old but gold

Yaoi!!!

You can see more at trans-relatable.tumblr.com!

Honestly I hate being nonbinary/genderqueer.

We live in a 100% binary world, where if your dysphoria is bad enough, doing almost ANYTHING will make you feel like shit and like you’re misgendering yourself.

Need to buy clothes? Choose from two binary sections. Need to go to the bathroom? Better pick which one you pass as. Filling out a form? Gotta choose a binary gender. Want to find a community for something online? Better hope its not specifically separated into “boy” and “girl” communities. Want to call yourself an aesthetic™ term like prince or princess? Haha fuck nope, not for you, peasant.

You sit in a hall for a talk and they address the crowd “ladies and gentlemen!” You want to talk about attraction and people will ask you “do you like boys or girls?” You wanna get involved in gender activism, its men vs women. You meet someone new, and they ask for your pronouns, you have to pray they don’t argue over the validity of yours. Wanna get something as simple as a magazine subscription? They make you put “mr, mrs, or ms.”

You want therapy to help you deal with it all? You better goddamn hope your therapist not only supports being trans, but recognizes your gender as valid rather than a “phase” or god forbid, a symptom of something else. You want hormones or surgery to help your dysphoria? Lmao might not happen unless you pretend you’re binary trans gender. Want a solid support group and community? Wish really hard that your local trans community won’t chase you out for being “fake or confused,” or “making the community look bad,” or being “actually cis trying to sneak into the community.”

We live in a world where, to most of society, we don’t exist; and to the rest of it, we might as well be only an afterthought.

And I hate it. I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to just check off “male,” or “female” on a box and have it be true. How many times I wanted to be able to check one off for a sign up like a fucking Pandora account without feeling like I was lying, misgendering, and betraying myself.

And then in trot these little fuckers in the discourse who have the fucking GALL to tell me I don’t face anything particularly for being nonbinary. That nothing I face is possibly different than what binary trans people face. That I don’t have a right to label the easiness of being binary in a binary world, because “that doesn’t exist.” They demand how dare I make up a word to differentiate between what I face for being trans, and what I face for being nonbinary specifically. I can hear “special snowflake” and “transtrender” accusations underneath all their thinly veiled mockeries over the very idea that I might have a different experience deserving recognition.

And I hate myself a little bit more.

On singular “they” and the opponents of its opponents

CN: transphobia, anti-nonbinary bigotry.

Today I stumbled upon an interview with a professor in Canada who refuses to use singular “they” for colleagues and students in an area that is considering introducing a law that would make this illegal. (‘I’m not a bigot’ Meet the U of T prof who refuses to use genderless pronouns, September 2016, content note: lots and lots of transphobia and anti-nonbinary bigotry.)

I support the introduction of this law and laws like it. This may not be surprising. ;)

There is much to criticise in their one-hour lecture posted to YouTube, where Peterson refers in a very concerned tone to trans women as “transgender men,” says that the idea of a gender spectrum is ludicrous and impossible to prove, and feels that the political cabinet is over-representing “social justice warriors.”

However, on Twitter the main criticism of Peterson I found was this by Jes Stolnik. It says, basically, that Professor Peterson is a hypocrite, because Peterson insists that they won’t use neutral pronouns for nonbinary people while repeatedly using singular “they” in this statement:

This is an argument to navigate delicately. I am wholly on the side of the nonbinary students and colleagues, all the way. But I don’t think Stolnik’s criticism is valid in this case.

Singular “they” is an established pronoun in English, but only for a particular purpose: talking about a hypothetical or real person of unknown gender. The current movement towards using it for specific known people is new, and it is very difficult for many people to accept on various levels, and this is the change that activists don’t want to acknowledge. Because if you acknowledge that the opposition kind of has a point, that gives them more power to beat you down. I can understand the reluctance to admit that Peterson is not actually being hypocritical in this interview. All of us are fighting for our rights and some of us are fighting for basic safety. It’s okay to fight in whatever way you can.

After all, singular “they” is a very well established gender neutral pronoun. Activists and nonbinary people argue that “you already use “they” all the time, how hard is it to use it for nonbinary people?” And you know what? It is really hard! Learning new pronouns is really really hard! Not for everyone, but for a lot of people. I have already blogged about how in English pronouns are a closed class, and that means pronouns are very very slow to change and to create. To create an entirely new pronoun and have it accepted by everyone there needs to be a linguistic need for it in a lot of people’s lives, and there needs to be nothing existing that can be adapted to fit that need. Where a pronoun can be adapted this can take a very long time. The use of “they” to refer to people of unknown gender and the use of “they” to refer to nonbinary people are not comparable.

Having said that, there are a few commonly used arguments against singular “they” for nonbinary people, and they’re all pretty terrible. Let’s start with Peterson’s feelings on the matter.

Generally speaking it’s respectful to refer to people using the nouns and pronouns they prefer. That’s why we feel bad when we get people’s names wrong and stuff like that. So if you’re refusing to use singular “they” to refer to me because you want to call me what you want to call me, for whatever reason, then you’re just being really rude.

All this.

“There isn’t an iota of Americanism in this address.”

no matter what kind of dysphoria you feel, you are valid and important.

you’re nonbinary and incredible! don’t let the bad vibes bring you down.

It’s been an honor pals and gals

I think you’re forgetting something…

True,but also

re blog cause it got better!

It got so much better hahahahaa

Boys don’t have to

•Have to be a certain height •Have to have a certain body type •Completely know their gender

•Have to be “macho” or “fearless” •Have to hold back their emotions to be “manly” •Have to have a specific personality

•Have to impress every person to feel good about themselves •Have to impress !anyone! to feel good about themselves

• Feel less valid for having emotions • Feel like they can’t have female friends without dating them.

This makes me so incredibly happy.

• Have to dress a certain way • Have to have short hair or any certain hairstyle • Have to have “masculine” interests

David Brooks (via traumatherapist)

STOP MISGENDERING PEOPLE WHO'VE MADE IT CLEAR THAT THEY DON'T IDENTIFY WITH THEIR BIRTH GENDER

THIS

Here you go, Tumblr. A little burst of pride for the 1st of Pride (the calendar month previously known as June). 

And here’s how to get pride material in your dashboard all month long (and beyond): Go to the pride search and hit “Follow.” Enjoy!  

Omg it’s beautiful

Trans people aren’t. the. ones. being. creepy. in bathrooms. h/t Carlos Maza