#nonbinary stuff

Ghost fandom has been wonderful for me in many ways, but as a nonbinary person, it can feel SO alienating to be non-cis here, in a fandom dominated by cis women. I've done my best to try following my own advice (hang out in the corners of fandom I enjoy) and I have accumulated many friends that way! But that isn't a perfect cure.

I write gender neutral reader fanfic and OCs who are usually nonbinary or some kind of genderqueer because it is very hard to find people like me in others' fanfics most of the time. In fandom I am also trying to indulge in fantasies and stuff, and I know I'm not alone there. I will read fic about cis women, because if i didn't there'd be like 5 fanfics for me to read, and because I'm trying to encourage other writers as well.

But the experience is deeply uncomfortable in a way I'm not sure some of y'all can understand, but I'd like you to try to consider. I'm sitting there doing some mental gymnastics, or suddenly having someone talk about reader as a "woman" and feel that splash of cold water ("Oh good, Copia's misgendering me now too lol") and have to adjust. Don't change your fic for me, that's not what I'm trying to say. But understand that's what it feels like to try to read and participate in fandom, to encourage other people's fics. Cis women in fandom do not have to do that; you can find just about kink or interest or character you like for you. We don't have that luxury. Our options are often to a) put up with feeling misgendered by association, b) write our own, or c) don't participate at all.

Annnnd then cis women come in and misgender my characters and often ME. (Yes, the reader characters are gender neutral so you're welcome to read yourself into them, but I notice they almost always get called 'she' and never anything else; people link to them as though they're hetero fic; they have been treated like "gender neutral" means "woman." More egregiously, my explicitly nonbinary third person OCs get misgendered so much I end up typing the wrong shit despite having a firm grasp of their identities.) It's not that I don't want y'all to read my stuff, but like...is it uncomfortable for you to have to contort your thoughts a bit to fit yourself into the space of the reader or OC? Maybe that's something you could practice because trust me, we sure do. We have to. Maybe when you see someone with a gender neutral character, instead of immediately going "ah yes a woman" you could. I dunno. Not do that.

This is not just about me. This happens to most of us. All, y'know, half dozen or so trans/nonbinary/gender diverse writers in this fandom.

And then comes the fact that cis women end up talking over us in a lot of conversations. A trans or gn fanfic or, hell, headcanon is written and someone takes the same idea and rewrites it "straight." And look, fanfic inspired by other fanfic is a thing, and I get that. At the same time, you have SO MANY OPTIONS. You are the majority of this fandom, but you still want the few things we've managed to get? C'mon, y'all. You could at least talk to us about it.

Unfortunately, if we talk about any of this, if we complain about this, if we're upset at someone talking over us, we end up looking like the mean ones (or occasionally get accused of misogyny, which is wild). We end up being the ones who are making everything about gender or being rude or whatever, or just told it's nothing, don't worry about it. So our options are to shut up and tolerate it, or storm out, or quietly back away. You don't necessarily mean it maliciously, but in the end it is the same result as if you did: we end up silent. We aren't part of the fandom anymore. And I genuinely don't think most of you care, not out of maliciousness but because you don't even notice.

And it's no use, apparently, asking our cis friends to stand up for us either (about a trans issue OR a non-gendered issue we have--because remember, we've just gotten used to shutting up), because unfortunately, they aren't interested in making waves either. They don't want to hurt someone else's feelings!

But in not risking the other person's feelings, in not "taking sides," they end up hurting our feelings. And why not? We're tolerant and quiet so it doesn't matter because we aren't going to be upset about it at them. They can ignore our feelings because it means they don't have to face consequences.

Can't be uncomfortable, after all.

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Also I made a Uquiz that I think is a lot of fun, here.

If your question cannot be answered with the help of The Transgender Dictionary, then I will get right on that and fix it before responding to your ask.

Thank you for your participation. Please reblog this post for reach.

Yes, there are complex and interesting questions to be raised about how perceived gender shapes a person’s experience. Yes, a lot of nonbinary folk *empathise* with amd see ourselves represented in shapeshifting characters - and what this is categorically NOT is a request to try to block nonbinary spectrum folk from playing shapeshifters, whatever that means in your setting.

But in real life every nonbinary spectrum person out there lives with a meatsuit that in fact stays very much the same.

We might get moments of serious euphoria by playing with presentations that massively shift how we *appear* to others; that give us a little bit of the potential experience as shapeshifting. But at the end of the day we are still stuck with a meatsuit that in fact does *not* meet the very narrow skinny white young abled idea of what seems to constitute Socially-Acceptable Attractive Androgyny, nor change effortlessly to meet fluid changes of what would give us euphoria or prevent dysphoria. Most of us live constantly with misgendering and denial that someone who looks like us could be different from the man or woman they read us as.

And if your only attempt to represent nonbinary folk is to do with physical shape, you are really misrepresenting not only the nonbinary spectrum experience, but saying a lot of things about gender that are not accurate and, frankly, playing into a lot of harmful ideas the cis still hold about gender.

You might not guess the huge joy you give me whenever I meet a huge hairy muscled nonbinary person, or fat curvy nonbinary person, or a nonbinary wheelchair user, or older nonbinary person, in fiction, but it’s very much there.