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katrafiy · 1 year

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I think about this image a lot. This is an image from the Aurat March (Women's March) in Karachi, Pakistan, on International Women's Day 2018. The women in the picture are Pakistani trans women, aka khwaja siras or hijras; one is a friend of a close friend of mine.

In the eyes of the Pakistani government and anthropologists, they're a "third gender." They're denied access to many resources that are available to cis women. Trans women in Pakistan didn't decide to be third-gendered; cis people force it on them whether they like it or not.

Western anthropologists are keen on seeing non-Western trans women as culturally constructed third genders, "neither male nor female," and often contrast them (a "legitimate" third gender accepted in its culture) with Western trans women (horrific parodies of female stereotypes).

There's a lot of smoke and mirrors and jargon used to obscure the fact that while each culture's trans women are treated as a single culturally constructed identity separate from all other trans women, cis women are treated as a universal category that can just be called "women."

Even though Pakistani aurat and German Frauen and Guatemalan mujer will generally lead extraordinarily different lives due to the differences in culture, they are universally recognized as women.

The transmisogynist will say, "Yes, but we can't ignore the way gender is culturally constructed, and hijras aren't trans women, they're a third gender. Now let's worry less about trans people and more about the rights of women in Burkina Faso."

In other words, to the transmisogynist, all cis women are women, and all trans women are something else.

"But Kat, you're not Indian or Pakistani. You're not a hijra or khwaja sira, why is this so important to you?"

Have you ever heard of the Neapolitan third gender "femminiello"? It's the term my moniker "The Femme in Yellow" is derived from, and yes, I'm Neapolitan. Shut up.

I'm going to tell you a little bit about the femminielli, and I want you to see if any of this sounds familiar. Femminielli are a third gender in Neapolitan culture of people assigned male at birth who have a feminine gender expression.

They are lauded and respected in the local culture, considered to be good omens and bringers of good luck. At festivals you'd bring a femminiello with you to go gambling, and often they would be brought in to give blessings to newborns. Noticing anything familiar yet?

Oh and also they were largely relegated to begging and sex work and were not allowed to be educated and many were homeless and lived in the back alleys of Naples, but you know we don't really like to mention that part because it sounds a lot less romantic and mystical.

And if you're sitting there, asking yourself why a an accurate description of femminiello sounds almost note for note like the same way hijras get described and talked about, then you can start to understand why that picture at the start of this post has so much meaning for me.

And you can also start to understand why I get so frustrated when I see other queer people buy into this fool notion that for some reason the transes from different cultures must never mix.

That friend I mentioned earlier is a white American trans woman. She spent years living in India, and as I recal the story the family she was staying with saw her as a white, foreign hijra and she was asked to use her magic hijra powers to bless the house she was staying in.

So when it comes to various cultural trans identities there are two ways we can look at this. We can look at things from a standpoint of expressed identity, in which case we have to preferentially choose to translate one word for the local word, or to leave it untranslated.

If we translate it, people will say we're artificially imposing an outside category (so long as it's not cis people, that's fine). If we don't, what we're implying, is that this concept doesn't exist in the target language, which suggests that it's fundamentally a different thing

A concrete example is that Serena Nanda in her 1990 and 2000 books, bent over backwards to say that Hijras are categorically NOT trans women. Lots of them are!

And Don Kulick bent over backwards in his 1998 book to say that travesti are categorically NOT trans women, even though some of the ones he cited were then and are now trans women.

The other option, is to look at practice, and talk about a community of practice of people who are AMAB, who wear women's clothing, take women's names, fulfill women's social roles, use women's language and mannerisms, etc WITHIN THEIR OWN CULTURAL CONTEXT.

This community of practice, whatever we want to call it - trans woman, hijra, transfeminine, femminiello, fairy, queen, to name just a few - can then be seen to CLEARLY be trans-national and trans-cultural in a way that is not clearly evident in the other way of looking at things.

And this is important, in my mind, because it is this axis of similarity that is serving as the basis for a growing transnational transgender rights movement, particularly in South Asia. It's why you see pictures like this one taken at the 2018 Aurat March in Karachi, Pakistan.

And it also groups rather than splits, pointing out not only points of continuity in the practices of western trans women and fa'afafines, but also between trans women in South Asia outside the hijra community, and members of the hijra community both trans women and not.

To be blunt, I'm not all that interested in the word trans woman, or the word hijra. I'm not interested in the word femminiello or the word fa'afafine.

I'm interested in the fact that when I visit India, and I meet hijras (or trans women, self-expressed) and I say I'm a trans woman, we suddenly sit together, talk about life, they ask to see American hormones and compare them to Indian hormones.

