here’s the thing:

the more i try to explain gender to cis people the more i understand plato's allegory of a cave

plato: the shadows are like a surface level understanding and coming out of the cave and seeing the actual objects is what being a philosopher is like

me: this is stupid and pretentious

cis person: girl is when pink and flower and boy is when blue and guns

me: oh no theyre still in the cave

I think cis people should also be their gender of choice. Like, if you're a man, you should get to really enjoy being a man- have fun with it! If you're a woman, take the parts of womanhood that really deeply make you happy. If being a little androgynous or ambiguous or hidden is the part that really makes you happy, you don't have to be trans for that. If you wanna lean really hard into being femme or masc- do it! You have one life in your body, do what makes you happy. Ditch the stuff you don't like.

My sinister queer agenda is I think that everyone should be the gender they like in the way they like it.

i dont mind being trans because hypothetically i could pull my cock out of my pants and throw it hard enough someone’s head it knocks them out and you cant do that with cis penises at least i dont think you can

WE NEED TO START TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT BIGENDERISM

seeing people say “sometimes i wish i was a guy but i still want to be a girl too” or vice versa and it’s like YOU CAN!!! YOU CAN DO THAT!!!! TAKE MY HAND

i accidentally cracked a bunch of eggs with this post

i think a lot of people would be happier if they viewed labels like homosexual and transgender as social technologies rather than identities

that is to say, "transgender" is a useful way for me to convey how i move through the world to others rather than some essential qualia. i am of a class of people with an infinite number of relationships with their genders

if you’re experimenting with pronouns make sure you:

- record your errors

- know your independent and dependent variables

- have a control group if needed

im like if a girl was {undefined variable}. im like if a girl was [fragment missing]. im like if a girl was (editor’s note: the author’s invocation of the word “girl” in this context is idiosyncratic, perhaps metaphorical) im like if a girl was im like if a girl draft deleted! im like if a girl You have reached your free article limit! Subscribe now to continue reading. im like if a girl was [THREAD LOCKED] im like if a girl (ENDING EXPLAINED!) im like if a girl Unusual activity detected, please highlight all the pictures of bicycles. im like if a girl I don’t respond to prompts that could be deemed offensive, and so I am unable to carry out the request. im-like-if-a-girldeactivated03092023. im like if a girl we are unable to take your call at the minute. im like if a girl isn’t registered under that name. im like if a girl could give you her date of birth. im like if a girl oh yes we have you under […]. im like if a girl LOST CONNECTION

so when straight people ask me why I say I’m “queer” or “gay” instead of sharing my actual identity as a panromantic demisexual non-binary sapphic queer I just tell them “ok look, when you’re talking to someone who isn’t local and they ask you where you’re from and you either say the name of the largest city nearby or ‘town name, suburb of large nearby city’ so they can get some geographical context of where you’re located right, bc they’re probably not going to know the name of the little town you actually live in.”

but if you’re talking to a local you can say the name of your actual town bc they have a greater chance of knowing where/what that is.

ok well when I’m talking to a straight person I start with queer bc chances are they aren’t as familiar with the context of all the little towns in that big queer city and need gps (gay positioning system) to find me.

if I’m talking to another queer person and I say I live in a suburb of gay city in a town called panromantic on the demisexual side of the tracks which is in the county of queer and I live off the intersection of non-binary and sapphic, they’d probably be able to find me with little to no problems, make sense?

Autistic people are like, “yeah I love following rules” and then proceed to rip apart the gender binary

I love following good rules. bad rules keep me from following better ones so I put them through a meat grinder and see what happens

The official rules suck, I have written my own.

the rules have to be consistent or they’re not the real rules

there are very few things less consistent than the gender binary

That’s not a contradiction at all. “I love following rules” means “I love having clear instructions instead of them being implied”. It doesn’t mean “I love obeying authority” or “I love conforming”.

People: gender is a RIDGED, SOLID THING and it only looks like THIS

Me: why

People: Because!

