decide what to be and go be it @transuncle - Tumblr Blog

Accepting identities I don't understand is actually extremely easy because I just go "this isn't about me" and move on with my life unbothered by someone else's identity, it's truly that simple.

eevee-on-keyboard

i heard someone say once, “you don’t need to speak French to acknowledge that it’s a language that exists”. and i feel like more ppl need to keep that in mind when they come across something they don’t understand.

transandrogyny--turtlebug

"Trans men will never understand what it's like to have thousands of nazis attack you" Girl has no interest in the oppression of anyone but people like herself like

You look up Elliot Page and it's like the second thing that pops up

transuncle

Blake Brockington (May 14, 1996- March 23, 2015)

When I first heard about Blake, we were celebrating- he was crowned the first openly transgender prom king of North Carolina, in Charlotte 2014. It was all over social media and the Huffington post. He was my age, also from the South, and seemingly thriving! Yay representation!!

And then a year later he was gone.

He later indicated the process had been tough on him, saying, "That was single-handedly the hardest part of my trans journey. Really hateful things were said on the Internet. It was hard. I saw how narrow-minded the world really is."*

Many have noted that what happened to Brockington fits a dangerous pattern of harmful behavior toward transgender youth – who often face disproportionate amounts of bullying, harassment, discrimination, and violence. Josh Burford, assistant director for sexual and gender diversity at UNC Charlotte, who had worked with Brockington on the exhibit at the Levine Museum, told the press "What happened to Blake is part of a systemic problem, especially for trans students of color. He didn't quit. He didn't give up. ... He's a victim of what happens every single day to these kids."

There are more detailed descriptions of the hate and harassment Blake faced, including every queer and racial slur imaginable, but I wont share them here. He was targeted for being transgender and for being Black.

He said the online hate was SINGLE HANDEDLY the worst part of his journey... Before all this, in order to transition he had to live in foster care due to unsupportive family (who deadnamed him after his death btw, even after he was internationally known as Blake).

And he said the online hate campaigns were single handedly hardest.

Blake would be 30 years old in 2026.

br0kenglasses

Friendly reminder that if you’re trans you don’t have to diminish yourself to find love. You will find someone who sees you as a regular, normal human (something I know I wasn’t used to myself) and love you with their entire heart. They will introduce you to their family and/or friends, they won’t hide that they’re dating you, and that if things ever end in that relationship, you won’t be left feeling like it’s because of your body. They will let you exist as you are and be loved.

transuncle

Yes!!!!!!

I grew up in the fucking Bush years where the #1 response to wanting to transition from cis people was "How are you going to find someone who will love you?"

And ive seen so many variations of this since.

And its TOTAL BULLSHIT.

I have been in several relationships. My current one, with a bi cis man, is 4 years old. We have a dog and 2 cats together. He is my fiercest advocate. We both have found so much healing in our queer love.

Like ive seen a lot of talk about how trans men shouldnt date cis men, and how they will never see us as men, that i closed myself off to dating queer cis men. But there is so much overlap in the experiences of queer cis men and trans men because we're both queer men! And I love queer men and being a queer man and how queer love helped me untangle a lot of bio essentialist bullshit I picked up over the years !!!

transsolidarity

Infographic made this week is about federal transgender housing rights! The May 30 timestamp is when I last did a deep research review on news/laws. Regardless of what state or territory you live in, these apply everywhere in the United States.

The main takeaway is that HUD still technically forbids anti-transgender discrimination in housing, renting, credit, etc BUT the Trump-Vance administration has paused all investigations into trans-related complaints. In a practical sense, if you are currently experiencing discrimination, contact a state or local agency first to discuss these rights.

Read the full article on the blog: https://transsolidarityproject.org/legal-resources/

elierlick

One year ago, trans women held an iconic topless protest outside the Scottish Parliament. I love it when trans women hold topless demonstrations. If they're arrested, the state must admit they're women. If they aren't, it exposes the obvious contradictions of defining trans women as legally male.

Now, a year later, Parliament has its first two transgender members, one of whom represents JK Rowling in Edinburgh. We can't attribute this momentum solely to the protest, but the direct action seems to have galvanized a new political movement of trans people across Scotland.

genderkoolaid

When we talk about trans people and sex work, we don’t talk about trans men.

Hi! I wrote a medium article!