There is a shared community of practice that creates a bond between us that cis people don't have. That's not to say that we all have the exact same internal sense of self, but for the most part, we belong to the same community of practice based on life histories and behavior.

I think that's something cis people have absolutely missed - largely in an effort to artificially isolate trans women. This practice of arguing about whether a particular "third gender" label = trans women or not, also tends to artificially homogenize trans women as a group.

You see this in Kulick and Nanda, where if you read them, you could be forgiven for thinking all American trans women are white, middle class, middle-aged, and college-educated, who all follow rigid codes of behavior and surgical schedules prescribed by male physicians.

There are trans women who think of themselves as separate from cis women, as literally another kind of thing, there are trans women who think of themselves as coterminous with cis women, there are trans women who think of themselves as anything under the sun you want to imagine.

The problem is that historically, cis people have gone to tremendous lengths to destroy points of continuity in the transgender community (see everything I've cited and more), and particularly this has been an exercise in transmisogyny of grotesque levels.

The question is do you want to talk about culturally different ways of being trans, or do you want to try to create as many neatly-boxed third genders as you can to prop up transphobic theoretical frameworks? To date, people have done the latter. I'm interested in the former.

I guess what I'm really trying to say with all of this is that we're all family y'all.

#transgender #third gender #hijras #femminielli #trans women are women #trans solidarity #trans rights #transmisogyny #transunity #transunitism #this is what trans unity looks like

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figofswords · 5 months

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I graduated college! In celebration, here's a Sheik and Ganon drawing I may or may not get around to finishing.

This was actually for a pulp art assignment in one of my classes. The idea here was, since Zelda is sort of a quintessential damsel, to picture what it might look like on her end of things apart from just sitting around waiting to be rescued. In particular, this drawing is a reimagining of this 1992 illustration from the Futabasha Fantasy Novel Series: The Legend of Zelda (via History of Hyrule) with a Sheik/Zelda inspired by the Ocarina of Time manga. In general I have really deeply mixed feelings about the manga adaptations (tp especially (¬_¬)) but I'm OBSESSED with the idea of Sheik as a double agent under Ganon - seriously, what were they doing for seven years? Writing spoken word poetry about the flow of time? Transing their gender? anyways.

#legend of zelda #ocarina of time #sheik #zelda #ganon #ganondorf #loz #oot #the legend of zelda #pen doodles

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captainzigo · 1 month

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hey hi hello , as a fellow trans girl pony enjoyer i love ur art and posts and the like!!

do you have any headcanons abt how HRT affects ponies? personally when i transitioned i made my self insert OC have a lighter coat & mane color and changed her name a bit so she transitioned with me :) the hormones been brightening her up quite a bit

:3 yes! i think it changes your cutiemark

on the left that’s marble pie from the show. pinkie’s sister. and that is octavio pie on the right. pinkie’s brother. from the silly pony life show. identical in design to marble, and not mentioned once in any of the many friendship is magic episodes about pinkie’s family. that’s because these are before and after transition pictures. i doubt anyone thinks of pony life as canon, but if it were then what im saying would be straight up canon. like not even headcanon.

one of the reasons people headcanon trixie as trans is she uses some animation assets normally used for the boy ponies. the only one i remember is her irises, but i seem to remember she may have also had a bigger horn? i don’t know if there’s any headcanons to form from that lol. but i like coming up with really alien biologies. like maybe some ponies wear contacts as an affirmation thing? that’s weird but it’s kinda cool to me. also possibly getting horns reshaped somehow

also i think they probably do transitions with magic. or maybe they do it with potions. but whatever they do its all fancy and whimsical like the rest of the stuff they do. when trixie and twilight had that magic duel they said no one can do the spell that “turns a mare into a stallion” but that’s not really what gender affirming procedures do anyway.

Prickly Pear, my oc from my profile. was just an oc long before i started using her as a sort of sona. i will not be revealing her assigned gender. but i did draw an actual sona one time and that bitch definitely used to have a different cutiemark. probably something i hate but was still kinda good at. like choir

man i drew her a while ago. her proportions are weird. although i guess i do have a lot of ass in real life so maybe that’s fine

i realize now i talked mostly about affirming procedures and not just hrt, but close enough. i think your cutiemark changes magically when you redefine your own identity for yourself. also this is just a headcanon i have. i’m not denying the transness of ponies who’s cutiemarks stayed the same through transition.

