#this isn't even about positivity for trans men* and trans male* bodies either because this is just... a human thing | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

olderthannetfic · 1 year

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You might get a kick out of this article someone linked me to, to try and argue that BL is in fact fetishizing (because Yada Yada women consume it and produce it and all that)

https://www.youthoutright.org/articles/fetishization-of-the-queer-community

Article is a fairly short read. But I have to chuckle at it as "evidence" since it makes a fair amount of claims with 0 sources:

That young teenage women make up a majority of fandom (and that's whose consuming/producing BL)

Straight, white women get paid more to write gay romance novels (and that these novels often feature Adonis like males with 0% body fat and no body hair; play into gender/hetero norms)

Etc.

Honestly the....article, if I can even call it that, isn't cohesive. I do find myself agreeing with its first two paragraphs...and surprisingly only the first two. However, this article spends a lot of its time focusing on fetishization of Trans bodies and chasers who go after transfolks bodies (which I'm not too familiar with this so if anyone wants to speak up on this point...)

I'm very confused by how someone could read this and think "this proves my point!"

Sigh.

I don't even agree with the beginning. Trashy "girl-on-girl" isn't what's making men think women exist to serve them. Society is doing that. Porn is a reflection, not a cause.

Not to mention the fact that f/f-for-dudes is astronomically common compared to shitheads pestering lesbians in bars. The latter are too common because the correct amount is 0, but just based on the numbers, a lot of dudes are capable of consuming this porn without being confused about what's fiction and what's reality.

The mass quantities of f/f-for-dudes do make it hard to find f/f-for-ladies, but this article has taken the wrong message from that. The correct takeaway is that we need better labeling and search features that are driven by the nerdy desire to categorize and not by algorithms that want to sell you stuff.

As long as het romance novels or porno movies for straight guys or bestselling thrillers or whatever are popular, they're going to drown out the algorithmic results for more niche things one is interested in.

Libraries and AO3 don't have this problem. Amazon and Youtube do.

the world of “slash fiction” (fanfiction portraying a romantic and often sexual relationship between characters from a given source) began centering gay men

Wow, article writer. So you know nothing then.

it’s been claimed that straight, white women are paid more than gay men by publishers to write gay romances

I'm honestly embarrassed for this article writer. First, most of this burgeoning field is selfpub anyway. Second, many established writers in the romance field are women, and established names will probably have a shot at better pay than new people.

Third, anyone who injects "white" like this is a moron and a wanker. If we're talking about racism in the Romance field (and boy howdy is there a lot), white gay men are no better, and men's race is just as relevant as women's. Either we're talking about race or we're not.

As it stands, this author just comes across as a misogynist piece of shit.

The overwhelming majority of these romances portray relationships between white, cis, abled men with no fat or body hair.

I have bad news for them about cis gay men's media. (Well, okay, some of that has a lot of body hair and interminable descriptions of the smell of ball sweat and stinky armpits, but still...)

Men who fit the first archetype will take the position of “top” in the numerous, inaccurate, graphic-as-possible sex scenes that are central to these stories and also appear to be central to many readers’ enjoyment.

I see we're in the usual "I, a sex-repulsed person, speak for all of humanity" mode.

People like horny art. News at 11.

These are complex issues deeply rooted in society. It’s difficult to envision mitigations and solutions. However, somewhere to begin would certainly be promoting more positive, intersectional, realistic representations of queer people and queer relationships. A vital action that can further this goal is choosing to consume media with queer representation that was created by queer people whenever possible.

Honestly, my response to this ending is:

Fuck off, you entitled git.

This uninformed little whiner is equating all kinds of unequal things. Chasers are all over the place, but they aren't the ones writing fanfic or any other amateur, personal writing. We have no right to other people's hobby time. Sure, we can vote with our feet, and we should, but this article doesn't really sound like it's advocating that: it sounds like it's crying that other people have different taste from the writer. Boo, hoo, hoo, someone I don't like got attention.

It's the usual ignorant trash.

Embarrassing.

