. I’d be happy w anything tbh, if im getting married, i’d just b happy to be w my wife/spouse. mb somewhere in a forest or on a boat would b cool, defs lots of good food and colorful flowers. I’d like a lot of color, most weddings ive been to are just b/w and bland for my taste (they’ve also all been straight tho so theres that.) it’s kind of wild to think that i might b married someday, but it’d b rly nice. i just haven’t thought much abt the planning of one. it’d b rly gay tho, probs give out tiny gay flags at each seat, and the cake could b lesbian flag colors. im rly drawing a blank on this, but i know id want all my friends around the country + world to be there.

17. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live?

i definitely want to live in a port town at some point !! idk where i’d like to settle down, ideally somewhere that doesnt get much hotter than 90 degrees + has lots of parks + is big enough for some events, like pride stuff, little festivals, a farmer’s market, and places to do things, such as a movie theater, bowling alley, mb an aquarium, if not one in a nearby town. hiking trails r also good.

19. Favorite lesbian novel/story?

on a sunbeam!!! its a huge inspiration for me, and i love it so much. it always puts me in such a good mindset when i read it, and the artist is my age, so it makes me feel like I can also accomplish great things if i rly put my heart into it!! which is such a good feeling, and it has great representation + characters that i love, and its rly gay, and in space and theres ships shaped like fish + its gorgeous : D i could go on for hrs abt it + how important it is to me. theres an nb character too, and like the aspect of found families is one that rly hits home and it helped me get thru a rough time of my life + better accept myself as queer/gay.

21. Favorite lesbian musician?

adult mom (tho i think they’re bi but still gay), or hayley kiyoko

23. Ever been assumed to be nothing more than a gal pal?

i think so, but i can’t place when, it’s been a bit.

25. Be positive! What do you like most about being a lesbian?

talking abt being gay w other girls/nbs is lovely and cathartic, i never got to growing up bc i lived in a homophobic town + i was like dealing heavily with internalized homophobia and body/gender dysphoria so i was ace for a bit. talking more abt like sexual attraction + aesthetic attraction is new to me, and that’s been a process to get to, but it’s nice that I can now do so w/o being belittled or barraged by insult. i also just love the thought of being w someone, and daydreaming abt when that happens is really nice. also,, girls + nbs r a blessing and brighten my day and im so glad im attracted 2 them

27. Turn ons?

absolutely communication, that’s a need. i had a bad experience w someone bc she wasn’t communicative at all, and failed to tell me that we weren’t dating despite us going on several dates + kissing??? like i wont go too into it, but hatchi matchi it was a mess. so yeah, communication, affection, and like reassurance that they actually want to be with me, and that my presence is wanted and enjoyed. I got a lot of “i dont care”s for answers last sort-of relationship, and that was rly discouraging. another turn on is for them to initiate talking and things, like holding hands or planning to hang out + such. consent is another big one.

29. Do you usually ask other women out or do you wait for them to ask you?

i usually tend to ask them out, but im still dealing w internalized junk, so its difficult. i also havent any situations in which they liked me back, which is frustrating. like i got lead on earlier summer for abt a month until i asked what we were doing + didnt rly get an answer, and it was this whole mess. i generally try to make the first move tho, bc i know firsthand how difficult it is, but that being said, it’s still hard for me to know for sure if theyre interested + i dont wanna make things uncomf w them, so i’ll wait until i think there might b attraction. that being said, once that’s all out of the way, i like to consider myself a good flirt when im trying.

31. Talk about your interests or hobbies!

i have lots of interests!! im obsessed w steven universe, its my fav show (and if u ever have time, we should totally watch it together sometime, i rly think you’d love it, it’s super gay + heartwarming.) i really love playing music and learning new songs, which im rly great at memorizing. talking to friends + gettin 2 know them better is always nice and fun. i like to draw new things + see the different ways ppl draw, so seeing art on here is always fun for me. i’m also rly into polygon videos (it’s a youtube channel, not like videos abt polygon haha) and this podcast called the adventure zone. season one just ended, so i might start listening to another one called friends at the table. i rly wanna start a podcast w someone, but can never find anyone to start it with. idk what I’d talk abt but if i could find a partner for it, i think it’d be a lot of fun. mb smth abt games or books/queer representation in media. doing a dnd podcast would also b rly fun, but a lot of work + editing so mb later down the road !! im blanking on other interests atm, but animations and cartoons r lovely and i aim to make something in that field one day, if not just a comic.

my hobbies r mostlyyyy drawing, dnd things now every thursday, hanging w my friends, playing video games, sometimes writing (i rly wanna start a comic, and im tryin to get my butt into gear on it), goin to parks, listening to music, and goin 2 events w roe + cesar, two of my friends. sometimes ill play music!! i need to get more than the keyboard i’m lending, but i love performing. ill also watch leg birds on youtube, theyre a lesbian couple that plays gams + theyre rly sweet.