#mlpfim #my little pony #ponysona #octavio pie #marble pie #transgender #trans headcanon

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radfem-rage · 1 month

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do you ever think about how emotionally immature TiMs and TiFs are? Everything I see them hung up on as been stuff I dealt with when I was 12-18. Yet they're out here hung up on it despite being 23+. Stuff like being obsessed with having followings, treating trivial things like it's their personality (gender, pretending their bad habits makes them cool, etc), being a mindless consumer (they all act like teens- wanting all this junk and being equally bad with money), not wanting to work because it's soooo unfair, being mad at the way SoCiEtY is (in regards to trivial things), etc.

It's honestly kinda creepy seeing TiMs in their 40s sounding the same way as 16yr TiMs, since literally most trans people sound and act the same fucking way. Its so uncanny, but it's due to their sheer lack of personality. They then turn into little "clusters" of appearance. Are you an it/itself/pup *posts pictures of furries and bdsm* trans or are you a they/them *posts pictures of cottagecore* trans? Don't even get me started on their physical appearance, because yes they even look alike physically and there's sets of "clusters" in regards to style. Are you the kidcore-esc dyed hair still feminine they/them girl or are you the porn-addicted dead-eyed blond twink trying to mimic an e girl? Or are you Chris Chan? lolol

When I see how they all function, especially with how I had plenty of friends who transed out.... It makes me conscious of how much I matured over the years. I wonder if I would be less mature if I wasn't actually dealing with systemic issues? Like abuse, homelessness, discrimination, etc. I went from "youre so mature for your age" to feeling like a "child within an adult body" to now feeling like my actual age. Progress! Yet with these people, there is no progress. They all come across as children in adult bodies.

Holy shit, yes!

What scares me is how the trans community has no problem telling the mentally ill youth that if their pretend identity isn’t affirmed at all times or if their insane demands are not being accepted immediately, it is a valid reason to threaten to commit suicide or shoot yourself. Things like:

• Demanding your parents never call you your “deadname” again out of nowhere

• Parents being forced to forget about how their child used to be before they got mentally ill and when they obviously struggle (because duh, a woman that gave birth to a girl will obviously struggle when that now teenage girl pretends she is a boy) they’re evil

• Tattoos of deadnames must be covered up or “fixed” to have the TiP’s new name or be removed all together

• Genital mutilation surgery the moment they want it and if the parents refuse or want to wait they’re evil transphobes who deserve to die.

• Never being allowed to share news articles about Trans pedophiles or rapists because “transphobia”

• TiF’s invading gay bars and TiM’s invading lesbian bars and then act confused when no one wants them around even though they have been shown multiple times no one wants the opposite sex in gay bars.

Trans people are indeed like children in adult bodies. They have never been told the word “no” and can’t accept it, either. They are stuck in a trans hug-box all day long that will affirm their bullshit and lie to them at every second of every day, they will only depend on other trans people because everyone else is transphobic and slowly lose connections with sane individuals. Then the moment they realize they were never born in the wrong body after all and underwent FGM/MGM for nothing the trans community will backstab them and tell them to k!ll themselves.

I used to have 2 TiM friends. Both were addicted to porn and thought women lived life on easy mode. They were acting extremely feminine and like a sexist stereotype, because they thought that was all a woman was, the moment I stopped affirming their bs and told them women aren’t regressive stereotypes or “feminine people” but adult people of the female sex, they dumped me as a friend. I never once regretted it because truth deserves to be spoken and I got nothing to be ashamed of. I too, changed a lot over the years and became more mature and outspoken, and grew & improved myself a lot, from libfem to radfem, and I love that about myself. ✌🏻

#I apologize it took so long #to answer lol I forgot to check asks #radfem #radical feminism #terf #terf friendly #terfs please touch #radblr #terfblr

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catboybiologist · 9 months

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I'm trans! Here's a way-too-long ramble on my internal thoughts on that!

My other posts on this:

https://www.tumblr.com/catboybiologist/725852054829023232/im-going-to-document-some-things-about-my?source=share

https://www.tumblr.com/catboybiologist/725851397783011328/the-short-answer-is-no-but-im-gonna-have-a?source=share

So yay I’m trans! Which like, is neither unexpected nor abnormal for the community I’ve fostered here, so I’m guessing most of y’all’s reactions is just a “hey cool”. But, you see the online side of me, not the irl side, so there’s still a lot of thoughts to sort out on my end. So I’m dumping a lot of thoughts here to sort all that out. And hoooly shit, it got very long, and I still feel like I have more to say… but yeah. If you wanna hear some perspectives on my relation to gender, transness, and femboy culture, read on!

