advocating for the minority since '13

Happy Thursday!

EXTENDED DEADLINE July 17th

Thank you to those who have submitted! If you’re wanting to submit you still have a chance! If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to reach out here or email at [email protected]

I haven't seen this circulating here on Tumblr, so I decided to make my own post.

last saturday, in Porto, there was a pride parade going down the street and this old man was standing there, by his front door, waving the portuguese flag. most people on the parade probably thought the same: old person waving the national flag? he's probably protesting against the parade, he's a nationalist of some sort.

then the old man called for that person to come near him. the whole parade stopped. everyone just.. stopped moving. they didn't know what to expect, and most expected the worst. and that person decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and approached the old man. and then... they traded flags, he hugged the person and then he waved the pride flag happily. everyone cheered him.

such a wholesome moment. 🥹❤️🌈

imo it mostly comes from a binaristic and cis-centric understanding of gender.

"Oppositional sexism" (coined by Julia Serano) is a handy term here: the idea is that men and women are inherently rigid and mutually exclusive categories of people. Anything one category is, the other cannot be, and vice versa.

Here, oppositional sexism holds that if women are harmed by misogyny, then men benefit from it; women can never benefit from it, and men can never be harmed by it.

A lot of transphobia is rooted in the ways in which trans people fundamentally defy oppositional sexism, and thus endanger the gender binary. Men are supposed to be big, and women are supposed to be small; but trans men assert that men can be small, and trans women assert that women can be big (to use one overly-simplistic example).

A lot of trans people and trans allies still adhere to oppositional sexism, but claim to do it in a "trans-friendly" way: sex can be changed, but gender is instead rigid and mutually exclusive. Or- perhaps more commonly- gender can be expressed in any way, but the ways in which gender is experienced are instead rigid and mutually exclusive.

Which is how we arrive at this insistence that trans people fall into one binary gender experience, even if they don't actually identify as a particular "binary" gender. "Trans women are women" might mean trans women can look and act any way at all, but it also means they experience womanhood in the same way that all other women do, and that experience is rigid and mutually exclusive of "man" experiences.

It's also why so many people are so eager to create new "inclusive" ways of sorting trans people into the same gender binary using increasingly contrived language: People insist on knowing the gender someone was assigned at birth so they can categorize them as AFAB or AMAB, and thus conclude what gender experience they have: man or woman. People insist on categorizing nonbinary people as either transmasc or transfem so they can conclude what gender experience they have: man or woman. People insist on categorizing trans people as either TMA or TME so they can conclude what gender experience they have: man or woman.

“Do Not Stand At My Grave And Weep” – Mary Elizabeth Frye

I just caught a post saying that transandrophobia is a real thing, and the same post was calling out my fear of men in other ways, so I decided to click on the transandrophobia tag to educate myself and I have definitely seen a lot of real examples of a very real thing. Stuff like being wrongly perceived as more angry because of T, or being perceived as dangerous. The biggest one for me was the tendency for queer spaces and friends to disconnect from or even ostracize transmascs that they used to welcome because they're perceived more as predators the more comfortable they get in their masculinity. That one, I hadn't really thought about, but it is so extremely easy for me to believe at face value because I have gotten weird and I have drifted so extremely close to becoming one of the people who perpetuate that exact problem. And that breaks my heart.

It's hard sometimes, because I'm so used to being treated poorly by masculinity. The men I've gotten to know so far in my life have had a habit of dehumanizing me, whether they saw me, a transfem, as a pleasure drone to manipulate and control or as a fellow man to bully and be rowdy with, and at this point both of those forms of treatment send me straight to a very dark place where I want one of us to die.

But in some ways I've allowed that trauma to narrow and crystallize my views on masculinity, including trans men. And that's not OK of me. That's weird of me. I got jarred by that post calling me out because I've literally said to another transfem (who is probably reading this reblog, hi) in conversation that transmisandry isn't really a thing. And now that kinda makes me cringe to hear from my past self. That was not OK of me.

So I'm gonna think harder about all this before I say anything about masculinity again in a way that could hurt someone or ripple out negatively. I'm sorry if I've already made a mistake in that way that's done any damage, though I hope I haven't.

The issue of men and masculinity being ostracized out of queer and feminine spaces, or just not let in in the first place, is something I really want to help work on, because it hurts women too.

It's why I had to teach myself my first lessons in femininity from scratch for most of my life in order to finally become equivalent in gender maturity to a 10 year old and hatch as transfem at age 27. Because for a very long time, literally zero feminine or queer people had given me the tiniest chance to be let into their world and taught their ways. To be let into my own world and taught my own ways. I had to observe from a distance and teach myself enough to speak the secret codes that convince only the most open minded of women and queer folks that I'm one of us and not a predator, when the burden of proof should never have been placed on me in the first place because I was a child. To this day there is so much trauma and behavior that I completely don't want that I'm having to manually unlearn that I would've never had if I'd been let in back when I was physically a child.

All of the same things that will protect future generations of transfems from the pain and trauma I suffered will also protect transmascs from this ostracization as they become their authentic selves. It's divine work for all trans people. I've already been practicing it in my own life just by continuing to push myself to be open, but it's time to preach it now.

[ Link to survey ]

The 11th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th June 2024.

It’s short and easy, about 5 minutes probably.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful - it’s what helped us get 40,000 responses last year.

