#nonbinary experience

Okay? Why tell us this? What's the point of coming into a space where people are using accurate vocabulary for describe the systemic oprression and social discrimination they face to subtly mock the vocabulary? It doesn't matter if you don't mean it as mockery, it is still a childish comment that completely details the conversation, as everyone is now invested in educating the binary person who doesn't know nonbinary language or school the person making a joke out of it. Maybe this is just a pet peeve of mine, but it's profoundly irritating nonetheless.

There is a werewolf in the town.

Yes, there is. Isn’t that beautiful?

People see the word "transmasc" and jump on terms like brother/bro, "boy" (which also feels infantilizing), and a wide array of similar terms (in both good faith and bad faith ways.)

And while some enben are fine with being a "bro" or "boy", nobody cares to ask for my preferences. People just assume transmasc = trans man.

It goes to show how deeply exorsexism runs in the TGD (trans & gender diverse) community. There's not a slither of consideration that I might not enjoy being associated with manhood. Even people who do know about transmasc enben often say things like "male-aligned" when referencing us. But not all of us are male-aligned.

Full image + closeups under the cut

Additional details under the cut

Just a few gender-affirming care for cis men (not an extensive list):

hair transplants and wigs (does it make you feel better to call them toupees?)

barbers who do facials, hair styling, beard care. Dying hair and beard to appear younger and more ‘masculine.’ (Whatever the hell that means.)

All the paste and wax and junk you buy to style your hair and beard at these places so you can have a nice 'masculine' appearance? yeah, that still counts.

use medication and OTC chemicals to keep what hair they do have on their heads.

cosmetics-- both temporary (makeup) as well as filler/very severe and expensive treatments to try to maintain a more youthful, masculine appearance. Makeup is more commonly accepted now, especially for something like an eyebrow and beard filler for missing patches

prescribed testosterone and/or oestrogen when their labs come back saying their levels are low.

They work out in gyms to try to get the 'ideal' 'masculine' form-- and if they can't, they take steroids illegally to try to conform to these standards. (some cases do allow legal prescriptions for steroids)

surgeries to lengthen their legs to appear taller. No, really.

voice therapy to lower their voices to a more 'masculine' register.

Gynecomastia Surgery to remove unwanted breast tissue

Liposuction and Abdominoplasty to help them try to create (someone's) ideal 'masculine' form.

penile surgeries- enlargement, straightening, and lengthening

implantation of penile prosthetics

cosmetic surgery on foreskin, testicles

erectile dysfunction- oral medications, penile injections, prostate surgeries

surgeries to repair undescended testis, scrotal implants for a missing or damaged testes.

medications, treatments and surgeries to improve semen count for reproduction

Just a few gender-affirming care for cis women (not an extensive list):

hair transplants and wigs

salons, dying their hair (especially if they've gone grey) to maintain a 'youthful' and 'feminine' appearance

artificial nails, cosmetic treatments to remove age spots

use medication and OTC chemicals to keep what hair they do have on their heads.

cosmetics-- both temporary (makeup) as well as filler/very severe and expensive treatments to try to maintain a youthful, feminine appearance

Women of colour, in particular, are encouraged to bleach their skin to conform to Euro-centric ideals of beauty

prescribed testosterone, progesterone and/or oestrogen when their labs come back saying their levels are low.

They work out in gyms to try to get the 'deal' 'feminine' form-- and if they can't, they take dangerous diet pills and/or diet plans to try to conform to these standards

voice therapy to soften their voices and make them less 'masculine'

Surgery to augment breast size with implants

Liposuction and Abdominoplasty to help them try to create (someone's) ideal 'feminine' form.

laser and surgeries for hair removal on face, genitals and rest of body

surgery to 'improve' the appearance of their genitals, including (but not limited to) labiaplasty and vaginaplasty, hymenoplasty, clitoral hoodectomy, liposuction/liposculpture, perineoplasty, vulvar lipoplasty, vaginal tightening, laser vagina 'rejuvination,' g-spot aumentation or amplificaion (G-Shot), injections of blood into the clitorous and upper vaginal wall (O-Shot or Orgasm Shot),

sexual dysfunction- oral medications, injections, vaginal surgeries

medications, treatments and surgeries to improve reproduction and ability to carry a foetus

I don't care what you call any of this-- this is gender affirming care.

Sure, you have boobs, great-- but you're just like a B cup. If you get MOAR boobies, you'll feel MOAR feminine! Get the surgeries! Men will like you better cos you will be more feminine! that is the mindset here. Throw in that tummy tuck. It’s not feminine to have any bulge.

Surgeries to tighten your vagina after child birth is gender affirming care. Hormone therapy and Viagra cos you can't get aroused? gender affirming care. Hormone replacement therapy because you've hit 50? gender affirming care. Hair transplant and beard filler? Gender affirming care. Cosmetics and salon visit? gender affirming care.

ALL of this-- ALL OF IT-- is designed to help people fit into the binary categories society has set up.

You want a breast augmentation so you feel more 'feminine?' I don't care. Go for it. But stop yelling at trans women for wanting a breast augmentation to feel more feminine.

You want surgery so you can have a longer dick? Cool, I don't care. Stop treating trans men like monsters for wanting a surgery for themselves.

Cis people engage in gender affirmation treatment every fucking day. EVERY. FUCKING. DAY.

