Talking about trans/queer stuff. Opinions abound. liberation over assimilation. No one wins the oppression olympics. 21+ 03/20/21💉 10/04/23 🔪 08/21/24 🚮
I know everything is shit fucked sixteen ways before lunch time, but it remains a fact that you should not trust anyone who wants you to feel like the whole world hates you all the time. That's a person trying to sell you something, swallow you whole, or bleed you dry. Especially those times when it feels like they're right.
No one wants anything good from you who wants you always feeling scared and hated. They will wear you out and leave you in the bin the second fashions change. Things are extremely high levels of fucked, but you are not hated like that. It's scary and isolating but you are not alone like that. Worst case, come and shiver like a wet dog with me, I won't say anything and we can dry out.
linking arms with my fellow beloved transes who like nonconsensual and/or monstrous transformation story tropes because it allows you a fantasy where you get to change your body without being made to feel at fault for it
i shouldve been born into the universe where i get bit by a werewolf or something and struggle with my new monstrous form a while until i ultimately realize that i love being an inhuman beast and start living my best life, instead of this universe where i have to stick myself with a needle once a week to achieve a form that will only be seen as monstrous by a select portion of the population and i cant even render their bodies unidentifiable about it
to the people saying this is awakening something in them, its never too late, and if imagining that youre being experimented on by a mad scientist to turn you into a Creature against your will is how you get there, then thats how you get there
real talk tho ive seen ppl talk abt how long hair on men isn't intrinsically feminine & assuming so is racist can we get the same convo going for Black women w short hair can we start talking abt how short hair isn't intrinsically masculine or is that a step too far
idw hear any more white people's opinions on this topic bc it's so clear they do not get it but they're soooo confident they do...... "well nothing is intrinsically masculine or feminine" yesss it's almost as though every culture has its own constructed gender norms which is why these values r culturally relative & why it's racist to impose eurocentric gender expectations on racialized bodies. all well & good to say femininity & masculinity should be completely abolished but what are you going to do for the Black women who are being labelled masc or gender non-conforming right now for not aligning with white gender norms that exclude them by design. "gender norms are social constructs do whatever you want forever" isn't enough we need to be saying "Black women are assumed to be deviating from gender norms just by existing even when they are purposefully expressing femininity bc western gender structures are built upon whiteness" like you've got to start by dismantling the racism & white supremacy inherent in these structures or you will leave racialized women behind
“It’s easier for trans women to pass/be stealth!!”
“It’s easier for trans men to pass/be stealth!!”
Actually it’s easier for people with very specific bodies (white, thin, average height) with large incomes and supportive families to transition medically in a way which is more likely to conform to strict ideas of ‘man’ and ‘woman’
I swear every time I see someone try to make the argument for one of us having it better they exclusively either cite celebrities (again, see white, rich, thin) or assume that the people they know irl are representative of every trans person.
It also begs the point that YOU DO NOT KNOW IF SOMEONE IS STEALTH UNLESS THEY TELL YOU. No one actually knows how many trans people successfully live as stealth.
Most of the passing trans people I know personally are women, but most of the trans people I know to be stealth are men. I also know far more trans women than I do trans men. Not to ignore the fact that these arguments completely erase non binary people who are pressured to just pick a binary gender to ‘pass’ as because it is functionally impossible to be a ‘stealth’ non binary person.
It is completely possible to have important conversations about the specific oppressions that different kinds of trans people face without framing one group as being completely objectively better off. Stop trying to pit us against each other. It isn’t easy for *anyone* to be trans in this world.
little graphic i made to work out my thoughts on patriarchy & how it Does Gender. to explain:
this is an analysis of how gender is conceptualized by (western) patriarchal ideology, not how people's "real genders" function. people can and do move through these categories throughout their lives, and even in different contexts and circumstances. it is not that anyone is inherently or statically a "hegemonic man" or "subaltern woman" but that these are constructs that the patriarchy applies to people to dictate how they perceive and relate to themselves and others, and how others perceive relate to them, for the sake of maintaining power over society. similarly, "queer" here means not just those who personally identify as queer/LGBT, but those who are read as being beyond the appropriate bounds of binary gender/sex/sexuality.
