How would you describe the concept of being gender fluid in mandarin? I've been avoiding coming out to my parents for a while bc I straight up don't know what I'd say - I don't know enough Chinese and idk if they'd be able to understand what I'm trying to communicate if I said it in English. They're both from the Hebei area if that helps at all, and they're not really conservative but they're also not at all caught up on modern terminology so,,, any help would be appreciated 😭

First of all, I want to say that I hope things go well and I’m rooting for you 💖

The term for gender fluid in Chinese, as I’m sure you know, is 流性人 liú xìng rén/流性别者 liú xìng bié zhě.

I’m honored that you think highly enough of my input that you asked, so I wanted to give an answer. However, I am not really a good person to ask about coming out to parents because I have not personally done so in any coherent manner myself, even though my parents aren’t conservative, either.

I can say that I think if I was to come out (hopefully I will one day—I just want to be financially stable first, altho... hmm...), I will probably explain it as best I can in English first and then later offer supplementary reading materials in Chinese. In my mind, the best course of action would be to just start off with the facts—say there is something important you want to share with them and that it would mean a lot if they could hear you out first (or however you talk to your parents normally to get them to sit and listen for a bit). “I am [genderfluid], this means I [whatever it means to you personally, as well as what it doesn’t mean/how you came to this realisation, etc].” I think if I was to explain genderfluidity to my parents, I would include what it might appear as in terms of personal outer appearance as well as how it affects your inner life. I would mention why it’s important/significant enough to your identity that you want them to recognise this is how you identify. I think emphasising the euphoric aspects/how being openly genderfluid would make you happy will be more beneficial to you, rather than try and immediately teach the terminology. My parents often say that they want me to be happy so I would try to explain how sharing that part of who I am would make me happy.

Your parents might understand what transgender identity is because it’s talked in the news a lot, so you could try approaching it from that direction, too. If they know of Guanyinshiyin, too, you could approach it from that direction or liken it to a feeling of nothing and all and either/or fluidity in that sense (if that’s a relevant definition). I think my parents would want to know what it means for them going forward as well, so that might be something to talk or establish in your initial explanation, too—pronouns, whether you hope to change your appearance once out to them, etc. I would probably also say something about how you understand what others might think about you but you don't care about that, again, going back to personal euphoria. I personally wouldn't expect them to understand anything right away, but I would communicate that the hope would be that they make an attempt, and that if they have questions at the moment or in the future, I would want to try to answer them.

I hope that helps at all. Maybe other diaspora with experience can offer further advice in the replies/reblogs.

Good luck! 💖💖

Something that might be helpful for later:

伴您同行：专为跨性别儿童的父母准备的指南 - This is a short guide geared towards parents of transgender/nonbinary children, covering questions of "why", "what", when", "what to do", "who to turn to", "where to go" (recommends Oogachaga, SAFE Singapore, The T Project, TransgenderSG, and Asia Pacific Transgender Network; I'm not personally familiar with all of these organisations, but the handbooks itself seems pretty helpful). It includes brief overviews of HRT, as well, if that's something you want to bring up at all.

Israel has deployed auto-firing quadcopters that emit the sounds of crying babies.

https://xtwitter.com/jam_etc_art/status/1780038184828608975

There is no possible reality where this is in any way capable of being passed off as self-defense. It was never self-defense. It is, and always has been, a genocide.

Crying babies. Crying babies. This is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, meant to draw out and kill civilians while also making it far more difficult to locate and aid children who are trapped or alone.

If you have money to spare, please consider donating to some of the fundraisers on Operation Olive Branch to help people escape this genocide.

End the occupation. Free Palestine.

cant get more fascist police state than snipers on rooftops overlooking peaceful protests.

this is what democracy looks like.

crying

columbia administration is threatening to call in the national guard tonight

This is different from Al-Shifa:

There are images of decomposed bodies wearing what appear to be scrubs... with their hands tied. Meaning they were executed while bound. I will not be sharing them because I'm tired of showing our martyrs' bodies to people.

21 April 2024

A little-discussed detail in the Lavender AI article is that Israel is killing people based on being in the same Whatsapp group [1] as a suspected militant [2]. Where are they getting this data? Is WhatsApp sharing it? Lavender is Israel's system of "pre-crime" [3] - they use AI to guess who to kill in Gaza, and then bomb them when they're at home, along with their entire family. (Obscenely, they call this program "Where's Daddy"). One input to the AI is whether you're in a WhatsApp group with a suspected member of Hamas. There's a lot wrong with this - I'm in plenty of WhatsApp groups with strangers, neighbours, and in the carnage in Gaza you bet people are making groups to connect. But the part I want to focus on is whether they get this information from Meta. Meta has been promoting WhatsApp as a "private" social network, including "end-to-end" encryption of messages. Providing this data as input for Lavender undermines their claim that WhatsApp is a private messaging app. It is beyond obscene and makes Meta complicit in Israel's killings of "pre-crime" targets and their families, in violation of International Humanitarian Law and Meta's publicly stated commitment to human rights. No social network should be providing this sort of information about its users to countries engaging in "pre-crime".

dont play defense

Aziraphale offers bok choy to the cute dancing lion. Who's in the back of that thing? Muriel, is that you?

Palestinian activists get their message across on Londons iconic Tower Bridge landmark- one of the cities most historic buildings. We need a ceasefire now.

Throwback thursday to when I was like 12 and I was putting out new writing DAILY...... Like entire Chapters of my then-current wips just, over an afternoon. What the fuck was I on