33. Do you love easily or does it take time for you to warm up to someone?

its easy for me to love friends, doesnt usu take me more than a few months of knowing them if were talking a lot. as for falling in love, that takes me a lot longer. ive never rly been in love w someone. i thought i was once, but rly it was just my first gay experience w someone and i wanted it to be perfect so i projected a lot of things + made it better than it seemed to myself for the duration of it, which wasn’t healthy, so i wanna avoid doing that again, + take things slower next time. or at least for what they are.

35. Ever fallen for a straight girl?

a few times, they were just crushes tho, so it wasnt too too bad

37. Favorite comfort food?

hot cocoa or tea. as for food food, i dont think i have one. mb french toast or cinnamon rolls.

39. Vegetarian? Vegan? None of the above?

i used to be a vegetarian!! for like a yr, but it was difficult for me to eat and feel full, and i was pretty underweight, so i stopped.

41. Early-riser or night-owl?

both, i tend to stay up, but getting up early can be nice if i dont have to do anything. like just gently waking + making some tea and a nice breakfast + sittin around for a bit.

43. What is your Myers-Briggs type?

enfp-a

45. At what age did you know you were a lesbian?

i think like 16-17? it took me a bit to get words for identity, like lesbian/nonbinary and the like, but i always knew, like id call myself an individual as opposed to gendered terms that i was referred to, and always felt rly yucky w deadname + the wrong pronouns

47. Are you crushing on anyone at the moment (celebrity or otherwise)?

ive got one crush atm !! and another person who seems nice, but i wanna hang out w before like thinking abt a crush (im poly, which perhaps goes w/o saying, but i always like to state it when talking abt these things, jic )

49. Talk about your dreams/aspirations for the future

i’d like a partner or two, to get some bongos- i got to play some a couple weeks ago, and it was the most fun i’ve had playing anything!! having smth with an instant response that i could make up rhythms with was really rewarding and so much fun. i know i want a cat at some point, to go on cute dates + cuddle and kiss a lot w someone, to visit my friends in other places, dye my hair, get a better job, to travel a bit, make a comic, go to college for animation and storyboarding, mb go to camp at some point, and I’d like to make some more friends here, i’m already making some, which i’m super happy about, but it’s always nice meeting new ppl

thank u for asking!! this was relaxing + fun, and a lot of the topics were cathartic to talk about, and i needed it. so thanks for listening too kinda

also im queen of commas, i’ve discovered while typing this

#msg in a bottle #cass charts #idk what i want my ask tag to be

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transstudiesarchive · 4 years

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The Experience of Questioning

TW: Sexual Assault, Derogatory Language, Homophobia, Drugs

The Experience of Questioning

How much can a single trauma and the worlds response to it rob you of your identity? How much can the culture you live in take from you? How do you ever really know who you are?

These are the questions that have cycled through my brain, in increasing fervency, for about the past year.

Growing up, I don’t explicitly remember being taught what it is to be masculine or a man. I don’t particularly remember my father explaining to me the differences in gender between my sister and I. I don’t remember my teachers defining my personality, traits, and attitudes by the fuzz growing on my face. But at some point, there was no denying that the lessons of what it is to be man were ingrained in me. What I do remember is a conversation with one of my elementary school friends about the differences between men and women. We had just recently started having conversations about getting girlfriends and his first crush was occupying his brain – he wanted to appear manly for her. I remember telling him that a man should always be the one to drive the car, that a man should be slightly – at least a few months – older than his wife, and that a man should always be the one that got into the fights if there were people that wanted to kidnap them. This was elementary school after all and fantasies of fighting off would be kidnappers were high on the list of concerns. These opinions and attitudes morphed and changed entering middle school. That same conversation seemed to happen hundreds of times a year once concerns of impressing the young women around school really came to the forefront of my friends and I’s brains. However, by eighth grade, it seemed like the differences between men and women in our brains became significantly starker and more dramatic. A man should never be a pussy, and if you were, you got the shit kicked out of you. A man should never complain about emotions, and if you did, you got the shit kicked out of you. A man should never be gay or remotely act feminine, and if you were or did, you got the shit kicked out of you. And a man should always be able to kick the shit out of other people, lest you got the shit kicked out you.

