#that man and his continual support of the trans and nonbinary community just means so much to me | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

gay-otlc · 1 year

Note

hi honest sincere question how can a man be a lesbian? can amab men be lesbians?

Hi! Thanks for asking respectfully. I am going to answer your question in significantly more detail than you probably wanted. Be warned.

The main reason I think men can be lesbians is: I think people can use whatever words they think most accurately describe their identity and/or experience. These words might not necessarily be words that they are, but still words that they use to describe themselves.

Lesbian does have a lot of feminine connotations, and can cause dysphoria for many men, so men who use both terms have often put a lot of thought into it. I might not understand their reasons, but I'm sure they have their reasons.

You don't need to understand to be respectful, but if you're curious, here is an explanation of why some men choose to identify as lesbians. This got so long that I'm dividing it with subtitles. I'm so sorry if you didn't want to read all this.

Lesbian Trans Men

Men who identify as lesbians tend to be trans men. Of course, wanting to use the label lesbian is a minority of trans men who like women! Definitely don't assume all trans mlw are comfortable being called a lesbian, or call a trans man a lesbian without permission.

At least for me, labels describe how I feel in the present but also the way I have experienced gender and attraction throughout my life. Right now I'm a man who's attracted to women, but at lunch today I was talking about how it felt in middle school to be a "girl" who liked girls, and I used the word lesbian to communicate that.

Trans men who have spent a very long time identifying as a lesbian and being a part of the lesbian community, often decades, might continue using the label lesbian after transitioning. If a trans man feels like he spent his life as a lesbian rather than a straight man, the former might feel most accurate to describe his experience.

Trans men might also identify as lesbian due to being in the closet. Internally, I feel more like a straight man, but that's not really how I'm seen by the rest of the world. I'm out to a few close friends offline, but pretty much all my other classmates or teachers or relatives or acquaintances think of me as a woman.

If I called myself straight, that would most likely be interpreted as me being a straight woman. I'm open about liking women, though, which means I would either have to be out as lesbian or bi. I definitely shouldn't call myself bi, because I'm not attracted to multiple genders. So, I go with lesbian. It's not the perfect label, but it gets the point across. (The point being "I think women are hot.")

Male =/= Solely, Always, Exclusively Male

Men who are lesbians are not always exclusively men. Multigender people exist! I'm one of them. If someone is bigender with those genders being a man and a woman, and they're attracted to women, I don't think it really makes sense to say that they can't be a lesbian.

I'm assuming you (anon) support nonbinary lesbians, since that's the general trend I've noticed among those who are trans-inclusive but don't understand male lesbians. Some nonbinary people will also identify as men. If nonbinary people can be lesbians, nonbinary men can be lesbians.

A genderfluid person might sometimes be a man and sometimes be another gender(s) that are more commonly included in lesbianism, and like women, and use both labels.

This could apply to anyone regardless of assigned gender, so those are some examples of how a man assigned male at birth could be a lesbian.

AMAB Male Lesbians

As for whether men who were AMAB can be lesbians... yes, but I want to clarify that not just any cis man should go "lol I'm a lesbian" because it's funny. Someone would need to put thought into why the feel like lesbian is the best label for them.

In the case of a man who was AMAB, they would probably feel like lesbian is a good descriptor due to having a complex relationship with their gender. Being genderqueer and being an AMAB man or AFAB woman are not mutually exclusive.

Gender Non Conformity

There's a type of identity that I believe is referred to as a cusp identity, or something like that? It is where someone might blur the line or exist in the grey area between two different identities with an overlap in a lot of experiences.

There might be someone who is on the cusp right between being a trans woman and an extremely gender nonconforming man. They might not be sure which one they fall into, or feel like they exist right in the middle. This person might identify simultaneously as or right between "lesbian trans woman" and "feminine presenting cishet man."

There are also some people who identify with their assigned gender, but pursue medical transition in a way typically associated with a different gender. I have a friend who identifies fully as a cis woman, but thinks she might want to get bottom surgery. It's a type of gender nonconformity, you know?

I don't know anyone who's had this experience in reverse, but it's definitely possible. I'm sure there's a cis man out there somewhere who has or wants to medically transition to "female." And I think it would make sense if this hypothetical person wanted to identify as a lesbian.

Trans Women

Just to be clear, I am NOT saying trans women are men. They aren't. (Unless they're multigender, which is cool.) But monogender trans women aren't men, and definitely should not be misgendered.

Similar to how a straight trans man might be closeted and call himself a lesbian, a lesbian trans woman might be closeted and call herself a man. Again, this lesbian trans woman wouldn't be a man. However, a she might refer to herself as a man to stay safe, or just because she's not comfortable being out yet, but might also refer to herself as a lesbian online or around a few people she's close with. She's not actually a lesbian man, but using both labels would still be enough to get cancelled by those violently against male lesbians.

Some trans women might also still be eggs (not yet realize they're trans). I know that prior to coming out as trans, some gay trans people have said something like "I'm a man, but I want to be in a lesbian relationship" or "I'm a girl and I love reading mlm fanfiction, I like to imagine myself as one of the characters." A trans woman just beginning to explore gender could identify or want to identify with being a lesbian, while still not fully realizing she's not a man. Again- not actually a man, but someone who might use both labels.

Arguments Against Lesbian Men

Now, I know there are a lot of reasons this is controversial, and some of them are even in good faith. However, they are still misguided.

"It's Misgendering Trans Men"

Many people are opposed to trans men being lesbians because they're trans men and would feel dysphoric if called a lesbian, or are an ally and don't want trans men to be misgendered.

That's a very understandable concern, but see my earlier note about not calling a trans man a lesbian without permission.

Trans men aren't a monolith, and everyone's comfortable with different things. Some trans men are comfortable wearing dresses and some trans men are comfortable being called "sis" or "queen" or something, but many aren't, and that's all okay!

I think people just need to be clear that even though some trans men are okay with this, it doesn't apply to all trans men.

"Cishet Men Will Pretend To Be Lesbians"

Another reason people are against male lesbians is because they're concerned cis straight men will call themselves lesbians for no reason other than they think it's funny, or they want to make lesbians uncomfortable. Which I agree; that's shitty, and they shouldn't do that.

But I feel like most of the time, they do make it pretty clear they don't genuinely identify as a lesbian. People with complex or contradicting identities generally understand that their labels don't make a lot of sense at first glance, so they tend to offer a short explanation. They have no obligation to go on and on defending their right to exist, but a sentence or two is good and most people are totally willing to provide that.

I've had friends ask about me being both a trans man and a lesbian, and I've given a short explanation, and it works! Because they aren't assholes! The main one that comes to mind happened shortly after I told my best friend I was changing my name, and it went something like this.

Me, after seeing a pretty girl: Oh my god, I'm so gay for her. Friend: Do you still identify as gay? I thought you might want to be called straight now, since you're a trans guy. Me: I'm, like, both a man and a woman? So lesbian and straight man are both fine with me. Friend: Okay, cool. Let me know if you decide you don't want to be called lesbian anymore since I don't want to make you feel dysphoric.

And then that was it! It wasn't a big deal. With just a short conversation, I established that I was a lesbian man because I'm bigender and not because I'm just saying it for the lols.

I do understand the desire to stop cishet men from making lesbian jokes, but the thing is, there's no reliable way to do so that won't also end up harming some queer people. I mean, TERFs argue that trans women can't be lesbians because then what's to stop a straight man from invading the lesbian community by falsely claiming he's a trans woman, you know? But just because some people might abuse other queer peoples' genuine identity, doesn't mean no one can use that identity.

"They're Invading Lesbian Spaces"

Those against male lesbians are trying to stop men from invading lesbian spaces. While I agree that lesbian spaces should be for lesbians, and I think it's wrong for people to attend an all-lesbian support group or something if they know they're not a lesbian, I also know I can't stop them.

What are we supposed to do, go around forcing everyone there to prove they are a Real Actual Lesbian? Who decides what a Real Actual Lesbian is? How do we verify if people are telling the truth on the questions asked to prove Real Actual Lesbian? Keeping 100% of non lesbians out of lesbian spaces just isn't a feasible goal and it's not fair to make everyone prove their identity like that.

If someone in a lesbian safe space is causing any harm to others, they should be kicked out, but this applies even if they are a Real Actual Lesbian. Lesbians are perfectly capable of hurting other lesbians and being a lesbian doesn't give them a free pass to get out of consequences.

Male Lesbians Are Rapists

An extension of the "invading lesbian spaces" arguments is that lesbian men are forcing or pressuring lesbians to date or sleep with men.

However, lesbian men don't necessarily expect or even want other lesbians to be attracted to them. Lesbians don't have to be attracted to every other lesbian in the world! Sometimes, people don't find another person attractive, and that's fine. Sometimes, people are not attracted to a certain gender, and someone of that gender being a lesbian won't change that.

I'm not attracted to nonbinary people, and there are plenty of nonbinary lesbians, and I'm not attracted to them. Which is fine! Them being lesbians doesn't mean I have to be attracted to them, and me not being attracted to them doesn't make them not lesbians. Accepting someone as their identity doesn't mean you have to find them attractive.

I might be attracted to a lesbian and ask her out, and she might respond "Sorry, I'm not attracted to men and since you're bigender I wouldn't be comfortable sleeping with you."

What I would not say: "But I'm a lesbian! You accepted me into your lesbian safe space, which means you have to sleep with me. Checkmate."

What I would say: "I understand, have a nice day."

In the above scenario, if someone in that situation refused to accept that the lesbian woman wasn't attracted to them, that would be shitty no matter what. It would be shitty if that person was a male lesbian, and it would be shitty if that person was a cis woman. Because it is shitty to not respect people's boundaries.

This isn't something only lesbian men are capable of doing. Most lesbian men are perfectly respectful people who would not rape anyone, and if they do? They're shitty, but they're not shitty because they're a lesbian man. They're shitty because they're a rapist.

Claiming that someone would lie about their gender identity to rape people is entry-level transphobia. You cannot believe "male lesbians are just lying so they can rape lesbians" and then call yourself a trans ally. They are mutually exclusive.