Stop treating trans, intersex and nonbinary people like shit just because we want to feel comfortable in our bodies. Especially when cis people spend billions every year trying to do the same.

Oh-- and PS -- you don't HAVE to do any of this to prove to anyone that you are the gender you are. Cis women don't have to wear makeup. Trans women don't have to wear makeup.

Im afab, my sex is female. Because I have been perceived as a woman my entire life, I have lived the experiences of a woman, both good and bad (being catcalled on the streets, people opening the door for me, people underestimating me, etc) . I have experienced girlhood and womanhood and sisterly love. My relationship with my mother is that of a mother and daughter. All of my lived experiences have been influenced by the fact that my body is a woman. But that is all external.

Internally, my identity, what i Feel like i am... is not necessarily a woman. I dont know what thats supposed to feel like? To identify with a gender. Because gender is made up right? Being a "man" or a "woman" influences your external experiences but plays no part in your interests or personality.

Thats my understanding and my experience anyway.

I feel I deeply understand transgender people because I've dealt with gender and body dismorphia my whole life. I know what its like to feel like my body is Wrong. And yet I dont understand transgender people at all because I don't know what it feels like to identify with another gender. Because to me, gender is all just made up, influenced by people perceiving your body.

All that to day, I think im nonbinary or agender or something. But i wonder how other nonbinary people feel! Do you feel like your lived experiences due to being perceived as a certain gender... make you that gender? Is it a feeling? A lack of feeling?

My body is a woman and my experiences are womanhood. But if i was stripped down to just my bare identity-who i am as a person- Im not a woman.

Does that make me nonbinary? Or just woman who is indifferent to gender?

And when I say "support nonbinary people who don't differ in presentation from their agab" I don't just mean fully medically transitioned transmasc femboy or transfem butches (though those people are cool and valid). You have to support people who don't medically transition, and that doesn't just mean naturally androgynous afab people who fit a butch tomboy aesthetic, or naturally androgynous amab people who fit a femboy aesthetic (though those people are valid and cool), you have to support nonbinary people whose appearance doesn't fit into any aesthetic of nonbinaryness. And not just people who plan to medically transition, or dress differently someday, you have to accept nonbinary people whose presentation is probably not going to change.

There are a lot of nonbinary people who just kind of look like cis men or cis women, and you have to accept that they're still nonbinary, that they're still valued members of the community. Nonbinary isn't an aesthetic for you to consume, it's not something people perform for you. It's an internal identity, and it's a community. We don't choose to be nonbinary (most of the time), and we shouldn't have to look a certain way for who we are to be recognized.

It even goes into the way nonbinary people (and trans people in general) are complimented, where it's always so focused on how alien the complimenter sees them as. It's always "girlcock", "boy boobs", "they/them pussy", it feels so fetishistic. And it's not even about how sexual it is, like "UwU you're such a cute genderless girlboy" feels more fetishistic than "you have dick sucking eyes". It's this focus on how the viewer enjoys them specifically as a deviantion from what they consider a normal human, as opposed to just being attracted to someone who happens to be a deviation from what most humans are. Like, I want to see someone express attraction to a nonbinary person, as opposed to just being attracted to nonbinary people as a concept. Like can people on here even really be attracted to transfem penises as penises anymore, like be attracted to them as sexual body parts they presumably want to interact with sexually, as opposed to fetishizing them as masculine body parts on a woman.

And I use chasers as an example because it's both obvious and way too common. But this acceptance without humanization is so common in so many queer spaces, and it's specifically so common twords nonbinary people. The focus on bodies, and the focus on how those bodies differ from from what someone considers as normal. As opposed to focusing on human beings and their experiences. And I think it's why it's so hard for people to accept nonbinary people who don't look diffrent from how their agab is expected to look and never will, because you have to accept experiences over aesthetics to support those people.

Like, I need to stress that if you meet a nonbinary person, whose afab, and isn't medically transitioned, and dresses femininely, you still have to accept that they're nonbinary, you have to accept that they're 0% female if they say they're 0% female. And its not just that you need to use their pronouns, you also need to not think of them as female. And I'm specifically using a non medically transitioned afab person as an example here because the internet, especially the queer internet, seems to have a specific hatred for those people (which combined with how transfem people are talked about, and how certain cis queer people are talked about, it makes me think a lot of the queer internet inherently sees feminine bodies as lesser, and sees bodies as losing value the more feminine they become).

And there's two things I mean by "it's important to support these people". The first is just that it's a lot of nonbinary people who are like this, and a lot of them are uniquely vulnerable or invalidated, and they deserve your support and love and validation. But also because if you don't support nonbinary people who don't "look nonbinary enough" for you, every nonbinary person you know is one failure to present in a way you deem valid away from losing your support. When there's a way someone can fail at nonbinaryness to you, than there aren't any nonbinary people you truly unconditionally validate.

I have to admit that I am a nonbinary person who looks a lot like their agab myself. Not telling you if I'm afab or amab, but I am telling you that I have no plans to medically transition, and I don't dress in a way that screams nonbinary. And it sucks in certain ways, especially now that I'm in my twenties and I've lost a lot of weight (both of these are things I'm happy about in general btw), I look so diffrent from what anyone wants to validate. The only time I see art of nonbinary people who look like me it's when they're specifically the opposite agab to me. It sucks that I feel like for at least 25% of the community will either always see me as basically the gender I was assigned at birth, or they'll basically see me as a binary trans person waiting to happen.