fred-erick-frankenstein reblogged
Melody Maker - 20/27 December, 1997
fred-erick-frankenstein reblogged
also if you wanna combat the "women in the past only crossdressed because of misogyny!" you have GOTTA read chapter 11 in Transgender Warriors where leslie feinberg does such a good job constructing an argument against this kind of radfem reductionism
""No wonder you've passed as a man! This is such an anti-woman society," a lesbian friend told me. To her, females passing as males are simply trying to escape women's oppression- period. She believes that once true equality is achieved in society, humankind will be genderless. I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't predict human behavior in the distant future. But I know what she's thinking- if we can build a more just society, people like me will cease to exist. She assumes that I am simply a product of oppression. Gee, thanks so much."
"First, let's talk about who can pass as another sex. My same friend reminds me periodically that she too might have passed as a men a century ago to escape women's oppression. She stares right past my gender expression as she speaks. [...] I don't want to burst her bubble. Everyone deserves untrammeled dreams. But I want to tell her that, in the dead of winter, if she was bundled up against the cold, with a hood or hat covering her head, some man in a deli might call her "sir." But could she pass as male on a board ship, sleeping with and sharing common facilities with her fellow sailors for decades and not be discovered? Of course, hundreds of thousands of women have dreamed of escaping the economic and social inequities of their lives, but how many could live as a man for a decade or a lifetime? While a woman could throw on men's clothing and pass as a man for safety on dark roadways, could she pass as a man at an inn where men slept together in the same beds? Could she maintain her identity in daylight? Pass the scrutiny of co-workers? Would she really feel safer and more free? How could females have lived and been accepted as men without hormones or surgery? They must have been masculine; they must have been trans-gendered. If they were not, how could they pass? We don't know how each of the thousands who passed from female to male over the centuries would define themselves today- whether as transgender or transsexual or drag or any other modern definition. The point is that their gender expression allowed them to transition. I just don't believe that the debate about why "women pass as men" can be understood only in the light of women's, or of lesbian and gay, oppression. It has to be viewed in the context of trans history in order to make sense."
"Look at George Sand, the nineteenth-century novelist. It's true that she could not have published without a male nom de plume at that time. But if that's all there was to her identity, why did she wear men's clothing? Why was she attacked for masculine behavior? And if it was just a question of lesbian oppression, what was she doing in bed with Chopin? If passing from female to male is simply motivated by the need to escape lesbian oppression, then why have females who have passed as males chosen other men as lovers?"
"Finally, if so many females have passed as men only to escape women's oppression, then why have so many males passed as women? While it is biologically easier for a female to pass as a young boy than for a male to pass as a woman, there are many, many examples in the modern era of those who passed from male to female."
"We have not always been forced to pass, to go underground, in order to work and live. We have a right to live openly and proudly. When we are denied those rights, we are the ones who suffer that oppression. But when our lives are suppressed, everyone is denied an understanding of the rich diversity of sex and gender expression and experience that exist in human society. I have lived as a man because I could not survive openly as a transgendered person. Yes, I am oppressed in this society, but I am not merely product of oppression. That is a phrase that renders all our trans identities meaningless. Passing means having to hide your identity in fear, in order to live. Being forced to pass is a recent historical development. It is passing that is a product of oppression."
fred-erick-frankenstein reblogged
i just wanted to say as someone who came out as genderqueer in 2011, you are in no way obligated to switch from using "older" other gender terms to newer ones like nonbinary. it's okay if you like the term nonbinary, but it's also okay if you'd rather stick with something else instead, like neutrois, genderqueer, genderless, boygirl, multigender, or whatever else your preferred term may be. use what suits you
I tried on Nonbinary and “enby” for awhile and it was fine for a time but I realized it didn’t fit entirely.