Political Lesbianism

Finally, this argument is derived from TERF rhetoric. If you're not familiar with political lesbianism, it's a radical feminist ideology that can be summarized by "don't date or fuck men." Being a lesbian was a feminist choice that wasn't necessarily about attraction to women, but about not being involved with men. This sounds quite a lot like the common lesbian definition used against male lesbians; "non men loving non men." A major component of TERFism is trying to keep men (or those they believe to be men) away from women's/lesbian spaces, and including trans women doesn't change the fact that the ideologies stem from the exact same place. There have been anti male lesbian posts that genuinely sound exactly like a TERF wrote them, which is pretty telling. If you're violently against any men ever being lesbians, odds are you've been drinking the TERF juice, and you probably need to unpack that.

Conclusion

This is ridiculously long and I have been writing it for the last two and a half hours. I am very thankful and also kind of apologetic to anyone who just read every single word I vomited out.

Basically, even if you disagree with someone using both "man" and "lesbian" to label themself, I would recommend leaving them alone. They're describing their identity in the way that works best for them, and they're not hurting anyone. You don't need to like their identity, and you definitely don't need to understand it, but you do need to be respectful. It costs $0 to not be an asshole.

If you're considering telling a lesbian man their identity is invalid, take my advice and simply... don't do that. There are so many other things you could do with your time.

The queer community has a lot of problems. The world in general has even more problems. In the grand scheme of things, someone identifying as a male lesbian literally does not matter.

That's finally all, thanks for reading.

#anon i am so fucking sorry you did NOT sign up for this monster of an essay #rip #also to clarify most of the time when i said you i wasn't talking to anon specifically #just a general you #i know it's confusing so yeah wanted to make sure that was clear #lesbian trans men #lesbian men #male lesbian #multigender lesbian #idk what other things i should tag #lesbian #pride tag #okay i will shut up now

161 notes · View notes

thearoacemoon · 6 months

Text

About Rose Noble

There has been a lot of confusion about pronouns gender and gender presentation in the Whovian fandom lately, I hope this post helps to clarify some of the points.

This text contains spoilers from The Star Beast so continue to read only if you watched the episode or if you're okay with spoilers.

First I must inform I'm a nonbinary person myself, my pronouns are they/them, all the stuff I'll talk about here comes from study and contact with the queer community, I'm not making it up.

1 - Pronouns doesn't equal gender:

Yes, a lot of nonbinary people use they/them, but the rule is: you use whatever pronouns you feel comfortable with, no matter what gender you are.

There's nonbinary people who uses she/her, he/him, she/they, they/him, all pronouns, no pronouns, neopronouns (like xe/xem), and many other possibilities.

People who aren't trans can use a different set of pronouns as well. For example, gay people historically used she/her even being cis male individuals, and that's okay. I knew a person whose partner was a cis man and he used he/they pronouns because they wanted to show his support to nonbinary people. It's a good thing, it normalizes people having different sets of pronouns.

And we make announcements if our pronouns change. Rose never said "my pronouns now are they/them", so if you aren't using she/her, you are misgendering her.

2 - Nonbinary people can identify as trans:

Being trans means you don't identify as the gender assigned at your birth, which includes nonbinary people. The white stripe in the trans flag symbolizes all genders outside the binary 🏳️‍⚧️

Some nonbinary people don't identify as trans, but it's an individual identification, the label itself is under the trans umbrella. I identify as trans myself, and I respect those who don't.

So yes, Rose can be trans and nonbinary. Also nonbinary woman or woman-align identities exist (such as Demigirl, for example).

3 - Gender presentation doesn't equal gender:

Rose dresses in a femme way, are referred as a girl, there's no problem about it. People from any gender can express their presentation whatever the way they like, male, female, androgynous, none, a mix of stuff, whatever.

Plus: don't speculate if she did gender affirming surgery or not, there's no evidence of it in the episode. Maybe she just changed her presentation with hair, clothes, makeup, accessories. Not all trans people do surgery.

Now I want to add a bit of a personal opinion: I don't think Rose is trans BECAUSE of the metacrisis. I personally think she was able to carry the metacrisis because she was trans in the first place.

If there's any mistakes in grammar, I'm sorry, English isn't my first language. Fell free to copy and paste this text in other groups, no need to give credits.

#doctor who #rose noble #the star beast #whovian #14th doctor #doctor who special #doctor who spoilers #nonbinary #trans #trans character #trans representation #nonbinary character #nonbinary representation

8 notes · View notes

cup1dvalenl1na · 11 months

Note

soul and maka with a nonbinary or transmasc s/o please? they're my comfort characters i care them very much

I'm not as familiar with this, since I am a cis woman. So if I do anything wrong please please please let me know. I took the time to research to know a little bit more, just in case. But still, don't be afraid to say something to me.

I'm gonna try to mix the two requests if that's okay, so a non binary reader that represents as trans masc.

TW// MENTIONS OF MISGENDERING (Other people, not Maka or Soul)

It's a given that she supports you.

Although she isn't super familiar with the topic she will do her best to find ways to understand, such as reading books at her local library or just searching online. She wants to make you feel comfortable and loved in any way possible.

If you use binders or any thing of the sort she will make sure that it's comfortable and doesn't hurt you. Will help you find comfortable binders in stores or online.

Will remind you to take them off before you head to bed, she always makes sure you're okay and can kind of act like a mom at times. But it's only because she cares.

If someone misgenders you she will politely respond to them what your correct pronouns are.

If they continue anyway (to be rude) she will get her book out and chop them, grabbing your arm gently and leading you somewhere else where they aren't around.

She loves and cares for you so much ❤❤

AYYY MY BOY

Supporting and excited for you tbh.

He will definitely go shop for clothes with you that help you appear more masculine.

Picks only the "cool" outfits for you and does a photoshoot with you later with his fuckin motorcycle in the background

Totally let's you borrow his clothes too if anything

I feel like he would know more about gender identity since I think he also had questioned his identity before.

If you wear binders he's more chill about reminding you to take it off for bed, or if you need a new comfortable one. He isn't a mom, he's more chill and relaxed about it but that doesn't mean he doesn't care. He just doesn't wanna overwhelm you.

If someone refers to you with the wrong pronouns (purposely) he'd just be like "not cool man." glare at them and also leave with you.

He will fight someone for you istg, you gotta hold him back sometimes/hj

I'm so sorry if this is vague and it took a while, i just wanted to make sure I did everything correctly. Let me know if I've made a mistake anywhere!

All the love to the trans community ❤

#soul eater #maka albarn #soul eater x reader #soul eater evans x reader #maka albarn x reader #soul eater evans

16 notes · View notes

swanlake1998 · 3 years

Text

Article: For transgender dancers, progress can't come fast enough

Date: March 8, 2020

By: Avichai Scher

Sean Dorsey was tired of being the only transgender dancer in the room. So he took the bold step of starting his own company, the San Francisco-based Sean Dorsey Dance, and become the first openly trans director of a full-time dance company. It was a milestone for transgender and gender-nonconforming dancers and choreographers, and Dorsey hoped it would lead to a more inclusive dance world.

The company is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year, yet Dorsey remains the only openly trans artistic director of a full-time dance company in the country.

“We’ve definitely made progress since I started, when there was really no context for institutional or social support of trans dancers,” Dorsey said. “But there’s still a major lack of representation across the dance world.”

Dance, especially older forms such as ballet and modern dance, is mostly structured around strict gender lines. While the growing acceptance of transgender people in the United States has extended somewhat into the art form, trans dancers are often forced to choose between being their authentic selves and career opportunities.

Issues start in training

Dorsey’s choreography often deals with trans issues, and he is committed to being an advocate in the dance world for transgender people. But even in his own company, Dorsey is the only trans performer.

“In San Francisco, at least, I don’t have the luxury of holding an audition for trans dancers,” he said. “There just aren’t very many at the professional level.”

Dorsey said this is largely because barriers for trans and gender-nonconforming dancers start at a young age — as most training programs are gender-specific.

Jayna Ledford, 19, made headlines when she came out as transgender in an Instagram post in 2018. She was studying at the Kirov Ballet Academy at the time, a traditional ballet program in Washington, D.C. It was the first time a dancer at an acclaimed ballet school had publicly come out as trans.

Classes at Kirov, like most ballet conservatories, are generally separated by sex assigned at birth, and when students are combined, teachers offer different steps for men and women. Ledford, however, found ways to get the training that matched her gender identity, including dancing on her toes in special pointe shoes, which is done almost exclusively by women and requires unique training.

“I wanted to do what the females were doing,” she said. “I’d do it on the side and not pay attention to what the guys were doing. I’d also stay after class and practice pointe technique with my female friends.”

She hadn’t had the training other females at the school had, but she was hoping to transfer from the men’s program to the women’s.

“I knew I had a lot of catching up to do in terms of pointe work,” she said. “But just being in the room with the females, that’s what I wanted.”

The Kirov Academy told Ledford she could not join the women’s program unless she physically transitioned. Ledford was not ready for that, so she left the school. She was disappointed but now says she understands the academy’s position. The school confirmed Ledford’s account but declined to comment.

Maxfield Haynes, 22, who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, said the large, prestigious ballet school where they trained was not supportive of someone presenting as male wearing pointe shoes.

It wasn’t until Haynes enrolled at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University that they were able to explore the more feminine aspects of ballet technique. Ledford also found higher education to be more supportive than a conservatory. She now studies at Montclair State University and practices pointe technique daily.

Lack of professional opportunities

After NYU, Haynes chose to dance with Complexions Contemporary Ballet partially because the company is explicitly supportive of gender fluidity, and even had a specific role for Haynes that is gender-nonconforming. In the David Bowie tribute piece, “Stardust,” Haynes dons pointe shoes and was partnered with male dancers.

“It was everything I could have dreamed of,” Haynes said of the role. “As nonbinary, I like to get to show all aspects of gender. I don’t think about dancing like a man or a woman, just myself.”

