@V1m It should be noted that "destroying the gender binary" is currently used by some groups as a way to discount Trans people, our identities, and our voices.
Seidkona on
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
This conversation is getting into the incredibly murky territory that is the concept of "passing. Yes, gender roles are a social construct and, broadly speaking it's in society's best interest to push back on them, but to be perfectly honest, the onus for that is on cis people, not trans folks.
Trans people are caught in a really shitty space between needing society to validate our identities and needing society to not be beholden to stereotypical ideas of what represents gender and that space can be frustrating, if not impossible, to navigate. Passing shouldn't be expected to be the goal of any given trans person, but for a lot of us, our general wellbeing is predicated on being gendered correctly and on not standing out as aberrant. AKA ensuring that people see and accept us as we are. It's all well and good for individual cis folks to reflect for themselves about how they personally classify gender (for real, that's a good thing to do) but that's for and about you, to improve your own perception of yourself and others. If you're doing it "for us" you've got the wrong perspective on it and it's not really helpful, not when every time we step outside we're surrounded by people who look at us like we're intruding on their spaces, who get confused as soon as they perceive something about us that doesn't "make sense", who address us properly at first and then "correct" themselves as soon as we speak. No amount of waxing philosophic about the nature of gender as a social construct does shit for the fact that it exists regardless and is firmly entrenched in our daily lives, and we have to struggle and suffer for it. For you, considering these things is a luxury. For us, we have no choice but to reflect on them constantly. We don't need validation on that count, we need y'all to get your shit sorted.
I’ve been out for about five months, and feel similarly? I just hate feeling fake when I forgot about gender and just act however, as if I’m expected to act a certain way now. Like, not more “feminine” but just differently than before I came out. I dunno it’s super weird to put into words.
Feeling like you have to live up to expectations. Feeling like a fraud when you don't.
Back when I first started coming to terms with being trans I took those online gender tests and made lists of all my personality traits, mannerisms, likes/dislikes, sexual preferences, etc. I spent a lot of time tabulating all that info and sorting it into masculine or feminine categories trying to figure out where I belonged. I spent some time wondering what is feminine or masculine and there are things I could point to and some of it would originate with a culturally constructed idea of gender while other things like bone structure or facial hair or voice are due to things beyond my control. Despite the numerous examples of people who don't fit the stereotypes there is a feeling that I don't measure up and wondering what I can do to fit in better and somewhat resenting the idea that I have to. I look at pictures of people who read as feminine and try to figure out all the little nuances and details that go into it. So many things....the clothes, the hair, accessories, makeup....and I get frustrated by my failed attempts to replicate it. Some people seem to pull it off so effortlessly and I am so bad at it. I feel like I'm never going to fit in because as much as I like the idea of being a girly girl I don't think it's ever going to be who I am. I don't especially want to become a wizard at makeup. I prefer pants and t-shirts. I like video games. Long hair just doesn't work for me. There are times when I become very self conscious of the way I sit or talk or wonder how my writing style comes across. Am I doing this right? I don't know. I think that's probably not a healthy way to think about it. Gender/gender expression is a messy thing. People don't always fit into neat little categories. I don't really know how much is going to change if and when I transition. What if the only thing that changes is that I have boobs and a new wardrobe. Is that going to be enough? And yet why should it require anything more.
We all go through a process of finding ourselves and for gender variant people that can take a little longer to answer those questions. To try and sort what was from what will be and what others think should be and it can be difficult not knowing. I don't like the ambiguity of it. The lack of grounding makes me feel anxious but part of the reason I want to transition is so I *don't* have to fit others preconceived notions. So that I can escape the gender box society wants to stuff me into. I'm not going to do all this just so I can get stuffed right back into another box.
And still I find myself wondering what I can do to fit in better. :?
@V1m It should be noted that "destroying the gender binary" is currently used by some groups as a way to discount Trans people, our identities, and our voices.
i mean there are basically two reasons one would want to destroy gender:
-you're a humanist and want to stop the suffering societal gender inflicts on people (you want to abolish societal gender)
-you're a sex essentialist and you hate trans people (you want to abolish gender theory because... you're sexist)
conflating or confusing these two arguments is easy and horrible.
