Tell It Ace

I am aroace and in my 40s. Let's talk aspec things. Main blog is A Beautiful Wasteland.

[makingqueerhistory]

I know your title says queer history but do you have any recommendations covering the straight movement? Specifically, how did hating queer people become a priority for the straights and why did they build their political project around it?

Wonderful question! Yes, I actually have read a bit about this!

For a more modern look at how homophobia is enforced and expanded culturally:

The Pink Line

(Affiliate link)

For a very expansive historical look at this discussion:

The Construction of Homosexuality

(Affiliate link)

For a book that looks at specifically the heterosexual experience of this:

The Tragedy of Heterosexuality

I hope this helps!

[naga-noia]

as a person under the agender/nonbinary umbrella I actually think the recently increased focus on a nonbinary person’s agab is insanely fucking uncomfortable and blatantly exorsexist. Stop trying to sort NB people into boxes of amab vs afab, transfem vs transmasc, tma vs tme, etc etc. It is not praxis or activism to keep attempting to binarize people whose entire identities are built around the fact that they DO NOT ADHERE to a binary. You are just being a fucking tar pit #sorry

[supermariosunshine2002]

tma and tme are to describe one's relationship to transmisogyny. it's similar to describing a relationship to anti-blackness by "creating a binary" of black and non-black (which includes white people, latino people, asian people, etc). tme includes anyone who is not transfeminized (such as cis men, cis women, trans men, etc). just because there are two categories of something doesn't mean you're getting forced into a gender binary. ignoring your relationship to transmisogyny by refusing to understand what tme/tma means is exactly the same as ignoring your relationship to anti-blackness by saying "i dont see color", because sure, you can ignore that there's a structural & systemic issue regarding a specific demographic, but it doesn't mean its not there!

[naga-noia]

nigga did your white ass really just come onto a black person’s post to try and lecture them about not knowing their own relationship to antiblackness

number one check yourself. Number two comparing TMA/TME to anti-Blackness is a false dichotomy and I need white queer people to stop trying to compare themselves to Black people every single chance they get. oh my god

The two are NOT similar. If you really wanna play the game of equating race and gender, then the equivalent to “Black and nonblack” would be transfem/trans woman and non-transfem/trans woman, not TMA/TME. I can assure you that NO black person is going around saying “antiblack racism affected vs antiblack racism exempt.” Because That Is Stupid.

EVERYONE is affected by antiblackness, because of how deeply it’s ingrained into our entire societal structure. You cannot write off specific demographics as not being affected by certain forms of oppression or discrimination, because the nature of living in a white supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy is that ALL of these systems are INTRINSICALLY connected with each other, and affect EVERYONE to some degree. There are countless historical examples of antiblack legislation directly impacting poor communities of other racial groups- including white people. There are primary targets of discrimination, obviously, but nobody is truly “exempt” from any sort of oppressive system unless they are at the VERY top of the damn food chain.

In the same vein, the intersection of transphobia and misogyny is ALSO deeply ingrained into our society. And because of that, nobody is truly “transmisogyny-exempt.” Even people who aren’t the primary targets are still directly impacted and negatively affected by transmisogynistic systems. I find TMA/TME to be useless in terms of categorization because it directly posits that everyone who gets sorted into the latter group just doesn’t experience any oppression or discrimination derived from transmisogynistic bases at all, which is ridiculous, because that happens All the time.

A trans man or enby who’s mistaken for a trans woman and is assaulted for it, a cis man who’s belittled and attacked on the basis of being Too Feminine, a cis woman who’s publicly shamed, derided, and transvestigated for having testosterone levels that are “too high,” are all examples of non-transfem/trans woman groups being negatively affected on the basis of transmisogyny.

Poor white people being affected by legislation meant to target and attack Black populations and the massive trend of colorism throughout Asian communities are examples of nonblack groups being negatively affected on the basis of antiblackness.

You cannot sort people by what oppression they do and do not face, and attempts to do so are inherently exclusionary and are bound to lead back into denying people of their lived experiences, just because they don’t line up perfectly into these specific categories of “this genre of person goes through this” vs “this genre of person doesn’t go through that.”