Opportunities to dance roles that are gender-nonconforming are rare in the concert dance world, even if dancers are becoming more open about being gender-nonconforming in their offstage lives. And those who want to physically transition face a stark choice, as none of the major dance companies in the U.S. currently have openly transgender dancers on their rosters.

Alby Sabrina Pretto recently made the difficult choice to begin physically transitioning with hormone replacement therapy at the expense of her performing career. She was a dancer with Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo, an all-male comedy troupe, for eight years. While she got to dance in pointe shoes, the style of the company is rooted in the comedy of men portraying women, which ultimately wasn’t how Pretto identified.

“There were moments I wanted to do things like a ballerina would and be ethereal and pretty,” Pretto said. “To dance like a woman.”

She knew that physically transitioning would mean she could not continue with the company.

“I wanted to have a career, and that slowed down my decision to transition,” Pretto said. “I waited until I felt like I had done what I wanted to do there.”

Liz Harler, general manager of Les Ballet Trockadero, said in a statement that transitioning does not disqualify dancers from the company.

“Dancers who expressed interest in transitioning to female have been told that their job would not be in jeopardy, though none have chosen to do so while continuing with the Trocks’ rigorous dancing and touring schedule,” Harler said.

Both Ledford and Pretto hope for the day when they can attend an audition and be hired without having to explain their gender identity.

Ledford said. “I’ll audition as any other woman. If I get in, then I’ll sit down and talk with them.”

Ledford is “optimistic” that this can happen in the next few years, but Pretto isn’t so sure.

“I am not naive, I know I cannot just audition for a major ballet company and join the female corps de ballet,” Pretto said. “But I would love for that to happen for me. It’s the ultimate dream.”

Her skepticism is partly based on the experience of her former Trockadero colleague, Chase Johnsey, who is gender fluid. He made headlines in 2018 when he was cast in a female ensemble role in the English National Ballet’s production of “Sleeping Beauty,” though it was not on pointe, and the heavy costume concealed his body. No additional female roles came his way afterward.

The question of who gets opportunities as a dancer often comes down to the taste of directors and producers and what they imagine their audiences want to see, not just ability.

Pretto danced a couple of character roles recently with Eglevsky Ballet, a growing ballet ensemble on Long Island, New York. The director, Maurice Brandon Curry, said he would consider Pretto for a female ensemble role next year, because her pointe work is “excellent,” though he wonders how some in the audience will react.

“Casting Alby in a female role would not be about passing as female, but I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge my concern about an audience member who was offended,” Curry said. “But art is not prejudice; it’s about inclusivity and open minds. If someone is not willing to have that experience, they don’t have a legitimate place in our audiences.”

Signs of change

Dorsey said that even having discussions about gender identity in dance is progress from when he started, and he’s encouraged by changes he’s seen: Most theaters either already have gender-neutral restrooms or create them for his company’s visit; trans and gender-nonconforming students attend his workshops in various cities and share with him their efforts to be accepted in their dance communities; the San Francisco Ballet persuaded him to lead a training session on gender identity in dance; and he was on the cover of Dance Magazine.

Ledford was recently a “Gaynor Girl,” a spokesperson for the popular pointe shoe brand Gaynor Minded. Pretto said she worked up the courage to use the ladies' locker room at one of New York’s busiest studios, Steps on Broadway, and no one seemed to mind.

Still, the art form has not yet caught up to reflect the audience, Dorsey said. His company has worked in over 30 cities in the U.S. and abroad, and he is usually the first trans choreographer a theater has presented. But he said the response from audiences is almost always positive.

“Dance audiences are ready and hungry for trans voices,” he said. “It's our dance institutions that are still catching up.”

#article #ballet #an article from last year but still important #sean dorsey #jayna ledford #maxfield haynes #alby sabrina pretto

125 notes · View notes

wearequeer-andwearehere · 3 years

Note

Hey! I've been questioning my gender for, like, two months and a half... And each day I feel more confused. I'm afab and I have contrasting feelings about my gender. When I started questioning, I didn't even know that your gender could be independent from your body. I only knew about the existence of binary trans people, and I'm sure I'm not a binary trans. During these months, I slowly unlearned the biases I had about gender and I tried to define what gender actually is to me. At first I thought I was agender, because I just couldn't put my finger on that so called "gender identity". Then I realised that I have some sort of gender feelings, but it's hard to define them.

I often feel like a mixture of boy, girl and agender. Sometimes I think I'm just a cis girl who's overthinking this. Sometimes I think I'm partially a boy. Sometimes I don't care about gender at all and I just want to be seen as a person. Sometimes I just don't want people to say that I'm a girl. And I hate all kind of gender stereotypes and roles. I've always have.

I usually present pretty masculine. Some days I do that just because I like the type of clothes (and I know that gender expression isn't necessarily gender identity). Some days instead I dress like that because I want to be seen as a male, or as a gender neutral individual. On those days, the way I dress and behave gives me gender euphoria.

One label that could fit is genderfluid. It's one of the first labels I learned about and... Something clicked. The problem is that I don't know if I can use it, because I'm afraid I could be intruding into a community I'm not actually part of. That's because the place where I live is so centered around the binary that, if someone asked me something like "are you male or female?", I would just say female. Maybe it's because it's easier, or maybe it's because in my head I see myself as a female - just for this, not for everything else.

So, I don't know if I'm actually a girl or not. I don't know if I'm nonbinary or not. It's like... I say that I'm a girl to avoid trouble, but this fact of being female feels like a burden most of the time (even though I don't have dysphoria). Identifying as genderfluid, nonbinary, genderqueer feels so liberating instead. It's like I've got the freedom to create my own gender, depending on how I feel. But I'm also scared to identify as those labels, because then I couldn't come out, and I would continue to live in a binary world and say I'm a girl. I already know that sometimes I will mean it when I say I'm a girl, and sometimes I will feel alienated and weird.

Do you have any advice? Thank you in advance for having the patience of reading this :)

Hey, mate, as a dysphoric binary trans man, I am telling you—you belong in the community. You’re not intruding at all—this is your community. Even if you’re not binary trans, even if you’re not dysphoric, if you’re trans, you’re trans. Full stop. You’re accepted here. We love you, alright? This is as much your community as it is ours. You’re welcome here.

If identifying as genderfluid, genderqueer and nonbinary makes you feel happy, use those labels! They make you happy and that’s what matters!

And just a side note, you’re saying that saying you’re female feels like a burden/alienating and weird, and my dude, that sounds like social dysphoria. I don’t know if you’re talking about the misogyny that comes with being a girl, but if you’re not talking about that, then it sounds like it could be social dysphoria.

Social dysphoria is when you feel discomfort and unease when pretending to be the wrong gender and being referred to as the wrong gender. E.g, a trans man feeling uneasy and uncomfy if he’s closeted and someone asks him his gender and he has to lie and say he’s a girl for safety, that discomfort is a form of dysphoria—physical dysphoria isn’t the only type of dysphoria.

If the labels make you happy, go for it friend! And yeah, it sucks that the world is so binary, but the trans community will always love and accept you. There are tons of nonbinary and genderqueer and genderfluid people out there just like you who’ll know what it’s like and you’ll have a community, and as a binary trans man I may not understand your exact experiences but we have shared solidarity in being trans I’ll always love and support you no matter what, alright?

We’re family here, and I’ve got you, little sibling. You’re gonna be okay, you are valid as you are, you’re allowed to be genderfluid and nondysphoric, you’re welcome here and I know it’s hard being trans in this world but we’ve got your back and we love you, and it’s going to be okay.

I hope I could help you out! Sending all my love <3

- Ryan

#ask #anon #helping out a questioning person

11 notes · View notes

radiomayak · 3 years

Note

Why do you think it’s okay to write a representation of a country as a trans and homophobic person when they’re supposed to represent ALL of their population? LGBT+ people suffer in Russia, and making the rep of their country hate them is offensive. Also, your transphobic threads need to stop. It’s just painful to watch.

Thank you for your honest feedback! It’s really useful for me to hear how it’s being received (impact over intent.)

If you care to read more, I’ll be putting some of my intent under a readmore, but since it is bothering the community, I will cease creating content about those issues.

If you’ve found my content triggering or would like to receive support related to LGBTQ+ discrimination online, there’s a bunch of resources here: https://www.glaad.org/resourcelist As well as the TREVOR project hotline, which isn’t only a suicide hotline- you can call them for urgent support needs as well. They also have online chatrooms, text lines, and forum spaces to give and receive support. Read more at https://www.thetrevorproject.org/

Ivan is a bisexual man, so anything he expresses against the LGBTQ community is also something he’s holding against his personal self. The subjugation queer people face in some parts of Russia isn’t something I thought someone like canon Russia would choose to stand against via being socially active and out-and-proud, especially in the way he handles conflict through intimidation and threats before all else. So, while making this muse, I decided that he would be effectively stuck in the middle of those two worlds.

What leads me to have him express a level of homophobia is him having a big collection of interpersonal anxiety (read: coercive ways of communicating, abandonment fears, deep feelings of inadequacy) that he uses to squash or invalidate or attempt to suppress what he feels towards men. When he deals with women, he continually appraises the situation and himself through a lens of aggressive and polarizing sense of what is “masculine.”

As the muse developed, I became able to name patterns in how I was writing him that suggest mental illness— yes, that’s related to why he’s homophobia/transphobic. This muse is a person who has remained somewhat steadily resilient, but whose resources have dried up recently: effectively, he’s facing a lifetime of absent or otherwise poor interpersonal relationships all at once as well as projecting stigma about what it means to struggle this way onto himself. The stigma around mental health in Russia can’t be ignored either, and is constantly battling with what little self-esteem he has left. If he weren’t a nation, the level of neglect he experienced could have stunted his neurological growth, and it’s only the ability to absorb knowledge through a large number of people through mystical means that led him to be able to operate in a semblance of normalcy.

