autumnsnuggling reblogged
Read this then read it again.
autumnsnuggling reblogged
funnytwittertweets
[Tweet by Gillian Branstetter reads “If enforcing gender norms requires a constant state of surveillance and censorship then they probably aren’t as biological or innate as you think they are]
autumnsnuggling reblogged
reminder that if you’re questioning your gender, “what do I want?” and “what will make me happy?” tend to be much more useful questions than “what am I, really?”
autumnsnuggling reblogged
also while i’m ranting about gender i always see debate about whether girls are rewarded for being tomboys or not and it’s like. actually girls are rewarded for mirroring whatever the situation demands of them. girls can’t be too prissy and refuse to play in the creek, but girls also can’t show up to girly events covered in mud. girls can’t have makeup art as a hobby or else they’re superficial, but if they never wear makeup they’re a slob and dumpy, etc. it’s not that girls are universally rewarded or punished for being tomboys, they’re rewarded for bending over backwards to always be exactly right for any given situation and punished for breaking those boundaries. so yes a classically pretty girl who cleans up nice is rewarded when she can ALSO be a tomboy. but a girl who is a tomboy all the time is definitely punished for never being able to achieve that prerequisite feminine side. this debate is over now thanks
autumnsnuggling reblogged
Terfs and exclusionists don't even think of acting up under this post
Love this
autumnsnuggling reblogged
Anonymous asked:
Do you not believe in biological sex? I’m confused.
Hoo, boy. Apologies in advance, but this is gonna have a long answer.
The thing about “biological sex” is, it’s a complicated science with a lot of nuance involved, and people who don’t actually know anything about it love to use it to mean “penis is boy, vagina is girl”.
Which, on the surface, makes sense to a lot of people. Its what we’re taught our whole lives, and it’s difficult to listen to any argument that contradicts our worldview. It’s scary and confusing, and people automatically resist scary and confusing things.
The thing you need to know, though, is that what we call “Biological Sex” can actually depend on a range of factors:
First off, primary sex characteristics: the bits directly involved in reproduction, what most people consider the defining indicator of gender.
Primary sex characteristics include the penis and testes, which are predominantly associated with men, and the vagina and uterus, associated with women.
This seems fairly simple on the surface, scientifically speaking, but bodies aren’t that simple. People can and are born with combinations of these things and live long, happy, healthy lives with few or no medical complaints. Many don’t even know they have undescended testes or ovaries at all, and only find out accidentally through unrelated procedures. Is a mother of three who’s known herself to be a woman her whole life suddenly a man because she has ‘male’ sex characteristics? No? Then why should any other woman?
Someone who is still new to this might be experiencing a cognitive dissonance right now, trying to reconcile “penis is boy, vagina is girl” with “people can have both (or neither)”, and they may try to do this by saying, “Well, this could be caused by mutations or deformities, so intersex people (people with mixed characteristics) are outliers, not to be included with “valid” genders.“
Which brings us to the next factor: hormones.
Testosterone is Boy, Estrogen is Girl. That’s what people know, so they don’t want to accept any different. Different is confusing, confusing is scary, scary is bad.
But, like primary sex characteristics, these things can fly in the face of common understanding.
A woman, for example, who considers herself cisgender, who has breasts and a vagina and a uterus and all that, might have high testosterone. Because people have both! And because testosterone can give people body hair, among other things, this woman has chest hair and a beard. She LOOKS a lot like what we think of as “male”, so do we tell her she’s wrong about her gender?
On the flip side, plenty of cis men with a penis and testes can have high estrogen for any number of reasons, and can develop breasts- does that mean they’re women, now?
Of course not. We have to listen to them to tell us what their pronouns are, what their gender is, and how is that any different from someone who’s trans? It would be incredibly ride to tell anyone that “oh, you SAY you’re a man, but you look like a woman to me, so I’m going to ignore everything you tell me and call you a woman until you can prove to my satisfaction otherwise.”
So if primary sex characteristics aren’t the final word on gender, and secondary characteristics aren’t either, then what’s left? DNA, right? Genetics don’t lie, everyone knows that.
