queer heartache

Call me Seagull. Queer as fuck.

[keepyourmom]

one issue i have with many anti-transmasculinity discussions on here, is the way anti-transmasculinity (or whatever term is currently in circulation) gets conflated with the oppression of other marginalized men, especially in conversations about structural power.

it is generally true that marginalized men often oppress the women in their communities. black women, for example, experience some of the highest rates of intimate partner violence, and most perpetrators are black men. practices like FGM exist in african countries, where african men mutilate the bodies of little african girls. across many marginalized groups, we can point to clear, well-documented examples of sex- and gender-based subjugation, including instances where marginalized men collude with white supremacy against marginalized women (go look up “weavechimp,” then search it on twitter to see who primarily is using it).

so, when it comes to intersectional and black feminism—which transfeminism was nurtured by—it isn’t hard to avoid any other form sex/gender-class analysis and say: “trans men oppress trans women! that’s basic intersectional feminism!”

but this ignores the actual positionality of trans men. it hallucinates when it comes to transmasculinity. it relies on extrapolating from movements where that framework does apply, and where (cis) men’s liberation does not depend on feminist politic, so men are excluded from feminist analysis by default.

the issue is not the exclusion of marginalized cis men from conversations about sex-gender liberation. the issue is the lack of material analysis of trans male oppression, because if you think about this stuff for more than a few minutes, that entire thing falls apart.

there is no cis man who can be forced to get pregnant and then denied an abortion. there is no cis man who can be legally or socially compelled to wear a hijab. statistically, trans men are more vulnerable to rape and sexual assault than any other group, but especially cis men. trans male liberation is uniquely intertwined with feminist liberation politic, because trans men are directly subjected to misogynistic systems in ways cis men are not. this is why extrapolation does not work.

like, black femicide is overwhelmingly perpetrated by black cis men. east asian cis men have created entire online networks dedicated to sexually degrading, harassing, and blackmailing women in their lives. in MENA, cis men murder women in the name of “honour.” these are concrete examples of marginalized men exercising patriarchal power over women in their communities. there is no trans analogue to this.

trans men are not killing trans women at disproportionate rates. trans men are not disproportionately raping or abusing trans women. trans men do not have traditions of trans female genital mutilation, trans female breast ironing, or trans female foot binding. trans men are not subjecting trans women to forced marriages, bride burnings, lobotomies, acid attacks, or honour killings. there is no trans female coverture, where trans men absorb the existences of their female counterparts. trans men do not dominate medical institutions and deny trans women care. there is no historical or contemporary system that could reasonably be described as a “trans male patriarchy.”

in fact, when we examine these same misogynistic practices, we find that trans men are often subjected to them, and have never facillitated them. trans men are killed in the name of honour. trans men experience FGM. trans men face extremely high rates of sexual and domestic violence.trans men are forced into marriages, compelled to wear hijabs, denied medical care, and left in pain. these are not abstractions. trans men face the direct consequences of transgressing the feminine role in society.

the people who disproportionately enact violence against trans women are not trans men. they are cis men. the people who disproportionately enact violence against trans men are also cis men (and a sizeable number of cis women).

the capacity of trans men to collaborate with patriarchy is not unique or exceptional. what is distinctive is how violence against trans men, and collusion against them, is minimized precisely because they are framed as beneficiaries rather than as targets of misogyny.

so no, anti-transmasculinity is not analogous to the oppression of marginalized cis men as a group, trans men are not simply "cis men with vaginas." transmasculinity is it's own experience, and anti-transmasculinity must be understood in it's own context. treating it as anything different obscures the ways trans men are positioned within misogyny and patriarchy, and it ultimately undermines both feminist analysis and analyses about anti-transmasculinity specifically, because it becomes clear that all these essays, these books, these academic articles about transmasculinity—are all based in daydreams, or imagined examples of "what should be true," rather than material analysis, a.k.a., "what is actually true."

[therapatical]

THANK YOU!!! THANK YOU THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I'VE BEEN TRYING TO ARTICULATE BUT COULDN'T

[therapatical]

I want to print this out, frame it, and put it in my room

as I've said before:

[sockpuppethistorian]

what would the world be like if aroace was the norm and wanting sex and relationships was considered the outlier?

I’ll go first

I think, obviously, buddy comedies would be the go-to movie plot choices instead of romcom.

