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When you are having a hard time, the way you can go easy on yourself is by allowing yourself to be instead of trying to find answers to everything right away and fix things as if there are instant solutions to such deep-rooted problems and patterns.

Going easy on yourself does not mean indulging in self-destructive behaviour that will make you feel good for maybe a few hours or desperately seeking instant gratification in any way and form you can find. 

It means not jumping to conclusions or thinking too deeply or forcing yourself to figure it all out. It means eating well, getting enough sleep, brushing your hair, and having fruit.

It means laughing with a friend, going for a walk or lying down on the cool marble floor in Shavasana. It means constantly filling your bottle of water and carrying it everywhere with you and reading good books the ones that give you some comfort and leave you with a sense of warmth and hope.

It means engaging yourself in things that allow you to breathe a little better as you do all the functional things life is demanding out of you, like work and chores. 

Going easy on yourself during such times means you don’t take yourself so seriously because that is the quickest way to skinny dip in rabbit holes and camp there for extended periods. It also means that you say no to things and people who make you feel anxious, conscious, and uneasy. Yes, you should step out of your comfort zone and push yourself and all that but there is a time and place for that. And when you’re feeling such heaviness of being, that is not it. 

i feel so seen!!

I would say I am a cis guy, yes, but I really don’t care. I could see myself being a girl aswell (heck I prefer to play feminine characters in video games that allow me to chose), but not in a way would I consider myself trans. Like, I would be fine with any. Obviously I don’t have the experience of being trans, but there is no dysphoria for me. There are things I don’t like about myself, but I feel like that would be the case in any way.

Let me tell you what femme has meant for me and what it could mean for everyone. Let me stretch the word.

Let's say that femme is dispossessed femininity. It's the femininity of those who aren't allowed to be real women and who have to roll their own feminine gender.

Rolling their own is what cis-femme lesbians did in the fifties. By class and by sexual preference, they were dispossessed of real womanhood. For what woman is complete without money or a man? So they learned how to improvise, how to sew; how to turn a thrift store sow's ear into a vintage silk purse.

Rolling their own is what contemporary femme dykes do. Invisible in straight spaces and frequently trivialized in queer ones, they must voice their femininity in a way that does not get shouted down or ignored. No easy task.

Rolling their own is what drag queens and trannies do and have always done. For what woman is complete without hairless skin and a cunt? We too learned how to improvise. and when we were mocked as caricatures of real women, we often became skilled caricaturists, owning the insult, engulfing it.

And this is what femme gay men do, too. Dangerously visible in straight space and often ridiculed in gay male space, femme gay men take shit from all sides. The straights dish it to them because they're visible. Second-wave feminists dish it to them because they're both feminine and male, and have thus sinned twice. Other gay men dish it to them for acting like, well, chicks.

What these groups share, aside from a fondness for eyeliner, is the illegitimacy of their femininity. That's how I understand femme: badass, rogue, illegitimate femininity. It's the femininity of those who aren't supposed to be feminine, who aren't allowed to be, but are anyway.

Second-wave feminists used to slander both feminine dykes and transsexual women as "female impersonators.' And this is true. What they missed is that female impersonation is what femme is. Femmes can only impersonate real women because we are, by rules beyond our control, not...

Its name reclaims a slur because the point is to say, “I am different, but that’s not a bad thing.” The queer movement is about upholding the right of all people to deviate from an oppressive cisgender, heterosexual, patriarchal norm. Broadening the spectrum of acceptable diversity; questioning and dismantling the social pressures that police and punish deviance. Changing not just our own lives, but how our entire society thinks about sex and gender.

That’s why “queer” embraces so many different groups. It’s not trying to erase their differences, but to try to coherently understand the complex overlapping pressures that affect each of them, and to extend our reach beyond the LGBT+ community. It’s about the right of lesbians to live without men and the right of trans and nonbinary people to be who they are, the right of asexuals to define for themselves what’s significant in their lives, the right of straight men to be vulnerable and emotional and nonviolent. When the great queering project is done, you will see the changes everywhere, not just in small LGBT+ enclaves.

For everyone who’s like “Whoa, I was with you until you threw straight men in there”:

Homophobia is a huge part of how all men are policed. If a man isn’t strong, tough, aggressive, and dominant? He gets called gay. So this isn’t “Soft straight men are totally LGBT+ and belong in your gay support group!” but it is “Part of the work of disassembling homophobia is changing how it affects straight men.”

It’s the same way that men aren’t the primary intended beneficiaries of feminism, but part of the work of feminism is addressing and changing toxic masculinity. If you’re effective enough at changing the system, you change it for everyone.

Queer is a coalition, not a demographic.

The purpose of the queer coalition is to end the practice of, “you must have [X list of traits] to participate in these parts of society.”

Can cishet men be queer?

Why does it matter?

Being queer isn’t about what specific identity or traits you have. It’s about saying, “HEY! Average isn’t the pinnacle of human existence! We didn’t build this world so everyone could strive to be just like their neighbors! People can be different and we can celebrate that difference, not shun it!”

