(((I Will Outlive)))

My redesign hot take is that if you’re aiming to “desexualize” a female character, don’t make her boobs smaller. You’re implying a lot here.

I remember when I was 13 or 14 or so I stumbled across comic book discourse in which people were complaining that some teenage superhero’s body was unrealistic because she had curves, and “sixteen years olds should have flat chests”. Perhaps the design was more subtly sexualized than I then realized, but I remembered her looking and dressing very much like me and being distressed that well-meaning people were calling her design “almost pornographic” and “only appropriate for adult characters”. There were long galaxy-brain dissertations that no athletic 16 year old would ever look like that.

I thought about those comments a lot when I did circus training and had to wear brightly-colored spandex. I was hyper-aware of my own physical development and horrified by it for more reasons than gender dysphoria. Instead of thinking of myself as a teenager with a teenager’s body, I spent a lot of time feeling ashamed for being a teenager with an “adult’s body”, under-eating and over-exercising in the hopes that I could minimize the markers other people referred to as “mature”.

Anyway. I don’t know why I’m thinking about that now. I felt like I was responsible for hitting puberty a slight bit early and had thereby committed some moral failing by attaining a grotesque and sexual shape.

I’d just like to ask folks to have a little more sensitivity about the “Tampon Tim” stuff—the way Donald Trump and U.S. conservatives are making fun of the democratic vice presidential candidate for putting free tampons in boys’ bathrooms. My girlfriend broke the news to me as though I was supposed to laugh, and it wasn’t until she saw the look on my face that she realized how personal this was to me as someone who’s advocated for menstrual products in men’s restrooms at my school and lobbied for access in prisons in my state. This is about trans guys and I want people to remember that.

I remember seeing a Kaitlin Bennet video where she went around smugly asking people if they thought tampons should be in men’s restrooms, with the obvious intended answer being of course not. We’re a joke to them; being connected to menstruation and menstrual products is already considered embarrassing for women, but for men, it’s downright humiliating and disgusting. As people who need tampons, who can get pregnant, who have breasts, but claim to be men, we are considered a perversion of the sex-gender binary. We cannot exist, and they make that clear. When you leave trans men and mascs out of these conversations, such as by pivoting to jokes about fictional cis men, you are contributing to our erasure. Please just remember who is actually harmed by these sentiments, and listen to our perspectives on it. Thank you.

love seeing revisionism in the wild “free the nipple never meant you can walk around topless every where that’s still sexual harassment it just meant for like breastfeeding and stuff”no it literally means you should be able to walk around topless anywhere because get this. breasts aren’t fucking sexual organs.

I remember when I was about 12, I watched a show on TLC that followed people as they got somewhat uncommon medical procedures.

There was one episode with a trans woman getting different gender-affirming operations, including breast implants. It showed the procedure, and (what I found so fascinating that it's stuck with me for decades), as soon as the doctor put the implant in, a censor blur popped up on the nipple.

And you just know there was a meeting between the TLC lawyers and the editors and producers of the show to discuss what the difference was between a "man nipple" (can be shown) and a "woman nipple" (no no must obscure, 'tis naughty). And they decided that as soon as the implant goes in and the nipple has more mass behind it, that's the moment when it becomes a woman's nipple and must be hidden to comply with TV rules.

But it's the same nipple. On the same person. I know what it looks like; I just saw it. But TV and obscenity rules are rules, and the rules say woman nipple = sexual and therefore explicit, but man nipple = neutral, just fine.

"Free the Nipple" was calling out arbitrary bullshit like that, because someone just existing with their body parts should not be considered obscene, and the double standard that men can be topless but women can't is so blatantly ridiculous. All nipples are just nipples. If you get turned on or bothered by them, that's on you.

Literally not the owner's problem if you get a boner about it.

love seeing revisionism in the wild “free the nipple never meant you can walk around topless every where that’s still sexual harassment it just meant for like breastfeeding and stuff”no it literally means you should be able to walk around topless anywhere because get this. breasts aren’t fucking sexual organs.

i will never not be mad that, in the effort of creating character designs for women that aren’t “sexualized”, we decided big boobs were actually the root of all evil

Believe it or not... I know my nonbinary identity is very confusing in a binary society. I am a grown ass adult that pays taxes and goes to meetings and generally lives in the same world we all do.

And I'm okay with that! Like yeah, I am both a polite young man and a feminist dommy mommy. Strangers are getting it right in ways they don't even know.

What does get me is how other trans people try to construct new binaries I can fit into. I'm bothered by allies who correct me on the language I'm actively using for myself. It destroys me that other queers gender my body, because nonbinary must fit such a featureless, sexless mould to be accurately communicated. Bethany might not know better, but I'm disappointed y'all don't.

This post is largely about chests btw. People get weird if you're nonbinary or fem and are flat. People get weird if you're nonbinary or masc and have tits.

It applies to so many other things, but nipples in particular make folks feel a certain way.

Anon is autistic and wonders how many other people do or do not wear bras, considering the opinion of their parents.

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I’m gonna say it. I hate it when people make a “non-sexualized” redesign of a large-chested female character and make her flat. Flat women deserve rep but think about the message you’re sending to large-chested women when your idea of making a character not sexualized is making her flat. Because it does not help women like me not see our bodies as inherently sexual, let me fucking tell you.