The Trans-cendants @proudspoonie - Tumblr Blog

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shisasan

“Something in her was violently sensual, alive, earthy…”

— 𝙰𝚗𝚊𝚒̈𝚜 𝙽𝚒𝚗 , 𝙳𝚎𝚕𝚝𝚊 𝚘𝚏 𝚅𝚎𝚗𝚞𝚜 - 𝙴𝚛𝚘𝚝𝚒𝚌𝚊 (𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢 𝚙𝚞𝚋𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚑𝚎𝚍 𝟷𝟿𝟽𝟽)

letsbelonelytogetherr

— Nina LaCour via letsbelonelytogetherr

letsbelonelytogetherr

— Time passing isn’t an apology. (via letsbelonelytogetherr)

capitulism

The largest mass shooting in American history was a hate crime against gay people. Don’t ever forget that.

exmellivorinae

June 12, 2016. Putting a date on this for when it gets reblogged months from now by people who think the post is about something from 30, 40 years ago.

butch-reidentified

I am a survivor of the Pulse nightclub shooting, having grown up in Orlando and just turned 20 a month prior. If you didn’t know, there were several families who refused to claim the bodies of their relatives due to their sexuality. One family even had their relative’s name removed from the memorial. Murdered by the same hate with which their families reject them in both life and death.

Many, many people celebrated Pulse. We were told we deserved it. That it was God’s punishment for our sin of loving the same sex. We are sent messages like these I received in 2018:

We in the community often call the victim count 49+ to include the survivors who couldn’t live with the pain.

The event was never officially declared a hate crime or targeted homophobic attack and is rarely listed as one in databases.

At our vigils for those slaughtered, Extremist Christian groups showed up to protest, holding signs like this:

ID: Me kissing a woman I was casually seeing in front of an angry looking man with a “Sodomy is Sin” sign.

Please understand how much more than just a mass shooting this was. We are still to this day harassed and told we deserved it by some.

This year was the sixth anniversary. The first couple years I received dozens of messages checking in on me on 6/12. Year 5 got enough news coverage for people to think to reach out to me. This year it was my therapist, the woman I kissed in that photo, and a couple of other gun violence survivor friends. People are forgetting already.

butch-reidentified

With the 7 year anniversary <2 weeks away, I figured I’d reblog this

remanence-of-love

girlrust

happy pride to my favorite gif in the world

remanence-of-love

caspercryptid

The really unfortunate thing about mental health progress is that sometimes you realize you've made it in the form of "wow, I haven't felt this bad in a fucking while"

caspercryptid

On the one hand it's a bit of a pick me up in a dark place to know that this will pass because it has passed before on the other hand sometimes it isn't entirely a pleasant thought to go "wow, I used to feel like this all the time. That was pretty fucking bad. It's pretty bad right now too also."

caspercryptid

Someday your current baseline will be the sort of thing you consider A Really Bad Day. It does get better.

jus4bodhi

aravenlunatic

haughtyraban

“there’s an ai tool for that” okay ?? there’s probably an ed sheeran song for it too who gives a fuck

catboybiologist

My apparently wild and radical take is that trans women can literally just dress like women without much "accomodation"

"but what about hiding your-" I guarantee you women's clothes already does that, and you need it less than you think

"but what about adding padding to-" there are women's clothes that do that, also you need it less than you think

"but I don't think women's clothes will accommodate my proportions" I'm guessing that they will, and if you've been in HRT for any noticeable amount of time, they will likely fit better than men's clothes

Like I had my whole "femboy guide" pre transition, but that was a different vibe entirely.

If you want my advice on how to dress now, it would literally just be:

Take what you currently wear

Look at the woman's cut version of it

Size it properly

Wear it the correct way (eg, use the waist that women's clothes are made for)

There's a lot of clothes that's made "specifically for" trans women. Aside from very specific things (like tucking) I think most of it is garbage. Not to mention the absolute horrible ways that they're often marketed, rolling in trans women's everyday clothes with crossdressers and fetish gear.

When a trans woman first transitions, I've found that they're immediately BOMBARDED with "fashion advice" that is A, extremely othering and sometimes dysphoria inducing, and B, oftentimes outright garbage and uses old school crossdressing/drag advice that often fails to account for the effects of HRT, or doesn't come off as a more casual look.

I do think there's value in guides that are more in the zone of "hey, you've only been taught about men's fashion and clothes your whole life, here's the basics of women's fashion to catch you up to speed" but I've yet to find one that doesn't devolve into a weird "hide everything about your body, tran" kind of tone.

Quick preemptive Q&A

Are you saying that trans women CAN'T wear men's clothes and/or be butch?

No, I'm saying that women's clothes DOES fit and accommodate trans women's proportions, but most people refuse to believe that.

So you're a gender conformist then? Just molded to the binary system of fashion?

The last thing society wants a trans woman to be, is a woman. The most radical thing you can be is yourself, and sometimes yourself is a woman.

But what if I don't want to dress in women's clothes?!?

Good for you, then don't

catboybiologist

Fuckit, here's my bullet point fashion guide for trans women. This is stuff that applies to ALL women but trans women specifically will not have learned earlier in childhood.

Your waist is high. Higher than that. It's over your belly button. Yes it'll feel high waisted. Yes it'll also feel good. If your hips are getting wider, this is where pants will try to sit naturally anyways, and anything else will be uncomfortable.