I like genderqueer and it fits so much better so that’s what I go by.
fred-erick-frankenstein reblogged
fascinating to watch society increasingly work itself into contortions about how to make a principled distinction between boy tits (pedestrial!) and girl tits (taboo!) because even as the rigid gender binary is slowly chipped away, we can’t handle the fact someone somewhere might be turned on
some breast cancer survivors have breasts but no nipples; are their chests nsfw? if they have their nipple transplanted to their forehead, must it be covered? if i have my nipples moved to my forehead but then later acquire tits via hrt or breast implants, then are they nsfw? why is a trans man’s chest post top surgery sfw but not pre? why is a flat-chested woman’s chest never sfw? what if someone refuses to disclose their AGAB? must they wear Schroedinger’s Sports Bra at all times? if someone transitions, has top surgery, then decides to go back to identifying as a woman, does their chest become NSFW again, or does it remain SFW?
so many philosophical questions! and what a waste of human brain power and technical ability to spend it all on arcane points of content moderation. at what point does this all become such a drag on our economy, that we have to jettison our hangups or else permit innovation to grind to a halt?
fred-erick-frankenstein reblogged
people keep trying to make "ladies and gentlemen" more inclusive.
I think we should go the other way around.
make more and more weird false dichotomies in greetings. "gamers and pianists". "oil painters and swordsmen". "vexillologists and entomologists". "chess masters and diamond artificers". "accountants and gendered individuals".
we need to be dropping shit into formal meetings to make people say "wait what? which one am I?"
I have started referring to my students as “critters and creatures.” I then offer them the option to decide where on the critter–creature spectrum they think they belong. They enjoy this immensely. I teach some critters, some creatures, some 50/50s, some critters with creature tendencies, some creatures with critter inclinations.
all i have to say is 'hello cowards' and it shuts gendering up
all i have to say
is ‘hello cowards’ and it
shuts gendering up
Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.
Amazing TED talk on the way the strict gender binary harms us, by XY intersex woman Emily Quinn
Here’s an extract of her talk:
“I have a vagina. Just thought you should know. Just thought you should know. I look like a woman. I’m dressed like one, I guess. The thing is, I also have balls….I’m not male or female. I’m intersex.
“Most people assume that you’re biologically either a man or a woman, but it’s actually a lot more complex than that. There are so many ways somebody could be intersex.
In my case, it means I was born with XY chromosomes, which you probably know as male chromosomes. And I was born with a vagina and balls inside my body. I don’t respond to testosterone, so during puberty, I grew breasts… I don’t actually have a uterus – I was born without one, so I don’t menstruate, I can’t have biological children…
“We put people in boxes based on their genitalia. Before a baby’s even born, we ask whether it’s a boy or a girl, as if it actually matters; as if you’re going to be less excited about having a baby if it doesn’t have the genitals you wanted; as if what’s between somebody’s legs tells you anything about that person.
Are they kind, generous, funny? Smart? Who do they want to be when they grow up? Genitals don’t actually tell you anything. Yet, we define ourselves by them. In this society, we love putting people into boxes and labeling each other…
“But there’s one really big problem: biological sex is not black or white. It’s on a spectrum. Besides your genitalia, you also have your chromosomes, your gonads, like ovaries or testicles. You have your internal sex organs, your hormone production, your hormone response and your secondary sex characteristics, like breast development, body hair, etc.
Those seven areas of biological sex all have so much variation, yet we only get two options: male or female. Which is kind of absurd to me, because I can’t think of a single other human trait that there’s only two options for: skin color, hair, height, eyes…”
Listen to whole talk here. Believe me, it is worth your time!
skankosaurus-uwu
Saying sex isn’t binary because some people are born intersex is like saying humans have tails or extra fingers because some people are born like that…
The definition of a binary is that only two options exist. Therefore, the existence of intersex people means sex cannot be a binary by definition. It can have a bimodal distribution- and indeed, it does- but it cannot be truly binary.
Humans can indeed have tails and extra fingers, in the same way that humans can be intersex. If you said ‘humans always only have five fingers on each hand’, you’d be wrong. If you said ‘humans can only be 100% ‘male’ or 100% ‘female’’- i.e. that sex is binary- you’d be equally wrong.
sinclusionist
I’d like to also take this opportunity to remind people that there are more people with intersex conditions in the world than there are natural redheads or people with natural ambidexterity, and yet we always talk about how intersex people are statistically unimportant, a fluke, a mutation, because they’re such a small percentage while redheads are included in surveys and accepted as a possibility in almost all aspects, and ambidexterity is recognized as an existing middle state in what could very easily be reduced to a (mistaken) binary as well. Hmmmmm.
