A cis woman tells me that maybe she should transition to gain male privilege as I'm recovering from getting beaten up in the men's bathrooms.
I tell her to be my guest and give me a call when she gets her jaw broken, I always carry a first aid kit and a pepper spray.
She calls me a misogynistic asshole.
A cis man tells me that he'd sure love some T.
Gave him my prescription and best of luck with the constant shortages and getting denied.
He calls me a pussy.
I'm fighting for my life and reproductive rights. I get told to get off women's fights, that it's not about me, like I shed my womb after my first T shot.
I search for support groups for SA victims, and I'm stuck in the same “women/NBs only”. Still shooting my shot, send an application. I introduce myself. Never get a call back.
I go to a trans night. Say I go by he/him. Get told back “yeah, that's how we all start !” by a trans woman. I'm too exhausted, I get up and I leave.
I hang out with my friends, one of them drunkenly says masculinity is a prison we must learn to escape. She gets rows of applause. Back to drinking alone.
Yes I could explain it. But who'd you rather be ? A delusional girl or a man made threat ?Or it could be better, I could just not exist ! And we'd bleach my corpse and I'd become a casualty. Not an F, ot an M, a W for Wound and for Wrong.
I put a candle on a single cupcake, 2 years on HRT. I blow it in the dark. Curtains closed like casket.
Yeah, you! Are you trans? Do you like reading books? Or watching movies?
Do you like media about trans men/transmasculine characters but don't know where to find it?
That's sooo crazy because I have this little spreadsheet I'm working on where I'm trying to document all media with protagonists/major characters who are FTM or transmasculine.
The spreadsheet currently has 600+ entries spread across the following categories:
Books
Manga
Memoirs and non-fiction
Movies
TV Shows
Graphic novels / Comics
Webcomics
Audio dramas
Games
Books and movies are also sorted by:
Which character is trans (MC, love interest, antagonist, etc)
If the trans character is POC
The trans character's sexuality (Because I saw lots of transhet guys sad about only being able to find gay romances)
If the author/actor is also trans (if we know for sure)
It's free to use, and free to add to as well! Editing permissions are on, and I check on the spreadsheet every now and then to make sure everything is in order and to clean up.
If you know something that isn't on the list, please add it! You don't have to fill in every single column, but fill it to the best of your abilities.
If you don't want to use the big ass long link below, you can also use: bit.ly/FTM-protags
About
short link: <a href="https://bit.ly/FTM-protags">https://bit.ly/FTM-protags</a>,Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/_nekhcore">@_n
I made this because I want it to be a community resource. So even if you're not a trans guy or transmasculine person, please reblog!
Hello! I am a genderfluid brazilian person, and I came to tell all non-brazilians about a media from my country that I hold very dear to me: Ordem Paranormal, specifically about its newest season, Hexatombe. It has released 4 episodes in the moment I'm writing this post.
CW for body horror in descriptions! There is violence mention and description.
This is a long post under the cut and it has spoilers about Hexatombe and the first season, so be warned. I will try to keep spoilers as vague as possible, but if I have to explain something in details, I will.
As a resume, Ordem Paranormal is a horror TTRPG created by Cellbit. It takes place in a world similar to ours, but affected by the paranormal, which originates from people's fears. It currently has 4 main seasons, 1 videogame, 2 specials and 3 spin offs, and one of these spin off is being released right now. This is Hexatombe.
1 - Hexatombe and identity
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Identity is a main focus in this season. Our main group of protagonist are not actually sure of who they are, in a quite literal sense.
They are people who fight against the paranormal, but they don't have memories of these lives. And, now, they inhabit the bodies of a group of serial killers, but they also don't have the memories of these people. And they are slowly regaining their own memories back. But are they the same people?
This season touches a lot on what makes you, you. Is it your memories? Your body? Your ideals? Your actions? Your thoughts? Your wishes? Or is it something else?
These protagonists are constantly going through this kind of questioning. They are being put in an incredibly dangerous situation with many moral dilemmas, and the surfacing of the memories of both their original lives and the lives of these bodies bring up the question of who they actually are. As they are transformed by these totally new experiences, they face every change that these situations are forcing upon them.
