אַזאַ מין מענטש

?ווער וועט בלײַבן? גאָט וועט בלײַבן! איז דיר ניט גענוג

[aza-min-mentsch]

Hi tumblr I am now dating the rabbinical student I talked about. They're really adorable and כ'האָב שוין אָנגעהויבן צו כאַפּן געפֿילן and they are the first frum person I've ever dated which is really awesome! I can already see some 'divergences' (to use the most conciliatory Marxist language I can) around me being a binary trans woman and them being a very non-binary person (differences in trans politics) and their religiousness being less intellectually and culturally motivated than mine. But whatever I'm actually happy enough now to not obsess over them and let things develop without undue neurosis. Yay!

Also in the future when I talk about the people I'm dating I will use the monikers "rabbinical student" "college student" and "big-name online feminist".

[aza-min-mentsch]

I call upon all so-called "new atheists" (including anyone who has financially contributed to or spread the ideas of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, etc.) to publicly condemn the brutal terrorist murders in Chapel Hill and repudiate the racist and imperialist politics of the above "thinkers." If you don't, how can I be sure you don't at least passively condone the murders of Deah Barakat, Yusor Muhammed and Razan Abu-Salha? Thanks!

[aza-min-mentsch]

I remember being a young confused trans girl on the internet in the late 90s reading endless personal blogs of trans women and wow this is so different from tumblr but there were endless warnings on these sites about you shouldn't transition if you haven't given it like years of personal reflection and it would be the only thing stopping you from putting a gun in your mouth ... maybe. I remember reading absolutely ludicrous hypotheticals like would you physically transition if everyone still considered you 100% a man or would you rather have everyone consider you a woman but never physically transition? Even mtfconfessions, for all I love it for getting into the really deep and sticky abjection and neurosis of trans women, don't get as deep as lot of those blogs got. These women made blogs to talk about being trans and make community and a lot of them gave bitter and stark warnings about anyone following their path (and also policed the living hell out of other trans women). 

I never did what they said. I never did some soul searching. As soon as I realized it was possible and I could I did. The most I ever really justified it was when I was going through the three month with a therapist gatekeeping bullshit. I mostly wanted cover and role models for being a dyke too and also for being my own woman (and honestly the barbies and queens in my life have given me the most encouragement on that). It's probably easier for me because given all the options of physical and social transition I'm check check check all the way down the list. I was always more interested in the material conditions and the actual experiences of trans women, how to play that game and maybe how to change it - rather than spending any energy thinking about should I transition, is it right or appropriate to transition. I'm still constantly thinking about this! I wonder to this very day what happened to all the trans women and queens and vestidos I knew - are they still alive, what do their lives consist of, are they happy, what do they think when they look back?

To the extent I ever thought if I was a TS or TV or TG (back then) or if I'm binary or not or what the fuck ever (now) I thought of it in terms of solidarities. The only reason I would go there and say I'm binary as fuck is because I am very willing, if it came down to it being a war, to be on the side of all people who call themselves women. If some misogynist came shooting for all the woman he could find I would not use that I was trans to get out of that even if he wanted to let me. I would tell that motherfucker to go ahead and kill me. Now obviously I have more common experiences and solidarity with trans women and latina women and jewish women but it still extends to all women and doesn't extend to men. And obviously I have my own very individual experience of gender and map of ideas and and associations and personal goals but really so does every woman on the planet I don't think my experience, even if pretty unique, is special or deserving of a specific noun.

I've heard people on this site that the more people identify as some sort of trans, even if that basically means only they just say you can use whatever pronouns during a PGP go-around, then that's positive for the cause of trans people. I obviously disagree because what does focusing on the differences in everyone's individual gender experience and worse, their greater theories of how gender operates, what does that do to build solidarity with trans people? What use is it that people declare themselves somehow outside of gender or just not enough like any gender category that exists in society outside of the internet? How does this build useful solidarity to analyze and work against exploitation and oppression that mediates through gender? How is this useful to build community and organize based on shared experiences? How is saying you're trans when you have approximately zero of what trans people would call trans experiences helpful? Why do you think you need to question your gender to be down with trans people?? You can also be in solidarity with people you don't have a lot in common with and I strive to do this all the time (immigration rights, pro-Palestine advocacy). At this point I appreciate when a person just can call themselves cis and I just about get excited when they don't feel a huge need to throw down the identity instead of just being real about who they are if asked and consistently and calmly reacting against transmisogynist shit. And I'm starting to seriously think about how all this mogai-ass proliferance of gender identities does to impede all these crucial and needed tasks.

I realize a lot of y'all on this site are young and finding yourself and I'm relatively unique in finding uniqueness a real burden instead of a treasure to yell about. I just want to make you think about what comes after doing you. You can say doing my transition was all about me and that's probably about right. But I also think coming into my womanhood (and my selfhood) has made me a person who can be there for people, who can build community to help out women like me. Are you really so interesting all by yourself? Or so good?