Can a cishet man “be queer?” I dunno. I don’t think that’s important.

Can a cishet man “live a queer life?” Hell yes he can.

Can a cishet woman “be queer?” Wrong question.

Can a cishet woman “live a queer life?” Hell yes.

These aren’t “straight people appropriating queer culture.” They’re not taking it away from us, not picking and choosing bits of it to share with their cis het friends. These are people joining queer culture.

^ This is why allies are part of the broader queer community while lesbian TERFs, exclusionists, etc. aren’t.

Listen. Listen. In 2007, I went to see a gay performance artist named Tim Miller. At that time he did pieces talking about the two major issues that had affected him as a queer man: surviving the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s as his friends dropped dead around him, and the fact that he wanted to marry his partner, who was Australian, and every time said partner came to the US there was a concern he’d be deported because his relationship made him “a risk for overstaying his visa.” Marriage would have given him a green card, but guess what you couldn’t do in 2007! Even if you got married in Maryland, it didn’t count for immigration purposes because it wasn’t federally recognized.

So one of the stories he told that night was about his high school German teacher, who was a butch lesbian. He ended the story with a line I have never forgotten:

“The queer kids, whether they’re gay or straight, have to stick together.”

This was a performance piece he’d first written IN 1994.

So: a man who survived a queer genocide says yes, you fucking well CAN be cishet and queer. I think he’d know.

At the time, I identified as a cishet man, although I usually added some witty disclaimer like “but I’m not very good at it” or “but I don’t have a fucking complex about it” or something like that. Queer was my way of a) showing support to the community that had been there for me my entire life, and b) ditching the vague qualifiers.

It would be another eight months before the implications of this really kicked in. I had gone to see my mother on her deathbed, and taken all of the needful stuff out of my purse and put it into my pockets. When I got back to the car, I started putting everything back in my purse, and I was grouchy about it, because I hate having lots of stuff in my pockets. And I said to myself I should have said screw it and just taken the purse in with me, because the only surprise would have been that I had the audacity to bring it with me, not that I had one.

And that’s when it hit me that I was, in fact, Queer.

Since then it’s been… a journey. I now identify as trans/non-binary, and there are times I suspect I may just be a woman, but I have such a poor grasp on gender that I really don’t know. I’d never really thought about it before. I’ve come to realize that I’ve always had some level of body dysphoria, but I honestly don’t know if it’s connected to gender. (It… doesn’t feel like it, but again, still not clear on the concept.) I did one of those face-app gender swap things and there was a weird ache looking at it.

And I wouldn’t have gotten this far if I hadn’t started with Queer. I wouldn’t have gotten this far if the Queer community hadn’t bumped into the little sissy nerd and gone “Oh, hey, you can hang with us.” I wouldn’t have gotten this far if a huge chunk of the It Gets Better Project videos didn’t explicitly go out of their way to say “And all of this is for the nerds, too, and the weirdos, and the folks who are always told they don’t belong.”

Your voice isn't ruined, it's changing.

If you want to make that transition easier, you gotta keep using it. Sing! Even if your voice cracks in goofy ways. Even if you have trouble placing your voice comfortably. It gets easier, I promise. Get a voice teacher (if you can) who has experience with vocal changes for pubescent cis boys if it's really making you anxious or if you're having a hard time controlling it.

To be clear, I'm not trying to be dismissive of people's emotions, nor am I trying to tell you about your own experience. If you feel something intensely, that's fair and valid. Respectfully, you should unpack that with a therapist or supportive peers.

However, when one of the main TERF tactics against transmascs is convincing trans guys that T makes you Worse in a Variety of Ways, and that you'll be ruining your body if you take it, I am EXTREMELY dubious of how many people online report any part of their body being ruined by T. Sounds suspiciously like TERF shit. And, yes, even Actual Trans People can play into TERF talking points. I'm begging y'all to stop the rampant fearmongering surrounding T.

and when i try to point out that i know several trans men who are still professional singers after transitioning people are always like “what makes you think you’ll be one of the lucky ones?” what makes you think i won’t????? i have over a decade of training and performance experience under my belt as well as teaching experience, which requires knowledge of the anatomy of changing voices. and tbh i’m furious that i was put off t for so many years because i was told i would have to give up singing when apparently what’s more likely is that i’ll just have to take some time off while my voice changes to retrain.

Men and women aren't two completely different species. It's not like a trans guy experiencing voice crack is something cis boys don't go through. Just because afab teenagers don't experience it, doesn't mean it's catastrophic for a trans guy.

Cis boys have the same issue and usually stop singing for a while, but continue singing after.

(I love this thread. All the educators are really careful and use affirming language for the kids they teach. A lot of them also say boys can be treated very harshly during this period, and it's probably very sudden for the kid. The belief (I fear) is that he's "becoming a man" so he shouldn't be helped or treated kindly anymore.

Never ever call it the voice "breaking". That implies that there is something wrong with the voice, when it is of course an absolutely natural transition. We call it the vocal transition or change.

