Random_Jojo _Reference

I think a lot about how Finnster said that she still calls herself a "femboy" because it's more marketable and gets her fewer death threats than saying she's trans

So a while back I asked Twitter/bsky “Hey transfemmes (or anyone vaguely adjacent) what’s a non-medical thing you wish someone had told you sooner in your transition that you know now?” And got the following answers:

-For Black transfemmes in particular - Everyone’s care tends to be different, but for mine (between 3c/4a depending) I wash and detangle 1x/w with argan oil shampoo/conditioner and curly detangler brush, sleep in silk bonnet. Knowing roughly what hair type you have will help you find more care, find what’s closest from the following, but you may be between!

-Buy a pumice stone for your feet bc moisturizer alone isnt enough

-Go to an esthetician and ask for your eyebrows “cleaned up a bit”

-“More companies make different undershades of orange concealers, incl pinkier ones, at all price points. They can be used for all pigmentation, dark eye circles, shadow from hair growth etc. Your horomonal chemistry changing means softer scents smell different w long wear now!”

-“If you a newbie, neutral shimmer that matches your lids swiped up to your brows + light mascara brightens up the face w/out requiring a ton of skill/cash”

-“Use Lotion! Using a mild college girl scent will be good for your confidence and will ensconce the impression of "busy girl"”

-“You don't need as aggressive shampoo/conditioner/holding product. Trim your ends or your hair won't get longer. Cute hairpins + scrunchies are widely avail at walmart, daiso etc and can help pull together a casual look, and specialty designs can be found via Etsy”

-“Consider buying even one simple hairband for keeping hair/bangs out of face even when hair is in the awkward short-long stage while you do stuff like clean. “

-If you have curly/coiled hair texture look for larger silk scrunchies as smaller ones tangle in our hair easier!!

-“look, sad-lil babytrans asciicat, you'll never figure out how people have money to do all the things to be so pretty - don't even sweat it, just buy a bunch of cheap skater skirts and feel free to lose yourself in the joy of wearing them.”

-“Glasses help a lot to feminize the face. As always, there are exceptions but delicate round glasses help this. Take a lot of pics to find your favorite angles, raise your head and/or try not to slouch in your pics, posing and posture is everything”

-“one of my biggest self love discoveries: just take the damn selfie. even if you feel gross, just take it - you'll like it in a few weeks. also it's okay to have favorite parts of your body. take pics of it often”

-“That nothing more transformative for my self-image than just doing makeup/changing what kind of clothes I wear. First time I properly got to wear a dress in public, and later when I first did my own makeup, it really hit and stuck that I am a woman. And not a bad-looking one.”

-“if you not super confident with makeup, but want to start wearing it, it's ok to start small. try glosses. practicing simple eyelining. a dash of mascara. "less is more" is a great rule for makeup in general, and it's ok to take time to find a look that best suits your face”

-“Snug period undies usually have a wide gusset and extra layers of material, making them a good (and much cheaper) alternative to gaff undies for tucking”

-“Ask a fashionable friend with a sense of style you admire to go clothes shopping with you, to help you find items that fit your frame. Barring that, keep in mind that high waisted pants and dresses are typically a good place to start”

-“poise and posture and movement are a huge part of presentation and can be incredibly empowering but also really painful”

-“- eye cream. invest in the future

- non-comedogenic lotion (especially after shaving) for less ingrown hairs/happier skin

- eye makeup BEFORE foundation

- halter necklines are very kind to strong shoulder silhouettes

- crossover dresses have more play in fit than many options”

-“Accept well meant advice, but never let anyone tell you what is and isn't 'ladylike'. Also, Venus razors with those thick moisturizing blocks are magic when it comes to shaving any part of your body.”

-“Glasses are huge. Go bold; folks are gonna notice you anyway, it might as well be for something you chose. Get a haircut, even if you're growing your hair out. Hairdressers are wizards, and the shaping can make you look more feminine even if your hair's still shorter.”

-“I am cis but I come to you from years in the large women's shoes trenches, that you do not suffer as I have: Nordstrom Rack. Watch the calendar for the Large Shoe Event they have like twice a year. Zappos and its outlet 6pm are also pretty good, and Rothy's has extended sizes. Toms and Madewell also go up to size 12. Toms is known for the simple canvas flats but they also have cute,high-quality leather sandals and booties!”

