PRO BIG MAN STAN

Last week I was at a meetup where I was the only transfem. I checked the groupchat when I arrived and there was a message from the organiser: "We have a newcomer called X, can you look out for him if you get there first?" I located X, introduced myself, sent a message to the chat say, "I have located X," and continued to talk to him until the organiser arrived. When the organiser arrived, she was not happy with me. It turned out my phone had autocorrected, "I have located X," to, "I had located X," which the organiser interpreted as me passive aggressively telling her that I had already done the thing she was asking about. Her conclusion: I was unreasonable and aggressive in responding to her reasonable request. My explaining what had happened didn't convince her otherwise.

A different occasion last week: in a local trans groupchat, a trans man sent a link to a drag event happening in our town. A few people said they were already going, some said they might go. Then a trans woman replied saying, "Thanks, but I don't really like drag." Her tone was immediately called into question. Her words were assumed to communicate: "I think you are a terrible person if you like drag," even though she never said that. Several non-transfems who had never even heard that drag might not be universally-beloved by everyone were upset to discover that fact. A trans woman simply saying she didn't like this thing became A Big Deal.

Meanwhile, at a different event again, a trans man told a group that he was straight and attracted to women, but he wouldn't feel comfortable bringing home an "AMAB woman" (yes he actually said that). It was quickly brushed over, and after he had left even trans women tried to defend him by saying "he probably didnt realise people would be offended" etc etc. In contrast to the examples above, he is not even aware that anyone was upset by what he said, never mind worrying about what consequences he might face.

“But Rue, where will these kids stay? Do you want them on the streets?”

of course not. In an ideal world, a kids would have multiple adults other than their parents they could look to for care, but I recognize that that will never be a reality for every single child. So: youth shelters, if they have nowhere else to go. There should be clean, warm shelters where anyone under 18 can stay for as long as they need, no questions asked. (And of course shelters that aren’t just for kids, but we’re talking about youth rights right now)

“But Rue,” I hear you say, “what if some moody teenager runs away after an argument?”

First of all, I’d rather a thousand moody teenagers run away than one abused child be trapped. Second, so what if one does? A kid needs time away from their parents, so they leave. The vast majority of them will get some time to cool down and then go back home, and if they don’t want to go back, period? Then nine times out of ten, they have a good reason. (Because yes, as hard as it is for you to believe, kids are humans who have common sense.)

“Okay, but what about the one time out of ten the kid doesn’t have a good reason?”

This ask ended up being really long, I'm sorry ahead of time.

I've known I was for sure transfem since around 2011 ish, when I was in my sophomore year. Before that, I didnt have the words, but presenting exclusively as a woman in online games, feeling sick to my stomach over all the times people - especially one of my first TME exes, who is an entire can of worms I'm NOT opening - would ask to "make sure I wasn't a man pretending to be a woman", cultivating and enjoying a completely different aesthetic and personality online that revolved around femininity and all the things I couldn't enjoy in real life?

I knew something was different, "wrong" (in the sense that no matter how I tried to emulate the masculine behaviors of the men in my family and life, I always failed and was punished), and I SORT of knew about transgender people, in the vein that a very specific story had circulated around about a trans man being pregnant, and it was something I remember sticking in my head. I never had the context that it could be me, or that there was a word for me, until the summer after my sophomore year.

The previously mentioned ex IS the reason I realized I could be trans, I could be a woman, but the rest of that relatively short relationship was Not Great.

Even just typing this up has helped me clarify and realize the transmisogyny I faced up to that point, but I'm hoping to just put most of it behind me if I can.

Anyway. At some point, i started to realize I was feeling kind of like how I was over my desire to "portray a woman online" (as my younger self rationalized it), though I honestly can't tell you when. I vaguely remember the sense of seeing nonbinary furries showing their pride, during and outside of what constituted pride month, and thinking they were either lucky, or cool, or that I wished that could be me in some ways.

It's been plenty of years by now, maybe a decade, but I remember that when I tried to talk to the people I was around at the time, the reaction just. Didn't exist. Very few people understood the idea of even being nonbinary, and I remember having at least one discussion about whether or not it meant all that time I'd spent online "making my image that of a trans woman" (not exact wording, I just remember that general topic) was going to change to me being nonbinary.

To this day, years later, I have almost never been able to explain how being nonbinary is a part of my identity and have anyone really accept it. It's definitely out of the scope of what many of them would expect or think of for someone who's nonbinary, and the majority of the time, I just get confusion or stares. My pronouns are she/they interchanging, and 9 times out of 10, it just means I'll get "she/her"ed by the people who respect pronouns at all (and i will say that this is still much better than being misgendered, as I am still a woman and it is still the core of my gender identity), and occasionally they/them exclusively, but that's been rarer for me.

My IRL friends have almost exclusively been TME, and one of them has been the best about respecting my pronouns and identity, while the others were all supportive, but with varying degrees of effort put in. In fact, said one friend is the only one that will still actively respond to me, even if we both have really bad time blindness.

The crux of this is that for a long time, my identity as a nonbinary trans woman has, by virtue of the second half, closed me off to the first. Ironically, it's almost like being nonbinary and TMA will get more people to actually respect my status as a trans woman, at the expense of the nonbinary facet of myself.

