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nightfoot · 3 years

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So I’m not a historian, but I just finished posting my medieval AU fanfic that included a medieval trans character, so I thought I’d ramble a bit about some of the research I did prior to writing it. There’s this idea that Western society believed in an absolute binary of men and women until Stonewall happened and introduced Western cis people to the concept of gender not being rigidly set in stone, but that’s just not the case. So here’s a brief overview of some specific cases I found along the lines of “Medieval and early modern people were thinking about gender too.”

The first is the one I think about most often. This is actually a little bit after the medieval period, in the 16th century, but still interesting. There was a person in the little town of Vitry-le-Fran ois who lived as a man. He was married to a woman and worked as a weaver. Tragically, his marriage lasted only 5 months before someone recognized him as “[birth name]” and he was tried and condemned (for the crime of using a dildo). But, he was given the option to go back to wearing skirts and live as a respectable woman. He rejected the offer, and chose to be hanged rather than live as a woman.

I just think about him a lot, and how much I wish he could come to the 21st century and see how the world has changed. He is also the person I always think about when I see the claim that all trans men in history were just “women trying to live with more freedom.” Because if it was only about trying to live a better life, then choosing any life at all would be better than death.

The second story involves another person from France in 1601. Thankfully, his chosen name was recorded - Marin began sleeping with a woman while they were both working as chambermaids in Rouen, but after a few weeks, he told her he was in fact a man, and proposed marriage. Before their marriage, though, Marin was accused of sodomy for being a “woman” trying to marry another women. However, he plead his case and asked for a medical examination, and after a genital exam, the doctor declared Marin had “a hidden but functional penis.” I read this as him being intersex. The court demanded he dress as a woman for 4 years in hope that the situation would clear up, but after those 4 years passed, he was allowed to go back to presenting as male, married his wife, and lived the rest of his life as a man.

This story is interesting because it demonstrated that people in 1601 were ready to accept “huh! sex and gender are complicated! I guess it is possible for someone to change from one thing to another!”

And the reason they accepted this is because of the “one sex model,” the idea that male and female are just two ends of a spectrum and all humans fall somewhere on that spectrum with the potential to shift position. This model is not exactly correct, because they also believed that it had to do with body temperature and that if a woman’s body temperature raised too much she would spontaneously grow a penis, but it is very interesting that 400 years ago, academics realized that sex is much more complicated than “you’re either A or B” but in our enlightened 21st century, we have to argue about that again.

Cross-dressing saints are also common in hagiography. One example is Joseph von Schönau, a celebrated monk who joined the abbey of Schönau in 1187 after a life of travel in Europe and the Middle East. What’s interesting is that during his deathbed confession, when he came clean to the priest about all his other secrets and sins in life, he said nothing about his sex.

There is another story I recall that, for the life of me, I can’t find the source for now. In that one, a saint lives his entire life in an abbey as a man. During his life, a local woman accused him of fathering her child. He could have easily disproved the accusation by explaining that he didn’t have a penis, but instead accepted the child as his and accepted the shame and disdain from his fellow monks. They only realized he couldn’t have been the father after his death.

My next two stories are fictional:

The first is the 13th century French story Roman de Silence. This is the story of a woman whose father needed a son to inherit, so when she was born, he decided to raise her as a boy. Throughout the story, personifications of “Nature” and “Nurture” argue over which of them determines who a person is. Throughout the story, Silence becomes a knight, captures Merlin in a prophecy twist (of the “no man can defeat Merlin” sort), reveals her sex in the end and marries a king. I actually think it’s more interesting to read Silence as a trans woman, despite being what we today would “assign female.” She was assigned male by her father, and grows up feeling conflicted about this.

Silence isn’t an example of a real life trans masc knight, but the story overall is exploring the question, “What exactly is it that makes someone a man vs a woman?” This says to me that Medieval People Were Thinking About This Too, and the idea that man and woman could be more complicated than looking at a baby’s genitals has been around for a long, long time.

My favourite fictional story is Yde et Olive, another 13th century French romance. This one tells the story of Yde, a princess being forced into a marriage she hates. Rather than go through with it, they dress as a man and run away. Over the course of Yde’s adventures, they learn how to fight with a sword, take down bandits, and end up as a knight in a foreign king’s court. The king is so impressed with Yde that he arranges for them to marry his daughter, Olive. Yde confesses to Olive that the marriage will never work because of his sex, but Olive says she doesn’t mind and will keep their secret, which, y’know, #Bi Princess. But someone overheard the conversation! And now the king will have them put to death for same-sex relations! (even though... he’s the one who insisted they marry). Yde prays to God for a miracle, and God responds by magically transforming Yde into a cis man. The day is saved and Yde lives happily ever after as a man with his wife. They have a son named Croissant.

My research mostly focused on transmasc stories, but I have to at least add the suggestion to read up on Choisy, an 18th century French transfem person. She wrote a novel (Histoire) about a child who was raised as a girl with no idea that having a penis meant people would think she was a boy. When her mother eventually tells her that she is “male,” she simply does not believe it. She goes on to marry a Marquis, and realizes she must tell him that she is allegedly male, only for the Marquis to tell her that he is, in fact, "female.” They go on to live happily ever after as a t4t couple.

Anyway, as I said, I am not a historian and this is not academically rigorous, but some interesting stories I came across while researching. I wouldn’t say any of these suggest that trans people were common and accepted by broader society throughout history, but they do show that people over the centuries have been thinking about gender, what it means to be a man or woman, and how the line between those can be blurry. This is far from being a 21st century exclusive discussion.

Unfortunately, hand-wringing hysteria about trans people is also nothing new, because I also came across several instances of medieval writers fretting about the idea of “men disguising themselves as women to sneak into convents and have sex with nuns.” Truly, the world never changes.

Sources:

Ferguson, Gary. "Early Modern Transitions: From Montaigne to Choisy." L'Esprit Créateur 53, no. 1 (2013): 145-57.

Hotchkiss, Valerie. “Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe.” Garland Publishing, 1996.

#trans history

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ilikedetectives · 3 years

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Thanks for saying it. As a trans woman I was side-eyeing that hashtag the moment I read the “movement explained” post last year saying this:

That wording (from the most prominent voice!) directly implies that there’s an acceptable criteria for womanhood and women outside those criteria don’t count. This kind of thinking always ends up targeting gnc cis women too because they’re not the “right” women, no surprise it happened here. (Apparently a gay cis man is more worth defending to them than gnc and sapphic women too?)

Plus a quick google search would easily tell them Kassandra and Eivor were envisioned as “masculine” as they are now even before the male options were designed? Official ACV concept art for Eivor’s character design even states lady Eivor was designed first and that male Eivor was based off of HER. But sure they’re “shells” based on men 🙄

Looks like they’ve chosen to “highlight, appreciate and support” the fact that queer, gnc women aren’t real women because these women are simply men’s “shells” for being masculine and queer.

Oh I’m so glad that you see this and stay tf away. Aren’t these the same breed that were sooooo outraged after reading and citing that Forbes article by Jason Schreier last year, “OMG Kassandra and Aya/Amunet originally were supposed to be the protagonist, I’m so oUTraGEd and feel rOBbeD that Ubisoft took this from us”? You’d think with all the devs that they are good friends with, they should know by now that Kassandra and f!Eivor were designed first in mind, then the male counterparts were added AFTER being forced by higher-ups and marketing. The Montreal writers keep having to reassure people that everything about Eivor is intentional and they have always intended that Eivor is a female. The first name alone, Eivor, is a female name. I think the devs already know they’d have to deal with idiots, so they added Varinsdottir in her last name (dottir means “daughter”), but I think the devs still underestimate their level of stupidity. They sure are attentive to plot details when it involves their brotherhood though, but women? *wheeze* They love AC2 sfm but it didn’t take them until last year to realize how dirty Aya/Amunet treated. Nobody paused when Origins was announced to say, but Amunet statue? Pleaseeee *wheeze* For them to go around saying that Kass and f!Eivor are just “shells” based on men and now, practically calling the devs lazy because making them masculine to save time/effort in development time really shows their true colors. If a woman isn’t slim-af-and-only-attracted-to-cishet men, then they’re not women. gnc, queer, trans women? I don’t need to take a guess to see what they view these women as. These fake feminists don’t find it disrespectful that Kass and f!Eivor are pushed aside for the male shells to take the spotlight, but they find Kass and f!Eivor being masculine and queer disrespectful. Someone please turn on “Send in the Clowns'' for me, I prefer the Judi Dench version.

You know what I find hypocritical about these fake feminist breeds? When they call for more female assassins content, they never once invalidate their beloved male protags, “We’re not here to cancel m!Eivor/Alexios/Bayek/Jacob/Arno, we just want more of f!Eivor/Kassandra/Amunet/Evie/Elise/Aveline”, but now that they have more backers, they immediately turn around and dismiss the only two AAA female protags as women because they’re “too masculine, like men.” That’s right! f!Eivor walking like a man and both Kass and f!Eivor wear male armors and are attracted to women automatically dismiss their existence as gnc, queer women. Being a masculine, queer woman somehow exempt them both from sexism because these two are just “men’s shells”? What kinda Isu drugs are they on? Now I wish f!Eivor had a true buff Viking body in her vanilla state (I know there’s muscles mod by amisthiosintraining and I, but still), because what else are these fake feminists gonna trash her on? f!Eivor is a shell for m!Eivor? *wheeze* What could’ve been said was, “I want a female-protag-only game because then the devs can focus all their time and effort on her story, for her” or “Ubisoft should give the devs more time, resources, and creative freedom to give players more historical context of the struggles the female protags have to deal with, compared to male protags”. For example: a side quest with Aspasia as she deals with how sexist people (surprise, women can be sexist too) were towards her as perhaps the most educated, influential woman in Athens at the time. Or how Kassandra had to fight her way to be allowed to compete in the Olympics. That’s all that’s needed to be said. There’s nothing wrong with asking/wanting a feminine female protag who is gender-conforming, but it says a lot about their true view of women when they drag gnc and queer women down to parade their idea of a superior woman.

But what did these fake feminists choose to “highlight, appreciate and support” instead? Oh that’s right, disregarding both Kassandra and f!Eivor as inferior women, because them fakers don’t deemed masculinity and queerness as the aUThenTIc female experience they want to play as. You know what’s worse? Pitting these female characters together to rate how “feminine” each of them are to deem which ones are more “real” as a woman. Can you imagine them doing that to the male protags? Knowing full well that the devs’ hands were tied when it comes to creative freedom when making Kassandra and f!Eivor, but still go around and shit on the devs for being “lazy”, while dismissing Kassandra f!Eivor experience as women because of their gnc and queerness. What kinda Beta Sigma (BS) is this? Oh I think I know the answer: reinforcing their ideas of what they find acceptable for their version of a woman. Honestly, it’s not the first time gnc, queer women are shit on in AC, remember that cursed DLC from Odyssey? Yea. I expect nothing more from Ubisoft-certified fans. Watch, if we somehow get a female-lead AAA game next installment and she happens to be queer, gnc, and godforbid to their fEMinISt standards, she happens to be trans as well, these fakers would most likely scream, “We support women. We want the REAL woman experience”. But if she happens to conform into their fEMinISt standards, you’ll get to hear how she’s their most favorite protag since Ezio cuz she’s a “real woman”. Again, nothing wrong with gender-conforming, feminine women, but using them as THE superior example, this fuckery/fakery reeks.

One last general tip from Doctor Who, “Goodness is not goodness that seeks advantage. Good is good in the final hour, in the deepest pit, without hope, without witness, without reward.” Look closely and you’ll see what those advantages and rewards are.

p/s: Didn’t Ubisoft CEO just appoint his family member(s) to be in charge, while there were also discussion on how the new directors are no better than the sexist, racist ones that were fired/let-go? Sounds to me like it’s business as usual again. Or us Vietnamese have a saying, “It’s easier for rivers and mountains to change than human’s nature to even budge” (giang sơn dễ đổi, bản tính khó dời). I find it so ironic that “gaslight gatekeep girlboss” is trending on my dash.

#I'm no Pythia but I saw this light years away #handsomejaclyn #f!Eivor #Eivor #Kassandra #ac valhalla #ac odyssey #aya #amunet #evie frye #elise #ac origins #ac syndicate #aveline #ac liberation #ac unity #Cisterhood #misogynistic feminists

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antiterf · 3 years

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I would really appreciate if people talked about this more

I’ve never mentioned this before on here, but I used to label myself as a truscum. I never outright said anything on it or about it online, and never attacked people with it, I’ll get that down first. I mostly used that for myself because those were the blogs that I went to for issues with dysphoria as a trans man.

This post isn’t about how truscum are bad, those who are going to reblog and listen to this post already think that truscum are bad. This is me pointing out that trans men and those with severe internalized transphobia need more of a community to avoid falling into truscum rhetoric.

Trigger Warning: Description of my self injury, internalized transphobia, and a lot of depression under the cut.

I originally went to truscum to figure out if I was dysphoric or not. I know I’ve had an anon on here try to ask me somewhat of the same question. The reason why is because I had a lot of internalized transphobia and live in a conservative Christian suburb. I seriously was born and raised in the same town my life and that town was that suburb. I was around 14 at the time.

Basically, the only reason why I wanted to find out is because I wanted to know if I could force myself to be cisgender. I was terrified of being transgender, and I hated myself for the possibility of it.

My logic though is that if I was dysphoric, then I couldn’t do much about it. Yeah, terfs would say that I could cope with it with anti-depressants, but my disassociation and sickly feeling was not helped by my anti-depressants. I was at the point of being constantly suicidal and with cutting I ran out of room on my arm and started to go for my legs (because I said that I would never go to my right arm... I was a creative little shit). I was put in an 8 hr a day outpatient program, and they legit kept me there as long as they possibly could before I was sent back to school, before I just went back to self injuring but kept it way more secret that time. I had been getting mental health treatment since 10 and puberty started, with it just getting worse, I was way out of options

I related to a lot of what truscum were saying with my dysphoria, and while they did tell me that they could not ever tell another person that they experience dysphoria or not, that they did relate to some of the things I was saying. One linked me to a list where someone gave a lot of specific symptoms of dysphoria, and boy, did I fit a lot. I also learned how to explain my disassociation. It was the first time I ever related to something when it came to my mental health issues instead of just hearing “yeah these people are just like you” before I didn’t actually relate to them at all. I felt so much relief.

I continued to go to them for advice on dysphoria and it wasn’t anything more, but you start scrolling through and things start to stick. Especially when you already have a lot of internalized transphobia.

“Yeah, why would anyone be trans? If they weren’t suffering like I was, I was at my breaking point to actually start accepting myself, how are they the same?”

It went on from there, and I started to believe what they said. I shared it to one cis person, and that cis person ultimately ended up harassing me because I was trans even after I explained honestly the entire pity story I shared above along with truscum beliefs that you need dysphoria to be trans (this is actually how I finally snapped out of it, thank you fucker, I’m more intolerable now). I mainly shared this shit with cis people in order to try and see me as more tolerable, and honestly, I just wish that I could have surrounded myself with trans people where I didn’t have to feel like I needed to prove a point. I was so vulnerable at that time, and didn’t nearly stand up to cis ignorance as I do today.

I mentioned trans men in the beginning too, and part of the community I was lacking in, was trans men. I would see more positivity for trans woman and nb people. I did and still see lack of support for issues trans men face both with the rest of the trans community and things that are trans man specific. Something I feel like I can relate it to is the bisexual limbo of being too gay for straight people but too straight for gay people. I’m looked down upon by my oppressors, but I’m too privileged to really access my own community. Especially when I identified as straight. It’s isolating, it’s isolating to a point where I would be happy that someone included trans men specifically in their “I hate all men” posts, I would be happy about it. And I know I can’t possibly be the only one.

I don’t have the power to create a community name for trans men where we can all find each other. I don’t have the power to put a name to struggles that trans men face specifically. I know that there’s transmisandry, but that gives everyone who doesn’t know what it is a fight or flight response. While it makes sense, it gives the same impression as calling the biphobia I face as a form of heterophobia.

I’m as proud of this as I am just as proud that I used to shoplift at 14 and believed things that my racist cop father said. I think that the shitty parts of your past self can be shared for some sort of benefit of others and that’s why I’m sharing this. If other trans men would like to add their own experiences, I would encourage it.

#notaterftip #not sarcasm #extruscum #xtruscum #transmed #truscum #tucute #Internalized Transphobia #self harm tw #cutting tw #trans men #trans man #transmisandry #transandrophobia #transmen #transman #trans rights #transgender

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voxofthevoid · 4 years

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Taking It Up The Ass Isn’t Character Growth - A Rant

So, in response to an ask a while back, I said I had a rant brewing on fandom and sex positions, and well, a lot of you wanted to see it, so here you go. You literally asked for it.