-“if something gives you gender euphoria, DO IT, and do it a lot! you’ll quickly lose the initial rush of euphoria, but it will help you feel centered and whole. for me, nail polish and comfy dresses were super helpful for feeling feminine all the time”

-“curly/coily-haired cuties most likely already know but sleeping with a bonnet has been a game changer. as a straight-haired girlie, it keeps my hair from tugging as i toss and turn in my sleep, from getting sweaty, and my scalp doesnt get sore like sleeping in a bun/pony does”

-“the big ones for me:

1. you dont have to do makeup most days

2. you dont have to dress hyperfemme

3. washing your hair every day is not good

4. if you're confident enough, people wont question your gender”

-“This is so basic (and not directly trans related) but no-one ever told me to use body lotion as a kid. I distinctly remember asking friends how to deal with body acne, and I got tips for exfoliating, but I guess they just assumed I knew lotion was a thing already”

-“if a piece of costume jewelry or metal hardware in a piece of clothing doesn’t agree with your skin you can put a layer or two of clear nail polish top coat on the offending object”

white transgender women hold systemic power over trans women of color, just by being white

Like, a cop in the United States can pull you over for any reason. Which is a nice way of saying no reason, because literally anything can be used after the fact as justification. A cop can say its cuz you looked at him, or didnt look at him, or it looked like you were holding something, or looked like you were driving too perfectly for it to be natural. It's insane.

There are apparently no circumstances where a cop can't just kill you. The line the courts have applied is "reasonably believed" you were a threat, but that's such a nebulous nothing limit that people get shot for reaching for their license, having their phone in their hand, you're running away with no weapon, not being able to follow conflicting commands, like anything. And cops are almost never charged, because every court is going to believe he could "reasonably believe" he was threatened. Fuck, if you give me enough time, I can make any situation seem juuuuust plausibly threatening enough to pass that bar. It's insane.

A cop can just rob you. Like tell you to give him your wallet, take all the cash out, and just walk away with it. Exactly like you would imagine getting robbed in an alley would go, except no one can help. And he doesn't even have to hide it, he just drops it in a box at the station and they put it in their bank account. It's legal. You can't prove it wasn't drug money. I can't prove any money wasn't at some point drug money. It's insane.

If a cop just walks in your front door and says "I'm here to kill you and your entire family" YOU ARE GOING TO PRISON IF YOU STOP HIM. There is no positive defense for assaulting a police officer in the United States, and doubly so if you kill him. You have effectively no defense against a homicidal cop, which happens same as any other job. Unless for some reason you have cameras all thru your house and clearly caught the audio of him saying that he's there just to kill you, you have zero chance of not going to prison, probably for life. And that's assuming you aren't killed "resisting arrest" while being taken into custody. It is a crime, in this country, for you to defend yourself under any circumstances if the person you're defending yourself from is a cop. That's insane.

You don't have civil rights if a cop says so. You have the right to have a gun, right? A lot of states have open carry. A cop can shoot you if he sees you have a gun. Doesn't matter if you have a license and everything. So you effectively don't have the right to bear arms if a cop can shoot you for exercising it. You have the right to protest. Unless a cop tells you to stop. He doesn't need a real reason to tell you to stop. And if you don't stop, you can be arrested or shot. So you don't really have the right to protest, do you? A cop cant just search your car or house, right? Unless he claims he heard something, or smelled something, neither of which can be proven. So a cop can search whatever he wants, as long as he pretends there was a "reason". So you dont have protection from unreasonable search and seizure, do you? These are no longer rights- they're things the cops allow.. for now. But legally, those rights have already been found to not actually be rights, because any random cop can decide to take that right from you, for any reason. It's insane.

B is quiet, sweet and gentle, has predominantly female friends, loves animals, spends weekends doing butterfly conservation with a group of elderly women, none of that makes her an egg but it's definitely unusual behaviour for a cis man.

No, what makes B such an obvious egg to me is how she is treated by everyone else. A lot of men just avoid her, they think she's weird and effeminate. Women generally like her well enough, but they still tend to keep her at arm's length in a way they don't do with cis men. In a way she is being third-gendered already, like there's no established pattern for men or women to interact with someone like her, so they just avoid doing so if they can help it.