[onbearfeet]

Every four-quadrant blockbuster would have a platonic subplot. The dramatic kiss at the end with swelling music would be replaced with a hug. Group hugs are considered especially satisfying.

The bestselling fiction genre would be friendship. Bookstores would have whole sections devoted to friendship sagas with spines in purple or green.

People who in our world talk about a "Cinderella ending" would instead talk about a "Fox and the Hound ending".

[prismatic-bell]

You know, I have a problem with this line of thought, and that it's simply replaced "romance is the most important thing to everyone" with "friendship is the most important thing to everyone."

In a world without compulsory alloromanticism and allosexism, why wouldn't the bestselling genre be one that doesn't exist in our world at all? Perhaps the milestone capper is getting one's own apartment/house. Maybe people like to watch comedies about work mishaps, as in "we were trying to install a door and now there are aliens."

You're still thinking in the allo box. You've just swapped parts.

[queer-heartaches]

Donald Trump orders ideological purge of Smithsonian museums in new executive order - LGBTQ Nation

Among his complaints: a museum that isn't even open yet might honor trans athletes.

[benjaminallhope-fulltimemind]

just a handy little info chart on the spectrums of sexuality.

[mythicalcoolkid]

[ID: a poster that reads "These spectra are all different." Below are four arrows, up to down, each labeled with a different sexuality spectrum.

Sexual attraction

Top: allosexual - often experiences sexual attraction (a feeling of wanting to have sex with a specific person)

Middle: grey-asexual - rarely experiences sexual attraction

Bottom: asexual - never experiences sexual attraction

Notes for sexual attraction:

There are other types of attraction and corresponding spectra. See: romantic, platonic, aesthetic, sensual

Asexuality can shift over time. See: aceflux

Libido

Top: high libido - often or strongly experiences libido/sex drive (a feeling of wanting sex, but not directed at a specific person)

Bottom: low libido - rarely experiences libido

Notes for libido:

Libido can change greatly due to mental health, life circumstances, and various other factors

Sex favourability

Top: sex favourable - sex is appealing and enjoyable for them

Middle: sex indifferent - does not particularly like or dislike sex

Between middle and bottom: sex averse - dislikes sex and finds it not appealing

Bottom: sex repulsed - finds sex repulsive or disgusting

Notes for sex favourability:

There are other spectra of favourability. See: romance favourability, touch favourability

Sex favourability can depend on context. See: aegosexual

Sex favourability can shift over time. See: sex fluid

Sex positivity

Top: sex positive - believing that "sex is good and people can do what they want"

Middle: sex neutral - no particular stance on sex

Bottom: sex negative - believing that "sex is bad and sex should be restricted"

Notes for sex positivity:

The other spectra are about things the brain/body does. Sex positivity is about ideology

Any combination is possible. Now you know these things exist. If you want to learn more about something, look it up.

End ID]

[certifiedsexed]

Certified Sex Ed Post!

[graytheory-deactivated20240520]

Why do trans men have to be supervised?

Why do people (both cis and trans) act like trans men and transmascs need our stories about our direct experiences with misogyny, sexism and transphobia, need to be "peer reviewed" by someone else (usually either a cis woman or a trans woman) before we can be taken seriously?

Why are afab trans people uniquely infantilized? When people disagree with us, why is everything we say reduced to "whining" or "being hysterical" or "overreacting"?

Many of us grew up as cis girls/women, or being treated like cis girls/women, and thus we were the direct primary targets of misogyny and sexism for most of our lives. Many of us continue to be targets even after we come out as trans.

So why are our experiences with misogyny, sexism and transphobia not trusted?

Oh right, it's because we are still direct primary targets of misogyny and sexism, and therefore no one believes anything we say.

