#ft rants

But being like this you sort of have to be aware of exclusionists and the mess that entails. Honestly though for stuff like neopronouns and gender that train has already started to die down. Like sure, there are a lot of assholes getting pissy about it but most of the people I know are fine with that stuff and aren't going to bat an eye. Like sure, trans stuff is still a nightmare and I'm not going to pretend it's not, or that it's not getting worse, especially for trans women but in the trans community itself and among a good amount of other queer people neopronouns and fringe identities are growing to be less of an issue. I can introduce myself to people with my full set of pronouns and have my list in a full pronoun page and I generally don't get harassed because people as a whole are getting better about this stuff.

Because of this and because of being more aware of this than other people I tend to pick up on other things that exclusionists do target. Mainly anyone using the 'wrong' sexuality label. While for most people new labels and new niche identities are fine, when someone has a complicated gender alignment it gets tricky when they identify as gay or lesbian. Though admittedly it usually turns up with lesbian more than often because just like with the truscum movement it tends to be us trans men cannibalizing the most.

Now for someone who's uninformed I get why this all may seem ridiculous. With such confirmed definitions how can a man be a lesbian or a woman be gay (in a non all encompassing term)? But I think a lot of people miss how important these communities can be for trans people. While I know for a lot of people this also has to do with how gender collides with sexuality and you can't discount that just because you want to be an asshole but even without that why are you trying to take people from this groups that are way safer for trans people than straight ones? When we're all facing such hard times I don't get how people ignore how devastating it can be to be driven away from these communities. Many trans men who like women or trans women that like men started in these communities and a lot of them hold on to that attachment. It's cruel to take that away just because you think those labels don't fit that person.

I think some of the same can be said for m-spec lesbian/gay people. Looking beyond the fact that sexuality is a spectrum people can fall in and out of and the fact that historical presidents exist these communities have a lot of overlap. Sure unlike with trans people they might not have fit into these communities at the start and it's not the exact same situation but these communities are still important spaces for a lot of people. When someone needs to fit in other spaces with people that have a queer attraction to men or a queer attraction to women I know these terms can be useful and while I can't say I know everything about them I still respect the hell out of them.

Beyond all of this I think the rigid separation and enforcement of labels can hurt the community more than ever help. At the end of the day we're all queer and while labels can help in confirming yourself and who you really are I don't think they should be small clubs and groups so separate from all the rest. I know from someone who has a collection of genders that's niche and probably has like 1 or 2 other people using some of them if that sort of means nothing. Obviously with a rift like that I'm not relating to anyone but I still feel it's a pretty lonely way to go about things. I just think it's better to accept people and those labels because at the end of the day that's just another queer person trying to get by. We aren't enemies, we aren't hurting each other just by existing so just let people exist with whatever labels they want. Thier definition of a label may not be exactly what you expect of that but it fits them so just let them use it and bring out a little more queer joy into the world.

Transmedicalism doesn't really make any sense.

Which is funny because this is coming from someone who used to be in these kinds of spaces. It was before I realized I was trans, a whole can of worms in and of itself, and I didn't realize partially due to the spaces I was in.

There are better videos and posts on this with mounds of evidence and papers and whatnot so don't take this post as your only sourse but this was on my mind for a while and I had to get it out.

It's such a sad state of being when you boil down being trans to the suffering people face. Not everyone has dysphoria because for some people their bodies are fine, they just happen to be a guy or a girl. Others aren't anything, both or something else entirely. It doesn't matter how you're trans because there's no right way to be trans. Gender is complicated and acting like it isn't really only hurts people.

This wasn't what I always believed, and this isn't what everyone believes either even if it's true.

Honestly, a lot of people would call me a trender now even though I have some pretty bad dysphoria. Mostly because my gender isn't binary, I support all trans people and I don't pass. I don't even really care about passing too much, I feel good when people call me a guy but I like skirts, I like looking cute and that doesn't change the fact that I am a guy. Cis men can do the same things and we don't berate them like we do trans men, mostly anyways.

