Assistance For Trans Folks

I'm nonbinary (demigirl if we're getting precise, which we are) and I am starting to go by they/them and the name Sasha. I'm worried about my parents' reaction. I know they won't throw me out or anything like that, but I'm pretty sure they won't understand right away. Which I understand, of course, they thought they had a daughter for about nineteen years, but still. Also I'm worried that it's actually just a phase? Which is pretty stupid but I worry about lots of things. Anyway, feel free not to answer this ask if you don't want to—I'm just scared and worried about everything ever.

Have a nice day. Happy birthday to Penny the deal warlock! I always enjoy seeing her adventures on my dash.

Bye,

Sasha

Hey like if it is just a phase so what? You're allowed to have phases, you're ALLOWED to change your mind about things and that never makes any thing you feel in the moment ANY less real. We're literally all changing every moment from day to day and I've never understood people using "it's just a phase" to make someone less important. Like so is childhood? So is menstruation? So is every other aspect of the human life cycle? It's okay if something doesn't stick that's the beauty of being human - you're allowed to test things out!

Why are trans people turning so TERFy when we seemingly agreed that this was all bad? Well, everything is getting more conservative, on account of the climate/environmental crisis and the related decay of capitalism and the rise of fascism as a response. People are scared animals and it is so easy to adjust to this environment by internalizing it, in hopes of surviving it.

With trans people getting turned into a scapegoat and neo-radfems getting massive political platforms, it was inevitable that people would react by internalizing radical feminism and trying to cut out the parts of themselves and their community that are least able to adjust to that. I think its a semi-conscious process of trying to blend in, trying to survive, trying to make sense of what is happening to you and why. Each person has a lot of different preexisting beliefs they are working with to make sense of the world, and we aren't consciously self-aware of most of them. What seems obvious to one person (you cannot rehabilitate radical feminism for trans people, because it is fundamentally structured through cissexism) will not be obvious to another if they are navigating the same issue with a different "map" so to speak.

Survival instincts are not necessarily moral instincts. Resisting conservative, fascism, etc. are not things that always feel conducive to surviving this present moment, especially for people whose worldviews did not have a developed and strong understanding of what resistance and revolution would mean in practice, how the circumstances would feel, and the kinds of material and ideological forces at play.

I think a lot of people are getting more conservative because they are falling back on survival instincts and trying to adapt to an increasingly conservative environment. But, at the same time, they don't think of themselves as conservative, nor do they want to be, and they want their survival instincts to be moral instincts (as I think we would all like!) and that the things they are doing to keep themself safe are also things that are morally correct and effective responses to injustice.

And again, people want conservatism to simply be the product of a character flaw they are better than, not something that anyone can fall into ideologically as a result of both personal choices and belief-environment. We want it to be that becoming a conservative is a conscious process we would certainly be fully aware of if it happened to us. If we could become conservative, either conservatism must be objectively right, or it means that "conservative" is not a unique class of people entirely different than oneself and the left as a whole.

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

If you are a White trans person with any interest in racial politics and racial solidarity, you have to put your allyship, solidarity, and support behind the entire Black trans community. Not just one portion of it.

You do also have to be vocal about Black trans men and Black nonbinary people along side Black trans women AND you cannot only bring up Black trans women when it is convenient for you to remember someone's getting punched harder than you. Because Black trans men and Black nonbinary people ARE ALSO GETTING PUNCHED HARDER THAN YOU BECAUSE THEY ARE BLACK.

is wanting to be a wife and mother a requirement for being a woman?

why might OP be annoyed with replies assuming that this post is about being aroace or transmasc if a woman doesn’t want to be a wife or mother?

are there reasons unrelated to sexuality and romantic interest that might make a woman not want to be a wife or mother?

are there reasons unrelated to gender identity and expression that might make a woman not want to be a wife and mother?

core concept: what is gender essentialism?

is it gender essentialism to imply that all women inherently want to be wives and mothers? could this be what OP is critiquing?

look at the notes OP responds to. is it gender essentialism to imply that being a wife and mother is so affixed to womanhood that to not want to be those things means you’re incapable of sexual/romantic feelings, or not a woman?

If you’ll all pardon my Americentrism for a moment, the amount, visibility, and flamboyance of Pride merch available in clothing, home goods, and comestibles stores is a DIRECT reflection of how safe it is to be queer in public in the United States.

How? Simple. Out groups aren’t profitable. If you’re not “acceptable” in the current social climate, big franchise businesses will not market to you. (Prime example - Look how quickly Target dropped all their Pride merch after having been wall-to-wall rainbows every June for almost a decade prior.)

Sure, capitalism sucks and being viewed as an exploitable marketing demographic isn’t a fun concept.

HOWEVER.

The grim truth is that being normalized enough to be considered profitable by corporations IS A GOOD THING in terms of the barometer of social acceptance.

Same thing goes for smaller businesses that throw kitschy Pride events or even just put a token rainbow flag in the window or somewhere inside the shop. That’s a level of acceptance that DID NOT EXIST thirty years ago, and I can tell you because I was there.