This has become one of my most popular blog posts ever, with more than 47,000 likes and reblogs. The main reason is likely because Emily Quinn gives this kind of diversity an unavoidable human face.
I would like to add one more thing: What those who are committed to the strict binary forget is that the variation found in intersex people continue into the world of non-intersex people.
Take genitals: Some intersex people have what people call “ambiguous” genitals. But the genitals of non-intersex people also vary a lot in shape and sizes.
Some scientists argue that there are as many as nine different types of vulvas. The average penis size is between 13cm and 18cm (5in to 7in). But a large number of men have penises that are not of average size, from less than 4cm to more than 26cm long. Some have identified as many as seven different penis types.
You cannot draw a clear line between the normal and the abnormal, when it comes to human genitalia.
Averages are precisely that: averages. Nature is ruled by diversity, not averages.
[ID: a picture of intersex woman Emily Quinn, a white woman with shoulder-lenght, black hair and blue eyes. She wears a light blue-ish, low-cut sweatshirt, and smiles widely af the camera. /end ID].
The definition of a binary is that only two options exist. Therefore, the existence of intersex people means sex cannot be a binary by definition. It can have a bimodal distribution- and indeed, it does- but it cannot be truly binary.
fred-erick-frankenstein reblogged
i am not afab, i was afab
i am not trapped in a perpetual state of being birthed and assigned a gender. it happened once.
my intention here is to remind myself (and others) that being assigned a gender at birth is a thing that happened to me, but it's also just one thing. it happened years ago. it's not as monumentally important to my current experience as some might think. it's had some snowball effects on other moments where i was assigned gender, but a lot of other factors were at play. race, class, (dis)ability, body, location. having been afab doesn't mean i have more in common with others who were afab than with people who were amab. having been afab doesn't make me an inherently safe person to be around. it doesn't make me weak, caring or good at household chores.
if you agree that gender essentialist thinking is wrong when people make essentialist statements about men and women, do not make the mistake of simply replacing the terminology.
“i am not trapped in a perpetual state of being birthed and assigned a gender. it happened once.”
[ID] The Life Of Brian "I got better" GIF [end ID]
i was afab once, and i haven't been ever since! remember: unless you are a small child, you also haven't been afab or amab in a very long time! yay!
[correction: it's a gif from "Monthy Python and the Holy Grail", showing a group of grimy peasants, one of them saying "i got better". /end ID].
fred-erick-frankenstein reblogged
These specific photos of victorian men in drag just hit me somewhere personal
(This one has a woman in men’s clothing too!)
Victorian drag did exist, but at least one of these is definitely photoshopped (by a Gender Role Reversal fetish artist, not that that matters)- the one with the man and the woman -so I’m skeptical of the others, too. the head proportions seem as weird in all of them as they are in the man and woman photo, and most drag back then was…you know…drag. the male performers were trying to look like their society’s perception of women, so wigs were in and visible facial hair was out
but if anybody wants to see actual Victwardian drag, here you go!
(Francis Leon, American drag performer born 1844. Photo undated, and since the dress seems faux 18th century, that’s not necessarily a good indicator of time period. Possibly 1870s given the jewelry and how exactly the historical dress is being interpreted?)
(Jack Brown, American vaudeville star, shown here in a Paris publicity photo. 1902, so not quite Victorian, but very close. This picture is often associated with noted drag performer William Dorsey Swann, who spent his early childhood enslaved and coined the term “queen of drag” during his career in the 1880s and 1890s. Sadly, no known photographs of Swann survive.)
(Ferdinand Horschelmann, a student at Tartu University in Estonia, dressed in drag sometime between 1876 and 1882. Here is a whole article about the popular drag scene at Tartu during the late 19th century, with plenty of photographs.)
and for some marvelous drag kings:
(Annie Hindle, American drag performer, pictured c. 1870s or 1880s.)
(Ella Wesner, drag performer, photographed in 1872.)
some actresses also played “trouser roles” onstage at times in their careers, but were not professional Male ImpersonatorsTM to the exclusion of playing female characters (Male/Female Impersonator is a good term to search if you want more information about drag back then, by the way, as it was more commonly used than “drag” or “crossdressing”):
(Actresses Lily Elsie and Adrienne Augarde in a publicity still for the 1907 play, “A New Aladdin.” Elsie played female characters more often than male. I see this photo mislabeled as a depiction of sapphic lovers so often that, having forgotten the names of the actresses, I found it by googling “Edwardian lesbian couple.” While many popular female performers of the era were queer, I can’t find anything to suggest that either of these specific women were- let alone for each other.)