I work hard that any inclusion of transphobia isn’t a denial of identity, because Ivan does understand that level of the trans experience of being ____. Most of his comments are lack of education-type deals (and it’s no one’s job to educate him, but he is not educating himself or engaging in a lot of queer spaces for fear of retribution and simultaneously as a form of self punishment) like thinking of gender in a binary, referring to personal traits as gendered, deadnaming when referring to someone’s past… things that you learn quickly on queer platforms like here and TikTok and maybe even YouTube. Ivan is not engaging with those online communities, either. Even with interacting with nonbinary people, like he’s done in a few threads, he doesn’t question identity but he never seeks to expand his knowledge... he’s too busy shitting bricks about minor social conduct norms. His mental energy is going towards a state of psychological survival, not learning or connecting properly with other people.

Some people don’t think of things this way, but I like to think that nations’ metacognitive appraisal of why they’re holding an opinion cannot discern what is personal (like a specific memory of something that happened to them) or universal to their representative area (like certain folk songs Ivan can recall even without hearing them before, other pop culture, and publicly significant events like bread lines.) Ivan feels both the support within and around the LGBTQ+ community in Russia as well as the homophobia and queer erasure. Within his own experience set, he has to settle what it means to be a survivor of sexual assault and be attracted to people of that same gender and physique, and what it means to love another person when his idea of family is fundamentally coercive and rigid. People are complex, and we as humans lean onto attacking the other for a variety of reasons... I intended Ivan’s homophobia to clearly be about more than just the community it attacks, but I recognize using something like that, that causes real suffering and loss of life, as a theme that isn’t directly related to the betterment of human life within fiction can be exploitative and I apologize. Now for the stupid sappy bit I didn’t want to write because it’s so backhanded to claim to like something that hurts other people: As a queer person myself, I’ve also found it personally useful to admit to Ivan’s homophobia and involve it in his thinking, since I can fight back at cisheteronormative assumptions I make in my own mind and become a freer person, but I understand now that my actions are harmful and I will reflect on them.

#ooc #response #tw homophobia #tw transphobia

8 notes · View notes

crossdreamers · 3 years

Text

Grandmother Writes Love Letter to Transgender Granddaughter

In a moving letter Maryann Durmer tells her transgender granddaughter that she is so happy that she came out, and that she supports her 100%.

The 75-year-old, white, heterosexual cisgender woman comes from a traditionalist and pretty intolerant background. Still, as she points out in an article over at HuffPost, striving to understand people who are different from herself is extremely important to her.

She writes:

Like many others, I realized that organized religion messed me up and that I needed to rethink my biases and understanding of sexuality and gender. Brainwashing takes time to undo.

Often it means having (or creating) a wide enough circle of family and friends with different backgrounds to open one’s eyes to our shared humanity...

Maybe, in some cases, understanding a transgender person is easier for a non-family member. There are no emotional bonds and no history with that person to look back on and reminisce about. But when it’s your grandchild who is transgender, it’s complicated. I worry that I may do or say something wrong by accident. Saying a new name after knowing a person for 20-plus years isn’t easy.

It’s not just about my granddaughter changing. It’s also that I have no “how-to” manual for processing my memories of my former grandson. All I know is that I love my granddaughter.

I have been researching, reading and watching movies and documentaries to aid me in better understanding and empathizing with what transgender people experience.

From the documentary “Born To Be,” which helped me to learn about gender confirmation surgeries and other health care options for transgender and nonbinary individuals who choose to transition medically, to Susan Stryker’s book “Transgender History,” which helped me to understand the importance of the movements that have led to creating a space for social justice for the trans community, this new knowledge helps me to support my granddaughter.

“I cannot walk in my granddaughter’s shoes,” Maryann writes, “but I can do my best to continue reaching out with kindness and acceptance, praying that she is protected from the hate and intolerance often expressed openly by people in the state where she lives.”

She also thanks Elliot Page for coming out and using his fame and visibility to help other people who are struggling to be their authentic selves.

Read the whole article here.

Maryanne’s granddaughter.

Photos from twitter.

See also: “My spouse of ten years is trans! I feel like I’m meeting her for the first time, bc her personality was so restricted as a man”

#trans #transgender #lgbt #lgbtqa #trans family #transphobia #mtf

24 notes · View notes

imadethisblogfor1post · 4 years

Text

What is gender? Please send help

Content warning: ignorance about transgender issues, discussion of sexism, well-meaning-ally-who-doesn’t-quite-get-it-ism. Callouts welcome and encouraged.

I want to start by saying that despite my profound lack of understanding about what gender is, I don’t want to invalidate anyone. I want so badly to be a supportive ally to trans and nonbinary folks, and at first I did a lot of reading to try to understand, but no matter how much I read, I stayed confused. So eventually, I gave up. After all, I don’t have to have a deep understanding of an identity to know that people are deserving of respect. If calling someone a particular name or using a particular set of pronouns will help them know that I love and respect them, then of course, of course, I will do that. Nothing I am about to say changes that.

The only problem is, not understanding makes it really hard to call out bigotry, because I don’t always see it. This post was triggered by a recent transphobic tweetstorm by JK Rowling, and I think I get why most of those were bad, but with some I’m still more sympathetic than I’m comfortable with. This continues a trend I’ve seen for a while: some of the most helpful pieces of reading material have been posts from radical feminists that I found myself nodding along to, only to find that the point of the post my friend was sharing was the attached comment and call-out. These served as huge wake-up calls, but it still wasn’t enough to explain to me what I wasn’t getting. More than that, even after the call outs, even after knowing that some of the points of the original post were transphobic, I sometimes can’t help feeling that some part of it rang true. Therefore, my problems as an ally come in two parts. One, I deeply lack the understanding to call out bigotry in others and myself, and two, there are some real conflicts between the feminism I subscribe to and certain aspects of trans ideology (ideology is not a good word to use here, but I’m at a loss for what else to call it)(sorry).

I’ll start with the second— it’s the worse one anyhow. The crux of the problem is this: there are distinct consequences to being assigned female at birth. We are treated differently, we are socialized differently, and no matter how progressive your parents are, it’s impossible to completely escape. Put simply, cis women and trans women do not experience 100% the same types of oppression. This is not to say either experiences more or less pain, this is not to say either is more or less deserving of support, this is not to say that we as feminists should not strive to be intersectional (we should). All I am saying is that inclusion cannot come at the expense of erasing or silencing the experiences of people who were assigned female at birth.

I have a few specific concerns on this matter - these are the points that make me sympathetic to radical feminism (even when I see them called terfs, as ashamed as I am to admit it).

One, we need to be allowed to use words about female anatomy without being called terfs. It’s not okay to exclude people and imply that all women have uteri and all people with uteri are women, but it needs to be okay to talk about uteri.This one comes up less often, but when it does come up I find myself extremely indignant. I am sincerely sorry that talking about anatomy triggers dysphoria, but in a world where female anatomy is treated as inherently explicit, and people have been silenced in legislative settings simply for using those anatomical terms, we can’t afford to be silenced within our own communities.

Two, it’s not okay to shout people down for how they experience attraction. I really shouldn’t have to say this, but too often I’ve seen lesbians pressured or called transphobic for not being interested in being with someone with a penis. It’s not uncommon for lesbians to experience compulsory attraction to men before recognizing their sexuality. That, combined with the prevalence of sexual violence against women and people who are assigned female at birth, makes me extremely skeptical of anyone whose response to rejection is to attempt to shame them into changing their mind. Again, I’m sorry, and it sucks that it causes dysphoria, but no one is entitled to anyone else’s attraction. It is not okay to pressure anyone else into a relationship or sex, regardless of the circumstances. I myself am gray-ace and panromantic - suffice to say I don’t really get how being attracted to genitals works, but if that’s how it works for them, then that’s how it works for them. If we need different words for “hi I’m attracted to the gender of woman” and “hi I’m attracted to female anatomy” then so be it, but honestly people probably shouldn’t have to disclose that much information right out the gates, and both should be allowed to call themselves lesbians. There’s a balance to be struck here, but I’m sick of seeing lesbians alienated for this, and it needs to be addressed.

Three, there need to be spaces for people who were assigned female at birth, without people who were assigned male at birth (unless they are invited as a guest). As mentioned above, sexual and gender based violence against AFAB people is incredibly common. A lot of us have trauma around it. We need spaces where we can talk about those experiences without being shouted down, the same way trans people need spaces to talk about their experiences. This is a bit of a slippery slope - obviously there need to be intersectional spaces as well, and it’s not okay to exclude people, as long as everyone is being respectful. But it’s important to make space for all of us, and understand that our experiences are not uniformly the same.

I’m not sure why this has been such an issue. Some part of me that I hate to acknowledge suggests that part of the problem is that people who are assigned male at birth tend to be more entitled than people who are assigned female at birth, simply because that’s how they were taught and socialized when they were younger, but that brings up a whole slew of other issues, and I’d hate to paint with too broad a brush. Perhaps it’s just that the fight for inclusion needs to be fierce and thorough, and any space where one isn’t included is treated as an attack, even if that isn’t the intent. No matter the reason, we need to understand that we are not all the same, and that’s not a bad thing.

In a roundabout way, this brings me to my other barrier to being a good ally: I just don’t *get* gender. It’s not that I haven’t tried. As I mentioned early on in this post, when I first realized how much I didn’t understand about gender I did so much reading. I watched videos. I listened to podcasts. I went to a workshop (though truth be told the workshop did more harm than good). And what I got is this: it sounds like there’s a common experience, some strong internal certainty that composes gender identity, that says “I am a woman”, or “I am a man”, or “I am neither”, as the case may be. I have never felt this certainty. There is no emotion that tells me I am a woman, there is no internal compass, there is no sense of “no, that’s not right” when I imagine myself as a man, except a sense of unfamiliarity with the idea. As far as I’m concerned, I’m a woman because that’s what I’ve always been, and that’s how I’ve always been treated. It would be odd to use he/him pronouns for me because no one’s ever done that, and it would cause confusion, but that’s about the end of my issue with it.

This is, of course, directly in conflict with much of the narrative around gender these days. There must be something I’m missing, but I can never seem to pin down what gender actually *is* and every analogy and metaphor seems to confuse me even more.

Gender must not be biological sex, because trans people exist. Nonbinary people exist. Both are valid, and for all that I’m not a very good ally, I know that much.