Me, arming my catapult: Hold on a sec i wanna test something

I’m reading a paper that uses the term re-transition as opposed to detransition and it crystallised a lot of my problems with the term. detransition implies an ability to return to the “default” “normal” cisgender body that lurks within all of us, just waiting to be re-excavated after a period of intentional (deceitful) burial, and a turning “back” or away from the freakish mutilation and “deviance” of transgender transition to a more natural, more authentic body - a body that can never be transformed, only temporarily cloaked by medicine and social trickery on the part of trans people

I know SEVERAL afab nonbinary people who, as soon as they came out as nonbinary - immediately began dressing in ridiculous hyper-femme outfits they never would have worn before.  A lot of people see this and say shit like “Theyfab” or say they are only nonbinary for attention.  After all, look how femme they are.

But to me, this makes perfect sense.  When you are forced into the category of “woman” against your will, femininity is a chore.  It’s a job that you have.  As soon as you say no, I’m not a woman, suddenly femininity isn’t your job anymore.  It’s not a requirement.  It’s just a fun hobby you can get into.  Or a little treat sometimes.

i don't get the whole deadname thing. like i do empirically but it never applied to me. personally my birth name's like. idk, yugoslavia? it's not accurate to call me that now and if you do you're a bit dense, but sometimes you need to speak about history with the names it had at the time, and that's all good.

no my parents did not name me yugoslavia. that's not what this post says.

ABCDEFGHI KLMNOP RSTUVW Y

22/26

terfs keep mentioning the % of autistics who are trans/nb and that we’re ‘brainwashed’

and because i’m an asshole, i decided to look into why so many autistic folks are trans/nb. it’s not an inaccurate statement, at least the first half, but terfs lie through their teeth so i decided to get to the scientific root of it.

the answer blew my fucking mind.

the study on gender and autism i found said two very specific things about autistic people: we are more mentally resistant to things like social conditioning and binarism. we like our secret third things, y'know.

an excerpt:

“The finding that non-binary identities are most elevated seems to support hypotheses focussed on autistic resistance to social conditioning, which are consistent with existing evidence of the same effect with respect to self-description of sexual orientation. Perhaps elevated rates of trans identity in autism might result from a rejection of the binary cisgenderist norm, which combined with a below-typical concern for social norms could promote the disclosure of the identity.”

94% of autistics surveyed for that paper identified themselves as non-binary.

other studies have found autistic people have higher levels of critical thinking, and require more evidence to maintain or convert to a belief system (hence why many of us eventually fall away from religion) than allistic people.

which means, at least from my perspective, that:

a) the ‘brainwashing’ terfs are accusing the trans community of inflicting on autistic folks would likely not even work if they tried.

b) the current binary definition of gender flies directly against embedded autistic modes of thinking to begin with.

you cannot brainwash someone into thinking something they already believe.

This essentially suggests that autistic people are likely to be NB because we are in fact resistant to the relevant brainwashing.

[copied from a reply by @maxens]

Sometimes I feel we do a disservice to trans people by framing their journey as some esoteric battle to escape their gender assigned at birth, rather than a very profound story of self-love and self-actualization. Many people feel they can’t relate to the desire to “become another gender” and thus don’t really “get” transgenderism.. but almost everyone can relate to the thrill and fulfillment of letting yourself be true.

it’s actually fine and cool if someone prefers certain people use certain pronouns for them and other people use different pronouns for them for whatever reason

like sometimes i want people who don’t really know me to use they/them pronouns more than they use she/her for me, whereas im okay with family referring to me only with she/her because it feels comfortable and familiar (and “lived-in” in a sense). and sometimes it varies depending on my mood or the day, it’s literally fine and not a big deal. i don’t think it’s too weird or complicated at all. just use the pronouns someone tells you to use without saying “b-b-but you let these people use these other pronouns for you!” yeah and you’re not them. okay?

hope it's okay to tag onto this because it truly resonates with something I've been considering for the longest time now: that society at large needs to start treating pronouns more like we do names and nicknames in the sense that it's already quite normal to go by different names and accept different (nick)names under different social contexts (e.g., getting called "sweetheart" by your partner vs. by your boss – VERY different). after all, aren't pronouns merely a way to shorthand somebody's name? people generally understand when someone asks to no longer be called a certain (nick)name and to instead be called something else (at least where i live). the same ought to be true for pronouns. it's a basic modicum of respect to refer to someone the way they prefer to be refered to in different contexts, be it their name or their pronouns.