0
Brovid Hasselsmof[Growling historic on the fury road]Registered Userregular
I am in the process of transitioning and yet I still regularly Google things like "what is gender" or "what do masculine and feminine mean" because I don't understand it. It's really hard to figure out a game plan for how to act/be in the world when I don't even know what game I'm playing.
@V1m It should be noted that "destroying the gender binary" is currently used by some groups as a way to discount Trans people, our identities, and our voices.
-you're a humanist and want to stop the suffering societal gender inflicts on people (you want to abolish societal gender)
It's really not as cut and dry as that for me.
I need my gender to live, in a very literal sense. There's a popular narrative among a lot of people that the world needs to be a totally post-gender utopia where we're all just eccentric meatsacks acting however we act without labels, but, like...I spent the majority of my life being driven towards suicide by my meatsacks, largely in ways that no amount of social engineering could have fixed.
I didn't just need the freedom to act differently; I needed a mechanism by which the life I had been trapped in could be totally superceded by something new. To be able to say, "I'm a woman the same as any other woman and all of that other shit from the past is officially non-canon." In the absence of those labels and concepts, I would have felt (did feel, for many years) that the things I hated about myself were intrinsic and inescapable.
Of course, that doesn't mean that nothing has to change with how society treats gender; obviously tons of stuff needs to change. But in general I've arrived at the opinion that cultural conceptions of traditional femininity masculinity are fine and healthy as long as they aren't treated like something to be enforced, gender-non-conforming-ness is expected and celebrated, and people are free to decide which narratives they want to be associated with and how (such that, say, "gender-conforming woman", "gender-non-conforming woman", "masculine-coded butch woman", and "nonbinary person with no association with any female narrative" are all rough examples of valid identity elements one could claim and expect to have respected irrespective of any birth assignment). I think there's a lot of flexibility to be had there without expecting everyone to abandon their gender identity.
Or, put another way:
-I think you can be a woman whose relationship with femininity is best described as "open rebellion", but who values that narrative of rebellion in such a way that you still actively identify as a woman
-And I think you can be a (for the sake of this argument let's say AFAB) nonbinary person whose exhibited behavior and personality may be superficially similar to hers, but who finds the thought of all of your behavior being percieved through the lens of "woman rebelling against femininity" repulsive
-And I think any workable conception of gender should accommodate both of these identities as valid and distinct without expecting either category to happily assimilate into the other (because most of the time they won't).
Which I know is still calling for a less-binary conception of gender and probably not opposed to what you a actually meant; I just wanted an excuse to talk about this stuff because "let's kill the concept of gender" talk in progressive circles makes me really uncomfortable sometimes.
We were all born into this status quo, while we need to work to make a better status quo for future generations, a lot of our own conception of what we can be was shaped by what is now and it's not reasonable to expect ourselves to be able to fully shed that.
That's part of what makes the concept of "passing" so hard to navigate. I hate so much of what society expects of women, but despite all that, it is what society expects of women and being recognized as one matters to me, which means compromising what I think women should be able to be, with what it takes to feel like one.
And it's not like any particular facet of femininity is inherently bad, it's codification and power dynamics that are the problem--this is a struggle within feminist movements as well--it's totally fine for me to feel validated by shaving my legs or wearing a dress or even being my boyfriend's arm candy. Society shouldn't demand these things of women but every woman should be free to choose those things if they wish.
my life has been a long series of people telling me what to do and who to be and how to act and i am immensely, personally bitter about it.
gendered expectations are a significant part of that for me, and i have been hurt repeatedly and significantly by that in my life.