(Actress Charlotte Cushman as Romeo in 1858. She most definitely WAS gay, with partners throughout her life including Emma Stebbins, the sculptor responsible for the famous Angel of the Waters statue in New York City. While she did sometimes play female characters, she first made her mark playing Romeo opposite her sister’s Juliet. No, that wasn’t An Incest Thing, and nobody saw it as such. I guess they were very very good at separating the art from the artists back then?)
Speaking of separating the art from the artist, it’s important to note that- just like today -drag was not always an indicator of gender identity or sexuality. As far as I know, all of the performers shown above were cis; many were also straight. (To be fair, there were people classed as drag performers back then who I’ve not included, because by modern standards they’d be considered trans and I don’t want to call their gender a “performance.”)
Drag could be seen as many things by cishet people back then: a joke of the “ha ha man in a dress” sort now likely to offend, a lark or a prank, a demonstration of a given performer’s impressive range, a heterosexual titilation (women wearing trousers are showing their legs to some degree, after all!), a solution for theatre societies in single-gender schools, a way to portray a female character as unpleasant or Unwomanly…the list goes on.
Although, of course, within all of those Socially Acceptable Drag Excuses, you always get people who end up in a “haha unless…” situation.
While many drag performers were queer- and, as I’ve said, many people we’d now call trans used drag as a way to express their true genders publicly -and the act of crossdressing certainly plays with notions of gender and sexuality no matter who does it, it didn’t always mean back then what it means today.
I can’t find the original of the first one, but I agree it definitely looks edited. His head looks a bit wrong, and some of the grainy texture behind it is smoother than the rest of the background. Here’s the unedited version of the 3rd one though:
1890’s couple, from valerieanasolaris on Flickr.
The second one appears to be Annie Jones, a bearded woman who lived from 1865-1902 and was part of P.T. Barnum’s circus.
And I believe the last one is also a bearded lady. I can’t find much of anything on her, but there are more pictures of the same person with the name Miss Delina Rossa.
So that’s 2 edited photos, and 2 probably cis women who just happen to have beards!
Thank you Vince! I’ve browsed a lot of circus & sideshow ephemera and was pretty sure that I recognized Annie Jones as a well-known sideshow performer, not a drag performer.
I see a lot of ‘cis’ women say they wish they were androgynous in the way men were or they wish they were pretty in the way men were. This is your sign to go try to do that. You may find you enjoy being an androgynous woman. You may find you no longer identify as a woman. You may find you don’t like androgyny. You will not know until you try. Cut your hair if you’ve always wanted to but have been afraid to. Shop in the men’s section if you’ve been too nervous to. Wear clothing with an androgynous  silhouette. Experiment with binding, take baby steps with compression bras if you want. Wear unisex scents. Live life. Try things you want to try. A lot of cis women do not understand the joys of mens pants and mens deodorant. I think everyone should try both of those things.
[screenshot of tags which read:
#much more comfortable being a woman when I realised it literally doesn’t have to mean anything #unlock cis+ it’s good for you]
that quote like “god gave us transness for the same reason he made grapes but not wine; yeast but no loaves — so we may partake in the divine act of creation”
- Julian K. Jarboe, quoted in Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery
rimurutempest
[image ID: a cropped photo image of an excerpt from a book. in black text on white paper reads, “going. As my friend Julian puts it, only half winkingly: "God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.” /end ID]
[ID: a screenshot of two comments by "xenoleaf":
it was originally written by Julian K Jarboe in a tweet, and featured in the book Something That May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery
fred-erick-frankenstein reblogged
Seitenbacher Hormone, Hormone von Seitenbacher. Dann hätsch auch net immer die Probleme mit deinem Gender.
fred-erick-frankenstein reblogged
Some fictional characters are relatable in a Gender way not because they’re nonconforming, but because they’re so incredibly into performing their assigned gender that it somehow wraps all the way around. Like, some sort of gender overflow error.
