#gender talk

[cosmiccrunchies]

Everytime we wear something that shows off a little cleavage we DO feel like those wacky childrens shows episodes where the dude swaps bodies with a hot chick and has to learn how his new body works...Yes I'm serving cunt but I'm also a beautiful nonbinary lesboy about it lol

[richbitching]

idk but i feel kinda genderfluid

i wish i could just change my body whenever i want

i wish i was more androgenous

i liked when i was on vacation as teen and for some reason there was a lot of children fascinated with my hair - they couldnt tell my gender and they kept calling me green haired boy/ blue haired girl. Btw the hair was teal ;p (mommy look! This boy has blue hair!!) fun experience, but some teens called me emo??? And one parent told their child that Im an alien, which is funny, but I'm still a little sad for children that hear from their parents that something so normal, like teal hair is something to be creeped out about, and thus destroying their child wonder.

[borndalemouche]

I had a hypothesis before the season came out, seeing all the gabriella stills and descriptions of her femininity, that they had scrapped the transgenderism or at the very least crossdressing tendencies from her character to avoid portraying a trans or gnc character as an incestual abuser. and with how the season developed, with the vehement portrayal of the incest and how it affected lestat, i think I might not have been too far off.

what i think is interesting in adaptations is how do you transfer an idea to another plot point to fit with the change in medium. and I think the Lestat 'sometimes i wish [to be a woman] too' comment that anchors his overall gender non conformity (with the way he dresses notably) is one way to keep this GNC character without linking it to the more abusive aspects.

and sure, from what I've understood, in the books, the two are very linked and Gabriella is basically looking for her masculinity in Lestat's, but in the current climate, especially in the US, do you really want to show that and fuel the fire, you know?

[w-erewolf]

literally how do I tell my doctor I want to go on T so I can get bottom surgery eventually but I'm not a trans man/transmasc person and am very much fem-aligned + nonbinary.

[cheshirelipstick]

as a transfem with like a lot of trauma: I understand the struggle of wanting to fit in as a man and not being able to. Being seen as something not quite a boy and not a girl either. There is a reason a first thought I was a girl before realising I'm nonbinary, and that is masculinity is fucking awful as it exists in society, even if it's inherently part of my identity from an outside perspective (since most people perceive gender through the binary they understand, I am not full man, I am not a full woman, so in the places where I am not one I must be the other *not counting for the way neurodivergence and disability causes you to be a dehumanised thing instead*)

I need to brave the places societal masculinity has taught me are unappproachable without ridicule and losing yourself, but I can't rely on femininity to help me out because I am not a girl nomatter how painful living as a boy was for me.

But thanks to this struggle, thanks to the trauma, I will always have an understanding of how being a boy in a way other people don't like or don't understand will get you hurt, and that's the struggle many of my fellow binary trans people go through every day.

[romanticmonster]

There I was. It was 2006, the prime time for a 14 year old teen to toy with identity. I was hanging out with the 'menlyn goths' (said mall goths), getting insight into eyeliner and silly mischief while me and my friend of the same age, looked up to these older goth teens. I was not fully onboard with being goth, no, but the play with identity felt fun. As things inevitably go with teenagers however, this older guy found 'joking' with me to be an amusing past time. Well, that's a euphemism. He was likely joking at me.

You see, he would joke about a number of things, but one came up enough times that it stuck in my head, "youd be a man then (derogetory)." Repeated jabs played off as jokes, all with this similar theme of calling me a man.

Fortunately, either due to my comfortable sense of self, my playful upbringing, or something akin that, I took zero offense. That being said, since it wasn't mentioned in passing, but a recurring comment, it really wiggled into my thoughts. "what if i was a guy?"

Funnily enough, this wasn't the first time i had mused on this concept. There were many occassions before that point where I'd hear comments in passing about how, 'women are good at multitasking', or 'men just think about sex'. While those are silly stereotypes, at the time, growing up and only starting to learn the world, it's hard not to see how I fit in with any given gender. In those cases my thought was, "huh, I seem to align more with what a guy is".

So when this older teenager tried joking with me, and being faced with the idea of really being a man, 14 year old me just responded with a simple, "that wouldn't be so bad."

What chewing on this concept ultimately did do though, was lead me to understanding a pretty harsh truth. That being, if I were a man, there were just as many traits I didnt fit in with. Just like being a woman had me not fitting in. being a guy? Sure I saw the pros but I saw the cons too, and the sad reality was being a girl had just as many. Namely, how people treated you in either category. I wasnt really suited for either. Not enough in either category to feel comfortable, but I was just as non-plussed as being seen as either as well. They both came with harsh setbacks as much as their benefits.

Doomed either way I thought. Why couldn't people just see me? Outside of such boxes? It really cemented my journey to see people as more than the sum of their parts, since that's what I wanted.

Aside from a side journey in unlearning some internalized misogyny, I decided it didnt matter if I was seem as man, or woman. Even when nonbinary became a thing, it didn't particularly entice me as an identity.

People would inevitably see me through whatever filters they had, and it truely wasnt really about me. Good or bad, people saw bad in the same things others saw as good, and good in what others saw as bad. There is no changing that.

I am me. No one can tell me otherwise. Besides, I'm always growing, even now two decades later. It's been fun creating me. In as much as its been troubling to accept myself for my, at times, unusual interests. Change what I can, and accept what I cant, or stab those who would treat me poorly because of their own biases. You know the cliché.

That was a hell of a lot of breath just for some creative nonfiction.

Im grateful though, despite how the world works, or how [insert any gendered discourse here]. I'm grateful I am seen as I am by some. That I've let myself be seen. I'm glad, even though it will never be perfect.

I can exist as me, whatever that means.

[bloodmoonsbloodbank]

Save My Dying Heart talk

Idk does anyone else feel weird misgendering their own characters even when it’s part of the story? Like I think it would have been more effective for reader to be referred to with she/her pronouns in the first few chapters but it feels weird to me maybe it’s partly because they are a self insert but also like knowing where the story is going and knowing that they are a boy makes it hard for me to fully commit to misgendering them at the possible cost of a more powerful story… maybe I’ll change it later but I’m keeping them at they/them rn