My employer has a mandatory anti-bullying course for new employees, and one example of bullying they use is refusing to use someone's they/them/theirs pronouns. I'm so happy and proud!
ive found that the best revenge is just doing whatever the hell you want
The best revenge is starting a fistfight at a family restaurant
That sounds like the voice of experience talking…
an old man at a red robin did not appreciate how many times id said the word 'fuck' and told me that it was a family restaurant and that i needed to watch my mouth after clapping a hand on my shoulder and calling me 'champ'
my friends were VERY WORRIED that there was going to be a fist fight in the red robin
instead i just talked louder about finding a boy to fuck some day
Edit: fuck that entire idea.
People supporting others without being secretly part of that group happens. It happens a lot. It's gross to assume or act like someone supporting you is secretly part of your group.
And being a condescending prick if that person does come out to be part of your group is also gross, like you knew all along. You didn't, get your head out of your ass.
Sorry about that Bendery, I realize my post could be interpreted as being very antagonistic towards you and not like I wanted being directly wholly at the tweet being posted.
I just really dislike the mentality from in there and know that it is rampant amongst the trans community online and wish it weren't.
Sorry about that Bendery, I realize my post could be interpreted as being very antagonistic towards you and not like I wanted being directly wholly at the tweet being posted.
I just really dislike the mentality from in there and know that it is rampant amongst the trans community online and wish it weren't.
what was the tweet?
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Sorry about that Bendery, I realize my post could be interpreted as being very antagonistic towards you and not like I wanted being directly wholly at the tweet being posted.
I just really dislike the mentality from in there and know that it is rampant amongst the trans community online and wish it weren't.
what was the tweet?
An image-tweet of a comic about a trans-ally discovering/realising their own trans-ness after listening to one of the trans-folk at the meeting/convention/some other group context involving moving boxes around, relate how they had a similar revelation after being an ally for a while themselves. Only with cat-ears to designate the trans* characters so the person visibly, spontaneously transforms pretty much instantly, or at least starts; I don’t know if there are later stages such as growing a tail because I didn’t pursue the next or any subsequent page.
It seems incredibly self-defeating, too, because it reinforces the idea that external allies don't exist and therefore anybody is not part of X group can never be an ally, which is gonna drive off people who are definitely not X but do have empathy for that group.
I ate an engineer
+6
H3KnucklesBut we decide which is rightand which is an illusion.Registered Userregular
edited May 2019
Also, something about how the comic presents it almost makes it seem like being trans is a bad thing? Something to do with the combination of the attitude of the one in pink, and the "oh god oh god" reaction at the end.
My employer has a mandatory anti-bullying course for new employees, and one example of bullying they use is refusing to use someone's they/them/theirs pronouns. I'm so happy and proud!
That's pretty fucking awesome and I hope that gets standardized across every place of employment.
This conversation has been done before: we got to be willing to give queer creators the benefit of the doubt when making stuff about their own lives.
This doesn’t mean this stuff is beyond reproach, or that we shouldn’t be self-aware when making it. But calling a comic like that “gross” is the kind of hyperbole that, when coupled with the kind of dogpiling going on here, is what discourages queer people from creating things centered around their queer experiences. Because who wants this kind of ruthless scrutiny?
Also, something about how the comic presents it almost makes it seem like being trans is a bad thing? Something to do with the combination of the attitude of the one in pink, and the "oh god oh god" reaction at the end.
This is the kind of ungenerous overthought I’m talking about. Transitioning is a big deal. It’s a major occurrence that can irrevocably change all of your current relationships. Everyone handles it differently, but “Oh god oh god” definitely resonates with me as the kind of cold anxiety that hit when I came to the same revelation. It doesn’t mean being trans is bad, but that being trans in a culture actively hostile to trans people can be worrying. Why read such a negative thing in this comic?
The comic isn’t perfect. It’s that kind of overly saccharine attitude that is common in the circles of white trans women. Which, as -Tal said, tends to develop toxic behaviors. You could probably tweak some things to get the message across better. Also the art is...okay, that isn’t relevant here. It’s a shitpost-esque comic that’s saying “Hey, remember how weirdly involved with trans politics before realizing you were trans youself? Pepperidge Farm remembers.” It’s the trans equivalent of “Only 90s kids will get this.” And just like how some 00s kids will remember Road Rovers, not every cis ally is secretly trans. The author probably assumes you understand this, because they are trans and you won’t be judging it it in the same way you would a screed from Jordan fuckin’ Peterson.
