Sorry for being truscum or whatever but I genuinely do not view the 50+ married chasers as long lost sisters just because they wear their wives panties and call themselves sissies. Same goes for 19 year old femboys who post thirst traps on Reddit. I think that people who are terminally online forget that for some people, they genuinely find wearing women's clothing to be part of a humiliation fetish that stems from misogyny, and not genuine gender exploration and until they unlearn that shit, I don't want to have anything to do with them.

And to go a step further, but being too accepting of these men and their misogyny fetish is actually harmful to trans women because it loops back around into this cycle of people insisting that we have shit in common because at the end of the day everyone just views us as men in women's clothing. And now we're stuck with members of TME communities thinking that it's cool and progressive to call women twinks and femboys and girlboys and shit completely unprompted and unasked for.

It's entirely possible to treat trans women like women, non-binary folks like they're non-binary, and chasers like chasers without insisting that we're all just on the same spectrum of "man in dress and panties".

Begging people to understand that homophobia doesn't mean "being mean to gay people because they're gay", misogyny doesn't mean "being mean to women because they're women," and transphobia doesn't mean "being mean to trans people because they're trans."

These are all intertwined systems of oppressive social control.

The whole THING is that gender policing of all types is used to keep people in line to make them act "normal" (to act as their gender should).

When a young boy doesn't want to play football and his brothers do, and they call him a sissy, they are being homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic. Even if he is straight and cisgender.

If a cishet woman is derisively asked "what are you, a lesbian?" For having short hair, she has experienced homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny.

One of the reasons it's so necessary to discuss them is because they are systems of control. The words aren't just describing types of hate crimes etc perpetrated against certain groups of people, it describes the violent aspects of cisnormativity, heteronormativity, and the patriarchy.

This post was made bc im mad about ppl being like "how would a person not lgbtq experience homophobia" (something I literally just saw) and "trans men can't experience misogyny and especially not transmisogyny" and "I'm a wholeass lesbian I can't be homophobic" (both sentiments I've seen multiple times before almost word for word). Those are just a few examples of the stuff I've seen said online from people who unfortunately don't understand how systems of oppression work to keep everyone in line.

Transphobia, homophobia, and misogyny are all inseparably intertwined because they come from the same place and have the same purpose.

hello!!! let me introduce my main ocs 💛

Jamie 🐈 : the protagonist, he is a professional artist, he works in comic preproduction he is severely unhappy and tired with his job (save him please) on the inside he is an actual sweetheart and lovely person he just needs a hug, Jamie is a trans man and he uses he/him!

Jay 🐺 : he is a barista, a college student with huge dreams. he works extremely hard to get what he wants and has a heart of gold. A certified Himbo! Gay, he/him

they are in love

read the comic HERE

index

ch1 ch2 ch3 ch4 ch5 ch6 ch7 ch8 ch9 ch10 ch11

Writing Intellectually Disabled Characters

[large text: writing intellectually disabled characters]

Something that very rarely comes up in disability media representation are intellectually disabled characters. There is very little positive representation in media in general (and basically none in media meant specifically for adults or in YA). I hope this post can maybe help someone interested in writing disabled characters understand the topic better and create something nice. This is just a collection of thoughts of only one person with mild ID (me) and I don’t claim to speak for the whole community as its just my view. This post is meant to explain how some parts of ID work and make people aware of what ID is.

This post is absolutely not meant for self diagnosis (I promise you would realize before seeing a Tumblr post about it. it’s a major disorder that gets most people thrown into special education).

Before: What is (and isn’t) intellectual disability?

ID is a single, life-long neurodevelopment condition that affects IQ and causes problems with reasoning, problem‑solving, remembering and planning things, abstract thinking and learning. There is often delay or absence of development milestones like walking (and other kinds of movement), language and self care skills (eating, going to the bathroom, washing, getting dressed etc). Different people will struggle with different things to different degrees. I for example still am fully unable to do certain movements and had a lot of delay in self-care, but I had less language-related delay than most of people with ID I know. Usually the more severe a person’s ID is the more delay they will have.

Intellectual disability is one single condition and it doesn’t make sense to call it “intellectual disabilities” (plural) or “an intellectual disability”. It would be like calling it “an autism” or “a Down Syndrome”…

Around 1-3% of people in the world have intellectual disability and most have mild ID (as opposed to moderate, severe, or profound). It can exist on its own without any identifiable condition or it can be a part of syndrome. There is over a thousand (ranging from very common to extremely rare) conditions that can cause ID but the most common are Down Syndrome, Fragile X Syndrome, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Autism, Edwards Syndrome, DiGeorge Syndrome and Microcephaly. Not every condition always causes ID and you can have one of the above conditions without having ID as long as its not necessary diagnostic criteria to be met. For example around 30% of autistic people have ID, meaning that the rest 70% doesn’t. It just means that it’s comorbid often enough to be counted as a major cause but still, autistic ≠ intellectually disabled most of the time.

