This blog is changing focuses!

Trans man, he/him, bi | 30 | ESFJ | AKA hanchandehen and hanchan1014 | Hi, this blog is being repurposed for my needs but will still include all that weeb shit people started following me for in the first place thank you all

[vhsdogs]

been replaying animal crossing lately

[the-real-numbers-deactivated202]

[rongzhi]

An adolescent bamboo rat (竹鼠) doing bamboo rat things

[tahthetrickster]

[foxes-in-love]

[bemusedlybespectacled]

this might be because I’m a family law lawyer and also an old crone who remembers when marriage equality wasn’t a thing (as in, marriage equality only became nation-wide two months before I went to law school), but I have Strong Feelings about the right to marry and all the legal benefits that come with it

like I’m all for living in sin until someone says they don’t want to get married because it’s ~too permanent~ and in the same breath start talking about having kids or buying a house with their significant other. then I turn into a 90-year-old passive-aggressive church grandma who keeps pointedly asking when the wedding is. “yes, a divorce is very sad and stressful, but so is BEING HOMELESS BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT ENTITLED TO EQUITABLE DISTRIBUTION OF MARITAL PROPERTY, CAROLINE!”

[bemusedlybespectacled]

“oh, he thinks a piece of paper shouldn’t define your relationship? ASK HIM HOW HE FEELS ABOUT BEING ON YOUR BABY’S BIRTH CERTIFICATE, PATRICIA.”

[bemusedlybespectacled]

“oh, sure, it’s all fun and games until your estranged parents are making medical decisions for you and inheriting all your property, TIMOTHY.”

[bemusedlybespectacled]

so, I’ve gotten this question and similar ones before, and I want to use it to go into what marriage actually is.

so, in law, there are a couple of legal assumptions made when someone is a close family member, like a parent. the assumptions are that this person knows you well enough to make decisions on your behalf in an emergency, supports or is supported by you financially, and, most importantly, that they are emotionally significant to you in a way that makes them different from a total stranger or a good friend. immigration law, for example, prioritizes families over people immigrating for jobs alone, because not getting a job doesn’t have the same emotional weight as never seeing your mom again.

the difference is that you don’t get to choose your family (outside of adoption and, uh, legally that’s not a bilateral decision). you do get to choose your spouse. the fact that you chose them is why they get priority for things like inheritance and immigration, even over your parents or your siblings or your grandma.

how does the government know that this particular person is someone you want to have as part of your family? you fill out a form and you tell them.

what happens if you don’t want them in your family anymore, and don’t want those assumptions made about them? you fill out a different form and you tell the government that.

the thing I think that’s hard for people to wrap their heads around – whether you’re a starry-eyed romantic or a pragmatic bitch like me – is that marriage isn’t an announcement of how much you love someone. that’s what a facebook status update is for. you do not need to be in love, or sexually/romantically monogamous, or be religious, or any of the other things people associate with marriage, in order to be married.

it’s a legal decision. it is choosing to get certain benefits (like taxes, because it’s assumed you’re financially supporting each other) in exchange for certain responsibilities (because it’s assumed you’re supporting each other, it stops mattering exactly who bought what after you got married, so divorce splits the whole pool of stuff even if one person bought like 75% of it).

you don’t get the one without the other, and you don’t get either if you don’t affirmatively say that’s what you want to have happen. it doesn’t happen automatically, or in every romantic relationship no matter how serious, because the choice is the point.

and, to be clear: if you do not want, or do not care about, the legal rights and responsibilities of being married, you should not get married. it’s a fucking legal contract that has serious legal implications! it’s not something you should be doing for funsies!

tl;dr: if you want all the shit that comes with a marriage, good and bad, you need to tell the government that’s what you want. if you don’t want it, then you don’t need to do it, but you need to also be aware of what you’re potentially losing (in exchange for what you’re keeping). that should be an informed decision, not one you make for emotional reasons like “I just want everyone to know I’m only having sex with this person forever” or “our love is so pure it transcends legal boundaries.”

[ida-backwards-intherain]

Is there any option other than marriage for telling the government you want this person to be part of your family? Like, can you draw up some kind of homebrew contract?

[bemusedlybespectacled]

Short answer: No. If there was, queer people would have done it already.