[gatheringbones]

kelli dunham, from our caregiving, ourselves, from the remedy: queer and trans voices on health and health care, edited by zena sharman, 2016

[ixlander]

[ID] OUR CAREGIVING, OURSELVES

Kelli Dunham

It’s rare that Seriously Observant Religious People and Seriously Culturally Queer People find themselves on the same side of any argument, let alone co-conspirators against a common authority figure. But when my partner Cheryl was dying of pulmonary complications from chemo that was supposed to cure her Hodgkin’s lymphoma, our large, extremely unorthodox queer family shared many hours in ICU waiting rooms with equally large extended Orthodox Jewish families. We were as friendly as we could be across hard tile and the smell of hospital antiseptic and the fear of death and countless unspoken assumptions. Members of the various caregiving teams, including me, wedged ourselves into small physical spaces and into the cracks of permission we had to be physically present for our family members who were fighting for their lives. The rule that established maximum number of visitors (two during the day, one at night) in the ICU made sense; the patient rooms were crammed with very ill people and the sensitive and expensive equipment keeping them alive. However, while we were careful only to have at most two folks at Cheryl’s bedside at a time, the sheer number of people who were rotating through seemed to alarm the staff. They would establish temporary and arbitrary rules that had no discernible purpose except for discouraging this rotation. For example, they’d decide that only one person was allowed to be present at a patient’s bedside between eleven p.m. and seven a.m. By this they didn’t mean one person at a time; this would have made sense based on the Small Spaces/Sick Patient argument. Instead, their one-person rule meant that just one specific individual could be with a patient in that eight-hour period, no swap-outs allowed. Patients who had mostly small families of the nuclear biological variety were not affected by the no swap-out rule since there was no one waiting to take over. But for those of us working in teams as family or large families as teams, it messed up our whole system. But it also did nothing to discourage us. The surest way to get a bunch of queers to do anything is to make a rule nonsensically forbidding us from doing it. If there is a collective noun for my people, it could be a stubborn. Never mess with a stubborn of queers. A stubborn of queers will not leave their dying friend because someone in charge tells them to. And as for me, the first night I spent away from Cheryl in her ultimately almost three-month hospitalization, she texted me at three a.m.: “I’m scared and alone and I can’t breathe.” One text like that was 100 percent more than I could handle. After that I camped out at the hospital like I was paying rent. One night early during Cheryl’s first stint in the ICU, I had spent four hours with my larger-than-average ass stuffed into the smaller-than-average visitor chairs in the waiting room. I chatted with my close friend Zed, who was there to support Cheryl and me. Zed was chilly, so I offered them my blue tattered sweatshirt. When Zed stretched in the doorway of the waiting room, a nurse gestured to them. “Hurry up. Are you coming back in or not?” Zed looked at me as I shook with suppressed laughter and crouched down into my chair. Because Zed was wearing my sweatshirt, the nurse thought they were me. Aside from both being queers on the trans-masculine spectrum—and now, being seen in the same hoodie—we looked nothing alike. I winked and Zed trotted into Cheryl’s ICU room to finish out the night shift. I looked over at one of the Orthodox men curled up in the corner and shot him a covert signal about what had just transpired by raising an eyebrow. Message received, he quickly sent a text message to his cousin visiting their loved one, and when his cousin exited the ICU, they conducted a similar exchange with an overcoat. The Super Gay Sweatshirt and the Orthodox Overcoat made numerous appearances that spring and summer. At the time I’d been a practicing registered nurse for more than fifteen years so I had more than the occasional guilt pang about deceiving the exhausted and overworked hospital staff. At the same time, the fact that the ongoing rotations enabled by our subterfuge didn’t cause any actual problems reinforced how silly the hospital rules were in the first place. [End ID]

[paxamericana]

Nebraska Dem with trans son vows to block all bills: "No one in the world holds a grudge like me"

"No one in the world cares less about being petty than me. I don't care. I don't like you," said Sen. Megan Hunt.

Nebraska Democratic state Sen. Megan Hunt vowed to filibuster every bill for the rest of the legislative session after the Nebraska Legislature advanced a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for people under 19.

The legislation, sponsored by Republican state Sen. Kathleen Kauth, would ban minors from seeking gender confirmation surgery and hormone treatments — issues that could impact Hunt’s transgender son. She discussed her son and his testimony in committee on Wednesday and to the wider body the next day.

“My son is trans,” Hunt said of her 12-year-old child, who she says has been unable to attain gender-affirming care. “And this bill, colleagues, is such an affront to me personally and would violate my rights to parent my child in Nebraska.”

The bill is one of many anti-trans policies rolled out this year, according to Trans Legislation Tracker.

“We have made it clear that this is the line in the sand,” Hunt said to lawmakers on Thursday.