I adopted these lessons pretty quickly into my life – I never was a fan of being beaten up. Accepting and helping to reinforce these lessons were easy for me, my masculinity was never questioned. By the time I was in seventh grade, I was at least 4 inches taller and 60 pounds heavier than the rest of my classmates. I had a distinctly patchy and wispy mustache throughout middle school. And despite my long hair, a product of the skater-punk rock culture I embedded myself in, nothing about me would indicate that I felt any differently about gender than the other young men I skipped school and shoplifted with. To be honest, I never felt different either. Throughout my young adolescence, I was predominantly concerned with girls, video games, and… well those are about it, actually. Despite being overweight, I was happy with my body – it was my shield from the violence happening around me and I was proud to be able to shut up would be brawlers with one or two good shoves. Like everyone else surrounding me, I used the six-letter f-word to demean and deride those who I didn’t like, never thinking about the effect it might have on others. I also distinctly remember having conversations with my friends about our gay, or presumed gay, classmates in which I said phrases like “I just can’t ever picture or understand liking another dude” and feeling somewhat proud of that fact. However, I never really felt like a man. Some of my friends and classmates found themselves steeped in showing off how manly they could be. Sports, fighting, drugs, and sex, were the predominant displays of manhood that were chosen. For myself, I was perfectly happy being called a man, but I never felt the need to express it and I never truly identified with it. Occasionally, I would be mistaken for a woman on account of my long, curled, luscious hair (something I dearly miss as a now balding 23-year-old). Additionally, there was a fixation on my eyelashes being too long for me not to be using mascara, something I never did but constantly got accused of. Growing up, I never minded these things and occasionally even enjoyed them. Sometimes they made me feel odd, but I was never concerned with my mild androgyny. I was living in the lap of privilege – never truly identifying as a man but never being questioned as anything else.

Life does seem to add complications though.

During middle school, it’s hard for me to exactly remember when but I would say it was most likely in the summer between seventh and eighth grade, I was sexually assaulted by someone I considered my best friend. It doesn’t seem relevant, nor healthy, to go into the specificities of the event. Suffice to say that the lead up to the event and the event itself was filled with manipulation, true gaslighting, and shame. It was, and still is, the most embarrassing moment of my life. Writing, thinking, or talking about it, despite the work I’ve done surrounding it, remains difficult, frustrating, and traumatic.

The worst things about moments like these is that you never realize the deepness of the wound until someone else draws your attention to it. Sometimes, you never realize what parts of you the wound damaged.

After that event, I desperately clung to those lessons I learned earlier in life and nothing was more important to me than being a man.

If we jump forward about a decade, past all of the fallout, past the trumped up expressions of male rage – things like identifying as a anti-feminist, not fully accepting my genderqueer sister, the dropping out of high school, the fights, the desperate attempts at self-worth via wearing polo shirts and working 70 hours a week, and the worst part, the anger – we find myself finally being healed. The process was a long and challenging one, filled mostly with introspection and therapy. Something I never expected to start questioning, though, was my sexuality and gender.

About two years ago, I fully transformed my misguided conservative-lite thinking into my current radical leftist, anti-heteronormative, anti-establishment self. A part of this was finding creators, particularly on YouTube, that could guide my thinking. Two prominent creators on the site that I found very early on were ContraPoints and Philosophy Tube. I became enraptured by these two, watching every video, sometimes multiple times over, to chase that feeling of having my mind blown. About a year ago and within three months of each other, ContraPoints posted a video titled, "Transtrenders", and Philosophy Tube posted a video titled, Queer✨. These videos covered the deep philosophical questions that surround queer theory and gender identity. They were foundational to my understanding of the world, LGBTQ+ identities, and even in some ways, myself. At the time, I had finally started realizing who I was. I became deeply accepting of the things about me that were not traditionally masculine. I had accepted that sexuality was a spectrum that could never truly be nailed down. I fully became a gender abolitionist, accepting that gender made absolutely no sense and if it disappeared, not much would really change about humans on a fundamental level. However, I still identified as a man.

I remember being alone and incredibly stoned, having just begun my true experimentation with weed at the time, when I watched “Transtrenders” for the first time. Something about the abstract nature of the video and my inebriated state made me realize that I felt off, I always had. This sounds simple, but it was perhaps the largest revelation I had ever had in my life, up to that point. In Queer✨, Oliver comes out as Bi-Sexual. The clearest moment that I remember from that video is Oliver talking about his journey of realizing, of acceptance, and him saying something like “I needed to have a long conversation with myself, and I needed to be honest”. This moment struck me. I remember thinking in the back of my mind “you need to a have a conversation with yourself too” and quickly shoving that thought away. After these videos, my thoughts about gender, that it was absurd and irrational, were never more clear. However, I still identified as a man.