I believe that TMA/TME was coined with the best intentions, but the problem is that it’s a clumsy dichotomy and the way a lot of people tend to use it ends up leading back into the same issues of being binary (“amab trans people experience this, afab trans people don’t experience that”) and then THAT leads back into a whole heaping mess in and of itself

Talking about the way transfeminized people are targeted by transmisogyny is not a bad thing in and of itself! But like, you can just say transfem/non-transfem- or even just “transfeminized” to describe the position oppressors will often place people into in order to enact transmisogynistic violence against them- instead of directly trying to state what different groups of people Do And Don’t Experience. you can say “primary targets of transmisogyny” without directly implying that certain groups are exempt from it all together.

THAT is my issue at hand when it comes to TMA/TME. It is an awkward framework to describe oppression, because oppression doesn’t work like that in reality

[peach-pot]

I think some of you people need to google amatonormativity… and like, think about it.

[peach-pot]

you can actually desire a traditional romantic relationship AND unpack amatonormative ideas within your mind and life. they are not mutually exclusive!

[luckyladylily]

I've known a number of non binary people in my life and I think single biggest conclusion I can draw from that is that non binary people are not the same. Like if Men fit in box A and women fit in box B, people really, really want nonbinary people to fit in a theoretical box C, and it just doesn't work like that. They are outside the boxes. They defy any simple categorization because they are not a third way of being, but every other possible way of being.

Being supportive of binary people is relatively simple, they have decided to sort themselves into one of the boxes that we have lots of experience interacting with. Being supportive of nonbinary people can be comparatively tricky, because you have to resist the urge to create box C and drop them all there. That's how we end up with various prejudices like "woman lite". Humans really, really like to categorize things. It helps us think. Unfortunately, sometimes it helps us think wrong.

If you have a non binary person in your life, I think it is important to take the extra effort to learn about them specifically.

[finalgirlguy]

lucy dacus review for stone butch blues is so beautiful 💌 happy lesbian visibility week

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

People will correctly identify that heteronormativity is a problem in old historiography and then immediately turn around and insist that two people must be having sex based on transgressive social intimacy. Then say something like "because sex is a human need for fulfillment."

Ah if only there was more than one kind of normativity to keep in mind....

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

This isn't exclusive to same sex attraction or love either. Anyone who digs into Empress Elisabeth's writings enough will find pretty clear statements about being apathetic (or disinclination) to physical intimacy and fulfillment from totally separate parts of her life.

We can't assume that people's highest fulfillment comes from having sex with the people they love. I wish we could have more nuance about this.

[cjsnaake]

I fuck with this

[hypokeimena]

[image description: screenshot of writing formatted as a question and answer exchange. headline of piece is: The Proposal to Raise Every Boy as a Girl. (author not listed)

Q. You want to raise every boy as a girl? Yes.

Q. Why? A boy will learn to hate girls as long as he is raised in such a way where he is treated as better, and superior to, his girl peers, whenever he is cruel to girls. So, instead, we raise boys as girls.

Q. What if they say they are not a girl, and want to be acknowledged as boy? Then you know they are a boy, so you must make sure to understand them as boy, and not a girl.

Q. What does it mean to be 'raised as a girl'? That's up for you to decide. The only difference is that you should not raise boys any differently than you raise girls, since you raise every boy as a girl.

Q. Girls and boys are raised in specific ways for specific purposes, so it does not make sense to raise boys as girls. If you raise every boy as a girl, then there is no being which is not raised as a girl, so anyone raised as a girl necessarily must learn to do anything and everything to grow up, without restrictions on tasks, labours, or interests.

Q. But boys and girls are different. All two girls are different, and raising girls in one specific way destroys this individuality in favour of moulding girls to serve the same master. Still, the girls resist to live life on their own terms. If girls can be raised such that they know they can do anything they want, including not being girls, so too will boys raised as girls.

Q. Why not raise every girl as a boy? Because if a girl does not exist among boys, then the girl is made.

Q. Why not raise girls and boys as themselves? The self must be made in a world where girls and boys can first and foremost be themselves. One step towards this goal is to raise every boy as a girl.