A lot of things that cause intellectual disability also come with facial and/or limb differences and/or seizures. A lot but not all intellectually disabled people go to special education schools.

Intellectual disability isn’t the same as brain damage. Brain damage can occur at any point of a person’s life while ID always starts in or before childhood.

“Can My Character Be [Blank]?”

[large text: “Can my character be [blank]?”]

The difficulty with writing characters with intellectual disability is that unlike some other things you can give your character, ID will very directly impacts how your character thinks and behaves - you can’t make the whole character and then just slap the ID label on them.

Intellectually disabled people are extremely diverse in terms of personality, ability, verbality, mobility… And you need to consider those things early because deciding that your character is nonverbal and unable to use AAC might be an issue if you’re already in the middle of writing a dialogue scene.

For broader context, a person with ID might be fully verbal - though they would still probably struggle with grammar, what some words mean, or with general understanding of spoken/written language. Or they could also be non-verbal. While some non-verbal ID people use AAC, it’s not something that works for everyone and some people rely on completely language-less communication only. There is also the middle ground of people who are able to speak, but only in short sentences, or in a way that’s not fully understandable to people who don’t know them. Some might speak in second or third person.

An important thing is that a person with ID has generally bad understanding of cause-and-effect and might not make connections between things that people without ID just instinctively understand. For example, someone could see that their coat is in a different place than they left it, but wouldn’t be able to deduce that then it means that someone else moved it or it wouldn’t even occur to them as a thing that was caused by something. I think every (or at least most) ID person struggles with this to some extent. The more severe someone’s disability is the less they will be able to connect usually (for example someone with profound ID might not be able to understand the connection between the light switch and the light turning off and on).

People with mild intellectual disability have the least severe problems in functioning and some are able to live independently, have a job, have kids, stuff like that.

What Tropes Should You Avoid?

[large text: what tropes should you avoid?]

…and a lot more but these are the most prevalent from what I’ve seen.

Most ID characters are either grossly villainized (more often if they have also physical disabilities or facial differences) or extremely dehumanized or ridiculed, or all of the above. It’s rarely actually *mentioned* for a character to be intellectually disabled, but negative “representation” usually is very clear that this who they’re attempting to portray. The portrayal of a whole group of people as primarily either violent predators, pitiful tragedies or nothing more than a joke is damaging and you probably shouldn’t do that. It’s been done too many times already.

When those tropes aren’t used the ID character is still usually at the very most a side character to the main (usually abled) character. They don’t have hobbies, favorite foods, movies or music they like, love interests, friends or pets of their own and are very lucky if the author bothered to give them a last name. Of course it’s not a requirement to have all of these but when there is *no* characterization in majority of disabled characters,  it shows. They also usually die in some tragic way, often sacrificing themselves for the main character or just disappear in some off-the-screen circumstances. Either way, they aren’t really characters, they’re more like cardboard cutouts of what a character should be - the audience has no way to care for them because the author has put no care into making the character interesting or likable at all. Usually their whole and only personality and character trait is that they have intellectual disability and it’s often based on what the author *thinks* ID is without actually doing any research.

What Terms to Use and Not Use

[large text: What Terms to Use and Not Use]

Words like: “intellectually disabled” or “with/have intellectual disability” are terms used by people with ID and generally OK to use from how much I know. I believe more people use the latter (person first language) for themselves but i know people who use both. I use the first because it’s grammatically easier for me to understand but I don’t mind the second. Some people have strong preference with one over the other and that needs to be respected.

Terms like: “cursed with intellectual disability” “mentally [R-slur]” “moron” “idiot” “feeble-minded” “imbecile” is considered at least derogatory by most people and I don’t recommend using it in your writing. The last 5 terms directly come from outdated medical terminology specifically regarding ID and aren’t just “rude”, they’re ableist and historically connected to eugenics. To me personally they’re highly offensive and I wouldn’t want to read something that referred to its character with ID with those terms.

(Note: there are, in real life, people with ID that refer to themselves with the above… but this is still just a writing guide. Unless you belong to the group i just mentioned I would advise against writing that, especially if this post is your entire research so far.)

Things I Want to See More of in Characters with Intellectual Disability

[large text: Things I Want to See More of in Characters with Intellectual Disability]

[format borrowed from WWC]

I want to see more characters with intellectual disability that…

…and I want to see stories that have multiple intellectually disabled characters.