the patriarchy uses a binary way of seeing the world, but the system itself does not run on a gender binary. this is for two reasons: a) that no matter how hard it tries, no patriarchy can ever erase the existence of intersex, trans+, GNC/genderqueer, gay people, etc. who fall outside how the gender binary is understood. patriarchy may deny that these people exist, but in practice, the existence of queers is as fundamental to the patriarchy as the existence of men or women, because there is always deviation from the binary and it has to be recognized to be punished; and
b) because gender doesn't exist outside the context of other social hierarchies. lower/upper class women, black/white women, enslaved women/mistresses, virgin or housewife/whore, etc. for example. this allows the patriarchy to directly reinforce and uphold other aspects of kyriarchy, while also being able to write off the failure of its own binary model as corruption from lesser or less "civilized" ways of being a wo/man. going back to point 1, these are not static categories. the point is that gender is always tiered, even within the supposedly simple man/woman binary. when it comes to those classed as women specifically, this is important to understand as women at the top of other hierarchies (particularly class and race) make active bargains with the patriarchy and often have a clear stake in upholding major elements of it directly because of how their womanhood is understood.
the patriarchy creates stereotypical traits, which it treats as masculine or feminine. the pursuit of these traits serve as the rules by which one is expected to play, at least in public, to show one's allegiance to the patriarchy and the willingness to maintain its illusions. these traits serve to, in various ways, control and direct people's labor and engagement in society. men and women are seen as having innate "good" traits (benevolent sexist stereotypes) and "bad" traits (misogynistic and misandristic stereotypes). hegemonic men and women are primarily defined by the "good" traits, being seen as able to "suppress" the negative elements of being a man or a woman, and being able to exist perfectly on opposite sides of the binary. subaltern wo/men are primarily defined by the "bad" traits and must struggle constantly against this perception, or risk being seen as a "failed" wo/men and socially punished, often violently. in this way, hegemonic men and women define themselves in opposition to each other, but also in opposition to the undisciplined, carnal "gender excess" of subaltern wo/men and queers.
additionally, because manhood and womanhood are defined by hierarchy, subaltern wo/men inevitably blur the boundaries of the binary. this can be seen in multiple ways, but maybe the most direct is how wealth allows for a strong division between the public (masculinized) space vs the private (femininized) space, allowing for strong homosociality, while those in poverty live in overlapping heterosocial spaces and often cannot afford to constantly perform oppositional sexism (for example, poor women being family breadwinners). this means that, like failed wo/men and queers, they are subjected to both misogynistic and misandristic stereotypes. queers are also perceived as having uniquely ugly or immoral traits born from their failure to align with the binary (misandrogynistic stereotypes).
the way this is designed isn't meant to imply that subaltern men & women are on perfectly equal playing fields gender-wise; it's more for simplicity than anything, but as always Things Are More Complicated Than That.
this is should be understood as a lens the patriarchy applies to society & to people, which it attempts to place people within & frequently struggles in doing that. it's a measuring stick to be held up to a person or group of people to figure out how one should think about and relate to them, its a set of filters to be flipped through to figure out the "proper" light in which to see a person and their actions. its a conceptual & social tool.
sometimes people have a fairly definitive place and are categorized in a certain way fairly consistently; other times, people bounce around depending on the context and their behaviors and what elements of them and their position in society are the most relevant to the goals of whoever is doing the categorizing. & as a lens, it can be adopted and recreated by any community within patriarchal civilization.
the ultimate point of dividing man and woman into hegemonic (or dominant) vs subaltern is that in a society with hierarchy ingrained into every (or just about every) aspect of life and culture, womanhood and manhood are defined by the expectation of hierarchy. there is no society where gender is integral to social belonging, in which you have any kind of upper-class and lower-class, and the upper-class allows itself to be seen as perfectly equal on a gendered level to the lower-class. its my opinion that truly intersectional feminism means starting from intersectionality, not imagining gender as something that can ever be "pure" and divorced from other social system that only later "intersects" with other, originally non-gendered forces. people's social experience (being) gender(ed) is always profoundly shaped by whether they are seen as the ideal (civilized) woman or man, or a knockoff (uncivilized) woman or man, even as people on both sides pretend these are homogenous groups with essentially equivalent experiences of gender.