Q. The way people raise girls is cruel, so why would you raise boys with that cruelty? If you raise girls with cruelty, then you should stop being cruel to girls.

/end description]

[creekfiend]

gender essentialism is soooo funny bc it's like "this is what women are like" and you're like "I've met women and many of them, if not the majority, have not been like that" and it's like "well women SHOULD be like that" and you're like "why should women be like that" and its like "because that's what women are like"

[h3rta-space-stat1on]

Okay but like real talk this is why I'm struggling with gender kinda cus its like "am I genderqueer? or does my autism disconnect me from the typical gender experience allistic cis girls have?"

[medliwaith]

over the course of my queer journey I tried to place the locus of my queerness in a variety of things. At first, I thought maybe I was queer because I liked girls. But I was bi. So I was still queer no matter who I liked or dated.

So I started to locate it in that identity instead. Queer because I’m bi.

Then I went, okay, my queerness shapes how I interact with people. People I’m dating, people I’m friends with; etc. How does it shape that? Well, because I radically choose to treat everybody with care and intentionality.

Part of this approach came from the ace-spec awakening/awareness… along with the importance of found family… but that understanding of queerplatonic relationships was key in that aspect of not only my queerness but my choice to live queerly.

So I started to locate my queerness in the external as well.

Then the gender thing came. Part of my understanding of my gender was also an acceptance of my own fluidity. My queerness is located in the fact that I accept that I change over time. Gender presentation, attraction, it all shifts.

This is another internal locus of queerness. It comes from within my own gender and attraction.

I began to itch when people tried to identify my queerness by external things. A trans lesbian I was on a date with called me a “girl kisser.” Factually correct but the implication was that that was why I was queer. Not anymore, definitely not then. I am nonbinary and at the time presenting as masc.

But also, at some point, I found a locus of queerness in the external relationships again. Polyamory. It turns out, when you treat everyone with care and intention, and seek to build found family, you develop an approach to relationships that grows and changes with you. As fluid as your insides can be.

And, yes, I eventually noticed when the years of figuring out my autism began to factor into the equation too. Neurodivergence.. my bodymind, my nervous system, does not readily or consistently pass as normative. This, too, shapes my understandings of myself and my relationships with others. It characterizes how I feel passion and affects how I communicate it.

There have been many times when I felt or others made me feel that my gender was autism. Boys on one side of the room, girls on the other, and you… well, I guess you can keep reading your book. Or: playing with my friends because they all like to pretend to be cats even though the other kids pick friends based on gender or something else I can’t quite put my finger on.

Learning about neuroqueerness (an academic and activist term which I have come to really love) showed me that this too can be conceived of as something that is inherently within the human range of diversity, which culture has arbitrarily placed a limit on in order to define what is normal.

It’s all culture. Established gender roles, expectations of how people should think and act, expectations of how to like and love and relate, expectations of bodies to look and function in particular ways… it’s all just human ideas and traditions put into practice. They aren’t actually hard and fast rules about how people inherently are. The boundaries that define what is normative and non normative are made up, they change, and there is absolutely no need to define yourself in relation to them if you don’t want to.

Which is to say. All of these things only matter as much as we need them to. Labels are mostly words we use to communicate quickly with other people. The long conversations we have with ourselves and others about who we are and why… those have their place too, and they go far beyond the labels and their definitions.

Generally, I would advise you to focus on the practical. If you want medical intervention, it may be best not to mention the genderqueerness or the autism. Those can both be stumbling blocks. Sometimes it is necessary to speak in code. “I have always known deep down I was the opposite binary gender” is sometimes code for “I want hormones please give me them.”

Even when interacting with a person you know, rather than a representative of an institution, you never actually.. *need* the labels. You can just say one day “can you use they/them pronouns for me?” Or “I’m not exactly a girl.” Or “I think I like people regardless of their genders.” These things are often less overwhelming to hear from non-queer people, anyway.