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oceansidegraveyard · 2 years

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to my death i will defend a transmasc or trans man's right to create art of themselves and our shared community how they wish, but my heart has been slowly dropping for a while now. thin, completely cis passing*, traditionally masculine bodies with perfect, stylized top surgery scars. the realization sets in that the only time i have ever really seen art of a trans male or transmasc body that resembles mine is in transmed caricatures. art meant to insult and mock bodies like mine, to remove transmascs and men like me from our transness and identity. our bodies are not celebrated, only defended when anti transmeds step in with well-meaning but ultimately alienating reassurances that not all transmascs/men look like this. but what of us who do?

i occasionally see the empty positivity/validity posts pass on by, attempting to lift up transmascs/men who are fat, who are either unable to access top surgery or hrt or who do not wish to pursue top surgery or hrt, or transmascs/men who are unabashedly femme. transmascs who have unique relationships to their bodies, and trans men challenging the popular perception of being male. but i hardly ever see any art or celebration of our bodies, of genuine admiration and acceptance for our bodies, of unconditional acceptance as us as mascs and men regardless of how we compare to the ideal. and even then, we are viewed as "in progress", because the thought of a transmasc/man who isnt pursuing top and/or hrt still isn't seen as something that can be desired or euphoric, or even an end goal of transition. bodies that look like ours are not always "before" pictures. stop treating us as such.

this is also magnified for transmascs/men of color, who are constantly pushed aside as undesirable or unacceptable or used as token diversity. transmascs and men who even when seeing representation of their presentation, will likely see it on a white person. creators of color who are deprioritized because them alone existing is something a lot of white creators cannot fully wrap their heads around.

support, celebrate, and make room for fat, pre/no t, pre/no top, pre/no bottom, butch, and femme transmascs and men, especially of color. support creators and those speaking about their experiences not being your trans ideal. celebrate us as a part of your community beyond "fat boys are cute and valid!" posts. respect and uplift transmascs and men of color, who will face higher violence and demonization of their bodies even more than we white transmascs/men will.

make room for us all.

= i understand that the concept of cis passing bodies is flawed, but i lack a better term to use. there are transmascs and men whos bodies are otherwise indistinguishable from what's expected of cis men's bodies, and they deserve representation as well. but when 99% of the time a depiction of a transmasc or man is, for lack of a better phrase, what's expected of cisgender male bodies but with lines under the pec muscles, no room is left for deviation of that standard. this of course backfires, since there are cis men whos bodies also lay outside that expectation, and are similarly discarded.

#transgender #transmasc #trans man #ftm #trans male

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hadeantaiga · 1 year

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@vriskarights

Reply to this post:

https://www.tumblr.com/vriskarights/706085331968065536/why-do-tras-call-lesbians-who-dont-like-dick

For whatever reason, Tumblr isn't letting me reblog to add my answer to your questions. Before we get to the questions though:

"by definition, no lesbian likes dick."

First, we're going to immediately denounce your transphobia right from the get-go.

Lesbians can like dick. Dicks are not gendered. Dicks can be attached to women. Trans women with dicks exist. Cis women lesbians can like trans women lesbians with dicks.

Lesbianism is not about "not liking dicks" and that's a super weird way to define your sexuality.

Now, if you personally don't like dicks, even when they are attached to women, that's fine. You're allowed to have a no-dick preference. Just don't sit there and act like you get to define lesbianism for the rest of the planet, because you don't.

Moving on.

"Do you have any sources of radfems partnering with and benefitting fascist organizations?"

Yes, I do. It's not hard to find these sources. Radfems saying things like "At least ISIS knows what a woman is" are literally everywhere.

Here's a news article for you from The Washington Post, "Conservatives find unlikely ally in fighting transgender rights: Radical feminists".

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2020/02/07/radical-feminists-conservatives-transgender-rights/

The Women's Liberation Front (WoLF) has become very friendly with conservatives of various kinds in recent years. They've been featured on Tucker Carlson's show and have presented at the Heritage Foundation, which is an organization that promotes conservative values. WoLF received money from another conservative Christian organization, the Alliance Defending Freedom, to help promote an anti-transgender bill during the Obama administration.

That's a lot of damning evidence from just one source. Believe me, there are more. Bottom line: transphobic radfems eagerly align themselves with conservatives when it suits their needs.

"How is recognizing the relevance of biological sex to sexism and homophobia fascist? And how are we bioessentialist--what innate qualities do we assign to males and females?"