[pinebark]

tumblr could you be cool for like

one

fucking

minute

[aza-min-mentsch]

Did I tell about somehow being let into a relatively elite FB group featuring some of your most famous white trannies? I really didn't say much until my friend and I talked about how we use shade as a method of building community and friendship and the mod freaked out so hard she removed me from the group and shut it down for a week and then added me back w/o saying anything. Good times!

[aza-min-mentsch]

This gq rabbinical student is acting pretty thirsty which happens to be just what I want in my life. I think after I hook up with them I'll be feeling secure enough to get back into contact with my ex. Friends have been telling me it's a bad idea but I'm always the sort of person to rather rip the bandaid off too soon than wait...

[aza-min-mentsch]

Empire is so wild and trashy I actually am looking forward to them having a trans woman character and I'm sure they'd do it just to do it. Like other shows I groan at the mere idea because they'll pretend to be ~great representation~ while being awful and engineered for liberals but fucking Empire will go awf like I can hardly fucking imagine let's get Janet Mock to play a role or something.

[transhousingnetwork]

Friendly reminder that Trans Housing Network is not OKCupid, grindr, or FetLife. This is an international resource for a demographic which is subject to widespread housing discrimination and poverty and faces barriers to safely accessing the existing shelter system. Submitting posts on here, or responding to posts on here, with sexual content or with the hope of finding a romantic or sexual partner is predatory and morally abhorrent and will result in your being blocked immediately.

People posting “Need Couch” submissions: Please be careful of people contacting you with an offer that seems like it may be sexually motivated or predatory. Try to use your intuition to pick up on red flags. Google a person’s email address, name, phone number, et cetera before meeting them. Look at their blog if they have one. If you have the tumblr url of a person who has said something inappropriate to you, report it to this page so we can block them.

[transhousingnetwork]

This morning we received a report from a case manager who had posted here on behalf of a client that a man had contacted them, his message raised red flags, and that they looked up his email address on facebook and his profile had a number of posts about seeking trans women for sex and using sex industry slurs for trans women.

I do not know what this person’s tumblr URL is, so I cannot block him, but everyone please be careful when meeting people off of here, especially cis men. There are nearly 20,000 followers of this blog, so its impossible to go through and block all of the creeps and porn blogs following us, and it is completely impossible to prevent these guys from typing http://www.transhousingnetwork.com into their browser.

I encourage everyone submitting posts to avoid talking about things like length of time on hormones, ability to pass, surgical status, et cetera as this is information that sexual predators of trans people will use in order to select targets. I also encourage everyone to consider questions about these things, unnecessary sexual comments (“I’m kinky/into chastity/leather/age play” are unnecessary sexual comment- “I’m gay”, for example, is not), statements like “I’m an admirer of trans women”, etc as red flags.

Most of the cis men who make submissions here seem like nice people who are sincerely trying to help out, but predatory submissions occur often enough that I urge you all to be cautious. Please use google and facebook and find out as much as you can about a person before meeting them off of here.

[aza-min-mentsch]

1000th post

Thank you for enjoying my mostly original internet content. I'm too old (or maybe honestly I'm just not messy enough) to be super social on this social media but yeah if you enjoy my #brand hit me up for facebook/etc.

[aza-min-mentsch]

don't trust a radical queer who's over 30

[aza-min-mentsch]

Somebody make a story about a trans woman who starts off all radical queer and smash the gender binary but inexorably and quite without her realizing she chills out and gets a career and starts shopping at Ann Taylor with her cis dude fiancee.

[gifbro]

[aza-min-mentsch]

The most quintessential adult skill in my mind is being able to hear people talk about their traumas and troubles and having a reaction that is appropriate and useful for both parties. But this doesn't mean being like these trauma-informed social worker white queer motherfuckers and always going "oh wow, that must have been so hard" "that brings up so much" "you're so strong". Trauma after enough time is just a hard-ass fact of life and sometimes the best reaction is a simple nod or a short and simple "damn that must've sucked." And if you ever get disturbed by the way someone talks about their own shit, if it's too weird or light or funny, consider the fact that you aren't someone who it is safe to share trauma with. 

[aza-min-mentsch]

If you're not disabled then clearing off your sidewalk of snow only to the extent that you can go about your usual commute but not everyone around you can is a gold star dick move.

[aza-min-mentsch]

Even if the person on the subway or the street who is begging is lying and lives in an apartment and has a mortgage and shit, they're still making their livelihood by begging. Like don't act too outraged - that's still a pretty harsh and degrading way way to make money. I spent years homeless and I never begged - not saying that makes me a better person, it was just one thing I couldn't bring myself to do.

[aza-min-mentsch]

Use whatever tumblr-ass gender identity you want, but if you try to obfuscate your birth assignment while saying you're trans I definitely won't trust you.

[aza-min-mentsch]

Reading a Russian historian and he says "The present author is a historian, and this makes him immune to the ideas of 'triumphant justice' - most injustices of history have never been avenged, and many injustices have paid off handsomely, both to perpetuators and their descendants." like damn, be real son, be really real!!