You can also throw around labels as they are helpful or unhelpful to you. I might say to one person that I am nonbinary and to another one that i am trans and to another one that i am genderfluid and the specifics really do not much matter to anybody other than me, so its best just to use the word that makes sense in context. I initially came out to my parents as bi and resolved never to change it because what mattered most was that 1. they knew i might date various genders 2. they eventually believed me. There were moments i didnt align with the label because of my fluidity but the label wasn’t for precision, it was for communication.

My advice:

Don’t worry too much about what gender is supposed to feel like. Figure out what clothes you feel good wearing. Try to notice how certain words make you comfortable or uncomfortable. Learn how to do the labor that keeps your life working, if you can, no matter how it is gendered. Find out what exercise and concerts and people get your heart rate up in a good way (whatever good means to you).

Fall in love with doing things queerly. It’s about how you live as much as it’s about who you are. So, choose the queer path, every time. (And never ever forget that sometimes the queerest option looks normative, because it’s just whatever makes you happy after you open your mind to all the options.)

[cityelf]

this poem is about being nonbinary.

[romancerepulsed]

i keep seeing misinformation about this, so: queerplatonic relationships do not have a set definition. the name comes from the idea that it's "queering" the platonic relationship, tailoring it to the individual relationships' own desires. it isn't necessarily romance lite, but it also isn't necessarily whatever definition you want to impose on it. the point of queering the platonic relationship is to break away from strict allonormative views on friendship, romance, and sex, not to make a new categorical box to fit in.

the answer to "what is a qpr?" is "whatever you want it to be." sometimes that is romance lite. sometimes it's a deeply committed friendship. sometimes it's friends who have a sexual relationship. sometimes it's based on an entirely different mode of attraction. sometimes it's fluid and impossible to put into words. it's whatever you want it to be. it's queer.

[lastoneout]

You guys need to recognize that the push to treat ace and aro discourse as stupid infighting that never left tumblr is indeed a manifestation of the continued erasure and devaluing of asexuality, aromanticism, and and ace and aro lives in an effort to pretend that the people who did it weren't part of a reactionary hate movement that completely decimated two entire marginalized communities both on and offline.

Like I try to be nice about this but I have seen SO many fucking people being like "lol yeah ace/aro discourse was one thing" and that is deliberate erasure of real and important queer history in service of dodging blame on the parties that did this who, for the most part, never fucking apologized or owned up to it, or, in the case of a few blogs I still see going around, clearly still stand by all of it and just hope you don't point that out, and ofc, no one ever fucking does.

Stop downplaying the absolute fucking devastation the queer community did to ace and aro people and our communities. If owning it makes you uncomfortable, good, go make it right, and start by not fucking lying about what happened, thanks.

[lastoneout]

Everyone will think I'm crazy, but I cannot stress that an atrocity was done to ace and aro people, and we never got so much as a fucking apology.

[lastoneout]

I do want to say if you got caught up in this I don't hate you, especially if you learned and changed, because like most reactionary hate movements ace/aro discourse was always presented as righteous and fun, and also it was EVERYWHERE and the people stirring shit were very well articulated. A lot of us were teenagers joining queer spaces for the first time ever and we wanted to belong and sometimes that means hating who the people who already belong tell you to hate. I get why people fell for it, I came close a few times myself when I was at my lowest and most desperate to feel like I belonged again. I get it.

I can't offer forgiveness or absolution to everyone, but you don't need me to forgive you to forgive yourself and move on, and I do think most of the people who got caught up in it have more than earned moving on.

However, what I want is for everyone to stop downplaying it. Don't call it stupid infighting, don't go "ace stuff was one thing but this with trans men is too far" don't claim it didn't leave tumblr or the internet, own how bad it was. If you were there you know, and your history is valuable, so even when it sucks please be honest about what happened. This part of queer history should not be forgotten, and especially not for the people who never really changed and have an interest in making sure everyone thinks this was just some silly infighting.

That's what I ask, do right by us, don't let us be erased again.