“People have said, ‘What if we go after your bills? What if we put a bunch of bills introduced by progressives up on the agenda? Are you going to filibuster those, too?’ Yes, because we’re not like you,” Hunt explained. “We have a principle and a value that actually matters that much to us that we’re willing to stand up for.”

Hunt was scolded over her stance by Republicans, who said her pushback set a bad precedent.

“You really don’t get it,” Hunt said to Republican state Sen. R. Brad von Gillern. “You’ve crossed a line and you’ve gone too far.”

“Don’t say hi to me in the hall, don’t ask me how my weekend was, don’t walk by my desk and ask me anything. Don’t send me Christmas cards ― take me off the list,” Hunt warned. “No one in the world holds a grudge like me, and no one in the world cares less about being petty than me. I don’t care. I don’t like you.”

“This hateful bill is not about policy. It is a basic human rights issue. The vote today will show us exactly which senators value the dignity, autonomy, and personhood of Nebraskans,” Hunt added on Twitter. “Do not cross this line. Do not violate our rights”

Hunt joins Democratic state Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh in her promise to filibuster the remainder of the legislature’s 90-day session, which ends on June 9.

“I will burn the session to the ground over this bill,” Cavanaugh warned.

[socialistexan]

Hey, remember 10 years ago when Marriage Equality was upheld and a bunch of cis LGB people decided that they got theirs so fuck everyone else, but especially trans people?

Remember when they acted like trans rights being the next big target meant that their rights were safe and they decided to either a) check out, keep their heads low, and allow trans people to die on the alter; or b) actively joined the fight against trans rights in a misguided attempt to get in good with their oppressors.

This is a wake up call to those people. You aren't safe either, you never were. Once they started winning victories against us trans folks they were going to come after you, but this time with the cultural momentum (and 3 more SCOTUS Justices) they didn't have last time.

Lawrence v Texas is on the chopping block, you better pay fucking attention.

[socialistexan]

Notice they didn't say "adult" before human 🤔🤨🧐

But apparently we're the "groomers."

Also I guess you're going to have to get your chromosomes checked before you get married in Iowa now.

[johnbrownfunclubofficial]

cwtw current and historical fascist violence, words that are sometimes treated as reclaimed slurs but are being used as slurs in this context. Sorry if i shouldn't have written this but i felt it needed to be said.

FASCISTS DON'T FUCKING CARE ABOUT THE NUANCES OF WHO WE ARE!

Cis-het men with a sissy kink, cis men drag queens, cis het dominatrices/dommes, cis female drag kings, trans people, gay people, bi people, aromantic/asexual people, fuckin cis intersex people, anyone else who's not rigidly and strictly and perfectly cis-het, ALL OF US are on the hit list. @vaspider explained it best: to the fascist, a conformist conservative military vet like Mayor Pete is still just a faggot to them because he's gay. If you don't fully fit into an extremely narrow definition of cis-het gender conformity, you're just a faggot who needs to go into the oven. I'm not fucking kidding, I'm not fucking exaggerating.

And yes, I'm including cis het people with gender nonconforming kinks and fetishes and habits here. You fuckers are just faggots and dykes to them too and you know it. All the rest of y'all, if they're not hurting us, be nice to them.

They want a world where women are chore-performing, baby-making appliances. They want a world where men are conformist, compliant workers and soldiers. If you're

• intersex

• gay or bi

• aro/ace

• trans

• gender nonconforming either in your public life or in your private sexual habits

• otherwise not cool with being one of the two options above

you're useless and considered defective to them. If one of the categories in the bullet list or a category damn similar that I'm missing applies to you, you're the same to them as a closeted tranny dyke fag thing like me. They see all of us, yes even those of you who are traditionalist and conservative, yes even those of you who are military vets, yes even those of you who are cops, yes even those of you who are cis het but entertain GNC behaviors, ALL of us as the same kind of defect that must be purged.

These people will torture their own children to keep their children from being like us. These people will PAY total strangers ABSURD amounts of money to torture their children to keep their children from being like us. These people will rape or allow others to rape or PAY others to rape their own children to keep their children from being like us (it's called 'corrective rape,' it's shockingly common, look it up if you feel like being miserable). These people will MURDER their children to keep their children from being like us. These people kicked so goddamn many of us out into the street and said we aren't their children anymore. If they will do that to their kids, what the fuck do you think they're willing to do to us, the millions of strangers they blame for their kids being queer?