If you've been at all interested in what I've been posting about historical sex work and FTM crossdressing, that's what this is about. I go over three examples of this in ancient Greece, Renaissance Venice, and 19th-20th-century San Francisco, and talk a bit about my thoughts on how these stories tie in to transmasculine erasure (& specifically the erasure of gay transmasculinity).

genderkoolaid

Unfortunately only found out about this after publishing, but this is another example in the realm of "FTM crossdressing being seen as highly sexual and obscene" (w bonus intersexism and racism because all oppression is intertwined):

So I was rummaging through my books in storage in an attempt to get some inspiration for this week’s post. Serendipitously I came across t

The emergence of women cross-dressing really troubled the connection between clothing and sexual identity. For those Latin nerds out there, you probably notice something wrong right away with the term hic mulier: hic is the masculine form of “this,” while the noun it modifies is feminine, “mulier” or “woman.” The comment being made is that the female transvestite throws everything into chaos, including language. In the 1620 pamphlet, Hic Mulier, the writer constantly describes this figure as defying any categorization: the hic mulier is “not halfe man, halfe woman; halfe fish, halfe flesh; halfe beast, halfe Monster.” The pamphlet goes on to accuse the female transvestite of dressing more lasciviously: “From the other, you have taken the monstrousness of your deformitie in apparell, exchanging the modest attire of the comely Hood, Cawle, Coyfe, handsome Drsse and Kerchiefe, to the cloudy Ruffianly broad-brim’d Hatte, and wanton Feather, the modest upper parts of a concleaing straight gowne, to the loose, lascivious civill embracement of a French doublet. . . and extreme short wasted to give most easie way to every luxurious action.” In other words, yet confusing, the writer actually finds that in dressing like a man the hic mulier is exhibiting her lustful nature. The anonymous writer at one point insinuates that the female transvestite has traded sexual favors for her outfit and for having her hair cut short. Among being compared to a monster, “the untamed Moore, the naked Indian, and the wilde Irish,” the writer also suggests the hic mulier to be comparable to a prostitute. In Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton’s The Roaring Girl (1610), Moll Cutpurse, a character based on the real life female transvestite, Mary Firth, is often perceived by other characters as being sexually promiscuous. [...] The villainous father in the play, Sir Alexander, who is under the impression that his son wishes to marry Moll, thinks that she may be a [slur for intersex people]: “Hoyda! Breeches! What, will he marry a monster with two trinkets? What age is this? If the wife go in breeches, the man must wear long coats like a fool.” (Ii.ii.71-2)

genderkoolaid

I know I already posted this quote elsewhere but I wanted to place it in this context:

Unless they present hyperfeminine, butches don’t have access to the job market. You will not be considered if you don’t wear nice women’s clothes. If you set up catering, you will get told, “I am disgusted; a woman who thinks she’s a man is cooking for me.” So butch lesbians normally have an assistant, or their femme partner if they have one, who is more feminine-looking to run the front so customers don’t know a masculine-presenting person is cooking behind the curtains. Many of us become sex workers [due to lack of job opportunities].… But then when police raid brothels and homes, the masculine lesbians get treated “like men.” This means more forceful handcuffing, kneeling, and stripping their shirts off. [...] According to Rosa, police are “far more brutal” to masculine-presenting queer women, which is particularly dangerous given that their masculine-presentation is a large part of what originally forced many LBQ+ people into sex work. Thus, masculine-presenting queer women’s discrimination in employment may lead to police violence after being pushed into sex work.

— Rosa, lesbian and sex worker rights defender El Salvador, quoted by the Human Rights Watch

genderkoolaid

"The House of D [was] 500 feet from the Stonewall Inn," Ryan says. "On the first night of the riots, people incarcerated in the prison could actually see what was happening out their windows, and they started a riot all their own, setting fire to their belongings and throwing them down to the streets below while chanting 'Gay rights! Gay rights! Gay rights!' "By the '50s and '60s, Ryan estimates, "around 75% of the people incarcerated in the House of D are queer in some way." In the 1960s, the prison began marking gay prisoners with a "D" for "degenerate," and placing them into solitary confinement because they were considered a "danger to other women." […] The first waywardism laws in New York State start in the 1880s and they only apply to girls and women, originally ones who are arrested for prostitution and then expanded greatly in the late 1800s to women who might become prostitutes. And that's where they really get into danger, right? Because suddenly the charge of prostitution has nothing to do with sex work or exchanging sex for money. Instead, a wayward girl is anyone who was thought to be improperly feminine to the point where she has an invitation to prostitution. She's either too sexual or she's too masculine and unable to get any other kind of job. So of course she's going to end up being a prostitute.