I hope that this list will give someone inspiration to go and make their first OC with intellectual disability ! This is just a basic overview to motivate writers to do their own research rather than a “all-knowing post explaining everything regarding ID”. I definitely don’t know everything especially about the parts of ID that I just don’t experience (or not as much as others). This is only meant to be an introduction for people who don’t really know what ID is or where to even start.

Talk to people with intellectual disability (you can send ask here but there are also a lot of other people on Tumblr who have ID and I know at least some have previously answered asks as well if you want someone else’s opinion!), watch/read interviews with people who have ID (to start - link1, link2, both have captions) and try to rethink what you think about intellectual disability. Because it’s really not that rare like a lot of people seem to think. Please listen to us when we speak

Good luck writing and thank you for reading :D (smile emoji)

mod sasza

Gender and sex essentialism are poison.

Here's what you're saying when you say that men are inherently bad, or that a penis/testosterone affects someone's behavior and makes them more aggressive/stupid/whatever:

- Your sons have no obligation to try and grow up into good men, because they can never be good if they are men. They should just give up and be cruel, violent, and angry, because that is all you have shown them they are allowed to be.

- Your daughters should expect all men to mistreat them, and that they have no hope of meeting a man who will treat them with respect or dignity. Abuse is the only thing they will ever receive from men.

- Trans women and transfemme people are forever poisoned by manhood and can never escape it..

- Trans men and transmasculine people are traitors to femininity and can never be real men.

- Nonbinary people are still beholden to their assigned gender, and aren't actually nonbinary, because you can never escape the poison of being a man.

- Intersex people are tainted by man cooties and are functionally men, and should be ashamed of it.

- Men have no obligation to try and be good people, because they can't be and are doomed to be evil forever.

That's a fucked up thing to teach men, y'all. A bad man is bad because he is bad, not because he is a man.

Treat men like they are human beings, because they are. They aren't aliens, they aren't ticking time bombs, they are not evil.

The patriarchy hurts men by telling them they can only ever be one thing. Don't reinforce that in the men you love. The men in your life are perfectly capable of compassion, of joy, of wonder, of happiness, of kindness, of being good people. But if you keep telling them that they can never overcome the sin of Being A Man, you're also implicitly telling a lot of people a lot of really bigoted shit.

Masculinity is not evil. Men are not evil. The patriarchy is not the fault of individual men. Because men are human beings.

The recent legislative attacks on LGBTQ+ youth have felt...overwhelming.

From Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill to families of trans kids being under fire in Texas, to multiple other states attempting to bar trans kids from playing sports.

Our Youth Voices shared their initial reactions to these attacks on teens like them, but also how they're taking action! 💪

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ From self care to protesting to sharing info, read them all on the blog.

Here's a sneak peek from Hailey:

Read what all the Youth Voices have to say on the blog!

Chinese giant salamander (娃娃鱼) a.k.a ‘baby fish’ due to the sound they make that sounds like a baby crying.

The Chinese giant salamander is one of the largest salamanders and one of the largest amphibians in the world. It is fully aquatic and is endemic to rocky mountain streams and lakes in the Yangtze river basin of central China.

The Chinese giant salamander is considered to be a "living fossil". Although protected under Chinese laws, its population has faced severe declined over the last 70 years and is currently (2022) listed as threatened. There are evidence indicating that the Chinese giant salamander may be composed of at least five cryptic species, further compounding each individual species' endangerment. It can reach up to 50 kg (110 lb) in weight and 1.8 m (5.9 ft) in length.

Here is a video of a 200-year-old Chinese giant salamander that was found in a cave.

Here is a video of it making the crying sound.

Here is another video

TERF Spotting 101: Hashtags

Trigger Warning: Transphobia, Enbyphobia

Note: Do not contact TERFs or SWERFs, this list is to help keep trans and nonbinary people safe.

This is a list of common hashtags that TERFs use. They are related to TERF issues, and often crossover with SWERF issues. If someone is a SWERF they are most likely a TERF as well.

Gender Free and Gender Abolitionist may be used in a nonbinary way but I have not seen it used like that on tumblr. So please take note of context.

Q slur has become a calling card for TERF lesbians and bisexuals, though you need to understand context in which the hashtag is being used because non-TERFs may use it for other reasons (like a warning for queer genuinely being used as a slur in a fanfic or smth).

Happy Trans Day of Visibility 2021! This year, we celebrate Trans Week of Action and work against dangerous transphobic legislation progressing all over the U.S.

Who is the First Woman? Meet our new graphic novel hero!

Artemis is the first step in the next era of human exploration. This time when we go to the Moon, we're staying, to study and learn more than ever before. We’ll test new technologies and prepare for our next giant leap – sending astronauts to Mars.

Artemis missions will achieve many historic feats, like landing the first woman and first person of color on the Moon.

With today’s release of our graphic novel First Woman: NASA’s Promise for Humanity you don’t have to wait to join us on an inspiring adventure in space.