It is pretty obvious that identity is something very important within the trans community. Not only in the gender sense, but in the general sense. Are you a new person after you transition? After you find out that you are trans? Is the "old you", the one in your memories, a part of yourself, a different person or just a pretense?
These people, these protagonists, could have been anyone. They could even have been a different gender. They are not aware of their past, and when they wake up with no memories, the phrase to describe it is "This may be the best thing that has ever happened to you".
Would you rather forget your past and your pain, but also your own discovery? Would you rather have been born cis? Would you chose to be trans again? These are questions that different trans people give different answers to, but they all quite fit the theming of this season and the situation these protagonists were put into. And we have more topics to go.
2 - Hexatombe and body
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As it was before stated, these people are inhabiting bodies that are not their own, but this is not where the body symbolism stops.
You see, in Ordem Paranormal world, the paranormal manifests in the form of elements, and one of those elements is Blood. It is the element of pain, irrationality, violence, anger, love, hunger, emotions, flesh, senses and everything your body can feel.
Blood is one of the two main elements of this season, and you can see it everywhere, from the creatures they face, to other human enemies, to their own powers and the environment surrounding them.
The body is something that can have a much deeper meaning when you look at it from a trans perspective. We have once again the question if you are your body. If it is only when you feel comfortable in it. If it is truly your body.
This season has many body horror elements, and this is a horror that has different meaning for trans people. It is really rare to find a cis person who would like any part of this kind of horror, but for many trans people, this is their dream. To have their body changed completely, even turned irrecognizable, to be put in a different body, to have a body that is in constant transformation and never sticks as the same.
The protagonists many time feel uncomfortable in these bodies, but they also feel a weird ease in navigating them. Even though this is not what they want, even though they are not these bodies, they have a much more complicated relationship with this situation than just hating it. And one of them is in a very special condition regarding their gender.
3 - Jae-Yoon
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Now, this is a bit of a personal topic, and I have to give you all some context here.
Remember how I said the original owners of these bodies were paranormal serial killers? And how Ordem Paranormal has two specials?
Well, one of them is Natal Macabro. It is a 3 episodes long Christmas slasher that aired in the end of 2024, and 3 of Hexatombe's protagonists show up there. However, it is their original versions, and they are the antagonists. And one of them is Jae-Yoon.
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Jae first appeared in ep 2 in their killer version, a mysterious hooded figure with an x in their face who would come out of the dark to stab their victims. They had an ambiguous gender until ep 3, when it was confirmed, in a very casual way, that they were nonbinary and used any pronouns. Although in Hexatombe another person is inhabiting their body, that person still goes by any pronouns just like Jae did.
And most of you must not know how important this is. And I will explain it to you.
Brazil is the country that kills the most trans people in the world. Nonbinary people are barely recognized here, and when they are, it's in a disrespectful way. We speak portuguese, which is a language with no neutral pronouns and with most terms being gendered, so brazilian nonbinaries have to make up pronouns everytime. Your discussion if neopronouns are valid is based on the fact you believe everyone has the privilege to have a gender neutral pronoun in their mother tongue. But many of us have to be creative and still not be respected, since transphobics will say that we are committing gramatic mistakes. We have laws that forbid schools from using gender neutral pronouns with students.
And to have a character like Jae, who is a good character and so cool, so beautiful and strong, to see someone like that being a canon nonbinary person and just being respected by everyone else, switching their pronouns and ways of refering like it's no big deal, it makes me very emotional.
There is a moment where a character asks "How do I refer to you?" And Jae answers: "However you want, I think" "Pretty? (in a feminine way)" "Pretty... (in a masculine and a neutral way)" "Handsome? Princess?"
Jae is very popular, and many characters flirt with them. It is natural, they become friends and really close to the rest of the group and their gender or pronouns are never brought up in a weird and uncomfortable way. And, for someone who has only seen bad news surrounding trans people in their country, this is so impactful.
As I mentioned before, the people in their bodies don't have their memories, but sometimes they have flashbacks occasioned by triggers. These flashbacks have elements surrounding both minds' memories, things they have in common. Jae's flashback hasn't happened yet in the moment I'm making this post, but we have a few clues on it.