Disclaimer: This is going to talk a lot about top/bottom roles in slash fic and fandom attitude towards them and is heavily filtered through the lens of my own tastes and experiences with fandom. I’d also like to be upfront that I am 100% in favor of people writing whatever fictional content they want, and it’s not what fandom does with characters that bothers me but rather how that translates into attitudes towards real, live people. Also, this is the essay version of a slow burn AU because I regurgitate my entire fandom history before getting to the point. Beware.

I discovered fan-fiction around a decade ago, had no clue what the hell it was, got hooked and dived deeper. I started participating in fandom circa 2013, and I was fairly young and also completely inexperienced both sexually and romantically. The fandom in question was Hannibal and my ship of choice was Hannibal/Will. It was/is a very chill fandom in general, but we had our drama. And chief among the contentious topics was—you guessed it—the top/bottom debate. I can’t actually remember any other topic that was discussed and argued for so ardently in that fandom, at least in those days. Even after I drifted away, I came across a few posts on the matter.

Generally, you had two camps—people who supported strict roles and those who were in favor of switching*. And because we’re a society plagued by illogical assumptions, the strict role camp mostly had people who thought Mr. Big Bad Cannibal in the Fancy Suits wouldn’t take it up the ass because he’s older, more experienced, more mentally stable, and of course, more ‘dominant’ in personality. Yes, that sentence is chock full of problematic shit. I am aware. Lots of people were aware and argued strongly against attributing top/bottom roles to personality. I don’t remember anyone arguing as enthusiastically for Top Will, but those voices were also there. But the general idea was that assigning strict top/bottom roles to a male/male couple was casting them in a heterosexual mold and thus, the progressive option was to make them switch. Strict roles also garnered comparisons to “yaoi” and uke/seme stereotypes, which was of course bad and fetishizing and we, the Western media fans, of course had to do better. Stealth racism is fun to untangle.

Anyway, I lapped up the woke juice. Partly because I was a baby queer from Buttfuck Nowhere, Asia, who had zero exposure to LGBT+ communities and what queer folks did with each other. Partly because it was the stance taken by most of my favorite writers so it seemed like a good position to emulate.

Emulate it I did. Most discussions I had about this happened in private with the handful of close friends I had in fandom. Where it really showed was in my writing. I made sure to write switching—maybe not in every fic, but then I alternated between fics. Thing is though, I did have a preference. I liked Top Will. I created and consumed a ton of Top Hannibal, and sometimes it was okay, sometimes it was not, but I couldn’t pinpoint why it made me uncomfortable. Back then, I thought I was a cis questioning/bi girl and once again, the impression I got was that not being MLM, having a preference was automatic fetishization. So I tried my best to justify my preferences, to my friends at least. I think what I said was that fandom was skewed towards Top Hannibal, and I liked the opposite because I’m a contrary fuck. Which I am, to be fair, but this was just me desperately trying to figure shit out without being offensive.

That’s the line I touted all the way until 2018, which was when I fucked off to grad school in A City, finally freed of Buttfuck Nowhere and able to actually date. At this point, I was settled in my sexuality (girls only) and questioning my gender (non-binary or trans guy). I had also tentatively figured out during undergrad that I’m an exclusive top and a Dom. Actual attempts at dating cemented that, yes, those are my preferences, about as flexible as a steel rod. Cue motherfucking epiphany over my fanfic tastes.

And see, over these years, I was engaging intermittently with fandom. I dutifully wrote switch couples. I also continued to have rigid tastes and continued to explain it away as being a contrary fuck—to be fair, until Steve/Bucky, my preference did seem to be the opposite of the larger fandom preference. But correlation, as we know, isn’t causation. Until Steve/Bucky, I continued to write versatile couples because I honestly didn’t have the guts to just say I liked it just one way. I do now but even then, I feel compelled to add that it’s because I want to see my own taste reflected in fic, so I write/read the character I relate to as a top, it's not that deep etc. Would I be as forthright if I didn’t have that reason? Would I have such strict preferences in fic if I didn’t have strict preferences IRL? The latter’s a mystery, but the former isn’t—I wouldn’t be because fandom is still entrenched in the same ideas that got me to this point to begin with.

In every fandom I’ve been in, I’ve seen some version of this debate go around. Sometimes, it’s one party saying “why would you write Character X as a bottom, he’s so Reason A” and a reblog chain that insults the OP and/or extols the virtues of switching. Sometimes, it’s a general-ish message that says they don’t understand why people have strict preferences when we all know real gay couples switch. Sometimes, it’s blanket statements that accuse anyone with preferences of fetishizing. Sometimes, it’s the same reasoning that gets you “Character Y is a top because of Reason B” transposed on versatile couples except this takes the form of “they switch because they’re equals.”

Ya’ll, I’m fucking tired.

I have long since lost count of the number of stories I’ve seen where an exclusive top learning bottom and liking it is character growth. Where a character who prefers to bottom taking a turn on top is empowering.

Isolated, these are fine. But I’ve seen enough of such stories that it’s distinctly discomfiting and a major squick. Sometimes a trigger, if I'm too immersed in the story. I’m not going to try and burn an author at the stake because they pissed me off. I am just going to close that window and quietly handle my shit. People can write whatever they want. But this one theme hits too close to home, as you can see from this 1.6k rant.

My friend (also my ex-girlfriend) and I had an all-out bitching session about this the other day. Both of us are kinky fuckers who have rigid, complementary roles we prefer and we have both had our grueling days of struggling to reconcile our sexual tastes with our ideologies precisely because of how these things are frowned upon in conservative and progressive circles. Seeing that in fandom, of all places, is both insulting and exhausting. Topping and bottoming aren’t personality traits. Neither is D/s. It’s sexual preference and power play. It really does not have to be that deep. I am not exorcising childhood trauma using the bodies of women. My partners, former and current, have not been brainwashed by the patriarchy. We will not become better, more complete individuals once I magically stop being a stone top and my partners embrace the joys of a strap-on.

I have, with my own two eyes, seen someone say that in a really committed relationship, of course the couple will switch.

Bullshit.

It’s transparent bullshit. This does not get attributed to cisgender M/F couples. Even when the automatic assumptions of woman = bottom and man = top get addressed, switching isn't presented as the default. No one’s saying “oh, if you really love your husband, you’ll peg him”. I do know butch/femme sapphic couples get their own share of shit. Because it’s all heteronormativity, right? Can’t have any other reason for top/bottom roles.

You have two extremes with “so who’s the woman” on one end and “it’s woke only if they switch” on the other, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re equally damaging. There shouldn’t be a pressure, however subtle, to conform your taste in fiction to some arbitrary idea of progressiveness. People are going to like whatever they want anyway; all this does is create an atmosphere where those likes can’t always be freely expressed without a lot of mental gymnastics. We’re seeing so many versions of this in the pushback against so-called problematic content, but smaller, subtler versions exist too.

Fictional characters aren’t real. They can be whatever you want them to be. And yes, other people will often want them to be the exact opposite of your ideas, but that’s just how things work. Meanwhile, the people behind these usernames? They’re real. No one should be throwing real people under the bus to ‘protect’ characters that don’t exist. Hannibal Lecter doesn’t care whether he gets fucked or dismembered in Author B’s fanfiction, but the discourse that surrounds the dick up his ass? That does affect flesh and blood people.

I am not claiming that this is the only attitude in fandom. Middlegrounds do exist. Plenty of people abide by fic and let fic and there are folks who pipe up to say not every RL queer couple switches. But it’s often the extremes that reach most people. That was certainly my experience, and I’m not the only one.

I don’t really know how to end this post. It is 100% a rant and one that’s been building up for a while. Bottom line is that people’s sexual behavior varies wildly and whenever you attack sexual tastes in fanfic by saying it’s unrealistic - or worse because let’s be real, that’s a very tame word choice - please remember that there’s likely someone out there who practices it.

* I’m using switch and versatile synonymously in this post. It’s mostly concerned with top/bottom debates. A lot of what I’m saying is also echoed in portrayals of and discussions surrounding D/s dynamics, but I’m not addressing that as much for now.

#fandom #top bottom discourse #wow that's a tag #here it is the rant i promised #because i don't quite trust tumblr i feel compelled to add that this is ofc not some kind of attack on actual people who switch either #you do you man #live your best life #vox has opinions

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whitehotharlots · 3 years

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Previewing the 2024 Democrat Primary

Within a couple weeks of his being sworn in, just about every person on earth will wish Joe Biden was no longer president. Sure, the few surviving John B. Anderson voters will be thrilled to see 4 years of crushing austerity and half-assed attempts at Keynesian stimulus. But most people will begin dreaming about a brighter future.

Good news! The 2024 Democratic primary field is going to contain dozens of options. Bad news! They are all going to be disgusting piles of shit.

The “top tier”

While it’s too early to do any handicapping, these are the candidates the media will treat as having the most realistic chances of securing the nomination.

Kamala Harris

Kamala did not win a single primary delegate in 2020. This is because she dropped out before the first primary, and that was because no one likes her. She has no base beyond a few thousand of twitter’s most violent psychos. Her disingenuousness approaches John Edwards levels: any halfway incredulous person can see immediately beyond her bullshit. She has no principles whatsoever, and while that may be par for the course for Democrats, she lacks even the basic politician’s ability to intuit anything that might, hypothetically, constitute a principle.

Even better: she is an awful public speaker. She sounds like how a talking dog would speak if he were just caught stealing people food off the kitchen table. She communicates in weird grunts and faux sassy squeaks, which is how she imagines real black women sound like, but something about her is unable to sell the bit. She begins her sentences in halfhearted AAVE, stops and panics halfway through as she realizes that maybe this sounds fake and offensive, and then reminds herself oh wait, no, this is okay since I’m black. This doesn’t happen once or twice per speech. This is how every single sentence sounds.

Kamala is like Nancy Pelosi in that no sketch show will ever impersonate her correctly, because anything that came close to authenticity would be considered far too cruel. This might benefit her in the primaries, as she exists in the minds of Democrats as someone and something she absolutely is not in reality. Nominating her would be like allowing your child’s imaginary friend to attempt to drive you to the store.

Andrew Cuomo

Easily one of the 50 worst people alive, Cuomo has a solid chance because Democrats, same as Republicans, are unable to differentiate between electability and self-serving ruthlessness. Cuomo used the deadliest public health crisis in American history as a pretext for cutting Medicaid and firing 5,000 MTA workers, and his approval rating increased. New York Dems are little piggies who love eating shit. If we assume that the political media will continue their habit of refusing to discuss the legislative history of right wing Democrats, Cuomo might well cruise to the nomination and then lose to literally any human being the GOP nominates by an historic margin.

Joe Biden

The party loves him because he is a right wing racist. “Progressives” tolerate him because black primary voters over 40 supported him, and their opinion is supposedly a magic window into god’s truth. Everyone else can tell he is manifestly senile. I don’t put it above the DNC to pick a candidate who is in horrible health, dying, or even dead--whatever the financial sector wants, they’ll get. But I would be shocked if his approval rating is above 39% by mid-2023, and by that point deep fake technology will be advanced enough they’ll put out a very lifelike video in which the Max Headroom version of Joe explains he’s proud of his accomplishments--that budget’s almost balanced already--but, man, I gotta abd--I gotta abdica--, uhh, I gotta, I, uhh, I gotta move down, man.

Wild Cards

These candidates would have all have a chance if they ran, but they could all much more easily retire to Little Saint James off of kickbacks they’ve gotten from Citibank and I.G. Farben.

Rahm Emanuel

Rahm is going to receive some hugely influential post in the Biden administration. Let’s say he becomes Secretary of Education. His signature achievement will be replacing all elementary school teachers with Amazon’s Alexa, which saved the taxpayers so much money we were able to quadruple the number of armed police officers we put into high schools. This will give him several thousand positive profiles on network news programs and the near-universal support of the Silicon Valley vampires who will own 99% of the country by the time Biden’s term ends. They will use their fancy mind control devices to convince geriatic primary voters that Rahm’s the one who will bring Decency back to the white house. His candidacy will be the paragon of wokeness, as expressing concern toward the fact that he covered up the police murder of a black guy will get you called a racist.

Rahm has a bonus in that Jewish men are now Schrodeniger’s PoC. When they are decent human beings, they are basic, cis white men who are stealing attention from disabled trans candidates of color. When they love austerity and apartheid, they become the most vulnerable people of color on earth and criticizing them in any way is genocide. No one will be able to mention a single thing Rahm has ever done or said without opening themselves to accusations of antisemitism, and that gives him a strong edge against the rest of the field. The good news is that an Emmanuel candidacy would result in over 50% of black voters choosing the GOP candidate--which, I guess that’s not really good but it would certainly be funny.

Gavin Newsom

Newsom is every bit as feckless as Cuomo, but he doesn’t put off the same “bad guy in an early Steven Segal movie” vibes. He will mention climate change 50 times per speech and no one will bother to mention how he keeps signing fracking contracts even though his state is now on fire 11 months of the year. If anything, this will be spun into an argument about how he’s actually the candidate best suited to handle all the water refugees gathering on the southern border. Look for his plan to curb emissions by 10% by the year 2150 to get high marks from Sierra Club nerds. He’s also a celebate librarian’s idea of what constitutes a handsome man, so he’ll have some support from the type of women who claim to hate all men.

Larry Summers

I mean, why not? Larry, like most members of the Obama administration, has politics that are eerily similar to those of Jordan Peterson. In normal circumstances, this makes a person a dangerous fascist who should not be platformed. But if that person has a D next to their name this makes them a realistic pragmatist who has what it takes to bring suburban bankers into our tent. If current trends in Woke Phrenology continue apace, Larry’s belief that women are inherently bad at STEM will be liberal orthodoxy by 2023, and his dedication to the Laffer Curve could see him rake in massive donations. Seriously, I’m not kidding: cultural liberalism is now fully dedicated to identity essentialism and balanced budgets. Larry is their ideal candidate. If he were black and/or a woman, I’d put him in the very top tier.

Jay Inslee

Unlike Newsom, Inslee’s attempt to crown himself the King of Global Warming won’t be immediately derailed, since his state is only on fire because of protestors. This, however, poses a different problem. He’s going to be a good test case for the Democrat’s uneasy peace with the ever increasing share of the electorate who become catatonic upon hearing a pronoun. On the one hand, you need to take their votes for granted. On the other hand, they’re not like black people or regular gays: most voters actively, consciously despise wokies, and associating yourself with them will ruin a campaign even in deep blue areas. There’s still gonna be riots in a year. Biden’s gonna announce the sale of all our nation’s potable water to the good folks at Nestle and some trans freak named Sasha-Malia DeBalzac is going to use that as an opportunity to sell their new pamphlet about how it’s fascist to not burn down small businesses. No matter what Inslee does in response, it’ll end his career.

AOC

I’m not one of those “AOC is a secret conservative” weirdos, but I am aware enough of basic reality to know she has zero chance of coming close to the nomination. The right and the center both regard her as a literal demon. The party is already blaming her for the fact that a handful of faceless Reagan acolytes failed to flip their suburban districts even though they ran on sensible pragmatic proposals like euthanizing the homeless. The recriminations will only get more unhinged when the Dems eat shit in the 2022 midterms. She will be a Russian, she will be white male, she will be a communist, she will be a homophobe: any insult or conspiracy theory you can name, MSNBC will spend hours discussing. Her house seat challenger will receive a record amount of support from the DNC in 2024 and it’ll be all she can do to remain in congress.

Larry Hogan

Don’t be dissuaded by the fact that he’s a Republican. Larry is the DNC’s ideal candidate: a physically repulsive conservative who owes his entire career to appealing to the most spiteful desires of suburban white people. He’s an open racist in a material sense--if you’re old-school enough to think racism is a matter of beliefs and actions, rather than the presence of cultural signifiers--but his is the beloved “never Trump” style of racism that Dems covet. He’s also a Proven Leader who thinks the role of government should be to finance the construction of investment property and give police the resources they need to run successful drug trafficking operations. Few people embody the Democrat worldview more than Larry.

The Losers Bracket

These people will have at least a small chance due solely to the fact that the Democrats love losing. They have lost in the past, and in the Democrat Mind that makes them especially qualified.