I guess the best way I can think to style this is as an interview with an imaginary third person, sooo…. Bold text is questions I can imagine people having LOL

So what’s my own personal relationship with the term femboy, catboy, and gendered terminology in general? Is the name of your accounts gonna change?

Short answer, no. I like the name CatboyBiologist. “Catboy” itself is a term that is completely untethered from gender at this point to me. Tbqh, the “cat” part feels more wrong than the boy part- as time goes on, I’ve generally ditched the cat ears for most of my outfits as I take them a bit more seriously. Maybe that’ll change when my transition actually starts, but for now, CatboyBiologist stays, and the femboy related language stays in all of my own past posts (keyword, past- more on that in a bit).

I’m not gonna be updating my approach to pronouns. Any pronouns do just fine, I’m sending a vibe into the world and pronouns are my feedback as to what other people interpret that vibe is. Default to they/them if you don’t know what to do with that.

I will be updating my pinned post to link all of these posts, but mostly copy/paste the information from before. That might take a moment cuz I’m lazy, tbh.

And let’s get something else out of the way.

I’m not socially transitioning yet, and probably won’t for a while.

Which, I think leads to a lot of follow up:

Well, why not?

I present fully male and masculine on a day to day basis, and look the part too. Part of it is just this looks insecurity. The mask stays on in my pictures for a reason. Beyond just facial hair (which grows aggressively on me and always shows some shadow), my face looks pretty masculine overall. It takes time to look the way I do in my posts. I wanna give my face and body some time to change so I can look more femme in more casual ways before I present it to the world.

Beyond that, I’m also just worried about being “accepted” as femme straight off the bat. Implicitly, I know this will be easier if I already have some small amounts of physical feminization down my belt.

There’s two main environments that worry me: family, and professionally. Family is a weird hot mess grey area that is too personal to talk about here, but the professional atmosphere is certainly going to be a bit… weird. I live in an accepting geographic region, and around people who are very outspokenly trans supportive…. But most of whom are cishet and simply don’t have a lot of experience seeing or working around trans people. I’m more afraid of being seen as “trans first, biologist second” as far as my career is concerned, than I am about outright transphobia. I know this will never fully go away, and given that I’m 6’2”, I’ll probably never “fully” pass- but I’d at least like people to implicitly read my as femme on a gut level before I start changing how I present that way. One thing my irl femboy experience has shown me is that, even if people can “clock” you intellectually, the way their gut instinct reads you affects whether they treat you as masc or femme. I hope that makes sense on some level. Of course its always going to be an awkward shift, but I hope some time on HRT will make it less awkward.

I’ve come out to one person that doesn’t know about this online persona, or the depths of my queerness. They straight up told me they were shocked. They were incredibly supportive, but they told me they didn’t see it coming at all. And they already knew that I “crossdressed occasionally”. So that’s kinda what I’m working with here.

Essentially, I’m not actually truly “transitioning” in a real sense yet. More than that, I feel like I’m getting the ball rolling. If there’s anything I learned in my research, it’s that HRT takes a while, much longer than anyone expects (suppressing my rant about how the media cherrypicks people in early transition for trans representation and the effect that has on public perception). Two years is often cited as the “end” point, but based on both scientific and anecdotal accounts, that is wildly untrue and variable. I also know that the first changes onset quickly (skin and mood, most notably), but that overall body shape changes sometimes take a VERY long time to start and progress. So to be quite honest, I barely feel like I’m transitioning yet, I’m just laying groundwork for the future.

So yeah. I’m gonna be boymoding for a bit. Possibly a year or more. Even for the people who know, I’ve still asked them to address me as he/him or they/them, and use my masculine name for now (haven’t even really decided on a femme name yet, although I have ideas [open to suggestions as well]).

Wait, so why address it online at all?

Put simply, honesty. I’m displaying a lot of selfies and experimentation with my look here, and I want to make it abundantly clear what I’m doing to have an effect on that. People have asked me if I’m on HRT in comments before, and like, I’m not gonna lie about that. Might as well also make a shitpost, a data gathering post, and a too-long ramble about it as well (which you’re reading now!).

There are a LOT of body image issues in femboy spaces (and trans spaces too!), often among very young people. While I have no issue with people on HRT continuing to call themselves a femboy (more on that in a bit), I do think transparency on that matter is helpful for those body image issues.

So to make it abundantly clear: all of my selfies and pictures that I’m labeling and tagging as “femboy” are pre-HRT. In the future, everything I tag with “trans” is post-HRT. I still got 1-2 weeks before actually starting, and I’m still going to use the femboy tag for any outfits I post during that time. The moment an estradiol pill hits my mouth, though, new pics will use trans tags.