We are aware Jae doesn't have a good, or at least a stable, relationship with their father, who is a very rich businessman, and that Jae for some reason acts in a "rebellious" way. In Natal Macabro, one of their favorite hiding spots was inside closets, and a way the players could have neutralized/got rid of them was to manage to lock them inside a closet. It is very likely their memories will revolve around family conflict, transphobia and not being able to be yourself.
But there are a few more things in Hexatombe we must talk about.
4 - Agatha
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Agatha is a reoccurring character from other seasons, she is one of the people that fights against the paranormal, and her backstory has become a trans allegory. Now is the part with heavy season 1 spoilers.
To keep it short, Agatha was a teenager girl whose mother got arrested for murder, and because of that Agatha was bullied in school, specially by this boy named Gabriel. One day, many girls in the school started disappearing, including Lina, who was Gabriel's girlfriend and Agatha's only friend. He believed she was the one who killed the other girls, and gagged and tied her, approaching her with a knife (it is unclear if his intention was to kill, hurt or threaten her). However, they were both in a paranormal symbol that made them change their bodies, and Agatha, now in Gabriel's body, killed him inside her own body. Later, she said "I killed what I hated the most" (although she was pretending to be Gabriel in that moment).
This story is very trans-coded, if you don't see. Agatha was bullied in school and when something violent happens, her bully immediatly blames her for it (trans women are often framed for violent acts with no evidence, even online, they are most likely to be accused of anything because of bad interpretation of others). She was kidnapped with the intention to hurt her (violence against trans people is really high, almost always with the only reason for the violence to happen being due to their transness). She killed her bully, but also killed her own body, which made her be trapped forever in the body of the boy that hurt her (many trans people hate some part of themselves, due to internalized transphobia, gender dysphoria, mental health issues due to the constant prejudice or due to the hate of "who they were" before they transitioned).
Agatha's story is a trans allegory, and she canonically uses the paranormal to have something similar to HRT and get a more feminine appearance. And I could be bringing her up due to the fact she did show up in Hexatombe, and she was responsible for the mission that put these people in these bodies, and she even gave them advice on how to handle the experience of inhabiting a body that is not your own.
But I brought her up to talk about something else. Someone else. To talk about Giovanni.
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And now you may be asking "who the fuck is Giovanni?", since I didn't mention him before. He is Gabriel's father, and he shows up in Hexatombe.
To explain his appearance, I have to explain something: basically, they are in a insane competition that I won't dive into, but you just have to know that the prize for the winners is the Coroa De Espinhos or the Crown Of Thorns, which is able of granting any wish.
And it was made very clear, although not in an explicit way, that Giovanni's reason to be in this competition is to make the wish of getting his son back.
And, if Agatha's story is a trans allegory, why can't Giovanni be a part of this as well? Why would it be impossible to read him as a transphobic parent, that can't accept their child's identity, that will mourn the loss of the ideal they had of their child, that will do anything to force their child to detransition?
But Hexatombe hasn't stopped in the trans part yet. There are a few more stuff to go.
5 - Other characters
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This part is not the focus of the post, but still things I want to highlight in the face of this discussion.
The first one is the fact that Jae is not the only trans person in this season. The other one is Alê, a nonbinary person that uses any pronouns. They are a member of a band that also takes part in the competition everyone is in, and they are the band's keyboardist.
The second one is to highlight two characters that, although are not confirmed trans, have strong connections to the concept due to a singular talk they shared. These two characters are Pomba (which translates to Pigeon/Dove) and Labirinto (which translates to Labyrinth).
They have a conversation that starts when Pomba asks: "I'm sorry, what's your name again?" "Labirinto" "It's like Pomba... did you chose your name too?" "Yeah... kind of. What do you mean, you chose your name?" "I believe when you chose your name, you take control of your life. Or at least it was like that we [he and his team] decided our names. Like flying for freedom, you know?" And Jae, who is in this moment, asks: "Why Pomba?" "I think it's because I'm small and I'm everywhere." "And smart. Doves are smart." "I think that's something only you can tell."