Gender must not be personality traits, because, that’s personality. There are people on all areas of the gender spectrum with all types of personality traits. Don’t tell me that women can’t be brash, that men can’t be sweet.They are.

Gender must not be how you dress, because hey, we should all be able to dress however we want! How you dress doesn’t change your identity. (This part is gender expression though I think, if I’ve followed the articles correctly) Butch women exist, feminine men exist, androgynous people exist, all are valid.

Gender must not be gender roles, because honestly, fuck that. Gender roles are a tool of patriarchal oppression, and I’m not about to sit here and that be all there is to gender identity. If it helps you feel more at home in your skin then more power to ya, but that can’t be all there is.

So then, what is it? What is left? This isn’t a rhetorical question. I have genuinely tried to find answers to this and I have never been more lost. When I went to the trans allyship workshop mentioned above, I was told by the others at my table that to them being a woman was being nurturing, valuing family, being empathetic, being a caretaker. I was so relieved that we ran out of time before it was my turn. I don’t know what being a woman is to me, it’s just what I’ve always been. The only thing it has ever meant was shame about my body, shame about my period, enduring r*pe jokes and kitchen jokes from my guy friends, always having to be the one to “seduce the guard” when we played d&d, and other, darker things I don’t want to mention. It’s only ever been painful, and fearful, and ashamed. On the one hand, it means I’m inclined to believe trans women when they say that gender isn’t a choice— after all, who would choose this? But on the other, I know there must be more to this, something that I’m missing because my identity is too deeply rooted in oppression. I am ripping those roots out one by one, but they go deep, and I’m scared that without them I won’t have any point of reference left.

I want to understand gender, but even if I never do, I will always respect the identity and pronouns that people claim as their own. It is never my intent to dehumanize, or exclude. I want to be able to call out bigotry, I want to be able to stand up for my trans and nonbinary friends, I want to be sure that I don’t say something to them that causes them harm.

But at its core: I don’t get it. What is gender? What makes a gender what it is?

Again, this is non-rhetorical. If you have the time and energy, I welcome any information, any resources, any anecdotes, anything at all to help me understand. I’ve looked, hard, but I won’t pretend to have read anywhere near the full lexicon of literature on this subject. If I’ve said something that upset or angered you, please don’t hesitate to call me out. Yell at me, if that’s what this post inspires, and I’ll do my best to learn from it, or at the very least maybe it will serve as a wake-up call for someone else. Or, if you agree, I’d be grateful to know that too. It can get pretty lonely feeling like there’s some manual to gender that everyone else has that somehow I never got.

TL;DR: What is gender? I want to learn but I’m hella lost and struggling to be both a trans ally and a radical feminist, and I was so afraid of offending anyone that I literally made a blog just for this post, which is silly because I don’t even really use my main blog. I just know that if you’re looking for callouts, this is where you go.

3 notes · View notes

the-truest-sentence-i-know · 4 years

Text

Shared Life Experiences

Chapter One: Coming Out

Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe

Pairing: Steve Rogers x James “Bucky” Buchanan Barnes (Stucky)

Summary: So much has changed in the seventy years that Steve was under, and now, in the 21st century, he realizes that he no longer has to hide those parts of himself that he used to.

But it isn't that easy, because when Bucky comes back into his life, he remembers all those feelings they’d had to hide back then that they wouldn’t have to now. But he isn't sure if that’s what Bucky wants - because it's been a while and feelings may have changed.

ao3 || ff.net || wattpad

The future was different.

Steve knew that that wasn’t exactly a profound statement, but the difference hit him every day. Many were positive, some negative – thought more in a nostalgic than objective way.

One night, not too long after the Battle of New York, they’d all been lounging in the tv room of Avengers tower, half-watching some drama or other. He hadn’t really been paying attention, and when he glanced over at the screen, he saw what looked like to be two men on a date.

His first thought was that this must be a parody of some kind. But as the scene went on, the romantic tone never wavered.

He was so enthralled by this couple, these two men in love, on the screen, that he didn’t notice the others watching him carefully.

Tony, Natasha, and Bruce watched him cautiously, uncertain of how he’d react. Of course, they hoped for the best, after all, Steve was a very decent guy, and he hadn’t been weird about women or people of colour at all so far. But, on the other hand, he had grown up in the thirties.

On the screen, the blond one knelt down and reached into his coat for a ring box. Steve inhaled sharply, eyes stinging, as the other man nodded tearfully. The two embraced, laughing as they lost their balance and tumbled to the floor.

Steve became aware of the others watching him and rose quickly. “Uh, bathroom,” he muttered before rushing out of the room. He knew how it looked, what the others must be thinking, but he didn’t want to be seen having such a strong emotional reaction to a damned soap opera of all things.

He made his way down to an empty hallway and leaned against the wall, eyes closed. He took a few shaky breaths, trying to keep the tears at bay.

Flashes of memory plagued his mind. Sneers. Hurtful words thrown like punches. Hiding in dark places from actual punches. Better memories accompanied them. Laughing blue eyes. Knowing smiles. Kisses in dark hiding places. Small cots and tangled limbs.

But always in secret.

“Steve?” a quiet voice asked.

Steve nearly jumped and quietly turned away to wipe any trace of tears from his eyes. When he turned back, Natasha stood there, arms crossed, leaning against the wall, looking concerned.

“Hey, Nat,” he said, grimacing at the hoarseness of his voice.

“You good?” she asked, and, as Steve was starting to realize with her, she really wanted to know. And he didn’t know what to say.

To say something out loud that has always been a secret between two people, never vocalized in a voice above a whisper, something that’s never been seen in full sunlight, is a feat nigh herculean.

So he just shook his head.

Nat simply pursed her lips, nodded and pulled him into a hug.

LGBT history was added to his list of research topics an important category on its own. He made his way tearfully through documentaries about Stonewall with Nat at his side. He watched his first pride parade from a distance, not quite ready yet to participate.

Finally, when Steve had once again pulled Nat out of the room to tell her this new thing he’d learned about (Elton John!), she’d said, “Look, man, I don’t want to pressure you or anything, but have you thought of coming out to the others? I promise that they’d be super chill about it.”

Steve looked at her uncertainly. “Are you sure, I mean, I like them and all, but…”

“100% sure,” she said. “They know I’m pan and, hell, I’m pretty sure there’s something going on between Tony and Bruce, with all that tension.”

The benefit of the internet was that research was so much easier – not just academic research, but research into how people did things, their stories and experiences. Steve read nearly every article about how to come out to one’s friends. But, no matter how much research he did, he didn’t feel quite ready.

That was, until one day, as he was about to head out for a run, he heard his name on the news that played almost perpetually on the tv. He leaned into the room to see what it was about.

A politician who looked vaguely familiar was on the screen – white hair, clean-cut – “… he’s the kind of hero we need as a role model, you see. A traditional man, from a simpler time. I would much prefer my sons to look up to Captain America than Iron Man – who drinks excessively and has a new woman on his arm every time you see him.”

“I’ll have you know that Pepper and I are going steady!” Tony called from the kitchen. “Although we do have an agreement.” He winked at Bruce, who rolled his eyes.

The news host came back on the screen. “That was Senator Johnson at a press earlier today is leading a small faction of senators against L-17, the proposed nation-wide ban of conversion therapy for minors.”

“Obviously, I support the LGBT+ community,” Johnson said a bit awkwardly. “But I also support parents’ rights to raise their children as they see fit. This law is an infringement of people’s freedom of religion.”

Steve’s jaw clenched. He had definitely heard of this guy before – notoriously homophobic, but tried to keep up the nice, reasonable guy routine.

“Hey, Tony,” he said. “How long does it take to set up a charitable organization?”

Not very long at all, apparently. After a week of meetings and long hours, Steve found himself with a door between him and a crowd of reporters.

Tony came in a grinned. “Don’t know how you did it, but here are more reporters in there than there were when I announced I was Iron Man.”

“Well, Captain America doesn’t hold a lot of press conferences,” Nat said. “So, they know it’s big.”

Steve smiled, trying to look confident. He’d never liked talking to the press, even back in the day. Then he’d just had to talk about beating the Nazis and try to keep up morale. Now he was about to say something to the whole country that he’d never really said out loud before. He hadn’t really had to come out to the rest of the gang per se. They had kind of figured it out through his determination to get this done as quickly as possible. A kind of silent understanding.

But this had to be him. and maybe he was doing it out of spite – he did wish he could see X’s face – but the more he thought about it, he knew it was bigger than that.

He wanted to make sure that no one in this country had to grow up like he did – hiding.

So, with one last deep breath, a reassuring nod from Bruce, a smile from Nat, and a slap on the back from Tony, he stepped through the door and out in front of the crowd.

Questions exploded at him and he quickly walked over to the mic. “Hey, everyone. Glad you could make it. Uh, I’ll take questions in just a sec.”

The crowd quieted down, and Steve took a moment to clear his head and slow his racing heart. “I am here today to announce the launch of my charitable organization, In the Light. And it will be for the support of LGBT+ teens across the country.

The reporters clamoured with questions again. Steve was sure he heard Johnson’s name thrown around. He gestured for them to quiet and continued. “This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, but certain recent events have made me realize that I am sometimes associated with, well, ideas and values I disagree with a lot.” He paused. “Those who yearn for a simpler time, when things were more traditional, must remember that people have always been gay, bi, pan, nonbinary, asexual, all the things people are now. And I’d know, because, well, I’m living proof.” Mutters grew. “I was born in 1914, and,” he paused for a fraction of a second. “I am gay.”

He stopped again as the crowd burst out with questions and waited patiently for them to quiet down. “And while I don’t want to dwell up the negatives, I do want to be honest. It wasn’t always easy. Sometimes, it really sucked. Everything had to be secret and hidden – and sure, we found ways around it, but that didn’t improve the circumstances. I want to help make sure that no one has to hide like I did.” His voice shook a little and he took a moment to clear his head. “Cause no kid should be ashamed of who they are.”