Find our people in your area, get organized, get armed, get trained, get politically active. Millions of people are already in this shit-hole fascist country's prison system. They will gladly turn the prisons into death camps and force us into ovens. They did it before in Germany, they are already doing evil shit to us right in front of our faces right fucking now. They want to escalate. Get a fucking gun, get good at using it, find some friends who will have your back, and get involved in politics in whatever way you think is best to prevent shit from getting worse and start turning things around. We survived the Third Reich alongside our Jewish brothers and sisters, alongside our Romani brothers and sisters, alongside our communist and anarchist comrades, but it was at a steep fucking price that we should never have paid and cannot allow them to steal from us again.

Shit is bad and getting worse, y'all.

[vaspider]

Man, I fucking told people so.

[sir-dyke-genderpunk]

“A society which cannot tolerate genderbending or cross- dressing ultimately will not tolerate homosexuality, bisexuality, or any other deviance from sexual or gender norms, no matter how closeted or assimilated.”

- Dagger: On Butch Women, 1994

[sua-sponte-deactivated20200331]

I’m watching that documentary “Before Stonewall” about gay history pre-1969, and uncovered something which I think is interesting.

The documentary includes a brief clip of a 1954 televised newscast about the rise of homosexuality. The host of the program interviewed psychologists, a police officer, and one “known homosexual”. The “known homosexual” is 22 years old. He identifies himself as Curtis White, which is a pseudonym; his name is actually Dale Olson.

So I tracked down the newscast. According to what I can find, Dale Olson may have been the first gay man to appear openly on television and defend his sexual orientation. He explains that there’s nothing wrong with him mentally and he’s never been arrested. When asked whether he’d take a cure if it existed, he says no. When asked whether his family knows he’s gay, he says that they didn’t up until tonight, but he guesses they’re going to find out, and he’ll probably be fired from his job as well. So of course the host is like …why are you doing this interview then? and Dale Olson, cool as cucumber pie, says “I think that this way I can be a little useful to someone besides myself.”

1954. 22 years old. Balls of pure titanium.

Despite the pseudonym, Dale’s boss did indeed recognize him from the TV program, and he was promptly fired the next day. He wrote into ONE magazine six months later to reassure readers that he had gotten a new job at a higher salary.

Curious about what became of him, I looked into his life a little further. It turns out that he ultimately became a very successful publicity agent. He promoted the Rocky movies and Superman. Not only that, but get this: Dale represented Rock Hudson, and he was the person who convinced him to disclose that he had AIDS! He wrote the statement Rock read. And as we know, Rock Hudson’s disclosure had a very significant effect on the national conversation about AIDS in the U.S.

It appears that no one has made the connection between Dale Olson the publicity agent instrumental in the AIDS debate and Dale Olson the 22-year-old first openly gay man on TV. So I thought I’d make it. For Pride month, an unsung gay hero.

[allos-aro]

An Incomplete Arospec Terminology Post

Haven’t seen any of these bad boys float around, but! Here are some terms that may be helpful to folks who are like “what is an aro”? This is definitely not a complete list of terms, and I don’t remember where all the terms came from, but here we goooooo!

Important note: not all of these terms are used by the entire community, and there is discourse within the arospec community about terminology and the politics surrounding them, particularly in the identities section. The OP does not intend to make any statements on specific terms intentionally, and corrections from other arospecs (unless starred) are appreciated. Discourse from exclusionists is not, however, and romantic folks are NOT to speak over arospec folks discussing in this post. All terms defined will be tagged in the OP as to make sure that those avoiding specific terms can avoid them.

ETA: Removed the ‘read more’ and is now tagged as #long post for those who want to save their dashboards.

Important Concepts

Arospec: The umbrella term for the aromantic and aro-aligned identities within the wider aspec, which is the aromantic and asexual communities. The arospec has different needs and wants than the acespec community, and both are worth distinguishing from each other.

Split-attraction model: also known as SAM, the split-attraction model holds that attraction to people can be distinctly split up into categories, such as romantic, platonic, sexual, etc. Using the SAM is not mandatory to identifying as aromantic or arospec, and many people just use “aro” to describe themselves for many reasons.