[ID: a screenshot of three comments. First one by "kubbley": Barbie?
Second comment by "akay4": He-Man?
Third comment by "un42n8accident": Johnny Bravo ? /end ID].
fred-erick-frankenstein reblogged
just saw a post where someone put “detrans dni” and like… hey we should be supporting detransitioned people bc if we don’t terfs will
butchofthemoon
sometimes you’re wrong about your identity and that’s ok like i used to think i was bi but it turns out i was wrong and i know ppl who thought they were trans but it turns out they were wrong and it should be ok and accepted that sometimes people don’t get it right on the first try
butchofthemoon
@shadowknight1224 this is an excellent way of putting it thank you
This touches on something I have felt for a long time, which is that one of the reasons rigid queer labels and gatekeeping is so dangerous is because if you want to encourage people to explore their gender/sexuality, there has to be a safe “Actually I was wrong” option.
I went through so very much anxiety coming out, and when I really think about it it was squarely from the fear of being wrong about it all. That I was, at heart, a cishet woman, and therefore I was appropriating a label that didn’t ‘belong’ to me, and I would (somehow) be harming other people by doing so. There’s so much more unnecessary pressure if the sword hanging over your head is “But you do have to be right about this, you can’t back out once you’ve even asked the question.”
I think that is Bad. I think it makes fewer people ask the question. I think that includes those who need to ask, and would be much happier for it.
to summarize: one of the things the Q stands for is QUESTIONING
and that is as it should be
I’d like to also submit the possibility that some people may be more prone to shifts in their gender identity than others, and that it’s not necessarily even a case of being “wrong,” so much as it’s a case of just changing over time. I know the predominant narrative we see in discourse is that a person who transitions was never their agab—and I’m sure that’s true for a lot of people! But… it’s not true everyone? I remember reading an interview with Danny Lavery after he came out, and he said something along the lines of “One day, I went to bed a woman and woke up not a woman anymore.” So if a person can change once, who’s to say that can’t change again? For example, I know Eddie Izzard (whose labels have shifted a lot over the decades, as terminology and options for gender identities identity have changed many times over since the 1980s) has said she goes through long block periods of being a particular gender, so right now she’s “based in girl mode,” (her words) but she’s previously had blocks of time being based in “boy mode,” too. So like, whose to say other people don’t have block periods like that? Maybe somebody really was non-binary for ten years and now they’re not anymore, y’know? Not feeling something about yourself forever doesn’t have to mean you were wrong the whole time. Of course, being wrong is okay too! But I’d make room for both.
i LOVE this addition, especially because it helps us move away from the “ive always known” narrative that dominates so much trans space. sometimes your gender literally changes, and it’s not helpful or healthy of us to act like that means everything that came before was false or mistaken.
Not to mention around 90% of people who do detransition do it because they don’t feel safe presenting as their gender. When asked why they detransitioned, a lot of people said it was less to do with what the transition going badly and more to do with social pressures and expectations and living in a world that treats trans people so badly. Other factors included lack of support, financial difficulties or even simple lack of healthcare.
No small wonder a lot of them feel the only option is to detransition. It doesn’t mean they stop being trans. It just means they are not in a position to be themselves because the world makes it impossible for them.
[ID: a screenshot of several tags:
Yeah I mean like. We absolutely should be supporting detransitioned people. Literally because what they do with their bodies (capitalized) is none of your concern. (next sentence is highlighted in blue) like detransitioning hurts nobody and if you think their existence hurts youra then you're falling prey to respectability politics. They will not stop hating trans people of we somehow manage to have 0% detransition. They will come up with some other bullshit reason. Their arguments are irrelevant and do not matter. /end ID].
fred-erick-frankenstein reblogged
anyway y’all have no problem when gay men doing drag use she/her but as soon as lesbians use he/him it’s suddenly a problem and a huge contradiction
realise that gender is part and parcel of heterosexuality and so lesbians necessarily navigate gender entirely differently than straight women
i think the “lesbians can’t use he/him” is absolutely implicit in wanting to keep us in a womanhood defined and ruled by heterosexuality. once we start to display us doing gender for ourselves, challenging and living with toxic heterosexual femininity: he/him lesbians, butches, etc. that’s when it gets out of hand for y’all
lesbians rejecting a womanhood that ties them to men because of gender, because of heterosexuality is not a bad thing, it’s not a contradiction, it makes perfect sense.