Satisfied that he had said enough, Steve took questions from the reporters.

“Are you referring to Senator Johnson’s statements last week?”

“I…” Steve’s diplomatic nature almost took over but remembered all the harm Johnson could do. He was really just another bully. “Hearing him connect me with his homophobic views did encourage me to go public with this earlier than I had intended, and one of the organization’s first focuses will be on the law banning conversion therapy and getting it passed. But this is bigger than one bigoted senator – this is about helping the kids who suffer because of people like him.”

After a couple of questions from other reporters, a much younger reporter from a news source he didn’t recognize, asked. “Just wanna say, love this a lot. We stand with you. Could you say trans rights?”

Steve smiled. “Absolutely. Trans rights.”

The kid – because really, it was a kid – grinned.

“Well, I’d say that’s a perfect conclusion for this,” Steve said. “Thank you all so much. Call your reps and tell them to vote for Bill L-17 and donate if you can. Thank you.”

When he got through the door, he saw Nat, Bruce, and Tony all watching the screen. They looked a little teary-eyed.

“Great job, Cap,” Tony said. “Way to stick it to that son of a bitch Johnson… And help the kids too, of course.”

Bruce merely nodded and smiled.

Nat grinned. “Told you they’d be chill with it.” When Steve shot her a look, she added. “The country, I mean.” She paused. “Well, obviously, you’ll get hate. Like a lot. I would recommend staying off the internet for like two weeks at least.”

Steve noticed that his heart rate had gone back to normal and he looked at them. This was good.

Time passed and he got used to people knowing. The old panicky feeling in his chest when the topic came up subsided. The organization grew. The bill passed – for which Tony threw a party.

Steve got to travel all around the country, opening up shelters and homes for kids who were kicked out or felt unsafe at home. He helped reps in various states push for LGBT+ inclusive sex-ed curriculum.

And he talked to the kids. That was simultaneously the best and worst part. The best because they were all wonderful, and smart, and funny, and brave, and strong. So strong. The worst because of their stories. The stories his so close to home sometimes that hall he could do was give them a hug and tell hem things would get better as he tried not to cry.

He didn’t realize how emotionally draining it was until one day Bruce came to visit him in his hotel in Miami and found him staring at a wall.

“Y’alright there, Cap?” he asked.

“Mmm?” Steve said, not looking away. “Yeah, I’m fine. Long day.”

It took Bruce a little bit to get the truth out of him, but when he did, he just sighed and said, “If you go on like this, sooner or later, you’re gonna burn out and it’ll take months to get back to normal.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“How long had you been staring at that wall before I came in?”

Steve shrugged. “Not long.” When Bruce raised his eyebrows, he continued. “Like twenty minutes. You’re right. But I can’t stop.”

“You don’t have to stop, just don’t push yourself so hard, okay? It’s not just you, there are other people who work for this organization. Like actual therapists who are trained to deal with this. You don’t have to go full hands-off, just, you know, take a break every so often.”

As it turned out, the break from In the Light would come in the form of Avengers work. Steve left the organization in the hands of some trustee employees as his whole world turned upside down for a while.

And then Bucky was back. Bucky who had been by his side as long as he could remember before everything happened. Bucky who had shared a bed with him since they were teenagers and he had started living with Bucky’s family.

Bucky, who had kissed him in a dark alleyway at age fourteen. His first kiss. For almost as long as they had known each other, they had been a little more than friends.

Bucky, who would arrange dates with all the gay and bi girls he knew so that they could go out together without suspicion. When they went to the movies with Ruth and Sarah, he and Bucky would sit on either side so the girls could sit together in the middle. Then they would stand guard outside a janitor’s closet afterwards talking loudly about the movie. And if worst came to worst and there was any trouble, they could keep the girls safe.

Bucky, who was now living with them once everything had quieted down. And while they got back into a reasonably familiar rhythm, there was a degree of separation.

Neither of them dared to step across that thin line between the platonic and the romantic. After all, it had been so long. Feelings may have changed.

#stucky #marvel #mcu #steve rogers #bucky barnes #steve rogers x bucky barnes #mlm #fanfic #fanfiction #my writing #shared life experiences

1 note · View note

donutsev · 4 years

Text

trans/lgbt+ hcs for DST Wilson:-

° Wilson is bi with a preference to men, and he's also Non-binary. The way I feel this works in canon is that Wilson stays away from his family to do science stuff (his passion) and also happens to be in his early 30's living on his own in solitude!! (Because i too, would move away to live in solitude to reach for my passion when my homophobic family members is so insistent on their belief that I shall be a good 'wife' to a cis man someday in order to achieve happiness)

-its also basically canon that KLEI had stated somewhere that wilson's big family cares about him alot, and yet he still decides to live in solitude in the middle of nowhere in the era of 19's?? REALLY makes you think... 🤔

-also Klei's statement that Wilson will never be happy. Although I know this is very much just a jokey thing about Wilson's continuous suffering in the constant, I'm just gonna say it's because he lives in a constant state of dissatisfaction. He loves science, and it's the one thing that keeps him going to further explore the things that exists within the world. But in doing so he neglected himself and how he feels as an individual, and then someday while being in the shared constant where he's surrounded by people whos NOT straight and doesn't give a crap about the sanctity of the gender binary (because I've decided that everyone in DST is lgbt HA), the realization just hits him. Hard.

° I mean it's not like he *doesn't* know, kind of doesn't know. He's just the type of guy who discovers things about himself that doesn't sit quite 'rightly' and reacted like "Hm.. quite peculiar.. I'll just let the me from the future deal with it!" And then just bails from the 'maybe I'm fuckin trans/not straight????' thoughts.

°I think somewhere through his lifetime he've probably sworn to never get married. This is the rebellious gay people who lives in society that doesn't allow them to strive pledge. And then he kept having crushes on men and guys he doesn't know what to do these feelings with. Just lock them down, focus on his newest scientific experiments. It's easier to not engage at all.

- but he've known for a looong time that he's not straight, but only now being surrounded by his supportive friends could he actually approach that topic and be like yeah I guess I do like men ! Wow that was it? I mean I still feel heavy but it does... felt good to finally say it and affirm it.

°anyway, nb Wilson is purely indulgent, though I do believe if the laws of the land allows it, Wilson would definitely be an NB character. Reason? First of all, Wilson in his heart, through and through does not give a fuck about the boundary of binary gender that is present in a society. Scientifically for him it's something to observe, kinda fascinating but it as a pivotal point of an organisational community? He thinks it's a loads of bullcrap.

-i think for a while he uses the masculine pronouns (he/him) and refers to himself as cis, though being in the constant he gets to complain about science and the absurdity of social constructs in a VERY loud manner. So the subject kept being brought up at some point, which he usually just say "the gender binary is a loads of bullshit! Don't you agree?" With his friends just reacting like "yeah Wilson yeah.. okay wilson we got u buddy" but they ain't telling on their assumptions yet because they want Wilson to figure that fact out himself

°Wilson is also strangely transfixed by the fact that WX78 refers themself as nonbinary and yet still presents themself masculinely. He supports this, but is also being rather chatty and questionative about this, thinking that it's for 'knowledge' but nah bro ur just trying to subsconciously relate to this nb gnc robot because ur ACTUALLY nb yourself... But u don't know that yet so u keep desperately asking trying to believe that nah, this is only curiosity, Im not asking because I'm interested to know what it's like, no REALLY, I can't be....u know...

- oh but he can be. And in fact, he did realize that he can *just* be. I'm thinking he's goin on his tirades again and it WAS Webber, and Webber responds something like "Gee I don't know Mr.Wilson, why don't you just step out of the box?" And Wilson being like "Well-first of all it's NOT that simple and..." A pause. A sudden realization. "Wait, actually it IS that simple. Oh my god."

° anyway my HC with nb Wilson is that this guy? Doesn't give a fuck about the societal concept of gender. He still uses mostly (he/) pronouns but he is VERY much nonbinary, but feeling close to masculinity he presents as such. And that's all for my Nb and mlm Wilson HC lol. Basically Wilson is a late bloomer in fully realizing his identity, and that's okay!

#my post #actually this was post for ALL dst chars headcanon but i got carried away

5 notes · View notes

radiantseraphina · 5 years

Note

Do you have any advice for writers who just. Don't have an experiance with important things? Like, if I wrote a story with a plot that followed conflicts I personally deal with, it would be whiny and dull. But I worry if I try to branch out to issues other people face, my lack of experiance on the topic will come across as plastic, or worse that im trying to profit off of other people's problems. But every story needs a conflict of some kind,,, and you get the picture

Hmm… If you feel comfortable with it, send me an ask with maybe some examples of what you’re thinking of, so I can give you some more specific advice. Because, like, writing about racism is quite different from writing, about, say child abuse? Also, I would argue that you shouldn’t so easily discount your own experiences and that there are, well, still plots you can write that wouldn’t fall into these, but that’s another post entirely. But here are my general thoughts in loose categories.

Firstly, do your research, preferably from people who have experienced whatever you want to write about. That’s crucial to approaching experiences that you don’t have. Aside from things like slaying dragons. Literal ones, of course. Metaphorical ones may still require research. But here’s the thing. Simply put, most problems are complicated. So how do you keep, for example, your story about racism/homophobia/sexism/ableist/etc. from sounding like a Very Special Episode™?

Keep in mind that most people know these things are bad. That’s why people always deny being them. Bob the Bigot isn’t homophobic; Bob the Bigot is ‘I don’t have a problem with gay people, BUT–’ So you need to go beyond X is Bad. And I’ll admit that’s something I struggle with. Incidentally, that’s why in DLU Alera’s racism stems from her insecurities (and her desire for money, which comes up later); Alera is constantly afraid of giving up her power, so she tries to make sure she has all of it and constantly tries to claim it’s what Bikaia would have wanted. Do I succeed? I don’t know. Maybe. She’s also loosely based off a certain president, but we won’t go there. So I suppose this boils down to ‘don’t just make someone racist/sexist/homophobic; give them reasons for being racist.’