Even I probably would have made fun of myself as a kid because I was in all of these spaces. Anyone who was on YouTube in 2018 knows how toxic the community was. I was really young back then and just figuring out I wasn't CitHet though at the time I thought I was Cis. My parents weren't supportive and I didn't have anyone to talk to so I used YouTube for escapism. I loved Kalvin Garrah because at the time he was the only trans youtuber I knew existed. I ate up every single piece of gay media and because of that I fell down the Truscum pipeline.

None of those spaces are really happy, it's hard to be when your entire identity as a trans person is built around hating other trans people. Anyone who didn't have dysphoria, anyone who didn't fit in were the scum of the earth and 'trenders'.

The funny thing (or sad thing really) is that a lot of people they bullied actually fit into the boxes they assigned for 'good' trans people. They had dysphoria, they were binary. The only difference was the fact that they looked trans. If you didn't look cis, if you even touched the color pink, if you didn't praise the cis overlords, the cis gods, you were a trender. Honestly it took saying you supported all trans people to be called one. Then once you were a trender you were the enemy, you didn't deserve to live, you didn't deserve to exist because you were faking something, even if you weren't. Breden, Milo, everyone else deserved so much better than being bullied, for some of them bullied off the internet. They didn't get that though and that breaks my heart that some of these people even died because other trans people hated them so much.

I've even seen someone say that if you were proud of being trans that made you a trender and isn't that just sad? Where are we at when not hating yourself means you're lying about your own expiriences. Sure for a lot of people being trans isn't easy, but that doesn't mean you have to hate yourself at all times. Why should we wallow in sorrow when we could be happy? Why do you want to take away trans joy?

The thing is, even if some of these people are faking, at the end of the day who does it actually hurt? There are a lot of arguments to this but most of them don't really make sense.

One of the main things I see are that fake trans people are hogging up trans health care. And I get this! Surgury isn't cheap, hormones aren't cheap and a lot of times there feels like a limited amount. But the thing is that there isn't, it's just that we aren't visible and Cis people don't want to put any effort into helping us. By deviding the community you're really just making it easier for Cis people to deny us, making it harder for everyone to get healthcare and laying down while our rights are being taken away.

We can see the effects of this aready, florida, texas, everywhere it is getting harder and harder to get healthcare and a lot of this is because we're so busy fighting each other that we're not fighting for our collective rights. If we said fuck it and actually worked together maybe we wouldn't have had to worry about this.

Another argument I see is the classic 'if they transition their going to give themselves dysphoria' which is kind of weird since like, not every trans person wants to transition? Those that do often feel euphoria from having their bodies match their brain. Others just change how they look outwardly and that's enough to feel like themselves. Why does it matter what genatallia people have? You don't actually know if they have dysphoria, you are not them and do not get to decide what is best for them. Even if transitioning isn't what's best for them why would bullying them off the internet help anything?

The last argument pretty much boild down to 'you'll make us look wierd in front of the cis' and like, who cares? Why do you want to be a cis bootlicker? Why do you want to uphold a white patriarchal version of gender like it's the default?

You aren't getting any points by being a Cis persons lapdog. You do not get extra points for being a token trans. It will not save you from the trans genocide, when all of us are killed, when all of us are dead because we looked different, because we look trans, because we aren't binary, they aren't going to love you. You are not suddenly going to sit at their table because you're one of the 'good ones'. They don't respect you, they respect what you bring them, a talking point, a symbol of not being a bad person because one trans person likes you. When you are done, when your token is spent in the vending machine of cis power you'll be killed just like the rest of us. You aren't their friend, they don't love you. They just want to use you until your use is up.

It took a long time for me to learn all this, it took a long time to accept myself as a trans man and an even longer time to realize I'm a bit more than that but I'm so much happier now. I was miserable as a Transmed because I hated myself and everyone around me. I don't know if this will reach anyone or change any minds but I put it out there so now I can stop thinking about this. If you're a transmed I hope you can at least think about this and maybe stop bullying other trans people.

Anyways, peace out.

This is my least favorite scene in all of fairy tail. I fucking hate this scene. I love erza with my entire heart but she comes off so bad here, and thats why I hate it, erza would not fucking say that. Ive said before my feelings on jellal are kind of complicated because while I like him as a character im really not a fan of how they handle his arc, this is the epitome of that. Literally everything I hate about the way they handle jellal and how he effects the narrative is present in this scene.