Joe Kennedy

The man looks like a mushroom-human hybrid from a JRPG. Trump proved that physical hideousness need not doom a presidential bid, but a candidate still needs some kind of charm or oratorical abilities or, god forbid, a decent platform. Joe aggressively lacks all of these things. A vanity campaign would be a good way to raise money and perhaps secure an MSNBC gig, so Joe might still run.

Mayor Pete

I am 100% convinced that Pete’s 2020 run was a CIA plot meant to prevent working class Americans from ever having a chance of living decent lives. I am also 100% aware that Democrats are dumb enough to enthusiastically support a CIA plot meant to prevent working class Americans from ever having a chance of living decent lives. If we have some sort of military or terror disaster between now and 2023 the Dems are sure to want a TROOP, and wait wait wait you’re telling me this one is a gay troop? Holy hell there’s no way that could lose!

Stacy Abrams

Never underestimate the power of white guilt. She lost the gubernatorial race to Gomer Pyle’s grandson, and her spiritual guidance of the Dems saw the party lose black voters in Georgia in 2020. Nonetheless, she is regarded as a magic font of fierceness within the DNC. She might stand a chance if she can establish herself as the most conservative non-white candidate in the field, but there’s going to be stiff competition for that honor.

Elizabeth Warren

Liz is probably angry that the party so shamelessly sold her out even after she was a good little girl and sabatoged Bernie’s campaign for them--yet another example of high ranking US government officials reneging on their promises to the Native American community. Smdh. The fact that this woman hasn’t been bankrupted a dozen times over by various Wallet Inspectors genuinely astounds me. So Liz is probably going to run again, and her campaign will be even sadder the second time around.

It might surprise you to hear this if you don’t work at a college or NGO, but Liz diehards actually do exist. She’ll get even less support this time because there will be no viable leftist in the field for her to spoil, but she’ll still hang in long enough to make sure the very worst possible candidate beats out the second worst possible candidate. Maybe she’ll fabricate a rape accusation against Sherrod Brown. Maybe she’ll spend her entire allotted debate time doing a land acknowledgment. With Liz, anything is possible--so long as it ends in failure.

Amy Klobuchar

Amy was the most bloodthirsty of the 2020 also rans. She will double down on the unpopular failures of the Biden administration, explaining that if you weren’t such a selfish idiot you’d love the higher social security retirement age and oh my god are so such a moron you think you shouldn’t go bankrupt to get a COVID vaccine? There’s a non-unsubstantial segment of the Democratic base that’s self-hating enough to find this appealing, but it won’t be enough to make her viable.

Martha Coakley

She lost Ted Kennedy’s senate seat to a retarded man who was pretending to be even more retarded than he actually was. Then she lost a gubernatorial race to a guy who openly promised Massachusetts voters that he would punish them for electing him. Her record of failure is unparalleled, making her perhaps the ideal Democrat standard bearer for the twenty twenties.

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drake-the-incubus · 3 years

Text

This is a gift for @striderhell from the Homestuck Secret Santa 2020 (@homestuckss). I was aiming for 3000 words but uh, Dirk as a muse didn’t want to continue exploring the concept of gender given his rigid but philosophical nature.

I hope this was good, and if not just gimme a shout and I’ll try and come up with something better.

Word Count: 1521 Fandom: Homestuck Characters: Dirk Strider, Roxy Lalonde Relationships: Dirk Strider & Roxy Lalonde (Platonic/Friends)

Additional Notes: Roxy uses He/Him and They/Them, I’ve never finished the epilogues but I love NB Rox. Dirk uses no pronouns in this, as I wanted to try that out.

Please enjoy Dirk exploring his gender.

Sometimes in an effort to define ourselves, we feel trapped to conform to some rigid aspect or label in hopes to reach an understanding of who we are. At times this process can be frustrating and dissatisfying. Other people take weeks or days, and some of them take years or never figure it out.

Perhaps gender, as a construct, can’t be fully understood, but we can understand ourselves as people without it. The tale before you, is only a short of someone who wishes to take a journey many end up doing, and most have never encountered.

Dirk was sitting in a cafe on Earth-C, sipping on a coffee in between tinkering with another pair of shades. The goal was updating and adding a better set of graphics, hoping to add some additional features to make things easier.

It had been a while since the Prince of Heart had seen the rest of the gods. Jake would visit once in a while, and they would have a friendly spar or talk. Roxy would message once in a while, letting Dirk know any spicy news about the rest.

Dave would randomly show up, they would stare each other down before both Striders would give a thumbs up and go their separate ways.

Rose would often come by, trading witty banter and wisdom. Both of them struggled with the massive impact of their god tiers and would often talk about it to one another.

Today though, Dirk decided a change of area would suit this project best, specifically needing to leave the workshop and enjoy some caffeine. Recently a problem developed that would continue to nag at the Prince even through the night. Lack of sleep was the reason why Dirk had picked a coffee shop. It made the most sense.

Gender did not.

Dirk had been going through a lot lately, and when Roxy had come out as trans, it had been taken pretty well by most of them. Not that it would be different if Dirk came out either, but rather that would take knowing what was going on.

This was a laughable moment, since they all had beaten the game, made it out and enjoyed their own little home in the midst of nothing. Creating entire worlds and civilizations with the help of their space and time players, but Dirk was sitting there, in a cafe, trying to figure out what gender even was and how it related to the god’s own identity.

Pronouns were hard, but so was even figuring this shit out. Making a copy of your brain at thirteen was much easier than figuring out if you’re cis or not, and Dirk didn’t know.

The more it was thought about, the more the thought cropped up, what if it turned out the being Cis wasn’t the result. Dirk was absolutely sure about not being a chick, nothing really appealed about that, but then again there was a very similar feeling over the current gender.

Man, agender or woman. Those were the categories that presented themselves currently. Working harder to connect the shades to the newly built chip, Dirk jolted when suddenly Roxy sat down across the table.

“I called out to you, but you didn’t answer.” He said leaning over and looking over the project. “I was wondering what made you change location, you’re pretty adamant to work in your workshop Dirkie.”

“I needed to think, which I was doing when you were calling out to me. Thinking so hard about creating a new line of orange pop with more caffeine than this cup of coffee that the world died out and I was left to only the one set of thoughts for once.”

He raised an eyebrow at that, and crossed his arms. “Really now? You think that I can’t tell something bigger is going on in that Strider head of yours? You’ve come up with projects while having a philosophical discussion with Rose and texting Dave a rap battle. You’re the king of multi-tasking, which also means your attention is usually divided more, and you’re attempting to put a wire on the wrong side of that.”

Dirk frowned and sighed, putting the project down. “Well, I can’t get nothing past you I suppose. I guess one thing that’s on my mind is how much I miss AR, since he was a good source of introspection, then again I have no idea if that would have helped in the first place.” Tapping fingers filled the space between them as the Prince looked outside at the billions of humans and trolls walking over the streets.

“I’ve been contemplating what gender is and how I relate to it since you came out as nonbinary. It’s been making me think about what is my gender, and I’ve come to the conclusion none of them really fit, but that’s also something to worry about since that means I don’t relate to any of the options-“

“Before you go on a long tangent, I want to ask, what are the options?” He interrupted Dirk while cocking his head.

“Agender, man and woman.” Dirk said bluntly, staring at Roxy. The laughter that resulted made the god tip the iconic shades down to stare at Roxy with deadpan orange eyes.

“I get greeted by your eye colour, score! But no, you got it all wrong, gender isn’t rigid categories, it’s a spectrum. You can’t define it by strict labels and there’s too many to count. So you don’t fit in three, there’s millions of genders. Some might not have a word for it right now. I’m nonbinary, but that’s because I’m not a man or a woman completely, I’m somewhere in the middle, closer to a man if I were to describe it as like, a sliding scale. So don’t be in a hurry, and don’t worry if you don’t figure it out.”

“I need to. Not knowing makes things difficult. I know it might be unhealthy to obsess over, but ever since I made Auto Responder, I had the need to understand myself fully and everything about myself.” With an elbow on the table, Dirk took a hand and raked it through the mess of hair. Having done so more than a hundred times earlier, the Prince was sure it was a complete and utter mess at this point, and would need to be taken care of at home.

“Well, I have a list of some of the other more known ones, maybe one of them check out for you?” He offered a tablet.

Dirk took it, and looked over the list of options and each description of it, mumbling under breath before placing the tablet back down with a definite, “I’m going to use Genderless for now and see what happens.” It looked interesting, the excerpt specifically outlined not having a gender at all due to neurodivergence, rather than lacking a gender or having no gender, different from agender. It didn’t feel much different from everything else, but nothing did. Having several of the entries be defined by one’s neurodivergence was weird, but the more thought placed into the concept, the more it felt real to Dirk. Rather it meant that the Prince would have to take Rose up on her offer to get a fully evaluation soon, even if both of them came to the conclusion Dirk was probably neurodivergent and that it wasn’t impactful with how the god had lived life before the game.

“Are there any pronouns I should use for you?”

Pursing lips, Dirk gave a shake of the head. “None preferably. I think I need more time to actually think everything over. I have no positive or negative feelings for anything on there, and so I’m debating on if I’m everything or not. I can figure out how to make an exact replica of my own brain as a teenager, create robots, plot out the exact way I can kiss Jake and even save everyone's lives getting into the game. I’ve designed complex interactions to lead to the outcome I desire, and I can’t even pick a gender. This is quite frankly, ridiculous.”

“You don’t gotta. Dirk, it’s not about just picking a gender, it’s about figuring out a big part of yourself, and something most people don’t do for yours. You figured out you’re gay, now you’re figuring out what else you could be.” He placed a hand on Dirk’s and gave him a smile. “Whatever your result, I’m here for you. Even if you later think you’re a Cis man I’ll still be here for you. We might be siblings but we were friends first and that matters the most to me.”

Dirk gave a snort. “This is so fucking corny, but thanks Rox. I appreciate the love and support. Maybe I can treat you to another coffee since I feel like if I don’t buy one soon I’m going to be kicked out for making a mess of a window table.” Motioning towards the table, and standing up, the god stretched out. “What are you in the mood for?”

“Caramel Macchiato please.”

“Gotcha.”

#homestuck secret santa 2020 #striderhell #I fucking was gonna make this christmas eve but I got busy the past two days #Glad I waited because this Idea was much better #trans nonbinary characters #dirk is amab

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sanderssidesfanfiction · 3 years

Text

If There’s a Place I Could Be - Chapter Sixty Six

If There’s a Place I Could Be Tag

November 14th, 2001

“So, wait...what do I call you?” Emile asked them.

“You can still call me Jordan, man. It’s my name,” they said. “I just happen to be genderqueer, instead of a woman, like you thought.”

“Right...” Emile said, struggling to understand. “I’m sorry, I really don’t understand a lot of this, but I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will, Emile, that’s why I told you,” they said, patting his arm. “Lots of people don’t understand perfectly, and those who do are usually genderqueer themselves.”

Emile nodded. “Thanks for trusting me enough to tell me.”

“Of course!” Jordan exclaimed. “After seeing you with Remy, I knew I could trust you with this.”

“Wait, what? Remy? Why?” Emile asked.

“Isn’t he trans?” Jordan asked, frowning.

“Not that I know of?” Emile said.

“Oh,” Jordan said. “My mistake, then. Still, anyone who’s queer has a better chance of understanding than someone who isn’t. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Yeah,” Emile said, letting Jordan go. Emile’s mind was reeling. Why did Remy keep getting clocked as trans?

June 20th, 2002

Emile was living for this moment. He and Remy had just taken their first few steps into the pride parade, Emile wearing what he had dubbed his “Remy-approved skinny jeans” and an old T-shirt that looked exactly like one that Remy might wear. Remy was wearing that infernal leather jacket, a pair of blue jeans and that green gingham blouse he had gotten in February. And already, they could see dozens upon dozens of people just like them, walking around and having a good time as the pride parade was in full swing.

Remy held Emile’s hand, but the looseness of his grip meant that he wasn’t worried about losing Emile in the crowd, he just wanted to hold hands. And Emile loved it. “Where do you want to go first, Rem?” Emile asked.

Shrugging, Remy looked around. “Not sure. I’m a bit curious about that stall over there,” he pointed.

“Let’s check it out, then!” Emile said, walking Remy over there. “Hi!” he chirped at the individual running the both. “What are you representing at the pride parade today?”

“Oh, this is a stall for nonbinary support!” the individual replied.

“Non...binary?” Remy asked.

“It’s a label for people who don’t identify as a man or a woman,” the individual explained. “You may have heard the term ‘genderqueer’ before? Nonbinary is similar, but for those who don’t want to use the word ‘genderqueer.’”

“That’s an option?” Remy asked. “You really can be neither? I mean, Emile said something about this in passing before, but...”

The individual nodded. Emile looked Remy over. He looked...not perturbed, but definitely curious. “You think that describes you, Rem?”

“Hm? Oh, no. No, I’m cis, Emile, I’ve told you before.” Remy shook his head. “I’m definitely cis. I’m just curious. I’ve never heard of that as an option before.”

“Okay,” Emile said. Remy moved away a couple feet and Emile glanced at the individual at the stall. “Thanks for explaining that to my boyfriend and myself.”

“Hey, no worries,” the individual said. “Though your boyfriend? Don’t tell him, but anyone who shows that much interest in nonbinary identities? Is usually not cisgender.”

“Yeah, I know,” Emile sighed. “But he’s extremely closeted if he’s nonbinary. And I love him either way, bisexual, and all that, but...I don’t want to push him.”

“Understandable,” the individual said. “Whenever he’s ready, be there for him. We’ll all be in his corner when he decides.”

Emile nodded and thanked them, heading over to where Remy was talking with someone who seemed to be from that comic company that Remy had been obsessing over for the past year. Remy glanced at him and smiled. “Hey. You have a good conversation with them?”

“Yeah,” Emile said. “They clarified some things a little further for me. I don’t know if you’d be interested...?”

“Not at the moment, no offense to them,” Remy said. “I just have a hard time wrapping my head around that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, I get it,” Emile said. “There’s only so much new information you can take in at a time.”

“Exactly,” Remy said, looking back at the comics.

“So, anything new about the comics that you can confuse me with?” Emile asked.

Remy laughed. “Oh, come on, you’re not that interested in my stuff,” he said.

“It’s important to you, so it’s important to me,” Emile said, putting a hand on Remy’s shoulder. “Now, come on. Why don’t you at least try to explain instead of just saying you’ll immediately lose me?”

“You won’t understand,” Remy warned. “You haven’t read the comics, you won’t get it.”

“But I’m willing to try and understand,” Emile said.

Remy sighed. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“Not really. If you don’t explain now, I’ll ask you to explain when we’re home and you can point out parts in the comics.”

“Why don’t we do that from the start? You read and I explain when you get confused?” Remy suggested. “It would be easier with visuals, wouldn’t it?”

“I mean, maybe...” Emile said.

“Then it’s settled. I’ll explain when we get home,” Remy said, smiling softly. “And for what it’s worth...I appreciate your efforts to understand.”

Emile smiled back and when Remy took an obligatory bookmark from the booth, they kept walking inward.

After a time, they could hear music being played from one of the booths, rather loudly, and they both gravitated towards it. When they got to the booth, there was a little bit of open space, enough for two people to dance in. Emile grinned and turned to look at Remy, who was glancing at Emile. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Emile asked.

Remy just grinned and offered his hand to Emile. “Care to dance?”

Emile took the hand with a grin and yelped as Remy immediately rushed forward into the open space, just as “Mambo No. 5” started playing on the speaker. They both laughed as Remy led Emile around the small open space, their dancing not very well-coordinated with each other but having fun all the same.

By the time they reached the chorus, there was a small crowd watching them as they slowly got more in tune with each other’s moves. Remy was laughing, and Emile giggled along with him. This was great fun, and he didn’t even care that people were watching, for once. It was just him and Remy in the world, dancing along to a silly song.

As they reached the end of the song, Emile dipped Remy and swooped in for a kiss, causing the crowd around them to cheer. Remy brought a hand to Emile’s cheek near the end of the kiss, and when Emile righted them both, flushed and grinning, Remy huffed. “I have half a mind to tell you off for that kiss.”

“Aw, no one’s gonna come after us for it, Rem,” Emile said with a shrug.

Remy was still huffing a little as they moved on and another couple replaced them in front of the music. “Still. I need revenge.”

“How are you gonna—” Emile yelped as Remy slapped his butt. “Rude! You won’t let me touch your butt and yet you can touch mine?”

“Mine was in revenge, not just because,” Remy said, a smug grin on his face.

“Rude!” Emile repeated.

Remy shrugged. “Don’t deny that you like it, I know you do,” he said.

“Not the point!” Emile exclaimed.