And I don’t mean, ‘this person hates gay people because a bisexual woman named Seraphina murdered their wife.’ Your readers aren’t going to be fooled by such an obvious ploy for sympathy. Like, I do think you can have a character be whatever because they don’t think they are, and that tells us something other than Don’t Be Racist, Zelda. But do the extra work beyond X Is Bad.

(That being said, if you are looking at writing about racism/ableism/transphobia you would definitely want to ask someone besides me. As much as I’ve learned about these from academia and other places, I am still an able-bodied cisgender white lady.)

So now, you’ve made your plot something besides a Very Special Episode™. At this point, you need to look at your characters. Why? Because characters drive plot. So if you’re writing about sexism/racism/homophobia/ableism, you’re probably going to have characters who are very diverse. You might have a hard time writing about biphobia if you don’t have an bisexual people in your story. So at this point (assuming I’d already done my research about these complicated issues), I would look at TVTropes. I’m not even kidding. It’s a great source for finding all the negative stereotypes associated with any given group of people.

Now, here’s where it gets tricky. Some tropes you very obviously should not use. But you also need to use some judgment here. For example, just because the Dashing Hispanic is a trope…doesn’t mean you should simply go to the complete opposite end of the spectrum and never write a Hispanic swordsman, even when the setting would call for it, and make all your Hispanic characters as un-dashing and unattractive as possible. And really, a lot of things (but definitely not all!) can be fixed if you humanize your characters really well. So keep in mind that your Hispanic swordsman isn’t just a swordsman or defined solely by his swordsmanship. Just like you aren’t also just a student/writer/whatever. Or maybe you take away the dashing bit and turn him into a flustered mess anytime a man/woman/nonbinary pal pops into the room.

Incidentally, some tropes can also be a good starting point if you notice there is a lack of diversity in them. I’ve been wanting to, for example, write a female Swashbuckler character (and well as a lady Hannibal Lecter) for ages and just haven’t gotten around to it.

(I personally also look up sporkings (chapter by chapter critiques) and/or reviews of relevant books for tips. Right now, I’m following a sporking of Mists of Avalon, once considered the feminist Arthurian adaptation before it was revealed what a horrific person Bradley was. Do I like Mists of Avalon or Marion Zimmerman Bradley? No. But if I want to write a bestselling feminist version of the Arthurian legend revolving around Sir Gawaine, I’m damn sure going to learn all the historical, feminist, homophobic, etc., missteps Bradley made. And I’ll happily recommend some sporkings if you’re trying to avoid certain things.)

So let’s say you don’t want to write about any of that. Let’s say you’re wanting to write about trauma. Depending on what you write, you want to be careful not to romanticize certain things. I’m not going to lie. As someone who was sexually abused as a kid, that is the absolute minimum standard for me. I cannot stand to read massive swaths of the romance and YA genres simply because of the way the Broody, Threatening Love Interest™ is romanticized. And as with anything else, do your research and ask questions. (Incidentally, the National Novel Writing Month forums are great for inquiries like this). Above all, be respectful.

If you can find them, beta readers are always a good option, especially if you can find people who have experienced the things you’re writing about. Or if you just have a couple of questions, you can always anon someone on Tumblr. Yes, some people may blow you off, but some of them won’t, especially if you’re polite and can show that you’ve already put forth effort to research that matter. (And not even kidding, I would answer EVERY bigoted question about the people of Appalachia if I NEVER had to read another nursing paper talking about how we’re “too stupid” to breastfeed and “feed all our babies Mountain Dew” ever again.)

Now, as for this profiting off others business. Let’s say you write your story, and it does actually bring you profit. Then, you use your platform to promote the voices of people who do have those experiences, and you acknowledge the great debt that you owe that community for sharing their experiences with you. And you acknowledge the luck and privilege that got you where you are. Support people working in the same area! You wrote a novel about a man in a terribly abusive relationship, and it becomes a bestseller? Great! Use your spotlight to share resources for abuse victims. You wrote a novel about a young person transitioning, and it garnered some success? Fantastic! Why don’t you point people to that underappreciated transgender writer?

And sometimes? You’re going to make mistakes, and sometimes, being told that you’ve made mistakes will really hurt because you’ve worked so hard not to make them. I know. I’ve been there a couple of times. When I wrote DLU, I knew I could get some things right. I knew I could write about child abuse and being mistreated by someone you loved and still loving and fearing that person because I’ve been there. And I knew I could write about depression and loneliness and struggling to trust people because I’d been there. I could even say I knew a little bit about classism because I grew up dirt-poor in rural Appalachia, babysitting my brother since I was nine because both of my parents worked multiple jobs.

But I also knew that when I wanted to make Meta Knight a Hispanic man that I was opening myself up to criticism about race. And when I wanted to make Bandanna Dee a trans man, I knew I was opening myself up to criticism about transphobia. And I knew that when I wanted to make one of the primary villains a really racist, evil queen that I was treading on ground that I had no personal experience with. And we haven’t even gotten to Nightmare’s backstory, which basically features the first-hand colonization of Traumwald. So guess what? Sometimes, I’ve gotten it really right. And sometimes, I’ve really screwed it up and had people send me messages saying, ‘Sera, no.’

(And this is crucial; what I haven’t gotten is ‘don’t try to write this type of character.’ Generally, people like seeing different characters with different problems, and if you treat those characters and your readers with respect, your readers will treat you with respect).

But if you’re going to take any one thing away from this post, let it be this: do your best and learn to accept criticism with grace. Don’t let your fear of messing up keep you from ever trying. It is far better to try and write an experience, having approached it with respect and nuance, than it is not to. And sometimes, you will mess up, and that’s okay. You apologize, you learn, and you do better. I, personally, would rather see a writer fail, learn, and do better than to never try at all. Because that’s what writing is. It’s a process of continually working to improve yourself.

#...although I don't know why you're asking a degenerate like me #Sera tries Writing!#looking at some of the...recent YA scandals might also be helpful #but don't let them scare you away from trying to branch out

11 notes · View notes

mxsharknado93 · 5 years

Text

The Pride: A brave, if awkward, first step

So, hey! First time I’ve ever done a proper review of something.

The Pride is an independent, Kickstarter-funded comic written by Joe Glass, with lettering by Mike Stock and a whole host of artists that you can see listed in the image above. I’d run them all down here but that would turn this opener into a full-on run-on sentence.

The Pride, as you could probably guess, is a story about an LGBT superhero team coming together (Led by the perfectly-named and Superman-esque Fabman) both to do some good in the world and to combat the image of LGBT+ superheroes. As a bisexual man, I am all about this. There’s going to be spoilers underneath the cut, so if you don’t want to read those, my TL;DR is Please buy this book and these comics, support them so that the series can grow and improve even more!

As with a lot of independent superhero comics, there are a lot of ersatz and expy characters (for those not obsessed with TV Tropes, that means they’re very similar analogues to preexisting properties) so that you can get acclimated to them more quickly and we can move forward with the story. There’s Wolf, the brooding, no-powers, hypercompetent rich badass; Muscle Mary, formerly a Queen of an island of utopian warrior women who wears a lot of red and gold and has super strength; Twink, who can cover his body in an indestructible metal that imbibes him with super strength; you get the idea. But just because some of these characters are familiar doesn’t mean they’re uninteresting or uninspired. Each one is fully realized and unique, with their own voice and characteristics.

The plot is fairly standard, but still fun thanks to all of the quirks and intricacies of the characters and their interactions with one another. Fabman doesn’t appreciate how the media portrays gay superheroes, he assembles his team, there’s growing pains, there’s pushback from the rest of the superhero community, there’s drama and drama and suspense and sadness, they fight an evil homophobic Southern pastor who wants to build a machine that will bend all the superheroes in the world to his control so he can use them as his army and kill all the gay superhumans, and they win.

The volume also comes with some additional issues after the main story called The Pride Adventures that mostly take place after the end of the initial story, including a two-issue story about the team fighting a vigilante named Outrage, a mech-wearing vigilante who murders homophobes to honor the memory and name of his dead boyfriend, who had also used the same superhero name. And it’s actually really interesting as the team debates whether or not they should stop him or if his actions are wrong. Obviously, they do, and in the end, they’re able to make Outrage see the error of his ways and how his actions are harming the legacy of the man he loved. But still, it’s a ride!

All of the characters represent different facets of the different levels of the LGBT experience; Fabman is out and proud of it and doesn’t really care who he upsets living his life. Wolf is a Camp Straight man still bitter from the backlash in his professional life after his homosexuality became public, resulting in him getting fired from the story’s Justice League equivalent. Twink was sent to the equivalent of a Conversion Therapy camp as a child and is estranged because of it. Bear (who’s a big ol’ anthropomorphic bear man and just the BEST) is an older gay man who came out after he got married and who had a son with his former wife. He’s also HIV positive and is used to help educate readers on the modern truth of HIV and dispel certain myths. Angel is a pansexual drag queen Frost is a Trans woman and White Trash is a Manly Gay whose strength and invulnerability are tied to his self-confidence, but who dealt with an abusive father and gets tattoos as a sort of therapy to work through those ugly memories. They’re all wonderful characters and I really hope the series will continue and we’ll get to see more of them.

It’s also great, as weird as it may sound, that the members of The Pride don’t get along perfectly all the time. Some creators try to paint the LGBTQ+ community as one big happy family and that’s disingenuous. I’m not trying to say we’re not all in this together, but there’s still discrimination even inside our rainbow flag and I like that that’s actually represented. Fabman and Angel actually argue in the team’s first meeting about the importance of explicitly mentioning the “T” in LGBT (although given that Angel’s a drag queen and not a trans man, I don’t know if that’s better or worse). Frost is worried at one point about how Muscle Mary will feel about her being a trans woman. Bear faces discrimination and hostility for being HIV positive. There’s layers. It’s like a good party dip.