Meet Commander Callie Rodriguez, the first woman to explore the Moon – at least in the comic book universe.

In Issue No. 1: Dream to Reality, Callie, her robot sidekick RT, and a team of other astronauts are living and working on the Moon in the not-too-distant future. Like any good, inquisitive robot, RT asks Callie how he came to be – not just on the Moon after a harrowing experience stowed in the Orion capsule – but about their origin story, if you will.

From her childhood aspirations of space travel to being selected as an astronaut candidate, Callie takes us on her trailblazing journey to the Moon.

As they venture out to check on a problem at a lunar crater, Callie shares with RT and the crew that she was captivated by space as a kid, and how time in her father’s autobody shop piqued her interest in building things and going places.

Callie learned at a young age that knowledge is gained through both success and failure in the classroom and on the field.

Through disappointment, setbacks, and personal tragedy, Callie pursues her passions and eventually achieves her lifelong dream of becoming an astronaut – a road inspired by the real lives of many NASA astronauts living and working in space today.

So what's up with that lunar crater?

Did Callie pass her math class?

And where did RT come from?

Be a part of the adventure: read (or listen to) the full First Woman story and immerse yourself in a digital experience through our first-ever extended reality-enabled graphic novel.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

All you Need to Know About "Autogynephilia"

“Autogynephilia” has been defined as “a male’s propensity to be sexually aroused by the thought of himself as a female.”

Note the male pronoun. This is a theory that is actively used in attacks against transgender women. Trans-exclusionary “radical feminists” love the theory, for that very reason.

That is actually all you need to know about “autogynephilia”.

Really.

But, OK: If transphobes are using the term against you or a transgender friend, it might help to know that this theory is a remnant of a 19th century understanding of sexuality and gender identity. The rest of us have moved on.

The inversion theory

The AGP theory states that only straight (androphilic) “men” have such fantasies. Women do not. Gay men and straight trans women do not.

The reason for this strange logic is that Ray Blanchard, the man who created the theory, bis strongly influenced by  the old “inversion” theory. 

According to this belief system gay men are feminine, and it this femininity that makes some of them want to transition. They want to sleep with straight men. Straight men, on the other hand, are not naturally feminine, so they cannot be “inverts”. >sigh!<

He is basically reducing gender identity to sexual orientation, and femininity and masculinity to a simplistic binary. 

This is not how the world works.

Dismissed by science

In medical circles  the theory does not have much traction as far as understanding transgender women is concerned. The American psychiatric manual, the DSM-5, argues that cross-gender erotic fantasies (also known as crossdreaming or female embodiment fantasies) might simply be a natural expression of gender variance. 

The international health manual, the ICD-11, has no references to “autogynephilia”, “transvestic fetishism” or any other related terms whatsoever.

Moreover, both manuals underline that being trans is not a mental illness. The “autogynephilia” theory, however, classifies such fantasies as a “paraphilia” (sexual perversion).

I mean, how can non- or pre-transitioning trans women fantasize about having sex, if not as if having a body that is in alignment with their true identity? That does not make them sexual perverts!

And if sexualities and gender identities are found on spectrums and continuums – as most experts believe – cross-gender fantasies should be found in a lot of people, also among those who think of themselves as nonbinary or even cis.

There are many scientific studies that document that the basic premises of the theory is wrong, and trans people have for the last 30 years or so argued strongly that it does not fit their experience of the world. 

For instance: There are gay men and androphilic trans women who have such fantasies – so do many people assigned female at birth. There are also many lesbian trans women who do not report such fantasies.

But most of all: Sexual fantasies of this kind are just one of many ways for a gender identity to express itself, so why focus on the sexual side only? We don’t do that when it comes to cis people, do we?

It is dead, but it won’t lie down

So does this mean that the theory is dead? 

Well, nearly. A few MTF feminization enthusiasts, often people who do think of themselves as any shade of transgender, seem to gravitate towards it. To them it may look like it is the only alternative concept that describes their reality. 

It isn’t.

Others seem to see the existence of erotic crossdreaming or cross-gender arousal as proof of “autogynephilia” being a real thing. In other words: They think that since some people use the term “autogynephilia” to describe feminine embodiment fantasies, that must means that the AGP explanation for such fantasies (an “erotic target location error”) is true. This is what we can call “a logical target location error.”

There are other and much more reasonable explanations for why such fantasies appear.

Documentation

We have gather some essential articles on “autogynephilia” and the “autogynephilia theory” that can help you understand what the debate is all about, why some people have erotic cross-gender fantasies, and why the theory is based on old fashioned sexist and transphobic stereotypes.

More resources from the autogynephilia debate.

Photo: Aleksandar Georgiev