Last year she asked out this girl Alice, and Alice said yes. They dated for a few months, broke up, and continued to be perfectly friendly. Alice started dating someone else, everyone moved on.

Then these whispers started that B was actually really creepy, people started saying they had heard bad things about her (unspecified), that she had abuser vibes, that she had done all this supposed bad stuff but no one was allowed to say what it was, but it was definitely bad. And, really unusually if B was a cis man, all the men and women and non-binary people in her circle all immediately stopped being friends with her. She was uninvited from events, people even cancelled one-on-one meet-ups with her, she was barred from attending the LGBTQ support group she went to (she is pan). And bear in mind that all this is stuff I heard only from the people who cut her off, I am at best a distant acquaintance of B.

I ended up at an organised-at-the-last-minute drinks event that was hosted by a cis woman acquaintance on the same night that B had a month earlier organised a boardgame session, and everyone who had been planning to go to B's boardgame meet cancelled to go to this drinks event, to which B was explicitly not invited (I didn't find this out until later, I'm not really part of this circle at all). Incidentally, the woman who hosted the event made a point of telling me she was concerned for my safety out in public at night, and then proceeded to call me a man 🤷.

Several months later, the details came out: the "creepy" thing she had done was to buy Alice a birthday present. Alice thinks that's weird because it's not normal for friends to buy each other birthday presents and so she understood this as B expressing a level of intimacy beyond friendship. (Again, this is Alice's perspective on what happened). I know for a fact that B buys her friends birthday presents often, because I know some of those friends. If Alice had originally led with, "B bought me a birthday present," rather than, "B is being creepy, and I don't want to tell you how just yet," it probably wouldn't've worked to socially isolate her, so she let everyone's imaginations run wild with ideas about what B might've done. Only when everyone had cut B off did she reveal the details, and I understand B's social life is very slowly recovering but there is still so much suspicion about her.

I've talked to enough trans women in my time to recognise this story well. I personally have been lucky enough never to end up in that situation, but perhaps that is because I tend to avoid friendship groups where possible and prefer to have individual friendships that don't join up. Perhaps that is a subconscious defense mechanism to avoid stuff like this happening to me, idk.

But during this whole saga, a common refrain from B's cis woman and transmasc former friends was to respond to mentions of her unspecified creepy behaviour with "I hate cis men". That is, to position her supposed abusive behaviour within the context of gendered violence, even while not actually knowing what she did. And, having met B a couple of times and got a vibe, it fell to me to point out that some people that they consider "cis men" are actually not, which raised the whole "male socialisation" issue and whether trans women are oppressed before coming out, and then I decided I couldn't deal with that conversation with a bunch of non-transmisogynised people.

But at this point I am sort-of thought to be the "cis guy defender". People will say they hate cis guys randomly, and then apologise to me as if I am personally offended. No, I hate them too. But I feel that with a handful of alleged "cis guys" I can see the woman beneath even if they are unaware of it themselves. And the thing is, I don't trust non-transmisogynised people to be able to see that at all. Or rather, I think they can see it, but I don't think they realise what they are seeing, only that they instinctively hate it and want to kill it, so ingrained is transmisogyny in our society.

And the fact is that most of these "I hate cis guys" people don't hate actual cis guys. They love cis guys. They go out of their way to spend time with them, they admire them, they seek their approval, their favourite writers are all cis guys, their favourite actors too. And that's not to blame them for that, we live in a world where cis guys dominate everything, that's life. But it is a problem when your hatred of cis guys is expressed only against someone who (it seems to me) isn't one.

To deliberately cut off B's social life based on no information, even as you still support Neil Gaiman or Johnny Depp, is not the action of someone who hates cis men's violence against women, but of a transmisogynist who doesn't even know there's a name for the bigotry they are perpetuating. It starts to seem that, coming from certain people, "cis men", much like "AMABs" before it, often functions ironically enough as a slur against transfems. And that's not getting into the issue of those transmascs who say "I hate cis men" not as a fact but as an affirmation, that effectively misgenders themselves in order to label themselves as ontologically non-oppressive, which is a whole other (but related) can of worms.