Now, The Pride isn’t a perfect comic. It’s a little pricey at around £30 (and that’s BEFORE shipping, especially outside the UK), but right now it’s £15 and for ten issues plus a lot of character art and creators’ notes, I think it’s a great deal. It does have a few issues, mechanical and otherwise, and I think it’d be unfair to use a soft hand in reviewing it. There are a fair few grammatical and punctuational errors and more mix-ups of their/they’re/there than I’d feel comfortable with seeing in a professional publication, but those aren’t the end of the world. I also feel like there’s a bit of underrepresentation in the book, with the majority of the team (Twink, Fabman, Wolf, White Trash, Bear, Frost, and Muscle Mary) being gay or lesbian. Angel is a pansexual man, as I already mentioned, but bisexuality and pansexuality aren’t the same thing (anyone who says otherwise is just trying to start an argument) and it’s worrying that the only example of a nonbinary, potentially aroace individual is the Martian Manhunter stand-in. Also, some of the names are a little... iffy. Twink is called Twink because... he’s a Twink. It’s a pun on the fact that Colossus is a big, burly, shiny metal dude. Bear... is a giant bear and a big, burly gay man. And I’m not super sure about how I feel about the Wonder Woman character taking the same name as a slur for a muscular gay man.

Like I said, it’s not perfect. But when all that we get a lot of times in comics is stuff like...

This... or....

THIS..

It’s such an important book and it should be rewarded for taking a big step forward with success and invested readership so that it can continue to grow and evolve and get better!

You can get digital issues at Comixology and on Amazon, as well as the first volume and these really cute pins on BigCartel!

5 notes · View notes

concerningegg · 7 years

Text

please help out a fellow brown trans poc ⁉

this is a very general look into my life story as of recently. if you can’t donate money, it’s totally cool! But, i’m hoping my story can encourage others to continue working towards their goals and not giving up on themselves.

Thank you for your time, good egg!

BIG CW: sexual trauma, homophobia, transphobia, mentions of family, mom, step parent/dad figure, pedophile mention, child m*lestation, homelessness, abuse, manipulation, depression, self h*rm

…

….

… Hey friends and strangers, my name is Khem, I’m 19 years old, laotian american and the only real family I have is my younger sibling who is 17. I’m a queer brown nonbinary poc and sexual abuse survivor. I was raised by a single mom who was basically my hero and feminist inspiration for independence and strength. That all drastically changed after my stepfather came into our lives 7 years ago and, i was outted by my K8 school as bisexual and was almost expelled because my best friend quickly and innocently kissed me on the lips in the hallway. I was not allowed to walk across the graduation stage and my stepfather talked about me kissing a girl in a sexualized and fetishitic “scandalous” way to his family and other family friends. He was abusive and manipulative and has ingrained his own homophobic and radical ideals on to my mom. Things got worse with time, and my home got emotionally and verbally abusive. My mom and stepfather would gaslight me when they found out I started to self harm when I was 15 and tried to explain my feelings about my mental health. At 18, I was kicked out of my mom’s home just a few days after Christmas because of my sexuality and the gender of the person I was dating during the time. My mom and step “father” stopped financially supporting my living and education and I had to drop out of UWM and was homeless for 6+ months, worrying where I should and who I should go to each night for a couch/bed to sleep in. Matters got to a point where I slept on a mattress in an ally at one point and wasn’t eating meals for days, even weeks at a time. While I was homeless, I was sexually assaulted by someone I thought I could trust and take care of me while in his presence, but instead, touched groped and kissed me while I was sleeping without my consent. I was so terrified, I let most of it happen and didn’t/couldn’t move and then got up to pretend i was about to use the bathroom. The guy pretended he was asleep when i got up and I had a panic attack. This was especially difficult because of the sexual trauma of being molested when i was 6 by a local buddhist monk. He’s never been accused or found. I’m not able to seek any help from anyone else because other adult family members have cut me off for similar reasons relating to my sexuality and gender identity. My biological father has’t been present in my life and the man that raised me who I call my dad, passed because of suicide when I was 12. I am still unable to continue my education and am now earning my own money in hopes to be financially stable enough to live on my own by next summer and hopefully go back to school. I am working now and living with a very kind neighbor that lived next to me in the former house i lived in with my mom and physically/emotionally/verbally abusive step “father”. The 70 year old neighbor I met over half a year ago is now the person I live with every day. My goal is to move out by next summer or in the next year and/or start taking classes at a community college in hopes I can get back into university. I want to work with the youth and especially our LGBT+ Youth in hopes to become a teacher one day. I’ve been harassed and insulted by teachers so many times before in my life and I’m tired of people treating young people like how i’ve been treated my whole life. I want to make a difference and help others with their lives along with my own. I appreciate any help and support and thank you for reading my story. I’m going to be okay but, a little help would mean so much to me.

paypal.me/khemtheythem

#lgbt #lgbtq #help #help me #trans #nonbinary #queer #gay #poc #brown

1 note · View note

thejamzine-blog · 7 years

Text

Run For Your Life, I Think Not

Considering misogyny in The Beatles’ “Run For Your Life”

*Content Warning: Domestic Violence, Intimate Partner Violence*

3,954,324. That’s the number of plays The Beatles’ “Run For Your Life” has on Spotify at time of writing (and Spotify has included The Beatles discography for less than two years). Beatle’s Maniacs and “let me spew all about music history on our first date so I can appear intellectual”-types may argue that “Run For Your Life,” released on 1965’s Rubber Soul, was merely reflective of the ’60s culture from which it was born, where a man could beat his wife and everyone would go to church on sunday as if nothing ever happened, but the Fab Four’s continued cultural impact means we need to consider their influence carefully. The Beatles had an irrefutable hand in shaping modern music and in light of this accolade people may argue the band should be forgiven for that one ‘bad song,’ but that’s simply not true. We’ve seen this logic before, such as in the case of Brock Turner, the ‘Stanford Rapist’ and a collegiate swimmer, who was given a light sentence for his crime a harsh sentence would have a ‘severe impact on him’ as a young college student. He did one ‘bad thing’ and that shouldn’t tarnish the rest of his career. Though The Beatles only imply violence through their song, this implication is not a lighthearted manner. Thankfully, these days the world has become wary of the exclusively white male band that totes lyrics of abuse and objectification of women. However, it’s painful to think that a go-to classic such as The Beatles have had a hand in this misogyny as expressly seen in the threatening lyrics of “Run For Your Life”:

Well I’d rather see you dead, little girl Than to be with another man You better keep your head, little girl Or I won’t know where I am

You better run for your life if you can, little girl Hide your head in the sand, little girl Catch you with another man That’s the end, little girl

It is a wonder that such hateful lyrics can be sung in such a buoyant and blissful way. “I’d rather see you dead” is a direct threat to the life of the woman subject of the song. Some may argue this is just an over-exaggeration. There are NO excuses for violence against women. Violence is a real and present danger for women, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 1 in 3 women experience physical violence, sexual violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime . This is a statistic that is all too real, either we have experienced this or one of our close friends has, and it is NOT a joke. In response to this statistic people may say “it happened one time, he was probably just really upset” or “he just hit her, it’s fine.” It’s not fine. Domestic Violence research points out that abusive behavior is repetitive and those who exhibit abusive behavior often have repeat instances of abuse with multiple partners. National Coalition Against Domestic Violence research also shows that violence often escalates. 72% of all murder-suicides involve an intimate partner; 94% of the victims of these murder suicides are female.

Let’s not forget: calling a woman a ‘little girl’ is demeaning and toxic. ‘Little girl’ implies that woman is still dependent, similar to how a little girl is dependent on the parental figures in her life. Her words are not taken seriously by adults, and thus she is a powerless figure (which of course is how society often treats girls, a problem in it’s own accord). Not only is the female character in the song patronized, but she is claimed by the male singer as property. Here the idea of ‘if I can’t have you, no one will’ arises. A sense of entitlement found in toxic masculinity that states a woman must be owned or must not exist at all. Depending on the parameters of a couple's relationship, cheating is an act of betrayal, however, women’s lives are not just fodder for some tragic murder/abuse/rape plot device and women do not deserve to be threatened as so.

Though John Lennon is credited as the songwriter (technically, both he and Paul McCartney are credited, but that was standard for songs written by either of the two), he tries to distance himself from the song. In a 1970 Rolling Stone interview, Lennon claims he ripped the lines “I’d rather see you dead, little girl/ than to be with another man, little girl” from a 1955 recording of country tune “Baby Let’s Play House” sung by Elvis Presley, written by songwriter Arthur Gunter. Lennon may try to distance himself from this song through the argument that the lyrics were borrowed from the past and not a reflection of his own ideas, but it still remains problematic. The issue lies in the fact that Lennon chose to fashion those antiquated and dangerous lyrics into a pop song fit for the masses, in the end it was his (and arguably his label and producer’s) decision to perpetuate misogyny.

What can one do in the face of antiquated misogyny? One step could be not listening to “Run For Your Life” or other songs and artists that perpetuate messages of violence. As consumers we have the power of our wallets to support or deny products, songs, messages, ideas. Instead, give the royalties from your listening platform to female and non-binary artists who stand up against violence and misogyny. You have the ability to advocate for equality, even if that means simply putting on your headphones. —SM

In response to The Beatles “Run For Your Life,” here’s a playlist of femme musicians you can support instead. These songs feature lyrics presenting female power and characters who have agency over their lives—characters who are no 'little girl':

*Though the focus of this article was on violence towards women, 1 in 4 men also experience intimate partner physical violence, intimate partner sexual violence, and/or intimate partner stalking in their lifetime.

*Additionally, “Run For Your Life” can be seen as a narrative sung about a straight couple, However, to think that intimate partner violence is only present in heteronormative relationships is a dangerous thought. Queer, trans, and nonbinary individuals are also survivors of intimate partner violence and should be supported and advocated for. For more information on intimate partner violence in the queer community: https://www.hrc.org/resources/sexual-assault-and-the-lgbt-community

*If you find yourself in an intimate partner violence situation, when safe call 1-800-799-7233 for the National Domestic Violence Hotline. There is no shame in getting help. Consider visiting The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence for more tips and resouces: http://ncadv.org/learn-more/get-help/accessing-resources

*More information on domestic violence research can be found at http://ncadv.org/learn-more/statistics

0 notes