Names are very important to trans people. Not only in the most known way of having a deadname and a new name, but in the occasion of it being very complex. Of forging a nickname into a name, an average word, a social name, a name that is only revealed to those very close to the heart. Pomba chose his name, and we saw Labirinto chose his name, both named after things that are not seen normally as a name for people, but have a deep meaning and importance for them. Something curious about Labirinto as well is that his player, Calígrafo, confirmed that he plays Labirinto with no gender in mind, since all protagonists have no memories and his character is more worried with the situation than with getting assigned with a gender.
Edit: something special someone added in the reblogs ( @disfrutalakia thank you!) is that one of the main players in this season, Beatriz Pozzebon or Beamon, is a trans woman, and many people in the production as well (like their awesome soundtrack creator Alice Schiavoto) and I decided to add this in this part of the post. :)
6 - Conclusion
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Ordem Paranormal has developed many times through the years, not only in its production, but in its way of telling a story and giving life to characters. In the first season, there was very little diversity in cast, but now, it has evolved beautifully. There are many kinds of representations in this season, with POC characters, polyamorous relationships, disabled characters and queerness in general, but I wanted to focus in the transness aspect of it since it is very important to me and close to my heart, and has such a tie to the season's main themes. There have always been queer characters in Ordem, and they are treated just like the cishet ones, in a completely natural way, not making the fact the series has queer characters a big thing. It is part of these characters' personal narratives, but it also is not their defining traits. They are respected and loved by their peers, and whenever there is a fight between them their queerness is not brought up because this is not what it is about.
I believe Hexatombe is doing a beautiful work in not only creating its trans characters, but also its trans narratives, with both what is canon and the allegories, the connections and themes, while at the same time not making it these people's whole focus and just letting them live this insane paranormal situation, regardless of their gender identities. It is something very hard to find nowadays, and if any of these characters die, we will know it is not a "bury your gays" kind of situation, because they are treated in the exact same way as the others. To be a brazilian queer and trans person and watch this national media, talking so much about our culture and weaving it into the narrative, treating its queer and trans characters with complete respect, with no gross or weird stuff (which is basically impossible around here), this makes me so, so happy. It is a beautiful way to tell these stories, and serves as a lesson for trans allegories and trans narratives. It doesn't have to be the focus to be special.
Getting huge and muscular not because I need to be strong and scary and intimidating and manly.
I am a man, yes, but I am soft. Gentle. Quiet. Kind. I need to tone my body not to change that, but to make that even easier.
I should have the muscles and stamina to help carry groceries up to my grandma's apartment when the elevator is out and there's four flights of stairs between her and her gallon of milk and a bag of oranges that starts to feel heavier the more stairs I've climbed.
I live in an apartment complex with a lot of cars. I want to be able to help my neighbor push their car past the big hump of snow built up behind them after a plow comes through the lot and clears the path to drive, but blocks cars from leaving.
I want my friends to be able to call me and help move their furniture into their new place, or even just help rearrange if they're planning to paint or or just update the layout of their living room.
I want my body to be useful and to do that I have to be strict with myself. It's the thing I've found that works best. I'm starting small, doing more at work, lifting and moving heavier things when I can, not waiting for someone else to do the tasks I would have avoided previously. Reminding myself that I am not only able to push myself in such a way (and should be using my body more for what it is able to do while I still can) but now I am WILLING. Sometimes that comes naturally, sometimes it comes by reminding myself not to be lazy just because I can get away with that. I finally really want to TRY, even if it takes some reminding when work has been stressful or my bed is soooo comfy
Most of the sexual advances I receive (from men, and tmes) as a transsexual woman at the very least involve them wanting me to top them. And often they want some insane violent or taboo fantasy out of me like they want me to r*pe them or humiliate them or be their mommy or their big sis or something.
This is literally how they see us. They want us to be their sex monsters. Can they not imagine that perhaps a woman wants to be made to feel delicate and vulnerable in the bedroom.
Also I very clearly indicate in my dating profiles that I'm a sub and a bottom. And then when I perhaps curtly refuse to r*pe and sodomize someone I'm told to fix my attitude. Ok.