Alterous attraction: an attraction term to describe attraction that is not entirely romantic or platonic, the “crush” equivalent is mesh

Queerplatonic relationship: a self-defined relationship by those within it that does not fit within the stereotypical definitions of a platonic or romantic relationship. You do not have to be aromantic in order to want or be in a QPR, a partner is called a QPP, zucchini, or a plush

Amatonormativity: the sociocultural idea that every single person is the most happy within a heteroromantic, heterosexual, monogamous relationship. Term coined by feminist Elizabeth Brake to describe the systemic ways that this ideology is upheld, and used within the arospec community as well as within the polyamorous community to discuss…

*Relationship anarchy: the ideology and practice of never assuming any kind of interpersonal dynamic is “one way” or “another” based purely on action. Every interpersonal dynamic, be it platonic, sexual, romantic, or otherwise, is discussed between all parties involved in it

Squish: the “crush” equivalent of platonic attraction, usually used to define friendships or a desire to become friends with someone

Arophobia: a specific prejudice against arospec people. Arophobia can be both intentional and unintentional, being called arophobic is not being called a slur, nor is it a dogwhistle for bullying.

Aromantic Identities:

Aromantic: experiencing no romantic attraction, often shortened to aro.

Demiromantic: only experiencing romantic attraction when a strong emotional bond is present.

Greyromantic: experiencing romantic attraction very infrequently. This is different from…

Aroflux: romantic orientation fluctuates but is always aligned with the aromantic spectrum

Lithromantic: experiences romantic attraction but does not want it reciprocated, also called akioromantic

Quoiromantic: cannot tell the difference between romantic attraction and other forms of attraction, platonic attraction is usually the comparison attraction

Reciproromantic: does not experience romantic attraction unless they know the feelings will be returned

Cupioromantic: does not experience romantic attraction but still desires a romantic relationship, this person can also be called romance-favorable or romo-positive (discussed in the next section)

Aroace: an aromantic asexual, meaning they experience no romantic or sexual attraction

Aroallo: an aromantic allosexual, meaning they experience no romantic attraction but experience sexual attraction

Neuaro/neu aro/neu-aro: a term that fits inbetween aroace and aroallo, for aromantics who are neutral about identifying as either asexual or allosexual

Non-SAM aro: an aromantic who doesn’t use the SAM to define their attractions

Unit aro: an aromantic who solely identifies as aro because their aromanticism is the most important part of their identity.

Nonamorous: the most commonly used term for aromantics who do not wish to enter any kind of relationship or dynamic that isn’t platonic. Other terms exist for this, like callistic, but they are not as well known or used within the arospec community.

Aplatonic: an aromantic that does not experience platonic attraction, and.or does not seek out interpersonal dynamics defined by platonic attraction

The Romance Feelings Spectrum

There are many terms used to describe how an arospec person views romance in society and in their life, many of which are debated within the community. The following list are terms that the OP has personally seen used and discussed (and one is a term that the OP uses personally for themselves), some of them are analogues with the acespec sexual favorability terms.

Romo-positive or Romo-favorable: an arospec who feels positively about romance portrayed in society and media. They may seek out romantic relationships of their own.

Romo-neutral: an arospec whose opinion on romantic portrayal in society and media is neutral. They may seek out romantic relationships of their own.

Romo-repulsed: an arospec whose opinion on romantic portrayal in society and media is negative, and often experiences distress and emotional exhaustion when interacting with media that contains romantic aspects or when discussing romance with people in their daily lives. They usually do not tend to seek out romantic relationships on their own.

Romo-antagonistic: term used by the OP to describe their own very intense disdain for romantic media and social norms, it is often also paired with an intense hatred for amatonormativity that prevents people from forming legally-recognized dynamics that exist outside of its “bounds” of acceptability.

Final Note

These terms are not all the terms used within the arospec community, nor should this post be seen as the sole dictionary of terminology. The LGBTA Wiki through FANDOM is a very good resource for finding terms and their origins. Do not apply terms to people without their consent, and this post does not give any readers permission to correct people on their own terminology. Arospec people are the authorities on the arospec community, and anyone else claiming otherwise is being arophobic.