“Look, Emile, I let you tongue me in public. A lot. And that gets me...excitable. It’s only fair that I have something to even the playing field,” Remy said.

Emile blinked. “You...get excited when I tongue you?”

Remy rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Have for at least a couple months, but probably longer. It’s not a huge deal, but it still seems unfair that you can do that but I don’t have any way to return the favor.”

Considering this, Emile adjusted his previous statement. “Okay, not rude. Just cheeky.”

“In a good way?” Remy asked.

“Is there such a thing as a good kind of brash and forward?” Emile asked.

“Yeah,” Remy said. “It’s like when someone flirts with you and asks you out on a date the first day of meeting you.”

“I wouldn’t really call that ‘brash,’” Emile sighed. “But it’s whatever, I guess. You have your revenge, now.”

Remy grinned and said, “I hope you realize I’ll do this any time you decide to tongue me in public.”

“Yeah, I kinda had that part figured out,” Emile said, rolling his eyes. He was fighting back a smile as he added, “It’s part of your charm.”

“Stubbornness is part of my charm?” Remy asked.

“Well, it’s either part of your charm or it’s a drawback, and personally, I don’t really see any drawbacks about you,” Emile said with a shrug.

“Oh, so the ‘part of my charm’ is you being an antiquities dealer trying to sell that old haunted baby doll that no one in their right mind would ever buy off you, got it,” Remy teased.

“Not exactly,” Emile said. “Because I don’t want anyone to buy you off me.”

“I—oh,” Remy said simply. “Okay.”

Emile nudged Remy. “Come on, you didn’t seriously expect me to say anything else?”

“I mean...no, but it’s one thing to expect it, another to actually...hear it,” Remy said. “I...I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

Emile shrugged. “Affirmation can be very powerful,” he offered. “Just hearing someone say that your feelings are acceptable, even if you knew that before, can leave quite an impact.”

Remy blew out a breath. “I did not expect us to get this sappy at pride. I just expected us to have a good time running around like lunatics, in all honesty.”

“Hey, we can still do that, if you want,” Emile offered.

“Maybe after grabbing something to eat? I’m getting kinda hungry.”

“Sure,” Emile agreed.

They went to the food trucks, Emile with his ID at the ready, not that he really expected to be buying any alcohol. Looking around a little bit, they settled for hot dogs and a soda each, and settled down at one of the picnic tables strewn around. “So,” Remy said.

“So?” Emile asked.

“What do you think of my outfit choice today? Be honest,” Remy said. “The skinny jeans and blouse, I know you always have thoughts when I wear stuff like this. But you almost never share them.”

“Well,” Emile paused. “I just don’t always know if my thoughts are welcome.”

“Unless you’re being insulting, your thoughts are always welcome,” Remy said.

Emile chewed on his hotdog, trying to buy some time. When he swallowed, he said, “Admittedly, I wonder if you’re actually trans when you wear this sort of stuff. Or at least gender non-conforming.” Remy got that familiar set in his jaw and Emile said, “That response! Right there! Is why I don’t bring this up.”

Remy huffed. “I’m cis, Emile. I don’t know why that’s so hard for you to understand!”

“Remy, listen. It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Emile said. “You say you’re cis, then you’re cis. Okay. I’m not trying to question your decision on your own identity. But...you certainly behave differently when you wear more feminine clothing. Not, like, noticeably to most. But you prefer being called pretty, you don’t mind me calling you ‘girl,’ and you sometimes look at women wearing feminine clothing with a sense of...longing, I guess would be the word. And you don’t do any of these things when you don’t wear more feminine clothing.”

Remy looked surprised. “I do that?”

Emile nodded.

“Huh,” Remy said. “But only when I wear my blouses?”

“That I’ve noticed,” Emile said.

“Well, what am I supposed to do with that? I can’t just be ninety percent cisgender, can I? And the other ten percent would be, what? A woman? What about the days where I don’t like being pretty or handsome? It doesn’t make sense, Emile,” Remy sighed. “I act like I’m cis most of the time, so I’m cis. That’s the best answer I’ve got.”

“Okay,” Emile said, feeling somewhat sad. Remy was just...settling for the best answer he had, instead of looking for something that might fit him better. He didn’t want Remy struggling like that for the rest of his life, but...he couldn’t force Remy to look for a label that fit better. So if Remy wanted to be cis, Emile would have to accept that. And if one day, that no longer fit, well, then Emile would be there to help Remy through the process of finding a new label that fit better. Because Emile would never not want to help Remy. “Anywhere specific you want to go after we finish lunch?”

“Not particularly,” Remy said with a shrug. “Not many places in particular that caught my interest last year. I just like the sense of community I get from coming here, more than anything else. That, and watching you loosen up some.”

Emile laughed. “I thought you said that when I loosened up I reminded you of that overly-cheery nerd you first met in college?”

“Oh, no, you do,” Remy said. “Don’t get me wrong. But it’s fun to see every once in a while.”

Emile grinned. “I love you, too.”

#if there's a place i could be #sanders sides fanfiction #remile #emile picani #ts sleep

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goatsandgangsters · 3 years

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For the trans asks! 1, 6, 14, 18, 25, 41?

1. How did you choose your name?

So the majority of people in my life call me either Em or EJ, though some people still call me Emeline (which is my given name). I don’t think I’ll ever consider it a deadname, because I do have some attachment, but I think the nicknames Em and EJ suite me better. People are welcome to use any of those options. While I’m particular about people getting my pronouns right and using neutral- or masculine-coded language, I’m kind of shrug emoji when it comes to names.

Em is actually largely @meyerlansky‘s doing (still suspended, rip), because they just... have a tendency to shorten people’s names and started calling me Em several years ago. And it just caught on! Particularly among online friends or mutual IRL friends, I looked around one day and was like “oh huh, a lot of people call me Em now, don’t they?”

EJ has a bit more of an intentional story behind it: I first thought of EJ back in mmmmaybe late 2018? I saw a post on tumblr that was like, “I think it’s cool how there are a couple different Categories that transmasculine names tend to fall into” and listing those out. And one of them was initialisms—with examples like AJ, CJ, TJ. And I noticed, you know, J is always the second letter. And EJ is ACTUALLY MY INITIALS. And I just instantly felt really good about that, because here was a Very Gender Neutral Name, but it still already felt like a name I’d had my entire life. It was fresh and familiar all at once. It fit into this J pattern while also still feeling unique, because EJ is not as common as other -J initialisms. I first tried it out when I started going to a trans group IRL, so I have an entire trans friend group that only calls me EJ. The majority of people at work also call me EJ—similarly because nicknames just spread sometimes. I left my official documentation under Emeline, but mentioned to a couple people that I also go by EJ and then I blinked and almost every single person I work with calls me EJ.

Both Em and EJ amuse me, because I’m surprised at how easy it is for people to pick up a nickname. I’ve found that people adjust to using a different name WAY more easily than they adjust to changing pronouns? Which is on the one hand an interesting observation, but on the other hand, it’s unfortunate because I CARE MORE ABOUT THE PRONOUNS PEOPLE USE THAN MY NAME

6. When did you realize you were transgender?

Short answer: 2012. I was a sophomore in college and one day I found out some people actually want to be their assigned gender?? I had thought we were all just miserably putting up with it.

(There’s a longer answer here about realizing my gender in 2012 but then spending years and years overcoming my internalized guilt about “not being trans enough” and constantly moving my own goal post of “well I’m not trans enough because I don’t do x” and then doing x and going “OKAY BUT I HAVEN’T DONE Y” and then doing y and going “YEAH BUT I DON’T DO Z” and then wanting z and finally realizing, hey uh, how many times are you gonna move this goal post and also you’re eventually going to run out of goal posts—and finally having to go OKAY FINE, YES, I’M TRANS ENOUGH. I’M OUT OF EXCUSES TO INVALIDATE MYSELF.)

14. How long have you been out?

2018 was the first time I started telling people directly to use they/them pronouns for me. (I know, I know, took SIX YEARS RIGHT? But processing that is what my therapist is for.) But before that, I was definitely like in that vague place of “blogs about gender feelings and nonbinary stuff often enough that everyone who follows me like probably knew for a number of years before I said anything directly.” But in 2018, I was finally being Concrete and Direct about it, put it in all my socials, etc. Then in 2019, I came out to my parents and at my job for the first time. So officially, 2��3 years overall!

18. How does your family feel about your trans identity?

If you asked them, they would tell you that they love and support me and they’re proud of me and they fully accept my identity.

If you asked me, I would tell you that while they do love and support me, trans stuff is COMPLETELY BRAND NEW to them, so they don’t always know the right ways to show that support. It’s one of those “sometimes I wish it didn’t take work, but I know they’re trying and they mean well” situations

They ARE making progress, albeit more slowly than I’d like. Neither of them had ANY IDEA what I was talking about when I first came out. They very much... did not understand what I was telling them. So I made them both read a very good book on the subject, which they did read, and that helped lay some groundwork.

My dad has been consistently good about using neutral language from the start and as of a couple months ago started consistently using my pronouns! My mom still has not used my pronouns ever, which is kind of a bummer because she’s had... two years. She’s at the stage of “notices when she gets it wrong” or “aware enough to avoid pronouns,” which is better than not noticing at all, but it’s still not as good as getting it right. iT’S A PROCESS. I’m trying to be patient with it. They mean well. But god I wish it could just be easy, like a light switch.

I still haven’t told them about my plans for top surgery. I’ve been putting off that conversation for....... months. It was actually the “pin in that for next week” comment to my therapist when we were wrapping up. But like, IDK IF YOU’RE STILL WORKING ON PRONOUNS, I FEEL LIKE “SURGICALLY REMOVING MY BOOBS” MIGHT SOUND LIKE A LOT?

25. What do you wish cis people understood?

I MEAN, QUITE A LOT. But if I have to get specific, I wish there was more understanding of why pronouns are actually important. I get the sense from a lot of cis people who are older and who don’t have a lot of understanding about queer stuff to begin with, that they think of pronouns as like “something they have to be PC about” and if they use the wrong pronouns I’m going to be mad and offended and they’re going to be sent to pronoun jail by the language police. Like, people approach pronouns by thinking “I need to remember that she uses they/them pronouns, so I need to only call her by them/them pronouns.”

But actually, I’m asking that they stop seeing me as a woman. I don’t want a linguistic bandaid slapped over internal misgendering. If you can’t internalize that I’m not a girl, then pronouns will continue to be a struggle. I’d rather people call me the right thing than the wrong thing, but I don’t want to only be called the right thing. I want to also be seen as the right thing, too. It’s like one of my friends had a coworker call them by the wrong pronoun and the coworker came to apologize and then was like “alright, see you later girl!” with apparently no cognitive dissonance whatsoever. Pronouns are important, but they’re also not JUST language. Pronouns are important because they signify seeing people authentically. I want people to get my pronouns right, but I don’t want getting my pronouns right to be ALL that people do.

Also, the idea that trans people are “angry and offended” when you misgender them because everyone is so sensitive and political correctness has gone too far, instead of like “it’s a painful reminder that you never get to just exist as your gender the way that cis people do, that no matter what you do there are always people who’ll use the wrong pronouns—sometimes unintentionally, sometimes intentionally, and it’s death by a thousand cuts” is a whole other rant I could go on. But if I get into how the myth of trans people being “easily offended” is dangerous, unfair, and untrue, we’ll be here all day.

41. What is the place (blog, website, forum, IRL space) you get most of your info on being trans or on trans related things?

When I was first starting out, I did—for better or worse—get a lot of information from tumblr. On the one hand, I can’t shit talk, because it did allow me access to information that at the time I couldn’t find anywhere else. On the other hand, tumblr is often an ugly place for information (and whatever nonbinary discourse and misperceptions might exist now, it was 38475785 times worse in 2012. good god. just fuckin wall-to-wall trusc*m). I can’t tell you how many “HOW TO PASS AS A MAN (FTM)” articles and blogs I read back in 2012 as well. I absorbed any information I could find about anything, anywhere, because it was not as widely available.

In the interceding years, I feel like I don’t know exactly where my information comes from. I just absorbed so much of it, wherever it could be found, that I don’t have a strong sense of where it comes from. I’ve watched countless “1 month on T / 3 months on T / 6 months on T / one year on T” videos on YouTube. I’ve trawled transbucket and facebook groups looking at people’s top surgery results. I’ve read lots of articles on fitting clothing and masculine style onto bodies that weren’t necessarily intended for those clothes.

Spending IRL time with trans people though has been by far the most enriching and healing, though. It wasn’t necessarily where I learned the basics like different methods of top surgery, but it was where I started un-learning a lot of the emotional baggage I’d picked up along the way.

[Trans ask game! What has been your gender journey?]

#in typical me fashion I gave you VERY LONG-WINDED ANSWERS to theoretically simple questions :p #big gender mood #smittyjaws

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gettin-bi-bi-bi · 3 years

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Hi! I don't know who to ask really, but for 6 years now I thought that I was bi, when I first noticed I liked women, i wondered about my attraction to men and if it was real but came to the conclusion that yes of course, I have had boyfriends and crushes so i must be. However now I am starting to wonder if this is actually true or just comp het... I only get crushes on guys that show an interest in me, and I never had a relationship last longer then 3 months (except for my one gf 6 months) 1/2

ctd. I used to get panic attacks before/during dates but i also have social anxiety, and this happened with my gf too at the beginning (but less often and less bad). I still enjoyed the sex with guys, but yeah now i am wondering if that can still mean i am actually gay. When thinking of the future i can only imagine myself with a woman, the thought of settling down with a man kinda scares me/ makes me uncomfortable. I also thought about maybe being bisexual homonromantic... idk, any advice? 2/2

“comp het” is a term coined by a transmisogynist and it’s frequently used to discredit trans lesbians, cis lesbians who date trans women and m-spec women who are attracted to men. Just so you know.

That being said.... yeah of course it’s possible that you’re gay. Or bisexual/homoromantic. Anything is possible. Maybe you always were gay and thought you were bi because of internalised lesbophobia and heteronormativity being a bitch. Or maybe you used to be bi but your sexuality has shifted towards exclusive or mostly attraction to women.

I can’t tell you either way which option is the truth here. Maybe it’s something else entirely. I would urge you to try not to seek someone else’s approval to use any label you want. If you feel like “bisexual” doesn’t cut it anymore or that it’s not precise enough to describe your sexuality then go with something else. Maybe it’ll change again one day or you will end up usuing different labels for different contexts. Like, if you only want to focus on dating women from now on then by all means use “lesbian” if that gets the point across better - even if your feelings for men were genuine in the past, you can still be a lesbian now.

Or maybe you want to go with something like homoflexible. Or bisexual/homoromantic like you mentioned. But then you might find those are a bit clunky to say and not everyone will understand what it means right away. So it’s also fine to just fall back to “bi” or “gay” or “queer” or whatever feels right in that moment.

Maddie

#Anonymous

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puttingherinhistory · 5 years

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December 27, 2015 by Suzannah Weiss

I was young when I came to discover masturbation, and I had orgasms long before I knew what they were.

Nothing about it seemed complicated. I just rubbed “down there” for a few minutes, and it happened. But later, magazines, comedy routines, and sitcoms taught me that my body – and vaginas in general – were mysterious and complex, often too complex for those without them to figure out.

Confirming what I’d been taught, orgasms weren’t as simple with partners as they were by myself. This is to be expected to some extent. There’s a learning curve when you’re getting to know someone new. But what confused me was that not everyone seemed eager to learn.

“Sorry,” I (unnecessarily) apologized to a partner for taking what I thought was too long.

“It’s okay. I know it’s harder for girls,” he said – and then stopped.

Compounding the lack of effort I encountered from some (though not all) partners, it became harder for me to orgasm when I started SSRI antidepressants. When I told my doctor, she said, “Oh, that’s hard for a lot of women anyway.”

I knew my body long and well enough to know being a woman wasn’t to blame, but others didn’t share my view that the problem was fixable. I grew hesitant to bring it up with partners out of fear that asking them to perform the supposedly impossible feat of getting a woman off was too demanding.

Orgasm doesn’t have to be the focus of sex, but if a woman wants one, she should have as much of a right to request it as anyone else does.

When people say that women’s bodies are more difficult – and these generalizations typically refer to cis women and are accompanied by rants about how complicated vaginas are – they teach cis women that an orgasm is too tall an order.

Trans women also have a slew of sexual stigmas attached to them, which Kai Cheng Thom describes here, though they’re beyond the scope of this article. In addition, though most research on orgasm inequity has studied cis women, trans and non-binary people with vaginas may relate to the frustrations of being taught their genitals are impossible to decode, too.