Recognizing that humans generally come in two sexes is not fascism. It becomes bigotry when you decide - against the evidence of science - that sex is binary and immutable. It's bigotry to say either sex has any inherent qualities. It's bigotry when you decide gender and sex are inherently linked and that trans people do not exist. Bigotry becomes fascism when you try to pass oppressive laws to enforce your bigoted beliefs, like anti trans laws.

Many radfems do assign inherent qualities to the sexes. Not all of them do it outright - it's much more of an unconscious bias. But almost all radfems are disgusted by males, masculinity, and manhood. Many radfems believe whether consciously or unconsciously that males are, at their core, bad.

Testosterone is usually listed as the thing that causes this badness. We'll get into how this affects their opinions on cis men and trans women, but I first want to prove this is bioessentialism by using trans men as an example. The radfem's fear, hatred and revulsion of trans men, and the way they talk about trans men, is all rooted in bioessentialism and associating maleness with disgust.

"Trans men who go in T become ugly, they're balding, greasy, covered in acne, fat, smell bad, and they're hairy" - all of those are innate qualities they associate with maleness and disgust. To radfems, body hair on a trans man isn't just hair, it's gross, even though they're feminists and they're supposed to support natural body hair.

The intense body shaming radfems express towards trans men betrays not only their own hypocrisy with regards to body positivity, but their bioessentialism as well. They would not be revolted by these traits if they did not associate them with maleness, and maleness with being bad and negative.

Almost all radfems I've seen have said something along the lines of "all men are bad". They don't ascribe this badness to socialization and often rarely even mention "male socialization" - no, they directly associate maleness with badness, as noted above.

Radfems are often not just afraid of males, they are disgusted by maleness, masculinity, and manhood. That's assigning a quality to the sexes: male = disgusting, female = good. That's bioessentialism.

Other innate qualities I have seen radfems assign to the sexes: males are always bigger and stronger than females, and females can never (or very rarely ever) overpower males. Therefore males are a risk to females, but females cannot be threatening or dangerous towards males. This is why radfems feel females need safe spaces but males do not. This is also why radfems rarely ever believe male rape victims of female rapists, and in some cases, do not believe males can be raped by a female at all.

That's all bioessentialism. And maybe you don't believe any of those things, but a lot of radfems do, and it informs their rhetoric. This is why radfems treat trans women like predators: not because of "male socialization", but because trans women were assigned male at birth, and that makes them tainted from the womb.

Cis men are completely capable of controlling themselves; they are not biologically predisposed towards cheating or rape or violence. That's all socialization's fault. But you'd never think that, listening to radfems.

Testosterone in someone's system does not make them good or bad, ugly or pretty. It does not make someone predisposed towards violence. It's just a hormone. If anything, listening to trans men describe their experiences and how T makes them feel proves that cis men who are actually awful cannot blame their behavior on their biology, as they desperately want to do.

Next!

"Believing that man is the word word adult human males and that woman is the word for adult human females (as the dictionary states) isn't bioessentialist as it ascribes no innate qualities (i.e. tough, nurturing, sporty, motherly) to the sexes."

The problem with the claim that male = man and female = woman is that it only works if language is immutable and never changes, and if trans people don't exist. I've already explained how radfems very much do assign qualities to the sexes. The belief that male = man and female = woman is bioessentialist because it erases the existence of binary trans people and nonbinary trans people, plain and simple. If you argue the only way to be a man is to be male, you are assigning a quality to both of those things.

"Recognizing trends brought on by socialization and observable in statistics != assigning innate qualities to males and females (i.e. acknowledging that the majority of violent crime is committed by men is not bioessentialist because it is a fact)."

It wouldn't be bioessentialist if radfems didn't follow it by saying that these statistics mean "ALL men are untrustworthy". The instant you say every man should be treated as potentially violent, it's bioessentialism, because you are now applying violence to maleness as an inherent quality.

"I have been called a fascist and a nazi for not liking dick,"

No you haven't.

"and for acknowledging that my female homosexuality (exclusive same sex attraction) is what makes me a lesbian."

This is why you have been called a fascist and a nazi, for reasons explained above. Not liking dick is perfectly fine; redefining lesbianism around your hatred of dicks is weird and also transphobic.

"As have many lesbians (hence why we’ve grown to be critical of the trans movement--it is homophobic and to our detriment, and why should we sacrifice ourselves when we’re already an oppression minority?)."