On that note, the lack of pockets on women's pants actually does have a functional undertone. Having pockets at the waistline creates a VERY uncomfortable "pivot point" between your stomach and your legs, meaning if you put your keys or phone in pockets of women's pants, they're gonna jab you in the stomach.

THAT SAID, if you DO want pockets, I'm not gonna stop you. But get cargo pants!!! Women's cargo pants look SO nice, and thigh pockets are a godsend. They're more functional and more comfortable with growing hips.

Yes, women's cuts actually do make a fair bit of difference, and yes, you will fit and look more feminine in a women's cut. Even if it's a women's cut of jeans and a t shirt.

"unisex" clothing is oftentimes just men's clothing rebranded. I'm sorry but it's true. A lot of it will drape over you in boxy ways, since the "visual size" of a men's cut is almost entirely defined by the shoulders and upper body. This looks bad if you have wide shoulders or large boobs. It looks REALLY bad if you have wide shoulders AND large boobs, like I do. (Side note, the solution to degendering this should probably be something along the lines of giving the two cuts neutral names, like "shoulder cut" and "waist cut")

Bra sizing is a mystic art. No chart, calculator, or online tool will get you anywhere close to just trying on a variety of them yourself. They're a necessary starting point, but they're not going to get it right. Doesn't have to be an actual fitting, doesn't have to involve another human being, just grab a couple and try them all on. Hell, order them online and return the ones that don't fit if you're too nervous about being seen at all.

Don't make any fashion goal to "hide" anything (apart from tucking tbh, but tucking is less dramatic than a lot of other stuff imo). This isn't even primarily a self confidence point (although that's a great side effect) it's a point that if you spend too much effort or emphasis in "hiding" something, the rest of the fit is going to fall away from you or be guided by that in restricting ways. It also might call a lot of unnecessary attention to the exact thing you're trying to hide- and oftentimes, the only reason you wanted to hide it is because you're overly self conscious about something that's falling within normal variation. Choker to hide an Adam's apple? Now you're both calling attention to your neck, and are limited to outfits that work with that choker. Too much stuff over the shoulders to hide them? Now you're limited to things that cover the shoulders, and are also adding more padding or material to them. This point is deprogramming. The fashion choices that trans women are having imposed upon them to look more cis are not only a result of cis bullying, but oftentimes achieve the opposite effect than what people want.

audible-smiles

My memory of The Birdcage (1996) is always that it's more dated and more difficult to watch than it actually is. You hear "drag-themed comedy from the 90s based on a musical from the 80s based on a play from the 70s" and you brace yourself just a little, right? But the film has a strong gay perspective, so the fruity fag jokes mostly come off as warmly affectionate. There is a surprising amount of poignancy in Robin Williams' portrayal of Armand, grudgingly agreeing to his beloved son's request that he go back into the closet for an evening ("do me a favor and don't talk to me for a while"). The drag club's staff attempting to redecorate the apartment with stuff straight people might like (a taxidermy moose head, an enormous crucifix, and Playboy magazine) is extremely funny. Albert's histrionics are a point of tension because he does often come off as a stereotypically pathetic/comic figure, but towards the end of the movie he makes it very clear that he's aware of how people see him, and asserts that trying to copy a stoic masculinity he doesn't possess for the sake of social approval would be more pathetic. In the 1983 musical adaptation, they give "Albert" (Albin) the only good song in the whole show, "I Am What I Am", which Gloria Gaynor covered to the delight of gays everywhere. Apparently Nathan Lane wasn't (publicly) out yet in 1996, which is amazing because it means that at one point in this movie you're watching a gay man playing a straight man playing a gay man playing a straight man, in a movie about how it's important to be yourself, an absurdity that does seem to encapsulate the state of gay America in the 90s.

silverhand

I'm seeing a couple of posts circulating about the gay 90s and this movie. The above is a very good summary, and I think it's worth adding a few other points.

This movie got made because Robin Williams said yes to it (and it's important that Gene Hackman did as well). Williams in the 90s was a mega-star of a type that's not present in the current media environment (maybe Tom Cruise, but I personally think that's echo from his salad days). Even his flops made money on the back end in the video rental market, which also doesn't exist anymore (streaming is different). Hackman was on the other side of his A-list career but still Hollywood nobility if not full royalty.

Playing gay was considered career suicide in the 90s. There had been a number of actors who put lie to that belief stretching back decades, but this was Williams and Hackman (yes, being on screen next to a gay character was enough to get you blacklisted) saying "screw that" and doing it anyway.

Being gay and out was career suicide in the 90s.

Nathan Lane had a really nice gig going for himself. The Lion King put him into the Disney rep company with people like Williams, Bette Midler, and Whoopie Goldberg (check their IMBD list from the 90s--they were making bank at Disney).

Lane didn't come out until several years later (nice summary: https://deadline.com/2024/06/nathan-lane-robin-williams-advice-coming-out-birdcage-1235975010/).

I don't want to imply that this was a Sorkinized moment where everything changed because of one thing, but this was a very important movie that caused real movement in the needle on queer acceptance.

It also proved that there was a market for films with gay characters, which had the knock-on effect of gay filmmakers being able to find distributors of their gay-themed films. Which meant that more people than ever (queer and non-queer) got to see representation on-screen.