Whoa. Followup question

Gluck (b. Hannah Gluckstein, British,1895 - 1978), Gluck, 1942, oil on canvas; National Portrait Gallery, London.

"The artist Gluck consistently broke gender norms. They wore masculine clothes, cut their hair short and smoked a pipe and, in 1918, in their early 20s, adopted the genderless name Gluck ('no prefix, suffix or quotes'"

ID: Painting of a sharp, androgynous, middle aged person looking to the side of the viewer.

was thinking abt the difference in how (some) people view women's products as "things companies are trying to sell to women" while men's products are "things men want as consumers" and like. men's desires are constructed by the patriarchy. this is the problem w engaging w the concept of the patriarchy as like, the culmination of every single individual man's active desires instead of a system inherently intertwined with other systems of power. like men are constructed manhood is sold to you! if you think that everything the patriarchy says about women is a lie but you take it at it's word on The Ways Men Naturally Are. I simply need you to rethink things

From I Am A Transwoman. I Am In The Closet. I Am Not Coming Out. by Jennifer Coates

when you post "The Article About Internalized Transmisogyny" to make a point about masculinity jfc

The Article About Internalized Transmisogny literally ends by making a point about manhood and masculinity and misandry in queer/feminist spaces:

ID: Quotes from the essay linked and quoted from

And let me tell you this stuff bites hard when you're transmasc, too.

Being masc-leaning and expressing attraction to women etc is subversive and mindful and Good unless you identify Too Much as a man in which case you are GROSS and DANGEROUS and totally distinct from any of that subversive Goodness. Or femininity is Good and masculinity is Bad, or identifying as a woman is Good and identifying as a man is Bad, etc etc. As long as we draw the line between the Progressively Good Gender and Mindlessly Bad Gender the right way we are nothing like TERFs and even suggesting it just makes YOU the transphobe. If a trans amab person complains they have Internalised Transmisogyny and if a trans afab person complains it's Fragile Masculinity and if a cis person complains they're a sexist transphobe. If you're genderfluid we let you be in the good one, aren't we nice? Hooray for being inclusive and fighting cisheteropatriarchy!

transmisc. transmiscellaneous.

Speaking of the Metamorphoses, shout-out also to my guy Caeneus, who also reads as very trans guy coded.

For those not familiar: in Book 12 of the Metamorphoses, Caeneus is presented as a rape survivor who asks to be turned into a man, and spends some time living his best life as a badass warrior dude invulnerable to all weaponry.

In the larger story of some asshole centaurs, Caeneus kills five centaurs in the general melee and this one particularly awful centaur insists he's a woman and should return to womanly spinning instead of war. Caeneus understandably kills him on the spot, and the other centaurs have to asphyxiate Caeneus to take him out. But a respected augur claims that Caeneus actually turned into a bird and flew safely away, concluding:

"Hail to thee, blithe Caeneus, glory Of the Lapith race, once a great hero, And now the only bird of your kind!"

Read Before You Follow: the Web is What Happens Next’s Most Dynamic Tool

i wrote about the webcomic What Happens Next for the cartoonist cooperative journal! go read it

I edited Sasha's piece for the Coop and got excited for WHN all over again.

Also: despite being starkly unflinching in portraying the characters' flaws, and how they hurt each other, it's ultimately compassionate and there are enough moments of lightness, humour, and kindness that I didn't find it too much despite the sometimes very dark topics and dynamics. And the cast isn't just queer but largely trans, this is one of the few stories I've read which feels like it's coming from a trans perspective but doesn't feel the need to soften how shitty trans people can be (because we're people, and people are often shitty) for the sake of Good Representation.

Not to make it sound too naturalistic, the vibe is more like... Homestuck or Fandom_Wank.

(I'm pretty behind, because I kept forgetting who everyone was between updates. The simplistic cutesy art works really well for this kind of story, and I love the non-linear depiction of an ensemble cast of people whose presentations and sometimes names have changed over time, but it can be a tad confusing)

other as in other than your agab, not other than your gender. so for eg a cis woman reading this the question is if you were amab would you be a trans woman do you think

I'm genderfluid so... yeah. I sometimes think about what that journey would have been like, though then I get distracted pouring out a drink for amab!me's Constant Struggle With Body Hair. At least they'd probably be a more conveniently androgynous height.

Also, just... imagining my platonic and romantic relationships with women in the 90s as a Nice If Awkward Soft Nerd Boy. The weirdly homoerotic friendships with other nerd boys. Writing earnest blog posts about how ALL men should try wearing dresses it doesn't have to be a Thing. GOD.