The fact that we can scoff and bitch about being an exploitable marketing demographic nowadays means we have made GIGANTIC strides since the 1990s. It also speaks to the fact that the drive and the conversation surrounding LGBTQ+ rights and acceptance are continuing. And getting louder.

You can be cynical about it if you want. But I will take a store that puts out lip-service rainbow merch over a world that pretends we don’t exist any day of the week. Because that will always mean something.

Yet, when they start being included, they are like “well, that’s just capitalism taking advantage of us, so it doesn’t count.” Like, you can’t use your EXCLUSION from something as evidence of general societal marginalization and then claim that once you’ve started to be included, it is politically meaningless. You don’t really get to have it both ways. That’s moving the political goal posts.

I get that we shouldn’t consider Target pride merchandise as like the pinnacle of queer politics or even the pinnacle of queer inclusion. I get that inclusion in capitalist intuitions is a very ambivalent form of social progress. But the truth is, capitalism is a big part of what creates our social reality right now (unfortunately).

Capitalism makes TV shows, and movies, and books, and ads, and greeting cards, and toys, and clothing, and, and…

When every single aspect of commercial social reality excludes queerness, that DOES create a real sense of social alienation. I don’t love that capitalism is responsible for creating so much of our collective social reality. But granting that it does, I think we’re forced to accept that our inclusion in it IS politically and socially important.

I can sing now though.

Source

—got confused about why I’d never been a boy scout because he forgot i was trans

—told me he was gonna get top surgery scar tattoos to match me after i get mine

—laughs at all my trans jokes, even if they’re supremely unfunny

—calls me big dog (and him little dog) even though he is about as tall as two of me

Then he said "You know, I completely forgot you weren't always this way. Femininity really suits you" and let me tell you I started tearing up

I'm nonbinary (demigirl if we're getting precise, which we are) and I am starting to go by they/them and the name Sasha. I'm worried about my parents' reaction. I know they won't throw me out or anything like that, but I'm pretty sure they won't understand right away. Which I understand, of course, they thought they had a daughter for about nineteen years, but still. Also I'm worried that it's actually just a phase? Which is pretty stupid but I worry about lots of things. Anyway, feel free not to answer this ask if you don't want to—I'm just scared and worried about everything ever.

Have a nice day. Happy birthday to Penny the deal warlock! I always enjoy seeing her adventures on my dash.

Bye,

Sasha

Hey like if it is just a phase so what? You're allowed to have phases, you're ALLOWED to change your mind about things and that never makes any thing you feel in the moment ANY less real. We're literally all changing every moment from day to day and I've never understood people using "it's just a phase" to make someone less important. Like so is childhood? So is menstruation? So is every other aspect of the human life cycle? It's okay if something doesn't stick that's the beauty of being human - you're allowed to test things out!

This disrespects the characters, the story, the author, the entire point of the book, and every single trans Discworld fan.

Context, for my non Discworld followers: Monstrous Regiment is a book which plays with the trope of "girl dresses as not to join the army", in which the protagonist slowly realises she's not the only one; all the other new recruits of her squad are similarly disguising themselves. Shenanigans ensue, and at the end of the book it's revealed a lot of the military higher ups are actually women with a facade of maleness, putting on the part so they can do their duty.

Sergeant Jackrum is also one of the people who ran away as a girl to join the army, but unlike the others he doesn't wear a facade. It's entirely himself. He is canonically a trans man. He doesn't want to leave the military and return to civilian life, cos he doesn't want to re enter the closet and live as a woman, and his squad's like oi mate you're literally sergeant fuckin Jackrum, there ain't a kid in this kingdom who hasn't heard of you in all your decades of service. Return to the family you left behind, the kid you birthed doesn't need to know you're trans, you can just say you're the guy who fathered that kid. Go be a grandpa and be happy.

I just did some quick research, though, and it looks like they may have gone back and fixed it? I'll have to listen to the audiobook again to see if that is indeed the case.

EDIT: Nope, still the wrong pronouns. However, in my search I also came across something interesting: there's two versions up on Audible. One released 2/23/23, published by Transworld Digital and one released 9/25/23, published by Harper. Both exactly the same length, both with the same narrator/cast. The Harper edition is the one that I have. But I think, the Transworld Digital one is the correct one.

Simply because I had to use address trickery to purchase Nightwatch's audiobook back in 2023, and it, too, was published by Transworld Digital. I think I'm going to spend a little extra money soon and buy that version and see if it's correct.

Source

Mahshid, a 26-yo transgender woman in Sanandaj, Kurdistan province, was killed because of who she was, because of being trans. The perpetrator of her murder is a salafi islamic group.

This attack was done to spread fear among the LGBTQ+ community.

Transgender women and girls in Iran face constant threats, not just from society but from laws and systemic violence. This news breaks at the start of Pride Month — a reminder that protection for trans people in Iran is more urgent than ever. No one should live in fear just for being themselves.

Please be the voice of Iranian LGBTQ+ community, specially the trans community, on this year's Pride Month. They need your support more than anytime.