Long answer: That’s a little like asking “can you become a citizen via contract rather than going through the immigration and naturalization process?” Marriage is a legal status: you either are or you aren’t. Can you cobble together very specific stuff, like advanced healthcare directives and wills and whatnot? Yes, absolutely. But anything that requires you to be legally married as a status cannot be contracted away: you can’t file taxes jointly or sponsor someone for a green card or get someone’s Social Security benefits if they die if you’re not married to that person.

Now, to be clear: some things that often require marriage do not always require marriage. For example, usually you need to be married to have someone unrelated to you be on your health insurance, but my job’s specific health insurance plan allows coverage for domestic partners, which they define as a single person who has cohabitated with you for six months or more and is in a committed relationship with you. So even though my fiancé and I are not married yet, he’s been on my health insurance for the past year and a half, because we hit the six month mark of living together right around when I had to re-enroll in my health insurance for the year.

But if we’d gotten married sooner, he’d have been able to get on my health insurance right away (getting married is a qualifying event that lets someone get on a health insurance plan outside of the enrollment period), but since he’s just a cohabitating partner, we had to wait six months for him to get on my insurance. And if he’d moved in with me a month later, we’d have to wait a whole year before he could enroll with me on my health insurance. Even though it’s allowed, it still doesn’t have the same standing as a marriage.

I guess technically adult adoption is an option, in that it is what queer people did for a while in lieu of marriage, but it’s a bad idea for a lot of reasons (not least of which being that you can divorce a spouse but you can’t undo an adoption).

[littledeconstruction-deactivate]

this, THIS is why QPR make me so fucking nervous. i’m not trying to shit on your beautiful poly aroace love affair, i’m asking you HOW WILL THIS RELATIONSHIP HOLD UP IN COURT. cause, news flash: it won’t.

if you have shared bank accounts and a house and a kid with someone who isn’t married to you, they can wipe you out – legally speaking – and you have no recourse. none. you will never see your kid again, unless you’re lucky and contributed half their DNA.

if they have a car accident and end up in hospital, you don’t have a legal right to see them. if they’re in a coma, their parents can pull the plug and adopt that child and you can do nothing.

queers wanted marriage equality not to Be Like Teh Hets, but because it is the most legal protection you can ever have against that bad stuff that comes (and it comes for everyone).

if you don’t have that stuff, if you’re relying on your partners to do the right thing forever and be perfect people and never have a business collapse or a messy family situation or an accident or even to get sick … you’re being really, really naïve.

[greyhairedgeekgirl]

Pre-legal-gay-marriage, I saw this happen.  I was on a parenting board and one day a woman we’d posted with for years told us her partner and one of their children had died in a car accident.  And because she wasn’t the biological parent of the surviving child – the child she’d been a parent to since conception – her ex’s parents took custody and took the child away and kept her from seeing that child.  Ever.

Because here’s the thing: children are not property.  Specifically, in estate law, children are not, and cannot be “Real Property.”  You cannot bequeath them like furniture, books, and bank accounts.   

“But my will states who I want as guardian!”  You say. Welp.  That statement is, in law, only a (strong) suggestion.  A judge still still have to rule on guardianship of your minor child, and you cannot, from the grave, dictate where they end up.  

Again: Children are not real property. If you are not their biological or legal parent, the state can remove them from your custody and hand them to someone more closely related, or not related at all but merely less gay, less queer, less “inappropriate” by your state’s legal standards.

The woman I knew back then was on good term with her not-quite-in-laws. Or thought she was.  Because as soon as her partner died, their tune changed 100%, they found anti-gay legal support, and they took that woman’s child from her.  Forever. 

That’s not my only “my outlaws are great and fine with us and its okay we’re not legally married” story, but it’s probably the most heartbreaking.  Though the image of a man who has just lost his partner of 25 years watching his ex-outlaws take ½ of his chairs, ½ of his pillows, ½ of his sheets, ½ of his napkins, ½ of his towels, ½ of his dishes, ½ of his books….. is pretty fucking close.  After they made him sit behind “the family” at his partner’s funeral.

[mierac]

My mother was a lifelong Republican, a very conservative Catholic. The thing that pushed her over on legalizing gay marriage was stories about people being in the hospital and their partner of 20 years not being allowed to see them, because they weren’t legally married. She thought that was wrong and unfair. 

Also a reminder “get married” does not mean “have a wedding.” You can file the paperwork and get married in a courthouse or office. There doesn’t even need to be a ceremony, you just have to sign some papers. (Bonus: you get access to the legal privileges of marriage as well as the protections, AND you get to stick it to the billion dollar “wedding industry” that preys on us all.)