About six months ago, in winter term, I got the opportunity to take Intro to Queer Theory. This class was probably the most profound class I have gotten the chance to take. It truly gave my brain ammo to start arguing against gender, against sexuality as a concept, against all the heteronormative institutions that oppress LGBTQ+ people and people in general. I got the opportunity to form a good relationship with my professor, forming a small crush on him (add it to the conversation, brain. You’re supposed to be a straight cis dude after all), and I asked him a question during office hours.

“Professor, I’m a gender abolitionist and I really don’t believe in the concept of gender. How do I advocate for that without stepping over the identity of trans or gay people that do?”

His answer was a total non-answer to my question, but it’s stuck with me.

“One day, I think, we’ll move past this whole concept of gender and sexuality. I think it would be better if we stopped focusing so much on that, stopped building it up so much, and just focused on the experience of bodies and pleasure.”

Near the same time, I remember talking to a then friend of mine who said to me, after a discussion around her gender identity:

“You’re the least straight, straight person that I know.”

After those conversations, secretly and without ever really having that conversation with myself, the experimentation with drugs and alcohol providing a very good distraction, I started to identify as something akin to Queer. It never felt right to me to outright identify as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I hadn’t earned that, but I didn’t fully feel “normal” either. I felt like something else. Something abstract that I didn’t even have the words for. However, I still identified, mostly, as a man.

Finally, we arrive at our current times. It seems like the majority of every one of our lives now consist of conversations with ourselves. I think, in actuality, that’s what this written diatribe has been. The conversation I’ve been putting off. I look back at it and I hope that, in some way, it can convey the emotion and confusion that I’ve experienced over the last 23 years but I know that it will never truly succeed in doing so. It seems so devoid of the context, of the memories, and primarily of the never describable feelings experienced in this process that it will fail in its goal. So many more words could be added. However, I do know that the reader, however few people that will be, might be able to project their own experience on this writing. They might see some of their own experiences or they might be able to imagine how they would have felt. That seems just as valuable.

At this point, it doesn’t seem like there’s much left to say about the topic. I suppose I’m non-binary, but that doesn’t seem very important at this point.

What seems more important is that I was able to get back what was taken from me. My identity.

~DVA ContraPoints Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdvM_pRfuFM&t=635s Philosophy Tube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hi6j2UXEZM

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myletterstoyoumrzubair · 7 years

Text

Dear Mr Z edition 10 11/03/17

Dear Hassan

note:This edition isn’t so much a love letter of sorts but rather my brainstorm of cultural differences, when comes to the idea of respect obedience and gender roles, in relation to us and our relationship.

You have taught me so much about myself over the last few weeks. As bad as this may seem, I can now admit that I can be rude and disrespectful to people, before you and I got talking, I tried my best to respect people but it is now clear that my idea of respect and your idea of respect until now were completely different. Maybe it is a cultural thing, I don’t know, but just being around you and being a part of your life you have shown me how I can improve on it all, and honestly I know at times I still may get it wrong, but that is because I am human, but you have made me aware of what I have been doing, just by the way you treat me. Respect in the western world is something that often slips through peoples hands, the new generation of young people, those in their teens, I have often seen or heard them disrespect other people in a way that when I were small it would have been unheard of. When I spoke to the lady in the Asian fashion shop last week she told me how in India and Pakistan it is how things are, that people are always courteous and respectful, especially to women and their elders. In the beginning it was a little strange to me how you seemed so lovely and nice to me in the way you spoke and as silly as it may seem I was naïve, and slightly conditioned to the western, slightly more disrespectful way of things. The way men treat women in the western world, there is rarely any of this etiquette and chivalry anymore, partly because western women are fierce about being able to stand on their own two feet, but guess what the more you dote on me like that, chivalry (opening doors and such, ‘ladies first’ etc.) the more I see how polite and awesome it is. I really see how the way men treat women in Pakistan is like us women are like queens and princesses, and how the idea of ‘obedience’ to your husband really actually works in reality.

Ok, in today’s society in the UK things don’t often happen like that because of how society itself has changed and therefore the expectations and roles within relationships. When you first told me about how men and women are in theory in relationships, that women only have to respect their husband and value their opinions, and how men pretty much want to bend over backwards to provide for and make their wives happy and feel valued, the first thing that came to mind was, that is how it was pre-second world war Britain, and even more so before the time of the British suffragette movement where women campaigned for gender equality. In the start of the 20th century and before in the UK, it was the mans role and responsibility to be the so called ‘breadwinner’ and go out to work and it was the women’s role to value and respect his efforts and to run the household and bring up the children, after all being a mother was is and will always be a full time job in its own right. That was until of course us western women found the freedoms that the working life can bring, during the second world war, when women went to work to fill the gap in the workforce while men went out to war.