In summary: critique is important, but remember that people aren’t perfect so maybe considering where the work is coming from and tempering your commentary accordingly. This is especially important when considering work from queer PoC, where people will break out the torches and pitchforks over the smallest issues.
To be totally honest I retweeted that comic because it reminded me, in more general terms, of my own personal experience of being a member of a GSA in High School, being friends with some queer folks in college, and then soon realizing I'm both Not Straight and Not Cis.
I would argue these revelations were ultimately my own, and while one of my queer friends said that they were pretty sure I was trans when they met me, in context it was more of a way to reassure me that my feelings were valid.
That all being said... there is a certain misdirected enthusiasm from some trans ladies that's uh... probably not productive for helping others figure themselves out. Thankfully though I've only had a very small number of interactions with people like this.
unfortunately like most things the truth lies somewhere in the middle. “all trans allies are secret trans themselves” is a bunk ass take, but also, those people do exist, that’s a journey some people have. so like. if you’re reading this and you’re cool with me you still might not be a girl? (or boy or neither or both or other.) but you can if you want to be! you have a right to self determination and the real bad guys are the ones trying to do it for you
also a reminder for anyone who wants to chime in that incarceration is totally cool is that she was immediately sentenced to solitary, a form of psychological torture that has been explicitly proven to make it completely random whether any testimony will be accurate or not due to it being torture. so your goals of compelling truthful testimony to a grand jury aren't even being met to begin with. don't bother carrying water.
+30
Erin The RedThe Name's Erin! Woman, Podcaster, Dungeon Master, IT nerd, Parent, Trans. AMABaton Rouge, LARegistered Userregular
It's all petty revenge. There's no justifiable reason for the way she is being treated and it's absolutely goddamn sickening
Posts
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Trans people are caught in a really shitty space between needing society to validate our identities and needing society to not be beholden to stereotypical ideas of what represents gender and that space can be frustrating, if not impossible, to navigate. Passing shouldn't be expected to be the goal of any given trans person, but for a lot of us, our general wellbeing is predicated on being gendered correctly and on not standing out as aberrant. AKA ensuring that people see and accept us as we are. It's all well and good for individual cis folks to reflect for themselves about how they personally classify gender (for real, that's a good thing to do) but that's for and about you, to improve your own perception of yourself and others. If you're doing it "for us" you've got the wrong perspective on it and it's not really helpful, not when every time we step outside we're surrounded by people who look at us like we're intruding on their spaces, who get confused as soon as they perceive something about us that doesn't "make sense", who address us properly at first and then "correct" themselves as soon as we speak. No amount of waxing philosophic about the nature of gender as a social construct does shit for the fact that it exists regardless and is firmly entrenched in our daily lives, and we have to struggle and suffer for it. For you, considering these things is a luxury. For us, we have no choice but to reflect on them constantly. We don't need validation on that count, we need y'all to get your shit sorted.
Feeling like you have to live up to expectations. Feeling like a fraud when you don't.
Back when I first started coming to terms with being trans I took those online gender tests and made lists of all my personality traits, mannerisms, likes/dislikes, sexual preferences, etc. I spent a lot of time tabulating all that info and sorting it into masculine or feminine categories trying to figure out where I belonged. I spent some time wondering what is feminine or masculine and there are things I could point to and some of it would originate with a culturally constructed idea of gender while other things like bone structure or facial hair or voice are due to things beyond my control. Despite the numerous examples of people who don't fit the stereotypes there is a feeling that I don't measure up and wondering what I can do to fit in better and somewhat resenting the idea that I have to. I look at pictures of people who read as feminine and try to figure out all the little nuances and details that go into it. So many things....the clothes, the hair, accessories, makeup....and I get frustrated by my failed attempts to replicate it. Some people seem to pull it off so effortlessly and I am so bad at it. I feel like I'm never going to fit in because as much as I like the idea of being a girly girl I don't think it's ever going to be who I am. I don't especially want to become a wizard at makeup. I prefer pants and t-shirts. I like video games. Long hair just doesn't work for me. There are times when I become very self conscious of the way I sit or talk or wonder how my writing style comes across. Am I doing this right? I don't know. I think that's probably not a healthy way to think about it. Gender/gender expression is a messy thing. People don't always fit into neat little categories. I don't really know how much is going to change if and when I transition. What if the only thing that changes is that I have boobs and a new wardrobe. Is that going to be enough? And yet why should it require anything more.