[godlessondheimite]

[fluffmugger]

#so did they miss the part where gatsby ends up floating dead in a pool and all the miserable deaths in wuthering heights#or did they miss that because there weren’t any chapters titled In Which The Sinners Are Punished For Their Errors#like. even if you require explicit moral instruction from literature it’s pretty hard to miss the comeuppance in those.

[pennie-dreadful]

“What I assume my teachers were trying to teach me”

[doctorbluesmanreturns]

Huck Finn is about a white Southern boy who was raised to believe that freeing slaves is a sin that would send you directly to hell who forges a familial bond with a runaway slave and chooses to free him and thereby in his mind lose his salvation because he refuses to believe that his best friend and surrogate father is less of a man just because he’s black. Yes it features what we now consider racial slurs but this is a book written only 20 years after people were literally fighting to be allowed to keep other human beings as property, we cannot expect people from the 1880s to exactly conform with the social mores of 2020, and more to the point if we ourselves had been raised during that time period there’s very little doubt that we would also hold most if not all of the prevalent views of the time because actual history isn’t like period novels written now where the heroes are perfect 21st century social justice crusaders and the villains are all as racist and sexist as humanly possible. Change happens slowly and ignoring the radical statement that we’re all human beings that Twain wrote at a time when segregation and racial tensions were still hugely prevalent just because he wrote using the language of his time period is short-sighted and foolhardy to the highest degree.

[mikkeneko]

I’m really kind of alarmed at the rise in the past few years of the “and we do condemn! wholeheartedly!” discourse around historical figures. it seems like people have somehow boomeranged between “morals were different in the past, therefore nobody in the past can ever be held accountable for ANY wrongs” to “morals are universal and timeless, and anything done wrong by today’s standards in the past is ABSOLUTELY unforgiveable” so completely, because social media 2.0 is profoundly allergic to nuance

please try this on for size:

there have always been, in past times as today, a range of people in every society, some of whom were even then fighting for a more just and compassionate accord with their fellow man and some of whom let their greeds and hatreds rule them to the worst allowable excesses. the goal of classics and history education is to teach you enough context to discern between the two, not only in the past but in the present

[three--rings]

My mind just boggles at the “There’s Racism In That Book” argument.  Yes, there is racism in that book, because that book is ABOUT RACISM.  The message is that it is BAD. 

My high school English teacher, who was a viciously brilliant woman, used to say that when people banned Huck Finn they said it was about the language, but it was really the message they were trying to ban, the subversive deconstruction of (religious) authority and white supremacy.

[lyricwritesprose]

Huckleberry Finn can actually be seen as a powerful case study in trying to do social justice when you have absolutely no tools for it, right down to vocabulary.  And in that respect, it’s a heroic tale, because Huck—with absolutely no good examples besides Jim, who he has been taught to see as subhuman, with no guidance, with everyone telling him that doing the right thing will literally damn him, with a vocabulary that’s full of hate speech—he turns around and says, “I’m not going to do it.  I’m not going to participate in this system.  If that means I go to Hell, so be it.  Going to Hell now.”

(I used to read a blogger who insisted that “All right, I’ll go to Hell,” from Huckleberry Finn is the most pure and perfect prayer in the canon of American literature.  Meaning, as I understand it, that the decision to do the right thing in the face of eternal damnation is the most holy decision one can make, and if God Himself is not proud of the poor mixed-up kid, then God Himself is not worth much more than a “Get thee behind me,” and the rest of us should be lining up to go to Hell too.  Worth noting that this person identified as an evangelical Christian, not because he was in line with what current American evangelicals believe, but because “they can change their name, I’m not changing mine.”  Interesting guy.  Sorry for the long parenthetical.)

Anyway, the point of Huck Finn, as far as I can tell, is that you can still choose to do good in utter darkness, with no guidance and no help and none of the right words.

And when you put it like that, it’s no wonder that a lot of people on Tumblr—people who prioritize words over every other form of social justice—find it threatening and hard to comprehend.

[qwertyu858]

Also, there is not that much of racial slurs. Like those guys are making it sound like its just “n-word” bombs from start to finish while, yeah they are a bunch of racial slurs but not at that point.