The view that cis women are hard to please maintains what sociologists call the orgasm gap, in which men have three orgasms for every one a woman enjoys, and 57% of women orgasm during all or most of their sexual encounters, but 95% say their partners do.

These statistics may appear to confirm the stereotype that women’s bodies are more complicated, but there are other forces at work.

As sociologist Lisa Wade points out, the orgasm gap is conditional. Lesbians report orgasming 74.7% of the time, only 10 percentage points lower than gay men. In addition, women take under four minutes on average to masturbate to orgasm.

If these statistics don’t convince you that there’s more to the orgasm gap than biology, here are twelve cultural factors that contribute to it.

1. People Believe Women Are Less Sexual

Women, the story goes, aren’t that into sex.

They may enjoy it, but they do it partially in exchange for validation, commitment, or financial support, popular wisdom says. As long as a woman is getting one of those things, she doesn’t need much out of the sex itself.

To the contrary, a lot of research and lived experiences indicate that women are as capable of wanting and enjoying sex as men.

Until we acknowledge this, we won’t prioritize making sex as enjoyable as possible for women because we’ll believe sexual pleasure isn’t as important to them.

It may not be because women themselves may buy into myths about their gender, neglecting their desires because they’re not supposed to have them. If they do, they and their partners miss out on balanced sexual interactions, not to mention fun.

2. Pornography Privileges Male Pleasure

Most people who have watched porn videos know they typically culminate with a “money shot” in which the man comes, and then the scene ends. Most woman-focused orgasms depicted in porn are merely incidental events on the path to a man’s pleasure.

Additionally, most mainstream porn scenes feel incomplete without blow jobs, while cunnilingus is less common.

All in all, the message is clear: It’s imperative that a man gets off, and if a woman manages to in the process, props to him, but it’s just an added bonus.

3. The Myth of ‘Blue Balls’ Persists

Blue balls, according to Urban Dictionary, is “the excrutiating [sic] pain a man receives when his balls swell to the size of coconuts because of lack of sex, unfinished bjs, and just not cummin when he knows he should.”

The entitlement reflected in this description is characteristic of most uses of the term “blue balls.” While vasocongestion, the accumulation of blood flow to the genitals, can occasionally cause mild pain in people with any genitals, this is not what men are usually referring to when they complain about blue balls. And whether they’re experiencing this or just sexual frustration, it’s never anyone else’s duty to relieve it.

Even though most women know no medical condition results from an erection that doesn’t lead to an orgasm, many of us feel guilty for not providing one. So, in addition to some men’s lack of effort to pleasure women, the pressure many women feel to pleasure men maintains the orgasm gap.

4. There’s More Information in the Media About Pleasing Cis Men Than Women

As a teenager, my secret guilty pleasure was buying copies of Cosmo from the drugstore and hiding them under my pillow to read at night.

I read all their sex articles just because I found anything sex-related titillating, but along the way, I learned all about different tricks to please men – and cis men, specifically. By the time I encountered a real-life penis, I already knew all the basic tricks in the book, plus some out-there ones my dude friends urged me not to try.

I don’t know what most teenage boys’ secret reading material was, but there aren’t many mainstream men’s magazines as obsessed with pleasing women as women’s are with pleasing men. If anything, I’ve heard it’s common for boys to sneak glimpses of Playboy, which is also geared toward pleasing men.

Maybe this explains why 25% of men and 30% of women can’t locate the clitoris on a diagram.

Amid all the advice we read about different ways to hold and touch a penis, many remain in the dark about vulvas and vaginas.

5. Hookup Culture Privileges Male Pleasure

“I will do everything in my power to, like whoever I’m with, to get [him] off,” one woman said in a study by Elizabeth Armstrong on college hookups. But when it came to their own pleasure, women held different expectations.

“The guy kind of expects to get off, while the girl doesn’t expect anything,” a woman in another study by Lisa Wade said.

Accordingly, one man in Armstrong’s study boasted, “I’m all about making her orgasm,” but when asked to clarify the word “her,” he added, “Girlfriend her. In a hookup her, I don’t give a shit.” Perhaps he sensed that women don’t expect much from their hookups.

Statistics about women’s orgasms reflect these attitudes.

The ratio of men’s and women’s orgasms is 3.1:1 for first-time hookups, but only 1.25:1 for relationships.

For whatever reason, hookup culture appears to have embraced the message espoused by the media that women’s orgasms are optional, while men’s are obligatory.

6. Sex Education Doesn’t Teach Us About Pleasure, Especially Female Pleasure

Like many schools in the US, mine only had a couple of days a year dedicated to sex education in middle and high school. During the initial classes on puberty, the portion about women was on periods and the portion about men was on erections, ejaculation, and wet dreams.

Already, our bodies were associated with making babies, while boys’ were associated with sexual arousal and pleasure.

Later on, we learned how to use a condom – along with how to complete a very normative sequence of events. You put it on, we were told, and then you have intercourse, and then someone ejaculates, and then you pull out and take it off. Men’s orgasms, but not women’s, were built into our safer sex lesson.

Nobody said “then you stop whenever you feel like it” or “your partner may need you to pull out” (because, contrary to what we see in porn, not every woman is multi-orgasmic and many have a refractory period, so we can’t all comfortably keep going until our partner wants to stop).

This is one sneaky way we learn to prioritize men’s pleasure without ever really learning about pleasure at all.

7. Self-Evaluative Thoughts Can Disrupt Women’s Arousal Process

Due to the emphasis on women’s appearances in mainstream porn and throughout the media, women learn to picture themselves during sex.

“How does my stomach look from this angle,” “Does my face look sexy or silly in this expression,” and “Would it be sexier if I made more noise?” are a few thoughts that have distracted me in the bedroom.

And I don’t think I’m alone: 32% of women say that when they don’t orgasm, it’s often because they’re stuck in their heads or focused on their looks.

Orgasm itself can become a source of performance anxiety.

Because the women’s orgasms are dramatized in porn and the media, with exaggerated moans and calculated facial expressions, some women feel so much pressure that fear of not coming keeps them from coming. This pressure can also lead women to fake orgasms instead of sticking it out for a real one.

Once again, women’s magazines don’t help.

Cosmo even provides a guide on “how to look even hotter naked.” Though “even” implies the reader looks hot already, the pre-bedroom workout routine and self-tanner application tips make it clear we don’t look as hot as we could – and even if we do, the focus is still on our partner’s pleasure, not what we see or feel.

Thoughts about partners’ perceptions place women outside their bodies, looking in, rather than inside them, feeling the sensations the sexual activity is causing. It’s hard to have an orgasm when you’re not even thinking sexual thoughts.

8. Sexual Trauma Can Impede Arousal and Orgasm

It’s extremely common for women to experience sexual trauma within their lifetimes. One out of six women has been the victim of attempted or completed rape.

According to sex therapist Vanessa Marin, this trauma can have lasting effects on one’s sex life.

“Sexual assault can rob your enjoyment of sex and can make any type of intimacy feel scary,” she said. “Some survivors experience feelings of disconnect or dissociation when they’re having sex. Others can easily get triggered by being touched in certain places or in specific ways.”

Marin recommends that survivors seek out therapy or a support group so they don’t have to deal with the effects of their pasts alone.

In the short-term, Marin has written that reminding yourself you’re with your partner, not the person who assaulted you, can quell trauma-related sexual problems. “Of course your brain knows that it’s [them], but this exercise can help the more subconscious parts of your psyche start to relax,” she writes.

Other emotions women disproportionately experience around sex, such as guilt and shame, may also lead to anorgasmia.

9. More Women Than Men Are on Antidepressants

SSRI antidepressants, like Prozac and Zoloft, can cause anorgasmia. This side effect isn’t gender-specific, but antidepressants themselves are.

Between 2001 and 2010, 25% of American women (but only 15% of men) had been prescribed medication for mental health conditions.

This may occur because women are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression, both frequently treated with SSRIs, the medication class most commonly known to cause anorgasmia. There are many theories as to why, but one possible source of this difference is societal misogyny.

As Ally Boghun writes of her anxiety, “A lot of the stressors that impact me the most are actually stressors put upon women by society to look and act in certain ways.” In addition, women are more likely to seek therapy, since toxic standards of masculinity deter men from discussing their emotions.

This is one case where the orgasm gap may be related to biological differences, but the sources of these differences are still societal.

10. Women Are Discouraged from Asking for What They Want

Women are taught to accommodate others’ wishes and put their own on the back burner, to be pleasant and polite and grateful and not ask for more, whether that’s food, payment, or sexual pleasure.

To bring back Armstrong’s research, one woman said she didn’t have the “right” to request an orgasm and “felt kind of guilty almost, like I felt like I was kind of subjecting [guys] to something they didn’t want to do and I felt bad about it.”

I can relate: I’ve said “sorry” many times for requesting or giving myself the stimulation I wanted, for taking what I thought was too much time, and for receiving pleasure without immediately returning it.

The same fear that keeps women from voicing their opinions in work meetings or negotiating salaries also keeps us from speaking up in bed.

But until we can “lean in” without bumping into hostility, women can’t singlehandedly solve this problem in any domain. It’s also up to our partners, coworkers, and others to make it clear they want to hear and accommodate our wishes.

11. The Normative Definition of Sex Isn’t Optimal for Many Women’s Orgasms

When someone says “sex,” most people think of penis-in-vagina intercourse, even though it means many different things to different people.

For example, some couples may see oral sex as sex. Some may also put oral or manual sex on the same level as penetrative sex, but this is still not the norm.

When someone talks about losing their virginity, for instance, we usually assume they’re talking about the first time they had penis-in-vagina intercourse.

This assumption can be problematic for women who get off more easily through other activities.

In one survey, 20% of women said they seldom or never had orgasms during intercourse. Only 25% said they consistently do. In another, 38% said that when they don’t orgasm, a common obstacle is “not enough clitoral stimulation.”

Since penetrative sex often doesn’t directly stimulate the clitoris, this could explain why other types of sex – or clitoral stimulation during intercourse, which women considered the most common way they got off with a partner – may be more optimal.

When we consider the activities that often help women reach orgasm as warmup or extra, we deprioritize women’s pleasure.

12. People Think the Orgasm Gap Is Biological

Orgasm inequity is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When men believe women’s bodies are an impossible puzzle, they don’t try to solve it. Neither do women who are taught their own pleasure is inaccessible.

That’s why it’s important we acknowledge all the societal factors that contribute to this discrepancy. Genetics can’t be fixed, but a lot of these problems can, which means that closing the orgasm gap is possible.

***

If you’re a woman having trouble orgasming, it’s likely not you. It may not be the result of any carelessness on your partner’s part either. You may just need to talk about it, challenge the myths you’ve learned about sexuality, and, if necessary, seek help for any psychological or medical conditions that could be contributing to the problem.

Or maybe it’s not a problem at all. Maybe orgasming isn’t important to you, and that’s your choice as well. But if it is something you would like, you have the same right to ask for it as your partner. If he expects orgasms from you, he shouldn’t mind you wanting one.

It’s not too much to ask, and your anatomy isn’t too complicated. The only thing that’s complicated is the toxic set of messages we’re taught about sexuality. But that’s not on you or your body.

#sex cw

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tussive · 4 years

Text

I have a lot of thoughts on this subject and some of them are touchy and I know many of my followers are trans. I've never really spoken about most of this publicly, but I was just discussing this type of thing with @fresholivesfromtheolivebar and I thought having a place to organize my thoughts and get them out in a hopefully not too rambly/weird and mostly cohesive post.

I used to identify agender/non-binary for a period of time. I've never identified as "male." I don't understand men. I don't get men. They talk to me and it's like their way of thinking is completely foreign to me. That isn't to say I'm not male. I am very much male. I was raised male. I am seen as male. I have been conditioned as a male (possibly a faggy male lol) my entire life, including now, and that undoubtably affects how I perceive life and shapes my personality. I've always mostly had women as friends, male friends generally I lost interest in talking to quickly, and I don't typically udnerstand their line of thinking/reasoning to begin with.

That's Colette quote sums it up really well for me. "“I have nothing to say to men and never had. Judging from the little time I’ve spent with them, their usual conversation is sickening. Besides, they bore me. I believe,” he hesitated, then concluded, “I believe I don’t understand men.”"

I have several male internet friends, but none who I'm especially close to. We all go months without talking sometimes, but I do enjoy speaking with them over shared interests. William is the exception, but we have discussed these things at lengths and he feels almost (or maybe entirely) the same way as I do. He doesn't really consider himsself "male" either.

I didn't like agender or non-binary or genderfluid or any of that, because I feel like they carry their own impressions that I didn't feel fit me. When I was younger, I experienced a great deal of gender dysphoria. I wanted to be born a girl. Probably because I always got along better with the other girls school. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother and her female friends. My step-grandfather was in my life heavily and I loved him dearly, but I never connected with him on the same level I did with my grandmother.

I thought I may be trans when I was younger. I looked into things, explored options, spoke with trans women and many of them were very pushy about transitioning. I was under 18 at the time and one person actually threatened me with calling CPS, lying and saying I was abused, so I could go live with another family and could "be who I really was."

That experience put me off becoming trans a lot, if I'm being totally honest. But also around that time I was questioning gender roles to to begin with. Why are certain traits, behaviors and interests considered "female" and others are considered "male." It didn't make sense to me. So I just said fuck you to gender roles and started doing whatever I wanted and my gender dysphoria went away. I still have aspects of my body I don't like and wish were different, but I think that's literally every human. Mine may be based around my sex to a degree and wishing I looked more feminine, but the core of the problem is the same.

I went by non-binary/agender for a while, but I didn't really love those because I felt like they came with their own implications, so I stil just called myself a male and would say like "male, kind of" or something when someone asked lol. I generally say I'm straight, but I do find males to be sexually attractive, but I've never met a man who I was able to connect with emotionally on any level even close to resembling romantic attraction. William is my only close male friend and I love him like a brother, not someone I want to put my dick into. I know going by like "newer" more specific terms, I'd probably be like "agender/non-binary demisexual heteroromantic." But I just feel like that is dumb. I don't think a label needs to perfectly describe you, just give people a rough idea, personally.

And like, I love trans people. Let me say here, I do not view any issue with trans people and if they feel transitioning is their best shot at happiness, they should go that. I am 100% believe in full bodily autonomy, you should be allowed to do anything with it that doesn't hurt someone. I do think a minority of people have taken things with it too far and have started trying to "cancel" anyone who doesn't perfectly all in line with their idealogy, but the majority of trans people I've meant online and in person are not that, they just want to be happy in their own body.

That being sad, I do think a lot of "TERF" arguments are valid. I think having spaces specifically for AFAB people is a good thing. Being born male or female and raised and conditioned that way within a society WILL affect who you are as an adult, even if you were trans then and just didn't really realize it yet. I like the "3rd gender neutral" bathroom idea, but I think it should go a step further. Eliminate all multi stall bathrooms. Every bathroom should be a single bathroom that anyone can use, regardless of sex or gender identity.

That all said, I view trans women as women. And the above points aren't really fair to them,* I agree totally. Like that is genuinely so shitty and my heart breaks for trans people who suffer through as much as they do. It's not fair that it happens. (Unfortunately a lot of things aren't fair. Which doesn't mean "SUCK IT UP PUMPKIN" it just means shit is going to suck a lot and learning to roll with it is the best way to have any kind of peace of mind imo. But I fully empathize. I am no familiar with gender dysphoria. And I still wish I was born female.

I just don't think transitioning is right for me because there's NOTHING that stops me from doing whatever I wanna do, wearing whatever I wanna wear, talking how I want to talk, etc as a male that I wouldn't be able to do. So it doesn't matter all that much. If other people want to transition, I fully support them and I think it should be easier for people to do so.

I love trans people, not to pull the "I even have some [x] friends!" card but basically every person I talk to regularly is a woman or trans/nb/queen/etc. I do what I can to support them whenever I can.

I know some of what I said here probably comes across TERF-y, or whatever the male equivalent of that would be. I don't claim that term, but I've been called it by random trans people online like hundreds of times.

If you feel like I'm a TERF or hate trans people or don't respect you or what you go through, by all means block/unfollow/message me to d iscuss it further. If you unfollow, I get it, you won't offend me or anything. Most of this is just me working out/posting my gender identity again because I feel good about it now really. The trans stuff is just like there to try to add context of why I don't call myself trans.

(Kinda sidenote: honestly I've been calling myself "queer" more and more. It's vague and doesn't give any specific impression other than "not cis opposite attracted person" and I think that's a good way to describe myself lol.)

