in honor of ace week id like to shoutout every asexual who first thought they were bi/pan because they looked at all the genders and felt no difference and zero is equal to zero so they said “huh. must be bisexual” and then shoved their sexuality back under the rug for 3-5 years
As a member of the bi community, ace people are always welcome underneath the bi umbrella
Galaxy brain take, and I’ll embrace it on the merit of being inclusive and fun.
crazy that in the 1970s they were like, "fine, women can play sports. but because they're innately less athletic than men, only in a special ghettoized League For The Frail And Delicate where they get paid less 😊". And not only is that still the system in 2023, but viciously lashing out at the smallest challenges to that system gets framed as Feminist Praxis
even setting aside the fact that gendered bodytype averages aren't universals, and plenty of individual (cis) women and (cis) men could easily go to toe to toe. have we considered that the fact that all the most prominent and well-paid sports are ones that require things like Being Tall and Having Muscle Mass, as opposed to, ex, gymnastics...is itself an artifact of sexism
also to people who are like "well do you think WOMEN should be playing AMERICAN FOOTBALL against MEN" actually I don't think anyone should be playing american football on account of, you know, the irreversible brain damage.
Something that has popped up a few times in the notes I want to address, that I am deciding to assume are there out of ignorance and not active malice:
This sentiment isn’t and never should be about why you “should wait.” “People might change their minds so don’t rush!” “Exactly! Don’t feel pressured to transition right now!” “You’ll know better when you’re older.”
NO! This post is about people who got pressured to wait and are now afraid it’s too late. This post is about people second guessing themselves cause they get told they’ll change their minds and keep putting off coming out in case they are “wrong.” This post is about people who COULDNT come out as a child as a teen as a young adult as a full adult because they “weren’t old enough” to know what’s right for them.
If you’re 3 and you know something is off you should be able to transition. If you’re hitting puberty and feel wildly out of place in your own body you should be able to transition. If you’re hitting adulthood and know it wasn’t “just a phase” you should be able to transition. But people often don’t. Often can’t.
This isn’t to encourage people to wait, it’s to remind people FORCED to wait that they didn’t miss the train, they didn’t miss their chance. The things you want are still achievable at any any age.
I know people who thought their body would never look how they wanted after giving birth. I know people who look extremely like their AGAB after puberty terrified they’ll never be able to look how they want. I know people who are nearing the end of their lives wondering if there is much of a “point” to socially transitioning when they’ve lived so many decades as their AGAB.
I am sorry for everyone robbed of childhoods they wanted, of youth they could have had, of times in their lives they could have been their authentic selves but couldn’t for whatever reasons. I am sorry you were forced to wait.
This isn’t a call to wait, just a promise that if you are forced to wait, you are not running out of time. You haven’t missed your chance. You’ll get where you want to be despite the pressure to stay.
Me, two glasses of wine in: "yeah so here's an in depth conversation about my identity as a nonbinary person, and my struggles with transphobia in 2023"
Median Center-Right American Dude at the party, also two drinks in: "Damn that's crazy, I never thought of it like that. Man, I'm sorry you gotta deal with this shit."
Me: "Ahh it's alright. I deal."
Random Guy: "People should just chill tf out."
Me: "Damn right"
Random Guy: "So if you're non binary, and, sorry if this is offensive but I don't know the right words here. Like, is it cross dressing for you if you wear a skirt?"
Me: "Its- hm. Huh. I have no idea."
Guy: "It must have been nice to go to school with other trans people. Like, you must've felt safe."
Me: "No actually it was the opposite. It just made me even more upset and confused. I didn't know what being non-binary was. I saw people that transitioned from one gender to the other and knew I wasn't that. It took me a long time to figure this shit out."
Guy: "man that sounds rough. No wonder you guys are upset all this time this sounds painful."
Me: "Well, it sucks until it suddenly doesn't. It sucks and then it rules hard."
Guy: "so It's like working out."
Me: [both of us are now nodding wisely] "it's like working out."
it’s so funny to me when terfs and other transphobes talk about “biological pronouns”
you realise there is nothing about a vulva that means you have to call someone who has one “she”, right? and nothing about a penis that means you have to call someone who has one “he”? like that is literally a socially constructed idea based on the perceived gender of a person with a certain set of genitals.
you cannot be actually critical of gender if you are not critical of the ideas about it that society has created, you fucking clowns 💀
Honestly. If pronouns were biological then why are they different in every single language?
^^^^^^^
My second language is German, where “she” and “they” are literally the same word.
And I swear there are languages where there is literally no gendered pronouns at all.
Just shows how UK and US centric TERFs are that they say this shit 💀
iirc there’s an african language that has no gendered pronouns, which is why people who speak it as a first language will sometimes use gendered pronouns interchangeably when speaking english bc to them they all mean the same thing. i think there’s a scandinavian language that does this too.
i had to pull this out of the tags bc this is so interesting! this makes me wonder how a language not having gendered pronouns affects the way gender is seen sociologically.
I definitely think it does! We use words to construct thoughts, and we interpret and interact with the world with said thoughts, so the language we use to do that has an impact on everything. Some spanish speakers are currently having complete meltdowns over inclusive speech, because spanish doesn't have neutral pronouns, and the concept of them doesn't even register on some people. And meanwhile other languages don't have anything but neutral pronouns or no pronouns at all, so the whole thing about mentoring other people's gender all the time seems funny and unnecessary to us, but okay I'll remind you that my best friend is a girl in every sentence, sure!