Posts that relate to discussion of the interplay of the communities, and how I view myself within them, I’ll tag with both.

Which leads to another follow up question. This one isn’t about me specifically, but it’s my hot take about a certain brand of trans discourse I’ve seen around (mostly on reddit tbh):

Why would someone who knows they’re mtf trans willingly call themselves a femboy and/or request people to “misgender” them?

So this is actually gonna be striking a nerve with me, and I know I’m gonna kinda be strawmanning here by arguing against the ghost of reddit comments past. I’m not gonna try to dig any of them up in the internet archive, but they are sentiments I’ve seen multiple times.

I’ve seen this question almost word for word in the comments of trans subreddits multiple times. Imma be blunt, and it’s maybe gonna sound a little mean. If this thought is going through your head, you’re likely way more sensitive and particular about labels than most people. And that’s okay! Ask people to address you how you want, you deserve that respect! But the real answer to this question is that many people simply don’t mind being called whatever label is most useful or familiar to themselves in various contexts.

The moment that it becomes completely unacceptable is when someone does actually change their pronouns, name, presentation, etc, and people still address them as “male” or “femboy”. That is completely the fuck out of line, and if you don’t agree, fuck off.

Why does this strike a little bit of a nerve with me? Well, the “conclusion” I saw reached in these trans spaces multiple times when the subject was brought up was annoying as hell. That conclusion was that the only or primary reason that people labeled themselves a femboy, even while on HRT… was to sell their onlyfans. My fucking god, seriously? This is just conservative rhetoric. Luckily, on tumblr, it seems that people are a lot more accepting towards people using whatever language they like to describe themselves, which I’ve enjoyed a lot.

I’ve also had a lot of hate towards “fencesitting” directed at me on reddit, from trans people, for calling myself a femboy. I can’t remember it verbatim, but I very distinctly recall getting a DM that went something like “I fucking hate femboys, just transition already. You’re making us (transfemmes) look bad.” So yeah. Bit of a sore spot.

Yadda yadda yadda the personal journey shit

If I can be real for a moment…. In an ideal world, I would still want to be a part time femboy. Even moreso than the sheer utility of it all (eg, enjoy cis male privilege when I want, but still get treated more femme in certain contexts), it feels almost more profound to fuck with gender norms without sitting on one side of the gender line or another. But I can’t really ignore what I’ve described as my “mental resting state”- a baseline crackle of dysphoria that fills the space in my head when there’s nothing else to fill it. It’s easily distracted, but its always there, and I can’t imagine living my life that way anymore.

I’ve pretty much known I was trans since I was about 12, and had a realization that puberty was just starting to hit me, and I hated it. I suppressed it deeply, for many, many reasons that I don’t think I want to share here. But it made a lot of other mental health struggles in my life a lot worse, even if I didn’t consciously acknowledge that’s what was happening. By the time I was willing to consciously acknowledge it, I realized that my dysphoria wasn’t so bad as to dive in right away. But, I made moves to stabilize my life overall, which have been massively beneficial to me in other ways as well.

During the pandemic, I found myself living alone for the first time ever. So during the pandemic, in one last ditch effort to try to convince myself I wasn’t trans, I delved into femboy aesthetics to try and “just be a feminine man”.

That failed.

So yeah, here I am. I have a wonderful queer community both irl and online, a meagre but stable income, health insurance that has great coverage for trans care, and accepting people around me in my life. It’s long overdue. Maybe I’ll beat myself up for waiting so long and masculinizing so much as a result, but I don’t think I really could have done it any other way.

This all said, I don’t actually really consider myself a woman yet. I’m sure many of you are aware of two different ways transfemmes view themselves(and trans people in general, but using a transfemme perspective here):

-Some view themselves as having always been girls or women, but took some time to realize it and make their body more comfortable for themselves with that information.

-Others view themselves as boys or men who made efforts to become women later.

I fall strongly in the second line of thinking for myself. For my own personal experiences, even though I have felt dysphoria for a long time, I don’t really think I’m “actually” a woman yet. I don’t know what my identity as a woman looks like yet. But I deeply want to discover and create who that person is, and there’s no way to do that without transitioning.

B but… BASIC BIOLOGY!!!!!

How many biology degrees do you have? I got a BS and an MS, and I’m working on my PhD. I’m sure you’ve brought a similar level of expertise to this discussion.