<#, Allos the Menacing Aro

[remadefaggotpeachsremade]

people really need to stop making fun of young trans boys who go through the “im a soft plant boy uwu” phase, who dye their hair pastel colors, who go through the space prince phase, who dresses very feminine. realizing you’re trans can be pretty tough so staying “soft” can be a good middle ground for these young boys who were previously raised feminine. making fun of young trans men that call themselves soft/soft boys is so harmful. let them find themselves, grow out of it on their own. if you consider yourself an “elder” and make fun of these kids you’re a terrible role model.

if you’re cis you can rb this just don’t speak on the subject

[acreaturecalledgreed]

also just. stop making fun of gnc trans men altogethor. its not something to grow out of for everyone and thats just as okay and acceptable as it is for boys who its just a phase for. how a trans man wants to present himself isnt anyones business but his and not a single one of them deserves to receive shit for it

[kidrat]

u guys shame us for pretty much every masculine transition goal we have. getting body hair is ‘disgusting’, deep voices are ‘scary’, and growing a small penis on T makes you a ‘short dick man’. women look soooo much better in mens clothes than men do. not wanting to be seen as feminine is ‘toxic masculinity’, patchy facial hair makes you a ‘neckbeard’, more belly fat makes you a slobby gamer dude stereotype. 

u make us well aware that the more we look like men, the less support we will get, because of the radfem rhetoric that seeps into every supposed feminist/lgbt friendly space. I’ve heard plenty of you joke that we should ‘stop making more men’. I added another man to this world when I came out, and I don’t think that was an evil, but I’m constantly supposed to act as though it was.

We can tell you’d prefer if we never came out. You’re happier if we stagnate, progress as little as possible with our transitions, be as non threatening to you as we can so we aren’t kicked out of the category of people you can stomach caring about. 

I’m saying this as a transmasc who likes femininity, and is aware of the double standard that you also hate us when we’re not doing enough to prove we’re reeeaallly men, but for a lot of people? the soft boy thing is a survival tactic. You’re making guys balance on a knife’s edge trying to be comfortable in who they are when any progress they make with that will contribute to turning them into the bogeyman you tell them stories about.

[thedoorisstuck-blog]

On Transmisandry

When people say ‘transmisandry doesn’t exist because misandry doesn’t exist’. they are fixating on the semantics instead of on our need for a specific word to describe issues that affect only us. Transphobia doesn’t cover it any more than ‘misogyny’ covers transmisogyny.

Trans men do not experience misandry. They experience something different which can be called transmisandry , which is not at all the same thing as being hated for being men, and is not the same as what trans women experience so it’s not interchangeable with transphobia .

You can use another word but I really need to protest against the arguments that put misandry as defined by cis men as a criteria for what trans men experience.

Here are just some of the things that trans men experience due to society’s hostility that we need our own specific language and space for:

being assumed to have the same male privilege as cis men

being assumed to WANT this privilege at the cost of women; i.e. treated like predators

being denied shared experiences with women because we are not women

being accused of invading women’s spaces

fearing cis men even though we are also men

not being respected by cis men

struggling with feeling inferior to cis men, to trans women, and to cis women

misdirected lesbophobia and the issues it causes

our bodies being affected by birth control issues

risking misgendering in ways specific to trans men (for example not being able to pee standing up)

struggling to define our gender while rejecting the toxic social constructs of it

being hated for being women (!! we are perceived as women by so many)

struggling with the influence of cis men on our behaviour

the safety of feminine spaces vs the desire not to encroach on them

making women uncomfortable

supporting feminism while rejecting things typically seen as feminine

for example, not being able to take part in destigmatising periods because of dysphoria and provoking misgendering

the guilt of rejecting femininity

the guilt of embracing masculinity

the guilt of hating our female-coded bodies in a world that hates women’s bodies already

underrepresentation in media of trans men specifically

fatphobia and body policing in a trans male context

and finally, I’m sorry, but this kind of dismissive attitude and erasure of our need to have our own words simultaneous with a complete support for trans women to have theirs, based on…well…the fact that we’re men. That’s exactly transmisandry- we’re trans people whose struggles are brushed aside because we’re men. :/

And yeah, trans women experience some of the above too- but in a different context that only they can truly understand, and that’s why they have ‘transmisogyny’ as a word to describe it. 