My brain is way too fried to formulate a full argument but here's brief summary of why I hate it so bad:

- erza acts super out of character here and it makes her come off shallow and just a bad friend tbh which sucks because I LIKE ERZA.

- kagura and milliana are painted as vindictive for daring to be upset at someone who killed their friend/brother

- the fact milliana lost her entire childhood to slavery is given no sympathy and instead the framing clearly shows the one were supposed to feel bad for here is jellal, which I really struggle to do considering the primary source of his pain is the guilt he feels over WHAT HAPPPENED TO THEM and regardless of who's fault it is they still payed the price

- the message appears to be that milliana and kagura just need to get over it

- despite being the catalyst for this entire confrontation, jellal says nothing, he doesnt even look them in the eye. He just sits there wallowing amd letting erza defend him which makes him come off like a self pitying prick

Every once in a while I come on here to hyper analyze something from ft that I think is really underrated/underrepresented in other media. Last time I talked about showing love with words, this time were talking about respecting boundaries.

I find that in a lot of media, especailly older shonen like ft, there seems to be this mindset that boundaries are meant to be broken. It's seen as "noble" or "romantic" when a character explicitely goes against the wishes of another "for their own good".

While this can be an effective way of conveying a powerful bond between 2 characters, I find that when it's done wrong, it does the exact opposite. When you dont respect boundaries you are essentially taking away another persons right to making their own decisions, whether its "for their own good" or not some things are not up to you to decide and doing it anyway is a disrespect to the other persons autonomy.

This is not always the case. For example, in the tower of heaven, Erza wants everyone to get out of the tower so she can face jellal alone and die without consequence. This is something Natsu does not respect after figuring out what her real plan is because he would sooner drag her dumbass out of the tower kicking and screaming then let her go through with that. That makes sense.

However, in the same scene only a few seconds prior, natsu had a very different response.

Before he realized what she was actually planning to do, Natsu was completely ready to leave the tower on his own, even refusing when Simon told him to go help. Obviously Natsu cares about her well-being, but he also recognizes this is her fight and trusts her enough to let her handle it on her own. The only reason he went at all was because he realized she didn't plan on making it back, and that's the point when the boundary was no longer worth respecting.

I think this alone works really well to establish their relationship and shows a level of respect and emotional maturity from Natsu that I think is a really underrated aspect of his character and would not have been nearly as apparent if he had run off to go save her without a second thought.

The place where I think this concept really shines, however, is in jerza. I talked a little before about how I think Jellals ability to express himself verbally is what shows he understands Erza, but in the same way I think Erzas actions show she understands him just as much, specifically, the respect she has for his boundaries.

In this scene in tartaros, Mira offers to take care of the chairman alone so Erza can go protect Jellal, an offer that Erza uncharacteristically refuses. This is weird for her because we know for a fact that's what she would prefer to be doing, if it was up to her she would be protecting him everyday of her life because that is how Erza shows love. However, that is not what Jellal would want, and she has enough respect and trust in him to put his wishes above her own.

I think the way Erzas' actions change in 100 year is also indicative of the way the boundary is shifted.

Seconds after waking up from the fight with Laxus where they both rocked each others shit, she imidiatly tries to drag her ass off the ground to go protect Jellal, because now things have changed and she's free to act of that impulse. I don't know if its intentional or not, but I think its a really clever and subtle way of showing how their dynamic has shifted since the og series.

I've made it no secret that my feelings on jerza's development are complicated, but it's moments like this that make me appreciate it regardless of its flaws. There's a level of mutual respect and understanding to their relationship that will always really stand out to me, and I think that is one of the strongest signs of love.

Theres more examples I could go through, especially when it comes to Natsu because I think with him specifically they are used very effectively and add a lot of depth to him that isnt obvious at a glance, but that would be a lot of work and I think i've gotten my point across already so i'll save that for another time.

In conclusion, I really like the way fairy tail specifically uses boundaries and when to respect/defy them as a way of conveying the characters relationships. Ft might not be perfect but this is an aspect of it that I genuinely love.