Especially because when you forget, when you downplay it, you downplay what's happened with truscum shit, with biphobia, and now with trans masc exclusion. You downplay it and you disguise that it's the same people saying the same things about a new group. I found out about the rise in trans man/masc exclusion because I saw someone saying that trans men are collateral damage secondary to the real targets of transphobia, trans women, and I immediately knew the person saying it was a shithead I should NEVER trust because that is exactly what they said about bi and ace and aro people. Word for word.

You do those who were hurt a disservice when you downplay what happened, but you also make our spaces less safe because if we pretend what happened didn't we can't stop it when it starts again.

And it always starts again.

[lastoneout]

Reblogging again after seeing YET ANOTHER person say ace/aro discourse wasn't mainstream and didn't leave the internet. People got kicked out of irl queer spaces behind this, stop fucking lying about what happened. At this point more someone pushes the "ace/aro discourse was bad but not mainstream/offline/as bad as what's happening now with [xyz group]" the more I think you have a vested interest in making it out to be not a big deal and that doesn't say anything good about you.

Like y'all claim to be against oppression olympics, but you're still engaging with it every single time you say anything even remotely like "ace/aro discourse was really bad but nothing as serious as what's happening now" and I'm sick of pretending it's not oppression olympics and also not a manifestation of the continued violence against ace and aro people. If the only way you're going to talk about what happened is through downplaying our suffering and/or spreading misinformation about it, do me and every other aro and ace person a favor and stop fucking talking about us.

[bee-a-ts]

the bi/pan alliance and the aro/ace alliance in my city did the funniest possible thing for pride today

[mylordshesacactus]

Hey so I'm gonna be very very honest here.

And this is going to make a lot of people very angry to hear.

But a lot of y'all on this website are truly deeply genuinely never going to be capable of any kind of real narrative analysis--and I don't mean 'being right all the time' I mean 'meaningfully engaging with the text in any way'--

Because you are, fundamentally, incapable of comprehending that writers usually do things on purpose.

[mylordshesacactus]

The themes are there on...purpose.

The match cuts were meticulously designed and put there to communicate something.

The VA's delivery of a line was being directed. Inflection and tone change the meaning of dialogue. This is intentional. There are entire teams of people shaping those choices and deciding which take to use based on what works best for the story.

Information is being revealed in a specific order, on purpose, to craft an emotional arc and guide the audience's understanding.

A character's romantic preferences are only, and SHOULD only be, their primary motivation if the genre is romance. That is why there is a genre called that. Most stories are other genres.

Creators who dislike a character generally give them LESS attention, MORE boring storylines, and LESS screentime.

Sometimes curtains are just blue. But if the shot composition or written narration takes time to HIGHLIGHT, especially more than once, that the curtains are blue, then the blueness of the curtains is by definition narratively important.

"Cite your sources" is not a witch's curse that banishes People With Different Opinions to the shadowrealm of Being Wrong. Someone making points that challenge your perceptions, while including screenshots and explicit examples, cannot be dismissed with "cite your sources" because they are literally doing that. Don't @ me on this one I've seen shit in the wars, y'all.

Failing to understand these things WILL bar you from ever really engaging with or understanding any narrative more complicated than Paw Patrol for the rest of your life.

I am very sorry if that makes you angry.

[hyperrbolic-orange]

This post is fantastic. The notes are truly incredible.

OP: you guys are never going to be able to meaningfully engage with story and character analysis if you cant understand or aren't willing to even consider the context within writers create their stories and the intention behind characters actions and motivations, which are intentional and complex. Not everything begins and ends with romance and relationships, in fact most stories outside of the romance genre feature more complex themes and motivations than straightforward romance and romantic love. Sorry if that makes you mad.

Everyone in the notes: ... I am overwhelmed with fury over this ridiculous and incomprehensible statement, how dare you. Many genres focus on romance, have you never watched a movie? There is always romance. Why would you say only the romance genre should include romance. I will not engage any further with what you said or consider additional context.

[hyperrbolic-orange]

Shout-out to the person who said that romance is the primary motivation of many characters outside of the romance genre, and the example that they gave for this was.... Glenn Close, in Fatal Attraction.