the policing of he/him lesbians is ironically completely bound up in misogyny: an anxiety to let lesbians do what they want and not consider men/heterosexuality and do gender on their own in their own way
same goes for the weirdness a lot of people have about “lesbians can’t be nb”
like lol yes they can
the move to always try and tie lesbians back on to a strict defined sense of womanhood makes lesbians parsable as Women in a purely heterosexual conception
if lesbians can’t be easily understood as women, then the male gaze can’t fetishise us, objectify us, make us two girls kissing for the pleasure of men. it’s a way of escape & of dealing with gendered trauma & of enacting subjectivity
lesbians know what they’re doing, leave us alone
Also lesbians can, do, and historically HAVE gone on testosterone. Suck it.
fred-erick-frankenstein reblogged
Thoughts on the gendering of Chinese pronouns
Edit: I replaced the word “colonization” with “westernization” in the last frame for accuracy. This comic was originally intended as personal vent. I didn’t expect it to get so much attention, and I will admit I wasn’t as careful with wording as I could have been. The original comic and its wording can be found here with an image ID.
Also can the racists and ra/dfe/ms get off my post and get better reading comprehension. This post was about my grief for western influence unnecessarily gendering something that wasn’t gendered before, not saying that gender roles and misogyny never existed in China so stop derailing the post.
This immediately brings to mind how the British criminalized the existence of anyone suspected to be a ‘eunuch’ in India. It was called the Criminal Tribes Act. It didn’t erase the existence of tribes and communities in India of people not conforming to the western idea of the binary. It called their existence a crime and punished them for it.
I understand that op is talking about a completely distinct experience, but I just wanted to say that I feel that last line in my bones.
Shared experiences save lives, but I just wish so many of ours didn’t have to be so negative.
Copy of the ID but adjusted:
[ID: A 6-panel, black and white comic. The panels are as follows:
1. The text “There is only one pronoun in Cantonese” next to that pronoun, 佢, written in grid paper.
2. White text against black. It reads, “Not neutral as in a statement. Neutral as in ‘never considered’“
3. A child on the ground, laying on their stomach with a pen in hand, in front of the paper with 佢 on it. Text next to them reads, “I think that’s part of why I didn’t consider gender much as a kid”
4. Someone wearing a qipao and two braids, drawn from the neck down. They put a hand up in a “stop” gesture at someone else’s hand, which reaches towards them from offscreen. Text reads, “But like the Mandarin 他 / the white people came / split 女 from 人”
5. Text reading “Split into 他 她” The two pronouns are written so that they form the labels of bathroom doors.
6. A person gestures forward. Blood drips from their mouth and the center of their palm. Text reads, “I gender myself in a tongue that is not my own / and taste the bitterness of westernization” /end ID].
I just saw the most Galaxy Brain gender take ever, from a cis man on reddit
[ID: a screenshot of a comment from reddit, with no username visible. The commend reads: This doesn’t make a ton of sense to me either. Setting aside the question of whether gender/sex is assigned or observed at birth, the gender I was assigned at birth was ‘boy.’ The gender I have now is ‘man’. Boys and men have different gender roles, and few adults identify as boys anymore. From this standpoint, every adult has a different gender than the one they had at birth. End ID]
Framing “girl” and “boy” as separate genders from “woman” and “man” is such an amazing take. it’s a framework that accommodates and explains so many trans experiences. Some trans people never were their AGAB. Some feel like they were their AGAB, but that that changed (usually when puberty hits, which is when you start “becoming a man/woman”. The accepted societal path is that girls grow up to into women, and boys grow up into men. But some girls grow up into men, and some boys grow up into women. This guy was a boy who grew up into a man, which generally works out pretty well for people. Some boys and girls grow up into people who aren’t men or women, even! It’s like this random cis guy skipped right over transgender 101, 102, 201, etc. and stumbled directly into Transgender Nirvana.
pansexualnikiforov
[ID: A gif of Neo from the matrix, with a calm face, saying “Woah.” End ID.]