Cis lesbians as a whole have not become critical of the trans community. Transphobes like you are, thank the gods, a tiny minority. Most cis lesbians love their trans siblings, both trans women and trans men.

You are tiny, loud, annoying parasites leeching off feminists and lesbians. Like mosquitos.

#anti radfem #anti terf #feminism #intersectional feminism #trans inclusive feminism #trans #transgender #lgbtq #queer

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transgirl-gaming-thoughts · 2 years

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My Thoughts On: Queer Representation in Games

Let's face it: queer representation has its moments, but we have a long way to go before its considered common. However, games have a strong history of featuring LGBT+ characters... though not always favorably.

Let me preface my post with this: I myself am a queer Christian. I'm trans (she/they), asexual, and lesbian. This isn't a straight person critiquing queer representation to seem "politically correct" or "like a good ally". This is a queer person sharing their thoughts on queer representation in games. I felt like that needed to be said, and be said first.

Queer representation in games is inconsistent, at best. If you're in a video game fandom, or any fandom really, you've probably seen theories about certain characters being queer, or certain characters in queer ships, but how many canonically queer characters have you seen? Unfortunately, most characters are either queer by the consensus of the fandom, or by confirmation outside of the game itself, such as Tweets from creators, comics, books, etc. During the 1980s, LGBT+ characters were practically non-existent, and when they finally began to become more common in the 90s (not common, just more common), they were often over-exaggerated stereotypes of queer people, and not legitimate characters.

Around the 1990s, video games began to include more queer characters (especially gay man), though they were almost always portrayed as excessively stereotypical. Gay men were almost always portrayed as effeminate men, and trans characters were generally portrayed as men with long hair. This is just another example of the continuous way people misconstrue homosexuality and transgender identities, and no one took trans identities seriously. However, we can see in this era a continuing push for characters to become less shallow, and have more depth to makes them them.

Things really started to pick up around the 2000s. The life simulator The Sims was a monumental release that allowed people to direct any two sims, regardless of gender, into a romantic/sexual relationship. Persona 2: Eternal Punishment featured gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters (with an honorable mention going to the intersex fortune teller). Heck, even Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door featured a trans woman who is bullied and misgendered by her siblings. The early 2000s gave rise to a whole load of new games with queer representation, and I've only scratched the surface here. Series like Persona have continued to include queer characters in their games. The Japanese game market contained and contains a significantly larger amount of queer representation, but that said, its not always positive representation.

Really quick, I want to touch on one of my biggest pet peeves with queer characters, and that's the fact that so many of them are villains. How many times have you seen a queer villain in media? Sure, everyone loves a good villain (Marvel's Loki got his own show, where they subtly revealed he's bisexual and genderfluid), but the portrayal of so many queer characters as the villain of a story has more negative undertones than I care for. In the classic RPG Chrono Trigger for the Super Nintendo, a major villain, Flea, is genderqueer, and states "Male... female... what's the difference? Power is beautiful, and I've got the power!" In a perfect world, I would be okay with queer villains, because if the character fits the role, so be it, but in a world that is still predominantly heteronormative, things like this come across as negative towards queer characters, saying they're the "villain" of whatever story they're put in. This theme continues with the usage of transgender characters, even in modern games.

Warning: May contain spoilers for Catherine or Catherine: Full Body TW: Misgendering and transphobia

The example that comes to mind is the 2011 game Catherine by Atlus. Now, full disclosure, I haven't played this game myself, however, I have read reviews and read the Wikipedia article on the character I'm about to mention.