Taking T in no way “ruins” your voice — that’s not what testosterone does to the body! Inside your larynx (your ‘voice box’) you have what we call the vocal folds, which are two flaps of skin that are very thin on the inside. They’re shaped kind of like a V, and when you put the folds close together and push air through, they vibrate and create sound! When you stretch them, the sound is higher, and when you loosen them, the sound is lower.

What testosterone does to the vocal folds is thicken them, which lowers the pitch of the sounds you make! When moving from thinner folds to thicker folds, there’s always going to be a period of adjustment — you have to remember, these are muscles, and new ones! They can often struggle to hold a certain pitch because your muscles are changing and functioning in a new way. This is what leads to voice cracks — your body is trying to put a pitch in head voice or chest voice when the new musculature indicates it should be elsewhere. The voice ‘cracking’ sound is literally just your voice switching rapidly between chest and head voice!

The period of time in which your vocal folds are still thickening and haven’t quite settled, you are referred to as a cambiata — essentially, an in-between voice. But that doesn’t mean you should stop singing! In fact, you should absolutely KEEP singing in order to get used to your new musculature and passagio (the places where your voice switches from chest to head and head to falsetto).

Tips for singing through your voice change as a cambiata:

1. It’ll take a while. Don’t rush it. It could be up to a couple years before your voice really settles

2. Don’t push your voice! There may be notes you could hit before that you no longer can or low notes that you’re almost able to hit but not quite — don’t force them! This is what actually does damage to the voice, because you end up grinding the vocal folds together, which can create friction and eventually callouses! If a note seems out of your reach, let it be! It’s better to not sing a note/switch octaves for that note than force it and end up damaging your voice.

3. Ranges! While you’re going through a voice change, it’s best to stick to the cambiata range of ~F3 to ~F4, and move lower/higher as it feels natural. Here’s a little video so you can actually hear what I mean!

4. Most importantly: keep singing! Your vocal muscles are like any other muscles, and they get stronger/weaker depending on how much you use them. It may feel awkward as you adjust to the changes just because you can’t actually see them, but I promise you it’s completely normal for your voice to do the things it’s doing! I mean hell — I’m a cis woman and my voice was lowered by testosterone during puberty, and I’m an opera singer now! It’s your body’s normal and natural reaction to testosterone, and it’s not going to ruin your voice.

Also just a side note while I’m here because I’m passionate about this — the human voice is not as gendered as people want it to be. I won’t rant on it here, but there as cis men who sing soprano (countertenors!) and cis women who sing tenor or lower (contralto — this is me!). Singing is absolutely not “boys are this and girls are this”, it’s a spectrum with a whole lot of overlap. If you’re a pre-T/no-T trans man? You’re a countertenor. It’s a real voice part, and is highly sought after in the world of classical singing. Just listen to this — it’s John Holiday, masculine as all hell, and he’s a countertenor.

And if you’re a trans woman? Well then you’re one of the beautiful and rare contraltos, women with deep voices who are ALSO very rare and highly sought after (not to brag or anything, but welcome to the club lol), just like the gorgeous Korneva Julia.

"Interviewer: [...] There’s this whole narrative around testosterone and what it does to your voice. As someone who loves to belt at karaoke, I know it was something on my mind when I was deciding to start HRT. So I can only imagine how it impacts folks who sing professionally. Could you talk a bit about how those two things—making music professionally and going on T—affected each other?

Blum: Even people who aren’t singers for work or people who are just casual singers, like you’re saying with karaoke, they’re worried about losing their singing voice. It’s interesting just because I feel like transition is so much steeped in this cultural understanding of all the things that you stand to lose if you medically transition, but we don’t really think about as a larger cultural idea the things that you gain. [...] I can’t tell anybody what the right thing to do is for them. I did lose my old singing voice, but I got a new one. It’s hard because you don’t want to lose the thing that makes you happy. But for me—I don’t know, it wasn’t really making me happy."

A group of 6 college kids were ahead of us in line and started chatting with me. Full on just having a fun conversation with someone literally going through the beginning of a very awkward middle school period. I was so shocked they wanted to talk to me. I think my mom mentioned it was my birthday. They were very nice about it. When we got on the ride they told us to go ahead of them so we could sit at the front of the car since it held 8 people.

Now the ride (called Journey to Atlantis - I believe it is sadly no longer there) started with a slow ride of beautiful visuals of dolphins and oceans and computerized images of this imaginary Atlantis before going up the hill to the beginning of the coaster, where it paused for about 30 seconds, and then the ride started. The college kids must have known there would be a pause. Maybe they’d ridden it before I’m not sure.

But as we sat there on that peak, 6 people I’ve never known, and will never know again, sang a very very lonely 11 year old happy birthday. Loudly. And with gusto. They were happy and laughing and joyful. And it made me feel less alone in the world.

I am 29 years old this year, and I still remember them. I still remember that kindness. It is so important. It doesn’t go into a vacuum. It exists beside me in my daily life. And I love the idea that I have been that person to someone else too.