Sorry this is long, sorry if this is confusing, I didn't proofread at all and sorry if this upsets you. I'm happy to talk with you if you are upset about anything or if you just want nothing to do with someone like me, that's totally fine!

Anyway, if you read all of this, I tank you. I know it's way too long but I just had some thoughts and feelings I felt relevant to things today and wanted to get them out.

Love you. <3 Marcus

#gender identity #trans issues #hope this isn't a huge fucking mistake lol

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wangxiangiftexchange · 3 years

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Winter Solstice Gift for garsideofthemoon

Hi! From the prompt I was inspired by @garsideofthemoon’s Likes: AUs, friends to lovers, shippy fluff, stuff about being queer or being trans/nonbinary. I hope that I did the characters enough justice in your eyes and you enjoy reading this!! Happy Winter Solstice!

Read on AO3

*****

Not Your Boyfriend, Still Your Love

“Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian called across the lawn of central campus, waving their arms frantically to get the other’s attention, “Lan Zhan! Wait up!”

Wei Wuxian’s brother, Jiang Cheng punched his arm, “Shut up, idiot, he’s clearly on his way to class.”

But Lan Wangji stopped his walking and turned back slightly to face Wei Ying, face impassive but the fact that he stopped was invitation enough for Wei Wuxian, who ran across the quad and pounced onto the taller man, wrapping both arms around his shoulders and hanging on. Lan Wangji took his weight easily.

“Good morning, Wei Ying.”

“Morning Lan Zhan!” Wei Wuxian chirped, pressing their face happily into the back of Lan Wangji’s neck and smiling against his skin.

Jiang Cheng caught up with them and the three continued their walk through the campus, “Aren’t you tired of this idiot yet, Lan Wangji?”

Wei Wuxian pouted at his brother, “He didn’t tire of being my friend after ten years so it’ll be at least another ten years of being my boyfriend before he gets tired of that, right Lan Zhan?”

“That sentence makes no sense,” Jiang Cheng said, “And you’ve been together for three years, what happens in seven years?”

“Husband,” Lan Wangji said, in the solemn way of his.

Wei Wuxian internally winced, and instead danced away from the other two, “Haha, maybe,” he sung, “You have to ask me first, Lan Zhan! You don’t know I’ll say yes!”

Lan Wangji twitched an eyebrow at him as if to say don’t I?

Wei Wuxian chewed on his lower lip all through class, worrying it like the creeping self-doubt worried at his brain. The problem wasn’t Lan Zhan. He loved Lan Zhan. Had loved him since they were seven and Wei Wuxian pushed an older kid off the swings when he tried to kick Lan Zhan as the quieter kid walked by.

Back then, Lan Zhan was the Absolute Best Thing that had ever happened to Wei Wuxian, nevermind that when they first met a year before Lan Zhan kept tattling on him drawing little comics during class instead of paying attention to the teacher.

“Books are so boring!” Wei Wuxian exclaimed at him across their four-kid table, “I pay attention during math, don’t I? And we don’t have a learning time for drawing so I do that when the rest of you talk about books! It’s more fun than reading dumb old words anyway, look, I drew you!”

Now, fourteen years later, Wei Wuxian still thought that Lan Zhan was the Absolute Best Thing ever, but they were less sure that they were good for them. Lan Zhan was gay. Had always been gay, since forever. At their first party that Wei Wuxian dragged Lan Wangji to when they were fifteen, playing spin the bottle and during Lan Wangji’s turn landing on their friend Mianmian. His face had screwed up distastefully as the rest of the group hooted and said, rather primly, “I’m not interested in kissing any girl.”

Wei Wuxian turned and was about to apologize to the girl in question, but she just rolled her eyes and responded, “Well I’m not interested in kissing any boy either.”

Wei Wuxian had wondered why those were the only two options, and in his slightly drunken state wondered why he felt between them. (He didn’t kiss Lan Zhan that night, even when Lan Wangji’s next spin landed on him and with no protest his friend leaned over and pressed his lips to Wei Wuxian’s cheek.)

Much later, at Mianmian and Jiang Yanli’s engagement party they regaled Yanli with this tale, everyone shouting their version at each other over champagne and music. Lan Zhan had pressed a kiss to the same spot on Wei Wuxian’s cheek.

By then Wei Wuxian had a much better understanding of who they were. He had a much less clear idea of how his boyfriend would react. They bit the inside of their cheek and kept quiet. At the confused look their friend Huaisang shot them, Wei Wuxian promptly burst into tears and flung himself at Jiang Yanli, sobbing dramatically about their precious big sister getting married and how Wei Wuxian was so happy for her.

“Wei Ying,” a welcome and familiar voice coaxed him out of his thoughts and he looked around him to realize that class had ended and they were the only two left in the room.

“Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian responded, smiling at him. The man blinked at him, thinking.

“Are you all right?”

“Aiya, Lan Zhan, you don’t have to worry about little old me! I was up late working on a piece for the gallery opening in a few weeks.”

Lan Zhan nodded, “Yes, my brother and uncle will be in attendance. I thought you could do with the warning.”

Wei Wuxian winced, “They don’t know I’m showing, do they?”

“Uncle does not, I told my brother that I already had a reservation when he offered to get me in as well. He guessed.”

“It’s not Xichen I’m worried about,” Wei Wuxian grumbled, “I’m the feature! I’m going to have to talk to him! They’ll make me, I know he’s one of the bigger doners.”

“The Jin’s will be there as well.”

Wei Wuxian slumped in his seat, sliding down until he chin was pressed into his chest, “Fuck,” he said, with feeling, “I’m going to have to dress extra fancy now. I can’t afford to upgrade my closet – I need new canvases!”

“I’ll buy you something to wear.”

“Lan Zhan, no. You don’t’ have to do that, I’ll figure something out.”

Their boyfriend leveled them with a stubborn gleam in his eyes, “It is as much for my benefit as it is yours and the art program, Wei Ying. Uncle has reason enough to dislike you, let’s not add ‘under-dressed’ to the list.”

“You’re right, of course you’re right, my Lan Zhan is already right. It’s just…” he trailed off, thinking about red dresses and sparkling ribbons. They wondered if they could get away with wearing some makeup, they were out as gay, they were an art student (the top art student, not that any of the adults in their life talked about that), it wasn’t outside of the realm of possibility for a cis gay guy to wear makeup.

“Wei Ying?”

Wei Wuxian jerked out of his thought again and bounded up, “Nothing, nothing! I’ll let you take me shopping tomorrow okay? I gotta go, I’m gonna be late for class.”

Lan Wangji knew that Wei Ying didn’t have class for another three hours, but as his boyfriend rushed past him, pressing a quick goodbye kiss to his lips and slipping from the classroom, Lan Wangji didn’t call him on it. He frowned to himself, tapping the tips of his fingers together in an uncharacteristic display of anxiety.

Wei Ying was lying to him. Or was pulling away from him. Keeping things from him. Lan Wangji respected his boyfriend’s life, understanding that having a life and friends outside of their romantic relationship was healthy and he didn’t begrudge Wei Ying at all.

More and more recently, however, Wei Ying wasn’t having friend dates or art-weekends. Or if he was, he was lying about it. His boyfriend was terrible at lying, at least to him, they grew up together, grew into themselves adjacent and holding hands. He loved him.

And Wei Ying was pulling away. Lan Wangji didn’t know what he was doing wrong. On one of his own friend dates with Mianmian he haltingly expressed his concerns. His friend had frowned at him and tried to reassure.

“Yanli only ever talks about how happy Wuxian is with you. If he was at all unhappy, you know she’d be the first one he’d talk to.”

“If he ever talked to anybody,” Lan Wangji countered, morosely.

Mianmiang patted his hand, “Talk to him, since you’re so worried about it. You two are meant to be. I firmly believe that whatever it is, you two will work it out.” She sipped her coffee and added, “There’s no way he’s cheating on you, anyone with eyes can see how disgustingly enamored he is with you.”

“Says the woman who’s marrying his sister,” Lan Wangji said, rolling his eyes, “If he is cheating on me, who’s side would you take?”

“Moot point. Like I said, there’s no way. Besides, Wuxian can’t live with guilt. We all remember what happened in history 703.”

Lan Wangji’s lips twitched into a small smile at the reminder.

“How’s wedding planning?” He changed the subject.

“Terrible,” Mianmian said cheerfully, “Our future in-laws are insane.”

“You sure you want to go through with this?”

“’Course. And you?”

“Always.”

They clinked mugs in mutual commiseration.

The gallery opening reception started well. Wei Ying, in all their tailored glory, was standing at ease, holding a glass of champagne in one hand and Lan Wangji’s hand in their other. They greeted people who made their way towards them as they stood in front of the first of Wei Ying’s featured pieces.

Everything went downhill fast when The Jin’s rolled in. In a cloud of ostentatious gilt and cologne Jin Guangshan and Jin Zixun entered the room like they expected a royal announcement and (in)appropriate fanfare for deigning to grace the rest of the plebs in the room with their presence.

With quick thinking and a thorough lack of etiquette Wei Ying and Lan Zhan dodged their greetings by ducking behind sculptures and canvases until they found themselves out on the patio. Giggling, Wei Ying wrapped their arms around Lan Zhan’s neck and pressed a series of bubbly kisses across his lips and jaw.

Lan Zhan held him tightly by the waist, enjoying the warmth of his boyfriend’s lips alongside the cool freshness of the outside air. They swayed together until the adrenaline faded and they were left leaning against the railing looking out over the small garden below.

“Will you get into trouble for that?” Wei Ying asked, eventually.

“Uncle is still upset at me for switching to a music major,” Lan Zhan told him, “This will not cause more strife than that ever could.”

“You wouldn’t have been happy in board meetings your whole life.”

Lan Zhan kissed his boyfriend’s hair, “I know. He’ll learn to forgive me for that.”

Their peacefulness was disturbed by the unwelcome edition of Jin Zixun swaggering out onto the balcony. He scowled at the two when he saw them.

“Christ, who invited that low-bred orphan,” he sneered, looking directly at Wei Wuxian.

Lan Wangji bristled, “He happens to be the feature artist, which you would know if you could read the program.”

“You-!” The Jin’s face turned red, it was well known secret that Jin Zixun failed the entrance exams and Guangshan had to pay for him to get into the university’s business program.

“He’s also the Jiang Cheng’s brother, which you well know,” Lan Wangji said, glaring at Jin Zixun. Jiang Cheng was currently top of the business program that Jin Zixun failed to get into on his own merit. “And he’s my boyfriend. So far he has much more reason to be here than you.”

Wei Wuxian couldn’t help but wince slightly at the proud way Lan Zhan called him his boyfriend, unfortunately the Jin noticed and grinned, smelling blood.

“Is he your boyfriend by choice,” he taunted, so venomously that Wei Wuxian actually took a step back, and only belatedly realized how that looked to both Jin Zixun and the love of his life.

“Lan Zhan,” He started to say, reaching out to grab his sleeve.

“I guess not,” Jin Zixun sneered, “I knew the Lans were a bunch of snobby ill-breds, no wonder you were forced to be with a man. Your uncle knew he didn’t want his disgrace of a nephew passing on the family genes.”

He didn’t see the fist that connected with his nose with a sickening crunch. He fell back heavily and looked up dazed. Wei Wuxian was standing over him, gripping their right hand protectively with their left and glaring down at him.

Jin Zixun, for the first time in his life, wished that someone wouldn’t pay attention to him.

“No one is forcing me,” Wei Wuxian said, “I love Lan Zhan. The day he asked me to be with him was the best day of my life. His uncle loves him for more than his career choices, but I guess you wouldn’t understand that, would you? Your uncle would drop you with hardly a thought if you strayed from the path he set.”

Jin Zixun knew that was true, after all, Jin Guangshan had dropped his own son when he confronted him about some of his more lecherous business practices, and Jin Zixun had assumed that that was how it was for Lan Wangji too. He pulled himself to his knees and fled with as much dignity as he could.

Wei Wuxian turned to Lan Wangji, who was staring at them with guarded eyes.

“A’Zhan, what he said wasn’t true. I know you’re not forcing me. I love being with you. I just…”

“Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan said when Wei Wuxian hesitated for too long. “Are you… not happy with me?” he fumbled too. And the two stared at each other, the tension between them felt insurmountable, but neither wanted to walk away. Neither could walk away from the other. There was tension and confusion, but there was love there too.

“I don’t want to be your boyfriend!” Wei Wuxian blurted, and instantly he knew that was the wrong thing to say because Lan Wangji’s face fell, his chin trembled for a moment as he forced himself to maintain control.

“No, wait! Lan Zhan that’s not what I meant. I love you, I want to be with you I do! More than anything.”

“Then why can’t you be my boyfriend?”

“Because I’m not a boy!”

Lan Wangji blinked. Of all the things he had expected Wei Wuxian to say, that was not one of them. He was caught completely by surprise and all he could do was gape (though elegantly) at his love.

“You’re not…” he repeated.

“A guy. Right.” Wei Wuxian smiled at him, though it was forced, a learned defense mechanism.

Lan Wangji closed his eyes and breathed. When he opened his eyes he saw his Wei Ying staring at him, hope and fear mingling in his gaze and Lan Wangji suddenly didn’t care about anything else.

“Girlfriend…?” he offered.

Wei Ying shook their head, “No. No Lan Zhan, I’m not… not a girl either. Most of the time I feel more masculine than I do feminine, but… not always. And like tonight, to spent so much money to get the suit tailored for me – and I love it and I love how you look at me when I’m wearing it. But tonight I felt more feminine and I really wanted to wear a dress and I couldn’t because you didn’t know and it’s a formal event and everybody would be here and no one really knows, not that it’s a sure thing and it might change and I know that’s a lot for you-“

Lan Zhan reached out and rested his fingers against Wei Ying’s lips.

“I want to be with Wei Ying, too.” Lan Zhan told him, “If he is a boy, or girl, or neither, or both. You are Wei Ying and so you are who I want.”

Wei Ying’s eyes teared up, he couldn’t help it. “Lan Zhan,” he whined, “You’re being too nice to me. It’s not allowed!”

Lan Zhan quirked an eyebrow, teasing, “Am I not allowed to say nice things about my boy- about my Wei Ying?” He quickly corrected himself and met Wei Ying’s gaze guiltily. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine, we can figure out vernacular later.”

Lan Zhan nodded, whatever his Wei Ying wanted. He should know that Lan Zhan would do anything in his power to make happen.

Wei Ying fell forward, knowing Lan Zhan would catch him. “We can go home if I want? We don’t have to stay? You’ll make up something about being sick and I’ll just have to take you home and take care of you?”

“Mn.”

Wei Ying snuggled into their boyfriend’s chest and thought about it for a minute. “We should stay. The school put so much work into the event and I don’t want to disappoint them.”

Lan Zhan ran his fingers through Wei Ying’s growing hair, “You are not a disappointment, to anybody.”

Wei Ying laughed wetly, “Yeah, sure. You know both your uncle and my mother are out there, right? They’re going to hate me so much more when this comes out. He’s going to try to disused you from seeing me, again.”

“I will not let him. Besides, at least he can’t complain about me dating a man anymore.”

Wei Ying pulled away and wiped at his face, he laughed now, and smiled a true smile at Lan Zhan. Lan Zhan’s breathe caught in his throat as he stared at the gorgeous creature before him. How had he gotten this lucky? What deeds had he done in past life to deserve someone like Wei Ying to choose him.

“He’s not gonna know how to complain about me now,” he laughed, “His face his going to get so red.” He straightened up and mimed stroking his beard, “Wangji,” he mimicked, “You cannot publicly date a man, your name is attached to the company and it will hurt our image. But ha! Jokes on him! I’m not a man!” He clutched his stomach and bent over he was laughing so hard.

It was, admittedly, an overreaction. But Wei Ying had told his boyfriend, his best friend since they were kids, that they weren’t a boy or a girl, and Lan Zhan had just.. accepted them. It was more than Wei Ying had dreamed about, to be honest. He was giddy with it. He finally collected himself enough to look up at Lan Zhan, he saw a small smile on his love’s face as he watched him.

“I love you,” he said, feeling it truer in that moment than any before because now they knew that Lan Zhan accepted their love, would accept their love fully.

“I love you,” Lan Zhan replied, equally earnest, and they wrapped each other in a caress of a kiss, tender and chaste and so, so loving.

Slowly, friend by friend, person by person, with the support of Lan Zhan, Wei Ying came out. To some it was casual, a dropped joke or teasing comment letting some of their friends the new norm.

(“My little brother came to see me,” Jiang Yanli teased gently, hugging Wei Ying tightly for a moment.

