#caeneus

I didn't "lose" my virginity. Someone took it from me. On a beach. I was young. He felt sorry afterward and said, more or less, I'll grant you anything you want. Anything I want? Why'd it take doing what he'd done for my want to matter? Why hadn't that mattered before on the beach? Anything I want?

Now? As if there was something on offer in this world that could undo what had been done? As if I didn't understand that this was not remorse but another display of power? As if I didn't understand who he was and what he could do? Did he think being a god made a difference at all? Anything you want. As though I was a child with a skinned knee, kiss kiss, you're okay, here's a Band-Aid, you're all better.

Why are we put on this earth? To experience pain and see where it takes us. Anything I want. "I never want to suffer like that again. Make me a man."

"You got it," said the rapist. What else do you need to know?

What exactly am I saying? Well, the Caeneus Fallacy is the idea that a character or a person loses their character as soon as they experience rape or sexual assault, and are dumbed down to that experience. The Caeneus Fallacy specifically would cover the experience that trans men in fiction and reality face, that when they are sexually assaulted in anyway, they are dumbed down to that experience, and their transness is erased in favour of making them a girlboss success story or a tragedy with no other character or history to them.

Caeneus is the character I use because he is one of the oldest trans men in mythology/history/fiction, and his original story recounts the story of a young woman, the third daughter of a king, meeting Poseidon and having consensual sex with her. Wherein after Poseidon decides to gift her with whatever she requests, here is where Caeneus asks that Poseidon turns her into a man, willingly, as well as give him invulnerability.

This is where the fallacy begins, as his story is twisted into non-consent and tragedy. That Caeneus did not consent or agree to this transformation, that it was only so that Poseidon would not have another illegitimate child. And this happens many times with both fictional and historical trans men, as people would rather assume a woman is seeking protection for herself by becoming a man than actually believe that he is a trans man.