But seriously, I could genuinely write an entire fucking essay about how studying biology has influenced my views on this subject, but honestly, that’s an entirely different topic. But tl;dr is that bioessentialism is brainrot, and if someone tries to use essentialist language to “justify” someone’s transness (or gender in general)… well, I think they’re wrong. Plain and simple. We don’t say someone isn’t “really able to see” if they put glasses in front of their eyes.

I’m stopping myself before I write more here, because this warrants another post or even a fucking video essay, to be quite honest. But yeah. Biology based.

Conclusion?

Uhhhh… in conclusion, I’m not particular about language or pronouns you use for me, I’m making posts about it anyways to ensure honesty associated with my selfies, if you’re transphobic jump of the tallest bridge you can find. I think that about covers it.

#femboy #transitioning #trans #transgender #mtf #cross dressing

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t4transsexual · 8 months

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when i was going through a rough breakup with someone who was very bad to me, i told my now-girlfriend (but at the time was just an instagram friend) that i had missed reading but developed depression at around 10-11 years old due to childhood abuse and bullying for being autistic and gender non conforming and since then havent picked up a book, but didnt know where to start. she then pushed me to go to the bookstore and pick out a book to read, and i read and finished that one (hell followed with us by andrew joseph white). recently i bought another book by the same author, "the spirit bares its teeth" that apparently has an st4t subplot which is very fitting for me, as well as the main character being an autistic trans man and coming from an abusive household, and ive never related so much to a character in a book it's unreal. representation is important and the first book was great but the main character wasnt autistic and i cant relate to a non autistic character. and shoutout to my girlfriend for getting me back into reading after all this time, shes a reader herself. im putting this on my t4t blog because we're trans people in love. heres a pic i took of me laying on her while she was reading (she moved her book out of frame)

its one of my favorite pictures with her, and she makes me so happy, and i really am happy. im glad she got me back into reading. i know transphobes who see my account will harrass us for being who we are publicly, but i also get a lot of trans people who are happy to see two trans people who love each other, and i just wanna remind yall that you can be really happy too, not in spite of your transness even, but as a direct result. the community ive been blessed to have as a trans person and the people ive met and have bonded with because im trans and we're trans have been so valueable and important to my happiness. this post is all over the place but if you take anything from it, its that you can be happy as a trans person and you should prioritize your community🏳️‍⚧️💜

#trans #t4t #transmasc #t4t love #t4t mlw #transhet #trans man #transgender #trans bi #transfem

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toc-the-elder · 4 days

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I've spent a lot of time being a bit confused by posts by trans people talking about being worried they're faking it and not really trans.

And yeah. I get you now.

I was doing some casual research to find out when the earliest date I could apply for a Gender Recognition Certificate is (depending on what level of evidence they ask for), and for some reason, I had the thought of "Oh god, you mean I can't change it back?"

I don't know where this thought came from. When I interrogate my own thought process, and ask at what point I would like to detransition, I don't have an answer for myself. There is no point where I think existing as I was would ever make me happier than living as the woman I can be. I suppose the finality of the certificate is what scares me a little, but isn't that the point? Isn't the whole point to try and close up all the legal loopholes someone might use to treat me as anything but female? And why should the finality of the thing scare me? My whole transition has been a series of finalities. I have already endured and bloomed under final, permanent changes to my body. I have already declared myself to the world. I know in my heart of hearts that I desperately want and need my surgery. It's been perhaps my deepest personal desire my entire life. I have been fucking diagnosed with the trans disease.

I shouldn't be shocked at the finality of any of this. And the fact that I am gave me a bit of a wobble. Like what if I'm not really trans? What if all these years have been just some silly mistake or not really me or self-delusion or just talking myself into something and what if I go through with all of this just to regret it?

Well, the alternative is going back to how I was, and I know I already regret that. I know I'm wrong when I suggest to myself that I'm not really trans. Because as much as I hate the way the NHS medicalises transness, they are treating me for gender dysphoria, and I grow more comfortable with what I see in the mirror every day. They boil transness down to gender dysphoria, and I certainly experience that, and embracing my womanhood makes me experience it a lot less. I know that non-trans people probably don't regularly and invariably picture having their intimate experiences with a different genre of genitalia.

Sometimes I have a moment of doubt, but by every metric I can think of, I am trans, and thus a woman.

#and honestly making myself a woman by accident doesnt seem so bad #trans #transgender #hrt #cw gender dysphoria #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia

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powerfulblob · 10 months

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Nimona Trans Happy dances !!

aaaaaah so excited about this

BREAKING NEWS

ND Stevenson just posted this on his Substack : I’m putting it here so there’s an image-described version of it somewhere on the web.