We need our own space and our own language just like they do. It’s not just for our benefit (which should be reason enough!), but also to avoid bringing male-focused conversations into spaces where they can make women (cis and trans) uncomfortable or distract from their specific issues. I don’t wanna pull emotional manipulations here but I do need to say this: it hurts a LOT having to constantly argue that I and others like me do actually struggle in a very specific way, especially in groups that are already ostensibly trans-friendly, and to have validation of my experience hanging on semantics. The concept of our struggle is always thrown out along with the word, as if they were one and the same. (this is a slightly edited version of a reblog I once made to a post on the topic)

[intersexfairy]

People on this site really, really, really have got to stop pitting trans experiences against each other. You can talk about the struggles one group of trans folks experiences without throwing another group under the bus. People have also got to learn to not derail when a group is talking about their struggles. And by derail I mean make it about another group to detract from the main focus, not when people point out that the way someone’s talking about a struggle is downplaying the same struggle for another group that experiences it.

This isn’t to say that you can’t say when a certain group has it bad in a particular area, but we need to stop having this attitude that because one group has a problem in a certain area that means the other group doesn’t get to talk about their issue with that problem, because newsflash, our adverse experiences have a lot more in common than people like to think. There’s no universal Transfem/Transmasc experience, but we need to remember that we have the same core struggles. We need to listen to one another, understand one another, fight for one another, instead of the opposite.

I’m tired of having issues pitted against each other and having this site’s trans community feel more it’s Transfem vs. Transmasc than Trans vs. Transphobia.

[queer-heartaches]

James, S. E., Herman, J. L., Rankin, S., Keisling, M., Mottet, L., & Anafi, M. (2016). The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. National Center for Transgender Equality.

Half of us face sexual assault in our life times. What ways can we protect each other? What ways can cisgender people help protect us? 

[dathen]

For years now I’ve noticed that so many other asexual people I know are also trans, often nonbinary, so it’s always been a “I have a feeling these two interconnect and it sure feels like there’s a very high percentage of us” thing.  But other than some informal polls run by resource blogs with limited reach, there hadn’t been any solid data on it.

And then lo and behold the study released by the Trevor Project on asexual youth gives me:

A larger proportion of asexual youth were transgender or nonbinary compared to the overall sample of LGBTQ youth. Overall, 25% of the LGBTQ youth in our sample were transgender or nonbinary, and 9% were questioning if they were. This compares to 41% of asexual youth who were transgender or nonbinary, and 13% who were questioning if they were transgender or nonbinary.  (source)

It is so exciting to have some research on this!!

[neurotypical-karen]

Yeah!! It’s one of those things that’s like. We Know. But it’s nice to have some data on it from an official organization.

I hope this triggers more discussion about how having compulsory sexuality so deeply ingrained in society affects our relationship to gender roles, because that’s been bouncing around in my head for a while. (also amatonormativity… it would be interesting to do a similar study with aromantics)

[neurotypical-karen]

additional info from the study:

- One in ten queer youths identify as asexual

- Twenty percent of nonbinary youth identify as asexual, and the number is higher than the general population for binary transmen as well

- Asexual youths are more likely to be depressed and anxious than their lgbtq peers. The study’s average rates for anxiety and depression symptoms were 68% and 55% respectively, while for asexuals it was 75% and 61%

[francis-forever]

I'm grateful to have gone to a college that requires honorifics in class bc otherwise I'd probably assume like most that "Mx. [surname]" is the only nonbinary option. I personally hate the tendency to put x in every gendered term and call it nonbinary so here are some other honorifics (but certainly not the only ones) I've seen nonbinary people use. For the sake of simplicity let's say the surname is Jackson.

Ind. Jackson- honestly this one kind of fucks. Ind stands for individual, and it gets bonus points for being the nearest equivalent to literally just referring to yourself as comrade.

Misc. Jackson- this one is ok, runs the risk of being pronounced like Miss. Honestly a little too on the nose for my taste. Also not really sure what it's saying? Miscellaneous? It seems odd with my name so I personally stay away but go for it if it sounds neat.

M. Jackson- *chef's kiss* mwa. This is the one I use. It's classy, it's elegant, and I personally like how you have to form your mouth in an entirely different way than Ms. or Mr. It forces people to make more of an effort to learn it, in my experience. They can't really play it off easily when they misgender you. However M. is also used shorthand in some languages for gendered honorifics (ie. Monsieur is M. in French) so if you're not comfy with that association this might not be your best choice

Anyways! tldr: honorifics are important for nonbinary people to have for formal environments, but Mx. isn't your only option. If anyone has more they use hmu in the notes bc I'm really curious what yall use.