We all go through a process of finding ourselves and for gender variant people that can take a little longer to answer those questions. To try and sort what was from what will be and what others think should be and it can be difficult not knowing. I don't like the ambiguity of it. The lack of grounding makes me feel anxious but part of the reason I want to transition is so I *don't* have to fit others preconceived notions. So that I can escape the gender box society wants to stuff me into. I'm not going to do all this just so I can get stuffed right back into another box.
And still I find myself wondering what I can do to fit in better. :?
i mean there are basically two reasons one would want to destroy gender:
-you're a humanist and want to stop the suffering societal gender inflicts on people (you want to abolish societal gender)
-you're a sex essentialist and you hate trans people (you want to abolish gender theory because... you're sexist)
conflating or confusing these two arguments is easy and horrible.
I need my gender to live, in a very literal sense. There's a popular narrative among a lot of people that the world needs to be a totally post-gender utopia where we're all just eccentric meatsacks acting however we act without labels, but, like...I spent the majority of my life being driven towards suicide by my meatsacks, largely in ways that no amount of social engineering could have fixed.
I didn't just need the freedom to act differently; I needed a mechanism by which the life I had been trapped in could be totally superceded by something new. To be able to say, "I'm a woman the same as any other woman and all of that other shit from the past is officially non-canon." In the absence of those labels and concepts, I would have felt (did feel, for many years) that the things I hated about myself were intrinsic and inescapable.
Of course, that doesn't mean that nothing has to change with how society treats gender; obviously tons of stuff needs to change. But in general I've arrived at the opinion that cultural conceptions of traditional femininity masculinity are fine and healthy as long as they aren't treated like something to be enforced, gender-non-conforming-ness is expected and celebrated, and people are free to decide which narratives they want to be associated with and how (such that, say, "gender-conforming woman", "gender-non-conforming woman", "masculine-coded butch woman", and "nonbinary person with no association with any female narrative" are all rough examples of valid identity elements one could claim and expect to have respected irrespective of any birth assignment). I think there's a lot of flexibility to be had there without expecting everyone to abandon their gender identity.
Or, put another way:
-I think you can be a woman whose relationship with femininity is best described as "open rebellion", but who values that narrative of rebellion in such a way that you still actively identify as a woman
-And I think you can be a (for the sake of this argument let's say AFAB) nonbinary person whose exhibited behavior and personality may be superficially similar to hers, but who finds the thought of all of your behavior being percieved through the lens of "woman rebelling against femininity" repulsive
-And I think any workable conception of gender should accommodate both of these identities as valid and distinct without expecting either category to happily assimilate into the other (because most of the time they won't).
Which I know is still calling for a less-binary conception of gender and probably not opposed to what you a actually meant; I just wanted an excuse to talk about this stuff because "let's kill the concept of gender" talk in progressive circles makes me really uncomfortable sometimes.
That's part of what makes the concept of "passing" so hard to navigate. I hate so much of what society expects of women, but despite all that, it is what society expects of women and being recognized as one matters to me, which means compromising what I think women should be able to be, with what it takes to feel like one.
And it's not like any particular facet of femininity is inherently bad, it's codification and power dynamics that are the problem--this is a struggle within feminist movements as well--it's totally fine for me to feel validated by shaving my legs or wearing a dress or even being my boyfriend's arm candy. Society shouldn't demand these things of women but every woman should be free to choose those things if they wish.
gendered expectations are a significant part of that for me, and i have been hurt repeatedly and significantly by that in my life.
i do not like it and i want revenge.
ineedmayo.com Eidolon Journal Updated
...I think?