“A’Cheng’s your brother, Jie, can’t I just be your younger sibling?” His voice was light, all teasing and laughter, but his eyes watched Jiang Yanli carefully. She studied them for a moment before breaking out into a welcoming grin.

“Of course! I’m so lucky I have a younger sibling to help me pick out my wedding dress!)

(Nie Huaisang and Jiang Cheng were over for an all-nighter video game and dumpling party. After winning Mario Kart for the forth time in a row Wei Wuxian got up and stretched out their fingers to go refill their drinks so they wouldn’t get any controlled thrown at them.

They came back into the room while their friends were complaining, “-the worst!” Nie Huaisang finished saying.

“I swear to god he cheats,” Jiang Cheng replied, voice coming out muffled through the pillow he had pressed over his face.

Wei Wuxian cleared their throat, “Excuse you,” he said lightly, “That’s ‘I swear to god they cheat’, if you please.”

Their eyes met Nie Huaisang who raised his eyebrows at him in question. Wei Wuxian nodded back and Nie Huaisang rolled his eyes at them.

“What? What do you mean? Who’s they?” Jiang Cheng said, emerging from the pillow-land-of-failure.

Nie Huaisang rolled his eyes again and smacked Jiang Cheng upside the head, “Your sibling just came out to us, idiot.”

“What? We already knew he was gay!”

“They still are!” Nie Huaisang said, and at Jiang Cheng’s confounded look, explained.

Wei Wuxian, after recovering from their laughing fit, said, “Now are you ready to have your ass handed to you, little brother?”

“Gods, fine. Fuck, you’re so annoying, I hate you.” But he smiled at them over the rim of his glass.)

On Lan Zhan’s and Wei Ying’s wedding, seven years later, Lan Zhan pulled Wei Ying into a swaying embrace at the reception, the red skirts of their dress glowing in the fairy lights surrounding them both, and murmured, “I am so lucky to be yours, Wei Ying.”

#garsideofthemoon #wangxiansolstice20 #*fic20 #*gifts20

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aroworlds · 4 years

Text

Those With More, Part One

When Mara Hill's magic results in her brother's impossible, wondrous transition, of course Suki wants to know how she did it! What if Sirenne's magic workers can help others find euphoria? What if this magic can heal Suki's hands—or at least lessen her pain? But Mara, distrustful of priests after their failure in protecting Esher, won't share her power.

A senior priest must bear responsibility, but Suki suspects her problems lie deeper than lack of oversight, and her reluctance to discuss her aromanticism with a woman who needs support only proves it. Would she have preserved Mara's faith and Esher's health if she hadn't first avoided revealing herself to her aromantic kin? If she'd faced their expectations that she shoulder their pain and grief as well as her own?

Suki has lived her life by the Sojourner's second precept, but how does she serve when she doesn't have more to give—and never will?

Contains: A disabled, non-partnering allo-aro woman struggling with the expectations of her young, fledgling aromantic community; an autistic, aromantic priest reconsidering their expectations of their community's leader; and an allo-aro woman in need of support as she struggles with her non-partnering, aro-ace brother's illness.

Content Advisory: Please expect many references to or depictions of aro antagonism, allo-aro antagonism, amatonormativity, familial abuse, mental illness, suicidal ideation, death, gender dysphoria, chronic pain, ableism and ageism. This piece contains non-detailed, non-specific reference to a character's past suicide attempts.

Length: 4, 409 words (part one of two).

Note: This is the last story in my Suki mini-series, but it refers to characters introduced in The Sorcerous Compendium of Postmortem Query and is best read following the stand-alone story What Makes Us Human. You can find links to all on my pinned post or on this Tumblr master post.

Non-romantic love, to Suki, serves a similar role as the Sojourner or any other god: a fine concept in theory, but while she respects others’ need for a guiding framework, she can only nod vaguely at love’s existence.

***

They talk in a west-facing corner of the inner gardens, the sun edging towards the valley’s cradling ridgelines. Suki sits with careful stillness, resting her bony wrists and fingers in her lap. Her companion, Mara Hill, twirls a lock of dark hair around her finger with the ease of a woman unaware of her movements’ toll. Few people reach the ends of their lives untouched by disability, but Suki still aches to watch others take their youthful ability for granted … even if Mara’s restless fidgeting suggests anxiety as much as mind-type.

Suki was an artist once, albeit not the kind of craftswoman draped in the world’s renown. She built wonder from bare ingredients. She made the needed and the practical from scraps of thread and fabric. She took her hands’ ability to knead and shape for granted, revelling in others’ appreciation, until the pain built to a degree even she couldn’t deny. Given the option, she’ll always sit in her garden with her knitting needles or workbasket, making.

She can’t reconcile herself to hours spent halting her fingers and wrists in too-often-futile hope of preserving later use.

“Must I explain, one trans woman to another, why we want this?” Suki works to ease her voice, to sound possessed of patience and released of jealousy. “We … dabble, in spells and medicines, parlour tricks to lessen anguish, but this … it can be freedom. When wrought correctly.”

Now, Suki sees little sense in seeking such a transition: she’s had time to forge an accord with her body and gender. If said accord holds a touch of the defiant, rebellion nonetheless sheltered her through aching moments of feeling her body less hers than a chafing suit she’ll endure for this life. Gender, though, only began the war of Suki’s selfhood separating from her own blood and breath, and it long ago won second place on her list of impossible wishes.

What if Mara’s magic can do more than change a body’s sexual characteristics?

What if it can ease Suki’s hands, heal her knees, return to her the gift of unthinking movement?

Mara shifts her hands to twist the untied lace dangling from her bodice. She’s a handsome woman: tall and long-limbed, her cheekbones sharp enough to slice hard cheese. Full lips, wide skirts and a waist-length sable braid soften the flat planes of her face, shoulders and hips. Suki can’t call Mara beautiful, but she may have used the word “ethereal” if Mara didn’t also bare her haphazard humanity: hair falling out of its pins, scores of grass stains marking her petticoats, a waistcoat absent any matching buttons, a dress ten years out of style knotted up to bare clashing stockings and scuffed boots. Life with Mara, Suki suspects, is no small amount interesting, but one needn’t fear from her airs or pretentiousness.

This conversation, regardless, comes none the easier.

“I know you understand,” Suki says, attempting a beseeching gentleness. “How can’t you?”

“It’s a secret.” Mara stares at Suki with a distressingly direct gaze, as though hoping to emphasise her sincerity through eye contact. “Handed down from witch to witch. I’ve sworn oaths to the living and the dead. I can’t. And I won’t.”

Mara Hill is also a terrible liar.

“You insist this isn’t sorcery. It’s witchcraft—a type of magic that can be taught! Why, then, can’t you teach us? Can’t you imagine what we could do, if we could study and understand it?”

Just as Suki regrets such desperation-fuelled bluntness, flashes of brown, red and grey show through the eucalypts and fern-encrusted rockery dividing the outer garden from an interior courtyard. Only two other people in Sirenne stand tall enough to be seen over said wall of rocks, and neither looks towards her. Moll, their face set in their accustomed expressionlessness and their iron-grey hair scraped back in a braid, walks close by their companion: a man with Mara’s cheekbones, his gaze distant and his face cavernous. While health warms her sienna skin, even when moistened by anxiety and dappled sunshine, his sallow complexion provokes no kind adjectives.

Esher Hill is the gaunt, walking embodiment of the nightmare Sirenne’s priests struggle to dispel when discussing medicines and spells—a man who appears drugged and ensorcelled into a puppet-like lifelessness, a state absent all vitality.

His sister caused, provoked or necessitated most of it.

Most.

Like too many guests, Mara brought her brother to the monastery when absent solutions in her home village’s offerings of lay priests, physicians, magic workers and well-meaning family members—a last, desperate resort. Esher wasn’t happy or healthy, but he had muscle and energy enough that Suki decided his taciturnity somewhat intentional. He stopped to pet Sirenne’s horses; he allowed their cats to settle on his lap. He scowled when faced with chattering acolytes. He reacted.

Mara’s power stripped his bones of flesh and tissue in the quest to craft him an almost-cis body. New organs, somehow, grew; others withered and sloughed away like an unused cocoon. Such impossibility should be a miracle, but can one fairly call a tempest that devoured his body and hammered his mind miraculous?

What if, though, this transition becomes a goal identified and worked towards with desire, preparation and consent? What if a patient understands what lies ahead? Can one then cope with magic’s trauma, a difficult moment endured in travelling a chosen road? Or what if they narrow the scope to one change, one part of the body?

Will she then see a butterfly, bloodied but eager to take flight?

Will she then be able to live her last years still wielding her pastry brushes and knitting needles?

“It’s dangerous!” Mara follows Suki’s gaze towards the rockery, her lips pressed together in pale, thin lines. “Can’t you see that? Shouldn’t you?” Her husky voice sharpens like a blade on a grindstone. “And what makes you think I should trust you with it? Or would?”

Suki bites her lip while counting backwards from ten. Her tongue runs to tart even when voicing second and third thoughts, and she fears she offers little sympathy when she finds something worth speaking: “But less dangerous in better circumstances? If he knew, was prepared, agreed, expected…”

If a witch doesn’t work her magic behind the priests’ backs, but that’s less Mara’s fault than Sirenne’s.

The question remains: if a witch fears dysphoria's ache the cause of her brother’s depression, why didn’t she offer this magical transition weeks or months earlier? Why didn’t she gain Esher’s prior agreement and approval? Why did Mara bother to take him to a monastery? That she wrought this after Sirenne’s failures dashes Suki’s hopes: Mara’s supposed witchcraft is sorcery, unpredictable and unreachable. Nothing more than a panicked, desperate deal made with demons, a grave power Sirenne can’t replicate ... even should a priest be fortunate enough to make the same bargain with the same brace of demons.

If demons routinely offered such vast power, how many trans people wouldn’t sell their soul for a body suiting their nature?

“Prepare? After you made me—” Mara’s voice cracks like thick, shadowed frost under morning’s first footstep. “If there were anywhere else, if I thought … we wouldn’t be here!”

Suki shifts in her chair, her hands and feet aching as though a purple-black bruise engulfs her joints. Is it a wild, ridiculous joke that her body throbs as if beaten while showing no wound to draw sympathy? Why must a black eye or nasty scrape provoke sorrow while injuries or illnesses unable to heal garner, at best, a mute acceptance? Why do people following the Sojourner’s path lack comprehension in the second precept’s broadness? Why must a priest spend her day asking questions lacking comforting answers?

Because Amadi’s ideal became her god: question.

Mara’s desperation, too, deserves an answer.

“We failed,” Suki says, her own throat roughening. “We failed to serve Esher’s needs. A man who has too long had those needs unmet, and believes he has failed in even wishing his needs met, reacted to this lack in despair. There’s nothing irrational in that.” She wants to smile, because she can’t not know the rationality behind such a conclusion, but Mara won’t understand. She doesn’t know about Mama Lewis. “We went over our changes with you, for we can’t allow this to again happen. I ask you sincerely: are we now doing something inadequate? Are you unhappy with Moll or Thanh’s service? Within the limits of our resources and ability, what aren’t we doing that you think we should? How can we better help Esher? Help you?”

Suki didn’t assign Esher’s first priest. She didn’t speak or condone the words that gave him reason to lose the last shred of a trust abraded by too many authoritative people. She didn’t know why he needed consideration in the priest given to guide him; the unasked question wasn’t hers to speak. Ignorance, nonetheless, rings like an intimate, personal failure.

Not a failure Sirenne’s priests share as a collective whole.

A failure, terrible and tragic, in Suki.

Could she have tried harder to serve as an aromantic priest?

Mara purses her lips, her green skirt clenched in tight-knuckled hands. “He’s … always been. A little. But only in the last few years was he so distant, and I don’t think … he wasn’t bad like this until after the Thinning and Benjamin.”

Suki takes Mara’s non-answer as indication that, at least for the moment, she has no objection—and perhaps that’s a victory, but what good is winning when the war shouldn’t be fought? Suki sighs, shaking her head, as Moll and Esher move past the gap in the trees, vanishing behind canopy and granite outcrops. Only her garden, in its art-defying muddle of ferns, trees, mushrooms and bright-coloured orchids, remains—and while, ordinarily, such clashing shades appeal to her, today those greens and reds feel another mockery, a symbol and privilege undeserved.

Even when Moll gave her the opportunity to address her neglect, she took retreat in her brusque manner and authority, confident that a conscientious priest wouldn’t examine the shallowness of her answer. She offered reassurance, solved a problem, revealed herself in the most cursory of ways and fled with fears and feelings still buried within her aching bones.

Question.

If she considers god her ideal and Amadi’s ideal her god, why didn’t she?

“Benjamin is your partner, yes?” Suki shifts her left ankle, thinking even a circumlocutory attempt to build rapport better than another futile attempt at questioning. “May I ask what happened at the Thinning? You needn’t answer.”

Mara’s body softens, although she doesn’t ease her grip on the skirt. “Have you had … family, friends, come visiting? After they … pass?”

For all that belief in the Sojourner’s path embodies the human struggle to conceptualise, negotiate and accept death, hir followers still deal in euphemisms. Family come visiting. Bad like this. Suki, in the outspoken rebelliousness of a would-be priest, spent a year into her novitiate chanting “death, death, death” at her mirror before bed, just to prove that death isn’t a black-cloaked reaper summoned upon saying hir name.

Such boldness failed her, of course, when Mama Polly passed.

“There’s always spirits flickering about, but few speak.” Suki barks a hoarse laugh. “A man who desired me and told me that he’d never have broken his neck if I’d first wed him. Both my mothers. Mama Lewis talks too much.”

Such events aren’t for Suki as unusual an occurrence as they are for the non-necromantic laity, but the conversations between the returning dead and the priest who offered guidance on their paths through the life now history aren’t for outsiders. There’s always a few, often those who died in the last year and haven’t yet had their connections to this world stretch thin, who come back to speak rather than observe. Sometimes those spirits come burdened with regret and recrimination; sometimes they express gratitude or relief. Death, drawing closer with every breath, grants the living a night a year where one must look into hir shadow and fearlessly accept, even celebrate, hir company.

She’s none too fond of Mama Lewis’s bitter postmortem moaning, but a salt circle and poker at least puts paid to that nonsense.

Respecting the sacred covenant of life and death doesn’t mean tolerating abuse.

“Really?” Mara blinks, shaking her head. “She came to me, with other dead relatives and villagers—my Aunt Rosie. I think she knew I needed to talk to her. She told me that I don’t have to romantically love a girl to want or love a girl, and they told me all the ways they didn’t love, which made me feel that … I could talk to the woman I wanted. So I did.” A sweet warmth softens and curves her lips, but the speed with which Mara flattens them suggests she isn’t easy with smiling in current circumstances. “And we’re together, now. But Esh … he doesn’t want anyone, and that should be fine, but maybe … it wasn’t good for him to see me and Ben happy.”

She leans forwards, coughing, before wiping her palm on her skirt.

Suki clenches her hands, fighting to ease her expression before Mara catches her face. It rankles, to say the least, when someone happy in an intimate partnership—however non-romantic!—suggests that those without must be broken in their loneliness. How can she ignore the reflections of Mama Lewis, one shape of expected love or partnership replacing another in the same unyielding structures and assumptions? Mama Lewis cut and hewed the shape of Suki’s illnesses, not another’s possession of something she doesn’t want!

Anger, though, doesn’t explain the terror stiffening her body.

“Or after seeing you find a less-conventional form of the coupled happily-ever-after,” she says in a voice perilously close to “glacial”, “your kin and village increased their expectations that he should find the same?”

Mara stares, her lips parted as if in surprise or hurt. “I … Uncle Sascha would say that, I guess. So would the Fisher sisters.” She sighs, frowning. “I don’t know. Just that he got worse after Benjamin … right when I thought he’d get better, because Aunt Rosie said that we’re … real, human. Just a less-known ordinary. Even if we didn’t know the specific word before Moll said it.”

“Only your brother knows why,” Suki says in the mild, self-evident comment a guiding priest says to people having difficulty observing—or permitting themselves to observe—the truth before them. The mild, self-evident comment a priest, who doesn’t fear the direction of this conversation, may say to a guided guest. “So why bother yourself with if I didn’t non-romantically pair up with a girl, maybe he wouldn’t have tried to kill himself drivel? Can you go back in time to not pair up? No! Nor should you halt your life just in case it may be the reason!”

Mara’s half-raised eyebrows suggest that she doesn’t agree.