So, chromosomes, then. The barest evidence of human biological sex. XX means “female”, XY means “male”, forget all that mess about vaginas, breasts, and testes. Our chromosomes are the holy gospel of gender.
Except, again, nature isn’t that simple.
Picture in your head a cisgender woman. She hits everything on our personal little checklist: breasts, vagina, uterus, minimal body hair, small jawline, high voice, everything. But she has XY chromosomes.
Because, surprise! That happens! And it happens more often than you think! People can and do go their entire lives not knowing it! Because it isn’t important to how we view our gender. We don’t care.
If you went to a lab today, got tested, and found that you had the “wrong” chromosomes- would you suddenly be fine with Becoming A Different Gender? Being treated like you’re a different gender? Having to dress different, talk different, redefine your sexuality, because your DNA says you’re wrong about your identity? How would that feel? Probably pretty shitty, huh?
So, when we get down to it, what is the one true indicator of gender? We can’t trust genitalia, because it presents on any number of variations and combinations. Secondary sex characteristics are out too, because hormones do whatever they want without rhyme or reason. Chromosomes do whatever the hell they want, fuck them, they’re useless.
If we are to open our minds to what the science is telling us, then, what is it saying?
If we are to put our faith in “Biological Sex”, then what does is dictate to be the truth?
That physical sex isn’t just “boy or girl”, it exists on a spectrum. It’s not “pink or blue”, it’s magenta, mauve, violet, lilac, periwinkle, cyan, cobalt, or vermilion, and our idea of “boy or girl” is almost entirely a construct of our imaginations, of the society we live in. It’s an illusion that dictates how we experience our lives, how we’re treated, what makes us happy and comfortable or how we feel at ease.
Biological sex cannot dictate gender because they’re different concepts with different rules grounded in separate realities, and no amount of pointless fussing can force them to cooperate.
Sex is one spectrum, gender is another, and they don’t know each other.
You can accept what the science says, or you can find excuses to justify the beliefs you’re comfortable with. It really doesn’t matter.
Just don’t be a dick about things that make you uncomfortable and the world will keep on spinning.
prochoice-is-pro-compassion
this is the best overview on this I’ve seen and the best rebuttal to TERFs claiming that correcting them on biological sex is using intersex people as “pawns” (spoiler alert: I’m intersex. It’s not.)
autumnsnuggling reblogged
1.7% of people are intersex, 2% have green eyes, and 1.5 percent are redheads, but yeah red is a natural hair color, green is a natural eye color, and being intersex is a 'deformity'. Keep pretending gender isn't a social construct
0.0006% of people in the world live in Ireland and we all agree that People Live In Ireland.
autumnsnuggling reblogged
enby-life
Possible replies to “your gender is what’s in your pants” or “what’s in your pants”
-legs
-bold of you to assume I’m wearing pants
-buy me dinner first
-a whole lot of lint
-what’s a gender
-what are pants
- The Void™
- *squints* Who's asking? Who do you work for?
- The second pair of pants that I wear for emergencies, obviously
- *visibly confused* m...my butt?
- Actually, it's a funny story that starts on the day Joan of Arc died...nevermind, you wouldn't get it. Mortals these days don't understand early 1430s humor anymore
autumnsnuggling reblogged
A relevant thread
Whoever you are, I fucking love you.
autumnsnuggling reblogged
Today I got a nasty TERF anon and I also really upset myself looking through replies on Twitter. The anon didn't make sense and doesn't deserve refuting, but I wanted to take a second to spell out something I see as missing in the discussions between transphobes and trans folks and their supporters:
When we say "trans women are women," transphobes blink and laugh. It strikes them as preposterous. They respond by saying "my dog is a cat" or "Freedom is slavery." Transphobes don't deserve our breath because they aren't listening, but for people who aren't actively filled with hate and dismissal of trans folks' feelings, I think this could use some explanation.