This forgotten women's prison helped cement Greenwich Village's queer identity by Terry Gross

genderkoolaid

Working Guys is a collection of stories by transmasculine sex workers that take readers through different moments in their lives. The sto

Working Guys is a collection of stories by transmasculine sex workers that take readers through different moments in their lives. The stories intersect between a few central themes, such as perceptions, media representation, and violence inflicted on trans sex workers. These nudge us to look at support systems and systematic changes required to address vulnerability, outlining the grey area between empowerment and vulnerabilities transmasculine sex workers face.

How far can one conform to expected ideas of gender before it becomes harmful?

“He told me that he struggled to see me as a man because I sell sex … and I found it hard to see the version of myself that I hid behind for work as anything other than a woman too. What he said to me had spread the sickness and I felt unsure in my identity. I pretended to be a woman for work, so people saw me as one outside of it too.” -- "Only women sell sex" by Liam

In the anthology, several contributors recount the bittersweet irony of adopting female persons to cater to the demands of the market. This performance, often described as “cis for pay”, often binds trans sex workers to conform to different gendered expectations. When transmascs fail to meet the binary societal expectations of how a ‘man’ should look or behave, they are faced with violence of all types and degrees. Sex workers capitalising aspects of oneself that can be eroticised is a form of powerful personal reclamation. On the flip side however, it leans into or even perpetuates harmful stereotypes that eroticise certain traits, further resulting in discrimination and violence.

Why are sex workers’ choices about their own bodies often subjected to the opinions of others?

“If you’re selling your body, isn’t it prudent to keep everything intact? Surely you’d lose customers if you had this surgery.” -- "An Appointment at Charing Cross" by Mx Dagger

In stories shared, several contributors to the anthology mention experiences where they were “hammered on details, including the type of sex work that were done” during requests for medical references for gender affirming surgery. These experiences highlight a higher barrier for trans people when it comes to obtaining medical support for their gender affirming procedures, which can have harmful consequences since many may choose to omit information when dealing with medical professions to avoid stigmatisation. This is in addition to the astronomical cost of medical transition that pushes many trans people into higher-risk work environments. These narratives challenge us to acknowledge that the fight for accessible transition care is inseparable from the broader struggle against economic and social marginalisation.

The invisibility of transmasculine sex workers.

Unlike their transfeminine counterparts—who, despite facing greater physical risks, benefit from more robust community networks—transmascs often find themselves isolated, struggling to advertise and represent themselves in spaces where few have a mental concept of what it means to be transmasculine. Highlighting the lived experiences of transmasculine sex workers is crucial when addressing the concerns of the sex worker community as a whole. However, over reliance on an individual’s experience in the sex industry might undermine other experiences faced by different sex workers. Hence it is important to continually highlight the diversity of the community. Joey, our ex-intern, penned down some of her thoughts while she was reading the book as a sex worker herself: “The truth is I often feel deeply ambivalent about my work – I’m torn between the desire to defend it (because I enjoy it) and the desire to critique it (because it’s work, and I would prefer not to need to work, or at least to be able to do so in better conditions). I never lie about my work, but I find it difficult to convey my thoughts effectively, while avoiding narratives that speak in absolutes: sex work being wholly degrading and exploitative, or sex work being entirely unproblematic and enjoyable. For me it’s somewhere in the middle—often a little of both.”

Conclusion

Working Guys challenge traditional views and push for different forms of empowerment, shaping a more holistic view of what transgender people experience. While doing so, Jack Parker uses the book as a platform to voice transmasculine perspectives and resilience in the face of adversity and challenges. A recurring theme, empowerment within the transmasculine community was highlighted in various ways – as allies and sex workers. This is rooted in the belief that individuals should make decisions based on what aligns with their beliefs, rather than conforming to external factors. By reading this, hopefully it gives us the strength – like what Parker is doing – to advocate for and empower transmasculine sex workers.

You can get Working Guys as a PDF here, or as a paperback here.

You can also read a little about the history of transmasculinity and sex work here.

taraxippos

Had been thinking about this post (which is a fake excerpt from an imaginary narrative written to mock 'tumblr prose'), and how most "no actually this is good" comments are highlighting how the construction of individual sentences is interesting, how some of the language is evocative, how it Goes Hard. Because that post is written badly in a very thoughtful manner that focuses on core structural issues rather than going for low hanging fruit of poor technical proficiency with the written word, it is not bad in the most "obvious" of ways. So I think this is a legit learning opportunity, but also I don't want to dunk on anyone so instead I will just preach to the choir of My Followers.

But yeah like to be more constructive than just going "lol tumblr prose bad", really the issue in Large part that characterizes "tumblr prose" (which to be clear I don't think is a discrete thing and at most is a combination of several writing tendencies influenced by the medium of Online) comes down to the lack of real contrast in Any aspect of narrative construction, and an obsession with being quotable and constantly being at 100% of Going Hard (which go hand in hand).