Its also the constant denial of desire. So many people touch me, grope me, catcall me, hit on me inappropriately, always with the veil of a 'joke' so they can avoid any consequences. But they never want to say to my face, I want you, you excite me, your body is beautiful, I desire you. That would be too much.
You'll grab my tits without asking but then when I want you to tell me you want me, you're not sure. You'll sexualize me constantly, but then when I want your attention, you're not into me like that.
You're humiliated to admit you desire me. So you r*pe me with your words and your touch instead. Because that means something different. Not desire, but despisal.
A corollary to all this is when I do insist on my sexuality, when I am unabashedly soft and ask to be treated as such, I'm met with disgust. I get laughed at when I try and be the little spoon. Raising that I've never once been held by them leads my partner to end the relationship. Demonstrating my yearning desperate, vulnerable desire for someone is met with ridicule. I'm no fun when I actually insist on being treated as a woman. Rather than a sex toy.
After two and a half years of writing, I have finally finished my very first webnovel, entitled "Be a girl", which you can now read in its entirety here.
Be a girl is a story about a teenager who so desperately wishes she could be a girl, but believes it to be impossible. It's a story about denying what your heart most wants. It's a story about coming to terms with the fact that you will never get the fairy tale ending you always wanted. It's a story about becoming the person you were always meant to be in a world that doesn't want you to. That even if you don't believe it, you can be a girl.
Be a girl is very personal to me. It's based heavily on my own experiences growing up as a trans girl. Back then, I never believed I could be a girl, even though I wanted it so desperately. Be a girl is a letter to my teenage self. It embraces her with an understanding of what she's going through, and whispers that it will all be ok. It won't be perfect, but you can be a girl. I promise.
Unfortunately for Ben, his wish for an uneventful seventeenth birthday goes unanswered. As expected, the bullies who tormented him through m
Reblogs got disabled on this post screenshotted below because people were being shits. But it reminded me of something I've wanted to see for a while. If I could have free creative license and budgeting to produce an anime, or cartoon of some kind i'd really like to see sort of a trans coming of age story structured, kind of like how the anime High Score Girl is structured. What I think is really great about that show, is that it's a coming of age story that just so happens to also be a romance story. Rather than a romance story that just so happens to be also a coming age story, which is what we usually get in my experience. A
The relationships in it are a big part of the emotional core. But the show is about growing up more than anything. I mean the main love interest literally moves away for like a season or 2, I can't remember exactly hiw long. And when that happens we just linger on that time. We don't time skip to when they next meet. We watch the main character be ssd and lonely that his friend mkved away, deal with how that affects him, make new friends and .lve on, and love his life in spite of what he lost. Only then do they ultimately reconnecting with her like... years later?Several episodes, maybe even a full season or two, later.
And personally, I'd really like to see a show like that following a midle schoolish aged "boy" making friends and connections, losing those connections, seeing people enter and exit "his" life. And there would definitely be subtext and hints for keen eye viewers to pick up on that our mc might be a little different, but it wouldn't be until a season or a season and a half of storytelling had come and gone before the main character had any sort of realization that she was actually a girl. And from there, the show would continue to be about the things that it had been about, you know, growing up and early adolescent romance, gaining and losing people, suffering heartbreak and realizing that life does just go on. That we do eventually get over it, and we do eventually move past it. About how we change as time passes, and how our lives aren't entirely about romance or identity? They're also about our passions, the things we like, our special interests.
And while all that story unfolds, our main character is a trans girl, and she would be going through her transition, and facing the challenges that a girl goes through as she transitions and slowly grows into herself. And that would take place over the course of multiple seasons and in story years.
So much queer media is only about being queer and, of course, as OP pointed out, hatching or coming out as an end point, instead of what it really is: which is the beginning of a new chapter. And I'd really like to more stories treating it that way. Stories that's aren't about being queer until they are, because that's how life is when you're queer. Life isn't about being queer, until it is. And then it's especially about being queer for a little while. Then, it is still about being queer, but it's also about a ton of other things too.
I want more stories that are about people who juat so happen to be queer. Especially stories about girls who just so happen to be trans. Especially especially about girls who just so happen to be trans, and also just so happen to like other girls, maybe even other girls who just so happen to be trans.