There are certain experiences that we think of as shared experiences of womanhood. But these experiences are never REQUISITES for being a woman; they're merely things that people who are women often experience. These things include biological experiences like menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding, childbirth, and cultural experiences like, say, getting catcalled, or getting a training bra, or being the only woman in a meeting in an office.
It's not problematic to discuss shared experiences that women often have. What's problematic is suggesting that they are necessary in order to be a woman, or to assume that only women experience them. This is patently obvious: not every woman (not every cis woman!) experiences pregnancy or menstruation or breastfeeding. No one would say you need to have been catcalled to call yourself a woman.
Moreover, we know that different groups of women have different experiences as sub-groups. Women of color experience things that white women never do. Fat women experience things thin women never do. And not just body things: women in high-powered careers experience different things than women who work in other ways. Women athletes have a shared experience that is not shared by non-athletes.
When we say "trans women are women," we mean just that. They are women. But we do not deny that they have had a different experience in life as trans women. The experience of growing up identified as a boy while knowing oneself to be a woman is surely something a cis woman or man cannot know. This doesn't conflict with being a woman because there are many, many ways to be a woman. Because women share lots of experiences, but none of us share them all.
This is why it's so important for feminists to fight for trans folks, beyond it simply being the right thing to do: because the same forces that tell trans women that they don't count as women are the forces that tell all women there's one way to be a woman. That being a woman means a specified list of things, your own desires be damned.
It's all a lie. There's no one way to be a woman. There's no universal experience of girlhood or womanhood. There is no single experience that ties us all together. But that doesn't mean we don't share something essential, but it's amorphous. It's constantly shifting and changing and never essentializing.
This is how I can share certain experiences of womanhood with fellow moms I know that I'll never share with other women. How I can share certain experiences of sexuality with queer friends that I can't with het friends. That I can understand how I share something meaningful with trans women even as our lives have looked very different.
This is why it's harmful to make assumptions based on people's sex/gender: because you can't assume shared experiences on the basis of shared gender. This is always true, even among cis women, and it causes major problems (see: all of white second wave feminism). And it's the same with our trans sisters.
I think if people could understand this, we'd be in a much better place.
THANK YOU
autumnsnuggling reblogged
autumnsnuggling reblogged
Oh my gosh, how had I not thought about this before?!
And I think that's the thing that really pisses me off: it's so normal. We don't batt an eyelid. Yet it's so nonsensical and damaging.
Wow.
autumnsnuggling reblogged
You can be trans even if you haven’t “always known” 🌈
kuraida
i keep seeing this narrative, where afab nonbinary people were always confused about being considered a girl, or having to act like one, or having to do girly things, or having to be friends with girls
Some of these things were confusing to me, too. Like, why do I have to wear my muscles out keeping my thighs together at church? (i mostly didn’t cause lol who gives a fuck). Why did my mom’s friend care about it when I was with her, but not my mom? Why did my dad and every other “brother” at church get to sit in tiny chairs and then spread their legs out 180° and make it really, really hard to look at them and not their crotch every Monday at bible study?
why was it not okay to sit comfortably on the floor? cause it’s not lady like?
at the same time, there were lots of things that girls were supposed to like that i did like? At 4, the only time I was able to wear a costume for halloween as a child, i chose tinkerbell. not for any deep abiding love of the character. I’ve never been a big Tink fan. I liked the outfit. the glitter! I still like faeries, the idea of being a beautiful, winged, ethereal being.
i didn’t like (and still don’t like) wearing pink, but i loved beading and lisa Frank and all the crafty shit my mom did and those velvet coloring posters and plastic lace and glitter! and those lights with pin holes where you were supposed to put little colored pegs in to make pictures? and i liked dolls and plushies and stuffed animals and horses! and if i never got depressed or had to “grow up” I’d probably still like these things? i still like glitter. i still like crafting and bright colors and i still have some of my stuffed animals.
i wasn’t a very girly child. i wasn’t convinced i wasn’t a girl, because the one thing i have consistently been sure of (like 98%) is that I’m not a boy or guy. there was only one other option! i envy people who were both connected with their own feelings and self assured enough to insist, even to themselves, that other people might have been wrong about their assigned gender?
i didn’t have my gender figured out. i assumed i was a girl. i assumed other people were right. i literally didn’t question it. i didn’t have very much say about how i presented back then anyway.