Japan technically has gendered pronouns but they are first person pronouns- third person pronouns (he she they etc) and second person pronouns (you, yours) exist in the technical sense but are not used because they actually mean something entirely different and are largely considered incredibly rude/direct/informal to use unless you absolutely cannot find a way around it. I can't tell you how many PSAs from native Japanese speakers I've seen for new learners to please stop saying "kimi" and "anata" for "you" because that's really an anime-only thing and is NOT how Japanese language has you refer to others.
"He" and "she" translate roughly to "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" so if you want to potentially make a very hilarious misunderstanding feel free but I wouldn't if I were you.
First person pronouns (I, me) are gendered but also aren't. I've heard women use "boku" and "ore", but at the same time that is generally reserved for men. Similarly "watashi" has strong female connotations and it's also the most commonly used personal pronoun in the country. I follow a Japanese singer on youtube who is a cisgender straight man who uses "atashi", which is VERY female. I used to follow a Japanese trans woman who dressed very gothic lolita for her music videos and she used "ore". So they are gendered. But also not. And all of these words translate to "I" and "me" in English so if you only read/hear the translations you receive roughly zero information regarding that person's relationship with sex and gender
Anyway tldr if your anatomy required you to use a certain set of pronouns we wouldn't have this variation occuring even in languages and cultures that are very different from the West.
Okay yes you reblogged a post about a boyfriend being a girl but are you like actually normal about multigender people especially about multigender lesbians and gay dudes
"But only 2% of the population is intersex. It's not that common. Why should we reframe or perception of gender for intersex people?"
Completely ignoring the fact that empathy exists. You do realize that 2% of the population in the medical field is considered very common, yes?
2% of children and 0.5% of adults have a peanut allergy and that's so common that they have entire rules around in in public spaces.
0.24-1% of the population has Rheumatoid arthritis. That's an eighth to a half of the number of intersex people!
1-2% of people are estimated to have autism, and that's considered a common condition.
0.1%-2.6% of people will get melanoma in their life time, and that's considered common.
1.2% of people have epilepsy and that's considered common.
Completely ignoring statistics like 6% of women have PCOS (which is a condition that can fall under the intersex umbrella). 2% of the population in the medical field is considered a common condition, and ergo by medical terms intersex is in itself common.
I don't think you realize how big 2% is. That's 2 in 100 people. If you walk into 3 fully filled classrooms (when I was in school a full classroom was 40 students). Chances are you just saw 2 intersex kids and didn't even know it.
So yeah. I think intersex is common enough to include in our discussions around gender and how transphobic rules affects intersex people.
-fae
things i have seen/experienced working in a toy store:
• a customer asking me if boys like coloring
• a customer telling her daughter she can’t give out ice cream stickers for party favors because there will be boys there
• an older couple laughing about how there’s a pink toy sword because a boy would never play with a pink toy sword (because i guess boys can’t like pink and girls don’t play with toy swords. also it wasn’t even pink it was red lol)
• a customer refusing to buy a snail robot kit for his nephew because it was “too cute for a boy”
• a customer sharply reminding me she was buying a gift for a boy when i suggested play food
• a customer telling her daughter she needed to pick a different birthday card for her friend because the one she chose had a pink envelope (her friend was a boy)
• a customer asking what a boy would like for valentine’s day instead of the stuffed dogs she was getting for the girls
• a customer getting upset when my coworker used blue ribbon on a gift bag because the present was for a girl
• a customer saying a toy guitar was “too girly” for her grandson, based only on the fact that the box had a picture of a girl playing with it (the guitar was red with yellow music notes)
but yeah, trans people have some real weird ideas about gender
Pronouns that you only use around other trans people. The good pronouns, kept in the cabinet with the good plates, just for special occasions with people you like.
hey girl are you a boy. would you like to be
oh my god this is literally just the plot of ouran high school host club isn't it
Love the argument "oh but if you transition you'll have to deal with being trans your whole life" because first of all there is nothing bad about being trans and second I'm still gonna be trans even if I don't medically transition I'll just be trans and miserable instead of trans and happy
Every time I hear someone say something like this I remember that one exerpt from that one book in which the author considers Gomez Addams as a trans man specifically because he has the energy of a guy who wakes up every day absolutely over the moon to discover that he gets to be a man with a family and a moustache and a wife who's taller than god yet again, and it becomes painfully apparent that people who say these things don't understand transness at all.
EDIT: I found it! Here it is!
An excerpt from the essay “Powerful T4T Energy in Steve Martin’s The Jerk” by Daniel M. Lavery, from his book Something That May Shock and Discredit You.
Absolutely amazing addition I love this and personally I can't wait to be proudly trans for the rest of my life!
// Closer - Nine Inch Nails // "Thoughts in Ice" part 5 - Alex Smith // War of the Foxes - Richard Siken // Donnie Darko (2001) dir. Richard Kelly // I Don't Wanna Be Me - Type O Negative // Comme des Garçons: Poem T-Shirt - Junya Watanbe // Textpost by @kickasstorrents // Fight Club (1999) dir. David Fincher // Talk Show Host - Radiohead // The Impossible, III (bronze sculpture) - Maria Martins // Reflections - Hannah Diamond // Black Swan (2010) dir. Darren Aronofsky // She's Gone Away - Nine inch Nails //
[image description: a digital drawing of a rat holding a bar in its mouth, between rainbow text reading “GENDER IS A CAGE AND I’M THE RAT THAT CHEWED THROUGH THE BARS”. the rat has white and purple fur, with a long yellow tail, and black paws, ears, and eyes, matching the colours of the nonbinary pride flag. the bar in its mouth is also black. the rainbow text changes colour for each word, and the background is white. end id]
yee haw! been meaning to do this one for a while and left the sketch in my folders for like, a year? saw it the other day and was like alright why not do this one quick?
anyway heres a rat for all your nonbinary needs
its projecting onto fictional sword handling ladies time amirite