The character Erica Anderson is a canonically trans woman who works as a waitress. She exhibits confident body language as well as body language that shows sexual confidence. The other characters behave in a transphobic manner towards her, voicing their disgust at the thought of a character having sex with her, and using her deadname several times over the course of the game. Not even the credits are exempt from this, as her deadname is used there as well. In the "ideal" ending of Catherine: Full Body, the definitive version of the game from 2019, Erica never transitioned at all, insinuating that it would be better for everyone if she never transitioned. Additionally, her coming-out scene was used to embarrass another character who had sex with her. Writer Caty McCarthy felt that Erica came off as well-rounded until her coming out was treated like a joke. While some people argue that her mistreatment by characters and plot are reflective of a society that is still dominantly transphobic, it doesn't change the fact her status as a trans woman was treated as a joke. A joke. If the writers wanted to make her character a commentary on transphobia, they could have done so, but it's very apparent that they didn't. People were pleased with her character as a whole, as she was a well-rounded character who went through very real trans experiences, but it's absolutely tragic she got treated the way she did in-game and by the creators. Keep in mind, this game was first released in 2011, and Full Body came out in 2019. I've had people tell me that LGBT+ identities are "the social standard" or "accepted by society", especially from Christians who claim they're being "counter-cultural" by being homophobic and transphobic. Things like Erica Anderson's character in Catherine are prime examples of the fact that yes, we've made progress, leaps and bounds even, but we are so far from being in a good place, and there's a lot of things we still have to power through.

Spoilers end here.

Life simulators and visual novels have always appealed to LGBT+ gamers, and there's lots of games with representation in these categories. Queer dating sims, queer visual novels, and queer options in simulators have been present for a long time. The long-standing MMORPG Runescape from 2001 allows the player to wear any clothes and change their gender and appearance at any time for no charge. The Animal Crossing community has been accommodating and accepting of all peoples and identities for a while, especially since the release of New Horizons in 2020.

Not all representation is obvious, either. The critically-acclaimed RPG Undertale by Toby Fox features a non-binary protagonist (the protagonist's gender is left ambiguous so that the player can project themself onto the character, but as far as the canon goes, they use they/them pronouns). One of the paths in Undertale also involves the forming of a lesbian relationship between two of the main characters (no spoilers here :3). None of these things are obvious representation, however. The main character never says they're non-binary, but they use they/them pronouns the entire game, and no gender is established. The lesbian characters are known to be lesbian not because they said so, but simply because they love each other. None of the other characters act surprised or respond negatively. To them, love is love. Some people have made arguments for a canon male or female gender for the protagonist, but the fact stands that Toby Fox said their gender is ambiguous on purpose; there is no canon gender. Let people express themselves!

In conclusion, how do I feel about queer representation in the gaming world? Mixed.

On one hand, the inclusion of queer characters and the addition of queer opportunities in games gives me hope that the world of gaming can be a more accepting and supportive place. On the other hand, this is also just a new format for homophobes and transphobes to voice their uneducated opinions and spread hate. Things like Erica Anderson from Catherine and the fandom's treatment of the protagonist's gender in Undertale serve as reminders that people aren't all kind and supportive, however much some people would like us to think that LGBT+ identities have become "the social standard".

However, it's not all bad. There are some games that have legitimately well-written queer characters, accommodating queer options, and overall accepting, supportive atmospheres. Games allow us to express ourselves, even when it might not be safe for us to do so in our everyday lives. Not all queer people are in safe environments, and if we can use video games as a platform to raise awareness and spread love, then I'll be there to support that, but whenever there's characters like Erica Anderson who're mistreated, I'll be there to calls shenanigans on that.

It is my hope, my prayer, my belief, that we can work together to spread love. Love is the root of all the good things in this broken world, and if nobody works to spread it, then we're all going to suffer. If video games can be a platform for us to show one another how much we care, and how much we love and support one another, why would we not take advantage of that? The video game industry is in desperate need of more queer characters who aren't there because they're queer, or are the subject of a queer game, but are there because they add something to the game through who they are, and being queer is just a part of that. We need to show people that we don't exist for the pure purpose of being queer, but being queer is a part of the beautiful people we were made to be, and we aren't afraid to show that. If we can have even a sliver of that in the world of gaming, things will get better. I know they will.

Thanks for reading this lengthy post. I didn't initially intend to post this so soon, but I felt Pride Month would be an appropriate time to do so. This is something I feel quite strongly about, and I wanted to share a little history along with my thoughts and feelings on the subject. Feel free to ask me about anything I wrote. You have my deepest apologies if anything I said offended anyone. It is never my intent to do so, and if edits are necessary, let me know and I'll get right to it! For now, have fun, stay hydrated, do what you love, and God bless!

~Alex

If you're interested in more of my ~queer~ thoughts, be sure to check out my secondary blog, Assorted Queer Thoughts!