[NOTE: ALL ART BELONGS TO ND STEVENSON, @gingerhaze! I’M JUST REPOSTING HERE SO I CAN INCLUDE AN IMAGE DESCRIPTION]

[ID: Text in dark red handwriting that reads “I’ve been getting to talk about Nimona a lot lately! Which is great because it’s one of my favorite things to talk about!” All text in the comic will be in the same dark red handwriting. end image description]

[ID:

Part 1: Text reads “Nimona is a webcomic-turned-graphic-novel I made ten years ago.” An arrow connects the text and points to a cartoon of ND Stevenson: He holds a picture of a shark with arms, legs, and boobs running to the left. He has short red hair, wears a striped shirt, jean shorts, striped pants, and boots. He wears an earring in his right ear: The other ear is hidden because of the angle. Small lines float from his head in a circular pattern.

Part 2: Text reads “there’s a shark with boobs in it and they gave me a medal for it.” An arrow connects the text and points to a cartoon of Nate: This time, he wears a suit, and wears a medal. He wears an earring in his left ear: The other ear is hidden because of the angle. Small lines float from his head in a circular pattern.

Part 3: Text reads “it’s about to be an animated movie”

Part 4: Text reads “the movie is really good”

Part 5: Text reads “most of you are probably aware of all this but idk I don’t know your life.” Below is a cartoon of Nate in a T-shirt: He has an ear piercing and a slight stubble.

end image description]

[Image description:

Text reads “anyway there’s one question I‘ve been getting a lot:”

Below, ND Stevenson has a conversation with an unseen person.

Unseen Person: So... The main character is a shapeshifter. Unseen Person: Is this a metaphor for transness? ND Stevenson: haha, looking back that seems obvious! but at the time I had no idea! ND shrugs, smiling slightly. He wears a sweater.

end image description]

[ID: Text reads “and so” “caught up in the glow of hype and nostalgia” Below the text, Nate goes onto a computer propped on a stack of books. He smiles, and a few lines float off his head.

He says “hey!” “let’s head back to Tumblr and see what I was posting about Nimona back in the day!”

Below that, there is a cartoon of a search bar, cursor, a few lines, and sound effects that read “tik tik tik.” The URL reads “gingerhaze.tumblr.com.”

end image description]

[ID: A screenshot of a post on Nate’s Tumblr. It is an illustration of Nimona and Ballister. Ballister has grey armour, iron prosthetic hand, black hair and a mustache and beard, as well as a red cape. Nimona has several piercings, a chainmail top, dark grey dress, and short red hair with an undercut. The two seem to be in thought, with Ballsiter frowning, hands on hips, while Nimona puts a finger to chin, as if in thought. The author’s text reads “I just kind of really like drawing both of these dudes.” The tag reads “Nimona” in all caps. It was posted 11 years ago.

end image description]

[ID: Screenshot of a post on Nate’s tumblr. A user caled fylum-gordata replied to the photo, saying “Nimona’s a dude. MIND BLOWN.”

Nate replied with: “Haha, "dudes" = "people in general" in my vocabulary. Nimona's a girl, but she can certainly be whatever gender and sex she wants, depending on her mood. Since she's a shapeshifter and all. Y'know.” The post is tagged with “Nimona” and was also posted 11 years ago.

End image description]

[ID:

Part 1: A cartoon of Nate’s face. It has a blank expression with his mouth closed but stretched out. Part 2: Nate says “oh” “buddy”

end image description]

[ID:

Illusration. Nimona, with a grin, says “I’m your new SIDEKICK” while Ballister, with a blank but angry expression, says “No.”

Nimona, this time has more developed muscles, the same costume, arm and leg hair, a beard, and chest hair text underneath reads “I had so much fun drawing Beefy Dude Nimona on today’s page that I started wondering what it would be like if she’d been a beefy dude from the start.

The post is tagged Nimona. End image description]

[ID: A cartoon of Nate. He seems a bit angry or frustrated, almost, and says “BUDDY” presumably for not seeing this in hindsight earlier.

end image description]

[ID:

A user called strix-alba asked “Hi! I have a Nimona question. When she’s being a beefy dude, for example, or something without a clear gender, does she switch pronouns? Does she generally stick with female ones? Or does Nimona not really care because she’s a shapeshifter and there are waaaaay too many other things to focus on?”

Nate replied: “She’s been an octopus, a cat, and a giant flaming monster. I don’t really think it mkaes a whole lot of difference to her what the sex of whatever body she’s in at the moment is. All her bodies are different sizes and have different parts. She adapts to each one to use it in the best possible way, but it doesn’t change HER. I can’t say for certain if she’s ALWAYS identified as female, but during the timeframe of the comic she does.”