.... you know I do think there may have been something more significant than romantic attraction motivating this character, who is a violent obsessive stalker. In fact, it could be something a little more... fatal?

Part of me wonders what they thought of the movie Obsession, but mostly I am too afraid to ask.

[foenixed]

"Why would this character be jealous of their friend's romantic relationships? Clearly they're in love with them" I don't know if you guys have ever Had Friends but it's actually pretty common for people to feel jealous if their best friend suddenly has less time for them and is prioritising someone they just met over them. That's not inherently romantic, that's the general human desire to be valued by the people you value.

[genderkoolaid]

The transandrophobia brainrot has hit tiktok hard. There's a sound going around right now that uses the T slur in a reclamatory way, but whenever a transmasc person uses the sound people lose their minds saying it's transmisogynistic for them to use that word. But when cis male drag queens use the audio it's a slay.

My answer to those people is Get Kate Bornstein'd:

Tranny. Many people don’t know the history of the word, they assume it was an assigned hate term or slur along the lines of the “n” word. That’s not how it happened. Tranny was invented by us in Sydney, Australia in the 1970s where drag was a big deal, and still the best drag shows ever are in Sydney, Australia – they’re amazing. So a lot of trans-identified women who were assigned male at birth did drag, that’s how you made your living. And so they were transsexuals, transvestites, drag queens, and they were all doing drag to make money. They all bickered amongst each other who is better than who, “Well the drag queens are better,” “No, the transsexuals are better.” “You are all freaks, we’re better.” And on and on and on. But they worked together and they were family together, so they came up with a word that would say family and that was tranny. In Australia they do the diminutive, that’s how they come up with words. So tranny. I learned the word in the mid-1980s, late 1980s from my drag mom in San Francisco, Doris Fish, who was the city’s preeminent drag queen and she’d come from Sydney. And she schooled me in this word tranny, she said, “This way it means we’re family, darling.” “Thank you mama.” [...] So we used it and we were trannies together. And F to M was just beginning to start, the trans men were just beginning to become visible, Lou Sullivan was a neighbor of mine around the corner, and he was the first big out trans man, wrote his book. So trans men and cross dressers . . . cross dressers were also family. Transsexuals, we were all trannies and that felt good. That got into the sex industry and became a genre – there was tranny porn, there were tranny sex workers – chicks with dicks, she-males. [...] And, my only guess is that people who . . . because the only way they would have found out about the word is if they were watching tranny porn or having been with a tranny sex worker and then hated themselves so much that they turned it into a curse word. So it’s not really technically correct to say we’re reclaiming a word – it was always ours. So, many people mistake the word for the hatred behind the word and, in my generation, and I’m sure in future generations of trans people, tranny is going to be a radicalized, sexualized identity of trans in the same way that faggot is a prideful identity in the gay male community – not all gay men are faggots, but those who are are proudly fags and those who are dykes are proudly dykes within the lesbian community, trannies are proudly tranny within the transgender community. Does that mean we can’t call ourselves that because some trans woman does not want to be called a tranny? No. I’m going to keep calling myself a tranny. To the trans woman who gets called tranny, I’m sorry – as soon as . . . you’ve got to look at why you’re getting called tranny and if you don’t pass, you’re going to be read as a transgender person and then you fall back on the cultural view of trans folk which is freak, disgusting, not worth living, we can hurt you. It has nothing to do with the word, it has everything to do with the cultural attitude. So the word has stirred up a shit storm, but it’s not the word.

^ From this interview

Four weeks ago, Bear posted a call for submissions on his blog. In the interests of keeping the call as open as possible, we agreed to include as many trans-identities as we knew, so we used the word "tranny." And that's where the activist shit hit the postmodern fan base. People have been pissed. Here's their argument: FTMs are co-opting a word that belongs to MTFs. The word "tranny" belongs to MTFs, reason those who were hurt by our use of the word, because it was a denigrating term reclaimed by MTFs—ergo, only MTFs could be known as trannies. I spoke with Bear, and we agree that’s wrong on several counts:

Tranny began as a uniting term amongst ourselves. Of course it’s going to be picked up and used as a denigrating term by mean people in the world. But even if we manage to get them to stop saying tranny like a thrown rock, mean people will come up with another word to wound us with. So, let’s get back to using tranny as a uniting term amongst ourselves. That would make Doris Fish very happy.

