A Polite Melody

Hi there, I'm Enviri | early 30s | they/them | queer | disabled | freak | My blog name is in reference to my late dog Melody, who will always be part of me.

[a-polite-melody]

It’s legitimately triggering to me, getting people begging for money in my inbox. Especially the ways which some of them do it.

“$20-30 may not seem like much to you”

Oh??? You know my financial situation???

Fuck off.

If anyone’s curious why I basically never answer asks, it’s because my inbox is full of landmines for triggering stuff surrounding financial insecurity and I cannot handle it, and it only gets added to day by day with what are almost certainly 99% scams which are hoping to prey upon my empathy.

[transand]

TERFs: transwomen are privileged males who oppress the females in their community

Trans men/mascs: That’s not true, you’re just transphobic. We do experience a unique intersection of oppression that is often erased and overlooked, but that doesn’t mean trans women are the ones oppressing us. Stop speaking over us.

TRFs: I can’t believe all of these transandrobros are saying they’re oppressed by trans women. OBVIOUSLY it’s the other way around and trans men are the privileged ones oppressing trans women

Trans men/mascs: It doesn’t seem like you’re listening to what we actually said. No trans person has gendered privilege over others, we’re just tired of being spoken over and having our unique struggles downplayed and erased. Transmisogyny and transandrophobia are both real and bad and we should be working together in solidarity, not playing oppression olympics.

Some rando who heard a secondhand account of “transmasc vs. transfem” discourse: omg why are you all so obsessed with infighting?? this entire discourse is stupid, everyone involved needs to touch grass instead of fighting about who has it worse! stop playing oppression olympics and work together!

Trans men/mascs: hello?? Is this thing even on? can anyone hear me???

[play-exy-be-sexy]

Hi I love you all🖤

[imstilltrying-ok]

Being a trans man is so strange, like as soon as you come out your experiences stop belonging to you. The misogyny you face isn't about you, you can't claim it is or you're misgendering yourself. The transphobia you face isn't about you, no one actually cares if someone transitions to be a man. The homophobia you face isn't about you, you haven't suffered like a real gay man. If you struggle with toxic masculinity being pushed in you, you chose this, imagine what it's like for cis men who didn't get a choice.

[scoutology]

#crysobbing

[aesungaia]

Everyone's Friend

[bone-and-brawn]

September 17, 2020

Thicc Thigh Thursday, ft I don't know what to do with my hands

[blvck-coffee-dad]

from the archives

[fizzywatercan]

if you don't like transmascs because they're transmasc, that is transphobia.

if you want transmascs to detransition or die because they are transmasc, that is transphobia.

these concepts aren't difficult to grasp.

[evo-is-obsessed]

"trans mascs never contributed to history or culture!"

if you're observing an absence of a minority group in recorded history and your first thought is "they must not have done anything important or valuable" and not "what happened?" then you have not learned enough history.

[catboykatebush]

I feel like the only time I ever see androgynous queer people mentioned in any relatively popular posts about queerness is to say that “nonbinary people don’t owe anyone androgyny”. Which, btw, is totally true! That, or, at worst, people with intentionally androgynous presentations are often subject to cringe culture perpetuating comments from other queer people. Meanwhile, there’s very little actual positivity or pride or allyship directed at us as androgynous people.

All that being said, I wish there was more appreciation and consideration of queer people who ARE and/or WANT TO BE (trans)androgynous. As a (trans)androgynous queer person, I often feel invisibilized and erased even within the nonbinary/genderqueer and broader trans communities themselves. Sometimes it really feels like other queer people view “androgyny” and related terms as antiquated, like we just shouldn’t even be using that terminology anymore, despite the fact that those words describe experiences of identity that one could argue are actually very common in queer people, even if they don’t choose to use that language to identify themselves.

I honestly think a lot of it comes down to pure exorsexism- a lot of people, even other queer people, feel uncomfortable with the idea of a trans person who’s not transitioning towards one side of the binary or the other. There’s so much pressure for nonbinary people to “pick a side”, even within queer spaces, and a lot of the time, the existence of androgyne people seems to challenge this mindset. Of course, none of this is to say that nonbinary people who do lean transmasc or transfem don’t face discrimination in and outside of queer spaces either, because as we should all know, any and all forms of nonbinary identity are considered to be unacceptable under patriarchal standards.

I hope this changes someday, and I hope we start to become more recognized in a positive light within queer spaces, but until then I’ll continue to be a broken record about it.

[garishgonzo]

Look i get that the transandrophobia debate is an active thing with a lot of different valid viewpoints.

but if you are arguing that transandrophobia does not exist and then you immediately start calling transgender men cuntboys/pooners/theyfabs/ect. I think you are the problem actually

[transautismman]

Omegaverse had such strong potential to explore things like gender, sexuality, societal expectations, and systemic discrimination at the intersection of two separate axes of gender and instead y'all used it to make cis men pregnant.

[ftmtftm]

When I was about 15 I finally convinced my parents to let me go to therapy.