#pride #lgbtqia #queer #lgbtq #queer pride #queer gamers #gaming #gaming history #pride month #happy pride 🌈#gendefluid #asexual #lesbian #pride 2022 #pride month 2022 #assorted gaming thoughts

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thedeadflag · 5 years

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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transgenderteensurvivalguide · 5 years

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This isn't to be rude, I'm just legitimately curious. What's the point in being transgender if you don't have dysphoria? Is it just because of the disconnect between the brain and the body? So, being trans helps you to feel more connected and at home in your body? There just isn't any distress? And if you don't have physical/body dysphoria, you shouldn't medically transition, right? I've heard doing so can cause you to develop body dysphoria. So, you should just socially transition?

Lee says:

“What’s the point in being transgender”? People are transgender because we are- it isn’t like there’s a point, it’s just the way some people are. That’s true for all trans folks, regardless of their experience with dysphoria.

Not having any distress from dysphoria doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t experience distress from being trans at all though- being trans in a transphobic world means that you’re going to be coming up against some transphobic people and uncomfortable and unsafe situations and all that because if you’re trans then transphobes aren’t going to ask you “hey, do you have gender dysphoria?” before they discriminate against you or shout at you in the locker room or something. So I think that trans people do share a common experience of minority stress from being marginalized even if you don’t have distress from gender dysphoria.

Yeah, I’d say that it seems like a lot of trans people who don’t identify as having gender dysphoria do tend to experience gender euphoria, and accepting that you’re trans if you’re trans is usually the first step towards helping you to feel more connected and at home in your body and more comfortable with how you move in the world. The Being trans without dysphoria post gets into that a bit more.

Gender dysphoria is defined in the DSM-V as “the distress that may accompany the incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender” (DSM-V, page 451). So some folks may have that incongruence but it isn’t necessarily causing them that distress. But if you don’t fully identify as the gender you were assigned at birth 100% of the time, you can call yourself trans. That’s it, there’s no other criteria you need to meet to be trans.

As for medically transitioning, I think that’s something each individual needs to figure out for themself. You have to decide whether the changes on HRT you want are worth the other changes you aren’t as excited for. You can do low-dose HRT and have the changes happen slower so you can stop when you’ve had enough, but some changes are permanent so it’s important to only start HRT if you’re reasonably sure that you’re okay with the permanent changes that you’d get. You don’t want to start HRT to find that it only makes you more uncomfortable.

There are some people who may find that medically transitioning creates some features they’re dysphoric with, and there are other folks who may feel that they felt neutral about their bodies beforehand and not necessarily distressed by them, but felt even more comfortable and happy after transitioning- a shift from neutral in either direction is possible.

For example, you might be…

Neutral & non-dysphoric about your bod pre-medical transition then dysphoric post-HRT/surgery

Neutral & non-dysphoric about your bod pre-medical transition then happier and euphoric/more positive post-HRT/surgery

Neutral & non-dysphoric about your bod pre-medical transition then still neutral, no particular emotional change post-HRT/surgery

Some non-dysphoric people may feel neutral about their bodies as they are so they don’t necessarily feel like they need HRT to be comfortable in their body, but they may want other people to recognize what their gender is and so they may find it easier to pass if they start hormones or get surgery and passing is often associated with safety in certain situations so that’s a valid reason to transition- if they think they’re okay with the HRT changes.

In fact, I wouldn’t even say that someone shouldn’t start HRT if one of the changes from HRT would make them dysphoric about something they’re not currently dysphoric about. It’s up to them to decide if that changes is worth everything else they’d be getting. Sometimes a little bad is worth a lot of good- it depends on the person and how they feel about it! And it isn’t a decision that should be taken lightly, but it also isn’t something that should be policed by random strangers on the internet.

I personally do have dysphoria and I’m on T and had top surgery, a hysterectomy, and I’m getting phallo, but that doesn’t mean that I am/was uncomfortable with every single aspect about my pre-HRT and pre-surgery body. Before I started testosterone, for example, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about getting facial hair. It wasn’t one of the changes that I was really looking forward to. Now I’m about 2 years on T, and I’ve found that so far I don’t have very much facial hair anyway but I just shave now and then, as plenty of folks do, and if I have literally 0 regrets about being on T and it was definitely the right decision for me. In my case, the change I didn’t particularly want (facial hair) was totally worth everything else.