[sharper-and-bigger]

These people would spontaneously combust if they watched Blazing Saddles

[bowditch]

the wild thing about this is that its generating the creation of actually subpar literature– blatant moralism and virtue signaling, “villains” who are actually justified in their behavior because of wrongs done to them instead of people who genuinely need to change, and sort of emotions-as-morality protagonists.

i’m not part of the “everything must be miserable to be realistic” camp, but it does cheapen the victories of triumphs and the horrors of tragedy to have stories where all the consequences are meted out with perfect proportion to the narratively-identified ills. literature should be capable of not explicitly telling you something is wrong or something is admirable because it’s showing you through the narrative. this is what show don’t tell SHOULD mean!

when we have characters who attempt to engender sympathy disgust us by their behavior, we’re cementing something in our own perception of what’s moral. when we feel the stark unfairness of someone who is trying to do good suffering anyway, that IS A KIND OF STORY. literature should challenge us and cause us to work through the complicated feelings of wanting to defend someone who is behaving badly, or disliking someone who is doing the right thing, because reading for fun is FINE but also not all our reading should be fiction that pats is on the back and makes us feel good about having The Right Ideas.

YA makes sense as an area for this conflict to see friction because teens do keenly feel the injustice of the world as they become more aware of it, and they want solutions that lessen that pain for them, and that’s natural. but they also deserve good literature and teaching and for that mess to be reflected in their literature in ways that don’t treat them as stupid.

[fourthage]

The evangelical blogger is Fred Clark, writing as Slacktivist. The blog post referenced is one of the ones taking a critical look at the Left Behind Series: The Rise of the Anti-Huck (scroll down to the quote).

[maeka]

フレンドさんです！

[princessmo]

all video games should be dressup games. if you can't put your guy in a little outfit what's the point

[animatedtext]

[vaspider]

If you think these "anti drag" pushes aren't going to be used against trans people for just existing in public, you really really need to read up on the vice laws which caused Stonewall.

If you think Stonewall was only trans women and transmascs/butches/trans men weren't arrested during the leadup to the riot, you need to read up on who was there, who was arrested, and why.

They are coming for all of us. Your supposed respectability will not save you. We will survive this if we stick together, and only if.

[kinka-juice]

From the Wikipedia page for Stonewall (warning for sexual assault mention):

The raid did not go as planned. Standard procedure was to line up the patrons, check their identification and have female police officers take customers dressed as women to the bathroom to verify their sex, upon which any people appearing to be physically male and dressed as women would be arrested. Those dressed as women that night refused to go with the officers. Men in line began to refuse to produce their identification. The police decided to take everyone present to the police station, after separating those suspected of cross-dressing in a room in the back of the bar. Both patrons and police recalled that a sense of discomfort spread very quickly, spurred by police who began to assault some of the lesbians by "feeling some of them up inappropriately" while frisking them.

Literally you need to defend men in dresses to fight against transphobia, period. The hate comes from the same root.

Attacking drag is attacking the right to present how you chose. And legislation against it will be weaponized against everyone, Cis, Trans, and otherwise.

Drag is a product of queer culture, and includes many many trans people in addition to GNC cis people.

Yes, you need to include Bianca Del Rio wearing a dress and makeup as part of her comedy, yes, you need to include a cis man who cross-dresses because it turns him on. As soon as you make it okay to go after one single group for wearing clothing that "doesn't match" their assigned sex or perceived gender, its open season to attack everyone for their presentation.

Yes, there are transphobic and misogynist drag performers. The whole category of art is not, and tons and tons of trans people participate in drag and drag is what cracked their egg.

Also, it's wrong to suppress anyone's presentation, whether they are cis, trans, woman, man, non-binary, gay, straight, anything. I don't care how they identify. If Trixie Mattel doing her thing makes you dysphoric, fine, don't watch her. But it's not wrong. It's not grooming. It's not anything wildly different from a cast member at Disneyland dressed as Snow White.

[13yearslater]

Successful trans men

I wish I knew about men like these growing up, I wish I knew that trans men could be successful after a lifetime of never seeing anyone ‘like me’ excelling in life. So here are some trans men - some that you may have heard of, some that you may not - that are successful in a range of careers. Never let being trans hold you back, never think you can’t do something, never think there is not a place for you.

Ben Barres American neurobiologist for Stanford University and advocate for women in science. Barre’s research on the interactions between glial cells and neurons changed the way that we understand the brain and opened up a whole new field of research.

Stephen Whittle Professor of equalities law. Founder of FTM Network in 1989 and Press for Change in 1992. Whittle has been heavily involved in trans activism since joining the Self Help Association for Transsexuals in 1979. His research and activism has been instrumental in ensuring the rights of trans people in the UK.

