gay bitch on the loose

firstly, i think that people who find issue with his appearance are misplacing their discomfort at the idea of being attracted to a trans man. literally by definition, him being a trans man means he was born in a female body and where ever he lies on the spectrum of expressing his gender and changing his sex does not change his gender identity. you dont have to be fully transitioned to be trans and given yamato's story it really wouldnt make sense for him to be transitioned as he would not have access to those sorts of resources. him not being transitions is an element that feeds into telling his story but all of that nuance is dismissed because male fragility wont allow them to acknowledge both that he is a man and they find him hot.

the second main way people dismiss yamato's identity is that they believe that him identifying with oden meant that he was never really trans but simply wanted to be oden but i think that this stems from a fundamental issue misunderstanding of the narrative. yamato claims to embody oden but the arc of his story is literally about how he was using that identity as a crutch to deal with his situation and his journey as he comes to realize his own identity and separate it from oden, but at the end of his arc he still identifies as a man. him being a man was never even questioned.

apart from the way that the opposition to yamato being trans being bull, i think that yamato is actually a pretty good example of intertwining a characters trans identity with the narrative. him being trans is not the focal point of the tensions or conflicts but rather is identity is interwoven with his story arc and colors his interactions and experiences differently.

i heard someone once say that the trans representation in one piece is especially notable among representation because of the number of characters and different experiences because no one single character needs to embody all of the trans experiences. yamato does not feel like some token trans character just slapped in but rather he feels like a fully developed character with his own compelling and interesting story to exploare. it feels like the narrative treats him as a real person just like everyone else and where being trans just one part of his identity and experiences

Please can anyone help a queer household, with two people of color, pay bills so we can squish our main money to make rent! We all would like to avoid a world we we have to be returned to transphobic or outright unsafe parent households.

We have a month of rent, and while we are working on plans and reaching out to housing help, any help to pay side bills so main checks can be saved would be appreciated.

My partner cashapp since mine locked me out being weird: @.stalefrybasket

Goal is 250 if we can swing that much to cover power bill, phone bills (needed for job calls).

If you can't share a boost is appreciated.

yknow what aggravates me is how both hepburn & pauli murray (and potentially LM alcott although I know less about them) are people we, i think, can generally consider part of transmasculine history based on how they described themselves. we can't know what modern words they would have used, but they share many experiences with people who today identify as transmasc, so they should be recognized as part of our history. and both are credited for their anti-patriarchal actions and defying of gender roles. & with both I see this assumption that if they were cis women, every act of gender non conformity and defiance of stereotypes around women was them fighting for women's rights– but if they were transmasc, then their motivations must have been entirely selfish and essentially feminist on accident. they just appeared feminist because they were cis men in the bodies of women, basically. the experience of cis womanhood is seen as a valid motivator for resisting patriarchy, but not transmasculinity. why? why is it assumed that transmascs are selfish and keen to go along with the patriarchy, or only resist based on the notion that they think they personally shouldn't experience misogyny because they aren't women?

if someone puts on pants and defies misogynistic demands put on women and they are a cis women, they are a feminist icon, but if they do the same thing and are transmasc, its... a disapointment? patriarchal? i wish so badly that we can get to a point where people can appreciate transmasculinity as something radical and which can be a powerful motivator for feminist action in and of itself. i wish we can get to a point where transmasculinity and feminism are not treated like oil and water, where transmasculinity isn't seen as a corrupted failed version of proper womanhood (whether that's being a housewife or a "womyn-identified womyn").

and it especially hurts when it comes to those two figures because neither of them were able to be openly transmasc. pauli murray was labeled schizophrenic and nearly institutionalized for trying to seek HRT and by the time transmasc healthcare started being more widely performed, they were under heavy scrutiny already as a civil rights activist working in the government. hepburn's entire career was, ultimated, based on them being a beautiful actress. i will never stop thinking of how many transmasculine ancestors just... held those feelings close to their chest and played the role of woman for the sake of their spouse or their children or their job or their politics. and how we're expected to celebrate this as the ultimate feminist gesture which any possible transmasculinity threatens the legitimacy of.

on this note. there are already so many rules for when you are "allowed" to describe a historical figure could be transmasc (even though that term is extremely broad and includes many kinds of identities). there is such a SPECIFIC kind of narrative we are taught to expect from transmasc history. masculine cis-passing heterosexual man (9/10 white) completely disconnected from his childhood or past living as a woman, who lives a life near indistinguishable from a cis man until he's outed.

one can't help but wonder just how much transmasc history gets buried and erased and "we just can't possibly say!"-ed because trans men&mascs are not allowed to exist outside of a narrative that makes misogyny a footnote at best.

like, i saw another post on Jimmy in which someone in the notes basically summed up their perspective of their gender as "maybe she was a trans man maybe she just didn't like the expectations of women." i mentioned the pauli murray thing above. its always always always "trans OR feminist" "trans OR navigating misogyny" and with Jimmy, Lou, and Pauli, all three of them could very easily have been transmasculine people who simply did not / could not run away and start an entirely new life completed dissociated from anyone who ever knew them and spend their entire life hiding.

but to me, feminism is fundamentally a sociopolitical movement for genuine, material, radical change in the dynamics of gender in our society, it is about challenging and dismantling the ways in which gender is constructed as a tool of social control, to serve the larger goal of dismantling the systems of oppression that rule us at large and building a better system and culture.

there are elements of feminist activism which you, as an individual, may not be willing or able to engage in, for whatever reason. and i do not think you should be expected to force yourself to engage in those sorts of activism, or any activism at all, frankly. but doing feminism should not be easy. it should ask something of you, it should hold you to some standard, because doing feminism should be about asking yourself "how can i, alongside others, assist in the fight for radical anti-patriarchal change on systemic and cultural levels?" you can and should balance that question with others relating to your own personal needs and goals and desires! but like. i strongly believe that feminism, as a movement, needs to be deeply invested in male liberationist activism, that this is a practical necessity in order to create a real multi-gender resistance to patriarchy; we need male liberation to be strongly associated with feminism in people's minds. and so many people react to this idea with "but its not women's responsibility to solve men's problems!" as if "feminist" is just a fancy term for "woman" and "feminism" is just when women get together and say pretty words to make each other feel really nice and strong.