I know that some non-binary people feel that they wouldn’t be fully comfortable with either all the changes from estrogen or testosterone. These folks may decide that either way they’d still have dysphoria about certain things, so starting hormones might create new areas of dysphoria but alleviate other areas, and they have to decide which things would be harder to cope with- the things they had before, or the things they don’t want about HRT changes. So for example, if a non-binary person really doesn’t want say increased body hair growth on T but they really want a lower voice, they may decide that getting dysphoria about their body hair is worth getting rid of the voice dysphoria because they can manage the body hair easier by shaving and the voice changes will be more noticeable in how they interact with strangers or something.

It’s all very complicated and it isn’t an easy decision so saying big general categories of folks shouldn’t medically transition and but people should often oversimplifies all the different variables that trans people are grappling with- and there are almost always a few exceptions to every rule. So making broad generalizations might exclude and marginalize some people who legitimately need to transition while including folks who might not want to. Some folks with dysphoria may choose not to medically transition and some folks without dysphoria might choose to medically transition, and there are often really good reasons why they’re making those decisions and that should be respected. Nobody should feel pressured into medically transitioning if they don’t want to do it, even if they have dysphoria, and the reverse.

So I really don’t feel comfortable dictating categories of folks who should or shouldn’t medically transition because life is more complicated than that. Each person who is interested in medically transitioning needs to spend some time thinking about it, and it can help to create like a concrete pro/con list of how they think they’d feel about each change. If they think that surgery and/or hormones is right for them after careful consideration, that should be respected. Not everyone decides to medically transition which is valid, and I couldn’t say whether medically transition is even a particularly common choice for non-dysphoric people to make, but we should respect other people’s bodily autonomy and trust that they can make choices for themself.

Followers say:

guiltyidealist said: Being trans isn’t “a disconnect between the brain and the body” because not all trans people feel like they’re “”“"born in the wrong body,”“”“ and sex =/= gender

Lee says:

Yes, exactly! I didn’t fully address that statement- some trans people may feel that there’s a disconnect between their brain and their body, but that isn’t true for every single trans person, as the follower above wrote.

You can’t be “wrong” about the way that you feel about your body- although it is transphobic to say “All men have X parts or want X parts” because that isn’t true. For example, one trans guy may say “My body is male because I am male and this is my body,” and another trans guy may say “I want to medically transition in every way that’s available to me because I don’t see my body as being fully reflective of my identity” and both of those feelings are valid.

I know this is all a lot to unpack and unravel, especially when different folks are using different definitions for the same words, but again, in the end it comes back to bodily autonomy and the right for folks to make their own decisions about their own bodies.

If you don’t fully identify as the gender you were assigned at birth 100% of the time, you can call yourself trans. That’s it, there’s no other criteria you need to meet to be trans. If you want to medically transition, then that’s your decision.

#Lee says #nondysphoric #not sure what else to tag this with?#Anonymous #transgenderteensurvivalguide #trans #transgender

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thedeadflag · 5 years

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what's your take on nb and butch lesbians hcing male characters as trans women? men are closer to how i present (as a nb butch) and so that's generally why i'll say a canonically male character is a lesbian, but i'm also afab and recognize how that makes it easier for me to present as a lesbian, nb or otherwise, and don't want to continue doing this/making jokes about it if it's disrespectful. also, if this ask is a bother, feel free to ignore it--i totally understand this isn't like, your job.

If we’re talking a trans woman butch lesbian, then sure. As a trans woman, she’s trustworthy, and if she feels a canon male character’s worthy of headcanoning as a trans woman, she’s probably got her reasons. Doesn’t mean someone who isn’t a trans woman should necessarily piggyback on that, because they wouldn’t be doing so with an informed perspective, not unless there’s a broader pattern of trans women HCing the character as a trans woman.

If we’re talking someone assigned female at birth, then I would say that this is being done for the wrong reasons. If you ID more with a male character, that’s perfectly alright, but there’s no need to rope trans women into it. You could just leave them as men.