I’m still somewhat vacillating between “gender doesn’t apply to me” and “i have a concrete sense of gender that is completely unrelated to male, female, masculinity, or femininity, that may or may not be unique to me.” Mostly leaning toward the latter, for now.
i think it’s okay to know who you are at a young age. i think young people are right when they declare who they are. i also think it’s okay to not have yourself all figured out at any age.
autumnsnuggling reblogged
99.99% of you are lovely people, so i’m sure this goes without saying, but because of recent entitled asshole anon, we’re getting a post about it
never under any circumstances demand that someone explain or justify their gender labels or descriptions to you
it’s none of your business
i’m cis, so this was relatively harmless in effect, because pretty much no one is giving me shit for being cis, that just doesn’t happen. but just … don’t do this to people, it’s bad practice and sets a terrible precedent for doing this to people who aren’t cis , and are likely more vulnerable.
but shana, you might be saying, what if i don’t think that that person should be using that label? what if i don’t like it?
well, here’s the thing: it’s not about you
it’s about them, and their relationship to their gender, and what it means to them, and has nothing to do with you at all. so don’t try and make it about you, because it’s just not.
someone is a nonbinary lesbian and it fill you with rage? shut up.
you think someone looks like a girl but he uses he/him? no one cares.
they say they’re trans but you don’t think they’re trans enough? keep it to yourself.
their gender is a journey rather than a destination, and their pronouns and terms change over time, and you don’t like it? seriously, shut up.
you think neopronouns are dumb and harm the trans community? be fucking quiet.
it costs you absolutely nothing to believe people when they tell you about themselves, and if you don’t believe them …….. no one fucking cares. grow up. don’t message them about it, don’t be an asshole, just move on.
if you’re a shitty person, the least you can do is keep it to yourself
What a surprise, someone commenting on a post and then immediately blocking me so I can’t respond to them or delete their shitty comment
I guess this week we’re mad about *spins wheel* cis people *throws dart* defending people’s ability to have their gender identity and sexuality respected
autumnsnuggling reblogged
me: dress how you want!! gender is fake!!! nothing matters!!!!!!
trans person: i like gender tho
me: hell yeah i respect that!!!! i apologize and don’t mean to dismiss your identity with my optimistic nihilism!!!!!!!
Good post OP
Denounce gender roles but respect gender identity.
smallest-feeblest-boggart
Denounce gender roles but respect gender identity.
autumnsnuggling reblogged
dear everyone who's questioning their sexuality and/or gender right now,
congratulations! thats really exciting, and there is a whole new world ahead of you. but it can also be scary. really scary. and its okay to feel that way too.
i just want to remind you, that even if it feels like you're all alone and nobody cares, i do. i may not know you or what you're going through, but you're valid and everything's gonna be okay. you'll make it through this, i promise.
autumnsnuggling reblogged
So I came up with this while rambling in a longer post but I thought it deserved to be said on its own:
Gender is a sandbox.
Some people will bring buckets and molds to build the perfect castle; some will accept the bucket but not quite know what to do with the molds, because it's much more fun to find your own tree leaves to decorate the castle. Some would rather just use their good ol' hands and their imagination: who needs pre-designed shapes anyway? And some don't even want to build a castle—just to dig a big hole and get their hands dirty for the sake of it. Some people don't want to settle with one castle, but would rather build a new one whenever it feels right. Some are still eyeing the sandbox wondering what the hell to do with it, and some just feel icky at the idea of touching sand.
And the people who think that building castles using buckets and molds is the only valid option, simply because that's how they did it, are the mean kids no one likes playing with.
(Additionally—tag yourselves: I'm that person that has been sitting in the middle of the sandbox for five hours. I still don't know what to do with all these molds. I don't even know if I want to use all of them. I've started my castle eight times already and decided that I needed to start over every. single. time. People are starting to stare...)