(also idk how this poll would feel to read if you were intersex)

today is the rare trans day of visibility / easter crossover

reblog to crack an egg

[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]

This post is now a work of political art that is just A+

girl help I'm getting they/them'd by well-meaning people who don't know what a tomboy is

This feeling is strange and complicated. On the one hand it's legit quite cool that nonbinary pronouns are becoming more widespread! On the other, I've spent my whole life pursuing interests and hobbies and ideals that weren't seen as particularly feminine, and when I was younger this was a major source of bullying and stress alongside some generalized misogyny taking the form of "you can't do or be anything you think is cool because you are innately inferior and to do otherwise means violating your nature," and it took me a while to conclude that this was just straight horseshit top to bottom and I could do whatever I wanted and present myself however I wanted without in any way being Not A Girl, and now it's like the exact same concept has flipped sides and is coming from a point of theoretical validation but still calculates out to "that's not very ladylike of you, you must be something else". anyway she/her thanks gang

I think it's like. the understanding that the gender binary is a small part of a much wider space of identities is separate from the understanding that a lot of that gender binary is a false dichotomy that artificially walls off universal human experiences behind specific pronouns and while the first concept is gaining wider understanding the second is lagging a little, which means "I am a girl and I like doing boy things" reads as "oh I've heard about this, you must be one of the Others who don't do the binary" rather than "the concept of 'boy things' is stupid from the jump"

just to be 100% clear

what this post is NOT talking about: using they/them pronouns for someone you don't know, aren't sure of, hasn't had a chance to introduce themselves, etc.

what this post IS talking about: my highly personal experience seeing some people "correcting" my commenters that were using she/her pronouns for me, because, despite me exclusively using she/her pronouns and saying so whenever asked, through no action of mine they had gotten the idea that I was using "they/them".

girl help I put a nuanced personal experience on the reading comprehension website

As someone who is a somewhat masculine presenting afab they/them using non-binary person: a) sorry people misgender you and tumblr has no nuance b) I think a big part of the problem is that a lot of people think "non binary, uses they/them" literally means "(probably cis) woman who rejects traditional femininity".

So non-binary people like me are treated like gnc women, not expected to be feminine but expected to identify 100% with women and 0% with men. And there is active erasure and even hostility towards non-binary people who too obviously identify as a man and/or don't identify as a woman at all and/or identify as something else (which are all distinct things!)

The fact that some people treat "they/them" as "she/her for gnc women"(*) doesn't make it any less misgendering to apply to an actual gnc woman. But it's just... misgendering all around :/

(*)No criticism intended of gnc women who do use they/them. The point is there's a massive spectrum and you can't assume what box someone fits in based on vibes.

Bigots denying a woman her womanhood aren't actually granting her the status of "man" esp with all its attendant privileges.

Degendering is a form of dehumanization. The goal of misgendering/degendering a woman is generally to treat her as a disposable object, unworthy of even the conditional and dubious "protection" that women are supposedly due under patriarchy.

If they actually saw her as a man she wouldn't be targeted in these ways, and "man/manly/male" would never be spat at her like an insult.

And this goes double for trans women. And, as kentsarrow said in her tags, WOC, disabled women etc also get "degendered" in ways that in no way lessen their experience of sexism.

I saw this on my dash, had that thought, then spent the next day thinking about how this sort of thing works for other sorts of trans people, before realising I hadn't actually reblogged it, and had to scroll through the blog I saw it on for a few pages to find it again.

I didn't even come to any neat conclusion. Certainly my own experience as an afab genderfluid person is that being called "woman(-like)" or "man(-like)", while always misgendering, can come from a wide variety of motives.

I've encountered plenty of people who just treat me like a woman as a straightforward expression of sexism and transphobia. But sometimes women treat me as "effectively another woman" in a way which is intended as a compliment and way of extending solidarity. It still feels bad but not in quite the same way.

And I have occasionally encountered their opposite, "feminists" who treat all afab trans people as "effectively men" in a very radical feminist "men are evil" way, yet may emphasise our 'feminine'/un-manly traits as a deliberately dysphoria inducing insult (we're trying to be men and not even doing a good job!). Meanwhile some trans men have treated me like a fellow man, genuinely intending it as a compliment and granting of status. Again, still feels bad, but not in the same way!

And I imagine there's a whole other mix of experiences for trans men, AMAB agender people etc. Hell even for cis people, "you're acting man-ish/woman-ish" can mean very different things. Back when I identified as a woman I had a few cis men compliment me on being Like A Man in the sense of being good at maths, not wearing makeup, having an enjoyably un-girly vibe etc. I knew they'd have despised me as mannish-in-a-bad-way if I wasn't still conventionally attractive, conciliatory, and feminine presenting, but I'm not sure they did. And plenty of women get put down for being too "girly".