These days it is more common for the western girls to want to be career women before becoming mothers and wives, apparently, so I have been told that in Pakistan there is no expectation or pressure on women to be achievers, and career women in the same way as western British girls are. Yes, in some ways I do want to be like that western girl, and work hard to get the career that I want for myself, but then at the same time I am a traditionalist and I see one of the greatest of things in terms of femininity is becoming a mother, and watching my own future children grow up and give them the best that I can.

I have also discovered a few weeks back the reasons why men treat women like they are princesses or their queens. It is because us women are the one’s who carry those children for 9 months at a time, and in great pain bring them into this world (I have heard that labour feels like having the equivalent of having 20 bones broken at each contraction, and it goes on for hours). I know first hand from professional experience how exhausting it is the experience and the journey going from a woman to a mother, and it makes sense for that reason why husbands, boyfriends and children look up to and respect the women, wives and mothers in society, because bringing children into the world is probably one of the most privileged, honoured and loved things a woman can do, and despite how far the medical profession (I hate how medicalised obstetrics and gynaecology has become, childbirth is one of the most natural and feminine things in the world) has become it still carries risk; people often have an idea of how their idea pregnancy and birth happens, but reality is, is still a process that no one has complete control over, and as far as I am concerned that is part of the beauty of it.

Sometimes I wish that young people in the UK were way more respectful than they are now. Many youngsters these days wouldn’t think twice about it when they backchat or disrespect their elders or parents. Being a young woman of tradition and being brought up to respect my elders, including calling those who are not family but are family friends by aunty or uncle, I honestly wish things in some ways were like they used to be here, before everything changed with the ‘modern’ times. Knowing you has opened up my eyes to how rude Britain and British people can be, unfortunately including myself. Since a wife is supposed to be obedient to her husband I hate it when I end up being rude to you, and I do try my best not to do it. It is like I want to be miss goody two shoes for you so that I respect you. Even now I find myself coming to you and asking for your opinion and ideas around things that is because I actually value your opinion and ideas. Your opinion matters.

I know I wont be and cant always be that ‘obedient’ wife that you want, and that is because I am human and it is a part of human nature to have faults and wrong doings, but it is the ability to acknowledge when as a person I do disrespect people, to be the better side of me, swallow my pride and to actually say sorry. All the same, I do want to try my best to be that person you want to spend the rest of your life with as your wife.

In today’s western society, our idea of what a good relationship is, is a little old fashioned, backwards. This is because we don’t really want to have this modern longer-term boyfriend girlfriend type relationship before we think of settling down, and because the roles in a relationship are similar to what they used to be here in early 1900s, with a modern twist. But I simply see it as traditionalist. I like it being the way things used to be here, and the fact is we are both ready to settle down in life. I like how it basically comes down to respect and honesty, and having no expectations of one person over another. You have already explained to me that if I want to go out to work and be that modern girl you wouldn’t want to stop me, and that you still see yourself as being in that role of a traditional husband. Who says that being from completely different backgrounds means that we cant find our own way through life, because I think we can. We can find our own blend of Pakistani – British life, and relationship. After all, isn’t that what relationships are? Teamwork!, (and finding your own way through) albeit with you as our team leader, and life is what you make it. Besides, we both know what we want in life, and we both know what we want from this relationship. It is because we are both so sure and want to do all we can to make this happen, is what I feel makes us so strong already, and because we both want to be there for each other.

I know I still have a lot to learn about what your ideas of things are, and about what you want in life, and although to some people it may seem like that I am being ‘hot headed’ or ‘rushing’, I know what I want and I am happy with the decision I have made for myself. I can truly see myself being happy with you by my side.

So now you know what I have learned over the last few weeks, about the differences in culture, and how I actually think your way of doing things may possibly even be better. I certainly love your idea of respect and being doted on. And you have most certainly taught me a lot of new things about myself, some things I already knew but were naïve to, and some completely knew, especially about what I want for me in a relationship. Before I met you I was more about having a laugh and a lark, and I still am but in a much more serious grown up way. I am done with messing around, I want to put my feet in the ground as such and make my life sorted for the future.

Thank you for showing me my better side, and the real meaning of respect x

Shelly x

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