In that post, the character voice is indistinct from that of the narration, and the characters quote one-liners that look Meaningful as excerpts and are borderline nonsensical as dialogue. There is no more than the faintest, most generic hints of characterization; these people exist as vague concepts to say deep words for the reader. The sentence length has little variation from its staccato beat, and so it is awkward to read and fails to complement the action or accomplish anything with the pacing (save for the slight slowdown when the torturer feels all that damp animal electricity). The timing is awkward and exaggeratedly dramatic. The description is a flowery kind of tryhard visceral and seems avoidant of describing anything too directly ("something dark and arterial" where there's nothing being accomplished by conveying uncertainty about what is currently gushing out of the injured character and the simple use of "blood splashed across the stones" would actually be 10x more effective), in a way that does disservice to what is supposed to be a torture scene, and leaves it weightless and ungrounded. In fairness to the people saying "this is good", that is MUCH easier to say when reading this fake excerpt as the standalone piece it actually is, but this kind of writing Cannot function in an actual narrative and is not what an excerpt from well constructed narrative fiction is going to look like basically ever.

It reflects a lot of very typical amateur writing issues that just about everyone has to grow out of (the minimal diversity in sentence length, simulated non-attention to scene pacing and timing), and issues common to fanfiction-influenced writing on social media (allergy to paragraph lengths of more than two sentences, little to no description of the characters or setting because, in fanfiction, the reader already knows their physical characteristics and mannerisms and it doesn't need to be lingered upon, Unlike In Original Fiction). But this particularly hits on an issue I think is semi-unique to narrative writing in the social media milieu, which is a focus on being quotable. This may not even be a conscious impulse at all But It's There. This kinda apparent terror of any moment not being as beautiful and hard hitting as possible (or for comedy, any moment not being A Joke). Everything "Goes Hard", so nothing actually does. A lot of "tumblr prose" type writing is less a narrative, more a string of quotes loosely assembled into narrative that vaguely gestures at things like Plot and Character. It substitutes depth for Suggestions of depth by utilizing stock symbolism without building it into the narrative, and by gesturing at weighty contexts without actually engaging with them. There can be little contrast or effective use of tone, pace, description when your story is a series of Hard Hitting Quotes.

I'm reading Watership Down right now and I think it's a great novel overall and can work as an example of how important it is to utilize contrast in your writing.

This segment is the lengthy first description of the titular down, which the rabbits are now encountering for the first time:

Adams is slowing the pace here to introduce us to the setting of the next segment of the book. The average sentence length is very long and keeps us lingering in the sensory detail, while still varied and thus smoothly readable. This new place is introduced by simultaneously conveying its physical description in vivid detail and conveying its feeling and character, and getting the most out of every described feature to do so. The thorn trees are "wind stunted". The air is "scented". The language takes on a very flowery character and heavily utilizes simile and metaphor. Woodland is "tumultuous with evening", sunlight filters through grass "like a wind" to the small creatures below, in contrast to laying "like a gold rind" on the hill when seen from a distance. This grandiose description is heavily functional and conveys both exhaustive physical detail and a feeling that this place is beautiful, awe inspiring to something like a rabbit, and full of life, though not without quiet hints of danger. It hits because Not Everything In The Book Is Described This Way. It means something that we're lingering like this and stopping to get a sense of this place on every possible level, and moving away from more direct, simple prose to convey the feeling of the place in depth.

This segment describes the rabbit Bigwig being found caught in a snare:

The prose here here has the opposite approach of the first excerpt. The language is concise, direct, and brutal. It only veers slightly away from the literal to describe Bigwig's voice as 'bubbling out' from his mouth, both conveying that the saliva and blood in his mouth is literally bubbling as he speaks, and implying the unsettling way his voice sounds as he's being strangled. The sentences are much shorter on the whole, as fit for the pacing of a tense and rapidly changing scene, and the timing closely complements the action - "There was a pause" not only conveys That There Was A Pause but interrupts the rhythm of this segment; the moment of uneasy stillness is echoed in the act of reading itself.

The scene this is excerpted from is extremely effective and does in fact Go Hard, it's well constructed in of itself but its effectiveness mostly lies in its place in the narrative. It's the culmination of a long, tense buildup as the reader becomes more aware that something is deeply Wrong about the place the rabbits are in, and the payoff is effective in being blunt and visceral, which hits because Not Everything In The Book Is Described This Way. Nothing about these excerpts are particularly quotable because that is actually not what good narrative writing is about.