Anyway! No neat conclusions but many thoughts! *passes on these thoughts to tumblr*

EDIT: Also, weirdly, I don't think I've ever had someone overtly call me mannish as an insult, even though I've spent the last ten years or so presenting androgynously while being visibly afab, increasingly fat, and sometimes in a wheelchair. I've seen it happen to other people, including feminine presenting cis women. But I just seem to consistently ping people as like... a harmlessly frumpy cis woman. Gender policing is inconsistent!

yeah i know we all hate gender binaries but don’t worry guys THIS binary that is related to gender is different. THIS system of classifying people as one of two things based on some aspect of their gender is fine don’t worry. this one’s never going to have transphobic or intersexist implications bro. this time it’s totally fine and correct to try and separate the complexity of the human experience into two categories. trust me bro. this is a GOOD gender binary. trust me

Denying a trans reading of Scott Pilgrim not because I don't see it but because if Scott was an egg and Ramona was a trans woman then there'd be no fucking way she'd be adhering to the prime directive this fucking hard whenever he says some egg shit. Scott would talk about his hair or go on about how he wishes he was a lesbian and her face would contort like a deflating basketball from the relatable cringe of it all

Kim: you can't say anything. you know how this works, she has to figure it out herself.

Ramona: you don't understand, she's been so bad lately. I don't know if I can take this any longer.

Scott, entering the room: hey have you girls seen my big jacket, the one that doesn't make me hate myself so much? wonder why it does that. anyway, I'm gonna go play DND with Roxie, she said it was girls only so Wallace couldn't come but for some reason she invited me anyway, lol. I'm thinking about playing a cool knight lady, just for variety. anyway bye!

Ramona: *looks at Kim*

Kim: dear god

The thing is that this is a setting where the Vegan Police is real, so chances are that the Prime Directive is probably being enforced by a high council of trans girls

The moment Ramona tries to tell Scott she gets interrupted by a cat girl speedrunner no clipping into the room and sucker punching her

Okay you know what that's actually a solid argument that's consistent with the series' internal logic

I don't know that the canonical Bertie Wooster could be called "progressive" (or "politically engaged" or "aware of anything that's going on outside of his immediate sphere of acquaintances with funny nicknames") but you can't argue he wouldn't support gay marriage. Bertie Wooster neither likes nor understands straight marriage, but he fights for his friends who inexplicably want to do that.

And if you change your pronouns, Bertie Wooster will never fuck them up because he barely has room in his brain for one set of them per person. As soon as you tell him, the old ones just evaporate. He might ask Jeeves about it later, but it'd be to the tune of "I say, Jeeves, why didn't you tell me that Bingo was a woman this whole time? I've been calling her a bloke for years; she must think I'm a perfect ass."

To be clear, he doesn't understand that she transitioned. He thinks that she's always been a lady. He'd try to explain it to someone and accidentally be the most supportive ally.

Here's the thing:

Cis people really do feel like the gender they were assigned at birth.

Cis women really do feel like women, and cis men really do feel like men. They experience what we would call gender euphoria related to dressing and expressing themselves as their gender, whether that's in a femme way or a butch way or any other way. They feel joy and connection with their gender, with their sexuality and how it relates to their gender. They wear clothes, participate in activities, and express themselves in ways that affirm their gender identity.

Gender critical radfems and terfs will try to convince you that "no woman feels like a woman". They do this for several reasons. Firstly, it's to try to convince trans men they aren't trans, they're just women with no connection to womanhood because "no woman feels a connection to womanhood". They also do it to try to discredit trans women, by saying "If you feel like a woman, then you're clearly not a woman, because "woman" isn't a feeling, it's biology".

A lot of gender critical terfs and radfems claim they are "dysphoric women", and will try to convince you this is a normal state of womanhood. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say no, that doesn't sound normal at all, actually. Most women do not secretly wish they could be men, or more androgynous, or have a penis. Most women don't define their lives through suffering - they love being women.

If womanhood - or manhood - is making you miserable... you might be trans, or you might be gender nonconforming. See if dressing a different way makes you feel a spark of joy and happiness - seek euphoria!

Gender should be joyous, not drudgery.

I am a cis woman and I absolutely feel happiness and contentment associated with being a woman, but not with being "feminine—" I started to experience what trans people know as "gender euphoria" when I cut my hair short and started presenting more "masculine." shoutout to butch lesbians for being literally my first experience of "oh, *I* want to look/dress/be like that"

Yeah, I'm a trans man and I know the feeling you're talking about - a lot of times, before I started T, I remember going to the hairstylist and asking for a short cut, only to be given a pixie cut that was a similar style to what a lot of lesbians have, and it didn't make me look or feel male at all. and I remember feeling miserable, because I didn't want to look like a woman with short hair, I wanted to look like a man. The first time I experienced euphoria from a hairstyle was when I asked the stylist to spike up my hair like David Tennant and she actually did what I asked, and it actually made me look male.