“Girl, the world tells you in so many ways that you shouldn’t non-romantically partner. After all that repetition, you’re inclined to find excuses to obey that! Keeping my brother from attempting suicide feels more reasonable to you than most puerile objections, but is this reasonable? Are you helping him by thinking this? Or are you obliging everyone who thinks you shouldn’t exist by undermining your partnership with misplaced guilt?”

She refrains from mentioning the insult in anyone’s assuming that depression must be provoked by the existence of someone else’s intimate partnership, as though such relationships are so fundamental one must sicken in witnessing another’s contentment! She refrains, unable to think of anything that doesn’t sound like an observation based in betraying knowledge. Shouldn’t they focus less, anyway, on Mara’s limited understanding of non-partnering people and more on the real issue at hand: her trying to craft another impossible?

Even if it means making herself the cause, Mara seems set on wishing together a world possessed of perfect assurance that her brother won’t again attempt suicide.

Sorcery is by far an easier art, but that’s no comforting truth.

Mara glances at Suki’s belt, as if in need of reassurance that she talks to a senior priest. “Are you, uh … well...”

“Am I what, girl? Don’t cluck!”

Mara swallows, stumbling over the word likely strange to her voice. “Aro … aromantic? Because you sound like…”

Aromantic.

A word in a book, discovered by accident.

A word feared, weighted down by her obligation and pain.

A word unsaid, a man nearly dying of its absence.

“Aromantic and allosexual. I like men for bedding. I don’t like partnerships.” Suki speaks with the casualness that shaped her words when speaking to a distressed priest in a vegetable garden, words said now as if they’ll make up for their silent past. Words said devoid of her terror. “I have enough of one with myself.”

She waits, wondering if Mara will subject her to the young, abled trick of past tense, as though sexuality must be Suki’s history and not her present or future. Something accessible only to the hale and young, presuming her sense of another’s sexual attractiveness withers along with her body? Or will Mara grimace, disgusted by the notion of an elderly, disabled woman whose sexuality hasn’t “decently” become distant memory?

She waits for the accusation: why didn’t you say this before?

“So you understand … why it’s … hard, to live unknowing who you are and what you want, what the words are?” Mara’s brow furrows, her hesitant speech giving way to a spurting rush of feeling: “That’s what Aunt Rosie gave us that night, but it came so late. I lived for so long not knowing, without a word, without knowing it an option! That it had a name! And that hurts, even now I have what I didn’t know I wanted or could want. For so long, I didn’t know! Maybe … that’s it, for Esh, the hurting? Or part of it? How can’t it be…?”

How old is she? Twenty-five? Thirty at most? One needn’t own precision in telling another’s age to know that Mara’s adulthood, outside of accident or illness, stands years distant from death’s shadow. Suki draws a sharp breath, fighting to swallow the tart, quill-bristled question clogging her throat: And when do you think I found the word, girl?

Amadi gifted her the other-shape-of-normal permissiveness, but ey died unknowing of the word describing them both.

Ey died, leaving her alone in a world where she feels outdated and unwanted, where everyone sharing in the known power of the word aromantic can’t comprehend her pain but expects her to, immediately and easily, carry theirs.

Mara needs her pain acknowledged, to have someone confirm that possession of a happy non-romantic partnership can’t and shouldn’t erase ignorance’s lingering hurts. Someone who acknowledges that such bruises are long in the fading but one can still build a life worth living. Someone who reflects understanding and the vital, powerful sense of aromantic siblinghood. Someone who can give what she needs and deserves.

Why must Suki provide it? Why not Moll? Why not anyone else?

“Yes.” She swallows, shifting her throbbing hands, fighting to keep the growl from claiming her voice. Another failure! “We all feel the … betrayal, the years lost to ignorance. Why didn’t I know? You’ll have times of hurting, of struggling, of wondering what could have been if your family knew, your friends, your neighbours. When something isn’t yet recognised or accepted, despite being extant and common … pain, for those of us ahead of that coming, isn’t optional. You aren’t alone in that.”

Suki isn’t gentle. Increased social permissiveness towards the crotchety manner discouraged in children and younger adults stands as one of age’s rare benefits. Mama Polly joked that Suki was set to be a grandmother while still a maiden, but Mama Lewis—curse her long-dead soul—didn’t laugh. Even after half a century gone, Suki can still recite her clipped lectures, delivered in the hope that decreased acidity and increased sweetness will help her daughter find the happiness packaged in a loving, romantic partnership.

Mama Lewis’s shade, returning for her once-yearly lecture, still hopes that her now-elderly daughter will soften enough to allow love into her heart.

It should amuse Suki that such gentleness is now demanded whenever she dares reveal herself as aromantic.

Mara nods, her lips pressed together, her jaw tight, her glistening eyes angled towards her lap.

“It could be part of your brother’s feelings. It could be something else. But this second-guessing of his motivations doesn’t help you or him!” Suki changes the subject for Mara’s sake: for a woman fighting to keep from breaking down before a near-stranger. “Where does this get you but exhaustion? You’re only going to chase your guesses around and around until you’re a dog barking at a rat behind a grate—only to finally spot a different rat gnawing on his brain, realise you’ve been barking at this one for no reason, and there’s actually a score of invisible rats feasting on his poor, bloody brain. Does this help you see those invisible rats? Does this barking help your health, girl?”

She absolutely, assuredly isn’t changing the subject because Suki fears the explosion of her own anger and hurt while discussing aromanticism.

Question. How can she?

Mara’s eyes meet Suki’s face in the bulging stare had by someone imagining rodents chewing on grey matter. “R—rats?”

“Chewing brain rats. You want pretty metaphors for a bloody illness? Don’t talk to a priest, then. Pretty metaphors leave people telling themselves depression isn’t illness, just something that can be shouted, shamed or pressured into abeyance. I don’t hold for that.” Suki sighs and attempts to ease Mara’s shock, hating her bluntness’ sharp, gleaming edges. Is she trying to hurt Mara, wounds delivered in return for those unintentionally given? “I know you want to help your brother. You’ll do more for him by asking what he needs, and listening to what he tells you even if it’s ‘nothing’, instead of chasing every rat in the hope they’re the ones eating him. There’s too many rats, girl! When he’s able to cope with your asking, ask. Leave handling the rats to us—because that’s what we’ll teach him.”

If only they’d thought to ensure Mara realised this before she attempted to bludgeon the rat labelled “dysphoria”, but who imagined a village witch owning such power or ability?

Mara nods: perhaps accepting such advice, perhaps planning to avoid future commentary on what she thinks provoked her brother’s attempt. Her silence is, though, more honest than immediate agreement. Better that than false approval or out-of-hand rejection, especially when she hasn’t agreed to a guiding relationship between priest and guest. Especially when Suki has already stepped further over that line than is wise for a priest struggling with herself! Anyway, hasn’t she gleaned enough to make a solid guess—that Mara sold her soul to purchase Esher’s transition? What more need they discuss?

She isn’t a powerful witch keeping her magic a solemn, oath-bound secret.

She’s a frightened sister doing everything she can to hold her brother into life.

Is that another rat set to gnaw on Esher’s brain? Is that, as much as distrust or fear of priestly reaction to sorcery, reason for her denial? Does she seek to keep this secret from Esher and the priests involved in his care to avoid making yet another rat? Does Moll realise this?

Is Mara all that different from Suki herself?

“I’m sorry that I can’t help you.” Mara stands and bows in the abrupt, jerking movements of a woman looking to leave before the conversation leads them anywhere uncomfortable—and Suki feels unreasonably relieved. “Thank you for your advice—and wisdom.” She hesitates, leaving Suki certain that “wisdom” is nothing more than politeness. “I’m glad, I suppose, there’s more people like us here. Maybe … maybe that will help Esh, if things go better.”

“If you think a priest’s guidance may be useful for your own sake,” she says, falling back on well-worn script in the surety that her own words are far too confronting, “please know that our service extends to all. And I hope, one day, aromantics are so ordinary there’s no need to comment.”

Mild, facile, trite.

Her hands throb, and Suki fights to unclench them.

Mara’s face shutters. “You’ve more than enough work with Esh.”

She bows again and, in a frenetic, long-paced stride best described as “hurrying”, heads down the garden path towards the guest quarters.

Trust.

Can she blame Mara for not trusting her when Suki has none to give?

She sighs and stares at her orchids, at the stone rising behind the tangle of shrub and ivy, at the blue-tinged mushrooms threatening to take over the lawn, at the green grass beneath her chair and the cloudless sky overhead. She stares at the rocks and leaves of her sanctuary, thinking about Mara, thinking about Mamas Lewis and Polly, thinking about the conversation with Moll in the vegetable garden, thinking about words unsaid and feelings concealed … but as the sun ebbs lower, she finds no course of action but the obvious.

Question.

Why has she, for so long, chosen avoidance over service? Why has she refused to face her pain, even while knowing the impact her absence has on others? If she preaches the sacred power in guiding another to a better road, why does she refuse another’s gift of the same? Will she leave this world as Mara is now? Or will she trust her own kin, her own ideals—the only god worth her wholehearted belief?

“Aziz!” Suki waves a hand at the acolyte reading on the lawn just out of non-shouting earshot. “Tell Moll that I’d like them to attend me here at their earliest convenience. Please have the kitchen arrange sweets for both of us and my afternoon tea.” She pauses, considering, as Aziz scrambles upright and straightens hir brown robe. “My shawl. And ask Thanh for an additional dose of my pain medicine. Thank you.”

Question.

If Moll is good enough for Esher Hill, they ought to be good enough for Suki of Sirenne.

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transfemininomenon · 4 years

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Hey, i'm actually a "truscum" i found out recently, but im a little confused on the whole ordeal. Im not even sure if i actually am truscum or not- because some posts seem to tie up with me being one but others dont, but i saw you were really against them, so i wanted to ask if you're okay with a friendly calm conversation about it? I am very confused and i just want to learn a bit more or find out if i'm wrong about the whole ordeal. Are you open to it?

i'll be honest im not sure how friendly i can be with this kind of conversation because i really truly genuinely, and i don't use this word lightly, Hate truscum and its hard for me to really be civil about the discussion. but for the sake of this and me giving you a lot of benefit of the doubt that this ask is in good faith i'll explain why i do not like the entire truscum ideology

1. i guess i'll start off with the Big One - the claim that dysphoria is Required to be trans. i'll preface this by saying that i am someone who has experienced, and currently Experiences in wildly different degrees depending on what is happening in my life, dysphoria throughout my entire life. i had my entire teenage and young adult years stolen from me by it. i won't get into details about it because that is a Very Very Personal subject for me, but needless to say dysphoria is something that was a very prevalent part of my life.

anyway. the notion that dysphoria is a Trans Requirement™ is something that i hugely disagree with. i used to think that me figuring out i was a trans woman was because i experienced dysphoria, but frankly the opposite is true. dysphoria is what made me refuse to believe i was a woman or could ever be one. it made me believe i was a man and that was all i would ever be. it wasn't until i really started experimenting with my gender and unpacking a lot of stuff i felt about myself that i started to finally realize the woman i was. i first started trying our she/her pronouns nearing four years now, and started using the name Alice a few months after that. being referred to as a woman & experimenting with different feminine things gave me such incredible feelings of euphoria that i still experience to this day whenever i discover something new about my identity.

and that is something ive heard from SO many other trans people i know. or different things too - i know people who are completely fine with their bodies, just certain words and terms never felt Right to them. because the thing with dysphoria is that it, like all things gender related, is a product of society. dysphoria only exists because transphobia exists - people are told that there are these two rigid things that you are and HERE is what makes you one of those things, and those things are drilled into you literally since birth. everything from colors to jobs to hobbies to cars to entertainment to clothing to Literally Everything is gendered, and when that happens then of fucking course there are gonna be people who don't fall in line with that, and when it's so instilled into people and seen as such societal norms of COURSE people are going to have trouble with that.

and that's not even getting into the subject of gender on a biological level. the fact of the matter is that the two sex system Isn't True and that biological sex is very complicated. intersex people exist, people with all kinds of different chromosomes exist, people of certain body types that have higher levels of different hormones exist, SO much goes into that subject that frankly narrowing it down to two things just doesn't Work

and that's the real problem at the end of the day. dysphoria only exists because of a fucked up gender binary that clashes with both biology and sociology. people are complicated on both a biological and personal level and having set binaries for things is bound to cause confusion & doubt.

like, people's identities are SUCH personal things in so many different ways. there isn't any Right Way™ to be trans. i know trans women with beards, trans women who have no interest in starting hrt, trans men who wear dresses and makeup, non-binary people who make no effort to be androgynous, i know SO many different identities and different people. because the fact is that there's no right way to be trans because nothing is inherently gendered including people's very bodies. people are themselves and there is no Right way to be themselves.

that's on top of the lack of education when it comes to the subject of gender. such a huge part too of me figuring out i was trans was literally learning that it was even a fucking option. i genuinely didn't know just Being A Girl was an option. reading up on gender stuff and researching the different idea of transitioning was intrinsic in my figuring out who i was because oh shit turns out there are people like me and that is Okay.

like, dysphoria literally could've been a non-issue for me. i could've lived in a world where i could just Exist and enjoy whatever i wanted without it being weird. i could've decided so much sooner that i wasn't happy with the way my body was growing and not spent my entire teen years being so confused why i was so sad seeing my girl peers. i could have from the start just gotten to be a girl and never have had dysphoria be part of the equation.

im not trans being i experience dysphoria. im trans because being a woman is rad as hell and it's what i wanted. im trans because changing my name to Alice was the biggest moment of my entire life. im trans because rebelling against the societal restraints of gender is fucking metal. im trans because my friends can't even remember me ever not being me now. im trans because im a great older sister. im trans because god nerfed me and i said nah thanks man but im not feeling it.

my identity and my gender are very personal and complicated things, and narrowing it down to "i experience dysphoria" is frankly insulting to me.

anyway, that's the big point out of the way, so here's some shorter ones

2. this is kinda expanding on the last point, but truscum both insisting non-binary people aren't a thing and them insisting "transtrenders" exist is hmm Bad

the sheer fact of the matter is the concept of being non-binary has existed from the oldest known records of human history on TOP of that concept being prevalent in many different cultures so what do ya know there's a healthy dose of racism involved in the denial of non-binary people. the gender binary is such a western concept and there are SO many different cultures where different gender identities exist.

and, frankly, going back to the above point that gender is fucking Fake and is a societal concept - again, of fucking course there are going to be people who see a rigid set of rules on gender and are like "well wait that doesn't fit me" so of COURSE non-binary people exist

on the subject of "transtrenders" i feel like i shouldn't even HAVE to get into this subject because of how inherently transphobic it is. the concept doesn't exist. there are people who experiment with their gender and then decide their assigned one is fine. there are people who go through all kinds of different identities. there are people who come out as a different gender and then revert back due to backlash. there are people who get told the way they present their gender is the Wrong Way™ and get branded a trender. it's a dangerous thought process that literally does nothing but serve the cis status quo and make people afraid to experiment and think about their identities.

3. the idea that Those Evil Trenders™ are stealing resources from the Real Trans People™ is, frankly, fucking bullshit. issues when it comes to trans people finding difficulty accessing healthcare comes from a transphobic society hellbent on denying us care on top of fucked up healthcare systems in general. hormones aren't some limited quality hard to acquire thing - when i started hrt transferring my prescription from my clinic to my local pharmacy was a non-issue because it's something basically any pharmacy will have for ALL kinds of different purposes. it's an issue because healthcare in general is a god damn Mess on TOP of inherent transphobia

and, frankly, truscum are directly involved in that transphobia in the medical field. unless you find an informed consent clinic you're going to have to jump through all kinds of hoops to prove you're Actually Trans™ by getting referrals from other (almost always cis) people and then get put on ridiculous waitlists to make sure you're not about to change your mind. that kind of attitude is only encouraged by truscum and it is one of the biggest source of trans people having such difficulty accessing healthcare.

4. truscum as far as im concerned are no different than any other transphobe. two years ago before i started hrt i was harassed by truscum multiple times, each time having them tell me i wasn't trans, that i was just a trender, and it genuinely boggles my mind that anyone thinks misgendering me because i disagreed with their ideology is Woke, actually. I've seen so many fellow trans women getting called men by truscum who disagreed with them. i was actively told i shouldn't start hrt because i "wasn't really trans and was gonna ruin my life"

i really hope all of people live in anger every day knowing ive been on hrt over a year and a half and am fucking Thriving

anyway that's all i got to say on the matter i realize my points became less thought out as it went on but frankly the first point is enough for me to not like truscum

(please refrain from reblogging this i don't want any clowns in my inbox)

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