If it’s just about presentation, change the way female characters present accordingly. Like, I’m confused how that’s not the solution that immediately comes to mind. I don’t understand how a person can say they like a way a guy character looks, and come to the conclusion that they’ll just make him a trans woman so they can see themselves in the character better. I don’t get how the first impulse is to equate trans women with cis men, and not make a shift in presentation/expression of an existing woman character. Or, I DO get how it can happen, because cissexism makes these sort of decisions so rooted in common sense and instinct that people don’t even think twice about them. It becomes the easy solution, because of course a person will jump to HCing a man as a trans woman due to gender-related expression/presentation when they connect trans women with men, or at least overwhelmingly more with men than with other women.

If you absolutely have to have the character be a woman for whatever reason, I’d honestly prefer you rock a genderbend/cisswap. At least then you wouldn’t be directly equating trans women with cis men, even if similar cissexist underpinnings would be guiding the alteration. Still transphobic, but nothing that could pretend to masquerade as trans-positivity like trans HCs often are positioned as.

And this is all, of course, assuming the shift of the character into a woman has some manner of good faith behind it, even if misguided and flawed. I will say that I am a little more cautious and suspicious when it comes to instances like this because I’ve seen similar issues with certain cis wlw and afab NB folks using trans women’s bodies as vehicles for a variety of fantasies and introspection-avoidance and whatnot via the G!P (girl penis) trope in fan works.

There’s a distressingly common pattern of trans women being positioned in deeply cissexist ways that…to simplify maybe to the point of some inaccuracy, but I’ve already written tomes on this matter already, I won’t retread those tracks…cast us as men who are conditionally treated as women.

There’s a lot of cis wlw struggling with comp het who use us in their erotica as the stand in for the male lover, and fill us with all the romanticized and eroticized toxic masculinity, letting us put on the illusion of womanhood until the sexual content hits, and then we’re the ‘hot alpha stud’ reaming into the cis wlw character with our over-sized engorged penises, often pumping them full of cum (and also quite often getting them pregnant). That ticks a lot of boxes when it comes to unprocessed heteronormativity, compulsory heterosexuality, cissexism, etc. and when that baggage can be draining to deal with, it’s an easier sell for folks to indulge in the thrill of taboo and fulfilling a twisted form of the conditioning they were give, especially if they’ve got a strict and homophobic religious upbringing.

Related to the above, there’s a lot of trans men and afab NB folks who see us as some kind of ideal midway point between men and women. Where we get to exist as women, at least in bearing the status of women and mental image of some famous actress or character, but appearing (in some physical ways, at least, largely bone structure and genitals), behaving, and functioning as men. They have a familiar physical form they can see themselves in, but with a penis tacked on as a means of distancing the character from womanhood and sources of dysphoria, to make them the ‘best of both worlds’ in a sense.

I shouldn’t have to explain to you how deeply cissexist and transmisogynistic these sort of instances are, or how harmful it is to be viewed through such a fetishistic lens, and to be represented in such a harmful and inauthentic way. I’ll admit, I usually come across cis butch lesbians upset at the mere notion of having their butchness equated with maleness, who hate when butch lesbians are represented as essentially a man. Like the common critique goes, there’s no “man” of the relationship between two women…with lesbians especially, the point is that they’re both women or woman-aligned, and neither are men. And when people primarily HC canon men as trans women, and rarely (if ever) HC canon women as trans women, they’re doing that exact thing, positioning us as men, equating us to men in everything but the most surface-level messaging.

And that sort of thing might not always be behind the kind of trans headcanons you’re describing. But it’s a persistent theme behind people HCing canon men as trans women, and being a non-trans woman butch lesbian doesn’t eliminate those issues from being in play. There are reasons why people jump to the decisions they make when it comes to our representation. Even if it might seem innocuous to you or others, there are currents underneath our consciousnesses that pull people in certain directions when faced with multiple ways to accomplish their goals. Cissexism is one that nearly everyone struggles with mightily, or has struggled with mightily in the past prior to working at unlearning it. Transmisogyny is one that most folks assigned female at birth don’t really consider at all until prompted with critique relating to it.

Either way, there’s no harm in trying to get a handle on why that urge arises to HC men as trans women, particularly under the reasoning you provided. And while you and others who have had similar motivations in the past are putting in the work, maybe focus on HCing canon women as trans women if you ever feel the urge for a trans woman HC

#long post #trans headcanons #transmisogyny #cissexism #trans fetishization #creative responsibility #g!p #compulsory heterosexuality #heteronormativity #genitals tw #genital mention tw #transphobia #Anons

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