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

For the curious, you can also spy on some graphs and demographic data for the incoming responses here.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

(ID in alt text)

hey again, beryl here! eternally thankful for all the help with getting me what i need to apply for+start my electrician apprenticeship! i am making this post because i need help paying our share of rent this month ($554 due 5/1). im still waiting on a few documents before i can even apply for my apprenticeship, and i have been applying to jobs in the meantime, but i havent heard back from anywhere so we are definitely going to need help so we can keep our housing. anything folks can spare helps a ton!

i have venmo, cashapp, and my husband has paypal, if you donate leave a house emoji in the payment note!

gender euphoria experiences with a self determined approach to womanhood, attraction and sexuality

celebration of bodies beyond the norm

creating our own culture of appreciating complex and intertwined expressions of gender and sexuality

destigmatization and newfound respect of and for our bodies

true sisterhood based on choice not force

the inherent revolutionary nature of our existence and our love and community

I adore transition timelines from people who started around my age. They boost my hope and confidence so much.

Also love to see the representation of trans BIPOC, which is sorely missing from public perception.

I’ve had a few different people in my inbox asking me why I view these terms the way I do. In particular, why I claim it’s intersexist. So, I thought I’d lay out a few examples, so everyone can understand where I’m coming from.

Imagine an intersex woman. She was assigned female at birth by her doctors, and was able to go about her childhood as a woman with no inclination that anything was amiss. Sure, she didn’t experience certain parts of puberty, but puberty was different for everyone, right?

But, later in life, she learns she has Turner syndrome. This is an intersex condition where a woman has only one X chromosome, rather than the usual two.

Soon after she learns this, she finds that laws are being made to attempt to keep trans women out of women’s spaces (often specifically sports) which use chromosomes as a defining factor of womanhood.

Would this intersex person be considered “transmisogyny affected”? She has been raised as a cisgender woman with no problems regarding being ‘clocked’, but she is also a direct target of transmisogynistic laws. She lies in a gray area.

Now, let’s go to another intersex person. Imagine an intersex man with PAIS. AIS is an intersex condition where babies are born with testes and XY chromosomes, but their body is immune to or can’t respond to androgens (which includes testosterone). Intersex people with partial AIS (PAIS) often develop a vulva and clitoris during puberty.

This intersex person identifies as a man, and he was assigned male at birth. However, his body does not produce testosterone, and he went through a feminizing puberty. To the average eye, he appears to be a woman now because of this.

Would this intersex person be considered “transmisogyny affected?” He was assigned male at birth, and now appears to be a woman, much like many transfems. However, if many saw how he looks now, stating that he is a male, they would probably clock him as transmasc. He was raised as a boy until puberty, and then faced astrozcization from his peers when he began a puberty that feminized him. What he was facing was a form of intersexism where transmisogyny was playing a huge part. Does his childhood matter? Can one become TME over time, when they were TMA as a child? Again, he lies in a gray area, where the answer is not quite so simple.

What about the “opposite”, per se — an intersex woman who had a masculinizing puberty? She has aromatase deficiency, which means that many ‘male’ hormones (which would usually be converted to ‘female’ hormones) would remain unconverted. She identifies as a woman, and was identified as a female at birth and was raised, until puberty, as a female. But now, she would be clocked as a trans woman upon looking at her. What does that make her? Is it different from the previous example? How and why? This intersex person also lies in a gray area. How she should be described with these terms is not clear.

And keep in mind, these are all relatively simple examples. All of the examples I listed self-identify as cisgender. But there are intersex people who are trans in any direction you can imagine.

If that last example identified as a trans woman, because she is now clocked as one, would you be able to say she’s wrong for that? What about if she identified as transmasculine, because of her experience with puberty? What if she’s multigender, bigender or genderfluid, and says she’s both transmasc and transfem because of her complicated experiences? Would that make her a TMA transmasculine person? But I thought that transmascs were all TME? That’s how it’s so often framed, anyway.

The reason why these questions are so difficult to answer is because these terms were not made with intersex people in mind. Very real intersex transfems were pushed to the wayside in favor of centering the perisex view of transgenderism. Intersex people are nothing but an inconvenient little afterthought, annoying perisex people with their demand for “inclusion” and “consideration”. (As per usual.)

You cannot simply make a new gender binary and say, “No, really, this time everyone fits into these two categories! Forcing people to confine themselves to these two rigid labels which are shown as opposites, and as never interacting, will definitely include everyone this time!!” No matter what the contents of the new binary is, it’s not going to work, because sex and gender alike are too complicated for that. There will always be people in the gray area.

This isn’t even getting into the fact that these terms, for all intents and purposes, seem to have been popularized by and associated with the Baeddelism movement around 2017, which was essentially “Radical Feminism 2: We’re Trans Women, So It’s Fine!” This movement is known for chronic villainization of trans men and non-binary people who aren’t transfem. (They act like this with cis people too, but noticeably less so than they do with non-transfem trans people. How curious.) Think along the lines of how regular radfems treat all men (and who they deem to be men) as inherently morally disgusting scum who deserve to be attacked.

Methinks that maybe these terms aren’t the neutral, fact-based descriptors of oppression that many people nowadays tout them to be, considering that.

There are queer people out there who when they see another branch of the queer community either succeeding or receiving support, their reaction is to try and pull them back down. The logic is often: if I had to suffer, so do you.

If I could give a piece of advice to anyone just entering the queer community, it would be: be wary of people who want suffering more than solidarity.

Even if you aren't trans/gnc please please please reblog for a bigger sample size!!!!!!!!