The post is tagged with “Nimona” and was posted 8 years ago.

end image description]

[ID: A cartoon of Nate looking shocked, eyes wide, mouth open, saying “BUD” with the U and the D getting bigger and bolder.

end image description.]

#nimona #long post #nd stevenson #transmasc #transgender #comics

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artiusrattus · 3 months

Text

I MADE MY FIRST GHOST OC!!!!

He's actually my first oc ever and I'm so happy to finally know what it feels like to have one. It's like having a child (idk what that's like either but I'm assuming this is it)

Here's some info about him!!

Name: Otto Hoffman

Age: Late twenties early thirties? haven't decided yet

He's a doctor and keeper and psychologist for the ghouls. Basically the man is a super smart science guy and he has some religious trauma so when he found out a satanic ministry needed someone to study and take care of these strange creatures he was interested.

and of course he doesn't just take care of the ghouls, he studies them for two reasons. One because it's fun and interesting. Two because he really really loves them and cares for them and wants to make sure they're healthy and happy and strong.

Dewdrop gives him the most trouble

but he loves him anyway.

He transed his gender.

Blind as a bat.

In a very deep state of love and romance with Mountain for reasons I will elaborate on if asked.

Cutie patootie

It might look like mountain is closer to the camera in the picture. that's not it. He's just really really big and Otto is very small. I haven't decided how small yet

That's it thanks

#the band ghost #ghost bc #nameless ghouls #ghost ghouls #small artist #ghost band oc #ghost oc #ghost fanart #fanart #my art #ghost band #ghost the band #ghost bc oc

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postoctobrist · 1 year

Note

Hi, Alice. I know this isn't really your usual sort of ask, but seeing you talk so lovingly to people just beginning to work out their gender feelings has made me feel sort of melancholy because I feel like I'm on the opposite side. I've been out for almost a decade, I'm coming up on seven years on T and I just kind of feel like I've lost the joy in being trans. I'm dealing with some health stuff, probably related to my hormone levels but as yet undetermined, which has basically eradicated my ability to have any sort of sex life (this is on top of other, much more long-term chronic illness). I might have to start taking estrogen as well which is terrifying the absolute shit out of me even though I know intellectually that taking a very low dose won't have any of the effects I'm afraid of.

I feel like a walking embodiment of the shit TERFs say about how taking hormones will ruin your life and fuck up your genitals. I'm utterly broken down by the relentless transphobia of this shitty fucking island. Sometimes I scare myself into thinking that I want to detransition, even though I know I wouldn't be happier as a woman, but god damn, when I think about that hot little 18 year old lipstick lesbian I was a decade ago it makes me want to cry. I don't know how to feel good about my body anymore. The days of feeling excited about playing with my gender expression feel like they happened a thousand years ago on Mars. The semblance of 'community' I had before COVID sort of disintegrated and I'm still mostly too riven with COVID anxiety to get it back. I'm very sorry for dropping this enormous shedload of feelings on you but I guess I just don't know how to take joy in being trans anymore.

I've been there - sometimes I am there. As a community, we're pretty good at getting people through the early years of transition, but after that you're supposed to just be good, which might be fine except that all the other parts of life keep going. Not only does transition not solve all your problems, but you keep getting new problems and they're all weird - my top left rib pops in and out of place a bit when I sit down now, it's great. We don't have a good set of ways for talking or thinking about aging, including for cis people. And on top of everything else, the world is getting harder and hotter and more bigoted and we survived a fucking pandemic. But: we survived a fucking pandemic. And we survived all the other things. We're tough, tougher than anyone gives us credit for, including us. Under the circumstances, we're doing pretty good. So that's the first thing: what you're feeling is normal.

Second part: is that feeling helpful or realistic? I don't think that it is. You can't know that you'll always be unhappy with your body, or that you'll never rebuild community. I don't believe that people can be ruined. Okay, you can't go back to being 18, and that's painful, but neither can cis people and they get upset about it too. And 18 year olds are really annoying, imagine being one.

All in all what I'm getting at is that stuff happens to us, like it does to everyone. We took an uncommon step to enforce the correct version of ourselves on the stuff, that's all. And you don't always have to be happy or picture-perfect about it, you don't always have to love it. But if that version of you is the right one, I suggest there is something there beyond joy. The joy can be beautiful, but time has given me the chance to understand my transness as a solemn, clear declaration of myself.

And that joy can and most likely will come back. Even if you have to find new things or think in new ways, inshallah we will all get our joyful moments. Despite everything.

be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous

in the final account only this is important

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