It's our first own language word for ourselves that has no medical-legacy. 

Even if (like gay) hate-filled people try to make tranny into a bad word, our most positive response is to own the word (a word invented by the queerest of the queer of their day). We have the opportunity to re-create tranny as a positive in the world.

Saying that FTMs can’t call themselves trannies eerily echoes the 1980s lesbians who said I couldn’t use the word woman to identify myself, and the 1990s lesbians who said I couldn’t use the word dyke. 

At one phase in the evolution of transpeople-as-tribe, it was the male-to-females who were visible and representative of trans to the rest of the world. They were the trannies. Today? Ironically true to the binary we’re in the process of shattering, the pendulum has swung so that it's now female-to-males who are the archetypal trannies of the day. The generation coming up beyond the next generation, i.e. my tribal grandchildren are the young boys who transition to young girls at the age of five or six. They’re the next trannies. None of us can own the word. We can only be grateful that our tribe is so much larger than we had thought it would be. How to come together—now that’s the job of the next generation of gender outlaws.

^ From Who You Calling A Tranny?

We've been having this debate forever and its been stupid forever.

And its an increasingly outdated debate. More people know about trans men&mascs than ever and there are plenty of trans men&mascs who have been called tranny by transphobes who don't give a shit about this distinction. And not just people who have been mistaken for transfems, either, but men like Andrew Jonathan Blake-Newton and Saye Skye who were attacked by people who knew them. Do they have more or less of a right to say tranny than a trans girl whose never been called it by a transphobe? (Neither. Because no one owns this word.)

[genderkoolaid]

fixed the linked to Who You Calling A Tranny (it seems there's issues with Bornstein's site, but lots of archived links) & also wanna add this other post of hers from 2014 also on this subject:

“How I define #tranny: ANYONE who messes around w gender w little or no care as to how tht might effect their standing in mainstream culture.” To my way of thinking, a proper and productive response to a proffered definition is to agree with it, disagree and refine it, or disprove it. The majority of responses to my tweet were all about how the word tranny has effected people’s lives. One person, however, managed to refute my definition by saying: “I fuck with gender. I am not a t*****.” For this person, I’m clarifying my definition. What I didn’t spell out is that I understand “tranny” to be a radical, sex-positive gender identity. Tranny is to trans person as fag is to gay man and dyke is to lesbian. More to the point of agreeing or disagreeing with tranny as a gender identity for oneself: I’ve been saying since I wrote the book, Gender Outlaw 20 years ago, that the only person who can name our gender identities is ourselves. In my own life, I’ve rejected the gender identities of both man and woman—despite the fact that I managed to live up to many cultural definitions of both those identities. I pass as a woman, I’m called she by strangers. AND I reject the gender identity of woman. Accordingly, if someone fits my definition of tranny and rejects that identity, then I respect their rejection of the identity. [...]     — FTMs are not allowed to use the word for themselves. FTMs are certainly included in my definition if they want to be.  [...]     — Why all this fuss, just to protect an edgy word? It’s more than an edgy word. Tranny is a valid, vibrant, and vital identity. Protecting that identity is what I’m making the fuss about. In closing: that people are offended by what I call myself is simply not my problem. Transphobia is our communal problem, and I have stood and will stand shoulder to shoulder with anyone who’s fighting that hatred. OK, done now. I’m going to get back to healing my body. Auntie loves you. Have good sex and fun with gender. Kiss Kiss.

[princesspuppyangel]

I feel like a lot of people can’t wrap their heads around the fact that trans women like being women.

[princesspuppyangel]

You know what that’s not it. People who don’t understand trans women are happy as women are doing so intentionally. They are actively choosing to refuse to acknowledge our happiness as women.

[w0nderland]

you NEED to pick a wedding theme and these are the only options what are you picking?

anteaters

corn maze

frankenstein

hello kitty

cargo pants

Voting ended onJun 26