this also isn't to say the binary lens doesn't matter, either. patriarchal gender ideology uses both the above quintet and the strict m/f gendersex binary as tools. the point of describing patriarchal gender ideology beyond the binary is so that we can break away from feminist theory that remains stuck in patriarchal ways of seeing the world. if we cannot discuss the centrality of queerness and internal gender hierarchies to how the patriarchy functions in practice, our criticisms of it will always fall short and we will keep recreating elements of it in our own minds and communities.
we cannot break away from the binary without realizing that the binary was broken to begin with, it was made broken, it could never function if it was anything but; thus spoke Sophia Giovannitti: "Gender is never fixed; gender is always broken."
What pisses me off the most is that y'all don't keep this doomerism to yourself, it would be one thing if you just wrote this shit in a diary, but y'all are putting that out there trying to scare young trans people into being divided. spreading the idea that trans unity is an "unobtainable fantasy" only serves to make trans people feel even more alone and desperate than before, during a time where being united will give us strength.
Trans people should be encouraged to find safety and community in one another, and not just with trans people that are "like them."
I also think that the strength gap is at least partially manufactured women would in fact be stronger overall if little girls were encouraged to do physically taxing games and activities and eat their fill while they’re growing vs having to constantly diet and be sedentary indoors (or god forbid do intense cardio while under-eating). The amount of adult women honestly afraid to lift weights bc they think they’ll get bulky as though bulking isn’t a full time job that athletes have to spend all their time on and anyone on earth gets shredded from just using their adult muscles for their intended purpose, girl your bone density 🥀
if you say women are intentionally nerfed from birth in 2026 people look at you like you’re insane and start condescendingly telling you about how women are just better at different things (but not during their periods haha) but this was a completely basic feminist talking point I grew up with like “girls can do it too! [shot of little girls climbing and running with boys]” nickelodeon commercial tier base level I hate it how is everyone suddenly dumber than the average 7 year old
the thing about misogyny is that femininity is both devalued AND forced on women (and those misgendered as women). if you fail to meet the arbitrary standard of Womanly Charm you're ugly and unwanted and hate yourself and if you succeed you're shallow and brainless and weak. if you don't try to conform you're lazy and if you do you're vain. it is not possible to beat this system. feminism needs both "feminine doesn't mean weak or less-than" AND "women don't have to be feminine to have value", and if you are fighting for one of these the people fighting for the other are not your enemies, nor are they privileged over you.
this post is inclusive of trans people, including but not limited to trans women and transfeminine people. exclusionary sentiment is not welcome.
You have all these people just freaking out about the safety of sex hormones being used for the same purpose they have been for decades, meanwhile the same people who didn't even know what GLP-1 was until a few years ago are now eager to get on these medications and nobody cares about possible long-term effects or regret.
I don't wanna sound like mean or nuthin but a lot of y'all have been trapped in a vortex of suffering for so long that you've come to identify with the suffering as an aspect of your personality and ideology and thereby to covet suffering and to mistake debasement for enoblement and humiliation for virtue
queer rep goes thru these cycles where every couple of years lgbt people are like "we get no rep in media and the representation we do get is way too sanitized and it feels so fake and flat. wheres the queer characters that are messy and flawed and REAL??"
then someone gets brave and makes a character who is a real bastard and makes all the wrong choices and is maybe even malicious at times and they make this character explicitly queer. and then fans are like "this is what you think of us?? worst representation ever" and the creator gets absolutely lambasted, ESPECIALLY if theyre queer themselves
then everyone else sees this and either thinks its too risky to include a queer character, or wants to make sure they're only doing the good and nice representation with no flaws or mistakes
then queer people are like "we get no rep in media and the representation we do get is way too sanitized and
The constant assertion that there's no harmful back-edge to patriarchal masculinity is, I think, somewhat reactionary and straight up reinforces patriarchal gender systems. It demonstrates a painfully incomplete analysis of how gender even functions, but it's also an active, conscious deletion of all the legitimate, valid, real criticisms of the masculinized experience within patriarchy. It serves to reify gender as a literal class structure (which it isn't, exactly) and makes patriarchy, misogyny, and paternalism into materiallly-correct positions with no downsides to serve the class interest of masculinized people. Which it is not at all. Especially when you consider the fact that the fundamental function of gender is literally just biasing your assumptions and interpretations of other people's behavior. Which is a bad thing to do pretty fundamentally.