Yeah, see, if I try to imagine actually being addressed and perceived as a man, all I feel is revulsion and sadness. I just want to be a woman who is just like a guy at the auto parts store

I seem to recall hearing about an exchange in which somebody’s cis dude friend helped lift and carry something heavy, and got to be everybody’s big strong man, and he was feeling all powerful about it, and realized “wait, fuck, is this what trans folks call gender euphoria?”

Cis people absolutely do get gender euphoria. And I’m fuckin happy for them when they do.

Wait wait this is a perfect example for the other side of this.

This is why (well at least one reason men buy into it) conservative men hate the discussion around toxic masculinity. They think we want to take their gender euphoria. The good feeling of being "everybody's strong man." That we want to shame them for being men, in essence that we want to make dysphoric about being men. Right wing talking heads capitalize on this and push this idea to further their agenda and try and pull men to the right.

I think I got that to make sense maybe not but there it be

No, you're absolutely right.

The conservative/patriarchal concept of manhood is, in a lot of ways, wrapped up in what makes men feel gender euphoria. Being strong, protecting others, being promiscuous, being chivalrous, supporting those around them.

Obviously the most femme person on the planet can do all of those things too, but they are associated with manhood and masculinity in Western Patriarchy.

(fun fact though, other cultures have different concepts of masculinity)

So, when I told my husband I thought I might be enby he asked me something I still don't have an answer for:

How do you know whether you're a butch woman (like @headspace-hotel up there) or non-binary? How do you know it's about presentation rather than a rebellion against gender roles? I've been trying to figure it out for ages but I lack a community I can ask about these things.

For the record, he wasn't being an asshole. He was trying to understand better but I lack the experience to be able to answer him.

Sometimes it's just a feeling you know in your heart, and there isn't anything more to it than that.

I think the answer to that question is going to be different for everyone but I think that it being a feeling in your heart is gonna come the closest to being a "for everyone" answer.

For me, knowing I was a feminine trans man and not nonbinary took awhile. It took introspection and a lot of soul-searching and, finally, offhandedly calling myself a "femboy" and then having some random transphobe trying to hurt me by calling me "he" -- and it all…clicked into place. And I just knew.

I felt it in much the same way that like, the clouds part and you see sunshine.

If you think about being nonbinary and it feels "right", then you're probably nonbinary. If you think about being a woman and it feels "right" then you're probably a woman. Likewise for being a man.

It might take time to like, dig through layers of feelings about things and reach the truth (I often felt terrified that I was "actually a boy" but I think that was tied to some internalized transphobia) but introspection gets you there eventually, I think.

IDK.

Every time one of my friends announces new pronouns or otherwise transitions, I check in with myself: hey, uh, how am I doing, gender-wise?

And the answer always comes back: "Yup! Still cis, thank you for asking!"

The closest I've ever come to experiencing dysphoria was a bad haircut that made me look masc, and when someone who didn't know my pronouns referred to me as "they". (It was horrible, do not recommend, but also it was valuable in that I became a lot more proactive in getting other people's pronouns right.)

For a long time I was deeply baffled by why so many otherwise feminist romance novels written by and for women made a point about how the badass/cross-dressing/monstrous etc heroine was still Delicate and Feminine and Pretty compared to the Big Manly Hero. Why write an unusual heroine in the first place if you were going to make her conventional in the end? But afaict such plots are designed to give gender euphoria to (some) feminine women: it's a fantasy of being able to do everything men can do, and possibly feeling unwomanly, but still being a conventionally feminine woman on a fundamental level, especially in the eyes of a partner.

I still don't enjoy such stories, and afaict a lot of women aren't into them either, but I at least understand the point now (though I can't claim to speak for people who do enjoy them, and am plausibly oversimplifying) I feel like there's more fertile ground to be dug into about how gender euphoria/dysphoria affects cis people but am still pondering it.

Also! To anyone trying to figure out their gender: what worked for me was experimenting with each plausible possibility and seeing if it was more or less appealing than where I was at. You don't have to figure out the Real Answer right away, and maybe there isn't one, just give yourself space to try out little changes (mentally or in practice) and see what feels good. Just keep following that Best Feeling direction and see where you end up, and be willing to let the Best Feeling direction shift and surprise you.

I absolutely encourage people who currently consider themselves cis to do this too. Even if you really are cis it'll give you a stronger sense of what that means, in general and for yourself. And if you do turn out not to be cis, you have an exciting journey of self discovery and gender euphoria ahead of you!

EDIT: A friend reminded me that not everyone, cis or trans, ever experiences gender dysphoria and/or euphoria. So, that's another thing to remember.