I've struggled a lot with making my gender "palettable", trying to gain some semblance of acceptance or respect. I don't explain it anymore to most people, as I never seem to have the proper words for it(which is in and of itself kind of relevant to my being nonbinary).

Which is just as jarring coming away from that into the larger internet as it was GETTING that respect.

However, now being in a polycule almost entirely made of transfems... it's been like a breath of fresh air. I'm personally dating three transfems, and though for the most part, my identity still isn't properly *understood*, it's *respected* now. My names and pronouns are respected and used properly, and every facet of my identity is treated as me. I don't have to fear or worry or pre-empt myself with "it's okay if you dont, its okay if you dont get it, I don't mean to push" (and its especially bad because my brain always tells me "okay but maybe if you explain it more, they'll surely get it this time!")

I don't know if this is comprehensible, honestly. All this is, I guess, to say, for the vast majority of people, the idea that I can be transfem and nonbinary is just... nonexistent. A thought that, if it does enter their mind, if i'm the one to put it there, will still just leave or be tossed out on its own.

Sorry for the long ask.

♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

The thing that actually pushed me over the edge wasn't taking estrogen, or getting away from an abusive household, it was actually a friend calling me princess and making me spend like three days questioning why I enjoyed it so much sgdgfjj.

Always thought from the age of like 11 that gender and all associated concepts like masculinity & femininity were nothing but arbitrary bullshit constructs that just constrain and hurt us, but it took until about 22 to think of myself as anything but "a man, begrudgingly, who hates everything societally entailed by that and refuses to engage with or participate in it." Breaking away was a slow & gradual process, went through a few microlabels and stuck with he/they for a couple of years before thinking "nonbinary is enough of a label, I hold the entire system in disdain so why would I want to identify myself relative to it with any more specificity" and applied the same approach to pronouns.

That covered the next couple of years, all the while totally failing to interrogate my regular thoughts of "lesbians are so cool and I feel akin to them somehow, I wish I could fit in with them but alas I'm not that much of a girl, I wish I could dress how I do now but be perceived as a dyke instead of a man" which sounds fucking laughable in retrospect but here we are. Also always feels cringe and laughable to say that what finally cracked Egg 2.0 was getting super into Cyberpunk 2077, its character creator making you choose between "cliché beefy action dude Body Type A" and "woman of exaggerated proportions Body Type B", and I had long since got sick of playing games as the former (another unexamined thought I always recognised as worthy of examining!); I actually downloaded a flat chest mod at first so I could look more like myself of the time while I tried to get the facial features as close to mine as possible within the confines of what Body Type B allowed.

Yeah, turns out spending several hours a night for weeks on end repeatedly looking into a virtual mirror (because I like to play immersively and have a morning routine) and seeing Feminised Me staring back made a few things click! Bought my character's cool navy lipstick about a month later, and bought some estrogen about three months after that.

I'm still nonbinary but also definitely girl enough to be a lesbian, I wouldn't call myself a woman though and I feel like that's a pretty normal relationship to the construct as felt by cis lesbians but y'know we're rarely afforded as much understanding and nuance; pronoun situation has also shifted from any to "technically any but if I say that and you default to masc I'll silently judge you, she/they unless I trust you to understand the complexity of my position." Still do wish I could dress like a dyke and be perceived as one instead of a man though, nearly two years of HRT hasn't done so much on that front (if granted smaller doses than many take, but that is deliberate because I am still nonbinary), which is frankly even more frustrating than it used to be because y'know TME dykes are often recognised as such by their conscious rejection of the hallmarks of femininity but if I do that I just look like some guy with nice skin (but that's a different topic to which I won't digress, this is long enough).

it being introduced alongside botox and fillers and multiple of their clinics suddenly saying that they won't perform abortions on anyone above a certain BMI even though it's against their own internal standards

Nil is always divided from the other villagers due to her behavior, her nihilistic worldview, not getting a job aka "being useful", little regard for tradition and their critical/non lenient view of Steve.

Due to Steve's curiosity, they try to find something for Nil to do, by putting her in a boat and travelling with her to their base or going on "adventures" with Steve, in hopes to find something that interests her.

Then there's the Plains Village Raid happens, where Polly and Nil meet and Nil hides her from the others. Then threatens Polly, interrogates her, and later sets her free. All things that other Villagers would never do. Then the Zombie Siege happens Which Nil only survived bc a) they were traveling back from Steve's base and b) Polly came back for them.

So before starting a nomadic life Nil already:

has a mindset more similar to Wandering Traders than Villagers (though Nil is nihilistic and Wandering Traders portray absurdism)

Semi regularly leaves the Village to "adventure"

does not care about being of use to anyone

defies Steve's, Polly's, and the villages' expectations

is openly confrontational towards people other Villagers would avoid or tolerate

After that Nil starts to travel the world with Nil, and they start to show more similarities to a Wandering Trader than an unusual Villager. This is where I stop yapping and show Nil's behavior (from mostly) during her travels next to the description of Brightgoat's Wandering traders.

The texts at the top describe a Wandering Trader's behavior from this Worldbuilding/lore post. The last image is misc stuff that show other parralels.

cant forget this post either