Michael D Cohen Actor, teacher and coach. Making his break in award-winning Nickelodeon sitcoms Harvey Danger and Danger Force he was the first series regular actor to publicly come out as transgender. Cohen has a BSc in cell biology and a masters degree in adult education, teaching at his own acting studio and providing workshops.

Chris Mosier American triathlete and award-winning coach. Six time member of Team USA in both duathlon and triathlon, Mosier also won two national championships in racewalking and was the first transgender athlete to qualify for the Olympic trials to compete against other members of his gender.

Yance Ford African-American film producer and director. Ford received an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking and was nominated for an Oscar for his part in producing and directing the documentary Strong Island which follows the death of his brother.

Kael McKenzie Canadian judge. Serving in the Canadian Armed Forces for several years, McKenzie later attended law school and and worked as a lawyer before being appointed as a judge to the Provincial Court of Manitoba in 2015. 

Shane Ortega Native American former flight engineer in the US army, former marine and professional bodybuilder. Throughout his career Ortega has served in Iraq and Afghanistan in over 400 combat missions. He has a long history of advocating for the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the recent banning on transgender service members in the US army. 

Drago Renteria Chicano photojournalist and deaf and LGBT activist. Renteria founded the Deaf Queer Resource and is CEO of DeafVision - a webhosting and development company run by deaf people and the founder of the National Deaf LGBTQ Archives. Renteria has been instrumental in both creating and hosting many online deaf/queer spaces online along with being heavily involved in real-world activism for decades.

Phillipe Cunningham Elected city councillor for ward 4 Minneapolis and previous special education teacher, Cunningham holds a masters degrees in Organizational Leadership & Civic Engagement and in Police Administration and is passionate about tacking inequalities in his community. 

[jenroses]

The vast majority of these men did not get puberty blockers early. I think that’s important for trans youth to know… that stupid legislation can’t stop them from being trans and transitioning well, even if the hoops are worse and take longer. (I think trans youth should be able to transition when and how they need to, but in the face of current transphobic legislation, you need to understand that even if they manage to delay you, they can’t stop you.)

[cchaiart]

xiaoxiaoxiaoxiaoxiaoxi

[steakandcheeeese]

Did I just see, in the year of our lord 2020 on tumblr dort com, someone use the term 'squick'?

Do we not use squick any more?

Did not get that memo

had I received the memo I would have lit it on fire

[ruffboi-mags]

Squick is a useful word that allows you to say “I don’t enjoy this and am in fact the opposite of enjoying it, but there’s nothing wrong with you enjoying it.”

It’s a good word and the only reason I can think of to want it to not be used is bc it flies in the face of the purity police’s wanting to make all things they personally dislike “problematic” and “gross”.

[prismatic-bell]

Squick is also a useful word when you don’t want to misuse/dilute “trigger.”

Example: I am deeply squicked by descriptions of characters eating in a messy fashion that would leave food and grease all over their faces. I don’t have any trauma or phobias associated with it, so it’s not a trigger. And it’s not something that’s widely disapproved of, like, say, murder, so it’s not something you’re likely to tag for. (After all, how many “cute” photos have you seen of Baby’s First Attempt To Use A Spoon?) I just think it’s really gross, and if it pops up a lot or in detail it’s very likely to tank my enjoyment of what I’m reading, so I’d prefer not.

That, dear children, is a squick. I am squicked by messy eaters.

Please bring the word back in 2020. It’s incredibly useful.

[gothiccharmschool]

People, I am BEGGING you to bring back “squick”. It is so. damn. useful. 

Seriously, when/why did it fall out of use among the rest of you? I still use it, everyone I know (in and out of fandom) still uses it. 

[superinframan]

[k8e-88]

Why would you leave that in the tags??

[whitepeopletwitter]

[thoodleoo]

if you needed proof that i’m really not cut out for the casual environment of teaching from my living room, just know that today i almost ruined a 20 minute long video i was recording about romano-british culture because i almost said “this dude fucks” while talking about the bitchin outfits worn by british chieftains

[thoodleoo]

in my defense look at this dude! the level of ‘this dude fucks’ here is off the charts

[thoodleoo]

[nephenees-lance]

There’s a more commonly known version of this that uses pre-timeskip art, but the artist (polarityplus) did this post-timeskip version as well.

———————– Ooo this looks cool