I mean, it's 9 months since the first spiro pill
But something like 6-7 since the first patch
And fewer than 3 since "full" dose levels reached to really get things going
So, I have no idea here. How do ya'll count this stuff? Is there, like, a standard?
On May, 22nd I have an appointment to up the dose. Just 2 days after I start my new job!
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
The best revenge is starting a fistfight at a family restaurant
That sounds like the voice of experience talking…
Nintendo Network ID: AzraelRose
DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
an old man at a red robin did not appreciate how many times id said the word 'fuck' and told me that it was a family restaurant and that i needed to watch my mouth after clapping a hand on my shoulder and calling me 'champ'
my friends were VERY WORRIED that there was going to be a fist fight in the red robin
instead i just talked louder about finding a boy to fuck some day
edit:
the full story is here
ineedmayo.com Eidolon Journal Updated
Edit: fuck that entire idea.
People supporting others without being secretly part of that group happens. It happens a lot. It's gross to assume or act like someone supporting you is secretly part of your group.
And being a condescending prick if that person does come out to be part of your group is also gross, like you knew all along. You didn't, get your head out of your ass.
I just really dislike the mentality from in there and know that it is rampant amongst the trans community online and wish it weren't.
what was the tweet?
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
It does not merit such a strong reaction, honestly.
I find it thoroughly gross.
An image-tweet of a comic about a trans-ally discovering/realising their own trans-ness after listening to one of the trans-folk at the meeting/convention/some other group context involving moving boxes around, relate how they had a similar revelation after being an ally for a while themselves. Only with cat-ears to designate the trans* characters so the person visibly, spontaneously transforms pretty much instantly, or at least starts; I don’t know if there are later stages such as growing a tail because I didn’t pursue the next or any subsequent page.
Nintendo Network ID: AzraelRose
DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
well it's not a great assertion.
This doesn’t mean this stuff is beyond reproach, or that we shouldn’t be self-aware when making it. But calling a comic like that “gross” is the kind of hyperbole that, when coupled with the kind of dogpiling going on here, is what discourages queer people from creating things centered around their queer experiences. Because who wants this kind of ruthless scrutiny?
This is the kind of ungenerous overthought I’m talking about. Transitioning is a big deal. It’s a major occurrence that can irrevocably change all of your current relationships. Everyone handles it differently, but “Oh god oh god” definitely resonates with me as the kind of cold anxiety that hit when I came to the same revelation. It doesn’t mean being trans is bad, but that being trans in a culture actively hostile to trans people can be worrying. Why read such a negative thing in this comic?
The comic isn’t perfect. It’s that kind of overly saccharine attitude that is common in the circles of white trans women. Which, as -Tal said, tends to develop toxic behaviors. You could probably tweak some things to get the message across better. Also the art is...okay, that isn’t relevant here. It’s a shitpost-esque comic that’s saying “Hey, remember how weirdly involved with trans politics before realizing you were trans youself? Pepperidge Farm remembers.” It’s the trans equivalent of “Only 90s kids will get this.” And just like how some 00s kids will remember Road Rovers, not every cis ally is secretly trans. The author probably assumes you understand this, because they are trans and you won’t be judging it it in the same way you would a screed from Jordan fuckin’ Peterson.
In summary: critique is important, but remember that people aren’t perfect so maybe considering where the work is coming from and tempering your commentary accordingly. This is especially important when considering work from queer PoC, where people will break out the torches and pitchforks over the smallest issues.
I would argue these revelations were ultimately my own, and while one of my queer friends said that they were pretty sure I was trans when they met me, in context it was more of a way to reassure me that my feelings were valid.
That all being said... there is a certain misdirected enthusiasm from some trans ladies that's uh... probably not productive for helping others figure themselves out. Thankfully though I've only had a very small number of interactions with people like this.
Steam
please note:
Really hope she goes down in the history books as the goddamn heroine she is.
Steam