I was vaguely openly queer, as in, I hadn't told my parents I was trans yet but I had an online girlfriend when I was 14 that they knew about, I was publicly identifying as pan, and was involved in my high school GSA, etc. and I needed a private space outside of school and the internet where I could process my traumas while being out as trans. As such it was really important to me that I had a queer or queer friendly therapist. Now that was hard to come by in Indiana even in the 2010's (especially bc a lot of the ones advertised were covert conversion therapists) but we did finally find one that took our insurance. A middle aged, married cis lesbian, who advertised as having experience with trans clients*.

I didn't know this until my early 20's when my mom and I were reconciling her poor reaction to my eventual public coming out as trans at 18, but my therapist was very convinced that I was not trans when I came out to her. She shared the fact that I told her I was trans to my parents and explicitly told all four of them she doubted me in her sessions with them about me.

I'm thinking about this all because the anniversary of my dad's passing was recently and I've been doing a lot of reflecting on my conflicting feelings about the ways he treated me as a teen (that was part of why I was in therapy, and why my parents were having sessions with my therapist without me). Then the memory of a day where he took me to Barnes & Noble and made me pick out several fashion magazines because "he thought I needed to be more feminine" came to mind and it clicked.

My therapist probably told him to do that.

It always struck me as very odd that my dad did that because while he was always kind of a "girl dad" with me growing up, he was also the first parent to fully embrace me when I publicly came out and never had any issue with my general lack of femininity when I was younger - in fact he often encouraged it and was very progressive about my upbringing... Until I started seeing my therapist and suddenly he was very concerned about me being a young woman and not being "feminine enough".

If that isn't a perfect example of transandrophobia, anti-trans masculinity, the gendered correction young people perceived as young women experience when exploring our genders/gender expression, and the private violence cis queer adults in positions of power can inflict on trans youth - particularly that adult cis women can inflict upon trans masculine youth, I don't know what is.

*It turned out, her only experience with a trans client was someone who had previously identified as a trans woman and was detransitioning. She told me this in one of our last sessions. First what a violation of her ethics as a therapist to tell me about that person and second, of course she would lie about having all of this experience treating trans people and then go on to convince my parents I wasn't trans - genuinely leading to serious trauma with my mom that didn't fully heal until a few years ago!!

[useless-stray]

if you tell trans men to kill themselves and they get upset and your response to that is “you’re a man, you by default perpetuate the conditions that lead to my abuse, you deserve this!!!” then you clearly have no damn idea what the fuck you’re talking about or what it’s like to be a trans man

[pululintu]

I think people who don't want phallo or any other bottom surgery should shut up sometimes.

Like all you have to say, is like: I don't think any off the available options are suitable for me, it's too expensive for me, I am not comfortable with the surgery, I have medical restrictions, I am fine with what I have, or like the million other completely valid reasons. But the moment it goes into hating on the results, or surgery, or calling it ugly etc, that's when I get mad.

Like I have seen so much of like calling it ugly or like a swollen sausage. Like my horrible summer child, a fucking sausage and two easter eggs painted by a four year old, would be better then what I have there right now.

Like yes it isn't and never will be perfect, but it is constantly evolving and getting better. Also it is a procedure real people get and are so happy. It saves lives and improves quality off life. Please shut up about your unsavory opinions on it.

[ftmtftm]

Im not the best with words but one of your post made me have a thought about the prevalant and transphobic idea trans people afab are transitioning due to internalized misogyny and the reality is quite a few of us will hyperfeminize ourselves (myself included at one point) due to misogyny (and transphobia)

Oh 100% — Broadly speaking it's a genuinely very common trans experience to push oneself into hyper-performing the gender presentation associated with one's AGAB when closeted or struggling with gender things.

I say broadly, because I've known many trans people across the spectrum of identity (myself included) who've done this at one point or another in their lives. I've known trans women who pushed themselves into hyper masculinity and given themselves eating disorders trying to build masculine muscle mass before coming out. I've known trans men who spent years wearing make up and shaving their bodies every single day, even on days where they wouldn't go out, before coming out. I've known nonbinary people who realized they were only keeping their facial hair routine because it made them feel like they had control over their appearance, despite it being a huge source of dysphoria for them, and other nonbinary people who would go full glam every time they set foot out of the house, only to later realize they were doing it because they felt so much pressure to be feminine in their environment that they were genuinely afraid of what would happen if they didn't.

I bring that up not to shift the focus, but highlight that we're not alone in that experience among other trans people.

You are absolutely right that there is a huge contradiction in the narratives about trans people assigned female transitioning due to internalized misogyny when we, in contrast, often actually hyperfeminize ourselves under misogynist pressure in order to avoid scrutiny, harassment, assault, etc.

While it's certainly not an uncommon experience by any means (it's one I share and just about every trans masc I know IRL shares too), it's not one I see talked about or written about very publicly. It's really disheartening because none of us are alone in it, but often times we think we are due to the lack of open conversations about the subject.

[bimmyjimmy]

i’m taking him away