When almost anyone says somebody's experience isn't a problem, what they mean is they just don't care. The thing bout all this social justice stuff is it's basically all about learning how to care. To develop eyes to see what's really happening. So when you refuse to do that about some things, because of how your gender biases function, you're literally just doing the thing you admit we need to stop doing.
been sort of obsessively combing through articles and websites and resources about top surgery and recovery more and more as I gear up to My Big Day and while I hate to report I may have gotten through most of the scientifically rigorous and reputable sites I am at least, now, stumbling over some of the funnier AI generated slop images i've ever seen in my quest for Patient Information
Because I was now a man, I could not speak about what it was like to be a woman. Because I had been a woman, I could never really speak about what it was like to be a man. Do the math: I could not speak. It was a double erasure, a double bind, in which every experience I had was false, and so nothing I said was credible. I could no longer derive authority from my experiences before transition, and shouldn’t even cite them — I had never “really” been a woman, so those things hadn’t happened — but those experiences could always be weaponized against me to prove I wasn’t “really” the man I claimed to be.
They call it erasure, when this happens. I wasn’t prepared for how literal the term was. Every day, I could feel myself disappear.
— Eraserhead: On writer's block and being a gender traitor by Jude Doyle
There are many good paragraphs but this stuck out the most:
"If “man” and “woman” are opposed and mutually exclusive categories, if men can only ever be predators and women can only ever be prey, then trans men can’t exist. We are logically impossible under the terms of the current system. You either “treat us like men” by voiding out half our lives, or you write us back into womanhood by denying our male identities. I knew all that, at least in theory, but when I came out, I actually saw my life story disappearing into other people’s blind spots. I watched myself become unthinkable in real time."
Also these:
"This wasn’t about accountability. This was people tactically forgetting my entire life,including incidents from my life they had personally witnessed or been involved in, so that they could shame me for transitioning. It was bad for me to be a man; if I was a man, I was a bad man, I was all the worst things men are. I was hulking, I was threatening, I was predatory, I was violent."
"I was treated as both genders, but only the most monstrous stereotype of each one."
Because that is exactly it. Anti-transmasculinity is being both erased and vilified, and then gaslit out of speaking about those experiences by the people who are erasing and vilifying you.
"The idea that I had always occupied a privileged position within patriarchy was, frankly, untrue; nor did it seem to me that a trans person was any less gender-marginalized than your average cis woman. What privilege I had was conditional, and these books were no guide. Men who wanted to “forge a positive masculinity” (and everyone was very clear that I needed one of those) were encouraged to get in touch with their “feminine sides.” Maybe that was healthy for cis guys, but I had been forced to do feminine things, and present in feminine ways, for the entirety of my young life. Whatever liberation I had achieved came from giving myself permission to stop."
As did the ending:
"When I write these days, I try to remind myself that whatever I’m afraid of saying is already true, and denial will not change it. I remind myself that the wrong people benefit from my silence, and will use it to write a version of my life I can’t recognize, or just write me out of the world. There is no established story or role for me; I belong to a category the world is still learning to imagine. I cannot account for the world as other people imagine it. I cannot give you every man’s story, every trans man’s story, every trans person’s story; I don't know them. What I do know is that every new story helps map the territory. All I can do for you, from where I'm standing, is tell you how things are."
the irony that jude kissed ass so hard to talia bhatt (and she, in response, proceeded to invalidate him and dismiss his experiences, all while he continued trying to kiss ass to her as she's directly disrespectful to his face) still never ceases to amaze me, to this day. like he was so close to getting it but the weird pickme-like self-abandoning behavior won out
transing my gender, one day at a time. @para-sike - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
